Zillow Intends to Buy and Flip Homes - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/zillow-intends-to-buy-and-flip-homes-1523581268 <comment><USER2> This is going to require some careful work to avoid getting sued for capitalizing on manipulating prices with their "zestimate". Maybe Zillow is feeling confident after their legal victory [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-zillow-group- lawsuit/zill...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-zillow-group- lawsuit/zillow-wins-dismissal-of-zestimate-lawsuit-in-u-s-idUSKCN1B32RN)

</comment><comment><USER3> Non-paywalled link: [https://www.mpamag.com/news/zillow-to-begin-buying- selling-h...](https://www.mpamag.com/news/zillow-to-begin-buying-selling- homes-directly-97727.aspx)</comment>


Stanford Large Network Dataset Collection - <AUTHOR> https://snap.stanford.edu/data/ <comment><USER2> A note here that SNAP at Stanford is funded by NSF grants through DARPA SMISC, which is a research group in the DoD looking to learn how to get better at influencing social media groups online for propaganda.

(Strategic Communication is the DoD term, well one of them, for propaganda)

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/08/darpa-social- ne...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/08/darpa-social-networks- research-twitter-influence-studies)

[https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=972cbc8...](https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=972cbc835c3702e9758aedcf032fb4ec&tab=core&_cview=1)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're looking for even larger graph datasets, the team at WebDataCommons[1] extracted hyperlink graphs from Common Crawl[2]. They're available at both page and domain levels of granularity.

The page level hyperlink graphs are 3.5 billion web pages and 128 billion hyperlinks for 2012 and 1.7 billion web pages connected by 64 billion hyperlinks for 2014.

[1]: [http://webdatacommons.org/hyperlinkgraph/](http://webdatacommons.org/hyperlinkgraph/)

[2]: [http://commoncrawl.org/](http://commoncrawl.org/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Sad to see the beeradvocate and ratebeer datasets were removed before I could grab them.

[https://snap.stanford.edu/data/web- BeerAdvocate.html](https://snap.stanford.edu/data/web-BeerAdvocate.html)

[https://snap.stanford.edu/data/web- RateBeer.html](https://snap.stanford.edu/data/web-RateBeer.html)

<comment><USER5> [http://jmcauley.ucsd.edu/cse255/data/beer/Ratebeer.txt.gz](http://jmcauley.ucsd.edu/cse255/data/beer/Ratebeer.txt.gz) [http://jmcauley.ucsd.edu/cse255/data/beer/Beeradvocate.txt.g...](http://jmcauley.ucsd.edu/cse255/data/beer/Beeradvocate.txt.gz)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> All of these datasets seem to be some kind of unweighted graph with no additional information (except community information in some cases).

Does anyone know where one can find richer network data sets? i.e. a graph in which the vertices have some attributes.

<comment><USER7> Not sure I agree. For example there's a patents set:

[https://snap.stanford.edu/data/cit- Patents.html](https://snap.stanford.edu/data/cit-Patents.html)

with included patent classification data. You can also join the WikiTalk set:

[https://snap.stanford.edu/data/wiki- Talk.html](https://snap.stanford.edu/data/wiki-Talk.html)

against Wikipedia data. You can obtain more node attributes for these (and others) easily by joining against public sets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are there any large datasets out there representing n-partite networks? So instead of people connnecting w/people I see e.g. devedges between developers and languages, or products and users, and so on..

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm just getting into machine learning so I'm looking forward to practicing on these datasets. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER10> The availability of real-world signed network datasets is really great, I've used the Stanford Large Network Dataset Collection in the past to test predictive accuracy in reputation systems. (Looks like they added a new dataset to the "signed" category -- wikipedia requests for adminship.)</comment>


One-stop performance analysis using atop - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/387202/ <comment><USER2> I love atop - and install it everywhere that I can. The in depth metrics + historical view is excellent.

That being said, I wouldn't call it a one stop tool for performance analysis. Particularly due to the word 'analysis' \- it tells you what resource was used, and what was using it. It doesn't tell you anything about /why/ the process was using it. It doesn't help with hunting down regressions. It doesn't give you insight in to what these processes are actually doing.

For that, you need to utilize strace/ltrace/ftrace/dtrace/ktap/systemtap/perf/sysdig/whatever

(If interested in the actual analysis/engineering side of performance, I recommend following Bredan Gregg's blog and buying his systems performance book - [http://brendangregg.com/](http://brendangregg.com/) )

</comment><comment><USER3> Atop was absolutely my favorite tool when I was supporting lots of interactive systems and users complained to me that "foo is slow". Even better, the logging let me determine the cause after the fact when a user complained "foo was slow". The beauty of it is that it's using process accounting to gather the resource utilization of everything that was running on the system between two points in time. Compare that to a more standard metrics-gathering system like collectd, where I would have to know the names of the processes I want to monitor in advance ([http://collectd.org/documentation/manpages/collectd.conf.5.s...](http://collectd.org/documentation/manpages/collectd.conf.5.shtml#plugin_processes)).

The case study at [http://www.atoptool.nl/download/case_leakage.pdf](http://www.atoptool.nl/download/case_leakage.pdf) is worth a read to get a feel for what it's like to use atop.

</comment><comment><USER4> Haven't tried atop yet. I am used to htop + dstat. Those two give me a quick overview of what is happening on the sytem.

</comment><comment><USER5> atop is an awesome tool.... and the article is from 2010.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible to use unlimited LTE as your full-time Internet? - <AUTHOR>

I try to be as frugal as possible. With T-Mobile in the news, the thought came to me if I could cancel my $100/month Comcast, get the $70/month unlimited data T-Mobile plan, and use that as full-time Internet.<p>Except the unlimited is only the phone and not hot-spot compatible. Or is there a way around that? (routing traffic or something) <comment><USER2> If the unlimited is for the phone, then it may be illegal to circumvent[1]. Even if not, it's against the terms of service and certainly unethical.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> I figured as much. I wish there was a unlimited tethering with the unlimited LTE plan, but with rate limiting. Like limit me to .5-1Mbps on my non-phone devices. I'm not downloading music or videos, or streaming, I just want to browse text websites and code on my MacBook, nothing bandwidth intensive.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately even modern webpages are very bandwidth intensive (by LTE standards) compared to what is usually served up to phones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Does the limitation include USB tethering as well as wifi? I know my Sprint contract allows USB but not wifi.

Edit: Is $100/mo. really the cheapest Comcast option?</comment>


Lonely Dissent - <AUTHOR> http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/12/lonely-dissent.html

<comment><USER2> Non-conformity is only relative to the social and intellectual norms in your life. A sci-fi convention is essentially a huge collection of socially tone- deaf individuals, so of course they're going to be tolerant; there's no coherent metric for conformity in the first place. This is probably why intellectual movements form: they create a context in which new and unconventional ideas lack the stigma they would have elsewhere.

This means that you can't measure the level of a person's non-conformity by some objective metric of how "strange" they are. A person who is well integrated into their social or intellectual milieu can do something less eye- catching than wearing a clown suit and still be much greater non-conformist. It depends entirely on your environment, your audience, and how well you understand both.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that the point about risking the incomprehension of those around you points to something deeper. I always marvel at Goddard's courage, for example, when he was launching liquid rockets out of a cabbage patch. Here's a guy who _moved back in with his mom_ and faced the ridicule of local and national newspapermen who fundamentally misunderstood the physics of what he was doing.

The incomprehension of the tribe nearly always leads to the most crushing kind of social defeat. And when you factor in the inevitable failures of any novel challenge, I'll bet you'll find that the life of an intellectual hero isn't just lonely, it's leadenly depressing. (I'm thinking right now of a comment made by one of the Wright brothers on the train home after a failed flight attempt: "Man will not fly for a thousand years.") It's no fun to be a depressed hero, I'm sure. For every Goddard and Wright brother, there must be thousands of failure stories, each of them detailing a life you'd never want to live.

The cost associated with real innovation is generally very high. We are, after all, paleolithic creatures living in a technical world. Conformity means a successful hunt. We're monkeys with mp3 players. Thus, this innovator's penalty is an atavism, but it's not one we're going to overcome anytime soon.

<comment><USER4> _I'm thinking right now of a comment made by one of the Wright brothers on the train home after a failed flight attempt: "Man will not fly for a thousand years."_

And yet... they kept trying.

It's not always the right idiom for ordinary problems - but for impossible ones, sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Did anyone not already know this? Anyone over the age of about 21 knows how much easier it is to add to momentum than to create it. It's the difference between a stand-up comic and a funny guy at a party. Or a founder and an employee. One is creating something, the other is redirecting it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not a bad article, but most of the examples given of "lonely dissent" seem to me to fall much more into the "vegetarian" category than the "clown suit" category.

For me at least, the feeling upon encountering somebody who tells me that he wants to have his body frozen after he dies isn't "Oh wow, what a crazy idea I've never heard before", it's "Oh, another one of those". Cryonicists (if that's a word) are too numerous and too well connected to each other to really count as lonely dissenters.

Oh, and I could have done without the "PS. I am awesome" bit at the end.

<comment><USER7> _It's not a virtue, you see - just a bias either way._

I think his point was showing up in a clown suit is not a "correct" choice because it's non conformist. Their are times a places where dissent is correct and others where going with the pack is correct and you can't arbitrarily say one is better than the other in all cases.</comment></comment>


Lost Causes of Theoretical Physics (2003) - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/20160209122140/http://www.mth.kcl.ac.uk/~streater/lostcauses.html <comment><USER3> Not a physicist, but isn't "Bohmian Mechanics" (1) what's also known as "Pilot Wave Theory", which is now gaining experimental support (2) ?

 _Clarke 's First Law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."_

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie–Bohm_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie–Bohm_theory)

2\. [https://www.quantamagazine.org/pilot-wave-theory-gains- exper...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/pilot-wave-theory-gains-experimental- support-20160516/)

<comment><USER4> Pilot waves, multiverse and Copenhagen are fundamentally ineligible for experimental support, at least with respect to each other. They lead to the same numbers, meaning than an experiment that agrees with one will also agree with the others. It's something like trying to tell the difference between 2x=2y and x+2=y+2.

The "support" in the article is really just a physical system that obeys (as a macroscopic approximation) something like pilot waves: "just like the universe" if pilot waves are right, and "just like those silly nonlocalists" if pilot waves aren't.

<comment><USER5> While the current formulation details of the pilot wave theory doesn't allow for new predictions, a better formulated one will. I strongly believe we'll see the breakthrough in the coming 10-15 years. Quantum mechanics are statistic predictions and it's about time we treat them as such.

<comment><USER6> > While the current formulation details of the pilot wave theory doesn't allow > for new predictions

Actually pilot wave theories do have new predictions, namely quantum non- equilibrium. We just have no idea if we can actually design an experiment for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Rigorous Feynman Path Integrals

It depends on how rigorous you want the treatment to be.

The whole machinery of Feynman diagrams is derived from Path Integrals and Wick's Theorem, so they are rigorous, at least as rigorous as standard perturbation theory using operatorial quantum mechanics.

A mathematical physicist won't be amused, though, that's correct. But I wouldn't say that Path Integrals are less rigorous than the average technique used in Theoretical Physics, and particularly in many-body theory.

<comment><USER8> There's been a lot of progress nonperturbatively defining quantum mechanics and quantum field theory using resurgence lately. See, for example, the very recent [https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.10441](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.10441)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The many worlds interpretation is just that, and INTERPRETATION, not a predictive theory. The article seems really upset by that, but is it any reason to label it a lost cause? I guess you can't really study it or preform experiments on it but that shouldn't be any suprise for any interpretation of quantum mechanics.

I might be missing something here...

<comment><USER10> If a theory isn't predictive, it isn't falsifiable. If it isn't falsifiable, then the theory isn't truly scientific.

This is a major issue/concern in advanced theoretical physics. Is it really physics if you can't experiment or is it just mathematics?

The foundation of science is falsiability within the scientific method. It's the core tenet.

<comment><USER11> But you need to do a lot of speculative work before falsifiability becomes possible. And that speculative work is going to involve groping around in the dark being guided by mathematical logic (and a certain amount of politics, fashion, and wishful thinking.)

Considering physics as if MWI could be true has the potential to lead to mathematical elaboration and eventual falsifiability.

Considering physics as if there's no need to interpret QM because there's nothing to interpret (because Copenhagen is the correct interpretation) is a statement of faith, not rigour - because as a position, it's no more falsifiable than MWI, or Bohm, or any of the other interpretations.

The point of mathematical physics is to generate _new_ falsifiable predictions. It's still science, it's just embryonic proto-knowledge - <USER2> is why it's called research, not teaching.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There has been an enormous resurrection of the analytic bootstrap. Grep, for example, [https://www.icts.res.in/program/NUMSTRINGS2018/talks](https://www.icts.res.in/program/NUMSTRINGS2018/talks) for bootstrap. The difference is the realization that the bootstrap equations can be solved numerically and can be thought of as a way to test whether certain conformal theories exist at all, rather than as a way to take you from hardly-any-input-at-all to a complete description of the theory.

</comment><comment><USER12> > Aspect, Dalibrand and Roger (1982)

Aspect, Dalibard and Roger (1982)

<comment><USER13> Grad school physics was/is your background I assume. I had the same thought when reading.

<comment><USER12> Yep, I was a graduate student in physics, but not at all in that field. The reason why I recognize Dalibard's name even misspelled is because I was a student in the same institution and I used to know several of his grad students.

Little bit of trivia: he was 23 or 24 when he wrote that paper…

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can anyone explain Feynman path intergrals to a non-physicist? I'm guessing there's a bit more to it than defining a measure on C[0, T] and lebesgue integrating.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm not a physicist but as far as I know the key concept of the Everett interpretation is that you can think of universe states as of vectors and perform mathematical operations on them. IMHO giving up the ability to think this way would be a tragic loss. Many other parts of the list would make a huge pity to forget too.

</comment><comment><USER16> Does it say Mach Principle is incorrect? That is good, as a non physicist I could never wrap my head around the distant stars influencing anything.

<comment><USER17> The distant stars are important because they make space flat. Remember that general relativity says mass bends space, or more accurately is the same thing as space.

So if _all_ the mass was nearby, space would bend inward around the current point and it would fold in on itself - the universe would be like the inside of a sphere.

Because the mass is distributed evenly at the largest scales, it instead continues flatly in all directions.

<comment><USER18> > the universe would be like the inside of a sphere.

The surface of which is "flat"? The interior surface, if that's the right word. Like living on the Event Horizon of a black hole. So we don't and hardly can know what's outside or inside or on the outside or inside.</comment></comment></comment>


One Million page views on movies.io - <AUTHOR> http://fredericjacobs.com/one-million <comment><USER2> OK, so, it's _that_ post.

Consider the following cases:

1\. a company violates a FOSS license by incorporating GPL code and not releasing source code.

2\. a company takes an image produced by an artist and sells T-shirts of it without the artist getting compensated.

3\. a website/mobile app/elements of branding get replicated (or very closely reproduced) in a new website/app (think Zynga, Chinese/Russian clones of Facebook/Groupon and whatnot).

4\. site content gets scraped wholesale, and fed into another AdSense-infested site.

In all these cases, noone _lost_ any money when bits got copied (in fact, sometimes the offending party would produce original work to mimic the product in question), yet doing above things is a no-no, but downloading movies is OK. I don't mean to take a high moral ground here, but it's baffling for me to see the cognitive dissonance.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps a more relevant analogy would a hypothetical popular newspaper example: you can buy it at the local store of some countries on the day of release, or if you live in those country where you can access them online for free or included with your TV subscription, you're fine. But if you don't live in said country and the newspaper doesn't distribute to you, or it gets to you some months late and it's old news by then, you might go looking for other access avenues. You'd very much like to get todays news so you can participate in the global discussion.

Have we not already come to the agreement that the problem is not piracy, but the lack of access in our new global arena? None of us here would be so naive as to believe that piracy will end when each of us have access regardless of our geographical location, but at least then we will be able to have a real conversation about it.

<comment><USER4> Nobody in my household has pirated even one track since the advent of Spotify in our lives. I know it's not the best sample size, and it's only anecdotal, but I suspect that would be the pattern across the board if similar models became adopted for other forms of media.

<comment><USER5> While technically true, frankly spotify might as well be.

While exact numbers aren't disclosed, I've seen a $0.004 per play royalty thrown around enough that it's probably at least ballpark.

<comment><USER4> But their payout is based per stream, not per track, isn't it? At amounts that still exceed that of radio?

"For a 99c sale of a track on iTunes an indie artist gets 70c. At the time you need 140 Spotify streams to make the same 70c." (Source: <http://www.spotidj.com/spotifyroyalties.htm>)

These figures are hardly comparable with piracy, and for an artist with a reasonable audience, should more than exceed the $.918 average royalty for a song per unit sold that record companies provided in the era of CD sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I do tend to disagree with the sentiment on HN regarding some aspects of the "pirating issue".

Common arguments are (as quoted from the text)and my symbolic translation to the HN world:

> "Movie theater incomes are in most cases enough to cover the production > costs. Their business remains viable even if people continue downloading > their movies"

in HN-speak: "Developer salaries are the highest in the economy, so their careers remain viable if people start copying their code"

> "Isn't the main goal of content producers that their content is seen ? Well. > If you would charge less for a movie I would be glad to pay for it. But > prices for buying movies online are just abusively high."

in HN-speak: "The main goal of a developer should be to get the product/code in front of many people. If the price would be lower, I would buy it. Ergo, the price should be lower and if not, im just gonna take it"

> "If I buy a DVD I have the right to do what I want with it"

in HN-speak: "I know the terms and licenses of the code I am using. However, i dont like it, so im just gonna do whatever I want anyways."

My view is that this is just like any other market: If you don't like the product or the way its sold under specific conditions, you always have the freedom of not buying it. No one is forcing you to anything.

Also, before this whole downvoting madness starts, please consider that I'm just trying to voice my opinion and argument for my stance.

<comment><USER2> This is exactly what I am thinking. If we expect others to respect our software licenses, why don't we respect others' license on creative content they produce, no matter how outlandishly priced or badly delivered we believe it to be?

What baffles me is the amount of rationalisation. I come from Russia, where piracy is a social norm, and if you pay full official price for entertainment products, you are either a sucker, or a rich person asserting your wealth status (I don't imagine much has changed). But Russians never attribute themselves downloading movies and cracking games to some higher purpose: we just like free stuff, and gaming the system for personal gain is a national pastime.

<comment><USER7> I don't think it's bad. I grow up in a time where it's normal that all information are free. I already have to pay fee's on electronic devices like printers, hard drives, DVDs etc. so this should be enough.

<comment><USER8> I'm sorry, but I still don't live in that time. I have to pay to get to academic journals to read that information. I have to pay to watch television live. What sort of world are you living in where information is already all free?

<comment><USER7> File sharing is normal for people today. I grew up with it and all people in my class exchanged games, music, movies etc. each other. Now I started working and it's nearly the same. I understand your point, of course. Music, Movies etc. are still protected by copyright, but I don't want to pay for a crappy service e.g DVD, which includes copyright violation warnings, previews of other movies and copy protection if I can get a better service for free. But I'll probably purchase the Tom Lowe movie, because he is a cool guy and offer the movie TimeScapes in various formats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Avengers made money so piracy is OK in this case? Why don't you want to pay for the movie? Is the price too high? You don't like theaters? Piracy is not a good solution to this problem. Movies cost money to make and a lot of it, production through distribution. Yeah some make a lot money back but many don't make any. Working with movies I know that when you put little money into a project your chances of getting something good out of it are slim.

It's clear there is a problem with the business model and someone needs to start coming up with a better solution, other than piracy. The solution needs one goal ... to make money for those that create the movies.

<comment><USER10> I think the sentiment he is expressing is that studios complain that piracy is killing their industry. Yet, both piracy and profits are way up. Thus, the argument that "we have to do something about piracy!" and asking for more anti-piracy enforcement, is obviously incorrect.

Note: The goal is _NOT_ to make money for those creating movies. Copyright exists to make sure the public gets more works created. Granting a temporary monopoly on the content produced is only done _so that the public ends up better off_. Please keep the actual goal in mind.

If works are being produced and being made available, then we're doing just fine. Copyright needs revisiting if we see signs that content production is going down. These days, we're seeing quite the opposite, with more things being produced by even more people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm sorry for being cynical, but getting a million pageviews as a piracy site with a fancy interface is not really spectacular. You're giving away content that is normally sold -- of course people are going to use it.

Not really impressed.

<comment><USER10> Which sites sell torrent files or magnet URIs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of the trends I've noticed more and more over the last few years, is that Design is now a USP in itself.

Take anything that already exists and execute it with better design / user experience and watch it become popular / successful.

That said, it once again highlights that as developers, we shouldn't ignore design or think that just getting the basic functionality working is all that matters. Design in a consumer market is a major influencer, often more so than the functionality itself.

<comment><USER13> Torrent sites and programs definitely need better UI and UX if they want them to become mainstream.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Right or wrong, this site looks like it exists to facilitate illegal movie sharing -- it's just a matter of time before the takedown notice comes.

It's too bad because it's such a pretty site. It could use a better knowledge base (ranking and relevance are so-so) but it's really pretty good.

<comment><USER15> Coda.fm does just that for music, and has been online for years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I still prefer the look of TorrentBulter.eu. It's default view is browsing the top movies, and displays them in a much more enjoyable manner. The details page on TB is also more feature filled, including a trailer as well (granted, these can sometimes be wrong).

Movies.io, honestly, doesn't offer anything more, other than being newer. Maybe I missed something.

<comment><USER13> TorrentButler is especially good for "discovering" movies. Both are good for torrent newbies. I like Movies.io search a lot, but I agree it would best if one of them combined both features into one. Also, both should have their own commenting systems, to make it easier to find the fakes. Movies.io has something called "Verified" now, but not sure how that works. Are they just verifying them manually? That seems like a lot of work.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are using the Fenopy API to get the verified status of torrents.

We still want to keep a lot of features out of the interface. Power users will still prefer searching manually for their torrents to see information we don't provide (such like codecs).

We want to keep our interface as clean as possible.

<comment><USER13> To me both Movies.io and torrentbuttler address the "torrent newbie" market, as people who already know how to use torrents, can use TPB or other similar sites just fine.

But right now I'd probably have to recommend both of the sites to newbies, one for searching and one for discovery. But I'm sure you'll have a lot of success just keeping it simple the way it is, too. It may actually be the main reason why it got so popular right now. So don't fix what isn't broken I guess.

But since I think this is more for newbies, you better make sure there are no fakes in those 5 listings, either through a technical solution or by allowing others to make comments on the page, or at least use ratings for the torrent's quality or something (but make sure they understand it's not about the quality of the movie).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You know what would be nice? If they added links to Amazon Streaming and Netflix when available. Some sort of nod towards paying for content.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think the thing for me that movies.io has that others don't is the top 50. It's a beautifully designed site that gives me access to a whole load of well presented information. I don't even torrent, but I've used movies.io to look for films that I haven't seen that might be worth looking into, and I can see the torrent element almost as secondary to some users.

I hope movies.io succeeds, but not so much as to put it on the MPAA radar for a takedown.

<comment><USER19> Rest assured, MPAA or alike won't leave them up for long. They should be smart as to where to host, and how to evade.

Still, even if someone shuts them down, the idea of visually and functionally all-web-two-point-whatever torrent sites will live on. I believe, that early success of movies.io will be enough for others to try to follow the lead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Thank you for this, love movies.io, though how do you add movies to 'watch lists'? I signed up and found I could change a lists name but could never find any way to add movies to this list.

The trailer feature is cool, but in order to close the trailer requires clicking the link again. It'd be cool if we could also press escape or click on the backdrop area to close it.

</comment><comment><USER21> So, whats the tech stack behind movies.io?

<comment><USER22> ""It's a typical Rails 3 apps, Nokogiri used for scraping, PostgreSQL db (migrated from SQLite originally), jQuery+ui for the aucomplete (lazy, yay!), and that's about it :) ""

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4054755>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hope we will hear when your first user gets their internet disconnected, or has to pay a large fine.

</comment><comment><USER24> The look & design is great. I'd love it if you'd let me filter on rotten tomatoes ratings, discover movies in certain genres, especially more underground / art house type movies. Most of TOP50 is just cheap hollywood action movies that don't appeal very much.

</comment><comment><USER25> I still want to know how you do the background images.

Congrats on building a beautiful product too.

<comment><AUTHOR> The backdrops are coming from TMDb.

We were asked several times to write a blog post about the technology that's behind it. We are working on it.

Hint: All Ruby on Rails, no NodeJS. Sorry guys

<comment><USER26> TMDb's TOS states that you can't "Use TMDb APIs in any manner or for any purpose that violates any law or regulation, any right of any person, including but not limited to intellectual property rights, rights of privacy, or rights of personality."

How does this reconcile with your use for a torrent search engine?

<comment><AUTHOR> We contacted them. They said they didn't had any issue with us using their backdrops and information.

<comment><USER26> Thanks for the response. It's quite surprising.

<comment><USER27> Well, I hadn't even heard of TMDB before, and now I do, thanks to movies.io, so they must be doing something good!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


More women plan to run for Congress than ever before - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/more-women-plan-to-run-for-congress-than-ever-before-2516228558.html <comment><USER2> For those who believe in the existence of socialization of gender roles from early childhood (as described by sociologists like Emily Kane in "The Gender Trap") this is a good thing.

It means socialization in human civilization has weakened from the time up until the 1800s where women were only able to gain power through escaping their role as chattel via cloistering/religious mysticism (see "The Creation of Feminist Consciousness" by historian Gerda Lerner) to where the biological sex of a person does not so much preclude the very imagination of gaining positions of state power due to lifelong psychological terrorism (to use terms from Dworkin)

But that's not really even the tip of the iceberg, as Kane, Lerner, and of course Dworkin would agree...

<comment><USER3> Or it could be more of a statement about the zeitgeist of Democratic Party politics.

I'd like to understand who these people are who are suddenly finding their voices. People don't wake up and run for Congress.

Personally, I think this a sign that the professional political types are ducking for cover, and we may not be escaping from the GOP brand of fascism anytime soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great! The government only works well when people participate.

Something I fear is lost on tweet and like generation due to social media algorithms preying on them.

</comment><comment><USER5> President Trump is such a motivator.</comment>


Android projected to top windows for OS dominance by 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://bgr.com/2012/10/24/android-market-share-microsoft-windows/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

<comment><USER2> I can believe that. Others have reported before that there will be 3 billion Android devices in use by 2016. By then I expect Android to be the #1 platform for developers, thanks to sheer numbers.

</comment><comment><USER3> In 2001 I got a beta of the .NET Compact Framework on an HP PDA, linked through Bluetooth to an Ericsson GPRS-equipped handset.

In 2001, I was surfing the Web with a real browser and writing applications in a Java-like language using an IDE with powerful refactoring and debugging features.

In 2001, I had in my hands, and Microsoft had in their product line, all the basic ingredients of Android.

Between then and now, Microsoft failed to restructure Windows Mobile around .NET. Failed to make anything out of their purchase of Danger. Launched the Kin. And now may be too late with Windows 8, although Windows 8, the application technologies it contains, and the UX formerly known as Metro make it a worthy competitor. Imagine if it had 11 years of evolution and app development behind it.</comment>


Do you build web games? Join the Axonify Game Contest. - <AUTHOR> http://games.axonify.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello everyone!

We're a startup corporate eLearning company that specializes in making corporate training fun through gamification.

For the next two months, we're holding a competition for developers to submit small browser games that can be played in short sessions that deliver meaningful training content. There's an example video and more details on the site - which you can check out at [http://games.axonify.com/](http://games.axonify.com/)

I'd like to stress that if you're in the market for building HTML5 or DOM based games and want to win some extra money - you've got nothing to lose. If you don't win a prize, you retain rights to your game fully.

This is great opportunity to submit small games you may have made with Construct 2, Game Maker HTML5 or other tools, as well. As long as they implement our API and follow the guidelines - you're set!

If you have any questions - please don't hesitate to leave a post or check out the contact address on the web page. Hope to see lots of Hacker News devs participating!</comment>


Hoodwinked by the Emperor's new Tweets - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/opinion/hoodwinked-by-the-emperors-new-tweets/3013074.article

<comment><USER2> There _are_ social media success stories. OK GO on YouTube and Dell on Twitter spring to mind. The author did hit the nail on the with the dynamism and newsworthiness considerations, though. My marketing agency steered a vinyl siding company away from Twitter investment, for instance.

Social media is the new darling now. (I've given three presentations, by request, on it in the last month.) But in a few years it will be no more a marketing panacea than billboards or PPC. Once the hype fizzles Social Media will just be one more medium to be considered when planning a marketing mix.

People don't like to admit it, or maybe they just don't know it, but marketing is a mostly about using research (which social media is great for, by the way) to inform your products and find out where your users are than it is about writing clever copy or coming up with snappy logos.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is an interesting point of view, and looks like a trendy one: I've read similar articles/blog posts (I think 5 or 6) in the last two days.</comment>


Surgeon performs successful head transplant on a monkey - <AUTHOR> https://ca.news.yahoo.com/surgeon-wants-perform-human-head-121305145.html <comment><USER2> This is pedantic, but shouldn't it be a _body_ transplant?

In the case of a human, the brain is what makes you yourself. Shouldn't the body be the thing that's being planted?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Scary part is that this is just the beginning.</comment>


How Obama Helped Digg Fix Bugs - <AUTHOR> http://blog.digg.com/?p=412 <comment><USER2> A more accurate title would be "How the US Presidential Election Helped Digg Find a Bug." I suspect the marketing department got to it.

</comment><comment><USER3> What are they using for the log graphs? It looks like munin, but prettier.

<comment><USER4> Looks like RRDtool to me, since it says RRDTOOL in the upper right of the images. Munin uses rrdtool. <http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/></comment></comment>


Free and Open Source: Touch4j, Titanium4, Flash4j, Air4j and more. - <AUTHOR> http://www.dzone.com/links/free_and_open_source_touch4j_titanium4j_flash4j_a.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Get it while it is hot. All packages can be downloaded right now.</comment>


Nude is a next-generation photo vault that uses AI to hide your sensitive photos - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/17/16414822/nude-app-photo-vault-sexting <comment><USER2> Interesting approach. I would be worried about its opsec though "deletes the photos from device" and that's it? Oops, out comes the file carver!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_carving](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_carving)</comment>


Brutality of Life Reading List - <AUTHOR> https://www.sonyasupposedly.com/brutality-books/ <comment><USER3> For non-fiction, I'd add The Hell of Treblinka, by Vassily Grossman, a Red Army journalist who was one of the first to enter the death camp. One of the hardest things i've read.

"It is the writer's duty to tell the terrible truth, and it is a reader's civic duty to learn this truth. To turn away, to close one's eyes and walk past is to insult the memory of those who have perished."

<comment><USER4> This book pairs with "Into That Darkness" by Gitta Sereny. A semi-biography of the commandant of Treblinka, based on interviews with him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lot statements by authors pointing out that life is brutal, and getting very depressing and deep about the topic, but not really explaining why. Life is brutal because its inherent to all living things being in pursuit of self replication whereupon success, such success is replicated. We are always in strife for the same space, energy, and resources with each other(each other being all living things).

Don't be saddened by it, or make it some sort of deep philosophical tragedy. It's as much fact as evolution, or as much fact as 10 - 1 = 9. Accept it and learn to love it for what it is.

<comment><AUTHOR> "But whaddaya know, pain is indispensable to survival." Linking to: [https://www.gwern.net/Backstop#pain-is-the-only-school- teach...](https://www.gwern.net/Backstop#pain-is-the-only-school-teacher)

You're correct that I focused on the topic I was writing about and not auxiliary issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I appreciate threads and posts like this, as I'm 30 and have had my share of brushes with death (cancer, one or two significantly dangerous moments in life) that have made me take real pause about "the point of it all," and especially what, if anything comes next. In fact, I've been really struggling with that thought of the moment of finality, and it's been keeping me up at night lately. Appreciate this share and looking into a few of these books.

<comment><USER7> Re Cancer, have you read "Tripping over the Truth: The Metabolic Theory of Cancer"[0]? [0] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23496164](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23496164)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just wanted to post a note of thanks to the author for labeling which links are affiliate links. I have no problem clicking on affiliate links - <USER2> wins a little when they are relevant to the topic at hand. I simply appreciate the transparency of having them labeled.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Live is suffering and you need something more meaningful than pursuit of happiness to make it bearable" seems to be central idea of everything Jordan B. Peterson writes and speaks about.

If I could add to this list:

\- everything by Alexander Solzhenitsyn that was translated to English.

\- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

\- Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky

\- Ward No 6 by Anton Chekhov

<comment><USER10> Peterson makes an error in the conclusion. The scarceness of opportunity to be happy does not mean to neglet things that make you happy. There is a difference between claiming happiness and seeing happiness as "bad" or "degenerating". Both will likewise cause suffering. Peterson (if he knows or not) is a Nietzsche apologist. Nietzsche perverted the philosophy of Schopenhauer and turned everything around. Schopenhauer saw that life itself follows an irrational principle - the "Will" in nature. Every being or even substance longs for existence and to take effect at the cost for other beings or substances. This "will" causes suffering. Schopenhauers way to cope with the evil in life is to neglegt this "will". To take an outside position, to reflect on it - to "philosophize", if you want, to participate in art. The principle of nature, to recognize it and to make your own conclusion out of it are independent things. This is the difference between Schopenhauer (Darwinism) and Nietzsche / Peterson (Social Darwinism). Nietsche identifies with the "Will". He propagates opportunism. "what is supposed to fall, you should push", "Prey on the weak, obey the strong". Out of the fact, that there is suffering in the world, he concludes that this is "good", an imperative. The might / power / will is the only sacred rule he accepts. Even if christianity seems to represent mercy ethics on the surface, the bible itself also sanctifys power itself. All power is from god. All power is good. So Nietzsche was not really anti Christian. He is very christian and religious regarding opportunism. Of cause "community","society", "the nation", ... => the higher order super organisms want individuals to sacrify their individual goals and to give up strive for happiness and take over "abstract" values which are the values of others. Mostly these "abstract" values of others (best example nationalism) caused a lot of suffering. More on side of the people believing in it than on the side of the people that propagate it. Peterson is good at rethorics. Beside of that, he s just a religious tradcon with a strong tendency to fascism. Following the power or opportunism principle of Nietsche / Peterson IMHO would result in perpetual holocaust. I prefer Schopenhauer, he taught to stand up for the weakest: rationality. Even being irrational beings with evil drives we can find ways to satisfy them without harming others or ourselfs - or at least reduce harm.

Schopenhauer: live out your irrationality in a rational way versus Nietsche / Peterson: live out your irrationality with rational reasoning as a tool (under the the shield of old school values "family", "nation" ...).

<comment><USER11> >Social Darwinism/"what is supposed to fall, you should push"

I always wondered how one could misinterpret natural laws, that whatever you do you cannot not obey, as human commandments, that you can obey or not.

Considering that Darwin findings would command us to ignore the weak (or that any knowledge could command anything, for that matter), is like considering that sending rockets into space would be an offense to the law of gravity, and that it would command us to spend our lives crawling on the ground like snakes.

(In the case of Nietzsche, maybe that's the "Will" subconsciously manipulating the puppet of consciousness, as a defense mechanism against the purposeless void reached by thinking through the irrationality of life).

<comment><USER10> It is a (short term) self enforcing principle, that is the pitty. Like in other ideologies. Civilization should mitigate such effects. And in some cases suceeded. So progress might be possible and should be thought of. But not in changing people or the "nature" of people. There has been progress in history (also backfalls). We would not have warm houses or water supply or electricity if someone had not believed in making a better life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Non fiction and super depression and full of pain, is everything Bukowski has written.

Love his books. He sees right through it all and doesn't give a fuck. At all.

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure he "sees right through it." His his view is sorta clouded by cynicism. The world is not all bad, after all. Or at least not as bad as he makes it out to be.

Full agreement on his not giving a fuck though. He's the kinda guy that would fart at a party and then laugh at the people offended by it.

<comment><USER14> I love Bukowski but reading his work as 'seeing through' things doesn't strike me as a good approach. His 'seeing through' involved a lot of fucked up stuff, among them what seems like a rather unhealthy relationship with alcohol.

An alcoholic plays life on extra hard mode. No wonder the conclusion is cynical!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How is _Meditations on Violence_ supposed to convey the brutality of life as well as the other titles?

My takeaway from it was that people are generally nonviolent, with a few (taxonomised) exceptions.

(My meta-takeaway from it is that poor intellectuals in the US have it much harder than rich intellectuals, but can still pay their dues and eventually make their own way.)

<comment><AUTHOR> WARNING: NSFL. Do not keep reading if you're not prepared to hear something truly horrible.

Here's a quote from the book: "We had an inmate in custody who had cut open a baby with a tin can lid and raped the wound. If someone can do that, do you think he will hesitate at all before gouging your eye out or biting off a finger?"

<comment><USER16> I wish this comment had a NSFL tag at the beginning. I did not want to read that, and it comes out of nowhere relative to its parent comment.

More generally, I think there's a difference between "meditation on brutality" and "misery porn", and that the latter sometimes gets dressed up as the former.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough, I'll add a warning.

Edit: I wanted to demonstrate the stupidity of this question: "How is Meditations on Violence supposed to convey the brutality of life as well as the other titles?"

The quote is not representative of the general tenor of the book, but it is representative of why that question is dumb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Another comment mentioned Grossman, I put _Life and Fate_ down after a particularly brutal, yet humanising scene. I do want to get back to it, it was just all too much. I don't have the appropriate callouses to tolerate war in the same way.

Conrad McCarthy I feel has staked his claim in what I'd reductively call dark westerns. _The Road_ , for example, is a simple story about a man and his child, but in hell only demons. I'll have to add the listed one to my growing collection, it reminds me of it.

Communicating the meaning of life through the brutality of it has the distinct advantage about being able to explore the death, pain, suffering, and, the descent into an evil in intricate detail. It is a proof by contraction in some respects that certain personal philosophies derived from existentialism need, but also much more than that.

</comment><comment><USER18> For nonfiction along these lines I would recommend reading Arthur Schopenhauer, Albert Camus, Friedrich Nietzsche, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, but most of all Primo Levi.

And for fiction it wouldn't hurt to add Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jose Saramago, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez as well.

</comment><comment><USER19> Dhammapada [https://accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/index.html](https://accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> Nick Land's _Hell-Baked_ [0]

 _Specifically, it is solely by way of the relentless, brutal culling of populations that any complex or adaptive traits have been sieved — with torturous inefficiency — from the chaos of natural existence._

[0]: [https://web.archive.org/web/20200203215527/http://www.xenosy...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200203215527/http://www.xenosystems.net/hell- baked/)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is an interesting list. I strongly recommend _The Good Earth_ which is one of the best books I have ever read.

In the non-fiction category, I would nominate _Rising Up and Rising Down_[1] by William T. Vollmann. There is a single, abridged volume. It's a grand, sweeping, beautiful and fascinating work.

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

</comment><comment><USER22> I would recommend Thomas Bernhard's _" Yes"_ (aka _" Ja"_).

</comment><comment><USER23> Woah this is pretty dark, but a very good read.

"I mourn for the people I know who are dying, which is all of them, but some much quicker than others."

Looking at older people and animals around me, and instantly thinking "well, they probably don't have much time left" is quite depressing.

There was a Sam Harris podcast episode where he and his guest argued about whether is it better to suffer through life, or not existing at all.

<comment><USER24> The podcast, for anyone interested: [https://samharris.org/podcasts/107-life- actually-worth-livin...](https://samharris.org/podcasts/107-life-actually- worth-living/)

> In this episode of the Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris speaks with David > Benatar about his philosophy of "anti-natalism." They discuss the asymmetry > between the good and bad things in life, the ethics of existential risk, the > moral landscape, the limits and paradoxes of introspection, the "experience > machine" thought experiment, population ethics, and other topics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Fiction: "2666" by Roberto Bolaño, "Captivity" by György Spiró (though this one edges close to "non-fiction")

Non-fiction: "Evicted" by Matthew Desmond, "Chernobyl Prayer" by Svetlana Alexievich

</comment><comment><USER26> Nas said it best [https://youtu.be/ch25kKo6QUo](https://youtu.be/ch25kKo6QUo)

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm reading Savage Continent (Keith Lowe) which covers Europe in the years after VE Day.

I'll just say the brutality of humans didn't end with the war.

</comment><comment><USER28> I immediately thought of the "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair: dark, despairing, depressing.

</comment><comment><USER29> Let's not forget about the pleasures of communism. "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn might be a worthwhile read.

<comment><USER30> When it comes to the brutality of life, I think we're well above political ideologies. Let's not forget [http://guantanamodiary.com/](http://guantanamodiary.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I would add several Palahniuk books and How I Became Stupid by Martin Page.

<comment><USER32> >several Palahniuk books

Could you recommend a couple for me to start with, please? Thank you.

<comment><USER31> I just happened to reread about 7 of them that I haven't touched in 12+ years. My vote is Lullaby then Diary. Then consider Choke. Rant is excellent, but it's in a unique format in that it's written as an "oral biography" so it's sort of like one big interview of a bunch of characters.

<comment><USER33> Lullaby was excellent, I will second the recommendation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Hard to beat the last line of "Nobody Writes to the Colonel."

</comment><comment><USER35> Surprised there is no Schopenhauer on this list

</comment><comment><USER36> Fiction: "Blindness" \- Jose Saramago

<comment><USER37> "Hunger" by Knut Hamsun</comment></comment>


What happened to cyberpunk? - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/6/5/what-happened-to-cyberpunk--2

<comment><USER2> Speculative science fiction is not so much a window into the future, but rather a reflection of the present in which it was written. By drawing on current trends, authors can extrapolate a future. The cyberpunk aesthetic arose around the same time as the personal computer, early Internet, 80's corporate greed, continuing urban sprawl, the Japanese economic bubble leading to property purchases all over the world, etc. -- inspiration for many themes that appear in cyberpunk works. Many of these things have cased to be novel (in the same way) or exist at all. For instance, computers and connectivity is ubiquitous now, massive conglomerate corporations haven't totally taken over for governments (depending on who you ask, at least), China has somewhat replaced Japan, and the world has moved on. Unless they were just writing genre fiction, authors like Gibson would not keep cyberpunk going because the world today is very different from the one that spawned it.

Another thought is to compare it to the other famous "-punk" style, steampunk. Steampunk benefits from the fact that all the technological foundation (steam, mechanical, analog) it is based on exists. I'd argue that the genre can thrive because a well-defined foundation exists from which to create. With cyberpunk, some of the foundations exist (computer hacking and espionage), but many are still left as future speculation (synthetic organs, cybernetic implants). It becomes harder to have a consistent foundation when there are still moving targets. I guess we can still have trench coats and mirror shades ;)

I really enjoy the cyberpunk aesthetic, and I wish it had more of a footprint in current music/film/TV. It may be though that true cyberpunk is really a product of the 80's. The spirit of what drove it, technology-driven dystopia, continues to this day.

<comment><USER3> I agree; I think the main thing happened is that a good chunk of the cyberpunk world arrived, and we found out that it sounds way more interesting on paper than it ends up being in the real world.

Chinese kids sell their organs to buy iPads -- sad, but predictable, not some novel dystopian problem.

The CEO of IBM holds a meeting in a virtual world via avatar -- sure, a shitty pixelated avatar in a ho-hum world kind of like the one my Sony PlayStation 3 boots into

Hunter-killer robot drones swooping out of the sky to kill citizens (and nearby children) with no regard for law or constitutional rights -- ugh, again? Change the channel.

It's not all here of course; if Chinese black ice could kill me through my computing terminal, that would still be pretty interesting. But by now we're all familiar enough with the matrix to know that it can't really kill me, except maybe through a heart attack induced by annoying popup Flash ads for erectile dysfunction pills. Boring.

<comment><USER4> Chinese kids selling their organs to buy iPads is straight out of a cyberpunk novel, as you say many things we read about 10-20 years ago are already here, but it's human nature to find the present the most boring place to be.

But as the article duly notes, -punk is about counterculture, and counterculture is timeless. And when you look at how many people still code in neon green on black background, or read those books, there still seems to be a need for these topics. The conversation is not over yet.

I'm a fan of the daydreaming induced by cyberpunk novels, although I don't understand why, since it's something we experience daily already anyway (and I can take or leave the leather coats, shades, matrix rain, and all other visual hallmarks of cyberpunk). But I think a modern cyberpunk work of fiction can be done, and I hope we will see it done someday.</comment></comment></comment>


Eclipse Foundation Websites Are Down - <AUTHOR> https://www.eclipse.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> and they're back up :)</comment>


No, I Am Not Lost – A Black Woman's Experience in the Stanford CS Major - <AUTHOR> http://theodysseyonline.com/stanford/black-women-in-tech/128310 <comment><USER5> One thing puzzles me. Even if it does not occur to someone that a young black woman in a CS building might actually be a CS student, _why_ are they asking if she is lost?

We are talking about Stanford, not Hogwarts. I would expect that the floors and the rooms are numbered in a fairly straightforward way that comports with the geometry, and that geometry does not change. I'd further expect that there is a directory or some such device that tells visitors what people are in what rooms.

These should be sufficient to allow a visitor, even a first time visitor, to find their destination. So as long as the person is not gazing about confused, clearly having no idea how to proceed, isn't the natural assumption that they are fine, and so you should leave them alone? If they need help, presumably they can ask someone.

<comment><USER6> I have no idea how the Stanford CS building is laid out, but my default assumption of anyone in the building would be there for a reason, not that they're lost. Even if I didn't think they were a CS student for whatever reason, I'd figure they knew what they were doing.

<comment><USER7> Slightly tangential, but sometimes people I can only describe as "tourists" walk around in the publicly accessible areas, so it's not totally unprecedented.

For what it's worth, I tend to tell these people apart from the people with business in the building by noting _where_ they're looking (tourists seem to be looking all over the place like they're taking it all in; people with business at Gates seem to be looking for numbers and other navigational indicators in line with tzs's comment).

<comment><USER8> And, as it happens, "Hey, are you lost?" can be a polite way to tell a tourist that they've wandered in to an area that they aren't really supposed to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> She thinks the "are you lost" thing is because she's black; but I suspect the real reason is that she's an attractive female who cares about her appearance.

Look at the blog photo:

[http://cdn1.theodysseyonline.com/files/2015/06/18/6357024594...](http://cdn1.theodysseyonline.com/files/2015/06/18/63570245948655346519628071_headshot.imgopt1000x70.jpg)

Purely visually speaking, that image doesn't say "I'm a computer science nerd" \--- but that has nothing to do with race!

Take away the makeup, mess up the hair, add 50 pounds, add glasses with unfashionable rims, change to a ratty old T-shirt, and nobody will ask, "are you lost?"

(Stereotypes are a problem regardless; just saying that perhaps it's misidentified.)

<comment><USER10> > Take away the makeup, mess up the hair, add 50 pounds, add glasses with > unfashionable rims, change to a ratty old T-shirt, and nobody will ask, "are > you lost?"

This is utterly ridiculous. That description matched about 10% of my 100-strong CS class.

White and/or male, on the other hand, matched about 98% of it (so if she really wants to "fit in", gender reassignment surgery & skin lightening would be far more effective).

<comment><USER11> funny how people will come up with any convoluted explanation to avoid the race issue.

<comment><USER12> I think sometimes it is a race issue. Sometimes it is not an issue. And sometimes it is partially a race issue.

The problem is it's impossible to perfectly separate the three scenarios except for in the worst cases. People guess based on their life experiences. So it's not surprise when certain groups are less likely to think it's a race issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Today the culprit is an amicable looking Indian girl I've seen from class.

Student not recognizing another student? A minority in the space trying to help another minority in the space? I wouldn't be able to draw too many useful conclusions from that.

>Being a woman of color who has graduated CS107 is almost like being a unicorn, and that's pretty f'd up.

Yes, but it's also entirely consistent with the last 200 years of western history.

In the end, yes, I can entirely imagine this happening, and understand why it's happening, and see that it's not going to change any time soon. That said, I hope it changes sooner than later and lovely little slice-of-life articles will help that happen.

edit: It also makes me kinda sad too.

<comment><USER14> For sure, and I don't believe the problem is very well known right now either. Many female friends I've talked to had no idea that software engineering was such a white male dominated space.

I personally think its in a rut right now. Both college students and working professionals will look at the space as being male dominated and passively choose to go a different direction if they are female. When the problem gets brought up in circles like HN, many rush to defend the space as if nothing is wrong.

A cultural shift needs to happen and unfortunately that is going to be extremely difficult to do without a lot of people interested in making it happen. Why do CS when you can just as easily get into other fields that are more accepting of women and minorities?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Women complain about a lot of things that some men don't understand. Minorities complain about a lot of things that some whites don't understand. A lot of these ungrokkable issues attack our self confidence. And when we complain about them, we give people a reason to dismiss us.

Being treated like you don't belong sucks. When I am asked "Where are you from? Where are you born? Where are your parents from?" I have to ignore it. She needs more life experience if she thinks the average person will have sympathy because people ask us these questions.

</comment><comment><USER15> Universities have been spoiled for decades by a large number of computer hobbyists, so they rarely bother to teach students how to program. I grew up programming, born of two programmers, so although the "Intro" was a class where they handed you a book and said "learn this", it was a blow off class for me (and the other hobbyists.) I felt really sorry for everyone else, and watched them leave for majors where they didn't expect you to know 50% of the job coming in, like electrical engineering and economics (as to not waste all of the math classes.)

People who haven't grown up with a computer in the house, or with good AP classes at their HS are at almost an insurmountable disadvantage IMO.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Being a woman of color who has graduated CS107 is almost like being a > unicorn, and that's pretty f'd up.

The real question is to ask "Why don't more women take CS107?" Only about 20% of the Stanford CS department is female. If I assume that a CS107 class is 100 people (it probably isn't--CS107 is not a beginner class--it has data structures as a prerequisite). 20 are women. Stanford racial data suggest that 7% of it's enrollment are African-American.

That means that you get _at best_ 2 "women of color" per year in CS107.

Even if all of these women pass, you're still looking at 10 out of about 10,000? students, at best.

Her experiences may be completely valid, but this is hardly the fault of CS107 or its teacher.

<comment><USER17> From: [http://sheplusplus.stanford.edu/sheStatistics.pdf](http://sheplusplus.stanford.edu/sheStatistics.pdf)

"At Stanford, computer science is the most popular undergraduate major--220 students declared CS during the 2012-2013 academic year. The introductory CS106A class is 40% female, but that drops to 30% in the subsequent CS106B and 20% in CS107. The major is approximately 12 percent female."

It would be interesting to see real survival analysis of Stanford CS majors sticking with it.

<comment><USER6> That's a very interesting downward progression. By just the 3rd course only half the percentage of women, which implies more than half the women quit (assuming the whole class shrunk as well).

Why?

I guess it could be a culture of exclusion, but for it to work that fast it seems like it would have to be exceedingly toxic.

I wonder if Stanford does exit interviews when people leave a major. I had to have informal talks with my advisers (at a different college) when I changed majors, explaining my reasons. I wonder if that data is collected at all? And if not, why not?

<comment><USER16> > I guess it could be a culture of exclusion, but for it to work that fast it > seems like it would have to be exceedingly toxic.

It's a failure of experience.

How many people can bake a cake? More on this later ....

My first assignment in data structures is simply: "Here is Eclipse, here is a project, here are directions for checking that project in, do it. Now use that to create a second project to print "Hello, World!" _exactly_."

1/3 of the class _CANNOT DO THIS_ and drop. I'm serious. Following directions _exactly_ appears to be a learned skill that not many learn.

Back to baking a cake. This is the same problem. Cakes have some _exact_ directions occasionally. If you get them wrong, something goes wrong. I cannot give out several of my cake recipes because people accuse me of giving them the wrong recipe when the problem is they don't follow it.

And, yet, these recipes were directly out of women's magazines in the 40's, 50's, and 60's. So, it's _not_ an anti-female bias to this characteristic.

It may be more of a fact that women _who can follow directions exactly_ get pulled off into different areas/fields/hobbies before they reach computers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not a very convincing article. Some girl tried to be helpful, a guy tried to start a conversation because he probably thought she was cute, and she experienced a bunch of "micro-aggressions" that she doesn't want to bore us with the details of.

</comment><comment><USER19> So what's the solution? More affirmative action? Make it taboo to offer a stranger help if they look lost? Make it taboo to make any sort of assumptions about anyone?

<comment><USER20> To live in a society where no one bats an eye that a women is in a CS building.

<comment><USER19> That's not a solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It was great to read the good news in this post :

      All that said, I do enjoy being a computer scientist at Stanford. I love learning how to become self-sufficient when it comes to building out my ideas into actual products and apps. In addition, the race and gender demographic for computer science majors here appears to be slightly more balanced compared to peer institutions. And the Stanford name comes with a ridiculous amount of power. It is a luxury to be able to drop it in conversations whenever I need to immediately be taken seriously. It is my hope that, with some of the projects I am working on this summer, I can put that power to good use by creating more spaces for minorities in technology to thrive and feel welcome.

I LOVE the fact that you sound like an enthousiastic cs student. I LOVE to read that it is in fact possible to be a CS student first, and black and female is just some detail about you that's pretty much irrelevant when we're talking about Stanford education and programming and javascript.

</comment><comment><USER22> I was traveling abroad in Japan and was asked by a Japanese woman if I was lost or needed help.

I was looking at the station map looking for how many stops until the station I had to get off at. I'm fluent in Japanese though - and don't think I was giving off a "I'm lost" look. She simply assumed I was lost because I don't look Japanese and was staring at a map.

Instead of assuming she was racist, intentionally or unintentionally, I assumed she was _trying to be nice and offer me help because she thought I looked lost_.

But extending hospitality or a helping hand is now seen as a _microaggresion_ against a person.

It's gotten to the point that I let doors slam into peoples' faces less I make them think I'm being sexist for holding the door for them. After all - if they want me to hold the door they can ask me to hold it for them. Otherwise they're fully capable of opening the door themselves.

Once-upon-a-time it was _polite_ to keep a door held open for someone. Not anymore.

<comment><USER23> Why do you feel like the topic needs to be about your feelings and not the feelings of the person who wrote the article?

<comment><USER22> People can have misplaced feelings. If they feel the world is out to get them and everyone around them is racist - they'll only ever see actions towards them as racist.

It's called offering alternative points of view that are more likely than them being a victim of some form of implicit racism.

Perhaps, maybe it isn't the person is racist, but that the person is a _nice person who wants to help_.

God forbid someone wants to _help you without you having to explicitly ask for help_.

Sorry if my post came off to you as more about my feelings than about nice people not being racist. Nice people will see a person crying and ask them _what 's wrong?_. Not wait for the crying person to ask for someone to talk to (crying people will almost never ask a stranger for someone to talk to).

Likewise - nice people will ask if you need directions if you appear lost.

The world would be a better place with more nice people willing to help others _without having to be asked_. I think most people, not just me, would agree with that sentiment.

But turning everyone who's just trying to help into some _aggressor_ is exactly how to make the opposite world.

<comment><USER23> You responded to a post about a person feeling alienated in their school by reminiscing about a pleasure trip to Asia while lamenting the death of chivalry. You missed the point while claiming that a person's opinion in invalid because you can't relate to it. You remind me of the guy I had in an econ class who said, "I don't understand why people hate airport security so much. If it's that bad they can just charter a private jet."

Not only does she feel like she doesn't belong there, she's not even allowed to _feel like she doesn 't belong there_ because you know better than she does about how she should feel.

And this is not about asking if you can help. This about the assumption that the person you see before you _must be lost_ because they don't belong there. It's about the fact that most white CS geeks aren't used to seeing black women in their midst. I have a feeling that you picked up on this point (she makes it pretty plain) but the implications make you too uncomfortable, so you've taken the pedantic position of 'they're just trying to help' to avoid confronting the idea that maybe, just maybe, this boys' club we've built for ourselves ends up excluding some pretty talented people.

Also, the question I asked you wasn't rhetorical: why did you read this article and immediately decide that your experience, which doesn't relate to this person's at all (she being asked several times in her school if she's lost, you being asked once in a foreign country) deserved to be heard? Why do you insist on covering up someone else's experience with yours? Why do you feel like you get to dictate whether someone's emotions are correct or not?

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

<comment><USER22> I was asked if I was lost consistently for the 6 months I was in Japan on multiple occasions by multiple people. I shared one occasion because the number of occurrences for my example does not matter. I could see the laughing one mattering a bit more if it occurred regularly, but that is a different example.

Luckily the concept of being lost was shared context for the given example and number of occurrences is irrelevant so long as they don't come multiple times from the same individuals.

 _> Not only does she feel like she doesn't belong there, she's not even allowed to feel like she doesn't belong there because you know better than she does about how she should feel._

Feelings don't change reality - and yes. I believe that the world should have more positive beliefs in one another than negative beliefs in one another. People get along better when they aren't assuming the worst in one another.

Imagine a scenario where a friend tells you they are too busy with work to go see a new movie with you. Depending on whether you believe them or not - <USER2> _feelings_ will differ. They've been busy for weeks! The movie is now out of theaters entirely. Have your feelings changed? Sure. Most people would, at this point, suspect their friend of lying to them. So you feel like shit, you think your friend is avoiding you, and are sad. Other people have tried to convince you that your friend was busy, but you refused to listen to them because your feelings told you otherwise.

Turns out they were _simply busy like they claimed to be_. But now you're pissy at them for "avoiding you" and refuse to talk to them because you've convinced yourself, contrary to any evidence, that they were lying to you because your _feelings_ told you so.

They feel like they don't belong _because_ they feel like they don't belong. Because they _feel like they don 't belong_ they see other peoples' actions as _affirming that belief_. It's a matter of perspective that they feel this way. So yes, feelings can be wrong and assuming the worst will always result in the worst being visible.

The world needs less negativity - not more.

 _> This about the assumption that the person you see before you must be lost because they don't belong there._

Statistically true, so it's likely a safe assumption to make that will likely _benefit more people than it "harms"_. The fact it is asked at all shows that it is true more often than not. The same reason why I'm not asked if I want a fork or chopsticks at a Chinese restaurant: more often than not, people request a fork.

Now - I could assume the Chinese restaurant is racist for giving me a fork instead of chopsticks. It's a microaggression against me! Why assume I want a fork? I'm capable of using chopsticks!

But that viewpoint is pessimistic, self-centered, self-victimizing, and feeds negativity into itself. I prefer to shift my perspective: most people ask for forks, so they gave me a fork. I don't give myself a victim-complex, I see how it benefits other people of society (less people have to ask for a fork!), and it's a rather neutral viewpoint to hold that is _just as reasonable_ and _probably more likely_ than the former.

So to answer your question: I don't give a shit for their feelings - <USER3> their feelings come from their pre-determined pessimistic viewpoint. They're looking for a negative reasoning behind an action and found it. They got what they were looking for, and just like their truth-telling friend, they believe their friend to be a liar.

<comment><USER23> You continually emphasize your personal experiences, as if they were relevant to this conversation. I am asking you now to pretend like you are the person in this article and explain this:

>their feelings come from their pre-determined pessimistic viewpoint

Reach into what you know about computer science departments and the decline of women in that field. Reach into what you know about developing professionally in mathematics as a black woman. Imagine what it's like to have everyone who you meet assume you don't know what you're talking about or that you only got where you are because of affirmative action. Imagine having to prove yourself every day in your chosen field because "statistically" there aren't very many people like you in this field.

This is 'evidence' you're ignoring.

Now justify:

>their feelings come from their pre-determined pessimistic viewpoint.

You're correct in that the pessimistic viewpoint is predetermined. It's predetermined by experience.

No one's asking anyone to feel guilty about asking the woman if she's lost. We're being asked to understand the underlying implications of this recurring speech event.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow, how times have changed. Not even a few decades ago seeing a woman (let alone an African American one) in a university as a student of cutting edge technology, would have been impossible. Shouldn't we also think of the progress that is being made? Of course she is frustrated, but I for one see it as a sign of great evolution on many fronts.

<comment><USER25> Are you being sarcastic ?

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when- women-stopped-coding)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Whenever somebody doesn't like something, they can just roll out their discriminatory flag and wave it around. Just as they are complex humans, the individuals offering help are complex humans. Sometimes I feel like people really just need little caps on that ticker tape print the motivation behind the words they are speaking before we will finally be out of this mess of "my feelings got hurt". I mean it is supposed to be about motivation after all right? If somebody is actually trying to be nice that should be ok right? Or are they just as damned as a racist? In which case maybe the campaign should be "don't talk to me unless I give signals that indicate that I think you are attractive/potentially helpful to me". What bullocks.

Its is like the social sphere is splitting into two entities: those who are approachable and those who fancy themselves so special as to not be approached.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think it's important to keep in mind that stereotypes about women not being as intelligent as well as black people not being as intelligent as non-black plays a (large imo) part in this as well.

Add the two together and there's an even higher likelihood the next person you see will think you couldn't possibly have the same major as them, are incompetent, didn't earn your way to your position, or generally don't belong.

</comment><comment><USER28> Meh, people are just trying to be nice. They aren't trying to be racist or prejudice or whatever, they are just trying to help someone that is lost.

It happens all the time when you go to a place where people like you don't usually go.

It happened to me in Asia all the time. Sure it wasn't fun, but acting like people were being racist isn't helping you at all.

She is making it into a bigger deal than it is.

It's a mild annoyance at best.

<comment><USER29> Google "microaggressions." Yes, people might be trying to be nice, but that niceness is from the assumption that you don't belong. When it happens multiple times a day, everyday, it surely can be disheartening.

<comment><USER30> "but that niceness is from the assumption that you don't belong"

That is a load of crap along with this whole "microagression" movement.

I see a girl that seems interesting to me, screw up my courage, and try to say something that sounds helpful to start a conversation. Then you come along and classify that contact attempt like a KKK rally and I'm a racist?!? No wonder studies are showing that male students are starting to steer clear.

With all these social apps, we pretty much have destroyed anything social in person.

Now, I should say that my life experience is not white-suburbia, so save time on the name calling.

<comment><USER31> Cause you're entitled to start a conversation with every girl that seems interesting to you right?

edit: because people here can't comprehend the view from the other side, maybe louis ck can help: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDh4qk1Tl8k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDh4qk1Tl8k)

<comment><USER32> Aren't people entitled to start a conversation with anyone they want? (Outside of some very traditional pre-modern societies where certain people are not even allowed at all to talk to certain other people, mostly by kinship.)

<comment><USER23> What's your phone number? I think you're on to something, I'd like to call you and hear more about what you think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As someone who is an office with 30 men and 1 woman, I hope she sticks it out. Diversity of experience and perspective matters. I've been in IT for 20 years.

Our office is pretty good, but you can see how without strong leadership and good men it might go all brogrammer and hostile.

</comment><comment><USER33> Take it for what it is - great to see a woman of color proud to be a CS Major.

</comment><comment><USER34> First two comments come right out the gate and cast doubt on the authors experiences. One goes on and says women and minorities, particularly blacks, are not smart enough to make it through difficult CS classes.

This is pathetic Hacker News, pathetic.

<comment><USER35> I don't doubt her experiences - I have no trouble believing that people are more likely to ask black women if they're lost. IIRC, this kind of stereotyping is well-documented.

I do take issue with her blaming the CS107 professor for contributing to sexism. She seems to be saying that CS107 is discriminatory merely because it is difficult and many people drop out. She notes that women seem to drop out disproportionately often, but this might not be something the professor has the power to do anything about - she certainly doesn't say anything the professor does which might be part of the problem, other than just making the class hard. Watering down core classes in the name of increasing diversity doesn't help anyone.

<comment><USER36> Someone can still be a great engineer and struggle through an early class - there's plenty of reasons for this to happen and universities/colleges need to address these problems.

For example - someone who has never coded before in their life - <USER4> shouldn't be some expectation that you had a computer growing up, built a website for peers in middle school and are already an expert by the time you hit your first class. There's plenty of capable people who a) never had the advantages/wealth to support some of these things b) haven't discovered their interest and "weed out" core classes don't help with that. You may take longer to get up to the same place as someone with the advantages above, but that doesn't rule you out from being an effective engineer/computer scientist.

<comment><USER37> Friends who majored in music _theory_ (not performance, which is worse) tell me that you have to pass a competency test to be admitted into the school as a college freshman.

(At least, at the good schools; this may not be true at third rate schools, I wouldn't know.)

This requires that someone spent years playing an instrument, typically with lots of instruction, both of which are very hard to do with no money.

Some may get this free in high school, but the high school _I_ went to had performance exams to get into _those_ high school freshman classes.

There was no music at all at my junior high.

I got 6 months of instrument training in 6th grade, and that was all that public schools offered me, and I know that some people had even less than that from the schools in their area.

The point being that it's not just computers. If we want to give an equal opportunity to students, there's a tremendous amount that needs fixing that is not at all limited to computers.

<comment><USER38> It definitely does need fixing, but not by simply admitting/hiring more minorities until the statistics are agreeable (easy) but by actually making those deep structural changes to enable true equality of opportunity for all (much harder).

<comment><USER37> Yes; I really dislike adjusting statistics, because it's off-target, whether it's easy or not, but I definitely agree that opportunity is the desirable thing to equalize.

Each racial group has subsets that trend towards different desires; e.g. as a white guy I knew lots of other white guys in high school who were anti- intellectual, and thought that going to college inherently meant you were a snob.

I don't know how to change subgroup attitudes like that, but at any rate it sure would be nice to give opportunity to those who want it.

The primary way that that is hard is that it costs hard money. In my example, money for student instruments and money for music instructors (typically far more than for the instruments, although both are nontrivial).

(In my areas public libraries have been cutting hours (and days) for decades. This is part of the ridiculously negative trend that we, as a society, must stop being foolish about, like these other issues.)

Statistics, OTOH, averages together those who don't want, along with those who do want, which is clearly unfair to those who do want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Thanks for sharing your story Alona. That was very brave of you given the rampant racism and sexism currently plaguing the tech space.

<comment><USER27> Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Anecdotally and in my area I can confirm racism and sexism (usually in the form of "harmless jokes") is pretty rampant in tech.

<comment><USER40> I think the downvotes are due to the fact that we haven't seen any evidence of _actual_ racism or sexism in the tech industry. We see lots of stories like this where it seems open to interpretation.

And yes, I myself have some personal experience of _real_ racism. If this is the worst that is happening in the tech space then things are pretty good.

Anyway, this is an important topic, so if you do have any experiences with racism/sexism it would be good to write an article or blog post about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> "Stereotype threat and feelings of isolation are huge obstacles many students of color face in my major"

Have you ever thought you might just look lost and people are trying to help out? Why do you immediately think everyone is somehow racist by asking you this question?

"Too often, however, this means that by week six in the ten week quarter system, the class enrollment makeup drops dramatically from being optimistically diverse to being exclusively male, white and Asian."

It's because the classes are difficult. I took these classes when I went to school and if you don't really know your stuff, you will fail.

I don't know the person that wrote the article, but it seems she wants to be taken seriously immediately. Nobody gets taken seriously immediately, even if you are white or asian. Everyone has to put the work in.

"I can put that power to good use by creating more spaces for minorities in technology to thrive and feel welcome"

Why don't you just say African-american students. Asians and Hispanics are also minorities.

When I went to school, I had many African-american students that were my classmates. As the classes went from 100 level to 300 level and above (major- level and weeder classes), many dropped out.

They were never treated any differently in class. We also need to remember that many universities have quotas for minorities and give extra points on the SAT for just checking a box.

This however, does not guarantee that a person has the knowledge to actually pass the classes once they get in.

<comment><USER42> You really check all the doesn't-want-to-understand boxes with this post. It's like a textbook in attempting to discredit through non sequitur.

 _Have you ever thought you might just look lost and people are trying to help out? Why do you immediately think everyone is somehow racist by asking you this question?_

Second-guessing lived experience (it turns out that people subject to racism are actually quite good at telling when it's happening to them), check.

 _It 's because the classes are difficult._

Seriously, think for even one second about the implication you're making here.

 _Why don 't you just say African-american students. Asians and Hispanics are also minorities._

"All lives matter!" It's not the author's responsibility to tackle the perfect at the expense of the good.

 _They were never treated any differently in class._

You have no idea how they were treated. They do. Let them speak.

<comment><USER5> >> It's because the classes are difficult.

> Seriously, think for even one second about the implication you're making > here.

Seriously, read the article before commenting. The author said that the class in question is Stanford's CS "weed out" class.

A "weed out" class is a class designed to be (1) difficult, and (2) come early in a major. The idea is that if you can get through the weed out class, you should be able to get through the rest of the classes in that major.

The theory is that by putting one of the hardest classes first, you avoid students ending up in the terrible position of spending 3 or 4 years majoring in one field and then have to give up and either drop out or switch majors when they hit a difficult required class that they just cannot get through.

<comment><USER42> Despite your numerous edits, you've missed the point entirely, which is that the GP posited that the reason the class tends towards homogeneity is its difficulty. The implication is that minorities are not as smart. I really didn't feel like I had to spell this out, but here we are.

<comment><USER6> Say you have a class that starts out with 30 students. 18 white, 10 asian, 2 black.

Say the course is very hard and it cuts 2/3rds of the total students. If the cuts were proportional by race, we now have 6 white, 4 asian, and 0 blacks.

There was no racism involved in the class, the fact that no blacks remain is a result of the class brutally weeding out 2/3rds of the students and that the initial number of blacks was very low.

You can quibble over numbers, but the basic idea remains that large percentage cuts in an unbalanced population can make it tend more toward homogeneity.

<comment><USER43> That's a good numerical analysis. However, you also have to account for the fact that, on average, black children in the US get a poorer education. There are studies and statistics and on and on. Is it controversial to think that somebody might be less smart because they got a worse education? And then is it so surprising that when they get into Stanford due to affirmative action, they can't handle the course load? The whole system is a mess.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


WorldChat.io: Chat with realtime translation - <AUTHOR> http://worldchat.io/

<comment><USER2> Due to the massive amounts of spamming going on right now I think there should be some sort of chat room system on there which allows you to create a room and send the link.

Or you could even follow a similar idea to Omegle by pairing two people together but make it so it pairs two people who speak in different languages?

</comment><comment><USER3> {{{message}}} in handlebars means that if someone one gets around your server- side sanitization your client side is wide open to XSS ...

also, rate limit the users, this is thing is managing to crash chrome!

<comment><USER4> Working on it, any tips to keep entity encoding in handlebars without the triple stash?

<comment><USER3> Don't encode entities on the server side if you are using handlebars, it will do that for you (that's the point of using {{}} it will make all user input "safe").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I built a proof of concept for something like this for someone quite a while ago... what he had that you desperately need is channels. This is entirely useless with any amount of people (particularly when spammers can't be controlled, which is just how the net is). Excellent idea, but it needs some concept of segmentation to be useful.

<comment><USER4> Totally agree, let's make it happen! <http://github.com/mashape/worldchat>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I got through with this

      ';alert(String.fromCharCode(88,83,83))//\';alert(String.fromCharCode(88,83,83))//";alert(String.fromCharCode(88,83,83))//\";alert(String.fromCharCode(88,83,83))//--></SCRIPT>">'><SCRIPT>alert(String.fromCharCode(88,83,83))</SCRIPT>

</comment><comment><USER7> I choose the "German" flag. Does it mean that _I_ should type in German or _others_ ' messages are translated to German? It's not at all clear from the wording: "Choose your username and language to start chatting with the world"... What if I want to type in English but read others' messages in German?

<comment><USER8> Both? It probably means that you write in German and other messages are translated to your language (German).

That's the only thing that would make sense.

<comment><USER4> This is correct. Basically whatever flag you choose is what determines the "From" translation language on your outgoing messages and the "To" language for incoming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since I made this, I'm glad some people like it (and not surprised some don't) but I'd love to answer some technical questions or hear any bugs / issues / security holes you hackers might have found. Cheers!

<comment><USER9> It feels like I'm being spammed, there isn't enough time to read the messages and its also getting flooded by people with the usernames flood and flooder.

<comment><USER4> Ya, I tried to implement rate limiting and failed, this was last night at 3am, so let me try again. If you code you might be able to beat me to it: <https://github.com/Mashape/worldchat>

<comment><USER9> I'm going out but when I get home I will see what I can do :) EDIT: I think using websockets + node.js would be a better idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> TIL Frühstücksfleisch is german for "SPAM"

good job shutting that fellow down. Very cool little app.

edit:

well...maybe some kind of rate limit might help.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wrote a very similar chat application using google translation, tech demo here: <http://speak.ly>

<comment><USER4> Wow, yours is way better!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is not a feature request by any means. I suspect that this and autocorrect would combine for some seriously funny international humor.

</comment><comment><USER4> Alternate client: <http://montanaflynn.me/mashape/world-chat/>

</comment><comment><USER8> _ahem_ <http://i.imgur.com/3LnvN52.png?1>

<comment><USER4> Sorry. To be honest I didn't test on mobile and actually built the site using a 24" thunderbolt display, thanks for the heads up!</comment></comment>


Mars: The Planet That Lost an Ocean's Worth of Water - <AUTHOR> http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1509/

<comment><USER2> Loss of water (and/or dissociated hydrogen) on rocky planets is an interesting area of study. A few weeks back I ran across a reference that the Earth is thought to have lost a quarter of its water to space over the past 4.5 billion years:

"The Earth has lost a quarter of its water" [http://sciencenordic.com/earth- has-lost-quarter-its-water](http://sciencenordic.com/earth-has-lost-quarter- its-water)

The determination was made by a similar H2O / D2O ratio analysis.

Given that the Earth has seven seas, that would be 1.75 oceans worth of water lost. The process is moderated by the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere (which recombines with dissociated hydrogen), so, curiously, not only is water necessary for life, but life may well help retain water on planets.

<comment><USER3> "...so, curiously, not only is water necessary for life, but life may well help retain water on planets."

An interesting thought. So perhaps old planets that still have water are more likely to contain life. We can detect water in some forms on exoplanets already [1] so soon we may be able to predict how common life is in the galaxy?

[1] [http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/september/nasa-telescopes- fin...](http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/september/nasa-telescopes-find-clear- skies-and-water-vapor-on-exoplanet/)

<comment><USER2> There are a few chemical signatures that are likely to indicate life. Oxygen would be one (though there are cases in which it can exist by other means).

Spectroscopy (how signatures are detected) is more _qualitative_ than _quantitative_ , so it's _very_ difficult to get a good sense of _how much_ of something exists, as I understand. Though it's _tremendously_ sensitive and can detect atoms or molecules across light years, and for plants, the range is ~30-300 or so from hazy recollection.

Water's almost certainly a weaker signal of life than oxygen, but it's a good sign all the same. And a strong water signal from an older but small (e.g., Earth-sized) rocky world would probably show that life does, or at least did, exist.</comment></comment></comment>


Blockchain.info reaches $100m successfully transacted - <AUTHOR> https://blockchain.info/wallet/

<comment><USER2> Wow. I was always a bit suspicious of bitcoin (due to the lack of a market for it, mainly -- it's always been interesting technically), but events seem to be proving me wrong.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great job. The pace of adding new features has been impressive. I think Blockchain.info is the best online bitcoin wallet .</comment>