Anatomy of a Moral Panic - <AUTHOR> http://idlewords.com/2017/09/anatomy_of_a_moral_panic.htm <comment><USER3> Ironically, the premise of this critique of journalism is as false as the Amazon story it cites. Algorithms and the Internet didn't ruin journalism, and this is not the end of the world. Journalism was corrupted by sensationalism as soon as it moved from subscriptions to ads, which in the US was in the 19th century. Remember when we discovered a colony of aliens on the moon? Yeah, that was the New York Sun way before we had electricity... Remember when Hearst started the Spanish-American war? No Internet then. Bad signals via the media is a very old problem. We should think about it, but we shouldn't think it's the Internet's fault.

<comment><USER4> Your entire comment is a straw man. The article doesn't claim the internet ruined journalism, and I don't even know where your "end of the world" comment is coming from. You're also comparing papers like the New York Sun and other tabloids, while this article is talking about respectable papers such as the New York Times.

I'll quote the relevant part of the article:

> The real story in this mess is not the threat that algorithms pose to Amazon > shoppers, but the threat that algorithms pose to journalism. By forcing > reporters to optimize every story for clicks, not giving them time to check > or contextualize their reporting, and requiring them to race to publish > follow-on articles on every topic, the clickbait economics of online media > encourage carelessness and drama. This is particularly true for technical > topics outside the reporter's area of expertise.

> And reporters have no choice but to chase clicks. Because Google and > Facebook have a duopoly on online advertising, the only measure of success > in publishing is whether a story goes viral on social media. Authors are > evaluated by how individual stories perform online, and face constant > pressure to make them more arresting.

<comment><USER3> Your entire comment misses the point. What I'm saying is that most journalism was always this way. Algorithms don't exacerbate this tendency any more than daily sales did for the Sun. As a former reporter for the NYT, I can say that journalists there are subjected to many of the same pressures, if in a more limited way than reporters at Buzzfeed. And that sales always mattered at the Times, too. Reporters have always, always chased readers.

<comment><USER5> I agree that journalism (particularly mass media which followed the invention of rail transportation) has been compromised by advertising. However, I'm not quite certain that subscriptions freed newspapers from advertising since subscriptions alone cannot cover the costs of running a newspaper. Furthermore, the problem with advertising isn't just how tighly linked to newspaper sales it is, but how it can constrain what's written in newspapers for fear of having clients pull advertising from the newspaper. So subscriptions may reduce the dependence on advertising and offer more freedom to journalists, but not entirely. Also, the danger of subscriptions is that we can only pay for so many and this limitation can constrain the number of sources we can draw from. The challenges facing newspapers are complex.

A general comment: while it is important to draw attention to the perverse incentives journalism is subject to, it is also important not to fall prey to the fallacy that people must act according to perverse incentives. Nothing justifies publishing unsubstantiated nonsense. Journalists are morally bound not to do so.

<comment><USER3> The challenges facing media are complex. The subscription model encourages publications to become luxury goods, just as the pace of the Web pushes print editions to become future-focused and heavy on analysis. Subscriptions can sustain niche products, but the free content on the Internet makes that harder than it used to be.

Almost every publication is beholden to someone, and often to several entities, usually the owners. Bloomberg News treads carefully with Michael Bloomberg, and the same is true for every billionaire-owned outlet. You can't avoid it, and as long as there are enough publications, it doesn't matter. They all make up for the others' blind spots.

While it may be a fallacy that people _must_ act according to perverse incentives, it is not a fallacy to expect that they probably will. Statistically speaking, moral bounds are not strong arguments when confronted with power and wealth. Those who decline on moral grounds are easily replaced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wasn't the "baseball test" an accepted norm in journalism?

"A reporter should not be assigned to cover subject X unless he has as good an understanding of X as a baseball writer is expected to have of baseball."[1]

Shouldn't media outlets be embarrassed into retracting stories written by people who know nothing about the subject? Shouldn't the reputation of the media outlet suffer?

1 - [https://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2007/08/the- bas...](https://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2007/08/the-baseball- test/54682/)

<comment><USER7> It's an ilformed test. Can a writer truly understand baseball as well as a baseball player? But, isn't a baseball player bound to be heavily biased toward the consensus baseball view?

Or, take finance. If a financial journalist _truly_ understood finance, wouldn't they be running a hedge fund instead of scraping by pumping out articles?

<comment><USER8> He said baseball writer, not player, unless he edited his comment between your post and mine.

<comment><USER7> I think we read the same post. I'm just saying that a writer's bias is correlated with his expertise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Who is making strides in fixing the underlying business model problems that are driving the increasing virulence and frequency of these moral panics, and undermining the integrity and function of journalism? Or at least providing alternatives that are equally profitable yet less pernicious.

Because barring the entrance of one of these as-yet-unimagined alternatives, it seems we'll need to lean on regulation...but then we get into messiness of regulating free speech.

There was Beacon Reader, the crowdfunding journalism platform, but they shut down. [1]

Then there's Google's "Fact Check", but its reach is limited [2]

[1] [https://www.poynter.org/news/beacon-reader-journalism- crowdf...](https://www.poynter.org/news/beacon-reader-journalism-crowdfunding- platform-closing-down) [2] [https://www.blog.google/products/search/fact- check-now-avail...](https://www.blog.google/products/search/fact-check-now- available-google-search-and-news-around-world/)

<comment><USER10> > Because barring the entrance of one of these as-yet-unimagined alternatives, > it seems we'll need to lean on regulation...but then we get into messiness > of regulating free speech.

OK. I'm on break, I'll make it a big longer to translate and sum up what I think has been the most underrated video of the 2016 french presidential election discussing how to «fix» political press. (reference: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GspZxQGRAXw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GspZxQGRAXw) ). Be warned, the proposal is pretty radical, but compare them to the radicalism of people who first proposed to separate the three branches of power. Here we are trying to make the media into a 4th one, independent as the others are.

The speaker is the director of a famous left-wing newspaper, "Le Monde Diplomatique" (not related to Le Monde). His goal is to substract the media from 2 influences: political influences exerted through public aids and funding, and market influences exerted through shareholders and advertisers.

He first proposes to separate media into two categories: entertainment and information (well information, general interests and political debates). He wants to avoid having a government agency arbitrarily sort between them so instead, he proposes 3 (radical) objective criterion to identify information media:

\- non-profit. They are forbidden to give dividends to shareholders.

\- non-concentration. One economic agent can not own more than one media in the "information" category (I did not know that until 1984, this was the rule in France)

\- no advertisement.

Not fulfilling these criterion would lead to be classified as entertainment. 100% legal but makes one unsuitable for public aid.

Then he proposes to replace public aids by a pooling of means, financed by the state, that would provide services that all these media need: printing, distribution, office space, servers, storage, distribution, accounting services, juridic services, commercial services, subscription databases, correction, etc...

He mentions that, in France at least, most media already outsource their subscription database, to a few big private operators. Also that semi-public pooling of distribution networks is already in place to allow small publications to exist.

How does this make it independent from the state if the state is the payer? Well he propose to organize that as a «régie publique» which could be translated as "autonomous public authority" and reminds that the French healthcare is managed that way and oversees masses of money more important that the State's budget.

The key there is twofold:

\- Money does not come from a tax but from a "cotisation" (contribution). It is often seen as the same by payers, but it follows a very different circuit: taxes go feed the state's budget that is then debated to fund the various public efforts. A contribution goes directly into the authority's budget and it does not need the state's approval for spending it one way or the other. It only needs state's approval to be in deficit.

\- The authority is managed by representatives elected from its employees and service users as well as some representative from the newspapers' readers.

This is a very radical proposal, but so far that is the only one I saw that takes seriously the claim that the media is a branch of a similar importance than justice and that it needs to be as independent as possible from market and political influences and proposes realistic means to prevent market and politics influence as well as respecting the freedom of speech.

<comment><USER11> I love this. Not because I understand it fully - I suspect someone is going to shoot plenty of holes through this proposal - but because it's the first one I saw that actually treats the problem seriously, and seems to preserve the reason we need press while eliminating the bad incentive structures.

<comment><USER10> For the context, this proposal was made by this journal director to JL Mélenchon, the far-left candidate in the election (who got 19% of votes, i.e. not a marginal) hoping it would be included in his political program.

It is a well-thought proposal by someone who knows the press industry well. It of course has leftist bias but I suspect that while there can be political criticism, it is probably pretty solid.

I don't know how applicable it is in the US though.

<comment><USER12> For context on "far-left" \- it's nothing like the far left in the US. France has an extremely well-developed set of leftists. It's the only country I ever visited where people had deep discussions about the difference between Trotskyism and Leninism when debating actual political events.

The US far left would maybe, possibly, pass as moderate left in France. Obama would be considered... center right? OK, centrist.

These ideas will not easily translate into a US political context :)

For those curious, his movement, FI, proposes also a rewriting of the constitution, Frexit, withdrawal from TTIP, sustainability as law. It's... interesting. It's a very uniquely French party.

<comment><USER13> I remember reading about Uber opening in France. Obviously the french taxi drivers weren't happy with it, and Uber were putting out press releases about how they "want to work together and blah blah corporate waffle".

But you can't just ignore the law like that like you can in USA, the French taxi drivers started attacking and burning Uber cars.

[https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/25/french-anti-uber- protest-t...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/25/french-anti-uber-protest- turns-to-guerrilla-warfare-as-cabbies-burn-cars-attack-uber-drivers/)

<comment><USER10> To be fair this was a clusterfuck. Taxi here are almost universally hated: they are rude, rare, dishonest, expensive and disorganized. Also, their scarcity in Paris was purposefully organized.

Most people also see that Uber violates important labor laws so most people did not take sided there.

The reason why taxi drivers could get away with so many violence is because the owners of the main taxi companies are VERY well connected to the political world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As one who has not reloaded ammunition in a number of years, I'm going to guess that the only reason Amazon won't sell you black powder (or gun powder) outright is due to shipping restrictions. Which means instead of buying the ingredients with a highly-trackable transaction from Amazon, your low-budget terrorist will have to resort to buying the powder pre-made, and anonymously in a cash transaction from the local gun dealer. Last I checked, they'll sell you big cans of the stuff for cheap.

<comment><USER15> .. in the US, or the UK? I'm fairly sure you'd need an explosives license for more than the 100g ""personal experimentation"" limit, although I'm still trying to find a good canonical rules summary.

<comment><USER14> U. S., where there are enough people that reload ammunition that I made a pretty good bit of money back in the 90s selling software for that market. So, yeah, if you want to buy a couple pounds of the stuff, it's not terribly difficult and no one is likely to think a thing of it (last I bought gun powder was probably ten years ago; take it as the dated information it is).

EDIT: I also forgot that referring to smokeless gunpowder as just "gunpowder" is mostly a U. S. thing. But smokeless gunpowder is what I mean, in contrast to the stuff old school muzzle loaders use (black powder in the U. S.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Good article. When I saw this I thought the UK press in general is really into panicking about the internet. Didn't they prompt the Youtube "Adpocalypse"? Not saying the concerns are irrelevant, but that the call-outs and subsequent remedies have to be well-considered.

<comment><USER17> >When I saw this I thought the UK press in general is really into panicking about the internet. Didn't they prompt the Youtube "Adpocalypse"?

No, that was primarily the Wall Street Journal that started that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> the talk missing here: accountability.

reporters can screw up. like everyone else. heck in the IT security industry we have a mantra that you should not punish mistakes, because over time that makes people more prone to hide mistakes instead of disclosing.

why isn't journalism the same? in the past they would publish erratas and mea culpas.

now, they get the clicks, ad revenue, and on to the next "mistake".

<comment><USER11> > _why isn 't journalism the same? in the past they would publish erratas and > mea culpas._

They still do. But it doesn't matter (and I don't think it ever mattered) - <USER2> you lie on the first page, and next week put an errata on the second page in small print, that correction isn't doing anything. Most people will not read it anyway, and by the time it's printed, the damage to readers' cognition is already done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Missing in these reports is any sense of proportion or realism.

Funnily enough I get the same sensation when reading Maciej's Twitter.

Trump is going to go to war to approve his ratings, apparently. And it seems Twitter employees have an obligation to prevent Trump from using the 'Block' button. for some reason. Also, Peter Thiel (a pet hate/obsession) runs a company that 'powers ICE deportations' and needs to be ostracized for his beliefs.

Some 'sense of proportion or realism' would be nice. That aside, great writing, as usual.

</comment><comment><USER20> It does not take a lot of views for Amazon to link stuff together.

I have a wholesaler dealing in closeouts (end of life products) that sends out emails with new inventory. I noticed once when looking at one item, that 2-3 entirely unrelated items showed up under "Customers who viewed this item also viewed", all that had been previously offered by the same wholesaler.

I don't know how big their email list is, but it's probably in the double to low triple digits. So several dozen people, at best, viewed all of these items, and that was enough for Amazon to pick up and correlate them.

A different time, I was advertising multiple entirely unrelated products with the same associates ID. One of them ended up, similarly, on the other item's page, presumably either due to the same people viewing both ads or them correlating by associate id.

<comment><USER21> I looked at pressure cookers on Amazon and for months was getting ads for full figured bras on other websites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> _The real story in this mess is not the threat that algorithms pose to Amazon shoppers, but the threat that algorithms pose to journalism. By forcing reporters to optimize every story for clicks, ..._

Because newspapers never did this kind of sloppy reporting before the interweb thingy.

<comment><USER23> I think the point is not that _some_ news outlets are doing sloppy reporting in exchange for eyeballs, but that _all of them_ \-- even those that used to be able to trade on their reputation for good reporting -- now have to chase the same eyeballs using the same tricks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I used to do rocketry about 15-20 years ago, we had some pretty stringent requirements back then for the high power stuff(G+ impulse motors).

I'm kinda surprised that the hobby hasn't been shut down completely given how hysterical some of the media can be about this stuff.

<comment><USER25> I'm pretty sure you can just buy black powder in the store for muskets. You don't even have to go through the trouble of buying all the ingredients off Amazon and mixing them.

<comment><USER26> In most States that is true. NY has restrictions in it, and I think CA does. Federal law allows up to 50 pounds of the stuff, before you need a permit. You can buy it at your local outdoor/sporting goods stores.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It boggles my mind that in such a connected age, getting accurate news should be such a hard problem. Never mind influencing the world - if I personally want to know what is really going on, I have no idea where to turn. Surely, surely, there must be a group out there that cares about accurate information and responsible research, to which I can subscribe? I am all for critical thinking, but having to become an expert in everything is wearying.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there no robust way to hold publications accountable for carelessly peddling bullshit?

I fear it will be incredibly difficult to improve the existing incentives.

<comment><USER29> This is a good question and I have given some thought on this. One quick idea would be to somehow shame publications for incorrect coverage, but doing so seems like an uphill battle. It will always be significantly easier to peddle bullshit than it is to disprove that bullshit.

<comment><USER30> Some gatekeeper like google would be needed to raise exposure by verifyability. The problem for a algorithm is to quanitfy truthfullness- it needs some feedback by the audience for that- and it needs to learn whos feedback is qualified.

Doubt that even google could build such a curating search engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't really agree with the author's stance here. Especially since it was posted a couple of days after the inept bomb attempt on a tube train: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/20/parsons-green- two...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/20/parsons-green-two-men- arrested-bucket-bomb-terror-attack/)

Yes, it's a bit sensationalist, it's the news. Have you _seen_ the UK news scene? This won't even be in the top 5 most misleading things said or printed in the news that day.

Please also bear in mind the law on explosives precursors: [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supplying- explosi...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supplying-explosives- precursors/supplying-explosives-precursors-and-poison)

</comment><comment><USER31> I might be wrong about this, but I think thermite is used more often as a simple welding method. Railroad workers doing track maintainence routinely use thermite to repair damaged sections.

[https://youtu.be/5uxsFglz2ig](https://youtu.be/5uxsFglz2ig)

<comment><USER32> True, but I suspect they wouldn't be buying it on Amazon. The retail market means you need to look at hobbyist uses, not industrial.

<comment><USER30> Why would you buy that? Its just aluminium powder and iron-rust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Minor additional point - if you're trying to create dangerous shrapnel, don't you pick something angular & sharp like crushed gravel, nails or even hex nuts, instead of nice round ball-bearings?

<comment><USER34> And now for the follow-up from Channel 4 and other media outlets: "hacker forum tries to find the best shrapnel for home-made explosives".

<comment><USER11> Would running a computer simulation for that be classified as terrorism?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It looks like this is an unpublished post. It doesn't show up on the front page of idlewords.com, and isn't available as a "next" link from the previous story.

maxerickson, how did you find this post?

<comment><USER36> He subscribes to idlewords premium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Drivers scare me more than anything I see on the news.

</comment><comment><USER38> Wait, so will Amazon ship magnesium, iron oxide, and aluminum powder all in the same box? That sounds kinda scary to my layperson ears.

<comment><USER31> The activation energy to get the magnesium ignited is rather high. There is little chance for them to spontaneously ignite unless the delivery truck is.gutted by a fire, and by then you have bigger problems than a kilogram of thermite.

<comment><USER39> Sounds like regexes. Now you have two problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's almost like we have a moral panic about moral panics...

</comment><comment><USER41> This is a good piece but I have one nit: it is incorrect to say "thermite [...] will not detonate."

I was shocked to discover this first hand some years ago: [http://olivernash.org/2009/11/12/fun-with- thermite/index.htm...](http://olivernash.org/2009/11/12/fun-with- thermite/index.html)

I can still recall the echoing boom of that (copper) thermite.

<comment><USER36> Thank you for this correction. Do you know whether Al + Fe2O3 thermite as normally prepared (meaning, not ground up into nanoparticles) will detonate? I'll update the piece accordingly.

Moreover, are you sure this was a detonation (shock wave) rather than a deflagration?

<comment><USER42> Given that ocfnash's page never uses the term detonate, never discusses the difference between detonation and deflagration, and doesn't describe the experiments that would distinguish them, I'm pretty sure they were not in fact performed, and the (informal) explosion he witnessed was not a (formal) detonation.

That's not to say it isn't worth a footnote to explain that "doesn't detonate" does not mean "won't go pop and propel burning material everywhere." Even a campfire can do that, but I could understand if someone heard "doesn't detonate" and drew the wrong conclusion.

<comment><USER41> Thanks for these helpful words of clarification!

As I commented above, I was rather sloppily using the words "explosion", "detonation" to mean flash and boom.

On the two occasions on which I witnessed this event, it was stunningly powerful but I now believe most likely just a deflagration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Well written piece.

I stopped reading news after Trump got into office and I have no shame about it. It feels great and I don't I miss out on anything.

When people talk or ask me about politics I just say I don't know because I don't read. They make s surprised face and then continue talking and arguing about absolutely pointless topics and about the upcoming apocalypse.

I just hope someone tells me an hour beforehand. I'd pay for a service that emails me only once s month and only about topics that matter. Just a brief overview. If I want details I can study history later.

<comment><USER44> That was your lesson from this? Stick your head in the ground and pretend politics is pointless?

Ignorance of politics is a luxury afforded only to citizens of authoritarian regimes. You live in a democracy (assuming that discussion of Trump in politics means you live in the US). Politics is how society chooses to make and use government.

People pretending they are morally superior or lead better lives through ignorance never cease to amaze me.

This article talks about sensationalism in news. Sure, avoid it. Be skeptical of bold claims. But right now Trump and Republicans are talking about making gigantic changes to the nation's healthcare system. Regardless of where you sit on the fence, this absolutely matters.

Pay attention. Find less sensational news. Pay for good journalism and also look for balanced analysis.

<comment><USER45> > You live in a democracy

> People pretending they are morally superior or lead better lives through > ignorance never cease to amaze me.

First of all, we don't have a direct democracy. This concept that everyone has to be 100% engaged (or even 90, or 80, or whatever subjective figure in your head that qualifies good enough is, which is another issue, your concept of being engaged enough doesn't match another) need not apply. Just _enough_ people have to be engaged, which historically speaking has happened.

Second of all, I don't think anyone is claiming a moral high ground here, and if they are you are correct to say shame on them.

Third of all, people who place the same onus of keeping up with whatever the hell is going on in the world as some moral duty never cease to amaze me because it is so easy to flip the script on you and say you don't know enough. There is an endless amount of information out there. "News" as a concept is not even a fraction as old as the concept of government and democracy. We face information overload. How can you blame people for just wanting to live their lives? What if I never signed up for this system? Most people care more about their issues locally (which is in line with human psychology, we weren't meant for these large social networks) but people who sit here and cast stones at people who aren't keeping up with what happens with the Mueller investigation, for example, (which something happens every 2.5 seconds) is what never ceases to amaze me.

<comment><USER46> > First of all, we don't have a direct democracy.

This isn't an argument against being informed, it's a pointless debate over semantics. You and anyone reasonable understood what GP meant, they meant democracy as a "national built on foundations of democratic values, such as freedom of press, freedom of speech (to varying extents), right to assemble, etc" in contrast to "authoritarian regime where those values are not enshrined in the government legislature or cultural values".

> There is an endless amount of information out there. "News" as a concept is > not even a fraction as old as the concept of government and democracy. We > face information overload

The concept of modern news may not have been a invented at the same time, yet it remains a fundamental core part of many democratic-leaning nation's values.

> How can you blame people for just wanting to live their lives? What if I > never signed up for this system?

You're probably free to move to an authoritarian regime if you cared to. No one chose to be born into a government system, but to claim no responsibility in a system that you've benefited from since you were born is passing the buck.

<comment><USER45> > You're probably free to move to an authoritarian regime if you cared to. No > one chose to be born into a government system, but to claim no > responsibility in a system that you've benefited from since you were born is > passing the buck.

Ah yes, the "if you don't like it, you can go back to where you came from" argument, in different clothing of course. This is just never a good rhetorical device. What a person did or did not benefit for is up for debate -- even North Korea provides basics -- but that's not what is being argued here. If I was born into an environment I had no say in building, and I find it incompatible with my way of life (imagine being a white boy from the south on a plantation and against slavery, then shoved into the Civil war), I am, by definition now oppressed -- I am forced to be subservient to a system I had no say in building. I brought this up not to argue it but as a counter example to the person who just says "I am fine just living my life"

<comment><USER47> > What a person did or did not benefit for is up for debate -- even North > Korea provides basics --

What

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Interesting how >80% of the commenters are defending panics, or attacking the website or author itself instead of actually debating the findings.

<comment><USER14> What's to debate? There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why product grouping was observed, and that explanation is far more plausible than imagining terrorists are ordering supplies from Amazon. Something something Occam. All we're left with is what you've observed.

Or did I completely miss the point you're trying to make?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I see 2 claims:

      1. The suggested materials are not for building bombs.
      2. No one would be radicalized to build bombs by following shopping recommendations.

Since uncharacteristically, he did not provide very good support to any of the above claims, I feel free to opt-in with my own made-up opinion:

      [1] is False. The materials ARE for building bombs. The "bearing balls" ARE what author says they are not (using an extremely unconvincing argument), and Mr idlewords is mistaken wrt how much data is used to build recommendations engines.
      [2] is True

<comment><USER35> The article did provide reasonable support for claim 1. Thousands or tens of thousands of people would have to buy the combination for it to be recommended, and aspiring terrorists don't usually purchase their terrorism supplies in a manner that makes it trivially easy to identify them (since Amazon knows who its customers are).

The article also provided a far more plausible explanation for the recommendation than people building bombs.</comment></comment>


OS X apps run on Linux with Wine-like emulator for Mac software - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/os-x-apps-run-on-linux-with-wine-like-emulator-for-mac-software/ <comment><USER2> > Doležel would like to bring _Angry Birds_ , other games, and multimedia > applications to Linux.

Who needs real apps when you have Angry Birds? Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER3> A "Wine is not an emulator"-like emulator? Come on, Ars.

<comment><USER4> Flies like an emulator, quacks like an emulator, waddles like an emulator: duck-typing says it's a bloody emulator.

<comment><USER5> It is not an emulator though... It is a reimplementation layer of winapi.

<comment><USER6> Wine emulates an API, not a CPU or a machine. The original meaning of WINE was WINdows Emulator. [1]

The word "emulator" in tech sometimes acquired an association with CPU or computer emulators. So for whatever reason (joke, marketing, etc.) WINE changed the meaning of the acronym. But it's still an emulator, just an API emulator rather than CPU emulator.

[1] [http://www.faqs.org/faqs/windows-emulation/wine- faq/](http://www.faqs.org/faqs/windows-emulation/wine-faq/)

<comment><USER7> >So for whatever reason (joke, marketing, etc.) WINE changed the meaning of the acronym.

It's likely they did it for the same reason for which "Windows Commander" famously had to change its name to "Total Commander": to avoid infringing upon Microsoft's trademark. Christian Ghisler got a letter from Microsoft's lawyers about the name of his file manager, though [1]; AFAIK, Wine didn't.

[1] [http://www.ghisler.com/name.htm](http://www.ghisler.com/name.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Howto add the Gentoo Overlay:

         A) Quick & Dirty
         1. Run: layman -o https://raw.github.com/LubosD/darling-overlay/master/overlays.xml -f -a darling-overlay

         B) Safe and Standard

         1. Find the overlays section in /etc/layman/layman.cfg
         2. Add https://raw.github.com/LubosD/darling-overlay/master/overlays.xml
         3. Update all repos by running: layman -S
         4. Now run: layman -a darling-overlay

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if they have implemented/made use of any libdispatch ports for Linux to support GCD.

<comment><USER9> Oh, they did, together with libkqueue and libpthread_workqueue.

[http://darling.dolezel.info/en/Build#Grand_Central_Dispatch_...](http://darling.dolezel.info/en/Build#Grand_Central_Dispatch_.28GCD.29)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The GNUstep libraries already provide a large part of all that has to be done. Frankly, I'd be happy with source-level compatibility or even an Xcode plugin that helped programmers write cross-platform programs that run on both OSX and GNUstep.

<comment><USER9> Considering the huge amount of work behind Quartz and Core Animation, I feel quite pessimistic about this goal.

How about creating a translation layer from ObjC and CoreGraphics sources to js and canvas in WebKit based browsers with some JavaScript engine?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: When do down arrows appear on comments? - <AUTHOR>

I was under the impression it was 200 points, but I see now it isn't. Any ideas? <comment><USER2> You can never downvote a reply to one of your comments, or a comment to one of your submissions.

There is a karma threshold for the downvote to appear. It is currently at 500 karma points.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1853529>

I was tempted to say "Here, let me Google that for you" because it's not too hard to find with a search. I resisted, but let me ask - what searches did you try before you asked?

<comment><AUTHOR> Silly me, I tried to use HN search and I found 200 points. That's obviously not true... so thought I would ask.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think I have heard it was 500 some time ago. I have checked at the FAQ and it says "There are no down arrows on submissions. They only appear on comments after users reach a certain karma threshold." so it's not clearly stated.</comment>


You Don't Just Get Fired at Netflix. What Happens Instead Is Brilliant - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/you-dont-just-get-fired-at-netflix-what-happens-instead-is-brilliant-or-maybe-insane-theres-a-raging-debate.html <comment><USER2> I would have loved to read this article, but there was a video playing SOMEWHERE on this page that I could not find to stop.

inc.com sucks

</comment><comment><USER3> Ugh. Another rule added to block obnoxiously loud autoplaying videos on inc.com

I hate the 2018 web.

</comment><comment><USER4> How can you complain about this (the process described in the article) when you get one of the highest salary on the planet for this kind of job ? I do not deny the hardship that comes with all this but aren't you compensated for it ?</comment>


The cold war bunkers that cover a country - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181102-the-cold-war-bunkers-that-cover-a-country <comment><USER2> They feel like part of a potlach economy. All that steel and concrete must have driven a steel-and-concrete economy quite well. That they had no good economic property once made, is less attractive but thats innate in potlach: you spend capital to destroy it, to force things to happen, not to build capital intensity in the things bought.

I bet more than a few of these were longterm pigsties. Not the ones on the beach maybe.

The bunkers which litter northern France are far sadder I think. These ones were sort-of self imposed stupidity, but the organization Todt carries a burden which is still being lived.</comment>


Junior dev – when is the right time to ask for a raise? - <AUTHOR> I'm 30 but for most of my working years I've worked in non-technical field. Year ago, I spent my life savings on coding bootcamp, finished it, got very lucky and I got hired on my 1st interview as a RoR web developer.
I've spent quite a large amount of money for the bootcamp, moved to big city which is more expensive and I make around 15% less than my previous job (6 yrs of exp.). I took offer from my current employer and turned down other offer (around 15% more). I told to myself that I'm starting out, not even on junior level, barely can call myself a programmer so I'm not going to worry about salary for next 2 years - just try to learn as much as I can.
Well here I am, one year later. Managed to survive it and found out I really like my job (and also got married + mortgage). Recently I found out that friend got hired at big company as a QA tester. The job doesn't even involve coding, it's "just" clicking on screen and filing bug reports. Her starting salary is 20% more with benefits (I have none).
It's moments like these that I wonder if this is normal or not. I mean I know I'm not the greatest coder and I still have a long way to go but I'm also constantly improving myself (coding on weekends/outside of work, reading up books etc.)
I've been there for a year and they treated me good, I learned a ton but I was thinking of setting up a meeting in month or two and just ask for a raise. When they interviewed me I asked for 25% more than I make now - which is I think is normal rate for junior dev. They turned me down but I'm thinking of trying again, or at least match what the other company offered me (15% more) when I was a total beginner. How do I do this without sounding like I'm giving them some kind of ultimatum? I am grateful to them and I'd like that fact to be reflected somehow when I talk to them about money but at the same time I don't want to sound too cocky. <comment><USER2> I don't have a clear answer to your question, but I'd just like to note that salaries tend to vary a lot between big companies and small companies, for the same role. So if your friend is working at a big company, and you work for a small company, it is normal (up to a certain point) that she will earn more. I think there are also various factors to consider, before asking for a raise, such as: Do I think I am earning what I'm worth? Is the company in a good position, financially speaking?

In any case, asking for a raise will always be kinda awkward I guess :)

</comment><comment><USER3> i don't quite understand the details of your situation, but, in general, a few thoughts:

\- the best way to get a serious raise is to jump companies. generally, you will build up earning power much faster by moving to a new company every few years.

\- if you want to ask your current employer for a raise, don't ask for a raise until you have a BATNA -- that is, a job offer in hand from another company (or you are quite certain you can procure one in a short amount of time). if you current employer says no, you have to be ready to jump ship. this isn't about an ultimatum -- i don't know that telling them about your job offer is necessary -- depends on how you want to handle it -- but it's something you need to have for yourself. if they say no, do you really want to stick around?

\- woah, no benefits? wtf. definitely jump ship asap. that is _not_ normal. (perhaps you are on your spouse's policy?)

"I am grateful to them" \-- you need to move on from this attitude. i'm not suggesting being cocky or contentious in any way, but you need to think of yourself as a professional, and take care of yourself and your career.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ask what the process is for salary review, and what expectations you need to meet.</comment>


EBooks that cost more than hardcovers - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/business/media/05follett.html?_r=1

<comment><USER2> Here's an idea: vote with your wallet. My upper limit for e-books is $11.99. I might pay $12.99 if it's a book I really want, but the majority of books I purchase from the Kindle store are $9.99 or less.</comment>


Startup Feedback: BuyLater - A Free Price Tracking Tool - relaunched - <AUTHOR> http://www.buylater.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Hackers,

We've just relaunched <http://www.BuyLater.com> \- a free price tracking tool with an all new design, support for more sites (was only amazon before), and support for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari.

We'd love to hear any feedback you have about our site and product!

Thanks so much!

</comment><comment><USER2> Awesome!</comment>


The Bacteria on the Handprint of an 8-Year-Old After Playing Outside - <AUTHOR> http://www.microbeworld.org/component/jlibrary/?view=article&id=13867

<comment><AUTHOR> High resolution: [http://www.microbeworld.org/component/jlibrary/?view=article...](http://www.microbeworld.org/component/jlibrary/?view=article&task=download&id=13867)

The author discusses in detail how she made the print in the comments.

<comment><USER2> Very strange but very nice project. I also recommend to read the comments.

Just a technical note: Many of the dot's are from mold/fungi, not bacteria.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> paraphrased from the reddit comments:

››after washing your adult hands it would look no different (maybe more diverse)‹‹

edit: link to some pictures about it (but remember to keep your kids dirty :) it's good for them [http://safesmokedfish.foodstandards.gov.scot/assessment/5126](http://safesmokedfish.foodstandards.gov.scot/assessment/5126)

Nice detail: see the white big blob in the bottom left? It's probably producing anti-biotics, keeping the other stuff at a distance (how did nobody see this earlier?)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm almost concerned to have this become a popular post. We have too many people already telling everyone to use hand sanitizer and all this nonsense.

Great picture though.

<comment><USER5> It's refreshing to see the positive and appreciative comments on the original article instead of the knee-jerk sorts of reactions you often see in the mass media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The bright orange ones might be staph. aureus. They'd need to be examined under a microscope to give a better idea of their identity than just the color.

There's a difference between being merely colonised and being infected.</comment>


UK satellite operator used the Doppler effect to locate MH370 - <AUTHOR> http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/uk-satellite-operator-used-19th-century-physics-to-trace-missing-plane

<comment><USER3> Here's some intuition about how the Doppler effect can be used to find location of a transmitter given a single receiver: objects (transmitters) moving in a straight line that are far away from the receiver will have less of a shift in frequency when they "pass" the receiver than objects that are close to the receiver.

What's more, you don't actually have to wait for the transmitter to pass the receiver: the radial velocity is what's important, and if you measure that at several points, you can fit a curve. That will tell you how far the transmitter is from the receiver.

Do this several times, and you can make a constellation of possible locations, and then fit those points to a line.

Globalstar does this with its satellite phones. Their situation is easier than with Inmarsat, because Globalstar uses fast-moving (relative to points on Earth) LEO satellites rather than geostationary satellites. Given a single LEO satellite on a known orbit and assuming that the phone on the ground is stationary, a fix on position can be made relatively quickly using the Doppler effect.

Here's a paper about how Globalstar does it: [http://www.eng.tau.ac.il/~nadav/pdf- files/Instant_active_pos...](http://www.eng.tau.ac.il/~nadav/pdf- files/Instant_active_positioning_with_one_LEO_satellite.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> We should all take a page from this book - data storage is incredibly cheap, and you can't predict what potential value you might get from it. Store any data you can get your hands on, timing information, raw packets, everything. It's easy to throw away later, but impossible to recreate if you never had it in the first place.

<comment><USER5> I think this is exactly how the NSA works:)

More on topic this is pretty cool use of limited data to solve a problem - <USER2> lets hope they can find the black box.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really interesting and I appreciate knowing the technique that went into coming up with this conclusion, but I find it kind of weird to see the article mention that the plane crashed and killed all passengers so factually. People need closure on this, but it seems kind of cold to speak this way about the fate of the passengers considering we have no physical proof.

<comment><USER7> It's kind of like when having a funeral without a body. Which is done in some extraordinary situations.

Statistically speaking, assuming the plane's final destination was somewhere in the Southern Indian Ocean, there are no more survivors. If the plane had somehow landed in the Southern Indian Ocean (roiling seas, 20 to 40 foot waves [1], pitch black - remember moonless night) and there were survivors, there would be no more survivors two weeks later (hypothermia due to wind chill, lack of fresh water). Also, the emergency locators in the life rafts would have most likely sent out the distress signals upon contact with water.

The mystery of MH370 is that in most all previous cases of onboard fires, there was some successful attempt to make a form of emergency radio contact. Even when the ceiling was literally melting [2]. There was none with MH370.

[1] [http://www.seos- project.eu/modules/oceancurrents/oceancurren...](http://www.seos- project.eu/modules/oceancurrents/oceancurrents-c02-p05.html) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Forties](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roaring_Forties)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111)

<comment><USER8> Minor correction: by the time the plane must have come down in the ocean, it was after 8am, which I think is well after sunrise at that date and location.</comment></comment></comment>


Most A/B test results are illusory [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdkHLS0FPMk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

<comment><USER2> I'm not familiar with A/B testing products or services, but based on the talk it seems that none integrate the proper setup of A/B testing described here by default.

It's understandable from the point of view that since most of them are selling to startups with small userbases, they don't want to exactly spell out that 90% of their testing is useless, and they need to get 100x more users to be able to measure anything.

But this seemingly also leaves a huge market gap for a product who would do that, and target slightly more mature companies, and deliver real results.</comment>


App Engine can finally receive mail. [bonus: delete your app as well] - <AUTHOR> http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2009/10/app-engine-sdk-126-released-with.html

<comment><USER2> Being able to delete an app is huge too. I've been waiting for this from day 1.

</comment><comment><USER3> Finally. Now, we just need wildcard subdomains...

<comment><USER4> And naked domains... And SSL on Google App based domains...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> AppEngine is pretty much awesome when you want to reduce web portal hosting costs. I am rewriting/augmenting a Rails web app in JRuby + Sinatra + DataMapper so it will run well on either Java AppEngine or one of my own servers using (C)Ruby. If my project gets a lot of users I would like to keep my costs down. (I usually deploy to Amazon AWS, but if you can live within the AppEngine restrictions, then AppEngine is even cheaper than Amazon.)

The ability of receiving email sounds good, but I usually only use this for new account verification - with AppEngine you can just use Google accounts.

</comment><comment><USER6> If I want to get started with App Engine but I have no experience, not with online apps nor with Python but I really want to learn, where would you guys suggest I start?

<comment><USER7> I would start with the tutorial <http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/gettingstarted/>. They also have a Java API if that is more to your liking. See if you can follow and understand the tutorial and fill in any gaps where you seem to be lacking in knowledge or understanding with other sources. If you know any programming language I think the Python is relatively easy to follow.

<comment><USER6> If I don't know any Java or Python, which would you recommend? Which is more similar to RoR?

<comment><USER8> Since AppEngine runs Java, that means it can run JRuby, which also means it can run Rails. Use it if you like. There are a couple of special considerations when using Rails on App Engine, although I am not familiar with them. Finally, you should remember that you're stuck with their datastore, so you can't use ActiveRecord (at least as far as I know, there may be a gem that lets you)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> (Warning: deleted app names _can never be reclaimed_.)

<comment><USER2> It's unfortunate that once deleted, names can't be reused by someone else. I imagine this has something to do with their security model.

<comment><USER10> Why is the name important? Won't you be connecting it to your own domain name anyway?

<comment><USER7> There are still a few details, such as not being able to do https through your own domain (and apparently even for this new feature your app can only receive e-mail at your appspot domain) that may still make having a good appspot name important.

<comment><USER11> It shouldn't be too difficult to simply set up your own email and then forward it to the app email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Receiving email, that's great. One question: Is this a simple thing to setup for yourself (outside of GAE)?

I'd been wanting to do something like this for a while, converting an email to e.g. JSON. But I haven't found too much info on the subject..

</comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know of a good alternative to app-engine-patch (<http://code.google.com/p/app-engine-patch/>) if you want to use Django to develop on GAE?

<comment><USER14> Yes, you can use Django trunk if you do like this:

[http://lethain.com/entry/2009/mar/05/deploying-django- spring...](http://lethain.com/entry/2009/mar/05/deploying-django-springsteen- on-google-app-engine/)

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the tip, but I was looking for a solution that would allow me to reuse contrib.auth and contrib.admin apps.

Please vote here for an AppEngine native Django support: [http://groups.google.com/group/django- developers/browse_thre...](http://groups.google.com/group/django- developers/browse_thread/thread/c0509549a5ca5ff5)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if GAE will ever offer SMS support, like an open gateway. That would be pretty awesome for what we're working on.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow, this was my #1 req, very happy.</comment>


PHP Framework CodeIgniter Has a New Home - <AUTHOR> https://ellislab.com/blog/entry/your-favorite-php-framework-codeigniter-has-a-new-home

<comment><USER2> I'm glad CI has a new home. For many in the PHP community is was their first MVC framework.

Although I wish BCIT all the best I'd wish it would have been picked up by WordPress instead. WordPress is great but it's really showing its age and it could do with a major overhaul. If WordPress would have adopted CI, bring it up to scratch with modern PHP development (Composer, PSR, component oriented, etc.) and build the next generation of WordPress (5.0?) on top of that, I think would have been beneficial to the greater community.

Edit: However, that might conflict with whatever Ellis labs is doing these days..

</comment><comment><USER3> Great to hear it has a new home. CI has been a good friend for several years - I still use it daily. It will be interesting to see if BCIT can bring it up to par with modern PHP frameworks like Laravel & Symfony 2.

</comment><comment><USER4> I used to love Codeigniter, but recently have been introduced to testing, testing and more testing. Codeigniter makes testing near IMPOSSIBLE unless you do some core system hacks. And even then, stubs, dependencies, fixtures.. don't even think about it. Unfortunately to make Codeigniter a fully testable framework, they will have fundamentally rewrite the whole thing. And I do think this has become more and more of a core requirement for modern frameworks.

That being said, I suppose at the end of the day, Codeigniter is still blazing fast and so incredibly easy to introduce to a newer developer. Maybe it will always have a place, and if so, I wish BCIT best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER5> Whilst I'm pleased that CI will not die an unmaintained death, I do wonder if it will be worth putting in the work to modernize the framework.

Symfony2 and others are now so much more ahead of CI. Composer and PSR-x standards make developing in PHP much more of a programming rather than scripting experience, and CI still feels closer to the latter.

On the other hand, I learnt much from CI when I first started MVC and OO development, so best of luck to BCIT.

</comment><comment><USER6> CodeIgniter is great. The first MVC PHP framework I learnt to use.

Started to move over to Laravel now since that's where 'all the cool kids' are heading.

<comment><USER7> I've also moved over to Laravel for the most part, but I like the minimalism of CodeIgniter, and still use it occasionally. It's actually to CI's advantage that it has grown so conservatively: it's still fast, secure, reliable, quick to deploy and upgrade, and there's not much to learn when coming back after years of absence.

(My only real gripe has been the lack of a good Model base class, which led me to roll my own: [https://github.com/lukifer/TheMissingModel](https://github.com/lukifer/TheMissingModel))

Best of luck to BCIT, I hope they keep building on CI's core strengths and resist the temptation to make radical changes.

<comment><USER5> Nice work. It's also worth checking out Jamie Rumbelow's MY_Model

[https://github.com/jamierumbelow/codeigniter-base- model](https://github.com/jamierumbelow/codeigniter-base-model)</comment></comment></comment>


Just a Reminder: Google Reader will not be available after July 1, 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://keepgooglereader.com/

<comment><USER2> Oh dear. From the site:

>> If Google won't keep Google Reader alive, then lets get them to open source the code and we will run it ourselves! Who is with me?

It would be a heck of a thing if they open sourced Bigtable and {secret sauce flavor B} and GFS and Chubby and {S} to make that work. Of course, they'd probably also need {G} so people could log in and {K} to store all of the preference data. That would probably then force opening {C} and {S_2} too.

I once tried to get some takers to open-source {secret sauce flavor S}. I had a standing offer to deliver stacks of pizzas and appropriate refreshments to any team who wanted to take it on as a weekend hack project. By that, I meant I'd pay for it, drive out and pick it up, and deliver it and generally be helpful. I'd even sit down and bash out some code if they wanted. Otherwise I'd just worry about removing cognitive load so they could get their work done.

It never happened. Some would say it's because {S} is too closely tied to {L}. I'd say it's because everything is too closely tied to everything else. Little short of a purposeful rewrite to be lean and mean would do it, and who has time for that?

Oh, if only I could share the picture of the whiteboard showing how all of this connected. Spaghetti wishes it could be that complicated.</comment>


MAGIC – Clojure Compiler for the CLR - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nasser/magic <comment><AUTHOR> This is another implementation of Clojure on the CLR (first one I believe is ClojureCLR[1]). There's also a long but interesting talk about this project from the author given at the Lisp NYC user group[2]. There are some cool examples showcasing interop with the Unity game engine.

[1] [https://github.com/clojure/clojure- clr](https://github.com/clojure/clojure-clr)

[2] [https://vimeo.com/203271192](https://vimeo.com/203271192)</comment>


Why there's nothing mysterious about consciousness - <AUTHOR> https://iai.tv/articles/the-demystification-of-consciousness-auid-1381 <comment><USER2> This is as well-argued a case for illusionism as I can imagine. And it shows how hopeless the case is. The argument is, in a nutshell, "Consciousness seems to imply a soul, but there's really nothing but brain; therefore consciousness is nothing but brain." It attempts to resolve the hard problem by ignoring the elements that make it hard. Something inside each of us is experiencing our perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and memories. Nothing suggests that matter produces experience. Therefore the ability to experience truly is mysterious. If some part of consciousness is illusion, who or what is being duped by the illusion?</comment>


Why does F = ma? - <AUTHOR> http://cognitivemedium.com/f-ma <comment><USER2> I'm not sure the question is particularly well posed, but I think the most coherent answer you'd get from modern physics is symmetry. Restating Newton's law's slightly, you basically get two points:

1\. Momentum is conserved

2\. All interactions between objects are mediated by forces (i.e. interactions exchange momentum).

So you may ask, ok, but why do these two things happen, which is is where symmetry comes in. If you require that your theory is invariant under translations in space and time, your theory must conserve momentum and energy. Then you ask, ok, so what kind of long-range interactions can we have between particles in a theory where energy and momentum are conserved and the answer turns out to be, well those that exchange momentum. For example, in the hypothetical from the blog post where interactions are mediated by exchanges of acceleration (forces are proportional to jerks), you end up with a universe where absent interactions, acceleration is constant. Why is this inconsistent with symmetry? Well, in such a universe, the acceleration of particles would be constant in the absence of interaction, so their kinetic energy would keep growing and growing, violating conservation of energy.

<comment><USER3> This seems to lead to another question, which is why is the invariant of the system what it is? Why are momentum (mv) and energy (0.5mv __2) conserved?

<comment><USER4> A sibling comment to yours mentions Noether's theorem that links symmetries (look up what symmetry means in this context if you're not sure) with conserved quantities. Here are some examples:

Energy is conserved because the laws of physics at two different times are the same.

Momentum is conserved because of translation invariance, as the laws of physics at two different points in space are the same.

There are others, like conservation of angular momentum because the laws of physics do not change under rotation.

Conservation of charge is because of gauge invariance of the electromagnetic field and might be the least understandable of the mentioned ones here. Check [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_conservation#Connection...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_conservation#Connection_to_gauge_invariance) for some details, even though I'm aware that it might be way too technical.

<comment><USER5> It's interesting to note that, when you look at the universe as a whole, energy is _not_ conserved. (It also isn't time- translation-symmetric.)

It's been such a successful concept that you'll even find people denying that that can be the case. I'm one of them, somewhat -- I suspect it implies that we're missing part of the system, hence the universe as we know it isn't closed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Putting it in somewhat fuzzier terms, and at the risk of repeating myself: F > = ma derives its power from the (implicit) assertion that there is a simple > unversal force law that lets us figure out F for a particular configuration > of matter. And so the configuration of matter completely determines the > acceleration of a test particle. There is no a priori reason this ought to > be true. It's an absolutely incredible fact of nature.

Yup, this is totally correct. To say it yet another way, we evaluate scientific theories not by looking at the pieces in isolation, but how much explanatory power you get from _all_ the pieces working together (penalized by the total complexity of those pieces). There's nothing mathematically inconsistent about defining "F = mv", it just makes F a less useful quantity.

Feynman actually had a remarkably similar discussion in his classic lectures:

> For example, if we were to choose to say that an object left to itself keeps > its position and does not move, then when we see something drifting, we > could say that must be due to a "gorce" — a gorce is the rate of change of > position. Now we have a wonderful new law, everything stands still except > when a gorce is acting. You see, that would be analogous to the above > definition of force, and it would contain no information.

> The real content of Newton's laws is this: that the force is supposed to > have some independent properties, in addition to the law F = ma. [...] It > implies that if we study the mass times the acceleration and call the > product the force, i.e., if we study the characteristics of force as a > program of interest, then we shall find that forces have some simplicity; > the law is a good program for analyzing nature, it is a suggestion that the > forces will be simple.

<comment><USER7> In a lot of problems, there is a "F = mv" as well, just not using the letter m. A velocity dependent force is a "damping" force. Pushing an object through some fluid medium will produce damping. There is also a "F = mx" which is a spring return force. All three of these forces operating together drive the (approximate) equation of motion for a lot of mechanical things, such as the cone of a loudspeaker.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Those F's aren't the same as the one in "F = ma" though. The one in "F = ma" means "the (vector) sum of all forces on the object".

You can write down, as you say, a bunch of contributions like F_spring and F_damp etc. that can be functions of other variables like x, v etc.

"F = ma" then tells you that if you sum up all the forces (F_spring, F_damp etc) you have an expression for the acceleration.

This gives you an equation of motion that you can solve to find out how the object will move given some initial state.

Basically, if you know the initial position and velocity, you can compute acceleration at that time. Then you can figure out the position and velocity of the object a short time later, and recompute the acceleration using these new values. Then you can step forward again, and again, for as long as you want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I liked KenoFisher's top level answer but I want to change the perspective because I think momentum is a red herring.

The starting point should be energy. Classical physics (and modern physics as far as I recall) determined that literally everything is linked by a single concept of energy. In my view energy is more real than anything else we experience and all our senses are for perceiving energy in different states. Matter is pooled energy, movement is energy, heat is energy (linked to movement), time is defined to some degree in terms of mass so it is linked in there too somehow. And we know energy is conserved because we have observed that everywhere.

Once we know energy is conserved the law of momentum makes a lot of sense - there have to be symmetrical laws that don't allow arbitrary creation of energy because that doesn't happen. And then F = ma turns up and it isn't so surprising for the same reason.

F = ma is in that sense not a fundamental law; it is a corollary of the conservation of energy. Mathematically there might have been other options, but that is the one that applies in this universe. There was always going to be a mass component in the formula because by observation energy is fundamentally linked to mass.

<comment><USER9> This only makes sense in a relativistic context, but forces don't exist in relativistic contexts.

So you can either have F = ma, or you can have GR, but you don't get to have both at the same time.

<comment><USER10> Wait, you can't write the Lorentz force down?

<comment><USER11> You can: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations_in_curve...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations_in_curved_spacetime#Lorentz_force_density)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Isn't this derived from conservation of momentum? As I understand it, that arises from a symmetry in spatial configuration: that physics behaves identically along shifts in position.

I'm well beyond anything I'm familiar with, but it feels like these more fundamental relations should be where meaning of equations like F=ma arise. If momentum is conserved due to symmetry of position, then forces applied by a field are exactly what disrupt that symmetry and thus are exactly what invoke changes in the conserved quantity?

I hope for explanations like that to bear more fruit because they arise from some pretty undeniable facts of reality: there aren't privileged positions in space except for how forces exist in some configuration, there aren't privileged moments in time except for how events occur along some timeline.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hijacking this thread in hope that some fellow physicist could chime in.

I'm physicist myself so maybe I _should_ know this or be able to figure it out myself but here's the question:

Where is kinetic or rotational energy 'stored'?

Is it eventually the transformation of fields that gives rise to kinetic energy? For example an electron whose electric field is not a radially symmetric must be a _moving_ electron and the difference in energy between the field configurations (simple radially symmetric electric field on one hand and the mix of electric and magnetic fields on the other) is exactly the kinetic energy it has?

<comment><USER6> The electromagnetic field configuration does contribute energy/momentum. In general, every field that interacts with the election field contributes: an "electron" stands for a complicated joint excitation of the electron, photon, W/Z boson, quark, gluon, ... quantum fields and what we call the momentum/energy of the electron is just the total of that of all of these fields.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > I find it astounding that a theory like quantum mechanics can have inside it > another theory, an approximation, also extremely beautiful mathematically, > but radically different. It's like taking Bach, adding some noise, and > getting the best of the Beatles out. I wish I understood better why this can > happen.

This isn't really the case. Author should've probably mentioned the Ehrenfest theorem[0]. It's not exactly accurate to say that Newtonian mechanics is "embedded" in quantum (or rather Hamiltonian) mechanics. In fact, we need to do some "artificial" re-jigging to make quantum mechanics work at Newtonian scales.

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

<comment><USER14> >> _It's like taking Bach, adding some noise, and getting the best of the Beatles out._

It's a very bad analogy. It's difficult to find a good one. Let's try anyway: Imagine that QM is a real piano and CM is how you expect a piano to sound in normal conditions.

If you press a C key, you get a C sound. You can modify the sound releasing the key or keeping it pressed, or pressing the pedals. There are some effect where you press another keys so the sound of the original string make the other strings move and modify the sound. You can hit the wood part of the piano to make some drum like sounds.

Most of this can be simulate in an electric keyboard and get an accurate piano-like sound. This is like Classic Mechanics.

Quantum Mechanics is like the real piano. You can open or close the top. You can fill the piano with a different gas to make the sound slightly different. Or fill it with water or liquid nitrogen. Use drumstick to hit the strings directly. Use a hammer to hit the wood walls. These create a more wide set of sounds that are nor reproducible in a electric keyboard. An electric keyboard is only an approximation of an idealized real piano.

(An experiment where the waviness of the particles is the most important part is like dropping a piano from a 8th floor to hear the sound of the crash, or using the piano as firewood to hear the crispy sound of fire in a winter night. I'm not happy with these examples because they are too destructive, but I wanted too examples of sounds that are very far away from the sounds you expect in an electric keyboard.)

(For some reason, musicians do more weird destructive acts with guitar than with pianos. Perhaps it would be a better instrument for the analogy. But it is more difficult to make an idealized model of a guitar. A piano is almost discrete.)

<comment><USER15> Better analogy would be chemicals adding up to life. Life adding up to ecosystems. Bargaining adding up to economics. D flip flops adding up to the internet. But all of this stuff is real.

<comment><USER14> I disagree. My idea is that with some common assumptions and simplifications, QM looks like CM when the mass is big and other usual conditions. Like a real piano can be under normal conditions simulated by an electric keyboard.

Life is like an emergent phenomena based in chemistry. In some special cases, the chemistry is very complicated and it's better to have special name for this situation and call it life.

Anyway, the problem with analogies is that each one thinks that their own one are better.

<comment><USER15> Oh well, I'm more of a rolling stones fan anyway. (smiley face)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> F = ma because if you walk outside and push things around that's what you will notice is happening. Any other explanation including a derivation from QFT would just be a different version of that, because whatever deeper underlying theory you were using would have come from the same place as F = ma came from to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER17> We will never know why it does, even though it is a well-motivated prediction of classical and modern theories.

It is possible for us to test whether or F=ma, though, and so far, it (with relativistic corrections) checks out.

An example of this sort of test from our research group: [https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.98...](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.150801)

(I'd go dig up more citations on the subject, but we have a grant proposal due in two days... :) )

</comment><comment><USER18> 'F = ma' is a special case of 'F = d/dt(mv)'. Expanding the latter via the product rule, we get: F = m dv/dt + v dm/dt, where a=dv/dt and dm/dt is the time rate of change of the mass of the object. This fuller form matters in, for example, aerospace engineering, where the mass of the rocket is changing as fuel is burned, so dm/dt is emphatically not 0.

I wonder if the philosophical questions asked in the fine article could have been addressed more satisfyingly from that more general starting point?

</comment><comment><USER19> If you're interested, Landau & Lifschitz "Vol 1: Mechanics" has a derivation of classical mechanics from purely physical arguments, from first principles. F=ma is on page 9.

<comment><USER20> And that derivation seems to be known at least since 1788:

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

<comment><USER19> Yes, but Landau derives that in a supremely elegant way, from purely physical arguments.

<comment><USER20> I personally always prefer first historical approach, only then elegant summaries. I am aware that some like just a distilled material. Still thanks for mentioning Landau and Lifschitz book!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As Poincaré put it, "Masses are co-efficients which it is found convenient to introduce into calculations."

</comment><comment><USER22> > [...] Two test particles with the same initial position and velocity, but > different electric charges, can behave quite differently in the same > electric field.

> One possible response is to say "oh, maybe our notion of force should really > be something like F = mj, where j is the jerk, i.e., the third derivative of > position".

> I've never worked it out in detail, but wouldn't be surprised if such an > approach can be made to work.

It might not be exactly what he's looking for, but in Kaluza-Klein theory, charge is related to the velocity of the particle in an unseen 5th dimension. Through some miracle, if you work out general relativity with one dimension extra, the resulting theory bears a striking resemblance to general relativity in the usual four dimensions plus electromagnetism. If you then assume the 5th dimension is extremely small, which would explain why we can't see it, you get quantization of charge for free.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaluza%E2%80%93Klein_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaluza%E2%80%93Klein_theory)

</comment><comment><USER23> > the equation in Newton's second law isn't F = ma, but rather the more subtle > statement that force is equal to the rate of change of momentum of a body

This is probably the most insightful bit and points directly to the potential of fiddling with the equation.

Drawing an analogy from electricity, F=ma is in a way the "DC version/expression" of a force, in which m and a are constant and F is a fixed quantity. However we can write an "AC version/expression" of the equation as F(t)=m(t)*a(t), in which the average of F(t)=F.

In a way we tend to just be content with dealing with averages instead of looking at the detail and seeing how it varies over time.

There's a lot of potential in looking at the variation. Especially as technology enables it through high speed cameras and instruments with higher sampling rates/resolution.

<comment><USER24> The "AC" version of that equation is actually F=dp/dt (p = momentum)

<comment><USER23> Thank you for the formula.

Do you know of example advances that have been made or problems that have been solved as a consequence of applying the concept implied in that formula?

<comment><USER25> Rockets

<comment><USER23> Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER26> Rockets have an exhaust with constant velocity, and they expel mass in the form of fuel. It's this expulsion of mass that generates the force that propels the rocket. Taking a force balance and assuming no external forces (e.g. gravity), you can integrate to get the rocket equation, which tells us how much fuel mass we need to reach a given velocity (the quantity we care about when talking about stellar distances).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> One interesting fact that has been missed here is the nature of time reversal.

F=ma. Switch on the time reversal machine: t becomes -t. Positions stay the same, but velocities reverse, because dx/d-t -> -dx/dt.

BUT accelerations stay the same! dx/d^2t gets a double negative, which is just 1. Gravity attracts in the future and the past. Throw a ball up and it comes back down; reverse the camera and it looks the same.

This means that (handwaving) _forces are independent of time_. And this in turn leads to a time-independent construction of forces - how about as the gradient in space (NOT time) of a potential.

This I think is a path to partial insight. A particle moves in a potential, and we can calculate the quantity 'a' from the purely-spatial gradient at the particle's position, without reference to time at all. And we can do this because 'a' is an _even_ derivative of position.

This is a crappy argument; at best it argues that it's nicer that f=ma instead of f=mv or f=ma'. Fourth or sixth derivatives are not considered. Still, understanding dynamics as governed by position only is compelling.

</comment><comment><USER28> Coincidentally on vacation I'm reading Leonard Suskind's "Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory: The Theoretical Minimum", which (I think, if I'm understanding correctly), goes into this question. Something about Gauge Invariance..

[https://g.co/kgs/dygVQN](https://g.co/kgs/dygVQN)

</comment><comment><USER16> > _A fun question: how does the universe change if the mass isn't a scalar, > but rather is a matrix, and so a = m-1F is the acceleration? What would this > world look like? Is it plausible?_

This happens in our universe when the coordinate system is squished. In the general curvilinear case, mass is a matrix.

<comment><USER6> Not only that, but mass is a matrix for electrons moving in a crystal lattice, even for normal coordinate systems. It's also true if you want F = ma to continue to hold in special relativity, then m is a velocity-dependent matrix.

<comment><USER11> _It 's also true if you want F = ma to continue to hold in special relativity, then m is a velocity-dependent matrix._

Not if you describe things in terms of four-forces and four-accelerations, which restores the simple proportionality. However, the spatial component of 4-acceleration is not necessarily parallel to 3-acceleration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think best way to look at this is m = F/a. Then mass is basically objects resistance to force.

<comment><USER30> This is a perfectly fine way of looking at it. But here's an interesting question:

\- We know that Force is proportional to acceleration. Let's call the proportionality constant, m_1=F/a.

\- We also know that objects are attracted to the Earth with a proportionality constant: m_2= F r^2/(GM)

and we can certainly set:

\- F == m_1 a == G m_2 M/r^2

to calculate the acceleration of the gravitational force. But why should m_2==m_1?

In other words, why is "inertial mass" (m_1) the same as gravitational mass (m_2)?

<comment><USER31> Follow up question: is there an "electrical" inertia? Why does gravity have only one relevant quantity but electromagnetic forces need two?

<comment><USER30> Well, it really doesn't. The "problem" is that charge is always associated with mass, with the charge generating electromagnetic fields and the mass being responsible for the gravitational one

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b I personally would have gone with: because E=0.5 _m_ v^2

And by that i mean that energy is a much more intuitive concept than force.

Why is E proportional to v^2? Now THAT's an interesting question.

<comment><USER32> Here's a good explanation (it reduces to F=ma, of course!). This explanation starts by answering a different question, then points out that energy is analogous.

[https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/67432/intuitive-...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/67432/intuitive- meaning-of-factor-2-in-formula-of-vertical-throw-max-height- h-v2-2g/67433#67433)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > _A fun question: how does the universe change if the mass isn't a scalar, > but rather is a matrix, and so a = m-1F is the acceleration? What would this > world look like? Is it plausible?_

m is only a scalar for particles though? For a general rigid body mass _is_ a matrix. Unless they specifically mean for translational degrees of freedom, in which case I think that would probably break symmetry

</comment><comment><USER34> One time in a physics class we were required to have a "cheat sheet" of formulas for an exam. One student did not have a "cheat sheet" and was told that he was required to have a cheat sheet. He grabbed a sheet of paper and wrote F=ma. He aced the exam.

</comment><comment><USER35> Because Work = Force times Distance = Energy. Acceleration is the result of energy added (by doing work) to a body with inertia (mass). Now if you ask what is inertia: _that_ is the right (IMO unanswered) question!

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't understand the problem the author sees with the conventional explanation. Yes, test particles of different charges behave differently, but this in no way implies that the law should involve the third derivative of position! The author says:

> I've never worked it out in detail, but wouldn't be surprised if such an > approach can be made to work. Essentially, it'd make acceleration into a > free (possibly constrained) parameter of the particle, rather than something > completely determined by the distribution of matter and fields. That free > parameter would implicitly contain what (in the conventional approach) we > think of as the charge information. Indeed, the new equations of motion > would have a conserved quantity, corresponding to the charge. But the > resulting force laws would be quite a bit uglier.

I don't see how this could be true. If it is, I'd indeed like to see it worked out.

Particles with different charges still follow F = ma. The force is different for different particles, sure, but the evolution of the position of the particle still follows a second order differential equation and not a third order one. Furthermore, going to a third order equation doesn't even solve the problem that the F is different for particles of different charge, that problem is still there the same as before. I don't think is a problem at all, by the way: the forces always depend on the particular situation we're considering, including on the mass, charge, and so on, and even more so for compound objects.

The question "Why does F = ma?" is a good question though. The conventional explanation only explains why classical mechanics is governed by a second order differential equation. It does not explain why F = ma is the right equation. If you interpret F as a general function of the state of the system then indeed F = ma doesn't tell you anything, because by picking the appropriate F you can get any second order differential equation. However, if we already have some prior idea of what force and mass is, which we do, then it's not clear why it should be _this_ differential equation. We do have an intuitive idea of what force is: if you hang 1kg on a rope then the rope pulls with some amount of force, and if you put 2kg then it pulls with double the force. Similarly, if you stretch a spring by 3cm you have some amount of force, and if you stretch two of those springs simultaneously you have double the force. You could relate the force in the spring with force by a weight by finding the amount of weight you need to stretch the spring by that 3cm. We can get a definition of force by picking some reference force as being 1 unit of force, and we can similarly come up with an experimental definition of mass.

If we accept such a definition then F = ma has physical meaning. For instance, it says that if you double the force then you double the acceleration. That is, if you pull an object with two springs then it accelerates twice as fast as when you pull it with one spring, if you stretch the springs by the same amount in both cases. This is a nontrivial fact about the physical world. The law F = ma also tells you that if you apply a constant force then the velocity increases linearly. That is, if you pull an object with a spring and keep the spring stretched by 3cm, then if the object accelerates to speed v in one second then it will accelerate to 2v in two seconds. This is a nontrivial fact about the physical world too.

</comment><comment><USER37> Remember that F and a are vectors and m is a scalar.

<comment><USER38> Yes and that it's more properly ΣF = ma. A lot of students forget that it's the sum of the force vectors, not just a single force, when they're first learning physics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> What confuses many people in high school is that F = ma but KE = 1/2 mv^2 (or 1/2 ma).

<comment><USER40> Acceleration does not equal velocity squared...

<comment><USER39> That would explain a lot. Our 80's high school physics teacher taught us that acceleration equals velocity squared, but he was prone to using vast over simplifications to get through the material quickly.

<comment><USER41> That's not a vast oversimplification, it's completely unrelated to reality</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Project management and collaboration app for agencies - <AUTHOR>

This is an app to easily manage a workload of multiple projects and to ease collaboration between teams.
We built it on weekends whilst running our agency and it's still very much in development.
I'm posting it because I'm interested on what HNers think we should focus on next:
* A 'client view' of each project?
* Project level permissions to allow freelancers to access particular projects?
* Estimates vs Actuals – see how they compare and use this data to predict future delivery times.
You can sign up for a free lifetime account at the moment. Please comment if you have any feedback or ideas.
Much appreciated!
http://runwaypm.com/ <comment><USER2> As a developer who's worked at an agency for a few years, I think this is a good start.

Considering that an agency's business model is basically just selling time, I would focus on estimates and scheduling resources.

<comment><USER3> Thanks Brett. I think that's a good point about agencies just selling time. The area of estimation, or at least measuring the accuracy of estimation, is something that a quite a lot of our beta testers have flagged up as something they'd like to see in the product.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> You can also access a demo here without signing up: <http://demo.runwaypm.com/session/demo>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://runwaypm.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> I like it I'd love it if it had git integration

<comment><AUTHOR> We considered making it development specific but most of the interest has come from a more general audience.

How would this work? You'd reference deliverables in individual commits? And maybe add time in the commit too? E.g:

git commit -a -m "Added delete confirmation [t:20]"

Would add 20 minutes to a matching deliverable name (the project would be derived from the repo).</comment></comment>


How can I live in the Bay Area - Only Focus on my startup. - <AUTHOR>

Ok, Im not an Ivy league rich kid, my parents wont pay any living costs. Should I save up and work on my startup daily or get a part time job?
My ideal situation would be to work 24/7 on my startup and then start pitching it around and making connections.
Having a full time job would take up the majority of my time, but if it has to be done I guess I will have no other option.
Let me know your ideas or experiences. Where I live now has no clue about the web startup scene and has no Angel investors or VCs. Its unheard of out here lol. <comment><USER2> If you don't have any savings, and don't have any income other than from working, how do you expect to live anywhere without working? Are you staying at home right now?

The bay area is expensive, but it varies a lot depending on where you are. Here's a hint: don't live in San Francisco. Look for a place in the east bay with roommates. If you want easy access to SF, just make sure it's near a BART station. You can get a decent place for < $600/mo that way.

If you're a good programmer and you can network, you should be able to cover your costs while only working 10-20 hrs/wk. That said, it make take you a little while to get your foot in the door if you're fresh out of school.

If you want to go soon, there are going to be a lot of university kids subletting their places for the summer.

The bay area is a great place. You'll have fun living there. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea I will live anywhere as long as i can make the meetings at Sequoia capital or with my soon to be buddy Ron Conway. lol jk

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Get here any way you can. If that means you get a job (even part time) and get in a roommate situation in sf or moutain view or whatever do it.

What kind of skills do you have? Email in profile if you have specific questions about the area or where to look for housing. I have lived here most of my life.

<comment><AUTHOR> Im a designer. Web/print/marketing related. My best option would be to hook up with a great programmer and get things going. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to live in Fairfield, which is midway between SF and the state capital. It is in Solano County, which is basically the cheap seats of the Bay Area. It likely won't be quite the hot spot you are looking for, but last I heard, about 40% of people in Solano commute to jobs outside the county in other (pricier) parts of the Bay Area. Some people even do that without a car. Transportation alternatives in the Bay Area are almost as good as Europe (or at least way better than anything else I have personally seen elsewhere in the US). There is commuter rail, decent bus service, and all kinds of creative options that for me were strange and new.

So if you can find a place in Solano County, you can reduce your living expenses somewhat. (Last I checked, for $1k/mo in SF, you can get an SRO rental...but there may be a waiting list and it's a total dive. It's possible to work full time and be homeless in SF.)

<comment><USER3> This commute will cush your soul. You are better off in east palo alto...

<comment><USER5> A real estate agent informed me recently that east palo alto is bad news. Gangs, etc. Is this really true?

<comment><USER6> Yes, depending on where you live.

I lived in one of the newer subdivisions for a few years, and it was fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey MenaMena123 - in my opinion you should start working on your startup - build fast a prototype and test the market - see if you can earn some money with it. If you will start erning money very good - you are on the right track. If not -don't give up, try to find a part-time job so you can still earn some cash bu also work on your startup! Good like on your venture!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also I'm not going for the money that can be invested, but the people that are around that can help etc etc. People are very important.</comment>