Wizard for Mac – new kind of statistics program - <AUTHOR> http://www.wizardmac.com/ <comment><USER3> Generally speaking, IMHO, making the _interface_ easier, in practice, doesn't actually make _using statistical methods correctly_ easier and that's scary.

SPSS is a classic example - and the social sciences have had a series of discredited papers over recent years due to poor application of statistical methods. Just because you can put a dataset in and get values out - <USER2> values that _look_ significant, it doesn't mean they are - did all of the assumptions and requirements of the methods/tests you used hold true/pass with your data?

So, while I haven't looked closely at this tool, all I saw was talk of the interface and the ease of getting results even if "you don't know where to start". That scares me. Especially when you start talking about applications in domains like medicine. That could be lives in the balance. Would we want civil engineers using tools like this to build bridges? Or people designing nuclear reactors?

To me, this is worse, not better unless it somehow helps you actually understand when, why and how to correctly use these tools.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. It's odd to charge money for this at all, given that there are such robust statistical tools for free (read: R). But on top of what you said, the fact that trial versions can't export p-values is tacit endorsement of the "p < 0.0x is all that matters" camp, further promoting toxic statistical thinking.

Promoting ease of use of tools and simplification of harder problems is great, but this is a really, really dangerous thing to make easy and oversimplified.

Nope nope nope nope nope.

<comment><USER5> To be fair, R isn't really that accessible to most social scientists. Heck, R isn't really that accessible to most programmers either. The tidyverse and R notebooks have definitely improved things by leaps and bounds, but R at its core is an unusual language. (I say this as a somewhat proficient R user) Its programmatic nature does aid in coming up with reproducible data analyses though.

SPSS has, shall we say, a less than savory reputation.

All this to say that there is a market for something much friendlier than R. R is used by pure statisticians, data scientists and the like, but most social scientists prefer Stata, which has pretty legit statistical routines as well as a point-and-click UI.

<comment><USER6> I'm fairly fond of JMP, which in my mind manages to thread the gap between "Easy UI" and "Push buttons until you get a p-value" decently.

<comment><USER7> Yeah I quite like JMP. JMP for the easy routine stuff. R for when shit gets real. I don't do much stats these days though, so not having a JMP license, I just reach straight for R on the rare occasions I need it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I own a copy of Wizard and have found it valuable on numerous occasions from digging around databases to tinkering with models. It handles non-trivial amounts of data with relative ease, allows you to do joins in the UI, has nice graphical representations that can change based on the type of the column. The list goes on. It does quite a lot of stuff.

Everyone I show this software to goes: "Whoa, what is this?" I would recommend checking it out before dismissing it.

<comment><USER9> I use Wizard all the time at work for analyzing manufacturing data to quickly check for trends and correlations. I find it better, easier, and faster than the internal tools purpose-built for the same task. I also prefer Wizard over JMP, Tableau, or any R/numpy/gnuplot methods, specifically for one-off tasks and analyzing new issues.

I'm not going to write a script or configure complex software for a quick check. Wizard is perfect for that. It's also super fast at scanning through really enormous CSV files, then generating plots for every parameter.

Every coworker who sees me using it for these tasks wants to know what it is, or how I send out relevant plots so quickly when new datasets are available. It's really a fantastic tool for quick work.

There seems to be a lot of negativity in this comments section about misuse of statistics. I think people are missing the point. Easy tools make data analysis more accessible, but misuse of data is the fault of the user, not the tool.

<comment><USER10> I some how cannot read these positive comments without believing that they are AstroTurf.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Robust statistical analyses require knowledge, judgement, and increasingly, specialist expertise. To market a product as a way to jettison the statistician is so shortsighted as to be intellectual malpractice.

Forgive me if I seem overly aggressive but I have grown weary of my and my colleagues' profession being side-lined and belittled. Politicians, administrators, and even some other scientists see statistics as merely a badge to be placed atop their own work for validation. Well, ladies and gentlemen, statistics is more than that. It is an empirical science in its own right.

      Of course, it doesn't always take a statistician to do the necessary statistical work. I am no physicist yet I can certainly apply the Clausius Clapeyron equation as needed. Likewise, I expect many (perhaps most) scientists to be able to apply an ANOVA or simple regression as the need arises.

      HOWEVER, the lack of intellectual humility on the part of so many non-statisticians when applying statistical tools to their own work is maddening.

<comment><USER12> I'm having a hard time understanding how statistics could be considered an empirical science, and really what bearing that term has on statistics at all. Can you explain?

<comment><USER13> Not OP, but I would say that when statistics acts like a subfield of mathematics, then it is an art.

However, if we consider judging whether a statistical method will be useful for the world as a part of statistics, then that part sometimes is an empirical science.

That is, the statement "I should use X technique because it performs Y% well" is sometimes an an empirical statement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't understand the hostility to this application. Progress comes from trying different ways to do things. I tried this program a few years back, and thought it was ok. It is easier to use than JMP, which some others have mentioned, though not as powerful.

There is nothing about easy-to-use that precludes understanding, and certainly nothing about difficult-to-use that promotes it. They are largely orthogonal. Using R doesn't make you a statistician, any more than using C++ makes you a software engineer. If anything, a simple interface can reduce the number of ways you can shoot yourself, and leaves more time to focus on the problem.

Being easy-to-use may be the difference between some analysis and no analysis, or at best, analysis by spreadsheet.

And finally, this is Hacker News. The author wrote this software and makes some money off it. Great. Isn't that what this place is all about?

<comment><USER15> I can see a 1.000 ways I can use this app. R is cool and stuff but it is very hard to get any chart if you don't know the language. And it might take a while to write down any code.

This is much simpler. You just input the data and it gives you charts right away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wizard is an awesome tool for initial investigation and initial slicing and dicing of incoming data. For trying out ideas and seeing if what you're "seeing" in the data might be worthy of further investigation and hypothesis testing.

It isn't R, SPSS or Minitab. It's brilliant at what it does and I love it. I've been using it for 3 / 4 years and wouldn't swap it for any other tool.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't understand this program. It states it is a statistics program but on the front page only test stated is " Shapiro-Wilk". I don't know how many here are familiar with statistics, but that is basically the hello-world thing for statistic tests. Also the pricing puts this program directly at the range of Graphpad's Prism, which is widely-used in academic fields other than the field of statistics, and quite intuitive.

Making good-looking figures nowadays is not a selling point anymore. If one's willing to script rather than clicking-the-mouse, Prism, Igor Pro, Origin Pro, Matlab (pricing from low to high) all can produce great figures and solid statistical test for people out of the statistics field. But nothing these days beats R for versatile of statistical tests.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you are willing to defer dismissing this tool out of hand as a p-value generator, you can get a better feel for how the author (Evan Miller) thinks about stats from his web site [1] and a presentation he gave [2]. I think you'll find that "Wizard" is not the product of whimsy.

[1] [http://www.evanmiller.org/](http://www.evanmiller.org/) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzJMFxj7GRI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzJMFxj7GRI)

</comment><comment><USER19> > Trial versions never expire. They do not report p-values, and cannot save or > export. Requires OS X 10.10 or later.

Maybe this makes the trial versions better?

</comment><comment><USER20> Apart from being literally the opposite of where I think statistics should be headed (i.e. I see the notion of "removal of 'complicated statistics knowledge'" to be more dangerous than helpful), I also had some practical feedback from watching the 12 minute intro video.

-Firstly, how does the visualization know the respective population or sample size from which the summary statistics and intervals are to be drawn?

\- The demo used a pie chart to try to display summary stats and confidence intervals from the general social survey. Aside from professional statisticians general dislike of pie charts, you cannot plot confidence intervals in this way into a pie chart just by inserting 'more white space between the slices'. There's only 100% of the area of the circle that you've got to play with, so any attempt to increase the 'white space' between the slices necessarily warps the real estate remaining to represent each actual slice.

\- Honestly, I see this tool likely to be used by people who participate in the practice of p-hacking, whether deliberately or not. The ability to throw lots of simple models quickly at lots of data mindlessly reporting some notion of statistical significance is dangerous. I'm assuming your stats are not (cannot) be adjusted in any fashion to implicate what you're really doing by using an automated model-building/reporting regime in this way (potentially running heaps of models on heaps of data until you find one that appears 'significant' based on a statistical test designed under the assumption that this is NOT what you're doing). No where did i see any application of train/test, sample/resample type methods to try to control for over-fitting in the prediction application or truly estimate how predictive/replicable such a technique would be in the real world.

While I appreciate the work done required to put something like this together (a lot of it looks like a gui interface to my own exploratory functions/scripts in R, for example), i genuinely believe this approach is more dangerous/likely to lead to false conclusions than helpful.

<comment><USER3> I agree, in this case, you're right on (and I have another comment saying as much) but _couldn't_ there be a UI that _guides_ you safely through some of those dangers? I have yet to see anything close to one but I could imagine a system that would at least ask a few questions that would quickly disqualify a dataset or intended analysis for some use cases. Imagine, if you will, turbo- tax for (basic) statistical analyses.

As I said elsewhere, a simple interface doesn't necessarily mean a correct outcome - In short, most stats software is solving the wrong problem. Many (especially this one) make it easy to get an answer, right or wrong. I'd rather see them make it hard to get a wrong answer - or, perhaps, hard to get an answer when you're using it wrong.

<comment><USER20> Hmmm. I understand that by answering in the negative (no, its not possible), i would put myself into the "64k is enough for anybody" type comments. Which is to say, since its not a logical impossibility and not a well defined concept and our technology/understanding is increasing, odds are we'll at least make headways towards it to the point that its already pretty good. One could argue that we're already there compared to statistical environments of the 80's and 90's.

Honestly, I think this is a tricky human problem, not a tech problem.

My reasoning is thus. I've been known to argue that even R is bad from this perspective: I view its success (apart from its free/OS nature) due to the fact that it carries with it libraries, a functional flavour, tied around a core engine/philosophy of implicit actions preference to result production rather than bothering the user.

These enable a person (with just enough knowledge to be dangerous) to load an externally authored package (that has neither been tested nor verified) with one line, load a dataset with one line (which silently corrupted or changed something during import), and apply a function in one line (which silently coerced objects/values in the background and unreliably expressed/suppressed errors and warnings). Where it does express warnings/errors, it does so unreliably/unhelpfully, so amateurs are led down the path of excessive warnings/errors where things continue on regardless: ignore them.

To many, what I've written up there is not a bad thing: you get statistical analysis in three simple lines for free, all while copying and pasting scripts from stack overflow or the internet.

Now, i'm actually working on my own hobby project of designing a language/library for my own use which is designed around fixing those principals: still function based, interactive, fast, no implicit coercion, allowing flexibility while imposing restrains and guarantees.

But I'm under no illusion that it would necessarily be popular if i ever realised it to the public. The attraction of R is that you get a model out in three lines, rather than 14 errors and no result telling you that there are issues involving realms of thought you didn't know you were ignorant in and you'll have to go away and study before you continue, or even that your data might not be suitable for what you're doing. It might not be a good piece of work, but cynically, for the type of person buying into such a mind-set of quick analysis via "darts thrown at an analytical wall", i'm not convinced that quality genuinely matters to them (even though it matters in the effects it has on the public further down the line).

And i've not even gotten into the problem that in the real world 90% of work is not analysis/modelling but in data cleaning/munging, critical thinking and technical problem solving, and that there's another layer of problems below that one which most academics and professionals rarely engage in, which is questioning the systematic/contextual nature of the data before it got to your data set (which no software/interface i'm aware of currently addresses and most people just blithely ignore).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I video if it in action would be really helpful. Just reading the landing page its hard to know how im supposed to use it. "Just click and explore" isnt very convincing.

<comment><USER22> They link to a demo video near the bottom of the page: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcA9YG9yJgs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcA9YG9yJgs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since other comments on this thread have complained about missing screenshots. Some can be found here: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wizard-statistics- analysis/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wizard-statistics- analysis/id495152161?mt=12)

</comment><comment><USER15> There is a video link at the very bottom of the page. It'll take some hazard to fall onto it. I'm not going to download a program and figure out how to use it.

Why not have the video at the top. Maybe pop right on my face. Actually, these are moments when I'd not mind a popup that takes focus out of a page.

</comment><comment><USER23> SPSS user here, I run a bunch of surveys in Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey, and frequently use their export to SPSS file functionality.

Often, I have questions that take the format of "for each of the following categories please rank them between strongly disagree and Strongly agree". The way these questions end up in the SPSS files are typically as different variables for each row, and a 1,2,3,4, or 5 as the measurement along with the labels.

Frequently, I want to pivot those types of questions by a variable like Region or Number of Employees (categorical), and then see the resultant tables. This is never fun, and inevitably takes a lot of time.

As others have said, statistics is a careful business that doesn't necessarily warrant ease of access to all mathematical functions BUT, handling what SPSS calls "Multiple Response Sets" better would be a godsend, just for the data prep and visualization step. I still ultimately fall back on recoding these or leveraging the MRS functional in SPSS to get this done (sometimes this is better than just using pivot tables in excel).

It would be great to be able to specify this kind of thing in this program, since without it, you can't really use/trust the computed percentages in some question configurations. Take a real look at the SPSS Tables feature, the Multiple Response Sets, and then visualization of them, and consider how that data is actually coded in SPSS files (the common export of survey tools) and maybe you can improve on that feature (It shouldn't be hard, MRS is a pretty bad setup, but it gets the job done).

</comment><comment><USER24> Just had a quick skim of the site and saw no screenshots just a load of marketese. Next I head to the HN comments: some preach FUD, others are stauch defenders. It seems very few speak from experience of actually using this application. It seems a lot of the discussion stems from the poor marketing than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER25> no screenshots?

<comment><USER26> Was thinking same thing, there is a link to a video at the bottom though.

<comment><USER27> and the video is blurry in 480p (maybe because it was uploaded 6 years ago?)

<comment><USER5> I came across this program about 6 years ago, and the webpage hasn't changed. I have a suspicion that the program may not have been updated since, but it's hard to tell.

<comment><USER8> No, it has received frequent updates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The app should use mutually exclusive colors for the visualizations to communicate the right and intended information.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'd recommend some screenshots or the video before you get to pricing.

Some of the graphics need to be improved. It would also be great to see why this is better than tradition BI tools (Tableau etc) and what your unique value proposition is.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this close sourced? I'm not using a statistics package I don't trust or that I can take apart to see what's wrong when it's returning weird results.

<comment><USER30> How much are you willing to pay to use something like this? Would you still pay if it was open source?

<comment><USER10> I use python and R for all of my research. Why would I pay for anything when those tools allow me to do these tasks for free?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Please check your home page on 4" devices. Headline is clipped.

</comment><comment><USER32> > PS- Wizard is only available for Mac, but if you're reading this on a PC, > consider this: for the price of high-end statistics software, you can buy > Wizard and still have enough money left over for a top-of-the-line MacBook > Air or MacBook Pro. Amazing, isn't it?

Wow, that's a great way to kill off any sympathy for him. Especially given that he's apparently had 4-5 years to dig himself out of that hole.

<comment> crooked-v It's not about "sympathy". It's about pointing out that similarly-targeted apps like Analytica can cost $1000+ per license.

<comment><USER32> $200 for this + $1000 for the cheapest macbook > your $1000 analytica license. And that's before considering that you're now stuck lugging around an extra paperweight everywhere, or that R is available for free.

<comment><USER33> > or that R is available for free.

Along with Python and Julia.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lobes of Steel - Neurogenesis and exercise - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/sports/playmagazine/0819play-brain.html?ex=1345176000&en=50ec7d1aef2de5e6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss How does the brain make new neurons? Exercise helps (and a few other things...).
Just remember the old ontological vs. empirical distinction. Effects of exercise (and substances) are easier to study in rats most esp. relative to human learning-related changes. We're doing the neuroimaging work of complex learning (think circuit diagrams), but it doesn't get us to the neuronal level.
Revolutionary bottom line of the last five years: You're producing new neurons every day (and exercise seems to help produce more). But whether and how they're used is up to you.
"We've always known that our brains control our behavior," Gage says, "but not that our behavior could control and change the structure of our brains." <comment><AUTHOR> How does the brain make new neurons? Exercise helps (and a few other things...).

Just remember the old ontological vs. empirical distinction. Effects of exercise (and substances) are easier to study in rats most esp. relative to human learning-related changes. We're doing the neuroimaging work of complex learning (think circuit diagrams), but it doesn't get us to the neuronal level.

Revolutionary bottom line of the last five years: You're producing new neurons every day (and exercise seems to help produce more). But whether and how they're used is up to you.

"We've always known that our brains control our behavior," Gage says, "but not that our behavior could control and change the structure of our brains."

</comment><comment><USER2> At least in the academic environment a lot of people are aware that, by exercising, they can then concentrate at a task for longer (hours instead of half-hour) and tackle harder problems.

That biological research could not figure out and test such simple truth until now does not mean it was not a widely adopted working hypothesis for a very long time.

What I would like to see is how are mental abilities affected by sporting conditions, for example a dull TV-ruled noisy gym with threadmills versus a soccer game in a sports field outdoors, and mindless, reflect-oriented sports such as Squash versus brainy, strategy-oriented sports such as team-sports or golf.

<comment><AUTHOR> The difference is growing new neurons. Adult neurogenesis was always thought to be very limited (e.g., the myth about "killing" brain cells). Now we know it's much more common than ever thought.</comment></comment>


How to encode to WebM - <AUTHOR> http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/How-to-Encode-to-WebM-73208.aspx

<comment><USER2> I know this is slightly out of topic, but since the author mentioned it, after seeing his presentation [1] on VP8 vs H264, I can't really agree with his conclusions.

WebM clearly outruns H264 on HD video. It doesn't lose color information and some image details due to compression, that can be seen quite easily on the HD video comparisons: the first one shows very different lighting, which can also be seen on the second, that is not to mention the "airbrushed" neck of the guy (and face, but not so noticeable).

[1] [http://www.streamingmedia.com/conferences/west2010/presentat...](http://www.streamingmedia.com/conferences/west2010/presentations/SMWest-2010-H264-VP8.pdf)

<comment><USER3> How can one tell from side-by-side captures that aren't even the same frames and where it's not clearly stated whether or not they're even comparable bitrates?

<comment><USER4> Also, presented themselves as lossy JPG images.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this not a comparison of libvpx against itself using various parameters from GUI frontends?

<comment><USER6> No, it isn't not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand how "it's time to start looking at encoding for WebM" when it is also "time to start dropping support for IE6", and both browsers have comparable market share.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps because one of them is on the rise while the other is on the go?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I might be wrong but wasn't streamingmedia.com doing some bullshit Theora vs H264 comparison before?</comment>


TuneMyGC: Optimal MRI Ruby 2.1+ Garbage Collection - <AUTHOR> https://tunemygc.com/

<comment><USER2> It would be nice to have some idea of how these optimized settings are determined. It's also not clear to me if this is intended to work for any Ruby code, or just rails apps. In any case, this seems pretty cool as I think many (myself included) don't bother to even try to tune GC.

EDIT: I'd also like to see a privacy policy that talks about what data they collect and how it's used.

<comment><USER3> Looks like what they are collecting is in this array:

[TuneMyGc.walltime, TuneMyGc.peak_rss, TuneMyGc.current_rss, stage, GC.stat.values_at(*stat_keys), GC.latest_gc_info, meta]

In this file: [https://github.com/bear- metal/tunemygc/blob/70a02b9dd252c6f5...](https://github.com/bear- metal/tunemygc/blob/70a02b9dd252c6f5d6909b05cf581bb72f8b7b3a/lib/tunemygc/snapshotter.rb)

Or in their protocol.md: [https://github.com/bear- metal/tunemygc/blob/master/doc/proto...](https://github.com/bear- metal/tunemygc/blob/master/doc/protocol.md)

<comment><USER4> Yes, what we wanted to communicate was that nothing proprietary to your app or code gets sent on the wire. Just a few numbers about memory usage and heap status the tuner analyses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Their github has all of the same info but also answers some very important questions about the service [https://github.com/bear- metal/tunemygc?](https://github.com/bear-metal/tunemygc?). Namely they tell you that it sets a bunch of environment variables and they tell you what information they collect.

What I want to know is why this needs to get recommendations from a web service. Do they have to collect a bunch of data to learn good recommendations for different situations? Isn't it much simpler to have an algorithm optimizing the parameters locally, or does that take too long to learn good values?

<comment><USER6> Maybe the algorithm can make better recommendations using data from multiple web apps but I suspect that it could be a commercial choice leading to a paid service (think about NewRelic). It's completely legit, nevertheless I'll prefer to keep my usage data inside my own box.

<comment><USER4> Yes, there's the ability to aggregate information from eg. several Unicorn worker instances on the same box for the same app and distributed too, but it's not exposed through the tuner, yet. That's a more accurate representation of how the GC behaves across a stack. Nothing's set in stone, we're still exploring and engaging for feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What kind of improvement are we looking at by tuning GC?

Is there a recommended app size /setup after which it actually makes sense to bother with GC?

This all comes to mind because any extra dependencies in my app are an ongoing pain in the ass; got plenty of those already. If this could give me a 20% speed boost - hell yeah, I'll try that. If it's a 0.4% ... nope.

From the first glance, it seems easier to do nothing, than to try something that may work.

just my 2c

<comment><USER6> From their diagram about Discourse it seems it could be a 30% boost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> After syncing snapshots im getting (error: hostname "tunemygc.com" does not match the server certificate) even after running certified-update

<comment><USER4> Thanks for flagging, we're looking into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I want to tune a Rails app on Heroku, would I need the add-on that's in alpha testing or will the standalone gem work?

</comment><comment><USER10> It makes me think that there's something wrong with the Ruby VM when someone has to offer a service like this. The Ruby community should expect great performance out-of-the-box, and the VM should tune itself, automatically.

<comment><USER11> VM performance is hard. It took years and years and years for the HotSpot VM to get as fast as it is now. Give it time.

<comment><USER12> I might be out of date but every time I worked with the JVM I ended up with a lot of command line params to tune the GC and other things.

VMs can tune themselves up to a point but there is always need to give them some precise bounds/goals, methinks.

<comment><USER13> As good as Hotspot is, it still needs tuning. The simple truth is there isn't a "one size fits all" solution for GC, it really depends on what you're doing and how the performance characteristics fit in to it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Diaspora Gains Steam on Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/diaspora-gains-steam-on-kickstarter

<comment><USER2> I think it's probably naive to think that just because it exists, people will flee Facebook for this new alternative. Diaspora may have garnered some geek attention and raised an impressive amount of money... but it has 3700 backers. Let's be generous and say each of those backers actually represents 100 people (i.e., only 1% of the people interested in this project were willing to give money to make it happen).

That means Diaspora has 370,000 users right off the bat. Impressive? Yes. But even if those 370,000 users all also quit Facebook and delete their accounts (doubtful, imho), that's still a drop in the bucket compared to 450 million. Most Fb users wouldn't notice any change in their social graph, certainly not enough to leave Facebook.

Further, Diaspora's pitch is great at getting tech geeks like us to fork over money, but it includes nothing that real, mainstream users actually care about (that is: talk to your friends, share photos and videos, play games... and maybe, just maybe, control your privacy). Think about who the average Facebook user really is. They're not people who know or care what the term "data portability" means, and Disapora loses them as soon as they use the word, "node."

In reality, Diaspora is like Identi.ca or Diso. They're great ideas on paper that we (tech nerds) may love, but mainstream users could care less. They go where their friends are, and right now, their friends are on Facebook. Facebook might eventually damage user trust enough to make people want to leave, but a pitch about data portability and open source is not going to get them to switch.

</comment><comment><USER3> Title case is so inconvenient. For a few seconds I was trying to grasp how Steam, Kickstarter and Diaspora can possibly connected.</comment>


Quit Job, Learning to Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.proudn00b.com/post/832363423/learn-change-start-day-1 <comment><USER4> I don't mean to imply anything about the poster of this article in particular, but I seem to recall a saying something like...

When your uncle the mechanic starts giving stock tips, you know a bubble is brewing.

I think we're already in the middle of a web/mobile/social app bubble.

<comment><USER5> So this is an interesting point that's worth exploring. I hear what you're saying (everyone and his brother is trying to make a buck making apps these days) but.....

I do kinda think that making apps is actually creating something vs. day trading (profiting on volatility/others' mania) vs. mortgage brokering (profiting on volatility/others' mania) vs. real estate flipping (profiting on volatility/others' mania).

So while there may be a "development bubble", I think it can only really be a good thing. More creativity. Now, when it stops becoming profitable to do so (i.e. app prices / advertising revenue reverts to the mean) then you'll see the opportunistic types vanish.

But I think deciding to build/create applications in and of itself shouldn't be seen as a bad thing...

<comment><AUTHOR> This comment is the best one I've read tonight. Thanks for the reply - <USER2> agree.

But I'm not sure of the development bubble piece- if there were sites starting with i,e, or x popping up everywhere, I'd be very scared haha

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> from his info page: "SF 7/19 - 8/3 Charlotte, NC - 8/3 - 8/7 Knoxville, TN - 8/8 - 8/9 Longboat Key, FL - 8/10 - ????"

On your about page, you mention that you're possibly touring? Just curious, have you factored in how much stress you might have going to another town every week? Will you have some friends/coding buddies to talk to during your trip?

I'm really not trying to be condescending, it's just that I recently tried spending a week vacation working on a personal project in a remote place, and I ended up spending more time finding the right coffee shop to work in, understanding the transit system, etc. than I did actually working. In any case, definately wish you the best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll add more information. Going to stay with family & have a wedding to go to. But after that its going to family house and getting away from SF distractions. Thanks for the well wishes!

<comment><USER7> I'm curious too — I'm moving to SF on Friday and would love to find some like- minded people with whom I can live.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I learned today that I may be losing my H1B soon. I can stay in the US as I'm married to another H1B holder, but I will not be able to work.

Since I dislike being idle, my first thought is to pack up and move back to my home country to look for a job. But this article represents an interesting path that I may follow myself.

Thanks for inspiring me to view lack of work permit as an opportunity and not a major life crisis.

<comment><AUTHOR> Booya! Thats great- grab the bull by the horns! Let me know if I can help further just tweet me @emilepetrone

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You might want to post a short summary here, as it's an interesting story.

What type of job did you give up? I'm definitely interested in your story and following your blog.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll make it more in depth tonight & get a solid post out tomorrow. Thanks for the comment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm in pretty much the same situation as you, fast-forwarded a few weeks. However, I decided to take the plunge into learning iPhone development. Once you start playing with it, you'll realize why the iPhone is such a compelling platform and such a hit in the mobile apps space. Apple made it really hard for anyone to build a crappy experience.

Tangentially, I'm not really enjoying the learning experience since going through the book (the grapefruit book) is pretty much the same as doing a bunch of tutorials. I still don't feel like I understand the overall architecture of an iPhone app and how the various pieces connect. Anyone have good book recommendations?

<comment><AUTHOR> So you dove right into Objective C?

<comment><USER10> Simultaneously reading the iPhone dev book and going through the Objective-C manual from Apple. Objective-C is pretty easy to understand as long as you understand object-oriented programming and have a solid grasp on C. It's just learning it AND the iPhone platform at the same time that is a little harder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice post but.. please, please, please make your links stand out some way. There are lots of useful links in there but they're exactly the same color and style as the body text!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hear you loud and clear- great feedback

<comment><USER12> Also, I'm not really a fan of reading text in monospaced fonts. Others may disagree, but reading code and reading regular text are very different things.

<comment><AUTHOR> keep the comments coming...coffee is brewing and changes are coming

<comment><USER11> FWIW, I actually like(d) the monospace font but.. I spent most of the 80s and 90s reading long texts that way. It's somehow nostalgic. I admit it's probably a niche fetish though ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Good luck. Maybe give some info on why you decided to learn certain technologies over other ones. Would be interesting to see what a n00b with no perceived bias chooses.

<comment><AUTHOR> K Will do

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hey Emile, did you do the E-ship program at UNC by chance? I think I remember you..

Anyway, I'm following the same path (teaching myself to program to work on my own projects). It's been fun (some days I feel like I can do anything with a computer) and challenging (other days I want to rip my hair out and hide in despair). I've been doing it for about a year and a half now.

I think the biggest challenge with non-programmers learning how to program is that it takes an exceptionally long time to get even the most basic functionality running. So work on the most basic thing, and even if it looks ugly in the beginning, just keep iterating on it. I started with Ruby and Rails, but you can't go wrong with Python and Django in the beginning.

If you want to see what lots of time and a little bit of programming on your own can give you, check out my little app www.getsetapp.com.

Good luck man, and let me know the next time you're in NC.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is an interesting schedule. I like how you added the social component. This days you can't do anything without the social component. :)

"5:30 AM - <USER3>

5:30 AM - 7:30AM - Read blogs, articles, mail, write blog post

7:30 AM - 12 PM - Code without distractions (turn on SelfControl)

12 PM - 1:30 PM - Run, workout, make some quick food

1:30 PM - 6PM - Ignore desire for a nap, Code & Coffee 6PM - Get out of the house and meet people!"

Do you really plan to uphold it every day? Or is it more like a flexible guide? This times look pretty tight. Did you plan it concerning your personal preferences (early wakeup, how much sleep?), or more on the general work day "normal people" expected schedule. And do you really need to write a blog post every day? Don't you think all this will be a distraction?

<comment><AUTHOR> Logic behind a schedule- I used to row at UNC, and we had practice twice a day. Having the same schedule over and over again creates a certain amount of comfort within the repetition. It's 6am now- been responding to comments & emails since 5:30, so yep holding to it! The blog post a day will serve as a marker for the previous days accomplishments, and thoughts for the process ahead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting "project". I think you should fill out the "why" and perhaps "how" pages with more information. It was hard for me to really understand what you are doing and why you decided to do this radical thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do- great feedback

<comment><USER17> tip, hang out on #startups via irc.freenode.net when you're bored / want to say hello to fellow hackers. I'm in the bay too btw, so if you're at the next eastbay HN meetup I'll see you there.

<comment><AUTHOR> awesome will do...yeah i'll be there!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Learn to Code, Quit Job" might be wiser?

<comment><AUTHOR> Tried that while I was still at Redbeacon. It's very difficult because you are in this start/stop mentality from the daily grind. Also it kept me tied down. If you don't take the leap, you don't have the full weight of the situation on top of you. Thoughts?

<comment><USER9> I downloaded the iPhone SDK in March 2008, whilst on vacation in DC. After working with it for a few months, I quit my job, but in that case, I'd written a few non-trivial programs and knew writing Objective-C and Cocoa code was what I wanted to do. Sure as hell beat writing business software and teaching C# to business grads, though anything is fun if you're determined to enjoy it.

Total pay cut, maybe $160k and rising. Yeah, still the right decision, though money has been _tight_.

The key point is that I had a solid grasp of what I needed to do technically to survive after quitting, and I was not jumping into the unknown, just the not yet done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points..will answer in next post</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Offshore workers 'getting heavier' - <AUTHOR> http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-31849823 <comment><USER2> One of my brothers works offshore and he was telling me about this recently. He had to get his shoulders measures by an 'accredited shoulder measurer'!

If you've ever been on a helicopter you'll probably agree that this does make sense though. It lets helicopter operators ensure people are sat near appropriate exists, and I wouldn't want to be sat next to someone enormous who's going to get stuck getting out.</comment>


Solving Android's 65K Limit: The Unbearable Lightness of Multidexing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.safedk.com/technology/solving-androids-65k-limit-the-unbearable-lightness-of-multidexing-2/ <comment><USER2> The first, second, and third thing I would try is dividing up the app. I suppose there are things that might be better off as a monolith, like maybe a really powerful CAD app with an in-memory data model.

But in most cases, where the data model is in a SQLite database, you can put that in a ContentProvider and have multiple apps access it.

"But that's not how we designed it." OK. OK. Just saying. It's a mobile device. It has constraints. It also has benefits for implementers who don't try to just steamroll the limitations.

</comment><comment><USER3> MultiDex brings its own problems with it. First it makes compilation times even worse, but it can also lead to unpredictable crashes during class load for Android < 5.0. Before using it, you really need to try to get under the 65k limit instead.

</comment><comment><USER4> Good post. I am using Proguard and still have more than 50K methods. Good to know there are other solutions</comment>


Apollo 14 Splashed Down 40 Years Ago Today: Six Odd Things About It - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2011/02/apollo_14_moon_weird.php <comment><USER2> The article is a bit flippant about the quarantine. If they hadn't been quarantined, and if there was a pathogenic life form on the moon, we would have been in serious trouble. I hope the same precautions will be taken with Mars missions.

<comment><USER3> It takes a _long_ time to get back from Mars. I think the trip itself would count as sufficient quarantine that any symptoms would become apparent.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hyperping.io, a simple and inexpensive website monitoring service - <AUTHOR> https://hyperping.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

here is the V1 of an uptime monitoring tool i've been working on the for the last 3 months. I tried to make something simple and really affordable. It doesn't require any setup and allow you to monitor your domains and APIs within seconds!

I had a lot of fun coding this, but here comes the marketing part where I'm less familiar with but brings new challenges.

Come talk to me if you want to get a coupon code or something, also I would love feedback from you guys

<comment><USER2> My advice is to seek customers who are not attracted by "inexpensive" or "affordable" and to tailor the product and its marketing away from "competing with free" and towards selling business value for enough money to make the product sustainable while providing high quality support and improvements by a well financed engineering team.

Good luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The tech part is the easiest here. Marketing a website monitoring service is really hard. That is why there are more than 70 providers known to have shut down: [https://www.supermonitoring.com/blog/website-monitoring- serv...](https://www.supermonitoring.com/blog/website-monitoring-services- that-shut-down/)</comment>


Google says game developers can rely on ads for income - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/09/admob-ant-smasher-case-study/ <comment><USER2> This has been a trend for the last six months or so. Backflip Studios tried a free game as a promotional strategy, and it's turned into a core piece of their business. More small developers are realizing promotion is easier with free apps and the market is now large enough to support ad revenue models.

[http://148apps.biz/backflip-studios-brings-in-serious- cash-w...](http://148apps.biz/backflip-studios-brings-in-serious-cash-with-in- game-ads/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Whether this is true or not, it's a bit nutty to risk the fate of my livelihood on Google ads because Google is saying I "can".

And in other news, my barber always thinks I need a haircut, and my mechanic always finds something wrong with my car that needs to be fixed.

</comment><comment><USER4> Who clicks on ads when playing games? I wonder how many of these are accidental click (accidental touches on a phone are a lot easier than accidental mouse clicks).

Does anyone have conversion data on clickthroughs from game ads?

<comment><USER5> My last startup had 181 mobile AdWords clicks, but none of them converted. Our AdWords guy hadn't even known our content network ads were being displayed on mobile devices.

Given that our product was a niche B2B product that appealed to maybe 1 person in 100,000, I'm guessing that all these clicks were accidental. We had 20,764 impressions and 181 clicks, for a CTR of 0.87%, which is a lot of accidental clicks.

The ratio would obviously be better for a B2C product with broad appeal. But I'm guessing that a large fraction of mobile advertisers are AdWords novices, and they're getting burned.

<comment><USER6> I saw the exact same thing. I had something like 1.25%-1.5% CTR from the mobile network, with no conversions. It was pretty terrible, and I disabled advertising on mobile networks (on by default) to save the wasted funds.

I've also now seen hundreds of networks where I get 100% CTR (2-3 impressions, all leading to clicks) on what are obviously junk/spam sites. Each of these only cost me a couple quarters, but it quickly adds up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When are we going to stop referring to the developer of apps like "Ant Smasher" as game developers? If I spend the time and resources to develop a real game, something that gamers will come back to after a few days, I'm not going to rely on ad revenue. Ant Smasher is not a game, it's a casual entertainment app.

<comment><USER8> Casual games are real games even if they don't have significant replayability (though some do).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Says the ad company! I love Google as much as the next guy, but I think entrepreneurs and creatives would create more wealth & the world would be a better place if there was more focus on real products & services rather than trying to grab more time on peoples' eyeballs.

<comment><USER10> Don't take this the wrong way but... It's a free market: go ahead and actually _do_ what you advocate. If you succeed, you'll be a role model and people will be inspired by your approach.

As I like to say, entrepreneurs do, everyone else talks about what should be done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Game where the point is to quickly tap the screen all over the place gets a high CTR? What are the odds?</comment>


Migrating SVN repos (with full history) to Git - <AUTHOR> http://www.futurice.com/blog/migrating-svn-repos-with-full-history-to-git-a-story-from-the-trenches <comment><USER2> This sounds almost _identical_ to the recent svn -> git transition in ffmpeg, in which the ffmpeg and libswscale repositories had to be merged while simultaneously continuing development.</comment>


Rhyming with NLP and Shakespeare - <AUTHOR> http://garysieling.com/blog/rhyming-with-nlp-and-shakespeare

<comment><USER2> Neat idea! It looks like the NLTK POS tagger is having trouble here so might limit your recall when used as a filter.

Instead I wonder if it would be better to use the context of each token to mine significant ngrams from the rest of Shakespeare's work and filter for rhymes with a phoenetic hash like Metaphone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting thought, thanks! I was thinking an approach like that would be good for non-dictionary words.

One of the things I didn't go in detail in is the issue where there are multiple pronunciations for a word - I was thinking that the way to address that would be to compare pronunciations between lines, but looking at metaphones across Shakespeare's work overall might also help build a solution to that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For those interested, there is a twitter bot doing exactly this with the twitter firehose.

[https://twitter.com/pentametron](https://twitter.com/pentametron)

Singular re-tweets do not make sense, they need to be taken in pairs.</comment>


Twitter nixed 635k+ terrorism accounts - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/21/twitter-nixed-635k-terrorism-accounts-between-mid-2015-and-end-of-2016/ <comment><USER2> And some news accounts reporting US atrocities in middle east too.

Really, US strikes in Syria are getting more disgusting with each passing day. Mosques, schools, bakeries, bridges (trapping people so that they can't even escape their stupid bombing raids). I'll be damned if western media ever reports any US made massacre perpetrated for example in Raqqa. And there's a lot to choose from just from the last week. All that is needed is search for it on twitter.</comment>


Cops Told This Uber Driver It's Illegal to Film Them. Surprise, He's a Lawyer - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/blog/2017/03/10/cops-tell-uber-driver-attorney-film <comment><USER2> "As a result, the Deputy involved has been counseled." So one officer of the five involved was counselled after they violated his constitutional rights? I really hope one day the situation with police discipline in the US will be addressed, but I don't know what it will take.

<comment><USER3> In all of my interactions with the police I've found that they pretty much have a free pass to do whatever they want to. Make up laws, threaten, beat, or kill. The punishment they receive will never measure up to any crime they commit.

Not sure what, if anything, could ever be done about it.

<comment><USER4> Body cam everything. Real penities for this when on film.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How can a citizen be free if cops try to enforce laws that they merely imagine, while everyone else has to use the legislative process?

<comment><USER6> You need to live somewhere away from cops, such as in the wilderness in Alaska.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Small, cheap, convenient recording devices potentially open up a whole new world wrt combating in-justice.

If I lived in the US, I'd wire up every inch of my car with cameras, to film criminals and cops alike. I'd have them all concealed, locked up and secure, and frequently streamed streamed to a remote server.

This is the real way to combat police injustice - a public pan-opticon!

If I lived in a bad neighborhood, I'd wire myself up everything I left the house.

Why the hell groups like BLM don't do this, I don't know; every bad cop is an legislative opportunity!

<comment><USER8> It's better to wire the cops.

There should be a federal law requiring all police officers wear body cams while interacting with the public. Further, it should be required that they be the kind that send a live feed to police dispatchers. I've seen how quickly police brutality gets dealt with when it's witnessed by public transportation security through their cameras at train stations. When someone is responsible for reporting crimes as they happen because they're watching them live, bad cops lose their jobs before the press can even report it.

It should be law that a police officer loses their authority the second their body cam is off. Streaming body cams should become the new police badges. Arrest someone without a body cam? Kidnapping and assault. Pull someone over when you're not on duty? Impersonating a police officer. Bark orders to people at a gas station on your way to work? Disturbing the peace.

<comment><USER9> Videos get "lost" all the time, and as you see from this instance there is no repercussions for Police. Much better to take matters into your own hand and record your own video.

<comment><USER8> Recorded videos, sure. That's why it has to be a live stream with someone watching it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You'd think that after all the stories about people filming cops and whether it is or is not allowed that the cops would actually know the law in this area by now.

<comment><USER5> They got it wrong on purpose.</comment></comment>


Paul Romer: The Trouble with Macroeconomics [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://paulromer.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/WP-Trouble.pdf <comment><USER2> Related humor from my personal web site: "Why are macro guys so grumpy?" [https://www.unur.com/sinan/outbox/100506-why-are-macro- guys-...](https://www.unur.com/sinan/outbox/100506-why-are-macro-guys-so- grumpy.html)

Being an economist might be a prerequisite for finding the "humor" humorous.</comment>


Simulating Roulette Strategies Using the Monte Carlo Method - <AUTHOR> https://sites.google.com/site/ezaroukian/misc/roulette

<comment><USER2> The best strategy I've heard of is to start with bet amount x bet on black or red or odd or even. Then, if you lose double your bet. if you win start at bet amount x. Most tables have limits so you will run into a problem eventually. by double your bet you cover all your previous bets + you'll get bet amount x. What it allows you to do is win bet amount x like 99.9% of the time but when you can't double your bet anymore you've lost x + 2x + 4x ... It's also a sure file way to have lots of anxiety when you've bet on red like 4 or 5 times and it keeps not coming up. The funny part is mathematically it wouldn't matter if you switched bet from red to black or odd or even on each successive bet since each trial is independent. But somehow in our mind it's hard to switch.</comment>


Unlock your door with Siri, SMS, or a secret knock - <AUTHOR> http://labs.laan.com/wp/2011/10/unlock-your-door-with-siri-sms-or-a-secret-knock/

<comment><USER2> the siri bit is might cool</comment>


Ask HN: anyone else having GMail app crash on iOS 7.1 update today? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Same with Skype, I couldn't log into Skype app. Reinstalling did the trick.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Never mind. Deleting the GMail app and reinstalling fixed the crashes.</comment>


Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://artplusmarketing.com/browsing-your-website-does-not-mean-i-want-your-spam-3821267e902#.vd0fwinq2 <comment><USER2> Discussed previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12335168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12335168) (615 points, 184 days ago)

<comment><USER3> Best comment, IMO: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12339338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12339338)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > They are able to do this because sears.com loads Criteo code and uses a > criteo.com cookie

> there may not be much you can do about this besides blocking cookies

Most browsers let you block 3rd-party cookies without blocking all cookies (in this case, blocking the the criteo.com cookie but not the sears.com cookie, when on sears.com): [https://www.maketecheasier.com/disable-third-party- cookies-c...](https://www.maketecheasier.com/disable-third-party-cookies- chrome-firefox/)

<comment><USER5> Does this actually count as a third-party cookie if the sears page loads criteo in an iframe (which may be 1px by 1px, and tell criteo that it was invoked by sears)?

<comment><USER6> "Third-party" is based on the domain shown in your browser's address bar. If that shows sears.com, then domains which aren't sears.com are third-party.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > The CAN SPAM act actually allows direct marketing email messages to be sent > to anyone, without permission, until the recipient explicitly requests that > they cease (opt-out).

Ladies and gentlemen, let's get this fixed. Spam is not only a waste of resources (bandwidth, time, and money) but it also contributes to malware distribution.

What will it take to accomplish this?

<comment><USER7> Overturning the first amendment.

Unfortunately, it protects lots of speech, good and bad.

<comment><USER6> Restrictions on commercial solicitation don't generally have First Amendment problems.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, this probably isn't going to encounter first amendment issues. It's much more likely that corporate lobbying will be the cause of any resistance to changing the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That and the fact that any app you download now adds you to their newsletter list. Just because I wanted to try your app, it doesn't mean I want to get tons e-mails from your company. It's so frustrating I stopped trying apps, and instead only download what I really need and/or trust.

<comment><USER10> Have you ever tried to make a business out of selling an app online or in an app store? How did you get users?

I definitely don't agree with "tons" of e-mails but a few promotional emails is understandable. I also don't agree with the tactics used in the article, to be clear.

<comment><USER11> Why is the company's inability to get users my problem? Those emails get flagged and placed in spam, where they belong? Spam is never "understandable". Get an (explicit, non-dark-pattern) opt in or you're spam.

<comment><USER10> Do you consider signing up to use an app with your email opt-in?

<comment><USER11> Absolutely not. I flag those as spam.

Unless it's an email notification from the service because of an action someone took... those are okay but I'd prefer them to be off-by-default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Amazon seems to be annoying in this area.

I look at a product out of curiosity.

Get stuck seeing the same product ads for days everywhere including FB, etc.

and yes I use Ublock, Ghostery etc.

<comment><USER13> Amazon uses your Amazon history to target Amazon ads to your interests. That's not the same thing as giving your Amazon account information to a third party.

<comment><USER12> I wasn't even logged in Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe I added it at some point, but " _criteo.com_ " is blocked by uBlock on my machine.

Anyway, it's baffling to me that people still defend web advertising. That "industry" is far sleazier and shadier than spammers, but for some reason people here will defend web ads.

<comment><USER15> I think most people here are defending "web ads qua web ads" (i.e. a picture in a box on a page that doesn't track you or start dancing around your screen), not the realities of most web advertising today. I think it's sad that business models that are based on non-intrusive web ads are becoming increasingly infeasible, but I certainly don't blame users for the current state of affairs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Probably more evil than the practice described in the article is at the very end. In order to get them to stop, or not start in the first place, you have to give them your email address. So you have to trust them with the very thing you want them to stop abusing. No thanks. The real answer is a very strict ad blocker. On all your devices. Every time you browse.

The only way to keep your personal information safe is to not share it in the first place. Pass all the laws you want and require all the layers of security you can imagine but your data is still not safe; it will eventually get leaked. Either through the actions of hackers, intentional or unintentional leaks, security bugs, or utter incompetence of some human that has legal access to it.

<comment><USER17> > So you have to trust them with the very thing you want them to stop abusing.

"Fun" fact: I register on sites with addresses like "address-suffix@domain", with a different suffix for different sites. I won't name names, but I now receive viagra-level spam to several of them, which reasonable people would expect to be able to trust. haveibeenpwned.com confirms that one of them, off the top of my head, was part of a breach.

<comment><USER18> Why not name names? Let's name and shame companies that are either selling your info or hiding breaches.

<comment><USER19> I got spam to a email registered with Microsoft.

A company I worked for got its email list leaked when the email service they used was breached. The email service posted a "we're investigating" in a blog post on a blog that was soon mysteriously deprecated/taken down.

<comment><USER20> Microsoft sells the shit out of your email address. If you sign up for Dev Essentials you can't even opt out of emails from "partners" unless you leave the Dev Essentials program (and I'm sure leaving it wouldn't actually stop the emails). The only spam I get at my work email (with spam filtering turned off) is tied to that program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Browsing your website does not mean I want your spam"

"Never miss a story from ART + marketing, when you sign up for Medium. Learn more"

Really wish Medium didn't allow custom domains so I could filter them out properly.

</comment><comment><USER21> Doesn't Privacy Badger take care of this by blocking third-party cookies?

</comment><comment><USER22> Not to justify this behavior, but to explain: retargeting (a.k.a. remarketing) has very good conversion rates. As long as people keep "converting" based on retargeted ads, they will live on.

</comment><comment><USER23> Perhaps it should be noted that Criteo can send the email on the behalf of Sears, without necessarily giving Sears your email address? Small distinction, maybe, but more squarely within the terms and conditions.

</comment><comment><USER24> I completely agree that this is an abhorrent practice, but I don't believe that legislation is the answer. Just because someone annoys you, does not mean you need to involve legal precedent.

<comment><USER25> What is the answer then?

<comment><USER24> Privacy. Email considerably lacks it. So does web-browsing in general. I don't have an answer on how to get it, but it needs pointing out that this is the real underlying issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just got one of these exact same emails. It may not be illegal in the U.S., but it makes me extremely dislike the company using the tactic.

<comment><USER26> Could you post the headers or the ip the email came from? I want to block that range from my email server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I would almost prefer this to all the web sites that harass me to sign up for their newsletter with a modal popover on every page I visit.

Almost.

<comment><USER28> I wish uBlock knew how to block those. Sadly, I'm not sure you could write software that could blocking those without blocking useful things like a login prompt that pops up if you leave your session idle.

I suppose it could be done via whitelist or blacklist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> That's really clever and disgusting.</comment>


New brain networks come 'online' during adolescence - <AUTHOR> https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/brain-networks-come-online-during-adolescence-to-prepare-teenagers-for-adult-life <comment><USER2> I remember very strongly fancying a girl when I was in high school, and that's exactly how I described it at the time: it was as if a new subsystem had "come online" enabling me to feel more complex emotions. I compared it to Lt. Commander Data's emotion chip.

Interesting to see empirical neurological grounds for what I subjectively _felt_ happening at the time.

<comment><USER3> I had this experience with having a kid (I'm male btw). I could _feel_ what i can only describe it as a "gear change" in my head.

I very suddenly thought differently and re-evaluated everything in a different way.

It was a very odd experience.

<comment><USER4> Definately an odd rewiring of some kind immediately followinuv birth. I remember distinctly, carrying the baby downstairs and visualising me tripping, falling and killing her - or crossing the road and getting a strong visualisation of a car knocking us down. Luckily that seemed to fade after about 6 months.

I still cry a _lot_ at movies now though, not something that I really did before. The kids think their father emptying out his spectacles is hilarious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting article. Any new emotion or new emotional state creates a new space for new memories, and adolescence provides new emotions. Particular memories are easier to retrieve when in the emotional state they were formed. Maybe this explains why it can be hard to beat depression - pleasant memories are more difficult to retrieve and negative emotions easily surface.

First few times trying weed it felt like micro-tarzan swinging from a familiar branch of neurons to a whole new area of neurons.

Possibly why magic mushrooms and the like are being investigated as a legit therapy.

<comment><USER6> Depression has quite a few weird effects on memory, e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overgeneral_Autobiographical_M...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overgeneral_Autobiographical_Memory)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I remember suddenly really liking listening to music when I became an adolescent. I wonder if my then new-found emotional appreciation for music was related.

<comment><USER8> I've heard the theory that the music you like/hear/is new to you at 14 is the music that you stick with for life.

<comment><USER9> I'm also very curious at what makes young kids stick to "new" genre. And could you make an old song (one that doesn't age much if possible) stick to them as if it was the new hotness. Or maybe it's reinforced by society reacting to it as a new fad too.

<comment><USER10> Oh for sure, young kids get hooked into all sorts of stuff. Old stuff, foreign stuff. You don't see it in the culture but interview a class of kids and there are always odd balls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I know a lot of people are going to talk about their experience of fancying the other sex, etc.

I would like to say however that for a while now, I've repeatedly reminded my friends that 'gained sentience' when I first watched WALL-E. It made me feel emotions I never had before, I couldn't put words to what a novel experience it was. It's where I firmly demarcate my 'pre-sentient' and 'post-sentient' life.

This actually sparked a discussion among my group of friends, some identifying a moment when someone in their life died, other putting it down to a single panic attack. So yeah, something biologically 'coming online' seems legit.

<comment><USER4> Fascinating, would you mind me asking at what age you watch Wall-E?

My teenage daughter simply won't watch it again - too 'totes emoshe'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> When everyone's talking about how something improved, I feel like my brain degraded on the other hand, lol. I don't have a sharp memory or energy anymore. I get lost often in thoughts and can't think more clearly if something needs an immediate black-white response. I have gotten worse at communication.

I would trade being asexual for increased brain efficiency, too.

<comment><USER13> How old are you? Have you ever sought a diagnosis for anything? You sound like me, 46yo with basically lifelong ADD that wasn't diagnosed until a couple of years ago.

Haven't found any silver bullets yet but your baseline can improve if you're in this club.

<comment><USER12> 16.

I am diagnosed with that and few other issues but haven't received much help outside of that (family not educated enough and kind of eh). I feel very sacrificial because I have to resist the urge to focus on things ignoring clear health problems and self care. I think that's the biggest problem I have right now. I can't consistently stick to anything in the slightest.

I can manage it by sheer self control but that isn't fun and backfires with bipolar/anxiety because you need to have motivation in order to incentivise yourself.

<comment><USER14> It _will_ get better. My teens were exactly the same. If your family isn't being supportive, trying seeing your GP directly (local doctor; I don't know what country you are in) and see if they will help you. Find some people who you can safely share your experience with. Remember that you are not alone, and that most of this is probably temporary. Modern opinion is that it's not until about about age 24 that your brain chemistry settles down.

Disclaimer: I also suffer from anxiety (and depression) and live on pills to stabilise me out, so I'm not talking out of my arse here :)

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I asked for a crowd source list for good mental health practitioners before since the place I live in doesn't have any even in the state. There is a lot of fraud and my bad experience combined with personal history has made me quite skeptical of doctors and hospitals. I am planning to give call to some of them, hopefully they might agree to see over face time as a temporary solution so I can again build trust in the falling apart healthcare situation here and due to other issues, it's hard to travel hundreds sometimes thousands kilometres to a different place to end up disappointed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So we already know that brain forms new neuron connections all the time (or during sleep), so of course if there are new connections, there will technically be new networks? So the brain forms new networks each time we learn anything new... So how is this any different?

</comment><comment><USER16> Louis CK has a bit about his earliest memory as he was 'coming online': [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q10C5Zp1_Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q10C5Zp1_Q)

</comment><comment> type-2 I never experienced this...

</comment><comment><USER17> Teen used to be the old adult. Today's 'teens' used to be admirals and generals.

<comment><USER18> The age of majority was traditionally 21 for men in the US and the UK. There were many rights and privileges that were restricted until then. You couldn't vote in most of the US until 21, for instance.

The only generals I can think of who were teenagers were nobility who inherited positions or people like Lafayette who managed to use his nobility to convince Washington to make him an honorary general when he was I believe 19.

Teenagers as a whole weren't respected members of adults society in the pre- modern time, even if they did usually have jobs.

<comment><USER19> Also Alexander was a teenager if i remember correctly.

<comment><USER18> I assume you're talking about Alexander Hamilton. He never rose past the rank of colonel. He did use connections to form a militia of college students that he led as captain. I believe he was either 18 or 20 at the time (there's a debate over when he was actually born). And he was later elevated to a colonel in the continental army, but he wasn't a teenager when that happened.

<comment><USER20> I rather suspect the reference was to Alexander the Great.

<comment><USER18> I thought that could be the case, but since I'd mentioned Washington and Lafayette I leaned towards Hamilton being the intended reference.

As for Alexander the Great he was probably a general as a teenager, but he falls squarely in the "nobility who inherited positions" camp. So much about Alexander is wrapped up in legends and comes from much later sources that we really have no idea how fantastic a "general" he was as a teenager.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Child mental health crisis 'escalating due to climate change' - <AUTHOR> https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/child-mental-health-crisis-escalating-due-to-climate-change-a4337356.html <comment><USER2> When you tell children they will have no future (weaponize fear) as part of a campaign to force change in public behavior one can expect casualties. The long term harm to the children is incalculable and there is not doubt it is not cyclical nor natural. There must have been a better way

</comment><comment><USER3> This article gives absolutely no evidence except one person's opinion. The statements are so broad and general with no direct correlation between climate change and actual mental health issues.</comment>


Favico.js – Animated favicons - <AUTHOR> http://lab.ejci.net/favico.js/ <comment><USER3> On Firefox on Linux, the favicon flickers if changed quickly in this example.

The webcam is a hilarious example. Reminds me of this 1-dimensional video game you can play in your address bar. [http://glench.com/hash/](http://glench.com/hash/)

<comment><USER4> Once the images are loaded it doesn't flicker, if you press the +1 button a few times it flickers but when you go back with -1 everything is already loaded and it doesn't flicker.

<comment><USER5> Maybe use 'new Image().src' to preload the images?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I want from favicons is SVG support.

It makes so much sense it hurts, especially when we think of desktop links, home page pins, etc.

The whole "bundle multiple sizes of animated files into one container" is crazy when they are nearly always different resolutions of precisely the same file.

If we have SVG we could modify the SVG at runtime to have it display additional data really easily.

As for video in favicons... kill me now. SVGs and a strict limit on favicon sizes would be good (enforced by browsers, ditch anything over 50KB - <USER2> should be more than enough!).

A nice bug I saw recently was that a server could be instructed to send an infinitely sized favicon, and the browser would happily consume it. Nice way to drain a phone battery, use all of the connection bandwidth, and just to play havoc.

What I want from favicons:

1) SVG

2) SVG support for icons in all major OS's so that desktop links and homepage links just work as SVG

3) Max-size enforced by browsers

<comment><USER7> Do SVGs really perform better than pixel are for what favicons are used for? I was under the impression that vector graphics performs poorly at small sizes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Atlassian Bamboo does this really well: if your tab is open on a build that's in progress the favicon will represent how far along building it is.

</comment><comment><USER9> Great example of a micro-library. Small, does one thing and does it well.

</comment><comment><USER10> Side note on fancy favicon stuff ... be sure to check out:

[https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/app/contr...](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/app/controllers/static_controller.rb#L94-L126)

You want your favicon asset on the same domain serving the page otherwise there is a bunch of CORS work.

</comment><comment><USER11> It has both MIT and GPL licenses.

For us non-lawyers, what does this mean?

<comment><USER12> You get to choose the license that works best for you.

[http://savannah.gnu.org/maintenance/DualLicensing/](http://savannah.gnu.org/maintenance/DualLicensing/)

<comment><USER13> Isn't MIT compatible with GPL though ? If it is, what's the point of having both ?

<comment><USER14> Making something dual licensed allows for the next dev to make modifications and then release those mods under his/her preferred license. You could make a mod of favicon.js and release your mod under GPL to ensure any further modification of your code and your favicon.js branch stays under GPL.

<comment><USER15> It's possible to release a mod under GPL when the original license is just MIT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> reminds me, i once coded a webcam2favicon streamer in literate coffeescript [https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/webcam2favicon](https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/webcam2favicon) so basically the readme is the code.

it's from 2013, still works in FF, chrome seems to have changed the way they handle changes in the favicon.

</comment><comment><USER17> It is a very nice library. However be aware that it currently has issues in chrome if your page has several icons: [https://github.com/ejci/favico.js/issues/85](https://github.com/ejci/favico.js/issues/85)

</comment><comment><USER18> This is quite lovely. Very good job. :)

I for one would be very curious to read about how this works (too lazy to read code right now!)...

<comment><USER19> Didn't read the code of this specific project but if recall correctly, you can change the favicon by setting it in the dom to the base64 representation of the icon data any time. From there, generating animations is just a question of filling pixels data with the canvas API and getting the resulting base64 string out of said API as well. Obviously all of this works only if the browser is relatively modern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> There is not a single Favicon visible for me on this site. Guess they are all loaded remotely or something. No idea. Chrome / Ublock Origin / Privacy Badger.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why not set your favicon to a gif?

<comment><USER22> Does that work? I thought gifs weren't valid format for a favicon?

<comment><USER23> They aren't, but many browsers still display them, and last I checked both Firefox and Chrome animate them. You shouldn't use them if you can help it.

<comment><USER24> So does this js work for IE and Safari? If so, we've got a polyfill!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Now that just looks useful. I can think of several uses. Thanks

</comment><comment><USER26> When running a cloud based continuous deployment build it would be an awesome way to get an indication that the build successfully deployed or failed.

</comment><comment><USER27> this is sweet. good werk</comment>


OpenAI Five defeats professional Dota 2 team, twice - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2019/04/13/openai-five-defeats-a-team-of-professional-dota-2-players/ <comment><USER2> > OpenAI's engineers opted not to have it read pixels from the game to > retrieve information (like human players). It uses Dota 2's bot API > instead...

Congratulations to openai. But thank the ai gods, there is somewhere to move the goal post to.

<comment><USER3> Of the two problems solving teamwork and strategy probably has the most payoff for non game applications (OpenAI is after all a non profit with a broad mission).

<comment><USER4> Probably, though note that they're no longer a non-profit. [https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp/](https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> See also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19655893](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19655893)</comment>


Apple Now Rejecting eBooks Because of Links to Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/02/29/apple-now-rejecting-ebooks-because-of-links-to-amazon/

<comment><USER2> linkbait

the actual content you want to read: <http://www.thedominoproject.com/2012/02/who-decides.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> As you might expect, I disagree. To me, the context of Apple's past actions with respect to the App Store and ebooks is very relevant. And that is something Seth's post doesn't have.

<comment><USER2> I don't mind derivative posts as long as they provide valuable insight. 4 sentences 3 of which are questions and a short quote look like a typical lazy linkbait. Provide your opinion, get deeper into the problem, bring actual value; what you posted could as well be a tweet "hey, read this [link] whatcha think? leave a comment". YMMV, I expect more from bloggers (especially linked on HN).</comment></comment></comment>


Dreamhost slams Rails for not working well on shared hosting - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dreamhost.com/2008/01/07/how-ruby-on-rails-could-be-much-better/

<comment><USER2> While I agree that RoR is pretty damned hard to use in a shared environment, I'll point out that it is definitely possible. It took Jamie a couple of weeks to get it all spinning...but Virtualmin can spawn mongrels, configure load balancing in Apache, and still keep it all running as the user (making it safe for shared hosting environments). Several of our customers have it deployed...and while the load of the RoR stack is significantly higher than PHP (or Perl/Python) under mod_fcgid, it can be done safely.

<comment><AUTHOR> Rails really exposes the overselling that occurs in most shared hosting environments. Though this isn't by any means praise for Rails, it does explain why a company that with massively popular shared hosting might be annoyed by it.

I don't mean this as an indictment of Dreamhost. I recall when I first started experimenting with Rails (years ago, pre-1.0 IIRC), Textdrive somehow had this reputation of being "the Rails host." This was probably a combination of the Textdrive folks giving some early sponsorship to Rails while having one of the more customizable shared hosting environments available. Anyway, imagine my surprise when I found that one could not reliably deploy a Rails app of any substance (even apps developed by Rails core members) on TxD's shared hosting because they kept killing the processes due to memory overages! Though it's understandable from a business perspective why there are process (and, more generally, resource limits) for shared hosting, it's also an absolute disgrace for a hosting company to imply that one can run Rails on its shared hosting when their policies preclude it and then all but call customers cheap for not wanting to upgrade to a $150/month plan just to run a basic app.

<comment><USER2> I don't know that that's an entirely fair assessment of TextDrive (and not just because they're a customer of Virtualmin). They were pioneers in running Rails in a shared environment...and the Rails development community is hostile to shared hosting (perhaps because, like RoR exposing "overselling" in the hosting industry, shared hosting exposes the extreme resource usage of most RoR deployments). So, it has always been an uphill battle, and until you've actually had to fight that battle, it's hard to imagine just how ornery it is. That it took them a few months to work out all of the issues shouldn't be damning evidence against them. It was untrod and undocumented territory, and the fact that two years later most hosts still don't offer it ought to be enough evidence that the hosts that can offer it safely are above average in their technical savvy (or Virtualmin customers...).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Really, this should be a _mea culpa_ , but instead it's a rant. Dreamhost was too ambitious in trying to offer Rails hosting given their legacy infrastructure. And now they're punting.

So why did they support RoR to begin with? "Ruby on Rails seemed to really fit in with our company philosophy and we thought our existing customer base would love it." Okay guys, so what have you learned here?

</comment><comment><USER4> hardly a slam more of a polite nudge.</comment>


Let anybody become a lawyer? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/10/no-we-cant-let-just-anybody-be-a-lawyer/247467/

<comment><USER2> This article feels like someone with a vested interest in the status quo trying very hard to ignore something that makes economic sense.

<comment><USER3> Disclosure: I'm someone with a vested interest in the status quo.

That out of the way, like much of the work from the Brookings Institute, this particular argument is based on a simplistic bit of back of the napkin economics. It sounds good to someone whose taken Econ 101 and little else: "ABA occupational licensing requirements have allowed lawyers to create a club with a limited membership that is able to raise prices to consumers, which is how top lawyers can get away with charging upwards of $1000 per hour for their time."

But the reality of the situation is that there is almost no barrier to entry for lawyers as it is. The bar passage rate for graduates of ABA law schools in NYC is almost 90%. There is indeed a huge glut of lawyers---between 1/3 and 1/2 of graduates of ABA schools do not get jobs as lawyers.

So what about those $1,000/hour lawyers? Why isn't the vast oversupply of lawyers bringing down prices? For exactly the reasons the article mentions: because when you're doing a $1 billion deal or you have bet-the-company litigation you don't want just any lawyer. You want your lawyers to be smarter than the other guy's lawyers. There is a huge rush to lawyers with the top credentials.

There are already small firms paying their lawyers $40k/year and offering low rates that would be happy to take peoples' business. Even these firms have more applicants looking for a job than they can handle. Yet the business isn't forthcoming.

If you want to see than $1,000/hour go down figure out a way to get Harvard and Columbia to graduate more JD's each year, or figure out a way to get people to buy cut-rate services from budget law firms.

Also, even ignoring the economic fantasy in the Brookings argument, there is a practical issue. Subversion of the law is potentially extremely profitable but in highly market-distorting ways. Big firm lawyers will help clients push the boundaries of the law, but the potential for disbarment (basically the death penalty to a lawyer's career) is a strong incentive to force them to toe the line. Removing this check might not lead to the libertarian utopia the Brookings Institute imagines.

<comment><USER4> This point can't be repeated enough in my opinion... far from being a cartel- industry, there is already fierce competition in the law.

Small- to mid-tier law firms can generally handle all but the largest, most labour-intensive matters at a fraction of the cost of the top-tier firms. The top-tier firms get the work not because they're the only option, but because people want the best. If the quality or service drops, there are plenty of lower cost alternatives without needing to flood the market.

In my opinion, deregulation of law is analogous to deregulation of medicine in that they are skilled professions which take many years of study to become competent in. The main difference is that you don't hear armchair economists advocating to let every man and his dog hang a "Discount Brain Surgery" sign on their fence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Deregulating law is a joke. There is so much to learn to effectively and properly advocate for a client in this legal system. Also it's worth noting that two states (NC and VT) allow you to become a lawyer without going to law school but both require you to pass the bar.

Last point: I think you'd be hard pressed to find firms outside of the top 5 that can still charge over 1,000 for a partner's time. Def not an associate no matter their seniority. Most big firms have cut their rates to keep their clients. Some big corps are wising up and refuse to pay a 1st year attorney 500 an hour.

</comment><comment><USER6> > The cure-all: Nix the diplomas and the tests. Let anybody practice, and use > third party publications -- a "Zagats for lawyers" as they call it -- to > police quality. New players will enter the market and costs will come down.

Hey, we should do this with food!

Wait, we tried. People died. We realized it was a terrible idea.

<comment><USER7> There are license requirements for foodservice?

<comment><USER6> I meant for food production.

But yes, in some places, there are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm glad that this is being discussed seriously. This article takes on the more extreme case for almost complete deregulation, but there are many viable alternatives. While I support some licensing, I do think that law is an almost textbook case of regulatory capture. In particular, the requirement of three years of grad school in a specific type of school is almost certainly unnecessary.

This article seems to claim the elite tier of law would not be affected. I'm not so sure. Imagine if people with top degrees in other fields were allowed to take the bar, or allowed an accelerated degree program. Many people really can learn more in 6 months than others can learn in 3 years.

</comment><comment><USER7> Crazy talk. Soon, someone will suggest that programmers, who control vast quantities of personal and business information, should go without licenses.</comment>


Show HN: ScotusWars – see your state's win rate in state vs. state court cases - <AUTHOR> https://scotuswars.gilslotd.com/ <comment><USER2> Cool! If the OP or anyone wants to try this across all US caselaw (as opposed to just Supreme Court) we recently released a data set of citation data at the Caselaw Access Project:

[https://case.law/download/citation_graph/](https://case.law/download/citation_graph/)

I used that data to build a visualization of how often states cite each other, for example:

[https://case.law/exhibits/cite-grid](https://case.law/exhibits/cite-grid)

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't exactly put my reasoning to words, but it's really nice to see a map of the U.S. include the territories as well as the states.

<comment><USER4> U.S. is an abreviation for United States. I'd say it makes more sense not to have territories than it does to include them in a list of states.

<comment><USER5> USA is an abbreviation for United States of America, and frankly, many of the territories aren't even in the Americas so, it makes more sense not to have them in the first place.

Kidding, because what you name something doesn't really matter nearly as much as what it actually is :P

<comment><USER4> I agree! That's my point :-). Why, in a nation that was founded on freedom and then states' rights, have a territory that cannot vote nationally or participate fully with the nation?

<comment><USER6> Or how can a nation created on the principle of self-determination declare itself indivisible?

<comment><USER4> That's from the pledge of allegiance, which was started by a socialist, Francis Bellamy. The PoA does not talk about self-determination in any way whatsoever and is not a foundational document or principle of the USA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting, not sure this tells you much of anything but it is visually interesting.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, instead of interstate conflicts, it might be more interesting to just visualize win/loss rates for cases originating in a particular state. They probably would all come out neutral, but if not, that might tell you which states are most likely to run afoul of the constitution.

<comment><USER9> >but if not, that might tell you which states are most likely to run afoul of the constitution.

Not necessarily. SCOTUS tends to let things simmer until there's disagreement among the states and then deliver a big smack-down that affects many more states than just where the case originated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems to not show the whole truth for multi-state cases.

Ex: [https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/147530/alabama-v- north...](https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/147530/alabama-v-north- carolina/) just shows as AL v. NC, but it's actually Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, Virginia and an interstate commission vs North Carolina.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sort of at the mercy of the WUSTL database, they only give one state for respondent and petitioner. I caught a few more cases with regex, but in the case of this one where the name of the case has only two states I didn't catch it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there a similar breakdown by federal circuit, judge, and the President that appointed them?

Alternatively, anybody know a source for that type of raw data in a machine readable format?

</comment><comment><USER12> This has severe accessibility issues which are fortunately fairly easily remedied. The short explanation of the problem: users of screen readers and others like them will be unable to use this at all.

Your map is essentially an imagemap, implemented with SVG rather than a raster image and <map>. But this draws attention to two important things about imagemaps that aren't implemented: indication of what you're hovering on, and keyboard accessibility.

With an imagemap, each area is a link, so at the very least you'll see the href in the status bar of your browser in desktop browsers; and you can do better by adding a tooltip with the title attribute.

The HTML title attribute translates to the SVG <title> element, which should be the first child of the element it applies to:

      <path …>
        <title>…</title>
      </path>

Secondly, each state needs to be focusable so that keyboard users and screen readers can click on them.

One way of doing that is to just slap tabindex="0" on each path, and slap a keydown handler on it to detect Enter. That's an improvement and would make it tolerably accessible, but it's not the _best_ solution.

The best solution is to make each state _actually_ a link. Wrap each <path> element with <a xlink:href="…"> (remember this is the SVG anchor element, not the HTML one, hence xlink:href. On the latest browsers you can use href instead, but Safari has only supported this for 16 months and Firefox for three years, so xlink:href is safest).

The eventual markup should be something like this:

      <svg>
        <a xlink:href="#AK">
          <title>Alaska</title>
          <path d="…"/>
        </a>
        <a xlink:href="#CA">
          <title>California</title>
          <path d="…"/>
        </a>
        …
      </svg>

And then start actually using the fragment for routing. This has the additional benefit of allowing sharing more precise links. The fragment used for routing should probably not match real document IDs, or else the document would be inclined to scroll underneath you; or else you could use a real one and just negate that. But if the link target is not a real element, add a link click handler that focuses the infobox, so that screen readers get pushed to the right place rather than remaining in the middle of the map.

Probably best also to order the paths alphabetically so that screen reader and keyboard users go through them in order.

Consider adding :focus and :hover styling too (e.g. change stroke colour, increase stroke-width, adjust fill-opacity, add a filter that tweaks the colour).

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems there's an error when you click on MA

<comment><USER14> I stumbled on that one and thought "Man, I really don't understand law. In Massachussets v NY cases PA won?"

A new player has entered the fight apparently.

<comment><USER15> Like "MIT Wins the Harvard-Yale Game"!

[https://www.espn.com/college- football/story/_/id/25276347/be...](https://www.espn.com/college- football/story/_/id/25276347/best-college-football-prank-harvard-yale-mit- balloon)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's with Oklahoma and Texas?

<comment><USER17> They've had all sorts of disputes through the years. Even sent some Oklahoma National Guard and Texas Rangers to the Red River in a dust-up over a bridge once.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't know what Iowa has been doing, but they seem... problematic based on this.

<comment><USER15> Apart from the "spicy" case identified elsewhere in the thread [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23760678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23760678), it looks like all of this is litigation against the neighboring states about boundary determinations, all of which Iowa lost.

It looks like the reason Iowa got involved in so much boundary litigation is that its western boundary is determined by the Missouri River (and its tributary, the Big Sioux River), while its eastern boundary is determined by the Mississippi River. Both of these rivers move around quite a bit and also are big rivers with complex courses that are hard to survey, especially with 1800s technology. So it seems like the Iowa government felt that the surveyors and Special Masters appointed to interpret the boundary had gotten it wrong with respect to the river courses, and wanted to challenge those determinations repeatedly, but never successfully.

<comment><USER18> That makes quite a lot of sense.

Thank you for the explanation, I tried reading one or two of the cases and got put off by legalese.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> click on DC and you'll see that the house has a higher chance of winning</comment>


Show HN: EARLY - connect with Early adopters - <AUTHOR>

We thought it would help us a lot if we would have a platform to connect with early adopters more easily for Stamplin. As a quick and dirty side project, we buit early (http://early.herokuapp.com/) other the weekend.
There is a lot's of features we would like to add:
 - obviously, subscribe, single vote by project
 - <USER2>
 - give your email address, add twitter account info and more to keep early adopters posted
 - more details about the project (images, video, etc..)
Customer validation shouldn't be that difficult.
Comments/thoughts? <comment><AUTHOR> clickable link: <http://early.herokuapp.com/></comment>