SF Bay Area Housing Crash Continues (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/selene/housing-bubble.html <comment><USER2> That was Awesome! First lets have a look at his points in the context of 8 years later, what happened?

#1 This author misses that house fundamentals in the bay area are tied to wealth generation, not income levels. A place like Facebook goes public and several thousand people are in a position to buy a million dollar house for cash. Depending on who you ask Google pays their top performing engineers in option adjusted terms between $300 and $400K/year.

#2 Interest rates are a function of economic activity, a crappy economy and you get low interest rates. At least now the Fed has stopped "promising" to keep them low.

#3 Adjustable rate loans can force the unprepared to sell their houses, that has always been true.

#4 The 'massive job loss' has been completely eradicated, the bay area is employing more people than it did in 2000.

#5 The salary declines must not be in tech, it used to be you had to be management to make $100K now you just need to be a senior engineer.

#6 The population loss from the dot com bust exodus was pretty impressive, but its also history.[1]

#7 The stock market has recovered, the NASDAQ had been adjusted, its over 4400 today.

#8 The leverage argument I didn't get. If you own a house you can't pay for you aren't "bankrupt" you are "out of a house" (that is the thing about secured no-recourse loans) and that sucks, but its not the end of the world. Lately prices have been crazy again.

#9 Shortage of first time buyers. The weird thing is that _somebody_ is buying those houses. A lot of them are buying for the first time, so where did they come from?

#10 Speculation - I'd love to see real numbers on this today, in 2006 I could see the problem but I think the mortgage meltdown took a lot of those people out.

#11 Moving and 'retiring' is fun, and the older I get the more folks I know have taken this route. Those folks are leaving behind houses which are being bought up.

#12 Trouble at Fannie and Freddie. Boy was that spot on. I am still wondering what will be the final resolution of that mess.

#13 Love the business week quote, it was made without an understanding of the underlying mortgage mechanism that was about to embroil the world in the greatest financial meltdown since the Depression.

So it is helpful to compare this authors fears and their outlook with what actually happened in the 8 years since they wrote this. Yes there was something amiss in the housing market (the unholy love child between derivatives and sub-prime mortgages) and that did come to roost and did blow up. But _once_ it blew up, the system has adapted. If you believe that the economy was "too good to be true" because it was being manipulated in this way, is it now more true? Less true? We will continue to see reverberations of that event in finance going forward, we appear to have avoided for now a similar melt down in commercial real estate, and many trillions of dollars have been "lost" back to the future where they belong. Good things have happened too, and eventually your grand children will read about this in their history books like we've read about the Great Depression. The tragedy would be if we failed to learn anything useful from the experience.

[1] [http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Bay-Area-is-fastest- growi...](http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Bay-Area-is-fastest-growing- region-in-state-5442241.php)

</comment><comment><USER3> I know this sounds crazy, but I don't want to buy in CA because we're running out of water. There seems to be no long-term solution besides the desalination of ocean water.

There are towns[2] in California here people have paid off their mortgage, yet might not have running water in a year.

[1][http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25013388/california- dr...](http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25013388/california- drought-17-communities-could-run-out-water)

[2][http://www.newsweek.com/what-happens-when-town-runs-out- wate...](http://www.newsweek.com/what-happens-when-town-runs-out-water-227929)

<comment><USER4> What's wrong with desalination? Israel does it: [http://www.haaretz.com/life/nature- environment/1.596270](http://www.haaretz.com/life/nature-environment/1.596270)

And San Diego will too, soon: [http://carlsbaddesal.com](http://carlsbaddesal.com)

<comment><USER5> Super-expensive and massive energy requirements. Its the least efficient way to produce water. Also produces brine-salt waste which is nasty to process or dispose of.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Considerations_and...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Considerations_and_criticism)

<comment><USER6> Even these costs pale in comparison to the annihilation of the Colorado River watershed. Desalination would make California produce much more expensive; it might severely hurt the lettuce industry. But it would save the environment of Arizona and northern Baja. Also the energy required to desalinate all the water in a LA house is less than that to heat one in Detroit.

Especially since the rise of solar energy (and tokamak fusion and geothermal) means that electricity is going to mostly get cheaper and cleaner in the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER4> Exactly! And as "natural" water becomes more scarce, prices will rise, incentivizing investment and innovation in desalination, making it more and more efficient over time.

<comment><USER5> Desalination has a fixed energy cost that can't be "innovated" away. It requires at minimum, 1kwH/m^3, in a completely 100% energy efficient system (such a perfect system does not exist).

That is the base energy required to boil the water away. Chemistry isn't like software, you can't innovate away the laws of physics.

<comment><USER4> I don't think our statements are incompatible (there's plenty of room for optimizing capex, even if opex has clear physical limits), but that reminds me of one of my favorite Simpsons quotes: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vxHkAQRQUQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vxHkAQRQUQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Articles like this should have "expiration dates." Everything in there was true at the time, but past performance is not always an indicator of future performance.

<comment><USER8> Right. It only becomes true when prices soar very very quickly. It's been my experience that rents stabilize with buying cost over the course of a couple years. For example, in the article:

> _It is possible to rent a good house for $1800 /month. That same house would > cost about $700,000._

That situation is no longer true. That situation only became true in the mid-2000s because that $700k house cost $350k the year before. The landlord is in no hurry to bump his rent to $4,500/month because it's not costing him $4,500/mo like it would if he was buying today.

The rent-vs-buy calculation is dead simple: you will never, ever pay less for your rental than it costs the landlord to own it. [Edit: but it will cost less than if you bought that same house _today_ , generally. That's why you can typically rent in a better neighborhood than you can buy in]. That means as sales prices increase, rents increase. Then add demand on top of that, as demand increases so does price.

(Obviously there are other things to consider to determine if owning is right _for you_ , but I'm talking in an theoretical world).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting that two years before the main crash was triggered, this article went down and identified almost all of points that led to it from a housing perspective by looking at one of the more extreme housing markets in the US.

\- Prices disconnected from fundamentals

\- Risky "home equity loans"

\- Extreme use of leverage

\- Surplus of speculators

\- Trouble at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

I wonder whether similar "canary in the coal mine" approaches could be used for other large market or societal shifts in the US?

<comment><USER10> Agree with most points, except Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had their smallest market share at that time, as private lending was taking market share (and as we later found out, was driving the subprime lending).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting to note that Zoning is never mentioned.

In 2006, housing was constrained by "Nobody is making land." (#8 in the Who Disagrees section). Now it is somehow "zoning" that prevents housing from being built, and availability of land is not an issue but rather ability to use it. A pretty amazing perception/rationale change.

</comment><comment><USER11> Title isn't title of page, and it's only one item in a list of dozens that is mostly a discussion of real estate at the time

<comment><USER12> Yes. We changed to the article title. (Submitted title was "San Francisco losing population at the fastest rate of cities in the US (2006)").

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Its all the hipsters fleeing because its not sufficiently underground anymore.

<comment><USER11> You're speaking in present tense about an 8 year old article

<comment><USER14> They were leaving before it was cool.</comment></comment></comment>


The Open Research Framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Dannyzen/openresearch <comment><USER2> Many consider CC BY SA not open either. Minimum CC BY, or CC0 e.g. [http://oaspa.org/why-cc-by/](http://oaspa.org/why-cc-by/)

<comment><USER3> CC BY SA is the best license to use for research. It's like the GPL, but for non-software works. What's not to love about that? It's definitely a freedom- respecting license.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, I've opened it to Public Domain.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean by "public domain"? Many countries don't have a concept of a public domain (or it's not as well-established as in America). If you actually wanted to release it as public domain (or as close as possible) then use CC0.

But I still stand by saying that CC-BY-SA is the best license for academic works because it ensures that the work is always useful to future generations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It give me a strange feeling with "Open" in title and documents in MS propriety file formats.

<comment><USER5> `.pptx` is the _Open_ Office Presentation Format. It's standardized by Ecma. It's not what I would call a proprietary file format.

<comment><USER6> It was designed by Microsoft to try to prevent the Open Document format (e.g. odp in this case) from getting traction. Microsoft's patent license prevents free implementations. And it supports BLOBs which essentially renders it non- open.

<comment><USER7> Exactly this!

MSFT just lobbied and pushed their formats, scared of .odp, .odt to gain great traction, when many organizations (including governments) considered using open formats instead of proprietary ones.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Walking through doorways causes forgetting: Further explorations - <AUTHOR> http://www.nd.edu/~memory/Reprints/Radvansky%20Krawietz%20&%20Tamplin%202011%20%28QJEP%29.pdf <comment><USER2> This was linked on Less Wrong just before Thanksgiving ([http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/8ik/link_walking_throug...](http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/8ik/link_walking_through_doors_causes_forgetting/) ) and I left this comment:

There is an old trick to help you remember something; concentrate on remembering peripheral things, recovering the context, where you were and what you were doing, when you heard or saw what you want to remember. I'm not surprised that it works in reverse, changing contexts interfering with recall, as well.

ADDED: Actually, the link in the LW post was to an earlier paper, to which the one here is a follow-up. But this one was also linked to in the comments.</comment>


Leaked video presentation of iPhone 5 + full specs! - <AUTHOR> http://www.arbuzion.ru/blog/apple/213.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Why do you think it's fake?

<comment><USER2> Grey background, not enough shine on the phone, English apps on a Swiss page, slider doesn't have the right effect, I believe there is also no mention of 3G or 4G on the specs page. And last but not least, the first second of the video shows a non-apple url: Users/peter/desktop/iphone%205...

Other than that it's been made nicely and had its round of exposure around the web :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> debunked as fake</comment>


A Fast, Open and Secure Replacement Operating System for Windows and macOS - <AUTHOR> https://os108.org/ <comment><USER2> > Built on top of NetBSD

Interesting. Why this vs Arch or Debian-based?

<comment><USER3> The real question is why not openBSD, not why not Linux - if security is the goal.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to comunicate more clearly my project idea? - <AUTHOR> I'm working on a project to build a web application that takes spreadsheets from users and automagically (asking some questions to the user) makes a custom webapp for the same uses that the original spreadsheet [0]
I find it pretty difficult to comunicate this idea to people, in the sense that it is difficult for them to understand what I mean. In general, they misinterpret something (for example thinking that I offer a consultancy service, or that I'm going to make an app for a specific vertical) or they ask questions until they understand and at the end they say "you should have said X" and I said X but with one or two different words from other people's "you should have said Y".
I don't want to blame them, because I think is a limitation from my side of the conversation, but I don't know how to improve on this, and that is what I need help with.
I've tried repeating the concept with different words or using more or less examples but it is like they need to discover it themselves to really understand and I feel like theres nothing I can do to help that understanding.
Thanks in advance for any comments or advice
[0] Corresponding ApplyHN submission https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11458094 <comment><USER2> Make a demo that shows the process in action.

If you can't make a demo: people are better at understanding concrete vs. abstract. "Honda Civic" is better than "car" is better than "transportation device".

What that means in your case: describe the app by describing a concrete use case. Pick a concrete example instead of talking in abstract. Presumably you already have compelling examples of specific spreadsheets turned into web applications.

If you describe 2-3 concrete examples, they'll generalize themselves but it's much more difficult for people to start with generic explanation and imagine concrete examples.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've tried different examples, buy never multiple in the same conversations, I like the idea of they generalizing it themselves.

This was the kind of advice I was looking for, things that I haven't thought of, thanks for your reply!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> try: " _I_ have a website / webservice that takes _YOUR_ spreadsheet, and turns it into something that can be put online, and lets anyone plug _THEIR_ numbers into something that works just like _YOUR_ spreadsheet, on a webpage. _And then_ ... "</comment>


Rsync.net CEO to Present on Cloud Infrastructure a CU Boulder on Nov. 20 - <AUTHOR> https://calendar.colorado.edu/event/cyberinfrastructure_presentation_and_discussion <comment><AUTHOR> I will be giving an hour (or so) long presentation at CU Boulder this coming Wednesday, November 20.

I will be discussing _both_ the rsync.net platform and cloud architecture in general as well as discussing the state of UNIX and UNIX systems administration in 2019 and beyond.

I hope to see some rsync.net customers from the Denver/Boulder area and would be happy to meet anyone from the HN community as well.</comment>


Scaling Python for High-Load Web Sites - <AUTHOR> http://www.polimetrix.com/pycon/slides/

<comment><USER3> These slides are totally offbase about static files with nginx and memcached. I've benched large nginx clusters storing static file page caches in memcached against just serving them from a GFS filesystem and giving linux lots of ram for buffer cache. Got about 8kreq/sec via nginx+memcached but got 23kreq/sec from nginx+filesystem with lots of buffer cache.

</comment><comment><USER4> Umm most of the slides appear empty to me with one or two lines written in each slide. Maybe somethings broken with my browser (ff3 on linux).

<comment><USER5> I am having the same issue on FF3/Ubuntu(Hardy)... Hmmm...

Edit: Oddly enough, open in Opera (Linux) and you get one continuous page - <USER2> slides...</comment></comment>


Things I've Learned From Marc Andreessen - <AUTHOR> http://25iq.com/2014/06/14/a-dozen-things-ive-learned-from-marc-andreessen/ <comment><USER2> Marc said in an interview once, "being CEO is basically a constant stream of bad news."

I love that.

<comment><USER3> > _being CEO is basically a constant stream of bad news. "_

Aw, poor CEOs (I'm one)... Perhaps ask an ER nurse how her job compares.

<comment><USER4> Most ER patients recover (I would hope). It also wasn't a plea for pity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a fan of MA, but I think people equate him with sainthood. He's not a saint. He's a pioneer that pushed the internet forward, made some mistakes, and now has some wisdom (and money) to dispense. I give his writing some credence, but nobody is perfect. I like that he has made post-browser mistakes. That gives credibility to his writing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for the work that went into this post.

</comment><comment><USER7> It is both possible and, really, with just a little inspection, really easy, just a wave of a hand, to see how to do much better at investing in information technology than described in the OP. Below I outline how. The crucial supporting background is just rock solid, so far essentially missed by VC but among the most solid in all of civilization -- no joke. That VC is missing out is just absurd.

The OP is yet another effort at 'understanding' venture capital investing. There's something strange here: At

[http://avc.com/2013/02/venture-capital- returns/#disqus_threa...](http://avc.com/2013/02/venture-capital- returns/#disqus_thread)

that is, VC Fred Wilson's blog, is some data that shows that on average in the US, information technology venture capital returns in one word suck, that is, are really poor, bad, low, etc.

So, in trying to understand how venture capital investing works, at least on average we are trying to understand something that works poorly.

Below I explain how to do much better, but broadly that VCs struggle so much, as is clear in the OP, is from incongruous to absurd.

The OP is awash in some really bad news that shows that the VCs admit that, really, they don't much know what the heck they are doing and, instead, are reading tea leaves and then shooting in the dark; such nonsense is unnecessary.

Let's consider some quotes from the OP:

"even the top VCs write off half their deals."

Dumb. Each year a VC gets 3000 deals, looks carefully at maybe 200, invests in maybe 20, and 10 flop. Clearly something's seriously wrong here.

"And of course, you make all your money on successful and non-consensus."

That the good deals should be so difficult to evaluate that there should be no "consensus" is absurd. Sure, detecting the next SnapChat is difficult, but largely we should set aside such deals -- based on, what, starting a fad of teenage girls having fun being 'improper'. Instead it is possible to have plenty of deals that are fairly easy to evaluate.

"And let me translate 'non-consensus': in sort of practical terms, it translates to crazy. You are investing in things that look like they are just nuts."

E.g., another SnapChat is that way, and that's why a VC should not take seriously such deals. E.g., someone comes out with a better version of the same basic idea, but maybe SnapChat is hurt by their installed base that becomes dragging a big anchor to responding.

But there are much better deals than SnapChat where nothing looks "crazy" or "nuts". Putting up with deals that are crazy or nuts is, well, crazy and nuts.

"The entire art of venture capital in our view is the big breakthrough for ideas. The nature of the big idea is that they are not that predictable."

Yes, "The entire art ... is the big breakthrough for ideas"; the problem is that, flatly, VC (1) is working with "ideas", e.g., SnapChat, that are based on fads, etc. and, thus, are essentially impossible to evaluate and (2) VC doesn't understand what really good, "big breakthrough ... ideas" are, where to find them, and how to evaluate them. For the good, big breakthrough ideas, accurate evaluation is quite doable, and there is little that is' not "predictable". VC doesn't understand (1) and (2), and I explain below.

"Most of the big breakthrough technologies/companies seem crazy at first: PCs, the internet, Bitcoin, Airbnb, Uber, 140 characters.. It has to be a radical product. It has to be something where, when people look at it, at first they say, 'I don't get it, I don't understand it. I think it's too weird, I think it's too unusual.'"

"Most of the big breakthrough technologies/companies seem crazy at first" is only true because VC has been, to borrow from a movie, "digging in the wrong place".

"You want to have as much 'prepared mind' as you possibly can. And learn as much as you can about as many things, as much as you can. You want to enter as close as you can to a zen-like blank slate of perfect humility at the beginning of the meeting saying 'teach me'…. We try really hard to be educated by the best entrepreneurs."

Sorry, I have a serious background in how to "learn", and my experience is that VCs are quite poor at it and need to 'put on their game faces' and 'up their game' several notches from some very good sources, and some popular Silicon Valley coffee or sandwich shop is NOT such a source.

"You want to tilt into the really radical ideas… but by their nature you can't predict what they will be." "There will be certain points of time when everything collides together and reaches critical mass around a new concept or a new thing that ends up being hugely relevant to a high percentage of people or businesses. But it's really really hard to predict those. I don't believe anyone can."

"Really radical" is fine, maybe often necessary, but, of course, not nearly sufficient; but it is just crucial to have ideas that can be evaluated accurately and to do the evaluations. For "really really hard to predict those", VCs are "digging in the wrong place". Instead, with good "breakthrough ideas", "really radical", provocative, shocking, "crazy", "nuts" that can be evaluated and that have a good evaluation, being able to "predict" is really, really easy.

"We are looking for a magic combination of courage and genius"

Looking for "magic"? Looking for magic went out of style back in the "Age of the Reason". Looking for magic is wandering and shooting in the dark. As I explain below, there is a way to find the light switch, turn it on, and see what's happening (thank you A. Wiles).

"The thing all the venture firms have in common is they did not invest in most of the great successful technology companies."

There is a reason: VC has concentrated on deals, "digging in the wrong place", that are essentially impossible to evaluate. Instead, concentrate on deals that can be evaluated and, then, evaluate them. What deals are those? I explain below.

"The challenge in the field is all of the great VCs over the last 50 years, the thing that they all have in common, is they all failed to invest in most of the big winners."

Again, the VCs were "digging in the wrong place". Yes, even in that place sometimes there is some gold there, but that doesn't much help because the gold is in a form essentially impossible to recognize, that is, evaluate. So, dig in the right place where can recognize, evaluate, the gold that is there. The right place? I explain below.

The theme of the Andreessen remarks is wandering and shooting in the dark. But that is unnecessary.

<comment><USER7> Here's what to do:

(1) Problem. Pick a "big ass" problem where the first good or a much better solution will clearly be a 'must have', not merely a 'nice to have' and will be very valuable, in the sense of making money, the green kind. Note the "clearly". If pick a problem that does not satisfy "clearly", then try again. I didn't say that the success would be easy to do.

Part of the reason VC has been "digging in the wrong place" is that it tries to make money with small problems, where the solution is just 'nice to have' instead of 'must have'.

The ideal example of a 'big ass' problem, although not in information technology, would be a safe, effective, cheap one pill cure for any cancer. "Breakthrough"? Yup. "Crazy"? Sure; NIH has been throwing billions a year at that. But it would be a 'must have'; no question about 'product-market fit'. A 'must have' doesn't have any questions about 'product-market fit'. If looking at projects where the results have some doubt about 'must have' and likely need to work on 'product-market fit', then are looking at the wrong projects, are "digging in the wrong place".

Another fad for teenage girls does not qualify as a 'must have'. Yes, such a fad might make a $1 billion, but it is too difficult to evaluate. Instead, I mentioned "clearly" be a 'must have'. That is, it is crucial to be able to get a good evaluation early on, and nearly never can do that with fad products, as, indeed, the Andreessen remarks so clearly indicate.

(2) Solution. Find the needed solution. Often the solution will not be easy to find, but this need not concern VCs since they need look only at deals where a solution has already been found. If can't find the needed solution, then return to (1) and try again. A solution that is difficult to find can give a technological barrier to entry.

Q. Whatever you are working on, someone else has already done that.

A. Let's consider that: Take all the people who have done that. Then, except for rare ties, there must have been a first such person, and for them no one else had already done that. So, the claim is false. Sorry 'bout that. Instead, there really are things that are significantly and genuinely new.

Q. Then someone else can just reproduce the solution.

A. Some solutions are quite difficult to find, may be based on original work and/or advanced prerequisites understood by only a few people, implemented in software, secure inside a server farm, and, thus, provide a technological barrier to entry.

(3) Prove that really have a solution as described. When have such a proof early on, usually it is just on paper, especially for solutions in information technology. Is this possible? Yes, for nearly all of science and engineering on practical problems, it's routine and standard. It's how we build a new airplane engine, a new airplane, a new rocket, a new satellite, a new application of carbon fiber, etc.

(4) Evaluate the paper solution. Can this be done? In nearly all of applied science and engineering, such evaluations are standard and routine; it is insisted that such evaluations be done. No one puts up a new satellite with 'agile' techniques iteratively 'searching for product-market fit'. There's no counting on "magic". Fads of teenage girls are just irrelevant.

(5) Develop the solution.

(6) Deliver, sell the solution, the first good or much better "must have" solution.

Can these six steps be done? Sure; history shows that there's no doubt. Thankfully for US national security, the best examples are funded and exploited by the US DoD.

A great example was the SR-71: Problem: Get pictures of the USSR. Solution: An airplane that can fly at Mach 3+ at 80,000+ feet for 2000+ miles without refueling. Proposed essentially just on paper by Kelly Johnson and the Lockheed Skunk Works. The project passed evaluation and went ahead as planned.

Other examples: GPS and the earlier version by the US Navy -- proposed on the back of an envelop by some physicists at the JHU/APL, A seafloor, passive sonar array. The F-117 stealth plane; flew across Saddam's anti-aircraft artillery without a scratch; another Lockheed success. The Keyhole satellite, that is, a Hubble but aimed at earth.

Outside of the US DoD, the LHC; found the Higgs as planned. The WMAP satellite -- found the details in the 3 degree K background radiation as planned and got enough resolution to permit an estimate of the big bang 13.7 billion or so years ago.

These projects were evaluated essentially just on paper and worked as planned.

Generally such science and engineering has a much better batting average than VC. E.g., in each case, the SR-71, GPS, the LHC, WMAP, there was a problem that needed a 'must have' solution, such a solution, evaluation just on paper, and success. No "magic". No getting 3000 projects, looking carefully at 200, picking 20, and having 10 fail.

What should VC do? Sure: Stop "digging in the wrong place" and, instead, follow steps (1) - (6).

Will VCs get many such project proposals? Well, likely now they get more than they are willing or able to evaluate, but with interest in and success with such projects, they stand to get more such proposals. Considering how few VC projects pay off now, VCs don't need to get more than a few dozen good proposals each year. Digging in the right place doesn't require moving much dirt to get to a lot of gold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Things I have learned from Marc Andreessen: he thinks Snowden is a traitor. And blames Snowden for causing problems for US companies to sell overseas.

<comment><USER9> Yes, I never expected Marc Andreessen to flip his own bozo bit, but that quote did the trick. Andreessen took the concept of "shooting the messenger" to new depths of stupidity when he said that.

Still, this link is well worth the few minutes it takes to read. His blog has a lot of "Things I've learned from" entries from various people.

<comment><USER10> > Andreessen took the concept of "shooting the messenger" to new depths of > stupidity when he said that.

And yet, not really. With the exception of RSA, American tech. companies are being hammered for the actions of NSA, not for their own "crimes". Even German companies obey German legal directives after all, and Vodafone made clear the other day the extent of government monitoring of networks around the world.

To the extent that Snowden has made clear the reality that government (and not just criminals) can take advantage of the jurisdictional problems of an open Internet, that's not the fault of the U.S. tech sector either. After all, some of the most successful NSA programs are really liaisons with European security agencies that run the actual intake work, not conspiracies with Silicon Valley.

The correct solution for Europe if they want to be free of the possibility of other nations (incl. the USA) doing targeted operations in their networks is to completely balkanize the Internet, which companies like Google and Facebook oppose for obvious reasons.

You can credit Snowden with revealing to the world the types of dangers inherent to an open Internet, but that very same set of revelations is a large part of what's harming the U.S. tech sector. You're right that people may have figured it out eventually, but nations and companies around the world tended to agree not to make too big an issue of it since the benefits of an open Internet were thought to outweigh the risks. But Snowden forced the issue.

The only true solution to the issues he raised, if you're a European citizen, cannot be left to voluntary compliance by the other nations of the world, especially since you can never certify compliance with that. You'd have to instead build out your own Facebook, your own Google, your own tech sector, just like Russia and China have done.

So credit Snowden with opening the eyes of Europe to that reality, but you can't eat your cake and have it too. We've seen region locking spread too far with just with RIAA/MPAA to want to see it infect the rest of the Internet, but _that_ is the message Snowden is responsible for (even if it wasn't the message he meant to send).

<comment><USER11> It's one thing to be dismayed at what the revelation of facts has done to the tech sector. Nonetheless, they are still facts. Calling Snowden a traitor is a red herring.

One could just as well say that Andreessen's greatest allegiance is to money. So perhaps in that context Snowden is a traitor to Andreessen's cause.

<comment><USER12> Yes, it's not that Andreessen's lost his mind; just that his role in life means he's in antagonism with people like us.

And Snowden is a traitor to the US government, whose interests are pretty much the same as wealthy elites like Andreessen (to a first approximation). But not a traitor to the world or even just the US population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> black text on dark red at 13px - not too reader-friendly

<comment><USER14> It's black-on-white for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "be the market" is the advice that comes out of portfolio theory. To say that it applies to one type of investor but not to venture investors is to basically announce that you have absolutely no understanding of portfolio theory.

<comment><USER16> This is an odd comment. Do you think that Marc Andreessen, who manages one of the most successful portfolios of startups in the history of startups, has "absolutely no understanding of portfolio theory"?

Or do you think an alternate explanation might be more likely? Is it possible that you misunderstood something? Or is it possible that, if Marc is challenging this thesis of portfolio theory, he might be doing so from a place of great experience and be worth listening to?

<comment><USER3> > _Marc Andreessen, who manages one of the most successful portfolios of > startups in the history of startups, has "absolutely no understanding of > portfolio theory"?_

He doesn't need to be above average there. Just like PG, he (mostly) invests in technology he actually comprehends, unlike some other delusionary VC from the investment banking world.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can you suggest any good tech blogs for my new site? - <AUTHOR>

Over the past few days I've been working on a side project (mostly as a way to get familiar with Django) that I've just launched: Bloggregator.net
The site is a tech blog aggregation site, similar in many ways to popurls.com and alltop.com, but focusing on tech blogs.
I've started off by adding some of the tech blogs that I read, but it would be great to get some suggestions from the HN community on some more that I could include.
Feedback on the site itself would be great too! <comment><USER2> > The site is a tech blog aggregation site, similar in many ways to > popurls.com and alltop.com, but focusing on tech blogs.

Why not just start with the tech blogs aggregated by popurls and alltop?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's a link to the site: <http://www.bloggregator.net></comment>


Facebook PHP Source Code from August 2007 - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/nikcub/3833406 <comment><USER2> I remeber these days. I worked at this time for studiVZ - a german social network (still exist, but nobody is using it anymore) and this leaked was caused by a misconfiguration in their Apache setup.

In 2008 studiVZ was sued by Facebook. They said we theft their PHP, CSS/JS "code". ([http://techcrunch.com/2008/07/18/facebook-sues-german- social...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/07/18/facebook-sues-german-social- network-studivz/)).

Indeed, the first version of studiVZ was inspired by Facebook. Our founder had seen FB in 2005 the first time in the US, but it wasn't possible to use the service without a .edu eMail account. That was the decision to make a local clone.

But the real story behind the lawsuit is a bit longer. In december 2006 Facebook tried to acquire studiVZ the very first time.

This picture with two of the studiVZ founder and some people from FB's management team is from this time:

[http://img-a4.pe.imagevz.net/photo3/f3/9a/ce37499d84437cb744...](http://img-a4.pe.imagevz.net/photo3/f3/9a/ce37499d84437cb744c1dbce2a78/1-cfd8a99fbccfa5cc.jpg)

But FB hadn't the amount of cash to aquire the company. The Holtzbrinck Publishing Group aquired studiVZ later for 85 mio. €

In 2008 (before the lawsuit) FB tried the second time to acquire studiVZ - this time for 4,8% of shares! But this deal didn't happend - unfortunately.

<comment><USER3> Just curious, what social networks are popular in Germany now? And what led to the declining usage of studiVZ?

<comment><USER2> I think the most popular social network is Facebook. But as others said, people are looking for small services to solve a small problem.

studiVZ wasn't cool anymore. We missed the point for a rebrand to open the plattform for other people. "studi" is a abbreviation for student. Our answer was a new brand called meinVZ (just another UI, same database). Together with the ability to provide new cool features (e.g. Apps, Activity stream, i18n) it was just a question of time until FB was getting the market leadership.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone else remember the friend graph visualization feature facebook used to have? It was an oddity, both because it seemed like a strange but useful feature, but also because it was a perl script.

One time I clicked it and got the source code to the file instead of the graph. It's somewhere on one of my hard drives, but it seems wrong to leak, especially since it has database credentials hard-coded into it.

<comment><USER5> managed to save a copy of several files that appeared at the time - home.php, album, group, friends, photo, profile, readmessage ... code was an interesting read, as were the comments in it: // You fucking link h4x0rs just got pwned // Shortcut out of this CRAZY expensive garbonzle // What did we come up with? // don't display the Tuna album (aid=-1) // is this group a dummy meant to populate newsfeeds? // do not list the creator as harvard // keep track of tuna contexts // Merman's Admin profile always links to the Merman's profile

// NOTE: ok, at this point we know we are going to display the full // page, so it is time to do a PHATTY PHATTY MULTIGET of all the shit that // we are going to need to make this page, or at least the most common things

// Clear fire if desired

<comment><USER6> Can anyone explain the strange obsession with tuna? Even in this index.php:

        // make sure big tunas haven't moved around

<comment><USER7> I am going to guess one of their test environment has an album with pictures of Tunas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I see code like this, I'm always amazed that I can actually read it and (kinda) understand what it's doing. I always expect code like Facebook's to be so finely tuned and advanced that it'd be completely uninteligable to those outside the company and not an expert in the language.

<comment><USER9> In my experience code become unitelligable not because it's fine tuned and advanced but because it's messy and rushed.

<comment><USER10> Or over-generalized with the logic split up and hidden in the interactions between a dozen (sub)classes.

<comment><USER11> Or under-generalised with the logic duplicated in a dozen places, ever-so- slightly differently

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think there is a valuable lesson to be learned from this piece of spaghetti. I can't quite formulate it from the top of my head. But it's something like: if you wanna be rich, don't waste your time being pedant - your users couldn't care less.

<comment><USER13> My mantra:

Shipped code > Well architected incomplete features.

Your user does not care in the slightest if you're using a design pattern, or if you are using dependancy injection, or if there is 100% code coverage. Just make it work! Then make it faster! Then make it more readable! In that order.

<comment><USER14> You might ship faster but this can easily lead to poorly written, hard to maintain and insecure spaghetti code. In fact, rushing to ship / meet deadlines is probably responsible for most of the vulnerabilities in software.

<comment><USER15> Ship too late and none of it will matter.

<comment><USER14> I guess shipping is more important to you than the possibility of losing user details (or worse). Christ, I hope I never give my details to a company you found.

Shipping quickly is important but it's also important to write quality code. Small bugs that can easily be fixed are fine but security problems or bugs related to payments, for example, are not.

<comment><USER16> How many companies have failed because of security flaws in their code?

<comment><USER17> Companies don't normally _fail_ because of security flaws, in the same way Boeing doesn't go bust when it has to ground 787s. But in both cases you end up potentially taking a _huge_ hit in costs. Off the top of my head, Sony had to write down $170 million in costs when PSN was compromised, and TJ Maxx ended up paying out $800 million in costs, damages, and compensation after their payment terminals leaked credit card details.

These are not figures you want to see on your bottom line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The code looks pretty clean. I dig the two-tab spacing as well, but perhaps that was done after the fact.

Anyhow, not sure if this makes any difference or not but i'm curious as to why true PHP constants are not used, and instead regular variables in all caps like $PARAM_INT are used. Anyone know why this might be?

I ask because one of you PHP-gurus might inform me that there are certain use- cases where a true constant is not wise.

An example below:

      param_get_slashed(array(
        'feeduser' = > $PARAM_INT, //debug: gets feed for user here
        'err' = > $PARAM_STRING, // returning from a failed entry on an orientation form
        'error' = > $PARAM_STRING, // an error can also be here because the profile photo upload code is crazy
        'ret' = > $PARAM_INT, 'success' = > $PARAM_INT, // successful profile picture upload
        'jn' = > $PARAM_INT, // joined a network for orientation
        'np' = > $PARAM_INT, // network pending (for work/address network)
        'me' = > $PARAM_STRING, // mobile error
        'mr' = > $PARAM_EXISTS, // force mobile reg view
        'mobile' = > $PARAM_EXISTS, // mobile confirmation code sent
        'jif' = > $PARAM_EXISTS, // just imported friends
        'ied' = > $PARAM_STRING, // import email domain
        'o' = > $PARAM_EXISTS, // first time orientation, passed on confirm
        'verified' = > $PARAM_EXISTS)); // verified mobile phone

<comment><USER19> They might be simple input validation filters created using the create_function() function which allowed you to create anonymous functions of sorts in PHP prior to 5.3. You can't assign an anonymous function to a constant. An alternative would have been to include a big switch statement in the param_get_slashed() function but since the same validators are used in a bunch of places it seems cleaner to use anonymous functions and have each function that uses them loop through and call each function passing the parameter named in the array key in as an argument

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hehe, these lines made me chuckle.

      // Holy shit, is this the cleanest fucking frontend file you've ever seen?!
      ubersearch($_GET, $embedded = false, $template = true);

In all seriousness though, I wonder how much of this was written by Mark Zuckerberg?

<comment><USER21> With the header "@author Mark Slee" on that file, I doubt much if any.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is quite neat compared to the average shitfest people leave inside wordpress templates. I had to unpick a whole 200 page intranet written with wordpress and buddypress (which stinks) recently and rewrite it as a non- wordpress site as it's hit the inevitable hack brick wall.

It's now an asp.net mvc app on Azure. There's hardly any code in it now and a the page response times are down at 50ms rather than 1500ms! One query per page vs 400 as well.

<comment><USER23> Exaggeration is the mother of ... well, something.

An entire intranet functionality with one SQL query per page. Right, okay...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't think it looks that bad. It's clean and easy to understand.

</comment><comment><USER24> Anyone who calls this bad/spaghetti code hasn't seen bad code.

</comment><comment><USER25> The comments on github are akin to 'my eyes! they bleed', but tbh, this is actually quite readable and I imagine wouldn't be all that hard to maintain.

I haven't touched PHP since about 2007 and it seems like it would be pretty easy to jump in and start making changes and edits. It is well templated, seems to use variables well and not have too many (if any, didn't look all that closely) hard-coded values. I've seen much, much worse in "cleaner" languages than this.

As a side note. I learned a lesson in my early 20s that has served me well to today.

Shipped code always wins.

I was a huge proponent (and still am) of good code, well architected blah blah blah. But, in the end, if your code never sees the light of day, it doesn't matter. I saw this when I took over a team responsible for care and feeding of a product originally written by the founder of a company. This company had just secured a series B on the original code (still). The product was ugly, the code was terrible, it was slow, it wouldn't scale, couldn't be configured and really couldn't be maintained. However, it got the company moving, got a series A & B, secured the first customer, and a second. It basically created a runway to build the thing right that wouldn't have been available had it not gone live.

</comment><comment><USER26> I like the variable naming in the code. It's good that they didn't use one/two letter variables that span more than five lines of code. Short, meaningless variables names--used for things other than index values is one of my big pet peeves. I had to use somebody else's code as the base for a project and it was full of two letter variables that didn't mean anything. Gave me a big headache working on it.

<comment><USER27> Seriously, some of these variables are named so elegantly it's actually a little surprising.

Beginning developers could learn a thing or two looking over code like these (even though it's now clearly outdated and likely defunct). I've been programming for half a decade and my naming conventions are still horrid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't remember from the site at the time what "monetization_box.php" would have been doing.

Also, my style of comments seem so tame and lame now :)

</comment><comment><USER29> This looks weird in search.php (line 89):

      if($user 0 && !is_unregistered($user)) { return $user; }

<comment><USER30> This is either a syntax error or a HipHop idiosyncrasy (was HHVM in use in 2007?)

$ php -r '$user = null; if ($user 0) { echo $user; }' PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '0' (T_LNUMBER) in Command line code on line 1

<comment> vezzy-fnord I don't think even HPHPc was around in 2007. Development didn't begin until 2008, IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> line 72: // Holy shit, is this the cleanest fucking frontend file you've ever seen?!

<comment><USER32> My favorite line, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> There seems to be, here & on the "interverse", a battle on whether it will be more more hip to call this spaghetti code or to call it clean code. I don't see very much debate on whether or not it is GOOD code.

It isn't good code. It is cleanly written, especially for the time. But all the noise about how bad it is isn't "hipster" talk - this is 400+ lines of completely unmaintainable code; which is why it isn't part of the current code base.

As soon as they got some money & started trying to make it do more, they wised up and dumped it

</comment><comment><USER34> People just call this spaghetti for superficial reasons, they don't see objects and they don't see current PHP practices used in 2013. But it is readable and maintainable code. We're out of context, and there is nothing there to assume lack of quality. Some people mistake code with literature, objectively speaking this is not bad code.

</comment><comment><USER35> From linked article "It seems that the cause was apache and mod_php sending back un-interpreted source code as opposed to output, due to either a server misconfiguration or high load (this is a known issue)."

Does anyone know what he is referring to when he says this can happen via high load?

<comment><USER36> It is a myth. High load has nothing to do with it. However if you configure apache wrongly, it will serve .php files as text. Only connection to load is if you have one broken server among N proper ones, a number of times that the broken one is hit depends on load - I.e. on low load, it may be configured so that it is never hit at all.

I guess the story about apache serving php source under high load came from the idea tha Facebook is a high load site (true) and they couldn't just have made as obvious screwup as misconfiguring a production server (false) so it must be apache/php bug that happens only in high load sites (false)

<comment><USER37> this was a real issue, here is the bug:

[https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=26810](https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=26810)

there were many related bugs as well. it didn't get fixed for a while, and when it was fixed it was over a number of revisions and wasn't tagged.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> How did someone "expose the PHP source code"? Did they actually find a way to make the code show up client-side, or was it just someone who managed to get access to the backend stuff? The way it's worded makes it sound like the former, but that seems unlikely...

<comment><USER39> It can happen if you upgrade Apache and/or mod_php, and for some reason mod_php fails to register for .php files without being a fatal startup error. Then apache will serve the .php files as plaintext.

It's one of the things that make one-off .php scripts easy to deploy (just chuck it into the webroot). With a little effort, this can be mostly prevented: let the webroot .php file just do an ' include("../outside- webroot/actual-script.php"); '

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Pre-PHP 5.3 -> Right off the bat: no namespace support, no closures, no surprises there

I am a bit surprised about the lack of OO though...

</comment><comment><USER41> This is why I was saying evented webserver code is better.

Look at how much I/O is happening one after the other. The latency could be greatly reduced by doing things in paralel and waiting until all the promises resolve.

</comment><comment><USER35> index.php line 130: foreach($upcoming_events as $event_id = > $data) {

Space between "=>"...

</comment><comment><USER42> A startup with spaghetti code of this stature will NEVER be successful.

</comment><comment><USER43> I really hope they cleaned that mess up or I feel very sorry for all the developers at Facebook.

>ini_set('memory_limit', '100M'); // to be safe we are increasing the memory limit for search

>tpl_set('simple_orientation_first_login', $get_o); // unused right now

>// We special case the network not recognized error here, because affil_retval_msg is retarded.

>all those undocumented(?) random error codes

>mix between ternary operators and regular if/else statements with no logical choice between one or the other

>no auto loading whatsoever

Seeing as this is from 2007, there is hope.

<comment><USER9> What's wrong with increasing the memory limit?

<comment><USER44> A 100MB per request is going to seriously limit scalability (or inflate hardware costs at least)

<comment><USER9> It doesn't say it's 100MB per request, just that it's raised for safety in the rare case where it's actually needed. Would you prefer serving a 500 to that user instead?

<comment><USER45> I can't think of a single reason a PHP script like this would need that much memory to serve a single user. Everything big would be handled by the database, what could 500MB possibly be used for?

<comment><USER46> They would be applying some search logic in memory in PHP. Depending on what you are doing it does make sense to load in a heap of data from the database then narrow it down in PHP.

<comment><USER45> That sounds grossly ineffective.

Reminds me of some production PHP I saw once, returned the entire database (`SELECT * from 'db'`) and manually walked through it with a for() loop. It wasn't very efficient at scale.

<comment><USER47> Yeah, you're right... It's way better to do expensive joins on the database where horizontal scalability is just a fantasy than in the shared-nothing www frontends that can be duplicated in clusters ad infinitum.

If you're building SomeSimpleBasicSite.com and you do this, you're probably a bad programmer. If you're truly facing scalability problems, it's table stakes.

Based on your comments in this thread you're out of your depth, man.

<comment><USER45> I still can't imagine not find an example of where anybody would want to return 500MB of results to PHP for processing.

<comment><USER48> I think Kiro meant 500, as in the HTTP status code, due to PHP running out of memory, not 500MB.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What We Learned from Analyzing 100M Bugs - <AUTHOR> https://instabug.com/state-of-mobile-app-quality-2018 <comment><USER2> Pretty much all of these "most" findings are explainable by the distribution of the installed user base, i.e. they are not real results but just artifacts of the population sizes.

<comment><USER3> Yes, you're right! The report covers data from Instabug users only. We extracted data from 30K apps with a range of user base sizes, locales, devices, etc. I definitely agree with you, it's not a definitive representation of the market, but we believe we have a good enough sample and that the findings are valuable for app developers.

We couldn't find any other data on mobile bugs like this, so we decided to share what we have for the app dev community to have some benchmarks and insights.

<comment><USER4> Sample size isn't the issue here, although a large heterogenous sample is good.

The complaints are e.g. "Most bugs are reported from iPhones" because they are a very popular type of phone with the customers more likely to report bugs. It doesn't necessarily mean the iPhone is buggier than others.

<comment><USER3> Right, we're definitely not saying the iPhone is buggier than others. I guess the issue is with the wording of the claim. It would be more accurate to say "Most bugs reported through Instabug are from iPhones"

That's also why we included the bugs/user data since it shows a completely different distribution across devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They haven't actually analyzed 100M bugs, they've analyzed a list of bug reports.

They haven't analyzed how quickly bugs are resolved, they've analyzed how quickly bugs are marked as resolved.

The distinction is important. Nowhere in the report there's any attempt to judge the quality of the data and its reliability.

Oh, and the honest answer to the question "Why did we create this report?" is probably PR.

<comment><USER3> \- You're absolutely right, not all the 100M bug reports are actually bugs. However, we highlighted this under the "Time to Close" section: "These are most likely not programmatic bugs, but could be support issues or spam." How do you think we should highlight this more to avoid confusion?

\- About bug resolution time, Instabug is used by many companies as their main bug reporting tool or they forward these bugs to another bug tracker like Jira and we have a two-way sync so whenever it gets resolved over there, it's resolved at Instabug as well. That's why we used the word "resolved" not "fixed" because each company has their own definition. I hope this makes sense.

\- About the quality and reliability of the data: Oh, we didn't mean to be protective about this! On the contrary, we'd love to get your feedback. What would you like to know?

\- About your third point, I respectfully disagree. As the person who spent the most hours working on this report, I can tell you honestly that it was not for PR. We just wanted to put something out there that would hopefully be valuable to the people in our community. We initially shared this with our own users for them to have benchmarks. This is the first time we've released anything like it, so it was an experiment for us to be honest and I'm loving all these comments because it helps us know what to do better next time around.

<comment><USER5> Sorry if I impugned your motives.

I think that this report is only useful in showing app developers that the patterns they encounter in their bug reports are common in the entire ecosystem, not special to their specific app requiring further investigation. Keep the patterns, keep the information about integration with external tools (customers might find it useful). Scraps the rest.

The main problem in the report is that you try to answer questions which your data and analysis is inherently incapable of answering. For example:

\- "Which manufacturers have the most bugs?" \- "Which UI orientation has more issues?" \- "Which locale has the most bugs?" \- "How does battery affect app stability?" \- "Which OS has buggier apps?"

As other commenters have mentioned, your results could be just artifacts of the user demographics (or any number of other confounders). The answers are, at best, meaningless.

There are significant inconsistencies in figures 1 and 2. They definitely do not agree with "Errors discovered through Instabug are most likely to be resolved within 24 hours of being reported." (except in the narrow technical sense of the first day being the most likely day).

Even if the data was sufficient, there's no mention of statistical significance in comparisons. For example, Danish is the locale with the most bugs per user. However, you have quite a lot of locales and random variability is expected. Is the difference statistically significant?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I expected something much more interesting: e.g. most common types of bugs, or causes of bugs -- and thus suggestions on how they could be avoided.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point and sorry to disappoint you! The good news is that we still have a lot to share, this is the first time in six years to dig deeper into our data and share it with the community. I'm sure we'll do more and more soon. A series about the most common causes of bugs and suggestions on how they could be avoided would definitely be a great start!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> On my Pixel 2 the download does not work for their report. I submit that bug so they can analyze it as their 100M+1.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ironic that I have a huge 'download report' banner across the middle of the screen (iPad Pro)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for reporting this bug! Yup, Instabug has bugs too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the y axis: "% Bugs" in Fig. 1 has an incorrect scale. It doesn't add to 100%.

Also, it doesn't seem consistent with the claim: "Bugs discovered through Instabug are most likely to be resolved within 24 hours of being reported"

<comment><USER10> The figure is showing percent of all bugs, not percent of resolved bugs. Likely the rest of the 100% is unresolved bugs.

The confusion on the second point hinges in "most likely". You're likely interpreting that as the expectation of resolution time whereas they are using maximum likelyhood estimation. MLE is rather useless in this case, but it is technically still correct.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right! Thanks for adding your thoughts to clarify. The wording "most likely" could be confusing indeed. How about we change it to be "Bugs discovered through Instabug are most often resolved within 24 hours of being reported." Would that be clearer? And also saying that this is percent of all bugs, not percent of resolved bugs

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hmm, all this is basically what I would expect....wait..."Most bugs are reported from iPhones, while more bugs/user are reported from LG devices."

....Why LG?

<comment><USER3> Thanks for checking out the report! I'm part of the team who put it together :)

Yeah, we thought LG was interesting too. When it comes to Android, we expected Samsung to take first place tbh, but we found more bugs/user reported from LG and Google devices (Fig. 9). This could be explained by our technical user base and the popularity of Nexus devices with Android developers. So the higher proportion of bugs/user we see reported is most likely due to internal beta testing by devs.

We went into this with some expectations and were surprised by some other findings as well... like Danish being the top locale where bugs/user are reported from :D

<comment><USER12> Or maybe it's the opposite, i.e. devs are not testing on LG devices so they miss corner cases and ship bugs to them?

<comment><USER3> Interesting! Could be. Our analysis is based on what we know about our users' behavior but certainly not definitive. All the data here is open to interpretation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm very confused...

"Errors discovered through Instabug are most likely to be resolved within 24 hours of being reported" is one of the TL;DR points, but only ~1.5% of bugs are resolved within 24 hours.</comment>


Ask HN: How to find clients/contracts/work - <AUTHOR>

I've been programming for the last 5 or 6 years and I'm pretty good at what I do. I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit (Attempted to start over 5 companies between 12 and 17) and would love to get my own thing going. I've been trying to build up work on the side this whole time, but I can never find any decent clients or send invoices for over $200.<p>How do you guys find your clients? Find contracts? Find work? I know I have the ability to run a company, especially if I just start being a one man show, but my lack of sales skills, experience and abilities always has me struggling to find work. <comment><USER2> IMHO, the best way is through your network. Great people know other great people, they tend to stick together. So find some great people and get the word out. I'd also suggest having a couple bullet summary of your personal value prop handy.

If you'd like to be more in the startup space then look at startup blogs for networking events in your area and attend. If you're in Seattle, you can attend things like OpenCoffee at Louisa's. I went a while back and met a few folks that were getting plugged in to various projects that eachother had going. I had coffee with Andy S (TechStars) that day. Your portfolio (which may or may not include open source contributions) will help seal the deal, but unless it's really prominent is unlikely to find the leads for you by itself.

If you're looking for enterprise level contracts, then probably the best thing you could do is go through a contracting agency to start. Most big companies don't hire independent 1099ers anyway, many times for insurance reasons (of all things...). Again the point always goes back to building your network so the first gig or two might not be what you want but keep in touch with the people you can. Make sure your gigs are at the best possible companies you can find. Again back to Seattle, Microsoft is awesome to meet great people at and they contract relatively heavily. Also the bio tech's are no doubt in need right now.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> If your skills are in web and/or mobile, contact design firms and show them projects you've worked on. When you work as a sub-contractor, they find work for you.

Deliver quality work and stay on schedule. Build relationships with multiple design firms and you can pick between projects.

</comment><comment><USER4> consulting is hard :) That is what I do for a living. My first job on my own was from a previous employer. That let me hire a team including sales people. It also let me make a bunch of costly mistakes. Eventually I found a sales person who got me additional clients.

I would say to make it in consulting you pretty much have to have a network. These days you could possibly use something like odesk or elance, but I dont have any experience with those.

</comment><comment><USER5> The first thing to do, in my opinion, is to maintain an active Github account and contribute to the open source community.

<comment><USER6> I have plenty of that and in my experience that doesn't lead to contract work.

I get plenty of full-time job offers but no contracting offers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do you offer specific skills? Do you have a website outlining those? Link it from your HN profile.</comment>


How to Name your Company - <AUTHOR> http://www.judegomila.com/2012/10/how-to-name-your-company.html <comment><USER2> Or, just name your company quickly and move on. We lost a couple weeks early on to naming Matasano, and after some false starts, eventually gave up and thumbed through a list of exotic plants. By the time the book of plants had been opened, the naming premise had been accepted: we were done trying to find a semantically "fitting" name for the company. We just picked a plant with a cool name.

We ran into two "problems" down the road; first: it turns out that a "Matasano" is a "quack doctor" in South America, which we discovered shortly after hiring someone from Argentina. We quickly convinced ourselves that the irony was a value-add, not a cost.

Second, we kept getting confused with Monsanto. This sounds (a little) sillier than it actually is. A lot of our clients, particularly back in 2006-2007, were large enterprises where the staff was particularly likely to have some confusion. We had more serious conversations about renaming over the Monsanto thing than over the "quack doctor" thing.

Ultimately, we just got over it and kept plowing forward. Equity goes _into_ your name; it usually doesn't get extracted _from_ your name. There's some sense in picking a good name, but keep in mind that weeks of time --- which is what we were facing --- is a very steep price to pay for something that might only be marginally important down the road.

I submit that the term "Airbnb", while memorable, has very little intrinsic meaning to most people who rent out their places on Airbnb. Ebay has none whatsoever. "Heroku" was one of YC's biggest acquisitions; that name breaks one of the rules of thumb of this post (3 syllables, yet means nothing to its customers). "Stripe" and "Square" and "Paypal" are great names, but "Braintree" seems to be doing pretty well too, and if "Braintree" is OK, I humbly suggest that "Mindweasel" and "Thoughtpants" will work too.

This is a good post. All I'm saying is, be careful of the procrastinate-y issues that come up early in your company. They all matter less than execution on everything else.

<comment><AUTHOR> You should be able to pull off a great name in 1 day. Heroku is a great name: abstracted, unique, interesting and developer related. Ebay is also a great name.

<comment><USER2> I am not clear on how "Heroku" is "developer related" in a way meaningful to most of its customers.

"Abstracted", "unique", and "interesting" are _very_ easy bars to clear when you take "relevant" out of the mix. So yes: I buy that you could come up with a name as good as "Heroku" in a day. Just open up a book of Japanese plant names.

<comment><USER3> Heroku could mean '6 farts'[1] You'd have to open up something other than a book of Japanese plant names to come up with that :p

[1][http://www.quora.com/What-does-Heroku-mean/answer/Matt- Van-H...](http://www.quora.com/What-does-Heroku-mean/answer/Matt-Van-Horn-1)

<comment><USER2> It's funny; first Google search result:

<http://koi-z-are-us.20m.com/japanese_plant_names.htm>

... and _most_ of these are viable company names.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey guys you know what is a cool name? HeyZap. There's a lot of names you could call your company, like Zap Hey, or Hi Nap. But I really like HeyZap. You know what looks awesome? Lighting bolts. You know what name has a Z which looks like a lighting bolt? HeyZap. Did I mention HeyZap is a cool name? Do you like the name HeyZap? If you're trying to name a company I think you should pick a name which really has PUNCH, something disruptive, something like HeyZap. Don't you think HeyZap is a great name? Obviously you're not going to think of a name as cool as HeyZap, but if HeyZap wasn't already taken you should really think about naming your company HeyZap. Has anyone heard of HeyZap? It has an awesome name, it's HeyZap. We really put a lot of effort in; we tried HelloBuzz, HiZing, GreetingsEbullience but we finally decided on HeyZap. It's just so catchy, HeyZap, HeyZap, HeyZap.

</comment><comment><USER5> A good list of considerations. The most important ones I think are still the classic two:

1) Emotive - The name should evoke some sort of emotional connection. This is essential to being memorable and likable. This is why computers.com and chairs.com are not so great for selling computers and chairs unless you are going for mass-market, price-based, SEO-optimized, unbranded sales.

2) Meaning - The name should evoke some sort of actual meaning associated with your product. This becomes less important as a company becomes established. When a name is established is the right time to separate the meaning component, not when the company is formed. Apple was formerly Apple Computer, but Apple would have been a terrible name choice in 1979 because it would require too much explanation.

Hipmunk is terrible name for a travel product, despite Jude calling that out as a good one. It has decent, if confusing, emotive response, and zero meaning or association with travel. Establishing that as a travel brand will be much more work than, say Kayak, which has at least some association with travel. I, for one, struggle to recall "Hipmunk" much more than Travelocity, Kayak, or Orbitz.

AirBNB is a good name, but fails is the secondary concern of being easy to communicate and spell. Despite that, it is strong in the two primary concerns above, so it is ultimately a good name. I agree with Jude that at some point they may follow the path of Apple and reduce the name to a more essential emotive component, such as just Air.

<comment><USER6> Agree, other than I will only call Orbitz for space travel. In 500 years time they will be a great brand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> ... All that and the best you could come up with was "Heyzap"?

<comment><USER8> I did not realize that the author was from the company named Heyzap. When they used it as an example of a good name, I scoffed and then hit the back button. That name is one of the worst out there. I don't know why in particular but it annoys the hell out of me every time I see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Something missing here: SEO considerations. It matters less as the days pass, but there is still value to getting an important keyword or two in the domain name (or to _be_ the important keyword, better still).

This is especially true if your business is planning to generate lots of business through organic. Especially false if it doesn't.

<comment><USER10> The audience for your corporate name is most likely: investors, bankers, family members, and people who know nothing about you.

In light of this, a perfect company name is easy to say over the phone, memorable, and suggestive in roughly that order of importance. A perfect example is "3D Robotics".

Your company name is the only chance you have to verbally communicate everything there is to know about your business in a split second. Your corporate name != your app name, and your app name != your URL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Lots of people are pulling Airbnb up on their name, but I think it's great:

Air = air travel, BnB = Bed and breakfast

I'm not sure if some people don't know what it means because it might be a British colloquialism or whether it's totally unintentional Airbnb's part.

<comment><USER12> Airbnb is an iteration on the company's original name, which was "AirBed and Breakfast." The idea was (and I think still is) that there is a ton of unused potential "capacity" in terms of empty couches and inflatable mattresses (airbeds) that people could offer for rent if given the opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great points!

But just to list more counterexamples, from another Hacker News thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3181272>

I'm pretty pleased with my own similar essay on this topic, which I called "Nominology": <http://messymatters.com/nominology>

<comment><USER14> Speaking of defining names, "Nominology" comes across as _the study of eating_.

<comment><USER13> You're thinking of nomnomology. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Alternative suggestion : name it after anything you have the matching .com domain as long it is not offensive.

</comment><comment><USER16> Mine is named Robots Everywhere and has a 1950s logo. This came from my mom's exclamation in entering the workshop while we were testing mesh-networked antbots.

</comment><comment><USER17> Considering that you are naming a new company some of these points are not valid/applicable. Being memorable is not easy unless people can repeatedly bump on to you which requires that your keep it in the news/advertising or that people can find you through mental or google searches. If you choose an abstract name people are not likely to find you again through search. I believe it's important for the name or part of the name to contain something descriptive. Names like "apple" "stripe" "zynga" are completely random; it would be a bad idea to name your bookmarking app after a tree or a liquor. Now, 'paypal', that's a great name. In the end however, a name is just a name, and doesn't really matter that much.

</comment><comment><USER18> Keep in mind these things change like fashion and it depends if you're selling to consumers or business.

You'll also want to be sure that the name appeals to your target audience or you risk it being liked only by clones of yourself, which are likely to be few.

</comment><comment><USER19> Great names are built not found.

</comment><comment><USER20> Although I have heard quite a few of these tips before, this is still a great article refresher. I like the idea of tip "8. Light up a MRI scanner", but I'm a bit skeptical on how easy that is to access/try.

<comment><USER21> It's also not really actionable. Cool, my company name lights up the parts of the brain that deal with mathematics, shape recognition, and spatial coordination. Is that good? Is it better or worse than lighting up the part of the brain that deals with vocabulary, puns and humor? Or one that tracks moving objects?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Pinterest has a pin in its logo? At first I thought I had never noticed this, but then as I look for it I'm not sure if it really was designed to be a pin.

</comment><comment><USER23> I disagree about the vagueness of a name. If I see a great name, I'll understand the point-of-view of the company (usually, a key element of their product or audience). If the company pivots so much that the name becomes detracting, they can always rebrand later: "NewProduct by NoLongerRelevantName" eventually becomes just "NewProduct".

</comment><comment><USER24> Counterpoint: "xkcd"

<comment><USER25> I don't find 'xkcd' particularly easy to pronounce or remember.

Given its target audience, it works for xkcd. Geeks like geeky sounding, hard to pronounce names (like gnustep, xmlhttprequest and PostgreSQL). If a name like 'xkcd' were chosen for a consumer service, it probably wouldn't work very well.

<comment><USER26> The name was chosen explicitly to be difficult to pronounce and remember.

<comment><USER24> No, it wasn't.

I named my company in the same way Mr. Munroe named his webcomic: a four- letter domain available in .com, .net, and .org.

<comment><USER26> <http://www.redhat.com/magazine/025nov06/features/xkcd/>

"Actually the domain name came after the instant messaging screen name, which I picked late one night. Five, six, maybe seven years ago, I was tired of having names that meant something. Skywalker4, Animorph7... I wanted to pick a name that I wouldn't get tired of. That would just always mean me. So I just went down combinations of letters that weren't taken, until I could find one that didn't have any meaning, didn't have any pronunciation, and didn't seem like an obvious acronym for anything."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Golden tip: go and play some Wordfeud. You'll come up with tons of nonsensical abstract words and names that have an interesting sound to them while trying to place your letters. I'll bet you some of those would make for great company names.

</comment><comment><USER28> The best resource for this I've found is: [http://www.thenameinspector.com/10-tips-for-naming-your- comp...](http://www.thenameinspector.com/10-tips-for-naming-your-company- product-or-service/)

And the rest of that guy's blog.

</comment><comment><USER29> We struggle with our name: Bitesize Irish Gaelic.

It's a language learning tool.

The Irish language is called "Irish" in Ireland, but often "Gaelic" elsewhere (depending on who you're speaking with).

The name we've ended up with is a mouthful of a compromise :)

I don't know if there's a fix for that...

<comment><USER30> Your name is fine for the product. If you went with just "Bitesize Irish" or "Bitesize Gaelic", you'd likely be much more confusing to a big chunk of your target market.

"Bitesize Irish Gaelic" isn't great as a company name because it's so narrow, but "Bitesize" _is_ a good name if you want to expand to other languages at some point. I don't know what you'd have to pay for the domain, but it's probably available since it's just parked right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is invaluable advice. You should start a web service with which people like me can submit all the crappy domain names we think about buying and you give us feedback. I'll let you think of the name for it though...

</comment><comment><USER32> This just inspired me to throw out my startup's name and buy a new domain.

<comment><USER33> Really? If you don't mind my asking, what did you throw out and what did you switch to?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Meh. These days it's so hard to find an available .com name that any bootstrapped startup is probably going to find its name by spending quality time at a domain registrar.

</comment><comment><USER35> What? Airbnb are re-branding to Air? That's a terrible idea.

<comment><USER36> I was also under the impression that BankSimple rebranded to Simple due to regulatory issues (I think certain states have rules about the type of company that can have the word "Bank" in the name).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I believe the syllable division should be "Ap" "ple."

</comment><comment><USER38> When in doubt, name it after a fruit!

<comment><USER27> And then your next startup is called Banana. Great idea!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> slashdot?

</comment><comment><USER40> ask on coWonder and let the crowd decide it <http://www.cowonder.com>

<comment><USER41> Talk about company names, I thought this is pronounced cow-onder, and is a tool to communicate with cattle.</comment></comment>


Show HN: what I coded during the Foursquare Hackathon - <AUTHOR> http://agoraapp.com Connect with people using Foursquare and Twitter We use your Foursquare checkins to introduce you in real-time with people you have common interests using your Twitter graph. <comment><USER2> I'd love to hear the concepts behind this, I'm guessing you first do a radial search from current location, yield list twitter handles, fetch last n dozen tweets, extract links, cluster, intersect, introduce.

I don't have a 4[] account to try it but im curious what you used. Obviously in 8 hours there's only limited technology that can be done, but if you're using python or another language with a rich set of libraries it's possible to do quite a lot during that time. Obviously 8 hours means 6 when you factor in HN time :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Foursquare has a API method that exposes the people who are at the same place than you are. Then we get their twitter nicknames and find who you have the most followings in common.

We use Rails 3, Memcache, Redis, Resque, Foursquare API (with Push) and Twitter API.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, that's essentially what I said, but I am curious what you mean by "most followings in common" (you mean people intersect?) I assumed you did some form of semantic analysis of the tweet streams to intersect based on common RT's or link topics?

I'm actually surprised there is a maxima between people intersects, or that it carries some meaning.

I wasn't really asking about the front-end, that seems like any of the boilerplate environments would have been equivalent, and just becomes a matter of most familiar, but rather the 'backend'.

Let's say you can write a UI, you have a lat/lon, you have the tweet streams from those around you, how, in a meaningful way do you find similarity? That's the core of your idea. Because Mike and Brett both follow JetBlue what does that tell you? However, if Mike and Brett both RT'd a link about the speed of limit hard limit, it's reasonable to assume they have some similarity in interest. That's the part I was interested in getting your thoughts (mainly because its something I've both thought about and worked on)

<comment><AUTHOR> Try to run some computation on top of Twitter using the followings in common and you'll see that it's actually working great. We only display with whom you have more than 4 followings in common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well done, but it looks awfully similar to DontEat.at. ;)

I was also at the hackathon. A couple of friends and I hacked together a lists feature: <http://foursquare.heroku.com>.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! DontEat.at tries to solve a different problem. They send you a SMS when you checkin at a place that health violations.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I only coded during the Foursquare Hackathon. Not before. Which means 1pm to 9pm.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very cool idea. Will it only work with people participating in the app, or anyone that has a twitter attached to their Foursquare account?

(As long as I participate in the app, of course.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Really neat idea. You should explain the backstage though, for a less deceptive experience.

</comment><comment><USER6> I like that app, it's wise use of API's to mashup a feature like that...

</comment><comment><USER7> I actually made two cool connections through it. Good job, Pierre!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great! Happy to help you meet new people!</comment></comment>


WTF? Why so many Ask HNs? Spam? - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/jh0Iq.png <comment><USER2> Are you trolling? That's obviously <http://news.ycombinator.com/ask> which (duh) has a lot of "Ask HN"s.

<comment><USER3> There is a bug in HN. When you get to about the #150 position in the main submission list in HN (fifth page), suddenly all the submissions are "AskHN".

Here are the fifth "normal" page and the firth "ask" page: <http://imgur.com/a/owaXa></comment></comment>


The Greatest 404 message I've seen in awhile - <AUTHOR> http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/sigops/roll_your_own/SIGOPS

<comment><USER2> A 404 page should help you find the page you were looking for, no? It fails miserably at that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Smart people always view source :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Marvin the paranoid android

</comment><comment><USER5> It's one of the default themes from Roxen webserver (roxen.com).

</comment><comment><USER6> awesome!</comment>


Manipulating the YouTube Algorithm [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PGm8LslEb4 <comment><USER2> 2 years back Brian Dean published statistics from analysing 1.3 Million YouTube videos[1].

Couple of key insights were,

Comment count strongly correlates with higher rankings

Average length of first page video is : 14 mins 50 secs

I would say, if someone starts a new Youtube Channel today with original content. Unless it is >10 mins (purposefully not being succinct), cautiously scripting the content to encourage comments (which are likely to be off-topic, polarising, memes, sarcasm etc.); then there's no way the video is going to be on first page (or) gain large subscribers.

[1]:[https://backlinko.com/youtube-ranking- factors](https://backlinko.com/youtube-ranking-factors)

Edit: Added /n for insights

<comment><USER2> Edit: I meant \n .

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> He just uploaded the second part of this series an hour ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-1RhQ1uuQ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-1RhQ1uuQ4)

<comment><AUTHOR> This one is on Twitter, and in it he also talks with NATO, who contacted him after he posted the first video and sent him a NATO report on platform manipulation. See...

Robotrolling [https://www.stratcomcoe.org/robotrolling-20183](https://www.stratcomcoe.org/robotrolling-20183)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In George Orwell's 1984, there is a description of a "kaliedescope" machine that remixes plot elements, etc from books to create media for the "proles." Basically, technology is at the point where we can do basically that for news stories. I wonder how far down the road TV shows and comic books could be? (I'm guessing 10 years, to get to the point where the first news synthesis by AI was a few years ago.)

<comment><USER5> Isn't this what most modern movies are, only the remixing isn't automated?

I wonder what a script for an action movie would look like if it was just based off of statistics of all the previous action movies. Probably watchable.

<comment><USER4> _Isn 't this what most modern movies are, only the remixing isn't automated?_

That was part of George Orwell's point.

 _I wonder what a script for an action movie would look like if it was just based off of statistics of all the previous action movies. Probably watchable._

We could probably get some great comedy out of it!

<comment><USER6> Netflix is sort of already doing this, producing films based on your content and metrics of what you search for and watch. They aren't automating the actual movie bits yet, but it's progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> At more than one point in the video he says that the spread of this kind of automatically generated content was not YouTubes fault, but in a way I think it is. It seems likely that the methods of manipulation shown in the video aim more at getting such a piece of content going and less at sustaining it. If "the algorithms" goal is to maximize viewer retention and this kind of autogenerated content keeps some people glued to the screen, watching ads and writing comments, it's really doing an excellent job, it's just the goal itself that is unethical.

Edit: Typo

<comment><USER8> Quite.

"YouTube Executives Ignored Warnings, Letting Toxic Videos Run Rampant"

 _The company spent years chasing one business goal above others: "Engagement," a measure of the views, time spent and interactions with online videos. Conversations with over twenty people who work at, or recently left, YouTube reveal a corporate leadership unable or unwilling to act on these internal alarms for fear of throttling engagement._

 _Wojcicki would "never put her fingers on the scale," said one person who worked for her. "Her view was, 'My job is to run the company, not deal with this.'" This person, like others who spoke to Bloomberg News, asked not to be identified because of a worry of retaliation...._

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-02/youtube-e...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-02/youtube- executives-ignored-warnings-letting-toxic-videos-run-rampant)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why can't all social network make 2 factor auth. and verify account with text messages. This should cut out lot of fake accounts. They can also randomly send out email verification when people try to upload stuff. It might make the process bit annoying but in long run help the platforms out.

<comment><USER5> Because you don't want to put hurdles between your users and posting a message. When you do, you're just creating incentive to move to another platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Youtube is like an election with a trillion billion candidates all competing for your attention, not 2

</comment><comment><USER11> One of the obvious solutions for this is to charge hosting fees, something like users paying $2 per video upload or so.

I think the video misses one basic point that so far youtube tries to fight fakes with technology instead of just limiting the number of videos uploaded or letting human moderators view the videos -- which would undercut their market dominance.

It is a lot easier to say, oh hey, we've got this technology and people are bad at their biases, instead for example, we're subsidizing this venture to gain market dominance so everyone is able to upload whatever on youtube, but with even this subsidy we are unable to do appropriate content moderation.

Foums and mail lists 30 years ago had that feature.

<comment><USER5> > One of the obvious solutions for this is to charge hosting fees, something > like users paying $2 per video upload or so.

That sounds like solving shoplifting by making customers pay an entrance fee. The majority of youtube uploaders are not the same 50 celebrities that rule the trending page and make thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars per upload.

I'm amazed that people who's uploads regularly stay below 10 do upload at all, I'd be even more amazed if they started to pay serious money just to upload their daily morning chat. Personally, I tend to care more for what happens beyond the carefully selected trending page. The trending page summons my inner Kaczynski, the rest calms him down. I'd hate to see those people stop.

<comment><USER11> I understand your criticism of my argument, that in this case only what is popular would be available but not what is niche and interesting.

I still make a point that there should be _some_ barriers of entry with humans (moderators?) as gatekeeprers to prevent the spread of this this kind of misinformation, and that would cost more money than what is happening now, it is up to youtube how they choose to recover that cost.

Trying to do some clever AI on videos after the videos are uploaded is trying trying to close the barn doors after the horses are gone.

<comment><USER5> > I understand your criticism of my argument, that in this case only what is > popular would be available but not what is niche and interesting.

That too, but my point was mostly that barriers would hinder the business. Even if people could afford to pay, they don't want to, and there will be a place next door where they don't have to. The problem will be solved insofar that the users migrate away, and take the problems with them - and the ad revenue ;)

> and that would cost more money than what is happening now, it is up to > youtube how they choose to recover that cost.

Youtube _makes_ money off of this sort of manipulation, they have literally no interest in stopping it. They just want the PR problem to go away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does youtube really use a simple visual hashing method for content id?

I thought youtube uses deep learning for everything now?

<comment><AUTHOR> YouTube uses multiple algos and signals, and yet spam still gets through. In some ways social media spamming techniques are reminiscent of the early days of the Web -- when the Web was overrun with "SEO" spam from junk sites attempting to manipulate the Google algo in the late 90s / early 00s. Google eventually solved the problem of Web and Gmail spam for the most part, but social media spam is a somewhat different beast.

HN has been having to deal with the in-authenticity problem too, maybe even moreso as of late. Solving it may require a concerted effort from all of us -- a vigilant watch by those who can see through -- those who not only take the time to flag inauthentic activity as they see it, but also educate others by calling it out and pulling back the curtain in a way that reveals its nature so more may become aware and learn to see it too. Discernment is a skill that can be learned when we are cognizant and vigilant and conscientious about paying attention.

<comment><USER4> _Discernment is a skill that can be learned when we are cognizant and vigilant and conscientious about paying attention._

Google, YouTube, and much of the current web is very easily manipulated by small but sizable and highly motivated fractions of the population acting together. It greatly over-represents the opinions of the extremes, particularly the voices which generate the most outrage.

Fear is the mind-killer. But we never knew the extent to which this could reach until it was combined with viral outrage. (Monetized and politicized viral outrage, to be precise.)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> presumably the purpose of these vids is to make $ from the pre ads, not spread propaganda.

<comment><USER14> ¿Por qué no los dos?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Destin's bias and hypocrisy makes it hard to watch his videos.

<comment><USER16> In what way is he biased in this video?

<comment><USER15> In the pro-usa way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I thought Destin was actually manipulating the algorithm.

<comment><USER18> Well it wouldn't be hard to make the argument that he does, albeit not as programatically as his antagonists.

What his channel feed looks like: [https://imgur.com/a/OqCIKlP](https://imgur.com/a/OqCIKlP)

<comment><USER19> For what it's worth, he seems to be pretty open about that in the video

<comment><USER20> And further, even if he is attempting to "manipluate the algorithm" he really is just trying to maximize his views for his content, which is much higher quality content than the average youtube video.

<comment><USER4> One of the best youTube science videos ever!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtWbpyjJqrU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtWbpyjJqrU)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The nine-year-old about to graduate from college - <AUTHOR> https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/science/this-nine-year-old-boy-is-about-to-graduate-from-college/vi-BBWOBdN <comment><USER2> So does he just glide through books understanding everything on the first be pass? If so what a lucky guy.</comment>


ShareLaTeX is joining Overleaf - <AUTHOR> https://www.overleaf.com/blog/518-exciting-news-sharelatex-is-joining-overleaf <comment><USER2> I've only ever used Overleaf and absolutely love it, so I'm happy ShareLaTeX is the one being absorbed and not the other way around.

Hopefully this will help improve the experience even further!

<comment><USER3> I don't believe it is an absorption or merger. It seems more like a strategic partnership.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14813511](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14813511)</comment>