4 Years of Data Science at Schibsted Media Group - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ASvanevik/4-years-of-data-science-at-schibsted-media-group-abba83854509 <comment><USER2> > Because your existing data can limit the solution space, and it can distract > you from finding the best approach. You'll be stuck in a local optimum where > you try to shoehorn every problem into the dataset you have available

Found this to be a very insightful quote, and something I haven't really thought about before.</comment>


Ask HN: I own the t0.io domain, but what web service to build for it? - <AUTHOR> Previously I built a url shortener https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8673137<p>But a bunch of people used it to send spam links... I'm thinking to build something else for this domain or selling it... <comment><USER2> It's short, I'll give you that, but that's all there is to it. There is no shortage of interesting domain names.</comment>


45 percent of world's wealth destroyed: Blackstone CEO - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE52966Z20090310 <comment><USER2> Price of world's wealth decreased by 45 percent: YC Partner

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really, most of it was really destroyed - debts not repaid, foreclosures, etc.

<comment><USER2> You're confusing money and wealth. When a house is foreclosed, it is transferred from one owner to another, but it isn't destroyed.

<comment><AUTHOR> When a company goes bankrupt, is wealth destroyed? When creditors are not repaid, is wealth destroyed? When pension fund investors lose their money and would have to retire later, is wealth destroyed? Current stock and bond prices imply that 10-20% US companies will go out of business in the next 5 years.

<comment><USER2> No, no, and no. Wealth could end up being destroyed as a result of rapidly falling prices-- for example, if a company that goes bankrupt then shuts down, and lets its machines sit and rust-- but they are not identical.

<comment><USER3> I think it is a mistake of some sort not to think of the companies themselves as machines. After all, what use is a tractor apart from the farming it can do in the future? Same goes for a farmer. Same goes for a farm.

Our economies create real wealth from nominal by taking into account future wealth creation. You can call assets (eg stocks) 'nominal' (not real) if you want because they are paper assets. That's correct in a sense. If the market decided to value them lower tomorrow on a whim, no real wealth is destroyed. These assets (in the stock example these are the companies behind the stock) go on creating wealth as usual. Future wealth creation is not disturbed.

On the other hand, if the company alters its wealth creation patterns (eg by going out of business). Real (future) wealth is lost.

Basically, I think you need to take into account future wealth creation in these definitions. Call it reverse capitalism (in the Marxist sense). Future wealth controlled the means of production.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google in talks to buy ITA Software - Bloomberg - <AUTHOR> http://in.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idINIndia-47867920100421

<comment><USER2> Perhaps Lisp will now be a standard/supported programming language in the Googleplex :-)

I think that most of what ITA does is written in Common Lisp.</comment>


Vanguard plans on loading mixed content on HTTPS pages - <AUTHOR> https://personal.vanguard.com/us/insights/article/trusted-symbol-022015

<comment><USER2> That's a very generous title. I would have chosen:

"Vanguard defends poor security hygiene"</comment>


Airpods – a Speculative Teardown - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/airpods-speculative-teardown-nick-hunn <comment><USER2> This is an amazing post. Cant wait to see a followup when these things start shipping.</comment>


Arbitraging credit cards while traveling abroad - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@shivpatel/get-the-most-from-your-credit-cards-while-traveling-abroad-3808352b4586

<comment><USER2> This would only be arbitraging if you were buying something on one card and returning it on another card. It's not arbitrage if you're not making a profit, it's just saving.

Nice cost-comparison tool though :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point! Wrong choice in words; will edit the post to make better sense. Also looks like someone else edited the title of this post on YC. Any idea how to change it back?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice trick, though not that practical.

1% of oversee spending may be to little benefit for the cost: 1\. Get more than one card with zero foreign transaction fees. Make sure you won't get charged yearly fee on those.

2\. On every transaction, check the rate on smarthphone. Oh, you want to buy $3 coffee, let me check my rate to see if I can save $0.03.

3\. More cards is more monitoring hassle. Harder to track, more hassle if they get stolen and you need to block them all. Also payback program tracking is much harder.

4\. Same with fees and interests. More card is more likely that you miss some payments and get charged interests/overdraft. One incident and you whole savings can go away. Even with autopayment you need to make sure you balance your accounts.

<comment><USER4> I think, but I'm not sure, that you're overstating the complication. Looking at your four steps: 1\. Everyone should have two credit cards. You don't want a single point of failure (mistaken fraud freeze, for example.) 2\. You only check every day, not every transaction. 3\. Again, I argue you should have two (Visa + Mastercard) 4\. Again. You're just trying to make things sound hard by repeating the same thing.

So. Have two cards. Make sure they autopay themselves. The only new work is checking the exchange rates once a day.

<comment><AUTHOR> @jannotti Couldn't have explained it better! Only clarification I'd make is you can use this for more than two cards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting concept let me see his method..scrolling.. oh it is about marketing his app.

Unless you invest the money you get from the credit card, isnt his approach just min/maxing your cost to get money?

</comment><comment><USER6> You also need to factor in any foreign currency fees your card issuer imposes. For example, in the UK, most banks impose a "non-sterling transaction fee" of 2.75-2.99% on transactions in a foreign currency.

There's a UK startup called Revolut - www.revolut.com - which allows you to hold GBP, USD and EUR on the same (pre-paid debit) card and convert money between them at mid-market rates, using an app.

It's pretty slick - I've literally stood at the counter, converting GBP to USD while the clerk rang up my purchase, then handed the card to the clerk and had the notification hit my phone seconds after he swiped.

<comment><USER2> > You also need to factor in any foreign currency fees your card issuer > imposes.

He's specifically referring to cards that offer spot forex rates. There are many such options in the U.S.

<comment><USER6> In the UK, the non-sterling transaction fee is separate from the currency exchange.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's really useful. You might want to take a look at [https://supercard.io/](https://supercard.io/) \- it's a virtual credit card which chooses the best daily rate for you.

I'm on the beta trial and finding it pretty useful.

<comment><USER8> I use the [https://revolut.com/](https://revolut.com/) app, which is awesome as it doesn't change any fees ever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's sad that I have to say this in 2015, but the cheapest way to deal with money oversees is to... use cash as much as possible. It's not as convenient (although, everybody takes cash, credit cards - depends on where you go...), but taking a wad of cash for trips <= 1 week or making weekly withdrawals for travels longer than that is usually by far the cheapest option.

<comment><USER2> As somebody who travels a lot credit cards are much, much cheaper than cash. It's not even close. Banks / exchange shops have commissions (baked into the exchange rate) from 2.5% to 5%.

My credit card charges $5 flat fee to take out cash, gives spot forex rates, and gives me 1% cashback on purchases. So if I take out $500 cash and spend $500 directly on the card I pay zero fees versus the $25-$50 in fees I'd spend dealing with $1000 cash.

<comment><USER9> What card is that, and with which bank, if any? I don't have any cards with a flat fee (both Mastercard and Visa).

<comment><USER2> Amazon.ca rewards Visa card from Chase: [https://www.chase.com/online/canada/amazon-ca- home.htm](https://www.chase.com/online/canada/amazon-ca-home.htm)

I was wrong, it's 1% per cash advance with a minimum of $5. I've never taken more than $500 in cash out at a time so that's how I remembered it. Also, the above calculations assume you overpay the card beforehand so you don't incur interest charges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Without real-time rates available from multiple networks, this relies on that back-tested effect that the card with the better rate tends to persist for several days; is there a reason to be confident that will continue? Not that there's much risk if it doesn't, but you could well just be wasting your time.

</comment><comment><USER11> So in the example, this method costs the user $7 compared to just always using the Visa card.

The quoted "savings" are compared to the worst possible case - which can only happen if... you use the suggested app.

</comment><comment><USER12> Less useful if you live in the Eurozone. I travel abroad a lot, and it's still just Euro....

</comment><comment><USER13> Why not just get a card without foreign transaction fees?

<comment><USER14> Because even with no fees, the rate your card uses to turn USD into whatevers will vary from card to card. If you're not paying an up front transaction fee, you're almost certainly getting rinsed on the rate offered.</comment></comment>


Show HN: GlassWireframe – Easily Design Mockups for Google Glass Apps - <AUTHOR> https://app.glasswireframe.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone! I made this because I wanted a simple way to plan-out this idea I had for Google Glass, but no knowledge of how Glass actually worked (best practices, display resolution, etc.)

Thinking others had the same problem I designed GlassWireframe much like any other mockup tool out there, yet specificly for modeling the look, feel, and interactive properties based on the official GDK.

I was very happy to see the hundreds who signed up to test the private beta; and I'm happy to announce it's now open for public use.

GlassWireframe is still young and has much room for improvement. Here are a few things we're working on to make it better based on user feedback:

\- Collaboration: multiple accounts working on the same project

\- Preview Mode: Viewing your Glass App creation set against uploaded scenic images, from the POV of a Glass User (much like starting a PowerPoint presentation)

Hope this helps! I believe the future is in wearable technology, and creating tools like this to aid startups and entrepreneurs towards this new frontier is a smart thing to do.</comment>


How I went from writing 2,000 words a day to 10,000 words a day - <AUTHOR> http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.ca/2011/06/how-i-went-from-writing-2000-words-day.html

<comment><USER3> Looks like a good argument for the Snowflake method [0]. This method is basically to "develop" a novel, by starting with a single sentence and gradually expanding it into the novel. In contrast, the other method (pansing) is to start writing the first chapter immediately.

For either approach you find great writers using them. It seems to be a question of personality.

[0] <http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php>

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the Snowflake link. When reading a novel, I sometimes try the reverse to crystallize my memory of the story. I imagine summarizing a page with a sentence, then a chapter with a sentence, then the book.

<comment><USER5> Same. And actually, having used this method without knowing it had a name, I can say it's a great way to write. Crystals grow naturally, but distillation is laborious.

Creating Short Fiction by Damon Knight changed the way I write—it puts special emphasis on being able to clearly state, in a sentence or two, precisely what your story is about. And there's hardly a better way to find out than to know at the outset!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am reminded of the Dijkstra quote:

From there it is only a small step to measuring "programmer productivity" in terms of "number of lines of code produced per month". This is a very costly measuring unit because it encourages the writing of insipid code, but today I am less interested in how foolish a unit it is from even a pure business point of view. My point today is that, if we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as "lines produced" but as "lines spent": the current conventional wisdom is so foolish as to book that count on the wrong side of the ledger.

Putting such a great emphasis on word count strikes me as a terrible idea. Who wants to read 10,000 words? No one. What you want to read is a good story, or an interesting argument, or beautiful language. If the writing isn't any good, more words just mean more annoyance.

If you want to boost a specific metric, you almost always can. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the whole picture improves along with it.

<comment><USER7> She makes a point of saying in point three that she's taking a critical look at what she intends to write, and makes sure there's good content in the scene, or she scraps/reworks the scene.

Admittedly that doesn't say anything about the quality of her prose, but one perspective is that the sooner you're done your first draft, the more time you have for editing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _"But that's the great thing about going this fast, the novel starts to eat you and you find yourself writing any time you can just for the pure joy of it. Even better, on the days where I broke 10k, I was also pulling fantastic words-per-hour numbers, 1600 - 2000 words per hour as opposed to my usual 1500. It was clear these days were special, but I didn't know how."_

This thrill of creation, when you've got the design (momentarily?) cracked and all that's left is the small matter of putting to disk what's there in your mind already, describes some of the most exciting experiences I've had writing code.

<comment><USER9> I have a strange reaction to my epiphanies. When I've cracked the puzzle mentally and it's time to put the code in the text editor, I start getting extremely anxious. No clue why.

Edit: To clarify, I mean anxious associated with "anxiety", not "with great anticipation"

<comment> X-Istence I know the feeling, and the reason why I start feeling anxious in the same way you do is because I know that afterwards I am going to be in a lull again, that I will be bored to tears and will have the hardest time concentrating and getting done what needs to be done until there is another hard part that needs to get done at which point I am flying again...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Quote:

"Several things were immediately clear. First, my productivity was at its highest when I was in a place other than my home. That is to say, a place without internet. The afternoons I wrote at the coffee shop with no wireless were twice as productive as the mornings I wrote at home."

The internet is now the most powerful distraction in the universe.

<comment><USER11> internet is the new tv

<comment><USER12> Internet isn't the new TV until people start bragging about how they've canceled it completely and we're all idiots for remaining beholden to "Big Internet."

<comment><USER13> Pretty sure that started happening a while ago.

Here's one from 2010. [http://www.freelancewritinggigs.com/2010/03/how-i- improved-p...](http://www.freelancewritinggigs.com/2010/03/how-i-improved- productivity-by-canceling-my-home-internet-connection/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The part about knowledge applies for programming too. I have noticed myself being far more productive when I have sketched out the general approach I am going to take with a problem on a paper first before actually writing any code. Once you start coding, you get lost in the low-level intricacies and this sometimes makes you lose sight of the overall goal.

<comment><USER15> True, but don't you find the sketching out process taking whole fun out of the process? I mean, once you know what you are going to code (or write), doesn't your motivation to (mechanically) implement it go down a bit?

I am curious because it happens to me usually, and I like to discover and explore as I go along instead of doing careful initial planning.

<comment><USER16> You must be extremely good at predicting any challenges in your designs. I'll sketch out my data structures in advance, but implementing the algorithms for processing them is rarely as straightforward as anticipated. Sketching it out helps me solidify the high-level ideas - but then I like programming by the "meet in the middle" model: a combination of bottom-up and top-down. I know plenty other programmers who prefer one or the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> And it only took 3207 words to convey.

Ah, fantasy author, of course.

<comment><USER18> Fun quote from the article: "This is not a choice between ruminating on art or churning out the novels for gross commercialism (though I happen to like commercial novels)"

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The most interesting part of that post, in my opinion, was how she claimed each of her discoveries were -- trivial. That really hit home with me because I've felt the same feeling before. I've learned to stop, step back, look at the problem, and just solve it.

Thanks for a great post (even though it was written a while back).

</comment><comment><USER20> I feel it's worth mentioning that, while word count alone isn't an indicator of quality, the #1 most common hurdle most writers (and developers, and anyone pursuing a creative art) are facing is producing. Real artists ship. 10,000 words might not all be good, but you're a hell of a lot more likely to spit out a few good ones in that pile versus a pile of 500 words. Make it work, then make it work well, right?

<comment><USER21> Writers swear by practice, and the discipline that enables it. Churning out words is practice; there's a saying that you need to get the first hundred thousand words of crap out of your system before the quality of your output improves. See also NaNoWriMo — No plot? No problem! — where the winning condition is simply to turn in forty thousand words at the end of the month.

<comment><USER5> There are a few significant problems with NaNoWriMo. First, while a challenge must be challenging, it should also be _realistic_. For many writers, 1666 words a day, _every_ day, is a bit too much to expect. Second, the requirement that the project start from zero is also a deterrent—it encourages a "starter" attitude when what's needed is a "finisher". Finally, the unrealistic deadline in combination with the start-from-nothing requirement makes people throw away their perfectly good work from last year. You wrote 80 pages? Toss it!

Sure, writers need practice, but such extreme conditions are not conducive to practice at all.

<comment><USER22> > For many writers, 1666 words a day, every day, is a bit too much to expect.

Well, with NaNoWriMo you have a whole month. So some days you may in fact have 0 words, and other days you'll have 4000. But in general, the more you do this, the easier it is. Are weekly 2000 word essays from college students who don't really care about English or Sociology or whatever class the essays are for too much to expect? Maybe. I know that after a few months of blogging 1000+ word blogs on a relatively frequent basis, those school essays are trivial.

> Second, the requirement that the project start from zero is also a > deterrent—it encourages a "starter" attitude when what's needed is a > "finisher".

The idea is that at the end of the month you evaluate what you have and decide if it's worth finishing and revising. Your work is not supposed to be "perfectly good". This is the same philosophy over at the Ludum Dare 48 hour game programming competition ( <http://ludumdare.com/compo/about-ludum-dare/> ) where you start from scratch and see what you can do. Many people have taken their finished entries and continued to work on them, eventually selling them for real money. Most people don't, they abandon the project, and that's fine. They learned something along the way that will help them be a better game developer the next time around or in a context where they have more time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's interesting that the goal is to increase the amount of words written rather than their quality. I suppose which of those matter more depends on the type of work you are writing.

<comment><USER24> Don't get too hung up on words written as being considered a metric of quality - for authors, it's a metric of productivity, quality or otherwise. Unlike (most) code, a novel generally has a roughly intended length when it's started (compare harry potter 1 vs 7; the light novel vs the must-service-my-fans). It can take you a few years to reach that, or a few months.

Words per session for an author does not translate into lines of code for a coder - they're different beasts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have written a few technical books together with a co-author. From my experience "Side 1: Knowledge" is king. Before I explain a technical topic in writing I prepare every sample project beforehand. Complex sample projects are prepared in different versions (starting with the sample immediately after it has been created by an IDE, …) up to the final version. This has two benefits: I, as a writer, can offer the sample (step by step) for download to the readers so they can use them as a reference when something goes wrong - <USER2> more importantly: It helps to structure the writing process because I know the steps I have to describe. I know when something essential has happened (because I have created an additional version of the sample).

A rough outline created in advance also helps.

I am also talking to myself - a lot. Before writing something down for my book I explain it to myself.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder, could similar principles be applied to writing code?

<comment><USER27> I think it's best to focus on writing _less_ code per day.

(edit: I mean that in the sense of making your code more efficient)

<comment><USER28> "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."

\--Blaise Pascal (<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is really important-the author is talking about starting with high level, easily modifiable structures, vs starting with all the details at once.

This is exactly the same concept as doing customer validation before creating the product.

It's the same idea as whiteboarding a complicated program before starting to code.

It's the same as creating a prototype before you code out a full-fledged product.

Using a top-down approach of creating "shells" before fleshing out details has been my single biggest productivity gain over the last year, and it's definitely worth applying to nearly every intellectual aspect of your life.

</comment><comment><USER30> Late to the party, but I felt I had to share that this post directly inspired my brain (definitely my _brain_, as opposed to _me_) to create and start writing a story. The night after reading and thinking about this, I woke up with characters, a world, a plot, conflict and resolution, a whole novel (actually a whole set of them). It's been quite a week for me, especially because my sudden surge in writing fiction led me to try giving my iPhone app away for free and then suddenly finding some unexpected success there, for the first time since that app launched!

</comment><comment><USER31> _If I had scenes that were boring enough that I didn't want to write them, then there was no way in hell anyone would want to read them_

I wish more writers would recognize this. It may be the most important revelation she makes in this blog.

Paralleling 9diov's comment (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3755826>), it would be great to come up with a way to think about app development that captures its essence.

</comment><comment><USER32> Interesting. Only if we could come up with a meaningful metric for programming.

</comment><comment><USER33> Are there IDE's that track lines of code edited/added per hour, etc?

<comment><USER34> The folks at cloud9 IDE or Codecademy are in a good position to collect and expose patterns in programming efficiency.

On one's own, simply using a VCS with a high enough commit frequency would let you infer something about lines added per hour. Perhaps an editor's undo stack could also be committed to store finer-grained metrics.

With detailed metrics and impressive data analysis there's the opportunity to uncover useful insights into how we debug and learn. That's probably more than a weekend project, but worth it in potential future payout IMO.

<comment><USER21> Turns out I'm already collecting this data… Vim has recently added a persistent undo feature (enable by setting 'undodir' and 'undofile'; 'undolevel' can also be raised from the default 1000); there is a Gundo plugin that displays the undo tree like a DVCS commit graph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Am I the only one who reads about this huge inelegant approach to increasing your "productivity" by simply brute-forcing more words per day. And can't avoid to think "woa, such a huge waste, she should just use all that energy to write a bot that does all that writing and save time in the long run"?

I already cry inside when I see the same design pattern repeat itself, twice, in my code. I just have to re-factor it, to avoid waste. And she's writing 10,000 words a day, that won't make the next 10,000 any more efficient? I literally cringe in fear.

I should probably take a break.

<comment><USER24> Brute-forcing? What she was originally doing was brute forcing. She's changed to a more planned, intelligent way of writing, the opposite of brute-forcing. It's a classic 'work smarter, not harder' article.

<comment><USER35> Probably my fault that I wasn't clear. It's just an analogy to my world and how I usually deal with problems as a programmer. If I had to write 10k words a day, I would write a bot to do it. And any more planned, intelligent way of doing that, _manually_ , would just feel like bandaging a brute-force solution instead of looking for an elegant one.

Just a bad joke anyway, nothing to see here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Do you guys know a productivity application that monitors app usage and keystrokes?

<comment><USER37> Rescuetime, not sure about keystrokes though.

<comment><USER30> A hundred thanks for the Rescuetime mention. I had no idea that I could get something like this for free (lite version, good enough for me, for now) and so easily (I think it took less than a minute to download and set up).</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook is down - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/09/facebook-is-down-for-many

<comment><USER2> Intermittent outages for me. This is the first service interruption I've ever experience from them and even this I'm having trouble recreating because sometimes it works fine after refreshing.

Should be interesting to see why it's happening after they patch the bug.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not working for my account (also in SF, already logged in). Based on the TC story, it appears to be specific to a certain set of accounts.

</comment><comment><USER4> Working perfectly well here (in SF, already logged in)

</comment><comment><USER5> It is working ins SF no problem!

</comment><comment><USER6> Working perfectly from Bermuda.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not working in Bangalore, India

</comment><comment><USER7> Not working in SF.

</comment><comment><USER8> Down in Cazadero</comment>


Guns are now killing as many people as cars in the U.S - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/17/guns-are-now-killing-as-many-people-as-cars-in-the-u-s/ <comment><USER3> If I could downvote this for being a sensationalist article, I would!

Here's the operative phrase: "The convergence of the trend lines above is driven primarily by a sharp drop in the rate of motor vehicle fatalities since 1950."

It's amazing that we've improved vehicle safety in the last 60 years, yet there is zero reason to conflate that with homicides involving a firearm.

<comment><USER4> That's literally the third sentence in the article, which also mentions the rise in suicide and fall in gun homicide rates two sentences below that. The title is dry and accurate.

> yet there is zero reason to conflate that with homicides involving a > firearm.

The article doesn't conflate anything; it makes a very interesting and important comparison: vehicle deaths (which have been extensively studied for decades, with much federal regulation and other pressure to improve safety) are now on par with gun deaths (which had been banned from federal research for nearly two decades).

> It's amazing that we've improved vehicle safety in the last 60 years

Wouldn't it be nice if fewer people were dying from guns as well?

<comment><USER5> It would be nice if fewer people were dying from bullet wounds; that does not change the fact that this article's headline is misinforming.

Further, the data is misleading as well. Suicides, homicides, and accidental deaths are three different things.

On top of that, this data is collected across the US...meaning that it includes both areas where gun laws are loose, and areas where gun laws are strict. This means that the data tells us nothing about whether tougher laws would help or hurt the state of gun-related death, for reasons that should be obvious to anybody who's completed a high school science class.

<comment><USER6> > Suicides, homicides, and accidental deaths are three different things.

In terms of someone being killed by a gun, how so exactly?

<comment><USER5> Suicides are caused primarily by mental illness, and can be committed through many means other than firearms. Trying to stop suicides by removing firearms is a pointless endeavor, similar to trying to cure a cold by keeping the patient from coughing. Homicides are similar in that one can commit homicide by many means other than firearms, though firearms allow doing so from a much greater distance; however, again, the root cause is mental illness, and attacking firearms is a waste of effort compared to trying to fix the root cause. As for accidental deaths, they have nothing to do with suicides and homicides, and the solution there is to teach people how to not point the firearm at something they don't want to kill (among other safety rules, like not keeping the weapon loaded unless absolutely necessary).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Firearm suicide data: [http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm)

Firearm murder data: [http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm)

Unintentional injury death stats: [http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental- injury.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm Australian, live in Canada, am a hunter who owns a rifle and am currently visiting the US. In the last couple of months, I've seen more guns than I have in my entire life.

Two days ago I walked into a friends unlocked garage to find at least 75 guns, mostly loaded, with ammunition lying all over. Some semi-auto assault rifles, some hunting rifles, tons of handguns. All perfectly legal (and legal to not be locked up too).

I think it's sad to live in a "successful" country where regular citizens feel the need to carry a loaded weapon in public. I think that's a strong indicator something is very wrong with this society.

I'm not an expert, and obviously guns don't kill people, though it's my observation there are a LOT of readily available guns in the US, and the US has a lot of guns deaths.

As an avid hunter I would never advocate "Taking the guns away", though I do think a few things should change - I believe gun laws in the US could be somewhat similar to Canada and Australia (no semi-autos or fully autos, basically no handguns, must be locked up, must apply for a license, need license to even buy ammo, etc) and gun enthusiasts can still have appropriate guns, while the sheer number of guns would drop substantially.

Citizens already can't own surface to air missiles, so we've already established some weapons are not suitable for private citizens, now we're just talking about what falls into what category.

I know it's a very difficult thing to change, as gun ownership is the 2nd amendment and is seen as a right not a privilege.

<comment><USER9> Grecy, with all the respect I have for Australia, there is a HUGE difference culturally between your population demographics and ours. The primary reason why the Australian ban (noting that 65-80% of guns are still in the general population in your home country, and never reclaimed by the ban - <USER2> who's going to enforce that? really?) will never work here. Australia = 97% white/Caucasian, 2% Asian, 1% everything else. The US is a vastly different landscape and our population comes from ALL over the world. If I were to introduce very deeply concentrated communities of 50 other religions, 15 other race demographics, and stir the pot the debate becomes that much more problematic. Back to Australia - having a very, very homogeneous society makes it easy to pass and maintain order in comparison to what makes our country so incomparable with yours on this issue in particular, as a model to follow. Same occurs with the Japanese model - so, leaning on that won't help either. I respect you, and I believe you have a valid point on face value but when you dig into the complexity and what I consider a unique trait of the US citizen (as a positive! for our diversity!) ... we will never ban guns. It's a poverty issue here, not a gun issue.

<comment><USER10> Hi, Such a complicated issue! But if I may correct a few errors,Australia is 60% British descent not 97% which is decreasing year on year. Within the larger cities Melbourne and Sydney there are levels of diversity observationally comparable to most large US cities. Our rural cities have a much higher homogeneous population but I believe that is similar to the USA, observationally anyway.

The 65% guns still in population is an interesting statistic but as a well read Australian I am surprised I have never heard this before and suspect it is a politically motivated / chery picked statistic. Probably a better statistic if we are talking about gun violence would be the decrease in the levels of gum violence that have occurred since the buy back of guns in 1997.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Alternate title: (ex) middle class americans are killing themselves in record numbers, but we want to talk about guns.

<comment><USER12> How so? According to this article, gun violence hasn't increased much at all. Cars are safer though.

<comment><USER13> In contrast to automobile deaths, it has increased: "In 2005, gun deaths outnumbered vehicle deaths in just two states, Alaska and Maryland, plus the District of Columbia. By 2014, gun deaths were greater in 21 states plus D.C."

<comment><USER12> Again, you're not looking at the data. Gun violence hasn't increased, automobile deaths have decreased.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> guns don't kill people; people with guns kill people. They mostly just kill themselves:

"...[S]uicides account for roughly two out of every three gun deaths."

<comment><USER9> I know its like being CPT Obvious, but that is so true. Fix the problem, not the symptom.

<comment><USER15> Fixing the issues that lead a person to consider suicide is really hard. Decreasing the number of available guns is much easier and is effective.

When Australia decreased the number of guns, the suicide rate (not just gun related suicides, but all suicides) decreased by 65%.

<comment><USER16> Suicides definitely decrease with less access to guns, however many countries with gun restrictions have higher rates of suicide than the US (e.g Japan, S Korea, France, Belgium) [1]

Also suicides via firearm had been declining in Australia prior to any buyback. [2]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate) [2] [http://c5.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/australia.jpg](http://c5.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/australia.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is funny in an article about the difficulties of finding safer ways of handling guns, it is attacked in the comments for trying to talk about gun safety. You can not just say guns are only unsafe in unsafe hands but not allow research and regulation in to gun safety to figure out why. Cars benefited from research and regulation and guns can too.

<comment><USER18> I haven't read the article and am not interested in attacking the article. Some of us don't believe that others (not all) are arguing in good faith. I don't believe we'll stop talking about firearms till firearms are illegal to own. For example; I believe that if firearm related suicide was reduced to zero we'd still be arguing about firearm safety.

I'm all for increasing the amount of data we gather and research we do in relation to firearms. I'm all for making intelligent decisions based on the data we gather. From where I'm sitting we don't make decisions based on the data we have (on either side).

This largely feels like bizarro abortion argument where both sides of the abortion argument are now arguing the exact opposite when it comes to firearms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Guns are banned in Brazil and we got the highest homicide numbers in the planet.

<comment><USER9> THANK YOU! Honestly, the more data I have the more it validates the gun legislation is a bad idea. The longer view is one of social reform related to what ills the country - crime, poverty, and a replacement of liberalism/progressive thinking with Republican conservatism bridging the isle in Congress by taking on poverty like no progressive ever has.

<comment><USER19> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#By_country)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is an incredibly sensationalist and politically-motivated title. It should really read "Automobiles now immensely safer in the US". As the article's own graph shows, gun violence hasn't really changed much in the last decade and a half, but cars have gotten a lot safer!

<comment><USER20> Good point. It looks like gun violence is down ~30% since the mid 1990's.

Also, how do they define "gun violence"? Does that include accidental shootings? Suicides? From what I remember, suicides account for almost half of all deaths due to guns.

<comment><USER12> "Due to guns?" Do guns make people suicidal?

<comment><USER21> It lowers the bar before people succeed. Take some pills and many back out, pull a trigger and your generally out of options.

<comment><USER22> Freedom, by definition, includes the freedom to be stupid[1]. This is kind of the point of having a _free society_ ; the people that do helpful things that you approve of don't need to have their activities protected by law and constitution. It's the people that do things you _don 't_ approve of that need those protections.

To test if people are actually free, you study how the unpopular people and unwelcome ideas are handled. If they are restricted "for their own good", then any claim of being "free" are jut marketing.

The solution is better education and more communication (and better healthcare, including a lot more funding/availability for mental health services). Going after guns doesn't address the actual problem.

Oh, and "take some pills"? That really depends. You may survive, but hours of hypoxia from an overdose of respiratory depressants can be incredibly damaging, especially to the brain. If the overdose wasn't strong enough to cause that kind of damage, it may not even be a fatal dose. There is going to be a lot of variation, and "backing out" only apples some of the time.

[1] As someone who strongly supports the _right to die_ , suicide is a complicated subject, and is _not_ "stupid" in some cases. However, for the purposes of this thread, that is really off-topic. The "stupid" subset certainly exists and they would be the people who would benefit form the "backing out" you mention.

<comment><USER21> This seems like the 'one true way' fallacy. If doing Y is vastly more expensive and harder to pull off and nobody is trying to do Y, then it's not an excuse to avoid doing X which is a vastly cheaper partial solution.

When you include external costs guns are massively subsidized. EX: Homeowners insurance generally does not ask about gun ownership even if it increases risks.

PS: The 18th may have allowed the sale of beer, but that does not mean the government can't _discourage_ use though taxation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder how many of these guns belong to the police (and hence the murders can't be prevented by reducing civil gun ownership)...

<comment><USER24> [http://killedbypolice.net/](http://killedbypolice.net/)

You can just subtract the numbers.

<comment><USER25> This is crazy. I recently stumbled upon the numbers for gun-killings by German police, I can't believe how much these numbers diverge:

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_in_...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_in_Deutschland#Zahlen) (Second column is "number of fatal shots", third is "total number of shots fired at people")

Of course, the USA have 4 times as many inhabitants and the German numbers are only related to gun-killings, not other methods. But still, they are in a completely different dimension.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It is really dishonest to compare accidental vehicle deaths to intentional suicides and homicides via gun. One is a safety issue void of intent. The other is the result of intent to harm with the most efficient tool available.

What are we to make of this? Require anti-death features on a leathal weapon?

</comment><comment><USER27> What a crap title...

Cars don't kill people, anymore than guns do. It's the idiot behind the wheel/trigger that's doing the killing.

These pieces of metal are built to be controlled by responsible humans. They do not make decisions for you, anymore than a spoon is making the decision for me to eat another bowl of cereal!

<comment><USER28> That's kinda a useless distinction. Nobody read that title and pictured sentient guns tracking down and hunting humans. Autonomous cars doing that might almost be plausible, but realistically the same applies there.

"Gun related fatalities are currently as high as automotive related fatalities in the U.S. for the first time" might be a more precise statement, but it's a worse headline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It sounds wrong to say so but that is as it should be!

</comment><comment><USER30> "Today, suicides account for roughly two out of every three gun deaths."

It looks like 2nd amendment protects right to suicide.

</comment><comment><USER9> Redefining the conversation away from the liberal thinking, the real debate is not about guns at all. It's about what causes violence, where does it occur, and how can we stop it. The most dramatic form of this crime, occurs most often from guns - so, we need to reframe it from gun violence to violence where guns are involved. This is a 65 year old problem - the root of it, is based on the highway system in conjunction with relining that left poverty in the inner city. I note here, I am leaving out race, but it disproportionately affects (use right?) the African American population because of the redlining (why I mentioned it), thanks to racism and white privilege - debate all you want, but mobility of the white middle class demographic was huge at this time. Think baby-boomers in particular. The SOLUTION to solving a WHOLE slew of problems, which liberals ALWAYS talk about is giving social programs a go on a major scale to help disadvantaged population. Bipartisan politics always shift away from this, because of the polarizing problem of being perceived as to liberal or to conservative, etc. etc. Poverty to expand on violence is exponential and often (like 80% of the problem) involves desperation which leads to crime, disassociation with society and drives youth / people to gang membership. It's been a long deep understood problem, that gangs of any time typically lean towards drugs, alcohol, and illegal activities to maintain the syndication of crime. This includes prostitution, which affects women and can more often lead to domestic violence. So, with all _that_ said, think of guns in the mix - illegal and not, and ALLLL the gun programs in the past, where do most of the illegal guns come from - that's right, poverty stricken areas. So, I lean back to what is gun control's main problem? It's ineffective. Solve poverty ... put a CONSERVATIVE BUSINESS BASED DEMOGRAPHIC (namely young moderate Republicans) on every other street with strict oversight who are NOT prejudice to start engines of economic growth to stamp out poverty in areas where it exists. Let Liberals cry all they want, but spearhead poverty in the urban centers and you will reduce violence where guns are involved. THAT is the solution.

<comment><USER31> > _Let Liberals cry all they want_

Please don't use ideological buzz-phrases here. It lowers the quality of discussion, regardless of what flavor of ideology you prefer.</comment></comment>


Building Modular Web Apps with Rack & Sinatra - <AUTHOR> http://www.web2media.net/laktek/2010/12/22/building-modular-web-apps-with-rack-sinatra/

<comment><USER2> Interesting article, but I'm not sold on the benefits of N rack mini-apps vs a rails app w/ multiple controllers, the author even mentions that each mini-app is, in-essence, a controller. It honestly mostly just sounds like more of a pain in the ass.

I like sinatra, it's great for small apps, especially ones that do need to be embedded in other apps (resque-web, the resque control panel for example). However, I think a lot of people just end up making their own shitty version of Rails with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, using n-rack mini-apps to replace, your Rails web app is not advisable. However, on cases where you need more fine grain control and customizing Rails can be a PITA, it's better to build the app from barebone Rack & Sinatra, using necessary middleware & libraries.

Though each mini-app looks like a controller, it beyond a controller because it's self contained.

<comment><USER3> "cases where you need more fine grain control and customizing Rails can be a PITA"

I'd love to see some examples where customizing Rails is a PITA and made easier by using Sinatra.

Personally I have little trouble making Rails do what I want, since I can get at the underlying Rack objects when I need to do things at the HTTP protocol level.</comment></comment></comment>


1+1 = 0 - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/117663015413546257905/posts/gvzrNKQqqnV <comment><USER2> _Math gets simpler in a world where 1+1=0, but it doesn 't become self- contradictory and explode into nothing. We call this number system the field with 2 elements or F₂._

There are lots of fields in which 1+1=0, not just F₂...

</comment><comment><USER3> Full article: [https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2016/01/integral_octoni...](https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2016/01/integral_octonions_part_12.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> the mother of all click-baits

<comment><USER5> Better title is 2 mod 2 == 0

<comment><USER6> In the study of rings and fields, one works with operations called "addition" and "multiplication", typically written "+" and "*", but which needn't have anything to do with number addition or multiplication. "Addition" and "multiplication" have identity elements called "0" and "1", respectively, but again, they needn't have anything to do with the numbers 0 and 1.

And, in a field of characteristic 2, there's no notion of 2, since "1 + 1" is by definition "0".

<comment><USER5> Putting "The sky is black" as a title seems incorrect to me, even though the statement "The sky is black on the Moon" is true.

<comment><USER6> +, × (or ·), 0 and 1 are standard notation in algebra for an arbitrary ring's addition, multiplication, additive identity and multiplicative identity. In that context, 1 + 1 = 0 isn't automatically false. It's just a statement that holds in some rings (e.g., F_2), but not in others (e.g., Z).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is just a bit too thick for me; I imagine I can grok it with just a bit more breakdown. Is there such a thing?

<comment><USER6> The author's post is written in an abstract setting, where 0 and 1 don't mean the usual numbers 0 and 1, but rather the additive and multiplicative elements of a field. The most basic examples of fields are the rationals, the reals and the complex numbers, all of which have characteristic 0. But, for any prime number p, there exist fields of characteristic p as well. In a field of characteristic p, the result of repeatedly adding any element p times is the field's additive element. In particular, in a field of characteristic 2, "x + x = 0" for any x.

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't say they don't mean the usual numbers 0 and 1 in this setting. F_2, also called GF(2) in another standard notation, can readily be interpreted as the set containing only the natural numbers 0 and 1, together with the operations of addition modulo 2 and multiplication. In other words, everything has its usual meaning, except that addition wraps around so that you remain in the two-element set.

Finite fields are kind of fun. The body of knowledge about them is called Galois Theory and makes a pretty good entrée into the world of abstract algebra. Interested readers might want to check out the short, $8 book by Émil Artin from Dover [0] for a good introduction.

0\. [https://www.amazon.com/Galois-Theory-Delivered-University- Ma...](https://www.amazon.com/Galois-Theory-Delivered-University- Mathematical/dp/0486623424)

<comment><USER6> > I wouldn't say they don't mean the usual numbers 0 and 1 in this setting.

I was talking about arbitrary fields of characteristic 2, not necessarily F_2.

> F_2, also called GF(2) in another standard notation, can readily be > interpreted as the set containing only the natural numbers 0 and 1, together > with the operations of addition modulo 2 and multiplication.

The question whether the additive elements of two distinct fields are the same mathematical object is evil[0], since its answer isn't invariant under field isomorphism. So I'd rather consider meaningless the very idea of comparing elements of different fields.

[0] [https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/principle+of+equivalence](https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/principle+of+equivalence)

<comment><USER8> The OP specifically calls them elements of F_2. There's no harm in thinking of the elements of F_2 as the ordinary numbers 0 and 1, as they retain all the properties of those numbers that are pertinent in the restricted setting of a two-element field.

One needn't ensure that an equivalence is well founded in order to invoke it for pedagogical purposes. We don't even need to specify which structure we're talking about when we refer to "the ordinary numbers 0 and 1". It's an imprecise statement that helps beginners grasp the basic ideas, which is all the situation calls for.

<comment><USER9> > There's no harm in thinking of the elements of F_2 as the ordinary numbers 0 > and 1, as they retain all the properties of those numbers that are pertinent > in the restricted setting of a two-element field.

No one viewpoint is going to be pedagogically valuable for all listeners. catnaroek was providing an expanded breakdown which might be helpful to those who struggle with the (technically poorly founded) equivalence you're putting forward here.

> One needn't ensure that an equivalence is well founded in order to invoke it > for pedagogical purposes.

At the beginning of "The Road to Reality," Roger Penrose has a great piece about how he believes that informal use of "equivalences" in mathematics for teaching purposes is responsible for preventing a lot of otherwise very smart people from grasping basic things like fractions.

His example is that some children who struggle with normal presentations of fractions do so because on some intuitive level they understand that "1/2" is actually an equivalence class of fractions, but it's very difficult for a child to reconcile that intuition with how fractions are taught to them in many schools.

I think the lesson here is that some people learn in different ways, and for some people using informal false equivalences or hiding formal true equivalences from sight is counterproductive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is just a demonstration of how math is not a rigid language and consequence of misuse of dynamic typing...

If we define symbol '1' to be integer typed, then there won't be any F_2 related confusion. And 1 + 1 is always 2.

</comment><comment><USER11> The title should be:

        1 + 1 ≡ 0 (mod 2)

</comment><comment><USER12> Great idea for a title /sarcasm</comment>


The startup periodic table: One way to deal with scarcity of #Engineerium - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2014/06/20/the-startup-periodic-table-how-to-deal-with-scarcity-of-engineerium/

<comment><USER2> we troubleshoot everything through logs, makes sense.</comment>


Typing Game with Hacker News Headlines - <AUTHOR> http://zty.pe/?url=https://news.ycombinator.com/best <comment><AUTHOR> I learned about this game on a recent post about the Impact HTML5 Game Engine.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16984605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16984605)

It turns out the typing game (built on Impact) allows you to get source text from any URL.

For example, you can type words from a Wikipedia article:

[http://zty.pe/?url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript_...](http://zty.pe/?url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript_syntax)

[http://zty.pe/?url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closure_(co...](http://zty.pe/?url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closure_\(computer_programming\))</comment>


Jodi Kantor is answering questions on her Amazon Article - <AUTHOR> http://parlio.com/qa/jodi-kantor

<comment><USER2> So excited about this...amazing Q&A experience.</comment>


The 10 most useless graduate degrees (Computer Science) - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-10-most-useless-graduate-degrees-2015-2?utm_content=buffer9d409&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer#9-computer-science-2

<comment><USER2> Lists like these are what's useless</comment>


Show HN: nomzsavior, a browser app to track groceries and prevent food waste - <AUTHOR> http://nomzsavior.us/

<comment><USER2> * Handle invalid input: if I say I bought my pork on 'lol' it tells me I have NaN days to eat it.

* I had to experimentally derive the purpose of the date field to mean "that's when it expires". No UI hint there.

* Why won't your app let me eat something that hasn't expired? Maybe I just want to eat my pork that will never go bad because I said it expires on lol.

* I can't figure out how I'd track things I already bought, as opposed to what I bought today. Does that even matter? I think it won't but that's based on my guess for what the date is.

Concept is cool, at least.

It would be nice if you could suggest & derive expiration dates -- if I buy "ground beef", maybe suggest "refrigerated ground beef", "frozen ground beef", ... and suggest an expiration date based on what the product is.

And it would be _killer_ if you were able to suggest recipes based on what you have/what is expiring. I'd pay for that, no joke.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

Thanks for the useful insight.

* As the app is supposed to be used on mobile phones, the date field should pop a calendar on focus, which _normally_ doesn't give the user the opportunity to screw around. This field needs validation, but it's not primordial at the moment.

* Nice idea, thanks.

* On a phone, you can only select a date starting from today, so my Android doesn't let me try it. It seems buggy on desktop browsers, I'll check that out.

The two last ideas are awesome, but sadly the time won't let me implement them.

Regarding the names suggestions, a cache for food names is implemented, I just need to connect it to the app.

<comment><USER2> Ah, that makes sense - I should've said "I'm trying all of this from Firefox". And to think that _I_ have fussed at _other people_ for writing bad bug reports ;)

I'll probably take a look at this on my iPhone. As someone that wastes tons of food, this definitely interests me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you're interested by this application, please try it on a mobile device.

It was not written with desktop browsers in mind, which means it can behave incorrectly on them.</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you get data? - <AUTHOR>

I am interested in playing around with popularity algorithms, graph theory algorithms, trying out some map coloring algorithms, etc...<p>All of these require data though, and I'm not sure where to get it.  So I was wondering if people on HN have good places to get data. <comment><USER2> Usually the governing body that oversees that industry will have tons of data. In the US, there is a governing body for everything, either a gov't department, or a similar organization. I'm not sure what type of data you need, but here's where I have gotten data to work with:

Population data - US Census (<http://www.census.gov/main/www/access.html>) Food data - USDA (<http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=8964>) SAT stats - College Board ([http://professionals.collegeboard.com/data-reports- research/...](http://professionals.collegeboard.com/data-reports- research/sat))

I could go on and on...try a search for {subject} statistics and you should get some ideas

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazon offers public datasets at <http://aws.amazon.com/publicdatasets/>

They include census data, as well as a dump of freebase's data (which mirrors things like wikipedia). They also have some genome data.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a good place to start: <http://theinfo.org/get/data>

</comment><comment><USER5> I treat the www as one giant database...

The nice thing about that is that it is all real world data, so quite messy. That gives you a good grip on what it takes to massage data before it becomes usable, and it also gives you some control over the level of abstraction.

</comment><comment><USER6> I asked a similar question here recently and got a number of valuable links, see thread here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=764982>

</comment><comment><USER7> Try <http://infochimps.org/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow... boatloads of data. Thanks all!</comment>


Max's privacy war brings Facebook to heel  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/maxs-privacy-war-brings-facebook-to-heel-20111027-1mksg.html

<comment><USER2> While it's good to see online privacy issues getting more attention, I think that the enduring message that people take away from these articles shouldn't be " _Facebook is evil_ ", but rather " _I should be more aware of the privacy of my data_ ". (Although, if Facebook is breaking the law, that's a little different.)

After all, these issues aren't specific to Facebook. They, and companies like them, are collecting information that has been voluntarily surrendered to them in the first place, whether explicitly by you (creating an account, messaging people), by others (friends tagging you, inviting you to events), or implicitly (visiting websites with "like/share" buttons). People need to be aware of these issues across _all_ facets of their online life, not just the policies of a single company.

<comment><USER3> Facebook isn't evil. Perhaps they're a bit naïve, thinking that storing all this data is ok, but it might not be.

Whenever Max' story comes up, someone usually comments that using Facebook is completely voluntarily, and people should just not use it if it bothers them what kind of data Facebook collects and how it uses them.

Whether or not it's voluntary is completely besides the point here.

First of all, as gerggerg mentioned in a comment here, it's not voluntary if you don't know about it (i.e. what data Facebook collects and what they do with it).

Second, if a company provides me with a service, I expect them to do it in accordance with the law. So, when Facebook provides us with their services, I really don't see why I shouldn't be able to request the information that Max has requested from them. It is actually my right to use their service, and then ask them to provide me with the data they have stored about me. Of course, Facebook will _also_ expect to run their service in accordance with the law, and be ready to hand over data when it's requested.

It's not like this is something we Europeans suddenly pulled out of a hat, and I'm sure Facebook knew about it. Any company that decides to open offices in another country will of course take time to learn about laws that affect their business. We've had laws for this for a while, actually, and we learn about how we can request our personal data from companies in school (at least I did).

But don't feel bad for the companies that have to comply to this law - it's not like all they do is sit around providing data to people requesting it. Most people don't actually request it!

<comment><USER4> > First of all, as gerggerg mentioned in a comment here, it's not voluntary if > you don't know about it (i.e. what data Facebook collects and what they do > with it).

Well, that's not some secret. They collect every single thing you send them and process it as they like internally. Only third-party access to the data is limitted. Assuming anything less not only from Facebook but any other company is likely to surprise you in a bad way.

<comment><USER3> > They collect every single thing you send them and process it as they like > internally.

No, this is wrong.

They are not allowed to do whatever they want with it. In Europe there are laws on what companies can do with your data. For instance, see the Data Protection Directive: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Under European law, consumers have the right to request a record of the personal information held by a company."

Given that Facebook's international headquarters is in Ireland, does the law also apply to Facebook when it deals with US users?

<comment><USER6> <http://www.facebook.com/terms.php?ref=pf>

"If you are a resident of or have your principal place of business in the US or Canada, this Statement is an agreement between you and Facebook, Inc. Otherwise, this Statement is an agreement between you and Facebook Ireland Limited. References to "us," "we," and "our" mean either Facebook, Inc. or Facebook Ireland Limited, as appropriate."

Wonder what's valid for me. When I created the account I wasn't US resident, now I am.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Unfortunately "1222 pages" is a pretty clumsy measure of data, making this hard to really get a mental handle on. I'd be more interested in a byte or word count.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. Look at the margins on the pages in that picture...they look like they're about 2 inches.

<comment><USER9> The saddest part is how much easier it would have been to provide a byte count than to print those out and count the reams he went through (if he even did so)

<comment><USER7> @jcitme

You've been hellbanned for nearly 5 months.

Also, I don't see how bytecounts could possibly be harder than anything else. You'd see it before you even managed to get the (probably multiple) files open to print to pdf.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What an unimportant measure of data. I bet a lot of that '1222 pages,' or up to 700mb (based on an average CD), is timestamps and other metadata on where and when he poked, commented, updated, and deleted his friends, photos, and statuses. You know, the sort of petty activity that Facebooking is mostly composed of. It doesn't really add up like that. Most of it never matters a week later.

What would have been more interesting is the KIND of data he got. Like, to what extent have they been tracking him physically? Today I myself updated to the Timeline profile and was surprised at the addition of a Map section beside my photos with 70 markers of where Facebook knows I've been. Looking through them though I remember authorizing the tracking in all of the ones I saw, and it's mostly just at school and at home.

Did the data include the websites he visits, speaking lately of the 3rd-party tracking cookies that the Like buttons got so much attention for? His level of friendship with his various friends? They have algorithms for this, and the extent to which they analyze a user is more interesting than how endowed their database is. Unfortunately the real juicy stuff probably isn't even there because the article says Facebook isn't required legally to provide any 'analytical procedures' that they run.

I bet most of that 1222 pages is just noise.

</comment><comment><USER10> > said the spokesman, who did not give a name in keeping with company policy.

So strange...</comment>


Show HN: I made a personalized software engineering newsletter sent every 3 days - <AUTHOR> https://getgood.codes/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys, author here. So I made this because I like to read good content but just hate the browsing part so much. The going-down-the-rabbit-hole part for me is inconvenient. Tried using app like Pocket, which is nice, but you still feel like going down the same hole. So I am really interested to know what you guys think about this personalized newsletter.</comment>


PragProg CoffeeScript Book Released - <AUTHOR> http://pragprog.com/book/tbcoffee/coffeescript

<comment><USER2> Well, that's one hell of a way to find out about what a college acquaintance has been up to for the past year or so.

Congrats, Trevor!

</comment><comment><USER3> To round out the reading list:

<http://arcturo.com/library/coffeescript/>

<http://autotelicum.github.com/Smooth-CoffeeScript/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Trevor won me as a customer when he personally answered and solved my coffeescript problem on stackoverflow.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm the author.

Writing about CoffeeScript has been a great experience. I'll continue to spread the word about the language with articles, conference talks, and perhaps screencasts—stay tuned.

It's worth mentioning that this is also the first book in print to offer substantial coverage of Node.js. I'm pretty happy about that. It's really, really cool to be able to write both the front and back ends of an app in the same language.

</comment><comment><USER6> I pre-ordered at Amazon quite awhile ago. Three days ago they changed the estimated arrival date from 10/5-8 to 9/7-12. If the book is actually being released tomorrow then hopefully Amazon will update the date again.. it would be sad if I had to wait six more weeks.

<comment><USER5> I strongly suspect you'll get your book sooner than that. I've asked my editors at PragProg repeatedly why the Amazon release date is so far in the future; it seems to be some sort of glitch. People who ordered their print copies directly from PragProg have already started receiving them.

<comment><USER6> I hope you're right. I should have bought directly from Pragmatic but the convenience of Amazon won out.

ps: congratulations on the book

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anybody else really bothered by this?

         CoffeeScript is JavaScript done right.

Does CoffeeScript somehow fixes all the quirks of the javascript language that we've grown s/to love/with?

<comment><USER5> Pardon a bit of advertising rhetoric. Let me make a couple of more precise statements:

1\. Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript, dislikes its syntax (he was famously told to "make it look like Java" even though its semantics are derived from Smalltalk and Lisp) and has become a fan of CoffeeScript. He blurbed the book and, as CTO of the Mozilla corporation, has been pushing to develop tools for debugging languages that compile to JavaScript within Firefox.

2\. CoffeeScript doesn't fix all of JavaScript's quirks. Roughly half of what you'll find at wtfjs.com is applicable to CoffeeScript. (Most of the other half involves `==`.) As JS gets faster, it'll become more practical to use JS as a VM to run languages that offer niceties like every number being a BigDecimal. But for now, CoffeeScript is an excellent compromise: Fewer quirks and much less boilerplate than JS, with little to no loss in efficiency when used properly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just ordered it because I used coffeescript on a project with good results. But by the time I get it, read it, and write a review on Hacker news this post will no longer be on the front page. :'-( sad

<comment><USER9> But people will still find it through search engines if you write it up on your blog and link to it from here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Congrats Trevor!</comment>


Is your city ready for electrical vehicles? - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/04/14/us-cities-electrical-vehicles-ford/

<comment><USER2> Is it just me or is venturebeat buying into this whole green movement a little to much? They featured a article about natural gas a week ago that was grossly inaccurate and was devoid of any research. It was upsetting because I really like Matt and his operation.</comment>


Ad Blockers Will Change How Ads Are Sold - <AUTHOR> http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/11/09/ad-blockers-will-change-how-ads-are-sold/ <comment><USER2> They are still in the denial and fight-back stages. He says: "The study should also confirm that people who are ideologically opposed to advertising are a minority compared to the ones who have installed an ad blocker simply because digital promotions and tracking have become unbearable".

This shows that they still don't see the big picture - that it's not just in digital media that ads have completely crossed the line, it's everywhere, from TV, radio and print, to billboards, jumbo-trons and corporate names on structures and landmarks. They are still clinging to the idea that they can go back to good times if they just reform some of their practices.

This is the end result of one group (publishers) relying on a revenue stream (advertisers) that destroys their own service and credibility. They still don't understand this.

<comment><USER3> I was with some friends travelling to central London recently, and we exited the tube system at Tottenham Court Road station. This station is currently undergoing refurbishment as part of the new Crossrail extension, and you now leave through a recently constructed exit.

On the way up the escalators, we all commented to each other how the station felt considerably different to other tube stations. It felt better, nicer, more pleasant. This was strange, as the fit and finish is no different to other new tube stations. Eventually one of my friends realised the difference: there was no advertising.

I think we underestimate the mental load that advertising clutter causes us, even when it's merely in the background. We're so used to it that it's not until it's gone that we realise how burdensome it actually is.

<comment><USER4> I actually quite like adverts in the underground... in London I always look at the posters when on an escalator to see if any shows (musicals/plays) look interesting, and I still enjoy looking at adverts on the Paris metro now I live here, again mostly for shows/art exhibitions/music (but also partly to absorbe French culture).

I work in marketing / previously worked in more direct advertising, yet most of the time find adverts annoying. But not on the underground.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. Tube ads are the only ones I'm happy to view as they're mostly for museums, galleries or theatres.

Otherwise I actively avoid advertising wherever possible – I haven't watched broadcast TV or commercial radio in years and block all the things online.

Interestingly, the other day I was on the tube and every single ad was for web-based services. No physical products or pre-Internet companies at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > We know the oldest segment of the internet doesn't block ads very much. By > contrast, the rate will skyrocket for a younger, more tech-savvy crowd.

That's so contrary to my own experience, I wonder what evidence they used for that.

It's also interesting that they see the 'kind' of ads as a problem, rather than the industry and its way of applying technology as a whole. Ads are a bunch of payload requiring bandwidth (sometimes in short supply), cpu power (and so reduce battery life), waste the recipients time, have been used to spread malware and viruses and are used to track people and build profiles on them. None of those factors have anything at all to do with the content or the format of the ads, and each of those by itself is a very valid reason to install an adblocker, combined the decision is an absolute no-brainer.

For a day or so I used chrome (where I normally use firefox but that browser is currently occupied with a rather long running macro) and my chrome install does not have an adblocker. It's absolutely incredible how much worse the situation has gotten since I started using adblockers.

The advertising industry _is_ the problem, not the ads themselves and I fail to see how they're going to get us out of this mess short of running into a very solid wall.

The fact that the largest advertising company on the planet makes a browser is telling, that may be in the long run the only way ads will survive, by being tied directly to a browser manufacturer which presumably will give them some way to force ads onto your screen. Personally I can't wait for the implosion of the advertising industry, sooner is better. Then we can go back to a web that 'just works' instead of this continuous barrage of commercial junk.

If the web were a radio station we'd be listening to 10 second music fragments interrupted with 12 minute advertising blocks.

<comment><USER7> >Personally I can't wait for the implosion of the advertising industry, sooner is better. Then we can go back to a web that 'just works' instead of this continuous barrage of commercial junk.

100% agree.

Also, pretty sure I'm not the only one who has started boycotting a product only because it's barrage of advertising is annoying.

<comment><USER8> > _Also, pretty sure I 'm not the only one who has started boycotting a > product only because it's barrage of advertising is annoying._

You're not the only one. In my case, I for instance decided to never use Groupon because of a barrage of pink and yellow ads I got once (before someone asks again - I'm pretty pretty sure this was _way_ before I've heard any controversy about Groupon).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > more than eight out of ten admitted using an ad blocker

As if we should feel guilty about it.

<comment><USER6> Hey, at least he spread the knowledge to the remaining two.

We're a step or two away from getting internet content delivered as one giant .png file with the ads embedded in the page and an oldfashioned clickable map (remember those?) for links and advertising.

That's one way of delivering advertising that can't be blocked that I can think of.

<comment><USER10> > We're a step or two away from getting internet content delivered as one > giant .png

Well at least it would be a bit more secure ;) but they won't do this. They'll first block users that use ad-blockers then they will just do some sponsored article with brands or just paywall their news sites.

Either way it's the end of ad networks as we know them.

<comment><USER6> > They'll first block users that use ad-blockers then they will just do some > sponsored article with brands or just paywall their news sites.

That requires a website _publisher_ to act against their visitors. Now, some websites will no doubt do this but they're signing their own deathwarrant with a strategy like that. The advertising industry is relatively powerless when it comes to adblocking, the first ad network that blocks access to the pages of the sites it is running on for users of adblockers will surely see a pretty steep drop in the number of websites they're still allowed to serve.

So only publishers have that power (and I'm fine with that, if they wish to force me to consume their ads I'm perfectly ok with getting my content elsewhere, it's not as if there is a shortage of content on the internet).

Adblockers are forcing a whole class of websites into a variation of the freemium model where the base service is free but only a small percentage is paying because they are still consuming ads. The bigger the ratio between free:paid users the higher the pressure on the remainder to monetize. This will in turn drive some of the remainder towards installing an ad-blocker themselves and so on.

This won't end well for the advertising industry, but it is self inflicted wounds for the most part. If advertisers had not structurally overstepped the bounds of the reasonable then adblockers would have never existed in the first place. Sloppy oversight on what ads they allowed to be served up didn't help either.

If they really wanted to fix this situation they could simply stop digging the hole any deeper.

An actionable plan would look something like this:

\- immediately stop tracking and profile building, announce this very loudly and _stick to it_ also in the future.

\- strict oversight on the kind of payloads they allow to be sent out

\- get rid of the crazy layering of the industry, stick to a simple 3 party model, publisher, advertising agency, consumer (this is a very complex step, agencies do not have the in-house knowledge required to actually serve ads) and take responsibility towards publishers and consumers for the ads served.

Lots of people would lose their jobs, lots of websites would likely go under but the industry as a whole would survive. If they can't make a move like this they are in fact milking the cow until it dies and die it will, their actions to date have only accelerated the process.

One of the problems that is hard to address is that the advertising industry is in an arms race internally, if one party starts using a new and even more invasive technique to outperform its competitors it gets all the business and this then results in adoption of that technique across the board.

And all this to (sarcasm mode on) 'improve your online experience and serve you more relevant content'.

<comment><USER11> The problem is this would be admitting that the big lie (user targeting produces relevant more effective ads) is a big lie.

User targeting destroys the social fear of missing out mechanic -- nobody believes advertising affects them, but everyone believes that advertising affects the other guy. I have to pay attention to untargeted ads because anything they claim is something "everyone knows", even if it's a lie.

But once retargeting pulls back the curtain on the wizard the user realizes that the ads they're seeing are individually selected just for them. Digital ads drop from (pretending to be) a primary cultural information source to the equivalent of a pushy door-to-door salesman, individually lying to you.

But if you admit that all user targeting does is goose vanity metrics while damaging the value the ad inventory generates, most of the jobs in the digital ads industry evaporate overnight -- including most of the ad-adjacent staff at both the publishers and the brands -- so everyone is incentivized to keep the charade up.

<comment><USER6> I think retargeting was the turning point. Up to there the ad industry could get away with what they were doing without the users wising up. But once retargeting became the norm people realized that they are being targeted individually and a whole raft of them switched on adblockers in response. Nothing more irritating than an ill-timed retargeting campaign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's not the website providers business what I do with the bits reaching my network. I choose to display and render what I want, and they choose to deliver what they want. It's not complicated. That is the most fundamental principle of information technology. One decides what to send, another one decides what to receive.

If a company dies because of adblockers, let the company die. That's economy.

<comment><USER13> In the music industry, technology and economy have worked hand in hand to 'let record companies die'. The result is that most projects nowadays are home- made, resulting in a generalized cacophony where it's so hard to find quality content that people are giving up. This is what's going to happen here as well. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Hopefully this will make people go back to real-world local structures, which are going to be profitable again.

<comment><USER6> > resulting in a generalized cacophony where it's so hard to find quality > content that people are giving up.

I've never had an easier time finding great new music.

<comment><USER14> I didn't understand this either, the quality and diversity of music has never been better

<comment><USER13> I can understand that somebody being exposed to this idea for the first time would be dubious. If you'd rather hear it from some of the world's top creators, check out presspauseplay.com.

<comment><USER13> @icebraining: I never said that idea was new, all I said was that apparently everybody hasn't been exposed to it. There are a few different opinions in this documentary, from this arrogant writer who got famous with the old model and is now in love with the new one because he can deal directly with his audience, to art lovers who are humbly searching for new ways, in theory or in practice. But this isn't the subject here, and you don't provide much to support your point of view yourself, so I'll stop replying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I use uBlock because it does more for my security than my antivirus suite. Fix that problem and we can talk about everything else.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's interesting how problem-solving paradigms can lead somebody to places they probably wouldn't go otherwise.

 _"... In a wide study to be conducted globally in the coming months, Google will try to ascertain what exactly motivates a web user to install an ad blocker..."_

I have many friends who train people. We agree on some things and disagree on others. What I find among some of my trainer friends is that if I disagree with them, the problem must be that I haven't been "trained" enough. They use training to change the world. If the world doesn't look like it's supposed to, then time to do some more training.

Google are data folks. If their business model doesn't work any more? Must gather more data.

Why do people install ad blockers? If we could only identify the top 3 drivers, then make some kind of short-term trade with them to prevent this behavior (The kid of short-term trade that looks good in the beginning but sucks for the user later on.)? We can fix this.

We must be careful that we don't approach problems already knowing what the solution is. This is especially tough in an established and crazy profitable industry. If your tool is to give people free stuff while collecting data to present them with ads, when presented with a problem, odds are that your solution is going to involve giving people free stuff while collecting data to present them with ads.

<comment><USER6> It's called 'institutional blindness' and the advertising industry will go down in history as the poster child for that particular affliction.

Now let's hope they don't take a whole raft of publishers with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _A modern news team should be financially rewarded for its contribution to traffic progression as well audience quality and retention performance_

Clickbait forever!

The only way to end the arms race is to go back to simple display ads: you get a JPG of a fixed size on the article, served from the same webserver. No tracking, no javascript, no flash, no audio, no animation.

<comment><USER18> I too was extremely surprised by this assertion. It would make more sense if he replaced "traffic progression" by "subscriptions progression"...?

<comment><USER19> That's a subtle hint to the extended corruption spayed by advertising. Publishers' jargon is centered around CTR, CPM, and traffic, because of their limited understanding of the technology powering their revenue. They grasp at whatever simplified concepts other non-technical persons showed down their throat (like "big data"), to keep their illusion of power and stability.

Hopefully it will be over very soon.

<comment><USER6> And they optimized for those numbers at the expense of everything else and now they're somewhat surprised there is a counterforce to their optimizations.

<comment><USER19> I have witnessed these "optimizations" taking place in the previous ad-tech- startup I worked at. The story goes like this, everything was (almost) fine, the product worked and it wasn't obtrusive. But, the numbers (CTR, conversions, etc..) were _a bit_ low, and since the revenue of the company were based on these metrics ('cause they are easy to collect and analyse), someone was tasked to find ways to increase them. Of course, this is where everything goes through the door, because the _easiest_ way to increase CTR/conversions is by adopting shady techniques like almost-nude-model or underwear pictures, pop-ups (@#$&%$#!), modals, etc..

I can see multiple reasons why advertising like that is doomed to fail. First is the business model; pricing for performance is not an option. Second is the people; you gotta get rid of the nagging layer of incompetence/ignorance of the ones making decisions. Last, the more business advertisers are losing, the more they are using shady techniques.

In the end, better let the whole industry crash hard and fast, so we can build something better after.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A comment on that page:

 _Publishers cannot blame advertisers 100% for this situation.

As an advertiser, I tried several times to offer, less intrusive ads in exchange for lower CPM. Publishers never, not even once, would be willing to reduce their price by even a penny in exchange for friendlier ads._

I think without any irony.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wish I could just directly pay web content creators the equivalent ad revenue that my pageviews would generate.

<comment><USER21> I always wondered why Google didn't build a micropayment system for that. But then again, that might blow up in their face.

<comment><USER22> They're testing it:

[https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/](https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/)

<comment><USER6> I don't want to pay google. I want to pay the _publisher_ directly. All this will do is give google even more power over publishers which is the last thing we need.

<comment><USER23> More power? The already use countless google products, AdSense being where they currently serve ads from. Publishers don't lose power. Google relies on publishers for revenue, I don't see them purposefully hurting a publisher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There's something strange about this.

We're at a point where ad blockers are used by a majority of the first parts of the audiences. The article and the talks it references all seem to be about how to slow down or halt the adoption of ad blockers so it won't get that to that point.

But we have reached that point already.

<comment><USER25> I don't think we can safely suggest a majority of media consumers on the internet are using ad blockers.

As the author states, we should be wary of most stated statistics on blocker usage. Neither the 25% nor 90% numbers he gives represent the global internet user base broadly enough for such an assertion.

<comment><USER24> My statement wasn't about the world, only about the existence of such demographic groups. I was thinking about groups such as "urban young German laptop owners".

<comment><USER25> > We're at a point where ad blockers are used by a majority of the first parts > of the audiences.

Ok. I guess if that meant urban young German laptop owners I was misinterpreting.

Audiences of content, in general, really aren't yet close to being a majority ad block users.

Of course, the trend will continue if media companies continue as they are or become more belligerent. I don't think it's a stretch to imagine a browser manufacturer partnering with / buying an ad blocker to install as default. Then we'll certainly see these majorities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. This article is now on page 3 of HN, apparently flagged to death.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a filter based on the total number of votes and the ratio of comments to votes, which I think this just tripped. It's designed to reduce the occurrence of front-page 'flame wars'.

<comment><USER6> You were correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This thread dropped from number 3 to number 97 in 3 minutes right after I made the Google comment.

Censorship at its finest.</comment>


Facebook Isn't Telling the Whole Story About Partnering with Data Brokers - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/facebook-isnt-telling-whole-story-about-its-decision-stop-partnering-data-brokers <comment><USER2> They did this with the new privacy dashboard, too. They made it sound as if they built it in response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when they had already announced in January that they will release that privacy dashboard to comply with the GDPR. Plus, they've been working on it for a year.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy- eu/faceb...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy-eu/facebook- makes-privacy-push-ahead-of-strict-eu-law-idUSKBN1FI0DO)

[https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/03/privacy- shortcuts/](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/03/privacy-shortcuts/)</comment>