A unique Judaeo-Urdu manuscript, Or.13287 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2017/07/a-unique-judaeo-urdu-manuscript-or-13287.html <comment><USER2> This is a fascinating synthesis of cultures.

A Shia Muslim king gave patronage to a Jewish artist who created a syncretic work based on Hindu themes (the celestial court of Indra) in a language derived from Hindustani and a script loaned from Farsi. It provides a glimpse at a past when cultures were collaborating with each other freely to create great art work, without animosity. I wonder how many more such unique works will be re-discovered and brought to light.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure we can/should assume a lack of _animosity._ In most cases, these things exist alongside animosity. Human culture is very complex and the story is usually multifaceted.

We all recently revolted against the last empires and quasi-empires in favour of nationalism. It's hard to say it was unjustified, and it often came with democracy and other aspects of liberty and liberalism. But empires have played complex roles in human history. They were oppressors and enslavers, but also collectors of culture and scholarship. Enablers of travel, commerce and cultural exchange. They brought disparate cultures together, voluntarily and involuntary.

Massive empire building in many cases left culturally rich legacies. The Mongolian empire opened east-west exchange of ideas and contact between scholarly, religious and artistic culture throughout all Eurasia. Some credit it with enabling cultural movements like the Italian Renaissance. This was alongside atrocities. Look up the conquest of Baghdad.

The Baghdadi Jews the article references have a long history with empires. The community started 2700 years ago, when the King of babylon conquered Judea and shipped Jerusalem's elite to the Bagdad area. The enormous Persian empire conquered Babylon and they were at the center of a cultural superpower. Then Alexander's Greeks Came, then Romans, Parthians, Caliphs, Khans, Seljuks, Ottomans... Many Emperors. Much blood. Much art.

<comment><USER4> > We all recently revolted against the last empires and quasi-empires in > favour of nationalism

"We all" is an overstatement.

<comment><USER3> An ounce of artistic license,please. We (the vast majority of us) can't caveat everything. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


'Good news day' decimates website's readership - <AUTHOR> http://m.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-30318261 <comment><USER2> This result (fewer readers for 'good news') isn't particularly surprising. People read the news to find things they need to take action on, things that interrupt their normal life flow and tell them what to do. I read a paper that called it the Utopia Paradox[1] which described the situation where all needs are met, people cease to pursue ideas. I would find when starting a new job and leaving behind an email inbox full of demands on my time that the sheer choice of things to do is initially overwhelming.

So when you stop giving people things to worry about, and I think they use it as a crutch to organize their day, they are at a loss. Too often news is "Its going to rain" therefore I need to have my raincoat tomorrow, "Idiots are going to win the election", therefore I need to vote, "Kids are getting kidnapped", therefore I need to protect my kids. But when the news is, "All the trains are on time!" what help does that give you in planning your life? None. And in fact you have now "wasted" time on reading an article that hasn't helped you figure out anything you need to prepare for or worry about, so that are only so many more minutes left in the day to prepare.

It's a very strange cycle. You can play it the other way though, you can both report good news _and_ give planning data, like "The trains are all on time and cars are less reliable than they were, consider changing your plan to use the train tomorrow." That is the sort of positive news I'd prefer we got, "Here is what is going on and here is some action you can take to help it continue and/or mitigate it."

[1] I suspect there are several alternate uses of this name though.

<comment><USER3> I can't recall a single time, ever, that the news gave me actionable information that I didn't already get from other sources. Basically, when you subtract all the feel-good stories and all the scare stories, what is left is the weather, information that affects my commute and extraordinary events. The weather i get from looking out the window in the morning. If something affects my commute i have to try to make it anyway, so knowing ahead of time just gives me more stress. And extraordinary events will be told to me in other ways.

Taking your examples: (1) nobody should need to tell you to protect your kids, (2) you should always vote, (3) you can see whether you need a raincoat in the morning.

Basically, the actionable content of the news is exactly zero. When i watch it, i don't expect to take action, i expect to be informed about the zeitgeist so i can gossip along with everybody else. We like to gossip about bad things more than good things, so if the news tells us only good things, it's not giving us what we want.

<comment><USER4> Not sure how you are going to find out the tornado weather in Chicago by looking out your window in New York, prior to flying out. Or how you are going to find out about a major traffic blockage on your commute route by looking at the traffic in your street.

Or even more extreme, how your are going to ask your nurse daughter to take extra precautions because there is a serial rapist of nurses in your city, without listening to any news.

Almost by definition, news is something out of the ordinary. I would suspect that news plays a far bigger role in your life than you seem to want to admit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Their readership might not enjoy 'good news', if you build up readers who enjoy a negative story, then putting 'good news' may put people off.

For example, I actually come to HN because in general there are 'happier' or at least less depressing stories on HN than negative. If all of the sudden this changed, I probably would visit it significantly less.

Plus, I would like to point out that Russian's (or any society for that matter), may have react different to happy stories.

<comment><USER6> > For example, I actually come to HN because in general there are 'happier' or > at least less depressing stories on HN than negative. If all of the sudden > this changed, I probably would visit it significantly less.

Same here. I actively avoid reading the local and world news. I didn't even know about the Ferguson case until starting talking to me about it. I assume that if there's something really important happening in the world that I need to know about, I'll either see it on Facebook or hear about it from a family member.

I love interesting articles about math, science, technology, music, and other thought-provoking ideas though. That's why I visit HN.

<comment><USER7> Besides, if there _is_ something really important going on, it will show up on HN too. We just filter out all the day to day negative noise that fills the mainstream news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's a whole industry on the net of pimping "fear porn." Sometimes the fears are even complete fiction, like Fukushima causing a cancer epidemic on the US West Coast. These sites are click farms, and some of them make a lot of money by doing nothing more than aggregating and reprinting blog articles with a fear or outrage slant. They generate massive traffic in spite of their horrible quality.

"If it bleeds it leads" is a saying because it absolutely works. There seems to be a huge attention bias toward negative information.

<comment><USER9> Wait, I know that site... Oh yeah, drudge.

<comment><USER8> Drudge is one, but there are thousands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They certainly biased their own readership by announcing the editorial agenda ahead of time. It would have been far more interesting to do this unannounced and then inspect the results. Given how nearly universally conditioned the general population is towards "negative" news people probably just took this to mean no "real" news would be published that day.

</comment><comment><USER11> It is also possible that by emphasizing negative news they have built an audience that is seeking negative news and it may be an entirely different audience who wants to read the positive stuff. Spend one day on positive news, they lose their core audience without having a chance to reach people who are truly interested in positive news.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nobody ever rubbernecks an open road.

Is it possible that the world we live in is so nice that almost all of the out-of-the-ordinary things that happen are bad things? People still cheer on news like the Philae landing, but highway overpasses being completed on time is the very incarnation of met expectations.

<comment><USER13> People don't rubberneck an open road because there's nothing human happening there. People certainly rubberneck when wedding processionals go past. Parades are another example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think this is less some grand psychological revelation about the human race and more a simple failure of the newspaper. Those weren't good news, those simply weren't news at all.

I don't know the original articles, but if the headlines in the BBC story are in any kind representative, then I have my doubts that the failure of the whole operation was really because people only want to read bad news.

For a basic definition of "news item", I would require that it tells me something I don't already know - or at least don't assume is the norm. Stuff like "you can use the public road system to commute to work today" or "municipal construction project is still on time as of today" does not fit that definition. (Okay, maybe the last one kinda does)

I think in general it is possible to make "sellable" headlines from good news as long as they are in some way actually relevant for the reader: Everyone would like to be informed about some new tax laws that allow them to save money. The HN frontpage itself also frequently contains new, positive developments from tech or science the top ranks.

</comment><comment><USER15> Something that popped into my head while reading this.

I am curious if the result would be different in a country other than Russia. In particular any country that doesn't have a recent history of heavy handed censorship and oppression.

>"No disruption on the roads despite snow,"

>an underpass would be built in time for Victory Day.

These seem eerily like the kind of headlines you would get in an environment where newspapers are forbidden from commenting on negative events. I wonder whether Russia's recent history makes people more averse to this kind of reporting than might be the case elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's kind of ironic actually - they follow up a day of purely good news with perhaps the most depressing news of all: human beings are hardwired for negativity :)

</comment><comment><USER17> A lot of conclusions being made based on one Russian website's experience for one day.

</comment><comment><USER18> | it lost two-thirds of its readers

The headline writer ought to look up the definition of decimate.

<comment><USER19> this is the worst type of pedantry. Wrong or right, you're being obnoxious.

<comment><USER20> and brings nothing to the debate but distraction. Who cares if it was 1/10th or 6/10ths, the point remains the same. In fact if anything the headline _understates_ the point by using decimate.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: The one thing in software development that should improve but has not?? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It should be easy to write correct programs.</comment>


Vent.js – jQuery inspired events library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ealush/vent <comment><AUTHOR> You don't need all of jQuery toady. My attempt was to bring you the the part that I think is still most needed - without all the bloat.</comment>


Om Malik to interview Paul Graham on stage in LA - <AUTHOR> http://omis.me/2010/01/18/in-la-hanging-with-mr-g/

<comment><USER2> I'm in LA but at $397 a ticket I think I'll sit this one out.

<comment><AUTHOR> I figure its a better deal than the ones that cost 1000+ for an early bird ticket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love both Om and pg, so this should be an interesting discussion.</comment>


The Next Chapter – moot retires from 4chan - <AUTHOR> https://www.4chan.org/news?all#118 <comment><USER3> The problem I see with his retiring is one I've experienced on reddit as a moderator.

When someone higher than you "retires" or goes otherwise inactive, yet still retains the power they hold, they inevitably come back. It's guaranteed. Even if it's only for a day. That doesn't sound like a problem at first, but it's a HUGE problem. Why?

Because new policies, rules or ways of handling things get enacted or evolve and those new things don't make sense to them. They haven't been involved with the day to day issues are not familiar with the new challenges the community has been facing. They forget that in community driven sites, the problems are dynamic and evolving. They think the community is exactly the same as when they retired. Only, it's not.

So when they come back they do away with the rules or new policies because "they don't make sense" or they're not needed. It sets the community back, or even destroying the new community all together. Some of the volunteers below them may get frustrated and/or quit because they just witnessed all their hard work get wiped out. Getting undermined by an out-of-touch owner/mod doesn't help the morale for the remaining volunteers.

<comment><USER4> moot has always been pretty hands-off when it comes to managing the site; the current list of rules has been more or less the same for the entirety of the existence of 4chan. Some more board-specific issues arise from time to time and they tend to be resolved as they come up. They're almost always addressed by appealing to the existing set of rules or by making changes to the board technology itself; e.g. changing how post numbers are calculated so people aren't overly obsessed with "doubles"[1].

But admins and powerful mods have always been able to fuck with the boards in ways normal users can't, such as embedding auto-playing youtube links in posts or having fun with formatting. They've used this power sparingly in recent years and, despite what certain posters want everybody to believe, it hasn't caused any major controversies. I doubt very much moot is going to have a burning desire to come back and embed a stupid video in a board.

[1] Doubles are post numbers ending in repeating digits like "593987144." People's obsession with "dubs" on the random board /b/ have been met with several solutions, such as hiding the last three number from posters (593987XXX) or altering the generation code to skip doubles entirely (593987143 is followed directly by 593987145)

<comment><USER5> If you spend any time browsing the archives/ghost boards or the public ban list, seeing what content gets deleted and what people get banned over, I think you'd change your tune.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is not a surprising development, there has been speculation that Poole has been readying the site for sale in the past few months. He has taken action to sanitize the site by suppressing discussion of Gamergate and 8chan (mention of either was a bannable offense), and more recently a purge of /pol/ (that board had been a haven for conspiracy theorists and neo-nazis). The theory had been that he was making the board more attractive to a mainstream audience to attract potential buyers, however, this announcement, along with the new requirements for "volunteers" suggests that something else is at play.

I would speculate that recent decisions have been driven more by IRL peer pressure and a desire for social acceptance than any kind of business shark/ Homo Economicus reason.

<comment><USER7> 8chan can't be mentioned because it's a competitor I assume? But what about Gamergate, why is it taboo to discuss it?

<comment><USER8> My guess is because 4chan was being used as an organizing nexus for a bunch of people widely seen as abusive and misogynist, and he just no longer wanted the headache.

Years ago I worked on bianca.com (early community site; founded 1994, Webby 1997, closed in the dot-com bust), which had a similar unfettered-free-speech aspect to it. I feel a lot of sympathy here.

Committing to publishing everything is one of those positions that is very appealing to a young idealist. But it grinds you down over time. Partly because of the content: unless you're a reptile you are faced with a series of decisions about whether this really awful thing is _too_ awful or just awful enough. And partly because of the people: most of them are lovely and some amazing things happen when people are free to be themselves. But some are terrible and plenty are just broken, and it's those you spend 90% of your time dealing with.

I saw one of the Bianca people recently and we talked a bit about 4chan and 8chan and how thoroughly grateful we were to have left those problems behind. No matter how appealing radical free speech is in theory, at the end of the day you're the person who has devoted your life to enabling awful people to say awful things. And with GamerGate, to go and do awful things as well. I imagine he's just tired of it.

<comment><USER5> That's fair, but then he shouldn't have been surprised when his site started hemorrhaging users who were there entirely for the freedom of speech they enjoyed.

8chan will probably last much longer than 4chan precisely because Fredrick refuses to make those judgement calls about what is and isn't acceptable. He doesn't need to bear a heavy conscience about what kind of speech he is allowing, he just follows the law to the letter and lets people do their thing.

I leave you all with a fantastic speech the late Christopher Hitchens made about the freedom of speech and why _there is no freedom of speech unless you extend that freedom towards people you disagree with, even the ones you find completely abhorrent._

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIyBZNGH0TY&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIyBZNGH0TY&feature=youtu.be&t=20m41s)

<comment><USER9> > _he shouldn 't have been surprised when his site started hemorrhaging users > who were there entirely for the freedom of speech they enjoyed._

Is this an accepted stat or is this a soundbite used by 8chan supporters? I've seen this repeated often, but it doesn't seem true. According to the archive stats ([https://archive.moe/vg/statistics/activity/](https://archive.moe/vg/statistics/activity/), [https://archive.moe/a/statistics/activity/](https://archive.moe/a/statistics/activity/), [https://archive.moe/v/statistics/activity/](https://archive.moe/v/statistics/activity/)) - 4chan's traffic and activity has been stable.

> _8chan will probably last much longer than 4chan precisely because Fredrick > refuses to make those judgement calls about what is and isn 't acceptable. > He doesn't need to bear a heavy conscience about what kind of speech he is > allowing, he just follows the law to the letter and lets people do their > thing._

I honestly don't see how 8chan is different from 7chan, and I'm willing to bet that after the controversy is over 8chan's influence will die down much like 7chan's.

<comment><USER5> > Is this an accepted stat or is this a soundbite used by 8chan supporters?

The qualifier you missed is "who were there entirely for the freedom of speech they enjoyed." There are some 60-80,000 daily users of 8chan right now, even in spite of the constant DDoSes the site has suffered over the past few weeks, and that number is only increasing; they had to come from _somewhere_. I've visited 4chan a few times since the split and have noticed quite a few people that seem out of place in imageboard culture, and in general a lot more of the whiny and shitposty elements that I left 4chan to get away from, so my guess is that as the older anons that craved the free atmosphere that had been slowly eroded from 4chan over the years left, they were replaced by newbies who were previously too scared to visit 4chan who figured things would be "safer" now (yes, there already existed communities like /r/4chan on reddit that consisted of people that liked "4chan humor" but were afraid of, say, stumbling across gore, and there are also a lot of people that lurk 4chan without posting that don't want to deal with trolls and arguments, who might be more likely to post now that a lot of the people they disagreed with left).

> I honestly don't see how 8chan is different from 7chan, and I'm willing to > bet that after the controversy is over 8chan's influence will die down much > like 7chan's.

As someone who was around for both splits, they are completely different. 7chan was an _exclusive_ community for "oldfags" (non-imageboard users, please don't shit on me for using that word, that is the actual term they called themselves) that attempted to insulate itself from the "newfags" and "gaiafags" they believed moot was allowing to ruin 4chan. They tried to do this by being highly elitist, and banning anyone even _mentioning_ 4chan or its memes or for not being able to keep up with the latest mod shenanigans (because apparently snacks was the most important element of 4chan to them). The site died a slow death because it didn't really have any _important_ unique communities to offer over 4chan, and because most people got tired of the comically overbearing moderation and eventually settled for the (at the time) much more lenient 4chan.

Now that 4chan is the site with the overbearing moderation, 8chan is an _inclusive_ community for people displaced from 4chan (mostly gamergate and /pol/), for fringe communities that previously lived in "general threads" that could now create their own boards with their own moderation (much of /vg/, parts of /a/, /lgbt/, etc), and for those that never had a home there to begin with (/furry/ is a pretty huge one that, for better or for worse, is one of the largest drivers of fresh blood into the site). Even if the boards like /v/ and /a/ with direct equivalents on 4chan died out (which they are not showing any signs of doing, even though they are admittedly smaller than the 4chan boards they split from), there is still a more than sufficient critical mass of people in the communities that _have no other home on the internet_ that could keep the site going.

8chan is also for those like yours truly, that remember how nice 4chan used to be in the lenient days before you had to watch everything you said for fear of upsetting a mod or janitor strictly following rules that the majority of the community disagreed with, or just deleting things allowed by the rules because they personally disliked them. The days when mods didn't up-end boards they didn't even _use_ , like what has happened to /u/, /jp/, /pol/ and /new/, and /r9k/ over the years, on a whim. The days when it wasn't tragically common for downright _respectable_ users to have to frequently ban evade just to participate. Once I'd had a whiff of the fresh air of hands-off moderation and posters that mostly ignore things they don't like instead of whining about them ad nauseum, I realized how much 8chan reminded me of my favorite days on 4chan, and I'll never go back.

Will 8chan "beat" 4chan? I hope not. I'm happy to let 4chan serve as the "containment site" for the (IMO) most annoying parts of the community. But 8chan doesn't _need_ to beat 4chan. It can do its own thing. Ironically, it's a bit like Hacker News vs. Reddit in that respect.

\---

Adding a response to malbiniak, because I've, uh, "hit the post limit" (cough):

>Within the first minute of his talk at XOXO back in 2012, he mentioned 4chan being about anonymity and ephemerality, not a blanket endorsement for freedom of all type of speech.

I know, he has said that many times, but _his users_ didn't see things that way, and that is really the crux of this debacle: the disconnect between what moot and the rest of the 4chan staff thought 4chan was about, and what the community thought.

<comment><USER10> >there is still a more than sufficient critical mass of people in the communities that have no other home on the internet that could keep the site going.

This comment is exactly where my head is at and has been my connection with 4chan.

I had a very rough time in my teens, and my mother and I moved to new cities or towns every year or two. It was hard to keep friends and consider a place home. 4chan was the constant in my life where I could always escape to be comfortable and amongst people who shared my hobbies while experiencing free- speech without the repercussions of identity. No other site offers this like 4chan does, and I've seen plenty of other chans over the years, so, I'm skeptical about 8ch.

I know a lot of people who feel the same way. I'm scared for the future of what I consider my home.

<comment><USER5> I totally understand where you're coming from. 4chan was my refuge for a very long time through some tough times in my life, and 8chan is the _only_ alternative I've used that captures the _feeling_ of 4chan. I tried many other english "chans" over the years (7chan, 99chan, 420chan, the wakachan/iichan "network", the easymodo/warosu ghost boards, SAoVQ, etc), yet I didn't stick around with any of them. They had their own unique communities, sometimes with greater average "quality", if you can measure such a thing, but nothing could match the excitement and energy of 4chan. I think this is because even the notable ones tried to distance themselves from the "4chan mentality" and community, and attracted different but much less significant audiences in the process. And who could blame them: why would you go to a blatant and insignificant 4chan clone that didn't have _anything_ different to offer?

8chan was once just like that, a ghost town of a somewhat more modern AnonIB clone that wasn't really going anywhere. It owes its success entirely to the fiasco of Gamergate discussion being banned from 4chan, which caused a (literally) overnight exodus of a significant minority of 4chan who wanted to discuss it, along with those who (like me, in spite of the fact that I sometimes defend it on HN) were mostly appalled by the blatant abuse of power. These people weren't trying to "get away from" 4chan or its culture, they were _forced_ to leave. They weren't curmudgeony "oldfags" or the like trying to enforce some new cultural norms in their secret club to increase the "quality", _they were 4chan._

Perhaps not surprisingly, the site is now thriving as a community "for people who loved 4chan, _by_ people who loved 4chan." And that's what's I love about it. It's just like 4chan, with a lot of the same people and ideas, but now, the _community_ is running the show, not some guy trying to distance himself from "his creation" and a team of mods that often don't even use the boards they're supposed to protect enforcing arbitrary rules from afar.

Give it a shot. For all the negative attention that boards like /gamergate/ and /baphomet/ receive, they're in their own worlds. The rest of the site is very welcoming towards anyone that understands "4chan culture" and isn't obnoxious about it. Also, webms with sound.

<comment><USER10> Haha, yep, I've been around for all of those other chans too.

I'm starting to browse 8chan alongside 4chan today and we will see where it goes.

<comment><USER5> Welcome aboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm excited to see what moot does next; seems like he's preparing for a big- ish transition in his life, after Draw Quest & 4chan. Maybe I'm wrong, but it will certainly be interesting to see what's next.

<comment><USER12> Going to mootsico, I imagine.

<comment><USER13> mootxico _

<comment><USER10> Thanks for 8 amazing years. 4chan represented a chapter in my life that has changed me fundamentally. Good luck in whatever you're off to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 4chan is blocked at my work, can someone copy and paste the content or post a TLDR.

Thanks in advance!

<comment><USER15> I founded 4chan eleven and a half years ago at the age of 15, and after more than a decade of service, I've decided it's time for me to move on.

4chan has faced numerous challenges over the years, including how to continuously satisfy a community of millions, and ensure the site has the human, technical, and financial resources to continue operating. But the biggest hurdle it's had to overcome is myself. As 4chan's sole administrator, decision maker, and keeper of most of its institutional knowledge, I've come to represent an uncomfortably large single point of failure.

I've spent the past two years working behind the scenes to address these challenges, and to provide 4chan with the foundation it needs to survive me by bolstering its finances, strengthening its infrastructure, and expanding and empowering its team of volunteers. And for the most part, I've succeeded. The site isn't in danger of going under financially any time soon, and it's as fast and stable as ever thanks to continued development and recent server upgrades. Team 4chan is also at its largest, and while I've still been calling the shots, I've delegated many of my responsibilities to a handful of trusted volunteers, most of whom have served the site for years.

That foundation will now be put to the ultimate test, as today I'm retiring as 4chan's administrator. From a user's perspective, nothing should change. A few senior volunteers—including 4chan's lead developer, managing moderator, and server administrator—have stepped up to ensure a smooth transition over the coming weeks.

I'll need time away to decompress and reflect, but I look forward to one day returning to 4chan as its Admin Emeritus or just another Anonymous, and also writing more about my experience running 4chan on my personal blog. The journey has been marked by highs and lows, surprises and disappointments, but ultimately immense satisfaction. I'm humbled to have had the privilege of both founding and presiding over what is easily one of the greatest communities to ever grace the Web. It was truly an honor to serve as 4chan's founding administrator, and I look forward to seeing what the next decade holds for the site.

On to the next chapter,

–moot

mootnote: I plan to dedicate this Friday afternoon (ET) to host a livestreamed Q&A session, where I'll hold court with the community one last time. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube page, and keep an eye out for a global message the day of. As always, I welcome and read all of my e-mails, and you may contact me personally at firstname.lastname@example.com.

Eleven and a half years, in numbers:

42,176,061,890 Total pageviews 1,771,091,423 Total posts 1,071,189,182 Total visitors 620,125,147 Monthly pageviews 21,128,887 Daily pageviews 20,360,487 Monthly visitors 1,223,807 Daily visitors 2,838 Terabytes per month 105 Volunteers 63 Boards 1 Administrator

<comment><USER16> See also (just don't do any banking/disable javascript):

bestproxyunblock.com proxify.com unblockingproxy.net freeopenproxy.com freeproxywebsite.net proxyserver.com proxysite.com newipnow.com browserproxy.net proxfree.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _2,838 Terabytes per month_

I didn't realize it was so big.

Does anyone have comparison points with other services such as Facebook or Reddit?

<comment><USER18> reddit is significantly smaller bandwidth-wise than 4chan. reddit doesn't host images. I don't remember exactly but when I left 4 years ago it was only single digit terabytes of outbound bandwidth.

<comment><USER19> Here is a slightly newer (although still quite old) answer from rram, peak of 924.21 Mbit/sec.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/r6zfv/we_are_sysa...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/r6zfv/we_are_sysadmins_reddit_ask_us_anything/c43g1t2)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "I founded 4chan eleven and a half years ago at the age of 15, and after more than a decade of service, I've decided it's time for me to move on."

That makes him 25 now.... and just to think, he's in a position to move on from founding, creating and running one of the web's most successful messaging boards.

Dang....

<comment><USER20> 11.5 + 15 != 25

<comment><USER21> Did this reply contribute anything to the conversation, other than display your strong grasp of both addition and "well actually..."?

<comment><USER22> Yes. It corrected something that was going to bother me aesthetically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> While 4chan continues to flirt the border line between nsfw reddit and deepweb, what is its moderation policy ?

<comment><USER24> Nobody actually knows. People have been banned for violations of the stated rules on each board despite not actually violating them, people have been left alone for flagrant violations of said rules. Board features like names, macros, and so on are toggled on and off more or less on a whim.

To say that 4chan's enforcement is inconsistent would be an understatement. But, the chaos is a feature, not a bug. Something to keep in mind.

But for everyone else, this is one of the reasons I think seriously that 8chan is the next big thing, it's basically Reddit, but for image boards. Mod abuse (real or perceived) will result in community fragmentation but on the same site, rather than exodus to other sites.

<comment><USER25> Eh, I can't really support 8chan. The admin/owner/dev/whatever is an absolutely horrible person.

<comment><USER24> Not that I've seen. As far as the site goes, the rule appears to be "unless it's literally illegal or breaking the site, I'm leaving it alone", and everything else is in the hands of the subredd- sorry, sub-board mods.

I think this is the only legitimate stance to take when it comes to a UGC site that allows people to set up their own communities. The staff of each board should be responsible for their own moral compasses, with a minimum of interference by the folks upstairs unless it becomes absolutely necessary.

The existence of a doxxing board is distressing, but it's not against any law in the USA. I don't want it there, but I want hotwheels making decisions like that even less. I feel the same way about things like /r/beatingwomen (exactly what it says in the title) or /r/picsofdeadkids on Reddit.

<comment><USER26> Er, /baphomet is not "a doxxing board." Or, rather, it's not just a doxxing board. It's also a swatting board, and swatting is illegal in the US.

[https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/baphomet](https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/baphomet)

You are also 100% incorrect about "only legitimate stance." Hotwheels needs to be clear about what his guidelines are; as long as it's clear what rules the communities operate under, and as long as people are free to decide whether or not they wish to create a community, it's certainly legitimate to have more restrictive rules.

"UGC site" is a red herring. I am creating UGC right now in the form of this post.

<comment><USER24> I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that actual calls to swat people have been deleted on that board. But, I can't say for sure because I don't hang out there, and the events of GamerGate have me applying a shakerfull of salt to any negative press surrounding 8chan.

And as far as "incorrect", that is your opinion and it is your own, I have a differing one. I like the idea of a site where the admin has assured that they will not interfere with you unless they have to.

Really, did you miss the qualifier "that allows people to set up their own communities"?

And since I've hit the posting limit:

That is your opinion @zorpner, and nothing I can say will change it. We disagree, _vehemently_ , on the whole "silence is complicity" thing.

@bryantd: Because freedom of speech is a guiding principle, a human right, not just a law, and that guiding principle is a higher priority than people talking about societally-disapproved-of-things. The price of following that principle is that people can and will talk about things that some or even most people don't like.

The idea of cracking down on people discussing things because you personally find it distasteful is, to me, _incredibly offensive_. I don't like the idea of neo nazis or places where people post pictures of dead children, but I also don't think someone should have the ability to come in and say "No, you can't talk about that."

@bryantd again: Ah, gotcha. In that case, no, I don't think there is a strictly different moral obligation in play.

I get that curated spaces are a thing, and I don't have an issue with those, but the problem I see a lot is that there are N stated rules in a space, but N+X unwritten rules and breaking them gets you in trouble, and oftentimes you don't know what you did wrong. This leads to the superficial projection of freedom of speech and an open community, but in reality, that is not what's happening. I.e. deception. And in an atmosphere of deception, censorship follows. Censorship, to me, being a greater evil than whatever someone could possibly be talking about.

That's the "why", because the moral obligation of free expression, IMO, is a few levels higher than most others.

Heck, even here on HN, this is a problem (though not NEAR as much as some other sites, thanks to Dang and PG and the rest). But still, we have shadowbans and post timeouts and opaque algorithms that kill posts before anyone has had a chance to read them.

<comment><USER26> I'm not asking why you think freedom of speech is a guiding principle and a human right. I get that and I agree that freedom of speech is incredibly important. I have spent a lot of mental time over the last few years thinking about that belief in relationship to my feeling that it's bad to cause pain.

This is not a simple problem.

However, it's also irrelevant to my question: why do you think that the admin of 8chan has a different moral obligation vis a vis free speech than the admin of Hacker News? You said that allowing people to set up their own communities was important, and I sincerely don't know why that makes a difference here.

It's OK with me if you misspoke, and you think that Hacker News should operate under the same principles as 8chan.

<comment><USER27> > I have spent a lot of mental time over the last few years thinking about > that belief in relationship to my feeling that it's bad to cause pain.

I submit that the two are not in conflict. The first is a principle that all people should have this right. The second is moral guidance on the subjective application of that right.

People can use their rights for good or for ill. The key thing is that people have that right. It's not a right if someone else's subjective moral judgments can take it away.

> This is not a simple problem.

That depends. Why do you think there is complexity? At a guess, you think others should live by your principles, and so you are conflicted when they do not.

<comment><USER26> That is a poor guess. I think it's complex precisely because I don't think everyone should be forced to live by the same principles, and because I recognize that some principles conflict. People have been arguing about value pluralism for a while now, so I feel like I'm in pretty good company here.

If free speech wasn't fundamentally important to me, I wouldn't think it was a complex problem, I'd be happy to limit speech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I guess I kind of expected it since the past 6 months were probably very though for him with all the negative attention the site received.

I wish him a happy retirement and all the best for what he's going to do next.

</comment><comment><USER29> I went to Startup School in New York last year and saw moot there. While outside between presentations, someone in the crowd called out "Chris, Chris Poole!" and some other memes at him. He seemed really put off by it and hightailed it out of there. I'd imagine he gets that often and could understand how that could be draining.

<comment><USER30> That's something that I haven't seen mentioned yet: The last few years, Moot has appeared to have nothing but contempt for the people who post on his site. I imagine a decade of being marinated in the worst the internet has to offer would do that to anybody.

<comment><USER31> He did create that cesspit and allowed it to thrive and attract the dredges of society. Not until 6 or 7 years into the site did he decide to crack down on the cp posted there. He definitely deserves ridicule.

<comment><USER32> Does he deserve ridicule for creating one of the few big internet communities where free speech means something? I think he deserves some credit for enduring all these years of enduring the hate of anybody offended by something posted on 4chan.

<comment><USER33> He would, if he'd stood by it. But honestly, after everything that's gone down on 4chan over the years, he decides that gamergate is the line in the sand where he starts banning? That not only undermines any commitment to free speech, it puts the things he previously permitted in a different light - <USER2> believes in actively censoring certain legal discussion topics, but he allowed xyz?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I realize Chris is tired of dealing with the headaches of managing 4chan. But if he has effectively outsourced management of the site, why not continue to hold the title of president or whatever?

I wonder how much of his cachet he gives up by doing this (even though he still owns the property). Given his influence on the internet due to 4chan, moot can probably raise money for his next project with relative ease. Can Christopher Poole?

Edit: Fixed moot capitalization.

<comment><USER35> moot is never capitalized. I guess we'll see but I mainly read it as he was stepping down as an administrator.

<comment><USER18> > moot is never capitalized

Neither is reddit, but the press doesn't seem to care and a lot of users don't realize it either.

Protip: Never make your brand "always lowercase" because it just won't work.

<comment><USER36> iPhone

<comment><USER18> Hah, good point. That might be the only one that actually works.

However, it has an advantage in that it's rarely the start of a sentence (usually it will be The iPhone), and anyone using a Mac will have it autocorrect.

<comment><USER37> > usually it will be The iPhone

So the brand still doesn't work, since Apple never uses an article.

<comment><USER38> "The best iPhone […]"

They do use articles in their presentations sometimes, though

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> so long and thanks for all the fish, mootles :3

</comment><comment><USER40> Just a little backstory for ya'll.

Somewhere in late 2014 there was a thread on the /int/ board joking about how moot was apparently having a relationship with a known "SJW" as they call it. Coincidentally, /pol/, the most ass annihilating board for politically correct types was ruined after the relationship leak, chaptas were removed and keywords were replaced with the political opposites.

After this, the /v/ board started calling moot a "cuckold", to elaborate, cuck has been a meme for the last few months on /v/ due to the huge rise of affairs and relationship problems in SGDQ 2014. Moot was ridiculed based on speculation from /int/, but most of all for ruining a controversial board dedicated to news and politics.

GG was never banned on 4chan, GG threads were deleted on /v/ since it was considered spam, the GG threads continued to strive on /vg/, the "video game general" board.

In the end Moot restored /pol/ after harassment from 4channers, which may be the reason moot is retiring.</comment>


Elop running out of time to turn Nokia around - <AUTHOR> http://sg.m.yahoo.com/w/legobpengine/news/elop-running-time-turn-nokia-around-102511392--finance.html

<comment><USER2> When people ask why Nokia isn't selling a lot of Lumias, most people, correctly, answer "Windows Phone". Going with Android puts them in a much better position than Windows Phone for a lot of reasons, and every negative that can be said about going with Android (minus the OS differences) can be said about Windows Phone. The only difference is that Nokia is pretty much the only OEM that is all-in with Windows Phone, but once WP becomes popular, whats to stop Samsung, etc from making more WPs? Nothing really, and at that point, Nokia will only be able to distinguish itself with its hardware (since there are limited/no OEM/carrier modifications allowed to WP) which is WORSE off than if they were using Android right now.

</comment><comment><USER3> The real link:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/19/us-nokia- strategy-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/19/us-nokia-strategy- idUSBRE88I0IQ20120919)

I wonder if they will quickly switch to Android if they will kick Elop out and decide the Microsoft partnership has failed. That would be great news in my book.

<comment><USER4> there are so many established android players already. I doubt that would help them much.

At least the premium W8 strategy differentiates them from samsung and co.

<comment><USER5> It would be pretty easy for Nokia to enter the Android market.

All it would need to do is to create 2 phone models, one for the low end, one for the high end, both with good build quality and that come in various colors.

And on the software side all they'd need to do would be to install the stock Android distribution, with the logistics and resources necessary to release Android updates over-the-air as soon as possible, while giving the insurance that customers will get updates for 2 years after they've bought the phone. They could also disallow carries from installing crap on these phones. They could further differentiate by bundling those phones with some premium Nokia apps, like an alternative to Google Maps with better offline capabilities.

Then they should also build an Android tablet, because there's really no competition to the iPad.

Like really, there are lots of Android "players" out there, but (1) Nokia still has resources and a huge distribution network available with lots of partners + (2) Android's true potential has yet to reveal itself and the pie will get a lot bigger + (3) everybody is doing it wrong.

<comment><USER6> It's really no where near as simple as that, not even close.

There is lots of politics, and red tape to keep in mind as well that has to be overcome before they can even think about Android, let alone delivering on it.

Getting rid of Elop, really doesn't change this painful process of software migration (which is never, ever "pretty easy") or everyone else that thinks Nokia/Android is a terrible idea from a business perspective (it is).

Nokia has already had to go through all of this recently to accomodate the Microsoft Plan, and it is just extremely unlikely that a company the size of Nokia could survive a second transition and come out the other end smelling like roses.

We are talking at least a year (and thats being very conservative and ignoring all existing and future plans that are currently in place that would need to be dismantled) before there would be a tangible Nokia Android product. There is also the large layoffs and rehires that would need to occur during this transition and this stuff takes time, lots of time when talking about a company at the scale of Nokia. I'd imagine they would lose lots of partners over this transition as well, the list is endless.

My bet is it would be another year or two on top of that before Nokia was at its current state as of today on the market with Android instead of Windows, except the market will be much bigger, and Nokia will be much smaller, but hey at least they have an Android phone right? ;-)

I'm sure Microsoft has Nokia by the balls as well (contractually speaking), which is just another reason amongst many others not to attempt such a transition from the business perspective. Also, it would be a very tough sell to the stakeholders, and upper management, as well as everyone else on the front lines that such a move would yield anything for Nokia besides a quicker path to hard times ahead and/or bankruptcy.

The cards are all on the table, it's too late to make an "effective" transition and they know this.

In an ideal world, business wouldn't get in the way of releasing a good product, but in the real world, business almost always mandates what the product is, and in Nokia's case, the business decision was made years ago and it is not something they can pivot on overnight like your typical Sillicon Valley startup.

<comment><USER5> Well, yes, I don't think it's feasible for Nokia either, because of the costs involved and because of politics.

However, all of us here that are familiar with the landscape and with Microsoft's history thought this was a bad idea from the beginning. A lot of people freaking told them so. This is especially infuriating since their N9 was a success, limited only by Nokia's decision to discontinue it from the start, with many reviewers calling it "one of the most fascinating phones of the last few years".

And Nokia is not a startup, but a big company that should have the resources to branch out a little and test the water with an Android phone. That's how smart companies are doing it - they are A/B testing competing solutions. Take a look at Google - that's still working on Chrome OS, in spite of Android being a success.

And I get that Nokia wanted to focus on fewer products, to preserve resources, however they've gone to the extremes, throwing away years of hard work and even consumer goodwill, adopting an operating system that they don't and will never control - at least with Android, if anything had gone wrong with the Google partnership, they could have forked it, just like Amazon did.

<comment><USER6> _However, all of us here that are familiar with the landscape and with Microsoft's history thought this was a bad idea from the beginning._

And I'm not? Talk about judging someone without knowing anything about them, wow! When did I say that the Microsoft idea was a good idea? It wasn't.

"And Nokia is not a startup, but a big company that should have the resources to branch out a little and test the water with an Android phone."

I never said or implied Nokia was a startup either? Nokia is a big company with big problems without the resources to branch out a little and test the water with anything, and this will probably be their downfall. That was the whole point behind my previous post!

 _That's how smart companies are doing it - they are A/B testing competing solutions. Take a look at Google - that's still working on Chrome OS, in spite of Android being a success._

I'm not even sure if your talking to me now?

 _And I get that Nokia wanted to focus on fewer products, to preserve resources, however they've gone to the extremes, throwing away years of hard work and even consumer goodwill, adopting an operating system that they don't and will never control_

I completely agree?

 _at least with Android, if anything had gone wrong with the Google partnership, they could have forked it, just like Amazon did._

Yeah, but they had Meego back then, and the Android platform was unproven, so tell me why they should have chosen Android over Meego again?

Actually, I have a better idea, don't bother, I'm not interested in talking about "what if's" only "what now's".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: J, a dead simple but colorful task manager inspired by t- - <AUTHOR> http://akash.im/j

<comment><USER2> You might want to point out that this does not work under 1.8.* Ruby.

j-0.5.1/lib/j.rb:129: undefined (?...) sequence: /(?<status>(TODO|DONE))\s(?<title>.+)\Z/ (SyntaxError)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out. Named regexp catching isn't supported in ruby 1.8. I'll update the gem with 1.8 support.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wrote this to flex my ruby skills, There's nothing special about it except the following:

* Decorated text * Marking tasks as done and deleting them is easier with a one digit key instead of 3 digit key.

If you already have text files with tasks in the following format:

<status> <task>

then you can just rename it to .todo and fireup j</comment>


How to Create an Ad Blocking Server on Ubuntu 16.04 with PieHole - <AUTHOR> http://www.ubuntuboss.com/how-to-install-piehole-on-ubuntu-16-04/ <comment><AUTHOR> This tutorial shows you how to set up a PieHole Server in Ubuntu 16.04 to block Ads and Pornography in addition to increasing your bandwidth by blocking queries to known ad sites.</comment>


On Leaving Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitalhobbit.com/archives/2008/04/13/on-leaving-google/

<comment><USER2> Google now is a very large company, and no matter how much they try to make it fun, it is still a very large company, with all the politics, b,s, inefficenices, frustrations, and inability for developers to make large impacts.

Google is the new MS (well, the MS in the early/mid 90s). Talent will start hemorraging slowly and surely, and in 10-15 years it will be just like MS, or worse IBM.

<comment><USER3> _... in 10-15 years [Google] will be just like MS, or worse IBM._

Ugh, keep your vague abstractions on reddit.

To be qualified to make that assessment, you must be working at Google and have worked at MS in the 90's. My guess is you are 0/2.

One guy leaves Google because he likes the thrill of start ups and you deduce that "talent will start hemorraging (sic) slowly and surely". First off, how the hell does one hemorrhage slowly? Second, there are very talented people who like start ups and there are very talented people who like job security. For example, professors.

<comment><USER2> Ok, while I am not an expert, but I can say there are many good people leaving Google. 1. From knowing three x-gogglers, (one of them is a good friend), 2. From what you can read on the news also,

<http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/03/can-google-stop.html> [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/apr/30/news.cityne...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/apr/30/news.citynews) [http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/04/03/what_to_ma...](http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/04/03/what_to_make_of_googles_brain_drain.html) [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brain- drain-...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brain-drain-fears- as-google-loses-more-senior-executives-804067.html) <http://www.gulfnews.com/business/Technology/10204853.html>

it is an undenaible fact that people are leaving. For many reasons, but they are. I understand that there are bright people that like the security of a large company, but there are many more bright people that Google is not attractive employer anymore. Lots of great perks, but salaries are just average, work maybe interesting or mindblowing boring (depending where you get stuck), plus many people bright would like to work on something on their own rather just be another small cog in a large company.

<comment><USER4> There's also the fact that the mindset among hackers at large is shifting away from being employees toward being entrepreneurs. No doubt employment at Google is more pleasant than average, but hackers are sensitive to the judgments of their peers, especially the ones doing cool things, and I bet that many talented programmers at Google are chafing under the idea that they _are_ nevertheless an employee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh look, an Xoogler who got burned out by working on ads when it seemed like everyone else was working on cool stuff.

Who'dve thunk it?

I'm not going to judge his choice of startup. I applaud this guy's resolution to do what makes him happy, instead of taking the safe alternative at a mature company. Because for him it was obviously the right thing to do. Cheers!

</comment><comment><USER6> I liked his description of google, seemed more real world and he lined up the advantages and disadvantages of being at google well. He's leaving because his goals are alligned with that of google's, not because google is a particularly sucky place to work or anything. I also need to get myself a couple of 24 inch monitors :-).</comment>


The Next Bootstrap Theme Marketplace - <AUTHOR> https://www.24ui.io

<comment><USER2> Awesome domain. No mock up of how the store will look though?</comment>


Mashape Open-Sources Its Kong API Management Platform - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/28/mashape-open-sources-its-kong-api-management-platform/ <comment><USER2> Nice to see more open-source solutions in this area. I've used the popular Django Rest Framework [1] to implement and manage APIs. Would there be a compelling reason to use Kong for the management aspect?

[1] [http://www.django-rest-framework.org](http://www.django-rest- framework.org)

<comment><USER3> You no longer have to code certain features into your API and can let Kong handle it for you :)

Saving you time and money!

       Some features: http://getkong.org/plugins/

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> open sourcing Kong which powers our API marketplace with billions of calls per day, is not only a major milestone for the team, but also marks a shift in API tooling and services, we're challenging the the status quo and service providers by giving away for free what they charge for in thousands (and in some cases millions) of dollars.

making it open source is the icing on the cake!

we want to give the power back to the developer community and together create amazing open source tooling, while directly adding years of lessons learned to your development stack.

<comment><USER5> So, what does Mashape (now) sell?

<comment><USER5> Doh, nevermind, Mashape sells, perhaps among other things, Kong Enterprise [http://getkong.org/enterprise/](http://getkong.org/enterprise/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Glad to see this! Building out this type of infrastructure behind a publicly facing API is never fun. That's partially why one of my API's is hosted at Mashape in the first place!

</comment><comment><USER7> This is an interesting stack, as it looks to be Nginx + Lua based with Cassandra as the backend database.

Not very common, but clearly well thought out and battle tested!

</comment><comment><USER8> This is Marco from Mashape. Let me know if you have any questions/feedback and I will be happy to answer.

If you need a testing Cassandra node to try out Kong, we have created this: [http://kongdb.org/](http://kongdb.org/)

<comment><USER9> Thank you for releasing this - it solves some problems we've been struggling with , and I'm really excited to use it. [ which i don't say often]

<comment><USER8> Thank you, let me know how I can help. You can find me at: [https://gitter.im/Mashape/kong](https://gitter.im/Mashape/kong)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Big fan of Mashape, and opening up a stack for API devs that easily does the auth, metering, etc is a big win for the glue economy. love it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I know it's so much like 'indirect marketing' things for Mashape. But, this stuff is pretty helpful for developers to create an API service in minutes. Thanks so much, Mashape.

<comment><USER12> Please do let us know what you think about it! We've worked very hard to open- source it the correct way :)

<comment><USER11> Well, despite Kong is still on highly development mode[1], the documentations[0] is well written. I'm impressed.

[0] [http://getkong.org/docs/](http://getkong.org/docs/) [1] [https://github.com/Mashape/kong/releases](https://github.com/Mashape/kong/releases)

<comment><USER3> Thank you, glad to hear my hard work has paid off :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another quality open-source project from Mashape! I had written a blog post about ~2.5 years ago on building our own API backed system: [http://blog.semantics3.com/building-a-paid-api- offering/](http://blog.semantics3.com/building-a-paid-api-offering/)

If Kong had been available then, we would have probably gone with it.

<comment><USER14> thanks varun, very cool what you built there! :) definitely looking forward to possible contributions from you to the github project ;P

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks very useful, congrats! Cassandra dependency may be an obstacle for wider adoption.

"Don't worry if you are not experienced with these technologies, Kong works out of the box"

These kind of statements are problematic. If you are not already using Cassandra, I'm not sure introducing another data store you don't have experience with would be a good move.

<comment><USER16> For now we have created [http://kongdb.org](http://kongdb.org) \- to have Kong running easily. For production use of Cassandra hosted we suggest Instaclustr.

<comment><USER17> [https://www.instaclustr.com/](https://www.instaclustr.com/)</comment></comment></comment>


Standard work hours around the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/09/workaholics-standard-work-hours-around-the-world/

<comment><USER2> What specifically is meant by 'unpaid' vs 'paid' work hours?

I find it hard to believe that Belgians, for instance, are only paid for 3.8 hours of work per day.

What am I missing?

<comment><USER3> One of the footnotes reads 'Majority of unpaid work includes chores such as housework and shopping'. I would have expected it to mean 'extra unpaid time at the office'.

I can't tell, but it seems that they're basically adding up everyone's time spent on all the activities during a year (say) and dividing them by 365. This doesn't seem very useful, e.g. what does comparing time spent on childchare tell you if include the childless? Hours of paid work if you include the unemployed/part-time workers?</comment></comment>


Deep Neural Networks Are Easily Fooled - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.1897 <comment><USER3> These arguments were introduced by Szegedy et. al. earlier this year in this paper: [http://cs.nyu.edu/~zaremba/docs/understanding.pdf](http://cs.nyu.edu/~zaremba/docs/understanding.pdf). Geoff Hinton addressed this matter in his Reddit AMA last month.

The results are not specific to neural networks (similar techniques could be used to fool logistic regression). The problem is that ultimately a trained network relies heavily on certain activation pathways which can be precisely targeted (given full knowledge of the network) to fool networks into misclassification on data points which might to a human seem imperceptibly changed from those which are correctly classified. It is important to understand adversarial cases, but unreasonable to get carried away with sweeping pronouncements about what this does or doesn't about all neural networks, let alone intelligence generally, or the entire enterprise of AI research, as seems to happen after a splashy headline.

<comment><USER4> I'd characterize this differently and also, as a lot more interesting than that. understanding.pdf can be viewed as a sort of dual to this paper but they're not covering the same thing. In Szegedy et al., they constructed invisibly perturbed images that resulted in the misclassification of previously correctly classified images. Here, the results of a search were images whose classification have little to no visual similarity to typical members of that class.

In a way this is interesting because it's a sort of visualization of what the network views as important in discriminating between different objects. It's also interesting as a display of how alien the learned model's view of the world is.

Take optical illusions...optical illusions are remotely similar to this sort of exploit, although the sort of scene modeling we do is a lot more complex than recognition or decomposition. Anyways, illusions exploit cues that result in distorted recognition but not drastically so, unlike the case for these networks. My guess is that this is due to animal vision using a lot more high level cues -- cues that are also useful in a natural setting -- depending on things like size, color, shade, lines, context and so on. Visual systems are also a lot more proactive, filtering out things that don't make sense, fudging color at the edges of vision, smoothing out shades and generally making inferences and deductions about what it should be seeing and how things are "supposed" to be. In fact, a good number of illusions exploit those aspects of vision.

In the case of these networks, the cues are incomprehensible, having no natural counterpart, so we see most of them as noise. But sometimes they make a kind of sense, as in the starfish, baseball and sunglasses examples. Based on the observations in the paper, I would guess only a handful activations strongly associated to each feature are responsible for each susceptibility.

With animal brains the distortions usually end up in a slightly transformed space, a different scaling or something. It's useful to match a bit overzealously and get something like pareidolia but it also makes sense to have the conflations actually be like something you might run into. The ANNs have no such incentive.

Their paper also wonders about whether this is unique to discriminative classifiers. Would a generative classifier, with access to a proper distribution, be so susceptible? That'd be very interesting to see.

They also mention some real world consequences, some of which I disagree with. Neural Networks are good at interpolating between examples, so if your training has good coverage over what is to be expected then it'll work very well. And in the era of big data this isn't really a problem (that they don't generalize as we do might explain some of why they have trouble with abstract images) so I'm skeptical an image search solution would be thrown off by textures.

There is, however, a better example of facial or speaker recognition. For example, you could train a network to distinguish between faces or voices and then evolve a pattern against it. This could then be used in such a way as to be randomly matched to an individual on a target database. Not good. Driverless cars are also mentioned but those are typically augmented beyond just vision. Personally, I'd add medical scans to the list of things to be careful with.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that some of the evolved images are inspired works of art. And a few of the images optimized (not evolved) with an L2 penalization are recognizable without the label and a few more where you can see why it gave the label it did.

Your offhanded dismissal was unwarranted IMO.

<comment><USER5> _The whole point_ of this paper is that these 'illusions' look like noise to humans and make no sense in relation to real-life objects, and you're hand- waving it away as if it was some insignificant, tangential technicality.

-

I'm willing to bet that in late 70s many people also thought that rule-based systems could lead to real AI if they were "more complex" and had more computing power available.

<comment><USER6> May be they were right?

[http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~russell/papers/ptai13-intelligen...](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~russell/papers/ptai13-intelligence.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We humans are as brilliant at pattern matching as we are in finding patterns that aren't really there, not just with our vision but with our understanding of probability , randomness, and even cause & effect. Thankfully, our brains are very complicated machines that can recognize a stucko wall or a cloud and invalidate the false identification of a face or unicorn or whatever based on that context.

With that in mind, is it really surprising that [m]any of our attempts at emulating intelligence can be easily fooled? An untold number of species have evolved to do exactly the same thing: exploit the pattern matching errors of predators to disguise themselves as leaves or tree branches or venomous animals that the predator avoids like the plague. DNNs seem to be relatively new and we've got a long ways to go, so is this a fundamental problem with the theoretical underpinning or do we just need to train them with far more contextualized data (for lack of a better phrase)?

Is there any chance of us having accurate DNNs if we can, as if gods during the course of natural selection, peek into the brain of predators (algorithms) and reverse engineer failures (disguises for prey) like this?

<comment><USER8> What I don't get about AI optimism: So we humans are very fallible and can easily make mistakes. Computers are better at us when it comes to problems that are clearly defined and for the problem is decidable (can implement an algorithm to solve any instance of the problem). But we need AI when the problems are more fuzzy, like recognizing a lion in a picture.

How can we build a mostly automated future, if the AIs that are supposed to do our jobs turn out to be very fallible as well? They won't - supposedly - <USER2> the problem of being self-aware and being able to follow their emotions rather than their own best judgement and reasoning. But it seems that some problems are inherently prone to making mistakes. Can it be avoided at all? And if so, who do we blame when an AI makes a "mistake" like that? The training set?

<comment><USER9> People's fallibility goes down as you throw more of them at a task—not because the majority will be right, but because the signal adds up while the noise cancels out. This is what the efficient market hypothesis, "wisdom of crowds", etc. are basically about.

If you train 1000 AIs on different subsets of your training corpus, their ensemble will be much "hardier" than one AI trained on the entire corpus. The automated future comes from the fact that you didn't need 1000 full training corpii to get this effect, nor do 1000 AIs cost much more than one to run, once you've built out hardware enough for one.

In other words, AI makes the application of "brute-force intelligence" to a large problem cheap enough to be feasible, in the same way slave labor made building pyramids by brute force cheap enough to be feasible.

<comment><USER10> There are many examples where crowd behavior exhibits less "wisdom". Take any market bubble for example. Have we ever looked at a tough scientific problem and came to the conclusion that the best path forward was to collect as many random people off the street and shove them in a room to solve it?

Also bootstrapping or model parameter selection techniques are already heavily used in AI and have not yet brought us this future. I believe that the model you presented has been simplified a bit too much ignoring a lot of important variables.

<comment><USER11> > examples where crowd behavior exhibits less "wisdom"

When crowds act irrational there is usually a problem in communication. The crowd would still be able to solve problems better after they repair these communication channels. For instance, some rocket launches failed because information by engineers lower in the chain of command, did not work its way up to the decision makers. The group was too compartmentalized, but launching a rocket is necessarily a group effort. 9/11 could have been prevented, or the aftermath lessened, if communication between intelligence agencies was better. In a market crash we often see a single actor making a decision or prediction, and there is little to no reward for people down the chain to disagree with that prediction, or even adjust it (leading to insufficient variance in the predictions). Everyone is blindly chasing the experts, while in a good group setting there is no need to chase the experts.

> Have we ever looked at a tough scientific problem and came to the conclusion > that the best path forward was to collect as many random people off the > street and shove them in a room to solve it?

Has a scientist ever solved a tough problem growing up in isolation to other scientists? I consider "standing on the shoulders of giants" to be a form of group intelligence. But yes: We have done something similar at RAND corporation. The problem was: Forecast the impact of future technology on the military. The solution was to collect experts (not random people), put them in a room with an experiment leader, and gradually converge to the best forecast, using anonymous feedback every round. It's called the Delphi Technique and it is still in use.

Also, there is an experiment running right now, that takes random civilians, has them answer intelligence questions ("Will North-Korea launch a nuke within 30 days?") and gives weights to their answers, according to previous results. This way random civilians trickle up to the top, that _individually_ beat _a team_ of trained intelligence analysts, simply using their gut or Google. It's called the "the Good Judgment Project". Put ten of those civilians in a room and you have an intelligence unit that is not afraid to be wrong, does not have a reputation to uphold, and does not care about any group pressure, authorities or restrictive protocols that may hamper a group of real intelligence analysts.

> Also bootstrapping or model parameter selection techniques are already > heavily used in AI

I believe the parent was talking about model ensembling/ model averaging, not ensembling techniques used by single models, like the boosting or bagging that random forests use. If you have a single attack as input crafted for a single model, then a voting ensemble of three models (lets say: random forests with Gini split, regularized greedy forests and extremely randomized trees) will not be foiled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have nothing intelligent to say without reading the full paper...

...But, how different is this from the various optical illusions humans fall for? I mean we can't exactly tell the difference between a rabbit and duck ourselves[1] so isn't it just a universal property of all neural-network like systems that there will be huge areas of mis-classifications for which there hasn't been specific selection?

[1] [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Rabbit- DuckIllusion.html](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Rabbit-DuckIllusion.html)

<comment><USER13> I believe that the point of the article is that the triggers for optical illusions are totally different in humans and the ANNs. I don't know how valid is this statement - humans sometimes do recognize "shapes" in white noise too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The vulnerability exploits imperfections in the NN weights. To avoid this kind of mismatch all you need to do is shift the same image by 1 pixel (assuming recognition is done per pixel), and you can cross check results to check if an error occurred.

Human brain recognizes better because it can sample the image many times from many slightly different angles. There's a reason saccade ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade)) exists.

<comment><USER15> This is highly oversimplified. The previous example of antagonistic samples being found works even if the training data was perturbed as you described. The reasons for saccades are also a lot more complex, involving photoreceptor adaptation etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There was a similar result a few months ago for another type of machine learning. (That's note 26 in this paper.) The problem seemed to be that the training process produces results which are too near boundaries in some dimension, and are thus very sensitive to small changes. Such models are subject to a sort of "fuzzing attack", where the input is changed slightly and the output changes drastically.

There are two parts of this process that are kind of flaky. The problem above is one of them. The other part is feature extraction where the feature set is learned from the training set. The features thus selected are chosen somewhat randomly and are very dependent on the training set. It's amazing to me that works at all. Earlier thinking was to have some canonical set of features (vertical lines, horizontal lines, various kinds of curves, etc.), the idea being to mimic early vision, the processing that happens in the retina. Automatic feature choice apparently outperforms that, but may not really be working as well as previously believed.

It's great seeing all this progress being made.

<comment><USER17> Automatic feature choice can actually lead to a set of features that resembles V1 receptive fields (as demonstrated by Olshausen and Field in [https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse528/11sp/Olshau...](https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse528/11sp/Olshausen- nature-paper.pdf)).

I recently attended a talk by Geoff Hinton on "capsules." He pointed out that the max pooling used in convolutional neural networks effectively disregards information about relationships among features. Instead, he propose a network composed of "capsules" that each estimate whether an implicitly defined intermediate feature is present and its pose. The idea is that an object is present only if its intermediate features are present and their poses agree. He showed some neat results from these models (some published in [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1412.1897v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1412.1897v1.pdf), and some from [http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~tijmen/tijmen_thesis.pdf](http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~tijmen/tijmen_thesis.pdf)). Notably, these models can evidently learn to classify MNIST with >98% accuracy given only 25 labeled examples. (I am not sure how many unlabeled examples were used.) I don't have any experience with these models, but given that most of these images look like a single feature embedded in noise or as a texture, I would not be surprised if a capsule-based network would not be so susceptible to these images.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The discussion about this paper on r/MachineLearning is quite insightful and worth reading: [http://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2onzmd/deep...](http://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2onzmd/deep_neural_networks_are_easily_fooled_high/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I start to like this way of looking for false positives or false negatives more and more.

It would be interesting to introduce some kind of aspects known from the human brain and see if the misclassified items "move" in some conceptually understandable direction.

* Introduce time. Humans are not just image classifiers; humans are able to recognize objects in visual streams of images. Such streams can be seen as latent variables that introduce correlations over time as well as space. What constitutes spatial noise might very well be influenced in our brains by the temporal correlations we see as well.

* Introduce saccades. A computer is only able to see a picture from one viewpoint. Our eyes undergo saccades and microsaccades. That's an unfair advantage for us, being able to see a picture multiple times from different directions!

* Introduce the body. We can move around an object. This again introduces correlations that 1.) are available to us, and 2.) might define priors even when we are not able to move around the picture. In other words, we can (unconsciously) rotate things in our head.

<comment><USER20> You might be interested in this paper, if you haven't seen it already: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.6247](http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.6247)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another journal paper covering the same thing.

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.6199](http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.6199).

And the article I got that references it.

[http://www.i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial- intelligenc...](http://www.i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial- intelligence/7352-the-flaw-lurking-in-every-deep-neural-net.html)

<comment><USER22> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8544911](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8544911)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> One might say that Picasso's Bull is a human equivalent of this: he "evolved" a sequence of images and ended up with something that has very few features of a bull, but nevertheless gets recognized by humans as such.

Then again, unlike the neural networks in the paper, humans would be capable of classifying abstract images into a separate category if asked.

</comment><comment><USER24> I know literally nothing about this science, so that paper had me concerned about the following question:

Given a visual face recognition door lock or similar system. If I want to break such a door lock, can I install that system at home, train it with secretly taken pictures of an authorized person, and evolve some kind of key picture with my home system until I can show it to the target door lock and fool it into giving me access?

OK this is a very simplified way to put the question, but is that something this paper would imply to be possible (in a more sophisticated way)?

<comment><USER25> If i'm understanding you correctly you want to train a second system with a first system's authorized user, then use the 'key' to open the first system.

A someone who actively researches biometrics I can't say that this is a good method for a few reasons.

1) Systems often train templates which look very different than the original input, especially if more than one image is involved in training. These templates aren't necessarily going to be recognizable to the first system (even if they can be represented as a 2D image).

2) Many enterprise systems (such as from Honeywell or whoever) include liveness tests and spoofing measures. Though anecdotally they are not very good, they check for basic measures such as if the pupil expands and contracts from a burst of light.

3) Most biometrics that involve access to some place (verification) usually include a 3rd party monitoring said access.

If you were to do this for say someone's home. Depending on the system you may gain access with a high definition photo as many consumer systems are set to a higher false accept rate (FAR) to prevent user aggravation. However, if they set it to be very strict (giving a larger false reject rate) then the best way would probably be attack at their sensor directly. That is, the system often doesn't care about the surroundings, it's trained for one task (open if authorized user).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't have too much of a problem with this actually, because a lot of the "nonsense" images actually bear strong resemblance to the objects. The gorilla images clearly look like a gorilla, the windsor tie images clearly show a collar and a tie. The image coloring is way off of course, but the gradients seem about right.

</comment><comment><USER27> If we could find out the selection criteria behind each layer of the neural network for the human visual cortex we could possibly build something more accurate.

Although I doubt the visual cortex is a simple feed forward network like the one used in the paper. It's likely to have a non linear structure that's significantly more complex.

</comment><comment><USER28> So, deep neural networks are like artists, able to see a structure in chaos? Like when Michelangelo looked at a large stone, seeing David there immediately, so do DNNs recognize lions in white noise? We should applaud introduction of phantasy and imagination into science ;-)

</comment><comment><USER29> What this tells me that there probably exist deeply weird images that would be recognized as something by one person or by very few people, but would be just an unrecognizable mash of colors and lines to everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER30> I wish they explained why evolutionary algorithms were used. They seem to suggest gradient ascent also works - I wonder what the key criteria are for constructing good adversarial images?

</comment><comment><USER31> This brings interesting question. Is it possible to hack human brain? Will specific set of stimuli make brain react in certain way?

<comment><USER11> A field in cognitive science that asks these questions is "gestalt psychology". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> If the shoe was on the other foot, I can imagine a race of super computer AI's administrating a similar test to humans and saying look at the puny human vision system. It is fooled easily by simple optical illusions that wouldn't fool even a 2 year old AI. Clearly, there are questions about the generality of the human vision system and perhaps it is not fit for purpose...

<comment><USER5> Yes, of course, what constitutes sensible image recognition is just a matter of opinion, and opinions of some algorithm are as valid as yours. In fact, my pseudo-random number generator seeded with image binary accurately recognizes 100% of images I give it (based on my newly developed definition of image recognition).

<comment><USER32> I have got no idea of the point you are trying to make. You seem to be criticizing something I said but not sure what. You do realize that I was trying to make a somewhat ironic / somewhat humorous comment that you have to be careful that what you test for is relevant and that one isn't focusing on a narrow weakness which may not actually be that relevant for the general case.

<comment><USER5> You're making a comment in response to a specific research paper. Therefore, I interpret the comment within the context of that paper. So you're implying that the paper is "focusing on a narrow weakness which may not actually be that relevant for the general case". I disagree.

 _Any_ 2d image is an optical illusion, so it makes no sense to criticize human image recognition based on it being 'fooled' by illusions. The real criteria for whether image recognition works well or not is altogether different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> So are human brains.</comment>


Ask HN: What has a better ROI? Comp Sci BS or JD? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> When you ask a "what is better" question, you have to provide your personal metrics : money, happiness, mobility, weekly hours, technical challenge, industry, purpose, etc. An universal "better" does not really exist.

</comment><comment><USER3> Both ?... litigate knowledgeably in software-related cases?</comment>


Ask HN: Can I get some feedback on my business idea/landing page? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,
I would love some feedback on my business idea. I haven't "officially launched" yet so I might change up some things, but the content that is on my landing page hopefully sums up the service I am offering.
As far as pricing goes, I will probably raise each plan $20 or $30 but I am not sure yet. I also plan on adding a live chat widget (olark.com) before I start promoting the site.
I seem to have a horrible time thinking as a non-technical small business owner instead of a developer so I would love any feedback on my copy.
Thanks for the help!
pixelguard.co <comment><USER2> Overall, great design but very mixed messaging. You seem to cater to a very non-technical crowd, but then confuse them by throwing in low level hosting considerations (content delivery network, sql injection, etc). Simplify it, focus on what your users know and care about (getting that weekly blog post up without a hitch), and remove the rest.

Specifics:

1\. Big call to action buttons over image: change the button background instead of underline.

2\. Second heading can be more concise: "PixelGaurd manages your website.
You manage your business."

3\. Copy under the second heading is too long.

4\. Remove the first sentence of Anne's quote, or change it to something like "I got up and running in the first day." Saying she didn't know anything about Wordpress is a huge red flag for me.

5\. Mark's quote is great. Maybe emphasize the "we take care of it for you" mentality by having a few example workflows of issues you've solved. This will provide me much more insight into what you can do, and will help me start seeing how I can use Pixelguard in my own business.

6\. Include company / position (CEO, marketing, etc) for quotes.

7\. Don't like the strikethrough in the plan. Position it as "Advanced gives you more" not "Basic gives you less".

</comment><comment><USER3> The copy is ok. You could tinkle with a little bit and do some AB testing. Do a google search on Buffer AB testing, they have some awesome advice on their blog.

Pricing, looks different. Usually, it's cheapest (on the left) with most expensive package (on the right). I wasn't sure if you did this to be different? With pricing, you might want to add in 'time', for example live chat 24 hours, if you can offer this, it will make your value proposition stronger. The States and Australia are on different time schedules.

I'd also offer a free account, whereby founders of startups can 'do' live chat with their customers. Realistically, they are the people that should be doing live chat, as it's their customers. They need to know what's going on. You could even consider charging for this ($10-20 per month).

If you want me to take a look at your copy more seriously, email me at firstname.lastname@example.com on the weekend, and I'll see if I can come up with anything better.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't have experience in hosting space but I'll say you have too much text on the front page. Perhaps put some graphics there and concisely summarize your offerings. IMO, users tend to have very short attention span so showing them the big picture may help for converting them into beta users. Perhaps also move beta users signup form to the top. May be put something like "click to sign up for free" or "sign up for risk-free demo".

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm I see what you mean about taking into consideration the short attention span. In your opinion, what do you think I should remove?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just a small suggestion, I'd change '$50' and '$100' to '$50/month' and '$100/month'. There's no mention of it being a recurring charge other than at the bottom of the signup form.

</comment><comment><USER6> 'Mark' is really John Heffron

[https://www.google.com/search?q=John+Heffron](https://www.google.com/search?q=John+Heffron)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha I was confused at first. Yes, the testimonials are not from actual clients and the images are just pulled off of Google images.

I do have some real testimonials to add but I haven't done that yet. There are still a couple of things I need to add/change e.g. fixing the headers links on mobile phones/tablets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Join Beta and Learn More buttons collide on a small screen.</comment>


Private Data - The Real Story: A Huge Problem with Education Research - <AUTHOR> http://math.stanford.edu/~milgram/

<comment><AUTHOR> This new submission is related to a previous Hacker News submission

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4649332>

from 60 days ago.</comment>


Bill force people to report cryptocurrencies entering the US - <AUTHOR> https://anonymster.com/bitcoins-anti-money-laundering-reporting/ <comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely crazy bill! we must fight against it</comment>


Git Smart: git bisect - <AUTHOR> https://www.pandastrike.com/posts/20141112-git-smart

<comment><AUTHOR> While a basic knowledge of git (i.e. checkout, add, commit, push, and pull) is fairly common among developers these days, when it comes to advanced topics, you still earn a lot of puzzled faces and blank staring eyes when you start talking about things like git bisect or git rebase. This blog series will shed some light on these topics of advanced gitology. git bisect, or git can do THAT?

</comment><comment><USER2> Summary: "git bisect bad" on current (broken) build, find a past build that works, mark it as "git bisect good", and git will basically guide you through a binary search to find the last good build before the current broken one.</comment>


More Worries over the Security of Web Assembly - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/security/more-worries-over-the-security-of-web-assembly <comment><AUTHOR> It's shame that the author has no idea about the security model of WebAssembly. Control-flow integrity and protected call stacks prevents direct code injection attacks in WebAssembly. Please check. [https://webassembly.org/docs/security/](https://webassembly.org/docs/security/)</comment>