Facebook is wrong, text is deathless - <AUTHOR> http://kottke.org/16/06/facebook-is-wrong-text-is-deathless <comment><USER2> > Human brains process it absurdly well considering there's nothing really > built-in for it.

That's unclear. The sheer bitrate of reading suggests that it might tap into some deep structures -- hacking some parts of the visual and speech systems, if you prefer.

I don't click on HN video links because I find video slow and frustrating way to learn almost anything. Text is so random access -- you can skip over boring bits re-read hard bits, luxuriate in the really wonderful bits...all of which is hard in video. And in fact because the visual channel is so complex, I find reading _more_ multimedia than video -- it's hard to feel cold when watching someone march through the snow, though a well written book can make me shiver with cold, even on a summer day.

<comment><USER3> Those deep structure may be active, but reading was never in their design documentation. Our brains evolved to what they are today long before reading was a thing. The fact that we read so well is probably a hacked-together scheme tying together structures meant for pattern recognition and speech.

I see reading much like swimming. None of us can swim without practice, as none of us can read. The scary thing is that even the best of us can only swim about as well as the average dog. So pity us on the day we find a creature actually designed for reading.

<comment><USER4> > structures meant for

"Meant"? Nothing in your body or brain is "meant" for anything. There is no "meaning", or "intention", for starters. And the brain is nothing if not adaptable. If your brain is "meant" to be anything, it's versatile.

<comment><USER5> I think pretty much everything in your body is specialized and is "meant" for something. No matter how hard you try, you're not going to get your heart to replace your pancreas or kidneys. And you can't replace your lungs with brain tissue. Sure, doctors can transplant a toe to replace a thumb or a heart blood vessel with a vein from a leg with great success, but it's doing pretty much the same function, just in a different place.

As a whole, humans are quite adaptable to their environment, but specific body parts tend to be specialized.

<comment><USER6> _you can 't replace your lungs with brain tissue_

No, but the brain can replace brain tissue for one task with brain tissue for another task. It's called neuroplasticity: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity#Treatment_of_b...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity#Treatment_of_brain_damage)

I agree with the GP, if there's one characterization that applies to the brain, it's "versatile".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A lot of us here works with information for a living. Of course, we prefer the leaner, more information dense medium.

Facebook is not a platform to communicate interesting ideas succinctly. I apologize for not coming up a better way of saying this, but Facebook is catering for the not-so-sophisticated. The majority of users probably can't scan/process text very fast.

Facebook is TV. It wants to be TV.

<comment><USER8> > Facebook is TV. It wants to be TV.

It's a great comparison. TV, in many ways is an obsolete medium, and yet it is still efficient and remains popular despite the advent of streaming and other media offering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I guess maybe I'm too old to understand (38) but to me, reading some text is simply _way faster_ than watching someone read that text in a video... but they are saying the exact opposite.

This is completely baffling to me.

<comment><USER10> Well produced video is magic. Think of a movie that was impactful to you -- done well, video can tell a story in an almost magical way.

The reality is that the average video is drivel and not nearly as good as a similar written piece. The FB is either living in a reality distortion field or thinking about high quality ad/infotainment content that produces $ for Facebook.

<comment><USER11> >Well produced video is magic.

Most of us don't realise how difficult editing is. There's a camera in our phones, and uploading to Facebook, Youtube or Snapchat has never been easier, so now we're all film makers. It just that almost no one realise how hard their favourite podcast or youtube channel has worked on editing. Or how many times they redone the exact same bit, to get it absolutely perfect, and watchable.

It's easier and faster, to re-read a few sentences, edit the worst bit, re- read and post. There's not really a fast way of editing the worst parts of a video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't stand video content unless the visual component is absolutely critical to transmission of the idea that is being communicated. I'd take a podcast/audiobook (with playback speed control) over 99% of videos that are shared on HN and a gazillion other sites.

The "information density" to "bandwidth" ratio (is there a term for it?) is seldom justified for the majority of video content.

<comment><USER13> (Payload.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I cant stand videos for most information. By the time the video loads and the probably slow speaking individual goes over just the introduction of the information, I could have already read a more informative article/post.

<comment><USER15> Since I started playing all YouTube videos at 2x speed[0] I enjoy watching/listening to videos much more. Watching videos at 1x is just unbearable to me now. I wish FB added 2x playback too.

[0] using [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/improvedtube- youtu...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/improvedtube-youtube- exte/bnomihfieiccainjcjblhegjgglakjdd?utm_source=chrome-app-launcher-info- dialog)

<comment><USER16> Interesting! I do the same with video lectures from Coursera. For example, Odersky's lectures may be interesting, but boy is he a slow speaker. I simply cannot stand his -- and to be fair, most -- lectures unless I play them at 2X speed.

And still, I'd rather read the PDF slides.

Video isn't a particularly good way of conveying formal information. Text with graphics is way better.

<comment><USER17> Video is a great way to convey formal information - when that info needs the moving visuals aspect to be clearly presented.

Videos of people just speaking text is terrible and the wrong tool for the job.

<comment><USER18> Well, the best way to accomplish this would be include an animation in the material that's mostly in the written form.

Like this: [http://acko.net/blog/how-to-fold-a-julia- fractal/](http://acko.net/blog/how-to-fold-a-julia-fractal/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This article borrows heavily from an article that Graydon Hoare (founder of the Rust programming language) posted a couple years ago - [http://graydon.livejournal.com/196162.html](http://graydon.livejournal.com/196162.html)

<comment><USER20> You probably didn't mean it this way, but your comment seems to suggest that plagiarism occurred. I think you meant to say simply that the two articles are similar in theme.

<comment><USER21> It doesn't seem like Kottke's style to plagarize, but it also seems extremely likely he read Graydon's post before writing this one. Even the phrases like "always bet on text" are the same.

<comment><USER22> FYI, the post was written by Tim Carmody, who is guest-blogging on Kottke.org this week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It'd be great if we could extract subtitles from video and put into a nice text format that's easy to read so it's skimmable. Then when you get to an area of interest, you should be able to click the place where you're interested and a video will pop up and start from there. Then when you've heard what you wanted to hear you can minimize the video and skim the text for the next area of interest and so on.

<comment><USER24> I imagine there could be an interesting means of moving the playhead along with your skimming, so when you highlight a block of text (as I do, habitually), the video would play through the selection and pause at the end. I'd love to use text as a video controller.

<comment><USER25> This is a great idea -- text is much faster to read, but watching a speaker is much more information-dense due to body language and intonation.

This would be a fun hack. Looks like the YouTube caption data is available via API: [https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/captions/downl...](https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/captions/download)

<comment><USER23> I can't try this out at the moment, but from looking at the documentation I don't see it say that it returns the timestamp of the caption anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How much Facebook browsing is done discreetly in school, at work, in meetings, on public transport, when waiting for someone? Will video work in these situations? I doubt they'll be able to _replace_ their current text with video.

It sounds more to me like they're looking at the bigger ad dollars YouTube is getting and want to absorb their market.

The only way for Facebook to grow now is to get out of the "friends and family" market and take over Twitter and YouTube's "celebrity/popular people" market. It seems like this could be a difficult pivot.

<comment><USER27> But they already have Instagram don't they?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The 90 / 9 / 1 rule is finally taking hold on Facebook.

With only 1% of the users generating content, 9% simply liking/commenting, and 90% logging in to just watch.... FB is desperate to satiate the immediate gratification needs of 1B+ people.

Video is the quick fix.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_\(Internet_culture\))

</comment><comment><USER29> One way to read it is "people are increasingly preferring video over text, so that's where Facebook is going". I think what it really means is that Facebook sees more ad money in video than in text, so that's where they are steering the ship.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is anecdotal, but I've still never watched one of those auto-play videos you see at the top of news articles. It's just so much more efficient to just skim the text below and find the relevant information you were after.

</comment><comment><USER31> This will force media companies to do something which they should have done a long time ago.

Think of all the videos you ignore on Forbes, WSJ, Bloomberg, etc. because you can't view them muted. Think of all the videos from Buzzfeed and others which aren't of such high caliber but are so easy to consume that you do.

This will force those with real content to publish that content in an accessible way. I'm fine with videos, especially muted ones, because if the current trends stay I think they'll be more useful to me and everyone else.

Text IS great. But somethings like a presidential speech or a short interview need the visual element. Some things don't need the visual part, but a media company can make it better than without it. The key will be to keeping it short because as others mention in the comments it's very difficult to skip around in videos for what you care about. Most of the videos I mentioned are already pretty short though, so I'm guessing that won't be much of an issue for them to adapt.

</comment><comment><USER32> Humans are wired to seek validation.

Consumption of media that expresses resonant emotions is to a degree validating.

However expressing and understanding myself and seeing myself emotionally and intellectually understood by peers is validation on another deeper level. The composition and writing of text has been shown to excite other areas of the brain than simple speech (there is a whole school on writing therapy).

There is always going to be a need for an immediate way to consuming and reacting. That market is served by twitter and snap-chat. Then there is the need for longer, carefully considered deeper thought. Thought where emotions have been deliberately moderated to provide breathing space for facts.

Video may provide more bits per second and via the eyes is more directly wired to our decision system. But the emotional space is already take by twitter and snapchat. The deliberation space is taken by text. It is not clear to me video will grow beyond a extended snapchat.

</comment><comment><USER33> Until now publishing content has had limitations.

Now anyone can publish as much content as they want, however irrelevant, and that is becoming a problem: proliferation of irrelevant content (irrelevant from the perspective of the reader).

So I think the next challenge is to just be able keep content concise, relevant and affine to your interests. Twitter took a stab at that, but it's not there yet.

Having a machine to filter and produce summarized versions of whatever endless feed you are reading, as well as remembering seen entries (a bit like Snapchat) is the next frontier.

Another key issue is selective ignorance, biases and such. Only exploring stuff related to your interests can trap people within a detached state with respect to reality.

<comment><USER34> > Only exploring stuff related to your interests can trap people within a > detached state with respect to reality.

That's something I've been casually interested in in the last few months, simply because I have, rather lately, come to understand that I won't ever be able to read all the books I want to read, or see the movies I want to see, etc.

However, it seems to me the "problem" or the situation is a little more complex than that. The information you consume will _always_ be a subset of "reality", and how detached you are from "reality" based on what information you consume seems like a quantity that will be hard to measure.

For the sake of being somewhat contrarian here, I'm just going to repeat something I've mentioned a couple times: I think that contrary to popular belief, all attempts at giving people a more "balanced" view of reality with a balanced "information diet", all attempts at avoiding the "filter bubble" are completely misguided.

The value is precisely in creating bubbles that are as valuable as possible for individuals, by filtering, curating, optimizing the information they consume to maximize the utility they get from it. That possibility seems to me to be largely unexplored today in places where you would expect to see it (information aggregation platforms, recommender systems that are still quite primitive, etc.).

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> There are a lot of people who like communicating through image memes & other short soundbites - I am not one of them.

I value text. I like reading deeper insights from people much more than cheap flyby memes or time consuming videos. If communication regresses like that, I'll probably withdraw from using those features. It's simply what I don't want in a social network.

<comment><USER36> Yes! Exactly. My (optimistic) suspicion is the users will get bored of it and stop looking at the river of crap, forcing them to change directions again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> As FB has removed and reduced features, including messaging from their mobile web app, I've been using them ever less... I'm not sure they aren't alienating as many people as they're actively engaging, and in the effort to keep the new millenials, they're pushing everyone else away.

<comment><USER17> > to keep the new millenials, they're pushing everyone else away.

Millennials are the biggest and most active group, and more important to them compared to "everyone else" \- they know what they're doing.

<comment><USER38> In the same vein I don't think it's as much capturing millennials as keeping up with them. It's impossible to predict every upcoming trend, but if they keep themselves nimble through acquisitions and trimmed product offerings they can ride the coattails of instagram/whatsapp type companies into eternity.

<comment><USER39> I disagree with the original premise that video is superior also, but Facebook is very calculated in their endeavors. They could be:

\- feature-chasing Periscope/Vine/Snapchat/Meerkat/Twitch/Youtube

\- enticed by pre-roll ads

\- planning future Oculus integration, live VR streaming, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Yes, for almost everything online, I prefer text: programming tutorials, the news, discussions like this on Hacker News. Imagine if each reply here had to be an uploaded video of the member talking.

For some other things, I prefer a video: how to cook something, how to repair something, how to tie a tie, an interview with a person whom I admire. Even then it can depend on my mood, and if I'm in a hurry I am like, "Oh, just cut to the chase, or put it in a one-paragraph article."

</comment><comment><USER41> Is it out of fashion to still want Facebook to die.

<comment><USER42> I'm not sure that I want FB to die totally...I'd prefer they shrink and shrivel up, but not go away totally...I want the decentralized interweb platforms of the future to have something to look at...and for them to remember what they should _not_ be doing. (Can you tell that I'm absolutely in favor of a non-centralized webternet world!?! ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> "stats showed the written word becoming all but obsolete, replaced by moving images and speech."

Obsolete would be a stretch however for many the web is all about consumption. Mobile devices cement this point. And videos are a very efficient way to consume information:

\- Read the book VS watch the TED talk.

\- Go to the recipe site VS watch this Tastemade video.

\- Read the Foreign Affairs article on the complexities of the Syrian war VS Watch this cool graphic filled Vox video.

And even with the written word, text is becoming more terse:

\- Read this article vs Read this set of tweets

But people will never stop writing so perhaps all Facebook is saying is that the written word will become less relevant to their business model as they slowly turn into something resembling Snapchat

</comment><comment><USER44> I always sent emails in plain text mode. I hate the idea of sending an entire html doc for a simple text only job.

</comment><comment><USER45> I think that interesting topic is "will we create programs as text for a long time?". Projection IDE seems to stall. Some time ago I was thinking about visual query language for databases (domain-specific) and composed this list of text advantages:

1\. Version control systems (VSC) out of the box. Software developers have been using safe source code tracking for many decades. Since queries are the main tools for data analysts, they should be treated the same way, but the development of all VCS features in a custom query editor is not economically viable.

2\. Portability. Text queries can be written even on a whiteboard and a notepad. One of the great advantages of text queries is that they are unambiguous: there are no hidden parts in a text query.

3\. Detachable. Text queries can be run in different warehouses. They should not depend on identifiers, conditions, and environmental variables.

4\. Fragmentation. An analyst can extract some feature from a query and partly pass it to his colleagues.

5\. Embedding. Software developers easily can embed queries into autotests, side subsystems can embed query parts into their code or resources.

6\. Specification. DSQL can be a part of a system's applied programming interface (API) for third party systems if DSQL specification is precise enough.

</comment><comment><USER46> They're probably thinking of memes and emojis as well. It can't be argued that well-structured text is a strong suit among individuals communicating with Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER47> > _Mendelsohn went further, suggesting that stats showed the written word > becoming all but obsolete, replaced by moving images and speech. "The best > way to tell stories in this world, where so much information is coming at > us, actually is video," Mendelsohn said._

This is going to go down in history alongside the mythical "640K ought to be enough for anybody" and the guy who thought the internet was just a fad.

</comment><comment><USER48> While video has the ability to communicate certain things more efficiently than text, it is far inferior in other ways.

For example, video is great at showing the physical relationship between car parts - what they look like, where they go - so if I'm trying to figure out how to get to that sixth spark plug on a 1990 Bronco II, I'm going to look for a video.

Video is also good at pacing the timing of emotional reactions. If it weren't, no one would watch movies.

If, on the other hand, I'm trying to learn or experience something complicated, like how to code in a new language, or an overview of the history of the idea of revolution, or any kind of theology, I'm going to read about it. I'm not going to watch some talking head give me far fewer words in the same amount of time, even if the video has some nice music and pans across a few pictures of cathedrals while the narrator speaks.

Words are the fundamental unit of thinking, and video is piss-poor at communicating words, especially when compared to writing.

<comment><USER49> >> Words are the fundamental unit of thinking,

Woa. Biig assumption.

I totally agree that text is "fundamental" indeed to our ability to communicate our mind-state, but text is not our mind state and it's a huge leap from "I can communicate with text" to "I'm thinking in text". You might as well assume video frames are fundamental units of thinking.

<comment><USER48> "Words," not "text." Illiterate people have words but can't read text. And some people "think in pictures" or "feelings" but that kind of thinking isn't the same as thinking in words.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> It's not clear what Facebook is thinking here. Video is useful for showing what you did, but not useful for communicating what you want to do. Maybe this reflects that people don't plan trips on Facebook any more; they use Instagram for that. One could interpret this as Facebook abandoning communication in favor of being a collection of public scrapbooks.

</comment><comment><USER51> I don't agree with the article. As others have already said here, text is random access and easy to process and retain information.

I am going to drift off topic: the future is AI that understands what we say, recognizes our facial expressions, and generally "gets us." While there are obvious potential downsides, the upsides involve getting notified of things in the order of most useful and entertaining first. AIs will use text, still photos, and videos to show us what we want to know and experience. This whole idea creeps me out a bit, but it is probably the future. At some point in time, effective computer to human neural I/O connectors will be invented, and the effect of civilization will be interesting. So, video -> direct neural implants.

</comment><comment><USER52> The folks at Facebook are not stupid. This is likely setting the groundwork to ream more bandwidth through their Aquila project [https://info.internet.org](https://info.internet.org)

More bandwidth means more money, which means convincing more of the public to invest more in Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER53> As a consumer/dependent-based institution which benefits from increased control strives for growth and succeeds, eventually you reach a point where the most benefit to the institution can best be achieved using less literate followers/subjects.

</comment><comment><USER54> I work in eLearning and we create a lot of visual content as its easy to convey ideas in video than through text.

The cost of video production is at least 50X or 100X more than text and hence, we take extra caution to make sure that it's precise and accurate. What is said in 1500 words is trimmed down to 250 words to create a video. It goes through multiple talents like motion graphics team, anchors etc before it hits the screen and hence it's interesting to watch. Text, caption etc are just there for SEO. Bandwidth is the only constrain, especially in developing nations.

And then there are low-quality mugshot videos, which takes less budget than what it takes to present the same content in text.

The quality ones will replace text forever.

<comment><USER55> > The quality ones will replace text forever

And this need to be a startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I think that the only thing that will make text obsolete is synthetic, panpsychic telepathy.

</comment><comment><USER57> Interesting that the author chose "deathless" over "immortal."

</comment><comment><USER58> FB is missing three significant differences. 1 - Consuming video is time consuming. There is no quick scan for key words etc. If you're locked in on video X there's no scrolling on, etc. Your experience, in a way, stops. 2 - Video is passive. Reading takes engagement. Those will effect the brain very differently. 3 - Video is not conversational. It's traditional top down broadcasting.

Sure FB might become more video but that doesn't mean it's going to result in the same attachment to the product, at least for adults.

</comment><comment><USER59> Text is an efficient medium to express something complex. But the average facebook user is not expressing something complex. He shares quick reactions, emotions, stuff that trigger anger or fun. Not things that requires deep analysis.

For that, video is perfect.

So in the context of Facebook, it makes sense. In the context of ads, it makes sense.

Yes, we don't want to believe it because it sounds like hell to people reading HN religiously, where text is kind, where people debate, where people don't use smileys, and where ideas get evaluated.

But that's not what Facebook is for. And that's not what the people on Facebook want.

</comment><comment><USER60> Wasn't there a paper from facebook where it says 80% of videos are watched without sound?

Doesn't it mean that most of these videos are watched with subtitles?

How is that taken into aaoumt with the "death" of text?

<comment><USER26> > Doesn't it mean that most of these videos are watched with subtitles?

No, it means they're not actually watched at all. Facebook autoplays videos (without sound) when you scroll through your timeline. If you get distracted and stop scrolling and 10 seconds play, they count that as a "play".

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Video is good for showing falling people (or naked). When I look for information - news, tutorials, knowledge - I avoid video like a plague. Three words: Low Information Density.

</comment><comment><USER62> I don't think Facebook is wrong.

It just so happens that video works better on Facebook (and probably other social networks), where the stream of information is huge. People, most of them anyway, suck at describing things. Most of them can snap a picture of something nice, exciting, cute, whatever. Not everyone is writer, nor should one be to share some everyday thing.

Text has it's uses. It's just that other mediums usually tend to work better on Facebook.

And that's fine.

</comment><comment><USER63> First, FB assimilated Wikipedia (just text, few images). FB also assimilated IMDB. Then, they discovered that most links aren't Wikipedia anymore but it's youtube. So they assimilate a video service so that they will be quoted when another hyped video comes up and not youtube again. Aaand facebook will continue to assimilate. Google's AI features should be at their next aim.

Facebook is Borg. Faceborg.

</comment><comment><USER64> I just read most of the comments, but I didn't read the article. I was much more interested in the comments.

Having said that, if these comments were an audiobook, or a word for word movie script, I'd probably only be through about 5 of them.

Words rule!

On the other hand, if a picture is worth 1,000 words, a movie must be worth billions! Unfortunately it takes a lot of study of a picture to get 1,000 word out of it. That's a lot of pausing.

</comment><comment><USER65> Just today we had a "children illustrated guide to kubernetes" receiving lots of upvotes(243), and some comments saying it's a much better way to learn stuff.

So i'd say text isn't the ideal, it's just a matter of economics that we are surrounded by text all the time, and maybe facebook can shift that.

On a sidenote, i'm curious why aren't there aggregators for well illustrated content ?

</comment><comment><USER66> To devils advocate, though, what if automatic transcripting of text from video actually worked reliably? You might then get many of the advantages of text in video form: ability to search, copy-paste, fast forward and backward while still seeing what is going on. You would still see the presenters ugly mouth flapping up and down, however, which might be thought a negative.

</comment><comment><USER67> It's interesting to consider how painful a "video-only Wikipedia" would be to use. If the point is to distract, then video is certainly at an advantage. If the point is to communicate or inform, then certainly text is the winner.

I guess that explains FB's hope for a rise of video content.

</comment><comment><USER68> I'm guessing this a pivot that actually is moving away from everyday user generated content as facebook already has become increasingly a news and image-macro aggregator/sharer. Why not video I suppose? I imagine forcing video advertisements pays significantly better.

<comment><USER69> Video ads are _slightly_ harder to block. Particularly on mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was first employee and lead engineer at a startup that was primarily focused on video, which eventually got aquired by a very well known video sharing platform. If there's one thing I learned in that 5 years, it's that I don't care much about video. I had every opportunity to find a way to care. I enjoyed creating the technologies that we created. I enjoyed managing the systems we built and meshed. I enjoyed inventing ways to store and retrieve Terabytes of short videos for thousands of people. I even enjoyed building a prototype video renderer in Javascript (which was eventually ported to C). But as far as consumption is concerned, I couldn't be bothered with the vast majority of it.

The applications that we built were an attempt to resolve some of this. We were building editing / curation tools to help improve video, and some of the people using our software created incredible things, that I absolutely loved.

I especially dislike the trend in the past (5?) years toward programming tutorials in video. Give me a written tutorial. Give me a blog post. Give me a well-commented repo, or at least a poorly commented one with a decent README file. When teaching anything involving a textual artform / profession, give me Anything but a visual / audial medium. I write and read code for a living, and otherwise I write and read about problems solved with code all day. When it comes to programming, video is a square peg in a knife fight.

That said, I have an enormous collection of TV shows and Movies, and I have a great deal of appreciation for the medium, in general. One of my close friends is an Editor in Hollywood and I have such an absolute respect for him and the creative sides of his industry. I love to see his work and hear about the intricacies therein. When edited and curated, video is splended. I can dive in and forget the world exists and appreciate nuance and symmetry of visuals, sounds, and ideas. And despite my feelings about programming videos, I know it's possible to learn from video, depending on the subject.

I don't want to watch videos of everyone I know doing every day things. I don't want to watch unedited, uncurated crap in real time. Every time a "Live" video link shows up on my FB notifications, I skip it. I don't want to see you live. If I did, I'd video chat with you, or I'd call you up to hang out. But if you want me to take some time out to watch your broadcast, then I expect some planning, editing, and and overall respect for my time. This is video, after all. It's all-consuming. I have to watch AND listen in real time, which means I'm not doing anything else. Asking that much of me requires respect.

Of course another benefit of text is that it's so easy to edit. I don't know if you've actually enjoyed reading this post, but I assure you the first version was much, much worse.

And if you just skimmed it and ended up here, at this sentence, well there it is: my favorite part about text over video.

</comment><comment><USER70> Temporal disillusions caused by a feeling of being in control. A desire to rush to novel/radical claims with a cloak of pretentious knowledge. Sometimes its such a strain to wade through. And yes, go ahead, downvote.

</comment><comment><USER71> This suggests that video lectures such as offered by coursera could be improved on by providing a transcript for every video lecture. Has this been done by any of the other online teaching institutions?

<comment><USER72> EdX does that, I just started a course on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Am I the only one who stops reading an informative English article when the word "because" is used to begin a sentence? Maybe text does deserve to die.

<comment><USER74> Because of your insightful commentary, the site has decided to close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Videos can be made to be extremely entertaining and take very little effort to consume. It makes sense that video will be increasingly important for Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER76> I am the kind that reads thrice before hitting send. It would be too slow/too weird to do that with video or voice notes. Text is deathless.

</comment><comment><USER77> Maybe a reason for declining text on FB is that people who like to talk to other people don't use FB anymore.

</comment><comment><USER78> Maybe you should have made a video of this?

</comment><comment><USER79> I would say the information _density_ of text is much higher than that of video, at least for my purposes.

</comment><comment><USER80> "Plenty of people can deal with text better than they can spoken language" That's a joke right ?

<comment><USER81> Deaf people are an obvious example. As are people dealing with content not in their native language. Accents can also be an issue.

And then there are many people who would simply prefer to read something over heating it. Is that really so hard to understand?

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> This is why it makes me laugh when idiots think the Minority Report interface could ever work.

Text will rule for a long while yet.

</comment><comment><USER42> So would some sort of animated ascii art be considered video or text?

</comment><comment><USER82> You don't need sound for text.

</comment><comment><USER83> Irrational exuberance by FB

</comment><comment><USER84> Well ... uh ... I think ... I think ... uh ... everyone can hear me? ... I'll wait till the guys in the back ... oh and the girls, too, right hahahahahah ... OK ... let's get started...

Sure. I know Facebook wouldn't put out videos like that but it seems 80% of all videos linked to do start out like that and that's the quality you're going to get from anyone worth listening to. Even the polished ones, though, blatter on about things I don't care about but I can't skim ahead in the video without worrying I'm skipping something I really do want to hear.

Thus, the advantage of text. To the point. Skimmable, both forward and backward with the ability to understand what you are skipping over.

Have you ever read transcripts from talks given? Don't you wish someone would have edited out all the garbage talk beforehand? And doesn't your mouse wheel finger hurt scrolling down the page, only to be told "to hear the rest of the video, click here".

Now let's talk about the weight of video files ....

<comment><USER85> At first, I thought 'Yeah me too, text is so much more efficient', but then I realized something. Maybe it's only me, but for learning more complex things video lectures work wonders for me, probably because they force me to slow down and process information calmly and in order; while with text, I tend to hastily jump all over the place, skipping the more boring bits and missing important things.

<comment><USER86> Opposite anecdotal evidence. I am terrible in following video lectures. But listening to audio books works wonders.

<comment><USER85> not really opposite imho, the point is 'explained slowly and methodically', seeing professor's face is completely optional

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> > _" It conveys so much more information in a much quicker period."_

What a pathetic load of hogwash. Video is the slowest possible way of conveying any meaningful information.

<comment><USER74> Came here to comment on same. It depends. No amount of text can give you the feel of an event like a short video. On the other hand, imagine TV news as "read the entire NY Times" \- it would take all night. Print has way more information, AND it's easy to skim.</comment></comment>


An End to Pornography, Sophistry, and Panty Raids - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/an-end-to-pornography-sophistry-and-panty-raids/ <comment><USER2> I have to ask, what is this? Even the most basic introductions are missing, and it seems to just ramble on one thought after another. Epstein seems to be involved. Who is Searle? Who are most any of the principles? Editorial, please!</comment>


I truly want to become another Steve Jobs. What should I do? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Steve-Jobs/I-truly-want-to-become-another-Steve-Jobs-What-should-I-do

<comment><USER2> > I truly want to become another Steve Jobs.

Well, you're off to a good start. You've linked to a site that requires a signup just to visit -- it's a walled garden, just like Apple itself.</comment>


What's the Best Exercise? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17exercise-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> I read through it. Pretty intersting. Running up stairs combines High Intensity Training and squat.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't really provide the progressive weight increases of barbell squats, and doesn't work your back muscles and arms like a proper squat, but if you're only going to do one exercise (which is a stupid restriction, mind you), it's probably not a bad choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm guessing nobody clicked through because it is on nytimes.com...</comment>


Facebook Handled their IPO Exactly Right - <AUTHOR> http://blogmaverick.com/2012/09/04/facebook-handled-their-ipo-exactly-right/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogmaverick%2FtyiP+%28blog+maverick%29 <comment><USER2> >> I bought and sold FB shares as a TRADE, not an investment. I lost money. When the stock didn't bounce as I thought/hoped it would, I realized I was wrong and got out. It wasn't the fault of the FB CFO that I lost money. It was my fault. I know that no one sells me shares of stock because they expect the price of the stock to go up. So someone saw me coming and they sold me the stock. That is the way the stock market works. When you sit at the trading terminal you look for the sucker. When you don't see one, it's you. In this case it was me.

That was probably my favorite part of the article. He screwed up and took responsibility for it! I'm not sure whether I should be impressed that he did or surprised that that taking responsibility for your behavior is so rare when everyone is always looking for someone to blame.

<comment><USER3> It feels both right and wrong - say I sold a inferior product to someone at a bloated price. As a seller, I made heavy profit and my business is a success. But I _knowingly_ inflated the price and screwed the buyer (of course, it is buyer's responsibility to evaluate the value of the item he/she purchases). The second part (bloating the price) just feels wrong.

<comment><USER4> In your world, what constitutes a fair stock trade?

<comment><USER5> Investors exchanging cash in hand for a discount on future cash flows, because they have different time or risk preferences. If you can't ever come out ahead without selling the asset (to a speculator who will of course have to kick it further down the hall of mirrors), its price has exceeded its fundamental value, which pretty much has to screw somebody over.

<comment><USER6> Eh, the issue you're against is that a stock price incorporates people's expectations of the future, and these expectations often turn out to be wrong.

This is where the gambling comes into play, but it's foolish to think it could possibly work any other way. Take the following example:

Say Congress passes a law that seriously hurts FB, and it will only go into effect in 3 months. There's a very small chance that FB will be able to successfully lobby its case, and a large chance that the law that has passed will go into effect.

Now, do you expect everyone to trade on FB's current "fundamental value"? Anyone in their right mind could see the changes that are coming and will price the stock accordingly. If they didn't, there would be huge arbitrage opportunities for anyone that could short the stock today and buy it in 3 months.

Now imagine that the certainty is less clear. Your own discounted cash flows model relies heavily on growth rate; a change in growth rate today disproportionately affects future potential a few years down the road. There are a lot of things to pay attention to but growth is probably the most important in the DCF model.

Everyone is trying to guess where that growth rate will go, and nobody can predict the future. Hence, a stock that can be volatile and not priced on its "fundamental value" according to you.

If you disagree with this, I would suggest you propose something different that would actually work.

<comment><USER5> If a baseball player is successful, the price of their trading cards goes up. Why? There's no concrete relationship between the two; the league doesn't pay the owner of the card per win. It just makes enthusiasts want to have the card to show off, and attracts speculators who intuitively expect the price increase they themselves help bring about.

In the same way, the success of facebook.com doesn't create any income for people holding FB shares, it just makes it psychologically easier to flip them. The price goes up for no better reason than everyone assuming it will.

The stock market has become a casino where self-perpetuating phantasms create noise that swamps the signal. I can't blame any company that fleeces willing speculators rather than try to sway value investors using actual yields. I'd love to propose a fix but I don't have one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The post-IPO "pop" also benefits the giant investment banks that underwrite IPOs; it is essentially a large transfer of wealth from the company to the bank and the bank's best customers, indirected sufficiently so that it's hard to spot.

Whatever you may think of Cuban's _caveat emptor_ stance regarding investor protections, he's right about Facebook's role in the IPO. The CFO's first duty is to the firm, and in this case it appears that Facebook made aggressive decisions to ensure that the IPO benefited them first and foremost. Which, ironically, serves the long-term best interests of outsiders who want a stake in Facebook.

<comment><USER8> _"The post-IPO "pop" also benefits the giant investment banks that underwrite IPOs"_

Great oxymoron.

If an IPO "pops" post-IPO, and during a defined period of time the underwriters essentially _underwrite_ , a.k.a. insure, the offering at the prospectus price, the appointed underwriting banks have a capital loss in the transaction. In dozens, if not +100 IPOs, underwriting banks have lost money.

<comment><USER9> A "pop" for an IPO means an increase in share price. Think pop vs. fizzle, not pop in bubble terms. Companies generally underprice the stock going through the underwriting banks so by the time they're sure to have a liquid market. The banks have an asset they have to give away at a price everyone knows is almost certainly below what it should be, so it winds up being a patronage thing.

Not this time though. Someone who worked on the deal at JP Morgan told me one of the big causes of the problem was that the clients in on IPOs usually ask for ten times as much stock as they actually want under the assumption they'll only get a small amount of what they ask for. With Facebook there was such a huge quantity that they actually got it and freaked out. But that's one data point from someone with a lot of incentive to self-justify.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Mark Cuban's Response to [http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/09/03/david- ebersman-the-ma...](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/09/03/david-ebersman-the- man-behind-facebook%E2%80%99s-i-p-o-debacle/)

Like always, love his rationale and thinking. I never understood people's view that facebook needs to be obsessed with the stock price (apart from the mentioned employee options). That might just be the naive youngen in me, but what facebook should, and in my opinion does care bout is its product line and users.

<comment><USER10> You are partly right, but in Facebook's case the stock price is important for a few reasons: (1) public perception: FB is a media/advertisement related company, and it is not good to be viewed by the public as a sinking ship; (2) employee retention: tech companies rely on stock grants to attract talent. With a stock price that is getting lower by the day, there is less incentive for employees to join the company.

<comment><USER11> (1) So your advice would be to cancel my (potential) very effective marketing campaign in FB because it's stock is sinking? Or should I reduce my personal activity? Or what?

<comment><USER12> No, but people without any successful campaigns (they either never have had a FB marketing campaign or their last one failed) will get doubts about if FB is the right venue. I personally think stock price is a bad proxy, but many people still look at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Mark's article misses one key point. If it were a win then he wouldn't need to write a post defending it.

A poorly performing stock price matters a great deal. It matters in the leverage you have with partners, retaining senior leadership, hiring new employees and overall day to day morale in the office. So maximizing the short term cash ramp has left FB significantly exposed over the next 24 months. YHOO is a fantastic example of what happens if your company suddenly has the aura of "loser" in the Valley. (Hopefully they'll turn that around but jury's still out)

So rather than absolutely maximize the short term gain FB could have found a middle ground that wouldn't make them the punching bag of the media resulting in long term risks to employee morale and retention.

<comment><USER14> The problems with "retaining senior leadership, hiring new employees and overall day to day morale in the office" can be fixed by repricing options, which is cheap in respect to the profit Facebook made from their high IPO price.

Yahoo isn't considering a loser in the valley because of their stock price. It's because no one in the valley uses their products. That isn't true for Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Full disclosure: I currently own FB shares (at a loss), but could sell at any time.

Cuban is right in that the Facebook IPO was great in that they sold their shares for higher than what they were worth and maximized the benefit for FB.

But the more important fact is that investors, who are the lifeblood of this entire market, got fleeced, and that's long-term bad.

The people that you do business with MUST have confidence that you will live up to your end of any deal that you make with them. If you're only going to do a single one-shot deal with someone, I suppose it's doable to screw them for whatever they're worth. That seems to be the Wall-Street-style business model that is popular with some people these days.

But if you intend to do business over and over again, screwing everyone you deal with is a great way to go broke very quickly. As well, if you attain the reputation of being someone that is bad to do business with, then you will suffer as well.

Do you think Andrew Mason is going to get as good of a ride on the next company once Groupon fails? How difficult will it be for Facebook to have another secondary if it needs to raise more capital?

My guess is that any new deals underwritten by Morgan Stanley will get a second look-over from any potential investors, given the fact that they really sold some snake oil with FB at $100B.

<comment><USER2> I'm going to be very surprised if FB is going to need to raise another 10B.

Also, it's interesting that when facebook pulled one over on the bankers, "they got screwed", but when the bankers do it to everyone else, it's "business as usual."

Of course Facebook isn't going to get valued as highly the next time through - THEY KNOW THAT - and that's why they got as much out of their IPO as they could.

<comment><USER15> It will affect FB when they make acquisitions based on shares as well. It might make potential acquirees more reluctant to take anything but cash, which will be a drag on their financials.

FB didn't pull one over on the bankers. The bankers and FB sold their shares to investors, so both parties are "guilty" to some extent. Investors are guilty for believing the hype as well, but in any deal, the buyers have a lot more power than the sellers, so keeping the investors happy is important for a healthy market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Mark presents some good points here. I like how he takes responsibility for his own trading losses and does the correct thing: he gets out when it doesn't do what he expects.

He's also correct that a company can reprice their options.

But all of that misses the point.

Later employees can have repriced options so they're no longer underwater but you have to remember that a lot of people went to Facebook in the latter days for a pre-IPO payoff that didn't eventuate. If their vesting options look little different to an RSU package they'd get from Google, there is no "golden handcuffs", which is what you really want for talent. If Facebook has to reprice their options to recreate that situation they may end up spending a lot of the cash they gained for the high IPO price.

Second, every company, every lawsuit, every _war_ has a _narrative_. That narrative is important. If you're trying to get people on your side, the facts typically don't matter, the narrative does. Pre-IPO, Facebook's narrative was of going from strength to strength to the point where it had competitors scared that Facebook would be _the_ Internet.

That is no longer the case. The spell is broken. Investors have realized this. No longer is Facebook the company with blue sky potential. It's (now) a company with a really high P/E ratio. Google, for example, peaked in 2007. Part of this was the highs of the market but part of it is also this shift from blue sky potential to viewing the company as a source of income. All this even though Google is making _way_ more money than in 2007.

So Facebook may take _years_ to regain the IPO price. Watch out for the pundits who see the $38 IPO price and consider $18 cheap. The first price we see for something tends to imprint strongly and we view all subsequent prices in those terms. It's a trap that could well lose a lot of people a lot of money.

Beyond employee and investor issues there is another problem here: companies tend to prefer to pay for acquisitions with stock rather than cash (eg Instagram was, at the time, $700M in stock and $300M in cash IIRC). If the narrative of your stock is one of it having consistently dropped since the IPO, it makes it harder to pay for acquisitions with stock as investors and founders have to price the stock based on expected losses rather than expected gains.

The key motivations in any market are fear and greed. If the stock has a history of going up (like Apple's in the last decade) then greed takes over and people want to get in. In Facebook's case, fear would be a significant factor now (given lock-ups of shares on acquisition, etc).

The problem with Facebook IMHO was that it waited too long to IPO. Of course as a colleague of mine likes to say, "that train has sailed" [sic].

One thing I that makes me chuckle is thinking back to the prices paid on secondary markets pre-IPO. Staunch FB defenders argued this was useful price discovery (one function of any market). Others (including me) argued that such markets were essentially echo chambers and the stock was too thinly traded to give meaningful price information. That view has turned out to be correct.

The best part of this whole story is that the wider market hasn't bought into the hype and has discounted Facebook stock accordingly. Any concern of us being in a bubble should go out the window.

<comment><USER17> to your points an interesting article from business insider

 _It's Becoming Clear That No One Actually Read Facebook's IPO Prospectus Or Mark Zuckerberg's Letter To Shareholders_

Quick hits from the article

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

Didn't anyone even read Facebook's IPO prospectus? The answer, I can only assume, is "no." Because if anyone had read the Facebook IPO prospectus, they would have learned, among other things, the following:

Facebook's growth rate was decelerating rapidly.

Facebook's user-base was rapidly transitioning to mobile devices, which produce much less revenue.

Facebook's operating profit margin was already an astounding 50%, which suggested it had nowhere to go but down.

Facebook's CEO had a nearly unprecedented amount of control over the company.

Facebook's CEO had set up this astounding level of control intentionally. Mark Zuckerberg knew all about how impatient public-market shareholders are. And he set up the whole company so he would never have to pay attention to their whining.

In the 9 months following the IPO, insiders would be free to sell more than 2 billion shares of Facebook that they had been holding for years.

Facebook was going public at an astoundingly high price for a company with these characteristics—about 60-times the following year's projected earnings, in a market in which other hot tech companies like Apple and Google were trading at less than 15-times.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-stock-letter- shareho...](http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-stock-letter- shareholders#ixzz25W9oFTeJ)

<comment><USER18>
         Facebook's CEO had a nearly unprecedented amount of
         control over the company.

Is that a bad thing?

I was under the impression that Larry and Sergey did the same thing with Google. As I remember they always retained more than 50% of voting rights, and now there's a new special class of stock issued to shareholders with no voting rights.

Thing is, shareholders can be irrational, especially with companies that are working on the cutting edge, because shareholders are more interested in short-term gains. E.g. Shareholders and Wall Street were thrilled when Dell was outsourcing their core competencies to Asus, which in the end screwed them over. Dell is now just a shadow of what it used to be, with no bright future ahead.

Of course, if you view that as a warning sign, then simply don't buy. But there are other factors at play here. Do you trust the company? Do you trust the CEO? Do you understand the risks? If not, then maybe you shouldn't own stock in the first place.

<comment><USER19> > Is that a bad thing?

Nope. The article does explain this. None of the bullet points are meant as criticism.

<comment><USER17> Exactly - From the article:

 _Again, Mark Zuckerberg set up the entire structure of the company so he wouldn't be forced to make dumb short-term decisions by whining public-market shareholders. And he TOLD them that he wasn't going to make those decisions.

They just didn't listen._

The article isn't an indictment of Facebook, its an indictment of investors who ignored the warning signs that this wasn't a stock designed for a short term position and are now complaining about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "If the CFO of Facebook came on SharkTank..."

This statement should end with "I'd offer him $100K for 50% of his company".

I really like Mark Cuban, but I feel like that show is beneath him. I've seen it a few times and haven't found any teachable moments. His blog, however, is great.

</comment><comment><USER21> He makes some great points, here. I like his quote, "When you sit at the trading terminal you look for the sucker. When you don't see one, it's you. In this case it was me." Interesting how he puts more blame on the buyer.

Also, sort of off topic (more related to just Mark Cuban), but I'm surprised he made that "SharkTank" reference. I've always wondered how he viewed his presence on that show. I figured he saw it more of a "charity case" because of his fame. I never realized he actually referenced it and promoted it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just think he really likes the show and really think he can help entrepreneurs (I happen to agree with both). SharkTank sure is sometimes a media play, and its sometimes less about the entrepreneur than the story, but you gotta admit that he is helping some really good people.

<comment><USER22> I've always wondered about the equity deals that get struck on SharkTank. Sometimes you see them make deals where the founder retains 51% of the company, but if you dig into the paperwork from ABC you see "ABC takes 5% equity or 2% royalty from all companies that appear on Shark Tank" (previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3946008> ). Whose share does that come out of, and where does that leave the founder? If it comes out of their share, they'd be left in a minority position if they now hold 46%, the "shark" hold 49% and ABC holds 5%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> They have a stock pile of money they wouldn't have had to play with for the next 2-3 years while they slowly grow their earnings. If they priced it at half they would have had half the money. Now they can sit back and relax. If you read the documents they clearly stated that they do not intend to be in it for the short-term and investors looking to buy shares should be thinking long-term. Zuckerberg seems to be a conservative dude who doesn't spend lavishly so he probably has a goal to make money and stock-pile it.

The only reason FB stock offering looks bad is because the market crashed for a moment halting the pop. If the market popped people would have nothing to say.

Cuban is spot-on.

</comment><comment><USER24> The parallel to Google is deceiving; as phrased by Mark, some reader may think that Google had a similar IPO crash. Not true. The referenced article and Google's repricing is from Feb 2009, when GOOG (then already a mature stock) had lost lots of value due to the global market crash a few months before. Completely unrelated cases.

</comment><comment><USER25> Other than AMT tax no Facebook employee can see the difference between the stock IPOing at $38 then falling to $18 and the stock IPOing and $18. Sure the is a lot more sturm und drang in one of the scenarios but at some point the price starts representing the market's view (right or wrong of the future). This is predicated on my assumption that Facebook's true value is closer to $4 (adjusting down to a P/E of around 20- I don't see a lot of growth potential despite claims like: [http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/30/party-like- its-1990-some-ct...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/30/party-like- its-1990-some-ctrs-on-facebook-sponsored-results-ads-exceeding-3/) ). I don't short because for that to be profitable you need to be 1) more informed and more certain, 2) have some idea of the timing of the market coming around to your point of view.

</comment><comment><USER26> Personally I think it is sad. FB tricks people into paying too much, and then some wealthy guy who should have been able to evaluate the offer properly gets fooled, but because he can afford the loss he tries to justify the whole thing, so that perhaps he can pull the same nasty stunt like that sometime in the future.

Using Cuban's own auction analogy, he was basically defrauded by buying a 'fake' collectors item, and thinks the fault lies with the purchasers (for not recognizing a fake when they see it) not the sellers or the auction house for perpetrating this ruse.

Paul.

<comment><USER27> How did they trick people? Genuinely curious...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I agree with his larger points, but i think it's only fair to point out the date on that article about Google options.

That was the very bottom of the market. Googles issues were macro. And the high-water mark in GOOG before that event was set by investors, not underwriters.

But fundamentally I don't think FB did anything wrong. As an armchair economist it looks to me like Facebook had enough strength in their order book to justify their $38 IPO price. You can't blame them for trying to maximize their one-time-only uber-billion-dollar liquidity event.

</comment><comment><USER29> What about the damn underwriters of this thing? Given the volumes offered, it was priced to go one way: down. So they maximized the offering but now the whole enterprise is worth half. Is the cash in the bank and the founder's coffers worth it? I have no idea, but I would think for employee compensation and morale purposes, it probably would've been better to leave a little on the table. Hell, their prospects looked like they were declining right on the eve of the IPO. What did everyone think would happen?

</comment><comment><USER30> Articles like the Sorkin piece have been appearing since the IPO because public shaming is the only tool disgruntled investors have to influence the company while Zuckerberg retains voting control. The market is looking for a dramatic (if temporary) gesture that will fluff the stock long enough for the muppets who got stuck holding the bag to dump their stock on some greater fools.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've been saying this for a while. Facebook and Zuck made out great on the IPO. They got everything they wanted out of it. The people who lost were the speculative buyers who thought the stock was actually worth that much and the underwriters who lost money propping up the stock price on the IPO day sell- off.

</comment><comment><USER32> naturally cuban thinks baiting suckers is a winning tactic, it describes his own success at taking yahoo's billion dollars for a company that didn't really exist. but note it also describes his string of tech failures ever since.

</comment><comment><USER4> Cuban is right, however I think there might have been some fraudulent (but possibly not illegal) activity of the underwriting bank to prop up the price on IPO day and in the days after...

</comment><comment><USER33> I largely agree with Cuban. But there is risk associated with going out too high. You can reprice options, but that introduces new complexities and risks.

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands I love Mark Cuban, but he's totally wrong here. He said the role of the CFO is to manage the company not the stock. Well, once you open the doors to investors and banks, they become your lifeblood. When you go public, guess what? Your goal is to make the people and banks investing in your company money. Otherwise guess what happens? Exactly what's happening now. The stock takes a huge dive and your company loses a ton of its value.

FB may have put $10 billion in the bank, but the market took $50 billion out of its value. Not exactly a win is it?

<comment><USER34> > Well, once you open the doors to investors and banks, they become your > lifeblood.

Not if your CEO has the controlling interest.

In theory, Zuck can let the stock drop to near zero, and then take the company private by buying outstanding shares for pennies per share.

And there's nothing the bozos with common stock can do about it.

> Not exactly a win is it?

It's a huge win, because that $50B has nothing to do with the company coffers, and has everything to do with the suckers who bought the common without serious voting rights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> due to the massive information asymmetry, didn't FB have a legal and moral obligation to provide an accurate valuation? this was my understanding from reading all the post-IPO anti-facebook fallout articles.

<comment><USER13> That's what the S1/prospectus was for. They're not being sued because there's nothing coming to light that they didn't cover. It's just the exuberance is fading as reality is setting in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The valuation of the FB IPO was _floored_ by the private market trades in 2010-2011.

</comment><comment><USER37> Ironic historical quote from the 2009 article:

'Google gives away free lunches to employees, but that didn't compel everyone else to do it," he said.'</comment>


On Lying - <AUTHOR> https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/lying-language-knowledge-ethics-and-politics/ <comment><USER2> Requiring something like 'intent' makes the picture impossibly murky. Intent can never be established with total certainty. Establishing intent requires mind-reading (ie, is impossible) or a confession that might itself be false.

So intent can only ever be established to some standard of evidence (possible, probable, likely or no plausible alternative interpretation). This introduces a huge amount of uncertainty which starts to dominate the moral situation. The lie cannot be disentangled from what the evidence is that it is a lie; because intent is always a fuzzy concept that cannot be measured or uncovered.

This is where the issues discussed here start to spring from - people imagine different standards of evidence then ask what the moral interpretation of that standard of evidence should be.

<comment><USER3> I think intent matters a lot. If you lie to me to take something from me because you want it, that's worse than lying to me in order to prevent me from going somewhere you know someone is waiting to take something from me.

I would never thank you for lying to me like a scammer would. I might thank you for lying to me like a parent would though.

Intent matters. Why you are lying to me is more important than the lie itself in my opinion.

<comment><USER4> And the consequentialist ethical standpoint is that intent does not matter as much, but the result does. And unlike intent, short term consequences are much more amenable to analysis.

In case of scammer vs parent, the results are obviously different.

But if say that parent lied with good intentions but caused harm, it could be as bad if not worse. The other thing that matters is whether consequences were predictable by the agent that lied. This is related to but not entirely the same as intent, however estimating that is pretty hard too. Typically done using a reference group.

Note that intent implies prediction of behavior of parties that are being lied to. The opposite is not true.

The argument in short is that the ethical difference between outright deception and gross negligence with same results is non-existent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The submitted link goes to a brief review of a recently published collection of essays; however, there's a table of contents and an abstract for each essay in the book itself available here[1].

I picked up Sissela Bok's book _Lying_ [2] a few years ago. While in someways it echoes the old "categorical imperative" argument (lying is wrong because you wouldn't want to live in a world where everyone routinely lies) I found it to be much more nuanced than Kant's heavy handed and inflexible system. There are in-depth discussions of paternalistic lies, lying to dying patients, lying to protect confidentiality, and much more.

[1]: [https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/978019874...](https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198743965.001.0001/oso-9780198743965)

[2]: [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/15606/lying-by- siss...](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/15606/lying-by-sissela-bok/)

<comment><USER6> Thank you for mentioning the Sissela Bok book, it looks interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The biggest advance in the field was the recognition of the role of bullshit.

Bullshit is talk that fills a role other than truth or falsehood. The speaker doesn't actually care whether it is true, false, or meaningless, but only what effect it has on listeners. Most political harm, from Hitler and Stalin to Trump and Bojo, arises from deployment of BS.</comment>


Ask HN: Feedback on "free" payment gateway using a Chrome extension - <AUTHOR> I am currently fiddling around with an idea to remove transfer fees for e-shops payments. But I don't know if it is a crazy idea that will never materialize. Anyhow it goes like this:
The e-shop embed an (additional) payment button and a script on the checkout form, just like with Stripe or Paypal. When the user clicks the button it will create a payment on my server with the relevant data from the e-shop, like bank account number, amount, currency, and open a new browser window on my site with the above payment information. This looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/m1ltZNg.png
To complete the payment the user must install the Chrome extension and navigate to own your online bank, make the transfer to the e-shop's bank account using the information given above. This is likely free. When the transfer have been made the user must export the transfer (or recent account transactions) to .CSV format, which many  banks offer. The Chrome extension will intercept this, verify the payment to the e-shop on my server and finally callback to the e-shop's checkout form.
Could it work?
______
Thoughts:
Planning for launch in Germany (and EU) which has standardized CAMT formatting for data exports.
There should be some mechanism to verify that this works with a given online bank. <comment><USER2> While the idea of a free payment gateway might be enticing for businesses, you or the businesses you serve need to provide something equally enticing for the users to go through the hoops of installing a Chrome extension. You'll need to figure out what the value is for the users - could it be lower prices? And if so, will the price be low enough for them to use this new method of payment? There are also other psychologies at play such as trust of the system, gaming the system, etc. that you will need to think it through.

Not saying it's not a good idea but there's a lot more to think about when it comes to payments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very valid concerns you raise. I am not sure I can answer them sufficiently, partly why I posted here. The primarily sales argument safe the ~3% transactions fee that many big payment gateways charge. In any case, it would properly only be offered as an alternative payment option besides the traditional.

Will properly make a MVP and try pitching it to some users and see what the response is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Problems off the top of my head: 1) standard bank transfers often aren't instantaneous (idk about Germany) 2) no support for handling disputes etc. 3) banks can simply try to block you if it ever gets traction 4) a lot of friction, no mobile support 5) it's hardly that much better than just having people do the transfer manually 6) you'll have to integrate across many banks UIs

Can you even verify if the transfer really happened based on this csv info?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

1\. The transfer is immediately registered as a transaction on your account statement overview.

2\. Yes, disputes would have to be handled by contacting your bank. I don't know the exact possibilities here, but would notice many complain about Paypal's polices too.

3\. Yes, but don't see why moving customers away from other payment platforms to the online would be bad business for them.

4\. Yes, no mobile. There are some constrains to it.

5\. It is essentially just a manual that get verified by a third party. In principle you could pay online shops manually, but the problem is that the shop owner would have to manually verify it, that is reading through his account statements. This Chrome extension does exactly this.

6\. To integrate you need to make sure the bank offers CSV data export with following the CAMT format (or something similar). This is required by the bank SEPA agreement in EU.

To verify a payment I reckon you need the following: amount, currency, account number and a token as payee note, see [http://i.imgur.com/m1ltZNg.png](http://i.imgur.com/m1ltZNg.png)

The unique token is generated by my server. Naturally there will have to be some testing with the different online banks.

I have done many (failed) projects before so I am likewise critical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My intuition would be that the cost of lost customers who aren't willing to

1) Install a new Chrome extension they've never heard of

2) navigate through their bank's website

Will be the much higher than payment processing fees.

Also, it sounds like you are storing bank account numbers on your machine.

<comment><AUTHOR> I imagine it would be an alternative payment method, not the only one. It does necessarily work with the customers specific bank.

This definitely isn't for anyone. A certain level of tech skills are required. But the customer do save money. Foreinstance on a 100€ transfer Stripe charges 3,2€ (0.30€ + 2.9%). The cost saving is the main attraction here.

I will only be storing bank account number (IBAN) which to my knowledge is usually available and doesn't pose a security hazard.

<comment><USER4> > But the customer do save money

Wait, so the business is the one who needs to integrate this into their system, but it is the customer who saves money? Why is the business going to spend 1000s of euros worth of time in order to save < 5% of their customers 4 euros?

Think very hard about the actual degree to which your product would enable a 200-person business to...

1) Increase revenue

2) Cut costs

Quantify that in euros.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would really love to know what others think on this ..

Can work if buyers are incentivized in some way to do this (too much friction).

"Free payment gateway" is enough for a lot of businesses to get started.

<comment><AUTHOR> I imagine it could offered as an alternative payment option besides the regular and more expensive. Making it easy to use together with Stripe and potentially as a plugin for popular e-commerce platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Intercepting data from a banking site? Sure that doesn't sound fucking dodgy at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> It uses the Chrome download API[1] and only listens to the downloaded files. If a file is from a specific bank site, contains the token and is in .csv format it will try to validate it. No user information is stored on my server.

Edit: I view it as similar as synchronising bank data with an external app.

[1]: [https://developers.chrome.com/extensions/downloads](https://developers.chrome.com/extensions/downloads)</comment></comment>


Java vs. K: a screencast - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~michaels/screencasts/Java_vs_K/Java_vs_K.html K is a proprietary APL-influenced array programming language. A simple 36-line Java program becomes a one-liner in K. <comment><USER2> This is the most obscure piece of Python code I could write to do the same thing :

def birthday(people=23): import random days = 365 sample_size = 1000 return reduce(lambda x, y : x + y, (len(s) != len(set(s)) for s in (map(lambda x: random.choice(range(x)), (days, )*people) for i in range(sample_size))))

I am sure someone can beat it ;) let me know <http://www.3kwa.com/Logbook/20070708>

How do I get the code to indent properly?

<comment><USER3> def birthday(people=23): import random days = 365 sample_size = 1000 return reduce(lambda x, y : x + y, (len(s) != len(set(s)) for s in (map(lambda x: random.choice(range(x)), (days, )*people) for i in range(sample_size))))

(two empty lines, then one space in front of every code line)

<comment><USER4> def birthday(people=23): from random import randint as rand; return sum([len(set([rand(1,365) for x in range(people)])) != people for i in range(1000)])

(constructs fewer inner lists, otherwise changes are completely cosmetic)

<comment><USER2> ah yes indeed much better! I tried to follow the K structure too much, but your code is too readable :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unfair comparison.

First things first, his java skills are rusty. Here's how a real java programmer would write this. Does the exact same thing as his final java sample; it's just less than half the size:

     import java.util.HashSet;
     import java.util.Random;
     import java.util.Set;
     public class BDays {
    	public static void main(String[] args) {
    		int people = Integer.parseInt(args[0]);
    		int days = 365;
    		int sampleSize = 1000;
    		int total = 0;

    		Random random = new Random();

    		for ( int k = 0 ; k < sampleSize ; k++ ) {
    			Set<Integer> s = new HashSet<Integer>();
    			for ( int i = 0 ; i < people ; i++ ) s.add(random.nextInt(days));
    			if ( s.size() < people ) total++;
    		}

    		System.out.println(total);
    	}
     }

secondly: Regarding the manual import writing and compiling stuff, well, I'll try and put this nicely: That's masochistic. Download jEdit, Eclipse, NetBeans, IDEA, or any other java programming environment other than 'notepad' and 'cmd', and you no longer need to compile anything, just hit F11 or CMD+R or similar, and you'll see your results right away. Note that in the above sample, the first 5 and last 2 lines were generated completely automatically by my IDE (Eclipse), so in practice we're talking about just 5 lines of actual code. The rest is generated or setup stuff.

thirdly: To optimize this code, you could stop generating birthdays the moment there's an overlap. Doing this in the K example is more complicated than the java example, in java you'd change the line 's.add(Random.nextInt(days))' to:

      if ( !s.add(Random.nextInt(days)) ) break;

that's all you need to do. In K, by using the _draw shortcut (A method that exists in a number of mathemetically oriented add-on libraries, by the way) you lose that flexibility.

Between the cartoon swearing I actually like the java code better.

Java could certainly use more functional stuff and there are legitimate arguments to be made for adding something to your toolbox (I suggest Scala; compiles to JVM so you can mix and match java and scala at will). However, these trivial examples invariably have archaic java compared to state of the art $OTHER_LANGUAGE. These straw man comparisons are thus pointless exercises as no actual java programmer would ever be convinced by this kind of thing. They'd just blame to horrible quality of the java example.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like Scala a lot (I spend most of my spare time coding in it), I know he used bad Java style, and I still think Java got pwned.

Complaining about the code appearance is like Java/C++ people who complain about the parentheses in Lisp.

Trivial examples are all you can fit in a screencast. You have to be respectful of people's time. If, e.g., you show Java people the code for the Scala compiler, when it was being bootstrapped in Java, and the > 2x LOC reduction when they were able to rewrite it in Scala to make the language self-hosting, Java programmers still wouldn't care, even though that's an example where the code bases are > 10K LOC.

<comment><USER5> ??

I'm not complaining about code appearance. My code is completely different from his code; I use the same principles as the stuff he uses in K - create a UNIQUE set and check if the size of the unique set is smaller.

Trivial examples have a fundamental failure in that programming in general doesn't scale up without side effects. It's like special effects: If you try to run a scene by creating miniatures, certain effects, such as wind blowing across water, and speed, do not remain the same. You need to tweak stuff endlessly to make it 'look right' and even then there are practical issues.

I get that screencasts can't very well delve into a 3-man-year project. This does not mean that because the issue cannot be represented in a screencast, that it doesn't exist.

Take static typing for example. For trivial-to-small code samples, static typing is completely useless cruft. In LARGE (man-month or 3 with multiple developers), it's definitely useful. This is somewhat hard to explain in a screencast.

I've gone toe to toe with Slava Pestov of Factor recently regarding a JSON parser and a basic non-blocking I/O webserver, both from scratch, and factor code was smaller than java code by a factor of 90%. In other words, where I had 10k LOC, he had 9k LOC. That's a virtual wash in my book, and nothing like the usual numbers claimed.

It also depends on programming style. I find this perfectly acceptable java:

someContainer.add(title = new Label("Title Goes Here"));

whereas most java programmers would rip this up into two lines. This goes into the meaning of a 'line of code'. A massive perl one-liner clearly is much more heavy than something like "a = 5". Almost all java vs. other code contests I've seen, the relative weight of each java line is on average way less. Just because a language likes to use a lot of punctuation doesn't mean it's inferior.

I'm not apologizing for java - in fact there are tons of changes I'd like to see. I'm just saying that trivial examples and pointless comparisons (LOC comparisons without any form of context or attempt to normalize vs. statement complexity) aren't convincing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://kx.com/a/k/readme.txt></comment>


Scientists use an atomic clock to measure the height of a mountain - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-atomic-clock-gravity-20180212-story.html <comment><USER2> The innovation here is that they made the atomic clock portable enough to be taken to the top of a mountain, so that they could use the difference in clock speed to calculate the height by general relativity.

<comment><USER3> A portable vacuum chamber. Pretty cool. So unlike a pressure altimeter, this could also work in space. And unlike a radar altimeter, you don't need a direct line of sight to the surface.

Although seems like the measurement could also be distorted by large masses like the moon...

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, you still need some communication with the outside world. To the local observer, the clock will run at the same rate no matter where you are. Only distant clocks will change.

<comment><USER5> I wonder if you could measure the difference between two clocks on the same craft at a distance from one another. The strength of gravity follows the inverse square law so presumably the difference in time between the two points will change also.

<comment><USER4> That should work, and give you the local gravitational gradient, which would correspond to the altitude. You might want four arranged in a tetrahedron so you don't need to orient them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article said that this was the first time atomic clocks were taken out of the lab to do this experiment, but definitely not the first time:

[http://www.leapsecond.com/great2005/tour/](http://www.leapsecond.com/great2005/tour/)

My favorite part is where he notes that with kids everything has to be exactly equal: "three kids, three clocks, three sodas." My somewhat fuzzy arguments with my brothers make me think he is a wise man.

</comment><comment><USER7> Quantum_clock#More_accurate_experimental_clocks: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_clock#More_accurate_ex...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_clock#More_accurate_experimental_clocks)

> In 2015 JILA evaluated the absolute frequency uncertainty of their latest > strontium-87 optical lattice clock at 2.1 × 10−18, which corresponds to a > measurable gravitational time dilation for an elevation change of 2 cm (0.79 > in) on planet Earth that according to JILA/NIST Fellow Jun Ye is "getting > really close to being useful for relativistic geodesy".

AFAIU, this type of geodesy isn't possible with 'normal' time structs. Are nanoseconds enough?

"[Python-Dev] PEP 564: Add new time functions with nanosecond resolution" [https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python- dev/2017-October/14...](https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python- dev/2017-October/149944.html)

<comment><USER8> The thread you linked makes a good point: there isn't really any reason to care about the actual time, only the relative time. These sorts of clocks just use 256- or 512-bit counters; it's not like they're having overflow issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am confused, I always thought that moving faster makes time go slower but the article says this:

"For example, a clock on top of a tall mountain — far from the center of the Earth — will move a tiny bit faster than a clock at the base of that mountain, where the gravity is stronger. It's not a mechanical error. Time itself actually passes faster at the top of the mountain."

From what I can understand from the Wikipedia article is that time does go slower the faster you move: "Special relativity indicates that, for an observer in an inertial frame of reference, a clock that is moving relative to him will be measured to tick slower than a clock that is at rest in his frame of reference."

I did a little search and half the sites I saw said one thing and the other half said the opposite.

Would anyone mind explaining like I'm five? Or maybe share a trustworthy sources I could read on the subject?

Thanks.

<comment><USER10> [paraphrasing]

Acceleration is a kind of speed. The more you're accelerating in a given direction, the faster you're going - even if there's something stopping you. Gravity makes you accelerate - even if there's ground stopping you from moving "down". So the higher the gravity, the higher the acceleration, so the higher your (instantaneous) speed, so time goes slower for you relative to other things not moving/accelerating as much.

If you're really close to a black hole, with LOTS of gravity, time will pass really slowly for you relative to most everything else - even if something is preventing you from actually falling in.

At the top of a mountain, gravity is lower. You're farther away from most of the Earth. Less gravity (however minute) means less acceleration means less (instantaneous) speed means time traveling relatively faster (or, well, not as slow as further downhill).

In space, far far away from everything, and so long as you're kinda averaging a speed of 0 relative to everything else, time ticks by the fastest (relative to most everything else).

So if you build two clocks that are practically perfectly in sync, and you move one to the bottom of a mountain, and one to the top, and then bring them back together, you can measure the tiny difference between them caused by one (the one from the top of the mountain) experiencing time faster than the other (from the bottom).

<comment><USER11> How much slower is time at the surface of the sun?

<comment><USER12> " . . . a clock on the surface of the sun will accumulate around 66.4 fewer seconds in one year [than would a distant observer's clock]."

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A similar experiment (but to only detect the effect of altitude, not to measure it) was done about 12 years ago, described here: [http://www.leapsecond.com/great2005/](http://www.leapsecond.com/great2005/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I wouldn't think this would be exceptional as a way to measure altitude.

However it is exceptional as a way to measure gravity differences arising from stuff inside of the Earth. See [https://academo.org/demos/gravity- map/](https://academo.org/demos/gravity-map/) for a picture of how that varies over the Earth.

(Though you wouldn't be measuring the strength of gravitational pull directly. You would be measuring the gravitational potential. The strength of gravity is the gradient of the potential field.)

<comment><USER15> Why is the Indonesia area so red on that map?

I get that other red spots have tall mountains... but why Indonesia?

<comment><USER16>
      Continental crust is less dense than marine crust. So just
      because the Himalayas are tall, they also displace denser
      mantle below, so they don't contribute much more to
      gravitational pull.

      The Andes and Indonesia are strong subduction zones. Besides
      the crust on the surface, there's another layer of (dense
      oceanic) crust below adding to the pull.

      -- Darren #44 comment at http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/31/the-earths-lumpy-gravity/

See, also, the following paper, which catalogs how the angle of subduction effects the gravimetric profile.

      Harabaglia, Paolo & Doglioni, Carlo. (1998). Topography and
      gravity across subduction zones. Geophysical Research
      Letters - GEOPHYS RES LETT. 25. 703-706. 10.1029/98GL00137.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How the hell did they measure clock speed if the passage of time itself is different?

<comment><USER18> "Dear tahw, what time and date is it over there? Please write back. I shall write again next month. Sincerely, phyzome"

...

"Dear tahw, over the past year, I have noticed something interesting in our correspondences -- more hours have passed on your end than mine, on average. I believe our clocks are ticking at different rate. Yours, phyzome"

(except measuring number of ticks, as communicated over fiber optics, and possibly with other tricks to cancel out communication lag)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "It didn't work as nicely as we hoped, but we learned a lot and it's a start," Lisdat said. "Sometimes you just have to begin, and then you can figure out how to improve."

Good sentiment to live/work by.

<comment><USER20> > Good sentiment to live/work by.

Definitely. I've found in my personal life that just getting started on something can be the hardest part about any given task (whether something physical, or implementing an idea as code or something like that). But once you get rolling on it, things tend to come along easier.

You might not reach the end, things might fail (sometimes spectacularly), or things will change midstream and you might not end up where you had planned. Regardless, though, the journey can end up being better than the original goal.

...you just have to begin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is it possible that they measured the distance not height to the reference clock? It takes time for the signal to travel to the reference clock. But I'm not sure about the exact geometry.

<comment><USER22> I would guess that one would send a clock signal (think of it as a square wave at a very precise frequency) and measure the phase shift between the two clocks. (also very precisely)</comment></comment>