The Prisoner's Dilemma: a summary, and new advances - <AUTHOR> http://bosker.wordpress.com/2012/07/23/the-prisoners-dilemma/ <comment><USER2> The most interesting story on IPD (especially from a hacker perspective) wasn't mentioned:

>Although tit for tat is considered to be the most robust basic strategy, a team from Southampton University in England (led by Professor Nicholas Jennings [1] and consisting of Rajdeep Dash, Sarvapali Ramchurn, Alex Rogers, Perukrishnen Vytelingum) introduced a new strategy at the 20th-anniversary iterated prisoners' dilemma competition, which proved to be more successful than tit for tat. This strategy relied on cooperation between programs to achieve the highest number of points for a single program. The University submitted 60 programs to the competition, which were designed to recognize each other through a series of five to ten moves at the start. Once this recognition was made, one program would always cooperate and the other would always defect, assuring the maximum number of points for the defector. If the program realized that it was playing a non-Southampton player, it would continuously defect in an attempt to minimize the score of the competing program. As a result,[8] this strategy ended up taking the top three positions in the competition, as well as a number of positions towards the bottom.

>This strategy takes advantage of the fact that multiple entries were allowed in this particular competition and that the performance of a team was measured by that of the highest-scoring player (meaning that the use of self- sacrificing players was a form of minmaxing). In a competition where one has control of only a single player, tit for tat is certainly a better strategy. Because of this new rule, this competition also has little theoretical significance when analysing single agent strategies as compared to Axelrod's seminal tournament. However, it provided the framework for analysing how to achieve cooperative strategies in multi-agent frameworks, especially in the presence of noise. In fact, long before this new-rules tournament was played, Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene pointed out the possibility of such strategies winning if multiple entries were allowed, but he remarked that most probably Axelrod would not have allowed them if they had been submitted. It also relies on circumventing rules about the prisoners' dilemma in that there is no communication allowed between the two players. When the Southampton programs engage in an opening "ten move dance" to recognize one another, this only reinforces just how valuable communication can be in shifting the balance of the game.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_dilemma#Strategy_for_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_dilemma#Strategy_for_the_iterated_prisoners.27_dilemma)

By the way, if you haven't read The Selfish Gene, do yourself a favor and read it now. It discusses IPD _and_ coins the word "meme"... what more could you possibly want?

<comment><USER3> It's fantastic how these people were able to play the metagame like that.

I suspect that if you caught on to this, the best strategy would in fact be to _impersonate_ the Southampton players, mimicking the ten-move dance, and then perpetually defect, assuring the best strategy against either the "always defect" or "always cooperate" players.

<comment><USER2> Absolutely.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo#Brood_parasitism>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel bad for game theorists. Any time an article talks about their field, the first paragraph has to be a frantic explanation of what the field is and why it's interesting, in terms a five-year-old could understand, and then the article always ends up just being about the prisoner's dilemma.

It would be as if every article about physics started out "How stuff moves is a really neat thing to study..." and then invariably ended up talking about the parabolic trajectories of projectiles.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is actually a really good article, including easily missed gems like the demos that the author put together (e.g. <http://s3.boskent.com/prisoners- dilemma/fixed.html> and <http://s3.boskent.com/prisoners-dilemma/titfer.html>)

</comment><comment><USER6> Did anyone else find that article meandering? The description of the game, in particular, struck me as especially pompous wiring.

The metaphor with the elephant and the goldfish had absolutely nothing to offer either, it was just a rehash of the previous sentence.

<comment><USER7> The metaphor might have been a little over-the-top but I support this sort of creativity in blog posts, if only because it can ripen into something much more aesthetically pleasing. There are places where it goes way too far -- _Gödel, Escher, Bach_ comes to mind -- but this is only a couple paragraphs.

In this case it does have something to "offer": it offers the insight that the only value that looking at past states can offer is a sort of "strategy tomography" to tell you what the other person's conditional probabilities actually are, but that once you know this, your strategy is first-order Markov, just because their strategy is first-order Markov. (This term, nth- order Markov, just means "depends only on the last n game states.")

It's true, however, that this leads to a very interesting consequence which is _not_ discussed in this context, something quite convoluted: "I will commit to a first-order Markov strategy in order to prevent my opponent from using a higher-order Markov strategy, so that my own analysis of their strategy simplifies." It is a curious statement that your own ignorance forces someone else to be ignorant, which you can then exploit.

This is proven in appendix A of their paper. To state the conclusion in their words, "In iterated play of a fixed game, one might have thought that a player Y with longer memory of past outcomes has the advantage over a more forgetful player X. For example, one might have thought that player Y could devise an intricate strategy that uses X's last 1,000 plays as input data in a decision algorithm, and that can then beat X's strategy, conditioned on only the last one iteration. However, that is not the case when the same game (same allowed moves and same payoff matrices) is indefinitely repeated. In fact, for any strategy of the longer-memory player Y, X's score is exactly the same as if Y had played a certain shorter-memory strategy (roughly, the marginalization of Y's long-memory strategy), disregarding any history in excess of that shared with X."

<comment><USER8> > It's true, however, that this leads to a very interesting consequence which > is not discussed in this context, something quite convoluted: "I will commit > to a first-order Markov strategy in order to prevent my opponent from using > a higher-order Markov strategy, so that my own analysis of their strategy > simplifies." It is a curious statement that your own ignorance forces > someone else to be ignorant, which you can then exploit.

This is only true if you know the strategy of the enemy beforehand, though. For instance if you play rock-paper-scissors and decide your move only based on the previous move your enemy can easily exploit that after playing for a while. It is true that the enemy doesn't have to remember more than one move after he learns your strategy but he needs to remember many moves to learn it.

<comment><USER7> 1\. No, that statement is still true even if you don't know the higher-order strategy of your opponent: no matter what it is, it has the same payoffs as some lower-order strategy.

2\. You would have to define "exploit that," especially with the understanding that this is game theory and probabilistic strategies are certainly encouraged. So for example, you might imagine a genius who can consistently outthink you, knows your entire history and how you like to play Rock-Paper- Scissors and immediately as you throw down Rock, simply is able to guess that this is what you're likely to do, and throws Paper.

You can beat this guy. Or, more precisely, you can equal him. It's very simple: before the day has begun, roll a six-sided die and memorize the sequence. As long as they are not exploiting certain "tells" (as a Japanese robot did in the news a week or two ago) -- as long as they are just making a deduction based upon the sort of person you are, they cannot produce a net win against you and you're safe. Indeed, the Nash equilibrium for RPS is not terribly interesting, it's to choose each of the options with probability 1/3rd -- I don't really have much reason to believe that this changes dramatically in iterated RPS.

<comment><USER8> 1\. I agree with what you say. There _exists_ a low-order strategy that has the same payoff against the low-order strategy your opponent uses, and you can use that if you know your opponent's strategy. However, in many games there aren't low-order strategies that would work well against _any_ low-order strategy so you need to know the opponent's strategy to choose a proper low- order strategy. Alternatively you could use a higher order strategy that learns the opponent's strategy and adapts to it.

2\. Well, I was thinking that a strategy would be a mapping from game history to a probability distribution over possible moves. Should this be considered in some other way?

Sure, you can just play according to the Nash equilibrium and you can't be exploited, but probably a more interesting case is when both players try to outsmart the other player and not just aim for a draw.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I played against extotionist strategy and I guess I got lucky because I'm leading (my score - 1) : (his score - 1) = 2:1 and won't change into 1:3 as advertised because from this step I will always defect.

        25. You defected (1 points) and I defected (1 points)
        24. You defected (1 points) and I defected (1 points)
        23. You defected (1 points) and I defected (1 points)
        22. You defected (1 points) and I defected (1 points)
        21. You defected (1 points) and I defected (1 points)
        20. You defected (1 points) and I defected (1 points)
        19. You defected (1 points) and I defected (1 points)
        18. You defected (1 points) and I defected (1 points)
        17. You defected (1 points) and I defected (1 points)
        16. You defected (1 points) and I defected (1 points)
        15. You defected (1 points) and I defected (1 points)
        14. You defected (1 points) and I defected (1 points)
        13. You defected (1 points) and I defected (1 points)
        12. You defected (1 points) and I defected (1 points)
        11. You cooperated (0 points) and I defected (5 points)
        10. You defected (1 points) and I defected (1 points)
        9. You defected (5 points) and I cooperated (0 points)
        8. You cooperated (3 points) and I cooperated (3 points)
        7. You defected (5 points) and I cooperated (0 points)
        6. You cooperated (0 points) and I defected (5 points)
        5. You defected (1 points) and I defected (1 points)
        4. You defected (5 points) and I cooperated (0 points)
        3. You cooperated (3 points) and I cooperated (3 points)
        2. You defected (5 points) and I cooperated (0 points)
        1. You cooperated (3 points) and I cooperated (3 points)

<comment><USER10> > won't change into 1:3 as advertised because from this step I will always > defect.

From the description of the extortionist strategy in the demo: " _The only way you can avoid being taken advantage of is to resign yourself to the meagre rewards of mutual defection, and to defect on every turn._ "

So: yes, indeed you can do that, but then your long-run score will be rotten because it will look like a vast succession of (D,D) plays, 1 point each. If you let the Extortionist extort you, you will get substantially more points.

<comment><USER9> _"The only way you can avoid being taken advantage of is to resign yourself to the meagre rewards of mutual defection, and to defect on every turn. If you do anything else then I will take advantage of your cooperation and I will do three times better than you, in the sense that – on average over the long run – (my score minus 1) will be thrice (your score minus 1)."_

I was refering to that. I did something else than dfecting all the time and got better result than 1:3 but that's ok since 1:3 is average over all strategies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For the split or steal game (with the golden balls), here is what I what do.

I would not open either ball, and I would tell the other contestant to pick one at random. Then, he MUST choose split for his own ball if he wants any chance of winning money. If my ball happened to say "steal" after opening, then I would split what I won with him.

I think this would guarantee both of us winning unless he was willing to take the chance of winning nothing.

<comment><USER12> You could just tell him you're going to choose steal: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0qjK3TWZE8>

<comment><USER11> I saw that video. That's what made me think of my idea. But mine removes the possibility that I might be holding out on "split" and I think has a better chance of guaranteeing we both split the money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's good to see Freeman Dyson still producing new insights in his late eighties. A great mind.

</comment><comment><USER14> If I were playing Split or Steal, my strategy would be exactly this: tell the other player that I'm going to choose "steal" and if they choose "split", I'll give them half of the winnings. We would shake on it on national television which forms a nice contract: an offer, consideration for both parties, and acceptance. The beauty of this is that if they're not an idiot they'll choose "split" and we each walk away with half. However, if they are an idiot and they also chose "steal" then nobody gets anything and I can sue them for violation of the contract in the amount of the 50% I would have won.

Sadly, I suspect everyone would then copy that strategy and much like everyone choosing the letters R, S, T, L, N, and E in Wheel of Fortune, it would quickly become a formula and would ruin the suspense the show hopes to create.

<comment><USER15> Here is the video of this happening on the tv show. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0qjK3TWZE8> . It worth a watch, I recommend it.

<comment><USER16> There's a twist in this example though. He says he's going to steal (but split after the show) and convinces the other guy to split. At the last minute he changes to split so that the split is governed by the rules of the game.

<comment><USER17> I deeply wanted "the other guy" to steal leaving that guy with nothing.

<comment><USER16> I think that's why the guy proposing the deal ended up splitting. If the other guy did steal to spite him, the fact he split would show that he was acting in good faith and would increase the chance of a split after the show.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Hofstadter essays: <http://www.gwern.net/docs/1985-hofstadter>

</comment><comment><USER19> The parable about the elephant and the goldfish was wonderful.

I imagined, when the time is right, telling it to my little boys as I tucked them in to bed at night. And then imagined one of them coming in to my bedroom later that night and beginning with "Papa, why did the elephant ...".

</comment><comment><USER20> Results and strategy summary of an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma tournament from last year: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/7f2/prisoners_dilemma_tournament_res...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/7f2/prisoners_dilemma_tournament_results/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Watch the embedded video, it's a great illustration of the article. :-)

</comment><comment><USER22> Thanks, very enjoyable read.</comment>


BestRes – Quickly change your Retina Display resolution - <AUTHOR> http://icyberon.com/bestres/

<comment><USER2> Unable to launch. Apparently this app is not signed properly?</comment>


Create Anime Characters with A.I. - <AUTHOR> http://make.girls.moe/#/ <comment><USER2> It's copy-pasting parts of the training images over and over.

In figure 8 of the technical report [0], compare the hair in images (0,0), (2,0), (3,0), (3,3), (4,4).

The paper suggests their method generates copyright-free images, yet they are very obviously derived from the input images and you can identify the parts of individual input images that are mashed together to form the output.

All in all their method seems to be performing "obfuscated memorization," in the sense that the generated images are scrambled up enough to fool their plagiarsim-detector loss function.

[0] [http://make.girls.moe/technical_report.pdf](http://make.girls.moe/technical_report.pdf)

<comment><USER3> You can also view Figure 8 online: [http://make.girls.moe/news- img/fixed_noise.jpg](http://make.girls.moe/news-img/fixed_noise.jpg)

But as the online article states, that figure represents a case where the model is explicitly set to "generate images [which] have similar major visual features with different attribute combinations": [http://make.girls.moe/#/news](http://make.girls.moe/#/news)

So some degree of repetition is to be expected, since you've turned off random noise. And despite that the images do still exhibit some variation if you look closely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That is an awesome choice of domain name ;)

For the uninitiated: (form Wikipedia) Moe (萌え, pronounced [mo.e]) is a Japanese slang loanword that refers to feelings of strong affection mainly towards characters in anime, manga, and video games.

[http://nic.moe/en/](http://nic.moe/en/)

<comment><USER5> This is what the domain name was created for IIRC.

<comment><USER6> AI anime character generators, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> King-Aaron I just seem to end up generating pictures that look like smashed crabs: [http://imgur.com/4PbYuEt](http://imgur.com/4PbYuEt)

<comment><USER7> Maybe it's the hidden heterochromia feature

And short hair seems to produce male characters

<comment><USER8> > And short hair seems to produce male characters

Unsurprisingly! They didn't exclude male characters, so if you ask for short hair, you'll be more likely to be drawing from a male-biased area of the latent space/noise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there a reason it doesn't generate images as pretty as the samples on the news page? ([http://make.girls.moe/news- img/samples.jpg](http://make.girls.moe/news-img/samples.jpg))

By the way, the Getchu and illustration2vec links on the news page are broken.

Edit: This part from the Tips page might be why it initially didn't generate great images:

The input of the model consists of two parts, the random noise part and the condition part. If you generate a good image, you could try to fix the noise part and use random conditions to get more good images. We have observed that a good random noise is important for the better generation.

Edit 2: Actually, no. According to the news page, if the noise is fixed, the generated pictures would be all similar.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow, the quality of generated face is pretty nice. It's not ugly as I usually see of GAN.

<comment><USER11> [http://imgur.com/a/A5gID](http://imgur.com/a/A5gID) i sometimes get this moetron monstrocity :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Amazing this works entirely inside the web browser.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, came to ask--so the GAN model is loaded into the Javascript engine and run locally?

I thought DNN models are fucking huge?

<comment><USER13> It gave me a warning to connect to WiFi and not load the site over a mobile data connection. So yes.

<comment><USER14> Oh, I didnt get that, would have been nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The paper, [http://make.girls.moe/technical_report.pdf](http://make.girls.moe/technical_report.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER16> Props for the domain name.

</comment><comment><USER17> The algorithms generates very obvious and non-aesthetics artefacts: [http://imgur.com/a/hxBop](http://imgur.com/a/hxBop)

</comment><comment><USER18> Shouldn't it generate different avatars everytime? I get the same picture when I generate a new one with same non-random params.

<comment><USER19> If you've selected the 'Noise: Random' option, it should, yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Create anime _girls_. Doesn't anime have boys?

<comment><USER21> Please don't propagate that sexist, binary view on gender. If you make the effort to criticise non-equal treatment, please always also include genderless, non-binary bigender or trigender, pangender, trans woman, trans man and any other-gendered.

<comment><USER22> i genuinely cant tell if satire. A+

<comment><USER23> So sad it has become this way.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Protesters expose a fractured Hong Kong, but China's grip only tightens - La-ang https://www.economist.com/china/2019/07/05/protesters-expose-a-fractured-hong-kong-but-chinas-grip-only-tightens <comment><AUTHOR> The issue of HK was settled in 1997 when it returned to full Chinese sovereignty. The rest really is a grieving process for those nostalgic of the colonial period.

The transition period was useful for China because HK was important and the government did not want to scare foreign companies away. It also allowed the British to save face.

We read sometimes that the expectation was that HK's system would 'spread' to the mainland... It was at best wishful thinking. HK might have had the rule of law (Still has it, and it is still lacking on the mainland) but it did not have Democracy under the British, who really started to open the system up after they agree to the retrocession, and the Chinese were not the type to turn 'soft' (1989 brought those who thought otherwise down to Earth, hard).

On the 'Chinese' side (mainland), I think that the thinking was that as the country develops the role and importance of HK would diminish. We see that now.

HK really rose to prominence after 1949 when Shanghai was effectively killed off. Before that Shanghai was the leading centre and the trend is that it will reclaim the title.

By population Shenzhen is also now larger than HK so one might wonder whether HK will end up being 'absorbed'.

For China as a whole, it seems to me that the rule of law is a key issue because China will not be able to truly achieve its potential without it.

Lastly, it's interesting that no-one ever mentions Macau that was retroceded to China in 1999 under similar arrangements after a much longer colonial period (governed by the Portuguese since the 16th century).

Edit: The Chinese side's point if view is also not often discussed. For China HK has always been a source of shame and humiliation, and understandably so. The retrocession was very emotional in China because it finally ended that period.

That is to say that I think that China will never budge on HK and will react very strongly against any 'interference', with the full support of the Chinese population at large because that brings them back to the darkest times of the Opium Wars and of the Unequal Treaties, even if all Chinese are not necessarily unsympathetic towards the protesters when it comes to democracy.

<comment><USER2> I am no expert, but it seems the non-democratic-but-capitalist system in mainland China, is at least as close to the pre-1997 system in Hong Kong, as it is to the late 20th century Chinese system. Granted, the mainland was already moving that way, but I still think one could argue that the HK system spread to the mainland. As long as you know, that the pre-1997 system in HK was capitalist, not democratic.

<comment><AUTHOR> HK has a strong rule of law based on the British system. That's a major benefit for them in itself and also for the trust it provides to foreign companies in investors.

The mainland is still far from having anything that could be called "rule of law"...</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Resources to learn Cloud technologies - <AUTHOR> Can someone Kindly recommend good resources (book, youtube, MOOC, certification course) to learn full depth of following - AWS, Azure, GCE, Kubernetes, Docker, and related ecosystem?<p>Also, all books that I see are about usage only. Are there books detailing the underlying technology for virtual machines and containers? Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> Maybe this book: [https://samnewman.io/books/building_microservices/](https://samnewman.io/books/building_microservices/)</comment>


Engineer – Don't Over Sell Yourself in Interviews - <AUTHOR> http://blog.soom.la/2015/05/engineers-dont-sell-interviews.html

<comment><USER2> >Ask your interviewer: "What do you need?" and see if you fit that description.

If a candidate, after hearing the answered, says that they can do that, will you believe them?</comment>


Show HN: Buzzer App – location aware notifications done right - <AUTHOR> It's created by two students from my town. They showed it to me and I thought it was pretty neat. I tried it out and helped them with their copy a bit and it seems to be an app that can do well. I'll pass your critique and praises to the founders when I see them this weekend. The website is http://buzzerping.com/ <comment><USER2> Clickable: [http://buzzerping.com/](http://buzzerping.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Is that a special privilege or something?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My apologies for not knowing how to create a clickable link :(

<comment><USER3> Details:

1\. When there is text in the comment field, then the submission will point to the text in it.

2\. To submit a link, the comment field must be empty.

3\. It is ok to submit a "Show HN" link and then comment in the thread.

Question: Is there a story behind why you created your app?

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it. Question is how did ISNIT created a clickable link in comment?

The founders of this app, two guys from my town, are from a nearby village and they commute from their village to the town daily. They had to call and tell their parents that they reached their office safely. If they did not call the parents would get worried. Sude note: it is expected in India for grown children to live with their parents.

So they thought an app would help them save money and time. Also, this ensured their parents got a notification as soon as they reached their office.

<comment><USER3> Ordinary comments can contain links but the original submission is either a link or text, not both.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's my question. When I add a url it appears as plain text not clickable. How do I make it clickable?

<comment><USER3> When submitting a story on the submit page, complete the title and link fields. Leave the big text box at the bottom empty.

Because if there is text in the big box at the bottom the headline will link to it. And the headline will not link to the external site.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Robinhood app – free stock trading - <AUTHOR> https://www.robinhood.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder what people think of this? Seems like a good deal, but maybe less great when it comes to, for example, tax time?

<comment><USER2> Hopefully they give all the documents required for tax on time. If they don't, you can always patch it together through your account statements (more work, of course).

There are a few things like ability to see dividends immediately (as opposed to seeing them on monthly statements) that are not yet added. However, you can trade all stocks for free, which is hard to beat.</comment></comment>


Are there any sites that have updated startup valuations for comparison? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Crunchbase will likely give you a clue, but the problem you're going to run into is that some rounds have private terms.</comment>


Show HN: Move by Numbers: Massively cooperative chess - <AUTHOR> https://movebynumbers.com <comment><AUTHOR> Greetings HN! OP here. This is a project I've been working on for about six weeks now. On the one hand it's an experiment to see whether a chess site not based on the usual one-on-one gameplay can garner any interest. On the other hand, it's an experiment in building a reasonably interactive game on the capital-W Web without resorting to JavaScript. (I've been on an anti-framework kick for a while now.) There's not a single script tag here, just the server and your browser having a friendly chat with HTML and CSS.

This is the first project I've ever released publicly, so even if it flops it's already a personal victory just to get something off my local disk and out in front of the world. I'd love to take your feedback and suggestions and to answer any questions you might have.</comment>


Ask HN: go for master's or certificate in CS? - <AUTHOR>

Hiya Hacker News. So I have a bachelor's in English, but I graduated with a 2.91 GPA. I contacted the university I'd like to go to (which would allow me to live with my parents rent free for the program), but they said a certificate program (about 30 credit hours worth of schooling) would be a better way to get into a master's program if I wanted to go that way after the CS certificate.
So I'm curious, should I try applying to a few other schools to see if I can get in with a strong enough application packet to make up for a low GPA, or should I go for the certificate program because English is just so much of a different course than CS?
Another note, i don't like student loans, and only have ~$900 in loans now. I'd have to take out loans to do all of the schooling from henceforth. Worth the debt?
Thanks for any advice, you wonderful hackers! <comment><USER2> I would do a second bachelors in CS. It should be maybe 40-48 credits. If you decide not to go on to grad school, a certificate is not as valuable as the second bachelors. A certificate may get you into the same school, but after a year you may want to apply for other masters programs. No one is going to give much credit to a certificate except the people who issued it. Plus maybe you could apply for a five year masters program and double count those last few credits.

Its not the low GPA that is going to hurt you, it is the complete difference between STEM and non-STEM degree programs. Do you understand advanced math? Are you at least an intermediate level programmer? You actually need these skills to be able to complete graduate courses in CS.

It's only worth the debt if you are committed to turning your degree into a profitable career. That means you would need to work towards an engineering position while doing this. You need to leave with a strong portfolio and expert level coding skills and software knowledge, not just student projects.</comment>


Early telecom standards battle: "Hello" vs. "Ahoy" - <AUTHOR> http://www2.cs.uh.edu/~klong/papers/hello.txt

<comment><USER2> I've often wondered about the meaning of the word "Hello". We all know what it's used for, but it's hard to pinpoint an exact definition for it.</comment>


Why Women Pretend To Be Stupid - <AUTHOR> http://www.evolution-x.com/dumbgirls.htm

<comment><USER2> Well, it must be evolution-x day. Acting stupid is unconscious attempt to invite a lek. A lek is a display of males before females. A woman makes a stupid remark to see which males give stupid replies, and if she is lucky, intelligent ones. I always suspected we were being manipulated, but I didnt realize how easily.

My GF doesn't do that. She's decided to keep me around and doesnt allow any illusions as to who is the smart one.

</comment><comment><USER3> I must not go to enough dinner parties, because I haven't seen this behaviour. Sure, people behave differently in some social situations than they might in others, but I would judge it's for all different reasons — an urge to impress, shyness, unfamiliarity etc.

Characterising this particular behaviour as pretending to be stupid is a bit of a stretch in my mind.

I think the answer is more simple; people often get anxious or uncomfortable in front of others they don't know, or who they are attracted to. Consequently they can come off as a bit dumb or inarticulate. No need to "pretend to be stupid".</comment>


Ask HN: Taking some time off to refocus my career, how should I spend the time? - <AUTHOR>

I feel like it's a fairly common situation among developers, but I've made it through my years since school being able to land good jobs without having to put a whole lot of thought into what I want to do or the big picture of my career. I'm lucky enough to be in a situation where I'm not living paycheck to paycheck, so I've decided to leave my current position in a couple of weeks and take a few months off to decide what I'd like to do next.<p>I'm wondering if anyone has tried something similar, or if anyone has any tips on making the most of that time. <comment><USER2> Yes I have done so. 2 tips:

\- Limit the demands on your time and thinking capacity, to maximize the opportunity. I've found that my most creative ideas come when I have absolutely nothing else to think/worry about. In my personal case, I achieved this by travelling slowly. A change of scenery, without the demands of moving a lot.

\- Place a firm limit on the time you take for this. It does not matter whether it is 2 months or 2 years. This is to limit the risk of non-decision. If everything is possible, what do you choose ? It's OK to not know or not be certain, but when that firm limit comes around, choose one. Action is better than thinking after a little while.

Good Luck !

</comment><comment><USER3> What do you want to do? Do that.</comment>


Austin: No Place to Go but Up - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mtobis/no-place-to-go-but-up-e9968b8f7d90#.1r5y8wv0b <comment><USER2> The author makes the same mistake as so many others in assuming that people's behaviour cannot change and that car traffic will always be present. The reality is that when car infrastructure is correctly priced and alternatives are available, the behaviour of people changes and car use declines. There's no need for any of this elaborate separation of traffic.

The answer to Austin's traffic problems is the same as for all cities. Reduce space for cars (roads and parking) and put that space to better use, whether it be for more efficient transportation options (ie. bicycles and public transit) or for housing and amenities.

The author cites Vancouver's grade separated Skytrain as a model to follow but didn't bother looking at the real success of Vancouver's transportation system, which is that as of 2014 only 50% of trips are taken by car. This milestone was achieved not just due to Skytrain, but due to huge gains in walking and cycling trips. Vancouver built a great transit system yes, but has also densified the city, built a great deal of separated bike lanes, never built a freeway, and most important of all has not expanded road capacity at all for decades. Traffic entering the city decreased by 5% since 1996 and entering downtown decreased 20%, while the population living and working in the area has dramatically increased.

The amount of cars entering Vancouver's downtown has been unchanged since the 1960s.

<comment><USER3> Having lived in Vancouver, we've still got a long way to go towards improving our alternative modes of transit. The car still remains king in the suburbs, and the political force of suburban drivers has been a significant blockade towards further public transit infrastructure funding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the main issues with elevated roadways / trains / bike lanes / what have you over city streets is the relatively dark and undesirable areas they create below them. Seattle had this problem back at the turn of the century, and it generally doesn't create a nice urban atmosphere to have massive elevated roadways above the main city, even if it's trains or bikes that run on them.

That's why cities like San Francisco consider tearing down their elevated freeways and replacing them with surface streets -- it creates a more desirable atmosphere when you're below. (Think the Embarcadero.)

Chicago's L is efficient, certainly, but the entire downtown core is hidden under a dark, loud, shaking train track. It's not the most pleasant thing to spend your time around.

<comment><USER5> The Boston Big Dig was a great improvement -- buried the highway and revitalized downtown and Seaport.

Maybe Austin should do something similar. It can narrow the streets and build some underground highways. Leave the above-ground for pedestrians and bicycles, traffic that can actually stop if it spots something interesting. Cars mostly go from here to there, never stopping in-between.

Buses are much cheaper than trains and can be re-routed if it turns out the population centers shift.

<comment><USER6> I like the idea, but I think most of Austin has limestone bedrock six feet below the surface, so that might be prohibitively expensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Has any city jumped from regional center to international metropolis so > quickly, without ever passing through a period of being a national city? > Austin has emerged as a world-class destination and a world-shaking center > of innovation in a decade.

Why do I keep hearing this, but only from Austinites? I put Austin in about the same category as Minneapolis; I'm vaguely aware it exists but not of anything going on there.

What are the major globally relevant corporations headquartered in Austin? Major NGOs? Famous cultural events? (Compare the level of coverage of SXSW to London Fashion Week). Dominant, influential film studios or publishing houses?

Why do I keep hearing Austin talked about in the same breath as SF or New York as a major global city? It's not even a "national city" to me.

<comment><USER8> Austin has... something of an ego. It thinks of itself as the center of Texas - not completely unjustly, as it is the capital. Since Texas is _obviously_ the best, greatest, most important, and all-around awesomeist place in the worst, it obviously follows that Austin is the best city in all of time and space.

It's got some hipster cultural cache and is a regional cultural and economic center... if your primary language is English.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _The abruptness of Austin's success ... is causing a whole range of > problems, unfolding in fast-forward — water supplies, electric supplies, > gentrification._

We have to stop calling what's happening in Austin "gentrification." We are segregationists. Our laws prevent mixed-income neighborhoods from existing.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ0NzlQp0dc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ0NzlQp0dc)

<comment><USER10> You can call it whatever you like, but for reference, the laws that are being described as "segregationist" are laws regarding minimum lot size. These laws are no more inherently racial than "gentrification". In both cases they only affect black people disproportionally because (quoting from the video) "black people have less money"

<comment><USER11> Actually, he said that "minorities make less money" in the video. That seems like a racist statement, as he chose to ignore an important minority group, asians.

<comment><USER11> Why downvote this one? I corrected the misquote and pointed out how the speaker in the video chose to ignore asians to misconstrue his issue as being about minorities in a racist way. If the video had featured a white person whispering something disparaging (and false) about minorities would you feel the same way?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just moved to Austin. I am super blessed to live 8 min bike ride from the heart of the city downtown. It's a nice city and I experience(d) the killer traffic jam every time I want to go somewhere which is outside of my bike-able range. I can't believe what it must be like to live north or south and have to be stuck in your car daily. Maybe feels like Elon Musk when he came up with the Hyperloop idea?

I think the option with the elevated bike would work well, considering there are a lot of cyclists and "free bikes" (like in London you can get them for free for 30min with the membership card).

</comment><comment><USER13> As someone who's lived in Austin (left in Sep 2012 to the Bay area and still have friends there) I chuckle when people say Austin is a tech hub. Sure there are satellite tech offices and a growing startup scene, but it is nowhere close and I mean like light years away from the innovation done in the Bay area.

And I don't understand the fascination with Austin; downtown area is nice, rest is all boring suburbs (IMO) just like any other place in Texas.

Edit: Does anyone care to comment on the downvotes?

<comment><USER14> >Edit: Does anyone care to comment on the downvotes?

Probably the dismissive tone.

The Bay area is unique throughout the world, so saying a city isn't a tech hub just because it isn't the Bay is silly. Forbes and others have written quite a articles about how Austin (And Dallas, and Chicago, and others) are all well on their way to being tech Meccas, and have backed it with actual data, e.g. [http://www.forbes.com/sites/navathwal/2015/02/12/5-markets-p...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/navathwal/2015/02/12/5-markets- poised-to-be-the-next-silicon-valley-for-real-estate/#6ff9ca1c1000)

So, your comment can come across as antagonistic and with a fair amount of hubris.

<comment><USER13> Ok, fair enough.

How do you define a tech hub? Is it R&D or is it operations (maintenance/sustaining, DevOps, tech support, biz dev)?

If it's R&D, clearly Austin is no tech hub. Only a handful of semiconductor companies and maybe a few software companies do _substantial_ R&D in Austin (a minor project doesn't count).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Has traffic decreased anywhere? It seems like everyone in every city is complaining about how much worse traffic is. This whole country needs massive improvement in people movers. Dedicated bike lanes, hyperloops, driverless cars - we need them - bring it on!

<comment><USER2> Traffic has decreased in the City of Vancouver. Down 5% since 1996 and down 20% if you only count Downtown.

This was achieved by:

* Building dense, walkable residential neighbourhoods downtown.

* Creating a great rapid transit network

* Building a network of bike lanes, including separated lanes.

* Policy against expanding the car road network that has lasted for decades.

<comment><USER16> You forgot the selling of half the properties to absentee owners who then leave the property empty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I live in Austin and i walk/Uber everywhere and largely agree with the author, we need better public transit absolutely. I'm wary of this line of thinking however "Our population is largely young and vigorous. ", a significant portion of people who could use better non single passenger car options are certainly not so young and vigorous, and it's worth noting that even those that are now won't be forever ;)

I think bikes are great, more bike options for sure, 10000. However in my opinion they're not a great solution to the transportation problem for most people.

</comment><comment><USER18> Elevated anything kills the street experience for pedestrians, which is once of the central points of having urbanism in the first place. Urbanism isn't about getting to point A to point B as fast as possible, it's about a dense network of interactions.

I bet the writer would change his opinion if he learned more about urban design. The final image is pretty much a poster child for what NOT to do (similar to Le Corbusier's vision for Paris).

The solution is to build more densely to make car trips less practical and to have better public transit that can't get stuck in traffic.

<comment><USER19> The writer is also talking about raising the pedestrian areas as well though. Surely it doesn't matter how dark and uninviting the ground level is if no one actually needs to walk there?

<comment><USER18> You're joking, right?

Ever notice how people prefer to walk on streets that have storefronts?

<comment><USER19> So have elevated storefronts?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's the biggest fallacy in armchair transit planning: Misunderstanding what induced demand means. If the system is at capacity everywhere, but you build to the point where a modality(any modality) is no longer congested, new demand will shift towards that modality. Thus, you can have a city where all the trains are packed, or one where it's the highways. Presumably, if you invested enough in them, bikes and buses could go the same way.

But what you can't do is create an "all-around" city where every transit option has equally low congestion. People will show a preference for whichever mode they got used to, and fill the others only as they hit their tolerance limits - not because one is faster, or cheaper, unless it's substantially so(and then congestion will arise to even the odds). This typically manifests today in a city crowding the highways but leaving the buses empty. New construction will mostly be used by newcomers unless there is some disincentive to drive, like downtown congestion charges, reduction of parking, smaller roads, etc.

The bus lane capacity thought experiment equates velocity to throughput. This is obviously wrong; while a bus interferes with some traffic, it also pulls more people into less space. Multiply that along the whole route, at high frequency, and you end up with geometric efficiency. A bus may go at a third of the speed, but it carries easily 10x as much as a four-seater, and bigger buses could hold even more. At the peak hours, congestion and slow speeds are assumed and vehicle capacity starts to matter for delivering the most commuters home in a timely fashion.

Then consider the network benefits of running more routes and connections at higher frequencies. Public transit has to hit a certain critical mass of densities and destinations before it really takes off; most of the US today, being heavily suburbanized in the mid-century fashion, does not enjoy this. But the New York City region got there, and several other metros are showing signs of moving in this direction. Access to transit is implicitly improving now that we're in the era of electric rideable vehicles and people making their first/last-mile connection can go at 10-15 MPH on whatever weird gadget they want without breaking a sweat or having to find lockup space. Capacity becomes a complicated equation with all these factors.

</comment><comment><USER11> This won't be a problem once enough remote tech workers replace the caged commuters.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is Austin the next SF?

<comment><USER22> No, Oakland is the next SF</comment></comment>


Rackspace & Drizzle: It's Time to Rethink Everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.rackspacecloud.com/blog/2010/03/13/rackspace-and-drizzle-its-time-to-rethink-everything/

<comment><USER2> Maybe I'm one of the rare few but I've had innodb files getting corrupted with no way to rebuild them. When my 10GB database got 100% unreadable, I gave up on MySQL for anything that's mission critical. I don't care why the DB got corrupted and why stuff like this ( [http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2008/07/04/recovering- in...](http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2008/07/04/recovering-innodb-table- corruption/) ) didn't work. I just don't want to ever be burned like that again. Sure I had a complete backup of the DB but it takes a long time to restore 10GB over the net.

Drizzle is using innodb too. How do I know the same thing's not gonna happen again? I much rather like the MyISAM .frm files because if one table gets corrupted, I can restore just that table from backup. Innodb corruption destroys the entire database.

Also, will Drizzle innodb finally get full-text search? That's the only reason people still use MyISAM tables. However, MyISAM locks the full-table so that becomes a bottleneck pretty soon.

Honestly, here's what I want from Rackspace and I will pay good money for it the next time I need a good SQL db: Give me a fast, reliable SQL db that works like MySQL, lets me do full-text searching without locking the whole table, and lets me change table structure without locking the whole table. Also, I don't ever want to worry about replication, syncing, sharing etc. Make this a cloud service. Amazon's SimpleDB comes nowhere close to a decent MySQL setup. Give me the features of MySQL in a cloud but without the hassles. And I'll pay for it.

Other than SimpleDB, I don't know one decent cloud db. Everyone talks about Cassandra, Redis, Postgres, and tons of other DBs but I don't want to manage yet another large database system. I want to write queries and build my app. I really think there's a big opportunity for a startup that offers a reliable cloud db service. Of course, there will be a fixed latency on every DB call but I think an overhead of 100-200ms/page is acceptable for never having to worry about the backend DB.

<comment><USER3> As far as fulltext search goes, have you looked at Sphinx? <http://www.sphinxsearch.com/> Plugs into MySQL and Drizzle, works _really_ fast, and has awesome extras like stemming support.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I've tried that and many other things. It's just yet another thing I have to worry about when I am making my app. I don't have to worry about TCP buffers or filesystems or RAM allocation. Similarly, I don't want to worry the backend that runs my app. I just want to use it.

<comment><USER4> I've been down the full text search path a few times; never fun, too many compromises and too much work. Just last week I used Sunspot solr <http://github.com/outoftime/sunspot> for a new site and wow, what a breath of fresh air. Its the first turnkey FTS I've found. Sunspot is a ruby lib built on solr's ruby lib. But it comes with solar embedded in the gem, scripts to startup/shutdown, complete config files...it just works!!! Add to that, my new app needed to do FTS for Chinese. I was expecting headaches and digging through Java XML hell...nope, it just worked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does it have any improvements on table locking during ALTER operations? Or are there any other engines capable of dynamic DB schema?

<comment><USER6> Put your email in your profile or contact me.</comment></comment>


Malaysian flight MH17 downed by Russian-made missile: prosecutors - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN11Y0WN <comment><USER2> Pardon my potential display of ignorance, but how does one steer a rocket, anyway?

<comment><USER3> There are a lot of ways. Here are a few:

1\. Steer by angling power-adjustable fins on the sides of the rocket.

2\. Influence the direction of exhaust by controlling rudder vanes aft of the rocket engine.

3\. Influence the direction of exhaust by changing the direction of the exhaust nozzle relative to the body of the rocket.</comment></comment>


Mahalo Caught Spamming Google With PageRank Funneling Link Scheme - <AUTHOR> http://www.seobook.com/mahalo-caught-pagerank-funneling-link-scheme <comment><USER2> The thing that pisses me off about Mahalo is that Calacanis goes around claiming it's some type of innovative idea/technology and that everything thing they do is for the benefit of the users. It's a straight SEO play, along the lines of About.com. Everything they do is to increase Mahalo's search traffic! Just look at the widget mentioned in that article. Does anyone really want that set of links on their blog? Does it really help anyone? And all of Jason's friends on the blog circuit still give Mahalo good press...

<comment><USER3> Actually, search traffic is not really a good thing to build a business on. It's nice to get started, but you really want something like Mahalo Answers that brings back a core group of folks over and over again to do something virtuous--like helping each other.

Syndicating tech headlines to a tech blog does actually help people. Also, syndicating the questions you've asked/answered with our Mahalo Answers widget also helps folks.

Also, I've never claimed we are so much innovative as practical. We really just try to do the simple thing: provide folks with the content, links and Q&A they want. The big win of Mahalo will be if we save a lot of people a LOT of time and keep them safe.

That being said the system is fairly advanced running on things like hadoop, nginx, memecache, etc.

Also, the idea of putting a virtual currency with knowledge exchange has never been done. If it works we will have done something fairly historic: created a currency for knowledge. That really hasn't been done before. I've been around the world in the last two years looking at virtual currency and knowledge exchange in places like Korean, China and Japan and the truth is folks are using it for games 99% of the tim e (the other 1% is virtual gifts).

We're the ONLY people to have ever put a currency on a knowledge exchange. That's fairly innovative from what folks have told me.... in fact some fairly intelligent folks have called it very innovative to brilliant.

.... time will tell I guess. :-)

all the best, Jason

ps - if anyone wants to try Mahalo Answers signup and send me your account name (or post the URL here) and I'll send you M$5 to spend.

<comment><USER2> Add rel="nofollow" to the widget links and I'll believe your goal is to help people and not game the search results like everyone else. There is nothing wrong with optimizing for search traffic. Competition is all well and good. But your site is nothing more than an ad-laden Wikipedia clone with a Yahoo Answers clone tacked on. Actually, a much better business model than most startups...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> All this really shows is that there should be several completely independent ways of ranking search results which alternate so that it will never pay off to try to scam them all because the ROI is too small.

Gaming the google ranking system is only effective because of the monoculture.

<comment><USER5> Then again, once Google gets wind of this scheme, Mahalo's pages will be listed somewhere around, oh, page 50.

<comment><USER3> Actually, I've talked to search engine companies about syndicating content between blogs and they have said over and over again that there is no issue with this.

Everyone has a blog roll, and most blogs have a "WIN Grid" at the bottom (a feature I created at Weblogs, Inc. where at the bottom of engadget/autoblog/joystiq/etc you see the headlines from the other sites).

From what I've seen said at conference the search engines only pass a small amount of page rank from these areas so it's not a major deal to syndicate your content around.

HackADay is now owned by Mahalo (we didn't sell it to AOL in the WEblogs, Inc. sale for obvious reasons... like hacking TimeWarner cable boxes :-). There is nothing wrong with syndicating headlines between mahalo and HackAday. If we're told there is we will stop.

This is just the SEO community upset at me for saying that "seo is BS" back in 1995!

<comment><USER6> "This is just the SEO community upset at me for saying that "seo is BS" back in 1995!"

I think it's more of a case where they are upset at you for gaming them for knowledge and advice, then beating them at their own game, which, by the way, has resulted in me having a tremendous amount of admiration for you...

You've 'scaled' SEO and kept the product quality. Kudos, J.

Edit: Oh, and it was 2005, not 1995 - since you seem to appreciate people correcting you ;^)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While this seems like shady tactics from Mahalo, it also seems to suggest the need for a better (read: less game-able) ranking system than PageRank. There's now tons more data about which sites users visit for a given query, whether they return to the results page, how much time they spend on a site, etc. If you can sift through the noise, it seems like this would be an even more accurate indicator of site quality than hyperlinks to a page.

<comment><USER8> Google has already played down the important of PageRank - specifically in a patent they filed a few years ago. Google for "trustrank".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "if Google lets this slide then many other people are going to start spamming them too"

Isn't this problem already all over the place?

</comment><comment><USER10> what is Mahalos long term strategy? It just seems to be pages full of links to other content..

<comment><USER11> Copying bigger companies? <http://www.mahalo.com/answers>

Don't get me wrong, sometimes 'copying' is great when somebody truly believes they can solve a problem better, but that doesn't seem the case here — the only new feature I see is that you can add a bounty to your question; other than that, I see no advantage over Yahoo! Answers.

<comment><USER12> Calacanis' playbook is to add features early and often. Their 'answers' feature is an example of this. Their long term strategy is all about content, or pages with aggregated content/links that help people find the content they need. It's actually a great idea, instead of relying on Google's algorithm 100% to serve the right results, Mahalo is employing people to aggregate the content.

<comment><USER13> Yahoo's 1994 playbook is to add features early and often. Their 'answers' feature is an example of this. Their long term strategy is all about content, or pages with aggregated content/links that help people find the content they need.

It's actually a great idea, instead of relying on Google's algorithm 100% to serve the right results, Yahoo in 1994 is employing people to aggregate the content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Its kinda funny, if some guy did the same exact thing to increase page rank for his blog, Google would come down on them hard the second they found out. Mahalo on the other hand gets a free pass</comment>


Latest Perk on Google Buses: Security Guards - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2014/01/16/technology/16reuters-techbuses-security.html?ref=technology&_r=0

<comment><USER2> So now that Occupy Wall Street has failed to accomplish anything, like-minded people are kicking off Occupy Silicon Valley?

I used to think that wall street was a target because they were seen as getting rich without producing anything, and were blamed for crashing the economy. If that was the reason, though, they wouldn't now be targeting companies like Google, who _do_ produce things and _were not_ responsible for the crash of 2008.

Because of things like this, I now think both protests were just whiny children crying _but it 's not faaaaaaair!!_ without bothering to think anything through.

<comment><USER3> > Because of things like this, I now think both protests were just whiny > children crying but it's not faaaaaaair!! without bothering to think > anything through.

Says the guy who didn't bother to do 10 minutes of research either in this thread or anything linked to in it. Heh.

Look, I don't think the violence is okay, and I do think to a degree, the protests against the buses and gentrification are poorly aimed. But these people are not protesting without cause.

A recent protest focused quite heavily on the number of evictions going around San Francisco, in an effort to raise the rent on the property. The gentrification here is stark- families who have lived here decades have seen their per-month payouts rise by _hundreds_ , if not _thousands_ of dollars over just the last decade. All of this in a city that by and large doesn't receive tax money from companies making the greatest profit(by working outside of the city's bounds and busing their people in), and can't afford to raise taxes very easily without hitting middle-income families.

Don't turn into just the caricature of someone too aloof to even attempt to understand.

<comment><USER2> You're right, they do have a claimed reason for protesting that I didn't mention (rising rents), but I think it's a very poorly thought out one, based on emotion rather than rational thought.

If I was renting out a spare bedroom in my house to a college student for $500 a month, and then another guy shows up and says "I'll pay you $5,000 a month for that bedroom," what do you think my reaction would be? What do you think _most people_ would do in that situation? I claim that nearly every one of the protesters, if they were in the position of the spare-bedroom landlord, would happily kick the first guy out and move in the $5,000 a month guy.

I can hardly imagine a way to satisfy the protesters' demands for cheaper rent without taking away that landlord's fundamental right to charge what he wants for use of his own property.

And by the way, tons of poor-ish and middle-class San Francisco home owners have made life-changing amounts of money from having their cheap homes increase in value when the tech industry moved in next door. But you never hear about them because they don't fit the narrative of the haves oppressing the have-nots.

<comment><USER4> > I can hardly imagine a way to satisfy the protesters' demands for cheaper > rent without taking away that landlord's fundamental right to charge what he > wants for use of his own property.

There's two ways to do it, and that's neither of them: increase supply (build new structures; apparently SF has over-restrictive policies on building that could be loosened?) or decrease demand (e.g. make corporate-run buses illegal).

<comment><USER5> > decrease demand (e.g. make corporate-run buses illegal).

AFAIK, those buses aren't operated by the companies themselves, but by external transportation companies as contractors. What would you make illegal, "don't take Google as a customer"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well a bus window was smashed in Oakland: [http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/20/5231758/protesters- target...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/20/5231758/protesters-target- silicon-valley-shuttles-smash-google-bus-window)

Hopefully if that happens again, the criminals responsible will be arrested.

I believe in the right to protest (even if the protest against buses seems pretty misdirected), but that right doesn't include vandalism.

</comment><comment><USER7> The buses are not the problem, just a convenient thing to attack. Each bus ride keeps a great number of cars off the roads for that day.

This is good for the environment and reduces the number of vehicles on the road. This seems obvious, but from reading the comments in this thread it seems like this whole kerfuffle is about the buses themselves.

<comment><USER8> Nah, the kerfuffle is about the symbolism. See people know they can't get a job at a tech company, they have to slog to work in horrible traffic to make just enough money to cover the cost of vehicle maintenance, rent and food. While this busses, they carry the kind of person they want to be but aren't, carried in air conditioned comfort from home to work, where they make more money and they don't even have to drive and they get free lunches.

I understand the anger, I got an earful of it volunteering as a big brother for at risk youth during college in south central LA. If a person doesn't have a vision of how they _could_ get to be that person they want to be, they lash out at the symbols of those folks. Trying to convince young latino men that getting $100 a week for being spotters for the drug dealers really wasn't a path toward that life they wanted, even when it clearly _was_ a path to getting some of the things they wanted right then and there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why don't the tech companies just fund improvements to actual mass transit instead of the busses? It seems like in the long run, if they continue to grow, that would make far more sense.

<comment><USER10> It's not the sort of route that a mass transit system runs. This isn't going a few miles and stopping every few blocks. It's an express-style route, 1-way- at-a-time, to a location 40 miles away which nobody has any reason to go to unless they work there.

To make a 40 mile run in an hour, a bus needs to do very few pickup stops in SF, drive nonstop to destination, then do very few drop off stops in Silicon Valley; then return empty to repeat. Same thing other direction for the evening trip. It's the sort of trip that only makes sense for a chartered coach, not a public bus.

If the route was provided by the local muni bus, people would protest that too - that tech employees were getting special treatment, that a SF tax funded agency was serving geographic areas well outside of SF, that stops should be added at all the intermediate cities (doubling the length of the trip), the system would be more wasteful as buses would run empty on company holidays, and that the companies should directly provide those routes themselves since they only benefit them.

The system presently in place actually makes far more sense than trying to expand muni because it's a very specific purpose and specific route.

<comment><USER9> What about trains? I thought CalTrain ran down very near to most of the tech campuses, admittedly the companies would still need a minimal bus system to ferry people from the station to the office park.

<comment><USER11> Caltrain picks up in only one location in SF (meaning employees would need to get to CalTrain), it takes over an hour from SF to Mountain View, has no WiFi, and drops off about 3 miles from the Google campus[1].

For a company with no shortage of money, a shuttle makes complete sense.

[1] [https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!data=!4m17!3m13!1m1!1sM...](https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!data=!4m17!3m13!1m1!1sMountain+View+Caltrain%2C+600+W+Evelyn+Ave%2C+Mountain+View%2C+CA+94041!1m1!1sAmphitheatre+Pkwy%2C+Mountain+View%2C+CA+94043!3m8!1m3!1d3677!2d-122.0770258!3d37.3946411!3m2!1i800!2i891!4f13.1!5m2!13m1!1e1&fid=0)

(EDIT: Added 3 mile source since someone below questioned it)

<comment><USER12> Google runs shuttles to the caltrain and it isn't three miles away from campus. Campus is huge; I see plenty of google employees on caltrain. There are 2 Caltrain stops in SF.

The issue with Caltrain is that there are simply not enough trains running on it to ferry all the people who need to get to the South Bay. My ideal solution is better express routes through the city to the caltrain station and from there shuttles to the corporate campuses. We'd need some serious infrastructure improvements to the caltrain however.

I wish companies were more willing to spend their lobbying money on pushing politicians to commit to infrastructure improvements that could benefit a broader stripe of the population then just their employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> William Gibson's zaibatsu come to mind. When they stop people getting off the bus rather than on it will be complete.

<comment><USER14> As someone who came of age in the 80s completely infatuated with all things cyberpunk growing up, and now having worked in Silicon Valley my whole career, taking me all over the globe working on computers: I am so amazed that the world Gibson laid out for 2020 is exactly what we have been building.

I am amazed that my daughter will be, in the year 2020, living in the world I imagined and RPGd in at the same age I was at that time (I was 17 years old, playing cyberpunk RPG where my character was living as a 17 year old in the year 2020)

If you have ever been to Singapore, and seen the private security-police, Cisco (not the networking company), that is the city of the cyberpunk world....

I am in love with, terrified by and amazed at our world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems that one can write even a master's degree on this topic:

The "Google shuttle effect:" Gentrification and San Francisco's dot com boom 2.0

[http://svenworld.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/01/Goldman_PRFi...](http://svenworld.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/01/Goldman_PRFinal.pdf)

<comment><USER16> Even though that is a Master's thesis, the writing is sophomoric.

I was especially offended by the misuse of "externality" in the first page: "Lower income people should not bear the brunt of the negative externalities of economic development" (she is referring to housing prices, which are not an exernality).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Black ski masks? Curly wired-earpieces? Jotting notes on yellow stick-it pad? Jerky answers? That doesn't sound like google at all, more like yet another fake. Remember this one?: [http://www.sfbg.com/googleshoutdown](http://www.sfbg.com/googleshoutdown)

</comment><comment><USER18> Haters. Just good old fashioned haters.

</comment><comment><USER19> This isn't surprising -- the wider the gulf between rich and poor, then the rich find themselves living next to people with little to lose. Cf. Mexico, India, Brazil.

</comment><comment><USER20> And thus the inequality divide will continue to grow. The haves will build bigger walls with more guns surrounding expanding exclusive spaces. They will enact police harrasment laws to keep out those that don't belong. They will make it more and more expensive to even visit the city to keep the have-nots out, except those that need to come and keep their city clean.

Money is power. Power gets what it wants. The fight for San Fransisco is one- sided. The winners have been pre-determined.

<comment><USER21> Leave it to SF to make taking a bus to work into a mark of extreme privilege.

<comment><USER16> Taking a bus, _and_ having people hate you so much they attack your bus. _That_ is privilege.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One wonders if they'll close the loop on this particular piece of history:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_Government_Services#O...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_Government_Services#Origins)</comment>


Playwright CLI – Open/inspect/emulate pages, generate screenshots, record users - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-cli <comment><USER2> As soon as python bindings came out I made a `promt-toolkit` based shell[1] for playwright and it has been such a time saver for prototyping!

        $ ptplaywright
        > goto('https://news.ycombinator.com')
        # click on first comments link
        > click('.subtext>a:last-of-type')
        # type in text in comment box
        > type('textarea', 'hello world')

I was about to refactor it to a whole package and submit it to pypi if anyone is interesting in this sort of behaviour.

[https://github.com/Granitosaurus/bin/blob/master/ptplaywrigh...](https://github.com/Granitosaurus/bin/blob/master/ptplaywright)

</comment><comment><USER3> I love playwright, especially since you get three browser engines (Webkit, Chromium and Gecko) under one unified API.

I am little disappointed they don't have a testing library built on top of it, so I'm constantly either trying to re-invent the wheel or I end up using libraries I don't like.

Sam issue I had with puppeteer. I think first party testing integration would be such a huge win with this.

I otherwise have nothing but awesome things to say about the playwright project, it really is such a great improvement over selenium and I think it's now got a more ergonomic API than puppeteer

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the feedback! I'm on the Playwright team.

We are building playwright-runner[1] to solve this problem. We are dogfooding the project internally, and a few weeks away from opening it up to early adopters.

[1] [https://github.com/microsoft/playwright- runner](https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-runner)

<comment><USER5> It does not support Drag & drop, is it right?

I think the support is missing in Playwright.

Are there any plans about this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Playwright has been growing on me and it'll feature heavily in a video course I'm making for browser automation.

I'm keeping the codebase open on GitHub: [https://github.com/umaar/learn- browser-testing/](https://github.com/umaar/learn-browser-testing/) so anyone who wants to follow along can do so for free.

</comment><comment><USER7> We're also to building SAAS produt which is very similiar[1].

Things we are supporting \- No-code test creation. Both playwright-cli and QAwolf supports it. \- Much more control over elements. We're using native chrome extension to achieve it. Integrated ChaiJS on top of it. \- Automated screenshot capturing, video + all debug info (console, network, DOM) when test fails.

We're looking for early beta users. If you're interested in trying it out + pizza send along your way, please fill this form [https://bit.ly/2FU2Vc4](https://bit.ly/2FU2Vc4).

P.S.- We're planning to start beta testing in couple of days.

[1] [https://crusher.dev](https://crusher.dev) \- Currently unfinished landing page.

</comment><comment><USER8> We are running a SaaS platform [1] that allows you to connect your Playwright/Puppeteer to our grid of browsers. It's built for parallel testing.

[1] [https://headlesstesting.com](https://headlesstesting.com)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure this improved much on existing solution like Taiko ([https://taiko.dev/](https://taiko.dev/)) which seems better than Playwright in a number of ways

<comment><USER10> Because it also supports Webkit?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What does it mean to have a test runner for it? Could you not just use it with jest?

</comment><comment><USER12> How does Playwright compare to Cypress?

<comment><USER4> In short: support for WebKit (to test Safari), out-of-process automation (not constrained by scope of in-page JavaScript, for example, to test multiple pages/frames/domains), support for non-JS language bindings. For a more comprehensive list, check out "Why Playwright?"[1].

[1] [https://playwright.dev/#version=v1.4.1&path=docs%2Fwhy- playw...](https://playwright.dev/#version=v1.4.1&path=docs%2Fwhy- playwright.md&q=)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Software to annotate web pages with stylus? - <AUTHOR> Maybe it's just me, but when I read things like [1]. And then read the HN discussion about it [2] and see more notes about it [3]. I just want to save all the three tabs (+ more I found via searching on DuckDuckGo), get the materials locally and potentially edit the text by typing, be able to highlight it and to be able to use my stylus for writing and doodling in the margins.<p>Does anyone know of such a project? If not, then hereby I offer it as a side project idea to anyone who's willing to do it. That person may very well be me.<p>[1] https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/what-is-electricity/<p>[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20059446<p>[3] https://landgreen.github.io/physics/notes/circuits/electricity/index.html <comment><USER2> Edge

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, I clearly don't use Windows.

I'll dust off that Microsoft Surface then :)

<comment><AUTHOR> After trying it out, I feel that Edge is quite unusable with this feature. The page only loaded partially and when I saved the file as a PDF my Surface froze and when I pressed it off after 15 minutes it doesn't get past the bootscreen.

This is why I don't like Microsoft.</comment></comment></comment>


The absurdity of athletes taking on the burden of billionaires amid pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://theundefeated.com/features/the-absurdity-of-athletes-taking-on-the-burden-of-billionaires/ <comment><USER2> Wow, I had no idea all the money pledged to the rebuilding of the Notre Dame was reneged on...

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, just to be clear, the linked article[0] calls out french billionaires for reneging, but the article is from last june, so who knows what's happned regarding funding since then. they say small french donors and the government is providing funding though. it's interesting that one foundation president estimates that 90% of rebuild funding is from american donors (big and small, presumably).

[0] [https://apnews.com/d69824caa68b4d24b13e91fed77dd953](https://apnews.com/d69824caa68b4d24b13e91fed77dd953)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Isn't that solved by taxes where rich people pay more taxes than others to help eliminate inequalities in society?? Of course, none of that works when the rich make up loopholes for themselves so that they and their corporations can dodge most or all taxes.

<comment><AUTHOR> we all need to do our part for our neighbors and colleagues.

taking care of employees who depend heavily on the company for their lives (the regular employees) is the duty of a company and its wealthy owners. it's not the responsibility of the highly-paid employees (the players) to take care of the low-paid ones, even though some players are going above and beyond in that regard.

it's also not right to shirk that responsibility onto the public via social programs (what walmart does in many places).

<comment><USER3> I think it is. Not in terms of employees but in terms of population: how do you pay for employment insurance? People working pay for people who are out of work so they get a chance to find work again without getting evicted.

And so the more you earn the more you should pay in taxes which go to those who earn much less or nothing.

If you don't have that, it's worse for everyone: more crime, less opportunity, more diseases, etc. These are things that impact everyone, rich or poor.

And when you get high enough up the food chain, yes it sucks to pay 50% tax on your highest bracket but really what is it you can't do with 5 millions that you can do with 10?

What Walmart does is shameful, and they're not the only ones underpaying employees and relying on public programs to top it up. But that's something that could be legislated away: force companies to pay living wages.</comment></comment></comment>


PayPal Shuts Down Secure Messaging Service ProtonMail's Crowdfunding Account - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/01/paypal-shuts-down-secure-messaging-service-protonmails-crowdfunding-account/?ncid=rss <comment><USER2> Yes, financial institutions do typically have "questions" they need "answered" before making quarter million dollar loans to anonymous e-mail addresses. There's no reason to put those in scare quotes, and it is very much a loan. PayPal is the company making the credit card charges, and if they end up being part of a scam or simply a poorly managed venture, PayPal is on the hook for all the chargebacks -- the account holder could easily disappear or be insolvent months later when they come in.

All the raised funds are at risk, for PayPal, for the 6-12 month period they can be reversed. Even if donors do so without a valid reason, PayPal gets hit with chargeback fees and needs to maintain a <1% reversal rate company-wide just to do business with Visa and MasterCard. They're willing to let their algorithms evaluate small risks (the typical eBay buyer/seller), but a human steps in to do the underwriting for larger volume accounts, just like at every MSP and bank.

The account got flagged for manual review, answered some questions, and was open to accept payments again within the same day. That's better than most banks I know which will take at least a few business days to approve a merchant account. If you're going to be accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars with PayPal, it might be smart to call them in advance instead of waiting for them to call you.

<comment><USER3> "anonymous e-mail addresses"

Doesn't PayPal urge you rather strongly to connect a bank account with your PP account? I regularly advise clients on creating these accounts, and bank account confirmation is typically the next thing they do after account creation. Does this not apply worldwide ... or do some people actually trust PayPal to hold their money?

<comment><USER2> Neither an e-mail address nor a bank account number really provides any of the information PayPal would want to know to risk large sums of money on an account: who they are, who's paying them, what those people expect to get for their money, whether that thing is legal in their jurisdiction and not a disallowed use of the service, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Their account is already turned back on: [https://protonmail.ch/blog/paypal- freezes-protonmail-campaig...](https://protonmail.ch/blog/paypal-freezes- protonmail-campaign-funds/)

<comment><USER5> Not even an apology for that ridiculous reason they used to freeze the account. They're acting as if it never happened.

<comment><USER6> So many HN commenters have this gut hatred of PayPal, which honestly isn't warranted. You'd find trouble finding ANYTHING that can accept $300k in donations for an unreleased product without some kind of review. This is the case over and over again in these "PayPal froze my account" horror- stories/whines, and somehow people have trouble learning to just contact the company FIRST and let them do the investigation before funding begins, instead of while in progress.

I defy you to find a single other financial partner who'd let this kind of behavior slide without review. (And Bitcoin doesn't count ... not if you want to accept donations from any reasonably large number of people.)

<comment><USER7> The "have you government approval to encrypt emails" [1] question was not necessary through. They did not even specified which government they mean.

[1] [https://protonmail.ch/blog/paypal-freezes-protonmail- campaig...](https://protonmail.ch/blog/paypal-freezes-protonmail-campaign- funds/)

<comment><USER2> It's pretty safe to assume "which government" is the government in which the PayPal account was opened. This is an employee of a financial business trying to determine if an organization they're underwriting is doing anything illegal in their jurisdiction, as that would be a prohibited use of the service. He/she is a normal human being, who isn't an expert in every possible line of business, trying to suss out the information he/she needs to approve this account -- put yourself in their shoes for a moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> PayPal may not explain things clearly, however if we imagine we were the risk management team in PayPal, here is the picture:

An account gets a lot of money from different funding sources (credit cards, ACH, etc.), the velocity is high, and most of the sources didn't have prior transaction records with this said account. To the RM team, they cannot tell if this is a legitimate transfer, or a massive transfer of booty by hackers.

Nevermind how famous this startup maybe, if your credit card were stolen, and PayPal shows you an HN article "well, I thought you wanted to donate to this startup X", how impress would you be? On top of that, the chance of CC customers with hefty chargeback is something that no sane business entity can take lightly.

PayPal may suck, but I don't see how a company with similar scale and footprint will do better. Doing differently very likely will mean losing so much money that it has to go out of business, or, have to partner with some foreign company that sells products of questionable quality.

</comment><comment><USER9> I asked on the reddit thread but got no answer: Doesn't PayPal not allow accepting payment for non-existing goods or services? This would include things like pre-orders and donations. If that's the case, this seems like a legit reason to freeze the account. I might be wrong, but I could have sworn I heard that somewhere.

<comment><USER10> PayPal has pretty clear direction and limits regarding crowdfunding.

[https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/lifecycle/crowdfun...](https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/lifecycle/crowdfunding)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's nice to propose Bitcoin as an alternative, but there's no "they didn't make it so you get your money back" system like pledges, is there?

Also, I don't see how they qualify for PayPal donation status as a nonprofit, so the outcome of this was predictable by day 1 and entirely their fault.

<comment><USER12> Yes there is. See Assurance Contracts on the Bitcoin Protocol (they haven't been implemented yet though, I think): [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_3:_Assurance_co...](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_3:_Assurance_contracts)

<comment><USER11> _they haven 't been implemented yet though, I think_

That's kind of a show-stopper, then. Saying that Bitcoin is an alternative to Paypal for these kind of Kickstarter-like efforts is just disingenuous and exposing your "customers" needlessly.

<comment><USER12> Well, USD doesn't have that feature either, but we have central agencies we trust (e.g. kickstarter). There's no reason why that model cannot be used with Bitcoin (so nothing disingenuous as you claim). The real power of Bitcoin would be to be able to do this in a trust-less manner. It hasn't been implemented yet, but exists in the Bitcoin Protocol. You're welcome to take a shot at it, by the way, the core developer team is always looking for new developers.

<comment><USER13> "Well, USD doesn't have that feature either, but we have central agencies we trust (e.g. kickstarter). There's no reason why that model cannot be used with Bitcoin (so nothing disingenuous as you claim)."

Well, in this case, they're using one of those central agencies (PayPal). So using PayPal as the central agency on Bitcoin would be exactly the same, and using a different central agency is a change independent of the use of Bitcoin.

"The real power of Bitcoin would be to be able to do this in a trust-less manner. It hasn't been implemented yet, but exists in the Bitcoin Protocol. You're welcome to take a shot at it, by the way, the core developer team is always looking for new developers."

I don't know that 'Bitcoin has X if you write code to let Bitcoin do X' is quite the same as 'Bitcoin has X.' Lots of things can do X if I put in all the work to do X.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _This also points to the urgent need for BTC adoption by both major crowdfunding organizations because PayPal is dangerous._

Bitcoin has its own issues -- see "Bitcoin crowdfunding sites find funding difficult" ([http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-crowdfunding-sites-find- fund...](http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-crowdfunding-sites-find-funding- difficult/)).

Even if the legal/security issues are worked out, it will take a lot of convincing to get mainstream users/potential crowdfunding donors on board. People don't trust what they don't understand, and the fact that the value of BTC is so unstable is a giant red flag. Would Joe Shmoe plunk down fiat for X $BTC, with the knowledge that the exchange may fail or the value of his investment may plunge the next day?

<comment><USER15> Those legal issues only apply to equity crowdfunding, not presale/donation crowdfunds like those on Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "This also points to the urgent need for BTC adoption by both major crowdfunding organizations because PayPal is dangerous."

Yeah, because having exactly zero recourse when the crowdfunded thing turns out to be a scam is totally what people are looking for.

Paypal is can be quite a pain in the ass with fraud prevention etc, but pretending that switching to a system with NO dispute resolution is better is ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER17> They didn't shut down their account, they froze it, huge distinction.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's kind of odd that this project is using crowdfunding at all. As far as I can tell, they are just selling software as a service, and the service already exists.

<comment><USER2> It's freemium, and no doubt like most freemium services, 99%+ of the users will pay nothing for it. They are raising funds to host that free service until it becomes self-sustaining through the optional upgrades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> When will people learn to stop using PayPal for these things?

</comment><comment><USER20> Previous submission is here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7968737](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7968737)

</comment><comment><USER21> What is a good alternative to paypal if you run a business ?

<comment><USER22> Paypal used to be the easiest thing to integrate - especially because they would handle the entire backend server workflow, and you just get a ping from their back end when the thing is done. They also have the instant payment button that would accumulate payments and consolidate orders without you even having a backend.

If you're looking for something similar to the payment integration, Stripe is pretty similar in terms of development effort and can even run a form on your (static) web site. You still have to do a bit of processing on your end, but we're talking about a few hours of work tops.

We ran a subscription business for a few months without a real backend or a database (validating that there is a demand) using stripe and JotForm. Jotform is a very simple forms builder and server online that can handle a trivial product selection, collect custom information, execute a payment workflow and send the customer and you an e-mail at the end, optionally showing the customer a confirmation page. Yes, all this is doable by a good programmer in a day or two, but it costs next to nothing on JotForm and allowed us to play with the process until we got it right. Their site can run paypal and stripe (and a few other things) so in case paypal blocks you it's easy to switch to a different provider without customers noticing anything.

Stripe doesn't offer seller or buyer protection - which is another benefit of PayPal. I don't know anyone else who does that.</comment></comment>


Take Seed From VCs To Get Them Hooked - <AUTHOR> http://www.markpeterdavis.com/getventure/2008/03/take-seed-from.html Entrepreneurs sometimes don't position themselves to take seed money from VCs. Some don't think to reach out to VCs that do seed investments and others avoid VCs at this stage.
In general, it's a good idea to take VC money in the seed round (if possible). Getting VC support early can make it easy to finance your company over the long term. Good VCs are typically pretty good at bringing new investors into the company for you. Once VCs are behind your company they have a vested financial and reputation-based interest in your.
However, hooking VCs early does present a risk...
More at markpeterdavis.com <comment><USER2> Be careful! VCs also have a somewhat different outlook than founders or angels. Taking money early from them means they're involved early, and they're probably going to want to see results. Some pressure can be healthy, but too much can kill a company.</comment>


Apple Maps Connect - <AUTHOR> https://mapsconnect.apple.com

<comment><USER2> I'm sort of at a loss why this is being upvoted-- am I missing something? I feel like other people are excited about this but I can't for the life of me see why...

This is something that every mapping product should have, no? Really not trying to troll just trying to figure out what I missed...

<comment><USER3> It's being upvoted because it's relevant for people in the tech industry to be aware of it, not because it's surprising or technically superior to alternatives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Basically, it is intended for business to add themselves on Apple Maps aka crowd sourcing. There is also an indoor positioning for businesses that qualify certain criteria. SearchEngineLand has some screenshots of the process to add your business on Apple Maps.

[http://searchengineland.com/apple-launches-maps-connect- self...](http://searchengineland.com/apple-launches-maps-connect-self-service- local-listings-portal-206349)

</comment><comment><USER5> I would bet that this is directly related to Apple's 2013 acquisition Locationary -[http://allthingsd.com/20130719/apple-acquires-local-data- out...](http://allthingsd.com/20130719/apple-acquires-local-data-outfit- locationary)

This is exactly what Dan and Grant built Locationary for, to crowdsource and manage (validation, collisions, conflicts) massive location based datasets.

Locationary's Saturn platform was worldwide, with hundreds of thousands of locations outside the US, so I'm guessing its only a matter of time before Apple opens it up.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is half-baked. I started the process to add a business, and halfway through I accidentally clicked off of the 'Add Business' popup. It lost all of my info (I thought), so I started over with the 'Add Business' wizard. Once I submitted for approval, I could then see the old entry that I started. But, you can't even delete businesses yet - so now there is a half-filled-out business just sitting there.

<comment><USER7> This is a necessary facility but I can't see how it will solve Apple's quality problems. Just spot-checking my personal pet peeve, they're still showing a hotel in the middle of Oakland that was torn down several years ago, even though their aerial image, which is also very outdated, shows the site as a vacant lot.

Nobody has incentive to remove their defunct business from Apple's maps using this tool. Apple either needs real crowd sourcing from the public or their own internal quality people prowling around.

<comment><USER8> _Apple either needs real crowd sourcing from the public_

Doesn't this already exist? There's a pretty big option after selecting any venue in Apple's Maps app that allows users to report it closed, update the data, that sort of thing. I reported loads of these in my local area shortly after it was release, and they certainly appear to have been updated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Still not going to be interested in Apple Maps until they start to update their data. Mercer St in Seattle is one of the main east-west routes between the highway and surface streets, and they still haven't figured out that it is a two-way street (which happened close to a year ago), and that most of Broad St no longer exists. This makes it useless for quite a lot of people here: basically anyone in the Belltown, Queen Anne, and Magnolia neighborhoods.

<comment><USER10> Report a problem - they take them quite seriously in my experience.

<comment><USER11> Nope. I reported the fact that what's shown as a coffee shop here in Melbourne (Australia) is in fact a parking lot, and has been forever, and couldn't feasibly be a coffee shop under any circumstances due to its location.

Two years ago.

And it's still a coffee shop. Corner of Flinders & Spring, if you're interested.

<comment><USER12> I did the same for a place in Sydney. It did eventually get updated. But it took a veeeeery long time.

<comment><USER13> I wonder if address-to-gps mapping is complicated by reversed street directions....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What is it? I don't have an Apple ID and have no interest in creating one.

<comment><USER15> There are 2 links after you sign in.

1) A link that will let you add your business to Apple Maps. "Your updates will be used to improve Apple Maps for our users and partners."

2) A link for a signup called "Indoor". The copy for that page is:

Thank you for your interest in Apple's new indoor positioning technology. We have received an overwhelming response on this service and we are prioritizing our efforts to focus on venues with the following attributes:

* Accessible to the general public

* Annual visitors in excess of 1 million per year

* Availability of complete, accurate, and scaled reference maps

* Enabled with Wi-Fi throughout

* Associated app is authorized by venue owner

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Bizarre design. Pretty tourist pics and an Apple sign-in. Which Lastpass fills in anyway, so heck, I sign in. And then I am looking at "frosted glass" rectangle (Yosemite desktop effect I assume) that covers the pretty pics and asks if I have a small business.

No, I do not. But there is no way to say that. Nothing to explain what this page would do for me if I did, and nothing to tell me what use it is (or isn't) since I don't. No back-story at all. Why did I sign in?

<comment><USER17> You signed in because this was posted on Hacker News. Apple didn't market this page to you. You're obviously not their target audience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I didn't like the part where it asked me to move the pin to the location but didn't have map tiles for the location!

</comment><comment> SG- Seems to be US only for adding addresses.

<comment><USER19> That's correct - I have just tried to add my german small business. No chance. Why would they limit it to the US? Google's doing the exact same thing without restrictions.

For a while I hoped Apple would let go of their US-centric thinking, but it seems I was wrong.

Edit: I just remembered that with Google Maps, they sent me a postal letter with a code to confirm the address. Maybe they haven't set that up yet, but my point still stands.

Can anyone confirm if the confirmation process involves a postal letter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> BEWARE. When I try log in it says my apple account has been locked out for security reasons. I went and reset the password and successfully logged into a bunch of other apple stuff, but when I tried to log into maps connect it said I was locked out again.

<comment><USER21> This usually happens if some other user who has a similar name accidentally enters your address but their own password 3 or more times. If your username is also borland there, it wouldn't surprise me if someone else has something similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> 1.

        Request limit exceeded.
        You have exceeded your page request limit. Please try again later.

2.

        What is your business address?
        United States (with no input option, static text)

</comment><comment><USER23> Whatever this is doesn't work in Firefox on Android.

</comment><comment><USER24> next up: Apple Search (spotlight for the browser)

</comment><comment><USER25> How come this doesn't work on an iPhone?

<comment><USER26> If the main purpose of this system is to allow small business owners to register their businesses, I just can't imagine that it would be worth anyone's time to either make an app for it or make a mobile web UI. It's something that some people use once and most people use never.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Built using Bootstrap and Angular</comment>