Ask YC: Recommend a good chair? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in the market for a good chair for under $200 (so no Aeron suggestions please).
Any ideas? <comment><USER2> I went to OfficeMax and Staples and sat in every chair they had. The fifth-to- last chair I tried at Staples ended up fitting me perfectly. I think it was $100. I ended up turning the arms upside-down because I don't use them but they're still required to keep the back from breaking off.

Before going, I had researched the proper ergonomic position for a computer user. The important parts were legs at ninety degrees, chair can't put pressure on underside of your hamstring muscle (otherwise blood pools in your leg), lumbar support, and (for me, at least) vertical neck support allowing me to read the monitor while my neck muscles are completely relaxed. To complement this, I built a two-tier desk where my elbows are at 90 degrees while using the keyboard. I also have a wireless mouse[1] to use when sitting in a different position (because different positions are the key to being comfortable).

[1] The Perific wireless mouse <http://www.thehumansolution.com/perificmouse.html> which I just discovered is discontinued. sorry, and I really hope mine doesn't break.

</comment><comment><USER3> EDIT: Guess I should have read the $200 limit. I know of no chairs in that range which are any good. If you're going for $200, you might as well shoot for $50-75 and get something cheap from Office Max; I don't think the extra $100 or so would buy you anything much better. You could probably get an improved surface type (leather instead of pleather, etc.) but that's probably it.

==== HERE BE EXPENSIVE CHAIR ====

I love my Humanscale _Freedom_ (get the headrest, too). It has gotten to the point now where I can't really sit in anything else without my back killing me because I've become so used to the perfect support it provides.

Definitely pricey (mine was $1,200 I believe, after a $200 rebate), but _wow_ has it been worth it. The only complaint I have is that the quality of the arm rest connectors are pretty poor; I had to have a replacement shipped after I leaned on one while getting up and snapped the thing off. My ~160 lbs frame shouldn't do that.

</comment><comment><USER4> In case you're willing to go up to $325, I'm very happy with my Steelcase Uno:

<http://www.steelcase.com/na/uno_products.aspx?f=12279>

When I was chair shopping I found that good chairs started at around $300. Assuming your definition of good includes "adjustable". As far as I know under $200 means either non-adjustable or craptastic.

</comment><comment><USER5> aeron.

seriously though, ikea has some pretty good chairs for the price, imo. or see if you can catch a higher end chair on sale online somewhere.

<comment><USER6> The Aeron is actually a good buy if you agree with Spolsky's math.

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDeveloper...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDevelopers.html)

Next time I have a chance to buy a chair I'm going to consider the Aeron. Having to fidget every 5 minutes because the chair's not comfortable has an annoying habit of making me forget exactly what I was just doing, and the Staples/Office Depot chair du jour always seems lacking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had some furniture from Crate and Barrel that was excellent for my old home office. I'm not seeing the exact chairs I had, but these are similar:

[http://www.crateandbarrel.com/family.aspx?c=897&f=4469&#...](http://www.crateandbarrel.com/family.aspx?c=897&f=4469&q=chair&fromLocation=Search&DIMID=400001&SearchPage=1)

[http://www.crateandbarrel.com/family.aspx?c=897&f=3393&#...
Mine were on sale - I got two for like $120 each. It was good because they were exceptionally comfortable, durable, and they looked quite good with the rest of my kit. I'm normally Captain Frugal, but I spent a bit to my home office together since I had a lot of people coming through there and making a good impression was a definite plus.
If you have a Crate and Barrel near you, might want to poke around there and ask when their next sale is happening. Durable, comfortable, and clean modern aesthetics is my kind of thing.</comment>


How Docker Fits Into The Current DevOps Landscape - <AUTHOR> http://blog.leanstack.io/how-docker-fits-into-the-current-devops-landscape

<comment><USER2> I just tried out the combination of Ansible, Docker and Etcd - Really simple and awesome.</comment>


Tom Wolfe's reflections on language - <AUTHOR> http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/tom-wolfes-reflections-language/ <comment><USER2> Tom Wolfe's discussion of this book in a recent Harper's article convinced me this book will be terrible.

My general problem with Wolfe is his creation of fiction from historical events while referring to them as historical. If you've ever read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Wolfe, the big argument between Kesey and Leary never actually happened. Wolfe just made it up and presented it as historical fact.

I expect this book to be more of the same. There's a line between artistic license and lying, and Wolfe has proven repeatedly he does not respect this line.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are the article's quotes and comments about Wolfe's treatment of Darwin accurate?

I'm not a big Chomsky fan. On the other hand, using Everett as an attack on Chomsky doesn't work; Everett is a bit sketchy and one language does not provide a counter example.

But I admit I haven't studied Chomsky in detail. I do know a fair bit about Darwin, though, and if this is accurate, Wolfe's whole book can be discarded without fear of missing anything.

<comment><USER4> It's accurate. This book is being ripped apart by scholars across many different disciplines. It's a lovely piece of trash that makes Wolfe look as bad as this article suggests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article does a good job going over the Pirahã controversy. It also has this quote, which is a good Chomsky quote:

 _" There is some genetic factor that distinguishes humans from other animals, and [it] is language specific. The theory of that genetic component, whatever it turns out to be, is what is called Universal Grammar"_

</comment><comment><USER6> Great read, it's true that intellectualism seems to be getting a bad rep lately. There's an onslaught of misinformation and as a reader, it's becoming increasingly difficult to know what information you can trust or not.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was hoping to read about the scientist who had reduced language to a simple mathematical formula. Instead, the article devolved into a heavy critique of Tom Wolfe. Bummer.

<comment><USER5> _I was hoping to read about the scientist who had reduced language to a simple mathematical formula_

This is a good place to start: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12626.On_Language](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12626.On_Language)

<comment><USER7> I've read professor Chomsky and know about his universal grammar theory. I don't remember there being any math involved. Is he the "scientist using math to explain language"? I'm even more disappointed now.

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-rebuts- ch...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-rebuts-chomsky-s- theory-of-language-learning/)

<comment><USER5> If you want to understand it from a mathematical viewpoint, it's a lot of work, but this is the book I used to learn it: [https://www.amazon.com//dp/0471137723](https://www.amazon.com//dp/0471137723)

The article you linked to doesn't really get to the core of the Universal Grammar idea; as Chomsky describes it: _" There is some genetic factor that distinguishes humans from other animals, and [it] is language specific. The theory of that genetic component, whatever it turns out to be, is what is called Universal Grammar"_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This guy is in desperate need of an editor. He may have a point, but that review is virtually unreadable.

<comment><USER5> It was a good article. It covered a lot of ground, but worth it for those willing to put in the effort.

<comment><USER8> I disagree. He has a point about the book, but this review is simply not good writing. It's needlessly verbose, meandering and self-indulgent. It attempts to be snarky but is devoid of cleverness and wit. His point is simple -- Wolfe's knowledge of the subject matter is scant and shallow and thus he has written a crap book.

I don't necessarily disagree with that at all. However it could have been more effectively said with half as many words and fewer clever quips.

I am very willing to put in the effort, if I get any sense that the author has put in some as well. Don't blame readers for not wanting to slog through lazy writing.

<comment><USER5> What you call 'needlessly verbose, meandering' are actually fact-filled details. If you are not interested in the details of the language acquisition device, (or if you knew it all already), then I can see why you would be bored.

<comment><USER8> Compare:

"Perhaps you, like I, read The Voyage of the Beagle and found it to be a remarkable triumph of literature and naturalism and science and, dare I say it, the intellect."

with

"The Voyage of the Beagle was a triumph of literature, naturalism and intellect."

Not one fact deleted. There's no accounting for taste -- maybe you like crap writing. But worthwhile ideas remain so even when presented in simple declarative sentences.

<comment><USER9> > "Perhaps you, like I, read The Voyage of the Beagle and found it to be a > remarkable triumph of literature and naturalism and science and, dare I say > it, the intellect."

> with

> "The Voyage of the Beagle was a triumph of literature, naturalism and > intellect."

> Not one fact deleted. There's no accounting for taste

Which is, in fact, the thing deleted (that is, the former version expressly emphasizes that the conclusion it offers is an opinion -- even as it clearly expects the reader to recognize that it is a quite common one, and that the author expects the reader to be likely to share it -- and the latter suggests it is a simple statement of fact.)

> But worthwhile ideas remain so even when presented in simple declarative > sentences.

Yes, but sometimes changing the sentence structure also -- as in the example you present -- substantially alters the idea being presented.

<comment><USER8> I don't imagine I'll convince you, but here goes.

Consider your response to me. If you had left it at "Which is the thing deleted" your point would have been well and cleverly made. But you go on to undermine it with a less clear parenthetical exposition of 50+ words (1 sentence!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> i have no idea what i've just read. is this a book review, a scholarly article review, what?

about the only thing i have gathered from it is the author doesn't like wolfe's ideas very much.

<comment><USER11> There is a picture of the book at the top of the page. The first words of the first paragraph are "Tom Wolfe's most recent book". The first words of the second paragraph are "Let's start with the part of the book about Darwin"</comment></comment>


Hackers Leak Walmart's Guide on How to Silence Workers - <AUTHOR> http://makingchangeatwalmart.org/2014/01/16/hackers-leak-walmarts-guide-on-how-to-silence-workers/

<comment><USER2> I went looking for the guide. Couldn't see it linked from the page linked here, so I followed their Gawker link, and couldn't see it there, so I followed the link to occupywallst.org. I couldn't get their embedded PDF viewer to turn pages, so I clicked the raw PDF.

To save others the trouble, the link is here: [http://www.docdroid.net/file/view/86lk/walmart-on- ourwalmart...](http://www.docdroid.net/file/view/86lk/walmart-on- ourwalmart.pdf)

A "Guide on How to Silence Workers" is not a good characterization of this document. From the post title, I expected something like "Here's how you subtly threaten and intimidate people into doing what you want." I don't see anything like that here. There are 13 slides. Several of them depict links between the UFCW, various anti-WalMart organizations, and one consulting group. A couple are pure propaganda along the lines of "Is OURWalMart/UFCW really here to help you? No!"

One of the organizations listed in the document is the same makingchangeatwalmart.org to which the OP links.

Maybe there are things about WalMart that one should get outraged about, but this doesn't seem like one of them. There's more heat than light here.

<comment><USER3> You're looking at the wrong slideshow:

[http://www.docdroid.net/file/view/86ln/manager- training.pdf](http://www.docdroid.net/file/view/86ln/manager-training.pdf)

[http://occupywallst.org/article/point-of-public- information/](http://occupywallst.org/article/point-of-public-information/)

The articles aren't organized well, and you have to click around to find the actual info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Always lost in these conversations are the hundreds of thousands of people who shop at Walmart because it stretches the meager family budget far enough to allow those low income people a reasonable existence. All else being equal, Walmart would have better work environments and more protections for its workers. But all else isn't equal and higher wages and more protections for the workers will likely result in higher prices which has an immediate effect on the poor and lower class. It's not a vacuum. Walmart is the logical conclusion of the uniquely American desire to pay the lowest price for everything.

Ironically, those who argue that Walmart is terrible to their workers almost never shop there because they have nice jobs and the ability to choose where to buy their staples.

<comment><USER5> Incorrect, Walmart can raise the wages of its employees without increasing their prices.

[http://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/A%20Hi...](http://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/A%20Higher%20Wage%20Is%20Possible.pdf)

TLDR: Walmart could give all it's low-wage employees a $5.83 raise in exchange for not doing a stock buyback. Their profits would not even suffer.

The other obvious point is that Walmart could pay its workers more in exchange for less profit. That would also not require any price hikes.

<comment><USER6> From a short-term perspective, increasing the bottom end of the pay scale is not an isolated event. All levels of the scale must be adjusted upward to offset the effect of condensing (in this case drastically) the pay differences between positions with different levels of responsibility.

From a long-term perspective, the management of Walmart does not own the equity in the company. They must act in the interests of the company's owners in order to at least preserve, if not expand, the company itself. The evidence against buybacks presented in the paper you link is quite thin. The management may be making a bad decision, but it is up to the shareholders to correct them.

<comment><USER5> > From a short-term perspective, increasing the bottom end of the pay scale is > not an isolated event. All levels of the scale must be adjusted upward to > offset the effect of condensing (in this case drastically) the pay > differences between positions with different levels of responsibility.

Prove it.

> From a short-term perspective, increasing the bottom end of the pay scale is > not an isolated event. All levels of the scale must be adjusted upward to > offset the effect of condensing (in this case drastically) the pay > differences between positions with different levels of responsibility.

You're correct, and this is why we need to raise the federal minimum wage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe I missed it, but I don't see the actual guide. And I doubt makingchangeatwalmart.org is an objective source on what it contains. I'd like to see the actual guide, or at least direct quotations from it, so I can make my own judgements.

<comment><USER8> It's about three more clicks deep:

> Original Post <[http://makingchangeatwalmart.org/2014/01/16/hackers-leak- > wal...](http://makingchangeatwalmart.org/2014/01/16/hackers-leak-walmarts- > guide-on-how-to-silence-workers/) >

      1. (OP) Hackers Leak Walmart's Guide on How to Silence Workers

> ...in the words of [Gawker's Hamilton Nolan<[http://gawker.com/walmarts- > anti-union-training-documents-dem...](http://gawker.com/walmarts-anti-union- > training-documents-demand-loyalty-1501887448) >].

      2. Walmart's Anti-Union Training Documents Demand "Loyalty"

> Occupy Wall Street has posted a set of [internal Walmart > documents<[http://occupywallst.org/article/point-of-public- > information/](http://occupywallst.org/article/point-of-public-information/) > >] used...

      3. (Finally leading to...) Walmart Organizes Against Workers

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Walmart is disgusting. The bright lights, recent attempts at upscaling their image, and the stupid yellow smiley face are all fronts for what's nothing more than a sweatshop for the unfortunate people who have to work there.

I avoid it...more people should too.

<comment><USER10> It's just a really unpleasant shopping experience, and I'm lucky to live in a place with alternatives and have a job that lets me afford to shop at alternatives.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: (meta) What are the peak hours of HN? - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to get a good poll of Javascript animation libraries people enjoy using, or would recommend. What would the best time of day be to submit the Ask HN post? <comment><USER2> The most popular hours are 9 AM EST to 1 PM EST: [http://minimaxir.com/img/hn- submissions.png](http://minimaxir.com/img/hn-submissions.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I'm excited to share libraries!</comment></comment>


CPSC 527 or: How I Learned to Start Worrying and Write a Virus - <AUTHOR> http://danieru.com/2013/12/28/cpsc-527-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-write-a-virus/ <comment><USER2> The idea that a security company would discourage people from learning about something, particularly in a safe environment, is horrifying to me (someone who has worked in a security company). It seems like applying the policy way too tightly- there's a huge difference between a "virus writer" and "someone who wrote a virus in an academic setting and never released it publicly".

The real horrifying part though is the fact that the people who want to solve the problem are being discouraged from doing so by the thread of blacklisting. On one level it's immoral, on another it's self destructive. More schools should be offering classes like this.

<comment><USER3> Could explain why there are no good anti-virus softwares on the market! All I see are bloated monstrosities only able to catch the less harmful viruses.

Even before I switched away from Windows I never used them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand why we need to have CHECKs in the first place. If everyone has to write some bullshit reasons instead of being blunt that they are just curious about how professional virus and malware is written, what is the point of reading those essays?

If we fear people start developing malware and virus, think about all those web design classes out there where students don't realize how vulnerable their implementations are. Think about all the free sec tools out there.

> Most anti-virus companies (including ours) have a policy against hiring > former virus writers for anti-virus work

What? Who do they hire then? I supposed I am qualified because I never written a serious virus/trojan. Would I call rm -rf a joke? There was a guy discovered a way to create botnet by XSS a Gmail chrome extension two days ago. Would anyone call that some form of trojan?

My friend did this prank in a computer lab. He knows the local IP to each computer and they are sequential. He wrote a shell script which (1) screen capture the current screen on each computer, send that image to the adjacent computer, and then change the background.

I think your enemy can also be your friends. If people are curious, they will find a way to beat their curiosity. If they are technically smart, they can write virus that bypass AV scanner. Hey, those are the guys you want to hire. Are they suggesting that none of the researchers working for these AV labs have never written some form of virus or malware or Trojan prior to employment?

</comment><comment><USER5> Back in HS, we did stupid shit like write joke DOS TSR virii that had easter eggs like calculators, ASCII tables and random text "screen savers" that didn't respect what you happened to be doing.

<comment><USER5> Also the computer lab was pure anarchy without supervision: the only rules were don't get the teacher in trouble, don't make 'em look bad and don't kill each other. Somehow, no one got caught hacking into the Pentagon or AT&T.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I do like the course application requirements of ACSII or PDF (and no Word). I miss uni and all the lecturers who have to have things just so :)

I also would have loved to have had a course like this when I was at uni. I might have paid more attention in the systems course :(

<comment><USER5> UC Davis is pro portable *nix (usually C code) instead of any particular bias(es). I wished the ugrad OS course used plan 9 instead of minix though.

</comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Did you by any chance use _Designing BSD Rootkits_ [1] as a reference manual?

[http://www.nostarch.com/rootkits.htm](http://www.nostarch.com/rootkits.htm) [1]

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, but I bet that would have helped! Instead it was just lots of reading and grepping through the BSD source code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't get the point from the security companies. Writing viruses will definitely give you the knowledge to understand and (at least try to) protect against them.

Keep it up !

</comment><comment><USER8> My very first "virus" was a batch file called win.bat that just scrolled profanity. It was called win.bat because that would make it execute before Windows loaded on a 95 system.

It brought the whole computer lab down after I manually "installed" it on each of the 5 machines one day.

This was in middle school, and yeah, my middle school was a joke. They ended up formatting all of the machines and the lab was down for half of the semester.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if instead of focusing a handful of courses on virus making we shouldn't instead re-brand the the whole endeavour with a more positive spin and focus on something that could be called 'nanogens' for instance, whose modus operandi would be identical to viruses, but their purpose would be to protect against their harmful counterpart and repair the host instead.

<comment><USER10> There is already malware that "protects" the host by detecting and eliminating other malware. The idea is that if you keep the user's system clean (except for your malware) then you will evade detection more easily.

If, as you suggested, someone released a virus designed to fix a person's computer, it would still be harmful in principle because you are making the assumption that people want strangers executing code on their machines.

<comment><USER11> > because you are making the assumption that people want strangers executing > code on their machines

Except that's pretty much what happens every time you visit a website with JS enabled...

<comment><USER10> Without context and purely based on technicality you are correct, yet in the frame of this conversation your comment doesn't make any sense.

Clearly there is a difference between a benign website and a site that hosts code that knowingly takes control of the user's computer (regardless of the programmer's intentions).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > and thus not be able to contribute to actually solving the virus problem

So I am expected to believe that the makers of anti virus programs have an interest in solving the virus problem, AND that they are actually capable of doing this, AND that they are the _only_ way this can be done? Not buying it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like an interesting course, I wonder if they can be convinced to put it on Coursera?

<comment><USER14> I doubt it, from the course's description[1]:

> Due to the inherent danger of this software, you may only work on these > assignments in the designated lab room for the course.

> You will be required to sign a form stating that you have read and > understood the lab protocols, and that you understand that misuse of the > information in this course can result in civil and criminal penalties under > the laws of Canada and of other countries.

Also, the link to the course's contents on John Aycock's page[2] says:

> (course access only, sorry)

So I guess they don't want to make the contents of the course public

[1][http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~aycock/virus- info.html](http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~aycock/virus-info.html)

[2][http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~aycock/](http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~aycock/)</comment></comment>


Two Starkly Similar Novels and the Puzzle of Plagiarism - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/books/dan-mallory-plagiarism.html <comment><USER2> If you haven't read The New Yorker expose yet, I highly recommend it. Something missing from this NYT article is the fact that Dan Mallory worked as an editor, and would have access to lots of manuscripts through his job. When reading The New Yorker article it was natural to wonder if he really did pen the successful book himself.

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/11/a-suspense- nov...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/11/a-suspense-novelists- trail-of-deceptions)

</comment><comment><USER3> That happened with "Life of Pi". [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/08/bookerprize200...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/08/bookerprize2002.awardsandprizes)

The author who stole was very arrogant admitting he stole the premise because he didn't want to leave it to a _" lesser writer"_

<comment><USER4> Here's the whole essay where he made the _" lesser author"_ comment:

[https://medium.com/@Powells/how-i-wrote-life-of- pi-6ffe1c017...](https://medium.com/@Powells/how-i-wrote-life-of- pi-6ffe1c0177ac)

He made that comment as a hypothetical in the context of a really bad book review. He even said in the very next sentence that the book may possibly have been very well written. I don't think he's trying to make any personal attack.

My personal opinion on plagiarism is that everything is fair game as long as it's clearly acknowledged upfront.

<comment><USER5> Isn't that called quoting people?

<comment><USER4> In the most extreme form, yes. And no one should be shamed for quoting someone with attribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mirror: [https://outline.com/FnfVMe](https://outline.com/FnfVMe)

</comment><comment><USER7> Classic plagiarism on plagiarism: [https://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/the- ecstasy-of-influence...](https://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/the-ecstasy-of- influence/)</comment>


House Committee AGAINST Science, Space, and Technology? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thespectroscope.com/read/house-committee-against-science-space-and-technology-by-lenny-teytelman-344 <comment><USER2> Holy crap... what the hell?

<comment><AUTHOR> Used to be one of the few bipartisan committees in Congress. Not any more.</comment></comment>


Four Reasons Most Startups Fail (And How Yours Can Succeed) - <AUTHOR> http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/taylor/2008/07/four_reasons_most_startups_fai.html

<comment><USER2> This article is essentially a recap of PG's speech at startup school from three months ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> yea i agree, but i still like that he's stressing not to take too much money too early - i think this is one of the things people tend to underestimate in terms of possible company-killers</comment>


Show HN: The Image Locator - automation for finding css top/left coordinates - <AUTHOR> http://locator.codestrict.com

<comment><USER2> Nice! Simple, clean and easy to use. Was just testing it out on this current html game I'm making and works like it should.</comment>


Mistakes startups make when talking to users - <AUTHOR> http://survata.com/blog/10-mistakes-startups-make-when-talking-to-users/ <comment><USER3> I thought this was going to be a post about customer development, where the issue is not generally the formatting of the questions, but asking the wrong questions in the first place, or misinterpreting the answers.

Surveys can be a useful tool, but nothing replaces a real conversation. Even asking more open ended questions in an email or survey form can give you so much more information than radio button answers (and unless you're a huge company, it's not too hard to read a few hundred open-ended responses).

Along those lines, I'll share a snippet from patio11's Microconf presentation last year (posted on HN yesterday), regarding interpreting the responses you get to a more open-ended conversation:

"If you're solving a problem people actually have, they will say at this point, 'Shut up and take my money.' If someone says, 'That's kind of interesting, tell me when that exists,' you have not successfully identified a problem that people actually have."

You don't get that kind of insight from radio buttons.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. One of the biggest mistakes I see startups making when talking to users is using surveys at all.

The theory seems to be "Oh, we'll get more information that way." Or, from the more honest ones, "This was less scary than trying to talk with people one on one." But surveys are mainly useful for confirming or denying particular generalizations from real conversations.

Surveys throw out all sorts of data. Every raised eyebrow. Every excited look. Every long pause where they try to figure out what they hell you are talking about. Every gesture, every tone of voice, every tangent. You really need that data when you're first starting out. Early on, the problem isn't the things you know you don't know. It's the things that you're pretty sure about that are false.

<comment><USER5> I'd say it is more of a "this is more tractable". Given that the barrier to doing a survey is so much lower for your users, the guys who accept "real conversations" will probably be significantly more optimistic about your product than those who don't..

<comment><USER6> People who are optimistic at the only people that matter. A company with only 1% of the world population as customers is one of the greatest companies in history.

<comment><USER5> If there are enough of them. Most B2Bs do not have anywhere close to 1% of the world's population as customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While the headline doesn't really match the article, because the article talks about surveys and not customer development, I want to point out one error I see quite frequently in startups or SaaS-businesses when they talk to users.

It can be summed up as: Asking the user for some sort of interaction and then failing to respond to the user's action.

This can be blog posts where there's an open question at the end with the goal to engage readers and failing to answer to interesting comments.

But I see it more frequently when I go for some sort of SaaS-trial, my account expires after a week or two, they ask me for feedback and since I'm not convinced of the product yet, I might give them feedback and state my concerns. That is actually the last chance for them to make me change my mind.

And they miss it. They simply fail to reply or to address my concerns that I stated in my feedback.

I don't have any numbers but my educated guess is that they lose quite a few customers this way. Some lost me this way and I bet there are others.

<comment><USER8> This comment worth gold. I respond it only so that I can see it later. Anyway, thanks for pointing this out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you want to get better at writing surveys - go read "Asking Questions" [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asking-Questions-Definitive- Question...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asking-Questions-Definitive- Questionnaire-Questionnaires/dp/0787970883)

If you actually want to look at how to get better at talking to users - <USER2> than writing surveys - I'd recommend getting a copy of Andrew Traver's pocket guide "Interviewing for Research" [http://www.fivesimplesteps.com/products/interviewing-for- res...](http://www.fivesimplesteps.com/products/interviewing-for-research)

There's also an upcoming book on interviewing by Steve Portigal <http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/interviewing-users/> \- googling around his name will find you some useful interviewing slide decks.

Indi Young's book Mental Models has some good advice on interviews in one of the chapters, and is also a useful read <http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/mental-models/>

(Bias disclaimer: I know Andrew, and I do workshops on interviewing ;-)

</comment><comment><USER10> They forgot the #1 mistake: Too Many Damn Questions.

There have been plenty of times when I have willfully taken surveys to help out companies I like then immediately gave up after being shown a survey with 20-60 questions. No.

What pisses me off is that they're asking for my time and effort without giving me anything in return. Like they feel entitled to taking 15 minutes of my time.

The worst is when they only display 1 question per page and there's a little progress bar at the top. And after 10 questions you only see the progress bar 7% full. At least it's not as bad as the time Starbucks/Chase Duetto Cards hired someone with a studdering speech impediment to call me for a phone survey... That lasted 30 minutes.

<comment><USER11> If they can't refine it down to 3 questions, they haven't thought enough yet about what they really want to know.

Also - it doesn't have to be the same 3 questions to each visitor. Draw them from a pool.

<comment><USER12> A nice platitude, but when folks from UX, marketing, sales, engineering, bizdev, and executives all want to know different things - that's how you end up with the 60-question surveys.

<comment><USER10> Well if I'm being paid for it, then there's really no limit as to how many you can ask.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For anyone interested in the art and science of surveys/customer interviews, I found this book to be quite helpful: [http://www.amazon.com/Asking-Questions- Definitive-Questionna...](http://www.amazon.com/Asking-Questions-Definitive- Questionnaire- Questionnaires/dp/0787970883/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366916840&sr=8-1&keywords=asking+questions) It's written for sociology/anthropology students, but the principles are equally applicable in product conversations. It's filled with lots of best practices for designing questions, interview flows, surveys, and other customer tools. There's actually a lot of mistakes that can be made without realizing and this book helps prevent many of them. e.g. switching up types of questions from yes/no, to scales, to free response to prevent answers based on momentum.

</comment><comment><USER14> The problem with this data is that it comes from Survata, which is one of those god awful spammy survey walls that makes users fill out a survey before they can access the desired content. When your data comes from being hostile and annoying to users, I don't think it can be trusted.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sometimes unbalanced scales (#4 on this article's list) are appropriate. If you have a five-option list where 95% of your users are answering 4 or 5, then it's time to unbalance the scale so that you can get better information. However, you need to have collected the balanced scale version for long enough to know it's an actual trend.

</comment><comment><USER16> I still couldn't truthfully answer most of the "improved" questions with anything other than "it depends" or "none of the above", because they still make too many assumptions about people's behavior and choices that simply don't match the diversity of reality.

Pay for a streaming video services? Depends, 99% of current services I wouldn't pay for. How often do I get a new mobile phone? Depends, sometimes two in a year, but the current one is already 3 years old. Fuck if I know the "average". How often do I check my mail per hour. Depends on where I am and what the fuck I'm doing, of course.

Etcetera, etcetera.

</comment><comment><USER17> Mistake #11: assuming that an online survey equates to discussions with your users. This is not a knock on survata, but rather talking about what it means to engage with a company's userbase.

Survata is one tool, but nothing beats direct, 1-1 customer interaction. Can't remember where I read it, but one CEO of a startup made it his job to handle a decent amount of customer support email. Of course, that only scales so far, but out of the gate -- that's priceless interaction.

</comment><comment><USER18> Also: Not having an actual conversation with your customers</comment>


How a CSS Triangle is Made - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/chriscoyier/pen/lotjh

<comment><USER2> All of these remarkable ways to hack CSS to make different geometric shapes (semi-circles, triangles, whatever) just leave me believing there is no computer science in CSS, no engineering in CSS, just a collection of hacks to develop to an underwhelming overcomplicated underpowered spec.

Add yet another level of unneeded complexity to web work.

<comment><USER3> CSS is very extremely well-specified in how it draws stuff, and if you use it within its bounds, it's very good at doing what it set out to accomplish. That is, as a way to style content. It was not designed as a "draw a triangle" language, and I'm sure the original people behind the CSS standard would never have thought of exploiting the bevel effect to draw a triangle.

I don't understand the attitude of "well, you're using CSS outside the bounds of what it was designed for, that means that CSS is ad-hoc garbage", nor the attitude of "well, you're exploiting CSS in a clever way, that means you're a terrible engineer".

It's a clever hack in the truest sense of the word, and that makes me proud.

<comment><USER2> The first five years of CSS articles were: "How I got two columns in CSS" and "How I ditched tables for two columns in CSS".

This does not make me think of CSS as a well specified standard to be used to style content in a manner needed by the web.

<comment><USER3> Layout is a very different problem than styling. I think it's an absolute shame we're now just getting sophisticated layout management, but the styling has been around for a while, and it works fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really like this. It's simple, but work so well. I could see a website making tutorials this way.

</comment><comment><USER5> That's the weirdest way to format HTML I've ever seen

<comment><USER6> It said (jade) so it seems to be this: [http://jade-lang.com/](http://jade- lang.com/)

<comment><USER7> Jade is the default template language in Express (common Node web framework) so a lot of people have been picking it up.</comment></comment></comment>


Deepmind Health - <AUTHOR> https://deepmind.com/health <comment><USER2> Joins IBM Watson, Flatiron Health, and I'm sure many others in trying to apply big data to improve healthcare. Glad the attention is focused here, even incremental improvements in matching patients to trials, diagnosis and treatment analysis would literally be saving people's lives.</comment>


Dear Facebook, Please Stop Acqui-hiring Everything. - <AUTHOR>

So, we all know about the Facebook acquisition of Instagram. When that happened, I went out and searched for a replacement. I had just started using Instagram (when it came out for android) so it was a bit of a 'meh' moment. Eventually, I settled on the LightBox Photo app. A decent little app for wasting time by messing with photo filters.
Now, it appears Facebook has bought them and they are closing down. :(
Am I the only one who's put off by the massive acqui-hiring that Facebook is doing? To me, it speaks of a lack of internal innovation. <comment><USER2> Stop complaining. If you built your own company and were offered to be "acqui- hired" you most likely would take it! There are some businesses that are viable enough to stand on their own - but the majority of startups in our industry are BUILT to be acquired, what happens to them is really an exercise for evolution in the ecosystem we all participate in.

If my company were offered to be acqui-hired, I would take it (assuming the offer was reasonable!). You probably would too.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't complaining about the company taking the offer. Bravo to LightBox for whatever they got for their joining Facebook. I don't mind that they got acquired. I just wish is wasn't Facebook. The LightBox Photo app is a direct competitor to Instagram, hence why they had to shut it down when joining Facebook.

I understand that many startups in our industry have their sights set on being acquired. In fact, it's the reason many of them exist. Personally, I think that such objective is myopic and is rather toxic to the technology industry. If a product is so amazing, why won't people pay for it. I understand that something like LightBox or Instagram are so called "social apps" and tend to have a terrible time monetizing. Seems to me that something like these photo apps could make money via storage. "Free" is rather basic, small online storage. Perhaps a number of pictures. Perhaps a number of uploads. Something to that effect. Then offer "Unlimited" plans for a yearly subscription fee (includes all the picture uploads and storage) or you could do some kind of "credits" to extend your app. (Think, "you've run out of slots for your photos. Add 20 more slots for 1 credit") Then people could choose to have unlimited or to have a set of slots where they could remove certain pictures in order to put new ones up. (Just an idea here, IDK if it would be viable.)

As for a company I owned being acqui-hired. Sure, everyone has their price. Were it to be Facebook, it would certainly be a higher price, than just about anywhere else. (This is entirely due to my issues with Facebook. They could buy my company out, but it's going to be expensive.)

<comment><USER2> I'm not so sure it's toxic, particularly with the reduction in costs to get up and running these days (Linux on a laptop with Emacs/VIM and a LAMP stack is free except for the hardware and hosting on the cloud makes it VERY affordable to start out small) I actually feel it's healthy and _positive_.

If you look at our industry it is panning out like a miniature biological ecosystem, with companies devouring other companies, some companies pivoting into different/new companies, big old companies being overthrown by smaller, newer, smarter ones.

Acqui-hiring is just one avenue for the evolution of technology to continue - and TBH, I may not agree with Facebook's policy but what they have achieved (virtually anyone that is "online" has a "Facebook") is remarkable with regards to the social graph and connecting people.

<comment><AUTHOR> I generally agree with you. As far as toxic, I was talking about the "exist to be acquired". Who knows, I may one day go that route with a company of mine. However, I would much rather have a product that adds value and could be bootstrapped. All the advantages you mention also mean that bootstrapping is also much more possible.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why was the Salesforce/Indiana article flag killed? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> For reference- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9272762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9272762)

<comment><USER2> My guess is that the mix of religion and politics was about to erupt into a massive flamewar.

<comment><AUTHOR> After thinking about it on my walk back to work, I tend to agree. Nothing from that thread was going to be productive.

<comment><USER3> Reading the comments made before the flagkill, your intuition appears to be sound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mkr-hn Hacker News is notoriously bad at handling any discussion where tech and social issues intersect. It's probably for the best.

</comment><comment><USER4> It is a little disappointing to see users flag-kill it. It's a conversation we gotta have somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER5> It was killed by user flags.</comment>


The Iowa Caucus, Pseudo-Events, and Hyperreality - <AUTHOR> https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-convivial-society-dispatch-no-be8 <comment><USER2> Can't say I fully got it. Probably because at this point I am tired of paying attention to train wreak American elections are. Why, why oh why are American elections ALWAYS screwed up in some way? How come every other rich country manage to run elections fine, but not the US? They can send a man to the moon, but they cannot run elections: Either ballot boxes go missing. The lines of voters go around the block, it closes before people can vote or the voting machines are broken, hacked, failed or whatever.

It is almost morbidly fascinating how there is some new way every election where things get bungled somehow.

<comment><USER3> The vast majority of electoral voting in the US works basically as intended. Most polling places don't have long lines except perhaps right when they open because people lined up ahead of time. Most states have some sort of paper ballot that is machine counted to save time (which IS a legitimate concern in a general election with 130mm votes or so cast). Before yesterday every state has for many election cycles run primaries or caucuses without this sort of snafu.

I'm assuming you aren't American based on your comment. You only read about the snafus because "everything went well yesterday in our city's/state's election" isn't news for us. It's normal.

<comment><USER4> I would also add in the complexity of US elections. Depending on the year you have multiple federal, state, and local positions. Add to that ballot initiatives and it's not difficult to have a ballot that is both sides of an A2 sheet of paper.

Even with all that, I've never had to wait more than 30 minutes.

Also, while Election Day isn't a federal holiday, ~40 states have a legal requirement that employers give employees time off to vote. (Not in the OP's initial list, but something people generally bring up without knowing the facts on the ground)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was surprised to see it mention this 1962 book:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Image:_A_Guide_to_Pseudo-e...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Image:_A_Guide_to_Pseudo- events_in_America)

certainly you find many books in history circa the 1960s that take it for granted that American culture has been full of BS from the very beginning, but that book clearly dates before the surge in French Theory, TV News as we know it, ...

</comment><comment><USER6> >Yes, he's right, that assumption is not warranted. We don't need to know immediately and the desire for immediacy is part of the problem, but that no longer matters. It hasn't mattered for years. In the currently-existing media- political environment, waiting a day or a week is unthinkable.

This premise seems at least somewhat disagreeable. Let's say I live in New Hampshire and am equally partial to two candidates, and dislike the front- running candidate.

It's advantageous for me to know as soon as possible which of my two favorable candidates best competes against the front-runner, so I can focus my donations and support on them asap.

Am I missing the point?

<comment><USER7> Your example is coherent, but you don't make an argument about the magnitude of the advantage.

If we take the week between the Iowa mountains and the New Hampshire primary, donating 24 or 36 hours earlier is likely to be worth essentially nothing.

<comment><USER6> >Your example is coherent, but you don't make an argument about the magnitude of the advantage.

Admittedly there's no data that exists to support a large magnitude of advantage. Likewise though, the author has none either yet is making the claim that it "doesn't matter". It's purely theoretical.

It would be like saying that whoever wins the jump-ball at the start of a basketball game is irrelevant, because the other team gets the ball at half anyway. Yet strangely enough, we find it gives a 3.5% win rate advantage.

[https://kenpom.com/blog/the-value-of-ben- gillery/](https://kenpom.com/blog/the-value-of-ben-gillery/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The machine needs to be fed.

Multiple 24-hour news channels need to put something on the air to sell ads, as do the network news programs. To say nothing of print and the web.

Honestly its information pollution.

<comment><USER9> The information vacuum was pretty palpable this morning.

The programming was all set up assuming there would be new information for people to talk about. Guests were lined up. Alternate stories were shelved or delayed.

Then there was no new information. But they still had time to fill. Plus they had special coverage last night with no information to report.

I do not envy the reporters put in that position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> These pseudo-events are almost necessary in our first-past-the-post system, to build consensus among two wings and avoid the spoiler effect. With its air of legitimacy it creates a schelling point (or two) so that a bunch of strangers can cooperate in a very strange game. It doesn't really matter what schelling point you choose, just that you're able to choose the same one, and your expected payoff will be higher.

</comment><comment><USER11> A weird article, but the title reminded me of this documentary: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation)

I think everyone should watch it.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some practical uses of a blockchain? - <AUTHOR> Question inspired from: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18543454 <comment><USER2> Blockchain gonna be base protocol (like TCP IP) and Dapps built on top of it. So theoretically ALL businesses can be rebuilt and run on top of blockchain technology. But its long time ahead, now imo best usecases for blockchain: 1\. C2C platform: something like central stock exchange can be replaced totally by blockchain. 2\. robotics and sharing economy: you have your own robots/device but not utilize its maximum capacity, you can allow others to rent this robot with a given fee, and all of those stuff should be autonomous and transparent via smart contract, no need of a platform like Uberobotics for it:)

</comment><comment><USER3> Money</comment>


Shoppers are turning to Amazon over Google for search - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/27/amazon-is-the-first-place-most-online-shoppers-visit.html <comment><USER2> Coming to the US, Amazon has lost so much value to me. The $49 minimum order for free postage stops me buying things. I just open eBay and the same item ships for free.

Yet in the UK I switched _to_ Amazon from eBay because it is a much better service.</comment>


Double trouble: inaccuracy in handling floats in .net - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.extremeoptimization.com/jeffrey/archive/2006/06/16/16647.aspx

<comment><USER2> I avoid == with floating/fixed points like the plague. If I can do a > or a < with a couple of and statements I'll do it. Too many times I've been burned by that damn epsilon. If only we had 8 digits per hand, base 2 would have been trivial to handle.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article points out an interesting quirk in C#/.Net: the algorithm the C# compiler uses to convert numeric literals like "3.14159" to 64-bit IEEE binary may be different from the algorithm used by .Net framework APIs to do the same conversion. So if you mix the two types of conversion in your code, you may get unexpected results.</comment>


Ask HN: Python SOA framework - hari-allamraju

Is there any framework in Python that can be used to build a SOA architecture around an AMQP broker ? or is it best to roll out a custom one using an AMQP library? <comment><AUTHOR> I've used ZeroMQ - not quite an AMQP library but a tool you can use to achieve similar goals[1] - in creating an SOA in Python.

The principal issue in using ZeroMQ is figuring out how to combine its messaging primitives into something your application can use. This could end up being an asset if you have special requirements; however, for common cases there are established patterns you can use. For an SOA, you may like the Majordomo Protocol [2].

As an aside, reading the ZeroMQ introduction was great in gaining an appreciation for the difficulties arising from creating distributed applications and was enjoyable, to boot [3].

[1] [http://zeromq.org/docs:welcome-from-amqp](http://zeromq.org/docs:welcome- from-amqp)

[2] [http://zguide.zeromq.org/page:all#Service-Oriented- Reliable-...](http://zguide.zeromq.org/page:all#Service-Oriented-Reliable- Queuing-Majordomo-Pattern)

        Also see a Python implementation of this protocol:
        https://github.com/guidog/pyzmq-mdp

[3] [http://zguide.zeromq.org/page:all](http://zguide.zeromq.org/page:all)

<comment><USER2> ZeroMQ is really good. I think the best introduction to it is this video, [http://vimeo.com/20605470](http://vimeo.com/20605470) (ZeroMQ is the answer). Just ignore the it was recorded at a PHP conference, the examples are pretty language agnostic.

I think one of the best things about ZeroMQ is there are not external brokers or services that you have to keep running. The entire architecture is captured in your own long running processes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am in the process of using Celery with Django, awesome stuff. Can't say exactly what I am working on but I can say that some big jobs need to be run, rabbitMQ is my queue server of choice and celery is my worker. Celery with Django is awesomely easy, you should be up and running with a prototype in just a few days.

<comment> hari-allamraju Are you using Django as a part of your larger application/architecture or as a auth provider for the SOA layer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should probably check out Kombu, Pika, carrot, QAM, Puka, etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> stompy ?</comment>


Seraphim establishes fully-automated 300MW solar module plant in South Africa - <AUTHOR> https://www.pv-tech.org/news/49334 <comment><AUTHOR> Title editorialized slight due to title character limit, dropped "assembly" after "solar module".</comment>


Much of reported cryptocurrency trading volume is likely fake - <AUTHOR> https://www.theblockcrypto.com/2019/05/28/up-to-86-of-total-reported-cryptocurrency-trading-volume-is-likely-fake-according-to-analysis-of-exchange-website-visits/ <comment><USER2> I would not draw same conclusion.

The website visit figures are estimates by SimilarWeb. I never heard of them, but would take their estimates with a grain of salt until proven otherwise.

Next, flagging volume fake just because average volume per estimated visit is high? That's a leap I would not make. Some sites cater to market makers who have larger volumes and trade over API.

What about dark pool trades where one exchange does publish the figures while the other does not?

Also, what is fake? Reporting volume without the actual volume of reported trades adding up to the reported value? Or are some trades fake? If the trades are fake, are they wash trades? Is the exchange the counter-party in these trades?

I am unable to trust this analysis.

<comment><USER3> I agree the evidence and reasoning is pretty shaky, but the conclusion isn't exactly surprising. See report from a few months ago with more rigor: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465606](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465606)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> OpenMarketcap's aim is to track cryptocurrencies without fake volume by having a process to vet, identify and pull data only from trusted exchanges: [https://openmarketcap.com/exchanges](https://openmarketcap.com/exchanges)

<comment><USER5> Listing Bitfinex who runs Tether doesn't seem all that trustworthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Won't there be significant volume from automated trading and market makers who dont need to visit websites in order to trade?

</comment><comment> village-idiot For a long time you didn't even need two accounts to wash trade on Bitfinex, it would match two orders from the exact same account. So of course a lot of the volume is fake, the question is how much?

<comment><USER7> That's ridiculously awful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "up to". OK so it could be 1%, or it could be 86%.

</comment><comment><USER9> okay I can tell this...one of my recent still uncontrolled adhd failures..

I did not have my adhd under control well enough last year to explain why the Bitcoin economic value model was factually incorrect..most of you now know that the economic model once touted failed to take into consideration....

ie that the growth of internet in terms of chasm between early adopters and mainstream would be exactly the same for crypto coin...the fly in the cake was that the chasm between early and mina stream adopters of crypto coin is in fact very different from internet site user growth..

In short terms bitcoin value economic model wrong due to no data on the chasm between early adopters and main stream.</comment>


Aspectroid: Exploring the aspect-oriented design space - <AUTHOR> http://www.aspectroid.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm half way through this (free) book. Interesting and original approach, I'll have to let it soak in, maybe read it twice.</comment>


Show HN: Metataste.com - Movie Recommendation Engine - <AUTHOR> http://metataste.com/

<comment><USER2> a very nice place for me to get recommendations, part of my usual new movie finder.

</comment><comment><USER3> Metataste helps you discover movies through a host of features, the prime one being movie recommendations. It also offers features like movies similar to a movie (based on plot, feel, genres, subgenres etc.), advanced movie search, wishlist, watched list, favorites, reviews and ratings. A most convenient way to watch many trailers at a go. And a small but active community of 4000+ ;)

We would like to know what do you like, not like or want, on Metataste.</comment>


Elasticsearch: dealing with complex permissions - <AUTHOR> https://www.tuleap.org/elasticsearch-dealing-complex-permissions

<comment><USER2> I've delayed the move away from PostgreSQL search on an open source project. Of course it's important to do the text matching quickly, but beyond that we have three concepts that on their own could be done simply enough but together they create a degree of complexity.

Thoughts on how to proceed welcome, in essence we have:

1\. Textual documents indexed.

2\. Permissions which are essentially group based (but lots of groups, potentially hundreds), and then owners || admins || moderators get special permissions.

3\. "Followed"/"Watched" items.

4\. "Ignored"/"Hidden" items.

Elastic Search remains our target, and we want to be able to reduce the results on the based of permissions and the ignore list, whilst allowing a further restriction to be "only the stuff I'm watching".

<comment><USER3> [Full disclosure: I'm a product manager at MarkLogic.]

MarkLogic can handle all of these requirements with aplomb. You can think of MarkLogic as a database built with search engine technology. It uses a document data model (text documents in XML or JSON). Each term (word, phrase, parent-child relationship, etc.) is indexed on ingest. There are index knobs and levers for things like diacritics, wildcards, and scalars, like you'd expect in real search engine.

As for document permissions, they're indexed just like other terms. However, they're automatically ANDed on to each query in the database engine, not application code. MarkLogic supports role-based permissions (read, write, and execute for stored procedures) with optional Kerberos and/or LDAP auth*n."Ignored/hidden items" are those that a user doesn't have permissions to access.

"Followed/watched items" is a pretty common requirement. MarkLogic uses a special "reverse index" to index queries along with text, values, and structures. With regular "forward" queries, queries find documents. With reverse queries, documents find queries. Thus anything that can be expressed in a query can be turned into an alert. This provides some pretty powerful match-making where a document can express its own attributes as well as those it's interested in matching. Hook that up to a trigger (pre- or post-commit) and you have alerting that scales to billions of documents and millions of queries. One of the world's biggest news sites uses this infrastructure on a MarkLogic cluster to handle saved searches and alerts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Makes no sense to me. Why not have a document for a file and a document for a folder? Or if you must have a single document, why not a field for folder permissions and one for file permissions? The corresponding query would be trivial.

This seems overly complicated and I can't find any justification for it in the article.

<comment><USER5> The article was maybe a bit too simplistic. What if you have more then one folder? What if a file can be located within a whole tree of folders, just like on a file system? Would the corresponding query still be trivial? Maybe there's a trivial way of doing recursion in elasticsearch?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> elasticsearch.com works on security problems and will offer a solution: Shield [1]

It seems that you have to pay the support to enable Shield on elasticsearch. Probably the same business model as for marvel, free as in free beer for development and have to pay for production

[1] [http://www.elasticsearch.org/overview/shield/](http://www.elasticsearch.org/overview/shield/)

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure it fits the needs.

Based on what I read here, it seems to be the equivalent of "Mysql users/Postgres roles" applied to ES.

I don't know how they will propose the feature but if we compare to mysql, it wouldn't be possible to map application permissions to mysql users/privileges. Mysql privileges are for "administration" accounts but not for the user management of the application itself.

Anyhow, Shield doesn't isn't likely to be an open source product. Tuleap, on its side, is 100% open source so it's a no go !</comment></comment>


How the Pirate Party could win seats at the next Australian Election - <AUTHOR> http://www.inquisitr.com/39896/how-the-pirate-party-could-win-seats-at-the-next-australian-election/

<comment><USER2> A pretty good analysis. The Senate system is slightly crazy and often somewhat random in the way the last senator from each state gets elected, so they do have a chance. The only big problem is that the "respectable" parties may not like the idea of doing preference swaps with a party called the Pirate Party.

I guess it'll also depend on whether they run on a relatively sane platform or a completely wacko platform.</comment>


You Are Not Ruthless Enough - <AUTHOR> http://playswithfire.com/blog/2012/02/19/you-are-not-ruthless-enough/ <comment><USER2> You know, these conversations always seemed to come down to discussions of "good code" vs. "ship quickly". I don't think that the point. Getting an MVP to market takes more than one iteration on the code, and even as early as refactor/debugging number 3, you can (and will!) be bit by bugs written in iteration 1 if you're writing bad code. The best stories are always about bad decisions from 6 months ago or more, but this can happen in the course of a single weekend.

Writing good, clear interfaces and using them appropriately does not slow you down. It lets you move faster, think clearly, solve harder problems, and build more.

<comment><USER3> a lot of projects are taking a soft process, like legal compliance, and trying to automate it. when you have requirements like < <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyIsPayrollHard> > perhaps the best factoring of interfaces, the best set of metaphors, aren't obvious, or are shifting. It certainly isn't something you can get right on the first try - if it was, we'd just Waterfall it and call it a day. So, yes, it is precisely a balance between future agility and shipping now - except if you don't ship now, you might not need the future agility ;)

me saying this is particularly ironic because i'm the guy pushing scala adoption, clean code, fixing our abstractions, etc. i'm also less valueable to the business over the one-year timeframe that dictates my comp because of it. The only people incented to relenentlessly care about things like technical debt are those with equity.

<comment><USER2> Oh, for sure. I'm not advocating getting it right on the first try -- that's crazy talk.

I'm mostly thinking about programming in the small: methods, classes, parameter lists, that sort of thing. Essentially complex problems can't (and shouldn't) be solved up front, but that doesn't imply the internals of that partially-solved problem should be disorganized, or that the API is inconsistent. I find that if I explicitly scope my work as I'm doing it, I can write good code to fuzzy specs, without over-generalizing, relatively quickly. Plus, coming back to it a couple months later (well within the typical employee-raise timeframe), I can fix or modify it much faster.

It's a balance, to be sure, but I think it's sometimes possible to work both faster and better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> so the thing is, this is very difficult to quantify and thus talk about. It also totally depends on the size of your codebase, the size of the team, and the timeframe of the business. if anything, i would have even higher value to my current employer by being less ruthless - we have necessarily tight business windows, and as the deadline looms closer, we slide back on quality to hit it.

5 years ago i was reading code complete and all those books, and whined a lot about all the poorly factored code in its interleaved and tangled glory. I thought I was the best programmer ever and took pride in my perfectly factored little modules. As I get older, I have a lot more respect for my elders and betters - they are solving harder problems than I am, problems that if I had attempted I would have a perfectly factored solution that meets half the requirements. Is it a bitch to maintain all that Java? it sure is, but we're all well paid, and our customers are begging us to bid on proposals we don't even want.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you're building a project from scratch, I think you have to be more ruthless with your time than your objects. In the early stages of a product it's easy and cheap to refactor if you find your devspeed slowing down because of poor coding choices you've made.

</comment><comment><USER5> Trying to get it right first time off leads to second system syndrome or overly complicated and meta fundamentals (if you are doing it first time).

In my experience, this holds true ESPECIALLY when working on existing systems whose behavior you don't understand completely. If you or someone else is the author is irrelevant here.

To get it right you have to screw it up first. The hacked up version may or may not get into production (depends on the scope). What one should do is gain intimate knowledge of a particular system/module and keep up to date with it. When you start implementing something big, you have no idea what it really takes, thus abstractions make no sense. Just use the goddamn duct tape and zipties. Then fix it as you figure out how it ought to be - and don't fret over it, you WILL change it again tomorrow.

But one should always strive to do it as right as possible, given the current circumstance. One should also

Good software is grown and it takes time, knowledge and patience. I liken it to drawing Silicon mono crystal for semiconductor waffers.

</comment><comment><USER6> Brilliant stuff, but ignores the fact that the market rewards the first mover, not the guy who came later with something better.

<comment><USER7> Really? I could have sworn google weren't the first search engine on the block, and Apple wasn't the first person to make 'smart' phones.

<comment><USER8> Apple will never be the first "person" to do anything.

With that said, point taken.

<comment><USER9> Corporations are people too.

<comment><USER10> I'll believe that when Texas executes one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Real cool, must when it comes to actually writing code:

\- UITableView approach is megalomaniacal, could use some love.

\- XCode sometimes sends you straight to the subclassing hell. Specially if you don't have a well defined model before you start dragging stuff into your storyboard.

\- Lots of iOS SDK classes will help you into taking the anti-pattern road. For instance: UIView:UIResponder.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm convinced you shouldn't be allowed to write production code unless you've read and understood The Pragmatic Programmer.

</comment><comment> buff-a "Every time you throw in something that seems to work, find out why it works."

This. Especially for bugs. If I don't know why its fixed, I haven't fixed the cause - I've fixed a symptom.</comment>


Show HN: Mac toolbar app to show electricity cutoff schedule - <AUTHOR> https://mhasbini.com/blog/introducing-electricity-cutoff-app.html <comment><USER2> This is stark reminder that we should not take our privileges for granted. We don't think about continuous stream of power through our plugs as a privilege (or at all) but it's not trivial, considering so many might have the latest macbook but not always the power to run it (and to even more people the idea of owning a computer is on the same level as flying to Jupiter).

<comment><USER3> Walking the dog last night I did wonder, what would it be like if our street lights just stopped working? Not that unrealistic a scenario; I mean our electricity network is pretty solid, but a power outage is a matter of when, not if.

Should double check my flashlights.

<comment><USER4> My street lights went out a few years ago. Really a beautiful night, great to experience true darkness in a city. OTOH, walking around was a bit treacherous, sidewalks are not as flat as you think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We had a similar app in Kathmandu. City cut of power to certain zones on an hourly basis, the app helped tracked the powers eventual return and pending cutoff. The amount of activity in the neighborhood when the power comes back on, screams of Batti Aiyo could be heard all around. Turns out it was entirely preventable and that it was all due to an enormous amount of corruption between the Nepalese Energy authority and factories around the country. One guy came into the authority and changed it all for the better and brought all the corruption into the open. Definitely made living here just that much easier.

</comment><comment><USER6> In my decrepit corner of the third world we call it "loadshedding" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout))

It's been a fact of life here as long as I've been alive and there is no indication that it'll improve in my lifetime either.

Even now as I type this there has been no electricity for 1 hour and won't be until another hour. There are about four 2-3 hour blackouts every day throughout the year.

We have always had to schedule every technology-related activity around it. When I was a kid, if there was a blackout during our favorite TV show, we had to go to someone else's house that had electricity or a generator.

We scramble to finish chores that rely on electricity when there's a blackout imminent. Of course there are always random unscheduled blackouts too so you can't really predict them.

Even now in almost 2020, almost every person here has a smartphone and quite a few have Macs etc but we still don't have 24/7 electricity. Almost every middle class house has their own generator and solar/UPS system.

I've never been able to participate in online groups or activities like gaming, collaboration or freelancing for long because of this (on top of unreliable internet too), because I can't expect people in better countries to re-accommodate their schedules around my periods of forced downtime.

<comment><USER7> Where do you live?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "We actually have a whole market of private large generators owners that sell you electricity to mitigate this."

Do they use the existing municipal infrastructure or do they need to lay new cables ???.

We have rotational 2 hourly load shedding on bad days here in South Africa as our state owned power company has no spare capacity and the power stations are old so they tend to break down often.

Our local FTH internet provider discovered the first time that happened after fiber rollout in our area when all their ONT's went online at the same time asking for authentication.

It was clear they never planned for this.

<comment><USER9> I'm guessing they put a generator per building, and if you pay them, they'll wire your unit up to the generator? Probably split the cabling after the meter (you wouldn't want the municipal meter to be counting power you're buying privately) and allow for a 2nd set of cables as input, with a big switch to toggle between the two.

<comment><USER10> There's one privately owned generator in the neighborhood with cables running to each buildings.

[https://browse.startpage.com/do/show_picture.pl?l=english&ra...](https://browse.startpage.com/do/show_picture.pl?l=english&rais=1&oiu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailystar.com.lb%2F%2Fdailystar%2FPictures%2F2019%2F03%2F16%2F734293_img650x420_img650x420_crop.jpg&sp=24d278f526e42ded4d077f122ebe032c&t=default)

The owner sells a fixed monthly fee per 5 amp, so there are individual breakers for each apartment.

[https://www.alamy.com/detail-from-a-wall-electric-cables- and...](https://www.alamy.com/detail-from-a-wall-electric-cables-and-fuses-in- the-open-beirut-lebanon-image280512641.html)

Notice the "green light" in the picture. This is to inform people in the neighborhood that it's "generator's electricity", so they cannot use washing mashing and water heaters.

The cable from the generator reaches the house after the meter, there's an automatic switch to take current from the generator only when there's no electricity from the government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> On that note: there are currently massive anti-government protests happening throughout Lebanon, against rampant corruption in the establishment, which is behind the broken electricity sector (amongst others).

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/world/middleeast/lebanon-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/world/middleeast/lebanon- protests.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> Hello from California where we're one of the world's largest economies and still have electricity cutoffs.

Thanks, Pacific Graft and Extortion!

</comment><comment><USER13> Anyone want to make this work in California with the PG&E schedule?

<comment> master-litty I do but, silly thought first, would there be any legal liability in doing so?

It's such a sensitive political subject, I can't help but wonder if a third party app that fails to report outages properly could get in trouble.

<comment><USER14> Legal liability getting in the way of doing good things will be part of the USA's downfall. A million tiny cuts...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I needed something like this when I was in India for 5 months! Except there was no generator, so I'd just sleep my laptop when it ran out of battery. At least I didn't try using a desktop.

I was interested in monitoring it at the time, so I wrote SMC voltmeter, an app to measure the input voltage. If you're interested in auto-detecting the power source to your laptop, my open-source code might be useful, so please give it a look!

[https://hackaday.com/2015/04/21/reading-analog-values- with-a...](https://hackaday.com/2015/04/21/reading-analog-values-with-a- magsafe-port/)

</comment><comment><USER14> If I lived here, I would fit an Arduino and a bunch of SSR's to my electrical breaker box.

The Arduino would detect use of the generator, and detect load on the generator (with a current clamp), and if the load was too high, start shedding power-hungry devices like electric heaters, driers, ovens, etc.

The order of switch off would be programmable, and some devices like fridges or heaters could be programmed to only run on utility power to save money.

Total hardware cost of $30 would pay for itself quickly in both saved generation bills as well as a better quality of life, and the design/build cost of a few days would easily be recouped by selling devices to all my neighbours.

<comment><USER11> Turn fridge and heaters off? How do then keep food fresh, or heat homes? It's not how it works, in Lebanon you pay the generator "company" a monthly fee independent of your consumption, but dependent on max amperage you wish to get. The electricity already cuts off (circuit breaker) if you go beyond it (e.g. use a hairdryer). Some people "cheat" that system by pouring saline into the circuit breaker causing it to rust from the inside, this it would never break.

<comment><USER16> The average refrigerator is insulated enough to keep food fresh for a moderate amount of time - provided the door remains shut.

How that shutoff affects the compressor is a different story, however.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> South Africa also has rolling blackouts every few months. We have apps to notify us when it'll happen on our phones. A lot of us have accepted it as normal by now.

<comment><USER18> Yup, only trouble is the app says "stage 3 loadshedding" and then your power is on. The next day the app says "no loadshedding" and hey look, the power is off.

This varies a bit, in rural areas it can be much worse, but often the municipalities are the culprits there. Even in some JHB suburbs you are never quite sure if it is the muni or loadshedding, but recently I have noticed that the FB hordes somehow manage to sniff out the exact transformer that failed...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This would have been useful in South Africa if that key assumption "thankfully the cut-off are almost always on schedule" had held.

EDIT: We still have apps though. It's just a mystery sometimes when your power is on and the app says "STAGE 4 LOADSHEDDING [U R SCREWED]" and strangely the power is still on. The converse is more annoying of course.

</comment><comment><USER19> You could get something like an iotawatt hooked up to your wifi with CT sensors on your mains breaker and get live readings of your power usage as well as "sense" when the power changes from Public to Diesel Gen. [https://iotawatt.com/](https://iotawatt.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> How does this work? Do you have two feeds into your house, one from the power grid and one from the generator-grid? Did the generator company lay new power lines to every house?

Or do you lease the generator and run it in your garage, but the generator maker somehow bills you for power consumed rather than just running hours?

</comment><comment><USER20> Fellow Lebanese(-American) here. This is awesome. Thanks for creating and sharing it.

<comment><USER21> Funny, I have a habit of reading HN comments before clicking on the actual link, and thought the link would be about the planned outages here in the SF bay area :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> That's akin to a cry out for a Powerwall plus solar panel setup!

<comment><USER23> The limiting factor is manufacturing capacity. Tesla limits where they sell Powerwalls and solar roofs because they can't make them fast enough to meet nationwide (or worldwide) demand.

<comment><USER11> It's also inconvenient for the generator mafia in Lebanon to have people generate their own electricity.</comment></comment></comment>


If your site is HTTPS, add the referrer meta tag so it shows up in Analytics - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/jotform-form-builder/how-a-simple-update-to-medium-com-will-now-allow-it-to-show-up-in-google-analytics-d29fd686b516

<comment><USER2> I'm LOL'ing --- I was just reading the other day about what they effectively recommending being deprecated, and should not be used today.

> <meta name="referrer" content="always">

Apart from the bogus "quote" symbols (another opportunity for a new article?), it does indeed work in Chrome; whereas Firefox has never had any support for it, because they appear to care ad nauseam about the privacy than about any sort of analytics.

And, BTW, Mozilla has finally implemented this recently (a couple of releases ago?), but they don't appear to support the "deprecated" "always".

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, thanks for the info! I checked our Google Analytics and indeed, the only registered traffic from Medium.com is from Chrome.

Updated the post to clarify this is Chrome specific.</comment></comment>


Erlang Style Concurrency - <AUTHOR> http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/concurrency.html

<comment><USER2> > It would be nice if this object would provide us with some ability to safely > communicate with other processes. We can't share memory, but we want to be > able to send a message. Let's add a void sendMessage(Process > receiverProcess, Object message) function to the Process class

Ha! So basically Handler.sendMessage(...) from android then?

[http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/Handler.ht...](http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/Handler.html)</comment>


Baroque.me: Bach Cello Suites No. 1, Prelude - <AUTHOR> http://baroque.me/

<comment><USER2> This generated almost no comments the last four times it was submitted. I wonder why.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3169940>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3166406>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3164200>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3164328>

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow! I clicked through on the new page to check if this was spam to see if I should flag it, and I was awed. It's a fantastic visualization of Bach's Cello Suites. Detailed information at [<http://blog.chenalexander.com/2011/baroque- bach-cello/>] but best to just click, watch, and listen.

Give it a minute to get going before you make any judgment. At first I was dubious, but then it got me. It took me until the second viewing to realize I could interact with it.

"Baroque.me visualizes the first Prelude from Bach's Cello Suites. Using the mathematics behind string length and pitch, it came from a simple idea: what if all the notes were drawn as strings? Instead of a stream of classical notation on a page, this interactive project highlights the music's underlying structure and subtle shifts."</comment>


EEEE - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee/eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee <comment><USER2> I really wish someone would explain how and why has 300+ stars and 30+ forks and 5 contributors.</comment>


Easily Reassemble Quicklook Thumbnails on OS X - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/CoderCookE/osx-thumbnails <comment><AUTHOR> Given the recent news about: Your encrypted photos revealed in macOS cache.

This tool is an easy way to see what your cache actually contains.</comment>


Magical iPhone View Controllers - <AUTHOR> http://www.cimgf.com/2009/05/11/magical-iphone-view-controllers/ <comment><USER2> Now just think - if it was open source you could just examine the code, rather than making roundabout tests to conclude that it's probably a feature. Fancy that.

<comment><USER3> The lack of a vendor-documented API guarantee means that any findings are moot, and usage of this feature is unsafe. Open source, for all its developer benefits, would not change this.</comment></comment>


Is Edward Snowden a Russian Agent? - <AUTHOR> https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/07/edward-snowden-is-a-russian-agent.html <comment><USER2> Look at the URL slug: edward-snowden-is-a-russian-agent.html

Someone had second thoughts on their original title: [http://web.archive.org/web/20160722125335/https://www.pastem...](http://web.archive.org/web/20160722125335/https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/07/edward- snowden-is-a-russian-agent.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Edward Snowden is a US counter-intelligent agent used to evaluate the public response to "uncovering" already known programs and to take steam off Assange's case.

As far as conspiracy theories go, I prefer this one. I find it strange that Snowden has not been the subject of character assassination.

<comment><USER4> > I find it strange that Snowden has not been the subject of character > assassination.

He was, a lot. How did you miss it?

<comment><USER3> How so? Manning had a sex change, Assange rape charges. What was Snowden accused of, apart from being a traitor (which, factually, he is)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any headline that ends in a question is not worth reading ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> Betteridge's law</comment>


Koobface Can Infect Linux Systems Too - <AUTHOR> http://digitizor.com/2010/11/01/koobface-can-infect-linux-systems-too-but-that-is-an-accident/

<comment><USER2> Uh huh... so it can infect Linux after you click the applet to "trust" it.

This like saying giving someone a shell script to rm -fr / and having them run it is infecting the system.

<comment><USER3> Well, it was the exact same situation with OS X (you had to explicitly trust the self-signed applet when asked), and that was apparently still news-worthy, so this is no different.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Curious how many developers experiment with drugs? - <AUTHOR>

This is a legitimate question. I'm not trolling or trying to be goofy
I'm curious as to how many developers use/experiment with drugs?
If you do, what kind, how often, and how do you apply yourself when you are "high"? Does it help you think clearer, more creatively, or do you use it to relax, etc..?
I use to smoke weed on a regular basis and found it helped me think differently about problems. I've cut down since and reserve it for weekends or when I feel like it would aid in what I'm doing.
How about you guys? <comment><USER2> In my experience, a lot of smart people have tried psychedelic-type drugs at some point.

<comment><USER3> I have no experience with this, but in my experience, a lot of smart people who do illegal things don't post about them on the Internet.</comment></comment>


Breast Cancer Linked to Permanent Hair Dye and Chemical Hair Straighteners - <AUTHOR> https://www.newsweek.com/breast-cancer-linked-permanent-hair-dye-chemical-hair-straighteners-study-almost-50000-women-1475328 <comment><USER2> > 7% higher risk in white women (HR = 1.07, 95% CI: 0.99–1.16)

The confidence interval _clearly_ includes 1.0. I'm tired of all these studies being uncritically reported on in the press with no mention of the giant error bars.

IMO medical researchers need to raise their standards. 95% is way too low. Also, journalists should be ashamed at the state of science and medical reporting. It's ironic that you can read articles blaming tech for the spread of fake news and then turn the page to the health section and read garbage like this article.

<comment><USER3> Here's a question I had when I learned this stuff in stats class: What does a 95% confidence interval actually mean? I could never get a clear answer.

<comment><USER4> Not sure if the answer will be _clear_ , but that's inherent in the weird and counter-intuitive nature of the concept itself (which I consider as a major disadvantage of it).

It is an interval that was obtained using a confidence interval generation procedure, for which the following is true: for any true value of the quantity you're estimating, the procedure yields an interval that contains that correct value 95% of the times, when run on different random samples collected conditioned on that true value.

You want to estimate some quantity, let's say the cancer risk ratio of hair- dyers to non-hair dyers. You make some (noisy) experimental measurements on people.

Then, let's say someone hands you a _confidence interval generating procedure_. You feed it with your measurement data and it spits out an interval. To claim that this interval is a 95% confidence interval is _actually_ a claim about the confidence interval generating procedure, not about the particular interval. And that claim is that for any true cancer risk ratio value, if we ran lots of experiments and fed all the results to this procedure, then 95% of the resulting intervals would contain the correct corresponding value. So in more detail: Assume the true ratio is, say, 1.05. Then if we repeated our noisy experiment in a 1.05-ratio world and applied the confidence interval generating procedure to the results, we would expect to get 95% of those intervals containing the number 1.05 and 5% of them not containing it. If we assume the ratio is 1.2, the same thing should hold. For this analysis to work, we need an idealized measurement model that tells us what the distribution of measurements looks like given any particular underlying value of the quantity of interest (say the cancer ratio). Then using this model and the description of a given confidence interval generating procedure, we may be able to prove mathematically that it indeed has the above property. Most of the time, statisticians use standards procedures, for which this property has been proved and the proof is widely known. They rarely invent new such procedures.

So, in summary: we don't know what the true value is in reality. But we can prove that the confidence interval generating procedure has the above explained property. Then, we will call the interval that this procedure gives us on our real measurement data a 95% confidence interval.

What it definitely does _not_ mean is that the true value is in the interval with 95% probability, and that's the most common misunderstanding.

I'm not sure if this helps at all. These things are really counter-intuitive and twisted against our natural way of thinking.

<comment><USER3> Framing it as statement about an interval generating procedure is really interesting! Do you know what an example would be? Appreciate anything you can point me towards to learn more.

Honestly, I feel like the whole concept is straight up weird and fascinating.

<comment><USER4> This is an in-depth explanation (may take some time to digest it):

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4742505/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4742505/)

<comment><USER3> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a plausible mechanism but a bogus study. With most of their confidence intervals including hazard ratios of 1.0 (or very close to it), they need to rule out even slight correlations like smoking and (low) income. Recall bias of the survey participants is another major factor in cancer cases. Overall this reads like they collected data of a bunch of chemical exposures setting their p to < 0.05 and found this one that they could publish on.

<comment><USER6> >need to rule out even slight correlations like smoking and (low) income.

Especially with hair dying, since looking at my environment at least early usage (before graying) is very much correlated with low income/education.

<comment><USER7> I'd like to see antiperspirant usage as a variable, but it seems like it would be hard to find a control. Having tried several times to buy deodorant without antiperspirant for my wife, I can say how hard it is to find an armpit product without aluminum oxide. It's not so hard to find masculine scented deodorants.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I'm wondering why we're not erring on the side of caution there and banning them until proven safe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am glad that they have statistical evidence, however it has been believed for a long time.

Beauty salons use a wide variety of products that are biologically active and unregulated. Many are known carcinogens, and working at a beauty salon puts you at increased risk of cancer. See [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19755396](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19755396) for random verification.

The question is what it does to the customers. It has long been suspected that increased cancer rates among blacks are tied to the fact that they are more likely to use beauty salons than whites. And if they do use them, they use them more often.

</comment><comment><USER9> Silly question: did they control for age?

Please tell me they did, because, duh... older women have more cancer and dye their hair more.

I don't have access to the full paper, but the abstract makes no mention of this, and states they included women from 35-74.

<comment><USER10> Fortunately, yes

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > "The research was based on the medical records of more than 46,000 women > aged 35 to 74 from the Sister Study, meaning all women involved had a close > relative who had died of breast cancer."

Can someone explain to me how this isn't a huge problem for this study?

<comment><USER12> If you want to be careful, you can say the study found that among cohort with increased cancer risk due to genetics, using those hair products increased cancer risk even further.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The most important part of the article:

"While the paper is based on patterns and trends and, as such, doesn't confirm a direct cause, ..."

Please be carefull jumping into conclusions. Further research is needed for that.

</comment><comment><USER14> The only thing surprising here is that it isn't scalp cancer.

Hair straighteners work by breaking and reforming the disulphide bonds in proteins. Proteins perform many important roles related to DNA repair, chromosome formation, DNA replication, and other cancer-relevant actions. It can't be good to have bonds in those proteins getting changed somewhat randomly.

<comment><USER15> Skin has millions of years of incremental improvement at keeping stuff out. It is not unheard of for a carcinogen applied to the body to not cause skin cancer directly but to cause cancer elsewhere because being on the body makes it likely to get in through the various holes where it then finds its way to some more susceptible tissue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there a source for this that isn't Newsweek? Newsweek isn't really a trustworthy source; they are, as I understand it, a publication several tiers below Buzzfeed (which does good work sometimes) that has acquired and turned Newsweek into a Newsweek Suit, Buffalo-Bill-style, and wears it around the Internet.

<comment><USER17> [https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-12-permanent-hair-dye- st...](https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-12-permanent-hair-dye- straighteners-breast.html)

<comment><USER16> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Direct link to the research article: [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ijc.32738](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ijc.32738)

</comment><comment><USER19> Slide summary from the authors: [https://bcerp.org/wp- content/uploads/Session3-AlexandraWhite...](https://bcerp.org/wp- content/uploads/Session3-AlexandraWhite_hair-dye-and-straightener-use-and-bc- BCERP.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER20> Breast cancer, but not head skin cancer?

<comment><USER21> Just guessing here, but I suppose it's because the effect has less to do with where the chemicals get into the body than where they accumulate and/or have an effect. As it turns out, scalp tissue is not sensitive to those chemicals but breast tissue is. Could have been the liver or the prostate instead, but it wasn't.

<comment><USER22> And if a woman has long hair at least some of the chemicals from the hair dye will wash off over their breasts when they shower.

Also guessing here, but home hair dye is usually quickly washed off in the sink while a salon will not only wash your hair more thoroughly but they tend to wash it twice after dying. So I would assume that when a person showers after home hair dye a lot more of the chemicals are rinsed off over their breasts when compared to after a salon dye.</comment></comment></comment>


Community-powered gem compatibility for ruby 1.9 - <AUTHOR> http://isitruby19.com/ <comment><USER2> This is seriously useful-awesome.

Seeing one gem's progress is great. I would love to see a more abstract view of gem ecosystem as a whole and how much activity there seems to be going from _failing_ to _working_.</comment>