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is uber now ripping off their customers?
on saturday night we ordered an uberx car to pick us up from a new jersey and to take us back to our apartment on the upper east side of manhattan. when i received the receipt i noticed a $20 toll charge for the george washington bridge.... the only problem is, is that this is only supposed to be a $11.00 toll. when i asked uber about this discrepancy, they responded:<p>the $20 surcharge is not only to compensate for the toll, but also the vacant ride back to nj. nj partner drivers are not licensed to pick up riders in nyc, so they will need to travel back empty to get their next fare.<p>okay, that makes sense. except that our driver told us he was from white plains, new york and that he was hoping to catch a fare back to manhattan so he didn't have to pay for the return toll.<p>so not only do they overcharge me, they try to cover it up by suggesting that the driver was from new jersey and that he'd have to deadhead it back. | just curious, how do taxi's handle the issue of tolls? i've never thought about it before. | should it have been $11 x 2 = $22? |
is uber now ripping off their customers?
on saturday night we ordered an uberx car to pick us up from a new jersey and to take us back to our apartment on the upper east side of manhattan. when i received the receipt i noticed a $20 toll charge for the george washington bridge.... the only problem is, is that this is only supposed to be a $11.00 toll. when i asked uber about this discrepancy, they responded:<p>the $20 surcharge is not only to compensate for the toll, but also the vacant ride back to nj. nj partner drivers are not licensed to pick up riders in nyc, so they will need to travel back empty to get their next fare.<p>okay, that makes sense. except that our driver told us he was from white plains, new york and that he was hoping to catch a fare back to manhattan so he didn't have to pay for the return toll.<p>so not only do they overcharge me, they try to cover it up by suggesting that the driver was from new jersey and that he'd have to deadhead it back. | should it have been $11 x 2 = $22? | this is disclosed in <link> "$20 surcharge on all trips between nyc and new jersey." it doesn't have anything to do with where the driver is from. it also appears to be included in the fare calculator there. (i can't be 100% sure because it doesn't break down the bill.)the fee shouldn't be dependent on where the driver happens to be from, or you'd be rolling the dice on which driver you happened to get: it's fairer to have a consistent price. |
is uber now ripping off their customers?
on saturday night we ordered an uberx car to pick us up from a new jersey and to take us back to our apartment on the upper east side of manhattan. when i received the receipt i noticed a $20 toll charge for the george washington bridge.... the only problem is, is that this is only supposed to be a $11.00 toll. when i asked uber about this discrepancy, they responded:<p>the $20 surcharge is not only to compensate for the toll, but also the vacant ride back to nj. nj partner drivers are not licensed to pick up riders in nyc, so they will need to travel back empty to get their next fare.<p>okay, that makes sense. except that our driver told us he was from white plains, new york and that he was hoping to catch a fare back to manhattan so he didn't have to pay for the return toll.<p>so not only do they overcharge me, they try to cover it up by suggesting that the driver was from new jersey and that he'd have to deadhead it back. | this is disclosed in <link> "$20 surcharge on all trips between nyc and new jersey." it doesn't have anything to do with where the driver is from. it also appears to be included in the fare calculator there. (i can't be 100% sure because it doesn't break down the bill.)the fee shouldn't be dependent on where the driver happens to be from, or you'd be rolling the dice on which driver you happened to get: it's fairer to have a consistent price. | hmm..do we now see the problem with de-regulating the taxi industry? |
is uber now ripping off their customers?
on saturday night we ordered an uberx car to pick us up from a new jersey and to take us back to our apartment on the upper east side of manhattan. when i received the receipt i noticed a $20 toll charge for the george washington bridge.... the only problem is, is that this is only supposed to be a $11.00 toll. when i asked uber about this discrepancy, they responded:<p>the $20 surcharge is not only to compensate for the toll, but also the vacant ride back to nj. nj partner drivers are not licensed to pick up riders in nyc, so they will need to travel back empty to get their next fare.<p>okay, that makes sense. except that our driver told us he was from white plains, new york and that he was hoping to catch a fare back to manhattan so he didn't have to pay for the return toll.<p>so not only do they overcharge me, they try to cover it up by suggesting that the driver was from new jersey and that he'd have to deadhead it back. | hmm..do we now see the problem with de-regulating the taxi industry? | correct me if i'm wrong but i believe that toll is at most $13 . more interestingly, there is no charge when leaving manhattan on the gwb -- it's completely free. fishy...perhaps. |
clojure cup 2014 apps
| this one is quite fun: <link>
and a shameless plug for my entry: <link> | that's pretty cool: <link> |
clojure cup 2014 apps
| that's pretty cool: <link> | the voting for the apps has started now - you can vote for multiple apps.<shameless-plug>
our entry in the competition: <link>
</shameless-plug> |
clojure cup 2014 apps
| the voting for the apps has started now - you can vote for multiple apps.<shameless-plug>
our entry in the competition: <link>
</shameless-plug> | i've laughed a lot by looking at the achievements i've unlocked with my git repos using acha: <link> ... my submission to clojurecup was a simple feeds reader: <link> |
clojure cup 2014 apps
| i've laughed a lot by looking at the achievements i've unlocked with my git repos using acha: <link> ... my submission to clojurecup was a simple feeds reader: <link> | you can also track current voting here (with history!): <link> |
physical activity can have a positive effect on children who suffer from adhd
| i think this points out that the problem is we keep treating our children like adults. we've pushed to make them learn skills earlier to the point that kindergarden is now essentially first grade [0]. additionally schools are cutting back on pe to be able to cram more education in [1].the result i believe is that normal childhood development of self-regulation begins to look pathological and becomes diagnosed as adhd. at the same time we've been demanding more at younger ages, adhd diagnosis have greatly increased [2]. additionally, roughly two-thirds of these kids won't have adhd by the time they become an adult [3]. i think this points to the fact that we're simply expecting too much academically too early and we're compounding this by taking away the physical play that would help them develop.we need to reset kindergarden back to where it was so that most kids have a chance to properly develop. we also need to restore the idea that children are suppose to play, that it's good for them and not a waste of time.p.s: for that other 30%, adhd is real and drugs may be entirely appropriate. i'd also suspect that more play and pushing learning later will help them as well.p.p.s: we also need to find a way for the kids that do have the self-regulation to learn more advanced material. right now schools do a terrible job of dealing with the kids on either end of the bell curve of learning skills.p.p.p.s: boys appear to lag girls by almost year in terms of their self-regulation [4]. i suspect that is why boys are far more diagnosed with adhd. in any case, i believe this is hurting both boys and girls, it's just more apparent in boys.[0]: <link>
[1]: <link>
[2]: <link>
[3]: <link>
[4]: <link> | didn't use the existing title because it's potential hyperbolic/confusing (medication suggests a pharmaceutical, at least to me). still, a potentially very important finding. here's the newly-released paper cited in the article:
<link> |
physical activity can have a positive effect on children who suffer from adhd
| didn't use the existing title because it's potential hyperbolic/confusing (medication suggests a pharmaceutical, at least to me). still, a potentially very important finding. here's the newly-released paper cited in the article:
<link> | children with adhd, previously mislabeled "young boys", respond well to physical activity, previously mislabeled "recess". |
physical activity can have a positive effect on children who suffer from adhd
| children with adhd, previously mislabeled "young boys", respond well to physical activity, previously mislabeled "recess". | was originally going to post "well that's a big fat 'duh!!!!'", but then i thought better.it's good to have studies to back up these sorts of things that typically get treated as common sense. |
physical activity can have a positive effect on children who suffer from adhd
| was originally going to post "well that's a big fat 'duh!!!!'", but then i thought better.it's good to have studies to back up these sorts of things that typically get treated as common sense. | john ratey wrote several good books on add/adhd as well as this one: _spark: the revolutionary new science of exercise and the brain_ <link> - it is pretty good. |
ask hn: is it time for software developers/engineers to unionize?
i've seen an increasing number of hn posts on the subject of how software developers/engineers are almost universally underpaid relative to the value they bring. the collusion between apple, google and others to keep salaries down and block poaching suggests that this is a systemic problem. there are sites out there like glassdoor that offer some transparency -- but for the most part this industry is very opaque. the average software developer/engineer is left with only anecdotal information to gauge their value in zsalary negotiations.<p>so my question for hn is this: would software developers/engineers benefit from a union? from a collective bargaining standpoint, would a union give software developers/engineers a leg to stand on? what would the backlash be from the tech industry if developers/engineers unionized in large numbers?. | my wife is a registered nurse, so she's a union employee. while it is nice to have someone negotiate on your behalf and represent you when you have a dispute, it certainly doesn't help with salary negotiations. you can't switch hospitals to get a higher salary because it is a formula based on education plus years experience. as an engineer, i have tripled my salary over the last 5 years by switching companies and being a good negotiator. a union would have just gotten in the way. developers need to learn their true value and negotiate accordingly. | hell no.unions serve a big need when employers exploit employees in a detrimental way. they did great things to expectations about safety on the job, number of work hours, ageism.in tech, we get paid better than most of the population, perks are expected and provided, and equity sharing makes some people rich. yes, you could maybe get paid more if there was a union restricting labor supply, which is how they work, but it would really suck to have union seniority rules or have union say in who works where. it limits freedom for both employers and employees once the important items like job safety have been addressed. union negotiations go both ways; the employer agrees to something, the union makes you agree to something by proxy in return. you may not like what the union forces you to do. |
ask hn: is it time for software developers/engineers to unionize?
i've seen an increasing number of hn posts on the subject of how software developers/engineers are almost universally underpaid relative to the value they bring. the collusion between apple, google and others to keep salaries down and block poaching suggests that this is a systemic problem. there are sites out there like glassdoor that offer some transparency -- but for the most part this industry is very opaque. the average software developer/engineer is left with only anecdotal information to gauge their value in zsalary negotiations.<p>so my question for hn is this: would software developers/engineers benefit from a union? from a collective bargaining standpoint, would a union give software developers/engineers a leg to stand on? what would the backlash be from the tech industry if developers/engineers unionized in large numbers?. | hell no.unions serve a big need when employers exploit employees in a detrimental way. they did great things to expectations about safety on the job, number of work hours, ageism.in tech, we get paid better than most of the population, perks are expected and provided, and equity sharing makes some people rich. yes, you could maybe get paid more if there was a union restricting labor supply, which is how they work, but it would really suck to have union seniority rules or have union say in who works where. it limits freedom for both employers and employees once the important items like job safety have been addressed. union negotiations go both ways; the employer agrees to something, the union makes you agree to something by proxy in return. you may not like what the union forces you to do. | i'd hate to be stuck in a union where what i'm paid is based on my seniority or on some test they come up with to measure my ability. i like being able to negotiate my salary. unions may initially bring us higher wages but the combination of union dues, corruption, and bureaucratization of our field by unions will ruin it. soon you wont be able to develop unless you're part of a union and have done your mandatory 3 years apprenticeship if we go that path.i don't want to be the next automotive industry. |
ask hn: is it time for software developers/engineers to unionize?
i've seen an increasing number of hn posts on the subject of how software developers/engineers are almost universally underpaid relative to the value they bring. the collusion between apple, google and others to keep salaries down and block poaching suggests that this is a systemic problem. there are sites out there like glassdoor that offer some transparency -- but for the most part this industry is very opaque. the average software developer/engineer is left with only anecdotal information to gauge their value in zsalary negotiations.<p>so my question for hn is this: would software developers/engineers benefit from a union? from a collective bargaining standpoint, would a union give software developers/engineers a leg to stand on? what would the backlash be from the tech industry if developers/engineers unionized in large numbers?. | i'd hate to be stuck in a union where what i'm paid is based on my seniority or on some test they come up with to measure my ability. i like being able to negotiate my salary. unions may initially bring us higher wages but the combination of union dues, corruption, and bureaucratization of our field by unions will ruin it. soon you wont be able to develop unless you're part of a union and have done your mandatory 3 years apprenticeship if we go that path.i don't want to be the next automotive industry. | my understanding of unions has been that they work through the restriction of the supply of their labor. i haven't thought about it for very long, but it seems to me that the union's success is contingent on its being able to prevent other companies from hiring developers unless they hire only union-certified employees. i am doubtful this can happen.i think that a semi-successful union would hamper the success of smaller companies by demanding that they hire only certified, highly-paid engineers. these engineers can only work a certain number of hours, use certain languages, etc. (assuming such conditions can be enforced in the first place, with so many available employers in the market).these conditions seem to me difficult for many organizations to accommodate. thus, my thinking is that a semi-successful union would trigger software boot camps like app academy to attempt to "break" the union by increasing available supply. the union would then fail. collusion between apple, google, and other companies to hold down salaries only succeeds if there is no "spoiler". facebook turned out to be a spoiler, and they benefitted greatly from it. |
ask hn: is it time for software developers/engineers to unionize?
i've seen an increasing number of hn posts on the subject of how software developers/engineers are almost universally underpaid relative to the value they bring. the collusion between apple, google and others to keep salaries down and block poaching suggests that this is a systemic problem. there are sites out there like glassdoor that offer some transparency -- but for the most part this industry is very opaque. the average software developer/engineer is left with only anecdotal information to gauge their value in zsalary negotiations.<p>so my question for hn is this: would software developers/engineers benefit from a union? from a collective bargaining standpoint, would a union give software developers/engineers a leg to stand on? what would the backlash be from the tech industry if developers/engineers unionized in large numbers?. | my understanding of unions has been that they work through the restriction of the supply of their labor. i haven't thought about it for very long, but it seems to me that the union's success is contingent on its being able to prevent other companies from hiring developers unless they hire only union-certified employees. i am doubtful this can happen.i think that a semi-successful union would hamper the success of smaller companies by demanding that they hire only certified, highly-paid engineers. these engineers can only work a certain number of hours, use certain languages, etc. (assuming such conditions can be enforced in the first place, with so many available employers in the market).these conditions seem to me difficult for many organizations to accommodate. thus, my thinking is that a semi-successful union would trigger software boot camps like app academy to attempt to "break" the union by increasing available supply. the union would then fail. collusion between apple, google, and other companies to hold down salaries only succeeds if there is no "spoiler". facebook turned out to be a spoiler, and they benefitted greatly from it. | yes - despite the bleating about unions from people who i can only assume have never had to fight exploitation and unfair practices, unions are one of the only ways that you as an employee can adequately defend yourself from bad employers and bad employees.yes, software developers are generally paid well and if you can earn the respect of your peers, you're usually treated pretty well too. however, the industry is rife with horror stories about sexism, over-working, burnout, family disruption, harassment and abuse - not to mention the ridiculous burdens placed on developers who are also expected to be on call 24/7, manage the company's it infrastructure, and generally do whatever the hell their superior demands at a moment's notice.for a privileged segment of the industry, there is no problem - but that is by no means representative of the whole. software mills churn out shitty software and treat their employees with the same respect they give to quality and professionalism.being part of a union gives you the numbers required to do meaningful damage to a company which doesn't treat you right. as always, a balance must be struck between the strength of the employer and the strength of the union(s), but for many in this industry, it's currently a losing battle. more and more demands every year, but fuck you if you want to be treated better.don't delude yourselves into thinking that being part of a union is only about money. if you ever have to work ridiculous hours, not see your kids or your partner, suffer from lack of sleep, do things outside of your job spec, and generally just feel like you're being taken advantage of, then the reason for this is that you are interchangeable. you're not a special little snowflake just because you're pretty darn up to date with the latest technical shizzle-wizzle you read about on hn. you may be technically very proficient, but then so are a lot of your peers, and there's no shortage of developers out there.this may be a highly skilled industry, but it's also one with a very low barrier to entry and a shit-load of people producing ok work at a fraction of the cost of your salary. you're not immune to abuse just because you're good at what you do. |
ask hn: what important truth do very few people agree with you on?
| microsoft have turned multiple generations into the digital equivalent of abused spouses, constantly saying "this time is different" every time a new os is released. they'll buy new pc's and downgrade to windows 7, or grit their teeth and use win 8.1. if you show them a shiny, modern kde-based linux distribution, their eyes glaze over while they proclaim "yeah, but linux is hard." even if you prove that it's easy as pie to use, they'll keep saying that, while they look uncomfortable from the cognitive dissonance they're experiencing. | psychiatric drugs are not effective in treating mental illness---at least not more effective than placebo. |
ask hn: what important truth do very few people agree with you on?
| psychiatric drugs are not effective in treating mental illness---at least not more effective than placebo. | common cold does not come from exposure to cold weather but from bacteria/viruses. that humans are immune to 99,99% germs out there and that you should not be so much afraid of infections. and that carbohydrates in your diet don't and cannot change into fat. fat is fat, sugar is sugar, period. |
ask hn: what important truth do very few people agree with you on?
| common cold does not come from exposure to cold weather but from bacteria/viruses. that humans are immune to 99,99% germs out there and that you should not be so much afraid of infections. and that carbohydrates in your diet don't and cannot change into fat. fat is fat, sugar is sugar, period. | i believe that people who don't vote can be just as patriotic as those who do.when a person votes during a presidential election, all that is accomplished is the person is making a choice between 1 of 2 carbon copy shit-bags that have been hand-picked corporate lobbyists and other kinds of sociopaths. to make it even more ridiculous, its just a single vote out of ~40,000,000. i think it makes far more sense to vote in local elections and primaries, because, even though the effort is still futile, that's the closest you are going to get to making an actual difference. |
ask hn: what important truth do very few people agree with you on?
| i believe that people who don't vote can be just as patriotic as those who do.when a person votes during a presidential election, all that is accomplished is the person is making a choice between 1 of 2 carbon copy shit-bags that have been hand-picked corporate lobbyists and other kinds of sociopaths. to make it even more ridiculous, its just a single vote out of ~40,000,000. i think it makes far more sense to vote in local elections and primaries, because, even though the effort is still futile, that's the closest you are going to get to making an actual difference. | sarcasm in any form is harmful to discourse and ruins communities.i bristle whenever i see someone responding to a popular opinion on reddit with a sarcastic "but... but...!" anti-comment. |
show hn: plants map
| hey this is cool! | awesome!i was working on a similar concept and then put it on the side burner. had some serious incubator support but set it aside due to circumstances. would be interested in sharing thoughts if you're open to it. feel free to drop me an email: me[at]kartikkumar.com |
show hn: plants map
| awesome!i was working on a similar concept and then put it on the side burner. had some serious incubator support but set it aside due to circumstances. would be interested in sharing thoughts if you're open to it. feel free to drop me an email: me[at]kartikkumar.com | have you seen fallingfruit.org? seems like there'd be some way for yall to collaborate... |
show hn: plants map
| have you seen fallingfruit.org? seems like there'd be some way for yall to collaborate... | it's plants! on a map! (only kidding, it looks clean and nice, including on mobile.)i haven't played with this much, but i'll bet there's a way to have a smoother zoom transition for your map overlay(s). |
show hn: plants map
| it's plants! on a map! (only kidding, it looks clean and nice, including on mobile.)i haven't played with this much, but i'll bet there's a way to have a smoother zoom transition for your map overlay(s). | maybe include links to the example organisation and a demo garden profile on the home page?then on the garden page, i guess i was expecting to see a map rather than just a list?<link> the map hidden for privacy reasons? |
plan b for china's wealthy: moving to the u.s., europe (2012)
| i thought that was plan a. | is there a paywall-free version that can be shared? |
plan b for china's wealthy: moving to the u.s., europe (2012)
| is there a paywall-free version that can be shared? | i commonly hear the chinese, japanese or x nationality are buying up the housing in the united states with the emphasis of it being bad. now, if we assume this to be true, is this necessarily a bad thing? the united states has been importing many things from china for a long time now. wouldn't it be good to welcome the wealthy chinese or japanese to spend some of that money back into the us economy? i'm sure the scale of chinese/japanense buying american homes barely makes a dent in the amount we spend abroad for cheap labor but just a thought i had. can anyone shed some light on my thoughts? |
plan b for china's wealthy: moving to the u.s., europe (2012)
| i commonly hear the chinese, japanese or x nationality are buying up the housing in the united states with the emphasis of it being bad. now, if we assume this to be true, is this necessarily a bad thing? the united states has been importing many things from china for a long time now. wouldn't it be good to welcome the wealthy chinese or japanese to spend some of that money back into the us economy? i'm sure the scale of chinese/japanense buying american homes barely makes a dent in the amount we spend abroad for cheap labor but just a thought i had. can anyone shed some light on my thoughts? | this year i'm thinking about leaving russia rather heavily.i was comfortable between peers, but now the political landscape is increasingly toxic, it gets worse all the time, and there are no solutions to any of our numerous problems. and everyone chooses to ignore reality and live in an invented world inside their tv set.i think i'll do this in a year, starting with a large hiatus to travel the world, live in new places.and then of course it will be europe not the usa. |
plan b for china's wealthy: moving to the u.s., europe (2012)
| this year i'm thinking about leaving russia rather heavily.i was comfortable between peers, but now the political landscape is increasingly toxic, it gets worse all the time, and there are no solutions to any of our numerous problems. and everyone chooses to ignore reality and live in an invented world inside their tv set.i think i'll do this in a year, starting with a large hiatus to travel the world, live in new places.and then of course it will be europe not the usa. | apparently, this is from 2012. even then, it was horeshit even then i bet.i know little about china. but i did live there in the summer of 2005 teaching in nanning (the former industrial hub running south to vietnam, not nanning the tourist trap).others have described the phenomenon. rich chinese families would hire white kids as tokens; tutors who lived with their children to teach their offspring "real english." i was not an exception; i found even a few in the same city.the family i lived with was one of the richer families in my region. i thought the father ran a mid-level pharam company. then i visited the site/office. it was a huge. then people pointed out ads for this company on national chinese tv, and billboards in other region on a family trip in the next province over and way south in beihai (is that what it's called, maybe hners can remind of the most southern chinese beach areas near vietnam; i forget). i found out he was a moghul for one of the biggest emerging pharma companies in the region. guy had a 7 series bwm with televisons built in, and a differenr rolex for every day and a duplex penthouse apartment in the super wealth part of town.so why all the background info? this guy visited america, when he saw me at lesst, twice after this in the following five years. they talked about moving to the us repeatedly (the reason my language tutoring was relevant at the time). but it never happened. even by the time i was there, post-9/11 backlash had fucked many chinese over. visa restrictions made things a nuissance, and the wealthy grew sick of it. some of the kids from other families even moved to australia, the new it place, because at least "they were not american with their visa and residency regimes." the wife had been blacklisted for no reason at all; attorney friends had contacts at the us embassy, and was told she was put on a list after the interview phase with a black mark like "do not approve residency visa bc this woman is shady." why the meek wife (who was a stay at home mom her whole life) and no one else in the family is a mystery to me.this dude could have opened up businesses to the tune of 500k bank deposits, according to my attorney dad, and naturalize very quickly, and the other lawyers who wanted to help and get an in to the business he would put out for them. he did not, and others did not either. the us had already become toxic. they invested in our economy, but they would even ask me to explain why we so were worth it economically to them, but the usg would routinely fuck around with rhetoric and policy clash with china. "we are your economic friends, why treat us like enemies?" (obviously both sides are complete disallusionment with the other if they really believe this.)so, none of those people moved. they invested all damn day in us and western business, but only enough to get paid and avoided "the dream" of moving to the west as elites, being prestigious (as those to even have the opportunity).ironically, as a nation, we earned our devalution abroad. people will buy from us, but no one wants to be us (that is a joke, enjoy). |
rackspace: how to royally poop on your customers (8 ways)
| not surprising. i use rackspace at work. i've been called a "stupid asshole" by a support technician (he thought he put me on hold to transfer me. he was wrong). i've had security issues due to my "fully managed server" not being "fully managed" and an array of other small inconveniences.i've put up with it because it's a pita to transfer servers. i think it's time to start shopping around. | >#1) send a maintenance notice when no one will read it.>#2) [...] had we gotten notice on a monday, we could have switched servers or companies altogether. hard to do that on a weekend with short notice.these two appear to be the same.>#3) be sure to not use the word downtime. disguise the issue as a likely small inconvenience.>#4) give zero expectations of impact.these two also appear to be the same. (these sentences themselves are actually contradictory, but the point of the description in these two are the same.)>#5) put details in riddle format. the official email said, “maintenance window (all times cdt, utc-5).” whew! that cleared it up.why is specifying the time zone of the times given below a riddle? i can't think of any way to specify exact times in a simpler manner. i'm really not sure if 'when it's the middle of the day in some part of the usa' woul have served customers better. i assume there were times specified, as the quoted sentence wouldn't really serve any purpose otherwise.>the rackspace maintenance window was 6am - 6pm. hmmm, thats odd.. thats exactly peak time. sounds perfect.you have no way to know how much traffic rackspace serves in that timespan, peak time for them might be way different than your peak time. they serve all kinds of countries all over the world, you know.>#7) spin lack of information as “protection.” certain details? like estimated impact? progress estimates?most likely, they are trying to deceive anyone there, they should obviously be referring to lack of information about the issue's nature, not lack of information about maintenance work.>#8) to pacify frustrated customers, just lie. i called into support 50 minutes into the outage and was told the migration was 85% complete. that pacified me enough to get off the phone. then two more hours passed.i don't think rackspace was actively trying to deceive people. this sounds more like an issue with unexpected issues coming up, or the customer service rep being poorly informed.>#9 bonus tip) direct customers to remedies that dont work. my support gal was empathetic but at best, offered me the option to create a ticket so i would be heard by those who care. lets forget how impersonal that is for a moment.'heard by those who care'? again, i find it hard to believe that someone whose profession is to resolve customer issues via phone would care any less than people on the other side of the ticketing system. it is more probable that the representative was just unable to assist any further. |
rackspace: how to royally poop on your customers (8 ways)
| >#1) send a maintenance notice when no one will read it.>#2) [...] had we gotten notice on a monday, we could have switched servers or companies altogether. hard to do that on a weekend with short notice.these two appear to be the same.>#3) be sure to not use the word downtime. disguise the issue as a likely small inconvenience.>#4) give zero expectations of impact.these two also appear to be the same. (these sentences themselves are actually contradictory, but the point of the description in these two are the same.)>#5) put details in riddle format. the official email said, “maintenance window (all times cdt, utc-5).” whew! that cleared it up.why is specifying the time zone of the times given below a riddle? i can't think of any way to specify exact times in a simpler manner. i'm really not sure if 'when it's the middle of the day in some part of the usa' woul have served customers better. i assume there were times specified, as the quoted sentence wouldn't really serve any purpose otherwise.>the rackspace maintenance window was 6am - 6pm. hmmm, thats odd.. thats exactly peak time. sounds perfect.you have no way to know how much traffic rackspace serves in that timespan, peak time for them might be way different than your peak time. they serve all kinds of countries all over the world, you know.>#7) spin lack of information as “protection.” certain details? like estimated impact? progress estimates?most likely, they are trying to deceive anyone there, they should obviously be referring to lack of information about the issue's nature, not lack of information about maintenance work.>#8) to pacify frustrated customers, just lie. i called into support 50 minutes into the outage and was told the migration was 85% complete. that pacified me enough to get off the phone. then two more hours passed.i don't think rackspace was actively trying to deceive people. this sounds more like an issue with unexpected issues coming up, or the customer service rep being poorly informed.>#9 bonus tip) direct customers to remedies that dont work. my support gal was empathetic but at best, offered me the option to create a ticket so i would be heard by those who care. lets forget how impersonal that is for a moment.'heard by those who care'? again, i find it hard to believe that someone whose profession is to resolve customer issues via phone would care any less than people on the other side of the ticketing system. it is more probable that the representative was just unable to assist any further. | what this shows is it's important to have a test server at a bunch of different companies to see what's important to you and leave them there for a 3-4 months evaluating how they respond to issues, actual uptime, speed of updating security mirrors etc. it's been a bit of an eye opener for me beyond features/prices to see how companies actually perform where the rubber meets the road. |
rackspace: how to royally poop on your customers (8 ways)
| what this shows is it's important to have a test server at a bunch of different companies to see what's important to you and leave them there for a 3-4 months evaluating how they respond to issues, actual uptime, speed of updating security mirrors etc. it's been a bit of an eye opener for me beyond features/prices to see how companies actually perform where the rubber meets the road. | bad notifications, sure. but all you've really demonstrated is that you can only handle planned outages. planning around the unplanned outages are where we earn our stripes (and paychecks).you have servers running on infrastructure inside a datacenter that you don't control. surviving reboots and outages needs to be a part of your strategy if these systems are important.oh, and there's this: <link> |
rackspace: how to royally poop on your customers (8 ways)
| bad notifications, sure. but all you've really demonstrated is that you can only handle planned outages. planning around the unplanned outages are where we earn our stripes (and paychecks).you have servers running on infrastructure inside a datacenter that you don't control. surviving reboots and outages needs to be a part of your strategy if these systems are important.oh, and there's this: <link> | 3 hours is crazy! according to new relic, my apps were offline for 11 minutes.i agree with your points though, 9:20 pm on a friday was a bad time to notify customers. i had to write an email to all my customers at 11pm on a friday. not only that, i had to call my business partner to read it before sending, as it was a friday night and i was inebriated.interesting story, after seeing the notice from aws here on hn, i called rackspace on wednesday night. it was late, and the gentleman answering the phone said he worked in the noc. he said that rackspace was not affected by the "shell shock" cve, and that they would not need to perform disruptive maintenance. imagine my surprise friday night. |
nyu eats world: an alumna laments the rise of an imperial university
| i've been interested in the itp program [0] for awhile and would be curious to hear any graduates' responses to this article...[0] <link> | this article is yet another thread in a long line of people complaining about nyu's rise. my personal favorite comes from the local rap group, ratking: seems random, like stanford transplanted to the fountain and the arch
infecting the apple, a cancer in its heart
why'd you make a campus out the park?
if it keeps spreading, it'll be deaded
panting and parched.
(<link> |
nyu eats world: an alumna laments the rise of an imperial university
| this article is yet another thread in a long line of people complaining about nyu's rise. my personal favorite comes from the local rap group, ratking: seems random, like stanford transplanted to the fountain and the arch
infecting the apple, a cancer in its heart
why'd you make a campus out the park?
if it keeps spreading, it'll be deaded
panting and parched.
(<link> | while human rights violations by a major us university's satellite campus are certainly concerning, on the topic of professor salaries, so what? nyu has top programs in a number of areas (the courant institute, for instance), and manhattan, especially lower manhattan, ain't cheap. if you want to compete with the stanfords and the mits and the harvards of the world for top talent, you are going to have to spend some bread. i don't see the problem here. |
nyu eats world: an alumna laments the rise of an imperial university
| while human rights violations by a major us university's satellite campus are certainly concerning, on the topic of professor salaries, so what? nyu has top programs in a number of areas (the courant institute, for instance), and manhattan, especially lower manhattan, ain't cheap. if you want to compete with the stanfords and the mits and the harvards of the world for top talent, you are going to have to spend some bread. i don't see the problem here. | i can't agree more with this piece. having recently (5 years ago) been at nyu, i can tell you the nyu the author remembers nostalgically is completely gone. it's a shell of a school, massive and well funded, yet intellectually just going through the motions. if you are not going to stern you are absolutely wasting your money. |
nyu eats world: an alumna laments the rise of an imperial university
| i can't agree more with this piece. having recently (5 years ago) been at nyu, i can tell you the nyu the author remembers nostalgically is completely gone. it's a shell of a school, massive and well funded, yet intellectually just going through the motions. if you are not going to stern you are absolutely wasting your money. | a giant satellite campus is sufficient condition to say a university "eats world"? does this expression mean something less grandiose than i imagine? |
tor executive director hints at firefox integration
| bravo. i would imagine this would be as an alternate and not in the default mainline. whomever takes this step first will probably find it being used as a catalyst for much more than just anonymity. first users whom hit copyright walls on youtube and other sites have a quick route around: "the net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -- john gilmore. but beyond this the services that could be built on mostly hidden end points are immense. personal mail servers, instant access to files at home, selective public vs private sharing groups, etc. | wonderful news. i am particularly looking forward to having torified connection in a browser with some continuity and customization.
the bundles are stripped of customizations and i find it inconvenient to bring along bookmarks and chosen extensions manually at every upgrade of the bundle.i realize it's often for good reason that the bundles are minimalistic, but i see no fundamental reason why i should have to relinquish bookmarks and personal settings to stay anonymous, and it would be great if this could spur a greater drive to make it clear what extensions are safe or new browser architecture that would make it safe to use add-ons in general with tor. |
tor executive director hints at firefox integration
| wonderful news. i am particularly looking forward to having torified connection in a browser with some continuity and customization.
the bundles are stripped of customizations and i find it inconvenient to bring along bookmarks and chosen extensions manually at every upgrade of the bundle.i realize it's often for good reason that the bundles are minimalistic, but i see no fundamental reason why i should have to relinquish bookmarks and personal settings to stay anonymous, and it would be great if this could spur a greater drive to make it clear what extensions are safe or new browser architecture that would make it safe to use add-ons in general with tor. | it would be so great if mozilla integrated tor. beyond the curse of success mentioned in the article, it would really lower the burden on the tor developers, who have had to support a lot of patches from firefox that mozilla have been slow to merge.my main concern is that this will be hidden behind an option or an "extreme private" mode -- tor seems too high-latency for the typical use-case of private browsing (image viewing and video streaming).if you run a web service and would like to provide high-security anonymous access, consider running an exit enclave -- a tor exit configured to exit only to your site. if tor detects that your exit and your site share an ip address, it will automatically extend the normally 3-hop circuit to your node, and the traffic will exit the tor network on your machine rather than an arbitrary node (which could be malicious).i hope this finally kills the "only criminals use tor" narrative the nsa and periodically, the media push. everyone deserves strong anonymity. |
tor executive director hints at firefox integration
| it would be so great if mozilla integrated tor. beyond the curse of success mentioned in the article, it would really lower the burden on the tor developers, who have had to support a lot of patches from firefox that mozilla have been slow to merge.my main concern is that this will be hidden behind an option or an "extreme private" mode -- tor seems too high-latency for the typical use-case of private browsing (image viewing and video streaming).if you run a web service and would like to provide high-security anonymous access, consider running an exit enclave -- a tor exit configured to exit only to your site. if tor detects that your exit and your site share an ip address, it will automatically extend the normally 3-hop circuit to your node, and the traffic will exit the tor network on your machine rather than an arbitrary node (which could be malicious).i hope this finally kills the "only criminals use tor" narrative the nsa and periodically, the media push. everyone deserves strong anonymity. | i suspect this will start hitting problems when users discover that lots of sites break in unexpected or mysterious ways when run in "super private mode" or whatever they call it. tor is blocked or treated suspiciously by a lot of different sites. it's not at all a free upgrade. |
tor executive director hints at firefox integration
| i suspect this will start hitting problems when users discover that lots of sites break in unexpected or mysterious ways when run in "super private mode" or whatever they call it. tor is blocked or treated suspiciously by a lot of different sites. it's not at all a free upgrade. | the article mentions "hundreds of millions of new users". that would be great news for privacy on the internet.but it would surely slow the tor network to a halt. users trying out privacy-enhancing technology would be disappointed guaranteed with 30+ seconds page load times.tor has roughly 1000 exit nodes, all traffic flows through them. it needs to have much more capacity to handle that kind of load. who is going to pay for 100x or 1000x server capacity? |
the irish post office has a plan to tell one murphy from another
| can anyone from ireland comment on "ambulances having trouble finding the right house"? this seems to be the most compelling and succinct argument against the staus quo.addendum: i got throttled but i wanted to comment on the "everyone has an iphone with gps" idea.i think "we" need to step out of the tech bubble for a little bit. the gps alternative assumes that everyone has a cell phone. this is problematic as it is but it also assumes that the cell phone will never damaged in the emergency, always charged, it is not on the second floor of your house that is on fire, never travels within urban canyons or inside buildings that interfere with signal reception, uses an address format that everyone is familiar with and is easy to read/speak unambiguously, etc. | two quick things:i want to first off say that while on paper us zip codes are more precise than uk post codes, the reality is often very different. the majority of people write their zip code without the "+4" which only gives you a city block, or roughly the same precision as a uk post code.secondly, i feel like ireland missed an opportunity here. if they are only adding zip codes now then, yes, going with a us-style system (with the +4) is the correct decision. however why not invent a "person delivery code" rather than a "location delivery code" system?i know, i know, crazy. but imagine this: each address is assigned a unique code (e.g. starting with 0-9) and each person is also assigned a unique code (e.g. starting with a-z) which is this mapped to a address when a letter is routed.when someone moves house they give the post man a card, which says "bob smith (a123456) has moved from 87654 to 838449, please forward my mail indefinitely to that address."that way when you move house your mail automatically follows you.ps - i am suggesting that the "people codes" be an add on, so traditional "send to address" mail methods would work (e.g. sending "remember to vote" to every house on a street, rather than every individual would still work).pps - calculating shipping would be no harder than today, just select your city and enter your "person code" or zip-code/house number. |
the irish post office has a plan to tell one murphy from another
| two quick things:i want to first off say that while on paper us zip codes are more precise than uk post codes, the reality is often very different. the majority of people write their zip code without the "+4" which only gives you a city block, or roughly the same precision as a uk post code.secondly, i feel like ireland missed an opportunity here. if they are only adding zip codes now then, yes, going with a us-style system (with the +4) is the correct decision. however why not invent a "person delivery code" rather than a "location delivery code" system?i know, i know, crazy. but imagine this: each address is assigned a unique code (e.g. starting with 0-9) and each person is also assigned a unique code (e.g. starting with a-z) which is this mapped to a address when a letter is routed.when someone moves house they give the post man a card, which says "bob smith (a123456) has moved from 87654 to 838449, please forward my mail indefinitely to that address."that way when you move house your mail automatically follows you.ps - i am suggesting that the "people codes" be an add on, so traditional "send to address" mail methods would work (e.g. sending "remember to vote" to every house on a street, rather than every individual would still work).pps - calculating shipping would be no harder than today, just select your city and enter your "person code" or zip-code/house number. | oh, the time i spend standing at the side of the road, flagging down amazon deliveries and tradesmen. and safari books online doesn't want my money because their cc validators won't accept an address without a postcode. |
the irish post office has a plan to tell one murphy from another
| oh, the time i spend standing at the side of the road, flagging down amazon deliveries and tradesmen. and safari books online doesn't want my money because their cc validators won't accept an address without a postcode. | here's the site for the new system - <link> |
the irish post office has a plan to tell one murphy from another
| here's the site for the new system - <link> | how will people selling to ireland have to update their web forms? lots of us-centric sites have zipcode as a number or 7 digit serial.
how do irish people fill them out now? i'm really curious.when i drove around ireland in 2009, i used a trusty paper map + the car had a gps which sort of worked. |
microsoft prediction lab
| sounds similar to the good judgement project: <link> article: <link> | i'm excited that microsoft is dedicating some resources toward building a prediction market platform. it joins the space now occupied by foresight exchange, scicast, inkling markets, lumenogic, predictious, truthcoin, and similar software platforms. hopefully microsoft will build a better product and find more success, though so far it seems like the lack of prediction market uptake seems to be the result of low demand, not low supply.as a long-time participant in prediction markets, i'll a list of my initial impressions of the microsoft platform.(1) i think it's big mistake to mix opinion polls with forecasts. it's quite confusing when one set of questions asks for facts and another set asks for opinions. it's also confusing when one set affects your score and another set does not. i think users would have a better experience if the two categories were totally separated (or if the opinion polls were just axed).(2) the scoring method they're using is not at all transparent. i suspect it's the logarithmic scoring rule (best for low-volume markets), but the interface doesn't make it clear how the bets relate to the odds. (look at scicast.org for one way of doing this.) i understand that the math behind betting can be offputting to new users, but it's also tough to get engagement when new users don't really understand the possible actions or their consequences.(3) the default bet sizes are awful. 100 points out of a 1,000 point balance means you'll be practically done with the site after 10 bets. even if your bets are accurate, you can't bet again until they resolve. the scicast play money market has had significant problems making accurate predictions because of a lack of liquidity for its high-volume users, who also tend to be the most accurate users.(4) i think i've already run into some bugs. when i vote in polls, it looks like my vote is being assigned to a choice different from the one i voted on.(5) i thought the design looked nice at first, but there are some usability problems. it's annoying how forecasts with three options require you to click a small button to scroll from side to side. a big part of casual non-algorithmic prediction market participation is quickly scanning over the markets to look for obvious mistakes. making it hard to scan over the forecasts makes the market harder to use and less accurate.anyway, the momentum behind prediction markets has been growing for years. perhaps in the future more companies will try experimenting with internal markets to predict things like whether projects will finish on time or on budget.i wish microsoft success with this new product. |
microsoft prediction lab
| i'm excited that microsoft is dedicating some resources toward building a prediction market platform. it joins the space now occupied by foresight exchange, scicast, inkling markets, lumenogic, predictious, truthcoin, and similar software platforms. hopefully microsoft will build a better product and find more success, though so far it seems like the lack of prediction market uptake seems to be the result of low demand, not low supply.as a long-time participant in prediction markets, i'll a list of my initial impressions of the microsoft platform.(1) i think it's big mistake to mix opinion polls with forecasts. it's quite confusing when one set of questions asks for facts and another set asks for opinions. it's also confusing when one set affects your score and another set does not. i think users would have a better experience if the two categories were totally separated (or if the opinion polls were just axed).(2) the scoring method they're using is not at all transparent. i suspect it's the logarithmic scoring rule (best for low-volume markets), but the interface doesn't make it clear how the bets relate to the odds. (look at scicast.org for one way of doing this.) i understand that the math behind betting can be offputting to new users, but it's also tough to get engagement when new users don't really understand the possible actions or their consequences.(3) the default bet sizes are awful. 100 points out of a 1,000 point balance means you'll be practically done with the site after 10 bets. even if your bets are accurate, you can't bet again until they resolve. the scicast play money market has had significant problems making accurate predictions because of a lack of liquidity for its high-volume users, who also tend to be the most accurate users.(4) i think i've already run into some bugs. when i vote in polls, it looks like my vote is being assigned to a choice different from the one i voted on.(5) i thought the design looked nice at first, but there are some usability problems. it's annoying how forecasts with three options require you to click a small button to scroll from side to side. a big part of casual non-algorithmic prediction market participation is quickly scanning over the markets to look for obvious mistakes. making it hard to scan over the forecasts makes the market harder to use and less accurate.anyway, the momentum behind prediction markets has been growing for years. perhaps in the future more companies will try experimenting with internal markets to predict things like whether projects will finish on time or on budget.i wish microsoft success with this new product. | i'm not sure i understand. i have 1000 points, but i only have 400 points for this week? when i spend my points on a bet, my available points don't decrease? there are only three polls i can bet on, the rest are just free opinion polls?not sure if i'm missing something. |
microsoft prediction lab
| i'm not sure i understand. i have 1000 points, but i only have 400 points for this week? when i spend my points on a bet, my available points don't decrease? there are only three polls i can bet on, the rest are just free opinion polls?not sure if i'm missing something. | will data culled from here be used in bing predicts?( <link> ) |
microsoft prediction lab
| will data culled from here be used in bing predicts?( <link> ) | interesting. what's also interesting is that they allow signing in with the google+ accounts. |
a world without mosquitoes (2010)
| wiping out a species deliberately flies in the face of the philosophy of environmental conservation that we all learned in school and from media. however, we have wiped out organisms that threaten humans before (e.g. smallpox) and are currently in the process of wiping out others, such as polio and the guinea worm, which is a parasite that is ingested in contaminated water only to emerge, slowly and painfully, through the skin (see dracunculiasis).in terms of deaths caused, mosquitoes are undoubtedly far deadlier than any species humans have eradicated to date. in north america they are more of a nuisance than a deadly threat, but the same does not hold true for large portions of the world where they are a major disease vector. they are unquestionably worth eradicating if it ever becomes feasible to do so.the question should not be whether or not we should eliminate the species of mosquitoes that feed on humans. instead, we should ask how can we minimize the impact of eliminating these species. can other species of mosquitoes that are not disease vectors, or other insects entirely, fill in the vacated niche? is it possible to eradicate mosquitoes in test areas to see what the long-term impact is? if we do eradicate them globally, how long would we have to "hit reset" by hatching and releasing stored eggs if unforeseen consequences make it necessary? | inspired by this article, and getting bitten by mosquitoes since then, and some of the more interesting species-targeting work being done, i've been thinking about this topic.there is a very major positive impact that mosquito elimination would have: we'd stop trying to suppress mosquitoes. we'd stop spraying for mosquitoes. we'd be more lax about standing water. standing water is treated like something awful, and while it can get a bit smelly and obnoxious, that's because standing water is an interesting host for lots of life, and besides mosquitoes that life is mostly fine. add in tick elimination and we could let many more urban areas go fully wild. more people would spend more time outside, and i think that would itself be a major ecological factor, as it would positively affect our attitude about the outdoors.there's a couple obnoxious insects, but nothing compares to the mosquito. eliminate mosquitoes and suddenly the human race can come to peace with bugs. that would be hugely ecologically positive. |
a world without mosquitoes (2010)
| inspired by this article, and getting bitten by mosquitoes since then, and some of the more interesting species-targeting work being done, i've been thinking about this topic.there is a very major positive impact that mosquito elimination would have: we'd stop trying to suppress mosquitoes. we'd stop spraying for mosquitoes. we'd be more lax about standing water. standing water is treated like something awful, and while it can get a bit smelly and obnoxious, that's because standing water is an interesting host for lots of life, and besides mosquitoes that life is mostly fine. add in tick elimination and we could let many more urban areas go fully wild. more people would spend more time outside, and i think that would itself be a major ecological factor, as it would positively affect our attitude about the outdoors.there's a couple obnoxious insects, but nothing compares to the mosquito. eliminate mosquitoes and suddenly the human race can come to peace with bugs. that would be hugely ecologically positive. | a little disappointed that neither the article nor comments have made much of the argument that any species which has made it through billions of years of evolution is intrinsically a thing of value. as for planned extinction, i feel the bar should be set high: we needn't know, right now, what their long-term value must be.nevertheless, if i try to find some specific value to mosquitoes, it is likely related to the thing that also makes them pernicious. they are evasive, clever, micro-scale hunters some of which have co-evolved with humans for millions of years. their feeding indicates they might be used for drug delivery, weapons, communications, logistics.just from one person's point of view, it would be a shame if, ten years after total eradication, moore's law delivered a boat-load of potential applications for mosquitoes. and of course if these insects have a say in the matter, we know how they'd likely vote. |
a world without mosquitoes (2010)
| a little disappointed that neither the article nor comments have made much of the argument that any species which has made it through billions of years of evolution is intrinsically a thing of value. as for planned extinction, i feel the bar should be set high: we needn't know, right now, what their long-term value must be.nevertheless, if i try to find some specific value to mosquitoes, it is likely related to the thing that also makes them pernicious. they are evasive, clever, micro-scale hunters some of which have co-evolved with humans for millions of years. their feeding indicates they might be used for drug delivery, weapons, communications, logistics.just from one person's point of view, it would be a shame if, ten years after total eradication, moore's law delivered a boat-load of potential applications for mosquitoes. and of course if these insects have a say in the matter, we know how they'd likely vote. | i highly recommend this radiolab episode, "kill 'em all", which explores the same issue.<link> |
a world without mosquitoes (2010)
| i highly recommend this radiolab episode, "kill 'em all", which explores the same issue.<link> | a few comments discuss the complete eradication of all mosquitoes, and the impact that would have. it is worth noting that only a few of the various mosquito species are vectors for most of the diseases we tend to care about, and as such the complete eradication of all mosquitoes is not necessary.you can eradicate just those species in order to remove the disease vectors, and replace them at the same time with a different mosquito that has a similar ecological role.of course we don't actually know if disease-vector mosquitoes play a different role than non-disease-vector mosquitoes, but the premise need not be the removal of all mosquitoes. |
why rumors outrace the truth online
| there is a lot of reaction to the headline here (hmm, maybe rumors spread through headlines), but i am curious about a new web-based service mentioned in the article text, namely the service called emergent.<link> saw another news report that was mostly but not entirely about emergent the other day, and shared that story on my facebook wall. evidently the people who run emergent are good at press relations.i post information about things like this on my facebook wall because i try to be preventive about rumors. i don't want rumors to be circulating among my friends. both on facebook and here on hacker news, i try to post stories and articles about truth-finding and rationale thinking and about little known historical and scientific facts that can be used to examine commonplace rumors. some of the postings appear to be ignored, but others appear to have some uptake and to prevent subsequent belief in the latest rumor going around. we can all do our part. we can enjoy working proactively to help one another think better and to know more facts and to practice more thoughtful examination of rumors. | false rumors are able to spread throughout a large population before being debunked. corrections, however, are only really able to spread to people who previously saw the rumor. furthermore, many people who shared the rumor may be less likely to share the correction, since it makes them look gullible for sharing the unverified rumor in the first place. so it's much harder for a correction to spread virally.if there were a system in place so that false rumors could be debunked in real-time, in-line (as opposed to using a separate retroactive correction), they would be less likely to spread as far. the closest thing i can think of would be something like genius. |
why rumors outrace the truth online
| false rumors are able to spread throughout a large population before being debunked. corrections, however, are only really able to spread to people who previously saw the rumor. furthermore, many people who shared the rumor may be less likely to share the correction, since it makes them look gullible for sharing the unverified rumor in the first place. so it's much harder for a correction to spread virally.if there were a system in place so that false rumors could be debunked in real-time, in-line (as opposed to using a separate retroactive correction), they would be less likely to spread as far. the closest thing i can think of would be something like genius. | rumors outrace truth, online or not; an observation allegedly made over 100 years ago by mark twain long before darpa got a bright idea about networking: “a lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” [0][0] <link> |
why rumors outrace the truth online
| rumors outrace truth, online or not; an observation allegedly made over 100 years ago by mark twain long before darpa got a bright idea about networking: “a lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” [0][0] <link> | it seems to me that the obvious answer to the question of why rumors are spread more than truth is that spreading truth requires using enough effort to discover the truth and spreading rumors requires no such effort.it takes someone two seconds to click share on some garbage article, it takes another person a minute or two of googling to see if something is true or not. laziness is going to win out with more people than effort. |
why rumors outrace the truth online
| it seems to me that the obvious answer to the question of why rumors are spread more than truth is that spreading truth requires using enough effort to discover the truth and spreading rumors requires no such effort.it takes someone two seconds to click share on some garbage article, it takes another person a minute or two of googling to see if something is true or not. laziness is going to win out with more people than effort. | for instance, the missing libyan jetliner story has been shared more than 140,000 times despite being questioned by the respected rumor-tracking website snopes ...... the snopes page on the jetliner story has been shared only 735 times since it was revised to classify the rumor false, a small fraction of the circulation of articles endorsing the claim.this example shows the correction for a rumor is much less popular than the rumor itself. i'm not convinced that his shows that true stories are less popular or less engaging than rumors. it shows that people are more responsive to positive claims than negative ones.a stronger analysis would look at the top 100 shared/liked stories in a timeframe. then determine the ratio of rumor to fact amongst this set of stories.something else to consider: i read the article and did not question the factual basis of the claims made. even gave it an uptick on hn. but i didn't check the sources, even though they are conveniently linked throughout the article. as far as i can tell, this makes me no different than the fella on facebook who likes a story without checking it out. i'm doing as much work as he is. right-leaning conspiracy theories feel right to him. systemic cognitive biases that effect the masses (but surely not me!) feel right to me. |
trends in the silk road 2.0
| the disclaimer is interesting:the following information is for educational purposes only, i have no affiliation with the silk road 2.0, nor have i ever purchased anything off the site. as far as i know, visiting the site and writing about it with no intention to buy (commit a crime) is perfectly legal.any lawyers could confirm the last part of the disclaimer? | it's interesting and probably not surprising that the most popular drug on the silk road 2.0 (and probably other darknet marketplaces) is mdma. mdma is difficult to find in pure forms and impurities can kill you. if you buy mdma from a vendor with a 4.9/5 rating, you can be reasonably certain you're getting quality product (comparable to old pressed pills you can hear aging ravers wax nostalgic about) at a fair price.i expect marijuana legalization will eat away at darknet marketplace weed sales, leaving mdma and lsd as the top two. which is exactly how it should be. they can be made in large quantities by moderately-skilled chemists to a high degree of purity and safety, and the silk road allows them to be distributed without any violence. it'd be impossible to bulk-search the mail for them. mdma could be packaged as any white powder and lsd is literally paper.i hope that this safe availability of mdma and lsd quenches the misinformation campaigns that have so horribly marred their reputation for the public. both of them have incredible potential for therapeutic and recreational use. |
trends in the silk road 2.0
| it's interesting and probably not surprising that the most popular drug on the silk road 2.0 (and probably other darknet marketplaces) is mdma. mdma is difficult to find in pure forms and impurities can kill you. if you buy mdma from a vendor with a 4.9/5 rating, you can be reasonably certain you're getting quality product (comparable to old pressed pills you can hear aging ravers wax nostalgic about) at a fair price.i expect marijuana legalization will eat away at darknet marketplace weed sales, leaving mdma and lsd as the top two. which is exactly how it should be. they can be made in large quantities by moderately-skilled chemists to a high degree of purity and safety, and the silk road allows them to be distributed without any violence. it'd be impossible to bulk-search the mail for them. mdma could be packaged as any white powder and lsd is literally paper.i hope that this safe availability of mdma and lsd quenches the misinformation campaigns that have so horribly marred their reputation for the public. both of them have incredible potential for therapeutic and recreational use. | > i somehow doubt this guy has sold half a million dollars worth of mdma at $1.5k a pop in such a huge quantity, but the price seems to be in line with other sellers for an equivalent amount.actually quite possible: the dutch seller supertrips sold into the millions range, so half a million for the top seller is possible.> i’m not entirely sure what the rules are regarding who can give feedback, but there seem to be people buying huge quantites if a user must buy a product to be able to review it. i have never purchased anything from the site, and i wasn’t presented with any choices to review an item.you can only review a listing if you have ordered it & paid for it (sr2 no longer does escrow); but you are also allowed to review a listing before your order arrives, which means scraping feedback can be very biased given that most users who are scammed will never go back to update their feedback. (that is, suppose a well-regarded seller has decided to quit selling; they put up a bunch of listings, accept orders & payment, withdraw all the money since there is no longer escrow on sr2, and continue until they're banned. the buyer will leave item feedback like '5 stars: trusted vendor, waiting eagerly for package' and when it dawns on them that they've been scammed, never switch it to '1 stars: got scammed'. so anyone who scrapes the feedback of this seller will see a sterling 5-star-average profile.) |
trends in the silk road 2.0
| > i somehow doubt this guy has sold half a million dollars worth of mdma at $1.5k a pop in such a huge quantity, but the price seems to be in line with other sellers for an equivalent amount.actually quite possible: the dutch seller supertrips sold into the millions range, so half a million for the top seller is possible.> i’m not entirely sure what the rules are regarding who can give feedback, but there seem to be people buying huge quantites if a user must buy a product to be able to review it. i have never purchased anything from the site, and i wasn’t presented with any choices to review an item.you can only review a listing if you have ordered it & paid for it (sr2 no longer does escrow); but you are also allowed to review a listing before your order arrives, which means scraping feedback can be very biased given that most users who are scammed will never go back to update their feedback. (that is, suppose a well-regarded seller has decided to quit selling; they put up a bunch of listings, accept orders & payment, withdraw all the money since there is no longer escrow on sr2, and continue until they're banned. the buyer will leave item feedback like '5 stars: trusted vendor, waiting eagerly for package' and when it dawns on them that they've been scammed, never switch it to '1 stars: got scammed'. so anyone who scrapes the feedback of this seller will see a sterling 5-star-average profile.) | drugs are a fascinating topic in my opinion, because they have affected humankind and it's decisions since ever and more than anyone wants to admit. it's a topic that is everywhere, and that simultaneously nobody has a clue about (a bit like climate change or high finance). people don't know which drugs there are, how they work, how dangerous they are, how much they are used etc.i talked to many people who are affected by the topic: teachers, psychologists, doctors, concerned relatives. i keep telling them: even in this rich city vienna, drugs aren't something that pops up in dark alleys behind trainstations, drugs are everywhere and used by functioning people you had no idea about. and they use massive amounts.there are doctors who say that they tell their clients, that it's ok to smoke one or two cannabis-joints a week. what they don't realize is that a regular smoker (which might be a 13-year-old) doesn't smoke one per week, but more like 5 joints a day.
this is a point which get's more important now that states around the world are legalizing cannabis. it really isn't very hazarous, in the sense that it kills you or makes you unable to function, so people can get used to smoking excessive amounts. but: every psychoactive substance you take constantly will, by definition, change you. when usage-patterns get to the "all the time"-category most points doctors and legalization advocates make become invalid, because now it's not about side-effects of a drug you take now and then, but about the effects of a permanently altered state-of-mind you "cultivate".i regulary ask sellers at highway petrol stations which cigarettes and smoking-utilities they sell the most. there was not only one time where their answer was: long rolling-papers and the lightest tobacco = ingredients for a joint.lsd isn't just something out of a beatles song, some people told be they had tried it with 15, because they could get it at their (noble high-society)-school. there were hooligans at a big local football/"soccer"-stadion charged with possession of it.the issue/problem of cocaine is interesting, because (like cannabis) it is one of the few drugs that permeates all of society from blue-collar-workers to high-society.
i once helped a completely confused guy in a smoking to get a taxi home, who stuttered that he lost his purse while getting high on cocaine on some actor's party. he is a painter and a director at one of the famous theatres here, and gifted me a painting he had with him for the taxi-fare i paid.i once saw two truck-drivers delivering goods to the local supermarket around the corner, snorting something of a magazine at 6.30 a.m.it's a bit hard to get data about mass of cocaine consumption in the us, but estimations are about 200 tons (400k pounds, please adopt the metric system!) per year. they regularly find unmanned submarines who can transport tons of cocaine. some of them are sophisticated enough that they might be able to cross the atlantic. think of the r&d involved there, that cartels have the money to buy.one of the problems in the vietnam-war was that vietnam was and is a big platform in international drug-trafficking and many us-soldiers got addicted to heroin while trying to "get away" from the war. estimations are that more than 40.000 soldiers were addicted. many of them probably still are, no matter what some people say, it's close to impossible to get away from heroin/opiates. the only easy way to deal with the poor addicts is provide them with their stuff until the end of their lives.afghanistan was (still is?) the largest opium and cannabis-exporter in the world. since they don't have many other goods than that, in the 90ies the us more or less allowed or tolerated the drug-business there, so the warlords ("afghan resistance") could buy weapons to hold back soviet russia.
so, in the war since 2001 us-money flows to both sides of the conflict. us-soldiers are paid to fight against warlords who get their money from selling their heroin in the us (and in the rest of the world). isn't that ridiculous?[..insert many more anecdotes and hair-raising numbers..]to sum it up:* drug use is way more excessive than society is comfortable with.* drugs aren't mostly used while sitting on the sofa, they are used while working, while riding vehicles, while doing anything really.* almost everything people know about drugs (from names to numbers) is incorrect (if they know anything at all).disclaimer:* numbers above might be inaccurate, because i don't have time for proper references, but the magnitudes should be correct.* this is not an opinion about how to work with the situation (i wouldn't call it problem, since drug-use has been always there, it's a property/corner-stone of human existence), i have opinions about that, but it's a very complicated matter. there's also a difference in advising addicted individuals and their relatives, which is (depending on the drug) relatively easy, and finding rules/laws for society at large. |
trends in the silk road 2.0
| drugs are a fascinating topic in my opinion, because they have affected humankind and it's decisions since ever and more than anyone wants to admit. it's a topic that is everywhere, and that simultaneously nobody has a clue about (a bit like climate change or high finance). people don't know which drugs there are, how they work, how dangerous they are, how much they are used etc.i talked to many people who are affected by the topic: teachers, psychologists, doctors, concerned relatives. i keep telling them: even in this rich city vienna, drugs aren't something that pops up in dark alleys behind trainstations, drugs are everywhere and used by functioning people you had no idea about. and they use massive amounts.there are doctors who say that they tell their clients, that it's ok to smoke one or two cannabis-joints a week. what they don't realize is that a regular smoker (which might be a 13-year-old) doesn't smoke one per week, but more like 5 joints a day.
this is a point which get's more important now that states around the world are legalizing cannabis. it really isn't very hazarous, in the sense that it kills you or makes you unable to function, so people can get used to smoking excessive amounts. but: every psychoactive substance you take constantly will, by definition, change you. when usage-patterns get to the "all the time"-category most points doctors and legalization advocates make become invalid, because now it's not about side-effects of a drug you take now and then, but about the effects of a permanently altered state-of-mind you "cultivate".i regulary ask sellers at highway petrol stations which cigarettes and smoking-utilities they sell the most. there was not only one time where their answer was: long rolling-papers and the lightest tobacco = ingredients for a joint.lsd isn't just something out of a beatles song, some people told be they had tried it with 15, because they could get it at their (noble high-society)-school. there were hooligans at a big local football/"soccer"-stadion charged with possession of it.the issue/problem of cocaine is interesting, because (like cannabis) it is one of the few drugs that permeates all of society from blue-collar-workers to high-society.
i once helped a completely confused guy in a smoking to get a taxi home, who stuttered that he lost his purse while getting high on cocaine on some actor's party. he is a painter and a director at one of the famous theatres here, and gifted me a painting he had with him for the taxi-fare i paid.i once saw two truck-drivers delivering goods to the local supermarket around the corner, snorting something of a magazine at 6.30 a.m.it's a bit hard to get data about mass of cocaine consumption in the us, but estimations are about 200 tons (400k pounds, please adopt the metric system!) per year. they regularly find unmanned submarines who can transport tons of cocaine. some of them are sophisticated enough that they might be able to cross the atlantic. think of the r&d involved there, that cartels have the money to buy.one of the problems in the vietnam-war was that vietnam was and is a big platform in international drug-trafficking and many us-soldiers got addicted to heroin while trying to "get away" from the war. estimations are that more than 40.000 soldiers were addicted. many of them probably still are, no matter what some people say, it's close to impossible to get away from heroin/opiates. the only easy way to deal with the poor addicts is provide them with their stuff until the end of their lives.afghanistan was (still is?) the largest opium and cannabis-exporter in the world. since they don't have many other goods than that, in the 90ies the us more or less allowed or tolerated the drug-business there, so the warlords ("afghan resistance") could buy weapons to hold back soviet russia.
so, in the war since 2001 us-money flows to both sides of the conflict. us-soldiers are paid to fight against warlords who get their money from selling their heroin in the us (and in the rest of the world). isn't that ridiculous?[..insert many more anecdotes and hair-raising numbers..]to sum it up:* drug use is way more excessive than society is comfortable with.* drugs aren't mostly used while sitting on the sofa, they are used while working, while riding vehicles, while doing anything really.* almost everything people know about drugs (from names to numbers) is incorrect (if they know anything at all).disclaimer:* numbers above might be inaccurate, because i don't have time for proper references, but the magnitudes should be correct.* this is not an opinion about how to work with the situation (i wouldn't call it problem, since drug-use has been always there, it's a property/corner-stone of human existence), i have opinions about that, but it's a very complicated matter. there's also a difference in advising addicted individuals and their relatives, which is (depending on the drug) relatively easy, and finding rules/laws for society at large. | a few months ago i had the idea of creating a project to scrape silk road. the idea was to parse all listings, determine the quantity, divide by the price, and then average it through the entire site. the end result would be an average price for weed/lsd/mdma,etc. sort of like the winkdex, except for drugs prices. shortly after i got it running, silk road 1.0 got shut down. then the darknet market "scene" became really fragmented into like 10 different sites. writing scraping code is tedious, so i abandoned the project. the code is here: <link> |
ios8 mac address randomization update
| isn't it easier to turn off wi-fi and bluetooth? | feels like a bug. any technical reason why this wouldn't be doable with all antennas firing? |
ios8 mac address randomization update
| feels like a bug. any technical reason why this wouldn't be doable with all antennas firing? | if anyone is looking for an android equivalent, root required:<link> |
ios8 mac address randomization update
| if anyone is looking for an android equivalent, root required:<link> | this article seems to do a better job explaining what's actually happening, and contradicts the op:<link> |
ios8 mac address randomization update
| this article seems to do a better job explaining what's actually happening, and contradicts the op:<link> | i wonder if the mac being fixed while cellular data is on has anything to do with hotspot 2.0 operation:
<link> |
protect yourself from the hidden dangers of `curl – sh`
| i'd say apply the same level of scrutiny as you would other code, such as the code that your distribution allows you to install. that means: 1) find a source you trust (nominally)
2) get a gpg-key that you trust belong to that user
3) get the install.sh script
4) get the matching gpg signature (install.sh.asc)
5) verify that 4) is a valid signature of 3) under 2)
6) have a look at the script
7) run the script
if you can't establish 2), you'll just have to stick to 3) 6) and 7).seeing that something is on a https site, just means someone had the access to put it there. if someone got access to the private key behind 2) -- 1) is probably so compromised that there isn't anything other than 6) that might protect you -- and if the script is truly malicious (as opposed to just your average botched bash script) -- it's not guaranteed that it's obviously malicious.anyway, a gpg signature links some distributable the author has verified all the way back to wherever that file was authored -- while https only anchors trust on the web server. web servers get compromised all the time. prefer a proper signature as a means to anchor trust ("yes, this is probably what x wanted to distribute. if you trust x, this is probably ok").a https signature just means: "this is something someone/anyone managed to upload to this web server". | i've seen this same argument time and time again and it's just silly. we preach that curl | sh is evil because of a potential lack of "transparency" but rarely does anyone denounce the evils of binary packages.when you run third-party code on your system there is always a risk of it doing nasty things, it doesn't matter if it's an easily readable bash script or a .deb you downloaded. the biggest argument i see about curl | sh that i can agree with is the issues that happens when your connection dies in the middle of the download. just download the file, then run it. |
protect yourself from the hidden dangers of `curl – sh`
| i've seen this same argument time and time again and it's just silly. we preach that curl | sh is evil because of a potential lack of "transparency" but rarely does anyone denounce the evils of binary packages.when you run third-party code on your system there is always a risk of it doing nasty things, it doesn't matter if it's an easily readable bash script or a .deb you downloaded. the biggest argument i see about curl | sh that i can agree with is the issues that happens when your connection dies in the middle of the download. just download the file, then run it. | there are other risks besides malicious webservers. even an accidental network glitch can be fatal, for example if the connection is dropped after the first "/" here:rm -rf /tmp/myawesomeinstaller |
protect yourself from the hidden dangers of `curl – sh`
| there are other risks besides malicious webservers. even an accidental network glitch can be fatal, for example if the connection is dropped after the first "/" here:rm -rf /tmp/myawesomeinstaller | if you don't want to bother with all this you can also just do a simple `wget <link> -o /tmp/script`, look through it in your editor, then run it. |
protect yourself from the hidden dangers of `curl – sh`
| if you don't want to bother with all this you can also just do a simple `wget <link> -o /tmp/script`, look through it in your editor, then run it. | i don't understand why you would go through all of this effort...just dump the data into a file:curl > foobarread the file using any number of normal utilitiesvim foobarcat foobarnano foobarless foobarthen if you like what you see execute the filesh foobarlinux/unix utilities are meant to be used. don't limit yourself to only knowing how to check the contents of a curl install if you have a curlsh function. |
the sound so loud that it circled the earth four times
| nice. i hadn't thought of there being a limit (due to vacuum) to sound intensity.reminds me of this recent comment on reddit: <link>;the saturn v rocket produced a swl (sound power level) of about 220 decibels, which is sufficient to melt concrete nearby and set grass aflame a mile away," | interestingly, the sound intensity will decay as a 1/r law, where r is the distance from the source. (i'm assuming conservation of sound energy as it travels horizontally, i.e., no loss to interactions with atmosphere and terrain).
compare with the 1/r² laws like the strength of an electric field at a distance r from charge q: e(r)=kq/r².in both cases there is a total of something (sound energy or electric field lines) and that total must be split over all possible directions. the total electric field must be split over the surface area of increasingly larger and larger spheres hence the 1/r² behaviour (1/4πr² to be precise). the sound energy is spread uniformly over a circle with circumference c=2πr, hence giving a 1/r decay, over short distances.for longer distances, the curvature of the earth will play a role. come to think of it, it must have been really loud somewhere diametrically opposite to krakatoa, 17 hours after the eruption... |
the sound so loud that it circled the earth four times
| interestingly, the sound intensity will decay as a 1/r law, where r is the distance from the source. (i'm assuming conservation of sound energy as it travels horizontally, i.e., no loss to interactions with atmosphere and terrain).
compare with the 1/r² laws like the strength of an electric field at a distance r from charge q: e(r)=kq/r².in both cases there is a total of something (sound energy or electric field lines) and that total must be split over all possible directions. the total electric field must be split over the surface area of increasingly larger and larger spheres hence the 1/r² behaviour (1/4πr² to be precise). the sound energy is spread uniformly over a circle with circumference c=2πr, hence giving a 1/r decay, over short distances.for longer distances, the curvature of the earth will play a role. come to think of it, it must have been really loud somewhere diametrically opposite to krakatoa, 17 hours after the eruption... | for anyone interested, i'd recommend simon winchester's book "krakatoa": <link> interesting are how quickly the volcano has risen out of the sea again after being totally obliterated, and how much life now thrives on it. |
the sound so loud that it circled the earth four times
| for anyone interested, i'd recommend simon winchester's book "krakatoa": <link> interesting are how quickly the volcano has risen out of the sea again after being totally obliterated, and how much life now thrives on it. | to put this in context, the krakatoa eruption released energy roughly equivalent to a 200 megaton bomb, which is roughly four times larger than the "tsar bomba", an h-bomb which is the largest nuclear weapon detonated to date. the globe's average temperature fell 1.2 c after the eruption due to so2 increasing the earth's albedo. the volcanic explosivity index (vei) of the krakatoa eruption was 6, and it's estimated to be a roughly once in a century eruption.when you think about it, we're living on a extremely thin crust that's formed on the surface of a molten, roiling ball of rock and metal. people are strangely obsessed with the threat of asteroid impacts when what's beneath our feet presents a perhaps even greater danger, one which we know next to nothing about! |
the sound so loud that it circled the earth four times
| to put this in context, the krakatoa eruption released energy roughly equivalent to a 200 megaton bomb, which is roughly four times larger than the "tsar bomba", an h-bomb which is the largest nuclear weapon detonated to date. the globe's average temperature fell 1.2 c after the eruption due to so2 increasing the earth's albedo. the volcanic explosivity index (vei) of the krakatoa eruption was 6, and it's estimated to be a roughly once in a century eruption.when you think about it, we're living on a extremely thin crust that's formed on the surface of a molten, roiling ball of rock and metal. people are strangely obsessed with the threat of asteroid impacts when what's beneath our feet presents a perhaps even greater danger, one which we know next to nothing about! | hey, i'm the author of the post (on twitter @aatishb). thanks for voting it up. would love to hear your thoughts and constructive feedback. cheers. (ps the references linked to at the bottom of the post are packed with fascinating information about krakatoa, for anyone who wants to dig deeper.) |
using machine learning and node.js to detect the gender of instagram users
| this is a great example of how privacy is not optional, even in "opt-in" systems such as instagram and fb. that instagram does not require you to have a facebook profile, and facebook does not require you to list gender means very little in terms of your own privacy.merely choosing to withhold information about yourself does not insulate you from a breach of privacy. that others do disclose such information allows 3rd parties to make really good guesses and inferences about you.there's a strange morality here: at what point is it unethical to voluntarily disclose data about oneself, if it could be used in a way to harm someone else's privacy? short of drawing a moral boundary (it could very well be impossible), we might do well to at least acknowledge the cost to these methods, alongside their benefits. | your implementation of momentum seems off, you just add a multiple of last error, instead of adding exponentially declining contributions from the past. i think you want double dw = alpha_ * val_[l][j] * d_[l+1][i] + beta_ * dw_[l+1][i][j];
w_[l+1][i][j] += dw;
if you want to get an output class probability, softmax is the standard way. minimize kl-divergence instead of squared error.you don't seem to be doing any regularization. it could maybe give you better generalization.i think you could get a speedup by doing your linalg with blas, i guess this would complicate the code though, making it a tradeof.training on multiple threads and averaging is a nice touch. it would be interesting to hear if (how much) it improved your results. |
using machine learning and node.js to detect the gender of instagram users
| your implementation of momentum seems off, you just add a multiple of last error, instead of adding exponentially declining contributions from the past. i think you want double dw = alpha_ * val_[l][j] * d_[l+1][i] + beta_ * dw_[l+1][i][j];
w_[l+1][i][j] += dw;
if you want to get an output class probability, softmax is the standard way. minimize kl-divergence instead of squared error.you don't seem to be doing any regularization. it could maybe give you better generalization.i think you could get a speedup by doing your linalg with blas, i guess this would complicate the code though, making it a tradeof.training on multiple threads and averaging is a nice touch. it would be interesting to hear if (how much) it improved your results. | it's unusual to see a coherent, from-first-principles explanation of a neural network. especially one that's commercially valuable (i presume) to totems.mildly alarmed to learn i'm only .039 probability male, though - better bloke it up on instagram. |
using machine learning and node.js to detect the gender of instagram users
| it's unusual to see a coherent, from-first-principles explanation of a neural network. especially one that's commercially valuable (i presume) to totems.mildly alarmed to learn i'm only .039 probability male, though - better bloke it up on instagram. | thanks for sharing your experience! couple of questionswhy implement the training in nodejs and not use an existing library in r or python (scikit-learn) and just implement the scoring (feedforward network) in node?did you just use a single test/train split? what is the variation in res if you run cross validation?your article suggests that you used mi to select the 10k best features. did you perform this mi feature selection before your test/train split? if so, you would already be "using" your class labels, and the results will be biased. it is likely your true generalisation error will be lower. |
using machine learning and node.js to detect the gender of instagram users
| thanks for sharing your experience! couple of questionswhy implement the training in nodejs and not use an existing library in r or python (scikit-learn) and just implement the scoring (feedforward network) in node?did you just use a single test/train split? what is the variation in res if you run cross validation?your article suggests that you used mi to select the 10k best features. did you perform this mi feature selection before your test/train split? if so, you would already be "using" your class labels, and the results will be biased. it is likely your true generalisation error will be lower. | neural networks have their place, but are probably the most complicated and opaque machine learning tool. they are also hard to set up: so many parameters! given that, i found it really strange that they went straight for a neural network (and then implemented one themselves!). surely the place to start would be naive bayes, followed up with regularized logistic regression (through something like glmnet). heck, even random forests would do quite well on this task i imagine, although thats getting closer to on the complexity and opaqueness spectrum towards nn.there is also no evidence of doing cross-validation, and in another comment they say they used entire data set to do variable selection - a pretty bad mistake. they justify by saying they aren't in an academic environment, but thats kind of a bad excuse, as given the way they've done it i'm very unsure whether they actually are getting the accuracy they think they are.i also worry that they sunk two man-months into this when they could probably have achieved similar if not better results with off-the-shelf and battled-tested tools. sets off a lot of warning bells. |
future smartphones won’t need cell towers to connect
| this would be fantastic for disaster situations if coupled with the right software. if the radios can speak on unlicenced spectrum, it'd open up even more possibilities. for example, you could have a "cellular" connection on all your devices, and not just your cell phone.see <link> for some of my ramblings along these same lines from earlier this year. | so something like "push to talk" is coming back to mobile phones. the more things change, the more they stay the same. oh, maybe push-to-talk has never gone away.[1] (it's not a feature offered by my cell phone carrier.)the article kindly submitted here with the interesting new news about phone-to-phone lte communication reports, "in theory, lte direct could be used to create communication apps that route all data from device to device. some chat apps can already use wi-fi and bluetooth to link up nearby phones, but lte direct could offer extended range and better performance. however, carriers will control which devices on their networks can use lte direct because it uses the same radio spectrum as conventional cellular links. wireless carriers might even gain a new stream of revenue by charging companies that want to offer services or apps using the technology, qualcomm says." as usual, the actual implementation of this service will be all about carrier policies and business agreements.[1] <link> |
future smartphones won’t need cell towers to connect
| so something like "push to talk" is coming back to mobile phones. the more things change, the more they stay the same. oh, maybe push-to-talk has never gone away.[1] (it's not a feature offered by my cell phone carrier.)the article kindly submitted here with the interesting new news about phone-to-phone lte communication reports, "in theory, lte direct could be used to create communication apps that route all data from device to device. some chat apps can already use wi-fi and bluetooth to link up nearby phones, but lte direct could offer extended range and better performance. however, carriers will control which devices on their networks can use lte direct because it uses the same radio spectrum as conventional cellular links. wireless carriers might even gain a new stream of revenue by charging companies that want to offer services or apps using the technology, qualcomm says." as usual, the actual implementation of this service will be all about carrier policies and business agreements.[1] <link> | with facebook working on mesh-networking we can be assured that it will be corrupted and heinous. i don't quite understand how the tech community could just simply capitulate freedom, liberty, and anonymity to a malevolent demon like facebook. |
future smartphones won’t need cell towers to connect
| with facebook working on mesh-networking we can be assured that it will be corrupted and heinous. i don't quite understand how the tech community could just simply capitulate freedom, liberty, and anonymity to a malevolent demon like facebook. | isn't this just a cellular mesh network? how does it compare to wifi mesh networking as far as range, security and usefulness? i'd like to see more of these decentralized alternatives to monopoly infrastructure providers, i'm just not sure how feasible they are. |
future smartphones won’t need cell towers to connect
| isn't this just a cellular mesh network? how does it compare to wifi mesh networking as far as range, security and usefulness? i'd like to see more of these decentralized alternatives to monopoly infrastructure providers, i'm just not sure how feasible they are. | i much prefer gan (wifi calling) (<link> to lte direct. lte runs on licensed spectrum, which means the licenseholder (the cell network) can squeeze you for as much money as they want. unlicensed spectrum is always cheaper, and you hardly need lte's range advantage for femtocells. why use licensed spectrum for short-range stuff?i also find it suspicious that this article emphasizes how much buy-in lte direct has from gigantic corporations, without making much of a case for why actual endusers would like it. a good clue is that there's no equivalent for wifi mac randomization (which ios 8 does by default) in lte direct: spoofing your imei is a federal crime. there's no way to avoid being tracked by lte direct femtocells, short of shutting off your phone and sticking it in a metal box. |
the sqlite database file format
| <link> the latest and greatest sqlite is sometimes 50% faster than 3.7.17 released in july of last year. impressive!i also love using sqlite for testing compiler optimization passes. their tcl test suite coverage is quite good. unfortunately, i think you have to splurge tens of thousands of dollars to get the c-based test suite. i believe you can only test full branch coverage with the c test suite. | is sqlite used as the internal database for some popular systems? |
the sqlite database file format
| is sqlite used as the internal database for some popular systems? | this is an odd, random thing to be on the front page. did any event in particular happen to make this come up? |
the sqlite database file format
| this is an odd, random thing to be on the front page. did any event in particular happen to make this come up? | also very interesting: <link> |
the sqlite database file format
| also very interesting: <link> | <link> |
the extraordinary california drought of 2013-2014
| the oakland museum's gallery of california natural sciences has some great installations highlighting california's water management and usage. i was taken aback by how much of california's total rainfall is captured and diverted for human consumption. it's well worth a visit to learn about all the infrastructure california already has for managing water and coping with draught, and how severe this draught must be to overcome those safeguards. | that is kind of disconcerting here is that there are clear winners in the drought - people who have water rights and who sell these rights at record prices as it is just much more profitable to sell the rights than to put that water to productive use. i wouldn't be surprised if these people haven't had any effect on the state water politics.on the other side, once price gets high enough, some enterprising folks will charter some big tugboats and start towing icebergs to ca :) |
the extraordinary california drought of 2013-2014
| that is kind of disconcerting here is that there are clear winners in the drought - people who have water rights and who sell these rights at record prices as it is just much more profitable to sell the rights than to put that water to productive use. i wouldn't be surprised if these people haven't had any effect on the state water politics.on the other side, once price gets high enough, some enterprising folks will charter some big tugboats and start towing icebergs to ca :) | what i don't understand is how we have gotten to the point where we are living paycheck to paycheck in terms of water consumption. we know that it varies from year to year... why don't we have some sort of cushion with which to plan ahead? |
the extraordinary california drought of 2013-2014
| what i don't understand is how we have gotten to the point where we are living paycheck to paycheck in terms of water consumption. we know that it varies from year to year... why don't we have some sort of cushion with which to plan ahead? | anyone interested in managing water should read the book living with water scarcity (free pdf here <link> |
the extraordinary california drought of 2013-2014
| anyone interested in managing water should read the book living with water scarcity (free pdf here <link> | just a few days ago some hn commenters were saying it's perfectly fine to waste food in america because, hey, you can't really know how much food you'll really need while buying it. someone ought to correlate what is the environmental impact on california from wasting 35 million tonnes of food annually. |
os x bash update 1.0
| also for 10.8: <link> for 10.7: <link> further information from the announcement is available here: <link> | with the update installed: $ curl -s <link> | bash
not vulnerable to cve-2014-6271 (original shellshock)
not vulnerable to cve-2014-7169 (taviso bug)
bash: line 18: 14885 segmentation fault: 11 bash -c "true $(printf '<<eof %.0s' {1..79})" 2> /dev/null
vulnerable to cve-2014-7186 (redir_stack bug)
test for cve-2014-7187 not reliable without address sanitizer
variable function parser inactive, likely safe from unknown parser bugs |
os x bash update 1.0
| with the update installed: $ curl -s <link> | bash
not vulnerable to cve-2014-6271 (original shellshock)
not vulnerable to cve-2014-7169 (taviso bug)
bash: line 18: 14885 segmentation fault: 11 bash -c "true $(printf '<<eof %.0s' {1..79})" 2> /dev/null
vulnerable to cve-2014-7186 (redir_stack bug)
test for cve-2014-7187 not reliable without address sanitizer
variable function parser inactive, likely safe from unknown parser bugs | do note:this addresses cve-2014-6271 and cve-2014-7169 only. there are currently 6 cves listed on the wikipedia page (not sure which are accurate): <link> protection is better than none and i'm glad to see apple rapidly responding. but this doesn't fix all the issues known to exist currently. |
os x bash update 1.0
| do note:this addresses cve-2014-6271 and cve-2014-7169 only. there are currently 6 cves listed on the wikipedia page (not sure which are accurate): <link> protection is better than none and i'm glad to see apple rapidly responding. but this doesn't fix all the issues known to exist currently. | just a heads up this page and the url download are over http, the https pages are totally broken.
<link> |
os x bash update 1.0
| just a heads up this page and the url download are over http, the https pages are totally broken.
<link> | is there a reason why this is not coming via the regular software update? i don't think a lot of people are watching apple's support pages for updates. |
eskimo – node boilerplate framework for rapid mvps
| i've iterated twice on these kinds of projects. first was drywall and the latest is frame. drywall includes a front-end and frame is just an api. finding a happy medium of features is tricky. some choices limit your audience quite a bit.drywall [<link>]
drywall is limited to people who're ok using grunt instead of gulp or backbone instead of _______, etc...frame [<link>]
i created frame to appeal to a larger audience. and because all the front-end opinions were removed it plays nicer since you "bring your own front-end". interestingly enough, now i'd like to provide postgres as well as mongo db connections.in general these projects are interesting and i think serve best as examples of apps beyond the absolute basics. once you make an app yours, it'll probably go in it's own direction quickly. | link: http://eskimo.ioquestions?email: [email protected]
github: <link>
gitter: <link> |
eskimo – node boilerplate framework for rapid mvps
| link: http://eskimo.ioquestions?email: [email protected]
github: <link>
gitter: <link> | free stickers @ <link> |
eskimo – node boilerplate framework for rapid mvps
| free stickers @ <link> | i do give some props for productivity and sharing a solution with the community (rather than just bitching about other peoples' solutions).this looks pretty well-put-together to get a project started quickly, though my personal preferences might have been sass/foundation. to me those are small nitpicks in the scheme of things, and you're never going to be able to please everyone with your choices for defaults :dthe checkmark tables get under my skin a bit since they're mostly a specific set of dependencies (which of course your framework 'aces') rather than a comparison of actual features (in fairness, asset pipeline/di i'd consider features).anyway, this is neat and looks worth some exposure. keep on hacking! |
eskimo – node boilerplate framework for rapid mvps
| i do give some props for productivity and sharing a solution with the community (rather than just bitching about other peoples' solutions).this looks pretty well-put-together to get a project started quickly, though my personal preferences might have been sass/foundation. to me those are small nitpicks in the scheme of things, and you're never going to be able to please everyone with your choices for defaults :dthe checkmark tables get under my skin a bit since they're mostly a specific set of dependencies (which of course your framework 'aces') rather than a comparison of actual features (in fairness, asset pipeline/di i'd consider features).anyway, this is neat and looks worth some exposure. keep on hacking! | that title looks like something you'd see in a hn parody.serious question though: why "rapid mvp" instead of just "mvp"? i thought the whole point of an mvp was that it required less time and effort - the rapid seems redundant to me. am i missing something? |
apple boycotts german newspaper after bentgate video – open letter to tim cook
| am i only one who find these videos moronic ? i mean, ofcourse it bends under what appears to be lot of pressure. my take is you shouldn't be affected if you don't wear too tight a jeans to make it bend. | so my wife and i went into an apple store yesterday and tried to bend a 6+. using a level of pressure no more than what i'd be willing to use for my own nexus 5, i couldn't even get it to flex. the bigger issue is that it seems designed to fly out of your hand, between the rounded sides and slick aluminum. |
apple boycotts german newspaper after bentgate video – open letter to tim cook
| so my wife and i went into an apple store yesterday and tried to bend a 6+. using a level of pressure no more than what i'd be willing to use for my own nexus 5, i couldn't even get it to flex. the bigger issue is that it seems designed to fly out of your hand, between the rounded sides and slick aluminum. | for those who aren't german and may not know computerbild or it's publisher. they have about as low a reputation as you can get, so low in fact that sometimes this seems to be the entire goal of what they are doing.everything they claim should be taken with a huge grain of salt, in fact one should probably assume their claims to be false until proven otherwise. |
apple boycotts german newspaper after bentgate video – open letter to tim cook
| for those who aren't german and may not know computerbild or it's publisher. they have about as low a reputation as you can get, so low in fact that sometimes this seems to be the entire goal of what they are doing.everything they claim should be taken with a huge grain of salt, in fact one should probably assume their claims to be false until proven otherwise. | > just to prove that what happens is nothing but the truth.no, it isn't, except in the most myopic and unhelpful way possible. it would be the truth to measure how much force is required and compare it to other phones on the market. it would be the truth to show that almost all phones bend when exposed to that kind of force.it is not "the truth" to show a selective amount of the truth that allows people to keep believing a lie in order to sell papers, and i find it hard to sympathise with fake journalists losing privileges only afforded to legitimate members of the press. |
apple boycotts german newspaper after bentgate video – open letter to tim cook
| > just to prove that what happens is nothing but the truth.no, it isn't, except in the most myopic and unhelpful way possible. it would be the truth to measure how much force is required and compare it to other phones on the market. it would be the truth to show that almost all phones bend when exposed to that kind of force.it is not "the truth" to show a selective amount of the truth that allows people to keep believing a lie in order to sell papers, and i find it hard to sympathise with fake journalists losing privileges only afforded to legitimate members of the press. | as an aside, the video that really demonstrates how easily iphone 6+ can bend is this one: <link> to have been bent with considerably small effort, and very quickly. |
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