Obama's Trauma Team: Inside the Nightmare Launch of HealthCare.Gov - Realskeptic
http://content.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2166770,00.html
======
brandonb
I've been working on healthcare.gov for the last few months alongside a bunch
of other Google, Facebook, and Y Combinator alums.

I'll always remember what Mikey told us in December, after the site was back
up, could handle a non-trivial amount of traffic, and people who wanted health
insurance could finally get it:

"1 in 1000 uninsured people die each year. It's not an exaggeration to say
that due to the work we're doing here, 5,000-10,000 people will live to see
the end of 2014. You should be proud of what you've done, but we should also
all be grateful to have this opportunity."

We're all grateful to be here, but there's a hell of a lot more work to be
done.

If any of you out there are an amazing software engineer or SRE, and want to
help make our government work better, please shoot me an email:
brandon@hcgov.us!

~~~
wooter
"1 in 1000 uninsured people die each year. It's not an exaggeration to say
that due to the work we're doing here, 5,000-10,000 people will live to see
the end of 2014. You should be proud of what you've done, but we should also
all be grateful to have this opportunity."

Hospitals don't let uninsured people die and insuring people doesn't magically
save their lives.

~~~
Crito
Hospitals do "let" uninsured people die because they are not obligated to
provide the full extent of their care capabilities to people who cannot afford
it. Come in with a hole in your abdomen, and for sure they'll patch you up
even if you don't have insurance. Come in riddled with cancer? Don't expect
the same as they would give somebody who could pay themselves or had
insurance.

This said, it is still a shoddy use of statistics. _" 1 in 1000 uninsured
people die each year"_ by itself tells us pretty much nothing. What is the
rate of death for insured people?

Wikipedia tells me that _8.39_ in 1000 people die in America every year, so if
uninsured people are only dying at a rate of _1_ in 1000 every year, it seems
to me that either it is beneficial to be uninsured, or uninsured people are
not representative of the population (perhaps because many of them are young
and healthy?).

I _suspect_ that what is going on is this person actually meant to say
something along the lines of _" 1 in 1000 people die every year in ways that
could have been prevented if they had insurance"_ A subtle but important
difference. The actual mortality rate of uninsured people is most likely much
higher than 1 in 1000, but the deaths of uninsured people in motorcycle
accidents would not be counted in that _" 1 in 1000"_ figure.

Either way, it is shoddy.

~~~
twistedpair
> Come in riddled with cancer? Don't expect the same as they would give
> somebody who could pay themselves or had insurance.

Ah, yes, the classic American healthcare problem. The poor person just gets to
go to hospice and keel over. The rich person gets to limp along, endure 3
rounds of chemo, and spend the few remaining months of her life hooked up to
machines in what is arguably a Pyrrhic victory and even lower quality of life.

~~~
Crito
You know that many people actually survive cancer and go on to live otherwise
regular lives, right?

------
pella
Dickerson rules:

 _" Rule 1: "The war room and the meetings are for solving problems. There are
plenty of other venues where people devote their creative energies to shifting
blame."

Rule 2: "The ones who should be doing the talking are the people who know the
most about an issue, not the ones with the highest rank. If anyone finds
themselves sitting passively while managers and executives talk over them with
less accurate information, we have gone off the rails, and I would like to
know about it." (Explained Dickerson later: "If you can get the managers out
of the way, the engineers will want to solve things.")

Rule 3: "We need to stay focused on the most urgent issues, like things that
will hurt us in the next 24--48 hours." "_

~~~
baseten
Rule #1: Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the war room!

~~~
lutusp
I wonder how many readers will recognize this famous quotation and its source.

(long pause ...)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove)

~~~
sehr
A lot, I hope! Strangelove is pretty well known for the most part across the
internet. Fantastic movie

~~~
saraid216
I watched it. I wasn't blown away. I don't remember it with enough detail to
recognize random quotations.

~~~
lutusp
> I watched it. I wasn't blown away.

Like many films, it hasn't aged very well. It relies on the atmosphere that
existed at the height of the Cold War, and a certain atmosphere of darkness
and paranoia that's less popular as a plot device in modern times. Also, for a
modern audience it would have required better special effects, using methods
that didn't exist at the time.

------
pdeuchler
>> "It is also a story of an Obama Administration obsessed with health care
reform policy but above the nitty-gritty of implementing it. No one in the
White House meetings leading up to the launch had any idea whether the
technology worked."

I used to be this guy. The guy with the lofty ideas, but who thought the
implementation was "beneath me". The guy who would sit around, waxing poetic
about various features, user acquisition, header alignment, etc. Don't get me
wrong I had serious technical chops, but fixing that annoying localization
bug? Blegh. Form encoding off? Don't wanna get my hands dirty. I had "big
ideas"! I was going to change the world! People who change the world don't do
the dirty work! So I'm very empathetic to the Obama Administration.

Like them, I needed a real wake up call. In my case, a friend who had
implemented an idea I had sold the software for a lot of money. When I
confronted him about sharing the profits he started running git blame on files
across the project. My name came up maybe once or twice, across a multi-k LOC
project, and even then on nearly inconsequential lines. It hit me then that
while ideas may have value, the implementation usurps all of it. An idea alone
is powerful, but once it's implemented the idea becomes worthless. At that
point it's all about rolling up your sleeves and _getting shit done_. When you
focus on that problems like an "ID generator" becoming a bottleneck (I had to
read that bit several times over... apparently I need to start raising my
rates to the hundreds of millions) disappear. It's a hard lesson I had to
learn, and it's one the Obama administration has hopefully learned as well. Of
course, I had just turned 17 when I learned my lesson, and Obama is now a lame
duck with less than 2 years left on his final term. I guess this exemplifies
my greatest struggle with the Obama legacy, in that it has become one defined
by squandered potential.

~~~
JonFish85
>It hit me then that while ideas may have value, the implementation usurps all
of it. An idea alone is powerful, but once it's implemented the idea becomes
worthless.

You need both. Implementation people aren't all that useful without a vision.
A vision isn't all that useful without implementation. It's a symbiotic
relationship.

Steve Jobs without a Steve Wozniak probably wouldn't have been as successful.
Steve Wozniak, without Steve Jobs, probably wouldn't have been as successful.
But the two put together made some great things happen.

Same with the moon landing. As much as it took a tremendous engineering effort
to put a man on the moon, it took someone with the vision and power to make it
all work. JFK didn't get involved in the details, I'm sure, but he really
helped to set the tone of the whole effort.

There's a fine line between looking at implementation as "beneath" your
position and knowing when you're being more of a hindrance than a help. In my
experience, nothing has driven me more crazy than a person above me who, while
being a great project manager or whatever, tries to get involved with things
that end up hindering the effort. If you take a weekend course on programming
in Java, that's great! But don't start giving out "helpful" tips in something
that is not your domain.

~~~
saraid216
> You need both. Implementation people aren't all that useful without a
> vision. A vision isn't all that useful without implementation. It's a
> symbiotic relationship.

37signals' take on this was the best one I've seen (paraphrased):

Ideas are a multiplier. If your execution is good, a good idea will multiply
that. If your execution is minimal, a good idea will scrape by. If your
execution is abyssal, a good idea will make it _worse_.

I'd link the actual page in the book, but I have always had trouble finding
it.

~~~
alexhaar
Derek Sivers talks about this idea as well:
[http://sivers.org/multiply](http://sivers.org/multiply)

~~~
saraid216
Actually, that's _exactly_ what I remember. I think I have been misattributing
it this entire time.

Damn it. Thanks. :P

------
nimz
HealthCare.gov is definitely NOT fixed or "revived" yet. I was trying to
register for healthcare for the Feb 15th deadline and there were errors after
errors. At the end, after hours of trying and waiting on hold for the tech
help-line, I was not able to register at all and missed the deadline. The
help-line's answer was, we are still working out the kinks, please print out
the PDF and fill it out manually. It's still a disaster-show.

~~~
brandonb
Yep, in spite of the progress made since October (when the site was entirely
down for days at a time), there are absolutely still problems.

I also see you're a YC alum! If you're interested in helping out, or just to
provide an error report on the problem you encountered, email me at
brandon@hcgov.us.

~~~
argumentum
Do you have any involvement with the individual State websites? I've had _so
many_ technical problems registering in California.

~~~
brandonb
Unfortunately not. :( I'm a California resident -- although living temporarily
in Maryland for the project -- and have gotten the same reports of technical
problems.

To give some background, 36 states use the federal marketplace, and 14 built
their own. Covered California is run by the state of California, with an
independent contracting company, codebase, set of servers, etc.

We do have some ideas about how to improve that situation over the long term,
but those will take time to bear fruit.

------
jobu
Wow! They weren't even caching database calls:

 _HealthCare.gov had been constructed so that every time a user had to get
information from the website 's vast database, the website had to make what's
called a query into that database. Well-constructed, high-volume sites,
especially e-commerce sites, will instead store or assemble the most
frequently accessed information in a layer above the entire database, called a
cache._

It also struck me as a little funny that Time had to define the term 'cache'.
Even my mom (74 years old) has some idea what a cache is (browser cache).

~~~
dragontamer
[http://tucsoncitizen.com/morgue/2009/05/07/115945-mexico-
s-w...](http://tucsoncitizen.com/morgue/2009/05/07/115945-mexico-s-weapons-
cache-stymies-tracing/)

Depends on what industry you work in. A Cache may look more like a giant pile
of weapons as opposed to some memory in a computer.

~~~
saraid216
Eh, it's not industry-dependent so much as industries have specific
reductions. A cache is long-term storage. The weapons industry would expect it
to be filled with weapons, and maybe some body armor. A scouting party would
expect tools for equipment repair, rations, and maybe some minor comfort gear.
A computer scientist would expect it to be full of bytes.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache)

[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cache&allowed_in_fr...](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cache&allowed_in_frame=0)

------
edabobojr
One question I have - were the high-tech wizards paid standard gsa rates?

[https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/ref_text/GS35F5457H/0LUS2P.2NVK...](https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/ref_text/GS35F5457H/0LUS2P.2NVKCH_GS-35F-5457H_GS35F5457HGPLOY.PDF)

Page 25. Top developer rate for 2014 is $99/hr which requires 10 years of
experience.

~~~
mikeash
Would explain a lot if so. Any developer you can get for that rate who has
been working for 10 years likely does not have 10 years of experience, but 1
year of experience repeated 10 times.

~~~
qdog
40x99x50=~$200k/year. That doesn't seem unreasonable compensation, what am I
missing?

~~~
diminoten
That $99 goes to the contractor, not the employee. There's a _ton_ of overhead
and profiting that comes out of that $99. I won't even hazard a guess at how
much of that $99 actually makes it to the guy or gal's pocket.

That said, it's not a bad living wage. I suspect below industry standard
though, is what these folks are saying.

~~~
qdog
Ah, I thought it was a direct contract with the government, not a contracted
person from an agency, my mistake.

Of course, I guess I should have assumed that, there aren't many direct
government jobs for this type of thing anymore, it seems.

~~~
mikeash
Yep, the government contracts out to a gigantic company who then "hires" you
and has you work on the thing, and takes half the money in exchange for doing
not a whole lot. It's a sad system.

------
Glide
_But one lesson of the fall and rise of HealthCare.gov has to be that the
practice of awarding high-tech, high-stakes contracts to companies whose
primary skill seems to be getting those contracts rather than delivering on
them has to change._

If this happens the entire contracting landscape of DC would change
dramatically.

------
jfc
> _the people running HealthCare.gov had no "dashboard," no quick way for
> engineers to measure what was going on at the website_

Someone needs to disrupt the government contracts business pronto.

~~~
smacktoward
These folks are trying: [http://www.dobt.co/](http://www.dobt.co/)

It's an incredibly difficult thing to do, though. Procurement practices that
are _enshrined in law_ are much harder to disrupt than those that are just bad
habits that ossified over time.

~~~
saraid216
There are ways to deal with things that are enshrined in law. Building a
corporation is unlikely to be the right way to do it.

------
MrZongle2
"Revived" is probably the right term to use.

A clinically-dead patient can be revived, but the condition they're in is
_far_ from OK.

------
dannyr
I heard that several people from YC startups and Google are helping out. This
is one of the reasons why we're seeing a lot of improvements to the Federal
Exchange site.

~~~
aristus
A friend of mine, from Facebook's networking team, also spent a month there.
He came back with a thousand-yard stare.

~~~
laz
The environment takes a toll on everyone, some more than others. The things
I've seen ... you cannot un-see ;)

------
rjzzleep
think about it this way. you have a bunch of technically unsavvy people,
because they have been working in government contracts forever. now you come
along, and say hey i could build this for you for much less money, and much
better.

how in the heavens would he know that you can deliver? you'll choose the one
you'll know at least. and since he has documents to back him up(mcse, mcsa, he
might have worked for microsoft for a while). he's the obvious choice.

i worked for the government in healthcare for a while. these are not
intentionally malicious people. hell, they even want to make it better, but
it's a combination of regulation(bidding system that favors friends), lack of
knowledge, and a little bit of ignorance.

but if you want more details feel free to ask. it was kind of fun to see a
corruption case close up.

------
gopi
Reading this strengthened my belief in the limited government

~~~
pjscott
Anything too big to fail is scary. What if it fails?

------
pikewood
"...government regulations did not allow them, even though they offered, to be
volunteers if they worked for any sustained period. So they were put on the
payroll of contractor QSSI as hourly workers, making what Dickerson says was
"a fraction" of his Google pay"

This information troubles me, because QSSI was just hired to fix Maryland's
broken Health Exchange site. It sounds like the company is cashing in on the
donation of brandonb and others experts' time?

brandonb, is your team involved with the Maryland efforts, or is that a
completely separate team?

~~~
brandonb
Unfortunately, each of the 14 states that made their own exchange used a
separate team with a separate codebase.

To be clear, it's not like QSSI or anybody else is ripping us off. We're all
getting paid the standard contracting rate. But many of us probably would've
worked for free if they had let us.

------
mgkimsal
I have a hard time believing that no one anywhere on the original teams
understood that caching database calls was good/standard practice. I think
even basic examples like that point out the lack of management problem. I can
easily envision someone on the team bringing up basic data caching and getting
overruled by other people on the team for trivial/stupid/political reasons.
With no proper or clear management in place, there's no one to take this stuff
to.

~~~
shpiel
What type of database did they use? What type of caching would be desirable?
Most modern RDBSes, like Postgre, Oracle, or Microsoft SQL server, have
internal LRU caching already implemented. InnoDB tries to store everything in
memory.

I wonder if they meant that the default caching was turned off, or that all
the queries had "no cache" clauses, or that an additional caching layer
(Redis, Memcached) was not implemented?

~~~
watwut
They used markLogic NoSQL store
[http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/12/03/healthcare-govs-heart-
be...](http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/12/03/healthcare-govs-heart-beats-for-
nosql/)

Just for the record, contractor did not wanted to use it and argued the team
have no experience with it. Someone in government decided it must be done that
way (in spring or summer).

~~~
hga
Yeah, a database with an unfamiliar paradigm in a project with late and
constantly changing requirements, a major one of "no window shopping" in
August, and others _through the week before launch_ , is an obvious recipe for
an extra big disaster.

Some people have theorized that Accenture's new role is to quietly replace
much of the current code base with their not quite so horrible California
exchange code.

------
puppetmaster3
Hmm. OK, here:

#1: Understand the customer!

In this case it's
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Ignagni](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Ignagni)
(They lobbied a congressman from Chicago w/ donations to elect, and Republican
side is pissed their side did not get more.) In EU, it tends to be written for
the people, but in USA, it's the lobbyists as customers.

#2: You can't fix political problems with software!

For example we can make the problem 10 times less by allowing each state to
manager Healthcare and compete for residents. Like Massachusetts. It's a fools
errand. But you can milk the feds if you bribe the right official.

#3. You won't find good and un-employed engineers!

Not in SV anyway. _A_ \- type engineers are ~ $240K and up. Y-combinator is
mostly n00b growth hackers, not expereinced coders. Plus the rumor is that you
have to be loyal to the party of New Democrats as the main req, not software
systems.

#4. I heard it's written in .NET and Oracle Access Manager.

A requirement? That's not what google plus, facebook or iTunes use or such
use. I don't want to code w/ those people that use that stack ( but I would
have a great time w/ them after 5pm, they tend to be nice people ).

Kalvin and Brandon: The most patriotic thing to do is to not try and catch a
falling knife so that each state can have a system they own - and we can move
to a state that has a good one. Party greetings to you.

------
akoumjian
I am still frequently getting errors when trying to sign up. Every few days I
get a little further in the process, only to get a random 500 when performing
some next operation.

------
PhasmaFelis
I'd really like to see a proper postmortem of the launch problems. Read about
how it got fixed is nice, but I want a detailed account of how such an
important project with the direct attention of the U.S. President managed to
get fucked so absolutely.

------
tunesmith
It's a great article, but this last line drives me crazy: "But in the end [the
President] was as aloof from the people and facts he needed to avoid this
catastrophe as he was from the people who ended up fixing it." It sounded to
me more like he was trusting people whose job it was to deliver. So his
failure to micromanage is somehow being "aloof". Never pass up an opportunity
to reinforce a media meme, I guess.

~~~
twoodfin
This was the signature accomplishment of his first term and a substantial part
of his legacy as President. He was out on the hustings making speech after
speech about how buying health insurance on the exchange was going to be as
easy as shopping for a plane ticket on Expedia.

It would not have been "micromanaging" for him to have done what was necessary
to be sure that what he was saying matched up with reality. Yes, it was a
giant IT project of the sort governments usually suck at. But that was the
bill he got passed and signed. If his administration wasn't capable of leading
that project to successful, timely completion, he has to shoulder much of the
blame.

------
n0rb3rt
[http://www.civisanalytics.com/pages/civis-
uninsured](http://www.civisanalytics.com/pages/civis-uninsured)

------
mephi5t0
Question: did anyone got fired in Washington for blowing through 300 mln and
delivering jack shit? Why if you get hired in a company and preform poorly or
just because of the budget cuts - you get laid off and end of story. If they
have budget problem in DC and politicians doesn't do what they were supposed
to, they get to keep a job and tell more lies...

------
chocosoes
this may sound stupid but i'm just wondering why the article is dated in the
future (Mar 10, 2014)? we're on even on March 3 yet, and yet its there
[http://search.time.com/results.html?N=46&Ns=p_date_range|1](http://search.time.com/results.html?N=46&Ns=p_date_range|1)

I'm not a regular time magazine reader, am I missing something here?

~~~
Mvandenbergh
Magazine articles are usually dated to the print edition they appear in.

------
warrenmiller
Does that article say 'Monday, Mar. 10, 2014' for anyone else?

------
grumps
What's up with the date on this article `Monday, Mar. 10, 2014`

~~~
NSAID
That's most likely the date of the print edition this article will appear in.

~~~
grumps
Ahh I started thinking that...but at first I was just wondering if I was
really confused on the current date.

------
uncre4tive
How come the headline is dated in the future, March 10th 2014?

~~~
Phlarp
This article is likely set to "officially" release in the March edition of
Time.

Just a fragment of old media leaking onto the internet.

~~~
SilasX
Falsehoods programmers believe about time #80: "Created" dates will all be in
the past.

[http://infiniteundo.com/post/25509354022/more-falsehoods-
pro...](http://infiniteundo.com/post/25509354022/more-falsehoods-programmers-
believe-about-time-wisdom)

------
futurist
Correlation, causation, blah blah blah. There are people who pocketed a lot of
taxpayer money creating the healthcare.gov failboat, and no one is being held
accountable. That's my takeaway from the article.

------
probablyfiction
This link takes you to page 10. Annoying.

~~~
j_s
[http://content.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2166770,00.html](http://content.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2166770,00.html)

------
api
Wizards? It's an e-commerce web site. This is baby stuff, even at scale.

~~~
smokinjoe
PCI Compliance can be a nightmare.

I don't even want to imagine HIPAA compliance for something of this magnitude.

~~~
erichocean
It's not HIPPA compliant. Really, did you think the government follows its own
rules? Get real.

~~~
smokinjoe
I guess you can call me naive.

..and slightly ignorant regarding this HIPAA kerfuffle that popped up. I did
some quick [hilarious] research that resulted in an issue where commented copy
was being used as an indicator that there was to be no sense of privacy on the
website.

source: [http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2013/oct/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2013/oct/29/joe-barton/healthcaregov-users-waive-any-
reasonable-right-pri/)

I'm not entirely sure that's what you're referencing or whether you're just
bein' a smart aleck, but I had some fun reading up on the story. I also
learned that the website healthcare.gov doesn't necessarily need as much HIPAA
compliance as I had initially anticipated. To enroll, the only 'medical' type
data you need to include is whether you are a smoker or not - I thought there
would be much more sensitive information right off the bat.

------
goggles99
> _How an unlikely group of high-tech wizards revived Obama 's troubled
> HealthCare.gov website_

How? With another 14 million dollars... that is how. You can do a lot of
things with 14 million dollars, this is not especially true when you are
talking about the govt spending this kind of money, but still - it is not
pocket change to the average company.

[http://www.nextgov.com/cloud-computing/2014/02/cost-
obamacar...](http://www.nextgov.com/cloud-computing/2014/02/cost-obamacare-
contract-has-least-quintupled/79202/?oref=ng-HPtopstory)

------
SpikeDad
Title = No view. It's not "Obama's" website. It's the Federal Government's
website. Or the Dept of Health's Website or, etc, etc, etc.

Using Obama for link bait means your article gets no reads from me.

~~~
GhostHardware
That's how the article is titled on Time's website "Obama's Trauma Team"


Ask HN: What are some gift ideas from an alumni to a professor? - neoplatonian
Having graduated from university a few years ago, I feel like visiting all my professors who influenced me for the better, and I'd feel awkward if I go empty-handed.
======
xnyan
Just the fact that you are coming back is very nice and uncommon.

Unless you are trying to influence/bribe someone or you are from a culture of
expensive gifts, gifts between professional friends are tokens of goodwill. A
card or letter are both good, maybe some other small trinket but honestly a
card is worth far more to me than some $20 pen in a gift box.


Traditional C "Hello World" working in NaCl - ginsweater
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/native-client-discuss/lT5bsW1ZlKQ/WsXJ5y_2s54J

======
calpaterson
As a side note, why is it that I have to sign in to Google in order to be able
to see this? Is registration /really/ necessary for Google Groups?

~~~
rnadna
You are right. It's very annoying. It's even worse than having links that are
behind a paywall, because at least a paywall usually indicates that funds are
flowing to the person (reporter, etc.) who created the content. The google
groups situation is quite different, and quite annoying. I _never_ login to
google groups to see something listed on HN. I wonder whether HN could provide
an option to let readers avoid such items, by removing them from the listing
or flagging them?

~~~
dangrossman
You are only being asked for a password because you're (partially) logged in
to a Google Account already. Either log out, or open Google Groups links with
"open in incognito window" if you use Chrome.

------
raverbashing
Can someone please explain to me why running native code coming from a web
site is a good idea?

Because I see this as "Google's ActiveX"

~~~
cantankerous
Read the paper. It's a subset of x86 that retains better security properties
for distribution.

[http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/native_client/data/docs_tarba...](http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/native_client/data/docs_tarball/nacl/googleclient/native_client/documentation/nacl_paper.pdf)

~~~
raverbashing
Very interesting. The security features are very thorough.

Of course, until someone finds a vulnerability, or a way through the
validator, or an exploit on an abstracted function.

Still, it's a good security model

~~~
willvarfar
The good news is its being very actively pro-actively fuzzed and fixed.

Worth looking at too: zeroVM <http://zerovm.org/>

------
toemetoch
I'm a fan of fast native code, but I worry that this promotes sneaky code in
the background once it gets widely adopted.

With javascript we basically have open-source web apps. I often skim through
js source to learn new tricks - and obfuscation doesn't really stop me (apart
from google's java-translated js) . With compiled NaCl I probably wouldn't be
able to find out a lot.

I'm not talking about "stealing user data" when I say sneaky code. No, with
compiled native code a whole new game is started: computational-intensive
code. It wouldn't be that difficult to include code that gets a job to work on
for a few minutes: breaking captchas, brute-forcing passwords, anything that
shift computational effort from a server to a client.

~~~
Drakim
I would assume the NaCl apps won't run by default. Maybe you get that "click
to activate" thing that firefox is implementing for Flash and Java

~~~
toemetoch
It doesn't run by default. But remember it's Google who's pushing this, and
their browser has momentum. I'd guess it's just a matter of time before they
run it by default. They already cashed out for security bounties for NaCl in
the past[1] and seem to have increased resources recently[2] since it's quite
a lucrative market for gaming.

[1] [https://developers.google.com/native-
client/community/securi...](https://developers.google.com/native-
client/community/security-contest/faq) [2]
m.yahoo.com/w/legobpengine/news/google-bringing-high-end-gaming-chrome-via-
native-054102268.html

------
arkitaip
I wonder when we will see the first obfuscated C for NaCI code contest.

~~~
spicyj
Just a note, it's NaCl, spelled NACL, as in the molecule "sodium chloride"
(and the abbreviation of the name "Native Client").

------
rollypolly
I wonder how it handles a bogus printf format string.

~~~
loeg
The same way the underlying printf implementation does? This isn't wrapping
printf(3), just the underlying write(2).

Are you trying to ask if it catches, e.g., format string vulnerabilities? I
think the answer to that is: Native Client's aim is to be a safe x86 VM, so —
hopefully. But to me personally, it seems unlikely that they've thought of
everything.

~~~
caf
The important part of the design - the bit that makes it achievable - is that
it's _not_ a general x86 VM. It only accepts a limited subset of valid x86
object code, a subset chosen to make validation a tractable problem. This
requires a modified compiler be used.

The unlikelihood that the original design was perfect is probably why they had
the "Native Client Security Contest" a few years ago - and indeed independent
researchers found several flaws. Personally, I'm a lot happier with it now
that they've fixed everything that Mark Dowd could find wrong with it ;)


United will offer up to $10,000 to bumped passengers - smaili
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-united-airlines-dragged-passenger-bumping-changes-0427-biz-20170426-story.html
======
mariuolo
Keyword being "up to".


After 7 years of blogging in German, I am switching to English. Here is why - imartin2k
http://meshedsociety.com/fighting-the-language-fragmentation/
======
a_bonobo
I used to blog in German for a relatively large German portal and stopped
because I couldn't stand the commenting behaviour by Germans - where in
US/English sites you get 50% joking, 49% niceness, and 1% insight in German
you get > 80% nitpicking and complaining, especially hard when we played
around and experimented with (un)gendered nouns in German. Killed all the fun
for me, Germans are strange.

~~~
Svip
> where in US/English sites you get 50% joking, 49% niceness, and 1% insight

Please show me this alternate internet!

~~~
stdbrouw
I think we're talking about professional blogs and niche content in
particular, not news sites or Reddit.

I've also noticed that Americans are generally more encouraging of new ideas,
even if they're not fully thought out and a bit wacky, whereas when I used to
write similar stuff in Dutch, I always got a collective "meh". Part of it is
just the fact that more readers almost automatically equals more encouragement
and sharing, but I can't help but think culture has something to do with it
too.

Of course, Germanic nitpicking can have its benefits too: there's not as much
irrational exuberance about everything that's new.

~~~
mercer
A _very_ common cause of conflict in multi-cultural groups that I've been part
of, professional or otherwise, has been the German and Dutch tendency to nit-
pick and the particularly Dutch tendency to give advice and criticism whether
it's asked for or not. I think there's definitely a cultural component to it.

~~~
Mithaldu
As a german and a programmer, i have to say: You call us nitpicky. We see
people as inattentive and lacking courtesy to the world around them due to all
the mistakes they let themselves make. It's absolutely cultural. Americans
need praise or they won't be able to feel good about what they're doing, but
they fear criticism because they feel it devalues them. Germans of a certain
education level are mostly neutral to praise, because it just confirms that
they did the work right; and value criticism because it helps them.

When you see a german being nitpicky, chances are they're either genuinely
trying to help, or think the person they're sending the message to was
impolite to the rest of humanity in their lack of care.

\----

Edit: Thanks for the downvote. Really setting an example of the cultural
differences here.* :)

* And yes, this is me being truly grateful. I'm not being sarcastic. (This is me being sarcastic: I love how i need to point this out when talking to english people.)

~~~
mercer
Just to be clear, I did not mean 'nitpicky' as an insult, in the same way I
don't (always) consider the Dutch tendency to speak our minds even when not
asked a bad thing. One of the reasons I like living in different cultures is
that they show me different ways to do thing, and I've come to greatly
appreciate many of the more 'typical' German things.

------
imartin2k
The fact that the site immediately goes down after it hits HN frontpage of
course is a bit embarrassing. Sorry, and thanks checking it out. (here is the
feed URL in case you wanna subscribe
[http://www.meshedsociety.com/feed](http://www.meshedsociety.com/feed)).

~~~
marcelweiss
You should install a cache plugin. :)

~~~
imartin2k
Yep thanks I did that yesterday after my hoster recommended that.

------
daliusd
Cached version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:j74EbmG...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:j74EbmG9pCIJ:meshedsociety.com/fighting-
the-language-fragmentation/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=lt)

------
mantis369
Despite English being my native language, I am sorry that it won. There is a
lot of ambiguity in it, whether you are writing on technical matters or not.

And what is with this scourge of position:fixed headers lately? I like to
scroll with the space bar or page-down button, and the header always slightly
overlaps the top of the new page, preventing me from reading a couple of
lines.

~~~
philh
Are other human languages significantly less ambiguous than English? (Conlangs
like lojban, sure, but anything used by more than a handful of people?)
Genuine question, I haven't studied any other languages since I was sixteen.

Fully agree about position:fixed. For long articles I often remove them in the
DOM editor. I wish browsers would change page-down distance when there's a
fixed header, but I recognize that this is a tricky problem that would have
horrible edge cases.

~~~
scrollaway
I speak seven languages. It's easy to see why English got so popular so fast.
It is an extremely simple language compared to others and even though it is
ambiguous in certain cases, most languages have ambiguity here and there.

Talented English speakers can at least get rid of most ambiguity by
themselves, which is something a lot of other languages don't have.

My actual favourite language so far is Swedish. Is it much more raw than
English, has less overall ambiguity and has a beautiful ring to it. It is also
very easy for a skilled English speaker to pick up and I would recommend it if
you are interested in languages. (It also gives you German for free)

~~~
tormeh
>(It also gives you German for free)

That's like saying that learning English gives you French for free. It really
helps, but it hardly gives you the entire language for free, just a
significant chunk of it.

~~~
scrollaway
English does not even sort of give you French for free. It does give you
Spanish (and Italian, to an extent) for free though. And I speak of all this
from experience.

~~~
scrollaway
Oops, I meant _French_ gives you Spanish for free, of course.

------
blfr
Even when your posts are minor, and strictly technical, like tips on doing
this or that with Linux, they will be often searched for with English keywords
and publishing them in English increases your potential audience tenfold. From
~50M people in a large European country to 500M English speakers worldwide.

~~~
icebraining
_From ~50M people in a large European country_

You're forgetting to count everywhere outside of Europe that speaks an
European language (besides English, of course).

Portugal has only ~11M citizens, but Portuguese is spoken by 220M people
around the world as their first language. Same with Spanish (470M) and French
(74M).

~~~
informatimago
You are missing a quite significant '2' on the number of francophones, it's
274 millions, not 74M.

[http://www.francophonie.org/Denombrement-des-
francophones.ht...](http://www.francophonie.org/Denombrement-des-
francophones.html)

~~~
icebraining
Sorry, I took the number from Wikipedia. That said, does that include all
French speakers? The number I mentioned was specifically about people for whom
French was their first language.

------
vegabook
I always find it refreshing to read blogs in languages other than English (in
my case, French), because my sense is that points are expressed in often
subtly different ways, thoughts where a different emphasis is possible only in
the medium of the language used. It would be better if the english speaking
world were to speak more languages (wishful thinking I know but the point is
that something is being lost in this unification of language).

~~~
imartin2k
That is a fair point. Different languages allow for different thinking and
expression of contexts. But I think in the end the language fragmentation is
still a luxury with a huge down-side. Especially nowadays, when most problems
are global ones that need to be solved jointly, not isolated.

I could be wrong of course. Maybe a world with fewer or even only one language
would be a horrible place. But maybe it would be better. I think it is worth
taking the risk.

~~~
vegabook
Agreed. Also one can argue that the fact that English may not be the first
language will in itself have an effect on the thought process, even if English
is the medium used. So in that way we still have some diversity, if only
obliquely.

------
k__
Good thing.

I sometimes got the feeling, that the german language culture is a blessing
and a curse.

I like how everything gets translated and dubbed for us.

But it feels like most Germans simply ignore most of the stuff, happening
outside of Germany.

I even know many IT people who claim they don't need to know english. But I
got the feeling that not knowing how to read and write english just keeps you
far away from the bleeding edge. You can see this when looking at german
companies, most of them feel like 1999.

~~~
nyir
The downside of all the dubbing is that the translations (and arguably
speakers) are horrible and also the benefit of free lessons in language
comprehension disappears unlike for countries were it's not feasible to dub
lots of movies.

~~~
kossmoboleat
Yeah, I'm so happy about the German Netflix, where you can easily switch to
the original audio. No other VOD site in Germany has that AFAIK.

------
baldfat
English is easily the lingua franca of the new age due to SECOND language.
Some refer to English as an international language (EIL)

First language speakers rankings: 1) it is zho (Chinesse) 1.19 billion, 2)
Spanish 441 million, 3) English 335 million, 4) Hindi 260 million and 5)
Arabic 235 million
[http://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size](http://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size)

Secondary Language Speakers: Only 1 out of 4 English speakers are first person
speakers. That makes English the most known language in the world.
[http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/content](http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/content)

~~~
adambard
The other relevant metric is the distribution of speakers. Most of the
speakers of Chinese live in China, but English is a significantly common
language in 67 countries by Wikipedia's admittedly questionable estimation:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_widely_spoken_lang...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_widely_spoken_languages_\(by_number_of_countries%29)

I don't think the data is entirely trustworthy -- it seems unlikely that
"Turkic" is spoken substantially in Lithuania -- but I did some analysis based
on this data anyhow: [http://adambard.com/blog/what-language-should-you-
learn/](http://adambard.com/blog/what-language-should-you-learn/)

------
junto
Interesting timing choice; Just as the CSU in Bayern decide that all people
living in Germany should be forced to speak German at home:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/112...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11278764/All-
immigrants-should-speak-German-at-home-say-Merkels-allies.html)

Most German people I meet seem to think that my children growing up in a
bilingual German-English household is _great_ , "your children are so lucky",
"they have such an advantage" is a phrase I hear a lot. It just seems that
German-Turkish isn't thought of in the same way, but is it really so
different?

Surely the underlying benefit of a bilingual upbringing is about future
opportunity and earnings potential. Whether that be that you can earn money
from business opportunities inside a sizable Turkish population (both internal
in Germany or in Turkey) or a very large external English speaking population,
are both valid.

On top of that, bilingualism has many other benefits, namely cognitive:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_advantages_of_bilingu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_advantages_of_bilingualism)

As well as a few (minor) downsides:
[http://www.multilingualchildren.org/getting_started/pro_con....](http://www.multilingualchildren.org/getting_started/pro_con.html)

Overall, most people think that being bilingual is a good thing.

The bottom line is that whether the author wants to blog in German, or English
(or both) or Klingon, is entirely his choice. Hopefully that choice should be
the authors for the foreseeable future!

------
spacecowboy_lon
Of course not that long ago (within living memory) in certain fields you had
to learn German and publish in that language.

I am thinking of chemistry in particular

~~~
maaaats
I live in Norway, and was almost forced to learn German at school: "It's the
language of engineers!". That was maybe true when their generation grew up,
but I haven't had use for it in a professional setting so far. So yeah, you're
right.

------
edoloughlin
It's returning a 508 at the moment. I guess that's the ultimate tl;dr

~~~
imartin2k
Sorry for that.

~~~
edoloughlin
No need to apologise. I was indirectly making a point about the popularity of
English vs German.

------
duggan
Obligatory Google cache version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:j74EbmG...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:j74EbmG9pCIJ:meshedsociety.com/fighting-
the-language-fragmentation/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ie)

~~~
imartin2k
thx of posting

~~~
Max_Mustermann
Thanks for* posting (it).

(I normally never correct anyone on HN but it seemed appropiate on this
thread.)

~~~
imartin2k
You must be German ;) Thx, it was actually just a typo.

~~~
Max_Mustermann
I'm actually latinoamerican :)

------
programmer_dude
I think this is a step in the right direction. Germany has a lot to offer to
the world at large. I hope others take a cue from it and understand that a
small thing such as language must not be allowed to come in the way of
universal co-operation and brotherhood.

~~~
Max_Mustermann
I think is only a "very small thing" if you're the one not learning a foreign
language.

~~~
programmer_dude
I am not a native English speaker. I understand it may not be the best natural
language out there but I hope you agree that if any language is close to being
the universal language on this planet then it is English.

~~~
nyir
At least it is at this point in time. German is also so close to English that
I'd say it's one of the easiest switches, at least for reading/writing.

~~~
imartin2k
But German is highly complicated, and there is the common convention that if
you do not speak perfect German, you cannot really be successful in whatever
career you chose.

From my observations that really is not the case in the English-speaking world
(correct me if I am wrong).

~~~
nyir
Oh sorry, I meant as a native German speaker instead writing/reading in
English.

And agreed. At the same time, if more people were to use German and therefore
also the percentage of imperfection went up, I guess that effect would then
disappear in the long term.

------
imartin2k
I just published a blog post describing my experience with this HN frontpage
entry [http://meshedsociety.com/how-a-perfect-launch-day-looks-
like...](http://meshedsociety.com/how-a-perfect-launch-day-looks-like/)

------
petercooper
Related question: are there any luminaries in the HN-oriented fields of
programming, open source, startups, or general tech who are well known in the
West and do/can not speak English at all?

~~~
mhd
"at all" is probably not that likely, at least in the programming sector, but
"not well enough to blog" is pretty common. Heck, it's common enough amongst
native speaking bloggers...

------
q_no
You should write a follow up: How HN brought my site down ;)

Hope you can fix this soon.

~~~
imartin2k
I should have seen this coming. But to be honest, I really did not expect the
post to hit the front page. :D

~~~
q_no
Would you mind to tell your readers what happened? Perhaps others can learn
from it.

~~~
easytiger
Well his VPS account exceeded his daily/monthly bandwidth limit most likely

------
imartin2k
My hoster recommended me to install WP super cache to avoid situations when
too much traffic kills the site. Gotta do that now.

------
informatimago
I guess this only proves Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk wrong. At least for
now. AI is so lame, that it cannot translate satisfactorily simple blog posts.
And this after 55 years working on the problem of automatic translation...


[ASK] HowTo catch some Fraud Scenarios in ecommerce – INTERVIEW Q - hnfoobar
Hello Dear friends,
this is interview question and I will like to brainstrom with you guys. Lets say you are interviewing for ecommerce company, what are the things you will look to catch fraud scenarios.
Lets assume there are following things in this system:
1) Buyer
2) Seller
3) Recommendations for Buyer and Seller (buyer rate Seller and Seller rates buyer)
4) Order Processing
5) Payment
6) Purchase
Again this is just open ended question and skys the limit for the solution. So, wanted to see how many ways we can catch fraud scenarios. This may/may not involve any machine learning algorithms.
Cheers!
======
hnfoobar
Here are some which I thought... I am wondering if there are other classes or
categories we should watch for Fraud/Risk

1) Unusually large orders or high-priced orders 2) Expedited shipping on large
quantities or high-priced orders 3) Expedited shipping when billing and
shipping addresses differ 4) Make sure the billing address matches the IP
location. 5) Limit the number of declined transactions. 6) Customers who make
multiple orders from different credit cards 7) Machine Learning - supervised
classification - the system is told in advance which already-reviewed orders
are fraud, and then asked to predict whether another order is fraud based on
what it’s seen so far 8) Anomaly detection


Are Posterous Fudging Visitor Statistics? - ig1
http://blog.awesomezombie.com/2010/12/are-posterous-fudging-visitor-statics.html

======
rantfoil
Our focus is on building the best product. It so happens to be that we are
aware of the issue and recommend that you use Google Analytics for deeper
insight into visitors and views.

Here is a bit of how-the-sausage is made, but you wouldn't believe how much of
a negative response we got from existing users once we went to a fully
JavaScript analytics system. So by sheer volume of user input we made the
decision to return to the original http request method of counting views.

We are continuing to look at ways to improve this system, possibly with
Mixpanel.

~~~
ig1
Do you not think the page view stats are completely misleading your users ?

There's absolutely no indication on Posterous that bots are likely responsible
for thousands of the page views shown (which given the long tail nature of
Posterous I imagine we're talking about the majority of the page views here
for a lot of users).

One user even reported that GA was showing 14 visitors while Posterous was
showing 9316:

[http://adamriggins.com/posterous-post-views-and-google-
analy...](http://adamriggins.com/posterous-post-views-and-google-analytics-
dis)

Whenever Posterous has given a response the focus has been on disabled
javascript, etc. rather than the fact most of these views are likely generated
by bots. For example the email you sent to the user here:

<http://www.creativenotice.com/how-posterous-stats-work>

Given the values are essentially meaningless why show them to your users at
all ?

~~~
rantfoil
A few weeks ago we had some bugs in new batch processing code that caused some
major errors there. These bugs have since been fixed. We are _definitely_ not
as far off as 9316 vs 14 in normal operation.

These numbers are far from meaningless. At the end of the day the numbers
reflect what our servers see -- they track something different from Google
Analytics but they are useful as a simple ballpark for how interesting or
visited your blog post was. Also, they're realtime, which GA does not provide.

~~~
ig1
You're avoiding the question about misleading your users.

If the majority of page views are generates by bots then the number of page
views you show isn't even a ballpark figure indicating how interesting/visited
the blog post is. It's simply a semi-random number depending on crawlers/bot
activity and nothing to do with real human visitors.

If you were simply off by 10% I could accept your answer, but you seem to be
regularly off by a factor 200-300%.

~~~
ig1
Just in case there was any doubt about Posterous not filtering out bots given
that Garry hasn't specifically admitted it:

<http://twitter.com/#!/richiepear/status/13809170130149376>

      Rich Pearson (VP Marketing - Posterous)
      @imranghory No - we just don't filter out your own views
      and search engine visits

------
benologist
They're just counting views in a particularly unrealistic but technically not
incorrect way.

Seems to be pretty much par for the course, like when twitter announces a
billion new users, most of which are probably bots and/or quora.

~~~
ig1
The test has to be what your users understand that value to mean. I'm betting
almost all Posterous users think they're being read by significantly more
people than they actually are.

If Posterous can't provide meaningful stats (and I appreciate that filtering
out bots may be non-trivial) then they should just avoid providing stats
altogether. Bad data is worse than no data as it's much more misleading.

~~~
benologist
I agree with you, but no company's going to leap forward and be honest about
numbers, they're going to use whichever makes them look biggest/growing
strongest to their users, investors and competitors, and all the numbers are
"right" in _some_ context.

~~~
ig1
"Our goal is to be 100% transparent with everything we do at Posterous,
especially when it affects your blog and content" -Sachin cofounder,
posterous.com

From: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1309849>

------
j2d2j2d2
They indeed fibbed during their campaign about how posterous is better than
blog brand x.

Specifically, about tumblr not supporting an email posting option.

------
radicaldreamer
There are many things that trigger a "view" for a post and a site: viewing the
blog triggers a view for all posts visible on that page. In addition, a view
will be triggered by the blog post page itself, bots and crawlers, and
<http://posterous.com/explore>.

View counts are updated every five minutes.

Google Analytics is better at measuring visitors and filtering out impressions
triggered by search engine bots, crawlers, or indexers.

See this page for how to set up Google Analytics on your Posterous site:
[http://help.posterous.com/how-to-add-google-analytics-to-
you...](http://help.posterous.com/how-to-add-google-analytics-to-your-site)

------
aufreak3
I've noticed that as soon as I submit a new post to posterous, it gets about
24 views. I'm quite sure those aren't people.

------
twoism
[http://help.posterous.com/how-are-site-and-post-views-
calcul...](http://help.posterous.com/how-are-site-and-post-views-calculated)

------
Xuzz
(Unrelated/offtopic: is "are" or "is" correct in the title?)

~~~
icey
It's a cultural difference.

In the US, people refer to the named entity (is). In the UK, they refer to the
collection of people that make up the entity (are).

~~~
ewjordan
Interesting, good to know.

How do UK speakers deal with non-named entities? For example:

My family is/are going out to the movie. The class was/were getting restless.

These are common gotchas on the SAT in the US; one of their favorite tricks is
using plural country names, like "The United States of America (is/are) ...",
where in US English "is" is the correct version. Cheap trick that really only
tests whether you've memorized ETS's stance on that particular grammar point,
IMO, but that's the SAT for you...

~~~
bodhi
> My family is/are going out to the movie. The class was/were getting
> restless.

In Australian English (derived from but not identical to the UK):

My family is going to the movie. The class was getting restless.

And the programmer's favourite: The data is corrupt.

~~~
bodhi
Sorry to reply to myself, but I actually forgot to put my main point in, which
was that British English generally refers to the group itself as the entity,
whereas it seems that American English refers to the group elements
individually.

------
greattypo
Terrible title. "Fudging statistics" and "not actively excluding bots" are
totally different.

~~~
ig1
I did actually check a dictionary before I used that term and the definition
of "Present or deal with (something) in a vague, noncommittal, or inadequate
way" seemed suitable.

------
invisiblefunnel
Posterous is/are in touch with what users want from a blogging platform, but
they seem to be out of touch with how users expect to be treated.[edit:
grammar]

------
webuiarchitect
Those counts actually includes hits by the spiders, too.


Ask HN: Please review my startup crowdmind.com - richesh
http://alpha.crowdmind.com

======
anigbrowl
At first I thought it was just another of those 'ask the intarwebs!' sites
where people just twitter or post to each other, but on further inspection I
was very taken with the scoring system and the ability to rate the poster's
good and bad reasons.

It looks like quite a bit more work to create the question than is usually the
case, which might be a disincentive for some - although it will also help them
to focus on the issue at hand. The layout is a little confusing at first and
god only knows why you made the search box background color to dark grey
against a black background - I found myself wondering why there was a search
button with no search box until I looked more closely. I think you could use a
one line explanation like 'Our members help you rate and discover your
options' on the landing page, because it took me a couple of minutes to
realize that the stars and ratings were functional rather than mere window-
dressing. your 'about' page does this very well, why not use the top two
elements from that (title and icons)?

It also wasn't obvious to me that the 'good/bad because...boxes were text
fields at first. Stick a flashing cursor in them or something, because they
look like headers.

For a site with so few questions and needing a network effect to take off, I'm
already impressed and think you're onto a winner here. I would even suggest
spinning off a 'pro' version aimed at business or other markets so that
professional users who could really gain from this won't have to encounter
questions of the 'how does I shot web' variety. Also, find some way to embed
it besides the x-posting to twitter, FB and LI. And why aren't you posting
'How can we make CrowdMind better?' as one of your featured questions, you
silly-billies!?

Overall, excellent: simple but not shallow.

~~~
richesh
Thanks for your review, it is very helpful and I really appreciate it. Looks
like the UI needs considerably overhaul given other reviews, so we'll
definitely implement your suggestions as well.

------
maryrosecook
As I'm sure you're aware, <http://ask.metafilter.com> does the same thing. I
use it because of the MetaFilter community: I have a general understanding of
the demographic, morals, values and politics of the people I'm asking
questions of. I also know that people's answers must be posted with an account
they probably value because they have paid $5 to create it.

Do you plan to foster a community with certain features? Or are you looking
for a broader range of people?

~~~
richesh
Hi, thanks a lot for your review. We are currently working on a credibility
score for the users based on how much others value their input. This should
create an experts community in each category. Currently you can invite trusted
advisors to your own decision pages with special invite code (the UI is only
visible to decision creators). The trusted advisors are people who's opinion
matter the most. The page will let you toggle between "the crowd" and the
advisors via the link on the right of option area.

If you look at this page
([http://alpha.crowdmind.com/decision/17_What_Is_The_Best_Java...](http://alpha.crowdmind.com/decision/17_What_Is_The_Best_Java_Code_Test_Coverage_Tool))
I'm the trusted advisor to the decision maker. So our ratings and scores are
maintained separately and displayed in the box above.

Right now the site is open to a broad range of people. We are also considering
allowing people to import their credibility from their blog, forums they are
active in, etc.

------
antiismist
The UI needs some work. The Viget Labs page looks really slick, so whoever did
that should take a crack at crowdmind. I won't sign in to sketchy looking
websites, even if it is with OpenID.

~~~
richesh
Thanks for your review. Anything in particular you can point out that we can
fix, or is it just the overall design? We initially had Viget Labs to do the
design but our direction changed after they delivered. So we had to make the
changes ourselves since funding is limited.

------
greengirl512
I like the concept-I think assigning attributes and making people think about
rating them will help weed out the idiots you get on places like Yahoo
Answers. I do think you need to focus on building a strong, intelligent
community for this to work. Also, the layout of the attributes rating box
needs to be cleaned up-it's kind of confusing right now.

By the way, I'd be happy to feature Crowdmind on our website,
www.usefultools.com, either now or in the future (since you're still working
on it).

~~~
richesh
Thanks a lot for your review and support. I will definitely get in touch with
you once I've fixed some of the issues pointed out here. Seems like we need to
do some UI tweaking to the decisions page.

Any suggestions on how we can build the community? Its definitely been a
struggling point for us at the moment.

~~~
greengirl512
Well, step one is just to make people aware that you exist-I think the "get a
bigger crowd" option is a great way to do that. Increasing your Twitter
following would probably also help, though. Tweetspinner is a good app for
this-if you get their premium service, you can follow people automatically
when they mention certain keywords, automatically follow all of your
competitors followers, then purge the followers that don't follow you back.

You can also submit your site to social media sites like Digg and Reddit.
Getting other websites to write about you will also help point people in your
direction.

Once you start attracting people, I think having a credibility rating system
will become increasingly important in helping to keep the community healthy,
intelligent and civil.

------
pushingbits
The main page is pretty slick, though you might want to think about using at
least slightly different styles for the "Considering" and "Looking for"
sections.

The "get a bigger crowd" options are a really good idea.

However, the question/answer pages are rather crowded. A clearer seperation of
elements would probably make it easier to see what's going on where. Also, the
"Reason (intellect)" section has good functional elements for rating/feedback,
but the "Attribute Ratings (feelings)" part doesn't. Why a drop down menu?
That's an extra two clicks for every rating I want to give.

EDIT: And the "0" button for a 0 star rating doesn't feel intuitive and I
don't see why it's even needed.

~~~
richesh
Thanks for the review. We are definitely looking to changing the consideration
and looking for to be more aligned with terms being used on the site (Options
and Attributes), and will try to make it more prominent.

We will look into re-working the UI for Attribute rating, I do agree that its
extra clicks for something simple.

The reason for the "0" is to give something 0 stars, because in the system 0
has a negative value vs. not entering anything. Not entering a rating means
you may not know about it to rate it. a "0" star means its bad. But, I see
your point about how that can be confusing.

------
mutoxen
Please advise that I need to be logged to have an aswer, because with the Back
button I need to rewrite the question.

~~~
richesh
Hi, Thanks for helping with this review. Yes, you need to be logged in to
interact with the site.

------
Tichy
Like it, but the interface is a bit confusing. At first I did not even see the
options in the side bar, which are actually the main thing to decide upon? It
wasn't clear to me where to enter stuff either.

I guess the actual options should be more prominent than the "feeling aspects"
of said options.

~~~
richesh
Thanks for the review, its very helpful. We've definitely heard about options
not being prominent and will be working on making them visible.

------
chanux
Think of a way integrating a Twitter conversation. Question & related replies.
That'll add some more value to the service I guess.

~~~
richesh
Thanks for the review. We have been investigating adding twitter integration,
but the character limitation seems to be a bit of a problem. We are trying to
use both status update and a direct message approach to make this work.

------
richesh
Does anyone feel that they wouldn't sign-up to this site because of the bad
design? (Anyone share antiismist) view below?


Playing with Wolfram Playing Cards - Adrock
http://adereth.github.io/blog/2017/11/02/playing-with-wolfram-playing-cards/
======
godelski
If the OP is here, I found the cup on their site. It lets me put it in my cart

[http://store.wolfram.com/view/misc/index.str#heart-spikey-
mu...](http://store.wolfram.com/view/misc/index.str#heart-spikey-mug)

~~~
Adrock
They put it back in the store after they saw my tweet :p

~~~
godelski
That's a lot of power. Use it wisely.

------
tsomctl
I'm always amazed by how expressive Mathematica is. Writing some of these
expressions imperatively would be significantly more than one line.

~~~
fjsolwmv
These are mostly just API calls with arguments, with some simple lambdas. You
can implement that in any language.

~~~
maliker
I think the magic of Mathematica is the combination of (1) a huge collection
of well-maintained CAS and math functions (2) great graphics and animation
support (3) the notebook interface (which jupyter is catching up on fast) and
(4) some of the best documentation in the industry.

Modifying the Mathematica code after its written, however, is very tricky.

~~~
blt
Even if some of the components in Mathematica are not state-of-the-art,
there's a huge synergy benefit from having everything together in one
environment, using the same datatypes. I think that's the big benefit of
Mathematica and Matlab. Python can match (or exceed) a lot of their
capabilities but you spend all this time with package managers, converting
data types, etc.

~~~
brianwawok
What is this time with package managers? Takes an hour one time to learn pip
and virtualenv. Then its 1 pip command to install a package.

~~~
aisofteng
An hour? I'd say about five minutes.

------
sushisource
Those are really neat. I did say "of course" sarcastically out loud when I got
to the King.

~~~
Adrock
Yeah, I lost it at that one. I'm not sure if that's his doing or just an
internal troll.

------
ninju
They should provide a QR code on each card that sends you to the Wolfram site
with the expression being executed, that way when you are waiting your turn on
Hold-em you can watch the animation from your phone

(it must have been a pain to hand type those expressions...great job!)

------
ukoki
Price: £4 — great! Shipping: £12 — nope!

~~~
disconcision
shipping to canada is an utterly inexplicable 47 dollars, apparently not
including taxes and duty

~~~
cal5k
Basically they ship the deck all by itself in a 747.

------
hackpert
Indeed, of all the tech company swag I've seen and collected, from a pure
nerdiness metric, I'd wager Wolfram's remains one of the coolest by far.

~~~
zitterbewegung
A CAS with beautiful graphing is a big feature that is required in most
situations and their swag wants to sell that point .

------
tehsauce
The code for these is really short and elegant! Keep in mind when you want to
make some graphics that aren't owned by the "king", the much more powerful
(though some boilerplate is required) open source libraries like p5.js and
three.js are capable of rendering these real-time in the browser!

~~~
cprecioso
Did you mean D3 instead of three.js?

------
pavel_lishin
How plausible are animated versions of these in real life? What's the thinnest
we can make a display+processor combo that can be powered by, say, the heat
from my hands?

~~~
gh02t
I don't think you could practically power a display + processor combo with the
heat from your hands. The best I can find on the power radiated by your hands
is this article

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-flashlight-
is...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-flashlight-is-powered-
by-the-touch-of-your-hand-180950226/)

That article says you can get about 5 milliwatts using a Peltier converter, so
working backwards based on Peltier converters being ~10% efficient that's only
50 milliwatts radiated by your hands. Even with an ideal 100% efficient
converter that turns 100% of that energy into electricity, combined with a
100% efficient step up converter to raise the voltage that's not a lot to work
with, that's barely enough power to light a couple of blue LEDs, much less a
display and a microcontroller capable of rendering 3D graphics.

------
msangi
This reminds me of pixel spirit: a tarot cards deck with beautiful pictures
made from shaders.

[https://github.com/patriciogonzalezvivo/PixelSpiritDeck/blob...](https://github.com/patriciogonzalezvivo/PixelSpiritDeck/blob/master/README.md)

------
tunesmith
The seven of clubs actually vaguely frightened me. What an appetite.

------
m00s3
Cool cards. What's not cool is $50 shipping on $5 cards. To Canada...


SearX: Privacy-respecting metasearch engine - tvvocold
https://github.com/asciimoo/searx
======
halflings
Even with a pool of proxies, I would expect an instance of this "metasearch
engine" to quickly get banned by the other search engines. The same IP running
thousands of queries and scraping its content (which is against their ToS)
should be easily detectable.

~~~
snowpanda
Building on that issue, I'd like to add that it would be nice to have a
feature that alerts a user that certain a search engine is denying requests.
It's visible in the logs or settings somewhere, but usually I find myself
wondering for a while why my search queries aren't accurate before heading off
to figure out why.

Still a great project though, I use it every day.

~~~
jbg_
At least for me, next to each result is a list of the engines that returned
that result. I run searx through Tor, so I occasionally find that Google stops
returning results for a few minutes.

It doesn't happen often, but it's easy to tell when it does because none of
the first page results have "google" next to them, while of course normally
most of them would.

------
snowpanda
On a related note, have any of you tried FindX?

[https://www.findx.com/](https://www.findx.com/)

[https://github.com/privacore/open-source-search-
engine](https://github.com/privacore/open-source-search-engine)

Looks promising but haven't used it much yet.

~~~
O1111OOO
I like this part "it draws its results from its own bot that crawls the web".
There aren't too many that use their own bot.

Tsignal ([https://deepsearch.tsignal.io/](https://deepsearch.tsignal.io/)) is
another that uses it's own bot with a little AI tossed into the mix. And...
it's currently not accessible:(

Wanted to add that I'm currently on Opera and using an extension named _Search
All_ [0]. After conducting a search via your default search engine, this
extension places a bar with a list of user configurable search engines. This
allows you to search alternatives easily using the same keywords.

One great feature is that if you go directly to a search engine, click on the
_Search All_ icon, it almost always identifies it with correct parameters and
can be easily added. Just added findX to my bar (for testing).

I plan on going back to Firefox and wish FF had something like this (part of
the reason I'm posting this).

[0] [https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/search-
all/?d...](https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/search-
all/?display=en)

------
fghtr
There is also [http://yacy.net](http://yacy.net), peer-to-peer distributed
free search engine.

------
finnn
I wonder what the rationale behind listing the site's CA in the public
instance list ([https://github.com/asciimoo/searx/wiki/Searx-
instances](https://github.com/asciimoo/searx/wiki/Searx-instances)).

------
bussie
Does this have any advantages over StartPage?

~~~
tonysdg
Or DuckDuckGo, for that matter?

------
saas_co_de
This is awesome. I have been wanting to build something like this for a while
but never had the time.

~~~
ReverseCold
There's also pears search, which died sometime after being funded by Mozilla.
I don't think it was malicious intent, but no one can explain why the project
is inactive.


Co-founder or no co-founder? - sum_itsin
http://www.roundbreak.com/2012/06/05/co-founder-or-no-co-founder/

======
pedalpete
Completely agree, but I think PG assumes that anybody who is smart/good enough
to get into YC is going to have a solid co-founder.

I wonder how many YC companies have failed due to a co-founder break-up.

Outside of YC, I hear a co-founder break up is one of the top reasons a
company fails.

~~~
sum_itsin
That's true. But I am somewhat skeptical about the fact that a smart person
necessarily is the one with good networking skills or the one capable of
forging sound relationships. There are times when a truly smart person, either
due to his own eccentricity or the environment, doesn't get to have a chance
of having a good co-founder unless he relocates himself which is hardly
possible in many cases.


The Power of Collaborative Debugging - modeless
https://robert.ocallahan.org/2019/11/the-power-of-collaborative-debugging.html
======
db48x
The more I read about Pernosco the more I want to use it.


OpenID Sucks. - veritas
http://irei.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/openid-sucks/

======
joeguilmette
I wish people could articulate valid points without writing like 14 year olds.

~~~
veritas
I'll own up to it :)

It was a 5 minute rant to be honest, not a well thought out exposition on
OpenID's various shortcomings.

So, apologies if it was inarticulate/verbose. I really should clean it up and
edit before I submit to YC.

I modded you up BTW :D

~~~
joeguilmette
oh haha i had no idea you actually wrote it. i mean, you make really valid
points, there's a reason nobody likes openid.

~~~
veritas
Haha, no worries dude. Your criticism was spot on and appreciated.

I don't usually submit my own writings to YC (first time I believe).

------
blader
I agree, but I liked flow|state's concrete critiques by example better:
[http://miksovsky.blogs.com/flowstate/2007/08/openid-great-
id...](http://miksovsky.blogs.com/flowstate/2007/08/openid-great-id.html)


Aaron Swartz, American hero - binarybits
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/12/aaron-swartz-american-hero/
======
jacoblyles
>"As I said at the time of Swartz’s arrest, his actions were foolish and some
punishment was probably appropriate. "

Bullshit. No punishment is appropriate. A system that punishes someone for
standing up for justice does not deserve to continue its existence. Aaron
deserved a medal, not a fine or a prison sentence. Here is my take on it:

[http://jacobexmachina.blogspot.com/2013/01/aaron-swartz-
free...](http://jacobexmachina.blogspot.com/2013/01/aaron-swartz-freedom-
fighters-death.html)

~~~
devcpp
I find it singificant that you used the word "justice" against the judicial
system.

The very concept of law started as a need for order and justice, preventing
grave crimes. Now, controlled by the powerful, it stands as a way to reduce
justice, and to increase injustice.

~~~
tripzilch
Yes and in particular, it's not the other way around: "justice" is not defined
as "that which a judicial system purports to implement". Just like "good" is
not synonymous with "legal".

------
holri
As always, nationalism is wrong. Beeing a hacker, activist or unconventional
thinker has nothing to do with beeing american.

There are enough counter examples, just study history. (for example that of
the CCC and his members and fellows)

~~~
ollysb
That may be so but this is the first article I've seen in the mainstream that
painted him in such a positive light. Using nationalism is probably the
fastest way to get a broad audience in America to support what he was making a
stand for.

~~~
tripzilch
Absolutely, I understand and maybe even somewhat support that. The problem is
when this proud nationalism comes at the cost of taking a dig at other
nations/countries or cultures.

Yet that's exactly what this article did.

And they really did not have to do that, in order for them to make their point
(and nor did Graham, for that matter--but perhaps that was an old essay and
quoted out of context).

It's a particular stumper when you consider that Swartz has loads of fans
outside the US as well, and they are following this news with just as much
interest, reading also US mainstream articles like these.

------
rhizome31
_“It is no accident that Silicon Valley is in America, and not France, or
Germany, or England, or Japan,” Graham wrote. “In those countries, people
color inside the lines.”_

It's all right to be proud of your country, although of course it's neither
very original nor very elaborate thinking. But why denigrate others? For your
information, there are a lot of activists who fight for freedom of
information, human rights and net neutrality in those countries as well.

~~~
EuroCoder
“It is no accident that Silicon Valley is in America, and not France, or
Germany, or England, or Japan,” Graham wrote. “In those countries, people
color inside the lines.”

That may be true. But those countries also don't torture people, inprison
people without charge, or start senseless wars. The US may make people richer,
but it also has the highest proportion of its population in jail, compared to
all other countries in the world. The US has a lot to learn from Europe.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
Seriously? Do you actually believe that France, Germany, England and Japan
have not tortured people, imprisoned people without charge, or (gasp) started
senseless wars?

ROTFL

~~~
EuroCoder
Good point, but what I meant is in the current era, after WWII. Since WWII the
US has been the leader among western countries in torture and senseless wars.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
I think you'd have to narrow it further than WWII. France was involved in
colonial wars in Indochina and Algeria (the latter involved lots and lots of
torture). England has participated in most of the US adventures and a few of
their own (Suez, Northern Ireland, Falklands). Japan and Germany have kept
their noses clean since WWII but that's partly a side effect of the complete
asskicking they received in the war, rather than some innate cultural
appreciation of peace and human rights. Up until recently France was
conducting nuclear tests in the Pacific and their agents were apparently
involved in the sinking of a protest ship in New Zealand.

England and Germany have much greater limitations on free speech than does the
United States.

------
noonespecial
Hero. Almost super. An interesting idea. He definitely had some Batman-ish
tendencies as far as stepping just over the line to accomplish what he thought
was right.

So far, everyone has talked about the losses of not having Aaron's (and those
like him) extraordinary contributions.

I wonder if a better way to count the cost is by how many bitter, cynical
super-villains we're creating. What happens when all of the people with
Aaron's talents decide that good is for suckers and become "investment"
bankers instead. A culture that loudly and openly demonstrates that it cares
nothing for truth or justice and reduces the law to politics is going to
create a lot more Madoffs than Swartzes.

~~~
Hario
Exactly.

------
eykanal
I like the perspective of comparing Aaron to older "hacker/visionaries" of
decades gone by. I wasn't aware of some of those brushes with the law.

~~~
edlinfan
Not to mention the comparison of the Pentagon Papers to the Manning cables
leak.

------
pajju
Things he made:

<https://www.jottit.com/>

<http://openlibrary.org/>

<http://watchdog.net/>

<http://reddit.com/>

<http://webpy.org/>

HN will miss your contributions. Rest in Peace. #Love.

~~~
rdtsc
I would hate to see webpy die. It is really an elegant framework. You can see
Aaron's intense desire for perfectionism, simplicity and clarity in it. I
respect those qualities.

------
tripzilch
> “It is no accident that Silicon Valley is in America, and not France, or
> Germany, or England, or Japan,” Graham wrote. “In those countries, people
> color inside the lines.”

Whaaaat, you have got to be kidding me.

Colouring inside the lines? Let's see, the Demoscene is almost exclusively a
European phenomenon. There's the CCC. Fravia did not exactly colour inside the
lines. There's the Pirate Bay. Wikileaks. Just a colourful few from the top of
my head, there's more if you dig further.

If you really have to look for a difference with Silicon Valley, I'd say it's
about making money, startups, entrepreneurship, chasing _that_ "American
Dream", contrast with the above examples which are all people that did it for
idealism, art or just for the heck of it, instead of for profit. In that
context, Aaron Swartz falls squarely in the latter category.

Before you throw a fit about my stereotyping, stop. The distinction I sketched
in the previous paragraph is just as stupid as the one Graham tried to make. I
think it's stupid to draw a distinction between US and EU like this[0], after
all, that's what this global communication information age is about. There's
"startup-hackers" in the EU just as much as there are "tinkerer-hackers" in
the US.

Having said that, the first thing I thought when reading that headline was
"wow, if a big media outlet like the Washington Post names you 'American
Hero', you really did something very right", and I felt happy. Which turned to
disappointment when I found that the "American" part of that title was wrought
with such bitter nationalism.

[0] I'm leaving Japan out of this because I really hardly know anything about
that country and don't want to be caught with my foot in my mouth, somebody
more knowledgeable than me can make that part of the argument.

------
edouard1234567
Hacking systems to their advantage is a pretty strong trait in the best
entrepreneurs and PG recognized this pattern earlier than most and built a
business out of it, it's called YC :).

What saddens me the most is not so much that he died but more that he didn't
live to accomplish all the great things a fearless visionary like him could
have done for all of us...

------
xtracto
Every time stuff like this happens reminds me of The Conscience of a Hacker (
[http://www.phrack.org/issues.html?issue=7&id=3&mode=...](http://www.phrack.org/issues.html?issue=7&id=3&mode=txt)
), a timeless piece.

> You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're
> all alike.

------
sever
This reminded me of Arnold Schwarznegger's rules for success in life:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuJ4hbkLiY0> about 50 seconds in. Rule 2 --
break the rules.

------
anoncow
Aaron Swartz, hero.

------
sidcool
It's sad we are doing all this now.

------
general_failure
What crap.

The idea of dissent is practically everywhere and there is nothing inherently
american about it. Neither is 'dissent' the first thing or the top 10 thing
that comes to mind when you talk about americanism.

Breaking the law is breaking the law. How can one have humor about it? I would
love to see the author share this 'humor' when someone plugs into _his_
network and steal his digital stuff.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>Breaking the law is breaking the law.

Except he didn't break the law.

~~~
emkemp
The US Attorney's Office disagrees with you. So did a Grand Jury.


How to Sell a Subreddit - nols
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-to-sell-a-subreddit
======
arama471
I'm dissapointed they didn't mention previous incidents like this:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3shr29/mods...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3shr29/mods_in_rstarwarsbattlefront_accept_bribes_from/)

And subreddits like /r/rickandmorty or /r/TagPro or /r/theexpanse where the
creators actively participate in discussion and in some cases modertation


At $1.1 Billion, Bloomberg Is Top University Donor in U.S. - wallflower
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/nyregion/at-1-1-billion-bloomberg-is-top-university-donor-in-us.html?hp

======
Snoptic
A bit weird how the article emphasizes how his gifts were spent on decorative
architecture, and doesn't say much about education, which Bloomberg says was
the intent of the gift. A billion dollars invested at 5percent per annum can
finance full 4-year scholarships for over 250 entering students each year.


Accelerated Wound Healing from Wearable Electric Field Generator - jhloa2
https://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/acsnano.8b07038
======
A2017U1
Surprised this has no comments.

Amazing stuff, hope they can make it production worthy. The gold usage in most
nano applications is negligible, the copper film might add up though.

------
CodinM
Somehow I feel sorry for the little rat.

~~~
jhloa2
I really wish there was an alternative to testing on rats. They're so
regularly put through so many terrible experiments. Hopefully we'll have more
sophisticated computer models in the next few decades to reduce the need for
animal trials.


How to get hired as mature self-taught ex-freelancer? - iainduncan

Hi, I'm a self-taught, 39 year old Python web/database coder, now looking to get into a full time position after 8 years of freelancing. My problem (I think?) is that I'm not what is considered a catch to the stereotypical founder: no CS degree, been working on regular Python+SQL projects, not young. I know I'm competent, I've been inhaling CS and coding books for years and have taught myself some tricky stuff like microcontroller assembly and real-time audio/midi app development in C.  But maybe I don't know how to properly present myself to people who might be interested in someone like me, or know who those people might be. Surely there are some companies who are actually impressed that someone has had to do all the running-a-business stuff in addition to coding, and has experience being completely responsible for the clients and the bottom line?
If anyone has thoughts on how to better position myself, or to whom I should be looking, or just wants to (constructively) trash my CV, that would be appreciated.  Or if the correct answer is that I'm barking up the wrong tree, I'd like to hear that too! I'm not here to whine and vent, I honestly want productive critiques.
Thanks hackers
Iain
http://www.xornot.com/pdf/Iain_Duncan_CV.pdf
======
iainduncan
If you want to send private comments, iduncan@xornot.com

------
danso
Do you have a link to web projects? I know this sounds superficial, but a PDF
resume only reinforces the perception, unfair as it may be, that you're "not
nimble"enough. You seem to maintain your own website with projects...you
should at least link to it from the PDF


Amazon Has Tried Everything to Make Shopping Easier. Except This. - coolrhymes
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/amazon-has-tried-everything-to-make-shopping-easier-except-this/

======
portmanteaufu
This article made my head spin. "Hey, maybe Amazon could open their own brick-
and-mortar stores. It seems like a bad idea, but Apple did it when it seemed
like a bad idea and it turned out to be a good idea. And Amazon wouldn't have
to have things for sale in their stores, you'd just go there to order things
online. But it probably wouldn't work and I'm not sure why I brought it up to
begin with."

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WalterSear
and they won't, either.


Should infractions be seen as an opportunity for profit? - cangrande
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704293604575343153590024146.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEThirdNews

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nemoel
Maybe the policemen work on a commission basis...infraction brokers?

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cangrande
I don't think so... but it's an interesting question. As you can see from the
recent experience of SF in the article, it's clear that they city is using
fines to fill it's coffers.

Would a progressive tax on speeding fines be a good idea?