gmisra

> The moment Google plays favorites manually is the moment I switch to another search engine.

If you believe this doesn't already happen, then you and I must be using different internets. Simply by being selective in which aspects of SEO gaming they chose to address, in what order, and to what extent, they are making editorial decisions. If you're working in an industry where search results are already dominated by low-level SEO manipulation (say, maybe, music lyrics?), are you expected to stand by and let Google be the arbiter of if and when that issue is addressed?

> why not speed up the process of meeting them in the middle and focus on legit link acquisition and traffic acquisition strategies...

My guess is that will be the very likely outcome of this whole brouhaha. It would also not come as a surprise to me if this was the goal all along - getting Matt Cutts' attention is hard, until you're doing something wrong.

You seem to know a lot about SEO, definitely more than me. But it feels like you are expressing a criticism that presumes that this behavior has been happening, and has been tolerated, for some time.

This is complicated.

1. rapgenius is probably the least spammy lyrics site on the internet, and definitely so amongst those on the first page of search results. As a consumer, I would not have a problem with Google, et al giving rapgenius results a special algorithmic bump to move them up. I also know that this is an opinion - it may be a popular opinion, but it is still inherently subjective.

2. If I was in rapgenius' shoes, I imagine gaming SEO would be a strategy to be seriously considered - one doesn't get into the music lyrics market without being aware of the current state of affairs. Barry Bonds believed he was the best hitter of his era, and if McGwire and Sosa were going to get credit for breaking the home run record while taking steroids, then damnit he was going to take steroids and hit 70 bombs. IMO, this is not a morality play.

3. But I do not care for the public personae of the rapgenius founders. They come off as juvenile and occasionally offensive, and I think they are bad representatives for consumer internet start-ups. I'm pretty sure this is a common opinion on HN, but I am not sure how much it should color our judgment of their actions.

As they say, the game is the game.

We are the one percent? (sorry)

Are your originals actually the original files? Some people have strong opinions about data leakage via EXIF metadata, specifically location and sometimes date/time. Do you strip that information out during upload/resizing?

Overall, it looks great. My family would definitely use it, for similar reasons to yours. Nice work!

Invert it. What we really care about is the percent of users who are experiencing a higher-than-tolerable response time, right? Why not measure that instead of using descriptive statistics whose goal is primarily to describe the entire distribution? Do we even care about the variance in response time amongst everybody below the threshold?

One of the biggest issues with mass-produced meat in this country is the total lack of transparency between the average case and worst case scenario. If all you take away from this is starting to believe in and supporting better food labeling practices, and perhaps actually having a conversation about your meat's provenance with your butcher, I'd consider that to be progress.

You may want to try Luke's Local http://lukeslocal.com

I am surprised by how few people are aware of this: https://www.pwdhash.com/

Convenience provided via Chrome/Firefox extensions, portability provided by the website.

Worth re-posting here: http://www.suasnews.com/2013/11/25838/gimball-an-insect-like...

This is clearly a strongly negative experience for one individual, but probably not a shocking story.

But why did this up-voted to the frontpage in a matter of minutes? It's currently in the top 10, after 40 minutes.

In my experience, the title is a fairly common sentiment amongst software engineers...until they join in on hiring responsibilities for their team(s), and then the relative value of recruiters becomes rapidly apparent.

In the early 1980s when NFL was enjoying it's first rise to dominance on the national airwaves, PPV was seriously considered and debated. The potential audience was one of the reasons Al Davis moved the Raiders from Oakland to Los Angeles.

However, market research demonstrated that there was strong consumer resistance for the concept of paying to watch one's "local" team, and the market for PPV out-of-market teams was not deemed large enough.

(to the cite-your-source pedants: there is a book that says these things, I read it once, but I do not guarantee that my recall is 100% accurate, nor do I remember title of said book.)

Another good opportunity to re-post this critique of "A New Kind of Science" by Cosma Shalizi. It's not kind.

http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfra...

Pretty sure each answer reveals a bit about each of our value functions (and what we read on-line). Here goes:

ProPublica http://www.propublica.org/about/jobs

Maplight http://maplight.org/content/jobs-at-maplight

Sunlight Foundation http://sunlightfoundation.com/jobs/

Rootstrikers http://www.rootstrikers.org/

resource.org https://public.resource.org/

Code for America http://codeforamerica.org/

Engineers Without Borders http://www.ewb-usa.org/

EFF https://www.eff.org/about/opportunities/jobs

Nexleaf Analytics http://nexleaf.org/contact-us

For me, the convenience of Uber was always in the predictability of when the car would arrive. Flywheel (http://www.flywheel.com/) has finally effectively solved that problem for regular cabs, after half a dozen apps tried. Anecdotal conversations with taxi drivers indicate that they are pretty happy with the Flywheel service as well - it is definitely the best received app by drivers.

Using an app that seems to treat driver's more fairly is worth something to me, YMMV.

My implication was that sitting through and reading all 24 pages of this review did not seem like a reasonable use of time for a non-fanboy.

Taking casual cheap shots at strangers from behind a meaningless alias reflects on you as well.

Thank you for actually answering my question.

If you know of a shorter, more useful review, or are willing to tl;dr this for non-fanboys, please share.

This entire problem would go away if Gladwell's writings were classified as speculative fiction instead of non-fiction.

What behavior should he be apologizing for, in your opinion?

One of the convenient things about DDG is that if your search results aren't to your liking, it's just a few additional keystrokes to pipe your query into another search engine via bang syntax: https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html

I have also found DDG to be not as good for a lot of software/library/syntax related searches, and now I usually append "!g" to those queries. But those are maybe ~20-30% of my total search volume, so it's worth it to me.

I think it is fair to say that making DDG your primary search engine _today_ involves some compromise of overall search quality, but that's the price of supporting an evolving product.

Really? Could you provide a source for this? I was under the impression that the 30-pin connector was (yet another) proprietary Apple hardware standard.

FWIW, pretty much the entire sub-field of "priming" in contemporary psychological research has come under significant scrutiny over the past few years. I am no expert, I would encourage you to read this: https://chronicle.com/article/Power-of-Suggestion/136907

"The studies that raise eyebrows are mostly in an area known as behavioral or goal priming, research that demonstrates how subliminal prompts can make you do all manner of crazy things. A warm mug makes you friendlier. The American flag makes you vote Republican. Fast-food logos make you impatient. A small group of skeptical psychologists—let's call them the Replicators—have been trying to reproduce some of the most popular priming effects in their own labs.

What have they found? Mostly that they can't get those results. The studies don't check out. Something is wrong."

Serious questions:

1. Do you think there may be selection effects in this type of donation model? How do you plan on preventing discrimination against the less photogenic?

2. Do my dollars, etc actually go directly to specific individuals, or is there a layer of intermediation a la Kiva (over which there was some confusion and "controversy" [1])

3. In a world where watsi-like treatment model becomes successful, do you believe that creating these individual-to-individual dependencies is a net positive improvement for society?

[1] http://pages.kiva.org/fellowsblog/2009/11/11/kiva-transparen...

1. San Francisco is small enough that there is in how much housing stock is created, with the same development groups at times opposing growth and at times advocating for growth.

2. Since building codes and zoning laws are often manipulated to adjust supply, there is predictably a lag between need and updated codes. We are in the middle of a housing creation wave. There is currently a large volume of to-be-constructed units that have been approved by the planning commission and will be entering the market in the next year [1].

3. One of the most overlooked sources of demand pressure is the recent and rapid rise of west coast properties as good investment vehicle for Asian investors [2].

4. Re: rent control - it is intentional that the community believes it is more valuable to keep rental housing stock fluid and accessible, at the expense of investment appreciation. Or, at least the community used to believe - given the changing demographics of San Francisco, I would expect these rules to change in the next decade or two. A reasonable comp is changes in how rental stock and rent control is treated in Berkeley over the past two decades.

[1] http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?page=1691 [2] http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22313326/bay-area-rea...

And the parent's point is that "why doesn't everybody use all keyboard shortcuts all the time" is a HN refrain that is tired and smug, and yet still the top-voted comment here.

For the silence/ambient noise problem: http://coffitivity.com/

It's rarely actually impressive to observe somebody attack lesser proponents of the ideas they disagree with. Sure, none of the actual decision makers will come within ten miles of an open forum, but this comes off mostly as just bullying.

Firefox only plugin. Is there something comparable for chrome?

For reference, this page is unsatisfying: https://panopticlick.eff.org/self-defense.php

And yet, this Pew Research poll from two days ago:

> "Overall, 56 percent of Americans consider the NSA’s accessing of telephone call records of millions of Americans through secret court orders “acceptable,” while 41 percent call the practice “unacceptable.”" [1]

The Pew question only specifies phone data monitoring, while the Gallup question mentions both phone and internet data. I'm sure the poll-question-phrasing-savvy can provide some more insight on the differences.

How much of the difference can be attributed to people's minds changing in response to further revelations, the quality of the government's response, the opinions of their peers, etc?

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/most-americans-suppor...

IMO, the most interesting thing going on here is whether Microsoft will incorporate the backlash against his comments as meaningful product feedback. We don't know if the feature is being seriously considered or not, but if it ends up being included, that'll say a lot about how much MS values those opinions.