ideonexus

This paper is spreading like wildfire in the science online community--not because of it's results--but because of how this data was obtained. It reveals that Facebook is monitoring everything you do on the platform. When you start to write a post, maybe in a moment of anger, think better of it, and delete that post to write something more moderate, Facebook has recorded everything you wrote and deleted.

This isn't a new revelation to HN. I've seen posts here before analyzing the javascript behind Facebook and showing how it's recording your every keystroke. According to the academics I follow, this paper is the evidence that the company is sharing that data with third parties.

I love this idea. Is there an android alternative?

Recommend this use the more accurate article title, "Radioactive Cloud Over Europe Hints At Accident Farther East." The expert cited said this doesn't sound like a nuclear plant accident, but a nuclear reprocessing plant accident.

This is my strategy. It's a very volatile, high-risk investment, but one I'll hate myself for missing out on should it take off. So I've bet what I'm willing to lose on it (<1% for me) and told myself I won't read any news on it so I won't invest more or get scared into selling.

And yet here I am. :)

This is the point I wanted to bring up. As a pack-a-day smoker for 10 years, I got up from my desk for 10 minutes every 1.5 hours to smoke a cigarette. Later, as a non-smoker, a health-conscious manager told me he wanted me to get up from my desk once an hour to take a five-minute walk around the building for my health. Regular breaks during the day are better for your health than vacation days; although, both are good for your health.

Seconding this recommendation. A former hobby of mine was photographically cataloging museum exhibits and uploading them to flickr cc-licensed. I've pulled tons of cc photos from flickr for picture books and other projects. It's a fantastic resource, and only costs you attribution.

I've been very happy with PIA. It's cheap with minimal impact to my bandwidth. The concern is that, like all VPNs, we are trusting them not to keep logs. PIA claims that they proved in court that they do not keep logs because they provided no useful data to an FBI request. There's a debate over whether this proves they don't keep logs or not here:

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/forum/discussion/26284...

Is this semantics? I am uncertain. I do think that it's in PIA's best commercial interests not to keep logs. It's the core of their business model. The moment a PIA customer's identity is revealed through them is the moment they lose all business.

I find this very important. I will find ways to turn competitive games into cooperative games just to keep my sons' interested in them. It works wondefully, and the increased engagement has a great payoff in seeing them get better at the games.

Ohhh... I like these. I was thinking of an interface for exploring binary algebra one and the Zeckendorf Theorem would fit right into it. I think getting kids to think in other systems expands their appreciation of math.

I really appreciate both of these comments. Thank you both.

Thanks! I struggle to make them mobile-friendly since younger children have a hard time with using the mouse and touchscreens are much more accessible for them. I keep learning a lot of CSS on the way, but it's really not my specialty. I would love for someone with CSS skills to rework my mess.

I've been writing little one-page javascript pages to introduce my four- and six-year-old to various mathematical concepts like cardinality, place-value, sets, factors, equivalency, etc, etc:

http://ideonexus.github.io/Explorable-Explanations/

The boys love some of them (others not-so-much). Based on this article, I'm getting lots of ideas for new ones to code. Most of the code is original, but I try to be careful to give credit to anyone whose code or ideas I build upon.

Took a look at the "trending" articles on this network. Most of them are about cryptocurrencies, followed by phishing-scam warnings, and finally a smattering of other content. This seems like a network built around the hype of cryptocurrencies that is hyping itself into value.

I'm experiencing a lot of anxiety lately that I'm missing the cryptocurrency boat, but at the same time the more I research the possibilities I'm finding far less opportunity to invest and much more opportunity to get taken.

It concerns me that we award managers all the credit for collaborative innovations. History remembers Thomas Edison as a great inventor with 2,332 patents. This is a distortion though. He was mostly a manager, who stamped his name on everything his building of inventors produced. I see the same thing happening with the mythologizing of Steve Jobs as an inventor instead of as a CEO.

This "great man" view of history distorts our perceptions. It tricks us into believing any lone person can rise from nothing. The reality is that it takes collaboration, funding, and often privilege. People might be a little happier with their lives if they knew the "great man" concept is just propaganda, and that simply contributing to something great is a worthwhile aspiration. I know I'm happier for discovering this in my mid-life.

I don't think we are really talking past each other. To me this an issue of self-determination as well. I lived in a small town completely lacking employment opportunities for 10 years. The kids who were able to move out got careers, those who couldn't are stuck working in the service industry. With a little government assistance, they could move to where the careers are.

I regret the blunt, clinical way I communicated this in my original post.

Actually, if I were proposing a "final solution," I would simply advocate that urban areas simply stop paying Federal and State taxes. Without government subsidization, rural areas unable to financially support themselves would vanish very quickly.

But I'm not advocating that. I'm suggesting we provide support to dying communities to voluntarily relocate to where the jobs are. Communities that are doing fine would obviously forego such an option.

The problem is that you can't look up those stats. They don't exist. I'm not talking about Federal Budget alone or roads alone. I'm talking about Federal Taxes, State Taxes, and Local Taxes as they apply to roads, electric lines, sewage, bridges, community centers, and the myriad other projects that go into supporting a healthy community.

There is a well established flow of taxes from urban areas to rural areas. We frame it as a progressive flow of taxes from high-income to low-income, but much of that low-income is tied to geography. I think the reaction to my post reinforces this. Comments in support of NY's export of low-income citizens out of the city have been up-voted. But, as I predicted, observing that rural Americans are consuming more public services than they pay for has drawn outrage. It's easy to call homeless people a problem, but people get angry when you point out how reliant they are on the government for their rural lifestyle.

I've been thinking we should have a Federal program that helps people in small towns relocate into urban areas or suburban areas at the outskirts of cities. I think letting sparsely populated rural areas depopulate would save us billions on infrastructure since it costs far more per person to run and maintain miles of road out to nowhere rather than short roads to apartments, townhouses, and neighborhoods. As a city dweller, I would gladly exchange the massive federal infrastructure costs that incentivise rural life for the much more consolidated stress this would put on my local infrastructure.

The irony of my proposal is that, while it is in a sense the converse of what NY is doing, I guarantee you it would draw vastly more outrage. The costs of sheltering the 60,000 homeless in NY is nothing compared to the costs of subsidizing rural America to the tune of trillions of dollars. The former is considered a debatable charity, while the latter is never questioned.

I felt the same way, but then I have to keep in mind that the library of games for the C64 was pretty immense, and negotiating with that many software developers to get the rights would be a herculean task. This isn't Nintendo, where a single company is putting out their own hits. Commodore's library is (I believe) entirely 3rd party manufactured, and back in the BBS days I maintained a library of hundreds of games for trade.

I agree with you with one exception: when a youtube video is preceded by an advertisement. Youtube videos load very quickly, but I have had to give up watching some videos because the 30-second advertisement gets stuck in loading mode. I assume this is because there is a contractual obligation to show the ad at a minimum resolution, while the video itself can be delivered at a low quality and improve depending on the connection.

I feel the core message of the article is that our online media are making us complacent. I know lots of people on social media who are really angry about politics and post furiously all day long. And I wonder, what are they accomplishing?

I wonder about this when I read a news article online and see there are 2k comments on it. So much energy spent churning out--what I assume the author believes are 'thoughtful'--comments that no one will ever read.

I have unemployed friends and relatives who spend their entire day arguing on social media. When I challenge them on whether this is the best use of their time, they tell me they are changing the world.

And then I read about the bot-armies flooding social media and news articles with comments intended to make certain positions seem more prevalent. I think about all the humans arguing with those bots and what a waste of time and effort it all is.

The internet makes it seem like there's so much sound and fury going on in the world, but then I step outside and find my local community working harmoniously on making our spot on Earth a better place. It's important to unplug from the unreality and look around you.

The coolest augmented reality setup is UCDavis Augmented Reality Sandbox, which uses a projector, an Xbox kinect, and sandbox that lets you wiggle your fingers to create rain, dig rivers and lakes, and see how water flows through an environment. My kids and I were blown away by it at a science festival last year. It's all open source and you could build your own for less than $500 I think:

https://arsandbox.ucdavis.edu/

An amazing example of the possibilities is the UCDavis Augmented Reality Sandbox, which uses a projector, an Xbox kinect, and sandbox that lets you wiggle your fingers to create rain, dig rivers and lakes, and see how water flows through an environment. My kids and I were blown away by it at a science festival last year. It's all open source and you could build your own for less than $500 I think:

https://arsandbox.ucdavis.edu/

IFLScience is not "journalism in general." The acronym stands for "I F*%ing Love Science" and it got started as a Facebook page made popular for posting science-joke memes. The site and FB page, both run by Elise Andrew, are both fairly disliked in the Science Online community for misrepresenting studies, disseminating false information, and chronic copyright violations as she blatantly steals photos and art from others and fails to give credit.

This wikipedia article covers just a little of what Elise Andrew is guilty of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elise_Andrew#Criticism_and_acc...

Links to this site have no business on HN.

"The Royal Surgical Society even issued a strongly worded Manifesto..."

"the Department of Defence declared a moratorium on all funding of sterilization research..."

I can find no evidence that such a manifesto ever existed or that the DoD ever took such an action. When I search for these, the top link is this essay. I know there was resistance to sterilization, but I suspect Dijkstra may have been exaggerating it to make his point.

This is crucial. I am concerned that #4 of the Terms of Use for this site does state that you give up your right to sue Equifax or join a class action lawsuit:

http://www.equifax.com/terms/

I clicked on the "Enroll" button before reading this (after giving my last name and six-digit social), and it told me to come back in a week to enroll. Now I'm wondering, did I just give up my rights?

I appreciate the concept of the "Northeast Megalopolis" here on the East Coast, where we consider Boston to Washington DC one continuous city:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis

I would expand on Go, Poker/Blackjack, and Logic Puzzles to taking up board gaming as a hobby. There is a renaissance in this hobby that started several years ago and is only growing in strength. I am fascinated with the wild variety of game mechanics and themes coming out each year. There's a social element to it that gets you out of your head if you go to your local gaming shop to play with others and there's also a quiet meditative element to it as you read rule books and play mock games in private to learn how things work. As an introvert, I find the structure of board gaming gives me a medium through which I can more easily interact with others. It's almost like collaborative puzzle-solving--especially when the other players are also in it for the fun and less the competition.

Magic the Gathering is still a huge hobby for me along these lines. I find getting out to Friday Night Magic tournaments leaves my mind ablaze thanks to the social interactions, constantly evolving game dynamics, and leaving each tournament with new ideas for decks and strategies. It's been around for twenty years now, keeps coming up with new mechanics, and is more popular than ever.

The author's experience strongly echoes my mother's experience getting a chemistry masters in the 1960s. One of her professors outright told her at the beginning of the semester that she would not do well in the sciences because she was a woman. That semester she actually tutored a group of men who were in the class, and all of those men received higher grades than her (she got a C-). These men told my mother they would help her fight the professor to get the grade she deserved, but she let it go.

A few years later, my mother met other women who had the same professor and had the same stories to tell about him. One of those women told my mother, "Because no one is fighting him, he thinks he can just keep doing it." For the next forty years, my mother never passed up another fight, excelled in the sciences, and is a respected professor of nursing today in her 70s giving talks around the globe.

When I attended the same university in the 90s, I told some friends about my mother's experience. They laughed and said it couldn't be the same guy, but their professor of chemistry announced on the first day that women were inherently incapable of doing well in his class. I'm thankful that today such a statement would get recorded, go viral online, and force dinosaurs like that into early retirement.

The biggest recurring issue I have with my managers over the last twenty years is their need to add unnecessary complexity to projects. I think a good manager stays out of the way and just monitors employees for any obstructions that are preventing them from meeting their goals. Yet, my experience is that when a manager sits in on a project meeting, they can't help but start giving input on the project itself, adding complexity to defined business rules or adding obscure use cases to the system. Too many managers can't help but dominate meetings because their dominant personalities is how they became managers in the first place.

The worst is when you get two or more managers attending the same meeting. Then nothing will get done as they eat up all of the meeting time arguing about business rules, magnifying the complexity of the system until you end up with some Rube Goldberg chain of logic that they will completely forget minutes after they've left the meeting. A good manager knows to trust their employees and only intervenes to make sure those employees have the resources they need to do their jobs. The most effective managers are humble and respect the expertise of the experts they hire.