This reminds me of the scene in Silicon Valley where Peter Gregory notices the popularity of Burger King, the number of sesame seeds they use, and remembers that sesame seeds only grow in Myanmar, Brazil, and Indonesia - the former two of which have large Cicada populations that emerge at different times. After some research, he finds that this is about to occur simultaneously in both countries for the first time in a couple of centuries. Apparently Indonesia doesn't have cicadas, so he purchases some surprisingly cheap Indonesian sesame seed futures based on the expectation that the price will spike next year.
Whoever did the detective work in the top answer to this article should get into investing, if they aren't already.
That reminds me of a scene from Liar's Poker, I wonder if it was the inspiration:
Remember Chernobyl? When news broke that the Soviet nuclear reactor had exploded, Alexander called. Only minutes before, yet Alexander had already bought the equivalent of two supertankers of crude oil. The focus of investor attention was on the New York Stock Exchange, he said. In particular it was on any company involved in nuclear power. The stocks of those companies were plummeting. Never mind that, he said. He had just purchased, on behalf on his clients, oil futures. Instantly in his mind less supply of nuclear power equaled more demand for oil, and he was right. His investors made a large killing.
Minutes later, Alexander called back. “Buy potatoes,” he said. “Gotta hop.” Then he hung up. Of course. A cloud of fallout would threaten European food and water supplies, including the potato crop, placing a premium on uncontaminated American substitutes. Perhaps a few folks other than potato farmers think of the price of potatoes in America minutes after the explosion of a nuclear reactor in Russia, but I have never met them.
> Whoever did the detective work in the top answer to this article should get into investing, if they aren't already.
I know some person who does this kind of detective work, let's express it this way: as a private, really time-intense hobby. Among others he revealed a complicated case of insolvency fraud and investment fraud involving multiple countries and stooges.
The sole reason he started all this detective work was because some customer was not willing to pay him as agreed for a web design job that he did (surely not more than 2000 €) - you cannot make up such a reason and story.
While he has a lot of talent for this kind of detective work, I would never give or lend him any money for the single reason that he simply has not the slightest magic touch for making money.
i certainly have to agree entirely with what you said. i just recently got into watching silicon valley and have been binge watching it, and you definitely have a point with how the analysis in the top answer is very reminiscent of the mentality that Peter Gregory would so frequently display.
Sesame seed production – 2014
Country Production (tonnes)
Tanzania 1,138,920
India 811,000
Sudan 721,000
China 629,900
Myanmar 519,400
Nigeria 434,990
World 6,235,530
It's a sign of a "cognitive surplus", because we have more educated people now than we have jobs for them to do. Also it's a sign of how these sites get people to work for them for free, and concentrate huge amounts of other people's work for their own benefit. This poster got nothing for all that work, but SE still gets advertising revenue driven by interest in the content.
The smaller stack exchanges are a really wonderful source of content I never thought I needed to know. I always check out the "hot network questions" side panel when I land on stack overflow and almost always find something interesting.
It's a shame that the internet devolved into cat pictures, pervasive advertisements, and political shouting matches. On the other hand, there are still some great communities out there for great discussion. I consider HN to be one of them.
Exactly. I started skimming the article like I do most these days, scrolling to the punch line while collecting the gist. When I got to the part about the ball being a knock-off, I was struck with excitement because I knew I wanted to read this whole thing, word for word.
you should read some of /pol/'s analysis of the email leaks from last year: it was truly a wonder of crowd-sourced investigation. They even set up meta investigators (managers?) to help guide the anonymous users' investigations to make sure that all of the emails got read and categorized.
A long time ago I worked as a "designer" for somebody who owned a chain of medium retail stores in Mexico and a also biggish printshop. When there was a (printed) product was selling very well, he would go to me and ask me to make one as similar as possible so he can manufacture it and get more of the profits.
He did it all the time and didn't care at all for the quality of the product. At first I tried to make the illustrations myself or actually try to do an original spin on the product, but he put pressure to just pull a clip art and call it a day.
Some times I tried to hide some in-jokes or innappropiate stuff just to see if anybody noticed. For example, he once got me to to copy a whole book on some catholic saint, on a hurry, and refuse to pay some one to proff-read it. So I intentionally replaced some words here and there to change the meaning and I even changed the name of the saint to "Batman" in the middle of the book. Nobody ever noticed.
So my guess is that whoever designed this ball is on a similar situation and did put even less effort into doing it, than whoever has the third top answer in the Stackoverflow post. Or maybe she even put a swedish axe just to see if anybody would notice.
The top answer is a picture of the use of Yxa in a Swedish alphabet learning book, yet there's still people here clinging to the yellow paint tube theory.
Incredible. Not sure what cognitive bias is at play here (or more charitably: perhaps they didn't scroll down).
Assuming this was made in China, there are two sources of confusion that could lead to this mix up.
1. The letter 'A' and an upside down Y-shaped character share the same key on a Chinese/English key board. This could lead to an unintended subconscious relationship between these symbol shapes.[1]
2. The orientation of these characters abruptly changed on the ball graphic between W and Q, leaving the orientation of the Y-shaped letter unclear to someone with minimal familiarity of Latin letters. An upside down Y is also easy to confuse with the letter A if you are not familiar.
This all assumes that Axe was the first common-'A' word selected. Perhaps they postponed the choice of the common-'Y' word given it is challenging. After misattributing Y for A, then someone just added an Apple graphic.
This was such a delightful read. A quote from the wonderful Okja recently released on Netflix: "Never mistranslate!"... unless you make balls for toddlers!
I've always found English SE to be interesting, because it varies between questions like this with extremely well thought up answers and questions that are so-so.
[+] [-] peterkelly|8 years ago|reply
Whoever did the detective work in the top answer to this article should get into investing, if they aren't already.
[+] [-] bradleyjg|8 years ago|reply
Remember Chernobyl? When news broke that the Soviet nuclear reactor had exploded, Alexander called. Only minutes before, yet Alexander had already bought the equivalent of two supertankers of crude oil. The focus of investor attention was on the New York Stock Exchange, he said. In particular it was on any company involved in nuclear power. The stocks of those companies were plummeting. Never mind that, he said. He had just purchased, on behalf on his clients, oil futures. Instantly in his mind less supply of nuclear power equaled more demand for oil, and he was right. His investors made a large killing.
Minutes later, Alexander called back. “Buy potatoes,” he said. “Gotta hop.” Then he hung up. Of course. A cloud of fallout would threaten European food and water supplies, including the potato crop, placing a premium on uncontaminated American substitutes. Perhaps a few folks other than potato farmers think of the price of potatoes in America minutes after the explosion of a nuclear reactor in Russia, but I have never met them.
[+] [-] wolfgke|8 years ago|reply
I know some person who does this kind of detective work, let's express it this way: as a private, really time-intense hobby. Among others he revealed a complicated case of insolvency fraud and investment fraud involving multiple countries and stooges. The sole reason he started all this detective work was because some customer was not willing to pay him as agreed for a web design job that he did (surely not more than 2000 €) - you cannot make up such a reason and story.
While he has a lot of talent for this kind of detective work, I would never give or lend him any money for the single reason that he simply has not the slightest magic touch for making money.
[+] [-] uiri|8 years ago|reply
RIP Christopher Evan Welch
[+] [-] ozzmotik|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seesomesense|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] louprado|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pouetpouet|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CJefferson|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sp332|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulgb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thearn4|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asciimo|8 years ago|reply
Almost as good as the story about the missing German family (http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hun...)!
[+] [-] oblio|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nothis|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] octalmage|8 years ago|reply
https://www.quora.com/Suppose-I-just-stole-2-billion-dollars...
[+] [-] morninj|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johan_larson|8 years ago|reply
http://nounsstarting.com
Oh internet, never change.
[+] [-] ryanx435|8 years ago|reply
it was quite fun to be a part of, actually.
[+] [-] armandososa|8 years ago|reply
He did it all the time and didn't care at all for the quality of the product. At first I tried to make the illustrations myself or actually try to do an original spin on the product, but he put pressure to just pull a clip art and call it a day.
Some times I tried to hide some in-jokes or innappropiate stuff just to see if anybody noticed. For example, he once got me to to copy a whole book on some catholic saint, on a hurry, and refuse to pay some one to proff-read it. So I intentionally replaced some words here and there to change the meaning and I even changed the name of the saint to "Batman" in the middle of the book. Nobody ever noticed.
So my guess is that whoever designed this ball is on a similar situation and did put even less effort into doing it, than whoever has the third top answer in the Stackoverflow post. Or maybe she even put a swedish axe just to see if anybody would notice.
[+] [-] Luc|8 years ago|reply
Incredible. Not sure what cognitive bias is at play here (or more charitably: perhaps they didn't scroll down).
EDIT: Some say these are pictures of a paint tube and some yellow paint: https://jimthechairmaker.wordpress.com/2014/01/08/my-carving...
The fact that an axe is used in the exact same way in the Swedish book is very strong evidence. There's prior art.
[+] [-] louprado|8 years ago|reply
1. The letter 'A' and an upside down Y-shaped character share the same key on a Chinese/English key board. This could lead to an unintended subconscious relationship between these symbol shapes.[1]
2. The orientation of these characters abruptly changed on the ball graphic between W and Q, leaving the orientation of the Y-shaped letter unclear to someone with minimal familiarity of Latin letters. An upside down Y is also easy to confuse with the letter A if you are not familiar.
This all assumes that Axe was the first common-'A' word selected. Perhaps they postponed the choice of the common-'Y' word given it is challenging. After misattributing Y for A, then someone just added an Apple graphic.
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ef/St...
[+] [-] louprado|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thedrake|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kochb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danbron|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danbron|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magic_beans|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johan_larson|8 years ago|reply
year yell yacht yellow yearling yeti yoga
I'd probably go with yoga, myself.
[+] [-] yuleanswer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldpie|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] BugsJustFindMe|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ryan606|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rplnt|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raldi|8 years ago|reply
https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/58o43m/hel...
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