Show HN: Framer Studio – Interaction Design Tool - <AUTHOR> http://framerstudio.com

<comment><USER2> This is really cool and one of the first products I've seen beyond our own that addresses a specific need: simple prototyping using code. There are many "without writing code!" prototyping apps, and many non-app code libraries and frameworks, but few that combine the two.

Our product is for HTML prototyping and intended to be used for making quick interactive mockups of web apps and sites. Part of the reason it exists is because we've always felt that you need to write code to accurately mock interactions; just using canned stuff provided by most drag-and-drop interaction design tools doesn't cut it. We launched in 2010 and in the four years since, no one has really addressed a similar niche.

Framer seems to be a cool alternate approach: first off, it's focusing on mobile apps and small touch-based interactions with a lot of animation. That's great since that's where the market is now. But it's also different in that it looks like you only write Coffeescript and no HTML or CSS. I guess that's a good development too, since during prototyping you just want to describe behaviour and not focus on managing semantics, document structure, styling, etc - best to just have the tool handle it for you through the abstraction provided by FramerJS.

Good to see Framer is being developed by fellow Dutchies, too! We should organise a prototyping meetup or something. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> props for not having a confusing front page that is very vague about what it actually does. This should be proof that you can be stylish _and_ clear.</comment>


Sendgrid is down - <AUTHOR> http://support.sendgrid.com/entries/23417077-21-Mar-Website-Down-Refusing-Mail <comment> grey-area I'm sad to see that HN is being used as a platform for this sort of demagogy, and sad that stories about this tawdry little tale are indiscriminately voted up above other stories which are far more interesting.

DDOS of a mailing service that lots of websites rely on because a completely unrelated company decided to fire someone is not an occasion for _lol_ and _schadenfreude_ as some posters here would have it. As a method of justice it has more in common with a lynch mob than a court of law - this isn't going to get the guy's job back, and it certainly isn't going to teach anyone a lesson, apart from that the internet is fickle, and monumentally stupid. But I very much doubt the people behind this attack are interested in justice or truly care about the man who lost his job, they're just doing it for the lolz and are punishing the internet at large over a silly little dispute at a tech conference.

Congratulations to the mob, I guess; it has shown its power, if not any sense of discrimination or proportionality.

<comment><USER3> Now you can argue as much as you want - but the (sad) truth is that mob mentality exists and we will have to deal with it for at least the next few centuries.

This should be a lesson for companies that hire highly confrontational people as their official community representatives.

Yes, in a perfect world there shouldn't be DDOS' and other attacks because of a tweet about an immature joke but it's not a perfect world and we should be very wary what personalities we hire to represent us.

As much as I don't like it - the "right" thing for sengrid would be to replace their 'developer evangelist' with someone who's less confrontational. Yes, it sucks. But as businesses we have to deal with reality.

<comment><USER4> If she was confrontational she would have confronted them. Replace 'confrontational' with 'passive aggressive' I totally agree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was a Heroku win for us. I just visited their add-ons page, identified a comparable provider, and restored mail in our application with the following:

        heroku addons:add mailgun:basic
        heroku addons:docs mailgun:basic
        vim config/initializers/mail.rb
        git add config/initializers/mail.rb
        git commit -m "Switching to back-up mail provider."
        git push heroku master

Since the account creation is all automatic and billing is all through Heroku, I never even had to visit Mailgun's website.

<comment><USER6> How do you handle SPF/DKIM and domain keys records? Do you send out a lot of emails? Have you had a mailgun account ready?

<comment><USER5> I don't know anything about this. If someone could provide some details/resources around this I'm sure it would be valuable to folks right now who need to evaluate the risks of switching providers on a short-term basis.

(For us in particular, SendGrid only represents a small amount of the email we send and it's mostly internal emails. The problem for us was that the ActionMailer emails aren't sent in a background process, so this caused a couple request timeouts.)

<comment><USER7> If memory serves, if you can log into Mailgun, it will have some text on how to set up all those things on your dashboard. Congrats on switching - <USER2> has vastly superior deliverability, at least in my observation.

<comment><USER6> I'd love to hear why you think mailgun is more superior than sendgrid. I'm currently using sendgrid.

<comment><USER7> We started off using Sendgrid too but found that our emails were often ending up flagged as spam, even though we had the SPF records and all that jazz. I should note that our emails were not spammy at all. Switched to Mailgun and haven't had any issues since.

I have also noticed that false positives from other startups in my own spam folder are often sent through Sendgrid (though I suppose that's not dispositive since it could just be that more startups use Sendgrid).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Even though I'm a SG customer, I can't help but feel a little schadenfreude.

edit: when I made this comment I thought this was a random service failure that would last couple of minutes. More than 1 hour later, I don't think it's that funny anymore as I'm being affected as well.

<comment><USER9> SG customer as well. What's all the negativity towards them? Is there something I should know about them? I wasn't aware of any incidents.

<comment><USER6> There's not much negativity toward them just a bit of criticism on how they're handling this outage. As I mentioned in another comment of mine on that thread - they should have reached out to customers and let them know there's an outage (especially if this is an outage that is > 10 minutes).

P.S: I still think Sendgrid are awesome and fortunately they'll listen to what we have to say and next outage will be handled differently.

<comment><USER10> A female Sendgrid employee overheard a joke mentioning a dongle looking like a phallus, took a picture of the guy, posted it to Twitter, and he got fired from his job without anyone hearing his side of the story. His apologies were ignored.

Now the mob is mad at Sendgrid.

<comment><USER11> and by mob we mean possibly one person acting like a dongle and knocking out a website.

<comment><USER12> Can I have a picture of you please for using the word dongle in a fashion that I may or may not be upset about? You know, for internet justice..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sendgrid customer here.

Since many services rely on SMTP providers like Sendgrid, they should have a way to notify customers when their server go down and transactional notifications may be disrupted.

I shouldn't be notified by someone who know we're using Sendgrid and happen to read HN.

<comment><USER13> They've been tweeting about it for an hour or so: <https://twitter.com/SendGrid>

I would expect them to send emails to customers in the event of serious issues though, expecting your customers to learn about problems through Twitter isn't that much better than learning about them from HN.

<comment><USER14> > I would expect them to send emails

<comment><USER15> Preferably not with their own SMTP service ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> OK, I'll bite - is this a coincidence - or are they being DDOS'd over the PyCon incident?

<comment><USER17> The dreaded FDDOS: Forking Dongle Denial of Service.

<comment><USER18> Still unfunny and tasteless. Imagine that.

<comment><USER19> Well I laughed at his joke. Maybe it's time to grow up and understand different people like different jokes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm just tuning in now, as I happened to see this here on HN and my company is a SendGrid customer (used for transactional emails).

Am I understanding this right - transactional emails for my company may be interrupted because of some random personal argument between two people?

<comment><USER21> Not confirmed, but definitely possible: [http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/20/playhaven-developer- fired-...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/20/playhaven-developer-fired-for- making-sexual-jokes-after-sendgrids-developer-evangelist-outs-him-on-twitter/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm surprised PlayHaven hasn't shared the blame for their role in this whole thing. Adria, and by-extension, SendGrid shoulder some of the responsibility for what happened, but PlayHaven chose not to back their own employee.

</comment><comment><USER23> It seems that Adria's personal blog is having similar problems..

<http://butyoureagirl.com/>

<comment><USER24> Yes she mentioned that her website was getting DDOSed and that she was going to put it behind Cloudflare. I'm not sure its a DDOS though, it could just be the amount of traffic she's getting from HN/Reddit/Twitter/etc.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5400134>

EDIT: It seems that her personal website (adriarichards.com) is down too.

<comment><USER25> How is putting it behind Cloudflare going to help now that the (alleged) DDoSers have the IP address of the actual server?

<comment><USER26> mirror the content to a different host. point cloudflare at it. something like that i guess. could be a pain in the ass if you can't get to the original server and you have no other copies of the content, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As a SendGrid customer, I'm certainly glad I visit HN frequently and was able to find out about this. I'm surprised we weren't notified by them directly, though.

<comment><USER28> We've never been directly notified by them despite their SMTP breaking a number of times.

<comment><USER27> I'll just start following them on Twitter then. I've recently started working somewhere new where we use SendGrid, and this is the first outage I've been aware of.

<comment><USER29> I did the same thing. Followed them on twitter just to be aware of the outage status without having to go look for it.

<comment><USER30> Since the service is timing out, I think we'd all be best served in this case by having robust internal monitoring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> First we replaced SMTP that was distributed and designed to be resilient to outages (i.e. not lose messages) with proprietary HTTP APIs and now we complain that they don't notify us via email when they are down. Nice.

I am guilty of using SES myself, but it's sad to see email becoming increasingly centralized.

<comment><USER32> We use SendGrid for transactional email, but handle (solicited) bulk email in- house. The centralization of email is at least partly due to the fact that ensuring email gets delivered is difficult and time-consuming.

While I'm sure a lot of SendGrid's customers don't want (or don't know how) to configure a mail server, there are other customers who know that delivering email isn't as simple as installing Postfix. The rise of centralized email services is the inevitable byproduct.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, I know. Not blaming SendGrid in the slightest. Spammers have spoiled it for us all. Freedom disappearing because of a minority of abusers seems to be a common pattern...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ironic:

<https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425>

<comment><USER33> That doesn't belong in this discussion. This isn't reddit.

<comment><USER22> Gah! I totally forgot to ask for your permission and editorial insight before I posted. Please accept my apology, and thanks for staying on top of things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> FWIW, we use Amazon SES and enjoy it immensely.

</comment><comment><USER9> Looks like she got the boot. <http://www.facebook.com/SendGrid>

</comment><comment><USER35> Great for Adria: more blog hits. Not so great for SendGrid: a PR disaster.

</comment><comment><USER36> all thnx to adria and her cyber bullying

<comment><USER37> All thanks to a dickhead with a botnet _</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What (browser) do you use to browse HN on iPhone? - <AUTHOR> I've been a Android phone user for a while and just switched to iPhone. One thing I don't like so far is that the font size of Safari browser is too small to read and apparently there's no setting that allows to increase the size other than pinch and widen technique. However it doesn't wrap the text and then I have keep scrolling horizontally to read it. On some sites I use Reader view which allows increasing the font. But HN doesn't have that.<p>So those of you who use iPhone and frequent HN, what do you use to make the font much more readable? <comment><USER2> Ah, don't worry(although I am not the creator of the app) I am using it and I don't have any issues with my credentials. Btw you can email the for any feedback, they answered me 1-2 times.

</comment><comment><USER2> Boreal app

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. That does look promising. Read their blog and just downloaded the app.

One question - it expects me to login to casually browse. Do you know how they manage the login? They present a on screen login windows and I'm a bit paranoid when it comes to providing username/passwords to apps.

Also, if the Boreal app developers notice this thread - how about a feature where I can browse HN using the app without having to login unless of course when I want to vote/comment? :)</comment></comment>


Cord-Cutting Weighs on Pay TV - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/cord-cutters-weights-on-pay-tv-1438820384

<comment><USER2> I'd like streaming Bloomberg and CNN then I'll cancel cable.

<comment><AUTHOR> For me it's football that makes a difference. Other than that, I stopped watching cable years ago.</comment></comment>


Winklevoss twins push another suit against Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/24/us-facebook-idUSTRE75N06V20110624

<comment><USER2> Haven't these guys gotten enough?

If they really had talent, they would have moved on years ago and started a successful company.</comment>


Google+ broke our trust - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/thanks-for-nothing-jerkface-7000030306/ <comment><USER2> I don't get it. So Brin announces to the world that Google+ is the new sliced bread in 2011. Then he tells a small group of people that he thinks he personally should not have been involved with G+. Also the leader of the G+ project leaves (one month after the project started? One month after Brin had his candid talk recently?)

Where in this is the broken trust? What is the author actually upset about? Seems to me like in 2011 Brin and co. thought Google+ was the future. Now Brin simply is admitting that he personally might not have been the right person to take this on and perhaps it was a bad idea (not clear from the poorly written article). On top of that the author is trying to make a story out of the project leader leaving precisely because there was no story there.

I think this piece is terribly written and there is no story behind it. G+ is not my favorite product but I think this is just an outburst of anger that does not deserve our attention.

<comment><USER3> The problem was the G+ was pitched as a social network. It grew, like a cancer, into some weird meta-project that defies description, and along the way fucked over lots of people who worked very hard to maintain different identities and roles in the various on-line milieus they frequented. Sometimes it was as simple as revealing their real name to their model plane group. Other times it involved just shutting down real income generating youtube channels that people had poured lots of time and effort into (thousands of hours), or revealing to abusive ex-spouses where you lived...all without any real good reason and zero upside to the users of the various Google properties and dubious upside to Google as a business.

This was very costly for Google just on the employment front as well. Word on the street is that Google had upwards of 1,200 employees working on the G+ project. Fully burdened, that's something like $250-300m/year.

There was no upside for the entire project, for users or for google. So now, a couple $billion later, they finally realized what everybody else on the planet realized 2 years ago. They could have just surveyed users back then to find out where they were screwing up, but in typical Google fashion, that would have involved actually engaging with their users, which Google is borderline allergic to.

<comment><USER4> >The problem was the G+ was pitched as a social network. It grew, like a cancer, into some weird meta-project that defies description

Really?

It was a single sign-on system to Google properties, tied to a social networking thing. accounts.google.com came not far after plus.google.com.

Google wanted to avoid becoming MySpace and wanted to mimic Facebook, and miscalculated slightly.

Personally, I really like being able to sign in once to Google properties. I like that YouTube comments now have real names on them. It makes them much less toxic.

How is it that Google+ shut down youtube channels? Changing the display name is all I've seen it do.

<comment><USER5> I agree on the real names. It truly cleaned up the nonsense and brings more peace of mind to those who scyually make YouTube money - the popular channel operators.

We get way less idiocy now.

<comment><USER6> See, I don't see that as a user. The bad comments sections used to be full of bad puns and arguments, but now they're just smaller and full of contentless "watch this" mentions. On channels where the comments used to be good, they are now rare and inaccurate.

<comment><USER5> The "watch this" mentions are something different - that's Google's way of trying to make things go viral (or something like that) on their social feeds, and I believe is completely unnecessary.

<comment><USER6> I believe they're just comments pulled in from google+ threads that mention the video in question, based on the logic that all comments on the video should be grouped. The problem is that people don't actually comment on videos on google+, they just share content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish both Google and Microsoft would understand that you can't force change down users' throats. It needs to come naturally. They need to _want_ it, and have it grow _organically_.

Sure, forcing them will definitely bring you bigger "adoption" (for lack of a better word) faster, but it will also build up a _lot_ of resentment, potentially negating any advantage you might have from ramming the change through, in the long run.

A lot of people didn't understand Twitter in the first 3+ years, but it still managed to grow organically, because people _wanted_ to join it over the years. Google tried to push Google+ to its 1 billion users within 2 years, with seemingly very little advantage for the _users_. What did they expect?

Same for Microsoft when it comes to pushing Metro to PC users who have been perfectly happy with their _PC interface_ , but Microsoft wanted to force them to use a _tablet_ interface on a PC. Why? Because Microsoft said so, and because they would get to flash "bigger numbers" to developers for "Metro users". The actual experience of the user on a desktop was barely a distant concern.

If you're a big corporation, and you can't grow a new business organically, then _tough luck_. Maybe you shouldn't be in that market then.

<comment><USER8> _I wish both Google and Microsoft would understand that you can 't force change down users' throat_

Innovation is a funny thing, and interestingly, forcing change on end users is something for which Apple regularly receives praise. Or as Henry Ford pointed out, people wanted faster horses. Few people probably wanted rush hour gridlock either.

Denonymization of the internet had already happened long before G÷. Cookies and tracking data were collected for more than a decade before its rollout. G÷ just made it explicit, and Apple was already ahead via iOS and the app store and the SIM cards in all those phones. Microsoft was barely a step behind them, and for me? Well I think the Metro interface has huge advantage over WIMP. It's cloud identity integration that drove me from Windows 8. Installation was the Oh-Shit moment.

<comment><USER9> Except people are ignoring the significant market growth slowdown that Apple has lost since Job's departure. A lot of old school Apple-friendly press always cheer each Apple release, but the reality is Apple hasn't really been "Apple" for some time. You have to remember that all of the news Apple released last week doesn't matter to the average user/consumer. The biggest news from Apple over the last 3 years to the average consumer was that they bought Beats headphones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Google+ embodied the Internet's cardinal sin: It broke everything it touched

I think this is the most important single line of the piece. G+ was pretty broken from the get go despite some promising ideas. But instead of focusing around what was working, Google simply amplified all the broken garbage -- then spread it around everywhere, making everything toxic, cancerous.

It's one of those many weird cases where you sit there, hands on your desk, mouth agape looking at some Google property that was fucked over by the G+ project and just ask yourself "doesn't _anybody_ at Google use this garbage?". Because the issues are so immediate and so obvious, it's impossible that nobody raised some red flags.

Which leaves two possibilities:

\- Google is composed of such inept socially awkward people that no red flags were raised and they all just proceeded on course _doo dee doo doo dee_ (a scenario I find very hard to believe)

\- Red flags were raised and simply brushed aside.

The first scenario is hard to believe because it presumes mass and gross incompetence on behalf of most of the employees at Google. But I know googlers, I've been interviews by Google, I've had various interactions with people from Google, and most of them just seem like normal folks from a variety of backgrounds.

As more and more leaks out it sounds like the second scenario is where it's at, and the question is why? Was it just some dumb headed attempt to extract any money possible for the major shareholders by turning the brand into garbage? Or was it just an honest attempt at unifying the properties, just managed at an absolutely amateurish level?

It's all so senseless and stupid and now everything is broken.

The sad thing is, this is something I see all the time, one hopelessly broken pet project is carried by the good idea fairy to some senior manager, and they being a cascade of failures across the rest of the company on something they probably have convinced themselves is just a big gamble with lots of upside. By the time the damage is done and widely recognized, the exec is out the door on their golden parachute leaving the remaining veterans to pick up the pieces and unfuck things. Except in this case, the ultimate party responsible holds half of the majority voting rights and continues to blissfully push socially inept product ideas. The only remediation is a long unfucking process and some possible minor impact on share price, meaning he can only buy 2 300' yachts instead of 2 350' yachts.

<comment><USER10> I think there was a more thought-provoking part than the "broke everything it touched" line:

 _Google 's executive chairman Eric Schmidt told National Public Radio digital editor Andy Carvin in 2011 that if people don't want to use their real names, then they shouldn't use Google+. He explained that Google should be considered "an identity service" with Google+ as the foundation across all its products._

Google, particularly its senior executives, have been utterly unrepentant as they've systematically trashed their once hallowed "do no evil" philosophy. The thing I find disappointing is that more people didn't take Schmidt's advice and stop using Google's services.

There are plenty of alternative search engines, e-mail services, video hosting sites, mobile operating systems and browsers. Outside these five, Google have relatively few big success stories anyway. Their track record in recent years has mostly been one failure after another, even sometimes damaging their established brands like YouTube and Google Maps.

And yet despite all the complaining, a lot of users seem to stick by them. I can understand that behaviour with Facebook (and Google+ itself) because of the inherent network effect, but the longevity of Google's brand loyalty is remarkable.

<comment><USER11> If I could find a good alternative to gmail, I'd take it in a second. Over the years, I've really started to dislike gmail, and most of google's services.

<comment><USER12> Did you mean a good _free_ alternative? Or just a good alternative?

<comment><USER11> Just a good alternative, I'm willing to pay, I just get scared sometimes that I'm going to lose out on quality by moving away from gmail.

But the more time goes on, the more I hate the interface changes to gmail, and IMAP to my local client is something that can happen with just about any service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I jumped on board early when I received an invite. I despised FB and was looking for for something that might actually resemble the tribe.net model of freedom and anonymity.

Unfortunately, I was told that I had to use my real name and signed up accordingly.

Everything was going along fine for about the first 9 months until I got into a small flame war with a woman in Canada about Scientologists (I used to work for some). That turned out to be the end of G+ for me.

It seems that the woman reported me for using a pseudonym, which to me and a few of my friends I obviously wasn't. I was livid! I immediately protested loud and clear in my timeline. One of my "hooped" IRL friends works at Yahoo! and told me that he had good connections at Google and could probably fix it for me. And that if he couldn't do that that he could at least vouch for me.

As he was trying to work his magic the pressure from Google was getting stronger. I had a big notice across my profile telling me that if I didn't provide legal proof of who I was that my account would be suspended in a week. I received the same threats in my gmail. So I started trying to work with them on this matter only to find that I was dealing with bots. I was beyond frustrated!

A few days later my friend came back to me and told me that there didn't seem to be much that he could do. I sure as hell didn't want to send them my my ID or birth certificate! So I caved in, scanned a court document with my full name on it and a judge's signature, and gmail'd it it.

I should mention that by this point Google had decided to lock my profile and place a huge notice across it demanding documents.

It took almost a full 2 weeks for them to get back to me and say that my document was legit. Well, duh!!

With my new found "legal" status I continued to use G+ for about another year or so. But as time marched on I became more and more disillusioned with Google and their products and interacted less and less with G+.

Then June 5th 2013 happened and I was introduced to the world of Edward Snowden. I immediately went and deleted _everything_ from my profile and timeline (no small chore!). I then put a notice on my "about" page stating that due to privacy issues with Google and the NSA that this account is no longer active.

I now only use my gmail account, have been a happy DDG and IXquick user since before this all went down, and haven't been back to G+ since.

<comment><USER14> I can understand not wanting the NSA to snoop your correspondence. I can't understand letting Google do that for years, analyze it, profile you and sell that information to just about anyone, but then thinking that the NSA is the final straw.

<comment><USER15> Google can't put you to jail. NSA (and the government) can.

<comment><USER16> Google leaking your real / alternate identity can get you killed or fired or beaten or arrested, and that's just for being transgender or homosexual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What made Google special in the past was having principles and walking the talk.

Those days when Altavista wanted to force people into watching noisy pop up advertisements with annoying colors before you could search anything, and this small company decided to just display text.

The days when everybody was onto portals to make the web enclosed inside gatekeepers hand and Google brought freedom.

Those days are over. Just the other day I had them trying to change my name in gmail and complete the information I gave them when gmail was invite only like my birthday or a picture of me.

When I refused I had them INSULTING ME!! Something alike "it seems you are so alone". Wow, if you don't use their "social private web", or any other social site you are alone, even if you have a blog with thousands of people visiting, and real friends you can talk, kiss or hug.

I am looking for Google alternatives right now.

<comment><USER18> As I say until people get sick of hearing it, google had:

1) principles and respect for its users, 2) great mathematical chops, and 3) clean UI.

1) is gone, and everybody has 2) and 3) now. Other than a moral center Google has never offered me anything that I couldn't get somewhere else. At least _then,_ before alternate providers were driven out of business.

Right now, I have DDG as my moral search engine. Hopefully, one day, there will be a place for moral email or social.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As an intensive user, everywhere on Google products, I feel the Microsoftization. This includes documentation with corporate jargon, the bloated and confusing Hangout fiasco, the frustrating way to connect multiple identities together.

Did they hire any corporate UX/UI/branding/marketing/documentation guys from Redmond recently, after Larry Page's CEOship?

<comment><USER20> It's an inescapable reality: companies grow and grow bloated and complacent. It happened to IBM and Microsoft, it happened to Google and it's happening now for Facebook. Once corporate mentality sets in the company's soul is gone.

<comment><USER21> My theory is that it involves excessively mediated reality. When Google was two guys, most of the people they talked to were not Google people. Now, my guess is that 95% of their conversations are with people they pay. Those people are more likely to tell them good things than bad things. And those people also think Google is pretty swell, because these who don't leave Google. And at Larry and Sergey's level, they probably aren't within three layers of external reality.

There's a diagnostic term: Acquired Situational Narcissism[1]. Basically, when a celebrity spends all their time around people who act like the celebrity is the most important person in the world, then they too start to believe it. I think there's a corporate version of that.

Imagine it: You created Google. You can buy anything. Everybody you spend time around defers to you. Of course you'd think you could do a better job of designing a social network than Facebook; half of humanity thinks that. The problem is that people will now let you do that.

Once you've done it, your very mediated reality makes it hard to know you've screwed up. Because everybody you talk to needs you to like them. Most of those people have gotten promoted a number of times, meaning they are very good at being liked by their bosses. And who doesn't like good news, especially about a pet project?

I'm not sure it's inescapable, but it certainly is the very common outcome.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism#Acquired_situational...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism#Acquired_situational_narcissism)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My problem with Google+ isn't the unification of Google's social platform. That makes absolute sense. The problem with Google+ is that it's _way_ too opinionated.

It's a platform, not a product. A platform has to bend to the needs of its users, and those "users" aren't necessarily the people posting the comments - it's also the people hosting the comments on their YouTube pages and whatnot.

I appreciate wanting Plus to be backed by a "real" ID, but pseudonym support that fully anonymizes the user (and controls over whether pseudonymous users are allowed to post to your pages) should have been a day 1 feature, for example.

</comment><comment><USER23> A suggestion for Google to save itself regarding G+:

Donate some of its engineers' time to fix and revitalize Diaspora -- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28social_network%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28social_network%29) \-- or one of its peers or something along its original vision.

It could achieve its goal of disrupting Facebook, give users their privacy back, and by releasing the source code, could role back its role in maintaining the code or policing the community.

It could declare victory and move on, leaving its users more satisfied than they are now.

<comment><USER24> I agree that would be cool, but I don't think Diaspora offers anything compelling to the general public. What fraction of FB users actually care that much about privacy?

<comment><USER18> In my experience, amongst non-technical people, around 95%. Amongst techies? A strong 20%.

<comment><USER25> If that was accurate 95% of people would have stopped using Facebook when the NSA's wiretapping was uncovered. Last I checked Facebook hasn't missed a beat

<comment><USER18> They need facebook because they like their friends. Its immensely important to me that the government stop tapping my phone, but if you think the fact that I still call my grandmother is a sign of consent, you're a fool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is it even possible to reverse course on the G+ integrations now?

Would Google even want to, even if everyone agreed it was a bad idea in the first place?

<comment><USER27> That's an interesting question.

I can imagine this push resulted in some positive refactoring of Google's internal systems, which they would like to retain.

However I can also imagine it resulted in some layers of duct tape (very much like the rush job after a merger or acquisition), which they'd love to rip off.

It would be interesting to hear a Google insider talk about this. Meanwhile, my _guess_ would be it's a mix of the above, and they'll be stuck with that mix for years to come.

<comment><USER28> Considering that the real-name policy is just that, a policy (albeit an automatically-enforced one), I don't see what technical problems would arise from its unilateral revocation. Just disable the flagging and be on your merry way.

The thing is, I suspect Google leadership still don't really see the policy as a problem. Brin said _his involvement_ was a mistake -- because _it tainted his image and his credentials_ , not because the policy itself was wrong. I suspect he still sees it as dirty work that _somebody_ has to do, just not himself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> To change status quo you need to provide enough value to motivate that change:

Google Search: Search experience was completely disrupted. Since that moment people could focus on what they needed (no disturbing ads) and be more efficient.

Gmail: Google innovated and simplified a lot email experience. You can easily measure the importance of Gmail to people by the importance of Gmail to the Google brand.

Chrome: As an early adopter, I could feel specially the speed difference. I always knew that would be a matter of time till Chrome control the market.

Google+: I never understood what value Google was adding to social networks. Facebook at the time didn't need to be disrupted also. After some time G+ went in the direction of Linkedin but couldn't add enough value to make people to change also. IMHO Google+ weakens Google brand. As simple as that. Should be closed? That is a good question.

<comment><USER30> Facebook needed to be disrupted, but unfortunately the main way Facebook needed (and needs) to be disrupted is in compartmentalising sharing better, and while Circles accomplishes some of that, Googles real name policy pisses all over it.

<comment><USER29> As a user of Facebook and Linkedin I'm only moderately happy with the experience but I can't see myself changing soon. I would be happy to change to one social network that could "compartmentalize sharing better" (using your words) and be used for both social and work issues. If they could add some twitter functionality would be a plus. Is not efficient using different platforms all the time, would be easier to have one platform with different "modes".

There is plenty of space to disrupt the market but the status quo here is very strong. The problem is not if somebody changes or not, the problem is that everybody needs to change in mass or the network will be useless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I miss the days of Google Labs and twenty percent time.

<comment><USER32> Me too. I remember being excited about seeing what Google's next big thing was. I lost hope when Reader was shut down.

<comment><USER33> The Real Name policy was the beginning of the end for me, Reader being shut down made me lose interest in all new Google products, and Snowden made me stop using some of the ones I already had been.

<comment><USER30> The Real Name policy is noteworthy from starting out being fundamentally stupid at the "anyone who has spent a week online should know this" level, but still seemingly just a dumb mistake, to being downright malicious and evil the moment it was clear they had no intention of backtracking even after their attention had been brought to the risks it put some people in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Just to be clear:

> OPINION: One month after creator and leader of Google+, Vic Gundotra, > quietly quit, Google chief Sergey Brin told a conference audience last week > that involvement in Google+ was "a mistake." He made the exact opposite > statement in 2011.

Whose involvement are we talking about here ? Brin, Gundotra or Google ?

> If only someone could have stepped in and course-corrected Google+.

>

> Oh, right. Someone could have.

>

> The same someone that just told the world, "heh, oops" and walked away to go > retreat back into himself, and play with his cars.

Is that someone Brin (who could have and has plenty of money to buy cars) or Gundotra (who could have and left the company a month ago - with enough money to play with cars I suppose) ?

(sorry for hand walking me but the style is confusing me)

<comment><USER35> I read it as being aimed at Brin.

It's sort of lazy and cheap to mostly use his hindsight in an article criticizing him. On the other hand, I guess there was plenty said at the time that called the real name policy a mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Google+ is just the most high profile symptom. The problem started when Google started using strategies against the fundamental nature of the internet.

We always assumed that Google was "good" because they understood and embraced the open and interconnected nature of the internet. They even stated so explicitly.

Google+, but also many other Google strategies follow the same pattern: trying to build walls instead of connecting, making things closed instead of more open.

</comment><comment><USER37> For some reason, my email address is now linked to a name that is not mine. I've not yet bothered to figure out how to change it, but I wish for the sake of trans people that this error had been more common.

<comment><USER38> Gmail insists on respelling the name of one of my contacts; it's only one letter different, but it's slightly embarrassing that I seem not to know his name after eight years of working together.

<comment><USER35> Having never experienced anything like this from Gmail, I wonder if you have the misspelling stored in a contact.

I even have a sort of contrary anecdote, I added an accent to a contact name a few years ago and it has always just worked.

<comment><USER38> The misspelling seems to come from a (automatically created somehow?) Google+ profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Google+ was the beginning of the end where using Google service was concerned for me. These days, I use Google only as a search engine and nothing more.

</comment><comment><USER40> "Opt in".

If you like e.g. "single sign-on", it should be your choice to set it up and participate. Not coercion. Not coercion holding your existing investment in various products (of which Google was and is acquiring ever more) hostage.

If what you are offering is of benefit to your users (should I use the word "customers"? -- a whole other discussion), you should be able to sell it to them -- on an "opt-in", "I'd like to use this feature" basis.

As Google+ rolled out, it became evident that it was anything but this.

True names. Then the stories -- accurate or not -- of account deletions.

I was damned if I was going to risk my longstanding Gmail account for the sake of trying out Plus. Fortunately, the integration was not so quick and thorough that I was at that time compelled to participate in Plus in order to keep that account. (Sign up for Gmail now, and you get a Plus profile, like it or not.)

Plus has some nice technical features, and some of the conversation I intersect (under a separate Google identity that I can afford to lose) during my limited interaction with it, consist of more thoughtful and interesting content.

But I'll never trust it -- Plus, that is.

Google showed us all, with Plus, the limits of their advocacy for us, the users.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think it is pretty refreshing for an executive to be self critical and admit big mistakes. Sergey sounded authentic in that interview.

Scott Forestall was axed for Apple Maps, but seriously, you rewrite a Maps service from the ground up from scratch and race to release it in iOS6, of course it's going to be beta quality for a long time, since these things take time to mature. I highly doubt the decision to include it in that state was solely Scotts.

I like to see companies admit major strategic mistakes as opposed to pretending everything is awesome for all time. (and no, Tim Cook's letter was a kind of non-apology, only a single sentence really admitted any mistake 'We fell short of our commitment')

<comment><USER42> Agreed on the admitting mistakes part but mentioning Scott Forstall as an example doesn't follow.

From what I've read, Scott Forestall was fired less for the issues in the Maps application and more for his refusal to sign any sort of apology afterwards for its shortcomings. I'm sure there were other internal factors for his firing but his refusal to publicly admit a mistake was a significant part.

<comment><USER41> Maybe he felt he didn't need to apologize because he was forced to rush and release in iOS6?

What if the following conversation happened internally:

Scott: "Maps is not ready" Cook: "Maps must ship as part of iOS6, it's the headline feature. We are committed to this time table." Scott: "But there are lots of issues, lots of bugs." Cook: "Fix as many as possible before release, but we are shipping."

Then, after the fiasco, he is asked to apologize, wouldn't you feel that the people who didn't take your advice should be the ones to apologize?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> To be fair the SMS+Hangouts integration seems to be what users want. Everybody and their dog is using Whatsapp by now, which is basically the same thing (I think - haven't used it).

</comment><comment><USER44> I'd love to see Google+ turn into a LinkedIn and Facebook killer. I just have no use for Google+ at the moment. I don't really like the tiles display and would prefer a list.

The YouTube integration doesn't bother me at all because 1) I don't post YouTube comments, and 2) it's easy enough to just create a separate account for using with services that you don't want associated with your main Google account.

<comment><USER45> IMO the silently majority is tired of a panopticon of "look it me now" social services who's main use case is massaging users egos.

Google should start over, Android-first (instead of web -first) and make the phone Addressbook / Google Contacts the focal point for everything social. Look at WhatsApp - it does exactly this - your phone number is your ID and your contacts is your social graph; how you interact with them - who you call, message etc and when / where you do it - these are your circles

Meanwhile if you look at the direction Apple is going, eg new APIs for iCloud eg fingerprint authentication, new APIs for foto management / sharing etc etc. they look about ready to pounce on the whole of social...

<comment><USER30> > Google should start over, Android-first (instead of web -first) and make the > phone Addressbook / Google Contacts the focal point for everything social. > Look at WhatsApp - it does exactly this - your phone number is your ID and > your contacts is your social graph; how you interact with them - who you > call, message etc and when / where you do it - these are your circles

I find this fascinating, as unless I'm misunderstanding you, you're basically suggesting what G+ did to enrage users as described in the article, but seemingly _worse_ :

Almost everyone have multiple "personalities". We don't share the same with our grandmother, our friends, our boss, our old class mates, random strangers and so on. This extends all the way to _which names we use_ , how we dress in different situations, who we _give our phone number to_ etc..

At first Google seemed to "get" this better than Facebook when they released G+. The moment Nymwars erupted it was clear they did not only not get this, but actively refused to learn.

For some this is not about hiding information. For some it is. For some it is a matter of actual _survival_ \- whether due to political involvement, or because of threats of revenge or abuse (think people avoiding abusing ex- partners etc.), or because of gender identity etc. (trans people have an incredible high suicide rate due in part to the reactions of wider society; on top of that there's actual violent reactions from people). Breaking compartmentalisation puts peoples _lives_ at risk, not just cause embarrassing moments.

The _first_ lesson one should learn in social, is that if you wish to create a social network that reflects how people interact, then people need to be able to full compartmentalise what different people see, down to and including your name and who else you are interacting with, and you need to make sure data are not easily leaking between those compartments and that needs to be _holy_.

In that respect, even _having_ a single, unified addressbook / contacts list demonstrates that they don't understand (or has purposefully decided not to care about) real social networks (as opposed to the "panopticon" service you decry): It cuts as deep as not revealing all the information on all devices at all times - devices can be shared, or lent out, or someone might just glance at one at the wrong moment. It increases the risk of breaking compartmentalisation accidentally unless users are very tech savvy: Suddenly your device beeps, drawing attention to its screen, just as it displays a message the person sitting next to the device should not have seen.

If you're lucky / extremely conventional / boring, you laugh it off. If you're unlucky, it can cost you your job, your relationships, contact with your family, or your life.

Social networks is not just some fluffy web-app thing - it's the fabric of society, and they cut deep.

<comment><USER22> Exactly. If they'd required you use a real name under the hood but allowed you to present different pseudonymous "facades" for each Circle, and then let you just tie things like Youtube to a given facade? That would be wonderful.

It really seemed like that's the direction they had in mind at the start - understanding that you have familial relationships, online relationships, professional relationships, and letting you compartmentalize those.

But that was just an organizational tool. We needed it to be two-way - in that you need to control your identity as it relates to those circles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> It sounds like Sergey is saying that _his_ involvement in Google+ was a mistake, not that that the company going down that path was a mistake. I think the author is taking the word "mistake" out of context:

"It was probably a mistake for me to be working on anything tangentially related to social to begin with."

</comment><comment><USER32> I've been using G+ consistently for a week now after signing off from a competing social network. I thoroughly enjoy it so far. Why is G+ dead in the water?

EDIT: Fatfingered a random exclamation point

<comment><USER47> I think most people feel Google's incessant need to push it on every product leads to overexposure and this hate of G+. To further that, I closed my G+ account a few months ago due to inactivity. You'd better believe that the whole process made it sound like I was going to lose access to my email, my youtube account, etc. It wasn't a positive experience.

<comment><USER48> They dropped the ball on nearly every major integration in some spectacular fashion, essentially. Be it forced integration, loosing anonymity, or botching up the g-talk's chat history.

The chat history bit me. They used to have a really nice chat history that integrated into the email seamlessly and had good export options. It even worked through IMAP. Unfortunately that all disappeared when they made g-talk hangouts. Essentially it was a duct-tape job like mentioned above. Apparently their storage back-end is quite different and they didn't put the work in to allow for easy retrieval and review of full chat histories. Unfortunately I needed a mass of chat histories(a year) for Visa purposes and the switch was about two thirds in. Retrieving the newer stuff became a part time job :|

Other than that I kinda like G+. I also like real identity movement. Eventually I believe that will be a big differentiator for swaths of the internet. The civil, real name sites. And the seedy, anonymous underbelly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I like to submit things like this to HN for a reason: [http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3106555&cid=41288357](http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3106555&cid=41288357)

And BTW I am thinking that the EU privacy policy fiasco is probably related. And to think that the EU courts recently ruled that current data protection laws requires that search engines must remove results on request.

</comment><comment><USER50> We are google's product. We are bundled and cleaned and sold to advertisers. The google+ process was just a plan to tell their customers that they had a nice, leaner, more refined product. Previously, their customers were complaining that the product wasn't as verifiable. This is a bit like the organic food certification process.

</comment><comment> model-m Google+ made it just a little too clear that Google is in the business of remembering everything about those who interact with it.

The attitude of "Google knows best what's good for you, and doesn't have to justify itself or even acknowledge your objections" also doesn't mesh with what a social network should be, in the minds of many.

</comment><comment><USER51> So far it has always been a good policy for me to take these lines literally:

>> Google's mission is to organize the world's information

>> and make it universally accessible ...

[http://www.google.com/about/company/](http://www.google.com/about/company/)

</comment><comment><USER52> "Brin told ... that ... he was "kind of a weirdo" and "It was probably a mistake for me to be working on anything tangentially related to social to begin with." \- I respect him more now. Being late to market was probably a bigger mistake though.

<comment><USER53> You respect him for noticing this only now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I don't think that G+ was a mistake. The only real issue is the real name policy, though I fail to see how they'd be able to enforce it. People could create alternate email addresses with fake names (and some did), and use it when they want to participate social "i-events" without giving up their id. It's been like that before G+, and it would only take a small move from them to correct it. Of course, the downside of this is that they wouldn't be able to claim a number of real users. But could any social site?

Btw, am I the only one to find the article title offensive, and unworthy of a place like zdnet? I wasn't a regular reader of their columns, I don't think that will help.

<comment><USER55> The problem with "people could just create fake identities" is that they'd basically be permanently living with the fear of being caught by google and having their entire identity erased, and all the comments would just be "duh, what did they expect creating an alternate email address with a fake name?"

That a bad policy is inconsistently enforced doesn't really make it any less harmful. Selective enforcement is more evil if anything, imo.

> Btw, am I the only one to find the article title offensive, and unworthy of > a place like zdnet?

It's much less offensive than the G+ real name policy, so that's a weird focus. ;)

<comment><USER54> Well sure, as long as the real name policy is actively enforcable by G (which I doubt, but someone else apparently had to go through their enforcment practice), there's a risk. Then maybe it means that G isn't the right medium to express oneself anonymously and have an official virtual life. As I said, the only real problem is that policy.

> It's much less offensive than the G+ real name policy, so that's a weird > focus. ;)

I don't think we have the same definition of offensive (please correct me if my second language english is wrong). That policy was harmful, but I wouldn't qualify it as offensive. I think the article provides good examples where it was harmful.

That said, if you don't think it's inappropriate for someone to use anonymity (or is it her real name?) to insult someone else, you won't mind if I finish this comment by the same sentence? I won't, because I know that it's not necessary, and it would undermine the message I'm trying to convey, as it does in her case.

<comment><USER55> > I don't think we have the same definition of offensive (please correct me if > my second language english is wrong). That policy was harmful, but I > wouldn't qualify it as offensive. I think the article provides good examples > where it was harmful.

I'm also not a native english speaker so I might well be misusing the term.

To me, it's not so much that it's harmful, but that the people it's harming, who are likely already marginalized, disadvantaged groups, are just entirely discounted and brushed off because they don't conform to some convenient but real-world-incompatible idea of how people live their identities. That harm and those people are apparently not as important as some business goal. That offends me.

Meanwhile, someone on the internet getting angry enough to use an insult like that is just a form of expression, it helps to define the emotional context of the writing, conveys some indignance, etc.

Why would an insult convey more offense than all the criticism in the article already does? I guess one might argue that abandoning a courteous "tone" of writing betrays a lack of respect. Imo the article already makes it pretty clear (especially towards the end) that respect has been lost, so the insult hardly makes that "offense" any worse. The author doesn't feel respected by Brin and feels exploited, so why would Brin be owed civility in turn?

It's also a particularly harmless insult that as far as I can tell has no vile connotations and implies nothing worse about the subject than that they're a jerk, so basically that they come off as disrespectful. It's pretty easy to convey that one thinks that someone is a jerk, or an asshole, or whatever, and it's usually considered okay to do so, so I don't see why being direct about it is more offensive rather than just, say, more abrasive or less polite.

In the situation of basically-helpless end user raging against the machine that is Google, I don't really think anonymity matters either. Unlike in a case of actual harmful harassment or abuse, I don't think Brin has a legimitate interest in discovering the whatever personal information about the insulting party, and if he thinks he does there are probably plenty of legal ways to go about it.

And anyway, whether the name on the article is the author's "real name" or not (contemplating which seems kind of ironic in this context), it's at most ~pseudonymous~, not anonymous at all. The name is definitely linked to a real identity, and anyway, authors have been getting away with completely made-up pen names for ages.

It's kind of strange to me that apparently it's more appropriate to insult someone if one puts one's real (however that is measured) identity on the line, given how wildly that varies in significance and consequences. That'd set the bar to entry at really unfairly different heights for different people.

That's a lot of words about this sidetrack, sorry for probably boring you, but I'm kinda fascinated by how people differ in deciding whether something is offensive.

<comment><USER54> >That harm and those people are apparently not as important as some business goal. That offends me.

I understand your point.

> Why would an insult convey more offense than all the criticism in the > article already does?

That really depends on the aim of the article. If it is to express a feeling, fine, she did express her feeling. If it is to make a point, she shouldn't, or one might simply say she cannot have a rational discussion, because it simply doesn't prove anything. Google didn't use insult, it undisclosed private information. While it is senseless, it's not an offense, in the sense that there's no proof that it was intended to hurt. I don't believe that S. Brin woke up one day with the idea of harming people, or do you think that is what happened? If it were the case: if I had been the victim of a deliberate attempt at hurting me by disclosing things about me that I consider private, I would be seriously pissed. The question is: was it deliberate, or was it simply an error, or a misunderstanding? People make mistakes, that's unfortunate, but it's understandable. She, otoh, cursed voluntarily.

> It's also a particularly harmless insult that as far as I can tell

That's anyone's appreciation. In a different culture, it might well be the worse thing you could say to someone. The fact that it carry already a insulting connotation is enough: there's no way someone could take it as a compliment, thus whether it is harmless or the worse one could say is besides the point, the message is clear.

> That's a lot of words about this sidetrack

For a minor issue, that happened in _the title_, but I surely don't care that much.

<comment><USER55> > If it is to make a point, she shouldn't, or one might simply say she cannot > have a rational discussion, because it simply doesn't prove anything.

One might say that, but I don't think that would delegitimatize her position at all. If someone seeks to be offended to avoid having to engage with the actual argument, that's on them, and they probably didn't need the pretense of caring about the insult to begin with.

> The question is: was it deliberate, or was it simply an error, or a > misunderstanding? People make mistakes, that's unfortunate, but it's > understandable.

The problems with google's approach have been pointed out almost immediately after their policy became known. If it was a simple mistake in the sense of an accident, it would have been corrected then. Google might not have set out to cause harm, but drafting their policies and sticking to them in contempt of the harm they are causing is a deliberate, voluntary move.

For a hamhanded car analogy, if someone parks in a parking space for the disabled out of laziness, and now some guy in a wheelchair has to cover another block's worth of distance because he had to park elsewhere, it's not okay just because they didn't do it to cause him harm, it's still bad because they didn't care enough about not causing him harm to avoid it. Something that hurts a disadvantaged group out of disregard for their needs rather than out of malice is still cause for offense and not just a mistake.

> In a different culture, it might well be the worse thing you could say to > someone.

I think that's really unlikely. I might conjecture a hypothetical culture where insults are expected and polite, but I think it's sufficient to look at the actual cultural context. Correct me if I am missing something, but "jerkface" is the blandest, least serious insult I can think of. It doesn't invoke gross body parts, religion, sexual language, the subject's intelligence, morals, looks or status. In fact, I cannot imagine anyone using it without irony, going intentionally for a weak and childish insult.

> For a minor issue, that happened in _the title_, but I surely don't care > that much.

Yeah, just to be clear, I didn't mean to complain that you started talking about the title, just that I needed so many words to respond.

<comment><USER54> > The problems with google's approach have been pointed out almost immediately > after their policy became known.

I've been the devil's advocate til now, I will not give up so easily. If people knew about this policy, then they couldn't have opt out of the service and look for something more amenable to their needs of privacy, couldn't they?

>For a hamhanded car analogy, if someone parks in a parking space for the disabled out of laziness, and now some guy in a wheelchair has to cover another block's worth of distance because he had to park elsewhere,

The policy there wasn't that someone took that reserved parking place, it's that the place simply disappeared from that parking lot. So yeah, it does suck, but there are other parking lots to use (which also mean other shops, if that guy in a wheelchair liked Google's ones, tough luck).

> I think that's really unlikely. I might conjecture a hypothetical culture > where insults are expected and polite, but I think it's sufficient to look > at the actual cultural context. Correct me if I am missing something, but > "jerkface" is the blandest, least serious insult I can think of. It doesn't > invoke gross body parts, religion, sexual language, the subject's > intelligence, morals, looks or status. In fact, I cannot imagine anyone > using it without irony, going intentionally for a weak and childish insult.

Really? Do kids use that insult? Well, I don't speak English fluently enough (especially cursing), and I'm not going to pull a dictionary definition to verify it. If indeed it's as you say, then that's a misunderstanding on my side, and I clearly deserved a downvote for that. I'll take your word for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Google Buzz and now Google+.

Google stop trying to be Facebook! You need to change course and focus on the consumer(customer service) & their privacy.

Otherwise others will and are starting to eat your lunch!

<comment><USER57> Good job. You are now merely 3 years behind everyone else on your commentary.

Your next quest is to formulate a complaint about Google Reader shutting down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> When someone now says doing something was a mistake, I sure hope the statement is in stark contrast with their sentiments at the time they were doing it. Otherwise, why do it?

</comment><comment><USER59> I think G+ could've owned the "social internet" without the "real id" rule.

They had the chance to drive facebook and twitter out of business... they blew it.

</comment><comment><USER60> > Google+ broke our trust

Google Reader did it for me. ..and did it for every product where I'm on paying $. I have hardly used google+ and I haven't missed a thing.

</comment><comment><USER61> What is the future of Google+? Is Google trying to pivot it into something different? Or Google+ will be just a platform (for login, profile info, etc).

</comment><comment><USER62> I think many of the policies that have been changed towards the usage of a real name are intrusive to privacy, but I have no pity on people who require privacy and lose it after willingly continuing to use a service that is known to conduct such practices.

<comment><USER63> That's a rather harsh way to limit your pity. I won't go so far as making the standard analogies of victim-blaming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> [http://hartator.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/fire-vic- gundotra/](http://hartator.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/fire-vic-gundotra/)

</comment><comment><USER65> Using and loving G+ and Hangouts to this day. I like how easy it is to get a group chat or a video chat going in the browser, and I like the increased control over sharing I have, especially relative to FB. (I can even share with people who don't want to log in because they hate the service. My FB friends cannot.)

I'm trying to sift through the complaints to see if they're relevant to me, but haven't had much luck so far.

1\. Everything

Complaints on the order of "it broke everything" just seem hyperbolic and silly.

2\. Nymwars

I think they should allow pseudonyms, but I don't blame the company for trying build something tied a little tighter to real world identities after fighting a decade long war against fraud and spam behind the scenes. I feel like it's within their prerogative to say they're building an identity service, because pseudonym based logins are already widely available. Faulting them for that choice is a bit like saying you don't like Gmail because you think email is stupid.

3\. YouTube

Among the other major complaints is that they broke YouTube comments, ie, the worst den of inane and offensive comments on the internet since 4chan. Good for them, the team deserves a medal.

Someone made a mashup just to illustrate the depravity of comments on the video site a few years ago: [http://comments.thatsaspicymeatball.com/](http://comments.thatsaspicymeatball.com/)

4\. Popularity

Probably the other tacit criticism is that Google launched a service that didn't immediately trounce all other social media sites, delivering everything for everyone. It's used by a _mere_ 350 million people. It's been criticized for that number being only a third of its registered base, but that seems perfectly on track or better than estimates for other social media sites. Twitter's active userbase is probably roughly 20%, for example:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-total-registered- user...](http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-total-registered-users-v- monthly-active-users-2013-11)

It's weird that a site with 350 million active monthly users is considered an embarrassing failure. I'm sure lots of services would be happy to trade userbases with G+.

It had a few cool features. It wasn't world changing. I feel like it hit some of the Segwey effect, a victim of its hype more than of its failings.

5\. Aesthetics.

I feel this is the most inarguable complaint. Some people don't like the style of G+, don't like its approach to usability, or find its sharing system needlessly complex or confusing. By all means, these individuals should not use the service. I don't like the look and feel of Pinterest. I shouldn't use Pinterest. To each her own. I worry some authors subtly shift this argument from "I don't like the feel of it," or even, "My friends don't like it," to "It is a failure of design that no one should use." Seems a bit unfair.

I believe there are good usability guidelines, but I don't subscribe to the belief that there is a perfect one size fits all, that all implementations of any service will eventually converge to one platonic form. Competition is good because we all like different things, each find different styles more intuitive.

I'd be happy to consider other arguments, but so far allegations of the service's abject horribleness seem somewhat exaggerated.

<comment><USER65> I suspected there weren't very many legitimate criticisms, that this was mostly emotional iconoclasm.

Silent downvotes are a sort of confirming evidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> If there's one video that shows off the purposefully confusing Google+ and Youtube integration mess, its this one of a woman literally crying because of it.

Warning: Strong language

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxiwu4MaJs)

<comment><USER67> Hey, I can find videos of people angry at about anything that exists.

Apple: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFOx81Lm34c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFOx81Lm34c) Facebook: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhPzx2KLoUg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhPzx2KLoUg) Nature: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJNqn-Y3pdY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJNqn-Y3pdY)

Ah! Why is it so hard to make everyone happy?

<comment><USER68> > Hey, I can find videos of people angry at about anything that exists.

Actually, you can't, and your post is a bit rediculous.

For "features of websites that are widely used", how many of them are part of youtube crying videos? Probably ~0.0001% and it certainly could be useful to call one out.

<comment><USER69> See, this is why Google wanted real names on Youtube. We've all read Youtube comments. They are the single worst comments on the Internet. Typically racist, usually mean, often obscene. Google really, through all this, just wanted to make the comments better on YouTube, I think. They heard everyone bitching and figured this was a way to make things less caustic. It didn't help, though...

<comment><USER18> I found them hilarious and often insightful expressions of honest humanity. Now, they're just shit. It's sad how much we're willing to give up to avoid every 100th comment being an aimless racial slur.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> We changed the title from "Thanks for nothing, jerkface" to the first subtitle of the article, which (a) isn't linkbait and (b) is more or less what the article seems to be about.

</comment><comment><USER71> Google is interesting. Choc full of academically bright people, yet collectively dumb as fuck. Shame there is not a phd for common sense or being down to Earth.

<comment><USER63> Can you name one organization of 50,000 people that is collectively smart?

<comment><USER72> Large markets are very smart.

Smart is not necessarily nice. Without nice, incremental returns to smart may be negative. Furthermore, the terminal goal of a market is to give some group exactly what it wants. Such groups are often large, and their wants are defined by how their members act -- usually when others are not looking. A market does not care what anyone _says_ they want.

It's a wonder the damn things aren't banned.

<comment><USER18> I liked the original wording better. This is yet another failure of Congress, not google.

Sorry for posting libertarian downvote-bait.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Oh look its another goth chick blogging about Google and whats bad and whatever... Go back in your cave... noone told you to get involved with Google+ neither Google will go with you cause you based your life around Google+ ...

Why people nowadays take everything so granted... Guess what before 90 years people were going to the toilet...hmmm on their GARDENS!

</comment><comment><USER74> _> With Google+, it became clear that we were all little more than webs of flesh spun over packages of saleable data._

What data is allegedly being sold, and who is Google selling it to?

<comment><USER30> I don't see anywhere where the article alleges that the data is for sale, but that it is saleable.

One way of capitalizing on that, without selling the data, is to sell access to advertise on the basis of that data.

The point is not to claim that Google is selling our data, but just another way of stating that we're the product, not the customer.

<comment><USER74> The point is to try to lump Google together with companies that literally _do_ sell customer data, e.g., credit card providers, supermarkets, stores at the mall, magazine publishers... They literally sell your non-anonymized, non- aggregated data, period.

It's an unfair lumping because what Google does is a far cry from that.

<comment><USER30> I didn't read it that way at all. I can see how it _can_ be read that way, but it can likewise simply be read as making it clear that Google cares about advertisers rather than users.

Whether or not a subjective interpretation is that she is "trying to lump" Google together with these companies, she did not come straight out and make such an allegation in the article. When you then imply in your comment that she did, it's a bit rich to accuse her of "unfair lumping" afterwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> News flash: Company co-founder and senior executive publicly supports own products!

<comment><USER31> News flash: Sergey now thinks that his working so closely on Google+ was a mistake.

<comment><USER75> Now that it's publicly dead in the water sure. But saying anything negative about your own products while they're still trying to push it as the next big thing? It'll never happen. Any executive that tried would be fired or sidelined. Public comments like that are purely a matter of marketing and PR, individuals (particularly senior ones) will always back the company message.

This is why you never hear anything from Microsoft other than Windows8 is great! Or alternatively, you never hear anything from Apple at all. It's the PR department's job, not the senior execs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> That's a lot of counterhate. Not wholly unwarranted, but severely one-sided.

Corporate products are not for dissidents or the privacy-focused. Period. The end. You need to find alts designed to be private and/or pay to not be subsidized for the profitizing of YOU - whoever you are or want to be.

Google wants to fold you into their walled garden by tilting all their products towards each other. Shocking. I can't think of any other... oh yeah right... EVERY massive tech company does this. Otherwise one of the other massive tech companies will eat their lunch within 10 years. You are the frog. They are the scorpion.

Also, part of force g+ is what you are seeing grow widely. Enough people are harmed or disgusted with the level of gaming of anonymity that the trolls have achieved that the real identity movement has grown pretty quickly.

I doubt large corporate interests will be able to find it profitable, over any minimally significant span of time, to preserve privacy and be a platform for social change/justice. The unintended consequence is also being a platform for the lulz. Don't be evil meets don't be bankrupt. If your platform is a cesspool, nobody will pay to swim there.

<comment><USER30> A lot of this hate presumably stems from Google's "Don't be evil". Google has been given a lot of trust. They then demonstrated very clearly that they can't be trusted to care _at all_ , and are prepared to go as far as putting users lives at risk over users _names_.

> Also, part of force g+ is what you are seeing grow widely. Enough people are > harmed or disgusted with the level of gaming of anonymity that the trolls > have achieved that the real identity movement has grown pretty quickly.

So give people options to block people who don't use a real name (but realise that for the _vast_ majority of G+ users you have _no idea_ if they use their real name vs. just use a name that sounds real enough to not get flagged by Google) from being able to comment on your posts. That would address the concern of people who have a problem with anonymous or pseudonymous posts, without forcing such a policy on other subsets of users where it in many cases is a problem. Trans users and political dissidents is just a couple of the worst affected.

There are many sub-cultures where handles are more common than real name - there are hundreds of people I would recognize by handle, from e.g. the demo scene, musicians/artists, but where I would not have clue who they are if going by their "real" name.

> I doubt large corporate interests will be able to find it profitable, over > any minimally significant span of time, to preserve privacy and be a > platform for social change/justice.

For this reason, I expect we'll soon enough find that companies targeting certain groups of countries, like the EU, will eventually find themselves facing legal restrictions on demanding/publicizing real names on the grounds that it is deeply discriminatory against certain classes of people. I'd expect trans groups to eventually go after that if it starts becoming too difficult to use products and services without a legally recognized name.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: trustful VPN proxy provider? - <AUTHOR>

My partner and I are currently running a Facebook application in China. As you may know, Facebook.com is blocked in China and that causes inconvenience. We consider to buy a VPN proxy service but there are too many noise when Google it. We need a VPN service that is trustful and secure, supporting multi-user (< 5) and at a reasonable price (we are startup afterall, < $50 per month is wonderful, < $100 is OK).<p>Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> Just set one up yourself, you can get a rackspace cloud 256MB instance for 12 bucks a month, that should handle you for a while. You can always upgrade if you need to scale.

</comment><comment><USER3> one possible avenue for your search would be for offshore servers rather than specific proxies - apache and mod_proxy may be sufficient depending on your particular needs. I think the challenge is to find some place that offers proxy services that china has not already blocked...

</comment><comment><USER4> rent a linux or bsd-based virtual machine at any web hosting company and install openvpn on it.</comment>


Hackers+Entepreneurs Play Video Games For Charity - <AUTHOR> http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bungie-day-2008

<comment><AUTHOR> We're taking the day off from our startups to play halo to raise money for childs play. If you have an xbox 360 and halo 3, add us. gamer tag is:

bday2008</comment>


Ansiedit.js – Create ANSI art in the browser - <AUTHOR> http://andyherbert.github.io/ansiedit/

<comment><USER2> Nice work Andy!

For those interested in ANSI art, please check Sixteen Colors, covering over 20 years of artscene history : [http://sixteencolors.net](http://sixteencolors.net)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is very cool. Shared group-editing sessions (a la ACiDDraw) would be icing on this cake :)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is fantastic. Looking forward to pairing the 'save as ansi' option this with escapes.js ([https://github.com/atdt/escapes.js](https://github.com/atdt/escapes.js)).

Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER5> > iCE Colors

> SAUCE

Well, that just took me back 20+ years.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is pretty cool! It would be awesome if it supported arrow key navigation like the old school ANSI editors of the past :)

<comment><USER7> I was going to say something similar. Give me cursor control, and it's TheDraw for the 21st century.

<comment><USER8> Now thats a word I havent heard in a while. Memories come rushing back of the 90's scene with 0 day, iCE, ACiD, DaRK etc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hey great work. I wonder how hard it would be to adapt this to creating teletext art as well?

</comment><comment><USER10> Pretty cool, needs fonts though.</comment>


E-mail to Barack Obama Gets UK Teen Banned from U.S. - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/09/14/luke-angel-barack-obama-e-mail/

<comment><USER2> >That said, Angel claimed that he was drunk when he wrote the e-mail, so he might not be a long-term threat — but maybe you can never be too careful.

"I was drunk when I shot the guy Your Honour, so it doesn't count"</comment>


The Four Most Common Evasive Techniques Used by Malware - <AUTHOR> http://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/security-data-protection/the-four-most-common-evasive-techniques-used-by-malware/

<comment><USER2> Summary:

1\. Environmental awareness allows malware samples to detect the underlying runtime environment of the system it is trying to infect.

2 .Confusing automated tools, allows malware to avoid detection by technologies such as signature-based antivirus software.

3\. Timing-based evasion to run at certain times or following certain actions taken by the user.

4\. Obfuscating internal data to include any number of tricks to run code that cannot be detected by the analysis system.</comment>


Reflections on Pre-Tirement: What I Learned from a Ten Week Leave of Absence - <AUTHOR> http://cushychicken.github.io/leave-of-absence/ <comment><USER2> I'm doing this now too. I chose to be funemployed due to stress and burn out at my last job. I saved up enough money to be out of work for 6 months. So far it has been one of the best life decisions I've ever made. It makes searching for a new job a lot easier especially because 4 interviews seems like the new norm. I have also seen a VERY dramatic improvement in my mental health and I love being able to relax and enjoy time with my family without getting the Sunday Scaries. I've been reading a lot of news and it seems like Americans are at a point now where everyone is stressed at work and can't disconnect due to digital ubiquity and pressure from employers. Not only that, but retirement prospects are looking grim. It may be smarter to pre-retire every few years if companies are going to continue to grind people into the ground.</comment>


New Book by Fred Brooks - The Design of Design - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201362988

<comment><USER2> In case you're curious, the Table of Contents are listed below:

Copyright

About the Author

Preface

Part I: Models of Designing

Chapter 1. The Design Question

Chapter 2. How Engineers Think of Design -- The Rational Model

Chapter 3. What's Wrong with This Model?

Chapter 4. Requirements, Sin, and Contracts

Chapter 5. What Are Better Design Process Models?

Part II: Collaboration and Telecollaboration

Chapter 6. Collaboration in Design

Chapter 7. Telecollaboration

Part III: Design Perspectives

Chapter 8. Rationalism versus Empiricism in Design

Chapter 9. User Models -- Better Wrong than Vague

Chapter 10. Inches, Ounces, Bits, Dollars -- The Budgeted Resource

Chapter 11. Constraints Are Friends

Chapter 12. Esthetics and Style in Technical Design

Chapter 13. Exemplars in Design

Chapter 14. How Expert Designers Go Wrong

Chapter 15. The Divorce of Design

Chapter 16. Representing Designs' Trajectories and Rationales: In collaboration with Sharif Razzaque

Part IV: A Computer Scientist's Dream System for Designing Houses

Chapter 17. A Computer Scientist's Dream System for Designing Houses -- Mind to Machine

Chapter 18. A Computer Scientist's Dream System for Designing Houses -- Machine to Mind

Part V: Great Designers

Chapter 19. Great Designs Come from Great Designers: Not from Great Design Processes

Chapter 20. Where Do Great Designers Come From?

Part VI: Trips through Design Spaces: Case Studies

Chapter 21. Case Study: Beach House "View/360"

Chapter 22. Case Study: House Wing Addition

Chapter 23. Case Study: Kitchen Remodeling

Chapter 24. Case Study: System/360 Architecture

Chapter 25. Case Study: IBM Operating System/360

Chapter 26. Case Study: Book Design of Computer Architecture: Concepts and Evolution

Chapter 27. Case Study: A Joint Computer Center Organization: Triangle Universities Computation Center

Chapter 28. Recommended Reading

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm eagerly awaiting my copy. Brooks' previous work, 'The Mythical Man-Month', is _still_ one of the best books ever written about building software. I re- read it every few years, just to keep those lessons fresh.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the book, Brooks was the manager of IBM's huge OS/360 project in the 60s. The system eventually shipped, but it was massively overbudget and late. He took the lessons he learned from the debacle, and wrote 'Mythical Man-Month' in 1975.

It's shocking how many of his insights still apply: Adding people slows down projects. Keep teams tight, and structured around your most productive programmers. It often pays to think deeply about a problem before you tackle it. Don't overbuild.

It's true that dynamic programming languages, tools like git, and rapid prototyping have made some of his examples feel dated. However, the underlying principles are still solid.

Hopefully 'The Design of Design' is a similar goldmine. Even if it's only half as good as MMM, it's still earned a slot on my bookshelf.

<comment><USER4> "For those of you who aren't familiar with the book, ..."

... buy it already. Except for occasional references to kilobytes of RAM (what the heck are those? are they like gigabytes?), you'd think the book was written last week.

<comment><USER5> Hey, cache is the new RAM, RAM is the new disk, disk is the new tape. So all though 256KB L1 caches still mean something....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fred Brooks, for those who don't know, is the author of the software engineering book The Mythical Man Month ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month> )

<comment><USER5> Also the author of "No Silver Bullet": <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet>

I haven't read anything of his that wasn't worth reading and the MMM is still one of the very best.

<comment><USER7> No Silver Bullet is one of the essays in The Mythical Man Month book

<comment><USER5> It was added to the 20th anniversary edition; I read it in the April 1987 issue of _IEEE Computer_ with the wonderfully Gothic cover.

<comment><USER7> Thanks. I own the 20th anniversary edition and while I knew it had some extra content, including an update to the No Silver Bullet essay, I didn't realise NSB wasn't part of the original edition.

<comment><USER5> You're welcome.

I found it very much worth buying the new MMM edition for his revisiting the "plan to throw one away, because you will" discussion on prototyping (e.g. see Joel's discussion on this). Very useful to me since I'd by then experienced most of the possible outcomes of this question.

He's not one to rest on his laurels and is to be commended for turning an _epic_ disaster into a lifetime of suggesting to us with style and verve how we might manage to avoid such ourselves.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


VentureBlog: Paul Graham is Today's Prius - <AUTHOR> http://www.ventureblog.com/articles/indiv/2006/001255.html <comment><USER2> Well the truth cannot be shut down, it will come out eventually. Just like this author says there are more talks of PG, i ahve lately noticed a rise in anti-PG stuff, its rather sad to see people trying to obscure the truth by false statements and rumours. My only question to PG/YC bashers is

if ! (PG/YC)

whatelse can you offer that is better?

else

STFU

<comment><AUTHOR> He he, great point ;)</comment></comment>


Plugin/Website suggestion for HN - <AUTHOR>

It would be great that when you hit refresh, you don't see the links already visited. (When a special mode is enabled)<p>So basically, if you've just visited 3 links of the top 10, you would see the "top 13" without your visited site. <comment><USER2> I'm actually writing a chrome extension right now for hn just for the sake of learning. I do believe there is a plugin that does this already (for chrome - search hacker news in the store) - but I would be happy to add it to mine. Right now, I just added a link to the right of all the user names that says "profile for xxx" and if you click it, it pulls their profile details into the page.

I will add this because I needed an excuse to use the html5 local data store. Also, I'll post the code to github when it's done and announce here.

Anything else anyone wants to see from an extension like this?

</comment><comment><USER3> This can be done really easily in userscripts (accepted in Chrome too).

      content-area a:visited {display:none;}

Actual coding left as an exercise to the reader.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will that automatically takes the top 15 if 5 links are already visited?

<comment><USER3> No it won't, but its just a quick hack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> that's actually a great idea..</comment>


Running a South Pole Data Center - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/04/coolest-jobs-in-tech-literally-running-a-south-pole-data-center/

<comment><AUTHOR> > Before he was cleared for travel to the Pole, Barnet was told he had to get > his wisdom teeth extracted. And if you're staying for the entire winter, > says systems admin Auer, they prefer to have your appendix removed.</comment>


A Dead-Simple Change That Increased Our Conversion Rate by Over 250% - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kajabi.com/a-dead-simple-change-that-increased-our-conve

<comment><USER2> That's a very nice discovery from A|B Testing.

Trying to figure out more about Kajabi, I started watching your "getting started in 5 minutes video" and see that you e-mail your users their password. I feel pretty strongly that websites should never do this... I'm wondering what the rationale is?

</comment><comment><USER3> I was all set to read this but then the article got covered up by some lightbox crap on which I couldn't find a close button (not that I tried very hard).

</comment><comment><USER4> It would be nice if we knew more about the test.

How it was conducted, sample size, length of test, etc.

Only thing I can tell from the post was that they changed the text of their button and that it was an A/B test. Pretty light on info.

</comment><comment><USER5> N=?

<comment><USER2> 1,843 visits according to the infographic.</comment></comment>


AP CEO Tom Curley Threatens Google: "They Will Not Get Our Copy Going Forward" - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/30/associated-press-google-business-media-apee.html?feed=rss_business_media

<comment><USER2> Is there a list of AP sites? So we can make sure we don't use _any_ of their material on our own sites?

Not by means of protest or anything. It's just that fears of bankruptcy are clearly driving the AP nuts and I'd rather not be in the way of any random lawsuits thrown around as a last ditch effort.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the bet that if/when Google drops AP content completely AP will start suing them to get put back in to search results.

</comment><comment><USER4> Message to Tom from the Interweb: "Do not piss off the Goog, your Internet life depends on it".

Seriously, as much as I don't see eye-to-eye with many of Google's decisions and tactics, they own the gateway to the web (currently) and will destroy you if they feel like it.

<comment><USER5> Deja vu.

Google vs. news sites in 2009 = Microsoft vs. ISVs in 1989

<comment><USER6> I agree. Now we just need pg to write his next article entitled "Google is dead".

Google is in that comfy monopolistic position where they can sit around on their advertising cash cow, tell others how they want the web to work, and no longer really have to innovate.

<comment><USER7> [citation needed]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Now would be a good opportunity for Reuters to come out and side with Google

</comment><comment><USER9> The bigger question is... When the AP is gone from the Internet, will anyone notice?

</comment><comment><USER10> The AP is pissed because Reddit, Digg, Google, and others (Hacker News?) are using AP content every day... usually with full attribution and links back to the article. Let me put that another way - some of the most popular sites on the internet send millions of pageviews to the AP every day.

That's a traffic situation that most sites would love to be in - but the AP can't figure out how to make money from those eyeballs? So they're going to try to stop the influx of traffic, so that... what? Their content can wither and die in peace? Talk about cutting yourself out of the equation.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why do I have a bad feeling that news aggregators will be getting their pants sued off?

<comment><USER12> They'd have a hard time suing organic aggregators like Digg since most news sites are running their buttons.

I COULD see an RIAA-style campaign where they just start suing bloggers left and right for copy-pasting too many characters in their posts.

Also, I could see Techmeme getting sued.

Basically, anyone who's going out and TAKING content from the news orgs and repurposing it for their own ends could be a target if they go that route. Forums and social news sites should be pretty safe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Any time they want, they can remove their content from google using a robots.txt.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you keep a journal? - <AUTHOR> If so, how long have you done so, and has it had any effect on your life? I've been keeping one for a couple months now, and I still find it to be a bit of a "chore." I document my daily work, thoughts, feelings, vent frustrations, confide to it, and monitor progress in various ways. But I have not found it to be useful other than as another distraction and pull on my time. I've read that journal-keepers are usually more productive, but I'm more productive on days I don't spend thinking about my journal. <comment><USER2> I use a composition notebook at work. Every day I write down a list of things I'm going to discuss at the scrum meeting, a list of things to do that day, a list of goals for that week to remind myself what I'm supposed to be doing, and then take notes on the bugs I'm working on. I'm a huge fan of diagrams and mindmaps so I fill up the pages with those, as well as notes of ideas that pop into my head or something my coworkers/boss mention that might be useful information later. At the end of the day I write a summary of what I accomplished and make any quick list of things I want to get done the next day.

I can flip through pages and actually see how my progress with certain things evolves over time. Sometimes, as a self-esteem booster, I look at my notes on something I've been struggling with a few months ago, and compare it to my current state of knowledge. I also have a bad memory and get somewhat nervous during scrum, so having notes to reference when its my turn to speak is super helpful.

</comment><comment><USER3> I do, I update it a few times a year (then its not a chore), but i can go back and look at what i was thinking about certain topics in the past (job, rel, etc).</comment>