Notepad++ drops code signing for its releases - <AUTHOR> https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/notepad-7.6.4-released.html <comment><USER2> Windows signing is a ripoff, $500/year you're getting nothing. Your certificate is not trusted. You have to "get reputation for it" before Windows Defender would stop giving users warnings. Also, renewing certificate is not a thing. Every time you have to get a new one, with same story of "reputation" again.

[1] [https://www.digicert.com/order/order-1.php](https://www.digicert.com/order/order-1.php)

<comment><USER3> Funny thing about trust: I trust a developer who drops some $$$ on a code- signing certificate more than I trust a developer who doesn't. Even if it's just $20.

Also, the validation requirements to obtain a code-signing certificate, while certainly not bulletproof, are not nothing: you need to send in articles of incorporation and your business needs a listing with a physical address and phone number in a public directory (e.g., bbb.org), and someone representing your business needs to pick up that phone when the cert validator calls it.

Your business name and physical address are injected into the certificate. Basically code-signing certificates make it easier for people to find you and sue you if they truly want to. I suspect that's the whole point.

The problem here is that the Notepad++ developer wants his certificate to say CN=Notepad++, but he won't be able to obtain that until he has some kind of business or organization registered in his jurisdiction with that name. Whereas CN=FIRSTNAME LASTNAME he could probably obtain immediately (just send in his driver's license during validation).

<comment><USER4> > Funny thing about trust: I trust a developer who drops some $$$ on a code- > signing certificate more than I trust a developer who doesn't. Even if it's > just $20.

Why? If I expect to make four figures on spreading malware/adware, and I can assuage the nerves of people like you by spending two or three figures on a certificate, I'm going to buy the certificate and make it look all nice and pretty and take your money.

> Your business name and physical address are injected into the certificate. > Basically code-signing certificates make it easier for people to find you > and sue you if they truly want to. I suspect that's the whole point.

So I have to incorporate in Delaware, make up a fake address, and rent a burner phone for a while. I'm not seeing the downside.

[https://www.bizfilings.com/toolkit/research- topics/incorpora...](https://www.bizfilings.com/toolkit/research- topics/incorporating-your-business/how-to-incorporate-a-business-in-delaware)

> Delaware does not require director names and addresses to be listed in the > Certificate of Incorporation.

<comment><USER5> They didn't say they trust the developer who spends the money _absolutely_ , they said they trust the developer who spends the money _more than they trust one who doesn 't._ Which is fair -- as you note, not every scammer will be scared off by the need to spend some money to pull the scam off; but _some_ will, so the ratio of legitimate developers to illegitimate ones will be higher in markets where there's some cost to entry.

<comment><USER6> This is fallacious reasoning. A well intentioned open source developer who does not earn any money out of a labor of love has no incentive to further spend money to sign his app that he's giving away for free anyway. On the flip side, a malicious actor that expects to earn money through a scam has every incentive to spend some money making the app look legit, especially if there is no risk involved.

<comment><USER7> The signed app can be globally disabled.

<comment><USER8> This could be easily achieved by Microsoft running a free signing service. Lowering the cost of signing to zero would significantly increase the proportion of signed apps.

<comment><USER7> The question was 'is someone who spends money for code signing more trustworthy than someone who doesn't' and it was being treated as if the trust or at least, increase in comfort, somehow comes merely from the act of spending money. It's an opt-in to a service that mitigates the impact of malicious code.

<comment><USER8> The parent statement was that having signed apps made them easy to disable. If all apps had to be signed, everything would have a reputation hook, and also be easily disabled. It's the hang-up of using the for profit 'verified' code signing ecosystem that makes signing ineffective.

Of course, MSFT/Apple etc will abuse it to kill apps they/govt don't like.

<comment><USER7> I don't really understand how any of this makes signing ineffective.

<comment><USER9> If the only way to play is to go through entrenched gatekeepers, who watches the watchers, hmmm? If anything this should be seen as a power grab by entrenched interests to have a cryptographic lever to pull to shut people out of what should be a user's discretion decision pre-emptively. Walled gardening at it's finest.

Code signing is a bit like gun control. It really doesn't solve the problem at all. It just pushes it up a level, and makes things more difficult for legitimate users.

It also lines up incentives such that the preferred model of software distribution shifts in the grand scheme of things toward for profit code.

While code signing is a neat technical solution, it's still a technical solution parading about as a solution to a social problem. And the social problem it is a solution to (that of untrustworthy folks existing) is not in any way mitigated by the act of signing as mentioned previously.

<comment><USER7> I don't really understand how any of this makes signing ineffective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I created a huge rant on code signing certificates here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwuk0E-tfeg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwuk0E-tfeg)

It's a nightmare. Complete scam.

I needed this for Polar: [https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/)

Mind you... it's Open Source but I still want my users to be able to download it without warnings.

No joke - it took me 2 weeks to get the CSC with about 4 hours per day working on just this CSC issue.

It's just a labyrinth of insanity from not having a listing on D&B to them insisting I pay $2k to expedite it.

I still don't have one from Apple because it requires a D&B number so I had to get a personal cert from them.

I went with a cheap one for Windows BUT it gives errors on install for like the first 1k downloads until Windows says it's legit.

It's a complete scam.

BTW.. if you get in the MS App Store you don't have to worry about a CSC so that's good I guess.

<comment><USER3> For those that don't know, D&B stands for Dun & Bradstreet ([https://www.dnb.com/](https://www.dnb.com/)). They have this concept of a D-U-N-S Number which basically means information about your business is in their database.

Last I checked expedited D&B was around $40 USD (10 business days) and same- day D&B around $500 USD.

Free D&B said it would take 30 business days, but it actually only took them 5 business days when I applied for it.

<comment><USER11> Apple has a tool where you can lookup your DUNS number directly for free.

[https://developer.apple.com/support/D-U- N-S/](https://developer.apple.com/support/D-U-N-S/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember the good old days when people were actually trusted to do their own research before downloading a potentially dangerous exe.

Now all we have are app store and certificate rackets. Im looking at Google and Apple too. Shame on the industry for accepting 30% revenue share on their services. The idea of an app store is great but not when it excludes other legitimate ways of installing software on device.

These practices are anticompetitive and monopolistic.

Good for Notepad++. I couldnt agree more with its sentiment.

<comment><USER13> >I remember the good old days when people were actually trusted to do their own research before downloading a potentially dangerous exe.

Is there any evidence that was ever really a thing / effective?

How could you possibly know?

There are plenty of examples of previously trustworthy software becoming untrustworthy, same with sites you download the code from.

That line reads like the absurd advice that security experts put out about "only download something you trust" and ignoring that nobody has a clue how to evaluate that aside form say limiting them self to FOSS and reading all the code...

<comment><USER14> _> absurd advice that security experts put out about "only download something you trust"_

This is mostly a meme from the overzealous FOSS and privacy crowd, not the security crowd. Professional security engineers do not, as a rule, encourage software engineers (or end users more generally) to only use open source software because "you can inspect the code for vulnerabilities."

Anyone with legitimate security expertise will understand the benefits of specialization and core competencies. Namely that despite the ideological perspective of many in the FOSS community, it is actually better to trust someone else with the security of your software. Because you most likely can't trust yourself with that task anyway.

The idea that most people can reliably identify security vulnerabilities in the software they use just because it's open source is laughable. They might find trivial low hanging fruit or _obvious_ malicious activity, but they won't have a better picture of the overall security posture just because they can read the code.

As an obvious case in point, consider how few people identify vulnerabilities in Firefox versus how many people use Firefox. The people who _write_ complex open source software don't even reliably find the issues in their own code.

<comment><USER13> Yeah I didn't intend to tie FOSS advice to the security comment but inadvertently my comment reads like that.

I intended it to just be a comparison of the "only download something you trust" absurd advice you get from "security" people you see on TV or something... and what the user was suggesting about the old days.

My FOSS comment was really meant to reflect the absolute rabbit hole you go down when it is suggested people can simply protect themselves. It's never ending flow of tasks and things you need to know that I don't think anyone can do ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What _really_ pisses me off is code signing for drivers. To install an unsigned driver in 64-bit Windows 10, you need to reboot your computer into a special menu that can only be navigated with a USB keyboard (which I have to lug out of the closet, since I normally use Bluetooth). That in itself wouldn't be so bad, except the setting persists _only until the next reboot!_ †

This is all in stark contrast to macOS's System Integrity Protection, which I can turn off once to never be bothered again.

I understand why Microsoft would enforce higher standards on drivers which can touch the kernel. But, the same fundamental problem applies: it isn't reasonable for non-profit, open source developers—many of whom _I_ consider perfectly trustworthy—to pay hundreds of dollars for a certificate! Let me make the final decision about who I trust. It's my machine—I even built it myself!

The primary place I run into this problem is with drivers to support weird video game controllers.

\---

† You can enable a "testsigning" mode via the command line which persists across reboots, but this only seems to work for certain drivers. If anyone can explain why it _sometimes_ works, I'd appreciate it, as my research has never turned up anything.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been slowly improving my open source Windows chess program Tarrasch [http://triplehappy.com](http://triplehappy.com) for nearly 10 years. One of my improvement plans has been to put on my big boy pants, and spend the money and time needed to sign the program. I thought it was a big part of the program graduating and becoming a serious software citizen. After reading the comments here I am reconsidering and might save myself the pain. Thanks Hacker News!

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm going through a "renewal" right now... The archaic maze of validation is also getting on my nerves. It's been three weeks now that I'm waiting for a phone call to validate my phone number. This article is making it so tempting to cancel my order.

The plethora of support emails is what motivated me to get one in the first place. I used to get accused of giving users a "virus" and getting into infinite loops on why they should trust me. I'm sure I was wasting more than $100/year of my time responding to these emails, so I just gave in and got one.

Now, I don't know what to do.

<comment><USER18> Is it k-software/Comodo/Sectigo by any chance?

<comment><USER17> Yes, Sectigo via The SSL Store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Where do I sign for a petition to have a free CA like LetsEncrypt for Code Signing?

<comment><USER20> LetsEncrypt is a hack to get HTTP encryption working without shelling out money for meaningless identity "verification". Code signing has nothing to do with encryption, so having analogous CA for code would be entirely meaningless.

What does code signing in Windows _actually_ verify? That executable's author at some point paid money to some company that Microsoft deemed an "authority"?

It's a rotten system. The whole CA pyramid is bullshit.

What we really need is a way to know that executable notepad++2.0 is signed by the same person who signed notepad++1.0 already installed on your computer, and that it's the same person who controls notepad-plus-plus.org, and that this identity has existed for well over 10 years. _This_ is legitimately useful info that would allow people to make more informed decisions about what to install.

BTW, the part about historic record seems like one of the few good uses for blockchain technology.

<comment><USER21> > LetsEncrypt is a hack to get HTTP encryption working without shelling out > money for meaningless identity "verification".

Have you used Let's Encrypt? It verifies that you own the domain in question. HTTPS requires that the server you're connecting to has been identified.

<comment><USER22> Verifying domain control =/= verifying identity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why not use something like certum[1]? It's $69/year (cheaper if you already have a smartcard), but the CN ends up with something like "Open source developer, [full name]". It's not "notepad++" like the author wants, but it's still better than nothing.

[1] [https://en.sklep.certum.pl/data-safety/code-signing- certific...](https://en.sklep.certum.pl/data-safety/code-signing- certificates/open-source-code-signing-984.html)

edit: updated price

<comment><USER24> "It's $828 per year" for ... a cert? What makes code signing this expensive?

<comment><USER25> Greed, mostly.

Digicert lists EV code signing certs as $664/yr. But if you are to enter their site through a side door or just plainly cry into the support's jacket, then the price magically drops to $104/yr. And that's for an EV cert! So the only reason there are $600 certs is that there are people who _do_ pay that.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, I about an EV cert from digicert for ~$100/year. People pay >$600/year?? What? I never even saw those prices! Not sure how I landed on digicert but I think it was a Microsoft article listing where to get EV certs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In case anyone reads this far down:

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows- hardware/drivers/da...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows- hardware/drivers/dashboard/get-a-code-signing-certificate)

Follow the steps under "Buy a DigiCert EV code signing certificate".

You're welcome. ;)

<comment><USER17> I want to personally thank you for this. I cancelled my order with Comodo/SSLStore and followed your suggestion. EV certificate is already in the mail :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Interesting that they will check the hashes of dependencies at runtime. But then I start to wonder - why dynamic linking if the library can't be replaced?

<comment><USER29> Why bother checking the signature of dependencies if the main executable integrity isn't being checked?

What really surprises me is that the author of something as great as Notepad++ isn't making enough money from the project to easily be able to pay for the certificate.

<comment><USER30> It's not about the price, but about name on the certificate:

> However I cannot use "Notepad++" as CN to sign because Notepad++ doesn't > exist as company or organization

CAs would put author's name as CN, which isn't great, especially for collaborative project.

<comment><USER31> Yep and sometimes the name people know isn't the name that a CA will permit in a certificate. I have one of those. I'm known as a shortened version of my middle name, say Jack Quimby, but DigiCert and others insist that the cert be issued to Alphonse Jackson Quimby, Jr.

OK I'll just buy an LLC from a state that's cheap (never mind the paperwork) but that's no good either because the new entity had no listed phone number...

<comment><USER30> >OK I'll just buy an LLC

When I bought code signing certificate for my LLC, in their infinite wisdom CA put "Spółka z ograniczoną odpowiedzialnością" as CN, because that's what they saw on proof of ownership. "Spółka z ograniczoną odpowiedzialnością" literally means "Limited liability company" in Polish.

<comment><USER32> I know that must have been a pain in the neck for you, but that's hilarious. Thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER33> Then I think you'll find this Poland-related story amusing too: [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7899171....](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7899171.stm)

<comment><USER32> I love it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Good for them! Certificates are a bad business today. The only reason I'd get one is because things like letsencrypt exist;

Orthogonally, I also think that $99 App Store fees are a terrible waste of money. You should get charged only when submitting to an app store for review.

There are plenty of root certificates that came installed on my computer, and I don't even trust them. Why would these CAs charge so much for so little value?

<comment><USER35> I believe Apple has a free tier. There are limitations. It sounds like you'd be fine with some of them, like you can't distribute though the app store. But I think apps you load on your device expire quickly and there are other limitations, so it really is for development, and not a great way to side load apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> At the end of the day, Notepad++ can't get a "Notepad++" cert because "Notepad++" is not a Legal Entity (i.e. a corporation or living person). At least from a policy perspective, Microsoft will only consider Legal Entities to be valid code signatories.

Yes, this _is_ stupid and outdated, I agree - I personally think that Keybase issuing code signing certificates and being able to verify that the person who signed this also owns this GitHub and that Twitter account would still be super valuable.

</comment><comment><USER37> Could post to Microsoft Store, which would let them do this for free.

<comment><USER38> I think if I remember correctly, they were opposed going the store route because it took too much effort building on top of the store sandbox and new installer packaging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Microsoft should jump in and afford the developer the cert out of good will given MS until recently never had a good alternative to NP++.

<comment><USER40> They have Visual Studio Code.

<comment><USER41> > until recently

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> These kind of code-signing certificates should be free for free and open source projects.

D Language community recently [1][2] bought a certificate reluctantly to satisfy Windows defender, virus scan warning, etc. Sadly we are stuck with this immoral blackmails.

[1] [https://firstname.lastname@example.com...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com)

[2][https://dlang.org/changelog/2.082.0.html#signed_windows_bina...](https://dlang.org/changelog/2.082.0.html#signed_windows_binaries)

</comment><comment><USER43> Beside the fact that code signing is a racket, [https://codesigncert.com/](https://codesigncert.com/) gets you a Comodo cert for $75.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is slightly off-topic, but do indie game developers publishing on Steam have to jump through this hoop to support Windows? Are all Windows games on Steam signed?

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm startled that there's no mention of app whitelisting yet.

Code signing reduces ops overhead and latency in environments that are using app whitelisting.

If the code is signed, then the signing certificate can be trusted _once_. All upgrades and patches that are signed with that certificate can be _automatically_ whitelisted, with no intervention from teams managing the whitelisting.

But if the code _isn 't_ signed, then if even a single byte changes in the executable, it must be re-whitelisted - usually manually.

The more signed apps there are, the easier it is for companies to start using application whitelisting, the fewer people are needed to maintain it, and the faster patches to those applications can be deployed. Making it easier for companies to move to whitelisting increases security for the ecosystem in the aggregate.

</comment><comment><USER46> Anyone have any source that cites it's sources for the profit margins on code signing rackets. I imagine for mobile the margins are especially high since phone o/s design makes it much easier to put less effort into audits. I bet the profits margins in both mobile and standard are absolutely monsterous. By the principals of business I assume they put in the least amount of effort possible while still putting in enough to protect themselves from blame

</comment><comment><USER47> > I realize that code signing certificate is just an overpriced masturbating > toy of FOSS authors.

I'm not sure what the author means by this.

<comment><USER48> Codesigning certs are a racket... the 'chain of trust' and documentation requirements mean they are expensive and hard to get as an individual, yet oh- so-essential for releasing software. Which also makes them status symbols, which the author is rejecting.

I kind of see them like taxi medallions

<comment><USER23> >I kind of see them like taxi medallions

Taxi medallions are pricey because there's limited supply and high demand. Code signing certificates have limited demand and unlimited supply, but are expensive because they require manual verification (like EV certificates) and has a bunch of startup costs (to get included as a root).

<comment><USER48> Factors keep both items expensive, and both are effectively required for doing certain types of business.

<comment><USER49> Medallions are an artificial constraint on supply -- the point of them is to shrink the market. Code signing provides a benefit -- it's a way for a user to ensure they have the right installer and that it wasn't changed by a nefarious third party.

<comment><USER48> And are code-signing certs really so different? The reporting and regulatory requirements behind them make me think that they are an intentional barrier- to-entry for newcomers, amateurs, and startups, and the business student in me admires their moat-like quality. Code-signing certs lock _a lot_ of people out of certain channels of software distribution

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Does this mean that some users won't be allowed to install Notepad++ because it's not signed? I know some corporate environments have restrictions on downloaded installers.

Off topic, but I have to say that whenever I need to open _hundreds_ of files at once and perform regex operations-- this editor rocks that task like no other. Kudos to Notepad++

<comment><USER51> You might be right, although developers usually have local admin rights, so it should be a matter of clicking past the warnings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> You can buy a Windows code signing certificate from DigiCert for $74/yr (EV certs are $104/yr) by going through this link - [https://www.digicert.com/friends/sysdev/](https://www.digicert.com/friends/sysdev/) \- much easier to swallow than the standard $499!

</comment><comment> forgery-- Companies using Carbon Black Protection (Bit9) or similar application whitelisting systems use signing certificates to help approve software. Once I approve the "Simon Tatham" certificate for my company, anyone can download the latest version of PuTTY and run it without issue. I wish the trend was for more software to be signed.

</comment><comment><USER53> In Germany, Notepad++ is ubiquitous on Windows computers (every developer has it). Is it like this in the US, too?

<comment><USER54> In my experience, npp has been surpassed by vscode or atom. however, I have recently found the markdown npp plugin and because of npp's speed, its become my go to markdown editor/viewer.

If I need to just edit one file quickly with a simple change, npp is still my go to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I am in a similar situation myself with Portable-VirtualBox. Does anyone know where one can get a reasonably priced code signing certificate?

Preferably one that does not require a USB dongle. Did order one from Comodo, but was not able to get the USB dongle to work.

</comment><comment><USER56> I can't be alone in not caring too much about the cert.

Notepad++ - Crack on!

</comment><comment><USER57> other than Microsofts signed software, the fact it is signed doesn't really mean much to me as I have no idea what anything should be signed with. What I tend to trust is that I know specifically where I went to get a piece of software. It is easier for me to tell what an official site is rather than an official signature

</comment><comment><USER58> Let's see if that affects usage or not. I'm sure people like it so much they won't care.

</comment><comment><USER13> > I realize that code signing certificate is just an overpriced masturbating > toy of FOSS authors

What does that mean?

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm on the same track. Definitely we need Let's Encrypt for code signing certificates!

</comment><comment><USER60> register Notepad++ Limited for about £10/$15?

<comment><USER61> That comes with a ton of additional bureaucratic work.

<comment><USER60> in the UK a company takes about 10 minutes to setup and if not actively trading requires about 5 minutes of work per year to keep going

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Good on 'im!

</comment><comment><USER63> Feels like there's an opportunity for some kind organization to help open- source developers out with this. It shouldn't be this hard for someone trying to give away good work to the world. I used Notepad++ for a long time, and still might if I spent any time in Windows.

<comment><USER48> I wonder if Lets Encrypt is working on code-signing certs? That would be a huge win for FOSS

<comment><USER64> How would let's encrypt verify the identity of the author?

<comment><USER65> They could sign an email address instead of a name.

<comment><USER66> Why bother with an email address? You could just punt the identity verification to the domain registrars and sign the domain.

I don't really think this scheme would benefit the end user though.

<comment><USER67> I would prefer notepad-plus-plus.org rather than some vague "Notepad, LLC", registered somewhere in the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> It seems the author is very focused on signing with x509.

I'm wondering if they are aware of free alternatives like signify or pgp that would work just as well (minus the windows UAC thing). Right now there are only checksums but no way to verify they are from the author and are distributed on the same server as the binary, so the only security layer is https.

<comment><USER69> >(minus the windows UAC thing)

As Windows only project, UAC is the only thing that matters in this equation.

<comment><USER68> I've just edited my comment to make this clearer. Doing code signing with signify or pgp gives you a way the verify the binary you downloaded is actually the file the developer built on their laptop, even if the webserver is compromised. Linux ISOs are very commonly distributed that way. I agree that it's extremely uncommon for windows users to verify this though.

<comment><USER70> Windows does not care about non-windows recognized signatures.

So this works fine for users who care about gpg verification, but fails the "Windows doesn't prompt me about insecure stuff" test.

<comment><USER71> presumably the user who understands how GPG signing works also doesn't care what windows thinks</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Publisher Gets Carte Blanche to Seize New Sci-Hub Domains - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/publisher-gets-carte-blanche-to-seize-new-sci-hub-domains-180410/ <comment><USER2> I'm actually surprised this whole suit is being pursued by a professional society. Closed publications seem to be out of line with the interest of their members. Unless the society makes substantial money from their publications, which is unlikely[0], it's hard to see what the motivation of this organization would be and why the members of the society haven't loudly complained against it. I'd really expect a suit from this to come from Elseiver or NPG.

[0] From talking to a few representives of sceintific societies it sounds like they usually produce thier journals at or around cost.

<comment><USER3> > I'm actually surprised this whole suit is being pursued by a professional > society. Closed publications seem to be out of line with the interest of > their members.

Not exactly.

I fully recognize that Elsevier and Springer Verlag have behaved so obnoxiously that they make everything I'm about to say sound ridiculous, but nevertheless, here goes.

"If you're not the customer, you're the product."

When I get the latest issue of (say) IEEE Transactions On What I Do For a Living, I want to know that the editors did their best to solicit and round up the best new work on advancing the state of the art in my specialty, and that the manuscripts they received check out and are worthy.

That takes money, because the editors have bills to pay and can't really do this on a volunteer basis. Even though the peer reviewers are volunteers, getting them to volunteer is itself work. And the work starts by filtering the slush out so you're not asking the reviewers to look at stuff that's utter crap.

Advertiser support is not appropriate here. "This issue of IEEE Power And Energy is brought to you by Xformer Corp. (So don't even think about discussing in these pages how our transformers blow up more often than should happen in polite society.""

Author support is even less appropriate, with all due respect to the PLOS line of journals.

And yes, the professional societies try to price subscriptions and downloads so their budget is at break-even, which is why they have an interest in getting subscriptions and payments from as many people as possible, i.e. by not making the PDFs available for free. If everyone in EECS joined IEEE, membership fees would go down, and they could add Transactions access to the standard membership package.

I do still think it's counterproductive to crack down on Sci-Hub. Ultimately, what we need is a micropayments system that makes paying for downloads too seamlessly easy to be worth dodging. If Venmoing for PDFs took less time to set up and use than going to Sci-Hub, this would be moot.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, everything you said is ridiculous.

Journals are _very much_ a profit center for the publishers. Scientific journal publishing is a wildly profitable business[1][2][3] and it is not all the clear that these profits are commensurate with journal quality. They are almost certainly monopoly rents. And the idea that membership fees pay for the journals is also silly. It's well known that it's institutions who pay the outrageous subscription fees for the journal that are actually powering this racket.

The interesting point here is that Sci-Hub isn't _really_ a threat to the publishers. Like with most piracy it's not clear that the people using Sci-Hub would purchase the papers if Sci-Hub weren't available. And no matter what the publishers can always count on those fat institutional subscription fees. And that's what this is really about. The ultimate danger of Sci-Hub is that it undermines the very idea of a journal. Individual scientific papers become the unit of trade and people will take those papers on an a la carte basis. SciHub, if it were left alone, would unbundle science publishing and you'd see a drastic fall in profits.

This is all about money and protecting a wildly profitable business model. The idea that this is about supporting editors is ridiculous.

[1] [https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/elseviers- profits-...](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/elseviers-profits- swell-more-ps900-million)

[2] [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable- business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science)

[3] [https://medium.com/@jasonschmitt/can-t-disrupt-this- elsevier...](https://medium.com/@jasonschmitt/can-t-disrupt-this-elsevier-and- the-25-2-billion-dollar-a-year-academic-publishing-business-aa3b9618d40a)

<comment><USER3> > Journals are very much a profit center for the publishers.

For Elsevier, Springer, WIley, yes.

For IEEE? For ACS? For AIP? Not so much.

> nd it is not all the clear that these profits are commensurate with journal > quality

THey're not. I shouldn't have to pay $35 dollars for an Elsevier PDF when Elsevier didn't even have the decency to spend some of that money on copy editing to help authors who don't speak good English.

But I should pay a price. Because the alternative is for someone else to pay, someone who does not have my interests at heart.

<comment><USER5> Since when do you need to pay just to download a PDF ? Just remember there's peer to peer, and that the web is not a big black box where you can only deal with giant companies and their websites - there's freedom in it too.

Also: I think your attitude is quite symptomatic of a certain laziness of the research community, which has helped these counterproductive monopolies to rise and strive. Get angry, for once, because this is getting ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can contact the plaintiff's Board of Directors by calling (800) 227-5558 or sending an e-mail to email@example.com [1].

Here is a list of their Board of Directors: [https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/about/governance/board/bo...](https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/about/governance/board/board- of-directors-images.html) . See a person or organisation you know? Let them know your thoughts about this.

[1] [https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/about/governance/board/co...](https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/about/governance/board/contact.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Wikipedia's Sci-Hub entry guides one to live addresses [1]. Would this ruling censor Wikipedia?

Also, who is defending Sci-Hub? Is there anyone who would be in a position to challenge or appeal this ruling? Or do we have to wait for the ACS to demand censorship from a registrar with balls?

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci- Hub](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub)

<comment><USER7> I wonder that as well - I recently made [https://whereisscihub.now.sh](https://whereisscihub.now.sh), which parses the Wikidata API to always link to an available version of Sci-Hub. Technically, it just transform content from one location to a different format, but yeah... It might stop working if Wikimedia would be forced to remove their links.

Anyway, Alexandra Albakyan (who is behind Sci-Hub) is unlikely to defend it with anything else than written statements, given that she's from Kazakhstan or Russia and is unlikely to come to the US given several earlier injunctions against Sci-Hub.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sci-Hub: the Internet's second most censored publication. (And altogether easier to support morally, ethically, aesthetically than the first one.)

Boycotting ACS seems like a nice idea, but it would be challenging for professional chemists.

<comment><USER9> Wait, what's the first?

<comment><USER8> Daily Stormer, which has gone through 20+ domains in the past 18 months, was the first site to get kicked off Cloudflare for content/no court order, constant attacks on hosting facilities, etc.

<comment><USER10> Is it truly "censorship" though, if one is so aggressively distasteful and difficult to deal with that nobody wants to do business with them?

Daily Stormer was taken down as a result of 0 court orders. If I'm on someone's platform and I either break their rules repeatedly or invite attacks on them, it's not exactly censorship if they get tired of putting up with my shit and remove me. VPS operators repeatedly warn me that if I invite frequent DDoS attacks, they will remove me from the service. They have a say in how their own platform operates.

White national socialists/identitarians sell themselves as the most censored people on the Internet as if they hold information just begging to be released and practiced. Only, there's no redeeming value to the content of their information; it ranges from callous disregard of people based on race, to the outright extermination of anyone who disagrees with the cause. All of these "beliefs" effectively incite people to attack them, regardless of how well you may articulate them. It's little different from me repeatedly challenging blackhats to disable my VPS.

The only thing they really succeed in doing, is being the Internet's biggest pain in the ass to do business with. There is absolutely nothing wrong with what Cloudflare did.

<comment><USER11> Removing something perfectly legal, because public opinion is against them is cowardly.

Being a company that advertises DDoS mitigation and then drops a customer, because they get attacked a lot, is a cop out.

Being a company that will argue that they are not responsible for what their customers post legally, while by contrast dropping customers based on their content is pretty much censorship.

Don't think for a minute that dropping Daily Stormer wasn't just about public opinion and turning bad PR into good PR.

<comment><USER12> Cloudflare didn't drop Daily Stormer because of public opinion, but because of claims by Daily Stormer that Cloudflare supported Daily Stormer:

 _Our team has been thorough and have had thoughtful discussions for years about what the right policy was on censoring. Like a lot of people, we've felt angry at these hateful people for a long time but we have followed the law and remained content neutral as a network. We could not remain neutral after these claims of secret support by Cloudflare._ [1]

Dropping them for that is 100% justified in my book.

[1] [https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily- stormer/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/)

<comment><USER13> Why couldn't have they made a public statement that they do not endorse the Daily Stormer, reasserted that Cloudflare's business is not political activism and warned them that future claims like this would lead to termination? After all, Cloudflare's CEO describes the act itself as "dangerous", as a one-time act that would never happen again(at least, until someone else does the same thing?), etc..

The CEO doesn't seem to agree with you on this being 100% justified:

> Let me be clear: this was an arbitrary decision. It was different than what > I'd talked talked with our senior team about yesterday. I woke up this > morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet. … It was a > decision I could make because I'm the CEO of a major Internet infrastructure > company.

[1] [https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service- to...](https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to-neo-nazi- site-1797915295)

(I was unable to source the claims that the Daily Stormer made about Cloudflare supporting them. I seem to remember the Daily Stormer denying they made those claims. It seems pretty important to know the actual catalyst for a major breach in company policy, but it doesn't seem to be reported anywhere I looked).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting that this sort of thing is happening just as more and more research is piling up showing that the old peer review publishing model is less effective in every possible way than open publishing on the Internet. Errors get caught faster without journals involved. Corrections are published faster without journals involved. Bad science doesn't stick around as long without journals involved. They're just not a thing we need any more. And this is where we will find out how they actually feel about the notion that the thing which provides the better value should win in the market.

<comment><USER15> Can you get grant funding without them?

<comment><USER14> I don't know enough about grant funding to hazard a real guess. That is an interesting issue, though. I presume that grant committees are not typically staffed by people well-versed in the subject area? Would they not be capable of recognizing a global acceptance of an applicants prior work without a fallible journal citation? I know that in many fields the amount of other work which cites a given publication is a very important factor, perhaps that would play a role?

What position would it put journals in if they were reduced to providing vetting for grant committees? If instead of being arbiters of scientific validity, which they are poorer at than open publishing, they simply become some sort of thing similar to ratings agencies that provide parents with an unreliable best-effort guide to content acceptability without needing to actually learn about the thing in detail?

<comment><USER15> For the US at least, grant committees are almost always staffed by people with subject area expertise.

For NIH, there are two levels of SME- one non gov and one gov.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does SciHub need an actual domain name? Could they provide their website on a well-known IP address, kind of like CloudFlare's 22.214.171.124 DNS? Other people could build websites that redirect to or reference this known IP address.

(Or can IP addresses be seized too? I assume not, or else I'd expect the actual SciHub website to be shut down, not just the DNS names pointing to it.)

Edit: It looks like SciHub is in fact available on certain IP addresses. The following website lists a few of them: [https://whereisscihub.now.sh/](https://whereisscihub.now.sh/) \- one example is [http://22.214.171.124](http://184.108.40.206)

</comment><comment><USER17> We ought to have some kind of DNS alternative that doesn't allow this sort of thing to happen.

<comment><USER18> They could just operate a .onion to work around the whole thing. I think they already do?

<comment><USER6> > _They could just operate a .onion_

scihub22266oqcxt.onion [1]

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci- Hub](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub)

<comment><USER19> The article mentions that that onion address is in the list of domains that are "included but not limited to" in the injunction.

Good luck to ACS getting a .onion address seized... WHatever their legal injunction says.

<comment><USER20> Its more funny than that. The onion addresses are now published in that very document for everyone to find.

<comment><USER7> I mean... That's theoretically funny, but I don't think anyone who knows what a .onion is had any problem finding Sci-Hub's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> *> Several service providers are not receptive to US Court orders. One example is Iceland's domain registry ISNIC and indeed, at the time of writing, Sci-Hub.is is still widely available.

Why is ISNIC different?

<comment><USER22> I think one of the biggest factors is that they run their own registration. A lot of the little countries outsource their registration to american companies such as verisign. ISNIC says they will only take down a domain on order of an Icelandic court.

<comment><USER21> What kind of domains have Icelandic courts requested to be taken down?

<comment><USER23> I haven't been able to find any instances of the courts requesting take-downs. But the registry has removed some ISIS domains on their own accord.

<comment><USER24> ISIS must be peeved they can't get the cute is.is URL.

<comment><USER25> I'd buy that domain and run something fun on it. No idea what but I'm sure there is a list somewhere.

But that would probably not end well for me. Or anyone associated with that domain.

<comment><USER26> Suggestion: Neopagan Egyptian-pantheon products.

(There's also a river of that name in England, which caused some recent problems for those nearby).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So confused. DNS registrars can be mandated to reject domain ownership? What about DNS registrars outside of the US?

Also..... at some point we could just publish a list of IP's if we care enough, right? Although that's less than ideal.

<comment><USER15> How would a Wikipedia DNS work? It seems like this would be a useful service as people move toward some weird morality-based instead of law-based way of living life.

This is a topic that I want to see if transhumanists have researched as this becomes really important post-singularity.

<comment><USER28> Some transhumanists have done thought experiments and research on it, and I would say that the most digestible version of the "morality-as-law" system is in the Eclipse Phase RPG.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is the article itself subject to the judge's prior restraint on the basis on mentioning a known working website for sci-hub?

<comment><USER29> Further, does this discussion page itself "facilitate access" by virtue of people mentioning a working sci-hub website?

What limits are there to the gag order? How much rights do you have left to speak of sci-hub online? Do you have any?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I run a rare disease wiki, which makes extensive use of sci-hub links to bypass journal article paywalls. Patients (including myself) can't otherwise access research on their own conditions.

How should I keep my links working? Should I link to stable IP addresses? Mirror papers to IPFS? Link to the onion address, via a public tor gateway? Host my own DNS server to point at sci-hub?

Bonus points for keeping https cert validation working!

<comment><USER31> Host the documents yourself?

<comment><USER32> Not everyone wants to deal with lots of teardown notices and other possible fallout.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Distributed detached root DNS anyone? A twitter bot that returns IP addresses to #icanhazscience ? I don't think they can prevent this.

<comment><USER34> Another comparatively difficult-to-block option is a bookmarklet that runs some JS to retrieve the latest IP address from some server somewhere.

I don't really want to switch to somebody's random DNS servers to use SciHub, but dragging a bookmarklet to your browser toolbar is pretty easy.

<comment><USER35> Not my website, but: [https://whereisscihub.now.sh](https://whereisscihub.now.sh)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Could the articles be hosted on ipfs? I say that because one of ipfs's stated goals is overcoming censorship.

<comment><USER37> They could. It's a bit inconvenient to pin things now (you can't just say "I want to pin 5 GB of SciHub") and IPFS is slow to resolve new content, but it should work very acceptably.

<comment><USER38> I'm not sure if this would work, but what about hosting a node that you can manually add to your bootstrap list? Would that make getting the content quicker?

Edit: Oh, amd why couldn't I just pin the top node of the dag recursively? Wouldn't that basically do what you want?

<comment><USER37> > what about hosting a node that you can manually add to your bootstrap list?

I tried that and it didn't help :/ I think there's a bug in fetching content, because I was requesting the files from a node connected directly to mine (which I knew had the files) but still could not retrieve them. Hopefully 0.4.14 will work a bit better.

Wouldn't pinning the top node of the DAG pin everything? How would you restrict it to X GB?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> If you can't remember what domain(s) Sci-Hub is on this week, why not make it all of them?

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Scholar/comments/7m3uin/meta_if_you...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Scholar/comments/7m3uin/meta_if_you_cant_remember_what_domains_scihub_is/)

</comment><comment><USER40> I really wish the publishers got together and started a netflix like service for journals. I would gladly pay to use such a service per month.

<comment><USER41> you are mistakenly believing netflix had an extensive up-to-dat3 catalog. They do not, in comparison there are many netflix-like distributors of science papers. Google Scholar, sci hup and the like bind those together.

<comment><USER40> Any pointers for an aggregator that has acm/springer/ieee?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Sci-Hub bot on Telegram is still up: [https://t.me/scihubot](https://t.me/scihubot)

</comment><comment><USER43> The publishers are an enemy of a free Web, and we mus not let them encroach upon our territory without repercussions, or else the next thing we know the Web will look like cable TV.

</comment><comment><USER44> Does a blockchain alternative to sci-hub exist yet?

<comment><USER45> Blockchains aren't useful for storing large amounts of data, so this probably won't happen. Blockchain as a distributed database + IPFS maybe.

<comment><USER46> Blockchains can be good for storing _links_ to large amounts of data, but that doesn't directly solve the fundamental problem here.

Storj[1], as I understand it, is an attempt at decentralized storage of large amounts of data. I'm curious if it could be used to host papers in a way that's difficult or impossible to censor?

1: storj.io

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> What would happen if they started writing the articles to a blockchain? It would be functionally impossible to remove, right?

<comment><USER48> If you start a blockchain made of copyright violation, it's going to be legally about the same as a torrent, and you'll get hit for connecting at all.

<comment><USER49> There's already plenty of legally questionable stuff in Bitcoin's blockchain:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16617136](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16617136)

Thus, it would be better (if it could be afforded --- see some of the other comments on cost estimates) to continue there, or perhaps one of the other altcoins that's already in use for monetary purposes.

<comment><USER48> It's very incidental, though, and most of it could be purged with mild effort.

<comment><USER50> The whole point of a blockchain is that it's append-only. Each block has a hash of the previous block. If you wanted to modify a Bitcoin block from a year ago, you'd have to do the same computation as a year worth of all miners.

<comment><USER48> The blocks are hash trees, and you don't need to store the whole tree. Purging depends on that, not altering the block history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> While I think the change Sci-Hub is driving towards more open access is a good thing, I do also feel like Sci-Hub is destined to be the martyr here. From the big picture this is more just the pieces going through the almost inevitable (in some form) motions that will get us hopefully ultimately to better future (with legitimate open-access), but that won't be helping Sci-Hub whose position from a purely legal perspective pretty clearly in the "wrong" side.

<comment><USER15> So was MLK and people made the same argument and (horribly and sadly) he was.

Obviously, copyright on publicly funded research isn't the same priority as civil rights in the US, but hopefully we learned enough so we don't make more martyrs for just causes.

The "dumb law is illegal, therefore let's follow it anyway" is not something I agree with by default. There are quite a few laws that need fixing.

<comment><USER52> I think a problem with that mentality is that it's antidemocratic. Basically you're saying that potentially the only laws you'll recognize are those with which you agree.

If other citizens were to also adopt that policy, we'd literally have anarchy.

<comment><USER46> From the standpoint of American government it was never intended to be a democracy. "Democracy" was feared by the Founders, who saw it as mob rule.

As for picking and choosing what laws one recognizes as legitimated, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr put it better than I can:

> One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying > others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just > and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not > only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one > has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. > Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

\---

> If other citizens were to also adopt that policy, we'd literally have > anarchy.

My first response to this is that we _already_ follow this policy. Have you ever exceeded the speed limit? Have you ever consumed an illegal substance? Have you ever fixed something in your home that requires a permit without obtaining one? The simple fact of the matter is that everyone violates the law, every day, consciously or not.

My second response is to question whether or not this form of anarchy, where each individual is responsible for their own actions and communities are responsible for establishing and enforces their own standards of behavior through social pressure, is a bad thing at all. I don't believe it is.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


People Have Asked Google to Remove 2.4M Links About Them - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2018/02/28/google-right-to-be-forgotten-europe-reasons-eu/ <comment><USER2> Concerning "It seems people in Germany and France were particularly keen on nixing links to their social media and directory details, while British and Italian people were three times more likely than others to target information on news websites."

One or the many things about GDPR I'm not sure of, from the point of view of a search engine/site is: why would GDPR change anything related to links to news-sites?

Meaning: one of the main tasks of a search engine is find news related to the search subject => hosting and using such information is therefore absolutely part of the core activities of the search engine => why is then google (and other search engines) willing to delete such infos?

Cheers</comment>


Ars Technica – Not Linux Distro Review – GhostBSD - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/not-actually-linux-distro-review-deux-ghostbsd/ <comment><USER2> This title made me feel kinda weird, I've always read it as Arch Technica instead of Ars.</comment>


Show HN: 9t – A multi-file tailer in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gongo/9t

<comment><USER2> Cat 'o 9 tails?

<comment><AUTHOR> The origin of name is "nine-tailed fox".

[http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Kurama](http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Kurama)</comment></comment>


An Idiots Guide to Really Really Bad Programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.codeproject.com/KB/scrapbook/Bad_Programming.aspx

<comment><USER2> seems like a cheap rip-off of this: <http://mindprod.com/jgloss/unmain.html></comment>


The future is Mobile VoIP - <AUTHOR> http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/news/article.php/3489221 <comment><USER2> Digitized voice calls *are* data. So they might as well run over an IP network.</comment>


Are You Ready for the Nanoinfluencers? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/business/media/nanoinfluencers-instagram-influencers.html <comment><USER3> First Thought: Noticed that the NYT is listed as a client on Obviously's site, the main influencer marketing agency mentioned in the piece and can't help but wonder if there is a behind the scenes PR play going on here. There's certainly some journalist merit to the article but without any disclosure that the paper and the company have / do work together it just doesn't feel 100% above board to me.

Second thought: At the risk of falling down a slippery slope, what is the end result of the advertisification of everything? If everyone with any sort of social presence is now a billboard that's going to erode what little "trust" there is in social networks even further. At some point this is going to take down the "review economy" \- the Yelps, Foursquare, etc of the world because you won't know who's leaving a review and who's a local nano-influencer posting to get their monthly free meal.

Reminds me of the "ad buddies" from the Netflix show Maniac except instead of seeking them out they seek you out.

<comment><USER4> There is no firm difference between "advertising" and "the media" and there never has been. Only varying levels of forthcomingness regarding intent. Burger King is trying to sell you hamburgers - no confusion there. A newspaper? Less clear of what they're trying to sell you, but don't doubt it for a second - they're selling you something.

The NY Times in particular has tried to portray themselves as independent and unbiased, when they've been anything but for essentially their entire history.

<comment><USER5> This is obviously and painfully false.

There is a fundamental difference between journalism and advertising.

When you see people advancing this point of view it's always worth pausing to notice and reflect on who benefits from efforts to erode this distinction.

<comment><USER4> You think media organizations aren't trying to push a particular narrative? They've been doing this since yellow journalism, Hearst and Pulitzer over a hundred years ago. Every side of the political spectrum does this.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_controver...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_controversies)

> When you see people advancing this point of view...

This is an ad hominem and not an argument.

<comment><USER5> "Pushing a particular narrative" or generally having a point of view is not the same thing as advertising.

It's undeniable that there are biases and preferences in journalism, and that there's no such thing as a truly objective point of view. Journalism is made by humans.

But that's a fundamentally different argument than equating advertising with journalism. They aren't the same. Fact-checked reported journalism that attempts to be objective is fundamentally a different thing.

And it's also a factual statement to say that there is an organized effort to obscure this difference, and that this effort benefits specific groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's crazy how advertising has evolved. First, advertisers were somewhat honest about their products, generally relying on Smith's little theory that buyers are rational and can thus be convinced by a strong argument about the qualities of the product. Then at some point (w/ the dawn of Western snakeoil/ cure-alls?) advertisers figured out purchasers aren't so rational after all and are better convinced by psychological manipulation--targeting their weaknesses, showing them images that associate the product with happy families, etc. Now advertisers go a level deeper. Instead of suggesting some general association between happiness and their product, they can target you at the personal level and have your friends and relations (often the closest people to you psychologically speaking) serve as manipulation relays. No need to figure out some general fear or desire in the populace that you can target --just make it seem like the product is already embedded in the buyer's world. Like his friends are the direct representatives of its efficacy and the happiness it will bring.

It's wild.

<comment><USER7> From what I've heard the "some point" was primarily a result of one man Edward Louis Bernays, who lead the charge towards these somewhat predatory practices, effectively inventing modern public relations and advertising. There was a really interesting ( and comical ) podcast about it from the folks at Stuff You Should Know:

[https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/live-in- chicago-...](https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/live-in-chicago-how- public-relations-works.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If anyone is looking for a "picoinfluencer" opportunity, my fantasy football team is seeking a new sponsor. There are 9 other 24-32 year old tech workers in the league and my team is currently 8-2.

<comment> atom-morgan Is this a joke or have you actually had sponsors in the past?

<comment><USER8> It is a joke, but one that I take very seriously. [https://i.imgur.com/wmjrQV8.png](https://i.imgur.com/wmjrQV8.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's kinda perverted how dishonest the internet has become thanks to advertising.

Children will go online looking for toy or game reviews not knowing even their friends have sold them out for a couple bucks.

<comment><USER10> Actually this isn't something new. Smart children in their young age coupd take advantage of others not being able to count.

Still, strength is probably more important as a child.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One day this war is going to end.

There has to be a point of saturation where the culture as a whole turns back to some version of authenticity. Clearly it's not going to be the millennials, perhaps the next generation will figure it out.

<comment><USER11> I think in every generation there are those who turn their back on it all. This has been going on since at least the 60's with the Hippie movement. Counterculture has been a thing since (psychological[1]) advertising has been a thing.

There will be no point at which society as a whole flips against it - the sad truth is that advertising _works_ , really well, and most people happily sign up to this lifestyle. The war for your headspace is a hell of a lot better than the wars that came before it.

The 'woke' (or whatever term you'd prefer) generation is never coming - <USER2> there will be people within every generation that turn their back on advertising and the promises it makes.

1: As in advertising that targets our desire to be happy/powerful etc. rather than merely describing the product. Watch _Century of the Self_ documentary for more information on how this form of advertising came to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sometimes I feel like throwing up when I hear more stories about advertising, advertising and more advertising. It's such a sad trend. Either people want to make money advertising things directly or our best engineers work for companies that provide advertising. There is so much potential lost with all the effort going into advertising instead of producing products that make the world better.

<comment><USER13> > There is so much potential lost with all the effort going into advertising > instead of producing products that make the world better.

Devil's advocate / on the other hand: there's so much potential lost with all the effort going into producing products that make the world better, but which fall flat due to a lack of or poor advertising.

<comment><USER14> They fall flat because they aren't keeping up with poorly made products that have all their budgets put into advertising.

We can keep flipping this as long as we want. At the end of the day, it sucks that companies get a bigger (short-term) reward by dumping more into advertising and marketing than into the product itself.

<comment><USER15> While advocating the use of Open Source software at a fairly large corporation I used to work at, a common refrain was "You get what you paid for" I eventually started replying to that with "So we get marketing, and lunches with sales teams?" It actually worked a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You see this alot on FB, "tag 10 friends in this ad to enter a draw" kind of thing. It is one of the reasons that social media is poisonous to genuine human relationships.

<comment><USER17> I have this vague suspicion that social media will die out with our generation because of this.

It came along when we were all high school/college or so, and this big platform to refind old contacts was a surprising new experience.

Then all of collectively went into the workforce and suddenly had public images to manage and so the whole thing very quickly became yet another advertising channel via tragedy of the commons.

<comment><USER14> You are way more optimistic than I am.

Reconnecting with old acquaintances is just one (outdated, as you mention) use case of social media. They have become much more subversive (and profitable) as media/advertising engines.

They'll survive as long as companies are willing to put money into advertising and enough people are influenced by (not even "suckered by") the ads. So basically forever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So nanoinfluencers are people with small following on social media that are given free products in return of advertisement.

Reminds me a type of sponsorship in sports and hobbies. The brands or shops select some individuals and give them access to their collection at advantageous price (say -30% of retail price, but not free), in exchange of simply wearing or using the stuff. Similar idea of "influencers" as advertisement platforms.

Next step: startup providing an API for influencers as a service.

<comment><USER19> These exist already at all levels from big -> small influencers.

The much maligned "Klout" was an early form of this but cratered for dumb reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm really concerned that I never heard of those brands before. Besides the obvious annoyance caused by these ads, is there any guarantee those no-name products (as far as I'm aware none of them are a household brand at least not in the UK) are safe?

I can see shady fly-by-night operations using these "influencers" to shill their dangerous & non-compliant shit and possibly get people hurt. Sure, they can also be buying conventional ads but (I hope) most people are wise enough not to fall for them or at least carry out due diligence where as it being posted by a "friend" (I'd say anyone that sells out their followers isn't really a friend) inherently gives it legitimacy.

We've already got this situation with multi-level marketing schemes using social media to shill their garbage (most is crap, and some is outright dangerous with multiple reports of nasty side-effects) and con new victims, I'd rather not see this expand even more.

<comment><USER21> Clinique is not a no name product by any stretch of the imagination. They've been going since the sixties and their products are available on pretty much any UK high-street. I guess you're not the target market for mid-high end skin care products?

<comment><USER20> > I guess you're not the target market for mid-high end skin care products?

Agreed, but the rest of my point still stands. I feel there's a lot of potential for abuse here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> temp-dude-87844 This is not that different from the people who are told to post on Insta and FB after they've received a service: styling at a hair salon, nails, makeup; it's not even that far from posting on their own accord after they've been to a restaurant or concert.

The meaningful difference is in the former case, the revealed preferences are swayed by the exchange of money and may not authentically reflect the person's true opinion, whereas in the latter case the revealed preferences are swayed solely by social convention (and may not authentically reflect the person's true opinion).

</comment><comment><USER22> Humans are strongly wired to evaluate differences between humans, and advertisers are skilled at creating the signals that humans use to evaluate.

But they don't have to work too hard. "Influencers" can be created virtually out of thin air. Simply say "this is an influencer", and in the absence of contrary signals many people will treat them as such.

(We've all heard of a NOT famous person hiring friends to pretend to be paparazzi when they go out somewhere, fooling people who see them, being introduced to someone "famous" that we've never heard of, etc., etc.)

</comment><comment><USER23> Probably nowadays Instagram is the medium that shows more "ads", considering the number of users that publish "promoted" content. It reminds me those fashion magazines that show like 130 pages of ads in 150 pages.

It's kinda sad to see people promoting stuff in exchange for some free samples, just so they can call themselves "influencers". I'm wondering if people are not getting tired of all of this fakeness.

</comment><comment><USER24> This group at Princeton conducted a study into whether influencers disclose their relationships with advertisers to users. Turns out the vast majority do not. Interesting read.

[https://medium.com/acm-cscw/was-this-an-ad-an- investigation-...](https://medium.com/acm-cscw/was-this-an-ad-an- investigation-of-paid-social-media-endorsements-3ab12231d3d8)

</comment><comment><USER25> Cool, maybe this will kill Instagram.

</comment><comment> Paul-ish I wonder if having sponsors also lends legitimacy to these influencers. Before they were just someone with some followers, but now they have corporate recognition.

</comment><comment><USER26> People are blocking more and more ads, so ad money is looking for new avenues. I really can't decide if this is better or worse.</comment>


IPads Are Everywhere - <AUTHOR> http://wickedchap.com/post/65127333930/ipads-are-everywhere

<comment><USER2> 1, iPad 1 doesn't have a camera

2, iPads are quite common in Germany

<comment><AUTHOR> My apologies on the first one, it just looked like iPhone 3 (the ugly, round backside) and assumed it was. I'm no iPad specialist.

Not at all common in Estonia, Latvia or Finland.</comment></comment>


In praise of impractical programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/11/in-praise-of-impractical-programming/ <comment><USER2> There is a difference between learning a craft and learning something that is intellectually deep, profound, and significant. The underlying theory behind SICP is that computing is an important and fundamental way of thinking, comprable to mathematics or physics, and should be taught as such. From this standpoint, programs are embodiments of ideas, and the fact that you can use them to build websites or robots is almost incidental.

There is nothing wrong with programming-as-a-craft, just as there is nothing wrong with learning to do car repair or HVAC installation, but MIT is not a trade school and SICP is not a how-to manual.

</comment><comment><USER3> IMHO SICP is a pretty practical book, since it teaches, regardless of the programming language, how to build abstractions in order to control complexity.

<comment><USER4> Maybe, maybe not, but SICP certainly is an idiosyncratic book. Its choice of examples, like using complex number, cartesian coordinate, polar coordinate to illustrate interface/implementation distinction, seems designed to interest MIT undergraduates, not average programming beginners. I believe the same content can be delivered in more appropriate examples.

<comment><USER5> SICP is not really a book for programming beginners, there are plenty of other books for that, like "How to Design Programs". I detest the idea of using "more appropriate" examples, to me illustrating deep concepts from interesting fields like electronics and mathematics via computer programs was the gist of the book. Also, all the ideas used in the programs are very high-level, explained in the text, and you don't have to have any in-depth knowledge from any field outside of CS, you just have to have some basic maturity with respect to dealing with abstract concepts. I know because I for example solved all the exercises related to mathematics (differentiation, power series etc.) in SICP before I actually learnt any calculus, which I later did largely being inspired by SICP. Anyone aspiring to become a good programmer has to be able to learn basics of a new domain quickly, just knowing how to program is useless in itself. Besides, the more interesting the domain, the more interesting the programs, I think SICP gets this as right as possible.

SICP in general is a damn good book, there were already quite a few attempts to "improve" it, but I am not convinced any of those have really superseded it. There is for example "Concepts, Techniques and Models of Computer Programming", which is basically what you wish, SICP without digging into any particular domain:

[http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Techniques-Models-Computer- Pr...](http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Techniques-Models-Computer- Programming/dp/0262220695/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338750648&sr=1-1)

There are certainly lots of valuable programming concepts explained in this book, and I would certainly recommend it to anyone with a deep interest in programming languages, but by using "dummy" examples, I think it simply became much more boring and less intellectually stimulating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> See also "Beating the Averages" by Paul Graham and The Blub Paradox described in that essay (<http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html>).

One should always learn other programming languages, especially ones with a different paradigm/approach. You can be certain that you are a Blub programmer: there is always (or will be) something better than what you currently advocate and cling to, especially better given the task at hand (there is no universal silver bullet, but there are specialized tools).

The book mentioned, "Seven Languages in Seven Weeks" is an excellent place to start and I highly recommend it.</comment>


Chennai Flood – Crowdsourced List for Shelter - <AUTHOR> http://chennairains.org/ <comment><USER2> Very nice. Who is behind this? Awesome work.

<comment><USER3> Here - [https://github.com/karthikb351/chennairains.org](https://github.com/karthikb351/chennairains.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great initiative!</comment>


Swift, the new way to build iOS Apps. Here's how - <AUTHOR> http://iosblog.co.uk/tutorials/developing-ios-apps-using-swift-part-1/ <comment><USER2> How do you specify public vs private members? The language seems to be missing private/public keywords, and protocols (interfaces) are automatically generated.

<comment><USER3> You can't at the moment, but you will be able to soon: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24003918/does-swift- have-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24003918/does-swift-have-access- modifiers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm aggregating resources to learn Swift for both new/existing iOS devs. Check it out at:

[http://www.LearnSwift.tips](http://www.LearnSwift.tips)

Mostly for selfish reasons to share it easily with friends.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the author misses the point of the `let` keyword. It's not meant as the equivalent of declaring constants in Objective-C; they're main purpose isn't to be global and static like constants.

<comment><USER6> And yet you've managed to shed no light on how constants should be used in Swift.

<comment><USER7> To shed some light on the practice of using `let` vs. `var`, an excerpt from the book by Apple:

"If a stored value in your code is not going to change, always declare it as a constant with the let keyword. Use variables only for storing values that need to be able to change."

Excerpt From: Apple Inc. "The Swift Programming Language." iBooks. [https://itun.es/us/jEUH0.l](https://itun.es/us/jEUH0.l)

<comment><USER8> Thanks Andrew, I am updating the posts as I learn more. We're all still learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Quick question. Can Swift be used to build OSX applications?

<comment><USER10> Yes.

[https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/mac/reference...](https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/mac/referencelibrary/GettingStarted/LandingPage/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014345)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "programming language called Swift which replaces Objective-C"

Does Swift really _replace_ Objective-C?

<comment><USER12> No, it doesn't. It is a great way to do 99% of the tasks most developers do. There is, and always will be, a place for Obj-C on the Macintosh platforms. Apple recognizes that most developers don't need the verbosity and tight-knit compatibility with C that Obj-C provides, and that is where Swift comes in.

<comment><USER13> I see Objective-C been shown the door if Swift is successful, it just needs a few iOS and OS X releases, with C left around for the UNIX layer.

Lets say around XCode version 10 gets released.

<comment><USER12> That is extremely unlikely. Enough so that I would bet money on it.

Swift is targeted at the largest user base of the Obj-C language, the iOS developers. Obj-C will be around for a long time both for legacy purposes and because Swift doesn't interop with K&R C (unless that code has an Obj-C wrapper, like CoreFoundation), and C++ code. Since both Swift and Obj-C support using Cocoa libraries, any API added to Cocoa will be usable by both, but Cocoa is only one of many libraries in the Macintosh ecosystem.

Swift will become a replacement for the development the vast majority of people do, but that doesn't mean that Obj-C is going away. Apple has done nothing to indicate so; they've really been stressing the point that Swift is intended as a new tool to work along side your old one (Obj-C).

<comment><USER13> I remember Apple representatives promising to a room full of CERN researchers that the JavaBridge wasn't going away and how Java was a first class language for Mac OS X development.

<comment><USER12> This is not even remotely similar to that situation. Obj-C is far more important & integrated than I think you realize.

<comment><USER13> I know Objective-C since 1999, when I had to port some software from NeXT to Windows, so I do know a few things about it.

From my point of view, many will jump to Swift if given the chance.

<comment><USER14> You are misunderstanding - this isn't about which is better. Almost all new application code will be written in Swif, but swift doesn't bridge between C and the Swift/obj-c runtime, so Objective-C will continue to be required for writing the glue layer.

<comment><USER13> Yes it does.

[https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documenta...](https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/Swift/Conceptual/BuildingCocoaApps/InteractingWithCAPIs.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014216-CH8-XID_13)

Additionally, this is just version 1.0. So nothing rules out that if Apple sees the language being widely adopted, other improvements in the FFI area aren't made.

<comment><USER14> I stand corrected, and your argument holds, however there is a great deal of objective-c code out there, so it will take a long time to go away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> BTW, part 2 is here: [http://jamesonquave.com/blog/developing-ios-apps-using- swift...](http://jamesonquave.com/blog/developing-ios-apps-using-swift- tutorial-part-2/)

<comment><USER15> And the github project is here: [https://github.com/jquave/Swift- Tutorial](https://github.com/jquave/Swift-Tutorial)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There is an awesome Swift Cheat Sheet and Quick Reference: [http://swift- cheatsheet.co.uk](http://swift-cheatsheet.co.uk)

</comment><comment><USER16> What's the deal with optionals? I am not sure what the use case are.

Seems much better then ObjectiveC

<comment><USER17> The docs seem to cover it pretty well: [https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documenta...](https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/Swift/Conceptual/Swift_Programming_Language/TheBasics.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014097-CH5-XID_428)

But the basic idea around optionals is a much better and cleaner way of dealing with possible null (nil) values. Lots of other languages have and are getting optionals.

<comment><USER16> What was confusing me that they would specify it during initialization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Free downloadable ebooks can be found there: [http://www.iphonetransferrecovery.com/Swift/free- ebooks.html](http://www.iphonetransferrecovery.com/Swift/free-ebooks.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> So is this actually a lot easier to use than Objective-C?

<comment><USER20> Yes...with caveats. It looks really nice, simpler syntax for the most part but the type system seems much stronger and I think those not used to functional languages/type theory may struggle to get complex things running straight away. But when it does run it should be a lot more robust (so I think it is a good change).

<comment><USER14> I think this is false. Things that are simple in Objective-C will be simpler in Swift, with better feedback from the compiler.

Things that are complex in objective-c will also be simpler and more robust in swift.

There _is_ a kind of complex coding using generics and the type system that would be harder for an inexperienced developer to understand, but that seems to me to be strictly additive to Objective-C.

<comment><USER20> I think that Swift is better and will overall be easier (I started may comment with a "Yes") BUT there will be a fair few casts and use of optional values needed when integrating anything with the general existing libraries that would cause a beginner programmer difficulties.

Example 1 - implementing a protocol (AVAudioPlayerDelagate)

You get errors unless you also implement NSObjectProtocol. The easiest way to do that is to also inherit from NSObject.

Example 2 - typed arrays/dictionaries

You can shove any NSObject in an NSArray or NSDictionary but the Swift arrays are typed (a good thing) but one that may make some things more difficult for beginners.

I suspect it is the tip of the iceberg of type related complication. This is a worthwhile tradeoff for greater safety and despite this Swift will still be easier to use overall that ObjC in my view.

It may also take a while for the documentation particularly across the internet to catch up with the quantity of examples for Obj C but this is only an interim issue.

<comment><USER14> I think you're wrong about both of these. Yes, it's true that you need to inherit from NSObject in some cases, but Cocoa is complex anyway, and this is not added complexity, so it's not different from objective-c in this regard.

For #2 you are flat out incorrect. Swift arrays can be containers of AnyType, in which case they interoperate perfectly with NSArray, and this is the default behavior when working with Cocoa.

Your fear about type related complexity being a real issue seems not to be justified by your examples.

Compared to dealing with the C based fragility of Objective-C, Swift is simply better for anything that it can do.

<comment><USER20> I like Swift and my overall answer is still yes that it is easier to learn than Objective C and that having to deal with types is worthwhile for the safety it brings and increased chance that it will do the right thing when it does run but it is still a barrier to a limited degree.

I remember initially struggling with the stuff in ML in the first year at university, I got it but I and many others had an initial struggle. I think that at least for beginners and maybe those coming from runtime duck typed languages Python, PHP, Ruby etc. it will be more of a barrier than you think.

For #1 in Objective C you inherit from NSObject (or a subclass thereof) for every class anyway so it is in all the examples and it isn't something that you need to do especially for a protocol.

For #2 yes of course you can have an array of a generic type but firstly you need to understand enough about the type system to create your array in that form and secondly what you get out will <AnyType> objects rather than <id>'s which get automatically cast to whatever you assign them to. But I do like the idiom for downcasting using _as?_ :

      if let movie = item as? Movie {
          println("Movie: '\(movie.name)', dir. \(movie.director)")
      } else if let song = item as? Song {
          println("Song: '\(song.name)', by \(song.artist)")
      }

[0] Excerpt From: Apple Inc. "The Swift Programming Language." iBooks. [https://itun.es/gb/jEUH0.l](https://itun.es/gb/jEUH0.l)

<comment><USER14> Yeah - the central point is that there aren't really caveats about Swift being simpler than objective-c. It's not perfect, but Objective-C has a much greater number of rough edges so is strictly harder for new users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is the extension keyword a form of reflection?

</comment><comment><USER22> Are we allowed to talk about this? Isn't this still under NDA?

<comment><USER23> The developer web pages are on public URLs that don't have any developer authentication or headers that say they are non-public information. It would be quite ironic if registered developers were under an NDA but the public was not.

[https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documenta...](https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/Swift/Conceptual/Swift_Programming_Language/TheBasics.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014097-CH5)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Swift is the new Visual Basic.

<comment><USER25> Actually it's a lot more like the new C#, which is probably a good thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's again the same boilerplate-code to create something simple as a tableview. I don't understand why they had to 'invent' a new programming language for that.

<comment><USER27> That's not why they built Swift.

Objective-C is a difficult language to work with and has decades of cruft. Swift is a start-over, but with Objective-C interop so you still have full access to the full existing APIs for OSX and iOS. Thus, the same boiler plate.

<comment><USER28> The thing is, understanding Obj-C was never the hard part. For example, understanding ARC, weak vs. strong (and now unowned [1]), and the various libraries is what took time and experience. Swift doesn't solve that at all and in fact offers its own oddities like the below:

"You indicate type methods for classes by writing the keyword class before the method's func keyword, and type methods for structures and enumerations by writing the keyword static before the method's func keyword."

Excerpt From: Apple Inc. "The Swift Programming Language." iBooks. [https://itun.es/us/jEUH0.l](https://itun.es/us/jEUH0.l)

I do think the new language is neat and will be fun to work in, but it doesn't solve the parts that tripped up many people when working in Objc.

[1]

        @lazy var asHTML: () -> String = {
            [unowned self] in
            if let text = self.text {
                return "<\(self.name)>\(text)</\(self.name)>"
            } else {
                return "<\(self.name) />"
            }
        }

Excerpt From: Apple Inc. "The Swift Programming Language." iBooks. [https://itun.es/us/jEUH0.l](https://itun.es/us/jEUH0.l)

<comment><USER29> Is there ever a time when you don't want a weak/unowned self in a block? Perhaps this should be made the default in Swift? (I understand that the Blocks spec requires all captured variables to be strong unless otherwise specified.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Airplanes and Kafka - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-nov-13-et-books13-story.html <comment><AUTHOR> Wikipedia page about Kafka's story: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aeroplanes_at_Brescia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aeroplanes_at_Brescia)

The original German text: [https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Die_Aeroplane_in_Brescia](https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Die_Aeroplane_in_Brescia)

A Google translated version (I can't seem to find an actual translation): [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fde.wikisource.org%2Fwiki%2FDie_Aeroplane_in_Brescia)</comment>


Google chairman gets called out for cutting off a woman talking about diversity - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2015/03/16/google-schmidt-unconscious-bias/#:eyJzIjoidCIsImkiOiJfa2tzYm10YXc3aHB1ZDV0bSJ9

<comment><USER2> Just because you do something, doesn't mean that it is motivated by bias. Maybe her speaking patterns made it easy for someone to interject a thought, more so than the other panelists. That's normal. "Cutting off" is a strong, emotionally manipulative phrase, and I doubt that it was as drastic as it sounds here. It was a panel discussion! I think this entire article only exists to push an agenda.</comment>


Uber launches new line of transporation services - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebubble.cc/uber-launches-new-line-of-transportation-services

<comment><USER2> This reads too bizarre to be anything but satire. Reasonably good satire, but not really something for HN. Flagged.

(rickshaw would actually be a good idea, fwiw)

<comment><AUTHOR> I see it (and the whole site) as social commentary on Silicon Valley

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Cities like San Francisco and Seattle are extremely bike friendly.

That's one hell of a workout in San Francisco.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think this is the first time I've ever seen a .cc domain on HN

</comment><comment><USER5> It's satire, even the name of the CEO is incorrect:

"We are proud to introduce Uber Rickshaw, Uber Bike, and Uber Piggyback." stated the CEO, Travis Parker Monday morning.

</comment><comment><USER6> Another lazy attempt to be The Onion.</comment>


Show HN - Relatable.io, turn spreadsheets into customizable apps - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
We've been working on a product idea and would like your feedback.
The product site and app can be found at: www.relatable.io
The target consumer is small businesses that run their companies out of spreadsheets.  Our web app turns those tables into simple grids and forms with validation.  Users can then create new tables in the product and relate data to other tables.  This is all done by users and doesn't require custom app development.
We'd like to add a bunch more features, but would like to know what more people think.  If you have any issues in the app and would like 1 on 1 support please email me: email@example.com <comment><USER2> Cool home page I wish mine was that good. Impressive UI.

Related work: (my stuff) [http://www.cellmaster,com.au/AppBuilder.html](http://www.cellmaster,com.au/AppBuilder.html) The product is is different, unlike other approaches, you can create sophisticated custom software. Create custom software, with spreadsheet formulas, the kind a only programmer is able to create.

[http://stoic.com](http://stoic.com) \- this is maybe the closet to relatable.io

[http://www.spreadsheetconverter.com](http://www.spreadsheetconverter.com)

[http://www.spreadsheetweb.com](http://www.spreadsheetweb.com)

[http://BaseCase.com](http://BaseCase.com)

[http://www.smartsheet.com](http://www.smartsheet.com)

[http://www.forguncy.com/](http://www.forguncy.com/) (Japanese)

</comment><comment><USER3> Tried it out. Very sleek with a nice ui but I fail to see the benefit or even the use of it. Why not just use Excel where you have access to hundreds of features (charts, vba, lookup tables, better filtering/sorting, validation, conditional formatting)? My suggestion, after trying it out, would be to add API bridging where they can populate tables from external data. Adding the right features (like ones that are difficult for users to do in Excel) could give this app some traction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for trying it out.

I agree there are a lot of things that Excel does that the product does not. We plan to add better grid functionality like sorting, filtering, reordering and saving of those views for later. We also plan on adding charts to better visualize data.

We do not plan to try and replicate all of Excel's functionality. Power users in that system are there for a reason. But there are companies using spreadsheets to run their business because they don't know any better, or don't want to foot the bill for custom development. We are focusing on those users right now.

Some of the things that Excel cannot do well that we plan on adding are things like workflows of data, triggering notifications on field values, and rollup dashboards. We are also currently finishing adding teams for groups to manage data together.

As for an API, we have one in place with how we designed the app. The front end is built in angular and packaged with grunt. The backend is a node API that only talks JSON (except the initial payload). They only look like one entity for the sake of not using CORS.

Exposing the API to the public is something that would be targeted to developers and IT departments rather than end users which wasn't the plan. However if that ends up being where the demand is we will follow it.

Thank you for the feedback, we appreciate it.</comment></comment>