Details of UK website visits 'to be stored for year' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-34715872 <comment><USER4> Has now been published in draft:

[https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/473770/Draft_Investigatory_Powers_Bill.pdf)

No explicit ban on encryption, but the existing RIPA obligation to decrypt when you have the capability and are made to. Potential madness in the "Equipment interference" section, although the bill claims this is already authorised under different legislation.

The Bill uses "communications data" to mean what we would call "metadata", ie everything except the contents.

"Equipment interference allows the security and intelligence agencies, law enforcement and the armed forces to interfere with electronic equipment such as computers and smartphones in order to obtain data, such as communications from a device. Equipment interference encompasses a wide range of activity from remote access to computers to downloading covertly the contents of a mobile phone during a search."

<comment><USER5> The irony - if that's the word - is that a site visit history is largely useless as metadata.

Only the most stupid people are going to visit "verydangerousterrorismsite.com" without going through a VPN. And visits to Facebook or Google are just noise without the details.

It's hard not to suspect that the real reason for the legislation is to legitimise dissident profiling, voter sentiment analysis, and thoughtcrime tracking.

I'm expecting an attempt to ban personal use of VPNs (without a commercial license) by around 2020.

<comment><USER6> "Largely useless" only to fight external threats. As you say, it's _invaluable_ for controlling internal dissent and abuse the system. Knowledge of a visit to AshleyMadison or YouPorn becomes instant blackmail material, regardless of contents.

Note for Eurosceptics: you know what the last bastion against this autocratic movement is? Yup, the European Court of Justice, backed by all those highly- worded treaties. Lose that, and you'll get back being hostage of your national elites.

<comment><USER7> _you know what the last bastion against this autocratic movement is? Yup, the European Court of Justice, backed by all those highly-worded treaties. Lose that, and you 'll get back being hostage of your national elites._

Yet here we are, anyway.

Remind me which government gave us the Data Retention Directive?

<comment><USER6> And which tribunal struck it down?

From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive) :

 _> On 8 April 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union declared the Directive invalid in response to a case brought by Digital Rights Ireland against the Irish authorities and others._

If the Snooper's Charter makes it through, the ECJ is the only hope to strike it down _and keep it down_ , considering how Labour is hardly free of authoritarian tendencies. That's the truth, as uncomfortable as it might be for eurosceptics.

<comment><USER7> _And which tribunal struck it down?_

Only several years late, of course. It's a bit weak to suggest that the EU is our saviour when it comes surveillance.

I'd rather place my faith in the ECtHR.

<comment><USER6> No, I'm just saying that removing the EU layer you lose another chance of fighting against the current (and/or future) wave of power-crazy national elites.

<comment><USER7> I don't see how a supranational government is any better than a national one, though. If anything, they're more remote and intransigent, and pretty much have a revolving door between the two. I trust neither when it comes to this issue.

<comment><USER6> The EU is historically influenced by "virtuous" countries, which have little interest in signing bad laws; "bad" countries benefit as a result. The European Parliament, with its proportional representation system and loose alliances, can often be more easily influenced on big, visible issues, than the hardcore-conservative first-past-post Westminster (where party loyalty is paramount).

The EU is not perfect (the Commission in particular is the root of a lot of "evil" activity), but if you believe in checks and balances, it's yet another power you can appeal to when things look dire on the home front.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Check the live page - [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk- politics-34719194](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-34719194)

8:40 'Security risk' of storing communications data "A new law to govern how police and intelligence agencies and the state can access communications and data will be published today.

Preston Byrne from Eris Industries, a cryptographic communications company which is withdrawing from the UK because of the proposed law, says the government is going to be tracking metadata which is essentially "a map of what you're thinking".

He warns the data could be compromised - citing the recent TalkTalk hack - <USER2> says this could lead to blackmail. And he argues that ______criminals and terrorists " don't use normal communication channels" so only the law-abiding people will be affected by the bill. __ __ __"

Preston Byrne has a point.. even common people are using VPNs and TORs. How come the terrorists bare their communications for surveillance?

<comment><USER9> " _...he argues that criminals and terrorists " don't use normal communication channels..._"

That part is true, and is known to government, the public (not at large, but it's no secret) and criminals.

The problem is a simple one, and identity checks at borders are a good example. You ask non-nationals, for example, to fill in a landing card to indicate where the traveller is staying during his or her visit.

If left blank the traveller is interrogated and risks deportation. If however the traveller lies and provides _any_ plausible address, be it hotel or residential, he or she is allowed through without suspicion.

The manpower doesn't exist to verify these details. The technology doesn't exist that verifies these details.

The net result is that technical solutions will only catch stupid people. The outliers, the ones you _really_ want, know how to game the system and don't get caught. No matter how much snooping, back-dooring, breaking of encryption or other nefarious thing is done.

It's economics + psychology. You spend what you have to ensure you cover 99% of the problem. The remaining 1% requires 1 or more orders of magnitude of resource to catch, which is simply not viable.

<comment><USER6> _> The manpower doesn't exist to verify these details. _

No, but that's not the point. The point is having yet another data point they can use to incriminate you, regardless of the actual crime they decide you must have committed. Say, you declare you'll stay at this hotel for a week, but actually check out after a day to [go sell drugs || see-sight in another city]; if they decide you must have been selling drugs, even though they can't prove it, they can get you for lying on your entry paper.

The more laws and regulations you have, the easier it is to punish anyone regardless of whether they can prove bad things actually happened. It's a degeneration of the "Capone" approach, and it's extremely common in authoritarian regimes. The fact that this sort of pointless law is becoming quite common across the EU is a worrying trend.

<comment><USER9> I agree it's not the point. It is one of many root causes though. It's a very interesting root cause because that economical situation gives authoritarian regimes, as you call them, the power to be authoritarian.

As an aside, while I used to be hugely concerned about this state of affairs, I am less so now. Maybe because I'm older and know a lot more than I used to. They may have the ability to "punish anyone", but not everyone. And while it is becoming more common in the EU, it is already fact in the US.

My reality is that I am unwilling to do anything about this situation, because I'm already devoting my time to other things - things I know I can influence. If I'm unwilling to do anything, I'm also technically disqualifying myself from advocating a course of action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The current UK government has committed to:

      1. ban encryption (any encryption worth its salt)
      2. ban anything psychoactive
      3. detach us from the European Convention of Human Rights.

Not one of these things is achievable in practice. This posturing and will amount to nothing but farce in the face of the details.

<comment><USER11> They also have banned some forms of pornography. The UK government has made it a priority to restrict and intrusively scrutinize the lives of its citizens, removing their ability to resist.

They're rapidly arriving at fascism. The public seems listlessly along for the ride, as usual.

<comment><USER7> _They also have banned some forms of pornography_

Which ones? The only one I'm aware of is revenge porn (with intent to cause distress).

<comment><USER12> Any material judged to be obscene under the current interpretation of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 (could include bestiality, bondage, rape simulation, etc.) People have even been charged for _writing stories_ , though I don't think anyone has ever been successfully prosecuted ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Walker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Walker))

<comment><USER7> How on earth can that act be deemed as this government banning 'some forms of pornography'? Even R v Walker is 2009 - a year before even the last government. Although UK production and distribution of some acts were banned last year, the pre-Coalition governments were far more draconian with their criminalisation of certain material involving consenting adults.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The BBC is being a good state mouthpiece today - the fact that they're quoting May as saying it doesn't hold previously contentious matters (I.e. Breaking encryption) is disingenuous to say the least. The bill will say that "unbreakable" encryption is illegal - which means all encryption, as if it's breakable, well, it's not really encrypted, is it.

Never mind that this is totally unenforceable. I could write up a one time pad with pen and paper. Most won't. Crooked cops will sell data. They'll blame "hackers".

You only need look at the talktalk debacle to see how incredibly warped this govt's views are - they haven't arrested anyone at talktalk, who are tge ones who had such poor infosec that script kiddies could blow them wide open. Instead they're arresting children.

Oh, and I'm seriouslt considering redomiciling my company - we only contribute a few hundred million quid to the UK economy.

<comment><USER14> The bill _will not_ say unbreakable encryption is illegal.

I've heard from sources inside the government that their intention is to maintain the legal status-quo dating from RIPA 2000. Which is to say that service providers have to disclose personal communications where _reasonably practicable_.

Since it's not possible for service providers to break end-to-end encryption, they will have a defence. Obviously this is a bit of a fudge and the position may need clarifying in court. But it's not the intention of this bill to change the legal status quo.

<comment><USER6> _> it's not the intention of this bill to change the legal status quo._

If they didn't mean to change the status quo, they wouldn't have introduced a bill.

As it happens, they _do_ want to change the status quo, _by making clearly acceptable for authorities to eavesdrop_ , something that was, er, technically illegal before, despite them doing it anyway.

So instead of punishing spooks for breaking the law, they're changing the law. Easy, innit?

<comment><USER15> >If they didn't mean to change the status quo, they wouldn't have introduced a bill.

Just strictly on this point, sometimes bills (or parts of bills) are introduced to clarify existing law. It may be a matter of subtle semantics, but this is often what is meant when it is claimed that a bill will not change the law.

<comment><USER6> Well, in this case the proposed act will basically supersede the Human Rights Act, by excluding authorities from respecting its article 8 ("Right to Privacy"), under which they've been repeatedly challenged (and defeated) since Snowden's revelations. Which is really a change in law, not a clarification.

So yeah, what they really need is a _change_ , because current law is _very_ clear that what they do is illegal.

<comment><USER4> No, it doesn't (and can't) supercede the HRA; there is actually no mechanism in UK law for doing that other than explicit repeal (Factortame principle).

And article 8 has an ill-specified "national security" exemption. [http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/incorporated-rights/articles- in...](http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/incorporated-rights/articles- index/article-8-of-the-echr/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> To me (a UK citizen) this is like the government tracking the title and author of every book I read, "but don't worry, not the contents or page numbers you looked at". The idea this is any meaningful barrier to finding out what you're really up to is ridiculous. Phone metadata is one thing - and still highly revealing - but much of the web is public! It's enough to make me think twice about where I browse, wondering "if I ever got challenged over it, how will it look that I browsed to this site?". That seems pretty harmful to the web - possibly even in an economically measurable way?

<comment><USER17> Think about what happens when you hit theverge.com: 40-odd requests sent sites you've never heard of. So-called internet connection records are a huge mess of noise even without considering obfuscation.

It is trivial for anyone to embed hidden iframes or send silent ajax requests to child abuse and terrorist forums without giving the visiter the slightest clue what's happening. In the case of iframes, there would probably be cached 'evidence' left on the target's pc. Try explaining that as your defence in court when you get set up by some script kiddie.

<comment><USER18> If they want to frame you they don't need hidden iframes and stuff. They can just manufacture it. Because it's all secret/confidential, someone who has a friend or pays someone inside can incriminate someone and make his life a hell.

We were warned of PIDE in school for a good reason (PIDE was the Portuguese Stasi). People will abuse it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is a lot of Tory bashing going on here but this policy runs deeper, Labour tried to put through similar legislation. The coalition dropped it but is back. Each Home Secretary seems to become more hard line and blinkered, like they are being poisoned by the fear emanating from the security services.

<comment><USER20> Indeed, one of the strongest critics (David Davis) is a Conservative and resigned his position as Shadow Home Secretary and MP under the Labour government to protest and highlight the issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34715872](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk- politics-34715872)

^ fixed link

</comment><comment><USER22> My first reaction to this was that VPN usage will explode, but I'm not sure how a VPN server hosted in another country would work with their desire to effectively ban encryption.

I feel like the UK is slowly goose stepping its way to a Chinese style firewall.

Given the right's obsession with what I'm ordering on Amazon, and the left being essentially unelectable right now, I'm not really sure where to put my vote at the next election.

<comment><USER23> Corbyn: so "unelectable", he got elected Labour leader. If you don't like the idea of electing Corbyn, don't vote for him, but don't let his "unelectability" put you off.

<comment><USER24> Appealing to Labour voters who vote in leadership elections is _not_ the same as being elected by the general population to be Prime Minister, by any stretch.

<comment><USER25> True, but the electoral logic that says Labour must be a centre-right party to get elected is the electoral logic of 1997, mixed with a heady selection of conscious and unconscious biases.

In reality I don't think anybody is qualified to state as fact that Corbyn is "unelectable". To me it's much more likely a statement intended to influence rather than inform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> J-dawg What practical steps can we take if this becomes law? If police and local councils are given access to browsing records, abuse is inevitable.

There are already well-documented examples of councils using terrorism legislation to spy on people 1)suspected of using the wrong type of rubbish bin [1] 2)sending their children to school outside of their catchment area. [2]

This type of abuse and overreach will happen frequently. Not to mention crooked police/council officials selling data, and others pursuing personal vendettas & checking up on current and former romantic partners.

The UK will become a horrible, paranoid place.

What can I do to protect myself? Use a VPN for all internet access? Use Tor (which seems too slow for most practical purposes)? What else can we do?

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3333366/Half-of- counc...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3333366/Half-of-councils-use- anti-terror-laws-to-spy-on-bin-crimes.html)

[2] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and- order/7922427...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and- order/7922427/Councils-warned-over-unlawful-spying-using-anti-terror- legislation.html)

EDIT: added links to sources

<comment><USER26> These days, Tor is not slow for practical purposes (except maybe for low- latency things like online gaming). Use it, it pisses GCHQ off quite a lot. :)

<comment><USER27> I don't think you actually know that it 'pisses GCHQ off quite a lot'. Public news about this can be misleading on purpose. Perhaps the cunning plan is to frighten those with something to hide into using Tor for which (who knows?) they have developed tracking techniques via a variety of approaches. If true, they'd be crazy to make that public. Herd your mice along the Tor route by discouraging use of the non encrypted internet.

All irrelevant really since anyone can arrange to communicate via an innocuous looking one-time pad whatever the weather irrespective of any possible moves that a government can make short of shutting everything down!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What is the best way for me as a UK citizen to try and fight this? Just keep donating to the EFF? Talk to my local MP?

<comment><USER29> Enough voters are so easily led by fear and minsinformation that I'm starting to think that there is nothing at all we can do.

I am a member of the Open Rights Group. I make monthly donations and attend their conferences. I petition and write to MPs and MEPs and nothing works. I don't even get replies.

Which is why I am now considering moving out of the country. I'm currently weighing up my options.

There is very little about Britain, its politics and the majority of the voterbase that I have anything in common with, apart from being born on the same patch of dirt.

<comment><USER30> My (Canadian) wife is proposing that we emigrate to Canada in the medium-term - I'm inclined to agree with her for the same reasons that you give.

<comment><USER31> Iceland seems to be pretty awesome from a political point of view. And it's still close to most European cities.

<comment><USER6> Effing cold though... and right when UK weather had got a bit more tolerable for us Meds (thank you, El Niño!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Flagged because 404. Correct link:

Surveillance bill to include internet records storage [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34715872](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk- politics-34715872)

</comment><comment><USER33> "For more intrusive surveillance - involving the detailed content of the communications - security services need to obtain a warrant."

The way this is worded makes me wonder if the 'detailed content' will be harvested with everything else and then retroactively looked at with a warrant.

<comment><USER34> Yes, they are going to carry on doing exactly that. Who knows whether they will bother with the warrants even. It never stopped them before.

Paedophiles! Terrorists! Criminals! Oh My!

<comment><USER13> Don't forget bears, the most dangerous of all online predators.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> By their (lack of) logic, they should also have an officer following every citizen and logging where people go, so that they can know John left his house at 9:17 and checked in at local grocery shop at 9:28. With a warrant they could then obtain information that he has bought a large cucumber - let's arrest him, because he is probably cheating on the government with cucumber. He told the grocer, that how government fucks him is not making him satisfied, so he has to finish the job with a cucumber.

<comment><USER36> We should also ban alleyways, as criminals can hide in them too.

Also noisy pubs and bars, because they provide an excellent environment for criminals to converse without people overhearing them.

And possibly the postal service, because criminals can use them to send messages, explosives, drugs and children to other criminals, without the police knowing the approximate contents of the communications.

<comment><USER37> I also think we need to take the obvious step to prevent pedophiles - <USER3> children.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I read the article, but I'm no clearer on what the criteria for issuing a warrant is.

A few years ago it seemed like the answer was "because TERRORISTS", now they're also talking about organised crime and child abusers.

This government have already branded the leader of the opposition a 'treat to national security'. Which leads me to concluded that they are either lying, incompetent, or reading all his internet history too.

Furthermore, I've heard no compelling arguments as to why the idea of an independent judiciary (who should be the only people who can issue these warrants) is broken, or how it should not apply when it comes to the online world.

But the drip drip drip of obfuscated and fear motivated erosions to the balance of powers continues, and it's making me deeply worried about what kind of country my grandchildren will live in.

</comment><comment><USER39> If we can't get privacy using crypto, we could always use chaffing to make their database useless. We just need a list of sensitive websites that want to hide their true users, and an ad-serving network that randomly serves up links to those sensitive websites on other web pages (but doesn't display them). In this way, everyone's browsing history will look suspicious, so the data won't be of any use.

</comment><comment><USER40> > _" Such data would consist of a basic domain address, and not a full > browsing history of pages within that site or search terms entered."_

Am I right in understanding they will have access to this data without a warrant? And then any 'further' data would then need a warrant.

> _" For more intrusive surveillance - involving the detailed content of the > communications - security services need to obtain a warrant."_

So with more and more websites using https, where does this 'detailed content' come from? Is the Government expecting ISPs to collect data that doesn't exist? As far as I was aware, as long as you view a website in HTTPS, there was no way your ISP knew what individual pages you are visiting.

<comment><USER13> The full text hasn't been released yet - just going on statements over the last few days. It's likely that you'll have to give the government your private keys, or be able to decrypt any encrypted communication that passes through your network.

Again, it's likely unenforceable, in no small part as there's no such thing as a "communications provider", which is the term they keep on using. Skype, Apple, etc., don't work in a vacuum - data transits via peers (are they communications providers?), your computer (is that a communications provider?), your ISP (they're almost certainly a communications provider), and so-on.

The purpose of this bill is likely to break large tech corps, rather than smaller operators, but it could also have the effect of essentially closing the technology market to all but large operators who can afford to be compliant.

<comment><USER20> The term "communications provider" is defined under UK law, though the practical meaning of the term is less clear: [http://aa.net.uk/legal- cp.html](http://aa.net.uk/legal-cp.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's much worse than that. They want to ban companies from offering encryption that they can't also decrypt.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the- uk/1...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the- uk/11970391/Internet-firms-to-be-banned-from-offering-out-of-reach- communications-under-new-laws.html)

Also, in regards to data retention - I thought the CJEU made it clear that it's against the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Is UK seriously pretending that never happened? It seems their strategy is "we'll just use this new law for 2 years until it gets invalidated, and then we pass a new one that we can use for another 2 years". And so on and so forth.

U.S. companies, please stop establishing headquarters in the U.K. It's on an authoritarian path as much as Russia and Turkey is (certainly under David Cameron/Conservatives, at least).

<comment><USER42> Presumably this means all passwords need to be stored in plaintext (or two-way encrypted, which is essentially the same thing at the end of the day)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> A perfect storm of incompetence and ill-intentions.

</comment><comment><USER44> Wild conspiracy theory - London is becoming the playground of world elites. So security is paramount. These bills are not to keep pedophiles at bay but to prevent some forms of "London spring" of the underclasses or other forms of physical harm towards your friendly neighborhood billionaire that could damage real estate prices. The conservatives goal is to make elites know they are safe here so they could switch to lower profile security details.

I have no better explanation why UK is pushing so hard on its own populace.

<comment><USER45> > I have no better explanation why UK is pushing so hard on its own populace.

Maybe the tories are just plain evil?

Maybe there doesn't need to be a grand reason and explanation behind it all, maybe they just have a hunger for harming others?

<comment><USER46> The core of legislation is proposed to the Government by the upper echelons of civil service. Those Permanent Secretaries et al don't change when a new Government is elected, unlike the US, so they can play a long game.

Here's the current chap at the Home Office,

[https://www.gov.uk/government/people/mark- sedwill](https://www.gov.uk/government/people/mark-sedwill)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I don't see anywhere in the bill what EXACTLY an Internet Connection Record is, and since there is no such thing as a standard Internet Connection Record in any of our existing network infrastructure, I assume this has been left vague so that it can be extended to whatever they want.

Nor does it define the exact kind of Internet Service Provider that the law is suppose to be enforced against. (Is this only suppose to apply to those supplying bandwidth or do all websites/services count?).

> Law enforcement agencies would not be able to make a request for the purpose > of determining – for example – whether someone had visited a mental health > website, a medical website or even a news website.

This seems to imply that there must be a whitelist of domains for which ICR collection is required. But there is no mention of such a list nor how it would be curated.

</comment><comment><USER48> Having the govt require ISPs to collect this data about us will result in ISPs "aggregating" the data and selling it to advertising / marketing firms, insurers or anyone willing to cough up a few £ for your private data.

<comment><USER48> And before you say that will never happen read giffgaff (cellphone company) privacy policy: [https://www.giffgaff.com/boiler- plate/privacy](https://www.giffgaff.com/boiler-plate/privacy)

Section "3\. The information we collect" then "5.iv. To third parties from whom you have chosen to receive marketing information."...

Which means they can give your browsing history, numbers you call etc to any company who you have agreed to receive marketing information from. Eg: Tesco Club Card, that-random-website-you-forgot-to-untick-the-box-on.com etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> >The draft bill also places a legal duty on British companies to help law enforcement agencies hack devices to acquire information if it is reasonably practical to do so.

WTF!

</comment><comment><USER50> To guard against terror. Terror coming from a certain group of people, we are pushed to choose between living without potential terrorists, and without the stasi, or with the potential terrorists, and with the stasi. Stasi and multiculturalism - both or neither.

</comment><comment><USER51> The way it is reported it makes it almost sound like this is the current state of affairs. Thus a feeling of "no need to fight it, its already implemented".

Am I right in thinking this is a proposal that is yet to be passed into law?

</comment><comment><USER51> Presumably "internet connection records" also includes any requests sent by IoT devices. So all that data will be searchable too.

</comment><comment><USER52> What a great story ===> page not found. <===

</comment><comment><USER53> Why you are voting to those idiots? This is very bad for the British economy. Now miney will flow to the Swiss VPNs.

</comment><comment><USER54> What is wrong with UK these days?

There is a lot of these kind of news coming out of UK in the last few months.

<comment><USER55> The right wing party (Conservatives aka Tories) just won a general election in May and now have a majority for the first time since 1997. They have been in power since 2010 but were moderated to some extent (at least on these kinds of issues) by needing to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

So they are now moving forwards with a bunch of things like this that they wanted to do previously but were unable. See also: repealing human rights legislation.

It's worth pointing out that they only got 37% of the votes, but ended up with just over 50% of the seats in parliament because of the first past the post system. So the majority of people in the UK don't agree with them.

<comment><USER56>
        > So the majority of people in the UK don't agree with them.

It's also "worth pointing out" that a majority government is exceedingly rarely formed from >50% raw votes.

You also cannot infer that the majority of people disagree with them. By making the subject "the majority of people" you could imply that the British public agrees with no one party. Which would be correct.

But the Conservative Party forms HM Government at present because more "agree with them" than with any other party.

It sounds like you're proposing a system where we're perpetually under a coalition government to ensure that enough MPs to represent 50% raw votes are involved. No thanks.

<comment><USER55> >You also cannot infer that the majority of people disagree with them.

The majority of people voted for non-Tory politicians.

>It sounds like you're proposing a system where we're perpetually under a coalition government to ensure that enough MPs to represent 50% raw votes are involved. No thanks.

I'm not at all sympathetic to your argument. Especially when the Tories said that a Labour-Lib Dem coalition in 2010 would have been illegitimate since it didn't have over 50% of the popular vote. What's so bad about coalition government anyway?

In 2015 the Tories got 36.8% of the vote and ended up with 330 seats (50.8%). Labour got 30.5% of the vote and got 232 seats (35.7%). The SNP got 4.7% of votes for 8.6% of seats. UKIP got 12.7% of votes for 1 seat. The Lib Dems got 7.9% of votes and 1.2% of seats. The Greens 3.8% of votes for 1 seat.

So you have a situation where 24.4% of the voters are represented by only 10 seats, which is only 1.5% of the seats! That kind of democratic deficit isn't sustainable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Oh, you always have something to learn from the communist China or opressiveve Syria.

</comment><comment><USER57> So basically the UK wants to become Google but instead of tracking users to improve products, they will be tracking everyone to catch criminals.

Imagine a full list of sites you visit being stored by your ISP and now available to your government when necessary. Wow.

Does this mean users will be flagged automatically if they visit sites that offer pirated software/movies and the like?

<comment><USER31> It is worrying when a private company has access to this sort of information.

It is urgently alarming when a government has access to that same information.

Governments have a long, proven history of abusing that information in ways that result in undermining of democracy, immoral imprisonment of political opponents, mass murder and genocide, and other niceties.

Governments should be afraid of the people, not the other way around.</comment></comment>


Is Chess Doomed by Artificial Intelligence? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@aubdau/is-chess-doomed-by-artificial-intelligence-fd2c7e0ceeb8 <comment><USER2> That's more than a little like asking "Is Trivial Pursuit doomed by Google?" If the objective for playing chess is to beat a computer, sure. If not, it's game play as usual. The computer might be able to teach you how to play better, but doom is an unlikely result unless AI finds a never-fails solution to the game, like was easily found (by humans) for Tic Tac Toe.</comment>


Adblockers and Innovative Ad Companies Are Working Together - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/09/adblockers-and-innovative-ad-companies-are-working-together-build-more-privacy <comment><USER2> _" But we also believe the Web needs a diverse set of revenue sources, and advertising is an important option that should be open to publishers who want to use it. So rather than blocking ads outright, EFF's aim has been to incentivize better behavior by advertising companies. ... Adzerk provides ad serving infrastructure to Reddit, BitTorrent, and a number of other high profile sites. They will be offering the ability for any publisher using their platform to serve ads that respect Do Not Track requests. If publishers choose to deploy such ads, they will not be blocked by default by Adblock, Disconnect, Privacy Badger or other coalition members."_

So that's the EFF selling out. Ad spam is fine, as long as the ad spammer claims to comply with some privacy policies, and ad blockers shouldn't block EFF-approved spam. Expect "contributions" to the EFF from ad companies.

<comment><USER3> So are you against ads completely, or are you against the tracking in ads? Because if you're just tracking, this seems like a realistic solution.</comment></comment>


Questions you'd be crazy not to ask at the start of your next project - <AUTHOR> http://agilewarrior.wordpress.com/2010/11/06/the-agile-inception-deck/ <comment><USER3> I hate to rag on TW, and I know they're good folks, but I've had about six teams that went through their Agile Inception process, and I was less than impressed by the results.

Don't get me wrong -- I think these are great questions. I think you need to ask them. And the TW guys meant well. In fact, the teams really enjoyed the exercise. It just wasn't as helpful as it could be.

I think that this is not related to the questions per se as much as it was related to the focus on the Questions rather than the goals. In other words, people love checklists, and even a checklist of simple necessary questions can be abused. What I see over and over again -- even from experienced practitioners -- is the focus on the checklist rather than the _problem_. They'll get through an exercise with TW feeling great, having all the questions answered, even making some cute diagrams. But the whole project is fracked, and everybody knows it. The team is just happy that they're doing what they were told to do, and had a good time doing it. That's not what I consider a successful result.

Taking dozens of teams through kickoff, I've found that the initial week or two is the most critical time for the entire project. Many times I've had managers ask for a schedule or agenda for each piece of the kickoff -- couldn't I provide just a list of questions we'd be going over? Looks like this list might do that. I always refused, however, because once I started asking these questions, we'd almost immediately run into business organizational issues: the customer wasn't present, nobody could make a decision, conflicting demands that couldn't be met, etc. And it was _these problems_ that "Inception" is really supposed to be fixing. Not just question- answering or game-playing.

Of course, that's in an environment where the problem is fixed by the business and the teams are supposed to solve it. In a startup, it's much more experimental-based and there is no set problem. Still, asking questions like this can be very useful. Just be careful to keep addressing risks, not just answering questions. That's the whole purpose of the questions, right? To find risks so you can get to work.

<comment><USER4> I agree with your checklist point. I've witnessed smart, creative people abandon thought and agility to complete a checklist. I've personally struggled with this issue in our business development process. When we're meeting with a new client, I get so excited about their project, that I dive into technical details and forget to ask fundamental questions about milestones, schedule, resources, etc. But when I have a checklist in front of me to ensure I ask these questions, I'm too focused on the list and miss important details specific to the project. We've found that a decent compromise is to have at least two people from our side at every meeting. One is dedicated to scenario- specific quick thinking and the other more mechanically ensures we've covered the fundamentals. It's still not perfect for some of the other reasons you mention, but having only one person in charge of the checklist and having others be checklist-free seems to allow for a good mix of agility while ensuring the critical parts of our process are followed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, from this blog I learned that there's a "Agile Samurai" book. Which is somewhat ironic, considering that hyperbolic job descriptions like this are kinda driving me towards _seppuku_ …

</comment><comment><USER6> For reasonably sized projects, "Show the solution" is the most important step. It is the first time your wishlist meets real constraints. It's not as important as "release early and often," but all roads lead through your software architecture.

Draw your modules on a whiteboard, connect them, and specify the data that flows between the modules. A prototype may also work, but I've never tried. Convince yourself and the rest of your team that this covers all of your intended functionality. Redraw until it does. This shouldn't take long - <USER2> your work is small or well-specified, you may spend 10 minutes at the board. This exposes early misunderstandings between members of your team, acts as an Early Warning System for timesinks or fuzzy features, lets you partition early work, and lets you cheaply iterate on technical solutions.

If you don't do this, this will be done on an individual basis, and misunderstandings will be turned into code. Common mistakes, like merging modules that should be separated, will be harder to fix as the project goes on.

</comment><comment><USER7> Managers are great at talking the talk, but it takes great developers to walk the walk. My current project is successful in spite of a similar list that was created at the inception. Over the course of 3 years, the why, the pitch, the NOT list, the Yes list, the priorities and what not have been changed and we keep afloat just because of two things : robust architecture and continues refactoring

</comment><comment><USER8> _4\. Create a NOT List_

I love this one. Nothing irks me more than a vendor soliciting feature requests without fixing critical longstanding bugs. While I wouldn't expect a NOT list to be written in stone, the mere existence of one might help to keep priorities straight. Sometimes that means saying _no_ to crazy feature requests.

<comment><USER9> I completely agree. Usually the client will say YES! to each and every new feature idea that pops up during meetings. Forcing an explicit list of NOT- features might be a good excercise... I have to try this next time =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ok so the elevator pitch template in point 2 is exactly like the vision statement template from RUP, probably older than that. The in scope/ out of scope /unresolved table is also commonly sen in many standard templates. 5 and 6 7 and 8 are also oh so common. The whole list just look exactly like what you'd find in a vision or charter document in typical methodologies.

This doesn't mean its bad or wrong just that this is clearly geared at people who have never been through software projects using any methodology.

</comment><comment><USER11> Very well written - this was one of those posts in which the graphics really added to the message.

<comment><USER12> You forgot the <sarcasm> tags. At least I hope this was intended sarcastically.

<comment><USER11> No, I am serious. The graphics were not your standard clip/stock art I thought they added to the message. If you don't, that's fine but there's no reason to be rude or disrespectful about it.

<comment><USER13> The team must be so agile they didn't proof-read it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The World's Best Athletes Are Now Better at Shooting - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/nba-bubble-shooting-soccer-empty-stadiums-11596539693 <comment><AUTHOR> _" NBA players are making a higher percentage of their free throws and hitting corner 3-pointers at rates the league has never seen. Soccer players are striking dead balls more precisely than they did before the pandemic. Without the distraction of screaming fans, one part of their games seems to have improved: shooting."_</comment>


It's Time to Get Serious About Exploiting Undefined Behavior - <AUTHOR> http://blog.regehr.org/archives/761 <comment><USER2> The only thing that a compiler should do with source code that includes constructs that have undefined behavior is generate an error message so it can be corrected.</comment>


Why did I release suggestmydomain.com? - <AUTHOR> http://changingbit.blogspot.com.br/2013/02/why-did-i-release-suggestmydomaincom.html

<comment><USER2> Great insight on XKCD, however I think that besides the content, it's shorter than "xipne" and is much clearer how to pronounce. Those characteristics still fall under best practices.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why did I just buy a domain suggested by suggestmydomain.com?

I guess it's like my dad always said, "you can't have too many four-letter domains". Except now it's five-letter. :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback! It was really important to me, =)</comment></comment>


Labor Dept. Says Workers at a Gig Company Are Contractors - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/business/economy/gig-economy-workers-contractors.html <comment><USER2> > the unidentified company — whose workers, it appears, clean residences

It shouldn't take long to figure out who that is...

> industry officials estimate that requiring them to classify their workers as > employees would raise their labor costs by 20 to 30 percent.

It's nice to put a number on how much they underpay their employees.

> and are permitted to schedule future jobs with the same customer without > using the platform.

You can do this with any of these "platform" companies that take a cut for regular jobs like cleaning or tutoring, though some may try to stop you. Do it immediately, and split whatever cut the "platform" took 50/50.</comment>


Ask HN: Java – looking for a persisten and embedded DB - <AUTHOR> Hi Guys,
i want to create a Java app and looking for a suitable DB.
The requirements are: - user must be able to run the software offline - user should not have to install any DB-Software (i.e. mySQL server)
so the DB should be embedded in my Java software and should create any filed to save the data.
Thank you very much in advance! <comment><USER2> If you don't need full SQL then you can use embedded key-value stores: \- RocksDB \- MapDB

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out [1] and [2].

[1] [https://github.com/xerial/sqlite-jdbc](https://github.com/xerial/sqlite- jdbc) [2] [http://www.h2database.com/](http://www.h2database.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://techshard.com/2017/04/01/3-embedded-databases-in- jav...](https://techshard.com/2017/04/01/3-embedded-databases-in-java/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> thank you both, exactly what i need. i thought h2 is not persistent, but as i see now, i can use it as a persistent DB too.

Thx!</comment>


Rhode Island bill would charge $20 fee to unblock Internet porn - <AUTHOR> https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2018/03/06/Rhode-Island-bill-would-charge-20-fee-to-unblock-Internet-porn/8441520319464/ <comment><USER2> This almost instantly falls down under any freedom of speech challenge. It won't even remotely come close to surviving legally.</comment>


Amazon headed to $150 Kindles? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/03/amazon_headed_to_150_kindles.html

<comment><USER2> I'd _very_ seriously consider a reader at that price-point. I have an annoying number of magazines and books in my man-purse/go-bag/laptop-bag-without-a- laptop-in-it.

The only issue for me is eyestrain; reading on a sample Nook on anything but the biggest size was uncomfortable after a few minutes.</comment>


Data Access Assistant: claim your data rights - <AUTHOR> https://udaptor.io/assistant.html <comment><AUTHOR> Hello everyone! Me and my co-founder have been working on the Idea for a platform that allows data portability for over a year now. The idea is simple, if you need to switch services, why can't you just take your data with you? Have you ever imagined being able to start using a new working out app and get tailored training based on your health app history? Or try out a new music streaming service and get good recommendations based on the music you listened from your previous service?

This journey we've been tracing though has shown to be composed of multiple steps. And today we are taking a new major one, giving people an easy way to access their own data from the services they already use. Basically, you have the right of access to your data from any service, but the way of exercising this right is not clear.

In short, we have put together the Data Access Assistant, a browser extension that helps yous claim your data by automating steps for you and helping you keep track of the status for each company you have requested your data from.

Currently, we work with chrome + gmail and have 5 services integrated, with more coming soon. And like I said, pretty soon we'll be launching new services to which you'll be able to port your downloaded data! Try it out and start claiming back your data!</comment>


Getting Things Done For Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://gtdfh.branchable.com/ <comment><USER2> Very helpful advice there.

Here's the GTD approach I've been following lately, which I'm very happy about. It's based in the tool Trello.

I have several boards (for personal stuff, for my main side-project, for work, for another project, and long-term goals). They all have four lists: Backlog, To Do, Doing, Done. Every Sunday, "Done" is archived into "Done (2012.04.08)" and I create a new, empty "Done" list. Then I bring tasks from the Backlog into To Do, in a way that everything in this list is what I plan to get done during the one-week sprint.

For projects I do with other people, we follow a similar approach, it's working great.

I wrote a toy script that parses the Trello JSON output into text format that I use for the weekly progress reports at my day job.

My productivity has overall improved. But, even more importantly, I feel less overwhelmed by all the different tasks I have in the pipeline.

<comment><USER3> This sounds like what I'm doing, without the text dump. But I like that, I like that a lot. I'm not a dev, any chance I could get the script from you? ;)

<comment><USER2> Here's the super basic tool/script I wrote for it: <http://pablop.github.com/trello-weekly-report/>

I'm planning to improve this over time, purely as an exercise to get more fluent in Python and Git.

This was actually a good excuse to get started with GitHub :)

<comment><USER3> You're the man (woman?)! Sorry I didn't respond sooner. I've been playing with the sample JSON... mind if I bother you with some questions?

Dunno if you accept Bitcoin, but I'd be happy to spare a few coins :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well written & no-BS GTD summary. Thanks for sharing.

I just stopped using GTD after 5 years on the system, including 3 years on OmniFocus. I respect David Allen and GTD a lot. But I found a better solution: daily outcomes.

Say you are building a social network startup called FaceSpace. Here's what your daily outcome list may look like:

Help people communicate more quickly -> Launch beta of FaceSpace -> Call Jason for programmer recommendations

We're going after the "why" -- instead of just doing tasks.

You'll have maybe 5-8 of these for the day.

How is this different than GTD?

1) No long queues of things to do. Start fresh every day. What persists is the outcomes we're after 2) Aware of the "why" behind a task gives you feelings of motivation and purpose 3) Focusing on the "why" forces you to do 100% necessary tasks 4) If life throws you a curve ball and you change the task, it's okay... We're focused on achieving outcomes, not tasks

I think GTD is great but I feel it focuses on tasks at the expense of focusing on the big picture. You shouldn't be waiting for a weekly review to see the big picture -- that's just way too long. For me, staying focused on realizing my outcomes all day has led to more directed and forward-driving tasks. As many great men have said, it's not about which tasks you do it's about which tasks you don't do. Focusing on the outcome helps you choose the best tasks.

Outcome lists FTW.

<comment><USER5> Would you care to elaborate on this a bit? In your example the daily outcome is:

Help people communicate more quickly -> Launch beta of FaceSpace -> Call Jason for programmer recommendations

But the actual outcome (task) for that day would be "Call Jason for programmer recommendations", right? I mean the "Launch beta of FaceSpace" seems more of a long term or strategic goal, and the "Help people communicate more quickly" more of a purpose, or like they say nowadays, a mantra.

So if you repeat this every day, isn't this overwhelming?

And there are a lot of intermediate steps between the "Call Jason" and the "Launch website", so how do you keep track of these?

Finally, how do you see this as a substitute for GTD? (Since GTD is a practical approach to keep track of everyday's bits of todos, that appear from everywhere.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some very good hints in here. I think the part where I differ most is that I'm a huge proponent of OmniFocus. It's quite a complex piece of software, but it is also very well designed, so you can put together a lot of different workflows and be mostly keyboard driven.

Being able to cross-reference projects/contexts with easy filters for next action or ticklers is invaluable. Repeating events and automatic review scheduling are the icing on the cake. I believe in GTD enough that I would still do it in pure paper format if I needed to, but OmniFocus can remove most of the overhead which makes it all the more attractive.

It's a good enough program that I'm contemplating switching from Android to iPhone just to have it on my mobile.

<comment><USER7> Agreed, they put a lot of thought into small conveniences that most other apps ignore. It's nice to have it grab e-mails as task items, and to just type "taskname<tab>1w<tab>1m" to create a task that won't be addressed for a week, but is due in a month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think if you care about the GTD stuff itself too much, you are no getting things done at all.

Maybe you just doing fake work, getting some fake motivation from a list of GTD advice which you will lose while you continue reading HN, twitter, etc.

In my opinion, getting things done is just 3 simple step.

get thing!

do it!

done!

<comment><USER9> This is very true. These GTD methods and everything is to "getting things done" what mac Donalds is to eating: it's quick; it's cheap but it's also a lot of crap.

This read is part of the big family of "self-motivation" seminars and "find your inner strength "bullshit. I hate to break it this way but drive is something you cultivate yourself, no generic "method" will do it for you. The irony is in those lists and methodology is most of the time people are motivated to do the setup for it: buy the books, the special furnitures, plan on organizing their time and in the end, when it's supposed to start the method falls flat and you realize that you aren't changed. Slacking is still a big part of your life, losing time on the internet, looking at Facebook etc... still eats a large portion of the time you get everyday.

Oh and please can we cut down on the term "hacker" ? I know it's called hacker news but it's a bit presumptuous to name it that way for almost everything that is posted here.

<comment><USER8> And many people make money from it. They blog about it, write book about it, and there are even some GTD group, meetup etc... They profit!

But the whole thing is a paradox. The things those people are getting done is write/talk/think about the "getting things done" stuff. But if they do, they are no getting things done.

It's fun to think this way XD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Amongst GTD software, what sticked in my use case is Emacs org-mode as described in <http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html>

<comment><USER11> Yep same here, if you are slinging code all day in emacs, it's nice to be able to bring up your agenda in another buffer when you need it so that you aren't switching too much out of context.

I use remember to add tasks as they come up so that I can quickly get back in to what I was working on. For me it all has to do with dealing with the little interruptions from people throughout the day.

Ideally this wouldn't happen at all, and I could focus 100% on what I'm supposed to be doing. But in the real world, people people interact, a phone call/email etc.... When I'm coding and someone arrives at my desk and says something like "Sorry to bother you this will only take a minute...", it triggers my fingers (C-R n) and once the conversation has ended I hopefully have notes of action items I need to address maybe even with a due date if i'm lucky.(C-c C-c) Or if it was pointless/not actionable (C-c C-k) and my cursor is right back where I was before being interrupted.

      http://sachachua.com/blog/2008/01/capturing-notes-with-remember/
      http://members.optusnet.com.au/~charles57/GTD/remember.html

I also track time with org-mode. (C-c a n) to bring up the agenda view, cursor to task i'm going to work on (C-c C-x i) to clock in. When I mark the task complete it clocks me out. Over the week of doing this, you will see your tasks on the timeline in your agenda view which gives you an awesome sense of accomplishment.

If you stick with it you'll have enough data to generate some really nerdy reports on what you do all day, or if you are freelancing, a format that goes a long way towards a proper invoice. I've never had a client ask for more information about what I was doing by applying this technique.

Like with everything emacs, I've barely scratched the surface on what is possible.

emacs + org-mode + remember = a process that can scale from macro to micro and is very adaptable to your needs.

<comment><USER12> I use org-mode for project planning and time tracking. I do need to figure out agendas and remember mode, two things I've not been using.

One thing about org-mode is that it's a single-person tool. I'm not aware of any way it could really work with multiple updaters.

<comment><USER11> yeah I don't think "multiple people mode" would work. I'm not too inclined to let other people at the files in my home directory either. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find this method works pretty well:

\- Identify big problems

\- Split big problems into small, manageable tasks

\- Assign tasks to others if necessary

\- Complete tasks -> solve problem

Yeah, it sounds simple, but it's an extremely effective and lightweight solution.

<comment><USER14> I do the first two as well, and since I don't have any other people working with me, my third is scheduling the task.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Good overview of the system.

Concise, logically divided, and refreshingly free of excessive hyperbole, witticism, and "insider" language that is all too common in pieces written "for hackers". Well done.

</comment><comment><USER16> Any way to have this articles compiled, as an ebook or something?

<comment><USER17> I uploaded a PDF here: <http://mario-kart.net/GTDForHackers.pdf>

And the ePub: <http://mario-kart.net/GTDForHackers.epub>

(Sorry the formatting is a little weird)

Plain text: <http://mario-kart.net/GTDForHackers.txt>

<comment><USER16> Thank you, good sir.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've mentioned Taskwarrior previously (command line task management, GTDable), but it's worth noting that it recently hit 2.0 and has an upcoming server component (in alpha):

<http://taskwarrior.org/>

<comment><USER19> I'm copying this from a previous comment of mine because I always end up writing about the great features of Taskwarrior:

Seconding taskwarrior for being a great todo handler. It has a minimalistic interface, but doesn't lack any features that you (might) find yourself wanting after a while of use. The IRC channel (#taskwarrior on Freenode) is active too. The command-line tools are perfect and let you make your system as minimal or as complex as you want. Over time, I've:

1) Set up a cron job that pumps my current list out to a text file behind an .htaccess'd directory. This way, I can see my list without needing SSH access.

2) I've also got a little Dashboard widget that pulls that text down, so I can swipe to the top-left hot corner and see them at a glance.

3) I'm using Alfred (<http://www.alfredapp.com/>) on my Mac, so I wrote a simple trigger called "task add" that connects to my box and adds it there. There's also a few posts out there for DropBox integration if you use that.

4) I didn't write this, but if you use oh-my-zsh, there's a plugin for Taskwarrior. I've learned about a couple options by pressing tab.

<comment><USER18> Nice tips. I'm using Alfred on OS X and Xmonad.Prompt on Arch but the cron to web view is a new clever idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why does the words 'hacker' and 'hacking' getting so much abused? Being a 'hacker' once meant something, one had to work hard to gain the respect from people, nowadays it's just about getting something done with in a few hours that bearly works. Also calling yourself a hacker doesn't really make you hacker, because it's all about the respect you get from the people admiring your work. Better stay with the words like 'programmer', 'developer', 'artist', etc...

<comment><USER21> Perhaps it's a bit like calling yourself exploiter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> In something unrelated: Holy crap does that site load fast.

<comment><USER17> That's one reason why I like pure HTML pages with no database backend. They load so much faster than your average Wordpress site.

This site does seem to be dynamic though. Maybe a custom engine, or simply cached correctly.

 _Edit:_ He's using <http://ikiwiki.info/>

<comment><USER23> On a side note, how hard would it be to write a WordPress extension that generates static HTML every time you write a new post or a new comment gets approved/submitted?

<comment><USER17> There's already a couple popular ones, like W3 Total Cache: <http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> i figure everyone writes their own. i wrote <http://planhack.com>

<comment><USER25> Wow. I really like the concept but I'm missing some more features for my own use.

Is it open source? That would be great to hack on it. Or does it atleast have an API? That way I could script some more functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is cool. For me, I've found that getting into good daily habits makes the biggest difference in my life. I use JoesGoals.com to track them. I set it as my home page. 42goals.com is also good.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a great summary. Thanks for sharing.</comment>


Google Newspaper Archive - <AUTHOR> http://news.google.com/newspapers <comment><USER2> I've done a lot of genealogy work for my family name and have used [http://newspaperarchive.com/](http://newspaperarchive.com/) extensively. In comparing a few quick searches, the Google Newspaper Archive is not even comparable. We're talking 2 irrelevant hits for Google Newspaper Archive vs. thousands of relevant hits for newspaperarchive.com.

And newspaperarchive.com only has a fraction of the newspapers in the country within their records. There is definitely a lot of room for improvement in this space because it's such a large task.

<comment><USER3> You know you are comparing apples to oranges? Google's archive is free and open.

<comment><USER2> _You know you are comparing apples to oranges? Google 's archive is free and open._

I'm not comparing Apples and Oranges. At worst what I'm doing is comparing store-bought Oranges in very good condition to free Oranges you could pick up off the side of the road that fell off a truck two weeks ago and are half way to rotten.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is incredible! The search function works well, which means they've OCR'd the papers. Is there a way of grabbing this text? I've not seen anything obvious.

Also the "link to this article" doesn't seem to work for me, although the search had taken me to the article just fine.

</comment><comment><USER5> The search/OCR seems patchy. I tried a few (presumably) unique phrases from some and the article wasn't found.

For example with:

[http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=PQY3Tb_h0-cC&dat=19111...](http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=PQY3Tb_h0-cC&dat=19111206&printsec=frontpage&hl=en)

I tried:

"marshalling that unspeakable parade" (wonderful phrase!)

another dull and listless session

cattle prices high granby quebec

and various other phrases from the home page both with and without quotes. Nothing returned the edition in question.

</comment><comment><USER6> Holy shit, this is awesome. Lots of papers. LOTS. Even local papers. And the resolution is good!

<comment><USER7> just give it 5 years to google to shut down the service

<comment><USER8> Google may shut it down, but it won't throw away the data. Nobody would do this.

<comment><USER9> Talk to the Archive Team about that...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just checked it out and unfortunately landed on The Times edition from 1804, the paper was filled with classfieds announcing awards for returning lost slaves, the casual manner of those ads made me lose my appetite for browsing further... very different times they were...

</comment><comment><USER11> Slightly related, but does anyone know where to get the equivalent of news.google.com or news.yahoo.com, but with more than 30 days of history? Ideally several years worth.

Lexis/Nexis appears to only cover print news, and their articles aren't timestamped.

<comment><USER12> Google News used to do that (and this newspaper archive was part of it, along with some others), but they seem to have pivoted towards only current news. Not entirely sure why. During the time that it had that functionality, I often found it useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know how to submit a newspaper to this archive? I have all 51 editions of a now closed newspaper in PDF format and it would be lovely to find them a home here...

<comment><USER12> They announced in 2011 that they were no longer going to be updating the archive, so I would guess there isn't a way to do so: [http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2385664,00.asp](http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2385664,00.asp)

You might try archive.org? [https://archive.org/details/newspapers](https://archive.org/details/newspapers)

<comment><USER14> Please submit to the Internet Archive!

<comment><USER13> Thanks all for the suggestions. I shall do just that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The Google logo at the top appears misaligned for me. Also when I click it, it redirects to a 404. Nonetheless very cool archive.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if there is an easy of downloading this and OCRing it. I would love to use this as training material for some ML algos.

</comment><comment><USER17> Jesus, this is fantastic. As others have pointed out OCR isn't so hot but you should be able to nab topics and names.</comment>


NetBSD: There's an amiga running a mirror at HTTP://de.netbsd.org - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/netbsd/status/1286898183923277829 <comment><AUTHOR> "It's an Amiga A3000 with 68060 accelerator card (Cyberstorm Mk2)"

[https://mobile.twitter.com/netbsd/status/1286910129716236289](https://mobile.twitter.com/netbsd/status/1286910129716236289)

</comment><comment><USER2> A shame it's not running the original Amiga Unix.</comment>


What operating systems the Plan 9 Google guys are using - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.plan9/msg/1fd0d23c9d28b621 <comment><USER2> Unsurprisingly, OSX or Linux and the old Plan9 text editor.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's worth looking at the entire thread. Both Cox and Pike point out that life is just easier at work running a well-maintained, supported system (OSX) that can play nicely with other machines.

<comment><USER4> I can understand going with a Mac if you want better support for the latest hardware or you need to run some commercial software like Photoshop. But if you're running a text editor and a compiler and developing unix software, what advantage is there to using a Mac over a unix box like Linux?

<comment><USER5> A Mac _is_ a Unix box. Actually, to be picky it's more of a Unix box than a linux machine as of those two only OS X has Unix certification: <http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/certificates/1190p.pdf>

<comment><USER6> But of course, OS X implements many Unix constructs wrong. Renaming a file is not atomic on OS X / HFS+, for example. (UNIX certification is "did they give us money", not "does it actually work".)

Also, of course GNU/Linux is not Unix. GNU is Not Unix! (I like GNU a lot better than Unix, personally. Much more sugary. "rm foo -rf" actually works, for example.)

<comment><USER7> What's that do? Unless you change the order, I'd expect it to delete two files: foo and -rf. How does the Mac get it wrong? I don't have a Mac at hand.

<comment><USER8> GNU tools generally allow you to put your options anywhere you please, even after regular arguments. Whether or not this is a good thing is of course up for debate, but it certainly can add convenience.

Confusion can occur with some applications (possibly non-GNU ones) for which option/argument order does matter, or with those where options have different affects on later/earlier arguments depending on where they are placed.

Note that the parent didn't say the Mac gets it "wrong," just that GNU "rm foo -rf" works in the sense that it will do what he intends it to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Researching the sam editor is strangely intriguing. See Rob Pike's description of the command language: <http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/sam_lang_tutorial/sam_tut.pdf>

<comment><USER10> Speaking of which, does anybody know how to get acme/sam working on Ubuntu? I'd really like to play with it a bit.

<comment><USER11> As mentioned by _yummyfajitas_ you can try

plan9port <http://swtch.com/plan9port> or

9vx <http://swtch.com/9vx>

and try to get _sam_ running on top of your linux box.

<comment><USER12> That's quite an overkill ;-)

But cool, nevertheless.

I am a bit ashamed the coolest operating systems on the market today are either Unix-derived/inspired or a lame rehash of VMS.

There is something wrong with this.

<comment><USER13> It isn't wrong, it is the consequence of a simple principle: "Those who don't understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." – Henry Spencer

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Quotes>

<comment><USER12> But, again, we had Plan 9. It was great and went nowhere. We had Lisp machines, Smalltalk and Oberon. All of them insanely ahead of their (and perhaps our) time and insanely cool. I can see we couldn't make anything better than Unix. What makes me ashamed is that we should be able to do it and I can't quite grasp why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Forgive my ignorance - can anyone elaborate on what sorts of innovations came from Plan 9, and why it didn't overtake Unix? I'm intrigued, but I don't know anything about it.

<comment><USER15> Wikipedia (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs>) article is a good start. Most notably the /proc filesystem which represents the state of kernel was lifted straight from Plan 9 into Linux.

As for the success of Plan 9, this quote on wikipedia sums it up -

Plan 9 failed simply because it fell short of being a compelling enough improvement on Unix to displace its ancestor. Compared to Plan 9, Unix creaks and clanks and has obvious rust spots, but it gets the job done well enough to hold its position. There is a lesson here for ambitious system architects: the most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough.

<comment><USER16> >the most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough.

These are words of wisdom for anybody that doesn't understand how Windows came to be the dominant desktop OS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What linux breed do most of these engineers use? any ideas? Ubuntu? red hat? any ideas? I've got a Win7 machine and the rc is about to runout. I'm going to get a new win laptop, but am thinking of setting up this old one as a linux box.

<comment><USER18> Seems to be mostly Ubuntu, but I've met quite a few Fedora, CentOS, RHEL, and other distro users from Google. There is no law about what OS engineers can use within Google, but they do have their own Ubuntu repository and such setup for distributing internally developed software and a custom Ubuntu install. Their server infrastructure, last I heard, was on an old bastardized Fedora version, but that was a couple of years ago; and it's probably not something they talk about with much specificity or frequency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd like to see a survey of what OS people of HN are using. Has someone submitted this before?

<comment><USER20> Yup.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=687267>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What's _sam_?

<comment><USER22> It is like ed(1) with a windowing system.

<comment><USER23> This is superficially true but I think ignores how usable sam is. The rationalized command language, the fact that you can see what you're doing, unlimited undo even across files (even across file I/O), and the ability to go to the file in question and just type make it a much more satisfying experience to do large amounts of development with than ed is.

<comment><USER24> Yes. Vi is also not too dissimilar to ed, but much more useful. (Also NetHack is quite similar to Vi, and much more useful and fun in turn.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wow, reading about the wikipedia articles on the difference between sam and acme sounds like the same pattern of arguments of using vi vs. emacs.

<comment><USER26> The difference is that we tend not to argue about sam vs. acme. For one, they both use the sam command language. Most of us (Plan 9 users) seem to use acme, but there are some long-time sam users around. There's no holy war :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wonder how they (or are even required to) test for Windows machines...my guess is that Microsoft products aren't even in their requirements.

</comment><comment><USER28> Summary: OSX, FreeBSD and Linux (in that order)

<comment><USER29> The correct order is Linux, OSX, FreeBSD:

"Rob, Ken, Dave, and I use Macs as our desktop machines, but we're a bit of an exception. Most Google engineers use Linux machines, and I know of quite a few ex-Bell Labs people who are happy to be using sam or acme on those machines."

<comment><USER30> That depends on whether you order by quantity or quality :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> it would be more interesting to know what kind of systems these guys are developing nowadays

<comment><USER32> So these guys went from the dream company of the 70s to the dream company of the 2000s. Lucky bastards!

<comment><USER33> That's usually the way it works.

Google also has a bunch of ex-Microsofties (dream company of the 1980s) and ex-Amazonites (dream company of the 90s).

It pays to get into a dream company as soon as possible, and do cool things there, because other companies will see those cool things and give you your pick of jobs.</comment></comment></comment>


Chrome will soon ad-block an entire website if it shows abusive ads - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/11/5/18063906/chrome-71-update-abusive-ads-blocking-december-2018 <comment><USER2> I don't like it. Honestly, I don't want Google to be the gatekeeper for what an abusive ad is or isn't.</comment>


The Greplin Review - <AUTHOR> http://panopticonic.com/2011/08/01/the-greplin-review/

<comment><USER2> "If you dare to join Greplin and sign up for an account, I guarantee you will wonder how you ever lived without the service."

That's exactly what Harj said. Within about a week of installing Greplin, he was saying he wondered how he had ever managed without it. Almost enough to make my buy an iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER3> The first challenge was easy in Python, but I have no idea how I'd write in Haskell. Anyone?

<comment><USER3> <http://challenge.greplin.com/></comment></comment>


Trump's other "quid pro quo" is Washington's biggest open secret - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90436584/trumps-other-quid-pro-quo-is-washingtons-dirtiest-secret <comment><USER2> TL;DR: The "other quid pro quo" is giving out ambassadorships to campaign contributors.

I tend to agree that this is an obnoxious practice that should be ended. However, in Trump's defense (ugh, there's a phrase I hate writing), it should be noted that this has been a practice of presidents from both parties for approximately forever. The article indicates that he does it slightly more often than his predecessors, but the moral difference between "sold 45% of ambassadorships" and "sold 30% of ambassadorships" is not large.

It's also worth noting that the ambassadorships given out to these clowns are nearly always completely insignificant ones, typically ones to small countries with pleasant climates. American foreign policy is not going to succeed or fail based on who is the Ambassador to the Bahamas. And in other cases where the diplomatic relationship is actually significant, like the ambassadorships to Israel and the UK, the heads of state of both nations are typically in such regular direct contact as to render the ambassador more or less ornamental.

Really the take-away here is that it's not clear what the actual function of an ambassador in the modern age _is_. When it could take weeks or months for a letter sent from one capital to reach another, having "our man in [insert capital here]" be someone who could reliably think on his feet was crucial. Today, when world leaders can reach each other directly in seconds via phone or text or tweet, who happens to sit in an ambassador's chair matters much less.</comment>


I'd rather Go complain about Rails - <AUTHOR> http://thread0.me/2015/05/id-rather-go-complain-about-rails/

<comment><USER2> It's stopping at 4 connected clients when running nginx+passenger because you are exhausting all the workers. You need to up the process limit if you are going to have workers that never complete their task for a long time, and then you need to worry about running out of memory if you have too many processes. Here's the passenger config information for that: [https://www.phusionpassenger.com/documentation/Users%20guide...](https://www.phusionpassenger.com/documentation/Users%20guide%20Nginx.html#_resource_control_and_optimization_options)

I wouldn't recommend the approach you are taking if you wanted to build this in ruby. Have you looked in to Event Machine? [https://github.com/eventmachine/eventmachine](https://github.com/eventmachine/eventmachine)

<comment><AUTHOR> Tried EventMachine in the past but not with this particular use case. Actually my nginx+passenger configuration allowed for 12 workers, but I may have counted wrong the running instances at the time of the deadlock. Anyway, what is interesting to me is trying to understand how actually Rails handles and releases MySQL connections. In fact, even with the timeout dance I implemented I didn't seem to succeed in releasing MySQL connections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> TL;DR; Native code generation implementation of programming language A outperforms interpreter implementation of programming language B.

<comment><USER4> And somehow, by using Go, he managed to plug a resource leak.

<comment><USER5> He also didn't need to load the entire rails stack, allowing him to have better memory perf in his application.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am not really sure how Rails behaves these days behind an evented web server, and I also don't know if nginx+passenger offer such a setup; but I was running a similar application with Sinatra+Thin, which handled hundreds, if not thousands connections easily. Especially the number of 4 successful connections and then none make me suspect that something in the Rails setup was broken and/or that Rails still does not support long running requests.

</comment><comment><USER7> This article is a bit absurd. Any experienced rubyist would tell you Rails sucks at this use case. Node/Go will absolutely kick ruby's ass here every day.

<comment><USER8> And there are many experienced "Rubyists" who refuse to concede that Rails isn't good at absolutely everything under the sun.

<comment><USER7> And there are people writing CRUD web apps in Go. There are plenty of developers who focus on the tools not expediently solving the problem for every stack.

I wouldn't say this is a problem specific to ruby</comment></comment></comment>


Who's Afraid Of The Big, Bad Hacker? - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2013/02/05/whos-afraid-of-the-big-bad-hacker-enterprises-should-be <comment><USER2> I don't think much of this article.

Its only references are links out to other news articles, the rest is just ropey opinion.

This is effectively an advert for his services and he's doing his best to scare people, although he doesn't appear to know what he's talking about.

"Most hackers are simply greedy."

Says who? Is there a survey of Hackers in which they listed their motivations? I would to have a look.

"HTML 5, the latest version of the HTML standard, allows users to personalize their browsing experience, and lets businesses build browser-based applications. But reducing the layers of technology between the browser and internal systems removes obstacles for would-be hackers. As businesses make greater use of popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, hackers can gain access to personal data that can be used for phishing or other "social engineering" attacks. And there's also the potential for corporate networks to be infected by malware from social networking sites."

Honestly, this paragraph is just a train wreck and sounds like something written by a grade-schooler. It's a mish-mash of unrelated sentences that might sound scary to an ill-informed employee, but contains zero substance.

Zero meaningful advice given at the end, to carry on the theme, just a link to his company.

I didn't realise Readwrite would publish such a lazy effort.

"Here's some buzzwords, some hazy definitions, and a few general misunderstandings - all in a 20 minutes rush job. Please give my company advertising space and traffic."

</comment><comment><USER3> crackers __ __</comment>


The D-Day rehearsal that cost 800 lives (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-devon-27185893 <comment><USER2> That is fascinating, especially how the people responsible managed to keep it hushed up for so long.

> The D-Day rehearsal, codenamed Exercise Tiger, was a disaster on a grand > scale with the loss of life greater than the actual invasion of Normandy > just months later

I am not sure how they did the maths on this. According to the WWII and DDay Foundation [0] 12,000 men died in the air operations in preparation for the landing, and 2,500 Allies troops died during the landing.

I can only thing they mean the proportion of death was higher (death/participants).

[0] [https://www.wwiifoundation.org/students/wwii-facts- figures/](https://www.wwiifoundation.org/students/wwii-facts-figures/)

<comment><USER3> > The First U.S. Army, accounting for the first twenty-four hours in Normandy, > tabulated 1,465 killed, 1,928 missing, and 6,603 wounded. The after-action > report of U.S. VII Corps (ending 1 July) showed 22,119 casualties including > 2,811 killed, 5,665 missing, 79 prisoners, and 13,564 wounded, including > paratroopers.

[https://www.historyonthenet.com/d-day- casualties](https://www.historyonthenet.com/d-day-casualties)

So it was actually pretty close: ~800 US troops killed during the rehearsal vs 1465 during the actual landing.

Somehow, from "Saving Private Ryan", I had imagined that the death tole was much greater.

<comment><USER4> Most of the deaths were on Omaha beach, where US Bombers completely missed their targets. US Bombers hit the farmlands miles inland, instead of the bunkers. In effect: the Bombers of Omaha Beach forgot about momentum and dropped the bombs "over" Omaha Beach (instead of "over the sea", where momentum would carry the bombs to Omaha Beach). IIRC, there were also Paratroopers who were dropped around the bombings, to slow down any reinforcements.

The soldiers on Omaha beach were expecting:

1\. Surprise Attack

2\. Bomber support

3\. Paratroopers preventing reinforcements

#1 and #3 were negated because the Nazis just happened to be holding practice drills at the time and were on the beach anyway. #2 was negated because the bombers missed.

Sometimes, it comes down to luck.

<comment><USER5> Do you happen to know why the Omaha bombers missed as a group? The failure to 'lead' the target makes sense, I'm wondering why it wasn't individual to planes but systematic for the beach.

My guess would be that the time to drop was called wrong by a flight commander or computed wrong beforehand, rather than assessed individually in each plane, but if you happen to know more I'd be curious.

<comment><USER4> Good question.

I looked it up, and it seems like the operation was way more complex than I thought (and it already sounded quite complex to me!)

1\. The skys were overcast, so the bombers were dropping blind through the clouds.

2\. The Omaha-beach bombers erred on the side of caution: they didn't want to release the bombs too early, because that would be "Friendly Fire", hitting the Allied Troops instead.

Its quite possible that the bomber squadron simply all missed because the clouds were just over Omaha beach (but not necessarily over the other beaches).

I'm mostly reading this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omaha_Beach#Pre- landing_bombar...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omaha_Beach#Pre- landing_bombardment)

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>-

It sounds like there's widespread agreement that the Naval commanders didn't offer enough battleship bombardment support as well.

\</comment><comment>-

So the full set of events are:

1\. Bombers missed (clouds blocked their view + worried about friendly fire)

2\. Navy commanders made a strategic error, and failed to deploy enough battleship support.

3\. Commando Paratroopers failed to stop reinforcements, because reinforcements were already at the Beach holding a training drill.

4\. 27 of the 29 amphibious tanks sank due to heavy waves. The landing infantry had to run up-hill in the beach sand into machine guns without any tank-support.

5\. Bad waves meant a lot of infantry landed off-target of their initial plan. The amphibious vessels hit a sandbar, meaning many infantry started their journey not on the sands of the beach, but wading in the water 50-feet into the water still.

Pretty much every bad-luck event possible happened on Omaha beach.

</comment><comment><USER6> I thought this was going to refer to Operation Smash [http://www.bbc.co.uk/dorset/content/articles/2009/05/18/dday...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/dorset/content/articles/2009/05/18/dday_exercise_smash_feature.shtml) , but that was ten days earlier and not quite as deadly.

Or even [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieppe_Raid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieppe_Raid) two years previously, which demonstrated all the things that could go wrong with a cross-channel raid at the cost of thousands of lives.

(People would do well to remember that even the successes of WW2 were written in blood, especially when invoking them in a contemporary political context)

<comment><USER7> Windsor, Ontario, Canada has Dieppe Memorial Gardens, and it had a Lancaster bomber mounted on a pedestal in Jackson Park for decades:

[https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/windsor-to-swap- part...](https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/windsor-to-swap-parts- overseas-to-help-keep-lancaster-bomber-flying-in-britain)

The Lancaster was used to incinerate German cities, and the only clearly superior bomber was the B-29, used to incinerate all of the Japanese cities, save 5 for atomic bomb targets.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Lancaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Lancaster)

Of course, as a child, I had no idea of the solemn significance of any of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I always wonder what is keeping the world away from WW3. I guess that nuclear weapons make it too frightening to start any large conflict if it can involve mushroom clouds.

I don't think leaders would really retaliate a nuclear attack, since it always is preferable to de-escalate a nuclear conflict than to escalate it. Mutual assured destruction is something nobody is interested in.

<comment><USER9> But it would have happened. The Sovjet Union had developed an automated retaliatory system, named 'Perimeter'. In the case of an alarm, it would have given the government executive the option to flip a switch and activate the system. Or, if there was no signal from the executive anymore and nuclear explosions are detected, the system activates by itself. If the system detects actual nuclear explosions on its territory, the retaliatory strike would be executed.

All this was mediated by command & control ICBMs (i.e. rockets without warheads but with detectors and comms) that the system would launch on warning and by switching the system on, the actual silos would respond to automated commands from these rockets. A system very hard to disable from outside.

The craziest thing about this: The Sovjets didn't even advertise this system existed but it did.

Perimeter is rumored to still be in operation, since Vladimir Putin likes to drop comments from time to time along the lines of 'we will never launch preemptively but retaliation will be swift and certain'.

Edit: typo

Edit2: So this system was created to automatically ensure retaliation even if the Sovjet union was effectively wiped out or if nobody wanted to make the decision to conduct a retaliatory strike while missiles are incoming but haven't hit yet.

<comment><USER10> One of the purposes for Perimeter was to keep the hotheaded generals in check. That is, if the detection system has a glitch, they don't rush to launch everything, but instead just turn on Perimeter.

I also think it was a large enough system that Western intelligence probably knew about it, but couldn't publicly acknowledge it, as it might expose the source of their knowledge.

<comment> blaser-waffle It would absolutely in the Soviet's interest to make sure people know that the weapon exists -- it helps keep them alive! To paraphrase Dr. Strangelove, what's the point of the doomsday device if they don't know you have the doomsday device?

I agree with your assessment that NATO intel probably knew of it, but kept quiet to avoid political drama and keep sources secret.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The cock-up of the destroyer being absent and radio error reminds me of the channel dash [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Dash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Dash)

</comment><comment><USER12> This event was also a plot line in an episode of Foyle's War (Series 5 "All Clear").</comment>


Katie Conf, a conference with talks only by speakers called Katie - <AUTHOR> https://katieconf.xyz/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Steve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Steve) and to a lesser extent [http://www.catb.org/~esr/ecsl/](http://www.catb.org/~esr/ecsl/).

Also, if you are named Isabella, you can visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston for free as a result of a provision of the founder's will:

[http://connect.gardnermuseum.org/site/Survey?ACTION_REQUIRED...](http://connect.gardnermuseum.org/site/Survey?ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS&SURVEY_ID=3560)

"Please note that, in order to be true to our founder, Isabelle and other variations and spellings do not apply."

I guess Katie Conf is being a little more flexible about spellings than the Gardner Museum.</comment>


Obama to Cut FHA Mortgage Insurance Premiums to Boost Homeownership - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-07/obama-said-to-announce-cut-in-fha-mortgage-insurance-premiums.html

<comment><USER2> Mortgage brokers have told me the FHA is no longer worth it. You can get a conventional loan with 5% down, FHA loans require 3% down but their mortgage insurance premiums are currently too high.</comment>


Ask HN: How many unused domain names do you have? - <AUTHOR> I received an e-mail that one of my domains was set to expire. When I logged in to my registrar to see which one, I was shocked to see just how many great ideas I never executed in the form of parked domain names. I have 22 domains. One for family email, a couple of my kids' names, but the rest are just collecting annual fees. Anyone else have a similar problem? <comment> tony-allan I've still got five even after letting most expire over the years. Turns out that it is quite easy to have a great idea and devote just enough energy to it to register the domain name.

It is very easy to delude yourself that the idea is so great that dozens of other people are just about to hit submit and take the name (and idea) away from you.

I get as far as learning some new technology, which is great, but not far enough to get to a useful MVP.

There is also a lot of housekeeping to sort out for a real service, which is a time and sometimes cost issue for something that must be bootstrapped.

The underlying issue is that many worthwhile ideas are hard and need solid effort and commitment to execute. Registering a domain name does get you very far.

</comment><comment><USER2> I discovered this little gem for my unused domains: [http://ethicalparking.informatick.net/](http://ethicalparking.informatick.net/)

I've been using it for many years and it works just great.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have about 50 and have the same problem. So I scratched my itch.

[https://newsy.co](https://newsy.co)

Hope you find it useful. Let me know if you have any questions. We are still in beta.

<comment><USER4> Buttons are somewhat broken on mobile, just FYI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> About 25-50 at any given moment. I buy for myself but seem to have a good branding sense because I often get acquisition inquiries.

</comment><comment><USER6> 99% of the ones I own are unused. The 1% is for email.</comment>