Dear Malcolm: Why so threatened? - <AUTHOR> http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2009/06/dear-malcolm-why-so-threatened.html

<comment><USER2> I think Gladwell is concerned that another writer is intruding on his niche of content-free pablum predicated upon the mistaken assumption that the plural of anecdote is data. The only thing more amusing than watching two writers who seem to operate within their own reality-distortion fields argue past each other is seeing members of the blogosphere who share a similar unfamiliarity with the concept of debate grounded in facts and data weigh in on either side.

<comment><USER3> "...that the plural of anecdote is data..."

Thank you for this most excellent quote. I got a good laugh out of that quip.

<comment><USER4> Interesting back-story on that line:

<http://bearcastle.com/blog/?m=20050808>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Talk to me after Ken has made enough to quit his day job.

<comment><USER6> What does that have to do with anything? since when was commercial success a measure of quality? (specially in writing?)

<comment><USER7> But the discussion isn't whether you can create quality writing while giving it away for free (obviously that's going on, long before the Internet - eg the Bible..) but whether "free" is a sustainable business model.

Anderson's own example is a guy who actually makes a living working as a civil engineer, ie selling his time for money. What he does in his spare time, for free, is known outside the Wired hype bubble as "a hobby".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Dear Chris: Why so inane?</comment>


ZX Spectrum devs claim missing royalties from Elite Systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/952953995/bluetooth-zx-spectrum-recreating-the-sinclair-zx-s/comments

<comment><USER2> Here I think is the specific comment hilighting the issue:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/952953995/bluetooth- zx-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/952953995/bluetooth-zx-spectrum- recreating-the-sinclair-zx-s/comments?cursor=5779913#comment-5779912)

Apparently, they vandalized wikipedia to put an ad for their app. Unbelievable.

edit: This is the first comment talking about the issue apparently: [https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/1066578103](https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/1066578103)

<comment><USER3> Another post from a dev who got scammed by this company: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/952953995/bluetooth- zx-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/952953995/bluetooth-zx-spectrum- recreating-the-sinclair-zx-s/comments?cursor=5786604#comment-5786603)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This came about because of this thread: [http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=46365](http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=46365)

<comment><USER5> Seems to be down at the moment, does anyone know of a cached version? Haven't managed to find one myself.

<comment><USER6> Still up, just slow.

<comment><USER5> It's been stuck 'Connecting...' for quite a while. I suppose I should've expected such a response from a community used to 16 minute loading times (my first computer was a ZX Spectrum). ;-)

<comment><USER6> Does your browser have a flashing border at the moment? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No-one seems to have pointed out that this is likely to be a trademark violation:

"All rights reserved. 'Elite', the Elite logo, the Elite: Dangerous logo, 'Frontier' and the Frontier logo are registered trademarks of Frontier Developments plc. All rights reserved. All other trademarks and copyright are acknowledged as the property of their respective owners."

In this case, unauthorised use of their trademark in the same trademark category (computer games), is going to damage Frontier's reputation.

Could someone get David Braben to contact Kickstarter UK?

<comment><USER8> Elite Systems have been around a long time too [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_Systems](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_Systems)

<comment><USER9> Yes, Elite was a triple-A player and a very well respected UK games publisher back in the 80s.

<comment><USER7> Oh, them!

Strange, there seem to be relatively few studios like that which didn't either get merged into something larger or fade away completely.

Superior Software is another example.

Mind you, if what these developers is saying is true, then they would do with improving one or two things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Now they got backed, I don't see the reason why would they not make the keyboard. But if their business partners are getting paid is another story.

<comment><USER5> The fundraising period hasn't ended yet, at the time of writing this there's 12 hours to go, and judging by the Kickstarter comments people who have already backed the project are starting to reduce/remove their backing. I wonder if this is the first time there's a chance a project that reaches its target on Kickstarter ends up under the target by the end?

<comment><USER11> A kickstarter project cannot go under funding goal in the last 24 hours if it has already reached its goal. You can back out if you contribution doesn't bring the project below goal. Part of the anti-trolling rules.

<comment><USER12> People aren't backing out, they are reducing their pledge. Do same anti- trolling measures deal with that?

<comment><USER13> Also not allowed. From the ToS ([https://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of- use](https://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-use)):

 _Backers may increase, decrease, or cancel their pledge at any time during the fundraising campaign, except that they may not cancel or reduce their pledge if the campaign is in its final 24 hours and the cancellation or reduction would drop the campaign below its goal._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why don't they simply sue him?

<comment><USER3> According to one of the forum posts linked elsewhere in this thread [1] his company's accounts are in the red, so even if someone were to sue and win, they aren't going to see any money.

[1] [http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showpost.php?p=750206&...](http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showpost.php?p=750206&postcount=36)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sounds a bit like the mess that is the Up Front reprint:

[http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/160421/item/2750333#item27...](http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/160421/item/2750333#item2750333)

</comment><comment><USER16> The amount pledged is indeed going down. It appears people are being true to their word.

Be interesting if it dips below the £60k required.

<comment><USER13> I believe Kickstarter actually won't let you withdraw a pledge if doing so would drop a funded project below its funding threshold.

edit: found the rule ([https://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of- use](https://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-use)),

 _Backers may increase, decrease, or cancel their pledge at any time during the fundraising campaign, except that they may not cancel or reduce their pledge if the campaign is in its final 24 hours and the cancellation or reduction would drop the campaign below its goal._</comment></comment>


How to Read a Log Scale - <AUTHOR> https://blog.datawrapper.de/weeklychart-logscale/ <comment><USER3> I often think that one of the biggest changes that could come would be the mass adoption of through statistical analysis classes as part of graduate programs.

There's far, far too many people I've know who just don't understand it.

I also see many forces working against it. For one, it'd show up the ignorance of a lot of the academic world.

I've known high level people, like a MD, who simply didn't fully grasp some basic concepts of statistical analysis (like P-value hacking, questioning sample size, comparisons between raw numbers, etc)

<comment><USER4> Everyone in these industries takes statistics in college and maybe grad school tool. The problem is (1) that statistics is hard math and these people aren't math majors (2) if you do statistics correctly you can never say anything bold with confidence, which kills your career in any field except statistics itself

<comment><USER5> In the sense that there are courses like _Physics for future presidents_ , it must be possible to at least attune peoples bullshit receptors to some degree - even if that is without going into the mathematics.

We now live in a time when media algorithmically shows you what you want to see, and politicians have effectively worked out that truth is almost totally unnecessary. Society will adapt, but it could end in disaster.

<comment><USER6> For example, one thing that most people don't get is that every measurement has an assumption. If you don't know the assumption you may make bad conclusions. Few people even ask this question when making measurements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I made this as well. Hopefully this helps too: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSwefZMyjV0&t=14s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSwefZMyjV0&t=14s)

</comment><comment><USER8> While I knew the concepts of log I first truly understood it when I started looking at everything as log2. In hindsight I feel like a moron, obviously it is about doubling and halving risks is what it's about (I'm an MD so everything is a risk ratio in my field).

I remember a colegue that was presenting results during their defense of a thesis where one risk ratio 0,45 and the other 2,1. I asked which effect was biggest and they automatically replied 2,1. I'm pretty sure that 80%+ of my colegues would make the same mistake. Everyone understands double/half - <USER2> should try to teach people this as the word log is just too intimidating for so many.

<comment><USER9> The word "logarithm" is an interesting accident of how they were calculated for so long. Exponentiation is easy: at its core it's just repeated multiplication. But doing the "opposite" is much harder, it is _not_ just, say, repeated division. Some of the oldest algorithms were logarithms. Some of the most complex algorithms an average person might study for a large swath of history were algorithms.

One of the most complex functions a slide rule enabled was simply some logarithms.

When such computations were hard and slow, people filled entire books with logarithms tables. Multiple volumes sometimes filled entire stacks in early engineering libraries.

I feel like this illustrates one of the biggest problems when we teach math from a "pen and paper first" perspective: exponents are easy to teach with pen and paper as soon as people are used to multiplication, logarithms which are intricately linked to exponents (as the reverse relationship) get saved for one of the last things to be taught, if they are taught at all, because not only is teaching them with pen and paper hard, it's now even harder that slide rules and logarithms tables are out of fashion, so a lot of teachers skip them.

Computers make long slow calculations so much easier. We have the power to give people some very deep visualizations into things like how directly exponents and logarithms are related, we maybe shouldn't let the historic complexity hide the visual simplicity so much when we teach these early concepts. Logarithms are always going to feel complex and ugly to those that study them with pen and paper alone. We have the technology to improve that.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Downside of exporting SDK per microservice and best practices - <AUTHOR> Every microservice, exposes APIs. I've read somewhere that, it's a bad practice to export an SDK to other microservices because it limits the independent deployability. But is it true? What are other downsides of this approach? The problem is that, without the SDK, every microservice will need to request the same data, and validate it in some way - which is some boilerplate code which in general one would like to have automatically filled. <comment><USER2> You don't share code between the services, services call each other. This mean you will have some code that is duplicated between services, that's normal.

One microservice should never directly modify data another microservice manges, each service should manage and maintain its own data source to keep the responsibilities clear.

There are some other methods for certain common functionality, like using sidecars etc. There are pros and cons of it all, just depends on the situation and beliefs of the architect.

IME, most companies aren't ready for, nor do they need, a true full scale microservices architecture. Instead a hybrid approach is more likely to be successful, where certain key services are isolated but the rest of the app can still be more of a monolith. The trick is identifying those key services and separating them out. One I almost always separate as a start is authentication/authorization, done properly it will keep that code very focused, clean and more secure. Other likely candidates are any service that might ingest large amounts of data but is focused, this will let you scale it independently to support load and growth but not force you into a complete microservices environment which can be daunting to manage at first.</comment>


Mildred Dresselhaus,pioneer in the electronic properties of materials,dies at 86 - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2017/institute-professor-emerita-mildred-dresselhaus-dies-86-0221 <comment><USER2> More on Mildred Dresselhaus in this IEEE Spectrum profile [1] when she was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 2015.

[1] [http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/profiles/mildred- dresselh...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/profiles/mildred-dresselhaus- the-queen-of-carbon)</comment>


The Exceptional Beauty of Doom 3's Source Code - <AUTHOR> http://m.kotaku.com/5975610/the-exceptional-beauty-of-doom-3s-source-code <comment><USER2> The most tantalizing idea here was that "Local code should explain, or at least hint at the overall system design." I was disappointed that there was no further reference to it after the introduction.

In the end, much of the article was yet another articulation of syntactic preferences.

<comment><USER3> I had to stop and think about that one myself. But it makes sence, at least if you emphasize on "hint at". When you wander though the source code, cascading the layers of abstraction, and jumping from place to place, it's nice that the code is somewhat bound to the same context.. in a way. It could be naming conventions, and using the same names for the same things consistently throughout the code. Another way to hint at the overall design is strict structure, e.g. layers: DAO-layer handles persistence, Business-layer handles business, Service-layer handles the interfaces to other parts of the application / other applications, etc. Naming the code-artifacts accordingly hints strongly at what it's doing.

Also code that is not directly dependant on the context (business domain) should be put in a special place, in Java that would be in util-methods "hidden" away in some common-package. This way it does not clutter the rest of the code, and allows for easier reuse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> And don't forget the check the discussion about Carmack's comment from yesterday <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5055808> .

</comment><comment><USER5> More or less dupe <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5055808>

edit: spelling

</comment><comment><USER6> I wouldn't call it exceptional beauty. Code can be beautiful, but most projects in gaming (or actually any other branch), just as the author of this article says, gets released under pressure. And yes, this pressure is more common and results in bad, smelly or messy code. However, quake and doom's source code were released/open sourced after the game was released. Maybe they cleaned it beforehand... This does not take away they have a strict procedure and quality control during the development. I have seen/read the code and it is well written!

</comment><comment><USER7> It's also worth checking out Sanglard's code review at <http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/index.php>

</comment><comment><USER8> Could some one explain the preference for printf over streams?

I find streams much easier to maintain since there is only one list instead of printf's two. I find Niether is really good at large string interpolation jobs, but streams seem to scale better to me.

<comment><USER9> Only one of many examples of confusion on the part of the author of this gushing post.

Whether or not you prefer the appearance of using printf to streams, streams are objectively better even ignoring scale, because they are typesafe, where printf is the exact opposite of typesafe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The section on Minimal Templates is wrong on many points. There's usually no need to sacrifice genericness for readability; that's what typedefs are for. Also, C++11 now has foreach loops.

</comment><comment><USER11> How 'bout that.

I thought this would have been submitted days ago.</comment>


HP laptops found to have hidden keylogger - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42309371 <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15885206](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15885206)

</comment><comment><USER3> So... This has ballooned from debug code with no evidence of ever being maliciously used to "loss of confidentiality" and now instead of being a keylogger it's a "hidden keylogger."

Dramatic tone change for no actual new news. Sure this is getting the person's blog attention, but now I'm certain I don't agree with the alarmist title of the original post.

<comment><USER4> And the assertion that "an attacker with access to the computer could have enabled it to record what a user was typing" is somewhat silly.

If the attacker has access to the computer, why not install some other key logger that would send info to the attacker's site?

<comment><USER5> Claiming that an attacker would use this is nonsensical.

You need write access HKLM in order to change the registry key, if you have write access to HKLM you can inject your own driver (inc. keylogger) into the OS.

Plus the keypresses are context-less (i.e. you don't know what application, or window the keypress was sent to). A continuous stream of keypresses with no context is darn near useless, it doesn't even contain timestamps!

Any number of off-the-shelf keyloggers would do a far better job, all of which can be auto-loaded if you have HKLM write access. They'll even tell you the exact web page a keypress was sent to and manage the job of sending that information to you...

<comment><USER6> www.facebook.com<return> stephan<tab>123abc

doesn't seem useless to me.

<comment><USER7> A person that knows that you can use tab to jump between form fields probably uses a password manager anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "He said the keylogger was disabled by default, but an attacker with access to the computer could have enabled it to record what a user was typing.

According to HP, it was originally built into the Synaptics software to help debug errors."

How bad is this really then? If an attacker could enable it, they could install another key logger anyway if this feature didn't exist? Can HP enable it remotely (I'm guessing not)?

<comment><USER5> Exactly. You need administrator to enable this, and you need administrator to install a different keylogger. So then the question becomes: Why use this? Well, an attacker wouldn't but the press doesn't know anything about tech' so, this fact escapes them. This is like science reporting all over again...

If you have HP's update agent installed, HP are able to install drivers, so all bets are off as far as what HP could do to your machine. They could enable this via the update agent, but even assuming worst motivations there are a tens of better commercial keyloggers HP would use before this.

This debug functionality likely shouldn't be shipping in retail versions of the driver (defence in depth, etc) and should be removed. But there's a ton of misinformation surrounding this bug which is frustrating, the actual security community are already bored of this one.

<comment><USER9> >you need administrator to install a different keylogger

nope. you need administrator if you want to install for all users, but there's nothing preventing a user from keylogging himself.

<comment><USER5> You need write access to:

HKLM\Software\Synaptics\%ProductName%\Default

Which requires administrator or equivalent, so that is preventing a user from even keylogging themselves.

<comment><USER9> i meant you can install any other keylogger without admin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Less of a big deal than they're trying to make it out to be, it's disabled by default and a leftover debugging tool.

<comment><USER11> Twice in the same year?

[http://www.tomshardware.com/news/hp-keylogger-debugging- tool...](http://www.tomshardware.com/news/hp-keylogger-debugging-tool-driver- update,34418.html)

How many of these "debugging tools" has HP left enabled, I wonder?

<comment><USER12> It's not enabled. And someone with access to your computer can just install their own keylogger anyway, so why is this even a security threat?

<comment><USER13> Well we didn't know it was there at all not long ago. How sure can we be now that there is no hidden remote way to turn it on?

<comment><USER14> That's not a valid form of reasoning. Just because we didn't know about something before isn't an excuse to make random assumptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There are key loggers and Key Loggers. If you need admin rights to enable it and it saves the keystrokes locally, then you probably shouldn't care. Anyone with that level of access can install something worse.

<comment><USER16> It still is a keylogger in a consumer product.

<comment><USER17> So is Notepad.

<comment><USER18> Notepad runs in userland under the supervision of the kernel. This is a driver and could be running in kernel mode. It could make a big difference.

Even if it's not malicious, I still think it is a rather serious professional mistake to ship a driver containing potentially dangerous deadcode.

<comment> vertex-four There's plenty of "rather serious professional mistakes" in whatever operating system you happen to run in the first place - it's very rare that something that doesn't affect security in any meaningful way gets the attention this has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> At least with a PC, it's relatively easy to put in a fresh install, either Windows or some other operating system, which everyone in tech should do considering the recent HP/Lenovo issues (although I'm not sure if it would help I this situation if this particular exploit was in the official drivers).

It's considerably harder with phones, with all of them running non standard, non upstreamable kernels, and consumers not really having alternative OSes like we do with PCs.

<comment><USER20> Most PCs come without Windows installation media and instead rely on a restore partition (keylogger included). If you try to install off random other media (e.g. MSDN), it will not recognize the OEM license that comes with the computer.

Because of this, there is no trivial way (edit: OK, without buying Windows again) to get a vanilla install including only the Microsoft keylogger, but not the HP one.

<comment><USER21> Not true, you can reinstall the same version and it will pick up the licensing from the BIOS. You can even extract the key from the BIOS to use on a VM (same hardware) if your running linux.

It's even very easy to get the install media direct from Windows, not like back in XP days.

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software- download/windows10I...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software- download/windows10ISO)

<comment><USER20> Thanks, this used to be an issue at least Windows 8. I'm happily surprised if it's now as easy as downloading the ISO from Microsoft and reinstalling it on an OEM machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just makes me support OSS drivers more. Imagine what damage could be done with hidden code in GPU drivers nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER11> In related news:

[https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/28/hp-quietly-installs- syst...](https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/28/hp-quietly-installs-system- slowing-spyware-on-its-pcs/)

</comment><comment><USER23> To me, this is one more reason to never use the default install of an operating system.

In this specific case, if the debugging "leftovers" were part of the official drivers, then I would say there is a good indication towards preferring a free OS.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is this old news? I remember an audio driver (maybe?) causing a similar issue 6-9 months ago.

I worked for a HP reseller at the time and could replication the issue on almost every model in our labs

</comment><comment><USER25> Well, Synaptics Touchpad Drivers always sucked. "Windows Precision Touchpad" is pretty good but not quite on Apples level.

</comment><comment><USER26> previous [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14314795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14314795)

</comment><comment><USER27> Why does _obvious_ bullshit like this get so much visibility?

Why not "Windows found to have hidden keylogger", it also ships with functionality that allows you to capture keystrokes if you so insist?</comment>


Magic numbers: A meeting of mathemagical tricksters - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18950-magic-numbers-a-meeting-of-mathemagical-tricksters.html?full=true

<comment><USER2> This is such a great idea. The boy born on a Tuesday problem is so simple once it's explained and yet completely unexpected before you hear the answer.</comment>


An update on Buzz - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/update-on-buzz.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FMKuf+%28Official+Google+Blog%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> Hey Google (I know you guys lurk here),

Where is Buzz for Google Apps users - specifically corporate Apps users? From a personal point of view, I find Buzz completely uninteresting. But as a collaborative tool, I would love it.

Yammer is basically what I'm looking for, but for some reason they haven't done Google Apps integration.

I suppose an alternate question would be: Hey Yammer - why no Google Apps integration?

<comment><USER3> And if you do, do it such that company-private stays company-private, please!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A huge challenge for the big tech companies (Google, Apple, Facebook, etc.) will be _how to offer unprecedented convenience without stirring up privacy concerns._

The company that can best walk this tightrope will win.

Some of the areas we'll see this in are:

\- social search

\- location-based services

\- personalized recommendations

\- purchasing history (think Blippy + Amazon)

\- social network ranking and filtering (along the lines of what Buzz was doing)

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't include Apple in that list. I don't think they get it.

The big question for me is, will users be willing to give one big player all their data? Or will we have a system, much like in personal financing, in which many individuals "invest" their data with several companies and use "brokers" to manage it. I want to favor the latter paradigm because this way, you don't have one big player locking it down at users' expense.

Google and Facebook playing keep-away with each other opens up a big opportunity for the small guys to come in and be that one broker who will help users manage their location-based data, their status updates, etc and offer them great services. Greplin is one such player and I'm sure there will be others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hah, I had expected this to be an announcement on discontinuing Buzz, but apparently they have a multi-year plan ready.

<comment><USER7> Tons of people use Buzz, and it's pretty obvious that it's going to be part of their rumored "Circles" social network.

<comment><USER8> Yea, if it ever launches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Odd choice of title. I would have thought the post would be about where Buzz is going as a service, or perhaps what pieces of the the made it to other services.

Well worded blog post titles, matter, people.

<comment><USER10> I thought that same thing... It's a update on buzz' privacy data leak not the service. I would like Google to add Buzz support for Google Apps for Domains and an iPhone app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've never understood why Buzz faced an FTC investigation but Facebook never has. Or has it?

<comment><USER12> I think the main initial sin of buzz, is that they launched the service from Gmail without any warning the people were going to have their contact lists suddenly exposed without oversight to other people on their contact lists.

There were several horror stories about violent ex-husbands suddenly seeing the new boyfriend's contact information and the like.

Gmail users hadn't signed up for "a social network", just an email account with a contact list they had every right to assume was private.

<comment><USER13> Gmail automatically adds people to your contact list, too. It wasn't merely a contact list that was exposed; it was every Gmail user you'd ever talked to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My problem with buzz is that it uses my Email address as my social network. Am I alone or is it common that there's a pretty big barrier between personal email and social account?

</comment><comment><USER15> A privacy review sounds great - once every two years sounds terrible. This isn't the 1950s, Products are changed and released in months, if not weeks.

</comment><comment><USER16> And yet, I can't find a way to delete my Buzz account without removing my Google account.

<comment><USER17> Settings->Buzz->Disable Google Buzz

 _This will disable Google Buzz in Gmail and delete your Google Profile and Buzz posts. It will also disconnect any connected sites and unfollow you from anyone that you are following._

<comment><USER18> So does that affect the people you follow or who follow you in Google Reader? I've been hesitant to do this, because I've never been able to find an answer to that question. I've read through seemingly related articles on help.google.com a couple times (including just now), but it's never been clear to me with a comfortable level of certainty. The whole "connected sites" thing is a bit confusing...

<comment><USER19> I just did it and there was a warning about unfollowing everyone in Google Reader.

<comment><USER18> Do you mean the warning was there to tell you that you would need to manually unfollow everyone in Google Reader, or that it was there to tell you that everyone in Google Reader would be unfollowed by disabling Buzz?

<comment><USER19> I believe it was the latter but I don't follow anyone so I didn't read it all that carefully. You get to the warning before confirming that you want to disable Buzz, so try it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Google settles with FTC on Buzz: <http://mashable.com/2011/03/30/google-buzz- ftc-settlement/></comment>


New Zealand PM apologizes to Kim Dotcom (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nzherald.co.nz/national/news/video.cfm?c_id=1503075&gal_cid=1503075&gallery_id=128168

<comment><USER2> No text! I suggest that people who post a video with no accompanying text, include a warning flag "[Video Only]", in the fashion of "[PDF]", so people will be warned that they won't be able to (a) absorb the content very quickly compared to watching a video, or (b) copy/paste relevant sections for the purpose of editorial comment.

<comment><USER3> "Of course I apologize to Mr. Dotcom. I appologize to New Zealanders, because every New Zealander that sits within a category of holding a permanent residency, or New Zealand citizen, is entitled to be protected from the law, when it comes to GCSB, um.. we failed to provide appropriate protection to him."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apologies are nice; now, who is going to jail for what happened?

<comment><USER5> Excerpt:

"Do you take any responsibility for what's taken place, as Prime Minister?"

"Well ultimately of course I'm accountable for GCSB and I won't walk away from my responsibilities there, but I would simply say this is an operational matter, it was at a pretty basic level, and it's been the system in place for a very long time. It wasn't overly complex, it didn't come about because we changed something. The day I found out about it was the day I issued a full inquiry and I've been very upfront and honest about what's now gone wrong."

GCSB: Government Security Communications Bureau

<comment><USER6> Upfront and honest? He has been caught out lying about key dates when he found out about Dotcom spying, and according to today's paper his revised story is a lie too, as there may be a tape recording of him mentioning something about it considerably earlier. [http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objec...](http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10839932)

<comment><USER7> I give him props for ordering the review, saying something might be fishy and then the eventual apology so quickly though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A straight talking Prime Minister who is not trying to talk his way out of blame. Awesome.

<comment><USER9> If you've been following the story you would know this clip is a complete farce. When pressed for any real information he falls back on the tried and true "I don't recall".

It's still up for debate whether he has been lying this entire time and knew about the entire thing.

[http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&obj...](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10839932)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So now the PM has apologized, what ramifications does that have for Dotcom, Megaupload and the ongoing legal stuff?

Does Megaupload get all it's servers and data back, immeidately?

Are all the charges against Dotcom and Megaupload dropped?

It is now clear the American authorities broke the law, and Dotcom can pursue them?

</comment><comment><USER11> what a mess</comment>


Why not a bytecode VM in the browser? - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/tb/nkkcm

<comment><USER2> Couldn't even be bothered to use the correct non-reddit link, huh?

<http://www.dartlang.org/articles/why-not-bytecode/></comment>


What Every Software Developer Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html

<comment><USER2> I'm just reaching the end of a pretty soul-destroying consulting project. The client side is C++, and uses a lot of strings. To my horror, there still doesn't seem to be a de-facto standard way of dealing with the various unicode encodings in C++, even after my multi-year C++ hiatus. I ended up using the WideCharToMultiByte() and MultiByteToWideChar() Win32 functions, which are rather yucky. I'd fully expected boost to have an answer to this problem by now, but that only offers UCS-4 <-> UTF-8 conversion.

What libraries do C and C++ programmers use to hold unicode strings and convert between encodings these days?

<comment><USER3> Not quite answering your question, but worth noting that C++0x supports various unicode encodings for string literals:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B0x#New_string_literals>

There's also a link to a proposed boost solution here:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/511280/is-there-stl- and-u...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/511280/is-there-stl-and- utf8-friendly-c-wrapper-for-icu-or-other-powerful-unicode-lib)

Doesn't quite sound like the standard way that you're looking for, but moving closer.

Edit:

"ICU today is de-facto standard Unicode/localization library" from a mailing discussion of the boost solution. And <http://art-blog.no- ip.info/cppcms/blog/post/43> has an interesting comparison of a few libraries, but not too comprehensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My favorite author on the subject of Unicode is Mark Pilgram in his book Dive in to Python 3 (it's relevant for any language):

<http://diveintopython3.org/strings.html>

"Some Boring Stuff You Need To Understand Before You Can Dive In."

</comment><comment><USER5> It's worth bringing this up from time to time, if for nothing else then to educate new developers.

</comment><comment><USER6> What happens when I copy and paste?

Do I copy the code points, or the encoded characters--the bytes--along with what encoding is used? Similarly, when I paste, is it the code points I paste which are instantaneously encoded using the application's encoding scheme?

</comment><comment><USER7> Just yesterday I ran into this exact problem.

In PHP curl_exec returns data in the raw encoding of the source. Fine, some people will want that. But I want to do things with the data, so I want it in UTF8.

So, I ended up writing my own curl_exec_utf8 function which I'm sure is wrong for many edge cases, but it is 2010! Why is there no decent ways to deal with charsets?

Here is the function, in case any of you need it, or want to point out how it is hopelessly broken : [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2510868/php- convert-web-p...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2510868/php-convert-web- page-to-utf8/2513938#2513938)

<comment><USER8> If we are lucky they will fix it before 2011. <http://www.php.net/~scoates/unicode/render_func_data.php?x=0> Complete 70.70

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For Ruby, I can highly recommend this series of articles: <http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/understanding_m17n>

</comment><comment><USER10> From 2003; it might be worth putting that in the title.

<comment><USER11> Hm but only really related to the recent Joel and the he's not blogging anymore situation.

What he says is still very much valid. It's a nice intro into Unicode. Quite refreshing to read.

<comment><USER11> Actually I just miss that he doesn't state anything about the downsides of UTF-8. Like that you need to go through the string to determine how many characters it has, due to their (potentially) variable length.

<comment><USER12> I'm still trying to find one valid use for length of string in unicode characters. What one usually needs to know is length of string as it's rendered by some output device, which is not related to count of unicode characters in any useful way. Even for fixed point fonts you can have glyphs that are composed from multiple unicode characters or characters whose glyphs occupy two consecutive positions.

<comment><USER13> Twitter has a limit of 140 "codepoints". Not bytes. Not glyphs.

<comment><USER14> That's weird, I thought its limit was deliberately low enough to fit into an SMS message, which has a limit of 140 octets (160 characters in some 7-bit encoding GSM uses). Do they actually allow, say, 140 kanji?

<comment><USER13> [http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development- talk/brow...](http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development- talk/browse_thread/thread/9a106a68b3227af2#)

<comment><USER15> That post basically just says go look at this wiki page: <https://twitterapi.pbworks.com/Counting-Characters>

Why not link to that in the first place?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> And of course, all developers should be familiar with U+F8D0 through U+F8FF.</comment>


Novelist Vikram Chandra on writing and building software for writers - <AUTHOR> https://leeschneider.substack.com/p/ep-10-on-a-call-with-vikram-chandra <comment><USER2> >I learned from reading a blog he wrote that he doesn't outline his long, complex novels. He writes with purposeful ambiguity.

> As you begin, you know very little about what the book is. But the thoughts > and visions persist, which means that this character and her world have some > kind of special energy for you, and you want to know more about this > character, what her situation is. - Vikram Chandra

>This means that he may spend years writing his way into a story, leaving big plot holes, learning about the characters as he goes, until the novel comes into focus.

>This seems like a scary way to write, but it has successful practitioners. His first novel, Red Earth and Pouring Rain, won the 1996 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book.

Ironically, this book made me give up on reading fiction for about a decade. It's probably the only book I left midway, as an adult.</comment>


8 grams of thorium could replace gasoline in cars  - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/8-grams-of-thorium-could-replace-gasoline-in-cars-20110812/

<comment><USER2> Sounds like another "just-around-the-corner-invest-now!" alternative fuel company.

* A lot of wordy rhetoric about "clean" and "green" power, not technical references.

* 200kg engines that generate hundreds of MW of power

* Claims prototypes are coming "very soon" (2014)

* Typical "lone inventor through sheer genius discovers new untapped, almost unlimited source of energy"

* Picture of Obama on the site ("Look govt. is investing in this too, so should you, get ahead of the game!").

<sarcasm> Not bad. I bet some will buy in. There is a profit to be made off of pedalling "just-around-the-corner" amazing energy breakthrough deals. But in this case first order of business should be finding a better website designer. If they are peddaling this for "investors" they need more flash, some animations, maybe some fake graphs.</sarcasm>

</comment><comment><USER3> Source article is much better: <http://wardsauto.com/ar/thorium_power_car_110811/>

</comment><comment><USER4> I think the biggest hurdle will be containing the thorium so that a head-on collision between two cars at 100mph each doesn't leak radioactive material all over the road.

I can't comment on the difficulty of building a nuclear engine weighing 227kg (I assume he means 250kW), but I would have thought the space industry would be the first to utilise such a breakthrough, and I'm not aware of the widespread adoption of those engines over solar panels.

If these challenges are met then such an engine could be a viable alternative to the batteries in electric cars.

<comment><USER5> For an auto engine it is beyond hopeless (economics, safety). This particular case is a crackpot/scammer with no substance at all.

Very small nuclear-powered engines are possible. There were several launched on space satellites by the US and USSR, i.e.

[http://www.etec.energy.gov/history/Major-Operations/SNAP- Ove...](http://www.etec.energy.gov/history/Major-Operations/SNAP- Overview.html)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954>

SNAP weighed under 430 kg for the entire power system (note this is a real fission reactor, not a radioisotope heat source like many space probes). These use highly-enriched uranium (weapons grade) to get very small cores.

Nuclear reactors have been proposed for interplanetary probes, such as the (recently cancelled) Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, which would have used a nuclear reactor powering an ion thruster. It's completely viable.

[http://nssdcftp.gsfc.nasa.gov/miscellaneous/jupiter/JIMO_Bac...](http://nssdcftp.gsfc.nasa.gov/miscellaneous/jupiter/JIMO_Background/JIMO.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Also tested for aircraft propulsion.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Nuclear_Propulsion>

tl;dr They discovered it was a bad idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Stevens has worked out you'd require a 227kg, 250MW thorium engine in order to power a typical road car."

250MW is around 333,333 horsepower. A 250kW, 333 horsepower, engine seems more likely to me.

<comment><USER2> A 250MW engine could power a city and its suburbs.

"Keep that foot on the gas, we need lights downtown for another couple of hours"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone have more information on exactly how this works? Does it mean 200+ Kg of thorium, only 8 grams of which would be used up during a car's life time?

<comment><USER9> The engine, turbine, housing and all that weighs over 200kg. The thorium weighs 8g.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Three questions:

1) How much would 8g of Thorium cost? How much would the engine cost? Even with economies of scale, I can't imagine that it won't be an astronomical investment.

2) Could enough thorium ever be produced? Can it work on a North American ~1car/person scale?

3) Finally, is this _really_ a good use of the technology? Isn't it better to just drive less, use public/bike/walking for transportation, live closer to work, etc?

</comment><comment><USER11> Unfortunately, the oil companies are too powerful to allow something like this to succeed. I would be very surprised if anything ever came of this.

<comment><USER11> I guess being a realist earns you downvotes these days?

See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F></comment></comment>


The Thrill of Flying the SR-71 Blackbird - <AUTHOR> http://www.vfp62.com/SR-71.html <comment><USER2> I just wanted to chime in that the reason I'm a programmer today is that my grandpa helped program the navigation systems on the SR-71. I found that slightly inspirational :)

<comment><USER3> That's so cool. Imagine, most of us don't even have dad programmers, and you have a granddad programmer and one working on such interesting stuff to boot.

Is he still alive today? And if so does he still work with computers?

<comment><USER2> He passed (at 82, I believe) about seven years ago. It was both sad and not sad, as he lived a long and amazing life.

He programmed the guidance systems of one of the Titan series rockets. He also was in the Navy in WWII. At one point, his destroyer was sunk, and spent a few days in the open ocean before being rescued. He was also present at the Japanese surrender ceremony.

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of learning to play chess with him over Christmas vacation. He was a truly kind man, and an inspiration to many.

<comment><USER4> My dad passed away a few years ago. He worked in defense electronics for 30+ years. It's kind of weird that I know very little of what he actually worked on. I know he did a lot of work on what became GPS and on Tomahawk and F/A-18 projects, but so much of what he worked on will probably always be a mystery to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the more complete version of the "ground speed check" story (which I heard from Brian Shul directly): he says he and Walt hadn't really "clicked" yet, that they were just kinda co-inhabitants of the same jet but not really a team, until that moment. It was when Brian was about to ask the question, and the radio clicked on and Walt asked the exact same question, that he felt they finally became a team.

For those concerned with the level of "mysticism" in this: Brian Shul is a remarkable pilot from a technical perspective. But do you really want to read his technical descriptions of flight? He's done a good job of describing the sensations in a way non-pilots can understand.

<comment><USER6> You can read the full version of the story here:

<http://blog.johnwurth.com/?p=110>

<comment><USER7> Definitely worth reading, more detail on that incident that the parent article. And just awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> i find this [[http://www.sunlakesaeroclub.org/updates_web_data/050828/SR71...](http://www.sunlakesaeroclub.org/updates_web_data/050828/SR71_breakup.htm)] to be even more amazing...

<comment><USER3> Wow. That's just plain scary. It also makes me appreciate more why high jet fighter suits look like space suits, without it the guy would have surely been dead.

Another interesting bit: "The SR-71 had a turning radius of about 100 mi. at that speed and altitude".

And "The ejection seat had never left the airplane; I had been ripped out of it by the extreme forces, seat belt and shoulder harness still fastened.". Just wow...

What a pity his buddy didn't make it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If anyone is interested in a bit more of the history behind the aircraft (also the U-2 and the F-117), do check out Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir... by Ben Rich

It's a great read!

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316743003>

<comment><USER10> Seconded, it's a fascinating book, both as a memoir of how to do fantastically ambitious engineering, and also how to manage a remarkable group of engineers. The analogue for the web would be something like reading an account of Google written by Page or Brin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author states that he graduated high school in 1966 and that he built a model of the the SR-71 when he was 10, presumably 1958 if he graduated at 18. He also states that the SR-71 was designed in 1960. Some of this doesn't quite seem right.

<comment><USER3> There is a Colonel Walter L. Watson though:

<http://scafricanamerican.com/public/pdf/honorees/112004.pdf>

The story feels a little strange though, the amount of 'mystic' connection between the plane and the pilot would make me worried if someone that prone to it would be piloting a 747 I'm a passenger on.

The pilot would be 'Brian Shul' <http://www.sleddriver.com/>

<comment><USER12> _The story feels a little strange though, the amount of 'mystic' connection between the plane and the pilot would make me worried if someone that prone to it would be piloting a 747 I'm a passenger on._

Really? "Mysticism" scares you so much that you'd rather your flight be piloted by a clock punching union man then what the Air Force deemed to be one of the best?

<comment><USER3> Strawman much ? There is a long way to go between a clock punching union man and a person that does not let his love for the machine get in the way of objectivity.

Personally I think that those bits are just to juice up the story, but you really have to wonder at passages like: "Like the combat veteran she is, the jet senses the target area and seems to prepare herself." and "There seems to be a confirmed trust now, between me and the jet; she will not hesitate to deliver whatever speed we need".

<comment><USER13> At least two things at play there:

1) Intuition. His non-conscious brain has developed an understanding of the machine.

2) Focus. When you're a warrior in his situation, you can't be second-guessing your horse. That calculation was made on the ground, and now he's committed -- to be effective, he needs to be fully confident that he's well-taken care of. The human brain seems to be wired for a euphoric reaction to complete and utter trust (parental/social/religious bonding?), and that he was able to let that system kick in at such a moment speaks a lot about his abilities as a pilot and about the engineering feat embodied in that jet.

<comment><USER13> Ok, and one more thing -- poetic license. The guy is a great storyteller.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not a big plane or car nut, but the SR-71 just emanated cool. Having a modified carbon copy as the X-Men's "Blackbird" certainly helped...

</comment><comment><USER15> The speeds mentioned in this article (Mach 3.5+), are significantly higher than the official airspeed records, set by the SR-71 itself (about Mach 2.9):

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fastest_aircraft>

Fascinating.

<comment><USER16> You're calculating it with speed of sound at sea level. At 80,000 feet the 3,530 km/h speed record is Mach 3.289 according to wolframalpha, still bellow the 3.45 claimed in the article. Although it is understandable that this mission wouldn't count for a speed record.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "With all inlet doors tightly shut, at 3.24 Mach, the J-58s are more like ramjets now, gulping 100,000 cubic feet of air per second."

Wow... what an awesome job to be able to fly one of these birds!

I had a friend in Boston who first flew fighters (F-16 IIRC) and then managed to switch over to the B-2 Stealth Bomber. Apparently it is not common to switch between the two types of platforms. It's a shame he was retired from the AF or I would have begged a ride. :-)

</comment><comment><USER18> This reads a bit like fan fiction. Anyone know its authenticity?

<comment><USER19> It seems to be from the book 'Sled Driver' by Brian Shul [1] according to the following website [2], on which I found the same article of the parent link.

I'm a bit confused though, as I have read the part about the groundspeed check before, I found it again here [3]. This version is longer and worded more beautifully in my opinion. The poster below that is mentioning that it's from the same book so I'm a bit confused.

[1] <https://galleryonepublishing.com/sleddriver/index.html> [2] [http://blogs.jobdig.com/wwds/2007/11/19/sr-71-now-that- was-s...](http://blogs.jobdig.com/wwds/2007/11/19/sr-71-now-that-was-some- airplane/) [3] [http://www.expressjetpilots.com/the- pipe/showthread.php?3197...](http://www.expressjetpilots.com/the- pipe/showthread.php?31978-ASPEN-20-SR-71-Groundspeed-Check)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you'd like to get a close look at one, there's one in the SAC museum, just outside of Omaha, NE.

<http://www.sasmuseum.com/2008/11/21/sr-71a-blackbird/>

<comment><USER21> There is also one in the AirZoo in Kalamazoo, MI. <http://www.airzoo.org/> <http://www.airzoo.org/page.php?menu_id=3>

Picture of the SR-71: <http://www.airzoo.org/page.php?menu_id=108>

It is a _very_ nice museum, well worth some visits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Reading this article was the most interesting experience I have had in a long time. The passion and feel of the description and the imagery being described really resonated with my geeky soul. RIP SR-71. You are a truly magnificent creation.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've loved this plane since I read about it in popular science as a grade school kid. I still remember this line from the article, "after it lands it so hot you can fry an egg on the fuselage".

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1250fZuhUg>

Issues with fuel reported in the story @3:09.

</comment><comment><USER25> All I can say about that page is thanks Readability for actually making it readable/viewable! (What's going on with the massive images?)

</comment><comment><USER26> some great blackbird info on this site, including the flight manual! <http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/>

</comment><comment><USER27> If this plane looked ugly, would anyone care that it is the fastest plane ever made?

<comment><USER28> Possibly not. The X-15 (while arguably a rocket with wings rather than an aeroplane) was much faster and less pretty, and you won't find so many nine- year-olds with posters of it.

<comment><USER29> It also never flew a real mission. The SR-71 was a real airplane that could take off, fly a mission, and land. The X-15 had to be ferried into space by another aircraft, then it flew around for a while, and then it could destroy part of itself, and finally land.

Pretty or not, the SR-71 was a lot more practical.

<comment><USER30> Never flew a real mission? It was an experimental _research_ tool. Or is Mach 6.72 not 'real' enough for you?

It was carried aloft, not into space, by a B-52.

<comment><USER29> I'm just explaining why I think kids don't have posters of it on their walls. Experimental research plane? Yawn. Real plane? Awesome.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are there no closed captions for the "vocabulary impaired"? - <AUTHOR> Such a feature would automatically show you the definitions of difficult words that you may not know.
That way, you don't even need to pause your movie/TV show to look up the meaning of a word.
Wouldn't that improve vocabulary significantly and be relatively easy to implement? <comment><USER2> Not sure what exactly you mean. Do you mean subtitles like this? (with apologies to George Lucas and thanks to [http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/](http://xkcd.com/simplewriter/) )

It is a time of people's war. Space ships of people who do not agree, hitting from a hidden home, have won their first win against the bad Many-Star-Group Big-Country. During the fight, people who steal hidden information for people who do not agree managed to steal hidden plans to the Big-Country's greatest attack thing, the DEATH STAR, a hard-metal covered space house with enough power to put away an entire large space home ball.

In such case, it would probably be better to see _both_ the simplified and original subtitles, no?

</comment><comment><USER3> It isn't a pain point for most people. In addition to that, for some people like myself, it is the opposite of a pain point as I don't mind learning new words by looking them up.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's wrong with learning new words WITHOUT looking them up?

<comment><USER2> It does sound as an interesting experiment. I wonder if there's a thesaurus mapping English to (a) simple English...although I can imagine that output of such experiment would not be exactly fluent.

I'm not sure that I'd be able to keep up with all the state - 1.story, 2.visual, 3.spoken word, 4.simplified subtitles and their map to 3 (even "normal" subtitles are pretty distracting).

edit: Let me abuse another classic for an example - something like that (emphasized words would be the subtitles)?

"All _ancient land name_ is _split_ into three parts, one of which the _tribe name_ _live_ , the _tribe name_ another, those who in their own language are called _tribe name_ , in ours _tribe name_ , the third. All these differ from each other in language, _what they do_ and laws. The river Garonne _splits_ the Gauls from the Aquitani; the Marne and the Seine _split_ them from the Belgae. Of all these, the Belgae are the _most brave_ , because they are _most far_ from the _Roman cities_ and _development_ of [our] _part of the world_ , and _sellers_ _not often_ _go_ to them and _bring_ those things which tend to _make weak_ the mind; and they are the _closest_ to the _tribe name_ , who _live_ beyond the Rhine, with whom they are _all the time_ _making_ war; for which reason the _tribe name_ also _are better than_ the rest of the Gauls in _being brave_ , as they _fight_ with the Germans in almost daily _fights_ , when they either _chase away_ them from their own _lands_ , or themselves _attack_ on their _borders_.

<comment><AUTHOR> Instead of simplified subtitles, you would just see the definition of a rare word that was just said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How do you know what is and is not a rare word.

<comment><USER2> Language corpus: feed a large collection of texts into database, sort by word frequency. The lower the frequency, the rarer the word.</comment></comment>


Total Immersion: How I Learned to Swim Effortlessly in 10 Days and You Can Too  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/08/13/total-immersion-how-i-learned-to-swim-effortlessly-in-10-days-and-you-can-too/

<comment><USER3> Blog Spam

Summary: after practicing swimming with various techniques for months, he bought a book titled "Total Immersion" and was saved. Not exactly what the title states.

Despite claiming that he's tried to learn to swim for years this is the sole blog post on swimming. But the blog _does_ have ads for "endless pool" swimming machines.

The hand-written notes, difficult to read for a non-swimmer, are a perfect lead-in to get a browser to buy the book. He could have typed in those notes, but that they're hand-written may give them more credence. In browsing the notes questions arise: what is a "Russian", how do I do "sensory drills" and how do they differ from "skill drills"? Guess I'll have to buy a book, a DVD or pay for a special course to find out.

This is good blog spam for Total Immersion, which has been around for years. Maybe it will sell some books for them. I wonder how much they paid for it.

As Astro Zombie stated on Metafilter: "I learned that simply avoiding Tim Ferriss saves you a lot of time."

[http://www.metafilter.com/78084/More-than-4-hours-spent- hati...](http://www.metafilter.com/78084/More-than-4-hours-spent-hating-Tim- Ferriss)

<comment><USER4> I like to think of Tim Ferris as a person with some brilliant insights who come off as a narcissistic individual and smell like a motivational snake oil saleman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've always loved water and I've always been swimming and diving for fun but I've never been taught to swim for real. Never went to swimming school or had anyone teach me swimming.

So I'm a self-learner, as in programming.

I knew could get better by hiring an instructor or taking a class but I've decided I like to hack myself. Especially, I wanted to experiment with self- analysis and trying to engage into self-correcting style of swimming, optimizing problems out of my way as I become aware of them. For the setting, I wanted to learn about the art of breast stroke. I wanted to learn to swim breast stroke well.

I first measured my progress by swimming until I felt exhausted (with occasional small breaks at the ends). When I started, I could do a mere 500m doing breast stroke and all my muscles were dead at that point. Then, my muscles got much better and I could swim slightly more but not much. Eventually, through careful thinking, trial-and-error, and finding a way I could move in a relaxed manner, I apparently learned something and within months I could swim 2000 meters of breast stroke in about one hour. There were still faster swimmers in the pool but I had overdone myself by a few times, and that was good enough.

In the second phase, I began to measure my progress by counting how many strokes I would do per 25 (or 50) meters, i.e. one stretch of a pool. I started at about 15 and again, by experimenting, finding the easiest movement, and dozens of hours of trial-and-error I got that down to about 8-9, given I was really really warm and not exhausted enough physically. So, I knew that again, I could do something more right, even if at the slight expense of excess muscle wear.

Now I'm in my third phase which is measuring my effortlessness. I try to swim without feeling the exertion of force at all. If I notice a slip (like a kick that doesn't propel me forward enough) or if I notice that I have to continuously [over]use certain muscles (which then start running out of juice), I try to self-correct myself into not doing that, into not having to use muscle power per se. I can surely walk 12 hours a day if I have to, why couldn't I theoretically swim 12 hours a day? The results so far are that I can occasionally "fly on the water"; that is, engage into some kind of a suitable circular moment that allows me to flow forward as if riding on a sine wave perfectly aligned to my movements, giving me a practically endless slope downwards. I can't describe it but it feels great!

The next phase is to try to get more speed while maintaining the effortlessness that I will hopefully achieve. I will need more muscle power but only slightly: my idea is that by using the slight advance in muscle power and by developing the right timing and alignment, I could apply them both together and gain more than I put in.

I don't know about the fifth phase, or that if one exists. Will see about that.

<comment><USER6> _"The results so far are that I can occasionally "fly on the water"; that is, engage into some kind of a suitable circular moment that allows me to flow forward as if riding on a sine wave perfectly aligned to my movements, giving me a practically endless slope downwards. I can't describe it but it feels great!"_

That's the 'point of enlightenment' I mentioned below. Very cool that you figured it out on your own. Gratz!

Your 2nd phase measurement of how many strokes you do per 25m is a good one. Once you've learned how to glide and keep your momentum between strokes, you can really stretch the distance you move per stroke.

<comment><USER5> Hey, thanks for pointing out the enlightenment. I read your post now and I could totally relate to it. I'm very glad I got the confirmation that I'm onto something now, so thanks for that ;)

Figuring it out on my own was deliberate as I like to decipher how things work, including myself. I don't intend to become a successful competitive swimmer so I could easily afford the time I spent on that. And all that time has been fun as hell!

Of course, like I said, I'm only in the middle of the more recent phase, thus I only get into the "flying mode" occasionally; it will take more practice to be able to stay in it. I'm certain that it will come in time.

One thing I've noticed is that glancing sideways at the passing track markers keeps me better in the rhythm (in breast stroke): I can see exactly when my momentum stalls or would stall so I can adjust my timing accordingly. It's becomes much harder if I keep my head straight ahead, due to the lack of immediate visual feedback.

<comment><USER6> Ah breaststroke. It's actually harder to glide in breaststroke than freestyle because in freestyle you can at least have one arm fully extended ~95% of the time, keeping you longer in the water (and less draggy) for a longer portion of the time.

Breaststroke on the other hand requires constant bunching up and exploding into a glide, but it's alot easier to lose your momentum between glides when you have to bunch up again.

Cool trick with watching the side lane markers to time your stroke to your momentum. Hacking swimming ftw. Once you've got it down, you might be able write a post with all your hacks and get it posted on Lifehacker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I did the TI program and went to one of the bootcamps. My stroke count for a pool length went from 27 to 14 during the bootcamp. If you're skinny, you may have trouble with some of the buoyancy drills - you may actually have to lean downwards (not straight horizontal like more normal body-mass folks). The TI drills are tough - as always if you want to learn quickly - take a workshop.

Swimming like a fish is like a sort of meditation. And like any meditation it requires concentrated practice. Timothy Ferris is somewhere between the elite athletes who come to New Paltz, NY to perfect their technique and average recreational swimmers.

The difference between an elite, National-level swimmer and normal swimmers is that they are up to three times more efficient. Instead of 97% of your energy going into fighting water resistance, elite swimmers can put 9% into propulsion. The reason why we feel like we've run the 100 yard dash when you are a beginning swimmer is that you've fought a wall of water 25m long.

Good luck. I highly recommend TI. Swimming is one of the best exercises for counteracting the strain of bad posture+typing.

</comment><comment><USER8> After I read this article several months ago, I went out and tried it out myself. Prior to trying it out, I could swim about 20m freestyle before becoming exhausted (yet run 10 miles without an issue). If he in fact learned TI well in 10 days, that would be an impressive feat. I swam for about 1 hour in the morning for about a month and am now able to swim several 100m without too much difficulty. Still, I have a long ways to go to become what I would consider effortless in the water (and even further to conform to the TI techniques). Although my technique is 10x more effective and efficient now, my main issue, though, has always been poor breathing techniques. Learning how to properly breathe was the most important thing I learned during the time - which oddly enough I did not learn from TI even.

Still, although far from an expert (yet), I'd definitely recommend the TI techniques to learn how to swim efficiently and well.

</comment><comment><USER9> It reads like an affiliate advert for total immersion.

<comment><USER10> It is. He makes money off the amazon links, and possibly other ways.

<http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/ftc-disclosure-blog/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've just taken up swimming myself, and this is exactly what I was looking for: a good technique which builds up your stroke. I'll definitely be trying it out.

For anyone out there who wants to start exercising but hasn't started, give swimming a try. One tip that changed my mind completely about swimming: wear goggles. I'd never worn them before, but it really made swimming much funner for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just started swimming yesterday. Do you recommend getting a coach or can one learn swimming by himself? How long does it typically to start swimming? I've just learnt to swim at the moment.

<comment><USER12> If you can spend the money, get a coach that will take a video of your stroke above and below water. The feedback from watching those videos will be invaluable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Some interesting tips, but in my experience (also swimphobic) the technique wasn't the hurtle - being comfortable underwater was. Maybe his suggestion of goggles helps, but getting over this hump seems more psychological than technique. In that case, it's personal will/discipline.

I think learning in a swallow pool with my girlfriend would be the best bet for me.

<comment><USER14> You get more comfortable underwater with practice. I did swimming in college, and the first few times, I could't swim a full length because I always started coughing, taking water through my nose (very unpleasant), in my ears. Soon enough, you stop doing that - you just learn reflexively how to avoid it - <USER2> you get used to what you cannot avoid. And you start asking yourself what the big deal is when the beginners go though the same ordeal.

I'm not sure this was your type of comfort problem, but I hope it helps.

<comment><USER13> You nailed it. I actually had an incident when I was in swim class when I was very young where I sucked in a lot of water through my nose. It left an deep impression as I often flashback to this when I smell pool chlorine. I like to think I'm over it, but I haven't been in a pool since. Soon enough though.

<comment><USER3> You've heard of "water-boarding" perhaps? That's what you experienced, except with water-boarding you don't get to come to the surface.

Back to swimming:

one never overcomes the sensations, one merely learn that it will happen, that it's unpleasant, and that, when it occurs, to control one's response.

Here's what you want to learn to do when you get a snootful of H20:

1\. stop inhaling immediately: close the throat and back of the nose,

2\. exhale sharply through the nose, no matter how little breath your lungs are holding. Use your belly muscles to force the cough,

3\. get to the surface and _slowly_ breathe in a full breath,

4\. then sharply exhale through mouth and nose to clear the airways.

Repeat as required. You can practice this on dry land.

I guess what makes this really difficult is that one must learn to suppress the feeling that "I'm gonna die!".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> His tips are very good. I also like the book "Breakthrough Swimming". It's really amazing how the techniques change/improve. About 8 years ago I was taking "triathlon" swim lessons and they were showing things unveiled at the recent olympics. I went from being a slow swimmer to one of the faster ones.

Incidentally, as a kid I was a lifeguard and even taught some swim lessons. I developed a fear of water after nearly drowning saving someone in the ocean and took up triathlons to get over it.

In general I think people try to swim too fast and get out of breath. They don't "feel" the water to sense when they are gliding or impeding the motion. I' especially impressed the author mentioned reaching down further than you expect because that really helps you get your feet up and reduce your "frontal area".

</comment><comment><USER16> i'll vouch for total immersion. i can't float while laying still in water (my legs sink). i could barely swim 2 pool lengths.

friend got me the total immersion dvd, there's a series of exercises that help you focus on balanced weight distribution in the water, full body rotation for more efficient swimming motion and easier breathing, etc. the exercises slowly work you into a easy freestyle. i went from basically unable to swim 4 laps to .75km swim in open water in about 6 weeks.

not really anything special, its just that a lot of people haven't invested the time into good technique. just like any other skill, follow the pro tips, dedicate some time and you'll get better.

</comment><comment><USER17> As someone who regularly swims 100 plus 25 meter lengths in a session, I can testify that the Total Immersion book and swimming style can make a big difference. It's all about balance in the water and builds it up over a series of 'karate kid' drills that break the stroke down into learnable chunks that all eventually come together.

</comment><comment><USER18> One of the things he doesn't mention is that all of these improvements in technique can be learned more easily by simply swimming long distance in open water. When there is no turning point and no way to rest you are automatically forced into longer, more gliding strokes. Also, the colder water forces you to focus on efficiency. I've been a decent swimmer all my life but when I started swimming in open water last year I first was intimidated by how much more challenging it was & then by how quickly your body and technique are forced to adapt to the new environment.

</comment><comment><USER19> That sounds like a good technique if you're relatively fit already, e.g. runners who want to branch out into triathlon, as opposed to someone who wants to take up swimming for health reasons. Am I right?

</comment><comment><USER20> Like any piece of code that claims to do xyz, the best way to try it is to run it. So, I tried the TI hints and such at the pool today. It definitely helped me feel more comfortable in the water and the less is more helps. Perhaps the most useful bit was that rotating shoulders.</comment>


How I Interview Customers - <AUTHOR> http://customerdevlabs.com/2013/11/05/how-i-interview-customers/

<comment><USER2> This is great... I love the 5 tips for how to get the right insight from potential customers.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the tip about not asking about the future.</comment>


Ask HN: I want dead-simple Java web app hosting with built in email support - <AUTHOR>

I usually run on AWS but I don't really want to have to set up postfix, etc. Suggestions? <comment><USER2> Use third party email like fastmail.fm, google apps for business, or others and use whatever host you want. (Email is usually pretty cheap from these like $50/user/year)

</comment><comment><USER3> Google App Engine supports JavaMail.</comment>


ACCC alleges Google misled consumers about expanded use of personal data - <AUTHOR> https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/accc-alleges-google-misled-consumers-about-expanded-use-of-personal-data <comment><USER2> FYI, the ACCC has successfully won victories against Steam refusing to provide refunds for faulty games. Just because it's a digital product doesn't mean you don't have consumer rights.

If you buy a physical good and it doesn't work towards its described specifications, you deserve a refund.

If you buy a digital good and you meet the system requirements but it doesn't work, you deserve a refund.

<comment><USER3> I think the steam problem was a store vs publisher issue. When No Man's Sky first released, you couldn't refund if you had player for more than 2 hours even though it was a faulty game. After the bad press spread, Steam stepped in and accepted refunds far past the 2 hour 'time played' requirement [0]. If Gamestop sells a faulty or unfinished game by EA (like Anthem), should Gamestop be obligated to refund you or should they ask the publisher if they want to refund the customer since the publisher might promise better future stability?

0: [https://bgr.com/2016/08/29/no-mans-sky-refund-steam-pc- ps4-s...](https://bgr.com/2016/08/29/no-mans-sky-refund-steam-pc-ps4-support- ticket/)

<comment><USER4> Australian Consumer Law has many provisions based on the fact that many companies are not always able to be fully sued in Australia. In order to prevent this the end retailer is responsible for ensuring consumer rights. Of course the expectation is that the final retailer then claims against their distributor who then claims against the manufacturer / publisher.

However this has been a problem with some digital marketplaces as they entered the Australian market. For tax reasons many products were sold via a Irish or Singaporean subsidiary and thus tried to avoid taxation on the sales (even some were selling in $AU from these offshore locations). As these loopholes were closed many companies essentially accepted they had Australian presences (mostly due to the changes around tax). However Australia has some fairly strong consumer protections (at least on paper), fairly broad statutes (terms like "reasonable durability" and "fit for purpose") and a fairly active consumer rights defender (ACCC) and many organisations have avoided Furthermore consumer rights cannot be removed via EULA agreements and such. Many organisations didn't change their systems for Australia as they were "mostly" compliant, and considered that digital goods were "New" and "Different" from the rules that affected physical products and retail operators.

So under Australian Law.... yes. Gamestop (or more likely EB games in Australia) is liable for the refund. However they can then turn to their suppliers and sue them for breach of contract for supplying defective products. It is reasonable Future stability doesn't come into it, as the product was sold misleadingly. EB Games has already been taken to task over this for Fallout 76 and trying to claim people aren't entitled to a refund.

0: [https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/eb-games-undertakes- to...](https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/eb-games-undertakes-to-refund- consumers-for-the-fallout-76-game)

<comment><USER5> * Many organisations didn't change their systems for Australia as they were "mostly" compliant, and considered that digital goods were "New" and "Different" from the rules that affected physical products and retail operators.*

And their arrogance cost them dearly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Original link is now access denied, ACCC have posted a correction that fixes an example they used: [https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/correction-accc- allege...](https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/correction-accc-alleges- google-misled-consumers-about-expanded-use-of-personal-data-0)

</comment><comment><USER7> The ACCC makes me proud to be Australian.

<comment><USER8> For non-aussie readers of YC News, the ACCC is an Australian federal government department that represents the consumer interests of the citizens.

This is a particularly important function in cases where there is significant asymmetry in transactions, as is typical with large corporations versus many customers making small purchases.

In scenario like that, a defrauded consumer has essentially no recourse, as nobody is willing to take a minor matter to court. Even if they do, they'll face an army of lawyers that will certainly drag out the proceedings until its Just Not Worth It for the angry consumer. Class action lawsuits, the type popular in the United States, are a joke, serving only to enrich lawyers.

In Australia, the ACCC sues or directly penalises corporations on the behalf of consumers. They enforce laws related to things like warranty returns.

They have a reputation for coming down like a ton of bricks on misbehaving businesses, with eye-watering fines for even minor things like putting up an invalid "no returns" policy sign at the cash register.

As a consequence of ACCC's actions, consumer confidence is increased, so people spend more, boosting the overall business activity in Australia. Companies that behave have everything to gain and nothing to fear. Companies that try to rip off consumers are eliminated from the market, so that they can't unfairly compete with law-abiding companies by dropping prices to levels where legitimate behaviour is unsustainable.

An anecdote: A local computer parts store refused to refund my $500 for a new GPU that was faulty. I told them that this was illegal, and they're running the risk of an ACCC fine. They just laughed at me. I did nothing about it, and jumped through the hoops to return the card to the manufacturer instead. Someone else must have reported them for their behaviour, and next time I was there I noticed a prominent sign at the cash register saying that they've been fined by the ACCC $750,000 and that they had to display this sign to notify customers of their rights. For a local, small business retailer this is a brutal fine, but they're still around and now they provide instant refunds for DoA parts without argument! Plus, the look on the face of the manager who refused my warranty claim was priceless. The system works.

<comment><USER9> Two ACCC decisions that the rest of the world would do well to copy: merchants are allowed to pass on credit card fees to the customer, but the fee charged has to be reasonably in line with the actual cost:

[https://www.accc.gov.au/business/pricing- surcharging/payment...](https://www.accc.gov.au/business/pricing- surcharging/payment-surcharges/qa-payment-surcharges)

The first part had Visa/MC howling (because they're normally insistent that merchants hide their fee) and the second pissed off airlines, hotels etc that loved to tack on high fixed charges as payment fees, but in both cases consumers are obviously the winners.

<comment> bash-j Also car advertisements have to show the actual drive away price including all extra fees and taxes. If you advertise anything on TV, you can't get away with putting small print in the commercial that changes what a customer would be getting for the price displayed, e.g. unlimited internet. You can't reasonably expect a customer to pause the tv, get off the couch and get up close to be able to read the small print, only to discover that speeds would be capped after a certain amount of usage.

<comment><USER10> Drip pricing is very similar and also illegal: the dark pattern of letting someone get all the way through a checkout process and then springing an extra expected (by the merchant, not the consumer) fee or charge on them in the hope that the sunk cost fallacy wins the day.

[https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/online-shopping/drip- prici...](https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/online-shopping/drip-pricing)

<comment><USER11> Unrelated to your overall point, that isn't necessarily fallacious reasoning. If most checkout processes in a niche are excessively long (free background check services come to mind) then the customer is choosing to spend extra money now in order to avoid spending extra time with an alternative.

<comment><USER10> In this case the sunk cost is time, the extra cost is money. So I think it kind of applies. They've just gone with a dual-currency system like predatory mobile games ;)

But I see your point, they're not necessarily overvaluing the time they've already spent, they're trying to avoid doing it all over again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Google acted inappropriately and in my opinion deserves the kind of punishment that is severe enough to curtail stuff like this.

That said, Facebook and other companies are just as bad.

<comment><USER13> What really bugs me that there is really no opt out. You can ONLY click "I agree", or don't use it. So I don't.

<comment><USER3> That is the opt-out. They provide services in exchange for you clicking 'i agree'; if they can't generate value from your use of a service, they don't want to be obligated to lose money by providing you some service for free.

The only problem is how consumers don't read the privacy policy and/or don't understand how valuable their data is to these companies.

<comment><USER14> That's only part of the problem. The other part is locking away all of your data - emails, files, contacts, calendar, apps - if you don't want to agree to a change to the policy. Own an Android phone? Good luck opting out of a change to the agreement!

<comment><USER15> Data isn't locked away. Only apps are.

<comment><USER16> Whilst Takeout is a thing, most of the data you'll get isn't in a form that's reasonably useful on it's own. You need to be a programmer to extract value out of a Google Takeout dump in a lot of cases. (I am sad more open source projects don't prioritize an "import from Takeout"-type feature.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'll be interested to see how this plays out. The ACCC media release might make it sound worse than it was.

In the included screenshots, there is clearly text that explains in pretty plain English. They left these parts out of the media release itself.

> ... With this change, this setting may also include browsing data from > Chrome and activity from websites and apps that partner with Google, > including those that show ads from Google.

> ...In My Account, the Ads Personalization setting currently allows Google to > use data in your account to tailor ads that appear on Google products. With > this change, this setting will also allow Google to use data in your account > to tailor ads on websites and apps that partner with Google.

It's a lot to process in a pop-up that forces a user to make an instant decision, and the lack of an opt out without clicking through to "More Options" is shady, but it does feel like a pretty good layman's explanation of what they were going to do.

<comment><USER18> > It's a lot to process in a pop-up that forces a user to make an instant > decision

Part of informed consent in Australia is "can freely make decisions without unfair pressure or influence from others." This kind of instant decision, and the following opt-in, don't fit within that requirement.

> but it does feel like a pretty good layman's explanation of what they were > going to do.

It doesn't include the detail required by Australian law.

> may also include browsing data from Chrome and activity from websites and > apps that partner with Google, including those that show ads from Google.

This is not enough. You cannot simply specify any arbitrary third party.

You cannot simply say "browsing data", but have to specify what it is that you're grabbing. You have to say that you're grabbing IP ranges, headers, screen sizes, etc.

<comment><USER19> > It doesn't include the detail required by Australian law...

> You cannot simply say "browsing data", but have to specify what it is that > you're grabbing. You have to say that you're grabbing IP ranges, headers, > screen sizes, etc.

What specifically? I'm Australian and I'm not aware of any law that specifies anything like that at all.

> This is not enough. You cannot simply specify any arbitrary third party.

That's clearly not true. Amongst others, credit companies in Australia do this frequently and haven't had issues with the ACCC over it.

<comment><USER18> > That's clearly not true. Amongst others, credit companies in Australia do > this frequently and haven't had issues with the ACCC over it.

They don't list _arbitrary_ third parties. For example, Mastercard tells everyone "MasterCard requires members to register all Third Party Processors (TPPs) and Data Storage Entities (DSEs) with the MasterCard Registration Program system.", and then all of those are available for the public, usually via a link, within their policy.

> What specifically? I'm Australian and I'm not aware of any law that > specifies anything like that at all.

Enough information that informed consent can be considered. It isn't specified, because it were, then companies would work around it. Australia makes use of a Common Law system, that which is "reasonable", rather than that which can be litigated.

<comment><USER19> > They don't list _arbitrary_ third parties. For example, Mastercard tells > everyone...

Not sure if you mean Google or Mastercard doesn't list third parties?

You seem to be conflating Mastercards's PCI compliance requirements[1] with their data sales to companies like Equifax[2] and others, which is an extremely opaque trade and not disclosed.

> Enough information that informed consent can be considered. It isn't > specified, because it were, then companies would work around it. Australia > makes use of a Common Law system, that which is "reasonable", rather than > that which can be litigated.

Exactly, and I don't believe that any court would find that they need to specify "that you're grabbing IP ranges, headers, screen sizes, etc". I'd note that the ACCC isn't making that claim either.

> that which is "reasonable", rather than that which can be litigated

Well "reasonable" is decided the courts, so it is litigated.

[1] [https://www.mastercard.com.au/en-au/merchants/safety- securit...](https://www.mastercard.com.au/en-au/merchants/safety- security/security-recommendations/service-providers-need-to-know.html)

[2] [https://www.equifax.com.au/about-us](https://www.equifax.com.au/about-us)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Honestly, while this change was controversial, it was very well publicised and displayed to users at the time. I think it is quite a hard case to prove that users were misinformed - if it it does hold up, it'll create quite an interesting precedent where even executing a change like that with complete explicit opt-in isn't enough to keep you in the clear. It might have the perverse effect of making companies pre-load every evil thing they can ever think of doing into their initial terms of use because it is interpreted as impossible to post-opt-in a normal person in a reasonable manner.

<comment><USER5> The previous privacy policy stated they would get the end users consent for anything that would reduce their privacy. They did not do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> @dang story is no longer accessible; updated link in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23964132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23964132)

</comment><comment><USER22> > _The ACCC considers that consumers effectively pay for Google's services > with their data, so this change introduced by Google increased the "price" > of Google's services_

It's interesting to think about a privacy policy tweak as a "price increase". I wonder if data will become regulated to the point where monetary value is transferred away from large companies and towards individual users so countries can tax their citizens on it.

<comment><USER10> It seems to be an extension of the idea of Consideration in contract law. That makes sense to me. You can't change the agreement to extract more value without giving something back in return.

<comment><USER3> Simple: increase free Drive space by 500MB, or even 1MB, each time it's updated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is interesting. The allegation is that Google didn't properly notify users about combining Doubleclick and other Google data.

Google did run a popup notification about the change, but:

 _The ACCC alleges that the "I agree" notification was misleading, because consumers could not have properly understood the changes Google was making nor how their data would be used, and so did not - and could not - give informed consent._

It's not exactly clear what the ACCC is saying here? Is it that Google didn't explain it enough, or is it that no amount of explanation is enough because user's "could not give informed consent"?

<comment><AUTHOR> From the ACCC website

"I agree" notification

The conduct is alleged to have impacted millions of Australians with Google accounts.

From 28 June 2016 until at least December 2018, Google account holders were prompted to click "I agree" to a pop-up notification from Google that purported to explain how it planned to combine their data, and sought the consumers' consent for this.

      Some new features for your Google Account

      We've introduced some optional features for your account, giving you more control over the data Google collects and how it's used, while allowing Google to show you more relevant ads.

The notification also stated, "More information will be available in your Google Account making it easier for you to review and control"; and "Google will use this information to make ads across the web more relevant for you."

Not sure how you can provide informed consent, when the notification is so vague

<comment><USER19> If you scroll down they include screenshots, which have diagrams including how the data flows, and additional text. It's quite a lot of information.

Hard to know what the appropriate level here is, but Google sure did a lot more than just saying what the text said.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Infer Topology - <AUTHOR> http://bost.ocks.org/mike/topology? <comment><USER2> A related tool I'm working on is a visual debugger for topology construction. You can see an example here showing California state and county boundaries:

[http://bost.ocks.org/mike/topology/debugger.html](http://bost.ocks.org/mike/topology/debugger.html)

You can zoom & pan in the debugger as well as use the arrow keys to step forward and backward through each step of the construction process, while in the JavaScript console the global `current` gives details on the current step. My plan is to make this a drag-and-drop interface for constructing TopoJSON with the ability to see exactly what's happening along the way. Of course, it might also be nice to edit and fix the topology in-place, but for now that's probably better left to desktop GIS!</comment>