Google and the NSA: Who's holding the 'shit-bag' now? - <AUTHOR> http://thestringer.com.au/google-and-the-nsa-whos-holding-the-shit-bag-now/ <comment><USER3> For those who aren't aware, this essay isn't really about Google's co- operation (or not) with the NSA regarding wiretaps.

This is about potential Google involvement in political activities outside the US, where Assange claims it is acting as a proxy rather than requiring direct US intelligence involvement. While Assange didn't name them, some specific instances of what he is talking about are the "Color revolutions" in Eastern Europe and the Arab Spring.

While this seems preposterous on the surface there is enough evidence to make it worth considering. The Georgian "color revolution" obtained significant funds from a body funded by George Soros[1], so private involvement isn't unprecedented.

It is also well known that Wael Ghonim (who was instrumental in fueling the Egyptian revolution) was employed by Google at the time[2] although he was acting in a private capacity.

OTOH, it isn't at all clear is the US intelligence complex would have wanted the Egyptian revolution to occur at all, and Assange doesn't go deep enough to explain that.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution#Soros_foundat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution#Soros_foundation_and_U.S._influence)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wael_Ghonim](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wael_Ghonim)

</comment><comment><USER4> It is creepy how Google Idea's projects all seem to be military type projects. It gives the impression that Google is actively using its social graph to do police work.

[http://www.google.com/ideas/projects/](http://www.google.com/ideas/projects/)

<comment><USER5> While "Google Ideas" makes it sound like a random VC fund or corporate "vision & innovation" wankery, according to that website:

 _Google Ideas is a think /do tank that explores how technology can enable people to confront threats in the face of conflict, instability or repression._

Their list of projects makes much more sense in that light.

<comment><USER6> Or, you know: "is a think/do tank that explores how technology can enable repression."

<comment><USER7> In America, repression is freedom.

<comment><USER8> And don't we have relative freedom? We are all free to sit and read news on a website instead of working 6-7 day weeks to support our families.

In a sense you can understand the perspectives of some western governments, because they think that we are better off than under-developed nations. And as long as they think that I believe two things will continue to happen. The hegemony will prevail, and its denizes will remain apathetic to its off shore actions.

<comment><USER6> > _We are all free to sit and read news on a website instead of working 6-7 > day weeks to support our families._

Speak for yourself. Most people would be out of their homes pronto is they didn't work 6-7 day weeks -- and tons of them already are on the streets or trailers...

<comment><USER9> Yep. Keep the people worried about their own homes, and they'll have little time, energy, or brainpower to worry about larger problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I missed this article at the time by Bruce Schneier and I think a lot more did, too, or didn't pay much attention to it, but according to him, Google already gave NSA a backdoor into Gmail, which is what the Chinese hackers used to hack them then:

[http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.ha...](http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hacking/index.html)

<comment><USER11> That is not an NSA backdoor and I'm shocked Schneier could make such a mistake, it is a system to comply with FBI/local police court orders. The Chinese hackers couldn't run queries on gmail accounts, all they got access to was archives of court ordered material that had already been copied into the system, see here: [http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/20/4349236/chinese-hacker- gma...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/20/4349236/chinese-hacker-gmail-breach- exposed-thousands-of-court-orders)

Basically, when a company needs to hand over data, they copy it and put it somewhere for law enforcement to pick up, and apparently the Chinese hackers got access to the drop box.

"Backdoor" makes it sound like Google built a query page that allows the NSA to enter in an arbitrary account name and just get the data -- on anyone.

<comment><USER12> > "Backdoor" makes it sound like Google built a query page that allows the NSA > to enter in an arbitrary account name and just get the data -- on anyone.

Now there's an idea. Now let's hope it's an original thought and nobody has had that idea before you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> On a positive note: Google's massive lobbying effort to undermine EU privacy protections can now be considered dead in the water.

</comment><comment><USER14> Most people love Google, they offer useful services. I think they'll be one of the bigger 'disappointments' in this whole scene as it fully unravels. The entire system needs to be decentralised, and quickly.

<comment><USER7> It's going to be a herculean effort to simulate google's (and other's) services fast enough to attract loyal users. All these big tech companies' services are extremely valuable and it's hard to convince the general consumer to forfeit convenience for the sake of security, but I guess that was the idea all along. We might as well start now.

<comment><USER15> I think companies can sponsor community projects just the way Apache was sponsored. Replacement for online email, documents and other services - <USER2> software. The ones that people can run on their own.

I think it is not a pipe dream. Some social and organizing groundwork needs to be done. :)

<comment><USER16> _I think companies can sponsor community projects just the way Apache was sponsored._

Apache provided value to its corporate sponsors. Free software that you run on your system, like your phone, doesn't put money in the pockets of any corporations, except possibly the cell carriers who have not been at all ashamed of their cosy relationship with the NSA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm still willing to be convinced that Google has some kind of special, voluntary co-operation policy with the NSA but this article doesn't seem to offer much proof of such a thing. It seems to consist mostly of accusations of guilt by association and the questionable inference that Google having a large lobbying budget is indicative of being in government's pocket somehow.

<comment><USER18> Historically realipolitik works on a quid pro quo basis. If government does something for you, then you are expected to do something for the government.

Trading favors is the name of the game. One may argue that lobiying dollars are the favor Google is offering. But one may not realize that dollars are merely the cost of a ticket to participate. It is not the sole price.

There are many examples throughout history that this is the way things work. There are two possibilities. Either Google's and governments relationship works the way Assange has described OR US governments in the last fifteen years are completely different (more honorable?) than all the governments throughout the world before that.

What do you think is more probable?

<comment><USER17> What is it exactly that the U.S. government has done for Google?

The way things typically work here is that you hire a bunch of lobbyists and put money in the pockets of various government officials in exchange for favors. So the quid is generally just $$$.

<comment><USER18> Listen, you think I know exactly how the deals are structured?

But from the tone of your post it would appear that you have participated in these deals yourself. So tell me are you a lobbyist, someone who hired a lobbyist or a government official?

Oh, you are no different than me - you have no data beyond your faith.

<comment><USER17> I'm not the one making bold accusations here. The burden of proof is not on me.

<comment><USER19> On what planet do big business and government NOT intersect?

Saying otherwise is a bold claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> All i can view is,

Your access to this site has been limited

Your access to this service has been temporarily limited. Please try again in a few minutes. (HTTP response code 503)

Reason: Access from your area has been temporarily limited for security reasons

Important note for site admins: If you are the administrator of this website note that your access has been limited because you broke one of the Wordfence firewall rules. The reason you access was limited is: "Access from your area has been temporarily limited for security reasons".

Did they block an entire country?

<comment><USER21> It has been revealed today, thanks to Edward Snowden, that Google and other US tech companies received millions of dollars from the NSA for their compliance with the PRISM mass surveillance system.

So just how close is Google to the US securitocracy? Back in 2011 I had a meeting with Eric Schmidt, the then Chairman of Google, who came out to see me with three other people while I was under house arrest. You might suppose that coming to see me was gesture that he and the other big boys at Google were secretly on our side: that they support what we at WikiLeaks are struggling for: justice, government transparency, and privacy for individuals. But that would be a false supposition. Their agenda was much more complex, and as we found out, was inextricable from that of the US State Department. The full transcript of our meeting is available online through the WikiLeaks website.

The pretext for their visit was that Schmidt was then researching a new book, a banal tome which has since come out as The New Digital Age. My less than enthusiastic review of this book was published in the New York Times in late May of this year. On the back of that book are a series of pre-publication endorsements: Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Michael Hayden (former head of the CIA and NSA) and Tony Blair. Inside the book Henry Kissinger appears once again, this time given pride of place in the acknowledgements.

Schmidt's book is not about communicating with the public. He is worth $6.1 billion and does not need to sell books. Rather, this book is a mechanism by which Google seeks to project itself into Washington. It shows Washington that Google can be its partner, its geopolitical visionary, who will help Washington see further about America's interests. And by tying itself to the US state, Google thereby cements its own security, at the expense of all competitors.

Two months after my meeting with Eric Schmidt, WikiLeaks had a legal reason to call Hilary Clinton and to document that we were calling her. It's interesting that if you call the front desk of the State Department and ask for Hillary Clinton, you can actually get pretty close, and we've become quite good at this. Anyone who has seen Doctor Strangelove may remember the fantastic scene when Peter Sellers calls the White House from a payphone on the army base and is put on hold as his call gradually moves through the levels. Well WikiLeaks journalist Sarah Harrison, pretending to be my PA, put through our call to the State Department, and like Peter Sellers we started moving through the levels, and eventually we got up to Hillary Clinton's senior legal advisor, who said that we would be called back.

Shortly afterwards another one of our people, WikiLeaks' ambassador Joseph Farrell, received a call back, not from the State Department, but from Lisa Shields, the then girlfriend of Eric Schmidt, who does not formally work for the US State Department. So let's reprise this situation: The Chairman of Google's girlfriend was being used as a back channel for Hillary Clinton. This is illustrative. It shows that at this level of US society, as in other corporate states, it is all musical chairs.

That visit from Google while I was under house arrest was, as it turns out, an unofficial visit from the State Department. Just consider the people who accompanied Schmidt on that visit: his girlfriend Lisa Shields, Vice President for Communications at the CFR; Scott Malcolmson, former senior State Department advisor; and Jared Cohen, advisor to both Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, a kind of Generation Y Kissinger figure — a noisy Quiet American as the author Graham Greene might have put it.

Google started out as part of Californian graduate student culture around San Francisco's Bay Area. But as Google grew it encountered the big bad world. It encountered barriers to its expansion in the form of complex political networks and foreign regulations. So it started doing what big bad American companies do, from Coca Cola to Northrop Grumman. It started leaning heavily on the State Department for support, and by doing so it entered into the Washington DC system. A recently released statistic shows that Google now spends even more money than Lockheed Martin on paid lobbyists in Washington.

Jared Cohen was the co-writer of Eric Schmidt's book, and his role as the bridge between Google and the State Department speaks volumes about how the US securitocracy works. Cohen used to work directly for the State Department and was a close advisor to both Condolezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. But since 2010 he has been Director of Google Ideas, its in-house 'think/do' tank.

Documents published last year by WikiLeaks obtained from the US intelligence contractor Stratfor, show that in 2011 Jared Cohen, then (as he is now) Director of Google Ideas, was off running secret missions to the edge of Iran in Azerbaijan. In these internal emails, Fred Burton, Stratfor's Vice President for Intelligence and a former senior State Department official, describes Google as follows:

"Google is getting WH [White House] and State Dept support and air cover. In reality they are doing things the CIA cannot do…[Cohen] is going to get himself kidnapped or killed. Might be the best thing to happen to expose Google's covert role in foaming up-risings, to be blunt. The US Gov't can then disavow knowledge and Google is left holding the shit-bag"

In further internal communication, Burton subsequently clarifies his sources on Cohen's activities as Marty Lev, Google's director of security and safety and.. Eric Schmidt.

WikiLeaks cables also reveal that previously Cohen, when working for the State Department, was in Afghanistan trying to convince the four major Afghan mobile phone companies to move their antennas onto US military bases. In Lebanon he covertly worked to establish, on behalf of the State Department, an anti- Hezbollah Shia think tank. And in London? He was offering Bollywood film executives funds to insert anti-extremist content into Bollywood films and promising to connect them to related networks in Hollywood. That is the Director of Google Ideas. Cohen is effectively Google's director of regime change. He is the State Department channeling Silicon Valley.

That Google was taking NSA money in exchange for handing over people's data comes as no surprise. When Google encountered the big bad world, Google itself got big and bad.

<comment><USER22> Missing piece of context: the author of the above quoted article is Julian Assange.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, I did not realize that until I got to the house arrest part. The author's name could have been more prominently displayed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't know about these new accusations about a Google employee doing covert work for the State Dept., but as far as them getting reimbursed for compliance costs, I don't really see that as scandalous.

The Guardian strongly implies that this contradicts their earlier denials about knowing anything about PRISM. But PRISM could just be the NSA's internal name for the program that collects data obtained from companies via court order. From the companies' perspective, they're just complying with court orders. Theres nothing in the Guardian's reporting that contradicts that, at least as far as I can see.

Assange's implication that getting reimbursed for court costs is some sort of business model for Google ("taking NSA money in exchange for handing over people's data") is absurd. They take advertisers' money for handing over people's data, not the government's.

Guardian's report: [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism- costs...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-costs-tech- companies-paid)

<comment><USER11> The guardian is really letting me down with the sheer amount of sensationalist reporting going on. They hit the jackpot with Snowden, but they keep trying to milk it and stretch the story out. Quoting the Gmail class action court filings incorrectly and putting words in Google's mouth was a low point.

<comment><USER11> Downvoted for truth eh? [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/14/google- gma...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/14/google-gmail-users- privacy-email-lawsuit)

Guardian had to publish a correction. They also mindlessly copied the press release from Consumer Watchdog and tried to connect the subject to PRISM, which it has nothing to do with (this is about automated Gmail ads).

"Consumer Watchdog, the advocacy group that uncovered the filing, called the revelation a "stunning admission." It comes as Google and its peers are under pressure to explain their role in the National Security Agency's (NSA) mass surveillance of US citizens and foreign nationals."

However, the Consumer Watchdog responsible for the misleading press release is not an advocacy group (there are two of them), it is actually an astroturfer with a heavily anti-Google bias, most likely funded by Microsoft out of a range of such organizations MS runs: [http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/08/28/microsofts-secret- scr...](http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/08/28/microsofts-secret-screw-google- meetings-in-d-c/) And some evidence here: [http://techrights.org/2009/05/04/consumer-watchdog- exposed/](http://techrights.org/2009/05/04/consumer-watchdog-exposed/)

Point is, the Guardian make a factual error, and at the same time, copy- pasta'ed an astroturfer.

<comment><USER25> Your Daily Finance link contains nothing that supports your claim.

Your second link in that paragraph is to a conspiracy site that basically declares anyone who ever is on the same side as Microsoft on any issue to be a Microsoft astroturfer or to have been infiltrated by Microsoft. Among things they claim are under the control of Microsoft: NPR, the Department of Education, the White House, the French government, all major newspapers, Amazon, Yahoo. The page you linked to is up to their usual standards--they base their argument on a Google search showing the CW has criticized Google more than it has criticized Microsoft, and on CW hosting its site on a hosting service that is part of a company that provides services for managing and contacting people.

It's probably best to start with more mainstream sites when researching something, such as the Wikipedia entry for the thing you are researching [1], rather than heading right to the conspiracy sites like Boycott Novell.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Watchdog](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Watchdog)

<comment><USER11> I always head to Wikipedia first, but Wikipedia does not always have the complete story. Wikipedia has nothing on FairSearch, and the evidence is pretty solid that Microsoft is behind this group. Nor did it say anything about Florian Mueller being on the dole from Oracle or Microsoft until recently (check the Wikipedia history of his page) when he admitted even, even when we knew for years that this was in fact the case given the sheer volume of articles he writes attacking only Microsoft and Oracle's competitors.

Consumer Watchdog isn't just critical of Google, they are rabidly so to a deranged order. They've got an entire site, [http://insidegoogle.com/](http://insidegoogle.com/) dedicated to nothing but 100% Google attacks.

This is the smoking gun modus operandi of astroturf. Does other consumer groups, like Consumers Union/Reports, or Center for Science In the Public Interest maintain sites _exclusively dedicated to attacking a single company_? They claim their issue is privacy, but if you look on their sight, they attack Google pretty much on everything, for example, they side against consumers and with publishers on Google Books.

Whatever other projects they've got going, it smells fishy. It smells like astroturf.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> For those who haven't read them, these posts by Steve Blank bring this all into focus. Spend a couple hours and read this: [http://steveblank.com/secret- history/](http://steveblank.com/secret-history/) and then this [http://steveblank.com/category/secret-history-of-silicon- val...](http://steveblank.com/category/secret-history-of-silicon-valley/) . History is fascinating when told by a good historian.

</comment><comment><USER7> So who from google is going to try to assuage our concerns and tell us that it's all misdirection that they, and thus we, shouldn't fall prey to? Or is anyone from the company not compromised by a candy-coated exterior?

</comment><comment><USER27> Schmidt personally seems to have political-power aspirations and has been practically transparent about using the chairmanship of Google to that end for himself and as a proxy for the company.

The motivation for all this freelance diplomacy doesn't even need to be for specific favors - it can be to raise his and Google's stature with the world's political power machinery.

Consider that, while it doesn't make it any less troubling, they might even have good intentions in what they're doing. I'm not trying to be an apologist for it, just thinking about what would motivate a company like Google -or rather, people at the top- to do stuff like this.

</comment><comment><USER28> Absolutely nothing surprising. Any company can be bullied and all companies have good incentive to crawl when government asks to bend.

<comment><USER12> Google has been crawling since their inception.

<comment><USER28> Thats a good one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I like to analyze potential motives that the elites might have for doing whatever it is they do:

Industrial sector elite: control of resources

Intelligence elite: control over people

Google elite: I don't know if they know yet but they are probably trying to find their place in the future. Maybe control of data?

Either way you can see how they all might be able to help each other out.

</comment><comment><USER30> Reading this article, one could be pardoned for wondering if Cohen is a NOC agent for some intelligence agency....

</comment><comment><USER11> Google doesn't need the paltry revenue from the NSA for their bottom line, Assange plays guilt by association, but doesn't address motives.

I have no doubt that Google is trying to stay on Congress's good side, after all, Microsoft funded an array of lobbyist organizations trying to get the government to shakedown Google, and their increase in lobbying spending is no doubt a response. It's pretty clear how this game works with regulatory capture, Congress threatens to regulate your business, you in turn, are forced to donate to their re-election campaign for 'protection'.

Less clear is whether playing nice with the State Department buys you anything. Assange makes it sound like Chomsky's conspiracy theories over pipelines, that Google has fruit plantations or oil pipelines abroad that need State Department protection, and somehow the State Department has some quid pro quo. But what can the State Department actually offer Google? They have no control over some of Google's biggest foreign issues: Chinese and Russian markets, foreign taxes. At best, the executive branch could back off investigations or approve mergers. But the evidence is mixed. Obama just veto'ed the Samsung ban on Apple, but allowed Apple's ITC ban on some Motorola devices to continue.

And what to make of the Cohen thing. So, Google is supposedly being contracted by the State Department or CIA to cause foreign uprisings now? Isn't it far more likely that the social, economic, and culture conditions that are fueling these uprisings have been boiling for years and that Google had little to do with them? Google, Facebook, and Twitter basically want users, and to promote digital media, and these uprisings which heavily used their services actually was good PR for social media overall.

I dislike the way many people analyze the motivations of those in other nations so as to remove local agency. Those same people will tell you, how dare you, look down on people in these countries, at the same time, viewing all local politics and local agendas as really being driven by the plans of external actors.

If Cohen was meeting with people in Iran and Azerbaijan, why does it have to be for some ominous CIA purpose. Couldn't it have been for existing projects Google Ideas already had? Google has been going all over the developing world evangelizing use of things like Google Maps for tracking local issues, like human, gun, or drug trafficking, environmental degradation, or even vanishing languages. Cohen's previous job would have given him the right contacts to make foreign connections in foreign governments, and is the perfect reason why Silicon Valley companies would hire people from the State Department who have foreign service experience. How many MBA grads working in Silicon Valley actually have any experience navigating say, foreign government officials in Kenya? For the same reason, the government hires Silicon Valley workers to work on government IT projects, because you go where the experience is. (e.g. data.gov)

None of this disproves anything, but I find the dots being connected here to be very tenuous.

<comment><USER31> You mean you didn't find it odd that Eric Schmidt traveled to North Korea?

<comment><USER11> Did you find it odd when Vice Media took Dennis Rodman and the Harlem GlobeTrotters to NK?

Eric Schmidt has been traveling around the globe lately as he was researching for his book, he also went to Burma and a few other places. I'm not really sure what the claims are supposed to be, what was he going to do in NK that the State Department couldn't do themselves? Spy? Negotiate nuclear arms?

When Tom Friedman travels to say, Sri Lanka, is it on behalf of the CIA, or because he wants to write another sappy book on globalization?

Sometimes things are much more mundane. Vice media actually got to meet NK leadership (dinner with Kim Jong Un), but they were really just looking to do gonzo journalism -- even if they were debriefed by the government when they returned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Mirror: [http://thestringer.com.au.nyud.net/google-and-the-nsa- whos-h...](http://thestringer.com.au.nyud.net/google-and-the-nsa-whos-holding- the-shit-bag-now/#.UhjdKhKJB-M)

</comment><comment><USER33> Wrote this on the topic: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6078124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6078124)

</comment><comment><USER34> "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." \- Benito Mussolini

<comment><USER35> That was 70+ years ago, political structures have become more sophisticated than that trite quote since then. It's like saying a computer is a machine that reads floppy disks.

<comment><USER36> Even though computers evolved by great leaps in the past few decades I argue that the human nature has been somewhat stagnated for at least a couple thousand years.

In that light, Mussolini's quote is as precise today as it was back in the day it was first said. Sad, yet true.

<comment><USER16> _In that light, Mussolini 's quote is as precise today as it was back in the day it was first said._

It also appears to be a false attribution and is basically unsourced. It does have a certain glibness to it that makes it suspicious.

[http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=280606](http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=280606)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Ever met someone who gives a great first impression and says all the right words but later betrays your trust? I've mostly had the experience with politicians, but Google is in a position to really _hurt_ people.

People need to get as far away from Google as possible. I think they're going to show a nasty side to their personality soon.

</comment><comment><USER38> None of it is convincing.

There is nothing extraordinary about the government showing interest when even a private citizen is contacting and meeting to interview someone who is wanted by said government on national security grounds.

Google's increased lobbying was dues to their big antirust battle a short while back, these tend to be expensive. Besides this is American and lobbying is a way of life here.

I'm not sure what Cohen was doing in Azerbaijan but is it really strange that he was getting support in a potentially hostile territory.

As for what ostensibly triggered this post, the "revelations" that firms get reimbursed for their troubles enabling surveillance, it's not new, nor is it a money making endeavor, it's basically the only concession by the government made in these wiretap laws, if they are to inconvenience entities with their surveillance they will at least have to pay for it [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/us/nsa-said-to-have- paid-e...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/us/nsa-said-to-have-paid-e-mail- providers-millions-to-cover-costs-from-court-ruling.html) Also some targeted surveillance might be necessary the problem is with the dragnet sort, and these revelations don't make a distinction between the two which doesn't automatically mean that it's the worst case scenario.

Assange might not have been pleased with his interview with Schmidt but suggesting that Google started the Arab spring is absurd.

</comment><comment><USER39> It sounds as if wikileaks has evidence. If they do, they should show it, although I guess it makes sense for them to set the context first so it isn't so easily ignored.

There seem to be a lot of people here determined to argue that google is innocent based on innuendo.

<comment><USER40> Perhaps they've decided to go about it the way The Guardian did: make some outrageous accusations and back them up with just a bit of proof, let the accused come out and publicly deny the accusations, then publicize the proof that shows that a) you were right, and b) the accused was straight up lying in their denial.

<comment><USER39> I strongly hope so.</comment></comment></comment>


The danger of using averages alone in web analytics - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/5/23/averages-web-performance-data-and-how-your-analytics-product.html

<comment><USER2> I agree with many of the points in the article, however it is conflating two unrelated things. Using simple averages in isolation is almost always a mistake. The real story in a system almost always lies in it's variation and not in the average. There are many ways to look at that, one of them is a histogram, although I tend to prefer time series graphs with moving ranges. One of my favorites is the Xmr chart or any of a number of statistical process control charts. Using those you can get a much better understanding of systems over time.

The transition to Real User metrics is not at all related to using an average. All recording and instrumentation processes will benefit through using more sophisticated and nuanced tools than a simple average. Real user metrics are an important data point, but they lack certain information you can get from external monitoring systems. We use both pingdom and catchpoint, by far my favorite is Catchpoint because I can see things like what ISP is involved with a slow request, what geographic region, etc. I can also get scatter plots and nice statistical graphs around median, geometric mean, 75th, 95th, 99th percentile.

So in short the main points are good, simple averages are misleading. Capturing end user performance data is good. Not using external monitoring though isn't a good idea because there a number of things that you can identify if you have that insight.

<comment><USER3> While you're right that they are two separate topics, they are quite closely related. Both are about the search for truth and getting a clearer picture of what's actually happening on your site.

Looking at your 95th percentile with RUM data means something totally different than looking at your 95th percentile with synthetic data. With RUM you are looking at your actual visitors across every page on your site. With synthetic testing (Keynote, Catchpoint, etc) you're looking at a small sample of pages from random nodes in random locations around the world. The problem with synthetic testing is that it makes all sorts of assumptions about your visitors like their browser, geography, connection speed, state of browser cache, etc. This doesn't mean that synthetic testing isn't useful (it is!), but it's important to recognize the shortcomings of your methodology whether that's from looking at an average or looking only at synthetic data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Disclaimer: My company also does web performance analytics.

I did a talk a couple of years ago on the statistics of web performance where I cover things like median, arithmetic mean, geometric mean, margin of error and sample sizes to carry out proper data analysis. Slides available here: <http://www.slideshare.net/bluesmoon/index-3441823>

To zashapiro's point about Geometric Mean... while it tends to be superior in the ideal case where the distribution is perfectly Log-normal, on average, most distributions tend to sway from a perfect log-normal. The median gives you a slightly better measure of central tendency in this case.

Secondly, there's the problem with user perception of geometric standard deviation (and consequently margin of error). Unlike arithmetic standard deviation which is +-, the geometric standard deviation is */, which means it's not visually symmetric... humans have an easier time visualizing additive symmetry than they do with multiplicative symmetry.

At LogNormal.com, we track the median, arithmetic mean, geometric mean a whole bunch of percentiles and margins of error and a complete distribution curve.

<comment><USER3> Philip, thanks for sharing the link to those slides. I didn't think it made sense to go that deep on my article, but it's a nice reference for anyone who wants to really dig in.

<comment><USER4> True, it was hard enough explaining those concepts in person ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Or, put more simply.

The average of [0,100,200] and [99,100,101] are both 100. And yet these two data sets are clearly different.

Measures of central tendency should always be supported by measures of dispersion (range, standard deviation, etc.) Not just with web analytics.

<comment><USER6> For a compelling example, see Anscombe's Quartet: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised you didn't you mention geometric means. Seems like that would also be a relevant way to look at performance data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes that's better.

I think the more important point is that knowledge of the underlying distribution -- normal (Gaussian), log-normal, exponential, power law, Weibull, etc -- is very important. The more skewed the underlying distribution, the less relevant the mean becomes -- and it can cause you to make some very bad inferences.</comment></comment>


Startup Ideas: The Future of Aging - <AUTHOR>

According to Census data, between 2010 & 2050 the population of Americans over 65 years of age will double to 88.5 million. The technology needed to facilitate these changes is not yet fully available.
The video below was created to inspire technological innovation and to make aging financially possible. This seems like a huge problem begging for elegant solutions.
http://www.aahsa.org/article_cast.aspx?id=10153 <comment><USER2> yes, good stuff. have you looked at aubrey de grey's book on ending aging? also grossman & kurzweil's transcend?

there is a tremendous opportunity there in non-institutional health/longevity. one entrepreneurial challenge will be getting a combo of scalability and defensible market position.

i hope to do something in this field more actively once my current project has grown its wings further ;).</comment>


Due to the success of Groupon.com there so many clones of the site. - <AUTHOR>

What's your thought on Groupon clones? Will they have a chance to survive in the market? How can Groupon stay ahead? <comment><USER2> Always space in any market for competitors. Check out yipit.com for an aggregation of such deals.

<comment><AUTHOR> cool thanks</comment></comment>


BBC Radio iPlayer – The Audio Factory - <AUTHOR> http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/BBC/AudioFactory/AudioFactory.html <comment><USER2> I use TuneIn to listen to BBC radio live outside the UK (I'm an expat) so the 320K AAC streams are unavailable to me, only 128K MP3 or 96K AAC.

The 96K AAC stream sounds better to my ears, but I notice that the default in TuneIn is the MP3 stream. I wonder why this is.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is lush. A well-written, deep, technical explanation of a small piece of technology that's become core to Britain's culture. If the author is reading - thank you.</comment>


What's a web browser - <AUTHOR> http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2010/10/12/whats-a-web-browser/

<comment><USER2> That is a brilliant analogy with TV and channels! I'm going to use it.</comment>


Bonhomme Richard, fate uncertain, would be one of largest ships Navy has lost - <AUTHOR> https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/military/story/2020-07-13/bonhomme-richard-fire-future <comment><USER2> Fires on a ship can spread scarily fast, which is one reason sailors devote so much time underway to cleaning--I've heard anecdotal stories of at least one lethal fire spreading through a ship's ventilation system due to the amount of combustible stuff it sucked up.

In port, a ship may be particularly vulnerable to this sort of thing, partially because fire boundaries that are normally closed while underway may be open to facilitate maintenance.

Here's a diagram showing a rough LHD cross-section near the bottom of the page: [https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/lhd-1.htm](https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/lhd-1.htm)

The fire here broke out in the lower V, close to one of the ship's magazines but pretty far from a lot of the bulk fuel (although there are a number of fuel pipes in and around the area in order to facilitate fueling assault craft and ground vehicles, which may be contributing to the fire with residual fuel).

Fortunately, even if there is a magazine in close proximity to the fire, it's likely well-protected, and unlikely to be full of ordnance. Furthermore, ordnance approved for shipboard operation has special thermal coating to reduce the likelihood of cook-off, which may be enough to protect it against the indirect heat of a fire on the other side of a bulkhead.

<comment><USER3> I've read some comments by someone that's been on scene since the start as one of the DC teams.

No ordinance is in the magazines. It's standard procedure to unloaded it at a pier specially designed for that task before extended port stays.

The fire has definitely reach the fuel lines you mention, and they're sustaining the fire. The team my commenter was a part of was one of the first to try to push inside. They made it about 25 feet in. The floor was so hot their team leaders boots melted. The writer said he had to stand on a pile of hose to avoid the same problem. The heat pushed them back out after less than half an hour. His opinion was that there was little choice but to just let the fuel burn off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this would be the first U.S. capital ship lost since WWII.

It's also interesting that China, Russia, and now the U.S. have all lost carriers while undergoing construction / maintenaince in just the past few years:

[https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/12/europe/russian-carrier- fire-i...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/12/europe/russian-carrier-fire- intl/index.html) [https://www.forbes.com/sites/hisutton/2020/04/11/brand- new-c...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/hisutton/2020/04/11/brand-new-chinese- aircraft-carrier-catches-fire/#44ab06cf7f4d)

Something to bond over, I guess. Dangerous work, and I hope everybody stays safe, better a carrier burns in peacetime than a life lost.

<comment><USER5> Neither of those was stricken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > McGrath described military shipyards in general as places "where an almost > insane devotion to safety, good housekeeping and procedural compliance is > required. It's hard to imagine one or more of those things not being > involved in the cause or spread of the fire."

It seems like the culture of safety and competence of the US Pacific Fleet is not what it was. Another example is the USS John McCain colliding with a freighter[0]. Then there was the whole Fat Leonard corruption scandal[1]. Maybe these are just anecdata and a side effect of greater attention.

0\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_S._McCain_and_Alnic_M...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_S._McCain_and_Alnic_MC_collision) 1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Leonard_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Leonard_scandal)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised this article doesn't mention at all the Los Angeles class nuclear attack sub that was deliberately set on fire by a dockyard worker.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Miami_(SSN-755)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Miami_\(SSN-755\))

<comment><USER8> >Fury admitted to setting the 23 May fire by igniting some rags on the top bunk of a bunk room. He claimed to have started the fire to get out of work early.[10][11][12][13] On 15 March 2013 Fury was sentenced to over 17 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $400 million in restitution.[14]

Wow, uh, that's a lot of money. Is this the poorest individual (by assets sans debts) in America? I can't imagine anyone being able to acquire personal debt on that scale by any other means.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One month ago, the French Navy lost the nuclear submarine "La Perle" meanwhile the ship was being maintained. The similarities with the "Bonhomme Richard" accident are striking.

<comment><USER10> This is just a guess, but I assume both are suffering crew shortages as a result of the pandemic, resulting in the excess trash that fueled the fire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is a cruel irony of Earth that our atmosphere is made up of such an odd mixture. It's odd to think that air itself is outright dangerous.

Four fifths of the fluid in which we live and breath ranges from inert to _noble_. The remaining fifth is one of the most dangerous, angry, reactive, poisonous gasses we know: _Oxygen_.

It is crucial to life and yet at the same time is quite capable of partially or completely destroying everything we hold dear. Our tools, belongings, us, our homes, warships, forests, crops and savannahs. It needn't even burn with a flame: most things will decay in its presence with or without spectacle.

If one encountered a planet where almost everything was made of gelatinous gasoline, whose principle inhabitants were a form of highly evolved sentient matchstick that kept striking boards as pets, one might think them a little risk averse. Then of course you'd realize that life and society on this planet have evolved in such a way because they are neither unfortunate or insane enough to live on a world that's blanketed in O₂.

On a visit to this planet you explain to their ambassador about the atmosphere on your home world. She doesn't know whether to laugh hysterically or faint in horror. The knowledge terrifies her and she takes deep methane breaths while stroking her phosphorous hands on tibbles-the-striking-board, trying to calm down. You decide it's best not to further disturb her with stories of plate tectonics and the major cities, nuclear reactors, etc your people have built on fault lines, at sea level.

<comment><USER12> > One fifth is the most dangerous, angry, reactive, poisonous gas we know.

Obviously you're utilizing hyperbole here, but I'm assuming you're referring to oxygen's oxidative potential (really "standard reduction potential"), but other gases have significantly higher reduction potentials than oxygen. Fluorine and Chlorine cause bigger, hotter fires at conditions that would generally be considered "non-flammable" if oxygen were involved instead. They also corrode/rust things faster than oxygen does.

Charts like [0] are misleading because they list the standard reduction potential of the monoatomic forms, which isn't realistic when most of these form diatomic gases (e.g. Cl2, O2, etc).

Both fluorine and chlorine gases are more oxidative than oxygen. Chlorine has electron affinity of -2.4 eV and while O2 is -0.4 eV.

0: [https://www.angelo.edu/faculty/kboudrea/periodic/trends_elec...](https://www.angelo.edu/faculty/kboudrea/periodic/trends_electronegativity.htm)

<comment><USER13> > at conditions that would generally be considered "non-flammable" if oxygen > were involved instead

"Generally considered non-flammable" doesn't even begin to describe it. From ([http://www.lateralscience.co.uk/Fluorine/Fluorine.html](http://www.lateralscience.co.uk/Fluorine/Fluorine.html)):

> the problem was its collection and containment. Fluorine chemically reacts > with just about everything, usually very vigorously. He fashioned collection > vials from platinum, palladium and gold. All were destroyed.

As to the GP:

> > the most dangerous, angry, reactive, poisonous gas we know

To continue the nitpicking, bear in mind that a gas is just one phase of matter for a particular chemical. What we're really after then is something from among the most reactive _chemicals_ we know. I nominate dioxygen difluoride which will (for example) react with liquid methane at -180C. It's antics are summarized by Derek Lowe. ([https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/th...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> According to Wikipedia, the Richard refers to"Poor Richard's almanac" a publication of Benjamin Franklin, who was US ambassador to France when John Paul Jones named the original Bonhomme Richard in his honour.

</comment><comment><USER15> 1,000,000 gallons of fuel oil reportedly on the ship. And munitions.

<comment><USER16> Last time I checked, the fire was controlled to be away from munitions and fuel. The stuff burning is pretty much anything that isn't metal scattered around the ship.

<comment><USER17> I'm obviously ignorant on this, but I would have expected anything short of munitions or fuel would not have caused this much damage on something as advanced as an aircraft carrier. The article mentioned that having fewer crew members made it harder to handle, but having 160 crew on board with fire and smoke detectors doesn't seem like it should have resulted in this. I hope to one day read the report on how this happened, I clearly have a lot to learn.

<comment><USER18> Apparently the fire suppression systems were locked out to facilitate the work and the doors/hatches had temporary cabling/hoses/vents running through them which prevented the crew from quickly locking down areas and control the spread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Curious - why they did not pump out all the fuel from the ship? 3500t of fuel can a lot of ecological damage, be that spilled or burned.

</comment><comment><USER20> The BHR is old as it is. I don't see it ever leaving port again after this.

<comment><USER21> It was laid down in 1995, that's not particularly old for a naval vessel in general. The Wasp class are still active, their replacements are just now entering service, and there was no plan to decommission it that I'm aware of.

Whether it gets repaired or not is more of a financial decision than anything else. Surely the hull has many decades left.

<comment><USER22> The fire has been raging for 2 days now and the forward mast has collapsed. I'd be absolutely shocked if that ship sailed again.

Steel really warps when you heat it up. Each compartment needs to be water tight. Just fixing the doorways alone would be a monumental task. Not to mention all the cabling and equipment that needs to be replaced. The amount of labor it will take to fix the steel will probably more than just laying down an entire new ship.

<comment><USER23> You have to evaluate the cost of the work, the cost of a new build, dry dock availability, and the ability to parallel path a repair + a new LHA.

It'll be an interesting decision.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, not just costs, but also scheduling concerns. The amount of spaces in shipyards is not elastic. The amount of labor needed for the repairs is not elastic. How will deferring the maintenance of other ships that are operation impact ship availability and how much will deferring maintenance end up costing those other ships in additional repairs?

Unfortunately, the military is run by MBAs now. There's no excess funding available for emergencies. Every penny is allocated, and it's still not enough. I was on a smaller amphib class ship, we routinely ran out of budget for replacement parts. Every quarter was an exercise in prioritizing what was going to be fixed and what was going to not get fixed because we simply didn't have the budget for maintenance.

Another concern is the crew. You've now got 200 or so sailors with nothing to do. Are they supposed to just mill about and wait for the ship to be repaired for a couple years? The crew will need to be rotated to other assignments. Now, you have a ship with no crew, it's going to have to go basically through the entire commissioning process again, sea trials, etc.

It's all a logistical nightmare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Do we know if this was possibly not an accident, but a hostile act by one of our adversaries? Taking one of the 8 USNavy'd mini-carriers without a fight is certainly something China dreams about...

<comment><USER3> No, that's a rather preposterous idea. What exactly would China gain from this that would be worth the possible blowback?

The CCP's #1 priority is stability to enable continued economic development. That's why they advance their more adversarial goals via sustained incremental efforts. They view democracies as vulnerable as they so often change leadership, whereas they can sustain very long term goals.

Life tends to be more banal than James Bond. The simple explanation here is that something went wrong and sparked a fire during maintenance work, likely welding, and because the ship was in dock with a bazillion service lines running through the hatches, the fire was able to spread to find fuel trivially. Based on a comment I read from one of the DC folks fighting the fire, they don't know the origin, but they do know it got into the fuel lines, which caused a minor explosion. The odds are pretty high they're just gonna have to let the fuel burn off.

<comment><USER25> When I was deployed aboard Naval vessels in 2000 a hole was blown in the side of a ship in our group, the USS Cole.

My real life includes attacks on US naval vessels that kill people and destroy equipment.

<comment><USER3> Of course I know about the Cole. But this was not a bomb. There's a pretty clear difference in frequency of ships bombed in port vs ones that simply catch fire. The whole point of terrorism is to create a public spectacle and take credit for it.

And of course, now we've shifted the goal posts yet again from "It was China!" to "It was terrorist!" with none of this changes in belief motivated by new information or evidence.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Creative Cloud removing contents of first hidden folder on a drive - <AUTHOR> https://backblaze.zendesk.com/entries/98786348 <comment><USER2> It gets worse, it'll also remove visible folders that have spaces at the start of names [https://twitter.com/backblaze/status/698229651899092993](https://twitter.com/backblaze/status/698229651899092993)

<comment><USER2> Spoke too soon, it's now even deleting files on sign in [https://twitter.com/backblaze/status/698235688941187075](https://twitter.com/backblaze/status/698235688941187075)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Normally with crazy bugs like this I can work out the logical sequence of events which lead to them but this one is baffling.

<comment><USER4> Yev from Backblaze here -> it was...uh...baffling for us too.

<comment><USER5> Great job tracking down the source of that problem, too!

<comment><USER4> You're welcome! Our devs are not pleased that they had to spend most of their day tracking this down, but they are tickled by the response :D</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A family devastated by relentless cyberattacks - <AUTHOR> http://specialreports.dailydot.com/how-to-destroy-an-american-family <comment><USER2> Comments like "Not exactly somebody I feel much sympathy for" and "he definitely was heavily involved in similar activity himself" miss the point entirely. The point is that swatting is too easy. Victims can't count on law enforcement to help. Family members are victims too, and they're powerless. I don't care how little sympathy you feel for Blair/r000t, his little sister did not deserve to have her school put on lockdown because of something her brother may or may not have done online.

<comment><USER3> I think it's worse that the mom was fired from her job because of the attacks and had a miscarriage, and now she can't find a new job because of the damage to her reputation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well that was an unpleasant read and it sounds like an absolute horror story for this group of people.

I, for one, am at a loss as to a solution for antics like this. It ends up affecting the entire community when police and fire personnel are being called to locations where no crime or fire is occuring, schools are being put on lockdown, and small businesses and franchises are making orders for people who did not desire to purchase their products. And the idea of having your utilities shutting off is pretty harrowing.

What do you do at this point? I'm surprised they haven't lifted roots, changed names, and moved but that's a tall order.

If they used very generic names like John Smith they'd likely be able to escape into obscurity regarding searches. They could proceed to stay off social media.

But is that a solution? Or forcing innocent people to abandon their lives they spent so long building up for the spat of two teenage/now young twentyish age kids?

We're starting to see two factor authentication become a thing more and more often, and password managers. These seem like they could help a lot of people tremendously but when companies value security over convenience people are probably far less likely to use their services en masse.

And of course where would the advertising revenue come from if client information was too strongly protected.

How intractable is this issue? And will there be a day when an 18 year old from halfway around the globe won't be able to destroy a family over a period of years? And if that day comes, what does it entail for individual liberties and privacy?

</comment><comment><USER5> The NY Times also just ran a story[1] on another serial swatter, including the immense effort (over 1000 hours across all involved) of a rankled Georgia detective to actually bring him to justice, since the swatter was a Canadian minor.

Little help from the FBI until the victim count had surpassed 40. Extreme difficulty getting Canadian law enforcement to play ball until they were able to get video evidence of the swatter broadcasting his antics live on the internet.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/magazine/the-serial- swatte...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/magazine/the-serial- swatter.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER6> And all this for a guy whose full name and address is contained within a Pastebin entry on the first page of search results when you Google his username! Imagine how hard it must be to identify swatters who have serious OPSEC.

<comment><USER5> I think the reality is when he was caught, that Pastebin page didn't have anywhere near the PageRank it does today. Moreover, the detective that did the bulk of the legwork wasn't tremendously savvy in regards to how online communities (and all the activity) work, which makes it a bit impressive that he was able to get his perp. He had a real ramp up there in order to be able to make real progress.

<comment><USER6> >I think the reality is when he was caught, that Pastebin page didn't have anywhere near the PageRank it does today.

That may be so, but you would think one of the first things an investigator of cybercrimes would do is Google search. Searches of "[username] real name" or "[username] dox" could provide instant leads for tons of cases.

>the detective that did the bulk of the legwork wasn't tremendously savvy in regards to how online communities (and all the activity) work

Indeed, this is the real issue. It's unfortunate that cybercrime investigators did not even bother looking into this. I suppose they may have their hands caught up with admittedly worse crimes, like child pornography and theft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It sounds like the only serious, tangible problem that happened was that Amy's employer (Ingalls) fired her because she was the victim of hackers, and then she couldn't get a new job because future employers didn't like what hackers had written about her on the internet. This is a pretty big failure of employment law as well as immoral behavior of the employers. That's the kind of widespread discrimination that we try to prevent against blacks, women, etc. But it can still be perpetrated against individuals and there isn't even any popular belief that it's wrong.

Imagine two headlines:

"Ingalls Health System fires woman after finding offensive comments on her social media account."

"Ingalls Health System fires woman after finding that she was gay."

Both are equally terrible, but only one is popularly considered to be very bad.

<comment><USER8> I pretty sure the daughter and local busk pail dispute your assessment of only one serious tangible problem.

<comment><USER7> local busk pail? I'm not denying there were a lot of horrible things, but largely temporary and more psychological than financial. Even the son being held in jail for 2 weeks doesn't seem as bad in the long term as losing your income, your ability to get a job, and consequently your house.

<comment><USER8> Businesses - man I really hate autocorrect

I doubt the affect on the daughter or the husband are temporary, they will get hit as everything lives on in search.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, that's pretty messed up. But do you know what's the worst thing here?

How someone got fired simply because people were talking crap about them/in a feud with a member of their family. How exactly is that legal? Why are we seeing employees firing people just because people insult them online? That Ingalls would do this is utterly pathetic.

Oh, and the whole utility companies thing. Why? Do they not train their staff about this sort of thing nowadays? Is it really so hard to ask for the password first, and then simply cut off the call if it isn't provided? It's like they trust people far too much nowadays.

If those things were resolved, events like this would be far less damaging in the future.

<comment><USER10> That's what "at will" employment is, sadly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This doesn't sound like what I would think of as "cyber attacks". This is a traditional leverage of a militarized police force as a weapon. The same could easily have happened before the internet, and I suspect it was less common and less intense because before there were SWAT teams it wasn't possible.

<comment><USER12> This couldn't have happened before the internet: many of the attacks are automated and many take advantage of the fact that you don't have to pay extortionate long-distance rates for international phone calls, both direct consequences of the ease of communication enabled by the internet of today.

Calling in pizza, gravel delivery, police, and hourly death threats from Finland in 1991 would have been quite expensive.

<comment><USER13> Additionally, it was really hard to piss people off who lived far away from you before the internet took off. Even if a Finn could do all these things in 1991 (phone phreaking to bypass the high cost?) they would have no motivation since they'd probably never get that pissed off at somebody in the US.

<comment><USER3> And what they want is a reaction. Without the internet they would not be able to see any reaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "She asks the policemen precisely what she needs to do to prove she hasn't just been murdered. Holding out her arm, she sighs as they take her blood pressure."

What? Seriously? I mean, yes cops are incredibly stupid, but they're not this stupid. I don't believe this happened. And if it did, the cop should be fired. Can someone really be that stupid to think that someone who is standing up in front of them is not alive? I call bullshit. Even a cop cannot be that stupid.

EDIT: Why not just ask for ID, since now all the cop's proven is that someone is alive, not who that person is. Ridiculous.

<comment><USER15> When you call 911 the police usually show up followed by paramedics / fire dept or vice versa. Depending on the city this is standard practice. The medics typically take blood pressure before leaving, not sure why but assuming this is a policy about confirming everyone is ok before they leave.

The writer likely simplified the scene by omitting the fact that EMTs arrived with the police.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can't help but notice Blair (the fellow who, in theory, drew the troll's ire) is basically never looking at the camera, and is wearing a Postal t-shirt. Not exactly somebody I feel much sympathy for.

The real point, though, is only brought up towards the end of the article: it's the hyperactive and hyperconvenient systems in place that allow for such easy exploitation and harassment. Swatting wouldn't happen if police were a bit more measured in their responses.

<comment> vezzy-fnord _and is wearing a Postal t-shirt_

What's wrong with Postal? It's a good franchise, although RWS' decision to outsource Postal III development to Akella proved to be a gaffe. Nonetheless, it is hardly any more obscene than, say, South Park.

<comment><USER16> Well, if you're doing a character piece, and the person who is arguably at least half to blame for the misfortune befalling his family is cheerfully wearing a shirt for a game explicitly about causing collateral damage to civilians...it's rather tacky.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The will be devastated by obesity anytime soon...

</comment><comment><USER6> Not that Blair/r000t deserves this sort of retaliation, but he definitely was heavily involved in similar activity himself in the past, and has poked the hornet's nest many a time.

Warning: graphic/obscene content.

[https://encyclopediadramatica.se/R000t](https://encyclopediadramatica.se/R000t)

[https://r000t.com/](https://r000t.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: How do I validate my idea with US businesses while living overseas? - <AUTHOR>

I currently work at a multi-national entity overseas, and I see them using an internally-developed tool which could be used by bigger businesses in the US. Now how can I validate my idea? <comment><USER2> Is it your idea?You just said you "see them using..." Anyway, to validate an idea for the US Market, you need an MVP and a promising team if you want to go for Y Combinator. Yet, a team full of internationals would have a low chance of getting in.

</comment><comment><USER3> Kickstarter if it's a physical product, Google Adwords/Facebook Ads geared towards US geo, Appsfunder if it's an app, and getting the phone to speaking with potential customers.</comment>


Ubuntu's #1 Bug:  Microsoft has a majority market share - <AUTHOR> https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bugs Status: In Progress Importance: Critical <comment><USER2> Take a look at the thread for that bug:

 _"Declined for Edgy by Colin Watson

Declined for Feisty by Colin Watson

Declined for Gutsy by Colin Watson

Declined for Hardy by Colin Watson

Declined for Intrepid by Michael Casadevall

Nominated for Jaunty by Jason Alan Graves "_

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really old...

</comment><comment><USER4> One man's bug is another man's feature.

<comment><USER5> Would I be using Ubuntu if it was as popular as Mac OS X? I don't think so. Part of the allure is the geekiness.

<comment><USER6> For me it's about having the apps I want to use, good cut and paste, and better updating tools.

I use Ubuntu because it's good. Not because it's obscure.

<comment><USER7> ... same reason I use Windows. It's got the apps that I want to use. I could care less about the operating system as long as it's not running on a Mac.

<comment><USER3> What's wrong with a mac?

<comment><USER8> It's more expensive.

<comment><USER3> It's incredibly stable. And a polished, supported, user-friendly end product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Man. I was expecting some clever, insightful article about how Windows' market share stops Ubuntu from gaining converts. This was funny, though.

</comment><comment><USER10> uh, this gets posted once a month. we get it</comment>


Show HN: Geminee – Easily transfer files between devices - <AUTHOR> https://gemin.ee <comment><AUTHOR> Author (and long time HN lurker) here! First time showing this to a bigger audience and would love to hear (read) your feedback. Besides the web app I've also got an about page which kinda explains how to use it (at [https://about.gemin.ee](https://about.gemin.ee) ). Thanks!</comment>


What are your thoughts on integrating your app into Facebook? - <AUTHOR> http://apps.facebook.com/science/ <comment><AUTHOR> Yesterday Facebook accepted my application ScienceHack into the applications directory. So far, it's been a huge success, I am getting great exposure to my target audience and every time someone adds my application, many more come through the friends feed feature. If you have a start up don't hesitate to integrate it into Facebook.

What are your thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER2> I suppose if it isn't too much work, why not. While you are at it, also write some widgets for OS X, Google and Yahoo?

However, this is the third link today that leads me to the facebook login page. That sucks. Why do you have to login to see the available applications? I don't have a facebook account, so, whatever...</comment>


Assange could face execution or Gitmo, lawyers claim - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinq.co.uk/2011/1/11/assange-could-face-execution-or-guantanamo-us/

<comment><USER2> I don't see an execution in the picture. Politicians would know better than to make him a martyr.

Could he wind up in Gitmo? Potentially...that's certainly a valid concern.

Should he? I'd rather not get in to that. To some he's a hero, to others a villain. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

<comment><USER3> Ah yes, moral equivalence. "Some say this, some say that. Thus, they are equally valid." :/

<comment><USER2> Not really that, but people either love him or hate him, and there's usually little to be gained by trying to convince someone to change their position in matters such as these.

It doesn't change my opinion, but I don't feel like getting downvoted today.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Encrypted Forms - <AUTHOR> http://www.jotform.com/encrypted-forms/

<comment><AUTHOR> I am really excited about our new feature that makes forms much more secure using public/private key encryption.

Here is how it works:

1\. You give us your public key (or we can generate public/private keys for you on your browser using JavaScript)

2\. Before someone submits a form we encrypt the data

3\. The data is saved encrypted in our database

4\. When you see your data, you provide your private key which is used on the browser to decrypt the data. (the private key is never sent to our servers)

</comment><comment><USER2> I read "encrypted forums".

Why don't we have encrypted forums?</comment>


Google Container Registry - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/tools/container-registry/ <comment><USER2> >Pricing

>During the beta period you will be charged only for the Google Cloud Storage storage and network egress consumed by your Docker images.

Dammit google, this is not how you price things. Especially when people have been burned by price jumps on your service before. I don't know why i'd bother integrating with a service when I have no idea what the cost will be.

<comment><USER3> > Dammit google, this is not how you price things.

It actually is the way Google quite often prices things.

> I don't know why i'd bother integrating with a service when I have no idea > what the cost will be.

Then maybe a pre-release service for which Google has not yet developed the experience with usage patterns that will let it price the service appropriately isn't for you. But that's okay, its not intended for everybody -- even everybody for whom the service would be appropriate when GA -- hence the Beta label.

<comment><USER4> >> Dammit google, this is not how you price things.

> It actually is the way Google quite often prices things.

True, that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

> maybe a pre-release service (...)

Also true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really expected for Amazon to release a Container Registry before they took the preview status off ECS. Looks like Google beat them to the punch. I'd still be very interested to see if Amazon will release something soon.

<comment><USER6> Yes a little bit of competition in the container registry space would be good for everybody. I need to have a closer look how good is this Google offering. One problem that we run into was security when started to use Docker. The management did not want to upload the images to any cloud provider, so we were forced to create a registry in our infrastructure. For this use case Registry 2.0 is going to be a better option.

[http://blog.docker.com/2015/04/faster-and-better-image- distr...](http://blog.docker.com/2015/04/faster-and-better-image-distribution- with-registry-2-0-and-engine-1-6/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Aweosme, I can't wait till they pull the plug out from under me.

<comment><USER8> I imagine that wouldn't be very likely in this case—this is much less like Google's usual "let's build some random thing and see if customers like it", and instead very much in the vein of the way Amazon treats AWS: as a set of infrastructure services they themselves consume, but also happen to expose to the public.

Now, they might make it _private_ in the future, but as long as Google are using containers for everything, I don't think the service is likely to just go unmaintained and fade away.

<comment><USER9> From what I know of Google's infrastructure, they are very unlikely to be consuming this internally, just like the rest of GCP. Just because they use containers doesn't mean they use this container repository. Just because they use Java web servers doesn't mean they use AppEngine.

<comment><USER10> Google absolutely uses App Engine internally, and many other GCP offerings as well. This is simply inaccurate.

<comment><USER9> They use the external version of App Engine to run any of their customer- facing products? Which ones? Products -- I'm not talking about marketing micro-sites.

<comment><USER11> Not Google, but Snapchat runs on AppEngine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This looks like it still uses Docker's craptastic who-needs-image-verification protocol.

No thanks.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is this specifically aimed at compute cloud users for faster deploys?

I would much rather go with dockerhub than use this. Egress pricing sucks. I'd rather have it from docker, who made the tool for my containers, than google.

What about docker 1.6, with image and container labels? Will Google keep this up to date?

<comment><USER14> >I'd rather have it from docker, who made the tool for my containers, than google.

Interesting take on things. It's mostly contributions from Google that made containers viable in the first place.

<comment><USER13> True that, the original LXC library was Google. Then Docker wrote their own implementation called libcontainer (and systemd-nspawn popped about).

While Google made containers possible I think Docker made them happen. I can't imagine committing an LXC container and pushing it to a repo if it weren't for docker. Nor would I want to manage raw networking in LXC. Nor sharing of filesystems.

<comment><USER15> (Tedious disclaimer: my opinion, not my employer's. Not representing anybody else. I work at Google, not on borg)

You might find the borg paper very interesting: [http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.co...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en/us/pubs/archive/43438.pdf)

The bits of containers that made it out into lxc are essentially borglet features. The rest of the infrastructure around it was never released to the outside world, and now docker is recreating some of that infrastructure. We've had borg for a long time ;)

There's lots more detail in the paper about how these pieces relate to each other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting. I've been using google/docker-registry to have a private docker registry based in Google Cloud Storage for some time now. I wonder what additional benefits this service will provide for the (presumably) higher price once it comes out of beta.

</comment><comment><USER17> Still beta, Google should have competitive price

</comment><comment><USER18> Next, the Google Container Store?

Only Google-approved containers will be allowed. No competing with "core Google services".</comment>


Ask HN: What class have you taken that gave you a revelation? - <AUTHOR> and what did you realize? <comment><USER2> Epistemology: no one knows anything for sure, least of all their own minds.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> my own: realizing midway through my music career that being able to "read" musical notation is, truly, an issue in fluency - no different than any other foreign language.</comment>


The ads Russia bought on Facebook in 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/us/politics/russia-2016-election-facebook.html <comment><USER2> Were there any pro-clinton sponsored ads?

That would be a smart move to hedge against the pro trump campaign failing</comment>


Ask HN: Will you build apps for Firefox OS to support an open alternative? - <AUTHOR>

When you are not sure about the adoption, what takes priority - benevolence or business decision? <comment><USER2> I toyed around with a dev phone a few months back, and in general I found that the Firefox OS environment has a lot of drawbacks that can be tough to push through as a modern developer. You're working on a platform that targets low- end hardware, is limited to browser-based technology, and lacks the community- generated frameworks that exist on iOS and Android.

I found it took too long to get anything done when compared to other platforms, and overall was just a mind-numbing experience.

I don't know that Firefox OS will ever catch up to the other devices in the US as far as developer tools and community go, but I'd certainly take another look at it if it did. Right now, I don't have the kind of time to burn on free projects that I did a couple of decades ago.</comment>


Is this life real or a simulation? - <AUTHOR> http://aeon.co/magazine/nature-and-cosmos/can-we-tell-if-reality-is-a-computer-simulation/ <comment><USER2> I'm with Philip K. Dick on this one...

 _"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn 't go away."_</comment>


Klejn's Commandments - <AUTHOR> http://laudatortemporisacti.blogspot.com/2017/12/klejns-commandments.html <comment><USER2> > The real question begins with 'who', 'what', 'where', 'when', 'whence', > 'whither', 'how', and 'why'.

I've never seen 'whence' and 'whither' included in the list of questions before. I like it though. It's interesting to separate "Where did this come from?" and "Where was it going to?"

</comment><comment><USER3> A surprisingly large number of the commandments apply more generally to science as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> Some gems:

> Every scholar has a right to make mistakes—if he makes mistakes correctly.

> Weigh pros and cons on the same set of scales.

> Do not hope for chance and luck. The law of gravitation was created in > Newton's head and not in the apple.

<comment><USER5> _" 5\. The scholarly world is not a team of friends. What is your discovery is a loss for someone else. And this someone is usually a prominent and powerful person. Therefore having made a discovery do not expect universal delight. Be ready for tough resistance, sudden attacks and a gruelling and lingering war. A scholar needs talent second and courage first."_

This one seems an elaboration on the concise "It's not enough to succeed. Others must fail."

(Origin traced at [https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/08/06/succeed- fail/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/08/06/succeed-fail/) )</comment></comment>


Anybots' Dexter the star of Robo Development - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com/8301-13772_3-9804720-52.html?tag=nefd.blgs

<comment><USER2> [http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2176/1763508649_857218800d_o....](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2176/1763508649_857218800d_o.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER3> to this day, what impressed me most about dexter wasn't his legs, but his hand(s). for some reason i just never realized the complicated beauty of human hands until i took a look at dexter's hands. it's tricky to build something with a strong grip, yet simultaneously not crush everything it holds (not to mention keeping the weight low)...

I really hope anybots makes it one day, because it has an even harder road ahead since they're not willing to even think about showing it off to the military for ethical reasons (which i respect them for)

</comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting. You really should contact sponsors. Consider Nike or Addidas so you can give more credible shoes ;-) Sportswear sponsoring should also be considered. At least for socks.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Anybots says Dexter can go wherever people can go, including climbing stairs and ladders."

Has a ladder been tried yet? That'd be awesome to see.

<comment><USER6> Uh, we didn't say that. We said _our robots_ _will eventually_ be able to go wherever people can go, including stairs and maybe ladders. They currently are restricted to floors with small random crap on them.

The point of the wherever-people-can-go idea is that the whole Anybots vision of the robotics market in the next 20 years is that AI won't be production- ready, but teleoperated robots will certainly be production ready. So, we merely have to design robots and software that can smoothly allow a remote operator to behave as if (s)he is actually in the environment the robot is in, and perform tasks that way. In particular, this involves going most places people can go.

So, we have a big bank of monitors that displays a big panorama fusing all of Monty's cameras, so the operator can see what's going on, and a glove and backpack operation that allows the operator's movements to be sent back to the robot.

<comment><USER7> Is the basic idea for third world operators to cheaply run humanoid fronts?

How will you deal with lag in places of the world where internet might not be fast enough but wages are cheap enough?

Or, are you planning on going into dangerous services, and replace a human?

How are you planning on making the bot rugged? Also, exactly how many pixels do you expect to ship? Deployed robots in Iraq send a highly compressed 320x240 color stream -- maybe two.

There is an awesome system by Chatten Associates that might be relevant to Anybots. They have a fast pan-tilt camera with analog broadcast to minimize latency to a tele-operator. The operator has a head mounted display with gyros, and here is the kicker: the gyros control the pan-tilt. This means that the camera looks where the human is looking. It's amazingly immersive. Even a small field of view camera works well. <http://www.chattenassociates.com/docs/bob.html>

Network latency is an even bigger problem with this kind of system. Operators vomit with lag greater than ~150ms.

<comment><USER6> On lag: I would imagine that the first teleoperation centers would come from places where sufficient internet connectivity was already in place, and then as the market grew, it would become profitable for service companies to create internet infrastructure in places where wages are lower.

Yes, we envision the first applications being dangerous services. The idea is, at any given time, for any given task, there is a ratio of how long it takes a teleoperated robot to do the task to how long it would take a human. Currently this ratio is maybe 10:1, and a good part of the work in the next couple of years will be reducing that ratio. It's likely to be cost-effective, though, to send robots to dangerous places even when the ratio is high; then, as the ratio nears 1:1, it becomes reasonable to use such robots for household tasks. Then, as we develop autonomy for individual tasks, the ratio will start to go below 1, because an operator can set a robot on one task, switch robots, set a second robot on a task, etc.

We haven't really looked into ruggedizing the thing, partly because Anybots eventually wants to mostly be in the software end of the industry, rather than manufacturing hardware. The point of the prototypes is to provide a platform to prove the quality of the software, and then find manufacturing partners to help make the robots bulletproof and production-ready.

Number of pixels is similarly up in the air, depending on how many we think are necessary to accomplish a given task. Monty's current setup has an array of fixed, cheap cameras, because it's easier to just have a whole bunch of cameras than to have a complicated expensive pan-tilt operation with one camera. One way of reducing the required bandwidth would be to create an option just to ship a user-selected region of the panorama, the one relevant to the current task. For navigation, maybe we could downsample the panorama to provide a wide-angle view of the scene. (The above is all speculation, by the way.)

I'm not totally sure I agree that latency is so terrible. Currently, our operators mostly move the arms pretty slowly, to avoid nonintuitive dynamic effects of pneumatic actuators. I would imagine that if you had to move your arm and wait a fraction of the second for the visual feedback, it wouldn't be so terrible. It would slow things down, but I don't think it would kill you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool!

Kara is a bit of a Bozo, but it's good to see anybots closer to business.</comment>


Qik thoughts - <AUTHOR> http://paulpaliath.com/qik

<comment><USER2> This article reads a little awkwardly in ignoring that Qik was an existing brand that Skype aquired, as that affects a lot of these perception issues.</comment>


Real-Life Illness in a Virtual World - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/science/taking-real-life-sickness-out-of-virtual-reality.html?_r=1&referrer=

<comment><AUTHOR> Its a few months old but i was wondering if anyone knew anything about this?

Viable? A threat to occulus rift? It certainly sounds interesting, but most "stories" like this do. (Comes off a little paid for).

<comment><USER2> The technology - shooting lasers into the eye to focus an image on the retina - has been around for a while.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3265255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3265255)

[http://www.hitl.washington.edu/research/vrd/](http://www.hitl.washington.edu/research/vrd/)

I think it's languishing in patent-encumbered hell at the moment. There used to be videos showing soldiers using it as a HUD-style visual aid.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the links, an interesting read!</comment></comment></comment>