Google HTML/CSS Style Guide – Omit Optional Tags - <AUTHOR> https://google.github.io/styleguide/htmlcssguide.xml?showone=Optional_Tags#Optional_Tags <comment><USER3> Maybe it will make more sense once it fully sinks in, but I think in general it is a mistake to make developers think about when and where certain things can be omitted. It's more straightforward to simply do one thing, consistently, following the "explicit is better than implicit" mantra.

What happened to optimizing for mental overhead instead of file size? This simply should be a build step, part of your minification and concatenation dance, not having to consider all of _these_ when trying to decide if I should close my
 tag or not:

 _A p element 's end tag may be omitted if the p element is immediately followed by an address, article, aside, blockquote, details, div, dl, fieldset, figcaption, figure, footer, form, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, header, hgroup, hr, main, menu, nav, ol, p, pre, section, table, or ul element, or if there is no more content in the parent element and the parent element is an HTML element that is not an a, audio, del, ins, map, noscript, or video element, or an autonomous custom element._

<comment><USER4> This reasoning is why I write all the web pages for my personal projects using XHTML. I can't be bothered to remember which tags are self-closing, which tags need explicit closing tags which can't be combined into the opening tag, etc. Everything's consistent in XHTML.

<comment><USER5> You shouldn't have to remember it, but you editor could and should.

<comment><USER4> XML validators are much more common in editors than HTML validators, probably because XML is both easier to parse and used for a lot more than XHTML.

<comment><USER6> I write and edit all my Genshi [1] templates as xhtml, so I can validate and process them as crisp clean hi-fidelity xml, and then pump them out to browsers with the html serializer [2].

If I were inclined to follow Google's guidelines on omitting optional tags, it would be easy to write a stream filter that removed them [3].

But I prefer source templates to have all the explicit properly indented structure, so they're easier to validate and process with XML tools (and by eye), and unintentional mistakes don't sneak through as easily.

For the same reason, I also prefer not to write minified JavaScript source code: that should be done by post-processors, no humans. ;)

[1] [https://genshi.edgewall.org/](https://genshi.edgewall.org/)

[2] [https://genshi.edgewall.org/wiki/ApiDocs/genshi.output](https://genshi.edgewall.org/wiki/ApiDocs/genshi.output)

[3] [https://genshi.edgewall.org/wiki/Documentation/streams.html#...](https://genshi.edgewall.org/wiki/Documentation/streams.html#serialization)

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<comment><USER8> Well, yes, it's hypocritical. But that's from a different team. You don't need to look further than the styleguide to find contradictions: it's advising to omit optional tags in order to "save bytes", then it's advising to indent with spaces instead of tabs.

 _shrugs_ should just let minifiers do the job.

<comment><USER9> Google's standard template language (soy / closure-templates) does mininfy whitespace by default [1]. However, it does not omit optional tags. I think this is why the style guide is written as it is.

Still, I agree that both types of optimization / minification should be done by the tooling layer.

[1] [https://developers.google.com/closure/templates/docs/concept...](https://developers.google.com/closure/templates/docs/concepts#linejoining)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just to put the code sample here...

        <!DOCTYPE html>

            <title>Spending money, spending bytes</title>

Sic.

        <!DOCTYPE html>
        <title>Saving money, saving bytes</title>

Qed.

Does the  tag really not matter anymore?

<comment><USER11> I never really thought about it much, but there's no reason it needs to.

There is not really any ambiguity that the head tag solves ever. Script tags don't act differently in or out of the head tag, and things like <title> are always going to do the same thing, so having the  block is at best a "comment" to the user that these elements are "head related".

<comment><USER12> One difference: when a script executes in the , the  doesn't exist yet — document.body is null.

A


How Python 3 Should Have Worked - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/python3

<comment><USER2> The problem is that they rearranged a fair portion of the libraries, so you would need two full trees of .py files, and it would require a lot more work to figure out which set was running at any given time.

<comment><USER3> You would also have to handle Python2 strings different from Python3 strings, and figure out some way to handle the encoding problem when translating between the two.</comment></comment>


I turned my personal site into a point-and-click adventure. What do you think? - <AUTHOR>

Introducing Raminibar - Personal site turned Point & Click adventure!
What is a personal site? For many years, I have been keeping a page where I'd list some info about me and occasionally update my blog. This made the format somewhat cold and impersonal. I decided to make this site into something more like me. I hope you'll like it.
http://raminibar.com <comment><USER2> Nice - but you need some background or edging to the text. The light green is too hard to read on the graphics at the top.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I need to look at what kinds of things can be done with Google Fonts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Unexpectedly awesome!

I kinda wish you could navigate from it though. Eg: When I click on the TED laptop, load the talk in below.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh good idea! Yeah I need to think about how we could merge the game and the navigation better :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone provide a clickable link for us poor souls living in the Android Ghetto?

<comment><USER5> Does that thing support markdown? [<http://raminibar.com> there]

<comment><USER4> Um, markdown? I don't know what that is. And might not readily know the answer if I did. But thank you for the link.</comment></comment></comment>


Google v. Belgium "link war" ends after years of conflict - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/google-versus-belgium-who-is-winning-nobody.ars

<comment><USER2> _Google removed the papers from its search and news indices. Given this judgment, it is rather odd that these newspapers, which fought so hard to restrain Google, are now clamoring for re-inclusion_

That's not 'odd', it's just the harsh reality of the power bases of post-Web media, and it reveals the stupidity of bringing this legal action in the first place.</comment>


Google releases standalone Youtube iOS app - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/youtube/id544007664?mt=8

<comment><USER2> It's an app for iPhone, it's not optimized for iPad. Doesn't seem like Google put much effort into it, just look at the sloppy icon.

<comment><USER3> They had to get it out by tomorrow, when Apple will release (or at least announce) iPhone 6 and iOS 6 without the Youtube app.

This looks like a rush job, but they'll likely improve it quickly. The Google+ app was totally horrible in the beginning, but they quickly made it one of the best social networking apps on iOS.

<comment><USER4> That's the point! Is this a win-win situation for consumers or no?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What do iOS users think about the design of the app? I'm asking because from screenshots and a video, it looks the design is a close copy from the Android app.

How do users accept common patterns like Actionbar or Slideout Menu on an iPhone?

<comment><USER6> I think YouTube borrowed the menu-behind-the-content-when-it-slides-to-the- right from Facebook. Anyway, that's where I first saw it.

Design-wise, it looks pretty much like the new mobile website.

<comment><USER7> The menu behind the content UI Pattern is actually one of the suggested UI patterns in the official Android style guide.

<comment><USER6> Ah. Found it (they call it "drawers").

<http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/actionbar.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There seems to be currently two entries of the same story on the main page (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4504246>).

In case someone here has kids and would be interested: I'm creating ToddlerTube, a YouTube iPad app for young kids.

If you have a few minutes, would be awesome if you could help fill out this three question survey: <http://goo.gl/nYIGD>

(Link to the other post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4504690>)

<comment><USER9> Hey! Glad I randomly found this post.

My baby cousins (I have around 6-7, and the number is quickly growing) are all huge fans of YouTube. Their parents teach them to search for appropriate things (Thomas the Train and Cars are popular searches) but I am sure they would love a version specifically for kids.

I'm not sure if I should fill out your form, or if you'd like me to ask the parents and see what their answers would be.

I often forget about comments I make on HN, so hit me on twitter @jonlim or my email in my profile.

Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> But where is the new Google Voice Search for iOS app? The new Search app was supposed to rival Siri. The big tech press splash was weeks ago and claimed it would be out in days! Is Apple embargoing it like they held back the Google Voice for iOS app?

</comment><comment><USER6> And about time, too. The old youtube app was the worst of the built in apps.

</comment><comment><USER11> I would have thought this would be much lower priority than a Google Maps native app for iOS, which also will be missing from iPhones when iOS 6 launches.

<comment><USER12> I doubt the teams overlap so priority isn't material to which is released first.

<comment><USER13> Yes. From what I have read youtube is run like a different company

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I couldn't find it via search (croatian store) but i followed link from this article to the app store, and installed it without any problems

</comment><comment><USER15> Not available on the German App Store (yet).

</comment><comment><USER16> It seems that AirPlay is not built-in...

</comment><comment><USER17> Does it support offline view?

</comment><comment><USER18> Not compatible with the iPhone 3G.

Guess I'll stick with the built-in app then...

<comment><USER19> The dropping of the app from iOS 6 won't affect you anyway, your iPhone is stuck on iOS 4.</comment></comment>


Gmail is now overriding browser right-click to provide a custom contextual menu - <AUTHOR>

This is a clear example of a design anti-pattern that often crops up with new Google interfaces.
There is no setting to turn it off, and it nukes the browser's standard right click contextual menu for opening links in new tabs and windows, copying urls, etc when clicking on messages.
Designers, please just stop with this kind of thing. It's not acceptable to change the behavior of a standard. fundamental browser interface in your site design. <comment><USER2> They (designers) do it to keep you from sniffing their handycraft code with the inspector. (That's a joke.)

The browser is no webpage-viewer-app any longer. Especially not when the "page" is actually a full-fledged webapp. As soon as an app begins to be an app viewer, it's really become an OS. (At least the Web is the OS, and browsers implement the frontend layer.)

Imagine the right-click context menu on Windows or OSX would be the same, all times, in all apps. Not much "context", no?

One could claim those browser right-click context menus hadn't to be there at all: at least, they've been "polyfills" with generic defaults, awaiting the (right, contextual) functionality being implemented by the webapps themselves. Granted, they _were_ useful, back when web pages were just static hypertext documents and browsers were mere html viewers.

Browsers will continue to play that schizofrenic role for some time, both as a document viewer, and as a UI renderer. But eventually we will need two separate "web surfing" apps.

This is also what's going on, I guess, when you here people complaining about pervasive javascript, progressive enhancement, and their demand that all web "pages" must support their no-js browser plugins indifferently.

The Web is more than pages: we got webapps now.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really the browsers fault, not the designers.

Right click is a useful way to interact with something, but it's unfortunate the browser only offers all or nothing.

Either have a browser context menu, or override it and have nothing.

We need a way to have both. I suggest the browser give the designer a fixed size box (size queryable at runtime) and the designer can put anything in there.

This box shows up together with the regular context menu, but with a special border to mark it as part of the page.

</comment><comment><USER4> That's just like, your opinion, man..

It's called a context menu for a reason. It is a menu that offers options based on your current context. If you think of gmail as an application and not just a website, it makes sense no?

That said, I think it would be better if the browser would expose an API that would let you manipulate the native context menu.

<comment><USER5> They do: [http://davidwalsh.name/html5-context- menu](http://davidwalsh.name/html5-context-menu)

<comment><USER4> Oh interesting, thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In Firefox, head to about:config and find dom.event.contextmenu.enabled, double-click it to turn it off. That way it will show the normal context menu on top of any custom menus.

</comment><comment><USER7> "it nukes the browser's standard right click contextual menu for opening links in new tabs and windows, copying urls, etc when clicking on messages."

That is incorrect. It only appears to work for the message list (where the browser context menu is not necessary anyhow) but in the message itself the right click works as usual.

</comment><comment><USER8> I understand your point and would agree for most parts, but I'm not sure how standard is that behavior. I.e. Before seeing your message, I've never really right-clicked on anything.

Maybe to bring the web inspector on an element?

What I often do that is I see more and more not working is the ctrl+click to open a link in a new tab. Oh, actually, if I ctrl+click and it doesn't work, I will usually right+click and "open in a new tab".. So, yeah, if both doesn't work, then I won't be happy.

<comment><USER9> >Before seeing your message, I've never really right-clicked on anything.

Really? I find myself using the right-click context menu all the time; "Open Link in New Window", "Save Image", "Copy" and (appropriately enough) "Search Google for x" I use multiple times an hour during normal web usage. Yes, I use keyboard shortcuts for these things as well, but if I'm on the phone or drinking from a cup then some shortcuts are awkward.

Anyway, the most annoying thing about this sort of feature is that there's no obvious visual cues to help anticipate non-standard behaviour. I get the same mouse pointer icon when I hover over "Inbox", "Sent Items", etc that I do when hovering over my email subjects. Yet I get different behaviour when right- clicking either control. This makes for an unsatisfying user experience IMHO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been thinking about this for some time now. If the browser is really to become the common platform for most applications in the future, shouldn't they be able to declare whatever interaction they desire?

There are long articles on the internet why the right click is a suboptimal way to interact with anything on-screen, but users who need the contextual menu already learnt it. Can't we make those menus more useful?

</comment><comment><USER11> The real answer is to stop using Gmail. And probably Google products in general.

</comment><comment><USER12> I actually like it

</comment><comment><USER13> Agreed.</comment>


Ask HN: High Performing Open Source Code Compilation - <AUTHOR> Is there a need for better compiled open source code ? Developers typically pull binaries from repo's that are not necessarily compiled with best optimization flags. Assuming a better compiled version can boost performance, would there be users for such a repo ? <comment><USER2> People who are really, really interested in performance will want code optimized for their CPU.

So, you would have to provide binaries for every CPU variant.

Worse, those users might also want to mix and match. For example, if they have a small SSD, they may want to optimize infrequently used tools for size, not speed, and they might want to optimize others for start up speed or security (you may want your web server to have all kinds of protections against attacks, even if that makes it slower)

=> in practice, it's easier to let those few users who care about this build their own software.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was only considering CPU optimizations for common variants. Even more specifically, different builds for cloud - that way I won't end up with unsustainable SKUs.

<comment><USER3> Yes, if you improve performance on the major cloud instance types, you will get a lot of attention and be in a position to monetize.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I will get back to this thread once I have something to show :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes there is.

It's not about compilation but currently I try to use a http server written in assembly ([https://2ton.com.au/rwasa/](https://2ton.com.au/rwasa/))

If you can show some improvements with compilation switches (for example: -lto=8 with static linking), you'll get the attention of those who try to reduce the costs and increase the performances.

<comment><AUTHOR> wow! Mad props for your code! How long did it take to write ? Hope to play with your code this weekend.

<comment><USER4> It's not mine but the project is astonishing ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't that what Anaconda is for Python?

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, does look like it. I need to dig more. I was thinking about all the open source github projects too. Typically in languages such as C/C++ that need to be compiled</comment></comment>


Agencies embrace technology to find the enemy within - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/federal-agencies-embrace-new-technology-and-strategies-to-find-the-enemy-within/2014/03/07/22ce335e-9d87-11e3-9ba6-800d1192d08b_story.html

<comment><USER2> I can't see this ending well. First, almost nobody works well when they're always under suspicion. This will encourage only the most self-centered, and unrealistically self-confident people to stay. Everyone else will suffer, and a lot will leave.

Any of these mechanical/automatic solutions are going to make "secret" or compartmentalized work even less efficient. One of the things about startups that lends them great efficiency is the lack of barriers, the lack of silos for information and work. All this is going to do is make impenetrable silos for information, leading to less ability to "connect the dots".

Statistically speaking, there's only a few real secrets, but there's many career-ending mistakes, and opportunities for slacking and thieving. Whatever practices come out of this effort will encourage covering up the mistakes and proliferating the slacking and fraud.

<comment><USER3> > Any of these mechanical/automatic solutions are going to make "secret" or > compartmentalized work even less efficient.

Of course, there's an easy solution to that, and to the greater problem of how to prevent insider threats: limit what you declare "secret" to something _far_ smaller and more manageable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is one of the most disturbing and Orwellian articles I have seen recently. The only threat those people posed was to tell the truth about unethical and dangerous secrets.

</comment><comment><USER5> Incredibly sad to see this article about agencies bending over backwards to plug leaks instead just trying to be less evil.

On the plus side, maybe all this new bureaucracy will cause them to collapse under their own weight.

<comment><USER4> Its just like the Stasi in east Germany.</comment></comment>


Calendario: A jQuery calendar plugin for creating flexible calendars - <AUTHOR> http://tympanus.net/codrops/2012/11/27/calendario-a-flexible-calendar-plugin/

<comment><USER2> This looks great but how does it compare to FullCalendar? [1]

From what I can see there is zero documentation, an area which FullCalendar excels at.

It will be hard to use this plugin without any documentation, certainly in the areas of events, which data sources are supported, etc.

[1]: <http://arshaw.com/fullcalendar/></comment>


Show HN: BuzMap – Global Unified Transit Map - Mark-Lester_UK I have created a single map that lets you easily browse all bus, tram, metro, ferry  and train routes. I've loaded some data from Europe, Israel and  India. It's called BuzMap: Here is an update, there is a previous outline linked at the bottom
State of the BuzMap - http://buz-map.com
I have done significant work over the last 3 months to get BuzMap further towards a usable product and at least prove the scalability of the architecture and I hope a glimpse of where we can go with this.. I have what I think is a viable user interaction model.  Upon touching or hovering over a section of the map you (should, see bugs below) get the longest service that runs through that part of the map highlighted on the map itself and an instance of its timetable in the margin. To move the mouse over to the margin or manipulate the map without crossing other lines and thus selecting them, click on the map to "hold" that route.  Below the timetable should be all the other services that use that line. You can click on any of those and get that route highlighted and a timetable instance. Click back on the map to enable browsing of other routes. There is currently only one timetable instance.
I have yet to load any of the US, and there are lots of bugs still.   You can read the rest of this update, and about the many bugs, why there's lots of areas still missing, and what the next steps are, here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vr5gHrpL25pEo7iFKRgWo9uDK09Xi-jw-c_Z4o9lvL0 <comment><AUTHOR> Awesome project! Would it be possible to add a filter for wheelchair accessible routes (given that this info is provided)?

</comment><comment><USER2> This is cool! Clicky link - [http://buz-map.com](http://buz-map.com)

<comment> Mark-Lester_UK thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very cool, very ambitious, very exciting.</comment>


Ask HN: Text messages as identity verification a bad idea? - <AUTHOR>

So this morning I'm having some fun. Someone tried to gain access to my Gmail account by turning on a feature I didn't even know AT&T had; web messaging. AT&T claimed on the phone with me that it can only be enabled via the phone, but I didn't enable it and my phone was sitting next to me on my desk, locked. So clearly there's a way to enable it through the web.
The message I got telling me AT&T web messaging was enabled for my account was shortly followed by a Google verification code. So someone was trying to use that feature to access my Gmail account.
Which got me thinking; which is the big mistake? Allowing a way to intercept text messages via the web, or assuming that text messages are a secure means of verifying identity?
Text messages as identity verification has become fairly common place, but in light of the fact that they can be intercepted on the web, is that at all a good idea? <comment><USER2> I can only offer anecdotal evidence from my own life.

My credit union previously offered a text message code when registering a new computer, now they call me directly.

Again it's not much, but I can only imagine they switched it for a reason.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's very secure, if you verify and only send authorization tokens to MINs

</comment><comment><USER4> You can turn off sms verification and use the Google Authenticator instead.</comment>


PayPal TOS Update: Will keep all fees even for full refunds - <AUTHOR> https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/upcoming-policies-full <comment><USER2> Reason 1001 to stop using Paypal.</comment>


Demonoid Is Back, BitTorrent Tracker is Now Online - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/demonoid-is-back-bittorrent-tracker-is-now-online-121112/

<comment><USER2> Looks like they got the tracker back up, but the website is still taking some time.

Torrent sites should just have an "export to XML" feature for all of the existing magnet links, in case of a site outage.

<comment><USER3> XML? This isn't 1999. JSON is the way to go.

Hell due to the simplicity CSV would also be acceptable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a trap!

<comment><USER5> Please avoid memes 'roud these parts.

I get your point, though, but it's rather obvious that they may have been bugged, so just stating it does not contribute much to the conversation.

Had you had some insider info, it would have been useful to share it, but this, not really.

 _Edit:_ I thought you were new, but your account is almost 4 years old... Whatever, you should know better.

<comment><USER6> Wow, get off that high horse much?

<comment><USER7> Didn't you know? HN is serious business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Long live the demon!</comment>


Show HN: A new search engine, Kligl - <AUTHOR> http://kligl.com/

<comment><USER2> Looks pretty, as a Bing wrapper, but it can't find itself yet :( <http://kligl.com/web/#kligl+hacker+news+locale:en-us>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you and yes, I know what you're alluding to [1]. ;-)

[1] <http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the feature where I can click a word in the search results snippets to add or subtract it from the search results. That's neat.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Powered by Bing"</comment>


Yara Rules Strings: Statistical Study - <AUTHOR> http://yararules.com/2017/04/06/yara-rules-strings-statistical-study/ <comment><USER2> Fascinating.

I was curious which .exes were not just hijacked legit .exe names. The first .exe file that's not a normal windows executable is "mshtaex.exe" which seems to be a disguised (or possibly mistyped) version of the legitimate "mshta.exe".

Mimikatz slips in the bottom of the list though. If someone's invoking mimikatz on your systems, that should stick out...</comment>


Code in the Hamptons - <AUTHOR> http://www.hamptonhack.com/

<comment><USER2> You've got my vote and support guys. This is a great idea. Which part of the Hamptons are you thinking?</comment>


Online Cheating Site AshleyMadison Hacked - <AUTHOR> http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/07/online-cheating-site-ashleymadison-hacked/ <comment><USER3> Not too surprising. Security in the past has been worse than abysmal on that site. I had a friend that jokingly made an account and sent me a link to his profile. However, that link was also his entire session. Once in the profile section it would let you change the password without knowing the current password. And the last kicker, the change password box had asterisks in it on page load and a quick "view source" revealed my friend's "not joking" password all from a link that didn't look too important.

In summary:

      1. Having a session id just stored in a GET variable for (most?) pages.
      2. Use of http on profile edit page.
      3. Allowing password change without reauthentication
      4. Storing of all passwords without any form of hashing.
      5. Sending passwords over http every time the profile edit page was viewed
      6. Very easy for a user to accidentally share confidential data.

I want to say this was back in 2008 and the site was launched in 2001. I can't imagine that they are making any of these mistakes today but if the past incompetence has any relevance then this security disaster was a long time in the making.

<comment><USER4> > I had a friend that jokingly made an account

"a friend"

<comment><USER3> Had it not been a friend I would have assumed as he did that the session id wasn't just slapped in the URL. What was great was when I sent him back "f1reball" and nothing else and he didn't believe that I could have possibly gotten that from the link he sent me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see a few comments sympathizing with the vigilantes behind this, implying that the exposed users had it coming. I am a bit sickened by this attitude, for several reasons. First of all, adultery is not illegal in the countries where most users of AshleyMadison are presumably residing, and even if it were, people could have used fake names which could implicate someone not actually associated with the site. This could destroy lives!

Second, performing your own vigilante punishment by outing people who you feel are not living up to your own personal moral standards has no place in a developed society. It is not your right to destroy a family, not to mention one where every member is a stranger to you, by outing one of its members as a cheater and at the same time putting all other members of the family on public display.

<comment><USER6> My only concern _is_ for those who's credit card information was used illegally. If I were an employer, I'd be concerned about hiring someone who joined this site. Most jobs put people in a position where they could "get away" with theft or other illegal activities that could deeply harm the company and I can see employers being very concerned about hiring someone associated with the site. Those folks just had their lives ruined -- even when they manage to prove to the banks that the activity was illegal, they're now associated with this for life.

As for the "real users". I don't think the lack of sympathy stems from people's misunderstanding that extramarital affairs are not "illegal". Most marriages have an expectation of monogamy and most users of this site were doing so in order to enjoy that activity without getting caught. They were the ones who decided to engage in an activity that broke up their family and "destroyed lives". This just sped up the process of getting caught. Aside from the moral contract that was broken, the cheating spouse also exposed their partner to sexually transmitted diseases without their knowledge.

I think sites like this are despicable and people using them should expect that a site that caters to helping you "get away with things" is not a trustworthy place to do business. They actually charged $19 to have your profile "completely removed" and then didn't do what was paid for.

I don't condone "vigilante punishment" and a read of the comments seems focused more on the activities of the users than the condoning of how they were caught, but I completely understand the lack of sympathy. I doubt you'd see such a lack of sympathy if the site catered to helping individuals escape addiction or cope with mental illness -- where a similar desire for anonymity exists.

 _Two wrongs don 't make a right_, yes, but expecting the average married person to have a lot of sympathy for a site that caters to weak people who'd rather destroy their marriage than figure out how to be a good wife, husband, father or mother is a stretch. There are many corners of the internet that make a huge profit catering to vice that is not illegal but getting caught doing these things would have consequences outside of the law. Users engaged in that activity are choosing to accept the consequences and folks investing in sites like this need to fully understand that the site has a big red target on their back; it will probably be attacked successfully at some point in the future.

As an aside, why is it assumed that all cheaters are men? The "vigilantes" frustrated me most with the comment _Too bad for those men, they're cheating dirtbags and deserve no such discretion_. Anecdotally, I know of several relationships broken up by infidelity. I doubt I'm alone, it seems to be the main reason that my friends' marriages end in divorce -- people don't like to be alone so rather than end their marriage, attempt to mature and figure out why they were so unhappy, they jump to another partner and start off a new relationship with _no trust_ as the foundation. In my small dataset, almost all of the affairs were had by women.

<comment><USER5> I do not expect anyone to have much sympathy with the site nor its users. But still, being publicly defamed on the internet for eternity is far too harsh a punishment for cheating on your spouse. The motivations for cheating can be complicated, and while it certainly destroys many relationships, I believe that some might still be salvaged when the cheater can come clean on his/her own terms.

Outing a cheater which you have no relationship with is a disgusting violation of the privacy of all parties involved, including the partner who was cheated on. It is interesting how the anonymity of the internet suddenly makes people more comfortable with shaming other people whom they have no personal relationship with.

I guess I'm just opposed to having a society where people punish strangers for not living up to their own moral codes. If we accept that someone reveals the names of cheaters on the internet, then we are accepting a society where it is okay to meddle in the most intimate parts of other peoples lives, even if their actions do not affect ourselves or society as a whole. This is wrong and disgusting in the same way as it is wrong when vigilante "sharia patrols" roam muslim neighborhoods in London, to bring up an admittedly extreme example. It is none of my business how other people lead their lives, even if I disagree with their lifestyle, as long as their actions do not harm me or the society as a whole. There is a reason we do not have a karma police.

<comment><USER7> > It is none of my business how other people lead their lives, even if I > disagree with their lifestyle, as long as their actions do not harm me or > the society as a whole.

Willful deceit and endangering your spouse is not a "lifestyle choice", it's wrong in an objective ethical sense.

Exposing your spouse to sexually transmitted diseases without their knowledge harms society as a whole. In cases where it's a wife cheating on a husband, forcing men to pay to raise children who are not their own harms society as a whole.

I'm not in favor of this kind of vigilantism either, by the way. But I think the relativism you express above, implying that cheating is a personal decision without a victim, is desperately in need of a reality check.

<comment><USER5> I admit that "lifestyle" is bad wording which sounds way too apologetic towards cheating. Of course there are victims, but society has still decided not to make cheating a punishable crime, nonetheless. My point is that it is not the duty of me to expose my fellow citizen, it is a private matter between that person and his/her spouse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It get's me that so many people are basically saying it serves these people right for using the service.

I don't think that it matters that this is a "cheating" site, your privacy should still be guarded and it's not fair that all these people are being exposed.

Secondly, I'd wager that many of the users sign up to use Ashley Madison for the thrill of the idea and probably aren't actually cheaters themselves or hooking up with other cheaters. A lot of the users are probably into the idea of roll playing or something similar.

It's just too bad because I think due to the nature of the site a lot of people's private information is going to be leaked because this hacking group thinks they are doing something righteous and justified.

<comment><USER9> Lots of people who use the site may be "innocent" (because they didn't actually do anything, or because they're in an open marriage or whatever). And even people who are to one degree or other "guilty" are not as a class to be declared guilty and given all the same punishment.

That said, while I can't necessarily judge any given _user_ of the site, I'm pretty confident that the people _running_ the site are contributing to net misery in the world. And certainly I think that it would fall within the realm of justice for them to be (at least!) forced to turn the site off.

But I don't think that's the most likely outcome.

<comment><USER10> Liberalism is an idea that has a lot of weight on this site.

For some, it's libertarian kind of liberalism where people should be left to make their won economic decisions. For others its the social liberalism kind where people should be allowed to decide for themselves what is a valid marriage, or what drugs they will or won't put in their bodies.

Most flavors of liberalism have at their heart the idea that "The State" is neither competent nor qualified to intervene in everything or make all decisions on behalf of its citizens. The State is usually the belligerent, but you could equally say "society" or a body like a twitter mob or a hacker group.

We don't need to collectively decide whether or not this site should exist. People should make their own choices.

There are a lot of things I think people shouldn't do and other people that help them do that. I don't think people should join churches. But, the only way I want to see churches close down is when people no longer choose to be members.

This is a freedom issue, like speech. You don't look inside to make your judgement. There is a right and a wrong here. The wrong is not the site.

<comment><USER11> Your style of marriage, your religion and what drugs you take are all victimless crimes. Cheating on your spouse definitely has a victim which is why it's much more of an issue than the others you've listed.

Most liberals are not anti state, but pro freedom as long as it doesn't affect anyone else's life.

<comment><USER12> Style of marriage, religion, drugs and cheating all do affect other people's life, even harm, to varying degrees and definitions. There is no freedom that doesn't affect anyone else's life.

<comment><USER13> Right, up to and including eating a slice of cheesecake, which is why your definition is useless. What we're discussing here is things that are harmful to others _per se_. Theft, violating agreements (like cheating), etc are obviously examples of this. Religion, drug use, open marriages are obviously not.

The distinction here is kot

<comment><USER14> Whenever someone claims something is "obvious" alarm bells goes off for me.

For starters, cars are obviously harmful: People get killed in car accidents.

So clearly, it is insufficient that something causes harm for us to consider them as harmful enough to argue against them on principle - at least for the vast majority of us.

Are you going to argue that violating agreements is always harmful? Almost always?

How do quantify that harm? Why? Do you have any basis for assuming there aren't people out there that e.g. just don't care? (because there certainly are)

At the same time you claim drug use in the other category, despite the large number of deaths tied to drug use. Religion has been the catalyst for massive amounts of deaths too. To some of us religion are "obviously" harmful to others _per se_. So clearly _your_ "obvious" statements are not objectively obvious.

It becomes very hard to take your argument seriously when your "obviousness" criteria are so obviously subjective and used to avoid having to justify your claims.

<comment><USER13> > For starters, cars are obviously harmful: People get killed in car > accidents.

This comment is a truly impressive strawman. Strawman abound in fora like HN, and everyone (unwittingly or otherwise) is probably guilty of them here or there, but this one is really worthy of note. You took a word ("obviously") that _I didn't even use in my definition_ and claimed that I'm using it as a "criteria [sic]" (as opposed to just using it with some simple illustrative examples). I usually assume that perhaps I was unclear or that someone misunderstood my comment, but you're not even attempting to pretend that you're not wholly misrepresenting my comment so that you can attack a claim no one made.

My actual definition (which you completely ignored) is that the definition of harm is applied to things that are harmful _per se_. Note that I wasn't making any statement about what I believe in, I was describing a distinction which is fundamental to modern ethics and policy, all over the world. I'll ignore the half of your comment that's impotently flailing at a claim _that no one made_ (as described above); The half that actually approaches coherency is an attempt to devise a litmus test for what would fall under this definition and what wouldn't (i.e. how do you discern things that are "inherently" harmful from those that aren't, given that you can construct a scenario of harm around literally every action anyone takes ("breathing is harmful if you take the last gulp of air from someone's oxygen tank!!")).

TW: Use of the word "obvious"[1]

The obvious[1] litmus test here is: is it possible to conceive of an example of someone performing the action without causing harm? To put it another way, is the action separable from harm? This is quite obviously[1] true for the examples given above: drug use, religion, etc. You can dream of (and many here have probably experienced) a thousand instances of drug use and acts of religion that harmed no-one else. This is in stark contrast to theft, violating agreements, etc.

> Are you going to argue that violating agreements is always harmful? Almost > always?.... Do you have any basis for assuming there aren't people out there > that e.g. just don't care? (because there certainly are)

Are you kidding me? This is true by definition. Inasmuch as utility is expressed by people making an agreement and wanting to hold you to it, the violated party in the agreement is being harmed. Note that this makes no statement as to whether _net_ harm is being done, and of course that this entire comment is all under the assumption that the person being harmed in each case is considered to have full agency as an adult (e.g., most people wouldn't consider it harmful to remove something dangerous from your child's possession, even though in the context of an adult possessor that would be considered theft).

If I'm interpreting your latter statement correctly in the quote above, you're talking about violating an agreement with the other party's consent? That's not violating an agreement by any common usage of the phrase, that's just mutually agreeing to call off an agreement.....The word violation makes it clear that it's done without the consent of all parties involved.

> At the same time you claim drug use in the other category, despite the large > number of deaths tied to drug use. Religion has been the catalyst for > massive amounts of deaths too. To some of us religion are "obviously" > harmful to others _per se_.

Sigh. You can't just put the words "per se" at the end of a sentence when you don't know what they mean. Words have meaning. Use them with care. Christ.

You're preaching to the choir when you talk about finding religion to be harmful overall. But again, it's not harmful _per se_. Using the litmus test described above, an act of religion that harms no-one else is me praying briefly before going to sleep. This act is easily separable from someone killing someone else in the name of religion. I honestly never thought I would have to explain this to anyone who wasn't a very small child (and even then, I probably wouldn't have cause to talk about why people murder each other).

> It becomes very hard to take your argument seriously when your "obviousness" > criteria [sic] are so obviously subjective and used to avoid having to > justify your claims.

An interesting question here is whether a grade-school level of reading comprehension unleashed in a forum full of (ostensible) adults is inherently harmful. /s

[1] You apparently have an allergy to the word "obvious", so I'll clarify for your benefit here. I'm saying this is obvious because the fundamentally basic thought process described here is part of the underpinning of almost literally every single moral system in the history of mankind (even the most theocratic ones). Most of the differences between more dated moral/legal systems and today is the level of bluntness we're willing to tolerate when deciding whether an act is likely to be separable from harm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The possibilities are endless, I imagine someone will make this data easily searchable and journalists will be digging through to found anyone of notoriety that was dumb enough to sign up with their own names and credit cards etc. This hack could create a ton of news stories, including record divorce rates.

I'm curious as to how the ashley madison admins are killing these links? DMCA takedowns? What's the mechanism for this?

<comment><USER16> There's another case to be considered here, too - people who have used the site, got caught/came clean, did the work to fix it and have rescued their marriages (or were doing it with the blessing of their spouse), and now are at risk for their name being published for viewing by their coworkers, neighbors, members of their church, etc as a "cheater", "adulterer", etc, even after they've ostensibly paid their moral debt.

There are certainly a lot of karma coming to a lot of people who deserve it, but there's also a lot of hurt coming to people who probably don't.

An unrelated thought: I can only imagine how giddy the staff over at Gawker must be right now. This is like the David Geithner story times 37 million.

<comment><USER17> If your friends or coworkers abuse you because of their beliefs, then they are the ones causing harm, not the person who informed them. You sound like you're not giving full blame to those abusers or at least accepting that their behavior is inevitable. If you're a member of a church which abuses adulterers, and you don't think adulterers should be abused, then you're as much to blame by supporting that stance with your membership.

<comment><USER18> I think you're making the mistake of treating blame in this instance as though it has to add up to 100%, and blame on one party lessens it on another.

If my friend's dad hates gays, I tell him his son is gay knowing it's likely to cause violence, then the father and I are both total pieces of shit. His guilt does not absolve me in the least.

<comment><USER19> Forgive my language but a saying I like to live by and I'll say to myself quite often:

"You look like an asshole pointing out that somebody else is an asshole."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash If you're going to cheat, expect to be caught. If your search for sex involves putting any personal information online, definitely expect to be caught. If you don't want to be caught, be careful, use pseudonyms, and protect yourself from tracking.

Or just ask for a divorce.

<comment><USER20> Or an open relationship. There are many options people may choose.

<comment><USER21> Tobias: You know, Lindsay, as a therapist, I have advised a number of couples to explore an open relationship where the couple remains emotionally committed, but free to explore extra-marital encounters.

Lindsay: Well, did it work for those people?

Tobias: No, it never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might, but ... But it might work for us.

<comment><USER20> Heh. Some people aren't up to it.

<comment><USER22> It requires a completely different mindset to relationships, most importantly, two people with that same completely different mindset, it's counter to most culture and how most of us were raised, but it can and does work.

Also, I find interesting the survivorship (or perhaps anti-survivorship?) bias in a _marital counselor_ talking about how a certain arrangement doesn't work.. what about all those people who never sought counseling because their relationships are happy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So much for this. "AshleyMadison has become the last truly secure space on the Internet." \- AM's PR team. Source: [https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153447889029655](https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153447889029655)

</comment><comment><USER24> People get hacked all the time but the data these folks failed to defend is almost as bad as what the Feds lost. You can always repair your credit, get new cards, even replace your money but you can never ever get back your reputation or your family or the respect of others if you lose that. But giving such a site this type of information (even if you were only curious) is just asking for it to become public. The consequences can range from embarrassment to divorce to losing children or even getting murdered. Whatever the thrill it's not worth the risk.

I don't know how to implement such a thing, but failing to protect people's information seems like it should be prosecutable. Maybe it's an impossibility but I don't know how else to make people care about protecting private information.

<comment><USER25> This is insane, you're saying Ashley Madison should be prosecuted for having their data hacked? Do you have any idea what that means for the rest of the world's websites? And to even make a claim that this is somehow worse than the massively private information the Feds lost is laughable.

Do you know what data AM had on its users? Do you think it's even remotely close to the data the Feds had on every single public sector employee in the US? Should the US be prosecuted for losing that data? Should I be prosecuted because my site got hacked through a 0-day?

Should KVM be sued for a bug that allowed for that hack? Should Linode since they're the data center?

No, no one should be sued. If you want people to wake up about their private information, then prosecuting the sites is in no way going to achieve that. How about people themselves are the ones in the wrong for cheating, and not a website that makes it easier. This is akin to blaming and banning alcohol because someone drove drunk.

<comment><USER26> What's wrong with the idea of having limits on data collection and regulations around their storage? You can't prosecute someone for being the victim of hackers but you can (and should) for not applying reasonable efforts in safeguarding data or storing more than they should.

<comment><USER27> There is always someone on HN who thinks whatever data you're collecting is too much, and plenty of hacks were the result of pretty sophisticated 0days in underlying systems despite reasonable precautions being taken in administration processes. There is already negligence on the books.

<comment><USER26> 'Too much' isn't just some random person's opinion where it's all relative. There are already plenty of examples of data regulation in governmental and commercial contexts - from PII of minors, to PCI, to data residency, to what companies are allowed to do in regions like Europe, Russia, and Asia.

All these hacks we are seeing of both public and private data are proving increasingly damaging as more data is being collected and aggregated (whilst as you point out, impossible to fully protect against).

This very clearly indicates an urgent need for far greater regulation of what is allowed both in transit and at rest, as well as suitable penalties for negligence. This should be a politically non-partisan issue as it's so wide ranging, covering national security (e.g. Snowden, OPM) as well as comedy gold in the commercial sector like Ashley Madison and more serious cases like Target.

<comment><USER27> Data regulation has to do with things like retention length, reasonable precautions, the right to have your data deleted, the right to see what they have on file about you, requirement that data be anonymized under certain contexts, etc. There is not a clear bright line about what data is "too much" for your application - that's a judgement call, and a nightmarishly vague and technical concept for a jury to decide.

<comment><USER26> It also has to do with what kind of data is allowed in transit and at rest as per the examples I gave which are all around legal and commercial regulatory compliance. It has never been a free-for-all where operators use their personal judgement. In several territories you need to be registered with the government to collect certain kinds of data for a start.

But now we are at the point where there is sufficient data being collected and aggregated (by both public and private orgs) that hacks can damage economic infrastructure and harm wider society i.e. not limited to those who have interacted with a particular entity. This means that light touch regulation is completely untenable (quite apart from the general naivety of looking to the market to solve problems it could not even theoretically be solved in the marketplace when your infrastructure itself is toast).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Also worth noting is the continuing evolution of the motivations behind hacks. The impact team made a seemingly moral (subjectively, not objectively moral, of course) when they could have likely blackmailed these users for money or influence.

It's interesting to try to guess how these factions, each occupying some point on the political/idealogical grid, are going to look like in 10 years. My guess would be that we begin to see more competition between them as well as an increase in internal organizational structure.

</comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone know if it would it be illegal to look at and/or download this information once it is publicly available? I guess this would vary by country a bit. Would this count as 'possession of stolen goods' type thing? Seems likely, though catching people or having the will to is another thing.

<comment><USER30> Illegal, also once you've compiled a data base of PII the laws governing personal information apply to you so you can be screwed from both ways.

<comment><USER31> So it's illegal to copy the phone book or class graduation lists?

<comment><USER30> Yes copying them is copyright infringement, if you build them from source yourself then the rules governing PII apply.

<comment><USER32> Phone books are not copyrightable.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co).

<comment><USER30> In the US maybe not, in Australia Telstra had copyright on the information in yellow and white pages till 2010, in the UK it's still protected by copyright as far as i know.

UK Law: "original non-literary written work, eg software, web content and databases"

Seems like the BT phone directory isn't protected however the database of yellow pages is still protected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> [https://twitter.com/PreachySnow/](https://twitter.com/PreachySnow/)

> Do you know what some men do when they find out their wives have been > cheating? They beat them. They kill them. They don't just leave. Also, users > of Ashley Madison could lose their jobs. You know, their support system that > allows them to take care of their kids. Millions of people being revealed > for committing adultery isn't anything to rejoice about. This is not the way > to handle such a situation.

<comment><USER34> And when that happens, it is the man's fault for reacting violently, or if you're particularly callous, the wife's fault for cheating. The person who reveals the truth is quite a ways down the blame list.

<comment><USER33> It's certainly the abuser's fault. But if you can avoid the situation by literally doing nothing (not leaking the info) then you might have a moral responsibility if you do it. And a lot of people think leaking would be a good thing, but they generally only think of breakups and don't consider violence.

<comment><USER34> That kind of cowardly pseudoreasoning allows those who are willing to threaten violence to get whatever they want effortlessly.

<comment><USER33> These are the two points:

      1. Millions of people being revealed for committing
          adultery isn't anything to rejoice about.
      2. This is not the way to handle such a situation.

Neither of these are cowardly, and neither of these give anything to people threatening violence. Outing someone to their abusive partner is clearly morally wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Most private investigators must be spending their Sunday night trying to get everything they can on this. They can and will make money on this data.

EDIT: Spelling

<comment><USER36> Most private investigators make all their money gathering evidence on worker's comp fraudsters for big insurance companies. My dad's been a licensed PI for over 25 years now and domestic cases are few and far between (maybe 1-2 per year) because Mrs Smith pissed off about her cheating husband doesn't have the cash that Bigco Insurance does and PIs charge by the hour. The insurance company has the cost of hiring a PI for 3-4 days so they can win fraud suits with the video evidence built into their cost structure. Unless the payout from a prenup is really big, it's not going to be worth hiring a PI to follow your husband around after work for a week.

(Sidenote: If you're ever dumb enough to try to commit worker's comp fraud, you'd better keep up the act everywhere. Don't limp pathetically to and from your car at the doctor's office, then get home and work on your car or jump on the trampoline you have in your backyard. True story.)

<comment><USER37> As to the sidenote, it must suck for the people who have periodic pain bad enough for them to be unable to hold a manual labor job but who can still have bouts of living a normal life. Either they have to forgo the moments of freedom they receive or risk losing any disability.

<comment><USER36> Eh, it's not longterm disability cases that the insurance companies hire PIs on. Hiring a PI is expensive. The insurance companies don't do it until they are already positive the person is defrauding them. The percentage of cases my dad's worked where the claimant was not very obviously faking is vanishingly small. Like less than 0.5%.

By the time the PI is involved, the insurance company is already ready to sue, they just want extra evidence to solidify their case. They're nearly all acute injury cases - "I slipped and fell at work, and now my back's out and I can't work for six months" and they hobble their way into the doctor's office leaning on a cane when less than an hour ago they were doing heavy yard work (or jumping on said trampoline!) with no difficulty.

Believe me, I have sympathy for people with chronic pain/invisible illnesses. I have fibromyalgia, my mom has myasthenia gravis. We are not the kind of people that wind up with PIs following them around with a camera.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> As much as I admire and respect the United States and its people, I can't be but amazed by the reactions to sex stories.

I have the impression that you can get away with anything, except sex. You can get away with incompetence, dilapidating tax payers' money, corruption, invasion of privacy, aggression on sovereign countries, authorizing torture, brutality, injustice. Big deal. Few care, and if they do, there are no consequences and no appologies. But God help you if your sex life is slightly different than what people say should someone's sex life be, it's the end of the world.

I found the whole Tiger Woods thing to be incredibly stupid. Appologizing to people you don't know because you slept with someone else than your wife. How exactly did several million people became part of the family?

I don't know why, but sex seems to be such a big deal in the U.S. media. You can shift the country's attention from something really important because the President enjoyed oral sex. Nevermind recording a conversation you're having with your friend.

Really.. How important is it to the nation which person is the President having sex with? It puts important things (like "Is he doing his job well?") to the background. "He's utterly incompetent, but he's never cheated on his wife and he's good people". Why would I care if he's having orgies if he's doing the job he was elected to do: doing everything for the interest of the people and the country.

Petraeus comes to mind, too. I mean a four-star General. Highly decorated. Going down for an extra-marrital affair. Seriously? Everything else he's done has the same weight and importance as "this"? The only thing it should have impact on is his family life, why should his career and public image suffer? Isn't this invasion of privacy from the public? And if we can tolerate this, shouldn't we tolerate that the Government spies on us and exposes what we do, in the media. Your dirtiest little secrets.

How come this phoniness and hypocrisy goes accepted? Politicians boasting "family values" shaming others for cheating while they themselves cheat. Boasting "family values" as an argument against same-sex marriage while you cheat on your husband/wife?. People pulling religion and abstinence stunts only to be discovered to be human after all and enjoying someone's body from time to time...

Why can this be used as ammunition by people who do it themselves, and how can the public opinion fall for these shaming campaigns by people who aren't clean from them.

How come whenever it's about cheating, it's mostly the men politician? Do you mean women don't cheat?

I simply don't understand how a country as developed as the U.S. can have the priorities organized in such an interesting way: 1- What X's sex life. 2-Everything else. Is it normal that people behave like 5 year olds seeing a vagina for the first time.

<comment><USER16> In our leaders, cheating on one's spouse is problematic (and plays well in the media) because it is an extremely clear-cut example of being willing to violate one's most sacred vows for one's personal pleasure or convenience - not a quality that engenders much confidence in said leader's ability to honor the vows they made to serve the interests of their country and her citizens.

Many of the other things you listed - corruption, incompetence, invasion of privacy, aggression on other countries, torture, brutality, injustice - <USER2> all potentially explainable as at least well-intentioned or misunderstood or justified by the ends. Violation of marriage vows, on the other hand, doesn't have a lot of wiggle room.

<comment><USER39> Your argument is basically circular reasoning. You say the cultural attitude is based on the unambiguity of violating one's commitments. But the very amount of ambiguity and "wiggle room" we find in marital infidelity compared to corruption, torture, etc... is itself a product of American cultural standards.

Culture is self-reinforcing, but you didn't explain why those standards exist, you've just shown how they get perpetuated from person to person.

\---

Breaking marriage vows is only a extremely clear-cut example only because the massive weight Americans put on marriage vows in the first pace. The society could put less weight on them and look at cheating in a "don't be nosey, they could have an open relationship" sort of way.

Sounds crazy right? But this is closer to the level you have to look at these things.

How did American society get so there was wiggle room around torture and other war crimes? Certainly those could be a "known or should have known" attitude towards prosecuting government officials, or at least becoming a disgrace with no option but to resign. We use "wiggle room" to accept a level of criminality in the politically connected class that would give a district attorney a field day if it were committed by everyday street gangs.

<comment><USER40> There's no such thing as a legal open relationship.

Maybe there should be. I think the world would be a happier place if people who aren't naturally monogamous didn't have to pretend to be - to themselves, or to anyone else.

The space in that place is a natural sticky area for sociopaths who enjoy lying and hurting people. Making "poly" an explicit orientation would make that space smaller and save everyone a lot of confusion.

But marriage is as much about property, taxes, and inheritance as it is about sex. That's the real reason it's a binary in/out yes/no state. And it's difficult to make those elements work when there are multiple people involved.

That aside - yes, it definitely is weird that starting wars and torturing people gets by with a nod and a wink, but infidelity brings out the howler monkeys. I think the reason is because virtue in America is defined by heroic force projection, greedy accumulation of resources, and dominance over enemies and the weak.

If you look like you're doing that, it's all fine. Having sex with people you aren't married to doesn't fit into that, so it gets big downvotes for weak self-indulgence, and - most of all - for leaving you vulnerable to a counterattack on your status and reputation.

<comment><USER41> _There 's no such thing as a legal open relationship._

Can you tell me which law an open relationship would be breaking in the state of Oregon?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Krebs is down again, so here's a link to the Washington Post coverage: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2015/07/20...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2015/07/20/online-cheaters-exposed-after-hackers-access-ashleymadison- hookup-site/)

TL;DR: Hackers took basically all data from cheating site AshleyMadison.com and what the hackers claim is a human trafficing/prostitution site EstablishedMen.com, have released some of real names/addresses/photos/profiles, and are threatening to release all 37 million personal records if the company doesn't take both sites offline.

</comment><comment><USER43> Krebs has a bunch of information on this: [http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/07/online-cheating-site- ashl...](http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/07/online-cheating-site- ashleymadison-hacked/)

It's recently been updated with a statement by ALM.

</comment><comment><USER44> The one group of people for whom I feel exactly no sympathy in all of this is the owners, investors and employees of AshleyMadison.

Anyone who creates a site specifically to encourage and facilitate adultery deserves everything he or she gets.

<comment><USER45> I don't have problem with 'encourage and facilitate' \- blame lies 100% on one committing adultery.

But they deserve being hunted down by lynch mob of defrauded cheaters for that removal fee extortion.

<comment><USER44> How does that work? If I sell you a gun knowing you're going to commit murder with it, am I not also morally culpable?

<comment><USER45> Adultery is contract breach - you are not culpable unless you are part of that contract

Murder is rights violation - you are in 'contract' by being human in society - you always can be culpable

<comment><USER44> I think you may be confusing morally culpability with legal culpability.

If you encourage someone to commit adultery, you are morally culpable, just as if you encourage someone to commit murder, you are morally culpable. The only difference is that, in the case of murder, you are also _legally_ culpable.

<comment><USER45> No, I am not, I was talking purely from morality standpoint.

>If you encourage someone to commit adultery, you are morally culpable

Apparently we just happen to have different views. For me, adultery encouragement is unsympathetic act, but does not fit criteria for being amoral.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> It couldn't have happened to a more deserving site.

<comment><USER47> Why is it deserving of this? Genuinely interested.

<comment><USER17> Cheating can cause a lot of emotional harm. Imagine a site for people to commit minor sexual assaults and publish the pictures of the victims. That would be easier to think of as deserving of being hacked though neither is causing tangible physical harm.

The article also gives the reason that they apparently falsely sold customers a "delete your information" fee without actually deleting it. That kind of fraud can only really be exposed by hacking or whistleblowing.

<comment><USER48> Cheating is legal. Publishing people's PII is not.

<comment><USER17> Being illegal doesn't necessarily make is more wrong. Those laws are quite peculiar to this time and country. You could say that the laws in a democracy reflect what the people feel is right and wrong, but only on a very coarse level. There are bound to be laws that the majority disagrees with, as well as actions which people agree are wrong but individual cases are so complicated the law wouldn't really be able to handle them, so they're allowed.

<comment><USER49> > Being illegal doesn't necessarily make it more wrong. Those laws are quite > peculiar to this time and country.

It does make it more wrong, without getting into personal opinions. Morals vary even more across communities, cultures and countries. It's a fallacy to think yours is universal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Waiting for the names of politicians with accounts to appear in the press.

</comment><comment><USER51> Cheating is not cool, but acting like all of the users of that site "deserve it" is such a horrendous broad stroke. It just reeks of White Knight BS. Every last person on earth struggles with balancing their own inner desires against the expectations of the society around them. Some are better at this than others. I'm glad some of you are such perfect little angels that you feel that wrecking other peoples live is ok. I've been cheated on before. It was fucking god awful but I wouldn't expect that the other person's life be destroyed as a result. Relationships are WAY more complex than some holier-than-thou promise that people make to one another.

</comment><comment><USER52> I don't get why people get so worked up over this. Yes, people have afairs; so what? It's fun and everyone likes to have a bit of harmless sex with new people once in a while. No big deal.

</comment><comment><USER53> Where was the information published? Couldn't find it anywhere...

<comment><USER29> Haha, I'm going to be very tempted to cross reference the data to my personal contacts if this information goes public. It's probably better not to know as many friends you know the partner also and it could put yourself in an awkward position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Cross-referencing the dump from this hack with the OPM dump containing a list of everyone with TS/SCI clearance... Now _that_ is a very handy bit of information.

</comment><comment><USER55> I may not like the idea of the site, but it wasn't until I started seeings ads for it, that I started hoping for its downfall.

My wish was granted!

<comment><USER55> Here is a banner ad I am referring to: [http://thehairpin.com/wp- content/uploads/sites/3/2011/04/1-7...](http://thehairpin.com/wp- content/uploads/sites/3/2011/04/1-74-percent-affair.jpg)

<comment><USER56> Me, I have an adblocker and let other people do what they want to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> What a blow for this company. What is the more ethical decision for a company in an ethically questionable business: shutting down the site and letting the hackers have their way, or allowing the hackers to release tons of private data?

I feel a class action law suit on its way...

<comment><USER58> Hire assassins to kill the hackers.

<comment><USER57> Two wrongs don't make a right, but three do!

<comment><USER59> Three lefts do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Perhaps it's a weakness on my part but it's difficult for me to see this as anything other than karma

</comment><comment><USER61> It seems that no one is making the distinction between actually having an affair and simply the fantasy of it that most of these members probably engage in.

I would guess that of those 40m members only a small handful have ever engaged in an affair through the site.

</comment><comment><USER62> Engadget has some coverage too [http://www.engadget.com/2015/07/20/ashley- madison-hack/](http://www.engadget.com/2015/07/20/ashley-madison-hack/)

</comment><comment><USER63> Apparently, there is data from all around the world. I hope it's realized that some countries punish cheating by corporal punishment or worse. If the data is published, I hope the data of users from those countries are removed.

</comment><comment><USER64> Assholes attacking other assholes online? Meh, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. Some of them will get what they deserve (personal opinion, of course), on both sides.

</comment><comment><USER65> Another nail in the coffin of the confidence in the IT industry. It starts to look more like a porcupine than a coffin now.

<comment><USER66> Your purview of the "IT industry" is pretty narrow.

<comment><USER65> Well, does it matter to the end user whether it is a flash or OpenSSL vulnerability, a sql injection vulnerability, a weak password or simply a careless employee who didn't check the URL before entering a password?

It is a long chain in which every single link has shown to be weak so far.

<comment><USER67> You're talking about network security, which is a very small subset of IT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Let the bitcoin extortion begin... :-/

<comment><USER69> Would it be better if the extortion were in Euros or Yen?

<comment><USER70> Who would be so stupid to try and extort people using those currencies?

<comment><USER71> Extortion predates Bitcoin

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Two points:

1\. Encrypt all database data, decrypt in application.

2\. If you only do perimeter defense, you're doing it wrong.

<comment><USER73> Regarding the first point, how would that help? The password has to be stored in the clear on the server. If an adversary got control of the box, then the adversary would get the password. And secondly, how would you search a database full of encrypted data? Homomorphic encryption isn't ready for prime time as I understand it.

<comment><USER72> 1\. It's much easier to compromise a DB into a dump with injection, insufficient access control etc. than dump the db, find out it's encrypted, then hack the app servers and find a key somewhere in the binary.

2\. You can use key distribution schemes to the app servers.

3\. If you need to 'live' search in personal data you're doing it wrong. You can move search to a fulltext engine for the stuff you really need, which is more difficult to dump and reassemble. E.g. if you search for city, you only have primary keys and cities in one system.

4\. You should also not keep profiles, personal data and other data on one server. Compromising one of the access paths will compromise all your data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> so where's the leak @? .torrent / pastebin ?

</comment><comment><USER75> the company was "working diligently and feverishly" to take down ALM's intellectual property.

I don't think the CEO understands how extortion works on the internet. If anything, their failure to protect it's users will result in a lot of divorces and sad kids. Even people who probably signed up out of curiosity is going to have a tough time explaining it to their spouses. The only option here is to shut down AM, but that seems unlikely given their history.

CEO thinks it's an inside job boy we've heard this line over and over after a massive leak. Hacking Team used it. Sony used it. It's not even taken seriously anymore. If a former employer is being scapegoated, he's about to make serious bank by suing his employer. There's no way to prove or even attempting to question him would immediately be liable for defamation.

If it is true that "powerful and rich people" are now going to have to divorce, give up have of their wealth to their spouse, I think ALM has bigger things to worry about in the form of class action lawsuits. The only outcome that makes sense is for AM to shut down.

</comment><comment><USER76> [https://twitter.com/ftrain/status/623095490226159616](https://twitter.com/ftrain/status/623095490226159616)

<comment><USER77> How is full name, address, credit card information, and private pictures and messages considered "just metadata"?

Nothing about that is metadata.

<comment><USER78> Imagine private pictures and messages not published. Then, full name, address and credit card information are actually "just" metadata, by the definition we've often heard from the officials. And publishing that is more than enough for those involved to really worry, that's the idea behind the message.

Moreover, the article states "the company didn't provide information on how much data might have been compromised." Where did you get the info that private pictures and messages are available?

<comment><USER77> I might be able to bite on full name/address (considering it's what you'd see on an envelope) but the context is important. The fact that Person A sent a letter to Person B on this can be considered "just" metadata. But certainly CC information couldn't be classified as such, and again, context is important.

<comment><USER78> The context is what the message is all about. Just the presence of the names on the given site is enough. And can you please quote how you know that the private messages and pictures are to be published too?

<comment><USER77> I agree with you. The presence of the names on the site transcends "metadata" at that point.

As for your request, straight from the horses mouth (the hackers): "We will release.... all the customers' secret sexual fantasies, nude pictures, and conversations..."

Source via Krebs: [http://krebsonsecurity.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/07/impact...](http://krebsonsecurity.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/07/impactteam-580x657.png)

Is that sufficient?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Someone's getting a divorce for Xmas!

</comment><comment><USER80> Good. I hope the company goes bankrupt. People murder other people and kill themselves over shit like this.

<comment><USER81> People who commit murder and suicide over their insecurities and jealousies are responsible for their own actions.

<comment><USER82> How is this any different than creating a site that is a "marketplace" for cheating on your tests/essays/whatever in University? The cheaters are responsible for their own actions, right?

<comment><USER83> because that is illegal

<comment><USER16> It's almost certainly a violation of the school's code of academic integrity, but illegal? Doubtful; nobody goes to jail for cheating on their exams.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


SaaS Pricing Models and How They Affect Valuation - <AUTHOR> https://empireflippers.com/saas-pricing-models/ <comment><USER2> Don't read this article. Save your time and go read Jason Lemkin's SaaStr blog. It's the "Joel on Software" of blogs for SaaS businesses.

Why? Because this article is grossly simplistic when it comes to SaaS pricing:

1- Despite its title, it Doesnt actually talk at all about how pricing models effect valuation.

2- it presents a laundry list of different models with "pros" and "cons" from the company's perspective, as if that is the most important viewpoint for choosing a pricing model.

3- nothing about aligning pricing to customer value. If you sell a product that improves, say, the conversion rate on a shopping cart checkout funnel, per-user pricing would be a terrible idea since that's doesn't align with value.

4- it completely neglects sales concepts. High CAC is fine if LTV is > 3x. Nothing about churn, let alone net-dollar churn, Nothing about incentivizing pricing or contracts to reduce the payback period, which can be without a doubt the largest throttle on SaaS growth, and thus valuation

<comment><USER3> Is there like a starter list for that SaaStr blog? I'm on like page five of articles and only back to february.

<comment><USER2> The "best of" is a great place to start and is grouped by topic

[https://www.saastr.com/best-of-saastr/](https://www.saastr.com/best-of- saastr/)

Don't get overwhelmed. I suggest starting with the stuff about building an MVP, getting traction, and getting to $1MM in ARR. Even if you have read the "technical" side of those stages of a business (building prototypes fast, shipping and iterating, picking an unsexy tech stack, etc) these articles are great because they explain the business side: pricing, average deal size, cost to acquire a customer, inbound and outbound, churn rates, sales channels, lifetime customer value.

Basically all the metrics you use to judge the health of a SaaS business and thus how they are valued.

I know it's a lot, but he does a great job ramping engineers to understand business and I have really come to enjoy the Science aspect of business (modeling, forecasting, etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A number of SaaS vendors have had massive cancellations because of the pandemic related downturn. This will require a revisit to the valuation logic as there is no more "recurring" when your clients go bankrupt or downscale.

All the obvious vertical plays have been hit tremendously like Tripactions (no more business trips). But even horizontal plays like HR SaaS companies like Namely have been hit big time by bankruptcies and downsizing.

I wonder if there will be a revisit to the MRR or ARR pricing model, and thus the valuation model as well.

<comment><USER5> I'm guessing we'll see a lot more linear growth, bootstrapped products rather than the incessant swarm of bogus "moonshot companies" seeking a hockeystick chart. I run a SaaS business by myself and it's more profitable than ever.

<comment><USER6> I'd be curious whether the cancellations of SaaS companies relates more to the pricing model (just being SaaS) or the industry/product. Companies like TripAction and Namely feel like they'd be hit by a pandemic regardless of whether they're SaaS or not.

I also run a bootstrapped SaaS worldbuilding business that has more churn than usual right now, but it's overshadowed by a big boost in activity and new subscribers that still put me net "up" \-- assumedly because more people are inside right now, spending more time online, have more time to find and explore new things online, are organically sharing more things with their friends, and/or looking for new ways to feel productive.

Feels like the biggest reason someone would cancel their SaaS subscriptions right now is losing expendable income -- but that's not going to help them with much larger, one-off purchases of software either. I'd expect a small resurgence of "buy this software" startups after recovering a bit, but I don't expect them to last long for a lot of the same reasons they didn't (in a general sense, across the industry) last long in the 90s. With limited income, it's a lot easier for someone to pay $5/month than $50 up front, especially when you're not sure you're going to love a piece of software enough to still be using it in 10 months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What i dont like about SaaS model is that it discriminates poor people and blocks innovation. Every SaaS is targeted to heavy users from highly developed countries. Medium tier has to provide most value, while minimal tier must be stripped from most important features, so that heavy users from developed countries wont save money choosing it.

At the end, if you are not a heavy user or from a not wealthy country you can not use SaaS.

So you have worse chances to compete with others. And you can not innovate. Because more and more tasks require having good SaaS. More and more products are only provided as Saas. You also can not buy "older" SaaS as you could buy older cheaper software.

So to sum it up as far as SaaS still is a great way to provide a lots of niche value, it discriminates people and blocks innovation.

<comment><USER8> This is just silly.

SaaS does not block innovation or discriminate against poor people.

The main thing SaaS offers is convenience. I cannot think of a single SaaS service that you cannot do without or replace with an alternative.

In other words, if you are cash poor, but time rich, you can always find or make an alternative.

In fact, I'd say just the opposite. SaaS is great for innovation and poor people. Most SaaS have a free or a low cost tier, or a pay per usage tier. This allows anybody, poor and rich alike, to get started without any of the heavy lifting or a large upfront investment.

<comment><USER9> I agree with Saassy. SaaS was a blackbox decades ago, but successful blueprints are readily available to get anyone familiar with and to get them started with creating their own Saas bliss.

I`m researching Dynoflowmatic ERP software and with all of the valuable information available, figuring out the "D" in derp was more difficult than finding good Saas literature.

<comment><USER9> Hmmm. I don`t upvote/downvote comments and haven`t figured out if there`s any value in it or not...

I expect to create a custom module for everything, but having access to all the data, tools and software has made it a very rewarding experience thus far.

As stated in the other comment, being able to touch it makes all the difference while learning.

Measure, flow, automation didn`t have that ring to it, but dynoflowmatic was an easy way to keep me focused on my goals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I missed the "how they effect valuation" bit... but this is a decent summary of SaaS.

Pay-per-Storage is a form of pay-per-usage and should be folded in. But that's neither here nor there.

The ideal forms of SaaS are (my humble opinion):

1) SaaS:EM (enhanced marketplace)

2) Base + utilization

</comment><comment><USER11> > Even if you're not thinking about selling your SaaS business just yet, > getting operating procedures implemented as if you were will help you to > succeed.

A bit off-topic, but how much is the valuation of a SaaS affected by the platform/language used?

Would a SaaS worth something in a typical language (Ruby/JavaScript/PHP) with a typical framework be worthless if done in a less typical language (Haskell/Racket/Smalltalk) and/or a less typical framework?

<comment><USER12> As a company grows, its technology edge or problems often show up in the results. For instance, Google's used commodity hardware when it needed to scale search, allowing them to index more of the web, maintaining its edge, which brought more users. Twitter has had problems on product iteration. This potentially is due to its tech stack or execution, but either way it shows up in its results relative to Facebook.

There are cases where the early tech is valuable to an acquiring company. Apple's acquisition of FoundationDB comes to mind. A company could also be interested if say they needed a bunch of Go developers to rewrite their backend, and an acquihire deal made the most sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Shouldn't the pricing models be based on the business models?

For example, for Slack, the network effects are so strong that it makes more sense for them to use freemium.</comment>


ESEA user data released after $100,000 ransom refusal - <AUTHOR> http://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/18438638/esea-user-data-released-100000-ransom-refusal <comment><AUTHOR> Link to more details (original source material):

[https://play.esea.net/index.php?s=news&d=comments&id=14936](https://play.esea.net/index.php?s=news&d=comments&id=14936)

There was some kind of browser check that took a long time the first time I went to access this link which is why I didn't submit this as the actual post.</comment>


Apple removes Facebook and Twitter integration from iOS 11 - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/apple-removes-facebook-and-twitter-integration-from-ios-11-2433996734.html <comment><USER2> This is not surprising. Given that iOS now has "sharing extensions" in a similar way that Android has sharing intents, custom integration with arbitrary apps never made much sense; it is harder to maintain and useless in certain contexts (countries, etc). This had to happen sooner or later.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hooray!!!!

Clearly Apple sees which way the tide is running.

</comment><comment><USER4> Did they also remove the contacts integration?

<comment><USER5> Care to explain?

<comment><USER6> If you had the FB integration set up in a certain way, all your FB friends would become entries in your iOS/macOS Address Book. It can make a huge mess.

<comment><USER7> That's especially fun for me when my phone syncs with my car's handsfree setup. I wind up with all my FB entries (which have no phone #'s attached) mixed in with all the deliberate entries which do have phone #'s. I wind up having to scroll thru 150 or so extra entries on the radio screen just to make a phone call in traffic.

<comment><USER8> "Siri call <name>"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Would be awesome to choose which app handles Twitter URLs.

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure iOS has the website issue a request to open X app w/an argument, so in this case it's Twitter making a request to open their app if installed.

<comment><USER11> Not sure how it works on iOS, but on Android apps tell OS what websites they can handle.

This does have some security implications, so there is a mechanism for web sites to vouch for an app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why did they have this "integration" in the first place?

User can "frictionlessly" upload personal data to some website but transferring data to some private location like say an SD card is not something any user would want?

Why is it these companies make the sensible things difficult if not impossible to do. While they make the unwise things like pushing personal data to some kids website (who called other users "dumb fucks" for sending him personal data).

Today people complain about excessive tweeting. Yes, it made sense for Apple to believe iOS users would want/need to share every stupid thought with the world media but not to be able to send private messages directly to other users without using Apple as a middelman.

But I guess they have learned a thing or two in 10 versions.

</comment><comment><USER13> They offered the functionality because users wanted it. Get off your high horse.

<comment><USER14> This sort of incivility will get your account banned here, regardless of how wrong or annoying another comment is, so please don't do this again.

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14534595](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14534595) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER13> To be clear: "get off your high horse" is considered incivil?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> At they trying to avoid an anti trust something? Either way, I like this.</comment>


On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs - <AUTHOR> http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147905 <comment><USER2> Debunking article: "The maths of the paper disproving conspiracy theories don't add up" [http://littleatoms.com/david-grimes-conspiracy-theory- maths](http://littleatoms.com/david-grimes-conspiracy-theory-maths) HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11008224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11008224) (106 points, 2 days ago, 60 comments)</comment>


Pico-8: Enabling more than 16 colors on the screen - <AUTHOR> https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=38565 <comment><USER2> This is the reason I love Pico-8, and have never really been into other "fantasy consoles". Pico-8 embraces the spirit of the old 8-bit systems (not just the aesthetic) where there are "hardware" secrets that you can discover and abuse. The limitations mimic that of old systems: there are several ways to access memory, multiple ways to do the same things - with tradeoffs to each. If you want to do something crazy, you have to really know the machine and think outside the box.

It's all artificial constraints (though you can easily make good games with resorting to tricks) - but these kinds of old-school easter-eggs make Pico-8 just, joyful!

</comment><comment><USER3> See also, for more of your Pico-8 needs:

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20740711](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20740711)

2017 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14174427](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14174427)

2017 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14128946](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14128946)

2017 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14046487](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14046487)

2017 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13667272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13667272)

2017 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13598182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13598182)

(...2017 was a big year)

2016 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13100468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13100468)

2016 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11185855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11185855)

2015 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10317026](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10317026)

2020 bonus thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22342295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22342295)

Others?

</comment><comment><USER4> Pico-8 was included in the recent Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality ([https://itch.io/b/520/bundle-for-racial-justice-and- equality](https://itch.io/b/520/bundle-for-racial-justice-and-equality)) from itch.io. That bundle was huge and very popular, so you may own it without realizing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Whoa. Pico-8 looks _rad_.

Any success stories in using Pico-8 for teaching / pupil engagement would be gratefully received.

Kids love this stuff, and as fully featured as Scratch is, its always good to have alternatives.

<comment><USER6> Celeste was originally written on pico-8, ... in four days.

<comment> frosted-flakes Is that what the bonus levels on the computer in the basement of the hotel are?

<comment><USER7> Correct

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have used pico8 for a while. And even written a few really bad example games with it.

I read and re-read the post in the wiki and it is just complex. Super complex.

There needs to be some really dumbed down examples. Hopefully that will happen over time.

Pico8 rocks. If you are wanting to write a game it is a great way to get started.

<comment><USER9> Check out LazyDevs on YouTube: the guy made an entire roguelite RPG with Pico8, it's an incredibly in-depth tutorial: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLea8cjCua_P3LL7J1Q9b6...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLea8cjCua_P3LL7J1Q9b6PJua0A-96uUS)

He's also made Breakout: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLea8cjCua_P0qjjiG8G5F...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLea8cjCua_P0qjjiG8G5FBgqwpqMU7rBk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Any progress on an open source implementation?

<comment><USER11> There are all sorts of open-source alternatives!

Here's a list: [https://github.com/paladin-t/fantasy](https://github.com/paladin-t/fantasy)

My personal favorite is the TIC-80: [https://tic.computer/](https://tic.computer/)

And if you're looking for a straight clone of the PICO-8, check out PicoLove: [https://github.com/picolove/picolove](https://github.com/picolove/picolove)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lovely stuff. Echos of Amiga halfbrite mode.

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

</comment><comment><USER13> Very different than how console games worked.

On the old consoles, say the SNES you had up to 16 palettes each with 16 colors to use for sprites or backgrounds - although for sprites one color would be transparent.

<comment><USER14> This sort of thing wasn't actually unheard of on 8bit consoles like the NES: [https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/Palette_change_mid_frame](https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/Palette_change_mid_frame)</comment></comment>


How I got hooked on Emacs - <AUTHOR> http://sachachua.com/wp/2008/01/12/how-i-got-hooked/ <comment><USER2> I was an VI user earlier. But after I switched to dvorak keyboard layout navigating with "hjkl" did not seem that enticing any more.

</comment><comment><USER3> For LISP hacking, the slime extension of emacs is really hard to beat - amazing productivity :)

<comment><USER4> Emacs + Slime + Swank = <3 and 0 interruption when deploying new code. Swank is an amazing tool to connect to a remote REPL. I wonder what the Vim lovers do without it.

And don't forget Paredit ... in fact just go ahead and read <http://www.cliki.net/Editing%20Lisp%20Code%20with%20Emacs>

<comment><USER3> I agree, I swank into both my local Repl and into my cloud Repl - it is pretty sweet.</comment></comment></comment>