Facebook Overhauls News Feed to Focus on What Friends and Family Share - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/technology/facebook-news-feed.html <comment><USER2> I very much hope this isn't just words. The core problem, IMO, is that content that makes us angry, anxious or jealous is a much better driver of clicks than content that makes us happy. I'm sure Facebook knows this. If they _really_ mean it, they'll accept that they will make less money as a result of this change. It would be the right decision in the long term, but the short term will hurt.

<comment><USER3> Are clicks the majority of revenue for FB? An ad unit that fills a users screen for a few second as they scroll throughout the day every day is super super valuable to brand advertising. I think that's ~$450 billion of the total ~$500 billion total annual global ad spend.

To me browsing the fb feed is a lot like like flipping through tv channels used to be. Brand advertising loved that too.

I'd think the More people browse their feeds the more valuable their ad unit becomes to brand advertisers.

<comment><USER4> How many people are aware that the list of interests directing Facebook ads are easily visible and editable?

Settings | Ads | Your Interests

It's really interesting to see the full scope of the interests FB has gathered over time. Some of them are pretty hilarious.

They have a seemingly huge ontology of every subject you could think of. If you methodically go through an remove every interest, the ads suddenly become very generic - stuff targeted to, say, age group and/or location. Since removing everything, and periodically clearing it all out, I generally only see stuff for things like real estate and car dealerships, which don't really mean much for me.

<comment><USER3> Generally people only consider ads that "don't mean much to me" as ads. If they do mean something to someone they suddenly cease being ads to that person. It's a weird thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good intentions or not, we must remember that history has proven time and time again, when any entity has far too much unchecked power, it is inevitably exploited by bad actors. A user base of two billion users without any real accountability is a scary thing. The only people policing Facebook are Facebook. We would never agree to a having a single dictator who answers to no one, why should Facebook be treated any differently?

<comment><USER6> Because unlike a dictator Facebook has zero real power over your life? It's a site of puppies and horoscopes, you think we should be dealing with them like we do Kim Jong Un?

How have we moved so far on the personal responsibility scale. Why aren't people partly responsible for not making better use of their time? Facebook is an "evil echo chamber", "wasting people's lives", "catering to business", etc - ALL THEY DO IS HOST YOUR FRIENDS' PHOTOS. Can't we take partial responsibility at least for how often we _choose_ to log on? Are we that simple that our entire personalities can be fully pwned with some basic machine learning?

<comment><USER7> > ALL THEY DO IS HOST YOUR FRIENDS' PHOTOS

This is like saying a Tesla car is just a machine that generates heat.

Facebook has built an algorithmically optimized list of content that they believe will drive you back to the site to consume more.

They also have insane amounts of usage data which they are testing for sentiment analysis [0] They've also run tests on content to provoke emotion as far back as 2014.[1]

It's clear that they have the power to influence emotions and impact people in real ways. Because you are strong willed does not mean that others cannot be easily swayed by dopamine release.

[0]([http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/27/technology/facebook-ai- suici...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/27/technology/facebook-ai-suicide- prevention/index.html)) [1]([https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/every...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything- we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/))

<comment><USER6> > This is like saying a Tesla car is just a machine that generates heat.

Not to that degree but I admit that I used a hyperbolic devise to try and pull back the implied necessity of Facebook.

> does not mean that others cannot be easily swayed by dopamine release

Facebook should be regulated as a narcotic :-P

Jokes aside, FB does have lots of ability to influence, and they shouldn't be able to operate with impunity, but that's a far cry from where we are now:

\- Facebook is too fun (because AI!!) and my work is suffering!

\- Facebook keeps giving me what I'm interested and engaged in!! (echo chamber)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if enough of the core-base was eroding that they were forced to make this change. I've been logged out of Facebook since October, and I know a few other friends who have as well. That's not really relevant, except that this group all had membership on Facebook at the 1 year mark - early 2005.

<comment><USER9> Yeah exactly the same for me. Friends communicate and share photos and news on WhatsApp now, not Facebook.

Facebook has become a kind of shit version of Reddit where everything in the news feed is basically stuff from Reddit that has been shared by friends. It used to be original messages from friends.

<comment><USER10> > a kind of shit version of Reddit

This!

Intermixed with ads, game invites, racist/populist images, and those silly heart glitter greeting cards stuff...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm beginning to wonder if Facebook has begun to realize that being the source of ads while temporarily beneficial to their bottom line is actually destroying their long-time value to advertisers. Chasing eyeballs for ads necessarily warps the things you present to those eyeballs and eventually you're in a race with every other eyeball chaser. The problem with that race is that you no longer have an undistorted understanding of viewer/user preferences but instead only understand their reaction to your attempts to capture attention and clicks, which is a more mechanical understanding of behavior rather than understanding underlying motives and preferences.

Ad companies have long specialized in the mechanistic side of things so Facebook really brings nothing new to table for them, and merely being "a giant audience" isn't especially worthwhile either since a "run of network" ad buy for Adsense or the like is cheap. Facebook's differentiator was "we have all this insight into users!" and while that was true at the time they began courting advertisers what I suspect advertisers and Facebook discovered was that those insights became less and less accurate as users responded to the changes Facebook began to make in order to try and increase ad effectiveness, thus beginning the distortion spiral.

I wonder if Facebook is making an attempt to return to the insight side of the business, allowing advertisers to use the info Facebook has regarding people as targeting for ads that occur away from Facebook. They return to a demographic/insight source rather than an advertising platform.

</comment><comment><USER12> Josh Marshall just now: "Announcement to publishers who reshaped business models around Facebook. Bye."

[https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/951615904760172545](https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/951615904760172545)

<comment><USER13> If it's bad for journalists and advertisers then it's good for users.

<comment><USER14> It depends. Some people use Facebook "likes" as a crappy replacement for RSS, so it's probably not great for them.

<comment><USER15> As someone who runs a business partly driven by people who use Facebook as a crappy replacement for RSS, I can confirm. Facebook made a change a while back where people who explicitly followed my page to keep up to date on local events and businesses suddenly were not seeing anything I posted. I had to start paying Facebook to keep them showing things to people, but even that is far slower than it had been. Out of about 2000 people following my page, I used to have around 1500 seeing my posts per week, now it's down to under 500.

My readers are pretty upset, complaining to me that I don't post enough anymore and they're missing events they wanted to know about, but I can't make Facebook show them what Facebook doesn't want to show them. I tell the people to go directly to my website, but for a lot of them Facebook is the only website that exists.

It's a small town without a newspaper or any other media outlets, so I'm still trying to figure out how to keep on going because I think it's a worthwhile service. Facebook doesn't make it easy anymore though.

<comment><USER16> Here's your experience summed up in comic form:

[http://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people)

Seems to be a common thing.

<comment><USER15> Damn that's so true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's still something eerily uncomfortable about how they want me to log in _so much_ and check _everything_. They basically lie about it now, finding any excuse to put a colored flag on something.

Recent example: while I was logged out, they put my picture on their "quick login" page _with a little red number "2" on my photo_. Well gee, turns out there wasn't "2" of _anything_ in my profile to see: no unread messages, etc.; no, it was just made-up crap to make me want to go check Facebook again.

Not sure why Facebook is so desperate for attention that they need to _LIE_ to get it but advertisers should be concerned: anything Facebook claims about "active users", etc. is probably greatly exaggerated.

<comment><USER18> > Recent example: while I was logged out, they put my picture on their "quick > login" page with a little red number "2" on my photo. Well gee, turns out > there wasn't "2" of anything in my profile to see: no unread messages, etc.; > no, it was just made-up crap to make me want to go check Facebook again.

I've seen this too: I created an empty profile once for some reason. The email account that I setup for it very quickly started getting messages like "you have 1 new notification - log in." When I did that, there wasn't a damn thing there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Oh brother... the quote at the end there? _" It's important to me that when Max and August grow up that they feel like what their father built was good for the world."_ Why does it bother me? Let me analyze.

OK 1) There are people out there who live their whole lives according to good values pretty much the whole time, and don't need the shock of parenthood to finally make them care about acting like a decent human being. And most are not 2) billionaires. However, quite a few apparently do need that little kick in the pants, which explains 3) how trite this sentiment is.

But owing precisely to how common it is, we may never know if this is something Zuckerberg actually feels, or if it's 4) just something he picked up that he thought sounded like something an earthling might say. A nice platitude to conceal the true market-driven motivation for this move, and 5) you just know there is one.

Also even assuming it's sincere, there's a prominent tone of 6) narcissism in it, when people suddenly start caring about their legacy. (Like "my legacy" and "how I will be viewed" as opposed to anything about the kids themselves or you or me or anyone that person might've hurt.)

I feel like as outlandish as it is, South Park's animated version of him, voiced like a badly dubbed Hong Kong martial arts actor, saying "Ha ha ha, you cannot block my shtoyle" and such, is more convincing & realistic than the reality!

<comment><USER20> I like to apply a test to myself, which I fail every time. Goes as follows:

Can I literally write down a statement that would have changed my perspective on this statement/issue/perspective?

Most things that I'm against, I cannot imagine myself not being against. One possible explanation is Zuckerberg is evil incarnate, but I believe the world is much more nuanced than that. If I cannot bring to life (and even metaphorically "try on" the other perspective), there is a high probability that I am too biased to offer a fair judgement.

<comment><USER19> I hear ya, and obviously I would fail as well, though a few years of statements backed up by actions would definitely change my perspective. We'll just have to wait & see!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Sharing" is spamming.

I'm interested in what my friends _write_. I have little interest in what they _share_ , especially if it's commercial content.

<comment><USER15> I agree. I've unfollowed so many friends because they are basically little machines designed to share everything they see on Facebook. I'm missing tons of moments from their lives and it gets awkward when my brother asks me if I saw his Facebook post the other day, but man I wish I could choose to see written posts but not shared posts.

<comment><USER21> _man I wish I could choose to see written posts but not shared posts._

Exactly. And Facebook won't give you that.

<comment><USER22> I remember when that was only what I saw on facebook

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've unfollowed everyone. My feed only shows past memories. I love my feed. I highly recommend it.

<comment><USER24> Sounds like Facebook, and indeed the internet, is an unneccesary middleman for you.

<comment><USER25> Internet is an interconnection medium. People use this tool in very different ways.

I understand this is an hyperbole, but it sounds really too far fetched. Facebook is not the internet.

<comment><USER26> True, unless your from a country where "free basics" is you're only offering ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Mark Zuckerberg's post on this change: [https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104413015393571](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104413015393571)

Facebook press release: [https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/news-feed-fyi- bringing-...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/news-feed-fyi-bringing- people-closer-together/)

<comment><USER28> The very first sentence of Zuckerberg's FB post says:

> One of our big focus areas for 2018 is to make sure that the time we all > spend on Facebook is time well spent.

"Time well spent" is also the name of an organization that is one of Facebook's strongest critics:

[http://timewellspent.io](http://timewellspent.io)

I wonder if the phrasing is deliberate.

<comment><USER29> The name originally came from Facebook (and earlier uses by other companies) and was used by timewellspent.io.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm guessing that this change won't affect the dopamine-release strategy they were engaging with before. There are far more issues with Facebook rather than the need to tweak the network to ad post ratio in the news feed.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's remarkable how closely the evolutions of the facebook "the product" track the evolutions of facebook "the founder". Zuckerberg starts his professional life as a college bro making tools for college bros, then a few steps later he's married and has kids and it's all about family and true connection, less about broadcasting to the world.

</comment><comment><USER32> Wait, Facebook cares about engagement between people instead of between people and ad-supported lowest common demoninator content? Could have fooled me over the past several years. I'm really cynical about FB but it really has earned it.

I hope it becomes more useful, because for me their original value proposition to users was great but has totally lost its way as they've monetized.

<comment><USER33> Yea, at this point I'd be willing to pay $10/month for a social network that respected my privacy, didn't bombard me with ads, and just generally treated me as a _customer_ , rather than _product_.

The trick of course is convincing anyone who isn't me to pay :)

Heck, maybe it should be a non-profit.

<comment><USER34> Just... get your real friends to text you.

If they won't text you, they're not your real friends. (This isn't always true, but I'd say that it's 95% accurate.)

I'm not being condescending or pretentious. I have done this, over the last few months, and it's helped me to realize who's really worth having in my life on a daily basis, and who's not.

<comment><USER15> I don't want my friends texting me everything. That's far more disruptive than a passive feed I can glance at. And I don't want to text my friends everything either.

One of the great things about Facebook is the unexpected social interactions. I post a picture and someone I haven't talked to in a while comments something really great on it and sparks a conversation and rekindles the friendship. That's not going to happen over text.

People in my life on a daily basis are in my life on a daily basis. People in my life occasionally are on Facebook.

<comment><USER18> > I don't want my friends texting me everything. That's far more disruptive > than a passive feed I can glance at. And I don't want to text my friends > everything either.

Real friendships aren't passive.

<comment><USER15> You have a very restrictive view of what a real friendship is. I'm sorry, but you don't get to define my relationships, that is not your right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This change was tested for months in several smaller countries including mine. I am not on facebook, but I know that media here hate the change. They lost tens of percents of traffic overnight.

<comment><USER36> This plus the Adblock wars makes me wonder if there's anything that would make both consumers and media happy at the same time, or whether the relationship is pseudo adversarial by nature now.

<comment><USER37> I was super happy mid-90s when we spent our own money to self-publish, as both a consumer and publisher.

Publishing a static set of lightly styled HTML pages to massive audiences is shockingly cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The FB feed has been terrible since it changed from a chronological list. Doubt this will improve anything.

<comment><USER39> Unless you have a small number of FB contacts (AKA "friends") chrono is probably rapidly overwhelmed. I wanted chrono too, but it's just too much.

OTOH it's absurd that if you want to see again that post you saw last week — or this morning! — you probably can't find it. That can be true in the HN firehouse too though sometimes you can dredge it out of your browser history. Good luck trying that w/FB

My gf works on this at FB (don't know if she works on _this_ particular change) and she says her group talks every day about the difficulty of finding stuff. I don't know if those discussions are part of her work or it's just they have the same problems. I just know that when I gripe about any UX issues or the shittiness of their app she just sighs and says, "yeah, we know"

<comment><USER40> > OTOH it's absurd that if you want to see again that post you saw last week — > or this morning! — you probably can't find it.

Try 2 seconds ago. Open facebook, browse, start to close facebook, see something interesting, but it's too late the tab is closing, oh well, re-open facebook, too bad it's gone forever you'll never see it again.

<comment><USER41> Worse yet, if you use the Facebook app to follow a link someone posted and leave it open for awhile, when you then hit the back button to close the browser and return to your feed, the post containing the link will no longer be on your screen, or even easy to find. Makes it near impossible to comment on it, re-share it, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I believe this is step 1 in entering/dominating another industry: influencer marketing. Hear me out. I have 3 friends who have started "influencer marketing" companies that fly out 20 or so influencers, and brands pay for posts during their trip. I'm not too well attuned to the economics of it, but from what I can see, it's profitable.

Facebooks move of doing this is probably to ultimately purposefully change the incentives for advertisers. Now, advertisers, who have went all in to social networks will have to retain that channel, since it happens to work so well. And they'll be paying more per ad, as a result of the economics of this new marketing paradigm. Influencers (when FB takes over this market, I'm sure they/we won't be called that) and Facebook is, please excuse my use of a buzzword, a true synergy. I mean, who wouldn't want free stuff* (with the catch that you have to post about the product x times in a given time frame)? By using the whole network as a conduit for advertising, I think this is going to be huge.

<comment><USER43> I think you're right, influencers are going to get bigger. They're kind of like a contracted-out or part-time sales team. Or another way of looking at it, they're living commercials.

Eventually FB will see influences as a challenge to their own ad network (the only ads on FB must go thru FB!), so I agree with you, FB will try to take it over. PS I wonder why you got a downvote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Too late. Noone around my family and friends share nothing in Facebook for long time. In 2018, it's probably the worst platform to connect to people. The best thing I did in 2017 was to permanently delete my Facebook account. Thankfully they now allow you to divorce with their app at least.

</comment><comment><USER45> So, like it was in the beginning? That's some innovation right there, boy.

<comment><USER36> Everything old is new again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Sounds like they're returning the feed to what it was back around 2007-2009 ish (when I first remember it). Or at least attempting to do so.

</comment><comment><USER47> I looked through my newsfeed this week for the first time in several months.

I thought the amount of trash posts and videos (which caused me to leave Facebook) had greatly declined, but wasn't sure why. If it's related to this change, it's a good start.

While I'm skeptical of Facebook, I appreciate their attempt to improve if it's genuine.

<comment><USER34> What's your criteria for "genuine"?

<comment><USER47> from the article: "We want to make sure that our products are not just fun, but are good for people," Mr. Zuckerberg said. "We need to refocus the system."

genuine for me, is making changes that are good for people, even if they are bad for advertisers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> You can of course do that "overhaul" yourself by installing a filter like F.B.Purity

</comment><comment><USER49> I welcome the changes, and am open to giving Zuckerberg's pledge to investigate decentralization this year[1] a fair shake.

He has a _lot_ of work and convincing to do to fulfill these lofty goals and inspire us to take him seriously. Nothing against Zuckerberg specifically, even -- just that corporate incentives and business momentum are mighty forces to be contended with, even assuming Mark is acting in good faith and full capacity.

[1][https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104380170714571](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104380170714571)

</comment><comment><USER50> Important to note, Facebook has been hiding posts by pages in the feed to users in Eastern Europe (Serbia, where I live), and it results in a much cleaner and less noisy feed, but people can still go to the Explore Feed and see posts by pages...

More on this: [https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/23/facebook-page- feed/](https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/23/facebook-page-feed/)

</comment><comment><USER51> yes please! The reason I don't use facebook anymore is because it doesn't present me anything I care about. Just memes, news and updates in some sale groups I am part of. I'm not complaining that it doesn't hog me as much as it used to, but the reason why I still have a account is to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances and see what's going in in their life

<comment><USER52> it is pretty easy to curate your own feed though, just unfollow/unfriend the people posting noise. I see maybe 1-2 new posts a day on average.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Funny this was reason I've been using G+ to share photos with friends and family since they 'stay' in the news feed.

</comment><comment><USER54> I see. FB is adopting a similar model to Tecent's WeChat Moments in which users primarily see content shared by friends and family. It worked for WeChat but let's how it goes for Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have long critiqued Facebook for chasing after ad revenue at the expense of the experience they offer users. In light of this news, the following quote comes to mind: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

I generally feel that Facebook has traveled so far in the wrong direction, coming back to any sense of morality will be an extremely hard job. That being said, I wonder if they truly understood the extent of their "shady" tactics. It's all too easy to focus on shareholders and forget about the real people using your service. All told, this does at least feel like a step in the right direction.

<comment><USER55> 0

<comment><USER56> As much as I dislike Zuckerberg, I do feel like early IM chats made over a decade ago while he was in college is not meaningful anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Just show all things from all subscribed sources in chronological order, add pagination, filtering and sorting, and you might have yourself _something_.

</comment><comment><USER58> The newsfeed should be a cronological list of posts from your sources. Then you could have some filter functionality that YOU control

<comment><USER10> I remember when Google+ was like that. It was so perfect. You could even set a frequency (with a slider!) for posts from each individual source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Facebook = weapon of mass disinformation Smartphone = weapon of mass distraction The 'perfect' storm.

next? AR/VR = weapon of mass delusion?

</comment><comment><USER60> I just want a date ordered list of everything my friends have posted. Is that too much to ask for?

</comment><comment><USER61> The fact that I'm not allowed to order my newsfeed by latest permanently is a big problem!

<comment><USER62> I have the same issue, I wouldn't call it a big problem, just annoying. What it does is show us where Facebook believe there's a possibility to make a profit, and it's not by keeping you up to date with your friends lives.

<comment><USER61> Sure, at minimum it is annoying. For me i'm always checking latest political, sports or technology news, although this might come across pretty bad but I put my facebook "world" in the same category so I want the latest updates all the time

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Zuckerberg is painfully slow. Makes me really question his so-called "genius".

</comment><comment><USER64> I just wish they would stop tracking me and everyone I interact with whenever and wherever

</comment><comment><USER65> Install newsfeed eradicator. Best decision I ever made.

The news feed offers nothing.

<comment><USER66> The best decision ever was to log out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I think Facebook is basically the replacement of the newspaper at this point. Oh well....

<comment><USER30> Years ago they pitched this exact idea/goal at F8 I believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Horrible news. Now this stupid thing will be less horrible and will keep people who were leaving.

Or maybe it will just go back to the point it was when I left, in 2013, which was already very unbearable.

</comment><comment><USER59> Facebook = weapon of mass disinformation Smartphone = weapon of mass distraction

next? VR/AR = weapon of mass delusion ?

</comment><comment><USER69> I don't understand, here is my news feed right now: \- A beautiful video from Patrick Seabase (person that I follow) \- A post from a friend asking a question I don't know the answer to, but already 8 comments. \- A post from The Economist (that I follow). This article is not relevant to my interest but sometime they are. \- A post about about a comment that one of my friend left on another post (this the kind of post I don't want to see) \- A friend posted a video of something funny happening in my home town. \- A post from my mayor telling us that the snow removing in the street is nearly done. \- A post from CityLab relevant to me.

So on and so forth. If your feed is irrelevant, it's your fault...

</comment><comment><USER70> I am very surprised by the general vibe in here that FB are doing this for the users or to promote responsible social networking. IMHO They poisoned the well by disrespecting their users [1] and are now trying to undo the damage. Just like Apple were very sorry _after_ they got caught slowing iPhones.

[1] [https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/facebook-sharing- crisis.h...](https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/facebook-sharing-crisis.html)</comment>


ProtonMail pays $6k ransom, gets taken out by DDoS anyway - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/11/crypto-e-mail-service-pays-6000-ransom-gets-taken-out-by-ddos-anyway/ <comment><USER2> NEVER EVER PAY RANSOM MONEY.

Please. Even if your business will suffer it will suffer a _lot_ more if you do pay since now it is known you'll cave. Also: you are making the problem larger for others.

<comment><USER3> From their blog: [https://protonmaildotcom.wordpress.com/](https://protonmaildotcom.wordpress.com/)

 _At around 2PM, the attackers began directly attacking the infrastructure of our upstream providers and the datacenter itself. The coordinated assault on our ISP exceeded 100Gbps and attacked not only the datacenter, but also routers in Zurich, Frankfurt, and other locations where our ISP has nodes. This coordinated assault on key infrastructure eventually managed to bring down both the datacenter and the ISP, which impacted hundreds of other companies, not just ProtonMail._

 _At this point, we were placed under a lot of pressure by third parties to just pay the ransom, which we grudgingly agreed to do at 3:30PM Geneva time to the bitcoin address 1FxHcZzW3z9NRSUnQ9Pcp58ddYaSuN1T2y. This was a collective decision taken by all impacted companies, and while we disagree with it, we nevertheless respected it taking into the consideration the hundreds of thousands of Swiss Francs in damages suffered by other companies caught up in the attack against us. We hoped that by paying, we could spare the other companies impacted by the attack against us, but the attacks continued nevertheless. This was clearly a wrong decision so let us be clear to all future attackers – ProtonMail will NEVER pay another ransom._

<comment><USER2> They put their customers in charge of the company? This gets weirder all the time. The problem is that they asked their customers in the first place. They should have simply communicated the fact that they would be under attack shortly _and_ indicate that they would _never ever pay a red cent_.

That would give their customers time to batten the hatches and/or migrate off the system for the time being while sending a clear signal that they would not pay anyway.

This is a tough situation to be in but putting your customers in control of the company (and in a democratic way no less) is not the solution. What about those customers that decided (rightly imo) against paying?

Companies such as these should have an up-front item in their terms of service indicating that they would never pay a ransom, that way they would be clear to both their customers _and_ their potential attackers.

<comment><USER4> "This was a collective decision taken by all impacted companies"

I think they were put under pressure by other companies using the same IPS, not their customers.

<comment><USER2> That's even weirder. They have obligations to their customers _not_ to their neighbors in the same DC, that's the territory of whoever handles their hosting.

<comment><USER5> The datacenter is not going to be happy if they are offline due to attacks targeting one of their customers. The datacenter has an obligation to their customers, and if that means cutting off ProtonMail so that other customers stay online, then that's what the datacenter has to do. Then, ProtonMail is under pressure to pay the ransom fee to avoid having services terminated by the datacenter.

<comment> eric-hu This is a risk the datacenter exposes their customers to by nature of how they operate. It's a major selling point to me that AWS employs some more sophisticated countermeasures to attacks like these. If their typical response to ransom requests was "you need to consider how you're impacting our business", I would take my business elsewhere.

<comment><USER6> > I would take my business elsewhere.

Great in theory, but surely nobody "elsewhere" will host you securely if hosting you means all their other customers get hosed.

"the attack against ProtonMail can be divided into two stages. The first stage is the volumetric attack which was targeting just our IP addresses. The second stage is the more complex attack which targeted weak points in the infrastructure of our ISPs. This second phase has not been observed in any other recent attacks on Swiss companies and was technically much more sophisticated. This means that ProtonMail is likely under attack by two separate groups, with the second attackers exhibiting capabilities more commonly possessed by state-sponsored actors. It also shows that the second attackers were not afraid of causing massive collateral damage in order to get at us."

Protonmail could just be talking this up, but if your ISP's (or AWS's) fancy countermeasures don't deal with this, why would they keep you? And why would any other ISP want or accept your business?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Loved the comment at the bottom:

'So basically ProtonMail said "We're incompetent and fund criminals… give us money."'

<comment><USER8> There's another good one:

"ProtonMail should apply for a refund. Or at least store credit."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems like the largest threat to the "ransom seeking industry" is for the public to come to believe that paying the the ransom will do no good. Sometimes, such as in cases like this, it becomes publicly known that a ransom is sought before it is paid. An interesting aspect of a Bitcoin ransom is that third parties can verify that a ransom was paid.

Would it be in the legitimate interest of the public as a whole for a third party (possibly governmental) to carry through on the threat as soon as the ransom is paid? This would be to the detriment of the victim, but reduce the likelihood that future ransoms would be paid, and thus eventually might reduce the number of future victims.

Might that be what's happened here?

<comment><USER2> That's an interesting angle, but if traced to the source that source would still be 100% on the hook for any and all fall-out from such an attack and I really wonder if any government entity would be willing to sign off on such a vaccination service.

<comment><USER10> It doesn't necessarily have to be a government, things like this probably attract more vigilante "Anonymous" type of people anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Vigilante solution: You could automatically send a ransom request any time you see a company getting DDOS'd by an attacker. If the attacker is also asking them for a ransom (so the company gets two ransoms), you ensure confusion and that the attacker doesn't get paid. Otherwise, you might get paid while the attack happens.

This way:

(1) companies that pay ransoms are AWLAYS punished and it never causes an attack to stop (2) no attacker ever gets paid a ransom

</comment><comment><USER12> I suspect, sadly, this is why Gmail and sites like it will continue to win. Secure email always sounds like a good thing, but it's less important in practice than accessible email. If you have to make a choice between confidentiality, integrity, and availability, for day-to-day email, very few people will choose anything other than availability.

(The email deliverability problem doesn't help matters, of course.)

<comment><USER13> an email server doesn't need to be accessible 100% of the time to guarantee deliverability

<comment><USER14> Protonmail's e-mail servers were off line for multiple days. With an outage of that length mail will start to bounce. It depends on the local configuration. But, 3 days/72 hours is pretty standard.

<comment><USER13> That length of down-time is unacceptable for any type of connection.... even for residential. But at least I guess that the senders will know that the emails bounced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's regular security solutions then there's those meant to stop High Strength Attackers. I warned ProtonMail's team and infrastructure wouldn't handle the latter. I was expecting stealth 0-days, though, given there's DDOS mitigations available. That they went down due to DDOS was a bit of a surprise.

"Cost estimates for these solutions are around $100,000 per year since there are few service providers able to fight off an attack of this size and sophistication. These solutions are expensive and take time to implement, but they will be necessary because it is clear that online privacy has powerful opponents."

No shit lol... Not a good sign that they're already in reactive mode. On other end, that MyKolab hasn't gone down might mean they're already compromised or just not targeted by this attack. I wonder what it is. They're just a GPG carrier in a semi-neutral jurisdiction in my usage, though. ProtonMail would've been, too, but I figured they'd be more likely to have service issues.

<comment><USER16> You mentioned that you warned ProtonMail's team about High Strength Attackers. What else did you warn them about? What other security flaws do they have in your opinion?

<comment><USER15> I warned others about them. I rarely warn projects any more because my associates and I have done that until we were blue in the face with little effort. My MO is to just post good stuff in forums that attract talent so they might see and adopt it. In any case, I posted a write-up on what real security is and what goes into it on Schneier's blog in response to a [false] comment saying secure coding is all you need. Here's the Pastebin of it:

[http://pastebin.com/y3PufJ0V](http://pastebin.com/y3PufJ0V)

Here's a specific example where I try to make a step-by-step guide for high assurance Tor without knowing its internals. Just drew on my prior work:

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/09/identifying_d...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/09/identifying_dre.html#c6678915)

Hope what High Assurance Security takes is more clear now. Unless you get lucky (eg GPG), you need high assurance to resist TLA's successfully and that might just be delaying inevitable. Still need monitoring & tamper-detection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I belong to a minority community in Pakistan target of regular state backed oppression.In addition to violence and flagrant discrimination the community representatives are also targets for abductions. The community has a rule.It never pays ransom to the kidnappers because this sets a precedent and exposes the representatives all over the country to even more kidnappings. This strategy while it may seem brutal is a necessary one and over the years kidnappings for ransom has gone down. Again, computer security is different, but the principle is same, you dont want to send out the message 'We'll give you money to make you go away' because it just goads even more to resort to such tactics.

<comment><USER18> See eg [http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/colinfreeman/100251070/dav...](http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/colinfreeman/100251070/david- cameron-wants-a-global-ban-on-ransom-payments-as-a-former-hostage-i-think-hes- wrong/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's really not smart. By paying it up you just incentive them to do it more often. Not only to yourself but to other websites.

<comment><USER19> This is the first case I've seen where a digital blackmailer didn't follow through with their promise. It's bad for business for them to renege as it increases the chance that their next victim wont pay.

<comment><USER20> I have no idea how to verify the statements, but I found some comments on the blockchain.info page for the bitcoin address regarding the DoS. It is supposedly from the blackmailers: [https://blockchain.info/address/1FxHcZzW3z9NRSUnQ9Pcp58ddYaS...](https://blockchain.info/address/1FxHcZzW3z9NRSUnQ9Pcp58ddYaSuN1T2y)

"Somebody with great power, who wants ProtonMail dead, jumped in after our initial attack!" "We have no such power to crash data center and no reason to attack ProtonMail any more!" "WE DO NOT HAVE THAT POWER! NOT EVEN CLOSE!" "We are not attacking ProtonMail! Our attack was small, directed at their IP only and lasted 15 minutes only!"

I don't believe Protonmail have said they have received any more requests for money, so that would go along with the above. I agree that it was silly to pay the blackmailers, but there is some reason to believe that these are two separate attacks.

<comment><USER14> Verified. ProtonMail received no additional requests for money. And, those are the attackers' words. The original attackers claim they stopped. They hit many other Swiss companies and stopped after they were paid, as well. They are screwed now (and seem to be panicking a bit) because the size of the secondary attack was enough to knock a portion of Swiss internet infrastructure off line, anger some high profile businesses (including banks), anger the Swiss Government, and cause the matter to become a high profile case for Europol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The only thing worse than paying a ransom is publicly announcing you've paid a ransom.

<comment><USER22> I guess by publicly announcing that they paid ransom that "didn't work" they have slightly undermined the trust for ransom as a solution in cases like this. So it might be correct from a game theory perspective, if you disregard any decrease in trust for themselves that is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm reminded of a similar article on ransoms and FBI's strange advice to pay up.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10482242](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10482242)

I think this is a good example of why this is bad advice.

<comment><USER24> Ransomware is a different scenario. With ransomware, if you have no backups and absolutely need your files back, paying the ransom is the only sane option. Of course, this can easily be prevented by taking frequent backups.

With a DDoS, there are almost no advantages to paying the ransom. Much better to spend the money on DDoS mitigation instead, to help now and in the future.

Also, the FBI wasn't making an official statement. It was just an off-hand remark from an agent, recommending technically ignorant people who desperately want their files back to pay the ransom.

<comment><USER25> In fact backups is not enough. It has to be offline backups, which raises the bar quite a bit. Backing up to a network drive doesn't even help, and I am not aware of any wildly used "write once-only" network drive capabilities.

<comment><USER24> Backup to an external hard drive that you only leave connected during the backup, or a cloud service (ransomware could theoretically target these but so far have not), or do a "pull-style" backup where the machine doesn't have write access to the backup location.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> No evidence given for it, but my first thought was to wonder is it was a government not liking ProtonMail's encrypted email service,and taking them down.

<comment><USER27> I mean, the day of SOPA blowing up when everyone was protesting what was necessary to take down piracy websites they shut down megaupload and arrested people across the world. My only question that day was: why doe we need SOPA again?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Runbox have also been under DDoS ransom too [1], although they appear to have handled it well because I haven't noticed any down time.

1: [https://blog.runbox.com/2015/11/ddos-attacks-on- runbox/](https://blog.runbox.com/2015/11/ddos-attacks-on-runbox/)

</comment><comment><USER29> God, why? That's utter incompetence. Never pay ransoms. This has highly lowered my opinion of ProntoMail.

<comment><USER30> I know you mistyped it, but ProntoMail really sounds cool.

<comment><USER31> All rights Reserved, Mailcentro, Inc Copyright © 2002-2013

(damn, it does sound like a cool domain)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Does any one know the technical details of the attack? The article simply refers to it as 'highly advanced denial-of-service attacks'.

From the fact that it knocked off their upstream providers also means it was probably just a simple volumetric attack like an NTP or DNS reflection attack. These are relatively easy to defend against.

I work for an ISP that gets hit with 5 or 6 of these a week, but because of the mitigation strategies we have in place our customers don't even notice...

<comment><USER33> They say the attack "exceeded 100Gbps" ([https://protonmaildotcom.wordpress.com/](https://protonmaildotcom.wordpress.com/)). I moved my server to OVH 6 months ago, and since then any DDoS attacks don't affect me at all. OVH say they can handle up to 480Gbps of attacks, and people are reporting that they are getting up to 90Gbps of DDoS attacks mitigated by OVH without any problem. Their DDoS protection is completely free with any of their dedicated servers.

I don't really understand the logic behind setting up with a Swiss datacenter with zero (or very little) DDoS protection. It is pretty much guaranteed that China will DDoS you if you are in any way involved in helping dissident groups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm not recommending it, but it should be noted that this does sometimes work as when Kim DotCom paid for the LizardSquad DDOS of XBox and PS4 networks to be halted last Christmas: [https://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-stops-xbox-and- playstati...](https://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-stops-xbox-and-playstation- attacks-141226/)

<comment><USER35> Kim Dotcom gave a gift that could easily be revoked if the attacker had continued attacking. Very different situation to giving cash (or bitcoin).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> To pay or not to pay....the bigger story here is the implication a nation state was involved.

<comment><USER2> That's purely speculative.

<comment><USER36> I did say implication

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It is possible that by paying the ransom, ProtonMail effectively financed its own DDoS attack. That being send, I commend ProtonMail's transparency in this situation, regardless of the seemingly negative reaction.

</comment><comment><USER38> Cloudflare should have an emergency hotline for situations like this. Charge half the ransom to handle the traffic for the duration of the attack. Offer contract afterwards.

<comment><USER39> No, profiting in any way off blackmailers looks really bad...

Reminds me of when Uber had that surge pricing scandal during the Sydney hostage crisis.

<comment><USER40> I think the OP meant it as a discount. (E.g. if cloudflare blocking the attack would cost 10k (for 5 sites) for a month, offer a discount at half the ransom (3k) for however long the attack lasts days).

<comment><USER39> Still too risky from a PR standpoint. It's the kind of corporate activity that means well (truly) but can be interpreted negatively too easily.

Unfortunately the only safe play is to give away the service for free (for duration of the attack). Which could be a solid marketing strategy, cloudflare's price point is reasonable enough that many would stick with their service even after the attack was over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Quite a few companies do pay ransoms that is not unusual

In fact is 100% of people never paid a ransom the attacks would not be funded

Publicly speaking about paying ransoms is very unusual.

</comment><comment><USER42> It seems like a similar DDOS knocked out FastMail last night for a little while, although they returned to service very quickly (<30 min)

</comment><comment><USER43> I don't understand why the attackers wouldn't stop? Why would they want to build up a reputation of not being worth paying? If they were always true to the word, then people would mostly always pay.

<comment><USER2> Different shark. Once there is blood in the water there'll be more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> this article is great, in a way. People pay ransoms with extreme agony, but because they are supposed to be effective. If they don't work, there goes the only reason to pay. this is exactly the article the DDoSers don't ever want to see written about them.

<comment><USER45> I wonder if the second attack was trying to punish them for paying, and a warning to others?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Honestly maybe they could have hired security consultants for a comprable fee? Fireye etc

</comment><comment><USER47> I hope they catch the culprits and put them in jail for thirty years.

<comment><USER33> Good luck with putting Xi Jinping in jail :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Wasn't able to get on site earlier at protonmail.ch

</comment><comment><USER48> Why couldn't they put it on Cloudflare?

<comment><USER14> Because ProtonMail would have been required to give CloudFlare encryption keys that would have 1) allowed CloudFlare to inject JavaScript to steal decryption passwords and keys 2) Allowed CloudFlare to collect metadata on traffic for individual users

ClouldFlare are a bunch of great guys. And, they wouldn't do any of that unless they were delivered a National Security Letter forcing them to.

If ProtonMail signed up with CloudFlare, like HushMail did, ProtonMail would have no way to know if these types of code modification attacks or metadata collections were happening.

And, as people saw with Hushmail, since CloudFlare does not do SMTP proxying (filtering/challenging) a DDoS could have still taken down ProtonMail's mail servers offline. While CloudFlare allowed Hushmail to get it's website back online, mail to my Hushmail account is currently delayed by several hours due to DDoS of their mail servers.

From [https://hushmailstatus.com/](https://hushmailstatus.com/) :

"We're investigating reports of incoming and outgoing email delivery delays. We'll update this page as more information becomes available."

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> lol, shame for you ProtonMail and Welcome to my blacklist

</comment><comment><USER50> It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation To call upon a neighbour and to say: -- "We invaded you last night--we are quite prepared to fight, Unless you pay us cash to go away."

And that is called asking for Dane-geld, And the people who ask it explain That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld And then you'll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation, To puff and look important and to say: -- "Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you. We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld; But we've proved it again and again, That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation, For fear they should succumb and go astray; So when you are requested to pay up or be molested, You will find it better policy to say: --

"We never pay any-one Dane-geld, No matter how trifling the cost; For the end of that game is oppression and shame, And the nation that pays it is lost!"

\- Rudyard Kipling

<comment><USER12> Poems by the man who romanticized the colonization of my grandparents' country are always cool, but the logic doesn't hold up. If you're _not_ as well-armed as the British Empire, and you very much do not have the resources to defeat the Dane, it's nice that the end of the game is oppression and shame, but you're going to lose well before you even get to endgame.

<comment><USER51> If you are talking about India, it wasn't a "country" before the British. It was a mixture of disparate kingdoms and sultanates. Not to mention that before the British, most of India was under Muslim colonizers i.e. the Mughals.

The Indians have always been a conquered people, it is only in the last 70 years that they have had freedom; you should thank the British for it.

<comment><USER52> Your comment may be factual, but you could have skipped the "you should be thankful" bit. It's quite a rude thing to say to someone you don't know.

<comment><USER53> That's not the context the OP used... It was: "you should thank", not "you should be thankful". A very subtle difference, but in this case (to you), it's the difference between offending and not.

<comment><USER52> I think both wordings are rude, particularly because of the word "you". OP doesn't know anything about his family's history. It's different from making a general argument that talks about the benefit to the whole country.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stateless token verification with JWT - <AUTHOR> http://jonatan.nilsson.is/stateless-tokens-with-jwt/

<comment><USER2> I don't think storing permissions in the JWT is really a good idea, and it might makes the token size a lot larger. I am not even sure if I should store the user_id in the JWT. I just implemented this on my site api and stuck the persistence token in the JWT, that way the token can be denied if you delete the persistence token, and it's linked the the user and the users permissions... but it still requires an additional database lookup.

What if you issue the JWT with role permissions embedded, and the user is rejected from the role before the JWT expires. Then they can still execute actions they are no longer allowed to? It just seems like it could end badly...

<comment><USER3> Maybe the author meant permissions such as 'read-only' or 'read-write' that place additional restrictions on a token.

Anything else would cause a lot of problems. Role permissions might change while a token is still active.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is basically it: Additional restriction applied to the token.

I was actually referencing this article: [https://auth0.com/blog/2014/12/02/using-json-web-tokens- as-a...](https://auth0.com/blog/2014/12/02/using-json-web-tokens-as-api-keys/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for clearing it up.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Brian Kernighan on C [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de2Hsvxaf8M <comment><USER2> Compare how thin is the C book from Kernighan vs the C++ book from Stroustrup. The result is that most people can fully understand C easily (if willing to), while the C++ case is impossible.

C is beautiful.

<comment><USER3> You should check out the new version of the C++ book by Stroustrup. After having stayed away from C++ exactly for the reason you speak of for probably 15 years, I gave it another try. I was very impressed at how C++ has changed with 11/14\. Stroustrup had to essentially rewrite the book.

Of course if you're simply comparing size, keep in mind that Stroustrup's book is aimed at beginners. And provides a thorough discussion of many things in the language. The C book is terse and not really aimed at beginners or students.

<comment><USER4> A more fair comparison: the drafts of the ISO C and ISO C++ standards on my system (both from 2011) are 701 respectively 1325 pages, of which 180 respectively 410 describe the language, and the remainder the support library.

That difference isn't as large as I would have expected. Part of that may be style or formatting; C++ seems to have about a third more lines per page and smaller text, so I guesstimate it has about 50% more text per page. Looking at the descriptions of the preprocessor that seems about right; C needs 19 pages to do that, while C++ manages it in 13.

That would make the C++ language description about 3 times as long as that of C.

<comment><USER5> The difficulty of learning and using a programming language increases (all else being equal[1]) faster than linearly with the size of its spec, because much of the pain comes from the interaction of one feature with another.

If we handwavily suppose that difficulty goes like size squared (perhaps every _pair_ of features generates a possible interaction you have to understand) then a description 3x longer makes for a language more like 10x harder. [EDITED to add:] Which feels about right to me for the relationship between C and C++.

[1] Of course there are exceptions; some "Turing tarpit" languages like Brainfuck can be completely specified with very little text, but are difficult to do anything useful with because they are stripped so very bare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love his wristwatch, just perfect.

I hope there's more of this interview computerphile will release in due course. It is a fascinating time to hear about from the guys who -- essentially -- engineered our profession.

<comment><USER7> I was fortunate enough to take a course taught by Brian Kernighan. Each lecture was a gem in and of itself. Lots of stories about his work at Bell Labs and how things came to be the way they are today. Professor Kernighan is also a great guy who is extremely personable and had every student's name learned by the second week.

Absolutely impressive human being all around!

<comment><AUTHOR> He comes across as a great guy in all the interviews I have seen of him. Chilled but still excited about the amazing things he has worked on.

On a related note I absolutely _love_ the Computerphile videos with Professor Brailsford. I could listen to that guy talk all day.</comment></comment></comment>


Reflections on Teaching Wargame Design - <AUTHOR> https://warontherocks.com/2020/01/reflections-on-teaching-wargame-design/ <comment><USER2> A very interesting article, with some great linked resources, thanks for posting. I have started simple wargaming with my young son, and I love how even in defeat, he always seems to take away something from the experience, and improve for the next time we play.

<comment><USER3> I concur. This is a pretty exhaustive write-up, with a lifetime of resources to devour. And while I think there is tremendous advantage to learning tactics and strategy games. One of my favorites to introduce to the younger set is the GBA classic "Advance Wars". I wonder if it's healthy. It would be nice if there was a PeaceGaming library as well. One that taught diplomacy and conflict resolution through non-violence.

I am reminded of the quote I believe attributed to John Adams along the lines of "I study war and politics, so that my children may master poetry and philosophy" ;)

<comment><USER4> You could dress up wargaming mechanics with more peaceful dressing. Renowned Explorers has a rock-paper-scissors system using brute force, taunting, and diplomacy, and each encounter can provide different rewards depending on which method was most heavily used, more or less.

There's something essentially analytical that underpins wargames and assessing, e.g. unit strengths and weaknesses, which is good mental practice for plenty of peaceful applications as well.

<comment><USER5> I've gotten the impression that in the academic use of the term "wargaming" encompasses this as well. For example, there's an article in the "Zone of Control" book I mentioned above titled "Cultural Wargaming: Understanding Cross-Cultural Communications Using Wargames". The emphasis being non-combat, non-conflict of course. There's other discussions of that in the book, though I haven't gotten that far into it yet.

But wargaming issues such as diplomacy, geopolitical interactions, and the like I think all fall into this category as well. Even in IT, we tend to call operational exercises "wargaming". The Model U.N. conferences I did in high school I think fall into this category as well.

I think you nailed it when you said that there's something "essentially analytical" that separates this sorta modeling from roleplaying, in that there's a system of rules which all parties have to abide by in order to help produce a realistic model.

I think "Peace gaming" is absolutely part of this subject, and we might stick it under the "Wargaming" category for established convention purposes, it definitely belongs here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If this is your thing, check out Playing at the World by Jon Peterson. It's a fantastic history of simulation games, including both wargaming and rpgs. Also includes a thorough review of pre-DnD fantasy literature, which I'm sure is appealing to more than a few of us of HN.</comment>


Circular Economy Framework Could Give India a Competitive Advantage - <AUTHOR> http://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_and_views/next_economy/libby_maccarthy/circular_economy_framework_could_give_india_competitive_ <comment><AUTHOR> Full report: [https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/assets/downloads/pu...](https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/assets/downloads/publications/Circular- economy-in-India_2-Dec_2016.pdf)</comment>


RIP Todd Bol, Inventor of 'Little Free Libraries' - <AUTHOR> https://www.weeklystandard.com/ethan-epstein/rip-ted-bol-inventor-little-free-libraries <comment><USER2> I built one of these with my kids (5 and 7 at the time), and painted it to look just like our house. I expected it to stand unnoticed in the corner of our driveway as people buzzed past in their SUVs.

That's not at all what happened. People come by -- kids on bicycles, parents with strollers, even elderly folks on a walk. They take and leave books. Sometimes they're people we know, and sometimes they're people we don't. It's a wonderful thing. RIP, Todd.

<comment><USER3> Do you have any tips on how to build one and start one up?

Edit: just found this [https://littlefreelibrary.org/build/](https://littlefreelibrary.org/build/)

<comment><USER4> Also for good ideas, check out Pinterest for little free libraries. I got some neat ideas from there. I ended up building mine around a neat old window I got from a reclaimed housing parts yard. Was really fun to have it in my yard!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are eight little free libraries within five blocks of our house in Seattle. My 3yo _loves_ them. A fun activity is to walk around the neighborhood, check each library in turn, and discover new books. It's hard to understate how impactful this simple idea has been on my daughter's life and, I hope, on the lives of many others like her. RIP, Todd Bol.

<comment><USER6> I wonder if you meant "understand" or "overstate" instead of "understate"?

<comment><USER5> Oops. Good catch. I meant "overstate". That's what too little sleep and too much caffeine will lead to, perhaps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is such a neat idea. I can see building a Little, Free Library being an interesting project. Add a solar embedded stack [1] to it and you could add some fun features such as: shelf time tracking (maybe to replace never read books), number of checkouts/returns, etc. I'm not sure if adding connectivity would be keeping with the spirit of the project, but it opens up even more interesting social possibilities.

In general, I love the idea of projects/technology that encourage interaction in the physical world. (See the first week or so of Pokémon Go).

[1]: [https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/09/how-to-build-a- low...](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/09/how-to-build-a-lowtech- website.html) is an example of a website run on such a stack

<comment><USER8> Nice idea! Also, if the books happen to be registered with BookCrossing, they are given a unique ID which you could potentially use for even more social interaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are dozens of these in my neighborhood in Washington DC and they're huge hits. I see people of all backgrounds and languages perusing, sorting, maybe giving the books a quick shuffle. They're generally well-treated and well- respected. There was one that got bashed up a few weeks ago, but it reappeared a few days later, patched up. In general they are well-loved parts of the community, and a reason to have just a little remaining faith in the goodness of humanity. RIP Todd, you did a wonderful thing. (You also gave me a great way to unload my own library, book by book by book over the past few years).

</comment><comment><USER10> Community-centered spaces like Free Little Libraries have a tremendous impact. They become hubs for knowledge and alliances between neighbors. They foster more resilient communities. Thanks, Todd.

[https://littlefreelibrary.org/build/](https://littlefreelibrary.org/build/)

</comment><comment><USER11> These are all over Germany, many predating the Little Free Library.

Some of them from the 90s: [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_%C3%B6ffentlicher_B%C3%B...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_%C3%B6ffentlicher_B%C3%BCcherschr%C3%A4nke_in_Deutschland)

I get the feeling they were around for a lot longer than that, but only the recent ones got listed online.

<comment><USER12> Wow, that one is cool - made of retired fridges: [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_%C3%B6ffentlicher_B%C3%B...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_%C3%B6ffentlicher_B%C3%BCcherschr%C3%A4nke_in_Deutschland#/media/File:B%C3%BCcherregal_Freiburg- Beurbarung.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's a recent interview with Bol here:

[http://www.startribune.com/after-cancer-diagnosis-little- fre...](http://www.startribune.com/after-cancer-diagnosis-little-free-library- founder-todd-bol-feels-like-most-successful-person-i-know/497826391/)

<comment><USER14> Jesus... that editor's note.

<comment><USER15> The closing paragraph is especially pertinent:

"I think there's a bright future for Little Free Library as long as there are books around and the people who love them," she said. "But there's no replacing Todd, that's for sure."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I never knew the idea was as recent as 2009 - I had naively assumed that they had been around since forever. RIP - he made the world a better place.

<comment><USER17> The concept isn't that recent.

I've encountered them in various forms throughout the years, but the popularity has ramped up in the last decade as paper books became increasingly obsolete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are two within a short walk of my place. They're pretty cool! On summer evenings there are frequently parents with kids reading on the bench or picking up a book.

</comment><comment><USER19> This summer I led an ESL class along a street where there was one, and stopped to point it out. A grandmother picked out a book for her granddaughter; I forget whether anyone else picked something out.

</comment><comment><USER20> My doctor's office has one. My kids love going there and seeing what might be there and adding books.

The idea that someone else put their book there and that they can really gets them excited.

<comment><USER21> On the one hand, that's cool. Anything that makes a place kids have to go that is often scary and unpleasant nicer is good.

On the other hand...kids aren't always the most hygienic when it comes to handling thing. Is there any concern that sick kids leaving books might spread their sickness? Or are the kind of communicable sicknesses that kids get that send them to the doctor (as opposed to, say, the emergency room) the kind that don't really spread through casual sharing of objects, so it doesn't matter?

<comment><USER20> I feel like kids are just contagious by default and your typical kid at a clinic has a cold just like the kid in school with a cold.

Despite some outliers, most folks aren't carrying terrible diseases so I don't sweat it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've seen these things around Boulder and had no idea it was such a widespread phenomena. The greatest people do things completely unprompted like this. RIP.

</comment><comment><USER23> We have a few in the city where I live (Belgium). I think it's a quite great idea - the ones I know are located near schools as well which might help children pick up an interesting book.

</comment><comment><USER24> While I believe the LFL idea originated from an honorable place, we need to do more to support actual libraries and (much more importantly) the staff there who play an important role in public education and assisting patrons in evaluating information:

[https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/05/the-case-against- little...](https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/05/the-case-against-little-free- libraries/523533/)

>"As a librarian, my gut reaction to that was, 'You know what else is a free library? A regular library.'"

<comment><USER25> I don't see these taking away from normal libraries in any way. Why is this the reaction?

<comment><USER24> It reinforces the notion that libraries are just self-service book warehouses, complete ignoring the role that curation plays and ignoring the essential services that a traditional library provides (reference services, interlibrary lending, etc)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Ts-essentials – Reusable, type-safe, TypeScript types - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/krzkaczor/ts-essentials <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, the author here.

Some time ago I noticed that many of my TypeScript projects share similar types and I decided to extract them to common library. Since then I was joined by many awesome contributors.

ts-essentials is a nice addition to standard TypeScript library with deep*, recursive types like DeepPartial or DeepReadonly. Turns out, there are many edge cases while implementing those, just take a look: [https://github.com/krzkaczor/ts- essentials/blob/master/lib/t...](https://github.com/krzkaczor/ts- essentials/blob/master/lib/types.ts#L9)

I am here if you have any questions!</comment>


Ask HN: Which adblocker do you use and why? - <AUTHOR> I use uBlock Origin, because it has never failed me, and it uses less resources than other adblockers. <comment><USER2> I use Opera browser with it's built-in ad-block feature to browse most sites. But I use Chrome for Gmail and web apps.

Never researched the issue, so I don't even know if Opera is considered to be particularly good. It shows 10-30 blocked ads on the average site. I particularly dislike auto-playing video ads.

Would be interested to see comments by HNers who have done some research into ad-blockers.

</comment><comment><USER3> uBlock origin - both on firefox desktop and firefox mobile.</comment>


Venezuela: The bridge of desperation - open-source-ux https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/Venezuela_bridge <comment><AUTHOR> Socialism strikes again. When you take away people's businesses and put government idiots in charge, they tend to drive them into the ground, because they

1) don't really know the business

2) there's no accountability - they aren't ruining something they spent 20 years building

And you drive the entrepreneurs out of the country, usually the most active people in the economy.</comment>


Turing machines that should run forever - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2087845-this-turing-machine-should-run-forever-unless-maths-is-wrong/#.VzNiKTPbcto.hackernews <comment><USER2> To give some more context, this is the work of Adam Yedidia, Scott Aaronson's PhD student at MIT. Here's a related blog post on Shtetl-Optimized:

[http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2725](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2725)

<comment><USER3> man, again shtelt-optimized takes a bogus sounding, garbage article from newscientist, and exposes the actual important result. I remember newscientists p=np confusion on graph iso, that shtelt-optimized offered the only useful explanation of.

<comment><USER4> Aaronson is a coauthor on the paper, he's not just explaining the work, he did the work.

<comment><USER2> Actually, if you read the post, you see him downplaying his involvement:

"Here's our research paper, on which Adam generously included me as a coauthor, even though he did the heavy lifting."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      Z is designed to loop through its 7918 instructions forever, but if it did eventually stop, it would prove ZFC inconsistent. Mathematicians wouldn't be too panicked, though – they could simply shift to a slightly stronger set of axioms.

Am I correct in thinking that this is completely wrong? Strengthening a set of inconsistent axioms -- taking a "stronger" set of axioms to be a set of axioms that can prove more statements -- will just produce another inconsistent set of axioms. (The inconsistent set <A, B->~A, B> cannot be salvaged by extending it to <A, B->~A, B, C> \-- no matter what C is, you can always derive <A, ~A> from the original three axioms.)

Incompleteness is a whole other thing, of course.

<comment><USER6> I noticed the same thing while reading it. I assume that this is just a mistake or misunderstanding by the author, and they actually meant "weaker".

Of course, switching to a weaker set of axioms would mean that some of the things proved by the old set might not be provable anymore, which still seems like an issue...

<comment><USER7> As a mathematician, I a appreciate the notion that a stronger set of axioms means more power and a smaller and more defined working universe, but I think the author meant "stronger" against contradiction, which is consistent with colloquial use, if not jargon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A Turing machine is just a computer program.

The Goldbach Conjecture example is just a program to loop through and test that each successive even integer can be reached as the sum of two prime numbers. If there is a counterexample to the conjecture, then theoretically this program will eventually find it. For these purposes, the authors don't care if the program calculates efficiently, but are interested in the length of the program. So brute force is fine.

The Riemann Hypothesis and ZFC programs similarly are just brute force searching for counterexamples.

The existence of programs to search for counterexamples is not new or surprising. I am not so sure what part of this work is new. I guess it is the discussion of philisophical implications.

<comment><USER9> What's new here is putting a specific upper bound on the complexity of the problem. A Turing machine using only binary symbols and at most 7,918 states is enough to prove or disprove ZFC.

<comment><USER10> To me, the use of Turing machines seems a little gimmicky; they're very far removed from the way we actually program, or reason about programs. The difficult problem here seems to be compilation: going from a usable program definition, either formal or informal, down to the bizarre world of Turing machines, either by hand or automatically.

To me, binary combinatory logic and binary lambda calculus seem like much more sensible languages for performing these kinds of algorithmic information theory experiments.

<comment><USER11> Scott commented on the Turing Machine vs lambda calculus approaches in:

[http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2725#comment-1085117](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2725#comment-1085117)

showing a clear preference for the "physical" operation of Turing Machines.

In the end, complexities are not that far apart, considering that

[https://gist.github.com/anonymous/a64213f391339236c2fe31f874...](https://gist.github.com/anonymous/a64213f391339236c2fe31f8749a0df6)

describes a 27 state Goldbach checking TM, which takes no more than 378 bits to encode, while

[https://github.com/tromp/AIT/blob/master/goldbach.lam](https://github.com/tromp/AIT/blob/master/goldbach.lam)

describes an equivalent 267 bit Lambda Calculus term, which can also be represented as this

[https://github.com/tromp/AIT/blob/master/goldbach.gif](https://github.com/tromp/AIT/blob/master/goldbach.gif)

lambda diagram, as explained in

[http://tromp.github.io/cl/diagrams.html](http://tromp.github.io/cl/diagrams.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is the first time I feel like I missed out on something by not taking Theory of Computation in college. Anyone care to break down what this article is talking about?

<comment><USER13> A turing machine is a mathematical abstraction that is the simplest machine that can compute things. Due to it's nature of "mathematical abstraction", it's actually impossible to build one, though you can restrict it and build one of course. In particular, we have real computers (more complex than Turing machines, and with other restrictions).

These particular Turing machines that were built, have special properties that allow them to test mathematical axioms/theorems, so for example, if the Z machine halts, then it means that the ZFC axioms are wrong. In the article, this is stated in the negative form ("Z will run forever if ZFC is right").

Disclaimer: it's been a long time since I last read the formal definitions of turing machines, and my explanation may be sloppy -- but I aimed for a more general thing to give you an idea.

<comment><USER14> Really the only thing preventing the construction of a _true_ Turing machine is the inability to have an infinitely long tape. Fortunately, that limitation isn't a problem in practice for most things you'd wish to compute.

At it's simplest a Turing machine consists of an infinite tape of memory cells, a read/write head, a state register, and a state transition table (functions). Read the current cell and look up the pair (current state, cell value) to get the effect (new cell value, direction to move head [left, right, stay], new state).

 _Nothing_ in real computers can't be translated to a Turing machine description. It just won't be efficient :P. And anything written for a Turing machine will run on a real computer, modulo memory available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> FYI: first-order logic and ZF set theory in Adam Yedidia's Laconic [https://gist.github.com/sorear/f56f447e2684ab4593d758da4ef42...](https://gist.github.com/sorear/f56f447e2684ab4593d758da4ef4290a) cf. [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/metamath/OumBq83Ksqs](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/metamath/OumBq83Ksqs)</comment>


How to Avoid Boring Sunsets - <AUTHOR> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-avoid-boring-sunsets/ <comment><USER2> How about sunrise !

<comment><AUTHOR> Their website has both! [http://sunsetwx.com/](http://sunsetwx.com/)</comment></comment>


A Victorian Flea Circus: The Smallest Show on Earth - <AUTHOR> https://mimimatthews.com/2016/03/31/a-victorian-flea-circus-the-smallest-show-on-earth/ <comment><USER2> This article doesn't have many actual photographs. This BBC site has some.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2LF04Y9n5hJTHK1l6ff...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2LF04Y9n5hJTHK1l6ffLhPc/the- rise-and-demise-of-the-flea-circus)

And the article doesn't mention "Mexican Dressed Fleas" \- [http://timcockerill.com/main/curiosities/mexican-dressed- fle...](http://timcockerill.com/main/curiosities/mexican-dressed-fleas/)

> Mexican Dressed Fleas or Pulgas Vestidas are a form of Mexican folk art that > existed as far back as the turn of the 20th century, but now no longer > practised. These tiny curiosities were made by hand by Mexican women and > consist of tiny fleas dressed in costumes, often as married couples and > sometimes with an elaborate background scene.

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably because the website is a 19th century academic sort of site that doesn't cover stuff past the reign of Queen Victoria.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I was under the impression that flea circuses were pure illusion—there were erratic, untrained fleas, or no fleas at all—and the entertainment was provided solely in the mind of the audience. The article seems to suggest otherwise. If it had been published a day later I'd swear it was a joke.

The author says that the real attraction of flea circuses included "seeing insects in costumes, pulling carriages, or racing each other." Is he seriously suggesting that fleas were somehow wrangled into miniature suits?

The article concludes with the head-patting remark that the Victorian credulity about flea circuses is "humorous, but not surprising." It's not clear to me that the joke isn't on moderns who believe in that type or degree of credulity from our comparatively recent ancestors.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you misread the "humorous, but not surprising" remark. It wasn't about credulity in believing in flea circuses, but about the well-known Victorian tendency to apply human emotions to animals. What the author found "humorous, but not surprising" was that this tendency extended to insects. Also, costumes were little bits of tissue paper. I think a lot of the interpretation of what the fleas were doing came down to the showmanship of the guy running the flea circus.</comment></comment>


How Many Method Calls to Display a Page using Rails? (3rd subhead) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitepoint.com/three-rubyconf-surprises/

<comment><USER2> Before this conversation spirals out of control, note that this is method calls to _boot rails from scratch_ and "Display a Page". The method call count to answer the request itself would be an interesting number, but I'm not as concerned about the work involved in starting the server.

<comment><USER3> I'm glad you said something. I was about to freak out a bit...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best resources for web-scraping? What resources are missing? - <AUTHOR> Tools, libraries, services, books, blog posts, etc. all count as 'resources' for the purposes of this question.
Feel free to characterize your recommendations by whether the intended audience is an experienced dev or a n00b.
UPDATE: If any patterns emerge for pain points or missing docs, examples, or resources for learning I might create a page or an ebook project on GitHub that covers that area. <comment><USER2> Two great tools for web scraping are [https://import.io/](https://import.io/) and [https://www.kimonolabs.com/](https://www.kimonolabs.com/). There are also lots of developer tools out there, the most popular is probably [http://scrapy.org/](http://scrapy.org/).

If you are interested in web crawling, which is often necessary if you want to extract data from very large sites (or many sites), I just wrote up a blog post comparing open source web crawling systems (including scrapy): [http://blog.blikk.co/comparison-of-open-source-web- crawlers](http://blog.blikk.co/comparison-of-open-source-web-crawlers)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for linking to those services, and your comparison of crawler libraries is very well done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wrote this earlier this year, covers quite a few details, it's been featured on HN frontpage a couple of times though so maybe you have already seen it.

[http://jakeaustwick.me/python-web-scraping- resource/](http://jakeaustwick.me/python-web-scraping-resource/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Great overview of the basics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The crawling aspect always seems overlooked to me. It's really easy to get a single page and pull the required data from it. However, what strategies do you use to crawl? How do you get around IP blocks? Continuous crawling? Etc.

In the end, it's the infrastructure that powers the extraction that requires all my attention. I've got a bunch of techniques I use, but I'd love to compare with how other people do it.

Love that more scraping resources are coming online. I see scraping as the important link between the web as it is now, and the web as it will be in 20 years. (web2 -> web3 for the jargon geeks.) The whole semantic web isn't going to be useful for most non-academics without considerable structuring effort put into existing data.

</comment><comment><USER5> I used to grab the page with curl, then use xslt on it to grab what I needed. The language is less important IMHO than the need for simplicity

Edit. Thinking about what's available now, maybe something using phantomjs or similar?

</comment><comment><USER6> With so many single-page and ajax-powered websites these days, I've pretty much abandoned traditional fetching tools like Curl; in favor of headless browsers like PhantomJS, Selenium, etc. Here's a pretty good list: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18539491/headless- browser...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18539491/headless-browser-and- scraping-solutions)

Of course this only covers the actual gathering of the content, not storing/indexing in an efficient way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you need an infrastructure to speed up your scraping or want to analyze some pre-crawled copies of the web there is Zillabyte. They have examples on their blog as well, Growth Hackers tweets this one out a lot

[http://blog.zillabyte.com/2014/06/23/5-easy-steps-to- build-a...](http://blog.zillabyte.com/2014/06/23/5-easy-steps-to-build-a-saas- lead-generation-app/)

There is also Import.io for web extraction. Do you have something you are looking for in particular?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope. Nothing in particular. Curious what people are already using and what they think might be missing, including docs, examples, etc.

 __UPDATE: __If any patterns emerge for pain points or missing docs, examples, or resources for learning I might create a page or an ebook project on GitHub that covers that area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For something quirky i use python with BeautifulSoup. Or lately node.js with phantom.js and server side jQuery.

And shameless plug - for anything more trivial and on-demand or websites that have good structure (which is the most of them) I use [http://redpluck.com](http://redpluck.com). It's easy and fast to setup, supports scraping behind login walls and powerful deep scraping.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, thanks for pointing to those tools and services. I hadn't heard of RedPluck before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is anyone using the Common Crawl dataset prior to scraping, or are there certain sites missing from that archive?

[http://commoncrawl.org/common-crawl-url- index/](http://commoncrawl.org/common-crawl-url-index/)

[http://commoncrawl.org/july-2014-crawl-data- available/](http://commoncrawl.org/july-2014-crawl-data-available/)

<comment><USER2> I've used it and it's great. However, many sites disallow all crawling via robots.txt and only whitelist certain crawlers such as Google or Bing. These sites will be "missing" from CommonCrawl.

One thing CommonCrawl really needs is a good index. [https://github.com/trivio/common_crawl_index](https://github.com/trivio/common_crawl_index) is great, but it only exists for the data from 2012. Apparently there was something in the works for 2014 data but there hasn't been any update for months: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/common- crawl/mrZBnvD...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/common- crawl/mrZBnvDvVvo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It depends on what you want to scrape. What do you hope to accomplish with an answer to this question? Do you intend to study/play around with a bunch of the libraries/tools mentioned? Do you have some sort of project in mind? Are you trying to get us to write a 'top 10 web scraping' blog post for you?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah! No, not trying to get a blog post written, but if any patterns emerge for pain points or missing docs, examples, or resources for learning I might create a page or an ebook project on GitHub that covers that area.

I probably will play around with the tools that are new to me regardless.

 __UPDATE: __Updated the OP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's no single answer that will stand the test of time, because the structure of Web pages changes over time, to some extent because of scrapers.

This general advice should serve:

1\. Get the page content the simplest way possible.

2\. Use regular expressions to extract the desired content.

For both the above goals, and because so much revision is needed over time, I recommend Python.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, sure, but even if your recommendation is to do it yourself with Python (rather than using a service) and regexes rather than BeautifulSoup, then the question becomes mechanize vs. scrapy vs. robobrowser, etc. etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I run this service: [https://screenslicer.com](https://screenslicer.com)

It can search, extract fields, and page through results--automatically (no config). A full-featured developer API will be available soon for finer- grained control.

</comment><comment><USER13> Webpage to RSS/XML feeds: [http://feedity.com](http://feedity.com)</comment>


"Out of the Crisis" Podcast - <AUTHOR> http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2020/04/out-of-crisis.html <comment><USER3> Since it's not 100% obvious - the poster "eries" is a popular author and popularized the idea of lean startups, which currently has (4,636) reviews on Amazon and a 4.5 star rating:

[https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs- Continuous...](https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous- Innovation/dp/0307887898)

<comment><USER4> An odd way to summarize a career, especially because amazon reviews are notoriously low quality and almost everything has 4-4.5 stars. It definitely under-sells his achievements.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, that's very kind to say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Produced this emergency podcast in short order with my friends at Breaker and LTSE. Happy to answer any questions or hear any feedback. Will have more episodes up soon

<comment><USER5> Hi Eric, what is an emergency podcast?

And without knowing anything about the guests - what is say, Sam Altman, doing right now that is qualifies him in your view? In other words, why should someone listen to him?

<comment><USER6> What is an emergency podcast?

A podcast made to monetize an emergency, clearly.

<comment><USER7> This comment broke the site guidelines both by snarking and by assuming bad faith instead of good faith. If you wouldn't mind reviewing [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there some reason to think Cuban has some useful thoughts here?

He has done well for himself but he seems more than willing to make quips well outside of his knowledge base. Specifically I'm thinking of some off the cuff tweets regarding personal healthcare that seemed to be pretty far off base.

Maybe that was a one off thing but I recall some others even regarding personal finance that seemed questionable.

<comment><USER9> Cuban is an ok guy, but the healthcare comments are a good example of him being plain wrong.

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2019/11/04/s...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2019/11/04/shark- tank-doctor-virus-fighting-pack-isnt-immune-criticism/4151858002/)

This is an example of him arguing with a MD. Cuban takes an issue with the doctor stating that consumer driven health care from non medical professionals is responsible for overuse of antibiotics. Cuban gets heated and dismisses the doctor as a quack when the doctor makes a completely legitimate point.

Mark Cuban, like all successful people in life, is great at providing a loud opinion on everything and especially with areas that aren't his expertise.

<comment><USER10> > consumer driven health care from non medical professionals is responsible > for overuse of antibiotics

That sounds like there are no medical professionals involved, but aren't medical professionals prescribing the antibiotics?

<comment><USER11> I'm not an expert here but I believe the argument is that because it's consumer driven if a patient wants antibiotics then they can just shop around doctors until they find one willing to prescribe. Plus of course, drug manufacturers aggressively pitching their product to doctors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there a transcript?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet. Would you like one?

<comment><USER13> Yes, please! I often read podcast transcripts. Conversations with Tyler, 80,000 hours, and Steve Hsu's Manifold all have great transcripts and because of that, they are the only podcasts I keep up with.

<comment><AUTHOR> helpful - <USER2>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _" The first conversation is with investor and philanthropist Sam Altman. He has been one of the leading Silicon Valley figures helping the entire biotech industry make a complete pivot to working on solutions: vaccines, therapies, and eventually a cure."_

Ok, no disrespect to Sam Altman, but _come on_.

<comment><USER15> The entire biotech industry? Surely you kid.

My wife works in biotech in SV and has never heard of him.

<comment><USER7> Let's be a bit careful here. That quote doesn't imply that anyone has heard of SA, only that he has been helping. Sometimes people help behind the scenes. Similarly, the claim about the industry is simply that it has pivoted. I have zero idea if either claim is true, but let's at least not replace them with claims that no one made.

This is in the HN guidelines btw: " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._" [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER15> The quote clearly claims he's helping the entire biotech industry, which is overstated to say the least.

Also no idea why you aren't responding to the GP instead. My post is within the the guidelines, even if you choose to disagree with its point.

<comment><USER7> Sorry to be a stickler, especially since Eric changed his wording, but your post wasn't within that guideline. You picked a weak interpretation of the quote you were objecting to. There was no inconsistency between "My wife works in biotech in SV and has never heard of him" and what it actually said. If you wanted to refute the quote, something like "My wife works in biotech in SV and that industry has definitely not pivoted to working on covid" would (if true) have fit the bill.

You're right that the GP comment was also bad and that I could have replied there also.

<comment><USER14> I appreciate your excellent work in maintaining the discourse, but there just isn't any serious interpretation of that quote which could have been more charitable. You'd really have to stretch to get away from the clear implication that SA's work has been essential to the COVID-19 response.

I also appreciate Eric's polite clarification in this thread, but as of now the original text remains on his site. It's a legitimate point of discussion for reasons that others in this thread have explained.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is the title a reference to Deming's book? ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes</comment></comment>


The Philosophical Origins of Yoga - <AUTHOR> https://worthypatterns.substack.com/p/stretching-beyond-the-superficial <comment><USER2> a zip file contains useful collection of yoga: [https://web.archive.org/web/20200818160234/https://file.io/N...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200818160234/https://file.io/NSMDMsn0I8fk)

<comment><USER2> Unraveling the Mysteries of Mula Bandha | Semperviva Yoga Apr 28, 2014 - Physically, the term mula bandha refers to your pelvic floor muscles. ... Are you consistently constipated or have diarrhea? Are you a high ...

[http://archive.vn/sCfjW](http://archive.vn/sCfjW)</comment></comment>


R, the master troll of statistical languages - <AUTHOR> https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2012/06/08/r-the-master-troll-of-statistical-languages/comment-page-1/#comments <comment><USER2> Summary: author shows three ways to extract numeric-only columns from a dataframe, 1. a naive loop, 2. using apply(), and 3. using idiomatic sapply(). Only methods 1 and 3 work as apply() assumes singly-typed vectors (and dataframes can have mixed types). Author is frustrated because 1. there are too many ways to do simple extractions and 2. using apply() is a prime example of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

Verbosity is an existential threat.</comment>


An inexpensive way to make great looking logos - <AUTHOR> http://www.jslogan.com/content/view/174/ <comment><USER2> Cool idea, but all of the example logos look horrible. I'd be embarrassed to have them on my website or product.

I think it misses the whole point that the biggest differences between a good logo and a bad one is typeface and color scheme, and this software seems to leave both of those in the incapable hands of the end user. Sure, having a nice mascot or graphic mark is great to have, but this software can't solve that problem either (because it can only provide a few pre-drawn marks, which once used by anyone become stale and indefensible as a trademark).</comment>