How Carrier IQ was wrongly accused of keylogging  - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57335715-281/how-carrier-iq-was-wrongly-accused-of-keylogging/ <comment><USER2> Please change title to "How Carrier IQ's PR Department is able to post articles on cnet".

<comment><USER3> While I agree with you in terms of content, based on how they've handled the rest of this mess I find it almost hard to believe they would be capable of looking up a cnet editor's email address, yet alone pursuading them to write anything.

<comment><USER4> They are not having any trouble with being in contact with the press at this point.

What seems more likely is that they were able to feed the reporter enough material from their side of the story that the reporter used mostly that to meet his deadline. Of course, the reporter may write a story from the opposite perspective Monday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "There's zero evidence that Carrier IQ captured, recorded, or transmitted any keystrokes"

...except the 17 minute Youtube Video that showed Carrier IQ capturing, and recording keystrokes.

<comment><USER6> No. Trevor Eckhart's video showed him capturing and recording the Android event log. This only demonstrates that the CarrierIQ agent running on the phone attached an event listener to keyboard events. While that behavior is consistent with a key logger, it's also consistent with lots of totally harmless software doing totally normal things.

<comment><USER7> >it's also consistent with lots of totally harmless software doing totally normal things.

lol. What "totally harmless software" or "normal things" require userland software to monitor every keystroke. And not just monitor them, but echo them so that they appear in the logcat?

<comment><USER8> I don't think that they've earned the benefit of the doubt here, but I think it goes too far to say that there's no reason why benign diagnostic software might pay attention to key presses. For example, a particular button combination could bring up a diagnostics screen or send additional information.

The logging, likewise could be just some debug code accidentally left in.

<comment><USER4> How about the https urls being intercepted?

Those were for a diagnostic command sequence or debug code too?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Data really is an attractive nuisance. It is not too hard to see how many legitimate carrier questions could be answered to the benefit of consumers by having phones log data. Perhaps the simplest one is "Where do I have areas of weak coverage and so more dropped/distorted calls?" If a large percentage of the handsets can log GPS + signal strength info over a long period of time, the phones that are in suitcases (erroneously recording poor signal strength) and those in airplanes (erroneously recording great signal strength) will be balanced out by real world scenarios. Given 12 months of data (which covers various weather conditions, and correlating by date) one could quickly and efficiently decide where additiona transmitter/receiver resources should be deployed, and under what conditions it might make sense to bring up more resources and when you could shut them down (rain for example absorbs 1.5 - 2.5 Ghz radio signals.

Of course that information can be accumulated much more painfully by driving around in a van to pick up this information. And the quality will be both better and worse, better in the sense that a signal-quality-van could have equipment to evaluate the signal strength very accurately, but worse in that you wouldn't get the time of day and conditional variation from weather.

The 'attractive nuisance' aspect of it however comes into play when you've created a logging/monitoring _platform_ and now you can collect other kinds of information. Like warrantless wiretappers who are unable to restrain themselves from listening in on conversations they have no reason to listen to, once the infrastructure is there the humans in the loop seem unable to prevent themselves from succumbing to their desire to 'know.'

I had a long discussion with some law enforcement types at a security conference along these lines (I was advocating outright bans on some of the tools they consider 'essential' for fighting crime). The economic cost of not using the tools is higher (higher taxes (to pay for more cops), higher phone bills (to pay for signal strength vans)) and, until it is actualized, only a "potential" risk of abuse. That is such a terribly hard equation for people to evaluate on instinct.

</comment><comment><USER2> It should be noted that (having finally watched the video) what he is accusing Carrier IQ of is key logging, but he does not demonstrate key logging of the keyboard (he demonstrates key logging of two of the hardware keys and the numeric phone dialer, but never demonstrates the same behavior when using the virtual keyboard -- he does show that the unencrypted url is being sent (which means that the Carrier IQ software has hooks into the browser where it shouldn't) but does not demonstrate key logging of, say, a password typed into a web page on an encrypted connection.

If the article made this point it might have some credibility. As it is, it simply looks like Carrier IQ's PR department working overtime.

<comment><USER7> It's the same thing. The way virtual keypads work in Android and the same as the hardware keyboard. Also, it's already been noted that it is aware of HTTPS urls and reports those just as meerily (at least to the adb logcat, I can't make other claims).

Further, the keyboard doesn't magically work differently when it's entering text into one page other the other... not sure what track you're thinking on there.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I agree that it's definitely tracking the url (and not the domain) but thet is not the same as key logging (which would capture things like passwords entered into a web page). I'll take your word for it that the text keypad is just as compromised as the numeric, but it would have been a lot more compelling to show a username / password (for example) being captured on a banking website before the user even pressed "submit" (or whatever).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Turns out they aren't wrongly accused of keylogging. Carrier IQ, likely in partnership with either the Handset Vendor and/or the carrier were responsible for the storing of personal information.

Here is a pretty good quotation from their director of marketing: ""We're as surprised as anybody to see all that information flowing," Andrew Coward, Carrier IQ's director of marketing, told CNNMoney in an interview. "It raises a lot of questions for the industry -- and not [only] for Carrier IQ.""

<comment><USER4> They're just trying to throw their customers (the carriers) under the bus at this point.

They really don't want to shoulder these oncoming class actions alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not keylogging does not absolve Carrier IQ. This article doesn't exactly say that, but it gives the impression that it's all one big misunderstanding from an overzealous "newly minted" security researcher.

That people jumped to conclusions that it was transmitting keystrokes, when "no no no, it merely has that _potential_ , you see!" well, what do you expect?

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm calling B.S. on carriers don't charge for your key-logging data.

My wire had some billing/technical issues and we worked through AT&T's data transmission logs, there were unexplainable uploads that seemed like telemetry or some kind of debugging. They denied it and told us it was our data uploads.

Now I know what that probably was ;)

Open up the tele-comm industry, this is really scare stuff!

</comment><comment><USER12> Quote: _It's true that carriers already know what URLs you're visiting when you use their network_

Is that true for https?

<comment><USER13> They only know which server you're visiting, so they can route the packets properly. But the headers are encrypted, so they shouldn't get the whole URL. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Https#Network_layers>

<comment><USER12> I'm familiar with the normal workings of https. What I'd like to know is if there's anything special about cellphone browsers such that the carriers act as MITM (like with Kindle Fire). What I can't imagine, though, is any way they could MITM the URL and not be able to MITM the rest of the HTTP request and response.

<comment><USER4> Non-smartphone browsers will often use a bastardization of https that does allow the carriers to perform MitM interception.

This should* not be the case with smartphones however, particularly when connected to wifi and not even transferring data via the carrier.

*The carrier may have planted an SSL trusted CA cert on your phone before giving it to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nobody ever accused carrier IQ of hacking the software onto the phones all by themselves.

Tracking all URLs is half as bad as tracking keys.

And forgive me if I don't find claims that it doesn't record the keystroke data that it's sent anyway in a customizable app very reassuring.

<comment><USER15> How is tracking all URLs half as bad as a keylogger? You understand that any ISP can see a log of which customer requested which website, right? They don't need CarrierIQ to see that, it's an integral part of the function of being an ISP.

<comment><USER16> The same would apply for SMS message and phone calls. A nefarious carrier could log those without anything being installed on the handset at all.

That aside, wasn't the claim that Carrier IQ can also log stuff that _isn't_ going through the carrier's network (e.g., when you're using your WiFi connection)?

<comment><USER17> >The same would apply for SMS message and phone calls. A nefarious carrier could log those without anything being installed on the handset at all.

Carriers are logging both your SMS and phone call activity anyway. You get a copy of the log in every bill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Isn't it a little early to say "wrongly," while the companies are still playing hot potato?

<comment><USER19> That's never stopped him before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This reminds me of the story that the media ran hard on for "...hackers launched a cyber attack against a water facility in central Illinois."

More and more tech sites now are turning into these media engines that just want pageviews, their spinning a small story with very little facts into a Fox type news story, it's very sad to see, and will continue to happen, so they can be bought by the AOLs of the world.

The Russian hack never happened [http://www.tgdaily.com/security- features/59984-the-russian-h...](http://www.tgdaily.com/security- features/59984-the-russian-hack-never-happened)

<comment><USER4> The water pump story was primarily an elaborate screwup.

This story has some very interesting reality under it and the details are still being uncovered.

<comment><USER20> I agree with you, but with so little facts up front, and with seeing the story was so twisted in the media, it's just the reality of how things happen in today's world. Buckle up and hold on, innocent later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How, in the same article, do you say "an expert examined the assembly of the software and determined there is no code that records or reports back" then follow that a little later with "carrier IQ doesn't make the decision, they provide the software with flags that the carriers can configure to record and/or report back".... These two statements don't really mesh up.

<comment><USER4> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model>

Stage 1. Denial

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Who is Declan McCullagh and why should we believe he invented the Internet?

</comment><comment><USER23> This is stupid. If they don't want to be accused of being a keylogger and/or rootkit, they should

(1) not allow keypress events to be sent to their software;

(2) force carriers to not hide their executable and show users what information they are collecting on their phones;

(3) keep a record of information, again to be shown to users on demand from the program installed on their phones, that has been uploaded;

(4) manage to answer simple questions, like (i) could you forward keystrokes, sms, ssh passwords, ssl passwords, etc, (ii) can your software contact your servers and download new control instructions, (iii) has this ever happened, (iv) under what circumstances would it happen

(5) easily give users the ability to shut down the flow of information and remove the program, including in all future updates

Really, this isn't rocket science.

<comment><USER24> I agree with your sentiment and most of what you say. But a lot of the general public are not good at computers. Remember the "facebook login" incident? If you tell these people that there a magic programme that runs all the time then they will always turn that off. As a result carriers will haves basically no information.

<comment><USER4> You mean people will be able to make informed choices about their privacy?

<comment><USER24> No, lots of people do not know about how to make informed choices about lots of things about tech. You right know how to use computers, but there are loads of people who Google "www.Facebook.com" they do not know about computers

<comment><USER18> I'm kind of losing track of the argument here, are you talking about defaulting to open vs. default-closed when it comes to privacy?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Whois records for Amazon Route 53? - <AUTHOR>
 Is there a way to access whois records for Route 53? I cannot for the life of me find a way to query their domain records. If I lookup a domain registered through Route 53 using another whois lookup tool, it will point me to `registrar.amazon.com` which just redirects to the Route 53 landing page. I have crawled through their entire sitemap looking for a search tool but have yet to find one.<p>Anyone have any info on accessing whois records for Route 53? Thanks. <comment><USER2> Using the "jwhois" tool against a domain at Route53, I see that it queries whois.verisign-grs.com and then gives me the data I expect</comment>


Towns in Massachusetts Are Building Their Own Gigabit Fiber Network - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/22-towns-in-massachusetts-are-building-their-own-gigabit-fiber-network <comment><USER2> Great quote from a resident (in a press release linked from the OP):

"Our family has lived in Goshen for almost 30 years. Over that time during town meeting, we've debated the costs of a fire truck, an ambulance, several highway trucks and police cruisers, capping our dump, a new elementary school, an addition to the high school and now the construction of a regional broadband network. Never [before] in the history of Goshen have we had to change the venue of the meeting because so many people turned out." All 240 voters were unanimous in their support of the bond authorization.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cities in NC did this[1]. TWC didn't like it, so they bought the state legislature and had it made illegal[2]. The FCC is trying to pull rank on NC, but NC is fighting back[3].

1\. [http://www.greenlightnc.com/](http://www.greenlightnc.com/)

2\. [http://www.wired.com/2011/05/nc-gov-anti-muni- broadband/](http://www.wired.com/2011/05/nc-gov-anti-muni-broadband/)

3\. [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/north-carolina- su...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/north-carolina-sues-fcc-for- right-to-block-municipal-broadband/)

<comment><USER4> Well TWC had their original monopoly granted by the government, so pretty natural they would look there to defend it.

I don't defend big ISP monopolies. But my concern with municipal broadband is that municipalities generally do a bad job running what should be private sector services. They end up being used for patronage jobs and other political shenanigans among other things. Plus your average elected city councilman doesn't know the first thing about the technical or financial realities of running an ISP. It's more like "hey we can pass a tax levy and take some money from each citizen to build a Cadillac internet service with no concern for profit or cost." It's thinking like this that had my town buying acres of land for a "tech park" that has sat undeveloped for years, and working plans for a waste materials separation facility that no private waste hauler will build because it's a guaranteed money-loser.

I wish I had more choice in ISPs. But I don't think my neighbor should be forced to pay for my internet service.

<comment><USER5> On the other hand, municipalities generally run water and sewage services without complaints; incompetence and corruption in that department are so rare that they are news.

You can privatize bus or trash service and hand the concession to someone else should the incumbent be too awful at their job, but things like water, sewage and data are natural monopolies, and for these different rules apply.

The sad thing is that we know how regulated utilities ought to be run, but we choose not to. Hence Comcast and the Enron-sponsored electricity shenanigans in CA.

<comment><USER6> > municipalities generally run water and sewage services without complaints

I'd largely agree with this from my own experience. The caveat here in comparing water & sewage to internet service is that water and sewage service - at least what we experience as end users - hasn't changed much over the years. Municipal governments are good at managing that type of service. I'm happy with the same water and sewage service that I had 15 years ago. Not sure I'd like the same Internet service. And I'm not so sure I'd trust my city to keep such a service up to date.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, imagine if municipalities had needed to increase their sewage "bandwidth" per customer tenfold over the last decade.

<comment><USER5> There was a fairly heady construction boom _in_ the last decade, let me remind you of that. That said, everyone seems to have a beef with Comcast, while the complaints about the Vermont muni ISPs and the only muni ISP in North Carolina ([http://www.greenlightnc.com/](http://www.greenlightnc.com/)) are muted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> $80 million for an area that has 20,000 households. If they get 40% uptake, that's $10,000 per household. TWC's market cap per subscriber is less than half that. The economics of building fiber suck.

<comment><USER9> The $80 million in fiber only lasts 1 year?

Laying water pipes is expensive.. but water pipes are good for what, 80 years? The cost spread out through bonds over a long period is not that bad.

The trick is how long is gigabit "good" internet for? In 2001, they could have built a 1mbit connection to every house and been seen as pretty awesome, but now, 15 years later, it would be pretty worthless.

Though I am not a fiber expert, I think there may be ways to future proof it so current 1gbit fiber could be 10gbit or 100gbit down the road with better back office equipment..

<comment><USER10> In my mental model, it's laying the conduit that is _expensive_ (but the collective clearly has an edge over a traditional vendor because they presumably don't have to get permits from the towns), followed by the cost of the actual fiber and/or equipment. But hopefully once that conduit is in place, if Super Awesome Fiber 2.0 comes along, they are one small remote controlled fiber-pulling device away from stringing the updated medium through said conduit.

I am purposefully not even addressing the multiplicative power of multi-modal fiber connections, or any such in-medium improvements.

<comment><USER11> When ISPs get federal money to lay fiber they will never lay conduit because then they would not get money again when "Super Awesome Fiber 2.0" comes around.

<comment><USER12> Installing conduit and pulling the fiber is about three times more expensive than just doing direct burial fiber. In rural areas it can be more cost effective to just do direct burial fiber.

Fiber strands are also quite cheap. It is often faster, cheaper and easier to direct bury a fiber cable with "enough" fiber strands to cater for current and any forseeable demand than to install a condiit system in rural areas.

Furthermore it is quite rare to replace the fiber in a last mile network. I can't recall a single instance since single mode fiber was introduced. It just isn't cost effective. It's much easier, cheaper and faster to just change the electronics/optics.

Even adding more fiber strands by means of a new cable is rare. Again it just isn't cost effective. It's much easier, cheaper and faster to just change the electronics/optics. Even so, in rural areas it is just cheaper to plow down another cable than to build a conduit network.

In summary, a conduit system is more expensive to install, repair and maintain than a direct burial network. Aerial systems are generally even cheaper, but have their own downsides.

A direct burial network might not be as flexible and easily upgradeable as a conduit system, but sometimes this does not matter, especially if you are on a fixed budget.

<comment><USER13> "Installing conduit and pulling the fiber is about three times more expensive than just doing direct burial fiber. In rural areas it can be more cost effective to just do direct burial fiber." True, but everyone also fights the laws around making sure the same ground doesn't get torn up again and again.

Where I lived in Maryland (which installed FIOS, then comcast upgrades, then a municipal broadband network), they literally tore up the same streets 3 times in a year and a half.

 _This_ is why it's so expensive.

But nobody wants to have to subsidize anyone else when they do work, so they fight regulations around burying extra/empty conduit tooth and nail.

<comment><USER14> If your crossing pavement, it makes since to add conduit. It also makes since for cities to require anyone tearing the concrete/pavement up to allow other companies to lay conduit at the same time- it doesn't cost anything extra to the company doing the tearing up to let others install conduit into the same trench. (Perhaps a bit of time, but the time they are alloted to get their extra conduit in should be minimal.)

<comment><USER12> > If your crossing pavement, it makes since to add conduit.

Yes, of course. I'm not advocating direct burial in all circumstances, just that it should be considered on it's own merits in rural deployments. Likewise one should not always build a full conduit system.

"It also makes since for cities to require anyone tearing the concrete/pavement up to allow other companies to lay conduit at the same time- it doesn't cost anything extra to the company doing the tearing up to let others install conduit into the same trench."

It always takes a bit of time, effort and planning. Subcontractors also want to be paid for any extra work, so there is always the question of who will carry that cost.

There are a lot of models for sharing digging costs, from simple co-dig projects to full scale infrastructure sharing efforts as in Stockholm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That people are willing to spend huge amounts just to avoid the monopolist ISP's says a lot.

<comment><USER16> If that were only the case... My parents live in one of these rural Western Massachusetts towns building their own fiber networks, Leverett, Ma. The town, is which directly north of Amherst and the Five College, had _ZERO_ available landbased broadband options.

So no, they didn't spend huge amounts of money just to avoid the monopolist ISPs as there are none servicing the area. And this is pretty typical of the towns participating, it's not that they have crappy service, it's that they have _NO_ service.

Also, having fiber has other ramifications. Try selling a house these days without available broadband and tell me how far you get or how much you have to drop the price. You'll get nowhere. My parents went through this several years ago when they were planning on moving, and quite literally had people simply turn around walk out when they found out that broadband was unavailable at the house.

Verizon is basically letting the copper in the area rot... it wasn't until 97? or 98? that my parents got touch tone dialing, and after every storm the line quality got worse and worse. At least now, for better or worse, the town and its residents are on the hook for the quality of service.

And I think everyone should have to dogfood their own products over a satellite connection. You'd be surprised how much everything sucks or breaks when you've got huge latency and basically modem++ speeds.

<comment><USER14> Exactly- I am on satellite Internet, and it is amazing how many sites are difficult to use or break entirely (even Android apps that won't work at all) because of the latency. There was a study about a year ago that found that having Fiber would add 5-10k or more on to the value of a home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I lived in Monterey, MA as a camp director for years. We had dial up forever and they were able to get 100 kbs in 2003 till today at almost $75 a month.

There is no way I can tell you how rural it is. When we had a medical emergency we speed 90 mph + one time down the road to meet the ambulance half way to the hospital that was 45 minutes away. Houses are about 1/2 mile away from each other on dirt roads that are not plowed during the winter. The center of town equals one general store and the post office and maybe 8 homes. The one saving grace for funding is that many rich and famous people have summer homes there. It would be great for these people to actually have

<comment><USER18> Sounds a lot like where I was born. Well outside of the summer homes for rich people bit that is.

Fun bit about not plowed roads in winter. We had a storm come through one year in the... 90's? can't recall but anyway the national guard had to, well there is no good way to describe this, tunnel might be a good analogy, their way through 13" snow drifts.

That was fun. Was like driving through the death star for the rest of the winter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The funny thing is that, land of MIT and tech, the city of Boston has one cable company that is slow and overpriced.

<comment><USER20> What? Boston has both Comcast and RCN, the latter of which is awesome and the former is decent (unlike how they are in other areas) due to the competition- I've used both. There's also FiOS depending on where in Boston you are.

<comment><USER21> What Boston neighborhood -- not nearby city, Boston neighborhood -- has FiOS?

I was fairly certain Verizon refused to deploy after Menino denied them tax breaks for a buildout, and have declared that they will never deploy within city limits. Ever.

If I could get FiOS within Boston city limits, I would've moved to said neighborhood already. To be fair I can't complain about Comcast's service over the past 7 years at all -- I get what I pay for, been down once ever I think -- but I'd take FiOS in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER22> My appartment in Arlington MA has FiOS.

<comment><USER21> That was my point. Arlington is not Boston. It is Arlington. It was incorporated in 1807 and has not been annexed by Boston since. That's not the case for former towns like Charlestown and Dorchester (which have been annexed and are now large neighborhoods of Boston), but Arlington is not Boston -- which is exactly why Verizon was willing to deploy FiOS there.

You cannot get FiOS within Boston city limits. Though I'm well aware that you can get FiOS in surrounding cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 1 GB/s for $109 a month, so amazing. The crazy thing is nearly all WiFi can't even burst close to 1 GB/s, so to fully utilize the pipe, you'll need to hard- wire in.

<comment> SG- Yet, besides it's not so much about utilizing it all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why is it to this day, we have Electricity and Water Pipes, as well as telephone line ( Who uses that? ) all built and layout into our new home but no one consider a CAT6/7 cable or even fiber cable? These Cable should all go to the bottom of the building where different ISP can easily be connected and provide Internet connection. Solving the last mile problem as well as bring in more competition driving prices down.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if they could work out some deal to sell Netflix or Google bonds at a lower rate.

<comment><USER26> I'm not sure whether this is a good idea, but it's _definitely_ an idea I'd want to watch happen.</comment></comment>


Google Cloud is down - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/pageperf/status/1019302516671107072 <comment><USER2> Must have been people who ran away from AWS when Prime day overloaded the authentication system and possibly other parts of the control plane. Google got too many of them at once...

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like this caused the Spotify and Snapchat outages.</comment>


How Facebook makes us dumber - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-01-08/how-facebook-makes-us-dumber <comment><USER2> What I don't get is dumb companies who post a link to their FB(or some other social media) page on their site:

1\. You're advertising another company for free. Is Facebook paying you to put their logo on your site? No.

2\. When people like/follow your page, they are trapped by FB(or some other social media) and you can only reach them there. If you're banned or they pull bait-and-switch on you, like Facebook did, you've wasted all this time building user base for Facebook and not building your business.

3\. You can't even reach them on Facebook, because you now have to pay Facebook to reach people that have already liked your page.

4\. Posting on social media wastes a lot of time and money(tools + people).

\- Compare this to getting an email address from your visitors:

1\. You are in control of your list.

2\. You can reach them anywhere & anytime almost for free.

<comment> yoz-y At one point people estimated that a Facebook like was worth quite a lot of money. I am quite sure that now the value has greatly diminished, nevertheless I do think that it is better than having an e-mail.

There are several reasons for that:

\- First (at least for me), an unsolicited e-mail goes directly into trash and I seek the unsubscribe button. Under no circumstances I am interested in additional stuff somebody has to offer beyond the first service.

\- People who did not buy your stuff/service can still like you on Facebook, they can do it after they have forgotten some login to your site etc.

\- The single best advertising that actually works is recommendation from friends. I think that seeing that somebody else liked something on your feed gets pretty close to that.

\- People do like to have all of their "Internet" in one place. Why go to mail if they can have everything in their feed?

\- If you use Facebook then they solve a huge number of stuff for you - administration, spam filtering, server hosting, account management (there are other solutions to this of course, but it is good to be able to throw all of this on somebody else)

\- I think posting on media sites wastes no more time than creating mailing lists and also requires less tools.

\- Advertising for Facebook is mutually beneficial, the more people there are, the more you can reach.

\- Also, ads on Facebook have great reach (from what I have heard) and are quite cheap.

\- I would hazard a guess that most people are more likely to have notifications on for Facebook rather than e-mail.

Facebook is also probably not going to fail, preparing for this scenario is a nice thought exercise but at some point you have to have some faith in your suppliers. Same goes for Google (mail, docs), Dropbox (file history), Github (issue tracker, code reviews).

<comment><USER3> "At one point people estimated that a Facebook like was worth quite a lot of money. I am quite sure that now the value has greatly diminished"

Have you looked at a stock chart of Facebook recently? All time high basically and worth $220b.

Or did you mean the value the company brings to the user?

<comment><USER4> You misread what was said I think. It's about a _facebook like_ , not about facebook itself.

<comment><USER3> Ah my bad - need more coffee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hm... the alternative explanation is, people were always dumb, Facebook (and internet in general) just makes it more apparent by giving us more oportunities to display our stupidity.

<comment><USER6> Or: people were always tribal and concerned more with shibboleths identifying the in-group than truth. Facebook (and Tumblr and Reddit, etc, even HN) just automates it.

<comment><USER7> I disagree with Tumblr and Reddit being compared with Facebook in this regard, and completley disagree that HN is in anyway similar in this regard. Facebook will automatically stop showing you things you disagree with, whilst it has to be a conscious choice on your part on Reddit and Facebook.

On HN you don't actually get to choose the content in any meaningful way, and therefore have no means of creating an echo chamber for yourself through other means then down voting.

<comment><USER8> I agree with your assessment of things other than to point out that HN is already an echo chamber to some degree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There have already been studies showing that frequent visits to FB make a person more unhappy in their overall life. Now this. So, a major worldwide internet power -- that is, a single company -- that is trying to disrupt so much of global life (India, anyone?), with the interesting side effect that it makes people unhappy _and_ less intelligent. If you had heard this "reality" 20 years ago, you wouldn't believe the future could be so dark.

<comment><USER10> Yep, a major worldwide internet power has vested interest in mining data from its billions of users via its product, which is broadly detrimental to those users.

To be honest, it seems a lot like the oil companies: major worldwide energy powers with vested interest in extracting fossil fuels from the earth then selling them to billions of users to burn, which is detrimental to everyone.

A lot of these mega-scale corporations manage to get away with mass-scale detrimental effects because of a general state of addiction to their product, which was legitimately new and useful at an earlier point in time. That, and after a certain point they become too powerful for any one country to stop.

<comment><USER9> Also, because laws are only a subset of the many ways a society handles, judges, and distinguishes detrimental actions. Laws can only do so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a search provider, DuckDuckGo tries to prevent the "gated community" syndrom: [http://dontbubble.us/](http://dontbubble.us/)

<comment><USER12> Yeah, too bad it fails at some searches and falling back to google is needed

For controversial stuff, the bubble is definitely a minus. For factual queries, it just makes things easier (yes, when I type 'python' I don't mean the reptile)

<comment><USER13> How does it fail for you?

I persisted and find that although the results are different, they are often just different. Once I became used to DDG it's started to seem like Google is the broken one.

It did take a while for me to switch, maybe 3 tries before it was working right.

<comment><USER14> One of my really lazy really common searches is the module codes at my university. It's really nice that Google know which university I mean and always get it right even if I've never searched that code before.

<comment><USER15> If they're at your university are the results you're looking for not all under the same domain? I would have expected site:university.com to return the right results for you. (Okay, perhaps it's not the every-man solution.)

<comment><USER14> Yep, that'd work - it does make the query considerably longer than the 5 character code though. Like I said, very lazy search.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It would be interesting to study Simulacra and Simulation when it comes to social media and memes.

People tend to align themselves with other people and communities who share similar beliefs. You can often see this where people Like and Share these meme images with some "profound" message (eg. "A real man/woman ...") when they like, agree with or find interesting for some or other reason.

So, what IMO would be interesting to see is how these things changes their world view and self-image. Are they replacing the reality of life with a simulacra (the meme; Social Media "friends" I supposed can be argued to be another simulacra)? How much more likely are they to like/share to share posts from others who they perceive to have similar world-views, even if they know very little about the topic? How likely are they to defend ideas which they only have by virtue of their social connection to other people?

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

</comment><comment><USER17> That's a ridiculous headline to derive from analysis of published article with title "The spreading of misinformation online".

Sure the idea that Facebook makes us dumber might have some truth in it. But it cannot be fairly evaluated unless one proves that the alternative Network Television or Grandma email forwards were not making us even more dumber before Facebook rose to prominence.

<comment><USER18> I think the problem with the article is that it doesn't dig deep enough.

For example, Facebook news feed is driven by an algorithm to push posts you are likely to be interested in. Liking an anti-vaccination post or anti- immigration post will surely result in more similar content in your news feed.

So Facebook inadvertently might be reinforcing confirmation bias more than anything else due to content being filtered and personalized to you only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Probably not a small nitpick, really, but the article explains not that we're dumber by using Facebook, but that we are less informed. I think that's an important distinction not only because people tend to conflate knowledge and intelligence/aptitude, but because we should worry as much about spending long amounts of time doing things that provide not even nominal information to keep our brains pliable and receptive to new knowledge and new ways of thinking.

<comment><USER20> I think I disagree. We actually spread lots and lots of "information" via Facebook. In other words, we're "very informed" (whether it's arguably correct information is another story.) But we are, really, becoming more rigid in opinions due to this "information" which means, we are less receptive to new knowledge and new ways of thinking.

(I think, in the big picture, our opinions on this overall point do align, so please don't completely disregard my comment :).)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Reddit too. I just wrote 500 words without using any logical fallacies backing up my assertions with scientific studies from trusted sources, why does my comment have -12 points without a single person taking the time to refute my position in a comment?

I believe managed, licenced hunting in Africa supports conservation efforts, there is no reason ever to spank or hit a child, all children should be vaccinated, and pitbulls are dangerous.

So, most people have unfriended and/or blocked me on Facebook. Now I live in a bubble. I'm not bothered by people who don't agree with me. I'm bothered by people who can't debate these topics without getting riled up. The African hunting topic ended with someone threatening my little sister. I can understand the business decision behind letting people live in a bubble.

<comment><USER22> Just out of curiosity why do you think children should never be spanked? Do you have children?

<comment><USER21> I'm not going to say that spanking isn't an effective way to discipline a child. I can also understand if a 3 year old walks into a street to feel like spanking the child. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that other forms of discipline for small children are more effective at correcting behavior and children who are spanked are often more violent towards other children with other developmental and learning problems in school. Also, what we can do is look at how adjusted, happy, and successful people are in life, whether they are a doctor or lawyer with their own practice, divorced, in jail for violent crimes, or if they have a drug or psychological problems and compare that to whether they were spanked or worse as children. What we discover is that people who were not spanked or spanked very sparingly for example only in the case they walked out into the street do much, much better in life. So if you have children and want to play the numbers game, it might be worth while to explore other ways of disciplining your child. Not only do they work, but they have better long term effects on the child.

<comment><USER22> OK it sounds like you are actually of the belief that spanking should be rare, rather than never. In this I agree, but I do think from personal experience that spanking is a useful "thermonuclear" option to stop dangerous behaviour in young children. To give you an example, I once caught one of my children at the age of two inserting objects into electrical power points. I gave him a good spank on the bottom and he never did it again. It is possible that another solution would have worked, but when you are dealing with a two year old playing with electricity do you really want to take the chance with another options? If spanking is rare children quickly learn that to get a spank means they have crossed a no-go threshold.

My limited personal experience of the results of disincline (of all kinds) is that inconsistent or random discipline from a parent is worse than almost all others. Children who live in fear of being disciplined for what appears to them to be for no reason, or where their actual behaviour plays very little role in affecting the discipline they experience, fair far worse. It is really hard as a parent, but being consistent is critically important. No means no.

<comment><USER21> I strongly agree with this author: Spanking and Child Development: We Know Enough Now To Stop Hitting Our Children[1]

> Spanking remains a common, if controversial, childrearing practice in the > United States. In this article, I pair mounting research indicating that > spanking is both ineffective and harmful with professional and human rights > opinions disavowing the practice. I conclude that spanking is a form of > violence against children that should no longer be a part of American > childrearing.

My stance is consistent with the recommendations of the American Psychological Association [2] and the American Academy of Pediatrics [3].

The issue is can we have a discussion about it without unfriending each other on Facebook building protective bubbles.

[1][http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3768154/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3768154/)

[2][http://www.apa.org/about/policy/corporal- punishment.aspx](http://www.apa.org/about/policy/corporal-punishment.aspx)

[3][https://www.healthychildren.org/English/family- life/family-d...](https://www.healthychildren.org/English/family-life/family- dynamics/communication-discipline/Pages/Where-We-Stand-Spanking.aspx)

<comment><USER22> Yes this is one of the reasons I spend far more time on HN than Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What most people forget about networks like Facebook (or twitter for that matter) is that just a misinformation can spread quickly, corrections of that information can to.

What FB have helped with is to make sure that neither newspapers nor politicians will be able to communicate in a vacuum.

What we see now is the first steps of a more enlightened society not a dumber one because dissent both gets normalized and much better access to minds it didn't before.

Of course there is going to be people who think alike or people who only befriend people who think exactly like them. But the second they want to spread their gospel outside their groups they are going to be met with a lot of other perspectives and thats a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER24> For all its faults, old fashioned broadcast media was better in a way. It spread information to you whether you agreed with it or not. Having a strong opinion on anything was rare, because for all you knew you where alone with your views. You where not exposed to as many like-minded people. There wasn't this feedback loop where you decided what information to spread on to that group of people, and they decided what to spread back to you.

</comment><comment><USER25> In Germany, vast parts of Facebook have become one big ugly hate fest. I've read so much utterly terrible crap in the past few days (in the aftermath of the NYE events in Germany), that I'm still sick to the stomach. People are completely resistant to any facts contradicting their favorite narrative and flagging is useless (moderation is a joke). Same for YouTube btw.

edit: typos

</comment><comment><USER26> I guess it's also amplified by the fact that people tend to accept things as true by default, until it's proven otherwise. In other words, insertion of data is the way cheaper then its invalidation and probably happen much more frequently thanks to social media.

<comment><USER27> Agree- I think an anonymous dislike button might help catch some of the bs posts- I know I would certainly use it a lot on my feed! At the very least, it would make the poster consider what they have posted in some cases and realise that people do not agree with or trust the content within that post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Yes, everybody has always been like this, but tech has changed the social nature of interaction. It's not just Facebook. Any online community (including HN) has a desire to limit conflict -- you want people enjoying themselves and contributing. That means "Don't show me stuff that I disagree with"

There's a natural conflict of interest. In the real world, we are forced to live with and confront those of widely varying opinions. Many times this is a huge pain in the ass. But it's good for the species overall. Over time, initially unpopular and ugly opinions get vetted: about one in a 100/1000 turn out to be a critical evolution in the way all of us think about ourselves.

In the virtual world, no such limits exist. We cannot afford to have the 1% folks who destroy discourse, so we just magically make them not exist. People share and promote emotional things which the vast majority can agree on. Instead of the outliers driving change, we begin to norm down those farther and farther out on the bell curve.

So people turn inward to their phones and tribes. We physically live next to each other, but we don't actually live with each other. Instead of a diverse and accomplished species, we are slowly becoming one large, comfortable mob.

<comment><USER29> Call me biased, but pretty much every on-line community I've seen in the past 15 years had no desire to limit disagreements. All they wanted is to get rid of _assholes_.

It's the same on HN and on your Facebook feed, as it was on the old topical boards and mailing lists. You can argue for any controversial position you like _as long as_ you do this in a civil and substantial way. What ends up happening is people getting split into two camps - those who can discuss things in a detached way and learn from them, and assholes who just want to call people names. Or, in terms of pg's hierarchy of disagreement[0], groups tend to split somewhere around DH3-DH4 level.

Which is totally fine, IMO. Unfortunately most Internet denizens seem to be in the "DH3 and below" group. What we need to figure out is how to make them abandon their ways and join the civilized world.

[0] - [http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html](http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html)

<comment><USER30> While I agree with you, this did have me giggling a bit: > and assholes who just want to call people names.

<comment><USER29> I guess I need to work on my writing skills a bit more; I still tend to quantum-tunnel into DH0 sometimes. :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What social networks bring is the explosion of the hierarchy of information that mainstream media and politicians imposed on us for decades.

That's why a lot of media/politics criticizes social networks because it questions their role and place in the society.

</comment><comment><USER32> > Can anything be done?

Should anything be done?

Entertain the possibility that what is observed is not really about the "facts," but intragroup signalling serving to maintain group cohesion.

But yeah, since we all hate those groups...

</comment><comment><USER33> So the study confirms that people naturally trust what their friends are posting, which then confirms that trust is what bonds friends together.

I view Facebook as a means to strengthen existing "physical" friendship, rather than a place to get unbiased information. So in that sense this is neither surprising, nor detrimental. Imagine what will happen if your friends start correcting your political views...

For less biased information, please refer to twitter. And please don't mix Facebook friends with twitter followings.

</comment><comment><USER34> Few years ago Facebook was supposed to work with media to improve the activity feed. But from my perspective it is just became as bad as it can be, it gives me no relevant information and 80% of it is garbage. When close friends post something interesting, it does not get promoted and rapidity falls in the bottom. Filtering out noise in annoying so I end up not using Facebook as I used to.

What describe the article is not a Facebook problem, it's an Internet problem, Google and Youtube make you as dumb as Facebook does.

<comment><USER35> In a broader sense I'd say it's also a societal problem. Growing up in a more traditional society as well as a Christian community, I had to deal with a huge variety of people and opinions on a regular basis, whereas nowadays the default is to associate with 'people I like', which tend to be people I agree with. And because others do likewise, it's difficult to actively counteract that, much as I try.

Of course there were some strong biases in these 'older' communities too (views on sexuality, abortion, etc.), but generally speaking people inside them varied greatly in political views, social class, upbringing, lifestyle, habits, and so on. It gave a face to many opinions that I would consider offensive or dangerous, and by extension an understanding and empathy that is much more difficult to have these days (for me).

I fear for the future of our societies (and social safeties) in part because of this. Changing views often starts with mutual respect, and that's much more difficult to do when opinions get separated from those who hold them, and when interaction is increasingly opt-in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm generally curious whether or not most people on HN still actively use their Facebook account.

<comment><USER20> Of course the members of _this_ tribe would certainly enjoy believing that we are above _that_ tribe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm not a facebook user but this just seems to be another article on the filter bubble.

</comment><comment><USER38> Being extreme in a group is signalling. Which explains the echo chambers that form.

</comment><comment><USER39> Actually, I've noticed that when people post misinformation in the form of a link to an article, FB often has some "See also" items posted below it that debunk the story.

</comment><comment><USER40> I understood I have less than 10 contacts in my life after closing fb 5 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER41> Facebook annoys me so much, I've stopped using it. It really is like an addiction. We've outsourced our feelings of belonging to Facebook. We want to be careful with that.

</comment><comment><USER42> This was made true by the founder of facebook calling his own users "dumb fucks" [https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=mark%20zuckerberg%20dumb%20fucks)

</comment><comment><USER42> I've never used facebook/AOL, never plan to. I use the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER43> Facebook makes smart people smarter and dumb people dumber. Same as with every other technology / medium.

<comment><USER44> And it doesn't make dumb people smarter and smart people dumber?

<comment><USER45> It doesn't do either of those; as always, reality is complex and doesn't boil down to soundbite slogans.

Hacker News is making us dumber.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> > Once people discover that others agree with them, they become more confident > -- and then more extreme.

And then the example plus explanation.

> Arriving at these judgments on your own, you might well hold them > tentatively and with a fair degree of humility. But after you learn that a > lot of people agree with you, you are likely to end up with much greater > certainty

This mechanism is considered extreme? Why? When a lot of people agree with me on some issue then naturally I'll be more confident in expressing my views.

So what if Facebook pairs tin foil hat wearers together so they can share their views? I doubt that they'll start believing that they are now the mainstream.

I suspect that the writer of this article just deeply resents the fact that persons with out of the norm beliefs or thoughts can now effectively organise and exchange ideas which in turn directly threatens the journalists monopoly on creating the mainstream narrative.

It is a good thing that ideas and views from other perspectives are now widely available online. You now can watch RT and then CNN or FOX and conclude that basically all of these channels are just feeding us propaganda crap with different goals.</comment>


Follow-up on 4K displays for programmers - <AUTHOR> http://tiamat.tsotech.com/4k-is-for-programmers-redux <comment><USER2> Bizarrely I've actually found that having a large single display makes me less productive as a programmer as too much head movement is required to see everything and I prefer to focus on a single file at time to keep everything mindful.

In the cases that I do need to compare two files side by side at the same time or have documentation open I have a secondary monitor for the additional window.

I've also learned that having a monitor that has the correct dpi ratio verses screen resolution verses screen size is more important than cramming the most number of pixels into a specific screen size. Especially if you want to avoid eye strain.

<comment><USER3> > I've also learned that having a monitor that has the correct dpi ratio > verses screen resolution verses screen size is more important than cramming > the most number of pixels into a specific screen size. Especially if you > want to avoid eye strain.

Definitely. The "retina" fad of higher and higher resolutions, combined with bigger screen sizes, means that you can get _plenty_ of tiny text on a screen, but that doesn't mean you can comfortably read it at a good viewing distance. So you turn the font size up... and wonder why you need such a high DPI since you'd just be seeing the same amount of text as before.

I prefer multiple monitors over one huge one, since I can position them so they're all easy to see and a relatively constant distance from my eyes (i.e. in an arc). One huge flat surface means that looking at the corners requires large head movements since that distance increases much more.

<comment><USER4> The point of "retina" displays is not to fit more content onto the screen, but to remove the pixelation of the screen in order to make it more like paper: the "retina" devices from Apple render content at exactly the same "font size" as the "non-retina" devices, the fonts are simply crisper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 4K is great, but two problems: it's not "Retina" resolution at 32" (and definitely not at 39", though that's too big for a monitor), and the display ports that exist today do not support it well at all.

DisplayPort 1.2 can do it, if the monitor pretends it's two half-size monitors next to each other. This causes major problems for OSes, though I did eventually manage to work around it on Linux. (On an nVidia card, enable Xinerama. Due to a bug, this turns Xinerama and RandR _off_ , making the window manager think you only have one monitor. Perfection.)

HDMI 1.4 can do it, but only at 30Hz, which is ugly. It's actually not unusable, but you'll be aware of what's going on.

As for the resolution issue: you're still not getting very good density. Your phone can do 440ppi. The Chromebook Pixel is 240ppi. 32" at 4k is 140ppi. Mind you, it looks great at 200%, but things are a little big. (I ended up liking this and my normal monitors now run at 125%.)

You really want 8K for a big monitor.

You also want 120Hz refresh, if only so that movies play each frame at a constant speed. 24 doesn't divide 60 (or 30!), but it does divide 120.

So until there is some transport layer that can do 8K at 120Hz, we're taking a step backwards. (4K at 120Hz is fine for TVs, though. Perhaps even HD is enough there.)

<comment><USER6> > _So until there is some transport layer that can do 8K at 120Hz, we 're > taking a step backwards_

Author here. I certainly do want 8K (or even more) on the desktop, but I disagree that the current crop of 4K displays are a step backwards versus recent history. Until these displays became available, we had a 7+ year stagnation where 2560x1600 was the pinnacle of semi-affordable desktop computing displays. Finally, after this years-long agony of lethargy, we have vendors selling televisions that in many ways exceed the capabilities of our desktop monitors.

I write this comment from my home workstation, which is equipped with three Dell U3011 30" monitors. I love these monitors. But each of them cost me $1,100 and that's the same price I paid for my first 30" monitor several years prior, a Dell 3007WFP. The pricing is asinine. But because I am satisfied with this configuration, I'll be waiting for a 60Hz 4K for my home workstation. If I were using a lesser configuration, I'd seriously consider dropping $500 (or at times, <$400) at Amazon to get a Seiki to tide me over until the second or third-generation 4K displays, or better, arrive.

I think you and I agree on just about everything except that point. I rejoice that there is something stirring in the display industry, even if it's coming from the television side of the aisle. I hope the display manufacturers feel encouraged to move as rapidly as possible on the desktop computing side. I'm trying to get the message out to them in my own way. :)

<comment><USER5> I have an Asus PQ321, and I will agree with you: the LCD panel is a huge step forward. But we shouldn't look at that and say the problem is solved, we need to be developing the next generation.

What I see limiting progress is the link layer between the GPU and the LCD panel. 4K@60Hz requires about 15Gbps of bandwidth. 8K will require 60Gbps. 8K@120, which is what I want, will require 120Gbps. We need a standard for that, so when panels become affordable, you can just buy one and hook it up. In the mean time, you have to suffer with text that's not quite as clear as what you get on your laptop or phone, and with video that "judders".

<comment><USER7> >In the mean time, you have to suffer with text that's not quite as clear as what you get on your laptop or phone

This is really noticeable when you have been working on your desktop screen for some time, then pick up your phone or tablet to read something. You get this instant: "Wow! This is SO much sharper" feeling. Then after reading on that device for 5 minutes you get used to it and don't explicitly experience it as sharp anymore.

But then you go back to working on your desktop screen and you get the opposite experience: "Wow! This IS fuzzy! WTF!?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have an Asus PQ321Q (4k @ 32") and it's what I've always wanted in a monitor. It fills my field of view and text is both legible and crisp at its native resolution. I can drive it with my retina MacBook Pro at 60Hz in Windows, and going back to my old Dell 30" monitors is painful. My only wish is that OS X would get its act together and support DisplayPort MST (and 60Hz). Windows on the same hardware in BootCamp does.

8k for the same price would be fine, but it's not needed at all.

<comment><USER9> >My only wish is that OS X would get its act together and support DisplayPort MST (and 60Hz).

Judging by the latest beta, 10.9.3 will enable 60Hz on 2013 Retina MBPs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if the 39" makes you crane your neck too much. It's a lot of pixels, but a lot of physical space and movement required as well.

The Dell 28" 4k monitor ([http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&c...](http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&sku=210-ACHO)) seems like a better option to me. Has anyone tried one out?

<comment><USER11> I haven't tried the 28" monitor because it suffers from the 30hz problem as well, so instead I got the 24" Ultrasharp (~$200 more on amazon) and it's amazing. It supports DisplayPort 1.2 so it can do 60hz. It supports HDMI as well, but not the newer version so you are limited to 30hz if you want to use HDMI.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HALPPM0/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HALPPM0/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00HALPPM0&linkCode=as2&tag=diaryofamadma-20)

<comment><USER12> Question for folks who have 4k resolution on a smaller screen (like 28"). Isn't most text (like text on websites) IMPOSSIBLY SMALL to read? My laptop has 1080p res and is 15 inches, and my goodness I can't read anything without Ctrl +'ing in Chrome until things are at least scaled at 125% (I generally use the web at 150% though). 15 * 4 = 60... (as 1080p * 4 ~= 4k), that means I'd need easily 80+ inch screen to be using 4k screens. How in the heck would you deal with things with 4k on a 28" screen?

<comment><USER11> I actually run mine at 1920 x 1080 @ 2x so that everything is super crisp. I have a retina macbook and it was just painful looking at my other monitors.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't a 1920 x 1080 display of the same size be more suitable then?

<comment><USER5> He can still individually address all the pixels, but targets each "pixel" to be 4 physical pixels. If the software can deal with that, like web browsers can, then you get twice as much clarity. (Try turning Chrome up to 200% default zoom. You'll notice that most websites ship assets that individually address every pixel in this new configuration. Things are the same physical size as they would be on a panel with half the resolution, but with twice the clarity. It's quite nice, even for programming.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There was a comment in the article about tiling window managers and Windows. I used to have to use Windows for work, and I missed my tiling window manager. As it turns out, bug.n[0] is a pretty decent TWM for Windows. I was using Windows XP, so I'm not sure of how well it works on newer versions.

[0] [https://code.google.com/p/bugn/](https://code.google.com/p/bugn/)

<comment><USER14> Fences [1]. And while we're at it, also recommend DisplayFusion [2]. It allows you to replicate toolbars across multiple monitors, plus a bunch of other customizations.

[1] [http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/](http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/) [2] [https://www.displayfusion.com/](https://www.displayfusion.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Some notes on driving the Seiki 4K with a 1st generation MacBook Pro Retina.

50" is too big for desktop, better with multiple monitors that surround you. 39" is ok, but scaling has been an issue: text is sharp at 4K and 1080p. But, non power of two scaling looks really blurry. At 4K, text is too small, and at 1080p, text is a bit large. When compared to retina, fonts look uneven, so I wind up coding on the MBP and use the 4K for Skype, email, etc.

Getting full 4K native between OSX and Seiki required some fiddling with SwitchResX. This was back in January and perhaps the drivers have been improved? Was underwhelmed until I got full 4K going. And then: Wow! Breathtaking! Too bad my first generation Mac Book Pro retina can only drive the 4K at 15hz, newer model MBP should work at 30hz.

With SwitchResX, I can drive the Seiki at 1080p60 and 1080p50, which is useful for previewing visual music pieces at different refresh rates. So, am generally pleased with the Seiki for working with media, though I haven't done much work with gradients and skin tones. MMV.

</comment><comment><USER16> I just moved continents again (about a month ago) and naturally brought my desktop... sans screen. I spent a day in a large Chinese computer market and finally settled on the 27" _Philips 274E_ (~US$290) for its thin black low- gloss bevel and perceived clarity. I do a lot of work with photos, and it doesn't disappoint at 1920x1080. Even 27" is too big for me... Amazon says the Seikis are 39"... not something I'd enjoy.

Having tried both, I also see multi-screen setups at superfluous, though useful in horrible office environments for removing distractions (people moving in the background, random cheap ceiling light glare, etc... anyone else think the window glare in the article image must be horrible?) Instead of multiple screens, I use _compiz-fusion_ (though this seemed to be dying at last check) to spin my screen between eight separate desktop spaces ctrl+alt+left/right. I also concur with other posters that full screen terminals for meditative focus are ideal. Thankfully I just hit a single extra function button I mapped on the keyboard to spin one up, alt+enter for full screen, ctrl+plus/minus to scale text as my eyesight/subject demand at the time. Not having to use the mouse is nice. I use a wacom tablet which travels everywhere with me for 90% of my mousing tasks as I've found it to reduce finger and wrist strain from clicking.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think the writer maybe mistaking frame rate(screen refresh rate in hz) for latency (time between graphics card outputting and screen displaying in ms) these are very different. Computer monitors have a low latency and tv's usually have a high latency (some have a game mode which turns off some image processing to get back some precious reaction time) our eyes and brains are fooled for motion at as low as 24 hz (film motion pictures)

<comment><USER5> If there is motion blur, yes, your brain sees motion with 24 fields per second. Without motion blur, not so much. Try gaming at 24fps and then at 60fps. You will notice the difference.

I've never seen 120fps, so I can't tell you if that helps. But if you're playing back 24fps source material (movies) and 30/60fps source material (TV), then you need 120Hz refresh at a minimum, just to be able to display each frame for the correct amount of time.

<comment><USER17> Motion blur is an artifact caused by fast motion recoreded with a slow shutter speed on camera equipment or a full screen shader effect found in modern games. A monitor or tv will not be the cause of motion blur. Whilst your correct that there is a perceiveable difference between 30 and 60 hz whilst gaming it would be negligible and the most likely cause of the "this isn't right" feeling due to latency.

<comment><USER18> TVs can cause motion blur when they are doing cross frame interpolation to "smooth" the image which many high refresh rate TVs do now a days.

(edit) averaging -> interpolation

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Personally I find too much vertical screen size to be taxing. This actually surprised me at first. I was using 2x24" for some time, and bemoaned the shift from 16x10 to 16x9, since I found the vertical size extremely useful for common tasks like reading documents. I briefly upgrading to three 30" (U3014), but found they were just too tall. To be comfortable I had to have them far enough away that they weren't particularly comfortable even at 1.25x scaling, so I was essentially wasting the extra space. I "downgraded" to 3x27" (BenQ BL2710 - fantastic monitor) and love them. The horizontal real estate is great, since I can angle the side monitors to still be relatively close, and can keep the primary workspace on the main screen. I certainly wouldn't be against 4k for added clarity/sharpness, but I can't see preferring a single 4k display, of any size or quality, to three 27".

<comment><USER5> The solution is to move the monitor farther away and adjust the scaling accordingly.

<comment><USER19> Yes, but then what's the point of having the larger monitor?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> 4k at 27" seems to be the sweet spot for people who aren't blind. In addition, instead of window managers get 2 or 3 smaller high resolution screens. Multi monitor is the easiest producitivity boost for programmers.

At my company everyone gets 2 monitors. We started with 19" in 2006. Moved to 24" after a fire and insurance replacement and then have upgraded to 27" primaries as sales and new machines were ordered.

After 7 years of multi monitor usage with a team of 12 people I can safely say that bigger is not always better. More desktops to work with are a boost. Pixel density is nice, but the OS by default handles multi monitor much better than any window manager and you can do things like one horizontal and one vertical.

<comment><USER21> > In addition, instead of window managers get 2 or 3 smaller high resolution > screens.

Disclaimer: I haven't used a 4k display.) It seems to me that unless you have a decent window manager, working on a 4k display will bring it's own set of (small) productivity hurdles. For example, Windows 7's DWM without any additional software works Well Enough on two/three smaller monitors, but how usable is it at 4k resolutions? Do you have to spend tons of time dragging windows around?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> We had one of these in the office, and I hate to say this, but it was TOO big. Everyone who used it developed eye pain after a few hours - it's taxing to have that many bright pixels glaring at you all day. We ended up sticking with thunderbolt displays for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER23> What would be a good upgrade path for my 2x 24 ? Id like to get more realestate instead of just more crispness though, so i am thinking about 2x 32 inch to run at native res. Or maybe just go with 2x 27" 2560x in the meantime until prices and technology catch up.

</comment><comment><USER24> There are 28" 4K Samsung displays on eBay if you are willing to wait for delivery from South Korea.

Works out around 600 GBP with VAT. So around $750 for US customers.

</comment><comment><USER25> Just spent way too long a time drooling over that Dell 31.5 inch 4K monitor!

<comment><USER5> Get the Asus one. The Dell supposedly has many very major problems.</comment></comment>


Arctic could be free of sea ice by 2040, 30 years sooner than expected - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/05/daily-chart?cid1=cust/ddnew/n/n/n/2017051n/owned/n/n/nwl/n/n/na/Daily_Dispatch/email&etear=dailydispatch <comment><USER2> So New beach front development coming online soon after?</comment>


The FCC did a lot more than just approve Net Neutrality today - <AUTHOR> http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/02/fcc-did-lot-more-just-approve-net-neutrality-today

<comment><USER2> Good things going on here. But I think we need to be careful about end- justifies-the-means thinking.

FTA:

> The Federal Communications Commission will allow some cities and towns to > set up and expand municipal Internet services, overruling state laws that > had been put in place to block such efforts.

> The commission granted petitions by Chattanooga, Tenn., and Wilson, N.C., to > overturn laws that restricted the ability of communities in those states to > offer broadband service.

What is the FCC doing overturning state law? This strikes be as worrisome, regardless of how bad the laws in question might be.</comment>


Going Feral Or "So long, and thanks for all the fish…" - <AUTHOR> https://asecondmouse.wordpress.com/2013/08/01/going-feral-or-so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish/ <comment><USER2> Best of luck. Sounds like you're doing it for all the right reasons. I hope that I'm not doing the same thing 40 years from now, either, to be honest.

</comment><comment><USER3> Congrats!!!!</comment>


Show HN: Beatboxing for Kids – Teach Your Child to Beatbox Using Everyday Words - <AUTHOR> https://beatboxingforkids.fun/ <comment><USER2> Looked like fun. Asked both kids (8,14). "Daaaaad! Nooo!" "I'm not doing that."

Then they went back to reading paper books, rigging wooden ship models, building forts in the woods, etc. JK. Right back to Fortnite and Instagram.

<comment><AUTHOR> The trick is to make them think they've discovered it on their own. Learning how to beatbox is sort of like learning how to dance -- it's going to be awkward at first, and kids can feel self-conscious about doing those things in front of their parents. But if they just happen to find a tutorial lying around and can maybe practice in their bedrooms without any parents watching ... they just might connect with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looking at the site on a small-screen iPhone 5S, your SVG gets messed up at lower resolutions. I thought it was my eyes at first until I zoomed up:

[https://imgur.com/a/j3Eqgwm](https://imgur.com/a/j3Eqgwm)

Also, the audio examples do not work on this phone.

<comment><USER4> Desktop Safari doesn't play them either. I guess it's because Apple still doesn't like Vorbis?

For iOS users who have a compatible player installed (I think VLC should do the trick), here's the direct links, in order of appearance:

[https://beatboxingforkids.fun/boots_n_cats_words.ogg](https://beatboxingforkids.fun/boots_n_cats_words.ogg)

[https://beatboxingforkids.fun/boots_n_cats_beatbox.ogg](https://beatboxingforkids.fun/boots_n_cats_beatbox.ogg)

[https://beatboxingforkids.fun/dog_dog_keys_words.ogg](https://beatboxingforkids.fun/dog_dog_keys_words.ogg)

[https://beatboxingforkids.fun/dog_dog_keys_beatbox.ogg](https://beatboxingforkids.fun/dog_dog_keys_beatbox.ogg)

[https://beatboxingforkids.fun/bud_d_daughter_words.ogg](https://beatboxingforkids.fun/bud_d_daughter_words.ogg)

[https://beatboxingforkids.fun/bud_d_daughter_beatbox.ogg](https://beatboxingforkids.fun/bud_d_daughter_beatbox.ogg)

[https://beatboxingforkids.fun/goose_kid_d_words.ogg](https://beatboxingforkids.fun/goose_kid_d_words.ogg)

[https://beatboxingforkids.fun/goose_kid_d_beatbox.ogg](https://beatboxingforkids.fun/goose_kid_d_beatbox.ogg)

[https://beatboxingforkids.fun/buff_double_puff_words.ogg](https://beatboxingforkids.fun/buff_double_puff_words.ogg)

[https://beatboxingforkids.fun/buff_double_puff_beatbox.ogg](https://beatboxingforkids.fun/buff_double_puff_beatbox.ogg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Once I was capable of doing an inward snare, softly beatboxing to myself became my version of Spotify. Music is so much better when I do it myself, same goes for cooking. I know I'm biased ;-)

<comment><USER6> Inward snare inhale is where the real fun begins. Though, I find over many loops I end up with TOO much air, so I have been working on the outward- inward-snare, which is an exhale snare that sounds like the inhale snare.

<comment><USER5> Do you have video of that?

<comment><USER6> Not of myself, but here's an example of the inward K snare (the most common, there are other inward hits such as a snare roll) [https://youtu.be/DRk5QkDit2c](https://youtu.be/DRk5QkDit2c)

It's just a matter of practice to make a K sound the same inward as outward. Then you can manage your air seamlessly, like circular breathing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One problem is that from reading the words there's no way to know what rhythm is intended, in fact the words are often written in a misleading way. So I start beatboxing the way I think the rhythm is, then I listen to the audio and it's very different.

For example:

        Bud   D   Daughter
        Kiss   D   Daughter
        Bad   Double   T
        Kiss   D   Daughter

Considering each line to be one measure, I thought bad would start at the beginning of the measure. But in the recording it starts partway into the measure. Demonstration: [https://i.imgur.com/10lFVDm.png](https://i.imgur.com/10lFVDm.png)

        Goose   Kid   D
        Bubble   D   Cat   Cat

This example is even more confusing. I thought both lines would be 4 beats. But the recording has the first line as 3 beats and the second line as 5 beats. Demonstration: [https://i.imgur.com/YWzHDED.png](https://i.imgur.com/YWzHDED.png)

</comment><comment><USER8> If you say "Hey Siri, beatbox for me", it will respond: "Here's one I've been working on. Boots and cats and boots and cats and..." Today I refer to a common four-on-the-floor dance beat as "the standard boots-n-cats beat".

</comment><comment><USER9> My 2 year old loves beatboxing. And cats. He will love boots and cats.

</comment><comment><USER10> I like it, simple and fun! Going to try this with my niece tonight.

</comment><comment><USER6> Or, the pg-13 version:

Bum bum tits ticklenipple bum tits</comment>


New device can harvest indoor light to power electronics - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/05/dye-sensitized-photovoltaic-cells-can-power-small-electronics-indoors/ <comment><USER2> How much efficiency improvement over calculator solar-cells are we talking about? It's not like we couldn't power basic electronics (like solar powered calculators) indoor before.

<comment><USER3> Apparently solar cells larger than a calculator one can give about 30mA, 5V at peak power output [1]. We really need to know surface area and lumen to know how good this thing performs.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/53X30mm-Micro-Power-Solar- Panels/dp/B...](https://www.amazon.com/53X30mm-Micro-Power-Solar- Panels/dp/B01BFX65YK/)

<comment><USER4> Units point of interest, the luminous flux per area is called "illuminance" and measured in lux (lumens per square meter) or footcandles (lumens per square foot)

<comment><USER5> `footcandle` is a ridiculous name for a unit.

<comment><USER6> it's not even the right dimension.

<comment><USER4> Originally comes from 1 fc being the illuminance on a surface 1 foot away from a 1 candela light source.

A candela being roughly the intensity of light from a candle.

Intensity (candelas) breaking down to lumens per steradian. They're a measure of how bright a light is in a particular direction, rather than its total light output (which is lumens).

And steradians, for the unfamiliar, being a measure of "solid angle". Steradians are to 3D angles as radians are to 2D angles. A 1 steradian solid angle projects out to an area of 1 unit^2 on the surface of a unit sphere.

Fun stuff!

<comment><USER4> Other fun fact, 1 fc = 10.7639 lux, because that's how many square feet make up a square meter.

But in the lighting industry we just pretend 1 fc = 1 lux for most conversions, because eh, close enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been using Logitech's solar powered keyboard (uses traditional cells) for years and I love the product. The biggest problem are:

1) doesn't charge well in low light

2) doesn't charge well from LED light

At first glance, the new approach looks to address one of those problems and possibly both.

</comment><comment><USER8> Claimed 30 mW may not seem a lot, but most of electronic sensors (even displays) are only used for short period of time. You continuously collect charge over time, often in a supercapacitor, while most of device circuitry is dormant. At some time the device wakes to take measurements, transmit data over some wireless technology, schedule next wake-up and then goes back to sleep.

Even if you need measurements every minute, 30 mW is plenty for these kinds of devices to do their work.

</comment><comment><USER9> TL;DR it's a special kind of solar panel that works better in low light conditions. Super cheap solar panels are around 11% efficient, average cells are around 18%, and these are around 29% efficient. So about a 50%-ish improvement.

It is a fascinating breakthrough, but unfortunately even if it was 100% efficient indoor solar cells would still be pretty useless. As a rule of thumb indoor illuminance is 200-1000 lux, vs outdoor illuminance up to 120,000 lux. A lux is slightly less than 1.5e-7 watts per centimeter. So for a 500 lux room (which I'd call pretty well lit) with one of these devices the size of a smartphone you'd be harvesting 1.5e-7w/cm2/lux _500 lux_ 7cm _14cm_ 0.29 efficiency = 0.00213 watts.

As cool as this breakthrough is, it's not going to get anywhere. Current solar-powered household devices (pretty much just calculators) don't really need 50% more power, and other household devices need many orders of magnitude more power.

Even if it was 100% efficient, it'd still be gathering less than a hundredth of a watt. That's not coming anywhere close to useful.

</comment><comment><USER10> I love the idea of reclaiming some of the energy from our lighting. Perhaps one day solar cell wall paints will be a thing.

<comment><USER11> If those solar cells are efficient, then they'll look you've painted the walls black. Not only will the quality of the light become worse (harsher shadows from less diffuse light), you'll probably install more light bulbs to compensate.

<comment><USER12> The EU incidentally created a similar problem when banning most incandescent bulbs.

Well, at least in some countries. Here in Norway, most buildings are heated by electricity - so replacing incandescents with LED or fluorescent bulbs effectively means that you spend less on lighting, more on heating and the sum stays the same - except the new bulbs are costlier and (mostly) provide less comfy light.

Sigh. Free lunches remain elusive.

<comment><USER13> Heat pumps are way more efficient than just resistive heating.

<comment><USER14> I don't think they are more efficient in Norway harsh winters..

<comment><USER13> That's actually a reasonable point, and it may be true. There's got to some temperature delta makes a heat pump a losing proposition, but I'm not sure how big that threshold is.

<comment><USER15> I accidentally replaced one of my heat pumps with an A/C only unit. So now I have to run the emergency heat strip all winter. I haven't seen any real increase in my power usage. The heat strip was running most of the time anyway because of low temps.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Anthropology of Mid-Sized Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2012/10/29/anthropology-of-mid-sized-startups/ <comment><USER2> I doubt that the phrase "masculinity vs. femininity" means the same thing to modern eyes that it did to Hofstede. It would probably be better to call this dimension something else, although I'm not sure that the alternative "quantity of life vs. quality of life" label is helpful either.

<comment><USER3> Somewhat related: Some who advocate for workplace diversity are suspicious that "culture fit" is often a dog whistle meaning something like "young white brogrammers". I believe that suspicion is justified. At the same time, this post reminds me that company culture isn't always _only_ that. It's rewarding to look at any organization through the eyes of an anthropologist. The idea that mid-size startups are actually closer to religions than tribes, for example, is something I find especially interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're in London and enjoy talking about topics like this, consider joining the London Ribbonfarm Readers meetup group [http://www.meetup.com/London- Ribbonfarm-Readers/](http://www.meetup.com/London-Ribbonfarm-Readers/)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's weird how the term "tribe" is now used to describe just about any set of people that has at least one thing or interest in common, even just temporarily...

</comment><comment><USER6> Kevin Simler, the post author, also blogs at [http://www.meltingasphalt.com/](http://www.meltingasphalt.com/).

</comment><comment><USER7> some more observations:

\- The branch of industry is important: Games/media are more likely to fire quickly than a shop that does networking gear.

\- Background of founders may be very important; if you are on the same wavelength or not with the management team, that's very important while working for a startup.

\- most important: the way that conflicts are resolved/kinds of crisis 'management'. To what extend is the company going into dirty politics mode once that things get tough? i guess the problem here is that things like integrity/honesty are impossible to classify; not tangible enough.

Interesting if someone has thought about good questions that could help to get a better picture with regards to the integrity thing while doing interviews; during interviews everyone looks so reasonable ... go figure how things will turn out in the end...</comment>