One Byte to rule them all - <AUTHOR> https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2020/07/one-byte-to-rule-them-all.html <comment><USER2> Seems like the high-level lesson is that tagged unions as traditionally implemented can be vulnerable in a manner that pointer/address-focused mitigations don't affect?

<comment><USER3> Indeed, a small integer tag seems much more vulnerable than a C++ virtual table pointer.

On modern hardware, how much is the penalty for using magic numbers instead of small indices? (A magic number meaning a constant like 0x85adb9ad instead of 2). The compiler can't optimize switch(it->type) using a jump table, but I suspect that branch prediction and speculation makes this optimization barely relevant.

<comment><USER4> A jump table isn't likely used for very small unions anyways. The biggest downside that I see is that comparing with zero is slightly cheaper if that is a common value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Huh, I submitted this two days ago -- why does it say two hours ago?

<comment><USER5> It's common for mods to game the system and resubmit stories they believe are good.

<comment><USER6> Not sure why this is downvoted. They do do that.

<comment><USER7> Likely because "game the system" has a strong negative connotation that seems unwarranted.

<comment><USER8> Only if you can actually speak to the motivation behind the act.... right?

<comment><USER9> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What do I need to learn to understand this 100%?

<comment><USER9> In somewhat increasing order of specificity (and decreasing additional understanding): computers, C, memory safety, newer cross-platform security mitigations, XNU, iOS-specific security mitigations, iOS exploitation techniques, Project Zero's previous work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The amount of work put into the exploit, the breadth of low-level knowledge involved, and the number of moving parts required for the successful privilege escalation is impressive, to say the least.

I suspect that getting thought this all took months, considering that iOS runs on platforms not exactly open for experimentation of such a kind.

</comment><comment><USER12> The LotR section headings were a nice touch

</comment><comment><USER13> great stuff

</comment><comment><USER14> So what does it mean?!

<comment><USER15> iOS has a lot of layers and mitigations both in software and proprietary hardware that aren't found in other systems. Keep in mind that this story would be 20 % the length on other systems, because "physical memory read/write primitive" would be a total break.

<comment><USER9> I should note that PPL is _not_ designed to protect against the kinds of attack described in this article; it's really meant to prevent substitution of forged page tables and by coincidence the address chosen by the author ended up being unmappable due to an attempt to protect against virtual memory read/write in the kernel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> iOS is full of holes. How can Apple in good faith say it is "secure by design?" (See [https://www.apple.com/business/docs/site/AAW_Platform_Securi...](https://www.apple.com/business/docs/site/AAW_Platform_Security.pdf) )

<comment><USER17> Let's give a experienced group of hackers nearly unlimited budget to find security holes in your competitor's products.

There's of course, zero bias in that approach, none whatsoever. /s

If project zero spent even half as much time finding and fixing security exploits in Android as they do just finding exploits in IOS, Google would have a truly competitive product from a security perspective.

<comment><USER18> I really don't see the problem with this, finding vulnerabilities is hard work and many times the results are used for nefarious purposes.

You seem to be concerned that Project Zero would be used as marketing material against competitors but I saw no sign of that.

Apple should thank Google for the high quality free labor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Project Zero

> News and updates from the Project Zero team at Google

>For the last several years, nearly all iOS kernel exploits ...

Damn, Googlers... Still incapable of explaining things to people. What the hell is Project Zero? Why don't you explain it in your tagline? If not, why not at the beginning of the article?

Edit: this sentence in the "about" section does the job:

> Project Zero is a team of security researchers at Google who study zero-day > vulnerabilities in the hardware and software systems that are depended upon > by users around the world

I suggest you change the tagline to something like "Studying zero-day vulnerabilities at Google".</comment>


Tell HN: Coinbase is stealing my money from me - <AUTHOR> Many years ago I created an account and bought crypto from https://coinbase.com and have since sat on it.
Lately I've been receiving emails from them that their terms of service has changed and I need to upload a US drivers license and a "selfie" in order to access my now locked account.
I will not be doing that - I don't trust third parties with my government ID, and "upload selfies for security" is the definition of security theater as well as being invasive and dehumanizing. I would not have opened the account with those requirements.
I understand that it is their prerogative to change their TOS, but in response I've asked them to close my account and either send me the crypto or the current value in USD. I don't think that's an unreasonable solution.
They are refusing to honoring that request after several months and several requests to escalate. But they are continuing to send me "we're going to confiscate your account if you don't comply" form emails.
What now? Yikes. <comment><USER2> Ignoring the specifics of this issue and the specifics that you're in a dispute with Coinbase:

Escalate this out of their CS queues. The most straightforward way is to involve their legal department, either by sending a letter that will be routed into it or having a lawyer send them a nastygram [0], which will cost somewhere between $100 and $300.

[0] Lawyers would typically call it a "demand letter", which would simply observe that they're your counsel, that the financial institution has your money and has refused to return it when asked, and that the financial institution should pay you your money immediately.

</comment><comment><USER3> KYC ("Know Your Customer") laws require this. Blame the US government, not Coinbase.</comment>


U.S. Revamps Process for H-1B Visa Application - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-revamps-process-for-h-1b-visa-application-11575673767 <comment><USER2> Link here - [http://archive.is/PxRAM](http://archive.is/PxRAM)

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone who can get by the paywall answer the most basic questions:

* Does this require H1-B recipients to be working directly for the company that sponsors them (e.g. you don't get to be a "consultant" to another company)?

* Require the recipient to be paid at rates greater than the average where they actually end up working?

I say this as someone who spent years on an H1-B and was continuously frustrated by the clearly stupid enforcement (comparing salary to locations in the middle of nowhere, outsourcing firms, etc).

<comment><USER4> These are changes to "application" only. It has nothing to do with H1B itself. H1B program has been currently a textbook example of government incompetence. I shudder to think how the US government would have treated its citizens (or part there of) if they could not vote.

This is a minor rejig of the application process that aims at making the process less transparent, waste more visas (by not giving them to anyone) and makes life easy for those who skirt the law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bureaucracy piled on top of more bureaucracy.

They could've made the whole process simple, clear and precise. But no. Let's harass employees, businesses and families.

The fact that even the most basic questions can't be answered easily are proof that the system is broken, incompetent at best! I feel sorry for everyone having to live this in the 21st century.</comment>


Ask HN:  Where do you buy your startup's tshirts? - <AUTHOR>

Looking to buy tshirts, any recommendations? <comment><USER2> Checkout <http://www.kommonthread.com/> They're working on a new program to help promote startups using T-shirts

</comment><comment><USER3> I cannot recommend <http://progressofdesign.com/> enough. I've ordered from them 3 times and couldn't be happier. Cheaper prices than most other places I've used in the past and great quality. I wanted to print a larger than average design and they accommodated me for only a small bump in price when other companies said they couldn't even do it.

<comment><USER4> I bookmarked Threadbird - <http://www.threadbird.com/> recently, from the folks of Storenvy I think, but your pricing is much more competitive! Threadbird got a bit more printing options and materials.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> we use vistaprint, primarily because the UI makes it easier to design shirts. You should test out the quality of shirts on a short run first.

If you keep an item in your cart, they will send you a coupon. If you buy a small amount, they will send you a coupon that you can use on a bigger order.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've wanted to rekindle "Startup Schwag" as I didn't get to get on it for very long prior to its close down.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've used Queensboro.com. Tons of options, and solid pricing. Would definitely use them again.</comment>


Cancer survivors less likely to receive callbacks from potential employers - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151106113840.htm <comment><USER2> After reading the headline but before reading the article the question in my mind as I clicked it was: "how would these potential employers know about someone's health status?"

Fortunately they explain it fairly quickly: They wear baseball caps saying "cancer survivor" and/or include that they had cancer on their resumes for no reason, other than for the study.

The way I see it, had I read on a resume that someone is a cancer survivor (or any other unwarranted personal detail that's clearly being shoehorned in) I'd find it very off-putting. That alone (along with the "wear a baseball cap" thing accounts for the discrepancy in hiring, as far as I'm concerned.

This isn't even fake science, this is just a piece designed to generate outrage.

<comment><USER3> Actually, it's just bad reporting. I had the same thoughts as you, but I found the paper here: [http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Craig_White6/publication...](http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Craig_White6/publication/279631346_Selection_BIAS_Stereotypes_and_Discrimination_Related_to_Having_a_History_of_Cancer/links/559e8a0e08aeed377e57932d.pdf)

Control group wore plain white hats, and each participant acted as their own control by applying to one store with a cancer hat and a different with the plain hat:

> In the experimental condition, confederates wore hats and provided resumes > that disclosed cancer survivor status. The resumes included the following > statement, "Please note: There is a gap in my employment because I was > diagnosed and treated for cancer. I have been in remission for one year" and > the hat had the words "Cancer Survivor" depicted across the front. In the > control condition, the resume provided no extra information and participants > wore a plain white hat. Finally, it is important to note that all > confederates served as their own control—they entered some stores wearing > the "Cancer Survivor" hat and other stores with the plain white hat. > Confederate applicants remained blind to condition

<comment><USER4> This is bananas. I'm a cancer survivor and I've administered hundreds of job interviews; I guarantee a large part of the difference in callbacks, if not the whole difference, is down to the combination of resumes and hats. Explaining a gap on your resume, great. Wearing a hat with "CANCER SURVIVOR" on it to an interview, ok, a little unusual, but whatever. Doing both? That's _weird_ —not because it has anything to do with cancer, but because the applicant is putting so much energy into driving home an irrelevant point. I'd feel the same way if you explained a gap by saying you volunteered at a sloth rescue in South America (which would be awesome) and wore a hat with "SLOTH VOLUNTEER" on it (which, combined with the gap explanation, would be a bit much). It just screams "I have no idea who I am so I've constructed a fragile identity around this one aspect of my life."

<comment><USER5> This sounds like the people who need to announce that they are trans everywhere.

<comment><USER6> Or vegetarian. Or pet owners. Or gamers.

<comment><USER7> Or hackers.

<comment><USER8> The term "hacker", despite its current dillution with bastardizations like "growth hacker" still holds its caveat - you don't get to call yourself a hacker. It's a term others may apply to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This "study" seems flawed in so many ways (or the article describing it doesn't do it justice).

According to the article, the people who did not get a job were the ones who "indicated on their resumes they were cancer survivors AND WORE A HAT that read 'cancer survivor' when applying for a job."

NEWS FLASH: Wearing a novelty baseball cap to a job interview may not be the best idea -- cancer or not.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I call "rigged science" on this one. Wearing any clothing other than professional apparel would bias an interview outcome regardless of the cause.

The control either should have involved people wearing hats for another cause and/or they should have had a resume-mention only group in the test.

Point of fact, I would not be suprised if discrimination exists. But no need to rig the test.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Doesn't surprise me. I certainly did not disclose my son's health issue when I was looking for a second job. Must say that when asked why I was looking for a second job I just stated our current situation needs me to have a second job and not my wife has to be with our son as he fights for his life and he is in remission but 99% chance of it coming back int he next 6-12 months.

When my son's cancer did come back the second job (And my main job) were both outstanding and really gave me flexibility and understanding, but I doubt I would have gotten the job the first place. It is hard to figure out what to disclose and what not to disclose for simple jobs like retail.

<comment><AUTHOR> Holy crap man, best of luck. I'm not sure how I would function enough to hold one job. Do you have any active crowd funding or anything going on right now?

<comment><USER11> Edit: I certainly don't mind sharing about our family's and son's struggle. Please don't feel bad that you brought up something bad or talking about it.

Unfortunately he passed away 2 years ago. We had an incredible supportive local community and few local organizations who's purpose was supporting local families.

I do highly recommend supporting St. Baldrick's [http://www.stbaldricks.org/](http://www.stbaldricks.org/) for cancer research. Kids get the shaft in research money especially with only 1% from Cancer Society of America and 4% of the Federal Cancer Research Grants got o fight pediatric cancer. Any adult research is of little value to kids, but any findings with kids benefits adults in cancer treatment. So in 20+ years we have the first new chemo drug because of St Baldrick's research funded project paid off.

<comment><USER12> Good god. Nobody should have to go through that. From one internet stranger to another: my sincerest condolences.

Edit: Victor Hugo lost his daughter and subsequently wrote what I consider to be one of the most beautiful poems in the French language. Here it is with an English translation: [http://www.frenchtoday.com/french-poetry-reading/poem- demain...](http://www.frenchtoday.com/french-poetry-reading/poem-demain-des-l- aube-hugo)

I wish I could do more.

<comment><USER12> Wikipedia has a better translation: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demain_d%C3%A8s_l%27aube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demain_d%C3%A8s_l%27aube)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This says more about the state of experimental methods in psychology than it does about the employability of cancer survivors.

</comment><comment><USER14> Yeah, because the idea is that the person is already weak and may have a relapse which will negatively impact their job performance, which is institutionally thought of as unacceptable. Welcome to late capitalism, where the money is gone and the "power" of labor doesn't matter.

Even if people don't have a conscious bias against potential liabilities that an employee might have, I'd suspect that subconsciously they do due to a general awareness of their own bottom line. When it comes time to make a hiring decision (an already an a-rational and largely emotional process), the subconscious biases against taking on a potential liability will probably manifest themselves, causing employers to invent an unrelated "reason" to disqualify a cancer-survivor candidate. Or maybe it's just an invisible push to the bottom of the pile without any false narratives. Either way, I assume the data doesn't lie.

<comment><USER15> > Yeah, because the idea is that the person is already weak and may have a > relapse which will negatively impact their job performance

If I'm hiring, I want the best possible candidate for the job at the best possible price. Someone who has a higher likelihood of being absent is less likely to be the best possible candidate for the job. Those emotional biases have real foundations.

I happen to belong to a protected group and also have a higher chance of being absent; I disclose that status, do my best to indicate that I _am_ the best possible candidate, and let the chips fall where they may. It's worked alright for me so far, although I'm sure that it's cost me a little.

<comment><USER16> Unfortunately, not everyone is in the position of privilege where they can afford to be discriminated against.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I could see cases where this could be relevant. Imagine someone with a great career path in, say, SFBA -- forward and upward progression. In 2006 he quits a job after 6mo and moves to Houston, Boston, Rochester MN, etc. and takes a much lower job (say IT manager or something remote, and with flexible hours..,or maybe no job at all for a couple years) for 0-5y, and is now looking for a job again, based on the previous experience.

Maybe he got fired from the good jobs and couldn't get a job somewhere good again and had to move somewhere cheaper to take a job more readily available. Maybe he or a family member had cancer and wanted to be near the world's best particular cancer care. I'd probably be a lot more strongly biased to hire the person who was willing to sacrifice his career for a while to save someone's life than otherwise.

(Although Stanford and UCSF are pretty good...)

</comment><comment><USER18> This is disgusting, but not surprising. Companies want young, healthy people that they can under-pay and over-work without fear of them needing a medical leave.

<comment><USER19> Well, I was in a situation where my small company had two people and I needed another programmer. One applicant came in who was clearly older - in his 60s I would guess. He came to the interview with a walker and looked in very bad health.

I really didn't care the age of who I hired but my company was tiny and it was a struggle for me to pay a good salary and provide insurance (both of which I did). I was not looking to take advantage of anybody. However if somebody came on and went on extended medical leave, I wouldn't have been able to keep paying them - not out of personal greed but because there literally would not be money to pay them. My salary was not much, if any more than my employees. Possible I might have had some legal obligation to keep providing some type of insurance - I'm not sure.

As it turns out he was completely unqualified - his resume did not jive at all with his knowledge - so I did not have to face the dilemma of whether I would hire him vs a younger, healthier applicant. But it did make me think and appreciate both sides of the situation.

<comment><USER20> This is always the conundrum that people don't like to discuss but I think is worth discussing.

For very early-stage companies where the total employees (and potentially revenue) can be counted on one hand, all hires are critical.

So a single hire who goes on extended medical leave, or sends your insurance rates through the roof can literally kill your company. Is it the person's fault? Not at all, but you are still left dealing with the consequences.

I wonder how early-stage companies draw this line and deal with this type of decision assuming the reason is not related to any of the protected classes from a hiring standpoint.

<comment><USER19> It is tough for sure. People who take a hard-line opinion on the subject I think may not have worked at a small company and/or have never had to think about payroll and insurance expenses.

I know when I was younger it never even occurred to me to wonder where my paycheck came from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unfortunately, this doesn't tell us whether ethics in hiring practices have grown worse, or whether they have always been this bad, and we are just getting better at objectively measuring them.

Either way, the well-intentioned laws governing discrimination in hiring will always be toothless as long as there is any legal reason to not hire a person that otherwise meets the stated job qualifications.

<comment><USER18> I'm willing to say subjectively that they have gotten worse. Some of the practices I've seen from the inside are downright despicable. Take your pick.. age, race, gender, health status.. I've seen the hiring department at our company pull it all. We had a candidate turned down because she spoke with a lisp and the manager said she wanted someone "intelligent" for the job.. despite the candidate's graduation from an ivy league college.

<comment><USER22> I would be looking for another employer if that's the sort of petty behavior they promote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'd love to see a study using actual cancer survivors and a control - who do not in any way include this information in their resume or discussion or clothing - and see if anyone is digging into personal medical history as part of their hiring practices. Probably have to apply for a different sort of job than retail though.

</comment><comment><USER24> Although this is flawed and kind of silly, the hypothesis the study tries to support does just kind of make sense in a pure common sense way.

My wife is a survivor and she'd would never show that side of her life during the interview phase of employment. It just makes sense. Once you get the gig, and has more meaningful relationships with the people she would likely share. It's kind of assumed you never get that personal in an interview.

<comment><USER25> "Although it's obviously a bad study, I am going to think its hypothesis is true."

The only reason we have science is because "common sense" is too easily fooled.

<comment><USER26> You're allowed to have a prior: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_probability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_probability)

A study lacking the power to prove its hypothesis doesn't disprove the hypothesis.</comment></comment></comment>


Old Techies Never Die - <AUTHOR> http://www.baycitizen.org/technology/story/old-techies-never-die/#comments

<comment><USER2> I really think that articles like this do a disservice to the industry, the age of the applicant is tangential to the problem, from the article:

 _While Web-based companies like Facebook and Google are scouring the world for new talent to hire, older technology workers often find that their skills are no longer valued._

Which is the heart of the issue, it's like saying that there is construction worker discrimination on the industry because we don't hire construction workers. Of all people technical workers should know that they have to keep their skills relevant. Pasturing as I call it, is a risky proposition some people take it as a course because they do not want to, or cannot keep up with the constant adaptation.

That being said you show the industry a 60 year old guy with Ruby or IOS experience and they will show him a job. Not hiring someone because they don't have skills is not discrimination and if you are going to hire someone without skills it makes logical sense that you would hire the guy fresh out of college to train.</comment>


Law Graduate Who Sued Her School Loses at Trial - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/business/dealbook/law-graduate-who-sued-her-school-loses-at-trial.html?ref=business <comment><USER2> A bit ironic. Teach students how to sue and you get sued.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, maybe she had a case :)</comment>


Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2017/7/31/16037126/reddit-funding-200-million-valuation-steve-huffman-alexis-ohanian <comment><USER3> >the company is literally re-writing all of its code

Wow.

>An early version of the new design, which we saw during our interview, looks similar to Facebook's News Feed or Twitter's Timeline: A never-ending feed of content broken up into "cards" with more visuals to lure people into the conversations hidden underneath.

>"We want Reddit to be more visually appealing," he explained, "so when new users come to Reddit they have a better sense of what's there, what it's for."

I fear this major re-design will be a mistake. HN is designed similarly to Reddit and if HN ever tried to do a major re-design, I think I would visit it less. I keep coming back to it because of its stories, comments, and its simplicity and minimalism. It has good content and is very easy to use and navigate.

<comment><USER4> I can't think of a single popular site redesign that actually made the site better. They're almost inevitably worse, usually much worse.

A common failing is trying to make the design more shiny and pretty while decreasing functionality, dumbing the site down, adding bloat, and slowing the site down to a crawl.

I really hope Reddit does not go down this road, because they really have a good thing going now. It would be a real shame to ruin it.

<comment><USER5> I have no idea why I care about the NFL, but I have been going to profootballtalk.com daily for years. NBC partnered with a bunch of independent sports blogs like PFT a few years ago. They then rolled 'em all out on a new redesign. I stopped visiting after the first couple tries, then PFT backed out of the redesign and went back to their previous (crappy, old) layout. The other blogs I used to go to (pro hockeytalk and pro basketball talk) didn't and I've never returned.

What I like about reddit and HN (more so) is the minimal, fast, low overhead experience. It's like the original slashdot.

I hate the new animated, ad heavy slow web.

<comment><USER6> I also never get why these sites don't change gradually. I mean, Slashdot tried - their code was a mess, and it looked really old. But it took them ages to rewrite this, and they did it all in one go. Bam! Community was pissed. Why not move the broken old HTML to standard compliant one section at a time, and clean up things here and there, and maybe introduce a new font, or section images, ... instead of this huge explosion_ Sure it might be more work and might also not be completely doable, but if you do it all at once, you are almost guaranteed to alienate your users. And if you are Reddit or Slashdot, that's what makes you.

(I somehow triggered a wrong keyboard layout while typing. I tried to find all typos, but probably didn't get them all)

<comment><USER7> Most likely Left Alt + Left Shift, if you're on Windows. I use it on purpose now, but man was it baffling when I didn't know what was going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you are going to re-design a site like reddit, your best bet is to keep the old version in place, but allow people to also view all of the same content in the "new" design.

For example, release the new design on new.reddit.com and let viewers migrate over to it at their own pace.

Once you have a lot of people using the new reddit instead of the old design, you can migrate the old reddit to old.reddit.com and put the new design up as the default.

WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T GET RID OF THE CURRENT DESIGN, until you have adoption for the new design. Period. If you simply replace the old with the new, reddit is as good as dead.

<comment><USER9> I understand your point, but wouldn't doing what you suggest lead to the problem of maintaining two different code bases? This doesn't seem like a good idea at all.

I think a better approach would be to commit to their new design, and do some sort of A/B testing to hone down the new UI until it replaces the old one.

I don't think reddit will die because of the changes they propose. This is just silly. For starters, there are Google Chrome plugins to make reddit more Facebook feed-like.

I myself like the way reddit works right now and would not like it to change much. That said, Reddit the company has to move towards what will make them money. I don't have this data, but their user base might have changed in the past years. People that really enjoy infinite feeds, for example.

<comment><USER10> You don't have to A/B test whether a good product is better than a redesigned crappy one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Still, he says making money is "not our top priority," estimating the > company spends only about 20 percent of its resources on its advertising > business. Huffman declined to share revenue totals. The company is also not > profitable.

I can't imagine giving $200M to a group of people who publicly say they're not focused on ensuring I get it back. Is this a VC investment or a charity?

Also, have they not achieved profitability after 10+ years because they don't know how to make enough money (i.e. ad sales team is weak), costs are too high (i.e. bad code so lots of infra or too many employees), or is it just not possible to be profitable in this space?

<comment><USER12> Brings to mind an article I read circa 2001 where a Google executive said, "Look, we could be profitable next month if we covered the site with annoying ads, but we're not going to do that. We're focusing on growth now."

Worked out okay for their investors.

<comment><USER13> Search results pages turn out to be the most valuable possible place to put ads.

Reddit might not be nearly so.

Then again Facebook initially seemed like it would have that problem but they seem to have overcome it.

<comment><USER14> But what if Reddit, which has tons of great content, blocks access to Google search, focuses on building a really good search engine, and strongly marketing it via sharing search results in their platform, could this become popular ?

And while $200M doesn't fit a design change, search engines are expensive.

<comment><USER13> If it were that simple Facebook would have tried it by now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am of the opinion that trying to turn a profit on something like Reddit is a catch 22.

The concept of Reddit, which is user generated content curated by users, doesn't have a lot of need for a middleman, more of just a few moderators and admins to keep everything running smoothly. The power of the website is solely in its users and their content generation.

Unfortunately these slow changes have been eroding what was Reddit's strengths of free speech and open dialogue by turning the site into "advertisement friendly". That means killing all subreddits that could sour potential buyers and altering vote-counts to favor specific messages.

Combine this with the fact that they are supplanting viral marketing disguised as user posts (One from today even! [https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/6ql2tu/made_my_deli...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/6ql2tu/made_my_delivery_drivers_night_by_showing_him_vr/)), allowing blatant vote manipulations ([https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2016/12/14/how- we-b...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2016/12/14/how-we-bought- reddit-for-200/#d5f709044a83)) or allowing entire takeovers (/r/politics during election cycle - hello CTR!) and you have a bloated replica of something that used to be an amazing social powered website.

<comment><USER16> Yea, man.

Subreddits like coontown, jailbait, fatpeoplehate & a bunch of nazi subreddits really provided valuable debate and dialogue. Voat now has all that 'dialogue' and I don't think anything of value was lost.

But complaining about CTR shows your colors when both sides spend similar amounts.

<comment><USER17> the_donald is filtered out of /r/popular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Within the context of redesigns I think there exists some value in looking at Facebook's failed card-based redesign back in 2013:

[https://dcurt.is/facebooks-predicament](https://dcurt.is/facebooks- predicament)

Essentially this big, beautiful design driven redesign ultimately never shipped because users spent less time on it. Certain design 'improvements' like increased padding between stories reduces density and as a result tends to reduce readership, for example. The internet as perceived by Engineers and Designers is quite different from the masses (even with Reddit's demographic differences from FB taken into account).

Reddit needs to be really careful with a redesign: data should lead the rollout efforts, not design. I think they are due for some UX improvements, perhaps around a gradual UI refresh; however, I have little faith in the product leadership at Reddit to pull this off. Huffman and crew need to be willing to can the entire redesign if user research and data come back negative.

<comment><USER19> Beauty is subjective; Usability is not.

Good design _must_ be usable; otherwise we'd call it art.

That Facebook redesign for example, while very aesthetically pleasing it looks horrible or confusing to use:

      * Search box doesn't look like an input control
      * Low contrast for top right nav (how do I change to any other page?)
      * Where did my groups and apps go?
      * Large pictures, great for mock ups, but it just means more scrolling when 80% of
        content I don't care or want to see;
        I really don't want to have a picture of a high school friend's baby take up the whole screen
      * etc.

It looks nice though.

<comment><USER20> They later changed the search box, but I recall at the time their motivation was "we want the title of the page to also be a search field, rather than just a search field". It sort of made sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Frankly, I love Reddit. If you pick and choose the right communities, it can be an amazing resource for everything from tech discussions, to local news, to emotional support. However, I will strongly agree with the perception problem, there's also a lot of bad on Reddit and its structure as a series of echo chambers doesn't help.

<comment><USER22> They should invest in some PR to let people know it's a platform, not a monolithic community. Although some people identify as "Redditors" which kind of undermines that point...

<comment><USER23> I agree. I've heard people say, "I don't understand why you use Reddit. I visited the front page and it is total garbage." But I've never heard anyone say the same thing about YouTube, even though its front page is just as bad.

<comment><USER18> Something also to consider is that provided I'm logged in, YouTube's front page gives me pretty great recommendations based on what I've previously watched.

On Reddit, however, there's a huge amount of great content I'm unlikely to stumble upon unless I'm seeking. This makes behavior based recommendations difficult. I think a combination of curated views (software eng front, political junkie, counter culture, etc) and machine based recommendation like YouTube could do great things for reddit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't understand this. Anyone remember a time when companies used their developers to update their site without having to raise hundreds of millions of dollars?

> An early version of the new design, which we saw during our interview, looks > similar to Facebook's News Feed or Twitter's Timeline:

So they will look like Facebook. Because nothing says cool and trendy like the social site your parents and aunts and uncles use. Now nothing wrong with aunts and uncles using the site, it's just that "fresh" and "cool" aren't exactly the first things that come to mind there.

> The company has about 230 employees, up from around 140 at the beginning of > the year. Huffman would like to end 2017 with around 300 full-time staff.

That sounds odd too me as well, maybe I am not versed in startup culture. Having a goal of going from 230 to 300 people seems like a pointless metric (and wasteful). It's like saying "I want to write 1000 lines of code today".

I haven't seen much mentioned about moderation and admins and how they censor and manipulate content and talk about fostering better communities and so on.

> Eventually, though, Altman and Reddit's other investors will want their > money back and then some. Huffman says there are lots of ways for Reddit to > exit, none of which he's focused on at the moment.

Well there is the answer. They are trying to sell it. "Hey, Psst! Wanna buy this cool site for $2B. It looks fresh like Facebook, and we just grew by 30% (230 to 300 employees) in the last few months. Close your eyes and imagine that hockey stick graph going up, and the value you'd be getting out of it".

<comment><USER25> Once I was fortunate enough to work at a company that did not take VC money. I was very very lucky. It was a combination of luck, and ethical founders.

On the other hand, a VC funded company I worked for (Hampton Creek) seemed like a ponzi scheme. When I quit the options strike price was so expensive I couldn't afford to pay for the options nor the taxes to "gain", the alleged hundreds of thousands of dollars in value it was "worth". What a joke. I think in the end we will see a lot of these companies are loaded with red ink and offer very little value.

I venture to say a majority of these unicorns are pump-and-dump schemes.

Your intuition seems right. I remember a time when companies used their developers to update their site without having to raise hundreds of millions of dollars.

<comment><USER26> Once you understand what a pump-and-dump scheme is and how it works, you see the word with different eyes.

<comment><USER27> Do you have any links or a succinct explanation of how it works, then?

<comment><USER28> Pump & dump is roughly the following:

1) Be rich/famous enough for people to pay attention to what you do

2) Pump a bunch of resources into something (company, stocks, whatever)

3) Everyone concludes there must be value, because you're investing your own cash

4) Others start investing, increasing the value further

5) You sell (dump) your stake at the new price before everyone realises they've invested in something worthless.

Say you invest $1 million in $1 shares and the extra investment/interest from others raises the share price to $1.20, you sell everything and get $200k profit for no work. Everyone else is left holding shares which turn out to be worthless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Good. Its about time for reddit to wither enough for a more user focused platform yo take it place.

Its the ol model I see time and time again. Site pulls in users by being generally awesome and doing things like not advertising, not censoring, etc. Then the site grows. Businesses start astroturfing because they can't advertise. Then the company slowly starts walking back on everything that made it special, for example, advertising, all while rapidly expanding the personell while hardly doing anything to improve the site for users. Aaaand right when advertising dollars are the best, try to capitalize or take public, followed by a big sale/buyout, and finally within finite time users feel betrayed and it withers and dies, but not until a competitor starts where they did, and usually follows the same path.

I stopped participating in reddit about the time sockpuppetry really started killing my favorite sub's, and personally I think the first and most greiveous mistake was moving away from text only.

The problem as it stands is none of the competitors stand out. I think hn is best, but scope is limited, /. does something's interesting but failed and lost its user base. Voat is too much of a reddit clone, and I just don't get the appeal of steemit etc.

Personally, we need to sit down and figure a better way to measure user worth. Right now I am leaning to a Slashdot style moderation/tagging system, along with a limited input per user at varying thresholds. Something that really interests be is automating logical maps of comments too.

</comment><comment><USER30> > Huffman's plan for the new funding includes a redesign of reddit.com — the > company is literally re-writing all of its code, some of which is more than > a decade old. An early version of the new design, which we saw during our > interview, looks similar to Facebook's News Feed or Twitter's Timeline: A > never-ending feed of content broken up into "cards" with more visuals to > lure people into the conversations hidden underneath.

this sounds risky for a couple reasons. I hope this is a bit hyperbolic and they are only referring to the frontend. But anyway: rewriting everything from scratch is a monumental undertaking and can delay other important enhancements. Rewriting everything partially contributed to Netscape falling behind its competitors[1] and eventually to its irrelevance. The other reason it is risky is that maybe the site's simple and functional design is what made them so successful in the first place?

[1] [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you- should-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never- do-part-i/)

</comment><comment><USER31> The announcement on Reddit also says they are changing their privacy policy to remove support for 'Do Not Track' [https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/6qptzw/with_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/6qptzw/with_so_much_going_on_in_the_world_i_thought_id/)

<comment><USER32> That seems pretty evil, especially given the justification:

> DNT is a nice idea, but without buy-in from the entire ecosystem, its impact > is limited. In place of DNT, we're adding in new, more granular privacy > controls that give you control over how Reddit uses any data we collect > about you.

What does it hurt to keep supporting it? It's actually pretty ironic: "DNT doesn't have total support across ecosystems, so we stopped supporting it".

<comment><USER33> Twitter did the same thing recently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Seen a few comments focus on the "redesign" and comparisons to Digg, and wanted to add a few comments:

1\. People may forget, but Reddit was a (the?) major winner in the Digg exodus.

2\. I don't think Digg every got the subreddit style discussion boards down. I think the reddit "homepage experience" vs. the typical subreddit experience to be very different. Should be interesting to see which way they slide for the redesign.

3\. The influx of new capital and the focus on the redesign sort of telegraphs that they want to grow reddit, which is a very large but idiosyncratic community.

If they do it right, the change will be very transparent and very incremental, ala the ebay background color change [1].

Should be an interesting thing to watch!

[1] [https://articles.uie.com/death_of_relaunch/](https://articles.uie.com/death_of_relaunch/)

<comment><USER35> There is a common misconception that Digg's failure was what pushed Reddit into the mainstream, but the truth is that Digg was on the decline and reddit on the rise long before the redesign.

[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2005-06-01%202...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2005-06-01%202011-06-30&q=digg,reddit)

<comment><USER34> True, but your data also supports the view that the redesign hastened Digg's death, and seems to correlate with increased growth at Reddit.

I.e., Reddit was doing something right, and Digg was shrinking. The Digg redesign fiasco accelerated both trends.

<comment><USER35> I won't argue that, but I think the trend data makes a convincing case that Reddit's rise and Digg's demise were inevitable, regardless of Digg's redesign failure.

<comment><USER34> Perhaps. Had they handled the redesign correctly, things may have turned out differently. It was a perfect storm of design, technology and technology failure...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> But.. but I began to like Reddit. Now they want to take it away from me by destroying it.

> It's going on a hiring spree

Ouch.

> redesigning its website

For no reason other than giving the unnecessary people from the hiring spree something to do.

> Huffman would like to end 2017 with around 300 full-time staff

The current number of 230 employees is already about ten times too many. What the hell do they need the additional staff for?

> The company is also not profitable.

Doesn't need to be because it could be run by ten people living off of donations.

<comment><USER36> For a site with the kind of traffic Reddit has from as many locales as reddit has, 10 people wouldn't even be enough to comfortably cover basic SRE requirements. Forget new features, they would literally spend all of their time just barely keeping the damn thing working. Their would be no admins. No Secret Santa, nor any of the various many things Reddit currently has that requires the support, and more importantly trust, that comes with a full time employee/contact.

Sure, could they do it? Absolutely. But I'd bet a large sum on money that they'd do so poorly.

Also it's important to note that whether you like it or not Reddit is and always has been a business. Being profitable isn't the most important thing right now for reasons, but somehow i doubt investors would be ok with them just punting on the issue forever. They rightly expect a return.

<comment><USER10> I assumed that 10-20 people would not include anyone who ever physically touches a server. Now that I think about it, it might make sense to not outsource hardware issues at Reddit's scale. I don't know how many people you need to keep Reddit running, but more than a hundred sounds wrong for such a basic web site.

I don't need Secret Santa and no support. What kind of trust do you mean?

<comment><USER37> > basic web site

... basic web site with a hundred thousand communities, gigabytes of images uploaded daily, millions of votes a day, 1.5 billion pageviews a month...

Also, reddit is a business, not just a website. They don't only hire engineers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I would love to see reddit being more like a wikipedia than a facebook. If they cut the sales team out and ask for donations like WP does, they would do just fine. I was on reddit before I was registered on FB and quite frankly I love reddit.com way more than FB for many reasons. It's a shame that they go down the hypergrowth-unicorn model.

<comment><USER39> > ask for donations like WP does

Isn't that what reddit gold is?

<comment><USER10> I usually like to pay for a premium account on other sites even if I wouldn't have to, but for some reason I don't do it on Reddit. In hindsight, my gut feeling was right, because they are in fact backstabbing butts in seats who sell out to greedy investors at first opportunity. Rich assholes who think they can make another Facebook are the easy way to get a "hiring spree". Gold was the slow and horribly marketed way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> >An early version of the new design, which we saw during our interview, looks similar to Facebook's News Feed or Twitter's Timeline: A never-ending feed of content broken up into "cards" with more visuals to lure people into the conversations hidden underneath.

Not sure why this UX concept needs to be applied to every kind of interface nowadays.

I think Reddit's current interface could be updated visually without changing its simplicity.

<comment><USER41> >content broken up into "cards" with more visuals to lure people

The reasons I left Digg for Reddit were the information density and the ease of rapid browsing. Eliminating those in favor of "cards" is incredibly short- sighted.

<comment><USER42> I would not be surprised if they shift everyone to the new view but allow users to switch back to the old style via preferences.

<comment><USER40> I would be.

It sounds like they're rewriting the whole front end. Why would they want to spend time and effort doing that and then, in addition to continually tweaking/adding to it, also maintaining a legacy interface?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Looking past the visual design, I think a more pressing question is what will happen to the API? From my perspective, it is Reddit's saving grace. It bridges the gap between available functionality and what moderators and users actually need. I personally run about ~30kloc of Python code against reddit 24/7, mostly to aid moderation of subreddits. This codebase has grown organically over the years, and truth be told, a major API change will require a major investment in my end. That is my own fault, for sure, but I know several other developers in the same boat.

Breaking the API will take away essential functionality from a _very_ wide range of communities, moderators and users alike. Can they do a complete front- and back-end rewrite and still maintain a backwards-compatible API? If not, I am out, because a rewrite is simply way too much work.

edit: typo

</comment><comment><USER44> I couldn't imagine a more futile investment. Reddit users are notoriously combatant. Ads on reddit have extraordinarily low CTRs. After bumbling around for the last ten years, reddit still doesn't know dollars from doge and is burning cash on ridiculous side projects like its gift exchange and its (already discontinued) entrepreneurship mini-series.

</comment><comment><USER45> I hope this redesign does not turn into a LinkedIn style disaster. Sometimes I wonder if these redesigns happen not for some well-argued business purpose but for overinflated departments having to justify their existence (which I strongly suspected in the case of LinkedIn's redesign which made the site unusable for months).

</comment><comment><USER46> I am not sure discussion sites like Slashdot, Reddit can run or scale as businesses. And retain credibility with the majority of their users.

As founder run sites with income to sustain the site it works but the moment founders become 'distant' and obsessed with commercial objectives the site sort of loses its focus and there is a slow decline.

Reddit only took off because it as seen an low key non-commercial alternative to the 'over commercial' Digg. Now it doesn't have that feel anymore and this can only end badly.

Even HN is not a profit making site, but delivers value to ycombinator outside of that.

</comment><comment><USER47> Reddit, after the great Digg exodus:

> You chose to grow with venture capital and you've no doubt (I hope) taken > some money off the table in your Series C round. I say this because this new > version of digg reeks of VC meddling. It's cobbling together features from > more popular sites and departing from the core of digg, which was to "give > the power back to the people."

</comment><comment><USER48> Honestly, how do you monetize Reddit? I'm curious what ideas they supposedly have. The crowd is too tech savvy to just throw more ads on it. They run ad blockers, and if you get aggressive like news sites do, the exodus will begin. It just seems like a community with little loyalty to the site itself, and distrust of obvious commercialization.

<comment><USER49> Feels like a large general discussion service like Reddit isn't the sort of thing that should be a for-profit company at all. And the same with other community-centric sites like GitHub.

These sorts of massive Internet community-curated stores of information would in an ideal world be community supported as well, like Wikipedia. And they also wouldn't (in an ideal world) be under threat of changing radically or disappearing entirely at any moment.

Maybe we need something like the UK's television tax. An Internet tax that pays for public service sites with no advertising and no corporate interest. Add that to the TODO list after world peace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> For reference, I feel the reddit post is significantly better:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/6qptzw/with_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/6qptzw/with_so_much_going_on_in_the_world_i_thought_id/)

</comment><comment><USER51> A company as old as Reddit should be profitable.

<comment><USER52> They were ran by a skeleton crew for a few years after they were initially acquired by Advanced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This is what this makes me think of...

[https://m.signalvnoise.com/press-release-basecamp- valuation-...](https://m.signalvnoise.com/press-release-basecamp-valuation- tops-100-billion-after-bold-vc- investment-c221d8f86ad7?gi=e8919e817fa0#.9lqnwvrs6)

</comment><comment><USER54> I think Reddit is on track to becoming hugely successful and completely irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER55> I don't get why a company who keeps the entire Internet talking on a daily basis is only worth less than $2B but a company that lets teens take snaphots and share them is worth many billions.

<comment><USER56> You don't understand? It's like this: valuation is based off how many users x how much each user is worth (in terms of targeted advertising).

Reddit has a lot of users but it's hard to build user profiles for targeted advertising as there's a lot of anonymity and shot posting.

Teen snapshot sites are worth more because because its real people, posting real things. That data is valuable.

<comment><USER57> I feel that reddit has enough data to effectively target ads. If I subscribe to /r/cars, chances are I like cars (if I make a post asking "What is the best car to buy for $X?" I'm probably in the market for a new car). If I post in a city subreddit, chances are I live there. If I post in /r/programming, I'm probably a programmer. There are also third-party analyzers that can take a reddit user's data and give a pretty good guess of their demographics based on their public post history as well.

I feel that if someone were to target ads to me based on the subreddits that I subscribe to, they'd be far more relevant to my interests than Facebook ads. Facebook shows me clickbait spam that my friends liked; I almost never see any interesting ads there. Reddit certainly has more advertiser friendly information than Snap does. On Snapchat, you share photos with your friends and Snap knows nothing about you other than your location. Reddit on the other hand has confirmed interests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> That's seems like a very low valuation for a site that heavily trafficked.

What is their average time-on-site statistic I wonder, i'd expect it to be much higher than most other websites.

</comment><comment><USER59> Can anybody name a successful ground-up redesign of a popular website? Or a successful from-scratch rewrite of a heavily used codebase?

<comment><USER60> I recall twitter's early rewrite going pretty well. The "fail whale" was a real big deal before that. They went from notoriously poor uptime to being on par with facebook.

<comment><USER61> But that was a rewrite of the backend which was very needed. The design didn't change.

Although I agree, Reddit desperately needs a rewrite of its backend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> A lot of comments have dealt with the general idea of a redesign - but I haven't seen much on the specifics.

I would like to point out the twitter/facebook feed style as described is difficult to replicate, because with reddit, seeing the title of the post helps contextualize it so much. Without the title, many posts become meaningless because you can't guess the subreddit that the post is from - <USER2> a meme/gif in one subreddit can mean something much different than a meme in another.

</comment><comment><USER63> Oh god. I had the pleasure of seeing one of their new executives speak. An ex- Microsoft guy.

I won't be surprised at all when they alienate their userbase with a pointless redesign that adds nothing of substance.

The kinds of people that are working at Reddit now are the kinds of people who are not creative and incapable of creating something original. They are the kinds of people who join a tech company solely to ride off the coat tails of those who came before them with original ideas and substance.

Naturally, since they don't understand the original desire and intent they are not able to contribute anything new or original. So how they contribute is instead by a route redesign of something that already exists.

Redesigns are generally not about improving upon something that was there before. They are a political process for who can get control over something popular that someone already made.

</comment><comment><USER50> Interesting. Im super worried a redesign will kill the site.

However, at the same time (after thinking about it), I can see it as a necessary step.

Without a redesign it'll be hard for them to implement a way to make money. I assume, that is also how they increased the valuation; by promising increased profits.

</comment><comment><USER64> I hope reddit have a strategy for implementing that change gracefully and how to deal with the most noisy opponents. I have helped a lot of companies redesign their communnities/forums/products. Its a serious minefield as a lot of people will protest (but most wil cope). even small changes can throw people into revolution mode. And its most often not the actual design which will get people complaining but the change itself. going to be very interesting to see how this will play out.

</comment><comment><USER65> Others have commented "they are doing a Digg" and asking whats the new Reddit. The better question is do you want to be the next site to replace Reddit? I don't think social news sites are sustainable at all. Reddit used to play the game to avoid becoming Digg and keeping its user base happy. It didn't seem to be profitable or profitable enough for their investors so they are forced to broaden the user base by any means possible.

</comment><comment><USER66> I don't know if this is commonplace but i'm intrigued by these valuations. Anybody have link to the actual valuation? What method was used?

</comment><comment><USER67> When I talked with Alexis Ohanian (after his talk at Google), I asked him about the switch from Common Lisp years ago. I assume the rewrite will not be in CL! He is a very nice guy and his feelings for social responsibility came through nicely in his talk.

I find Reddit one of the most valuable web sites I use, covering news and tech interests. I wish them well on the infrastructure refresh.

</comment><comment><USER68> >An early version of the new design, which we saw during our interview, looks similar to Facebook's News Feed or Twitter's Timeline: A never-ending feed of content broken up into "cards" with more visuals to lure people into the conversations hidden underneath.

So they are doing same mistakes as Digg. Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER69> >>the company is literally re-writing all of its code > > Wow.

Good to know they are "literally" re-writing code instead of "figuratively". Why is the adverb "literally" overused so often?

<comment><USER70> Emphasis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> I'm really curious at what their cap table looks like at this point in time. With the various ownership rejiggerings by Conde Nast, and this and Sam's last round, wonder who has the power here

</comment><comment><USER72> surprised the valuation is so low for a top 5 destination (per alexa).

<comment><USER73> Likely because of their lack of profit despite being so highly ranked.

Personally, other than FB I can't think of a site I visit more often than reddit. Whether at home, on the bus or just sitting on the couch, it's the site I know I can open and find some useful content.

With the amount of engagement they have, they should be making more money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Ugh, trying to fix marketing issues with more engineering....

</comment><comment><USER75> Wow, complete redesign? Sounds dangerous. Why dont they make incremental changes and ab-test the impact?

</comment><comment><USER76> Anyone know what Reddit's DAU is? This will help us give more context as to revenue potential.

</comment><comment><USER77> Is all of the money going to the company, or is some of it going to cash out existing shareholders?

</comment><comment><USER78> I'm way more interested if they create their own digital asset than the money they raised.

</comment><comment><USER79> I want Usenet newsgroups back.

</comment><comment><USER80> Either you die Young as a Digg, or live long enough to become Reddit.

<comment><USER81> But according to that statement, Digg lived long enough to become a Reddit?

<comment><USER80> Digg wasn't Batman. Point. On topic Digg didn't survive the wrath of voting rings. They stopped using it. That irioncally killed it.

<comment><USER80> By voting rings I meant that were promoting real 'amusing' stuff to pile up banner ads CPM revenue. They invested a lot in 'amusing stuff' and as well as keeping Digg alive.

<comment><USER80> Also Reddit is alive because of them, they play by the rules, who is gonna invest billions of hours to keep Reddit active without any kind of reward in return ... Rewaeds could be depending on the sub Reddit you run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Reminds me of digg.com Gl hf reddit execs.

</comment><comment><USER83> Why does it take $200M to do these things?

</comment><comment><USER84> I came here to say something about Digg but there are already 70 references to Digg in the comments.

</comment><comment><USER85> well, good news for the HN community!

start your engines, reddit will do what so many user-driven content sites have done - light themselves on fire. slashdot, digg, they never learn.

yes, the network effect is a huge moat. but then you actively alienate your users and then it goes FAST.

good luck to the aspiring entrepreneurs going after this opportunity.

don't even need a strong business plan, not like you can make any real money - but you'll get funding for years to come :)

</comment><comment><USER86> Reddit or 4chan, decisions, decisions.</comment>


Facebook Considering Political Ad Blackout Before US Election - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-10/facebook-considers-political-ad-blackout-ahead-of-u-s-election <comment><USER3> Interested to see the graph of political ad spend on Facebook in the final days leading up to election day in 2016.

Some countries, like France, already ban political advertising in the few last days before election day, in efforts to avoid last-ditch misinformation campaigns at the last moment. They also ban political advertising on social media in general though, so not exactly pommes to apples.

<comment><AUTHOR> Me too, I know Acronym tracks this week by week now but I haven't seen historical data ([https://www.anotheracronym.org/newsletter/fwiw-voter- registr...](https://www.anotheracronym.org/newsletter/fwiw-voter-registration- in-crisis/) from their newsletter this AM).

They do ban it, although I'd be curious to see if the parties here actually abide by the ban

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why don't FCC/FEC rules that apply to television election ads apply to Facebook ads? Or if they do, then what's the difference?

<comment><USER5> FEC is unable to do anything right now because they do not have enough appointees. Jon Oliver did a great episode on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems pointless unless they start vetting every ad to ensure it's not political.

It's amazing they don't vet ads to begin with since it does sound like they have those armies of contractors checking every post... but the posts aren't paid...

<comment><USER7> those armies of contractors only check the posts that are reported

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting thread from the CTO of the DNC on the potential ban

[https://twitter.com/nellwyn/status/1281673596767805447](https://twitter.com/nellwyn/status/1281673596767805447)

</comment><comment><USER8> > considering imposing a ban on political ads on its social network in the > _days_ leading up to the U.S. election in November

Try months, or at least weeks.

</comment><comment><USER9> Kanye does not need Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER10> There's an interesting shift that seems to be happening at FaceBook. The logic is basically:

If Trump loses the election, we should be out in front of any changes the new adminstration would consider. If we can do an easy layup, we should take it.

Remember, FaceBook is famously numbers-driven. They, probably more than anyone else, believe in the power of numbers and algorithms. They probably even have insight into political groups and grass-roots trends that we don't have. But all the public data we know about is leaning away from Trump, at the moment.

So they could aggressively back a loser, and then get punched in the face if, as expected, he loses. (Sure, they'd be better off if he wins - but the numbers must bear that out).

Or they could make a couple of tactical adjustments now, and if the political tide turns against them, they could truthfully claim, oh we've been moving in this direction for a while now - glad you noticed!

It seems like an increasing number of FaceBook executive decisions are unfavorable to Trump these days. I don't believe that's entirely based on principles or lofty abstractions - I think it's smart positioning, based on the data.

The data is pointing away from Trump, and FaceBook is adjusting.

<comment><USER11> The whole premise of your article is that by taking ad money facebook will face either administrative or voluntary backlash, which I don't think will happen.

Political ads are airing every day on radios and youtube, and you don't hear it as much. Just like Google getting hate for _attempting_ a search engine in China while Bing has _always_ been there. You can't predict the outrage machine because it is never fair.

<comment><USER10> I think people have read my comment as though I hate Trump and I'm gloating that FaceBook is turning against him. But I don't think that's a fair reading.

I am trying to describe what "is" and not "what ought to be."

In this instance I am making a point that I believe is underexamined: if you look at FaceBook through the lens of political positioning, it can be very powerful.

If it was the case today that Democrats had been in power for decades and there was some kind of realignment towards Republicans (as happened in the 90's), I think you'd see the reverse of this: FaceBook elevating conservative voices to moderation positions, or advancing a message of pure neutrality.

I've worked at Bay Area tech companies. They are usually very attuned to the climate they're in, and maneuvering to be in a better position.

The average person can be like bah, who cares? I'd rather live my life, enjoy my freedom. But a tech company has a lot more on the line.

And, in my experience, companies like FaceBook have even more to gain, or to lose. Millions of dollars, even hundreds of millions. Possible anti- competitive lawsuits and actions.

So, for them, a defeatist attitude of "it's all unfair so why bother" isn't good enough. Some ambitious lawyer or exec will advocate "I can do better than that - here's how" and lead their company in a different direction - <USER2> that's true for FaceBook also.

I'd also make the observation that FaceBook is trying to get regulatory approval for a cryptocurrency, and that's a delicate thing. For that, being viewed favorably, even by individual politicians, matters.

So for all those reasons (and please don't view it as a criticism of FaceBook), I think it makes sense that some of the things issuing out of HQ now are motivated by the political climate we find ourselves in.

Remember, FaceBook is a famously future-facing company. They invested in WhatsApp years before social was dominant, seeing the future 10 years in advance. And people believe they're not paying close attention to the next 3 months?

It's in their DNA. It's part of how they grew to be such a giant, successful company. And if you examine their actions, fairly but objectively, the evidence is there to see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember reading a story on here of a former Mormon who advertised only to the email addresses of their still-Mormon family.

This kind of power has some scary implications, and it is precisely what made Facebook turn into an advertising giant.

The fact that they've left these systems largely in place after watching the damage they've caused means facebook execs think changing these systems would be a financial disaster.

Edit: changed ambiguous wording.

<comment><USER13> Would anyone really assume these systems wouldn't be left in place by an advertising monster?</comment></comment>


iPhone Becomes the Most Frequently Used Camera on Flickr - <AUTHOR> http://blog.shutterfly.com/iphone-is-top-camera-on-flickr/

<comment><USER2> I don't doubt it. Any tool that aggregates functionality and is as popular as the iphone will be tops in all catagories, phone, camera, video, browser.</comment>


Ask HN: What would graph-based discussions look like? - no-twist When we look at the evolution of discussions on the internet, we can see that it started with lists in chronological order (traditional forums). Then trees arised as can be seen in mailing lists, Reddit or HackerNews. This datastructure can represent what a post is responding to (instead of quoting).<p>What is the next step? Do you think graphs are more expressive? What about going even further and model discussions as Hypergraphs or Multigraphs? <comment><AUTHOR> A tree is a natural structure, because often you respond to another post. A graph would mean responding to several posts, which doesn't happen that often.

Usenet discussions have an additional structure on top of the answer-tree: You can group discussions by subject/topic, changing the subject line when the subject changes. So that would be a colored graph.

Good Usenet readers have a lot more features (e.g. marking posts as read, killfiles) than anything that web-based discussions offer. I sometimes wish that web UI's would implement this, too.

</comment><comment><USER2> I think there is a tendency to focus on finding an algorithm that determines weither and how many discussions are "the top x". But really this is not the point of discussions. The point is to maximize usefulness for the participants (weither they actively participate or passively just read along). Also to maximize usefulness in the long run, meaning discussions need to be archived in a way that they can be re-started easily. One discussion basicly concentrates the opinions and arguments around a certain topic, so the starting point is a plain topic (like "discussion about application containers") and not nessessarily a question (like "what do you think of docker?").

The whole question is really interesting.

<comment> no-twist I fully agree that there is a tendency to oversimplify the way online discussions are sorted. This often leads to a system where the rich get richer and it is difficult for new comments to get their audience; is it even obvious what an up or down vote means? I am not sure, but it might help to have a multi-dimensional voting system so there is a possibility to agree/disagree with a comment without signaling bad quality.

For the second part, I think that in such a case it should be possible to connect the question ("what do you think about docker?") to the overall topic even after it was created. The structure should be flexible in a sense that a topic can grow in all directions and can be referenced in multiple discussions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm interested in similar topics. I put together mockup on GitHub ([https://github.com/alain94040/arguably](https://github.com/alain94040/arguably)). I could definitely use some more ideas.

What do you think of ordering and voting? What about discussions that go in multiple directions?

<comment><USER4> Your introduction is great, I like how you question that there is only one right answer. This always annoys me on stack overflow. The answers are for everybody, the author of the question is just one case.

But your mockups confuse me. I think there is more to discussion than just pro/contra. Also I don't see anything about graphs. Did I miss something?

On voting I think that just up/down is not expressive enough. When somebody downvotes, I cannot tell if they disagree or just want to tell me that my post is too off topic or has bad quality. We need more choices. But this makes the UX more complicated. Do you have an Idea?

What do you mean by discussion going in different directions? The branching that happens in tree comment systems like this one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Do you think graphs are more expressive?

In principal, yes. Getting the UX right so that more than a few people will be comfortable using it...

From working with mindmapping software I can see where graph (or multigraph) presentation of discussions could work well.

> What about going even further and model discussions as Hypergraphs or > Multigraphs?

I can see utility in annotated multigraphs, but I don't see hypergraphs providing much that graphs don't already provide.

<comment><USER4> Do you think something like Mindmapping interfaces are not suitable for "more than a few people"?

I'm trying to think about other graph representations that are intuitive, but nothing comes to my mind. Trees seem to have more possibilities.

<comment><USER5> > Do you think something like Mindmapping interfaces are not suitable for > "more than a few people"?

Well, given the limited apparent reach of mindmapping software compared to more linear notetaking software, quite possibly; also, while vaguely similar, its a different domain, and getting the right UI semantics is a new challenge for discussions.

Also, discussion have a network effect, so accessibility to a broad audience is going to be even more important for forums than for mindmapping (though perhaps you could have a more linear, say tree-oriented, presentation along with a power-user graph-oriented presentation. Not sure if that's really viable.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting question. Cross-posting on Reddit comes to my mind. We can see Reddit as one big tree where the root node is Reddit. Directly connected are all subreddits, which again act as trees to connect all starting posts in one subreddit. Real cross-posts could be modeled with a graph, where one post belongs to multiple subreddits.</comment>


Terrible Boston highway signs - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/news/local/gallery/111507_signs/

<comment><USER2> The funniest thing about this is how many of these signs are within two blocks of each other near Charles Circle. The photographer must have spent the whole time driving in circles.</comment>


Is California Bailing Out Tesla through the Backdoor? - <AUTHOR> http://wolfstreet.com/2017/07/16/california-bail-out-tesla-ab1184-ev-incentives/ <comment><USER2> The Business Insider piece sourced it's information on what the bill does not on the bill text, but on a combination of an advocacy email from an opposed legislator and reporting by the Mercury News.

The rebate plan does not do at all what the article claims; specifically, for instance, it does not establish a new general rebate that is designed to match the difference between an electric vehicle's price and that of a non-electric vehicle with similar features. Instead, it establishes a declining rebate for _compact_ electric vehicles that starts at an initial level that would provide an approximate net purchase price after all existing incentives equal to the most commonly sold compact vehicle in the State, but where the rebate level would decline with EV penetration by income segment. (Health and Safety Code 44215.4, as added by the bill.)

In fact, there was no specific rebate plan in the version passed by the Assembly, which notionally is the subject of the article; there was a requirement for the PUC to adopt incentives. The sources the article relied on (assuming BI doesn't misrepresent then) were either inventing bill content from whole cloth or speculating about what the PUC might do; in any case, the bill has been significantly revised already in the Senate, to address the same broad purpose but to be more specific about program parameters and move the primary administrative responsibility for programs to the Air Resources Board rather than the PUC.

<comment><USER2> FYI, in case the reference to Business Insider in the above seems odd, the mods have apparently not only changed the headline to a more clickbait one than it used to be, but also ibexplicably changed the source article from a BI article to a nearly-identical (to the point that if they were turned in in a the same class in school, the putative authors would probably be hauled in to answer questions about plagiarism) WolfStreet article.

<comment><USER3> Is this the Business Insider article you're referring to?

[http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-stock-price- california-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-stock-price-california- state-government-bailing-out-2017-7)

If so, it's written by Wolf Richter, the owner of the Wolf Street blog, and has a link to his "original article on Wolf Street" at the bottom. Not plagiarism.

HN Guidelines ask you to "submit the original source", so this is probably why the HN headline was changed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand why they are singling out Tesla here. There are currently 4 other large volume production EV's being sold in California (Nissan Leaf, Hyundai Ioniq, Chevy Bolt, BMW i3).

EV's make good sense both economically and environmentally for California in the long run, but we still need the tax incentives for the next few years until battery costs come down with new production capacity.

<comment><USER5> Because the benefits of the subsidy are disproportionately given to companies that exhaust federal subsidies. And Tesla will be the only one to do that for some time.

EV's don't make good sense "economically" for California yet. It's not unreasonable to wait until battery costs come down so mass adoption comes naturally.

They do make sense environmentally, but there is a far better way to compensate them for the actual value of their environmental benefit rather than a politically decided subsidy. California is already discussing doing it's own Cap and Trade market. Instead of subsidizing "zero emission" cars, it creates a market cost for carbon emissions, and raises the prices of gas engined cars, and not just newly purchased cars, all cars.

And it's fair, if your Tesla gets all of it's electricity from coal fired plants, you'll pay your fair share for that plants emissions.

<comment><USER6> What about the carbon emissions in order to manufacture the car, dig up mines for lithium etc? Surely that needs to be accounted as well.

<comment><USER5> That's what a well designed cap and trade system should do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is Tesla in trouble financially? And I mean actual can-no-longer-be-profitable type trouble? That seems an odd call given that they've so far planned pretty comprehensively, and delivered pretty much on their plans, and those plans would have included the existing subsidy ending as soon as they hit higher volumes.

The fact that they're hellbent on hitting those higher volumes ASAP indicates to me that they know they'll still be profitable after the subsidies are gone. In fact, they'll probably gain some advantage from the fact, as the only EV manufacturer operating at any kind of volume, because it will raise the barrier to entry for newer, still-lower-volume manufacturers.

So yeah, nice windfall for Tesla, but 'bailout' seems somewhat loaded.

<comment><USER5> They raised a ton of money recently to cover the continuing investment they forecast needing to make it to profitability. But they then turned around and bought hemorrhaging Solar City, so it's unclear how long the cash will last and whether it's long enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So if a P100D has the 0 to 60 of an exotic, but all the interior fit and polish of a base trim CLA, taxpayers should... cover the difference in price to a CLA? There has to be something missing here.

<comment><USER9> Nope, you got it. Small group of people get to decide which products get how much in subsidies, and by extension, which companies get how much taxpayer money. Also, since it's a per-vehicle subsidy, it rewards large companies over small ones. (Not to mention wealthy consumers over poorer ones.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Chevy Bolt got great reviews, and it was supposed to be big competition for the Tesla 3, but so far sales have been disappointing.

[https://cleantechnica.com/2017/07/18/chevy-bolt- production-r...](https://cleantechnica.com/2017/07/18/chevy-bolt-production- ramps-tesla-model-3-production-ramps/)

Anybody have an idea why?

</comment><comment><USER11> > > [http://vidak.cssrc.us/content/district](http://vidak.cssrc.us/content/district)

Wow what is it about Visalia and Tulare that would cause something like this?

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow, if they're giving that much away to EV buyers, just think how much they'll hand out to people who walk to work!

<comment><USER13> yeah as someone that bikes 25 miles per day for commute it kinda bothers me how many tax breaks are given to other forms of commute like trains, buses, vansharing, EV, etc.

<comment><USER14> I bike as well and never thought of this. Now, I'll never be able to forget it.

<comment><USER15> One solution is to simply treat everyone equally and not give anyone a tax break.

I know this is not what most people think, but in the context of good governance, my view is that no (legal) behavior is any more or less meritorious than any other.

<comment><USER16> Why would you think this? For illegal activities there is a hierarchy -- why would there not be for legal activities?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's hardly a "bailout" when Tesla generates more revenue for the state than these tax credits are worth. The sales tax alone on many of the current models exceeds this tax credit.

<comment><USER9> > _Tesla generates more revenue for the state than these tax credits are > worth_

California collects a 7.5% sales tax on the purchase of new vehicles [1]. A $40,000 car would thus generate $3,000 of state sales tax income. That appears to be much less than the value of the proposed credits.

[1] [https://www.salestaxhandbook.com/california/sales-tax- vehicl...](https://www.salestaxhandbook.com/california/sales-tax-vehicles)

<comment><USER18> > _A $40,000 car would thus generate $3,000 of state sales tax income. That > appears to be much less than the value of the proposed credits._

Tesla sells expensive cars, revenue per car is currently near $90.000.</comment></comment></comment>