iOS 12 is all about making your iPhone work better - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/25/ios-12-is-all-about-making-your-phone-work-better/ <comment><USER2> This reads like an apple press release, with no critical thought whatsoever.

<comment><USER3> Well a lot of journalism recently is like that.

Newspaper subscriptions are a dying breed. Online news makes money from ads. To sell more ads, you have to sell more views or get sponsored content (native advertising)

It is in the interest of news companies to tell us things that we want to hear, or what a large group will want to hear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can we have a VPN button in Control Center?

How about per-app VPNs with Apple Configurator, i.e. no MDM?

If Apple wants to support privacy, it should be possible to route one or more apps to a dedicated VPN where their traffic can be restricted and monitored closely.

<comment><USER5> Doubtful as they'd get on the bad side of a lot of governments doing that. VPNs are something that the upper brass are aware about and will make a fuss about if they're added. It's a high profile security measure.

<comment><USER4> In some countries, enabling an IKEv2 VPN on iOS will cause any app (including Apple Mail, Safari or even Settings) to crash the first time it uses the active VPN.

Those countries may be exploiting an iOS bug, by injecting packets into IKEv2 streams. Observed for more than a year, still present in iOS11. This doesn't happen with OpenVPN, possibly because it's easier to break OpenVPN wire traffic without compromising the phone OS.

The point is: governments can already use VPN traffic as justification for exploiting targeted devices, they don't need any help from Apple. Android has many options for network security, why should Apple be hamstrung by hypothetical governments who will break iOS anyway? Apple customers are paying a premium and still being needlessly exposed on insecure WiFi networks.

Millions of Apple users would benefit (motivating device purchases!) if Apple removed their VPN dark patterns from iOS, e.g. make it easy to enable Always- On VPNs which don't leak unprotected packets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well I'd hope it wouldn't make it work worse.

</comment><comment><USER7> Have they added IMAP Idle support yet?

Not having imap mail push on iOS is annoying to say the least.

<comment><USER8> That would require keeping a connection open to the mail server 24/7 which is a bad idea.

<comment><USER9> It's a way better idea than periodic polling, which is the current behaviour when the mail server operator doesn't collaborate directly with Apple to implement their push notifications.

<comment><USER10> Way better by what metric? Periodic polling is going to be better for battery than keeping a connection open 24/7.

<comment><USER9> Uhmm... how exactly?

Idle, open connection won't suck your battery _at all_ , it's just an open socket sitting somewhere in the RAM. The only problem with it is having to send keepalives due to broken NATs being prevalent that can quietly close your connection with you having no chance to know that until you decide to send something through it. Anyway, keepalive pings are way easier to process than a complete poll and will send your processor and baseband back into sleep much quicker. Also, on most networks you can actually keep a connection open for much longer than 15 minutes, and when the network is so horribly broken that you can't, you can always fallback to polling.

Both Android and iOS already employ various techniques for dealing with keepalive timeout calculation because... guess what... that's exactly how their push notification systems are working.

You gain better battery life from rarer pings, less roundtrips and easier to process responses. Periodic polling is absolutely the worst for your battery - isn't it just obvious?

<comment><USER10> If keepalive pings weren't a thing, you'd have a point, but you admitted they are. The keepalive pings have to happen at least every 2 minutes I think (and usually more frequently than that) as I believe 2 minutes is a common timeout for this sort of thing. Meanwhile polling is every 15 minutes at the most frequent (or 30, or every hour, etc). This means it fires up the radio less often, which means better battery.

I'd also guess the OS tries to schedule these fetches to coincide with the radio already being on as they don't have to be precisely timed.

<comment><USER9> Keepalive timeout negotiated by Android on one of my test devices is usually between an hour or two. And as I said - if you're on a particularly crappy network that gets keepalive < 15 minutes, you just fall back to polling. You can only gain battery life, not lose.

After all, if your e-mail provider cooperates with Apple, you get your mail fetched by... a constantly open, 24/7 push notification service connection instead of IMAP polling. Which means better battery.

Keepalives are also scheduled by the OS - that's one of the most basic power saving strategies. I mean, it has been already implemented in 2009 in Maemo, which wasn't even tiny bit as restrictive about networking stuff as Android and iOS are.

<comment><USER10> The OS already has the push notification connection open, so having more stuff go over it is effectively free (when considering the case where there's no new data, it's _literally_ free, and when there is new data it's presumably no less efficient than fetching the data via another mechanism).

In any case, my inclination here is to believe that Apple doesn't have IMAP Idle because it drains more battery than fetching every 15 or 30 minutes, as I can't think of any other reason why Apple would refuse to implement it (and they've implemented it already in desktop Mail.app, so it's not just laziness). And what's more, I'm inclined to believe Apple has actually tested this out rather than just assuming it to be the case. Apple cares more about power efficiency than any other major software vendor I know of, and email is such a fundamental piece of functionality for the device, if they could actually get better power efficiency by implementing IMAP Idle, they'd have done that years ago.

Now, it's certainly possible that on some networks, keepalive pings could be infrequent enough that IMAP Idle would not use any more power than fetching. But having that be true for some networks doesn't really matter because Apple's not likely to implement a mode that says "use IMAP Idle if it's efficient to do so, otherwise fetch" due to the potential user confusion.

In an ideal world, Apple would standardize some way for mail servers to deliver push notifications to clients (and what's more, do it in a way that allows 3rd-party clients to register to receive these pushes too, not just the built-in Mail.app¹). I don't know why this hasn't happened; maybe nobody cares enough, or maybe Apple can't convince Google to care about having push support for Mail.app² and if they can't convince Google then it's not really worth pursuing as Google accounts for such a huge percentage of the world's email accounts at this point. However, I do know it's _possible_ for mail servers to support Mail.app push notifications, as FastMail rolled out support for it some time ago³.

¹I actually use a 3rd-party client called Spark that gets push email, but to do so, Readdle actually runs a server themselves that logs into my mail account, uses IMAP Idle, and sends the client a push every time new messages come in. This is of course a potential privacy and security violation, though I've chosen to trust Readdle and trust that they abide by their privacy policy (which, among other things, states that they throw away the email data after delivering the push notification, and don't use this data for any other purposes).

²I have to assume this is Google deliberately making the Mail.app experience inferior in order to convince people to use their own Gmail client.

³FastMail had to actually send some engineers to Infinite Loop to talk to Apple engineers directly in order to figure out how to do this integration. I'm really curious what the technical details are here.

<comment><USER9> How is "use push notifications if it's an e-mail provider that worked directly with us, otherwise poll" any less confusing? What's more, you get the same behaviour with push notifications already - if you're on a really crappy network, you're likely to not get your notifications instantly due to having too long keepalive timeout until OS adjusts.

The answer it simple: with IMAP Idle, you could do push notifications directly from your mail server to your phone without Apple as a middle man, and one of the things Apple cares about more than power efficiency is having full control over their platform. There's no real technical reason for it to be so screwed up as it is now.

<comment><USER10> It's less confusing because the fetch vs push preferences are per-account, so you can see right in preferences which accounts use push and which use fetch (and what the fetch intervals are, as that's also per-account).

> _What 's more, you get the same behaviour with push notifications already - > if you're on a really crappy network, you're likely to not get your > notifications instantly due to having too long keepalive timeout until OS > adjusts._

In all my years of using iOS I've never noticed push notifications becoming noticeably delayed in situations where I still have a network connection. Maybe Android sucks at this, I don't know, but iOS has always been really good about delivering push notifications quickly if my device is reachable.

<comment><USER9> As I also said earlier, most networks these days aren't so crappy, so with well-working timeout adjustment algorithm you may never notice it. Also, with increasingly common mobile IPv6 connections, it's not an issue anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> iOS 11 is still better than Android

<comment><USER9> As a Maemo user that recently got both Android and iOS devices for software porting and testing: hardly. When it comes to reliability, glitches, etc. they're pretty comparable, with Android being slightly better.

However, I have only seen Replicant, AOSP and LineageOS. What you get packaged by your hardware vendor might be worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Newer" iPhone because your older iPhone will be screwed.

<comment><USER13> Aren't they supporting iPhones all the way back to the 5s with iOS 12? That's way better than any competitor can claim.

<comment><USER14> I'm running 12Beta2 on my 5S.

I'd say performance is better than iOS11 at this point. There's still a lot of rough edges and I suspect they have a debug build released at this point. I think the final build will be really good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Oh the irony. I updated to iOS 12 after reading this post, and now I cant paste quotes into the response box from reply view on HN from my iPhone SE. It's pretty obvious the smaller phones have been abandoned at this point.

<comment><USER16> This is a beta release, so I'd expect some bugs at this point.</comment></comment>


Reddit introduces chat feature, AskHistorians goes dark for 1 hour in protest - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gakw51/in_30_minutes_at_830_pm_edt_raskhistorians_will/ <comment><USER2> Reddit admins have fully rolled back the chat feature due to the hugely negative response. Ouch.</comment>


/r/startups - a Reddit for startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/startups

<comment><USER2> 1\. HN is the reddit of startups

2\. I'm subscribed to that reddit and it's pretty dead...there are like 1-2 new submissions a day

</comment><comment><USER3> Last I checked it's called Hacker News.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which is of course ironic given how vocal HN users are about not wanting this site to turn into Reddit.

Then again, Reddit won't let anyone log in right now so your up-votes could be from Reddit users seeking refuge. ;)

<comment><USER4> Yup..in emergency mode they are...which is a shame as there's quite an interesting thread on there at the moment (only 1 x interesting thread mind you)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bit of a shame that this gets posted here right in the middle of a major Reddit outage. (Yeah, you can see the site now, but logins still aren't up.)

</comment><comment><USER6> Hey, that's my subreddit. Does anyone want to be a moderator? I don't check it very often.

<comment><USER7> Nice idea. I can certainly help mod it if you need it, but I think that it is somewhat without purpose, since the startup folk hangout on HN.

Maybe a Crosspost script?

<comment><USER6> Completely without purpose. I just picked the keyword to test out the subreddit functionality, and years later it has 2000 subscribers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another one: <http://allyourstartuparebelongto.us/>

<comment><USER4> Not sure i agree with the name "All your startup are belong to us" ??

<comment><USER9> This site is literally brand new and it's a tmp domain. Wasn't intended for public consumption yet :)

The phrase is a reference to all your base are belong to us.

If anyone is interested in helping though, please let me know.

<comment><USER10> I'd love to help out if you still need people

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Remember when Reddit _was_ about startups (pre-HN)?

It's good to see them coming back around. :)

<comment><USER12> Remember when HN was called Startup News?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Strange, there were no posts complaining how reddit is turning into HN. What would be reddit's equivalent of erlang articles?

<comment><USER14> Lolcats, last time I checked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's the USP....?</comment>


Ask HN: Trademark registering - <AUTHOR>

I am looking for a cheap service to register a trademark in the US, Canada, Europe. Any suggestions? <comment><USER3> Do your own search and register direct with the offices yourself? Probably only doable for a textual mark.

<comment><USER4> It's really not hard to do the search and registration yourself. You might need to do a bit of reading, and/or asking questions. But no more difficult than learning how to use the latest shiny thing properly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow! You want to do US + EU!??

So, you're in the many $K in filing fees just to go via OHIM - <USER2> Harmonization Interior Market, to get a EU - wide "passport", and a 1.5yr plus min time to registration, permitting zero challenges, which can be technical from the office, or from watchful competitors. "Watchful competitors" include big corps caring for the penumbra their rights cast.

So: nothing cheap.

If you have a VERY CLEAN application, which means you've thought this out a long while first and read up good, _ATTORNEY FEES WILL BE THE SMALLEST COST FOR WHAT YOU ASK_

Sorry for all the caps, but you see, you can negotiate simplified atorney fees - you don't want to miss on a minimum response time to a fill-in form question, do you, and you do want a service address for all this etc?

Where attorney fees are a big thing is where you've no clue as to the suitability of your trademark or the areas of business you wish to enter into of might apply that mark to. Then, it gets silly. Or alternatively, cheap only if you plan to scale past a little startup.

Oh, yeah, you do realize you have to actually DO business on record in these jurisdictions to keep your marks, and also to keep marks you have to protect them by fighting infringment no matter how silly, or you vacate your claim, don't you?

Basically, you asked about a commitment amount of money, maybe wondering if it's like registering a domain, which conveys zero rights (See Zappa decision for the very latest in a long list of stupid loosers).

<comment><USER5> Sorry, to clarify, OHIM fees aren't that bad, but you do have to get a translator because you need 2 EU languages, say Eng / French, and again all that local service address stuff, and if you're a US Corp, registering your corp as trading in the EU, somewhere, someplace, and filing even blank tax returns.

What you really need is an Uncle of a friend who's in this business, and tel lthem you'll f=do the donkey work, but can you use their office and beg tricky questions. Network it. Be prepared for some of the snottiest put-downs though :)

That said, DO IT THE HARD WAY YOU'LL LEARN A F'N TON about business!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Whoa, i just checked your profile and you work / founded a business in a legal services field.

Not being funny, but i' surprised you're asking HN.</comment>


Newer, More Dominant Covid-19 Variant Is More Infectious in the Lab - <AUTHOR> https://www.genengnews.com/news/newer-more-dominant-covid-19-variant-is-more-infectious-in-the-lab/ <comment><USER2> Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23112277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23112277)</comment>


The 10x programmer - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ynzi.com/2016/09/the-10x-programmer.html <comment><USER2> Great explanation for the term. It was needed. I'll be showing it to some colleagues.</comment>


Android is Winning  - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/14/android-is-winning/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

<comment><USER2> Of course Android wins as a platform. Apple still makes good money for share- holders. Win-win?</comment>


Fragmented sleep 'harms memory' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14279123 <comment><USER2> This must be why parents have more than one child - they forget what it's like in the first few weeks :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it's safe to say that this is one thing nearly everyone learned in college.

<comment><USER4> Simple formula for being a college uber-student:

        - Practice good sleep hygiene
        - Begin work on all of your assignments the day you get
          them, and work a little on them every day until they
          are due

If you can do these two things, your odds of being in the top 10% will increase dramatically.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It would be interesting to compare and contrast this with any data about polyphasic sleep. I'm all for, and very interested in, getting less sleep but feeling better, and previous informal experiments have suggested that it's possible, but there's so much conflicting data.

<comment><USER5> What data are you talking about? As far as I know it seems that polyphasic is a popular hoax, just as 'we use only 10% of our brain power' - popular but fake. Dr Piotr Wozniak, who seems to know a bit about sleep deals with it in few articles on his site. Also most first-hand reports I've read (sorry for no links, I can dig into my history later) usually ended up in people saying they are tired and rationalizing why do they go back to normal pattern (ie. many people had problems admitting that they failed).

<comment><AUTHOR> For "data" in the above read "many, many stories from a wide range of people, some of whom claim it works."

I recently read someone's report of using polyphasic sleep for multiple years. Don't know where, can't spend the time.

You're saying that no one has ever switched permanently to it. I'm saying people sometimes say they switched back out because of issues other than the sleep.

When I ran on a week of 6x28 hour days I felt better, but I couldn't sustain it because of the constant time shifts relative to "normal" people. When I slept four times a week I got a lot more done, and generally felt better, but in the end I got a job that wouldn't support the timing issues it caused.

I'd just like to know the truth.

<comment><USER6> Polyphasic sleep has been discussed extensively here.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=652650>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1464142>

To quote Indiana Jones, if you want _the truth_ , go to the Philosophy department. But the evidence indicates the various kinds of polyphasic sleep discussed in those threads is a terrible idea.

<comment><USER4> Philosophy department? I don't know if the odds are so good for getting _the truth_ , as opposed to the odds of getting the ability to greatly impress a certain fraction of the populace while talking around the truth.

<comment><USER6> I think that's what the line is hinting at: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097576/quotes?qt=qt0357889>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I haven't been sleeping well for the past few years due to (presumably) nasal congestion. On the whole, I've felt like I cannot learn as quickly as I used to. Granted, I'm older, but it really seems like some things (such as muscle memory) just wouldn't stick.

I'm curious if anyone's been in similar circumstances. An ENT took one look at me and told me it was allergies, but I never seem to be able to get any relief, despite the seasons changing. I'm highly allergic to most trees and some grass, and I wish I wasn't. I'll probably start shots here pretty soon.

<comment><USER8> As damontal said, take a nasal steroid, they're awesome. The other thing that helped me was taking Nasalcrom, which acts like an antihistamine, but you can take it long term, and has a localised effect.

What you probably have is an issue with your carpet, or some other allergen in your home, perhaps mould. I recently moved and noticed in the bedrooms at night I would get very congested which would affect my sleep. Taking the nasal steroid and the cromolyn gave me instant relief. I had the carpets thoroughly cleaned and bought a HEPA vacuum cleaner, and now no longer have to take the medication.

You could also have a dust or dust mite allergy. Using a latex mattress cover can help there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Granted, I know very little about how brain work, but assume that general principle is dynamic building network between small elements in the brain which is affected by different signals (which can come from both outside receptors, or could be generated by brain itself?)..

So... Can someone explain in simple words why human brain _need_ to sleep to consolidate memory? What is memory? This is not like RAM in my desktop where you need to do map reduce to aggregate information... This is state of network which is constantly and dynamically changes..</comment>


Common Lisp lexical closure [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFhPot-bgtI <comment><USER2> A cool aspect of closures not stressed in the video is that they end up capturing all enclosing lexical environments (not just the parameter environments), even those you make using let! For example in Common Lisp:

(let ((x 0)) (defun counter () (setq x (+ x 1)) x))

Or in Scheme:

(define counter (let ((x 0)) (lambda () (set! x (+ x 1)) x)))

You can make a closure named "counter" that has access to the environment containing "x" so that every time you call those functions they return the next "x".

If you really want to understand closures I recommend reading Section 3.2 of SICP [1] and learning how to draw environment diagrams.

[1] <http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-21.html#%25_sec_3.2></comment>


Setting Goals, Making Money - <AUTHOR> http://lbrandy.com/blog/2009/01/setting-goals-making-money/

<comment><USER2> Job ads are ads, too. Since I started putting Google Ads on one of my pages, I realized that Amazon affiliate links seem like quite a bad deal. At least if people just buy books, Google Ads pay way better (my impression from rather limited experience). Maybe one has to hope for people buying really expensive items on Amazon occasionally.</comment>


Lone Yelp review dogs business owner - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/problemsolver/ct-biz-0904-problem-brader-20110904,0,5548651,full.column <comment><USER3> This raises several important issues.

The first is that most people don't review things. No matter how easy it is the vast majority of the population just won't do it. The simpler you make it the more that will but the simpler it is the less useful it becomes.

This has several important implications.

\- It makes local hard to scale because your audience size is that much smaller that reviews are far less reliable both in frequency and volume; and

\- Again I'll say something I've said here repeatedly: the value of so-called "social search" is limited to nonexistent because most people in your circle won't review anything.

Secondly, businesses like Yelp risk going down the comScore route. 10 years ago comScore was _the_ source for visitor numbers, which drove advertising revenue. If you paid you got accurate numbers. If you didn't, comScore "guessed", and for some reason those numbers always seemed low, so much so that lots complained.

The problem is that comScore (and now Yelp) have an economic incentive to get people to advertise such that they are not impartial and site therefore cannot be trusted.

It's why I think companies like Google (disclaimer: I work for Google) should stay out the content business. We're great at connecting people to things they want. If we're one of those things they want then we have at least the potential for the appearance (if not the actuality) of impropriety, at the very least.

I just don't see local reviews and social search going, well, anywhere, certainly anytime soon.

<comment><USER4> What Yelp does is a racket, similar to what BBB does. In Yelp's case they are being helped by Google and other search engines. The problem is that when people link to them that's an upvote in Google's eyes. After enough upvotes are gained, provided they don't spam, there's little anybody can do to downvote them. It's not like you can negatively link to them. This, I feel, is one of the main problems with the like and +1 buttons. There's isn't a -1 or notlike option.

<comment><USER5> I suspect Yelp is extremely venerable and could be successfully sued from several angles. However, the court system tends to protect such companies on free speech grounds etc. So, their downfall will probably come from leaked internal operations rather than any external source.

<comment><USER6> A beautiful typo. You mean "vulnerable" for "venerable" right? Is that because you think they really are doing what the article implies? Is there evidence more substantial than that offered by the Tribune? The article for me is just shoddy journalism. Can it be that hard to really test the hypothesis that businesses that turn down the ad salesperson get screwed by Yelp? I don't want to defend Yelp since I don't like the site, but I think its pretty scummy of the Tribune also to willingly promulgate, at least by rhetorical implication, the idea that Justin G is some kind of shill for non-Brader dog trainers.

(Very much tangential at this point, so I'll put my theory that Justin G, far from being a shill, is actually a superhero in parentheses. Consider: He's very secretive. He reviews businesses without leaving behind a trace of his true identity. He doesn't respond to queries from the Tribune. And look at his profile: He wears a cape. A cape! Also, his reviews are annoyingly sincere. And as for his name, clearly Justin G is _justing_ the world one review at a time. Yes, verbing weirds language, but if you can justly right the world, why not rightly just it too?)

[http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=z25c9TyWY1TdVEGxkj34...](http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=z25c9TyWY1TdVEGxkj34jw)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_(linguistics)#Humor>

<comment><USER7> I've heard talk of dodgy behaviour from Yelp before. See eg. this article: [http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/yelp-and-the-business- of-e...](http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/yelp-and-the-business-of- extortion-20/Content?oid=1176635) (via here: <http://www.jwz.org/blog/2009/02/yelp-shakedown/>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I worked at Yelp on their product management team for about 18 months.

It's essentially impossible for anyone in the company to manipulate, delete, or add a review to a business page unless the reason is related to Terms of Service. Even then, you cannot do it without someone noticing and double checking that the reason something was removed was legitimate.

The algorithm is (in my mind) similar to Google's PageRank—it's not a trivial piece of software, it takes a full time team to maintain, edit, update, fix, improve, etc. Whether or not a business is an advertiser is never taken into account.

Yelp puts consumers first - that means sometimes they remove legitimate reviews. Everyone on the product and engineering teams knows this, realizes it sucks for businesses, but would rather err on the side of all reviews being legitimate. The reason they keep working on the algorithm is to improve this and make it more accurate.

The sales staff has strict rules on what they can and can't do, they do not have access to editing, managing, or deleting reviews and I never once saw an email come to product asking for a review to be removed or added.

Thousands of businesses work with Yelp, are happy with Yelp, and have happy customers. Even businesses with 5 stars get negative reviews sometimes. You cannot please everyone.

<comment><USER9> It's hard to believe that so many business are complaining about Yelp if nothing was wrong... If what you are saying is true then the only conclusion is that the algorithm used has a major flaw but Yelp doesn't want either to acknowledge it or fix it. I believe that they rather don't want to fix it so it help their true business of selling ads.

Anyway Yelp overall business practices and customer/business support is flaky at best, and a scam at worst. "freedom of speech" has not the same meaning when you are at Yelp.

<comment><USER8> There are significantly more stories of businesses having a great experience with Yelp than a bad one. But it's not exactly a great story for the Chicago Tribune to highlight all of those businesses.

What does it say to you that a judge threw the case out?

<comment><USER10> Really? I've only ever heard bad things. Can you provide examples?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Earlier this summer, a Yelp salesman called Brader's house to ask if he wanted to advertise on the Yelp site._

Yelp will never make it as a public company, which means that it should technically fizzle and die sooner rather than later. What they do isn't illegal, but it should be; its revenue model is unethical, sleazy, blackmailing, extortion.

<comment><USER12> Those are some pretty bold accusations based on rather thin evidence. Are you suggesting that such a service is incapable of running above-board? Is there anything Yelp could do to prove to you that it is operating in an ethical and reasonable manner?

<comment><USER13> Yelp seems to have had a lot of bad press for this kind of thing and has had at least one class action suit, alleging extortion, levelled against it:

<http://yelpscam.com/negative-yelp-press.html>

<comment> brown9-2 A lawsuit filed against them is not proof of anything. That same suit was thrown out.

<comment><USER13> That's an awful lot of negative press. Seems quite possible there's something to it (unless there's some sort of conspiracy against Yelp).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yelp's filtering algorithm is terrible. Purely anecdotal, but: I've tried writing reviews on Yelp several times. When I first started reviewing and my reviews were getting filtered out, I'd think "OK, maybe I just need to continue reviewing and eventually Yelp will realize I'm not a faker". After about 20 reviews (spread over a couple weeks, most of which still remain flagged), I got pissed and gave up.

How does Amazon solve this problem? AFAICT, Amazon doesn't filter out any reviews, and I've never noticed fake reviews being a problem. Are people simply less inclined to give fake-glowing or fake-terrible reviews on Amazon? (Makes somewhat sense to me, since Amazon is less "personal".)

<comment><USER15> Amazon (and app stores, for that matter) have a huge advantage in that they can verify that the reviewer is at least a customer. Amazon differentiates these reviewers visually in the reviews. Yelp cannot take this verification step.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The problem Yelp has is that they don't allow unfiltered reviews to be contested. So even if Brader or his customers wanted to contact Yelp and say "Hey, our reviews aren't spam or for gaming the system" and explain what happened, there's no easy/official way to do it.

The one and only time I wrote a review on Yelp, I gave a restaurant a one star rating because the customer service was truly terrible and I left with a horrible taste in my mouth (figuratively). The review wasn't riddled with spelling/grammatical errors and it extremely close to the word limit Yelp has in place. Anyone reading it could tell it wasn't a fake review. Heck, in the few days the review was up, it got voted up to most useful review. But I got hit by the filter anyways. I suspect the algorithm really is flawed and not being manipulated like some people claim, but maybe I'm an optimist.

<comment><USER17> You're probably right. Seems mostly a case of.. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Mix in a bit of "lazy" and you've got yourself a situation that sucks for the small people unable to fix the big system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> From personal experience Yelp is a company I do not respect or trust in anything.

Yelp absolutely don't care about small business and how their filtering system works. My wife is running a small business and she has been facing exactly the problems described in the article. Real customers posting real reviews but quickly disappearing in the filtered reviews for unknown reasons, some of her customers have been on Yelp for a while but still their reviews are filtered, while some competitors (we guess) post a negative review with what is most likely a fake account stayed, and are never filtered out.

Like in the article, my wife was contacted by Yelp to advertise, and she declined... Soon after some of the positive reviews vanished!

Yelp until a year or so ago didn't even let business owner reply to a negative review, so the power was in the hand of the reviewer. What is worst is that even with that in place, even if a fake review is posted and advertising for a competitive business which is against their TOS, Yelp simply do not care of removing such review. Another area wher Yelp is doing a really poor job: it is still possible to review a closed business or a business that change name BUT the business owner can't reply to any such post. So the communication is borked and Yelp does't care to fix that. They do mention "freedom of speech" which my wife and I do get, but then how come someone can post a review on a close business, but the previous business owner can't reply to it?? If people are able to review but owner can't reply, it means that their back end system has some logic to handle that, but the code for the owner to reply has most likely been disabled ! Why? That's not really how freedom of speech work!

Yelp is NOT at all for promoting small business, they are in the business of selling ads and having the most page views. Trying to be a fair and honest business is not at all on their business plan.

From what I heard from other small business owner here in the Bay Area, they have experienced mostly the same.

Yelp is what I consider a SCAM and as a software engineer I will never consider a job in this unprofessional company. Sooner or later I think the truth will be shown on how Yelp manipulate their system for their own benefits.

Finally to conclude this rant, my wife business is still going on even with some negative reviews because we made sure that she was not dependent on Yelp for getting customers. She had many happy returning customers for the past 3 years, even if their positive reviews disappeared.

<comment><USER18> Yelp are in a hard place, they show negative reviews about peoples businesses. People who work there, or own the business absolutely hate this, because it could cost them there business. Nobody likes having their work threatened.

And most people who own businesses think they are doing a good job, and don't like criticism. They take it very personally, and blame Yelp rather than the reviewer.

<comment><USER9> It looks like either you have never been interacting with a business owner you know and trust, or you are a Yelp employee. Believe me, my wife can handle negative review when they are truthful but when you see a negative reviews that is clearly advocating for a competitors and Yelp doesn't do a thing to remove it, you have to wonder what are they up to. Additionally even without getting all the information about a review that Yelp is getting (IP address, frequency of visits, etc), we saw a few times similar negative review being posted on the same day with similar wordings for 2 newly created accounts. Interesting enough the same day one real customer (with many Yelp reviews) posted a 4 stars reviews... Guess what? Yelp 'algorithm' filtered out the 4 stars reviews and left the 2 one star reviews... Sorry but as an engineer with over 15 years of experience it sounds fishy to me.

Since my wife started her business, she has met various other business owners with similar experience...

Hard to believe that their filtering system is not directed toward the good of Yelp business plan for selling ads.

<comment><USER18> Someone who sees anyone arguing Yelp's side as an employee sounds a little paranoid. I am inclined not to believe you, and surprised you would put forward that argument. Of course your are expected to think the best about your wife, and how she handles business.

You may even be correct, but you are too biased in this issue to offer an honest and objective opinion, surely you see that?

Now I am not saying Yelp do not do some dodgy filtering, but it would be incredibly stupid of them if they did. I have seen many arguments before, but no actual proof. And this article from the WSJ, after further investigation, indicated that Yelp are not doing anything dodgy. The negative reviews seem to be honest, from a decent reviewer, not a fellow dog trainer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article could have revealed that of the 18 "hidden" reviews, 14 were the only review by the Yelper and 11 were in a one week period. These are two of the main criteria for Yelp's filtering.

I'm surprised people believe that Yelp would be so clumsy and unethical to simply penalize non-advertisers.

<comment><USER19> There is certainly a ton of press around this coming from several reputable media outlets for months. Google for 'yelp extortion'. So you shouldn't be surprised. This is a real problem for them. At minimum, here is a documented case of legitimate reviews that simply aren't shown. They are basically saying 'The computer did that, so fuck off' and end up coming off like a bully, which by all measured terms they are.

<comment><USER12> This meme hit pretty big a year or two ago, a bunch of lawsuits were filed and nothing came of any of them. Yelp is usually able to demonstrate in each case that what it claims is happening is accurate (advertisers are buying a specific bill of goods, review flagging is systematic, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Its SEO'ers....

A competitor of the dog training business hires an SEO Search Engine Optimiser to increase his business. To do that they post negative reviews of all the competitors. They post fake positive reviews of their client.

I have tracked this down before. The positive reviews all looked suspiciously similar and over-glowing. I have seen the same review, the same day, by the same guy, in multiple nearby neighborhoods.

This also can happen when an SEO marketer calls and you turn him down. He then spites your site and calls back again later to see if your more agreeable....

</comment><comment><USER21> In case you want to dig in deeper, Frank Brader's dog business on Yelp now has 4 stars from 5 reviews:

[http://www.yelp.com/biz/haus-von-brader-dog-obedience- traini...](http://www.yelp.com/biz/haus-von-brader-dog-obedience-training- north-riverside)

Justin G, the negative reviewer, was a Yelp Elite member from 2006-2008:

[http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=z25c9TyWY1TdVEGxkj34...](http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=z25c9TyWY1TdVEGxkj34jw)

<comment><USER13> I'd get rid of the punitive filtering too if negative press came out.

I wonder if "Elite" indicates paid? Yelp does pay, or has paid in the past, some reviewers.

<comment><USER12> No need to speculate about "elite": <http://www.yelp.com/elite>

You can argue that the benefits of being "elite" equate to compensation but that's a pretty slippery slope and I'm not sure entirely useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The obvious thing to do for the guy is to post a note explaining the situation on _his_ website and link to Chicago Tribune's article. That should alleviate most if not all concerns of those who read that Yelp review.

(edit) And display the note only to those coming from Yelp.

<comment><USER23> I would expect that the note is then buried or removed under Yelp's labyrinthine terms of service.

<comment><USER12> Wrong. The note goes right in the same box as the review.

<comment><USER24> Wrong too. The note goes on _guy's_ website, not on Yelp's. "We noticed you came here from Yelp. Yadda-yadda..."

<comment><USER12> Wrong.

"Where your Public Comment will appear Your comment will appear directly following the review that you've commented on."

<https://biz.yelp.com/support/responding_to_reviews>

<comment><USER24> "Wrong?"

GP's comment said "The obvious thing to do for the guy is to post a note ... on _his_ website" - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2959702> \- that's the context.

<comment><USER12> Wrong. I was replying to this comment: "I would expect that the note is then buried or removed under Yelp's labyrinthine terms of service."

I unfortunately cannot downvote your reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Anyone find it weird that Yelp makes you pass a reCaptcha when trying to look at filtered reviews? Clearly you can look at unfiltered reviews without this. It's almost like Yelp is yelling "Don't look at these reviews....please!"

</comment><comment><USER26> Customer reviews and ratings can be one hell of a mess, not just for businesses but also for customers.

As a customer, they are often useful in narrowing down one's choices, even with a margin of error from cheating or lack of enough data. But, they are still a heck of a lot of work! Ever tried choosing a wardrobe, washing machine or laptop based on reviews? You can spend hours reading wildly different accounts, which leave you more confused than when you started.

I generally read reviews to answer simple questions which the product listing does not answer. I try to find out if there are any common problems with a product.

A good FAQ and a list of the most common problems may be a better solution than pages of reviews.

<comment><USER27> Reviews can be pretty useful. If my mom needs a simple modem/wifi/router in her house, I'll just buy her whatever one has the most reviews on Amazon.

<comment><USER26> If you choose a product with a rating of more than 4 stars averaged over a lot of customer reviews, it's pretty decent data to go by. For routers, there are a handful of good brand names you can safely pick from. Even so, you admit you don't actually read the reviews, just go by the total number.

It's harder when choosing a product like a washing machine which has a lot of options between 3-4 stars in any given price range and no clear winner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Given Yelp's size, why doesn't it employ some collaborative filtering options? In general I don't care about everyone's reviews (especially of restaurants). But it would be interesting to know -- for people who like White Castle, McDonald's, and Denny's, but not Applebees -- what would they recommend. This is not the type of thing you could typically get by reading reviews by themselves (and maybe those people wouldn't do Yelp reviews in any case). But standalone reviews of things where taste is such a large component I find almost worthless. With that said dog training is probably something where taste plays a much smaller role.

<comment><USER21> There's a new mobile app called Ness (<http://www.likeness.com>) that's trying to do this. I happen to agree with you, so I really hope Ness can pull this off. I'd really like a recommendation service that knows my personal preferences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> They should really reply to the negative review and point to the other positive reviews. Whether genuine or fake, you will always have unhappy customers, but you have to deal graciously even with the nastiest of them.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's easy to come down against Yelp, but small businesses have been trying to "game" Yelp in unsophisticated ways for some time.

We work with a lot of small businesses and I've had conversations with a statistically significant number of them who have admitted trying to flood Yelp with reviews they've written themselves, writing reviews under fake named accounts, and providing over-glowing text for reviews to be submitted by friends. They get angry at Yelp for allowing bad reviews to show up and think they can fix it with reviews written in all-caps with text like "Bob and Jane ARE THE NICEST, WARMEST, MOST AMAZING PEOPLE I KNOW and the person who wrote the review above DOESN"T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT." We always advise them not to use these tactics but to instead put a sign up asking their customers to leave reviews on Yelp (since all reviews on the site trend to 4.3, they're probably improving their position with every new review).

To recap:

\- So a business has a small amount of reviews online, one negative from someone who has left more than 400 reviews.

\- The business asks their loyal customers to leave positive reviews all at the same time.

\- Yelp sees abnormal traffic and abnormal acceleration of overly-positive reviews from brand new users (OMG. Best Dog Trainer EVER!! A+++++ Would recommend).

\- Yelp's algorithm flags this activity as abnormal since it looks similar to spam/paid/fake reviews and won't alter their algorithm to accommodate an attempt to game their system.

The reality is small businesses do this kind of "gaming" all the time and sometimes it's benign, sometimes it's malicious or fake. I once worked with a client who had left dozens of reviews about themselves and complained that Yelp always took them down which "wasn't fair". Yelp sees way more attempts at gaming reviews than you'd realize and I imagine they've gotten pretty good at it. Like Google's algorithms, Yelp's algorithms may occasionally flag real reviews. Both have an incentive to improve.

The other thing is that if I'm a sales agent at Yelp (responsible for bringing in $8k in revenue this month), I'm going to call on customers who have bad reviews (and thus show up lower in searches) first. This is not because I'm trying to scam anyone. It's because the folks at the bottom are usually the most eager to pay to show up at the top. The guys who already sit in the top 5 spots of an organic search have trouble justifying the expense. If I call on someone who is on the first page of a Yelp search, their first thought isn't going to be "this guy's trying to scam us". Likewise, the companies that buy Google ads aren't the ones who show up first in an organic search either (unless they demonstrate that the ROI justifies it. SMBs aren't typically as sophisticated).

This isn't extortion, it's not a scam, and it's not wrong. It may appear obtuse from the outside, but nothing would harm Yelp more than for these allegations to be true. It would be downright irresponsible of Yelp to try to do things this way from a shareholders' perspective.

TL;DR: SMBs try to game Yelp all the time. Yelp's built algorithms to look for this kind of behavior. This business hit a lot of triggers.

<comment><USER30> TL;DR: You're wrong. And you sound like someone from Yelp trying to "game the system" and write positive reviews about yourself. Maybe PG's algorithms should censor you without any evidence?

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

My parents had the exact same experience as in the article.

\- A few years ago, they didn't really know what yelp was, but a customer was surprised that the reviews up there were pretty bad, mostly just from customers who were upset we had to send them letters after they didn't pay their bills.

\- We encouraged people to review the business on Yelp. Despite numerous people (including a couple Yelp Elites) writing positive real reviews, interestingly, none of the reviews showed up on Yelp.

\- Customers told us their reviews had not shown up, and when we called Yelp to find out why, a few reps either claimed there was no way to put the reviews back or they denied their existence. The one thing they did have in common was they promised things would be "fixed" if we advertised with them. I'm pretty sure that's closer to extortion than smart business.

\- Last week, my dad finally caved and placed some ads on Yelp.

\- Within an hour, there were suddenly dozens of additional reviews on there for the business, and the rating had shot up from 2 stars to 4.5 stars.

So let me ask you, if Yelp really thought those hidden reviews were trying to game the system, why were those reviews placed back when we agreed to spend some ad money? Yelp can't argue that their reviews are unbiased when stuff like this happens.

<comment><USER29> Hi akashs,

I have no affiliation with Yelp. Click on my username anytime if you want to read who I work with and some background. It's right out in the open. However, I had to look at your posts to learn that your new startup is in the local review/recommendation space which is something you should actually disclose when bashing a competitor.

If what you're saying about Yelp's ad reps and software is truthful, then you should be spreading your father's story far and wide (call your local newspaper, they'd love the story), and you should feel comfortable recommending that your father cease to do business with them (why did he?).

Best of luck in your new venture.

<comment><USER30> I didn't think you worked at Yelp, but you were defending them just like my parents' customers were defending them. And as you point out, it's wrong of me to accuse you of gaming the system without any evidence that you work for them. Doesn't feel that great, does it? You actually illustrated my point quite nicely.

Also, we're not really competing with Yelp at all, so I think it's all fair game. In fact, we're integrating with Yelp's API, since we do recognize that despite how screwed up I may think their business is, people still trust them.

And my father did it because the few hundred dollars he spent is paid back if it prevents a couple customers from leaving, or even if he doesn't have to spend another hour on the phone with them. Doesn't mean what they did is fair, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't really like to admit it, but anyone who thinks it's just the "poor old algorithm" doing what it thinks is fair is misinformed.

Part of my core day job work involves identifying real vs not real people and also uses the same technology to drive everything - lucene. An algorithm that refuses to attempt identification beyond what data yelp itself stores is clearly in denial of the "mountain" of data available on people in the form of public web apis on the internet. I could write an "algorithm"/analyzer that does a better job than what yelp is currently doing in a day.

At the end of the day the biggest loser in all of this is probably yelp's users. Inaccurate reviews means you're getting inaccurate results on finding places local to you...which means the tool isn't nearly as useful to you as an end consumer. They might want to just sit down and find another way to get the same sales figures without sacrificing the quality of their product. Otherwise all it will take is someone else to come along and give people the right product to put them out of business. These stories that keep appearing on the internet about Yelp are increasingly becoming harder to ignore for everyone, which is sad for all the hard working engineers at Yelp who's only desire is to deliver a kick ass product. Lame

<comment><USER9> Hi spaznode, I will be really curious to hear more about your approach for doing a better filtering. Feel free to contact me (contact info/web site on my profile).

<comment><USER31> Not sure what you mean..rtfm

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> So technically if something like that is part of the algorithm ...

                if (customer.RefusedToAdvertise) { foreach review in Reviews ( if(review.Score > 1) { reivew.visible = false; } ) }

Yelp can then say that "employees can do nothing, everything is done by the computer" and that would technically be true. And nothing can be done because they can not be forced to reveal the actual algorithm and any case will be thrown out of court?

</comment><comment><USER23> I use a great car rental service at LAX. I've tried to put a glowing review on their Yelp page to help them get business to no available. It doesn't even show up. I'm guessing this is because they choose not to advertise with yelp either?

I just wrote another review right now to test this out again, and my account shows I have written two with them. Why is Yelp not displaying these on their business page, and their star rating is unchanged?

<comment><USER33> Because Yelp is a scam business which extorts. I'm more surprised to see people defending Yelp on this site.

<comment><USER34> Maybe yelp paid a firm to generate positive reviews of yelp?

<comment><USER35> or maybe the opposite. maybe yelp's competitors paid to have negative reviews. hah :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This also goes to show that a business owner can not afford to be Internet- illiterate.

</comment><comment><USER37> I would hope that Yelp doesn't actually operate in the manner in which its detractors accuse it of (as it would seem to be pretty cut-and-dry extortion).

I assume Yelp operates in the way they say they do, but I still find it functionally useless as a review site.

Every once in a while I'll look up the reviews for a place that I frequent and like, and read the reviews. They inevitably show me that people's reviews might as well be random. If the reviews for places that I already like are this different from my own experiences, how useful can they be for places I'm thinking about going to?

It would be like if I read movie reviews from a reviewer who hates all the movies I like (or worse, is ambivalent). I wouldn't find reading their reviews useful.

<comment><USER38>
      It would be like if I read movie reviews from a
      reviewer who hates all the movies I like (or worse,
      is ambivalent). I wouldn't find reading their
      reviews useful.

You could read the reviews, and then only go to movies that reviewer hates. Not a guarantee, but it does decrease the sample size. Unless the reviewer hates all movies.

<comment><USER37> Yeah, movie reviews might not have been the best analogy. My general take on movie reviews is that I only use them to discover movies that I might have otherwise missed (i.e.: a bad review will never dissuade me from seeing a movie, but a good review of a movie I hadn't planned on seeing might make me see it).

And to be fair to Yelp, I've only ever really looked up Restaurant reviews, which seem to be the category of reviews that are the least useful. I don't think anything in a Yelp restaurant review short of "Every time I go here, they drag me to the back room and harvest my organs", would make me take notice one way or the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> For those that haven't seen it, this is exactly how the Better Business Bureau (BBB) operates as well, here is a 20/20 investigation look at it: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo8kfV9kONw>

</comment><comment><USER40> #1

Yep, Yelp is still a total scam despite their claims of reform everytime they get publicity about their criminal behavior.

For those who ask "What crimes?", among their crimes are extortion and fraud. Deleting genuine positive reviews if you don't pay them, and deleting negative reviews if you do is simply not legitimate: there is no defense for it; the only explanation possible is that it is an extortion racket. The fraud is that they misrepresent themselves to the public as an impartial review site.

It's obscene that they are still in business and just shows you what a lousy job most state attorney generals are doing.

#2

A completely separate issue is the review. The article says that he gave several 1 star reviews to dog trainers, but only one 5 star review on 11/9/2010 to a dog trainer, "Perfect Manners Dog Training" in Naperville. This suggests that he may be an employee or friend of the owner of that business. However, comprehensively searching his 463 reviews reveals that he also has a 5 star review on 11/9/2010 for "Thunder's Pack Canine Training" in La Grange Park and there are only two 1 star dog trainer reviews in total, the other being for "Wetnose For Dogs" in Forest Park on 9/11/2010. So either the reporter was inaccurate, or some reviews of Justin G's have been changed. Hard to say at this point. Given the huge number of reviews by this Justin G., many extremely detailed, he is probably legit.

#3

Yelp covers things up. Here's the bad review in question:

[http://www.yelp.com/biz/haus-von-brader-dog-obedience- traini...](http://www.yelp.com/biz/haus-von-brader-dog-obedience-training- north-riverside)

Notice that there are now several good reviews shown. However you can verify in Google's cache of Yelp that there was a single 1 star review on Aug 26, 2011 23:28:48 GMT, last week, a total rating of 1 star, and no other reviews shown. Since then, this article has come out (on September 4 2011) and Yelp has just now changed the site, with the date of all the good reviews being 9/4/2011, obviously when they approved them and not when they were originally posted, which was obviously before the article came out. Time and time again, when bad publicity hits from Yelp's criminal fraud, they patch things in a single spot to cover up their fraudulent activity.

<comment><USER12> You make serious allegations not supported by facts.

#3 The new reviews were obviously written in response to the article. Three of them actually reference it!

<comment><USER40> Plenty of facts there that's why I gave specifics.

I'm curious, how well do you know Yelp's CEO Jeremy Stoppelman? Do you guys meet for coffee, or are you guys just casual acquaintances from your visits to the Yelp offices?

<comment><USER12> Well enough. I presume you will consider me biased but rest assured I have no problem criticizing Yelp when warranted. But much of the criticism in the article and here is pretty weak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Check this restaurant out. Some of its highly-rated reviews are filtered.

<http://www.yelp.com/biz/tsingtao-taste-sunnyvale>

According to them, Yelp called them if they want to advertise and then they will unfilter those reviews.

<comment><USER12> The filtered reviews appear to be "drive bys". I would be surprised if that hearsay is correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> When you search for this business's name, you see the 1 star review right there on Google.com along with "Don't be fooled by a nice site ...". But when you click through there's 7 reviews with a total of 4.5 stars.

Yelp must have caught on to this breaking story?

</comment><comment><USER42> How can a computer evaluate the 'realness' of a review? The idea of Yelp, crowdsourced business reviews, is great, but do we really prefer trusting super active web content contributors, seeking cyberspace attention, over experts (eg Zagats)?

<comment><USER43> I think they do things like filter out reviews from a user that has only posted one review, or if your name appears to be fake, etc. But who knows how exactly their algorithm works.

They're afraid of competitors leaving negative reviews for a business and there's probably something to that, but there's no transparency about it. And they've been doing the extortion thing for a while now: [http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/yelp-under-fire- from-...](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/yelp-under-fire-from- lawsuits-citing-ad-pressure/?ref=yelp)

I always thought it would be great if there was a Yelp for landlords - <USER2> landlords are rarely held accountable and it's not like you ask for references before you sign a lease - but there would probably be too many false reviews posted to make it work or tenants wouldn't feel comfortable speaking freely (because unfortunately tenants still need references). There's actually a website trying it, but doesn't seem like it's going anywhere right now: <http://www.donotrent.com>

Hopefully people will see Yelp for what it is: a small sample of the population that may be dissimilar to you writing probably biased reviews.

<comment><USER43> Why downvoted?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> That's a mighty fine business you have there. Shame if anything were to _happen_ to all your positive reviews. Maybe... advertising with us could help with that?

</comment><comment><USER45> _"they are convinced it filtered at least some of the positive reviews after the Braders refused to buy advertising."_

If I was Yelp, I'd try to address this accusation somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER46> I wonder if there's not an important distinction being lost somewhere between free speech and Google.

</comment><comment><USER47> the Better Business Bureau has been doing this for years. Welcome to the real business world.

</comment><comment><USER48> Extortion. This is the racket of the 21st Century. Once you got the eyeballs, you call every business in your database and threaten to cut its legs out from under it unless it pays up. Google's running more or less the same racket. It's "soft"...there are no threats, exactly. But imagine if the Chicago Tribune called vendors and threatened to run a miserable review of them if they didn't pay?

So why hasn't that happened? Because of libel laws, for one thing. RICO for another. Best answer would be a class action to subpoena Yelp for the IP & personal info of the posters of questionable negative reviews that had survived the removal of legitimate positive reviews, and file a lawsuit against the authors and Yelp for libel. A few thousand of those and they'll be pushed back into their corner.

2+2 Poker Forum has been doing this in the online casino industry for awhile... but they're real criminals anyway: [http://www.casinomeister.com/forums/poker- complaints/45662-2...](http://www.casinomeister.com/forums/poker- complaints/45662-2-2-evil.html)

<comment><USER49> Am I the only one who believes that yelp is prolly telling the truth and that it was just a coincidence? It sounds quite plausible to me that their algorithms work in the way, that are described in the article.

<comment><USER48> Just because it's algorithmic doesn't mean it's legal or clean. I can write an algorithm that searches your cookies for porn sites, figures out who employs you, and emails you a customized extortion threat. If their algorithm works the way it's described in the article, then it'll downrank or remove 10 legitimate, positive posts from real customers if they're made in one day, and will preserve and uprank 1 illegitimate negative post from a competitor, unless the unwilling subject of this debate agrees to pay to remove the negative review. That's the definition of extortion, and if ever there was an algorithm written for that purpose, the one described in the article is it.

<comment><USER49> The way I understand this is, that he was not asked to pay to have the negative review removed, just for advertising, which was totally unrelated to his reviews.

<comment><USER48> If there was a reasonable or non-negligible possibility that removal of the positive reviews resulted from his failure to pay the bribe, then the onus is on the company to provide records to the contrary. That's the point of subpoenaing the poster of the negative comment that survived; not to sue him directly, but to establish the mechanics of and facts arising from Yelp's algorithm, and to establish a pattern of extortion.

Consider: Yelp's algorithm could just as easily flag EVERYONE who gets a single star review for a sales phone call.

<comment><USER12> Isn't the burden of proof typically assigned to the accuser?

<comment><USER48> Depends if you live in the US or the UK, when it comes to libel.

<comment><USER34> Can you explain how libel differs between the US and the UK?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here, <http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=libel+differences+us+uk>

(the top link is a pretty good one)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Does anyone know a place where I can post my review of Yelp.com?

<comment><USER51> You can review it on Yelp.com: <http://www.yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-francisco>

<comment><USER23> Reading this was fascinating and considering the number of unhappy reviewers over happy, their own 3-star rating seems far-fetched.

<comment><USER12> I'll wager $100 (to charity) that their 3500 ratings equate to a 3 star rating.

<comment><USER12> You can owe me: [http://jamiehdavidson.blogspot.com/2011/09/exploration-of- ye...](http://jamiehdavidson.blogspot.com/2011/09/exploration-of-yelps-own- filtered.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How are you doing S2S authentication? - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone,
How are you doing service-to-service authentication in your apps? I'm looking for data about what people are using to secure calls between their own components. OAuth 2.0, SSH keys, mutual TLS with PKI, cert thumbprints, passwords, others? Why? How do you handle operational issues like revocation, keyroll, key distribution, and so on? Are there any particular libraries or services you use?
I work on identity at Microsoft and want to make sure we're thinking about what people really using.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I have been using symmetrically encrypted TCP servers and clients, which I have been developing in a C++ library.

I believe the standard is basically TLS 1.2 asymmetric encryption and then token-based authentication via username/password mechanisms. For example, most databases are securely accessible via external services using TLS.

Key distribution in my case (symmetric encryption,) is trivial, but securing or replacing those keys is non-trivial and I have yet to solve this problem.

Nonetheless, securing private or even public TLS keys is a seriously difficult problem as well.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I had some offline feedback on spiffe.io - would also love to hear of people using this. Thanks!</comment>


Ask HN: How did you find your passion? - <AUTHOR> How long did it take you? What age were you when you knew it was your passion? How did you know it was your passion? <comment><USER2> For me, it snuck up on me in my thirties. I lucked into school for design, and.... found my home. Never had a thing where I "identified" as the job.

How do I know? Hard to say... it just feels incredibly clear. It feels right like no other work ever has. It's sorta the old canard about "loving what you do."

In other words, I know because I love the work. I lose myself. I can spend whole days working, not drinking, not eating, just working. Hard to ignore.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't have passion, I'm just good at what I do.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've enjoyed coding since I was young. but, I'm not sure I'd call it my passion.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder about that too.

<comment><USER6> One useful way is what you'd love to do if you had infinite money.

<comment><USER7> And what if the answer is "putz away the week doing all sorts of different things none of which anyone would pay me for and any one of which if done exclusively for an extended period (or if required to do when not in the mood for it) would quickly become oppressive"?

Is it inconceivable that not everyone has a passion?</comment></comment></comment>


1200 screenshots of computer interfaces from old movies - <AUTHOR> http://screen.waxy.org/screenshots/

<comment><USER2> Can someone transfer this to something browsable like flickr/pinterest/etc?

<comment><USER3> Try puting:

javascript:a=document.getElementsByTagName('a'); for (b in a){c=document.createElement('img');c.setAttribute('src',a[b].href);a[b].parentElement.appendChild(c);}

into your URL bar.

<comment><USER4> champion, didn't think to do something like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe add the movie Sneakers and maybe Swordfish?</comment>


Show HN: gleeBox, keyboard glee for your web - <AUTHOR> http://thegleebox.com

<comment><USER2> I love it. I've been looking for something like this for a while now. I was a Vimperator user for quite a while, but just couldn't use it anymore. I ran into too many issues, and I think the feel just wasn't there.

I support anybody who tries to make me use my mouse less, and the browser is the biggest pain point right now in that arena :)

<comment><USER3> Would you mind expanding on the issues you ran into with Vimperator?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey great work on your plugin! But I must say I'll stick with vimperator, and this would be for the love of just one feature: Hints.

Hints allow you to select a link, either by numbers assigned to each link in your current page view, or by typing the link's name.

Maybe I misunderstood the way gleeBox works, but from what I've tested, you can select all links (with ?a) but you then have to navigate to the correct one by repeatedly pressing TAB? That's a show stopper for me.

But like I said, kudos for the initiative.

On a related note there's a standalone browser with vimperator-like features currently under developpment although the available versions are more than usable: <http://www.uzbl.org> . When it gets stable, I'll definitely dump firefox/vimperator :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. The default behavior of gleeBox is to search for links when you enter any text.

So, you can simply enter a part of the text of the link you want to go to. If multiple links have the same text, you can TAB your way to the right link. You don't need to use ?a.

<comment><USER4> I'm a real newb. :) Thanks for clarifying. It's mentionned in the user manual, but to be honnest I just read the big highlights about the commands not the text.. Sorry sir :). And again, great job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> On a related note, Google Experimental Labs lets you enable Vim-style navigational shortcuts for search results: <http://www.google.com/experimental/>

</comment><comment><USER5> You should really remake the screencast, I can barely hear the voice.

<comment><USER5> I can make you a voice recording for the screencast, if you like, just give me the text to read. That's my little hobby. See examples in my blog.

<comment><USER6> Strange, the sound level seems to be reasonable for me on all the machines I've heard the video on...

<comment><USER7> Well, the sound level is okay, but I can barely understand what he says.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I use vimperator for firefox, it uses vim-style command-line. Works great and is extensible. <http://vimperator.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> gleeBox and vimperator differ a lot in the way they work even though their core functionality is the same, that is to aid in navigation.

And, with gleeBox, you can do a lot more like search bookmarks, execute bookmarklets, yubnub commands, etc. Plus, I think it is more easy to use for the non-vim junkies :)

<comment><USER9> Searching bookmarks are available by default in vimperator. You can easily create a yubnub command and assign a hotkey for it, i think. And since vimperator can execute any javascript code from its command line, you can execute bookmarklets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> sid- Another idea 1\. Delete ads by command - del div.classname (but for that a user will have to know the classname for that div, maybe an inspect html shortcut for selected item like the letter i, ?) or delete a.parentNode 2\. Check/Uncheck checkboxes and click submit buttons (Maybe)

<comment><AUTHOR> #1 - What do you mean by deleting an ad? Do you mean to hide an element on a page whenever that page is opened? I'm not sure how the inspect command will work, though.

#2 - Makes sense.

<comment> sid- 1\. Launch gleebox, search for link. once link is selected type :i or :i.parentNode (or maybe a shorthand for that :i^1 or :i^2 which could mean :i.parentNode.parentNode) once you inspect an element del should be starighforward. And del commands for particular page can also be persisted and run for subsequent visits.And have separate options for persisting del commands and running them on subsequent page visit.

Feel free to ignore these suggestions if you think it will affect usability and bring more complexity.

<comment><AUTHOR> This might make it a bit too complicated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> sid- Feature request : search tipjar for ESP related to current site via gleebox and accept result in gleebox itself without going to options.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a crazy but a very useful feature request. Wish it was easier and a little less time-consuming to implement.

Maybe someday... :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We'll love any feedback. Thanks!

<comment> sid- 1\. I would love if you can add a feature to click the 'play' button on a flash video through the keyboard shortcut. For example on your own page <http://thegleebox.com/> there is a video, but to watch that I have to use the mouse.

2\. Searching google and other search engines without going through yubnub command (eliminate the extra HTTP get). I know i can search google through the address bar and the search box on top right, typing 'g' is much easier than command+L and command+K.

3\. ability to pin/unpin the gleebox so it does not disappear despite http refresh when I open a link in the same tab.

<comment> sid- Also How about implementing login functionality to websites with such a command ?

lo::facebook (could use your save username/password in firefox) or lo:facebook -u username -p password

Since many a times the login page on websites is uninteresting

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds useful. We'll think about it. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


NSA releases open-source infosec tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.itnews.com.au/News/406509,nsa-releases-linux-based-open-source-infosec-tool.aspx <comment><USER2> Using their extraordinary resources to educate industry and peers to improve the state of the art should be a main operating procedure for a gov funded security organization.

<comment><USER3> I think the NSA is also behind the EDP Audit, Control and Security Newsletter. I was once invited to contribute a paper but had to cancel because I get a little loopy sometimes.

There is the CIA World Fact Book. The CIA also has an online library that I haven't really looked into other than that someone posted a link to some advice for intelligence analysts, on the general topic of avoiding personal bias.

firstname.lastname@example.com will send you real spy stories that you may Feed The Monster, that is, write movie or TV scripts.

Both the CIA and NSA have "For Kids" sections for those of our younguns who want to grow up to be spies.

One of my very best friends is an FBI agent. A former girlfriend endangered national security by listing her work address on our alumni website; she's heavily into math and there aren't many reasons one receives mail at Ft. Meade. That's what post office boxen are for.

My second cousin Glenn Thobe speaks better Russian than Vladimir Lenin. Because he had "some connections in the State Department" he was permitted an unescorted five-month visit to the Soviet Union at a time when the Commies feared the Free World far, far more than we feared them - and for good reason.

Glenn is a soft-spoken, quiet, good-looking guy, he was young at the time so I expect the Soviet chicks were hurling themselves at him like beached whales.

He is also a physicist and an electrical engineer. If you want to win a Cold War when it suddenly grows Hot, you want lots of Physicists and Electrical Engineer but then Uncle Sam launches an Intercontinental Ballistic Vegetarian who doesn't even have a driver's license because he prefers public transport.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This brief writeup from Puppet Labs seems to answer most of the questions I had about the nature and usefulness of the technology released.

[https://puppetlabs.com/blog/nsa-release-system-integrity- man...](https://puppetlabs.com/blog/nsa-release-system-integrity-management- platform-simp)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is _not_ by the NSA but by its contractors. Namely employees of Onyx Point, Inc. and KEYW Corporation.

<comment><USER6> There are several other contractors that were involved in the creation of the Puppet modules but those are the top two contributors probably. In fact, I'm pretty sure I was asked to contribute the Puppet module I hacked a year ago or so to the project but with a casual search I didn't see any commit by myself.

I had no idea that NSA had anything to do with this project is the thing. I just thought it was a project to standardize deployments of projects for DoD IC systems using modern configuration management tools, specifically Puppet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The technology transfer project is fun. If you read the document from March 2015, they released a list of patents which can be licensed and used by US gov and companies.

Or... by a large number of countries for free, where the US patents do not apply.

<comment><USER3> But not by many of the countries we actually trade with. :-D

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/SIMP](https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/SIMP)

<comment><USER9> "For those out there that just want the goods, the actual code for the SIMP project is hosted under the SIMP GitHub Organization."

[https://github.com/simp](https://github.com/simp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why did I read that comment section? I wonder if any of those people have ever heard of SELinux.

</comment><comment><USER11> That's also a move towards transparency, a great tool to control and limit government.

I'm sure there'll still be classified programs in the future, but I'd urge people to go beyond "they're evil" and see what it represents.

</comment><comment><USER12> That's a huge amount of repositories. I've been reading through the descriptions of a few and so far it's hard to gauge what this thing is in its entirety (or maybe I'm just too tired).

After working with their OWF I'm skeptical that this will be anything better than commercial but I'll keep an open mind and continue looking through docs. If anyone has a better summarization that would also be helpful (because apparently I haven't figured it out yet).

</comment><comment><USER13> Not their first Opensource project Apache Accumulo was opensourced by them - [http://www.informationweek.com/applications/nsa-submits- open...](http://www.informationweek.com/applications/nsa-submits-open-source- secure-database-to-apache/d/d-id/1099972)?

</comment><comment><USER14> The contents of the NSA Tech Transfer program are also quite interesting:

[http://m.nsa.gov/research/_files/tech_transfers/nsa_technolo...](http://m.nsa.gov/research/_files/tech_transfers/nsa_technology_transfer_program.pdf) [pdf]

</comment><comment><USER15> Forbidden message appears to me.

Here is the google cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Iac_dvJ...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Iac_dvJSWqkJ:www.itnews.com.au/News/406509,nsa- offers-cybersecurity-tool-to-businesses.aspx+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=en)

<comment><USER15> Aims to avoid duplication of effort for govt agencies.

The US National Security Agency has offered up one of its cyber security tools for government departments and the private sector to use freely to help counter threats and raise their security posture.

The systems integrity management platform - SIMP - was released to the code repository GitHub over the weekend.

SIMP helps to keep networked systems compliant with security standards, the NSA said, and should form part of a layered, "defence-in-depth" approach to information security.

NSA said it released the tool to avoid duplication after US government departments and other groups tried to replicate the product in order to meet compliance requirements set by US Defence and intelligence bodies.

"By releasing SIMP, the agency seeks to reduce duplication of effort and promote greater collaboration within the community: the wheel would not have to be reinvented for every organisation," the NSA said in a release.

Currently Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 6.6 and 7.1 and CentOS versions 6.6 and 7.1-1503-01 are the only supported operating systems for SIMP.

The NSA, which has in recent years faced heat over its mass surveillance and bulk data collection activities as exposed by former contractor Edward Snowden, has increased its efforts to share its technology in recent months.

It recently debuted its 'technology transfer' program, which aims to further the development of new capabilities and technologies within both government and the private sector.

The program allows the NSA to offer internally-developed technology to industry and researchers. It has so far opened up a range of products in eight categories spanning networking, optics, processing, security, and microelectronics, among others [pdf].

Director of the program, Linda Burger, said the open source method of "transferring technology from the federal laboratory to the marketplace is extremely efficient".

"The open source community can leverage the work that NSA has produced, and the government can benefit from that community's expertise and perspective. It's a win for everyone – and for the nation itself," she said in a statement.

Despite the secrecy of its intelligence gathering work, the NSA has a history of producing and publishing security-related work, and holds annual competitions that seek to find the best cybersecurity papers.

The spy agency's trusted systems research group has also produced a hardened, mandatory access control architecture called Security Enhanced Linux that has found its way into several distributions, as well as Google's Android mobile operating system, FreeBSD, and Oracle's Solaris.

<comment><USER16> Do you remember that backdoor that was found in SELinux a few years ago?

<comment><USER17> No, could you elaborate on this "back door"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That "Report Abuse" button...

</comment><comment><USER3> I applied for the US Air Force Cyber Command in 2008. While there is no way I could get a clearance I hoped to work in a purely defensive position.

At the time every branch of the military wanted its own computer security force; eventually they were unified under the Joint Forces Cyber Command, which is under the Stategic Command (STRATCOM); the Strategic Command is the joint successor to the Strategic Air Command.

(The military is heavily into the word "Joint". I cannot possibly speculate as to why.)

Each branch has its own force, MARFORCYBER for the Marines and so on.

They are all based in Ft. Meade however Ft. Meade really isn't that big. I expect they just use Ft. Meade to receive snail mail, but if you look up its Zip Code at [http://www.usps.com/](http://www.usps.com/) in bright red text the resulting page says "The Postal Service does not deliver mail to Ft. Meade" but then provides the Zip Code.

(At least it did last time I checked.)

Also at Ft. Meade and open to the public is the National Cryptological Museum. You can see stuff like a U-2 and a real Enigma machine there.

You can apply to work for These United States at [http://www.usajobs.gov/](http://www.usajobs.gov/)

I watched some recruiting videos when I applied to the USAF Cyber Command; one of pointed out that cell phones are not permitted in secure areas because they have a maintenance mode that enables The Phone Company to listen in without your knowledge. Have A Nice Day.

<comment><USER19> > (The military is heavily into the word "Joint". I cannot possibly speculate > as to why.)

Joint refers to a multibranch organization. The Joint Forces Cyber Command, for example, doesn't belong to a specific branch, but employs multiple branches. The commander can be Air, Army, Navy, or Marine. When any two branches work together it becomes _joint_.

<comment><USER20> >The commander can be Air, Army, Navy, or Marine.

In non-combat joint operations. Like technological development, R&D, etc. The Marines are represented by the Navy, as they're part of the Navy.

<comment><USER21> The USMC will still have personnel stationed in these organizations, it won't all be Navy.

<comment><USER3> Do Marines serve aboard Naval vessels?

I do understand that the Marine Corps was created because the Navy wasn't having a whole lot of luck with attacking the Barbary Pirates on land, so the Navy delivered the Marines to Tunisia or Morocco or what have you then the Marines dealt with the pirates after going ashore in a Ground Effect Vehicle.

I have only been aboard just one of my father's boats, the USS Springfield in Gaeta, Italy in 1970 and '71\. I clearly remember this huge battleship but when I visited in 1997 what I expect was the same kind of ship looked more like a canoe.

I think the Springfield was either a Light Cruiser or a Missile Cruiser but Dad never made a whole lot of sense when he tried to explain things verbally.

Anyway I don't recall ever seeing any Marines there in Gaeta.

I do understand that in These Modern Times the United States Marine Corps jets around aboard Virgin Air.

<comment><USER21> I imagine Marines will be deployed at least on Naval vessels with combat or combat support missions. I imagine Marines fly missions from aircraft carriers alongside Navy pilots, albeit fewer. And, land-based research or other commands (like the previous poster had mentioned) will still have Marines -- it's more than just a large infantry unit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A similar headline might read: "ISIS releases freedom of speech app" or perhaps "KKK releases geocaching app" or "LAPD releases Snitcharoo app" etc.

I wouldn't be against a Dept of Cyber Affairs, but the NSA absolutely needs to be stopped, at any cost.

</comment><comment><USER23> any hacker who supports the NSA or GCHQ is a traitor to the hacker culture and to the human race. these disgusting people must be stopped. the americans and british geopolitical meddling made their own enemies which they implore you to give your freedoms up for (or did, your freedoms are gone right about now) - the NSA and GCHQ need to be completely abolished and the money put into sustainable communities and fuck their terrorist mindset bullshit ideology. they create the fucking terrorists not us. ahem :)

<comment><USER24> > traitor to the hacker culture

I don't understand the weird disconnect between HN and the intelligence community. It's almost the _perfect_ job for a 'hacker' type: work with cutting edge technology and thousands of other incredibly intelligent people to try and out-think adversaries to gain access to their resources. You get to build defensive _and_ offensive software to attack computer systems, and actually use it, something that would get you arrested if you did it personally. This was why I loved penetration testing, and an obvious extension of financial security would be working in national security. Yet somehow, these guys are 'evil' now, notwithstanding the IRA and otehrs in the UK, the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks, and so on - those were all perpetrated by _actual_ evil people, who deserved to be investigated and followed and found. And, looking at the leaked documents, there is a huge amount of auditing and checking - don't do this, because it's illegal, don't search for that because it's against the law - not the wild west free-for-all that people seem to imagine.

Anyway, if I could get a clearance, I'm sure I'd love working for GCHQ or SIS in the infosec arena, as would most hackers. The cognitive diasonance is strong in many people!

<comment><USER25> This one sided view of their marketing pitch is exactly what's wrong with them and, to some extent HN in general, in it's Californian money & tech bubble...

Seen from the outside, this kind of tech-trip-before-thinking-globally, or solutionism, is why people are upset, and rightly so. Snowden has shown, as many others have before and after, that they spy for economic and political gain against ally, they don't even respect local American's laws and could hardly be described as democratic or even accountable.

I'm not saying there isn't a need for law enforcement or surveillance, but it has to be accountable, targeted and justified. Not simply a secret digital war machine disguised under the "omg, everything is now terrorism! Save the children! --fox" and cool marketing to entrap the young mind and throw them away once their time has passed...

I wish I would want to work there, IF and only IF, they would fix all those issues.

In the mean time, yes, they are an enemy of democracy, and a very hypocritical one at that.

The public servants that work there deserve to be put to work for the greater good.

<comment><USER26> Criticising the NSA for spying on the wrong targets makes as little sense as criticising soldiers because your country is at war with the wrong enemy.

<comment><USER27> The army doesn't normally go off and attack another country in secret without even telling their own government.

<comment><USER26> heh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Probably has hidden backdoors

</comment><comment><USER29> It would be interesting if there is an intentional hidden vulnerability within the code that NSA could use as a backdoor into companies that end up implementing the tool into their system.

</comment><comment><USER30> See? They're not evil at all! It's just like Microsoft. Opensourcing stuff proves they are good now. They're going to be the organisation we all love. You'll see. /s</comment>