Dropbox Drops Photo Galleries - <AUTHOR> https://www.dropbox.com/help/photos-videos/photos-page <comment><USER2> I don't think the consumer space is something Dropbox is really interested in. I don't blame them and they probably have the numbers to back up their decision to drop photo galleries.

I thought Carousel was going to be a big success[1] but it didn't hit the mark like I suspected. Even if it did I doubt it would generate any meaningful revenue for them.

Google has figured out the consumer photo space with Google Photos. Their general approach was simply better than Carousel which was too focused on socializing. Even there they would have been outdone by Google Photos; not to mention the crazy AI which comes along with Google Photos.

Shameless plug for an open source EXIF-based photo workflow automation tool[2][3] I wrote and used with Dropbox but now use with Google Drive / Google Photos / Synology.

[3] [http://github.com/jmathai/elodie](http://github.com/jmathai/elodie)

[2] [https://medium.com/@jmathai/introducing-elodie-your- personal...](https://medium.com/@jmathai/introducing-elodie-your-personal- exif-based-photo-and-video-assistant-d92868f302ec)

[1] [https://medium.com/@jmathai/thoughts-on-dropbox- carousel-e5a...](https://medium.com/@jmathai/thoughts-on-dropbox- carousel-e5aad177400a)

<comment><USER3> Google is pushing out new features for Google Photos at an impressive rate through now as well. Hope that doesn't. If they didn't shut Carousel down before, they would probably be shutting it down by now with Google Photos, Apple Photos, Amazon, taking so much of the space up.

<comment><USER4> What happens when Google Photos shuts down?

<comment><USER5> Has Gmail shut down yet. Google photos is not going to shut down. Why? Because of data photos are data billions of megabytes of data that is being uploaded to Google every week. I don't think Google would want to miss out on it.

<comment><USER6> Gmail makes a lot of money with paying customers and with ads for non-paying customers. I don't think Google photos makes money on its own.

It could easily happen that Google comes up with a new product they think should replace Google Photos so that they shut down photos to force-migrate users. Wouldn't be the first time.

<comment><USER7> Google photos is a good impetus to pay for upgraded storage as you'll quickly blow past the limit.

<comment><USER3> 16 megapixel photos and 1080 videos are free. The amount of people who need limits above that are pretty slim. It'll be 1-2 years before top phones go above 16 megapixels photos. So even longer for a more than small percentage of people to have those phones. Among those that do, including me, I'd be okay with most photos being downsized to 16 megapixels from say 21 megapixels in 3 years. Google Photos might also increase the free limit in a few years like they did once before. If they don't increase the free limit, I could see people like me wanting the full size photos and videos in maybe 4-5 years. Quite a long game for Google to be playing when they have been keen on cutting spending in recent years and increasing profit.

I hope they do commit to Google Photos growth momentum over profit seeking, but hard to be optimistic these days based on their recent record (and no I'm not talking about Google Reader).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Trust the cloud they said, it's always there they said.

In all seriousness, the need for local, speedy, transparent and ubiquitous data redundancy is still there and if anything growing.

Consumers want a 'refrigerator' of data - be it documents, photos, etc. Buy, set and forget.

Huge opportunity there.

<comment><USER9> It won't work because ISP are slowly but steadily turning home internet connections to one way flows. It starts with data caps and ends with IPv4 exhaustion and every single account behind Carrier NAT.

The type of internet where anyone could host and interact freely with other parts of the internet are already past. People just haven't realized it. It'll be Internet TV.

<comment><USER10> My solution to this is a cheap Linux VPS. It's still "in the cloud", but I think simple VPS hosting is much less likely to go away or change drastically than more complex cloud services. It seems like co-location would be even better, but I have no idea how that would work for individuals looking to host a single server. I've always assumed it would be prohibitively expensive.

<comment><USER6> Good for HN folks but no option for 99% of the population. For them, Dropbox or Google Drive are the best and most secure option at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It looks like they are moving towards folders as an organizing principle instead of an album abstraction. More information here: [https://www.dropbox.com/help/photos-videos/changes- photos](https://www.dropbox.com/help/photos-videos/changes-photos)

<comment><USER12> This is probably a better link than the original.

<comment><USER13> Can confirm. The original link doesn't tell anything about discontinuation of the service—at least not the French localization of that page. But that other link does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Plug for SmugMug here: $40/year for, as far as I understand it, unlimited photo and video storage. Great controls over sharing, easy to order prints, and the iOS app is getting better all the time. Plus, you are not the product. They just want to do photo storage well, and that's it.

Back when I was deciding on a service, I was down to Carousel and SmugMug. I liked the idea of paying Dropbox for space that would go beyond photos and I think Carousel was good at syncing photos from the iPhone, but I went with SmugMug for the reasons above and have not regretted it one bit.

<comment><USER15> I like the idea of SmugMug but I have a few quibbles with it:

\- As far as I can tell, there's no RAW support ([http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93278](http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93278)), admittedly this is the biggest problem for me, as all my photos are RAW.

\- Video is extremely limited (20 min/3GB) and I expect to be able to store that too, as I treat it basically the same way I treat photos.

\- Their privacy policy is that of a content publishing platform, not a place to store personal photos: They will access your information without your consent and without mandatory notification if "we believe your actions are inconsistent with the spirit or language of our user agreements or policies". That last one is the killer.

\- Their ToS is that of a content publishing platform, not a place to store photos: They prohibit "User Content that, in the sole judgment of SmugMug, is objectionable, harmful or which restricts or inhibits any other person from using or enjoying the Services, or which may expose SmugMug or its users to any harm or liability of any nature." i.e. they can object to literally anything I put there. I don't want to have to think about whether my backup provider will deign to approve the photos I take.

I honestly prefer Google Photos to SmugMug. It has decent RAW support and with a $10/month Google Apps account you can get an unenforced 1TB quota (i.e. unlimited). And they don't police the stuff you backup, only what you share.

<comment><USER3> > I honestly prefer Google Photos to SmugMug. It has decent RAW support and > with a $10/month Google Apps account you can get an unenforced 1TB quota > (i.e. unlimited). And they don't police the stuff you backup, only what you > share.

So there's an official 1 TB quota, but for now it's unenforced? Presumably, it'll be enforced at some point, no? If you're putting up raw files and/or videos that exceed their free tier, that can add up quickly.

The TOS and PP issues are bummers. Have just added on to why I don't want to use SmugMug.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Annoying. I was happy paying $100/yr for Dropbox to store my photos along with a few extra files. The photo features weren't great, but good enough for basic browsing through galleries. I bought into the idea that if I was paying for the storage it would be more durable and permanent than some fly-by-night photo startup or google/amazon feature. I realize the photos aren't going anywhere, but my use case is. Canceling my subscription to Dropbox... now.

<comment><USER17> Dropbox only dabbled in photos. Despite my desire to support Dropbox both because they pioneered the online synced folder and because they supported Linux I ended up paying Google because Google Photos came out of the gate way ahead of Dropbox's languishing attempts at photo management/sharing and Google Photos has kept a strong pace.

<comment> Paul-ish How do you sync from Linux?

<comment><USER17> For Dropbox? You install the official Linux client. For Google? There are third-party sync products and Gnome can mount it as a network drive but I didn't mean to imply that I did; I don't sync Google Drive with Linux.

<comment><USER18> I use InSync for Google Drive on Linux, works great

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Google's version (photos.google.com) is great. I love the auto-generated albums, animated gifs and movies. It's also very easy to share and create group albums.

<comment><USER20> but a lot of us were using Dropbox because we really don't want to use anything Google. That's the thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe I'm too old for this, but I read the title as "Dropbox _discontinues_ photo galleries"

I still can't get used to the fact that drop means release.

<comment><USER22> Dropbox _is_ discontinuing photo galleries.

> The Photos page is changing on July 17, 2017, but your pictures will stay > safe in your Dropbox account. After July 17, you'll no longer be able to > create or share albums on the web, or browse photos in the current timeline > view.

<comment><USER21> You're right! i just skimmed over the article and missed the important thing in the box on top :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> For those looking into alternatives but do not like the auto-downsizing or quality reduction: Google Photos has an option to include (and upload too) your pictures stored with Google Drive.

[https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6156103?co=GENIE.Pl...](https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6156103?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER24> Funny, it seems that it has been a feature since the first day. Just yesterday I watched this [1] first demo of dropbox which notably mentioned the feature

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QmCUDHpNzE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QmCUDHpNzE)

</comment><comment><USER25> What will be the next thing removed? Linux? Syncing? I mean I almost cancelled when the public folders were shut down. We tried Dropbox for business but after it not working out we had 50,000 files deleted at random and I had to restore them, one at a time...

</comment><comment><USER26> Their monthly price for 1TB of storage is still less than Google Drive, but I've become increasingly frustrated with Dropbox. If I want 2TB instead of 1TB, I have to pay 4.5 times more. I can understand that they may want to go after business users and that I am not a core customer, but the pricing seems out of whack and then they keep on cutting features. For me, it's time to get off the train.

</comment><comment><USER27> Dropbox is a strange company. They must be doing backend maintenance or something, but they seem to take away more features and function than they add.

I honestly don't get what they do as a company, and I love the product and have paid for years. They hold back basic features like search and now take away stuff like albums that freeware packages can do?

</comment><comment><USER28> This seems to be 'why': Will I still be able to share photos directly from my Dropbox account to Facebook or Twitter? After July 17, you'll no longer be able to share photos directly from your Dropbox account to social media. You can use shared links to share files or folders on social media.

</comment><comment><USER29> When you scroll down on the page, the logo at the top suddenly animates and contracts horizontally. The "Dropbox" word disappears and only the box logo remains. This serves no visible purpose and merely serves to distract the reader.

Logo animations when scrolling were introduced in order to be able to shrink the size of the header, to give more room for the content. But the header on this page does not shrink at all.

The funny thing is that this page, while following the norms of flat design, has managed to adopt skeuomorphism in the worst way. The shrinking logo had a use on pages that shrink the header, but here is remains as a pure decoration, with no functional purpose.

</comment><comment><USER30> This title is misleading. Dropbox is "dropping" photo galleries in favor of something more integrated[1]:

"The Photos page will be replaced with a new, streamlined photos experience that looks more like our redesigned Dropbox website. You'll be able to access it by navigating to dropbox.com/photos or clicking on Photos in the left-hand menu of dropbox.com."

[1] [https://www.dropbox.com/help/photos-videos/changes- photos](https://www.dropbox.com/help/photos-videos/changes-photos)

</comment><comment><USER31> Well that makes choosing Google Drive a lot easier

<comment><USER32> Last time I checked Google Drive's client was a few steps behind Dropbox's. Is this still the case? I think at some point Google did not have a Linux client and I know the UI for OSX didn't look or feel as native as Dropbox did. However it has been a long time since I tried it out.

<comment><USER17> Still no Linux client but Gnome can mount your Google Drive much like an NFS or SMB mount.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This sucks. I used this all the time. Does anyone know a similar, anonymous service? I want private sharing links and I don't want a username displayed on the gallery page like Google Photos.

</comment><comment><USER34> They still haven't even gotten desktop sync right. I removed it and downgraded my account after months and months of CPU usage issues on macOS.

</comment><comment><USER35> Dropbox lost me when they closed Carousel. I don't understand why this space is so hard.

<comment><USER36> Nobody wants to pay.

<comment><USER27> Sure they do, they just need more. Plenty of people are paying for iCloud and Google.

Dropbox' strength is sync and sharing, but they kneecap that by double- counting sharing capacity. I can't share a video with my wife (a non- subscriber) without paying _again_ )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Well this explains the shift to Cyberduck my company made.</comment>


The Venture Capital Financing Stages - <AUTHOR> http://www.antiventurecapital.com/finance.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Checkout the other links on the site. . .an interesting read if you wanna kill time. . .idk if i agree with all of it. . . but its always nice to hear someone's point of view on a subject. . .</comment>


Hackers hit Philippines websites amid China dispute - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2012-04-hackers-philippines-websites-china-dispute.html

<comment><USER2> I would like to know how anybody thinks they can determine the nationality of a hacker smart enough to penetrate government websites in the year 2012.</comment>


Uber raises at $3.5B valuation from TPG and Google Ventures - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20130822/uber-filing-in-delaware-shows-tpg-investment-at-3-5-billion-valuation-google-ventures-also-in/

<comment><USER2> Any way this makes sense other than as an investment into the virtual infrastructure that will route and control a self-driving car ecosystem?

<comment><USER3> Taxi/limo service is $6B market as is, why does it have to be about self- driving cars to "make sense"? You statement seems to beg the question.

<comment><USER4> > $6B

Interesting given the valuation of Uber. Does it imply that Uber is worth more than half of the Taxi/limo market?</comment></comment></comment>


Why are engineers treated like peons in the startup world? - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/1a177j/why_are_engineers_treated_like_peons_in_the/

<comment><AUTHOR> Vinod Khosla is talking at sxsw on how rigorously they evaluate and monitor the CEOs they invest in. Evidently that doesn't apply to his grandson.

<comment><USER2> What's going on with his grandson?

<comment><AUTHOR> His grandson is the CEO in this story

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> For better or for worse, the system is named "capitalism" not "hardworkerism".

In the "you can't cheat an honest man" department, you can be sure that some of the engineers complaining about nepotism now were expecting to cash in on the CEO's connections when they signed on.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the one complaining about nepotism. They were just complaining that he is an inexperienced tool that underpays them. That said, I'm sure they did count on his family connections creating an unending runway when they signed on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In my experience, everyone in tech tends to think that their particular skill set is the only thing that matters and that everyone else is an idiot. This seems true for business, marketing, engineering, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's probably true. It'd be okay if everyone thought their skills was most important and all the skills paid about the same, but business and investing think their skill is most important and their salaries actually support that idea.</comment></comment>


The Illusion of Competence - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/ideas/what-know-it-alls-dont-know-or-the-illusion-of-competence <comment><USER2> _" One study found that 80 per cent of drivers rate themselves as above average – a statistical impossibility"_

In a driving test, five drivers score 100, 100, 100, 100, 90. The average is 98, and so 80% of them are above average.

<comment><USER3> Lay people confuse average with median. When you ask someone if they're "above average" they often assume you mean "in the top half of the population in ability" which is "above median." In which case 80% is impossible.

<comment><USER4> What you say might be true, but the article is written by "the editor in chief of Knowing Neurons and a PhD candidate in neuroscience at the University of California". It seems that not only lay people confuse statistics terms, but also the very people that make research and present the results. And this is sad ... and in line with the article in some sense.

<comment><USER5> I just want to be clear... Are you implying that the author doesn't understand the difference between different measures of central tendency?

<comment><USER6> > Are you implying that the author [a PhD candidate in neuroscience] doesn't > understand the difference between different measures of central tendency?

They probably are. There's this tendency in geek circles to assume that someone—especially an expert in another field—doesn't know what they're talking about unless they spell it out in such excruciating detail that those geeks (who actually _don 't_ know what they're talking about) can follow along as well.

I don't know why it is, and it's frustrating as hell. It seems like it's related to the Principle of Charity, but I don't know if it's the same thing, or just a similar thing.

<comment><USER5> Glad to read this. I thought I might be the only one picking up on the irony here. I mean, come on. He JUST read about D-K, then demonstrates it in action.

<comment><USER6> I agree, although as I said to another commenter, I'm more bothered by assuming others to be incompetent even though they are, than I am by assuming yourself to be competent when you're not. And they're related, but not quite the same?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Consider if every person thought he/she was in the 60%ile for some skill. Then, the best people would underestimate their skill and the worst would overestimate.

This would produce the statistical results of the Dunning Kruger test, but I don't think that's nearly as exciting as what is claimed.

<comment><USER8> I was thinking this as I read it, and the author seemed to be shocked that both extremes of the bell curve thought of themselves as being more average. That just seems logical, to assume you are average.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ever since I learned about Dunning-Krueger, I've systematically questioned many things to which I would normally feel competence or expertise.

It's basically redoubled my Imposter Syndrome. It's not crippling, but I often wonder: "Do I _actually_ know this? Do I know enough to know it if I don't?"

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how expertise in one domain translates to D-K effect in other domains.

<comment><USER10> I'm a software engineer so I can confidently say that it does not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So, what does convince the least knowledgeable?

<comment><USER5> I have seen D-K written about in the context of beginner-experts; people that don't have more knowledgeable peers to help them see the limitations of what they know (think one-man IT team in a small company, or angry drunk Uncle rambling on about politics in the recliner).

My observation is that D-K comes up in areas that people think are easy to understand (but are actually complex). Especially if the person comes from a domain with high perceived complexity. Example would be computer scientist discussing education or psychology... That seems to be ripe territory for D-K.

<comment><USER6> > people that don't have more knowledgeable peers to help them see the > limitations of what they know

I've definitely met people like that; people who are used to being the smartest people in the room, and so when they make pronouncements without thinking long about a problem, everyone around them is used to assuming what they say is right, because they're smart.

And once they're around other smart people, it's like talking to a brick wall—they're so used to everyone else accepting their bullshit, that they don't know how to handle being called on it, and they don't know how to defend their ideas because they've never had to before.

Oy. Frustrating people.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: idea for the future of document editing - <AUTHOR> http://doc-edit.herokuapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Great job! I encourage you to continue improving it.

I pasted a Paul Graham essay and the results were telling:

<https://dl.dropbox.com/u/315/random_pics/nlp1.png>

<https://dl.dropbox.com/u/315/random_pics/nlp2.png>

<https://dl.dropbox.com/u/315/random_pics/nlp3.png>

<https://dl.dropbox.com/u/315/random_pics/nlp4.png>

In short, the results aren't relevant at all -- either to the author or to his audience. (The third screenshot is particularly conspicuous.)

I can think of some domains where this could be pretty handy -- you should try feeding your algorithm a stream of tweets and see what happens.

All in all, this hasn't been done before and was presented quite nicely. Well done.

<comment><USER3> Another test case: I pasted a couple paragraphs of John Gruber's Kindle review in there, and it shows me (only) "Fleetwood Mac" (derived from the phrase "my Mac"), and "I Love" (the country music song, from the sentence "I love glowing screens").

It skipped terms that seem to me much more obvious links, like "iPhone", "iPad", "TiVo", "ATM", "Kindle", "credit card", "supermarket", or "e-ink".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is very very cool, and makes for a good demo too.

One suggestion would be to put the latest topic on top - or at least vertically near where you type.

Second being able to pick the corpus being used for matching. might make it interesting. Say IEEE or ACM, or PubMed. Might bring up interesting things that others have written that are similar, which they've not noticed before.

I can see a very good match with technical writing, publications, etc. Esp if you can pull in excerpts. This would make for much better writing for many who may not have Eng as first language.

Neat!

<comment><USER5> Oh yes. Give me what you just described, integrated into a typesetting system that can produce scientific papers of LaTex quality (or, simply, a LaTex editor like Kile) and make citations to those sidebar infos drag & droppable, with links to the fulltext PDF (might need integrated Login handling for the electronic publishers).

Second idea: Scratch that and integrate it into a PDF reader instead and instead of drag & drop give me the citations as plaintext popups (this way it would be useful for other purposes, even book reading).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> An interesting idea, but it comes up with really, really useless suggestion -- I don't think anybody needs to be told what don't is, west may be a cardinal direction but 'in the west we enjoy' does not refer to particular side of a compass.

Also for some reason it blinks with 1. AD is a year (I did write the word one, but it really shouldn't blink).

<comment><USER7> I see it as an interface demo, not a search results demo.

obviously you would connect it to the best search results at your disposal. that's a different problem entirely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think this would be a very good candidate for the future of document _reading_

<comment><USER9> Particularly for educational environments. Annotation of texts to explain cultural references, idiomatic usages, etc., is extremely useful in foreign language instruction, and anything that can help do that automatically and reduce the time an instructor has to to spend preparing the content would be extremely valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> FYI: relevant, not relevent.

It's a cool idea, but presented in a sidebar like that i think it's mostly a distraction. when you're writing you want less outside information, not more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, thanks.

I guess there would need to be the ability to hide the sidebar in a more usable version. Thanks for that tip!

EDIT: grammar

<comment><USER11> What if instead of a sidebar, you could get information about a word by putting your mouse over it and doing something? (does javascript let you trap rightclicks?)

<comment><USER12> The nice thing about a sidebar is you can investigate a broader scope of the document's semantic content, as opposed to just specific sections. (but yes, it does... and this might be a good way to narrow the context)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The idea is that as you type, some relevant information about what you are typing should appear. Long term, it should integrate search into document editing and simplify the writing process. This is currently far from perfect, I just put it together on the past 4 hours.

<comment><USER13> Given the privacy flap when Google started serving ads based on the contents of e-mails, do you foresee any worries here --or do you think it's sufficiently different, or that such worries have faded away with familiarity?

Also, as a minor nitpick, 'relevant' is misspelt (as 'relevent').

<comment><AUTHOR> I would imagine the biggest privacy concern would be trusting a strange site with personal documents. Most people have no problem storing documents in Google drive but I foresee there would be a slow adoption rate for more serious writing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice Work!

Your https doesn't work for me because you make calls to the unsecured duckduckgo api and chrome refuses.

You should use: <https://api.duckduckgo.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Now using the secure DDG. Thanks for pointing that out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would like to see the ability to drag and drop the text directly into the editor... and an ability to choose the sources for obtaining information (Wolfram Alpha, Wikipedia etc). Also, if you could highlight individual results and run a lookup against them you could drill down even further making the information more relevant... and as a sidenote, I be would inclined to target the student market whom could use this as a study tool (or lifesaver for last minute assignments)

</comment><comment><USER16> Is it just me, or are we missing the source code? Would be nice to have a peek.

Edit: Sorry, didn't see that is was just JS! EditEdit: But where is the source to /keywords

<comment><USER17> (Did the developer claim somewhere the implementation was open source?)

<comment><USER16> No, but if it wasn't I would obfuscate my JS... ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, this is very very relevant to something I've been thinking of for the past few months -- if you're interested in collaborating, shoot me an email.

</comment><comment><USER18> So... does this actually work?

I'm using the latest Safari and OS X 10.8... if I delete the contents of the text box, four of the terms on the right remain.

If I enter new content... still just those four terms.

edit: the more I write, the less terms there are on the right, but they're still terms from the original content... if I type a word twice, I get the definition... three times and it goes away.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are in fact a lot of bugs, it was written in just a few hours as a proof of concept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Typing "Bayesian classification of" somehow causes the relevant content "Naive Bayes classifier" to be added repeatedly in a loop.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting idea. It could be improved by filtering out stop words; right now it recommends Oregon and Belgium for "or" and "be."

</comment><comment><USER21> fyi, zemanta (zemanta.com) has been working on a similiar product (targeting bloggers) for years. Take a look at it.

<comment><USER22> google docs also has an integrated information sidebar this days

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is really cool and I can definitely see it being useful once the kinks are worked out.

Without repeating most of the feedback given already, I've noticed that it picks up too many pointless words. I'd suggest making it more selective with the words picked out to be relevant. Quality over quantity.

</comment><comment><USER24> Very cool. I don't think this is the "future of document editing", but it's a neat project nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER25> I was just testing it using other top news on HN, like this one: Roy Bates's death.

It seems there is a bug when I enter this line:

      "Roy Bates died on"

Paddy Roy Bates's wiki page keeps getting added to the right column continuously.

</comment><comment><USER26> It might be useful to show relevant content from my local system on things that I've written already, like maybe notes from a project, or excerpts from email.

Writing code, similar suggestion, showing other code, requirements, design, etc.

</comment><comment><USER27> I wrote a text with "German constitution" and now it's stuck in a loop fetching the information to "Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany".

<http://i.imgur.com/0QaY2.png>

</comment><comment><USER28> The real time information is neat!

FYI, This feature is available (in non-real time manner) in Google Docs and Microsoft Word, which are powered by Google Search and Bing respectively to research terms, images and relevant content.

</comment><comment><USER29> Modern remembrance agent ([http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~rhodes/Papers/wear-ra- personalt...](http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~rhodes/Papers/wear-ra- personaltech/ra-screen.jpg))

</comment><comment><USER30> Ooh! I had the same idea about providing contextual information. But you executed on it. This is a wonderful tool that I'd use. All the best. Keep improving it.

</comment><comment><USER26> In Firefox 16.0.1 on Linux, if I type a letter after the pre-existing text then the browser opens a tab that I had previously closed. Works fine on Chromium.

</comment><comment><USER31> Very cool. The right hand side should auto-scroll.

</comment><comment><USER32> When you write "times" in documents, it starts to flash (I mean time entry goes and comes back continuosly)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just pushed an update that gives better results and fixes a few of the many bugs.

Thank you everyone for the feedback!

</comment><comment><USER33> This is super amazing for writing Mathematics, if the context aggregation could be tweaked a bit.

</comment><comment><USER34> looks cool ... what I have always found missing in text editors is a local undo (each line maintains its own undo history) ... bad from user experience and weird requirement I know but something like that would be useful for some programmers IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER35> hey that's pretty cool. given that i was just reading about ted nelson's project xanadu this fits pretty neatly with that.

hopefully you can tune it to ignore various words that have less impact on things and instead focus on more core and unique elements.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is the idea, I would like to go one step further. I see it as being in 2 possible 'states' The first would be some overview of the document and the second would be very relevant to what you are typing right now and what you are about to type. For example if you typed "Ted Nelson" right away you should get a picture, bio, birthday and anything else that may be relevant.

<comment><USER36> Some terms could use further disambiguation. For instance - 'lance armstrong' brings up lance, arms (but not arm) and armstrong (which is apparently an airport in Louisiana) but not Lance Armstrong. Cobra brings up the snake, the Cabinet Office Briefing Room but not the insurance plan.

Still, it is pretty cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Nice work!

This would be very helpful for writers, although it can also be used to target ads.

</comment><comment><USER38> Nice effort here...this is a really tough problem to solve "correctly".

</comment><comment><USER39> if you want to do this sort of entity recognition, there is Apache Stanbol which is quite useful: <http://stanbol.apache.org/>

</comment><comment><USER40> how does the NLP work for this?</comment>


You're under arrest–and live on video: Cops are live-streaming from crime scenes - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90468154/youre-under-arrest-and-live-on-camera <comment><USER2> Found this to be a fairly reasonable article covering both the benefits and potential pitfalls of real-time video monitoring usage in law enforcement. Though I thought the 'live-streaming' bit in the title was a touch sensational.

On balance, I tend to think systems like these do more good than harm. That's kind of a loaded statement though, because I'm assuming free, legal, and open access - and I'm not even sure what that means.

That being said, I can see the danger of tools like these being used for ill intent.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this is motivated by the fact that storing video from every body cam is too costly for little gain. The police departments that have well trained staff and nothing to hide adopt them with no effect on officer behavior. Police officers get away with bad behavior because of no accountability. When they make a mistake and kill or injure an unarmed person there is always another officer that will cover them. When you interview all the officers that were supposedly at the crime scene you get contradicting stories precisely because they weren't actually there. Therefore the focus is now on the tactical benefits of body cams.

In video games there is often a "kill cam" that shows you where an enemy attacked you from. This information is often used to spot camping snipers and then sneak up to kill them for revenge. If the police can utilize the body cams correctly the maximum number of casualties should drop drastically.</comment>


James May builds a house from Lego - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/surrey/8168892.stm

<comment><USER2> If you have lego bricks to donate don't give them to James May, give them to a kid in your neighbourhood that can't afford them for a pretty much timeless pleasure instead of for a five day stunt.

The lego in my family has been passed down 3 generations now, close to 43 years and plenty of the original bricks are still there, they're a little faded (some, not all) and some of them are a little loose but they're doing fine.

To throw them away on some rich flunkie's 5 day project is a total waste.

<comment><USER3> > _To throw them away on some rich flunkie's 5 day project is a total waste._

I'm not going to disagree totally with this, but James May has been doing quite a lot lately to raise the profile of science and engineering, and simply blowing off a project like this with disdain seems a bit shallow. It's part of a larger push by the BBC to get more kids into engineering, and while it's too early to say for definite, there are signs that it's working.

Yes, giving surplus lego to a kid down the street is a good thing, but every now and again it's worth supporting larger projects with greater reach.

I don't know if you've read _Good Omens,_ but there's a bit in that where each demon is reporting on what they've done recently. Several talk about the individuals they've tempted, and the near certainty of a soul each. Then Crowley says he managed to tie up the mobile phone network in all London for about 30 minutes around lunchtime. The others can't see what that has to do with anything, and Crowley is at a loss to explain how the frustration and anger will cause tens of thousands of souls to be one step closer to Hell.

Sometimes the big picture is hard to see. Maybe this isn't an example, maybe this is a worthless stunt, maybe this has no long term effect.

But then again, maybe it has.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the best strategy to relocate to the Bay Area? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a recent CompSci grad working in the Midwest for a small software company. I want to relocate to the Bay Area.<p>What's the best strategy to find a software engineering job in the crowded SF job marketplace for someone who doesn't live there? How do I start making professional connections with companies and individuals that are 2,000 miles to the west? Who should I be talking to? <comment><USER2> Honestly I think the best way is to just come out here if you are able to. Grab a room from AirBNB and stay for a month or two. Figure out what you like to do, then find the companies that do that and tell them you are really interested in working for them.

Show up for hack days, tech talks, meetups, user group meetings and all the various things that are happening all the time. Talk to others at these events and ask them if they know someone at one of the companies you are interested in.

</comment><comment><USER3> We are hiring right now- I'd love to chat. I'm also an SF native so can give you some general perspective on the bay area as well. Feel free to email me any time. firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER4> When are you thinking of relocating?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sometime in 2011 -- I'm honestly pretty flexible.

<comment><USER4> Send me a shout on Twitter?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Top HN posts since 8hrs so you wont miss any when you wakeup - <AUTHOR> https://www.8hrs.xyz/ <comment><AUTHOR> It gathers all articles that made it to Hacker News home page and keeps them for 8hrs.

heroku dyno is just up. To see it working comeback soon.</comment>


Can better ads stop the growth of ad blocking? - <AUTHOR> http://adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/ad-blocking-will-keep-growing-until-we-make-ads-better-2/ <comment><USER2> I think he hit the solution with the example he gave of piracy. You don't go after the pirates or try to lock down the product. You change to business model.

One of my favorite ad/content models is TapeOp magazine. They state when subscribing that will get emails from advertisers to the magazine if you subscribe. If you don't want that then don't subscribe. There's none of that "pay if you don't want the annoying ads" nonsense. The ads are relevant to the content of the magazine and are of interest.

I think it may be too late to 'make up with adblock users'. Adblocking will probably be default on future browsers just as popup blocking is.</comment>


Privacy not included: Holiday gift list for privacy and security - <AUTHOR> https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/ <comment><USER2> I see this as nothing more than a fun poke by Mozilla at the overwhelming majority of the technology industry—those who treat privacy as a nuisance at best and as a non-event at worst. Mozilla are giving people like myself the fun of clicking on the Amazon Echo or Google Home and voting "Super creepy," chuckling to ourselves about our virtuousness before closing the tab in Firefox.

I doubt they expect this page to be used by many laypeople. Maybe a few techies will toss a link out to their families as a rough crowdsourced assessment of the degree to which some popular devices respect user privacy. The inclusion of several nearly-unknown high-privacy options seems to be a reminder that there are alternatives; probably more difficult to use or less capable, but alternatives to the mainstream data-harvesting devices you see routinely advertised.

I think it's lighthearted fun intended to illustrate Mozilla's mission of being advocates for privacy, to a degree that we have become unfamiliar as a society in the age of everything-as-a-service.

Yeah, there are probably some inaccuracies. But frankly, unless you're selling a device that allows you to run the services on your own host using open source software (the way Mozilla does [1]), it's fair game to say that it's _possible_ you are not sufficiently respecting user privacy. How can we as users be sure if all we can measure is that, indeed, the device sends data off-network to the "cloud?"

If you genuinely respect user privacy, you should allow a user to wholly own the data in the most pure form possible: they never send it to you.

[1] [https://github.com/mozilla-services](https://github.com/mozilla-services)

<comment><USER3> I think it's an important list, even if somewhat sloppy. It would be to everyone's advantage if product reviewers like Consumer Reports, various tech columnists, blogs and so on, got the message that privacy matters. They need to start including privacy as a component of their review.

Pressure for companies to go green has worked over time; pressure for companies to go "quiet" \-- that is pro-privacy -- could have the same effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this page shows some of the disconnect between the people raising the privacy alarm and your average consumer.

The page looks to be targeted at consumers, with the 'creepy' meter that changes as you scroll. However the PS4 and Xbox are considered 'A little creepy' and a sous vide cooker is listed as 'Somewhat creepy'.

Despite the arguments made on the respective pages for why they are creepy (generally "Shares your information with 3rd parties for unexpected reasons") I don't think any consumer on the planet is going to consider any of those gifts even slightly creepy.

In my opinion it weakens the argument for the legitimately creepy products when such innocuous things are included in the list.

<comment><USER5> take the nest

'has parental controls': can't determine

well, it's a blooming thermostat. You can lock the thing out.

That's more 'parental control' than any standard thermostat.

creepy meter? as a gift for a non-family member? yeah, that's weird.

<comment><USER6> Standard anecdata disclaimer but Nests are a pretty universally liked gift in my circle. It passes the bar of being cool, tasteful, useful, and unlikely that the recipient would purchase one for themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't see the purpose of this page. It's not a guide, it's a poll. Why would I base my decisions about personal privacy on the uninformed opinions of a bunch of random people?

<comment><USER8> It's a poll because this way Mozilla wont have to, be held responsible for, not defend any of the opinions presented there.

> We created this guide to help you buy safe, secure products this holiday > season.

Because "we created this poll so you can see what other people think is safe, secure products this holiday season" doesn't sound nearly as good.

So they made a guide, that's really a poll. What do you mean you can have your cake and eat it too?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How is the Roku on this list? I have a pihole setup to do network level adblocking and telemetry disabling and the Roku is the absolute worst device. Thousands and "phone homes" per day that are not needed for the device to function properly. I can only assume it is feeding data back to the mothership at a very high rate.

</comment><comment><USER10> The most disturbing thing about the state of privacy is the households that purchase a multitude of devices that collect, link, and resell data about you.

As an example, Imagine the household that has multiple gmail accounts, multiple android phones, everyone uses google maps, Chrome on every desktop, google for search, they add a Nest thermostat, a few Dropcams, and for good measure they use 126.96.36.199 and 220.127.116.11 for all of their DNS queries.

You can live in nearly the same world with Amazon and others.

Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER11> By the way I think this Santa guy himself is high on the creepiness scale when it comes to privacy infringement :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Firefox web browser:

[X] Can install extensions without my knowledge or consent that do not explain their functionality, and were added based on pressure from the marketing team. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15956325](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15956325)

Edit: Am I being unfair here?

<comment><USER13> I think you're being unfair.

"This add-on was installed and set to 'OFF' and made no changes in the user experience unless it was explicitly turned on by a user, but it was added. Even when turned on no user data was collected or shared."

<comment><USER12> What part of my description does that contradict?

Edit: Also, the "no data was shared" is a lie or two inches short of one. It injected http headers on requests to NBC sites once activated. No one was logging that?

<comment><USER13> The unfairness is to raise such a minor issue compared to the issues this holiday gift list is intended to address.

<comment><USER8> Mozilla is not allowed to get away with being a little bit shady because they ultimately have good intention.

There is a price to pay to be the "good guy". If Mozilla doesn't want to be good they don't have to be. They don't have to make the mistake Google did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is kind of like the boy that cried wolf:

Thy are listing the PS4 and XBox as a "a little creepy" They are listing Apple iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Apple Air Pods, Roku, ChromeCast, and Kindle as "somewhat creepy".

I am concerned about my privacy and avoid "smart" speakers, appliances, etc, but do not find the devices I listed above "creepy".

<comment><USER13> Do you trust the xbox one to keep its microphone always off? I own one but do find it a little creepy. I keep the kinect turned around away from the room, and have the setting to make it turn fully off. This means annoying waits sometimes when it insists on a software update when turned on, but I think the setting is worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't really get some of these ratings. They give a thumbs-down to fitbit and other gps watches because they track location and speed, etc. Yes that is the entire purpose of buying those products, so I don't really get the presenting of that as a negative feature. It's like rating an email app poorly because it processes your emails.

<comment><USER13> Disclaimer: I work for Fitbit but speak only for myself.

The guide says of Fitbit Versa, "Shares your information with 3rd parties for unexpected reasons: yes". This is false.

The rating may just be by vote, but there's no excuse for getting the facts wrong.

<comment><USER16> > This is false

Since the software is proprietary, and you are not making an official announcement on behalf of fitbit, why should we believe you? What you say directly contradicts the privacy policy[0] on your employer's website, which certainly states that they have the freedom to share your information 'with others': "You may also authorize us to share your information with others" and "We transfer information to our corporate affiliates, service providers, and other partners who process it for us"

0\. [https://www.fitbit.com/legal/privacy-policy#how-info-is- shar...](https://www.fitbit.com/legal/privacy-policy#how-info-is-shared)

<comment><USER13> Please stay on topic. The claim I said was false was "shares your information with 3rd parties _for unexpected reasons_ ".

<comment><USER16> Who expects a fitness tracker to share information to 3rd parties at all? I bet if you asked any of fitbit's customers if they expected fitbit to share their information with <insert random 'data processing' company here>, they would not have expected that.

<comment><USER13> Who? Anyone who knows that companies contract work out. At very few companies is every single function performed by employees.

<comment><USER17> I don't see what employing contractors has to do with sharing user data with third-parties.

<comment><USER13> A contractor is a third party.

<comment><USER17> But a contractor working on your codebase (which is what I believe you were implying) isn't the same as providing user data to a third party (for processing or for advertising and so on).

Providing data to third parties for processing is clearly different (and as an ex-user of one of Fitbit's products I definitely wouldn't have expected that this is the case -- Fitbit's fitness tracking is so core to the company that I wouldn't expect the processing of said data to be outsourced.) Yeah, it's in your privacy policy but that's just a cop-out (by that metric, no product can unexpectedly send data to third-parties).

<comment><USER13> I think you're making assumptions about the kind of information that's shared. The kind of example to think of is when you buy from Fitbit and your information gets sent to a payment processor.

Here's the whole paragraph:

We transfer information to our corporate affiliates, service providers, and other partners who process it for us, based on our instructions, and in compliance with this policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures. These partners provide us with services globally, including for customer support, information technology, payments, sales, marketing, data analysis, research, and surveys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My favourite thing about these lists is that they're dominated by the views of mild paranoiacs. A normal person will open the page, see a frowny face next to an Xbox One, and decide that the list is bullshit.

Most privacy advocates are the strongest enemies of their own causes. They only accept purity and it encourages everyone to ignore them.

</comment><comment><USER19> The first time I saw an Elf on the Shelf in boxed form, and how heavy the box was, I assumed it had a surveillance camera in it. Apparently it doesn't, usually.

</comment><comment><USER20> About the voting system:

1\. Anonymous

2\. Hard to game

3\. User privacy

Pick two!

</comment><comment><USER21> Privacy should be a non issue with strictly enforced GDPR, for Europeans at least.</comment>


Inventor of the Internet takes aim at BitTorrent - <AUTHOR> http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9977880-2.html <comment><USER2> So his device basically detects any "peer-to-peer-like" traffic, regardless of protocol, and caps it, simply because there's a lot of it?

How is this fundamentally different from the current, pretty-clearly-evil techniques employed by ISPs like Comcast to look inside customers' packets and make value judgments about them? I admit I don't know exactly what the device in question does, but how is this possibly a good thing for the Internet at large?

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought Al Gore was working on global warming.</comment>


Idea Week, Day #5: Full resolution online video, on the cheap  - <AUTHOR> http://www.tipjoy.com/our2cents/2007/10/full_resolution_online_video_o.html <comment><USER2> Isn't this essentially SesameVault?

<http://www.sesamevault.com/>

I suspect it's irrelevant, since when given a choice between paying one cent to host HD video and free craptastic YouTube, most people would choose YouTube.</comment>


A Conversation with Alan Kay (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523

<comment><USER2> > Just as an aside, to give you an interesting benchmark—on roughly the same > system, roughly optimized the same way, a benchmark from 1979 at Xerox PARC > runs only 50 times faster today. Moore's law has given us somewhere between > 40,000 and 60,000 times improvement in that time. So there's approximately a > factor of 1,000 in efficiency that has been lost by bad CPU architectures.

Anyone know what kind of benchmark he's talking about? Because if that's true, holy shit.

(considering of course, that this article is from 11 years ago)

<comment><USER3> Well ... Moore's Law is not about speed, but the number of low cost transistors you can economically put on a single die. How that translates into "speed" is complicated, e.g. when you're first able to put all of a CPU on a single die you get a big speedup. After this was written raw clock speeds hit a wall, all that's left is microarchitecture improvements, including making things wider, making dies wider by putting more cores on them, and adding lots of cache.

Hmmm, and a whole lot of architecture work has by and large ended up on the garbage heap of history, or is no longer trying to compete in speed. Plus ARM has always prioritized power over speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Let me guess...object oriented programming was more about message passing than anything else.

I'm just kidding, I love reading Alan Kay. He's awesome.

<comment><USER5> If you want to read a terrific interview in which he touches on WWII's effect on him, how Socrates could get to heaven, how programming has turned to pop culture, and of course message passing, see his interview in Dr. Dobb's[1]

[1] [http://www.drdobbs.com/240003442](http://www.drdobbs.com/240003442)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hackerer.news - Group stories by tags (and day) - <AUTHOR> https://hackerer.news/ <comment><AUTHOR> I've long since wanted to make it easier to find uncommon content on HN. Many popular posts hide the less mainstream ones. Rather than complain, I made Hackerer.news. It has also allowed me to spend less time on the site playing dopamine roulette as it appears far more static when not sorted by age + score.

The first version displayed two columns per day: Niche & Popular split by number of votes. Both lists were still quite long and trending content still shaded other posts.

This v2 update shows a single list of one day sectioned by tags. The tags were manually[0] defined to separate out current trending content. Clicking on the date cycles: today -> yesterday -> older. I expect to continually update the tags to group frequent posts on trending topics.

Comments wanted and any/all feedback welcome.

[0] [https://gitlab.com/karmakaze/hackerer- news/-/blob/master/src...](https://gitlab.com/karmakaze/hackerer- news/-/blob/master/src/main.ts)</comment>


Falsehoods Win on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/largest-study-ever-fake-news-mit-twitter/555104/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> This is reporting on an MIT study on fake news. The findings include that false information pretty much always wins, i.e. that people prefer to spread falsehoods than truth. And it doesn't seem to have anything to do with bots, surmising it might be something embedded in human nature.

 _falsehoods were still 70 percent more likely to get retweeted than accurate news_

<comment><USER3> Falsehoods can be narrowly crafted to appeal to an identity groups defining beliefs; truth has the same advantage in terms of confirmation bias only coincidentally.</comment></comment>


Microsoft fails to fix Surface Book problems and cherry-picks positive reviews - <AUTHOR> http://betanews.com/2015/10/28/microsoft-fails-to-fix-surface-book-problems-and-cherry-picks-positive-reviews/ <comment><USER2> I would have liked him to go more in depth about the actual issues he believes the device(s) have. He points to the update info, but that update doesn't claim anything is broken (and of course it doesn't, why would they do that?).

The article he links to[1] however does include this information, which makes me wonder what the point of this article is? Is it just to point out marketing avoiding the problems? Because that's what marketing usually does.

For those like me who wanted to know more about the issues:

        Enabling Hyper-V causes the Surface Book screen to flicker. (turning off Hyper-V fixes the issue)

        Detaching the screen causes some weirdness with the keyboard once reattached.

        If you detach/reattach the screen, the Surface Book will not resume charging.

        Intel video driver causing the Surface Book to freeze. (a temporary fix: disable the Intel HD Graphics 520 in Device Manager and reboot. This forces the Surface Book into Basic Display mode)

        Wobbly display when reattached. (seems to be a manufacturing flaw with a minority of devices)

[1] [http://winsupersite.com/surface/we-now-know-what-included- da...](http://winsupersite.com/surface/we-now-know-what-included- day-1-updates-surface-book-and-pro-4)</comment>


Distributed crypto identity as a mechanism for legal empowerment of the poor - <AUTHOR> http://figshare.com/articles/Distributed_crypto_identity_as_a_mechanism_for_legal_empowerment_of_the_poor_and_stimulating_local_economic_development/1292895 <comment><USER2> This is like your hammer breaking and you deciding you need to build a new nail.

If you need "legal" identification, it has to come from your government or be approved by them. Whether it's a "digital" or paper identity, it still has to be processed by your government. If they're already not doing it, they're not going to do it in a new form, either.

Aside from this ID is the idea of digital currency. _That_ could actually be beneficial to remote people using basic cell phones. But it doesn't need any fancy digital ID; just tie the phone identifier to some intermediate personal banking network, and you can send and receive money using just your phone number. Simple, direct, intuitive, using existing infrastructure. I don't think biometrics should be necessary (it's easily broken and costs more money).

<comment><AUTHOR> There are many governments which lack either the physical capacity or the political interest to provide persistent and meaningful legal identity to their citizens. Sometimes they use this to prevent their citizens exercising their democratic rights.

The impact of this is that their citizens lose the ability to create or enforce legal contracts. Take property, for instance. Families from Syria to Haiti to Sri Lanka have been living on and off the same land for centuries then along comes a war or natural disaster and they are forced off their land with no legal way of proving - once their communities are destroyed or distributed - their ownership of title.

There are numerous cases where the lack of a fundamental right to legal identity is a cause of tremendous hardship to people. In the poorest countries it is a recognised and well-researched cause of perpetual poverty.

It's not building a new nail, it's giving people full and persistent access to the hammer that was always their's but was never in their possession.

<comment><USER2> It comes down to 'legal identity'. 'Legal' meaning 'of the law' specifically applies to an identity that is created by, and upholds, laws relating to identity. A legal identity is only useful if it is administered by the government, since it's the government that makes the laws.

Democratic rights are rights given by the government. Only the government can give or take away democratic rights. Similarly, rights that are based on identification are based on government-issued identification, because if a 3rd party controlled the ID process, they could just print up whatever IDs they wanted and subvert the government's laws.

It seems like some people think that just because your government is oppressing you, you have some recourse. You don't. They will continue to oppress you until you fight them and force them to do what you want. Trying to create an alternative market for what you want will just be labeled illegal and subsequently destroyed.

That's what a "black market" is: goods and services that the government doesn't want you to have. This ID would just create a new black market for identification, and would be completely useless in terms of dealing with property laws, voting, unemployment, and any other government service.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're coming at this from a very specific perspective related to your experience of government and services. I'm glad you live in a place where you can trust these sorts of fundamental services. This paper was not written for people like you.

Look at something like M-PESA in East Africa. It allows a person to have the equivalent of a bank account and transact with others without having any form of state recognised identity - only a mobile phone. That this is so successful is largely as a result of the complete inadequacy of the local banking system and the regional governments' inability to provide meaningful identity to their citizens.

Consider vaccination programs. Aid agencies responding to the Haiti earthquake in 2010 struggled to place young children back with their parents because no- one carried identity and the state - which had been barely functional before - was entirely non-functional. As reported in The Economist at the time, agencies carried out mass vaccinations against cholera but some people were vaccinated multiple times and others were missed entirely because there were so many agencies all running around like headless chickens.

Again, a simple distributed identity system would have permitted a better response.

Or the other example from the linked paper ... in rural communities in the world's poorest countries, people's identities are vouchsafed entirely by that community. Community-based lending programs (as popularised by Grameen Bank in Bangladesh) are successful precisely because individuals lack identity or their own independent credit record. Micro-lenders offer loans to these community groups rather than individuals and so the individual builds up no credit record of their own.

If they ever need to move (because of drought, joblessness or whatever) they lose the reference and identity they have built in that community. They cannot take it with them.

In the presence of a motivated and functioning state, sure, maybe this isn't needed. Unfortunately, billions of people don't have that luxury.

<comment><USER2> For non-government purposes this ID can be useful. But it is not a replacement for legal ID. It's worth pursuing for edge cases, but let's not pretend it will protect people.

This whole thing is an attempt at a technological fix for a non-technological problem. It's not practical to 'route around' bad or missing government. The logistics behind each one of these issues goes far beyond having a simple ID.

<comment><AUTHOR> For places like Somalia, South Sudan, Libya, trust is so incontrovertibly broken that there is no clear path back to central government and rule of law. Government has to start where it has always started, with circles of trust.

This system isn't a hack or 'route around' these circles of trust, it simply makes them verifiable, persistent and mobile. Eventually, once they get large enough, then they can lead to stable, centralised government.

It's not very different from the way circles of trust for lending eventually became large, national banks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe it would be better to divide this paper into two, one dealing with just the technological aspect and the other dealing the the political and economic implications.

Also, are you sure this technology would be decentralizing things? Maybe the technology itself would be decentralized but in a world where everyone has an electronic id, I can foresee an internet requiring said id for everything, just like what happens with government issued ids. In turn this would mean that persons would be much more easily tracked across their daily lives. Does not sound very appealing to me.

As for the whole legal empowering side, these sort of initiatives have backfired before so I'm sceptical. For example, once this is in place, wouldn't it make people more vulnerable to being forced to reveal their identities?

<comment><USER4> As far as I can tell, there is no technological aspect here. It doesn't offer any solution to providing decentralised, unique identity. It just points out systems with central authority that provide unique identity, and the blockchain, which provides distributed identity verification without ensuring any unbreakable connection between one person and one identity. Then it seems to indicate that the two should somehow be mashed together to create distributed, unique identities, without explaining how.

I don't see how it would be possible to prevent a single person from creating multiple identities in a distributed system.

<comment><USER5> You could easily create multiple identities, but they would not be worth much. By somehow encoding all the relationships of trust that a person has had throughout their lives, it would become possible for another person in the same, or connected, trust networks to verify the identity and the trust placed in it.

New identities would simply have no trust, and would be quite worthless without years of normal life behind them.

<comment><USER6> There might be incentives, though, for groups to collude to create artificial identities in their networks, as a form of gerrymandering.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a major risk to that ... one person in the group gets discredited and that compromises everyone in the group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this should be the standard for identification and signature. Pen and paper signatures are not very reliable and are inefficient none-the-less.

We can put these keys on cards or phones and have them distributed across services and state boundaries.

Seems far more reliable to me. And verifiable!

<comment><USER7> Downvote and no response? What's wrong with this comment?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Sqwok.im – Fast, open, & frictionless chat on news/etc. with no bs - <AUTHOR> https://sqwok.im <comment><AUTHOR> just built a new social project that's a mix of chat/content aggregator and looking for some ppl to check it out and give feedback.

I really appreciate it! goals are fast, open, and frictionless discussion on news/whatever else w/no bs.

how/why: I wasn't satisfied with the options for engaging people and having meaningful *realtime conversations online, particularly around news. Most platforms are walled gardens, heavily moderated, not based on chat, or targeted at gamers etc.

The premise is simple, post a sqwok (like a tweet can be all text or if it includes a link it will parse it), then share the url with anyone and have instant discussion.

e.g. [https://sqwok.im/p/Q_6WA_p6LvOfpA](https://sqwok.im/p/Q_6WA_p6LvOfpA)

thanks!

</comment><comment><USER2> Pretty great, but could you add notifications to when you have more comments on your posts?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes definitely! I plan to add notifications soon... I assume you would want to be notified right away when activity happens, then maybe not again for a period of time so as not to get spammed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Neat</comment>


Ask HN: Add an "Outline" link beside the "web"? - <AUTHOR> Since many online newspapers are putting up a paywall, or straight up blocking visitors from EU, I think it's time to consider adding or changing the "web" link that we see here in the comment page. I know that it's used to search on Google for the same article with the intent to bypass the paywall, but time after time it failed me.
I'd personally love to see an "Outline" link which automatically redirects to the uncluttered version of an article using outline.com, which provides a great service. Or otherwise, a Chrome extension that recreate that just for HN.
Disclaimer: not affiliated with anyone, just an annoyed EU member. <comment><USER2> This is a great idea. I keep hitting bloomberg limits, and they still haven't realised I am never going to pay for their articles.

The only method of payment I deem acceptable in today's age is cryptomining.

Process: Connect to website. No login necessary, incentivise account creation by persisting "Mined credits".

If you don't login you lose your credits after session expires. This way you can literally leave the tab open to passively gain credits while you aren't using your device for other means, and the website gains a direct source of income.

This also means that the better your content, and the more users you have, the more money you generate.

This thing is so obvious, I find it stupid that no-one has made it yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> Add this bookmarklet to your browser:

        javascript:(function()%7Bwindow.location.href %3D 'https%3A%2F%2Foutline.com%2F' %2B window.location.href%7D)()

Credit: [https://www.designernews.co/comments/257987](https://www.designernews.co/comments/257987)</comment>


GoDaddy Released My Personal Information to a Spammer Troll - <AUTHOR> http://skepchick.org/2014/04/godaddy-released-my-personal-information-to-a-spammer-troll/ <comment><USER2> While GoDaddy has a point about the opt-in component being important for deciding whether spamming took place, they certainly didn't need to release her personal information to the spammer. That's a terrible, serious breach of privacy.

A naive approach that might work without either party needing to divulge emails:

GoDaddy: "We have received complaints that you've been spamming. Give us a list of SHA-1 hashes of addresses of the people that opted in and show us how they opted in."

Customer: "Here's the list."

GoDaddy: "At least one complaint email we received does not match the SHA-1s on this list."

<comment><USER3> I read this as GoDaddy releasing her email address only. In theory, isn't an email address only personally identifiable if the address owner has done some action linking it to a real world identity? I assume that's the argument GoDaddy would make.

However, it should have been made abundantly clear to someone reporting spam that their email address may be disclosed to the accused party.

<comment><USER2> An email _is_ personally identifiable information, in and of itself. NIST includes it right in their definitions. [0]

[0]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personally_identifiable_informa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personally_identifiable_information#Examples)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for this. I am not up to date on what is considered privacy information, apparently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm loathe to defend GoDaddy, but I don't know if they can be "blamed" in this case, if only because what happened here was not the typical spam scenario.

If I'm understanding the situation correctly (and if I'm not, please let me know), a crazy person with an agenda sent a mass-mailing to about hundreds atheists/bloggers in an attempt to push his POV. Skepchick reports him to his email host (in this case, GoDaddy), under their spam terms.

GoDaddy does their standard process, which includes asking for opt-in proof, and revealing the email. Crazy guy goes crazy and makes a website dedicated to trying to defame Skepchick, using info he found about her online.

The problem is, this wasn't typical spam. Meaning, this wasn't some bot sending out Viagra sales pitches or the "great investment leads" people that send me 30 messages a day. This was unsolicited mail, yes, but it was with an agenda. Basically, I'd classify it more as harassment.

I'd imagine the situation would have been handled differently if it was flagged/seen/filed as harassing messages, rather than spam. I don't know, but I have to assume GoDaddy has an abuse team and that their methods of handling this sort of thing would be different.

Please understand, I'm not putting the onus on Skepchick to correctly know how to classify the message. It stands to reason she thought this was spam. But at the same time, I don't know if this sort of edge case is common enough to require a more complex method such as SHA-1 hashes.

Shitty situation all the way around, but I think the biggest problem was this was treated as a normal case of spam, when really it was a case of abuse/crazy.

</comment><comment><USER5> So GoDaddy is utterly terrible both when you're their client and when you're not their client. Great. Could that company be burned to the ground already?

<comment><USER6> Sadly it seems good marketing can compensate for being terrible.

<comment><USER7> It's pretty much the law of businesses this days. If you pump enough money to market your product/company, then your sales will be orthogonal to the product itself. You can sell any crap, as long as your marketing team is good enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To contrast this with a real world example, if your neighbor is having a party and you call in a noise compliant to the police, I don't think they tell the party host "we got a noise complaint from your neighbor at 123 My Street".

<comment><USER9> Depends on the locale; I've heard stories of officers showing up at the complaintant's door 2nd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> TL;DR: User got spam from a website hosted by GoDaddy. User reports spam. GoDaddy wants to be good guy and asks spammer if user opted in (by providing spammer with the user's email). Spammer stops spamming, but harasses user by posting her photo online, which s/he probably got using the email address GoDaddy provided.

In retrospect, I'm sure there are better ways for GoDaddy to investigate such complaints, but I think they didn't do something very evil - an email address is hardly "personally identifiable information". On the other hand, if you don't want your photo to be posted online, don't post your photo online.

<comment><USER11> So email address is not personally identifiable information even though it was all the spammer needed to identify her? Right.

In some parts of the world (e.g. Slovenia) personal email is very much considered a personal information and any operator divulging it in such manner would pay a steep fine.

<comment><USER10> So if I forward your email, I'm committing a crime? There's too much law about the internet...

> In some parts of the world (e.g. Slovenia)

Slovenia is rather crazy about everything computer-related. A while ago Google was forbidden from collecting Street View data. I really hope that has been reversed by now...

<comment><USER12> > Slovenia is rather crazy about everything computer-related. A while ago > Google was forbidden from collecting Street View data

 _whispers_

That was Austria.

<comment><USER10> Slovenia as well - full article (in Slovenian): [1]. In 2010, information commissionaire first rejected Google's request for recording [2], but it was finally approved in 2013 [3].

[1] [http://lendavainfo.com/google-street-view-za-slovenijo-je- ko...](http://lendavainfo.com/google-street-view-za-slovenijo-je-koncno- delujoc/)

[2] [https://www.ip-rs.si/varstvo-osebnih-podatkov/iskalnik-po- od...](https://www.ip-rs.si/varstvo-osebnih-podatkov/iskalnik-po-odlocbah-in- mnenjih/odlocbe-in-mnenja-varstvo-osebnih- podatkov/?tx_jzvopdecisions_pi1%5bshowUid%5d=1943&cHash=40b3fc486d)

[3] [https://www.ip-rs.si/novice/detajl/snemanje-ulic-za- storitev...](https://www.ip-rs.si/novice/detajl/snemanje-ulic-za-storitev- google-street-view/?cHash=2113761ece703e0badf20352fa2faa35)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yet another reason to _not use GoDaddy!_.

I highly recommend Hover as a domain Registrar. Tried them with a few new domains, and loved it so much I migrated everything there.

<comment><USER14> Sure, use whatever other registrar/host you want, but it quite evidently doesn't exactly help people who aren't using godaddy but still have to deal with abuse related to people who are.

<comment><USER13> Indeed. I just look for opportunities to talk about how awesome hover is :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Despite all my hate towards GoDaddy, I cannot see the happening being their fault.

As tomp pointed out, disclosing email address is part of the process, probably not clearly stated, but GoDaddy handled it well. They issued a fine to a spammer, resolving the initial spamming case.

Worse would be if they have not carried out any actions at all.

Now, concerned the harrassment, how come GoDaddy is responsible for trolls being trolls? As Company pointed out, report him to law enforcement. Sue him, or anything, victim has got the spammer's domain, thus all the private information needed to escalate the problem further.

<comment><USER16> It shouldn't be godaddy handing the abuser the email for verification, it should be the abuser handing godaddy it's opt-in-list for verification. This way the reporters identity is never in danger... Of cource it's their fault.

<comment><USER15> Imagine yourself being a highly respected business owner, where your main product is sending personalized newsletters to privacy concerned customers paying you much for their data to stay safe.

Will your argument still stay the same? Are you going to hand in millions of your precious customers email addresses each time to your domain registrant when one of them marks your email as a spam? How are you going to explain later to your customer why he is receiving spam on email address email@example.com? That you had to send everyone's address lists each time a spam was reported?

<comment><USER17> The assumption would be that the registrant acts in a professional manner and only uses the list to verify the complainant's claims.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think all this just goes to reinforce the complete brokenness of e-mail to date.

While the proposals for requesting proof of opt-in via SHA hashes and such seem technically feasable, I think it pretty quickly breaks down when you think about how much cost and overhead that would put on GoDaddy (or law enforcement) to manage.

Think about the volume of spam out there. Then imagine a very tiny fraction of that being reported. Each one of those would require validation. While you could automate all the SHA sum comparison stuff, I don't think you could easily automate the validation of whether the opt-in mechanism was appropriate. If the sender indicates there was an opt-in, the validator must still confirm with the complainant whether that is a true claim. Without that, the system is useless because the spammer just keeps a SHA sum for each of the addresses they've purchased and supplies them along with an "Yes they opted in!" claim.

Manually validating the opt-in mechanism would require lots of manpower, and more importantly, a common and universally agreed upon set of rules for how opt-in should work. There are all sorts of nuance in the way there. Should it be a double confirmation? Does existing business relationship count? If so, what are all the rules regarding what constitutes such a relationship? What about unsubscribing afterward?

Edit: Removing the pessimistic and un-useful concluding paragraph on the hunch that was what warranted downvotes.

</comment><comment><USER19> Forwarding a complaint onto the end user is standard practice these days. It seems that every few months there is a story like this where someone sends an abuse complaint then is surprised when the hosting company sends it to the end user. For any large enough company it's unlikely a person will even read your complaint before it gets forwarded on. Most complaints are designed to be sent to the end user so it's no surprise companies automate this process.

<comment><USER5> Forwarding the complaint itself is normal, forwarding the identity of the complainer?

<comment><USER20> Anonymous complaints are an ethical issue. If you have no recourse then complaints become pernicious.

Also, they forwarded some pretty basic details, an email and a name. They weren't sent her SSN, mailing address, or anything like that, so it's no more identity than she associates already with her email address, as far as I can tell.

You need to be able to contact a complainant, otherwise there is no resolution, only a complaint.

<comment><USER5> > Anonymous complaints are an ethical issue. If you have no recourse then > complaints become pernicious.

The complaint itself is not anonymous, there is an intercessor which knows the identities of both parties, and who _is the recourse_.

> Also, they forwarded some pretty basic details, an email and a name. They > weren't sent her SSN, mailing address, or anything like that, so it's no > more identity than she associates already with her email address, as far as > I can tell.

Oh great, they didn't send enough for a complete identity takeover so I guess everything's… wait what?

They sent personal information to somebody who might — if the complaint was well founded (which it clearly was) — take retributive action. That does not strike me as an ethical or sensible move.

> You need to be able to contact a complainant, otherwise there is no > resolution, only a complaint.

No, not necessarily and definitely not if the complaint is simply a well- founded one where the resolution is to fix your shit. And if it turns out you do actually genuinely need to directly contact the complainant, contact information can be asked of the intercessor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I would report GoDaddy and the spammer to the police. If the spammer went through all that trouble he's probably nuts.

<comment><USER22> The religious references are a bigger red flag of the spammer's mental health I'd say.

<comment><USER5> Well at least he doesn't seem to be mabus-nuts: [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dennis_Markuze](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dennis_Markuze)

So there's that...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There is a similar, perhaps more significant problem with Twitter's abuse reporting tool[0]. To submit the form, users are required to tick the box that notes they accept the following:

 _" I understand that Twitter may provide third parties, for example the reported user, with details of this report, such as the reported Tweet. Your contact information, like your email address, will not be disclosed."_

I think it highly likely that would encourage further abuse. This has prevented me using the tool in the past, and makes me think Twitter doesn't quite understand the issue.

[0]: [https://support.twitter.com/forms/abusiveuser](https://support.twitter.com/forms/abusiveuser)

<comment><USER24> What's wrong with this? they say "Your contact information, like your email address, will not be disclosed". They just tell the person who's twitter account it is something like, "By the way, it's this tweet that was reported as abusive and they said it was abusive in this way" am I misunderstanding this?

<comment><USER5> That's also my reading. They warn that they may share the report itself, such as the reported tweet and the comments (e.g. the "further description of the problem" field) to the reported, but will not share contact/identifying reporter information. That seems fine to me, one needs to know _what_ he's being accused of to mount a defense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Welcome to GoDaddy's customer service. I don't even let them have my domain names. Use NameCheap (and no, I'm not being paid to endorse them).

<comment><USER26> Agree, I switched all my domains. Turned out to be much easier than I thought. I'm not endorsed by them either, just a very happy customer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Please tell me nobody here is actually using GoDaddy anymore. How many lessons does one need to learn before they realize GoDaddy is an awful company?

</comment><comment><USER28> Well, I struggled to get through the first half of that article. Enough banner ads?

<comment><USER29> She's making money selling her story.

<comment><USER30> You mean just like news outlets do when they sell stories?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Was their response really just "Go call the cops"?

</comment><comment><USER32> I am not hating on Go Daddy but I will say that articles like these do not come out of left field. There was the incident about two months ago with the @N twitter name that involved them and I have heard other grumblings about them. Then when you have other registrars that offer competitive services and do not have those grumblings, you switch. I did. (namecheap.com) Just sayin'...

</comment><comment><USER33> Not surprising. GoDaddy does not have a good reputation among anyone I know, and I've been involved with domain names since the mid 1990s. I recommend you research other registrars and consider taking your business to them. I know Namecheap has good prices, 2FA, low prices, and discount codes for people leaving GoDaddy. Best wishes.

</comment><comment><USER34> There's no reason to expect professionalism from a company that proudly portrays itself as a gang of leering adolescents.

</comment><comment><USER19> Released the same personal information that is widely available via WHOIS, it seems..

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm still puzzled that people are still using companies like Godaddy, Network Solutions etc.. which collect more horror stories than any other ones. Are customers really that stupid ?

<comment><USER36> Clearly, the answer is yes. In a commodity business, where your customer does not necessarily know much about your product, brand name recognition, price competition, and other-people's-money buyers are your bread and butter.

GoDaddy advertises heavily. NetSol relies on the fact that they were the first and no one ever gets fired for recommending them.

The people who are still their customers obviously do not realize they can get better value--though not necessarily a lower price--from other companies.

And, apparently, there are also the buttmunches out there that are customers _because_ the customer service (and self-policing in particular) is awful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> So which registrar does HN recommend?

I've used Namecheap before and they were decent, though the dashboard looks like it was built in the 90's.

I checked out Hover but they seem to charge a lot for email.

<comment><USER38> Namecheap recently redesigned. It looks much more modern now but it still looks like the same template everyone else uses.

<comment><USER37> Their front page looks nice, but the dashboard and everything else looks the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've lost several domains that simply got deleted from my account. Every time I tried contacting them about the subject they refused to answer.

</comment><comment><USER40> Time to switch to proxy email id's, which do not give out the first name or the last name.

From now on, I'll be known as wHzqbUWp at gmail.com

</comment><comment><USER41> They are also elephant killing [1] sopa / pipa supporters [2].

[1] [http://gawker.com/5787676/meet-godaddys-ridiculous- elephant-...](http://gawker.com/5787676/meet-godaddys-ridiculous-elephant- killing-ceo)

[2] [http://godaddyboycott.org/](http://godaddyboycott.org/)

</comment><comment><USER42> The spammer appears to be a religious hypocrite, so why not spam the spammer with religious hypocrisy right from their own playbook?

I would begin with Isaiah 45:7 "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, _and create evil:_ I the LORD do all these things."

</comment><comment><USER43> "I noticed that the email address it came from as well as the link went to a GoDaddy registered domain."

Who does a whois lookup on domains from spam emails?

<comment><USER44> If I think the spammer is legitimate enough that a complaint will make it harder for them to spam, I do.

<comment><USER36> If I just want to pretend to be a volunteer junior deputy for the Sheriff of the Internet for two minutes, I'll do it.

Spammers would not have their accounts suspended as often or as quickly if no one ever reported them to firstname.lastname@example.com . There's always the possibility that my iota of caring generated the lead that sparked the investigation that allowed the actual network security guard to take down the spammer kingpin or a portion of his botnet.

Mostly, it's when I just want to kick the spammer squar in the danglies, for annoying me when I'm bored.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is the 3rd article on HN about GoDaddy being an absolute shit-show. I am curious how long they gonna keep up.

</comment><comment><USER20> With Skepchick involved, this seems sketchy.

I'm not going to spend today defending GoDaddy, as they've been a fair fly in the ointment to me. However I would not suggest burning them at the stake because of somebody on this particular blog posted an inconclusive statement about a breach which was, as far as we can tell, dealt with already.

As a customer of theirs, I'll probably be contacting them about this to make sure I don't have any similar issues, and suggesting a remedy (probably something like the cryptographic hash based verification method suggested elsewhere on this page) for the future.

<comment><USER46> Seems sketchy? She has evidence to back up her claims including an email from godaddy.

<comment><USER20> I don't trust the source though. /she/ included "an email" "from godaddy". But Skepchick has been host to such golden, contributing members of society as Rebecca Watson, so excuse me if I don't feel compelled to believe incriminating claims from people who ruin blood cancer research donation drives with inappropriate and divisive humour, then criticize others for being confused or offended rather than apologizing.

From reading the article alone, sure, I wouldn't be quite as skeptical, but I'm going to hold out until GoDaddy has a say in this case, because I don't really trust either of them.

<comment><USER47> So this seem sketchy because it is on the same blog that also includes someone completely unrelated that made a joke you find offensive? Whatever floats your boat I guess...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Who on earth reports spam to originating server administrators? It might seem contrary to general sentiments here, but really, why not handle your own problem (and adjust your spam filters) instead of troubling GoDaddy?

<comment><USER5> > It might seem contrary to general sentiments here, but really, why not > handle your own problem

Same reason why you should report spam to SpamCop: help clean up the internet, and clamp down on spammers so others don't have to deal with them?

Especially when the originating server specifically has a policy of not allowing outbound spam.

<comment><USER29> Then, instead of whining around on the internet writing blogposts and making money off those banner ads, the poster should have contacted local law enforcement authorities.

I don't see why she should defame GoDaddy. If I had a server there, and I was accused of sending spam, I would have the right to know which address considered my email as spam (and determine for myself whether the user subscribed to my services or not).

<comment><USER48> No. You could send them the sha1 checksums of those who had opted in, and godaddy could confirm if it matched or not. You have no right to their personal information, but you do have a right to be heard.

GoDaddy deserved every last ounce of negative coverage for this they can get.

<comment><USER19> So, every time someone receives an abuse complaint, they should have to send checksums of every email on their list? What if it's a massive mailing list by a large company? What if it's a fraudulent abuse complaint, just designed to get the company to waste resources?

<comment><USER49> What if the company just lies that someone's not on their lists - they'll have to turn the information over one way or the other if it's to be checked, and it may as well be in a checksum as anything else.

<comment><USER19> I've never heard of any provider making someone turn over their mailing lists. Do you have any further information about when this has occurred?

Generally, when someone gets too many spam complaints, or doesn't handle them well, they get terminated from the hosting provider.

<comment><USER49> > I've never heard of any provider making someone turn over their mailing > lists. Do you have any further information about when this has occurred?

\---

I didn't mean to imply that was what happened. I said that they'd have to if it's to be checked.

My thoughts were that you're either going to have to trust the accused spammer - in which case you can turn over the SHA of the complaining email address, and the provider can compare it to the SHA hashes of their own. Or... they're going to have to turn the list (again, preferably with the entries hashed) over to you - and then, I suppose, you'll have to trust that they're giving you a truthful list.

But, either way, I don't see how the mere act of hashing the list is going to significantly alter the problems of nuisance complaints or of dealing with large lists. Hashing is a very cheap thing to do after all.

<comment><USER19> There's not really anything you can do about an individual spam complaint, aside from telling the end user and having them remove the email from their list (aside from things that are quite obviously spam).

The problem is the 'Report Spam' button is also the 'I no longer wish to receive this email' button to non-technical users. Just because you've received a spam complaint, doesn't mean that it wasn't an opt-in email.

Providers never attempt to verify your email list. If you generate too many spam complaints, you get terminated. It's not feasible for a third party to get a copy of your mailing list, then somehow evaluate how legitimate it is.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>