Ranking highly in search engines has nothing to do with SEO - <AUTHOR> http://www.joshklein.net/seo-search-ranking-strategy-tip

<comment><USER2> SEO is a lot like weight loss...people always look for the shortcut, when there is a surefire way to do it. People think they can lose weight with a magic pill, craze diet, or amazing exercise machine, when the surefire way is to eat less and exercise more.

With SEO, there's no magical formula for structuring your page or writing meta tags...the best way to rank highly is to have lots of unique, useful content and have people link to you. Any site with thousands of pages of unique content and lots of links ranks highly for the terms on those pages.

Google "digital camera reviews" and you'll see a site I worked on, Steve's Digicams, comes up 4th because there are 20,000 pages of digital camera reviews spanning 12 years that hundreds of people have linked to because the information is useful.

This is not to say that you can't game the system a little. One way is with niche content. The less competition there is for a keyword, the easier it is to move to the top of the rankings with fewer links. Look at <http://www.wisegeek.com/> as an example. They find terms that have high search traffic, but few results. Then they pay writers to create content targeting those terms. They still have unique content, but they require fewer links in to vote them to the top of the results.

</comment><comment> monk-e-boy wrong</comment>


Efficient JavaScript (2006) - <AUTHOR> https://dev.opera.com/articles/efficient-javascript/ <comment><USER2> In retrospect it's scary that some of these statement still hold as truths subconsciously.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. Many of these tips are still valid in new Chrome* (despite the fact the article is from 2006 and about Opera) so I think this article can be still helpful (ofc I would verify every tip by making actual benchmarks before I would follow it).

*I checked some tips in Chrome Dev Tools, and most of them was still relevant.</comment></comment>


Tension and Flaws Before Health Website Crash - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/us/politics/tension-and-woes-before-health-website-crash.html

<comment><USER2> > Another sore point was the Medicare agency's decision to use database > software, from a company called MarkLogic, that managed the data differently > from systems by companies like IBM, Microsoft and Oracle.

I wonder where this requirement came from. Were there specific reasons, such as an analysis that this particular technology was most appropriate to the task? Or something involving vendor favoritism?

</comment><comment><USER3> So it's all MarkLogic's fault?

<comment><USER4> It's insane that they went with a proprietary XML database for a project like this. The site probably won't work until they rip out that stupid database and put in a regular SQL database, but that probably means a full rewrite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> unbelievable...this is what happens when nerdy zealots are let loose to make crucial product decisions. I am sure there is some hipster hacker in there who advocated the adoption of nosql.

<comment><USER6> Trust me, no "hipster hacker" anywhere on the face of the planet has ever uttered the words "I know what would make this project better; an XML datastore!". Nothing is less cool than XML.

The hipster solution would be MongoDB. :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it really hard to get a job in tech right now or is it just me? - <AUTHOR> I keep reading about record low unemployment but am finding it nearly impossible to get another job in tech currently.  It seems like every position I apply for gets a few hundred applications, despite the news saying the labor market is tight right now.  What's the disconnect? <comment><USER2> Getting the _first_ job in tech is fairly difficult I think.

Employers don't want to invest in training anyone because (in their experience) the employee will just go work someplace else for more money. It seems to never have occurred to them that if they pay market rates to the newly up skilled employee, that the employee wouldn't feel the need to leave.

The "shortage" of tech talent is really a shortage of tech talent that will work for below market rate.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tech is pretty general, what specific role / experience / location are you looking for?

</comment><comment><USER4> Did a job hunt last year for about six months and only got one bite. So, anecdotally, I'd say the market is quite thin at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER5> You said another job, so I'll assume you've been employed in your field. What part of tech in specific and how many years? Are you in the US? On West coast or East or middle states?

I mostly agree with @chrisbennet that a lot of the time there is a "shortage" of people willing to work at cut rate prices, not really a shortage of qualified people.

I will add to this, many companies will advertise less than fair wages for a position intentionally and call it market, or take a senior position and mark it as junior with junior wages to intentionally game the H1B and other visa systems. This is because there are some basic (easy to game) requirements they have to file to prove they tried to market and hire a US worker but were unable to fill the position. As a consultant I saw this at almost every mid to large organization I did work at, and I have seen it in a number of startups that have reached a higher funding level over the past 5-6 years too. To be 100% up front, I have no problem with hiring a foreign born engineer, but they shouldn't be paid less than what I would be if hired for the same job. That isn't fair to me and isn't fair to them, if they have the skills to do the job, pay them comparable for living and working in the US.

Another factor I have seen over the years. I helped a number of companies go from not filling their open tech slots to filling them by changing the interview process. I was at one company that literally had a guy drive 2 hours to get the the interview, this is after successfully passing a technical phone screen, for his in person interview with 4 individuals (me included). Within 5 minutes the hiring tech lead asked 2 technical questions about javascript and then dismissed the interviewee from the interview saying he wasn't qualified. Well fuck, talk about creating a horrid environment and destroying a companies reputation. I was tasked to help fill positions with qualified people, and so we worked on how to interview people. First and foremost, we got rid of the ego driven interview that most tech companies favor and went to a human based approach. We still asked the hard questions but it is about the persons method of working through the question not whether they gave the right answer. Some of the best engineers I know would flunk most of the ego interviews, but if you get them talking about what they have done and have them describe the details, challenges, coding issues etc you'll find out they are amazing at their jobs and will figure out whatever you put them to.

Last point. In general, if you are in the over 1yr of experience but under 5 years of experience that is the hardest time to get a job in a lot of ways. It is still where you need coaching, but also where people start to find their own methods so it is a harder hire for a company to get right. Over 5 years gets easier, over 10 easier still, then at some point we start tipping back into the harder to get past the door category. For an engineer to stay an engineer beyond 15-20 years, the ego based interviews are the worst because they are generally based on CS questions people learned in school recently, or based on things too easily looked up so not worth memory space. For example, asking a web developer to write a hash table in the interview (seen this many times) is fairly useless and will eliminate a lot of good web developers. But instead asking them about the worst performance problem they solved and how will show you what type of experience they have, how they think and what level of understanding they possess. I usually ask a few versions of that question scoped to data structures, loops etc, but I never care about something like Big O overall, again too easy to look up -- what I care about is why they made the choice and what tradeoffs did they consider. Lots of techniques here get you way better data and let you see if you can work with the person, versus just asking them to regurgitate knowledge that is within a few keyboard strokes via a google search.</comment>


Popular Google Play store apps are abusing permissions and committing ad fraud - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/google-play-store-ad-fraud-du-group-baidu <comment><USER2> It's not just ad fraud, they've been copying information like whatsapp phone number, reddit username, telegram username etc.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/miband/comments/8eqtve/why_did_mifi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/miband/comments/8eqtve/why_did_mifit_copy_my_reddit_account_information/)

<comment><USER3> I actually can't believe this. How in the name of all the is holy are we letting them get away with this.

Sure, we talk about the problem a lot. But we need to take action. It seems every big corporation are abusing the trust we give them in some form or another.

Please, for the love of God, can anybody prove me wrong. Are there any companies than don't abuse our trust?

<comment><USER4> Microsoft, for all their other flaws, usually keeps out of the business of selling their consumers. Perhaps it's because they have better (internal) monetization possibilities.

<comment><USER5> Last time I used a Windows computer, there were tons of advertisements in the start menu.

<comment><USER6> And on the lock screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the things that is really troubling about the Google Android Play store is the ease that an app developer can develop an app and remain totally anonymous unless you are forced to file a lawsuit or subpoena to Google to reveal information.

I own and operate a fairly popular audio streaming platform, and I've had to deal with numerous instances of unscrupulous app developers who steal API keys from our licensed developers, release apps wrapped in tons of ads, and are able to remain totally anonymous by:

1) Setting up what is presumably a fictitious company

2) Privacy policy link that directs to pastebin

3) Email address for support where nobody responds

These apps steal tens of thousands of dollars of ad revenue from my business monthly, and I have absolutely zero recourse. Filing DCMA and other complaints with Google typically goes into a black hole, and when they do respond or address the issue its typically "we don't see the need to take any action here" \- presumably because these apps are generating enough revenue for AdMob and the Play Store that Google has zero incentive to take action.

How often does this happen in the Apple App Store, almost never.

It's absolutely infuriating.

<comment> 076ae80a-3c97-4 Time to cycle API keys?

<comment><USER8> App update cycles are slow so this would break old versions of his apps.

<comment><USER7> That, and they can steal the new API keys just as fast as we rotate them. And since these API keys are licensed to third-party developers we've got to manage business impact for that third-party.

The problem is Google has no incentive to address these issues, because they prioritize their own platform growth revenue over user and partner experience.

With all the frustration one can have with the Apple App Store, including huge wait times for new releases, arbitrary reasonings for declining apps etc, it's almost worth it vs the wild-west of the Google Play Store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> the locked in store model has completely failed. both for ios and android it is a terrible experience compared to PC. you are stuck with only the search tools the hardware maker gives you, often designed in a user hostile way (ios brings up ads) and no way to bail out to a different store. as well the monoculture leads to a race to the bottom with garbage programs shoving their way to the top via misleading a dishonest means, and by sheer numbers.

i want no part of it. when a phone maker comes to the market without this locked down model i will buy it, and if windows goes this route i will drop it for linux.

and yea i know you can sideload on android, but the unwashed masses don't know that so it doesn't matter.

<comment><USER10> > _and yea i know you can sideload on android, but the unwashed masses don't > know that so it doesn't matter._

Then what is your solution? The unwashed masses _tried_ the wild wild west of digital software delivery back in the 2000s. It ended with tears, viruses, UAC and SaaS. Even today, most sideloading, for general consumers, begins with trying to pirate apps and ends with even more invasive spyware.

The locked in store model is better than than what we had before for the general consumer (at least iOS's, unequivocally is, IMO). The App Store might be bad for developers, but it's way better for consumers.

<comment><USER11> The solution is what has been suggested earlier: allow users to choose their own 'store', don't lock them to a single vendor. This is already possible with Android where F-Droid is a good example of a 'store' where the chance of being exposed to these shenanigans is close to zero.

Currently iOS users lack this option so for them the only way out is to change platform.

<comment><USER12> That doesn't seem like much of an improvement: if it became popular, you'd see the same social attacks switch from getting people to install apps to enabling a new store. F-Droid is safer because it's much smaller and mostly free software: that's good for people who don't want anything else but it seems unlikely to satisfy mainstream demand or survive a motivated attack.

<comment><USER11> Linux survived these attacks. Debian survived them. Ubuntu did. More or less all Linux distributions have been attacked but survived, many of them thrive.

Yes, this is free software. Being less susceptible to these problems has been one of the stated advantages of using such for a long time. Alternative 'stores' carrying 'pirated' non-free software do not have this advantage and can easily turn into dark places so the solution does not lie there.

Will people choose a 'boring' free software 'store' over a 'cool pirate store' (Arrrrr!)? Some will, some won't. Those who will will end up being mostly silent as the thing just works. Those who won't will be susceptible to the whims of those who put up those 'stores' and are likely to come home with a bit more than they asked for.

Some 'stores' will get a good reputation along the lines of that of F-Droid, some will get the reputation of being the place to go to get the latest craze but also the latest infection. Users will start making conscious decisions based on those reputations, just like they already do elsewhere.

Will opening up closed platforms like iOS for third-party software repositories get rid of these problems? No, it won't, it will even raise the average level of problematic software on that platform. The difference between closed systems and more open ones is not that the closed ones are inferior, it is that they limit the user's choice to get something which is _better_ as well as _worse_ than what the walled garden offers. In this context _better_ can mean software which does not come with tracking, analytics, profiling and other such privacy-invading nonsense. I can get the source code and build it myself, I can host my own repository, only time limits where I can go. This is not true for the Google Play Store or the Apple Appstore, nor is it true for the Amazon equivalent or any of those Chinese alternatives. That is why I chose to use something like F-Droid.

By the way, there is nothing keeping e.g. Facebook or Twitter from releasing a free software version of their apps. Their value - and most of their profiling proficiency - lies in their platforms, not in the apps used to access them. They might lose any additional venues for leaching the user of data but they would gain some believability when they state that they're not up to no good. Of course there are plenty of alternative apps for these services so they don't really _need_ to but they _could_ if they wanted to.

<comment><USER12> > Linux survived these attacks. Debian survived them. Ubuntu did. More or less > all Linux distributions have been attacked but survived, many of them > thrive.

Really? Is there a huge market of mainstream consumer Linux software which I've missed in the past 3 decades of using it?

The answer is, of course, no. Linux distributions have mostly been used by developers and other IT people and there's never been the equivalent of the mainstream mobile app ecosystem used by people who are asked to make critical security decisions which they don't know how to answer. If there was an equivalent, there would be the same sleazy sites pushing free porn, games, taking successful apps and repackaging them, etc. that we see in the mobile/Windows desktop world, and normal people would routinely be socially- engineered to get access to free stuff, just as Linux users have for years been fooled into running binaries or installing packages. This isn't more widespread because there's not much money in it but if that were to change it would immediately require the same kind of hardening which every other consumer OS has had to make.

<comment><USER11> Well, there is Android, that uses Linux and is as mainstream consumer as it gets. Do mind that I specifically said 'Linux survived' as in 'the Linux kernel project', followed by a number of Linux distributions.

Also, where are those _Linux users [who] have for years been fooled into running binaries or installing packages_? The majority of Linux users get their software from repositories maintained by whichever distribution they use. This fact is one of the reasons why Linux users are far less likely to install 'random' software. It is that aspect of Linux distributions which 'stores' like F-Droid bring to Android.

Last, what kind of 'hardening' do you deem _every other consumer OS has had to make_ which Linux distributions have yet to accomplish? I'd go so far as saying that the likes of Windows and MacOS are playing catch-up here in finally getting around to implementing a sane repository infrastructure from which users can install and update software instead of having them hunting around the web for some _SETUP.EXE_ to download and click on - which then proceeds to install not only the requested program but also a host of toolbars and 'shopping assistants'.

That both Apple as well as Microsoft took one step further in making these software repositories single-source to the detriment of their user's freedom of choice is what started this discussion in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I did my Master Thesis on this kind of stuff. There are many Apps among the top 100 free ones that ask permissions completely unrelated to their functionality. Yeah I know, not surprising. What surprised me at the time was that Android gives away much information "for free". For example, if I recall correctly, GET_ACCOUNTS was granted automatically and it allowed to get the "title" of every account on the phone as shown in the Android UI. Most Apps use the actual username as the title, google included (aka, every App could read your email address). Nice exceptions are Signal and WhatsApp.

<comment><USER14> I'm the author of this article and I'd love to learn more about what you found in your research. You can reach me at craig dot silverman at buzzfeed.com.

<comment><USER15> This review from USENIX Enigma 2019 might be interesting for you. They tested over 80,000 of the most popular Android apps to examine what data they access and with whom they share it, how mobile apps are tracking and profiling users, how these practices are often against users' expectations and public disclosures, and how app developers may be violating various privacy regulations.

Some numbers from the presentation

      - the "GPS icon" is visible for only 0.04% of actual accesses to location data

      - of 42000 apps transmitting personal information, 21000 (50%) don't use TLS and send data unencrypted

      - 1,325 apps that don't have location permission, actually obtain street-level location data and transmit it home

[https://www.usenix.org/conference/enigma2019/presentation/eg...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/enigma2019/presentation/egelman)

<comment><USER14> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > As noted earlier in this thread, I didn't go looking for Chinese developers > for this story. But if you go hunting for permissions-abusing apps, this is > where you might end up. …

[https://twitter.com/CraigSilverman/status/111862075124903936...](https://twitter.com/CraigSilverman/status/1118620751249039360)

<comment><USER16> Cheaper labor, I suppose.

I bet Eastern Europe is also represented.

<comment><USER17> Are chinese really cheap labor though? Their tech companies are quickly eclipsing that of western companies.

I don't think it's fair to say it's just a cheap labor thing.

<comment><USER16> Not utterly cheap, but likely not as expensive as Silicon Valley.

Also, I suspect that those who concentrate on adding spyware and ad fraud, repackaging, etc are not the top talent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The article puts blame on specific apps of Chinese origin, but lot of said in the article can be applied to other apps too, for example:

> Kaltheuner, of Privacy International, told BuzzFeed News the policies are > vague about how third parties, including potentially the Chinese government > or other authorities, can gain access to the data being collected.

Google's privacy policy [1] is also very vague. Instead of clearly writing technical details, what data they collect and when, they just give a general description. Take this phrase, for example:

> We may also collect information about you from trusted partners, including > marketing partners who provide us with information about potential customers > of our business services, and security partners who provide us with > information to protect against abuse.

Or this:

> We provide personal information to our affiliates and other trusted > businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions and in > compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality > and security measures.

Absolutely no details. I don't see how Google hiding its "partners" identity is different from Chinese companies hiding their identity.

The article says that Chinese company can share the data with their government (without any proofs), but doesn't Google share the data too when required by the law?

Also, there is an interesting note hidden in Chrome's policy [2]:

> Chrome won't allow a site to access your location without your permission; > however, on mobile devices, Chrome automatically shares your location with > your default search engine if the Chrome app has permission to access your > location and you haven't blocked geolocation for the associated web site.

So instead of singling out a Chinese company, we should pay attention to all of the mobile apps and their practices.

Regarding excessive permissions, I think Google could improve the situation by promoting apps with few required permissions in the search results and making permission list more noticeable. For example, currently, if you browse Google Play, permission list is hidden behind a tiny link.

[1] [https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en- US](https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-US)

[2] [https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/privacy/](https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/privacy/)

</comment><comment><USER19> It's amazing how poor the filtering is. There are plenty of developer horror stories of legitimate apps being taken down by some broken, automated process - sometimes taking peoples' entire Google accounts with them. Then you're stuck dealing with more automated systems for support.

Of course these garbage apps make it through somehow. My favorite is an SNES emulator that's full of ROMs. Clearly a copyright violation, but somehow made it through state-of-the-art AI...

<comment><USER20> _My favorite is an SNES emulator that 's full of ROMs. Clearly a copyright violation, but somehow made it through state-of-the-art AI_

I'd actually be fine with it letting stuff like that through, but filter out actual _malicious to the user_ apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> In an ideal world, OS maintainers, instead of running a software store with a client-end on consumer devices, would run just a repository, with version control, metadata and downloadable packages for apps submitted to and supported on their platform, but allowed any third party to link to their repositories for fetching information or downloads. This would allow external review hosting, discovery, competing marketplaces, or even users directly fetching the application without navigating marketplaces if they knew what they wanted.

Of course, there's nothing in this approach financially for the maintaining company, so this was not going to happen.

<comment><USER22> What could possibly go wrong? Viruses, malware, ransomware, toolbars, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Installing f-droid and using more simple and open source apps is one of the best things I've done lately.

<comment><USER24> Its too bad its still flakey at updating apps. I've been using it for a few apps for many years, and I'd say easily half of app updates simply fail for non-obvious reasons. Its been this way across multiple devices and countless versions of Android, so I'm left to believe the problem is with F-droid itself.

<comment><USER25> I also heavily heavily hate the idea that they sign everything, the app stores must not be trusted. They should _only_ be signing over packages already reproducibly compiled.

<comment><USER26> Why? Isn't that how signatures of any Linux distro work too? The packager signs the package not the developer.

<comment><USER25> Because they force users to trust them unnecessarily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There are several app categories which become breeding ground for malware.

\- battery booster \- phone cleaner \- anti virus \- note taking app \- file manager \- ···

For risk management from getting banned, those adware companies, will usually register multiple accounts, with offshore address in Hong Kong or Singapore.

This is a good starting move by Google, but not enough still. We still see companies like Cheetah mobile, Du group being active in Google Play Store.

Those companies (and their associated accounts which distributes malware) who caught red-handed, should be banned permanently.

</comment><comment><USER28> Good. This is what advertising agencies asked for and what they deserve. Implement a "click button to get money" system means of course people are going to try to beat that any way they can. I'm surprised any web advertising firm manages to stay afloat.

<comment><USER20> In fact, there's a browser extension which users willingly install that can help you "commit ad fraud":

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19278936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19278936)

It might actually be beneficial for privacy, since trying to "poison the well" of tracking data gets detected by the adtech companies and they'll likely start ignoring you. In that sense, affecting their bottom line is the only way to make advertisers leave you alone...

<comment><USER29> I would rather not being subjected to the adverts and the associated data mining in the first place. Nothing more creepy than the feeling you are being stalked through your internet journey to sell you yet another useless product you don't want or need.

Creepy and deceitful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm not entirely sure I have that much of a problem with ad fraud, doesn't it only hurt the ad companies and companies like google (which I have a problem with anyway), by basically scamming them into believing that I interacted so that company should be compensated.

I do object to collecting and sending my personal information, but I feel they just mixed it, as that probably relates to more then just these Chinese apps.

And I really don't like the fact that it seems that Google only cares about abusing the users, and breaches of trust and privacy when it hurts the advertisers (and themselves), and not when the normal user gets hurt.

Not surprising though, but still annoying.

<comment><USER31> It hurts mostly the companies paying for ads, and probably mostly smaller ones that can't detect the issue. Think your local car dealer.

<comment><USER32> I've never seen an ad for my local car dealer, or similar, in an iOS app, for instance. Just saying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> They're mixing so many issues and confusing the matter. They have discovered ad fraud, which is interesting, but doesn't actually directly harm the user (right?), just the advertisers and Google. But then to make sure they are propagating fear, they bring in the completely unrelated issue of data being sent to China. And there is some confusion there too - is it only through the (unnecessary) permissions that users _approve_ (a much different problem) or are they able to send unexpected data also without the permissions? I wish the world didn't have this sensationalism arms race to get their articles read.

<comment><USER34> If the ad fraud runs in the background as claimed, it harms the user by wasting their battery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> People think I'm weird for not installing whatsapp because it downloads all my contacts and I can't prevent that in this version of android which I can't update because I can only do that through at&t while on their network but I get service through someone else because at&t doesn't cover my area.

It's absurd.

<comment><USER36> Just get a written permission from all of your contacts that you're allowed to upload their data to WhatsApp, like the rest of us clearly have.

Or make it so that no one has anything against you ever. Because people have been sued already for uploading their contacts' information to WhatsApp without permission.

I really don't want to encourage you to use WhatsApp, but one possible solution would be to use this app: [https://f-droid.org/app/opencontacts.open.com.opencontacts](https://f-droid.org/app/opencontacts.open.com.opencontacts)

It's a separate store for your contacts, so that you don't have to use the Android contacts implementation where every app and their mum wants access to.

However, mind that WhatsApp is not going to be particularly user-friendly whether you do this or block access to the contacts in newer Android versions. It won't display people's names until they've chatted to you (and then only in a shitty secondary GUI), so you will often have to guess from their picture who they might be.

And worse still, there's no way to initiate a chat from within WhatsApp to someone who's not in your contacts.

Thankfully, there's an app for that nowadays, too: [https://f-droid.org/app/io.github.subhamtyagi.openinwhatsapp](https://f-droid.org/app/io.github.subhamtyagi.openinwhatsapp)

<comment><USER18> Isn't exporting a contact list a violation under GDPR? Contact names and their phone numbers are a personal information and the app must get that person's consent to process their data.

<comment><USER36> Let me put it like this: I consider it only a matter of time before a lawsuit for this completes and Facebook has to pay a multi-million dollar fine. A lawsuit against WhatsApp was filed in the night that the GDPR became active: [https://noyb.eu/4complaints/](https://noyb.eu/4complaints/)

The lawsuit is not just for this matter, it's rather because users were forced to consent to the privacy policy in order to continue using the services, which is very hard to justify under the GDPR, but I presume/hope, they will also look into what WhatsApp wanted users to consent to and how they presented it (89 screens full of legalese).

In theory, there is some clause in WhatsApp's terms of service which requires every user to get that written permission from all their contacts that I joked about.

One actual thing that WhatsApp will be able to cling to, is that they do have a 'legitimate interest'. Without uploading these contacts, their service would not anymore grow at even just half the pace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> >"If an app violates our policies, we take action

Bullshit, Google. Bullshit. Only a very small proportion of the apps on Play ask only for the permissions that are needed to perform their task, and Internet access is not a deniable permission, leaving a nice little back door for them to siphon off your data. The example of the flashlight app is not an edge case, it's the norm. Google does not care because they'd rather earn more ad revenue than have quality apps, and the number of apps with the ability to seriously spy on you is staggering.

</comment><comment><USER38> > BuzzFeed News manually identified apps that requested a high number of > permissions, including those assigned as "dangerous,"

A useful automated tool for this is 'Exodus' it will scan APKs for trackers and permissions and provide a web report.

Here is a report for one of the apps mentioned. [https://reports.exodus- privacy.eu.org/en/reports/15627/](https://reports.exodus- privacy.eu.org/en/reports/15627/)

</comment><comment><USER39> > Ad fraud is simply the norm in China

Why is that? I can't even imagine what's going on at the meetings leading up to implementing ad fraud in what I presume is a normal company otherwise and not a bunch of gangsters. Is it morally OK to do this in China for some reason?

<comment><USER15> > While on my most recent flight to Beijing, I sat next to an chatty elderly > Chinese woman. We started discussing the topic, and she said that Chinese > society lacks su zhi 素质, which translates roughly to manners or etiquette. > Before the Cultural Revolution, she explained, Chinese society was guided by > the moral lessons of Confucianism, with its emphasis on being a gentleman, > respecting one's elders, and obeying one's leaders. But during the Cultural > Revolution, Mao Zedong put Confucian principles on its head, pitting the Red > Guard youth against their parents, the less educated against the educated > elite. This chaos tore the social fabric and transformed the society into a > survivalist one, a dog-eat-dog world, the vestiges of which are still felt > today.

> When Deng Xiaoping implemented the Reform and Opening Up policy in 1978, > capitalism was added to the mix of the survivalist culture; in order to get > rich, you had to compete fiercely, fend for yourself and take care of your > own with no regard for rules. This would also explain the rampant corruption > among government officials, who use their position to amass wealth for > themselves and their family. And nowadays, a third phenomenon has also added > itself to the dangerous cocktail of selfishness and competition: the digital > age. Many Chinese young people spend the majority of their days glued to > WeChat, or taking selfies everywhere, or shopping at the ubiquitous malls > around the country. This "me" culture is certainly not unique to China; > indeed, we see the same thing happening to the youth in New York to Buenos > Aires to London to Brussels to Moscow. But in China it exacerbates the > already self-centeredness brought on by the cruelty of the cultural > revolution and the competitiveness of capitalism with Chinese > characteristics.

> In other words, China doesn't just lack common etiquette and basic manners; > it lacks a moral compass altogether.

[https://thediplomat.com/2016/09/chinas-quest-for-a-moral- com...](https://thediplomat.com/2016/09/chinas-quest-for-a-moral-compass/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > Google confirmed it found fake ad clicking on all 6 apps, and said ad fraud > was against Play store policy. So why aren't you removing the apps, I asked. > They said they banned them from ad products and were still investigating. > Really? Finally, not long ago, Google removed them.

What's wrong with this guy? Does he not understand what investigating means? God forbid Google actually investigates claims of malfeasance.

<comment><USER28> BuzzFeed News is a trash rag, what are you expecting?

<comment><USER41> BuzzFeed yes. But this is BuzzFeed News, featuring their Pulitzer Prize winning editorial staff. Very different from BuzzFeed.com.

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

<comment><USER42> > Pulitzer Prize winning editorial staff

That's no longer a reliable way of trusting the credibility. There's been many Pulitzer Prize news reporting which have come out to be completely false.

<comment><USER43> Maybe, but it helps make them less of a "trash rag"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> google play store and android have consistently shown that the first priority is gaining market share. user safety and security, app quality, data privacy and positive developer experience are far, far lower priorities.

</comment><comment><USER45> Here is a solution for this problem: let's devalue mobile advertisements. How? Simple: every time you see an ad, add the product advertised to a blacklist. Refuse to download any app that advertises to you. I've been doing this for a few years, and have felt no negative effects; in fact I have way less app clutter on my phone, and I still find all of the apps that I look for. Advertising has changed in nature; it used to be about increasing visibility of your products. Now it is about compelling people who don't want or need your product into buying it, by using deception and psychological manipulation. So how do we kill the beast that the ad industry has become? Don't feed it.

<comment><USER36> I appreciate the vigour, but it's probably easier to just use an ad blocker: [https://f-droid.org/app/org.blokada.alarm](https://f-droid.org/app/org.blokada.alarm)

<comment><USER45> An adblocker keeps you from being exposed to an advertisement. This means you'll be adding zero value to the ad. What I'm talking about is a boycott, and you'll add negative value to it. I find this much more effective, and again, it has had no discernable negative effect on my life. I research to find the things I need. Word of mouth is more powerful, and gives more value to people's opinions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> > This means they can no longer use any of Google's ad products to earn money.

Really? Guess it can be easily done with new virtual firm and new contact data.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is as surprising as the facebook story.

</comment><comment><USER48> To consider the versions of Chinese apps uploaded to Play is already much cleaner and toned-down than their China versions.

DU Group is an affiliate of Baidu, which has been using ads like "Click a button to boost your signal 5X stronger" to harvest users. It's common and unfettered in China, since they are all watchdogs of the party.

</comment><comment><USER49> Has anyone ever gone to jail for this? Oh, you committed massive fraud and stole millions of dollars? We're just going to tell you not to do that anymore... in what world would they NOT incessantly scam the system with these completely asymmetric incentives?

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm using a non-Google version of Android (provided for the Fairphone 2) and install apps from the F-Droid store (exception is WhatsApp which is a dirctinstalll). Can I consider myself safe?

</comment><comment><USER51> THIS, among many other reasons, is why I (and my wife), switched to the iPhone.

<comment> mellow-lake-day That is a not a cure-all solution. It may be better as Apple has a higher barrier of entry into their store but those apps still exist. And Apple doesn't remove these apps right away either, for instance it took Apple one month to remove the app that was sending browser data to China.

[https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/07/adware-doctor- stealing-...](https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/07/adware-doctor-stealing- history/)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/10/20/data- thi...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/10/20/data-thieving- apps-banned-from-apples-app-store/#4440859cb89f)</comment></comment>


DotCloud (YC S10) Mix and Match Cloud Platform Launches - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/22/yc-funded-dotcloud-an-application-platform-that-lets-you-mix-and-match/

<comment><USER2> This is Solomon, co-founder at DotCloud. We're around to answer any questions you may have!

Also open to suggestions for a "Offer HN" post :)

<comment><USER3> Since we are introducing ourselves, I'm Sebastien, the other co-founder:-)

<comment><USER4> Congrats on Launching guys!

Should come by the Cloudkick/Rackspace offices again sometime, would love to catch up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this is the first YC company with french founders so congratulations to the team for that, and most importantly congrats for your launch I look forward to test it! Dotcloud seems awesome!

Cocorico :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Congrats on the launch!

Is there any reason you're running an outdated version of Nginx (0.7.65 vs 0.7.68 vs 0.8.54)? It's one major revision behind current and a few minor behind stable. Which brings me to a question I had lingering in my mind, what is your "software" upgrade process since users have no control over it?

Another question, do you cache non-static objects (cookie based caching when proxy_pass'ing)? If so, how are you handling the different cookies for each particular app? Can this be turned off?

Regards

Joe

<comment><USER3> About the nginx version:

\- 0.7.65 is the version currently used in ubuntu lucid. We use it only as a proxy.

\- On services like python-wsgi we currently use 0.8.52 and we will soon upgrade to 0.8.54

\- On the ruby-passenger service we follow the nginx pulled by passenger

So it's always dependent of the context. The idea is to keep the stacks stable and secure at all times.

Once we have tested and approved an upgrade we create a new revision of the corresponding service and deploy it across the platform. If the upgrade requires downtime we schedule a rolling maintenance window and notify users.

On caching:

We don't cache by default (but this could change). Users have the option to add caching services like varnish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a developer struggling to also be a sysadmin I find this very interesting. We were just about to start looking for a sysadmin to manage what we're doing, so it will be interesting to see how DotCloud works. We're Python focused, so this looks to be right up our street. Curious to know what others do in terms of managing the servers etc - do you think that it could be dangerous to rely on a service like this? Do you think its better to understand from end-to-end what you're using and why?

<comment><USER8> I HIGHLY recommend Dotcloud. We have been using them for a couple of months and its insane how easy it is to get setup. The Dotcloud guys have done a spectacular job in making it painless to use their system. Ours was a Python/Django app and just took a few lines of configuration to get up and running.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, you guys are fearless, so much for sure.

Cassandra and Hadoop alone need a good chunk of domain knowledge to keep them running smoothly. Seeing them listed casually next to so many other deployment stacks makes me feel slightly dizzy.

I'm definitely looking forward to see if you'll be able to pull this off.

<comment><USER2> DotCloud co-founder here.

You're correct, there's a beefy learning curve to properly configure, fine- tune and scale each of these components. Our job is to tackle that learning curve _so you don't have to_.

As a developer, you get a little more value out of that deal every time you want to play with something new.

It works for us, because after a while you start seeing patterns in proper automation. There are only so many ways to store, modify and move bits around.

<comment><USER9> You're preaching to the choir, most of my day- and nightjob involves just that. ;-)

That's where a bit of skepticism stems from, as I've dealt with both of these databases first hand, also various other stacks ranging from java, python, ruby, even lua.

The not-so-stellar uptime record of Heroku shows that making one size fit all is quite hard, even when you're doing it only for a relatively small set of components.

Doing it well for nearly _all_ of them is nothing short of the holy grail in systems management.

<comment><USER2> One important detail: we're not releasing all these components right away, although we did package and test them all.

We'll start with the fundamentals, and gradually expand to the full catalog.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Direct link to the company: <http://www.dotcloud.com/>

If someone can tell me which YC batch they're a part of, I'll edit the title - this is the first time I'm hearing about them.

<comment><USER3> We are Summer 2010.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed. Congratulations on the beta launch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like the courage trying to manage this. Two thumbs up.

To be honest, I am skeptical, that a newcomer startup can do the heavy lifting of supporting such a big stack. Each of these has a lot of specialities that need to be known and to fight.

Background: Our stack uses appjet, nginx, varnish and couchdb. Each of these has different challenges. Think of optimization, scaling, resource limiting, leveling, monitoring, statistics and enforcing governor limits/notifying customers. We needed over a year to establish this. I don't want to sound negative, just think about all this, what we needed learn.

<comment><USER2> If you think about it, isn't it incredible that _you_ had to invest so much time and money in building out your infrastructure? How many web businesses had to re-invent the wheel to get to the same result?

Yes, it's hard work for us. But 90% of the work is the same across all deployments. We take advantage of that fact to offer massive savings in engineering and sysadmin time.

<comment><USER10> Wise words. I will be really impressed, when you guys can deliver this. Your startup has a great future and will be very useful to many of us.

<comment><USER2> If you mention you HN username in your beta request, we'll send you an early invite so you can see for yourself :)

<comment><USER10> I appreciate it. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Congrats to the dotcloud team! I already had the luck to work with seb and sam from the dotcloud team and I can testify that they are extremely skilled and reliable guys. They won't fail you nor your servers :) My 2 cents

</comment><comment><USER12> Fantastic idea; wish I had thought of it. I'm very curious to see how efficient your "glue" code is between the components. It's one thing to have a modular hands-off system, it's often another to have that system perform reasonably well. What level of system administration do you expose/hide to the developer? How do you plan to make money?

<comment><USER2> Our focus is on giving control a developer needs: how do I install language- specific packages? How do run my tests? How do I pass settings to my app? How do I run that custom build command?

We don't offer root access. But we're working on customization tools that will make you forget you ever had to ssh into a server directly.

As for pricing: we're already charging a few test customers, and will expand paid plans to all beta users very soon.

<comment><USER12> If I understand correctly, your basic assumption is that a developer only needs access to the configuration options. Essentially, a developer isn't going to hack the code, they just modify the package configuration as needed. I think this would be a fair assumption and targets a huge number of users looking to leverage the cloud.

As for pricing, looking back, I realize that my question may have been a bit blunt and offensive. What I was really curious to know was whether you were going to be charging "per instance", "per hour", "per instance-hour", "per package", etc. For example, is Apache+MySQL on a single machine (if that's possible) less expensive than Apache on one machine and MySQL on another? What about compared to Nginx+Cassandra? (FWIW: You don't have to answer this directly if you want to keep the cards close while in testing...)

None the less, I wish you the best. (signed up for a beta.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Congrats Seb, Solomon, and the rest of the Dotcloudees!

<comment><USER14> Hey, you have a gold name! That's funky, is that because you're a YC company or something else? I've never seen that before!

Edit: now it's gone... that was _strange_. I'm sure I saw a gold name!

<comment><USER15> I'm also seeing that. Anyone know what it's about?

<comment><USER16> From what I can see, it's people affiliated with YC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Heroku has a fixed stack with tiers that they could tune, tweak and horizontally scale. Is that what dotcloud provides for each of the listed technologies ?

<comment><USER3> Each technology will have it's own way of scaling.

For example:

\- for django you will have an easy way to add more instances

\- for mysql more slaves

\- for celery or resque more workers

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> very interesting. I am interested in seeing how it actually works though. Its still behind the doors. Hope to get invite. (btw, heroku is not just deployment platform, it helps u scale as well. Interested in seeing if dot cloud helps in that fashion)

<comment><USER2> Yes, we do help you scale as well. Think of DotCloud instances as a generalized version of Heroku's "dynos".

You can scale up any component in your stack by cranking up the number of instances. We automatically provision and reconfigure instances for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How's the Mono / .Net support coming along?

<comment><USER2> We assumed Azure had the .Net world covered. But if we get enough demands, we might reconsider.

Would you be willing to host a production .Net app on Mono?

<comment><USER19> Yes, if the host is good. I love .Net but I'm continually jealous of things like Heroku which really support a fast and nimble development approach favouring smart developers rather than heavyweight process. Azure isn't quite there.

Azure's addon options are pretty limited too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I like the strategy of using other YC companies as alpha customers. If any of the companies on the platform get traction it looks pretty good for DotCloud as well.

</comment><comment><USER21> One of the (only) advantages of App Engine over Heroku is that they auto- scaled. Will you guys be doing that?

<comment><USER2> We're taking one step at a time. First we'll give you metrics to help you decide when to scale up or down. Eventually we'll offer to take that decision for you, with a configurable ceiling.

In our experience, for most customers 10-second manual scaling is just as good as auto-scaling.

<comment><USER21> I don't know what 10-second manual scaling means.

Our problem with Heroku was that we didn't know how many units to allocate, and ended up way over-spending. But if we had tweaked it to be just right, we would have been screwed by an unexpected surge.

<comment><USER2> It means that you type 'dotcloud scale' and wait 10 seconds :)

We offer resource usage data, so you can make an informed decision when scaling. You are correct that a very sudden surge can still screw you - but we are preparing an alert feature to help you mitigate this.

<comment><USER21> I don't mean to be negative, but I like your product a lot less without autoscaling. If it's hard to do, then it'll be nearly impossible for me; if its not hard, then I'll be annoyed that I'm writing code that you guys could have trivially written.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> anyone know about their pricing ?

<comment><USER2> Expect a pricing page very soon. We are validating the model with a few paying customers already.

We would love to hear your suggestions at email@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Congratulation with the launch! Are guys going to handle database versioning/migration somehow?

<comment><USER3> Database migration is a complex subject:-) You have full control over you database (with sql prompt and everything). That means that you can use any migration tool you like.

If we start seeing a recurrent pattern we'll try to automate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Whats the difference from CloudKick?

<comment><USER2> Cloudkick helps you deploy and monitor your own servers. DotCloud helps you deploy and scale your application, without having to worry about servers.</comment></comment>


What it's like to ship yourself overnight on Cabin's sleep pod bus - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/22/cabin-sleep-pod-bus-review <comment><USER2> You americans don't have any trains, eh? :)

Not exactly the ritz, but does the job: [https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=sleeping+train](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=sleeping+train)

<comment><USER3> There is a sleeper train up the coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco:

[https://www.amtrak.com/coast-starlight-train](https://www.amtrak.com/coast- starlight-train)

<comment><USER4> Someone in the comments mentioned that Amtrak's sleeper train travels daytime on the SF to LA stint and the terminals are some way away from the city. So the travel by night advantage is gone.

Amtrak's sleeper cars are also quite expensive when I last looked at it as an option for getting from Colorado to San Francisco. The price compared to a seat on the train was 2..3x or more (but it includes food).

<comment><USER5> In the case of San Francisco it's a bit unfair to knock Amtrak for the location of the terminal, because it's not their fault, it's the fault of geography. San Francisco sits at the tip of a peninsula; for a train to stop in SF -- actually in SF and not Oakland or San Jose -- and also continue on to other locations would require the train to come up the peninsula, make its San Francisco stop, then turn around and go back down the peninsula in order to continue north (up the east side of the Bay) or south to other destinations.

Since that would be wasteful, Amtrak doesn't do it; instead they stop in San Jose (where you can switch to Caltrain to run up the peninsula into SF) and Oakland (where you can hop on BART or a ferry to cross the Bay into SF).

<comment><USER6> Engineering can easily trump Geography in this case: you could just tunnel under the Golden Gate and keep going north. This would be a _utterly_ trivial compared to something like the Seikan Tunnel[1].

Just to be clear: not knocking Amtrak here. They're virtually budget-less, for the most part disallowed from owning or even maintaining their own infrastructure, so building new infrastructure would be completely beyond the Pale. Not knocking Amtrak at all -- it's America's collective ability to get its infrastructure act together that is just sad.

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

<comment><USER7> You could also just use the bridge itself. My country has a copy of the Golden Gate (built by the same company) and we've retrofitted it to run trains underneath the deck: [https://www.google.com/search?q=ponte+25+de+abril+comboio&tb...](https://www.google.com/search?q=ponte+25+de+abril+comboio&tbm=isch)

<comment><USER8> Never heard of this bridge until today. However, according to Wikipedia:

> Because it is a suspension bridge and has similar coloring, it is often > compared to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, US. It was built by the > American Bridge Company which constructed the San Francisco–Oakland Bay > Bridge, but not the Golden Gate.

<comment><USER7> Oh. My life is a lie :| Thanks, I don't even know where I've heard that. Still, same style of bridge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's a very expensive sleeper bus. I took an 8 hour sleeper bus here in New Zealand, including free wifi (which you don't even need, you're sleeping), and it cost me NZ$30 (US$22), including luggage. The same thing in Vietnam cost me about $10, but had the problem that the beds were Vietnamese sized, which for a European wasn't super comfortable.

Sure, they weren't quite as fancy, but it really doesn't matter if you're sleeping, you're asleep. I guess that's the SV markup on everything that's been common in the rest of the world for a long time.

They are super convenient though, pick up and drop off in the middle of the city, and accommodation included. Go to sleep, and you wake up at your destination.

</comment><comment><USER10> Not sure I'd really want to get where I was going with bed-head and no access to a shower. Other than that, seems like a great idea. Maybe they could work out a cross-promotion or voucher or something that would let people use the showers/locker room at a gym at the destination?

<comment><USER11> Actually, you wouldn't need any of that at the destination which is Santa Monica pier. You get out in the LA sunshine, walk down the steps to the beach and take a dip in the Pacific. When you're done, rinse off in one of the public beach showers and you'll be dry in a jiffy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Trying to think if this would work for me. I don't live there and haven't commuted that type of distance regular enough to warrant this type of expense. But, on trips, I tend to stay alert enough to know what's going on regardless of how hard to try to sleep. I tend to try to drive on trips because I don't trust other people driving. They mention wanting autonomous buses to run that route, but I just got my class B CDL and could see myself making this run every weekend as a job which would be cool.

</comment><comment><USER13> I can't wait until we get autonomous driving and can convert our cars into sleep pods. When you're going across the country at a slow pace, the MPG (or MPGe for electric cars) is also going to be fantastic. You'd still need autonomous recharging for an electric car but apparently that's a solved problem as well.

</comment><comment><USER14> I haven't used Cabin but a lot of other bus companies (Megabus, Greyhound, Flixbux,...) and trains with sleeping compartments and I imagine the bus to be a lot harder to sleep on (vibrations, breaking, highway noise,...) than a train on fixed tracks.

<comment><USER6> Have you _ridden_ trains in America? I've travelled almost every Amtrak route across the country. In a country that properly maintains its rail infrastructure, Cabin will definitely lose much of its competitive advantage. In America, however...

<comment><USER14> Only used trains in Europe so far hence why my impression of trains is probably a bit biased...

<comment><USER15> Not biased, you just have an impression of trains _in systems that are well- funded as a public service_. Come to America to experience the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If only we'd had similar capsules on transcontinental flights — now, _that_ would be something. Otherwise, it is just a bus serving two points, no more exciting than a sleeping car in a train.

Properly sleeping on a flight, on the other hand, feels like luxury.

<comment><USER9> They do, if you fly first class. You just have to spend several thousand dollars on a ticket. Air New Zealand also offers skycouch ([https://www.airnewzealand.co.nz/economy- skycouch](https://www.airnewzealand.co.nz/economy-skycouch)), which is similar and cheaper, but really is only worth it if you're traveling with your partner or someone else you feel comfortable spooning for an entire flight.

<comment><USER16> Capsules are arranged differently — they can be stacked together vertically, and probably be offered at least for the price of business class seats.

(If the weight is a great concern, and it is, and capsules are too heavy — hammocks can also be an option).

<comment><USER17> I've thought about exactly this. Take a cue from Japanese honeycomb hotels and stack them three high in the place of the current seats - you could get equivalent passenger numbers on the plane, while giving people a safe way to stretch out on a long flight. Correctly designed, they would be safe, possibly safer than seats, during an emergency landing, although I can see getting out in a hurry being a major setback for implementation.

<comment><USER18> The major thing about beds on planes is international safety regulations. Two that I can remember when working for an airline which were introducing beds:

1) The aisle has to be a set width, so you cant stack cabins across the plane.

2) Passengers need to seated and have a seat belt on upon take off and landing.

I think theres another about being able to be belted in if turbulence happens, and be inspectable by attendants. In short, its not as easy as one may think, and its these regulations which complicate things.

<comment><USER17> In a sleeping capsule, passenger's ranges of movement up/down and forward/backward would inherently be more restricted than in a seat. If necessary, a belt could be provided, although it might not be as comfortable because there's no guarantee on where the person's waist will be when lying down.

The way I picture it is replacing seats as they are currently laid out in e.g. a 747 - 3 seats become stacked capsules -> aisle -> 3/4 seats become stacked capsules -> aisle -> 3 seats become stacked capsule. I don't deny that getting into these capsules would be awkward for people with limited mobility, but I do imagine it is within the realms of possibility while meeting safety regulations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ooldezaZgU0](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ooldezaZgU0) ...

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm not sure why would someone do this if flying takes way less time and is cheaper.

<comment><USER21> Cost of travel + accomodation.

If you are flying there is a need to book a hotel to deliver the same experience of being in LA/SF at 7am refreshed.

That is the "free money" in the model, people can exchange sleep in a hotel for a sleep on a bus with pretty much the same outcome.

<comment><USER13> Ideally there'd be a place to take a shower where you arrive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Looks like the cabins don't have sound barriers... better hope you don't get a snorer on the trip!

<comment> mike-cardwell Ear plugs?</comment></comment>


Bitcoins Seized by DEA - <AUTHOR> http://letstalkbitcoin.com/post/53700133097/users-bitcoins-seized-by-dea

<comment><USER2> As an early adopter of Bitcoin, I'm happy to see this, because it's a sign that Bitcoin is on the path to more mainstream US market adoption. As more US citizens get comfortable with and start using Bitcoin, US law-enforcement organizations gradually will learn to use it, gradually will learn to monitor its use by others, and, yes, gradually will learn to seize it whenever it's used for criminal activity.[1] This is not a bad thing.

\--

[1] Bitcoins can be seized -- just like cash, gold, a file stored in a hard drive, or any other physical or digital asset in a person's possession.

<comment><USER3> Considering the entire point of bitcoin is circumventing seizure, that sounds like a bad thing to me.

<comment><USER4> "the entire point of bitcoin is circumventing seizure"

[citation needed]

There are many reasons to want to use Bitcoin.

Plus it _is_ much more seizure resistant than centralized systems like banks.

<comment><USER5> _[citation needed]_

Yeah, the more I read about bitcoin in the media, the more I've decided people are projecting on the currency what they _want_ it to be about.

 _The entire point of Bitcoin is anonymity!_

 _The entire point of Bitcoin is to be able to do things that sound suspiciously like laundering money!_

 _The entire point of Bitcoin is to circumvent seizure!_

I just wonder what will be next on the list.

<comment><USER6> I've always wondered why people would use Bitcoin to launder money. I mean, in a "real" investigation on the fact, Bitcoin's blocktree serves as an infalsifiable ledger that can trivially be analysed by a computer. Would make laundering harder, not easier in my opinion.

<comment><USER7> I'm just speculating, but I'd imagine it's easier to "wash" bitcoins then it would be to wash other currency.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, but it is also far far easier to unravel the washing of bitcoins.

Every transaction in BTC is recorded in the public blockchain _forever_. A good enough computer has infinite amounts of time to analyze the transactions of BTCs after the fact.

I dare say it is impossible to properly launder money with BTCs as it is. (ZeroCoins or other protocol extensions notwithstanding)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One thing's for sure, it'll be interesting to follow the blockchain and see what eventually happens to that BTC. Does the government leave it in a wallet, or cash it out with Coinbase, or what?

<comment><USER10> One of the neat things about bitcoin that hasn't been talked a lot about is that bitcoin makes it possible (with a little planning) to create seizure and "civil forfeiture" resistant money. This can be done if you want to save your money for later (perhaps for your defense, or for after your eventual release), or alternatively merely because you believe that civil forfeiture is unethical and dangerous to society as it accelerates the militarization of the police.

Imagine a system where the private material of a wallet is shared among one or more trusted individuals (using secret sharing) who are under instructions to cooperate with each other in destroying or moving the money if you are ever arrested or fail to check in after a certain period of time. If your aim is to merely destroy the money, you could also get away with having a secret VPS running somewhere that does the deed (it would not matter if it were later found).

If you go with the "destroy" route, then you would not even be destroying the _evidence_ from an ethics standpoint (thanks to the nature of the blockchain). However the authorities, upon being denied their "prize", would undoubtedly throw a childish hissyfit and assert that you destroyed the evidence anyway.

<comment><USER11> _Imagine a system where the private material of a wallet is shared among one or more trusted individuals (using secret sharing) who are under instructions to cooperate with each other in destroying or moving the money if you are ever arrested or fail to check in after a certain period of time._

Don't you think that people involved in money-laundering already engage in such conspiracies? There's a reason they call it ' _organized_ crime.'

<comment><USER10> Uh, yes? Of course? That seems obvious.

I'm not sure what you are getting at here.

<comment><USER11> It's naive to assume the government wouldn't be able to figure out such an obvious scheme. I disapprove of civil forfeiture laws as a matter of policy, but your proposed mechanism for outwitting them is absurd.

<comment><USER10> They would of course "figure it out". Actually, there wouldn't even be anything to figure out in the first place, it would be painfully obvious what had happened and they would strike out at you for doing it. Your bitcoins are transferred out of your wallet hours after you are arrested but before you give them the passphrase to your wallet... what is there to figure out?

You seem to be _entirely_ misunderstanding what I am proposing.

<comment><USER11> I don't think so. You seem to be entirely overestimating the effectiveness of your proposal.

<comment><USER10> How is destroying bitcoins not an effective way of ensuring that nobody has those bitcoins? How is that not effective?

You seem to be under the impression that I think the authorities would not realize what happened, or would not strike out at you for doing it. I am suggesting neither of those things. They can be as angry as they want to be, but that will not un-transfer those bitcoins. Hell, they can beat you with a wrench for the rest of your natural life but that will not get the bitcoins back.

You _plainly_ do not understand what I am suggesting. _" That would be organized crime and authorities are good at recognizing organized crime"_ is not a coherent response. Speak plainly, what _specifically_ do you think the flaw is?

<comment><USER12> > _They can be as angry as they want to be, but that will not un-transfer > those bitcoins. Hell, they can beat you with a wrench for the rest of your > natural life but that will not get the bitcoins back_

That's very comforting.

<comment><USER13> Actually it is, because it means that since they provably have no way to coerce you, anything they do can be shown to be petty revenge, and that's really the worst way to support one's case.

Governments are used to having a stick to support their arguments with; take it away, and you will find them very bad at making an argument.

<comment><USER12> > _Actually it is, because it means that since they provably have no way to > coerce you, anything they do can be shown to be petty revenge, and that 's > really the worst way to support one's case._

Petty revenge is the bread and butter of lesser bureaucrats in government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a layman's question about Bitcoin for people who know more about the currency: Who or what controls the overall monetary policy for Bitcoin?

In other words, is there some sort of digital central bank that controls inflation by deciding how many Bitcoins are released per area?

<comment><USER15> The mining pools (groups of miners who've joined forces) control it in practice. This effectively gives a very small number of people control over significant things, like transaction fees.

<comment><USER16> But if the managers of the mining pools were to do anything too overt, those who contribute computing power to them could (and probably would) quickly pull their support. At least in theory.

<comment><USER15> Those who contribute share in the profits of the pool! Most things that are in the interest of the pool are in the interest of the miners.

Also, as hardware gets more specialized, the cost to entry gets higher and power concentrates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> USER'S, not USERS'.

 _Very meaningful_ difference here.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're correct. Thanks for catching it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wouldn't this being a "honeypot", as suggested in the article, be an instance of entrapment, which is illegal?

<comment><USER3> No, it's only entrapment if you wouldn't have commit the crime with someone else. Buying drugs from an undercover cop, which is basically what the OP describes, is not entrapment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As a bar prepping J.D. at the moment, I just want to see how this plays out in a courtroom where the prosecution relies too heavily on bitcoins as their ID strategy. I'll totally let them try and explain this to a jury...

<comment><USER20> Probably just as well as any other form of circumstantial technology-based ID: IOW, it depends on the expert witnesses and the presentation of other identifying evidence by the prosecution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The coins of a specific user have been sized, why this sensationalistic title?

<comment><USER22> lol, you interpreted it to mean that bitcoin itself had been seized? do you freak out and check your wallet when you read a headline that says "cash seized by authorities", too?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have the impression that the possibility to track bitcoins history make it less anonymous than real money. There is a thin invisible string linking all bitcoin holders together and that can be followed. With honeypots, and help of NSA like methods it is possible to identify the people involved. As soon as bitcoins are used to buy goods to be delivered.

</comment><comment><USER24> If anyone is curious, the guy seems to be the SR vendor 'Casey Jones' [http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/1gxiv7/srrelated_b...](http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/1gxiv7/srrelated_bitcoin_seizure/caoxlmg)

</comment><comment><USER25> Probably honeypot operation. I wonder if DEA would auction those coins like all assets that get seized.

<comment><USER24> No, it was probably fallout from a controlled delivery or something. There have been multiple controlled deliveries in the past for SR users and so far zero honeypots or other fancy traps (see my collation of arrests/prosecutions in [http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road#safe](http://www.gwern.net/Silk%20Road#safe) ).

<comment><USER24> Although he _is_ a vendor, so who knows: [http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/1gxiv7/srrelated_b...](http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/1gxiv7/srrelated_bitcoin_seizure/caoxlmg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Someone buys drugs and gets caught, and has property seized. How audacious.

</comment><comment><USER27> Yellow letters on an orange background? Yuck.</comment>


Ask HN: Post Got Flagged - <AUTHOR> Hey guys,
My post got flagged after reaching the front page in <30m: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22686264
I didn't think it broke any guidelines but it would appear that it did.
Thoughts?
My hypothesis is that it got flagged as a function of the business I'm in (we help companies increase revenue in exchange for an ex-post fee) and the copy.
Thanks for your time. <comment><USER2> Posts do not need to violate the guidelines to be community-flagged.

In this case, coronavirus thought pieces from non-experts have increasingly been treated with skepticism.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for correcting me. I was unaware of that.

I see, that makes perfect sense. I was aware that anything related to the coronavirus would probably be divisive, but it hadn't occurred to me that this might've contributed to the flagging.

Thanks again for your time.</comment></comment>


Should Facebook Buy RIM? Inside Tech's Hottest New Acquisition Rumour - <AUTHOR> http://www.techvibes.com/blog/should-facebook-buy-rim-inside-techs-hottest-new-acquisition-rumour-2012-05-30

<comment><USER2> This is an incredibly compelling rumor. Facebook buying RIM would revitalize both companies and would signal a huge shift in Facebook's strategy.

However, I don't know if Facebook is mature enough yet to jump into the mobile patent shark tank.</comment>


Scientists decode human thoughts and emotions using MRI and computer analysis - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mind-reading-scientists-decode-human-thoughts-and-emotions-using-mri-and-computer-analysis-60-minutes-2019-11-20/ <comment><USER2> Does this mean there is no such thing as free will?</comment>


Javascript Templating Engine Chooser - <AUTHOR> http://garann.github.io/template-chooser/

<comment><USER2> It's also missing Nunjucks, which works in browser and server, can precompile templates (when done so is really fast), lets you do more logic in templates, has autoescaping, and a bunch of other stuff. Some big project like Mozilla's new Marketplace is using it.

<https://github.com/jlongster/nunjucks>

<comment><USER3> Send in a pull request! It's on GitHub. That's what I did [0]

[0] <https://github.com/garann/template-chooser/pull/20>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's missing DustJS, which is IMO a strong contender that does well in benchmarks

<http://linkedin.github.io/dustjs/>

* Works in the browser and on the server

* Pretty fast

* logic-less but with a helpers API for when you need more power

* pre-compiles templates

* has template partials

<comment><USER5> I am curious why this isn't ported to more languages like mustache is. I ported it to PHP, but it's not really language specific for just the templating part, though context assignment and callbacks might be (but aren't hard).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there a way to deselect an option without reloading the page?

For example: Under "DOM Structure", once you select "DOM" or "String", you can never go back to seeing all the template options.

<comment><USER7> It seems a little buggy. There seem to be several state combinations that cause it to lock up.

<comment><USER6> The "app" is just a bit of jquery that hides/shows divs based on their classes. It skips a refresh if the filter is empty ( to avoid creating an invalid jquery selector?), so if you set "View Partials" to "Yes" and then "No", nothing changes. Anyways, I just forked it and fixed it.

<http://xinsight.github.io/template-chooser/>

This is a simple little app, but it's a good example of how using the DOM as a model and a view (as most jquery apps do) doesn't create the most elegant code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hmmm, I wonder about the reliability of the information, or perhaps reliability is not the right word, maybe completeness would be better.

I don't know who Garann is, and I don't use Javascript templating, and yet just by playing with the options on the page I was able to predict that Garann is using with dot.js. A quick Google then confirmed the hypothesis, which makes me think that the options that are available are aimed quite specifically at Garann's use case, and might not be generally applicable.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is just one of the reasons why I feel developing web apps has gotten harder. While there are a lot of javascript frameworks it is likely two projects pick different routes. It basically means if I need to maintain a project I will have to learn a new javascript library.

<comment><USER10> Also, if you're using a tool that was built more than a year ago, you risk ridicule. Definitely a lot more work figuring out what the hottest new tools are than in traditional or backend development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Missing several from LinkedIn's throwdown: [http://engineering.linkedin.com/frontend/client-side- templat...](http://engineering.linkedin.com/frontend/client-side-templating- throwdown-mustache-handlebars-dustjs-and-more)

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd rather just see a matrix.

<comment><USER13> It might be more helpful if you provided an argument that wasn't just an assertion of your personal tastes.

<comment><USER12> If I don't know exactly what parameters I need it's easier to quickly scan a table than toggle individual options.

Maybe I want some subset of features that aren't available together but I'm willing to compromise on one or more of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nicely put together :) Might want to hide a feature if the selection makes no difference (re-show when it does have potential to make a difference).

Example: Both, Entirety, Fastest, Then it doesn't matter if you say precompiled yes or no.

</comment><comment><USER15> Helpful to learn about the options, but as soon as I said it was for the client and has to be fast, there were no options remaining.

</comment><comment><USER16> Also, Swig.

<http://paularmstrong.github.io/swig/>

</comment><comment><USER17> I encourage you who have found missing frameworks to submit a pull request instead of posting a comment.

</comment><comment><USER18> Can't un-choose. If you choose in a particular department you cannot just take the choice away and it filters by it, forcing you to reload the page.

</comment><comment><USER19> No plain mustache.js

What kind of chooser is this?

</comment><comment><USER20> No option remains for Both, logic-less and fast.

</comment><comment><USER21> Really surprised knockoutjs isn't mentioned. It is the default templating engine in a default .NET MVC project.

<comment><USER22> Knockout is an MVVM (MV*) framework, it is much more than a templating engine. If it had a standalone templating module, then that module could qualify for the comparison for sure, but as it stands it would not make much sense to include it in the comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> jQote2 missing. In our benchmarks one of the fastest and a lot of features.

<http://aefxx.com/jquery-plugins/jqote2/>

<comment><USER24> Yea, I'm glad I'm not the only one using it. It's very fast and works great. Some bugs but workarounds aren't difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great work.

</comment><comment><USER26> Unreadable font.</comment>


What is Erlang-Style Concurrency? - <AUTHOR> http://ulf.wiger.net/weblog/?p=10 <comment><USER2> Beyond the Actor model in erlang, it's got lots of neat tid-bits, especially when you start working with OTP. You can actually have a pool of generic servers waiting to be transformed to any type of server you may happen to need at any one moment. I found that to be an odd thing at first, as it sounds like an invitation to a 'server pool manager', and all its hassles. But neat nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a big Erlang fan, but I think that the concepts it introduces can be ported to other languages with enough work. Bringing Erlang concepts to more traditional languages has the potential to completely transform how we think about structuring massively parallel programs. Personally, I can't wait for python to transparently scale to thousands of machines. A pipe dream, perhaps, but that's what I'm pulling for.

<comment><USER4> Why wait for Python to reinvent itself? Just use Erlang and call Python libraries from Erlang if you really need them.

<comment><USER3> I have no problem using Erlang when I need it, but eventually concurrency is a problem that every language is going to have to deal with more effectively than it does now. The Actor pattern makes a lot of sense to me conceptually, and makes it trivial to parallelize systems. It's not like Erlang's the end all, be all of programming languages, but it is a forward looking one. I look forward to other languages catching up with it.</comment></comment></comment>