French cities trying to ban public adverts - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/dec/23/advertising-breaks-your-spirit-the-french-cities-trying-to-ban-public-adverts <comment><USER3> It's kind of an open secret that the city of Santa Barbara (CA, US) has banned several forms of public outdoor advertising: we have no billboards, no promotional posters, no taxi toppers... It's delightful, and very high on my list of reasons why I enjoy living here. Every time I leave I'm reminded how noisy space is when it's filled with advertisements. I wholeheartedly recommend others advocate for similar policies in their municipality - it can be done!

<comment><USER4> Lots of places in America have severe restrictions on advertising. Hilton Head, South Carolina; and along the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey leap to mind. I think along some of the toll roads in Houston this is also true (It's been a while, I might be remembering that wrong).

Billboards are banned in downtown Chicago, so big companies rent storefronts in tourist areas and put in stores that are not supposed to make money, just to be billboards for their brand.

<comment><USER5> I live in downtown Chicago and I find the lack of billboards everywhere refreshing. Michigan Avenue has very few advertisements with the exception of unintrusive storefront signs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quite simply, advertising is visual pollution; whether it be on large billboards, on bus stops or freestanding in the middle of the sidewalk.

It's visual pollution and it has ruined our towns and cities. I'm excited to read this article and see that people are taking a stand.

<comment> Joe-Z The first time I started thinking about it that way was when I bought a book featuring a selection of Banksy's works [0]. In the opening pages it had a quote of him, making pretty much that point:

The public space is ours. It's not their for corporations. It's to be enjoyed by the people and if you want to come in with your hands full of money to make something else of it you can fuck right off. He's a true artist.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Wall-Piece- Banksy/dp/1844137872](https://www.amazon.com/Wall-Piece-Banksy/dp/1844137872)

<comment><USER7> Banksy quote on advertising.

\---

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think in the near future we'll have empirical evidence that most ads are malicious exploits of flaws in human psychology.

Ideally, all ads should be plain text listing of facts. Pictures only allowed for demonstrative purposes. And they should be listed in "Ad sections", like a phone book.

<comment><USER9> > plain text listing of facts

Coca-Cola tastes great!

Coca-Cola gives you an extra pep in your step!

Coca-Cola will rot you teeth!

These are all true statements (the first one is subjective, I'll admit), but I suspect that many believe the effect of plain test listing of facts would only allow the third statement.

> Pictures only allowed for demonstrative purposes.

Wouldn't a photo of someone drinking a Coke and enjoying it be allowed under this rule?

<comment><USER10> I agree with you. And I suspect 9 out of 10 doctors do as well.

I want to neuter advertising more than anything, but I can't think of any kind of "rule" we could establish that would make public mind hacking illegal.

<comment><USER11> you don't need any hardcoded rules. When in doubt have a local municipal office or whatever decide whether to take down ads or not based on residential complaints.

Consensus and some common sense and case by case judgement ought to be enough to decide whether ad placement is appropriate.

<comment><USER12> This doesn't work from a first amendment perspective. The town council is BFE, Mississippi is not going to approach its censor role in a fair way, for better or worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The Indian city of Chennai banned billboard advertising completely; [https://www.rapidtransition.org/stories/adblocking-the- globa...](https://www.rapidtransition.org/stories/adblocking-the-global- cities-clearing-streets-of-advertising-to-promote-human-and-environmental- health/)

Public advertising is company sponsored graffiti; [http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/litter-on-a- stick/](http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/litter-on-a-stick/)

</comment><comment><USER14> For those who haven't been to Paris, there's moving/jittering electronic signs everywhere like something out of Minority Report. They're a distracting eyesore and should be banned.

<comment><USER15> Compared to most global city I've seen (NYC, Amsterdam, Zurich, German cities, Tokyo, Singapour, Bankgok, London...) I'd say Paris is of the least 'technological' kind.

It's actually so distinct that as a nerd I just don't feel 'home' in France, architecturally, culturally, compared to most comparable countries/cities on any continent. France feels somewhat stuck in time, which you may not be able to tell looking at all the smartphones and 1Gb fiber, but could glimpse at by talking with enough locals: they just don't like / trust / see value in high- tech in general, more like a threat / disturbance / forced upon them). Again, this is the feeling, the mindset, not 'reality' or 'objective truth' (the French are the same as everyone else in this regard, obviously; I'm talking about perceptions here, like the fact that the French are the most pessimistic on Earth despite their incredible relative wealth (less than 1% of the world's population for 3.25% GDP) and quality of life (GINI, whatever).

It's great that Paris and the French exists for those who'd rather live in a more 'vintage' environment (this can be said for a lot of European small/mid cities btw), but subjectively, France is everything but high-tech or 'nerdy' compared to Germany, UK, USA, Japan (probably topping it all), Korea, basically the world's top 10-15-20 countries (GDP per capita). Even Switzerland, which is very old-school in a lot of ways, feels more "21st century" than France in day-to-day living.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> In Lausanne, we have "le pub vous faites de-penser" stickers on many billboards. Translation: Advertising makes you de-think (a pun on "spend")

<comment><USER17> But also most of the billboards are ads for cultural events, theatre, city- organised events, museums etc. I quite like that actually, where else would I find about some shows or things to do.

<comment><USER18> > I quite like that actually, where else would I find about some shows or > things to do.

How about in a free magazine which advertises all such events? Or a website that does similar? Also listings of "What's On" in more general media.

<comment><USER17> All of that is also great too, but I find it's less of a waste to print a dozen of billboards at strategic locations vs. printing hundreds of thousands of newspapers and spam peoples mailboxes.

In Lausanne specifically, those billboards are also works of art in their own right so I do enjoy them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Good on them. In Los Angeles, the tonier the neighborhood the fewer the billboards. The savagery of monster electronic signage and visual barrage increases substantially as one goes into the less affluent locations.

<comment><USER20> Well, of course. Mental pollution is just another thing poor people are subjected to, while the executives of those same advertising companies live in suburbs without a single billboard in sight.

<comment><USER19> Definitely true in America's saddle point society. A certain class will always go back to equilibrium no matter the shove, the rest fall off the sides at the slightest touch.

The poorer areas are subjected to architectural punishment, food as unhealthy as it is cheap, lack of investment and services, and pollution of all varieties. I see the "Cloud Minders" from the original Star Trek.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There was an iPhone ad draped over the Louvre a few months ago. I was shocked that the parisians of all people would debase themselves for Tim cook like that.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, the government in Victoria (Australia) forced the Sydney Opera House to accept _gambling_ ads (for horse racing) projected onto it a few months ago.

Despite large public outcry, etc.

Definitely some money changed hands to bribe the gov people involved to make it happen. Can't see any other excuse for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> >'Advertising breaks your spirit'

Anyone who has taken the NYC Subway understands this sentiment. The only way to avoid them is to completely close your eyes and wish you were somewhere else.

</comment><comment><USER24> Good on these guys. The French also are massive exporters of this garbage - Sydney is lousy with billboards inflicted on us by JC Decaux.

Amusingly enough, the JC Decaux trucks are entirely festooned with Australian flags, which is a _totally_ conventional for a 100% French company to use as visual elements and not deceptive at all.

</comment><comment><USER25> A general sentiment I see here is that ads should be banned, but what can be done in the US? The First Amendment protects truthful advertisements. In addition, we have the FTC for misleading and lying ads (although their success is not what it should be (case in point: OutBrain and Taboola)). So, what do we do?

Further reading on the 1st Amendment and advertising: [http://www.lawpublish.com/amend1.html](http://www.lawpublish.com/amend1.html) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Hudson_Gas_%26_Electri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Hudson_Gas_%26_Electric_Corp._v._Public_Service_Commission)

<comment><USER26> Nobody wants ads banned. The problem is that ads are being placed into previously unused places and louder than before. The result is that all companies have to compete with these new obnoxious ads or risk falling behind their competitors that are willing to put ads in distasteful places.

In my opinion, the solution is to clearly define a discrete set of spaces for ads and make sure everyone is able to compete on equal footing. It's not like these companies _want_ to shell out more money for ads - they simply have to in order to compete.

EDIT: Also the US needs to adopt Britain's ban on election ads outside of the election month. We waste a phenomenal amount of time and money on election ads that provide zero real benefit to the US.

<comment> munk-a > Nobody wants ads banned.

I want ads banned.

They provide nothing of value and exist only to sway people into buying your product - a lot of advertising isn't overtly malicious but it all exists dependent on an assumption that being told to buy a product is a more valuable use of a time than whatever else you're doing.

I _suspect_ that being constantly bombarded with advertising has ill health effects by making it harder to find peace of mind and de-stress yourself, but that's just a gut feeling.

<comment><USER27> > > _Nobody wants ads banned._

> _I want ads banned._

> _They provide nothing of value and exist only to sway people into buying > your product - a lot of advertising isn 't overtly malicious but it all > exists dependent on an assumption that being told to buy a product is a more > valuable use of a time than whatever else you're doing._

I'm a prolific adblocker, but I disagree with you here. I think if things were kept at a reasonable balance, advertising would be a net positive.

There have been several times where I've tried new restaurants because of ads. Sometimes I'll go searching to buy a specific thing, and realize that it doesn't yet exist in the market. Then a few months or years later, I'll see an advertisement for that thing, and I'm always very appreciative.

That's not to mention that if ads were banned tomorrow, the established brands would have decades of advantage built up against newcomers, becoming a self- reinforcing monopoly that I'd imagine would last decades after the last person to have seen an ad dies.

And don't forget, making something illegal doesn't mean it goes away. Look at how often people accuse accounts on social media of astroturfing. Do you think that astroturfing will become more or less common after a ban on advertising? At least with ads legal I can evaluate them as ads. I can't tell which glowing reviews are legitimate and which are planted, and if you think you can I'd put money against you.

> _I suspect that being constantly bombarded with advertising has ill health > effects by making it harder to find peace of mind and de-stress yourself, > but that 's just a gut feeling._

I definitely agree with you on that. The current state of ads is nothing less than an assault on people's cognitive abilities and mental health. Something needs to give here.

<comment><USER28> > Do you think that astroturfing will become more or less common after a ban > on advertising.

A ban on advertising means the company can no longer tell the employee that their job is to astroturf, or fire them for not astroturfing, because that would be a admission that the company was engaging in advertising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I look forward to the mainstream catching up to seeing advertising like second-hand smoke: harmful enough to others to ban based on widespread democratic support.

</comment><comment><USER30> My wife did her PhD in out-of-home media (which very much included billboards).

I have yet to find a more rabid opponent to out-of-home advertising (in general) and billboards (in particular), and she will explain why it is evil at the drop of the proverbial hat...

As an amateur artist she will start with visual pollution and then veer into psychological damage... /grin

<comment><AUTHOR> Curious: does she have an argument for why in-home advertising _is_ good, or is it just that she has not studied it?

<comment><USER30> Mostly a lack of study, it would seem, but she is anti-advertising in general as well...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is great. For website owners, magazines etc. it's sorta their choice to "pollute" their pages with ads, but out in the world you're polluting the commons, where people have little choice in the matter. It depletes people's ability to have a clear head & freely focus their attention.

</comment><comment><USER32> In Lyon the public ad space was traded to an ad company in exchange for funding and maintaining the city's public bike share scheme. It's a trade off, of course, but for just 30 euros à year I (and the rest of the city) get virtually unlimited bike share.

The anti-ad groups here would be happy for the public ads to disappear but it would be a real shame if the affordable bike share went with it.

FWIW there is a real debate about who got the better side of the deal between the city and the ad company, but the Velov scheme is great. :)

<comment><USER33> They wouldn't buy the advertising if they couldn't make a profit on your attention. Pay with brain space, or pay through a tax. Which is more expensive?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not the brain space that's paying for the advertising, it's your (or, well, people's) buying of the advertised products. So in addition to the costs of brain space, there are still also actual financial costs to it that are borne by the city's citizens.

<comment><USER34> Well they got the product they bought, so it's a stretch to consider it a cost. Perhaps only the marginal cost that went to advertising, but it's still a stretch to consider it a cost if the buyer considers they got their money's worth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Bit of a crypto-tangent: more than anything else, the hope of replacing advertising as the economic engine of the Internet is why I care about the cryptocurrency space. In most cases, I think crypto is a solution looking for a problem, but the capability to trade edge compute/memory/disk/network for an ad free Internet experience would be immeasurably good for our collective mental health.

</comment><comment><USER36> OK, I'll make the case for ads:

Ads are disruptive. They allow new businesses to break into markets owned by old dominant suppliers. This way they keep the market healthy and serving consumers.

Based on that, you'd expect anti-ad initiatives to be aligned with powerful established industries. Not that I know how to confirm or refute that.

<comment><USER37> Ads allow whomever has the deepest pockets to dominate the public's attention. Incumbents will have more money to spend, chilling the influence of new competitors. Most of the "disruptor" success stories that come to mind started with some variation of "we didn't spend anything on advertising, relying on word of mouth."

<comment><USER38> > Ads allow whomever has the deepest pockets to dominate the public's > attention.

Not necessarily. Advertising has diminishing returns -- we know this because companies don't buy unlimited advertising. If every ad dollar was as good as the first (i.e. it generated more than a dollar in profit) then everybody would buy an unlimited amount of advertising so they could make an unlimited profit. At some point you hit saturation and it costs more than it makes you.

Meanwhile the little guy needs it more because they're unknown, i.e. their baseline is further from the point of saturation so they have a higher cost/benefit ratio. If nobody advertises then people keep buying from the incumbent because they don't know of any alternatives.

The biggest problem with advertising isn't big vs. little, it's that it's a signaling war. If Coke spends a dollar and Pepsi doesn't, Pepsi loses $2 in sales. But if they both spend a dollar then they've each burned a dollar only to both stay where they started.

What would really help is to have some industry of trustworthy third parties whose job it is to tell you what to buy, but nobody has ever really cracked it, because the buyers don't want to pay for it and the sellers only want to pay if it will influence the results.

<comment><USER39> Advertising indeed seems to give an edge to newcomers over the incumbents, but those same "little guys" would need to advertise _less_ if everyone's attention wasn't already saturated by everyone else's ads. Everyone is still wasting money; new players just waste less.

<comment><USER38> The question is, if you got rid of advertising, how do the customers find out about a new product from a new business?

<comment><USER40> Newspapers, magazines etc. Basically however they want.

<comment><USER38> Those are just other forms of advertising, and the entire print industry is dying anyway. Where's the real answer?

<comment><USER39> Pull advertising isn't really the same kind of advertising as the predominant push kind, and it's the latter that's considered a problem. Let people decide where and when they want to be advertised to on their own. Let them visit exhibitions, trade shows, buy or browse product catalogs and shopper's magazines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Meanwhile, there are resources available for people who are stuck in areas of high visual pollution, which require only a small investment in tools and mindfulness of personal safety.

[http://brandalism.ch/take-action/](http://brandalism.ch/take-action/) [http://www.billboardliberation.com/ArtAndScience- BLF.pdf](http://www.billboardliberation.com/ArtAndScience-BLF.pdf) [http://www.billboardliberation.com/](http://www.billboardliberation.com/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Germany is FILLED by them, they often advert smoking brands on bus stations.

I hope germany learns from france, this is great news and very inspiring

</comment><comment><USER43> one reason I love living in Asia the shear amount of advertising is far more interesting to walk around than say Irving California which is basically Speilberg-esch E.T. suburbia.

<comment><USER18> Question: can you read the advertising (i.e. read the native language)? Because for me at least, chinese & japanese advertising can look 'picturesque' but I think I would feel differently if I could actually read the banal messages that are undoubtedly being pushed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I personally prefer to tax rather than ban, but good on them.

What's different about the internet that has some countries trying digital services taxes rather than digital ad bans?

<comment><USER39> My guess: no obvious immediate hazard + not enough public outrage + lots of money flowing through = countries want to tax it to capture some of that money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Banning ads would be nice, but that's already old thinking.

The growth of the influencer model, advertorials/newsvertising, and individual personality as brand experience means that even if all public ads were banned, brands would just be paying thousands of micro-influencers for IRL mentions, tracked silently through the mic on your phone.

When you take the influencer thing to it's logical conclusion (everyone is a brand ambassador) then it becomes real murky real quick about what's an ad and what's just a person's opinion.

<comment><USER39> That's just a reason to _also_ ban "influencing". Few other ways of advertising damage the basic fabric of society - interpersonal trust - <USER2> badly as influencers.

<comment><USER46> How would that even work?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> My money is on JCDecaux winning this battle.

</comment><comment><USER48> I can't wait for the day when we finally get rid of these coordinated assaults on our senses, both online and in the real world. Things like Ublock Origin & SponsorBlock have opened my eyes to a world without adverts.</comment>


Adamantium May Become A Reality - <AUTHOR> http://web.ncsu.edu/abstract/science/wolverine-metal-alloys/

<comment><USER2> So in the future I will be able to enter alloy characteristics and get the exact formula or even better the alloy itself?</comment>


Some Thoughts about Productivity and the 40 Hour Work Week - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/better-things-digital/some-thoughts-about-productivity-and-the-40-hour-work-week-b70f86362d86 <comment><USER2> I think more companies need to allow more flexibility when it comes to hours in the office. This is actually a pretty interesting topic to me.

From reading about programmers routines and how long one can code, I believe most people are fully engaged in their tasks 2-4 hours per day. Add some time for meetings and research. It is pretty silly to sit in the office 8 hours for a dev. That changes if your work in customer service or a similar job where you need to be there.

I actually interviewed at a company that had a strict 8-5 policy with 1 hour lunch. I told them that's too much time and I'm not willing to slave away in the office.(no remote option)

I think people should be open about productivity and not pretend it is some kind of a taboo subject that you can't bring up with your employer. There is no reason a dev should have strict hours, unless they are fresh and require supervision.

<comment><USER3> This is definitely a plague - when it comes to time usage - in current society. The perception of busyness as opposed to actual productivity. We have all encountered some examples of that in all the offices we've worked in. I am baffled by: 1\. How pervasive that problem is 2\. How a large majority of people seem to agree but no one company has the guts to drive the behavioural change by implementing actual flexibility policies, which go beyond nice- sounding PR</comment></comment>


Best Books For a Startup? - <AUTHOR>

I think this is an interesting topic. Most likely it's been done already. Anyway, here's my list:<p>- Monk and the Riddle- Randy Komisar (You HAVE to read this, it puts it in the right perspective. Randy is a genius)<p>- Paypal Wars<p>- Founders at Work- Jessica Livingston <comment><USER4> Founders at Work (of course)

"Best Practices"-type books that cover the tools and technology the startup is using, whether its Textmate, Unix, Subversion, whatever. Becoming more efficient is never a bad thing.

I'd also add books on management and dealing with people:

\- The Art of Speedreading People - <USER2>

\- Behind Closed Doors - Rothman, Derby

\- The Mythical Man Month - <USER3>

\- Most if not all the books on Joel Spolsky's "MBA Curriculum":

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBACurriculum...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBACurriculum.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> WOW, Joel Spolsky's list is great. A lot of books on there that I didn't mention above that I've read. Funniest book title:

Difference between God and Larry Ellison... is that God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am writing my own ... Survival Guide for Bootstrapping Entrepreneurs

<http://www.startupforless.org>

</comment><comment><USER6> A nice compliment to the books is a "startup dot com" documentary. It has a lot of dot-com era specifics, but it is very enlightening nonetheless.

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/>

<comment><AUTHOR> for sure, really good movie. theres also a movie on kozmo called edreams. that i havent seen yet :-(.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 1) Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell (very interesting ideas)

2) Innovator's Dilemma (for understanding what can work well)

3) Inside Intuit (for a great business story)

4) Eric Sink on the Business of Software

<comment><AUTHOR> heres the google books full version of inside intuit. this book looks awesome:

[http://books.google.com/books?id=lRs_4U43UcEC&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=lRs_4U43UcEC&printsec=frontcover#PPR9,M1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> High Tech Start Up - John L. Nesheim

Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey Moore

One Minute Manager (but only if you've never had management experience)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm surprised that 'Getting Real' hasn't been suggested yet, perhaps it has something to do with the recent backlash against 37signals. Anyway I'll stand by it. Fantastic book. I might even go as far as to say 'essential'.

<http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php>

<comment><USER10> It's definitely worth reading, but not worth paying for since you can read it for free on their site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

[http://www.amazon.com/Made-Stick-Ideas-Survive- Others/dp/140...](http://www.amazon.com/Made-Stick-Ideas-Survive- Others/dp/1400064287/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205679800&sr=8-1)

</comment><comment><USER12> For the German readership: "Cash Code" by Tritsch and Kohlhammer. It has a focus on the legal and administrative stuff around a startup. <http://www.cashcodeportal.de/>

</comment><comment><USER13> I have a book left over from my b-school days that I often dip back into. It's called "The Entrepreneurial Venture" and it's sort of like "Founders at Work" if that had been written by Harvard Business School professors.

[http://www.amazon.com/Entrepreneurial-Venture-Practice- Manag...](http://www.amazon.com/Entrepreneurial-Venture-Practice- Management/dp/0875848923)

I know that in this group it probably provides an alternative perspective.

</comment><comment><USER14> It looks like nobody else has recommend one book I particularly like: Startups That Work: Surprising Research on What Makes or Breaks a New Company by Joel Kurtzman and Glenn Rifkin.

It combines a large quantitative study on startups with highlights from case interviews. The book's claims are generally backed by empirical evidence, which is something missing in many other entrepreneurship books.

David Sickmiller

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow, how could I forget this one:

eBoys: The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work by Randall Stross (San Jose State Professor, Writes for the Times Occasionally, etc.)

Seriously, this is a really open approach to how Benchmark Capital approached investments in eBay, Webvan,etc. I believe it's available on itunes as an audiobook as well.

</comment><comment><USER15> I recommend "The Design of Everyday Things" (formely "The Psychology of Everyday Things") by Donald Norman. It's kind of dated and it's focused on product design, but it has some very good ideas about making products that are easy to use and understand.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd also highly recommend The Monk and the Riddle - I don't think I've ever seen it suggested elsewhere, but I recommend it to everyone.

I found PayPal Wars to be a bit dull, and the author a bit smug.

</comment><comment><USER17> This might be only tangentially related, but I dig "How To Be Rich" by J. Paul Getty. He talks a lot about how he built Getty Oil, and about what's important in business and in life.

</comment><comment><USER18> The New New Thing

Founders at Work

Hackers and Painters

How To Get Rich

Competitive Strategies

The Intelligent Investor (or Security Analysis)

Liar's Poker

<comment><USER19> Steven Levy is great, I would add his Crypto book as well.

<comment><USER18> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Analysis>

Different kind of security, but I'll check it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The New New Thing(<http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall99/newnewthing.htm>)

</comment><comment><USER21> "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie.

This book should especially be read by those that aren't good with people.

</comment><comment><USER22> Art of the Start - Guy Kawasaki

How to Get Rich - Felix Dennis

Differentiate or Die - Jack Trout

and of course...

Founders at Work - Jessica Livingston

Hackers and Painters - Paul Graham

</comment><comment><USER23> Insanely Great - Steven Levy. About the building of the original Macintosh. Extremely inspiring and interesting.

</comment><comment><USER24> Bootstrap - Kenneth L. Hess

</comment><comment><USER25> The Adventure of Leadership by Hap Klopp is a great weekend read.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think news.yc needs a search.

Heres some we added 3 days ago :p

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=135185>

<comment><USER26> google: books site:<http://news.ycombinator.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> If They Say No Just Say Next by John Fuhrma

</comment><comment><USER28> Smarter Ventures - Katharine Cambell</comment>


FBI Says Chinese Operatives Active at Scores of U.S. Universities - <AUTHOR> http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article199929429.html <comment><USER3> Reminds me of this story from last year:

 _But those [Chinese] students often bring to campus something else from home: the watchful eyes and occasionally heavy hand of the Chinese government, manifested through its ties to many of the 150-odd chapters of the Chinese Students and Scholars Associations.

The groups have worked in tandem with Beijing to promote a pro-Chinese agenda and tamp down anti-Chinese speech on Western campuses. At Columbia a decade ago, the club mobilized students to protest a presentation about human rights violations in China, urging them to "resolutely defend the honor and dignity of the Motherland." At Duke, the group was accused of inciting a harassment campaign in 2008 against a Chinese student who tried to mediate between sides in a Tibet protest. More recently in Durham, England, the group acted at the behest of the Chinese government to censor comments at a forum on China-Hong Kong relations._

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/us/chinese-students- weste...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/us/chinese-students-western- campuses-china-influence.html)

Also reminds me of this recent news, of Mercedes Benz made to apologize to China for posting a quote (in English) by the Dalai Lama on Instagram, a platform banned in China:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/07/mercedes- apologis...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/07/mercedes-apologises- china-quoting-dalai-lama/)

EDIT: damn, downvotes are coming fast for this one. I wonder why :^)

<comment><USER4> I'm torn.

On the one hand, I do think people should be aware of it. On the other hand, I don't see the fuss. What you describe is the norm for many groups - not just the Chinese.

>At Columbia a decade ago, the club mobilized students to protest a presentation about human rights violations in China, urging them to "resolutely defend the honor and dignity of the Motherland."

This is normal for many groups and many issues. On my campus, any issue involving the Palestinians or Israelis would have lots of groups protesting and putting a fair amount of pressure to get the university to intercede and cancel the speaker. There was once suspicion that the Turkish government was trying to influence the views on their conflict with the Kurds. Many/most Turkish students in my time were on government scholarships, and I do know for a fact that they did ask students to spy on one another - and risk losing funding for their education if they did not get in line. For many international student organizations, it was considered normal to request for funding from their embassy to host events promoting their culture (including informational materials, videos, etc).

So yes, the Chinese are doing it, just as everyone else is. This is not even considered controversial on campuses. Religious groups do likewise. As do political groups. What's so special about the Chinese?

The article does a fairly poor job of describing of giving details/examples. What have these groups done that makes them stand out compared to the norm?

<comment><USER3> You make a reasonable point.

That said, all the countries you mention have strong track records of human rights violations. So really China's not surrounded by good company on that issue, and maybe the takeaway should be more that we should be cautious regarding these countries and how they might try to influence discourse on US campuses rather than saying "well a bunch of corrupt governments are all doing it, what's the big deal?".

As far as "what's so special about China"\- the sheer volume of its population (and thus of its population studying abroad) as well as the fact that it is (or is close to being, depending on how you want to draw your lines) the world's leading economy are good starting points.

I'm French, went to grad school in the US, and did not see any of my countrymen protest on campus because the history department was teaching about the war of Algeria and they weren't happy about it (nor did I see Catalonian students protest that the geography department treated Spain as a single country... you get the point).

<comment><USER4> >and maybe the takeaway should be more that we should be cautious regarding these countries and how they might try to influence discourse on US campuses

Which I agree with, which is why I said I do think people should be aware of it. But beyond merely being aware of it, I'm not sure there's much else to do. When you say "we should be cautious", what do you mean? How can we be any more cautious?

Ultimately, the situation exists because the US has strong laws on free speech and freedom. It should be a given that various groups will exploit these laws. If they are using students for propaganda purposes, the only useful response I can think of is likely counter-propaganda. Personally, I am wary of just saying "Beware of Chinese propaganda". I've seen that tactic used in various times in my life and the result has _always_ been the equivalent of "Let's not trust what this person is saying because he is Chinese and we should beware of the Chinese" (i.e. many people heed the warnings and then blanket distrust the whole group of people).

Which is why I complained about the article: It's mostly "Beware of the Chinese on campuses" and not "Look at all these (specific) problems that have arisen because of the Chinese on campuses".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> During my undergrad university days (at the University of Utah), I took some Mandarin classes. There was a local Confucius Institute which provided various free materials in Chinese to the campus library. The extent of my direct contact with them was receiving a couple hundred dollars for doing well in a Mandarin speech contest they held for my class.

It was obvious that there was a certain propaganda aspect to this outreach effort; the reading materials provided of course didn't go into any potential negatives of the Beijing government, etc. Very much in line with the CCTV news network. My Mandarin teacher was Taiwanese and so I think that was good for me in that I wasn't getting all my exposure to Chinese from a single source.

I would not be surprised at all to learn that Chinese government operatives were using these various state-funded educational agencies for gaining intelligence and promoting their ideology. I assume the US is doing the same thing. It's a long game, with assets being put into place sometimes decades in advance. A healthy dose of cynicism is always important when dealing with state-funded groups; it's rare that countries invest such resources just out of the goodness of their altruistic hearts.

<comment><USER6> Why would you expect the Confucius Institute to provide information on the negatives of Chinese government? It's a Chinese culture organization, and it's directly affiliated with the government of China.

<comment><USER7> Voice of America, and other media provided by the U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau provide a balanced perspective on the U.S. If there are anti-government situations going on, they cover it. Just take a look at the headlines about Trump on voanews.com vs. the headlines about Xi on xinhuanet.com.

<comment><USER8>
        > GOP Women Frustrated by Trump's Approach to Abuse Charges
        > 2018 Congressional Elections Loom as Referendum on Trump
        > House Panel Launches Probe into Trump Aide's Employment Amid Domestic Abuse Allegations

Oh, wow, point taken.

I always forget about VOA because the government doesn't promote it inside the United States. BBC and even NHK have a much higher profile than Voice of America does in America.

<comment><USER9> _I always forget about VOA because the government doesn 't promote it inside the United States._

Openness and fairness are also political weapons. You know your side has lost, if it reaches a state of "evaporative cooling" such that it's incapable of using such weapons.

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/lr/evaporative_cooling_of_group_beli...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/lr/evaporative_cooling_of_group_beliefs/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Australia has of late had its own issues involving accusations of Chinese espionage as well as good old-fashioned palm-greasing: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Dastyari#Chinese_influence...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Dastyari#Chinese_influence_scandal)

If the US starts clamping down on this sort of thing, expect China to accuse the US government of xenophobia, since of course "we'd like to stop so many Chinese agents and toadies from infiltrating our governmental and educational systems" translates to "we hate Chinese people" in Mandarin.

EDIT: To be clear to any Chinese agents reading this, my issue is not so much with the spying and soft power campaigns so much as it is the unfair accusations of racism.

<comment><USER11> Can you imagine if Russians were a another "race". They'd be able to throw the racism card all over dems for having the temerity to accuse them of all sorts of political interference and other meddling...

Alas, they cannot make such accusations. At most they can use "xenophobia".

<comment><USER12> > Can you imagine if Russians were a another "race". They'd be able to throw > the racism card all over dems for having the temerity to accuse them of all > sorts of political interference and other meddling...

I assume this is why everyone turns a blind eye to the elephant in the room when it comes to foreign influence of American affairs - Israel.

<comment><USER11> That one's a bit more complicated. Our interests intersect with theirs along many axes. And they have lots of lobbyists in DC and Americans of Israeli/Jewish heritage donate lots to DC politicians along Israeli policy lines. People of Russian heritage on the other hand typically have opposing views to that of Moscow in many areas, so they are not as aligned, if at all; in addition, many people of Russians descent have Jewish heritage as well... So you know, they doubly oppose Moscow.

<comment><USER13> this is a typical narrative of double standard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> And we continue to tolerate those who wouldn't tolerate us...

Even the Chinese have a word for these people who naively defend and turn a blind eye to this sort of thing: "Baizou".

From Wikipedia:

"The word baizuo is, according to political scientist Zhang Chenchen, a Chinese word that ridicules Western "liberal elites". He further defined the word "baizuo" with the definition "People who only care about topics such as immigration, minorities, LGBT and the environment" and "have no sense of real problems in the real world"; they are hypocritical humanitarians who advocate for peace and equality only to "satisfy their own feeling of moral superiority"; they are "obsessed with political correctness" to the extent that they "tolerate backwards Islamic values for the sake of multiculturalism"; they believe in the welfare state that "benefits only the idle and the free riders"; they are the "ignorant and arrogant westerners" who "pity the rest of the world and think they are saviours".[7] The term has also been used to refer to perceived double standards of the Western media, such as the alleged bias on reporting about Islamist attacks in Xinjiang."

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

<comment><USER15> Sounds fake to me. Any actual Chinese to confirm this? Just going by the "they believe in the welfare state that "benefits only the idle and the free riders"" comment; China is a _communist country_ , its about as far on the spectrum left past welfare state as you can go.

<comment><USER16> You can reach a higher level of understanding if you stop trying to cram multi-dimensional politics into a one-dimensional spectrum.

China is State Capitalist, not Communist. The government doesn't tell people what jobs to do and provide them with their home, food, and consumer goods

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Isn't this well known fact? It isn't a secret that the chinese, along with the israelis, russians, british, french, japanese, koreans, canadians and even the saudis have operatives in academia, government, business, etc.

And of course we have operatives in all those countries as well.

<comment><USER18> Every country spies on every other country. But not every country steals foreign technology for its companies.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, only those who are capable.

<comment><USER20> And need to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This isn't a new controversy, for what it's worth. For example:

[https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/29/chicago- facul...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/29/chicago-faculty- object-their-campuss-confucius-institute)

One way to summarize: colleges accept Chinese-sponsored Confucius Institutes as a way of bolstering Chinese language programs, which are valuable in the marketplace. But if you let China fund your Chinese language programs, the instructors you end up with will to some extent suppress discussion of politically-sensitive topics. And, of course, college staff probably also see this as a labor dispute: colleges that accept CI-sponsorship are in a sense outsourcing the work of professors.

</comment><comment><USER21> That would explain why my school's international students have such nice, James Bond-esk, cars.

<comment><USER22> Eh... I worked at a community college whose bread and butter was international students. Lots of them had really expensive cars. Not sure why China would send hundreds of operatives to infiltrate a community college and then pay to put them in flashy cars. It's more likely just rich parents.

<comment><USER23> Even the ones driving 15 year old Chryslers likely have wealthy parents. University is absurdly expensive for international students of no particular note. On the order of $100k/yr in tuition for a no-name state school.

What's another $50k when you're spending half a million dollars to educate your kid?

<comment><USER24> Universities can be expensive, but community colleges typically aren't. Most of the fuerdai in community colleges are probably studying English to get into a university. Even though they are rich, they won't turn down a good deal when they can get one (and since luxury cars are so much cheaper in the USA than China, they are considered good deals as well).

<comment><USER25> Community colleges are significantly more expensive for international students; at the local ones nearby you're looking at paying 4-5x more.

<comment><USER24> Sure, but the base is low.

<comment><USER25> It's on the order of $10,000-15,000. That's just slightly under the price of a university education for in-state students.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Honestly, is this news? Is it anything new that there are people roaming around university campuses that intend to make inroads into young, impressionable minds?

When I was at university, I remember there was an organization called "Horizons" which would show up to a number of social events and invite people to their building located near campus for free dinner. Of course, they were a Christian organization and were keen to sell their religion in this way.

I remember thinking it was a bit disingenuous but mostly just saw it as being silly. Students would go to get free dinner but seemed mostly capable of avoiding being indoctrinated. I think people such as those from the Confucius Institute should be regarded similarly. That is, they should not be seen as a real threat.

What concerns me is that giving attention to these things in the wrong way will only encourage people to develop a xenophobic attitude towards foreign students. I don't think there's legitimate cause for concern here. The overall culture and message of academia -- that one should investigate for one's self and see -- still seems intact and should be capable of standing up on its own, even if some seek to infiltrate it with their own agendas.

<comment><USER27> It's news because it's all allegations with no evidence. Tfa says there are several hundred thousand Chinese students in the US. Not a single one has been shown to be a Chinese operative.

<comment><USER26> Actually, I agree with you there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Personally I think some Mandarin should become compulsory in the US because I think basic lack of communication is the greatest security risk. The biggest problem to me is the Chinese suppression of dissent and overcentralization. And since there are so many Chinese people it seems almost inevitable that these tendencies will encroach upon or at least rub off on the US.

I assume at this point most universities realize any work they feel should be closed is not so if they have Chinese students involved.

I wonder if it might be possible to start requiring study of decentralization and free speech topics as general requirements for graduation.

<comment><USER29> I got about six weeks of Mandarin in middle school. Not enough teachers are available to offer it in most high schools. If you wanted to _really_ learn a second language before university, it was either French or Spanish. Like a chump, I chose French, because the teacher was reputed to give out less homework than the Spanish teacher. I've never even been to Quebec or Haiti. Quelle dommage; ce n'est pas trop utile pour moi. Tant pis. I can't even remember all the conjugations and tenses for _etre_.

You make Mandarin mandatory in the US, and you'll just end up with a bunch of people who wasted their time learning a language they will never use. And maybe some who will try using it at a Chinese-American restaurant only to learn that everyone there speaks Cantonese, or a lesser-used Chinese dialect.

<comment><USER28> True if it's not used it will be a waste. But the thing that worries me is the resource contention between the countries. So maybe we should have a preemptive "war on division" to try to integrate the cultures before our differences come to a violent head.

<comment><USER29> Actual 2010 census said 3.8M Chinese-Americans in the US, or 1.2% of the population. 2016 interim projection was 4.9M, or 1.5%. Granted, they are largely concentrated in California, Washington, New York, and Illinois. But it's still a significant population, and they can be found nearly everywhere [that is worth emigrating to]. A large fraction of students at US universities are Chinese nationals.

There are 100k Americans living in China (2/5 of them in Hong Kong), and a trace quantity of naturalized American-Chinese, because the only practical way for a white immigrant to gain Chinese citizenship is to marry a native. Applicants without obvious Asian ancestry aren't likely to ever get _accepted_ , even if they do manage to get legally naturalized.

So which culture _should_ be expending greater efforts?

<comment><USER28> True. My theory on that is that it is due to racism inherent in the culture. But hopefully it may not be quite as bad in the current generation. Anyway to improve that aspect of their culture to me it is a similar problem of trying to integrate the cultures -- we can't just force them to accept our ideas without an exchange or understanding theirs. Unless you believe in the traditional approach of war which to me is clearly a very stupid and self- destructive path.

<comment><USER29> My response, informed by the ~very realistic~ simulation called Civilization, would be to send in missionaries and spies, to promote my culture, and send in the diplomats to bribe them with the very technologies that made their wonders and city improvements obsolete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If the federal government is so concerned about giving away R&D, they need to do something about all the companies that freely give it away when they offshore manufacturing to China and other countries. They've been doing it for decades; the horse is already out of the barn. Not only that, he left the barn 30 years ago, and has recently died of old age.

</comment><comment><USER31> Wow, this seems like straight-up racist fearmongering. The Chinese have "infliltrated" our schools by _attending_ and starting culturally oriented studies? What's wrong with setting up classes for studying Mandarin, the #1 most popular language on the planet?

<comment><USER32> What if these were Russians and the title was "FBI Says Russian Operatives..." would you have said it's straight up racist fear-mongering?

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

<comment><USER33> Not technically "racist" but in my opinion much of the treatment of Russia in the media is highly prejudiced.

<comment><USER32> It's getting embarrassing at this point. It was a good PR campaign, but it has run its course by now it seems.

[https://theintercept.com/2017/01/04/washpost-is-richly- rewar...](https://theintercept.com/2017/01/04/washpost-is-richly-rewarded-for- false-news-about-russia-threat-while-public-is-deceived/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm not sure I understand the argument of the article. Yes my graduate classes have many Chinese students in them, but why exactly is it bad that they are furthering their education and doing research in the US? The biggest issue I see is that many of them want to live and work in the US after graduation, but basically have to leave it up to luck in the visa lottery system.

<comment><USER35> The FBI is not warning about students, but about government agents posing ad students, I.E. "operatives".

Here, they have access to learn and potentially influence our culture from within. Most importantly, if the FBI is correct and they exist, they most likely do not have your interests in mind.

That said, I don't know how one would deal with this without causing McCarthy style hysteria and sweeping up innocent students along with operatives.

<comment><USER36> > _The FBI is not warning about students, but about government agents posing > ad students, I.E. "operatives"._

What is the distinction here?

I do not generally expect international students on a student visa, with no intention of becoming citizens, to forget about the interests of their home country and prioritize the interests of the country they're visiting. They're here because the school is good, that's it.

<comment><USER35> You dont think that Chinese espionage does not potentially extend to our colleges? You dont think the U.S. is doing at least as much elsewhere? All this talk of collusion with Russia recently doesn't bother you either if it is true that a foreign power could have targeted our culture successfully to the point that they threw an election in their favor?

Such sentiment would be naive. Particularly in an authoritarian nation swarming with propaganda. There are plenty of children potentially willing to dedicate themselves to the interests of the party, whether for perceived virtue, or fear of retribution.

<comment><USER37> _You dont think that Chinese espionage does not potentially extend to our colleges?_

Well, no, I'm not sure what "espionage" would mean here? Does it mean stealing information? Doubtful. Unionizing graduate students? Hard to believe. Thwarting the education of others? Haven't seen it. While the Chinese may be placing people into positions at American universities with the idea that they might one day be useful, I'm not sure what would could as espionage. If anything I'd guess the "operatives" would mostly be keeping track of the activities of other Chinese students, and possibly serving as conduits for more covert operatives, but I'm doubtful they are doing anything that would legally qualify as espionage.

 _You dont think the U.S. is doing at least as much elsewhere?_

You'd have to be clearer about what the "as much" is, but I'm doubtful the US is putting much effort into putting operatives into academic positions abroad. Probably they want to open channels of communication with people who are already there, but I'm doubtful we're doing anything particularly effective involving "fake" students. And again, what would the goal of this be?

 _All this talk of collusion with Russia recently doesn 't bother you_

Seems worth investigating, but no, nothing I've heard so far bothers me. There are lots of countries that have great interest in affecting/effecting US policies, and I'd presume that Russia would be one of them. I'm doubtful they were particularly effective in influencing an election, though, or even that they were the country with the greatest influence. This is the place where I assume the US is doing much more with regard to other country's elections, possibly with greater impact.

 _Particularly in an authoritarian nation swarming with propaganda._

I don't know your politics well enough to know if you mean China, Russia, or the US here? If you point is that there likely exist Chinese students who are willing to do what the Chinese government asks them in return for being allowed to study abroad, then sure. But I'd guess that most of what is being asked is "Learn everything they will teach you and then come home and build a better China", and I think that's a good thing?

<comment><USER35> If you had a long term plan to destabilize a nation, and wanted to understand how best to do it, don't you think it would be useful to send seemingly innocent students to gather intelligence in political hotbeds like universities?

After all, these students are future leaders. Understanding how to manipulate them or weaken them and their futures, or how to sow divisiveness amongst them or other Americans...

Wouldn't such information make it easier to at least, say, pose plausibly as influential "trolls" with relevant cultural content on the internet?

Just as in software, one doesn't necessarily need to anticipate a specific threat to recognize attack surface.

<comment><USER36> And as with software, sometimes part of the intended purpose of the software inherently exposes you to threats, and saying "Shut down the threat" means shutting down the software. The easiest way to prevent people from defacing Wikipedia is to make it not a wiki. The easiest way to keep your computer secure is to unplug it from the network.

Having foreign students attend our colleges is something that we have long recognized is good for our country and for the world. Obviously it's an attack surface too, in the same way that Wikipedia's "edit" button is an attack surface. But if we want to actually maintain the policies and goals that led us to deciding that we want foreign students to attend our colleges, we need to be clear about why these particular foreign students are different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> That being said, the Chinese do have a term called: shan zhai which deals with copyrighting/conferfiting. While I'm not endorcing it, it does have some cultural roots.

The strange parts guy explained it some in this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdKV6x13cz8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdKV6x13cz8)

<comment><USER39> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanzhai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanzhai)

 _" Historically, "shanzhai" is sometimes used as a metaphor to describe bandits who oppose and evade the corrupted authority to perform deeds they see as justified."_

Seems to be a bit like the Robin Hood mythos in western culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> In Australia, I am concerned with the Influence that China has over our economy and how they are trying to influence our politics[1][2][3][4]

[1] [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-14/china-backlash- austral...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-14/china-backlash-australia- questions-of-political-interference/9258462)

[2] [http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public- service/the-...](http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/the- art-of-influence-how-chinas-spies-operate-in-australia-20171203-gzxs06.html)

[3] [https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign- af...](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign- affairs/chinese-influence-at-all-levels-of-australian-politics-says-clive- hamilton/news-story/77be3faf6ab6f40738fc5d7d5897d78b)

[4] [https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/us- politics/aust...](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/us- politics/australia-concerns-over-china-influence-spark-us-probe/news- story/24c8a86697d0b37b4c5b6cb1b8312b55)

</comment><comment><USER41> Duh. Ask Chinese grad student about it. They know who the active communist party members are and who they don't speak their mind in front of about affairs back home.

</comment><comment><USER42> 350,000 students and god know how many employees. FBI apparently has around 35,000 employees. I know not all the students are spies, and not all suspicious ones get their own team of agents rights away, but looks like using a Patriot Missile to kill a $150 drone. Time and time again.

</comment><comment><USER43> The FBI never changes, does it? I'm not even saying that they're wrong, but stating it this way is just fodder for bin fires. It would be strange if China and others didn't do this, and strange if the US didn't do it to them.

<comment><USER44> Yes, of course, but it would also be strange if the FBI didn't warn about it when they identify it happening so that they can decrease the chance of intelligence gatherers getting what they want.

<comment><USER43> I agree with the general principle you're describing, it I'm unconvinced that it applies in this case. Do you see what I mean? How does this warning empower the public?

<comment><USER44> Perhaps if you're a researcher at a university and you get an interesting business offer out of the blue in exchange for access to something (maybe data you've gathered), you may be a bit more wary and consider if you're being manipulated by another government's intelligence service.

<comment><USER16> Why do I care precisely who is manipulating me?

<comment><USER44> You shouldn't, of course. The FBI is just making people aware of this particular campaign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The Chinese government has been very aggressive when it comes to media in foreign countries. Via Foreign Policy ([http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/21/one-of-americas- biggest-...](http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/21/one-of-americas-biggest- chinese-language-newspapers-toes-beijings-party-line-china-influence-united- front/)):

 _In recent years, and especially since Xi became president in 2012, the Chinese government has sought various ways to increase its influence over China's 40 million-strong diaspora. The Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, a ministry specifically dedicated to the task, works to extend the party's reach, and the push has seen increasing success in New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, where local ethnic Chinese organizations have begun to vocally push for pro-Beijing policies._

For years The Washington Post ran a paid supplement from the China Daily supplement, which was basically propaganda aimed at English speakers ([https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/02/of...](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/02/official- chinese-propaganda-now-online-from-the-wapo/70690/)):

 _For instance, the item above: "Stop Telling Us What We Should Do," with "we" being China and the object of the imperative sentence being the nagging United States. Or this one and this, clarifying how unfair it was for foreigners to criticize China's "rare earths" exports policy. As a matter of fact, China's "actions taken in the past few months, and those to be taken in the months to come, are totally legitimate."_

In Canada, the CCP pushed Canadian officials to ban English-language reporters from certain events featuring a Chinese official, and kick out a reporter from a local Chinese newspaper that criticized China's human rights record ([https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/wynne- agrees-t...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/wynne-agrees-to- closed-events-with-chinese-after-communist-party-officials- asked/article26696163/)).

In Hong Kong, the situation for media companies is much worse - <USER2> kidnapped book publishers and booksellers off the street in Hong Kong and Thailand and shipped them to China for trial. Their crimes? Publishing or selling unauthorized books about government officials ([https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/17/china- behaving...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/17/china-behaving- like-gangster-state-with-bookseller-kidnap-say-hong-kong-politicians) ).

 _Lam, the 61-year-old manager of the Causeway Bay bookstore, claimed he had spent months in solitary confinement in a cramped cell after being snatched by a group of men as he entered mainland China in October 2015.

"They blindfolded me and put a cap on my head and basically bundled me up," Lam told reporters.

Lam claimed Chinese agents had forced him to confess to crimes he had not committed during his detention. He said he had decided to speak out after thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Hong Kong to protest the booksellers' disappearances._

<comment><USER16> How deep does the rabbit hole go... The Atlantic runs an expose on WaPo's China Daily advertorials, meanwhile The Atlantic runs Scientology advertorial

[https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/the- sci...](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/the-scientology- ad/267198/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Gosh it's getting so you have to worry that you might inadvertently be exposed to _Chinese ideas_ now. Or that - God forbid - they'll steal all the _good pure American_ ones. Like how to be a spendthrift blowhard with great hair.

</comment><comment><USER47> Is there any link to intellectual property theft? I always wonder about the need to steal our intellectual property when China is doing so well with their own startups and innovations.

</comment><comment><USER48> I wonder when the FBI would take similar action on white nationalists who murder innocent immigrants.

</comment><comment><USER49> Regardless of what side(s) you take, it really is a blessing and benefit of the US system, there can be an open, lively, and free discussion without comments or commentors disappearing as if a phrase would topple an entire system.

</comment><comment><USER50> Here's where this statement is poisonous: I'm not sure if the FBI is actually being honest, or if this is some Trumpist bullshit that confirms how racist the current administration is.

Either way, I find it hard to believe. If its the former, its not shocking. If its the latter, it's disappointing but not at all surprising.

<comment><USER10> You find it hard to believe that a major world power is conducting both espionage and soft power campaigns inside the US?

<comment><USER51> and he finds this hard to believe after a power (russia) interfered massively in an american election? an in europe...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Xenophobic paranoia, a gift that keeps on giving.

</comment><comment><USER53> Hard to get through some of these statements:

> They have a long-term strategic objective to become a world power. > > Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats

O RLY? Funny, last I checked, China was a world power. Shit, China rivals the US as a world power.

> Most Americans have not heard of all of these companies. > Sen. Mark Warner, > a Virginia Democrat

Surprise surprise! Well, most American's haven't heard of Acxiom either. It's always surprising how much other people don't know, isn't it?

And, FWIW, I bet more people have heard about ZTE than half the organizations that contribute to Mark Warner's campaigns. New companies entering our markets from China have to play by the same rules our own companies do, how is this any different. If it is different, why? How does this matter in the discussion of Chinese intelligence gathering. More importantly, who cares?

The fear-mongerers care, that's who.</comment>


Search: now faster than the speed of type - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/search-now-faster-than-speed-of-type.html

<comment><USER2> Other submissions on the same subject:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672391> <\- This has _lots_ of comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672388> <\- This is an explanation

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1672346> <\- First

</comment><comment><USER3> I have mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand I feel this is kind of "rude" and distracting. By "rude" I mean that I haven't finished typing and the page isn't waiting for its turn to interject.

On the other, this is just the logical extension of autocomplete on a search form. Even on a mobile phone, we already have this kind of predictive text functionality.

I guess we'll see with usage. For the most part though, I use FF's built-in search box, so I won't get to test it much.

<comment><USER4> I use Chrome and thus the url bar is my search box, so I won't be able to use it much either (unless it's somehow integrated into Chrome which I'd expect).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The real question for me is whether I'll ever see this behavior. Other than the occasional image search, I do basically _all_ my searching via the Chrome tab-complete search functionality.

I'm sure I'm in the minority of Google users, and those of use exclusively using the Chrome/FF/Safari/IE (such as it is) address bar searches are not numerous enough to impact the success of this initiative, but still. I also wonder if it will be good enough to drive any of us _away_ from from the address bar search functionality.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't really see the benefit here. I understand it may save 2-5 seconds per search, but it's not as if though those 2-5 seconds are improving my experience any.

Assuming the time saved was important, they should've just implemented an AJAX search instead: type, press enter, dynamic load without page refresh. That's the real time killer. Having the results change while I'm typing is actually kind of annoying.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well, imagine a kid trying to search for sextant!

<comment><USER3> I tried it for sextuplets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone really thinks Google is too slow?</comment>


Rich Hickey fanclub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tallesl/Rich-Hickey-fanclub <comment><USER2> Pasting from midway down

 _Fogus: In an old paper of yours, "Callbacks in C++ Using Template Functors", you write favorably about C++, OOP, and static typing. Why did you change your mind?_

 _Hickey: I'm not sure I did. I said C++ was flexible—it is—and that, when implementing a callback system for C++, one should remain aligned with its object orientation and static typing. More interesting to me, in rereading it, is that I am still now making the same arguments I made then, fifteen years ago, against mixins and derivation as extension mechanisms._

 _That said, I certainly was a fan of C++ in the day, and five more years of it cured me of that. The complexity is stunning. It failed as the library language it purported to be, due to lack of GC, in my opinion, and static typing failed to keep large OO systems from becoming wretched balls of mud. Large mutable object graphs are the sore point, and const is inadequate to address it. Once C++'s performance advantage eroded or became less important, you had to wonder—why bother? I can't imagine working in a language without GC today, except in very special circumstances._

 _Along the way, I discovered Common Lisp, which was much more flexible, dynamic, simpler, and fast enough, and decided that was how I wanted to program. Finally, with Clojure, that is becoming possible, and practical, for me._</comment>


Show HN: Make Movies on the Go without Hassle - <AUTHOR> http://2gzr.com

<comment><USER2> Visited the website. Just my advice:

(1) The domain name is hard to remember. (2) On the home page the value proposition isn't clear. Also, remember, benefits over features.</comment>


Meetro And AOL Quietly Developing New Forum Products - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/07/meetro-and-aol-quietly-developing-new-forum-products/ <comment><USER2> Meetro always appeared to be a wannabe business built around a single feature missing in other IM networks -- if they ever gain any traction, the primary networks will just implement Meetro's functionality. Glad to see they're branching out, although I'm curious about what would make their forum offering unique in an already-cluttered space.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any YC startup in this space?

<comment><USER3> Coming soon.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm available as a beta customer if they are interested...</comment></comment></comment>


My Soccer Fandom Is Out of Shape - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/06/arsenal-manchester-city-new-strangeness-soccer/613216/ <comment><USER2> I am surprised nobody has come up with "virtual tickets" system where you set up speakers on the stadium and you can have multiple people join in and shout at home into their microphones to be heard at the stadium.

It seems such an obvious solution that would make a lot of money and make games actually have chants that follow the game play.

Eg. you probably need a group of only 10-20 people all virtually seated in a single area (one speaker at the stadium) to get a song started as others pick it up on their headphones.</comment>


Netflix's Altered Carbon gave me what Blade Runner 2049 couldn't - <AUTHOR> https://www.polygon.com/2018/2/8/16991208/netflix-altered-carbon-blade-runner-2049-comparison <comment><USER2> I agree with the sentiment that any kind of SciFi is irresistible on Netflix. There has been a great void when it comes to futuristic shows or movies. I even enjoyed bright, despite its numerous flaws.

However, altered carbon's visual brilliance is marred by two things:

1\. Many actors are simply not up to the mark. The two leading ladies quell and Rei both feel incredibly wooden and cheesy. Really takes away from the show.

2\. The world is not futuristic enough for being set 300+ years in the future. I feel that this 2ould have worked better if Kovacs would have been asleep for 30-40 years, not 250.

One awesome character was Edgar Allan Poe, who is a hotel. He was fun, and well played by the actor.

<comment><USER3> The hell of it is they had some very good source material to work with in the novels, but seem to have made it all too high concept for anyone's good.</comment></comment>


Flipping out – a guide for international founders considering a "US flip" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@fritjofsson/flipping-out-a-guide-for-international-founders-considering-a-us-flip-6333ec3b82a3#.jeyt80hpj <comment><AUTHOR> Some words for international founders considering raising VC funding and considering flipping their company to the US.</comment>


Why You Should Care About Holacracy - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/review/heres-why-you-should-care-about-holacracy/ <comment><USER4> In my (somewhat limited - 6 teams, 4 different institutions, two flat teams) experience, these sorts of "no manager" approaches are a _flaming disaster_. You might argue that they didn't do it right - I argue that the burden of proof is on the disruptor to prove their betterness.

The ground reality is that someone can hire you, fire you, give you a pay raise, and is the person of record in the court cases when they arise (as they do). That person _is_ the ruler in the fiefdom - it's purely cultic and deceptive to say otherwise.

<comment><USER5> Holacracy isn't about getting rid of managers. Keep an open mind and keep reading about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whenever I read these types of posts, I always feel like I'm listening to a lecture by Leon Trotsky on the theoretical perfection of Communism.

"You may not be interested in Holacracy, but Holacracy is interested in you."

 _> How do you hire, promote, and fire at a Holacratic company? How should you prioritize what work to do or decide who does what? The rest is up to you._

Those seem like big things to leave out of a management methodology...

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it reminded me uncomfortably of Trotsky as well - not in how it works, but rather how it is _supposed_ to work if you just ignore critical details.

C&C isn't just a 20th century management methodology. It's been around since the beginnings of civilization. It's hardwired into our parenting, education, and government models. A small, committed team can try organizational structures that run counter to everything we've been taught for our entire lives - but does it scale?

More than Trotsky, this makes me think of Bakunin, Kropotkin, and other anarcho-syndicalists. This sort of "classical anarchism" also focuses on the problems and failures of the C&C hierarchy, but attempts to deal with it by rejecting the hierarchy altogether, beyond local control - if you can't punch your boss in the nose anymore, there's too much structure. Society is then organized into direct democracy around the means of production - farms, factories, businesses that elect their leaders locally and can remove them from power at any time.

Anarcho-syndicalism was put into practice in the Spanish Civil War, when the workers simply stopped answering to their bosses and instead ran things for themselves. And it got _crushed_. If there was one thing the fascists and communists (both strong C&C structures) could agree on, it was that the anarchists were the enemy. And when your little farm commune got visited by a thousand soldiers with tanks and artillery, you got wiped out, no matter how pure the ideology.

I can imagine a similar problem with Holocratic businesses - <USER2> businesses might well be uncomfortable dealing with such an organization, when they can't trust the authority of the leadership of the Holocratic structure. And if you try to keep a Holocratic structure internally while maintaining traditional outward-facing executive leadership, you're sooner or later going to have a problem of "because the CTO said so". The question of who has the power to fire in a Holocratic organization? You'll get your answer soon enough.

And there's the rub, isn't it? If you have an organization large enough to transition from anarcho-syndicalism to a deeper C&C structure, but try to do software-enhanced anarcho-syndicalism (which is kinda what Holocracy is), then you're going to have a hidden, obscured C&C structure riding along inside your Holocratic cloud. And real, final power will be with C&C, which in turn derives its authority from the owners/board, which in turn derive authority from common law and social convention. But with everyone knowing that there's a metaphorical gun to their heads, Holocratic decisions will be made with the unspoken acknowledgement that someone can/will get fired over bad decisions. So much for transparency.

Of course, this is all theoretical.

<comment><USER8> _Anarcho-syndicalism was put into practice in the Spanish Civil War, when the workers simply stopped answering to their bosses and instead ran things for themselves. And it got crushed. If there was one thing the fascists and communists (both strong C &C structures) could agree on, it was that the anarchists were the enemy. And when your little farm commune got visited by a thousand soldiers with tanks and artillery, you got wiped out, no matter how pure the ideology._

"War is the state's killer app." Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > One of these Responsive methodologies is Holacracy, defined as "a > comprehensive practice for structuring, governing and running an > organization. It replaces today's top-down, predict-and-control paradigm > with a new way of achieving control by distributing power."

That's not a definition.

</comment><comment><USER10> It seems like this author has confused "C&C" with "management which is out of touch with employees and provides no clear guidelines" and "holacracy" with "good management which is in touch with employees and provides clear boundaries and guidelines and power structures".

The author says "No one knows who gets to decide what." is a trait of C&C, which holacracy solves.

This article has confused my own understanding of the term "holacracy" quite a bit.

Maybe there is a good definition of the term elsewhere?

</comment><comment><USER11> if you can't see who's bottom of the spine to kiss, it doesn't make you the one.

One can look at the Borg for the example of ultimate flat organization - <USER3> have only Queen - and they have highest possible communication/collaboration at the level beyond wet dreams of the open floor office zealots.

Anyway, i'm eagerly expecting our management to start pushing on us Lean Agile Scrum Holacracy in the near future. We've already been Leaned, Agiled, Scrummed and as for getting Holacratized ... we'll adapt too. Resistance is futile anyway.

<comment><USER12> "It's 'LASH'. Like a whip. It evokes 'snappy', or 'fast', which is exactly how we run our company; we are flexible, have long reach, and no rigid structure. All of our successful employees learn to use a whip, just to make the analogy explicit."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> One thing that's missing in this description: who gets to decide how much people get paid?

<comment><USER14> Even one of its adherents agrees that Holacracy's inability to address compensation is "like buying Microsoft Office without Microsoft Word" ([http://recode.net/2014/10/03/holacracy-or-hella-crazy-the- fr...](http://recode.net/2014/10/03/holacracy-or-hella-crazy-the-fringe-ideas- driving-the-las-vegas-downtown-project/)), though I'd argue that it's more like buying a typewriter without a keyboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Aside from the fact that this appears to be yet another cuckoo-pants management cult, I just cannot stand the name - it is obviously spelled wrong, and should either be "holocracy" or "hollacracy".

<comment><USER16> I suppose it's technically correct, even though it's a little goofy. The first part is from the neuter form of the Greek adjective ὅλος (holos), meaning "whole". The neuter form (used as a noun here I assume) would be "holon" and the plural of that, "hola". So holacracy would be "rule by wholes". Better than rule by a-holes, I suppose...

<comment><USER17> Being a native Greek speaker, I find "holacracy" (ολακρατία) at least weird; it sounds completely wrong. If I wanted to combine the two words I would automatically use "holocracy" (ολοκρατία). I can't think of any example where Greek uses the plural form of a word in combination with -kratia.</comment></comment></comment>


Trump Promised to Help Tech Companies. What Does He Want in Return? - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/12/trump-promised-help-tech-companies-what-does-he-want-return <comment><USER2> The premise of the headline is immediately flawed. He promised a lot of things. And like Obama before him and every other challenger, more than half of those promises will be moot since they won't be delivered. And it's hard to ask for something in return for nothing.

Of all of the high profile things he promised, I don't think tech appears on that list at all, so I'm not sure why any one is expecting any substantive action either way.

And before you claim I'm wrong because of this or that thing he said, are you sure you want to take the man at his word? Because anyone here can trot out all sorts of crazy things that have been said bearing no connection to reality.

The reality as far as I can see it is that tech isn't in his top 20 priorities.</comment>


Surgery Is One Hell of a Placebo - <AUTHOR> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/surgery-is-one-hell-of-a-placebo/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me of the ProPublic article, _When Evidence Says No, but Doctors Say Yes:_ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13705761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13705761)

As I said in that submission, "Sometimes medicine helps patients, sometimes the medical-industrial complex makes work for itself. I took a lot of medicaid patients to & from doctor appointments where nothing much was accomplished."

From the present article:

> Given these results, why do these surgeries remain so widespread? Because > the ineffectiveness of these procedures can be hard for doctors to see.

All of medicine is handicapped by this phenomenon. A friend had an implant put in his neck... Was good for a few years, then the pain returned. He went back to see if the implant had failed: 'no, now the next joint down has failed'. Implants all the way down.

IMHO, the first implant might have been acceptable if they'd also made an effort to figure out how to keep his other discs from degenerating in the same manner.</comment>