Ask HN: University checks for cheaters when delivering code assigments. How? - <AUTHOR>

My university checks for possible cheaters when delivering programming assignments. by inputing them to a program that gives back the probablitlity those two programs have code copyed of each other. How does the program work in essence? <comment><USER2> It may use something like Kolmogorov complexity [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity#Compress...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity#Compression)

...where symbol matching is used along with variable names after removing all extra white space.

Although, I'm guessing your university uses PMD : [http://pmd.sourceforge.net](http://pmd.sourceforge.net) It's a fairly popular tool for detecting code issues (including copied segments).

</comment><comment><USER3> Take a look at this:

[http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/](http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/)

Specifically:

[http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/publications/papers/sigmod...](http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/publications/papers/sigmod03.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm no expert in this but I suppose just like how they check for plagiarism in essays.

They usually compare submissions with other submissions, past submissions and also against similar references on the internet in case a match is found on some website.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess... but there has to be something else. You can plagarize an essay, and finding that is kinda easy because you copy-paste word by word and so, it's obvious. But two programmers can have identical pieces of code without that meaning they copied each other, don't you think?

<comment><USER5> Not really; discounting extremely simple programs like print "Hello world", there are many possible stylistic differences and people will write things differently. One person will write for, another while; one i=0;j=0, another j=0;i=0; another will name variables differently; another will take two lines and make them into a procedure; one will write "if x then return y else return z", another "if x then return y; return z;", another "if not x then return z else return y" another "return x ? y : z" etc. If your assignment is at least 50 lines of code, compare it with someone else. You will see tons of differences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are you asking out of intellectual curiousity or a desire to beat the system?

<comment><AUTHOR> Curiosity. If i was capable of beating the system, then i might as well do the assignment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's probably a combination of runtime analysis and code construction analysis.

Submissions with similar runtimes will use the same algorithm. If most students use the proper way, but a group of five students all, by "chance," pick an obscure dumb way (or a really obscure fast way), then they may be copying. Manual investigation would be triggered.

Look into how JavaScript minimizers/obfuscators work. They could be parsing your code down to a form where your variable names and comments don't matter at all. They're just analyzing and looking for coincident structure of programs.

Now, your administration is smart enough to not flag code where there's one way to do it (write "find a member of a list"), but if 10 people copy the same wrong way to do it, it would be a flag to investigate further.</comment>


Twitter's Fucked - <AUTHOR> http://degoes.net/articles/fuck-twitter <comment><USER6> Yep. Yep, yep, yep. And Twitter's response is to ban some, but not all harassers, using the algorithm of "whoever is high profile and we don't like politically." That gives said harassers surprisingly legitimate reasons to claim censorship by Twitter as a company, despite the fact that they were in clear violation of Twitter's ToS and deserved to be banned.

I refer of course to the Milo Yiannopoulos situation (edit: I said the article didn't mention. I missed the mention.). The man deserved what he got, but there are dozens of accounts that were his "executors" \- doing the actual harassment for him in many cases - who got off scot-free, while he remains banned. There is no consistency.

I think there's a possibility that the arbitrary enforcement is partially because Twitter knows that if it were consistent in enforcing its own rules, so much of its population of users would disappear that it would be hobbling itself.

The only "safe" way to use Twitter now is as an echo chamber - only follow people you like, only talk to people who think the same way you do. That's a waste.

<comment><USER7> I have personally lost the belief that you can actually change someone's opinion on almost anything. So an echo chamber doesn't have to be a bad thing. I think people overestimate the value of having your beliefs challenged, does it ever really change someone's mind? If that's the case, you might as well view twitter as entertainment and to clue into the things you care about, in which case it can be pretty useful.

<comment><USER6> You _can_ change somebody's opinion, just not through one direct interaction. An opinion change requires time, internal rationalization, and repeated exposure.

An echo chamber is bad because it not only repeatedly re-broadcasts beliefs, it also amplifies them. "The President is wrong and should be voted out of office" can turn into "The President is wrong and ought to be shot" in an echo chamber environment much faster if there's nobody around to say "wait, hold up, maybe don't."

<comment><USER8> Most likely at that point, they are making the opinion for themselves and you probably have very little in the decision making

<comment><USER6> Yes, that's exactly what is happening. You can't reach into somebody's brain and make them change, but you can plant little idea-seeds that grow into change.

<comment><USER9> Recent studies [Nolan 2010] have shown this method to be tricky and dangerous, but effective.

[Nolan 2010]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception)

P.S. Sorry... couldn't resist ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> True story: I was at a fundraiser in SF in about 2009, and over the course of the evening I found myself chatting about Twitter on two different occasions: once with Bill Maris of Google Ventures, and once with Joi Ito.

Bill and I were actually talking about what kind of investments GV was looking to make. He stressed that GV was looking to invest in businesses that were actually good businesses. As a counterexample, he brought up Twitter, which at the time he considered to be a "good investment" (said with a grin and a wink) but not a "good business". I had one of those feelings that you get when somebody really smart just shared with you The Truth.

Later I found myself in a conversation with Joi, I think as part of a group and not one-on-one, and Joi was talking about Twitter's lack of revenue. Joi was an early stage investor in Twitter, and he was telling us something to the effect of, "once we have all these users, we're going to bring everyone to the table and figure out how to monetize and what we can charge for."

Over the years I've thought a lot about Bill's distinction between a "good investment" and a "good business", and about Joi's "users first, money later" optimism. I always felt like Bill would be proven right in the long-term, and I think at this point he sorta has been.

Ultimately, though, either approach to investing can work -- but if you're gonna do the Joi thing, you gotta know when to get out of the trade. (I have no idea if/when Joi got out... just stating a general principle.)

<comment><USER11> How is Twitter not a good business? It's still worth $11 billion.

<comment><USER12> It's never made a profit.

<comment><USER11> This is a good point. So I looked up some Twitter financials.

In 2015 they posted a Net Income of -$521.03M and EBITDA of -$137.21M.

I don't exactly understand how those two numbers can differ so much, but either way they're pretttty bad.

<comment><USER13> I was curious as to why the two numbers differed so much. A lot of it seems to be deprecation charges on servers and networking gear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does Twitter have to be Facebook to not be "fucked"?

I don't understand these statements that "Twitter is fucked". Twitter could improve filtering and safety but if it never changed I'd probably still get my news from it for the rest of my life. I just can't think of a better app for my use cases. I often like Twitter Moments, like something funny or some pop culture stuff I wouldn't have picked up on.

Every time there is breaking news Twitter carries it first.

I don't want longer tweets. That's what URL's are for. If you want to discuss really distill your thoughts and thread them. I'm on here to scan for stuff that lights up my brain not have an Op-Ed shoved in my face taking up the whole screen.

I just don't understand. I love twitter.

<comment><USER15> People love to hate Facebook and Twitter, but they ain't going anywhere. The service they provide is too useful, and after so many years they are ingrained in people's social lives.

<comment><USER14> Exactly. They fill a need. These Monday morning quarterbacks should march up to sand hill with a prototype and build their own. Leave my twitter alone.

<comment><USER16> Well the actual quarterbacks, in the form of its owners, are selling. Today it's down 14%. It's lost 1/2 its value in 12 months. It's not profitable.

Now maybe they just haven't discovered, or innovated, a business model that'll at least stop them from taking on more water. Nevertheless, I'm curious how much it's worth to you, in dollars, per day, per month or per year. Because $0 isn't working, clearly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My rule is that if nobody would pay for your service, you probably don't have a worthwhile business.

If Google instituted a $0.99 monthly fee to use Google search, people would line up to pay it. They don't have to, because their business model works differently, but they _could_ do that, and it would work. I'd probably pay for an account.

If Facebook instituted a $0.99 monthly fee to use that, a lot of people would do it just because it keeps them in the loop with their friends. And in fact, many people would be willing to pay $2.99/mo for a business account which gets to do more (like post more events or whatever). Again, this isn't their business model, but this would totally work as a business model.

People would pay for Uber de-facto; they _do_ pay for Uber.

Likewise, half my coworkers have bought coin packs in Pokémon Go. In general, lots of games do pay models.

If Twitter added a $0.99/year fee, there would be a clone written in a more scalable architecture taking all their users within a week. Some businesses would keep Twitter accounts, but that number would decrease as they lost users. Remember that Twitter added some minor advertising and instantly started losing users.

There are tons of other startups with this problem. The idea these days is, get a bunch of users and introduce ads. The problem there is that when you add ads, you're fundamentally changing your service. It's a bait-and-switch. And once you do the switch, if people weren't willing to pay for your service before, they're not going to want to start paying for it in the form of ads.

<comment><USER18> > there would be a clone written in a more scalable architecture

Curious, what would be more scalable than Twitter's existing JVM based architecture? 3 years ago[1] they were able to handle upwards of 140 (edit) thousand tweets per second without any latency -- that's pretty ridiculous.

[1] [https://blog.twitter.com/2013/new-tweets-per-second- record-a...](https://blog.twitter.com/2013/new-tweets-per-second-record-and- how)

<comment><USER17> I didn't explain that well--initially Twitter was on RoR and sharded MySQL, which wasn't scalable. Obviously they have done a lot of scaling work and can handle their load now.

If I were implementing Twitter today, I'd probably do Elixir and Cassandra. I don't generally leap to go NoSQL but Twitter's structure is particularly suited to Cassandra. Elixir gives the ease of development I associate with Ruby with the scalable, decentralizable BEAM. I'd also consider going with Erlang straight up--it may not be as pretty as Elixir, but there's a lot to be said for maturity in a language.

But I'm saying this because I have the benefit of newer technologies and having seen Twitter's mistakes. From a technical perspective, I think Twitter is pretty well done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Every platform that is public and anonmyous runs afoul of this, this isn't just twitter. You can look at Youtube comments, reddit, pretty much any forum.

What's missing is that other platforms, like Facebook, took a very hard stance on this and forced people to signup as their real identities.

Twitter, can easily follow suit. That won't fix all of the problems, but it will go towards improving things and it won't require massive product updates and changes to the UX.

Given that their MAU growth numbers are low, and no longer the number that they want the public market to focus on, actually instating this now wouldn't even be that damaging from a reporting perspective, and if they bled out a few users that weren't really contributing it could go a long way to improving things.

Technically there is a privacy setting that twitter doesn't play up that can be used for people that want to use twitter as a consumption platform and limit the interactivity from other people.

Twitter is still fundamentally different and more open than facebook and with requesting non-anonymous users they can still keep that open platform and potentially clean up some of the outlier conversations that seem to be a focus for so many people of what's wrong with twitter.

<comment><USER20> HN is public and anonymous and mostly manages to not suffer this problem, due to the heavy manual labour of the moderators and a whole lot of selection bias in its userbase.

To a slightly lesser extent, Slashdot has also licked that problem: for any story that attracts enough comments (more than 300) the top rated ones are often pretty good and the worthless ones start auto-collapsed. Even though Slashdot gets a lot of jip these days, some of it deserved, I've still spent many enjoyable hours reading some of the top rated comments there. Especially nice is the fact that upvotes must have an adjective attached, which gently nudges users into certain kinds of behaviour. For instance it's the only site I've encountered where people often post extremely funny comments despite the serious topics. The moderation system there encourages that sort of behaviour.

<comment><USER21> HN is not as mainstream as Twitter or Reddit, so I don't think we can really compare it that way

<comment><USER22> I wouldn't necessarily consider Reddit mainstream either. Sure, it has a lot of users. But I don't hear people on the streets telling each other to look at their subreddits.

<comment><USER23> If we can trust in Alexa, reddit is #26 globally and #9 in the US. Even with some error margin, that's damn mainstream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I actually think none of these things are Twitter's biggest problems and that while they are big issues Twitter could gradually, painstakingly fix them through thoughtful policies coupled with careful engineering. Their biggest problem is Facebook rapidly building Twitter's future inside Facebook.

What I mean is this: I agree with Jack's vision of Twitter being a "window to the world", a place where you can instantly get a sense of what your compatriots are thinking and how they are reacting to news. They have two features which accomplish this pretty well: hashtags and live video. When crazy things are happening Twitter is one of the best ways to "live" the event through those two features. Jack appears to have taken this to heart and recently said that Twitter's future will heavily involve breaking news. This also addresses one of the big complaints in this post - you can't have a thoughtful debate in 140 characters. But you can react! And you can absorb little pieces of information and media.

Unfortunately for Twitter, Facebook has also seen the writing and the wall and has built superior versions of hashtags and live video directly into their experience. I have seen a noticeable improvement in the specificity and granularity of their trending topics lately and we've all seen over the past couple weeks how effective and raw (maybe too raw) their live video is.

So I don't think Twitter is fucked - I think their future still, after all these laggard years, has a lot of potential. The problem is they have to stare down an 800,000 pound blue and white gorilla to win.

</comment><comment><USER25> Speech is not violence. The author's conflation of the two trivializes actual physical violence.

<comment><USER26> [http://www.nonviolentcommunication.com/aboutnvc/nonviolent_c...](http://www.nonviolentcommunication.com/aboutnvc/nonviolent_communication.htm)

[https://www.heartland.edu/documents/idc/What%20is%20violent%...](https://www.heartland.edu/documents/idc/What%20is%20violent%20comm%20and%20nvc%20\(Winters\).pdf)

<comment><USER27> Again, in both cases it's using violence as a rhetorical trick.

Verbal and emotional abuse of children are serious issues, but they do NOT have to be violent for them to be horrible. The conflation of the two muddies the language that we have to describe the events that happen to us.

If someone says, my parents were very violent to me, what would you assume happened? Doesn't knowing that there was physical abuse help give context that helps you respond to the situation?

<comment><USER26> Did you even read the links?

'Violent speech' and 'violent communication' are a form of violence. They have a nuanced definition. They can be used in multiple ways. Language is not strict. It is fluid, it changes over time, and in this case, totally applies to the subject. You are arguing for an unrealistic, unenforceable, overly- literal use of language.

<comment><USER27> We have word-phrases for what you're talking about. More nuanced than your proposed catch-all of 'violent communication.'

As someone who's been on the receiving end of a large portion of 'violent communication', it's much easier, and significantly more validating to say 'emotional abuse' or 'hate speech'.

I don't understand what about asking violence to retain its definition is unrealistic. It's an important word with important implications.

(I did read the links -- that's how I pulled an example out of them. You really are a fan of rhetorical pot shots!)

<comment><USER26> Violent communication is an umbrella term for a variety of causes and effects. It may not be hateful. It may not be abusive. But it has the quality and characteristics of the intent to cause harm, which is what violence is.

But going back to your main assertion here, you say that the word 'violence' has a particular definition, and the use of this phrase does not retain it, and that it thus harms people's interpretation of the word and its meaning. Let's see if that's true.

The American Psychological Association defines it as this:

 _" Violence is an extreme form of aggression, such as assault, rape or murder. Violence has many causes, including frustration, exposure to 𝘃𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮, violence in the home or neighborhood and a tendency to 𝘀𝗲𝗲 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲'𝘀 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆'𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁. Certain situations also increase the risk of aggression, such as drinking, insults and other provocations and environmental factors like heat and overcrowding."_

The Oxford dictionary has this definition:

 _" violence. Pronunciation: /ˈvī(ə)ləns/. noun. 1) Behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. 1.1) 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗴𝘁𝗵 𝗼𝗳 𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗻 𝘂𝗻𝗽𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗰𝗲: 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘃𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀. 1.2) Law The unlawful exercise of physical force or intimidation by the exhibition of such force. To do violence to. Damage or adversely affect. Origin: Middle English: via Old French from Latin violentia, from violent- 'vehement, violent' (see violent)."_

Wikipedia has this to say:

 _" Violence is defined by the World Health Organization as "the intentional use of physical force 𝗼𝗿 𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿, 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗱 or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, 𝗽𝘀𝘆𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗺, maldevelopment, or deprivation", although the group acknowledges that the inclusion of "the use of power" in its definition expands on the conventional meaning of the word.[2] This definition involves intentionality with the committing of the act itself, 𝗶𝗿𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗲𝘀. However, generally, 𝗮𝗻𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝗰𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝗷𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝗮𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝗺𝗮𝘆 𝗯𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝘀 𝘃𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗶𝗳 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝘃𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 (by a person and against a person)."_

Also note that Wikipedia (and many other sources) define the _types_ of violence as self-directed, interpersonal, and collective, spanning acts such as physical, sexual, _verbal, psychological, and emotional_. (Other sources include expanded or additional categories)

\--

You'll note that in many definitions, the term encompasses several iterations on the theme, such as assault and non-physical harm. (As a fellow linguist, i'm sure you're aware that the definitions of the word "assault" in both a legal and non-legal context includes non-physical harm) According to multiple sources, the definition of the word flies in the face of your more strict interpretation.

But you also mention catch-all word-phrases for things like this - <USER2> 'violent communication'! You can also notice that since the word 'violent' is in the phrase - and since it is the root word of 'violence' \- and since their mutual definitions span the same subjects and imply the same cause and effect - that it isn't a perversion of the original word's meaning at all, but merely elucidates a particular category of thing the root word wouldn't have directly described as well.

Now, let's finally address your love of the word 'rhetorical'. The word 'rhetorical', in a general definition, is to form a question in order to make a point rather than elicit an answer.

Taking into account the rest of my argument & evidence on the original subject, don't you think it might be more useful to use language to point out a flaw in logic, rather than trying to break down someone's argument with ad- hominem attacks?

<comment><USER27> You're willfully misinterpreting definitions here:

>>" Violence is an extreme form of aggression, such as assault, rape or murder. Violence has many causes, including frustration, exposure to 𝘃𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮, violence in the home or neighborhood and a tendency to 𝘀𝗲𝗲 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲'𝘀 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆'𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁. Certain situations also increase the risk of aggression, such as drinking, insults and other provocations and environmental factors like heat and overcrowding."

Notice the APA's definitions includes assault, rape, and murder, and your bolded text specifically refers to the root causes of violence. The exposure to violent media predisposes people to violence, the perception of other people's actions as hostile even when they're not causes a misunderstanding that leads to violence.

1.1) from the Oxford definition is a testament to how strongly people react to violence.

The Wikipedia article is a far more compelling argument for your case, but the WHO has political interests that colors their definition of the word. Was the FDA promoting trans fats violent? It certainly is an action that was taken from a position of power which caused harm. The FDA actually might be one of the more violent domestic US institutions under this definition. Are all parents violent? Doing some harm to your child's mental health or well being is going to happen in 18 years of making decisions.

Clearly there is a difference in significance between the 'violence' of a parent who teases their child a few times and a parent who is beating their child.

We have an obvious colloquial use of the word violence that supercedes using violent as an adjective in this way. If we're going to talk about linguistic drift, this is a very poor example. Rather, this appears to be a small number of people who are attempting to expand the definition of violent. This definition has only been adopted by a few special interests groups who have a vested interest in changing how the larger population communicates. One method that they are using to do this is using rhetorical[1] tricks, like labeling everyone who does not agree with them as violent, by using overly loose definitions like the WHO example above.

[1] When an argument is nearly entirely about the way that we use rhetoric, I'll use the word rhetorical. That's the nice thing about words, when they have strong definitions, they're highly applicable to situations. You can use them and everyone will know what you're talking about!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> While I agree with most of the author's points, I'm not convinced at how possible it would be to have a product that "adopts the market-orientation and ad hoc network of Twitter" in such a way that "harassment would be impossible." While deep learning and similar technologies can certainly make it much more difficult to harass someone, you can't rely on the content of someones message[0] nor can you rely on the network status of an individual, as spam accounts won't be readily differentiable from new accounts, and blocking new accounts from contacting people defeats the "ad hoc network" requirement.

[0]: People are great at communicating meaning non-literally (see: definition of literally) and one of the ways that manifests itself is through slang, which is going to break anything but a so-close-it-might-as-well-be-AI system. If you ban a word or phrase, it's meaning will be communicated through another word or phrase. The insulting adversary has an advantage here, as they can use other real words and phrases that would otherwise be innocuous to insult you, it would be especially advantageous to use popular/common words/phrases as replacements (see: euphemisms).

It's certainly possible to train a system in hindsight, but I highly doubt you could do so in real-time and any delay in reacting to new slang means that's when antagonists will strike. Hell, you could even do asynchronously defined insults, send many messages containing various words phrases and then announce, shortly after their delivery, what they mean (heh...).

<comment><USER29> Why did you jump to ML as the solution to a vague product description (and then proceed to outline how it'd be difficult to do with ML)?

Twitter 2.0 could do something as simple as forego the linear timeline (and the restrictions that that imposes re: filtering) and still achieve all the goals the author outlined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I disagree with the author because I've seen much more hostile content on Facebook, which doesn't exhibit any of the author's identified causes.

I also think John De Goes doesn't mention the elephant in the room with which he got burned, the last LandaConf along their policy and handling of the created situation. And far from me to judge that situation in this comment, but I find his judgment compromised, to say the least, if not disingenuous.

As for some of his claims, I'm actually glad that Twitter doesn't filter my content. I DO NOT want any more filter bubbles. I actually want the people I respect to show me their religion and political beliefs. In fact I want disagreeing opinions, even if painful, because that's how I learn. I'm a tolerant kind of guy and I want to see the world for what it is. And if I can't tolerate somebody, then I'm not interested about his work or jokes either.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm sympathetic to the author's general ideas, but also find myself perturbed by the myopic cheapening of the term "violence". (chars < 140)

<comment><USER32> I found the author's usage of the term eye-opening rather than myopic!

<comment><USER31> Interesting. The way it was used seemed hyperbolic & better replaced w/ something like, "banal", "vapid", "uncivil" or "derogatory". (< 140)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> People are tired from crybullies. We need a place where freedom of speech still matters.

Freedom of speech doesn't include invading someone's privacy (this is illegal; doxxing, stalking etc. should be banned and actively fought against). But if you can't handle insults, it is not anyone's job to prevent them. There's always "Block" button, and then, there's always "delete account" button.

<comment><USER34> Explain to me how effective blocking individuals is when you're being spammed by dozens and hundreds of people with so little to do that they will happily go create egg accounts to continue harassing you. It's not practical or feasible to block all of them. So people should delete their accounts because they get brigaded? To _hell_ with that, and with the people who think that is a social norm worth protecting.

"Crybullies." And I literally thought this could not get any sillier a thing.

<comment><USER35> Without taking a stance on either side of this contentious issue, I would note that it should be technically feasible to offer an option which would auto- block any account that hasn't established a certain extent of "not a troll sockpuppet" bona fides - for example, by being more than a few weeks old, and having a certain degree of engagement with the community at large. Accounts which fail to meet these criteria, and persist in attempts to abuse someone already recognized as being targeted, might be automatically suspended or banned.

I don't care for Twitter particularly, but it's a thing that exists, and it's not likely to go away any time soon. And I don't care for shitposter brigades _at all_. As the current brouhaha demonstrates, manual intervention in high- profile cases is no solution at all. Twitter's engineering team is easily capable of an automated solution; all they need is for their management to turn them loose on the problem. I'm not sure why that hasn't yet happened. Of course it's impossible for any automated solution to make everyone happy - <USER3> what we're looking at right now is a response that has made everyone _unhappy_. Twitter can do better. I hope they take this incident as sufficient reason to do so.

<comment><USER34> I hear and respect what you're saying, but I don't think you can technologically fix a social problem. Twitter needs _moderation_ , and I don't think that's practically accomplished with a purely technological solution. Assholes simply don't have a right to be there, and Twitter has a responsibility to its userbase to not subject them to it at all, rather than merely "well, machine learning" to a merely intermittently abusive, rather than constantly abusive, state.

<comment><USER36> FWIW, even attempting technological solutions sends a signal of a sort. It's probably a "Red Queen's Race" to stay ahead of determined abusers, just as it's difficult to conquer spam, but one side-effect of making a concerted effort to try is that Twitter would be sending an unambiguous message about limits on behaviour.

<comment><USER34> This is a good point. That _some_ movement is happening is, unambiguously, a good thing. It demonstrates at least some recognition of the situation. Whether it's the right movement, or whether Twitter will consider it to be "enough" and stop, is still an open question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> >The root problem with Twitter is that the product is carefully engineered to cultivate maximum violence.

Hard to make it past this part. Not sure what definition of violence you're using.

</comment><comment><USER38> I made a version of this argument three years ago here: [http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate- twitter/](http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter/)

Twitter's core problem is that _its product 's design encourages users to behave badly._ Mechanisms are baked deeply into it that make it very difficult for its users to come across as anything other than jerks. Even those with the best of intentions fall afoul of these mechanisms by accident periodically, sometimes with serious real-world consequences like loss of a job or important personal relationships. Users with _bad_ intentions, meanwhile, are enabled and rewarded by other mechanisms.

Twitter is a Perfect Storm of bad discussion software design.

</comment><comment><USER39> _The severe limitation on the size of tweets selects for puerile violence rather than thoughtful, mutually satisfying interactions._

It's not just the size of tweets, though that does exacerbate things. The entire attention economy of online social media rewards viral attention, and therefore it rewards outrage politics. (Politics in the general sense of _Homo sapiens_ following its social mammal instincts.)

<comment><USER14> Give them 500 characters. It doesn't matter it's the commons. You want people to behave? Teach real civics in the schools.

<comment><USER39> _It doesn 't matter it's the commons._

Oh yes, it _does_! There's a ton of historical, economic, and game theoretic work that indicates this matters. A lot!

 _You want people to behave? Teach real civics in the schools._

That only provides the information, not the incentive. If you want people to behave, give them a stake in society.

<comment><USER14> All good points. Perhaps I was too flippant. To clarify, it does matter how people behave. I just have little faith that the commons won't continue to fall tragedy to itself without some sort of indoctrination (or incentive system as you pointed out).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I don't think the author knows the definition of "violence"

<comment><USER41> I think he has a fair idea:

[http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/violenc...](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/violence)

2\. Strength of emotion or of a destructive natural force

<comment><USER42> You're broadening / redirecting that definition. One can have violent feelings or reactions to something, such as someone suffering PTSD, mental breakdown, emotional reaction to medicine. But one can't just claim that words that they don't like spoken by someone are violence committed on them. At that point you get into the "you're raping me with your thoughts" and that's just irrationality. If one were irrational words will no longer retain meaning anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Trying to stop people trolling, insulting or having bad behavior is a waste of time. Instead of that, make tools so people can filter the noise properly.

</comment><comment><USER44> The banning of Milo is beyond hypocritical, the person he was "harassing" said far worse things, yet she remains and keeps her little blue check. What a joke.

<comment><USER45> She also actively encouraged her followers to harass back to the people she was harassed by. Which he was accused of inciting although he never actually said it while she openly told they to do it and boasted about it.

But yeah one is a flavour of the month celeb and the other is a loudmouth who doesn't meld well with Twitter employees political leanings. But both violated TOS and both should have been banned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> > Free speech has a legal definition, and Twitter doesn't qualify.

The legal definition of free speech is based on a moral principle, for which Twitter _does_ qualify.

When a platform such as Twitter or Facebook becomes the de facto public square, then a ban from Twitter or Facebook is a de facto ban from the public square.

I don't care about Milo in particular, but I do care about the fact that censorship by Twitter or Facebook _is_ real censorship.

</comment><comment><USER47> > _This means if you follow someone for what they have to say about > professional improv comedy, you also get to hear them trash your religion, > berate the intelligence of people who vote the way you do, and otherwise > rant about and retweet topics you don't want to hear about._

Wow, this is a really impressive observation that I think I, and maybe others, have sensed but couldn't quite express. This is super relevant to me in the music sphere, as I enjoy the art form but find numerous "Twitter Winners" like Father John Misty toxic in the long term. Disclosure: I needled FJM on Twitter following his immature diatribe that dropped 7 F-bombs on an un-expecting family-oriented afternoon because its hurtful to fans and other artists.

</comment><comment><USER48> Another issue that contributes to anger on Twitter is that comments on tweets are displayed based on the time which they appeared. So angry and unhelpful comments often appear at the top, even if no one likes them, because they were posted first.

</comment><comment><USER49> Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed ([https://www.amazon.co.uk/So- Youve-Been-Publicly-Shamed/dp/03...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/So-Youve-Been- Publicly-Shamed/dp/0330492284)) is an interesting book that goes into some detail on the moral outrage and abuse side of social media.

</comment><comment><USER50> Total side beef: can we all please stop comparing Pokemon Go DAUs with those of massive social platforms that have been around for years and years? It's just silly.

</comment><comment><USER51> I agree with a lot of this article, but want to call out this point for discussion:

>This means if you follow someone for what they have to say about professional improv comedy, you also get to hear them trash your religion, berate the intelligence of people who vote the way you do, and otherwise rant about and retweet topics you don't want to hear about.

This sounds like the author is _asking_ for Twitter to build an echo chamber for him? I would rather not have that for my account tbh and I would like to discourage Twitter from heading in this direction (though it has already started to do some of that).

<comment><USER20> Just tweet tagging would do the trick. Probably tweets are too short to auto- tag, but medium manages to do it for longer form content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52>
      > There are four types of content that can earn you retweets:
      >
      > 1. Indignant
      > 2. Insulting / Harassing
      > 3. Cute / Funny
      > 4. Insightful / Intelligent

...

      > Of these four kinds of content, two are inherently violent,
      > and the other two have the potential for violence (mean jokes, condescension).

Today I learned that sharing an intelligent/insightful comment is potentially violent enough to be worth commenting on.

I guess I'll just make dumb and obvious statements from now on, since I value peace.

<comment><USER53> This continued attempt to redefine violence to include words disturbs me in a very fundamental way. It's a legitimate attempt to make thoughtcrime viable by people who firmly believe all human ills can be solved if you just wag enough fingers in faces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I like how everyone now wants an echo chamber of their own ideas and are so uncomfortable with someone who challenges their opinions that they demand a service change the way it operates. I'm not saying the bashing/harassment is okay, it isn't.

</comment><comment><USER55> > I actually think that, for technology companies, more people will choose > providers that are completely non-political.

There's no way for a tech company to be "completely non-political." So I actually think that people will continue to prefer providers whose politics they see as compatible with theirs. And it seems to me that tech companies like Google and Microsoft and Apple (in their public pushback against government surveillance) and AirBnB (bringing in Eric Holder to do a non- discrimination policy) see things similarly.

Specifically when it comes to harassment and hate speech, while I certainly agree with his points of making it easier for people to protect themselves, in the end there's no way to avoid taking a political stance. Twitter (like Facebook and most other large social networks) has a policy that "you may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease". Obviously that's an inherently political position. But conversely, _not_ having a policy like that -- saying that attacking, threatening, and promoting violence against people based on these characteristics is okay and it's up to them to use the tools to insulate themselves from it -- is just as political. There really isn't a neutral position.

[Of course this is the same guy who doesn't see that a decision to let Curtis Yarvin speak at his conference is just as political as a decision not to. To be clear, I'm not saying it was a right or wrong decision; I'm just saying it was political either way.]

</comment><comment><USER56> This is an excellent assessment with more depth and nuance than its title suggests. It also isn't the same old Twitter-bashing.

I hate Twitter, but I don't necessarily agree that it's too broken to fix. There's a place for a Twitter-like product in the world, and Twitter is already entrenched.

The question of a Twitter revamp is this: will it alienate existing heavy users? Will that effect be counterbalanced by new users?

</comment><comment><USER57> It's an interesting treatise, but I suggest the author is describing media in general. Tech has only amplified the faults of media: emotionally visceral and passionate (i.e. as opposed to dispassionate or objective) news gets the clicks.

Very proud and 'credible' news outlets face this problem and it's real. Either get the clicks or go out of business.

</comment><comment><USER58> How about a rating system for people? And each rating could also be biased by the rating of the person giving the rating. Kind of like pagerank for people. Then the posts of those who have the most positive ratings float to the top of the stream.

Sure trolls will support other trolls but I'm pretty convinced most people are good people and should easily outnumber and be able to take down gangs of trolls online.

This way the community self moderates and is able to weed out the undesirables and assholes on the platform all by themself, no intervention required.

The people you rated highly could also float to the top of your stream so if you enjoy the trash talking of milo or similar characters you can still see them without them poisoning the well for everyone else.

<comment><USER59> There is a sort of rating system, in the follower ratio. Each follower represents a "vote" for the value of that person's Twitter stream.

It's not only the number but also the ratio. There are people who have 200,000 followers because they are following 200,000 people. This tells you their tweets are worthless. (And if you're following 200,000 people, you're not reading their tweets.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Has anyone ever had substantial conversations about the idea that maybe, just maybe, this is a human beings problem? As in we're not conditioned nor designed to communicate in such an environment? And that this type of access to the public and each other is so new (in the greater scheme of the world) that we have no damn clue what we're doing? Or is everyone going to continue to make arguments that are heavily based on the presumption that we're all good little boys and girls who only desire / are capable of having "meaningful interactions" online and that's the natural state of things by which everything should be analyzed?

<comment><USER60> Those are two extreme positions, most of the substantial conversations I have lie in the middle. We typically assume that humans are not well-adapted (yet) to communicating in a digital format, and so we're still developing norms and ways of communicating tone and so on.

We're not all good little boys and girls, but we do want to have good conversations with one another, and so we try and do what we can to make things better as we go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I'll bite on the Twitter 2.0 comment.

In some sense, I see the descriptions he made in Snapchat. The ability to consume content from where ever I choose, but my ability to reach out and converse with people who create content is limited by their desire to create a 1:1 connection with me. I wasn't a big fan of Snapchat when it first came out, but over time it has interested me with some of the decisions that they have made to really make the product about consuming moments that are personal to me, as well as interesting to me.

</comment><comment><USER62> Twitter is best for announcing things: events, blog posts, updates, software version and the like, plus maybe a link. Anything else is unfit for the platform. The strings are too short.

<comment><USER63> Actually, what I find Twitter best for is directly talking to CEOs, lead developers, lead marketers, or other people in high positions. They usually reply.

For instance, I asked John Carmack if he'd ever consider doing anything on the Atari Jaguar again (he ported Wolf3d and Doom to that platform back in 1993) and he replied saying that he'd more likely do Apple ][ stuff if he went retro.

How many times in a person's life do they directly talk to John Carmack? It's amazing that you can just type a few things in and someone that powerful replies to a relative nobody.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> The problem is deeper than these details -- Twitter's product doesn't solve a problem.

It adds communication to the world, with certain unique flavors... and some people have found ways to use it to improve reporting on news, events, or marketing. Some people have found ways to solve minor problems for themselves, specifically. And because of those things, it has found its traction.

But there is no major underlying problem shared by millions that Twitter solves. Which is why it also struggles to maintain a userbase.

</comment><comment><USER65> If you post a well-shot picture on Instagram you'll immediately get a bunch of random (but not spam) Likes and maybe a comment or two (I assume people search their interests via hashtag: "#architecture" or "#cars" or etc.). Same with Reddit or Hacker News; post a comment and you'll _often_ get an upvote/reply/comment/banter in return. On Facebook your IRL friends will Like your stuff.

Without a meaningful number of followers, on Twitter you get _nothing_.

Hashtags eat into your 140 characters, and are mostly used ironically or for singular events/causes, which aren't really appropriate for the majority of tweets. So no one's going to find it via search or hashtag.

There are no communities/topics/forums/subreddits to join. No way to tweet at all the other people who like this one thing.

So to get any kind of notice/interaction with a Tweet of your own you're left to tweeting at someone else, which feels wrong/argumentative/pushy for all the reasons this article laid out. Infinitely more intrusive than a comment reply. Hoping that they either retweet you or reply to you, which gets your tweet those precious views, favorites, and replies enjoyed (and dreaded) by the most average tweet of a well-followed account.

Those metrics (and lack there-of) either lead you to _not_ tweet yourself and only follow [celebrities / internet-celebrities / news] or constantly [reply- to / tweet-at / annoy / troll] those same high-profile accounts. Which is better for Twitter?

<comment><USER60> My tactic is this, and I've used this in several different circles – look for people who are moderately influential in a field, but not super famous (say less than 2k followers). Then follow them, and tweet positive things at them, or ask genuine questions, and contribute. There's usually a group of people who all talk to each other, and you can gently get into the conversations if you're careful. Once you do that, and you've made decent contributions a couple of times, they'll typically follow you.

Now I can "ask Twitter" a question and get interesting responses from dozens of people. But it takes time and effort, which I suppose most people aren't willing to spend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I've been using Twitter since 2006-2007, and for a long period of time I absolutely loved, ranted, and raved about it. The problem is that now, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do on Twitter to offer or receive value.

Last night I was blocked by someone I followed for simply offering a tame retort to a comment they made whilst blocking someone else.

When I tweet, nothing happens. Granted, I'm not the most interested Twitter user in the world, but I'd like to think I have the occasional insight that might be worth reading, favoriting, or sharing.

The only time I actually see engagement is when I'm using it for current events, and respond to strangers. One would think that when this happens, you might be able to cultivate those engagements into future correspondence, but nope...it's all event based, and I have no time for that.

Despite my conservative nature and Jack's recent behavior/antics, I do like Twitter and want it to succeed, but it's not going to be long before I stop using it and eventually stop registering accounts for new businesses. We have more fun with Snapchat.

</comment><comment><USER67> I think killing the 140 character limit will severely damage Twitter and turn into a tumblr-like website. I do agree with the author on some of the technical aspects he mentioned like filtering. I'd add to that list how conversations are structured, they are a complete mess. It gets worse too if you're building a product that leverages their API.

</comment><comment><USER68> Umm, so twitter is a private company. Yeah, they can censor whoever they like. Can the NYT censor if they want? YES! Should they, likely not b/c of backlash from people like us. What we have to realize, is that unless there is a non- profit totally open "commons" then there is really no recourse for us. Did Twitter damage us monetarily? Are they even responsible outside of their terms of service? Suspect even that has language that subjects it to change at any time. In short, the idea that "twitter's fucked" is well...stupid. You can say what you want, but you know what...twitter can kick you off at any time. That's just the way it works. Has been that way since the days of BBS and later AOL/Compuserve (and yes, I was kicked out of many of those rooms too).

</comment><comment><USER69> I wonder how much of root of this can be reduced to election year political nonsense. A year from now, it's going to be much less annoying to be on the Internet.

The author is right that the product has some major flaws, especially around harassment, but no one else seems to want to take over the space. And Facebook, Tumblr, G+, etc. are all much worse platforms for the kind of discussion that happens on Twitter.

So I think the toxic environment can definitely put a ceiling on the number of new users, so does the timeline issues, but it could probably just keep plodding along for another 5+ years as-is until these issues are worked out or something much better is put in place (not likely, but possible, IMO).

</comment><comment><USER70> If you use twitter as described in this article, then that's the kind of experience you will have. It's kind of like being in a large crowded public space. If you are loud and assertive and determined to stand up for everything you believe in, even with strangers, then you will run into trouble no matter how good your opinions or how polite you are.

"everyone can send anything to everyone" is twitter's USP. I can't think of another many-to-many broadcast (publish-subscribe) platform. That is what makes it successful, and it is vulnerable to competitors who use that model, but I can't think of many. Snapchat kind of works like that, right?

</comment><comment><USER71> I, for one, do want technology companies making ethically informed decisions. It doesn't mean they will always make the right ethical decisions, but it has a far higher chance of positive outcome than simply avoiding the matter altogether.

I can understand why the author is somewhat frightened by the prospect, but fear doesn't justify inaction.

To say Twitter isn't free speech because it has limitations seems dubious. The U.S. is fairly well-regarded on the rights of speech, but even here there are limits. That doesn't mean free speech doesn't exist, it means it is paired with responsibility with penalties for failure to abide by those responsibilities.

</comment><comment><USER72> I wonder why twitter will not use Machine Learning to remove terrorism propaganda from their social network? I mean you can train neural networks to recognize terrorism spreading accounts and tweets. It's not black magic, NLP to get intent + classification of known/blocked terrorist accounts and just train. Then show message "Sorry but this tweet looks like abusing our rules, please wait until our staff will check it" or something like that. If you do nothing where you can then you are just accomplice to spreading terrorism.

<comment><USER73> The likely end result of that is just coded communication.

As a similar example, Facebook's "no gun sales" policy now has people selling a pair of socks for $650 using a picture that just happens to have a gun in the background. (Examples: [https://twitter.com/ecined/status/756940120826097664](https://twitter.com/ecined/status/756940120826097664) [https://twitter.com/monteiro/status/756639900796088320](https://twitter.com/monteiro/status/756639900796088320))

<comment><USER74> And you honestly don't think machine learning will be able to detect that as a gun sale?

<comment><USER73> The more it does, the more coded it gets.

I still have to dig into my spam folder's contents periodically to rescue important emails for the same reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I recall somebody describing retweets in a sentence:

A dog barks. Several other dogs bark.

</comment><comment><USER76> It's worth nothing that John's thoughts here are no doubt heavily influenced by his experiences on twitter during the LamdaConf/Moldbug incident.

</comment><comment><USER77> _In addition, Twitter lets anyone contact anyone with any kind of content, and will send a notification to the recipient. As a result, any person or bot with a Twitter account has the ability to interrupt your life with an invasive, hateful message at any time._

What? I thought they had to follow you for your Direct Message to reach them. So I can contact potential advisors through twitter if I can't figure out their email address?

<comment><USER78> You can open up your DMs so anybody can message you now.

<comment><USER77> I believe you are wrong:

[https://cl.ly/0a2C3d432i1W](https://cl.ly/0a2C3d432i1W)

[https://support.twitter.com/articles/14606](https://support.twitter.com/articles/14606)

It does say _If you are sending Direct Messages to accounts that do not follow you, you may need to verify your phone number._ and I did verify my phone number - still nothing.

<comment><USER78> It's not on by default. TBL probably doesn't have it enabled. It's on the Security settings page[1]

[1] [https://twitter.com/settings/security](https://twitter.com/settings/security)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Y'all must be using a different Twitter than the one I'm using. Violence[0]? I mean, I hear tale of it. But I don't have any examples that come to mind [1].

Maybe it's because I'm not a celebrity of any kind, but it really seems like you get out of Twitter that which you put in.

[0] disregarding the misapplication of the word here, for a minute.

[1] Unless we count that time Zed Shaw called me an evil capitalist war monger or something like that.

</comment><comment><USER22> >This means if you follow someone for what they have to say about professional improv comedy, you also get to hear them trash your religion, berate the intelligence of people who vote the way you do, and otherwise rant about and retweet topics you don't want to hear about.

I actually like this aspect of non-filtering. It forces exposure to differing opinions and makes people think.

</comment><comment><USER80> Yesterday, I saw this chart [1] from Twitter's Q2 2016 earnings report, and noticed that US users are only 21% of Twitter's 313 million monthly active users. Presumably, other anglocentric (ie. posting in English about topics relevant to English speakers) users push this figure much higher than 21%, but:

Does the kind of posting culture the author writes extend to the international, non-anglocentric portion of the audience? I'm not entirely convinced it does.

For example Twitter is very popular in Turkey, where it's part of social culture [2][3], and while a great deal of 'western' content is consumed, most of the user-generated discourse is either casual or latently political. Trying to find English-speaking media covering abuse on Turkish Twitter only lead me to this article [4] about a political clique harassing users about political stances, and that was a sponsored effort, not 'organic' acts by self- organizing users.

Twitter is also fairly popular in Japan [5], where pop culture phenomena drive much of the engagement.

While I agree with nearly all of the points presented in this analysis, I'm just not sure it represents most of Twitter's non-US userbase, which is significantly larger in aggregate than its US users.

[1] [http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5797c8ca88e4a71b008...](http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5797c8ca88e4a71b008badb3-960/twitter.png)

[2] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomwatson/2014/03/25/turkeys- twi...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomwatson/2014/03/25/turkeys-twitter-ban- shutting-down-technology-or-social-culture/)

[3] [https://www.socialbakers.com/statistics/twitter/profiles/tur...](https://www.socialbakers.com/statistics/twitter/profiles/turkey/)

[4] [http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/turkey-twitter- trolls/](http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/turkey-twitter-trolls/)

[5] [http://mashable.com/2013/10/22/japan-loves- twitter/](http://mashable.com/2013/10/22/japan-loves-twitter/)

</comment><comment><USER81> This makes no sense. Several of the issues he identifies are also problems on Facebook but they haven't hurt that network:

140 Characters: I rarely see "thoughtful exchange of complex ideas" on Facebook which allows as much text as you can type.

Perverse Mechanics: it's the same metrics used on Facebook and every other social network out there.

Terrible Filtering: Same filtering as Facebook.

<comment><USER80> Facebook requires a real name and most people provide it, because they also use it as a Friends & Family social network. We've also drilled into an entire generation's heads that employers will check Facebook, so realistically most of the conversation on Facebook these days is either carefully groomed, or Tumblr-style Buzzfeed reposts, or personal updates scoped to friends & family.

Twitter is intended to be public -- as private accounts vastly limit your audience, and at that point, you have much better alternatives to share content within your circle like Tumblr or Facebook or Instagram. You can adopt a pseudonymous identity, and most importantly, you can tag (ie. 'reply to') other public accounts, essentially arbitrary people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> It's easy to complain and identify problems, I don't really understand why these posts are so popular, but one seems to crop up on HN every month or so. It's kind of tiring to see all this negativity towards something that's done a bunch of good for the world and is fading away. Not everything lasts and that's okay.

</comment><comment><USER83> I left recently specifically because of Twitters failure to promptly remove obvious bots and users partaking in harassment.

</comment><comment><USER84> > In fact, it's hard or even impossible to fit a single intelligent thought > into 140 characters.

He said, in fewer than 140 characters...

</comment><comment><USER85> Twitter's role is in providing a nice mirror to narcissists. There is a huge population segment with these characteristics and Twitter's existence is guaranteed unless somebody comes with even more beautiful mirror. That's how they get their numbers; anything beyond that is just piggybacked on top of this.

</comment><comment><USER86> The part about different kinds of content that get shared reminds me of this CGP Grey video that talks about what causes us to share things: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)

<comment><USER87> Yeah, this is exactly what I thought of too. Searched for "CGP" and there your comment is! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> I don't get why everyone wants Twitter to be not-Twitter.

The fact that anyone in the world can read and reply to your tweets (and vice versa) is fundamental to Twitter.

It seems like what people want is an entirely different service, something like Slack or group chat with invite-only groups.

</comment><comment><USER89> This is from the same guy who thinks "diversity" in tech means capitalists and libertarians in the same room. His opinions are not worth reading. Twitter does have major problems but this is not an insightful, original nor helpful piece on them.

</comment><comment><USER90> What's Happening. [https://blog.twitter.com/2016/see-whats- happening](https://blog.twitter.com/2016/see-whats-happening) Twitter's best promotional explanation ever I'd say.

</comment><comment><USER91> I really think milo is correct when he says that Twitter would support anyone who is higher in the position of claiming to be victim. Whether that person is victim or not does not matter. Twitter does not stand for free speech for sure in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER92> Is "Twitter's" a valid contraction? My understanding of contractions was that they were only used with pronouns and helping verbs but I can't find where this is stated in online definitions.

It makes me very uncomfortable.

</comment><comment><USER93> I am probably in a very small minority, but I have never seen the point of Twitter. It has almost limitless potential to destroy your life by taking something out of context and copying it to millions. I shudder to think of the number of times I have made a tasteless throwaway comment or colourful joke that, if taken out of context, would have had dire consequences.

It has almost limitless potential to take up all your attention, trying to stay up to date with what everyone is saying.

I can't think of a single thing I am missing out on, by not having an active Twitter account, but can think of many reasons to not have one.

<comment><USER57> You're not in the minority, you're in the majority.

Not that many people actually use Twitter.

That you think you are in the minority is a weird cultural phenom - <USER4> with the loud voices behaviours signal to us what is 'normative' even if it is not!

Because you see a lot of people using Twitter, you think 'everyone's doing it'. In reality - most people are far more neutral/central than the voices in the web. And most people just don't care about such things.

Try ignoring Twitter for a few months. You won't feel left out, trust me. It's mostly noise.

<comment><USER15> Twitter had 350 million active users in Q1 of 2016, this is quite a lot actually.

<comment><USER94> The majority might be bots. Surely for financial reasons the most tenuous definition of "active" will be applied.

Still, its like the old saying about email, I don't care if 99% of email is spam, as long as I get my electric bill email on time, I'm all good.

Twitter might become like TV, where everyone knows everyone watches, but it turns out statistics prove almost no one actually watches.

Its like the endless debates about religion where its a ritual to say X where X is "I believe in Y" and people endlessly argue about the difference between doing something and being something, as if they have to be linked.

<comment><USER57> " but it turns out statistics prove almost no one actually watches"

... ha ha .. ha ...

People still watch a lot of regular TV and will continue to do so for quite a long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> WRT the "Harasser's Paradise" section: a few months back I uninstalled the Twitter app from my phone and I started using the mobile site. It works great and it kills bullshit notifications.

</comment><comment><USER96> a bit of a strange argument. Twitter's salty environment is the nature of the beast in many ways. He seems to have some idealized nature of "how it should be" vs "how it is". Also, make clear distinctions about where you feel Twitter went wrong as a business and where you just don't like it ( <\- this is by far my biggest pet peeve of engineers talking about other products). Pretty pointless article.

</comment><comment><USER97> I haven't experienced harassment (only have 100 followers), but here's what I don't like.

Can't edit tweets

People follow you and unfollow you if you don't follow them back in a day or two.

Webcam porn stars like your tweets to draw attention to themselves.

Inconsistent user experience. Do I click the profile picture to edit my settings or edit my settings to change my profile picture? I always forget.

[http://twitter.com/johnwheeler_](http://twitter.com/johnwheeler_)

</comment><comment><USER98> Yeah, why didn't they make twitter more like Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr, LiveJournal, Medium, MySpace, or Facebook?

</comment><comment><USER99> It's certainly possible to insult someone in 140 characters, but it's equally possible to complement them.

(This post: 136 characters)

</comment><comment><USER100> I agree and disagree (in a friendly manner!). Yes, Twitter can be (and often is) a violent battleground. IMHO, this is not the reason it is failing (in fact, these battles drive high engagement).

Politics get violent, no matter where you express them, no matter the character limit. That's just the nature of the beast - half the people in the world disagree with the other half. Censorship is too difficult to execute at high level, because as it has been shown in the past, the people controlling the censorship are often biased.

The way I have found Twitter to be enjoyable is to not get involved in political threads (and yes, I have made the mistake of doing so, several times). I do not share the same political ideology as many of the people I interact with on Twitter, but I nonetheless respect their right to have an opinion. So long as I do not turn Twitter into my soapbox, I enjoy it (same thing applies to Facebook for me). If you completely block out people you disagree with (as many tweeters do), you will have a very narrow view of the world.

I think there is value in Twitter, and it could easily repair itself if it cared enough (unfortunately, it seems to care very little about improving itself at the moment).

One thing Twitter has done right: I have made more real-world friends (as in, people I have met in person) via Twitter than I have Facebook. Twitter encourages befriending people you do not know, Facebook still carries the privacy stigma.

Here are things that Twitter _should_ do if it wants to improve:

\- Fix the blue sticker. Stop handing it out to arbitrary people, and ignoring real influencers (example: thousands of video game streamers have the sticker, but Richard Garriott, one of the most influential game creators, does not). Allow people to apply for the sticker with a nonrefundable paid application (just enough money to pay the staff to evaluate whether or not they warrant the sticker).

\- Monetize popularity the right way, and get rid of all the fake followers. Get rid of people who follow then unfollow just to get a high follower/following ratio. This makes people who build their follower base the honest way seem underrated/undervalued. Come up with a better ranking system than number of followers (i.e. how influential are your top 20 followers?).

\- Emphasize and reward the flagging of fake accounts. Put the twitter population to work at eliminating spam and fake followers.

\- Sometimes I want to express things that are not exactly advertisements, but if I want to promote them (using money) they will get marked as an ad ("promoted"). This just cheapens the value of whatever I want to promote. Its really not necessary; let users figure out what is an ad and what is not - <USER5> is pretty easy. Think of all the people willing to pay to get real exposure for their tweets (not spammy tweets, but just people that want to broadcast their ideas or content). This could be a business model on its own.

\- Fix your software. I've noticed it makes my browser grind to a halt on some machines. Others have issued complaints across various platforms.

\- There is much more, but I have probably already gotten too deep.

</comment><comment><USER101> I know this sentiment will be unpopular here. But so am I (to the point where moderators have "rate limited" me until such time as I stop speaking on SJ issues) so... I think it's no surprise that suddenly the previously pro- twitter and "pro freedom of speech and welcoming spaces for all even if they're unpopular" folks are mad at twitter.

This article is hot on the heels of twitter banning Milo Y for cheerfully orchestrating yet another race baiting campaign against a black woman in cinema, and just a few months after Degoes himself got a lot of heat on Twitter and lost nearly all corporate sponsorship, having to rely on the businesses of friends for reduced funding for LambdaConf. This is a "hot take" in the Twitter parlance. And of course, banning Milo and shunning LambdaConf didn't fix the root causes or stem the tide of harassment of other behaviors that make the twitterLeft continue to be mad.

To directly address TFA's content, it's not possible in the modern era to be "non-political" because the definition of "non-political" varies so radically. More on this in a moment, but being "non-political" is neocon code for, "not offending me" (in the same way that "safe space" is actually code for "inoffensive space") and that's a rather complex and customized product to deliver.

It's very interesting though. We've all ended up in a place where the platform sort of holds us hostage. We feel compelled to share our bite-sized rhetoric chunks and then castigate people for being "unfair" and banning "rational argument" without considering that (and I stress, _all sides_ of every issue has these people) a nearly unending torrent of ill-considered hate vomits at everyone involved in even the minutest controversy. _It's totally irrational to demand people remain rational under these circumstances._ The neurotypical human simply cannot be expected to handle the way Twitter amplifies negative data.

And yet, we cannot possibly deny the pivotal importance Twitter (and in abstract, media like it) has had on rapidly disseminating information that I think most people here would absolutely agree should get out. For example, Twitter rapidly spreads media and information about social unrest worldwide, has laid bare many abuses of official power in the West, and has been incredibly important for disseminating viewpoints during the current American election.

This conversation _is_ valuable even though it is "political." It has value in every case where it brings raised awareness about the human experiences that define political conflict, social unrest, and violence worldwide.

The key difference is that in every case where twitter is used for news reporting and rapidly sharing personal perspectives, it trumps every other media. Twitter simply outshines every other media sharing design we've ever seen for news. Degoes is dead and demonstrably wrong that it's only cute and tidy tweets that get huge sums of retweets.

Many of the most successful tweets in the sphere of "politics" are just raw information. "Donald Trump said this." "Egypt's government is doing this." "This is happening in Libya." The same 140 character limit that quashes all but the most clipped conversations and promotes media actually severely limits the spin one can actually craft around any given fact and strongly favors media delivered so fast that any substantial working or processing has to be automated. That's probably to the platform's overall credit.

If Twitter has a future, it's as a news platform that makes everyone into a journalist. If Twitter is doomed, it's because it forces everyone into a common scrum of a debate where even if we could type more to more eloquently debate, it wouldn't matter because the overwhelming pressure of people tossing out quit hate fastballs would erode the conversation.

Those of us who are opponents of Degoes worldview overall are still in violent and absolute agreement that the platform needs more tools to curb 'harassment'. While we may differ on the subject of what harassment is in this case, we agree that ultimately Twitter needs to develop sophisticated tools for managing incoming content and filtering it.

They've refuse to do so. Maybe 2-3 years ago, we could argue it wasn't feasible at scale, but I think the industry has progressed to the point where we don't believe that anymore. It's entirely feasible to do even basic bayesian classifiers at "twitter scale". It could be done client side, even!

Ultimately, there have to be trapdoors in this for news and shocking information. A social conservative may not like it if we bring up some of Donald Trump's more outrageous turns of phrase, but if it's timely and corroborated data then it probably has value, and I suspect most people would appreciate receiving it even if it's only from one wing of their social graph.

Twitter's successful future isn't in some clever blocklist as Degoes suggests. I don't think it's about longer formats or an emphasis on rich media, either. It's in deeply understanding the content of tweets and finding a way to push timely, critical information to you via an amenable arm of your social graph. If you need to hear about the Muslim Spring through Pat Robertson to digest that information, so be it. That is you. If you need to hear about it through your favorite liberal pundit Colbert, that too is you. This is semantic analysis and machine learning in an unprecedented level of ambition, but I don't think anyone doubts it can technically be done.

</comment><comment><USER102> > (edit: I said the article didn't mention. I missed the mention.)

Amazing your comment is top—given you didn't read the article.

> The man deserved what he got

From what I've seen (I'm no expert on the subject), that's debatable.

<comment><USER103> Wait, missing one mention equates to not reading the entire article? Amazing indeed.

<comment><USER104> "Milo" appears nine times in the article. The discussion about him is a large part of the content.

<comment><USER105> To be fair, the points about that person were almost near the end after heavy points about the product, it "felt" like conclusion territory which I often skip if I've gotten the point already, and to be honest, I about ran out of steam by that point too. Is it so crazy to imagine that someone reads an article that makes its point quite clearly even before the conclusion, and comments upon it after reading solely its meat? Hell, I almost closed the article _once I saw that person 's name,_ even.

A lot of people here just are snapping to criticize over this, which is oddly reminiscent of a subtext of the article, not doing this comment section any favors, and specifically discussed in the HN guidelines.

Now that I've made a substantive comment: who cares, seriously?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> twitter 2.0 is 141 chars

</comment><comment><USER107> Finally! In HN I have finally truly found the loving, caring crowd that really cares about ethics in game journalism above everything else! Keep up the good work folks!

</comment><comment><USER108> 140 Characters; 100% agree, it should have been a minimum requirement of the message length instead maximum.

<comment><USER109> Effective comment, and you still have 32 characters to spare.

<comment><USER108> :) Nah, (confirmed by downvotes hehe) it is not really that effective comment imho either. It is a common (quick) thought i think many will have that read paragraph about the 140 char limit. And my statement is not very specific, nor a 'fix' for the problem and could be argued to be untrue for.. other reasons (e.g. the more you write the more chance a certain point will not be agreed upon by reader and discards the whole message because of that, and sorts)

And I could have dedicated pages on how much you write isn't that important, often it is the reader, that can't be arsed to read it anyway.

If twitter would do a bit more on rewarding 'good' (and yes.. who am i to say what is good) behaviour; though some might describe that again as censorship. Creating another discussion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER110> You put that much thought into the analysis but couldn't do the same for the headline?

"F __ked " is a cop out word used when you don't have enough mental juices left to actually describe what you want to describe.</comment>


Sam Altman: 36 Life Lessons I Learned Before the Age of 30 - q-base http://observer.com/2015/05/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades-are-short/

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like point 15: This is what I struggle most with now: Quitting my "safe" job with a decent salary and starting for myself with basically zero income.

</comment><comment><USER2> So much intelligence, from such a young man.

<comment> q-base Haven't been overly impressed by all of his content - but this is really good!</comment></comment>


The Physicist Who Sees Crime Networks - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/the-physicist-who-sees-crime-networks <comment><USER2> [https://backchannel.com/the-physicist-who-sees-crime- network...](https://backchannel.com/the-physicist-who-sees-crime-networks- fb6478536e8f#.f2zzuae6s)

is the current correct url.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I copied the link just after reading the article, but it does appear to be dead now. Unfortunately I can only update the title, and not the URL.</comment></comment>


100 years on, DNA casts doubt on Crippen case - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,2192866,00.html

<comment><USER2> A few months back, Vanity Fair published a fascinating excerpt from a book ( _Thunderstruck_ ) about this case. Dr. Crippen was one of the first people ever to be captured because of radio transmissions. He fled the UK on a US- bound ship, and the captain of the ship recognized him and basically started a sting operation. It's pretty awesome hearing about him dining with the disguised Crippen by night and communicating frantically back to the mainland by day.

As for this DNA evidence, fine, it's pretty compelling. I just wish the article made some attempt to explain the presence of a _dismembered, putrefying body_ in Crippen's cellar. Here are the facts. Crippen's wife disappears, a police investigation begins, and shortly thereafter, Crippen and his lover--both in disguise--flee across the Atlantic. Then detectives find a body in Crippen's house.

Maybe Crippen really was innocent and fled because he feared (rightly, as it turned out) that no one would believe him. But if that's not his wife's body, whose was it and what was it doing buried in the cellar?</comment>


Ask HN: How to get good feedback for academic code? - <AUTHOR> As part of my academic research I am writing some python code. Although I try to follow good coding practices I don't get any feedback on my code from my supervisors, as they are domain experts (civil engineering) but not experienced in software engineering.<p>How do others in simmilar situations get feedback for the code they write? <comment><USER2> This is definitely a pretty common situation with academic code.

I think there are two paths - (1) human code review to consider things like design patterns, and (2) automated code review through static analysis to consider things like linting, use of language idioms, cyclomatic complexity, code duplication, variable reuse, etc.

Code Climate [1] is one service that provides the latter pretty well. It's free for open source.

You can also run linting tools on your local machine, for instance ESLint for JavaScript or pycodestyle / pep8 or flake8 for Python.

[1]: [https://codeclimate.com/](https://codeclimate.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> CodeReview on StackExchange, so long as the code works.

[https://codereview.stackexchange.com/](https://codereview.stackexchange.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Thank you

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would recommend starting a code peer review circle with your fellow domain experts and never allowing yourself to push to your repo without someone reviewing.</comment>


Rant: MVPs and "Failed Ideas vs Failed Execution" - <AUTHOR>

If I need a pencil to write something down, I don't want to give my email address to a company that says they are building a pencil and will let me know when I can buy it. I need a pencil now. I'll look elsewhere.
Quick rant on a problem I see far too often in the startup community. Startups take a decent idea, push out a hollow landing page or MVP, get bored/give up too early, and then pivot or start something else. This is then generally accepted as "it's been done before, and it failed", as if the idea itself failed - when the fact is that the piss-poor execution failed. This is why I look negatively at MVPs and landing pages for non-existent products. While theoretically a smart way to gauge interest or spend the least amount of time failing, in practice they promote uncommitted, piss-poor, spoiled, ADD execution. If you know you're solving a problem, stick with it and iterate until it people like it.
So next time someone tells you "x has been done before many times, and it failed" - remember that decent ideas aren't what fail, it's the execution that fails.
Take a critical look at your idea (not your failed competitors) and move forward. <comment><USER2> We've seen lots of landing pages - frequently with default Boostrap look and feel - posted on Show HN that don't even explain what the product/service is about; all you see is a single paragraph of non-specific text and a signup form. It's just lazy and a total misconstruction of what MVP means.</comment>


Secure Headers for PHP - <AUTHOR> https://www.aidanwoods.com/blog/secure-headers-for-php <comment><USER2> Though I am not familiar with this particular project and can't comment on its quality, a C-S-P directive engine is always welcome.

In my opinion [1][2][3], it's fairly clear that C-S-P isn't a fire-and-forget header (unlike some other Security Headers) and that its generation needs to take into account rules that can be set up ahead of time and the context of the resource in question. The OWASP wiki page itself recommends this, but as far as I know, no web framework implements this.

If you know otherwise, let me know. This may be the first.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12584356#12584733](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12584356#12584733) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12408328#12408680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12408328#12408680) [3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13055470#13057260](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13055470#13057260)

<comment><USER3> If you generate them on-demand based on the resources included in the page how can you ensure that XSS attacks on the page aren't going to result in hostile sources being included in the CSP headers? I'm curious as to what the rules would look like that define a fluid list of sources that can be expanded based on page content but not vulnerable to inline XSS attacks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Generally with these things, avoiding user input is one of the best ways at making sure they can't inject things into the header value.

I'd recommend manually writing the list of sources for the page type. There isn't really a safe way to just scan the page for (safe) resources unfortunately (how could you tell which resources were meant to be there?)

Point of the (CSP) part of this class is to let you break down your CSP into distinct components and then combine them together.

E.g. You need to embed a tweet – that twitter embed code will require you to add script, style, and image sources to your CSP. You could file them all quite nicely in the CSP array format, and call that variable `$twitterCSP`.

If twitter changes things in the future RE the required sources, you now know what to amend. If you decide you no longer want tweets on your page, you can get rid of unnecessary sources by deleting just `$twitterCSP` from your code – instead of leaving in sources you don't need, or having to trudge through the entire CSP string trying to figure out which sources you added to make twitter work.

Goal is source management, not auto generating the list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do CSP headers change dynamically between page loads very often? I can't think of a situation where that would happen. Consequently rebuilding them with PHP seems unnecessary. Writing them using a build tool (eg gulp), and saving them to a static includable file (or even a server config include) would get you the same benefits without adding load to the page on every request.

Take said, this is still far better than not having a CSP or having a static one, so it's an admirable project regardless.

<comment><AUTHOR> CSP headers are more often than not: static (bar nonces). Having them be dynamic is really just a bonus to the management aspect you gain here. (You can make sure every page truly only has access to load the sources it needs though).

As far as using the class to do it goes, there are other benefits other than just CSP management: auto cookie upgrades and error messages about poor configuration to name a few.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Could you not simplify your large CSP header by using wildcards and moving some of your dependencies to a central place (e.g. host Font Awesome yourself)?

<comment><AUTHOR> It can be simplified, but it would reduce its usefulness to include wild cards.

By specifying paths more explicitly, I whitelist less of the domain (and consequently reduce the chances that I'll whitelist something this is user controllable in the domain). I'll usually try to allow down to specific files in CSP if I can.

Hosting font awesome myself costs me money, pointing to cloudflare is free

Edit: check out my site vs. a few others using Google's CSP evaluator – you'll probably find a lot with known CSP bypasses due to their whitelisting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunate that it isn't published on Packagist, or installable via Composer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey. Just to let you know that the project is now installable from Packagist!

[https://packagist.org/packages/aidantwoods/secureheaders](https://packagist.org/packages/aidantwoods/secureheaders)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think that in LAMP environments (common shared hostings) it's in general more convenient to set it in .htacess but... OK if you need it for some reason in php, you can have it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I kinda find this hard to believe: [https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/programming_langua...](https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/programming_language/all)

I wouldn't be surprised if PHP is first, but Ruby, Python, and Javascript BOTH under 1.0%? Seems highly doubtful.

That leads me to believe that this report must be generated off of websites that actually self report language. I know PHP does by default in most distros with an X-Powered-By header, but it's not clear to me what if any other languages do that by default.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you're setting your headers with PHP you've already lost. Headers should be handled at the webserver level (e.g. Apache/Nginx), not in your server-side code.

<comment><AUTHOR> IMHO, I don't think a broad statement about where headers should be handled can really be made. For the one liners, sure. You can set up HSTS once and forget about it.

For something like CSP, it becomes very difficult to maintain a list of sources very quickly. Also, for parts of CSP like nonces too – from a usability perspective, it's a lot easier to pass a nonce around in the application layer, as opposed to generating it at the Apache/Nginx level, and then trying to insert it into the HTML as the page goes out.

Goal here is to make things like CSP easier to use. Integrating security headers into a language devs are already familiar with achieves that.

Disclaimer: I wrote the post and the PHP class.</comment></comment>


Vivaldi 2.6 - <AUTHOR> https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-blocks-abusive-ads-improves-profile-management-and-more/ <comment><USER2> This monetization of web content first as a business model for browsers is pathetic when considering what are the stakes. I will pay for Firefox premium (VPN and cloud) and will always block ads no matter what. I'm not interested in content that's only published to generate revenue. Vivaldi or Brave whom ever... I don't need a to streamline online advertisement, I want it to die together with the industry that's based on it.

<comment><USER3> I completely agree with you. I block ads on principle and will do so even if they're unobtrusive and backed by blockchain-based profit sharing. Judging by this being the top comment, many HN-ers agree with you as well.

The Internet population at large, however, doesn't. People would rather watch ads than pay and until it changes there will be many businesses online relying on ads.

<comment><USER4> i want neither ads or paying. i'd like to see everyone with their own website. peer-to-peer can handle a lot like video, as well as a decentralized news feed, and a new type of web-ring, adding each other's websites instead of adding fb friends. it's easy to set up free hosting for someone's website, and to supply a free domain, even if a subdomain off another person's site. there are ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really love Vivaldi's features and how they're designed/UX'ed.

But I've had to move away from it, back to Firefox, because it was simply too sluggish and weird right where _it matters_.

Like, I'm never entirely sure whether a page is loading. Is my connection bad, or is Vivaldi in a weird lockup state? I mean, the latter is totally imaginable. I've had pages suddenly render entirely white, while stuff is still clickable (i.e. the mouse becomes a hand icon when I move over where I expected to see buttons). I had to copy the url into a new tab and all was good again.

Quirks like these compared with the slight slowness of the UI make Vivaldi feel like a pre-iphone smartphone. I wish they would address this.

I don't even think I'd need for the UI to be much _faster_ \- I'm ok with a slightly less snappy UI in exchange for all the power user features (and the speed with which Vivaldi has been adding them). But you have to improve the visual feedback. Little loading spinners can get you a long way. Don't just freeze stuff. When I click "stop", make the stop button become the reload button immediately again. Show proper error pages when stuff goes wrong, I don't mind, I can reload. Ditch the limbo states.

I truly wonder whether the Vivaldi team actually uses Vivaldi. Or maybe they all use enormously powerful 32 core workstations on amazing internet? C'mon guys, fix your browser. It's worth it.

<comment><USER6> For me it's one of the snappiest (on Linux mint / i7 / 16GB). I changed to Vivaldi about year ago and it's the first browser ever which isn't constantly slowing down with time and I'm not constantly thinking should I change again.

<comment><USER5> Hm! Maybe it's all Windows specific then. That's a pretty polar opposite experience you got there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> On the topic of browsers, netsurf[0] (which implements its own engine, rather than being yet another webkit/chrome/gecko frontend) is close[1] to making a new release.

[0] [http://www.netsurf-browser.org/](http://www.netsurf-browser.org/)

[1] [https://listmaster.pepperfish.net/pipermail/netsurf-dev- nets...](https://listmaster.pepperfish.net/pipermail/netsurf-dev-netsurf- browser.org/2019-June/003988.html)

<comment><USER8> Look I'm not asking for the most modern bloated web design, I like simplicity, but that website looks pretty outdated an ugly for a modern web browser. As a user if their website looks that outdated why should I trust their browser?

<comment><USER7> While understandable, that's just one opinion.

I actually do like the classic design, and how the page doesn't require downloading several megabytes of data to display.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, basically, it will pass more of your data to Google, not block tracking, but remove a lot of the visual noise that reminds you you're being tracked...all while raising the stakes for advertisers to circumvent current and largely effective ad blocking methods.

<comment><USER10> >So, basically, it will pass more of your data to Google

Where exactly do you get this from?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The title is mildly confusing right now, I parsed it as "Abusive (Ad Blocker)" instead of "(Abusive ad) blocker" and wondered why they would want to boast that on their blog

<comment><USER12> I run uBlock Origin in hard mode[1]. It's pretty close to an "Abusive (Ad Blocker)", and I like it. Most websites break on first visit, which makes me more aware of all the extraneous crap.

[1]: [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking- mode:-hard-m...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-hard- mode)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I switched from Chrome to Vivaldi and back to FF for two reasons:

1) Vivaldi rendering performance is the worst I've ever seen in a browser. No idea how they managed that using webkit, but some sites would make tabs crash on a high end system.

2) The web developer tools are unusable due to bugs.

3) Fixing simple but impactful bugs takes too long.

I really like their useful and plenty settings for everything, but 1) and 2) make it a no go for me.

<comment><USER14> Vivaldi using Webkit... Its Chromium isnt it?

<comment><USER13> They're using Webkit, yes, but I guess it's highly customized. The performance is so much worse than Chrome and FF

It's even possible to create pages in a way that reproducibly freezes and crashes Vivaldi. Their rendering process handles pages with many elements and multimedia objects very poorly.

<comment><USER15> Vivaldi uses Blink.[1]

[1] [https://help.vivaldi.com/article/user-agent- spoofing/](https://help.vivaldi.com/article/user-agent-spoofing/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Oh, I first thought they added an ad blocker that is abusive.

</comment><comment><USER17> The "abusive ads" text links to Google's guidelines for abusive ads: is this what Vivaldi is using to determine what's "abusive"?

</comment><comment><USER18> > We've got great feedback on our support for User Profiles and based on that > we've added new ways to customise those for you.

Are user profiles the same kind of dumb shit that is in Chrome? As in, it's completely forced upon you even on a single-user machine with every way to disable it removed years ago.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, what's the deal with that? There have to be at least 2 nines in the percentage of end-user systems used by only a single person. The only explanation I can think of is that they're angling for a Chrome-like cross- device experience that _conveniently_ stores all of your browsing data on their servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm seriously thinking of switching to Vivaldi as my default development browser.

It has incredible keyboard support and feature wise closest to the old Opera browser, which till date is the first browser I feel in love with

</comment><comment><USER21> Bit of a letdown really, I've been waiting since forever for an Android browser and now they come up with this "selected ads" thing.. I don't think they are serious.

</comment><comment><USER22> > [Tabs] Releasing middle mouse button on a tab closes it, even when the > actual click was somewhere else VB-43962

I filed this bug two years ago. I guess there are fewer and fewer mouse-users.

</comment><comment><USER23> How much of a payoff is there in browser business given that browser development is not trivial at all and it has become a commodity?

<comment><USER24> Browser development can't both be non trivial and a commodity. Or I'm misunderstanding you.

<comment><USER25> Browser development is non-trivial, but browsers themselves are a commodity. There is no money in browser itself as an app, or at the very least not enough to support development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> But how do you make money to pay your devs?

<comment><USER27> Thw only credible statement I found regarding that was that they sell the spots on the default start page for money. However, I have no idea how much these are worth in a browser with approximately 0 percemt marketshare.</comment></comment>


IAQ on C Programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/c-iaq.html

<comment><USER2>
      2.4: Then why are array and pointer declarations interchangeable as function formal parameters?

      Classism.  We consider arrays "second class objects".  They don't vote, and they get treated as pointers.
      Additionally, they're merely objects, not citizens.  Marx wrote about this a lot.

That is gold!

<comment><USER3> I quite like this one:

 _4.4: People keep saying the behavior is undefined, but I just tried it on an ANSI conforming compiler, and got the results I expected.

They were probably wrong. Flame them mercilessly. Be sure before you do that your compiler is really ANSI conforming, though. If it turns out you were wrong, they get a legal claim on your firstborn._</comment></comment>