Spec-me-maybe: Introduces the "maybe" syntax to RSpec - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/davidcelis/spec-me-maybe <comment><USER2> I find it quite funny that people cannot tell whether this is a joke or not, just says something about the state of things...

<comment><USER3> It does. Especially considering the fact that RSpec itself was created as a joke solution to the "I wish my tests were more human readable" meme several years ago. Hopefully that sheds some light on why some of us might be hyper- sensitive about it.

<comment><USER4> That's not quite true.

I created RSpec (in early 2005) to draw people's attention away from the word "test" because it was a huge hangup while I was teaching TDD. I kept hearing "You can't test something that doesn't exist, therefore your entire idea is bunk." I wanted to introduce TDD to people without ever using the word "test", and then switch them to using xUnit instead.

Not a joke, but I guess you could reasonably describe RSpec as a tool for performing a good old fashioned bait and switch. In a classroom. (I never intended for it to be used outside of a classroom setting.)

Around the time I was looking for ways to "teach TDD without using the word", Aslak Hellesøy introduced me to Dan North's ideas of Behaviour Driven Development. That's where the word "should" came from. I don't know if it was actually Aslak or Dan (or possibly even Liz Keogh) that first used the word "should", but that wasn't my idea.

Also, I'll point out that mixing #should onto Object wasn't my fault. The original syntax looked very close to the expect().to() syntax of today. It was actually assert(foo).does_equal(bar) at one point, and this was the syntax I was most fond of. I tried dozens of different combinations. "#should" was one of many, and I didn't like it. It got released this way because I was talked into it after that variant was demonstrated (by someone else) to a positive audience.

People liked it. RSpec took off. Whoops.

I later said on twitter, jokingly, that RSpec was a huge troll. That was kind of a joke on a joke. RSpec wasn't a joke, but I didn't build it for actual use. That was a happy accident. That said, it's a great tool these days, if a bit heavy. And it has certainly served my original wish of teaching many people TDD very well.

My $0.02 on the "maybe" syntax: if you need this, I suspect your problems are a lot larger than whether or not an assertion will pass or fail. It's symptom solving.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for this. It's nice to have it straight from the horses mouth instead of the many different types of RSpec folklore I've heard about its origin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While this is obviously a joke, I can see it having a limited amount of practical value. Imagine, for example, being tasked with updating a poorly- maintained legacy code base with a large number of indeterminately failing specs containing order dependencies. You could `RSpec::Maybe` everything until you're sure you have the order dependencies resolved, then convert to regular `RSpec::Expectation`s.

<comment> Dorian-Marie That's the usecase of `pending`

<comment><USER6> pending might as well not be there.

how many maybes passed could be useful information - perhaps 80% is good enough to be confident it works, but if it's 20% something's gone wrong

<comment><USER7> Pending is really useful: it can also tell you if a test that you expected to be passing is now failing. It's also useful for hiding output for tests that are temporarily failing, until you fix them all.

I'll often spec out a whole behavior, with ten or fifteen tests, and then mark all but one pending, make that one pass, unmark another one, make that pass, unmark another... it's easier to focus on just the one you're working on rather than 19 other failing outputs.

Committing a pending test? yeah, that's bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Love the build status badge. Nice touch.

</comment><comment><USER9> Everything should also take `.maybe.it_wont` at the end, for completeness.

<comment><USER10> seems legit. i'll take a look at it, maybe

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can see wondering if this was a joke as 'maybe' is mildly reminiscent of promise[1] and the like but if you got to .on_my_machine and still couldn't figure it out, you got some 'splainin to do. :)

[1] [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/09/11/asynchronous-p...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/09/11/asynchronous- programming-in-javascript-with-promises.aspx)

<comment><USER12> There's also the Maybe monad, which is a good substitute for null.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This may be a joke, but there are valid scenarios for this sort of thing, which is why rspec has pending and skipped tests:

[https://relishapp.com/rspec/rspec-core/v/3-1/docs/pending- an...](https://relishapp.com/rspec/rspec-core/v/3-1/docs/pending-and-skipped- examples)

<comment><USER14> There are valid scenarios for having a test which is expected to fail in some settings. But of course you should always know why a test might fail and be explicit. (Which is exactly what pending and skipped tests are for.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15>
      it 'probably should not raise any sort of error' do
        maybe { user }.will_not raise_error
      end

I snorted on that one.

</comment><comment><USER16> maybe(test).will be_success.on_my_machine

I can't stop laughing right now. Well done boys, well done.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is really funny, thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER18> The epitome of programming in Ruby.

<comment><USER19> Oh for goodness sake. It's a joke.

<comment><USER18> [http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/HashWithInd...](http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/HashWithIndifferentAccess.html)

<comment><USER20> You're not making any sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is this serious or a joke? If its serious I seems like a bloody awful idea!! What is the point of a maybe test??

</comment><comment><USER3> This has to be a joke. I'm fond of TDD just as much as the next person, but seriously, some of you RSpec fanatics have lost your minds.

<comment><USER22> Sorry, it has to be said:

After some inspection, maybe it passes for a joke.

<comment><USER3> Maybe.</comment></comment></comment>


LikeALittle's Ridiculous Hacker House - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/04/tc-cribs-likealittle-lal/

<comment><USER2> It all looks pretty easy when you see a TC write-up on them and VC business cards sprawled out on the floor, but some interesting back-story from Evan on how LAL got started (from the _Startups Open Sourced_ interview):

"As soon as I graduated from business school I started a company called ProFounder with two cofounders, Jessica Jackley who had started Kiva before, and Dan Mauriello. While doing that, I met my current cofounders for LikeaLittle, Shubham and Prasanna. They had left Microsoft, came to Stanford, and used to hang out there because they were trying to start a company. A mutual friend introduced us and after a month or two we decided to join forces.

So we started ProFounder. I worked there for about six months and then it moved on to L.A and I didn't want to go to L.A; I decided I wanted to stay in Silicon Valley and do some consumer Internet things. So, Shubham, Prasanna and I came back to Palo Alto, lived together in a one-bedroom apartment with no furniture, slept on the floor, subsisted off of rice, and tried a bunch of stuff until we caught something that worked.

This was January 2010. For several months we just brainstormed; it wasn't until October that we actually came up with LikeaLittle. We had probably tried 10 ideas before that and they all failed miserably. So, in October 2010, we created a first edition of LikeaLittle.

We've been working together for almost a year, but before YC we had not done any fundraising. We were bootstrapping the entire time; we were living in a one-bedroom apartment our entire time together and then for a two month period, [my cofounders] lost their visas, so we had to go and live in India together. So we lived with my cofounder's family in India and were doing the startup from there. It was interesting, the power would go out all the time and our users were in America so we had to be on U.S. time; all kinds of crazy stuff was happening.

But, in India there were no expenses. The family would make us food and we'd stay with them; we literally had a zero dollar burn rate in India. So that was pretty fantastic; we kind of had an infinite runway. We've basically spent the entire year living off of rice and beans and sleeping on the floor, together."

<comment><USER3> Wow, just wow. This is why I read Hacker News. Three guys living in a single bedroom apartment, sleeping on floors, being forced to move around the world, failing 10 times, and still pushing forward. That's dedication if I've ever heard it, and these guys have just earned my respect a hundred times over. Often times, especially when TC is involved, the startup life seems like fun and games, with a hackathon thrown into the mix here and there. It's obviously not the case, but the media likes to portray it that way.

I wish there were more firsthand accounts like this. Keep up the great work, LAL team!

<comment><USER2> The media's portrayal of startups is something I have a split opinion on right now. On one hand, I feel bad criticizing the media because several founders have cited jealousy as their reason for starting a new company. "Kevin Rose was on the cover of BusinessWeek, why the heck couldn't that be me?" So on one hand, it's a somewhat healthy amount of jealousy. On the other hand, I think it hurts people because there's a shock they experience when they do their first startup. "Wait a minute, startups aren't supposed to be like this. The magazines and newspapers had guys on the cover smiling, holding a thumbs up. This isn't what I signed up for!"

It's like digital crack. You get a sensational story, and it's kind of cool because it makes the startup world seem more attractive and now you have this overconfidence that you can do it, because well it's just easy and it looks like fun. It's probably better to read the full stories and get the full context. The founders aren't usually in the media to talk about themselves anyway; they're out there promoting their startup, so you're mostly walking away with a sales pitch (although startups do this to varying degrees, Indinero comes to mind when I think of startups who are most intent on using media coverage to grow, just an example). This video was definitely cool though, it's fun to see how they all work. They have one of the best pitches for hiring: "we have some of the smartest engineers" is an easy sell.

Check out the book if you want all the back-stories. It's pretty sobering; a nice break from the koolaid, so to speak.

<comment><USER4> > They have one of the best pitches for hiring: "we have some of the smartest > engineers" is an easy sell.

I actually didn't get that impression when I read (and heard) their hiring pitch. To me, their pitch was "the people who work here are geniuses and you have to beat them to be recognized. Oh did we mention they are the best in <insert continent>?" Not exactly as humble as saying "come and work with brilliant people. you too can have a massive impact."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was a lot more entertaining than the typical Techcrunch blog spam. They should maybe try to do more things like this "boots on the ground" sort of stuff. I'm so tired of hearing about so-and-so getting funded by so-and-so, that stuff was never interesting. But here we're getting some actual honest content. We get to see a startup doing tech stuff, where and how they work, in their natural habitat.

That aside, these guys kinda look like they're following the Social Network playbook to the T. I wonder how long it'll be until they hire Sean Parker and dilute one of the founders' stake in the company.

</comment><comment><USER6> I am so glad these guys are happy. I would not be okay working in that environment.

I already have had (and left) a dorm room.

My perfect coding environment is a quiet office, alone, with an awesome view of mountains. High speed internet. Silent computer. Company IM. Garguntuan monitors. On the walls, whiteboard, and a bookshelf somewhere. So, totally not LAL!

<comment><USER7> Exactly my thoughts. Dorm rooms is like so 2 years old. I want a decent setup, a good view, high speed internet and a vision to win the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is interesting to me. How can I put this as diplomatically as possible?

I'm glad that there is a culture like this out there. It espouses productivity and gives a real view as to what folks will do in order to try their hand at a serious venture.

Clearly the guys here are aware of exactly what they're doing by putting this whole thing on film. They're happy, they believe in their projects, and they're not ashamed to put this on the record.

Having said that, I remember my early 20s, too.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm older than these guys--late 20's, married, no kids (yet). I just don't see this lifestyle bring very practical for married/family folks. But then again, I've never heard any stories of people other than young singles doing stuff like this. Anyone know of any outliers like this in the valley?

<comment><USER10> I'm the same age but single, and I applied to LaL but realized that I just don't have the energy anymore to sustain the pace they want. I could've done it at 19, I probably could even have done it at 24, but now that I'm 29, I just can't code for 14 hours a day, let alone 20. (Actually, that's not entirely true - I've pulled 14 hour days for 4-5 day stretches working on a Google doodle or coming up to a launch, but I need like 2 weeks of recovery time afterwards.) Alas, I wasted my twenties on college and 3 failed startups.

It's certainly _possible_ to start a company in your 30s - PG did it, founding ViaWeb at 31 and selling it at 34 - but it does seem like a bit of an uncanny valley without many founders. My theory is that people who are the type of person that's going to found a startup probably would've founded it by 26, and then if their first couple attempts failed, they're licking their wounds at 30 and trying to figure out how to give it another go.

Those same people often end up starting follow-up ventures much later, after the kids are self-sufficient. I have one friend from elementary school whose dad is working on his second startup at the age of 70. His first venture - founded at around age 60 - ended up IPOing at a market cap of several billion before crashing and burning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Any shot at hiring female engineers is out the window...

<comment><USER12> Actually, I think the "inspiring" (his words) Aston Kutcher poster makes it so the shot at hiring anyone with actual taste is out the window.

<comment><USER13> It's pretty clearly a joke...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> lal is a curious site. I've known about it since december when my sister told me about it. She used to spend hours on it reading to me funny little flirts that people wrote. The initial users had a great sense of humor and it was really lightweight and fun. Now though, it is so heavy and serious! It seems like half the people who post are depressed by a breakup and are looking for an outlet. Also, since the site is less popular now than it used to be the posts stay up for a while and the content is rather stale.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you guys want to join the mess, we're hiring :)

<http://lal.com/about/the_game>

<comment><USER15> "We are hiring the best _in_ the world."

EDIT: I wish I was experienced enough to work with you guys.

<comment><USER16> _I wish I was experienced enough_

I'm pretty sure in the video the CEO says they're much more interested in aptitude than experience, after all they hired a college freshman.

<comment><USER15> Thanks, that gives me hope. I was thinking about raw coding experience, not years though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My favorite bit:

Evan: This is one of our recruiting strategies. We literally go to recruiting events...and we just tell them, "Hey, I'll give you a thousand dollars if you can beat my co-founder, Prasanna here, in a coding challenge."

Jason: Do you usually win?

Prasanna: Ah, I mean, if we lose...

Jason: Then you're going to hire the guy...

Prasanna: Yea.

</comment><comment><USER18> The story is impressive... And I hope they're on to building something big and serious. Am I getting this right, 5 ACM finalists working on a nicer version of craigslist's missed connections?

</comment><comment><USER19> When I was looking for an room 6 months ago in Palo Alto I thought it would be cool to live with hacker/programmers/whatever. I quickly changed my mind when _every_ house I saw with self-proclaimed hackers ended up looking like this.

</comment><comment><USER20> Nothing against LikeALittle, but I really wish people with such kind of raw talent and dedication were doing something better than solving the problem of anonymous flirting.

<comment><USER21> stay tuned ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I love LAL team. I was one of the active admins at my school. I flew to Cali for a week and Evan let me stay at their place for a week.

These guys sleep like for 3 or 4 hours and code for the rest of the time. Amazing company :)

</comment><comment><USER23> Startups may need to live on a budget, but good to see that they didn't overlook the importance of nice whisky with the Johnnie Walker Blue. No office should go without a good scotch.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is why I'm moving to Silicon Valley. I want this.

</comment><comment><USER25> is it just me or does it remind you of the house from the Facebook movie?

<comment><USER26> allot more partying and girls in the myface movie... that looked pretty smelly and claustrophobic to me, but going by the comments i'm in the minority.

e: just to clarify, you guys are awesome and i admire your work and attitude... just each to their own and when in rome yada yada

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How much coding can there be that these guys need to live like this?

<comment><USER28> What do you mean _need to live_? I'd pay to live their and work on lal. The only thing I didn't see what the coffee machine, hope it's a good one.

<comment><USER27> A slip of the keyboard. Obviously if they received $1 million in funding, the team is smart enough to choose how they live. I'm just saying, it probably wouldn't burn through their funding if they hired a maid to come in occasionally. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Loved this episode.. Now this is what I picture when I think about a startup! Kinda makes me wanna move out west...

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm so glad they mentioned Philz, some of the best coffee I can find in the bay area and filled with hackers.

<comment><USER30> When I saw that Philz, I recalled all the long hours I spent at that table outside working on my at-the-time first iPhone app... the valley is a very special place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This to me is one more link in the chain of evidence that this is not just the 2000 bubble rehashed. Not just different people but different _kinds_ of people are in charge this time, different methods are being employed. The focus is less on sheen and who has the biggest flagpole or best in house sushi chef and more on results and methods.

I like that a little, even on the chance that it does fail again at least this time it will be on our terms.

<comment><USER32> I think this just means that software and software development is cheaper this time around. Back in the day, your CRUD app needed a proprietary compiler using proprietary libraries running on a proprietary operating system talking to a proprietary database. This cost mucho money, and was super buggy. So you needed a lot of smart programmers and a lot of time to get anything that worked.

These days, you just use Ruby or Perl or something and its 100x faster to develop and probably runs faster than 1999 C++ on a mainframe did. So there goes your main cost. (Netscape is a good example from that era. Not that great a piece of software -- it ran super slow and needed a lot of people to write it.)

Also, good startups are pretty easy to do with just one person. So when you only have one or two people, you don't need flashy offices or sushi chefs... you just rent a nice apartment and order out. Expensive, but much cheaper than what people did in 1999.

<comment><USER33> Just for the record, as someone who worked on web apps in 1999, we used Perl + MySql. No, they were nowhere near as effective as those tools and others are today, but I didn't know anyone using a mainframe. We did use expensive Sun gear instead of cheap linux boxes, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The LAL designer posts some stories and photos here <http://musho.posterous.com/> (unfortunately, it's in Slovak only).

</comment><comment><USER2> Speaking of Hacker Houses--if anyone is looking to join one in SF with a few other hackers (one YC founder, one Facebook coder, and myself) let me know jmtame at gmail

</comment><comment><USER35> <http://lal.com/gatech> is more or less a horrible wasteland… it's certainly no <http://onlyattech.net/>. Is there supposed to be something entertaining about this, besides reading the submissions from creepy people in the CS building?

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't understand one thing: if they raised already millions and believe so much in their future, why do they eat $1.5 red beans and why they don't hire a cleaning lady? It looks to me they are way past the ramen profitable phase, aren't they?

<comment><USER37> Doesn't seem to make them too miserable either...

<comment><USER36> You don't know this, do you? Also, I happen to be sleep researcher. There is TONS of literature that says that people, when sleep deprived, make all sort of mistakes. I don't care what they say: I would not trust a line of code from someone who claim to sleep 3 hours a night no matter how smart they are (and they surely are smart).

<comment><USER37> I was referring to the place. Did they really say something about sleep in the video?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Damn, I can't believe I turned down there job offer.

<comment><USER39> If they want you then, they want you now; give them a shout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I love this startups attitude. Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER41> I like the bit about the free projector..."yeah so old startups just give us stuff"

</comment><comment><USER42> I just love it

</comment><comment><USER43> This looks so much fun. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER44> Buy a fucking vacuum.

<comment><USER45> > Buy a fucking vacuum.

<http://i.imgur.com/CuFuD.png>

<comment><USER26> my god man... that's impressive</comment></comment></comment>


WTF: A personal information dashboard for your terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/senorprogrammer/wtf <comment><USER2> Anyone remembers NetBSD's wtf?

[http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi/man?wtf+6+NetBSD- curren...](http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi/man?wtf+6+NetBSD-current)

        $ wtf wtf
        WTF: {what,when,where,who,why} the fuck
        $ wtf bsd
        BSD: berkeley software distribution
        $ wtf linux
        wtf: I don't know what linux means!

<comment><USER3> As a non-native English speaker, I need it all the time to follow conversations on Internet. I've also made a a personal acronyms database to read GCC's internals documentation and another to translate errno codes to their constant name and vice-versa: [https://github.com/lgeorget/acronymdb?files=1](https://github.com/lgeorget/acronymdb?files=1)

<comment><USER4> > _As a non-native English speaker, I need it all the time to follow > conversations on Internet_

I found that installing the google dictionary extension[1] for chrome solved that problem for me entirely.

you just doubleclick on the word and a popup opens with its definition.

This extension is the primary reason I'd loath to ever to switch browsers.

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google- dictionary-...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-dictionary- by-goog/mgijmajocgfcbeboacabfgobmjgjcoja?hl=en)

<comment><USER5> I'm trying out switching over to Firefox and this is 100% the biggest thing I miss about Chrome. I keep double-clicking words and waiting a few seconds just for nothing to pop up.

<comment><USER6> There are many extensions for Firefox that provide the same functionality. Here's one: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dictionary- ex...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dictionary-extension/)

Also, if you're using Windows, you can use WordWeb (which is a full-fledged app).

<comment><USER4> The firefox extension is incompatible with the current firefox version, and the UX of WordWeb is ... incomparably bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know any go. I was able to read everything, like I wrote the code. Is go usually that easy? If yes, I think I should learn it.

<comment><USER8> Yes. One of go's strengths is that there are very few tricks and the language is heavily biased towards easy reading over compact code.

<comment><USER9> I'm also a Go noob. I tried writing a basic web server in Go yesterday to handle Twilio SMS callbacks. Trying to inspect the requests I was receiving was such a pain, I gave up and wrote the server with Sinatra. Am I missing something that's making this more difficult than it should be?

<comment><USER10> I love Go specifically for this purpose. I wrote a simple server doing exactly that with Twilio: [https://github.com/dang3r/jenophone/](https://github.com/dang3r/jenophone/)

<comment><USER9> Thanks! I'll check it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can't this be made more general and modular by creating a windowing system for terminals first, and then write little programs that operate in that system?

<comment><USER12> At what point do we just say why not 'install a modern GUI'?

<comment><USER13> I use TMUX to essentially create what this person has made. It's much more versatile than a GUI for me because I can kill any "widget" and reopen it with altered command line parameters. It's an incredibly useful and productive way to work. And if I realize that I want data that isn't present, I can just split a TMUX pane (or start a new TMUX window) and display it there.

<comment><USER14> There was a point where it was that simple to run GUI widgets on a desktop, too. The likes of xman and xclock were just that, programs that one could just run and stop.

<comment><USER15> Such things are not dead! I still use one for my clock (buici-clock) and another to show battery life (xbattbar).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love this particular type of software, I have been considering doing the same in python/urwid, but I have had trouble thinking up which modules would be useful and/or interesting.

I would welcome suggestions of similar software, or modules that would be useful if implemented for this, just for something to read or think about.

<comment><USER17> _> but I have had trouble thinking up which modules would be useful and/or interesting_

Anything interactive with a readable API: mail inboxes and IM services.

Calendar entries and other notifications published via online calendars.

Other online resources: RSS feeds, TV/film listings - modules to simply display static data and/or filter & highlight specific items of interest.

Anything normally monitored by tools such as cacti/collectd/similar: disk IO, connections, CPU use, memory, application status, ...

Remote versions of the above (either the core module supporting remote calls or a generic server that allows modules to be run and their results read remotely.

 _Though the key to writing software to scratch an itch is to make sure it supports the things that would be useful and /or interesting to you._

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Really like it. My only criticisms are:

        * I'd love to be able to write my own modules for it
        * When a module's config is bad it just doesn't show -- no errors are produced (that I can find) so I don't know what in my config is bad.

<comment><USER19> You can write your own modules, you'll just need to fork the repo and write them in Go. There's no DSL for it.

Good idea about the config. I'll create a feature issue for it.

<comment><USER20> Go uses less CPU and is less crashy, both of which are nice in a dashboard.

It also seems like more generic modules may handle the use cases you'd want a DSL for.

For instance, there's already a text module; if a similar module can listen to a FIFO or even listen on a socket, you can just throw whatever you need into it from any language that can write to a filehandle.

If it can handle ANSI escapes, most commands that can write to a terminal would work with it. So `{clear; ls --color=always} > /whatever/fifo` or `> /dev/tcp/whatever/1234` could stick to my dashboard.

<comment><USER19> Both very interesting ideas indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wednesday-Thursday-Friday looks like an excellent permanent pane for my tmux to have a hotkey assigned to. I'm always resentful at myself that I haven't figured out a way to replace ~/todo after 20 years of using (almost) the same environment.

</comment><comment><USER22>
       ~/.wtf/...

Doesn't follow XDG base directory spec.

<comment><USER19> Got a good pointer to more details? I don't know anything about that spec.

<comment><USER22> See [https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir- spec/basedir-...](https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir- spec-latest.html)

The main idea. You read $XDG_* variables, and use them if defined, and use spec defaults if not. It declutters $HOME from dot directories.

<comment><USER19> I'll take a look, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm not sure I would find all of this terribly useful, but it does remind me of a little addition I made to my status script - the time in UTC as well as local time. If you use a system where you are easily able to add arbitrary text to your status bar, I highly recommend this addition. If you do not use such a system, I highly recommend a change ;)

<comment><USER19> Anyone wanting to do something like you describe in the menubar should check out Hammerspoon. Brilliant stuff.

<comment><USER24> I am decidedly not a Mac person, but hammerspoon is one of my favorite pieces of software in any category.

For people who don't know, it is a service you run on a Mac that has all of Cocoa bound to Lua. You can script aaaaaaanything on your Mac in Lua. Don't like the way Mac does window management? Treat yoself! Want to control anything at all on your Mac with just keystrokes instead of endless pointy clicky? Treat yoself!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Just like in the movies!

<comment><USER26> It's a unix system! I know this!

<comment><USER27> That quote actually made me decide I wanted to know computers, at an early stage.

She was so cool - AND saved the day with UNIX magic! :-)

<comment><USER28> Except she used that wacky 3D file browser instead of ls, find, grep, etc...

<comment><USER29> > used that wacky 3D file browser

FSN [1] on a SGI running IRIX.

Didn't they use that one in Hackers as well?

[1] [http://www.siliconbunny.com/fsn-the-irix-3d-file-system- tool...](http://www.siliconbunny.com/fsn-the-irix-3d-file-system-tool-from- jurassic-park/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I want this, but with more of a focus on running arbitrary commands and formatting the output nicely.

</comment><comment><USER31> Nice. Maybe it can replace my macOS dashboard if I keep one fullscreen space with iTerm open.

<comment><USER19> Yep, that's exactly how I work with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The documentation seems insufficient. I can't figure out how to switch between panes, e.g., to modify the todo list. Once it's selected, I expect to be able to use it, but without knowing how, it is unusable.

<comment><USER19> Tab key to move between selectable panes. Forward-slash (/) on any selectable pane to open the help.

Note that not all panes are selectable and quite possibly not all selectable panes have help (they should but...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is pretty neat. A dashboard screen isn't my style, but I've taught my assistant program to answer a lot of the same questions.

<comment><USER34> Could you tell us more about your assistant program?

<comment><USER33> It's a (bad) Visual Basic program that also runs my house and logs the GPS in my car. And while it's meant to have voice recognition, it doesn't, because I haven't found a good solution yet that meets my needs. It has a significant number of half-implemented features, because I only invest time in it when inspired to and only so far as it makes my life easier. There is no machine learning of any kind and the command structure is quite static.

For instance, I found I was often asking my house a couple times throughout the day for the thermostat status when I was at work (I have a fairly temperature sensitive pet). This week I went ahead and just told it to go ahead and wrote a little 'status report' email, and then call for it a couple times a day in Windows Task Scheduler.

[https://github.com/ocdtrekkie/HAController](https://github.com/ocdtrekkie/HAController)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I have used conky to do a lot of similar things in the past. It has a GUI window, but is configured and displays mostly in text.

<comment><USER36> yup, conky is what crunchbang used to use, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Kinda off topic but what font are you using in the screenshots? It's nice!

<comment><USER19> Roboto Mono Medium for Powerline 14pt

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> how does a beginner learn how to do all this, not how to instal but LEARN from beginnning. i am looking at this and i am like WTF is this.

<comment><USER39> This is written in Go. I'm not sure this uses cobra, but you could start easily by writing basic CLI tools using cobra[0]

[0] - [https://github.com/spf13/cobra](https://github.com/spf13/cobra)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Whenever I see the letters WTF, the first thing that always comes to mind is Web Template Framework

</comment><comment><USER11> Does it also work on small terminals (e.g. 80x24)?

<comment><USER19> In the config.yml file can define the column and row sizes to whichever screen size you like. No reason it couldn't work with those dimensions. Take a look at simple_config.yml in the repo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life

</comment><comment><USER27> Brilliant project!

</comment><comment><USER42> Isnt this org mode?

<comment><USER13> No. Some of the information, yes, but otherwise no. Org-mode doesn't display like this unless you go into the agenda and then it's only kind of like this.

You could probably use org to help you generate a lot of this though. You can have code blocks which run arbitrary code and generate a report that another utility like this (or another part of emacs) could monitor for display.</comment></comment>


Why leave Google to join Facebook? - <AUTHOR> http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2010/11/why-leave-google-to-join-facebook.html

<comment><USER2> I imagine most people want the pre-IPO stock. That's the only reason I could honestly conceive. It's the sad truth of the world we live in. Facebook is, like MySpace, always at risk of being overwhelmed by the next social go-to website. Application developers follow the users, not the platform.

<comment> brown9-2 This is a commonly cited reason, but in reality, how many employees can be given pre-IPO stock before the company ends up with so many owners that they're forced to file for IPO?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the number of owners that a privately-held company can have before being forced to go public is only 300.

<comment><USER3> Employees would typically only be given options, not actual stock. I might be wrong, but I think they can give as many options as they want. And as anyone who has been granted options knows, options usually end up being worthless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> cool-RR If I'm not mistaken, (please correct me if I'm wrong,) Don Dodge's _job_ is to do PR for Google. So this seems like just band-aid for the bad PR from Lars Rasmussen's departure to Facebook.

<comment><USER2> Well, I really don't think there's much to do here.

In this case, Google wasn't responsible for Wave's failure to gain traction. Not to mention, Google keeps their employees quite happy AFAIK. I'm sure Wave's death played a key role in the switch, but honestly, that's of no fault to Google.

Imo, it's bad PR for Lars, not Google. It shows he follows the money, or at the very least, allowed his ego to define him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> the people that are leaving google to join facebook are doing it mainly for the same reason they joined google in the first place: status.</comment>


Ask HN: Can Deep learning be applied to audio - aman-pro I want to create a deep learning based filter to remove human voice from a song and generate a karaoke (regular filters are not effective). Is it a good idea to use deep learning to achieve this? <comment><AUTHOR> Kadenze has a program that eventually incorporates Deep Learning ([https://www.kadenze.com/courses/creative-applications-of- dee...](https://www.kadenze.com/courses/creative-applications-of-deep- learning-with-tensorflow-iii-iii/info)). I believe it can be achieved but I haven't seen anything that clearly points out how.

</comment><comment><USER2> Yes. This is called the cocktail party problem. Though you can solve it with more traditional methods like SVD, deep learning solves this really well too. See [https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.04658](https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.04658)</comment>


YouTube Unleashed a Conspiracy Theory Boom. Can It Be Contained? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/technology/youtube-conspiracy-stars.html <comment><USER2> The problem faced is unprecedented soapboxing. Insane ideas have been around as long as humanity. Usually you stand on a soapbox and preach, people ignore you. Some might even disuade others from listening.

The problem with online opinions is that while the "opinions are like assholes, everyone's got one" adage is true, online nobody is there to tell you "stop watching this stupid thing". And we all know YT comments are a heap of garbage. Also YT/Instagram comments are fully moderated by the author, so removing all disagreements is easy. Easy to give the appearance of consensus.

And worse, once you watch one, YT's algos want to keep you watching so suddenly you are flooded with related vides.

This leads to a problem.

<comment><USER3> I've found it almost impossible to remove a specific feed or ideology from my YT recommendations. As an example I once watched Yanis Varoufakis speak at the Oxford Union. He has appeared on panels with Slavoj Zizek who is a person I personally can't stomach. Almost immediately after the Yanis video I had YT recommend me to watch a panel with Zizek and Varoufakis discuss in 2016. I didn't watch it - but since then I get Zizek constantly recommended in my feed. Note I don't use google for searches and my YT is running pretty much isolated in Chrome while I use Firefox/Tor for all other browsing. So google doesn't know me and YT knows me only via my handle that is otherwise not connected to anything (outside YT).

I have countless examples like this. YT keeps pushing me down a specific ideological path without any action on my part. Sometimes it's great but in those cases where it's not it's not just bad but outright dangerous. I don't think YT has the effect on my since I'm way past a point (age) where my behavior can easily be formed. But I can see how this sends somebody over the cliff who is still figuring out who they are.

People like rockstar2016 (aka the MAGA killer) or the woman who went into Youtube HQ and starting shooting the place up were probably a good examples of how social media can radicalize those that are the most vulnerable.

EDIT: "All but one of 30 Flat Earthers interviewed said they hadn't considered the Earth to be flat until watching videos promoting the theory on YouTube" [https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/18/researchers-blame- youtub...](https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/18/researchers-blame-youtube-for- the-rise-in-flat-earthers/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's been an uptick in conspiracy theories lately, I kinda blame the whole "mainstream media lies" movement. Some people are starting to believe that if almost everyone believes something, it has to be a conspiracy.

My favourite one right now is "5G is bad and will kill us all and microwave birds". There is not a single article on 5G without the Facebook comments being full of people shouting about the extreme dangers (even when it's just about enabling the fake 5G on frequencies previously used for LTE). No matter what you say, they will keep linking you vague YouTube videos by people who claim to be doctors and misinterpreted documents from the 80s. I don't get it at all.

<comment><USER5> It's very attractive in an unpredictable world if you're feeling vulnerable, scared, disenfranchised. Someone out there has the answer, and oh man it's great because someone's answer are these things I'm inclined to belive and reinforces / validates my values.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Our society is premised on the idea of free exchange of ideas. Some will freely choose to think/do/believe things we find insane (some cults/religions/jobs).

The premise of this article is that these videos are going to brainwash/hypnotize poor fools into believing crazy things.

Newspapers need to win not be being the only voice in the room, but by being the most relevant, clear, researched, reliable, unbiased voice in the room.

<comment><USER7> Why do you think that people will automatically listen to the most relevant, clear, researched, reliable, unbiased voice? Lots of people end up listening to loud, angry, biased voices that say a lot of bullshit. We see this with things like the anti-Vax movement.

<comment><USER6> The premise of our society is that it's not the law's job to make sure everybody only believes true things. That's a rather Orwellian idea.

<comment><USER7> 1\. The law isn't involved in this, this is Youtube changing things. 2\. The law gets involved with factual stuff all the time. You can't sell pills and make certain claims about their health effects, you can't print a newspaper and slander people, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some of the conspiracy theories have been proven true already by Wikileaks and Edward Snowden. Just because something is a theory doesn't mean that it's true or false.

What we know already is that powerful organizations have secrets that they spend big money on protecting. The difference now is that with the internet the time for which a secret can be kept shortened significantly.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have to wonder how much of the uptick in conspiracy theories and extreme perspectives are nation state actors attempting to sow discord. I don't think people need help being crazy, but social and new media are the equivalent of getting to drop millions of flyers into enemy territory for a small fee and little to no risk.

<comment><USER10> A meta conspiracy theory!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the early days of the internet I thought all this "information" being available / soon to be available as a positive. I had no idea what the negatives would be at that point, let alone the scale.

<comment><USER11> I don't personally know (or know of) anyone who truly saw this coming 20+ years ago. It's a bit humbling to have been blindsided so thoroughly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is like all those politicians and journalists lamenting the rise in violence, when both war and violent crime are actually at historically low levels. We are today in a golden age of science, where people's beliefs are on average the most fact-based they have ever been. You wouldn't believe the ridiculous things people believed in the past.

Yes, we have a long way to go and we should continue to seek improvement, but don't try to tell me that things are getting worse when that's clearly not the case. Or at least provide some evidence that's not anecdotal.

</comment><comment><USER13> Annoyingly, conspiracy theorists are great consumers. They are primed to reject the status quo and try new things. Look at Alex Jones' merchandise. I am not saying that his supplements are snake oil, but he definitely profits from curating an audience that is skeptical or outright rejects modern medicine.

</comment><comment><USER14> My favorite YouTube is the rainbow conspiracy it appears the person is not aware of the color spectrum.

That said filter bubbles and ai feeding us more what we "want" is probably increasing conspiracy theories and making us less tolerant of different views. There has been little talk of the morality of ai algorithms.

Personally I was recommended "hot" dating sites advertisement when having relationship issues. Not what I needed but surely what most likely pays the best. The issue is lack of ai moral or for that sake profit first. Obectivivly the ai was right but morally not I am a parent. Ads probably should be regulated at least you should be able to say no to ai algorithm and behavioral psychologist maximizing profit for private companies.

</comment><comment><USER15> The most relevant and interesting aspect of any conspiracy theory is the fears it exposes. Whether its fear of environmental degradation ( Chemtrails ), fear of loss of agency ( anti-vaccination, anything mentioning the Federal Reserve, most political conspiracy theories ), racial identity fears ( anti-semitism, "White Genocide", Islamophobia, etc. ).

One underappreciated aspect of the rise of conspiracy theories in the last 20 years is the fact that more people are insecure financially and have lost trust in institutions, often justifiably so. So conspiracy theories meet less resistance than they would have from people who are not worried about their survival in the face of a society that seems determined to immiserate and impoverish them if not destroy them.

Additionally we have a number of examples of institutions being subverted to malign ends, from Wells Fargo to Wikileaks, we consistently see dishonest behavior from organizations that claim to have the publics interest at heart...

</comment><comment><USER16> Should it be contained? The answer is no.

</comment><comment><USER17> Just don't allow stupid and crazy people to buy guns and you won't have to care much about what do they believe.

<comment><USER7> They still vote, or fail to vaccinate their children.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Mr. Dawson unspooled a series of far-fetched hypotheses. Among them: that iPhones secretly record their owners' every utterance

Yeah, but that's true.

<comment><USER19> Even if not true, very far from "far fetched".

Totally plausible, and in some cases (certain malicious apps etc, on Android or jailbroken iPhone) totally true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is this really YouTube's fault? The President of the USA thinks China invented climate change as a hoax to reduce the economic output of the USA. Who can expect youth or anyone really to be okay in an age where the ruling parties are themselves the ones creating and pushing the wildest conspiracies?

<comment><USER5> >Is this really YouTube's fault?

At some point aren't they responsible for hosting it?

If I were hosting it, I'd feel somewhat responsible.

<comment><USER20> All the TV news networks then as well, right? Everyone who plays video of the Republicans spouting lies about the world, without directly commenting how wrong it is, would be equally guilty? More guilty?

This stuff starts with Authority. on Live TV. Not some rando youtube channels.

<comment><USER5> The responsible news networks really do put some effort into verifying claims and confronting politicians, sometimes the moment they claim it, and they do filter who gets on...

I have no idea what you mean by "More guilty".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't think the article is even fact based to assume youtube has created a conspiracy theory boom. I remember the dial-up age and people typically knew some corner on the web for reading conspiracy theories to get some laughs. When 9/11 happened there were those conspiracy documentaries and this was before youtube was what it is today. My guess if a boom is being created. The reason is from people being crafter at getting people absorbed in the conspiracy theories. Maybe the health & happiness of society has decreased and where people are now easily absorbed into conspiracy theories. Misery is a beast that pulls people into time sink holes to escape reality.</comment>


Verizon Wireless injecting tracking UIDs into HTTP requests - <AUTHOR> See @KennWhite: https://twitter.com/kennwhite/status/525110471733817344
Verizon Wireless is injecting a UID into all HTTP requests made on the VZW network, regardless of whether or not you've opted out of their Customer Proprietary Network Information (CNPI) options.
It's injected at the network level- So it tracks across browsers and ignores 'private browsing', do-not-track headers, overriding the UIDH in the client/curl, everything. My confirmation showing the headers only appearing in unprotected HTTP requests (disappearing when VPNed):
https://twitter.com/rammic/status/525360201361530880
If you're on the VZW cell network and not using wifi, you can check your own ID here (via @j4cob):
http://uidh.crud.net/ <comment><USER2> Let's say I want to send some TCP. That TCP happens to kind of look like HTTP, but it's not. It's just some protocol I made up which looks HTTPish enough to trigger this injection.

Doesn't that mean that Verizon isn't actually offering TCP/IP (Internet) access, since they corrupt my protocol stream in transit? Shoudln't that mean they should be charged with fraud if they continue to advertise the fact that they provide internet access when what they really provide is a broken version of TCP they made up?

It's a serious question.

<comment><USER3> When most mobile providers get you on the internet, it's through NAT. They're already terminating and re-creating your connections for you, and not providing your "real" tcp/ip packets to the internet, and thus neither the world's "real" internet packets to you. All you get is a translation.

You've never gotten "the real internet" on a mobile device. The idea that they may change one more part of your fake connection seems pretty irrelevant.

The same happens on "real" routers, firewalls, etc when they massage the traffic going through them. Sometimes they barely change anything at all. Sometimes they make minor adjustments. Sometimes major ones. You don't have an agreement with any of them specifically to modify your packets; they just do. So do you have a claim of harassment against your packets? Have they trespassed on your property? Are you trespassing on their routers?

The answer to all these questions is: nobody has ever guaranteed to you what you get from the internet, other than "availability" if you're a business user, and even that's not set in stone.

<comment><USER4> NAT doesn't terminate and recreate connections. It modifies packet headers and forwards them.

Modifying headers in order to facilitate transit over a network is one thing, modifying the L7 payload is another.

<comment><USER3> Well you're right in a sense. But it modifies packets to a point where they are indistinguishable from the original connection, and tracks the incoming and outgoing interface sides as if they were discrete connections (there are at least four flows for every NAT connection).

Often carrier-grade routers will replace every aspect of a tcp/ip packet, like sequence numbers, windows, flags, source and dest ports, etc. Routers like these see everything going through them as a form of NAT; it's just some connections are modified more than others. The exception to this would be interfaces in bridge or monitor mode.

To your second point that modifying some layers is OK but modifying other layers is not: what rationale explains this double standard? What about the application layer do you find to be unique in that there's some expectation of purity? Does a proxy not modify layer 7 to cache and pass traffic? Does DNS not do the same?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They don't appear to be doing this if you've opted out of "Relevant Mobile Advertising", which is another option [separate from CPNI] on [http://verizonwireless.com/myprivacy](http://verizonwireless.com/myprivacy).

Here's the setting you're looking for:

[http://i.imgur.com/QFJJNV5.png](http://i.imgur.com/QFJJNV5.png)

Mods may also want to update the title to include "Wireless" after Verizon; Verizon landline is not doing this anywhere AFAIK.

<comment><USER6> I have a prepaid account, and I'm not allowed to change privacy settings either online or over the phone. The web tells me I am an account member and not owner, and the phone just says prepaid is not eligible to opt out. I can fix it by using a VPN, but isn't it illegal to not even allow me to opt out? Postpaid is significantly more expensive than prepaid and not available to people with bad credit. How can they discriminate like that?

<comment><USER7> I'm not clear why you think it would be illegal. There may be rules against not allowing people to opt out, I don't know. But when you ask "How can they discriminate like that?", there's nothing illegal about discriminating on the basis of credit or willingness to pay for a more expensive product.

<comment><USER6> I can understand discriminating on quality or something like that, but we're talking about not being able to opt out of having your personal information sold. It seems like there should be some kind of a law where that has to be made absolutely clear. It doesn't even seem to be buried anywhere in the Terms of Service, which say:

"Verizon Wireline consumers and certain business customers may opt-out by calling 1-866-483-9700. Verizon Wireless consumer and certain business customers may call 1-800-333-9956."

Only after calling that number are you told you are ineligible because you are prepaid.

This is advertised as a prepaid account, not a personal-information-selling subsidized account. It's also not even really competitive with other plans. Verizon gives you up to 1GB/month for $45, only with recurring payments, while Cricket gives you 10GB 4G with unlimited throttled data for $55. Unfortunately, Verizon has a monopoly in most of my area. T-Mobile and Sprint don't operate here, and AT&T is spotty.

<comment><USER7> I'm attracting a lot of downvotes, and I feel like people think I'm supporting Verizon. I agree with you in that I think they're being scummy, but I guess I was just saying that when you ask "How can they discriminate like that?" the answer is that lots of scummy things aren't illegal. I agree it might be nice to see much stronger privacy laws in this area, but they don't exist yet and that's most of what I was trying to say. I think I thought you were saying that you thought it was illegal ("isn't there a law...") whereas you were really just saying you thought it should be illegal.

<comment><USER6> I do think it should be illegal, but "isn't it illegal?" was a genuine question. I don't know the specifics, but I'm surprised there isn't some legal requirement. You can't even send e-mail without allowing an opt-out, and every ad network I know of has an opt-out policy, so sending tracking information to every website you visit and selling that information with no option to opt-out just seems over the top and out of step with what everyone else offers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This has been going on for ages, not sure why people just now noticed it.

They were testing it last year, you could clearly see these headers on a large percentage of traffic coming from their gateways.

I'm not expressing an opinion one way or another but they clearly felt the UID is not directly identifiable and thus does not become a privacy issue until they share the mapping of the UID to customer data.

My guess is in their minds if you opt-out they just do not provide your UID to 3rd parties for targeting.

In the ever increasing dream of cross device marketing (think your iPad, iPhone and Laptop) many companies are trying to figure out ways to connect these devices to a single individual or family.

IIRC Verizon quietly started rolling out service wide TOS changes to allow this sort of thing a couple years back. That said I'm not sure if their TOS makes it clear how this is implemented and what potential side effects might be caused by the way they've implemented them.

<comment><AUTHOR> The news is that they are injecting it even when you have opted out of CNPI.

The disturbing part is a unique ID that follows you despite private browsing and across browsers. The worst part is that it goes to every site you visit (not just VZW or selected advertisers). It can be trivially linked to your existing cookies/identity to follow you even after clearing cookies, changing browsers, switching devices, etc.

<comment><USER8> Yes it's disturbing, again I'm no mind reader, but I guess they assume when you opt-out they just don't map your UID. Meanwhile you're still trackable and just one small data point could be used to reverse everything you visit.

As an example if you sign up for some random blog and they capture UID's they could quickly map your email to your UID and onward into the spiral we go.

IP Addresses are a similar problem for home users, nobody seemed to have noticed that quite some time ago ISP's started making DHCP lease times quite long. Not to put on a tin foil hat, but I assume this was done more strategically then just to reduce load on DHCP servers in their networks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This makes me rather unhappy. I'm seeing this on Verizon. Can someone with an alternative mobile provider like Sprint or T-Mobile test this, too?

<comment><USER10> > This makes me rather unhappy. I'm seeing this on Verizon. Can someone with > an alternative mobile provider like Sprint or T-Mobile test this, too?

I would guess that voting with your feet would be the most effective response. While many think consumers don't care (or don't understand), we can see many vendors beginning to emphasize confidentiality features.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure if I value my confidentiality more than the unlimited talk/data/text plan on which I'm grandfathered. It's a hard change to make, especially considering I no longer see the tracking data after I disabled it in my settings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> On my Verizon Moto X (Android), the header is not visible if I use the Chrome feature "Reduce data usage", but it is visible if I disable that feature or, ironically, use Incognito mode. This feature causes non-SSL, non-Incognito traffic to be proxied through Google's servers, using the SPDY protocol. Some info on how this works: [https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/data- compression](https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/data-compression)

</comment><comment><USER12> It seems that [http://uidh.crud.net/](http://uidh.crud.net/) is not working right now (gives a 502). However the UIDH header can be seen here:

[http://lessonslearned.org/sniff](http://lessonslearned.org/sniff)

Also [http://verizon-uidh.tk/](http://verizon-uidh.tk/) gives a yes/no if you have the UIDH header (and shows you the header if you do)

</comment><comment><USER13> Bummer, the iPad (LTE version) sends this tracking information and there is no way to turn it off.

<comment><USER14> setup a vpn with digitalocean like I do, it's about all we can do.

<comment><USER13> Well to be clear, on WiFi it does _not_ send the tracking data, only when using the LTE network. That said the only SSL tunnel software I saw was Junos Pulse which is sitting on a ton of bad reviews at the moment because apparently it doesn't work with iOS 8. What VPN software do you use with your iPad?

<comment><USER15> I use OpenVPN Connect, it's a bit of a pain to set up, but it works well. [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/openvpn- connect/id590379981?...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/openvpn- connect/id590379981?mt=8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seems similar to Apple's Spotlight phone-home thing: unsolicited extra data being sent, a somewhat buried disclosure that it's happening, people having difficulty getting their opt-out preference honored (possibly caused by several confusingly-similar options to disable.)

It does sound like Verizon's is more a case of simply not honoring the option, though, unless some commenters here have just not found the magic checkbox yet.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hmm, confirmed on Verizon 4G LTE network.

Can anybody recommend a good VPN service that works on android?

<comment><USER18> If you use Chrome and enable Google's Data Compression Proxy, all http traffic is proxied via Google's servers and sent to them via spdy (which is encrypted), so Verizon can't tamper with the requests or see what they are:

[https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/data- compression](https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/data-compression)

<comment><USER19> So you trade Verizon's tracking for Google's?

<comment><USER20> At the very least, it would only be Google that could track you, instead of every website you visit being able to read your Verizon-assigned ID.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Apparently Verizon has two patents on the process:

[http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20130318346](http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20130318346)

[http://www.google.com/patents/US20130318581](http://www.google.com/patents/US20130318581)

<comment><USER22> Excellent news, that means their competitors are safer to use?

<comment><USER23> It would make sense for Verizon to license the technology to other carriers.

1) The more widespread the technology is, the more advertisers will be aware of it and will seek it. This means more revenue for Verizon (bigger market for this product).

2) If all carriers do it, then people won't have an incentive to switch from Verizon.

3) Licensing fees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Here's a scary thought: How do we know every ISP isn't doing this, it would be undetectable if they only injected these on certain domains e.g. facebook, google. However I don't see how much more tracking ability that would grant over IP tracking.

</comment><comment><USER25> Doesn't examining/modifying data exempt you from the DMCA safe harbor protections?

<comment><USER26> VZW doesn't use SIMs except in some new 4G tech.

<comment><USER25> Um, how is this relevant?

IANAL, but the DMCA seems to protect you from liability only if you don't examine and modify traffic. If they're looking at the protocol to see if it's HTTP and therefore modifiable, they could look at the host to see if it's going to the pirate bay and block it. This means that when someone goes to the pirate bay on the Verizon Wireless network, Verizon is liable for their actions under the DMCA.

This is like YouTube reviewing videos before they're uploaded. If they were reviewing videos, they could catch copyright violations from the start and thus should.

There's probably legal trickery they could use to get out of it but it seems like a valid point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just confirmed that the UID follows the SIM, so even swapping phones won't save you.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just checked my Verizon 4G LTE MiFi and the headers are not there, I've not done anything special to my account settings.

On ATT I see the X-Acr thing but not clear if it's UID like or not in nature, would need to see more of them.

<comment><USER24> I just checked my AT&T phone and I have an X-Acr header too.

<comment><USER27> How're you checking?

<comment><USER24> Go to this page over a cellular connection. (Turn off your wifi) [http://checkyourinfo.com/request](http://checkyourinfo.com/request) Then look for a long number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> When I try to 'withdraw consent' for 'Verizon Selects Participation Status', I get this prompt [http://imgur.com/sbVpMhR](http://imgur.com/sbVpMhR)

<comment><USER29> That's because that program gives you rewards points specifically for sharing your private information [1].

[1] [http://time.com/money/3025429/verizon-smart-rewards- loyalty-...](http://time.com/money/3025429/verizon-smart-rewards-loyalty- programs-retail/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> You can view all of your device's request headers at [http://checkyourinfo.com/request](http://checkyourinfo.com/request)

<comment><USER31> I just checked my AT&T iPhone and it includes a "X-Acr" HTTP header that has a long GUID? Is this a similar tracking ID?

<comment><USER32> Curious, I don't see this but if that's the same acronym used here it's a tracking ID:

[http://www.gsma.com/oneapi/anonymous-customer-reference- beta...](http://www.gsma.com/oneapi/anonymous-customer-reference-beta/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> As a prepaid account I don't have access to the privacy settings. I spent an 1:15 on the phone with Verizon with no luck (no one had any idea what I was talking about). This has huge potential to be abused. It won't take long for companies to link your real name to web traffic and know exactly everything you look at on your phone. Wait until the cable/DSL companies realize the untapped revenue potential.

</comment><comment><USER34> VZW does all sorts of weird traffic management. They proxy everything and will throttle applications deemed to chatty as well.

</comment><comment><USER35> This looks like a job for Tunnelbear VPN! [https://www.tunnelbear.com/](https://www.tunnelbear.com/)

I am huge fan since I starting using it when traveling Europe. The mobile version works great as well.

<comment><USER36> Whatever you do, do _not_ uninstall TunnelBear!

[http://i.imgur.com/1YQfGRN.png](http://i.imgur.com/1YQfGRN.png)

<comment><USER37> TunnelBear probably has the best branding I've seen in the while, very well executed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm on Verizon and got "did not receive X-UIDH header" message from uidh.crud.net. Possibly because it says "1x" at the top of my phone and that means it's on another network?

<comment><USER39> Could be 4G only? Just did it from a 4G LTE tablet, got a big ol' X-UIDH string of what appears to be Base64.

Edit: Also, on a positive match, the page displays a link to an NBC News article on Verizon's CPNI (Customer Proprietary Network Information).

[http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/why-you-should-check- yo...](http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/why-you-should-check-your-verizon- wireless-privacy-settings-right-f1C6370918)

<comment><USER6> I get the header injected on 3g.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As this requires reassembling the HTTP request to add the additional header, this probably introduces extra latency too.

Fortunately https is becoming more pervasive which bypasses this and any other transparent proxies.

<comment><USER40> The carriers are working to subvert this -- see the IETF draft for "HTTP/2.0 Explicit Trusted Proxy" or read this article: [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/25/evil_or_benign_trust...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/25/evil_or_benign_trusted_proxy_draft_debate_rages_on/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Kinda makes you wish the IETF had adopted all-TLS-all-the-time in HTTP/2.0.

We need HTTP/3.0 to be SSL all the time and nix the CAs so we can avoid MITM from VZ.

</comment><comment><USER42> What about LTE modems on Verizon? I am testing them and was planning a fairly big rollout to replace some services that previously relied on Sat internet.

<comment><USER43> Yes, modems, access points, LTE tablets included. Consumer and Enterprise users (including me) are seeing it. Eg: [https://twitter.com/innismir/status/525279100907560961](https://twitter.com/innismir/status/525279100907560961)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I assume there are similar opt-outs for AT&T, Sprint, T-Moblie, etc. Anyone maintain a page of links for how to access the opt-outs?

<comment><USER45> Interesting, I just tested my device over AT&T LTE, but there was no UIDH header.

Edit: There _is_ an x-acr header, which contains a curiously large amount of encoded data, far too much to be any reasonably sized id. Anyone know what it is?

<comment><USER46> I see this as well. AT&T LTE with iPhone 5 (running 8.1).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/support/customer- agreeme...](https://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/support/customer-agreement)

" _We collect personal information about you._ We gather some information through our relationship with you, such as information about the quantity, technical configuration, type, destination and amount of your use of our telecommunications services. You can find out how we use, share and protect the information we collect about you in the Verizon Privacy Policy, available at verizon.com/privacy. By entering this Agreement, _you consent to our data collection, use and sharing practices described in our Privacy Policy_. We provide you with choices to limit, _in certain circumstances_ , our _use_ of the data we have about you. You can review these choices at verizon.com/privacy#limits. If there are additional specific advertising and marketing practices for which your consent _is necessary_ , we will seek your consent (such as through the privacy–related notices you receive when you purchase or use products and services) before engaging in those practices. [..]

DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES

We make no representations or warranties, express or implied, including, to the extent permitted by applicable law, any implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, about your Service, your wireless device, or any applications you access through your wireless device."

[https://www.verizon.com/about/privacy/policy/](https://www.verizon.com/about/privacy/policy/)

"We collect information about your use of our products, services _and sites_. Information such as call records, _websites visited_ , wireless location, application and feature usage, _network traffic data_ , product and device- specific information _and identifiers_ , service options you choose, mobile and device numbers, video streaming and video packages and usage, movie rental and purchase data, FiOS TV viewership, and other similar information may be used for billing purposes, to deliver and maintain products and services, or to help you with service-related issues or questions. In addition, this information may be used for purposes such as providing you with information about product or service enhancements, determining your eligibility for new products and services, _and marketing to you_. This information may also be used to manage and protect our networks, services and users from fraudulent, abusive, or unlawful uses; and help us improve our services, research and develop new products, and offer promotions and other services.

[..]

When you register on our sites, _we may assign an anonymous, unique identifier_. This may allow select advertising entities to use information they have _about your web browsing_ on a desktop computer to _deliver marketing messages to mobile devices on our network_. We do not share any information that identifies you personally outside of Verizon as part of this program. You have a choice about whether to participate, and you can you can visit our relevant mobile advertising page (link to www.vzw.com/myprivacy) to learn more or advise us of your choice.

Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI): [..] Verizon Wireline consumers and certain business customers may opt-out by calling 1-866-483-9700. Verizon Wireless consumer and certain business customers may call 1-800-333-9956. Other customers may decline to provide or withdraw CPNI consent by following the instructions in the Verizon notice seeking consent. For additional information, you can read examples of common consumer CPNI notices for Verizon Wireline and Verizon Wireless.

Please note that many opt-outs are cookie-based. If you buy a new computer, change web browsers or delete the cookies on your computer, _you will need to opt-out again_. Please also note that some wireless devices, portals and websites have limited ability to use and store cookies. As a result, advertising entities may have a limited ability to use cookies in the manner described above or to respect cookie-based opt out preferences. However, ads may still be tailored using other techniques such as publisher, device or browser-enabled targeting. You should check the privacy policies of the products, sites and services you use to learn more about any such techniques and your options. If you do not want information to be collected for marketing purposes from services such as the Verizon Wireless Mobile Internet services, you should not use those particular services."

<comment><USER47> The identifier seems more pseudonymous than anonymous.

In fact, isn't "anonymous, unique identifier" an oxymoron?

<comment><USER48> > In fact, isn't "anonymous, unique identifier" a tautology?

I believe the word you are looking for is "oxymoron" which is the opposite of a tautology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Where's the class-action lawsuit?

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm on Verizon and got "did not receive X-UIDH header". 4G, droid ultra, FL

</comment><comment><USER51> Useful to note that the UIDH changes every 7 days.

</comment><comment><USER52> How is this UID different to an IP address?

<comment><USER32> It's stable across devices and sessions – if you have a cell phone and a tablet, the UID is the same and it won't change over time even as you move around their network.

<comment><USER52> In some sense having one ID instead of two unique IPs is better?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> How do you opt out of CPNI?

<comment><USER39> The linked NBC News article explains you can do it through Verizon's customer account web interface, but the parent says that won't work.

..."regardless of whether or not you've opted out of their Customer Proprietary Network Information (CNPI) options."

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> also seeing this despite CNPI settings. class-action time?

</comment><comment><USER55> This as been known for a while and it's used by some advertisers...

<comment><AUTHOR> The news is that it's ignoring the opt-out selections (including mine that I set a while ago).

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Verizon Wireless tracking on its customers browsing habits, but why? [http://www.techworm.net/2014/10/verizon-wireless-tracking- on...](http://www.techworm.net/2014/10/verizon-wireless-tracking-on-its- customers.html)</comment>


The Best Quotes from Startup School - <AUTHOR> http://gaborcselle.posterous.com/the-best-quotes-from-startup-school

<comment><USER2> related to the facebook florida llc quote, for those curious, are the actual papers from sunbiz <http://bit.ly/1MDAnT>

</comment><comment><USER3> These aren't direct quotes. I clearly remember a few being worded differently.

Maybe list them as "remembered anecdotes" and not direct attributions.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you share photos? - <AUTHOR> Having just been on a vacation, I have mid-sized (~200) collection of photos I'd like to share with friends and family.
There seem to be a bunch of sharing options out there, which one do you use?
I need a network that either the recipient doesn't need to use, or is likely to be using already (aka Facebook), where I can control specifically the list of people who see the album, and where I can choose a couple of different subsets to show different groups of people. <comment><USER2> I've used Dropbox, Google Photos, and Facebook. Dropbox lets me generate a link and email it to whoever I need to, but doesn't really have access control besides that. Facebook controls access, but degrades the picture quality and isn't accessible to everyone I know. I haven't used Google Photos as often, and the people I've used it with had Google accounts already, but I think that provides a mix of features (access control through shared albums, ease of sharing through generated links, etc). For some people, I just bring a flash drive with photos on it. What's easiest and best depends on who I'm trying to share with.

If I had the time, I'd build an OwnCloud server. It would make it more convenient to keep control of my own data.

</comment><comment><USER3> In my case I have a self hosted OwnCloud setup on VPS which I use to share the photo folder (via link) and everybody can download all or selected number of images based on what they want. My friends though, usually send links from Google Drive/Dropbox to a Zip file with all the images in there. I personally do not like FB or others as they degrade the images and more importantly for privacy reasons.

I hope this helps:)

</comment><comment><USER4> I use Whatsapp, Facebook, Dropbox, and sometimes Google photos. They all have pros and cons but are good enough.

</comment><comment><USER5> Been using Google Photos happily for almost a year now.</comment>


Ads implant false memories.. - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/ads-implant-false-memories

<comment><USER3> Could this constitute the idea of first degree inception? Getting someone to believe a false, or artificial idea (maybe similar to that of when you upload a custom payload), to someone's mind and using that artificially foreign data to trick the victim into believing something. I could see how this could be an ethical issue or delema. However, the usage of implementing artificial concepts to get the user to regurgitate information that was not there or trigger remembering information that they might have forgotten brings up the idea of interrogation. On the flip side it could be used to filter information in patients who experienced trauma and were involved in a crime. Maybe this might be the first step in an alternative to hacking the mind - <USER2> electronics, but with memories. Of course it must be voluntary or implemented in an unnoticeable manner.

I find this stuff facinating.</comment>


Goo.gl: Making URLs shorter for Google Toolbar and FeedBurner - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/making-urls-shorter-for-google-toolbar.html <comment><USER2> Just when I thought the URL shortener fad was on the way out...

<comment><USER3> But Google knows the contents of each page, though.

If they were going to be awesome about it, they know what the page says, so they can just store an MD5 hash of it, and find what the new URL is, if it's still live, or serve a cached version if they can't find it.

That'd be pretty nifty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They modestly omitted mentioning another point in favour of goo.gl:

* Chances are, we're not going to go out of business and break your shortened links any time soon.

<comment><USER5> * Chances are, we will log all the links you click and associate them to your account even though you don't want us to do it.

<comment><USER6> How is that different than any other link shortener? This reflexive Google hate is getting ridiculous.

<comment><USER5> The other link shorteners don't have access to your email, to your search history, to your phone, to the places you look up on the internet, etc...

<comment><USER7> I think you need to stop using google if you find this to be a problem.

<comment><USER8> Is that really possible?

Google "how to stop using Google" -> "Did you mean 'how to stop using Bing'?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is it possible to use this with Chrome? I haven't seen a way yet. It seems kind of silly to leave out support for their own browser. Google toolbar requires IE or Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think the real money is going to be in creating a physical URL shortening device. An appliance that sit on your network and rewrites every URL using a GUID.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think this is a good play for Google. I'm sick of URL shortening services, but if they are here to stay they might as well be backed by a company that will be around. This is also going to be very useful for them to trend real time sharing.

</comment><comment><USER12> When this becomes general-use, Analytics integration will be a no-brainer, and awe.sm will not be happy.

</comment><comment><USER13> I never noticed a speed issue with TinyURL, so their third point is pretty silly to me. Also, add a 4th point, "Self-Serving: if the target page has moved, we get a chance to serve you a redirect with our ads on it".

<comment><USER14> How are they going to do that? They tell your browser to 301 to the target URL - the browser is what notices the target URL is a 404, not Google, so Google would have no way to know whether or not the target is gone. The target URLs could be private (only accessible to specific ips). Even if google crawled the page, they would have no way of knowing if _your_ browser could reach it.

<comment><USER13> They wouldn't have any way to know for certain if you _could_ get to it, but they would be able to tell for certain if you _couldn't_ get to it, because _they_ can't get to it from anywhere on their worldwide network. Something is better than nothing.

<comment><USER15> The point, I think, is that you could still use the shortener to link to an intranet or similar site that is not available to the public web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Google is really hitting the lows these days.

They overhyped wave and when they launched it nobody knew how to use it for anything besides trolling, then Google trolled us and said that Chrome OS would only "support" SSD because seemingly there is nothing special about it except being overly crippled, but they want to make it look like it boots fast.

And now this, Google are jumping on the utterly useless URL shortening fad. Google is losing it.</comment>


What the hell should I try and learn?  - <AUTHOR>

"Learn to code" is the new black. But what should one learn?
Javascript? Rails? Djanjo? PHP? ASP? Node? jQuery? Sinatra? iOS? WordPress? Drupal?  etc etc etc. (I recognize that some of these are foundations for others).
I freelance using WordPress and have come to know it very well. I'm certainly not a PHP developer, but I'm capable of pulling a nice, functional site together. I know CSS and HTML extremely well, jQuery is coming along. But that's about the extent of it. I can pull together some SQL statements, write enough PHP to string a few things together
So, I end up constantly wondering:  where should I spend my time learning to program? Should I just sit down for 6 months in the evenings and learn Rails? Should I focus on Javascript? PHP? iOS?
If you knew HTML/CSS/WordPress today, what do you think would be the best thing to start learning tomorrow? <comment> saiko-chriskun Both Ruby and JavaScript get my vote, in terms of mainstream web frameworks.

For Ruby you obviously have Rails, but there are also some other neat frameworks out there such as <http://padrinorb.com>

For JavaScript, the various frameworks are obviously built upon node.js, my favorite being <http://railwayjs.com>

</comment><comment><USER2> Look around and test the waters.

Do you want to do frontend or backend stuff? Run through the rails tutorial, and check out django if you want to do web development. See if you enjoy those.

If you want to do backend stuff, run through the node tutorial.

Just do what you enjoy!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Certainly I imagine it would be front-end development.

I just had a moment (or a million moments) this past year where I realized that I'm doing all these freelance, on-off projects for people, I'm definitely not actually learning to code.

I get better at using WordPress, better at debugging for IE, better at CSS3 stuff, I've gotten far, far better at using jQuery, etc, but I'm still not learning to program.

I feel like maybe I should take this whole year and sit and learn Ruby on Rails in the evenings, and then after the year is over, maybe I'll finally have a reasonable handle on OOP, MVC, etc....

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Node's a lot of fun, I've been having a blast with it the last couple weeks.</comment>


The Origin of the Fortune Cookie - <AUTHOR> http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/a-sweet-surprise-awaits-you/ <comment><USER2> 99% Invisible is almost always a good listen and it's concise, most of the podcasts are 15-20 minutes.

<comment><USER3> For those of you in San Francisco, Roman Mars did a TED Talk about their flag design and specifically levels good critiques against the San Francisco flag, lays out ways to make it better, and shows examples of good flags along the way. [http://99percentinvisible.org/news/99-invisible-at- ted/](http://99percentinvisible.org/news/99-invisible-at-ted/)

The precursor to that talk was an episode on flag design: [http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/vexillonaire/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/vexillonaire/)</comment></comment>


Responsive Grid System - A Flexible Way To Create A Responsive Web Site - <AUTHOR> http://www.responsivegridsystem.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Found Via <http://goo.gl/wDPwI></comment>


Magic – Completes signup forms automatically, with just an email address - <AUTHOR> https://magicsignup.com <comment><USER2> On the plus side

\- The convenience factor is compelling, like auto-complete.

\- As a v1 you can see the true magic in a seamless signup.

On the downside:

\- It does something unusual / unexpected / creepy.

\- It's too slow - noticeable lag vs. say the auto-suggest in search.

\- If accuracy is good why bother exposing that to the user? Intercom.io does this all in the backend off of email only registrations and seems to have about a 70% hit rate. The data is useful to business owner but I'd bet the user would feel less enthusiastic knowing that I have their personal fb, twitter, linkedin, etc as soon as they register.

I am sure that svbtle can show the A/B data validating this is worthwhile for THEIR audience.

But I'm not sure for a broader use case this is going to help due to the factors mentioned above.

<comment><USER3> > If accuracy is good why bother exposing that to the user?

That's a great point. A prior startup I worked at used a nice social referral tool, whose name slips my mind right now, but their backend would asynchronously pull Facebook, Twitter, etc. links for each of your customers. It was really convenient and worked for 80-90% from what I recall.

<comment><USER4> Mailchimp does something like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice start, but perhaps Magic can also suggest the user's password by searching for their email address in a database of known password leaks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Best feature suggestion ever. But what would be cool is to do that, but instead of pre-fill in their password, notify them that they are using a password that is known to have been a previously leaked password of theirs.

<comment><USER6> I made something like that for Angular email textboxes: [https://github.com/bradcavanagh/angular- pwned](https://github.com/bradcavanagh/angular-pwned)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Presumably, they have some preexisting database that maps email addresses to personal information. Their Privacy page, however, is not transparent _how_ exactly they got this data:

> Broadly speaking, we collect information in three ways: (1) when you provide > it directly to us, (2) when we obtain information about you or your company > through trusted third parties or indexing systems, and (3) passively through > technology such as "cookies".

This is a disconcerting use of "secret sauce," particularly since email addresses have the same weight nowadays as usernames.

<comment><USER8> Maybe clearbit? Which you can opt out of here: [https://claim.clearbit.com/claim](https://claim.clearbit.com/claim)

I did this a few weeks ago and magic signup does not work for my email address.

<comment><USER9> Probably not. That clearbit form tells me that they don't have my email address, but my information was pre-populated into Svbtle when I used that same address.

<comment><USER10> I got the same thing the first time, but I did it again and it sent me an email to claim my account. Maybe their site got overwhelmed by HN requests? Not sure what happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why would you use this instead of login with Facebook/Google/Twitter/etc., which only requires two clicks from most users and actually has better privacy implication since the user knows which data you can access?

Or maybe the goal of the service is for web sites to surreptitiously get more data from users who are otherwise unwilling to provide it, but are somehow willing to provide an e-mail address tied to their real identity?

<comment><USER3> One advantage from the dev side is not having to deal with the OAuth integration, Facebook permissions, tokens expiring, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's pretty creepy that I can randomly enter email adresses and get first and last names... !

<comment><USER13> ok, how does that work: did all those people sign up with Magic?

<comment><USER14> Based on other comments, the info is bought off Clearbit. You can opt out here: [https://claim.clearbit.com/claim](https://claim.clearbit.com/claim)

<comment><USER15> That just kept re-directing me to enter my email. I was never able to opt-out

<comment><USER12> It sends you a confirmation email. Inside this email is a link to your profile. You can either add information (linkedin, facebook, angellist, etc.) or delete your profile.

I deleted my profile.

<comment><USER15> the "link to my profile" is just a link to the same submission form for "claiming" my profile.

I filled that out, and got another link to the same place.

<comment><USER16> Welcome to Clearbit!

<comment><USER15> heh, yeah. I'm pretty sure all that did was sign me up for more spam/marketing-tracking. hooray

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Actually this make me very angry that my private details exposed in such creepy way, even if this is using some public APIs etc.

I would never sign up to service with such form.

</comment><comment><USER18> So now I can find out the first and last name of the owner of whatever email I punch in there?

<comment><USER19> If it's the primary email on their account, you already can with Gravatar.

[https://en.gravatar.com/site/implement/profiles/](https://en.gravatar.com/site/implement/profiles/)

<comment><USER18> Only if they choose to supply that information to Gravatar in the first place. Magic is not giving people the opt-in option, it's just opting you in whether you like it or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> On the one hand, yes, I can see how this could improve sign-up rates for those who are concerned about those things, and I count myself among that number from time to time.

On the other hand… yeah, creepy as hell.

</comment><comment><USER3> Say what you will about Dustin Curtis, but everything he makes is just so nicely designed and enjoyable to use.

I'm curious about the pricing model: $20/mo for 2,000 requests. I wonder if you still pay for the request if it returns a non 200 or if their API can't find a name.

</comment><comment><USER21> Clearbit, Full Contact and Pipl all have email lookup APIs. My guess is they are using one or more of these APIs.

</comment><comment><USER22> I have a fairly unique last name, which is in my email address.

So far two dead relatives that never really used the internet have been "marketing matched" to my email address. So I get spam for my deceased grandmother and uncle. Its a little jarring. I'm not sure what kind of matching they do but clearly its not working.

Plus isn't the point of using a service being able to decide to match it with twitter, Facebook or just not link to those things.

</comment><comment><USER23> _Because it helps your users save time, Magic increases conversion rates and makes the web easier to use._

Honestly, how much time do you really save by auto completing a couple of fields? This seems like a solution in search of a problem.

Also, while I don't have the data to speak for other users, I personally don't see myself paying for any service that presents my own personal information to me before I even know what the fuck it is.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't get it :-/

I couldn't even try it because my browser's autocomplete automatically completed all fields.

Doesn't everyone has autocomplete?

Also, it's pretty creepy.

<comment><USER25> No, I'm in the same boat. Chrome already does this for me, I couldn't tell if anything different was happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I suppose it's a good thing nothing came up when I entered my email?

I would be turned off from a website or service that prepopulated a lot of my information without my consent.

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if a new way to do signups would be just an emailto: link that you click and send. From there it automatically logs you in and sends you a password.

<comment><USER28> This is what I was thinking as well, but not necessarily email you a password because it's always some random crazy thing. More so remember the computer you clicked the email link from and either keep you logged in or you can log in with just your email from the computer you clicked the email link from. Sure there could be some security risks with your phone being stolen or a snooping SO, but most sites don't necessarily need to have that worry. For instance, commenting platforms like disqus, reddit, or your favorite news platform, or some site you'll probably only use once. With sites like this it doesn't matter much of other people gain access to it. It's not like your social platforms, LinkedIn, bank portal, government site, etc..

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have no problem with this, but it doesn't work very well for me.

Tried about eight of my email addresses. School and work ones did nothing, and neither did my Outlook.com account, or Yahoo.com.

For Gmail addresses it just pulled the name from my Google+ account for the one that had it, and failed on all the rest.

Not super impressive IMO. Especially considering all my email addresses are some variation on firstname.lastname or flastname.

</comment><comment><USER30> Guess who is using firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER31> So, I guess it's cool now to overload app/service names? E.g.: [https://getmagicnow.com](https://getmagicnow.com).

But more than that... "Because it helps your users save time, Magic increases conversion rates and makes the web easier to use."

There's one heck of an unfounded/unvalidated assumption.

</comment><comment><USER32> Probably a way better way to increase "conversions" would be just to not have a pain-in-the-ass login process.

oAuth/Persona, and then don't ask for anything else until its actually needed.

And now you have (for the logged-into-oauth-provider case) a 2 click login system. It can not get easier than that

</comment><comment><USER33> Isn't there already a service called "Magic"? [https://getmagicnow.com/](https://getmagicnow.com/)

</comment><comment><USER34> So many site names could start with "magic"

<comment><USER35> Calling it "AnalProbe Data Collector" might have reduced sales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I don't understand what's the value of exposing this autofilled data to the user. Why not just do it on the server-side?

<comment><USER3> Going out on a limb here, but what if this really a data training layer on top of Clearbit? Maybe they sell the human validated data back to Clearbit or downstream?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> um chrome (and presumably other browsers) already remember all of my information and autofill it...

<comment><USER38> Except it works terribly.

I hate how I only get those prompts when the field matches whatever fields Chrome thinks it should, yet many companies don't use these field ID's, so Chrome sits there stupidly.

I would love the ability to teach Chrome that this is a form and yes these are valid fields. Maybe somehow submit it to Google and have them update whatever regex they use. I feel like it fails about 50% of the time.

<comment><USER39> Im pretty sure theres a set of standard attributes you can set on fields to make them autocompletable. I use this as a reference: [https://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Autocomplete_Types](https://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Autocomplete_Types)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What was the increase in conversions? Right now it's just hand wavy :)

</comment><comment><USER41> Their demo still requires a password. A little white lie?

</comment><comment><USER42> Is this related to that one concierge-like service?

</comment><comment><USER43> Not another Magic! Cool feature though :)

</comment><comment><USER44> can anyone explain how they might be getting all that data from the email in an automated fashion?

</comment><comment><USER45> thats creepy, what if i don't want to be on that database :/

<comment><USER46> If it's coming from FullContact Person API, you can opt out here: [https://www.fullcontact.com/privacy/](https://www.fullcontact.com/privacy/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> $20 for 2000 requests a month? HAHAHAHAHA no.

<comment><USER48> As far as contact records go, that's not an unreasonable price, especially so at such a low quantity.</comment></comment>