A Guided Tour of emacs-git - <AUTHOR> http://files.taesoo.org/git-emacs/git-emacs.html

<comment><USER2> I use "magit" for emacs; for the stuff that I don't find easy to do in magit (or that I don't remember the magit workflow for) I use the standard shell commands (also inside emacs).

I only skimmed this, but I didn't see anything here that would make me switch from magit. It looks like a matter of personal taste to me. Did I miss something?

<comment><USER3> The maintainer of Magit is an asshole.

<comment><USER4> Note: philjackson is the current maintainer of magit, which is anyway a fine and useful project.

I've recently moved to egg, a fork of magit with a very readable UI.

<http://github.com/byplayer/egg>

<http://wiki.github.com/bogolisk/egg/manual> (screenshot)

<comment><USER3> Egg is great, I'm not trying to poach you as a user, but you should give the key-groups branch of Magit a try. It has similar discoverability semantics as Egg but with more functionality.

<comment><USER5> Hey, you _are_ trying to poach him!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not clear to me from the page: does C-x v v commit all modified files (like git commit -m), or just the current file? I'd like more information about how this interacts with the git index in general.</comment>


House votes down stopping employers asking for Facebook passwords - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/house-votes-down-stopping-employers-asking-for-facebook-passwords/11067?tag=mantle_skin;content <comment><USER2> Unbelievable. How is this amendment even controversial?

<comment><USER3> read the amendment.

      "1 SEC. 5. PROTECTING THE PASSWORDS OF ONLINE USERS.
      2 Nothing in this Act or any amendment made by this
      3 Act shall be construed to limit or restrict the ability of
      4 the Federal Communications Commission to adopt a rule
      5 or to amend an existing rule to protect online privacy, in-
      6 cluding requirements in such rule that prohibit licensees
      7 or regulated entities from mandating that job applicants
      8 or employees disclose confidential passwords to social net-
      9 working web sites."</comment></comment>


Ranked choice voting in 5 way Mpls mayor race - <AUTHOR> http://electionresults.sos.state.mn.us/Results/MunicipalRaces/107?districtid=43000 <comment><AUTHOR> Background: Minneapolis has Ranked Choice voting (or Instant Runoff Voting, depending on your terminology). In yesterday's mayor election, results are so close among the top 5 candidates (out of a dozen) that we're now down to counting third choice votes to determine the winner. The likely winner (Jacob Frey) got less than 25% of the first choice votes.

This election makes a really interesting test case for the value of ranked choice voting!</comment>


Symmetric Multiprocessing in Allegro CL - <AUTHOR> http://www.franz.com/support/documentation/current/doc/smp.htm

<comment><USER2> Lispworks 6.0 would also have SMP support.</comment>


How to Acquire Users for Free - <AUTHOR> http://spencerfry.com/ways-to-acquire-users-for-free <comment><USER2> I'll add another way to acquire users for free, but it takes a lot of work and isn't "free" in the traditional sense at first per se.

Buy ads. Start with a $100 AdWords coupon that is free and not hard to come by. Even $25-50 would be enough depending on your market.

Bid on cheap cheap long tail keywords (3-4 word phrases). You won't get a lot of traffic at first, but that's kind of the point. Get your campaign dialed in where you are making at least $2 per $1 you spend.

Use that money to grow your advertising profitably over time using the same method. Work your way up the ladder so to speak.

You can do this on AdWords, Facebook, Microsoft AdCenter, and probably on AdMob as well. It's not hard at all. It just takes an incredible amount of patience not to blow all your money in a week.

Remember, the goal is profit, not volume. Grow profitably and volume will come with time.

<comment><USER3> "Get your campaign dialed in where you are making at least $2 per $1 you spend." -- if you can do that, then you are in the perfect place to take a loan / favorable investment.

<comment><USER4> If you can reliably get $2 per $1 you spend, why bother with a loan or investment? You've already won the game.

<comment><USER5> If it takes you 50 years to turn $1 into $2, then you have not won. Put your money in a bank account instead.

If you can do it in a year, you've won. But if you start with $1 then after one year you have $2, then the next year you have $4, etc. It takes less time if you take a $1000 loan and turn that into $2000. Of course turning $1000 into $2000 is harder than $1 into $2, so take a loan as big as you can still double ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know how legitimate this is, but I used an interesting AdWords strategy to gather users. The normal strategy is to use a minimal bid in a certain area, and create an attractive ad that gets people to click. However, this costs money, as you pay based on a per-click basis.

What I wanted to do, was generate a lot of awareness. When people are aware of your product and see it advertised everywhere, it's more likely they'll check you out. If they happen to check you out after hearing from a friend, it won't even be an ad-referral, and it won't cost you a cent. How do you create awareness without using money?

I have no basis for saying this, and my only proof is a very successful campaign that I ran doing this. Since I've shut my project down, the trade secret isn't very useful anymore. I think there's an innate appeal for certain ads. A lot of ads make it blatantly obvious that they're there, but just doesn't make you want to click. Not because the product looks bad - but I just don't want to click some ads. I know a lot of friends also have this feeling, and a small study I conducted confirmed this.

My strategy was this: Bid minimal amounts after researching bids in certain areas, and create an ad that shoves its name, and possibly basic idea into an user's face. However, do not provide any incentive to click - at all. In fact, make it ugly, but not ugly enough to make your product or service seem bad. This is tricky, and takes some getting used to. The end result is a very LOW conversion rate (usually considered as a failure) - which is exactly what we want. I've gotten a bunch of repeat impressions onto users, without having to pay for them. If they happen to hear about it from a friend, they're now much more likely to check it out, because they're familiar with the name.

I've come up with a bunch of strategies like this, and I really wish I wrote them all down so I could share them. Maybe they're terrible... feel free to tell me it's a terrible idea. It may not work in all business areas, and I'd love to get some feedback.

<comment><USER7> Interesting but the problem with this, at least as far as AdWords is concerned, is that low CTR means low Quality Score means higher minimum bid required for the same positioning. So it is costing you more in the long run.

If you're doing a CPM bid on the content network then you're bidding on impressions anyway, in which case there really isn't a reason to disincentivize clicks.

<comment><USER6> I never actually ran into this problem. Interesting though - I'll definitely look into it. Thanks for the note

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One thing they don't talk about if you're buying customers: the delay between paying for customers and getting paid by them can run you out of business even if your LTV exceeds your Customer Acquisition Costs. (Conversely, if you can get paid by your customers before you have to pay for them, you're golden.) Note that I mean actual cash in hand, not transactions - you have to include the inevitable delays from whatever payment system you're using. I wrote a bit about this a while back on my blog: [http://www.karlo.org/2009/04/maximizing- your-online-business...](http://www.karlo.org/2009/04/maximizing-your-online- business-part-three-user-acquisition.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Tracking your source of traffic is definitely one of the more credible and consistent strategies from this article. Similar methods have been used successfully for measuring the effectiveness of online ads to determine where your viewers originate. Understanding the nature and location of discovery of your app is crucial.

<comment><USER10> My company's marketing manager spent quite a lot of time figuring out what we were paying adWords for. He quickly realised that most ads were displayed on eMule-related forums, and that most clicks we paid for were thrown-away money. Lesson learnt: track carefully where ads are displayed!

<comment><USER11> You can segment AdWords to only display on Google search results. And you should.

<comment><USER10> Yep, we realized it. The "Display Network" used to work fine, though. It went downhill in the recent years.

<comment><USER11> I think things were a lot better when AdWords was less expensive back in the day (say around 2003-2005).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> TINSTAAFL -> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_aint_no_such_thing_as_a_f...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_aint_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch)

<comment><USER13> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch)</comment></comment>


Microsoft disbands the Band: fitness device pulled from stores, no Band 3 - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/microsoft-disbands-the-band-fitness-device-pulled-from-stores-no-band-3-this-year/ <comment><USER2> They should have published the designs and opened up the code so that others could build a platform around the products they have cancelled. Just allow anyone to make a Zune or a Band clone and if there is a platform that emerges later, get back into it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Microsoft should just forego consumer apps and devices. Almost all of their late to the market ideas are light weight, copycat, throw money efforts with no originality or differentiation.

<comment><USER4> I'd argue that their Surface line seems to be going on quite well - in fact, its been inspiring a lot of copycats itself (e.g. Elite X2, Asus Transformer Book, IdeaPad Miix)

<comment><USER5> you forgot iPad Pro

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is sad cause the Band seems to have a good following and they should just have improved reliability with a new iteration. I've seen a lot of people using them and reviews have been good.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, at least they're focusing on their core products.</comment>


Ask HN: Will working on open source projects get me hired? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a mathematics undergrad who will be graduating in December. I have no job/internship experience and a mediocre GPA. It took a lot of neglect for me to get into this position, but there's nothing I can do about the past at this point.
I am interested in finding a job that involves coding, but right now I lack any experience other than a couple semesters of programming classes. However, I'm very enthusiastic about learning and I think there are enough resources to teach myself.
I am seriously considering dedicating a year to independently learning programming languages and working on personal/open source projects. I have enough money to live for several years actually, but I don't anticipate taking that long.
This seems like a better idea than dedicating all my time applying for scarcely available jobs that I'm not really qualified for due to lack of experience. I know people who have done that for a full year and had nothing to show at the end of it.
An alternative would be applying for graduate school in computer science. My 3.2 GPA and lack of undergraduate research would probably disqualify me from any good graduate schools. It would take me 3 years to get a master's due to prerequisite classes I would have to take first. Honestly, I think I could learn more practical knowledge on my own in less time and for less money.
Does my plan sound reasonable? Do you have any suggestions on what I should work on? If I start a blog/github account and post tons of code, will an employer care that I had a gap year after graduation? I keep hearing programming jobs are in high demand, and anyone who can FizzBuzz can get a job. If that was the case, I should be able to get a job immediately, but I doubt I will be able to get anywhere with my blank resume. However, with a year's worth of projects and code available for employers to look at, I hope I will be able to get somewhere. <comment><USER2> Dirty secret: getting hired requires a skillset entirely orthogonal to programming. You can get hired as an engineer with a 3.2 and no experience - that isn't too different from probably half of HN at their first job. (Absolutely nobody cares what mine was, but if I ever remember my university password to check with the registrar, I think it will be somewhere in that neighborhood.)

Throwing code onto Github is not time-efficient for self promotion. Meeting people with authority to hire programmers and convincing them to hire you is. Experience is NOT A PREREQ even when they say it is. Shouted for emphasis. Experience is a convenient filter applied to winnow the stack of resumes that they receive from bozos. If the COO recommends hiring you, you don't need to be filtered. You may not be even asked for a resume.

You're not in an industry that cares about gap years.

</comment><comment><USER3> A CS graduate with a GPA in the low 3's is quite employable. The math field is full of seniors graduating with GPAs in the low 3's that can't find jobs. Lots of them have done a little programming, so it is hard to stand out. There is an excellent chance you will be sending out resumes for a year without a job offer, looking less employable all the time.

If you can get into a CS Masters program (doesn't have to be a top school), you would be much more employable after a year of CS classes than you are now, even if you are far from getting a degree.

Alternately, can you delay graduation a year? Is it feasible to spend another undergraduate year minoring in CS?</comment>


Harry Potter fan sites MuggleNet and TheLeakyCauldron change online practices - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/hradzka/status/1278887943956885504 <comment><USER2> Artist creates fictional universe and becomes exceedingly wealthy. Good use of time.

Group creates meta community to celebrate (or castigate) work of Artist. Good waste of time IMHO.

Artist makes public statements wholly unrelated to her art. Group demands Artist abide by Group's ideology even when speaking outside the context of her art. Dangerous precedent; flawed assumption.

Artist continues to produce art while Group protracts cultural neuroticism around Artist leading to loss of rational thinking within Group. Artist sleeps like a baby. The End.</comment>


Experience: I disappeared for 30 years - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/12/experience-i-disappeared-for-30-years

<comment><AUTHOR> That's one extended LSD trip.

</comment><comment><USER2> That's quite touching.</comment>


Ask HN: How much economics as an entrepreneur should i know? - <AUTHOR> Well I mean if you think about it. Economics seems to be a really important skill one can have while starting his startup. I mean a lot of things come into play creativity, empathy (psychology), maybe some sort of philosophy (helps take a moral and ethical decision), obviously Computer science too.
But as coming to economics I am blank so as a new entrepreneur i want to know from you guys who have already done it and already doing it. Which pieces of economics are really important.
In terms of psychology even if you can tell me something about Biases and common dilemmas that would be great to share too. <comment><USER2> Plenty. A consequence of being a founder is that you will have to report results. As well as financial projections. Even if its just to yourself and your "executive team" of one other co-founder. More probably on an investor conference call. Or in legally-actionable board meeting minutes. Perhaps it may even occur live one morning on CNBC's Squawk Box.

You need to know the finances of your own company. And need to know the economics of your chosen space. Cold.

To grow, you need to design for growth. And communicate your business objectives with crystal clarity. To speak intelligently and forthrightly requires you to master the language of entrepreneurship. It begins with your peer network. Reach out to other founders, even competitors. Go to events. Don't be afraid to cold email. Ask direct questions relating to everything and research every concept you don't know.

Also begin a steady diet of news: Economist, Bloomberg, FT, WSJ, Reformed Broker. Treat it like you would an essential component of your startup's "culture". Because you may think the fact that 10Y US Treasury yields are holding above 2.40% doesn't directly effect your company. But it does.

The advantage to begin mastery of econ in your 20s, is that a decade later when you hit 30 and need to make long term decisions out of necessity, it will no longer be guesswork. You'll know mathematically what your risk appetite is. And know on an instinctual level, what separates a good investment from the pack.

As for the social science side, there is no better place to start than the "Neuroeconomics" work of this year's Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler. Start on "Nudge" and "Misbehaving". True game-changers. And then onto Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow".

And do give credence to the classic that kicked it all off: Adam Smith and "The Wealth of Nations". As important as Descartes, Kant, Locke, Rousseau and Jefferson to our modern world.

Best of luck, dprophecyguy!

</comment><comment><USER3> During your undergrad you learn so much "classic" economics you start to believe its true. Then in your graduate education in economics you learn that this is basically all bullshit.

Then, you look outside the windows and none of it makes any sense. Some economics, or rather, basic mathematics is nice to have. But startups are counterintuitive, and hence the only economics you need to know are the economics of scale.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not an entrepreneur, MBA, or econ major (did take some classes in college, continually read up on the subject), so take this with a grain of salt.

There's a tremendous amount of overlap and shared concepts, but probably going to need to know more about business/finance than economics per se.

Some of the busywork can be farmed off to an accountant/lawyer, but you'll need to understand pricing, unit economics, profit and loss and basic accounting principles. If you're interested in taking investors, you'll need a very good understanding of terms and preferences to avoid getting screwed, and you'll need to be able to talk about business plans realistically to make a pitch. If you start to take on multiple employees, there is a tremendous amount of knowledge (both intuitive and book-learning) about organizational behavior and management that you'll need to internalize.

<comment><USER5> I just want to add to this that accounting is extremely figured out in a lot of ways, and so learning it well will help you run your business better even if you are not doing the grunt labour. If you understand the ebbs and flows and trends of your particular business it is inevitably going to be tied to the concrete accounting data- economics is the same way. It tries to take the concrete and extract trends from it to understand how stuff works. If you are also working on a B2B sort of operation, accounting is part of the lingua franca. If you are completely naive to it you will be surely less off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was an economics major (also technical) who started his own company in college. Generally it doesn't help, or at least not that I noticed.

Economics is mostly theory about how the world should operate based on certain laws... supply and demand etc. They go through rigorous derivations using calculus and statistics. You might get a top level overview of the driving forces behind an industry, but in a startup that's hardly useful.

Also in microeconomics, you are taught how a prototypical consumer might behave under canned conditions. Not at all representative of the real world.

There's really a single law book for running startups, and the first commandment is talk to your customers. Literally everything else is bs, at least in the beginning stages.

<comment><USER7> I feel like we took different values from an economics degree. I also have one, but it wasn't really the details about Macro or Micro at an intro level (which is where you get told all these laws, before more advanced stuff just tells you how they aren't quite right). It's more about a way to think about a problem or set of problems. The only hard skill that I'd say I got out of it was being able to do regression analysis (which has proved useful many times). But the more valuable skill was opening my mind to another way to look at and approach problems. Certainly the vocabulary and basic understanding of the area also helps when dealing with business. It's not the only lense to look at a problem, but as an entrepreneur, I think it's one I have to look through a lot and quite regularly. Something as simple as opportunity cost, that's a daily trade off at a startup. Knowing some behavioral economics might help you make better and more informed decisions rather than simply going with your gut in situations where you gut might be misleading you. That's maybe harder to quantify, but I think it helps more than you give credit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not really an answer to your question but Joel Spolsky has an interesting article regarding economics and open source: [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy- letter-v/](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/)

</comment><comment><USER9> An understanding of basic concepts such as supply and demand and the theory of price is essential if you want to run a sustainable business. A common fallacy for example is to calculate prices based on costs instead of the value one creates for one's customers.

Other than that knowledge about accounting and being able to read various kinds of reports in particular are highly useful skills as an entrepreneur. That's not economics in the stricter, scientific sense of the word though.

</comment><comment><USER10> As an entrepreneur, I'm not sure economics is very applicable on your day to day tasks.

However, it is a very useful framework for thinking when it comes larger abstract stuff like strategy and vision. I use a very basic supply and demand graph and I think you can get pretty far with simply understanding factors that shift those lines.

</comment><comment><USER11> A general understanding might help, but IMO knowing specifics is not necessary. I've known plenty of entrepreneurs that have little to no understanding of economics.

In addition, economics can get quite political. Again, a general understanding of why it's political can help here, but specifics are not necessary.

</comment><comment><USER12> Not important at all in my experience. Build something people will pay for. That is the biggest stumbling block for most entrepreneurs.

All this stuff comes into play once you have already become successful and scaled.

</comment><comment><USER13> You should understand the basics of Macro and Micro Economics imo.

For example, something as simple as supply and demand concepts will make you understand a lot of stuff.

</comment><comment><USER14> There are a number of behavioral economics concepts that can have varying degrees of practical usefulness for your business, depending on the industry, but are (imo) all useful as food for thought in your day-to-day decision making processes.

-The Decoy Effect ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoy_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoy_effect)) The decoy effect highlights the importance of thinking through the structure of tiered product pricing. If you're wondering why newspaper sites like the Economist or WSJ offer digital+print subscriptions that are closely, if not identically, priced to just print subscriptions, this concept helps explain that. Essentially, when you have a menu of prices, carefully creating one or two throwaway options helps make your other offerings seem much more reasonable.

(See the related concept of anchoring below)

For some real world examples, see: _[https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/05/t...](https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/05/the_independence_of_irrelevant) _[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/21/dining/21plate.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/21/dining/21plate.html)

-Base Rate Neglect ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy)) This explains why many people ignore general prior probabilities, and focus on specific given probabilities. Give the Wiki a read, there are some pretty stark examples of decision making gone wrong.

A closely related example of this from Bayes' Theorem is the following classic: [http://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph- modules/bs/bs704_probabil...](http://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph- modules/bs/bs704_probability/bs704_probability6.html)

Base rate neglect can help explain why people dramatically overestimate the accuracy of things like medical tests. Understanding what a "99% accuracy rate" really means can have life changing consequences.

-Sampling Bias ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias)) This serves as a counterpoint to a practice some of the other commentators in this thread have mentioned, i.e. "asking your customers". If your end goal is to serve a diverse set of customers, it's essential that the sample of potential customers you're asking is not biased in some extreme way. For example, asking customers who are only from a specific geographic region, are only of a specific size in terms of headcount, revenue, etc.

I can't find the exact HN discussion, but there was a post that was a stark example of this a few months back. The gist of the post was that someone had built a software business that was able to address a niche accounting problem that many of his local plumbers (electricians maybe?) faced. He grew it to $500,000 in revenue relatively quickly, only to find that very few other plumbers across the country had this accounting challenge. This entrepreneur eventually shuttered his software business, since future prospects for growth were negligible.

-Anchoring Bias ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring;](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring;) see in particular the "negotiations" section) Anchoring has direct applicability in pricing and negotiations. IMO anchoring bias is why if you feel that you are charging too little for your product, raise your prices sooner rather than later. After a certain amount of time, your customers will be "anchored" to that previous price point, and will be quite unhappy with a price increase.

-Sunk cost fallacy ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Loss_aversion_and_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy)) This fallacy is quite prevalent in the real world. It's particularly egregious in the defense contracting world, where defense contractors have convinced the US Congress to fund projects that are years behind schedule, and billions over budget. The fallacy can best be described as "throwing good money after bad".

I'd like to note that sometimes this concept is over-applied. If you budgeted $10 for a project, and at the $10 spent mark you discover you need to spend $1 more to complete it, it's not necessarily falling into the fallacy to spend that $1 if the end benefit from that completed project still justifies the overall cost.

<comment><USER15> > If you budgeted $10 for a project, and at the $10 spent mark you discover > you need to spend $1 more to complete it, it's not necessarily falling into > the fallacy to spend that $1 if the end benefit from that completed project > still justifies the overall cost.

It's not the sunk cost fallacy even if the benefit of completion only justified the _additional_ $1 cost; the $10 already spent is irrelevant, since if you choose not to finish, you don't get it back, it's only the sunk cost fallacy if you are treating the cost already spent as a loss of not proceeding.

You sort of did the opposite fallacy, where instead of treating the sunk cost as a loss if you don't proceed, you counted it as a loss if you do. But the sunk cost is neither.

<comment><USER14> > It's not the sunk cost fallacy even if the benefit of completion only > justified the additional $1 cost; the $10 already spent is irrelevant, since > if you choose not to finish, you don't get it back, it's only the sunk cost > fallacy if you are treating the cost already spent as a loss of not > proceeding.

Fair point, I should've said if the total benefit of completing the project is larger than the marginal cost ($1) of completing the project.

> You sort of did the opposite fallacy, where instead of treating the sunk > cost as a loss if you don't proceed, you counted it as a loss if you do. But > the sunk cost is neither.

Just to be clear, if the total benefit from completing the project is something like $0.50, choosing to spend the $1 to complete the project _is_ an example of the sunk cost fallacy.</comment></comment></comment>


How do I determine an iPhone app's approximate sales? - <AUTHOR>

Doing some research for a client who is asking what the market is for a particular app. I know the competitors' apps rankings, but how would one guess (even if very very approximate) what their actual sales are?<p>There are tons of resources available for viewing competitor website traffic (e.g. http://www.compete.com), but is there any resource for iTunes apps? <comment><USER2> this is a little old but could be used for very approximate approximations: <http://www.joelcomm.com/app_store_ranktosales_revealed.html></comment>


The Final Issue of Nintendo Power and the First - <AUTHOR> http://www.dorkly.com/picture/46769/the-final-issue-of-nintendo-power-and-the-first

<comment><USER2> I had the first ~100 issues of Nintendo Power, starting when I was 6 or so. At the time I found it really interesting. As I grew older, I couldn't tell if the magazines were simply getting worse or I was just getting older and realizing they were worse. Then I realized they were always bad in a special way, because it was essentially a huge advertisement for Nintendo.

One thing I do remember rather enjoying (and being of high quality) were their special edition game-specific guides. The one for Link To the Past was great if I remember right.

Anyway, I think its fun that they used essentially the same covers for their first and last issues. Fitting and well done.

<comment><USER3>
      > Anyway, I think its fun that they used
      > essentially the same covers for their first
      > and last issues.

Just like Seinfeld[1]? (first joke of first episode as the last joke of the series finale)

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Finale_(Seinfeld)#Part_two>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had a Nintendo Power subscription for most of elementary school. To me, that era of video games seems nostalgically arcane -- when games weren't just intended to be finished as a function of time, and there wasn't an abundance of information available on the internet. I remember being "stuck" on countless games, until an issue of Nintendo Power finally told me that the way to beat Asura was to use the 'Wall' spell on herself in Final Fantasy 2 (or IV, or whatever the cool kids call it).

Nintendo Power's maps and tips weren't always that helpful, but they almost always covered good games. Most video games didn't have huge mainstream media marketing budgets back then, and without Nintendo Power I would have never discovered lesser known games like Shadowgate, Faxanadu, and Duck Tales. As other commenters have indicated, the magazine _was_ basically essentially a vehicle for Nintendo direct mail advertising -- but one that actually worked pretty well for the era.

Hmm, might be time to find some emulators and ROMs...

<comment><AUTHOR> Faxanadu was really great, but nobody has heard of it. My first RPG, depending on how you want to classify Zelda.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I find it slightly disturbing that I was able to picture in my mind the exact cover image before clicking the link.

I certainly hope that if I had been alive back then I would have had the front page of the paper the day after the moon landing similarly etched into my brain.

Here's to wasted youth!</comment>


The Myth of the Lone Hacker - <AUTHOR> http://ashtonkemerling.com/2012/11/27/the-myth-of-the-lone-hacker/ <comment><USER2> Common Lisp isn't the only option. There are other communities that are geared more towards practical development, with large and growing user and library bases. Aside from the obvious example of Clojure, I'm thinking specifically of Racket [1] and Chicken Scheme [2]. I use the latter personally, and it's a pleasant experience on any project scale, with the heavy emphasis on extensibility and package management. It also compiles to C.

[1]: <http://racket-lang.org/> [2]: <http://www.call-cc.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Lone hackers are not a myth. There are definitely people out there who do incredible things entirely or mostly by themselves.

It seems to me that question is orthogonal to the value of community for a language. If anything, a strong language ecosystem empowers lone hackers, and I suspect most good ecosystems benefit greatly from the contributions of lone hackers.

<comment><USER4> In this case I meant myth in the "tradition or legendary story" sense, not the "this is completely false" sense.

<comment><USER5> Ashton, I appreciate your thoughts on this subject - I've been meaning to write about it for a while, and just posted my response here: <http://startupframework.tumblr.com/post/36816740387/power>

Not to side-track from programming language semantics, but I hope to engage in a discussion on the sole entrepreneur as you mentioned.

Edit: I think the bottom line of your post and mine is that: _No one does it alone_. At least, that's my (perhaps more philosophical than technical) take on it. So for hackers and entrepreneurs to reach critical mass with their products/offerings, they need the input/help/support from those around them (family, friends, clients, etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I do wonder why such a powerful language such as Lisp has such a small community and number of libraries. There may exist some trade off between the level abstraction and number of users for languages. You may have to 'hang around' long enough before the penny drops and you're a proper Lisper that can use the language productively. What other languages have for them, in my small experience at least, is that you can grasp all the essentials and get a general feel for the language very early on- allowing you to 'hit the ground running'. With Lisp, it takes a while (I started learning a few months ago) to grasp concepts such as macros, closures, and continuations, which really give Lisp its power, and then effectively implement them on the fly. A few bloggers out there write about the 'moment of clarity' that they get once they understand Lisp macros, etc.

<comment><USER7> There was an article posted here a while ago that made the case that Lisp is so powerful that it makes it feasible to do much more yourself rather than relying on libraries, and thus it attracts a higher level of hacker that wants to do things their own way and is more intolerant of compromises made in the name of standardization. Sort of the opposite of the lowest common denominator approach of successful enterprise languages like Java. The failure to thrive of Common Lisp is strong evidence of the worse-is-better phenomenon.

<comment><USER8> I would say this is also highly driven by non-hackers. Many schools are nothing more than Java certification shops and many companies select technologies pushed through salespeople.

I'm fairly sure languages such as Lisp and SmallTalk would be much more widespread today if the industry wasn't told what to use by clueless people driven by profits.

<comment><USER6> Interestingly, looking within the Lisp hacker community, individual hackers seem to be doing quite well. It seems as though the language is geared towards empowering the individual. Even though Lisp is hard to learn, once you 'get it' the pay-off seems to be rather large.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nevertheless, it was Richard Stallman who wrote a hell lot of GNU as a lone hacker.

</comment><comment><USER10> So the empowered individual is a myth, and to the extent it is not a myth, these reckless individuals harm the community. Individualism bad, got it?

</comment><comment><USER11> I neither use, nor have used Clojure, but I keep hearing about it, which says something for the community aspect. Curious how this maps to that.

<comment><USER12> Clojure can draw on the whole Java ecosystem, so it's immediately useful, which gives it a great entry point.

<comment><USER13> Yes but it also has a package manager and library repository with over 5000 idiomatic Clojure libraries. A lot of projects would not even have to use Java libraries.</comment></comment></comment>


EU Member States agree on monitoring and filtering of internet uploads - <AUTHOR> https://edri.org/eu-member-states-agree-on-monitoring-filtering-of-internet-uploads/ <comment><USER2> Right now this is a proposal by the EU commission (which is composed of representatives from the member states), but it won't become EU law until it's approved by the EU parliament.

I hope this will die in parliament. If you live in a EU country this is a good time to email your representative!

I think this summary by Julia Reda (a member of parliament) was really good:

[https://juliareda.eu/2018/05/censorship-machines-link-tax- fi...](https://juliareda.eu/2018/05/censorship-machines-link-tax-finish-line/)

(although biased, she is not in favour of filtering and monitoring)

<comment><USER3> This will not die in Parlement, for the simple reason that the Parlement is a toothless tiger. It's an instrument to make it look like the EU is democratic, while it's not.

If this is approved by the EC (the only actual institution within the EU with any power) it is just going to be law, and nobody will be able to stop it.

I hope some day soon enough people will see that if we want to have any kind of future in Europe in which we and our children are able to live with dignity we need to put our political differences aside and destroy this ideological monster together, before it destroys us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This will only embolden Euroskeptic parties. It appears Italy may be only the beginning of this summers drama in the EU

</comment><comment><USER5> How will they monitor encrypted traffic?

<comment><USER6> It's likely that they would require the site you are uploading the data to to filter it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article makes it very hard to understand what the issue being discussed is.

</comment><comment><USER8> Who, like what exact person, persons are bringing it back, all the time to censor the populus ?

Can we just "tell" "them" to get lost and leave us alone for good ?

</comment><comment><USER9> Didn't really expect ALDE to be ok with this.</comment>


Ask HN: How does your job benefit society? - <AUTHOR> There's a lot of news about privacy violations, wealth equality, filter bubbles and the abundance of advertisements on the internet. I'd love to see some counterpoints about software that truly improves people's lives or the welfare of society. How does hacker news contribute to the general welfare? <comment><USER2> I'm working on Remember, it's a personal search engine. It's like Google Photos for every file type. And while it's great for productivity, it will hopefully serve a bigger purpose, maximising human potential.

We're building a product where a researcher can type "all of my research on cancer" and will see their life's work unveil in front of their eyes. All the papers, notes, voice memos, everything. And maybe, just maybe it'll spark an idea they would've otherwise missed.

I think the biggest way I can benefit society as a 21 year old is to make a product that enables people to do so. I know I can't solve wealth inequality and cancer all by myself, but I might be able to empower the people who will. I believe this is the greatest power of software.

</comment><comment><USER3> If I didn't have a job I wouldn't be able to pay taxes, and a lot of poor people need whatever help they can get from the government, not to mention NASA and the national parks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I like this response. Is this worth more than the contributions made towards war, the erosion of privacy and general corruption? Could you (in theory) instead give your money directly to these causes.

Some jobs may also enable others to do their jobs more effectively, who may in turn enable someone to benefit the general welfare.

Having a direct, measurable effect is admittedly rather nice, but that isn't the majority of jobs.

<comment><USER3> If it were up to me I would certainly re-allocate where my money went.

On a professional level, I don't feel that I'm necessarily making the world better (at least for now, and with the caveat that I do believe that I am contributing to an increased mean utility), but at least I'm not making it worse (one of the consequences with my last employer is that if we succeeded it would put some people out of work; I left for many reasons but one was that I decided I was no longer comfortable with that).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I work for a medical device company. We do a lot of things, but mostly blood manipulation. Our products do everything from making a particular day easier for someone, to making more specific blood products available, to saving people's lives.

This job is the best contribution to society that I have ever been a part of, and I'm grateful to have done so.

</comment><comment><USER5> I work on the Front-end/UX of healthcare/hospital sites across the U.S. My job is to make it easier for patients to find the doctor/specialist/physician they need. It's indirect - but connecting patients to the care they need can potentially save a life or ease someone's pain. I think about that for every website I touch.

</comment><comment><USER6> My company bets on betting markets getting an edgd using statistical data. We help provide liquidity to the betting market and keep betting exchanges and totalisers in business.

</comment><comment><USER7> My job informs consumers about products that may be of interest, gives them real money/gift cards/other rewards for doing so, and includes fun games for them to enjoy as part of this transaction. If they don't want to see my companies ads, they simply don't install the app, so any user who continues to use any such app is explicitly opting into the advertising.

edit: I should probably be explicit that I don't really feel this has deep redeeming social value, but I thought it might be worth a chuckle.

</comment><comment><USER8> My own software business makes Photoshop plug-ins. I doubt that has much intrinsic value, but I'm proud of what my customers have used them for. One customer runs an Etsy store selling t-shirts of Pugs wearing plaid, designed with my software. It's extremely niche, but makes her super happy & she earns more than I'd ever expect from it. Another customer runs a drug rehab program, and for those who complete the program, they get a free portrait photo shoot to see a before/after comparison of themselves, a visual reminder of what their life looks like away from drug addiction. I've also given free copies of my software to youth art programs, though that's practically free for me to do anyway.

I put some of my revenue/income towards charitable projects, but I keep much of that private / anonymous. My general philosophy on that comes from two of my favorite books, "Banker To The Poor" by Muhammad Yunus (of Grameen Bank) and "The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune" by Conor O'Clery.

</comment><comment><USER9> I work at a Smart Grid company and we make devices and software that help conserve energy and natural resources. I'm glad to have found the job because my previous job didn't have what I perceived to be a benefit to society and that really bothered me.</comment>


Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/jonathanmayer/status/1044300922149588993 <comment><USER3> I'm not sure why people are surprised. Google has been downright evil for quite a while now. They do this in all their products, down to the point of intentionally crippling them.

For instance, since Android 5, the standard contact app doesn't allow you to _modify_ a contact which is not synced with an account. Why even _do_ this? The list of tracking settings that can be turned permanently on, but only _temporarily_ off is ever growing. At some point, you just give up because it's such a silly waste of time. Google knows this very well.

Almost all the google websites, except google search, work badly on anything except chrome. I mean, google groups is rotten already on chrome, but just try it on firefox for the full experience.

Maps (the website) used to be a game-changer in the past. It was insanely fast. Nowdays I hate it. The UI is just horrid. On Firefox it just misbehaves constantly. I only use it for streetview, and still I'm appalled at how badly it has evolved.

They are pushing still impressive libraries and tools. But there's not a single of their products I still like to _use_.

<comment><USER4> The new Gmail, Adwords, and Analytics run horribly slow in FF, so I have a separate Chromium portable installation simply for those pages. It's so annoying that Google only cares how their own products run in Chrome.

<comment><USER5> > The new Gmail, Adwords, and Analytics run horribly slow in FF, so I have a > separate Chromium portable installation simply for those pages. It's so > annoying that Google only cares how their own products run in Chrome.

Reminds me of when Microsoft used to optimize it's products for Windows and other OSs were an afterthought...

<comment><USER6> That's still the case.

<comment><USER7> That might be but I'm using dotnet core and vscode on Linux now and except autocomplete being weaker than I'm used to in Java and config files being a mess, -both of which are true on Windows as well, I haven't found a single thing to complain about.

And while I have stopped trusting MS (again) after their recent browser failure it seems they are very much trying to sell software and services on all platforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> But the funny part is Google keep your saved addresses. It only block the access.

If you have your home and/or work address set in Gmaps, and you disable all tracking in myactivity.google.com. The address will disappear and GMaps will invite you to reactive App and Web tracking. If you do it, your saved addresses will reappear. This is slightly dodgy.

<comment><USER9> > This is slightly dodgy.

It is punitive. They are (and are within their rights to) withholding value because you aren't giving them what they want, which is mineable activity information.

I notice that there are always cartoons of happy users getting additional useful features from their services when tracking is enbled, but never cute cartoons of the other actors extracting value based upon advertising etc. Truth In Condescending Explain-o-Toons, now! etc.

<comment><USER8> I completely understand, it's in their right, absolutely.

However, once you disable the tracking, the UI no longer show the address and even say "Set location" under Home address and Work address. This let you think that Google doesn't have this information, which is false. This makes me feel like Google got info about me and I can't use it. I find this part dodgy. Once you disable a setting it should be clearer that data is not deleted.

<comment><USER10> Sounds more like a UI bug/oversight than intentional deception.

Google Maps UI has a feature to display your set home address, once you turn off tracking or whatever it no longer has access to that home address in its UI so the default state is to ask you to set one.

If that's the case then the real problem would be that the address data is siloed off somewhere in your Google account under maps and isn't accessible to be changed/cleared from your general account settings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In a way stuff like this and the recent news that they don't delete their own cookies from Chrome when deleting all cookies could be good news. It seems to become clearer and clearer that Google is getting desperate to squeeze more and more data out of people in order to sell that data. Hope they will lose their good guy image because now they are just another big greedy company like all others. Nothing wrong with that though. It's just good for people to realize that.

<comment><USER12> Why on earth would you think Google would sell its most valuable asset? Google does not sell user data, it builds on it. The more data they get, the better and better their AI will develop.

Looking back, when they announced they were going to become an AI-first company these sort of drastic data-grabs and privacy issues should have been apparent. But hindsight is 20/20...

<comment><USER13> %s/sell/monetise/g

You know what they meant. Google is milking users for all data they can derive from their activity and creating value from that. It's not so much the use of the data that's the problem as the lengths they go to to create that data.

I recall someone from one of the major tech companies talking about how their users "emit data", implying the data just happens and their role is purely passive with the users practically handing them that data. That's a perverse way of looking at it when you contrast it with e.g. the GDPR's premise that data belongs to the user and companies need (withdrawable) consent to collect and process it.

In the US tech companies don't collect user data, users "emit" it -- even if the only reason the data is "emitted" is because the tech is actively spying on its users' every move.

<comment><USER14> That in and of itself is the sole reason Google doesn't bug me as much as some other networks (Facebook comes to mind).

They provide a lot of value, but in the end, I think a lot of their products will eventually use market and mindshare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> huy-nguyen I want to be able to quickly input my home address into google map but don't want to turn on google search history so I had to resort to an imperfect solution: use the "text replacement" feature to expand a unique short phrase like "hmad" to the full home address when typed into the google maps search bar.

<comment><USER15> I use "&&" as the shortcut for for my address, "@@" for my email, and "##" for my phone

For my work address, email, and phone, I just append "w"

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This! They used to allow you to, but now I don't save my home address and can't use a lot of Google features because they want you to enable activity tracking. WTF... why do I need all my activity to be tracked to use basic features?

<comment><USER17> My favorite part has been them pretending they no longer store your address, but when search results on the web places a pin they somehow manage to suggest it's an "x minute drive" from home... Which is it Google? Do you have the address saved or not? You forget where my address is only when it's inconvenient and coercive?

<comment><USER18> Are you sharing your location? Maybe nothing is stored, but your current location is used for searches you make.

<comment><USER19> I've had the same results when I've explicitly not shared location.

I will also use Google maps to find the route to some restaurant, turn off the GPS because I don't like being tracked and it's no too far, then head to the restaurant within 10-60 minutes of when I checked the GPS. If I have wifi on I will invariably get asked to rate the restaurant within 5 minutes of arriving there, regardless of how much time has passed since I checked the route.

I currently use a Pixel phone, but based on the experiences I've had, I will be switching to an iPhone in the hope that I get tracked less. After switching to Firefox and ddg as my daily drivers, I just need to get off of Gmail and I will be google free

<comment><USER18> Are you turning off GPS or all location? Because location can still be enabled when GPS is off. There's location via wifi and via bluetooth.

<comment><USER19> The location option in the android quick menu. I was unaware there was any other way to even turn off the GPS. I assumed it was wifi since it seems to not happen when the wifi is turned off.

It would have at least been corporate speak to have an option called GPS that people assumed was location tracking and was not. Having an option called "Location" that does not stop your phone from tracking your location when turned off has crossed the line into fraudulent behavior for me

<comment><USER18> Hmm, that seems to completely turn off all location. So I don't know why google would seemingly still know your location.

<comment><USER19> All they need to do is see what wifi connections I can reach on my phone. In any urban area you can easily reach 50+ wifi connections standing in one spot. If google knows X wifi connection corresponds to Y range of a physical location because of someone else left their location and wifi on, then they can tell that if I can reach 4 or 5 different wifi connections at once then I must be at a certain address.

It's like browser fingerprinting. It doesn't take very many bits of entropy before you are identifiable

<comment><USER18> Yeah, I know about using wifi for location. But I think turning the android location setting off disables that (in addition to disabling gps and bluetooth location). These pages indicate that:

[https://support.google.com/android/answer/3467281](https://support.google.com/android/answer/3467281)

[https://support.google.com/android/answer/6179507](https://support.google.com/android/answer/6179507)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why are people surprised when a company that fundamentally doesn't believe in privacy does these kinds of things?

Edit: quote removed -- see child comments.

<comment><USER21> Why don't you post the rest of the quote as well?

> I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't want anyone > to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really > need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines -- including > Google -- do retain this information for some time and it's important, for > example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and > it is possible that all that information could be made available to the > authorities.

Kinda changes the whole context from "secrets are for bad people" to "you shouldn't use Google with anything really secret, because government".

I'm really dismayed that a lot of good people and orgs keep misrepresenting this quote for many years by cutting it out of the context. This doesn't mean that Google is automatically your friend, btw.

<comment><USER22> The reality is that I don't want a search engine in my phone.

Maybe it wasn't the case when he said that quote, but the story here is they're trying very hard to blur the line between their services and the device itself, in some very awkward ways that don't make a lot of sense except except beyond their own business needs

<comment><USER23> > The reality is that I don't want a search engine in my phone.

For what it's worth, I've disabled the 'Google' app on my Android phone for a few weeks now, and have experienced no problems. I don't use Google for search, and I already had Chrome disabled too, so all it did was take up some memory and battery, now freed up. All I lost was an extra screen on the mobile "desktop" (which I mostly only accidentally ended up in anyway), and some (generally useless) notifications about "things I might like".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't even ask my phone to set an alarm anymore without giving it my entire web and app history.

Google is vulnerable here as they're creating a very real need for basic alternatives

<comment><USER24> They're creating a need, but that doesn't mean they're creating a market opportunity. Google has taught everyone that all this stuff should be free, and that's no accident: it's a deliberate strategy to suck up all available oxygen away from potential competitors. Someone (Ben Thompson maybe?) described Google's strategy as not just building a moat, but scorching the earth for hundreds of miles in every direction from their castle. It's unbelievably difficult to build a direct competitor to Google unless you're starting from a position of huge capitalization (and even that's no guarantee... I don't exactly see techies flocking to Bing after they complain about Google)

<comment><USER25> This is so fucking true. If anything you can see this in the real marketplace. Consumers have become so averse to paying for software because they see gmail, google maps, google keep, docs and photos as available for "free" - <USER2> they have to part with something from their life but not the cash, so why the hell pay for anything else?

<comment><USER26> Even worse than undermining expectations about the price of software, since google's general use apps (gmail, docs, etc.) are Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS[1]), Google is also undermining the basic concept of buying a copy of software. Even as an intangible good, it's easy to understand the value of owning a copy that you get to keep and use on your own terms. When the same software is only available as a service, availability issues and other risks that outside your control make the service less valuable.

Why should someone want to buy software when most of the software they see and use regularly are unreliable services?

[1] [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server- really-s...](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really- serve.en.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> On my Pixel 2XL, I cannot set temperature to Celsius on my home and lock screen unless I allow this setting.

<comment><USER28> When I had my Pixel I remember not being able to save reminders or events with the assisstant unless I enabled Google Now Cards, which shoved advertisements and bullshit articles onto my home screen

<comment><USER29> I remember using Google now cards but stopped after they decided they needed my full history to make them work. I guess I was lucky I missed the advertisement phase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The ridiculous part is if you had once had location tracking on before, and had previously set your Home/Work address - Android Auto will still occasionally offer you directions to Home/Work _spontaneously_ , despite Android Auto refusing to let you "Navigate Home/Work" when you attempt to do so on demand?

</comment><comment><USER31> Dark patterns seem to be becoming standard UX for Google now. I notice so much of it all over their products.

<comment><USER32> There is nothing dark about this, they are doing this in plain sight, there is very little people (who wants to use Google services*) can do about it. Even GDPR looks more and more toothless as days go by and nothing happens to obvious violators and it only covers European users of course.

<comment><USER33> Dark patterns aren't dark because they're "hidden". They're dark because they're misleading, or coercive.

<comment><USER32> Dark patterns are misleading, like highlighting the opt-in box for GDPR. No one is tricking users here, there are no options, they are told to suck it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> On Android there's also the constant nagging to turn on GPS every time you open the app just to check the opening hours of some business. Super frustrating.

<comment><USER35> A maps app wanting to show the current location upon startup - isn't that to be expected?

<comment><USER36> No. Most times I use a maps app it doesn't need my location. Let it ask only when I explicitly ask for directions from my location, or when I click on the "center on my location" button.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Yeah, I've noticed this. They even taunt you, saying "hey, don't you want to add Home address?" \- "Sure, _click_ " \- "So full tracking it is, then?"

</comment><comment><USER38> Looks like Apple needs to run another 1984 ad during the Superbowl.

<comment><USER39> Super Bowl now streaming live on Sina Weibo, so it might be problematic.

<comment><USER40> Is the US football (not soccer) that popular in China or lots of Americans use Sina Weibo?

<comment><USER39> Neither. NFL just want to push it so much.

> The stakes are high for the league's bid to tap the enormous potential of > China's 1.4 billion people. NFL is pushing tie-ups with more than a dozen > platforms on regular television and online to help reach viewers, even at > rush hour, Richard Young, managing director for NFL China, told Reuters in > recent interviews.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/r-super-bowl-goes-social- as-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/r-super-bowl-goes-social-as-nfl-seeks- china-touchdown-2017-2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This has been the case for multiple years.

I'm NOT saying, "people shouldn't be surprised." By all means, be very outraged and surprised about it, maybe something will change. What I am saying is the fact that so many people are surprised on HN of all places means that very few people here have ever turned off Web & App Activity tracking, even just as a temporary experiment to see what would happen.

That makes me sad. Do it some time, you have no idea how many things on your phone will break. Google does not want you turning off that permission; there are a large number of other Google apps that exhibit behaviors just as outrageous as this.

 _Please_ go do some some first-hand research. You can turn off Web & App Activity temporarily. You can leave it off for even just a week, just to get a feel for what happens.

[https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols](https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols)

<comment><USER41> My personal favorite restriction: turn off Web & App Activity and then try to use a voice command to call/text another person. You can't use voice commands with contacts if you have the permission turned off.

I always forget that when I'm trying to do hands-free commands while driving. I have to pull over and manually click on the contact. I can't just use voice commands and put the phone on speaker.

It's outright vindictive, to the point of being legitimately dangerous. You can still add contacts, and their names still show up everywhere on the phone. You just don't get to hands-free dial any of them, because... somehow Google needs access to my search history to do that? It's one of the most straightforward examples of higher-ups in Google prioritizing user tracking over user safety.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Been annoyed about this for a long time. Google still knows about my home address as I have that label set in my Google Maps settings, it just won't let me use it unless I allow them to track all my search history. Wtf. Evil design pattern for sure.

</comment><comment><USER43> I wonder what would happen if the world somehow managed to boycott Google, Facebook and Amazon as a protest against privacy issues and anti-competitive practices by these cos.

We already have the alternatives ready, network effects so strong smh

</comment><comment><USER5> I am a privacy conscious person, I've been using the Here We Go app on iOS for directions:

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/here-wego-city- navigation/id...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/here-wego-city- navigation/id955837609)

It has very cool feature - offline maps. By downloading your state/country's maps, you don't have to query a server for every little mapping request.

Between this app and saved podcasts, I'm able to switch off my mobile large chunks of the day.

<comment><USER44> How do they make money? Their site seems to point to selling some kind of information to companies:

[https://www.here.com/en/industries/media/advertising](https://www.here.com/en/industries/media/advertising)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Chronicling the sign-in pressure:

[https://twitter.com/ridiculous_fish/status/10389160047204311...](https://twitter.com/ridiculous_fish/status/1038916004720431105)

</comment><comment><USER46> This is not GDPR compliant.

<comment><USER47> Huh, good point!

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I set up a Shortcuts (formerly Workflow) to auto-map to my home address in Directions view, which is far more convenient anyway.

There isn't much point in creating lists of important places within the app because Google can't seem to figure out how to show these to you in fewer than 5 taps/screens. It's crazy when the 3rd party solution can provide more direct access in an app than the app itself.

<comment><USER49> That's quite a clever solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I think I'm going to become an Apple user.

</comment><comment><USER51> FWIW this is not new. This has been the case for the past couple of years at least.

</comment><comment><USER52> You also can't use Google Home to control iot devices (in my case just a wifi plug) without having that setting enabled. I know most folks concerned about this tracking wouldn't have a Google Home anyway, but it was annoying to me ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment><comment><USER53> I won't give them my home address any way. If I want directions to "my house", I google an address on a block down the street.

<comment> ux-app they still know where you live. Your phone stops moving for 8 hours in the same spot every night. That's where you live. Unless you also leave your phone in a neighbor's letter box in which case you fooled 'em good.

<comment><USER54> Sure, they know but they're putting usability behind "accept us tracking everything" for anyone who has "opted out of tracking" several years ago. Basically they're turning off more and more usability so that they can get you to accept their tracking agreement.

They do this with btle as well, you have to turn on location services because they can't bother to randomize bluetooth tags (like apple) and want this setting on all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'm pretty sure it's been like this for a while though. I distinctly remember going through that when I was moving recently.

</comment><comment><USER56> This is not very least-privilege of them. I would measure a company's trust based on the error:

      |whatTheyAskFor - whatTheyNeed|/whatTheyNeed.

This number should be << 1\. Being error-prone doesn't make you look very good. Stop asking for more than you need, it shows that you don't really care about your customers. You look less competent when you require more permissions than you need to accomplish a task. Don't do that.

</comment><comment><USER57> I stopped updating the 2 remaning Google applications on my phone - apart from the damned play services, let's not even go there -: maps and translate.

Maps is at 8.4.1[^1]. Before 9, it all worked reasonably, it wasn't giving me the creepy "Are you at ?" push notification, it all just worked. Yes, it's most probably still tracking me, but at least it not _that_ annoying as the new ones.

Translate is at 3.0.12[^2]. v4 was the "let's use AI". What happened in reality: offline translation, english to chinese, v3, 2014: people more or less understood after looking at it long enough. v4, 2016: blank stares at the text, then they gave us Baidu translate. Comparing the 3 things - v3, v4, baidu - v3 and baidu had some resemblance, , v4 was something completely unrelated.

I've seen software "evolving" for 25+ years now, and I'm pretty certain each and every piece of it has a pinnacle, when functionality meets (learnable) usability. After that it's first too many functions, than dumped down interface with not enough functions, then "AI" and non-functioning functionality. There's nearly never a OK, let's take a step back, which is so desperately needed.

As a result, I decided to stop updating some of my software, because it won't get any better for a very long while.

[^1]: [https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google- inc/maps/maps-8-4-1-5-r...](https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google- inc/maps/maps-8-4-1-5-release/) [^2]: [https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google- inc/translate/translate...](https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google- inc/translate/translate-3-0-12-3-release/)

</comment><comment> raffael-vogler What is your Google Maps alternative of choice for Android?

I wish OsmAnd ([https://osmand.net/](https://osmand.net/)) would be more interactive on the map and complete regarding addresses. For example if I want to know which bus or subway to take to get from A to B in Hamburg I always have to resort to Maps.

<comment><USER58> I like Maps.me [https://maps.me/](https://maps.me/) because it works offline and I can easily add markers to it, which are saved to a simple XML file on the phone (so it means even the app disappear, I can move them to another app). I also like that I can correct or add new places via my openstreetmap.com account.

It's based on OpenStreetMap and is reasonably accurate. The main disadvantage is that search is not that great but you get use to it once you know what it works and doesn't work with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I realized all this when google made my android phone practically useless [ back in the day when play store was markets ], those days google maps worked like a charm on edge connection, only showed as much info needed and there was no such thing as google play services.

I had used that phone, and then google started pushing play services, play store into my phone.

the market app would not download any app without being transformed into the play store app which would require google play services.

These took space on my phone, and the phone did not have space to even save sms.

Installing, side loading apks and all is fine but you don't and can't tell your parents in a 3rd world country.

It became horrible one day when I wanted to just run android market on my phone and google forced to download play store, play services, and market transformed into play store and it took more than 100 MiB data. I was trying to show my parents as to how to download something from market, etc. whatsapp was becoming popular in my town. It was horrible because 100Mib of data costs money and screen flashed twice.

Then I had to give up. I had not got much money at that time.

Now, what I do.

I make an obscure email account [not gmail] on yahoo or ms or any tuta and make a google account using that email [ not gmail ] and you can keep changing the google' account email.

Google tracks your location, but it also correlates your location against your emails [ it never stopped reading emails ], don't use gmail at all.

You cannot avoid tracking of location, but you can avoid cross check of tracking info with your gmail content.

The gmail which is use actually is never synced to any device [ have deleted all the my activity permissions ] and I have turned up forwarding from gmail to a certain address which I open using firefox klar once a day.

Summary :

DO NOT USE THE SAME GOOGLE ACCOUNT FOR GMAIL AND ALL OTHER GOOGLE SERVICES.

</comment><comment><USER60> From my experience, multiple companies have caught on and are doing this.

\- NVidia: Block their telemetry, and their driver installer will block, even if you downloaded that massive driver package.

\- Microsoft: Block their telemetry and some aspects of XBox One will break, including the Windows-10 streaming of the XBox. I found this to not be consistently true, so I am not sure what is going on behind the scene.

\- Occulus Rift: You can't even block this telemetry. It's in the same app flow as the headset. If you block the telemetry to Facebook, the headset won't even work.

I predict that more and more companies will move critical services to the same DNS name or IP that their telemetry are using.

</comment><comment><USER61> They've been doing that quite a while now. Funnily, they still let me use my workplace, (sometimes) but never my home address.

Just more incentive to move away from Google (which is sad, because the services are great; I'd even pay for them!)

</comment><comment><USER62> Why would you want to let them know where you live or work in the first place?

<comment><USER63> For me, it was so that when I'm somewhere I don't know, I can type 'home' into the maps search box and get directions.

I turned off Google's activity tracking on iOS a couple of months ago, and only realised that Google Maps wasn't storing my home location when I used it for directions while stuck in traffic and it sent me to a nearby nursing home instead of my house.

I ended up turning activity tracking back on, because Apple maps still isn't fit for purpose where I live (Ireland). I often need directions down small rural roads, and four times out of five Apple Maps won't recognise the destination address, or will send me to a nearby but incorrect location.

<comment><USER64> Have you tried HERE?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I thought this was already the case for years. If you use android and have a google account setup, which is essential to downloading apps, it already tracks the user in the map app.

</comment><comment><USER66> Another one is if you remove body sensor permission for Google play services. Once you do that, Maps will keep on showing an error notification every few minutes.

</comment><comment><USER67> I've switched to the Vivaldi browser after all these privacy undermining "features" Google has been rolling out.

But I am happy Android now allows setting your own DNS - you are no longer restricted to Google DNS. I am waiting for X-Privacy to be made available for Android 9.

Apple products are not an option for me. It's Linux, Windows and Android in my world.

</comment><comment><USER68> I made a similar remark here [0] about how disabling search history means Google Maps can't even save locally your search history on Google Maps.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17779757](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17779757)

</comment><comment><USER69> I noticed this a few weeks back, when I disabled all tracking. The easy solution on Android was to have two shortcuts, one to home and one to work. That's ignoring the fact that I am still using Android and probably I am still being tracked some way.

</comment><comment><USER70> Anyone would think that Google want to track you wouldn't they. Oh wait...

</comment><comment><USER71> On Osmand, saving one's home address, or any place for that matter, is easily done by clicking on the star button. One can categorize places if they want to.

This is stored offline on the device.

</comment><comment><USER72> The big question for Google: What revenue stream lies beyond ads? What else could you make money off to inspire again? Rather then just selling out your users on a daily basis.

<comment><USER73> Their cloud business doubles every year. Play & hardware are also considerable now: [https://qz.com/1334369/alphabet-q2-2018-earnings-google- is-m...](https://qz.com/1334369/alphabet-q2-2018-earnings-google-is-more-than- just-advertising-now/)

<comment><USER72> Their cloud business is tiny compared to Amazon and Microsoft. They are a little late to that party. Play store is interesting and not much competition at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Google has gone rogue...

</comment><comment><USER75> Looks like google has hit a gold mine with some algorithm to better sell ads or is under pressure from competitors (Facebook) to gather more data than they have currently.

Their lack of presence in social media will hurt them in the long term. In Facebook you upload pictures, you like stuff, you spend more time on someone's profile, you hover more on an ad even if you don't click all these while you are logged in. Google doesn't have that graph unless they link gmail with search. No one logs into Google search and give their identity, but we do pretty much the same in Facebook.

<comment><USER76> >you upload pictures, you like stuff, you spend more time on someone's profile >Google doesn't have that graph

Google has that information from the contacts of all Android phones, Google Photos, etc. Granted they don't probably have the information from iPhones, but then a lot of people don't have or use their FB account too.

> No one logs into Google search and give their identity

No one here. Most of the non-tech people (and some tech people) do log into Chrome and Google account, which means they are logged into Search too.

<comment><USER75> > Google has that information from the contacts of all Android phones

Not really. Manufacturers like Xiaomi (and I believe Samsung) use their own cloud to sync stuff.

> "Most of the non-tech people (and some tech people) do log into Chrome and > Google account"

That is the recent change right? Like said, google seems desperate to get into that information graph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Sincere question about activity controls: What stops Google from collecting my web and app activity anyway even if I explicitly turn it off on my dashboard?

</comment><comment><USER78> I've seen a lot of outrage at Google's practices over the previous 2 weeks. Has Google actually reversed course on any of their decisions?

</comment><comment><USER79> But google are great. This is a feature of their online service. They need all your information in order to sell it so others can search and find it.

Or something.

<comment><USER35> If your argument starts with "sell your information"-like FUD, it's difficult to take anything you say serious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> I wonder how many people have died in car accidents while trying to type their home address because of this while driving.

<comment><USER81> Not even joking, I rear ended someone while trying to dismiss the "USE OUR APP" popup that comes when you navigate via maps.google.com instead of the phone app.

<comment><USER82> I have been using OsmAnd~ [0] lately and have been pretty happy with it as an alternative. Uses open street maps, works offline, pretty good and configurable app.

[0] [https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.osmand.plus/](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.osmand.plus/)

<comment><USER83> The big issue preventing me from using something like OsmAnd is my need for real-time traffic. Generally, I can figure out where a place is with only the address since the N-S streets in my city are numbered and the first digits of an address on a cross-street corresponds to the numbered Avenues. Traffic, OTOH, can easily vary by 30 minutes on a 15 mile trip day to day even without any crashes along the route.

Is there an open, or at least more private, app that can give me accurate traffic data?

<comment><USER84> Maps.me, which also uses OpenStreetMap data, can show live traffic info. Not sure where they get the data from or whether it's accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Disable auto translation of reviews in Google maps is also another anti- feature that for no reason requires sign in.

</comment><comment><USER85> First politician to seriously stand behind breaking up big web/data-collecting giants gets my vote.

</comment><comment><USER86> Pretty much. Companies are good until they star leveraging their market position. Either you give us everything, or you can't do basic things.

A work around was to create a G Maps link on my phone with directions to an address (e.g., home).

But honestly, I took the plunge and carry around a feature phone now. Haven't missed the smartphone much.

</comment><comment><USER49> Its why I've never logged into Google Maps on my iPhone and I never will.

</comment><comment><USER87> This has been like this for years. I always thought it was kind of scammy

</comment><comment><USER88> Wait... What? You don't mind telling Google where your home is, but you mind it tracking your online activity? Shouldn't home address be more sensitive?

<comment><USER89> For many of us home address is not very sensitive information. What we do online can be.

It's not just what Google knows about you. If your account is compromised, attacker may be able to download all historicsl information and share it with everybody.

<comment><USER35> Why not use client-side encryption for all that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Google is on a roll lately...

<comment><USER91> or hacker news is :)

Besides Chrome 69, issues like this are not new, we are just taking a moment of "wait a minute, Google is bad? they also did X, Y, Z in the past"

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> The banality of Google.

</comment><comment><USER93> Any good un-Googling tips for someone stuck with an Android phone, Moto G4?

<comment><USER57> It's harder than it looks.

In theory, there's microg, in reality, if you do a complete un-googling, most push notifications won't come through.

If you do want to try it:

\- factory reset the phone to get rid of any google accounts

\- root the phone

\- get "System app remover (ROOT)"[^1]

\- remove all google applications, except google play services and framework

\- reboot

\- remove remaining google applications

\- reboot

\- get xposed[^2] and fakegapps[^3] and hope it works

\- get microG[^4], maybe through nanodroid[^5]

\- pray for it to work

I managed to get this running once, not ever again on a marshmallow based devices, and even when it did, push notification were a lottery, they may or may not work.

[^1]: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jumobile.m...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jumobile.manager.systemapp&hl=en_US) [^2]: [http://repo.xposed.info/](http://repo.xposed.info/) [^3]: [http://repo.xposed.info/module/com.thermatk.android.xf.fakeg...](http://repo.xposed.info/module/com.thermatk.android.xf.fakegapps) [^4]: [https://microg.org/](https://microg.org/) [^5]: [https://nanolx.org/nanolx/nanodroid](https://nanolx.org/nanolx/nanodroid)

<comment><USER93> Thanks, but I was more thinking along the lines of installing a new OS (Linux) and running Android apps (e.g. for banking) in a sandbox. Is that possible?

<comment><USER57> Not at this point in time, as far as I'm aware.

I've been trying to do this on my linux, so far, I failed; all the android emulators are extremely slow.

<comment><USER93> Okay, thanks. I might buy an Apple phone then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> Time to give Bing a chance.

</comment><comment><USER95> There was a lot of uproar about this internally but nothing changed. They told us that this was the only "practical" option.

The company has rotted.

<comment><USER96> From the outside, it seems to have reached a tipping point in the past year that is now getting quite dramatic. A whole string of heavy-handed, anti-user, and privacy-hostile decisions. What just happened to the culture that would allow all this evil behavior? Or did we misunderstand it all along?

<comment><USER97> > Or did we misunderstand it all along?

I think yes. Google has been considered "evil" by the tinfoil hat crowd for quite some time, and once again it has become apparent to the mainstream that they were right.

<comment><USER98> Google died when Smith said you have no privacy now[0]. Well I have no Google now. Fallback almost never used.

[0] can't find actual quote, did I dream?

Quoth: "We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about"

<comment><USER36> You didn't dream: [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/04/google_ericisms/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/04/google_ericisms/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Ah, the 'good' old Google. I'd say choose a different service, but not that there is a viable choice.

</comment><comment><USER100> Just the tip bro.

</comment><comment><USER101> In the meantime, there is still a lack of interest in my essay on this.

<comment><USER102> And the link to your essay is ... where?

<comment><USER101> [http://yuhongbao.blogspot.com/2018/09/google-doubleclick- moz...](http://yuhongbao.blogspot.com/2018/09/google-doubleclick-mozilla- overview_92.html)

<comment><USER102> You wrote an interesting blogpost, but I think its a stretch to say this relates. Your essay is about click tracking and ads, and social media tracking.

The prime issue under discussion here is that google demands you turn on location tracking to use a feature, not that they do any kind of clicktrails.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Observatory of Economic Complexity - <AUTHOR> http://atlas.media.mit.edu/

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I compared China's imports from 2001 to imports from 2011. Quite revealing how much infrastructure they built. In 2001 imports mainly consist of parts and China acts as an assembly line. Cathode tubes make up 1.25% of all imports revealing somewhat outdated tech base. Contrastingly in 2011, focus shifted on importing basic materials and producing things internally with great increase in imports of energy and foodstuffs.

Pretty awesome how you can illustrate technological progress of the country by imports/exports.

</comment><comment><USER3> According to this, the US exports integrated circuits, telephones, digital disk drives, electrical control boards, and semiconductor devices.

If this is the case, why are most of the electronics we see in the US made in Asia / China?

<comment><USER4> Maybe what we export is already saturated here, but a technological step above what's needed elsewhere to develop the economies that need them...no amount of money can cause those items to be manufactured in the markets that are importing them.

While unsaturated U.S. market segments need cheap goods so China makes electronic items and ships them here at a lower price than can be made domestically...often using the higher end equipment we exported to them.

Also...final assembly of an item is sometimes labeled as "made in"...even if all the parts that go in aren't from there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Germany is both a big importer and a big exporter of dairy products. I guess this indicates that there isn't any substantial cost associated with cross border trading of these products?

<comment><USER6> Within the EU, there is essentially zero cost for any cross border trading at all, you can move your stuff freely between countries, and money transfer is also essentially free, especially within the euro zone.</comment></comment>