Canadians need to get angry about government spying revelations - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.montrealgazette.com/2013/09/19/canadians-need-to-get-angry-about-government-spying-revelations/

<comment><AUTHOR> Some things I have been able to dig up.

In his final report to Parliament, commissioner Robert Decary says some of the spying at Communications Security Establishment Canada may have affected Canadians in the past year. However, thanks to poor record-keeping, Mr. Decary – a retired judge who has been the agency's independent watchdog since 2010 – said he can't be sure.[1]

CSEC is forbidden from intentionally collecting or analyzing information from Canadian citizens in Canada or abroad. However, the National Defence Act allows the defence minister to give CSEC written ministerial authorization to intercept private communications unintentionally while collecting foreign- signals intelligence.[1]

Doesn't this contradict with the Canadian Privacy Act?

Yet, while Mr. Binney compliments the surveillance acumen of Communications Security Establishment Canada, he also urged the Canadian public to scrutinize CSEC – especially given its long-standing close ties to the NSA. "They have integrated reps," he said, referring to how the agencies swap personnel. He pointed out that they also share technology, such as a very powerful, recently revealed Internet-surveillance tool, code-named "XKeyscore." "CSEC does not direct its activities at Canadians and is prohibited by law from doing so," its chief, John Forster, said in a rare public statement. Yet, records recently obtained by The Globe show that CSEC has been developing its own secretive programs to "incidentally" monitor at least some Canadian telecommunications traffic.[2]

Some of Mr. Snowden's leaks speak to the NSA's close relationship with CSEC – suggesting, for example, that the two agencies teamed up to spy on foreign diplomats at a 2009 G20 meeting in London, and may have also been in cahoots to install a back door to spy on encrypted messages on the Internet in 2006.[2]

At the time, Canada's Communications Security Establishment ran the standards process for the international organization, but classified documents describe how ultimately the N.S.A. seized control. "After some behind-the-scenes finessing with the head of the Canadian national delegation and with C.S.E., the stage was set for N.S.A. to submit a rewrite of the draft," the memo notes. "Eventually, N.S.A. became the sole editor."[3]

So CSEC was being coerced by NSA and completely gave up control. Although I can respect the apparent "restraint" Canadian government has, but clearly system can be abused and will stay way under the radar compared to NSA and GHCQ. [1][http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/watchdog- says-s...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/watchdog-says-spy- agency-might-have-illegally-eavesdropped-on-canadians/article13913875/) [2][http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/beware-of-data- spy...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/beware-of-data-spying- former-nsa-official-warns-canadians/article14430225/) [3][http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/government- announce](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/government-announce)

</comment><comment><USER2> As a Canadian, I'm more angry about the proposed human rights violations in Quebec.

This "charter of values" is blatantly racist.

[http://www.nosvaleurs.gouv.qc.ca/en/propositions/3](http://www.nosvaleurs.gouv.qc.ca/en/propositions/3)

<comment><USER3> Not sure I'd necessarily say racist...

They should simply require all religious jewellery to be hidden/covered up for employees, and not allow covered faces. The ban on turbans and head-scarves is too much though.

It's not as though working FOR the government is some sort of human right...

<comment><USER4> "Not sure I'd necessarily say racist..." "It's not as though working FOR the government is some sort of human right..."

Our Charter clearly states a person can't be judged bases off of sex, race, religion, or sexual orientation. I don't care what you call it, it's fucking wrong. I also don't care where you are from, in Canada, you don't judge people based off those things. Everyone has a right to those jobs, and to all jobs, unless they don't have the _skills_.

<comment><USER3> Since when is covering your face a religious issue?

My wife is Muslim (and black), she doesn't cover her face, nor does any of her family, most of whom have been to Hajj and are quite religious. My wife's face wasn't covered when we were married by a Sunni Imam in a Muslim ceremony.

So is requiring someone's face to be visible a religious issue? A racism issue? What is it? How about tucking in a chain? Does that infringe on someone's religious beliefs?

Should government employees have no dress code? Come in to work wearing a baseball cap?

<comment><USER4> To be entirely honest, I don't really care what your wife wears.

This is an issue regarding The Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada. It is explicit. No discrimination against religious beliefs. What constitutes a belief shouldn't be up to the Government to dictate, unless that belief may cause harm to an individual or those around them.

I don't really see how this is hard to understand. Be accepting, and don't judge people. It has the happy side effect of making you a better person, too.

(Note, I'm not religious at all. I'm here advocating based entirely on my belief that we have an amazing Charter of Rights)

<comment><USER3> > No discrimination against religious beliefs. What constitutes a belief > shouldn't be up to the Government to dictate, unless that belief may cause > harm to an individual or those around them.

So police and government officials shouldn't be able to identify someone wearing a Niqab? Hiding one's identity is a safety issue, and harm could follow...

I fully agree with the rest BTW, but you do need to realize, there are unsavoury practices around the world that are justified by 'religious' belief...

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure how wearing a Niqab while doing your desk job somehow constitutes a security risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Most Canadians I know have fallen prey to the "I have nothing to hide" fallacy. Those who have not seem discouraged/depressed about trying to hold back the tide of governmental privacy invasion AND/OR focusing all their attention on more visible issues like oil pipelines | religious symbols | taxation...

<comment><USER7> There is an easy way to dispel the "I have nothing to hide" fallacy. Ask them how much money they made last year, how long their penis is, and what medication they are currently on.

Then inform them that you don't have the power to imprison them but the government does.

I have successfully changed the mind of a dozen people in about 90 seconds. You have to shock people out of their stupor.

<comment><USER8> Since I am in the < 25 years age category, I tend to hit them where it huts the most. Here is what a usual conversation goes like:

Me: You should care about these things. X: But I have got nothing to hide! I don't care. (Then I get the look, "Do you have something to hide?") Me: OK. Since you have nothing to hide, please give me your Facebook password so that I can go through your FB inbox. Also, your Gmail and Skype passwords would be good to have, since you have nothing to hide.

Never fails to work.

I think the issue is that people tend to place certain "trust" with the government and that their information won't be misused and have this notion that the government can't do no wrong. But they tend to forget that there are people in a government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Us Canadians aren't too prone to getting angry about politics, though we certainly should shine more light about the issue, and maybe take away Steven Harper's majority if they don't respect our wishes.

At least we have a (mostly) functional political system, with viable 3rd parties, better representation, etc... Harper has to call elections by 2015 I believe, and it wouldn't be a stretch for an NDP-Bloc-Green coalition to form a government...

Steven Harper is my MP, maybe I'll send him an email.

Edit - also seems as though current polls show a slim lead for the Liberals...

<comment><USER9> I think that's a negative, in a way (the not being too angry or upset on politics). It seems not a lot of us (the general Canadian population) cares, or even understands what's going on.

Everyone I talk to is either too ignorant about international, or even domestic affairs, or simply responds with "uhuh," or "meh." People don't seem to truly understand what kind of effect this has. Not only on people's privacy, but on the ultimate government control. If nobody responds, it basically gives the government a green light to do it again, and again.

I'd disagree with our "functional political system." There's so many systems in-place that warrant a conservative behaviour. Such as the vote of non- confidence, first-past the post, no set terms or set maximum time in office, etc... It encourages the government to only act in their best interest. Only being interested in staying in office. Thus, potentially controversial or progressive bills would be worthless to make. So they do the same "safe" thing.

I would also argue that we have really bad representation (not relative to any other country - just an absolute bad). Some have proposed other voting systems such as proportional representation. But this creates even more problems, such as common coalition, which I wouldn't classify as a good thing.

But perhaps this is only because I'm ready for a lot of change in how things work, and not always acting on the status-quo. It seems the only way to really fix things, is to radically change a slew of systems - which most likely won't happen.

<comment><USER10> It's infuriating how passive Canadians can be. The answer I hate the most when I get worked up over privacy issues is "Well we all knew this was happening". I just wanna tell them "enjoy your Nazi Canada then", but somehow I feel that might not exactly win them over to my argument either.

Sorry for venting, I haven't been able to discuss politics or anything of consequence in a critical way with a real-live person for quite some time.

<comment><USER9> haha. I feel the same way :). I find privacy, for the majority of the people, is a non concern. They love their little lives, with a job, paying taxes, and living. The government doesn't exactly encourage participation, they'd love to hide these things. The more people participate, the less likely they'll be able to get away with it.

It's quite disappointing here that not many people care. I find it appalling, and ignorant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Since Canada, Australia, NZ and UK are part of the 5 eyes alliance obviously our agencies are just as rogue and illegal as the NSA. This is precisely why they dissolved the CSIS/CSE watchdog authority so they could spy on us unhindered

<comment><USER12> <I>This is precisely why they dissolved the CSIS/CSE watchdog authority so they could spy on us unhindered</I>

Well, that's factually incorrect since the Security Intelligence Review Committee oversees CSIS [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Intelligence_Review_Co...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Intelligence_Review_Committee). And there have been several hearings to which Richard Fadden has testified in front of MPs.

However, it's worth pointing out that SIRC's credibility is shot with the appointment of people like Arthur Porter.

<comment><USER11> They axed the Inspector General of CSIS who was critical of their escalating privacy violations and cut the position permanently

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't know aboot 'angry' but there should be defined laws on the books about what organizations (i.e. anti-keystone ppl) get placed under added scrutiny. Also, some of the ways attempted recently to garner support for internet censorship have also been somewhat offbeat. But they are at the vangaurd of things, pretty important stuff.

</comment><comment><USER14> Both the NSA and CSE claim to avoid gathering data on their own citizens, yet there's unprecedented sharing of information going on between the "5 eyes" agencies, so those assurances have little practical value.</comment>


AI will jeopardize entry level software engineer jobs - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/22/jack-dorsey-ai-will-jeopardize-entry-level-software-engineer-jobs.html <comment><USER2> "Our analysis shows that workers with graduate or professional degrees will be almost four times as exposed to AI as workers with just a high school degree. Holders of bachelor's degrees will be the most exposed by education level, more than five times as exposed to AI than workers with just a high school degree,".

This is surprising.

</comment><comment><USER3> People tend to overestimate effect of technology in the short run and underestimate its effect on the long term.

IMO - Even with all the progress, it is early days for AI and ML. We will feel the full impact in 10+ years</comment>


Senate Embarrasses Themselves in Facebook Hearing - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-A84_Y4D50 <comment><USER2> I agree with Cenk. There were actually quite few "bad" questions, even those that for some have "obvious" answers.

The bigger issue is that in some cases the questions were a bit too general, which allowed Zuckerberg to respond to them while actually dodging giving the right answer.

Like for instance, the senator Ana thinks embarrassed himself the most, was trying to figure out just how much Facebook allows users to delete the data the company has _collected on them_ or data the users have given to third- party developers. But Zuckerberg is pretending to be dumb and not fully understand the question and says "but Senator, we already allow you to delete the data!"

But we know Zuckerberg is being misleading there. Facebook doesn't allow you to delete all the data _they_ have on you. They allow you delete the data you've posted online yourself at most (and maybe some other interactions on the platform, but it definitely doesn't include data gotten from cookie tracking and whatnot).

The Senate questions were actually pretty good. It's the House questions that I found much more boring/uninteresting and repetitive. I think the biggest mistake the House members made and also a bit the senators was to confuse advertisers with third-party developers.

So they kept asking questions about Facebook "giving/selling data to advertisers" when Facebook is mostly doing that with third-party developers, and they are the ones actually _getting_ your data. Also, Facebook has been sharing _your_ data with data brokers, but almost nobody asked the right questions about that.

And when someone did, Zuckerberg again dodged easily saying "we've ended those partnerships" but there was no follow-up asking what happened to all the data they've given them for years, which was very disappointing to see.</comment>


Low incidence of smokers among hospitalized Covid patients - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2020/04/24/can-nicotine-treat-covid-19-french-researchers-think-so/ <comment><USER2> I'd be willing to bet that it's not nicotine itself, but something else in tobacco smoke. Hell, it might even be the tar for all we know. Would love to see the research results.</comment>


IOS Hat – turn Photoshop layers into Objective-C - <AUTHOR> http://ioshat.madebysource.com/

<comment><USER2> I recently bought the "Chuck Norris Backpack". Will this be included with my already purchased bundle?</comment>


The buying binge is over (will it impact ad market and startups?) - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/15/news/economy/colvin_buyingbinge.fortune/index.htm <comment><USER2> Robert Shiller was talking about this too, yesterday: [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july- dec07/jitters_1...](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july- dec07/jitters_10-16.html) (scroll down to the part starting "Public confidence in the economy").</comment>


Ask HN: What would a "better" LinkedIn look like? - <AUTHOR> I am working on a side project - a cleaner, better version of LinkedIn. Curious to know what "features" would you want to see in such an application. <comment><USER2> The functionality that linkedin has is sufficient in my opinion. It is the way in which people use it that has decreased its value for me. It has simply become a B2B/P2P marketing platform. Ultimately things like FB, Linkedin, etc... will fade out due to it not being focused enough.They will keep generating ad revenue, HR, sales/marketing departments but there will be better solutions for professionals. I think over the next several years there will be industry specific solutions that prove to be more effective.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ultimately you just don't like their UI, and want to experiment with making it better. Just do that.

</comment><comment><USER4> Angel.co is on its way to compete with linked in ..check out features its been adding</comment>


The 6 Month Startup Challenge – From 0 to $100,000 in Annual Revenue - <AUTHOR> http://iamkenrogers.com/2015/01/23/startup-challenge/

<comment><USER2> I am looking forward to following you, though it seems a bit naive, especially the statement: "If done properly, building a SaaS application can provide an extremely lucrative business without killing the creator with 80 hour work weeks, my goal is to do exactly that".

But good luck :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm realizing just how naive it was the further I get in the process :) Definitely a lot of challenges I hadn't expected and a lot of mistakes I've already made even this short of time into it. The biggest has been not doing enough research into my target market and application. Right now it's looking like my original idea isn't going to be a viable product, so I'm going to be switching to a new application idea, this time with much more research involved.</comment></comment>


Saving the World from Spreadsheets [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyWKxFxyyrQ <comment><USER2> i love the views into the audience :-)

more on topic, without having seen the whole youtube movie: [https://datavizproject.com/](https://datavizproject.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice Abom79 t-shirt.</comment>


Histography – Timeline of History - <AUTHOR> http://histography.io/ <comment><USER2> no firefox support, great.</comment>


Prostate Cancer Foundation Response Statement to Reddit (Donation) Post - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcf.org/site/c.leJRIROrEpH/b.9200789/k.C50B/Prostate_Cancer_Foundation_Response_Statement_to_Reddit_Post.htm

<comment><USER2> Which post is this?</comment>


Hewlett-Packard ships official HP 15c app for Android - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hp.hp15c15

<comment><AUTHOR> The _Voyager_ calculator platform, a revered and cherished tool for many a STEM graybeard, has been reincarnated by HP via an official application on the Android platform with the recent release of the "HP 15c Scientific Calulator." The asking price, while high compared to most mobile applications, is in line with the better HP-11/15/16 and (cough) 12c emulators in the Play store, and one-tenth the asking price of used specimens on the open market. During and since their reign, many owners would attest that these units were among the best designed devices of all time. Long live the King!

</comment><comment><USER2> For $16.99?! That's more than one of their printer cartridges!

<comment><USER3> And it will never run out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why are there so many calculator apps? They all do the same.. asside of the various bugs they have.

I use realcalc all the time: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.nickfine...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.nickfines.RealCalcPlus)</comment>


1Password 4.2 for iOS gets huge update to browser, sharing features - <AUTHOR> http://blog.agilebits.com/2013/05/13/1password-4-2-for-ios-gets-huge-update-to-browser-sharing-features/ <comment><USER2> I've been shopping for a password keeper with Google Drive sync support. Does 1Password have that? Would anyone recommend any other software over 1Password?

<comment><USER3> You can store the key chain anywhere on disk, so you could store that in your Google Drive sync folder. The only different to Dropbox, is that 1Password automatically appears to scan for the key chain in your Dropbox folder. With IOS support though, I don't think that the location is configurable.</comment></comment>


US government is 'ignorant of technology', say Huawei bosses - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/16/spying-claims-show-us-is-ignorant-of-technology-say-huawei-bosses <comment><USER2> This is probably the most convincing line of argument against as-yet unsubstantiated claims by the US that Huawei is an arm of the Chinese government. It's probably a distraction--the folks doing the actual research within the US's TLAs almost certainly include some highly competent people-- but the leadership have practically set themselves up for this sort of ad hominem-yet-accurate attack.

</comment><comment><USER3> Has anybody checked all the code from Huawei that ends up vetted on its way into the Linux Kernel?

As far as institutional code contributors go, they're climbing. Theyre not quite Red Hat or Intel, but theyre certainly beating out any other primarily- phone manufacturer.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fact check: true.</comment>


Silicon Valley's Unchecked Arrogance - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-development-set/silicon-valley-s-unchecked-arrogance-d86cbb8db52#.sd0agldqx <comment><USER2> Entrepreneurs may only solve problems that they understand, but VCs only fund entrepreneurs they understand. There is far more monoculture around investment than entrepreneurs. The biggest challenge is access to capital. while entrepreneurs are trying to create the next snapchat there are entrepreneurs who are trying to create driverless tractors, but one group is going to have a far easier time accessing capital so you see survivor bias.

Non-standard areas need to show returns to investors, but that's hard when they don't have access to capital. So the story goes that only certain kinds of investments are VC backable. We're starting to see some shift in the food and ag space, but it's slow.

When we look back ten years from now we'll realize that a few sectors were over invested in, but overall we mere massively underinvesting in innovation.</comment>


Ask HN: What tools are you using to manage large scale AWS instances/services - <AUTHOR>

WHat do you use to manage tens, hundreds or thousands of instances on AWS?<p>What do you think is your most important tools for doing this? <comment><USER2> Hi,

we used Scalarium from Peritor, which is now AWS OpsWorks, and this worked very well for us.

You basically create CHEF-scripts to define type of servers and group different types of servers to clouds (e.g. web server, DB server, load balancer, monitoring server, app server, memcached server etc.).

Once this is done you can easily start/stop instances either manually or automatically triggered by an event (time-/load-based).

We managed 500+ servers with this solution.

If you don't like AWS OpsWorks, you can still use Chef or any of the other IT- Automation-Tools (puppet, vagrant, ...)

Best Thorsten

</comment><comment> benji-york At work I'm helping build Juju, which is Canonical's cloud management system. If you're using Linux it might appeal to you. A demo of the GUI service management tool is up at [https://jujucharms.com/sidebar/](https://jujucharms.com/sidebar/).

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm interested in this as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm too :)</comment>


DUB - DENIM : An Informal Tool For Early Stage Web Site and UI Design - <AUTHOR> http://dub.washington.edu:2007/projects/denim/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is actually a really old tool, but I submitted it because it implements some solutions to the problems outlined in another recent submission: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5076858>

DENIM isn't exactly a wireframing tool though. It's more of a site concept development tool. I always felt like many of the ideas were great though, and with the widespread adoption of tablets, it seems like DENIM's second coming would make a lot of sense. We just need a tablet version.</comment>


McDonald's Universal Icons for 109 Countries [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.enlaso.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/McDibaks-Nutrition-Icons-Case-Study.pdf <comment><USER2> The older I get, the more I'm convinced that icons are not a terribly good way to convey information. Some things and concepts, sure. Others, not so much. Especially in technology and science.

Navigation can make good use of icons. Left, right, up, down, start, stop, these kinds of things can be learned and used widely. Somethings like text manipulation icons, cursors, insertions, selections, can be used effectively, but can be surprisingly hard to explain or even describe. Icons for operations can be really tough. Right now as I look at my computer I can see a library of arcane and archaic imagery. Telephones, disks, pen nibs, VCR controls (navigation, sort of), little boxes with arrows, little boxes overlapping, deadbolt locks, paper airplanes, file folders, fluffy clouds, paperclips, and of course little hamburgers.

These can certainly be useful clues, but they also can be very confusing. I've seen paint brushes used to indicate a paint brush in a paint program, but I've also seen the exact same icon used to indicate a screen refresh. Now I'm at as much a loss as anyone to come up with a good substitute, although I will note that I can't imagine any _good_ circumstances when a user needs to be in charge of refreshing the screen.

These days I'm using a lot of 3D software, and the user interfaces are a crust of complicated and indecipherable icons. And that's just the top layer of the UI. Almost all of them rely on a text/label system and hot keys for doing much of the work. Discoverability is essentially zero and the only way to get good is to learn the words and the alphabet. Pros end up _hiding_ most of the UI.

Sometimes a word is worth a thousand pictures.

The only one of the icons in the link that make much sense is the one with kcal on it. Unless I dealt, in detail, with these everyday, I'd never remember what the rest stood for. Something like this may make a lot of sense for the people that produce the labels, but I'm unconvinced it does anything good for those who need to _read_ the labels. Word labels in the intended reader's language is almost certainly the best way to go for actual use.

<comment><USER3> A heretical opinion, but one I agree with. I feel like the success of iOS and Android proves that the world of windows and icons from desktop computers was fine for nerds but ultimately a failure for mainstream use.

hell, just look at fabric instruction icons… [https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a0/6b/b9/a06bb91bc...](https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a0/6b/b9/a06bb91bc2c8ac51d6f0e635943c3dc2.jpg)

<comment><USER4> The only people who feel it's heretical are designers with too little experience.

Very few people would insist these icons were good design: [http://i.imgur.com/W6pWibe.png](http://i.imgur.com/W6pWibe.png)

Unlabeled icons are an antipattern in all but a handful of cases.

<comment><USER5> What you saw isn't actually bad, because - unlike the current icon storm on mobile - each icon on that screenshot has _a tooltip_. Hovering a mouse over a button and waiting for a tooltip is one of the most basic computer use skills. And if you have that, then icons suddenly have a better value proposition.

Not that I personally like icons. I feel I can pattern-match a word faster than I can pattern-match an icon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Except for calories, I would not be able to understand what means the information on nutrient icons without having the corresponding word next to it.

<comment><USER7> From TFA:

> "We realize that some of the visuals may not already be strongly linked in > consumer minds to the nutrient they are meant to depict in all markets."

> "We intend to promote understanding of the images through supporting > materials in Europe, from web sites to images explained on tray liners and > via in-store displays," ...

> "After repeated exposure to these images, customers should eventually grasp > their meaning, with or without printed labels next to them."

<comment><USER8> What I found most interesting was not the rather meaningless icon choices, but the incredibly deceptive dotted line seen on page 12. It's basically anchoring people in a meaningless way such that not everything seems bad.

Without the line it's like 50% more sodium relative to the number of calories I am eating. That's terrible. With the line ehh, I guess everything looks ok.

<comment><USER9> The line simply shows one third of your recommended daily allowance (based of the somewhat popular notion of "three square meals a day" I imagine). If anything it's useful.

A single serving that breaches the line should be treated with caution, making it straightforward to understand which foods are contributing disproportionately to your daily allowance.

<comment><USER8> Consider your looking at fries and it's 30% of your daily sodium intake which is below the line. But, it's only 10% of your daily calorie intake because it's a side for one meal. In that context it's sodium relative to calories that's important or sodium in combination with the rest of your meal. In none of those cases is a line at 33.3% useful for anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Whenever issues like this come up, I like to refer to the WIPP report on how to identify waste containment plants for 10,000 years.

[http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%...](http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%20message%20to%2012,000%20a_d.htm)

In the end, it was determined that there was no guarantee that a re- established civilization could grasp what we were trying to say, and that perhaps just an area earning a reputation as cursed, via attribution of visitors, would be the best deterrent.

Therefore, I would submit: "These are not foods of honor. No highly held nutritional facts are described here. Nothing valued is here."

<comment><USER11> That whole effort was such a waste of time and money. If civilization collapses, what does it matter if the waste storage site is disturbed? It's not like it's going to be a threat to humanity. Without advanced technology, any damage from radioactivity would be limited to the local population.

To extract a large amount of contaminated material and spread it around the world, you would need an advanced technological civilization, which would then be able to detect radioactivity. If anything, a big concentration of it may help accelerate their scientific progress at some point.

<comment><USER12> Well the issue would be that it hurts the local population. And maybe you can prevent them from getting hurt, if you try to come up with a good warning.

<comment><USER11> But there's an opportunity cost. You pay a whole interdisciplinary committee to sit on their asses thinking about it for n weeks (I don't even want to know how long it took). You could take that money and use it on a million other things that would result in a larger reduction of people-getting-hurt.

<comment><USER13> What would that be? Those million other things that prevent people 1000, 2000, 5000 years from now from getting hurt? A good warning seems like a great idea, and low cost, high impact. Problem is, no language has lasted for 10,000 years.

<comment><USER14> Lightning bolts seems like the best thing to use. They're scary and deadly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Okay, I've got a crazy idea. Why not create a combination of words that expresses the thing, instead of these very weird and incomprehensible-at- first-glance icons?

For example, for proteins: the word "protein" is understandable in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Greek and Swedish. The Russian "belok" should be understandable to Polish and Russian speakers, and the Dutch "eiwitten" should be understandable to Dutch and German speakers. Thus, writing "protein/belok/eiwitten" would be understood by almost everyone. "kcal" is even simpler and should be understood by almost everyone everywhere - maybe make it "kcal/calories" for more readability. "salt/sol/αλάτι" should cover everybody as well. Perhaps throw in the Cyrillic as well if McDonalds expects a large amount of uneducated Russians in their restaurants.

You could even put the native language in front to prevent any insult to cultures. Am I crazy, or might this actually work?

<comment><USER16> As a German I would not understand "eiwitten" as "Eiweiß". However, the word "Protein" is also used in Germany as a regular alternative to "Eiweiß".

<comment><USER17> Even weirder, according to the chart on page 5, German seems to be the only one to describe the _kcal_ unit unambiguously as _Kilokalorien_. Where all others go for calorien (Which could either mean the small _cal_ or large calorie _Cal_ / _kcal_ ) or completely unitless with describing it as energy content [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > "We have accomplished our mission: keep the information simple, easy to > understand, language-free and top line."

I find this amusing since the first icon is "kcal"... The information is perhaps too simple, as none of these really lets me know what they mean. Without a legend, I wouldn't know what they mean, and if your icons need a legend, then they really aren't doing their job effectively.

<comment><USER19> Can all things be solely and uniquely communicated by an icon? I'd expect not - it's not so different from the collisions you get with TLAs (Three letter acronyms)

On the other hand, is an icon set successful if you can see the label once and then keep it straight without labels in the future? I'd say so and I think this work gets close to doing that.

<comment><USER20> But if we do that then things could look more like the FDA label and just literally repeat the words "fat", "protein," etc but translated into the local language.

<comment><USER21> err, why would that be desirable? That seems like the worst case scenario, not the best.

<comment><USER20> Because there's no ambiguity. I have no idea what those icons mean except 'cal' or 'kcal', so if I have to look up a legend then to decode it then I might as well have the word in place. A giant table of icons & numbers isn't necessary a better case than a giant table of words that I can read & numbers.

<comment><USER22> I believe half the point was to design for the use-case where you can't fit a "giant table of words [you] can read & numbers." Where currently the nutritional information ends up in restaurants on e.g. a sheet on the wall instead of on your food, or in grocery stores on product bulk packaging (e.g. cardboard boxes that get thrown away, etc.) instead of on the individual product units.

Consider that numbers take up relatively-constant amounts of space, but words for some nutritional concepts in some languages can be _extremely_ long—and mostly you design for this by just requiring the design-element to have a box- size of the widest possible text in the widest language, and then padding the box with empty space almost all of the time.

Removing the words, and just having icons + numbers, allows for a design that can be very "narrow" in horizontal area, taking up a basically-constant amount of space with very little padding, allowing it to fit in many places it currently wouldn't.

<comment><USER20> I would suggest that if it can't currently fit then it needs to be rethought if it should be there at all, especially if abbreviations can't be used in whatever language it's required.

Icons that are impossible to decipher don't improve anything IMHO. Perhaps they should have gone culturally-specific, something with just the first letter, or anything else that people might locally understand if the word absolutely can't be used.

<comment><USER22> Why is it a problem if people can't understand the icons _right now_? The goal is to slap them on everything, everywhere, for decades. Complete, textual nutrition labels will continue existing where they already do. People will make the mental association when they're looking at their food packaging and see the two kinds of labels, with the same numbers between the two.

Is it a problem that the "floppy disk" symbol for saving documents is _now_ meaningless, since floppy disks are dead? Kids who encounter the icon today, just learn the meaning by rote. To them, it's an opaque language element representing a concept—just like, say, Chinese characters. Humans turn out to be okay at just absorbing the associations of an opaque icon over time, without the icon _needing_ to be specifically evocative (skeuomorphic) of anything. It just needs to be unique.

And re: "it needs to be rethought if it should be there at all"—consider, for example, individual-serving yoghurt snack tubes. What's in them? Who knows? The info is on the box, not on the tube. Can you "count calories" on a lunch containing one? Nope, not unless you wrote down the calories from the box when you were at home. Kind of annoying, no?

<comment><USER20> Because these icons are for mcdonalds only. If magically they were universally adopted, then I'd agree. I seriously doubt they will, especially because they're not particularly clear as they currently stand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So the icon for "fat" is a tape-measure, indicating that "fat" is the bad type of calories that makes you fat ... Was this made by designers, or by actual experts? Or is there malice involved here?

<comment><USER24> I noticed that, too. Unfortunately it seems like it's going to take several more years to shake off the aggressive anti-fat lobbying and paid "research" by the sugar industry. Also, I'd imagine McDonalds would be much less willing to warn its customers against their offerings high in sugar or refined carbohydrates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> There are some not so subtle emotional connotations to the icons which make the icons easier to understand/remember but problematic in usage.

Protein is the bottom of a stack -- implies important or less important depending on your personal view point on stacks Fat is a scale, implying an association with weight -- a negative link. Carbs are a gas gauge implying energy -- a positive link.

</comment><comment><USER26> Oh the bike-shedding! The bike-shedding must have been _epic_. You can just feel it oozing out of every line in that doc.

<comment><USER27> It's not bike-shedding when the actual goal of the committee is to determine a color for the bike shed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I frequently travel to non-English speaking countries and am conscious of what I ingest - the attempt to standardize nutrition labeling on an international scale is a great effort!

At this point, no, I don't know what the symbols mean without a legend, but I'm sure at some point in time, not everyone knew that a red octagon on a post means stop.

<comment><USER29> Learning a few words even if you can't speak them is pretty damn simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> > "We have accomplished our mission: keep the information simple, easy to > understand, language-free and top line."

"language-free" by constructing...a language. They even provide a translation dictionary!

</comment><comment><USER31> The only 'icon' I understood what the one with the text in it.

</comment><comment><USER32> McDonalds has a clear conflict of interest in the design of these icons for nutrition information.

<comment><USER33> I laughed out loud that they settled on red for protein and green for carbs. Isn't red=stop, green=go more universal?

<comment><USER22> Relevant line from TFA:

> Some colors were changed because nutritionist feedback identified red with > protein, yellow with fat and green with energy.

Red, I understand. Muscle fibre (what protein builds, in most people's minds) is red. Yellow is fat because fat _is_ , itself—in large enough amounts—a light yellow color. Butter, margarine, liposuction ejecta... etc.

Energy, though, is a bit hard to deduce. Notice that the symbol beside carbs is a _gas gauge_. Petrol is, in fact, a somewhat-greenish liquid. And I'm guessing petrol was the subliminal metaphor here. You "fill up on" energy like a car fills up on gas; and carbs make you go like gas makes a car go.

<comment><USER34> It's a gas gauge? I thought it was a weight scale, as in "eating lots of carbs makes you gain weight".

<comment><USER22> I had to work through it by a process of elimination, like a Sudoku puzzle: the "fat" symbol is definitely evoking "tape measure around the waist" iconography, perhaps implying (falsely) that "fat is the thing that makes you fat"—but more likely just putting people in mind of their weight and then saying "yeah, that stuff, that's what's in this."

Given that, it'd be redundant for the carbs icon to _also_ be about weight. It's a meter of _some_ sort, though. To me, it's either _temperature_ —or pressure in a storage tank. Temperature would somewhat make sense, in the idea that carbs are the simplest thing that the body burns, and eating more carbs literally makes you hotter. But there are more common icons for temperatue (e.g. an old mercury thermometer with the teardrop base), so it's probably not temperature. Pressure it is.

Given that the referent is _carbs_ , what would the storage tank be filled with? Probably a liquid. Liquid sugar? Sugar isn't green. What's a green liquid? Most hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are _like_ carbohydrates, and serve many of the same functions for machines that carbs do for humans.

What's a common hydrocarbon pressure gauge? A car's gas gauge.

<comment><USER34> Gas gauge still doesn't make sense to me, based on the orientation. Every gas gauge I've seen has the "empty-full" axis being vertical.

<comment><USER35> You've never seen a gas gauge with E on the left and F on the right? Or am I misunderstanding?

<comment><USER34> Pretty sure I've always seen them vertical. Maybe because I've always driven Japanese cars?

<comment><USER36> Here's a nice horizontal one for you :) [https://scoutparts.com/products/photos/18520_237275.jpg](https://scoutparts.com/products/photos/18520_237275.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> As a graphic designer, its disappointing to see so many ovals that are meant to be circles.

</comment><comment><USER38> I don't see a good explanation here about _why_ they need to have a universal set of icons.

If they allowed a greater quantity of icons that work better for each region, why wouldn't this simply be better?

<comment><USER39> McDonald's has made billions from standardizing operations as much as possible across the world.

> If they allowed a greater quantity of icons that work better for each > region, why wouldn't this simply be better?

Economies of scale, consistent printed materials.

Rather than have 109 variants of the icons printed on 109 variants of the packaging you standardize as much of the package as you can, allows you to print larger volumes and distribute them more easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The protein icon looks like sugar to me

</comment><comment><USER41> "McDonald's legal team faced considerable challenges to ensure that none of the images were already trademarked in another country."

Alphabets solved that problem millennia ago.

</comment><comment><USER42> Maybe the solution to iconography needs like this is Chinese characters. Many of the design criteria -- legibility at various sizes, distinctness, adaptability to different layouts and colors -- are readily met.

Two character combinations for some of the McDonald's symbology can be kind of complicated, though:

蛋白 dànbái = protein

脂肪 zhīfáng = fat

醣類 tánglèi = carbohydrates

熱量 rèliàng = calories

<comment><USER43> Sorry I don't understand your comment, in the first part you propose a solution, but then you explain why it won't not work.

Icons should be universally distinguishable/recognizable, I as a european do not see any easy distinction between the characters you just wrote, they all seem similar to my.

<comment><USER42> In putting forth my proposal, I also considered an argument against it; but I did not mean to present it as a conclusive argument defeating it.

I am a mid-western American. The characters do look distinctive to me; but I took some Chinese in high school, many years ago -- so maybe I am not a good test case. Part of my reason for posting, was to get feedback from people with different backgrounds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> the title "Looks great, but will it work on Styrofoam?" made me take a second look at the year this was published.

</comment><comment><USER45> anyone think it's strange they don't include sugar as one of the base 5 nutrients alongside carbs, proteins, etc? I for one would like to know how much sugar my meal has.

</comment><comment><USER46> This icons don't look like anything to me. Main purpose of icons should be to replace text and McDonald's failed this time.

</comment><comment><USER47> I love McDonald's.

</comment><comment><USER48> Everywhere outside of McDonald's, the only obvious icon for "fat" would be a burger.

</comment><comment><USER49> Problem: our food has too many poisons we need to disclose. Solution: better icons for all the types of poisons! Did anyone think of a different solution?

</comment><comment><USER50> It's quite remarkable how isolated from the world the people named in that document seem to be. It is as if they had never travelled anywhere outside the US before starting the project. Or if they had they had been stunningly unobservant.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is painful. Fat, why not a bucket of lard? Salt, why not a salt shaker??? These icons are incomprehensible for the educated and the uneducated mind alike.

<comment><USER52> A bucket of lard? Is lard stored or served in buckets? We buy lard in blocks where I live. I can imagine drawing a bucket but how do you convey the lard part of it? Maybe buckets of lard aren't as universal as you think they are and McDonalds already knows this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Don't get me wrong, but I just don't see the point in this. This looks like a pretty in-depth study, why couldn't we use these man hours to create something of actual value? Why does someone care that some people associated an icon with "scary alien"? Just put the icon descriptions somewhere on the page and use circles with a single letter inside for all I care.

<comment><USER54>
        > for all I care

Just because you don't care about something doesn't mean it's not worth thinking about, especially when we're talking about international assets.

<comment><USER55> they're nearly all incomprehensible... there's no way anyone would ever guess most of the meanings

<comment><USER56> you would never guess the meaning of the letter "a" either, does that make it worthless?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to download a file using Selenium Webdriver on the browserstack? - <AUTHOR> https://softwaretestingboard.com/qna/2302/how-download-file-using-selenium-webdriver-the-browserstack <comment><AUTHOR> I guess this tutorial will really help Test Automation Engineers

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.</comment></comment>


David Cameron & Mark Zuckerberg discuss spending initiative on Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5Bbzi7s1Ko

<comment><USER2> What the coalition government is trying to do in terms of soliciting ideas and having more engagement with the public via the internet is very welcome. There is a signal/noise issue though and a lot of silly suggestions are made, so I think that better rating systems are required - perhaps similar to HN.

However, I'm also wary that the previous administration also tried to court popularity and "listen to the people" during the early years. Everything hinges upon whether the new government actually makes constructive use of good suggestions by the public. If they subsequently ignore highly rated suggestions then there could be a backlash - as there was against Tony Blair when he built up great expectations of change only to subsequently dash them later.

<comment><USER3> They Reykjavík municipal government headed by The Best Party is using a web application to solicit ideas: <http://betrireykjavik.is>.

The source is up on GitHub: <http://github.com/rbjarnason/open-direct- democracy>

It's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction. You can vote things up or down, make arguments for and against proposals etc.

<comment><USER2> I think software of this kind is the future of collective decision making (government), but as you say this sort of thing is very much in its infancy and it will probably be many years before really compelling systems emerge.

<comment><USER3> We already have compelling systems for most things. Open data formats for things the government produces, version control that could be used for legislation etc. Just think about how much accountable legislators would be if they were all forced to use Git, and you could annotate any piece of legislation.

<comment><USER2> Version controlled laws would be a great idea. You could have an rss feed for each law and subscribe to any changes or make comments on the changes. So all this sort of technology exists now, and what's to be done is more about assembling those things into a form which is customised for government use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find that extremely unbecoming for a PM. Probably trying to seem down to earth but I just think its very embarrassing.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Adding comments has been disabled for this video." But enabling comments for the budget deficit won't result in a stream of inane trolling?

</comment><comment><USER6> TLDW: \- thank you, it's great \- thank you, it's great

</comment><comment><USER7> Get a decent backdrop, Zuck! I can't stop staring at that heating vent.</comment>


Models Will Run the World - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/models-will-run-the-world-1534716720 <comment><USER2> Click Bait, no models :(

</comment><comment><USER3> "When built right, they create a reinforcing cycle: Their products get better, allowing them to collect more data, which allows them to build better models, making their products better, and onward. "

And this is why the current business-landscape seems to be more and more monopolized the further time goes on. Giants like Amazon, Google, Netflix, Facebook have just such a huge advantage due to their access to billions of datapoints, making it increasingly diffcult for a new competitor to disrupt the market.

I don't know what the solution here is (obviously a hands-off approach will not work). Maybe the data itself should be made public (communistic data?).</comment>


Enter the Matrix – A technical overview and guide to all things Matrix - <AUTHOR> https://brendan.abolivier.bzh/enter-the-matrix/ <comment><USER2> What are the differences between Matrix and Jabber?

Jabber implemented a protocol with similar mechanisms several years ago, with a custom xml protocol which could also pass not only text but also rendezvous data for voip/video calls and whatever else custom data you could codify.

Jabber has native protocol implementations for both clients and servers and can handle a reasonable amount of connections with ease. Clients are available throughout all platforms.

I'm asking this question because I believe the reason Jabber "failed" (read: didn't catch as much as other closed alternatives like WhatsApp) wasn't because of technology hurdles, because it was poised to solve the very same problem Matrix works against - which is 'IM fragmentation', but actually a lack of a proper plan to generate interest with its intended population.

I'd say work on your release plan and make your clients 'tasty' and snappy, because technologically speaking, I believe Jabber has already solved all the technological problems Matrix strives for.... and it sadly wasn't enough.

<comment><USER3> One use of Matrix is defragmenting IM, and it's true that both XMPP and Matrix can be used to power chat systems.

However, architecturally they really couldn't be more different:

* Matrix's main data primitive is synchronising conversation history within a room - _not_ message passing. In fact, there is no way to just 'send a user a message' in Matrix: instead, you can only synchronise your copy of a room's state and history with someone else's copy of it.

* Matrix rooms are replicated equally over all participating servers - there is no focal point as there is in a XMPP MUC.

* Matrix provides a single monolithic (beta) spec, which compliant clients have to implement (for a given class of clients). There are no optional features or competing extension proposals for a given feature for a given class of client (e.g. 'desktop messenger'), to try to avoid fragmentation.

* Matrix's baseline transport and encoding is super-simple-stupid HTTP+JSON, but with room for folks to propose superior transports & encodings as we see fit. So far there's been WS+JSON (which nobody seems to use, as it's not that massive an improvement over HTTP+JSON), and this year there's a GSoC project to look at MQTT-and-similar as an alternative.

<comment><USER4> IOW, Matrix is best suited for replacing IRC or Slack, for communication around organized teams/communities or topical conversations with strangers; while Jabber/XMPP is a better Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Hangouts or Gadu- Gadu, best for staying in touch with friends and talking in ad-hoc group chats between them.

Plus, XMPP can be used for great amount of stuff non-IM related, while Matrix seems very focused around its IRC-like use case, where XMPP doesn't really improve much over IRC.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Plus, XMPP can be used for great amount of stuff non-IM related, while > Matrix seems very focused around its IRC-like use case

I don't really agree here. While Riot is focused on a IM use of Matrix, Matrix itself is open enough to be usable in any use case requiring a payload to travel from A to B. You could think of Matrix use in IoT, social networks, forums, etc. Some people even made a working PoC of a blog using Matrix, and I heard some others are also working on building a system to bypass information censorship using Matrix as its only back-end.

I don't know XMPP enough to state which spec is wider than the other, but what I know is that Matrix isn't limited by what Riot or other Matrix-based IM clients can do.

<comment><USER4> Of course you can (ab)use a lot of protocols in various ways, however, XMPP was designed with this extensibility in mind and that's exactly why its basic RFC is so minimal. Heck, even basic instant messaging over XMPP is defined in a separate RFC (RFC 6120 for Core and RFC 6121 for XMPP-IM).

GP already stressed it out:

> Matrix's main data primitive is synchronising conversation history within a > room - not message passing.

So Matrix might be well suited for things like blogs, but XMPP will be certainly better for push notifications, for instance. However, you can easily build Matrix-like primitives on top of XMPP, while the other way around will be less flexible.

<comment><USER5> But flexibility is the problem with XMPP in the first place. None of the clients and servers have compatible feature sets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is nice to see Matrix in HN: this project needs more visibility.

In a world dominated by Slack, which removes privacy/history control from users and place walls, Matrix is the promise to have a better open scenario than IRC was.

I am crossing my fingers. I hope with all my heart to this technology to flourish.

</comment><comment><USER7> Just a user, but I think Matrix needs to

\- work on stability: the status quo is unreliable. Until this is solved it's hard to recommend Matrix to anybody who is looking to use it for serious work

\- disable signup on main server: this is a decentralized netword and the main server is overloaded already. It is overloaded so badly, that devs decided to turn off presence for as long as I can remember first seeing matrix. So even IRC is more usable in that regard because I know when I see a user they are online or they even have presence and an away message

There's more but those are two issues I think should be dealt with urgently.

<comment><USER8> You bring up a good point about disabling signup on the main server.

I've recently been wondering why the Matrix team wouldn't want to lose some of the control they have over the Matrix universe..

They could solve their scalability problem by bringing up other homeservers (why not a paid riot.im server even?) or promoting other open servers hosted by the community.

Seems like Mastodon folks are favoring horizontal scalability by making people use various servers, but the Matrix team wants to keep mostly everyone on matrix.org.

(I hope this doesn't sound too negative.. I know it's not like Matrix folks want to centralize things.. It's just, I wonder why they don't promote other homeservers more)

<comment><USER9> I'm on the public Matrix.org server and I recommend new folks to sign up on the public server unless they're 100% sure they're willing to commit to the devops burden of maintaining their own homeserver.

I also know at least a halfdozen people who immediately said "yes" to the devops burden of maintaining their own homeserver (and reportedly, it's actually really easy).

Different strokes for different folks. If self-hosting it was a pre-req for using it, I'd still be saying to myself "yeah, I'll do that _riiiight_ after I get my closet k8s cluster just the way I want it", and, well, I know myself better than that, so I use the public one, and I'm happy.

<comment> vertex-four Mastodon gets away with just telling people to go find a server to register with, you don't have to self host to get some reasonable level of decentralisation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If matrix wants to be a thing it needs to get a good and native client for popular operating systems. Riot isn't a good client.

<comment><USER3> There at least 4 good native clients in very active dev atm:

* Fractal ([https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/fractal.html](https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/fractal.html)) from the GNOME community (who just had a big hackathon in Strasbourg last week: [https://wiki.gnome.org/action/login/Hackfests/Fractal2018](https://wiki.gnome.org/action/login/Hackfests/Fractal2018)). They're looking to add E2E and VoIP in the relatively near future.

* Nheko ([https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/nheko.html](https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/nheko.html)) - a very Telegram-looking Qt client, which has been in very steady progress for ages. They're actively working on E2E right now.

* Quaternion ([https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/quaternion.html](https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/quaternion.html)) - a more IRC-like looking Qt/QML client, also in very active dev.

* Gomuks ([https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/gomuks.html](https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/gomuks.html)) - this one's new; a really nice dedicated text-user-interface client written in Go - again, in very active dev.

Meanwhile we're also doing everything we can to improve Riot, but for desktop usage a native client will always beat an electron one :)

<comment><USER11> The most popular OS is Windows. And Qt is not a native client, at least for Windows. Something modern built with UWP would be nice. Second popular OS is macOS. And native for macOS is Cocoa.

PS not requiring anything, just my 2 cents. I, personally, like Riot.

<comment><USER3> Qt's native support on Windows is very very good these days, as apps like the Telegram desktop client show.

<comment><USER11> Last time I checked, Qt still used completely its own rendering, input handling, etc, imitating platform. So it's conceptually not different from, e.g. Java Swing. Probably imitation is better.

That said, Windows is bad at UX consistency. Native used to mean WinAPI with built-in window classes handling input, buttons, etc (and wrappers like MFC or Windows Forms). Then it was WPF with its own DirectX-based stack. Now it's UWP with even different code. I guess, Qt is not the worst solution. macOS is much more coherent ecosystem when it comes to native.

<comment><USER12> >macOS is much more coherent ecosystem when it comes to native.

Then again if you try to run a gtk3 app like Fractal mentioned above on Mac OS, you will see that it looks exactly like a Gnome application.

<comment><USER3> yup. Qt seems to get it much better on MacOS (at least from comparing Fractal with Nheko).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does E2E work now? Last time I tried, it did not. That was some time ago so things might have changed. It still is listed as "working on it" for many clients though.

To develop a new communication platform today without E2E as a core functionality is odd.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it does. The UX is not great but the crypto has been solid since 2016: [https://matrix.org/blog/2016/11/21/matrixs-olm-end-to-end- en...](https://matrix.org/blog/2016/11/21/matrixs-olm-end-to-end-encryption- security-assessment-released-and-implemented-cross-platform-on-riot-at-last/)

<comment><USER13> for Riot, it still is not enabled by default due to bugs though?

> As of May 2017 Riot's end-to-end encryption is technically in beta, but this > is due to some residual stability bugs and missing usability features. Once > these are resolved we plan to get the full implementation security assessed > and out of beta. End-to-end encryption will then be turned on by default for > private conversations.

[https://about.riot.im/security/](https://about.riot.im/security/)

<comment><USER3> Yup, we haven't turned it on by default yet - but this no longer really due to bugs, but missing UX features. The stuff that remains is:

* Cross-signing devices when you sign up to remove verification pain

* Ability to access history from before the point you join the room (if desired)

* Better UX for verification (comparing mnemonic phrases rather than public key fingerprints)

* Ability to optionally back up E2E keys, encrypted, on the server so you don't lose your history if you lose all your devices

* Ability to search E2E rooms (using a clientside search engine)

* ...and fixing any last key management bugs, although right now we believe we've fixed almost all of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really would like to have a single chat client. I have friends/business partners on Skype, WhatsApp, FB Messenger, iMessage, Discord, Slack and (ze horror)MS Teams.

I wish I had a single app, be it on desktop and mobile, to use, with the combined feature set of all of those (filtered down to whatever my communication partner supports). I know: how dare I dream of such a magnificent beast?

What are the chances Matrix is turning into this?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd say they're quite high because not being "yet another IM thing" but rather becoming the way to bring all comms togeter is one of Matrix's core missions.

Of course it's not there yet, though it's quite likely to get there in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> From the FAQ:

" Tox.chat looks to be a very cool clone of Skype - a fully decentralised peer-to-peer network. Matrix is deliberately not a 'pure' peer-to-peer system; instead each user has a well-defined homeserver which stores his data and that he can depend upon. "

What's the rationale behind "impure" decentralizing? Why not go fully decentralized like Tox does?

<comment><USER3> Battery usage, network utilisation, complexity of implementing clients, and wanting a more guaranteed home for your data than having it smeared over endpoints.

That said we will hopefully move to a more hybrid model in time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can someone point me to a good comparison of Matrix, Mattermost, Zulip, Rocketchat, IRC and XMPP (say, Prosody) or explain what niche each fills if they are not competing.

Assuming for a small company with a dozen employees, all of whom sometimes work remotely.

<comment><USER17> Let me take a crack at it. This is highly opinionated and probably biased.

IRC is reliable, can be forced into encrypted client-server communications, and has the fewest client-side features. The strength is the number of available clients and the primacy of channels (rooms). File-sharing is available but not a focus. There are lots of bot libraries.

XMPP is reliable, the server can mandate client-server encryption, and has some client-side features including simultaneous appearances (being one person logged in through several devices) and better one-to-one chat than IRC. File- sharing is an optional add-on. There is no good iOS client that I know of; mobile clients tend to be bad at requesting history.

Mattermost, Zulip and Rocketchat I have the least experience with; they all seem to be very popular with small groups of users but are complex to install and have very few clients.

Matrix is promising. It does one-to-one and chat rooms smoothly, server config is pretty easy, and you can have the server mandate client-server encryption. There are lots of clients that all seem to be in mid-alpha development. If it survives a year or two, I think it will be widely adopted.

<comment><USER18> > Mattermost, Zulip and Rocketchat I have the least experience with; they all > seem to be very popular with small groups of users but are complex to > install and have very few clients.

At least for Mattermost I have to disagree with the "complex to install". All you need is a sql database (MySQL/MariaDB or Postgres), for production you then also should put a reverse proxy in front.

With "very few clients" you are referring to client software, correct?

<comment><USER17> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is this project affecting by the pgp sMIME issues in the news recently? (starting to learn this matrix thing, thanks in part to this nice synopsis posted in the article)

<comment><USER3> a broken matrix client might fail to sanitise its html messages and be vulnerable in the same way, but we're not aware of any that are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > guide to all things Matrix

> A device is bound to an access token and E2E encryption keys (which I'm not > covering in this post).

This is far from 'all things Matrix' then.

<comment><USER21> That's very nitpicky for such a comprehensive article.

<comment><USER22> _Sigh_

This is HN, after all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is an exciting project but still needs a lot of work (particularly in making the faster, cleaner, and easier to install).</comment>


Stephen Hawking Warns We Must Colonize Another Planet Soon. Why He's Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2017/05/03/stephen-hawking-mars-colony-moon-space-elon-musk/#7bb02daa6537 <comment><USER2> Not that we _need_ to any time soon, but really, this would just be the most fantastic thing imaginable.

Imagine -- a push to colonize space -- like a cowboy/cowgirl.

First the required ships and moonbases. Then out to other planets, requirements ever pushing technology advances forward.

In a struggle to survive, especially in challenging environments like space, we seem to do our best.

And all the tech of course benefits us all. Things that are so unique and life-changing we can't really foresee it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Has anyone done the calculations on the plasticity verses rigidity of the earths mantle when changed by exothermic verses endothermic physics?</comment>


When Indie game development gets a black eye - <AUTHOR> http://gaming.icrontic.com/article/project-zomboid-giving-indie-gaming-a-black-eye/

<comment><USER2> The Holy Trinity of Making Backups:

1) If it's not automated, _it's not a real backup_.

2) If it's not redundant, _it's not a real backup_.

3) If it's not regularly rotated off-site, _it's not a real backup_.

Doing any one of these things by itself or in tandem produces "a copy." A copy is handy, and it may really save you, even a majority of the time. But, making casual copies is optimistic at best. Someday, you will need the benefits of all three layers.

[http://www.43folders.com/2010/03/15/yes-another-backup- lectu...](http://www.43folders.com/2010/03/15/yes-another-backup-lecture)

<comment><USER3> You also probably want backups to be tested. Many people, myself included, have been bitten by "I did not quite have what I needed to bring the production environment up again."

With regards to coders specifically: git and similar DVCSes is a lifesaver. If you have a sensible push workflow, loss of a laptop only costs you the laptop, the time it takes you to get a new machine to the state where you are productive (+), and whatever your average not-pushed-to-somewhere batch size is.

\+ Having recent experience with this, Ninite + Dropbox + a monthly backup of my Ubuntu VM (where dev happens) in Dropbox = total recovery time was about three hours.

<comment><USER4> These days I freeze development environments by

\- checking in the tools, as well as the sources

\- running them in a VM, and backing /that/ up

\- ensuring that none of the tools, certificates, etc. will expire

Gigabytes are cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not like when you are constructing a house and a tornado happens to knock out months of your hard work. Programming is less like laboriously laying thousands of bricks, but more like very carefully laying a small handful of bricks in just the right places after a lot of thought.

I have a feeling that as they start re-developing what they have lost, they will find that the work goes 1-2 orders of magnitude faster than it went when they originally did it and in just a few weeks they will be caught up.

I think the way that they are handling it (treating it as pretty much a project ending blow) is pretty questionable.

<comment><USER4> I once lost two weeks of work with an "rm -rf" typo. No backups, just gone. It was the 80s, and I had been careless.

Took me about a day and a half to re-create the work, and it was /better/.

I'm not saying it's a good thing to lose work this way. But it's seldom utterly catastrophic. (Exceptions like "the SourceSafe database and build machine start pushing up daisies the night before Final" . . . well, for one thing: Don't use SourceSafe, and for Pete's sake, make sure your backups actually work).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Both gamers and gamers with programming chops have grossly unrealistic expectations for how software development actually works.

<comment><USER6> Can you expand on this thought?

<comment><USER3> Gamers don't know that projects fail _all the time_ even with millions invested in them, that 2,000 donations of $10 each is _not a large amount of money_ , that amateur artists do not on average have habits which resemble teams at megacorps, etc.

Devs don't understand that gamers are the worst customers on the face of the earth, that for the price of an expresso they think you have an obligation to listen to their entitled whining for _years_ , that the community they participate in and value belonging to is frequently a toxic cesspool of humanity, and that being an indie developer is approximately ~10% or so about making video games. (The other 90% is marketing, customer support, community management, marketing, accounting, marketing, taxes, marketing, hiring, marketing, etc. Quite similar to selling bingo cards to elementary schoolteachers.)

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure about the feeling of entitlement. I think it's actually the opposite. Until very recently, the video gaming scene was a game was done, gold pressed, shipped and never touched again. No feedback, no updates, no changes, so gamers would quite prominently voice their opinions. This had no chance at all of affecting the current game but provided feedback on how to do the NEXT game. This same method of voicing opinions has been carried over into an environment where you can react to them and improve the game without a change in tone. It also strongly falls into the fact that if people are complaining about it, it means they care and you have customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was just reading an anti-PayPal rant the other day (that I agreed with) and someone was saying that this was the very reason that PayPal was holding the pre-order funds for an indie developer. And here we are, with that exact situation.

I think it's a pretty rare thing, but I can't blame PP for covering themselves on this.

The developer -should- refund everyone's money if they aren't going to be able to deliver. And if there's a major delay, they should offer the choice to the customer.

But likely, they don't have the money, and it's just not an option.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't agree that this will "send ripples through the Indie community for years to come" as the article suggests. Perhaps people will be a little more wary about putting up cash for a project on the the promise that it will be finished one day, but that's about it. Independent games have been around a lot longer than the last few years. A little drama from one project won't upset anything.

<comment><USER10> At the very least it serves as justification for Paypal to not allow pre- orders for an unfinished product. I'd never heard of this sort of incident prior to this, but it just proves that Paypal and Google are right to protect themselves from this sort of problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> First I've ever even heard of the project. While it may have been popular, and a lot of OTHER people might have heard of it, indie games are all over the place and I doubt this will have much of an effect on the overall market.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wow, what a douchy site. Guess this is the tabloid for the indie world?

protip: When life sucks act perfectly.

The guy had his baby killed and these guys ream out the way he responds. He was working on making something that people enjoyed. Hearing people on the sideline, put that much effort into making him wrong strictly pisses me off.

There are risks in paying an indie for a game before he delivers - wow that's a shocking conclusion.

Feel bad for the developer, that's a kick to the nuts I hope I never experience.</comment>


Two-Factor Authentication: Too Little, Too Late - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/essay-083.html

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an article from 2005, as someone would have surely pointed out, but I found the topic to be relevant as there is now a trend of companies like Google, Dropbox adopting two-factor auth and the security implications of that.</comment>


Augmentors: The First Blockchain AR Game Has Been Launched in South Africa - <AUTHOR> https://bitcoinafrica.io/2018/10/02/augmentors-the-first-blockchain-ar-game-has-been-launched-in-south-africa/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm astounded that blockchain, AR, and a semi-developed nation are coming together all at the same time.</comment>


Ask HN: Transactions over multiple web services - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys, to make it short: Is there a preferred way/nice solution for wrapping multiple web service calls in a transaction? I have to build a new "integrating" web service atop 2-3 legacy web services, so say for example:
def register(user) {
  callWebService1(user);
  callWebService2(user);
  callWebService3(user);
  doSomeOtherStuff(user); }
Also let's assume I can still make some changes to the old web service interfaces or add some more methods.
Any "light-weight" best practices?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> It depends on how 'idempotent' the service calls are. If it's safe to retry the entire register method over and over again then it's pretty simple to keep track if anything blew up during the process and then just try from the top again.

If those services cannot be safely retried then you'll need to deal with calling other operations on the services to roll back the changes if anything goes wrong. I worked on a system that had a similar problem (not idempotent and we actually didn't have way to delete/rollback changes through their service) so we had to log every call made for context. That way if any service failed we could retry the whole operation and skip over the things that were successful.</comment>


Show HN: Casual.pm – Organize Tasks and Projects the Way They Look in Your Mind - <AUTHOR> https://casual.pm/

<comment><USER2> Hm, nice idea and service. Give it a try.</comment>


He, She  It? - <AUTHOR> http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/parenting-gender-neutral/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> besides he normal STEM, tech & pink vs blue, I found this quote:

 _"... Historically, equality has been more of an issue for girls. But today, I'd be more worried as the mother of a boy. Girls do better in schools and jobs. More girls go to university. Gender neutrality isn't just a matter of letting girls do stuff - it's about helping boys to express their emotions, and understand their feelings. ..."_

Excellent point.</comment>


Automating molecule design to speed up drug development - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2018/automating-molecule-design-speed-drug-development-0706 <comment><USER2> I read it and wrote a reply: [https://medium.com/@mostafab/mit-paper-in-ai- for-drug-discov...](https://medium.com/@mostafab/mit-paper-in-ai-for-drug- discovery-at-icml-2018-very-incomplete-a0ba9fd39853)</comment>


All The Cool Kids Use Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GpOfwbFRcs&t=1m32s

<comment><USER2> "Tell me more about these bohemians."</comment>


Why I published Venmo users' "drug" deals on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://blog.usejournal.com/why-i-blasted-your-drug-deals-on-twitter-f8c517de1256 <comment><USER2> To me this brings into discussion the distinction between legal privacy and ethical privacy. If I'm walking down the street and tell my SO something in confidence (perhaps a medical diagnosis), and you are walking behind me and overhear, legally it's your right to spread what you hear to anyone you want. Ethically... it would be wrong to do so.

I do think people view online privacy through that same lens... We have community bubbles, that are technically public, but we feel confident speaking within them for whatever reason.

Yes people need to be more conscious of where communication take place, but it does not excuse unethical, legal, abuse of privacy.

<comment><USER3> Communications on the internet are different than physical communications. So different in my view as to not really have a useful comparison point.

If I tell a joke, people will chuckle and it'll be on their mind for 10 seconds, and then it's gone. All I need to do to make sure no one is overhearing it is to do a quick look over my shoulder. And if someone does leak it, I'll know which 6 people it might be and I can confront them.

If I write that same joke down online, it's there forever, anyone can grab the joke any amount of time later, strip out all surrounding context, report me and have me fired from my director gig.

Our social systems were developed with the understanding that communications would persist for a minute at most. This does not translate well to online systems.

<comment><USER4> Our social systems will adapt; James Gunn will survive, but also his and similar examples may impose a chilling effect on discompassionate writing.

<comment><USER5> It's basically a fact now, that anything you say in any text messaging service to anyone, no matter how encrypted or protected the service may claim to be, if you say something interesting, your friend is likely to capture the screen contents to an image, and publish it somewhere to get laughs.

There's no stopping this fact, and with daily zero day fire drills, the defense of claiming an insecure, hacked smartphone is at fault, is essentially plausible. But it gets worse, because hacking isn't a even required step. One sketchy app installed on a phone with zero defects is enough to plausibly deny a sceenshot of a private conversation escaping into the wild. People breeze past those permissions authorizations all the time. But of course installing promiscuous app isn't even a required step, because some phones have stock apps installed at the factory, and are insecure out of the box. Or, hey, maybe they bought their phone second-hand, because phones can cost $1000 now, so knocking a hundred bucks off the sticker price isn't even unconscionable, and less technical users are clueless as ever, so they wouldn't even consider the risks.

So, no matter what, at the consumer level, truly no one is in control of how things leak, even if you choose your friends wisely. An Apple engineer can't even let his daughter look at a prototype over lunch without her accidentally instagramming the world in a moment of irrevocable error.

So, chilling effects? I mean, without question, when being deaf and mute to the point that one may as well be bound and gagged is the only cure, calling that "chilling effects" is quite the understatement.

We are moving rapidly toward a society that only thinks "happy" thoughts, for fear of the consequences oherwise. Is such a fear healthy?

<comment><USER6> That is not what happened to Gunn. And my friends were never shitty like that. I would never call someone like that "a friend".

And realistically, while IT crowd knows about hacks, most people dont, because such hacks are in fact rare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As an american, this is one of the most sadistic and reckless ways to raise awareness of a security issue and the researcher should be ashamed.

\- American drug laws carry some of the harshest penalties in the developed world. Civil forfeiture allows police to seize your car and home, without trial, for drug charges. 3 strikes laws can and have put many people in prison for sentences as long as 20 years, for less than an ounce of Marijuana

\- once released from prison, many American ex-cons are required to pay restitution for their incarceration and can be legally discriminated against for housing, employment, and even public benefits in some states. reformed convicts cannot vote in most american states, and must file legal petition for restoration of their right to vote.

\- parole terms can be extended well beyond a prisoners sentence and require years of monitoring and testing services the former convict must pay for, or be sent back to jail.

simple convictions like marijuana can result in the loss of your children, the loss of your job, and complete financial ruin.

Source: I have been incarcerated in the United States in the past.

<comment><USER8> >As an american, this is one of the most sadistic and reckless ways to raise awareness of a security issue and the researcher should be ashamed.

As an American, you are under educated about how the justice system works.

You can't be charged with crimes they can't prove. It's why comedians and public figures can openly admit to smoking weed.

Putting a weed or needle emoji in your Venmo transaction isn't going to have the DEA breaking down your door in the next hour. These people are 100% completely safe.

With all of that said, if someone is convicted due to this, they were already screwed and being actively monitored.

Also the author said he removed PII.

<comment><USER9> As an African-Canadian, it appears to the rest of the world that you have two different justice systems, and the one for people of colour and allegations of "drugs" works completely differently than the one for white Americans.

I am skeptical that Americans of color will not be charged for drug crimes that cannot be proven by any reasonable standard, and I am also very much afraid that if someone is brought to the police's attention like this, they will be at risk of a wrongful prosecution, or worse.

Just bringing a person of color's name to the attention of their local law enforcement's attention can create a risk of death in a traffic stop or no- knock search coupled with an itchy trigger finger.

It shouldn't be like this, but as long as it is, outing drug users to the police in any way contributes to the injustice in the American "justice" system.

<comment><USER10> > As an African-Canadian, it appears to the rest of the world that you have > two different justice systems, and the one for people of colour and > allegations of "drugs" works completely differently than the one for white > Americans.

As an American, and one who grew up among the poor, and criminal elements of society in the "racist" deep south, I do believe you read a bit too much sensationalized news leading you to a wrong conclusion.

However, you're right, there is a dual system. A system for the rich and a system for the poor.

<comment><USER11> Interesting. That's a testable hypothesis. If after controlling for income there is a difference in sentencing between races, then that's evidence to reject the hypothesis that there is no racial disparity.

I believe I once read something that makes me believe that we should indeed believe there is racial disparity but I can't find it now. Pity.

<comment><USER10> > If after controlling for income there is a difference in sentencing between > races, then that's evidence to reject the hypothesis that there is no racial > disparity.

Well, logically speaking, you can't draw that conclusion.

<comment><USER11> I implicitly meant for similar severity of crime. Different distribution of crimes is a different discussion.

Still testable, and I believe rejectable that race has no impact on sentencing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Even on cash I rarely put the real purpose in the memo field...

Coming from cash, and finding that the world has apparently settled on venmo, has me supremely disappointed. What the hell were they thinking? Payments is not a social network. I hope venmo feels blowback for this, but I know they won't.

Can any venmo engineers comment on their ridiculous system? Do any users actually find value in sharing their drug deals (and other transactions) with the public?

<comment><USER13> > and finding that the world has apparently settled on venmo

Correction: the world is not limited to the USA.

<comment><USER14> Also it's not limited to people in their twenties, who are the only ones I've seen using Venmo. In any case, Venmo will be gone soon enough, it's already bought by PayPal and I can't see them maintaining two parallel systems.

<comment><USER15> That was close to five years ago and venmo has added major features and a lot of new users in the intervening years. Moreover the paypal brand isn't what it used to be especially among venmo's core demographics.

<comment><USER14> What major features have been added? On the contrary, I see them retiring the web portal and going mobile only. One day somebody is going to make the easy decision of migrating all the users to PayPal and cutting out the redundant work. Or maybe they'll simply brand PayPal mobile "Venmo", the effect being the same.

<comment><USER15> Venmo card and fast withdrawals have been added in the last 6 months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is one of those things that the people who welcome the march towards crypto or cashless seem to forget, ignore, or don't consider important. Privacy of what you do with your money is important.

I know Vemmo is an extreme example, but it's not like they don't still have that data accessible for interested parties to access. People here like to say "We're never going to give customer data over blah blah blah," but time changes everything. The information is there, and you don't know what the laws or social forces will bring tomorrow.

Either way, a good spotlight on the issues that need to be discussed.

<comment><USER17> Cryptocurrency users and developers are very much aware of the importance of privacy. For many, it's the primary concern.

<comment><USER16> Yes, but there are two facts that will short circuit privacy.

1\. By the very nature, blockchain is public. If the wallet can verify a transaction goes from one user to another, it's not private. You can obscure all you want, but you from the way I understand it, if the system can verify itself then nothing is private.

2\. Blockchains are centralized in that there is once source of information. Our current payments system is more decentralized in that Bank #1 -> Mastercard -> Stripe -> Bank #2 -> Bank #3. There are multiple parties that need to work together, and theoretically have different information collection requirements. If you need to trace money from Bank #1 to Bank #3, in theory you need multiple warrants.

Privacy requires some form of black box and trust in that black box. I'm not sure how you can remove that black box without reducing the privacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> yoz-y If reading "So you have been publicly shamed" has taught me one thing. It is that an unfortunate Tweet without substance can turn into a career ending horror story quite quickly.

Yes the data is publicly available, but there are less reckless ways to raise awareness.

<comment><USER18> The author did not include names in their tweets, only the message (memo/comment) field of each transaction.

<comment> yoz-y From the article: "I removed the last names of users because..." and from the TNW critique of the bot "... in the form of a bot that tweets the names and faces of Venmo users...".

I assumed that the available information was first name, avatar picture and the "drug deal". From the sample tweets it looks like first name and the first letter of the last name were given, but no avatars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The system reports deals containing "stripper." Which launches it straight into moral territory.

It also has many, many false positives, e.g. "pills" are legitimate means of taking medication. And "Drank"? Is it likely this many people are mixing together cold syrup and grape juice or is it the past-tense of drink. Also notice that "beer" and "wine" aren't flagged (unless appearing along other flags).

This is absolutely emblematic of why we need our 4th amendment in the U.S. to prevent fishing expeditions. If governments were allowed to do this, they could ping things on many people who don't deserve it.

</comment><comment><USER20> [http://www.vicemo.com](http://www.vicemo.com)

<comment><USER21> Meh, I'd wager 80-90% of these are kids/friends joking around. I've definitely gotten "Thanks for the great night" sort of stuff from mates before when I remind them I bought lunch a week ago.

Still don't understand why people ever use the Public setting on Venmo, but that's another story. It's practically the opposite of Instagram, instead of looking like some rich socialite to your crew you look like someone who doesn't carry enough money for takeout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The public stream is so old that I assume people put drug emoji in there as an over joke.

</comment><comment><USER23> So, Venmo is basically a bank, but as-a-startup and it makes all your wires public by default? And people actually use this?

<comment><USER24> Yep. That's like the only difference between it and PayPal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> A previous discussion on Venmo and publically available data form it (People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17181130](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17181130)

</comment><comment><USER26> >> _By mid afternoon CNET, Mercury News and a half dozen other websites had posted articles about it. Not used to seeing my name on news websites, I cringed as I read expecting to get blasted — but I wasn't._

Until one of them that went to jail or lost their lively-hood and/or family decides to ask you, "what did I owe you, that you did that to me."

Personally, I wouldn't do that for ethical and for the above mentioned reason...catching "drug users" is not my job.

</comment><comment><USER27> I assume a lot of these are jokes. In fact my Venmo feed is basically reversed. If someone spots me $5 for lunch I'll likely pay them back for "Drugs" or "Illegal Activities" and if I'm actually doing something I would like to keep private I will say "Stuff" or "Thanks".

<comment><USER28> I just write "legal things"

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > I learned that Venmo's public by default setting made the details of > millions of Venmo transactions publicly available to anyone who cared to > look. So I did what any software engineer would do and started digging > through the data.

This makes me gag. Don't lump this behavior in with being a software engineer.

<comment><USER30> What behavior? Pointing out how stupid it is to publicly post your transactions? A company offering an API to easily fetch this data?

<comment><USER29> > So I did what any software engineer would do and started digging through the > data.

That behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Does law enforcement actually look at Venmo as a source of evidence? I don't think I've ever put an actual reason for my transactions in the memo box. It's always something silly, and if you're actually buying drugs you're not going to say "this is for drugs" .

</comment><comment><USER32> Ah yes, the totally factual and 100% accuracy of Venmo transactions. Like the $62 a co-worker with a dark sense of humor paid me for "cunnilingus".

</comment><comment><USER33> Why on earth would anybody ever want their transactions in a public feed anyway? I really don't understand the attraction of it at all.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's nice that Venmo makes the transactions freely available... banks make you pay for that information.

</comment><comment><USER35> Honest question. If you were a hiring manager, would this post be a red flag for hiring the individual?

</comment><comment><USER36> The rest of the thread has gone over the drugs aspect - I have to disagree entirely with

> _I actually don't care for the term "bot" because it implies some sort of > AI_

A bot is just a regular user account dedicated to and controlled by a non- human. Script, AI, IFTTT, whatever. It's a bot.

</comment><comment><USER37> There's been a website for months or years that does this, right?

<comment><USER38> [http://www.vicemo.com/](http://www.vicemo.com/)

<comment><USER37> Right... and it's still live... so why does anyone care about this guy's Twitter bot?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This guy should be careful, he might get got.</comment>