Parts of Heroku are down - <AUTHOR> https://status.heroku.com/#now

<comment><USER2> Heroku is up. My production application on Heroku is up.

Heroku's _provisioning, build, and remote console services_ have been down for a few hours. Luckily my production app is still chugging along pretty well. There was a time this afternoon when I wanted to restart one of my six dynos (because it was half-dead) but was unable to due to the API lockdown. That meant every sixth request was sent to an app server that was likely to barf on it for a while there. The dyno got better a few minutes later though.

 _Postmortem edit_ :

API outage is over after a period of about three hours (that I was aware of anyway). During this window my app's response time was about 1500ms. Now that it's over it's down to about 250ms, which is on the high side of our daily variance between 150 and 250.

Unfortunately for us, we pushed out a marketing newsletter right about the time they shut down the API. Looks like we're still getting decent sales though!

[1] [https://status.heroku.com/incidents/633](https://status.heroku.com/incidents/633)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a long-time Heroku user (I've also written about them quite a bit, and published a book on the topic). In my opinion, Heroku is still, without a doubt, the best hosting option around for production apps.

I've worked and built enormous projects in the past and hosted them myself (on hardware, and on providers directly (Rackspace, AWS)), but have _always_ had more headaches, wasted time, and downtime when doing things myself (and with a team) then when I'm using Heroku.

Regardless of the occasional incident Heroku has, I'm still 100% a loving user. The people over there work super hard on tons of stuff, and do a great job at keeping millions of applications up.

Keep at it! <3

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious to know why it is that AWS can operate its API with a much higher degree of reliability than Heroku. They clearly have superior design and processes given the large difference in reliability.

Having been a heroku user for quite a while in the past I'm not surprised, these sorts of issues are sadly common with heroku.

<comment><USER5> Heroku has lots of single points of failure in its architecture.

Heroku also has no transparency into its architecture, which is why no site on Heroku will be able to be PCI compliant after Jan 2015.

I'm not optimistic about Heroku's ability to continue to be a leading PaaS.

<comment><USER6> > no site on Heroku will be able to be PCI compliant after Jan 2015

do you have a reference for that?

<comment><USER5> Read the PCI DSS 3.0 SAQ A-EP documentation (and some of the blog posts people have written about it).

Heroku has never been able to pass a PCI Level 1 or Level 2 audit, but as of Jan 2014 it will also no longer pass level 3 or level 4 SAQs.

<comment><USER7> What in particular is Heroku missing to pass level 3 and 4?

Hit and run comments aren't really useful. Some detail and if possible some suggestions for improvement really help. Even if they can't be implemented for some reason.

<comment><USER5> > What in particular is Heroku missing to pass level 3 and 4?

It's mostly documentation. If Heroku has built a secure system and documented it adequately, then it would easily pass SAQ A-EP.

One easy example: Maybe Heroku keeps logs of all HTTP requests that include params containing credit card numbers. Nobody knows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Our website went from an appdex of .9 to .5, with page load times so long that many requests timed out. We're still pretty dead in the water for many users though it is getting better, according to NewRelic, and we didn't use Autoscaling.

Kind of surprised Heroku went down for so long in the middle of the day. Can't imagine any serious large scale services wanting to stay on a platform with that availability for very long. We're not large enough yet to move, but I think AWS is going to have to happen at some point.

</comment><comment><USER9> Heroku is not accepting new builds, but is still performing for my web apps that are deployed there. I would say it's not down, but that they're having deployment issues.

</comment><comment><USER10> We're a Top-1000-ish site (in the US) with ~15M pageviews and ~50M backend transactions per month. We saw a ~20ms increase in response times across all requests (some are super-fast and skew things quite a bit) during the downtime. Luckily, our CDN strategy takes a lot of load of the backend and we were fine throughout the down time.

I'd echo rdegges point from eariler, Heroku has been (and will be for the foreseeable future) equivalent to a FTE in giving us the ability to build things and not worry (too much) about the hosting.

Edit: note the response time increase _during_ the downtime event.

</comment><comment><USER11> Heroku is effectively down if your application uses the Heroku API for auto- scaling. It probably means that only larger applications are affected.

<comment><USER12> Also any free tier apps that were asleep couldn't start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "We have completed the maintenance work. API functionality has been restored, and builds are resuming. We're continuing to monitor the affected systems." \- Heroku Status

Builds are back up for me after a few hours of downtime.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wish my company's IT team took their jobs as seriously and provided on- demand, easy-to-read timelines for service outages along with regular updates. That way anyone in the company can see at a glance how reliable the infrastructure is and how quickly issues are resolved.

Of course, the IT team would probably hate being held visibly accountable like that. But hey, I guess that's why they are working in corporate IT as opposed to a well-known and successful cloud service provider.

<comment><USER15> > Of course, the IT team would probably hate being held visibly accountable > like that. But hey, I guess that's why they are working in corporate IT as > opposed to a well-known and successful cloud service provider.

Is your IT team compensated at the same level as well-known and successful cloud service providers? If not, why would you hold them to the same standard?

<comment><USER2> Good point. Internal IT teams have a completely different set of incentives. Heroku's status timelines are important in keeping old customers as well as getting new ones. Internal IT doesn't really have that sales/retention problem, but they definitely have an "I might get fired if someone gets the wrong idea about an outage" problem.

<comment><USER15> Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Heroku isn't down, only some parts of the infrastructure are disabled. I haven't seen any service interruption to my production app however (which would be the case if Heroku as a whole was down, which is what the title implies).

</comment><comment><USER16> We changed the title from "Heroku is Down" (originally, "Heroku has been down for more than 1 hour") in an attempt to make it more accurate. Happy to change it further if anyone suggests a better title.

In general, "Foo is Down" doesn't make for very good HN posts, because while it matters to users of Foo, the fact that Foo is down usually isn't intellectually interesting (which is what HN is looking for in a submission). Postmortems about why Foo went down, on the other hand, are often fascinating. Conclusion: we should usually wait for the postmortem.

<comment><USER2> Surely there's room on HN for original content in the form of comments? My top comment in this thread is a decent starting point for a discussion of what was actually down and what it meant to users. I'm sure Heroku's inside story will be even more interesting if they choose to blog it.

edit to add: Thanks for the transparency in moderation! I had thought this thread was poorly titled too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Funny" how both Heroku and Bitbucket end up on HN the same afternoon for similar reasons... coincidence?</comment>


Ask HN: How many Amazon's Web Services do you use? - <AUTHOR> Amazon has a lot of web services and all them don't necessarily paint a coherent picture about your application's business or deployment logic. Would love to know how many and which services do you use ? <comment><USER2> It varies widely. They're not Pokémon; there is no need to catch them all.</comment>


Implementing search on a static site with Netlify functions - <AUTHOR> https://www.aha.io/engineering/articles/implementing-search-static-site-netlify-functions <comment><USER2> The article mentions in-browser search, which as mentioned is often sufficient for small sites. For reference, my site [0], generated on hexo using the icarus theme [1] uses what appears to be the `inferno` package's insight search class [2] to accomplish this without needing to make any requests back to Netlify. I was pretty impressed by the responsiveness and ease-of-setup.

[0] [https://matansilver.com](https://matansilver.com)

[1] [https://github.com/ppoffice/hexo-theme- icarus](https://github.com/ppoffice/hexo-theme-icarus)

[2] [https://blog.zhangruipeng.me/hexo-component- inferno/module-v...](https://blog.zhangruipeng.me/hexo-component- inferno/module-view_search_insight-Insight.html)</comment>


Show HN: Outpost – Collaborative Email for Teams - <AUTHOR> https://www.teamoutpost.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

I've been working on Outpost ([https://www.teamoutpost.com](https://www.teamoutpost.com)) for a couple of years now - it's a shared inbox tool for teams that manage email addresses like info@, sales@, or support@. It has collaborative features like assignments, notes, saved template responses, etc.

We launched it as an MVP in 2018 and started getting great feedback from users about how to make it better. A couple weeks ago we hit a huge milestone: we got our companion mobile app approved in the App Store.

I work on the marketing team, and it's been a really rewarding journey working with our smaller team of developers to build a tool like this that can compete with other tools in the market. We've spent a lot of time talking to our users and developing features based on their requests.

Outpost is a web app that syncs directly with Gmail or Office 365 via IMAP, and connects to other mail providers via forwarding and SMTP. If users don't have a mail provider, we also provide free email hosting.

We built the iOS app earlier this year, and are working on the Android version right now. We weren't really sure what to expect when submitting the mobile app to the App Store, especially given some other product's recent experiences, but we were able to get approved in about a week. That was a huge relief, and we're really excited to keep moving forward.

I'm happy to answer your questions, or you can check it out for free and let me know what you think of it. Thanks for taking a look!

<comment><USER2> It looks like a nice product, but I was not able to try it out due to accessibility issues.

Many of the controls are labeled in such a way that my browser does not see them as clickable widgets. For example, the three dropdown selectors in the top left are not hinted. This is because they are built out of <div> elements, a big accessibility no-no. See here for more details:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA)

Also, in the console I'm seeing one 500 status code from your own API ([https://api.outpost.co/api/v1/super- admin/check](https://api.outpost.co/api/v1/super-admin/check)) and several requests to tracker services, something I wouldn't want on a corporate app.

As a no-mouse user, I had to resort to dragging the pointer cursor around with mousekeys several times just to get past signup. I would not be able to use your app on a regular basis.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! I'll pass this on to our web developer and we'll try to get those items addressed ASAP.</comment></comment></comment>


WebGL 2.0 Compute - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/blink-dev/bPD47wqY-r8/5DzgvEwFBAAJ <comment><AUTHOR> This would bring GPU accelerated compute shaders to Chrome. It's probably a (very) long way off, but the intent is awesome.</comment>


Involuntary Eye Movement a Foolproof Indication for ADHD Diagnosis - <AUTHOR> http://www.aftau.org/news/2014/involuntary-eye-movement-a-foolproof-indication-for-adhd-diagnosis

<comment><USER2> The conclusions of the summary are vague. ADHD most frequently mis-diagnosed; then they test people 'diagnosed with ADHD'. How are we to be sure they were in the correct group?

Then they tested folks on and off Ritalin. Those off Ritalin showed less of the eye movements they were testing for. This they extrapolated as proof that Ritalin works to treat ADHD and is not a placebo. Circular reasoning of a sort I am baffled to explain. Perhaps the eye movement is a spurious irrelevant symptom; then Ritalin's effectiveness for ADHD is completely disconnected from that finding.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Paper here (paywalled): [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698914...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698914001187)</comment>


Sites that pushed JavaScript to the limit - <AUTHOR> http://www.netmagazine.com/features/2011-review-20-sites-pushed-javascript-limit

<comment><USER2> I think "Linux in your browser" was the limit in 2011:

<http://bellard.org/jslinux/>

<comment><USER3> Totally agreed. Emulating an entire x86 CPU, and booting a Linux image over the network in javascript? And it's fast enough to be completely usable? Jaw- dropping achievement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think that "top n" lists of things might be the 2011 web cliche of the year, but there was one gem on there that was worth the view. Check out the beercamp link (<http://2011.beercamp.com/>) - it does something I have never seen before. It hijacks the scroll bar and instead of a y-axis scroll, it zooms towards the center of the screen, pushing the outer elements larger and then off-screen. I just like to see examples like this that make me challenge my expectations of what an interface can be. (Not that I am an interface designer - it would be fascinating to grab a coffee with people that are and hear some other non-obvious ways of letting a viewer steer a web browser)

I'm sure we'd cry bloody murder to see this replace the "top left, scroll down" model, though.

<comment><USER5> That's pretty cool but I can only get it to work on Chrome. Every other browser the website is severely broken for me.

What browser are you viewing this in?

<comment><USER6> Works for me in Safari.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How is gmail.com missing from this list? Before gmail you could hardly notice any email provider using XMLHTTP requests to load their mail, search, etc.

It just my opinion, but to me it's always gmail which made it a normal- everyday-thing for sites to use Javascript so tightly across browsers. And they keep adding a ton of features like automatic email update (remember the check email buttons?), dragging/sorting contacts, inline chat, etc which may appear seamless but definitely push Javascript to the limit.

<comment><USER8> It predates 2011

<comment><USER7> well, facebook.com is on the list too.

<comment><USER9> Not sure if this is the criteria -- but Facebook's Timeline feature was recently added and appears to me to be JS heavy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There were some good examples, but most didn't push JS to the limit. About half were merely "cool sites that use JS".

</comment><comment><USER11> <http://repl.it/> should be on this list. I don't think anything on this list comes even close to compiling CPython, Ruby and Lua to JS.

</comment><comment><USER12> I would also have added <http://codecs.ofmlabs.org> which features _hand- ported_ MP3 and ALAC decoders.

</comment><comment><USER13> Well if they have the Windows Phone demo, they shouldn't forget the Ubuntu demo: <http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/>

<comment><USER14> That's really well done. The Windows 7 demo not running on WP7 was a little funny, but hey, I guess they don't have to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was surprised to see that <http://www.drawastickman.com/> was not on the list.

<comment><USER16> Sure, this one is amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's missing <http://www.browserling.com>.

</comment><comment><USER18> Three.js demos and baroque.me are amazing!

<comment><USER19> I stumbled upon three.js demos when looking for Javascript plotting libs yesterday and I couldn't believe the stuff it can do rendering on a canvas. It was a big "I really underestimated Javascript" moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Any list like this without <http://140byt.es> and <http://js1k.com/2011-dysentery/> are incomplete IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think it's fairly ridiculous that jQuery Mobile is on the list, but Sencha Touch is not.

<comment><USER22> Agreed. That and Pusher is not built on Node, rather on Event Machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow, this list has both some amazing sites but also rather meh-ish sites. And also thanks for the amazing comments, there are some really cool suggestions (as the Ubuntu online demo -- never knew that existed. Thanks!)

</comment><comment><USER24> <http://eightbit.me> should be on there.</comment>


State and future of Heka - <AUTHOR> https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/heka/2016-May/001059.html <comment><USER2> > There was one fundamental mistake made, however, which is that we shouldn't > have used channels. > they make it very hard to prevent message loss. If > unbuffered channels are used everywhere, performance plummets unacceptably > due to context-switching costs. But using buffered channels means that many > messages are in flight at a time, most of which are sitting in channels > waiting to be processed.

That's really interesting, I'd love to hear how people overcome similar problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.</comment>


Introducing Jibo - <AUTHOR> http://www.myjibo.com/

<comment><USER2> The video makes it look amazing from a technology point of view. Also makes me think of the movie "Her" in a scary way.

Would love to see videos from regular people (not the company) showing it off.

<comment><AUTHOR> IMHO it looks more like a concept than an actual product at the moment. A lot of the technologies they demo are impractical, or otherwise not as convenient as they would like (i.e. how could the robot know about the stories the children are reading?)</comment></comment>


Visual Studio Mobile Center - <AUTHOR> https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/mobile-center/ <comment><USER2> Hey all, I am on the Mobile Center team. We are creating amazing work flows for app developers of any language or platform. From React Native to Swift.

Please share any of your questions or areas of the mobile app creation process that are most frustrating / annoying / time-consuming to you.</comment>


Ask HN:  Living in a warehouse? - <AUTHOR>

Has anyone ever done this?  What is your warehouse like?<p>I'd like to build the ultimate hacker home and warehouse.  What would you put in it? <comment><AUTHOR> There was a slashdot thread about this many years ago. If anybody can find the link, that would be awesome.

<comment><USER2> Here it is: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=316819>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> An enclosed living space so you can afford to heat/cool it.

</comment><comment><USER4> For whatever reason I'm fascinated by industrial robots - it would be great to have a couple of those enormous robotic arms for simulated wii hacked sword fights: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qEotHQgUsg> check out minute 0:58...

<comment><AUTHOR> Be careful! I would not want to get hit with that racket.</comment></comment>


When Product Adoption Is Lite - <AUTHOR> http://davidcummings.org/2016/01/09/when-product-adoption-is-lite/ <comment><USER2> Correct spelling is "light".</comment>


Scala Vs Clojure – Let's get down to business - <AUTHOR> http://bestinclass.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/scala-vs-clojure-lets-get-down-to-business/

<comment><USER2> quote of the week ( which comes from this article ):

One guy asked me 'Havent you ever passed arguments in the wrong order and expected a different return than what you got ?" and I'll be honest: No, I haven't. But for people who have a hard time getting arguments order and return types right, this system is a great help. So it has it's place, I must say.</comment>


Congressman asks NSA to provide metadata for "lost" e-mails of IRS officials - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/congressman-asks-nsa-to-provide-metadata-for-lost-irs-e-mails/

<comment><USER2> NSA = National Storage Archive</comment>


Angels vs. VCs - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pmarca.com/2010/03/angels-vs-venture-capitalists-1.html

<comment><USER2> The best angel investing in my world (Silicon Valley early-stage startups) is based primarily on _relationships_ , not on formalities. This does not mean that formalities are dispensed with. On the contrary, everything is done by the book. But it is done on _friendly_ terms, with the wealthy individuals who open their pocketbooks knowing and believing in the founders and coming beside them to offer not only money but also strategic advice and long-term guidance. These are basically former founders themselves, and successful entrepreneurs, who consciously seek to guide the new ventures toward the path to success _without_ using VC resources in the early stages.

And this is the wave of the future. VC investing is basically still largely frozen today, but the early-stage efforts of such angels are active and thriving. They might raise $500K or $1M or $1.5M, depending on the need, but the terms of the investment will always be preferred stock on _balanced_ terms. Often, the round will be styled as a Series AA to distinguish it from the typical VC-type round.

This piece has one of the best conceptual discussions of the differences between angel and VC funding that I have ever read. Nonetheless, the model documents still derive from a VC mindset (a good tip-off is the term sheet provision that the startup will pay $10K of the investors' legal fees for making the investment). Thus, while I believe the Andreessen Horowitz fund is trying to distinguish itself by taking a simpler approach than is traditional, I believe it remains VC-style. One will not get the equivalent here of the benefits of what one would get from an angel investment made by a few wealthy individuals with whom one has existing relationships. The latter, and not the former, is the optimal angel investment.

The approach being pioneered here is a very good step in the right direction, but it represents more a _VC firm_ trying to expand its range than it does an optimal form of angel investing.

</comment><comment><USER3> First, Great to see new content on pmarca again.

Second, saying "it takes a lot less money to build a company nowadays" has become a cliche. Unfortunately few people really explain why this is. I thought this was an excellent explanation.

> I emphasize product to distinguish it from building the company. Building > modern companies is not low risk or low cost: Facebook, for example, faced > plenty of competitive and market risks and has raised hundreds of millions > of dollars to build their business

Important point. People use the term "startup" nowadays to refer to products more often than companies. Building a company is a totally different endeavor. It's surprisingly easy to build a profitable, popular product on the Internet. But turning that into a global, thriving company is a totally different ball game that few people have managed to do. I think it starts by picking an important problem to solve. Most of the startups I've seen (some of mine included), have gone after small, niche problems that won't lead to large companies.

> When we invest in angel rounds, we behave like an angel. As angel investors, > we can invest as little as $50,000, we do not take board seats, and we do > not require control.

That's an awesome pledge. Anyone know other VC's that also do this?

<comment><USER4> Beware: just because they don't have a board seat or formal control doesn't mean they won't have a lot of influence, and possibly even de facto control. In particular, if you need to do a follow-on round (and if you only get $50k the first time around it's almost certain that you will have to) you will almost certainly have to do it with them, because if your initial investor doesn't follow on it's extremely unlikely that anyone else will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very insightful comment: If the VC wants to be in the angel round, but refuses to behave like an angel, then entrepreneur beware"</comment>


Surprise Your Friends With Hogwarts Letter - <AUTHOR> http://www.hogwarts-letter.com/

<comment><USER2> This is one of those ideas that could help support a small startup of two guys living on air mattresses. But doesn't this run into some kind of copyright issue?</comment>


Cloudflare to give SSL for free to all customers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cloudflare.com/celebrating-cloudflares-4th-birthday <comment><AUTHOR> The "hint" they refer to in the post is that the first letter of every paragraph spells, "SSL TLS FREE".

</comment><comment><USER2> Alt title: "CloudFlare offers to MITM all customers for free!"

Source: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8337815](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8337815)

Not to knock on CloudFlare too much though. Their DDoS & malware protection is definitely a nice plus to have. Just know what you're signing up for.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some what ironic that I get "SSL Connection Error" in Chrome for that post!</comment>


Show HN: WebMTG, manage Magic the Gathering games, tournaments and decks - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bartzon/webmtg

<comment><AUTHOR> I've added some screenshots!

[https://github.com/bartzon/webmtg#features](https://github.com/bartzon/webmtg#features)

</comment><comment><USER2> After some time, this becomes a website for managing Bitcoin accounts and keys, grabs your Bitcoin keys, loses them, everybody is poor.</comment>


Show HN: Unfollow.xyz – Tools to help clean up who you follow on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://www.unfollow.xyz/ <comment><AUTHOR> Lunch break launch on ShowHN!

UNFOLLOW.xyz started as a way for me to take control (and clean up) who I follow on Twitter, but then realized that is a little bit selfish of me so I decided to open it up to everyone.

As you can see by its amazing design, I launched this in a very VERY MVP state.

Right now there is only one tool online. Basically wanting to see if this might be useful for Twitter users, and if so, I'll be releasing more and more tools.

Let me know your thoughts.

<comment><USER2> Perfect Timing, I was just purging my followings list. my 2 pennies: 1) The "Next Account Please" button is not necessary, just show the next account. 2) You could sort followers by last_tweet_date

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Was debating on the "next account please" button. Put it in there at the beginning just to help slow down the speed of unfollows. More of "I don't want Twitter to ban you" feature.

#2 ... Will see what I can do with that.

Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Disqus: comments can now be blog posts - <AUTHOR> http://blog.disqus.net/2008/08/25/reblog-comments-can-be-blog-posts/

<comment><USER2> I'm also quite skeptical about Disqus from a number of aspects, but this is a very interesting feature, with the potential to do for commenting what github is doing for code hosting - i.e. explode it to a new level.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great... now if you only could do that from HN in addition to Disqus ;~)

<comment><USER4> Seriously, how long before HN comments can integrate with Disqus?

<comment><USER5> Disqus doesn't provide any way for non-WP sites to import comments. That would make this sort of integration rather difficult.

Personally, I'd really like to add disqus to my blog, but I'm not going to do that until I can preserve my existing comments.

<comment><USER6> Why couldn't you do it similar to how google adwords works..?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a great idea to encourage more thoughtful discussion through blogs. Those disqus guys are smart.

<comment><USER6> Apparently NY Times is trying to enable blog comments better. Disqus should really contact them about being the backend software for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Disqus are really doing some good stuff here. At first I was quite sceptical about Disqus, but actually, it's a useful service from the point of view of the user. Disqus has the potential to become the thread that links together a bunch of blogs into a real community.</comment>


Why are all web pages so darn slow now? - <AUTHOR> I'll answer my own question: it's because they are (almost) all bloated beyond all reason by excessive "content", fancy javascript and reams of links to CDNs and other services. Regarding the latter, each one of these now executes needlessly over https, requiring endless "TLS handshakes".
The web doesn't quite completely suck now but it's trending in that direction fast. <comment><USER2> I have actually been experimenting against responsive web lately, partly influenced by bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com (don't worry it's a CSS site)

Responsive web was jaw dropping when it first started but now it's become extremely common. Do people really need to do several different designs for phone, tablet, desktop?

A lot of major sites like Reddit do very well without responsive. And it wouldn't work for something like Stack Overflow because their user base are desktop people who prioritize low friction access.

It takes a long time to load and a long time to build. So most people should really rethink whether they need all this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Love it! Yeah, how about prioritizing the communication of information. And face it, your site is NOT going to be a profit center through ads - and if you try to make it into one, you'll just drive away your users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I feel like it's always been like that.

Websites in the 90s were slow, too. They did a lot less, but the tech was worse.

Now everything is faster but we push things to the limit and make everything slow again.

I must say that every once in a while I visit this website I made in 2007 and it's super-fast, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've noticed a, er, noticeable worsening in the past year. I used to enjoy doing things on the web, but now no matter what I try to do, whether book travel or watch a news video, it turns into a slog of waiting for pages that won't load, or won't stop loading junk, endless "TLS handshakes" and loading things from Cloudflare, etc etc.

<comment><USER3> Are you sure it's not your browser (ad blocker, spyware, etc.)?

<comment><USER4> how ad blocker can hurt the speed? I was under impression that by blocking some loads it makes it way faster.

<comment><USER3> No idea. By blocking legit scripts. Disabling all extensions would be the second step I'd take, though, after having made sure that there is no malware or app using up all bandwidth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My guess: people hiring web developers evaluate their work by how pretty a website is, not by how fast it is.</comment>


Is anybody working on the Semantic Desktop/Interface? - <AUTHOR>

Hi All,
Just wondering - is anybody aware of interesting movement in the semantic desktop area? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_desktop
Maybe it's pie in the sky, but I think not.  The essential nature of the Windows interface hasn't hugely evolved since the early days -   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows#mediaviewer/File:Windows1.0.png
I'm not sure what it'll look like, but my gut is that the right implementation of a semantic interface could be a sea change.  I think the term desktop however is kind of defunct, since it will need to be ubiquitous across a user's/organisation's devices.  Love to hear any thoughts.
Cheers, Andrew. <comment><USER2> Take a look at the digital.me EU project, which seems to have wrapped up after prototyping a cross-device architecture with role separation. Some earlier semantic desktop efforts floundered due to poor performance caused by RDF. Current, less ambitious KDE effort uses sqlite & xapian, [https://community.kde.org/Baloo](https://community.kde.org/Baloo).

[http://www.semanticdesktop.org/ontologies/](http://www.semanticdesktop.org/ontologies/)

[http://www.dime-project.eu/DescargarDocumento.aspx?idd=5207](http://www.dime- project.eu/DescargarDocumento.aspx?idd=5207)

 _" The Digital.Me project introduced the concept of a personal information sphere, referring to multiple devices (including personal computers, tablets and smartphones) and also remote Web services and online accounts as holders of personal information. In view of the need to integrate and better manage this distributed personal data, a number of extensions to existing ontologies, plus a number of new ontologies have been submitted and published by OSCAF. These include coverage not only of new and yet 'traditional' personal information that is of direct interest to the user (DLPO - for online item sharing), on more than one device (DDO) and online accounts (DAO), but also of context/presence-related information (DCON, DPO), privacy preferences, user histories (DUHO) as well as ontologies for the personalisation and customisation of entire systems and automised events (DRMO)."_

Some Java code was released in Aug 2013: [http://dime- project.github.io](http://dime-project.github.io)

There is the "Hub of All Things" project in the UK, [http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/wmg/research/business_tran...](http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/wmg/research/business_transformation/ssg/research/value/hat/) which includes [http://nymote.org](http://nymote.org)

One could argue that Tiling Window Managers are relevant to semantic desktops, [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Comparison_of_Tiling_Wi...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Comparison_of_Tiling_Window_Managers)

Are you interesting in using or developing a semantic desktop -- open-source, proprietary or hybrid?</comment>


Anyone Looking for a Wordpress or Ruby Dev? - <AUTHOR> Hey Guys!
So, instead of drop a web dev pitch here I'm just going to ask - what's a really great way to land some web development work as a freelancer?
Here's the thing. I've been doing it for about 3 years already, but I got spoiled since all my clients were based on referrals. Plus I was lucky because when I got in it my first clients were very well connected. So it just spread from there.
I decided to make a change for a while and work for a single company. I decided that that wasn't for me and I'm back again doing the freelance thing. But instead of going the slow route and building up referral clientele again I want to  jump start the process with new solid clients.
And the rub is this - I moved to the middle of nowhere to focus on building a web application. I'm  dead smack in between San Fran and LA - in silent hill. Thankfully I've got a decent cushion of money to live with for a while but it's not going to last forever! Otherwise the obviously easy thing to do is to go to dev and tech meet-ups (None in my area).
Anyway, your thoughts are warmly welcomed. <comment><USER2> Try the monthly freelancer thread (beginning of every month), odesk, upwork, wwr, remoteok & SO jobs. These should be enough to get you started. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> Look into options for working remotely eg weworkremotely.com and stack overflow careers for example as a good starting place.</comment>


Bank robbery suspect wants NSA phone records for his defense - <AUTHOR> http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/crime/fl-phone-records-fisa-broward-20130612,0,5434900.story <comment><USER2> His lawyer is a genius and a hero. A genius because when he doesn't get the records (and be wont), it will appear the prosecution has something to hide. He wins either way.

And a hero, because this makes clear the exact problem with these databases. Once they exist, there are endless uses for that each -seem- reasonable. This request illustrates that slippery slope in a way that makes even the NSA nervous.

<comment><USER3> Trying to make a mindmap of what has transpired and implications:

* monitoring the world

\- better PR (how to spin news to the masses)

\- better data for elections (get out to vote campains, donations) - this way they improve their elections machine

\- better metrics for governmental activities and social development - this is what I hope it will be used for

* manipulation

\- bubbling - presenting slanted/targeted results in searches and feeds - requires deal with FB and Google - in this way they can promote the opinions they want and actively downplay the activist movement

* propaganda

\- using analytics they can target write articles in the media to influence public opinion

* blacklisting

\- we've seen this in China and US, with The Great Firewall and No-fly List, it will probably become much more pervasive

\- they can blacklist persons but also websites and specific messages in social networks

* targetting people

\- they can auto-identify activists for any political orientation, networks of people, the social influencers

* blackmailing

\- they know our most private interests and they can use that for blackmail when a person has been auto-identified or in any other situation

* wildcard - what will happen in the future with this information

\- it could fall in the hands of Republicans

\- similarly, other countries could make use of such datasets

\- various companies could use the info for their own benefit (for example Google could use the data in many ways that would scare the people)

* slippery slope

\- use of surveillance data in civil and crimilal lawsuits -> imposing a reign of terror on population

* the basic questions

\- who has access?

\- what data has been collected?

\- how are they using it, and what machine learning tools are they applying on it?

\- who is going to get such data in the future and how are they going to use it?

<comment><USER4> This is what's happening in China now. They've had the great firewall for 10 years - what's happening since then has been further development of ways to manage what people think. So they allow weibo, etc. to work, and are figuring out how to control the message.

By controlling a few birds at the right moment, you can control where the whole flock goes, and it still thinks it's free.

<comment><USER5> Sounds very Illuminati to me. (Oh yeah. I went there.)

I don't think it's that easy, though. China seems, at least to me, as a very divided nation. They can't keep it up forever, I mean - something's gotta give at some point.

<comment> chao- It "gives" quite frequently, and between the size of the system, and some policies therein, it can absorb a significant amount of "give". There are actually _hundreds_ of protests each day. State media control is of course the largest reason you don't hear about them often, but far from the only factor.

When discussing China from a Western perspective, and not simply using "culture and history" as a catch-all/cop-out for differences, I would say two points need to be kept closely in mind: Scale and Paranoia.

No Western country operates at "China Scale". Entire societal functions operate less efficiently, or break down entirely, when you reach a certain size. You often hear bewildered statements, wondering "Why China does X instead of Y?", where X is an unsustainable notion for them. Sort of like how on HN we talk about "Facebook Scale" or "Twitter Scale" to emphasize sets of problems that most other companies don't have, and likely never will.

But size lends something else: Momentum. Things will continue forward tomorrow in a manner similar to today, if only because it would take a huge exertion of effort to change it. And in this case, 500 protests per day with a few dozen people each is _not a huge exertion of effort_ relative to the population.

As for paranoia, I'm sure some of China's leaders agree with your _" They can't keep it up forever"_ statement (at a national level--local is a different matter). They worry about this regularly and it colors much of what they do. Does a US Senator wake up in the morning and ask themselves "Is today the day that everyone decides democracy is a terrible idea? Is today the day it all crashes down?" Of course not. But many of China's leaders worry for their system.

Of course that paranoia is probably of a different flavor now than 20 years ago. China's economic success and continued upward trajectory has to help some leaders sleep easier at night.

As for the Illuminati: Please don't go there. It never helps.

<comment><USER5> Oh, I didn't mean to go all conspiracy theorist on you. The previous comment just sounded a lot like it.

I think China will be okay, as long as their economy doesn't collapse under its own weight.

<comment><USER6> I can't think of an instance of an economy "collapsing under its own weight." China might run into issues with currency manipulation, but aside from that they will be most stable so long as they keep growing at a fast clip. The problems will start to appear when growth slows or stalls, and people no longer see their lives or children's lives getting better (e.g. the Arab Spring)

<comment><USER5> There's the signs of an early housing crisis (i.e lots of apartments being built, but nobody's buying). Entires cities stands empty, without occupation. That seems a bit like an economy that's heaving trouble maintaining itself.

<comment><USER6> Ah so you're saying the government pumping up economic growth artificially won't be able to continue indefinitely. I'd agree: organic economic growth can't cause economic collapse (unless there are serious infrastructure issues) but artificial growth certainly can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And in one go, NSA moves from evil fuckers to Dropbox-for-the-whole-world.

Next step, political refugee uses NSA records to determine who was torturing him in Afghanistan.

To be fair it's absolutely brilliant - the only real defence we have against total surveillance is to be able to see what the guards are watching as they watch. This is a step along that road. Mr Brown may be doing the world a much bigger favour than we think.

<comment><USER8> If it all hushes down and we begin to get on with our daily lives, with the program still intact, perhaps you'll be able to make an information request. For a fee of course, oh hang on, isn't that how it already works?

You've got more faith in the freedom of information than sadly I! Perhaps information will randomly go missing. Just like the spurious claim that the CCTV network was down on the London underground on 7/7 (really??)

Or you'll get it rebuffed under something like: 'likely to prejudice the defence of the British Island'

[http://peacenews.info/node/6840/remote- killing](http://peacenews.info/node/6840/remote-killing)

Hot air from the Tories in 2010:

[http://www.conservatives.com/News/News_stories/2010/04/~/med...](http://www.conservatives.com/News/News_stories/2010/04/~/media/Files/Downloadable%20Files/Big%20ideas%20to%20give%20Britain%20Real%20change.ashx)

1\. Never again be governed for years by a prime minister with no popular mandate. (Isn't that rather ironically exactly what we got!)

3\. They'll expand on the freedom of information act.

7\. They'll protect whistleblowers.

8\. The right to data act, the public will have the right to appeal if public bodies refuse requests for data collected by the government.

<comment><USER9> Re: missing CCTV, aren't you thinking of the death of Jean Charles de Menezes two weeks after 7/7?

<comment><USER8> [http://www.julyseventh.co.uk/7-7-cctv- evidence.html](http://www.julyseventh.co.uk/7-7-cctv-evidence.html)

They really need to sort it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 21 Comments so far and none commenting the State's Secret Privilege that allows such requests to be thrown out immediately. None of these lawsuits will go anywhere.

See: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_secrets_privilege](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_secrets_privilege)

People erroneously tortured by the govt had their cases thrown out. Cases as low as bank robbery have zero chance.

<comment><USER11> I'm not so sure. In what way are this guy's phone records a state secret?

<comment><USER12> I'd say it's because they are part of a top secret government program

<comment><USER13> Not any more.

<comment><USER14> Actually, there are a lot of secret programs and there's going to be a PRISM II, which, coincidentally keeps an exact copy of the data from PRISM after it has been switched off.

The only way to get around this is to open up the NSA to an independent team of international cyber experts from the UN. It would set a great precedent of 21st century democracy and challenge totalitarian regimes around the world.

<comment><USER15> Why from the UN?

<comment><USER16> Because its not the US and not a specific foreign state.

I know Americans hate the UN, to socialist and dares to criticise the US, but for non Americans it's the closest thing to an authority that they can at least try to believe in as independent. We all trust the UN weapons inspectors, yes? Well, not GW Bush on a war path, true, but the rest of us?

So how about UN Data Inspectors?

Do Americans really believe the rest of the planet even slightly trusts the US government? No. So the UN would be the best bet. Unless the US is prepared to be audited by, say, the French.

B5 fans will understand that the US is nicely represented to many by Mr Morden. Nice hair, nice suit, winning smile, all the right words.... surrounded by shadows.

<comment><USER17> Americans hate the UN? The US subsidizes roughly 75% of the cost of the UN. That should emphasize the US commitment to the UN and international community.

It may be fair to say Americans are skeptical about relinquishing State Sovereignty, such as the US refusal to sign the Rome Statute and come under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, but most Americans would agree the UN is of great importance to the World.

>Do Americans really believe the rest of the planet even slightly trusts the US government? No

I think if you took a poll at any given time a majority of Americans would not trust their own government. American history teaches us to have a healthy skepticism for government. That skepticism would certainly extend to the UN, whereas at least the US is a democracy, in all its imperfection, which includes terms limits and elections, it only makes sense to be skeptical of relinquishing sovereignty to a UN that includes States represented by authoritarian and repressive regimes.

<comment><USER11> Do you have a source for that 75% number? He's one for 22%: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations#Funding](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations#Funding)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> He will never get them. I will give you a different example - in 2010, when the Polish president died in a plane crash in Russia, it was known that he placed a phonecall from his satellite phone shortly before the crash. Well, for investigation, Polish government wanted these records, and the only country that had them was.....the United States of America. Back then it was known that they intercept and store ALL satellite calls, even the ones made by a president of a foreign country.

And guess what? The US refused to release them, under the guise of "national security". Polish(and Russian) investigators NEVER got these records, even though they clearly exist.

Therefore, I don't think a guy like this would ever get what he wants from the US government, it's just not how it works.

<comment><USER19> It may help that this requestor is a US citizen. This gives him certain rights that the Polish government did not have in the case that you cite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This will get messy. Everyone will start pulling at this database. Can they send men to prison on account the information needed to exonerate them is classified, even if the person requesting the data is the same person under surveillance?

<comment><USER20> More like, withholding evidence! Think about it. That metadata could _very plausibly_ confirm or deny alibis (or at least help confirm/deny maybe).

<comment><USER21> Is it not considered evidence acquired illegally and unusable in court? Considering most people think that most of this information does not qualify as probable cause per the Fourth Amendment...

<comment><USER22> That requires admission of illegality

<comment><USER20> I don't know why but this put this all in a whole extra sharp perspective for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is not the first time a request like this has been made. In the Noriega case, the attorney for one of the co-accused pilots requested copies of telephone conversations intercepted by the NSA at their secret facility in Panama called "The Tunnel." The Government went ballistic and tried to have the defense attorney arrested--somehow he had obtained a copy of a map showing the existence and location of the facility. The Government merely denied that it had such records but quickly made a princely deal with the lawyer which ended up excluding the pilot from the case and giving him a sentence of less than a year.

The other issue that bothers me with respect to the defense lawyer's tactic here is that it does not appear he has complied with the Classified Information Procedures Act. Since the request was made in the middle of trial, perhaps the judge waived these, but failure to comply would be another way to get around the disclosure requirement.

Finally, line U.S. Attorneys really have no knowledge of these matters--Main Justice flies in CIPA specialists to assist whenever there is classified information.

<comment><USER24> Is the existence of the phone "metadata" classified anymore after national media debate and the public acknowledgement by POTUS? And unless this suspect is under a national security investigation, I can't see how his specific phone records can be classified in "subset".

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I see a lot of smart people making intelligent comments, but intelligence is not knowledge of the law. I'm not a lawyer, and am happy to be corrected by one, but I do have some small knowledge of law.

First, under the law there is no entity called "government." I see these blanket statements about "the government must." The prosecutors don't belong to the NSA, and so we need to understand that laws rarely apply across the spectrum to the whole of the federal government.

Second, we need to understand that there are lots of rules and laws related to disclosure. The defense and prosecution can ask for many documents, and there are well-defined rules for what you can withhold, redact, and what you must produce. Because the entities are separate (see above) the rules that apply to the prosecution are different from those that apply to the NSA.

Finally, the NSA need only comply with the rules for issuing subpoenas. This is where things get messy. I'd be surprised if a subpoena gets issued at all, more surprised if the NSA responds, and I might die of shock if they said anything besides, "no, because national security."

The NSA works to catch criminals - not to defend anyone. I know it seems and probably is unfair, but this lawyer's request is going nowhere. It's the same as with "anything you say can be used against you," the police aren't required to disclose the things you tell them that would help your defense. Don't expect law enforcement to come to your aid in criminal defense. The sad truth is that the information recorded by the NSA can be used to prosecute, but it'll be a cold day in hell before the NSA lets you use their information for your defense.

<comment><USER26> This sounds like a great explanation of an additional reason why the NSA collecting billions of communication records is harmful to civil liberties. It empowers prosecutors with no proportional aid to defendants.

<comment><USER25> Yes, this is one of the main problems I see with the NSA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> That's exactly why I think total surveillance can be totally fine. You just need to have unrestricted access to all recordings of you. It can prove many things for you and if someone will try to smear you by using some recording ripped out of context you can provide context if you have access to the material.

Of course US will have to do something about the law mess. Whatever they do, it can be only improvement over current: we have too many laws to even count them, and we are sort of fine not enforcing most of them, most of the time because bunch of them are silly.

<comment><USER28> But if we rely on this too much it would in theory give more power to hackers, and more reliance on the secureness of such a system. Suddenly you're being framed by some entity with sufficient political or hacking power.

<comment><USER27> I think it will eventually evolve into a system where everyone has access to everything, but it might take a generation or two. Intersting times.

<comment><USER29> I sometimes thought the same way, but yesterday I read Asimov's "The Dead Past" and it made me realize where the limit of this lies. I'm not sure if we want it that far.

<comment><USER27> I recommend to you Culture series of Iain M Banks.

<comment><USER29> Thanks! On my 'to read' list!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It would be very interesting to see what would happen if this were to occur in a case where the defendant's phone records were relevant to the defense's case and the defense attorney asked for the NSA records to demonstrate innocence. Not sure if this case qualifies or not, as I haven't heard anything of it other than this article.

<comment><USER31> If the defendant is the one who wants the phone records, can't his laywer call the phone company on his behalf and obtain them?

<comment><USER32> In this case they're hoping the NSA kept better records than the phone provider:

"The prosecution had told defense attorneys that they were unable to obtain Brown's cellphone records from the period before September 2010 because his carrier, MetroPCS, had not held on to them."

<comment><USER33> I really hope that they tried to get the records through a court request to the right people rather then just calling the company and asking for it. I find it really unlikely that such records don't exist anymore. Phone call billing is the one thing that brings money to telcos and they're often processed and analysed. They may not be exposed to public, but not keeping a backup of them stored at least on some tapes somewhere for years is really surprising...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> In the short term, before more safeguards are put in place, it is actually much more dangerous that this program is public knowledge. When it was a secret, the government couldn't use the information it gathered in a public case, for fear of giving up the secret. But now they can use it.

<comment><USER35> Just because it is public knowledge doesn't mean that the government can use the information to prosecute.

Suppose Alice and Bob are talking about a big drug deal over the phone, and Carol (working for the NSA) listens in. Carol lets her friend Dan know, and Dan's a police officer so he goes on a stakeout and catch Alice and Bob in the act, with $1M of cocaine in the trunk of Alice's car, and $1M of cash in the trunk of Bob's car. Open and shut case, right?

US case law states that the cocaine is "fruit of the poisonous tree", because the cocaine would never have been discovered by the police if it weren't for the illegal wiretap. Therefore it is inadmissible as evidence. The prosecution's case is sunk, and Alice and Bob go free. (Note that Dan never committed any crimes, might not be aware of the wiretap, and got good, hard, physical evidence that Alice and Bob were breaking the law.)

So if the government tries to use an illegal wiretap in an actual criminal case, it will probably do the prosecution more harm than good. Best chance for a conviction is to pretend the wiretaps never happened.

Edit: I think a good example here is "Nardone et al. v. United States." In this case, Nardone was convicted of smuggling alcohol etc. during a first trial based primarily on evidence acquired through illegal wiretaps. This conviction was overturned because the wiretaps were not admissible as evidence. On the second trial, Nardone was convicted again on other evidence. This conviction was also overturned, because the prosecutors wouldn't have had this evidence if it weren't for the wiretaps.

<comment><USER36> In such a hypothetical scenario would the police then be required to return the cocaine? Furthermore, would the owners of the cocaine be expemt from future prosecution. I mean, whats stopping the police from tailing them and waiting a few weeks before re-arresting them?

<comment><USER35> I am no legal expert, but the purpose of the exclusionary rule is to discourage police from illegally gathering evidence, not to provide relief. See WARDEN v. HAYDEN, 387 U.S. 294 (1967)

> Just as the suppression of evidence does not require the return of such > items as contraband, the introduction of "mere evidence" does not entitle > the State to its retention if it is being wrongfully withheld. Pp. 307-308.

So just because the cocaine can't be used as evidence, doesn't mean that the police have to give it back -- it's still contraband. Maybe they would destroy it if they have no other use for it. But Alice would get her car back, if it were seized with the cocaine.

As for future prosecution, nobody is exempt, but the prosecution would probably have to come up with new charges (due the fifth amendment double jeopardy clause). Waiting a few weeks would not change legal circumstances and a judge would see right through such trickery, but if I were Alice or Bob I would keep my nose clean for a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Some have raised the idea that, if surveillance data on everyone were publicly available it'd be OK. The problem is that this will never include everyone. At the very least all government employees, from the President to local cops will be excluded. Beyond that there will be whole groups with varying degrees of influence who will be outside the system.

I came across an example of how this works a couple of years ago when I came across a toddler left alone in a car while strapped into her car seat. This was at the local post office. It was easily 110 degrees outside. The car was not running (no air conditioner). After about 15 minutes the mother came out of the post office. I confronted her. She saud there was nothing I could do about it. I took down her licence plate and called the police. My jaw dropped when The cops told me they could not help me. Her licence plate was protected because her husband was a cop. They claimed they could not get any data on that plate. I was fuming. I called again and asked for a supervisor to come and talk to me. Two cops came to my home. I had them interview my kids --who were with me and saw it all-- to get the facts. I got the same story. I told them that this kid could have died and that I was sure the cop husband would want to know about it. I got the clear and distinct feeling that pushing further would have had potentially negative consequences for me. I had to balance the my indignation with the potential to piss off the brotherhood of cops and my family's well being and safety. I dropped the whole thing and threw away the number. I know people who were cops in other countries ad have heard enough stories in the general vein of "fuck with cops and you'll regret it" that I had to opt for self preservation.

My point is that there are sub-societies that do not live in the same reality the rest of us enjoy. The idea that surveillance would be applied and disclosed equally is, in my opinion, not aligned with reality.

<comment><USER38> That truly is mind-boggling. I see cops turn their lights on to run red lights where I live and it makes me just as mad. One of these days one of them is going to get T-boned.

I wonder whether this "protection" happened at the state or local level. License plates are given out by the state, so if you had traveled 100 miles in some direction but not left the state, and had a different city look up the plate, would they have told you the same thing?

Your story paints articles like this in a whole new light - [http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Florida-Highway-Patrol- Tr...](http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Florida-Highway-Patrol-Trooper-Who- Arrested-Speeding-Miami-Officer-Files-Lawsuit-184753781.html)

<comment><USER37> What happened to that police officer should have triggered mass firings and jail sentences. Every time I post a comment on HN speaking negatively of unionized government organizations I get mercilessly down-voted. I don't know if this is because there are a bunch of union thugs reading HN (doubt it) or brainwashed liberals who support unions out of pure indoctrination and without much thought. The truth is that these organizations are nasty animals with unprecedented reach, power, rights and immunity. They almost operate under their own laws and it is nearly impossible to go up against them. Case in point, bad teachers ought to be fired mercilessly without pension and those who abuse children should suffer the same fate. There was a case here in Los Angeles of a teacher who sprinkled cookies with --don't barf-- his own semen and fed them to the kids. The teacher's union actually protected this animal's rights for as long as they could. If the teacher's union is that ugly, imagine what police unions and even non-unionized government groups must be like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> How is this any different than when those big and small call witnesses to their defense they know will not come. For instance, Milosevic's defense team in his war crimes trial attempted, moronically, to call former PM Tony Blair and former US President Clinton as witness. I am sure they knew he would not show up.

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3613020.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3613020.stm)

I also recall Saddam doing similar things in his trial. Is there not a name for this type of failed legal tactic?

</comment><comment><USER40> I was just thinking - don't get me wrong - but is there any way to know whether if the surveillance actually protected any terrorist attacks, and if yes, how much? I think it is theoretically possible that it helped to prevent many attacks, but government could not announce it because that would reveal the whole network. It would be best if somebody would leak some documents that would show the terrorist attack being prevented. That would probably be the first leak that revealed not the crimes of the government, but actually good work, that was supposed to stay a secret.

</comment><comment><USER41> This issue and future questions described in these comments and comments posted across HN regarding PRISM NSA suggest the possibility that it will become illegal to raise questions that arguably threaten DHS, NSA. Something like the law against threatening the POTUS -not allowed by the 1st Amendment.

</comment><comment><USER42> If this was not a stunt, the lawyer would have just asked the phone company for their records.

</comment><comment><USER43> Elsewhere on the Internet :) [http://i.imgur.com/VGaCBrl.png](http://i.imgur.com/VGaCBrl.png)</comment>


Redesigning LinkedIn's Header Bar - <AUTHOR> http://jesseddy.com/blog/2012/09/redesigning-linkedin-header-bar/

<comment><USER2> I like the overall redesign you've done. Everything is easier on the eyes and easy to read. I do have one issue with it though. You've removed the home and profile buttons. As a user I think those pages are pretty important and should be easy to reach. Reaching them should not require drop-downs or shortcuts. How did you intend the user to reach those pages in your design?</comment>


Show HN: FWD:Everyone – Making email into a social network - <AUTHOR> https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/RtYWs75qQTyNfnepPpom_A/sxsw-advice-timers <comment><AUTHOR> Submission statement: For a long time I thought it would be cool to read the email of tech industry leaders and celebrities. I thought it was a dumb idea, but then a friend encouraged me to go out and actually ask some folks if they'd use it. And surprisingly a lot of the folks we talked with told us that if we built it then they'd use tho product.

Different people we talked with had different use cases. Some people were sick of answering the same question from dozens of different people. For college professors, fifty years ago their correspondence would get donated to their university library, but now that it's in their inbox that will all get lost unless there is some way to archive it. And for entrepreneurs, their email is content they're already creating that could be used to promote their startups, it's just that they're getting cheated out of their followers.

So while for me it was all about getting a chance to peek inside the private lives of really interesting and accomplished individuals, for these folks they see it as a way to maintain a blog with 10x less effort. So we tried to build something that would fulfill both use cases.

In a couple months we'll also have public and private organizations. So with public organizations, you'll be able to, say, subscribe to all the public email from Steadfast VC partners. Or with private organizations, you'll be able to share email privately within your business and tag it with things like the project name, 'decision', 'deadline', etc. (Charging for private organizations will be our business model.)

<comment><AUTHOR> We just added a screencast (sans audio) on the front page to give a quick overview of the functionality of the site. We also added a couple example threads to the logged out page, so if you click the titles you'll get taken to the thread page.

This front page stuff was just redone within the last couple hours, so we'll clean up the design over the next couple days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Love it!

Some comments:

\- I want to upload a thread, and it asks me to give Oauth to my entire email. That's a little too much! Can't I just forward an email? I figured that was the point, given the name. I just CC email@example.com and it gets published.

\- I dunno if I want to include the entire thread when I forward. I'd personally rather CC firstname.lastname@example.com when I'm writing an email, and get _only_ this message, with the context cut out for privacy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! With respect to just forwarding the thread, that was the original idea. The reason we've moved away from that though is, counterintuitively, for security reasons.

Basically we wanted to make posting email double opt-in, so that you can't publish emails from other people without their permission. The problem is that without OAuth you would be able to change the text of the conversations, and also who the messages were coming from. So although we could still have a permission mechanism, it wouldn't really be enforceable. And worse, anyone getting a permission request would have to reread the entire thread to figure out whether the uploader had changed the text of the conversation.

When we build a Gmail plugin we might be able to get around Oauth if we're able to forward each message in the thread, since I think we'd be able to verify the authenticity of the messages with DKIM. I haven't fully looked into this yet.

For now what you can do is make multiple gmail addresses and/or revoke the oauth access after each time you use the service. (We do this with our own accounts dozens of times per day while testing the site, and it hasn't caused any issues.) I think also a lot of people in the tech community are more comfortable authing their work email accounts than their personal email accounts, so we're not necessary counting on seeing a huge wave of adoption until we have the organization features in a couple months.

With respect to not including certain messages, that's a feature we currently have with Oauth. You can redact any text within the message bodies, which then isn't stored in our database. And you can also exclude messages entirely from the thread, and again the text of those messages isn't stored in our database either.

We're going to add more fine-grained privacy settings in the future so that way you can white list certain people and organizations and whatever. But for launch we wanted to keep everything super simple, and make sure your first experience with the site isn't getting doxxed by your friends or whatever even if that means not getting any super viral content on day one.

<comment><USER2> Ah, I see. I guess you'll have to weigh whether that giant obstacle to adoption is worth that feature. My bet is that it won't be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Imo as a mediocre web developer and huge fan of open and decentralized technology, this is the way that social networking should be done, at least until a reliable standard becomes available for social networking. It doesn't depend on a monolithic system, and seems to be backwards compatible. Thoughts?

<comment><USER4> Interesting thoughts. I think one of the draws of email for us is that it is an open technology. The other platforms for communication are great too, we just think that part of emails staying power is the result of it having open protocols.

We also think a lot of really great things get talked about over email that aren't inherently private. Conversations that showcase deep knowledge and understanding through the lens of relationships. For us, that's the magic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> whoa cool! Will you guys have a private side to this thing? I'd love to be able to show a thread to only to colleagues in the newsroom as a story develops, and then open source my reporting once it's published.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! And yes, we're going to have both private and public organizations. (Like GitHub we'll offer free public repos and paid private repos.) We actually already have a lot of the API code for this, but we still need a couple more passes at the UI on some of the views.

We're also working on commenting, a gmail plugin, and a bunch of other stuff.

<comment><USER6> Founder of Streak here, love the idea. If you're making gmail plugin, we published the www.inboxsdk.com to make it really easy to make them. Happy to help if you have any questions/issues....

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We are definitely going to build on InboxSDK, we have a couple months of other features to build out first though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can someone with some good security/email knowledge tell me if email spoofing is a thing (or will be possible) here?

<comment><AUTHOR> When you preview a thread we get that data directly from the Gmail API on our servers. This means that if your email is properly configured with SPF and DKIM, it shouldn't be possible for someone else to spoof your email before we retrieve it.

Once we have a copy of your email, we then take a hash of the messages before sending the text to the users. When we get the text back from the users (who can make highlights or redactions), we compare the text we receive back with the hash of the original message and throw an exception if the hashes don't match. We then delete the hash from our database, and store an encrypted copy of the message. The message remains encrypted until each of the message contributors gives permission. If this doesn't happen then the encrypted thread is deleted from our servers.

So yeah, we were pretty OCD about making sure that if something shows up in everyone's newsfeed that it was actually both written by you and approved for publication by you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like it, but even with the screencast I don't understand how this works.</comment>