A billion medical images are exposed online - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/10/medical-images-exposed-pacs/ <comment><USER2> An odd line from the article, wherein it states that security researchers don't blame vendors, but the physicians and hospitals that fail to properly secure the software.

I have never, in all my years of working in healthcare, seen a hospital or physicians office directly install and manage PACS. They pay a third-party - usually the vendor - to install, configure, and walk them through it. Maybe a behemoth system like Northwell has the IT bench to do it themselves, but that would be the exception.

So allow me to rephrase slightly: "technologically inept organization pays vendor to make machine go vroom. Vendor leaves keys in ignition. Damn that technologically inept organization."

To take a 10,000-foot view of the situation, though:

Healthcare-related technologically was largely pushed on the industry via legislation. Said legislation was almost entirely stick, no carrot. The result was healthcare organizations with a gun to their head to buy from a handful of vendors, with no real ROI to be seen from it - aka, the government outsourcing its costs to private industry, and throwing pork to some major health IT firms along the way. When a technology is forced on you at a loss, from a vendor with little incentive to optimize ease of use or utility, you get a terrible piece of shit that no one wants to invest more time and money into than absolutely needed. That's going to show itself in a myriad of ways.

<comment><USER3> I've been the IT vendor in this scenario. While I'm sure there are plenty of inept vendors not doing their part to ensure the systems they implement are secure, a big part of it is doctors and their work culture.

Many doctors see themselves as too important to deal with security. They have an attitude of "I went to school for medicine, not computers! How dare you ask me to use a computer." They are not only technologically inept, they are proud of it. And I'm not just talking about refusing to use complicated software. I'm talking about doctors that insist that they shouldn't be forced to use passwords (not even complicated passwords; ANY passwords). And in most of the organizations I have dealt with, doctors are the most important people in the organization and have final say on anything, which often means that the security department's efforts are all overridden by doctors that can't be arsed to even type in a password before using their EMR, and don't even dream of something more complicated like asking them to use multi-factor auth.

I once worked at a hospital where a doctor was looking at porn at work, clicked a phishing link, and gave up his network credentials. An attacker then used those credentials to breach the network and siphoned several hundred thousand dollars from the financial system (wiring money to himself). Security detected this and disabled his account. 20 minutes later the doctor had called the CEO, yelled at him ("how dare you lock me out of my account!") who then called security to yell at us and insist we re-enable his account. The doctor was never reprimanded (for falling for phishing or for the porn) meanwhile the security team got a stern talking to and was instructed to never disable a doctor's account again.

Healthcare is a different world for security. You have to acknowledge that yes, patient safety is more important than security, but oftentimes these doctors take it to an extreme and they are very difficult to work with. I have never met a group of people more elitist and "too important to be bothered" by security than doctors.

<comment><USER4> It goes both ways. I keep telling the IT people at my hospital to stop using SMS 2-factor and they blow me off and treat me like an idiot.

Anyway, 'Doctors' are a pretty diverse bunch, and most of them aren't arrogant porn-fiends.

<comment><USER5> Porn fiends? Doctors don't have the time. But you must admit that the profession brings out some very arrogant traits. They usually express the pointof view that they learned everything they needed to at med school and any new outside information is suspect and not important including IT security.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure how to reply to your comment. I know a lot of doctors personally, and less than 1% are what I would describe as very arrogant. Some specialties probably enrich for arrogant people, particularly cardiothoracics, cardiology or neurosurgery at large prestigious institutions, and some countries have a system which tends to permit arrogance (eg the USA).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The key takeaway from that article, for me, is that the government body that is supposed to monitor, enforce, and penalize organizations who fail to follow the HIPAA rules is basically doing nothing.

So with no consequence to these massive lapses, why would these companies care?

<comment><USER7> Under funded...just like the IRS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8>
      % curl -L 'https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/10/medical-images-exposed-pacs/'
      curl: (7) Failed to connect to guce.advertising.com port 443: Connection refused

WTF?

I have a lying DNS server, and it's getting ridiculous.

Here's the outline for people who care about privacy/tracking/GDPR, etc. [https://outline.com/Ep5u4K](https://outline.com/Ep5u4K)

<comment><USER9> For now I'd be happy if techcrunch was blocked so people had to submit other sources.

I've not been able to find a way to read content on that domain for months now.

Edit:

PS: unlike many here I've little against ads as long as they aren't tracking me, but the "consent screen" on techcrunch is less "consent" and more "strongarm".

PPS: as others are mentioning it seems the whole thing seems to be compliance theater since they seem to set a tracking cookie before even displaying the consent screen :-/

<comment><USER10> I'm on Firefox Preview for Android and am having no problems with the article. No ads, popups etc. Just pure content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From Techcrunch's article it looks like it's possible to see so-called "protected health information" (PHI) in these images. PHI includes patient names, diagnoses, hospital and doctor names, contact information, and so forth. It's sometimes possible to "de-identify" medical images by scrubbing off patient info. But I bet most of these are not de-identified.

The examples in the TechCrunch article are redacted, but I guess that was done for publication and not on the stored images themselves.

In the USA, HIPAA and ARRA 2009 (followon legislation) made it a federal crime to knowingly or negligently disclose PHI. It's a crime that "pierces the corporate veil." That is, natural persons can be tried and convicted, even if they were acting on behalf of corporations.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has a Breach Notification Rule, requiring holders of data to notify patients and CMS themselves if PHI is breached. [https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/breach- notificat...](https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/breach- notification/index.html)

CMS announces breaches involving 500 or more patient records here [https://ocrportal.hhs.gov/ocr/breach/breach_report.jsf](https://ocrportal.hhs.gov/ocr/breach/breach_report.jsf)

It wouldn't surprise me if the people involved in securing these sloppily configured DICOM servers are in a state of panic. I was involved in dealing with an unintentional breach of 44 patient records a few years back, and yeah, we had some panic. (Misrouted fax messages was the root cause, for what it's worth.) Also observe that I remember to this day how many records leaked out. Breaches are a big deal. It stinks to be them. I know that for sure.

I hope they get it sorted out. It will take a while. It will also take a while for the affected medical professionals and their IT providers to start responding to these breach reports rationally. Kubler-Ross's stages of grieving are still in play for them: anger, denial, negotiation, etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> On the user side, we have to jump through hoops and sign so many onerous paper HIPAA compliance forms at dr's offices, to just get doctors to share records about us. On the backend it's free for anyone to access. It's all backwards!

<comment><USER13> The signature demands that really annoy me are the ones in which I must acknowledge that the provider has informed me of their HIPAA policies, which demands are seldom accompanied by actual information about HIPAA policies, which I probably wouldn't read anyway even if they were included.

<comment><USER14> Then refuse to sign: you can't be denied care for refusing communication of your records to 3rd parties. It's certainly better for your privacy too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It feels like the places where security is of utmost importance like in banking, security cards or health are the worst at doing it.

At least, lack of security of credit cards is understandable as banks are profiting from fraud by charging the victim a fee.

In health? This must stop. It's a failure of regulatory bodies as they throw so much junk policies around that the things that really require attention is just overlooked. The overabundance of paperwork and policies is not improving security, it's keeping away actors that could do way better.

<comment><USER7> They focus on visible security more than actually securing things. Example: making it very hard for a user to log into a system "because of security " but not using security certificates to secure their email servers.

<comment><USER15> Related: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In 2009 I was building an enterprise medical imaging SaaS for hospitals, and we would constantly come across hospital IT admins who were adamantly against trusting a cloud vendor with their sensitive healthcare data - even one that's audited, security-checked and whose sole responsibility is to take care of these images.

We always thought it was a joke that these guys questioned us, when we knew how bad their internal security practices were. At some point around 2011-2012 we seized on the idea that holding your images inside of the hospital's four walls was a liability for them, and not a point of pride.

So, not at all surprised about this, nor about the complete lack of security practices at many of these healthcare IT vendors.

<comment><USER17> Lots of open S3 buckets full of critical data not helping the counter argument. Security is hard, proving you're secure to others more so. How do I know you're not just storing my data in S3, abstracting away the mechanism, but your bucket policy or acls are garbage? I don't. Cloud does not immediately mean more secure.

<comment><USER16> The point I was making isn't that the cloud is naturally more secure, it's that the company was 100% focused on medical imaging, not the 1000 projects a typical network/system admin at a hospital has to juggle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sensitive data should be thrown away and the medical images could improve on the current state of the art medical image database used for machine learning.

I'd be more than happy to publish my medical images with results if it would be used for an open database.

I have been at doctors in third world countries, where doctors don't get the same level of education, but try to use the best tools available without paying too much money.

<comment><USER19> Define sensitive data.

One of the challenges is that just deleting a name, say, doesn't necessarily fully anonymize a medical record/image. In general, I actually agree with you but anonymization/privacy is a challenging problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Could this data be anonymized and open-sourced for training diagnostic algorithms? It's hard to put the genie back in the bottle so why not at least make some use of the images?

<comment><USER21> Possibly, though with only the images you'd be missing some useful info, like the actual outcome. Also they are likely not "high quality" images on average.. so for example, if there is cancer present, it may not be identified in the image.

See [https://www.cancerimagingarchive.net/](https://www.cancerimagingarchive.net/) for some examples of carefully curated data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> DICOM is a standard that does too much. They should scrub everything related to networking and focus solely on encoding/decoding medical images.

<comment><USER21> As someone who deals with it every day, I completely agree. In fact, I mostly pretend the networking part doesn't exist anyway, and do all networking the normal way..

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I work for one of the largest health care networks in the northeast US. Nearly all of our PACS use the default installer password - which in at least two cases is literally just the name of the company that makes it.

</comment><comment><USER24> Clickbait-y headline that they forget to mention hospitals as well. Yes doctors should be more responsive and responsible. But they're (only) doctors.

Hospitals on the other have have staff dedicated to technology and such infrastructure.

Dr X being unaware of the implications is understandable. Perhaps not forgivable but certainly no surprise. But hospitals? They have no excuse.

<comment><USER25> I work in health, and I sometimes have to interact with the federal database of doctors. It's amazing the things you see in there.

There are doctors who don't know their own addresses. Can't spell the name of their town. Don't know their ZIP Code. Don't know the difference between a mailing address and a physical address. Don't keep their information current. Or sometimes don't even know what town they're in, putting a neighborhood or region on federal paperwork because "everybody knows where that is."

We assume that because doctors are smart at medicine, they should also be smart at computers. They're not. Just like my commercial airline pilot neighbor is great at flying transcontinental jumbo jets, but every few days has to shout across the street at me to ask if today's the day to put out the trash bins.

<comment><USER26> Not smart at computers, but maybe they are smart _about_ computers. Everyone thinks old people can't use tech but what if they don't want to and that resistance is a manifestation of wisdom that's incomprehensible to those without the same wisdom. To believe doctors as a class of people are less intelligent than average is silly and probably ego defensive. As a group doctors are of above average intelligence and certainly smarter than most of the people they work with in IT.

I think it's the academic and professional institutions that are most culpable for the current state of things. They should have been the ones who foisted tech requirements on doctors, instead it was done through federal regulation. Most of the blame for most of today's problems comes back to universities. If using tech is part of the job if being a doctor, then make it so from inside the profession.

<comment><USER27> There are different types of intelligence. Both fields require totally different talent, interests and skills. One is solving very abstract problems, the other is talking to people and learning a huge amount of information about how humans work.

I am good with abstract stuff, but in no way I could remember that amount of information about people as doctors too. I still have no idea what most of my bones or other things within me are named and I have zero interest in it. I can imagine one could be also the other way around. Have huge amount of interest in people, but despise techy knowledge.

In the end both doctors and it workers are so different from each other that they have so much trouble understanding one another. Remember doctors never asked for all this abstract shit. Also as you age you will get more set in the field you choose. That is just the way people work. Not an excuse or why one should not keep improving themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> From the article :

"We're not naming the affected organizations to limit the risk of exposing patient data."

However, a google inurl:dicom search sure shows up the affected organizations on the first page (and plenty pages after that).

And the sites are still fully open. Absolutely zero hacking required.

A lot of organizations had better get to work fast on this.

(edit: no images were viewed in the making of this post)

<comment><USER21> It's hard to know what Google returns for a different person these days, but inurl:dicom does not return anything suspect for me.

It's also worth noting that the types of systems mentioned in the article (unsecured PACS) would not show up on Google anyway. They must be accessed using one of the DICOM network protocols.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've contracted for some medical orgs and I can tell you there is plenty of blame to go around, and most of it belongs on the heads of administration (C-levels), who let doctors get away with things they shouldn't while at the same time underfund and generally shit on their IT departments. IT directors without the backbone or knowledge to speak boardroom and convince the C-levels to have their back are failing, doctors are failing, and administrations are failing when it comes to IT, add all that to a complex regulatory scheme in which some vendors are basically immune to being dropped, overworked doctors and nurses because congress keeps them artificially scarce, and it's a recipe for disaster.

To those making excuses for doctors, you should be ashamed of yourselves. There is enough blame for everyone in this case.

</comment><comment><USER30> Fun experiment: use google maps API to search a major US metro area for medical practices. Pick out any websites that don't use TLS. Crawl them for HTML forms that include common PHI keywords. You'll find a lot. Those same practices are usually going to have a whole mess of more serious HIPAA issues.

</comment><comment><USER31> Not only is transport security mostly lacking in DICOM, but there is little to no notion of access control for records. And I'm not just talking DICOM, but the apps themselves. It's no surprise though, when the DICOM standard has sections like this:

 _The DICOM Standard does not address issues of security policies, though clearly adherence to appropriate security policies is necessary for any level of security. The Standard only provides mechanisms that could be used to implement security policies with regard to the interchange of DICOM objects between Application Entities. For example, a security policy may dictate some level of access control. This Standard does not consider access control policies, but does provide the technological means for the Application Entities involved to exchange sufficient information to implement access control policies._

[http://dicom.nema.org/medical/dicom/current/output/html/part...](http://dicom.nema.org/medical/dicom/current/output/html/part15.html)

The original DICOM TCP protocol requires that every device connected use an encrypted tunnel, and it's not easy to get all the device venders to agree on which ones to use, and then update their software. DICOM Web Services are a thing, and at least they would get HTTPS basically for free from their choice of web client and server.

HIPAA has been out since the 90's so we need to get more fines against the providers to make them implement confidentiality and access controls. It's actually the GDPR which is now driving access controls rather than HIPAA.

To be fair though, the DICOM folks are busy constantly trying to standardize new image data coming from innovations in the modalities (scanners).

</comment><comment><USER32> [https://picsafe.com](https://picsafe.com) is a HIPAA compliant tool that solves this. Until penalties are applied, health organizations won't act on this.

<comment><USER33> No, picsafe does not solve the issues described in the article. What makes you think it does?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> If this article is correct, it's such a huge problem that health systems are likely to hesitate to take steps toward basic imaging security, because they won't know what to do first.

<comment><USER33> I think what to do first is really quite simple: Do not let back-end servers face the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wish one of my past providers was impacted by this a few years ago. I had to waste hours and thousands on MRIs when a practice closed and they made getting imagery impossible.

</comment><comment><USER36> Knock. Knock. The average human body is rather boring. especially for the 3/4ths that outside the young adult age range of 15-35.

As to insurance company exposure, almost all of these imaging procedures were paid by health insurance companies and already know all your ailments.</comment>


Nov 10  CHM: Live Xerox Alto demo with original PARC development team - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerhistory.org/events/upcoming/#yesterdays-computer-tomorrow-xerox-alto <comment><USER2> I saw this demo in 1975. But then it was Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg, neither of whom is presenting this time.

I've used Bravo on an Alto. It was a good editor, the predecessor of Microsoft Word. On the Alto, it was used for programming as well as document preparation. The file format was plain text, then a control-Z, then the formatting information. The Mesa compiler stopped reading at control-Z, so you could put boldface and such in your source code.

Those were cute machines. I used them in the 1980s, when they were obsolete, and Stanford still had a few running.

</comment><comment><USER3> What might make this a thousand times better is a way to submit questions online for the Q&A session.

Obviously some hard decisions would need to be made about which questions to actually ask, but a voting system, while crude, might allow the question database to self-prioritize before the event.

\---

I have to admit that the question I immediately wanted to ask this group is very offtopic, but I wanted to add the above suggestion anyway because I know others likely _would_ come up with good questions. FWIW, here's what I thought of:

The source code to SketchPad turned up online several months ago: [http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102726903](http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102726903)

I'd love to see a functional TX-2 emulator that can run SketchPad, and I'd be very willing to commit time to making it a reality. But the source scan is of extremely poor quality, AFAIK comprehensive in-depth info about the TX-2 isn't really out there, and no hardware survives.

A better scan would be an excellent start. I'm in Australia, or I'd have volunteered the time to rescan everything a _very_ long time ago.

From there, _much_ more info about the TX-2 is needed.

I'm reminded of [http://martin.poupe.org/casio/](http://martin.poupe.org/casio/) (select "assembler information", the site uses frames) who reverse-engineered and wrote an assembler for his calculator without knowing anything about the architecture - but he had hardware he could experiment with.

Again, I realize this is incredibly offtopic...

<comment><USER4> Brian Silverman, who has done some miraculous "bringing back software to life" (and some HW as well), has always wanted to do this.

The problem here is partly that no one is quite sure "which" TX-2 has to be emulated, and, worse, where to find the specs. The machine was a research computer and constantly tinkered with, including changing instructions and formats. Also, Sketchpad was written in a macro-assembler (Coral) which was idiosyncratic to say the least.

But I would advise contacting Brian to chat about this...

<comment><USER3> Thanks very much for this first-hand information! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Alto is getting a lot more press recently! CuriousMarc is currently fixing another one for the Digibarn[0]. I'd never seen one till the first of his videos, only knew they existed because of the Apple history and through a semester of Smalltalk at University. Very interesting.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSPlr4AZsKQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSPlr4AZsKQ)

</comment><comment><USER6> For anyone who has as much trouble reading this on a mobile device as I did (what happened to the contrast?):

CHM Live

Yesterday's Computer of Tomorrow: The Xerox Alto

Live Alto Demonstrations by: Doug Brotz, Dan Ingalls, Tom Malloy, John Shoch, Charles Simonyi, Bob Sproull.

How did personal computing start? Many credit Apple and IBM for this radical shift, but in 1973, years before the Apple II and IBM PC, Xerox built the Alto, a computer its makers thought could become the "computer of tomorrow." The Alto embodied for the first time many of the defining features of personal computing that seem natural now, over forty years later: individual use; interactive, graphical displays; networking; graphical interfaces with overlapping windows and icons; WYSIWYG word processing; browsers; email; and the list goes on . The birthplace of this pioneering machine was Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), which assembled a remarkable collection of computer scientists and engineers who made real their idea of "distributed personal computing."

Original members of the PARC team will present live demonstrations of, and discuss, some of the Alto's remarkable achievements: Tom Malloy and Charles Simonyi will present Bravo, the WYSIWYG word processor; Bob Sproull will show the graphics programs Markup and Draw; Doug Brotz will display the email client Laurel; Dan Ingalls will reveal the breakthrough programming environment and language Smalltalk; and John Shoch will survey the Alto's other accomplishments. Our program will close with an audience Q&A session with the PARC presenters. The event will be moderated by David C. Brock, Director of the Museum's Center for Software History. This will be a unique opportunity to learn about yesterday's computer of tomorrow that profoundly shaped our world.

This event is co-produced by the Museum's Center for Software History @CHM(, which collects preserves, interprets, and presents to the world the history of software and its ongoing impact on global society. The Center for Software History's Al Kossow restored two Xerox Alto computers starting in March of 2017 as part of the center's Alto System Project. An extensive Alto software archive has been preserved by Al Kossow and extensively curated by valued Museum volunteer Paul McJones, and it publicly available on the Museum's website. You can learn more about the revolutionary Alto in our permanent exhibition, _Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing_.

</comment><comment><USER7> Argh!

I know CHM have put alot of stuff up on YouTube, and I hope they do for this as well. There are already two other events in this time-slot that I want to go to!

<comment><USER8> Hi! I am the Associate Producer for live events at the Computer History Museum. Yes, this live show will be published on the Computer History Museums YouTube channel a couple days after the event. If you cannot attend in person or watch the show on the Facebook live stream, you can watch it on demand immediately after the show on the museums Facebook page in the video section. Let me know if you have any additional questions!

<comment><USER7> That's awesome. Thanks very much!

<comment><USER8> You're welcome!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> i know everyone says this, but I'm so glad they found a way to make this happen.

now that thats out of the way could we do the same with a Symbolics? who do I contact to volunteer time?

<comment><USER10> General volunteering information for the CHM is here: [http://www.computerhistory.org/volunteers/](http://www.computerhistory.org/volunteers/)

As far as the Symbolics event goes, could you email me what you're thinking about so I can pass the idea along? (As a MacIvory owner myself, I can guess what you'd like to see but I'd want to be sure)

<comment><USER9> I just think it would be fantastic to have a presentation from people who had their hands in it about what made that such a different and productive platform. especially given the level of general interest in that topic the last couple years.

thanks very much for the link, will follow up there

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> After sitting down on a real Alto machine last week at the Living Computers: Museum + Labs, I'm beyond excited for this event! Thank you so much to the speakers, sponsors and organizers for arranging this.</comment>


The Turbo-Encabulator in Industry (1944) - <AUTHOR> http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?reload=true&arnumber=5328648 <comment><USER2> Rockwell Automation did some work to modernize this with the ironically named retro-encabulator [0]. It follows the same principles, but uses the off-the- shelf parts we've come to appreciate from RA affiliates. GE was the main supplier of this updated version [1], and reviews show that its performance was excellent in the field.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXJKdh1KZ0w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXJKdh1KZ0w)

[1] [http://www.rfcafe.com/miscellany/humor/ge-turbo- encabulator....](http://www.rfcafe.com/miscellany/humor/ge-turbo- encabulator.pdf)

EDIT: There's quite a lot of controversy convering this area of reseach in the following decades. A more technical overview [2] on the turbo-encabulator's operations is discussed in an article covering Chrysler's tulmultuous efforts to apply it to their automotive line. The short of it is that despite being an impressive leap forward in technology, if mass produced it would generate dangerous quantities of DHMO [3]. It just goes to show how a small unexpected side effect can derail even well researched technical solutions.

[2] [http://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive- histories/automoti...](http://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive- histories/automotive-history-chryslers-failed-turboencabulator-hybrid-program- patriot-games/)

[3] [http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html](http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html)

<comment><USER3> Sidenote: That narrator got a job at Lowe's. And it makes it hard for me to take him seriously.

[http://www.lowes.com/projects/other-areas/pressure-wash- your...](http://www.lowes.com/projects/other-areas/pressure-wash-your-home- exterior/project)

<comment><USER2> I think it's clear that his career as spokesman for the retro-encabulator was limited. Rockwell really dropped the ball on that project, and we can see many on the team fell a bit further than hoped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Quite awhile ago, not too long after Kickstarter became a thing, I really wanted to do a modern, professional, warm, heartfelt video proposing a cloud- connected turboencabulator. I was going to post it to Kickstarter to see if I could raise money; if I did, I thought it'd show how little most people understood about how Kickstarter worked.

Then that fellow raised a half million dollars to make a sandwich, and I kind of felt like my point had been made for me already.

<comment><USER5> > if I did, I thought it'd show how little most people understood about how > Kickstarter worked.

Hm. What do most people misunderstand about Kickstarter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't wait till we can 3d print materials with compatible electro-grammetric properties to allumite. With brass fill, carbon fill, and magneto polymer fill petg and abs, we're getting closer to full ionic encapsulation which will let us make an equivalent device. Though, our rotational flex won't be as balanced. For now, however, differential girdle springs will still have to be purchased off the shelf.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you're talking about encabulators, it's hard to go wrong with the Rockwell retro-encabulator line. I know newer retro-proto-turbo-encabulators have flashier features, but newer isn't always better when you're dealing with grammeter interfaces.

<comment><USER8> I need an app enabled one though, programming it thru the existing PLC interface or worse, manual adjustments is so time consuming.

<comment><USER9> Talk to your Rockwell rep. If a worse way exists, they'll find it for you.

<comment><USER8> We just upgraded from the installing a config from paper-tape system, at least now I can use a serial port.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can someone smarter than me explain how they're getting the dingle arm to reduce sinusoidal depleneration without it increasing the magneto-reluctance of the rotor-slip stream?

<comment><USER8> We just went thru this upgrade process at work - it has something to do with live sockets and the sinusoidal flux of the reverse osmogrfier, and modulating the skor motion accordingly - Rockwell had sent out a great white paper on this, perhaps you should request it from your rep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some folks really get into optimizing their encabulators: [https://www.reddit.com/r/VXJunkies/](https://www.reddit.com/r/VXJunkies/)

</comment><comment><USER12> encabulation is a great topic of study with many interesting video demos

turbo encabulator v1 [https://youtu.be/Ac7G7xOG2Ag](https://youtu.be/Ac7G7xOG2Ag) rockwell turbo encabulator [https://youtu.be/2fjcJp_Nwvk](https://youtu.be/2fjcJp_Nwvk) rockwell retro encabulator [https://youtu.be/pbsmHnsjJZk](https://youtu.be/pbsmHnsjJZk) chrysler turbo encabulator [https://youtu.be/UyRllRWfLJE](https://youtu.be/UyRllRWfLJE) chrysler turbo encabulator diagnosis and service [https://youtu.be/pbsmHnsjJZk](https://youtu.be/pbsmHnsjJZk) fort worth vintage flying museum specific service notes [https://youtu.be/bOV0v1Uq5CY](https://youtu.be/bOV0v1Uq5CY)

<comment><USER13> I think Bud Haggert's narration in the v1 "original" is still the best. Be sure to read the video description on it too.

<comment><USER12> good advice, fascinatingly it turns out the whole thing was part of the development of the IFB, the earpiece in common use on every tv news show: The turboencabulator skit was originally intended to demonstrate the usefulness of earpiece radios as a replacement for cue cards when actors are delivering lines for a video. Bud Haggart wanted to show that you could use the earpiece effectively even when the lines get ridiculously difficult to follow, so he used the turboencabulator as a subject because it'd been a running gag in the engineering community ever since its first technical description was published by John Hellins Quick in 1944.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would like to see category theory applied in this area, for a more rigorous model of turbo-encabulation in the abstract (independent of hardware limitations).

</comment><comment><USER15> My startup is a leader in cloud based turbo-encabulation.

</comment><comment><USER16> etsy has done some work in this area, too.

[https://vimeo.com/63087035](https://vimeo.com/63087035)</comment>


Thoughts on Medium's monetization - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/drizzle-blog/subscriptions-on-medium-f23de6677464#.ltadk38h1 <comment><AUTHOR> My cofounder Kelly @klyburke has put together pros and cons of different monetization strategies for Medium.</comment>


HoloClean: Weakly Supervised Data Repairing - <AUTHOR> https://holoclean.github.io/gh-pages/blog/holoclean.html <comment><USER2> Very related: _Open Refine_

[http://openrefine.org/](http://openrefine.org/)

> is a powerful tool for working with messy data: cleaning it; transforming it > from one format into another; and extending it with web services and > external data.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing! This looks much more practical than HoloClean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is also ExceLint [1] for fixing bad data in (Excel) spreadsheets. I never tried it.

[1] [https://github.com/ExceLint/ExceLint](https://github.com/ExceLint/ExceLint)

</comment><comment><USER5> The code is on GitHub[1] for anyone interested.

[1] [https://github.com/HoloClean/HoloClean](https://github.com/HoloClean/HoloClean)

</comment><comment><USER6> This looks useful.

I wonder if the concept could be used to make predictions about data instead of just preparing it. ie, to interpolate likely missing values like in collaborative filtering?

There are probably several datasets that could be explained with this kind of scalable weak semi supervision

</comment><comment><USER7> This looks really cool, but I must admit - when I saw the name I hoped it was a HoloLens AR gamification of tidying up my house that gives me points for each dish washed or item of clothing folded. But hey, data is cool too.

</comment><comment><USER8> Holoclean was presented at this year's SIGMOD conference.</comment>


"Why don't senior engineers apply?" Career page about ping-pong but not parenta - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/mlroach/status/953022122699341824 <comment><USER2> And the retort - [https://twitter.com/paulmach/status/956017594313699329](https://twitter.com/paulmach/status/956017594313699329)

</comment><comment><USER3> Lol!

Also, too much effort, only to be rejected because he couldn't remember a corner case of a toy whiteboard problem.</comment>


Erdogan cannot take a joke – summons German ambassador over satirical song - <AUTHOR> http://europe.newsweek.com/turkey-summons-german-ambassador-over-erdogan-parody-report-441813?rm=eu <comment><AUTHOR> Video with English subtitles: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2e2yHjc_mc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2e2yHjc_mc)

Video with Turkish subtitles: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=349VWBGICUQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=349VWBGICUQ)

</comment><comment><USER2> Small note: The English (and Turkish) subtitled versions were only created later, as a response to Erdogan's demand to have the German version taken down.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ironically, a song satirizing a dictator ends up being censored just by stating plain facts. Imagine how it would have been if the song was released in Turkey.

Can only grief for the sane people in that country that have to put up with such repression in society.

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't actually censored - Turkey just asked for this.

<comment><USER4> Turkey just asked, because it was released in Germany, and Turkey _couldn 't_ censor it. If they asked, it gives you reason to think that they would have censored it if they could have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Erdogan is a disgrace for all civilized Turks! But obviously there are too many Islamists in Turkey to keep electing him!</comment>


How Google Could Rig the 2016 Election - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/how-google-could-rig-the-2016-election-121548.html?ml=po#.VdzEFvZViko

<comment><AUTHOR> Link to original study.

[http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/E4512.full](http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/E4512.full)</comment>


iPhone developer? How do you talk to you users? - <AUTHOR> http://daringfeedback.wufoo.com/forms/iphone-development-survey/

<comment><USER2> TestFlight does a good job of providing some of this information, but is expressly for the testing phase of development.</comment>


Are the iPhone and iPad touchscreen interfaces usable and accessible enough? - <AUTHOR> http://webdragon.com.au/main-site/welcome/are-the-iphone-and-ipad-touchscreen-interfaces-usable-and-accessible-enough

<comment><USER2> As a fully sighted user, I struggle with the buttons on touch screens. When once texting while walking was so easy, with an iPhone you have to stop and look at what you're doing.</comment>


Does the famous F-shape pattern in eye tracking really exist? - <AUTHOR> http://www.eyequant.com/blog/eye-tracking-f-shape-pattern-data <comment><USER2> Interesting read! Thanks. Was always wondering about the generalizability of NN's F-Pattern.</comment>


New Breed of Patent Claim Bedevils Product Makers - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467004575463843289453872.html?KEYWORDS=new+breed+of+patent+claim

<comment><USER2> As a patent lawyer I feel that have to chime in here. I have read the discussions thus far and I think most people are missing one important issue. Determining whether a patent is expired is not actually that easy. The patent office and various databases that list patents do not say whether a patent is expired or not.

The 20 years from filing rule for patent term seems deceptively easy. But there are many caveats. First, the rule is relatively new and there are still many patents out there that are subject to a different older rule. Second, there are various ways that the term of a patent can be modified, such as term extensions and terminal disclaimers.

So, if you want to absolutely certain whether a patent is expired or not you must either hire a patent attorney or spend a lot of time trying to learn patent law and patent practice by yourself.

As a patent attorney I should not complain, I suppose, but I think the law referenced in the article makes sense. False patent markings do discourage competition, and it is not actually that easy for the ordinary potential competitor to determine if a patent is valid or not. Although, the penalty of 500 per item may be a bit excessive.

</comment><comment><USER3> The thing that really bothers me is future-dated copyrights. For example, buying a textbook and the copyright date on the title page is 2012. How is that not illegal?

edit: If I were just to scan them and host them all online would I be doing anything that could be considered infringement? Because as I read it, what they are saying is that this textbook is considered public domain for another two years.

<comment><USER4> Your reading is incorrect. In the United States (and most other signatories to the international copyright treaty whose name escapes me at 1 AM), copyright attaches automatically to any creative expression. Works in general default to copyright, not to the public domain.

The copyright notice, symbol, and date are advisory only, not magical runes with exotic legal effects. (Registration of copyrights gives you extra bonuses, but it isn't necessary to invoke copyright protection.)

Yes, taking them and hosting them would be infringement. So would republishing this comment, which has no date or copyright symbol but is copyrighted by virtue of existing. The usual rules about fair comment, etc, apply, and courts would hold that I've certainly given PG et al implied license to retain and display the comment as a consequence of writing it here.

I am not a lawyer, but I'm not wrong, either.

<comment><USER3> I realize that the copyright date is only advisory, but if you're future- dating your work then what should that be seen as advising? Since future- dating your work is essentially stealing from the public domain, I think that any future-dated works should be legally seen as advising that anyone is free to copy and redistribute that work until the future date. That seems like fair compensation to me.

<comment><USER5> _Since future-dating your work is essentially stealing from the public domain [...]_

I think you're under the impression that copyrights expire at some point, which isn't really the case any more in the US for corporate-owned copyrights, right?

<comment><USER3> Regardless, when I purchase a textbook I am buying the right to copy and redistribute that textbook after X date. By future-dating the work the publisher is taking away something that I have paid for, which seems like it shouldn't be legal.

<comment><USER5> Since Congress can and has retroactively changed the length of copyright repeatedly, I don't think that there's any presumption that you are buying a right to copy after a given time, or at all. Since I'm against copyright in the first place, this argument about textbook copyright is rather academic to me. So to speak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Super-summary: companies are getting sued for putting expired patent numbers on their products. Previously, for a maximum of $500; last december, a ruling allowed up to $500 _per offense_ (with potential(?) speculation that this implies _per individual item produced_ ). And for some reason this includes retailers, not just producers, though I don't understand how.

I'll count this a good thing, though $500 per item on the shelf is excessive. As long as those patent numbers are on a product, people won't be as likely to do anything similar for fear of patent violation.

If the retailers are also held accountable, I feel sorry for them. That's a redonkulous amount of fact-checking they'd have to do, especially since some patent numbers are _inside_ the items, on the motor housing.

<comment><USER7> Where did it say retailers were responsible also?

<comment><USER6> > _Raymond E. Stauffer was shopping at a New Jersey mall when he noticed > something peculiar about the bow ties on display at Brooks Brothers: They > were labeled with old patent numbers.

Mr. Stauffer, who calls himself a "sharp-dressed man," also happens to be a patent lawyer. He sued Brooks Brothers Inc. in federal court, claiming it broke the law by marking its adjustable bow ties with patents that expired in the 1950s.

He figured the retailer would have to pay a nominal amount for violating a law that bars companies from marking products with erroneous patent numbers._

Opening paragraphs, among mentioning other retailers elsewhere (though those seemed to be referring to those retailers' own products).

<comment><USER7> I think its just a misleading choice of words. Article writers will often substitute a descriptive word for a proper name to avoid being overly repetitive - "the retailer" was probably just a reference to Brooks Brothers.

<comment><USER6> Most definitely a possibility. I thought it seemed a bit strange, in any case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Let's not get over-excited here. The WSJ article didn't seem to pick up on a June 2010 appellate holding: Someone suing for false patent marking must prove that the patent owner had _a specific intent to deceive the public_ with the false marking. See [http://www.townsend.com/Resources/legalupdates/Pequignot_Sol...](http://www.townsend.com/Resources/legalupdates/Pequignot_Solo_Cup)

<comment><USER9> True, but a separate ruling says that they have to rule on the merits of the case and that they can't just dismiss for lack of standing as one court attempted to do (something that would've slammed the door shut to these cases).

[http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/images/stories/opinions- orders/...](http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/images/stories/opinions- orders/09-1428-1430-1453.pdf)

In other words, they have to actually prove this at trial, which can be expensive, even if they have a fairly low bar to prove that they meant no harm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's 2010. Checking to see if a patent is still valid is trivial.

What happens to old stock or whatever? Do retailers have to pull things from the shelves when their patents expire?

Better yet, you could have a product code, that could lead to a web page that has the list of patents (and potentially other information; recalls etc?) on it.

<comment><USER11> That would actually be a decent application for StickyBits on UPC codes for popular products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice to see the patent system is working.

If corporations want their patents to be protected, patents must be protected. Selling an item with an expired patent number is akin to fraud, and undermines the patent system at large.

Congress to the rescue!

</comment><comment><USER13> There's just something about this story that left a bad taste in my mouth and turned my stomach. This is a quintissential example of lawyers behaving like scum. I'm not saying that companies shouldn't keep their patents updated. I _am_ saying that it's greedy, sue-happy lawyers going around essentially trying to wring free money from companies. These people are simply the latest iteration of patent trolls, only with a slightly different shade of scaly green skin.

<comment><USER14> How is this not an appropriate application of the patent system? The placing of patent numbers on products causes many people to not create imitations, clones and whatnot. If the patents are expired, there is no protection, so the placement of the patent number is an act of intimidation.

When the patent numbers are removed, people can start imitating, introducing competition in the market, and even commodifying things. Basically all the things patents prevent. This allows for increased overall market efficiency.

Since the patent system is in place, perhaps instead of feeling sorry for the poor companies being sued for abusing the patent system, maybe you should try to appreciate that some people will do this. Maybe they are scum, maybe not -- do you actually know anyone who does it? Most likely some are just looking for a quick buck. Some are doing it because it needs to be done. Some may be doing it because it is exciting new lawyering. How is this any different in terms of motives than a random sample of tech startups (replace lawyering with tech...).

Related: Do the people who launch suits to get patents invalidated make you sick also? Do you call them "just another form of patent troll"?

<comment><USER15> Perhaps it's an act of intimidation, more than likely it was placed on the product years in the past and it would cost the company a lot of money to take the patent number off.

Also, if I'm looking to make a competing product, and I see a patent number on a similar product, would it not make sense for me to check if the patent is still in effect? I'm not just going to see a patent number and say to myself, "oh shoot, they already got it, guess that's the end of that."

And from a consumer perspective, do I really care if there is a patent for this product or not?

My compromise would be to say the company would be required to have the patent numbers taken off and perhaps a fine to the USPTO, but why should this lawyer get money?

<comment><USER16> From the article:

"The law on false patent markings is similar to whistle-blower laws. Anyone can file a claim on behalf of the government, and plaintiffs must split any fine award evenly with it. "

Blame the system, not the person.

<comment><USER17> "The system" allows people to do many kind of unethical, greedy or just plain irritating things. It's still their choice to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another example of a useful law that's on the books and have not been enforced by any government agency.

Imagine how many laws out there are like this?

</comment><comment><USER19> I remember reading a paper about marking with respect to software patents - since marking is required in order to enforce software patents, if a patent holder fails to cite patent numbers on applications that use the patent, there are limitations the enforcement of that patent. This would mean, for example, that for Amazon to fully enforce the One Click patent they would have to note "Pat." or somesuch on the web page.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think the real solution here is that whenever you claim patent protection, you also include the expiration date of the patent.

This eliminates the problem old left-over stock marked with expired patents. It also eliminates the problem of forgetting.

</comment><comment><USER21> >>> To keep them valid, companies must pay maintenance fees every four years.

I wonder how many patents are invalid because of neglect.

<comment><USER22> The fees are higher than I expected: [http://www.the-business-of- patents.com/patent-maintenance-fe...](http://www.the-business-of- patents.com/patent-maintenance-fees.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Who would have guessed that the general public will be gaming the same system that has been gamed for years by the corporations? ;-)

</comment><comment><USER24> This is the definition of irony. Patents coming back to bite you for having them!

</comment><comment><USER25> This is why there are lawyer jokes.

</comment><comment><USER26> Live by the patent, die by the patent.

</comment><comment><USER27> Lawyers are scum, but sometimes they are useful, even if by accident or as a side-effect :)</comment>


The Queen's stylesheets - <AUTHOR> http://spiffingcss.com/

<comment><USER2> While the linguist in me is appalled by the author's joking (hopefully!) prescriptivist notion that British English is equivalent to such a thing as "correct English" (the American in me is also perturbed by such a claim), I'd like to point out that the home page's phrase "amount of features" is considered by such prescriptivists to be incorrect English. :) They would insist on "number of features" :P

<comment><USER3> A brief note to the Author of the Page in question

" _...one must check whether one has PHP 5.2 (or newer) installed upon their Internet server..._ "

Should this not be 'one's Internet server'?

" _Something our primitive stateside friends can understand_ "

What is this 'stateside' you speak of, Sir? Our Colonial Cousins may also resent the adjective that has been applied.

I personally rather regret the automatic recitation of Arne's ditty when visiting the page.

<comment><USER4> Prescriptivists would say it should be "one [..] upon his", but the author may wish to avoid using gender specific pronouns and is thus using the singular "their" instead.

<comment><USER3> I accept both points. I was reflecting on usage I have seen in late Victorian/Edwardian sources. That seemed to fit with the style of the text (although not the visual presentation of the page).

PS: 'Spiffing' is later and the Jeeves references in the HTML markup point to 1920s. Biggles. Biplanes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not very many substitutions performed[1]:

        'colour'       => 'color',
        'grey'         => 'gray',
        '!please'      => '!important',
        'transparency' => 'opacity',
        'centre'       => 'center',
        'plump'        => 'bold',
        'photograph'   => 'image',
        'capitalise'   => 'capitalize'

Would've thought there'd be a ton of opportunities to pedantically correct CSS's choice of words. !please instead of !important made me laugh, though.

[1]: Taken from <https://github.com/idiot/Spiffing/blob/master/spiffing.php> (aside, please don't use this project as a good example of PHP code style).

<comment><USER6> Some are incorrect. Transparency and opacity are opposites.

<comment> chestnut-tree They are in the sense that 100% transparency = 0% opacity. But in the end, aren't they both giving the same effect in CSS?

In Illustrator, for example, the interface has an opacity setting but the help file refers to it as setting the transparency since that is essentially what you're doing when you lower the opacity. (Personally, I prefer the word transparency, it just seems clearer to me.)

<comment><USER7> "I prefer the word transparency, it just seems..."

I cannot decide to up vote or down vote your comment based solely upon this statement. Therefore, take my lack of voting as a positive affirmation that I have no strong feelings one way or the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The sound. Oh my goodness, the sound. Why is there not a button to stop it?

I was listening to some music in the background with multiple tabs open, and I didn't expect a project link from HN to autoplay music. Confusion ensues.

<comment><USER9> <iframe src="[http://www.youtube.com/embed/yHNfvJc99YY?fs=1&autoplay=1...](http://www.youtube.com/embed/yHNfvJc99YY?fs=1&autoplay=1&loop=1) style="width: 400px; height: 400px; position: absolute; left: -999em; top: -999em; visibility: hidden; -webkit-user-select: none; -webkit-user-drag: none;" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Love it, reminds me of "If PHP Were British" ( <http://www.addedbytes.com/blog/if-php-were-british/> )

Wouldn't mind a few more substitutions in the language, but it seems like most of the work went into making a really nice landing page. Great job there! (Autoplay music forgivable on a joke at least)

</comment><comment> ezequiel-garzon It's amusing, although I'm lost with their proposal of "transparency" over "opacity", since they are opposites and, as far as I know, used on both sides of the Atlantic. Also obtaining the transparency would require applying the transformation x -> 1-x to the opacity.

I feel I'm missing something with this example.

<comment><USER11> As a Brit I concur with you good sir. We use both words (transparency and opacity) this side of the Atlantic.

And as you say, "transparency: 0.2;" would equal "opacity: 0.8;"

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ok, this is only tangentially related, but does anyone know why it's "background-repeat: no-repeat" instead of "none"? Or why it's "text-wrap: none" but "white-space: nowrap" or "white-space: pre-wrap"?

<comment><USER13> It's because you're able to define all the background styling in one line:

background: #000 url(pic.png) no-repeat;

So having background-repeat: none; would conflict with background/background- image: none;

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> People seem to be taking this a tad seriously. It's a joke, right? (S)he's not actually expecting anyone to change all their css to use some random PHP script just so they can have British spelling and backwards transparency/opacity semantics.

<comment><USER15> Of course it's a joke. As a joke it's about as funny as "all Americans are fat and uneducated" (i.e. not funny if it's not directed at you and offensive if it is).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> As an Englishman I must say that it really does bother me when people attempt to write or talk in the manner they imagine an English gentleman might. It always feels quite stilted, particularly in the not-quite-correct usage of unnecessarily antiquated vocabulary.

<comment><USER17> Some English gentlemen speak with what is quite stilted and not-quite-correct usage of unnecessarily antiquated vocabulary though ...

Oh well, toodle-pip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am going to put this into our development workflow. It totally made my day. Thank you so much! I admit that background music is highly relevant. However, using 'photograph' => 'image', is not good. I suggest 'picture' => 'image', since it covers both illustrations and photographs.

</comment><comment><USER19> I guess we also need ones for other languages

        透明度: 0.5;
        色: 紫;

which does bring up the point, are we being at all culturally insensitive by making nearly all web standards English?

Or how about UsingCamelCase? Give than some languages don't have the concept of UPPER/lower case.

Does Go require you to use "er" for interfaces as in Writer, Reader, Serializer? That seems even worse given that it not just roman letters only it's English only. I don't know other languages but I suspect the suffix 'er' has no meaning in Spanish, Italian, French, and that being forced to added it to classes written using those languages would really suck.

        type Escribirer interface  // !?!?

<comment><USER6> The thing about English use is, well, at least it is consistent. Everything uses American English, so if you need to learn to program, there is only one language to learn. Allowing other languages wouldn't solve much since English would still be present in all the API methods and so on, so I think consistency is better.

<comment><USER20> "Everything uses American English"? Yeah, no. There's plenty of technical stuff on the web that uses British English.

<comment><USER21> There's very little code on the internet that uses British English. I'm Australian, and even when I write software that will only be used by other Australians, I still use American English so I don't have to think about it.

Spelling in documentation is much less important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Your example is incorrect

"transparency: 1" != "opacity: 1"

We use transparency in the US. Transparency is how much light passes through an object and Opacity is how much it blocks.

so:

"transparency: 1" == "opacity: 0"

<comment><USER13> Funny enough, the example is ambiguous since:

"transparency: 0.5" == "opacity: 0.5"

<comment><USER23> Yeah, when I caught that, I thought that it might just be semantic trolling! (a terrible variant)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Also known as _international English._ This point can't be stressed enough.

<comment><USER6> What about _US (International) English_? :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Don't miss the comments in the HTML.

<comment><USER26> Hilarious indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> As a Briton I find these kinds of things as offensive as I suppose Americans must find international stereotypes of their country, people and education.

</comment><comment><USER28> This isn't complete until the shorthand box notation is changed from top, right, bottom, left to top, left, bottom, right.

<comment><USER29> I may be mistaken, but I don't think British clocks run backwards...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Smashing! Next order of business: i18n whereby .com becomes .co.us and .co.uk becomes .com?

<comment><USER18> That would be not politically correct. Instead .com-s have to be redirected to co.uk and co.us respective to their geography, and in 3 years course, .com TLD has to be abandoned in favour of equality rights. Long live the Queen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is not something that ought to require substitution. It is not beyond the realms of technical possibility to make the parsers accept both "color" and "colour" as correct. Similarly for other common substitution pairs.

</comment><comment><USER32> It should change all the vendor prefixes too:

       border-radius-for-all
       border-radius-for-Webkit
       border-radius-for-Opera
       border-radius-for-Firefox

And maybe @summons instead of @import.

</comment><comment><USER13> This would be awesome if I could use LESS and not open myself to a possible LFI.

</comment><comment><USER33> If any Rubists want to play with it, I wrote a gem for it: <https://github.com/muan/spiffing> :)

</comment><comment><USER34> Autoplay music had me cracking up. How can you people actually criticize it of all things for what is so clearly a joke?

</comment><comment><USER35> I am quite sure I'm not the only one that read the text with a brit accent in my mind.

<comment><USER36> No, I think a lot of us Brits do that too

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Music starts playing automatically, quickly closed window.

</comment><comment><USER38> auto playing music on the web is a bit 90s no?

<comment><USER39> Indeed, it puzzles me why people still enable it in their browsers.

<comment><USER40> It's implemented not using the old-fashioned tags, but by embedding an invisible Youtube video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Ew autoplay music. What is this, Geocities?

</comment><comment><USER42> The bowler tilts upon rollover. Nice touch.

<comment><USER43> it turns on and off the music too!

<comment><USER33> It links to the same page, so the music stop and start again....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Does transparency: 0.1; -> opacity: 0.9;

Because it should.

</comment><comment><USER44> Autoplay music? Are you kidding me?

<comment><USER45> No, one is having a jape with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> TURN OFF THE MUSIC DAMNIT</comment>


Wanna have zillions of google profiles? - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fgstatic.com%2Fs2%2Fsitemaps%2F <comment><USER2> Here's a Torrent with a tar.xz that contains all of them: <http://v.nix.is/~leech/google-profiles.tar.xz.torrent>

That's files sitemap-000 through sitemap-3278. They contain a total of 16,256,271 profile URLs.

</comment><comment><USER3> I must be missing something...

When I filled out my Google Profile I was told by Google that the information would be added to their search and would make me more easily discoverable.

Are people going to act all shocked that means it's indexable? _gasp_

</comment><comment><USER4>
        curl -O http://www.gstatic.com/s2/sitemaps/sitemap-[000-3278].txt

<comment><USER5> damn, i have always been saving the files explicitly:

curl <http://foo.com/[1-1024]> -o "#1.txt"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> OK, I'll be _that_ guy: what are we looking at here?

<comment><USER7> Alright, I'll be the other guy: what would this be useful for? Google profiles don't allow links, so SEO appears to be out.

Just to do it?

<comment><USER8> Google profiles don't allow links?

<http://www.google.com/profiles/112195136944637672112>

<comment><USER9> And none of the links have a nofollow tag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's interesting that the profiles list the public followers and following stats. With some deep crawling, you could build a huge social graph from this data.

<comment><USER11> you need to be signed in to google to see the followers/following data. it shouldn't be hard to pass a valid cookie along, but it might get a little suspicious for one user to make ~60m requests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This morning I started getting spam that used my real name on my gmail account. I wonder if this is connected.

</comment><comment><USER13> The odd thing, is that getting a list of all profiles correctly doesn't wor. If you go to Google's robots.txt and scroll to the bottom to find the profiles sitemap is located at:

<http://www.gstatic.com/s2/sitemaps/profiles-sitemap.xml>

Which 404s.

Luckily, it's quite easy to reverse engineer. Start with:

<http://www.gstatic.com/s2/sitemaps/sitemap-000.txt>

and increment 000 till you 404. From quick testing, it's less than 3500 but more than 3200.

<comment><USER14> As of this comment it's exactly 3278. I wonder why you didn't bother doing 3-4 more trials before writing the comment :) <http://www.gstatic.com/s2/sitemaps/sitemap-3278.txt>

<comment><USER13> Because I spent too much time trying to figure out why the index sitemap XML file was returning a 404. I'm really surprised that Google, one of the inventors of sitemaps and big proponent of using them, can have such a high- profile error. I dug around to see if I could find what's going on.

By the time I got to figuring out how many text files there are, I was getting bored.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder - what could be some non-evil things to do with easy access to all of this information?

<comment><USER16> openid?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> sitemap-3278 is the upper limit, so there appear to be roughly 16.4 million profiles available. I would be interested to see how many of these have public information (name, address, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER18> Twitter provides pretty much the same info through its api. Granted, it doesn't not disclose email.

</comment><comment><USER19> The thing that really bugs me about Google profiles is that they're directly connected to email addresses. I guess Google thinks their ability to deal with spam is good enough that putting millions of their user's email address publicly available isn't a concern.

<comment><USER20> The email address is not displayed on the profile page.

A user can customize his or her profile URL with an email address. The settings page clearly states that the email address is publicly discoverable if the email address is used in the profile URL.

<comment><USER19> Shouldn't I be allowed to customize my profile URL with a string other than my email address? Why force me to expose my email if I want something other than a 21-character numeric id?

<comment><USER20> I suspect that Google used email addresses because they already have tools for managing that namespace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Would be useful to know which profiles have Buzz enabled and further be able to search those profiles for specific keyword interests.

Point being to follow like-minded people on Buzz to gain exposure to your own profile.

</comment><comment><USER11> i get the feeling my machines have a busy day ahead of them.

</comment><comment><USER22> I may be a little daft but how is this a big deal other than these files showing up in G's index?

<comment><USER14> I don't think it's a big deal but I guess the author wanted to point out an easy way to crawl this public info. There are similar ways to crawl public Facebook profiles too, so it's really not a big deal.

<comment><USER23> Re facebook: really? I'd be interested in a hint here....

<comment><USER24> [http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/4726/view- faceboo...](http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/4726/view-facebook- friend-list-hidden-or-not-hidden)

<comment><USER25> Have you tried it? This was posted in January, but doesn't seem to work anymore.

        curl -A Opera 'http://www.facebook.com/ajax/typeahead_friends.php?u=4&__a=1'
        for (;;);{"error":0,"errorSummary":"","errorDescription":"","errorIsWarning":false,"silentError":0,"payload":{"friends":[]}}

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> About 817 results (0.22 seconds) - Not the Zillions I was expecting

<comment><USER27> Each of the ~800 sitemap-???.txt files contain ~ 20k profile entries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Those profile lists aren't complete. For more discussion, see the Google Buzz list where, until the Buzz team released their own firehose, any of us who wanted a firehose had to build our own. Also noteworthy, it's easier to just download and parse those XML files -- why use a search engine for that to begin with when it's already aggregated for you?

</comment><comment><USER29> Or easier.. [http://www.google.com/#q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fgoogle.com%2Fpr...](http://www.google.com/#q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fgoogle.com%2Fprofiles)

<comment><USER30> No, harder. Your link would require you to crawl thousands of Google results pagea, while the OP's link gives you sitemap URLs of many profiles at once.</comment></comment>


Screencast: Hole-driven Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://matthew.brecknell.net/posts/2013/02/26/hole-driven-haskell/

<comment><USER2> I think this sort of interactive development is a very good direction for type systems to take. A good type system not only precludes a wide range of annoying errors but also makes the language more expressive (e.g. typeclasses) and can even be an aide in developing the program in the first place.

For example, I imagine a tool like Hoogle* would be really awesome: you give it a type and it suggests how to compose functions to get that type. I know somebody implemented this for Java, but I think it would be more powerful and easier in a language like Haskell.

The important idea is to use type systems for more than just preventing errors, as these type holes show.</comment>


The fine-structure constant is 137.757257638721699 - <AUTHOR> https://antoinemissout.me/finestructureconstant/ <comment><USER2> Why sqrt(2) \pi^4?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the rms power of a 4-dimensional sphere signal of radius 2^(1/4).</comment></comment>


Thoughts on the US Debt Downgrade - <AUTHOR> http://leedsonfinance.com/2011/08/07/thoughts-on-the-downgrade-2/

<comment><USER2> These experts seem to be missing fundamental: You dont do huge amounts of budget slashing in the middle of a recession. We dont need hundreds of thousands added to the unemployed. Sure, we can trade priorities like trading wars for infrastructure, but wholesale slashing just courts a depression. The solution is to get the country back on its feet, and cut out the wasteful wars. Then close the tax loopholes and get rid of the Bush tax cuts. At that point we can tackle the debt reduction with a vengeance. Backloading the cuts isnt just politics, it's also sound economics.

<comment><USER3> You're assuming that government spending is helping. What if it's the problem? To illustrate, imagine a hypothetical country where 90% of the working population is employed by the government to enforce needless bureaucratic rules on the 10% of the population that is actually engaged in producing goods and services people actually want. Because of the taxes needed to fund the 90% and the onerous business environment, the country is in a recession. What is the solution? (Hint, it's not to maintain government spending.)

A big government is a "luxury" that poor economies can't afford. This is an old problem. Over two hundred years ago, Jefferson complained that the King of England "has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."</comment></comment>


How to sort through job applicants - make them write. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.healthfinch.com/how-to-sort-through-job-applicants-make-them

<comment><USER2> A bit of a weak blog post, but I found this interesting:

"No quality applicants from Craigslist - Even if they were qualified, every email came off as spam. Needless to say they did not receive a response."

Eh, what? Care to _explain_ what made the inquiries spam-like? I've been responding to a select few CL job postings for part-time and/or telecommuting gigs, trying to drum up a little extra work. I know it's par for the course in this economic climate, but I'm getting virtually zero responses back. If you're gonna request an email response, at least have the damned courtesy to send a response (even an auto-responder would suffice), so I at least know my message didn't get eaten somewhere along the way.

And speaking of methods used to weed out applicants... there was one shop that gave me a login/password to some testing site, and I took this online evaluation that was some bizarre hybrid of a Mensa exam, the SAT, and a Myers- Briggs personality evaluation. I was like, WTF?!?

Still, it's a little disheartening. I don't know if my resume sucks or there are a bunch of _really_ high caliber people pounding the pavement these days, but sometimes I feel like a total schmuck. I acknowledge that there's the non- zero probability of me being a total moron and nobody's been honest enough to clue me in, but I'd like to think I'm pretty damned qualified some at least _some_ of the jobs I'm inquiring about.</comment>


Google to Launch Groupon Competitor - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/01/20/google-offers/ <comment><USER2> _Update 2: We've also learned that Google will pay out 80% of a business' revenue share three days after its deal runs. Google will hold the remaining 20% for 60 days to cover refunds before sending the rest._

This is a pretty significant piece of the news. With groupon famous for its slow payment terms, 3 day terms may look very attractive. Cash flow management is a big portion of running many small/local businesses and with most of their vendor terms from 7-30 days the 30+ day delivery from groupon can turn a big success into a big problem. This sounds like a great sales differentiator for them.

Even if google doesn't get significant traction out of the gate, if this forces groupon to abandon their aggressive floats it could have a real effect on how good their financials look leading up to an IPO.

Imagine if Google was willing to take a significantly lower revenue share on the deals to gain market share. A big reason everyone is so breathless about the business model is how crazy the margins are. If google was willing to throw a significant amount of the $6B offer price at a promotional pricing structure they could seriously slow down the rate that the competition expanded markets.

<comment><USER3> If the businesses were worried about cash flow, I think the 75% haircut would be the bigger issue. Also, they will likely be pre-paid for a large percentage of their Groupon patrons (I have many I haven't used from months ago) and not everyone ends up using their coupon.

Businesses flock to Groupon because its popular and puts them in the spotlight for a day to tens or hundreds of thousands of local people on their mailing list and twitter followers.

<comment><USER4> Mmm, I think you misunderstand cashflow. It's not how much money you make, it's how fast you get it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems to me that with this launch, Google has become more like Microsoft when Google was gaining some sort of ascendancy - a juggernaut that is so afraid of the upstarts that they chase the shadows of the next big thing, in this case Groupon.

The local search & commerce space cannot possibly only look like Groupon. On Hacker News, we have seen people try different models & different variations. There are some ways that doesn't even rely on deals. Just yesterday we saw <http://getpunchd.com/> a mobile play on loyalty schemes.

And Google has Android, a mobile OS coupled with what was once and possibly still the best mapping site on the web. It would seem figuring out how those two combined can be the wedge into the local space should be their priority instead of being scared into creating a clone.

<comment><USER6> They tried to buy groupon, having that fall through doesn't it make a lot of sense to create a business doing the same thing you were going to do with groupon? These deals are embraced by a large number of people, why try and innovate into a new model that regular people don't get or like when there is already a perfectly good one out there with heaps of traction.

<comment><USER7> Except that Groupon is a "people business", with lots of sales and support staff. This is antithetical to Google's culture. I'm not at all sure Google is going to win this battle. Will be interesting to watch.

<comment><USER8> Google has plenty of salespeople as is and has bought plenty of companies with a large number of salespeople (Doubleclick/Admob). They were also willing to take on Groupon's thousands of salespeople with the $6B offer.

<comment><USER9> Probably Googles competitive advantage over Groupon is that they ought to be less reliant on direct salespeople than Groupon were because of their existing visibility and customer base _and the vast number of external marketing/SEO/design businesses that will happily recommend their customers try Google promotions for a small commission_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This create a really interesting dilemma for Google. A significant portion of Groupon's subscriber base comes from the Google Ads they are running.

Now Google can either: 1\. Ban Groupon from advertising on AdWords 2\. Use the CTR and conversion data from Groupon's campaigns to learn exactly how to target ads for Google Offers.

Since they have massive amounts of data from Groupon's campaigns, it's definitely feasible for them to capture lots of their traffic. But will they really run Google Offers and Groupon ads next to each other?

<comment><USER11> They'd be sued for doing 1. plus it's unlikely given that they accept Bing which is an even more direct competitor. 2. is probably illegal. Don't think it's worth it for google to put itself into so much trouble.

<comment><USER12> Is #2 really illegal? What's to stop Wal-Mart from analyzing sales receipts before deciding which store-brand product to introduce next?

<comment><USER13> If it's illegal, I suspect it's only indirectly so, by some roundabout after- the-fact fair-trade-practice or antitrust analysis, based on Google's dominance of search advertising. Which means: very arguable and not much of an up-front deterrent for a motivated competitor.

In their privacy policies – which concern 'personal information' with far more legal sensitivity than aggregate ad/transactional data – Google pretty much grants themselves carte blanche to "combine the information you submit under your account with information from other Google services or third parties in order to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services" and/or "Provide, maintain, protect, and improve our services (including advertising services) and develop new services".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Google has enough publicity power and local business relationships (AdWords, Places) that they will have less trouble than anyone else signing up businesses to be part of the deals. Probably even FB. Then, they also have their ad network and services (gmail, search, maps, etc) to sign up users and promote offers. This is 2 good solutions for problem #1 for a local business deals network.

Google is making a smart move. Most of the bigger deal sites share an uncanny similarity - they are called "clones" for a reason. And the way to stand out is to offer better deals. I have gotten the Groupon newsletter since they came to NYC, and I have never bought a deal. And I am usually a very compulsive shopper. There is not enough variety and nothing is that compelling. The way to stand out is to target deals better so you can make money on margins instead of volume and offer more lucrative deals for businesses. FB may have as much data, but Google has shipped better big-data targeting than anybody else. You need to acquire, sort, and analyze the data, and then have the relationships to exploit your insights. And as location, purchase history, and timing come into play, the data is going to get big if you want to target deals well.

<comment><USER15> "And as location, purchase history, and timing come into play, the data is going to get big if you want to target deals well."

Data, especially at scale, is extremely powerful in this business: [http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/11/why-we-invested-in- groupon-...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/11/why-we-invested-in-groupon-the- power-of-data/)

The one question I continue to have in a situation like this is the "bytes v. beings" approach. Self-service is very compelling and certainly the "holy grail" of local advertising, but more often than not, the onramp to Google for small business is AdWords and that's hard, really hard to understand for a small business owner. I'm not sure if the small business owner is really reading through Google's AdWords University documents and watching the YouTube videos. You're going to need people to sell to people and not just bytes on a screen.

The salesforce, in the immediate term, I feel is the largest initiative Google needs to take on. Demand will always be there, especially across their widespread network. Just get the best merchants (note: quality of the deal is still important in large markets like NYC) and perfect the sales process.

<comment><USER16> > I'm not sure if the small business owner is really reading through Google's > AdWords University documents and watching the YouTube videos. You're going > to need people to sell to people and not just bytes on a screen.

This is so true. We've just launched a Groupon-clone a couple a months ago in an European country which has a high percentage of Internet penetration, but even though we've built a very simple online system for the business owners to be able to check the redeem-status of the coupons (once the deal is over), there's the problem that more than half of them don't have a computer or Internet connection at the POS. So right now we email them an Excel file with all the coupon codes which they can print at home. Now, asking these people to know about AdWords and such... I don't see how the situation in the States would be so much different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The logo, maybe: <https://www.google.com/images/logos/offers_logo.gif>

<comment><USER18> Wow that's ugly. I don't know if the Google brand is the best thing for them to use here, maybe they could have bought a lesser Groupon competitor and kept their brand. It seems from the outside that Youtube is one of Google's most successful purchases because they kept it a little separate.

<comment><USER19> "Goopon" somehow just didn't feel right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One of the reasons Google may fail at this is the support call center.

Groupon has large and professional support call centers that around the world that takes care of customer inquiries, something very distant to Google culture

<comment><USER21> IT's called outsourcing for a reason.

<comment><USER20> zappos does not outsource that for a reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Try google.com/offers and you get a different 404 than if you typed offer, deals, coupons, etc...

<comment><USER23> Good catch. Furthermore:

      curl -v http://google.com/404

results in this HTTP header:

      Server:sffe

Whereas:

      curl -v http://google.com/offers

results in:

      Server: GSE

So they're obviously proxying from a totally different subsystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Lesson: Don't turn down an offer from Google. They buy because they want in the space.

<comment><USER25> This behavior is essentially what Microsoft did from 1985-2000. Companies that turned down offers saw their software cloned within 2 years, and sold at a discount or bundled with other MS products.

<comment><USER26> Exactly. I can't wait until some YC companies start being at the receiving end of this behavior so the insane level of Google worship on this site can finally go away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is it just me or does Google seem to be really bad at acquisitions and/or executing this sort of competitor-cloning operation? I don't know if they're below-average, but it seems that a year later, nothing you read about them doing has ever worked out. Except maybe Android.

<comment><USER28> Google Maps was a successful acquisition/competitor clone. Google Finance is also successful (a clone of Yahoo Finance basically). Those are the only two others I can think of off the top of my head.

I don't think Google is particularly below average here though; I think it's just a risky strategy to clone something. You often miss a critical non- obvious piece of the puzzle, because only the surface of the business is visible when you're copying it.

<comment><USER29> Other acquisitions that I would call successful (at least from user adoption point of view):

* Picasa (Picasa - Jul 2004) * Google Earth (Keyhole Inc - Oct 2004 ) * Analytics (Urchin Software Corporation - Mar 2005) * Youtube (YouTube - Oct 2006)

and probably many others from this list:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I for one welcome more group-deal sites, I think we all win, as long as they are reputable.

I wish however Google instead had taken on PayPal more directly and more intensely and even make an ebay competitor (google base will never be ebay or even craigslist).

PayPal/Ebay is rolling in profit, I am not sure why Google doesn't want some of that.

<comment><USER31> eBay is certainly an aging service. It has had very few significant feature changes since perhaps 1998 or so. However, it does have a fair amount of competition (amazon and craigslist being the best examples). Most of the competition for eBay comes in the form of catering better to particular segments of the market. Craigslist caters more to the yard-sale segment (timeliness, locality, and just-getting-rid-of items being more important than maximizing revenue or selling/buying niche items). Amazon caters to small, niche sellers (people selling lots of used books, or trans-shipping medical supplies, etc.) More competitors will come along targeting more and more segments of eBay's current market.

Paypal is a different story. It's a very much harder business on the fundamentals. One of the world's largest financial institutions which has grown up in the blink of an eye and faces problems on a scale that no other bank in the world faces. Criticism of paypal is often fair, but sometimes it's ungrounded from perspective (of the "garsh, why don't these piece of junk hover-shoes work right?" variety). The real criticism should be toward our archaic banking systems and regulation. The services that paypal offers should ideally be built into any old bank account, but they aren't because the system is so heavily regulated and still married to outmoded ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ok, help me understand this - if Google really wanted to get into this business, and if they couldn't acquire Groupon, then why didn't they try to acquire Groupon clones like LivingSocial, and many more? What could be rational behind starting from scratch?

<comment><USER33> After Amazon's investment into LivingSocial, the valuation shot into "over $1 billion" [http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/02/livingsocial- confirms-175-m...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/02/livingsocial- confirms-175-million-amazon-investment/) but controlling only 8% of the market, vs Groupon's 79%. It would have been a very expensive acquisition.

For everything else near 0% market share, Google can probably easily get ahead on its own brand name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Anyone who thinks Groupon has been caught off guard here - I highly suspect this was part of the preliminary due diligence process in order to get the $6 billion figure on the table when the offer was made.

In fact it seems like it would have been one of Google's bargaining chips to get a better price. "We offer $6 billion - you'd probably better take it because our BATNA is to launch Google Offers in Q2 2011..."

</comment><comment><USER20> Goopon?

<comment><USER35> Goopun :p

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> With the 200+ million gmail email addresses that Google has access to, Google can instantly become a major competitor to Groupon & LivingSocial assuming a certain percentage of gmail users agree to try it.

It seems that each large internet company has its own deals site now: Google with Google Offers, Amazon with LivingSocial, eBay with Groupon, and Facebook seems to be developing its own type of daily-deals advertising.

I wonder what Apple and Microsoft will do. Both of them probably have something in the works....

<comment><USER37> I have several gmail addresses. Don't fall for the number hype.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> If I were a Google investor I would be watching this very closely for two reasons:

a- See how Google overcome their issues in dealing with customer service and related things. They'll need to get better at this stuff at some point to have the widest possible scope for trying new things.

b- See if they can pull off another extension of their core business. Adwords is the ultimate small business advertising platform and Groupon is another part of that world.

</comment><comment><USER39> I wonder if there is any casual relation between Google's failure to acquire Groupon and removal of Eric Schmidt from CEO...

</comment><comment><USER40> Am I the only one concerned that Google is acting more and more like Microsoft?

Initially it was courting Groupon, and no doubt got a chance to dive deep into the bowels of the beast - and got a no holds barred look into their business and books, and because they got rebuffed or the deal fell through, they now take that knowledge and build a competitor.

This not the first time either. If I am not mistaken, that's how Google Buzz came about. They wanted to buy Twitter, kinda went through the same process (if I remember correctly) and then when it fell through launched their own version.

I, for one, am no fan of copycats - but competition is good. It keeps Groupon honest.

Kinda concerns me, though, that Google has become more bare-faced with this type of action.

Still a google fan though, and won't be migrating my gmail and Google Apps accounts any time soon.

Just saying!

</comment><comment><USER41> I wish they were focusing more on improving their search engine than jumping in any possible business...

</comment><comment><USER42> I'd like them to integrate the business management portion into Places. That would give companies more reason to create a Places page and keep the information current.

Then I'd create a mobile application so that coupons and management could be done from phones or tablets. This would help with the small business that doesn't have a computer or internet beyond CC processing.

I think the consumer side of this should just be a way to redirect people to the Places page of a business and highlight the coupon that business has available.

</comment><comment><USER43> IMHO, they will crush Groupon if they execute well. Groupon is still relatively unknown outside tech circles.

<comment><USER44> Nah, I wouldn't be too sure about it. They haven't even kill Facebook or Twitter yet.

<comment><USER45> They didn't clone Facebook or Twitter?

<comment><USER46> I thought that was the point of Orkut and Buzz.

<comment><USER47> Orkut may not have predated Facebook, but it predated the wide spread of Facebook--as I recall, I was able to use Orkut before Facebook expanded to my college.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Classic Google. First they try to buy Yelp.com and that fails, so they build Google Places (TBD if that turns out to be more successful). Now they tried to buy Groupon and failed and now they're potentially creating a clone of that instead. I guess these are classic examples of Build vs Buy.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think I saw a very interesting economic analysis behind what Groupon does posted here on HN awhile back. These type of offers supposedly solve certain coordination problems, but I can't remember who captured most of the surplus: the public, businesses, or both. Anyone have a link?

</comment><comment><USER20> 'With its vast reach, huge resources and brand recognition, it could prove to be a powerful player in the space.' Yeah, just like it did with Buzz. Though this time it actually has more shots at it.

</comment><comment><USER50> Groupon is going to face a lot of competition these next months. Now Yelp is offering some similar deals related with food....

</comment><comment><USER51> I really feel like there is a coupon bubble. Business's can't carry on these deals forever can they?

</comment><comment><USER52> Newspapers and other local advertisers will be a take a big hit while the Big G's battle it out.

</comment><comment><USER53> Yxczcscdwtsshsdfhgzfwdsgfvfdmsfdm JmxzFzxstcx fSfsdzshf xgsddsdsd;-2/ddsa

</comment><comment><USER54> It'd be interesting if they incorporated this well with their NFC work they're doing with Android.

<comment><USER55> I'm curious, how would you imagine that working?

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> It's about time they put to use all that information they've been hoarding. I'm excited.

</comment><comment><USER57> I wonder when Groupon will become a verb for falling out of relevance due to one trick pony/smarter competition. I guess MySpace'ed or Yahoo'ed never caught on.

OMG Ponies!!!!1!!

</comment><comment><USER21> This is just the beginning.

Google will offer local business bundled QR services. Imagine walking up to a restaurant window. snapping a QR photo, or google goggling, and having the menu displayed on your android, and maybe offers you a daily deal.

Google wins in mobile, and entrenches itself into the local ad space. Can Apple Do this?

<comment><USER58> Wouldn't that be the same restaurant window that already has a menu mounted on it?

<comment><USER59> That made me smile :)

"Look at this brilliant technology. Just take a picture of this symbol and your phone automagically translates it into list of specials and prices!"

"Why don't they just put up the menu/specials?"

"oh..."</comment></comment></comment>