Adblock via /etc/hosts - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts <comment><USER3> I had been doing this until some time ago to block ads and to prevent Google from collecting my web browsing history via Google Analytics. During the time I witnessed a strange phenomenon. Every time I added "127.0.0.1 www.google- analytics.com" to C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts. I saw the line removed from the file some hours later. Although I had added tens of lines I only saw the Google Analytics line removed. IIRC finally I decided to figure out whet caused the removal. I used Filemon to watch file changes, though the line got removed again while watching the file and nothing appeared on the log. I suspected Ring-0 processes were secretly running and causing the removal, but I knew nothing about the Windows kernel so I gave up here. I wonder what was the cause to this day.

<comment><USER4> Instead of Filemon I'd suggest firing up Process Monitor [1] with a filter of "path contains system32\drivers\etc\hosts" and then Filter -> Drop Filtered Events.

Let this run while you go about your normal work, then check back after you notice the change. Look through the Operation column for WriteFile or something similar, then see what Process Name did it. This'll let you figure out what's actually making the change and you can appropriately assign blame.

[1] [https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/sysinternals/processmoni...](https://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/sysinternals/processmonitor.aspx)

<comment><USER5> on the subject of sysinternals Process Monitor. Did you know procmon.exe REQUIRES Workstation service running in order to start. It uses it to enumerate something and will silently die without it. This is not documented anywhere and pretty bogus.

Older versions worked fine without this service. It was silently added somewhere between win7 and win8 releases.

<comment><USER4> Hmm, interesting. No I didn't... I'll poke with this and maybe open a Premier ticket on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> See, the thing is what if a website is broken due to host files, you can't easily re-enable ads for just this one website you need.

A situation we can all imagine ourselves in: You need to check the google analytics for your website/company site. You can't because it's blocked at Host level.

What solution would there be for this use case?

<comment><USER7> A situation I've found myself in before: asking our devs why the site is broken, only to find it's my overzealous script blocking.

<comment><USER8> I bet your devs love you for this

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hi Folks, this is my repo, thanks for all the comments.

I'm always looking for ways to improve things so I'm open to all suggestions.

EDIT: A couple of clarifications.

1) This isn't just for adblock. Your hosts file is useful for thwarting all sorts of malware. If a bot or trojan phones home with a domain, a vigilant hosts file will block it. A if a bot or trojan phones home with an IP, then the hosts file can't help you but, then again, an IP can be physically located fairly quickly.

2) The key to a good hosts file is keeping it current. This hosts file amalgamates several well-curated sources. So your hosts file is only as good as your ability to keep it current. This repo helps with this.

<comment><USER10> Hi Steven,

Thank you for your contribution. What do you think about this setup?

I use two Digital Ocean servers in different datacenters in which I have ran this script ([https://github.com/jlund/streisand](https://github.com/jlund/streisand)).

I modified the script ([https://github.com/jlund/streisand/tree/master/playbooks/gro...](https://github.com/jlund/streisand/tree/master/playbooks/group_vars)) before I ran it and pointed the upstream DNS servers to my two personal DNS servers that are hosted on different datacenters.

The DNS servers are running a script ([https://github.com/Kolyunya/afdns](https://github.com/Kolyunya/afdns)) that pulls the hosts file daily from ([https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts](https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts)).

It has been working great for a few weeks, but I'm curious about any improvements I could provide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm running this for years.

using 127.0.0.1, I have a httpd responding to every request by a 200. this avoid some anti-ad-block check. (such as "watch this ad before your video")

you can also configure your server to reply with a cat gif. but who would like to see a such Internet?

<comment><USER12> Cats for ads. Has a nice ring to it. I'm surprised no one built it yet.

<comment><USER13> Adblock with Catblock Chrome extension: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-with- catbl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-with- catblock/mdcgnhlfpnbeieiiccmebgkfdebafodo?hl=en)

<comment><USER14> I guess I could plug a silly little script I wrote for GreaseMonkey which runs on facebook.com. I hated looking at the "Trending" and "Recommended Pages" sidebar so I axed them out in favor of random imgur images of your favorite subreddit. By default you'll get `/r/aww` but you can flip it with a fixed little box in the top right to whatever floats your boat.

Full disclaimer: I'm a horrid at javascript, and the result below is mainly due to a lot of copy paste from various internet sources.

[https://gist.github.com/GrahamBlanshard/d7211436088e0159164a](https://gist.github.com/GrahamBlanshard/d7211436088e0159164a)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just gonna plug hostsman, which has been doing this on windows since forever:

[http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman](http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman)

Lets you chose which lists to use, and automatically update those lists. Also makes it easy to temporarily disable your rules if you need something that's blocked. Has a button for flushing the DNS cache.

</comment><comment><USER16> (Full disclosure: I run a service that blocks and intercepts malware communication using DNS! [https://strongarm.io](https://strongarm.io))

Blocking via your hosts file has some great benefits; it works regardless of network and is relatively easy to update. Unfortunately, it doesn't scale easily to many systems or give you any insight into whether or not you are trying to connect to blocked domains.

Blocking via DNS is a good alternative and is suggested multiple times in this thread. You can easily protect a whole network by setting your recursive resolvers and it works across any system.

If you are interested in this and don't want to operate and maintain your own DNS (as well as pulling down various domain lists) check out [https://strongarm.io](https://strongarm.io). We manage DNS, aggregating lists of bad domains, and (most uniquely) will alert you if you try and talk to a blocked domain.

It's free for personal use. We are a growing startup and love feedback from HN. Feel free to contact me directly as well! stephen[at]strongarm.io

<comment><USER17> I setup a DNS server once that would replace ads with porn. Worked pretty well.

<comment><USER18> "This DNS server replaces ads with porn."

"Everything looks exactly the same."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm using my own VPN server and I setup unbound DNS server there. It's the only way for my old iPhone and iPad to browse internet without ads. And it's really fast. I use [https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/](https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/) for ad servers list and a little awk script to convert it to unbound format.

<comment><USER20> Yes, unbound is great—I run it on my local machine with a list of ad servers to block. I use this little script to download and convert the Someone Who Cares hosts list to unbound format[0] every few weeks. BTW, the pgl.yoyo.org list is available[1] in Unbound format since a few months ago[2].

[0] [https://github.com/jodrell/unbound-block- hosts](https://github.com/jodrell/unbound-block-hosts)

[1] [https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=unb...](https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=unbound;showintro=0)

[2] [https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/news.php?#unbound](https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/news.php?#unbound)

<comment><USER21> I use this script [https://gitlab.com/Khaine/DNS-Unbound-Blocklist- Downloader](https://gitlab.com/Khaine/DNS-Unbound-Blocklist-Downloader) to pull data from a bunch of different places and load into unbound

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Using 0.0.0.0 [instead of 127.0.0.1] is faster because you don't have to > wait for a timeout.

I'm not going to argue that localhost is better than 0, but that specific argument they've raised is incorrect. You don't have to wait for a timeout on localhost either. It will either fail instantly due to no listening processes on that IP and port, or it will connect to whatever process you have open on that address (eg a local instance of a http daemon).

<comment><USER23> They should also add :: to also block on IPv6, see [https://gist.github.com/teffalump/7227752](https://gist.github.com/teffalump/7227752)

Although if you use dnsmasq on OpenWRT with these hosts file beware that it can crash sometimes due to a bug that is now fixed in git: [http://lists.thekelleys.org.uk/pipermail/dnsmasq- discuss/201...](http://lists.thekelleys.org.uk/pipermail/dnsmasq- discuss/2015q4/010026.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Or use the DNSCrypt proxy. It has a module to filter DNS responses based on their name (full name or using expressions such as _sex_ ), or on the IP addresses they resolve to. Instead of returning 127.0.0.1, which can make you vulnerable to rebinding attacks, it returns responses with the standard "REFUSED" response code. [https://simplednscrypt.org](https://simplednscrypt.org) [https://dnscrypt.org](https://dnscrypt.org)

</comment><comment><USER25> I've been doing this on a Streisand created VPN server : [https://github.com/jlund/streisand](https://github.com/jlund/streisand) and use most of the same lists (though I've had to remove a few things from "Someone that cares" and I've also had to add a few things - I target apps too so I nuke some specific to mobile apps that are likely not in those lists).

The reasons:

* Block adverts in native mobile apps

* Block adverts in mobile web browsing

* Create a single connection for the mobile (reduce exposure to latency of new connections to different servers)

* VPN connection keep-alive means I seldom reconnect

* Side effect of mitigating risk of my telco screwing with my traffic or excessively logging metadata

It works really, really well.

I'm sure someone will say "battery!" but the cost of mobile adverts on batteries far outweighs the cost of connecting to a VPN.

This is effectively adblock for mobile that works for all apps and websites.

</comment><comment><USER26> Some of these map the domains to 127.0.0.1 which is wrong. It should be 0.0.0.0.

On second thought, you shouldn't be using the hosts file for this at all.

<comment><USER27> Can you explain the reasoning behind using 0.0.0.0 instead of 127.0.0.1? Genuinely interested.

<comment><USER6> Basically it's slower if you use 127 because it actually checks if something is running (example a server or whatever). 0.0.0.0 means explicitly "there is zilch, nip, nada". It's a little bit faster.

<comment><USER28> telnet 0.0.0.0 $port works fine on my machine, it connects to localhost, so besides the speed, I don't think there's any other difference at least on Linux.

<comment><USER29> "ssh 0" or "ssh ::" works fine too. Also "[http://0"](http://0") or "[http://](http://)[::]".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> While this is ok as an idea, I prefer Privoxy [1] to get my ad blocking outside of the browser. It has the benefit that I can turn it on and off (I use a proxy switcher). It also means that I can have other devices use it either via LAN or SSH tunnel or whatever).

[1] [http://www.privoxy.org/](http://www.privoxy.org/)

<comment><USER31> Privoxy is being hosted on Sourceforge, and Sourceforge is still hiding malware in the files. I checked yesterday.

<comment><USER30> How ironic. I just get it via apt-get in debian.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Whoever is using OpenWRT this is a great script for blocking hosts [https://gist.github.com/teffalump/7227752](https://gist.github.com/teffalump/7227752). I guess it could be modified to use this source.

</comment><comment><USER33> Could someone please explain why advertisers do not re-use functional domain names to defeat domain-based filtering? I always find it fascinating that they still use such obvious ad-only (sub)domains to host assets.

<comment><USER34> That's really the next step in the evolution here. Content creators/producers and publishers _need_ to make money. They're not going to make all that content for free if ads (their revenue) suddenly disappeared tomorrow. Sure, you'll still have a few donation driven sites, and a few subscription-based websites, but 80% of the internet (probably more) relies on ads. Without that revenue stream, the content goes poof. Not to mention, all that innovation and the innovation yet to come. The next youtube, reddit or facebook would not get invented.

Anyways, yeah, some ad companies are starting to do exactly this. They're serving ads up from the domain/website the ads are displayed on. Host files are completely ineffective here unless you've already previously spotted the ads and manually blocked them (and provided they haven't changed the file name of the ad/picture since your last visit).

But the ad companies doing this are tiny. It's quite likely you've never been on a website that has enacted this method. Most ads on the 'net are served up from google's adchoice/adsense program. Once Google themselves start doing it, it's game over for adblockers and for host blocking. I heard through the grape vine that they're actually working on this very issue (the issue of ad blockers).

<comment><USER33> Thanks for the tip! I would image that once HTTP/2 becomes more popular, serving ads from the same domain might even be preferred simply for the speed improvement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've recently switched from Windows to Linux, and I feel kind of "naked", because I don't know what is the Linux equivalent of Windows Firewall + NOD32 + Common Sense. I've got ufw and AppArmor installed so far. Is using such a huge hosts file a common practice? Also, what about Flash? I don't want to install it, but some websites insist on it still. What would you advise, folks? I'd appreciate any suggestions.

<comment><USER36> There is no equivalent, these precautions are simply not necessary under Linux. As for Flash, I'd install Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This already works quite well on my Android phone using AdAway.

Edit: AdAway uses an /etc/hosts file.

</comment><comment><USER38> Wouldn't it be more efficient to add blocking on router level? Making all of your devices (at home) ad-free.

Anyone exprerienced doing this?

<comment><USER39> There are a couple of products for this already: "AdTrap" and for the Raspberry Pi "pihole". (Content warning on [https://pi-hole.net/](https://pi- hole.net/) : contains piping curl into bash, slow-loading SPA site)

<comment><USER40> Pi-hole is great and I had no trouble setting it up, but I couldn't continue using it as it constantly triggered NoScript's ABE (Application Boundaries Enforcer) which blocks scripts served from a LAN address. This is for a good reason, and it may be possible to white-list the Pi in the ABE settings, but I didn't have a good enough understanding of the implications to feel comfortable just allowing it or disabling ABE.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I loved using Gas Mask for multiple host file management on OSX. Not so much for Ads but a great app I had trouble discovering.

</comment><comment><USER42> dnsagte[1] should use this as it's default source. Fixing.

[1] [https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate](https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate)

<comment><USER43> This looks awesome, plus I am already running shorewall +dnsmasq.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I wanted a service for my laptop with custom blacklisting/whitelisting, blocking stats and a webserver to serve a blank HTML page for any domains in DNS list so I made:

[https://github.com/jdoss/dockerhole](https://github.com/jdoss/dockerhole)

It was inspired by [https://pi-hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/) and I am glad to see there are others making similar things to block Ads.

</comment><comment><USER45> I made a little C program that converts AdBlock Plus filter lists to hosts file entries: [https://github.com/wwalexander/hostsblock](https://github.com/wwalexander/hostsblock)

There's a bit of an impedance mismatch since filter lists support some fairly advanced pattern matching while hosts file entries are obviously limited to specific domains, but it gets most domains.

</comment><comment><USER46> This technique works very well for blocking ads in Skype.

You can also block the BBC Breaking News banner this way by adding polling.bbc.co.uk. Or if you want to play a prank use 188.8.131.52 as the IP. GitHub pages don't check if you own the domain.

[https://unop.uk/dev/breaking-the-news-blocking-the-bbc- news-...](https://unop.uk/dev/breaking-the-news-blocking-the-bbc-news- breaking-banner-and-playing-pranks)

</comment><comment><USER47> For GNU/Linux also check hostsblock [1]. It's available on aur.

A pi-hole clone notrack [2]

[1] [https://gaenserich.github.io/hostsblock/](https://gaenserich.github.io/hostsblock/) | [2] [https://github.com/quidsup/notrack](https://github.com/quidsup/notrack)

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm using [http://pi-hole.net](http://pi-hole.net) running on a Raspberry Pi. I use it as my home dns, it runs dnsmasq and points a list of a million ad hostnames to its own IP, answering every request with a blank HTML page.

<comment><USER49> How many websites does it break? I'm a bit hesitant to set up pihole since it's rather hard to enable ads for just one domain, as more and more websites just stop working with ads removed/blocked.

<comment><USER48> It's not breaking much websites I'm using regularly. The only really breaking effect I see is when clicking on forwarder links of affiliate networks, of course. Happens for bargain/deal websites mostly.

And of course you shouldn't have to work with GA or Flurry or other analytics services, because they are blocked by pi-hole.net of course. But you can easily whitelist via ssh.

I'm now using it since 2 months and am pretty satisfied. The traffic saving effect is also nice, which make websites load faster as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Relevant: adblock with DNS Server [https://hub.docker.com/r/kolyunya/afdns/](https://hub.docker.com/r/kolyunya/afdns/)

This is for people who cannot edit /etc/hosts, but can change DNS server.

<comment><USER51> "... people who cannot edit /etc/hosts, but can change DNS server."

e.g., "mobile" or "tablet" users who choose Apple iPhone, iPad, etc.

The idea of an ARPA-networked devices that have no user-editable HOSTS file seems inferior to ones that do, i.e. the vast majority of ARPA-networked computers for three decades, but that's just my uninformed view.

The experts selling these things must know better.

DNS works very well for blocking ads. It allows for things that cannot be done with HOSTS alone.

But if you trust a third party for your DNS resolution needs (ad-supported search engine company "free" public DNS, ad-supported, corporate-sponsored browser, etc.), then all bets are off.

If and when advertisers complain and start to cut back on spending, then these third parties could remedy the situation, easily. In my opinion.

If the user is running her own DNS services, then it may be too much trouble for advertisers and the companies they prop up. It is a stretch to think that any ad-supported company could stop users from exchanging lists of names and numbers, whether through a HOSTS file, zone files, or some other mechanism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/01/business/cost-...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/01/business/cost- of-mobile-ads.html)

Ads slow us down.

</comment><comment><USER53> Has anyone tried OpenDNS? It seems that a filtered DNS service is the way to go here.

</comment><comment><USER54> This needs to be a larger effort, one hosts file updated hourly or any regular interval which we just configure to fetch and update through a cron job and forget.

Would love to see some project like that.

</comment><comment><USER55> Is this reasonably small enough not to cause performance issues? I notice it mentioned trying to keep the size more reasonable.

Ad-blocking via hosts files can often lead to a noticeable performance hit.

<comment><USER56> you're getting downvoted, but I remember this issue cropping up for windows XP boxes. Other Operating systems and more modern versions of windows cope with large hosts lists more competently.

<comment><USER15> The problem isn't completely solved, though.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/401h2o/hosts_fil...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/401h2o/hosts_file_update_is_extremely_slow/)

In windows 10, the DNS Client does something that is O(n^2)

<comment><USER57> Isn't the O(n^2) operation described in that thread happening only when the hosts file gets updated, and not with every DNS lookup? I would imagine even sequentially searching a local list of 350,000 entries, like the post describes, would still be extremely fast in the context of loading a web page.

But, that said, there can be a huge difference between how one might think things should work and what actually happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Does anyone have a convenient way to convert this to a bind9 config format? I would rather run this for the whole LAN than just one computer at a time.

<comment><USER59> > Does anyone have a convenient way to convert this to a bind9 config format?

If you use BIND RPZs, you can convert from /etc/hosts format to BIND zonefile format, (or just pump the new entries to nsupdate) which should be pretty trivial. Some information and useful links are in this comment and subsequent commentary. [0]

IMO RPZs are _substantially_ easier to manage than an ever-growing set of master blackhole zones, _especially_ when you have slave DNS servers.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11085521](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11085521)

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I used too but windows tends to hang up when the host file gets overly long so had to abandon it when the advertiser grew too many.

Has window 10 got better with that?

<comment><USER5> [https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/401h2o/hosts_fil...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/401h2o/hosts_file_update_is_extremely_slow/)

apparently no

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Another option is to stand up a DNS server that knows how to do something like BIND 9's Response Policy Zone [0][1].

Although figuring out how to propagate RPZ changes to them isn't exactly straightforward (more on this below), if you're using BIND, you can set up views that match certain clients and provide one mix of RPZs to one set, and another to another set.

On updating RPZs in a view (warning: BIND 9-specific instructions follow) :

So, BIND has this nifty option for a zone called "in-view". This lets you say "The data for this particular zone lives in this other view, so when requests come in for this zone, in this view, use the data in this other view.". It might sound complicated, but it's really just a pointer to a pre-existing zone definition. This lets you define your master zones in one big "zone definition" view, and have client-specific views refer back to those definitions.

However, you can't use in-view with RPZs. Why? Who knows? [2] But, what you _can_ do is this:

* Create one unique RNDC key per view

* Add an allow-notify and match-clients entry in each view with that view's key

* In the appropriate views, add a slave zone definition for each relevant RPZ, with localhost as the master, and whatever is your usual domain xfer key as the key [3]

* Back up in your "zone definition" view, add to your also-notify list for each master RPZ definition an entry for localhost and each view key. [4] Having an ACL _just_ for these RPZ slaves cleans up the RPZ definitions.

Now you have dynamically updatable host blocking that can be deployed on a per-host basis, if you like. It's _initially_ a bit more work than managing a local hosts file, but you can easily apply host blocking lists to any set of machines on your LAN, and you can programmatically update the RPZ lists with tools like nsupdate.

[0] [http://jpmens.net/2011/04/26/how-to-configure-your-bind- reso...](http://jpmens.net/2011/04/26/how-to-configure-your-bind-resolvers-to- lie-using-response-policy-zones-rpz/)

[1] [http://www.zytrax.com/books/dns/ch7/rpz.html](http://www.zytrax.com/books/dns/ch7/rpz.html)

[2] RPZs are handled just like regular zones in _every_ other way except for this one. It's a bit frustrating.

[3] This is actually less burdensome than it sounds, as you can write these slave zone definitions once and include the files containing the definitions in whatever view needs them.

[4] That is, if you had three views, your also-notify list would have something like the following new entries: _127.0.0.1 key "view1-key"; 127.0.0.1 key "view2-key"; 127.0.0.1 key "view3-key";_ You can have entries for _just_ the views that use a given RPZ, but it doesn't hurt to have one ACL that notifies _all_ views when any RPZ data changes.

<comment><USER42> Are you talking about the ability to NXDOMAIN *.example.com while also whitelisting this.example.com? AFAICT dnsmasq cant do this, I'm interested if bind can. I have a simple DNS request forwarder half-written to deal with rule trees.

Edit: [https://github.com/paulchakravarti/dnslib](https://github.com/paulchakravarti/dnslib) looks interesting

<comment><USER59> > Are you talking about the ability to NXDOMAIN [star].example.com while also > whitelisting this.example.com?

Yeah, you can totally do that! Details are here [0][1], but in your RPZ zone file, you use a CNAME with a value of . to return NXDOMAIN, and a CNAME with a value of rpz-passthru. to process the query normally:

      ;allow www.sinfest.net, but deny all others, including sinfest.net
      www.sinfest.net CNAME   rpz-passthru.
      sinfest.net CNAME       .
      *.sinfest.net CNAME     .

And to demonstrate:

      $ dig +short www.sinfest.net ; dig +short sinfest.net; \
      dig +short www.sinfest.net @126.96.36.199 ; dig +short sinfest.net @22.214.171.124
      126.96.36.199
      184.108.40.206
      184.108.40.206
      $

If you're interested in a complete, but simple RPZ zone file I can provide one. If you have more questions, feel free to ask, and I'll try to answer.

[0] [http://www.zytrax.com/books/dns/ch7/rpz.html](http://www.zytrax.com/books/dns/ch7/rpz.html)

[1] [http://www.zytrax.com/books/dns/ch7/rpz.html#rpz- examples](http://www.zytrax.com/books/dns/ch7/rpz.html#rpz-examples)

<comment><USER42> Fantastic. I'll add bind output and optional integration asap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Don't the empty <div>s just get left behind taking up space when using this method?

<comment><USER62> It's hard to do anything else - if you collapse them you can easily break the site layout. (Some sites may even design their layouts to break if the ads are removed).

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> It took me about a minute to find 12 false entries just by looking what lines end in .de

</comment><comment><USER64> very cool. It would be interesting to see this built into a (maybe raspberryPI) router and have a more central point/policy for configuration maybe together with caching (dnsmasq).

<comment><USER65> There is the Pi-Hole Project, which does that pretty nicely: [http://jacobsalmela.com/block-millions-ads-network-wide- with...](http://jacobsalmela.com/block-millions-ads-network-wide-with-a- raspberry-pi-hole-2-0/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> been doing this for a long time with various facebook related domains - <USER2> people if they borrow my laptop though.

</comment><comment><USER67> Whilst I'm sure this is no longer the case, I used to do this back in the day, but it was soooo slow!</comment>


US Navy Patent Antigravity Device - <AUTHOR> https://www.blopeur.com/2020/05/01/navy-patent-antigravity.html <comment><USER2> Think this is from June of last year. The Drive broke the story about the patents: [https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28729/docs-show- navy-g...](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28729/docs-show-navy-got-ufo- patent-granted-by-warning-of-similar-chinese-tech-advances)

The journalists pursued a two prong strategy for this story. First one was verifying the cockpit videos released years ago via FOIA requests (that was a surprise) that only recently got released by the Navy (a bigger surprise.)

The second prong was their investigation of a supposed scientist working for NAWCAD, named "Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais." Think physicists have looked at the patents and called it word spaghetti. One of the patents literally starts defining how to control gravity.

The journalists are still not sure whether this is a real person doing fraud backed by ignorant leadership trying to save face desperately or a purposeful psyop operation headed by a made-up name and designed to drain foreign government research budgets.

<comment><USER3> I think this is the most recent article they had about this subject

[https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31798/the-secretive- in...](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31798/the-secretive-inventor-of- the-navys-bizarre-ufo-patents-finally-talks)

It's a fascinating story, I hope someone gets to the bottom of this.

<comment><USER4> There are a few explanations I can think of, and each of them is rather strange.

1\. The whole thing is a dis-info campaign to hook a near adversary into thinking we have spooky next gen technology. This all being public makes me lean this way. Similarly perhaps this is being used as a cover story for some impressive but not physics defying drones, similarly to how "UFOs" were used as an diversion away from projects like Mogul or the f-117 and B-2.

2\. Pais is a conman, scamming the military into funding his fraudulent tech.

3\. Pais is a breakthrough genius. The Tech is real and in years it will be revealed to the public.

4\. The "Bob Lazar" option. "UFOs" as in foreign objects exist and occasionally crash, and are studied and reverse engineered when they do.

It's interesting to note that Pais was recently transferred to submarine command.

<comment><USER5> > Pais is a breakthrough genius. The Tech is real and in years it will be > revealed to the public.

Or it's already installed on Nimitz-class carriers (with huge tires tucked into hidden underwater pods). The navy is just waiting for a serious war to warrant revealing land-carriers capable of driving hundreds of miles inland.

<comment><USER6> If not, at least when they decommission the old carriers we can have some serious monster truck rallies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The "background" section of this particular patent [0] _starts_ pretty sane (if obviously a little grandiose--enough to get one's guard up) but rapidly and suddenly dips off the rails. The trouble is that the mostly unintelligible details about "hyper-frequency" rotational and vibrational coupled modes are interspersed in a bunch of technically correct--if vapid--physical statements about quantum fields pervading all of spacetime, and other phenomena being emergent of excitations in these fields. (Notwithstanding the fact that uniting QFT with gravity is the biggest open problem in Physics today...)

I think this is an illustrating case in how much easier it is to create high- falutin' nonsense than it is to debunk it. Most of the claims are somewhat vague but they touch on areas where someone needs a lot of knowledge and precision to coherently dispute them.

I highly recommend reading a patent lawyer's research into the history of this particular patent from the last time it was posted here[1]. Apparently the examiner tried to reject the patent claim several times on technical bases, against the protest of some Navy brass, before finally admitting it without comment months later.

[0] [https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en) [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763445](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763445)

<comment><USER8> >> I think this is an illustrating case in how much easier it is to create high-falutin' nonsense than it is to debunk it.

Are there jobs around as debunkers? Sometime I think I'd be good at that. It seems like someone should have a vested interest in having accurate models of reality and being able to spot BS.

<comment><USER7> Ironically, in the DoD contracting world there are roles like this; SETA (systems engineering and technical assurance) and SME (subject matter expert) contracting roles from disinterested third parties are usually a required function in DoD acquisition programs. These folks are basically paid skeptics of the work being done by the prime contractors, which is a good failsafe to build in for >$100MM tax-funded programs and for weapons and vehicles that can kill people. In this particular case, though, the hokum is coming internally from a government lab, and the work is early research, so it doesn't have to meet the same validation standards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Appears the scientist [1] that filed this patent has a history of filing patents that "stretch the limits of science" — which to me increases the odds the only thing being stretched is the truth:

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore_Pais](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore_Pais)

<comment><USER7> Right, and among them are more[0] patents held by the US Navy for high- temperature superconductors and "high frequency gravity wave generators." It's clear he has at least one patron within the DoD; it's a shame that the technical oversight over this program is so credulous.

[0] [https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Salvatore+Cezar+Pais](https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Salvatore+Cezar+Pais)

<comment><USER10> Unless they're in on the joke and the goal is to fool foreign governments into chasing down pseudoscientific rabbit holes.

<comment><USER11> far more likely it's a grift (e.g. to the stars academy, remote viewing companies like SRI Int'l in the 60s-80s, etc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From 2016 already. Note from the wikipedia page of the filer of this patent: "His patent applications on behalf of his employers have attracted international attention for their potential military and energy-producing applications, but also doubt about their feasibility, and speculation that they may be misinformation intended to mislead the United States' strategic adversaries about the direction of United States defense research."

In particular it's pretty wild that:

\- this effect does not seem to have been replicated in outside laboratories

\- the US military would willingly share details about how it works through the patent system while they can also just not tell anyone.

<comment><USER13> The US military also has a mechanism in place to prevent classified tech from being patented.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_Secrecy_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_Secrecy_Act)

It is a pretty good example of how the patent system is broken. Like for example someone patenting dropdowns...

[https://patents.justia.com/patent/10078623](https://patents.justia.com/patent/10078623)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If this were true (I doubt it), that's an insanely short patent (6 pages) with barely any information about the device. How would something like this get approved. That's insane.

<comment><USER15> It's easy to get a patent on just about anything. I have a patent for a faster-than-light communications device:

[https://patents.google.com/patent/US7126691B2/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US7126691B2/en)

I filed it as an exercise to see if you can get a patent on a device that violates the laws of physics. Turns out you can.

<comment><USER16> So I can use you patent to send the patent back in time, generating prior art, which caused your patent to never exist.

<comment><USER15> Well, you could if it worked, but it doesn't, so you can't :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "As [Baron Vladimir Harkonnen] emerged from the shadows, his figure took on dimension — grossly and immensely fat. And with subtle bulges beneath folds of his dark robes to reveal that all this fat was sustained partly by portable suspensors harnessed to his flesh. He might weigh two hundred Standard kilos in actuality, but his feet would carry no more than fifty of them."

As I've gotten older and fatter this seems like a better idea. I'm ready for my portable suspensors now please. This may help to solve the Navy's problem with obesity among recruits.

<comment><USER18> Your comment reminds me of a news service reporting on some previous levitation/antigrav tech. The application they suggested was "floating burn victims in hospitals".

That's the best you can think of for a floating-things technology???

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The tech behind is sound. There do exist similar "antigravity" devices. And patents.

The problem is to make gravitomagnetic fields efficient. Currently it's barely measurable. Pais' idea does look good, esp. the idea to hook up two such spinning superconductors and twist their axis a bit. That's the UFO patent. AFAIK he is trying to build such a thing with the navy right now. In the lab in my city they tried similar things, but their lab is very small, and they cannot verify Pais' idea. The navy should be good enough. Interesting moonshot, but probably nothing will come out of it.

</comment><comment><USER20> There's an expression, with respect to rock music: "Before any artist did anything, Elvis did everything..."

Or, with respect to classical music, substitute Mozart or Beethoven for Elvis...

With respect to this kind of stuff, there was John Ernst Worrell Keely:

Hans von Lieven: KeelyTech: Paper on John Ernst Worrell Keely

[https://merlib.org/node/5064](https://merlib.org/node/5064)

"Before the Navy did anything, Keely did everything..."

Also, if you're going to study Keely, watch out -- there's a lot of fake news and disinformation...

</comment><comment><USER21> Build a craft with a cold fusion power plant, an EM-Drive propulsion system, one of these babies for lift, and an Alcubierre drive for once it breaks orbit you'd really have something.

<comment><USER22> This would be shittiest Star Trek knock off series _ever_. I'm imagining the "aliens" would be the weirder residents of SoCal?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The USN has been watching too much Macross in their free time. And couple this with fuzzy deep fake videos, media complicity, and high-ranking "reliable authorities" behaving as actors must be getting a good kick out of trolling the public for "natsec" "reasons." Without independently-verifiable evidence, big claims are most likely big yarns.

<comment><USER18> In macross, the antigrav generators broke through the fuselage and floated away. They needed to use good old rockets/propulsion to get to space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> [Patent Clerk] Anti-gravity... um... anti-depressant? I could put you through to someone on that?

</comment><comment><USER25> Let's be clear about one thing, it is far more likely that this object is terrestrial. Going off of this, thee country most likely to pull this off would the the United States.

</comment><comment><USER26> "polarized vacuum" I'm sure those two words could be elaborated upon, certainly does seem to be a couple of nice words when put together make you go - errrm

<comment><USER27> yeah- something akin to the casimir effect?

<comment><USER26> Maybe, though it's that detail which is lacking and making it all just a bit too vague.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm glad to see this again. This patent is the first thing I thought of when the "UFO" admission news hit last week. I'm guessing what we're seeing is probably some experimental stuff. Hopefully it's our stuff.

</comment><comment><USER29> If it worked it would be classified.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is this related to the EmDrive?

<comment><USER15> Yes, insofar as neither one of them actually works.

<comment><USER31> I lold :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Look, In this world there lot of criminals that break the law so what are the odds breaking this universal laws?

</comment><comment><USER33> A bit late for April Fools...

</comment><comment><USER34> Have they accidentally invented time travel yet?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_\(film\))

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't know anything about quantum vacuum but from reading this I assume that the entire mechanism follows trivially from the underlying physical properties. Or in other words, wasn't this application apparent when physicists theorized these properties in the first place? And shouldn't the IP belong to the public which subsidized the research?

<comment><USER36> IF the patent were not a fraud or disinformation (it certainly is one of these), then it would not "follow trivially", it would be the biggest discovery in physics in 50-100 years. It would be monumental.

Unfortunately, it is either fraud or some kind of disinformation.</comment></comment>


Unicode is over and it dies over Emoji - <AUTHOR> http://blog.koehntopp.info/index.php/2745-unicode-is-over-and-it-dies-over-emoji/ <comment><USER2> The original Unicode emoji made sense as a compatibility measure with Japanese encodings, but I thoroughly disagree with the expansion of Unicode Emoji.

The idea that the default emoji represent white people is ridiculous, since the codepoints are meant to translate directly with Japanese computer systems. In the original NTT DoCoMo set, they didn't even have facial skin (probably because of device resolution and colour limitations), just features like eyes and mouths. Maybe the Unicode consortium made a mistake by specifying them as bright yellow, which people now associate strongly with the Simpsons, where white people are represented as bright saturated yellow.

In my understanding, nobody in the standardization process even considered that Emoji had a race. If people project one race or another onto what are supposed to be disembodied universal facial expressions, then that's their problem.

<comment><USER3> I feel you should have more empathy for people that do not look like you.

For some people, race, fighting for for recognition, let alone equality, is a daily battle. You may live and work far from this conflict, but it exists, and in some part the diversity modifiers for emoji provide folks with empowerment. Don't take that away over limitations in the spec.

There are billions now who own smart phones, and want that funny Japanese Telco encoding standard to reflect their world too.

This is not a technical or standards problem, and the fitzpatrick modifiers do not decrease functionality of unicode.

I feel my point is to chill, and consider how functionality outside your perceived value might bring others joy.

<comment><USER2> > _I feel you should have more empathy for people that do not look like you._

Quite literally nobody has bright yellow skin. Emoji are not human beings, they are エモ → e-mo → emotion 字 → ji → characters (update: apparently I've been misled, but not in a way which changes my point, see reply below). The codepoints do not contain, have never contained, and will never contain a racial identity. They are an abstract representation of universal human emotions, just as generic as single-line ASCII emoticons.

Nobody's racial identity was represented by Unicode emoji faces to begin with, and certainly nobody any less than me.

<comment><USER4> Actually, "emoji" is 絵[e] (picture) + 文字[moji] (character). A lot of them do not represent emotions, but just random pictograms. In my opinion while encoding pictures as text was a good idea at the time (due to limitations of mobile text messages), it makes no sense in 2017 where we have technology to easily inline any picture in the text even on mobile phones.

<comment><USER2> > _Actually, "emoji" is 絵[e] (picture) + 文字[moji] (character). A lot of them > do not represent emotions, but just random pictograms._

Thanks, I really do wonder why people lie to me or make things up. I guess that's what I get for never typing it into my IME in full.

> _In my opinion while encoding pictures as text was a good idea at the time > (due to limitations of mobile text messages), it makes no sense in 2017 > where we have technology to easily inline any picture in the text even on > mobile phones._

Even at the time, the character set was apparently meant to replace common phrases and text emoticons (for SMS, as you note). There's frankly no way anyone would have the time and energy to produce high quality custom images for simple messages, save for selfies.

<comment><USER5> It's not hard to imagine people making that assumption, as it is reasonable if not correct, particularly as "emoticons" and "emoji" are often used to describe the same or similar non-character glyphs. There's no need to assume bad faith on others, any more than it would be to assume ill on your part for repeating it without confirming it.

<comment><USER2> Well, I suppose the fault is shared, but it was told to me confidently enough by somebody I would generally trust in these matters. I'm not throwing any particular person under the bus here, so I think I can be as emphatic as I'd like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My understanding of the Emoji acceptance process is that such characters only get accepted if you can prove that people _have_ been using the emoji as a text-like glyph in other contexts (usually either on paper, or in a proprietary forum/chat system.)

Unicode's aim isn't to serve as a useful "palette" of characters that people should actually want to type ever. It's to serve as a single, unified encoding for archiving existing texts. If people persistently write the same odd symbol on paper, then Unicode aims to ensure that they'll have a common codepoint to encode that symbol to.

The worst case scenario for Unicode is a world where people encode texts onto forums with millions of little proprietary Emoji images, and then those sites close, the images are lost, the URLs of the images are just UUID.png or somesuch, and so the contextual meaning of the text is lost.

The second-worst-case is one where such texts blanket the internet, and—because of their various derivative-proprietary encodings—it becomes impossible to make such texts machine-readable/indexable/sentiment- analyzable/etc.

The Unicode Standards Body might be behaving rather silly from the perspective of someone who just wants to be able to record their own thoughts—but from the perspective of ensure the Internet and all its documents remain amenable to library science, the standards body is behaving perfectly sensibly. They'll give people whatever they need to keep using Unicode in place of some proprietary extension, because that's how you keep text on computers interchangeable.

</comment><comment><USER7> The original Emoji sort of made sense - there were a number of disparate systems already using the private use area. Now that we're inventing brand new ones that are going to literally live _forever_ the unicode community should seriously consider hoisting them out and forcing carriers and other communication utilities to create proper standards for inline images.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is it intentionally ironic or unintentionally confusing that the first instances that should be ":-)" have actually been converted into the emoji versions?

<comment><USER9> Either the author fixed it or your browser is doing it -- they show up as the text versions for me.

<comment><USER10> The author fixed it.

That is, TIL that wordpress replaces these things on output, and there is not even a switch to prevent that. I had to install a plugin to fix this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I definitely agree that the over-specialization of emoji faces is ridiculous.

However, one question has occurred to me: what has the _actual_ consequence of the skin-tone-modifier been on real-world emoji use?

The answer, in my experience, is that essentially _no one uses skin-tone- modified emoji at all_. This, in turn, makes me wonder if perhaps _this_ was the intended result the whole time—to, in a very circuitous way, ensure that the "default" state of any given emoji has a generic skin tone.

<comment><USER12> > what has the actual consequence of the skin-tone-modifier been on real-world > emoji use?

The blog post gave some good examples.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/white-p...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/white- people-dont-use-white-emoji/481695/)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/kendall-jenner-used-darker- em...](http://www.businessinsider.com/kendall-jenner-used-darker-emoji-than- her-skin-tone-2017-8?IR=T)

I don't think white people use white emoji because being white isn't part of their self-identity. That's one of the normalizing qualities of being the dominant type (e.g. Hollywood). Just like nobody points out that they are heterosexual.

I live in Mexico and my darker skinner friends use the color tinted emojis.

<comment><USER6> Now I'm curious whether white minorities in cultures (e.g. in Hong Kong) are more likely to use the modifier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I also don't get the emoji pollution on Unicode, maybe it is an age thing.

<comment><USER14> The thing to do is to ponder the tremendous consequences if you don't pay any attention to them.

<comment><USER13> Not being able to write meaningless sentences on whatsapp and similar?

<comment><USER14> See, it'll be alright.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I welcome adding Emoji to Unicode. I also welcome adding different skin tones to Unicode. I welcome _everything_ that invites more people to engage with, appreciate, and feel included by technology.

I welcome a world where you don't need to be at all tech-savvy to get as much out of a computer as anyone else. People can drive without being engine-savvy, and I think it is fan-fucking-fastic that computing is moving in the same way.

Technology is such an amplifier for human activity, if everyone doesn't get to play, we're doing it wrong.

Any time anyone writes "this new thing that makes a system less elegant but opens it up to more people is a bad new thing" \-- _they are doing it wrong_.

</comment><comment><USER16> easy early fix would have been to make all skin tone emojis blue. okay now they represent everyone and no one, no need to introduce ten skin color gradients for each meme

<comment><USER14> There are (a small number of) people with blue tinted skin.

[http://abcnews.go.com/Health/blue-skinned-people-kentucky- re...](http://abcnews.go.com/Health/blue-skinned-people-kentucky-reveal- todays-genetic-lesson/story?id=15759819)

<comment><USER17> FYI that article will start playing a full-volume video ad as you start scrolling down. Scared the shit out of me.

<comment><USER14> Sorry, didn't happen to me, I would have found an alternative.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Fugates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Fugates)

<comment><USER17> No knock against you, just wanted to point it out since it was so shocking for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why is this flagged??

<comment><USER18> Emoji fanboys I guess... I seem to not be able to vouch for it. Is it a karma thing or can't one vouch for submissions?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have the feeling it's something American that I can't really understand as an European.

Last time I got flagged was a comment with a link to a picture of a Sikh with a sign that said he writes bug free code. As some Americans mistake Sikhs with Muslims that may have triggered something. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14209714](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14209714)

By the way: You can't post emojis here. Hacker News removes them from your comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't understand why you need different colors of emoji.

Isn't yellow sufficiently neutral?

</comment><comment><USER20> When politics come into play, technicians can only shake their heads ...

<comment><AUTHOR> It must be politics why this post got flagged.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Least important issue ever.

Unicode has like a billion more spaces for characters.

</comment><comment><USER22> That's not what the Skyrim face editor looks like. That game is heavily modded. The real one is more like this: [http://scalar.usc.edu/works/interactive-storytelling- narrati...](http://scalar.usc.edu/works/interactive-storytelling-narrative- techniques-and-methods-in-video- games/media/2.1%20-%20Skyrim%20Character%20Creation.jpg)</comment>


Interactive visualization of Kerr spherical photon orbits (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://duetosymmetry.com/tool/kerr-circular-photon-orbits/ <comment><USER2> Here's some videos I did a few years ago. Program source on Github.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvGnzGhIWTGRuIsHzDLde...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvGnzGhIWTGRuIsHzDLdeWS4GSZ9CIY-b)

</comment><comment><USER3> Animated this would make a reasonably nice addition to XScreenSaver

</comment><comment><USER4> Thank you for sharing this...it so awesome to see threejs.org for understanding educational concepts so easily. Kudos!!!</comment>


Ask HN: How do you get your private projects/repositories reviewed - <AUTHOR> One of the best things about publishing open source code is that you get to see other devevelopers view of your work. They see things you might not, or may find a more efficient way of solving a problem which you learn from.
Sometimes we work on solo projects that are long term endeavors and by nature can't be open sourced but you still want to get that insight from other developers.
How do you go about getting that insight for projects you are happy for people to review, but don't necessarily want to open source. <comment><USER2> A person with those goals and constraints could hire a consultant. Assuming of course that it's work not a hobby, that makes the most sense. If it's a hobby, then the sense it makes is just how far down the "prosumer" route the hobbyist is willing to go.</comment>


Is Facebook evil or merely incompetent?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/101810-is-facebook-evil-or-merely.html

<comment><USER2> I'd say Facebook is opportunistic more than anything. They know how badly people can't sit still or be alone and they simply profit off that. Like Tocqueville said 'people get the government they deserve.' This is what happens when people don't think about how closely freedom, privacy, and selfhood are linked. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. For social networking, people go to the big, nice-looking site that all of their friends seem to like. It sells your grandmother on the slave market? Oh, too bad, no one told me this!

I think Facebook has survived long enough in a very competitive market segment that they can't claim to be stupid. They do care about privacy etc. - to the extent that they need it to remain in the market, but not one ounce more, and to some extent their business model (not charging their users, ever) means they have to do scary stuff on the side (with all privacy implications) to remain competitive with for-fee sites (e.g., Xing, LinkedIn) as well as sites that are financed through generic advertising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At Facebook the motto is said to be "move fast and break things". I think that explains pretty much everything about them, the good and the bad.

</comment><comment><USER5> Any sufficiently entrenched incompetence is indistinguishable from evil.

 _[Paraphrasing Arthur C. Clarke]_

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm having a hard time buying that they're incompetent. I mean, we just had all those stories about one of their biggest partners leaking data to advertisers, then they go on to ban the practice and remove _other_ (far less profitable) programs made by different companies from their systems and pretend that we won't notice....

Now, it could be that they hired away the 10% of Google that's the least competent, but I don't really buy that. And somebody ought to have noticed all the news stories about selling Facebook data to advertisers.

So if they're "incompetent" it's because they're sticking their heads in the sand.

</comment><comment><USER7> "The present king of France is bald."

</comment><comment><USER8> Neither. Facebook has consistently pushed the privacy (or lack thereof) envelope since they launched the newsfeed, and they have consistently profited from it. The regular press backlash hasn't done shit to their bottom line, so until the misstep that actually causes the general public to care (which could come shockingly fast), they are simply a brilliant company.

</comment><comment><USER9> While I don't disagree with the author's points of discussion I do disagree with the tone and attempt at humor. Sometimes even if you do have something valid to say your words won't be sweeter by sitting on a bee hive.</comment>


Jitters over land-use politics in Peninsula downtowns squeeze startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/08/17/surveymonkey-deal-shows-jitters-over-land-use.html

<comment><USER2> The title makes absolutely no sense to me.</comment>


Looking for an Android mail client with configurable push notification settings - <AUTHOR>

Push notifications are great, but without the ability to customize them - they're too inflexible. I want to specify when push notifications can arrive and create filters to get silent notifications from all my social networks, and it would be really cool to have the ability to set a custom sound for notifications. <comment><USER2> In MyMail you can set the time period in which push notifications arrive, you can filter notifications from social networks, and you won't be bothered by spam. Oh, and the app lets you choice different sounds for notifications.</comment>


How to solve Facebook's fake news problem: experts pitch their ideas - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/29/facebook-fake-news-problem-experts-pitch-ideas-algorithms <comment><USER2> This won't work though, because the people who want to read fake news won't "like" the truthful stuff. Facebook's problem is that people want what they want and don't care about viewpoints that challenge their beliefs.</comment>


Launch HN: Shift Health (YC S19) – Understand Your Healthcare Costs Pre-Visit - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
We're Lance, Lance, and Dallin (Yes...2 founders named Lance :)). We are the founders of Shift Health (https://shifthealth.io). We help patients understand what they will owe pre-visit and provide flexibility to pay overtime.
Purchasing health care is unlike anything else you buy in our society today. You wouldn't expect to walk into a grocery store, take home a loaf of bread not knowing the price and then receive a surprise bill 3 months later. So why is this the standard experience for buying health care services? The surprising thing is that the standard experience for doctors offices is not much better. Antiquated billing processes compounded with the fact that patients are responsible for more and more of the bill out of pocket is creating a scenario where doctors offices are only collecting 40% to 60% of the patient out-of-pocket responsibility. We partner with doctors offices to tell patients what their expected out-of-pocket price is before they see their doctor and provide flexibility to pay overtime. Our mission is to make healthcare costs understandable and affordable for all.
We all met working on a marketing venture together that we have since exited. While working on our marketing company we carved out time each Friday to discuss big problems that we had the right talents to solve. Those Super Duper Friday's (as we called them) were really valuable for us. Lance R. (Rodela) has worked in healthcare tech for most of his career (Medicity, Aetna, SolutionReach), and he cued us into the trend of High Deductible Health Plans (HDHP's). These plans are being rapidly adopted and are having adverse impacts for patients and healthcare organizations. Patients owe more and more out of pocket (up 12% just last year), and healthcare organizations are ill equipped to collect effectively from patients. We set out to validate the problem, and everyone else we talked to agreed that medical billing is almost never a positive experience. So we set off to fix it.
Even with Rodela's background we didn't realize how hard this was going to be in the beginning. Healthcare has been very resistant to disruption to date. Antiquated legacy systems abound, political lobbyists hover over everything and administrative staff have to be extra cautious not to find themselves on the wrong side of countless regulations and legislation. In short...it's gnarly. Not sure if it was insanity or inspiration that drove us forward, but onward we went. First, we went out and talked to clinical leaders near us. It did not take us very long to find an excited pilot partner to innovate with us. We did a lot of discovery work with their billing, front office, and operations teams to understand their workflow and requirements. Next we spoke with dozens of patients to better understand their needs, pain points, and challenges. Once we had a firm grasp, we presented mockups and prototypes to the clinic and to their patients to refine an MVP. Finally, we set to work constructing our solution.
As we neared completion on the MVP the next hurdle (prior to even getting launched) appeared. We needed to integrate with the practice's Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system. Fortunately, our partner had a strong relationship with their EMR provider, which saved us months of what would have otherwise been frustrating back and forth. Whew… we made it, right? Yup! Well, we made it to stage one at least. We launched the pilot and saw excellent feedback from both sides. Patients would text us saying "I love love love this" and our pilot partner saw patient collections grow by 30%.
We are not stopping there though. To build the best estimations we needed to build into insurance networks and more, and that is what we are pioneering today. There is still a lot of tech to build (calling all health tech pros hungry to work on something big!), but we are excited to announce that today we are able to text obstetrics patients 48 hours before their appointment how much their care will cost them out of pocket with 95% accuracy.
Healthcare payments have been a giant mess for a long time, but all of this is approaching a massive tipping point for change with 3 important market forces:
1. Financial Forces: Due to the rapid adoption of HDHP's, patients are financially responsible for more of their bill. Doctors offices are ill-equipped for this paradigm shift and are collecting less (40%-60% of patient balances are written off). Patients want to know their costs ahead of time, and we have proven that doctors will collect more when they communicate ahead of time and provide flexible payment options.
2. Social Forces: Healthcare costs and spending has been catapulted to the center of the upcoming presidential debates, and an executive order requiring price transparency in the United States was signed in June 2019.
3. Technological Forces: Platforms are emerging providing more health data access than ever before.
I've recently seen some posts on HN about the executive order and price transparency (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20275097) so we're looking forward to a really good discussion.
Please reach out with your ideas, help, and connections! <comment><USER2> How is your service different from the many other players in this space that have failed or are struggling to succeed?

To provide context: price transparency is basically a commodity, and the actual prices a patient will be deemed to owe for services rendered isn't just hard to predict, it's sometimes literally not possible. I've worked in this space for years. The problems with this industry aren't technology problems, they're people (political) problems. From what I can see, your company isn't actually doing anything that isn't already available and in some cases implemented. That's the motivation behind my question.

<comment><USER3> > The problems with this industry aren't technology problems, they're people > (political) problems.

This is a great point that I feel could be copy pasted to a lot of Show HN business ideas. This SV bubble mindset is that everything is an engineering problem and can be solved with some kind of tech, ignorant of understanding the real root of the problem.

Edit: Relevant XKCD [https://xkcd.com/1831/](https://xkcd.com/1831/)

<comment><USER4> All these guys are missing is a blockchain

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was part of the founding team of a startup that did exactly this about 2 years ago. I wish you the best of luck but sales cycles are excruciatingly long and the larger players that are working with razor thin margins may find the 4.5% bit too expensive. Happy to chat and best of luck with the startup!

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the well wishes! We believe that the timing component is really important, and there is evidence that the winds of change are blowing right now. Would love to learn from your experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The US is an absolute joke of a country. Just vote candidates in who will make universal healthcare a reality rather than spawn new industries to further extract value. /Australian

<comment><USER8> That won't change the costs if anything it will make them rise and rise faster. You have one payer: one large, infinitely wealthy entity paying the bill it's human nature for participants to jack up rates

<comment><USER9> This would be a great argument if we didn't have literally all of Europe, Japan, Australia, etc. to conclusively debunk it.

> The U.S. spends about twice what other high-income nations do on health care > but has the lowest life expectancy and the highest infant mortality rates, a > new study suggests.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-spending/u-s- healt...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-spending/u-s-health- spending-twice-other-countries-with-worse-results-idUSKCN1GP2YN)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Awesome work. Are you planning on integrating with multiple EMR systems or just insurance systems themselves? What are your thoughts on Epic's AppOrchard etc, or FHIR?

Good luck, I work in the health tech space....it's "fun" ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> We are planning on integrating with multiple EMR's to make sure we're able to offer a fully automated, fully integrated approach to practices. I love the steps Epic is taking to open up API's. My hope is that more EMR's will follow suit. Healthcare is fun...and challenging :).

<comment><USER11> FHIR APIs are definitely becoming more and more broadly deployed, which is awesome! Scaling wise, it might be worth looking into the interoperability partners that specialize in standing up FHIR endpoints for providers like Datica & Redox.

<comment><USER12> Agree on FHIR APIs are becoming ubiquitous especially with Apple Health pushing its adoption in consumer facing applications, not so much on the legacy enterprise side from what I've seen thus far (I work primarily in the clinical trials side of things) and we prototyped our own integration stack to help with wrangling with different standards (more like the lack thereof). It is worth actually building that ourselves in the early days as we have learned so much about the challenges to integrate with our partners and will at some point looking into interoperability partners as we scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Since there's a non-zero chance that America does get single payer healthcare in the next 5-10 year how would your company adapt? Or are you gambling that it won't happen (I would understand this gamble, because if it doesn't happen then this could be extremely useful to consumers/patients and is really needed).

<comment><AUTHOR> At this point the gamble is that Single Payer won't happen. There's a chance but we think it's slim. Our bet is that we're positioned well to take advantage of the recent Executive Order.

<comment><USER14> I'm just curious, from a moral perspective, how does it feel to bet against many of the poor being lifted out of death and medical bankruptcies for the sake of your own profit?

<comment><USER2> Your question is a bit harsh, but it strikes at one of the more insidious truths in this space right now: most if not all these health tech companies' business models simply wouldn't work if we had a functioning health care system, and they end up participating in the negative feedback loop that further entrenches the problems they claim to want to solve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Doctors offices are ill-equipped for this paradigm shift and are collecting > less (40%-60% of patient balances are written off)... our pilot partner saw > patient collections grow by 30%.

I'm not seeing how a mission of _decreasing_ patient costs fits with these stats.

<comment><USER15> "Cash pay only" doctors compete with the existing system today. With the rising upfront costs each year, there's an increasing trend of a cash pay doctor's office visit being cheaper than the co-pay of your insurance provider.

Why this is true a separate discussion (possibly overhead of dealing with the healthcare system or insurer).

<comment><USER6> We have seen that trend of more and more cash-pay only physicians and think it is great!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Medical billing is _very complex._ Others have tried and shown mediocre results.

So 95% accurate is very impressive!

Anything you attribute the reliability to?

<comment><USER6> That is part of the secret sauce ;) And your right, this is all painfully complex!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Congrats on the launch even though this feels like a "faster horses" solution instead of something like, I don't know, universal healthcare like the rest of the developed countries (and actually also non-developed).

<comment><USER18> Remember, universal healthcare != socialized healthcare. The US has "universal food", as do most developed nations. In these countries, food isn't just "free" for everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hey guys - this is a great initiative! Something i have been so frustrated about the current system. We work with large medical centers in clinical trials space (and worked with hl7, fhir, cqm, hipaa etc) - happy to help in whatever way i can. My profile has my contact.

<comment><USER6> Thanks so much for the offer! Would love to learn from your insights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good luck guys! Any attempt to better this abhorrent mess gets my biased upvote.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! We're looking forward to tackling this head on. Appreciate the support!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is great. Healthcare is a mess. Glad you're working on fixing it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We agree healthcare needs to change. We're excited to be a part of that change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Typo in front page:

We integrate with with over 50 EMR systems

(extra with)

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER23> why is this even a thing. just use the NHS.

<comment><USER24> You don't have healthcare cost under the NHS? I'm Dutch and I have lots of healthcare costs. A bit over €3000 in tax, €1100 in insurance, €885 deductible, €300 dental, €300 physiotherapy, €50 in uncovered medicine.

I would love a website that broke these costs down for me in a logical way so I could streamline my personal finances.

<comment><USER25> The NHS costs are limited to £9 per prescription (England only, waivable on low income). Hospital visits are free; people complain about having to pay for parking, because they lack all perspective on how bad it might be.

The tax is not hypothecated but is about £3k each. [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42950587](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42950587)

(Dental and optical you may have to pay up to a few hundred £ for)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What is going on with a source code of that simple landing page? It's over 11Mb in size. Also you have over 500 declarations of @font-face, and inline css is just bizarre. I would recommend you taking a look into that, it's not good.

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll look into it. Thanks for the heads up.</comment></comment>


The Best Way To Keep Prisoners From Using Cell Phones - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/humannature/archive/2009/07/16/cell-blocks.aspx

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I'm very much against the use of jamming and tend to agree with the CTIA stance on the matter. There are benefits to allowing the staff of prisons to carry cell phones and those benefits would be gone.

In addition, there's always the possibility that the deployment of jamming equipment results in nearby areas suffering degraded signals. It's not like putting up a concrete wall.

Detection alone wouldn't be sufficient, and an authenticated system seems like it would be very tricky to sort out since the prison is going to be sharing cell towers with non-prison areas.

In all three cases, I don't think it will eliminate the problem, but like most security issues, it's best to throw everything you can at it so if one component fails there's three backing you up.

<comment><USER3> I'm kinda disappointed, I thought by the title it would be some Faraday cage solution. After all these people are already contained.

<comment><USER4> Not when they're outside in the exercise yard.</comment></comment></comment>