When I asked Tinder for my data, it sent me 800 pages of my deepest secrets - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/26/tinder-personal-data-dating-app-messages-hacked-sold <comment><USER2> "Some 800 pages came back containing information such as my Facebook "likes", my photos from Instagram (even after I deleted the associated account)"

It's going to be interesting to see how Tinder tackles the 2018 EU General Data Protection Regulation in 2018 and how things will play out in courts and practice.

For example, are you allowed to store information that I have chosen to unlink? Will Tinder have an easy way to export the data without having to settle to long email conversations, as there is a right to data portability? If so, in what format will this data be presented?

<comment><USER3> I think worst case (best case?) scenario is that they will 'copy' the data they're not supposed to keep off to another country, _maybe_ anonymize it but otherwise the data will still be there. Its too important - even in anonymized form. Its capable of helping sociologists, medical researchers, advertisers, etc... They don't need to know that "James. T. McLovin' of 123 Happy Lane, went on 15 dates and slept with 3 women, prefers brunettes", but knowing that a "John Doe, M, 27, income of $50k, likes rugby, etc..." is good information to have.

<comment><USER4> The country the data resides in is irrelevant. If the data is about an EU citizen, that's all that matters.

I believe the company in question would also need a legal entity in the EU in order for the EU to prosecute them, as I don't think you can take (e.g.) an American company to an EU court. IANAL though.

<comment><USER3> eh. Maybe. If they copy the data to a 3rd party in America (i.e. sell the data a marketing company, for "research" purposes), then the EU can't really go after the marketing company. I'm not saying it's right. I don't see why they couldn't anonymize the data (morally or ethically). But, I don't own a marketing company.

<comment><USER5> If a company based in the EU is transferring the data to a 3rd party in America without appropriate safeguards to ensure said data is treated in a way that complies with EU law, then the transfer itself is unlawful, and the EU can go after the company for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I got fed up with Tinder's Android client and reverse-engineered their API (this was back when the Android security model let you use mitmproxy). Two things stood out to me:

1\. The AI was kind of hacky. Updates were done by polling rather than push. There were a lot of unused fields - for example, "remaining likes" would hang at 100 until the likes were used up, then it would go straight to 0.

2\. They tracked absolutely every action you took and sent it to a different server from the API requests. Opening settings, opening your own profile, opening someone else's profile - it was all logged. They knew exactly what you were doing in the app and for how long.

It wouldn't surprise me nowadays if this is standard practice but it was eye- opening to see it happening firsthand.

<comment><USER7> Number 2 is standard. In my experience It's a form of logging more than a form of data collection.

<comment><USER8> What's the difference between logging and data collection?

<comment><USER9> I work on a web application, and would love to have some metrics which I would consider "logging". The distinction I would make is,

\- Data collection is about learning things about your users \- Logging is about learning what your users were doing when Something Went Wrong.

Obviously, there's a _ton_ of overlap here, in that a lot of (all of?) the info one uses collects for one purpose could be used for the other. As a developer of the UI, however, my main concern is not about learning more about our users (our UX people already do that), but rather about understanding what happened, or which features are actually being used (so that we can know if they are safe to prune).

<comment><USER10> In reply to and0, you also need to keep in mind that companies alao might need to know which behaviors did NOT cause a crash to figure out the root cause of a crash as a sort of control group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > A few months earlier, 70,000 profiles from OkCupid (owned by Tinder's parent > company Match Group) were made public by a Danish researcher some > commentators have labelled a "white supremacist", who used the data to try > to establish a link between intelligence and religious beliefs.

The guy's name is Emil Kirkegaard and the paper and data is still available. I skimmed the paper and have no idea why he was labled a "white supremacist", or by whom. ("some commentators", really? Is this journalism?)

[EDIT]

paper: [https://openpsych.net/files/papers/Kirkegaard_2016g.pdf](https://openpsych.net/files/papers/Kirkegaard_2016g.pdf)

dataset: [https://www.reddit.com/r/datasets/comments/4jj53i/here_is_a_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/datasets/comments/4jj53i/here_is_a_mirror_for_the_okcupid_osf_emil/)

<comment><USER12> Hi, I am the person who is cited in the article and who helped Judith get access to her data. If you are interested in the OKCupid story, Judith also wrote about this in more details, also with my input. [https://www.letemps.ch/sciences/2017/04/07/laboratoire- fake-...](https://www.letemps.ch/sciences/2017/04/07/laboratoire-fake-science)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the clarification.

Just a brief look on the titles of the Kirkegaard's other publications seems to confirm that he appears to have a deep interest in immigration, genetics, crime and IQ. One of his independent papers even mention cranial volume, which sounds vaguely familiar: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism#Craniometry_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism#Craniometry_and_physical_anthropology)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I always felt a bit silly logging in to Facebook in a private browser window in every other week, many times through a VPN. Also not sharing much more than jokes and cartoons or memes. Not to mention my absense from the hip social web, including Tinder, but many more as well.

I don't feel silly anymore. :)

(btw: my name is not zoltaan ;) )

<comment><USER14> Outliers such as yourself won't do much to curtail the practice of companies amassing identifiable, weaponizable, and often undersecured data about their users. And because the data is valuable and there have been few regulations put in place to balance that value with the burden of responsible handling, those companies will continue to collect more and in more creative ways, whittling away at your creative maneuvers to avoid it.

In my estimation, this is a good first step, but privacy has to be a feature of the system, not just a heavy shield you carry through it.

<comment><USER15> I just don't see the doom and gloom. You say "weaponizable" but even the worst offenders for oversharing aren't giving facebook information that seems that bad? Compare the data talked about in this article (likes, jobs, dating preferences) to data that already is public knowledge and avaliable to _everyone_ : (assuming US) how much you payed in property taxes, where you live, what your phone number is, which political party you're registered to vote in (depending on the state this might also be linked to your telephone number or even last 4 SSN), all documents related to any companies you may have incorporated. Your _public_ data footprint is far more expansive than the tiny slice companies like tinder and facebook have. The only reason they don't bother linking to the public realm is that personal data (unaggregated) is worthless from the prospective of "building models to sell adds".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think Tinder specifically has far better grounds for having all this data than most tech companies. After all it is their core function to try to match people, and to do that well you need to know the people.

<comment><USER17> I wouldn't go so far as to say they _need_ all this data. The service could work fine with just self-reported preferences and profiles if you wanted it to.

<comment> throw-away-8 Self-reported preferences and experimentally observed preferences are not the same.

<comment><USER17> I agree, but I don't know that that is such an impediment that the app wouldn't be usable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It just dawned on me that Tinder is basically the new and improved version of Zuckerberg's original creation - Facesmash. Except Tinder can do so much more than that. And amusingly, Tinder is hailed as a great app while Facesmash was decried as a way of dehumanizing and objectifying people. My, how far we have come.

<comment><USER19> I think a big part of that is people consent to being on tinder.

<comment><USER20> Absolutely. That also says something about the difference in the times. Zuckerberg forced people onto Facemash probably because he thought it would be easier than getting people to sign up voluntarily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm somewhat curious about the verification process here. Wouldn't this be a prime target for would-be blackmailers?

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder what Snapchat would return. All the messages ever? Regardless of their pretend volality? Someone please try it, I don't have an account.

<comment><USER23> Rumor is that snap keeps messages in google cloud compute encrypted. When messages are expired or read by the user, they just delete the encryption key.

<comment><USER17> Why would they do that? Keeping around a bunch of blobs nobody can decrypt seems like a huge waste of resources.

<comment><USER24> I suspect the same reason PostgreSQL has VACUUM. Immediate deletion can be expensive, and deletion can be cheaper if done in batch. On the other hand, they want to make it immediately unreadable. Deleting key seems to be a good way to make something immediately unreadable while avoiding expensive immediate deletion.

<comment><USER17> OK, yeah, if we're talking about some sort of tombstone operation I get it; I thought the claim was the nefarious overlords of Snapchat were keeping the data around, which was harder to understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wow--there's some pretty intense SEO in the slug for that URL: tinder- personal-data-dating-app-messages-hacked-sold

<comment><USER26> They're all keywords relating to the topics discussed in the article, aren't they?

I wouldn't be surprised if it was auto-generated from keywords that the author can assign to their article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I just downloaded a 16GB archive from [https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout](https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout) I'm impatient to see what it contains.

Update: I have forgotten to unselect Google Photos and GMail, that's what takes most of the space.

</comment><comment><USER28> Dating websites are, quite possibly, worse for our privacy than any social network ever invented. Consider this: A website like OkCupid can go much deeper than Facebook in understanding who you are, and what makes you tick. This is invaluable to marketers, and the government for that matter. I avoid dating websites because whose to say this data can't be used by others, such as insurance, employment, or the police? The following exchange from the television program "Person of Interest" I think is quite telling, albeit tongue in cheek, as to this threat: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPirWp2oAJ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPirWp2oAJ4)

</comment><comment><USER29> How would an individual get access to their data without a lawyer?

<comment><USER12> Email Chommy, the data protection robot: email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think the more interesting question would be, how much data do they retain on you if you close your account?

<comment><USER31> All of it?

<comment><USER32> It sucks that you are probably correct.

My own biggest issue with data retention is not that these companies collect all this data (they need to for their business models to work) but that they keep all of it, forever, regardless of whether it could possibly still be relevant to any business purpose (such as chat conversions from a decade ago).

<comment><USER24> I actually think chat conversation from a decade ago would be quite relevant. One baseline recommendation system is "people who bought X also bought Y". Consider "people whose conversation is in cluster X generally liked people in cluster Y". If chat conversation can be usefully used to cluster users for better matching (and I think it can), it would be valuable to keep even if content is of no interest.

<comment><USER32> > even if content is of no interest.

Can't they just keep (at most) the metadata?

<comment><USER24> As a data scientist, I think losing actual words would be a loss. Words would be only used by word embeddings like word2vec, but actual words let you switch to better word embedding later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's scary that this data can be kept for years without the user being aware of it. If this data was breached it would be worse than Ashley Madison. I suggest there should be laws that say users should be given the option to delete data older than x months selectable by the user. It seems obvious that sensitive data should not be kept indefinitely after following [https://haveibeenpwned.com](https://haveibeenpwned.com) .

</comment><comment><USER34> In the EU, when I ask for my data, do I have rights to "views" of my profile?

</comment><comment><USER35> The Ashley Madison hack [1] will look like a walk in the park if and when Tinder gets breached.

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

</comment><comment><USER36> Aside form the ethical considerations of long term storage, what is tinder doing with all this data if they can't even keep the bots off the service?

<comment><USER37> I think they just don't try to keep the bots off...

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I can't believe Eben Moglen's FreedomBox isn't a bigger project. It would help solve a lot of these problems.

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

[https://freedomboxfoundation.org](https://freedomboxfoundation.org)

<comment><USER39> While I love that project I don't see how a tinder-like dating app would work on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is terrifying

<comment><USER31> Only if you've got something to hide, right? /s

<comment><USER41> /"swipe right" ?

To be fair, this article is a vulgarization of what "tech-savvy" internet user already know.

<comment><USER42> "/s" means "sarcasm"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> tip for starters: never ever use your real identity for online services if not absolutely necessary

<comment><USER17> That seems a little hard to navigate on a dating app.

<comment><USER43> Why? Lot of people use aliases or nicknames. I never had issues doing that.

<comment><USER17> I'd have to imagine it'd put some people off.

<comment><USER43> Never had that, actually lot of people don't use their real names on dating sites or even FB. And if someone asks you say its for privacy reasons, people do understand. Look at Okcupid, its all nicknames there ;) same goes for other sites. Same goes for Apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> what can i say... welcome to the internet? ;D

</comment><comment><USER45> It seems really dangerous that you can ask for and get this data en mass. How do they really verify it is you? Can that be easily social engineered?

</comment><comment><USER46> Tl;dr Tinder stored her messages and pics and she was embarrassed reading them again.

<comment><USER47> Shit, if I dig deep enough in Usenet or my email archive (going back to the nineties!), I can easily find some cringe worthy things written by me. It's actually rather humbling and enlightening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Tinder is like GNU social, no actual conversations. Fake news

</comment><comment><USER49> 880 matches holy shit, that has to be 8x as much as the average guy. Life must be so easy.

<comment><USER50> That's around 220 matches a year since shes had the app, so like 18 matches per month for four years...

She matched with a new guy every two days basically, and he mentioned she only sent 1700 messages since she started. That's almost two average messages per match before getting bored and moving on.

With that much abundance of choice, I guess you could say life is nice and easy for the author.

<comment><USER17> Well, you could say that, but is it true? Perhaps the post-match experience isn't necessarily very good, and anyway I'm not sure raw quantity maximizes anything normal people care about.

<comment><USER51> The going stereotype about Tinder is that most men (all but the most attractive) match poorly while most women (all but the least attractive) match well - but that (again, most) women nonetheless experience a lack of communication post-match.

<comment><USER52> Women have more matches, but a worse experience. Men have less matches, but the matches they get are better.

Which is better, getting 1,000 matches in a day, when 999 of them are people who just swiped right no matter what, or who are downright rude, aggressive or poor communicators?

Or getting 2 meaningful matches in a day from people who actually want to meet you and might be a good fit for a relationship or friendship?

The first is just a bunch of noise with no signal. The second is preferable.

And plus, I'm a guy and I would easily get 3 or 4 matches a day when I was on Tinder. It's not like men are completely ignored on it. I'm hardly a supermodel, but nice pictures and a well-written profile can go a long way on online dating. Plus living in a high-population city.

<comment><USER17> I've never used online dating and, barring some kind of calamity, won't ever be dating again, so I'm working only with second-hand experience. But what you say makes some sense for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I assumed everyone used a fake FB profile for Tinder... is that not the case?

<comment><USER54> I doubt even 0.1% of their users does that.</comment></comment>


Google I/O 2020 – A Collaboration of the Cosmos - <AUTHOR> https://events.google.com/io/mission/ <comment><USER2> Unfortunately no time to play now, but this looks rather intriguing as a Google "io game" tied to Google I/O conference marketing ;)

Looks like PixelJS, Firebase behind the scenes. Will dig into it later. Nice find!</comment>


One-Third of U.S. High School Students Now Own an iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2012/04/03/one-third-of-u-s-high-school-students-now-own-an-iphone/

<comment><USER2> "extensive survey of 5,600 U.S. high school students"

So extensive...</comment>


What compiler does HN use? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Hacker News is built on the Arc programming language ([http://arclanguage.org/](http://arclanguage.org/)), if that answers your question.</comment>


Deploy your ML models in 10 mins - <AUTHOR> We have an idea of building a CI/CD system for machine learning models. So to speak, the tool will help: - Automate integration of ML models in your pipeline - Automate Model testing (in both end-to-end and customized/fragmented flow). - Automate model deployment to any clouds, with function to manage versions. - Visualize deployment monitor/tracking.
What does it mean to you? - Faster to deploy your ML models - More efficient to manage and monitor your deployment process.
We'd like to know if these functions really help ease your pain points about ML model deployment, or if it has missed anything critical. Of course, we'd love to hear your feedback on the UI/UX as well.
PS: We've just built a CLI for this product, so if any of you want to give it a try and have a deeper discussion with us, please leave your email in the comment section. <comment><USER2> Are you thinking something like Amazon Sagemaker, generalized for any cloud?

<comment><USER3> If you're talking about deployment concept, yes. But we strictly focus on model deployment, while Sagemaker stretches to other aspects like training and tuning models.

Two things I think we can "beat" SageMaker: \- Pipeline (workflow) visualization \- Use of cross-platform servers. As far as I know, you can only use AWS with Sagemaker?

Other than that, we're still thinking of how to compete with Sagemaker in terms of deployment capability so if you have any ideas, please share with us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi, definitely interested in this product!

Keen to use the CLI version.

do you have a sign up form?

<comment><USER3> hey reggiepret, I'm one of Podder's makers. Thank you for your interest.

Please visit our website [https://podder.ai/](https://podder.ai/) and sign up for a CLI demo there. Waiting for you!</comment></comment>


HTML 5 <keygen> Tag - <AUTHOR> http://www.quackit.com/html_5/tags/html_keygen_tag.cfm

<comment><USER2> Sounds nice in theory, but is there a way to access the private key - e.g. for backups or passphrase protection?</comment>


The highest-rated products on Amazon. - <AUTHOR> http://topazon.com

<comment><USER2> Pretty cool, but is there a reason it doesn't have the actual product name/title on that page? Like the headphones and knife, unless you're a super expert, you can't tell what it is from looking at the picture.

And having to following links to see _what_ it is seems kind of like busy work. (And the HDMI cable, "Don't get ripped off by more expensive cables that are no better than this one." since that doesn't appear to be pulled from an amz review, it seems intentionally obfuscated.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Part of the point of Topazon is to make it easier to buy something like headphones without having to do research or compare different products if you don't want to. To most people, displaying the specific name and model of the headphones wouldn't mean anything.

Nothing is intentionally obfuscated. The summaries are combinations of direct quotes, paraphrased quotes, and editorial summaries based on the reviews. In the case of the HDMI cable, if I remember rightly, the fact that it was cheap and worked perfectly compared to more expensive cables was a common theme in the reviews.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Topazon is a side project that aggregates and curates the 100 highest rated products on Amazon.com. The information was gathered by going through Amazon category by category and manually collecting the products with close to 5 stars and enough reviews (usually over 50) to make the rating significant. Some judgement was applied, for example picking a 4.7 star product that was $150 cheaper than a comparable product with 4.8 stars.

Note: the links to Amazon have an affiliate tag. If this bothers you, feel free to copy paste the links without the tag instead of going directly.

<comment><USER3> I believe this site has also done a bit of advertising on reddit. How is that working out?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, redditors seem to be particularly interested in the site, so the ads there have been working out even though the site doesn't make a ton of money per visitor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be fun to have a "can you name this product from the photo" game -- I instantly recognized about 30% of these products just from the picture.</comment>


Test the Spammyness of your Emails - <AUTHOR> https://www.mail-tester.com/ <comment><USER2> I've used Postmark's JSON API to test spam-ratings of emails for years. Can't recommend enough.

[http://spamcheck.postmarkapp.com/](http://spamcheck.postmarkapp.com/)

<comment><USER3> Very interesting. This could be a good way to preflight your emails automatically before you send them. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since you absolutely have to run everything you plan on sending to a mailing list via spamassassin beforehand, mail-tester.com is a great tool. It saves the annoying work of cobbling together a spamassassin test script and integrating it into your workflow, and gives you a bunch of other checks while you're at it.

Spamassassin is half of the bane of my life when it comes to maintaining deliverability on a scientific mailing list:

[https://www.exratione.com/2015/08/spamassassin-is-an- inadequ...](https://www.exratione.com/2015/08/spamassassin-is-an-inadequate- technology/)

It stops being a useful tool and starts being a mode of censorship that is in effect controlled by the people who practice fraud and abuse. It is very annoying to find all sorts of things that effectively can't be discussed by mail in a list: specific drugs and technical terms used in research, any research discussion or published research that uses long technical words in close proximity, fundraising for research, and so on and so forth. Every newsletter to the opt-in, well-gardened list becomes a little minefield of self-censorship as you go through multiple iterations with spamassassin, weeding out and rewording things.

It is all very trying. One has to think that there's a better way.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice, I have used this service before (along with [http://mxtoolbox.com/](http://mxtoolbox.com/) and [http://www.checktls.com/](http://www.checktls.com/)), I'm up to 9/10 now for my private mail server (on Digital Ocean), still working on getting DKIM to work.

But, even scoring 9/10, I still have a lot of trouble sending mail to people on hotmail/live/outlook. I have contacted Microsoft and after getting the advice to not send bulk mails (I don't) a couple of times, I finally got a human to respond. This person admitted that their spam filter is an outsourced black box over which they have no influence. I should try to use proper formatting and hope for the best...

So I don't know how useful this score is in the real world.

Edit (some more mail server pain): The first mail I sent from my own server was a mail to all my friends informing them of my new email address. at that time I didn't have spf configured and used a self signed cert. So I would be 7/10\. All Yahoo contacts answered me that I was permanently banned. None of them ever receive any of my mails.

<comment><USER6> I had 10/10 during years, yet outlook would block emails from one of my domains - even if I was replying to an incoming email!!

Microsoft seems to have lots of secret rules, blocked IPs and other stuff that nobody's really figured out.

I did manage to contact them one, I got white-listed, and email went through. But only for a few months, and then it went back to being silently dropped again. It was only for a particular domain. Other domains on the same host has no issues.

I had to move the client in question to Fastmail, since there seemed to be no way to figure out how to please MS, and my client had lost several big sales due to documentation being silently dropped. Fastmail deals with it somehow. I guess they have some human contact with some influence in MS anyway, being large as they are.

<comment><USER5> Yes, that is the worst thing about it, there is no reporting of any kind, no errors in my logs, and not my email getting into a spam folder at outlook.com. If it would be in a spam folder my relatives could un-spam it, if I got an error message, I could act on it. In stead, some emails go through, some don't with no indication on either side what the system choose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Discovered that I hadn't setup DKIM for my Google Apps domains, nor had I realized how easy it is to do it: [https://support.google.com/a/answer/174124?hl=en](https://support.google.com/a/answer/174124?hl=en)

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell Just ran this service through [https://emailprivacytester.com/](https://emailprivacytester.com/) \- The mail-tester.com results page popped up a javascript alert injected by emailprivacytester.com which proves that the content of email is not being properly escaped in some manner at mail-tester.com before being displayed.

<comment><USER8> That's not ideal, but is also probably not a big deal in this case. There's no sensitive information to be stolen off the page here, and the only person who's going to see it is the attacker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is cool. I like how simple it is. Also, I just learned about SPF records from this. I didn't realize there was a DNS related[0] mechanism of preventing spam. Kinda neat.

As an alternative to this, if you'd like a little finer grained information about it spam filters from specific companies, Litmus (I'm not affiliated) has a really cool spam-test[1] that actually tests it against all major spam filters (Google, Yahoo, etc) instead of testing it against spam lists like this does.

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

[1] [https://litmus.com/spam-filter-tests](https://litmus.com/spam-filter- tests)

<comment><USER10> DKIM is better (SPF doesn't prevent, for example, Amazon SES impersonating you and sending out unauthorized email on your behalf)

<comment><USER11> Neither actually prevents anything because it's up to the recipient ('s server) to apply whatever scrutiny they feel like.

<comment><USER6> DMARC actually specifies exactly what the recipient should test and what they should to with the email.

They can easily ignore DMARC records, but at least you're still telling them what to do with failing email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So... it's a reinforcement learning tool for spammers?

<comment><USER13> I've used it (amongst other email testing tools) for quite some time now to validate the thousands of emails we send each week for BoomboxFM[1]. And none of those emails are "spam". Email is the delivery system for our product, and trust me, it sucks trying to figure out why people who 100% want your emails don't always get them straight to their inbox. Particularly with Gmail.

[1] [http://www.boombox.fm/](http://www.boombox.fm/)

<comment><USER12> I know all about the nuisance of BigCorp dumping my (non-commercial, mind you) email into the spam folder for obscure reasons, but whatever company you're trying to push, you miss the point. A web service to say "this is what most spam filters will do to your email" is just a training signal for spammers. That is, unless they are smart enough to implement an amazing meta-spam filter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are there plans for an API (paid or otherwise)?

My SaaS has a built in marketing tool that allows for bulk email sending. I constantly run into an issue where customers have an image from a designer, and want to embed that image as the entire content of the email. Of course, that's flagged as spam. I would love to show users a spam score before they blast away.

<comment><USER15> Am I the only person out there that doesn't display images in email by default? I can't tell you the number of emails I've gotten--from companies I'm a big fan of and I've agreed to receive mail from--with enticing subject lines that contain no content. Just images.

Case in point is REI. A couple weeks ago I spent several hundred bucks on camping gear from one of their competitors and found out later they'd had an enticing discount linked in one of their image-only emails. I guess we both lost out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is anyone else blocked by CASA-CBLPLUS? It's apparently the China Anti-Spam Alliance, I'm very confused.

<comment><USER17> My mail got listed there as well, even though I send everything through google's smtp servers with my own domain name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> That revealed a configuration problem in my server. The hostname was set to some an old domain name (which I no longer own or control). Who checks their hostname? Not me obviously. This probably explains why some email was being filtered to spam by gmail. Fixed, and I'm now getting 9/10.

</comment><comment><USER6> 10/10 is pretty easy to reach if you sit down one afternoon and do your homework (I was a newbie to email when I used this, and opensmtpd could not have been simpler!).

It really makes a huge difference getting past spam filters everywhere, so I can't recommend this website enough!

</comment><comment><USER19> How bizarre, was looking for one of these just last week because I'm starting to worry that my email signature's image tags are causing issues for some recipients.

Can't recommend these kind of tools enough!

</comment><comment><USER20> I've used mail-tester in the past and had great results with it. I highly recommend it!

</comment><comment><USER21> My email fails DKIM in half the tests, and succeeds in the other half. Sigh...

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't get it. What am I suppose to do ?

<comment> mike-cardwell View the front page. It will show you an email address which looks something like "firstname.lastname@example.com" which is unique to you. Send an email to that address then click the "Check your score" button. It will rate the email which it received from you and point out any configuration problems.

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the help. I finally succeeded. I'm missing spf and dkim. Not easy to define.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Useful tool, sure. But really, if you have to test, then yes, your mail is probably spam that noone cares for.

<comment><USER24> You clearly never made an app that sends opt-in emails (think activity notifications, reminders, whatever). Unless you know the exact right incantations, 3% of these mails _will_ end up in Gmail's spam folder. This directly results in 3% unhappy users. They'll _never_ consider blaming Gmail instead of you.

<comment><USER25> Part of the problem with those is that a lot of companies (including big ones) have started sending notification and "what's happening" updates them _without_ an opt-in, which causes users to think they're spammy and mark them as such. LinkedIn and Twitter are particularly big offenders here, but there are a lot of others. Twitter even likes to periodically invent new kinds of email notifications and newsletters, and opt you in to them by default.

Gmail might be making this a little better by introducing a middle ground, moving those kinds of emails out of the Inbox into either the "Social" or "Promotions" boxes, where they're less likely to be marked as spam (although probably also less likely to be seen).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What was your favorite company at Launch today? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Where can we find an overview of companies that demoed at Launch today?

<comment><USER3> launch.is just follow the blogs about each presenter or click to see the demo pit companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> so far it would have to be domo.... "you get notification, BOOM!"</comment>


The use of Europe's "right to be forgotten" privacy law has broadened - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/technology/right-to-be-forgotten-law-europe.html <comment><USER2> This is a very strange article with very unsympathetic protagonists. So two Italian muckrakers can't make a living publishing random details about people's lives, so what?

The issue here is that unlike today, even 20 years ago finding information used to be _non-trivial_. So there was little long-term damage to having a small Italian paper publish your name, in relation to charges that were eventually dropped. It still wasn't ideal, but it wasn't fatal to your reputation.

Today, anything and everything is online and follows people around like an unshakeable shadow. So of course these folks have the "right to be forgotten" \-- it's bringing balance back to the equation.

"Journalists" are the worst perpetrators of this -- shout the lies loudly, but whisper the retraction or the truth. Good for the Europeans to have this law in place.

<comment><USER3> What makes them "muckrakers"?

<comment><USER4> to me this stands out

>But Vittorio Pecoraro argued that his privacy had been violated. The article was easily available and searchable online, and _he had not been convicted of a crime_. Yet because of PrimaDaNoi, what he considered a humiliating family argument had become the first thing that many people knew about him and his pizza and seafood restaurant, he said.

>"I have a reputation, I have been here for 50 years, I am known all over," Mr. Pecoraro said in an interview at the restaurant, Positano, where the 2008 fight had occurred.

This situation has apparently threatened this man's business and it's not clear to me that there is a case for public interest.

This journalist is literally a guy sitting in his apartment digging up stories on private citizens. I actually agree with the court ruling here and I'm glad that we have the right to be forgotten. I don't want to live in a society were the commercial interests of paparazzi can destroy entire existences of people even if the people in question have apparently moved on long ago.

I don't want to live in a society where people's careers or personal lifes are ruined because someone at gawker or buzzfeed gets paid by clicks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting question. While in principle it seems like a terrible idea to force someone to delete such "important" information, I also kinda understand how the person in question wouldn't want this information floating around forever.

If I understand the situation correctly, it should probably be enough if this journalist would anonymize the names in the article, so it can no longer be traced back to any individual. After so many years, that does seem reasonable.

Also consider that journalists were never allowed to just publish anything. There always had to be a public interest for them to be allowed to publish certain details about peoples lives, so it only makes sense that they'd have to remove it as this public interest fades with time, yet the impact on peoples lives remains the same.

Just imagine having to apply for a job when the first thing that comes up when googling your name is a news story like that. On the other hand, who really cares about that story enough that it's worth possibly destroying someones life over it?

\---

EDIT:

From the text > "My only duty is to write and verify information," Mr. Biancardi said from the apartment where he and Ms. Lotti worked 12-hour days at side-by-side desks. "Everything else comes after."

Interesting that the privacy of the subjects he writes about doesn't seem to be a part of his thought process at all. If his defense was "There's still (and always will be) a public interest in this case", then I might have agreed, but with that attitude, I won't even call this guy a journalist.

<comment><USER6> > Just imagine having to apply for a job when the first thing that comes up > when googling your name is a news story like that.

Around here it's illegal to google applicants without their consent. Hiring decisions can use only information that the applicant provided.

Granted, that's undetectable unless the person doing the hiring messes up and mentions this. I do follow the law myself, don't really know what others are doing.

Also not sure how widespread this requirement is even in Europe.

<comment><USER7> > Hiring decisions can use only information that the applicant provided.

That would seem to preclude things like criminal background checks, or even calling up universities to verify any educational credentials the applicant listed on their resume.

<comment><USER8> In my country, the state provides a cert to the applicant stating that his background is sufficiently clean. No more details. You can't tell if I am spotless or have done jail time but it was long enough ago not to matter anymore.

It does containg language like ... has no criminal record, except for child molestation etc... Which doesnt mean we're a country full of perverts, only that it can't be trusted for jobs working with children, another cert is used for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Let's address the elephant in the room: the problem lies with Google.

Prior to this recent NY Times article, why is a family brawl with minor injuries and no charges that took place in 2008 shown on the first page of results when someone is looking up a man's pizza and seafood restaurant? Is that really the most relevant result that is in the public interest? I would bet money the original story didn't even have any backlinks.

Bing and other search engines are not nearly as awful, but Google in particular has a notoriously bad habit of promoting defaming content to the top of its search results. And right now, they absolutely dominate the search market.

It is my belief that Google's AI is optimized to prioritize "scandalous" content, because it grabs readers' attention, in the same way National Enquirer headlines at the grocery store checkout lane do.

Google does the same sort of thing with YouTube, promoting extremist content above moderate content, and it has a real effect on people: [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/08/technology/yo...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/08/technology/youtube- radical.html)

There is a real problem with online harassment and defamation, and Google is contributing heavily to it by rewarding sites that peddle defaming content.

<comment><USER10> I love this hypothesis because not only does it fit in perfectly with my world view of Google, but because it's entirely plausible to consider how their algorithm could inadvertently optimize for such a result simply by looking at click through and bounce rates.

People are likely to click on the most sensational result on the page, and in cases like this they are pretty damn sure going to pick a different search query afterward, which to the algorithm will look like success.

It seems like something easy to study and prove to a high degree of confidence if it is occurring. Particularly the theory that other search engines don't surface the same negative content, or don't rank it as highly.

<comment><USER9> I have done a significant amount of research into this, and compared results through multiple search engines. I am confident this is mostly specific to Google.

I would prefer not to name the sites in question, because they are borderline illegal and I do not wish to give them exposure, but on the off chance any journalists are reading this and are interested, please get in contact with me here and I will share my findings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For context, the BBC publishes a list of articles that are hit by this ruling.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/authors/e7896818-cd4d-3...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/authors/e7896818-cd4d-3506-911c-b6d43ac16740)

After a quick click around some examples of what is being "forgotten"

Some people smugglers - [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8093741.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8093741.stm)

This review of best cities - [https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20151124-the-best- city-...](https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20151124-the-best-city-for- working-families)

This story about someone not being entitled to privacy because of her roll in public life - [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18189668](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18189668)

This story about a former cabinet minister's troubles (lots of stuff about Chris Huhne on the list) - [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25814537](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25814537)

Related to above, Nick Clegg would like Chris Huhne to return to cabinet - [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk- politics-20978489](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20978489)

<comment><USER12> how is that creating such a list not serve the opposite purpose of the law ??

<comment><USER13> The idea is generally to keep things from showing up when you search for people by name, not to remove the information entirely.

<comment><USER12> So the law is only for google ? That make 0 sense

<comment><USER13> Someone could make a Right to be Forgotten request to the BBC for the news article, but they'd need to meet a higher standard. The listing is of ones where people have asked to have the result removed from Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just yesterday, I read "European Court limits right to be forgotten to E.U" [1] linking to a court ruling at europa.eu [2]. RtBF can be circumvented e.g. via a non-EU VPN / Tor exit node.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21058848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21058848)

[2] [http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc...](http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=218105&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=903295)

</comment><comment><USER15> Dear journalist...

it's called forgiveness. Look it up.

The problem with permanent records is, that it forces you to never change. Meaning you deliberately keep a murderer a murderer. Even in cases where their life completely changed since then and they are a valuable contributor to society again.

E.g. no matter how much you try … meet with your old buddies from the school/city you left decades ago … and suddenly you're the same loser again, getting bullied just like back then.

And if my loved ones were murdered, the LAST thing I would want, is for the murderer to not even be allowed to do good in the world to balance the evil. Or to act like they did too, and do to them as they did to me.

Because as a child of people who had to murder in war, to not be tortured and raped and murdered (three of my family membera were still murdered and two tortured), I know very well, that there is no such thing as mentally undamaged/unharmed person that intentionally murders somebody when it looks like she has a choice. Or who does no regret it when they come to their senses.

Let people heal! Violence, even simple holding a grudge and shaming, which is what you did, dear journalist, is not making anything better. Only worse.

We aren't truly out of the dark ages, until we forego revenge (aka "punishment" aka violent harm) and manage to fix even murderers and rapists to make them functioning parts of society again.

</comment><comment><USER16> The bit about damages is weird from a privacy standpoint, did Biancardi also loose a defamation lawsuit or something? Or is it the other way in Italy, and a defamation lawsuit can force you to take down material?

I realize this was mostly a story about a single case that some editor put an overly broad headline on, but given the headline I was expecting more about this "broadened" use.

Some discussion about if the right to be forgotten law has a larger impact than the DMCA trolling would have been nice too.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why is the right to be forgotten only discussed in the context of somebody doing something illegal?

Suppose I wrote something on the internet a long time ago. And now it's being replicated by companies who make their money by selling ads.

Now my words are being used to sell products I don't even like. I'd rather have whatever I wrote be deleted than for someone to think whatever ad is showing might be relevant.

<comment><USER18> This is a copyright/intellectual property issue, not a right to be forgotten issue.

If you wrote it, outside of employment, you hold the copyright to what you have written. I believe that is so internationally.

The hypothetical companies publishing that writing are breaching your copyright.

Even if you were commissioned to write a piece for a particular purpose, it is likely (by my understanding) that you still hold the copyright, and the hypothetical companies are still breaching your copyright by using your work for an unlicensed purpose.

<comment><USER17> You're right it's also a copyright issue.

What are your cost estimates if I treated it as a copyright issue and just start suing everyone in breach as a private citizen for something I posted for free for everyone?

In theory, your suggestion works. In practice, copyright laws are more intended for companies and lawyers while privacy laws are for individuals.

edit: The right to be forgotten doesn't mention if there's also a copyright violation I can't invoke it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Well good it's not fundamental "right" (you have no rights to other people's brains) - but courts should not accept what was written 10 years ago as evidence for or against someone's character.

<comment><USER20> why not? if he did something bad 10 years ago and he did again one month ago, is says something about his character.

<comment><USER21> gp wrote:

>but courts should not accept what was written 10 years ago as evidence for or against someone's character.

you wrote:

>he did again one month ago

...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why are some of the comments here defending the deletion of facts? If it's a fact that you've stabbed someone and there is a police record to uphold that then you should not have the right for that to be forgotten.

It's in the interest of other people to know if you have done something like this previously (that warrants a police record) and also serves as a deterrent to other potential perpitrators.

This article is interesting because it's an example of how the original intention of the law is being exploited. Surely, this can just be refined with an amendment.

<comment><USER23> I think the key point is that there is a requirement that the facts being deleted have no significant public interest [0]. So, for example, Boris Johnson can't have his name removed from search results because there's a public interest in preserving the historical record (can't delete facts with significant relevance to the public), but you can have revenge porn deleted (the public really could care less, and doesn't at all benefit from, what you look like naked).

[0] [http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc...](http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=152065&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=14612)

<comment><USER22> Maybe, but public interest is subjective. The line should probably be drawn at legal offenses. If you commit a sexual offense (e.g. sex in public) that warrants a police record, it should remain. However, if your privacy is violated by someone else when you were not committing an offense then you should have the right for that to be forgotten.

<comment><USER12> Theres also the general problem of the truthness of what people write about you online .. anyone can write anything so it shoulg be at least defendable to be kept

<comment><USER22> Agreed, if something can't be defended with reference to a legal offence or proceeding then it should have the right to be forgotten / removed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why can't the EU produce easy to follow guidelines and examples and make the process fair?

Right to be forgotten shouldn't be about taking down the information, but protecting those involved.

For example, let's take Grievous bodily harm. If a journalistic source reports on a GBH case (such as this), we could come up with some rules that say the publisher has the right to include:

\- identifying details about "incidentals" \- e.g. the victim (e.g. Name) or location (e.g. Business name) for 3 years after the event. After that, they must replace it with generalities - "A 39 year old man", "A restaurant on Letsby Avenue". Must ensure that an individual person or business cannot be identified from the generalized description without significant legwork.

\- identifying details about the perpetrator for a number of years after the first article is published - at least 6. Their age should be a consideration here - if a 90 year old stabs someone at dinner, I'd expect that to be generalized after 5 years. If a 20 year old stabs someone at dinner, I'd expect that to survive for 20 years. So assuming we now have a number between 6 and 20, if the person was not convicted, that number should be halved.

Once that's done for various classes of crimes, the process should be cheap and easy - the publisher should be sent a letter by the subject or someone with a vested interest in the article and request that the article be redacted. Provided they give enough information, the publisher should be able to look up the guidelines and either agree or reply with a reason. If they refuse, they can be taken to court.

On a broader note, this is just another way that GDPR is broken. It feels like the lawmakers wanted it to cover so much, that they wanted to right wrongs so badly, that they didn't care who would get hurt in the process. Almost retaliatory lawmaking.

</comment><comment><USER25> This will be used like patents system

<comment><USER5> *ABused

Also no, that's what we have courts for: They decide if it is justified or not to remove something from the internet. Not every legal system is as corrupt as that of the USA¹, you know?

¹ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eatfgXTMFf0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eatfgXTMFf0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you are running some sort of politically connected criminal conspiracy GDPR and "Right to be Forgotten" seem tailor made for coverups. No stuff left lying around for Wikileaks or prosecutors. Any screw ups in the coverup can be managed with "Right to be forgotten".

<comment><USER27> How can I use GDPR as a criminal? Do I ask google to delete my account? and because a criminal asks to delete an account or an email Google should in fact keep copies of all emails and all data forever? Browsers should then not allow to delete your history because some criminal can use that functionality, it is obvious a function created to hide stuff /s

<comment><USER26> I don't think one should be able to hide data from the proper authorities if they are properly authorized by law, but one should be able to hide it from non law enforcement. Browser history deleting and such are a reasonable accommodation of the latter. I guess Wikileaks violates this rule, but they don't care about violating people's privacy unless they're corrupt politicians.</comment></comment></comment>


Memsparx - An intelligent news aggregator. Like Google News. - <AUTHOR> http://www.memsparx.com/

<comment><USER2> Some thoughts on the design, which I'm not terribly excited about:

When I read Google News or a newspaper's website, I scan a lot of headlines. Even that level of summary helps keep me up to date with what's going on. Memsparx gives me four stories by default, with no clear indication of the gravity of them.

The graphic approach is interesting though. I think you could go somewhere with a "field" of images in different sizes.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not part of their team. One of my friends is a part of it.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'll forward them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I hope you licensed the images you use, because otherwise you'll be sued out of existence in 3.. 2 .. 1. Sad but true.</comment>


Ruby on Ales 2014 CFP Open - <AUTHOR> http://ruby.onales.com/#2014

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Again! I'm happy to announce that we've opened the 2014 Ruby on Ales CFP. If you want to come to Bend, Oregon in March to speak to a bunch of Rubyists please consider sending us a proposal.</comment>


Ask PG: Are you ever coming back? - <AUTHOR>

It looks like your last comment was 45 days ago. I liked checking your comment page every now and then. I could always find some interesting insights. Will you ever comment again as "PG"?<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg <comment><USER2> It would be impossible for him to truthfully reply anything but "yes" to this question.

<comment><USER3> False. He could use a different username.

> Will you ever comment again _as "PG"?_

<comment><USER2> Well, you've got me there... _Unless_ OP used "PG" to refer to Paul Graham's initials and not the username. In that case the only way PG could comment _not_ as PG would be to claim to be someone else, in which case the answer wouldn't be true.

<comment><USER3> That may depend on whether or not the double-quotes are delimiters here or actually part of the name. He could sign his comment as "PG" or PG accordingly.

Though, by signing his comment he would break the guidelines ([http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)).

<comment><USER2> As far as I know Paul Graham has never signed a comment as or claimed to be _" PG"_ including the quotes. OP's question is phrased in a way that assumes Paul Graham has commented as _" PG"_ (whatever that may mean) before, so if OP __was __using the quotes as part of the name then the question itself wouldn 't make any sense. And if that _IS_ the case then, well, I really don't know where to go from there.

<comment><AUTHOR> I meant it in the sense of "will he ever comment again under the HN username of PG". For all I know, he might be commenting now under a different username, but if so, that's his business. Not mine. It has been a while since the PG account has commented. I was just curious if he plans to return to the PG account.

<comment><USER2> Of course, that seems obvious. Elwell and I were having what I consider to be a fun theoretical discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I presume he's staying out of the way for a while to let Sam push his personal brand a little more. Hard for him to develop as the leader with PG hanging around.

That said I do like PG's essays.</comment>


The Fall of WeWork - <AUTHOR> https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/11/inside-the-fall-of-wework <comment><USER2> This Adam Neumann guy is a living legend. The inevitable HBO miniseries will have an A-list actor and associates will tell tales of his exploits for decades. $1 billion parachute and public investors never got burned. I feel most bad for the employees, but that's the free market for you. Bernie Madoff represented the worst of the financial crisis villains, and Adam Neumann is the millennial con artist for the unicorn era. A man of the times.

I keep eating up these stories, as I'm sure most of us here are as they keep getting upvoted to the front page. Fascinating

<comment><USER3> I have two live-action soap operas that I follow closely as my guilty pleasures. The main one is the Trump saga and related stories, anchored by Ken White and Josh Barro's phenomenal podcast, "All The President's Lawyers."

The second is the swamp called Silicon Valley: Theranos, Wework, etc. But I don't have a good anchoring podcast for it, I only get it piecemeal via HN and such. So recommendations appreciated!

<comment><USER4> Pivot by Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway

<comment><USER3> Going to check that out. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not sure how accurate this article is, but having no background on Neumann nor WeWork, it sounds like a cult that brainwashed a lot of hard working people. Adam sounds delusional at best and a predatory conman at worst, at least from the conclusions one can draw from the article, and Wall Streets delusion on profitability was nothing more than a loaded gun given to a toddler.

I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from this - in my own experience, I've met managers, directors, and executives who can be very charming and flattering. These are people who I seemed to instantly like... in hindsight, they have some common traits (their ability to sell, 1:1s where the people just talk on and on and on about themselves, their achievements, or their vision without asking about my ideas, vision, concerns, motivations, etc)

These are the people you have to be extremely cautious of. In my experience, they are deluding themselves and others, or they are purposely giving that pitch because they see you as a useful pawn for some agenda. I've learned this lesson a few times now. I don't mean to sound cynical but that's reality.

<comment><USER6> I feel like I also know the type. Confident and charismatic. Rarely apologetic. Rarely empathetic. Can easily build out many relationships. Only concerned about other people insofar that they can help accomplish the predators end goals. Not fun to work with this kind of person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The real question is, why is the Saudi Arabia sovereign wealth fund such a huge source of dumb money? They propped up WeWork. They propped up Uber. To some end, or just through sheer dumbness?

None of this could happen without a huge source of dumb money.

<comment><USER2> Investing $10 billion responsibly across a lot of private companies is hard work. Gotta find the companies, negotiate, join the board, monitor them, be apprised of the goings-ons. Then you find a company that can plausibly take $10billion in one go and return the same as any other tech company, plus by giving them so much capital they can destroy the competition.

It really comes down to easy-money policies of central bankers combined with the laziness of investors. So much money to invest and doing hard work is for suckers who don't have the connections to get the capital to invest.

<comment><USER8> Okay, but why not do something simple like buying the S&P 500? Is that unavailable at scale?

<comment><USER9> Vanguard does that at that scale, so I guess yes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > In another meeting, Neumann said three people were going to save the world: > bin Salman, Jared Kushner, and Neumann. Shortly after the news broke in > October 2018 that Saudi agents tortured dissident and Washington Post > columnist Jamal Khashoggi and carved his body with a bone saw, likely on > order from the crown prince himself, Neumann told George W. Bush's former > national security adviser Stephen Hadley that everything could be worked out > if bin Salman had the right mentor. Confused, Hadley asked who that person > might be, according to a source familiar with the meeting. Neumann paused > for a moment and said: "Me."

<comment><USER11> Look I want to put the boot into silicon valley snake oil salesmen and billionaire assholes as much if not more than most here but this troubles me a little.

None of this kind of story before his fall from grace and now here it all is. So I guess we don't get it reported if his snakeoil IPO'd for a squillion dollars? Or maybe is it exaggerated now it publically failed to IPO so putting the boot in is allowed.

It seems like there is a fair amount of reporting where those working on it are desperate to knife the subject but only occasionally allowed to be let off the leash to do the hatchet job.

Maybe it has some baring on how such an asshole as Neumann has failed upwards to become a billionaire.

Failed upwards to become a billionaire. Does he care what we think of him in any way?

<comment><USER12> That is a wrong way to look at it. Journalists dig into stories that pop up or give them a reason to look into. Without this fall from grace and outed as a cheat, he is just another success story, a valley billionaire so nothing really to look at. They have limited time and will try to invest in stories that they feel are important.

<comment><USER13> The reason of $42 billion borderline fraud with red flags all over is not newsworthy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reading this article, I can't help but feel like an economic reckoning is on the horizon like none seen before.

<comment><USER15> There is a lot of cash still floating around. It's not all bad.

<comment><USER16> Is there an ELI5 of why all this cash doesn't find its way to the economy (and that we get housing and companies valuation bubbles instead of inflation, with salaries stagnating for more than a decade)?

<comment><USER17> The Fed's interest on excess reserves (IOER) keeps a lot of money there. The graph [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=pB2X](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=pB2X) shows that the IOER was regularly above the effective federal funds rate.

That means, banks made more money parking their money at the Fed, effectively removing it from circulation; than they could make holding bonds.

When a bank holds a government bond, someone else in the economy has to do something with the money they paid for the bond.

In contrast, excess reserves might as well not exist as far as the rest of the economy is concerned.

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=pB2X](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=pB2X) shows the absolute amount of excess reserves.

IOER explains a big part of the puzzle you found without invoking any conspiracy theories or sly remarks about 'trickle down economics'.

See [https://www.cato.org/publications/working-paper/floored- how-...](https://www.cato.org/publications/working-paper/floored-how- misguided-fed-experiment-deepened-prolonged-great-recession) for a broader discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fascinating. A lot of the stuff they did still makes sense. Even having a hyperenergetic lunatic as a company face might work. But how on Earth did the investors refuse to address the red flags, that's criminal.

<comment><USER18> Because there are only a few investors, and they are all in on the scam. Even admitting the existence of red flags would have tanked the S-1, so they just hoped that the public markets wouldn't ask too many questions and buy shares at the desired IPO price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > In the wake of the Journal exposé, investor Michael Eisenberg and WeWork CFO > Artie Minson held a conference call with WeWork's directors and argued that > Neumann had to step down, two people briefed on the call said.

So Minson went to the board behind Neumann's back and suggested that Neumann should be fired. Ultimately, Neumann was fired and Minson became co-CEO. The human dimension here is interesting.

</comment><comment><USER20> All the firing of brilliant coders at WeWork makes sense now, after reading that Adam is dyslexic. These coders were asked to make something awesome. Given that vague direction, some of the probably did TDD, and tried to show kanban or project management burn lists or something like that. These coders would say the awesome was in the code, and the summary of features for product spec. He should just _read_ it. That probably triggered Adam to no end. And that's why in the end he just bought Meetup.com, but even that didn't work. He ran into the same problems again. Reading about Adam is like reading about Hitler. The German high command was suckered into thinking a hateful person who couldn't stand people more brilliant than him knew it all.

<comment><USER21> _All the firing of brilliant coders at WeWork makes sense now_

It makes sense because WeWork was not a tech company, had no need of "brilliant coders", and besides, they were not brilliant anyway and produced basically nothing beyond a website and perpetually broken wifi and printing.

<comment><USER20> What a missed opportunity for developing new tech with all that capital! Brilliance should always be needed and welcomed.</comment></comment></comment>


How I'm going to learn Erlang - <AUTHOR> http://blog.oscardelben.com/content/2008/12/how-im-going-to-learn-erlang.html <comment><USER2> I could never learn something like that, I learn by actually doing. For example, when I wanted to learn Perl (this was a while ago...) I started to write POPFile in it. The only way I could get sufficiently motivated was by writing some code that others would see and use. Nothing like peer pressure!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's interesting, I actually plan to use half of my time scheduled to do practical programming using Erlang. But this is only for the first month, where I want to set up a good understanding of the language, then I can use it for real projects. I totally agree that practice is the best thing to do.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I make a post in my static website from phone? Options? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I would like to host my custom domain website. I already have the website and it was previously hosted in github (long story, now I have forgotten the password and email id associated with the GitHub account)
I like to have the functionality of posting to website directly from mobile phone (Android). Could anyone suggest me how do I do it?
I know WordPress has this. Are there any better alternatives?
Thank you. <comment><USER2> Either:

a.) Manually modify your web page either through the existing files hosted by your provider, or by pushing something via ftp/git.

b.) Use a content management system (CMS), either custom or third party, to update content using whatever methods are in place (usually some sort of dashboard).

Additionally, note that many popular site builders (e.g. Squarespace) offer a mobile app for editing on the go.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the recommendations. I am more looking for an app sort of, that allows to post directly.

I will look into CMS.

In regards to Squarespace like site builders, I have already domain and my website (just basic html and css). So, I am just looking for a service/system that allows me to host and it's app let me post directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are tools built for this use case. One example is [https://forestry.io](https://forestry.io)

<comment><USER4> Have you used forestry ?

</comment></comment><comment> atom-x You could always just embed your own twitter feed, depending on how much content you intend on posting.</comment>


A ReasonReact Tutorial - <AUTHOR> https://jaredforsyth.com/2017/07/05/a-reason-react-tutorial/ <comment><USER2> Reason/OCaml has brought back my love of programming. It is functional, statically typed, and extremely pragmatic. You can program it just like an imperative language and write mutating code without any ceremony, or you can write purely functional code and get the benefits of equational reasoning.

The pragmatism comes from the fact that you can use it today on the browser. Unlike most other compile-to-js languages which are fairly new, OCaml is a mature language with a stable ecosystem. Its history dates back to the 80s when Robin Milner et al started building a theorem prover which evolved into a language that can be used for general purpose programming with strong compile- time guarantees thanks to the Hindley-Milner type system.

Reason is a new syntax for OCaml, and it is being lead by Jordan Walke and Cheng Lou. Jordan prototyped the first versions of React in OCaml, and React has planted nubs of FP ideas like immutability, and introduced a functional approach to building composable UIs which has so far been dominated by object- oriented mutation-heavy paradigms. The team is taking it one step further by bringing the entire FP paradigm to the browser.

The Reason syntax is currently functional just like OCaml and Haskell:

      let sum a b => a + b;
      print_int (sum 1 2);

The Reason team is considering changing it to a syntax that ALGOL-style programmers are familiar with. There are more details here: [https://github.com/facebook/reason/pull/1299](https://github.com/facebook/reason/pull/1299). So it'd become:

      let sum(a, b) => a + b;
      print_int(sum(1,2));

So in essence Reason can be considered a super-set of Javascript that adds powerful static typing, immutable values, and almost-first-class modules. This will greatly remove a source of friction for programmers new to FP, and in turn should help in the mainstream adoption of a strongly typed functional programming language. I think this would be a wonderful thing for practicing programmers in that more of us will be able to enjoy statically typed FP, and for the industry in general because we can now expect better programming practices and more robust systems.

<comment><USER3> One of the things I dislike most about JavaScript is the syntax. I always thought the Javaesque syntax hid the some of the nice semantics underneath. CoffeeScript and LiveScript help reveal that language.

I really hope Reason doesn't make the same mistake and go for a more ALGOL- like syntax. My hope would be that they go for an even cleaner syntax than the current, more like Standard ML and Elm. The semicolons and the curly braces will not be missed.

<comment><USER4> It's not ALGOL-like syntax that's a problem with JS, it's the fact that for decades the JS syntax was frozen, without any significant additions to the initial, very minimal, syntax. The same is true for JS standard library: it's almost non-existent compared to Python or Ruby, and even Lua has more builtins (IIRC).

In other words, you can have good looking FP support with braces and semicolons. It's just that you need to build such support into the language, and for JS it was impossible for a long time.

<comment><USER3> I'm not complaining that JS isn't Haskell. Underneath the C/Java syntax JS is a small, simle, Lispy, dynamic language — if you like that kind of thing. JS' syntax hide that. CoffeeScript helped reveal it.

> In other words, you can have good looking FP support with braces and > semicolons.

Of course. But why would you?

<comment><USER2> I love braces and semicolons and my biggest gripe with CoffeeScript and HAML and Python was that they used space to delimit blocks. The good thing about braces is that moving code around is easy and it makes auto-formatting possible. refmt, prettier etc. are all amazing to have.

But in terms of syntactic preferences, it is quite subjective and I wouldn't claim there is one true answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Excellent post, Jared. Thanks for making it.

I figured I should share a project I made as well with ReasonReact. I'm a noob to React and frontend programming in general, but I was surprised by how easily it was to pick it up. I created a simple game of Snake over a weekend just to test it out. Great programming experience, great first impression.

edit: live demo: (warning: not mobile friendly) [http://220.127.116.11/projects/websnake/index.html](http://22.214.171.124/projects/websnake/index.html)

<comment><USER6> For people who want to look at some Reason code, here are some more projects:

[https://github.com/jsdf/reason-react-hacker- news](https://github.com/jsdf/reason-react-hacker-news) (rather unimaginatively, a hacker news app)

[https://github.com/jsdf/lisp.re](https://github.com/jsdf/lisp.re) (native, the start of a lisp in Reason)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a really nice tutorial, and the interactive elements showing type info are great!

</comment><comment><USER8> Reason is an awesome project. It's still early, but I could even see this having the power to mainstream an ML (given the fact it's picking up steam in the enormous JS community)

It's syntax fixes pretty much every issue I ever had with OCaml as well (and feels pretty nice to write if you're coming from a JS background)

</comment><comment> nv-vn This is cool stuff! Awesome to see OCaml as a platform moving forward with Reason/Bucklescript/React.

</comment><comment><USER9> Loving Reasonml so far - super good tooling/ecosystem and good interpolation with JS.

<comment><USER7> Are you running on node or some other backend?

<comment><USER9> Currently just playing around with the frontend(React) only. But the development experience (especially with VSCode + merlin) has been awesome so far. If I were to build a backend I would probably go for Elixir :P

<comment><USER7> Oh cool, I just posted about that on the Elixir Forum [https://elixirforum.com/t/reasonml-with- phoenix/6643](https://elixirforum.com/t/reasonml-with-phoenix/6643)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Being able to use React is great and all but What if you want to use service workers? Web workers? Canvas? Websockets? Type defining or writing wrappers around every web specific API I need to use is a non-starter for me.

Is there any ongoing or planned effort to integrate web technologies into ReasonML (as in provide up to date and comprehensive typings)?

<comment><USER11> There are actually a ton of binding already defined here: [https://github.com/BuckleTypes](https://github.com/BuckleTypes)

Further, anything already typed with Flow or Typescript can be converted with this. [https://github.com/rrdelaney/ReasonablyTyped](https://github.com/rrdelaney/ReasonablyTyped)

Beyond that, defining js types and interop with Reason/BS has probably been the most pleasant experience in a compile-to lang that I've used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> thanks for the post, great job. i'm using react with clojurescript (reagent). i also would love to see a react tutorial with js_of_ocaml.

<comment><USER13> I'd say BuckleScript (BS) has already overtaken js_of_ocaml. If I'm not mistaken BS even forked some code of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Comparison with Clojurescript?

<comment><USER8> Advanced type system, language level pattern matching, ML syntax, compiles to clean and readable JS in comparison to what is emitted by the Clojurescript compiler

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> SUPA HOT FIREEEE</comment>


Climate change is a remorseless threat to the world's coasts - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/08/17/climate-change-is-a-remorseless-threat-to-the-worlds-coasts <comment><USER2> In no sense promoting climate denialism this part of the world has been dealing with sea level rise and storm surges for a long time. London too: the south east is sinking under both geology and water table shifts apart from sea level rise, and geotechnical engineering for the London barrage is not new. Nor in Venice.

What I might take from this is a sense of optimism about point problems, places which can build dykes and sea walls and gates will make adjustments for the next period but some places like parts of the US eastern seaboard are intractable at a price the US economy wants to pay, or Bangladesh which has hundreds of millions of people at risk in a delta floodplain.</comment>


PlayCanvas launches glTF 2.0 Viewer Tool - <AUTHOR> https://blog.playcanvas.com/playcanvas-launches-gltf-2-0-viewer-tool/ <comment><USER2> See also [https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF-Sample- Viewer](https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF-Sample-Viewer).

</comment><comment><USER3> I had always uses this[1] as a way of double-checking my GLTF output during game jams, but this looks really nice! It's nice to have more variety in this space. Blender's GLTF output works nicely with three.js or other WebGL libraries.

[1] [https://gltf-viewer.donmccurdy.com](https://gltf-viewer.donmccurdy.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> Is Draco the renderer? I'm looking for the pbr renderer in here.

<comment><USER5> Draco is a compression technology ([https://github.com/google/draco](https://github.com/google/draco)) available in glTF files. PlayCanvas is both the engine and the renderer in this viewer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks great! It seems like a nice evolution for those familiar with tools like Unity and PhaserJS.

I wasn't familiar with PlayCanvas until now and I think I found my weekend project.

</comment><comment><USER7> The glTF material model is essentially all you need for realistic rendering.

I always wondered how much performance you could gain by implementing that model directly in silicon and ditch GPU shaders instead. The great problem of modern GPUs is that they are deigned as a multipurpose parallel computer used for all kinds of things and not as a dedicated GPU. Since Moores law is essentially dead this could be the only way forward.

<comment><USER8> > The glTF material model is essentially all you need for realistic rendering.

If you assume the whole world is plastic, then yes! But the microfacet model is not the ultimate physical model, GGX-Smith and Epic/Disney PBR are compromises in a lot of cases, and you interact with _hundreds_ of surfaces every day that can't be modeled accurately with it. Fuzzy or hairy surfaces are often modeled with a microfiber model! Epic's approximations (e.g. the split-sum approximation) can't easily handle anisotropic surfaces like brushed metal. And fleshy surfaces like skin, wax, paper, fruit pulp, etc. all require some form of subsurface scattering beyond the basic Lambertian diffuse.

> I always wondered how much performance you could gain by implementing that > model directly in silicon and ditch GPU shaders instead.

Very little of the shader code that's being run is the microfacet BRDF stuff, and that's ALU so it's the fast bit! The expensive stuff is texture fetching for i.e. incident light, shadows, and that's all done by artists and graphics engineers above the BRDF layer. BRDF just tells you how to respond to incoming light, not where it is or where it comes from. And it makes you supply stuff like albedo color, normal direction, which are where shaders spend a lot of their time.

<comment><USER5> Some of these features (sheen, anisotropy, subsurface scattering) are being added to the format with changes like [https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF/pull/1726](https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF/pull/1726). But realtime implementations can get a lot of mileage out of a simpler metal/rough PBR workflow, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know of a good library or implementation to view gLTF models in Android using OpenGL and Java?

<comment><USER10> [https://google.github.io/filament/](https://google.github.io/filament/) from Google has become very impressive over the past two years. And, it has the most beautiful documentation you could ask for :)</comment></comment>


Which Distros Work on New Windows 8 Machines - <AUTHOR> http://ostatic.com/blog/which-distros-work-on-new-windows-8-machines <comment><USER2> Why not just link to Matthew's post?

<http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/20522.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> UEFI, at least as I understand things, was really about enterprise desktops, which are nice big chunks in terms of sales compared to individual consumers. The consumer facing change is a side effect.

From the perspective of the corporation buying big amounts of computers from an oem, your users are employees, and it makes sense that you don't want them screwing with secure boot. Individual Consumers still have options.

The ARM thing is, however, a bigger deal.

<comment><USER4> UEFI is not secure boot just like boot from USB is not BIOS.

Secure boot is great we just have to demand that we control the keys.

<comment><USER5> What? Booting from USB uses the BIOS.

The solution to UEFI is to refrain from using it. Just use a classic BIOS.

If some Linux distribution cannot boot via a legacy BIOS (how difficult is that, really? we've been doing it for over 30 years), then it's not an OS worth using.

Relative to everything else BIOS software has not changed much in 30 years (ask yourself why; it does not need to), and only a couple of companies have a monopoly on nearly all BIOS software.

A BIOS does not need features. It does not need a shell and applications. It just needs to initialise hardware and launch a bootloader, and to be able to do this from a variety of media. That is, relatively, a very simple task. You want it to work everytime, with no fiddling.

UEFI is not giving you anything that is worth the hassle it can cause and the complications it can add to simply booting a device. It is not giving you more freedom.

Whatever the reasoning behind UEFI (maybe there is no compelling reason; that wouldn't be a first), UEFI is a recipe for disaster. Because MS is headed downhill, they will get desperate and will try anything to retain market share; and they have a history of using complexity and obscurity as a way of disincentiving many users from using Windows alternatives (e.g. Gates used the original BIOS strategically this way in the 80's).

UEFI is certainly not the path to "hardware and software freedom". It will not make things easier for any user who wants to use different OS's on a variety of HW. But it may be abused by MS who has immense influence on hardware manufacturers.

Stick with the old BIOS. Keep it simple.

<comment><USER6> The BIOS is hardly simple. Apart from the fact that modern OSes need to re- implement half of what the bios was designed for just to get the full adress space, and jump through countless hoops during boot is secondary. There are still timeswhere I have to reboot to change some BIOS setting, which is unnesasarily inconvinient. Presumably, UEFI implentations will be tested and stable.

Also, even if your distribution supports BIOS, that does not mean your motherboard does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been using Fedora since well before they dropped the "Core", but F18 might just be when I jump to Arch. The MSFT signed shim is just too repellent a concept to me; I will sooner use a distro that makes me mess with UEFI/BIOS options crap.

<comment><USER8> I once suggested transferring the keys to a neutral standard body in another thread on HN.

<comment><USER7> It would be nice to see hardware OEMs completely neutering this nonsense by installing default public keys of their own alongside the MSFT keys, then publicly release the private material so that anyone could sign images that would be trusted by default.

Who the hell even needs this "feature"? Are we really so afraid of an "evil maid" attack? People who legitimately need it are a minority (some larger corporations and... paranoid people?) and can remove/add their own keys.

I assume some part of their contract with MSFT would prevent them from doing this.

<comment><USER9> Why bother with default keys? Why not just ship with SecureBoot as an optional feature? If people want to really be secure they need to enroll their own key they trust.

<comment><USER10> I wonder who will take on the responsibility on educating people like my mom on who to trust and how to enroll public and private keys.

Or how about we have it secure by default and allow people who presumably know what they're doing to turn it off or enroll their own keys or ones they trust because of their heightened knowledge? Are there really a lot of people who are able to partition their hard disk but unable to turn secure boot off? How does that compare with the number of people running Windows and vulnerable to malware and bootkits?

<comment><USER9> >Or how about we have it secure by default

If the private key is public, it's not secure, there's barely a point, hence my question... That's why I find this all so amusing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The latest Windows 8 Dell Inspirons let you turn off UEFI.

<comment><USER12> Of course they do. All x86 Windows 8 PCs are required by Microsoft to allow disabling Secure Boot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am still using my almost-4-years-old Asus laptop, so I don't know much about this secure boot thingy, but I thought they require vendor to allow consumers to turn the secure boot off?

<comment><USER14> Turning off secure boot is only required for x86 and the actual article (at mjg59.dreamwidth.org) says "in case you don't want to fiddle with firmware settings."

So for Arm you would still need a signed boot loader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My relatively new machine boots both UEFI and Legacy. I have tried Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch in UEFI only boot and they all work out-of-box in their own ways.

<comment><USER16> Currently running Ubuntu 12.10 on a brand new HP Envy 4 Ultrabook. Everything works just fine, but I had to use Boot Repair and turn off secure boot in the BIOS before Grub would show at boot.

<comment><USER15> There is a special Ubuntu ISO for secure boot that contains pre-installed Boot Repair but it didn't work for me. I just used regular ISO and it worked like charm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Weirdly being filtered by the public wifi spot i was using.

(<http://imgur.com/fPeXY>)</comment>