David Cameron's Internet porn filter is the start of censorship creep - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/03/david-cameron-internet-porn-filter-censorship-creep <comment><USER2> I'm really disappointed with this whole situation. The government. The parliament. The people & the media. I resent all the apologizing and explaining and the "don't attribute to malice…" excuses. I also think that it's very possible that unrelated "side effects" like surveillance and control of the internet "media" have always been an intended unstated goal.

This article is right on the right track. This is an attempt to control the discussion, the definition of normal and public morality. It's is not a response to an actual problem. It's old fashioned conservatism and paternalism.

The bottom line here is choice. Parents everywhere have easy solutions for voluntary porn filters. You can have them set up by your the people you buy your internet from or the people that sell you your computer. It's cheap or free and it's available. I do not buy the "it's too complicated" argument. This is parents responsibility and it just ins't that hard to meet that responsibility.

<comment><USER3> I think the filters are bad.

But buying and installing filters is hard for many people. They don't know anything about networking or the internet. These people need help setting up wifi.

This is just movong the filter from existing software providers to the ISP. It's not at all ISPs so you can shop around[1] if you want to avoid it. It's optional so you can tirn it off if it's on bu default for you, and not all of them are.

[1] shopping around isn't possible for broadband because of the weird way it's provided in the UK.

<comment><USER2> A - Nonsense. It's not hard. You can take your computer to any "computer repair" shop and get it installed. You can install something yourself or you can call your ISP and ask them to install it. You can get help from your kids' school or you can get help from whoever it is that helps you set up your email or home wifi network. It may not be absolutely trivial, but it is a solvable problem for an adult willing to invest an hour or two and/or a little bit of money. I just hate this "people are dumb, this is hard for them" argument. People are capable if they are interested.

B - You can use legislation to make it easier while preserving freedom. I don't like this option, but it's much better than mandatory. Make it mandatory for ISPs to offer free filtering.

This is a case of not trusting people to manage their own families' affairs.

<comment><USER4> The argument is an extension of the reason we don't let stores sell porno mags to 13 year old's -- it is ridiculous to assume the parents will always be with their child to make the decision for them.

I've no measured and thought-out opinion on porn filtering or censoring at ISPs one way or another. But a lot of recent research on the subject of youth and lewd material consumption suggests the current free and unfettered access to pornographic material is unhealthy.

Is there a "slippery slope" to cry out with where this line of thought goes? Sure. But in societies that decide their federal system should be arbiter of its health care system, it makes no sense to argue when that government takes measures to act on information regarding the health of its citizens.

<comment><USER2> _in societies that decide their federal system should be arbiter of its health care system, it makes no sense to argue when that government takes measures to act on information regarding the health of its citizens._

I really hate that argument. It's extremist and righteous.

<comment><USER4> I guess this news simply feels like a natural conclusion to me -- why wouldn't the British government see it within its powers to act in what its medical research suggests in the best interest of its people?

I think the contention would be must lower on this site, if the news didn't involve making laws about the Internet. If it was about a food or something, it'd be a relative non-issue.

<comment><USER5> > why wouldn't the British government see it within its powers to act in what > its medical research suggests in the best interest of its people?

Should the British government forcibly prevent you from drinking Coca-Cola because it's bad for you?

<comment><USER3> Since thw british government isn't forcibly preventing anyone from getting porn your point fails.

But, trying to answer your question: if coca cola marketed their product as having health benefits they'd be stopped by one branch of government. If they advertised it as being totally safe in inlimited quantities they'd be stopped by another regulator. The food industry haa been warned to make labelling clear and to reduce sugar, salt, and fat content or face strict regulation. So, yes, i'm happy for government to regulate the food supply.

<comment><USER5> > So, yes, i'm happy for government to regulate the food supply.

Do you think there could not conceivably be a private company doing quality assurance on various food items, or any other product for that matter?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." (1)

As a UK citizen, I've been very disappointed by this debacle. I suspect that Cameron's heart was actually in the right place (protecting the children, etc) but he does not understand the significant number of unintended consequences that we are likely to see (and are already seeing).

I would suggest doing the following to make this workable long term:

\- Centralise the list of sites categorised as obscene/pornographic/etc (why should it be different for different ISPs?)

\- Make the list of these sites publicly accessible and searchable

\- Ensure the list is maintained by a non-political and balanced panel (is this possible?)

\- Implement a process for removal requests where a site is mis-classified and ensure that this appeal process is separate from the initial panel

\- Implement KPIs on the effectiveness of the filter that take into account false positives + false negatives

\- Remove any automatic categorisation based on keywords, this is too crude

\- Make publicly accessible the guidelines for classification

Unfortunately, I don't expect the above to actually happen :(

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor)

<comment><USER7> I downvoted your comment because I could not disagree more with what you are saying. If I understand you correctly, you're arguing that this is a good idea, only with sub-par implementation.

But it's the idea that is bad; more than bad, it's despicable, it's an abomination.

The government should not be in charge of what my children can or cannot read _in my own home_ ; I'm in charge of that, thank you very much.

Besides, what raising kids teaches you is that in many ways, kids are little adults; they grow better and are more happy when one treats them with respect.

<comment><USER8> > The government should not be in charge of what my children can or cannot > read in my own home; I'm in charge of that, thank you very much.

That's _exactly_ what this filter is though. It's not implemented by the government, it's an opt-out filter implemented by your ISP. If you want to use their defaults then it's there and free, if you want to allow access to everything then control it yourself then fine.

I don't think this should exist, but you're hurting the fight against it by not even bothering to check the most basic of facts.

<comment><USER9> I think you're skirting over the more complicated issues here, contained in the fact that UK citizens have to officially opt out on what society deems prudent.

IMHO he was spot on.

<comment><USER10> So, if they set default to opt in to the filter, can we end the conversation?

<comment><USER11> Yes (at least as far as I'm concerned).

But that's what ISPs were doing. And Cameron said it wasn't good enough, which is how we've ended up here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If I was British, I would do anything I could to urge politicians and the public to dismantle this firewall. Our biggest problem, not just in Britain but in all countries, is that the public does not understand how serious this is at all.

<comment><USER13> Even many people on HN don't realize how serious it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > The category of "obscene content", for instance, which is blocked even on > the lowest setting of BT's opt-in filtering system, covers "sites with > information about illegal manipulation of electronic devices [and] > distribution of software"

WTF

<comment><USER15> "Respect for a partner" is another WTF topic:

[http://www.newstatesman.com/sites/default/files/images/3_Scr...](http://www.newstatesman.com/sites/default/files/images/3_Screen%20Shot%202013-12-20%20at%2019_09_57.png)

<comment><USER14> Wow, that whole section is staggeringly stupid. Is that seriously going to be blocked? Seriously?

<comment><USER16> They have since changed the wording on that section to be less obviously evil. The "homosexual lifestyle" part is discrimination against a Protected Characteristic just as badly as if it said "black culture".

I have an ongoing complaint with BT as to whether the actual filters have changed. Nobody has yet said "no, it's secret"...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The _start_? Cleanfeed has been running for _10 years_ already: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_(content_blocking_sys...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_\(content_blocking_system\))

<comment><USER18> Plus, last year we started to see filtering of file-sharing websites: the Pirate Bay is now blocked on every major UK ISP.

<comment><USER19> ...as well as about 4 proxies out of thousands.

Censorship never works because it's so easy to turn it onto a game of whack-a- mole with next to no money and effort even aside from all the other flaws.

<comment><USER20> And it's also taught anyone who use TPB in the UK that the first thing to do if you can't get to a site is to search for proxies. Every extra hurdle makes people better at avoiding the next one...

<comment><USER21> I'd like to think that the uk web filter and the wider government surveillance narrative of the past few months is actually a ploy by our leaders to slowly educate the public in circumventing censorship and to stimulate the development of a free internet - like the Socratic method, but for culture.

Then it gets cloudy outside and I stop thinking that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Censorship is bad. That said…

This is not censorship. It's an opt-in web content filter, operated by the largest ISPs, with no statutory backing. It's intended to encourage ISPs to provide optional parental controls for every subscriber, and no more.

Frankly, I think this is actually a pretty good outcome, if not deliberately so. It completely kills the arguments for _actual_ Web censorship by eliminating the "think of the children" argument, which is probably the one which the media bang on about most, without imposing any legal requirements or mandatory filtering.

So there are plenty of options for users who don't want to be subject to the filter. Switch to another DNS provider, or don't opt in to the filtering, or even better – switch to one of the ISPs that don't offer this feature and never will.

Ironically, I think that these filters are going to encourage the preservation of Internet freedom in the UK in the long run.

<comment><USER23> It's opt out, not opt in.

How does it stop being censorship just because there is no centralised list?

<comment><USER3> Cameron's filter is opt our for new customers, but opt in for existing customers.

It's not government censorship if the government isn't providing a list of banned sites. And the filter is optional - selling adult magazines in modesty sleeves isn't censorship.

<comment><USER24> > _It 's not government censorship if the government isn't providing a list of > banned sites._

First, it's still censorship.

Second, the government can start supply a list of banned sites at any time.

Third, the way telcos/ISPs work with governments (and how they have to work with them, in order to get certain contracts, favors, bandwidth etc) it's very easy for government agencies to supply lists (not only of "adult content" but also of "extremist content", whatever that is), under the table. Who will let you know that the sites ISP x blocks were given to them by government agencies?

> _And the filter is optional - selling adult magazines in modesty sleeves isn > 't censorship._

Well, the very role of "modesty sleeves" IS censorship. It might be to censor those covers from childrens eyes, and we might agree with that, but it still is censorship.

<comment><USER3> I genuinely don't understand how some companies voluntarily providing filters to their customers, that those customers can chose to use or not to use, can possibly be censorship.

It's fucking insulting to people living with real censorship.

<comment><USER11> I've lived in countries with what seemed like real censorship to me.

I guess there were warehouses of people somewhere with black marker pens, it was interesting to see the way they took different approaches as individuals applying the rules. Adjacent Nirvana Nevermind albums stick in my mind; one with a perfect rectangle drawn over the naked baby, one with swimming trunks creatively drawn on.

There's nothing amusing about this, no creativity to find in the black. It stinks of blanket censorship on a very inhuman level to me. But maybe my idea of censorship still isn't real enough. How much further does it have to go before it's real, how close should we get to that?

<comment><USER3> What changes need to be made to the uk system to make it more like proper censorship?

1: make it mandatory for all ISPs to provide it.

2: make it mandatory for all people to use it.

3: have a government supplied list of banned material

4: have penalties for being in possession of such material.

At the moment ISPs are chosing to offer these filters (albeit with the threat of potential legislation).

People don't have to use the filters. Not everyome is opted in by default, and for those who are there are proceedures to opt out.

The government isn't supplying any lists of what to ban, they've just asked ISPs to make sure that under 18s are not getting access to pornography.

And there are no penalties for possessing any content blocked by these filters. Someone can have terabytes of this stuff with no problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Perhaps a solution to this is a very public campaign to opt out of these filters. This would achieve 2 goals:

1\. Good plausible deniability excuse. If asked why one has opted out, or would like to opt out of the filter, one could always answer: "Because I saw comparing X and it has convinced me that this is the right thing to do to secure my rights to free speech..."

2\. The more people opt out the more likely this project is going to be either a) abandoned or b) made mandatory rather then optional. If the latter happens, I am sure the people are going to take to the streets.

Technical solution to this would be to create a simple website that tests your Internet connection, tells you if it's possible filtered, and based on your ip, tells you who to contact to remove the filter.

<comment><USER26> Are you really sure they'd take to the streets? I, sadly, wouldn't be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I always thought of the UK as highly educated and less gullible. This is the entry point for a world as described by fellow UK citizen George Orwell. It's a shame that people's honest hopes & beliefs in conservative "leaders" seem to be what could turn this into 1984.

Death by a thousand cuts.

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

</comment><comment><USER28> Reminds me of this recent editorial (which is hopefully not paywalled) in the Wall Street Journal about "the Good Intentions Paving Co": [http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230402070...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304020704579276942556236158)

<comment><USER29> Paywalled, but a freedom-hating pirate has fortunately given us what i believe to be a copy of it:

[http://casinocap.wordpress.com/2013/12/31/the-road-to- hell-i...](http://casinocap.wordpress.com/2013/12/31/the-road-to-hell-is- paved/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Obviously, living in a house of 5 male students, I won't opt into this.

I will be sending my MP a weekly write up of what we've been watching though. I hope you join me! (In writing, that is)

<comment><USER31> Great idea. I may be joining you in that.

Although the links will probably have a lot of pornography in that since i can bypass it pretty easily without opting out.

But since they really want to know I'm going to give them a list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Anybody else think the hacker community will suffer a bit since it will be just that much difficult to learn hacking since the information is in some mysterious way related to pornography?

I keep getting blocked by T-Mobile's porn filter even while accessing certain posts on HN.

I'm referring to people just starting out that have no clue how to bypass the filter just yet. Not someone who already knows some stuff and it's quite easy for them to bypass it.

Say using SOCKS5 and SSH tunneling to a box not covered by this bs filter.

<comment><USER3> Why haven't you opted out of content lock?

<comment><USER31> It's my company phone and it requires a credit card (which i don't have).

I only use debit cards which they don't accept.

It's a personal choice but i shouldn't have to be forced to own a credit card to unlock my fking porn filter.

Did I mention anything i see on HN most certainly doesn't qualify as porn?

Does qualify as hacking though if technical blogs on device vulnerabilities or back doors are considered hacking.

I would qualify it as security research but that just another loose term the ISPs can play with to ban important information on potentially insecure devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> At present the UK has a variety of different filtering systems.

There's the IWF list, there are the mobile filters, There are the voluntary ISP filters and if they're not good enough there's the proposed mandatory filter. Edit {there are also the court ordered blocks of file sharing websites}

This is a serious problem because some of the filtering is too broad and catches stuff that shouldn't be filtered. There is often no way to get things taken off the list.

Sometimes things that should be filtered are not, and again there's no way for users to report that.

The IWF list claims to have a tight focus on images of child sexual abuse and other pornography that is illegal in the UK. But that means the list of sites and news groups and etc are not easily available. I'd hate to be a researcher testing those filters because it'd be easy for police to spin the collection of information into something sinister.

Some kind of standards process might be handy. That would list things the filters must do, should do, must not do, and should not do. It would cover how to report mistakes in filtering, the evidence needed for proof of age, etc. that would improve the filters but keep the government out of providing the filters.

Ideally politicians would know enough about technology to understand what people are telling them about filters - i find it hard to believe that politicians are that stupid.

EDIT: interesting to hear the US reaction to these optional filters. They're in place but I'm happily playing poker with money on my phone.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm very disappointed with UK people. They should've known better. They should've seen this coming from miles away. But they've been reprogrammed to think that surveillance, and to a degree even censorship is "okay" if it's done for "good". They should've known that censorship even for "good" always, and I mean _always_ , leads to censorship for evil, too. It leads to politicians censoring anything they don't like. And the worst part about censorship, is that you may not even find out what has been censored, and what you weren't allowed to know.

David Cameron is nothing short of a dictator. It's just that he doesn't have all the dictatorial powers he would like yet. But he seems to be working hard to get them, and this porn filter, the charging of _friends_ of journalists with terrorism, and other such things are only the beginning. Throw Cameron David and his party out of office, and go to the streets and demand the banning of the porn filters at the next elections. Otherwise, expect much worse to come over the next years.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is just bad. First of all even though the filter is optional - most large scale ISP's are rolling them out as an opt-out option. I bet a lot of people will not even find out there is such a filter. Secondly, with such ambiguous categories like "obscene" and "extremist" content that have proven to block sites that contain information on LGTB issues and helplines for abuse people get trapped in filter bubbles. People are treated like mindless zombies and it's a self fulfilling prophecy because without alternative opinions or a wide and diverse specter of information people do indeed become mindless zombies. Finally, this is the most lazy and stupid solution to the problem - does the state not want it's people to be able/learn to deal with various information that's out there (because remember - if you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there) and to think critically? Or is this a vile and through-through attempt at gagging the internet?

Bonus food for thought: remember how Tories recently deleted their internet archives... ?

</comment><comment><USER34> The basic notion of empowering corporate and political entities to judge for a people what information is and is not "acceptable" is scary to me, and I would imagine, to most Americans. (I expand on this here: [http://blocvox.com/americans/93Mz6FfGIku- CcH8JHndIg](http://blocvox.com/americans/93Mz6FfGIku-CcH8JHndIg) )

To my knowledge, the word "acceptable" is never used in any pertinent legal code, but it is used by MPs and other officials, and therefore represents the cultural understanding of the law. So one must then ask, what is culturally made of people who are interested in material that is not "acceptable"?

I wonder if my repulsion to this is a cultural thing, Americans having more governmental skepticism and having a tradition of individualism, versus Britons having more faith in (to put it nicely) the potential of government to foster order and maintain cultural heritage.

</comment><comment><USER35> If you live in the Uk and you want to do something about this you can join the Open Rights Group [https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/cameron-stop- sleep...](https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/cameron-stop-sleepwalking)

</comment><comment><USER36> This will lead to a blossoming of linguistic creativity. People are going to grow a new sexual slang that evolves arms race pace in order to get around this.

If this happens a person will need to be able to trace the evolution of the slang/code words for whatever they're looking into in order to trace a topic back throughout its history.

All this happens now in a lot of ways and in a lot of different subjects, but I think it's going to become much more important.

</comment><comment><USER37> Judging from natural progression that usually follows such decisions made by any government following is highly likely to happen: The blacklist will expand, not shrink, becoming tight with political agenda. Pressure to stay opted in will increase. Process to opt out will become more complicated in order to keep people from opting out. Final blow - blacklist will br enforced by default and opting out removed.

</comment><comment><USER38> Let me refresh your memory.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28)

I'll give you a clue which party implemented this legislation.

It's always been about censorship of lifestyles the Tory party and the Daily Mail don't approve of in an attempt to return Britain to some golden age that never happened.

It's censorship and social control, plain and simple.

</comment><comment><USER39> There could be an unintended side effect of this mess. People will get so fucked off with Cameron and Co., it could lead to a dramatic increase in (black) hacking activity in Britain. I've already bought a black hat in preparation (similar to the one that is sported by Odd Job from Golfinger).

</comment><comment><USER40> In fact, it is not the start. Its a finish. Once the system is in place all you need is to add URLs to block. And it is already in place and seems to work fine. Except it is still avoidable via proxies.

</comment><comment><USER41> Where can you check if BT or O2 is blocking sites?

The O2 status checker is down: [http://urlchecker.o2.co.uk/urlcheck.aspx](http://urlchecker.o2.co.uk/urlcheck.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER10> Someone is just using the "slippery slope" argument, which may be true but this article wasn't that convincing to me. The internet for most people is only 10-15 years old but somehow life is not possible without it?

"The internet is a lifeline for young LGBT people looking for information and support – and parents are now able to stop them finding that support at the click of a mouse."

How does the filter work in Britain? Can you go to a cafe with your mobile device and use different settings?

<comment><USER42> A lot of public internet like cafes is filtered, and this is likely to increase with these new filters.

<comment><USER10> Can someone explain how the filter actually works. Google has a filter, for example. Is it a bunch of checkboxes or do you actually talk with someone on the phone?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I just have one thing to say about the censorship, fuck everyone that is pro this stuff.

</comment><comment><USER44> To what extent are private commercial interest driving this vs politics?

</comment><comment><USER45> what is the thought on Clean Port 80?

</comment><comment><USER46> Look, I am against censorship of the internet - but a line has to be drawn somewhere. The internet is ubiquitous. Four year old kids can surf the web proficiently these days and easily get to hardcore porn by accident. That is by design of pornography marketers.

The porn industry blew it. They shamelessly market to kids. anything to get them interested/hooked. Do you think that they would get away with putting porno mags on the lower shelves of toy isles?

There are laws to keep tobacco companies from marketing to kids. There are a slew of laws which prevent marketing all sorts of things to kids. How is the gist of this any different.

I agree that this should have been done in a different way. Each ISP potentially having a different blacklist is ridiculous. The organization and execution could have been a lot better. An exemption list should be standard across ISP's rather than only offered by a few and not shared (exemption list where say an actual sex ed site with an approved/compliant password protection and validation system for people to use to sign up for it is Not Blocked by default if it's owner registers it)

BTW, those of you who say that parents could install filters locally to block this content are out of touch. These filters need constant updating or the fuzzy logic is very poor. Today, most kids today are more computer savvy than their parents. They easily get around these filters, anyway what about smart phones and tablets? What about friends houses? Unfiltered internet devices are ubiquitous. Putting a filter on your home PC would be like putting a band-aid on a severed limb to stop the bleeding.

I wish there were a better way besides censorship. Anyone have any ideas?

</comment><comment><USER47> Oh give me a f*cking break. Attempting to regulate the distribution of pornography on the internet is no different than attempting to regulate the distribution of pornography via other media - magazines, video, television etc.

We've had rules and regs and laws for decades on pornography, these were/are no more an attempt at "censorship" than this attempt is.

It may be badly implemented, it may be impractical, it may have issues, but lets stop all this 1984 conspiracy bullshit.

The Guardian is just churning out more bollox tailored to the world view of it's largely young, largely left-wing, largely public sector readership who believe David Cameron and the Tory party is some sort of devil incarnate.

<comment><USER48> I wish I could downvote.

<comment><USER3> Engaging in the discussion is a better way to get the karma that allows you to downvote.

Why do you think parent comment is wrong?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Movies Search API - <AUTHOR>

I've developed an API that has better results of search engines such as:
- TMDB.org
- Rotten Tomatoes
- Rovi Corp
- Freebase.com
- Wikipedia (Film)
- Wikiquote (Film)
For "better results" I mean that if I try to search a movie in one of these APIs here above, my API it's likely  that succeed where these will fail (eg. little known movies or translated titles)
My API provide IDs of external databases such as IMDBID, Rotten Tomatoes, TMDB, Wikipedia, Wikiquotes for movies
- Are you interested? <comment><USER2> Hey guys

would love to have your APIs on Mashape (<http://www.mashape.com>) --> I think our community of developers will love it.

cheers aghi

</comment><comment><USER3> I am interested in a good movie search api. i currently use tmdb.

from the "original search site" i tried spiderman and spider man.

no results.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can you provide an endpoint for using the API? How can we evaluate a service if you don't let us try it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nothing. <http://www.nanocrowd.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I've just tried with a Film for testing.

Title: "La Ricerca della Felicità"

Expected: "The pursuit of Happiness"

No results. Nanocrowd.com failed.

<comment><USER5> [http://translate.google.com/#auto/en/La%20Ricerca%20della%20...](http://translate.google.com/#auto/en/La%20Ricerca%20della%20Felicità)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, but mostly films doesn't be translated literally.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


UK cyber security officials report Huawei's security practices are a mess - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/03/uk-cyber-security-officials-report-huaweis-security-practices-are-a-mess/ <comment><AUTHOR> Not completely unexpected, but i'd like to see the same evaluation performed on other vendors, my guess is that the result would not be substantially different.

The "process" for handling vulnerabilities once they are discovered would probably be better, but i doubt the same would be true for the coding practices. These vendors have too many products and seldom each one goes its own way in regard to software.

See: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507225](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507225)</comment>


A gruesome legal case turned Voltaire into a crusader for the innocent (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/03/13/broken-on-the-wheel/ <comment><USER2> It says that you couldn't practice law in France without being catholic. The victim studied law but couldn't practice because he was protestant. That fascinates me. We tend to have very simple models of the past but this indicates some underlying complexity that I want to understand. Did he study law because he didn't think the rule would be enforced? Did he study at a law school? Why did they let him study if he was a protestant? Did he think the law was going to be changed? Did he think he would was going to lie and claim to be catholic but then changed his mind? What was it like being in that situation?

</comment><comment><USER3> Previously if briefly discussed at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9404302](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9404302).

</comment><comment><USER4> Denials and miscarriages of justice, without any recourse, are among the more dispicable acts of any society. In this case, there's one way, at least, to ensure that the option to recourse remains open.

A damned powerful story.</comment>


Wolfram Alpha is down - <AUTHOR> https://www.wolframalpha.com <comment><USER2> It's been down for a week but they just noticed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not down for me.</comment>


Ask HN: I keep trying and failing at startups, what am I doing wrong? - <AUTHOR> I'm 34, based in London, and for the past 5 years I've built and launched several ventures. Each of them failed. I'm not dumb, and I get that I need to be technical and have some domain knowledge preferably. Hence, I've taught myself Ruby (just the basics) and design all my products on my own using Photoshop and sometimes HTML, CSS. I've spent 1000s of hours (I kid you not) designing my products. I almost always manage to convince a good developer to join me. And yet the products keep failing. Here are some:
Current: Online money transfer - transfercorp.co.uk Get your energy billing issues sorted - getpowerhelp.com Check if your name is on a sanctions list - stoplosttransfers.com
Previously (repos are on git): Reloved - a mobile shopping app for home decor products Research Nation - a trip advisor for market research reports
To be perfectly honest, I've never had more than 5 users for any of these products. And that's after investing between 50-150USD on Facebook and Google Ads..
I realise I've only shared links for 2 of my products which are currently online so you can't really diagnose what I did wrong on the rest..
Is this typical? 5 years, 5 products, less than 5 users per product? Or am I just really really bad at this founder thing and should just suck it up and stick with early employee at startups from now on.. <comment><USER3> You're not selling to people who buy things with money.

Looking at your list, they seem to be handy things that consumers could use to solve a problem that bothers them a little. What you want is a product that fixes the immediate existential threat that an otherwise wildly successful company just discovered they have (ideally as a result of reading the copy on your homepage.)

I made a list of things my next SaaS product should have. No particular order, but give yourself a point for each one you can tick:

\- Business: Purchased by businesses as opposed to consumers

\- Aspirin: More like aspirin (takes an existing pain away) than a vitamin (nice to have)

\- Valuable: Immediately saves >$100/month by using it

\- 50x500: Market to quickly sell 500 subscriptions at $50/month

\- Paid: Paid from day one as opposed to Freemium

\- Recurring: Continues providing value every month, not just one time or occasionally

\- Immediate: Useful straight away by user #1

\- Network: More useful the more users in the Org use it

\- Supportable: Low instance of customer support. Few emails asking for help

\- Fun: Interesting enough to keep working on

\- Buildable: Not to huge in scope. Can be built as MVP, then iterated

List out your ideas, add up the number of boxes they tick, and that's your score. I've had a lot of ideas for a lot of things I wanted to build, but thus far none that score more than 10.

My existing products get a 6 and 7 respectively, and they still bring in enough to live comfortably, so it's certainly possible to succeed without all those bits above. But if you can meet most of those requirements, you'll find yourself on a much easier road.

Good luck!

<comment><USER4> Nice list, thanks. If you don't mind what are your existing products? I'd be curious to see how they are checking the 6 and 7 items.

<comment><USER3> S3stat ([https://www.s3stat.com/](https://www.s3stat.com/)) gets a 7 and Twiddla ([http://www.twiddla.com/](http://www.twiddla.com/)) scores a 6.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use TransferWise regularly, so I am a potential client for TransferCorp but frankly as soon as I open the page alarm bells start going off in my head and there is near zero chance I am giving you any of my financial information.

The UI is a giant mess, there is tons of strange yellow dead space (70%+ of the entire screen), menu items are for no reason unreadable unless you mouse over, when you click on them you get an animation glitch, when you shrink the browser window the entire middle element (yellow/orange thing) disappears but the "Send Money Now" button doesn't and starts corrupting the green right side. I really cannot stress enough that the UI experience on that entire site is just awful, and that alone would put me right off letting you dick around with my money (if you cannot get the UI right I just assume security, reliability, etc are as bad or worse).

I also hate the complete lack of information. When I click on anything I get this silly login box (with a different colour theme) and need to click again to sign up. The track button and dashboard buttons are demos, but the send button requires login(?) for some inconsistent reason. The login and sign up button in the bottom left keep disappearing (WHY?!).

Honestly you know the scene in cheesy hollywood movies where someone asks "What is wrong with the way I look?!" and the other person just points at all of them? Yeah, that right there. Everything is wrong with the UI of that site, just everything. I'm sorry, I have nothing constructive to say, scrap it and start again with a consistent theme and go learn about usability and UX, forget trying to be clever, save clever for when you get the 101s down. I thought I was bad at UI, but this site is like a Geocities page.

<comment><USER6> Agree that TransferCorp is amateur land in terms of design and UX.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 5 years, 5 products, less than 5 users per product? What? How do you give up after one year of work on one project?

I doubt you even had one decent project if thats what your churn rate is. Do you expect these things to take off over night? It takes years to develop products and businesses.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if you are targeting problems in search of a solution, or solutions in search of a problem. There is nothing wrong with starting a business to show users that they have a problem they did not even know they had. The only real issue there is that you have to educate your user base... and that is hard.

Taking a look at your links:

Online Money Transfer -- This seems like a solved problem. Maybe I don't understand but is money transfer online something I can't do from my bank or 100 other reputable entities? Why should I use yours? Are your rates lower? Are you more secure? Can you get around some pain I am having? From your site it seems like you are giving a simple way to transfer money but frankly, in a very saturated market.

Get Power Help -- Now this is more interesting. I had no idea there were rights involved with NPower. However, I bet very few other people knew that either. Now the question is, do they have rights to make money from their complaint? Which complaints will make them money? I don't want to pay you GBP30 for an apology (no offense). I want a chunk of GBP10000! This is an education problem. If you can solve that it might work. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that the Ombudsmen gets a whole lot more written apologies than they do GBP10000 rewards.

Stop Lost Transfers -- Again, very interesting! Seems to work well. When transfers are slow or stopped do they have any idea to even check if their name is on the list? If they transferred with a reputable transfer service and something happens will that transfer service tell them why it was slowed or stopped? How do people even know they should check their name before they initiative a transfer? Again, education.

I don't think you are bad at founding. I think you just haven't found a niche to found in yet which has high growth potential without massive education. On top of that, even if you did educate people on the need for your services, would you make enough money to make them useful? For example, if I were an investor looking to invest in your ideas I would have to ask, what is the upside potential of get power help and stop lost transfers? Right now you have no way to even monetize stop lost transfers. And I have no sense of how much people can win from NPower in disputes. I would pan the online money transfer as an investor because I think the market is too saturated.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have also had a startup that had few customers. And another that never launched.

I think people misrepresent the reality: startups are hard. There is a lot of competition to get attention. People who are complaining about your site design are probably right -- there is always room for improvement. Standards are very high.

I think marketing and networking are key, but so is everything else. A fair amount of luck is involved.

People like you who report their failures are a rare breed, so don't be fooled. Most startups are unpopular. There are too many options out there for everyone.

Keep working on site design, product improvements, product/market selection, marketing/networking, etc. Think of it as a popularity contest partly.

Keep trying to find and build a product or service people want. Keep improving, it is very competitive in all areas and usually requires great execution and some luck.

Some people are lucky and it comes easily. That's not most people.

Marketing, networking and feedback loops are probably key. Integrating in existing social groups.

</comment><comment><USER10> It sounds like you do not provide enough apparent value and hence people do not pay!

I am not talking about there "real" value you provide but what value you are able to communicate to those who actually lands on your site.

My advice would be to talk to customers, either those who have signed up or alternatively you could go out in the real world, find some target customers and talk to them.

This could be in a coffee shop (ask permission from the manager) where you could offer to pay for the persons coffee, then let them use the software and get them talking about what they see, their experience and thoughts - <USER2> notes of everything and most importantly shut the f*ck up, do not explain nor complain!

Take what you learned and use in your copy writing and development, then go back out again and repeat until you either has proven that people do not get value from what you are building or that they do!

<comment><USER10> Oh, I forgot

Get into a mastermind group (or two) Listen to "startup for the rest of up" podcast Listen to "the startup chat" Attend MicroConf Europe Read books like "the lean startup", traction, smartcuts, the war of art, the dip, etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think that "never had more than 5 users" is really the center of the problem.

You just need to remember that customer/client opinion matters most. Try not to be too revolutionary and make sure you listen to feedback from potential customers. Do not ask your friends, they are a super unreliable source of product confirmation (because they like you).

If you cannot get 100 users, you really shouldn't put much time into that specific idea. I know others will give you their unicorn story ("It worked for me"), but if you have given it five goes, I would focus on what your potential customers are saying.

Hope that helps!

<comment><USER12> _I think that "never had more than 5 users" is really the center of the problem._

Exactly. Start with the potential customers and figure out what problem they need to be solved, and then figure out a way to solve it. Then you go to them an show them a mockup of your solution. So for getpowerhelp, ask people in the complaint line down at the power company if they would use this app, and show them a mockup on a tablet, and collect an email. Or ask people waiting in line at the Western Union office if they would use transfercorp instead, and show them mockups. The screenshots or mockups would only take a few hours to make, and you might find that the people in line at the power company really just want to get in someone's face and scream, not fill in a form, and the people at Western Union need to send cash, so an app won't help them. Those are questions it would be great to get answered before you invest too much time building anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It sounds like you haven't had enough people visiting the websites (50-150USD isn't much on Google Ads... provided the product itself generates enough revenue to pay for them in the long run) I mean, money transfer and claims consultancies are real enough business models, but your rivals have large ads in Tube stations and daily automated calls. I'm not suggesting you should go that far, but the trouble is I don't see much evidence that you've actually done much to get people to your sites - there's not much in the way of content and I doubt you show up in search even for relatively niche queries like "npower overcharge refund".

Since you're keen to improve your skills and domain knowledge, SEO and marketing are what's going to make you money.

The same goes for tweaking the wording. npower being forced to refund £70m customers should be on the front page, not halfway down the FAQ below a couple of sarcastic comments. (I didn't know that, and I once had a £2.5k sorry-we- haven't-billed-you-on-time gas bill from npower land on my doormat, which fortunately was not my debt) Similarly, I don't see a mail address, company registration and details of FCA registration in the footer for Transfercorp, which is a pretty massive red flag for a site promising to handle my money. Your site on the theme of lost money transfers doesn't link to your actual money transfer site. It's not the technical behaviour of the app that's holding you back.

</comment><comment><USER14> I get the impression that you want to design stuff, and it's incidental that startups let you do it how you want. Judging by the "I've spent 1000s of hours (I kid you not) designing my products", you're doing the same as what I do with development, and I'd be wary of that.

Maybe, start by trying to let your tech/design be a means to an end and start by solving a problem for users. The launch websites for so many successful startups were super ugly[1]. 100's of hours per project with less than 5 users each, sounds like alarm bells to me. If you haven't already, read The Lean Startup[2]. Build MVP, validate and iterate or pivot accordingly.

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/6125914/How-20-popular...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/6125914/How-20-popular- websites-looked-when-they-launched.html)

[2] [http://theleanstartup.com/](http://theleanstartup.com/)

</comment><comment><USER12> You should spend more time talking to customers first. If you talk to potential customers before putting pen to paper or writing code you will either have a bunch of people interested and ready to sign up when you launch, or you should find out that nobody wants what you plan to build.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think you need to spend more time and money on marketing. You need to split test various ads to see what actually gets people in, then spend good money to that. $50-150 can be gone in no time if you aren't targeting correctly/using the right creatives.

Without good marketing none of your apps are going to take off. You can't just make them and hope it fills with users

</comment><comment><USER16> > Is this typical?

Your individual experience may vary. May I suggest James Dyson's autobiography a useful read on overcoming failures and set-backs> [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/955045.Against_the_Odds](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/955045.Against_the_Odds)

</comment><comment><USER17> Personally I failed about 10 times before I built something that made any money. Over time your batting average gets better, mostly because you learn to see a failure coming and kill the losers before you've spent any significant time on them.

But yeah, 5 fails doesn't seem out of line at all. Keep at it man!

</comment><comment><USER18> At least one of these sites would do well on Martin Lewis's Money Saving Expert site ... Seriously you should contact his team.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> clickable links to current products: transfercorp.co.uk, getpowerhelp.com, stoplosttransfers.com

<comment><USER19> Your meta-description is either severely lacking or non-existent. You need to add more content describing who you are and what you do on your pages. Among other stuff...

Maybe the best thing to do is to head over to seomoz.org and get their free SEO manual so that you can learn more about online marketing. Inbound.org is considered as the HN for SEO, so check that out too.</comment></comment>


The Refactor Party: An idea I shared on GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Zaskoda/RefactorParty <comment><AUTHOR> I'm OP. I'm a dev, but not particularly spectacular at dev. I'm also not qualified to host or run an OSS project. I'm full of noobness in that regard. But I had this idea and I thought this would be the best way to try to share it and see if it's catchy for anyone else. YCombinator is one of the few places I've shared this link.

Side note: Tho I read the news here often, I don't post. My account here is nearly 8 years old and as of this post, I have two karmas!</comment>


Show HN: Blockchain for everyday life - <AUTHOR> http://fabryc.org <comment><USER2> Hi, what's the value I get if I store something in the blockchain (and apparently I'd need to pay for it in the future?). Perhaps you would like to explain that on your page or give some examples?

BTW, if you'd like to get more feedback, please feel free to visit our free UX community platform at [https://usability.testing.exchange](https://usability.testing.exchange).

<comment><AUTHOR> The value lies in being able to create a permanent ledger that cannot be changed for your products that anyone can access. For example if this was around during the time of Da Vinci, he could have recorded his paintings onto the blockchain and attached a QR code to the back of them. Then today we would be able to scan that QR and trace the painting back to him. This is a huge deal as some art experts claim almost 50% of paintings in museums are fake.

Another use case would be for cars. Each car could have a QR code attached and every time a mechanic does a repair they could add that service record to the car's ledger, creating permanent service records (a big issue faced with buying used cars is a lack of service records).

The use cases are endless. And when we do take it off of the testnet and onto the actual blockchain we want to bring the cost of gas down significantly so that it will almost be like paying nothing. We are adding the explanation to our page very soon! And thanks I just posted on your website!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why do you mandate Chrome if MetaMask runs on Firefox as well?

Also, I don't understand what is this all about. I'll have to pay to add a product entry? For what?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're updating that. Right now it uses test ether so you don't pay anything, we want to get the cost down drastically before we start using real money. The cost is for something called gas which is a fee that pays ethereum miners to verify transactions onto the blockchain.

Here's a video to give you an overview of how to use it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym8pVPJhlmw&t=233s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym8pVPJhlmw&t=233s)</comment></comment>


Mom's Genes or Dad's? Map Can Tell. - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/03/AR2007090301106.html <comment><USER2> but how long until we can produce the "perfect" progeny...that is the question. How long until we can eliminate all the bad genes?</comment>


Ask HN: What makes a great API documentation in your opinion? - <AUTHOR> There are a lot of different ways to do documentation.
There are the basics like having good SDK/libraries references. For example, [Stripe's famous 3 panels view](https://stripe.com/docs/api) is one of many ways of displaying that information.
It does get quickly blurry when you introduce topics like:
- Explaining the main concepts of the products/API
- Quick Start Guides (multiple languages?)
- How-tos for the main use cases
- Tutorials such as how to do <use_case_x> with <specific_language_or_framework>. Do you even include that in the docs?
Then there are the features of docs:
- Button to try this function/API call
- Includes the user' API keys in the sample code if they are logged in
- all of the content in one very long page or split it up.
- etc
So HN, what do you like to see in an API documentation? from little features, cosmetics, layout or how to structure the content. I want to hear about it! <comment><USER2> I like reference APIs mixed with examples. MSDN is great when it does this and pretty horrible when they don't. There's nothing worse than a highly composed API (think Android) without examples.

</comment><comment><USER3> In 2009 I was working on building out API docs and looked around for good examples. Stripe was so far ahead of everyone else. I still think they have some of the best documentation out there.</comment>


A stretching habit isn't doing much of what people hope - <AUTHOR> https://www.painscience.com/articles/stretching.php <comment><USER2> A relative of mine is an Alexander Technique teacher. My understanding of stretching, from them, is that:

\- The main point of stretching is to improve your range of motion, for injury prevention. For example, if your hamstrings are too tight to bend at the knees and hips, you can injure your back trying to pick things up off the ground. (Corrolary: If you're already flexible enough to bend your joints in the proper ways, you don't need to stretch much; just enough to maintain that flexibility). \- Stretching before exercise is mostly pointless; a warm-up is far more important. After exercise is the best time to stretch, while your muscles are still warm & loose. \- The proper way to stretch is to move right up to the edge of your range of motion, then relax. It should be slightly uncomfortable, but NOT painful -- that's because pain prevents you from relaxing; "feeling the burn" is a good way to injure yourself. \- Short stretches are not very effective (though of course they can still feel good). Stretches should be held for a few minutes. When you release the stretch, the muscle should feel pleasantly warm.

That is to say, many people stretch terribly wrong. Thus, unless the studies cited also taught people to stretch correctly, I would expect them to show no benefit from stretching.

I looked at the abstracts of a couple of the studies cited but could not ascertain how participants were told to stretch. I'd appreciate if anyone wants to spend the time to dig into the research a bit more and figure out whether any of it contradicts my relative or whether it merely supports the claim that _incorrect_ stretching is basically useless.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish they'd make more of a distinction between pre- and post-exercise stretching. As I understand it, pre-exercise stretching really is pretty useless if not outright harmful. That's what the article _seems_ to focus on, but it's maddeningly vague. OTOH, I haven't heard such a severe indictment of post-exercise stretching. It's what I do. I run more than 95% _of other runners_ who enter 1000 km/year challenges that enable me to make such comparisons, and that's already a pretty self-selected group. I've had one serious encounter with plantar fasciitis, lesser incidents of ankle or knee tenderness, and occasionally some mild shin splints. I feel like some simple stretches - nothing aggressive or elaborate - after each run have helped with some of these. Perhaps stretching really is over-hyped, but this article seems just as questionable on the other side.

<comment><USER4> I'm interested in this difference too, because anecdotally post-workout stretching does reduce soreness for me. One of the two studies referenced in the part about how stretching doesn't prevent DOMS actually did find that stretching decreased soreness, and post-workout stretching decreased it more than pre-workout stretching: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21735398](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21735398). But, as the paper authors termed it, the effects were "clinically insignificant" (not the same as "statistically insignificant"). The results still strike me as odd from my personal experience, because it's so predictable that I'll be sore if I lift weights without a 5-10 min cool down afterwards. I'd want to see added research beyond these couple of studies before jumping to a conclusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I got into lifting I was told not to do static stretches like quad pulls or arm across chest ect but to work on dynamic stretches like leg swings and foam rolling just to get blood flowing to those areas and then to do static stretches after the lifting session if you really want to. The idea I was told was that stretching cold is just like pulling on a cold rubber band; its easier to snap.

</comment><comment><USER6> Flexibility is a good-enough reason for me.

</comment><comment><USER7> In group exercise, stretching performs an extremely useful function: giving people who arrive early something to do while waiting for others. For this reason alone, it will survive and thrive in this context no matter how much evidence stacks up suggesting it doesn't have the purported benefits.

</comment><comment><USER8> You can't kick high if you can't stretch high, so martial prowess is the first counter-example I can think of.

</comment><comment><USER9> I had shin splints really bad everytime I ran. The minute I started stretching first I never got shin splints again. So it's anecdotal but in my limited scientific experiment stretching has 100% success rate.

</comment><comment><USER10> If anybody on here runs marathons you might know a guy named David Goggins. He's an ultra marathon runner and a former Navy Seal. The guy had major health problems I believe after leaving Navy and he attributes his recovery to 8 hours of stretching every single day (he eventually cut it down to 2 hours). The man is an amazing endurance athlete in general. Highly recommend checking out his story.

Edit: here is the link where he talks about it [1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSpaBN63ovk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSpaBN63ovk)

<comment><USER11> _He 's an ultra marathon runner and a former Navy Seal._

It is a common fallacy to assume that what may be good for "superhuman" (ultra marathon, navy seal) is also good for regular human. In this case, correlation doesn't imply causation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've had neck pain for the past few years. After visiting a number of doctors and physiotherapists and having an MRI to help diagnose - I was recommended strong anti-inflammatory medicine and massages. While it helped, this was a persistent problem. Ultimately it wasn't until I started building a routine of stretching and building strength that I've started to overcome it. I have a feeling it might be a similar circumstance to our discovery of Myopia prevention; we had evidence to suggest sunlight helped, but not a true understanding of the mechanics until recently. Stretching might not be the solution by itself, but maintaining and improving mobility is a stepping stone to healthy muscles.

<comment><USER13> Very similar situation in my case. Had pain for years and quite severe at times. Dr's prescribed muscle relaxers that just made me sleep, and pain/knot would be back right away. It was on my trapezius, and always a knot there I'd have my wife use her elbow. Wasn't until I stumbled across this video from Kelly Starrett til I found the cure. Yes, cure. I keep doing the stretches every day to keep it at bay. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRozBCFU_pA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRozBCFU_pA)

<comment><USER12> Wow! Thank you so much for the link. Its amazing how similar our situation sound, my partner too would have to use her elbow for these knots. I'll be adding these stretches to my routine!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As far as I understand from years of body building, stretching helps mostly with the recovery, after the fact, often the next day, with some very light weights - redoing the same execercise as yesterday with stretches will improve recovery time.

</comment><comment><USER15> Can't be further from the truth. Not even going to read the article.

I've experienced enough disfunction from a lack of stretching to know how useful stretching is if you lift weights. Hell, just sitting down too often necessitates stretching, lest your psoas shrink from the position. It would be like limiting the range of motion of your elbow for long periods of time; eventually that bicep is going to shrink longitudinally (lengthwise).

Limitations on range of motion like this lead to situations where it's easier to hyper-extend that muscle, i.e. overstretch it in a short (split second) period of time.

To be specific, I used to deadlift frequently, but I didn't stretch later on, and eventually just the simple act of putting on socks caused me to hyper- extend my rhomboids or something back there. Put me out of commission for a bit such that even biking became impossible without excruciating pain afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been thinking trigger point therapy is pseudoscience for a while. I doubt it is possible to stretch the IT band. If it was possible couldn't you over stretch it?

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure about the it band, but foam rolling my calves massively decreases the pain and tightness I get from walking, and if I make foam rolling a habit, I no longer get pain.

Also, it's possible the pain is gone from just walking a lot but it don't think this is the case because I get pain if I walk a lot and don't foam roll.

<comment><USER18> Good chance that foam rolling does 0 for your calf muscles/tendons, but breaks up the bonds of sticking fascia, which tfa doesn't touch upon at all.

Foam rolling doesn't need to be overdone, either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This makes sense intuitively (and also isn't new news).

Animals don't stretch. They do fast however (against their will of course). Which one is probably better, the natural or forced one?

One question that remains is regarding dynamic stretching. What does everyone think?

<comment><USER20> Animals stretch all the time. Evidence: My cats and dog do it all the time.

<comment><USER7> Not like a yoga class or exercise group.

<comment><USER21> Have you not heard of "downward-dog"? My moms dog does this move every time he gets up...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Report finds $50b of cryptocurrency moved out of China hinting at capital flight - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/21/china-users-move-50--of-cryptocurrency-out-of-country-hinting-at-capital-flight.html <comment><USER2> This is something that I suspect could cause another crypto boom even if a short lived one. If/when government decisions or some other forces cause people to want to move currency and avoid government scrutiny there will be a large amount of cash flowing into crypto currency.

</comment><comment><USER3> Corrected link:

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/21/china-users- move-50-billion-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/21/china-users- move-50-billion-of-cryptocurrency-out-of-country-hinting-at-capital- flight.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Any career path for engineers that won't require all day screen time? - <AUTHOR> Perhaps management or product management. Maybe education but these all still seem like I'm destined to be looking at a screen all day. Anything I'm missing that might set me free? <comment><USER2> Some managers can spend more time in meetings than in front of a screen. Maybe you want a role at a non-tech organization?

</comment><comment><USER3> Management is just a different kind of screen. Still 90% screen time. Consider field engineering (oil field, etc) or field sales. Or switch to a physical job.</comment>


Why Did HN flag my submission on Democracy and change it's name? - <AUTHOR> I added the EIU 2016 Democracy Index with the title: US downgraded from 'full' to 'flawed democracy' and the title was changed to '2016 Democracy Index' before being flagged. See screenshots below: 1) Original post http://imgur.com/O22kb1P 2)Title Change: http://imgur.com/2IvB4Nv 3) Flagged: http://imgur.com/71daypA <comment><USER2> This is all routine. Please read the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). You've broken them in several ways, first by editorializing a title and second by posting this question here instead of emailing us. As for the flags, that's the work of HN users, as I described here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13492445](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13492445).

</comment><comment><USER3> HN Guidelines [1] has a policy to post the full title of a site without modification.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER2> That's the correct link but you've described the guideline inaccurately. What it says is "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait". Note the "unless".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> it's because general political topics aren't considered a good fit by a lot of people and lots will reflexively flag them.

As an example of how despised political discussion are, a chrome extension I made to filter stories (mostly political) made it to the front page:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13467611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13467611)

</comment><comment><USER5> I tried submitting a comprehensive article that did not have access restrictions and a title that did not need editorializing ( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13491827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13491827) ) and it was marked "dupe", referring to your flagged topic. Mh.

</comment><comment><USER6> 1) political

2) editorializing the title

</comment><comment><USER5> I guess it was editorializing the title. (Also, the provided link was not very informative since for the original white paper you would need to register.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Because much like the US, HN is not a democracy...

<comment><USER8> On the contrary, this is democracy at work in one of its clearest forms.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I learn Dart? - <AUTHOR> tldr: There is a side project I'd like to build, and I'm wondering if Dart & Flutter is the way to go for the app development.
I'm a backend dev, so I'm not worried about the db or api. But, I have very little experience with mobile, and... not to be too harsh... but I'm curious if it's worth it to learn Dart & Flutter for the apps.
Just so it's clear, I don't care what the "hottest" framework or language is. I'm more concerned about building something for fun, and getting valuable experience at the same time. I respect all the work many people have put into Dart and Flutter, and I'm impressed by what it can do. That being said, if Dart is something that won't be around after a few years, then I'd rather not spend my time using it for this project, and do it with different technology / do a different project.
I don't know much about the language or the decisions being made by Google in terms of the project, so I would appreciate your thoughts. I've only ever made two apps with Dart & Flutter.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Just my opinion but Google has put a lot of time and energy behind Flutter and Dart. It is gaining popularity quickly and has a promising future. You should judge it on whether it's suited to your needs _now_ and don't fret about the future. Things come and go but Flutter has as good a chance as any to thrive and continue for years to come.</comment>


Raging forest infernos in Chernobyl Exclusion Zone burning for eight days - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8212397/Raging-forest-infernos-Chernobyl-Exclusion-Zone-close-exploded-nuclear-reactor.html <comment><USER2> Guardian Source for those who prefer: [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/06/bad- news...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/06/bad-news- radiation-spikes-16-times-above-normal-after-forest-fire-near-chernobyl)

</comment><comment><USER3> 16× "normal" is barely more than an order of magnitude. I rather direct my concern at Hanford Site.</comment>


Getting Networking Out of the Activity Life Cycle - <AUTHOR> http://mattlogan.me/options-for-an-asynchronous-rest-client-android-app

<comment><USER2> Other than "clunky" I wonder why the author advocates using the Application object for networking. A Service can have a remote API, and that's useful where you are mixing RESTful APIs, which would probably use a ContentProvider interface on a device with a command API. You also have the choice to share these interfaces with other apps.</comment>


Facebook's Problem Isn't Privacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.cringely.com/2010/05/lets-get-small/

<comment><USER2> "If Facebook really wants to get profitable it needs to get smaller by kicking-off users who don't make it money. Then it has to be be really nice to the ones they keep."

As far as I can see, this contradicts most of what he was talking about previously. If you kick the people off of Facebook who don't make them much money, you'll be kicking off the people who _don't_ play Farmville or Mafia Wars, and you will be left with an even worse signal to noise ratio.

Despite that, I thought it was an interesting article.

<comment><USER3> The reason people use facebook is because everyone is there. Get rid of that network effect by kicking off 90% of users, and facebook has just suicided.

<comment><USER4> Better curation of posts is what's needed. The rushing torrent of information is useless. We need to reward those who post interesting things and penalize those who post drivel, without alienating friends. We also need better filters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This criticism is spot on, but it's not FB's fault. Look, if you have >800 "friends", chances are you will get many less than interesting status updates, that is true for any social medium. You can of course hide people, but I've found that the cost of miss is much larger than the cost of false alarm, e.g. I can quickly filter, maybe 20 status updates per minute to judge their level of relevance. However, even people who post "inane" updates sometimes post interesting stuff.

Now, one interesting thing that FB doesn't have is a "best-of-today" display of all public updates, that can be voted up or down by all users. This would be an incentive to post interesting updates. What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER6> _Facebook is useless to me. We're all too connected to really connect._

Exactly. Once again, it's the problem of social flatland. Meeting everyone we know all at once is never conducive to meaningful interaction. It's why, even at a party, surrounded by many people we know, we rarely address the entire group and certainly never carry on a conversation that way.

Social networking will stagnate until someone builds upon a non-flat model.

<comment><USER7> Facebook isn't flat. It has friend lists. The problem isn't the product; it's the people. It's not always easy to mentally categorize new people you meet because you don't know what bucket they're ultimately going to end up in. Pruning and adding to lists is work. Worst of all, creating lists to begin with requires sifting through all of your friends and bucketing them.

Facebook has tried to address this by automatically filtering your feed to show you the people it thinks you care about. I don't know how well this works because I'm too much of an information glutton to allow things to be hidden from me, so I turned the filtering off.

<comment><USER6> _The problem isn't the product; it's the people._

I think Don Norman would probably disagree with you.

I maintain that this is a design problem. We meet people in a variety of different contexts in real life: These contexts vary by geography, time, and purpose, but they're discrete entities that should be as translatable to an application's design patterns as our person-to-person relationships already are. How to do this smoothly, of course, is a bit trickier than just making a buddy list, hence the fact that it's not being done very well right now. But that's no reason to give up and blame the users!

The funny thing is, Facebook actually got this mostly right at the beginning. The "networks" were exactly the kind of construct that a non-flat social network needs; their downfall was that they started out too big to be useful and only bloated from there until they were retired. Networks the size of your immediate family, a group close friends, your team at the office, would have worked. And, with proper design, they still can.

<comment><USER7> Some problems are just hard. No one blames calculators for the difficulty of calculus. Classifying relationships is something we don't normally do consciously.

People use email and Facebook messages for the small groups you've mentioned. Attempting to shoehorn that use case into the news feed and the post workflow would complicate things. Most things that people share outside of work don't need to be limited to few people.

Cringely is basically saying, "I wish Facebook solved this problem that I have, but few of its other users probably have as well." It makes no sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I guess I'm just a social leper or something, but I don't have this problem. Nor do most of the people I know who aren't professional networkers. I have something in the neighborhood of 150 "friends" on FB. Only about 30 or so of them post with any regularity.

If you are "friends" with ever person you ever meet, yeah, this will be a problem for you. On the other hand, if you limit your "friends" to people you would actually make a point to hang out with in person when you're in the same place, it doesn't seem to be an issue.

In other words, this isn't Facebook's problem, it's Cringely's problem.

<comment><USER4> An alternative view: Facebook needs more kinds of friends. Best friends. Respected advisors. Acquaintances. Annoying friends. Tolerated relatives. Workable filtering could be inferred from these designations. (Which could then be tweaked into good filtering.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the problem of facebook is not the size of your friend list, but the size of "useless" (matter of tastes) apps that populate the timeline, like quizzes, and a big etc of questions, games...

I block one, and ten new appear...

</comment><comment><USER7> By default, Facebook limits the Live Feed to show only posts from people it thinks you care about to limit overload. I assume few people change this, but Cringely has. Click "Edit Options" at the bottom of the Live Feed.</comment>


Show HN: Play poker with friends. No cards or chips needed - <AUTHOR> https://playcards.live <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! I love playing social poker with friends, but often find ourselves not having play cards or chips. I've tried quite a few options, including various mobile apps and websites. Didn't like any of them. So I made my own.

I had two main focuses: easy to use (only requires a web browser; no signup; no download) and good UI for face-to-face poker (track player scores; mobile friendly).

I also included a practice feature where you are pitted against an AI in heads-up.

Due to the social distancing situation, I realized it's not the perfect timing for release. But I do want to put this out there and move on. Hopefully it's useful to some people.

<comment><USER2> Site looks really good. Showed it to my team, I think we'll be experimenting with it this week. I've only tested practice mode so far, but is there a way to increase the blinds after X minutes? Like a Sit-N-Go / tournament mode?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! It doesn't have tournament mode yet. But looks like this is the most requested feature so far. I'll consider adding it soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I really like the design and the UI of this poker service.

Btw I found a way how to abuse the system when playing against AI in the practice mode. Every round I go "All-In" but after some time AI still can not figure out that I am bluffing. I farmed like 10 000 of free cash in 5 minutes; 200 of cash per round.

Also you can think about adding stats and maybe further developing this to become real cloud poker service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, and yes you found the exploit :)

The bot tries to play Game Theory Optimal, so it doesn't really care about the opponent's strategy. That's why no matter how often you go all-in, it won't change its strategy.

In theory, playing GTO will guarantee that you won't be beat. However, there are holes in this bot's strategy (to reduce computation). So when you find these holes, you can exploit the bot.

That said, if you play "normally" (don't go all-in on the first action), the bot should be pretty competitive.

> Also you can think about adding stats and maybe further developing this to > become real cloud poker service.

Interesting. I was focusing on the "home poker" use case. I'll think about it more. Thanks!

<comment><USER4> where can I find more about the GTO strategy? Is the algorithm public? Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


How Google Search Dealt with Mobile - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/backchannel/how-google-search-dealt-with-mobile-33bc09852dc9/#

<comment><USER2> > Google claims that the app's "word error rate" has been cut down to 8%.

How does Google know this? When i edit a query after speaking it at my phone Google doesn't seem to pick up on corrections in later searches. Or do they mean in internal tests?</comment>


CDC scientists pursue deadly monkeypox virus in Africa - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/health-science/monkeypox/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_monkeypox%3Ahomepage%2Fstory <comment><USER2> Africa is very large, and Africans is a very broad description of people who live in the continent. The article talks about Congo, which puts the disease in sub-Saharan Africa, already being a lot more specific.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why does the title say mysterious if we know it's monkey pox? Is it because we don't understand the virus mechanism or what?

<comment><USER4> Washington post title is "CDC scientists pursue deadly monkeypox virus in Africa", different from what has been submitted.

<comment><USER5> The clickbaity title seems to actually be the one used on the front page of WP. For me, the actual article title is "Chasing a Killer" which isn't much better really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Re: "Worldwide, animal-borne infectious diseases that jump to humans are on the rise."

Is that true? Or is this due to detection methods? (I presume it's the latter.)

I'm also curious, would similar things happen in developed countries if the factor farm food supply (e.g., chicken, pigs, etc.) if there wasn't such high use of chemicals, meds (abx), etc. Why isn't the rain forest of Brazil a hot bed for such things?

<comment><USER7> > Why isn't the rain forest of Brazil a hot bed for such things?

Why would it be?

It looks like one of the least imaginable places for those things to appear. Very few people, modern agriculture, access to developed medicine, almost no history of human colonization.

<comment><USER6> Or. Why isn't it? Or might it be but we don't know, yet?

To me it seems like a combination of wild life and minimal - but enough - human contact with that. I mean, what's to stop deer ticks from something more than Lymes Disease? I would imagine it's nothing.

Yet, these things seem to happen in Africa nearly exclusively. What evolutionary context does this? This is, why?

<comment><USER7> > Yet, these things seem to happen in Africa nearly exclusively.

If you look at animal flu transmission to humans, it's almost always central America or Asia, for really well understood causes. Europe has a history of importing those diseases from Asia, and, of course, America has a history of importing them from Europe.

All said, there's a reason to expect most of transmissions to happen on Africa. It's were we are from, and all the animals most similar to us live there.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. The flu seems to work that way. But why do these "exotic" viruses seem to be exclusive to Africa?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really dislike the site layout. It makes it quite difficult to read on a desktop computer.

Just scrolling to continue reading steals the article text and replaces it with an animated image or map. I admit it's really pretty, but I care more about the content than the presentation, and the latter makes reading the former difficult.

<comment><USER9> And it pushes my CPU usage constantly above 20% (otherwise 1%) on a i5 desktop machine with a 27" monitor. I just wonder how painful would be navigating it on a netbook or small laptop, not to mention tablets.

<comment><USER10> I just read through it on an older ASUS Chromebook Flip (ARM, 4GB) without issue. I found it to be a clever and engaging presentation format for a tablet. If I were on my desktop I'd probably go for the print view though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you read the full article a tldr; would be much appreciated.

<comment><USER12> There's a smallpox variant called monkeypox that seems to come from contact with animals from Africa which is communicable, incurable, and deadly about 10% of the time. The smallpox vaccine is only 85% effective against it. They suspect various African rodents of spreading the disease, so scientists are trapping them, freezing them, and shipping them off to laboratories for analysis. There have been several outbreaks in African and the disease once spread to America because some animals brought over from Africa were kept in the same facility, and then infected, other animals sold as pets. One of these pets was a prairie dog that bit and infected a 3 year old American girl.

The rest of the article appears to be background about them hanging out in remote villages near the site of recent outbreaks.

<comment><USER13> Also note this is a long know virus and not considered an immediate threat, though it is high on the watchlist via concern it could mutate.</comment></comment></comment>


Gource, a software version control visualization tool - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/gource/

<comment><USER2> this is pretty damn awesome

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't forget to upvote if you feel it deserves being seen by more people. :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Chic Translator – Translations that don't suck - <AUTHOR> http://chictranslator.com

<comment><USER2> Just sent you an email guys, because when your motto is "Translations that don't suck." with the Eiffel tour in background, having such an awful French translation on your homepage is really not the best way to sell it imho.

The email, just in case you'd miss it:

Hello,

I'm French and a French teacher and I would like to warn you that the first part of your translation is good, but the end is totally awful, I can't find any other word, sorry.

I mean, if you're willing to charge $1 per translated word, you really cannot put this kind of translation as an example on your homepage...

I'm talking about the end of the sentence: "let's do it again" translated as "il faut recommencer".

If you say "il faut recommencer", it means "we have to do this again because it was bad". In French when you "recommence", it's because you've failed to do something properly, the exact opposite of what you're trying to say here.

A better translation would be "quand est-ce qu'on remet ça ?" or any kind of French idiom to convey the right meaning.

That's it, have a good one,

<comment><USER3> French Canadian here. I wholeheartedly agree that "il faut recommencer" was a jarring error.

<comment><USER2> French from France here. Thanks, I was starting to think it was okay for Canadians to translate it like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify, pricing is as follows:

$10 - 50 words or less

$50 - 200 words or less

$100 - 400 words or less

<comment><USER4> This is quite a bit more expensive than agencies I've worked with in the past, and those typically involve a translator + proofreader who are at least somewhat knowledgeable about the topic being translated, so the quality is pretty good.

I suppose some people will be happy to pay a premium for a quick turn around, but personally I care about the quality much more than the delivery time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback, we'll take it into consideration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We've removed the example for now. If you do decide to try us out, and are unsatisfied with your translation, we'll retranslate it.

<comment><USER4> Your customers need to be able to _trust_ the quality of the translation because almost by definition they are not in a position to judge it themselves.

<comment><USER5> THIS. So much _this_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> bit pricey

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. If I wanted to translate my webpage in a bunch of languages, would you do that too?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you gave us a webpage in one of our supported languages (currently only French and English, more soon) we would.</comment></comment>


Stephen Watt keynote at Infiltratecon 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://www.infiltratecon.com/watt.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Security Professional with hacker buddies who did TJ Maxx hack talking at length frankly about his prosecution under conspiracy charges by same prosecutor who prosecuted Aaron Swartz.

See [http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/17/convicted-hacker-steven- wa...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/17/convicted-hacker-steven-watt-on- aaron-swarzt-its-just-not-justice/) etc</comment>


Solving the Voting Problem: Recommendation-Consumption Impedance Mismatch - <AUTHOR> http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/10/recommendationc.php

<comment><USER2> Well, there goes my startup idea. Good thing they're free ;).

<comment><AUTHOR> I think a lot of people have been thinking about this problem for the last year or two at least, so you're not alone! I think the key is still having a good team (I haven't been able to hookup with cofounders) and adapting the idea to the market. The idea, really, is just a place to start.</comment></comment>


World War II Battle When Americans and Germans Fought Together (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/12/world-war-ii-s-strangest-battle-when-americans-and-germans-fought-together.html

<comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_for_Castle...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_for_Castle_Itter&dir=prev&action=history)

First edit:

13:06, 9 July 2013 Khanate General (talk | contribs) . . (704 bytes) (+704) . . (←Created page with 'The '''Battle for Castle Itter''' was a battle fought in the final months of World War II, days after the death of Adolf Hitler. The 23rd Tank Battalion ...')

2008 reference: [http://www.historynet.com/the-battle-for-castle- itter.htm](http://www.historynet.com/the-battle-for-castle-itter.htm)

Not to take away from the story, but "first time ever" hyperbole is trivially verified (or invalidated) online.

<comment><USER3> I think it's even pretty fair to say that if Americans fought there, then this story has been told _thousands_ of times in VFWs and American Legions over the past 70 years.

<comment><USER4> Actually the insistence that this is the only telling of the story and how often the author says "the only thing more unbelievable is how true it is!" makes me question the accuracy of the book. I know it's an advertisement dressed up as a news piece, but it's just very suspicious-sounding.

<comment><USER5> I think you're confusing the author of the book with the author of this article. The whole "hasn't been told before" hyperbole is only found within the article. The book doesn't make that claim at all.

<comment><USER4> I understand it is two different authors. The author of the article makes the claims that make the book sound suspicious. Billy Mays didn't make OxyClean, but his advertisements didn't make me think highly of the product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The really strange battle is the battle of Athens in 46.

[http://www.constitution.org/mil/tn/batathen.htm](http://www.constitution.org/mil/tn/batathen.htm)

Returning GI's disgusted at local corruption broke into the national guard armory and enforced fair elections after a fire fight with the local corrupt sheriff.

<comment><USER7> There are no shortages of strange battles. The city wide brawl in Wellington, New Zealand, when American troops ended up in fatal brawls with locals over the refusal to enforce US ideas on segregation, for example.

<comment><USER8> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Manners_Street](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Manners_Street)

An interesting read, but it does appear that no one died in the incident.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of my favorite, end-of-WWII stories is that of Operation Zitronella [1].

Several German troops stationed at a weather station on Spitsbergen weren't able to formally surrender until they were picked up by Norwegians in September 1945, four months after the end of hostilities.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Zitronella](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Zitronella)

<comment><USER10> Have you heard of Hiroo Onoda? He was stationed (or "hidden") as a guerrilla fighter on a small Philippine island, and his superiors told him to keep fighting until he received further orders. These orders never came so he kept fighting until 1974!

He dismissed all leaflets, newspapers etc. that were dropped for him as propaganda, since they showed Americans living with Japanese side by side, and if Japan had lost, all Japanese would have obviously died fighting. He published interesting, but not that truthfully ghost-written memoirs (he does not mention that he killed several islanders).

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

<comment><USER11> [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jānis_Pīnups](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jānis_Pīnups)

This guy came out of hiding 50 years after the end of WW2

<comment><USER12> There's also "nazi Kurt", who hid above the arctic circle until 1981: [http://www.strangehistory.net/2010/06/27/nazi-kurt- captured-...](http://www.strangehistory.net/2010/06/27/nazi-kurt-captured-in- arctic-circle-in-1981/).

(Mentioning this for the similarity to operation Zitronella and because StrangeHistory.net is an interesting site)

<comment><USER9> Yes. This was the only German land operation on the North American continent during WWII

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "The most extraordinary things about Stephen Harding's The Last Battle, a truly incredible tale of World War II, are that it hasn't been told before in English"

I'm quite sure I've read this story before, in English.

<comment><USER14> Especially since this article is from May 2013.

<comment><USER15> Missed that earlier, added it now. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sounds like an interesting book, so I checked the Amazon page and all of the two-star reviews follow a similar theme:

" _In the hands of a writer with a flair for the dramatic and the ability to turn a phrase such as Cornelius Ryan [Wrote The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far] [...], W.E.B. Griffin, Tom Clancy, or Donald Burgett [Wrote "first-hand accounts" and is one of the subjects of Band of Brothers], this book would have been a compelling read. However, Stephen Harding managed to turn [this] into a dull trudge of boredom._"

They seem to have difficulty distinguishing fiction (and popular non-fiction) from history, to be complaining that this is in fact a history book.

<comment><USER17> Longest and bridge are not fiction, I don't think band of brothers is either.

<comment><USER16> It isn't, really. _Band of Brothers_ is just a weird coincidence.

On the other hand, I don't know if _The Longest Day_ and _A Bridge Too Far_ are extensively footnoted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> bjelkeman-again Some redirect/ad on this page sends me to spam/porn sites on an iPad.

<comment><USER18> Who would host a porn site on an iPad?

<comment><USER19> Noone likes a grammar Nazi. Especially an SS Grammar Nazi.

<comment><USER3> > SS Grammar Nazi

Worst. Cruise. Ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Another strange alliance - when the Finns fought "with" the Germans against the Russian. I'm using quotes because they weren't allies, really, but were against a common enemy at the time. Some discussion of that in "The Winter War" \- [http://www.amazon.com/Winter-War-The- Finland-1939-1940/dp/08...](http://www.amazon.com/Winter-War-The- Finland-1939-1940/dp/0811724336).

<comment><USER21> Also the closest I believe we've come to having two democracies openingly fighting each other (USA v. Finland)

<comment><USER22> Depending on how you define 'Democracy', you could count the war of 1812 (USA vs UK) as two democracies openly fighting. Both had elected legislatures & executives at the time (although both with a heavily restricted franchise)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow this really reads like a Hollywood scenario. If I would have watched this on TV I would have thought it was not realistic at all.

<comment><USER24> Truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense

\-- Mark Twain

<comment><USER25> One day, I'll say something that brilliant... And everyone will think I'm quoting Mark Twain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think my _World of Tanks_ addiction has made me compulsively identify all armoured vehicles when I see them - anyone know what the tiny light tanks are in the picture at the top of the article?

NB The armoured cars look like Steyr ADGZs.

<comment><USER27> Italian CV-35's ?

<comment><USER26> Thanks - so that picture is unlikely to be from the end of the war!

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L3/35](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L3/35)

NB In my hunt through German armoured vehicles of the period I found this beastie:

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

A remote controlled tracked bomb!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Meh, going by the quality of films based on real life stories as of late, I really wouldn't care to see a movie based on this, it would probably butcher the characters.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think I read about this in Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (written ~50 years ago) .... so hardly a first telling of the story.

</comment><comment><USER30> 05.12.13, do we really need year old news?

<comment><USER31> Your comment seems strange in light of the fact that the linked article discusses a historic event from 70 years ago. "News" is hardly the right word...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> please God no Hollywood movie of this episode...</comment>


Ask HN: Can Dropbox be used as an email host and is it a good idea? - <AUTHOR>

And this, in the context of <i>Dropbox having Mailbox app</i> now, is noteworthy. Don't you think? <comment><USER2> Are you asking because someone told you it could be? Dropbox can share a static, html website, not actually be a computing machine that could run software apps like an email server.

If your question comes from a certain idea about how you might possibly do that, by all means reply and I'll see if I can explain further.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was just a subjective question. I thought Dropbox could just extend this functionality.

Or maybe 3rd party apps/services could felicitate this just the way e.g. [http://calepin.co](http://calepin.co) does for static site generation. Use Dropbox for storage of emails. And naturally you'll have a local email archive on all your connected devices.

So, seems there's nth like this as Dropbox doesn't let us to do the compounding, as you also pointed out.</comment></comment>