Wikileaks moves to Amazon's cloud to evade massive DDoS - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/11/wikileaks-moves-to-amazons-cloud-to-evade-massive-ddos.ars <comment><USER2> Doesn't hosting with Amazon create a money trail? If the US were to prosecute them, they could subpoena Amazon, and find more members of the organization.

Assange is knowingly putting himself in the line of fire, but isn't there a goal to make sure other members of wikileaks stay anonymous?

<comment><USER3> Why should other members be anonymous? Isn't that hypocritical since Wikileaks is all about transparency?

<comment><USER4> It's also all about protecting whistle blowers. They've put a lot of thought into ways of covering the tracks of people who come to them to keep them safe - I don't think it's hypocritical. They're concerned for their safety, not their politics.

<comment><USER5> Ironically, Clinton expressed similar concerns about Wikileaks exposing people who speak privately to diplomats.

<comment><USER6> They asked the US gov to redact any sensitive sources. They didn't get any help.

[http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/20...](http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/20/wikileaks)

<comment><USER5> Possibly because that would tell Wikileaks what they thought was sensitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Moving to an elastic infrastructure in the face of an attack that aims to increase usage, seems like a recipe for a huge bill.. The wikileaks guys are obviously uber smart and have thought through the pros and cons of the move, but it seems an unusual choice..

<comment><USER8> As it's mostly static content, they're likely just using Amazon as a CDN, which isn't very expensive at all.

Makes perfect sense actually. It'll be interesting to see what Amazon has to say about this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not familiar with Amazon's content policies, but I couldn't see Amazon wanting this stuff hosted on their servers.

<comment><USER10> It would depend on how Wikileaks designed their AWS infrastructure. Amazon's policies are specific to the territory in which they operate. They obey the local laws for the data they will store on their hardware and will only comply with local laws. For example, if you provision your services in the EU-Ireland region, it is governed by the laws of the EU, not by the United States. That being said, I don't know the specifics of the laws with regards to each of the different AWS regions.

<comment><USER11> > the laws of the EU

We are, sadly, not quite that far along yet.

<comment><USER12> Sadly? The things that come out of the EU are at least as stupid as local laws, especially wrt technology.

<comment><USER11> The US has a massive commercial advantage because its laws, while not _better_ per se, are at least uniform.

Also, European national states are mostly too weak to have any influence in the global problems of the 21st century. A smaller share of a larger (power) pie would still be an improvement.

<comment><USER12> Economically, it would be an improvement. But look at laws like the data retention law that forces ISPs to keep access logs on all their users. The EU is also highly undemocratic, or at least very indirectly democratic.

First install a working democratic process, then get more power. Not the other way around "lets give them insane power and then they will surely be nice to us and give us a good democratic process" as many people seem to want.

Also I'm not even sure that if there were a good democracy that I'd want to give e.g. Italians the power to vote on what happens to me, given that they elect and keep electing Berlusconi.

<comment><USER11> Meh, the Netherlands went further than the EU requirements on data retention. Yes, that's stupid, but...

And yes, creating a "EU government" is almost certainly even harder than it appears. The current system seems to combine the speed of a multi-country democracy with the legitimacy of a multi-country oligarchy (of elected ministers, but still).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am curious who wants to attack Wikileaks and for what purpose. I think it's unlikely this is the USG because of the sheer pointlessness of it, plus the fallout that would occur if it were discovered. The likeliest major player I can think of is China, but I'm not sure I have a reason for that belief other than that they are the bogeyman du jour. An alternate possibility is that this is just some cracker flexing his muscle, or showing a potential client what he can do.

<comment><USER14> Shear pointlessness has not been preventing thr USG from doing much of anything in the past decade or so.

Or did you miss the past few years of security theatre and unwinnable wars?

<comment><USER13> Are you actually trying to argue with me, or just taking a potshot at the USG? If the latter, please use someone else's comment as a platform and not mine. If the former . . .

Sheer pointlessness is meant to encompass several reasons I believe the USG is an unlikely culprit.

First, there's the risk of significant consequences if the USG's involvement comes to public light. There's another election in two years, so even the PR damage could cost them. Then there's the matter of this kind of action being illegal. Maybe no prosecution would occur, but maybe it would.

Second, unlike your security theater example, there is literally zero chance of this doing any good for anyone. Every person who is even the least bit interested could obtain the documents with only minor effort considering how widely they have been distributed. Major news organizations have already collated them for the masses.

On the other hand, "security theater" and "unwinnable wars" are only pointless in a debatable sense. There are obviously a large number of people who believe that airport security measures are having some positive effect. Similarly, by some metrics (not mine), the war in Iraq has been successful and the war in Afghanistan is heading in that direction too. I don't doubt in hindsight that they will prove to be mistakes, but that is not the same as their having a absolutely known "pointlessness" value now. So I think that objection of yours is incorrect as well.

Also, you've only pointed out two pointless things the USG has done in the past decade. That's not the same as proving that the USG is equally inclined to do pointless things as pointful ones. In fact, it may be that the USG discards pointless courses of action at a much higher rate than pointful ones, but that certain pointless actions have been enacted nonetheless. In this case, it would still be predictive of the US not being involved that the Wikileaks DOS is pointless.

Finally, I'm not aware that it is the USG's standard infosec policy to maintain batteries of compromised civilian computers with which to perform cyber warfare. Perhaps it is, but that would be quite a discovery in and of itself.

So, there are a lot of problems with your line of reasoning. I could be wrong, but I think the odds are something like 80-20 that I am right and this is not the USG's doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It looks like it's hosted in the US (ec2-184-72-37-90.us- west-1.compute.amazonaws.com). Also, the front end proxy is doing some heavy filtering to weed out the cheap hit-and-run nodes participating in the DDoS but still accepts legitimate browser-based requests (persistent). Notice how a Reset (R) is sent right away on the first try:

08:57:41.211436 IP managed.unixy.net.49467 > ec2-184-72-37-90.us- west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http: S 1398247905:1398247905(0) win 5840 <mss 1460,sackOK,timestamp 2031832550 0,nop,wscale 7>

08:57:41.264403 IP ec2-184-72-37-90.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http > managed.unixy.net.49467: S 1288073904:1288073904(0) ack 1398247906 win 16384 <mss 1460>

08:57:41.264424 IP managed.unixy.net.49467 > ec2-184-72-37-90.us- west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http: . ack 1 win 5840

08:57:41.318642 IP ec2-184-72-37-90.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http > managed.unixy.net.49467: R 1288073905:1288073905(0) win 16384

The Reset packet sent from the EC2 node to the initiating node is a probe to identified non-existent nodes (spoofed). Notice in the above handshake that the initiating node didn't send a packet-response to the Reset. On the second consecutive attempt though all appears well (because the EC2 node added the initiating node to the ACL).

08:57:42.961708 IP managed.unixy.net.49468 > ec2-184-72-37-90.us- west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http: S 1394481180:1394481180(0) win 5840 <mss 1460,sackOK,timestamp 2031832989 0,nop,wscale 7>

08:57:43.016547 IP ec2-184-72-37-90.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http > managed.unixy.net.49468: S 1406181195:1406181195(0) ack 1394481181 win 5792 <mss 1460,sackOK,timestamp 26523835 2031832989,nop,wscale 3> 08:57:43.016564 IP managed.unixy.net.49468 > ec2-184-72-37-90.us- west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http: . ack 1 win 46 <nop,nop,timestamp 2031833002 26523835>

08:57:51.100914 IP managed.unixy.net.49468 > ec2-184-72-37-90.us- west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http: P 1:18(17) ack 1 win 46 <nop,nop,timestamp 2031835023 26523835>

08:57:51.180674 IP ec2-184-72-37-90.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http > managed.unixy.net.49468: . ack 18 win 724 <nop,nop,timestamp 26525876 2031835023> 08:57:56.206546 IP managed.unixy.net.49468 > ec2-184-72-37-90.us- west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http: P 18:39(21) ack 1 win 46 <nop,nop,timestamp 2031836300 26525876>

08:57:56.261630 IP ec2-184-72-37-90.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http > managed.unixy.net.49468: . ack 39 win 724 <nop,nop,timestamp 26527146 2031836300>

08:57:56.678942 IP managed.unixy.net.49468 > ec2-184-72-37-90.us- west-1.compute.amazonaws.com.http: P 39:41(2) ack 1 win 46 <nop,nop,timestamp 2031836418 26527146>

But I wonder just how long they'll be able to evade the attack.

Regards

<comment><USER16> I guess this explains why netcraft keeps showing their website as mostly down worldwide for the last day or so when it's actually performing extremely well.

Question: why does the RST packet identify non-existent nodes? Doesn't TCP sequence prevent a blind continuation of a http request? Is this just one type of syn flood protection?

<comment><USER15> Most likely, the initial Netcraft attempt to connect is met with a RST. Subsequent attempts are also met with the same RST. This is because the attempts are spaced out in time enough for the original ACL, permitting access, to be flushed.

According to the RFC, the RST does not get an ACK if the initiating node is "legitimate." So the "silence" or non-ACK is a good sign, which results in the initiating node being added to the ACL. You don't want plain TCP handling this because of half-open TCP handshakes which can exhaust kernel data structures (memory) and CPU (from having the kernel sift through a large data set).

Regards

<comment><USER16> Thank you for your insight. A bogus IP - one that no one is listening on - would also not ACK a RST, right?

Doing a little googling this process seems to detect an attack (from a valid ip) that has been programmed to ignore RST - presumably because some intermediate ISPs (like tier1 borders) will detect a DDOS and forge a RST to attempt to mitigate them. Much like the firewall configs that circulated to defeat sandvine RST throttling of bittorrent.

<comment><USER15> A bogus host will obviously not respond to the RST but the last router-hop that receives the RST will (per RFC/protocol specs). The response is destination unreachable via ICMP. The ICMP unreachable packet is cheap (non- persistent) and requires no up-keep from the last hop to the bogus host. Most importantly, the ICMP unreachable packet requires no upkeep from the filtering node in EC2.

Regards

<comment><USER16> thanks much!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _ALL_ the more reason why Assange should stop prancing around like a f __*ing queen and just release the entire trove in one big torrent. By dishing out the documents slowly (their own FAQ claims they'll release the docs over a period of months to maximize exposure), he's setting himself up for such attacks.

They can always release their analysis and interesting findings later.

</comment><comment><USER18> I know DDOS is a difficult problem to solve, but I think using the cloud to out-scale your attacker doesn't solve the problem, it just increases the cost of it. The obvious solution for the bad guys (not gonna call them hackers, can't call them crackers can I?) is to use the cloud too. Generating an HTTP request is even cheaper than serving static content on a CDN.

<comment><USER19> > The obvious solution for the bad guys (not gonna call them hackers, can't > call them crackers can I?) is to use the cloud too.

I'd say a botnet already qualifies as "the cloud". Why pay Amazon when you can get a million desktop machines doing it for free?

<comment><USER20> At college, we were already talking about "the cloud" in 1990. That's a long time before AWS was even a twinkle in anyone's eye.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unfortunately, once the big guns of the media and those opportunists in government find out, Amazon will be forced to make a statement one way or another. Do they support this kind of thing or not? I can even imagine calls for a boycott from some sectors - not a great thing for Amazon at this time of year.

<comment><USER22> Everything that embiggens this story is good news for Wikileaks. And Amazon taking a stance would be something big.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> According to this, Wikileaks is no longer available on Amazon either:

[http://online.wsj.com/article/AP90b4520b2a9b455ea6e9d8d66fae...](http://online.wsj.com/article/AP90b4520b2a9b455ea6e9d8d66fae1fec.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> I think after some days, WikiLeaks will publish documents using torrents. That way they can avoid (at least) DDoS.

<comment><USER11> They are already doing that. Not much good if people can't get to the .torrent file. (Yes, I know about DHT and that you can just mirror .torrent files. It's still inconvenient enough that most won't bother.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is very interesting. If Wikileaks does in fact become designated a terrorist organization by the US, then it seems Amazon will have to shut them down or run the risk of providing them "material aid".

The same would be true of any other cloud provider... are there any sizable cloud providers outside the US?

<comment><USER26> If Wikileaks is a terrorist, then so too is the New York Times, and any other media outlet that has conveyed the same information Wikileaks released.

<comment><USER19> Bingo. Bob Woodward publishes leaks like this all the time in his books. Some of it is TS stuff, too, IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why don't they invest some of the donation money in P2P DNS and start hosting the site as torrent ? Many people would be happy to seed.

<comment><USER28> Because Bittorrent-powered P2P DNS is a weird buzzword, not yet really existing piece of technology. And, I'd guess, WikiLeaks probably want to publish (primarily) on the mass-accessible Internet, not at some obscure place where nobody except for crypto-geeks could access it.

They could try popularizing Freenet (which is already existing and is a fairly stable technology), but, again, I'd guess they probably have their hands full of other tasks already.

WikiLeaks hosts torrents. For example see the link "Click here to download full site in single archive" at the bottom of <http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/>. And, I believe, the content is already copied to (and being discussed at) Freenet and other similiar P2P networks.

<comment><USER29> If they used Freenet I can imagine the mainstream media going straight for the fact that Freenet is full of child porn. I don't think they need any more of that kind of publicity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> <http://geo.flagfox.net/?search=wikileaks.org>

</comment><comment><USER31> <http://e.businessinsider.com/nbl.2e8/TPa_4qqdbcEdB9HKA8022>

there it is - i called it! <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1957189>

</comment><comment><USER31> on ec2? 10 bucks that site is gone by end of this week.

<comment><USER31> and i was right! ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Shouldn't we really be trying to get to the bottom of who is behind this DDoS attack? If Wikileaks is said to be a terrorist organisation, isn't this an act of war?

<comment><USER33> I don't understand the logic - why would attacking a terrorist organization be an act of war?

<comment><USER32> Is it not?</comment></comment></comment>


Environmentalist Says Only Nuclear Power Can Save Us Now - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9AGx2q_F_0 <comment><USER2> In the video Shellenberger says that he's not against a carbon tax, but that it's too unpopular and therefore not realistic.

Weird that he doesn't realize that the same applies to nuclear. Probably even more so.

<comment><USER3> I wonder what the Venn diagram looks like of people for/opposed to each of those two things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Without Nuclear power the US is going to move backwards on greenhouse gas goals. Right now nuclear makes up 18% of US electricity generation and renewables make up 6%. Almost all those nuclear plants are scheduled for decommission in the next 15 years. So even if we quadruple renewable energy generation greenhouse gas emissions won't go down.

</comment><comment><USER5> According to a professor a few years ago, nuclear power has a maintainability problem: a reactor is only good for x (50?) years, so you have to rebuild them perpetually. Since the construction and cleanup are very complex, it isn't feasible to power the earth with nuclear. Only solar seems able to scale enough, iirc

<comment><USER6> Huh, can anyone confirm the 50 year number?

I think powering the earth via nuclear reactors in perpetuity has problems, but what we really need is a power source for the next century or so. Hopefully by then, we'll have more efficient solar panels, or fission, or something else.

What we desperately need is _time_.

<comment><USER7> 50 years is actually pretty good. Most coal and natural gas power generating facilities last about 30 years. Solar plants are closer to 20 years.

Nuclear's problem in the US isn't so much the lifetime of a plant as the difficulty in constructing new plants and consignment of waste. There isn't much political will in either major US political party to allow these problems to be solved. As a result getting a new plant approved and constructed within a reasonable budget is close to impossible. Oil/natural gas companies hate them and environmentalist organizations hate them.

The only real support nuclear has is the military because it's so useful for ships and submarines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's not clear from their recent stories on the topic whether Reason actually would admit to believing in Climate Change.

They certainly don't recommend doing anything crazy, like a Republican backed carbon tax. And they're very sure that oil companies shouldn't be held financially responsible.

But apparently nuclear is the solution to this non-problem?

That kind of suggests to me that they know nuclear isn't the solution.

[https://reason.com/tag/climate-change/](https://reason.com/tag/climate- change/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Just finished watching Chernobyl, all I can say is that if what some environmentalists say about nuclear being the only option is true, we are completely screwed.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Some environmentalists".

Others, not so much.</comment>


PyCon 2011: Disqus: Serving 400 million people with Python  - <AUTHOR> http://pycon.blip.tv/file/4880330/

<comment><USER2> Slides are on slideshare - [http://www.slideshare.net/zeeg/pycon-2011-scaling- disqus-725...](http://www.slideshare.net/zeeg/pycon-2011-scaling- disqus-7251315)

It's been said numerous times before, but it can't be stressed enough - Disqus' lightweight stack, and by-the-book development and deployment methods never cease to amaze.

Ladies and gentlemen, _this_ is how it's done.

<comment><USER3> slideshare really need to drop the flash and do a html+js implementation

it is just an image slideshow, afterall

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Disqus talked last year at DjangoCon also.

Slides: <http://www.slideshare.net/zeeg/djangocon-2010-scaling-disqus>

Video: <http://djangocon.blip.tv/file/4135225/>

And the HN discussion item: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2249526>

</comment><comment><USER5> I recently worked on a system where the CI (pre-commit in teamcity) took half an hour with occasional "random" failures. It's a nightmare. I can only imagine how hard on them it is to be in this situation and still release 3-7 times a day.

</comment><comment><USER6> Worth having in your Python Webapps Toolkit: uWSGI, Celery, Graphite...although not in this video but tornado & fabric seem great tools also. I'm discovering new python packages everyday. It's just awesome. :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Full details (link to slides as well) can be see on Lanyrd: <http://lanyrd.com/2011/pycon-us/sckrw/#link-chfc>

</comment><comment><USER8> Before deciding a framework., Check weather it is active or not <http://wiki.python.org/moin/WebFrameworks></comment>


Tips for Intermediate Git Users - <AUTHOR> https://www.andyjeffries.co.uk/25-tips-for-intermediate-git-users/ <comment><USER2> This looks like a set of notes that are mostly correct but encourage bad practices. I think it's because they author doesn't understand git and doesn't know what they are doing.

>A lightweight tag is simply a named pointer to a commit. You can always change it to point to another commit.

Umm, you can do this, but in general you should never rename tags. Occasionally a developer will tell me the tag they pushed is incorrect and I'll agree to remove it only if they promise not to re-create it. If you read the man page on git-tag it's clear why you should avoid doing this.

>A lovely little tip – don't forget that branch names aren't limited to a-z and 0-9. It can be quite nice to use / and . in names for fake namespacing

If you use '/' is branch names you can create path conflicts. I've seen it happen and it took me a day to debug and figure out. There is some code checking for path conflicts in the git source but it's not invoked via all code paths that create branches. I recommend against using slashes in branch names unless you know what you are doing.

<comment><USER3> >If you use '/' is branch names you can create path conflicts. I've seen it happen and it took me a day to debug and figure out. There is some code checking for path conflicts in the git source but it's not invoked via all code paths that create branches. I recommend against using slashes in branch names unless you know what you are doing.

Can you elaborate on this? What you said doesn't make much sense. If having a slash in the branch name creates path conflicts, that means slashes are treated specially, right? How exactly does someone 'know what they are doing' to be able to use them?

<comment><USER2> Yeah. For example:

      $ git branch fireos
      $ git branch fireos/feature-branch
      error: unable to create directory for .git/refs/heads/fireos/feature-branch
      fatal: Failed to lock ref for update: No such file or directory

This happens because creating 'fireos' branch stores the sha1 in file .git/refs/heads/fireos. But if you later want to create branch 'fireos/feature-branch', git needs to store the sha1 in .git/refs/heads/fireos/feature-branch. This is impossible because 'fireos' is a file and cannot be a directory. Path conflict.

<comment><USER4> It gets even uglier when you don't discover those conflicts until a pull or push.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The master tip: have a detailed written policy on git usage, on what goes into which branch, on git commit message format, and make really, really sure everyone understands it before they start anything.

No tips will help if the history is crap.

<comment><USER6> Is there some kind of git plug in/linter that will check for commit style before accepting a commit? Basically, linting the commit messages.

<comment><USER7> At my current gig we use a set of git hooks, and the pre-commit hook enforces the git comment style, which performs integration with bugtracking/timetracking. We wrote our own and it's just a couple of regexes tied to a couple of warnings.

Look in any git project's .git/hooks/ directory for some sample scripts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I replied to an individual comment, but I would just like to comment generally too - this article is 4 years old and if I wrote the article now there would have been more advanced information.

At the time beginners in git weren't doing much of this stuff, so they were tips for people who had used git daily, but this stuff wasn't common knowledge being done by all developers.

If anyone has anything they'd like to see in an advanced article, let me know and maybe I'll consider writing a "Tips for becoming an Advanced Git User" :-)

</comment><comment><USER9> Just to add some value to this post: [http://ndpsoftware.com/git- cheatsheet.html](http://ndpsoftware.com/git-cheatsheet.html) This is a tremendous help for those folks who have not yet reached intermediate level.

<comment><USER10> Thanks! I'm intermediate in some parts of git and not on others, but since I'm a visual learner this layout really helps me see how the different commands relate to each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It looks like this is a list to get to you intermediate level in git, as opposed to tips for already intermediate git users .

I would have liked to see some points about git-bisect, hooks, etc.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. I was expecting more substance in the hooks department, diffs, or other things off the beaten path. This just seems like a list of the basic git commands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find this hardly informative. Those users who consider themselves intermediate already know all this stuff. When I clicked the link I thought I will see about interactive rebasing, advanced stashing and stuff like that. There are other things which are already mentioned by others but the tag handling advice is horrible. Tags are meant to be immutable milestones. Never change them and please don't encourage people to do so.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've found in practice that using "stash" is a very effective way to ensure you'll spend lots of time in the future looking for a lost branch. I don't like stash anymore.

I like the idea of aliasing the command unstage, but once "reset HEAD" is in the muscle memory its kinda stuck.

Is git-flow still cool? Or is it so popular its just assumed to be in use as a standard, thus well beneath the level of an "intermediate" users guide? If you don't use "the" git flow repo, at least as a branch naming strategy and overall usage strategy it's worked pretty well for me.

</comment><comment><USER14> These aliases (from ~/.gitconfig) proved to be invaluable countless times, I hope someone will find them useful:

        [alias]
            logo = log --oneline --graph --all --decorate
    	logg = log --graph --all --decorate
    	logt = log --date-order --graph --tags --simplify-by-decoration --pretty=format:'%ai %h %C(Yellow)%d%Creset'
    	ignored = ls-files --others -i --exclude-standard

Explanation:

        logo, logg - improved logs
        logt - log just tagged commits
        ignored - lists ignored files

</comment><comment><USER15> Am I the only guy who would rather focus on his code?

These days I stash my source in zip files.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here is a more useful tip:

[http://pastebin.com/RP9ZdZY5](http://pastebin.com/RP9ZdZY5)

<comment><USER17> That's nothing but aliases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> A tip for intermediate and professional users to avoid headaches: [http://subversion.apache.org/](http://subversion.apache.org/)

<comment><USER19> I am in a cafe and was sipping my coffee when I read your comment. Now people are looking at me laugh my ass off, with half the coffee spilled on the keyboard.</comment></comment>


Scaling Twitter Applications Without Blinking - Apigee & Heroku - <AUTHOR> http://apigee.com/blog_detail/heroku_and_scaling_twitter_applications_without_blinking

<comment><USER2> _"by accessing the Twitter API through Apigee, you can receive significantly improved Twitter API rate limits"_

So the selling point of this service is that they have used their leverage to get "better" access to Twitter APIs than a non-Apigee developer? Smells fishy...

</comment><comment><USER3> super cool.....</comment>


Show HN: Voice bots for learning to *speak* a language - <AUTHOR> https://www.magiclingua.com <comment><AUTHOR> I wasted too much time tapping in fun apps and still couldn't speak. That's why I built a voice bot that teaches me conversations. Curious to hear your feedback, let me know!</comment>


Show HN: Plants Map - <AUTHOR> http://plantsmap.com

<comment><USER2> Awesome!

I was working on a similar concept and then put it on the side burner. Had some serious incubator support but set it aside due to circumstances. Would be interested in sharing thoughts if you're open to it. Feel free to drop me an email: me[at]kartikkumar.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe include links to the example organisation and a demo garden profile on the home page?

Then on the garden page, I guess I was expecting to see a map rather than just a list?

[http://www.plantsmap.com/garden/165/cloudy-way-garden- va](http://www.plantsmap.com/garden/165/cloudy-way-garden-va)

Is the map hidden for privacy reasons?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, we want it there too. We're moving to ArcGIS and just haven't finished adding it yet. It's very near the top of the to-do list!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's plants! On a map! (Only kidding, it looks clean and nice, including on mobile.)

I haven't played with this much, but I'll bet there's a way to have a smoother zoom transition for your map overlay(s).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Yes, we are rebuilding the site and in the next version maps use ArcGIS.

<comment><USER5> Interesting, I know that it exists, so someone must be using it, but I actually don't recall ever seeing published web projects using ArcGIS. Why did you choose to use it?

Did you evaluate postgis + leaflet/mapbox?

edit: just looked into the subscription plan with ArcGIS and it seems somewhat expensive (and opaque - you are buying "service credits" which are consumed by how much you use their services - e.g. how many tiles are served, how much data is stored, etc. all use different rates of "service credits".

<comment><AUTHOR> They support the Alliance for Public Gardens GIS nonprofit which ties into the ArcGIS platform. We are working with a lot of public gardens so it just made sense to go with the flow, plus they are pretty awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> have you seen fallingfruit.org? Seems like there'd be some way for yall to collaborate...

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of the businesses on that site would be perfect for Plants Map. We haven't launched business profiles yet but we are interviewing several this week to see what they want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> hey this is cool!</comment>


Your Bedroom Is Too Hot. What Is the Ideal Temperature for Sleep? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/12/sleep-cold/604111/ <comment><USER2> Summary: "So I will say this: 60 degrees [15,6 Celsius] is the correct temperature for winter sleep. Anything warmer is incorrect."

<comment><USER3> Sounds like bullshit. 15.6 degrees would just require better insulation to trap body heat, maybe even a sleeping bag level insulation. 18-20 degrees is where the lowest bound is for a regular blanket and some pyjamas.</comment></comment>


Google bans my events app for referencing Covid-19, or related terms - <AUTHOR> I'm an independent developer and in this thread I will show you the succession of events that lead to Google ban of my app.
In september 2019 I decided to start developing as a fulltime project an Android app about physical events in Spain.
At the end of February 2020 I launched the app.
March 14 2020 started the confinement in Spain. Weeks later I decided to pivot the app to include online events, movies and tv shows ranking of online streaming platforms.
This May 2020, I launched the update and reoriented the app as a Things to do app (Only available in Spain). So I used the following description of the app:
Title: "Tintodo - Things to do"
Short description: "The best things to do, online events and movies"
Full description:
"Are you thinking of things to do when bored? Or are you planning what to do tomorrow? With this app you can discover online events and movies from your favourite online platforms.
Find out online events in your quarantine like activities, meetups, cooking recipes, business and networking events. You can also filter the types of events and if they are free or paid events.
Thanks to this app, you will never be bored tonight. You have a ranking of the best movies in all online movie platforms, which will allow you to enjoy this confinement and is one of the main sources of things to do in your free time.
Note: We don't play movies in this app. This app allows you to browse movies in your favorite platform, some of the movies are free, some not, the owners of those platforms are the ones who own the rights of the movies."
17 May 2020, Google suspended my app for using keywords related to COVID-19.
This is my case, but in a near future, how I can advertise my users or future users that my app behaviour is different due to COVID, I have no chance. 8 months developing that lead to a suspension for using covid words, at least, It's not 9 years like the Podcast Addict app. <comment><USER3> Slightly different topic, but Google also suspended our company's adwords account, I believe for using keywords related to COVID-19.

The business is an American manufacturer that added capacity to manufacture PPE to make up for the lack of Chinese supply. Since we were supplying direct to the market, the prices of the PPE were in-market from before COVID times, or cheaper. We weren't out to make a killing, just to fill up some manufacturing time and help folks out. We had the equipment, the people, the facility.

However, we didn't have a great way to reach people who needed it - <USER2> was not our normal industry - so we decided to put it up on Adwords.

Within 24 hours, the account was suspended. We appealed it (thinking it must have been a mistake), and a month later, they told us they reviewed it and maintained the suspension. We told them we were only promoting PPE to help people in health care find supply and they didn't care. We've never had suspension issues before.

The whole experience left a very negative taste for Google. With their extreme dominance in market share for advertising, they no longer need to cater to customers' needs. (Maybe they care if you're a multimillion dollar customer, but certainly not if you're an everyday SME manfuacturer.) And there's not a lot of alternatives to turn to for that type of advertising. There was no recourse, no discussion, no reasoning. Just the Google blank wall.

We wound up manufacturing lots of it anyway to hospitals in need, but Google actively tried to stop distribution of American-made PPE during the pandemic.

<comment><USER4> > _" Google actively tried to stop distribution of American-made PPE during > the pandemic."_

This sounds like a great headline to shine some light on Google's banning practices. Some bad PR may help them reconsider their lack of customer service.

<comment><USER5> Great headline.

Shame there won't be any ads put on that article to pay any of the staff. Another one of the problems that comes from a near-monopoly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the most popular podcast apps, Podcast Addict, is dealing with this right now as well: [https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/05/18/podcast-addict- pull...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/05/18/podcast-addict-pulled-play- store-allegedly-violating-coronavirus-policy/)

[https://twitter.com/PodcastAddict/status/1261651512947691520](https://twitter.com/PodcastAddict/status/1261651512947691520)

<comment><USER7> HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23219427](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23219427)

<comment><USER8> Can someone remind me why there is an "app store" that is run by the phone OS maker? Aside from the anti-trust/monopoly type issue, should there be a more market healthy de-coupling between the place I buy my apps and the OS maker?

Monopolies are almost always bad for consumers.

I kind of chuckle when I think about how Microsoft had such a huge battle over IE being integrated into Windows, and now we sort of accept a situation 100x worse on our mobile phones without batting an eye.

<comment><USER9> The why is that there was a huge solution/market gap.

Finding software for Palm and Windows phones was often a trek through random forums and websites to download garbage that didn't work.

There needed to be a central registry before smartphones would be adopted by the average person, and the registry needed some quality assurance so that the average person would have a good experience.

Tucows wasn't going to cut it, and the only open model that worked at the time was linux distro package repositories, which would need a dozen features tacked on before it was usable, and only added packages glacially (that QA problem again.)

Smartphones wouldn't be a thing without centralized app stores, but I'm also in favor of allowing users to add third-party app stores, in the belief that 99% of people won't do it, and the 1% would understand the security risks.

<comment><USER10> > There needed to be a central registry before smartphones would be adopted by > the average person

This is revisionist. The iPod/iPhone originally didn't even have third party apps and it caught on anyway. Even now, 90% of the value of a smart phone is having a web browser in your pocket and most "apps" could have just as easily been web pages.

I think the only apps on my phone that can actually justify being apps instead of web pages are Signal (so it can store my conversations on my phone and not a third party service) and Firefox (because it's a web browser). Meanwhile the iOS app store won't allow Signal to be my SMS app and requires Firefox to use Apple's browser engine, so the utility it provides is strictly negative. I could have been just as happy to get Firefox from firefox.com and Signal from signal.org.

I still don't understand why Facebook is an app. Facebook is a web page. (I mean I do understand, it's because the app can hoover up more of your personal information, but why should _I_ want that?)

<comment><USER11> > 90% of the value of a smart phone is having a web browser in your pocket and > most "apps" could have just as easily been web pages.

They will be very soon. PWA is spreading like wildfire.

Now we just need to teach people to use secure browsers. (Not just ones people think are private.)

<comment><USER12> > PWA is spreading like wildfire.

Do you mean on Android? I've read they're a bit crippled on iOS

<comment><USER11> They're a bit crippled on both main platforms, but quite a bit less all the time. and the more average consumer learns about them, the less the friction will be of Menu->Add to homescreen (if you missed the prompt/dismissed it without reading).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've long wished there was a more encompassing alternative to F-Droid, which would include the same payment facilities as Google Play (paid app, in-app payments, subscriptions), allow proprietary apps (but still give FOSS as a search filter and show it as a prominent feature on the app page), and offer plenty of user curation features ala Steam and make filters optional (which would allow communities of independent reviewers to vet apps for child-safety, not being COVID-related, etc... and users to chose whether to restrict themselves to that selection or not).

It's quite amazing when you think about it, that two US companies have absolute power over deciding what 99% of people in the world can do with a device that many would describe as an extension of themselves.

<comment><USER14> Epic games tried to side step google:

> When Fortnite launched on mobile in 2018, Epic Games very notably > sidestepped the Google Play Store and pushed users to download the title > directly from their website, an effort made to avoid the substantial revenue > cuts that Google takes from in-app purchases of Play Store downloads. After > 18 months of harsh rhetoric regarding platform gatekeeping, Epic Games says > that Fortnite is now available for download on the Google Play Store, though > it will still be downloadable from fortnite.com moving forward.

> Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, > through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security > pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and > carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing > third party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play > Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store,: > an Epic Games spokesperson said in a statement. "Because of this, we've > launched Fortnite for Android on the Google Play Store."

<comment><USER15> And Epic conveniently forgot to mention the part about the security warning being well deserved when it came to Fortnite...

[https://www.cnet.com/news/fortnites-battle-royale-with- andro...](https://www.cnet.com/news/fortnites-battle-royale-with-android- security-problems-is-just-getting-started/)

<comment><USER16> Hmm... Well deserved, or a poor security choice for Android? The vulnerability appears to be that any app can overwrite an APK downloaded to external storage with a FileObserver. How is that not pathologically bad security on Android's part?

> Any app with the WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission can substitute the APK > immediately after the download is completed and the fingerprint is verified. > This is easily done using a FileObserver. The Fortnite Installer will > proceed to install the substituted (fake) APK.

<comment><USER17> Android offers app-local storage that no other app can write to. Epic simply failed to use it. The alternative would be no shared filesystem at all, but then people would complain about that as well since things like file browsers wouldn't function and sharing things like photos between apps becomes tricky.

Notably, all operating systems that allow programs to write to files have this "pathologically bad security". Download a .exe file on Windows and check its hash before installing and you have a TOCTOU bug where malware can sub the file after you've checked the hash.

Another alternative is to not permit any application to be installed unless it is signed by the OS manufacturer or some other finite trusted list of signers - but then we are right back at the app store model that pisses people off.

<comment><USER15> "sharing things like photos between apps becomes tricky."

That's a solved problem. Apps on iOS can request access to the photo library. Why Apple still doesn't allow write access to the music library is frustrating.

It would be nice if you had a universal "folder picker" where multiple apps could be given access to a user created folder on ios, admittedly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Apple rejected my update for having COVID-19 related keywords, I removed the keywords and submitted again and it was approved pronto. I wasn't trying to piggyback the pandemic or anything like that, I added the keyword because it's relevant to my app.

But as I understand it, Apple is not accepting any apps related to COVID-19 that don't come from an authority like a medical institution or a government body. In the face of the reality that there are many people ready to sell their mothers to slavery for profit(and even maybe likes or the LULs), I am O.K. with leaving the pandemic to the monopoly of institutions that can be held responsible for their actions.

You should try to re-submit your app without referencing to the pandemic in any way. Do not include any keywords that can get you flagged again. After all, the pandemic could have never happened. You are not entitled to profit from it, right?

Your description looks fairly innocent and I see how it is relevant to mention the quarantine and I wish you luck as your app might actually help people with it but it's not the end of the world not to use the word.

Unlike you, there are many people looking to rank high in the most popular keywords simply because these are popular keywords at the moment and it's likely that Google and Apple don't have a better way to separate bad apples from the good apples so they go for the crude but safe approach of banning them.

</comment><comment><USER19> Google is just such an awful, despicable company, that I've actually moved everything I can from their platform. It wasn't easy, I'd been a Gmail user for nearly 15 years. I'd rather pay Microsoft a hundred bucks a year than support them. That's how much I hate Google.

<comment><USER20> Agree.

I am using the German email provider mailbox.org They even report how often the government forces them to release info with a search warrant.

However, I have yet to find an email provider that mimics Gmail's tagging system (=> you can give n many tags to a single email and that email is only kept once on the server).

I often think that Google's "Don't do evil" motto is stretched way too often these days.

<comment><USER21> They removed "Do no evil" from their guidelines.

<comment><USER22> It's "Don't be evil" and it's still in the code of conduct:

      And remember… don't be evil, and if you see something that you think isn't right – speak up!

\- [https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of- conduct/](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/)

<comment><USER21> [^1] is the particular source I had in mind. It seems to no longer be a value but part of the signoff.

[^1]: [https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of- do...](https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil- from-1826153393)

<comment><USER23> The last sentence in your article:

'The updated version of Google's code of conduct still retains one reference to the company's unofficial motto—the final line of the document is still: "And remember… don't be evil, and if you see something that you think isn't right – speak up!"'

So they literally just moved it to the end of the code of conduct and did not remove it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have a strong love/hate relationship with all this App Store oligopoly. Love because often they are weeding out apps with security/privacy concerns. On the flip side, cases like this where you are 600 feet buried in red tape trying to talk some sense into someone at the company.

You can try to talk to someone at Google, but good luck with that. I think you're doing what's best now. Shine a spotlight so far up Google's hooter via publicity about your case that someone higher up catches your attention and remedies the situation.

<comment><USER25> I wonder why Apple can't treat apps the same way they treat charging cables? The Apple approved cables are usually a bit more money but I'm willing to pay a few extra bucks because Apple provides a valuable service to me - I know the cable is much less likely to fry my device. Likewise I'd be willing to pay an extra dollar or two for an app that jumped through all of Apple's hoops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> My brother made an app to help people remember to wash their hands when they get home. Simple. Free. No ads. Very minimal. Tracks location locally but doesn't collect it or make any network calls. Google denied him from publishing to the app store until he removed all references to Coronavirus or COVID-19.

I only downloaded it because he's my brother but I now realize how helpful it is and it's frustrating that potentially helpful apps are getting banned when they're not even attempting to profit.

</comment><comment><USER27> Yeah, google banned mine too ([https://medium.com/@lazherrera/that-one-time- google-made-it-...](https://medium.com/@lazherrera/that-one-time-google-made- it-more-difficult-to-communicate-about-covid-19-cf29c3751c69))

<comment><USER28> >Please remove all metadata and In-app mentions of COVID-19 or its related keywords such as stay home, social distancing, etc.

that is just crazy

As usual they are just using a hammer to crack a nut.

They can't pull this shit with youtube because creators have a direct line to draw attention to it. With developers they know it will go largely unreported

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Could you post your back-and-forth with google support?

In the worst case, I doubt it will resolve anything but it could give other developers an idea on how or how not to communicate with google. In the best case, you might restore your app on google and have a template for other developers on how to deal with this issue.

If you have send a request but didn't get a reply, please post those as well.

<comment><USER29> They banned my app which gives COVID-19 related information in Sign Language. No reply on my appeal yet.

<comment><USER14> You need to give me more than this. Like: I filed a complaint at date X, time Y, and wrote <this>. Today is date X1 and I haven't received a reply.

It might not matter for your case, but the next time I'm in a meeting I can use this to say "Hey, maybe it's not smart to go with those services from company Z"

<comment><USER30> I doubt this will be of much use to you but here are the emails I received from Google.

I appealed to Google on March 27th at 9:18AM. Received a response on March 30 at 5:31 AM telling me they received my appeal. Google denied my appeal on March 30 at 8:43 PM with no more information than the original. I responded to Google within minutes on March 30 at 9PM. I received an email back from Google on April 1 at 1:10 AM with a final "fuck you."

Here is the last email from Google:

\</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

Thanks again for contacting the Google Play team.

As much as I'd like to help, I'm not able to provide any more information or a better answer to your question. In our previous email, I made sure to include all the information available to me.

As stated in our previous email, we have confirmed your violation, we will not be able to reinstate your app if you don't provide proof that the app is from, commissioned OR supported/acknowledged by a government entity or public health institutions like WHO.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

And the original rejection from Google:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-

During review, we found that your app violates the Sensitive Events policy. Specifically, we don't allow apps that lack reasonable sensitivity towards or capitalize on a natural disaster, atrocity, conflict, death, or other tragic event.

You can read through the Sensitive Events page for more details.

For example, your app currently contains content towards a specific sensitive event, such as Coronavirus, without legitimate source of information.

If you are one of the following, please provide verifiable documentation for our review.

A government body/healthcare organization who developed this app. A developer commissioned to build this app by a government or an official health organization entity (examples include WHO, Red Cross, Hospital, etc). An app supported/acknowledged by a government or official health entity for use. Alternatively, please be advised that we will not be able to reinstate your application without the above documentation.

You may also want to read through the Protecting People From Misinformation paragraph in article Coronavirus: How we're helping on Google's blog.

If your developer credentials are still in good standing with Google Play and if your app allows for it, you can publish a new compliant version of the app by following these steps:

Make the necessary changes to your app to address the issue described above, if possible. Double check that your app complies with all other policies listed in the Developer Policy Center as additional enforcement could occur if there are further policy violations. Sign in to your Play Console and upload a new app using a new package name and a new app name. Thank you for your understanding. Please let me know if you have any other questions on Google Play policy.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Your app can't even mention the words Covid or they'll suspend the app and ding your account. Absolutely preposterous.

</comment><comment><USER31> That is rough. I had to read your text several times to find anything related to COVID, but I guess it is the "which will allow you to enjoy this confinement" part.

I'm no expert, but I guess you need to try and phrase it like it just the thing you need when you are home, and let the users figure out why they are home.

<comment><USER32> Could also be mentioning of "quarantine" directly. Might make sense to make your app description more generic to just being home, so that it will still be applicable after the COVID-19 pandemic has come to a conclusion.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, makes me wonder if apps for "stay at home" parents are getting hit too, despite the fact that the expression is decades old.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> They're doing the same on YouTube. Just mentioning covid will get a video demonetized regardless of content. It's as if Google's position is that we have to deny anything is out of the ordinary, like it isn't touching the lives of every person in the world.

</comment><comment><USER35> My app was suspended back in March just before Google updated their policy regarding to COVID. And my app was just being submitted for (my own) internal testing, didn't even made public.

One would've thought the change in policy back then was to allow Google to offer more clarity and fairness.

Seems things are going the other way.

Hacker News Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22462315](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22462315)

Updated Link to Blog Post: [https://flyingnobita.com/mobile/flutter/2020/03/02/coronavir...](https://flyingnobita.com/mobile/flutter/2020/03/02/coronavirus_suspended_my_first_google_play_app.html)

<comment><USER36> Note that, unlike OP's events app, your app was specifically about Covid/Coronavirus and serves no other purpose but to deliver Covid/Coronavirus information. I expect their judgement call is more plausible in your case than in OP's.

<comment><USER35> Agree that it's a different case than OP's.

Though I'm still puzzled at how Google allows so many YT feeds showing live COVID stats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > This is my case, but in a near future, how I can advertise my users or > future users that my app behaviour is different due to COVID, I have no > chance

Why do you want to advertise that to your future users?

From your description, your app appears to be an event finder that started out for only physical events, and you later expanded that to include online events.

The app itself does not appear to have anything to do with COVID. COVID was simply what personally motivated you to add online events, and so it's not clear to me that including COVID related words in the description will actually help anyone find or understand your app on the store.

</comment><comment><USER30> With this policy Google should ban Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, every news app, Reddit, etc, etc, etc.

Of course, they won't, because this policy is absurd and enforced unevenly.

</comment><comment><USER38> Artificial intelligence?

More like dumber than the dumbest human.

<comment><USER39> Yes. Going after the crop of fraudsters and SEO scammers trying to cash in on the crisis is a fine idea. But between this and Podcast Addict, it's pretty clear they're just indiscriminately deleting everything or trusting and algorithm to make hard calls.

The odds are good they ban Red Cross or a reputable news organization.

<comment><USER40> Whoa, they took away Podcast Addict? I've used PA for nearly a decade and can't see how they could credibly ban it from their store. Either this is a result of their advanced "AI" making an oopsie or they're using the current situation as an excuse to axe their competition, and I'm more likely to believe the latter. Google always acts with a degree of plausible deniability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I've had a similar experience about two months ago. Our app is a simple health and fitness tracker. When corona broke out, we made some adjustments so that people could track their symptoms and export them as Excel file in order to share it with their physician or health authorities. We also adjusted our description accordingly and got banned immediately. We appealed to the ban, removed everything related to corona from the description (I guess the word "quarantine" is the offending word in your case) and got reinstated after a few days. Nowadays it's used by thousands of people participating in a COVID-19 longitudonal study and we haven't had any problems again. Takeaway: Unless you're the WHO, don't mention anything related to COVID-19 in your description. Ask your Chinese friends how to deal with censorship, in Finland they simply make "Kotona" ("at home") instead of "Corona" Videos on YouTube. [https://www.millionfriends.de/coronatracker- suspended/](https://www.millionfriends.de/coronatracker-suspended/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Maybe a solution for this sort of thing might be progrsive web apps. You won't be subject to the risk of an app store knocking you off.

</comment><comment><USER43> Youtube also removed several videos from a youtube channel MedCram.com. Its a channel run by a medical doctor who discusses updates from medical journals in technical detail.

The following videos have been removed from youtube.

\- Coronavirus Epidemic Update 10: New Studies, Transmission, Spread from Wuhan, Prevention (2019-nCoV)

\- Coronavirus Pandemic Update 43: Shortages, Immunity, & Can a TB Vaccine (BCG) Help Prevent COVID-19

\- Coronavirus Pandemic Update 57: Remdesivir Treatment Update and Can Far-UVC Disinfect Public Spaces

\- Coronavirus Pandemic Update 60: Hydroxychloroquine Update; NYC Data; How Widespread is COVID-19

\- Coronavirus Pandemic Update 71: New Data on Adding Zinc to Hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin

Watch their latest video to see that they try to stick to the facts and avoid politics: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UANgon3Umns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UANgon3Umns)

</comment><comment><USER44> I follow some Brazilian YouTubers who are referring to the covid-19 as "Voldemort".

</comment><comment><USER45> I believe Google made it clear they will only allow a very small subset of apps related to COVID-19 so they can make sure that

\- The information on their app store regarding the virus is 100% medically and scientifically accurate.

\- Nobody takes advantage of the pandemics to profit.

</comment><comment><USER36> "circumstances beyond our control"

"global circumstances"

"event restrictions"

</comment><comment><USER46> Google pays people hundreds of thousands $ per year so that it _acts like_ a faceless government bureaucracy staffed by lazy drones.

</comment><comment><USER47> Simple solution is to just stop writing apps for Google's platform. There are other avenues that aren't dependent on the corp whims of entities you can't really talk to.

<comment><USER48> Not really. The only other option is to limit your service to only desktop PCs/websites which is not super helpful to normal people that just use their phones for everything.

Google has a monopoly on phone apps. If they don't like your app then you pretty much don't exist. You don't have many options.

<comment><USER49> "Normal people" do not just use their phones for everything. Normal people use their phones for getting around and they stare at the screen when they are bored, for example waiting for a bus or waiting in line.

When they want to do real work or real play they don't do it on their phone, they need a larger form factor with more power, a bigger screen, and better input technology, whether that is a laptop/desktop or game console.

This idea that if something isn't available on your phone, then it's not available is silly. There are many things that, while you can technically put on a phone, really don't thrive there. Phones are low powered, minimal form factor devices with inferior inputs. You do stuff on the phone because the benefit of doing it from any location far surpasses the unpleasantness of the interface. For example getting a cab, or figuring out how to get from A to B, or sending a quick message to someone when you are away from the house.

If it's not related to helping you move around from place to place, or helping you connect to a friend quickly, it's not going to _thrive_ on the phone even if you put it there, and if you look at the _usage statistics_ of phone apps versus regular PC apps, you'll see this confirmed.

<comment><USER50> > When they want to do real work or real play they don't do it on their phone, > they need a larger form factor with more power, a bigger screen, and better > input technology, whether that is a laptop/desktop or game console.

That's clearly not true. For a large portion of the world, the smartphone is their only computing device.

There are about 6 billion smartphones in use. Last I heard, the desktop/laptop install base was around 1 billion, but that's a fuzzy memory.

<comment><USER49> Counting install base doesn't matter when you are comparing such different devices. There are more shoes than cars in the world, but that doesn't mean you are going to sell hood ornaments to people who only have shoes. The large number of cheap smartphones simply aren't going to be useful to run your office app, regardless of the size of the install base. And for the types of phones that will run your app well and give you access to the customers with the spending power you care about, you will discover that they cost a lot more than a standard desktop and about as much as a decent laptop. People who can afford those phones have options to use the best form factor and will use their phone when mobility is much more important than a lousy interface, which is why there has been so little success in the mobile app world outside of the top 10 apps, which are stuff like Uber, google maps, etc. But if your reasoning is to be followed, it must be the case that billions of people care mostly about maps, connecting with friends on facebook, and getting taxis than about using other applications, which isn't the case at all, it's just that's what people do on their phones.

<comment><USER50> Roughly half of lower-income Americans don't own a PC[1], and we have some of the highest market share in the world. I don't have numbers handy outside the U.S. but again, 1 billion PCs doesn't cover much of the population.

The trend has been obvious for years: more and more people do all of their computing on smartphones.

[1] [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/07/digital- div...](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/07/digital-divide- persists-even-as-lower-income-americans-make-gains-in-tech-adoption/)

<comment><USER49> 89% of US households have a laptop or desktop. That doesn't mean each family member has their own, whereas it's more likely to have each family member have their own phone, say on a family plan. But in terms of revenue generating opportunity, if someone cannot afford a laptop or a desktop, they will not own an iPhone either, which accounts for 2/3 of mobile revenue, and they are not going to be running your complex smartphone app on their discount android device, so you haven't responded to my argument at all; you keep fixating on counting the number of devices rather than looking at actual addressable markets and the best way to generate revenue from people who can afford to pay for your product or that advertisers will pay to market to.

Just to throw some numbers out there, as of 2018:

iOS revenue: 47 B. (global, all sources, software, ads, etc) [1]

Google play: 25 B (global, all sources, software, ads, etc) [1]

Global software revenue: ~450 B (global) [2]

Total software revenue (US only): ~260 B. [3]

You are right about the 90% and 10%, but it's not pointing in the direction you think. So you can keep counting devices with very different characteristics and insisting that one number is higher than the other, or you can start counting dollars.

[1] [https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app- revenues/](https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/)

[2] [https://www.statista.com/markets/418/topic/484/software/](https://www.statista.com/markets/418/topic/484/software/)

[3] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/184124/estimated- revenue...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/184124/estimated-revenue-of- us-software-publishers-since-2005/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> However Google frames it, I see this as nothing more than them grabbing a chance to monopolize a popular search term for their own revenue with plausible deniability.

</comment><comment><USER52> Google did not behave like a reasonable business partner. Maybe it would be good to ditch it and support independent web

</comment><comment><USER53> And how long before Google decides that all detected side-loaded apps are harmful and automatically removed?

<comment><USER54> I mean, at least they allow sideloading at all, which is more than can be said for that _other_ App Store ecosystem. Still hoping the EU will force Apple to allow sideloading on iPhones, but I'm not super optimistic.

<comment><USER55> Indeed. And they allow third-party payments from within apps. And they have long since supported the most important PWA features (including notifications) in the mobile browser, making the unrestricted web a viable platform for delivering apps.

I sometimes find it difficult understanding all the complaining about Google and all the love for Apple, with regard to doing what's right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Since Google is taking such a strong position against what they view as COVID19 misinformation, are they liable if I get sick as a result of some misinformation that managed to get through their filters? I might not try to go after some small time app developer or other rando on the Internet, but if Google is willing to stand behind their guarantee with those wonderfully deep pockets...

<comment><USER57> That's like saying the police are liable for you being robbed because the thief wasn't in jail.

<comment><USER58> I think the point is, if Google isn't liable, then why are they censoring apps based on COVID-19 keywords? Doesn't seem to be any of their business.

<comment><USER59> And if the police aren't liable, why are they putting people in jail?

Liability is not the only reason Google might choose to censor Covid keywords. They might do it because their users expect them to. They might do it because they think it's the right thing to do. They might do it because they care more about blocking disinformation than allowing useful information. They might do it because a programmer has been working on this really cool censoring algorithm and they want to test it in production. They might do it because they're tired of people talking about Covid on their platforms and want it shut down in general.

Section 230 applies to every major/minor platform in the US, granting all of them immunity from liability for most content. And yet, virtually all of them from Facebook to 4Chan, from Youtube to Pornhub, from Reddit to tiny 200-member Wordpress forums -- all of them censor some content. So liability is clearly not the only motivation for platforms to moderate, otherwise every comment section would be 8Chan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I've banned Google from my life, and everyone else should too.

</comment><comment><USER61> Google is not the benevolent dictator of the internet. They are a profit drive soulless corporation. Not saying that's good or bad, just saying you should expect zero favors from a sociopathic entity.

</comment><comment><USER62> #boycottGoogle

</comment><comment><USER63> I'm not a fan of censorship at any level. But at least you can always have Android users install themselves.

Sure you don't get their massive advertising platform Play Store. But that's Google's decision.

You can organically develop users, you don't need Google.

<comment><USER64> That's an option that requires some tech savviness. The choice architecture of Android heavily favours Play Store, so it's deflecting the issue to say it's not a form of censorship because there's a workaround.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> stop using COVID-19 as SEO keyword!

</comment><comment><USER66> Google (and Facebook and Twitter and Medium....) are turning into absurd comic book level censors. They have too much leverage and influence over society, and moves like this meaningful harm people's ability to communicate and conduct basic activities. Google is the worst of them, and should be broken up immediately on antitrust grounds. But let's not ignore that COVID-19 has exposed the hamfisted authoritarian rule of the digital public square by virtually all technology companies.</comment>


Lobster today is viewed as a delicacy, but was once reviled - <AUTHOR> http://sub.garrytan.com/lobster-today-is-viewed-as-a-delicacy-but-it-was-once-so-reviled-that-indentured-servants-refused-to-eat-it <comment><USER2> If you read "Consider the Lobster" (which you should), you'll note that the product _did_ change. Lobster used to be cooked dead, then canned in saltwater. Now it's cooked live and served immediately with a hefty side of melted butter.

Sure, maybe the class-based issues made it less likely that people would be willing to try even lobster done right, but I don't think lobster as it was once served would have much more success today.

<comment><USER3> I still wouldn't want to eat it three times a week. It is quite strange that it's considered a delicacy, if you look at live lobsters up close they are kind of disgusting and really just look like giant insects that happen to live in the water. They do look much more presentable after being boiled/steamed (color change) and presented on a plate with garnish, though.

<comment><USER4> > really just look like giant insects that happen to live in the water

That's because they basically are, since crustaceans are likely more closely related to proper insects than millipedes, centipedes, and arachnids are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Definitely this version is oversimplified.

As Thomas Bushnell once pointed out to me, lobster has the interesting characteristic of being delicious, but making you very sick if you eat it all of the time. The diaries from which we get the descriptions of how horrible people around Massachusetts Bay thought lobster was, _ALSO_ contain descriptions of how wonderful it was. It was only after having little choice but to eat it frequently that their extreme aversion developed.

Try it. Try to eat lobster every day for a month. See what you think about it then.

<comment><USER6> I've done a much more moderate version of this with oysters. Last winter I decided to try to eat oysters at least twice a month, because I really liked them. At one point, they became a lot less appealing, and so I stopped. I can only imagine how bad it would be with trying to eat them daily.

<comment><USER7> It's probably not a coincidence that Leviticus prohibits shellfish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Lobster is not a delicacy in New England, and eating at a lobster pound is the New England equivalent of a German biergarten. One of the reasons why the price has dropped so much is that the lobster fishery is managed for sustainability.

I think the stuff about humanely killing the lobsters is hogwash. Boiling and eating a live lobster is one of the few meals where you have to confront the fact that we kill so that we can eat. Hold them upside down, plunge the lobster headfirst into the boiling water, and give thanks for life. And make sure you have a pot with a heavy lid.

<comment><USER9> > I think the stuff about humanely killing the lobsters is hogwash.

Is there any _disadvantage_ to stabbing the lobster in the head first? I mean, it just takes a second or two per lobster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Same could be said about flank steak which used to be a cheap cut of steak. After Fajitas got popular the price tripled

[1989] [http://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/26/garden/how-a-humble-cut- go...](http://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/26/garden/how-a-humble-cut-got-a-fancy- price.html)

Now about PBR... being from the Midwest and a bit of a beer snob PBR was largely the defacto-standard because it was the cheapest lawnmower beer that wasn't a BMC (Bud-Miller-Coors).

The same could be said about lobster - there's a story behind it.

Sure, 'they're all made up'... so is the value of gold, but they also have some interesting history behind them if you are willing to go beyond the surface.

<comment><USER11> Sometime do an actual blind taste test with some beers at the PBR level. The differences are subtle to nonexistent.

<comment><USER10> Hrm? I have... there really is no difference. With PBR and other American Adjunct Beers ( [http://beeradvocate.com/lists/style/38](http://beeradvocate.com/lists/style/38) ) It has little to to about taste and everything to do with not wanting to buy from the 3 industrial leaders that own 90% of the market.

<comment><USER12> If you're on the east coast, you guys should try Yuengling. It's easily one of the best cheap* beers out there.

* < $1/bottle

<comment><USER13> I'll second that. Also their "black and tan" is fantastic if you want to go _slightly_ more expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think a lot of this is also economic. Many other types of food (beef, chicken, pork, fish) soon became heavily industrialized, with semi-mechanized processes capable of harvesting food in bulk. Things like trawler nets or meatpacking assembly lines. Lobster remains fairly labor-intensive to harvest, with lobstermen needing to check individual pots and bring up lobsters one-by- one. That means the price of other meats has come down much more quickly than the price of lobster.

BTW, during the financial crisis, a collapse in demand and a bumper crop of lobsters drove the price _way_ down. In late 2008 you could pick up $2 lobsters in supermarkets in Massachusetts. My family ate a lot of lobster for those few months...

<comment><USER15> You can always detect when a certain kind of meat's price plummets, because then it suddenly appears for a limited time at McDonalds:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=mclobster](https://www.google.com/search?q=mclobster)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=mcrib](https://www.google.com/search?q=mcrib)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is another piece here which deals with Lobsters being a particular toxic dish as they are the dumpsters of the ocean: scavenging dead material. One might not hurt, but weeks on the stuff would leave you quite sick.

<comment><USER17> That is what I have heard (sorry can't remember the source). But they basically sift through the garbage and refuse all their lives. That is why allergy to shellfish can be common and those allergies tend to be severe.

<comment><USER18> This isn't a strong argument on its own... liver and kidneys "sift through garbage" constantly but how many people are allergic to chicken or cow liver or kidney?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I haven't tried it yet, but this method of killing and cooking a lobster is intriguing: [http://blog.ideasinfood.com/ideas_in_food/2010/06/the- comple...](http://blog.ideasinfood.com/ideas_in_food/2010/06/the-complete- lobster.html)

The lobster is killed quickly with a knife in their main nerve cluster (the article calls it the brain, but I think that's giving it too much credit). Time is then provided for the muscles to stop seizing, and it is brined to improve texture and to prevent coagulation of the hemolymph to the meat. Then the lobster is divided and different parts are cooked for different times just like we commonly do for most other kinds of meat.

I thought HN might be interested, since many of us are incorrigible optimizers.

<comment><USER20> That sounds like far too much work than the current process. I doubt any lobster eaters would jump through all those hoops when simply boiling them works so well.

<comment><USER7> Well, it's an animal rights kind of deal. If you're the kind of person who cares about that, this might make or break a decision to prepare lobster for dinner. If (like me) you don't actually care, then it's not relevant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In the case of lobster, I wonder if the issue was taste or freshness. If they "washed up on the beach in two-foot-high piles", it's easy to imagine that people were eating not-so-fresh seafood and getting sick, giving it a bad reputation.

</comment><comment><USER22> Eat any food every day and it will get old. I live in Texas and we eat Mexican/Tex-Mex so often it gets old also, and its fucking delicious.

This article is interesting as far as showing the history of why it was reviled in early times, but I think the same could be said of anything else...

</comment><comment><USER23> Why do people eat popcorn? They like crunchy butter.

Why do people eat lobster? They like chewy butter.

<comment><USER24> I had no idea people felt this way about lobster. To me it's the greatest food on the planet, hold the butter please.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The same thing happened to salmon in Sweden in the early 1800:s. There are stories about servants having contracts about not eating it too ofter as well, but the level of truth in these is questionable.

Either way, salmon was very abundant and became expensive/exclusive. It is getting cheaper again lately, though.

[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.faktoider.nu%2Flax.html&act=url)

</comment><comment><USER25> Diamonds as well. [http://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-de- beers-2011-12?o...](http://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-de- beers-2011-12?op=1)

</comment><comment><USER26> I love the PBR China story. $44/bottle. Hustle! "There's almost no ale in China: I had to smuggle the yeast into the country."

[http://www.danwei.org/advertising_and_marketing/pabst_goes_u...](http://www.danwei.org/advertising_and_marketing/pabst_goes_upmarket.php)

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm not sure this is fair—doesn't the author admit that the value of the good is based on scarcity? That it became valuable when it could be shipped to places that didn't have two foot tall piles of lobster washing up on the beach?

<comment><USER28> What the author is pointing out is how the social perspective is completely arbitrary, even when it tracks the economic value. Of course lobster will be cheaper / less valuable where it is more plentiful, but it was also viewed as _intrinsically worse_ than other foods, in stark contrast to its popularity today.

<comment><USER29> What the author fails to point out is that eating seafood every day sucks. It's too rich/sweet/salty. It's like eating cake for every meal. It's not that people are fickle or stupid or whatever he's trying to point out here. No one wants to eat lobster every day. Not even people in the midwest. Ohh, and to add to that, eating a lot of shellfish can cause you to become allergic to it.

Source: I come from a coastal town and love crab, but couldn't eat it more than one or two times a week.

<comment><USER30> Fish is too rich? I thought that the consensus was that it is appealing because it is a lighter and healthier alternative to meats such as beef, chicken and pork.

<comment><USER20> Many fish are. Shellfish even more so. Nobody who can help it relies entirely on seafood. Where I'm from, it was the poor children of fishermen who were stuck eating seafood every single day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Tastes change[1], and sometimes the economics of things change (see Aluminum). Few things have an intrinsic value that you can separate from culture.

1) although, being from ND, I have yet to meet a beer drinker willing to drink PBR

<comment><USER9> > (see Aluminum)

For aluminum, it seems to me there was also the novelty. The metal was a new discovery and had that odd low density.

<comment><USER31> It was also incredibly hard to extract, so it was more valuable until technology caught up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> There's stories of vodka sales increasing with price increases. Marketing can sometimes overcome Economics. :-)

<comment><USER33> No, that's still economics: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good)

<comment><USER15> alternatively, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good)

depends on your opinion of vodka...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The british used to feed it to their prisoners because it was considered worse than eating rats.

</comment><comment><USER35> Not just lobsters, oysters happened the same</comment>


Hydro SHEDS: open geo-data of rivers, lakes and watersheds - <AUTHOR> https://www.hydrosheds.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here is also the article which makes me discover that impressive atlas:

"Global hydro-environmental sub-basin and river reach characteristics at high spatial resolution" ([https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-019-0300-6](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-019-0300-6))</comment>


Apple sells 3 million iPads in 80 days - <AUTHOR> http://ipadwatcher.com/2010/06/22/apple-sells-3-million-ipads-in-80-days/ <comment><USER2> I'm somewhat surprised that none of the other manufacturers has brought a similar product to market yet - well, a few have, but in a muted, almost diffident fashion. Given the lead time and the existence of fairly competitive hardware already deployed in netbooks, I had expected that Asus or someone would move more aggressively to get a foothold in this opening market rather than allowing Apple to brand the form factor. Perhaps they are calculating on launching competing products for late summer (for students going back to school) or Christmas (the family sofa computer).

there are a _lot_ of commercial possibilities going unexploited at present. I'm already seeing iPads deployed commercially; at the mall the other day, I saw someone using one to take consumer surveys, and I noticed over a year ago that 7-11 stores use (older) tablets for inventory management. As a pure consumer device, tablets - preferably slightly larger ones - are just _begging_ for deployment as a family boardgame platform.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I don't get it either. I find it odd they did not see the iPad coming. I guess I'm looking at it with hindsight but an device running the iPhone OS was rumored way before the release. An android tablet could have been out and running before the iPad. It seems they were just waiting to see if apple could sell any and then start building one.

Pretty crappy way to tag along on another companies research and marketing.

I just want a damn tablet with android with decent specs. I don't care if it's flat like a pancake. Make it 720p with a front facing camera and at least 32gb of flash memory. Then ew nvidia chip and BLAM, I'll buy it so will all the real computer users. :)

<comment><USER4> I think everybody was assuming: "There's no way they'll just release a big iPod touch." Nobody thought the formula for a successful tablet could be defined so simply.

<comment><USER5> Though it's not really, they introduced new controls and chromes which don't make sense on a phone's screen (but do on a tablet's) and the device to screen ratio is completely different.

It looks like a big ipod touch (which means people are rapidly familiar with it), but it feels very differently.

And of course, even if it were just a big ipod touch none of Apple's (potential) competitors in the field have such a platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a device that received a strong negative reaction from many in the (non-Apple-worshiping) tech press. It just goes to show you how out of touch many of them are with what really excites users.

<comment><USER7> Windows Vista sells nearly 40 million licenses in the first 100 days ([http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/16/microsoft-vista-sells- nea...](http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/16/microsoft-vista-sells- nearly-40-million-licenses-in-first-100-d/)).

This is an operating system which received a strong negative reaction from many in the (non-Microsoft-worshiping) tech press. It just goes to show you how out of touch many of them are with what really excites users.

<comment><USER5> Vista took 7 months to reach 4% market share, 7 took 3 weeks.

7 sold 90 million licenses in its first 4 months.

<comment><USER7> The iPad took 4 weeks to sell 1 million units.

The iPhone 3GS sold 1 million units in 3 days. ([http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/03/ipad_sales_top_one_m...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/03/ipad_sales_top_one_million/))

<comment><USER5> The 3GS and the iPad occupy completely different segments and markets (one of which didn't quite exist before the device was created), Vista and 7 don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has anyone tried to buy an iPad at Best Buy recently? They have been sold out in my area for a while, and they have no idea when they'll get more since Apple randomly ships them to Best Buy stores.

<comment><USER9> My local Best Buy (in Sarasota) is the same. A BestBuy employee said they're working through a backlog. People ask when the next shipment arrives, and when it does they come in to buy them up. In some cases the entire shipment is gone in the same day.

<comment><USER10> Did you check Computer Advantage across from the airport. I got mine in Sarasota from Computer Advantage about a week ago. It was the 32GB wifi only model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Press release: [http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/apple-sells-three- mi...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/apple-sells-three-million- ipads-in-80-days-96885659.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> I've noticed from the developer side that our iPad app downloads are really strong compared to the relatively low #s - I dont know if we're just better suited for that format - anybody else notice that?

<comment><USER13> Probably because there's currently less noise in the marketplace. Also the iPad itself is a much better device to browse and search apps than the iPhone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Most people want to see 3M in 80 days, but it is more like 3M in 3000 days. Correct me if I am wrong, but Apple started to work on these touch screen technology (which I guess is the foundation of the Ipad) since 2001. Or at least that's what I heard during Jobs'D8 interview.

<comment><USER15> Using that logic, it's 3M sold in about 40 years, since that's about when the first microprocessors were developed.

<comment><USER14> That is different I believe. The key feature for the Ipad would be it's touch screen technology.</comment></comment></comment>


Crystal: Concurrency with easier syntax than Go - <AUTHOR> https://rillabs.com/posts/crystal-concurrency-with-easier-syntax-than-go <comment><USER2> Thanks for the writeup! I've been following Crystal for a few years now, and am mostly interested in seeing how it will continue to develop with regard to parallelism.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, that part is definitely what caught my interest too :)</comment></comment>


Long distance relationship? Perl can help. - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/serendipity/

<comment><USER2> My favorite example of Perl helping a relationship: <http://hop.perl.plover.com/cover.html>

"I wish all my programs achieved their design goals so spectacularly."

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. The Kayak dev key is here:

      http://www.kayak.com/labs/api/search/developerkey.html

2\. Using your email as a perl string requires a \ in front of @

3\. I had to install many packages before the Perl script ran on a basic EC2 Linux instance:

      sudo yum install gcc perl-CPAN perl-libwww-perl expat-devel gnuplot

4\. Before installing the CPAN packages he mentions:

      sudo perl -MCPAN -e 'install Digest::SHA'
      sudo perl -MCPAN -e 'install Test::More'
      sudo perl -MCPAN -e 'install XML::Parser'

You may have to do additional debugging and install other CPAN packages.

5\. Install the CPAN packages he mentions

6.

      nohup perl SerenDaemon.pl > errors.txt 2> exceptions.txt < /dev/null &

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, thanks for the great feedback. As the author of the program, I have taken down Serendipity out of courtesy to Kayak.com after receiving an email (very nice, I might add) about the costs incurred by continuously running searches. Please back off your search frequencies if you are using the script. Thanks!

<comment><USER4> Hello, I've checked out Serendipity earlier today and wanted to download it when I get back home. But now it's too late.

Would it be possible that you send me the source via mail (my email address is in my profile)? Of course I'll take care not to overload the service.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is very cool. Does anyone know whether Kayak is OK with this sort of scraping? (translation: will this break if it gets popular?)

<comment><USER6> It's not scraping, it's using Kayak's API: <http://www.kayak.com/labs/api/search/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Slightly off-topic, but forcing me to download an image preview when I could quite as easily view it in my browser drives me insane, now I have a file I _don't want_ that I _didn't expect_ and have to delete it! Silly.

<comment><USER8> That's a browser issue. My browser asks if I want to download, or if I want to view internally (and if so, what mime type; to which I replied image/png).

Don't blame your poor configuration on the author of web pages. Ultimately clients should control the web experience, not servers.

<comment><USER9> It's how Google code handles files in SVN, rather than a browser issue. They specifically set the content-type header to binary, rather than image.

I would hate it if my browser asked me what to do every time I load an image.

<comment><USER8> It doesn't ask if the headers are correct. But in the 0.001% of time when they are wrong, it asks, and saves you from the complaint that the OP made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a really great project! I can think of two things would make it better, but both are beyond your control.

1\. Use Hipmunk's (nonexistent at the moment) API and show the least agonizing flight of each day.

2\. Somehow include Southwest's flights and prices (which nobody else has, AFAIK)

</comment><comment><USER9> Cool, thanks. Just installed this and it works great. Do you know a good way to send SMS programmatically (as you mention)?

<comment><USER10> A crude way would be to send an email to #@carrier.tld (e.g. firstname.lastname@example.com) and it will be converted to SMS by the carrier.

<comment><USER11> I agree, that's the easiest crude way to do it. The only problem will be is if you're trying to make an app where people supply their numbers in order to get an SMS, because you don't know the carrier. To get around that, afaik, there is:

1\. [hard to implement, and costs money, easy for the user] integrate with an sms gateway. Here is a comparison of two: [http://dcwilkie.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/sms-gateway- compari...](http://dcwilkie.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/sms-gateway-comparison- smsglobal-vs-tropo/)

2\. [easy(er) to implement, free, hard(er) for the user, hacky] Have the user sms a user id (or some identifier) to an email address, you read that email, and associate the identifier with the "from" field, and send sms's to that email.

<comment><USER12> An even easier way: send the email to that number on ALL carriers. Only 1 of them will have that number, and they will deliver it; the others will just drop it (or bounce it, so use a return address that can ignore the bounces).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Related: see the cheapest flight to each of your Facebook friends. <http://apps.facebook.com/milehighflyer/></comment>


Posterous SSL certificate expired yesterday - <AUTHOR> https://posterous.com/

<comment><USER2> They have posted an update on twitter about it. ( <https://twitter.com/posterous/status/256828008432824320> )</comment>


Web browser color management test - <AUTHOR> http://gearoracle.com/tools/web-browser-color-management-test/

<comment><USER2> On Mac 10.6.4, I see that Webkit supports ICC V4, but Firefox 4 does not. Obviously, we should always tag with V2.

What I don't understand is the final test: comparing an sRGB tagged image vs. an untagged image. No current browser on a Mac is assuming sRGB as a default? That's just crazy! I did check the source images, and they are correct: same formulas. One tagged sRGB, the other untagged.

I often have relied upon the sRGB default to keep my image filesize down. No longer. I'm tagging everything from now on. We've been able to coast in the past, because most displays have a gamut smaller than sRGB. Not true anymore. Modern LED-backed LCD panels generally exceed sRGB gamut - meaning your images will have an improperly extended gamut if you don't tag them.

<comment><USER3> The idea of the last test is to compare how the browser renders untagged images and page elements. On a wide gamut display, the untagged elements will be over-saturated, unless you're using Firefox and have it properly configured to assume sRGB on untagged elements.

<comment><USER2> I understand color management very well, thank you. I have profiled and edited profiles for dozens of devices, from pre-press to proofing and through to production: litho, toner, wide-format UV, solvent, aqueous, and latex. Also displays, scanners, and DSLR studio environments.

My point is that in Firefox 4, sRGB is NOT being assumed, nor is it being assumed in Safari, or Chrome. In every browser I tested, those images are over-saturated on my high-gamut, profiled displays.

EDIT: According to my research, sRGB is the default color space on Windows only. That would explain my results. I am still amazed by this, and cannot understand why this should be so across all Mac browsers. I can only imagine this is because Windows defaults everything to sRGB, so there was no reason to implement this in-browser. Anyway, this just proves the point: Always tag your images, and don't assume the browser will default to sRGB.

<comment><USER3> I agree 100% with you: always tag your images.

Firefox doesn't assume sRGB for untagged images and graphs by default, only if you configure it on the advanced menu: <http://gearoracle.com/guides/firefox- color-management/>

The point of the test is to encourage browser developers to give users choices on how untagged page elements are color managed, and the right choice is to consider then in sRGB space. Firefox is the only browser that allows this via the gfx.color_management.mode switch. This is important because not all page graphics are images and there's no way to tag a CSS element, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=488800></comment>


Why Process Trumps Relationships in China - <AUTHOR> https://www.fictiv.com/resources/spotlight/hardware-lessons-from-bsg

<comment><USER2> This is a common factor I have observed in big companies (in terms of people) as well. Big companies in countries like India and China, tend to be process oriented to get things done.

</comment><comment><USER3> I met Greg Fisher at a hardware meetup- very, very sharp guy. He is absolutely right about Process trumping Relationships BUT it can be very difficult to establish that process if you are only in China for a short while to get something manufactured.</comment>