Data Broker Opt-Out List - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yaelwrites/Big-Ass-Data-Broker-Opt-Out-List <comment><USER2> If anyone cares, there are a nontrivial amount of companies who have your 'private' LinkedIn info. I don't know if they make fake accounts to friend you, recruiter profiles, or buy it from LinkedIn. I asked one to please remove my info, and they sent me a CCPA form. I told them I didn't live in California, and an agent acted confused and told me to just fill it out, it's the only way to remove it. In short, don't trust LinkedIn.

<comment><USER3> crunchbase is one such place. they harvested everything from my LinkedIn, I asked them to remove my profile they say it's not possible unless I also send them additional data (scan of my passport). they say it's impossible to remove my info because it is "crowd sourced" which may be the case today but from the data they have on me it is from when they had no users yet and when they scraped sh!t from linkedin:

*

Hello,

To comply with various privacy laws, we require the completion of this form to remove the person profile you have mentioned. If you would like to delete your personal profile page, please complete this form here.

Best, Erika

\----

Dear Erika,

thank you for the information.

I have never signed up to this site and therefore do _not_ consent to any information about me being stored on your systems and I do not care who creates these profiles. It is your responsibility under GDPR not to store information about me without my explicit consent and I therefore kindly ask for information about me to be deleted, further I expect any future profiles about me to be blocked from getting created and such info not to be stored also in the future.

In case information is not deleted within 30 days I will hand over this matter to my lawyer and also file a report with my data protection commissioner in the EU.

best regards,

\----

dear <...>,

Thank you for contacting Crunchbase!

Please note, if you have an active trial or subscription we recommend that you cancel first before moving forward. Instructions on how to cancel your trial here. And instructions on how to cancel your subscription here.

If you would like to download or permanently delete your user account information, please complete this form here.

If you would like to delete your personal profile page, please complete this form here.

If you would like to deactivate your user account, please reply to this email to deactivate your account. You can contact email@example.com if you wish to reactivate your account at a later date.

Keep in mind, your user account is the private information that you can use to control your billing, login information, and alerts. A profile page is what displays externally on Crunchbase - these are completely separate. Because Crunchbase is a crowdsourced platform, any registered user can add or edit any profile page - profiles are not explicitly linked to any user.

Please feel free to reach out if you have any additional questions - we'll be happy to help!

Best,

Erika

<comment><USER2> Yep, same shit. Just checked my email, the last one in question was 'Apollo'. The form in question makes you attest you are a resident of California, which began the back and forth.

APOLLO

Dear Alex,

On behalf of Apollo, we are pleased to assist you in exercising your access rights under GDPR and/or CCPA. You may exercise your access rights as follows.

If you wish to remove the personal information that we have that is tied to your email address, then please respond to this communication by submitting the attached Identify Verification Form. We will then respond to your access request upon further email verification.

Why we require this: We require the above because GDPR and CCPA asks that we verify your identity to a reasonable degree of certainty before providing information: this is important, to avoid providing personal information to someone "spoofing" an identity. We believe this process provides that reasonable certainty while avoiding having consumers send us personal government IDs, which contain sensitive information and which we prefer not to receive. (And, unlike companies that deal directly with you, it's not possible for us to verify you based on our prior relationship – like, by having you list your last movies watched, clothes purchased, or trips booked.)

If you prefer to avoid the above process, you can learn detailed information about the categories of personal information that Apollo collects, and how we source it, sell it, and use it for business purposes, by reviewing our Privacy Policy (available at: [https://www.apollo.io/privacy](https://www.apollo.io/privacy)). That Privacy Policy also will tell you how to easily opt out of our marketing databases.

Thank you for your interest in our business and data practices.

<comment><USER4> This is such a shitshow. They never took "reasonable degree of certainty" before storing private data either - it makes no sense to then ask that for deletion requests.

<comment><USER5> It does if you want to feign compliance while making it hard to delete data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So interestingly enough, a Facebook account I made years ago that was only used as a test is somehow in the records linked to my current address. Facebook is literally the only person that knows about this account and its never been attached to my personal FB account. It's making me really suspect right now...

<comment><USER7> Why? This is Facebook's business model. They have a shadow profile for you and managed to link your test account or some other service they own (whatsapp?) with your real account. They only need a single data point.

<comment><USER8> I'm surprised TFA doesn't include Facebook[1]. It's worse than all the others combined.

[1] [https://facebook.com/help/delete_account](https://facebook.com/help/delete_account)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been through most of these and removing yourself really can be done. In many cases the removal is considered temporary and you have to repeat every four to ten years. It's not possible to get off of the skip trace and debt collectors databases run by Transunion, Experian, and others - but you can flood them with false information and they will record it and keep it forever.

<comment><USER10> I'd love to know what kind of false information you're enjoying sending them, and how!

<comment><USER9> \- Fill out surveys at malls with your name and either a phone number or address that matches one currently in your credit file and you can supply false info for the the opposite.

\- Put in a mail forwarding card with your name from a former address to a random real address like a Starbucks, Taco Bell, apartment complex w/o unit number, etc.

\- Change the billing address of a credit card or utility and allow to sit for one billing cycle. Works best if you have e-statements. They will send a physical confirmation to the address and it will most likely go in the trash but not guaranteed.

\- once a quarter you can update your information with the credit bureaus and they will Happily record it. Later you can say you never lived there and they will remove the info - but only from the databases used in credit decisions

These are the ones most effective because there is almost no filtering, just a bunch of automated processes collecting and distributing. Just make sure there are one or two "facts" that the data quality algorithms can use to link your "new" data with existing profiles.

<comment><USER11> Then when you go to open a credit card or actually try to clean up your credit report, you'll need to remember which Taco Bell you randomly pretended to live at to answer security questions.

<comment><USER9> When I run into that problem I wait for the rejection mail from the creditor, then I write back with a redacted photocopy of my IDs - completely useless with everything blacked out but my name - and a copy of their letter. I say here is my redacted ID as proof of identity and a photocopy of your letter as proof of receipt so please approve me and that has worked every time so far. It makes it very easy to see where the line between security and security theater is drawn. Not that any US bank is going to win awards for security (except maybe Robinhood, they really stand out with standards based 2FA and the ability to block external ACH with a click)

<comment><USER12> sad state of affairs that this level of surgical precision and orchestration is required just to not be stalked and creeped on to incredible levels. and this doesn't even cover the situation with respective to showing up on relatives' profiles.

if you have the time, you should make a complimentary "solution" read me page for this post.

deletion really does seem to be an unwinnable proposition, so flooding with false data is a great approach. can this be automated?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> be careful you guys. these are awful people collecting this data, and i'm pretty suspicious that they will use the additional data they gather form you when you opt out ("for proof its you") and use it against you in their other databases. for instance, i confirmed my phone and email info in order to opt out of one but another clone site now says my information is "Verified".

<comment> privacy-matters You have no idea how sketchy these companies are.

ZoomInfo (public company) for example provides a free plugin for sales people which is scanning email for all the email signatures and then they sell all that data to their customers. Even crazier is they take data from their customer's CRM systems.

DiscoverOrg is buying data from third parties without really knowing how they got the data.

There are a bunch of apps and browser plugins that read your emails or contacts and then those companies sell that data to third parties like these data brokers. I use very few browser plugins because of this threat.

If you have somehow acquired a list of contacts you can get a lot of these companies to purchase it with very few questions.

<comment><USER13> I used to operate a dozen or so small web sites. A spammer once offered me a crazy amount of money for the mailing lists. When I declined, he offered an even crazier amount of money to buy all the web sites, in their entirety, including mailing lists and social media accounts.

I ended up selling him the one web site that didn't have a mailing list and only rudimentary social media presences. I bought a new car and moved to a better city with the money.

<comment><USER14> I bet a blog post about your story would get a lot of votes here. I'd read it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm surprised they have my name and address though it's a few years outdated.

How did they get it?

If I opt out, doesn't it confirm that what they have is accurate and make my data even more valuable?

Given the nature of these sites, isn't it sketchy to provide DL to opt out or am I being paranoid?

<comment><USER16> It would confirm your data but they're legally bound to respect your choice. For any fairly large orgs (eg if they're public/listed on major exchanges) disobeying your choice would be a huge risk which they will likely not take ( the smaller data brokers don't have as much to lose, but just to be clear it would still be illegal).

<comment><USER17> > they're legally bound to respect your choice

Can I ask by what law?

<comment><USER18> GDPR and the California law inspired by it.

<comment><USER17> So only for those in Europe and CA?

Even re: California, are you sure CCPA implies these data brokers have to respect your opt-out for this particular purpose? (For reference, the opt-outs existed before CCPA and I believe GDPR as well... so you're saying they gained teeth afterward?)

<comment><USER19> Well, I guess I know what I'm doing the next time I'm in Europe (or even just their airspace?).

<comment><USER14> Or the next time you're using Tor with an EU exit node...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I went through the process to delete it, including giving them my email address. They showed me all my relatives, their home address, and said that I needed to confirm my email. Never received my email. This is going to keep me up at night.

</comment><comment><USER20> For EU-citizens, any legal data collection would have to be opt-in, right? If I've had no business with any of these companies, there should be no reason for me to have to opt-out.

<comment><USER21> Despite this, loads of companies still do opt-out with impunity.

<comment><USER22> I think the EU are still being very lenient with companies right now to give them time to adjust their practices. I'm looking forward to when they (hopefully) start to hand out fines.

<comment><USER17> > I'm looking forward to when they (hopefully) start to hand out fines.

Given the pandemic, plausible economic collapse, Brexit, and so many other things going on in the world right now, I wouldn't hold my breath.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Pardon my ignorance,is this US specific (or mostly US)? Why is this stuff allowed?

<comment><USER24> The US has been dismantling the rule of law for decades. They call it "deregulation". It lead directly to the last big financial crash, and it also is largely responsible for predatory schools, prisons, universities, banks, and much more.

<comment><USER25> > It lead directly to the last big financial crash,

Erm no. 2008 was directly linked to Greenspan (Fed), Freddie Mac (Federal) and Fannie Mae (Federal), all government run entities, which stopped making proper risk evaluation when issuing loans. That's not deregulation, that's a problem with how these government agencies actually functioned.

[https://www.fool.com/investing/dividends- income/2008/09/10/t...](https://www.fool.com/investing/dividends- income/2008/09/10/the-people-responsible-for-fannie-mae-and-freddie-.aspx)

> If not the boldest of the group, then at least the most public, Greenspan, > the man many are now blaming for the housing bubble (there were a brave few > that piped up years ago), has refused to go quietly into his well-padded > retirement. The man charged with providing the country with a financial > voice of reason fell far short, so much so that it might be comical if it > weren't so tragic.

> Greenspan's denial of the possibility of a housing bubble has been widely > derided in the past year, but a single statement could be excused as human > error. However, a quick scan shows that this wasn't a single event. He also > promoted the adoption and expansion of adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) > products in early 2004, when short-term rates were at or near historic lows. > That same year he claimed, "securitization by Fannie and Freddie allows > mortgage originators to separate themselves from almost all aspects of risk > associated with mortgage lending." And separate themselves they did, ceasing > to perform any kind of due diligence as to the ability of borrowers to pay > for the homes they were buying.

<comment><USER26> That's the narrative that one side of the ideogical divide went with. The other side blamed deregulation such as the removal of Glass-Steagal

<comment><USER27> The citation is also a hotly written article from 2008. A more objective explanation from recent years would cite a bit of all of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm curious if anyone has any info on the business model here. There seems to be a ridiculous number of data brokers, so with this amount of competition, the marginal profit must be low. Online advertisers probably get better bank for buck just using Google's or Facebook's pre-targeted profiles. Banks and financial institutions and real background checks probably stick with the few big ones (credit bureaus, or lexis nexis etc.) Is this for snail mail spam? Telemarketers? Stalkers?

<comment> privacy-matters Sales teams need this data to reach the right roles with the right message. My friend was quoted $19k per year to access to the ZoomInfo database for his two person company. There is crazy money here. ZoomInfo has a $17B market cap last I looked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> By opting out sometimes you have to provide them with even more information than what they initially had.

<comment><USER30> Exactly as most are asking for email which inadvertently can confirm the identity and if you use the same email for other services, they can get even more data about you. I guess it's a matter of trust, how much do you trust their 'opt out' promise.

<comment><USER31> If you're paranoid, definitely use a throwaway email for the opt out. They already have so much info on me that I'm doubtful that confirming my identity would add anything to that.

I guess we're lucky that most of these SEO-saavy brokers seem to at least pay lip service to US/EU laws (or even do so voluntarily, since I think only a handful of states actually restrict selling your publicly-available or personal information online).

I shudder to think about what's floating around for sale on the dark web or companies hosted in countries that don't care about US law.

<comment><USER32> > If you're paranoid, definitely use a throwaway email for the opt out.

If this worked then anyone could opt out anyone else, which some people would object to. I think that's the loophole they use to force you to provide even more info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> [https://www.instantpeoplefinder.com/optout.php](https://www.instantpeoplefinder.com/optout.php) goes directly to a 404. Honestly doesn't surprise me, but there's a special place in tech hell for these people.

</comment><comment><USER34> One way to attack this in a larger scale is to get the responsible politicians somehow outed in media by any of these databases. For example one media article that got good spread here was when the newspaper bought the GPS- tracking information for a politician and wrote about it (they did not publish it, no need to).

</comment><comment><USER35> "DeleteMe, PrivacyDuck, OneRep, Reputation Defender and Reputation.com all offer different opt-out services. However, these are not comprehensive, as _some data brokers do not allow third parties to remove listings_."

This seems odd. I'm curious if anyone has substantiated it? PrivacyDuck seems deeply ethical, and I would assume they would inform users if this was the case.

Here is their guide for reference, that walks you through exactly what they do: [https://www.privacyduck.com/resources/](https://www.privacyduck.com/resources/) (Assuming I understand correctly what they are saying; please correct me if I'm wrong!)

</comment><comment><USER36> It would be nice if there was an indication if any of these cover non-American citizens, Europe in particular.

</comment><comment><USER37> founder of deleteme here (joindeleteme.com) Yael's list and other free DIY lists are good. You can do this yourself, it is simply time-consuming. [https://joindeleteme.com/help/diy-free-opt-out- guide/](https://joindeleteme.com/help/diy-free-opt-out-guide/)

The worst part imhop is that your opt-out is often not respected over time when new data flows in (including voting records scraped so get ready for November).

Of course, you can always pay deleteme to do it for you. the real solution here is better-crafted legislation and a re-definition of public record information when it is published virtually.

i expect this to take ~5 years, but optimistic we can get there.

</comment><comment><USER38> Lots of these are 403ing now. Good job HN, don't forget to get back once they're up again ;)

</comment><comment><USER39> Are there any paid services that will do the work to opt you out of all of these?

<comment><USER2> Seriously, I'd pay 100 dollars right now if someone just handled this all for me. And I'm sure at least a few thousands of others would too. Sounds like a decent startup idea to me.

Edit to add: I did read the other comments. joindeleteme seems like a scam/money grab. Yearly sub that autorenews, and a BBB rating displayed? Give me a real tech service.

<comment><USER19> Better yet, one that sends paper opt-outs by registered mail to maximize removal cost and receipt confirmation. It's not expensive when there's 100 names in 8pt font in each envelope.

<comment><USER2> That's actually a fantastic idea. Like that one service here not long ago that sent letters to Chase opting out of arbitration. Some company that can figure out the exact verbiage needed and contact address, and send off as needed.

With enough updates and utility, that I'd consider a monthly subscription for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I highly recommend OneRep ([https://onerep.com/](https://onerep.com/)) as a service to remove you from these websites. I've been using it myself for a while and it has saved me a lot of headache.

For those of you who do want to remove all of the info yourself, I've found this is also a good resource: [https://inteltechniques.com/data/workbook.pdf](https://inteltechniques.com/data/workbook.pdf)

<comment><USER41> From the research I have done, Onerep is also a data broker that lists your data online [https://www.privacyduck.com/comparisons/privacyduck-vs- onere...](https://www.privacyduck.com/comparisons/privacyduck-vs-onerep-com- the-eastern-european-privacy-company/)

<comment><USER40> Thanks for posting this. I do feel foolish that I didn't come across the relationship between OneRep and Nuwber myself. I hope other HN readers will see this and take this into account before they consider OneRep. I'll definitely consider deleting my account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Amazing list. Wish you could sort by search rank order.

</comment><comment><USER43> Opt-out lists are just another vulnerability. Hysterical.

There are just two possible outcomes.

Default to David Brin style radical transparency. With a pay-for-privacy grift on top.

Or we get serious about privacy. That means translucent databases (hash all PII, just like password files), Real ID (no anon, no bots, registered alias ok), and extend property rights to our personal data (it's my data, pay me).

</comment><comment><USER44> Can I pay a service provider to do this for me en-masse? If not, why is nobody starting a business like this?

<comment><USER45> Abine offers a service called "DeleteMe" which promises to do just that.

[https://joindeleteme.com/](https://joindeleteme.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I get a lot of hotel offers, essentially robocalls. Is there an opt out for the same?

<comment><USER30> Just registered with FTC's do not call list, let's hope that works.

<comment><USER46> This is an awful idea. The volume of spam calls I receive greatly increased when I did this.

<comment><USER47> Did you report any of the calls?

<comment><USER46> I'm not sure what the point of that would be, the caller ID is generally fake.

<comment><USER47> Oh, I talk to them and ask the caller for information that reveals the company behind the call; then complain via the agency that manages the donotcall lists in my country.

Like oh yeah, double glazing, yeah, send an appraiser to my house, can I have a phone number in case I need to cancel? What company ID badge will the appraiser have?

I don't get many calls through though.

<comment><USER46> I usually get calls from people who want to extract my credit card information during the call or take over my Windows computer using a remote desktop program during the call. So most of the times I asked for call back information they hung up.

<comment><USER48> > take over my Windows computer using a remote desktop program during the > call.

I wish I got calls like this, it seems like it could be a lot of fun.

What kind of stuff are they usually looking for? What would be the best ways of fucking with them?

Are they dumb enough to be somehow enticed or tricked into downloading an executable from the "victim" system and running it on their own systems?

*The only calls I get are the car warranty scam and the credit card debt scam. Unfortunately, not much entertainment value to be had with those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> We should write an automated open source script that'll submit the forms for us. Be happy to contribute, checking to see if there already is any efforts

</comment><comment><USER50> Isn't this what Spartacus ([https://spartacus.com](https://spartacus.com)) does?

</comment><comment><USER51> Are there tools that would automate the opt-out process for a lot of these? Those would be really helpful!

</comment><comment><USER52> I just spent 10 minutes opting out of everything my linkedin settings let me...

Short of deleting it...

</comment><comment><USER53> Time for stricter privacy laws and a code of ethics for programmers.

</comment><comment><USER54> This should be called BADBOOL

</comment><comment><USER55> Thanks, Josh!

</comment><comment><USER56> The DoNotCall registry is compromised. If you have never received telemarketing calls and you don't receive them frequently, keep your precious number off this site. Once I did and after a week I got more spam calls than ever. The FTC strongly denies that the list is compromised but it obviously is.</comment>


Museums from around the world. - <AUTHOR> http://googleartproject.com

<comment><USER2> The cameras they use on this project are absolutely incredible. If you know what you are looking for, you can really gain a new appreciation for works. The only two downsides I have seen with this project and ArtFinder is that 1. They seem to focus on Modern Art and earlier, and are really weak on contemporary challenging artists. Meaning you can't really interact with artists you read about at Frieze etc. and 2. I still find it hard to just get pleasantly lost in the work - Quite often it is a chore to discover things you actually care about, and the "fun" of wandering around a museum wears off quite quickly. would love to hear people's thoughts.</comment>


Google+ Has 40,000,000 Users According To Larry Page - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitetrail.com/2011/10/18/google-has-40000000-users-according-to-larry-page/

<comment><USER2> We really won't know how many users Google+ has for another few months. DAU would be the interesting measure this early in its life but the normaly monthly actives are sort of irrelevant until things settle down a bit.</comment>


Conversations with YC Partners: Harj Taggar - <AUTHOR> http://www.tapin.tv/#video/8c74260293274f879a0912fece497e7f/now

<comment><USER2> The keyframe at the beginning is missing, and it looks like the intra frames between any two keyframes are in a random order.

Also, please use this: <http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_mp4_module.html>. I want to be able to skip ahead in the video. (Edit: You're using RTMP, so this won't work. But wowza and fms both support seeking if configured correctly.)

<comment><AUTHOR> And it's fixed. Looks like some kind of temporary/local issue.

<comment><USER2> Not fixed for me. Are you using CDN? If so I might still be getting the old (bad) cache.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hit us up at firstname.lastname@example.com and we'll debug this. It looks like it's working intermittently</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Multiplicative Power of Masks – Explorable Essay on How Masks Can End Covid - <AUTHOR> https://aatishb.com/maskmath/ <comment> just-juan-post Doesn't not wearing masks do the same thing via herd immunity?</comment>


Is English Wikipedia's 'rise and decline' typical? - <AUTHOR> https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/revisiting-the-rise-and-decline <comment><USER2> Interesting that the decline started in 2007. That seems like a long time ago in internet time.</comment>


Protecting Against Leakers - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/08/protecting_agai.html

<comment><USER2> _As a system administrator, he needed access to many of the agency 's computer systems -- and he needed access to everything on those machines._

He certainly did NOT need this access to administer systems. It still boggles my mind that the sensitive data on those systems was not encrypted so administrators could not read it.

In any well-run IT organization, the DBAs cannot read the credit card numbers stored in the database and the systems administrators cannot read user passwords. But they can still administer the database and the the servers.

<comment><USER3> This is actually easier said than done. One of the major concerns is you don't want some dude with a security clearance taking work home with him. So a lot of effort goes into things like selinux being used to control what programs can access files.

Here you have a fundamental conflict. A root user can reconfigure the controls to allow access (that is absolutely necessary from a practical perspective), and so you end up having to trust the sysadmins.

Or you could set up other systems that would read the files, decrypt them only within special programs. Now you have two problems..... Moreover the sysadmin might be able to pull passphrases as they are typed, keys as they are uploaded, etc. It is not that easy to manage.

In the end a determined sysadmin can get the information and there isn't really a way you can lock him or her out fully.

<comment><USER4> A determined sysadmin can certainly get the information, but can he do so undetected?

<comment><USER3> A sufficiently careful one probably could for some time, especially if he was quite aware of what was checked and could work around such checks initially.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > More surprising than Snowden's ability to get away with taking the > information he downloaded is that there haven't been dozens more like him.

Is an assumption on Schneier's part. For all we know there were dozens or more. They may not have released the data or they may have sold it to some foreign agency instead.

<comment><USER6> _... or they may have sold it to some foreign agency instead._

Don't forget corporations and individuals. And of course blackmail. That could be very profitable, specially against powerful people, politicians...

<comment><USER5> Interesting angle. Makes you wonder if any politicians data was part of Snowden's haul. If so that opens up another can of worms.

If they didn't have segregated access (and it does not appear that they did) then that would have surely been too juicy to pass up. 20,000 documents is a lot.

This might also go some way to explaining the panic, if they don't know what he's got and he's had access to data like that then some people must really not be sleeping well right now.

<comment><USER6> _Makes you wonder if any politicians data was part of Snowden 's haul._

It's safe to assume that most (every?) politicians data is part of _NSA 's_ haul. Add journalists.

I find the debate about surveillance terribly naive. Politicians get corrupted as soon as there's no one closely looking.

Creating such a surveillance and secret-keeping mammoth is calling for massive corruption. And this thing has been running _for years_.

<comment><USER5> Yes, that the NSA has it is fairly obvious at this point but the question is whether or not Snowden took it. Is there any indication that he did?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Part of Assange's philosophy is that secretive unjust organizations will operate less efficiently and become less effective as they lock down their internal flow of information in response to leaks. Looks like things are going according to plan.

<comment><USER8> If we take Schneier's example of the bank president and the ATM, you could easily argue that is a flawed philosophy. Every day I go to the ATM, money comes out. Like clockwork, very efficient.

<comment><USER9> Because bank's principal job has been running ATMs for 40 or 50 years and it is run-the-bank stuff. If you look at internet banking (and how out of date and clumbsy most of these systems are) you will see this effect. Change-the- bank stuff is what "suffers" from this.

Retail banks' ATM and overnight payments systems are often 25-year-old pieces of software and hardware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _> Think of an employee as operating within a sphere of trust -- a set of assets and functions he or she has access to. Organizations act in their best interest by making that sphere as small as possible. The idea is that if someone turns out to be untrustworthy, he or she can only do so much damage. This is where the NSA failed with Snowden._

And if you read easily between the lines, this is where the NSA failed _us_ as well.

Snowden's sphere of access was very large. He broke org procedure for the good of all Americans and net users on the planet. What is implied is that existing analysts in like positions have similar access, and can break org procedures for nefarious purposes (indeed, as they already have countless times according to reporting), and no amount of official gov't reassurances on "checks and balances" or "proper procedures" can wipe this fact away.

I wonder how many roles at the NSA have inflated spheres of trust, and about all the little and big ways their operators break org procedures all the time...and especially for what reasons...

</comment><comment><USER11> Finding a balance between paralyzingly complicated processes and having to trust single employees with all of your secrets is not easy. I think that's great, since it helps discourage organizations from doing the kind of things that morally outrage their employees.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you are worried about leakers, you probably are doing somehing "bad" and you are aware of it.

Why would anybody even consider giving such tips to `people which can be summed up as evil' is beyond me.

<comment><USER13> Pretty much every company has confidential information. When a company administrator sells the internal address book to a recruiter or when a salesperson makes a copy of the prospects database before joining a competitor - that's leaking too.

<comment><USER14> It would be interesting to consider a world that is truly without secrets, even of obscurity. It's possible we might get there. I think the way companies and so forth do their work could end up being adjusted to cope.

<comment><USER5> 'The dead past'.

Isaac Asimov, 1956.

<comment><USER15> I just read that. Thanks for pointing it out. The parallels to the present day are striking and disturbing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Two points seemed to contradict eachother. The first was cutting classified sysadmin positions by 90%. the second was requiring doubling up for work on classified systems.

Does this mean that the sysadmins will each be responsible for 20x as much information or work? With such a workload how can the doubling up be effective?

I guess my rule is that when confronted with a crisis, organizations will usually react in such a way as to preserve or even exacerbate all pre-existing problems.

<comment><USER16> Or cut the need for sysadmins to 5% and fire all but 10% of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > A public or private organization's best defense against whistle-blowers is > to refrain from doing things it doesn't want to read about on the front page > of the newspaper.

I feel like this hasn't been said enough in the debates surrounding the surveillance leaks.

</comment><comment><USER18> Every nation need secrets but not in that way it is currently handled. There must be a kind of balance like a committee which decides in every single case "should this information be classified or not". When this procedure would be consistently applied there might wont be a prism program. Leakers should get a chance to contact this committee and get exemption from punishment. I hope all of you know what I mean - I know my english is not the best.

<comment><USER19> That's a _lot_ of power granted to some committee. Who verifies that it's working well, and its members aren't actually selecting what to publish for their own benefit? What guarantees would a leaker have that the committee will protect her/him?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The best protection is having nothing to leak.

</comment><comment><USER21> In a sense, Snowden was whistle-blowing on _himself!_ whenever you have lower level employees given such tremenous power without auditing and checks, the system is open to abuse. He has shown that a conspiracy of one can engage in very significant and very bad actions. What if he did such things and told no one?

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm baffled. One the one hand, the NSA wants their employees to "uphold and defend the constitution". On the other hand, they want their employees to keep secrets.

(... It is possible for these two things to not be in conflict with each other...)

They want their employees to honor the commitments they've made. At the same time they're lying to congress and the FISC.

Dear NSA: Let me help you un-fuck your business: Stop requiring your employees to uphold and defend the constitution. Stop hiring people who believe that the NSA should be held accountable to the citizens and/or to the congress.

(Perhaps you should start by creating a cult of personality around a strong, charismatic leader. And for the signing-in ceremony, instead of swearing to "defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic", maybe they could just wipe their asses with a copy of the Bill of Rights.)

If you do this, you will never have another Edward Snowden again. I guarantee it.

<comment><USER4> Apparently they employ pre-brainwashed employees (Mormons).

Edit: okay, that was offensive to Mormons, but they do apparently employ a lot of them. If one group is overrepresented, so will their views (which might diverge from the rest of the population).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> How about being an ethical organization that people would feel morally compelled to support versus harm? How about not creating secrets around ills committed but actually being candid about such issues when eventually discovered and reforming openly? It seems organizational psychology is partly to blame.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm not happy hearing the unqualified statement "we need secrecy" being banded around without any opposition.

<comment><USER25> How about replacing it with 'privacy'? We all need privacy and politicians are not an exception.

<comment><USER26> I would argue that politicians ARE an exception. They are the most public figures, and they do enjoy a unique status. They should have no professional privacy whatsoever; their personal privacy can be on par with celebrities etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you book meetings within a large organization? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Via outlook schedule meeting assistant functionality.

[https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Video-Use-the- Sched...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Video-Use-the-Scheduling- Assistant-A7BF1AEE-BEE6-46D6-A126-194ED04FBE09)

</comment><comment><USER2> [https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Video-Use-the- Sched...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Video-Use-the-Scheduling- Assistant-A7BF1AEE-BEE6-46D6-A126-194ED04FBE09)

</comment><comment> UK-AL I assume for most companies, exchange + outlook</comment>


Show HN: New C# Winforms Theme, uses GDI+. - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/Qr9Lutuf

<comment><AUTHOR> The themebase section is written by a person called "Aeonhack" my code uses his themebase and is located near the bottom. My code is the one that actually draws the stuff and so on, his is a api to call GDI+ with.</comment>


Life on other planets would likely be brief and become extinct very quickly - <AUTHOR> http://astronomy.com/news/2016/01/the-aliens-are-silent-because-they-are-extinct <comment><USER3> People always talk about how vast space is, but rarely about how vast time is. We've been looking for life for the last what, 60 years or so? It seems like not only is space so vast which makes finding evidence of life hard, but this is made even harder by the small volume of time we are likely to be around to try and observe in the grand scheme of things. Alien life has to be relatively close in terms of distance as well as time.

What if our closest alien life became discoverable (started emitting radio signals or other signs) a million years from now? Would we be around to see it?

<comment><USER4> > Would we be around to see it?

And how long does an average civilization broadcast radio?

On the "life is safe" end of the spectrum, maybe there's much better technology to be discovered. On the "life is dangerous" end, maybe you learn pretty fast not to broadcast your location to the galaxy.

<comment><USER3> > maybe there's much better technology to be discovered

Obviously we don't have much to draw on, but it seems like our technological growth looks a bit exponential. I'd imagine a civilization that has been around for a million years would have discovered a hell of a lot of technology - but a million years is a blip in 13.82 billion years, the age of the Universe. It's like 0.001% if I've got my maths right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been reading The Vital Question by Nick Lane, where he puts forth some theories about the origin of eukaryotes, and life in general. It does make it seem that abiogenesis and eukaryote-genesis are much more difficult than we give them credit for.

So in the Drake Equation, I think that F[L] is probably pretty low.

And because eukaroyte genesis is difficult and only happened once (and it took a billion years of bacteria & archea hanging out before we got a eukaryote), and eukaryotes are a prereq for multi-cellular organisms and thus intelligent life, F[i] is also really low.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Vital-Question-Evolution- Origins/d...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Vital-Question-Evolution- Origins/dp/0393088812)

<comment><USER6> This gets my vote. My hunch is that intelligent life like the kind we would love to meet happens either on the order of once or twice per galaxy during the galaxy's entire lifetime, or it happens SO rarely that, if the universe is infinite in extent, then any intelligent observer looking out from the "center" of their observable universe will most likely be in the only intelligent civilization in that visible radius.

Depressing, but it seems more plausible than things like "Great Filters of DOOM". It would predict that there is a lot of intelligence in the entire universe, but each cluster of intelligence is profoundly alone.

<comment><USER7> Then why the fuck do we keep killing ourselves?

Seriously, if we taught this level of intelligent-life appreciation to every born soul... the world would be a better place.

Rather than starting with the teachings we do for youngsters; why not just teach them how freaking rare and lucky they are to be a consciousness present to hear that fact and then know that they can then expand the known universe... but do this in a much more deliberate fashion than we are now?

We need to be much much more deterministic from a species if we will survive for eons.

<comment><USER5> To quote Ender's Game: _" I am not a happy man, Ender. Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it."_

It doesn't really answer why we commit suicide. But it does give an answer to why we aren't happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there anything revelatory in this article? I didn't see any links or references to new papers/ideas, but some Googling returned this 2016 PDF[1] titled 'The Case for a Gaian Bottleneck' by Aditya Chopra from ANU.

There's been discussion in the past[2][3] about these 'Great Filters' that prevent life from occurring everywhere in the universe.

[1][http://adi.life/pubs/ChopraLineweaver2016.pdf](http://adi.life/pubs/ChopraLineweaver2016.pdf)

[2][http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/greatfilter.html](http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/greatfilter.html)

[3][http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi- paradox.html](http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html)

<comment><USER9> What I got was that the rapid emergence of biological feedback was essential for regularizing climate which in turn enabled life on earth to evolve. In a way, life itself enabled life on earth. It's the rarity of this emergence that is important rather than the rarity of intelligent life. Another thing I got is that life itself will destroy life the way climate change is going :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My personal lesson from the fermi paradox and the drake equation in particular is that we humans are terrible at grasping very small probabilities. Intuition completely fails when we have to decide if something has the probability 10^-5 or 10^-50, which makes sense because for almost all practical purposes both are almost zero in most situations, but for edge cases like the drake equation they make all the difference.

<comment><USER11> Its not just difficult to grasp. Its very difficult to estimate in the first place since have very little data at hand to make any call. For example we may take 1/9 for the probability of life appearing in a given planetary system, but we have no idea if this is representative or not of usual probabilities or if our system is exceptional in any way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The problem with this reasoning is that it considers this to be true: if intelligent life exists, we are gonna be able to understand its intelligence.

What if there exist an intelligent life, so intelligent that their level of intelligence compared to ours is like comparing ours with...cats. We all know small genetic mutations can have huge impact. So huge they might just be technically/biologically out of reach.

So maybe an intelligent life exists out there, but they are so ahead of us that we are not even capable of understanding how. Like a little cat watching a car thinking maybe it's an animal.

<comment><USER13> > So maybe an intelligent life exists out there, but they are so ahead of us > that we are not even capable of understanding how. Like a little cat > watching a car thinking maybe it's an animal.

So true. We are really bad at looking at things outside the lens of our own experience. Why would life evolve in exactly the same fashion? Would it even have DNA as we know it? There is life that could form in ways we cannot even perceive - intelligence of a type that is so completely alien that neither could every notice or understand the other.

The universe may simply be filled with life, but because it evolves so differently it may simply be impossible to see most of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Industrial civilization may not last very long. Industrial civilization on Earth is only about 200 years old. A useful starting point is the first time a railroad train carried paying passengers. There were earlier demos and prototypes, but think of that as the moment the Industrial Revolution got out of beta. Progress up to then was very slow. Progress after that was very fast.

About 75 years ago, progress reached the point that a substantial dent could be made in the planet's resources. Until then, human activity just wasn't large scale enough. Now, we can see the end in sight for many resources. On a scale of centuries, most mineral resources run out.

The high-power, heavy industry phase of life may have an expiration date that's closer in time than the founding of Oxford University.

<comment><USER15> > About 75 years ago, progress reached the point that a substantial dent could > be made...

Controversial assertion. There's a lot of evidence that we've been able to rank on the level of forces of nature for quite a while now. The disappearance of megafauna, the desertification of Western China and Saharan Africa. There's even evidence that the Amazon rainforest may have been a massive human silviculture project that had been going on for 10,000 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Imagine how easily we can also become extict and even our most powerful technology isn't powerful enough to save us. Imagine a big explosion in our galaxy , like that supernova that happend recently. We could die out like ants. We should be progressing faster...

<comment><USER17> We're already progressing at breakneck speed. The last 10,000 years saw us go from stone tools to the Samsung S6.

<comment><USER18> And in the last couple of years, from the iPhone 6 to the iPhone 6s!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Liu Cixin's The Dark Forest, the second book in his 3-body problem trilogy, posits a similar philosophy: resources are limited so civilizations annihilate other civilizations. So if an alien civilization knew about earthlings, they will destroy earth ASAP if they are capable, lest the earthlings come after their resources.

This is also why some people believe we should not try to make contact with intelligent alien life. They believe broadcasting our location is dangerous.

<comment><USER20> It just doesn't make any sense. Resources are limited, sure, but they're not scarce. In fact, they might not be limited even. If something can afford to come to Earth, they can afford to get unlimited resources from anywhere. Unless you're positing it's from one of our nearest stars and then just happen to be coming to Earth as a last ditch effort or something.

I mean, scenarios can be imagined where an alien would want to destroy life on Earth, but they seem far fetched.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> No answer to the Fermi Paradox works if it requires all aliens to uniformly come to the same end state or satisfy some boundary condition without exception. All it takes is the one exception, one small group in one suitably advanced civilization, and you have self-replicating probes building an expanding wave of computronium, dismantling even the stars themselves as soon as the economics favor a better use for that matter. Such as more computronium.

The Fermi Paradox is more the Wilderness Paradox: why is everything, everywhere we look, wild and unmodified? Why are there still stars, when a simple economic analysis of our future tells us that we will tear them down in favor of more efficient arrangements of matter and energy?

[https://www.exratione.com/2015/05/the-cosmological- noocene/](https://www.exratione.com/2015/05/the-cosmological-noocene/)

"Per our present understanding of physics and intelligent economic activity, we will turn every part of the great span of the universe into our descendants if not diverted or stopped by some outside influence, stars and all. The cosmological noocene, an ocean of intelligence. That the natural universe remains present to be used by us indicates that something is awry, however, that some vital and important understanding is missing, and as a species we are still just making the first fumbling explorations of the bounds of the possible with regards to what it is that we don't know."

<comment><USER22> > _dismantling even the stars themselves_

It's unclear whether that's actually feasible from an energy balance perspective. You'll need a lot of energy to re-arrange things on that scale. Each star is already sitting at the bottom of its own local energy well.

Maybe the far future will discover radically new ways to produce energy - <USER2> until then, this whole thing about the wave of computronium flooding the universe is pure speculation.

<comment><USER21> Agreed, but stars are very fragile in some ways; surprisingly small disruptions in some of their transitional layers can cause novas. Stellar modeling is entertaining in that way.

So in place of "dismantle star" perhaps "provoke extreme mass loss" would be a more obviously net energy-positive goal for the engineers. Still, one should run the back of the envelope calculations on what you'd have to do with a stellar mass to produce greater energy than it emits in its current form, and whether the difference can be enough to make it a net positive to nova the star. My intuitive belief is that the difference in efficiency of use of materials can be huge, more than enough to justify large investments in stellar engineering at the stage when technologies means molecular nanotechnology plus nucleosynthesis: factories capable of taking in hydrogen and turning out anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There sure are a lot of confident yet highly speculative declarations about life in that article, in spite of the fact that we currently only have a sample size of one.

<comment><USER24> Really? Which declaration in particular are you referring to?

<comment><USER23> > Early life is fragile

> The aliens are silent because they are extinct

> new life would commonly die out due to runaway heating or cooling on their > fledgling planets

I'm not disputing the science or studies the article refers to (I'm far from qualified for that), I believe that models of plausibility are an important part of the process, but as with most science journalism they just can't help turning them into some sort of "absolute" statements.

<comment><USER24> Good point, missed those statements (forest for the trees I guess). Those are quite unfortunate!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The book _Rare Earth_ covers this topic throughly. The conclusion they come to is that complex, multicellular life is likely extremely rare in the universe. But simple, microbial life may be much more common than we think.

[http://www.amazon.com/Rare-Earth-Complex-Uncommon- Universe/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Rare-Earth-Complex-Uncommon- Universe/dp/0387952896)

<comment><USER25> I didn't find the book very persuasive. The authors basically take everything that is (or might be) uncommon about the Solar System, and somehow turns them into an argument on why we are so lucky to have them.

E.g., we have big Jupiter. We don't know exactly what it does, but it might have helped the Earth survive its early days. Therefore, it _might_ be the case that the rise of complex life _needed_ Jupiter. Yadda yadda, multiply a dozen of these things, and suddenly life on Earth looks like an incredible stroke of luck.

The problem is, we don't know enough to make that verdict. What if the existence of Jupiter actually postponed the rise of life by sending big comets along our way?

I enjoyed "Life Everywhere" by Darling much more, though it is probably too dated to recommend in 2016. (Astrobiology is a rapidly changing field, I suppose.)

<comment><USER15> That's interesting remember the book explaining Jupiter had a specific influence on earth's ability to develop complex life in that its size and position made it essentially _prevent_ a lot of comets and dangerous asteroids from hitting earth by simply getting in their way.

<comment><USER25> I think I wrote my argument rather poorly. Let me try again:

I could buy that Jupiter in our particular Solar System had the effect of clearing asteroids in the Earth's orbit. However, that doesn't automatically mean that Jupiter was essential. What if, say, Jupiter's presence in the early days of the solar system prevented these asteroids from coalescing further, resulting in the presence of the asteroids in the first place? Or what if it didn't matter in the long run anyway?

Okay I just pulled that out of thin air, but what I'm saying is that there's too many unknowns to declare we needed Jupiter for life. The authors cherry- picks arguments that support their cause. Also bear in mind that this book was written in 2003, when we knew less than a dozen extrasolar planets and, IIRC, basically none looked like our Solar System (because the instruments weren't good enough to detect such systems). Even now, I don't think we know enough about planetary systems to confidently say whether Earth-like systems are common or rare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I am convinced that we're the first/only space-capable species in our galaxy by the simple absence of killer self-replicating interstellar robots. I'm serious. Anything that's remotely possible becomes inevitable on these astronomical scales, and all it takes is one jerk making one self-replicating killer robot and that's it for life for the rest of time in the galaxy.

</comment><comment><USER27> A series of unproven theories as a basis for a new theory that further unproven theories can be based on. The cornerstone of modern science.

There really needs to be more documented, observable data before there can be any remotely credible theory about how abundant or desolate our universe is of life. Using such observable data (we know the name) we could only surmise that in 100% of solar systems with a similar sun, bearing a planet at an adequate distance from it's sun, will not only support life, but would have life.

Common sense[?] would dictate that's very unlikely, but there's no scientific basis yet to even theorize otherwise until we can find a way to get that data. To come up with absolutes about planets such distances away is foolish given we don't know half a shit about the planets right next to us.

<comment><USER28> It seems like a lot of SETI/astro biology is more speculation than science, i.e. something that can be disproved or reproduced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Our view of life in the universe is subjective, we compare it with the only place we know it exists, earth, probably life exists in many forms not limited to how we know it or how we would expect it to evolve so probably not all life might be brief how earthers might think.

We are amazed how life exists in the most hostile places on earth and how it was able to adapt to very harsh conditions, probably life in universe is also full of surprises.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder why on this subject everyone overlooks two major events witnessed by thousands of people some of which former military pilots and instead focus on science fiction scenarios.

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

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

People try to explain these events in all kind of ways avoiding the most obvious one no matter what.

Is it fear? the lack of recognition by authorities? I never understood why people will talk freely about aliens in the universe but aliens here is always a taboo or a subject of ridicule no matter the evidence.

<comment><USER30> I think its more likely the government was testing military equipment.

<comment><USER29> > Witnesses claim to have observed a huge V-shaped (several football field > sized), coherently-moving dark UFO (stars would disappear behind the object > and reappear as it passed by), producing no sound, and containing five > spherical lights or possibly light-emitting engines

Do you really think the military has this kind of technology?

<comment><USER31> Do you think there used to be dragons roaming the earth?

<comment><USER29> Do you still think the earth is flat? This is how it sounds when you try to ridicule something that you don't know or probably don't want to know for various reasons, you should read more on the subject with an objective mind.

<comment><USER31> I think the comparison with dragons is appropriate. Religion and talk about hell and demons was in-vogue at the time so dragons fit in well with that. Why did aliens wait for us to develop advanced technology before manifesting themselves, and why did they stop now that smartphones and google-earth are common-place things?

<comment><USER32> > Why did aliens wait for us to develop advanced technology before manifesting > themselves, and why did they stop now that smartphones and google-earth are > common-place things?

The Prime Directive? :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Compared to age of Galaxy, Life on this planet has been brief. Also, aren't something like 99.99% of all species extinct?

<comment><USER20> Not really, life on Earth has existed for about 26% of the age of the universe (about 3.5 billion years). And we have good reason to expect that life cannot arise before a certain time because we have to go through a cycle or two of supernovas ejecting useful elements into their surroundings.

If you meant intelligent life, then nevermind :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> So life won't always find a way?</comment>


FBI busts software copyright fugitive who fled to Pakistan  - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/020212-copyright-fugitive-255671.html?hpg1=bn

<comment><USER2> "was arrested at Dulles Airport as he was trying to get back into the U.S."

What the hell was he thinking? That he would be able to enter the US without being noticed?</comment>


'Has Anybody Gone to Prison for Violating the F.C.C.'s Do Not Call List?' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/insider/has-anybody-gone-to-prison-for-violating-the-fccs-do-not-call-list.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=timesinsider&region=c-column-bottom-span-region&_r=0 <comment><USER2> Article says around 100 civil penalties total have been issued for violations of the DNCL.

That pretty much sums up why it doesn't help much.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Mr. Quilici and federal officials say software to block robocalls and greater enforcement may be starting to help._

I haven't got a clue what they are doing on the Old Continent, but my mother- in-law never gets spam calls. It's a solved problem, despite the protestations of the government.

</comment><comment><USER4> I just got 3 calls in 4 hours from the same CASH NOW number. I wish there was a way to drag these asshats into small claims once a week like you can with some (email) spam.</comment>


Created chessvision.ai CV/ML app to analyze chess positions on any website/video - <AUTHOR> https://chessvision.ai <comment><AUTHOR> Reddit discussion here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/b826h5/created_chess...](https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/b826h5/created_chessvisionai_a_computer_visionmachine/ejvelvg/)</comment>


How the Cult of "Fact-Checking" Helped Trump Win - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mtracey/how-the-cult-of-fact-checking-helped-trump-win-bc51f7b69f49#.x4bb2uywu <comment><USER2> I agree with the article, mostly, but this:

>If you overload people with preachy, preening nonsense on a daily basis, you thus overload their cognitive faculties, and they are going to ignore you.

is overly dismissive. You haven't overloaded anybody's "cognitive faculties" when you feed them them transparent nonsense. Their cognitive faculties are working quite well, despite your efforts. They're not ignoring you because they're confused; they're ignoring you because you don't have any credibility, and credibility is the coin of any news organization.

There's a reason trust in the American media is at historic lows.

<comment><USER3> The article had some good things in it, but the message that Trump wouldn't have been president-elect if it wasn't for these mistakes, just makes it look sad and more of an emotional piece that you might find in drama magazines. Stop over-Analysing (edit: without proof).

It is funny how everything is now: 'how this helped Trump win' etc. And before the election it was supposed to make him lose.

When you win everything can be said to have helped you win. But what really proves that something contributed to it, and why did everyone(big news at least) miss the evidence?

<comment><USER4> A general way to dismiss a lot of this is with the comment "People who got everything wrong about Trump prior to X now tell us...."

A good comment I recently came across is:

 _Rather, it is the views of those who have to maintain respectability in order to maintain their position that have changed. It is no longer permitted for them to even think the thoughts required to understand what just happened. The Overton Window has become the Overton Bubble._

From [https://sydneytrads.com/2016/11/18/alistair- hermann/](https://sydneytrads.com/2016/11/18/alistair-hermann/) which looks at it from the Australian viewpoint (i.e. I can't follow a lot of it ^_^ and haven't really tried to digest it yet).

<comment><USER3> Yet it is good to change position, and to reflect on why they got it wrong. This is just grasping at straws, there is no data they use to back their conclusion. It seems merely a thought, a thought that is then published as a fact. And I am seeing so many of these articles these days, I am sure the fly landing on Hillary can be blamed for Trump winning.

It looks like an interesting read, thank you.

"But the reasons for Donald Trump's rise exist outside the Overton Window, and thus cannot be understood by anyone stuck within its confines. Yet for those not so confined the reasons for Trump's rise are obvious."

<comment><USER4> You're very welcome.

 _I am sure the fly landing on Hillary can be blamed for Trump winning._

Seriously, that was likely _a_ factor, especially when coupled with the Obama fly incident. The whole "Spirit Cooking" occult stuff that came from Podesta's emails, combined with the art he proudly displays in his office and home giving that instant credibility, got a number of people who are more inclined to thinking about the supernatural than the typical HN commentator to wonder about things like demonic possession, which is, after all, straight out of the New Testament.

(As for me, I'm definitely willing to entertain thoughts of the supernatural when it comes to evil.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using blender's Eevee to animate battle droids - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/Uk2T8nteat0 <comment><AUTHOR> This is a great example of far blender has come! It took a few hours to render using free software on a computer that probably cost under $10K.

Imagine how much time and cost this kind of animation would have taken just a decade again. It's pretty amazing.</comment>


Apple Watch event announced for March 9th - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/26/8115325/apple-watch-event-march-9 <comment><USER2> I've purchased a Pebble and, more recently, a Moto 360. I love the idea of smart watches but I feel like they need to be as passive as possible for the best user experience. So far the Apple Watch looks like it needs a lot of interaction to do different things. I'm excited to see a real demo of the interface to see if that's really the case.

However I won't be buying anymore smart watches from anyone until at least another generation or two; the Moto 360 and even the Pebble are just so thick and the constant amount of charging the 360 needs makes it difficult to go through a full day just using it to keep track of the damn time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really hope they can throw some Broadwell laptops into this event. How long can they let the MacBook Air get thrashed in every other manufacturer's comparisons? When Dell has a better version, it's time for an upgrade.

<comment><USER4> It's probably a bad idea to promote minor upgrades when you're trying to get the world excited about your new product.

<comment><USER5> It's not uncommon for Apple to launch other products at the same time as major products (with no event coverage except maybe for a press release).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Minimalistic YouTube Websites? - <AUTHOR> Hello, sometime ago I've seen here a youtube minimalistic website, but I don't know what is the name of that website and now I'm looking for. Someone knows? <comment><USER2> [https://invidio.us/](https://invidio.us/) [https://toogl.es/](https://toogl.es/) [http://www.viewpure.com/](http://www.viewpure.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly what i'm looking for. Thank you!

<comment><USER2> You are welcome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> youtube-dl => mpv.

No ads, and the files live on your machine.</comment>


Ask HN: Where would you host 100 small, customizable, static sites? - <AUTHOR> I want to offer dead simple website hosting for customers of my startup. Only small customizations for each page. Only one template. I'm thinking the AWS API with S3, Cloudfront, Route53, along with a custom front end, but I wanted to check here first to make sure I'm not getting in over my head. <comment><USER2> I've used [https://www.netlify.com](https://www.netlify.com) to host 100s of static sites for my clients.

It integrates nicely with GitHub and is blazing fast (distributed, geo-cached CDNs).

Best of all, the team at Netlify knows what it's doing, and founder Matt is very smart and their support responds instantly to any questions, no matter how deeply techie it is or how complex.

[ Disclaimer: I'm not affliated with Netlify. Just happen to love their service as I was looking for this and did an extensive evaluation of various such service providers]

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for responding!

Which Netlify plan do you use? I'm looking to offer this service for free.

Can your clients customize their sites? I'd want them to be able to upload a new logo or change the text on the About page, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm currently building something very similar.

The stack is very similar to what you're proposing:

S3, Route53, Cloudfront, with a Django backend running on Lambda (using the great Zappa! framework for this), and a very basic CMS built with React. Django and React apps rely on a Graphql implementation (Graphene + Apollo) for data transfer.

For a short while I considered using Google's cloud offering due to S3 having a 50 bucket limit but they have since dropped that limitation.

I've been jumping back and forth between the infrastructure and apps solving each problem only when necessary but would be happy to share what little experience I have with you.

You can PM me if you like: mail[at]woven.website

</comment><comment><USER4> This doesn't sound like anything a small, $5-10/month VPS couldn't handle.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to offer clients the option to customize their sites, however. How would you go about setting that up? Would you build a CMS for multiple users on the VPS or use a prebuilt solution? I was thinking about S3 because it'd serve their sites quickly, it'd be secure, and I could build a simple front end pretty easily. What do you think?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd do it caveman style and self host. Keep a tiny VM of your setup on the cloud somewhere as a failover (only have to power it on long enough to rsync).

As long as things stay small, managing hardware is usually easier than addressing 3rd-party curve-balls.

</comment><comment><USER6> FastMail accounts come with ftp/webdav storage & an interface for turning a directory into a static site. Fast backend, reseller accounts, DNS, etc. No complaints.</comment>


Bias Against Novelty in Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.nber.org/digest/jun16/w22180.html <comment><USER2> Having experienced bias against publishing truly novel findings, I can testify this form of bias is a potential hazard re: scientific progress.

Back in the early 2000's, in the course of clinical practice I encountered some unexpected outcomes of treatment which correlated to a particular, if unexpected diagnosis. I tried to find info about this, but to my surprise a thorough search of the literature came up empty.

I felt a duty to report my observations. Putting it into a formal paper was difficult for me to accomplish, but did get it organized. Believing in the idea of open access, I decided to submit to a newly established open-access publisher.

Peer review did not go smoothly. Because the subject had never been reported before, at least in a peer-reviewed journal, the reviewers expressed doubt about the reality of the data. One "peer" was determined to disparage the report to the extent of making glaringly inaccurate, distorted comments about the nature of the condition in the subjects of my report. After a rigorous defense of data and procedure the editors decided to ignore the negative review and the report was published.

Novelty is not only apparent in terms of methodology or cross-discipline application of ideas, but also arises when attempting to share previously unreported observations. The closed-mindedness of many in the academic community (who are the predominant peer reviewers) is apparently a pervasive problem in the sciences, and possibly endemic in academic culture in general.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like your review process went very well. Those hardened anti- novelists have probably rejected piles of genuinely crank material. They're needed to keep the literature free of true rubbish. Of course they're not perfect so sometimes rubbish gets through and sometimes good work gets blocked, but if the researcher really believes in their work, they'll go to extra lengths to break through, as you did.

Maybe the world would be a slightly better place if your overly skeptical reviewer had reviewed this [http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet- paper.htm](http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-paper.htm)

<comment><USER2> Keeping "rubbish" out of the journals is a reasonable goal, though judging by what's in the journals I read, you're right rubbish still leaks through from time to time.

I believe I was the beneficiary of good fortune in overcoming the barriers, but luck is a very thin and unreliable conduit to success. Indeed I know authors not as lucky, and their good work was blocked.

Fields of research are often highly specialized and a small community of interest can become insulated from voices outside that world. It's my impression that was the basis of the difficulty I encountered.

Not that I have a solution to the problem, but I've wondered how many worthwhile novel contributions by "outsiders" not affiliated with a field's main research centers are being lost under current peer review regimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yep. Professor in molecular biology here. Been at numerous universities you know. I can confirm very unscientific groupthink as the main driver of science progress nowadays. Being a lone wolf, rogue isn't really a viable option given the funding climate. Perfect sheep extends all the way from college to the professor level. Think this would surprise most lay people given the conception of scientists as off in their own world.

<comment><USER5> I think a number of things contribute to the rise(?) of groupthink in the sciences (particularly in biology). One is the increasing age [0] of the peers in the peer review systems. Younger people are typically willing (and able) to perform more risky novel research. However, the biggest single factor is the drop in science funding, which leads to fear and an inherently conservative response (on the part of both grant applicants and reviewers).

[0] [http://scienceblogs.com/transcript/2009/12/03/nih-grants- by-...](http://scienceblogs.com/transcript/2009/12/03/nih-grants-by-age/)

<comment><USER6> There is also the whole NPM-ish attempts at using things like publication frequency and number of references to gauge the ROI on research, and therefore the performance of the scientists involved.

All this runs smack into Cambell's law.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell's_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell's_law)

<comment><USER7> wow, thanks, I had never heard of Campbell's law, and it really puts into a concise form what I believe about a lot of things (from science publishing to interest rate manipulation).

<comment><USER6> I think i originally ran into a British variant, called Goodheart's Law, while reading about reforms to their National Health Service.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law)

The particular example being of how hospitals where given a negative rating based on how many patients were left waiting on stretchers (the rating system being introduced in an attempt at producing market like forces within the NHS). To get around this, the staff started removing the wheels on the stretchers while the patient was waiting. That way it was a bed, not a stretcher...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I feel like if you break down what's being said here, that it's just a consequence of having to communicate ideas to people.

I publish "Gravitational constant is actually (some slightly more specific thing)", with extension of existing methods. Someone sees that and already will be convinced just by the title!

I publish "Gravity is actually caused by micro-gnomes pushing things around with walkie-talkes", and it's pretty novel. I don't really have existing work to base it on.

Why should anyone believe my work has any basis in reality then? The burden of proof is on me to convince people. Fool-proof methodology, simple explanations. Bringing it back to current understanding helps. But I'm the person saying everything is different, the world owes nothing to me just yet.

Not to mention that the header graph is totally confirmation bias. Yes, you're going to cite the original paper citing the effect you're studying. You probably won't cite most incremental research. Definitionally novel papers that get any traction will collect references.

\---

I actually have an example of my own novel research! I'm the first person to post about a bug with Ubuntu's (at the time) new IME manager[0] on Ask Ubuntu. Turns out there was a real thing (and it wasn't me being silly). So now I have 550 points on Ask Ubuntu because of this question, and get notifications about it all the time.

I have cornered the "Ubuntu 13.10 keyboard bug" citation space. Mainly for being first. And I have gotten extra rewarded for it. Novel papers enjoy the same perks when they get any traction.

[0]: [http://askubuntu.com/questions/356357/how-to-use-altshift- to...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/356357/how-to-use-altshift-to-switch- keyboard-layouts)

</comment><comment><USER9> It's likely not the same phenomenon, but I'm reminded of the story of Millikan's oil drop experiment and how the accepted value slowly changed from Millikan's reported value to the curent accepted value.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_drop_experiment#Millikan.2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_drop_experiment#Millikan.27s_experiment_as_an_example_of_psychological_effects_in_scientific_methodology)

</comment><comment><USER10> Their full paper is here [http://cepr.org/sites/default/files/news/CEPR_FreeDP_180416....](http://cepr.org/sites/default/files/news/CEPR_FreeDP_180416.pdf) . If I followed it correctly they measure "novelty" by:

\- bucketing citations into journals

\- building a network of journals with edge weights defined by the number of papers that cite both journals

\- Using cosine similarity between journals (cf [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Similarity_(network_science)#C...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Similarity_\(network_science\)#Cosine_similarity) ) in this network to define how banal it is to cite them together

\- For a new paper, they recompute this matrix and define novelty by summing 1-banality over the new edges

I don't know if their method reduces to a standard thing from network science (eg. betweenness, centrality, ?) but I would not be surprised if it did.

A closely-related paper with a totally-different writing style did something like this a few years back:

"Citing for High Impact" [https://cs.stanford.edu/people/jure/pubs/citations- jcdl10.pd...](https://cs.stanford.edu/people/jure/pubs/citations-jcdl10.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> My preconceptions here are the reverse - that mundane studies seeking to replicate existing studies to confirm their findings are boring, and as such are not pursued or funded, despite their importance. I understand that 'novel' is being used in a slightly different context here, though.

<comment><USER4> In biological sciences it's a well known secret that most of what you write your grants on is for work that you've already done. This is not about being "boring" vs interesting. It's pragmatism to survive and get funding.

<comment><USER12> Is it not that way in other sciences? It's funny that I just assumed all sciences did the same thing. In fact, my wife works in a museum, and I was stunned to find out that they write grants for work that isn't even _started_ yet.

<comment><USER13> > Is it not that way in other sciences?

I can speak to the fact that this is _absolutely_ the case in the physical sciences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Status-quo bias is a phenomenon that is well documented in the psychology literature: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias) Bias for the established ways of thinking seems especially common (to me) in the physical sciences. I do not think that should be a surprise since the fundamental view of natural processes does not advance quickly. Perhaps this is why Einstein remarked that if you really believed in your ideas then you should quit being an academic and go get a job like a lighthouse keeper. That maybe works in mathematical physics, where all you need is a pen and paper, but in the other sciences it does not seem like a great plan. What I have observed many do when they find their ideas fall foul of the times is they go get a line-of-business job that does not require a lot of mental energy. That is a plan I have seen work for many. Finance is particularly good for that. It is a field where knowing how to think in contrarian fashion and also knowing how to run with the herd are both valuable. I see a lot of mathematical physics folks do that as a way to reconcile the glacial pace of scientific development with the urge to think and do something new and innovative. There are quite a few famous mathematicians who paid the bills with finance work. For instance, Gauss wrote insurance contracts and used his distribution to help price the risk. Of course, in modern times Jim Simons runs a hedge fund.

</comment><comment><USER15> These notions sound familiar.

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

</comment><comment><USER16> Good! There _should_ be a bias against new things until the new things are proven to be correct.

Optimizing science based on "what do people who want to get tenure want" seems like a great way to be bad at science.

<comment><USER17> I agree, I have some experience from doing medical research, and this seems like a given to me. My friends who work in the softer sciences like psychology have different opinions though, since they often work in degree's of correctness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> My aunt's been studying the sun magnetic field for decades. She has measured (yes, measured) parts of the sun inner magnetic field (quite complex to do actually). Div(B) not null there. She can't get it published because Maxwell's equations and it's a "new" discovery. Maxwell starts with "in the void", I think we can agreed that centre of the sun is not the void. It is incredible that scientist MEASURING stuff can't get its measures published in recognized science papers.

<comment><USER19> _> Maxwell starts with "in the void", I think we can agreed that centre of the sun is not the void._

Maxwell's Equations apply in the presence of sources, i.e., not just "in the void". That includes the equation Div B = 0. In other words, "sources" are electric charges and currents; there are no magnetic charges and currents. So, as GFK_of_xmaspast commented, most likely there is an error in her measurements somewhere, and she should be trying to find it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is this bias, or does it just take time for other researchers to go into areas opened up by novel papers and then publish other papers that cite those novel papers?

</comment><comment><USER21> Intuitively this sounds like confirmation for the current system. The thing is, that it takes time to understand truly novel research, while a measurement like the discovery of the Higgs has a immediate impact, because the Higgs mechanism was studied for 40 years.

(To be clear, I believe that the focus on citations is stupid for other reasons, but this does not seem to be a failure of the system.)

</comment><comment><USER22> If anything I've heard the other thing - that it's hard to get published unless something is novel enough. There's not much interest in studies that just confirm or slightly extend, which is why reproducibility becomes an issue.

<comment><USER5> Somewhat novel research is fine, just as long as it conforms to what is expected. Novel AND counter to the expectations of the field is much harder to publish.

<comment><USER4> sad but very true

<comment><USER23> Can you think of a low impact paper that later turned out to be too novel to get published in a high impact journal at the time? How often do you think this happens? I for one don't see this a lot. What I see more often are people that think there work is super novel, and either it's not, or they don't have enough evidence and don't know the field well enough to know that they are wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What if it is an education issue? Maybe by training young scientists for wayy too long before they start doing science, we "overtrain" them, and their mental models are over-fitted to current science. Naivete can sometimes be a major source of creativity (that's why people who cross disciplines sometimes have great impact).

</comment><comment><USER25> Obligatory mention of Rupert Sheldrake: [http://www.sheldrake.org/books-by- rupert-sheldrake/the-scien...](http://www.sheldrake.org/books-by-rupert- sheldrake/the-science-delusion-science-set-free)

<comment><USER26> Obligatory mention of pseudoscience in a topic about real science: check. Might as well hail Deepak Chopra as Einstein reincarnated.

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

<comment><USER25> Obligatory knee-jerk accusation of "pseudoscience" at the mention of Sheldrake: check. It's a topic about overly conservative attitudes in the scientific community. Thanks for demonstrating that tendency with your insulting comment.

<comment><USER27> Sheldrake's ideas of "morphic resonance" are the worst kind of pseudoscientific garbage. The man literally believes that insulin molecules inherit a collective memory from all insulin molecules that have existed in the past.

He has constructed a New Age world of fantasy based on a fundamentally new type of physical phenomenon that is completely unsupported by physicists.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and he has not delivered such evidence.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The sproutcore 60-60 days for 60 devs to train for 60 hours to write one book - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/sproutcore/browse_thread/thread/309de9abdc7944f4

<comment><USER2> This sounds great. The weakest part of sproutcore right now is the documentation, which has actually gotten worse since I first learned 14 months ago due to bit rot. Fixing that will go a long way towards increasing adoption.

</comment><comment><USER3> If Strobe is the book sponsor than they only need 100 people, 25 companies or some combination of the two, to raise the money.

</comment><comment><USER4> This sounds like an excellent candidate for Kickstarter - have you considered that option?

<comment><USER5> Totally agree, but apparently the Kickstarter people turned them down.

From the article: "I had originally hoped to do a Kickstarter project, but I have since been informed that we do not fit the profile of project they are trying to promote at this time."

<comment><USER4> That's too bad. Regardless SproutCore will be huge now that they also have Katz on their team :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When is the deadline for funding?</comment>


Chrome: Playing the browser game for keeps - <AUTHOR> http://saffer.posterous.com/playing-the-browser-game-for-keeps

<comment><USER2> It's not like Google advertises the Chrome version number, though. In fact, they seem to try to hide which version you're on, so I don't think that this is a marketing gimmick at all. Chrome's release schedule has a lot more to do with the changing nature of user software and the Internet - version numbers shouldn't matter, all users should aim to run the latest version, and updates should come quickly.

These are all admirable goals and Chrome's versioning is just a side effect of newer software development methods. Chrome is perhaps on track to win the browser wars because it's the best browser and gets new features the fastest; IE's release cycle is still humiliatingly slow.

<comment><USER3> I, personally, consider myself more "tech" person - and I don't have the slightest clue which Chrome version I am using. If you said the newest Chrome is Chrome 7, I would have to agree.

One part is, I guess, the seamless upgrading (when I use Firefox, I usually click on "upgrade next time", because I am always doing something TOTALLY important that can't wait). Other part is that the extensions don't break every new version and the UI looks completely the same (unlike for, let's say, Opera, which changes UI all the time). I don't know what browser version am I using, and I don't care.

Really, I hope this will become standard in OS, too.

<comment><USER4> As of this writing, the "newest" chrome is either 12, 13, or 14, depending on which stability channel you're on.

Woo!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author is missing the point. Chrome does not market its version number, and transparently updates itself in the background. I'd imagine the vast majority of Chrome users have no idea what major version their browser is on - I sure didn't until I took a look.

Unlike previous number races, Chrome's rapidly increasing version numbers do not indicate a will to impress consumers with high values. Instead, Chrome takes a page from web applications, and makes the version number irrelevant to the vast majority of its users.

Firefox seems to be trying to do the same, but IMO it's putting the cart before the horse. It should improve its update mechanism until version numbers do not matter, and _then_ update the major version as often as it wants to.

<comment><USER6> > _"users have no idea what major version their browser is on"_

To be fair, I'm pretty sure this is true of every browser. And most software in general.

Marketing people like having a number. Developers like having a number. They like it for different reasons and have different goals for it. But users have never really known or cared.

<comment><USER7> I use Chrome, and this is the first time I have been ignorant of what version number my browser is on. So yes, most users don't know or care. But now, even techy users don't know or care. It really is a step change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This was actually the entire purpose of Chrome - to push forward the state of the art in browsers. When Chrome was released, Google made it clear that they didn't care per se whether people used Chrome. What they cared about was getting more people using better browsers by forcing the browser market to move at a faster pace. And it appears they have done exactly that. I'm very impressed with the execution - they articulated this precise strategy in 2008 and we're now really seeing it work.

<comment><USER7> Competition sure can be a wonderful thing, when it happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "This smells to me like an anti-trust move"

People really need to learn what anti-trust is and what it isn't. My goodness, the label gets applied to _everything_.

<comment><USER10> "Anti-trust" is government action to break a "trust" or monopoly. The author appears to be using the term incorrectly.

<comment><USER9> I'm referring more to the fact that he suggests increasing a near-hidden version number every 6 weeks to be potentially criminally anticompetitive.

<comment><USER10> Well yes, that too. I'm implying that he is not only ignorant of the proper meaning but also even of the proper terminology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Relevant posts the OP seems to have missed...

<https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dg63dpc6_4d7vkk6ch>

[http://blog.chromium.org/2010/07/release-early-release- often...](http://blog.chromium.org/2010/07/release-early-release-often.html)

[http://www.thechromesource.com/understanding-chromes-six- wee...](http://www.thechromesource.com/understanding-chromes-six-week-release- cycle/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Yeah, because Linus deciding to name 2.6.43 3.0 is _clearly_ inspired by Google Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER13> Umm.. anti-trust ? shouldn't we be glad that things are moving faster now...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think a lot of these comments are interesting. Perhaps chrome's versioning is not made apparent to the user, but I'm sure all of their competitors know what is going on.

Regarding anti-trust: Anti-trust laws are laws that are intended to prevent monopolistic measures. I posit in the article that by controlling both the client (chrome) and server (Google Docs, in addition to GMail, Google Search, et al) that Google is in a unique position to perform monopolistic actions. I'm not the only one that thinks Google may be doing something nefarious either - [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/06/ftc- launchin...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/06/ftc-launching- antitrust-probe-over-google-search-ad-businesses.ars) .

</comment><comment><USER14> I always thought x.y.z version strings (like Firefox 3.6.3, or similar) contained a bit of extra information about how development occurs which is often ignored.

When z is increased, that is the developers way of saying that "this is the least dramatic update we will make available to end users". Alternatively, an increment of a is a sign that "this is the most dramatic alteration in functionality we will make".

I think that part of the trend toward higher version numbers isn't just about having nice big numbers, but rather a reflection of changes in development methodology. Whether you attribute it to DVCSs or simple changes in developer culture, it seems clear that the "biggest possible" update has significantly shrunk in size lately.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sigh, not this BS again.

Look, google doesn't advertise version number revs, and updates happen invisibly behind the scenes. Figuring out the chrome version number takes effort, as there is no rebranding on a major version number bump. Chrome uses the major version number for engineering reasons and uses a continuous deployment method. Certainly other developers may make a bigger deal of major version revs (often tying them to a product updates requiring new purchases) but that shouldn't affect anyone's judgment of chrome's versioning. They could jump to version a million by now, nobody should care much.

</comment><comment><USER15> it's really all about transcending the version number. Which Chrome has basically succeeded in doing. Hats off to them too -- it makes for a much more exciting development and innovation space</comment>


Who's working on Obama's promise of electronic medical records in 5 years? - <AUTHOR>

There's certainly no lack of EMR software, but who's going to make sure I, the doctor, can get records from different databases and have them presented to me in the same format? No matter what hospital or office I'm in, no matter where the information is coming from, I would really like it to be presented to me, whether on a screen or on paper, in the same format. Right now the state of the farce is that every doctor spends more time learning the 9 zillion EMR systems than on the patients they treat. The frustration factor definitely leads to medical errors.
Anybody working on this?
Edit: President mentions the 5 year horizon in the weekly address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDfpd8GV9dI <comment><USER2> I consulted for a startup that transcribed medical records and enabled insurance companies to search and filter them to find fraud, malpractice, whatever.

Apparently changing the workflow in a big insurance company isn't like steering a big ship, it's like steering an island.

</comment><comment><USER3> Microsoft and Google are hard to ignore - even if there are zillions of EMRs.

There's room in the long tail for smaller ideas - but this is probably going to be a formats war.

[http://www.microsoft.com/industry/healthcare/providers/busin...](http://www.microsoft.com/industry/healthcare/providers/businessvalue/housecalls/clinicalworkflow.mspx)

[http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN285482202...](http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN2854822020080229)

</comment><comment><USER4> There are already some industry & government formats:

Prescriptions: <http://www.ncpdp.org>

Health Records: <http://www.medicare.gov/PHR/Default.asp>

</comment><comment><USER5> There is a startup located in Connecticut that's found a reliable, one day turnaround transcription and medical filing service. It'll probably get a nice, fat Obama boost soon.

<http://www.imedx.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> I was asking this at my doctors office yesterday. I'm sure the arcane situation is due to the required confidentiality needed with patient data. Average people (secretaries, receptionist) can not be trusted to keep digital data secure, given the cleverness of social engineering. Moreover, public perception of data insecurity is well established. So, you would need a very secure system and to convince the public.</comment>


Image manipulation recipes in the cloud - <AUTHOR> http://cloudinary.com/blog/image_manipulation_recipes_in_the_cloud_the_cloudinary_cookbook

<comment><AUTHOR> The Cloudinary Cookbook is a collection of examples showing how to do complex things with images, by combining different cloud-based image manipulations, or tweaking a specific manipulation to achieve a certain result. The cookbook is built of recipes that include sample images, code in all development frameworks, tips and guidelines and links to additional resources.</comment>


Show HN: OneQstn - For when Survey Monkey is a bit much - <AUTHOR> http://www.oneqstn.com

<comment><AUTHOR> My first real web thing (don't want to call it an app as it is pretty simple). Based on a real need we had at our startup (hardware company) to ask people a simple multiple choice question and get their feedback. This was built on and off over a few weekends and evenings - feedback would be great and really helpful as I am not a coder by training (electronics guy)</comment>