How to Set Up a Mac for Web Development - <AUTHOR> https://www.upandrunningtutorials.com/how-to-set-up-a-mac-for-web-development/ <comment><USER2> > This article will guide you through the minimum setup you'll need to get up > and running

Why complicate with things like third-party terminal emulators? Nobody at the level of getting started needs something like that.

<comment><USER3> I guess it depends what your starting point is, if it's from having done no dev work I'd agree. But if it's from having done dev work on Linux I certainly was relieved to find iterm2.

<comment><USER4> iTerm is great but I'd like to take a moment to mention alacritty[0] in case some people haven't heard of it.

By far, the lowest latency terminal emulator on OSX.

[0] [https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty](https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty)

<comment><USER5> It's not, by far[0]

[0] [https://danluu.com/term-latency/](https://danluu.com/term-latency/)

<comment><USER6> Actually from the looks of it we'd be better of using the stock terminal app than alacritty, thus back to the argument that a beginner probably don't need another terminal emulator.

Personally I also use iTerm partly due to habit, been using it for well over 10 years all the way back to the pre-fork days on my PowerMac G5. But it always had features that kept me on (although they've varied over time), for one I've had better true-color support, handles cursors-states better with vim inside of tmux. More font configuration options. I used the Tmux-integration before but don't feel that it adds value for me personally anymore as I'm so used to using tmux directly, GPU-rendering was a nice addition for the 5k/LG UF 4K monitors.

Tried going back to Terminal.app (mainly for ultra low vi latency inside of tmux) but always ended up going back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's fascinating, really, that Microsoft has narrowed the gap so rapidly with WSL. I read these steps–which I performed for years over the space of a few machines–and am amazed at how janky the tooling is. WSL/WSL2 are clearly pushing to build better ways to create developer tool chains, without all of the janky macOS specific stuff. With everything being a container, and inherently disposable, along with all the investment Microsoft is making into VSCode and its remote tool chain, it's a good time to be a dev on Windows (and I genuinely didn't think I said that when I switched two years ago).

<comment><USER8> I am not an expert by any means but isnt Docker just good enough for this case as well? The benefit of WSL is that it doesnt consume more memory than it needs to has been my experience. I am not entirely sure of the memory consumption of Docker.

<comment><USER7> Docker is nowhere near as close to the metal as what Microsoft has done with WSL2—it's got better performance and runs as near-native as you could possibly get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One question: Why Hyper is default choice?

<comment><USER10> I wonder why the terminal app section is there at all, since the preinstalled Terminal is totally fine. Since this article seems aimed at brand new developers, I'd expect the author would want to eliminate any unnecessary steps.

<comment><USER11> iTerm 2 provides noticeable improvements. Being able to select text and have it immediately copied to your clipboard (much like the PRIMARY clipboard in Linux) is very, very nice. The UI is also much more customizable. And things like imgcat (a program like "cat" but for seeing images in your terminal) or even the ability to Cmd+click a file path on a remote server and have it downloaded over SSH onto your machine are fantastic

EDIT: also worth mentioning that if you use VS Code (or another GUI editor) and a separate terminal emulator, you may find VS Code's built-in terminal emulator to be very, very convenient. Although if you're overwhelmed with everything you already have to install, then it might be better to stick to iTerm 2 in the beginning, because it's a drop-in replacement for Terminal.app with awesome improvements

<comment><USER12> Iterm2 is truly awesome and I'm sad there's no real equivalent on Linux, but it's mostly useful for power users, you can get by very comfortably with the standard terminal.app with very few setting tweaks.

Although I was not aware of "click to download", I wonder how that works.

<comment><USER13> Most linux terminals are much better than terminal.app, though true don't have has many nifty features as iterm.

<comment><USER14> What makes you say "much better"? Having used them for decades I'd be hard pressed to find a single feature I regularly use which isn't in Terminal.app by now.

<comment><USER13> My last experience with it, didn't support the full color palette, some of the more obscure escape seqs, and window splits. Has it improved in the last six months?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "If you're just getting started, choose Chrome."

Why, exactly?

<comment><USER16> Chrome has better devtools.

Personally I use Firefox on my MacBook for slightly better battery life and the tools are good enough for the most part. AFAIK in terms of batter life it goes Safari > Firefox > Chrome.

I feel like all of this and more should have been mentioned in the article. It's surprising that Safari wasn't even mentioned when it has clear benefits in some cases (coming from someone who hates Safari).

<comment><USER15> Interesting. How is chrome devtools better? They seem to offer the exact same things imo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> `nvm` should be the default for installing node imo.

<comment><USER18> Why bother with nvm when you already have homebrew?

<comment><USER19> You may eventually want to pin your project to a specific node version, and homebrew aggressively upgrades dependencies with no easy way to run older versions, other than setting up your own tap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm curious about what this would look like on Windows, especially for someone who's been happily developing on Mac for nearly a decade. Is WSL or a VM required? I assume so, for many languages.

<comment><USER7> It'd be WSL, and about as few steps as the article describes–I've documented it here: [https://char.gd/blog/2017/how-to-set-up-the-perfect- modern-d...](https://char.gd/blog/2017/how-to-set-up-the-perfect-modern-dev- environment-on-windows). You'll just be using Aptitude to install packages instead–or you could use the new automation tools to get a fully disposable, native development environment without messing about (I forget the name right now, but I'll post if I find it).

I'd argue that it's getting _easier_ to get a modern web dev environment going on a Windows box than much else these days, especially with WSL2 about to land. It's fun that Microsoft is investing so heavily in the developer experience.

<comment><USER20> This sounds like what I was expecting, I'm glad to hear it. I already do a fair amount of work in an Ubuntu Desktop VM and it's fine, so I imagine WSL2 should be at least a bit better than that. I'm REALLY over Apple hardware and don't think I can justify the investment again. If WSL2 is as promised, it'll probably seal the deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think installing Docker should be one of the first steps...

</comment><comment><USER22> Didn't knew about Hyper. What do you guys think?

<comment><USER23> It's ultra slow compared to any other decent alternative

<comment><USER24> Not really, at least in comparison with iTerm 2. Hyper recently introduced a WebGL renderer and with my oh-my-zsh/pure-prompt config, both of them loaded in about the same time.

But keep in mind, the only reason I use Hyper is because of the borderless window aesthetic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Really curious how these things make it to HN frontpage?

<comment><USER26> Surprised to see that articles like there still exist. Not that there's anything wrong with that.</comment></comment>


5 Steps to Re-Create Xerox PARC's Design Magic (From the Guy Who Helped Make It) - <AUTHOR> http://m.fastcodesign.com/3046437/5-steps-to-recreate-xerox-parcs-design-magic-from-the-guy-who-helped-make-it

<comment><USER2> Sounds really nice, but sadly, Xerox parc and other places like that (eg Bell Labs) are a thing of the past. These places just won't be compatible with today's project management professionals who expect "deliverables" on a schedule. Michaelangelo's kpi's sucked.</comment>


A Peddler of Fake Reviews on TripAdvisor Gets Jail Time - <AUTHOR> https://skift.com/2018/09/12/fake-reviews-tripadvisor-jail-italy/ <comment><USER2> _TripAdvisor hopes that jail time will scare off the dishonest folks creating fake reviews. We hope so, too._

That's the take of the Skift travel blog? No description in the article about the law that was broken and whether or not it can be applied to violators outside of Italy.

And, honestly, if peddlers of fake reviews are criminally liable and can be sentenced to jail then there's a problem with the law. TripAdvisor, Amazon, Apple, and Google definitely need to boost the disincentives for posting fake reviews, but referring suspected offenders for criminal prosecution is over the top unless fraud or other serious crimes are involved.

<comment><USER3> > unless fraud or other serious crimes are involved

Fraud: wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain

Pretending to be someone you're not to _make money by lying_ is fraud, plain and simple.

<comment><USER2> So every fake review is to be treated as a case of full-on criminal fraud?

These cases need to be pursued in civil court, if at all. A better approach is for TripAdvisor, Amazon, et al is A) set up a better system to positively identify fake reviews and B) to ban both the providers and purchasers of fake reviews, including owners, senior executives, and colluding staff. If the disincentives are strong enough and consistently and fairly enforced a lot of bad actors will be cleared out in short order and responsible companies won't go near this stuff.

<comment><USER4> The person was making a business of it, it was not just a casual, occasional lie.

This is systemically poisoning the well of public trust upon which society relies to function.

We only have a prosperous society because we have widespread trustworthyness.

You propose that breaking it down is meaningless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am italian and i won't ever understand my country! We are years behind other tech countries (in terms of laws and legislation and business support) and we are the land of neverending trials and let a lot of crimes be committed without effective punishment and then an italian court sent to prison somebody for fake reviews...i'm happy they let justice do its work in this case, simply it seems so unusual and a little bit exaggerated since others crimes aren't punished with the same severity

<comment><USER6> Londoner here -- I see _a lot_ of your compatriots working on awesome tech products. To boot, they all seem to be TechItalia graduates, so it seems like Italy has a serious brain-drain problem :/

<comment><USER7> I am one of these "escaped brains". The explanation is extremely simple. In my case, after finishing Uni (degree in CS), I applied for few companies in my area, near Verona which is a wealthy part of Italy.

The best salary I managed to bargain was around 1000 euro per month (gross). This leaves you with a 750 Euro net and basically no benefits. Take away rent, a little bit of leisure, and transportation costs you basically save nothing.

At that point I said fuck it. I started looking for jobs on the other side of the Alps and landed a job at Google in Switzerland that pays 10X that. And yes, Switzerland is crazy expensive, but not 10X Italy!

I miss Italy, but it now became a holiday destination for me.

<comment><USER8> Doe Italy not have a minimum wage, or is it just really low?

<comment><USER7> Some working categories have it, some don't. IT didn't back in 2013, the period when I decided to pack my stuff and go. Now I believe it has been incorporated in the metalworker category (see below).

Minimum salary for year 2018/2019 (hourly/monthly)

Clothing and fashion 6,60 € 1.144 € Agricolture 7,13 € 1.235,87 € Tourism 7,17 € 1.242,80 € Metalworker 7,32 € 1.268,80 € Construction 7,59 € 1.315,60 € Food industry 8,21 € 1.423,07 € Finance 11,11 € 1.925,73 €

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Err..

So yelp/tripa/whatever charges business for positive reviews and improved placement, but 3rd party frauds go to jail?

I suppose we will get community time for sharing our netflix password next ?

<comment><USER10> Disclaimer: I work at TripAdvisor.

Please don't lump TripAdvisor in with Yelp. You can't pay for a positive TA review, or for more prominent placement of your positive reviews. Our reviews are just listed in reverse chronological order. You also can't pay to appear higher on the hotel list of a given city.

<comment><USER11> "You also can't pay to appear higher on the hotel list of a given city."

This would seem to conflict with your statement: [https://www.tripadvisor.com/TripAdvisorInsights/w588](https://www.tripadvisor.com/TripAdvisorInsights/w588)

"These ads drive high quality traffic to your business by appearing above search results"

<comment><USER10> Sure, we have sponsored placements in the first slot, which contain the word "sponsored" next to them. That's an ad, in the same way Google has ads, and it appears above the list. I'm saying we don't let you pay to change the order of the list itself, in the same way Google doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've decided and tried to remember that you pretty much can't trust ANY online reviews of ANYTHING. The dream of the internet is over.

[https://www.recode.net/2018/3/18/16581030/mattress- reviews-n...](https://www.recode.net/2018/3/18/16581030/mattress-reviews- nectar-nest-affiliate-fees-ftc-memoryfoamtalk-casper)

<comment><USER13> To be able to trust random Internet users was never a good dream because cheap identity is the Internet's default. (Not necessarily a bad one.) More surprising than reviews regressing to the mean is that it took them so long. Why?

<comment><USER12> Agreeing with you, I guess the weird thing is that it WORKED for 20 years or so!

I'm sure people have written a lot on this. I think some of it is because most people actually _are_ interested in treating each other respectfully, and the internet was smaller, with less opportunities for making money (at one point enforced anti-commercial in fact), and more homogenous (for better or worse).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _Italian court handed down a nine-month prison sentence to a person who > wrote fake hotel reviews_

I heard it was reduced on appeal. Now he has to serve a week in prison, and the remaining four months are public service: he will temporarily join the cabinet, advising Italy's prime minister. He will receive no salary, just room and board: for anything else, he will have to leverage his position to hustle kickbacks.

</comment><comment><USER15> The "strange" thing is that seemingly all this happened in June 2018, according to Trip Advisor themselves (Italian):

[https://www.tripadvisor.it/TripAdvisorInsights/w4237](https://www.tripadvisor.it/TripAdvisorInsights/w4237)

If you search for the "news", each and every italian (and not only) newspaper has something about it, published in the last 24 hours or so.

</comment><comment><USER16> >"Writing fake reviews has always been fraud, but this is the first time we've seen someone sent to jail as a result," said Brad Young, vice president, associate general counsel at TripAdvisor, in a statement.

I don't get this. Writing a fake review doesn't seem like fraud to me. What seems like fraud is a company passing off a fake review as it is legit. Which would mean that the company that paid for the fake review should be the one in legal trouble not the person writing the fake review.

Edit: I should clarify while leaving my original comment up. I phrased this poorly. What I should say is why is only the company who wrote the reviews being punished instead of the both the company who wrote the review AND the company that paid for the fraudulent review in the first place?

<comment><USER17> In addition, maybe. "I only did it for money" isn't really an excuse for the person actually making the reviews though. They submitted the reviews pretending they're legit.

<comment><USER16> You're right. I definitely didn't get my thoughts down in a correct manner and I added an edit. That said, actively paying somebody for a review that is not legit is definitely fraud as well, yet it doesn't seem like anybody who used PromoSalento's reviews were fined or jailed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is this peddler part of how "TripAdvisor changed travel"[0]?

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17870480](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17870480)

</comment><comment><USER19> Paid fake news is okay, but not this. Our value system is totally .... up !

</comment><comment><USER20> People who write inadequately negative reviews should be punished too.

</comment><comment><USER21> From the article:

>The company has said that most attempts at review fraud are committed by a small minority of hotel and restaurant owners trying to boost their profile unfairly rather than knock another property.

>Anyone can post a review on TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Minube, whereas a guest may only post a review of a hotel on online travel agency platforms if the person actually books at least one night at the hotel through the agency.

>In 2012, TripAdvisor was scolded by a UK watchdog group, the Advertising Standards Authority, for using promotional wording on its site saying that it offered "reviews you can trust… from real travellers… and trusted advice from real travellers." The group said the company couldn't back up the claim by proving that all of the reviews were genuine and from real travelers. However, strictly speaking, no system, based on verified bookers or not, could meet that standard.

How valuable is a review? What does it contrast to? Some imaginary _background or average experience_? It is hard to design a system such that there are no fake reviews. The fake reviews can take different forms: actual customers who were "bribed" (or is that just a discount?); paid reviewers did physically visit but who were bribed, possibly posting under false names, or simply fake reviews written by people who were never accomodated.

Here is my probably brainfart idea which tries to solve both problems at once:

HostCompare may be implemented centralized or decentralized, so I will describe the decentralized version, such that a centralized version can cull away some of the crypto (but then bribing central HostCompare is a vulnerabillity).

HostCompare: instead of reviews, customers booking accomodation in a city through hostcompare, will spend half of their visit at one accomodation, and half at another. The customer can navigate the comparisons between different places, and for each pair already tested view all the facets for which place A is better ">" or worse "<" than place B.

In exchange for the tourist traffic forwarded HostCompare demands a certain percentage of their income. Each host is free to generate its own keypair, and when the tourist arrives shows his passport/ID/... and the host signs the hash of: the name of the visitor and the Comparison's unique ID, and publishes it. This means that you can't create a positive review for your place without also generating customer traffic to your competition and convincing a tourist to co-operate. The comparison is only written once the consecutive stay at both hosts is over.

EDIT: I was going to write my idea more in-depth, including how HostCompare would use part of the profit to encourage (by making cheaper through discount) unexplored comparisons. Also finding cycles in the directed graph. Also how a host bribing a HostCompare tourist would only work if this bribe is offered indefinitely to HostCompare tourists. Furthermore it is more efficient to simply list a lower price at HostCompare since then you are paying less towards HostCommpare. The bribe is effectively a means to be secretly cheaper than listed. Comparisons are also better than reviews since the host can think about how to improve the situation, since it is in fact a comparison instead of a review in vacuum, or a review in comparison with vague memory of travels past, or a review in comparison with some unformalized expectation.

</comment><comment><USER21> TLDR: "Taste can not be argued" but identity can.

</comment><comment><USER22> rofl. jailed for leaving reviews. how to fill up your prison system and create messed up mind? just like that!

<comment><USER3> Based on even a cursory reading of the article, he was jailed for _selling fake reviews_ \- not leaving them. Profiting from deception is a common line to draw when defining fraud.

<comment><USER23> In addition, these reviews were unambiguously lies rather than puffery; the author never used the services that were reviewed.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook staff demand Zuckerberg limit lies in politcal ads - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/28/facebook-employees-vs-ad-lies/ <comment><USER2> Already discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21380227](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21380227)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think Facebook is really pushing back on this because it's a free speech issue. They're pushing back because it's technically and financially challenging to do. If claims in political ads were easily falsifiable, they probably would have done this a long time ago.

<comment><USER4> If that were the case then there is no truth in society and/or the facts are so hard to find that there effectively isn't a democracy.

Given that last election they took large sums of foreign currency for political ads, had representatives in cambridge analitica's HQ / war room, happen to profit astronomically from increased engagement due to division and disinformation, and their own employees with insider knowledge are also calling the stance out.

It seems wildly strange in that context, when Facebook could easily take the stance that it's hard and they might not get it right but will try anyway, instead of bogus misinterpretation of free speech that is Zuck's current stated position.

<comment><USER5> > _It seems wildly strange in that context, when Facebook could easily take > the stance that it's hard and they might not get it right but will try > anyway, instead of bogus misinterpretation of free speech that is Zuck's > current stated position._

Because not getting it right can actually be _worse_ for society, because at that point Facebook is picking and choosing who gets to run political ads. This should be terrifying considering that some of these tech companies have so many oopsies when it comes to certain political leanings. What do you think the calls will be like about Facebook when it turns out that one side in politics tends to not get to run their ads on Facebook while the other side can?

<comment><USER4> Not running ads with blatant lies is not partisan.

Having a policy of allowing all lies and providing tools for sale to microtarget users so that people can't validate truth only favors politicians pushing lies and not people viewing them.

Facebook not removing ads with blatant lies is bad enough, but their product is now positioned as a disinformation tool.

Instead of using targeting to match people who need products with those product ads, they're openly announcing their product as a tool for corrupt politicians to target voters with disinformation.

You don't need a cambridge analytica to steal Facebook data for targeting when Facebook is offering that same service directly

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Activism-driven policy is generally not a great governance model - you might satisfy the 250 employees who signed the letter, but disgruntle 5000 silent others who strongly believe it's not Facebook's job to fact-check political ads.

<comment><USER7> You realize that women's right to vote, African American right to vote, LGBTQ marriage laws, minimum wage, and the rest of your progressive legislation was based on activism based policy?

<comment><USER8> It's nice to think of policies I agree with when considering activism, but lets take a look at some I don't.

Banning pork[0] for all meals being one of them, or maybe something like being forced to wear a burqa[1]?

I mean, if there was a pro-trump activism rally in your workplace and seemingly the majority of workers were pro-trump, would you be silent? I would.

(FWIW I'm playing devils advocate, suggesting that not all activism promotes social justice or advancement of society)

[0]: [https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3936/denmark-bans- meatbal...](https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3936/denmark-bans-meatballs)

[1]: [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10323303/I-was- for...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10323303/I-was-forced-to- wear-the-veil-and-I-wish-no-other-woman-had-to-suffer-it.html)

<comment><USER7> I wasn't suggesting that all activism promotes progressive societal values. That is an ethical and epistemological question.

I _was_ suggesting that a good number of things that happen are a byproduct of activism.

All that said, it cracks me up that HN does a vote down on such basic sociological things. What a culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If FB starts fact-checking political ads, that to me would be one step closer to Facebook being a 'publisher' rather a 'platform', which would open Facebook up to a world of litigation when something nefarious or disagreeable slips through the cracks to the public. And of course, after political ads, what's next? Should they limit certain dietary advice if the purported results are not sufficiently substantiated?

Another question would be - how are the 'lies' to be limited? Are the posts hidden, or marked with a "fake news" indicator? What if 80% of the content in an ad is true but the other 20% is unsubstantiated? Does that get tagged as well? "Partial fake news"? If Facebook implemented something like this, would they be open and transparent about how their site goes about verifying claims in ads so that the users can go straight to the source(s)?

With all of Facebook's missteps and mistakes in the past, who really wants them to be the arbiter of truth? Would people even trust them to be the arbiter of truth? Or would Facebook's efforts to mitigate or limit certain ads embolden the political side represented by that ad? (Not to generalize, but there are certainly some out there who are immediately dismissive of claims of truth when they come from Fox News/CNN, depending on their political persuasion).

It would seem more logical to me for Facebook to fund and coordinate some kind of 'awareness' campaign on the site in which it guides its users as to the level of skepticism to maintain when seeing political ads and how to go about verifying the veracity of claims in political ads they might see.

<comment><USER10> Hi, if you could stop spreading the lie that there is some magical distinction between a 'publisher' and a 'platform' that somehow limits what a business is legally allowed to do, I would really appreciate it, and I know a lot of other folks would too! Thanks!

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190613/03172142391/once-...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190613/03172142391/once- more-with-feeling-there-is-no-legal-distinction-between-platform- publisher.shtml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why does this come up in 2019 for the first time?

How did Newspapers, Radio and then TV handle this for the past 1200 years?

<comment><USER12> I don't know if you're posing a rhetorical question, but I'd genuinely like to know this. Lying in politics isn't new, and political ads are also not new. Is lying in political ads a new thing? If not, why is it a problem now? Is it because of how many people they can reach? Are the lies somehow worse? Or is this somewhat of an overreaction to the 2016 election, which was a confluence of factors, only one of which was social media (and ad) manipulation?

<comment><USER13> I think this comment gets at something that has been bugging me about the Facebook advertising problem: I still don't see it as a problem.

Yes, I disagree with dishonest political ads, and wish they didn't run on Facebook. But I don't see the need to change Facebook. As long as their terms of service are honest, I think they should be allowed to do whatever they want. If people don't like it, they can leave.

<comment><USER12> I think the argument around it reeks of dishonesty, really. People arguing against political ads or speech on Facebook are often skirting around the main elephantine problem of democracy: most people are disinterested or maliciously misinformed (as in, when presented with facts, they'll double down on their misinformation).

In order to solve this whole kerfuffle, we'll have to tackle that head-on. That people are misinformed, disinterested, and downright apathetic. You can ban political ads on Facebook tomorrow, and it won't solve those fundamental problems. It's just kicking the can down the road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is getting to be a growing trend in Silicon Valley: employees demanding of their management and even CEOs certain action. Whether California a "right to work" state or not, I imaging employees demanding management do something that management doesn't want to do is grounds for dismissal. Are workers being let go for "standing up to management" like this?

<comment><USER14> It's not just SV. Power dynamics within orgs have changed and are changing.

Traditional Hierarchies are struggling because hyper-connecitivity within the org and to the outside world have increased exponentially. This diffuses power at every level within a hierarchy. You can't have power over someone 2 levels down if their network is as influential as your own.

<comment><USER15> I don't think we can make that statement yet. What we can say is that there is a huge amount of bloat in current technology companies along with huge perceived competition for employees, so many employees feel they are worth more than they are.

Most boom industries go through this. Then you get bad times, the fat gets trimmed, and a couple of lay offs later the employees realize that they are indeed fungible. Add a couple decades of maturity and they get a much more realistic view of work rather than "work is my life, and my life is work".

And sure, there may be a handful of essential staff, but the odds that you are a political activist masquerading as an employee while also being essential are nearly zero.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is coming from 250 of Facebook's 35,000 employees which equates to about .7% of their employees. You will always have a small group within that number of people that will be vocal about something, so this is definitely not an uprising.

</comment><comment><USER17> What's wrong with employees trying to influence what they're working with?

</comment><comment><USER18> Per usual, nerdy engineers think they know it all. For example: "free speech and paid speech are not the same thing" \-- this is _literally_ what Citizens United v. FEC decided. It's the same thing. Read the damn law. _Ought_ it be the same thing? Who knows. Maybe, maybe not. Don't agree with the status quo? Get out there, hit the streets, knock on doors, and get the law changed. SCOTUS doesn't make laws, and Facebook sure as hell doesn't make laws.

But internet outrage and strongly-worded letters are a lot easier than actually organizing grassroots campaigns and getting people elected to Congress.

<comment><USER19> This is exactly right. Although your suggestion that a congressional law would overturn Citizens United is not necessarily true. It's a difficult question given the basis of the original decision.

With that said, I'm rather surprised at how poorly constructed this letter is. If you're going to trot out trivial platitudes, you might as well go full bore and craft a persuasive polemic.

Instead this letter reads to me as a mealy-mouthed, mushy argument crafted by people who self-evidently favor paternalistic oversight when their letter does little to persuade me these are the people who should have any oversight over anything at all.

Ironically, if a politician of a favourable political persuasion linked to this letter in an ad I'm not sure how it could not be labeled as "misleading". It posits things that directly render many of the underlying "solutions" moot. The argument is broken almost immediately after it begins.

The best treatment of Citizens United I've seen is by Laurence Tribe - who no one of any merit would consider an apologist for Republicans or a textualist - in his book "Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution". The actual decision itself reads well and is worth everyone's time.

If memory serves, Laurence talks about his thinking on the case with Charlie Rose here: [https://charlierose.com/videos/10259](https://charlierose.com/videos/10259)

EDIT: Now we see the parent comment being the most downvoted in this thread; with no one engaging with the content of the comment. Quite a sad state.

<comment><USER18> > This is exactly right. Although your suggestion that a congressional law > would overturn Citizens United is not necessarily true. It's a difficult > question given the basis of the original decision.

This is true, although an amendment could :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is "I will do x/y/z" a lie? Given how often politicians actually keep their promises you can say most candidates knew their promises were lies

</comment><comment><USER21> The decision that solves a lot of problems is for social media sites to just not allow political ads of any kind.

How much of their revenue is based on political ads?

</comment><comment><USER22> Why don't they just ban political ads altogether?

<comment><USER23> Because political ads are like printing money

<comment><USER24> Political ads make the company very little money actually

<comment><USER25> Source?

<comment><USER12> [https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-isnt-taking-political- ads...](https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-isnt-taking-political-ads-for-the- money-coo-sheryl-sandberg-says/)

This is the first thing I found; take-out is, the flak they get over the whole political ads controversy isn't worth how much they make on them, comparatively. I'm inclined to believe them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Might as well ask Zuck to hsve FB observe "business hours". No service between 11PM and 5AM local times to protect users from over use and engagement. Set a limit on ads per hour per user. I'm sure he'll see why they are great ideas.

</comment><comment><USER27> 0.7% of Facebook's staff ?

</comment><comment><USER28> 250/35000 staff signed the letter.

I guess "Less than 1% of FB employees demand Zuckerberg limit lies in political ads" doesn't have the same ring to it. I guarantee you can find more FB employees who believe the earth is flat, or are 9/11 truthers than the percent that signed this letter.</comment>


Sears files for bankruptcy after years of turmoil - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/15/sears-nears-bankruptcy-after-years-turmoil/ <comment><USER2> Sears started as a mail-order company in 1892, with a catalog that quickly grew to more than 500 pages. It came in the mail yearly, and rural America quickly came to depend on it. It's hard to convey what a huge success Sears was; its 1906 IPO (the first one ever handled by Goldman Sachs) qualifies it retrospectively as way beyond a Unicorn, as they _raised_ more than $1 billion in 2018 dollars.

They didn't open their first brick-and-mortar store until 1925, but the catalog operation was still going strong for decades after that. However, they mis-judged the future, and shut it down in 1993. Amazon was founded in 1994. Sears had all the logistical knowledge of how to sell and deliver billions of dollars of consumer products at scale; they should have been Amazon, but pivoted away at exactly the wrong moment.

<comment><USER3> More than that, Sears had Prodigy, an early and very successful online service.

They had all the pieces in place and still dropped the ball.

<comment><USER4> They also launched and owned Discover up until 1993, so they even had in-house payment processing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "More important, Lampert personally lent billions to Sears Kmart, increasing corporate debt. As in-store sales lagged, Sears sold off major assets like Craftsman brand tools and Land's End outdoor equipment to service the loans. Lampert also split ownership of 266 Sears and Kmart buildings into a real estate investment vehicle called Seritage. Last year, Sears and Kmart stores paid $200 million in rent on these properties they once owned, eating up operating revenue.

As Sears closes hundreds of stores and considers bankruptcy, Lampert will likely come out ahead. He enjoyed fees from all the lending to Sears, and he'll recoup more money in any restructuring, even if Sears has to sell off inventory to do it. As a shareholder of Seritage, Lampert's hedge funds can profit from higher rents charged to new retail outlets that move into the shuttered Sears locations." [1]

[1] [https://newrepublic.com/article/145813/cause-consequences- re...](https://newrepublic.com/article/145813/cause-consequences-retail- apocalypse)

<comment><USER6> I wonder to what extent can Sears' creditors go after Seritage.

It can't be as simple an algorithm as:

1\. Buy a company

2\. Spin off major assets into another company

3\. Have the original take debt and pay the money to the spinoff

4\. Bankrupt the original, but keep the healthy spinoff without paying any of the debt

5\. Profit!

... can it?

<comment><USER7> Why? It's a model that's worked successfully for decades, though you forgot 1a Have the company take on debt to pay for the takeover.

It's also ridiculously destructive and abusive to all except the asset stripper.

<comment><USER8> Why do others hang on when they see this coming, if they stand to lose?

<comment><USER9> Rampant bullshitting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "filed for bankruptcy ahead of a $134 million debt payment due Monday"

wow

"The company has roughly $5.6 billion in outstanding debt"

wow!

That got me to google. As it turns out, only 18 out of the 500 s&p 500 companies don't have ant dept. That is crazy to think about.

[https://www.retirebeforedad.com/debt-free- sp-500-companies/](https://www.retirebeforedad.com/debt-free- sp-500-companies/)

<comment><USER11> Companies without debt are considered to be inefficient. The whole idea of a company is that if I have $100 to invest, I can either lend it to someone else and get interest, or I can build something and get a profit for my effort. As a company, if you can't make more money from your $100 than you could get from lending it to someone, then you shouldn't be running a company -- you should be lending your money to someone else.

If you can make more money running your business than lending money, then you can _also_ make more money than it would cost to borrow money. If you are making 10% on your $100 and someone offers you another $100 for 5%, then it's a pretty good deal if you can expand your business. Just to make it clear, 10% on $100 is $10 and 5% on $100 is $5 dollars. So by borrowing, you expand your business and make $15 instead of $10 -- increasing your profits by 50%.

Obviously, I chose easy numbers to make the math obvious, but generally it works. The thing you need to ask yourself before you borrow money is, "What are the chances that I can make that I can expand my business with that money" and "What are the risks". But generally speaking, healthy companies can increase profits if people keep offering them more money to work with. There are a few exceptions that have so much cash that they don't know what to do with it. Believe it or not, that is considered to be a big problem.

<comment><USER12> Yep, leveraging debt is considered a financial tool, not a malaise. Corporate accounting is very different than a personal bank account.

Even companies with large cash reserves will take out loans when the interest rates are less than the internal rate of return of spending that loan. Most people take out loans for personal things, not increasing their own personal rate of return.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I managed to get my craftsman table saw picked up from Sears (via Shop Your Way) a scant 48 hours before they declared. I have no doubt my local store will be closed and I expect the killer deals via Shop Your Way will be gone shortly.

I'm genuinely saddened for the people at my local sears that are left. They always were kind.

They'll be looking for jobs as fast as they can I expect. I hope they get them.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's incredible that it took until 2018 for this to to arrive.

Over a decade ago I was frustrated with the sharp decline in Craftsman's tool quality. At one point I had exchanged a malfunctioning .5" drive rachet using their famous lifetime warranty, only to have the noticably inferior replacement start malfunctioning months later. It was already clear to me back then Sears was done.

</comment><comment><USER15> Here is a good timeline on Sears.

[https://s.thestreet.com/files/tsc/v2008/photos/contrib/uploa...](https://s.thestreet.com/files/tsc/v2008/photos/contrib/uploads/107b974c-011b-11e8-9c95-0f7dafbe68a7.png)

</comment><comment><USER9> Ah, like Toys'R'Us before it, the leveraged buyout destroys another company.

Sometimes, I wonder what might have been if Sears had never gotten out of the mail order business, and had adapted reasonably to the advent of the Internet. I like to imagine they wouldn't have been as disgusting as Amazon.

<comment><USER16> Sears had been dying for a long time, and they got out of the mail order business because they were losing a ton of money on it.

<comment><USER9> Does that contradict anything I said?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> unrelated, but sears has had a lasting impact on american life in some of the strangest ways. Im an automotive engine mechanic, and to this day I still see old cars with "sears" style 'advanced' tire balancing.

This was a service they offered back in the 90's and were subsequently litigated for it in some cases as they hadnt disclosed the full operational process to customers before the work was agreed upon. Basically a tire alignment at Sears also included wear leveling. Sears would pull your tires off, spin them in a special laser mapping machine on the wheel, and grind down high spots in the tire to "balance" it. this worked to remove flat spots in the tires but the technology could actually increase the chance of a bubble or blowout in certain conditions.

Then theres Craftsman tools. Worthless garbage from 2000 onward, but if you managed to find yourself a set of genuine Craftsman sockets or wrenches from the good old days then you're officially the dreamiest grease monkey in the shop. These wrenches were practically strong enough to tear the hinges off St. Peters gates. They were the gold-standard that settled every east german/west german tool argument from an old timer.

</comment><comment><USER18> Even 5-10 years ago both our Sears and KMart stores in the area were very run- down, poorly lit, with really no upkeep at all. Both our family and someone else's we know got really screwed on new sets of tires from Sears Auto that were faulty and that they did not want to fix. The service was terrible.

Every now and then you could find an okay product at a decent price in KMart, but the writing has been on the wall for the longest time. Now both of these stores are gone from our area.

I can remember how different these places were when I was a kid/teen, though, and interesting to watch, as the person quoted in the article says a "slowest train-wreck" happen to what used to be popular brands (at least Sears, not sure if KMart really had the same status or not)

</comment><comment><USER19> This reads rather similar to a famous Dutch warehouse's demise: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%26D#Bankruptcy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%26D#Bankruptcy)

</comment><comment><USER20> What happen to their shares? Should I sell them? Can I sell them? Am I screwed?

<comment><USER15> Why are you still holding them?

To your question, Shares will be delisted to pink sheet under $SHLDQ.

<comment><USER20> What does that mean? I just read the news so I'm not sure about my options. Who would buy them?

<comment><USER21> If you don't already know the answers to these questions you should not be taking the high risk of investing in individual stocks.

But yes, you're screwed. In general you _might_ get some money back if the assets they can sell on a firesale exceed the debts, but that'll be pennies on the dollar.

But if the company had more debts than assets you've lost your money, unless you're among the first in line for debt payout, but that'll go to "innocent bystanders" like the suppliers of Sears first, not investors who just made a bad investment decision.

<comment><USER20> Meh. I'm investing peanuts and it looks like I'm going to learn something which I would have completely ignored if I had not bought these stocks.

<comment><USER22> What lead you to buy Sears stock in the first place? Was Sears a seemingly viable concern when you bought in?

<comment><USER20> It was the cheapest stock. Been buying small amounts of cheap stocks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I realize that this is hard and disruptive to people who work for Sears. But, isn't corporate churn an important thing?

</comment><comment><USER24> Heading down to the Sears Outlet to buy a scratched but perfectly functional version of the company for 90% off.

</comment><comment> village-idiot In how many malls is Sears the remaining anchor store? This is going to be painful for suburban America.

<comment><USER25> Sears stores have become really depressing places. There's very few workers and very few customers, and the workers have no energy or enthusiasm. There's no _life_ in the place. So if a mall has a Sears as the one anchor store, the mall is already in trouble, because Sears isn't pulling its weight as an anchor store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> From an old comment in [https://www.metafilter.com/62394/The-Record-Industrys- Declin...](https://www.metafilter.com/62394/The-Record-Industrys- Decline#1742245) previously referenced by [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13135620](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13135620) just a reminder of what Sears could have been if they had not taken the short sited decision in the early 90's.

Sears was started in the 1890's as a mail order business to compete against local general stores (think of all those westerns with "General Store" on one of the buildings - they were Sears competition). The guys Sears worked on railroads, and he saw all the middlemen tacking on markup as products moved west in the distribution chain until they go to the stores.

So he started a catalog, the famous Sears catalog in 1893. It was 300 pages, and had everything. Now think about this for a second. In 1893, you had a mail order catalog that sold pretty much everything that was for sale in 1893 - machinery, bikes, toys, dry goods, etc. Does this sound like another business you know?

So every year the catalog comes out, and after a few decades it becomes an American institution. For much of the population, the Sears catalog includes a decent quality, low cost version of every mass market nonperishable consumer product in the United States that wasn't a car (they did sell those at one point very early on. They also sold mobile homes too, up to the 1940's).

You could pick anything from the catalog, mail in your order with a check, and in a few days/weeks you'd get it. If you didn't like it, for any reason, Sears had a "satisfaction guaranteed" policy that you could return it at anytime for a full refund.

Now pay attention, because here's where it gets good.

In 1931, Sears starts an insurance company - Allstate. It buys financial investment firm Dean Witter and real estate broker Coldwell Banker in 1981. In 1984 it starts a joint venture with IBM called Prodigy, an online computer service, sort of a prototype AOL. In 1985, Sears launches a new major credit card, the Discover card. For the next eight years, the only credit card you can use at Sears is Discover.

At this time, the early 80's Sears is the largest retailer in the U.S.

By 1993, the 100th anniversary of the Sears Catalog, Sears had built up considerable goodwill in the mind of consumers. They weren't the lowest price, but they had what you needed at good prices and the service was second to none. They had real estate, insurance, financial planning, and all at good prices with top customer service.

This is 1993. In quite possibly the greatest example of corporate shortsightedness, Sears shut down it's mail-order business in a cost cutting measure. It spins off Allstate that same year, and soon dumps Dean Witter and Coldwell Banker.

In 1993, Sears had the most extensive and sophisticated mail-order retail operation on the planet and they closed it.

Two years later, Amazon.com launched, and was soon selling everything that sears sold through it's catalog. By the late-90's Walmart's push of low-cost China imports killed Sears retailing. Online banking takes off. Credit card use surges as mail order and retail purchases are shifted online.

Sears had its own computer network in 1993. They had access to IBM, they should have understood the power of the internet. All they had to do was shift the catalog online instead of killing it off, promising in store returns and the same Sears satisfaction guaranteed. Discover could have been the credit card of choice for security and protection online. Dean Witter could have been what Schwab, E-Trade and Ameritrade became. Back in the mid-late 90s when many people were hesitant to use credit cards online, Sears could have been a familiar face online.

Sears could have used the Catalog to create searscatalog.com or wishbook.com and owned online retailing, owned amazon's business, owned online brokerage and banking, but they blew their chances to save a few bucks in 1993. They could have made huge profits in the early 2000s real estate boom by leveraging that success with their real estate arm (imagine if Amazon sold houses).

By my estimates, Sears could have spent about $200 million in 1994-1996 to develop and promote retailing and financial services online, and they'd be reaping billions.

Sears could still be a huge American company today, instead of a historical footnote.</comment>


AWS IoT Button - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/iot/button/ <comment><USER2> I hacked one of these to power the nightlight in my kid's bedroom ([https://github.com/ecaron/hue-website- nightlights](https://github.com/ecaron/hue-website-nightlights)). The downside is that the button barely lasts for 1000 presses = 90 days (all kids like pushing buttons). And it is heart breaking because its just a AAA battery that they decided to solder in place...

I'm excited that this button launched. But $20 is too much for something without a swappable battery. I'll either keep intercepting the ARP packets from the $5 unit or buy [https://www.particle.io/button](https://www.particle.io/button).

<comment><USER3> From the Amazon official page ([https://aws.amazon.com/iot/button/](https://aws.amazon.com/iot/button/)):

        How long will the battery last?

        The battery should last for approximately 1,000 presses.
        When the device battery runs out of charge, there is no way to recharge or replace the battery.

How can you sell a _button_ that has only 1000 presses in it for $20 with a straight face? Looks like overcomplicated, overpriced garbage to me.

<comment><USER4> It's being presented as testing hardware, so you can get to know their stack. At $19, it's _probably_ being subsidized substantially.

In the same way free AWS instances are not adequate for hosting a production website, this is a toy for devs to get to know their stack...

The real question for this device is, is it hackable, i.e. can you change the software running on it, or open it up and solder different hardware to spare pins?

It looks like people have done this, but it's surprising amazon would sell a devboard without catering to it: [https://github.com/dekuNukem/Amazon_Dash_Button](https://github.com/dekuNukem/Amazon_Dash_Button)

<comment><USER5> If it's testing hardware, then why doesn't it have a replaceable battery? This is just madness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The battery should last for approximately 1,000 presses. When the device > battery runs out of charge, there is no way to recharge or replace the > battery.

This limits use cases to infrequent-press applications.

<comment><USER7> But also limits the damage :)

[https://twitter.com/AvidanRoss/status/727222223417667584?lan...](https://twitter.com/AvidanRoss/status/727222223417667584?lang=en)

"Amazon dash button lost in my house is being tapped and ordering bulk paper towels. Time to hunt down a wifi signal."

<comment><USER8> As pointed out in the comments there, the button will not ship a second order until the first one has been delivered. You will get a notification email each time it is activated so you can cancel an order. It's also trivial to deauth a particular button.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Our Puck ([https://flair.co/products/puck](https://flair.co/products/puck)) is sorta like this but with a small display. Instead of a generic button its a bit like a generic knob. So far positioned more as a heating and cooling device but I know I am excited to open it up to developers.

<comment><USER10> At 3x the price (or 12x the price of a hacked button), it's not really in the same market as the dash button though

<comment><USER5> You'll hit breakeven on the price at 2,001 presses and from that point on it'll be cheaper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm glad they accepted that people were already hacking [1] their cheap Dash buttons and decided to roll with it.

It's 4 times more expensive than their hackable Dash buttons ($20 vs $5), but apparently more powerful (and secure?) from the get-go.

[1] For example, see all the entries: [https://hackaday.com/tag/amazon- dash/](https://hackaday.com/tag/amazon-dash/)

<comment><USER12> > It's 4 times more expensive than their hackable Dash buttons ($20 vs $5)…

That's interesting. A new product like this (no matter how seemingly small) takes some work, so to me this suggests that people hacking the "subsidized" buttons were a bigger use case then they'd planned for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just the number of points of failure in this pipeline relegates this to toy status at best.

WIFI interruption? Button doesn't work.

Internet connection down? Button doesn't work.

Bad network congestion? Button doesn't work.

Amazon suffering DDOS? Button doesn't work.

Battery dies? Button doesn't work.

Too many presses? Button doesn't work.

Misconfigured server? Button doesn't work.

Certificate expiry? Button doesn't work.

"The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain." \- Montgomery Scott

<comment><USER14> What were you planning on doing with this? Launch a shuttle?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> FWIW I tried following the instructions with a normal branded dash, and it is clear that the IoT button has a different firmware.

Differences: * Amazon ConfigureMe network uses WPA2 for the IoT button. No encryption for the branded button. * IoT button has extra fields (according to the documentation) that the branded does not. They are for a certificate, private key, REST endpoint, region, and a checkbox to agree to TOC.

</comment><comment><USER16> wwwwhaa.... what IS this?

> For example, you can click the button to unlock or start a car, open your > garage door, call a cab, call your spouse or a customer service > representative

I'm so confused. So now, to open the garage door, I buy an internet device, and when i click it, it sends a message to a server, charges me 0.02$, runs some kind of "cloud" script that executes some kind of "rules", registers something in a database, and sends a message back to my garage door opener?

The future is weird.

<comment><USER17> Maybe the future they envision for you is to be able to open your garage door while you are not in its proximity. Or to let your car open the garage door on its own, after you summon it. Who knows, soon enough, the cars will have a life of their own, going on nightly strolls and self mechanic check-ups. :)

<comment><USER18> There's no need to involve remote servers for your self-driving car to open your garage door. It can do it the same way you currently do, with an RF signal.

I'm sure we can concoct some contrived examples where one needs to open a garage door without being present, but I really think this is more about the big tech companies trying to get vendor lock-in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "This item, sold by Amazon.com, is currently reserved exclusively for Prime members."

So my price just went up from $20 to $120. There goes that.

</comment><comment><USER20> Something similar: [https://bt.tn/](https://bt.tn/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Better Alternatives ( from comments and searching on google):

Amazon Dash button 5 $ - for shopping on amazon, hacks found for ifttt integration ( integrated with buying on amazon) : [http://www.amazon.com/b?node=10667898011](http://www.amazon.com/b?node=10667898011)

[https://www.particle.io/button](https://www.particle.io/button) 20 $ , integrated with ifttt

Product: ESP8266 => DIY 7$ IFTTT ( [https://www.hackster.io/noelportugal/esp8266-ifttt-easy- butt...](https://www.hackster.io/noelportugal/esp8266-ifttt-easy- button-888a87) , [https://hackaday.io/project/5673-esp8266-dash- button](https://hackaday.io/project/5673-esp8266-dash-button) , [http://www.instructables.com/id/Emergency- Button/](http://www.instructables.com/id/Emergency-Button/) , [https://github.com/sam1am/IFTTTButton](https://github.com/sam1am/IFTTTButton))

<comment><USER22> >[https://www.particle.io/button](https://www.particle.io/button) 20 $

Since this was mentioned elsewhere in the thread, this is actually $49. With a little work, the $19 Photon could certainly do the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> A lot of complaining about the $0.02/press (no recharge/replace on battery) but all the other buttons I've seen cost significantly more and this feels a little more plug&play. I'll probably wait for it to get cheaper or get a replaceable battery as I don't have a great use case for it at this time but it's at the top of my list if I need something like this.

</comment><comment><USER24> I know it's not as convenient as buying one of these, but it's really not very hard to make your own button, and it's a very fun project. Here's mine, which is also open source, including the PCB and things:

[https://www.stavros.io/posts/emergency-food- button/](https://www.stavros.io/posts/emergency-food-button/)

</comment><comment><USER25> FWIW, if you don't need hardware, you can turn your phone into such a "button". Apps allow you to add a widget to your home screen and can be configured to make HTTP requests.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.rmy.android...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.rmy.android.http_shortcuts)

</comment><comment><USER26> in case anyone is interested I wrote a node.js module a while back to repurpose dash buttons

not as elegant as their official IoT button, but it works (and dash buttons are 25% of the price)

[https://github.com/hortinstein/node-dash- button](https://github.com/hortinstein/node-dash-button)

edit: corrected my tired beer math

<comment><USER27> > and dash buttons are 4 times cheaper

If they were four times cheaper, they'd be -$60. I think you meant they're 25% the price.

<comment><USER28> That's not how fractions work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Are there alternatives to this? It sadly seems like amazon has no plans to release it internationally anytime soon. I'm looking for a simple button that can just ping a URL in the simplest case.

I'm looking at a raspi + button hardware right now but something already packaged with wifi would be a lot easier to use.

<comment><USER14> particle photon. Does input and output via GPIO just like raspi but with wifi onboard. [https://store.particle.io/](https://store.particle.io/)

<comment><USER24> The photon is way too expensive for these things. What you want is an ESP8266.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So it's about $0.02 per click. That is a bit expensive.

</comment><comment><USER31> Have they updated the branded ones so you can't reuse them? otherwise why waste $20 when you can get one of the original branded versions for $5.

<comment><USER32> The branded ones are presumably subsidized by the brands they're labelled with, and getting them to do whatever you want is a fairly hacky process to my knowledge.

$20 is pretty comparable to most of the IoT "do anything when pressed" stuff I've seen on Kickstarter and elsewhere. It'd be a handy "arm my security system" sort of thing for me.

<comment><USER33> What are examples of those "do anything when pressed" Kickstarters? All I know of is Flic.

<comment><USER32> Flic, Particle, 1btn, bt.tn, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I really hope they haven't patented this. It doesn't seem hard to compete against it or build your own - an ESP8266 module costs about $6 and makes it super easy to hack your own "IoT button".

<comment><USER35> ESP8266 is around 2$ (even cheaper if you buy only the chip) and an nodemcu/wemos devkit around 4$.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'd say Texas Instruments' Sensortag gives you much more flexibility. It has lots of sensors and 2 buttons.

</comment><comment><USER37> It's a $19 button that lasts ~1000 presses and can be used to trigger events on Lambda (which are free for the first million, so no real issue). So what you're getting is a cost of $0.019 per press.

Compared to a button on a webapp (which can be pressed from your phone) that, when pressed, goes through API Gateway and then hits up Lambda? At which point you're paying $0.0000035 per press.

Decisions, decisions...

<comment><USER38> Will you be permanently mounting your phone where you want to trigger these events?

<comment><USER39> I have already (effectively) permanently mounted my phone on _me_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Some progress has been made at reverse-engineering the hardware, which is very similar to that found in the Particle Photon. At $20, the Photon is a clear winner over the IoT button. As soon as someone puts the pieces together so we can flash the Dash's firmware, that's when things get interesting.

[https://community.particle.io/t/amazon-dash-anyone-hacked- it...](https://community.particle.io/t/amazon-dash-anyone-hacked-it/14303/35)

</comment><comment><USER41> I wrote a blog post [1] several months ago on how to use these buttons to call Uber. Happy hacking!

[1] [https://medium.com/@geoffrey___/summon-uber-with-the-new- ama...](https://medium.com/@geoffrey___/summon-uber-with-the-new-amazon-dash- button-876b54385dec#.r01e7f9zt)

</comment><comment><USER42> This is a great gateway drug to learning & using AWS; smart move by Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER43> Bummer, can't order this from Australia. Really want to get one of these for some testing. Anyone with inside info as to when these will be available outside the USA?

<comment><USER44> Sure you can: [http://www.borderlinx.com/AU/en/](http://www.borderlinx.com/AU/en/)

<comment> tony-allan Could not find it in search. Also looks like it is for Amazon Prime members only.

Borderlinx chat person said: "You are welcome. We can ship the item without any issue." but also "Regarding the Amazon prime membership issue please be advised to check further with merchant."

This is the product page: [http://www.amazon.com/AWS-IoT-Button-Limited- Programmable/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/AWS-IoT-Button-Limited- Programmable/dp/B01C7WE5WM)

<comment><USER45> Ask [http://priceusa.com.au](http://priceusa.com.au) \- I'm fairly sure their agent (in Oregon) uses Prime. Probably a ToS violation, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Yup, I was looking for a way to realize this: [http://make-everything- ok.com/](http://make-everything-ok.com/)

</comment><comment><USER47> "Yo"[1] hardware.

[1] - [https://www.justyo.co/](https://www.justyo.co/)

</comment><comment><USER48> At $20, who would by this?

Has anyone seen a DYI that's cheap?

<comment><USER49> I bought a couple as the main value for me is that it's tied directly to AWS Lambda. Yes, I could build an ESP8266, RaspberryPi, or Arduino-based solution, but then it's totally custom. Because my startup is involved in "serverless" computing, it's beneficial for me to say that this button directly calls an AWS Lambda function out of the box.

I'll replace the battery with a DC transformer and use one for demos.

<comment><USER48> Not following why exactly you've decided that being "serverless" or using Lambda makes this worth it. What exactly is IO Pipe (your startup) and what would a demo using Amazon's button do?

<comment><USER49> We're building open source tools and services for developers to build and manage the lifecycle of serverless applications. The AWS IoT Button works as an event-loop for a (simple) serverless workflow. We can use it to demonstrate and validate one of our use-cases and to provide demonstration of our tools (push the buttons and see what happens).

The concept of running our code directly from IoT devices is something we've found pretty compelling but until now it was very much a DIY affair. It's exciting to see Amazon release hardware that does this out of the box, directly running our code, as basic as it might be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I would love a Zapier integration here

<comment><USER51> Apparently the button supports SNS, which can be integrated with Zapier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Why US only?!

</comment><comment><USER53> we can now have one "click" deploy's.

<comment><USER54> That was my first thought as well! How much more satisfying than clicking a link in a UI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I read the manual, hoping to see the punchline. This isn't ... real ... is it?

<comment><USER56> People were hacking their Dash buttons to do this, and amazon was already producing the hardware and software, so why not monetize it?</comment></comment>


Certifying Compilers Using Random Testing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.regehr.org/archives/804 <comment><USER2> Interesting that there was only one compiler that was immune to a wide class of bugs they found everywhere else:

"The striking thing about our CompCert results is that the middleend bugs we found in all other compilers are absent. As of early 2011, the under- development version of CompCert is the only compiler we have tested for which Csmith cannot find wrong-code errors. This is not for lack of trying: we have devoted about six CPU-years to the task. The apparent unbreakability of CompCert supports a strong argument that developing compiler optimizations within a proof framework, where safety checks are explicit and machine- checked, has tangible benefits for compiler users." <http://www.cs.utah.edu/~regehr/papers/pldi11-preprint.pdf></comment>


Brave Isn't Bad - <AUTHOR> https://theprivacyguide1.github.io/why_brave_isnt_bad.html <comment><USER2> The comments in this thread are ironic considering the content of the post.

Brave exposes controls for all of its privacy and crypto features and you can easily opt in or out of anything that concerns you, making it a great choice for privacy.

It really smacks of hypocrisy that everyone is all for multitude of open source solutions, except when it comes to browsers. Mozilla has made _many_ misteps regarding privacy and I've never seen attacks like this. To say that browser wars are political is an understatement.

Even assuming the worst, that being that Brave is trying to track you and build an ad network rivaling Google, that still seems in sum total a good thing. Google has gone down a dark path completely unchecked with their unimaginable omniscience and ad revenue, and I welcome an attack on their monopoly.

<comment><USER3> Brave is not even a browser, it is just a rebranded Chrome that advertises itself to users as a "browser" while its main publicity is nothing but an unhinged attack on the very same company that built the browser it's rebranding. On the other hand Firefox IS A browser and Mozilla is a non- profit.

<comment><USER4> Nice revisionist history you got there...

Chrome is just a rebranded KDE Konqueror if your logic holds.

<comment><USER5> Brave didn't make any changes to the underlying engine. Chrome has, at this point, basically rewritten it.

<comment><USER6> No but it made a lot of changes I terms of ad blocking and privacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > But Brave has a backdoor!

> No it doesn't. Brave is open source and there has been no backdoor ever > found. Many people claim that Brave being able to use custom HTTP headers > are a backdoor but this isn't true. HTTP headers are allowed as per RFC > 7231. See Brendan Eich's response to this.

This has got to be a joke, right? Nobody's claiming that Brave 'using custom HTTP headers' is not allowed in the HTTP spec, the problem is that _Brave downloads a list of headers to inject into requests for specific websites_.

I'm not sure I'd call this a "backdoor", but considering it cannot (to my knowledge) be disabled it at least deserves a conversation. Trying to minimize the complaint with "it's allowed in the HTTP spec" is insane.

</comment><comment><USER8> Disclaimer: not associated with brave in any way.

Facts:

1\. Brave's tracking degree is little to none, compared to Google/Microsoft(edge).

2\. Brave is the only browser that splits ad revenue with the user, and pays creators a higher percentage, compared to the AdSenses of the world. On top of that, brave ads aren't distracting, are generally of high quality and non intrusive to the browsing experience.

I've personally earned more than $50 in aggregate this year using brave, and tipped a 100% of that to sites and content I consume often. Both the creators and I are happy costumers of brave.

<comment><USER9> The problem with brave is that it takes away creators freedom of choice when it comes to revenue for their content. It's nicely summed up in this article:

[https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of- brave.html](https://practicaltypography.com/the-cowardice-of-brave.html)

TL;DR: Creators have to sign-up to brave's BAT system in order to get revenue for ads that Brave embeds on the creator's website. And even then there is a competition upon creators for users to spend money on them which is not correclating with the time users spend on creator's content.

<comment><USER10> The thing is that, in my experience, Brave does not embeds ads on the creator's page. It shows system alerts with the ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > But Brave is based on Chromium!

> Chromium is open source and all Google tracking can easily be disabled. > Brave strips out all of this by default. Remember that Chromium is not the > same as Chrome.

Sorry, but this is not a satisfactory explanation to me. Brave is marketed as the pro-decentralization/good web citizen browser. Yet, it uses Chromium, which contributes to Google's dominance over the web — pushing developers to further neglect Firefox and other browsers as a target.

Also, where is Brave's innovation? I see none. Instead, I support Mozilla.

<comment><USER12> A key part of why Mozilla succeeded in somewhat resurrecting the web was that it was _good_ , when compared with Internet Explorer.

Firefox is slow ( _especially on Linux_ ) when compared with Chromium. The Firefox UI is more complex and not any more powerful; the excuse used to be that they supported more deeply-integrated extensions, but that's mostly dead now. With regard to "dominance over the web", Firefox is riddled with compliance bugs and misbehaviours, many of which go unaddressed for years, these bugs and incompatibilities have forced me to disable features for Firefox users, or find workarounds, over the years.

> _Also, where is Brave's innovation? I see none. Instead, I support Mozilla._

Where is Mozilla's innovation today? They maintain a broken, slightly- differentiated Netscape clone, and have an unmistakable chip on their shoulder; but there is no substantial benefit to using Mozilla, and there are some serious drawbacks that Mozilla could avoid if they cared. Brave is at least doing something interesting, with an innovative compensation model which has some hope to reduce reliance on surveillance-driven advertising, and they put a Tor client in the default distribution (even if the browser does not implement some of the anti-fingerprinting measures that Tor Browser does).

On top of this all, Brave is differentiating on what matters, rather than taking up the pointless task of maintaining similarly-licensed, lower quality implementations of various web standards. If Google gains power over the web with Chromium, in some vague way, then Mozilla's power move would be to base Firefox on Chromium (or at least fork Chromium). Rust is a spectacular thing they've done, but at the end of the day, any argument for using Mozilla should begin with a long list of positive characteristics of the product, and not with vague platitudes about implementation diversity.

<comment><USER7> > Firefox is slow (especially on Linux) when compared with Chromium.

People tell me this, but I genuinely can't tell the difference between Chrome and FF's speed on linux. Both feel equally fast to me. My only real complaint about FF on linux is a lack of hardware video decoding.

> Mozilla's power move would be to base Firefox on Chromium (or at least fork > Chromium)

You can't be serious.

<comment><USER13> > People tell me this, but I genuinely can't tell the difference between > Chrome and FF's speed on linux.

It's pretty apparent in "web apps" \- plenty of SPAs grind Firefox to a halt and not Chrome. The other major win for Chrome is battery life on laptops. I know it's getting better for FF, but it's still not that close.

Safari actually does the best on (nearly) any hardware you can convince MacOS to run on, but they broke extensions recently so it's not viable for me anymore.

(I still run FF Nightly as my main browser.)

<comment><USER14> _It 's pretty apparent in "web apps" \- plenty of SPAs grind Firefox to a halt and not Chrome. The other major win for Chrome is battery life on laptops. I know it's getting better for FF, but it's still not that close._

Is this because you're on Mac OS? Firefox has always had Mac as a third-class OS, especially since they started pushing Metal. I can't remember the last time I had Firefox crash, grind to a halt, or even stutter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > they use Google by default

I currently use DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine _because_ Brave's Private mode uses it by default. I had heard of DDG before, but I assumed that Google was better. When I saw that it really works just as well, I decided to switch.

<comment><USER16> I like DDG but, when I'm looking for answers to technical questions, I sell my soul to Sergey. Google gets me to the solution far more rapidly.

<comment><USER17> Isn't it better to search for technical questions and corresponding answers on Q&A websites?

<comment><USER18> No, because they do not capture all the technical knowledge available online. If they have relevant data, a search engine will hopefully surface it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am unable to use _any_ Chrome/Chromium based browser due to one stupid and trivial characteristic. When you spawn a new session of Chrome/Chromium the resulting window/tab steals focus. That means that if you do so from some sort of terminal based program you are pointlessly left sitting there with the cursor still in the terminal window but with the focus on the browser window. If you were hoping to spawn more than one new browser session (say from a RSS reader), well, you are not doing that.

Firefox has an obscure option that can be used to turn off this obnoxious behaviour. So I must use Firefox.

<comment><USER20> What OS are you using? At least on Windows there's a Win32 API to change window focus: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10898560/how-to-set- focu...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10898560/how-to-set-focus-to- another-window)

On macOS maybe this: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41309910/how-to- regain-s...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41309910/how-to-regain-set- focus-in-a-mac-os-swift-application)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://brave.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/02/adshero_1.png](https://brave.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/02/adshero_1.png)

That is a image from:

[https://brave.com/brave-ads-waitlist/](https://brave.com/brave-ads-waitlist/)

Notice the page is about the Grammys and the ad is about the Grammys. This is important.

So Brave strips the ads from my site and inserts their own as (even more annoying system notifications). And they are relevant to the page so now my visitors might think I was the dick that triggered a notification that must be dismissed.

And If I want a cut I have to sign up for some rando cryptocurrency company, the bastions of ethics and security.

Please Brave. Use a unique user agent string so I can just block people using your browser. And I don't care if people block ads, I do too. But when you get desperate and start showing ads for dildos on my site discussing cross-cut table-saw blades I'm not going to be a happy camper.

<comment><USER8> Real original smear there - "Brave will get desperate, and start pushing NSFW, and edgy ads."

I like this fake alternate strawnan universe where actual dildos head Brave, where last ditch efforts to save a silicon valley VC funded startup is to push wherever it is you dream they'll push. Because burning everything to the ground is par-for-the-course, for both VCs and entrepreneurs in the valley?

Or - this is classic FUD-ing, backed by exactly zero evidence

<comment><USER22> I guess you're new here. Personally, after 20+ years working in SF, I think that's a perfectly plausible outcome. I mean, the whole internet ad market has been a long slide to being as awful as they can get away with. The median investor cares much, much, much more about ROI than how that return is achieved. And a common outcome for content companies that aren't stars but have nonzero revenue is to end up as zombies that do anything that juices income a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > _But Brave whitelists Facebook and Twitter trackers!_

> _This is only partly true. Brave whitelists some Facebook and Twitter > trackers because blocking them outright would break buttons on some websites > (e.g. the Facebook like buttons). Brave is meant to be easy to use, breaking > a lot of websites is not easy to use. Brave was never meant to be a max > privacy solution._

> _The whitelist is now optional and can easily be disabled in the settings._

Opt out features like this don't respect your privacy.

<comment><USER24> Clicking on a Facebook button doesn't contribute to your privacy.

If you're going to click it, it needs to work. If you're not going to click it, it doesn't matter.

Opt out is the best option here

<comment><USER25> If nothing has changed over years this is just not how it works. As long as like button and it's scripts present on page Facebook will be tracking you. You dont need to click on button to activate it and this is the problem.

<comment><USER26> we have fb like buttons at work (which gets disabled by the fb container extension), but using the js version is a choice (by the website operator). An fb like button can be a normal link with certain query parameters which we have used for years.

<comment><USER25> I actually used social buttons without tracking for my own projects:

[https://sharingbuttons.io/](https://sharingbuttons.io/)

Problem is that most of websites just use default solutions that FB and Twitter provide that do enable invasive tracking.

<comment><USER24> So developer error / laziness not user error (though they are using Facebook)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Brave is the most disruptive thing to happen on the web in 15 years. The discussion about tracking is almost irrelevant - adblocking is the bait that brave uses which will take us from google's web to a web where every visitor can directly pay the creator to read anything on the web. It's almost comical to watch HN melting against brave because it's threatening the profits of their bosses. I personally hope the best for them and i 'll be doing my best to promote it.

<comment><USER28> > HN melting against brave because it's threatening the profits of their > bosses

That breaks the site guidelines. Please read and follow them, no matter how wrong you feel other commenters are.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This had the effect of making me realise Brave is not the answer. If you don't mind some UI inferiority, Firefox is the answer.

<comment><USER26> what ui inferiority?

<comment><USER29> I can't re-arrange add-on icons with a simple drag and drop of the mouse. That limitation alone holds me back.

<comment><USER30> Yes you can, but you need to select "customize..." first, i.e., you want to customize the interface.

<comment><USER29> That's what I'm talking about, it's way too inconvenient to have to enter that clunky 'Customise' window (and then close it ooff) just in order to drag an icon out of the way of my existing corner icons. I try new add-ons all the time for temporary or small functions. It's little things like this that make the everyday experience a deal-breaker. FF has come a long way - e.g. not requiring restarts for add-ons anymore - but there's still more things to fix. I literally check this one feature (draggability of add-on buttons) about once a month, because there's a great to deal gain with Firefox due to privacy.

<comment><USER26> I just checked Chrome, apparently it doesn't support moving anything but extension icons? I far prefer the FF approach (also because of accidental moving)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Does Brave still fail fingerprinting tests in a comically bad fashion? Last time I looked at Brave, it appeared to be pretty bad for privacy fingerprinting-wise compared to Firefox and (surprisingly) Chrome.

<comment><USER32> Hi, I do privacy research at Brave. Our fingerprinting protections are still being improved (our second round of FP defenses should hit nightly in Jan), but the comments here are wrong; our defenses are much better than Firefox and Chrome.

We don't consider as part of our threat model preventing sites from knowing you're using Brave. I'm not aware of any browser or tool that considers this as part of their privacy threat model either (including the terrific Tor Browser Bundle). Our goal is to prevent sites from distinguishing between Brave users.

My claim is that our fingerprinting protections are strictly stronger than Firefox and Chrome. A partial list of fingerprinting protections that are enabled by default in Brave are at [1].

Fingerprinting is tricky, and we're tacking the problem in on multiple dimensions. We need to go further, and expect to have v2 of our defenses in nightly in the next month or two [2], but we're also leading efforts in W3C to address fingerprinting in standards (I'm snyderp, those are my / Brave issues identifying privacy harm in standards) [3], and we're pushing hard to prevent web standards and privacy efforts from being eaten up by vaporware [4].

So, all that is to say, Brave has the most aggressive fingerprinting protections of any general purpose browser, and is getting better. The naysayers are welcome to backup their claims ;)

1: [https://github.com/brave/browser- laptop/wiki/Fingerprinting-...](https://github.com/brave/browser- laptop/wiki/Fingerprinting-Protection-Mode)

2: [https://github.com/brave/brave- browser/issues/5614](https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/5614)

3: [https://github.com/w3cping/tracking- issues/issues](https://github.com/w3cping/tracking-issues/issues)

4: [https://brave.com/brave-fingerprinting-and-privacy- budgets/](https://brave.com/brave-fingerprinting-and-privacy-budgets/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > Their home page (their website, not the browser's home page) contains > analytics because they want to see what type of users are using their > service, how many etc. Analytics are used virtually everywhere and are a > nice way to gain information about how much traffic your website is > recieving. Additionally, Brave's tracker blocker blocks this tracker anyway.

Then why have it? Just because "everyone is doing it, so we should too, even though it's antithetical to our goals"?

</comment><comment><USER34> Just use Firefox. The fact that these posts are even needed says everything about the choice you're making.

<comment><USER17> Herd mentality much?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Ads in and of themselves are bad, even without tracking. My time and attention are the only truly limited resources I have. Hijacking those to make me desire things I don't need reduces my quality of life. Secondarily, ads corrupt every media outlet they touch. To hell with all of them.

<comment><USER27> brave uses ads to generate revenue for _users_. But the tokens might be used in the future to incentivize more direct behaviors, e.g. incentivize users to sign up or post quality content or buy a product. This would completely bypass the advertising ecosystem and the nuissances it creates, connecting users and makers directly. It's still marketing, but direct. There are many possibilities when payments are frictionless.

<comment><USER35> Realistically, what kind of money are we talking about? There is some amount of money I would sell my attention for, but it's somewhere in the multiple hundreds of dollars per hour. Less than that, and my effort is more efficiently spent on other things. More than that, and I'm extremely suspicious of the motives of who would pay that and why.

Get real. Ads are disgusting.

<comment><USER27> there are already "offer walls", i.e. incentivized actions that reward users with small amounts of money. Or users could e.g. be rewarded if their amazon reviews are highly rated. there is an incentive for websites to do that. it doesnt even have to be about ads

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Basically every reasoning they give for why Brave is not as bad as it seems, seems to demonstrate exactly that point. Literally. Starting with "they clearly state in their privacy policy that their ads do not track you". Great. Sure. Argument won decidedly.

</comment><comment><USER37> Any developers out there, using it day to day?

<comment><USER38> Yes, I am. It's been my primary browser for the last 14 months. It works the same as chrome for web development.

I like the built in privacy features, but still use ublock, umatrix and privacy badger in conjunction with built in features. It's extremely snappy.

I have some qualms about their BAT model, but I am opted into ads and have set wikipedia and several favorite sites to auto donate. I've also cashed out about half of it myself (about $30 of $60 this year).

The ads themselves are crudely targeted. They claim the browser profiles your visits locally. Basically, visit opted in programming sites, get programming ads. It doesn't feel spooky and the ads are not intrusive.

I would use this without the BAT model or crypto wallets, but use both of those features all the time but it's just a bonus.

The most important thing to me is that it's chrome dev tools without Google. Chrome is straight up scary.

* Also, native tor windows are handy for testing ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If I am going to use Chrome/Chromium then I am just going to use Chrome/Chromium and spend 10 more seconds and install ublock. No reason to use a themed Chromium by a company that literally announces itself to investors (among which Peter Thiel who has obviously personal issues with Google founders) as an advertising platform with a cryptoscam if it didn't work.

<comment><USER39> I'm not too sure what ublock does entirely, but it seems to focus more on blocking content of the site. Like images, iframes, scripts, etc.

Chrome does a lot of calling home. Like, a LOT [1][2]. For example, it checks sites are "safe" (as according to Google's standards) running every website you visit through their servers.

Brave tries to disable most of this.

1\. [https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled- chromium](https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium)

2\. [https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network- traff...](https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-traffic- results/)

<comment><USER40> Brave uses the same safe browsing implementation as Chrome.

> running every website you visit through their servers.

That's not how it works.

<comment><USER39> Feel free to add some more facts/sources/links to prove your claim please.

Brave proxies requests [1] to Google to ensure they do not get the details of the website you are visiting.

1\. [https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Proxy- redirected...](https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Proxy-redirected- URLs)

<comment><USER40> The proxy doesn't modify the request. It just hides who it is coming from. That just means Brave knows who it is coming from instead of Google.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>