Iceland's Pirates head for power on wave of public anger - <AUTHOR> http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-iceland-election-idUKKCN11Z1RV <comment><USER2> I am involved with the Icelandic Pirate Party. I'm a substitute member of the board of Pirates in Reykjavík and a district representative in a new institution of the party, the Information Board, it's role being the production of information for general consumption. Ask Me Anything.

<comment><USER2> There's a factual error in the article. Birgitta Jónsdóttir is an influential member and won the primary for the capital region (3 districts ran a collaborative primary). She is not a leader of the movement. We aim for as flat a structure as possible. The grassroots are in theory more powerful than our elected representatives. If we are in the position of leading a coalition for government we will see a true test of that principle.

<comment><USER3> You mean you (personally) are opposed to Burgitta being PM or has this matter been discussed at the party and there's opposition to her?

<comment><USER2> No. She is interested in being speaker of the house. We have no leaders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting story of alternative politics, I like many of the Pirate party positions, but as wonderful as Iceland may be, it's not exactly the center of political change in the world. Bravo to them, but let's see this same movement on the European continent.

<comment><USER5> Germany already had its Pirate Party story and it was a total disaster. 4 years ago they entered a few local parliaments with over 8% of the votes, but in the end the party destroyed itself from the inside. Turns out that if a bunch of nerds form a political party without establishing a good communication structure the whole party ends up looking like a Usenet flamewar. In the last local election in Berlin the Pirate Party had less votes even than a satirical party and the "Animal Protection Party".

I hope the Icelandic learned something from that and don't make the same mistakes.

<comment><USER6> I imagine a group of people whose base commonality is "we want other people's stuff for free" will find that they jumped into something of a moral tarpit on many levels.

<comment><USER7> There is a difference between "wanting other people's stuff for free" and believing that the length of copyright (life of author plus 120 years), the penalties for stealing content (5 years felony conviction plus $250,000 fine for each movie downloaded), and the techniques content owners use to get violators (mass sending of dubious lawsuits based on IP address then immediately offer to settle, similar to extortion) has made people angry at IP laws.

<comment><USER8> >the penalties for stealing content (5 years felony conviction plus $250,000 fine for each movie downloaded

So where exactly do you face such penalties for downloading content?

<comment><USER7> It's actually $500k [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States#Criminal_penalties)

<comment><USER8> And how many people have faced criminal copyright charges for downloading movies in the US? (hint: none)

<comment><USER7> Uhhhh I forgot to respond to this before now, but hundreds every year? Here is one[0]. Another from the Media Institute shows the number of convictions per year through 2011[1]. I don't even understand your arguments. First you didn't believe the penalties were that harsh, then I showed you, then you didn't think anyone actually went to jail, then I showed you. I guess next you'll say no one has ever been executed by the state for downloading movies, so the laws are fine?

[0] [https://torrentfreak.com/87-months-in-prison-for- copyright-i...](https://torrentfreak.com/87-months-in-prison-for-copyright- infringement-fair-sentence-or-utter-madness-130608/) [1] [http://www.mediainstitute.org/IPI/2011/052511.php](http://www.mediainstitute.org/IPI/2011/052511.php)

<comment><USER8> I don't think you understand. There's a big difference between civil and criminal copyright infringement and it's not exactly easy to commit criminal copyright infringement.

Downloading movies does not carry any criminal penalties, and the possible civil penalties for downloading are minimal.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Copyright_Law_in_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Copyright_Law_in_the_United_States#Civil_vs._criminal_copyright_infringement)

>[https://torrentfreak.com/87-months-in-prison-for- copyright-i...](https://torrentfreak.com/87-months-in-prison-for-copyright- infringement-fair-sentence-or-utter-madness-130608/)

Are you suggesting that a prison sentence was unreasonable for someone selling stolen software licenses at a massive scale? This isn't some guy downloading the newest episode of "Suits", but a somewhat large commercial operation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm particularly curious about the Edward Snowden angle to this - if the pirate party were elected and if he was granted asylum in Iceland would he take it, or would he try to stick it out in Russia until things cool down back home?

<comment><USER10> I don't think Edward Snowden will ever be granted asylum in Iceland.

Granting asylum to Snowden without the US' blessing has massive political consequences. If you look at the close ties Iceland has to the US I think it is obvious that this is not going to happen:

\- The US are an important market for Icelandic goods, import sanctions will decimate the economy.

\- Iceland and the US have trade agreements, which would most likely be rescinded, resulting in higher prices of goods in Iceland.

\- Iceland is a party to extradition treaties.

\- There is an US airbase in Iceland (although it is mostly just one hanger used for reconnaissance).

The only chance Snowden has to live in Iceland is if his status is downgraded to some kind of "person non grata" (i.e. he is free but will never be able to enter the US).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Living the Greek reality of being governed by a populist party of clueless people, I hope that the Pirates' rise is not just a show of public anger, but rather a conscious decision.

I like a lot of things about Pirates (especially from northen countries), but I hope they are taking it serious and are already preparing (/have prepared) not just proposals for new things but also about the boring "everyday" things that are needed when running a country.

In a world of rise of extreme right-wings and clueless populists, I hope Icelandic people will question things more for the improvement of the politicians as well. Judge by policies not by ideologies is still not widely applied (at least speaking for my country).</comment>


America's Mortgage Market Is Still Broken - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-30/america-s-mortgage-market-is-still-broken?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social <comment><USER2> Why would we care if these entities go under? We cared when banks were at risk because they hold deposits. But Quicken Loans doesn't.

I mean the root of the problem is that these entities only have to hold the loan long enough to sell it to the government. So of course they're financed with short term debt, etc. To address the problem, the government should stop buying mortgages.</comment>


Japan's washi paper torn by modern life - <AUTHOR> https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2019/06/25/lifestyle/skin-deep-japans-washi-paper-torn-modern-life/ <comment><USER2> Many culturally significant products and practices go down this path. I believe washi particularly shoji will eventually settle into the category of "isn't produced on an industrial scale but never stops being made" with other products such as chainmail, non-electric typewriters, swords, powder horns, quill pens, parchment, monocle, coonskin caps, cathode ray tubes, hand drills, etc.

<comment><USER3> Is anyone making CRTs? As I understand it, original broadcast CRT monitors (so-called PVMs and BVMs) are becoming rare and expensive. They are sought after by retro gamers in particular.

<comment><USER4> Sadly, no.

I use CRT on my main computer, in my country all flat panels I seen so far are too expensive OR useless for my purposes.

1\. CRT can use arbitrary resolutions, I love that, not only for retro gaming, but some modern games can reach "ultra" settings when lowering resolution a little, on a "mid-range" GPU (I own a Radeon 380X, sadly the last GPU to have analog video, I dunno what I will do when purchasing my next one)

2\. My CRT contrast never bothered me, differently from the flat panels I owned, for example trying to play "superhot" and then "dark souls" same day required lots and lots of fiddling with flat panels, the settings that let me see anything at all on dark souls, made the screen flat white on superhot, fixing the settings for superhot made the screen flat black on dark souls... CRT I never felt the need to readjust contrast and brigthness after I found the setting I wanted.

3\. Input lag... for most games this is not obvious, specially since lots of recent games have input lag anyway (for example I noticed a couple games check the controller status in a certain order that make all input always 1 frame late, sometimes 2 frames late if there is vsync and whatnot in the mix) but for example playing "Necrodancer" on CRT is much, MUCH easier for me.

4\. This one is more theoretical, since the CRTs I own are cheap, but for a long time some CRTs could reach crazy high refresh rates.

5\. "HDR", well, to be honest I never seen this either in person, but I know that some manufacturers did made some cool CRTs that supported HDR, most notably for SGI workstations that could create images with some ridiculous amounts of bits per pixel.

6\. Retro gaming without expensive hardware: many, MANY games relied on CRT pixel "bleed" and fuzzyness of analog systems to create special effects, a notorious one is the waterfalls in sonic, on a system that has the intended hardware instead of seeing alternating columns of pixels, you would see a transparent waterfall, there are lots of emulators with plugins to simulate those, but to make the art work REALLY right on a modern screen you need a 4k screen, expensive powerful GPU and whatnot... as weird it sounds... it is cheaper to buy an actual CRT and even an actual old console to play some games.

<comment><USER5> >MANY games relied on CRT pixel "bleed" and fuzzyness of analog systems to create special effects, a notorious one is the waterfalls in sonic

But handheld systems with sharp pixels used the same art techniques, and many pieces of official artwork showed game art drawn with sharp pixels (think early NES game cover art). The Sonic waterfalls even use distinct vertical lines to represent falling water, instead of a checkerboard dither pattern, which would be the natural choice if you assumed it would be blurred. Arcade games used the same art techniques too, and they used high quality monitors and RGB connections, so pixels were clearly visible.

<comment><USER6> The thing about CRT pixel "bleed" is that it is a pure Gaussian blur, which is practically the best way of upscaling a raster image _within a purely analog system_. Strictly speaking, you can of course do much better with a digital- upscaling step, using e.g. Lanczos filtering (which is far better at preserving sharpness while smoothing out "blocky" appearances), or even with special "pixel-art scaling" algorithms that work strictly within the original palette. But still, even a CRT is much better than what can be shown on a fixed-resolution handheld screen!

<comment><USER5> That's assuming that the pixels are point samples, which isn't true of pixel art. Consider the typewriter on Crono's desk at the start of Chrono Trigger, where a single pixel checkerboard pattern is used to represent the keys. The best way to scale this is nearest-neighbor. The same technique is used in many games to represent chainmail armor.

<comment><USER6> It's assuming that "a pixel is a point sample" is a better model, even of pixel art, than "a pixel is literally a small square". Checkerboard patterns are also used quite often for simple dithering (in pixel art with smaller- palettes) which is perhaps the polar opposite of your example! (And if you really don't want blurring, most pixel-art-specific scaling algorithms will nicely match nearest neighbor on that particular pattern, while still doing their best to smooth out "jaggies" elsewhere.)

<comment><USER5> How can the scaling algorithm distinguish between "checkerboard representing high spatial frequency detail" and "checkerboard representing intermediate color"? There are games that use both. The only scaling technique I know that can do this with acceptable accuracy (in real time!) is "human brain scaling".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If that rang a bell for you, it might be via Baumgartner Restoration [0], the excellent painting restoration YouTube channel. He refers to it as "Japanese mulberry paper" and IIRC relies on it for its light weight but reliability.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvZe6ZCbF9xgbbbdkiodPKQ/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvZe6ZCbF9xgbbbdkiodPKQ/videos)

</comment><comment><USER8> When I see articles on these kinds of materials - handmade and fairly unique, but not in wide demand any longer - I tend to wonder:

Are there any applications for the techniques used in the making of the materials that could be applied to other modern materials that could potentially create new uses for those materials.

For instance - just spitballing - but what if a different fiber and "glue" were substituted; could a very thin "mat" of such material be made, and what could it be used for?

I'm sure I'm not the first to think about this, though...

<comment><USER9> I think, in this case, the pertinent question is the reverse. Could you make paper out of kouzo fiber using regular mass-produced paper making techniques? (It'd likely be smoother, and so wouldn't have the "feel" of washi paper; but it'd probably still have the properties being discussed in the article—longer lifespan/durability than regular paper.)

As well, there might be other things kouzo fiber could be used for besides the uses it's been put to (panels in shouji screen doors, and origami paper, mostly), that haven't been tried because they don't occur to the artisans who grow the kouzo. Maybe, due to its length, kouzo fiber has better wicking properties than regular paper fiber, and so washi paper would make a better substrate for pH test strips, for example. Or maybe the raw fibers would make a good base for a spray insulation product (presumably in combination with fire retardants.) Or maybe they're durable enough that you could work them into a cloth, as is done with hemp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is bit nit-picky of me, but it's a thread I've been noticing lately in some international news, so I'd like to know if anyone has observations or thoughts.

In South Korea, China, and Japan (to the extent of my observations), it seems when some culturally significant norm, craft, or product begins to lose said status, partit chalked up to a result of (what tone usually conveys as destructive) "Westernization". But a significant amount of the advances (i.e., emergent products or norms that have supplanted the ones in question) themselves tend to be celebrated and attributed to the progressive trajectory of their culture & state. It's just an odd bit of nationalistic hypocrisy that gives me an itch.

Of course, I do not think for a moment this is the case for everything, or that their peoples even embrace this view (as I believe to have been conveyed by the media). And I'm sure the West has behaved or.continues to behave in a similar manner, either now or (surely) in the past.

Perhaps I'm completely amiss, which, in that case, all the better.

<comment><USER11> From a western (uk) perspective I would say theres Americanisation going on, where in the past there would have been a diversity of opinions.

In the 80/90s we seemed to look to Japan for Business/technology and culture, to Europe for food, and culture as well as America. I suppose China has somewhat filled part of the gap, but it seems to be a near US monopoly at the moment.

It seems to me that being exposed to the diversity of the world is a good thing, becoming a copy of one other place not so much. This is of course highly subjective.

So to answer your question, being exposed to, and picking the best bits of western culture seems a net positive, becoming a generic western country not so much.

I have absolutely no idea where the balance is between 'progress' and 'tradition', and I don't even think I'd recognise the balance if I saw it. I'm not even sure if there is a balance. Perhaps we'll forever be bemoaning the loss of washi, whilst celebrating the things that replace it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Japanese Washi Paper making video. John Daub interviewed Washi paper master, Rogier Uitenboogaart living in Kochi Japan. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwu1t3d6kU4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwu1t3d6kU4)

</comment><comment><USER13> One of the many victims of plastic perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER14> Dave Bull of Mokuhankan has occasional blog posts about problems sourcing washi paper: [https://mokuhankan.com/conversations/archives/2016/04/how_ar...](https://mokuhankan.com/conversations/archives/2016/04/how_are_we_doing_part_three.html) [https://mokuhankan.com/conversations/archives/2016/07/paper_...](https://mokuhankan.com/conversations/archives/2016/07/paper_breakthrough.html)

Though I seem to recall one other earlier post, but I can't find it at the moment, it was about debris/bark being mixed into the paper IIRC.

</comment><comment><USER15> There is even a photographic "film" made from washi paper:

[http://filmwashi.com/en/products/handcrafted_films/](http://filmwashi.com/en/products/handcrafted_films/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone knows if washi paper notebooks are available somewhere? Search queries led me to no where.

<comment><USER17> [https://awagami.com/collections/stationery-decor- gifts](https://awagami.com/collections/stationery-decor-gifts)</comment></comment>


When is one thing equal to some other thing? (2007) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.math.harvard.edu/~mazur/preprints/when_is_one.pdf <comment><USER2> What a fun, accessible and well-presented paper. I'm not sure who Saunders MacLane is but their memory is served well.

<comment><USER3> Co-founder of category theory.</comment></comment>


Algorithmic cruelty - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2014/12/24/algorithmic-cruelty.html

<comment><USER2> I think it' better to link to the original post: [http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/12/24/inadvertent- alg...](http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/12/24/inadvertent-algorithmic- cruelty/)

I also think that the original title is better: "Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty" because the autor understands it's not malice:

> _And I know, of course, that this is not a deliberate assault. This > inadvertent algorithmic cruelty is the result of code that works in the > overwhelming majority of cases, reminding people of the awesomeness of their > years, showing them selfies at a party or whale spouts from sailing boats or > the marina outside their vacation house._</comment>


Which tools are you using as a Product Manager in your company? - <AUTHOR> I am creating a list of products that are currently being used by product managers across multiple verticals. Could you please recommend a few so that I do not miss any important ones. TIA! <comment><USER2> [https://github.com/cjbarber/ToolsOfTheTrade](https://github.com/cjbarber/ToolsOfTheTrade)

Looks like you published your list of tools yesterday [https://browsee.io/blog/top-10-tools-for-product-managers- in...](https://browsee.io/blog/top-10-tools-for-product-managers-in-2020/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, just wanted to be sure that I am not missing any important ones!</comment></comment>


Calculus Is So Last Century – statistics is better for today's workforce - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/calculus-is-so-last-century-1457132991 <comment><USER2> The title would be laughable if it were not published in the Wall Street Journal (and paywalled). Why do we persist in denigrating reasoned analysis and modeling. Truth is, a scientist or engineer needs to know both the calculus and statistics and a whole lot of other mathematics.

</comment><comment><USER3> ¿Porque no los dos?

How will you differentiate probability generating functions if you don't know calculus ?

How will you know how to integrate a CDF from a PDF without calculus and vice versa ?

<comment><AUTHOR> One would know conceptually how a measure works without knowing specific integration rules.

This would then enable a person to interpret statistical claims and conceptually understand a distribution without necessarily being able to reproduce the calculations from scratch.

<comment><USER3> Come on, it only takes a couple of hours to learn the basics of calculus.

Finding the volume of things from their surface areas and you can integrate.

These are not difficult concepts.</comment></comment></comment>


Why I Invest in Online-to-Offline Businesses - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zactownsend.com/why-i-invest-in-onlinetooffline-businesses <comment><USER3> > In a comment on HN, PG noted that the massive fortunes of the future will be > made by "startups in industries that didn't previously have them."

This requires a myopic definition of the word "startup." I have yet to encounter _any_ industry in which there are no new businesses being formed. Are these new businesses all started by Silicon Valley types, and do they look like Silicon Valley startups? Of course not, but that doesn't make them any less a "startup."

> Many if not most industries can be improved with an injection of technology > and the introduction of the startup ethos (disruption, growth, efficiency, > data, etc.).

This statement seems to imply that most industries are behind the curve technologically, and that the players in these industries aren't focused on growth, efficiency and the use of data.

From agriculture to shipping to insurance, it's hard to find major industries that are _not_ using data and cutting-edge technology to create efficiencies and drive growth. In many if not most cases, you will find that they have been solving incredibly complex problems and building sophisticated solutions for longer than many Silicon Valley "startup" employees have been alive.

> Most of the economy is still untouched by the methods used by Silicon > Valley's engineering-first companies.

What "methods" are these? And what exactly is an "engineering-first" company? Is a company primarily differentiated by having a prettier website, which ironically seems to make up a good number of the startups the author points to, an "engineering-first" company? If so, why? And why does this matter?

I wonder how the author would describe companies like Exxon, Maersk and GE...

<comment><USER4> The assumption from the author and pg, and many others, myself included, is that software excellence is something in the DNA of SV startup culture, _and_ is going to deliver outsized, orders of magnitude advantages over companies that do not have software in their DNA.

my favourite analogy is at some point after Gutenberg and 1451, there were companies who had hired almost entirely these new literate citizens, and companies who had hired maybe a few to work in the "ink department".

Those with literacy in their DNA had outsized advantages. It often came up against Royal monopolies and state interests, which may be one reason the Industrial revolution took a while to arrive.

However it is worth noting that the first wave of electrification of factories in the late 1890s did not see productivity rise much till the 20's - <USER2> generation had to retire before factories were reorganised away from steam engine layouts. A similar effect seems to be happening here - the first generation of managers with computers in workplace is retiring, leaving behind the tired Microsoft metaphors for Desktops and filing cabinets. And it is being replaced with ... well we don't know yet, but I have not had a copy of word or PowerPoint or excel for years. And I have not had OpenOffice either, and only use google docs for CVs.

Software will deliver outsized advantages for companies with it in their DNA for at least a generation.

<comment><USER3> How many startups do you really believe are more technically sophisticated than, say, Chevron, Hapag-Lloyd, Cargill, ADP or Goldman Sachs?

It's easy for a couple of 20-somethings sipping lattes at The Creamery to imagine that industries like agriculture and trucking are filled with bumpkins who don't "have software in their DNA", but that doesn't mean this is reality.

If you remove yourself from the Bay Area bubble, it's quite difficult to find industries that are not already using data and technology in very sophisticated ways.

> ...software excellence is something in the DNA of SV startup culture...

What is "software excellence"?

Look at the page source for the websites of the companies the author has invested in: most of them exhibit more than one easily-avoided front-end worst practice.

Obviously, this doesn't mean that these services are of no value, but it's kind of silly to throw around phrases like "software excellence" and "engineering-first" when the type of companies that are supposed to be exhibiting these things apparently can't find the time to push clean, efficient front-end code to production.

<comment><USER5> I like the specific mention of Agri-business. I'll admit to being pretty blind to it until a close friend went to one that is doing amazing things and producing very sophisticated devices. They're currently switching out the old for the new similar to what you were replying to. They have the "startup" mindset but it seems they are already entrenched with money to burn, looks like a good position to be in.

And I drove by the place all the time, never realizing it was on the cutting edge of one of the world's biggest business sectors.

<comment><USER6> I've done three agriculture software startups. I do not believe that the average city dweller has any idea. At the last InfoAg conference there was a number of UAV (drone) vendors for the first time.

This nationally known futurist gushes about how technical ag has become: [http://www.precisionag.com/video/c:0/1688/](http://www.precisionag.com/video/c:0/1688/)

If you're expecting to find Mr. Haney from Green Acres fame you're in for a rude shock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe it's not which one is beter over another. Who is beter at sales, marketing and networking. Sometimes soft skills are as or more important then your technical superiority?

<comment><USER8> Not to mention the finance chops required to make money, manage physical inventory (which most 'startups' don't really have to worry about), buy/hedge commodities and currencies, etc...

Most of the SV 'startups' I read about are just glorified websites, maybe with a mobile app as well. There are plenty of real, physical problems which can't simply be solved with a website. That's not to say there isn't opportunity for disruption and improvement, but your typical 'startup' is simply in the wrong domain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been thinking about online-to-offline a bit recently while watching the rise of Grouper amongst my peers (as well as Tinder to a lesser extent). Seems like there may be some places where the offline-to-online focus of disruption could itself be disrupted by encouraging more offline interaction. Anyway, interesting to think about in the age of software eating the world.

</comment><comment><USER10> From what I gather, he invests in: companyA is going to buzzwordAdjective the stalwartIndusty</comment>


Ask YC: Apple Camera Hack? Peeping Tom 2.0? - <AUTHOR>

	I was in a cafe the other day and while using their open wireless decided to get some work done. As I surfed the web... all of a sudden the light on my MacBook Pro Camera turned on!
I was not using any application or program that would make this happen. There were some crazy lookin techies in the room and I got kinda freaked... was it possible for someone to create a Mac Camera Hack?
Is it possible to even make an application where as the light would not even go on to tell me it was in use?
Creepy. <comment><USER2> On a related note -- watch out for the fact that the camera turns on automatically with skype..

I had an awkward moment once chatting to my father - when I pointed out that it didn't look like he was sitting in the study (in fact - I could see the pillow behind him).

I'm sure we all know this - but just a usefule reminder. It made me decide that I'd love any inbuilt camera on a pc of mine to have a physical switch to turn it on/off (like my T60's wireless)</comment>


90:9:1 – the odd ratio that technology keeps creating - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/12/ratio-technology-mozilla-firefox-os-90-9-1 <comment><USER14> I think the article describes exactly the two factors in play:

> The more you look for it in networked environments, the more frequently some > sort of 90:9:1 ratio seems to emerge once the market matures.

First, of _course_ something will show up the more you look for it.

Second, "once the market matures" is completely up in the air. Was the market immature in November 2009, when IE had 65%, Firefox 24%, and Safari, Chrome, and Opera each 2-4% of the browser market? Is it mature now? I don't think "immature" is the word that comes to mind to describe the browser market, for many. Yet there's certainly no 90:9:1 ratio in browser share currently.

<comment><USER15> Technically the browser "market" is not a market, because browsers are for free. That's very unusual.

Hence whoever invests most in its development + distribution can gain market share. Similar to Android, Chrome is strategically important for Google to keep users in their ecosystem, so it makes sense for them to overinvest. It's just a loss leader paid for by advertising dollars. Also distribution is cheap for them through google.com.

Microsoft has kept IE in the Windows org, and for the longest time did not invest enough to pay down technical debt. For the longest time investments couldn't be justified with advertisement dollars, so after they "won" the browser war with Netscape's demise they cut down much of the IE team.

Firefox devs paid down Netscape's technical debt for free to escape the IE monopoly. But distribution is a problem for them since they neither own the desktop OS nor the web's primary entry point.

<comment><USER16> It's still a market if every product is free. And they're not even really free, you pay with potential advertising revenue, vendor lock-in and with data that you generate.

<comment><USER15> Well they are just as much of a product as free parking is for a convenience store. The browser is not the product. You are the product, sold to advertisers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looks like somebody rediscovered how power law distributions are prevalent in so many different statistics.

</comment><comment><USER18> Welcome to the power law ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law))

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this just the geometric series? 1, 9, 9×9 = 81

The other ratios in the article are similar: 85:14:1 or 91:8:1

This is just basic Social Network Analysis ([https://www.coursera.org/course/sna](https://www.coursera.org/course/sna))

This rule has two parts, given a choice of selections

        A: there are only a few "key players"
        even if the original selection was very large

        B: the ratio of #1 to #2 is about the same as for #2 to #3

This is why multiple choice always have 3 choices typically \- we do not even notice #4...

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

loosely related:

Viggo Brun wrote about algorithms to find to simple ratios... he was trying to tune a piano!

He calculated the ideal tuning ratios are close to some simple fractions

        log(2/1):log(3/2):log(4/3) ≈ 12:7:5 ≈ 53:31:22

[http://retro.seals.ch/digbib/view2?pid=ens-001:1964:10::21](http://retro.seals.ch/digbib/view2?pid=ens-001:1964:10::21)

</comment><comment><USER20> "the only product that has ever been advertised on Google's front page"

The Nexus One and 7 were too:

* [http://searchengineland.com/surprise-googles-home-page-promo...](http://searchengineland.com/surprise-googles-home-page-promoting-nexus-one-32987)

* [http://www.cnet.com/news/googles-nexus-7-tablet-pops-up-in-r...](http://www.cnet.com/news/googles-nexus-7-tablet-pops-up-in-rare-home-page-ad/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm not familiar with the HN API, but is it possible/can someone come up with submitters:commenters:inactive accounts for say the past year to see if it comes out close to 1:9:90? Does the "1% rule" seem to apply to HN?

<comment><USER22> Any site that you find interesting likely has an element or structure that causes it to skew that pattern. Wikipedia doesn't follow that ratio, for example. Also the metrics around social media stuff are so bizarre (and so easily manipulated) that it's hard to get decent data. Trump's engagement metrics on Twitter are in the fractions of a percent. CEO posts on LinkedIn get a few hundred reads and four comments. So is that 100:1? Or is 400 reads versus a million followers the important ratio? It's all over the place and you can pluck whatever curve you want by selecting datasets and ignoring important outside influences such as LinkedIn's idiotic design or Trump's pacing of Tweets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> _> Now look at desktop OS sales: the ratio stands in the most recent quarter at about 91:8:1 between Microsoft's Windows, Apple's Mac OSX, and "self-build" machines which probably get Linux._

This is a drastic oversimplification... Some of those Windows machines will have Linux put on and many "self-build" machines will have Windows (or Hackintosh OSX). The vast majority of the Windows and OSX sales will likely stay as Windows or OSX boxes, so the data is still largely valid - but I feel this particular measure is a bit of a reach.

Furthermore, we can say this is isolated to technology, but in my opinion this happens in Facial Tissue sales just as often as tech. This is a law of human preference: on average 90% of people follow the herd, 9% go for a close alternative, 1% go hardcore.

This is even true of characters in TV shows! 90% of people favour the hero, 9% are into the side-kick, 1% dig deep into some random character, possibly even creating new backstories.

[edit: clarity]

</comment><comment><USER24> This is just one of those horse shit "rules" that you can find a lot of places if you're willing to look for it and do some really liberal rounding.

</comment><comment><USER25> Pareto ?

Robert Kiyosaki suggests 80/20 is an average but in the world of money, the most suitable rule is 90/10.

[http://1-million-dollar-blog.com/what-is-9010-rule-of- money/](http://1-million-dollar-blog.com/what-is-9010-rule-of-money/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Sometimes, things differ by orders of magnitude. News at 11.

[http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3777](http://www.smbc- comics.com/index.php?id=3777)

</comment><comment><USER22> The article fails to provide a single example where those are the specific ratios (versus arbitrary curves), provides a number of counterexamples, then concludes "proven!" To wash off the stupid, I found myself re-reading this excellent primer by Ben Golub (Harvard Dept. of Economics):

[https://www.quora.com/In-what-conditions-would-you- expect-a-...](https://www.quora.com/In-what-conditions-would-you-expect-a- power-law-distribution-curve-to-emerge?shar=1)

</comment><comment><USER27> While this article cites browsers as an example of 90:9:1 curiously I use 3 of them, generally simultaneously:

Chrome - For work

Safari - For personal stuff

Firefox - For occasional stuff that falls on the other two browsers (sadly more common than one would like)

In the case of browsers there is a huge amount of context related to things like work and private online accounts, e.g., at Google. Using different browsers is a simple way to keep your personalities separate.

<comment><USER28> I agree. Browser vendors should recognize this to eat up the remaining percents. It should be easy for me to have several fully isolated Chrome instances with different desktop icons and clearly distinct windows (this is where UI color-theming shines).

<comment><USER29> Chrome user profiles does the trick for me.

<comment><USER28> I'm somewhat wary of relying on profile switching. Is there a way to launch several instances with different profiles concurrently?

<comment><USER30> Yup, it's got first class UI in Chrome. They even recently added an "open link in <profile>" item in the right click menu for each profile you have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> 85:14:1 for Android:iOS:Windows Phone might be right globally, but... that's surely skewed by developing countries.

My gut feelings say iOS would be very dominant, but it'd be interesting to see how the ratios compare in startup hubs to the rest of the U.S. Or, even better, broken down by income level, state, or some other useful demographic info.

Edit: Sounds like I should do some more research on Germany :).

<comment><USER32> I dunno. Fire up a map of Europe on Statcounter and you see Android everywhere but UK, Scandinavia, and maybe Netherlands. The rest has Android sitting on top (and i would hardly consider Germany a "developing nation").

<comment><USER31> Wow, their data is enlightening.

Sept to Nov 2015* by Mobile OS Worldwide [http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww- monthly-201509-20151...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww- monthly-201509-201511-map)

These percentages are from the CSV export:

      Country  Android  iOS    WP
      </comment></comment></comment><comment>-  </comment><comment>-  -----  ----
      U.S.     46.81    50.7   1.63
      Germany  67.72    28.34  2.67
      UK       43.14    44.2   3.62

      European countries dominated by iOS

      - <USER2>
      - Faroe Islands
      - <USER3>
      - <USER4>
      - Isle of Man
      - <USER5>
      - <USER6>
      - <USER7>
      - <USER8>
      - <USER9>
      - <USER10>
      - <USER11>
      - United Kingdom (though 44.2% iOS vs. 43.14% Android)

      Asian countries dominated by iOS

      - Christmas Island
      - <USER12>
      - <USER13>

If you filter out the rich/small/weirder island nations, both lists are... quite short.

A few more for the curious:

      Top 5 Android Countries by %:

      Country      %
      </comment><comment>-----  -----
      Myanmar      92.32
      Niue 	       87.05
      Iran 	       86.86
      North Korea  86.53
      Poland       86.31

      Top 5 iOS Countries by %:

      Country           %
      </comment><comment></comment><comment>----  -----
      Norfolk Island    77.27
      Christmas Island  71.74
      Monaco            70.07
      Japan             65.4
      Guernsey          62.04

*The free version limits to 3 months for a map.

<comment><USER33> I don't know why iPhone is so popular in Japan, but the other 4 countries in your top 5 are fairly small...perhaps this is driven by carrier deals?

<comment><USER34> Because the entrenched incumbents were pushing piles of garbage for phones because they thought they had a walled garden due to Japanese language support.

iPhones came in and blew a hole in that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is caused by network externalities. Both direct and indirect network externalities. When a product's or platforms value to the user, third party developer, or hardware manufacturer increases as the number of users of the product grows, this creates strong positive feedback.

Open standards and monopoly laws can reduce this externality and keep them from becoming monopoly. Android can call iPhone, and software can be ported from one platform to another.

</comment><comment><USER36> While this is insipid, the tendency of the Internet to a winner-take-all system is interesting and needs more commentary. Is it the product of the massive consolidation of wealth and corporate power? Or is it a feature of the Internet? Should we avoid it, or mitigate its effects (monopoly power)?

<comment><USER37> Network effects are called network effects because they predate the internet. They are well-studied, and those who from them are adept at using the political system to erect and maintain barriers to entry for challengers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I wonder how well it describes participation in politics.: It rings true: Only 1% really thinking about the world and creating new ideas, 10% thinking critically about what the 1% say (but letting the 1% define their options), and 90% following the herd.

</comment><comment><USER39> The examples in the article could just as well be examples of the pareto principle.... ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle) )

</comment><comment><USER40> Also Zipf law. [http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/papers/ranking/adamicglot...](http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/papers/ranking/adamicglottometrics.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER41> Power laws show up in many systems, as the 80-20 Pareto rule, graph theory's "scale-free network", even electromagnetism and gravity.

</comment><comment><USER42> OT but is anyone else seeing a Zalgo font? Looks really broken.</comment>


Steam Linux Beta starts today, NVIDIA claims - <AUTHOR> http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/Releases/NVIDIA-Delivers-Massive-Performance-Boost-to-Linux-Gaming-8ac.aspx

<comment><USER2> To be honest, Linux is my favorite gaming platform already. I remember trying to play the original Diablo and WarCraft games on windows 7 with no success. Diablo II works ok in virtual box running XP with 3d acceleration enabled, WarCraft III pushes the virtual 3d acceleration to the limit and just runs super slow.

All of those games run flawlessly on Linux with latest wine. It might take few minutes to play with wine config and winetricks but if you're playing games you have the time to waste anyway.

Also I've played all the latest Blizzard games flawlessly under linux + wine setup (World of Warcraft, Diablo III and Star Craft II). You do need a beefy video card for those however.

<comment><USER3> "It might take few minutes to play with wine config and winetricks but if you're playing games you have the time to waste anyway."

I completely disagree with your assignment of value here. Playing games is fun. Configuring wine is an incredibly frustrating, bash-your-head-against- the-wall-repeatedly process that is commonly measured in hours, not minutes - if it works at all.

<comment><USER2> "an incredibly frustrating, bash-your-head-against-the-wall-repeatedly process that is commonly measured in hours, not minutes"

s/head/axe/ s/wall/monsters/

Sounds awfully like video gaming ;)

<comment><USER4> If hitting monsters with an axe sounds as appealing as bashing your head against a wall, I guess I can understand why you wouldn't enjoy gaming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With Valve, nVidia and others doing work to improve Linux gaming, it may soon become a serious gaming platform. Which is fine by me as gaming is the only reason I have a windows computer.

<comment><USER6> Until NVIDIA makes Optimus completely functional on Linux and not a pain in the ass to configure, I'm pretty much going to dismiss any claims that Nvidia are working to improve Linux gaming.

<comment><USER7> Apart from not being able to use vdpau, bumblebee makes Optimus work very well for me. In Windows 7 I have to reboot when I want to switch between the chips, in Linux I just run applications directly or prepend "optirun".

<comment><USER8> I've also used bumblebee and am generally quite happy with it. But the big drawback of bumblebee over a "proper" implementation is that the rendered frames are copied to the Intel GPU in software. I hope that Dave Airlie's work on hotplug will lead to a better implementation at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel like an idiot for only just realizing; this is valves solution to the potential windows 8 lockout isn't it

<comment><USER10> Yes. Or at least their stick to beat Microsoft with when it come to negotiating access to the Windows Metro UI in Windows 9.

The desktop environment isn't going away in Windows 8, so platforms like Steam will still be able to run. Windows 9 though? Anyone who doesn't have a head full of rocks can see that Microsoft might decide that only "enterprise" installations of Windows get to keep the desktop UI.

Valve really, really need to be negotiating from a position of strength when and if Microsoft decide that's the road they want to take.

<comment><USER11> In order to be a decent bargaining chip they would need to bring more users to Linux desktop though. They can't really say "Give us what we want or we'll move to a platform with 1% of the userbase" without having their bluff called.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Steam beta would be neat - but you know what I'd prefer first? Non-shitty drivers and config interface.

I recently switched from 7 to Kubuntu full-time on my primary desktop. So far the only severe problem I have run into is that when I activate the nVidia drivers, my display becomes retarded. If I dare to go into the terrible nVidia configuration app, it insists that both my monitors (a 1920x1200 24" and a 1680x1050 20") run at 1024x768. Now, it's not that the drivers can't figure out my displays resolution. It clearly states the correct resolution for both monitors in several locations. It's just when it comes to the X Server Display Configuration, it decided to go full retard. Now, just activating the drivers and not touching the config results in a display that AAALLLMMOOOSSSSTTT works. Except for the fact that it assumes my smaller monitor is to the right of my larger one, when the truth is the other way around. And, of course, I can't simply change that setup because that would require going into the configuration app... which will force my resolution down to 1991 levels should I be unwise enough to try to actually use it.

I THINK this is caused by the fact that my larger monitor runs at 75Hz while the smaller is 60Hz. But I'm not sure. I refuse to plumb the intestinal depths of xorg.conf, most especially because when I install Ubuntu, ITS display configuration works perfectly. Of course, after installing nVidias drivers it goes out of its way to fuck up Ubuntus display configuration app too. It certainly seems aggressively determined to make my experience as difficult as possible.

<comment><USER13> Can't you use xrandr while using the nvidia drivers? 'xrandr --output VGA1 --left-of LVDS1' works nicely for my laptop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> nVidia doesn't say the Steam Linux Beta starts today, they just say that they have tested their new drivers with the beta. They have probably tested them with an internal Valve steam beta that nobody else has access to yet.

<comment><USER15> To me it sounds like Steam would go live today.

"new R310 drivers were also thoroughly tested with Steam for Linux, the extension of Valve's phenomenally popular Steam gaming platform that officially opened to gamers starting today."

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's comforting to know that NVIDIA understands what drives purchase of their hardware, and is willing to hold Valve's hand in this.

</comment><comment><USER17> Good news. Now I hope DRM free distributors like GOG will start paying more attention to Linux.

<comment><USER18> A GOG employee addressed the issue of supporting Linux before. You can find what he said here:

[http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/linux_support_on_gog/pos...](http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/linux_support_on_gog/post14)

<comment><USER17> Yes, though arguments weren't too convincing.

Here is another answer from CDPR/GOG about Linux:

[http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/10/24/cd-projekt-red- interview-c...](http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/10/24/cd-projekt-red-interview- cyberpunk-2077-witcher-2-piracy-windows-8-and-more/#null)

<comment><USER19> At least it seems like they are looking into how to support Linux. I don't see how they want to overcome the problem of "supporting all distributions at once" instead of going for the major one like Ubuntu. Even if you do not like Unity nothing prevents from you using a different interface and still run Ubuntu compatible software.

<comment><USER17> There is no need to go Ubuntu only. See how Humble Indie Bundle packaged Torchlight. It works on many major distros, DEB, RPM based and etc.

<comment><USER19> I know, but that was one of the arguments from the GOG guy in the link. Saying that maintaining different packages for all distros is time-consuming and so on.

<comment><USER17> No, I don't think he meant that. It's rather trivial. He mean bigger discrepancies across distros. Think one of them using X.org while other already jumping to Wayland and etc. Packaging is a trivial thing to solve in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can someone explain the potential viability of a bootable Steam Linux distro, probably based on Ubuntu? I guess device drivers would be the main issue but if there was ever anything that could get manufacturers to pay more attention to Linux it would probably be this.

<comment> SG- If it were to happen today or in the near future, there would barely be any games for it, and nothing too interesting that would make people want to buy one. Only Valve's recent games would be ported to Linux while almost all third party games would not be port (look at Mac Steam's games).

<comment><USER17> Improved drivers benefit everyone. Even Wine based games will run better. So kudos to Valve and Nvidia for working on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> how to get new R310 drivers on ubuntu using apt-get? Are they in the repo yet?</comment>


Coming soon to GMail: See who is accessing your mail - <AUTHOR> http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/remote-sign-out-and-info-to-help-you.html This is absolutely brilliant.  It's been done on the web before but rarely and usually not so well.  Of course, it's the same thing you get on logging into a shell account and using "w" or "last" but doing it on the web is really a big deal.  Every web site with access control should provide some sort of log like this.  It seems like a simple enough idea but why isn't everyone doing it? <comment><AUTHOR> This seems like such a simple and fundamental idea, why isn't every web site with access control doing it? I'm sure it's been done on the web before but rarely and usually not so well. Of course, it's the same thing you get on logging into a shell account and using "w" or "last" but doing it on the web is really a big deal.

I particularly wish the bank/credit card web sites I use would give me an access log instead of doing things like asking you tell them who your fourth- grade teacher was or whatever when you switch computers or making you change passwords every ninety days.

</comment><comment><USER2> I have been waiting for yahoo to do this for a long time. It makes me wonder why yahoo and microsoft cannot come up with cool (yet obvious) things like this first.

Does anyone know if this is something the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) could make a part of the internet authentication standard?</comment>


Pay for GitHub with PayPal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1861-pay-for-github-with-paypal <comment><USER2> Looking at the actual payment process it seems you get an iframe embedded within the github page that asks for your credentials. It's not possible for users to verify that the iframe actually belongs to paypal without looking at the source (it doesn't, it actually belongs to [https://assets.braintreegateway.com/](https://assets.braintreegateway.com/) and it POSTs there too). If this was any less reputable website implementing this it would look really, really shady.

It also doesn't help with that we've been training users to check the URL bar before filling in their credentials, which won't help at all now.

<comment><USER3> Hey I'm Pedro, one of the developers at Braintree who built this. We are actively working on this. Initial integrations pointed to a Braintree domain, but any new merchant who integrates PayPal via Braintree will be using a PayPal domain. GitHub will do so shortly.

<comment><USER2> That's good, but I think the user needs a way to confirm that the pop-in is actually served by paypal, and that that is where their credentials will go. As it is now, what will stop me from faking one of these forms, making it look totally legit, but instead sending the logins to my own server?

<comment><USER4> What would ever have stopped you from doing that? What will stop you from doing that in the future?

<comment><USER2> Uh, the fact that normal paypal integrations redirect you to a [https://paypal.com](https://paypal.com) page that has paypal.com in the url bar, and a green mark for an ssl certificate that says "Paypal, Inc [US]"? Which we have trained everyone to look out for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if anyone will use this. Seems like paypal is no longer the defacto standard for payment as it once was.

<comment><USER6> Personally, I trust paying a person via Paypal vs. a generic credit card form. Or anything really that doesn't let me trust you with my 16+3 digits that grants full access to drain my credit.

<comment><USER7> Agree, but reluctantly. Given Paypal's horrendous history of freezing funds and poor customer support, I use it only when I have serious doubts about a site's generic form.

<comment><USER8> Paypal has great customer support if you are a consumer, it is only sellers that have issues. And usually it is because someone thinks it is a good idea to use Paypal as a donation processor (which it is NOT meant for) and are surprised when they get into trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> WikiLeaks... never forget

</comment><comment><USER10> Honestly I know it will probably never happen, but it would be awesome if Stripe added PayPal integration. That way we can accept credit cards like we already do, but also accept PayPal using a single unified API.

A lot of our international users want to pay with PayPal instead of credit cards. International credit cards also have a high tendency to decline.

<comment><USER11> Have you thought about switching to Braintree to provide that functionality to your customers?

<comment><USER10> We love Stripe, and don't want to migrate. Plus we use [http://hookfeed.com](http://hookfeed.com) for Stripe analytics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hopefully this means I won't have to pay £1.61 in bank transfer fees every month.

<comment><USER13> I don't understand why you would anyway. There are a shed load of UK credit cards which don't charge a currency conversion fee.

Here's a list of them: [http://www.money.co.uk/credit-cards/credit-cards-with- no-for...](http://www.money.co.uk/credit-cards/credit-cards-with-no-foreign- transaction-fees.htm)

I've used a Halifax one before and never paid for paying in USD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would love to see GitHub actually keeping PP off the site and not putting money in their pockets. I am bit disappointed to see such an innovative and open source company not directly supports one of the most shady corporations around.

</comment><comment><USER15> Funny how Braintree had to build that for PayPal :)

<comment><USER16> Braintree is a division of PayPal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> any plans to accept bitcoin or SEPA?

</comment><comment><USER18> <insert snarky bitcoin comment here></comment>


Blocking Image Hotlinking, Leeching and Evil Sploggers with Url Rewrite - <AUTHOR> http://www.hanselman.com/blog/BlockingImageHotlinkingLeechingAndEvilSploggersWithIISUrlRewrite.aspx <comment><USER2> I use this simple rewrite rule to prevent user submitted images from being used on other sites...

      <Directory /images>
              RewriteEngine On
              RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
              RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !mydomain.com
              RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|png)$ http://images.mydomain.com/no.gif [NC]
      </Directory>

<comment><USER3> I've used this method too. But I thought the image type you were supposed to serve as an alternative had to use a nonstandard extension (like .jpe)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We seen opportunistic vultures use the DMCA to lawlessly enforce their censorship, but when a case it's actually designed for comes up...

Maybe he already thought of it, but it might also help to send DMCA notices to Google as well as the website's registrar and host. I'd love to see a bad guy get taken down by the good guys for once.

<comment><USER5> Agreed that DMCA can also be used, but that only applies to US hosts/sites. His approach lets you handle other cases and also takes effect immediately.

<comment><USER4> I was not thinking of that and you are absolutely right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thank you for using a specific blacklist on HTTP_REFERER.

Worst I've seen done is when sites will throw the stupid "No Hotlinking" message image when they don't see a matching referrer from the same domain. In other words, a "fuck you" to anyone who decides to configure their browser to not send referrers.

<comment><USER7> Configure your browser to send the target domain as the referrer and you won't have that issue.

In fact it even makes any hotlinking filters set up like this not work at all, and serve you the picture normally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Of course, Jason Scott already won at this. <http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1011>

</comment><comment><USER9> Unfortunately this approach does not work in HTTPS world. See <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-15.1.3>

        Clients SHOULD NOT include a Referer header field
        in a (non-secure) HTTP request if the referring page
        was transferred with a secure protocol.

<comment><USER10> This only will not work if your page is loaded over HTTPS and your assets are done over HTTP.

If your site and all of the linked/embedded assets are HTTPS, it will work as intended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You're breaking the internet.

<comment><USER12> How? Hotlinking of images on someone else's site has been viewed as inappropriate as long as I can remember (was it okay before 1995?). It's not wise design in any case: what if they remove it or reorganize their site? (Hyperlinks to other peoples' pages have always been okay, but that's not what we're talking about here.)

<comment><USER11> Hotlinking or embedding on another site is not the only thing that breaks.

\- Downloading

\- Search engines

\- Caching

\- Sharing (usually nabs thumbnail)

It's just not a good idea. And it doesn't really work. Any scraper worth their salt would just fake the referrer and be fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The only new thing in this post here is how to do this in IIS, but I guess nobody is using IIS here.

<comment><USER14> Your guess is wrong :)</comment></comment>


2,800 New Data Breaches with 80M Records Added - <AUTHOR> https://www.troyhunt.com/ive-just-added-2844-new-data-breaches-with-80m-records-to-have-i-been-pwned/ <comment><USER2> Just let that number sink in a bit. 80M/2844 = ~30K accounts / breach.

And still, just about every service that you _have_ to make use of (your HOA, your insurance company, your government and so on) wants you to trust them with your data secured by a userid and a password that they will administer on infrastructure that they are most likely not competent to secure.

One of the best things to come out of the GDPR is the reporting requirements for breaches. You can expect a lot more of these updates in the future.

Edit: interesting, the link now goes to '[https://ghost.org/fail/'](https://ghost.org/fail/'), a 404, so go to [https://www.troyhunt.com/](https://www.troyhunt.com/)

<comment><USER3> I worry we're approaching a situation where everyone just assumes their data is out there, lethargy / ignorance of the users sets in stone, and as on the whole we don't make any progress security wise.

<comment><USER4> We're not approaching it. We're past it. Everyone's data being out there, that is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So my most-breached e-mail address (a hotmail address from 17 years ago that I basically use for stuff I know will send me spam) has 3 or 4 newly-added breaches.

      2,844 Separate Data Breaches (unverified): In February
      2018, a massive collection of almost 3,000 alleged data
      breaches was found online. Whilst some of the data had
      previously been seen in Have I Been Pwned, 2,844 of the
      files consisting of more than 80 million unique email
      addresses had not previously been seen. Each file
      contained both an email address and plain text password
      and were consequently loaded as a single "unverified"
      data breach.

      Compromised data: Email addresses, Passwords

The problem is I have no idea what this breach is sourced from, so I don't know what account in particular was affected. Not Troy's fault, obviously, but it's basically just telling me, "Your e-mail address and a password to somewhere was found online somewhere." For all I know it's recycled data from a breach I already know about.

At this point it's not really a big deal. I use a password manager and they're all random at this point, so I just need to figure out which one to rotate.

<comment> tail-recursion I wrote a little python script to match the websites with the Alexa Top 1 Million and sort by rank. I found 268 top 1 million sites in the pwned list. You can check out the ranking here if you want [https://github.com/tail- recursion/hibp-rankings/](https://github.com/tail-recursion/hibp-rankings/). Notable websites include; lotro.com, mtgox.com, malwarebytes.org, daemon- tools.cc, autohotkey.com, vbulletin.org

<comment><USER6> So, recycled old dumps all of them? Every single big site I can see here has coincidentally already had their data publicly dumped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's getting to the point where it feels like the site could just be replaced by one of those joke sites where the answer is just a static string: Yes.

Hopefully at least it will push more people towards password managers and avoiding password reuse.

</comment><comment><USER8> This information isn't valuable in any way to affected users without an easy way to verify. Obscuring that information doesn't protect the users, it only possibly sends them to places on the web where they are at a higher risk for some other security breach. This is just click bait.

<comment><USER9> not sure why you say that. If you subscribe to HIBP, and your address turns up in one of these breaches, you'll get a notification.

you can also search now for your addresses and see if you were affected.

<comment><USER10> Problem is, the pastebin has been removed, so I don't know what account associated with my email address has been compromised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm a little surprised he doesn't share actual password lists with at least some other security researchers. I get there are legal issues involved but I thought researchers had legal protections?

"Dark web" (lol) hackers are already going to be circulating the sources of this list and in any case could probably crack sha-1 reasonably quickly. So if you do a minimal amount of verifying the person who asks (e.g. ring their university) you can surely help the good guys with little risk of misuse?

<comment><USER12> He recently shared Pwned Passwords which lets you check if your password is in the breached data.

1Password then did a POC integration into their service so you can test if your password shows up in HIBP data.

[https://blog.agilebits.com/2018/02/22/finding-pwned- password...](https://blog.agilebits.com/2018/02/22/finding-pwned-passwords- with-1password/)

<comment><USER11> Right but that's not so useful for security researches. Analysis of the actual passwords would be more useful.

<comment><USER13> His reasons:

[https://www.troyhunt.com/no-i-cannot-share-data-breaches- wit...](https://www.troyhunt.com/no-i-cannot-share-data-breaches-with-you/)

[https://www.troyhunt.com/here-are-all-the-reasons-i-dont- mak...](https://www.troyhunt.com/here-are-all-the-reasons-i-dont-make- passwords-available-via-have-i-been-pwned/)

<comment><USER11> Indeed. I guess the best practical argument is sharing them securely is hard. Which is very true. However if it's not possible for two security researchers to exchange data then what hope is there for the rest of us?

I get he doesn't want to do that and that is his prerogative. However, it does feel like we're so scared of things falling into the wrong hands that we hobble our ability to defend against hacks in the first place.

<comment><USER13> I would imagine if there are any security researchers he trusts sharing the data with, they wouldn't need to email him out of the blue for it, nor need to discuss it with the rest of us.

But no, there is likely no hope, lol

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Like most of you (probably) I have more than one email address.

My host 'hacked' email address has been involved in 6 breaches.

Anyone beat that?

<comment><USER15> No way for me to verify it because I use different username on different sites, and I have a self-hosted catch-all email server, I would have to extract all my usernames or emails from KeePass and check each of them separately... I'm too safe to even know I was hacked.

<comment><USER14> That might be even more interesting actually. Seeing as you could identify the exact site that was breached. That sort of data would actually be quite valuable to this project I would surmise.

I also have a similar system now as you do, but really only for higher value accounts, not the niff naff forums stuff. And like you it's all randomly generated unique passwords so pretty safe.

None of my site specific emails have been breached yet, which is good as that would mean a major global provider had been breached.

<comment><USER16> The project seems to know where the data comes from, at least in my case it identified each:

        Email 	 	Pwned sites
        dropbox@... 	Dropbox
        ffshrine@... 	Final Fantasy Shrine
        github@... 	 	GeekedIn
        linkedin@... 	LinkedIn
        patreon@... 	Patreon
        tumblr@... 	 	tumblr

(The Github one was using their OAuth - which kinda screws with the traceability)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I ran the emails of a few of my family through the pwned API so that I could tell them to change their passwords. I was surprised that almost everyone I reached out to was surprised by their information being out there. My interpretation was the general public is almost entirely unaware of the scope of these breaches and what they need to do as a result.

It'd be cool if there was some way of gently sharing with your friends and family whether or not they've been pwned -- maybe some kind of social network plugin or web app that generates emails for you to send to them. A key challenge would be being sensitive to their privacy, i.e., not coming off as creepy.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is there anything like this but for credit cards rather than accounts/passwords?

</comment><comment><USER19> JFYI: I've seen plex.tv.txt in the list.

line 713

<comment><USER6> Most likely just the old dump repackaged.

<comment><USER19> Yep. But I thought it better to say it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I received a notification earlier, though only regarding a dead email address that I forward, it's probably some forum I signed up to ages ago and forgot about.

I guess this is also a good time to remind the general population that password managers are a thing and prevent such breaches from turning a "oh I don't visit that website anymore" into "oh sh*t my bank account just went to 0"

</comment><comment><USER21> I applaud the dedication and effort that the author puts into HIBP.

One small suggestion, though: I wouldn't harm to ask somebody to proofread public statements like this, especially since this is a highly trust-related topic. The density of typos is annoying to me even though I'm not a native speaker.

</comment><comment><USER22> One of the nice things about changing email addresses... every single notification I've ever gotten from this site applies to my old addresses. A couple years after switching, no breaches of my current credentials have appeared yet.

</comment><comment><USER23> Link currently 404s unfortunately. Navigating directly to troyhunt.com works fine.

</comment><comment><USER24> > I think that would be a much more interesting and useful way to spend two > hours, rather than implementing _cute little algorithms_ inside an isolated > environment like HackerRank.

Hiring manager here, one who doesn't use HackerRank either. I'm in agreement with the premise, but I would likely decline an applicant unironically employing the tone of writing emphasized above given the implications against cooperation and teamwork.

"cute little" can be replaced with "case-specific" or "niche," maintaining the same general meaning while divorcing it from adversarial connotations.

<comment><USER25> wrong post :')

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm sure most people here are already familiar with how to make unique and strong passwords but for those who aren't:

[https://inspiredelearning.com/resource/create-strong- passwor...](https://inspiredelearning.com/resource/create-strong-password/)

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't recognise any of the hosts in that list. It's going to keep me awake now wondering which one of them I had an account with that was leaked. Might go find a torrent and do some spelunking ...

<comment><USER28> Plex.tv.txt? (line 713)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> There should be a way to check entire domains, outside of known public email providers. I use a different email address for every website I use and a catch-all rule on my domain to redirect them all to a single email account. I won't check them all simply because I don't even remember them all. I know this could have the downside of being useful in email address enumeration though.

<comment><USER30> There actually is - use the Domain Search ([https://haveibeenpwned.com/DomainSearch](https://haveibeenpwned.com/DomainSearch))

<comment><USER29> Thanks for this link, looks like all the emails in my domain are safe.</comment></comment></comment>


Inside Facebook's Hellish Two Years–and Mark Zuckerberg's Struggle to Fix It All - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/inside-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-2-years-of-hell <comment><USER2> Hmmm "One current employee asked that a WIRED reporter turn off his phone so the company would have a harder time tracking whether it had been near the phones of anyone from Facebook."

<comment><USER3> This is well known.

<comment><USER4> How is this done? Does the Facebook mobile app record all location data? Or does it record all nearby bluetooth devices?

<comment><USER3> I don't know how the details of this is done. However, you should assume that every piece of that that the Facebook app has access to, it will relay back to HQ. It will be stored and correlated with other datapoints that they have of you. They will know who you encounter as you go about your day.

I'm super surprised that they haven't made a dating app out of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Then she told him that she had their messages on Gchat, which Fearnow had assumed weren't accessible to Facebook."

I would like to know more about this.

<comment><USER6> Came here to ask just this. Even if the journalist/contractor were being as sloppy as possible with netsec, HTTPS would protect traffic between browser and Google's servers. But I'm guessing a place like Facebook would have proxy servers that could be inspecting the traffic if it were done at work? But if the employee took screenshots and waited until they were home to send them, he'd be OK, right? The article says he did this from his personal laptop:

> _So when Zuckerberg's admonition circulated, a young contract employee named > Benjamin Fearnow decided it might be newsworthy. He took a screenshot on his > personal laptop and sent the image to a friend named Michael Nuñez, who > worked at the tech-news site Gizmodo. Nuñez promptly published a brief story > about Zuckerberg's memo._

<comment><USER7> You're thinking too much into it. They might just record the screen every few seconds and save it to their servers. There's software that does this easily.

<comment><USER6> The story isn't completely specific on the chain of events, i.e. the sending of the screenshot on his personal laptop may have been done _in addition_ to using GChat at work. But if he indeed was using his personal laptop at work (as many contractors do, though I can't speak for what it's like at Facebook), how is screen-recording software simpler than a proxy server? Aren't proxy servers used by corporate IT to screen incoming/outgoing traffic for possible malware?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _nothing less than our democracy is at stake_

@dang, this is a brilliant piece of journalism. Any way to give it more traction on the HN home page?

<comment><USER9> It looks like someone flagged the story unfortunately. It dropped like a rock from the front page. It really is an excellently written piece

<comment><USER10> Is there a way to bring a flagged story to the attention of Hacker News people to unflag it?

<comment><USER11> Email email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Relevant story from 2016: the NYT profiled Fearnow, the contractor who was fired for apparently leaking some screenshots to Gizmodo (but not for the story about FB's bias in curation):

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/21/technology/facebook- trend...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/21/technology/facebook-trending- list-skewed-by-individual-judgment-not-institutional-bias.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> You can't fix something that is specifically designed to get the maximum information from people. However if by fix they mean make it even sneakier about how it gathers personal information then I guess fixed it is.

<comment><USER13> > You can't fix something that is specifically designed to get the maximum > information from people.

You can simply not participate. That's the quickest fix. FB would be out of business tomorrow morning if people realized what a thoroughly bad company this is.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A while ago, I questioned what was first. A decline in users or their algorithm changes.

The question still remains...</comment>


Ask HN: Let me help you build your product for free - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking to gain some experience and I'd like to know if there is anyone out there who would like help on their product. I wouldn't charge anything since I love programming and the experience would be more than enough for me.
I've been using mainly Python lately, with small bits of HTML, CSS, JS, SQLite, PostgreSQL, and Flask. I'm very open to learning new technologies and I would actually like to see what the hype is about Ruby and Rails.
If you think we could get along and you need some help, feel free to drop me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com. <comment><USER2> FFS, don't work for others for free!

Work on an open source project.

Build your own site. If you don't have ideas, then look through flippa.com for ideas. Build a site, and then sell it on Flippa.

Find out what people want, then build it for yourself. For example, you could build Wordpress add-ons and sell them. People will give you ideas for this all day long.

If you must work for someone else for cheap (not free!) then look for your closest web development shops and offer to work as an intern for cheap. If you don't get work, then learn more and come back later.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think that people would want to pay for things that I make, I'm not very good. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm actually working on something now that is probably pretty trivial. Drop me an e-mail at firstname.lastname@example.com if you want to know more.

<comment><USER3> It is good practice to work with other people. I applaud you putting yourself out there.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I'm going to interview Andrew Warner of Mixergy, what should I ask? - <AUTHOR> http://asable.com/2010/05/interviewing-andrewwarner-live-fri-june-4th-12pm-pst-httpmixergy-comlive/

<comment><USER2> Q: What was his most favorite interview and what was his least favorite interview.

Q: Is Mixergy profitable, if not what are his plans to make it profitable? Or what are his future plans for mixergy?

Q: Have you done any "paid" interviews?

Q: Why mostly video interviews? What if someone is willing to do an interview but can only do text interview (my email or IM), will you be interested in such interviews? (I didn't check to see if you did these interviews).

Q: Who would you like to interview, but haven't got around in doing it yet?

Q: Anyone declined your interview offer?

Thats all for me. Its only fair we ask him tough questions. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great questions, pavs. Thanks so much for putting a lot of thought into this. Really appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I know Andrew always asks about numbers and finance data. He's been very open with his last business, but I have yet to see him disclose data about Mixergy. I'd like to see some Mixergy financials.

<comment><AUTHOR> :) a very good point. Let's ask him the hard question! Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would he ever consider angel investing? Or in any way connecting startups to money?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, NEPatriot. That's an unusual question. I have never thought of that. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> would he consider starting a company again instead of just interviewing people who've done it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I have added your question to the list.</comment></comment>


You're Doing It Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001223.html

<comment><USER3> Sweet, sweet irony. It's not every day that you see a post titled "You're Doing It Wrong" that's, well, doing it wrong.

I've worked on plenty of sites of varying complexity. If your templates have anything more than trivial logic in them, You're Doing It Wrong!

Adding complex programming constructs back into the templating language is NOT the way forward. It's the way BACKWARDS. It's where we came from. Templating languages are intentionally simple because you're NOT supposed to have lots of complex logic in your template. Sure, you might have a little bit of if/then/else and a bit of looping, but beyond that, if you need anything more than that, you're doing it Very Wrong.

As for ending up with huge templates - again, Jeff is Doing It Wrong. To avoid having monster spaghetti templates, you're supposed to break down your templates into their elements, much like you break down your large pieces of functionality into classes and methods.

<comment><USER4> My app evolved in the following way:

templates with logic/inline JS -> templates without logic/ external js -> almost no templates/ JS + Ajax to draw the page on the fly

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's amusing to watch server programmers come up with a thousand different ways to abstract away HTML. If you've ever worked with a good interaction designer, the best thing you can do is let them write views in something as close to HTML as possible. Every attempt to auto-generate sections of the view is something that will need to be worked around at some point. A lot of these frameworks seem to come from the mentality that design is just a programming problem that can be solved by pushing code out from the backend. A lightweight templating language (smarty, velocity, etc etc) should be all you really need. Poking holes in the HTML and inserting data is precisely the right way to do it.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Templating tends to break down because it forces you to treat code and > markup as two different and fundamentally incompatible things.

Well of course code and markup are two different things, but incompatible? Not really.

We use HTML templates simply to let the designers play with the templates without our interference. It also makes changes easier to integrate. Otherwise we could use a DSL and transform the syntax tree in valid xhtml (which many people are already doing).

> Rather than poking holes in HTML to insert code, we should simply treat HTML > as code.

Actually that means poking holes in your code to insert HTML. And it's worse IMO.

While I like some of the articles Jeff has published on his blog, but I've long since deleted the blog's feed from my list because the signal to noise ration is really awful.

</comment><comment><USER7> I liked this post, and I think it speaks to a major problem in areas of software development that involve a lot of logic but are considered "not programming." A lot of effort is put into technologies that allow "non- programmers" to work with these tiers of app development, and I think they generally backfire.

The most common one is tag libraries in place of scripting. The Java world is probably the biggest offender here. The JSTL started out as a way to create cleaner looking pages - and maybe it has - but the spec got to the point where they were recreating the entire Java language as a separate set of tags. Supposedly, these tags are easier for "non-programmers" to use, but by the time you're setting properties for objects and using conditionals and loops, you may as well admit you're a programmer.

I'm no big fan of long jsp pages, but I prefer Rails's approach to scripting: if a task requires programming logic, use a programming language.

Ultimately, I found the "you're doing it wrong if you include scripting in a view" to be very unconvincing, especially if the tags you replace it with end up recreating the programming language you're not supposed to be using in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER8> Markaby is pretty sweet:

      html do
        head { title "Boats.com" }
        body do
          h1 "Boats.com has great deals"
          ul do
            li "$49 for a canoe"
            li "$39 for a raft"
            li "$29 for a huge boot that floats and can fit 5 people"
          end
        end
      end

<comment><USER9> Thanks. I modded up the parent submission, in part, because I was pretty sure I'd seen several of these syntaxes by now and I wanted to precipitate a shootout in the comment section. ;)

More examples, please! Here's some haml, from the haml site. (I don't actually know haml, but perhaps I soon will:)

      #content
        .left.column
          %h2 Welcome to our site!
          %p= print_information
        .right.column= render :partial => "sidebar"

Grading these competitions is hard, since it depends on taste and you can't always tell from a short example how something will perform in the field. haml may be a bit _too_ terse (though I say that without being convinced that it's true; terse is generally good), and on first glance it will confuse the daylights out of an otherwise HTML-savvy person who has never seen it before. But I certainly like it compared to tag soup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I first ran into this issue several years ago, while I was using PERL (blargh).

PERL has packages that allow you to put your HTML inside your code, or allow you to put your code inside templates.

It soon became clear to me that neither is the win - the only real difference is "if I don't escape (via a quote character or a <? or a <%), what is a character considered - HTML or code?".

The problem is that code is there are two different conceptual trees - <USER2> HTML tree with nested elements, and the code tree with nested logic, and these trees do not have a 1:1 correspondence.

This is not a simple problem, and there are not simple answers.

Programming in Ruby and Rails for the last few years, I've become a fan of partials, but the tradeoff that you get is that for greater ability to read one file, you lose locality of reference ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locality_of_reference> ) - you might have a table row in one file, and the data data in another file entirely.

In general, I am a huge fan of straight text based editing, and always raise a dubious eyebrow at proposals for graphical editors and strange new editing tools.

...but I seriously wonder if there's some solution off in the space of a different kind of editor that lets you switch back and forth between viewing the code tree and the presentation tree...

</comment><comment><USER11> So he wants to use PHP, then. Uh, I mean, the way PHP used to be written, with code and HTML mixed.

I'm dumbfounded that he does not notice the circular nature of his proposal.

</comment><comment><USER12> Scala also has in-line XML literals.

Pretty much every Lisp has a way to express markup directly as S-expressions.

</comment><comment><USER13> I really hope this doesn't start a trend of not using templates. Templates may not be perfect, but they're the best we've done so far (Seaside aside).

</comment><comment><USER14> He's about 1/3 of the way to reinventing BRL.</comment>


Show HN: Figma-like measurement tool on any web page (Chrome extension) - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/measuremate/fcbffocoaopnenhgbchlchgndohggdei <comment><USER2> Works really well. Thank you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment</comment></comment>


Online Education Leaves Too Many Students Behind - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/online-education-leaves-some-students-behind-4dc816fd7613?source <comment><USER2> In my opinion online education is failing because:

1- people are not accustomed to it and online education companies do not spread a "methodology" to approach online education. Students that need help are supposed to at least use discussion forums but often they don't

2- online education target the low hanging fruits, usually offering "just" master's degrees. I dreamed to be able to get my bachelor's by an accredited institution, on-line and for a reasonable fee but that dream never came true.

So at least in my opinion, online learning didn't really happen: the promises of "disruption" and "revolution" haven't been kept.

You still need to go to a regular university to get a bachelor's degree, and then you can (maybe) enroll in a master's degree, assuming regular universities aren't better/cheaper than online ones.

</comment><comment><USER3> The premise of the article is right in that those students who need extra attention for learning the actual course material fall to the bottom while other disciplined and receptive students learn more. This widens the gap, and you can see it during online course discussions. The former group usually respond later and with much poorer quality, but they fulfill the requirements to earn the grade.

This is where my objection to online courses come in. The checkboxes for what is needed to complete the course are much easier to tick online with far less scrutiny of the actual work than in-person classes. (Then there are those in- person classes which use online platforms for work, but that's a whole other topic)

Even for those who are willing and able to learn efficiently from online courses, a simple search for what professors see on the backend of the platform used administer the course will show what metrics they use to decide whether the student did the work.

For example, in Instructure's Canvas platform professors know when you've copy and pasted, how much time you've spent on the system (and specific modules), which areas of the course have been opened, and other details on students use. Professors use different methods with the data they have access to, and some use none at all. Once a student figures out the professors hidden methods for determining gradable work, that's what can become the focus for the student and not the course material itself.

I do both. I figure out the professors hidden methods, usually after a couple of graded assignments, and then I make sure I check those boxes as well as fulfilling the assignment requirements. So even if a student is good at learning online, they can game it enough to make it easier to get a better grade. This further widens the gap because those who care less about the grade but just passing the course likely never think about these variables.

Ultimately, a student can pass an online class and not learn a single thing, while others can learn as much as the course offers, but likely retains less than an in-person course since they're able to have a crutch with tricking the system.

Needless to say, there's more to the story for success with online courses. Anecdotally, I learn far less from University online courses than I do from high quality tutorial videos that I find for subjects I want to learn online. Oddly, more and more professors are using these videos to supplement their curriculum. I don't know how I feel about that, as it seems to cheat the whole idea of paying them to teach me. Let me supplement the course material with outside material on my own, and don't integrate into your lecture.</comment>