Show HN: Rejection Conditioner for YC Applications - <AUTHOR> http://rejectionconditioner.com <comment><USER2> My old friend H. Pringle scripted a rejection letter that looked a little like (please forgive my liberal re-interpretation):

Dear _,

Thank you for your rejection letter dated ___. As you may imagine, I have received a lot of fine rejection letters, and you will appreciate that it is impossible for me to accept them all. I will therefore be starting employment with you on ____.

Regards and best wishes, H. Pringle

</comment><comment><USER3> I once had an idea for a non-profit[1]. Started to fill out an application, got about 1/5 of the way through, abandoned it because I decided it wasn't something I'd commit to, and never submitted it.[2]

Then about a month later, a rejection _still_ floated its way into my inbox. It really stung even though I hadn't applied that round :).

P.S. - if that rejection came from someone actually viewing it, and not some autosender, that's kind of a lightweight privacy violation, at least from a usability standpoint. Most would think that an unsubmitted application would automatically be an unread one as well. But since it was in the non-profit category maybe the screener had extra time on his/her hands.

1 - chronic disease studies for multiple blue-color workplaces 2 - never did video, so couldn't have been accidentally submitted

<comment><USER4> I had the reverse happen to me with a recruiting company that shows up occasionally on HN. I had started filling out a profile in the evening, and when I returned to finish it the next morning I already had a rejection email sitting in my inbox.

I probably submitted something on accident and just didn't notice it, but it still hurt when I sat down at my desk that morning and discovered I'd been rejected before I'd even managed to fill in all of my personal information.

<comment><USER5> Maybe they rejected you due to incomplete information? I think you are worth it. :)

<comment><USER6> I know you didn't fill out the required forms but I've pre approved you for a hug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of the Journal of Universal Rejection.

[http://www.universalrejection.org/](http://www.universalrejection.org/)

<comment><USER8> I was wondering why one of the editors' links was already purple despite having never seen this site before and despite not knowing anything at all about the editor in question. I inevitably ended up clicking it out of curiosity.

Well played, Lois A. Butcher-Poffley. Well played.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey all,

This is a weekend project that drew inspiration from my own experiences of getting rejected from various applications. Although I personally haven't applied this time around, I know the sinking feeling of seeing a rejection email pop into your inbox and reading the lines "We're sorry to inform you..." I hope you find this useful and welcome feedback to improve on this.

<comment><USER9> FYI your callback link on MailChimp goes to www.rejectionconditioner.com which has no DNS entry, when it should go to rejectionconditioner.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Good catch! Thanks for the heads up :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would like to see a variation on this that

1\. requires you to fill out the YC application form to start the process; and

2\. takes 7-10 days to get back to you with the inevitable rejection.

There's a whole separate psychology involved in getting over the hump of submitting the application, when you know that not only might you be rejected, but you'll have to spend a lot of effort to _get_ rejected, and won't find out whether you have been for quite a while. _That_ , in my mind, is the feeling you have to "get used to."

(For a bonus, let the applicant respond to the rejection email with special pleading. Auto-reject that after 7-10 days as well.)

<comment><USER11> Your MVP could be applying to YC with an intentionally bad idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is hilarious. Any chance of expanding this to other institutions? E.g. maybe you can charge parents $20 a month to send their kids a rejection letter from Harvard every day.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely will work on expanding to other organizations! Universities are definitely at the top of the list as early admission applications are nearly due, as well as job/internship application rejections

<comment><USER12> The only issue I see with this is that it could affect the delivery of the actual senders, especially if people get tired of receiving them and start marking them as spam instead of unsubscribing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I prefer a straight "You we're not accepted." Rather than all the platitudes about how you're awesome but everyone is awesome so it's hard to choose from all the awesome but don't feel too bad etc etc.

I'm a big boy now, just "Sorry you didn't get in." Is less patronizing somehow.

<comment><USER14> That seems to be a trick that all these hot startups use to make you think they actually care about you.

Like how Slack always says stuff along the lines of "we like you" and "I hope you have a great time at work today" every single time you log in.

Or how npm says "we love your boss" \- Yeah of course you love my boss because he's the one who's paying for the enterprise license.

In npm's case it's probably more tongue-in-cheek but still, it's a bit disturbing that these services keep telling me that they love me when in fact they wouldn't care if I dropped dead tomorrow... Except maybe for the lost revenue.

<comment><USER15> "Welcome to Costco. I love you."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As someone who has been rejected from YC after interviewing a few times now, nothing builds confidence like repeated rejection. I love this. (p.s. you should build your company anyways, YC isn't God).

<comment><USER17> Re your last point, as Seth Godin says: "Pick yourself" \- I love it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I might clone this and adapt it for break-ups

<comment><USER19> Random frequency, "hey...we need to talk" (recipe for heart attack)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a really fun, clever idea for a weekend project. I'd be very curious to hear what your experiences are in a month or so, or after some future rejection email, to see whether it really conditions you.

It might be interesting to send the email at random times on random days so you can't get used to it, which I believe is a similar method to how games will increase your response to rewards by making them irregularly timed.

Either way, nice job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah absolutely! This was based off of a small experiment that I did (albeit with job rejection letters) over the course of a week, and I felt a lot more numb to the rejection than I had before. It's anecdotal and only one data point, but I thought to make a weekend project out of it to get something shipped.

Re: timing the email, Mailchimp allows you to specify a time range, which I believe sends the emails at a random time between that time range. I set the time to between 8AM and 8PM EST, so people should be receiving emails between that time.

<comment><USER20> Oh that's sweet, so you already have randomness built in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It'd be nice to have standard rejection emails from popular companies: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.

<comment><USER22> I have these in my inbox alongside many other rejection letters. It is not very nice to have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> After 6 real rejections I don't really feel them anymore. This year however we have a comeback - some really nice growth curves. If needed we plan to reply back with a beautiful steeply curved chart screenshot. Maybe tweet it? Autoresponder?

</comment><comment><USER24> [http://bureauofcommunication.com/compose/air](http://bureauofcommunication.com/compose/air)

</comment><comment><USER25> This is horrible, and beautiful. I love it!

Another way of extending it (besides the suggestions) could be making a collection of nasty HN comments. Try to match the topics and you might be into something! Mandatory xkcd reference: [https://xkcd.com/810/](https://xkcd.com/810/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! I also briefly toyed with the idea of letting users OAuth in via their Gmail accounts to compile a list of applications that they've sent in, but I really wanted to get something out quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is it the same every day? I feel you should randomise it a bit.

On the general topic, there is something called "rejection therapy". While I haven't exactly practiced it myself, I've had my fair share of rejection and I can definitely feel it is something to try out. Be it social or work-related things.

</comment><comment><USER27> This needs an equivalent for writers, in response to their query letters. In my experience, writers are way too sensitive to this and they need to get used to seeing the rejections before they start submitting (it often cripples them from even starting to make submissions).

</comment><comment><USER28> In my experience, rejection letters don't ever feel better. I've had plenty.

This also looks like you are doing it wrong. The mass of rejection letters have many grammar and spelling mistakes. They tend to be poorly written.

I don't even open them. The preview is all the information I need.

</comment><comment><USER29> How I Learned to Handle Rejection

I got a lot of rejection in grades 1-8. The teachers believed that I was a poor student. In some ways, I was.

If only from teacher lounge gossip, grade by grade the teachers assumed I was a poor student.

Then in grades 9-12 I learned my main way to defend myself from rejection:

Main Way: Know what the heck I'm doing, have some solid ways to know I'm right, and otherwise stay out of sight so that I won't be a target.

So, right, in the 9th grade I discovered high school math. So, I did well: (A) As some aptitude tests showed, I have some math talent. (B) I found that when my math was correct, I was 100% immune from criticism or rejection. So, I made sure my math was correct. It worked great!

Did the same in high school chemistry and physics. Worked great again!

So, when I was right, the teachers were forced to give me credit and just swallow their surprise, disgust, the evidence that they were wrong about my work, whatever. They didn't like to swallow that, but they had to and did.

I still couldn't expect to please the English literature teachers so gave up on them and English literature and settled for grades of gentleman C.

Lesson for Employees: As an employee, the Main Way can be dangerous because having such solid evidence of being right can be threatening to others. Others don't like to have swallow that there is solid evidence that they are wrong. So, as an employee, might have to back off on having such solid evidence; or if have the evidence, then don't let it be known unless it is needed in some unusual situation.

In grad school, my department Chair was a straight A, rigid type of guy. His research wasn't much, but no doubt in courses he made lots of As.

Well, soon he didn't like me. Sorry guy: In a course I found a question, got a reading course to study it, and in two weeks had a solid solution with a nice, surprising, new theorem. The work definitely looked publishable and was -- later I published the work with no problems. From then on in grad school, I had a halo -- could do no wrong. Why? I'd done some rock solid, original research that any of the faculty members would have been thrilled to have done. So, the Chair had to swallow.

For entrepreneurship, try to use the Main Way again: So, have some relatively solid reasons to know you are right.

Next, don't expect anyone in business writing equity checks to accept, understand, or even consider your solid reasons. Why not: Because in all their experience, they've nearly never seen or at least have never accepted any solid reasons as relevant.

Elsewhere in our civilization, such solid reasons are both necessary and nearly sufficient.

E.g., at one time before spy satellites, the US wanted an airplane that would fly about 2000 miles without refueling across the USSR high enough (80,000+ feet) and fast enough (Mach 3+) not to get shot down and take lots of high resolution pictures. So, Kelly Johnson at Lockheed's Skunk Works came to the CIA with an armload of blueprints of solid reasons. He was right, and he, Lockheed, and the CIA all knew he was right. The result was the SR-71, as at

[http://iliketowastemytime.com/sites/default/files/sr71_black...](http://iliketowastemytime.com/sites/default/files/sr71_blackbird_leaking_fuel_cell19.jpg)

and it worked just as planned and never got shot down. No doubt.

Same for GPS and a lot of other US national security projects.

Indeed, given the solid presentations on paper, nearly always the rest of the projects were low risk and high payoff.

So, for entrepreneurship, use the Main Way. As Kelly Johnson did, have some solid reasons to know you are right.

Then accept that none of the equity funders will pay any attention at all to your solid evidence.

So, then, also, you should pay no serious attention to their rejections. Bluntly, they don't know what the heck they are doing. Instead, they are essentially just throwing darts, in a poorly lit bar, after several beers, and occasionally hit the bull's eye.

And there's a much bigger reason to f'get about the equity funders: It has become fully clear that for a successful project, say, building another Google, that the equity funders have no idea at all just how to do that. E.g., it happens only about once each 10 years, and to the equity funders it's all just luck and never by solid design like the SR-71.

So, if your project could be as successful as Google, or even worth $10+ B, then you have to accept that none of the equity funders have even as much as a weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue how to do that or how evaluate your project to do that. So, their rejection means nothing very solid about your project, is just noise from incompetents.

"Incompetents"? Sure: Could count with shoes on all the information technology VCs (bio-medial VCs are commonly very different) who are qualified for a technical slot in a startup, for CTO or CIO, for a tenure track slot in a STEM field in a good research university, for an NSF grant, as an NSF problem sponsor, who as sole author have published a STEM field research paper in a good journal, etc. Bluntly, in technology, they incompetent. So, their opinion or rejection of a technology project means no more than the outcome of a dice roll.

So, pick a project you can bring to nice profitability with just your own checkbook, and then do that. Millions of US Main Street businesses -- auto repair, auto body repair, grass mowing, pizza carry-out, etc. -- do that and where there is more capex then needed for, say, a first Web server and router.

<comment><USER30> Incredible story, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Suggest a tweaked version that sends rejections from major publishing houses to aspiring novelists.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hmm, this is a nightmare. Why would I expect to receive a "Rejection Email" everyday in order to improve myself or accept a fact in real life?

This looks like a email collecting tool. No Privacy Policy, no Terms page. A giant input box to add email to a Mailchimp list?

</comment><comment><USER33> This is wonderful! And the best thing is that a freemium model immediately suggests itself, for a fee we can receive personalised rejection letters for the case if we would get to interviews. I feel that's when we need this service the most.

</comment><comment><USER34> The formatting makes it difficult to read the message you are trying to convey.

</comment><comment><USER35> So many people fall in love with this idea. I just can't believe it.

<comment><USER35> If you don't feel the pain of rejection, how would you want to chage your action for a better outcome? Desensitized of rejection doesn't mean you need to actively seek for rejection, right? It will only make you feel like a loser and okay with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I don't think the conditioning process advised here is sound if considering the subject's psychological health.

</comment><comment><USER37> Or you can just use a monthly reminder in Google Calendar. Update this reminder with all the rejections you receive.

</comment><comment><USER38> I would like to see this applied to a dating app. Some people turn into complete monsters when faced with rejection.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is amazing

</comment><comment><USER40> OMG, what a dumb idea!

How about receiving acceptance emails? Am I the only one to think that positive reinforcement is a way better tool? How would it possibly help you to tune yourself to a negative outcome on daily basis?!

<comment><USER41> Hate to break it to you, but the most frequent phrase you hear as a founding CEO is "no." Often masked as positive feedback, which is the real one-two punch to the gut. Yes, positive outlooks are a _requirement_ but you're going to get "no" conditioning training at some point.

You calling this a dumb idea is a perfect example, so I'm sure the creators here thank you for that!

<comment><USER42> Or the 'california no': "yes, but now isn't the right time [and will never be]" or "no, not today [nor tomorrow, nor ever]". Gives you false hope for no reason.</comment></comment></comment>


Ubuntu 20.04's zsys adds ZFS snapshots to package management - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/03/ubuntu-20-04s-zsys-adds-zfs-snapshots-to-package-management/ <comment><USER2> Oh thank god there's a way to disable autosnapshot! It's been filling my drive with useless snapshots ever since I installed Ubuntu with zfs support, drowning out my real snapshots. Who needs a snapshot after calling "apt install htop" anyway? The ZFS snapshot and grub update processes increase the install time 3-fold, and run the risk of seriously hooping the system if the power goes out unexpectedly.

Has anyone had any real problems with apt install or apt remove busting their systems? Seems more like a solution in search of a problem.

<comment><USER3> > Who needs a snapshot after calling "apt install htop" anyway?

I'd think the more useful feature would be taking a snapshot _at the beginning of_ the apt run; and then tossing it away if apt manages to complete successfully. That way, apt returning a nonzero exit status could be caught by a wrapper script, that would then transactionally revert the changes.

I believe NTFS still does this for Windows updates, even if "transactional filesystem" features are no longer "available" (i.e. exposed to userland.)

Of course, unlike NTFS's filesystem transactions, ZFS snapshots aren't MVCC — you can't have multiple parallel ones going on at once that get merged on success. So that apt-wrapper-script reverting, might throw away something else you've done to your rootfs (and hopefully only your rootfs; such a technique would effectively require moving all user-mutable data to other mounted volumes.)

<comment><USER4> Apt completing successfully is not the same thing as the installation completing successfully. For example, Apt could successfully update a bunch of libraries, versions, etc. which now breaks your application, but because apt's actual tasks succeeded the snapshot gets removed and now you can't roll back.

> and hopefully only your rootfs; such a technique would effectively require > moving all user-mutable data to other mounted volumes

I believe that zfs installation creates a separate dataset for /home, meaning that it won't be rolled back along with everything else. The same should be true for things like /var/lib/, but I haven't done such an install in a while, since the first 20.04 build with zfs enabled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If anyone is wondering about the historical context to this, look up "boot environments", which first appeared under Solaris with FreeBSD copying the feature:

* [https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E86824_01/html/E54764/beadm-1m.ht...](https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E86824_01/html/E54764/beadm-1m.html)

* [https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?beadm](https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?beadm)

<comment><USER6> I've been updating my freebsd-current desktops for quite a few years with beinstall / beadm, and I love it. The ability to quickly roll back from an update is critical on a rolling-release OS like freebsd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> ZFS is great but aren't we better off focusing on something else like btrfs? The whole licensing situation makes me nervous to adopt this.

<comment><USER8> I think Ubuntu adoption of ZFS is a testament that it is here to stay. Btrfs still has some issues (eg stability), which ZFS simply doesn't have. It's rock solid.

<comment><USER9> > I think Ubuntu adoption of ZFS is a testament that it is here to stay.

Like Mir, Unity, Upstart and all the other technologies Ubuntu adopted, but removed after a while again? I always have the feeling that the Canonical engineers try to advance the Linux ecosystem by introducing new technologies, but somehow always pick the wrong ones, which end up not being adopted anywhere else. Granted that's different with ZFS, as ZFS already has a large user base, but there is nothing guaranteeing that Ubuntu won't remove ZFS in a few years again.

<comment><USER10> As you yourself mentioned, ZFS is different.

The other projects were (for the most part) anonical originals" that they tried to create -- primarily on their own -- to replace existing products. ZFS is going on 15 years old, quite mature, highly trusted, and, of course, it already has a huge existing userbase.

It's certainly not an internal Canonical project that requires them to devote huge teams of developers to it. Unlike the others you mentioned, ZFS will continue to exist and grow regardless of Canonical's involvement.

<comment><USER10> > _anonical originals "_

Oof, "Canonical originals", that should have read (not sure what ate the two missing characters, HN or the iPad).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: is there a cross-device calendar with tasks outside of Outlook and iOS? - <AUTHOR> Since I've always been forces to use outlook for my work I've never really had to dig deep into an alternative.
I have a PC and an Android Phone.
I've just become self employed and am looking to set up a workflow outside of Outlook that involves a calendar with tasks that syncs across devices.
I'm shocked to see that google tasks does not work on mobile (except for in the browser). Google have introduced Reminders into their calendar but this is only working on mobile for me, not on desktop.
I dont see any To Do apps with a smooth integration into google calendar (presumably because google calendar does not have a coherent task/reminder feature which would facilitate an integration).
So how can I have tasks/reminders and a calendar all in one that works on mobile and desktop?
It never even occurred to me that something so fundamental could be a problem. Has anyone solved this? This seems like a massive problem to me. <comment><USER2> If you want something highly customizable, you should checkout EMACS Org Mode [http://orgmode.org/](http://orgmode.org/) (a major mode in EMACS). There are various integrations between it and other TODO + calendar apps.

An example of org to google calendar: [http://orgmode.org/worg/org- tutorials/org-google-sync.html](http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org- google-sync.html)</comment>


Show HN: HN on IRC - <AUTHOR>

irc://irc.freenode.org/#hn has a bot that copies the title and url of each HackerNews news almost as soon as they are published.<p>Sources at: https://gitlab.com/com-informatimago/com-informatimago/tree/master/small-cl-pgms/botihn <comment><USER2> Bot has issue of linking the post. Url's are appended with '>' at the end, because of which every url shows a 404 not found page.</comment>


Ask HN: 2020, a broken year. A golden year? - <AUTHOR> 89 days ago, predictions were made for the coming decade: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21941278
How true are they still ?
What do you believe will happen ?
I imagine some kind of therapy by confinement. A person is locked (with their consent) in a small room, in which we find many art supplies: music gear, brushes and paint, cooking ingredients, clay, a computer for all digital creation, anything she wishes for.
This person is invited to realise she's mostly not limited by the physicality of the world she lives in, but by her own mind.
In this day and age, in this new decade, a lot is possible. We just need to ask for it, make the required efforts to see it happen.
Thoughts ? <comment><USER2> It's more like a false start to the new year.

Most of those predictions were derived from users possessing second-hand crystal balls, especially those predicting acquisitions, IPOs and political matters. Nobody in that thread ever predicted that a widespread SARS-like virus would destroy and cause mass upset unless they had looked into the news in around November 2019.

Mind you, I actually did predict a crash this year and the importance of healthcare in 2020. However, I wasn't correct on the cause of the crash though but it seems my predications looks as if they are the most accurate so far:

Pre-coronavirus predictions [0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21926473](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21926473)

Post-coronavirus predictions [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22663119](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22663119)</comment>


What Is a Good Person? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ramanfrey/what-is-a-good-person-4c79c1b36677 <comment><USER2> Someone who doesn't use Medium.</comment>


Google Fusion Tables Shutting Down - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/fusiontables/answer/9185417 <comment><USER3> _Google Fusion Tables and the Fusion Tables API will be turned down December 3, 2019_

Anyone else put off by the ridiculous use of "turned down" here? "Turned off", maybe.

<comment><USER4> It might be surprising to outsiders and perhaps it shouldn't spill out, but it's pretty normal lingo inside Google engineering. You turn up things (services, clusters, products) and later turn them down.

<comment><USER5> Double speak at a company that does no evil. Color me surprised. I prefer the verb kill. Google gives life to certain services and then kills them.

<comment><USER4> You are ascribing motives that don't exist. It's not double speak, if you're referring to 1984: it's just that "turning down" is the converse of "turning up". That's a fairly simple and straightforward explanation, no matter how unfortunate it turns out to be. Most of the time, it's used when an internal service moves: it turns up in X and turns down in Y. I'm not sure what your motives are, but I know that you're off mark here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very sad about this. I was searching for a good online, collaborative database, where I can define clear schemas and provide certain views on it, for a small, public database a few friends and me are working on. Fusion Tables seemed to fit the bill as Google Sheets was basically too unstructured for this (basically I tried to find a free, collaborative, simple MS Access)

<comment><USER7> Airtable is almost exactly that: a collaborative, simple MS access. It's free for up to 1,200 records, then $10/user/month for more [https://airtable.com/pricing](https://airtable.com/pricing)

<comment><USER6> Thanks! I've considered it before but not sure anymore why I did not choose it. Though it probably relates to the fact that we are a small volunteer project with insecure funding (i.e. currently none) that tries to keep a records database of contact information up-to-date. This goes hand-in-hand with complex permission management/input controls (i.e. those listed should be able to submit a request for modification or for adding their record) and the possibility for integrating the result in a website. I don't think such integration tools are included in the free version

<comment><USER8> Why don't you just ask them if you could use it for free? It's not much cost to them and they could do something good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)

<comment><USER10> I'll never forgive them for BufferBox.

<comment><USER11> Reader for me

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> All the more reason to use R, pandas, SQL and other open source, database projects.

<comment><USER13> I find it hard to see much overlap between this product and any of the things you listed - except in the broadest sense.

<comment><USER12> It's better to rely on code-based data tools, like those I mentioned, than "experimental" Google projects that'll get "turned down" at the drop of a hat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's a shame, but not a surprise. I used to teach Fusion Tables to journalists [0] as a gateway into the power of SQL/relationships. The merge functionality was an effective if watered-down version of a proper SQL join, but it got the point across in a way that VLOOKUP couldn't. But Fusion Tables's killer function was its integration with Google Maps. For novice users who couldn't build a simple HTML page to to save their lives, Fusion Tables was an incredible way to create a powerful interactive with data.

I stopped teaching FT because several years ago because it seemed clear, in an implicit way, that it wasn't getting the traction. I hardly ever heard anyone inside or outside of Google talk/tweet/etc about it, in the same way people do for Sheets or BigQuery. I missed the easy data-to-interactive-map workflow for teaching, but for production work, FT was just too clunky (and merge far too limited compared to a SQL join) to justify using as a data store.

[0] [http://www.smalldatajournalism.com/projects/one- offs/mapping...](http://www.smalldatajournalism.com/projects/one-offs/mapping- with-fusion-tables/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I hope we don't hear news of Google sunsetting any more of their products in 2018(first Google Plus and now Fusion Tables).

<comment><USER16> The end of Inbox was announced in 2018 too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Another Google product bites the dust

</comment><comment><USER18> This one hurts because I recommended to and helped a number of business users to use Fusion tables as an alternative to building out something in-house.

It's really weird for them to write: "Google has developed several alternatives, providing deeper experiences in more specialized domains" and then not actually provide any alternatives.

<comment><USER19> > It's really weird for them to write: "Google has developed several > alternatives, providing deeper experiences in more specialized domains" and > then not actually provide any alternatives.

It _would be_ really weird for them to do that, but the sentence you quote is _immediately followed_ by a bulleted, annotated list of alternatives (stripped of descriptions, those listed are: Google BigQuery, Google Cloud SQL, Google Sheets, Google Data Studio, and an upcoming set of new map visualization tools that you can sign up for info about.)

<comment><USER20> I wonder which of these has a better projected lifespan?

<comment><USER21> Fusion tables was alive for 9 years, so ...

<comment><USER20> Some of those are living on borrowed time then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Whelp, there goes my laboratory updates repository. We were using each Google Fusion Table cell as a pre-formatted text-box which we could then sort and search. Does anyone know of any alternatives for this purpose? I made [a post]([https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/q/49546/2134](https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/q/49546/2134)) describing the requirements for what is essentially a "sortable and searchable pre-formatted text post publisher" and I keep running into related use cases.

</comment><comment><USER23> Aww man, time to migrate my side-project. I used fusion tables essentially as a DB + Frontend. I scraped a bunch of review data on colognes / perfumes and sorted them based on sillage (projection) / longevity: [http://fragrances.ziggymo.com/](http://fragrances.ziggymo.com/)

</comment><comment><USER24> What percentage market share does a Google product need to dip below to be culled? I was wondering this today when the G+ shutdown was accelerated - <USER2> was at 0.14%. Could this be used as an early warning sign?

<comment><USER25> I worked at Google for almost 10 years. In my experience, these end-of-life projects often get shutdown because nobody wants to work on them.

There are a ton of interesting projects at Google for people to work on, so people select for interesting things with potential high-impact. If a team can't be formed to own the product, maybe someone will volunteer to take care of it in their 20% time. But there are these company-wide mandates to move production systems from a storage system to a newer one, and a part-timer doesn't see the point of doing such thankless job.

Management can also play a role. If a VP wanted to support the product, it would get supported. But they use the basic heuristic as above ("is this an interesting project with high potential impact"). In this analysis a VP is just a proxy for 100 engineers making the same decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> [https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)</comment>


What a Difference 2 Percentage Points Make - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-difference-2-percentage-points-makes/ <comment><USER2> While it is an interesting point, it is a weak excuse for their poor election forecast, which right up till the end[1] had Clinton as a sure winner.

Now, the difference was in the margin ...

[1] [http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election- forecast/](http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/)

<comment><USER3> 71.4% is not "a sure winner".

<comment><USER2> Okay, maybe "sure winner" was putting it on the edge, but 70% chance of winning is still far from being decided by what is hidden in the margin error.

<comment><USER4> I don't think you clearly understand what 70% means. If you call 70% and it doesn't go the other way three times out of ten, you were poorly calibrated.

A lot of people seem to have read 70% as "no worries", which is simply wishful thinking, and now are blaming Nate Silver for being "wrong".

If your doctor told you you have a 70% chance of surviving the week, you probably wouldn't call that a "sure thing".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Amazing when you think about it, such a dramatic change in outcome from just 1 in a hundred persons voting differently. Same would have been the case with UK's tragic Brexit vote.

</comment><comment><USER6> So, we all finally stop listening to this guy now, right?</comment>


Silicon Valley's Political Endgame - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/book-drafts/silicon-valley-s-political-end-game-in-15-charts-a647c6074367

<comment><USER2> The "one world government" one surprised me. The believe that that is an improvement should be dispelled by the awareness that there are no silver bullets and that a diversity of opinions and thought tend to produce better solutions. A one-world government is basically a monoculture and we all know why those are bad. They focus on an implementation over interfaces. Implementations bake in inefficiencies and bad ideas in a way that makes them hard if not impossible to dismantle.

</comment><comment><USER3> > A growing demographic of highly-skilled college-educated liberals will > transform government's role to be about directly investing in citizens, > funding them to become as entrepreneurial, civic, and healthy as possible.

> The ultimate goal is to make life as close to the college experience as > possible: a life dedicated to research, exploration, and creativity, while > automation ensures that everyone has enough food and leisure time to pursue > their unique contribution to the world.

I read through the charts and think the conclusion is a bit of a stretch.

My (admittedly anecdotal) experience with those in the industry seem seem to be wary of formalized education.

Also, not sure about how the representative sample (time? sample size?) was obtained and some of the questions seem like they were designed to elicit a certain response.

Example: Do personal decisions, such as eating healthy, affect most people in society, thereby justifying government involvement in our everyday decisions?

I imagine the response would have been very different if everything preceding the "thereby" was excluded</comment>


Show HN: A simple neural network in Octave to solve the XOR problem - <AUTHOR> https://aimatters.wordpress.com/2015/12/19/a-simple-neural-network-in-octave-part-1/ <comment><USER2> Great job! Weaving through the math, diagrams and code like this is a great setup.

You might consider adding a little more force and excitement into the writing, to keep people engaged. Maybe a joke. You'll catch a wider audience that way.

"There are a number of things to note about a... " <\- This paragraph needs to be rewritten for clarity. The text is disjointed and redundant. The diagram above it should probably be made with a larger, clearer font and rearranged a little.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much for reading and for the constructive feedback.</comment></comment>


Self-generating recursive art using Mechanical Turk - <AUTHOR> http://labs.earthpeople.se/2015/12/self-generating-recursive-art-using-amazon-mechanical-turk/ <comment><USER2> Site is having woes for me (database error), I think we broke it.

Here's a link to google cache:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NTq35Cw...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NTq35CwFBAMJ:labs.earthpeople.se/2015/12/self- generating-recursive-art-using-amazon-mechanical- turk/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au)

</comment><comment><USER3> Art? Or just an internet version of the game "Telephone"...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> here's the result in progress: [http://interpretthis.tumblr.com](http://interpretthis.tumblr.com)</comment>


The history of Faber & Faber in letters - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/28/faber-and-faber-the-untold-story-letters-eliot-joyce-beckett-plath-larkin <comment><USER2> These are fun insights into the hit and miss tastes of the publishing biz. For example, from the article, "A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond, 28 August 1957":

 _I think the author has missed his mark in this story of a bear adopted by a middle-class family called Brown. Unless I mistake him he means it to be funny but the jokes are all on the bear; the Browns treat him very much as I imagine they would treat a "foreigner" and as one's sympathies and affections are all with the bear it is difficult to laugh with the author. Moreover the Brown family are perfect fools, they leave him alone to bath and nearly to drown; they twice lose him, once on the Underground and once in a large store simply through inattention. No – frankly the best of the book lies in its title._

I kinda feel F&F's department of humour kinda had a very rigid pole up its ass. I bet they were kicking themselves after this went on to be published initially by Collins in '58.

</comment><comment><USER3> My favorite bit:

 _I am frightfully sorry about the printers' prurience! Do please, when you are correcting proofs, replace f— by fucking in full; and David Bland, our production manager, will get in touch with the printers personally to make sure that nothing goes wrong._

Nothing better than an editor who literally gives a fuck!

The letter reminded me of David Lodge's afterword to "Ginger, You're Barmy". When it was first published in 1962, he had to bowdlerize the swear words that were copious in a novel set in the army. A second edition was published later, when the word in question was deemed printable, and initially Lodge went through his manuscript restoring "fuck" after "fuck", until he finally thought better of the idea and left the manuscript in the initially published form.</comment>


The World in 2036: Nassim Taleb looks at what will break, and what won't - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/17509373 <comment><USER2> So Mr. "There will be black swans that we can never predict but have great consequences" tries to predict the future now? He should be wiser than that.

<comment><USER3> The whole point of this little exercise was to make predictions based on things that aren't "fragile". I like this idea of extrapolating from robust things (coffee, bikes) and thinking about what are the things require so much "fragile order" that they'll go away with energy crises and pandemics.</comment></comment>


Polyvore acquired by SSENSE and is immediately shut down - <AUTHOR> http://blog.polyvore.com/2018/04/some-big-news-for-our-polyfam.html <comment><USER2> This is a truly sad day for the individual... and +1 for Mega corporations.

Years ago when Polyvore launched - they TRULY innovated and brought REAL power to the single user. Enabling them automagically to BECOME a creator/designer/curator.

This technological leap fwd, generated a wellspring of creativity for those millions of users struggling to communicate their unique sense of style and design-sensibilities.

Fast fwd, we now see the typical cycle of indie-platform being absorbed by MEGA Corp ( YAHOO ) -- but promising only BETTER evolution :

      Going forward, Polyvore will still be the same Polyvore that you love, but we'll have more resources to make it even bigger & better. Our mission of empowering people to feel good about their style will stay the same. We'll continue to add cool new product features and roll out new perks for top members. We've accomplished a lot on our own, but together with Yahoo we can take Polyvore to its fullest potential. [1]

then tossed over once again to another buyer..and laid dead to rest in the interwebs..

What does this 'evolution' yield one may ask in all due earnest?? How about the EXACT anti-thesis of why Polyvore started in the first place: Mass Produced. Mass Consumption. Mass FEED of Mass Produced Clothes.

yay.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2015/07/31/yahoo-acquires- polyvore/](https://techcrunch.com/2015/07/31/yahoo-acquires-polyvore/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm so upset by this. I had many friends on Polyvore, and now they're gone. And I have no idea who they are, so I'll never see them again. They helped me through so much in my life. I created characters from things I loved, made so many friends, expressed myself. Now, it's all gone thanks to greedy corporate companies.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm so pissed right now!!! I was on Polyvore for over 4 years and now... Everything is gone!!!

<comment><USER5> Same!! I wasn't on there for as long as you were but I created so many sets and now they're all gone!!!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best place to find ex-pats? - <AUTHOR> I need to hire in the sales realm and have had good success with ex-pats looking for remote work.  Can anyone recommend good job boards for locating ex-Pats, particularly those located in the western hemisphere? <comment><USER2> The monthly HN Who's Hiring thread is a good place to start. It's mostly oriented towards software devs but I've seen sales and mgmt positions posted there as well.</comment>


Ship of horrors: life and death on the lawless high seas - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/12/ship-of-horrors-deep-sea-fishing-oyang-70-new-zealand <comment><USER2> The author of the story, Ian Urbina, has just published an eminently readable book (Outlaw Ocean, from which this story is an edited excerpt) on the vagaries of law on the high seas; embedding with fishermen, repossessors, fishery authorities and environmentalists he paints a rather grim picture of how you can get away with just about any kind of ruthlessness, cruelty or pollution as long as you do so in international waters.

I picked it up at JFK the day before yesterday, planning on reading a chapter before going to sleep on my flight to Heathrow. Next thing I knew, the flight attendant asked me to prepare for landing.

<comment><USER3> One of the stories I recall from my time at an NGO in this space is that a tuna boat crew straight up murdered their fisheries observer and chucked his body overboard. When the ship docked, the responsible crew scattered to the wind.

There's a huge tension in the observer's position. They're watching what you're doing and can see any legal violations. At the same time, they're dependent on the fishing vessel for food and shelter. High bandwidth communication channels are expensive and hard to come by. And if the captain/crew knows you're putting their livelihoods at risk in real-time, they might do something about it. So we had to balance observer safety with whatever data we were asking them to collect.

<comment><USER4> This is true for any situation when you're the lone outgroup. Unless you have a camera live streaming (which is expensive even in an urban area), you only have the available evidence, which could be scarce or ambiguous.

The only deterrent is the chance someone might avenge you, which usually ends up being a prosecutor interested in only padding their win rate.

People who survive poverty are more aware of this than others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Up here in Norway they had discovered some absolutely horrid working conditions on some of the trawlers that fish for snow and king crabs. They'd import workers from eastern Europe and Asia (Indonesians etc.) - where the workers would deal with up to 18-hours shifts, to the point that they'd fall asleep on deck, while working.

When food ran out, they'd start eating bait. The pay was so low that they sometimes couldn't afford going back home...$400-$500 monthly salary in northern Europe.

[https://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/secret-slave- contracts/7055...](https://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/secret-slave- contracts/70555901)

<comment><USER6> Why eat the bait instead of the catch? Surely on a ship full of literal _tons_ of fish, the cost of feeding the crew some of it is completely negligible?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of an article discussed here, which I can't find at the moment, about the horrific conditions that cruise ship employees, often indentured servants, endure.

When I was a kid, working on the open seas seemed so romantic, but I suppose historically it's mostly been a cruel environment populated with cruel people.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think NY Times had a similar story about fishing fleets in Thailand and Indonesia... basically modern slavery. Seized passports. Multi-year contracts. Brutal work hours, abuse, and horrendous living conditions.

Sounds like NZ acted aggressively in trying to do the right thing here, which is terrific to hear.

</comment><comment><USER9> >The last men off the drowning ship said that they saw Shin in the wheelhouse, refusing to abandon his post or put on a life jacket. Hugging a pole and clutching his clear bottle, he was muttering in Korean and crying.

I find this fascinating. You really couldn't ask for something that would align incentives more in keeping the ship afloat than the captain going down with the ship. And yet, the captain blatantly ignored safety requirements and caused his ship to sink.

I have more respect for this captain, who even though he placed his crew members lives at risk, placed himself at more risk and went down with the ship, than a lot of CEOs who do or tacitly encourage doing very shady (or illegal) things and then escape accountability through golden parachutes. Maybe we need more "captains going down with the ship" type of laws in the business sector.

<comment><USER10> As a former professional deckhand who has worked on small fishing craft, my take on this would not be that he elected to go down with his ship. If that has ever actually happened outside of myth and fable then it has at least been very rare. My guess is that in his own way the captain was as desperate for the job and as fearful for the consequences of the unfolding event as his crew, and was simply paralyzed by despair. He may also have been impaired by alcohol, dampening reason and enhancing panic. Many, perhaps most, commercial sailors fear the water in a way that people who work ashore can't understand. The image of the recreational sailor who is as at home in the water as on the surface of it does not describe the average worker on a commercial vessel, right up to the officers. They're not out there for fun, and they know that if they are forced overboard far from land, survival suit or no, the chances of death are quite high.

<comment><USER11> That thought has always terrified me: survival mode in/on the water with an inevitable death ahead.

It masks me wonder if there is a market for automatic sensing hydro-electronic sensors integrated in sailors / fishermen's clothing. The idea is if the sensor is in contact with some amount of water for 90+ seconds, start a count- down to chirp an emergency radio beacon.If the user doesn't over-ride the count-down, via a button somewhere in clothing, it starts sending a distress beacon, allowing for rescue within hours most likely.

The reason for the automatic element is if someone were to be knocked overboard and unconscious. A similar concept can be thought of regarding the firefighters PASS device:

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

<comment><USER2> You basically reinvented the PLB (Personal Location Beacon), a GPS-equipped radio transmitter slightly bigger than a pack of cigarettes which will let a satellite network know your precise location minutes after falling in the water.

The one I wear when at sea cost $400 or so plus a $50 annual fee.

<comment><USER11> Thank you. So it is a case of people planning poorly. :(

<comment><USER2> Not necessarily; after all, such a beacon will only let the world know that someone, somewhere is in the water; depending on where they fell in, rescue personnel may need days to get to the site if it is sufficiently remote and the weather is bad enough.

The main benefit of a PLB is to assist the vessel you fell from in finding you - unless you had the good luck to fall overboard near a heliport in decent weather or in a busy shipping lane, the PLB will (mostly) not be able to get a rescue effort by any other party under way in time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is not surprising that these kinds of conditions exist on fishing vessels - you start to treat your fellow human animals the same way you treat other animals. "Fishing," which is really planetary-scale sea foraging, as Jeremy Jackson points out, is incredibly cruel to everyone involved. If you do not already shun seafood because of the massive amounts of mercury and other toxin pollution, maybe consider the ethical problems, and start advocating for a total ban on commercial fishing.

Watch this talk by Jeremy Jackson if you still think that seafood is somehow "ok": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zMN3dTvrwY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zMN3dTvrwY)

</comment><comment><USER13> "This is the best we can get." That says it all.

<comment><USER5> I'm from a very rural (coastal) area, where every surrounding town and village has been affected by loss of jobs, displacement of fishing industries, etc.

Fishing is, and has been for hundreds of years, the lifeblood of the area.

One thing I've noticed is that people are unfortunately vehemently anti- regulations and anti-gov involvement. Any new company, no mater how shady, is welcomed with open arms. As long as they bring jobs, all is good.

As it often happens, these companies skirt (or just completely ignore) labor laws, and will work their employees to the bone, ignoring contracts, and what not.

Not too long ago a company like that was taken down by workers that actually sued, because it turned out that they'd been working double digit hours, 7 days a week, without pay, and in dangerous conditions.

The company simply shut down, knowing they wouldn't stand a chance to compensate workers on owed salaries.

The locals were furious. Not at the company, but at the workers that sued - because one less business meant less jobs. They'd rather have workers get abused and cheated out of money, than no money.

And that is unfortunately the attitude in many such places - not only slave workers from south-east Asia.

Desperation really plays a trick on people, and can make them susceptible to exploitation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The title made me think of pirates. I was prepared to read how horrible seafaring used to be. Turns out for a lot of people it still is.

</comment><comment><USER15> This really puts the whole Amazon discussion in perspective.

<comment><USER16> The rainforest or the company? My housemate is Brazilian, and has a _lot_ to to say about the former.

<comment><USER15> The company I mean, but I'd love to hear his thoughts on the former.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I usually try to stay away from comments on the site implementation, but in this case having the same full page video ad pop up every time you scroll a page on mobile? Seriously, what are they thinking? I understand the importance of ads to a site, but this made the article unreadable to me.

<comment><USER18> I got half way through before the ads crashed chrome.

<comment><USER19> No ads whatsoever with Chrome plus uMatrix.

<comment><USER20> I'm using Edge with the built-in ad blocker and didn't get any ads.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Memory Like Cast Iron Pans - <AUTHOR> http://blog.benroux.me/cast-iron-pans/ <comment><USER2> "You don't wash cast iron pans."

Except that you do. See [http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/11/the-truth-about- cast-iron...](http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/11/the-truth-about-cast- iron.html) , which points out there are a number of myths to do with cast iron pans, and says one of the things to do is:

> Clean it after each use. Clean your pan thoroughly after each use by washing > it with soap and water and scrubbing out any gunk or debris from the bottom. > I use the scrubby side of a sponge for this.

"The most important reason is that food cooked in a cast iron pan adds a character to it. It starts to shape the flavor of what you will cook in the pan later on."

On the flip side, quoting from [http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/12/food/fo-36243](http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/12/food/fo-36243) :

> From the 1930s through the '60s, Americans were convinced you had to have a > certain kind of bowl to make a proper green salad: a plain, unvarnished > wooden bowl which could never be washed. The idea was that the wood "cured" > over the years, making ever more exquisite salads. Actually, the dressing > seeped into the wood and the oil turned hideously rancid, so the bowls stank > to high heaven.

> A sly foodie named George Rector had simply hoaxed the whole country. He'd > invented the myth of the wooden salad bowl to spice up a story in the Sept. > 5, 1936, issue of the Saturday Evening Post.

> Playing on Americans' fear of snobbish French gourmets, he painted green > salad as the most finicky dish of all. And the secret of the perfect salad? > Rubbing a clove of garlic on a wooden bowl, which would give just enough > garlic flavor but not (horrors!) too much . . . and then never washing the > bowl.

> The French themselves had never believed any such thing. In fact, Parisian > gourmets didn't even like garlic in their salads--as Rector knew perfectly > well, since he'd worked in Parisian restaurants. In his cookbooks, he had > published garlic-free French salad recipes.

Sounds like exactly the same belief.</comment>


Review my startup: Akshell, now with CommonJS support - <AUTHOR> http://blog.akshell.com/Anton-Korenyushkin/Akshell-02/

<comment><USER2> I'd like to see a clearer up-front description on the front page. This is clearly for people-in-the-know, so just letting me categorize this quickly would be really helpful.

I _think_ this is something for doing server-side Javascript development, with integrated hosting and an IDE. It's not clear to me how things like persistence work; since Javascript is somewhat novel in this role these things aren't obvious. It's not like PHP, where I'd just assume MySQL.

I see you are talking about new programmers using this, but I wouldn't try to talk to both audiences at once. Either have a separate entry page for new programmers, or just skip it (realistically it's only early adopters who are going to be interested in this for the near future).

<comment><AUTHOR> Your comment does makes sense. I should change the front page.

Applications has two places to store persistent data: database and file storage. The latter is rather common. The database is implemented on top of a custom query language designed for embedding into JavaScript.

Here is a database API description: <http://www.akshell.com/docs/0.2/guide/db- and-fs/>

And query language description: <http://www.akshell.com/docs/0.2/ref/core/db/#query-language>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> From talking to Anton, it seems like GitHub integration is next up on the TODO list. Any feedback on whether you'd find that useful and how you think it should be done would be really appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER4> What does it do? The blog posting doesn't mention anything except recent changes to a product with no description.

<comment><AUTHOR> It enables users to develop web applications is JavaScript and host them in the cloud. The only tool required for development is a web browser. And the deployment is instant.

It also features an environment where applications can interact with each other; so they could be really modular and social.

<comment><USER5> Is this similar to what AppJet originally attempted to do? If so, have you attempted to contact them to see what types of problems they encountered before focusing on EtherPad?

<comment><AUTHOR> Akshell targets more "heavy" applications than AppJet. E.g., it has a relational database and AppJet had key-value store. I contacted JGate guys. JGate is an AppJet successor <http://apps.jgate.de/>.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You should have a look at the Joyent Smart Playform. I think it is very similar, supports CommonJS and Git style deploy. (Plus it is open source) <http://github.com/joyent/smart-platform>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the link. I'll study it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It anagrams to Haskell, so I assumed this was some DSL for writing Javascript in Haskell...

</comment><comment><USER8> Awesome, glad to see CommonJS modules and JSGI in there!

Have you looked at the ECMAScript Proxy proposal? You might want to consider using the API.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I have looked. I implemented a simpler Proxy: <http://www.akshell.com/docs/0.2/ref/core/misc/#Proxy>

It's more restrictive, but much more easy to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Awesome! I still want the ability to run it on my own server, though. You aren't going to get people to use it by locking them in to the platform.

</comment><comment><USER2> Have you looked at Bespin for an editor/IDE?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have, but decided to stick with EditArea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Everything JS has my approval.</comment>


Why running the White House Web site on Drupal is a political disaster - <AUTHOR> http://slate.com/id/2233719

<comment><USER2> This article is nothing more than weakly supported anti-Drupal propaganda. Don't waste your time. It's almost as if an editor asked the writer for a piece to counter all the positive press the switch to Drupal has been getting.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm sorry, but I agree with almost everything in this post. Not to start a platform war or anything, but Drupal seems like the best CMS in the world until you figure out that you can do it all in half the time using Wordpress.</comment>


Show HN: I made a programming language with Spotify playlists - <AUTHOR> http://h313.info/spet/ <comment><USER2> Pretty interesting... it really makes you ponder how many things in our world can be refitted and sequenced into codes.

<comment><USER3> Any set of six things can make a turing machine. You just need "instructions" for each of the primitives -- right, left, print, erase, scan, halt

<comment><AUTHOR> Any set of three things can make a Turing machine as well - you just need AND, OR, and NOT

<comment><USER4> CAR, CDR, CONS suffice as well

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How have you reserved space for future instructions? Your first version has some instructions which don't have a specified discrete value, and are condition based. Does this mean that programs written with this first draft will no longer function if the instruction set changes?

What would happen if Radiohead were to suddenly remove all songs from Spotify? Would this break the applications?

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting, and kinda awkward.

Good job for finishing such a side project. "virtual shoulder pat"

</comment><comment><USER7> This is awesome!</comment>


Feds Reluctant to Make a Deal With Snowden - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/edward-snowden-interview/feds-reluctant-make-deal-snowden-n116891

<comment><AUTHOR> In related news, John Kerry wants Snowden to "man up".

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us- canada-27615210](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-27615210)</comment>


Lightning storms triggered by exhaust from cargo ships - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23531442-300-lightning-storms-triggered-by-exhaust-from-cargo-ships/ <comment><AUTHOR> Paper: [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL074982/full](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL074982/full)</comment>


Ask YC feedback: Simply create a single URL from multiple URLs - <AUTHOR> http://fuseurl.com

<comment><USER2> Nice simple idea. This is surely useful when you want to send several URLs to someone. For me, this is rather an edge usecase during my web-activities. So I'm not sure if this has potential to be monetized somehow.

<comment><USER3> It would probably be best to monetize it as you would proxy site. With Adsense and a few affiliate banners. Then once traffic gets up a bit flip it on sitepoint.

<comment><USER4> Ew, how unimaginative. I think it's probably more clever to exploit the fact that people are associating sites with each other - if someone is interested in one, they'd be interested in the others. Maybe start a web search?

<comment><USER3> And you would monetize that how?

<comment><USER5> volume! economies of scale!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd avoid using the term 'newline' in the description. Maybe something like "Enter URLs, one per line". Newline seems like a developer term.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I created Fuseurl to simplify sharing multiple URLs. Instead of posting or emailing 10 different URLs, you can just create a single URL and share it. I got the idea when I wanted to text message someone multiple URLs. The site can also be used to create a quick reference to your favorite websites.

I appreciate any feedbacks you have.

<comment><USER7> You could be more creative when displaying multiple pages.How about tabs instead of putting one under another?

Widgets and Firefox extensions spring into mind, given the concept.

Useful app nonetheless.

<comment><USER8> I agree with the tabs. Would make it a lot easier to navigate. Other than that, I disagree. I can't see this being very useful IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> wave - Very very nice idea. Good execution, great concept. I often have to do this, and hats off to you, coz I did not think of this.

One small suggestion, and I might be splitting hairs here, but maybe make the tabs on the top a little more prominent. I missed it the first time around. Nothing that you need to take care of, I just figured I would pen it down.

I also see that you are not checking the url to see if its valid (which is fine). It does bring up one problem and that is if I link to three HM links, they all show up as the same name in the tab. Maybe give an option to name the tab... ?

Update - Woops, ca98am79 had the same suggestion as me. Sorry. Did not see that prior to posting my comment

<comment><AUTHOR> I had a code to check for a valid url, but removed it because I didn't think it was really necessary. I just want to make it faster and simpler

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is nice - the only thing I would suggest is that if I'm creating a fuse of many pages on one site, all of the links on the top just have the site name and no way to distinguish. For example, this fuse : <http://fuseurl.com/2w> just has 'news.ycombinator.com|news.ycombinator.com' at the top - a way to manually change the titles to these links would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER11> I see that you've rediscovered trails and incorporated it into URL shortening service which uses frames to navigate through the trail. As the author of uggc.cgi ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=177441> ), I might be biased, but I like it. You may want to get a .se domain to make the URL shorter. You may want to map resource IDs to letters for easier typing on mobile telephones.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice and simple. Open All is nice (except that (tabs) doesn't work.) Good support for back/forward.

Take a look at Trailfire ( <http://www.trailfire.com> ). They do some interesting stuff with the same idea, but allow comments in places and stuff.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's not really obvious to a non-technical user that there are multiple pages going on there. Not sure how you would make that more clear, but the links at the top don't quite do it.

</comment><comment><USER14> You should also create a link to an example page, already populated with multiple urls choosen by you, just to demonstraste the service.

<comment><USER11> Bonus points if it involves downforeveryoneorjustme.com and validator.w3.org ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=153995> ), uggc.cgi ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=177478> ) and y.soho.lt

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Cool - One thing I'd fix is the horizontal scrollbar (I'm getting it at 1024x768)

</comment><comment><USER16> somethings wrong with your layout, on my macbook (13.3") on firefox i can't get down to the sample links, i had to make the text smaller

</comment><comment><USER17> Very nice, thanks.

</comment><comment><USER18> nytimes.com busts out of the frame.

</comment><comment><USER19> Also, as a further point.

If you're going to the trouble of going to a site, copy-pasting all these into a form, clicking a button, then emailing that..

wouldn't you save more time, really, just emailing the list?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your comment. As it was mentioned, this wasn't to be used just during emailing but it can also be used during texting, chat session and posting comments

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Augh. Frames.</comment>


10 Tactics to Quickly Reduce Churn - <AUTHOR> http://getamity.com/reduce-churn-2

<comment><USER2> Kinda spammy? "Get your free copy" Also, what's with all the non-breaking spaces?

      It
      means articulating the different kinds of users who would get value from your product,
      highlighting the leading benefits and features, and, as important, being transparent  about pricing.

Looks like:

      It
      means articulating the different kinds of users who would get val
      ue from your product,
      highlighting the leading benefits and features, and, as important,
      being transparent  about pricing.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out, it has since been fixed.</comment>


Who and what is Coinhive? - <AUTHOR> https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/03/who-and-what-is-coinhive/ <comment><USER2> _" But according to Troy Mursch, a security expert who spends much of his time tracking Coinhive and other instances of "cryptojacking," killing the key doesn't do anything to stop Coinhive's code from continuing to mine Monero on a hacked site. Once a key is invalidated, Mursch said, Coinhive keeps 100 percent of the cryptocurrency mined by sites tied to that account from then on."_

This is where I think Coinhive ethically crosses the line; perhaps legally, too. The mining scripts should stop when contacting Coinhive and determining that the specified key/ID has been disabled due to complaints or fraud.

<comment><USER3> Just to continue the quote from the article:

 _Reached for comment about this apparent conflict of interest, Coinhive replied with a highly technical response, claiming the organization is working on a fix to correct that conflict.

"We have developed Coinhive under the assumption that site keys are immutable," Coinhive wrote in an email to KrebsOnSecurity. "This is evident by the fact that a site key can not be deleted by a user. This assumption greatly simplified our initial development. We can cache site keys on our WebSocket servers instead of reloading them from the database for every new client. We're working on a mechanism [to] propagate the invalidation of a key to our WebSocket servers."_

<comment><USER4> Meaning they'll "fix" it when they're forced to, but in the meantime they'll make a nice profit off the "broken" code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When Coinhive was released I was really intrigued and imagined a lot of cool way of doing micropayments. I even built a multiplayer game where you had to mine in order to get in-game credits (you can find the URL in my comment history), which was fairly well received by the players.

It was a proof-of-concept and when I saw that it worked I started building a proper version of it. However, soon thereafter rogue actors started using Coinhive for malicious things and I'm now at a point where I don't feel like continuing on the game. I still think it's a cool concept and my game is very clearly opt-in where I explain what will happen when you press "Start mining".

It feels like "this is why we can't have nice things" is applicable here.

<comment><USER6> You may find it less palatable, but I could totally see the 'free to play' games going down the road of cryptocurrency mining.

As your project did before, you could tie the mining with in game currency. If the underlying block chain is actively traded you could even scale the game currency with real currency in some way... 0.0001 cent is a gold coin for example. Payment that way would seem fairly above board, especially if you clearly tell the player about the taxing system -- this could then be your funding.

<comment><USER7> I think most people would even prefer that to ads, I'd much rather have you utilize 30% of my CPU for a while than make me watch an ad.

<comment><USER8> On mobile that is bit more difficult. But even there: I'd rather have my battery drained by a clear, transparant miner than through spying and data- mining ads.

Though, in reality, I'd rather not have my battery drained at all; so I'd disable this when not plugged in. Or for desktop only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _"For roughly a week in January, Coinhive was found hidden inside of YouTube advertisements (via Google's DoubleClick platform)"_.

I'm shocked, and very surprised to hear that malware code is disseminated through innocent ads put out there by a user-loving, "do no evil" company. /s

Now, can we please finally conclude that an ad blocker in your browser is mandatory?

<comment><USER10> Sure! Do no evil, right?

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/14/17011266/google-chrome- ad...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/14/17011266/google-chrome-ad-blocker- features)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Has anyone found attempts to deobfuscate the coinhive source code? Maybe my google-fu needs improvement...

I found a github page that provides a proxy to the coinhive allowing the user to keep 100% of the profit, but it doesn't even link to the coinhive code that I could see. ([https://github.com/cazala/coin-hive- stratum](https://github.com/cazala/coin-hive-stratum))

Also found this, [https://jonathanmh.com/testing-coin-hive-crowd-source- monero...](https://jonathanmh.com/testing-coin-hive-crowd-source-monero- mining/). Interesting but no source code.

<comment><USER5> The actual miner is using WebAssembly so I don't know if it's even possible to deobfuscate in a sensible manner.

<comment><USER8> I've tried to reverse engineer it, but failed. The best place to start, IMO, is the communication between client-server over a websocket. It is binary, but shows some interesting data and keys as in key-names, from key-value, not crypto-keys).

My idea was to make an API-rate limiter, where a client has to submit a list of calculated hashes (PoW) with each request and so protect the API against bots, scrapers and other (D)DoS attacks. Bad idea, because the data that has to be transfered (in Headers) is going to huge, megabytes, if you want to make even a few cents on a million-hits-per-day API.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Found Dr. Matthias Moench to be the real gem in this story. Here is the translated version of the Die Welt article:

[https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...](https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&nv=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article135077209/Viagra- ist-fuer-Gangster-heute-lukrativer-als- Kokain.html&xid=25657,15700022,15700043,15700105,15700124,15700126,15700149,15700168,15700186,15700201&usg=ALkJrhj30tQD5O_BVoUt00qDsfxMLHZhPg)

</comment><comment><USER13> It's unfortunate that Coinhive has given this type of monetization a bad reputation; at least their shady practices make it that much easier for a competitor to enter this space. I hope that someone can come along with a transparent mining script that has an expidient abuse resolution process, and no tracking. Hopefully that's enough to overcome the stigma now associated with this type of monetization. I would certainly prefer that to regular ads.

<comment><USER14> You'd prefer lower battery life and worsened browser performance?

<comment><USER15> That's also a description of ads.

<comment><USER14> I think solving hashes ad nauseum while the page is loaded (and beyond due to service workers) is _well_ beyond a typical ad in terms of resource consumption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The pr0gramm.com-admins spend the whole day banning users that upload screenshots of this article to the platform.

<comment><USER17> I mean, doxxing Gamb wasn't really necessary, he was always very paranoid about being doxxed, and users of the site know what happened to cha0s when he was doxxed. So i understand that they want to think a bit about how to handle this situation.

I've complained about krebs being an asshole before on HN and this pretty much confirms it.

What exactly did doxxing people contribute to this story?

Edit: This might actually be the final straw that breaks the camels back and pr0gramm will go down.

So thanks for that, Krebs. I wonder if Brian knows that Krebs means cancer in german. It's somehow fitting.

<comment><USER17> Can't edit anymore, but:

Yup, I pretty much predicted Gambs official statement.

They really don't like the doxxing. They posted an official statement and asked nicely to not post their private info on the website as everyone can google it now. And if shit get's out of hand with their private data in the public now they'll shut down the website.

Edit: Oh, they also said they've never banned anyone for posting the screenshot but asked them nicely to wait for the statement.

<comment><USER18> Private information? If it was so private, how was Krabs able to get it all off of domains they registered? Answer: It was never private, and just nobody bothered to connect the dots before now.

<comment><USER19> Just because Denic doesn't allow private domain registrations doesn't mean you're supposed to go after people and dump their personal info into your popular blog. Large parts of the information was historical data persisted by third parties that'd be hard to expunge. There's a good reason for pr0gramm admins to want to remain anonymous - cha0s initially quit the site because he received an 80kg steel oven as sort of a threat. The post includes names and contact information of volunteer moderators that weren't even part of their company.

But Brian Krebs' private information - which is definitely out there - is to be kept out of public view? I'm sure he'd pursue legal action if I put that on my blog with some half-baked accusations

It's wrong, plain and simple, which is why pr0gramm moderators have been removing posts with both their own private information and krebs'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why is Coinhive seemingly the sole option for this tool? If it's just code, what is to stop a different group of devs to replicate the process?

<comment><USER21> People are lazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just a heads up - we, Hashcash.io, working on V2 of our product which will incorporate some bits discussed here: mining and currency and micropayments with new blockchain and PoW approach. We applied to YC18 summer batch, but either way we are going to launch it, it will just depend how soon.

If you are interested - leave an email on website :)

</comment><comment><USER23> Here is a followup post to the article. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16696865](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16696865)</comment>


Password Manager LastPass Acquires Xmarks - <AUTHOR> http://kara.allthingsd.com/20101202/password-manager-lastpass-acquires-xmarks/

<comment><USER2> Very logical fit. LastPass have been making noises about integrating bookmark sync since around the time Xmarks added password sync support, and I'd rather it be this way around than the alternative (LastPass is extremely secure, Xmarks... don't know). This presumably means my bookmarks will sync between all my browsers, computers, and my phone, as well as my passwords. Hoorah!

Disclaimer: I am a LastPass subscriber

</comment><comment><USER3> It would appear that Xmarks is a good fit for LastPass. LastPass already deals with cross-browsing syncing and I would assume that their backend hardware would be generally 'compatible' with whatever requirements Xmarks has.

So if LastPass already has a viable Freemium model, then they should be able to integrate Xmarks into their business plan fairly easily.

</comment><comment><USER4> You know, people storing their passwords on a /free/ service always seemed a wee bit icky to me. What happens when the service goes bust? Will all their passwords be lost, like tears in the rain?

<comment><USER5> Enough people pay for the advanced service with LastPass (Mobile phone support) to cover all the free users. Even if LastPass was nuked every user still has access to all their data -- a encrypted cached copy is kept on every browser and every phone you ever use. Pull the plug out of your computer and verify yourself...

</comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell I hope XMarks doesn't end up dragging LastPass down with it. Don't get me wrong, they're both good services, but I don't think it's possible to make money with what XMarks offers.

<comment><USER5> LastPass is already profitable enough to continue supporting Xmarks indefinitely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> All your bookmarks now belong to them.

Sure hope they were encrypted.

</comment><comment><USER7> I hope LastPass will help Xmarks to overcome its difficulties...

<comment><USER8> by charging for the service.

Xmarks is great but I don't think it's a service I would pay for.

<comment><USER5> The service will remain free, and we're happy to have you as a free user. Our plan is to continue to add mobile device support and ancillary services on top to convince you that maybe $1/month is worth it. We only need to convince a few percent of people to make this a success.</comment></comment></comment>


Cloud with Me – Automating and Simplifying AWS - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/12/cloud-with-me-makes-setting-up-and-managing-aws-servers-easier/ <comment><USER2> Looks like a simple clean interface to launch small EC2 instances (perfect for projects or small websites etc)

Though I'm not a fan of creating an IAM user and hand in over my access key ID and secret key. Especially one that grants them Admin like permissions.

They should create a copyable policy that is restricted or ask people to create roles that they can assume.

</comment><comment><USER3> > AWS doesn't care about clients who have one WordPress site

But why would someone only wanting to run one WordPress site choose AWS?</comment>


Rendering Subviews in Backbone.js - <AUTHOR> http://www.joezimjs.com/javascript/backbone-js-subview-rendering-trick/?utm_source=news.ycombinator.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=hackernews

<comment><USER2> well you can also pass el: $(...) as an argument to the view creation which is a bit nicer.

or you can just set el: as an initializer in the view. then you don't need to do set the element manually and you will know inside the subview where it's supposed to be.</comment>


Browser-require.js brings "require" to the browser (just like node) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/marcuswestin/browser-require Browser-require lets you write javascript using "require", "exports" and "module" in the browser, just as you would in node. It helps you with your dependency management, and provides a compiler to condense all your required modules into a single file for production. <comment><USER2> It uses synchronous XHR to load the JS-File. Then evals the JS-String.

This is great, but I could not figure out debugging my loaded code with this solution.

Any ideas ?

<comment><USER3> Firebug and the WebKit Inspector allow you to set breakpoints by just putting "debugger;" where you want to jump into debugging.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. I did not know that.

The problem of getting stacktraces for errors remains.

UPDATE: Just tested in Safari. I get nice stacktraces there. Its only a problem in Chrome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The main difference between this and other solutions like RequireJS is the fact that you don't have to wrap your CommonJS modules in callbacks and thus could in theory use them "unmodified".

<comment><AUTHOR> That's one of the big differences - I'd say the other big difference is that it comes with a compiler that bundles all your required modules into a single javascript file for production

<comment><USER3> RequireJS also has it's own compiler.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did not know that! :P

I guess browser-require will still be useful, since you can import the same files in node and in the browser

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand. Require.js _already_ works in the browser. <http://requirejs.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> require.js does asynchronous file loading and is supposed to be deployed as-is in production. Browser-require makes it easy to develop your code using synchronous require statements and straight-forward dependency management. For production it has a compiler that combines all the required files into a single file (which is the only way you should serve your javascript in production)

<comment><USER5> RequireJS also has a "compiler" that will combine your files into one or more layers for production use, as well as straightforward dependency management.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > When a module is required, we fetch it's javascript as a string using a > synchronous XHR.

<comment><USER3> Obviously, that's meant for development only and that's why it also ships with it's own compiler for production (where I seriously hope they don't use a synchronous XHR to fetch the compiled code).

<comment><AUTHOR> no, it does not :)</comment></comment></comment>


Gamifying Conways Game of Life – Round 1 - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.knapps_apps.reduce

<comment><AUTHOR> After user testing, I made the warp button beg for attention and added three minimal levels. I can go pretty deep on level generation, also just relying on the vast amount of available material, but I have another concept that is a little stronger and uses about 95% of the code, so I need to cut chase ASAP to get them both to market. I'm happy to support both apps, but I believe in the end they will be concept apps, getting me the feedback I need to develop a full product.</comment>


How I didn't get my first paying customer because of my birthplace - <AUTHOR> https://alireza.gonevis.com/how-i-didnt-get-my-first-paying-customer/ <comment><USER2> Wow, talk about perseverance! Mad props to you for sticking with it through all that, and finally finding a solution. Sometimes "sheer force of will" and a relentless drive to not quit, are the only things that will get the job done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your kind comment. Still I have a long long way to go, but getting one problem fixed made me to push forward for more.</comment></comment>


OnePlus Is Again Sending User Data to a Chinese Company Without User Consent - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/fs0c131y/status/956628910308982785 <comment><USER2> Notice how there is actually no proof at all in these tweets. The author admits that they could not observe any network requests being made:

> I didn't manage to trigger the network communications to the teddymobile > servers but I will continue later.

It looks to me like this person is cherrypicking random SDK methods that may seem suspicious out of context and making very wild assumptions of their purposes.

For example, they show a function that checks if a string contains a bank account number ([https://twitter.com/fs0c131y/status/956649951056064513](https://twitter.com/fs0c131y/status/956649951056064513)). Somehow they then jump to the conclusion that copied text is run through this function and uploaded to some server! But where is the proof? They could check where this method is used and show this supposed data upload happening.

In fact, since these methods are coming from some third party SDK and not the app itself, they could be completely unused.

<comment><USER3> Playing devil's advocate here, we don't know _the conditions_ of usage. It could be just inactive, or become active after X date or whatever other condition they wish. Speculating on use/non-use is a bit pointless until someone analyzes these in-depth.

What we do know is the intent of those functions, and it paints a quite horrible image.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any fight for privacy in the modern technology environment is such an extreme case of power asymmetry that I'm starting to think it's hopeless.

On the one side you have individuals that don't want their private information to be revealed without their consent. On the other are device manufacturers, advertisers, startups, and giants like Google and Facebook. Often, maintaining privacy while viewing a _single website_ requires either trusting or subverting the intentions of multiple such organizations.

It's like going to war with the British Royal Navy at the height of its power in a dinghy. So far it's been possible because the navy has made a promise that they'll "play fair". But that can change on a whim and there's ultimately very little you can do if that happens.

<comment><USER5> Don't worry, the GDPR is coming.

Now you're going to war with the Royal Navy in a nuclear armed ruber dinghy

4% revenue per timeframe in which privacy rights were violated, or 20 million. EUR, whichever is larger, is absolutely nothing to ignore anymore.

<comment><USER6> That sounds nice in theory, but in a global setting, how will it really work?

Per GP comment, there is a whole tech stack of N providers, each piece made or running in a different country, pushing data to servers in another country, which data is bought by interests in a third country, for M destinations. Then you get the providers who intentionally don't store data in GDPR countries specifically so they can avoid these rules. Look at what Uber already does to skirt the authorities. So you have at least MxN countries possibly involved or whatever. If your data is released, it'll rattle around in a pachinko machine of jurisdiction debate for years against well funded, malicious corporations.

It doesn't seem like any rule is enforceable in practice.

<comment><USER5> The GDPR applies extraterritorially.

If a company even stores a record of a single EU citizen, the GDPR applies to it, and the EU has the right to seize the assets of the company for the purpose of enforcing it.

<comment><USER7> I am curious about something.

If you were to only offer your service in North America, but someone from the EU comes over to North America on vacation, and somehow becomes recorded in your service.

Does the GDPR still apply in this case?

<comment><USER8> As long as that someone is still in the US, no. But if the service is used from the EU, the GDPR applies.

Article 3 defines the territorial scope:

[http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELE...](http://eur- lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679&from=DE#d1e1455-1-1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why does it matter whether the company is Chinese or not? Isn't it bad enough that there's a background process running, unbeknownst to the user, and presumably uncontrollable by the user, that monitors the device's clipboard and has methods like containsBankAccount(String)?

<comment><USER10> Sure it's bad but there are a couple of reasons why it matters that it's a Chinese company.

1\. It feeds into the suspicion many have that many (most? all?) large Chinese companies are effectively controlled by the Chinese government. This could go as far as having backdoors in, say, Huawei routing equipment.

2\. Effectively disclosing a user's personal information to the Chinese government could, in some cases, imperil their liberty, even their life. I'm talking about people the Chinese governments views as "dissidents". The same would be true if it were a Russian, North Korean, Iranian, Syrian or Sudanese company.

<comment><USER11> >It feeds into the suspicion many have that many (most? all?) large Chinese companies are effectively controlled by the Chinese government.

All is the correct answer. Just like it's not legal to own property in China, all companies are ultimately owned and controlled by the Chinese government. They have shiny, pretty, Western-looking front ends to attract foreign investment, but from a strictly legal standpoint, they're all owned by the government.

For some reason people forget that China is still a communist country. Nothing's changed other than it's gone from exporting rice to exporting phones.

<comment><USER12> China does indeed have the concept of private property, to the extent that China _de facto_ recognizes the rule of law (which admittedly isn't that much):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_Law_of_the_People's_R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_Law_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China)

It's not accurate to say China is "still a communist country." It could be more closely defined as a capitalist one-party state. That one party is the CCP, and they still revere Mao, but it's an open secret that they have embraced capitalism under a veneer of socialist populism.

That being said, it's not wrong to say that information in the hands of a Chinese company is a trivial step away from being information in the hands of the Chinese state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> OnePlus statement that it is a false claim: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/7t6joy/statement_f...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/7t6joy/statement_from_oneplus_on_the_latest_clipboard/)

The recent few "data collection" alarms appears to be smear campaign.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here is an article about their previous data collection: [https://www.chrisdcmoore.co.uk/post/oneplus- analytics/](https://www.chrisdcmoore.co.uk/post/oneplus-analytics/).

</comment><comment> xkcd-sucks On one hand, if you live in the USA maybe it's better that a Chinese company spies on you, because they're far away and the government/other gangsters are less likely to care about you than about local people involved in local politics etc.

On the other hand, there's no guarantee your data isn't also made available to domestic parties, either as it's intercepted in transit or explicitly shared in bulk in exchange for e.g. concessions on a trade treaty

<comment><USER11> > On one hand, if you live in the USA maybe it's better that a Chinese company > spies on you

It depends on who the "you" is.

If it's a couple of internet nobodies like you and me that China is spying on, then it's no big whoop. But if the "you" in question is someone who works at the Pentagon, or at a defense contractor, or a diplomat, or government official, then there's a problem.

<comment><USER15> Even if you are a nobody, are you sure? Maybe you know someone that is not a nobody (works at the Pentagon, or at a defense contractor, or a diplomat, or government official ...). Or you know someone that has access to a non-nobody. And even that. Probably having access to an allegedly nobody with no connection could be interesting. Which access level has, I don't know, the DevOps of Credit Karma? Or a Data Scientist for Acxiom, or... They are totally mister nobody, but they have access, directly or indirectly to important peoples. So, the risk is actually higher than expected...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How do we remove this?

I'm getting quite tired of one plus. This is the third strike against them in at least the last 6 months.

Anyone has good experience with a custom rom on a one plus 5?

<comment><USER17> I've been using Lineage on my oneplus 3 for some time, and it's very stable. [https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/cheeseburger](https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/cheeseburger)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> And what penalty will the company suffer? Virtually none.

<comment><USER19> This is one of the cases where they will probably suffer if any of this turns out to be true. OnePlus is a small manufacturer with a following of enthusiasts. They aren't large or popular enough to PR their way out of this.

<comment><USER20> OnePlus is owned by the same company that owns Oppo and Vivo, so they aren't really a small manufacturer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seems to me like this might be a requirement for Asian markets or for selling phones in those regions. Author has tweeted that it's specific to Chinese regional locale/headset. Can't it be chalked up to the costs of doing business if sales plummet? OP5s owner here.

</comment><comment><USER22> I thought this was going to be something interesting like them encoding your private data into the dictionary set to obfuscate the communication. Apparently it's nothing at all.

Also worth noting iPhone sends a lot of information in the HTTP headers about your phone - like model number. Android does the same thing. Also simply plugging your phone in to USB (not accepting any on-screen dialogs) will save the IEMI and other device IDs into your system log. If you ever have a device stolen I suggest you run $(zgrep -i iphone /var/log/*.gz)

</comment><comment><USER23> This is a smear campaign. It seems like first this only affects Chinese users and second it does not send emails or numerics (tries to protect privacy)

</comment><comment><USER24> Funny. If you visit a Canada website, it will "Save User Data to a Canadian Company Without User Consent" for sure.

</comment><comment><USER25> When will the lesson be learned! You cannot reason with China when your head is in its mouth!

</comment><comment><USER26> Can anyone recommend a similar company that isn't violating privacy?

<comment><USER19> OnePlus isn't all that special in the hardware category. Buy any device supported by Lineage OS and go nuts. If you want the whole package from a single company keep your eye on the Librem 5

[https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/)

<comment><USER27> > OnePlus isn't all that special in the hardware category.

I don't know about that. I've found their hardware to offer surprisingly good value for money, and they offer close-to-stock Android for much less than Google now do.

Their privacy failures are deeply unfortunate; I'd have remained a happy customer for the next several years were it not for these issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Shocker! Nobody should be surprised by this.

</comment><comment><USER29> The tweets are blatantly inaccurate.

There's an r/android discussion on this currently, where the consensus is that the twitter poster is a serial clickbaiter.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/7t6joy/statement_f...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/7t6joy/statement_from_oneplus_on_the_latest_clipboard/)</comment>