A Revolution in Your Pocket - <AUTHOR> https://rbs.io/2019/05/a-revolution-in-your-pocket/ <comment><USER3> I'm definitely sympathetic to the ideas described in this article. I strongly feel that software should be designed to serve the interests of users, and running locally is structurally necessary to accomplish this.

For some applications, it seems plausible that mesh networking and cooperative routing could potentially replace centralized communications infrastructure. It's probably OK if an email takes half an hour or more to wind its way through intermittently connected machines to get to a recipient, and for things like maps and restaurant menus you can take advantage of physical locality.

Most of the time, though, the decentralized approach means information propagates slower, less reliably, and with greater need for redundancy (and thus overhead), so anything that's already challenging current infrastructure, like livestreaming video, is right off the table. And then there's the part where if you aren't living in an urban center there may well not be any other machines for miles to mesh with.

I'm also doubtful about the assertion that mobile devices are up to the task of "machine learning". Cell phones have severely limited power and thermal dissipation capacity. The tensor units that have started to show up on mobile devices are exclusively designed to _evaluate_ pre-trained networks; training is far more expensive and practical today only because of the economies of scale in a datacenter: train once, run many times. But to train fancy NNs, you need big heaps of data, too, and not always the sort of data you can source in an... entirely above-board manner.

Perhaps the answer is simply that some of these things aren't done anymore, or at least not for free?

<comment><USER4> I was thinking today why not just create an overlay network on top of the internet that throws-back to a place without corporations or governments?... Back to the 90s internet. With its own DNS servers, etc. Which does not resolve anything outside of the overlay network. So no facebook, no Google, no cloud services... Maybe a user run directory like Yahoo! used to be. Nothing but realms run by webmasters. A walled garden of the people by the people for the people.

<comment><USER5> Tor?

<comment><USER6> i2p.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We've been working on a very similar idea to this for the past few months: [https://pocketweb.io](https://pocketweb.io)

There is a very early iOS beta available, and Android is coming within the month. We've thought a lot about battery and data and have gotten really good results by leveraging existing radio wakeups, batching requests, and doing all sorts of optimizations to the sites themselves.

Right now we're focused entirely on personal websites, because we believe the majority of those can actually easily be hosted on a phone (eg. How many people actually view your LinkedIn page every day? A single Facebook page doesn't require a datacenter. Etc).

We're limited to single static pages with images right now but better support for multiple pages and server code with SQLite is coming. More template types, for example stores, are coming as well.

Let us know what you think!

<comment><USER8> Love the idea. Couple first impressions from the iOS app though:

1\. Most of the icons and images are really low-res. You should include @2x, @3x assets or just have higher res images and let them downscale on older devices. 2\. A lot of the "Latest Active Sites" won't load, and the spinner just spins forever. I know the whole point is that it's a site hosted on someone's phone and may or may not be available, but there definitely needs to be a more graceful way to fail. The spinner blocks the UI and doesn't go away.

I know it's isn't part of the core service you're trying to offer, but seeing blurry buttons and having the app get into a broken state after clicking some links is not a good first impression. There's a lot of signalling involved in the first 30 seconds or so when a user (like me) is trying to decide if they want to invest time and brainpower into exploring your service, and it's worth smoothing those things out.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the feedback! We're still in very early days with regards to the UI, and I know there's a ton of room for improvement. Hopefully we'll have something more presentable ready soon!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I noticed that the word "battery" doesn't appear anywhere in this post. Isn't conserving battery power one reason why we delegate so much to central services?

That said, I think the wireless routers that a lot of us have in our homes could play an important role in this kind of decentralized Internet. They'd need to have more computing power than many wireless routers do, but that's OK because they're already plugged into the wall all the time.

<comment><USER10> That vision is definitely being explored, not necessarily built into the router but usually as network attached appliances for some kind of "local cloud" (idk marketing). Syncloud & antsle are some Ive seen on the device side, and usually they run owncloud or nextcloud plus other "apps"

The problem is from a reliability standpoint running stuff at home can be not great. Home network quality / reliability is not going to be datacenter quality, you're going to have to deal with this thing running all the time & power costs, and you're probably going to have to be tech-inclined enough to admin these apps at some point. These things have real costs, I think there's a place for an honest discussion about what things cost for sure, but I don't think people are getting fleeced on apps in the cloud by and large

<comment><USER11> there was a proposal ~10years ago on that [https://fon.com/](https://fon.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This feels like a superset of the problem medical records management is in a digital age.

There are the bits you need public. your anaphylaxis status. your advanced health directive with 'do not rescucitate' and your organ donation status.

There are the bits you need semi public. You need a trained health professional in sexual health to know you have chlamydia, but its not relevant to a physio doing upper body work.

There are the bits you need private. your mental health status adversely affects your employer insurance, and your employment. You do not wish this revealed randomly.

Some health models empower some health professionals with magic override keys to see almost all of it.

Some models empower statisticians to see all of it in 100 years after your death.

Some models you carry it in a smart card. Some models you carry keys, and its in a central DB.

<comment><USER13> > your mental health status adversely affects your employer insurance

This statement makes no sense in 99% of the countries in the world.

<comment><USER14> In the U.S., any condition that you have CAN BE AND WILL BE used against you - either by insurance firms, employers, etc. Even if in some cases it is illegal to be used against you, the U.S.' environment is such that those with power over you will use such info against you...so you can unfortunately consider the U.S. in the 1% of the countries that you cited. </sigh>

<comment><USER15> I think you and @Kiro are in agreement. My interpretation of @Kiro's comment is that most of the world doesn't do employer-provided insurance, so that aspect of @ggm's comment would essentially only apply to the US.

<comment><USER12> An awful lot of the oecd economies with FinTech, mining and the like do have employer funded health benefits. It's a tool to attract high-performance staff, by offering fringe benefits which bypass taxation.

If you are working for a trans national in a developing or emerging economy you will have these benefits.

So sure, normal health internationally is not the us model. This is packaged perks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article really resonated with me. I rarely use my Android phone for talking to people, and the apps and setup are geared to getting work done securely and with as much privacy as possible. I seem to spend a _lot_ of time tweaking settings to stop Google trying to run my life and monitoring me. Overall, I have a good experience but I really wish I didn't have to keep fighting my phone!

What would _really_ make a difference (to me at least) would be a libre phone/OS. Yes, I know these are available but I can't afford them. What we need is a freedom-minded philanthropist to step in and Save The World. Once we have a more private phone then surely privacy-designed systems could flourish, as the author describes. If that happened I'd be there like a bear!

<comment><USER17> I would suggest installing LineageOS on a supported phone and not installing any of the proprietary Google apps (play services, maps etc). I have been doing that for a number of years.

[https://lineageos.org/](https://lineageos.org/)

<comment><USER18> LineageOS still use Google services, even without preinstalled google apps.

<comment><USER17> Which ones, do you have a link where I can read more about it?

<comment><USER18> DNS, connectivity checks, etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is an idea that keeps coming back every 2 years or so. While it is enticing to think about, these ideas never manifest into anything. With most decentralized projects there usually hasn't been a big enough financial incentive to execute them.

<comment><USER20> I don't disagree, but... when Bitcoin came out I ignored it because of the long history of digital cash schemes that had failed. I assumed the same forces would give it the same fate.

If decentralized money can finally find some traction, maybe so can other kinds of networks. Maybe the financial incentives are a part of the context that could change.

<comment><USER21> Cryptocurrencies are special in that, almost from their very inception, they could be used to make money. There are at least four ways one can make money with them: those with access to cheap electricity and enough starting capital can literally print money out of thin air; they form unregulated exchanges to gamble on; they're very useful for scamming people; they're also useful for laundering money and buying illicit goods. These four things give cryptocurrencies _a lot_ of interest and participants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The author should check out Scuttlebutt if they haven't already. There's a compatible mobile app called Manyverse which will sync your social feed over WLAN or Bluetooth with peers while it's open, and also over the DHT and via public forwarding servers.

</comment><comment><USER23> > Many, if not most, of us already own a hand-sized computer with a persistent > network connection that we take pretty much everywhere and which lives in > our pockets or bags. The top of the line Android and Apple personal > computing devices [...] run at upwards of 2 Ghz, have around 4GB of RAM, and > on-board storage ranging between 64 and 512 GB.

Who is "many of us" really? If this is supposed to be a promising new avenue for decentralising the internet it seems a little premature... I feel like there are too many wide eyed rich people with $1k phones living in a bubble sometimes - the vast majority of the world cannot afford the expensive toys you take for granted.

> honestly, does anyone use their "phone" primarily as a voice communication > device anymore?

Most of the world... (The internet does exist outside san francisco, but hey you can decentralise _your_ internet I guess)

<comment><USER24> I live in Washington, DC, actually...

But I appreciate the feedback. I think you're right that I'm being a bit optimistic here, but the whole vision is a work in progress.

I'm also not sure that current smartphones are actually what you would want to use for such a vision. They're convenient because lots of people have them, but they're not purpose-built for the kind of work that I'm discussing here.

<comment><USER23> > I live in Washington, DC, actually...

Yes, SF was just a euphemism for "rich people city", oh great now you made me say it!

> I'm also not sure that current smartphones are actually what you would want > to use for such a vision. They're convenient because lots of people have > them, but they're not purpose-built for the kind of work that I'm discussing > here.

Smartphone technology has already created lots of nice side-effects like the super cheap single board computer craze... I honestly think this is currently the closest device that is of a practical cost and performance for almost "everyone" as a personal server.

But the main issue with all these decentralised ideas is not really if your personal server is fast enough, but whether it has enough pipe (this is still a problem even in a mesh network). Dare something be slightly popular (especially video), your personal pipe will never be large enough, this is where centralisation rules unless P2P serving technology is pushed more (there are already some nice working examples out there for video and even entire static sites).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is not a new idea. Apple already emphasises that they do all the machine learning on your own device and no data is sent to the cloud. But this approach only works well for a small class of problems. For other types of problems you need to look at data wholistically at a large scale in order to see patterns and you need a cloud service.

But more importantly we know that complex services break once in a while. If such services run on entirely on your personal device then the complexity of your device goes up exponentially. That's not good. We learned in the 90's that a better model is to centralize complexity, and make end devices as simple as possible. (Look up Larry Ellison's 90's speeches about Network Computing.) So, no, moving the center of computing to personal devices is not a good idea!

<comment><USER26> _> For other types of problems you need to look at data wholistically at a large scale in order to see patterns and you need a cloud service._

What types of problems do you have in mind?

 _> But more importantly we know that complex services break once in a while. If such services run on entirely on your personal device then the complexity of your device goes up exponentially._

The idea is that a lot of problems aren't so complex once delegated to participants of the network.

 _> We learned in the 90's that a better model is to centralize complexity, and make end devices as simple as possible. (Look up Larry Ellison's 90's speeches about Network Computing.) So, no, moving the center of computing to personal devices is not a good idea!_

By "we learned in the 90s" you mean that a company with an obvious commercial interest in the idea tried to push it and largely failed because it was based on assumptions that were practically Jurassic within a few years ("you don't need a powerful machine to support the use of common network services" and "thin clients can be much cheaper than general purpose computers"). We have our multi-core gigs-of-RAM phones and multi-core gigs-of-RAM Chromebooks now that may superficially qualify for implementing the idea of a "network computer" or even "thin clients" by dubious standards, but are actually just powerful devices that are locked down to proprietary third party services for reasons that have no real advantage to the consumer; "fat" clients.

Other things we learned in the 90s: JNCO jeans are cool.

<comment><USER27> _> What types of problems do you have in mind?_

Search comes to mind. Traffic information systems are going to become more important. Also, everything related to fighting fraud, spam, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Nice write up. I am straying off topic, but I am interested in local decentralized data, machine learning, and apps. I switched to iOS several years ago for privacy reasons, but at least a few years ago it was a nuisance to permanently install one's own apps on your iPhone. My iOS developer account expired a few years ago so maybe this has changed. It seems important to be able to build apps from source code and install them on your own device. Android is probably a better story for this but my Samsung phones had a ton of crap ware on them, taking hours to clean up (as much as possible). What do people use? De-Googlized Androids? Easier way to install one's own iOS apps just on your device?

<comment><USER29> I've been using a de-Googled Blackberry KeyOne. I adore the keyboard, and Blackberry is pretty low on apps with undisclosed and/or non-standard permissions[1]. Root's unavailable, but disabling everything down to, and including, Play Services, is good enough until the Librem 5 is available.

At this point I'm down to a minimum of apps from the yalP store (Firefox, Whatsapp, Signal, Wire, VLC), with everything else on F-Droid.

AndOSM is more than good enough for me; either it's right there within a search, or I find a website with an address, and add what was missing at my earliest convenience. It's not perfect, but data seems to be added faster than the world changes, suggesting Google will have to innovate or lose their lead in accuracy/completeness.

[1] [http://eprints.networks.imdea.org/1959/1/An_Analysis_of_Pre-...](http://eprints.networks.imdea.org/1959/1/An_Analysis_of_Pre- installed_Android_Software_2019_EN.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Keeping all those radios powered on and transmitting/receiving for mesh network servicing/upkeep is going to burn through battery pretty quick :(

<comment><USER24> Author here.... I'm actually really interested in what we can do about the battery situation. The vision I laid out is clearly more battery intensive than your average phone is today. I do have some ideas about breaking apart the compute and display components, allowing the compute (and wireless) to go in a bag (or something) and connect up to a hefty battery while the human interface components are lighter weight.

<comment><USER31> Carrieng extra weight in my backpack and remembering to charge it all the time sounds pretty annoying. Why would someone do this, compared to using a remote computer? Maybe a home server, if they really hate cloud?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is there any hope we can have something like a "Linux phone" someday and not have to cater to anyone or any privacy infringement at all?

<comment><USER33> I'd say our main hope at the moment is the Librem 5 [https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Assuming I'm an average user, this revolution would require my phone to double the time spent transmitting and receiving data, and block off a large chunk of its internal storage for information I don't care about. I cannot imagine as a consumer thinking these losses if battery life and data capacity ever being worth it.

</comment><comment><USER35> Sharing data directly from mobile sounds like a poor idea since data caps and data volume pricing is rampant in many countries. Plus it is likely to make a poor battery life even worse. I would rather folks upload data on their home or shared servers for sharing purposes.

</comment><comment><USER36> A decentralised internet running on mobile devices? Richard Hendricks would like a word.

</comment><comment><USER37> I really wish the OS vendors weren't asleep at the wheel on this one, or otherwise being distracted by the effort to just 'move everything to the cloud'.

Imagine if we had an OS that solved the usability problems of IPFS and made it immensely easy to publish content on ones own named segment of an IPFS network - instead of having things like Dropbox glom themselves around a paltry excuse for file-sharing system services that exist in most modern OS's today?

Wouldn't it be grand if someone write an email client - yes, EMAIL - <USER2> integrated with a smart contact system, allowing one to run and operate ones own social network without requiring any further infrastructure beyond local, private email services. Everything I do on Facebook, I was once able to do just as easily on Email - the interface is the only difference. I want social networking back under my control again, and a return to email, wrapped in a better local tool for providing the services, is the way to do it.

I also want to be able to turn myself off the Internet - having the ability to turn my phone off and be unavailable to the Internet at large - not just as a consumer, but also as a provider of information - should be a basic, inarguable right.

If the OS vendors weren't chasing the cloud bucks, this would be a reality.

I believe an opportunity for a smart team exists: build a Linux distribution which incorporates a few basic ideological rules:

* The user owns their data

* The user controls their data

* No new services or protocols are needed to provide better services: Use OSI properly or GTFO

* The UI is the final frontier for freedom

* If the user wants to fully disappear: OFF SWITCH

* If the user wants to engage in public discourse: ON SWITCH

* De-centralize all the things, bring control back to the local user always

As the years go by, I feel more and more inclined to start a test-bed Linux distro which uses these rules to build out a user-controlled OS designed for widespread content distribution on the basis of such things as IPFS, albeit with a much, much better UI for maintaining ones assets than currently exists. If anyone else is interested in such an experiment, I am all ears ..

<comment><USER31> Btw, "OFF SWITCH" is fundamentally incompatible with IPFS.

If you serve your website from IPFS, the first visitor will get the full copy and start serving it. You can toggle your switch as much as you want, this won't have any effect.

It's funny that Facebook is much better at giving control to user than email. At least in Facebook, you can delete post. And once you send email, there is no way to retract it.

<comment><USER21> > _It 's funny that Facebook is much better at giving control to user than > email. At least in Facebook, you can delete post. And once you send email, > there is no way to retract it._

This is hitting straight into data ownership question. As a sender, I might want the ability to retract a message I sent. As a receiver, however, I do _not_ want the sender to have that ability. Once a message reaches my inbox, I want to own it.

I'm strongly on the receiver side on this one. This is how it works in meatspace - once you send a message, you can't unsend it; it belongs to the transport layer and then to the receiver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Anyone interested in this sort of revolution should look into Dweb Camp ([https://dwebcamp.org/about/](https://dwebcamp.org/about/)) put on by the Internet Archive crew. Folks from Mastodon, Gun, Scuttlebutt, IPFS, Beaker Browser (DAT), etc. will likely be there. If not, look into these names, download Manyverse for your Android phone (Scuttlebutt client) and start playing around.

</comment><comment><USER39> I keep waiting for someone to port Beaker Browser[1] or Dat to mobile.

1\. [https://beakerbrowser.com/](https://beakerbrowser.com/)

</comment><comment><USER40> I like a lot of these ideas. And eventually it seems like mobile devices is where it could go.

But before we are entirely reliant on mobile, we may be able to do a lot of it on our home computers over the regular internet using decentralized protocols.

But back to mobile, does anyone know of any open decentralized identity solutions that will run on a smartphone?

</comment><comment><USER41> A summary at the beginning would be nice.

<comment><USER42> The paragraph after "The Vision" seems reasonably clear on this:

> There is the potential today to reclaim control of our digital lives from > monopolist platforms and unnecessary rent-seeking. There is a world within > reach where always-on, always-connected pocket computers become personal > data stores. All your photos, documents, messages, and other data live with > you, not on a faceless server belonging to a random corporation. The only > machine learning done is done for you. Data only leaves your device because > you want to send it somewhere.

<comment><USER43> But they're not stored on central servers because we don't have room on our phones but because we want to share them with others. This whole article feels like an attack on Facebook and similar services without actually naming them. And, as a consequence, without actually addressing how they succeeded or how to supplant them.

<comment><USER42> I wasn't making an argument, just repeating the author's summary that was requested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I don't know where to begin so I'll just quote chunks and respond to them.

> Our data will stay on our mobile computers and be backed up (encrypted of > course) in the cloud

If one's phone is stolen or destroyed, how does one restore from the cloud backup? What prevents me from buying a 2nd phone and attempting to "restore" it from my friend's backup? Do I just have to guess his password? I'm imagining something like Apple's iCloud backups but that service involves a _lot_ of details that need to be right to ensure its security. That costs money, which means users either have to pay in cash or by having their data mined (or both).

I predict that the most popular backup service in this hypothetical world would be a free service that leaves user data unencrypted and sells it to 3rd parties.

> We will carry with us the fundamental representation of our identity, backed > and verified by advanced encryption, instead of cumbersome passwords or > logins associated with the same large platforms that control our social > lives

That's great until the battery dies or there's a hardware failure or the phone is lost or stolen. Then you have to restore from a backup and that means verifying your identity in some other manner. At some point, identity reduces to a combination of: 1. A password or secret. (Something you know.) 2. A token issued by some trusted entity declaring you are who you claim to be. (Something you have.) 3. A biometric. (Something you are.) Assuming your phone is dead, only option 1 can be used without a 3rd party storing identifying information about you.

> Sharing of data, either broadly with a large group or directly person to > person, will happen directly between mobile computers, skipping the > intermediaries like Facebook or Twitter we're used to today

People's phones aren't always online at the same time. Sometimes they're in a tunnel or on a plane or away from civilization. Given that constraint, who is storing and transmitting the data between the two people? Who runs the service that lets phones say, "I'm Bob's phone. I want to talk to Alice's phone. What is her IP? Oh she's offline? OK send her this data when she's back." Are they compensated for doing so? If not, why would they run such a service?

> Artificial assistance will be local first – for example, searches for the > best nearby coffee shop will turn to the nearby network for responses before > asking the entire planet

I seriously doubt the local network would give better recommendations and results than Yelp or Google Maps, as both entities would sync the local info to their own databases and run their own algorithms on the data. Their results would be a superset of the local data with better algorithms. Who curates the local network's results for spam or fake reviews? Why would they have an incentive to do so?

> Machine learning will provide personalized intelligent assistance that runs > on your own mobile computer

I don't think that could work. The latest phones have hardware to run ML algorithms efficiently, but they don't have the hardware to train them. That requires TPUs and a lot of power. Also you need large data sets to train models. That means aggregating lots of people's data.

Most people either don't understand or don't care about the implications of Facebook/Google/Amazon slurping up information about them. If anything, people prefer it because they get a better experience. Their news feed has more interesting content. Their Amazon recommendations more closely match what they want. Their search results are more relevant. For these people, the current situation is a win-win.

I'm not against this idea, I just don't think it has a chance of working. For something new to succeed, it needs to be more compelling than existing products. More importantly, it needs to offer advantages that existing products can't copy. If at the end of the day you build something that's slightly less convenient to use than Facebook, it doesn't matter how privacy- centric it is. You'll only attract a few idealists.

</comment><comment><USER45> A phone is good for talking to people. Don't need a computer for that. Much better audio (analog) would be a plus.

I'd use a mobile-sized computer with no radios, just ethernet, USB (for a keyboard) and HDMI (monitor).

Putting both in one package? just asking for troubles.

<comment><USER31> > I'd use a mobile-sized computer with no radios, just ethernet, USB (for a > keyboard) and HDMI (monitor).

sounds exactly like Raspberry PI? (or any of the 100's of other cheap SBCs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is just... weird.

We have centralized services for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that they're more reliable than decentralized systems. Phones get lost, stolen, drowned, and crushed. People drive through tunnels or into mountains without cell signal. Batteries die.

It seems patently absurd to think that a P2P network of handsets is somehow going to replace The Datacenter, on any timescale.

<comment><USER47> That's pretty much the intent and role of IPFS though. Based upon current saturation statistics for mobile telephone handsets (which has to be 95%+ for every person 15+ years old in the USA at least), you're only a few meters away from another handset that's likely GPS enabled. Why in the world do we need centralized mobile carrier infrastructure when mesh-based P2P comms are now possible over ISM band networks? An IPFS + 900MHz P2P mobile chipset addon + GPS-based geographical routed P2P communications transport for handsets (and rapid adoption of the same) is all it would take to eliminate the mobile carriers. This could be as simple as a BLE-enabled device or phone case...

<comment><USER48> Mesh networks unfortunately scale really poorly [1]: O(1/sqrt(N)). You really need a fat backbone to turn the topology into something more like a hypercube.

[1] [https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/grid:mobicom01/paper.pdf](https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/grid:mobicom01/paper.pdf)

<comment><USER47> ...for static ad hoc networks. GPS-based geographical routing would be a dynamic, constantly changing optimized mesh.

<comment><USER48> Type of routing doesn't make a difference for the above result. The main assumption is that node-pairs that want to communicate have random locations. That leads to O(N) pairs trying to go across O(sqrt(N)) links in the middle.

In practice who knows what kind of communication patterns you would get. Applications would probably evolve around the long distance limit if it existed, but it's hard to imagine not having backbone links. Most likely the meshes would stay relatively localized (and I believe there exist a number of regional wireless mesh networks out there serving real customers).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> What about the potential for malware propagation? Why should I trust the mesh network?

</comment><comment><USER50> reminds me of beartooth

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

</comment><comment><USER51> Would like to note that the idea of mesh decentralized networks is a big plot point (later) in the Silicon Valley HBO show - [https://play.hbonow.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GVU2WugfAylFvj...](https://play.hbonow.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GVU2WugfAylFvjSoJATvA?camp=Search&play=true)</comment>


Venture Capital Is Getting Squeezed - Alex-Potsides https://medium.com/startup-games/venture-capital-is-getting-squeezed-b145ff3092ab <comment><AUTHOR> This looks like it was copy/pasted from

[https://stratechery.com/2015/venture-capital-and-the- interne...](https://stratechery.com/2015/venture-capital-and-the-internets- impact/)</comment>


History Will Remember Obama as the Great Slayer of Patent Trolls - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/03/obama-legacy-patent-trolls/ <comment><USER2> History will remember Obama as the weak President who did nothing to stop Russia from destroying the one principle that held the world back from territorial wars ever since WWII.

As we enter the new era of land grabs and might-makes-right, history shall record that what the American President did to stop it was order travel bans on a few minor flunkeys.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, what was the one principle? The US certainly didn't stop randomly invading countries after WWII.

<comment><USER2> The principle of territorial integrity, enshrined among other things in Chapter 1 of the UN Charter.

The US didn't stop invading, and neither did the USSR. But the one principle was that waging war for territorial gain is no longer acceptable.

After WWII, the major countries understood that while it's impossible to completely outlaw war - states will find real or imagined reasons to attack each other - if we agree to freeze borders, most of the motivation for waging war will go away.

And it worked. After 1945, no developed country started a war against a peaceful neighbour to perform a land grab. The very few exceptions where annexations did happen were in the context of pre-existing state of war, and even so were not recognized by the international community (e.g. the Golan Heights).

But actually invading a country which doesn't threaten you and annexing part of its territory? Didn't happen after 1945.

Until 2014. Welcome to the new era.

<comment><USER4> Russia "gave" Crimea to Ukraine well after WWII. The majority of Crimeans are Russian. Putin is defintely taking a leaf out of Hitler's play book but it's more like "Khrushchev gave it and Putin took it back"

<comment><USER2> Russia and Ukraine weren't sovereign states when it happened. It's not relevant to the international principle I'm talking about.

It's true that the majority of Crimeans are Russian, but the majority of people in Sudetenland were Germans, too.

The whole point of territorial integrity is that state boundaries are frozen to prevent territorial wars, _even if_ they don't happen to coincide exactly with ethnic boundaries (they never do).

If there's no threat of territorial land-grabs, there's no motivation for the sovereign power to do ethnic cleansing. In Crimea, for example, Russians were and remained the majority since Ukraine declared independence in 1991. Ukraine never tried to settle a huge mass of Ukrainians in Crimea, or induce Crimean Russians to move out. In the bright new world we've now arrived at, states will be very motivated to "smooth out" their populations by ethnicity, so that neighboring powers don't invade and annex lands with "their people".

The 19th and 20th centuries were rife with such ethnic cleansings and mass resettlements; ever since the fallout of WWII we had very few. Not anymore.

<comment><USER5> _" If there's no threat of territorial land-grabs, there's no motivation for the sovereign power to do ethnic cleansing."_

There's _less_ motivation. If power is (or might be) democratically controlled, and issues are divided along ethnic lines, then there remains motivation.

Still an important point, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "If you are asserting a patent against people who have never heard of your > technology and they never embodied it in commercial product, or otherwise > you have no real reason to think they copied you," he says. "And if you're > doing that, and your patent isn't something that is very specific, and is in > general vague, that is a pretty clear sign that you are a patent troll."

This is really the gist of it.

<comment><USER7> To be honest, I don't fully understand this quote.

In the first sentence, he seems to be saying a patent troll might be suing someone who has never heard of the troll's technology and they haven't produced a commercial product. The "they" in that sentence seems to imply he is speaking of the one being sued. If they, meaning the party being sued, has not created a commercial product that infringes on the troll's technology, it begs the question of why are they being sued?

Plus, a patent doesn't have to vague for it to be considered part of a patent troll. It can be a very clear and precise patent on something so glaringly obvious that no one else bothered to patent it because a normal thinking person wouldn't think it should be granted in the first place.

<comment><USER6> The first sentence doesn't say the company being sued hasn't produced a commercial product, but rather hasn't embodied the invention described in the plaintiff's patents in a commercial product. I.e. they have a commercial product, but have no reason to believe it incorporates anyone else's invention.

> It can be a very clear and precise patent on something so glaringly obvious > that no one else bothered to patent it because a normal thinking person > wouldn't think it should be granted in the first place.

In practice this is a lesser problem, because a very clear and precise patent on something really obvious will be quite easy to invalidate using prior art. It's not free to defend such suits, but cheap enough where a nuisance settlement isn't particularly attractive. It's the vague patents that aren't clearly applicable to your particular problem domain that are the greatest concern, because litigating the meaning of those patents can be very expensive.

<comment><USER7> Well, I'm still confused.

Company A has a patent, Company B has a product that doesn't use said patent, Company A sues Company B anyway?

Or are you saying that Company B has a product that they think is original by having never seen the patent beforehand?

I'm just getting stuck on the idea of being in a patent lawsuit over a product, or no product I guess, that doesn't involve the company being sued for the patent in question.

As for the second point, a clear and precise patent on something obvious would be easy to use. You simply offer to settle and/or license cheaper than it would be to fight it in court, pushing the idea that invalidation is not easy and not common. It would pay off if you think of the long tail.

The vague patents are for going after the big targets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> He will be remembered for being the first black president, remarkable in his unremarkableness and continuation of the status quo.

</comment><comment><USER9> Only if he is successful.

While personally, I am of the mind that software patents should be eliminated entirely, the concept of patents appears in the constitution[1], which makes it very hard to make substantive changes, and there are a lot of people aligned to keep current laws in place. If you fundamentally believe that an idea on its own that has not been instantiated in a product has value (which is a basic concept of patents), then trolls are very hard to eliminate. What if an inventor sells his patent to a lawyer in order to monetize it (his protected right) because he lacks the resources to litigate himself? Then is that lawyer a troll, or just an enforcer of the inventor's right?

It's easy to say we are trying to eliminate trolls, but it's hard to draw a black and white distinction between trolls and legitimate plaintiffs if you fundamentally believe that an idea without a product has value, and that concept is in the constitution (or at least,the constitution has been interpreted that way to date).

[1] Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8

</comment><comment><USER10> There is a long way to go to fix patents.

[http://stks.freshpatents.com/AAPL-sym.php](http://stks.freshpatents.com/AAPL- sym.php)

No matter what happens with Obama it couldn't be worse than what Romney would have done.

<comment><USER11> At least Romney knows how to run a business - which is more than can be said of a Community Activist.

Obama is going to go down as the worst President in history. Staggering debt, destruction of the Health Care industry, "Common Core", Benghazi, lies, corruption, etc.

I doubt Romney would have put the country in the mess it is now.

Hope & Change my ass...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If we really are making statements predicting how future generations will remember a current figure:

"History will remember Obama for being the First African American President of the United States", will supersede any other statement in the long run (50-100+ years).

<comment><USER13> Even that assumes the perpetuation of certain modern attitudes that I don't feel comfortable confidently asserting into the future. Perhaps race won't matter in 100 years, and people will hardly think to notice. Perhaps after the first AI President of the United States, the mere question of _race_ won't be seen as worth mentioning, next to the more pressing question of _species_... the future is a foreign country, more foreign than anything currently in the world.

<comment><USER14> Even if race doesn't matter in 100 years, historians will still mark its importance in the development of the United States (and every other country in the world). Even _with_ a post-racial future, Obama's most significant feature will be that he represented a tremendous milestone in America's racial issues.

<comment><USER15> I find this doubtful.

Up to now, Margaret Thatcher is not primarily remembered for being female, a comparable and unmatched milestone. She is remembered more for what she achieved in office (for good or for bad).

The changes that allowed America to have its first black president did not happen on the day of the election in 2008, nor during Obama's time in office. To suggest that he will be remembered for this is to suggest that he has done nothing of historical note.

<comment><USER16> We are used to seeing females as leaders though - as with your example, UK has a QUEEN, so having a female PM while unprecedented, is not that surprising. And we've had queens leading entire countries centuries before. However, a black person chosen as president in a country which just 40 years earlier had racial segregation? That's really surprising and a massive development.

<comment><USER15> Two words: Nelson Mandela.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> While he himself is using Apple-products? I say not.

<comment><USER18> A patent troll is a person or company who enforces patent rights against accused infringers in an attempt to collect licensing fees, but does not manufacture products or supply services based upon the patents in question.

<comment><USER7> What if they produce products on some of their patents and sue based on the others?

<comment><USER19> That'd be a grey area, but doesn't really apply to Apple anyway.

<comment><USER7> I think it applies to both Apple and Microsoft.

Likely applies to a number of large international corporations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If we're gonna be fair and balanced, let's not forget targeted assassinations. See also: works by Jeremy Scahill

</comment><comment><USER21> History is long.

Long after the time in which anyone can easily recall who was US president in 2014, or what party was in power, or which wars of declining empire were fought, and then long after anyone even cares about that ancient history, and later, long after the whole downward slope of the history of the US is but a footnote of interest to scholars of the transition from second to third millennium, and later still, long after anyone can even find out with any great reliability who was US president in 2014 ... long after all these things are forgotten, the first half of the 21st century will still be clearly recalled as the dawn of the biotech and data era, the coming of age of medicine and computing.

Progress in science and technology is really the only thing that matters in the long term. Everything else is just fiddling cultural details. How much do you know or care about the legal disputes of Ur?</comment>


All Presidents Are Above Average - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2244527/

<comment><USER2> I don't doubt that history books for children often paint historical figures in more (or less) generous terms than reality would suggest, but this story is pretty thin on examples. Six quotes about 43 of the most studied men in history doesn't really say anything at all, especially when you consider that writers of adult history have their own unique biases.

<comment><USER3> It's not a hard-hitting exposé -- it's just supposed to be a little bit funny.

Sometimes the flaws aren't about details. It's the aura of holiness. Americans seem to think it's good that children have a sort of secular faith in their head of state. I'm not sure why.

I saw this book "Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope" in my local bookstore once, which takes it way over the top. Unintentionally hilarious, or perhaps disturbing. Judge for yourself:

<http://www.nikkigrimes.com/books/bkbarack.html></comment></comment>


Japanese and Taiwanese Flags Removed from Maverick's Jacket in New Top Gun - <AUTHOR> https://kotaku.com/japanese-and-taiwanese-flag-removed-from-mavericks-jack-1836625162 <comment><AUTHOR> The silver lining is that Winnie the Pooh's efforts around Taiwan have had somewhat of a Streisand effect in the west: I really didn't know anything about its situation with China until the censorship started getting coverage.</comment>


Ask HN: Good websites about UI design - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I'm looking for interesting websites/blogs about user interface design.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> A couple of usability sites, which are a big part of design:

\- <http://www.useit.com/> (Jakob Nielsen) \- <http://asktog.com/> (Bruce Tognazzini)

Bruce publishes rarely and seems to be more interesting. Jakob has some great posts, but also a lot that feel more like "please buy my book" than "this is helpful".

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/20-websites-t...](http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/20-websites- to-help-you-master-user-interface-design/)

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.konigi.com/>

<http://www.patterntap.com/></comment>


Telegram is the hot new source for pirated content - <AUTHOR> https://theoutline.com/post/4143/telegram-is-the-hot-new-source-for-illegal-downloads <comment><USER2> that's a good sign!</comment>


Is the US about to split the internet? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53686390 <comment><USER2> Hasn't China already gone halfway to that by putting up the Great Firewall and strongly funding local "copycats" of many companies that were founded and based in the US?

I'm not suggesting that what the US is planning is good! I think it's not great. But it doesn't seem to be a pre-emptive thing that's being done.

<comment><USER3> From a non-developed world viewpoint, is it even possible for China/India etc to have there companies grow to such a massive size to rival Facebook, Micrisoft etc without protecting them from multi-nationals with way more immense power and the capacity to simply buy companies?

Ala, Facebook bought Instagram. If there was no such restriction, could they not have just bought Tencent in its infancy?

Essentially ensuring that currently countries that have not developed will continually never develop.

<comment><USER4> Just look at the EU and you have your answer about protecting your young markets.

<comment><USER5> And the answer is that there's nothing to rival Facebook, Google, etc. in Europe. Save for Yandex in Russia.

<comment><USER6> You're ignoring the fact of FB, Google et al opening offices all over Germany/EU and paying ludicrous salaries to even junior devs. It is a form of resource theft IMHO.

They have the deep coffers to lure young people who otherwise might've started their own businesses. As a result, the IT and developer market is entirely fucked up here in Southern Germany. Yes, yes, "software eating the World" and all that — but the big players (US corps, mostly) are not just by buying up most of the talent but _they create unhealty expectations for the rest of the crowd_.

_"I know where to put a semicolon in JS, I expect a starting salary of €100k"_ etc.

<comment><USER7> If they actually truly know where semicolons go in JS, then they may be worth €100k. That's some deep magic, which has bitten this very, very experienced developer in the ass more than once.

Getting it right in Java or C is no special feat. Getting it 100% correct in Javascript... that's an accomplishment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Over the years I've come to believe that an overwhelming amount of people would actually prefer a censored internet. Some might want "obscene" material gone, others would love to eradicate "fake news" and a few people might still be around that would instantly jump at any chance to purge the internet of blasphemy against their sky-daddy of choice.

I used to think censorship was really just an instrument of the few to control the masses, but I'm starting to believe that we who just don't want a censored internet are the minority.

<comment><USER9> I support the tiktok ban because it's about economic fairness. American tech companies can't fairly compete in China. But until now, Chinese tech companies _can_. This gives inherent advantages to Chinese tech companies.

<comment><USER10> > American tech companies can't fairly compete in China.

They absolutely can if they adhere to the law. LinkedIn and GitHub are thriving in China. Google and Facebook voluntarily pulled out.

<comment><USER11> China doesn't have rule of law. They have rule by law, but that's quite different: as long as google or Facebook can't impress the official class, the officials will find a law to keep them out. They can't actually go to court and dispute the decision (which doesn't officially exist anyways), and I'm sure Tiktok and Tencent are going to court over this (and they even have a good chance of even winning).

Let's put it this way: the Chinese Constitution makes strong guarantees about freedom of speech and press. But it doesn't matter since there is no court to enforce any of that, China lacks any checks and balances and officials mostly rule by fiat and hierarchy.

<comment><USER12> You could just as well be describing DC, except FAANG have 100x more power _Inside The Beltway_ than inside First Ring Road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just wonder if the source of the problem are these "App stores" of the world.

If I could just download these apps like I download software for linux, it would be very difficult for the govt to enforce anything like this.

Tik-tok banned in India too and by ban it merely meant that the govt. forced Google / Apple to remove it from the play store. There is complete ban on torrent / porn sites in India but that doesn't stop anyone from visiting those either.

I think this is just one more argument against these central repos that are aiding censorship and political propagandas.

<comment><USER14> I think you are right that "app stores" are the most convenient place to enforce this. They get a fairly good effectiveness with low effort.

However I doubt that not having them would stop the bans, it would take a bit more motivation, and a lot more effort but unless we have a truly censor- resistant solution I suspect the government would still put in the effort.

<comment><USER15> Take a look at how that worked out for attempts to suppress the DVD/CSS ripping algorithm.

When software is source code, not just binary blobs, it starts to enjoy (some|more) protection under the 1st amendment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is exactly why we don't want walled gardens. You can quickly loose your freedoms for the sake of "security".

<comment><USER17> I agree in a philosophical sense, but I'm not sure how a separate method of distribution would affect this particular situation. Unless the argument is just against gatekeepers in general, like the state.

<comment><USER18> I would say it's that any centralised code signing source will inevitably be unleashed in a geopolitical fight at some point, and setting them up in the name of security should always bear that in mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "We don't want Chinese companies spying on Americans, that's OUR gig!"

<comment><USER20> As a European, all I see is US spying on everyone through their US companies/apps, and bullying other countries that try to so the same...

Europe standing clueless in the middle, European council with an average age of 70ish not understanding what all the fuss is about.

<comment><USER21> Governments and companies are going to be spying on everybody either way thanks to technology.

If asked, given the current state of these two entities, I would choose being spied on by the US government 100 out of 100 times over being spied on by the Chinese government.

<comment><USER22> As a Canadian, and one employed by a US HQ'd company, the US gov't has the power to mess with my life in more ways than the Chinese government does. So, no, if forced to I don't accept your choice. You might prefer being spied on by your own gov't, but I don't accept your gov't spying on me.

I'm not going to China any time soon, but I need to cross the border to the US for work sometimes, and for pleasure sometimes, too. Since 9/11 that border has been an aggressive and hostile place marked by frequent highly authoritarian interventions and it has escalated even more under Trump. And its reach extends now onto our phones and thus into our private lives and this spying now extends online and profiles are being made of all sorts of people without them knowing. This has always happened, but its reach is far wider than before.

Being flagged by the US gov't hurts me directly, China only indirectly. I don't trust the US federal regime, and neither should (most) Americans.

EDIT: love being downvoted along with the other (European) comment. It's clear many Americans still don't get how their government behaves to its so-called allies. Ask Angela Merkel how she felt about having her phone tapped. Maybe the EU and other allies need to start randomly detaining US citizens with "strange names" or "suspicious profiles" and keeping them in rooms for hours, interrogate them, search their phones, then let them go with a smirk and a "have a nice day." Maybe then US citizens will understand how odious this is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The bans will be blocked by courts and the administration knows that. It pushes the orders forward anyways for purpose of political communication.

It is not in the US strategic interest to "balkanise" the internet; as it is now the US has enormous influence over the global internet. Why replace that with something much smaller?

<comment><USER24> From the state department publication: [https://www.state.gov/announcing-the- expansion-of-the-clean-...](https://www.state.gov/announcing-the-expansion-of- the-clean-network-to-safeguard-americas-assets/)

"Momentum for the Clean Network program is growing. More than thirty countries and territories are now Clean Countries, and many of the world's biggest telecommunications companies are Clean Telcos. All have committed to exclusively using trusted vendors in their Clean Networks."

Looks like the goal isn't to balkanise the global internet. Rather, to create a zone where Chinese companies are banned from accessing it at all by integrating other countries into the Clean Netwok program starting with the US. Unlike China's great firewall which is purely domestic in scope, the Clean Network has global ambitions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't know.. it seems like just another country adding restrictions like most countries have.

The idea of an open internet doesn't really work when you have countries that are not abiding by the "rules" like China that censor and utilize every chance they have to monitor user activity.

It is a sign not that the US is splitting the internet, but that work towards decentralizing stuff and evolve the web in such a way that it cannot be censored should be implemented.

Of course, countries can always "cut the cable" but that is too much of an economic hit I believe.

</comment><comment><USER26> What's to stop Chinese agents from setting up shop in the US or Europe, and disseminating rogue apps from their "trusted" base?

<comment><USER27> What's to stop Chinese agents doing what the NSA does to spy on Americans?

I think it would be better to just let china spy on the 12 year olds that use tictok and encourage Americans to use strong encryption / security by default.

Following the Chinese lead of censorship just encourages them to hack American companies like the Americans do.

<comment><USER28> > let china spy on the 12 year olds

That's a ton of kompromat. Even if irrelevant on average and on the whole, it'll impact enough individuals. Why give that kind of leverage away for free?

Though agreed regardless, we need to move towards E2E encryption, local storage, and local key management (i.e. no password resets... or complex recovery schemes).

<comment><USER29> There is an easy solution to kompromat - stop being judgemental shitheads for 12 year olds or caring what morons think. Seriously - kompromat is defined in terms of tbe cultural norms and not intrinsic. The LGBT community learned this well before the fucking CIA by being out and proud to tell the mafia blackmailers to go fuck themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If you want to avoid foreign "misinformation" (spin that as you will), this is the only sensible thing to do. Arguably, the citizens of the "free" world are incredibly vulnerable to misinformation campaigns run by foreign agents.

<comment><USER27> All people are vulnerable to misinformation campaigns, the problem is every one has lost interest in accurate information. The only solution people provide is that we need to get rid of the bad information instead of changing peoples motives.

<comment><USER31> I hope this is satire. Every totalitarian government says that censorship is for the people's protection. Then the government gets to decide what is or isn't misinformation.

A population with good critical thinking skills is necessary in a democracy. Conversely if you don't give people the right to vote for their leaders or policies, you don't need them to think critically (or politically) either.

<comment><USER27> > Every totalitarian government says that censorship is for the people's > protection.

Because this is the messaging the people will accept, a dictator could just say that's the way it is deal with it but they don't, they use the narrative the people will accept.

> Then the government gets to decide what is or isn't misinformation. >> The > only solution people provide is that we need to get rid of the bad > information

There is no "the government" its just people, two factions the red flag and the blue flag both get their information from their own isolated sources of what is accurate. The truth is somewhere in the middle ground with both sides deciding that whatever doesn't fit their current clic is misinformation. Democracy is great at giving us two flags instead of one but I don't really give a fuck about flags I care about individual freedom.

> A population with good critical thinking skills is necessary in a democracy.

100% and I feel our democracy is failing because people are just not motivated toward critical thinking, its difficult and calls yourself into question, what if you are wrong? or supported something you no longer believe in? in a world with cancel culture and mob justice? Fascism is a low effort alternative for many. Simple problem: all the other flag wavers, simple solution: get rid of them.

If democratic countries want to remain that way we need to give up our tyranny and flag waving in support of real freedom. People won't do it naturally we need to change the system to encourage people to think by rewarding them for doing so. Change peoples motives toward critical thinking and democracy and away from fascism and tyranny.

<comment><USER31> Worth noting that plenty of democracies aren't as dysfunctional as the US and have more than 2 viable political parties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> >>Mr Pompeo's reasons for "cleaning" the US network of Chinese companies is very different to authoritarian government's desire to control what is said online.

Good to see the BBC [AKA Radio Free America] continuing to uphold its [mostly self-awarded] reputation for unbiased reporting.

PS: in the above context, it should be: authoritarian governments'

These days, the standard of literacy ain't much to write home about either.

</comment><comment><USER33> it's already split for the average users (>90% of total users)

Some countries (like France for instance) impose DNS censorship on ISP to block some domains.

<comment><USER34> This censorship is so easily circumvented that it's laughable. Firefox's dns over https or 'echo 18.104.22.168 > /etc/resolv.conf' will do.

<comment><USER35> "C:\ doesn't have an etc folder"

~Most people.

The problem here isn't any one person circumventing the 'censorship', it's influencing mass movements to prevent mass data-grabbing. If every tech-savvy Linux user uses TikTok, it's probably not _that_ big of a deal as it's less than one percent of the population (and arguably the group most well-equipped to deal with the potential spying).

<comment><USER36> Technically it does. It should be in c:\windows\system32\drivers

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Is this a sign that the web is now irrelevant, wholly replaced by easily- store-censored (thanks, Apple and Google) apps?

<comment><USER8> Part of me thinks this is good. Not for others, but for me at least. After all, if you can censor 98% of users by focussin on apps, why would you bother implementing technology to censor the lower levels of the internet? Who knows, we might even reach a point where new censorship mechanisms won't even bother with "low-level" traffic like HTTP(S) anymore.

<comment><USER38> That is the most naive comment I've read in years.

More like they would block all network traffic that is not from apps, authenticated via one of the approved cloud providers.

<comment><USER8> More naive than hoping that there won't be any authoritarian censoring in the first place? Not by much, I'd say, but maybe I'm just being very pessimistic. Honestly I'm just kinda disillusioned. I know most people would gladly go along with this kind of BS and the rest of us would just get dragged along, as has happened countless times already. (Or do you really think we're in a better position now than east Germany was right after whitnessing the horrors of the Nazi dictatorship?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Requiring certain walled gardens to not publish certain apps is a form of censorship. But it's not exactly "splitting the Internet." Everything's still connected together, it's just that certain sites aren't allowed to host certain material.

I have a few questions. Would this apply only to Apple and Google app stores? Would jailbroken phones still legally be able to install the apps? Would third-party app stores legally be able to distribute them?

If the government tells an app store not to sell a specific program, isn't that similar to telling a bookstore not to sell a specific book? How does the government argue that the free speech protections of the Constitution don't apply?

</comment><comment><USER40> Sociology will have a field day with this era.

A field century even.

<comment><USER24> TBF the last 1.5 centuries aren't slouches either in terms of sociological field experiments.

<comment><USER40> I'm not sure what you mean, beside the overall technological progress. If so this is why I'm stumped by the recent international degradation. I'd hoped sanity would be stronger but actually the modern world may not be a lot stabler than previous centuries. Or at least not a lot wiser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I think all these walled gardens both foreign and domestic have split the internet.

Look at what happened to Usenet, its still there, but many major ISPs don't offer access to it to my knowledge.

Larger email providers mark all email from self hosted servers as spam in most cases.

Chat is mostly on proprietary apps. The majority of the population does not use open standards for chat.

</comment><comment><USER27> Censorship by another name is still censorship.

</comment><comment><USER42> state department version: [https://www.state.gov/announcing-the-expansion-of- the-clean-...](https://www.state.gov/announcing-the-expansion-of-the-clean- network-to-safeguard-americas-assets/)

</comment><comment><USER43> The internet would be split if the simplest requests -- TCP, HTTP, and email -- cannot cross borders without inspection/censorship. If people everywhere cannot communicate, we would move toward the stark borders of the Cold War, where simple acts of cross-border communication were notable.

One can readily argue that China has already split the internet, to an extent. In the best case, one can imagine that the US is stumbling-toward/leading-the- way into a world where free expression and freedom from monitoring is requisite for unfettered access to the predominant global communications network. I hope that is the ultimate destination.

The Trump administration is unlikely to be able to finish that work, but a line in the sand to state that outright monitoring of global citizens is unacceptable seems like a good place to start. To make this work, the United States must also refrain from deeply monitoring the speech and actions of citizens of other countries. It is reasonable to expect the EU to require local hosting of a lot more US cloud services in the coming year.

If the world is to balkanize, it may also mean that cross-border interactions are dominated by open-source software and open protocols. A silver lining in a dark cloud.

<comment><USER44> > The internet would be split if the simplest requests -- TCP, HTTP, and email > -- cannot cross borders without inspection/censorship.

This is Cloudflare's endgame. It's not just authoritarian nationstates. It's also (in the US at least) authoritarian corporations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> If we end up with a balkanized internet and people start using proper decentralized programs, then let's go.

</comment><comment><USER46> China already did this. These are just tariffs for the digital age

</comment><comment><USER47> Please don't derail the discussion by talking about apps.

This is not just about TikTok or other apps, and not just about app stores. As the title says, it's about whether we will have open networks in the future.

 _" Clean Carrier: To ensure untrusted People's Republic of China (PRC) carriers are not connected with U.S. telecommunications networks. Such companies pose a danger to U.S. national security and should not provide international telecommunications services to and from the United States."_

[https://www.state.gov/announcing-the-expansion-of-the- clean-...](https://www.state.gov/announcing-the-expansion-of-the-clean- network-to-safeguard-americas-assets/)

Note that it's also not just about the CCP, but "malign actors, such as the Chinese Communist Party".

Do you think the US administration has enough integrity to be trusted with such matters?

<comment><USER29> If they say "national security" as the reason you should never trust them period. They are trying to brain hack you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> (edited for tone)

It's not just the US. Countries around the world are slowly coming to the realization that they can really only regulate the portions of the internet housed within their legal jurisdictions, and that data sovereignty matters.

Is the US splitting the internet? That's debatable. I think we started the process with the Patriot Act. That led to multiple countries passing new privacy and data localization laws (GDPR in Europe, Data Localization in Russia). I believe that the current proposals coming out of State are best characterized as a (clumsy) attempt at data localization through executive fiat.

Of course, this could also just be revenge for a bunch of TikTok users trolling the president pretty hard.

</comment><comment><USER49> as much as i'm afraid of internet balkanization, this is alarmist - noone is proposing blocking all traffic to china, they are proposing blocking individual foreign organizations suspected of criminal activity, which is already what has been happening and what happens in every other sphere.

</comment><comment><USER50> With GDPR, Great Firewall, Apple and Facebook's heavy handed gardens... Most of the internet is splintered.

I don't have the legal team to negotiate GDPR, so I can't make my website legal in Europe (it probably is, I collect practically nothing, but I can't be sure since IANAL.

I don't have an apple product, so my app can't be tested or converted to work in Apple devices and put in their App store.. so if you like what I made, and you don't have an Android device, you can't use it on mobile...

If you want to use my web interface, if it's Chromium, you now need to go through an extra step to unblock cookies to jump from one of my sites to another, because the subdomain changes and that's "a different website" now..

Seems like everyone is already splintering the Internet... Most of it is the US's fault, but it's not just TikTok..

<comment><USER51> Neither GDPR, nor Great Firewall are US fault...

<comment><USER48> GDPR was a direct reaction to the USA Patriot act and the Snowden leaks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> No reason to do that, just block their routes. Finish their wall for them.

</comment><comment><USER53> This is old style propaganda: clean

The alternative network, what we have, is dirty, soiled, unhealthy, blemished - because of Chinese influence. By removing China from the connection, the network is cleansed.

It's transparently racist. It is not necessary to use words like this if you have a persuasive argument based upon facts. This is an appeal to ignorance and fear of things that are filthy.

<comment><USER35> >It's transparently racist.

Bullshit. China a geopolitical entity (notably, one of the "authoritarian dictatorship" variety) and explicitly don't support democracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> This would of been a great opportunity for Apple to crack down on abusive API calls to ensure far less spying on mobile apps. The issues with TikTok are basically only working so long as the OS allows them to continue to occur. Mobile apps should be significantly more transparent whenver they do more than just show something on a screen. If they access the network, your location, etc it should be logged somewhere, and you should always be able to go into the app settings (even if it's hidden for "advanced users") and block apps from accessing specified API calls completely.

Not sure if Google will do it, or if they do, they might take their sweet time.

<comment><USER8> More than preventing access, OSes should allow spoofing information just to make it harder for apps to be like "but I want want waaaaant your GPS coordinates or I won't let you use this calculator app"

<comment><USER29> It would be harder but from a User experience perspective just booting their asses from the store for doing this would be better.</comment></comment></comment>


A Graph That Explains Scifi TV After Star Trek - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/5347631/at-last-a-graph-that-explains-scifi-tv-after-star-trek <comment><USER2> So what did this explain?

If you answer that, then my next question is, how can plotting shows like Futurama, Charmed and Buffy on the same Graph as SG1 and Bstar explain anything?

</comment><comment><USER3> This doesn't explain anything (I'm not even sure what there would be to explain), or seem to have any connection to Star Trek.

All it seems to show is that in the late 90s shows started to merge sci-fi (or aspects of sci-fi) with other, more "mainstream" genres.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's pretty amazing to think that Star Trek TOS had only 3 seasons, and yet you see how the vast influence it had on so many different things.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure how well it 'explains' Tv but it does provide an interesting overview. It does suggest that now is either a particularly good or a particularly bad time to launch a new TV franchise, though.

The list of surveyed programs is interesting. I had no idea there was a series called _Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills_ , and am astonished it managed to last for 3 seasons.

</comment><comment><USER6> Graph on the left is a weak compromise. Just eye-candy & name-dropping.

Graph on the right is based on larger amount of data - they did actually include many more shows (like DS9, The Outer Limits): [http://io9.com/5348003/tv-shows-surveyed-for-themes- througho...](http://io9.com/5348003/tv-shows-surveyed-for-themes-throughout- sf-and-fantasy-tv-chart)

</comment><comment><USER7> 1996 to 2003 seemed like a heyday for SF/F television: all the charts trend upwards into that period and downwards when exiting it.

<comment><USER8> They trend downwards because Lexx went off the air around that time, then everybody realized how crappy SF/F was without Lexx around to give it all some levity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can't take it seriously because it misses out Deep Space Nine.</comment>


Why did so many other file-sync services fail before Dropbox? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Why-did-Dropbox-became-wildly-successful-while-most-prior-attempts-over-the-years-fail

<comment><USER2> This question implies that Dropbox is the only successful file sync service, which is incorrect. I use JungleDisk and I'm happy with it.

Much cheaper than DB and I use my own S3 account.</comment>


Breaking down San Francisco's car break-in epidemic - <AUTHOR> https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2018/sf-car-breakins <comment><USER2> Maybe the city could discourage break-ins by prosecuting more aggressively. The approach of the police suggesting not leaving valuables seems like victim blaming. "If you hadn't been wearing that short skirt..." Getting a window smashed is not trivial damage. Incidentally, insurance rates for the city are much higher than in other parts of the Bay Area. Smash and grabs seem to be much rarer in New York City for some reason which suggests San Francisco is being victimized by defective public policy.</comment>


Debussy's Radical Search for Simplicity - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/01/debussy-stephen-walsh-review/579601/ <comment><USER3> I love the mixture of pentatonic, modal, tonal, and atonal in the works of Debussy. He toes the line of modernity with wit, charm, and absolute beauty. For wit, check out Gradus ad Parnassum, a super bouncy piece in a beginner- friendly key. For charm, go with Arabesque No 1. Absolute beauty lies in store in Claire de Lune, yes, but also in The Sunken Cathedral, in the string quartet, and in the vocal music. He has astonishing creativity, look at his Preludes, his opera, or his Afternoon of a Faun for that, wow, sheer creativity.

Debussy (or perhaps Ravel) may be the one composer who most successfully commanded the widest range of tonal devices, before the modernists like Stravinsky and Schoenberg pushed tonality to its breaking point/broke it. Debussy was not the only innovator, as we saw innovation and creativity from Bach to Mozart, Debussy to Chopin, however I'd argue Debussy was the true bridge into modernity.

Debussy harmonic analysis: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbjWgfNoO2U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbjWgfNoO2U)

</comment><comment><USER4> To my not-very-well-trained ear, almost all composers before Debussy sound a little dated, corny, and constrained, and most composers after him - <USER2> and Messiaen being important exceptions! - sound abstract and unmusical.

Debussy's music is at this equilibrium point where the harmonic language is complex and atonal enough to evoke a spectrum of iridescent colours and haunting, ambiguous moods inaccessible to traditional common-practice harmony, but just constrained enough to avoid the descent into hostility and noise.

<comment><USER5> As someone who also enjoys music in this vein, I'd recommend trying Ravel, Mompou, Janáček, Satie, Delius, Busoni, Milhaud, Fauré, Schubert, Liszt, Domeniconi, Sibelius, Ligeti, Messiaen, Xenakis, Martinů, and Scriabin among others I'm forgetting (in roughly decreasing order of likeness). Like you I don't get much out of most earlier classical music, with the major exception of Bach, or out of totally atonal stuff either.

<comment><USER6> The one I feel like I'm missing the most from is Mozart. To me Mozart sounds so trite, mannered, frilly, wimpy and boring. "Deeeeeee deedlee dee dee dee dee deeeee dee..."

FWIW, my favorite Beethoven pieces are the ones that sound the least classical in harmonic language -- especially the Waldstein Sonata and Sonatas 30-32.

<comment><USER7> Mozart can be hard to get. It's been said he was primarily a composer for voice no matter the instrument he composed for. His slow pieces are the most otherwordly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Its interesting to see the influence of Debussy through time. For example the wonderful work of Bill Evans.

<comment><USER9> The opening chords of So What capture this feeling perfectly.

<comment><USER10> Apparently those (jazz) guys called the 4ths voicings like in _So What_ 'Ravel chords'. And the ( _Peace Piece_ -derived) _Flamenco Sketches_ I can't help but think owes something to the first movement of Mahler's 9th, which even has the 'down a major 3rd' progression. (C -> Ab in F.S., D -> Bb in the Mahler)

..Speaking of which, I didn't learn until recently that James Brown stole the 'booo-dap' riff from _So What_ for (maybe his greatest song), _Cold Sweat_. Apparently he wanted a song with horns going 'booo-dap' just like _So What_..it's even in the same key, almost the same voicing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Pour le piano_ is to me one of the greatest piano works.

</comment><comment><USER12> One interesting branch of Debussy's legacy is _spectral music_, e.g.:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6WXzOIsBuQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6WXzOIsBuQ)</comment>


For over a year now groovehq.com scamming customers - <AUTHOR> https://haydenjames.io/groovehq-not-free-forever/ <comment><USER2> There is an actual government agency that deals with "Truth in Advertising" violations ... [https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/GettingStarted?NextQID...](https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/GettingStarted?NextQID=251&Url=%23%26panel1-6#crnt)</comment>


MySQL: the Pros and Cons of MyISAM Tables - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/03/25/mysql-myisam-table-pros-con/ <comment><USER2> Not a good article at all. It makes MyISAM sound good which just isn't the case.

MyISAM is good for read-only tables. It has very fast reads. Once you start getting writes, it crumbles. Since most web applications today have a decent amount of writes, MyISAM isn't that good.

So what is MyISAM good for? Well, let's say that you have a table of post codes. Maybe you want to add new ones every month, but for general purposes, it's read-only. You'll get MyISAM's speed for reads and writes won't matter.

On the other hand, say you're making a site like HN. In that case, you constantly have writes (votes, submissions, comments) and locking the table isn't an option as it would just crumble.

The article says that MyISAM is good if your application "has to be fast". That isn't true. Most applications would be faster with InnoDB. This article takes a completely inaccurate approach to databases. So, they'll be lots of people who read this and think, "faster is better, therefore I'll use MyISAM," when such a choice will give them lots of speed problems as users start using their app.

<comment><USER3> Great explanation. Would you recommend mixing InnoDB and MyISAM tables within a database based on read/write levels of certain tables?

My general knowledge of databases says Yes, no problem but having much less experience, I figure it won't hurt to ask.

<comment><USER4> From what I've read, NEVER mix InnoDB and MyISAM tables in the same database.

Update: While they don't say never, they don't recommend it. Managing backups gets a lot harder. Also, you should never mix innodb and myisam tables within a transaction, which is probably what I was attaching never to.

[http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2009/01/12/should-you- mo...](http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2009/01/12/should-you-move-from- myisam-to-innodb/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very basic explanation of the pros and cons. It assumes a total beginner audience.

I think that the lack of foreign key constraints and transaction support needs to be emphasized more, especially considering who the audience is.</comment>


Sehrch.com: A Structured Search Engine Powered By Hypertable - <AUTHOR> http://www.hypertable.com/blog/sehrchcom_a_structured_search_engine_powered_by_hypertable/

<comment><USER2> From their homepage...

>Royal's under the age of 20

I don't know the implications for search, but that should be: Royals under the age of 20.</comment>


1Password for Linux Development Preview - <AUTHOR> https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/114964/1password-for-linux-development-preview <comment><AUTHOR> It seems like 1Password CLI, and 1Password X are not the only options for us Linux users anymore, as AgileBits is releasing an official GUI client.

No Electron crap either, seems to be native, written in Rust, and with full desktop integration, including GTK dark mode, X11 clipboard sharing, biometric unlock, and whatnot.

While I use, and prefer the CLI version — even wrote my own wrapper[1] for it —, having a GUI version is sure to make a lot of people happy, my wife included.

[1] [https://git.sr.ht/~jamesponddotco/dotfiles/tree/master/.loca...](https://git.sr.ht/~jamesponddotco/dotfiles/tree/master/.local/bin/1p)</comment>


100 Years Later, the Madness of Daylight Saving Time Endures - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/100-years-later-madness-daylight-saving-time-endures-180968435/?no-ist <comment><USER2> These keep coming out, but I guess I just don't get it. Say, looking at it from the POV of parents with daycare/school-aged kids. Let's say that school always starts at 8, and kids wake up at 7. Full-day school/aftercare etc. is done by 5 PM or so.

During the summer in California, with daylight savings, the sun will rise at ~6 AM and set at 8 PM. The morning sun is mostly useless, at least for me. But 3 hours of sun after school ends is nice for kids to be outside, it's warmer, etc.

Without daylight savings, the sun would rise even earlier at ~5AM and set at 7 PM. So we've lost an hour of evening sun for an our of super-early morning. Sounds like a bad deal to me, but what am I missing?

<comment><USER3> Just stay in daylight saving time, don't go back.

<comment><USER2> The issue with this is the late sunrise in the winter. In mid-Jan in LA the sun rises at ~7AM. It would rise at 8AM with daylight savings in winter. This sucks terribly since it moves your whole commute into dark; kids walk to school in the dark, etc.

It's pretty depressing to start the day in the dark, to be honest (with apologies to folks living in very northern or southern latitudes)

<comment><USER4> That's called out at the end of the article:

"But before the end of the first month of daylight saving that January, eight children died in traffic accidents in Florida, and a spokesperson for Florida's education department attributed six of those deaths directly to children going to school in darkness."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since several DST articles have been posted this week as we approach a DST- event weekend, I have found it interesting to read the comments on HN. My own comment [1] on Florida's vote to use permanent DST (assuming the federal government will allow it) expressed my sentiment as succinctly as I could.

But I want to make one more point to counter a sentiment I've seen in these threads. Most of us who out of convenience characterize ourselves as "anti- DST" don't much care if we have permanent standard time or permanent "daylight-saving" (summer) time. The specific singular timezone we select is inconsequential in my mind, as long as it is in fact singular. What _anti-DST_ means to me is being opposed to the twice-annual madness of changing every clock in the nation. As I said in my other comment, these clock changes cause countless small nuisances, immeasurable drowsiness and lost productivity, and a non-trivial number of injuries or worse. So shift every state one timezone eastward, but do so and be _done_ with clock adjustments once and for all.

And yes, there are bigger problems in the world. But unlike solving healthcare, abolishing DST is just a decision. There's no hard problem to solve—just remove it.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16547740](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16547740)

</comment><comment><USER6> I personally don't care if the reasons are bad. I can't explain why, but I look forward to daylight savings time and dread when it ends.

</comment><comment><USER7> I hope this gets done away with sooner rather than later. While I enjoy the extra one hour in the weekend before the holiday season, the spring forward generally causes me a headache lasting about a week.

<comment><USER8> Because you're missing one hour of sleep? Maybe try to ease into it? 2-3 days before it happens, start getting up 15 minutes earlier. Then 30 minutes. Then 45 minutes. Then when its daylight saving get up on time (which would be 60 minutes earlier than usual, but only 15 minutes earlier than the day before).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember how weird it felt the first time I visited Hawaii, where the sun year round comes up around 6am and goes down around 6pm. You could feel the cultural response to this. People were waking up earlier then I was used to, out shopping earlier then i was used to, and eating dinner earlier then I was used to.

Nowadays it makes sense to me how much our schedules have been dictated by the effects of daylight savings. Going to work at 9am, eating dinner at 8pm, going to sleep at 1am. It feels now like we need DST to function correctly.

</comment><comment><USER3> The only redeeming quality of moving to Arizona has been the lack of daylight saving time.

</comment><comment><USER10> > and even browned out lawns unaccustomed to so much daylight

...wait, what? What am I missing here?

<comment><USER11> Is your question if lawns can brown out from too much daylight? Because they certainly can, and e.g. in South Korea they were brown most of the summer. (in reality, it's probably more a mix dry, warmth and light).

<comment><USER10> Sure, but would daylight savings be the cause?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This video is a must-share twice a year, especially for people who have moved to Arizona to free themselves from the madness.

[https://youtu.be/k4EUTMPuvHo](https://youtu.be/k4EUTMPuvHo)

</comment><comment><USER13> I remember reading somewhere that the whole switching time by an hour twice a year thing literally kills people every year.

The premise was that on the days right after the switch to the later sunrise schedule, sleepy people that were used to driving to work in daylight are now driving to work at night, and there's a statistically significant increase in traffic fatalities on those days.

My source has been lost to the sands of time, but it rings true for me.

My goal in life is to perform a us government sponsored cost-benefit analysis for ending "daylight savings time" and have it come out as an overwhelming positive.

<comment><USER14> >My source has been lost to the sands of time, but it rings true for me.

I think it is mentioned in Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> How much expense goes into software which needs to support daylight savings? How many bugs have occurred because of it?

Personally I deal with this problem a lot. It is a pain and expensive. Of course this is a problem because the time data my software ingests often doesn't include the offset or zone. So I have to work around it. All for subtracting then add one hour for the year.

<comment><USER16> How many bugs will pop up if we stop having DST?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why is this marked "[dupe]"? this article is dated March 9 and was not previously posted.</comment>


Microsoft new CEO makes windows os free - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/microsofts-new-ceo-satya-nadella-2014-4

<comment><USER2> > "Microsoft new CEO makes windows os free"

Two points about the above title:

1\. It's not the title of the linked article, which is "In A Six-Day Period, Microsoft's New CEO Satya Nadella Completely Changed The Company".

2\. It's false. Microsoft did not make the Windows OS free. In order to compete with Android, Microsoft is going to offer Windows 8.1, its least popular product, available free _to manufacturers_ of devices with screens less than 9 inches measured diagonally. Consumers will still have to buy all versions of Windows at the usual retail prices.

The title is the worst kind of linkbait.</comment>


Ask HN: CS graduate programs in Canadá - <AUTHOR> What are good CS graduate programs in the Toronto area? <comment><USER2> My friend did the MSc in Applied Computing from U of T and liked it enough to do PhD there as well: [http://web.cs.toronto.edu/Graduate/prospective_gradwhy/mscac...](http://web.cs.toronto.edu/Graduate/prospective_gradwhy/mscac.htm)</comment>


Ask HN: How to hold an online fundraiser? - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to hold an online fundraiser in which I provide gift incentives of no cash value (virtual goods, extra features, etc) on my site in exchange for a user's donation to a non-profit organization.
I initially planned to just accept payments/subscriptions directly on my site through my existing PayPal infrastructure, and donate all of it to the organization at the end of the fundraising period.  But I learned that attempting to do so would immediately cause PayPal to freeze the account and demand paperwork that we are authorized to accept payments on behalf of a 501C (which we aren't).
Instead, I'm thinking that it would be nice if there were certain non-profit organizations (or an authorized third-party site that collects money on their behalf) in which I redirect a user to the donation URL, and the site sends me a notification when the user has successfully donated (via a POST to a URL of my choice), allowing me to confirm and process the reward.  (Similar to how PayPal works, but with the non-profit directly handling the processing).
So my question is:  Does anything like this exist?  If not, any ideas for getting something like this started? <comment><USER2> A buddy of mine is giving out free copies of his software at the moment to anyone who gives money to Haiti. He is doing it on the honor system. I think that is likely to be sufficient, depending on who your customer is.

Failing that, see the Paypal documentation about Return URLs. The one set up with the button has priority over the global one specified per Paypal account. Thus, if you know the email address associated with e.g. the Red Cross' Paypal account, you can craft Paypal URLs which cause people to go to Paypal, send money directly to the Red Cross, and then come back to a page under your control. This is only minimally secure but, again, what are you worried about security for here anyhow.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would gladly give out the rewards on the honor system, but the volume of incoming requests would be too much to process manually; it has to be an automated process.

Interesting point about the Paypal return URL. I'm concerned that this is a less-than-optimal solution, but something I could look into if I can't find something more solid.

<comment><USER2> _it has to be an automated process._

You and I would get along very well. :)

I just donated money to (+): Red Cross [ ] Catholic Charities [ ] UNICEF [ ] Other [ ]

      [Get Your Free Dragon Egg]

\+ We trust you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see what you're saying, but I think that if you scale this to a large number of users (especially if the free "thing" is publicly visible), then you're going to have a lot of people abusing it and/or making a mockery of it. After all, this is the internet, and nearly every community has a subsection of immature/abusive people.

To really make it special and encourage people to give, there has to be an element of rarity (or real value).

I'm certain that the above approach is valid and would raise money, but I don't think it's going to maximize the amount of money collected for the organization. I'd estimate that a complete solution could bring in at least two times as many donations, and maximizing donations is the goal here (otherwise I could just do something simple like putting a banner on the front page).

Regarding the honor system and scalability: I don't think that there would be much abuse if people had to contact me personally to say that they donated money, but people would be less honest in clicking a button (I imagine lots of people would click it because they planned to give in the future and then forget to do so, for example).

Or maybe I'm just entirely lacking faith in the kindness of others and should be more trusting :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> coincidently, I've just hit a similar problem and looking for a solution (mine is a swear jar webapp which automagicly donates to charity when you press it)

so far things I'm thinking:

1-use the paypal api to directly donate from the user's paypal account into a charities paypal account. (easy, but requires the charity to accept paypal)

2-there are a few sites with apis \--<http://www.globalgiving.org/api- contest/> looks like you can give the api a charity id and some credit card details and it'll handle the donation \--justgiving.com and missionfish.com have private/beta api's that were let loose at charityhack.org, but aren't publicly availible yet

anyone seen anything else similar or better?</comment>


Ask HN: What subreddits have you learned the most from? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It's a low-comment sub, but I'm a big fan of /r/damninteresting

It's described as "The reddit-specific version of the curated links section of DamnInteresting.com. These represent the nifty articles we've found (and occasional written) about science, history, and psychology."

I enjoy it because it's a shotgun approach to knowledge, rather than specific domain knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER3> Probably some combination of

/r/semanticweb

/r/machinelearning

/r/artificial

/r/amateurradio

/r/math

/r/electronics

and

/r/programming

</comment><comment><USER4> /r/learnpython. Just reading the posts plus comments and answering the occasional question has taught me a lot, most of it good.</comment>


Tell HN: Land of Lisp's Barski M.D. speaking about Clojure (11/18 DC area) - <AUTHOR>

Conrad Barski M.D., author of "Land of Lisp" (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1593272812) will be giving a talk entitled "Land of Lisp: The Clojure-ish Parts" at the National Capital Area Clojure Users Group (CAPCLUG) on November 18, 2010 at 6:15 pm.  The meeting will be held at 12021 Sunset Hills Road Suite 400, Reston, VA.  Pizza and drinks are provided as part of the admission cost of $0.00 USD (i.e. it's free of course).
The talk will be followed by mingle time whereby you can talk to programmers interested (and at times well versed in) Clojure, Common Lisp, Scheme, Ruby, Java, and the Kent Recursive Calculator.  If we're lucky we'll see a live performance of the hit single, "Land of Lisp"! (music video at http://landoflisp.com)
Please consider signing up at the CAPCLUG meeting site (http://www.meetup.com/Cap-Clug/calendar/14802573) so that we know how much food and beverage to provide.
I will be watching this thread for the next 3 days to answer any questions. <comment><USER2> Is there any chance this will be recorded and made available for those of us who are unable to attend for some reason (like living on another continent)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, but there are no plans to record this talk.

<comment><USER3> Man, between this and the clojure conference I feel left out.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the case of The Conj all talks were recorded and will eventually be made publicly available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What??? You're promising them a live performance of "Land of Lisp"???

I didn't authorize this... Oh well, I guess I'll have take a trip to the basement and dust off my acoustic guitar :-)

-Conrad

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd be willing to donate some money to help get this recorded

<comment><USER6> Ditto!

<comment><USER7> One of the rare useful "Me too." posts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since folks are asking about a recorded presentation: Tell you what, I will do my best in the next month to do a second presentation with video. If there's video I'd probably want to structure the talk a little differently.

So I think we'll stick without video on this talk, but I promise to do what I can to have a second talk somewhere that includes online video in the next month or so.

-Conrad Barski

<comment><USER5> Please email me directly (ie add me to your mailing list) and I'll send a donation to support the video

I'm jiaaro at gmail

 _edit_ : PS - I'm really enjoying land of lisp :)

<comment><USER4> Thanks but no donation needed :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> added to the calendar! looking forward to the talk</comment>