Google's Monopoly-Based Foreign Policy - <AUTHOR> https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/googles-dangerous-monopoly-based <comment><USER2> I've just read the Reuters story that is linked. The Turkish government said that they were not legally permitted to sell phones with the current contract; so Google stopped selling an illegal product until they could resolve the issue.

If Google kept selling the phones without resolving the issue then they would be subject to fines. How is complying with local laws a Dangerous Foreign Policy act?

<comment><USER3> > "We've informed our business partners that we will not be able to work with > them on new Android phones to be released for the Turkish market," the > Google statement said.

The article also says that Google won't be working with their business partners on new phones. The article spins this as demanding to "work with" Turkey, which strikes me as an overstatement in service of the argument that Google is discriminating against smaller countries.

The author does seem to believe that Google should be compelled to do a maximum amount of business in every possible market until the State Department steps in. It's the authors contention that doing less than this is a Dangerous Foreign Policy Act.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps I am not understanding the implications, but is Google supposed to be forced to make its phones available in Turkey?

<comment><USER5> Google is perfectly capable of untying their search from Android via a software update, because that's the remedy they already developed and use in Russia. Turkey is asking them to turn on the same capability. Google is saying they could but that they won't, because Turkey isn't a big enough country to make them.

And yes, if Google is breaking US and international anti-trust laws, "forcing" people to do things is generally the remedy of last resort.

<comment><USER6> Or perhaps the Russian market was large enough that the return on continued investment in it despite the required changes justified remaining in it and the Turkish market isn't large enough to justify continuing to invest in it.

<comment><USER5> What investment? Google already develops Android, they already developed the "untying" feature for Russia. What's left? Turkish Localization? I find it hard to believe that even a 50% mobile search share in Turkey won't pay those incremental costs.

I find it much more believable that this is a simple pressure play.

<comment><USER7> Ongoing support for the Turkish market. Technical support staff who can speak Turkish, documentation in the Turkish language, and a team of developers to handle Turkish-specific i18n bugs. None of these are 'incremental' costs.

<comment><USER5> My thinking is that if this argument is true, Google should be the one making it. They don't need HN to "reverse engineer" a defense for them, particularly one that may not be factually correct.

<comment><USER8> Please don't shift goalposts - you asked a question (on HN!), got an answer here (based on conjecture), and you now want an official Google response that breaks down the reasons?

<comment><USER5> My point is simply that the conjecture seems difficult to believe on the face of it, but that I would be willing to revisit my beliefs if Google actually made the claim. The fact that Google has made no such claim makes it more difficult to take seriously.

Edited to be more substantive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> On paper, this is not really wrong. You can't force a shop owner to sell his products to you if he doesn't want to. Similarly, I just don't have the rights in forcing you to sell your house to me. I'm sure services like Netflix or Disney Plus are probably still not available in some countries. If you visit their website from those places, you would likely get a service denial message. It's within Google's rights to offer/withdraw their services to any places they wish.

Having said that, maybe there was a better solution they could have implemented instead. Something like this should only be the very last choice on the list after exhausting all other options.

<comment><USER10> > You can't force a shop owner to sell his products to you if he doesn't want > to.

The very first article of the Dutch constitution actually says that people have to be treated equally in equal cases. If you live in a country with a similar principle, do you know how this works with someone refusing to do business with you? If they sell to your peer, wouldn't they have to have a reason for not selling to you (i.e. to indicate that the case is unequal)?

A reason like creditworthiness or "looking like you won't pay the bill" may or may not be sufficient, I'm not questioning which reasons may be used. I'm just wondering if it's true that a shop can indeed refuse someone for no reason at all.

For those who are curious about the phrasing, source (in Dutch unfortunately): [https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0001840/2018-12-21](https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0001840/2018-12-21)

<comment><USER11> _> The very first article of the Dutch constitution actually says that people have to be treated equally in equal cases._

Is that supposed to apply to the Dutch government? Or to everyone? Constitutions normally say what the government can and can't do; they don't normally directly tell ordinary citizens what they can and can't do.

<comment><USER12> Are you sure what is normative for Constitutions? I suppose in this case normally just means in most cases.

<comment><USER13> Not sure if even most. Just checked our constitution. While in most articles it doesn't order or forbid people to do specific things, there are dozens of rules and rights, which apply to .. I guess anyone in scope, many of which seem quite pointless if they only applied to the government.

<comment><USER11> _> there are dozens of rules and rights_

The US Constitution has a Bill of Rights, which applies to everyone in the sense that everyone has those rights, but which only applies to the government in the sense that the government is the one the Constitution says can't violate those rights. For example, the 1st Amendment says the government can't infringe freedom of speech. It does not say that everyone is guaranteed the same platform to speak from, nor does it require particular private entities to provide a speaking platform to anyone who asks for it.

Saying "people have to be treated equally in equal cases" sounds like the same kind of thing: if the US Constitution had such a provision, I would expect it to work the same as the 1st Amendment, i.e., requiring the government to treat people equally in equal cases, not requiring private entities to do so. But the Dutch Constitution might work differently, which is why I asked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't see how this is a controversy. Turkey made a legal judgement, and Google decided the cost of compliance was too high so instead of thwarting the law and risk legal liability they retreated from the country.

The threat of Monopoly by Google in Turkey is gone - so congrats? You shouldn't force a company to provide you the opportunity to by their product (outside of certain circumstances regarding protected classes in the US).

</comment><comment><USER15> This story is about Google not wanting to have a browser choice screen for the bundled Chrome application to give a choice of either Yandex or Google search???

It doesn't sound that's all there is here.

Perhaps a Yandex app store? Or perhaps this is about data residency?

But also the author here is arguing that Android is a state asset and the choice to restrict usage to a country is the job of the government.

Seems like a silly idea to me.

</comment><comment><USER16> The giant still has legs of clay.

China still has an overwhelming edge in manufacturing, with Vietnam and Thailand being years away from reaching even 10% of its capacity.

They can easily legally mandate everybody to use "Huaweidroid" and make sure that chipmakers bake in their key fingerprints, so the firmware can't be changed outside of China.

With anything like that unfolding, there will simply be no way out of this for Google, unless they commit to a truly herculean task of starting own manufacturing somewhere else. But even in this case, they will have to commit to competition with now much cheaper "Huaweidroid" based phones

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm generally pro competition but I feel like there's probably more to this story (just remembering how eBay also left Turkey). Aren't there some issues with how the data is supposed to be stored in Turkey (a place where many people including journalists are jailed and does not rank highly as a Democratic country) that would also make Google more likely to just up and leave or outright negotiate with the government over the laws rather than directly give in? Of course, I get the argument for how Google is too powerful with their system, I don't disagree, but I'm skeptical in general of trying to do fair business with Russia and Turkey given their track records

<comment><USER18> > just remembering how eBay also left Turkey

eBay didn't leave Turkey. They've bought [http://www.gittigidiyor.com](http://www.gittigidiyor.com) and continuing to operate.

They're still here, just under a different brand. They've bought their fiercest local competitor.

<comment><USER17> Sorry, you're absolutely right, I meant PayPal and obviously they haven't been the same company for quite some time! [https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/31/paypal-to-halt- operations-...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/31/paypal-to-halt-operations- in-turkey-after-losing-license-impacts-hundreds-of-thousands/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > The regulator had asked Google to change all its software distribution > agreements to allow consumers to choose different search engines in its > Android mobile operating system.

Hang on a second... why does the MS regulation to offer browser choice on first run apply to this already?

<comment><USER20> Turkey is not in the EU yet

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Microsoft eventually caved, and put a "Browser Choice" popup in Windows. This was because the US was too big for MS to ignore. Here, we have a similar choice: Turkey wants Google to give users "Search Engine Choice", and because Turkey is relatively small of a market compared to Google's TAM, they decided they'd rather ignore than market than compromise, even though a compromise is probably the best outcome for users, for fair competition.

I think the author is not talking about what Google has a right to do or not do, nor do any moral obligation to play in which field. The problem being highlighted here is that size simply matters too much.

</comment><comment><USER22> If ever there was a moment where a good open source phone OS as GUI toolkit could break onto the market, that time is now.

</comment><comment><USER23> > Google said it was willing to 'work with' Turkey, but as a partner and not > as a corporation working within a sovereign nation. It simply said it > doesn't like Turkey's law, and so it will stop providing Android phones for > an entire country. In other words, Google has a private sanctions regime > against smaller countries.

The fact that Google even has the leverage to blackout an entire country like this--and that it's legally allowed to do so--is the best reason I've seen so far to break up Big Tech. They're playing with fire and undermining the U.S. diplomatic community by mixing public and private interests in a way that supersedes national policy. Both Android and Chrome need to be spun out--at this point they are basically public utilities.

<comment><USER24> > -and that it's legally allowed to do so--is the best reason I've seen so far > to break up Big Tech.

Of course it is legal.. Nobody can tell a company who they _HAVE_ to sell their product to.. But you want to break it up and what then exactly.. ?

> Both Android and Chrome need to be spun out--at this point they are > basically public utilities

No, they're not.. And they're not a fundamental right either.

<comment><USER25> _Nobody can tell a company who they HAVE to sell their product to._

Lots of court cases have forced merchants to sell to minorities to whom they would rather have not sold.

<comment><USER24> Could you share on some references to products and not services forced to be sold ?

Also policy based and not discriminatory based..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Yea there's alot of emotional bickering that comes up when a company says "we won't do business with X".

>In other words, Google has a private sanctions regime against smaller countries.

With this stupid statement, my company must have a private sanctions regime agaisnt half the world

<comment><USER27> Your company probably isn't as important to the world as Google.

To the point, though: go read the Reuters article[0] linked from TFA. They're not pulling out of Turkey; they're refusing to license software to "business partners" making products for Turkey unless those partners lock search to Google.

Is your company really boycotting half the countries of the world because they have rules in place regarding your business practices?

[0][https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-google/google- warn...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-google/google-warns- turkish-partners-over-new-android-phones-amid-dispute-idUSKBN1YK0QR)

<comment><USER28> > Your company probably isn't as important to the world as Google.

Google isn't that important to the world. China gets by just fine without it and not having access is mainly a mild inconvenience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> TLDR: Turkey wanted to regulate Google's activities in the Turkish market, and so, Google decided to exit the Turkish market entirely.

I'm all in favor of vigorous anti-trust enforcement, and I think the Turkish regulators did the right thing. American/European regulators can probably take some pages out of their playbook. But it seems ridiculous to blame a company for choosing which markets it wants to do business in.

</comment><comment><USER30> Ah, it's so nice to have my morning coffee with my daily fresh anti-Google story on the front page of Hacker News. Our lives just wouldn't be the same without it.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, I don't get it. FB is being openly evil with the political ads thing, but Google is the devil somehow? I suspect a smear campaign.

<comment><USER32> Two things can be different and still both be bad.

Are you claiming everyone on HN loves FB and hates Google? Because that is a pretty strong claim to make. Same goes for the tech press in general, it's not hard to find negative articles about FB and Google on the same website or from the same source.

If you type "matt stoller facebook" into Google Search (the devil's search engine) one of the top results on the first page is a criticism of Facebook... by Matt Stoller:

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/22/restru...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/22/restructure- facebook-ftc-regulate-9-steps-now)

If you're going to suspect a smear campaign or conspiracy that's fine, but please at least make a basic effort to validate your theory before posting it on HN

<comment><USER33> OP was talking about what gets upvoted to the front page of HN, not necessarily what gets written by the source.

Try searching "Matt Stoller Facebook" and then "Matt Stoller Google" on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The article was masterfully framed to make us feel outraged by Google's exercise of its right to chose where it does business. When Google pulls out of a country, it loses a lot, and so does the country. This is a strong incentive for both parties to be reasonable. Forcing Google to obey every government in the world doesn't seem fair; many countries have unreasonable or evil laws.

<comment><USER35> OTOH: forcing every country in the world to obey google is no better.

<comment><USER36> Google doesn't have armies and police forces. It can't "force" anyone to do anything, unlike governments.

Deciding not to provide its services is not a use of force from google.

<comment><USER37> Many believe internet access is a basic human right. [1]

Thus, many believe that pulling out of a country where your device is one of the sole affordable ways of reaching the internet is tantamount to a human rights violation.

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

<comment><USER38> Many people believe abortion is murder. That doesn't make it so.

<comment><USER39> " _Don 't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents._"

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Google also operate in USA. USA has more people in prison than Turkey has. Recently journalist Max Blumenthal was jailed on false charges.

<comment><USER40> > Google also operate in USA.

They're based there, in case you didn't notice.

> USA has more people in prison than Turkey has.

And is substantially larger, and tends to not lock up everybody that _might_ be against dear leader. For now.

> Recently journalist Max Blumenthal was jailed on false charges.

Definitely not a very good moment in the history of the USA but there are plenty of worse examples and besides the case was dropped.

You _really_ can not compare Turkey and the United States in this way.

<comment><USER41> Why not? Turkey survived a coup. We can critique the governments handling all day but can we at least all agree that when a democracy barely survives a coup it ought to institute policies to solidify the rule of law and endurance of its institutions?

<comment><USER42> Your premise of democracy is wrong. Turkey is an authoritarian dictatorship at this point.

<comment><USER43> ...and the US is shockingly close to being one.

<comment><USER44> How? Genuine question. Is it because Trump? Because while Trump and many of his supporters may be authoritarian, he was still duly elected, and if he had lost, Hillary would be President. In a dictatorship, Obama would have chosen his successor (generally).

<comment><USER40> Let's wait for the next election before we call this one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Google should be broken up like the Bell system was in the 80s.

<comment><USER24> Why ?

Maybe some proper regulation written by people who know what they're talking about would be a better start no ?

The nuclear option of : 'Oh break them up, they're out of control' is such a fallacy.

Maybe if lawmakers were clued in on what large companies like Facebook, Google actually did, they might just set better rules.

<comment><USER46> Fair point, but, I think we all can agree "proper regulation written by people who know what they're talking about" is extremely unlikely to happen.</comment></comment></comment>


The Fantasy and the Cyberpunk Futurism of Singapore - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-fantasy-and-the-cyberpunk-futurism-of-singapore <comment><USER2> Singapore is a weird place. During the flight, the stewardesses walked around and handed everybody something - I was expecting a wet towel, but in fact it was a card in multiple languages which says "If you are about to bring any amount of drugs into the country, you are going to be executed." Lovely first impression to set the tone.

Other than the omnipresent paranoia, the thing that struck me as the most bizarre is that almost nothing in the country is oriented around children. The fertility rate is basically the lowest in the world, as the way of maintaining the population seems to be simply skimming the top few percent of qualified workers from India, China, and other southeast Asian countries, people who will essentially live at the office until they have made enough money to return home, or simply retire and die alone in the country.

Another strange thing was the way the city is planned - everything is concentrated to a district. For instance, rather than having record shops peppered around the city, there is a the "record shop area", where there are a dozen record shops in a single place. It's like this for lots of things - books, refrigerators, etc.

The food was great though. I'm craving laksa just thinking about it..

<comment><USER3> I wonder, would there be an opportunity to flush any substances down the toilet, at that point? Sounds like a potentially terrifying situation, considering the number of stories I've heard from friends and family about accidentally flying with marijuana that they were unaware of was left over in a backpack or whatnot.

<comment><USER2> You would have to use the airplane toilet. Immediately after stepping off the plane, you are scanned by some kind of scanning IR(?) camera, which I assumed was looking for drugs. I actually had some vitamins in a baggie which I was shitting bricks about, but the actually immigration point was very polite and chill, much moreso than, say, JFK.

<comment><USER4> I think the IR camera was more likely to have been looking for _fever_ than drugs. I don't mean to say that Changi doesn't have drug-detection mechanisms, but the commonest use of IR cameras at international airport gates is to try to find passengers who are showing signs of infectious disease.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These comments seem to paid a really dystopian picture of Singapore. Of course there are problems with its government, but in my travels, Singapore was one of the most impressive countries I've ever visited. By far the cleanest city I've ever seen, the most futuristic, most efficient, and my favorite food city.

Singaporeans visiting America for the first time are often shocked at how much worse the U.S. was compared to their expectations, almost third-world like. If more Americans visited countries like Singapore and saw how much further ahead they are, maybe for once our people and politicians would have some modesty and fix things instead of just being complacent.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it's funny how the author says the people sort of go along with the government especially now just weeks after the recent election where opposition parties took a district, which sure in terms of actual governing power doesn't mean much, but means that the PAP is just starting to feel some pressure from the outside, particularly among younger people and families who opted to vote in the WP in sengkang. It doesn't really seem like sg will move beyond a one-party state soon because of it but people are hoping the government moves in a different direction especially after covid.

WP taking sengkang was big big news in sg, people have to understand the PAP has dominated singapore's government for decades. In terms of actual power it means little but it was a blow to the PAP's soft power as it was a clear sign that people want the government to reorient itself.

</comment><comment><USER7> Strange place. I was amazed how many homeless there are - which will be denied, when mentioned.

I guess the people sleeping on the walkway to Louis Vuitton island were not homeless? The sleeping people in the underpasses, sleeping under signs saying not to sleep there also?

<comment><USER6> My impression actually is there are far fewer homeless, compared to say portland or LA.

<comment><USER8> there are homeless in Singapore seriously?

<comment><USER9> Yes

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Many hardworking Singaporeans today resoundingly choose a government that > promises economic stability even as censorship laws become more and more > stringent and inequality is rife.

As a Singaporean, this is the point that sticks out as proof that the author has lost touch with local sentiment. In the recent election, young Singaporean citizens felt " especially agitated by Raeesah Khan being hit with a sledgehammer." and thus many voted against the PAP. [0]

Yet, on the author's point of paradox of cyberpunk... there is a kernel of truth. While most Singaporeans wouldn't scrape a temple for a new high tech mall like Jewel, (IMO) most Singaporeans would be okay if it was for a new train station so that we (ironically) can visit Jewel more conveniently.

[0]: [https://mothership.sg/2020/07/inderjit-singh-pap- ge2020-crit...](https://mothership.sg/2020/07/inderjit-singh-pap- ge2020-criticism/)

</comment><comment><USER11> And for those of you that want the greatest novelist of cyberpunk, William Gibson, and his take on Singapore, "Disney Land with the Death Penalty."[1]

[1] [https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/](https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/)

<comment><USER12> I love how Gibson compared it to Stephenson's burbclaves, which to me is like the literary equivalent of a famous musical artist singing the "Weird Al" Yankovic version of their own song (which has also been known to happen).

<comment><USER13> Which artist did that?

<comment><USER12> I know of at least two. The Barenaked Ladies have been known to interject lyrics from "Jerry Springer" into live performances of "One Week". And The Presidents of the United States of America sometimes close out live versions of "Lump" with "And that's all I have to say about that" (the final line of "Gump").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Cyberpunk dystopia" seems very inaccurate to me. Nothing whatsoever about Singapore is "punk" in any sense of the word. "Cyber-utopian" is a better descriptor, with the emphasis on the traditional connotations of the word utopian, that being an aim for perfection at significant cost to principals that don't fit the vision.

<comment><USER15> Well, the ruling corporate authority in a cyberpunk state isn't very punk, either. It exists as an edifice to be opposed or exploited by such a rebellious subculture. Maybe Singapore is a cybernetic dystopia in search of a cyberpunk movement.

Also, the street samurai/cowboy hacker trope isn't ubiquitous to every cyberpunk work. Ghost in the Shell, a seminal work, is about law enforcement officers who uphold the state, and occasionally chase down cyberpunk anarchist hackers. (Blade Runner is much the same.) You can have the trappings of the genre without all elements of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> As someone who has lived in several tourist-ridden parts of California, the idea of turning the airport itself into a tourist trap is _very_ appealing.

</comment><comment><USER17> The fact the "Four Floors of Whores" was government sanctioned always fit well with the Disneyland feel to me.

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

I started seeing the beauty in rubbish after visiting Singapore a few times. There's something quite unsettling when there is absolutely none.

<comment><USER18> > _I started seeing the beauty in rubbish after visiting Singapore a few > times. There 's something quite unsettling when there is absolutely none._

If you were here during our lockdown, you might have seen plenty.

Some parts of Singapore's population don't see the civic responsibility in throwing trash into bins, unlike most of Japan and Taiwan.

Singapore is a clean _ed_ city, not a clean city.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As draconian and harsh a lot of Singaporean laws seem to be it's hard to argue with the country's success. I've been to Singapore many times and a lot of south east Asia as well and as someone who grew up in a third world tropical country (Rio) I don't have a romantic view of SEA as many Euros or Americans.

Singapore is a paradise compared with Indonesia, Malaysia etc.

<comment><USER20> Given the pandemic its a paradise compared to most of the states too.

</comment></comment><comment> HHC-Hunter My biggest disappointment about Singapore is the censorship. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Singapo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Singapore)

My biggest boast about Singapore are the privacy laws and technology infrastructure.

Singapore could be great, if only a few things were to change.

<comment><USER21> The PAP is slowly losing popularity. A second political party gaining power could change things.

My take on the censorship and police state is that it's there so there aren't significant racial or religious tensions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Interesting... regardless, I'd love to visit SG someday

</comment><comment><USER23> The Wired website is a f*cking joke.

I clicked to read the story, and I have pop-ups and banners all over the place. I try to click the "X" to close them, and I can't.

Goodbye, Wired. I'm not going to read the article and I'm not going to read you in the future.</comment>


Show HN: The best jobs on the web in one email - <AUTHOR> http://devjobs.io

<comment><USER2> Your example email seems to include a near total lack of the details you claim to filter for. I think including more details (location and salary/benefits at least!) would really make you look more appealing. As it currently stands, the list of postings has very little to engage me by itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

I could definitely pull the information right into the email.

My only concern with that is having the letter be too long. As it stands right now I include 20-30 postings per mailer.

I could break it up into multiple mailers as well. So something like 10 posts per mailer with a layout like such:

[Company] [Job Title] [1-2 Sentence Description] [Location] [Salary] (I could possibly pull in a salary from Glassdoor if this isn't provided)

Would that be more attractive?</comment></comment>


Browserprint: are you uniquely identifiable? - <AUTHOR> https://browserprint.info/ <comment><USER2> The Firefox "Random Agent Spoofer"* helps with this site at least. The biggest leak that needs to be plugged is the browser plugin details. Any obscure plugins at all are worth a lot towards unique identification. Why any script should be able to enumerate all plugins is beyond me.

* [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/random-agent-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/random-agent-spoofer/)

<comment><USER3> Using panopticlick, system fonts seem to be worth a lot as well, which is strange to me as i feel like very few people ever touch their system fonts? or do they change with different OS updates/patches?

<comment><USER4> Often applications come with their own fonts as well.

<comment><USER3> ahh, ok, thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why do the browsers let the website know which plugins I have?

There are some things like Flash that should identify themselves, but those are few and far between, and the check should be feature specific and handled by the plugin.

Allowing every site to build a profile based on plugins [that is: a) fingerprint, and b) profile based on the plugins I use] is just an egregious violation of privacy.

At the very least, if there is some reason to expose browsers, let it be configurable.

Also, font testing should be made expensive [eg, one check per second]. Check if we have font "scrabble", OK, but not get list of all fonts.

<comment><USER6> Because browsers need to be able to declare what content can be displayed to the user. If we only had Flash it would be simple, but considering the amount of content delivery systems that each browser implements and the fact that they are not consistent there isn't much way around it. It's not true to claim that the browsers let anyone know which plugins you are running, this is limited to a specific subset of plugins that handle content.

There is no way to prevent "fingerprinting", infact what you suggest seems to indicate that you are thinking about it the wrong way. You can disable these plugins but that creates a fingerprint on it's own, if you only accept HTML (no HTML5 because it's also "evil") and no javascript well then you are a more unique fingerprint than your vanilla Chrome with Flash, PDF, and a few WebM and DRM plugins. The only effective way of disabling fingerprinting is make all browsers identical, and more importantly all hardware and software configurations that those browsers operate in also identical.

You also need to understand the value of each fingerprint if you look at [https://panopticlick.eff.org/](https://panopticlick.eff.org/) for example then most of the fingerprints produced are useless, half of them are shared between 30-80% of all browsers. The most unique one was the HTTP_ACCEPT Headers in my case which is unique for one out of ~1400 browsers so that is something I can now use to see if this is something that can be fixed. The plugin fingerprint in my case is 1 out of 48 browsers, that is not unique in any case and from what I've tested every latest Chrome install on Windows 10 without any additional content plugins (e.g. Java) has the same fingerprint.

<comment><USER7> You're missing that these things don't have to be taken in isolation.

If you've got 4 metrics each of which slice about "1 in 50" then taking the combination you've got a metric that is unique between 1 in 50 and 1 in 6.25 million (depending on correlation).

The "fingerprint" is all that information put together, not each taken in isolation.

<comment><USER6> That only works when you actually have variance in the fingerprints greater than OS/platform based.

If I spin up 10 new Windows 10 machines install Chrome on them I would get the same fingerprints, oddly enough they would be identical to the fingerprints I'm getting on my own machine since I don't have any plugins installed (I do have multiple extensions).

The only real change in the fingerprint I've seen so far from my own internal testing is the screen resolution, and WebGL fingerprint (Intel/NVIDIA seem to produce a pretty identical one, AMD differs a bit).

However the main point i was trying to get across is that while trying to minimize your fingerprint or exposure you create your own unique fingerprint in the process.

For example using adblockers these addons can easily leak not only which adblocker you are using but which lists / filters you have enabled, if you are a non-English native and you are using a localized list that exposes a lot of information.

Addons / extensions that block things like HTML5 Canvas also leave a fingerprint - you run a modern browser by all accounts but don't support Canvas? whelp you are upto something!

Same goes with WebGL and many other plugins/vectors.

The problem here is that content delivery relies on the browser being interrogatable for certain information, if that information is not correct then the content will not be displayed properly (which on it's own can be detected), we want to move on from Flash, we want to move one from addons and plugins into more native stuff but this came at a cost of platforms being more unique and diverse which allows you to generate a more unique fingerprint. Creating a browser that generates random fingerprints also won't really help, unless everyone uses it you would again stand out of the crowd even more.

That said however without specific targeted exploitation I have not yet seen a tool nor I managed to make one that creates a good fingerprint that can be easily used to identify a browser rather than just classify it and the platform it's running on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The server appears to be timing out but the title and concept reminds me of this: [https://panopticlick.eff.org/](https://panopticlick.eff.org/)

<comment><USER9> Is my browser uniquely identifiable? Yes! This is no surprise, not anymore at least.

I pass the first three tests here, but fingerprinting does the trick. About one in 50k browsers has the same fonts as me. About one in 30k browsers have the same addons and plugins. I bet those two don't overlap. Then there are several other variables like language that narrow it down if that is still needed.

They could try to explain how to make a browser not uniquely identifiable however. What browser configuration is not unique? What do I have to do to get that?

<comment><USER10> I believe that Tor browser is least uniquely identifiable. That's a major Tor Project goal. Ideally, all Tor users would be using the same browser, with no modifications. There is a privacy/security slider, but there are only four settings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So the "Do not track" header is another data point in the fingerprint worth ~1bit on its own. Has it actually had any benefits or should we just get rid of it?

<comment><USER12> DNT can't protect you against bad actors really. These are the people/companies that are honoring the DNT clause.

[http://donottrack.us/implementations](http://donottrack.us/implementations)

<comment><USER13> I like how the site loads something from ajax.googleapis.com, with Google being known for not respecting DNT.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> if you are so worried, tha you are identifiable - just use your iphone, same hardware, same browser - same fingerprint(beside ip which can be dynamic & useless) - so literally all iphone users are the same user. (i was trying to make some start-up which required fingerprinting, but we pivoted =))

<comment><USER15> what's your startup doing now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I bet it's really cool, however it seems the request never finishes. It could be that it only works if you have javascript and/or cookies enabled.

<comment><USER17> Seems to be a problem with overload.

But speaking of javascript, how many of the fingerprinting checks will not be possible if js is turned off? I could imagine that definitely all screen- related stuff is immediately killed.

<comment><USER18> Apparently my CSS font list alone can _uniquely_ identify my browser out of those tested so far, which is rather concerning...

Is there some Firefox extension I can use to spoof my font list to some subset of my existing font list to conform with some widely used system default? I do have some custom fonts installed, but I'd prefer random websites I visit to not know about them if possible.

Also, the way plugins are handled in Firefox has always bothered me quite a bit. I can disable them, but not remove them. What gives?

<comment><USER19> My HTTP_ACCEPT Headers uniquely identify me, but I think anyone with an OS set to french using the last chrome version would have the same header, so it's really not a big sample (13 709 currently).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just wondering - would it be possible to send a header back to webservers forbidding them to fingerprint my browser? Would that have any chance legally?

<comment><USER20> If I understand it correctly, the way this fingerprinting works is just by using questions you need to show the website properly.

 _' What is your screen resolution? What HTML5 features do you support? Do you have this font/plugin?'_

Bar giving up all those facilities, the best you can do is ask and hope they comply....

<comment><USER21> There's browser extensions that will fake all of those to a standard value. The tricky part is that with fingerprinting, depending on your chosen faked value you could end up being more identifiable, if not enough people use it.

For instance, you can change your user agent and headers to some generic Windows Chrome one but a savvy tracker will fingerprint your TCP connection and realise you are actually on a Mac, and that can be used as a further source of entropy to better identify you.

I've spent more time than is healthy looking into ways to uniquely identify devices on the internet. While the company I was working for was always on the safe side in terms of privacy, the more blackhat methods can be useful in collaborating with law enforcement to deanonimise Tor users (think pedophiles, not drugs)

Tor Browser devs have in turn been really good at hardening fingerprinting attack vectors related to it (and rightly so, browsers don't rape people — people rape people) but unless you're super paranoid it's not a great experience for the average user.

I think a better solution will come (at least in the EU) from the proposal to extend cookie law to any kind of fingerprinting (regardless of storage), which takes use case in account and can be enforced through big fines.

<comment><USER22> > _There 's browser extensions that will fake all of those to a standard > value. The tricky part is that with fingerprinting, depending on your chosen > faked value you could end up being more identifiable, if not enough people > use it._

Couldn't this be worked around by reporting random values every time?

<comment><USER21> Kinda, but then the random values just become a flag for "has x browser extension installed" and the trackers will still use the things you can't change, like the OS networking stack, GPU, audio, etc. to track you.

It's very hard to get away completely... even with Tor, if you are the only person who uses Tor to visit a certain site you are as trackable as anyone else for that site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >Secure connection: fatal error (40)

yep, pretty unique</comment>


CHASM LEAP – THE HARDEST GAME YOU'VE Never PLAYED - <AUTHOR> iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chasm-leap/id1270615642?mt=8
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chasm.lp&hl=en
Test both your accuracy and quick reflexes with CHASM LEAP! Find yourself amidst an endless hazard of chasms which you will need to navigate through precisely, to avoid obliteration! Time each leap carefully to ensure your success in this anticipating new arcade game.
Try to survive as long as possible without plunging into a CHASM! <comment><USER2> How about no.</comment>


500px Terms of Service - <AUTHOR> http://500px.com/terms <comment><USER2> As much as I think Terms of Service documents are broken, I don't like these supposed simplifications, because invariably they simplify too much.

For example, in the real ToS, there's this clause:

        The license granted to 500px includes the right to use your Content fully
        or partially for promotional reasons and to distribute and redistribute your
        Content to other parties, web-sites, applications, and other entities (...)

This is, in my opinion, an important clause that does not appear in the simplified version of the text.

<comment><USER3> I've been through the process of litigating a contract in court. Not fun, but definitely was an exquisite education in the school of hard knocks.

Lawyers throw all kinds of language into a contract, that doesn't mean the intent was there. Vague, unfair, or overly broad language that was not clearly understood by both parties tends to get reduced, removed, or modified in accordance with what both parties reasonably understood to be the intent. So if they tried to get overly sneaky and do something where the basically version says X, but the full clause says we do X,Y,Z, then the courts may very well rule the implied intent was X but Y and Z were not implied and agreed to.

If they understand what they are doing, and plan to strictly abide by the basically section, this is a fantastic idea. If they at some point decide they want to get sneaky and put something in the detailed version that is not covered in the "basically" section, they may well find themselves in a world of trouble if it comes to court.

My experience was a company trying to sue me, despite them breaching the contract. The judge took a dim view of the crazy clauses in there and was pretty sharp with them. I expect the same thing would happen here. A normal user would probably abide by the "basically" section and the courts would _probably_ take that interpretation. Of course YMMV.

<comment><USER4> "The column on the right provides a short explanation of the terms of use and is not legally binding."

That's quite clear to me. If I were to try my luck in the courts, I'd be pleasantly surprised if the Judge took the "basically" column as the legal interpretation. Ignorance, as far as I'm aware, is not an acceptable legal defence (as cited by many a judge to people who neglect to pay their taxes).

The fact remains however, few people read TOS pages or privacy polices. Any attempt to change that should be applauded in my view.

<comment><USER5> _Ignorance, as far as I'm aware, is not an acceptable legal defence (as cited by many a judge to people who neglect to pay their taxes)._

Be careful not to confuse criminal law with contracts. It is fundamental to the existence of a contract that both sides understand it. That is one of the few points of law that is pretty much a universal constant, whatever jurisdiction you're in.

<comment><USER6> Which is somewhat absurd, since most people agree to hundreds of ToS contracts without reading them.

<comment><USER7> And the legality of this isn't fully established; in fact, last I heard, it was being somewhat successfully contested. But there's no sweeping word on the matter yet: you could probably take a ToS violation to court and have it set precedence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is brilliant. It's always seemed crazy to me that terms, laws, and especially contracts are written in legalese that only a trained lawyer could really understand, and yet all lay-people are expected to adhere to the nuances of these rules.

Obviously that simplicity isn't sufficient alone, or we'd just have one law "Be Good" (even that needs 'good' to be defined properly) -- but having a summary like this next to the specific details, in "lay-galese" if you will, it seems like this should be the standard way to write all legal documents.

I hope it doesn't open them up to liability due to the interpretations of the summary, though?

</comment><comment><USER9> TL;DR TOS are quite refreshing! Of course I'd be interested to hear if this opens them up to any liability due to the summaries inherent imprecision... Can any lawyers chime in on this?

<comment><USER10> At the top, it's explicitly stated:

      Before using any of the 500px services, you are required to
      read, understand and agree to these terms. You may only create
      an account after reading and accepting these terms. The column
      on the right provides a short explanation of the terms of use
      and is not legally binding.

Obligatory IANAL, but that explicit statement probably covers them from any potential liability from providing summaries.

<comment><USER11> Has this been challenged yet in a court, when someone reading only the right- hand column decides they feel all lawsuity? Is this sort of 'user-friendly interface' covered by existing case law?

IANAL either, and I wouldn't touch this or anything else that hadn't been vetted by a professional. To me, on first glance, this smells like class- action bait. "Your Honor, the defendants deliberately misled the plaintiffs by placing a 'simple' Terms of Service on their website, but then hid their true intentions in small print which claimed the obvious, prominent version wasn't legally binding." Who needs that hassle?

<comment><USER3> I'm not a lawyer, but I have been through the process of litigating a contract in court.

The law does cover this. Contracts are about a meeting of the minds. Do both parties understand and agree to the terms. Things like email, other written communication about the contract or terms are all reviewed at trial. It's amazing how much of the "sneaky" verbage just get thrown out or ignored as unreasonable or not understood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We just launched a redesign today that features a new presentation of our TOS (<http://hover.com/tos>). We take a lot of pride in making all aspects of our service as useful as we can and didn't want our legalese to be the exception to that. We abandoned the "Explain This" approach that 500px took on the basis that we wanted the agreement itself to be friendly, not the explanation of it. (Well, we want the explanation friendly too, but we thought it would be much easier to explain if the agreement itself was approachable.)

Its a work in progress, and I think we're a lot closer to where I want to be. We focused extensively on making it understandable, useful and usable and I'd love to get feedback on how well we hit the mark (or missed it as the case may be...). There's still some complexity in there that our lawyers insist on and I figure we can keep whittling away at it until we get what we really want.

/r

</comment><comment><USER13> I was expecting a TOS in ultra small print so that it all fits into 500px (500px height or whatever).

<comment><USER14> Or something that would have to fit in 500px in 12px Helvetica, Arial. That would be quite nice actually. Our TOS or EULA is about 3 paragraphs, and that's it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wanted to do this in 2006 for delicious.

The problem is that by placing the simplified terms in the same place, they become binding. Since they must differ somehow from the actual terms, then you open yourself to various problems.

<comment><USER16> What about simplifying the actual TOS then?

<comment><USER15> That's probably fine. I'm just regurgitating the feedback I got from the lawyers - you should have exactly one representation of the terms so that people/courts/whatever don't get to pick and choose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> one-man-bucket Planet Money did an episode on why TOS and EULA's aren't human (as opposed to lawyer) readable.

Here's a link to the episode: [http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/04/21/134633336/why- are-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/04/21/134633336/why-are-credit- card-agreements-so-long)

</comment><comment><USER17> If you can write down your terms of service in a simple and clear manner, why include the obfuscated version?

<comment><USER18> Legal documents are similar to computer programs in that they must be very precise and follow strict rules of construction. The comments in a program's source code would not suffice as instructions to a computer, and neither would an annotation to a legal document suffice for the document itself.

<comment><USER19> Except, of course, that legal documents are not nearly as precise as programming languages. And most legal documents have a lot of dead code-- nobody really knows or cares if that code path is followed anymore. You don't want to be the guy removing sections from a legal document.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is indeed a nice TOS but I've always been impressed by Tarsnap's legal section.

<http://www.tarsnap.com/legal.html>

</comment><comment><USER21> > _(iii) for any direct damages in Excess of (in the aggregate) $100._ //

That doesnt sound legal.

It would, if enforceable allow them to only pay you $100 if they wrote off (destroyed) your car in a crash if it happened that you were a customer. Or similarly they could duplicate any customer's copyright works and pay only $100 compensation.

<comment><USER22> Hi pbhjpbhj!

Thanks for pointing that out!

It is legal and very common. It is done simply to limit the liability in unforeseen events. Some courts can throw this point out during the case, some may adhere to that. But most terms on the Internet would include it "just in case".

And no, we won't duplicate customers' works and such — we have build it for photographers, and we are photographers ourselves. We care about that stuff.

\- Evgeny Tchebotarev, COO, 500px

<comment><USER21> > _Some courts can throw this point out during the case, some may adhere to > that._ //

Thanks for your response. I wasn't suggesting, as it might read, that it's not legal to make the claim. Just that there was no apparent legal value in such a disclaimer.

I realise it's a technicality but do you, or does anyone here, know of a case in which such a clause has been valuable in limiting the defendants liability (or otherwise valuable I guess) and as a follow-up why the claimed limit of liability is not $0 USD or say 1¢? On the later point consider that one could be the subject of a class action by a million users (the claimed liability then would differ 1¢/$100 as $10k/$100M; this suggests there must be a strong reason to claim at the specific value).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Funny how site called 500px doesn't fit in my 1000+px wide browser :)

</comment><comment><USER24> Under the Fair Usage policy (emphasis mine):

Premium accounts are _limited_ to maximum of 1,000 new photographs/images per week 100,000 photographs/ images in total (approximately 3,000Gb of storage) and 10Gb of data transfer per month. Awesome accounts that exceed a limit for several months will be notified of their usage and restrictions may be imposed if usage is not corrected.

\---

A couple of things. First, what about Plus accounts that exceed a limit for several months? It would appear that the TOS don't cover any sort of restriction on those accounts.

More importantly, _limted_ is not how the premium accounts are advertised at <https://500px.com/upgrade> the Plus and Awesome account don't say "1000 images/week" they say "Unlimited Uploads Upload ... as much as you want." Additionally no total storage limit is ever mentioned.

I know that the cellular companies and ISPs think that "Unlimited" actually means "limited" but it doesn't.

un·lim·it·ed, adj. 1. Lacking any controls 2. Boundless, infinite 3. not bounded by exceptions : undefined

That definition does not have "4. limit to be determined arbitrarily"

500px should either update their upgrade page advertisements to match their TOS, or--better--update their TOS to match their advertisement.

definition from: <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unlimited> (I'd prefer an OED definition, but I don't have a subscription)

</comment><comment><USER25> I like the TOS for this site: <http://ycombinator.com/legal.html>

<comment><USER26> I really liked YC's Privacy Policy from their original legal page

      Privacy Policy: We're too lazy to look at log files, and haven't yet written any software to do it.

      Terms of Use: When you click on a link, our server will send you the corresponding page.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20050324100821/http://ycombinator...](http://web.archive.org/web/20050324100821/http://ycombinator.com/legal.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Good legalese IS human readable. The point of legalese is to define everything in absolutely certain terms. Where words are given unusual or overly specific meanings, these meanings should be defined in the document. Legalese can be heavy going, but should never require any knowledge that 90% of the population doesn't already posses.

Of course, having a simplified version is still nice.

<comment><USER28>
        The point of legalese is to define everything in absolutely certain terms.

Legalese is what you get when you try to get a precise meaning from an imprecise language. It is like trying to get the type safety of Haskell in PHP, resulting in a lot of verbosity.

I think this is relevant: There is a paper+presentation from SPJ about defining a contract (financial, in this case) in Haskell. Precise and machine verifiable.

[http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/simonpj/Papers...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/simonpj/Papers/financial-contracts/contracts-icfp.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This reminds me the "Privacy icons" project. Aza raskin wrote about it : <http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/privacy-icons/>

Basically, next to the terms of use, easily identifiable icons are displayed. Something like Creative Commons did for licenses.

</comment><comment><USER30> What we need is a Creative Commons for TOS boilerplate, to just copy and paste.

Especially, since most of that lawyer blah is superfluous. Things like "do not harass other people". Really! We already have /laws/ for that, you don't need to add any obviously prohibited thing to the TOS.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, I have always wondered why community bulletin boards don't come with a TOS, but internet bulletin boards do.

Someone puts a cork board up in a rec center, they don't feel the need to inform people that they are not resonsible for the content. What is the legal situation on the internet that makes people think they need to do this?

Is it just herd mentality or is there a legal reason why you have to tell people that if they post child pornography that you will delete it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Well done to whoever spotted this. I signed up to this site, and now I will delete my account. The simplifications are not accurately simplifying what they should be. Which I think is silly, since the majority of us can read and think, and see that in some cases the simplifications barely match whats actually being said.

And I point also and especially to wording like this, which leaves me outright cold to them as a product _"The registration information you provide must be accurate, complete, and current at all times. Failure to do so constitutes a breach of the Terms, which may result in immediate termination of your 500px account."_

This is a website, that _I_ put photos on, not an application for something serious.

<comment><USER22> True. But we want you to have the truthful information in case someone steals _your_ photos. We'll be able to investigate and find out the truth. Having real name, web-site, twitter or facebook helps us a lot in that.

There has been a few cases like that, and photographers love that we take proactive approach in solving their problems.

<comment><USER33> Want and need are two very different things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm glad someone did this.

But I'm not sure that it really gives me any more confidence in my knowledge of the contractual agreement than if I hadn't read the TOS at all.

I think a company's TOS is based on the assumption that if the company tries to use their TOS to take advantage of lots of people, if one person finds out, everyone finds out. And the company has to answer.

If a company makes their TOS more readable, I'm still agreeing to the contract on the same assumption. It doesn't matter that I read it. What matters is that I legally bound myself to the TOS, not the summary.

What would be way cooler was if the TOS summary sections were curated by the masses (wikipedia style). See, that I would trust and I would be interested in reading.

</comment><comment><USER35> I assume most of us here at HN do some sort of computer development work. In computers, languages aren't simple, human readable, though modern languages try to be as readable as possible. Why is that? It's because you can't have ambiguity. An ambiguous command could set off a nuke...or break a pacemaker and kill a patient, or something worse.

There is a reason why legal documents are terse, boring, difficult to read. It's because they need to avoid the natural ambiguities of human language.

Mom just saw a cat in the living room. The mom was in the living room and saw a cat? The mom was in the kitchen and saw a cat in the living room? See, for a casual conversation it doesn't matter. But to prove where a murder happened, it matters....

As much as I hate lawyerspeak(computer programmer here), I understand the need for a technical language and I understand that the simplifications in that document WILL allow for ambiguities.

For example: "If you use more than your fair share, we may gradually limit your account." Can mean anything....

</comment><comment><USER36> Their privacy policy is also very readable.

<http://500px.com/privacy>

</comment><comment><USER37> My take away from this conversation is that everyone could benefit from A simple shared set of TOS and privacy policies, something like open ID for login or creative commons for copyright sharing. It could be branded so people can read it once and know how it works. Having a small set of versions would make case law for one site easily. applicable to other sites, and you could monetize with a small regular fee to use the branding/trademark , and add a certain number of hours per year for legal advice/representation in cases/suits directly related to the TOS and privacy policy as a premium option. Write once, reuse anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER38> If you want you can generate a readable privacy policy with iubenda (<https://www.iubenda.com>), while TOS are coming soon :)

</comment><comment><USER39> Here is an idea. Simplify the actual terms of service. The TOS can be what was written under the "Basically" parts.

There is no rule that a TOS has to be convoluted.

<comment><USER40> The "basically" parts don't cover even 10% of the actual terms. As others have said, there are tons of restrictive language in there that are not even hinted at under basically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I cannot see half the page because my browser width is 1024px

Should people really be expected to horizontally scroll a dozen times to read a page.

<comment><USER42> This site seems to be the perfect example I was looking for during yesterday's discussion on the ever-increasing size of users' screens.

I _know_ you are a photography site, and you want your photos to be big & beautiful -- but this is not necessary.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3827737>

Oh, and one the subject of TOS; I believe a legal document, is a legal document, is a legal document -- trying to "paint over" your terms with "friendly" prose isn't helping the user and is also unnecessary...

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> We took the approach of a human readable TOU and Privacy Policy (with a bit of humor thrown in):

<https://www.voo.st/about#tou>

<https://www.voo.st/about#privacy>

</comment><comment><USER44> This is a nice approach and I think a lot of companies will follow suit. I wonder, are there any good links or resources on generating the Terms Of Service or Privacy Policies in the first place? Or is a lawyer always required?

<comment><USER38> Did you try <https://www.iubenda.com> ?

<comment><USER44> Wow, that's great thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Bagcheck has done this previously - <http://bagcheck.com/terms>. I feel it is a lot more readable because the actual legal code isn't in 'fine print'.

</comment><comment><USER46> The CommonTerms project (<http://commonterms.net>) is working on a common framework for easy previewing of TOS documents.

Your feedback is welcome!

</comment><comment><USER47> Reading this just reminds me how awful the state of copyright is. We need a new way for producers of images (and any other digital art for that matter) to make money.

</comment><comment><USER48> Breath of fresh air. I've never seen a ToS like this before.

</comment><comment><USER49> I like how the terms require the users of the service to "be responsible" but disclaim all responsibility on the part of the service provider.

</comment><comment><USER50> FWIW, they posted their response as a blog entry: <http://500px.com/blog/114>

</comment><comment><USER51> "To fully use the services you need to create your own account, without violating other peoples' rights."

That misplaced apostrophe is killing me.

</comment><comment><USER52> I think the simplifications are very well designed but ideally they should be accurate. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER53> I love it! Lawyers would hate it.

</comment><comment><USER54> I can definitely see the big difference between lawyer language and make-sense language.

</comment><comment><USER55> First I thought this is a template other services could copy and put up on their site.

</comment><comment><USER56> that's why we need something like the gpl for toss. this way, we know EXACTLY what the terms are without reading the whole thing.

</comment><comment><USER57> brilliant ... no one listens to me when I say SIMPLICITY is the biggest way to success in the tech world.

<comment><USER57> people don't like to think, they want easy, fast, simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Laws should have TL;DR versions too.

</comment><comment><USER59> > approximately 60Gb of storage

Is that Gb or GB?

</comment><comment><USER60> Never trust the big print.

<comment><USER61> That's a good point. It can work for a website TOS, but it wouldn't work for a home sale contract for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> The only good TOS is one whose URL returns a 404.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you waste food? Try Food Tracker. - <AUTHOR>

I have an idea and wanted to get feedback from Hacker News readers:
Food Tracker is a web and mobile application that keeps track of food in your fridge and pantry. Whether it's veggies or milk, Food Tracker intelligently creates meal plans, monitors expiration dates, and makes shopping and recipe suggestions based on the ingredients you have (and not what you don't have).
Interested to hear your thoughts. Thanks. <comment><USER2> How are you tagging food items? Is it embedded into your fridge/pantry? Are you thinking about using your cell phone to "scan" every item? If the auto food tagging infrastructure is in place, a web/mobile app can have interesting applications.

It might be easier if "intelligence" is integrated into refrigerators like - [http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/23/siemens-refrigerator- gets...](http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/23/siemens-refrigerator-gets-hacked- adds-rfid-communication/)</comment>


Replay: Unknown Features of the NetBurst Core (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/print/replay.html?

<comment><AUTHOR> While it might sound from the title like this article is hopelessly out of date, I think it's still highly relevant to the current generation of Intel processors. I came across it in a footnote to Agner Fog's excellent [http://www.agner.org/optimize/microarchitecture.pdf[1]](http://www.agner.org/optimize/microarchitecture.pdf\[1\]).

The article details (what I think is) an otherwise undocumented 'replay' feature that describes how the processor deals with data dependencies that aren't resolved on the expected schedule: among others, L1 cache misses, TLB misses, and failed Store-Load forwards.

[1] Footnote to self: Read the rest of Agner's footnotes!

<comment><USER2> AFAIK the replay feature is present only on Netburst processors, basically, the P4 line (Northwood onwards, not sure it was on Willamette ones)

Modern Intel processors do not use the Netburst architecture.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have specific knowledge about how more modern processors handle these cases? I was particularly excited to find this article because it was the only source that explained the hardware counter activity I found here: [http://fastcompression.blogspot.com/2014/09/counting- bytes-f...](http://fastcompression.blogspot.com/2014/09/counting-bytes-fast- little-trick-from.html)

Yann was trying to write a fast histogram to record the number of occurrences of each character. But the simple version of the program was much slower than expected. After a fair amount of digging, it was determined that "impossible" store forwarding was a factor. Checking the performance counters seemed to confirm that many of the loads were being replayed (executed many times before being retired). Is there another explanation for this?

<comment><USER2> From this it looks like it might be something similar really [https://docs.google.com/document/d/18gs0bkEwQ5cO8pMXT_MsOa8X...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/18gs0bkEwQ5cO8pMXT_MsOa8Xey4NEavXq- OvtdUXKck/pub)

I'm not very familiar with the modern things in the Core architecture

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I think so too! But I'm biased almost surely. You probably didn't notice, but the "Nathan Kurz" who wrote that email and the 'nkurz' that posted this are both me. That's why I was excited to finally find some sort of external confirmation. :)

<comment><USER2> Aaah sorry I didn't notice :)

Sorry, my knowledge of the microprocessor internals have been going down these past years (and they are becoming more complex)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Beirut's Bright Future as a Tech Hub for MENA, If Its Politicians Will Allow It - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/03/beiruts-bright-future-as-a-tech-hub-for-mena-if-its-politicians-will-allow-it/

<comment><USER2> I had no idea this stuff was going on in Beirut, but I'm excited to visit. If anyone from the Beirut tech community is reading this, I had two questions:

(1) Do you agree with the author that the startup community is primarily held back by internet speeds? (It's painful to Skype or share a YouTube video with friends in Lebanon, so I know it's a problem -- just wondering about how you'd rank it with other concerns.) Are there any gaps in desired engineering skills? Are people bringing experience with large-scale web architecture or hardware design from working outside of Lebanon?

(2) What's the competitive advantage for these companies? Some ideas -- like music streaming or health tracking or Hulu for the Middle East -- seem easily deflated if an already-at-scale competitor decides to focus on Arabic internationalization. What do Beirut's tech startups understand about Middle East consumers that Western tech companies are missing?

<comment><USER3> I live in Beirut.

1)Internet speed is a problem. Engineering talent is extinct (all the good engineers leave the country). Like i said people are leaving so no experience from outside is coming in.

2)Some of these startups mentioned are dead, even some of the names are people i worked with and have not a single success story (some not all) which diminishes the credibility of this article. As for the promising startups like Anghami, they have a better understanding of the arab culture and connections, let alone the reality of the situation as opposed to information perceived from such articles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think Beirut's politicians are the only political risk the city is exposed to. Anyone familiar with the recent history of Lebanon knows that it is the pawn in a bloody geopolitical game being played by the US, Israel, Syria and Iran, among others. All of those countries have the power to destabilize Lebanon and its capital in a variety of ways. Many local politicians are tied to one or more of those interests. Anyone who thinks Lebanon will be stable any time soon should read Robert Fisk's "Pity the Nation."</comment>


Bitching is the killer app for Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/968-bitching-is-the-killer-app-for-twitter <comment><USER2> I think Jason Fried just has a bunch of negative friends. I tend to see a lot of extremes on twitter. Something is either totally awesome or pitifully stupid. Not a lot of middle ground.

<comment><USER3> Looks like DHH wrote that entry.

<comment><USER2> You are correct. I didn't notice that. I guess that makes all the more sense :)

<comment><USER2> I take this back. I met DHH at Startup School this past weekend and he was incredibly nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Then who needs Twitter? Just go to any place of employment and listen.</comment>


Solving Likely Problems in Your Multithreaded Code - <AUTHOR> https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc817398.aspx

<comment><USER2> Microsoft's code quality evangelism pains me a bit. With one hand they publish articles like this and add tools to Visual Studio to help with code quality (e.g. adding static code analysis to VS2012 Express and later). And with the other hand they go "haha fuck you" and arbitrarily lock out some code quality tools unless you're using Visual Studio Ultimate. (my Visual Studio with MSDN Premium isn't enough, it seems.)

"Smart Unit Tests" [1] is the most recent in a long list of things tucked away in Ultimate.

[1] [https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/dn823749(v=vs.140).aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/dn823749\(v=vs.140\).aspx)

<comment><USER3> This isn't surprising. Microsoft is out to make money, not to make the world's code quality better. They may make the world's code quality better sometimes, but if they are faced with a choice between the two, they're going to choose the money. Visual Studio's tiered pricing and tiered features are just an example of that.

If making the world's code quality better is a priority for you, I think the solution is to switch to free languages and toolchains and help improve them. I'm not saying this from a "shut up or leave" kind of mentality: this is exactly why I moved out of the C#/.NET ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The bank account example is a classic illustration of the problems with locking:

        class BankAccount {
            internal static void Transfer(
              BankAccount a, BankAccount b, decimal delta) {
                Withdraw(a, delta);
                Deposit(b, delta);
            }
            // As before
        }

Withdraw() and Deposit() either do their own locking, and we get a race trying to use them together, or we push locking up the chain to their users. The former solution is unacceptable, and the latter just punts the problem--what if we want to call Transfer() and some other function together without a possible race condition between them?

<comment><USER5> Create a "box" type, say AccountAction, that represents something that has to happen atomically. The AccountAction-ness ripples up the chain, so user functions may return AccountActions, or may call several AccountActions and return a single combined AccountAction for things like this Transfer. At the top level there can be a single "actor" that's responsible for processing accounts that processes AccountActions one at a time; user code passes an AccountAction[T] and gets back the "unboxed" T, the actor having performed the action atomically.

Ensure that the only way to construct something that accesses a BankAccount is as an AccountAction. You're automatically assured that any code calls the "actor" eventually, because there's no way to e.g. print an AccountAction[String] to standard output - sooner or later you have to make the call. User code can still have races if it tries (e.g. if it deliberately calls the "actor" separately for the withdraw and the deposit), but such code is much more obviously wrong from reading and looking at the types (particularly if you call your actor call something like "unsafeTransaction"). If you've got a single consistent point of entry/exit (e.g. this is a message- processing system), you can put the actor call there.

The only hard part is making this easy enough to use that it doesn't overcomplicate the code. Provide easy syntax for composing two AccountActions - something that's as clear and simple as just calling two methods, but with just enough difference to make it clear from the code whether you're using one or not - e.g. non-action calls use "=", action calls use "<-". Make a library of functions for doing things like "perform a list of AccountActions as a single, atomic AccountAction". Better yet, make AccountAction conform to some interface such that that library already exists.

(Of course by now you've probably guessed that AccountAction is just an alias for the reader monad. But the naming is valuable; it keeps everything more concrete and clear)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> (2008)</comment>


URL Shortener Analysis - Tweets from 2009 vs. 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://ewencp.org/blog/url-reshorteners-over-time/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what the point of this analysis is. That Twitter is wrapping each and every URL, however short, is a known fact. And since people are using different URL shorteners, URLs are bound to be re-wrapped when a tweet is retweeted.

<comment><USER3> It's a known fact, but nevertheless annoying that Twitter _URL LENGTHENS_ , and annoying that Twitter thinks it's ok to rebrand publisher shorteners like nyti.ms or tcrn.ch which help users recognize where the redirect will take them.

<comment><USER4> But these publisher specific shorteners no longer serve any function surely. They were because you had to use a shortener, so they created their own. Now everything goes through t.co you effectively do not need a shortener yourself. For your own site you get no more analytic data from a shortener than a real url.

<comment><USER3> I don't generally use sharing services; I email links while reading the page. I like emailing a link that I know doesn't line break. That just needs to be less than 70 chars, but many news sites are longer. So as long as they're shortening, might as well shorten for all venues. Twitter's shortener is useless in this direct sharing case.

Another publisher specific function is, as I mentioned, letting a user know through your branded short URL what this shortened link is likely to take them to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought the point was that Twitter can add a few lines of code that check whether a URL is shortened before re-wrapping. Fewer redirects, less time till I get to the real content.

<comment><USER4> Twitter want the data so they decided you have to wrap in t.co. They dont care about indirection. Though they could try to undo other shortners.

<comment><USER6> At least on the Twitter web site, they already have the unwrapped URLs -- see the data-expanded-url and data-ultimate-url attributes on links (and, of course, at least one unwrapping is used for displaying the link).

They probably don't want to completely undo other shorteners, however, because these services aren't only used for shortening. I absolutely believe it's beneficial for them to have multiple levels of indirection so others can gather stats, I just don't like it as a user who is consuming the links. If the amount of indirection, delay in loading pages, and brittleness of links gets bad enough, maybe it eventually will make sense for them to try harder to avoid it.

But they could, in some cases, avoid increasing the amount of indirection and still gather the same stats. For example, on their site, since they open links in a new tab anyway, they could make that link direct and capture the click event with a separate AJAX request in the original Twitter tab.

If you focus only on page load latency, other sites/services besides URL shorteners are making things worse. I regularly notice some small delay waiting for my click on a Google result to go through Google's servers since they (annoyingly, in my opinion) swap out the target URL for a wrapped version at the last minute. Of course, Google has other good reasons for doing this as well -- stats and removing referral information immediately come to mind.

I also didn't show that this negatively impacts user experience. It could be that t.co, on average, requires so little overhead that the extra level of indirection doesn't matter. But I think it's worth looking into, and if it does have a negative effect, figure out ways to mitigate these effects.

<comment><USER4> Another issue is that people who use twitter want stats, and t.co has no public stats interface, so people use bitly etc as they still want data.

On mobile I notice the slowness of t.co a lot. On desktop I have been noticing waiting for the google redirects too recently. So I think they are a problem, but potentially more resources thrown at the problem could fix this, but using other means would be better as you suggest.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon's knock-off problem (35 Shades of Grey, anyone?) - <AUTHOR> http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/04/16/amazon-knock-off-bestsellers/?iid=HP_LN <comment><USER2> So publishing houses fill a need after all?

But seriously, in theory, crowd sourcing of editorial reviews should resolve this. But the reviews are not as well surfaced on other devices. If you shoulder surf the computer illiterate, you'll find it amazing what they're happy to click unquestioningly.

The only way to combat this is either deny self-publishing (bad solution), or improve customer trust signals to the point it's not profitable for a self- publisher to assemble even a 23 page pamphlet.

Amazon should step up and make trust signals more prominent.

 _// "The Dragon with the Girl Tattoo" sounds much more interesting:[http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Girl-Tattoo-Adam- Roberts/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Girl-Tattoo-Adam- Roberts/dp/B006Z32SC4/) _

<comment><USER3> Commercial publishers, though not as blatant about it, are nearly as bad in their own way. A financially successful book is guaranteed to spawn hordes of imitations from "respectable" publishing houses.

I was in a physical Barnes & Noble store not long ago and noted that they now have an entire _section_ labeled "Teen Paranormal Romance".

<comment><USER4> That's mixing things up. Imitation isn't the problem here: clones happen of all successful products, and that's a good thing.

The problem is _fraud_. These titles and authors (and sometimes cover art) are _deliberately similar_ to existing products and appear designed to catch sales from people who aren't paying attention. That's not the same thing at all.

<comment><USER3> I dunno. While I'm not a connoisseur of that genre, some of the imitations do seem to be deliberately designed to skirt _just this side_ of the line that would get them sued and/or indicted.

"Yeah, we'll call ours...Moonlight, and we'll make the guy a zombie, no a mummy!, not a vampire..."

Clearly the "books" in the referenced article are way over the line, wherever it is. That's why I said "not quite as blatant". However, I don't think the position of that line is quite as firm as you're suggesting.

<comment><USER4> I still think you're confused. Making a Twilight knockoff about mummies isn't going to get you sued or indicted. The content, in fact, really doesn't matter. The point is are you deliberately trying to confuse buyers who _want_ Twilight into buying your book instead by mistake?

That's just not a feasible attack vector with brick & mortar stores, where you can't draw eyeballs without paying for very expensive off-shelf displays. But on Amazon, you can game the search results to put up a page that looks to an uninformed buyer like the genuine product. That's fraud, or nearly so, and it's absolutely not what the me-too publishing world does.

<comment><USER3> I've seen "fake O'Reilly" paper books from other publishers that use cover designs very similar to real O'Reilly books.

They were quite obviously intended to deceive an unsuspecting buyer into thinking the book was an O'Reilly product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A couple of years ago, my wife, who is relatively computer savvy (not compared to HN users, just to the general public) tried to buy a Miley Cyrus album for a young acquaintance. Instead she got a Miles Cyrus album, which was a guy singing bad covers (though they could be a lot worse) of Miley Cyrus songs.

I still find that highly amusing, but it's also a huge failure on Amazon's part. There's no way that was the album anyone was looking for.

<comment><USER6> I was going to write about this very thing a couple of hours ago although itunes not amazon, but I think the principle is the same.

If you go to itunes and search for any popular song (pre-released songs are the best for it) there are always a lot of shadily labelled covers that are there to trick buyers into purchasing them. I've been caught out by it once before (not paying much attention, see the title matches and hit "buy").

It's not like these songs aren't making sales, quite a few have a large number of reviews (some asking wtf?) and because the character limits in itunes allow for you to cleverly disguise the songs they are a great way to make quick money. For example for the new Justin Bieber single "Boyfriend" there is a group called "Justin Bieber Tribute Team", their name shows as "Justin Bieber..." because of the cut off and they have a song out called "Boyfriend", which is just an instrumental version of the real song, it has ~40 reviews of people saying they love Justin and this is an amazing new song, or saying "wtf is this".

<comment><USER7> iTunes has a preview button for all tracks, right? (Besides, "Julia bieber" gives the cover two stars)

<comment><USER8> I once bought a $10 iBook on itunes, thinking it was the movie. There, I've said it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As of this writing there are 15 separate Amazon sellers claiming to have new and used copies of my print-on-demand book. Their prices range from $12 to $888.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer- listing/1461178185/sr=/qid=/r...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer- listing/1461178185/sr=/qid=/ref=olp_tab_all)

I haven't called their bluff to see whether they are just lazily-evaluating the book (buy it from Amazon and drop-ship) or whether they are printing copies themselves. I suspect the former, but the latter would be exceedingly clever too.

There is no way to report spammers or otherwise find out what the hell is going on, and I gather Amazon is uninterested in fixing the problem. Either way they make money.

<comment><USER10> I think the really interesting thing here is that the seller that is reselling your book for $800 has what I would call a pretty good seller reputation, at 92% positive out of almost 1000 ratings. Crazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My friend wanted to buy me a kickstarter-backed card game called Cards Against Humanity which has been sold out for some time, so she forked over a good bit of money (several times the retail price) to buy what she thought was a rare unopened copy on Amazon. Advertised clearly as such, complete with pictures of the _actual_ game.

It turned out what she actually got was a crappy homemade set of print-outs made off of a PDF the company provides for people to make their own copy of the game for personal use. Their site specifically states '...you can use and remix our game for free, but you can't sell it. Please do not steal our name or we will smash you'. Needless to say, she was pretty disappointed. She returned it and got her money back with no issue (except for the shipping she paid for both ways); the seller claimed he had no idea he was selling counterfeits. I imagine they made quite a bit of money doing this and taking advantage of people too lazy to go through the return process. It's really a shame, but sadly policing the market seems to be an extremely difficult problem (at least economically) considering how many products are listed.

</comment><comment><USER11> I had this too when I bought an iPad Smart Cover. The price is really the only way you could know it was a knock-off product:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004TEPN8M/ref=oh_o00_s00...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004TEPN8M/ref=oh_o00_s00_i00_details)

Fortunately I just needed something cheap for a single journey I was making using the company's device, but the fact it says the word Apple, uses their part number & is one of the top-selling items in the category, I can see how many would be fooled.

I read the comments and assumed it to be fake (it very clearly is), but I can imagine most people would not get that far and happily stump up the cash - e.g. those who don't realise that Amazon allows 3rd party sellers.

<comment><USER12> Holy shit!

Edit: Are you sure MC942ZM/A is a real apple part number? Try googling it. Your point stands, though.

<comment><USER11> Ha, well no. But clearly it's meant to emulate an Apple SKU.

Yet another way it's using all the look and feel of an Apple item purchase to confuse the seller.

I think the problem is that even if the buyer is aware that orders may be fulfilled by a third party (big IF), it's not unreasonable that a buyer may assume there's been some kind of vetting to prove legitimacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You all should read my new book, "Grieg, Erdős, Breugel" Sincerely Yours, Hoff Dougstadtler

<comment><USER14> ... an Eternal Silver Knot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've recently noticed a lot of self-published books on Amazon that just pull their text straight from Wikipedia articles, like this ([http://www.amazon.co.uk/Articles-Nintendo-Including- Pictocha...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Articles-Nintendo-Including-Pictochat- Connection/dp/124253895X/)) or this ([http://www.amazon.co.uk/Articles- Nintendo-Including-Pictocha...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Articles-Nintendo- Including-Pictochat-Connection/dp/124253895X/)). Most of them have little disclaimers that presumably get them past Amazon's rules but they're still cluttering up a lot of search results and doubtless tricking a few people.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's not only lookalikes that plague Amazon, but also counterfeit products. E.g. my girlfriend once bought a Playstation 3 controller from the Amazon marketplace. When it arrived, it looked virtually identical to the controller that came with the PS3. I did notice that the quality seemed a bit worse, but assumed that Sony opted for cheaper production.

Fast forward a few months, and suddenly the controller stops working. After checking some websites, we found out that Sony disabled some series of counterfeit controllers.

Luckily, Amazon refunded the money. But it is still a nuisance.

<comment><USER17> A while back I was looking for Thinkpad batteries on Amazon and _literally every one_ was counterfeit (even though half of them were called "Genuine Lenovo", they'd have plenty of comments disagreeing). It's pretty sad.

<comment><USER18> Amazon doesn't do much to filter out counterfeit items, it seems. From personal experience, a non-trivial number of shoe merchants on Amazon sell fakes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This sounds similar to what The Asylum does (<http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheAsylum>); they make extremely cheap knockoffs of big-name movies, like "Transmorphers", and rely on people not paying attention to inadvertently buy or rent their movies. It's apparently incredibly profitable.

<comment><USER20> Or less cynically they make funny knockoff movies that a lot of purple watch on purpose. The book thing is pure scam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is not a new problem. It's been common long enough, at least, that Monty Python made a lovely sketch about it several decades ago: <http://www.montypython.net/scripts/bookshop.php>

<comment><USER22> [http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ayoutube.com+bookshop+j...](http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ayoutube.com+bookshop+john+cleese+connie+booth)

Brilliant. Is there a subculture of collectors of "fake" products sold on Amazon? Surely some people prefer fakes...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Razor blades seem to be another thing _supposedly_ often counterfeited on Amazon. See <http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000277P5E> for example.

<comment><USER24> But I'm assuming you're safe when the item "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com."

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't see how this is a problem at all.

It's no different than stopping at "Dairy King" and being disappointed in the ice cream. Eat somewhere else next time.

In fact, there are plenty of legitimate artistic works that have the _exact same name_. You can't copyright a title, and you shouldn't be able to. Maybe Isaac Worthington, with a little practice, will become a well-respected writer. Certainly you can't blame a guy who wrote a book about Steve Jobs for calling it "Steve Jobs".

</comment><comment><USER26> For the biggest acts it feels like the solution was already found (for the most part) by Twitter with their fancy verified checkmarks.

</comment><comment><USER27> There have been a lot of anti-amazon articles lately.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've seen similar shenanigans at brick and mortar stores where what looked like a "Sharpie" was actually a "Skerple" with a clever font. Lame.

<comment><USER29> I've seen the same at Big Lots as "Shapiro".

They wear out in 2 or so days.

<comment><USER22> Try the "Staunion" brand fake Sharpies - worked well for me ;-) . Some fakes can be better than the real thing (There was a fake Syma clone mini-copter I kept buying more of because they were better than the real ones in particular ways).

In countries with poor counterfeit product policing, consumers learn which fakes to buy, or which sellers to trust. Just like buying LSD or Ecstasy :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> if you think book knockoffs are amazon's biggest problem, try to buy anything else!

it's like browsing dealextreme.com

101% of the non-book products are either:

       a) not the real brand
       b) appears on the listing as $3.00 with $17.99 shipping

<comment><USER31> A bigger problem for me is the almost totally broken search.

Try searching for Fuze (Sansa Fuze, an MP3 player) and then selecting "in Electronics & Photo" and then sorting by price.

You end up with pages and pages of power adaptors; cords; cases; screen covers; etc. And the paging mechanism for Amazon only lets you scroll one page at a time.

There are very many examples of this.</comment></comment>


Darkmarket: the world's fastest response to a govt takedown of digital markets - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/genjix/darkmarket

<comment><USER2> What, exactly, does this do? The ReadMe is somewhat terse.</comment>