When zebra mussels colonized Lake Erie, it began to recover - barry-cotter https://www.ecosophia.net/a-conversation-with-nature/ <comment><AUTHOR> I think this piece is misguided.

Some background: as a kid, my family boated on the SF Bay. I can remember when cormorants were rare on the bay. There were no porpoises or dolphins in the bay. It was rare for a whale to enter the bay. There were zero brown pelicans. All of those observations are entirely opposite of today's bay. Acts of government have seriously improved water ecosystems.

Now that memory is a data point of one. But we also all should know that the Cuyahoga has not caught fire in 50 years and that's not because of the work of zebra mussels -- they don't consume stuff which is volatile enough to catch fire spontaneously.

In summary, before reading the piece everyone should be aware that waterways have generally been substantially cleaned up in the last 50 years.

With that as background, I have immediate questions: What evidence is there that Erie was cleaned up by mussels and not by new environmental laws? Even if the mussels helped, were they a necessary condition to cleaning this up? Or did they simply advance the cleanup by a few years?

The piece contains good skeptical thinking, but it does not sufficiently lay evidence that Zebra Mussels were a cause of Erie's cleanup, rather than a coincidence. It's pretense at being a factual explanation of history is unearned.

<comment><USER2> You're right, the article makes too strong of a correlation between the affects that Zebra & Quagga mussels have had and Lake Erie's recovery. But I'm curious, does that totally discredit the article?

No doubt, if left alone without any government policy, Lake Erie may not have recovered from purely natural means, such as the introduction of an invasive species. I believe, like you, that government policy has helped in the restoration, at least has helped speed it up.

But I don't think that's the author's real point. The point he is ultimately making is stated in the article:

> "Our culture — meaning here the collective culture of modern Western > industrial society — is obsessed by the false belief that nature can't adapt > to our actions."

and:

> "Our habitual way of dealing with Mother Nature assumes that we talk and she > listens, full stop, end of sentence. [...] What we need to recognize, > rather, is that we're engaged in a conversation with the old broad. We said > "pollution," she quipped "zebra mussels;" we said "internal combustion > engines," and she smiled and said "coastal flooding." We can listen to her > responses and learn from them - or not, and find out the hard way what else > she has to say."

I think the author is suggesting that nature will, in the end, restore balance and that we, as species, could possibly help by simply getting out of the way or maybe working with natural processes. Understanding nature's process rather than fighting it is likely the best way out of the messes that we've created for ourselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well, that is one _unusual_ source for an HN submission!

Quite interesting read - about the author, from that website:

> _John Michael Greer is a widely read author and blogger whose work focuses > on the overlaps between ecology, spirituality, and the future of industrial > society._

> _He served twelve years as Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in > America, and currently heads the Druidical Order of the Golden Dawn. He > currently lives in East Providence, Rhode Island, with his wife Sara._

"Ancient Order of Druids in America" and "Druidical Order of the Golden Dawn" \- who has heard of those before?

I looked them up and found

\- [https://aoda.org/](https://aoda.org/)

\- [http://www.druidical-gd.org/](http://www.druidical-gd.org/)

I'm not one to dismiss something just because it is... unusual. I must admit I would not ask if this was some professor of biology at XYZ University. I have no idea what to think about an American Grand Archdruid. Does anybody have any well-founded opinions about those organizations? I like their page title "Frequently Thrown Tantrums" though -- [http://www.druidical- gd.org/ftt.html](http://www.druidical-gd.org/ftt.html)

<comment><USER4> My philosophy professor in a college was also a Professor of Magic History in a School of Witchcraft and Wizardry[1]. Really. After that I do not pay much attention to such a things, I prefer to judge by what people say, not by how do they look.

[1] [http://ostentum.ru/en/](http://ostentum.ru/en/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you want to read more about this kind of thing, I can highly recommend this book:

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan

It's incredibly well researched and written, and gave me a much better understanding of what's going with the ecosystems.

<comment><USER6> The alewife invasion and mediation is an interesting fish tale: [https://fishingbooker.com/blog/history-of-fishing-on-the- gre...](https://fishingbooker.com/blog/history-of-fishing-on-the-great-lakes- part-2/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _> Some of my readers may remember media stories from 1969, when the Cuyahoga River, which flows into Lake Erie, caught fire one hot summer day—yes, it had that much toxic waste in it._

This actually understates the situation; the Cuyahoga caught fire no less than thirteen times since 1868. The 1969 fire was merely the one that served as a rallying cry to pass legislation to take action. [https://www.alleghenyfront.org/how-a-burning-river-helped- cr...](https://www.alleghenyfront.org/how-a-burning-river-helped-create-the- clean-water-act/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Every time I read stories about how polluted our (US/Canada) streams and lakes are it makes me shutter to think of how monumentally bad China must be with little to no environmental protection!

This recent video of just one small, insignificant shop in China for example. It needs to somehow dispose of thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83GDV0xsTTs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83GDV0xsTTs)) and my suspicion is that it goes into local rivers.

<comment><USER9> > Every time I read stories about how polluted our (US/Canada) streams and > lakes are it makes me shutter to think of how monumentally bad China must be > with little to no environmental protection!

We _were_ that bad. The EPA (signed by Nixon!) is what turned that around.

<comment><USER10> read 'excuse me sir, but would you like to buy a kilo of isopropyl bromide'. Gergel proudly tells of doing exactly this in The USA. Some kid started to mess with it and got a nasty accident, if I remember correctly

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While I understand the point about zebra mussels cleaning up lake Erie, I can't agree with the idea that we should welcome all invasive species. After all, the presence of e.g. feral cats on various islands or foxes in Australia is just another one of the messes humans made, and we should feel as responsible for the damage they do as we feel responsible for pollution. Zebra mussels may be one of the few examples where an invasive species was actually good for the ecosystem, other invasive species just exterminate or squeeze out native species, leading to a loss of biodiversity.

<comment><USER12> I don't think that Greer is claiming that we should "welcome all invasive species" as much simply pointing out that Nature doesn't stand still. What we call an "invasive species" is, from a broader perspective, simply Nature adapting to changing circumstances, which includes opening up new habitat to previously unknown species. This only looks odd or threatening if we assume that Nature should be static and fixed, and that only humans can or should enact environmental change.

<comment><USER13> Also, that evolution works by "the survival of the fittest". If an invasive species (that didn't evolve in the environment it's invading) is better-suited to the environment than the native species (who did evolve there, and by rights should be better suited to it), then that's a win for evolution. The fitter species survive, and will then evolve into the niches available.

The introduction of mammals to New Zealand is a disaster for the birds that live there and that have evolved into all the niches available. But for the planetary biosphere, it's a win because the mammals are better suited to living there (otherwise they wouldn't be so successful).

Cane toads, though... that one is going to be interesting.

<comment><USER14> > But for the planetary biosphere, it's a win because the mammals are better > suited to living there

It's not a win in either case. It's just what happened. Evolution and nature and the biosphere don't have goals.

<comment><USER15> You raise a good point too. if there are no wins or losses in nature maybe it comes down to promoting species we enjoy most?

<comment><USER4> How about maximizing diversity? Because it is more fun for people and because it increases fitness of the biosphere as an ultimate ecosystem?

As for me it sounds better. Yes, local people could be annoyed by lions or venomous snakes, but for the most humans lions and snakes are just a curiosity that makes world more interesting.

<comment><USER13> but I think this was the point of the article.

Losing highly-adapted, very fragile species to a more robust invader is a loss of biodiversity. But that holds biodiversity as a higher virtue than survivability and adaptability. Is that justified?

This is the thing: if species A out-performs species B in a given ecosystem niche, and species B becomes extinct as a result, that's how nature works. That's evolution. There's nothing "wrong" or "bad" about that. Survival of the fittest.

If humans caused species A to be there, that's irrelevant. It doesn't make Species A's survival (or species B's extinction) "unnatural" or "wrong". We were just a transport mechanism, like any other "natural" transport mechanism.

Surely evolution and survival of the fittest overrules biodiversity?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the text of the article there are words: _" we could always roll snake-eyes in the evolutionary crapshoot"_ I'm not an English native and I cannot grasp the precise meaning of the "to roll snake-eyes". What does it mean? Does the rolling of snake eyes somehow different from rolling human eyes? Or maybe snakes cannot roll their eyes(?) and... I don't know.

Would someone be so nice to explain this, please?

<comment><USER16> It refers to getting two 1's when rolling dice. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_eyes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_eyes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been visiting the St. Lawrence river downstream of the Great Lakes since the 1970s. My mother grew up in the era before the Saint Lawrence Seaway was established in the 50s, which made the river navigable by larger ships (although not container ships) below the Thousand Islands to Montreal and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, opening up the Great Lakes to international shipping and trade.

The river used to be filthy. Lots of industry on the U.S. and Canadian sides and in the Great Lakes dumped all kinds of untreated waste into the ecosystem. I also remember a major oil slick which I believe was caused by a maritime accident. This was before the advent of better navigation technology and environmental protection laws.

The water may have become cleaner over time, but I noticed that by the early 2000s, the types of fish that I had caught off the dock by the dozens as a child in the 70s and 80s -- perch, sunfish, bass -- were becoming extremely rare. Ten years later, these shore species had all but disappeared except for a few bays and harbors.

The disappearance of these fish coincided with the appearance of the zebra mussel. The lore told here is that the zebra mussels were carried over by Ukrainian freighters in the 1990s (similar to the story in TFA). But other new species have appeared on the river, too -- cormorants, carp, and Canadian geese are very visible now, and they weren't in the past.

We also seem to have more extreme variations in water levels, with flooding this year and in 2017, and very low levels in other years. Surely that impacts water temperature and breeding conditions for some aquatic species.

I think some people blamed the zebra mussels and the cormorants for the disappearance of many species of fish, but I think there's a larger story taking place, with many factors contributing to changes in the ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER18> We had ConEd workers come to our schools in Ohio in the 80-90's to educate us about how they had to spend millions of dollars and hundreds of man-hours annually power washing the mussels out of the lakewater cooling pools and pipes at the Fermi II nuclear plant between Detroit and Toledo because the mussels prefer the warmer waters.

I cursed and still cursed stepping on the sharp mussel shells lining the now clean and swimmable beach waters of Lake Michigan. Decades of misplaced vitriol.

[https://goo.gl/maps/VrWdpomeGvXZcFsJ6](https://goo.gl/maps/VrWdpomeGvXZcFsJ6)

<comment><USER19> Leaping out a boat into shallow water and landing on muscles or oysters is not misplaced vitriol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was hoping this article would go more into the detail of other invasive species in the Lakes like Asian Carp and those nasty looking parasitic Laprey's.

<comment><USER21> ctrlaltdyaln says>"like Asian Carp..."

Mmmmm! Good eating:

"Eat The Enemy: The Delicious Solution To Menacing Asian Carp"

[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/eat-the-enemy-asian- carp_n_63...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/eat-the-enemy-asian- carp_n_6324896)

<comment><USER20> I didn't know you could eat them! I'll have to try out this recipe thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> More of a philosophical perspective than any sort of real proposal, but worth a read if you're into that. It's a mid-length piece, looks longer than it is due to the comment section at bottom.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm from Erie and lived there during all of this, and can confirm. Especially this:

> And the human reaction? That's where things get interesting. The human > reaction was all-out panic

Zebra mussels grabbed headlines in the local paper for years. Everyone went nuts. We all thought it was doomsday and believed you'd never be able to float a boat in the bay ever again.

<comment><USER24> I remember seeing all of the warning signs about zebra mussels when I was growing up there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Happy as I am about the result (the essay wanders a bit after getting to the "punch line") it reminds me how bizarre I find that people regularly eat mussels, oysters, vertebrate livers, kidneys and the like. The idea of eating a used filter really revolts me.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if you could invent a pool filter powered by zebra mussels? You'd obviously need a good way to keep them contained in the filter area and out of the piping and pool proper.

Can it be done?

<comment><USER26> I doubt it. Maybe in a natural pool closer to a swimming hole, but who would want those mussels to be in their bool. If they colonize the pool floor, you're going to end up with your feet being cut up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> What sort of pollution does that blogger think is coming out a nuclear plant? He seems to think cooling towers and water show how pollute. It's just water.

<comment><USER28> > What sort of pollution does that blogger think is coming out a nuclear > plant?

If it's an effluent or sewer pipe, do you think "it's just water"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> A better title would be: "When zebra mussels colonized Lake Erie it pivoted irreversibly towards a totally different ecosystem"

It never recovered.

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't understand the title.

<comment><USER31> It's a bit difficult to parse. Zebra mussels colonized the Lake Erie at a time when it was so polluted that it had been declare biologically dead. In particular this happened:

"Some of my readers may remember media stories from 1969, when the Cuyahoga River, which flows into Lake Erie, caught fire one hot summer day—yes, it had that much toxic waste in it."

<comment><USER32> Yes and yet humans hate zebra mussels and label them an invasive species because they are an economic menace screwing with pipes and ship hulls and costing billions of dollars of economic damage.

<comment><USER33> What happens to a boat hull if you don't clear the mussels off? Do they actually damage it or does it just look unsightly?

<comment><USER29> Will block the ballast water system (entry and exit). Will interfere with any bail water operation. Will increase the often huge fuel bill (more resistence to move in water). Will damage and increase friction in moving parts of the propeller. Will block water cooling systems putting the engine in risk. Will increase painting and cleaning bills. Will scratch rubber buoys that will need to be replaced faster. Will significatively ease bioincrustation by bigger animals

And of course it cuts human skin

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I stopped reading at _Gaia is a tough and feisty old broad_ because no one -- not even a Druid -- is allowed to say "broad" and be taken seriously nowadays. I'm sorry. I didn't write the rules. That's just the way it is.</comment>


Why Google+ Gets a "+1″ for Browser Security - <AUTHOR> http://www.barracudalabs.com/wordpress/index.php/2011/07/21/google-gets-a-1-for-browser-security-3/ <comment><USER2> > _Facebook SSL: Optional and not default_

Not only is it not the default, but it's hard to keep enabled for a good chunk of users. If you try to go to an app page[1], for example, you will be informed that SSL cannot be used. To continue, you need to disable SSL not only on pages that app uses, but the entire site. It doesn't get re-enabled when you leave the app.

[1] I don't know that this is true for _all_ app pages, but it's definitely true for at least one of the most popular apps on Facebook.

<comment><USER3> Not a FB app developer, but my naive experience is that not all apps are hosted on a domain with SSL available. If it's not on an SSL domain, it brings up a box asking you if it's ok to disable HTTPS.

<comment><USER4> Which is a problem, why not just force all app developers to use SSL?

Additionally, the button disables SSL _forever_ , rather than just while you're using the broken app.

<comment><USER5> > Which is a problem, why not just force all app developers to use SSL?

The developer console on Facebook says this will be the case on October 1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there an up-to-date best-practices guide to implement websites using HTTPS and cookies securely?

I hear a lot of stuff discussed in this article and in the discussions about HN-HTTPS (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2909102>) which is all new to me.

<comment><USER7> We (iSEC Partners) have a whitepaper on the topic that explains most of the basics.

[http://www.isecpartners.com/storage/white-papers/web- session...](http://www.isecpartners.com/storage/white-papers/web-session- management.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Thank you very much, I'll have a look at it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are a lot of good things there but the author seems to be looking at it like "there's a bunch more headers on G+ ITS BETTER!"

Unfortunately it's not true. For instance, G+ does not use X-Content-Security- Policy (<https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/CSP/Specification>) and uses X-XSS- Protection instead, which is a solution not exactly designed properly. (Noscript is a slightly better implementation, but since its client side, no dice)

You can also check this at Wekbit: [https://bugs.webkit.org/buglist.cgi?keywords=XSSAuditor&...](https://bugs.webkit.org/buglist.cgi?keywords=XSSAuditor&resolution=---)

Many G website just disable that filter afaik because sometimes it can be misused by the attacker.

I suppose that Chrome will eventually support X-Content-Security-Policy or something similar and then G sites will switch to that.

<comment><USER9> You seem to be confused here. CSP and the XSS auditor are not mutually exclusive; you can certainly use both and one can cover areas missed by the other. Also, in terms of market share the XSS auditor is going to be supported by a bigger user base than CSP. It's also important to note that the XSS auditor is disabled on other Google sites primarily because it hasn't been tested for compatibility--not because it can be misused by an attacker.

As for CSP support in Chrome, it's currently available if you set a vendor- specific header. (That's the normal way to handle an experimental standard that's still in flux.) My personal opinion on CSP is that it's a bit of an overly complicated mess. We didn't plan to implement it in Chrome/WebKit until very recently, mainly because Mozilla got some major sites on board. In the end, we decided users would be better served by CSP (warts and all) than by any attempts at yet another standard.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What's interesting to me is that even though G+ is a lot younger and has a much smaller feature set compared to Facebook, Google appear to be putting security in from the ground up. Facebook on the other hand are desperately lagging behind in this way.

<comment><USER10> That's the benefit of hindsight. Facebook was built as a startup and grew fast. G+ is being developed in a fully-fledged company with way more resource.

Agree, though that Fb could be working harder on this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Related: SPDY - Google's always-encrypted application-level protocol to augment HTTP:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPDY>

<comment><USER8> I would rather see SCTP, I mean, something standard, than a hack up on top of existing protocols, even if that's slower to implement.

Now then again SPDY is indeed fast _and_ encrypted

This is also interesting:

<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=spdy>

<comment><USER11> SCTP is at a different layer of the network stack -- it's a replacement for TCP, not for HTTP. As such, it's much more difficult to deploy, as it currently requires a kernel extension in most OSes, and can't traverse most firewalls.

Also, it isn't encrypted. So there's that too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Unfortunately, not all of these headers are supported in all browsers, meaning any of you still using IE6 won't be able to take advantage of these headers."

That would be a plausible explanation for the fact that they use a user-agent based whitelisting. If one's protections rely on client-side features, it's a bit more understandable (though I still find it a bit weak) to try to enforce use of a browser that implements them.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not only that, Facebook serves it's JavaScript from a static content server that is not secured using SSL, or when it is, it's a bad certificate. Combined with Chrome's aggressive insecure script blocking, Facebook is a nightmare to use.

tl;dr: If you think you're secure because Facebook says HTTPS, you're completely wrong. If I'm on your network, I can inject javascript just as happily as if facebook were loading over http.

This has been reported and ignored, as one might guess.

<comment><USER14> Hey, I work on security at Facebook, and when you've turned on HTTPS mode you definitely should _not_ be pulling javascript from anywhere over HTTP (and of course our CDNs should all have valid certificates!). You're correct that this breaks a lot of the security that HTTPS offers. Do you have an example packet capture or list of HTTP CDN URLs that were referenced when you were in HTTPS mode? Or of the domain with an invalid certificate? I'll try to get that fixed ASAP.

I'd also love to debug your report getting ignored - do you know where you submitted it? We take white hat reports pretty seriously and I know I've seen a number of them resolved in less than a day after being reported. Check out <https://www.facebook.com/whitehat> to report stuff in the future (we'll even pay a bounty of $500 for most properly-disclosed security bugs: <https://www.facebook.com/whitehat/bounty/>).

<comment><USER13> I'll take a capture next time and grab the <head> tag from the body. The biggest problem is that it's very sporadic. Some days it will work perfectly with no warnings and exceptions. Earlier today though, I got the "Security Warning" from Google and improper certificate (not even on the static assets) on a network that I trust to a high degree.

<comment><USER14> Cool, thanks for the follow-up. Was the "Security Warning" you're talking about from google.com, or from facebook.com? If facebook, do you know what the specific domain was that caused the error (and the reason for the error)?

Also, I'm curious where you reported this before? If there's an issue causing security bug reports to get dropped, that's something I want to fix ASAP. Thanks!

<comment><USER13> The security warning was the alarming red one generated by Chrome, but for the Facebook site and domain. I can't tell you if it was for the root domain or www, and I'm afraid I do not recall the error. I get a bit confused with Chrome (because it has various levels of warnings for various types of things (the page itself, scripts, stylesheets, etc) and it doesn't help that I'm on the dev channel, but sometimes I get the full blown red warning, sometimes I get the red X through the https in the url bar and sometimes I get "Insecure Script was Blocked" which occurs strangely, when I receive notifications.

I honestly don't remember where I reported this before, it was not at the link you've offered above. I've got that bookmarked now. Like I said, if I have someone to contact or the whitehat link you mentioned, I will be sure to get a more detailed list of what happens when it occurs again.

Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reddit censorship - <AUTHOR> http://techrights.org/2015/05/28/reddit-censorship/ <comment><USER2> Shadowbans aren't meant for _censorship_. It's an artifact of old Reddit design for spammers that hasn't been replaced yet. (I know the CEO mentioned that was on the agenda, hence the improved suspension option)

Hacker News does shadowbans too which I am not happy about, but that's another story.

<comment><USER3> > _Hacker News does shadowbans too which I am not happy about, but that 's > another story._

We almost never do that anymore except in cases of spammers or new accounts that appear to be trolling, i.e. the cases where telling people you banned them tends to be problematic. Apart from those, we almost always post a comment in the thread saying that we banned the account.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&date...](https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20banned%20this%20account)

<comment><USER2> I have noticed those comments recently and they are much of an improvement. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is from 2015. Reddit removed their shadowbans for regular users (still enabled for spammers, I think) [1].

And, by the way, calling out censorship because of 1 shadowban when there's even a subreddit to know if you're shadowbanned ([https://www.reddit.com/r/ShadowBan/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShadowBan/), appears when you search shadowban reddit) is too much of a stretch, I think.

1: [https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/11/reddit-account- suspensions...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/11/reddit-account-suspensions/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know anything about shadowbans, much less changes in policies about them. I only submitted the link because I thought it was an interesting read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Free speech is a concept of government. Reddit is a for-proft corporation. It's not censorship, it's a business refining its model.

Joke's on you that you thought reddit was anything but.

<comment><AUTHOR> The joke is on me, I guess. I've never understood how the line is drawn. Freedom of speech and religion are both in amendment one. Free speech is a right, but one can, evidently, open a website and suppress any opinion one chooses. Freedom of religion is a right, but one cannot use religious beliefs to deny gay people their rights. [1] That seems like a double standard to me and I've yet to find a way to reconcile it.

edit: grammar, edit2: supporting story

[1] [http://abcnews.go.com/US/judge-orders-colorado-bakery- cater-...](http://abcnews.go.com/US/judge-orders-colorado-bakery-cater-sex- weddings/story?id=21136505)

<comment><USER6> Freedom of speech protects you from government prosecution, with certain limitations like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, etc. It doesn't mean that others (e.g. Reddit) have to give you a platform for your speech.

Freedom of religion won't let you practice something that impinges upon the rights of others or violates a law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> FWIW the "others don't see my posts, only I do" is called "shadow-banning" or "stealth banning": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_banning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_banning)

 _The practice involves making a user 's contributions invisible to all other users, but visible to themselves, making them less likely to create new accounts to add the same material._

</comment><comment><USER8> If someone was censoring comments not kind to the pharma industry on that post, you would think they would have also removed the comment that starts

"... horrible horrible medication. don't take it."

</comment><comment><USER9> I have stopped going on reddit. There is an obvious agenda trying to be pushed in the guise of a purely user driven content aggregator.

<comment><USER8> Everyone has an agenda. techrights.org has an agenda. Hacker news has an agenda (You think you can post whatever you want here and not get banned?).

<comment><USER10> But most are clear about them, not lying. Also, let's not forget when they called themselves a bastion of free speech, where people can come to share ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reddit had shadow bans _way_ before Conde Nast. This article acts like it's blown up this huge conspiracy, but only uncovered something that is common knowledge. It has all the conspiratorial fervor of the most witch hunt-y Reddit threads—and it's not a good look.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ironic how this will be flagged to shit and seen by only a few.</comment>


Skepticism after Windows 10 search failure - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2020/02/06/windows-10-warning-serious-failure-provokes-questions-and-anger/#7eb5ac7d6a52 <comment><USER2> The search behaves "as if" it's using randomly-ordered keys in a random source dictionary, and it's maddening.

If I type what seems to be the same 3 letters a few times in a row, the result is always different: one time it acts like the app isn't even installed, another time it finds the app (first choice), another time it finds some other random sub-component instead of the app with a weird file extension. Oh, and my favorite: sometimes it finds multiple things but only after a delay, meaning that just as I hit Enter the top hit _changes_ and I end up opening something entirely unintentional (bonus points if the mistaken choice is something that takes longer to launch, freezing the machine).

They need: (1) stability in the UI ( _never_ mess with something once it is highlighted), and (2) stability in the lookup (the same input produces the same set in the same order, _every single time_ or it's useless).

<comment><USER3> If anyone from Microsoft happens to be reading this thread, please read the above comment, then re-read it. It's a spot-on description of the problems and solutions for Windows search.

Edit: and just to expand on a point the commenter made, the results would be more valuable if it prioritised in an order like this:

1) Something the user has pinned

2) Something the user has launched a bunch of times

3) The shortcut leads to an .exe that's likely to be the main program file

4) Anything else

<comment><USER4> 5\. Never anything on the web

<comment><USER5> There's a registry setting to turn that off thank God.

I LIKE Windows 10, but that particular "feature" is a no go for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's amusing (and infuriating) that file search - IMO, one of _the_ most important features for a desktop O/S - has been utterly broken in Windows since Vista.

On Windows 10, half the time it just hangs with "Searching files", displaying zero results. The other half, search simply says "Nothing found", even when I _know_ there is a match. I just tested it with %USERPROFILE%/.docker - open up File Explorer and search for ConfigVersion that appears in config.json. Nada.

I have to resort to cygwin/grep any time I want a search that actually works.

I never had this problem pre-Vista. I don't know how they managed to go backwards on such a fundamental feature.

<comment><USER7> I personally never use search tools; at least, not with files I've created myself. IMHO organising correctly your files using aptly named directories and sticking to that is much more effective than dumping stuff around the filesystem and then having to rely on search in order to untangle the mess. That's why I tend to disable desktop icons; in this way I always have to force myself into opening a file manager and actually decide where the files should be put into.

<comment><USER8> > IMHO organising correctly your files using aptly named directories

I have a lot of ebooks on my computer (> 10000). One problem with organising books and other PDFs is that sometimes they fall into multiple categories. (Should a new scientific article on lucid dreaming go into 'brain and cognitive science' or 'meditation' or 'hypnosis' or 'sleep' or 'self improvement'?) I could dump each new file into the directory representing the first category that comes to mind and make symbolic links from directories referring to other categories, but in the end the number of categories is practically endless. Search is in practice the only workable solution.

<comment><USER9> You can add tags to files instead of putting them in folders, I believe

<comment><USER8> Yes but conceptually it amounts to manual classification into multiple categories, which is just neverending work in my experience.

Manual classification is still useful to classify documents according to labels that are not present as strings in the books' contents though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Of all the things I hate about Windows, unified search is the worst. If I want to search the web, I'll search the web--there's an app for that, the browser. Let me just search my hard drive, please. I didn't experience this bug, but if I had, I'd be furious that I couldn't search my own local files without somehow getting an internet service involved.

<comment><USER11> What is the alternative? Mac does the exact same with spotlight.

<comment><USER12> Spotlight search is 100% local unless "Spotlight Suggestions" is enabled. Even then, the search works exactly the same but is augmented with online content (like sports scores, weather, suggested websites, etc) where relevant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I got multiple people to install voidtools everything and open shell as a result of this bad update.

I asked them after we applied the patch if they wanted me to revert the changes, but they refused, stating that having instant local only search and a normal start menu was a dream come true.

That is beside the point that if Microsoft can no longer even produce a wimp interface without third-party software needed to get us back to the baseline of Windows 7, that does not bode well for them.

<comment><USER14> I also use O&O shutup. It's portable and needs to be run only once and perhaps after a windows update. Lately, the windows updates doesn't seem to alter the changes I made using shutup.

It's a convenience tool. If you look up everything you can do it all manually.

<comment><USER15> Everything is a search engine, not at all related to O&O shutup.

<comment><USER14> I never mentioned everything, I never said shutup was a search engine.. Not everything in this thread is related to "everything", some things are related to windows dailing home to ms hq.

dang: I'm done with this bullshit, it's ok to delete my account.

<comment><USER16> You replied to someone talking about Everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Windows 10 search is a weird beast anyways. Sometimes it finds things, sometimes it doesn't. On my work machines it often doesn't even find items from the start menu.

<comment><USER18> Look at how much the results change based on small changes to the input. Type three letters in a name and get a lot of things that aren't what you want. Type the fourth letter and the exact thing you're looking for jumps to the top. But if you add the fifth letter it goes away. I feel like it's trying to be too clever or, because it assumes the input is coming from voice recognition, it doesn't trust that what you typed is actually what you "said". So instead of compensating for potentially mistyped queries it searches for results that are nearby in audible space.

<comment><USER19> Thanks to both of you for mentioning this.

Every time I encounter this strange behavior in WIN10 -- I am so _dumbstruck_ by it each time it still feels like it must have been a "glitch-in-the- matrix".

I mean, because no one would really release software like that, would they? At least not a multi-billion software behemoth like MS? Right? </sarc>

<comment><USER20> I know why this happens.

It happens because someone doesn't understand that search rankings vs. queries have to have a 'smooth' solution, and thinks they can tweak a few weightings here and there to get the results they think are 'correct' for the very specific cases they have in mind, without realising that this has a knock-on effect on the _entire scoring space_ and you get odd singularities and stuff popping up as a result.

The people in question should not be touching anything even distantly related to a computer in any professional context.

<comment><USER21> I try not to say things like that anymore, you've never met the person and have no idea of the context or their skills.

Could be that they were forced to change it at the 11th hour just before Windows 10 was being demo'd and it was never changed back. Could be a committee decision. Could be the programmer hated the surveillance installed by MS and so deliberately made the search bad.

<comment><USER20> The 'someone' in question probably wasn't the engineer.

I'd bet the engineer was listening to the 'someone' saying things like 'why don't you just' or 'it just needs to do this', or other things including the word 'just'.

I'd bet the engineer tried to explain the realities of how this stuff works, to 'someone' who's job didn't involve understanding what they were asking for, and reacted by demanding with the word 'just' instead of pretending to ask.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can't say I ran into this particular bug, but I tend not to trust the search on Windows much anyway. I myself have implemented better text/prefix matching and ranking using a very simple SQLite database schema, on a _far_ larger dataset than 'the local machine', yet Microsoft repeatedly fail at a task which should succumb easily even to brute-force approaches.

They don't get to claim that it's a harder problem than indexing a hard disk without first explaining why they think they should retain the use of their fingers for continuing to send search terms over a network after I, as the owner of the hardware and 'owner' of the OS instance have made a concerted effort to turn that shit _off_.

<comment><USER22> Jeffrey Snover[1] likes to say that "Microsoft is incapable of sustained error", yet they've been incapable of building a good search for at least 15-20 years that I've experienced. Bing search is no competitor to Google, Explorer filesystem search is slow and untrustworthy, the search which integrates desktops to Windows server indexing of fileshares is slow and untrustworthy, on-premises SharePoint search has never worked well for finding documents for me, Start Menu search is the worst at matching plain text strings in short names year after year, Windows version after Windows version, local Outlook Search wasn't great, Outlook search backed by Exchange isn't great, and it goes easily back to Joel on Software's blog post[2] of _2004_ where he says

> _Just do me a favor and search the damned hard drive, quickly, for the > string I typed, using full-text indexes and other technologies that were > boring in 1973._

That's still what I want, and _still_ what they don't do.

[1] PowerShell originator, now "Chief Architect for the Azure Infrastructure and Management Group" at Microsoft.

[2] [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft- lost...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost-the-api- war/)

<comment><USER23> Here's the thing: I've built, back in 2005, a full-text search for 60 GB of small-text data that would typically return results in under 15ms. This was using 100% Microsoft-native technology, like C# and SQL.

How much data does the Start Menu search _have_ to index, total? A few 100KB? Something like that. This is assuming a fresh install, no documents, no third party apps.

A modern CPU can simply _brute force_ through that amount of data and perform nearly arbitrary subtext matching, without any fancy indexing techniques, in something like a handful of _microseconds_. Even in an absolute worst-case of cross-process pointer chasing out into uncached main memory, you're talking a few tens of milliseconds, max.

Yet, a fresh install of any version of Windows, including Server editions, simply flat out _fails_ to find control panel items or shortcuts even if their names are typed exactly. Many _hours_ later it'll find _some_ of them, not necessarily all. Days later, _perhaps_ it'll reach a 100% match, but that's certainly not guaranteed.

For me, often having to use freshly installed Windows VMs, I see a nearly 100% failure rate for this component.

It's just absurd that this passed QA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Microsoft doesn't build Windows with the consumer as the priority. Microsoft first, then big business, then advertisers.

I used to find this aggravating but it's better to accept it and move on.

<comment><USER25> To me, Microsoft's PR message has always amounted to "Windows users are either too busy, dumb, disorganized, impatient, or unfamiliar with their systems to know how to do things, so we try to think for them." It was amazing how much more productive and powerful I felt switching to Linux. Like, I could suddenly FIX problems without having to install some sketchy .exe or driver. Can't understand why people stick with Windows when they have other options.

<comment><USER26> I definitely roll my eyes when people say that on Windows everything "just works".

I have to fix (or just deal with the fact that I cannot do anything about it) just as many things that break or go wrong with Windows as I do with Linux.

Hacking around with the registry is just that. A hack job to roughly get Windows to behave until the next update breaks it.

At least on Linux you have the whole system open to you and can roll back changes or apply patches with much more control.

<comment><USER27> But for some people it just does work. Without the need for any hacks, just some tweaking of settings. So when I see people saying they roll there eyes when they they see those claims, I say: think a bit further, consider other factors. Like, it depends on what you do with it perhaps, on the hardware?

<comment><USER26> I agree that for some people, they stick with Windows because their hardware and software does just work. Compatibility with the things you do is important.

However we are in a thread about how Windows 10 search just up an broke and whose only permanent fix is to disable part of it in the registry.

The search function barely works compared to alternatives too.

People can absolutely stick with Windows but I was referring to people who argue that they cannot try alternatives because they don't "just work" and you have use a command line and do all this configuration stuff.

I have less problems on Linux and most of them are of my own creation, trying to run software in wine or use hardware with non-free drivers.

It helps to adapt to doing things the Linux way when using Linux instead of contiuing to operate in a Windows mindset.

<comment><USER27> _people who argue that they cannot try alternatives because they don 't "just work"_

Fair enough, but your argumentation still sounds like 'works for me so it's all fine' which is the main point I was addressing. I.e. it's not because you have less problems on linux that others do as well, and hence they could make a rather valid argument that they gave up trying. Which doesn't mean all people complaining like that are right of course. It's never so black/white.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The state of this webpage and most i visit on a daily basis makes me sad. Can't just open a page and read stuff anymore. There's a vide being loaded and before that finishes the cookie popup comes up.

<comment><USER29> Disabling Javascript by default avoids most of this, though it breaks some sites.

<comment><USER30> I go one step further and disable CSS by default too. More often than not, disabling CSS improves webpages.

<comment><USER29> I'll have to try that out, somehow I'd not considered that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I have an easier fix than most people on here.

I would like the start menu search to be confined to the programs installed on the computer. To search settings make me click the 'cog' first. To search for files there is Explorer, which is already better at the job. To search the web I will use Firefox to access a search engine.

Wouldn't that be simpler?

<comment><USER32> Wow, no. I have no idea what folder a lot of my files are in, because I can find them with Search. And that extra click before accessing settings would be a huge downgrade for me. I am a fan of Windows search, it's one of the biggest improvements to usability they've ever made. Even if it worked better in Windows 7.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't understand. I don't want my start menu to search my files or the internet or be smart in any way, I just want it to show my installed programs or apps or whatever you want to call them. If I want to search my files I have a program for that, if I want to search the internet I open my browser. Why do we have to over complicate things! Who asked for this?

<comment><USER34> they failed to find a good place for that search, but the feature, itself, is extremely valuable.

on the mac, for example, spotlight search is part of things i do on autopilot. that's how they should have presented that search functionality. a keyboard shortcut, big search field in the middle of the screen... cortana shouldn't have been the front focus here...

i still use it though. would be sad to see it go! i use it to see where stuff and settings that were obvious and easy to find before are now hidden.

<comment><USER35> Sounds like Launchy

<comment><USER36> I still use Launchy on Windows 10, alongside the native search. The plugins Launchy has like for Putty integration make it invaluable.

It's a shame it's no longer developed.

<comment><USER37> Have you tried Wox? [https://github.com/Wox- launcher/Wox](https://github.com/Wox-launcher/Wox)

<comment><USER36> Hadn't heard of it until now, taking a look. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I gave up on windows builtin search a long time ago because its so frustrating - Wox launcher and especially Everything Search is my substitute of choice. Its also incredibly fast!

Edit, Links: [http://www.wox.one](http://www.wox.one) [https://www.voidtools.com](https://www.voidtools.com)

<comment><USER39> Just a note - looking at Wox, the official repo seems to be unmaintained, there's appears to be an active fork here however: [https://github.com/jjw24/Wox/](https://github.com/jjw24/Wox/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Every time one of the many irritations I have with Linux makes me consider reinstalling Windows to give it another try, this kind of thing is just what comes to mind and stops me.

<comment><USER41> In my opinion, there's issues with all OS, but Linux is the only one that is documented enough, can be customized enough and as enough of an ecosystem to fix my problems or at least find workarounds. With Windows or Macos the only solution is too often to live with the ecosystem as thought by Apple or Microsoft, liking it or not, which I just can't stand personnally...

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The only things I'm searching this way are related to Windows' own ambiguities and opaqueness. For example, something like classic 'Control Panel' (not quite true, 'bookmarked' it after a while) or special setting menues. Most of these issues are caused by the dual UI.

All other things - in particular file search - are much more comfortable with Total Commander, a software providing a sophisticated consistent interface for more than 20 years now, superseding any Windows versions internal abilities easily (including the whole explorer functionality).

</comment><comment><USER43> Even the most insane Start menu shouldn't have enough items that you couldn't just put all the items it contains in an in-memory list and do a dumb startsWith search, and be lightning fast and more reliable than whatever insanity it is doing out of the box these days.

</comment><comment><USER44> About a year ago, I switched from a Windows 10 quad-core Xeon system to an iMac Pro. The single greatest performance enhancement, among many, is the speed and accuracy of the macOS search.

<comment><USER45> Seconded. Not to mention how amazingly fast the iMac Pro is in general.

Still thinking of buying Alfred but I'm undecided. Have you tried it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I quit using Windows search a long long time ago but I have to admit that it worked better in the WinXP days.

Currently using SwiftSearch with very fast results, as it reads directly from the NTFS MFT. No databases, no indexing, no background processes or services. There's also UltraSearch that works with the same idea but is more polished.

</comment><comment><USER47> My search stopped working months ago, typing anything blanked out whole the Start menu. I figured Windows was punishing me for turning Cortana off in the settings. At some point in the last few weeks a Windows update fixed my search. I agree with a lot of posters- I won't use Windows search. It doesn't do what I want or need, and does not function how I expect.

I had never heard of Everything but just downloaded it and tried it. It is fast! I typed in YYYY-MM-DD for a few different dates. I have never used OneDrive, do not want to use OneDrive and wish I could uninstall OneDrive. OneDrive creates ~10 new files every day.

The broken (now fixed but still stupid) search is just a symptom of a bloated quantity-over-quality, walled-garden, rented-not-owned, OSaaS.

</comment><comment><USER48> Frustration with Windows Start menu search drove me to install Keypirinha: [https://keypirinha.com/](https://keypirinha.com/)

Specifically: I type ope and the top of the list is Skype, then the Opera folder, then Office. When I add an r then About Your PC is at the top. then opera.pak, and at last Opera. But even if I type Opera the hit I expect is still not at the top of the list.

With Keypirinha it remembers which one I choose and promotes it to the top.

And that was before Search stopped working. If I didn't need SQL Server and Visual Studio for the work I do I would not have Windows on any of my own hardware.

</comment><comment><USER49> Honestly for non indexed search VoidTools everything is leaps and bounds before windows search. It searches directly in the NTFS dictionaries and is blazing fast.

</comment><comment><USER50> To have search work viably as a menu it has to repeatable, which generally involves delivering desired results. More anti-user hubris from microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER51> I just wish I could get search to stop returning applications I uninstalled months ago (and yes I've tried deleting and rebuilding the index).

<comment><USER52> Perhaps there's a shortcut in Quick Launch? (A Windows 95 feature they decided to get rid of but never quite managed to completely remove.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Recently my respect to apple is growing more and more because of issues like this. Apple is always criticised for lack of innovations compared to its competitors but their attention to smaller details and ensuring their products just "work" proved to be more valuable to customers than dozens of broken features.

Edit: Of course there are some exceptions like apple maps

</comment><comment><USER54> "we all found out that our local search boxes are somehow dependent on some service working at Microsoft." She attacked the company for a lack of transparency and gave it a maximum 'Pinocchio score' for a lack of trust.

I miss Ubuntu (minus their amazon scandal...)

</comment><comment><USER55> Classic Shell has continued to make Windows 8/10 far more functional, IMO. The start menu wasn't broken, and simple is good if you ask me.

[http://www.classicshell.net/](http://www.classicshell.net/)

</comment><comment><USER16> If you want to see an example of what file search could be like, use the program 'everything'. I have no idea how microsoft creates something so terrible in the first place, let one leaves it that way.

</comment><comment><USER56> Hey does this effect LTSC? Like, I read the article and looked at the comments and Search works fine and great for me, always have

Been a macOS user since the start of my career, but I have been enjoying Windows 10 LTSC

</comment><comment><USER57> I've used FileLocator Pro as my Explorer CTRL+F replacement for years, and I love it.

Fast, doesn't rely on fragile indexing, and finds stuff Microsoft always seems to miss.

</comment><comment><USER58> If I need to search for something outside my policy limited range, I use explorer++. It will find it, and it will allow you to have tabs and to store favorites.

</comment><comment><USER59> Anyone catch the IP or know the URL search phones home to? I suspect I would not be the only one who would want to pi-hole this.

</comment><comment><USER60> A good search app is called "Search Everything" :)

<comment><USER61> You assume everyone has permission to install software :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Does this mean that microsoft could be keeping copies of the meta data of every file on every windows computer on their servers and doing the search there?

<comment><USER63> Well, yes, they obviously _can_ as in _could_ , as could any other OS.

This incident doesn't actually show any local files being sent to MS, however. Online search can be disable with a registry entry, which proves that the online service is not necessary for searching local files. It's far more likely that a connection error for the bing search is just triggering some bug that then prevents local results from being shown.</comment></comment>


Supreme Court rejects limits on corporate spending in electoral campaigns - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/21/AR2010012101724.html <comment><USER2> "When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought," the court said in a decision written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. "This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves."

Seems like a fairly compelling argument to me.

<comment><USER3> Corporations and unions are not sentient beings.

<comment><USER2> No, but they are composed entirely of sentient beings.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but corporations are a way for sentient beings to skirt liability. A corporation cannot go to prison for life. A corporation is designed with the goal of producing profit for its sentient owners/shareholders. It has no interest in leading a "healthy" life, only a profitable life.

<comment><USER5> A corporation can be put to death, and with no due process. See e.g. Arthur Anderson, which was eventually exonerated by the Supreme Court. But long after it was dead.

And that threat can get them to do crazy things, e.g. that's what wrecked AIG a few years before the financial crisis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not a problem as long as politicians are required to report their funding sources. One politician receiving a million dollars from a corporation is free publicity for the opposing politician.

<comment><USER5> This doesn't change _anything_ about what companies can do _with_ politicians, e.g. "coordinating" let alone contributions, both of those are still forbidden.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm speechless, and the result of this decision will make that more so, relative to rich non-person corporations.

<comment><USER6> you're not entitled to equal power of speech or equal anything for that matter. just freedom of speech. you can say anything you like. you have to earn being heard.

<comment><USER8> Yes, apparently with wads of cash instead of something like, oh I don't know, rationale or expertise.

<comment><USER6> I am an infallible bureaucrat working at the Ministry of Justice in Communications and have judged that your comment should be deleted. Let me remind you that while the system is not perfect, it is better than nothing. Never mind the fact that I've worked out a deal to go work for R. Murdoch once my stint at this shitty job is over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fine, can we jail a few corporations now?

I would also like politicians to wear sponsor tags like nascar drivers.

I may as well be asking for a pony.

</comment><comment><USER8> I posted a day or two ago that I'm leaving the US, and I'm not kidding.

<comment><USER10> Where are you planning to go?

<comment><USER5> Some place with less freedom of speech, since that to the best of my knowledge describes every other country in the world.

It makes a certain amount of sense: pmichaud is appalled by an increase in the freedom of speech (really, a return to the pre-1990 normal state of affairs) and wherever he goes, there will be less of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _> The court split 5 to 4 over the ruling, with its conservative members in the majority_

Can't say I'm surprised.</comment>


A sprinkle of compost helps rangeland lock up carbon - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/A-sprinkle-of-compost-helps-rangeland-lock-up-5832244.php

<comment><USER2> So, I'm not a scientist, but could there be value in incentivizing land owners and countries globally to sprinkle compost everywhere? I.e. we go into normally arid parts of the world or sub-prime agricultural plots (parts of: africa, south america, china) and sprinkle their territories?

From a global warming perspective, it makes sense, but also from a "how do we feed 10-15Billion people" perspective makes even more sense.

</comment><comment><USER3> How much methane is released in the composting process prior to the finished compost being spread on the fields?

<comment><USER4> Very low if aerobic conditions are maintained (which also minimizes nitrous oxide emissions):

[http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=methane+from+composting](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=methane+from+composting)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > This not only sequesters the carbon but improves the soil's fertility, > boosting plant growth and capturing more carbon while also improving the > soil's ability to absorb and retain water.

So this only relies on nothing else than fertilizing?

<comment><USER6> Fertilising is often a misleading term, as people assume nitrogen-based (inorganic) fertilisers, which tend to be one-shot wonders, and not terribly helpful at improving soil quality or ability to lock up carbon.

This story is hardly new, though, and there's an abundance of research that's already been done on simple, inexpensive, long-term, highly scalable ways of increasing carbon-carrying capacity of soils. Increasing organic matter is the obvious play, and you can do that by sensible stock management, sensible plant selection, application of compost (in this case as a kind of starter), and for some spectacular results application of biochar.</comment></comment>


The Role of AI in UX - <AUTHOR> http://uxmag.com/articles/two-ways-artificial-intelligence-contributes-to-great-user-experience

<comment><USER2> Author here. Happy to answer any questions!</comment>


Philadelphia budget data visualization - <AUTHOR> http://budget.brettmandel.com <comment><USER2> This is a nice visualisation but it's not clear to me what the purpose of it is - other than the immediate "WOW look how much is spent on Police + Prisons!" that struck me. Or is it simply a "check it out, I know what comprises Philadelphia's budget...".

I'm a total outsider so I admit it's entirely likely that this means something to folks living there. But either way it would be nice if there was a little blurb on what he's trying to say or some attempt to explain what the budget would look like if he was elected. As it is this is simply "Look at this budget, just look at it".

<comment><USER3> It also seemed odd to me that so much was under "Finance Department". I'd figured Finance would cover the actual bookkeepers, interest on bonds, and other things related to money in the abstract. From its size that budget must also be "Stuff that doesn't go anywhere else".

<comment><USER4> In most cities this also covers revenues, aka tax collection. It would be nice to see the breakdown on how much of the budget is dedicated to collecting taxes to fund the budget.

<comment><USER5> When you drill down you get to the actual entries in the budget that correspond to the particular thing you are looking at.

It was interesting all the Director of Finance salaries of 900K - 1.4M. Seems like a lot of money to pay a civil servant but I may have been misreading the budget item.

I was looking at things like this:

192 FICA TAXES 0192 DIRECTOR OF FINANCE - - - 2012 - $1,369,489.56 PPE 07/10/2011 FICA MATCH CITY OF PHILADELPHIA

Seems to suggest that this director made $1,369,489.56 in compensation.

<comment><USER6> Nothing compared to the $15 million it shows as total compensation for the sheriff. (Don't know how to link it; just go to the farthest-right gray square that touches the bottom of the overall rectangle.)

<comment><USER7> That's to the Sherriff's department. It's all the salaries of deputies and whatnot. If you click on a box after zoomed in it gives an itemization.

Looks like the Sherriff (Barbara Deeley) had two line items for salary and made about 130k or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice visualization but HOLY CRAP is that normal for the police department suck up so much of a city's budget?

<comment><USER9> I live about a mile north of City Hall, but I grew up in a small town (pop 3000) in south-central PA. I've been living in Philadelphia for only a few years now, but every single night, I hear sirens, several times a night. And several times a week, I hear helicopters. I'm used to it now, but the police activity is on a level I never could have imagined existed in America when I was living in my tiny little town. Parts of the city near Temple are lit up and patrolled like it's the green zone in Baghdad.

When you stop and think about it, there is a near-constant state of emergency, and this no doubt applies to any major American metropolitan area. I'm not at all surprised that the police department has such a huge budget here.

<comment><USER10> 20-25% is about average for non-pension expenditures on police.

It's easy to lose context of just how massive a part of PA Philadelphia is. The city proper alone has more than 10% of the state's population (1.5MM to PA's ~12.7). Add in the other PA counties and you're close to 4. Add in the out-of-state parts of the Metropolitan area and you're quickly closing in on 6.

I've always felt safe when I've been there but given the sheer volume of people, I'd surprised they're not spending a larger amount of police forces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You are running for comptroller of Philadelphia?

Best of luck to you. It seems like you have the smarts to get noticed for your merit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Brett and I worked together on the project.

<comment><USER12> Great job! Can you speak (or maybe a blog post would be better) about how you put this together? What did you have to do get/massage the data? What tech did you use, etc?

It's nice to see stuff like this coming out of Philly.

<comment><AUTHOR> The site uses D3.js <http://d3js.org>. I'll write up a full recap later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here are two similar ones:

Obama's Budget Proposal (from 2010): <http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/01/us/budget.html>

<http://www.smartmoney.com/map-of-the-market/>

</comment><comment><USER14> Neat. Was some tool used to construct this, or was it done manually?

What may not be obvious to people initially when they look at it, is that when you see the label "Department of Finance" on the gray rectangle that is actually the label for the gray rectangle plus the green and orange ones adjacent to it -- the different colors represent the expenditure classes described on the "About" page. It would perhaps be clearer if there were thick black lines separating the items (instead of just a thick line of the background color) and zero separation between the colored rectangles representing the breakdown by class within an item (which currently have thin lines of the background color separating them giving the impression that they are separate items).

<comment><AUTHOR> The treemap was made using D3 with some customizations. All the source and datasets are on github.

The department groupings are done with spacing. They are subtle, I know.

Right at this moment, I am adding color coding to the About modal.

<comment><USER10> Mind sharing the github link?

<comment><USER15> <https://github.com/bengarvey/budget>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you want to make some budget visualizations of your own, let me link this site we've been working on:

<http://openspending.org/help/index.html>

It's powering a variety of budget sites, like <http://wheredoesmymoneygo.org/>, <http://bund.offenerhaushalt.de/> and <http://cameroon.openspending.org/en/>. People can just go an upload their own data quickly - OpenStreetMap for money :)

</comment><comment><USER17> Philadelphia needed someone to put this together... it's amazing that with open data, a campaign can help create something of real and lasting value in the course of their pitch.

gov 2.0 <3

</comment><comment><USER18> > $1,062,921.12 PANASONIC TB19/2GB/TOUGHB

The prisons department needs a lot of toughbooks. How many toughbooks do you get for a million dollars?

<comment><USER19> 265 @$4000. Base price is ~3400, but figure it comes with warranty and service addons and whatnot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Almost $4,000,000 a year on "sidewalk falls". Does anyone know what % on average an injury lawyer makes from those settlements?

</comment><comment><USER21> You can see the salaries of individuals, at least within the police dept. Is this normal for US cities? I've seen situations where public servants earning more than a certain threshold (eg 100kpa) had their names & salaries published. Doing so for everyone down to crossing guards seems like an unnecessary breach of privacy.

<comment><USER22> It's quite common. Chicago just overhauled their website and lists the salary of every single public employee: [https://data.cityofchicago.org/Administration- Finance/Curren...](https://data.cityofchicago.org/Administration- Finance/Current-Employee-Names-Salaries-and-Position-Title/xzkq-xp2w)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> as a Philadelphian, this is great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Neat. I'd add a legend for the colors and some kind of detail for the lower- right corner tiny stuff that kind of seems like it might as well not be there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Working on that right now! Should be up shortly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Those decimals are distracting and dont seem to have any purpose at this scale. Also it may be easier if you just put the $s in millions.

</comment><comment><USER5> That is the coolest thing I've seen in a while. Really helps you drill down to where the money is going in the budget.

</comment><comment><USER23> also, interesting he doesn't have anything to say about the incumbent. [http://www.philadelphiacontroller.org/biography-of-city- cont...](http://www.philadelphiacontroller.org/biography-of-city-controller- butkovitz.asp)

Is there a term limit or something? They're both dems.

<comment><AUTHOR> Philadelphia is a one party town. The real race is the primary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is just fascinating, nice work!

</comment><comment><USER27> The detailed listings should be sorted by expenditure to better explain what's in each category.

</comment><comment><USER28> Where does education fit into this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Entirely different budget. This is the General Fund which doesn't include the school data.

<comment><USER29> To add to that, the Philadelphia School District is completely separate from the municipal government: its funds come from separate taxes, and (since 2001) it reports directly to the Governor, not the city government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Cool, shall share!</comment>


Comprehensive guide to software engineering and entrepreneurship for free - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079R8QGCL <comment><USER2> Is there a downloadable PDF?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, there isn't.

<comment><USER2> Curious about the advantages of a free Kindle book for you.</comment></comment></comment>


How to prepare for the competition as a startup - <AUTHOR> http://startupmanagement.org/2014/10/06/on-startup-competition-dont-obsess-but-dont-ignore/

<comment><USER2> If you have competition, pivot.</comment>


Show HN: 10kTower, a Tower Sim game in 10k - <AUTHOR> https://10ktower-10kapart2016.azurewebsites.net <comment><AUTHOR> Made for the 10k Apart contest, the goal of which is to create a gracefully degrading website experience whose initial download (before XHR) is 10k or less.

Contest site: [https://a-k-apart.com](https://a-k-apart.com)

Source code: [https://github.com/webrender/10ktower/](https://github.com/webrender/10ktower/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Fantastic =) Recreation of one of my favorite games, having fun with it this morning.

Noticed that you have to keep a high cash balance -- once the population reaches a tipping point every citizen will be unhappy if there isn't enough security, resulting in instant negative income and an unrecoverable downward spiral. Razing every room isn't enough to remove the "need security" flag.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I'm glad you like it and thank you for the input! That's a really good point - I've pushed this commit forward which resolves this by only counting occupied floors in quality-of-life calculations - in other words, if a user makes a bad floor decision in the future, they can delete that floor to undo the decision and figure out what went wrong. It probably won't deploy to the contest site until tomorrow, though.

[https://github.com/webrender/10ktower/commit/a6b8fe2234f713e...](https://github.com/webrender/10ktower/commit/a6b8fe2234f713ecc7a2a317b20d546edcc31cc9)</comment></comment>


Google contractors sacked after vandalizing OpenStreetMap - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/17/2714044/google-contractors-sacked-vandalism-openstreetmap <comment><USER2> As soon as your company grows beyond the point where everyone else has the same personality type you do, you'd be amazed at how hard it is to run _perfect_ herd over everyone else's ethics. Anyone who thinks that this sort of thing requires management approval from Google simply has no concept at all of how difficult it is to scale trust and supervision. Google is effectively a _small country_ at this point.

Someday a YCombinator company is going to make front-page news after having tried to spread smallpox using dirty blankets, and someone is going to suggest that Paul Graham must have tacitly suggested it was a good idea, and they are going to be stupid.

<comment><USER3> It is very different.

Paul Graham is an investor, not a manager. If PG ran a company that hired a contractor who did some dirty deeds, PG would be in a load of hot water.

<comment><USER2> Have you ever hired a contractor? They, um, don't always do what you want.

<comment><USER4> For those not in the know, SIAI had an unfortunate contractor theft incident in 2009. <http://lesswrong.com/lw/5fo/siai_fundraising/4156>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, the comments blaming Google for this are ridiculous.

I'm no Google apologist. But it was 20 edits from 2 people. We have no clue what their motivation was, but probably they were just being assholes.

If an asshole Google employee started trolling on HN, posting 20 obnoxious comments, and pg tracked the IP addresses back to the same IP address as this incident, do you think he should raise a stink and say that Google is trying to take down HN because it's a competitor of Google+?

Come on, that's ridiculous. Is this really the effort of Google? They have tens of thousands of employees, and hundreds of thousands of computers all over the world. Google attempted to poison an open source map using 2 employees and 20 edits? Come on. If they redirected 0.01% of their traffic to that website, they could probably keep them down indefinitely.

The one scary thing, however, is that if you do do something obnoxious, like get into a flame war with someone, or if you add some false information to wikipedia for whatever reason, and the owner of the website complains online about it, you could get fired, even if your comments were completely "anonymous". That to me is scarier than any of this other stuff.

<comment><USER3> Not everyone is blaming Google. However, many are rightly taking the position that Google has to be held responsible for actions of its contractors, which is a different thing. Google has taken the first steps, which is to sack those people. Next it has to undertake review of all the sites that these people accessed and make good any damage they caused.

<comment><USER5> So, if you visit HN from your place of employment, your employer should be held responsible for every single obnoxious act you make? Or if you go to Amazon.com and post a negative review on a book, the author should sue your employer?

That's ridiculous. You're basically arguing that all employers should strictly limit the websites that any employee visits, since the employer should be held accountable for their employees actions.

If the contractors did something against the terms of their employment and got fired, that's one thing. But to hold the employer responsible and say they should "make good" on the actions of their employees is wrong.

<comment><USER3> I was equally surprised and dismayed when I learnt of this initially, but it is already established as a point of law. See

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability>

So in the case of the luxury cruise ship sinking, or Exxon Valdez, the ship owner is responsible the cost of cleanup.

<comment><USER5> In the second paragraph of the first section:

"whereas an employee acting in his or her own right rather than on the employer's business is undertaking a "frolic" and will not subject the employer to liability."

A Google contractor adding false information to OpenStreetMap is undertaking a "frolic", unless that was specifically his job at Google. If Google specifically told him to do it, then yes Google should be held liable, however, if the contractor is killing time and being an asshole while twiddling his thumbs, Google will not be held liable.

<comment><USER3> Oh yes, you are right. I had forgotten about "frolic".

I wonder how this point will pan out with the case of Costa Concordia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So let's see here. Google "contractors" in Kenya get caught stealing customers red-handed. Then "contractors" in India take over where they left off. They also start messing with OpenStreetMap.

And somehow, no one at Google had any idea? Oh, please. If this was Microsoft, you'd all be raising hell, but because it's Google everyone is talking about how great they are for dropping the contractors? I'm disappointed in you all.

<comment><USER7> These contractors are a full continent _plus_ an ocean away from the Googleplex. It seems pretty plausible to me that nobody high on the totem pole had any idea about the particulars of what they were doing. I doubt they even know everything that the thousands of full-time employees who work right down the hall are doing.

<comment><USER8> Not that I'm taking side on this Google fiasco but distance is not an excuse in these days of distributed workspace and multi-national corporations. If distance is an acceptable excuse, BP didn't have to take responsibility for the oil spill happened in the Mexico Gulf since it's an ocean away in a different continent.

<comment><USER7> You seem to have taken my comment out of context. I didn't say distance excuses anything, just that it presents logistical challenges. The comment I was replying to suggested that Google _had to have known_ , so I was explaining that, no, the higher-ups at Google very well might not have had a clue. This does not appear to have been a major campaign of great strategic importance to the company, it didn't involve a lot of people and it wasn't anomalously using any resources, so I have no trouble believing that it simply slipped under the radar. You might say that was negligence on Google's part, but I don't think you can call it malice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Not working on Google projects anymore" doesn't imply the same thing as "sacked" where I come from.

I think people want a better explanation then what we've seen so far. Vandalizing wikipedia for teh lawlz is one thing, vandalizing OSM with potentially dangerous things like switching one way streets is another kettle of fish. Especially when your employer (err employer's employer) runs a well known competitor.

<comment><USER10> They were contractors. Google isn't their employer and can't sack them. All they can do is ensure that they no longer work on Google projects.

<comment><USER11> The wording is ambiguous.

And the term "sacked" can certainly be used to apply to service providers / contractors:

[http://www.governoruduaghan.org/infocus_listing.php?head=3&#... http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-11-18/delhi... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/3741846/BBC- sa...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good on Google for (apparently) taking appropriate corrective action in this case.

As comments at TheVerge note: this is the third notable instance of contractor misbehavior in very recent weeks for Google. Seems to me that the company needs to tighten up its contractor vetting and oversight markedly. This is a general outsourcing problem: delegating work to another entity means you've created a new obligation within your organization to oversee that work.

It's hardly new, and it's hardly specific to business. Apple, Dell, HP, Microsoft, and other are currently dealing with fallout from outsourced labor practices, particularly in China (Foxconn / Shenzhen), but also India and elsewhere. The US government has seen much criticism over its outsourced contracts. BP has had some disagreements with its contractors Cameron International, Andarko Petrolium (Mitsui Oil exploration), Weatherford International, Transocean, and Halliburton over fish-oiling services rendered.

What might be interesting would be to see a clever and distributed solution by Google. My expectations aren't high, but it's definitely a wicked problem and they'd be a good crew to tackle it.

<comment><USER9> "Good on Google for (apparently) taking appropriate corrective action in this case."

Considering:

(1) this is the same India contractor that was involved in the scandal last week.

(2) The new infractions happened after that scandal broke.

(3) As far as we know they are still giving their business to this contractor.

Then you have to seriously doubt whether "appropriate corrective action" has been taken.

<comment><USER11> Well:

1: If this is the case, Google have correctly identified the source and it turned out to be the same in both cases.

2: Mocality broke on Friday. The OSM incidents were reported Monday, and apparently had been ongoing for at least a few days prior. I'd say they're largely coincident.

3: It does take some time for a business to respond, especially where contractual issues are involved. I suspect in this case the OSM report was a final straw / accelerator in Google's decision process.

Speaking for myself, _I_ used the term "apparently" as we've just got Google's report of their action, I haven't seen it verified elsewhere. Though I'd be inclined to believe their statement (lying at this point would be a Really Dumb Move[tm]).

Really, given the scale of operations, this is lightning action on Google's part.

As I noted, the problem here is that there are three incidents (two tied to the same contractor) of malfeasance in Google's name (if indirectly, through contractors, on Google's part). This speaks to shoddy practices, or in best light, considerable room for improvement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

This seems to apply to several levels of this incident, up to and including this discussion of it.

Most, if not all, of the discussion here in both directions is speculation. It seems to me that it's still early. The Google detractors here will be much more persuasive, to me at least, if they come back in a few weeks and Google has still not issued a strong apology and full, detailed explanation.

<comment><USER13> > Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately > explained by stupidity."

I can see why Occam's Razor should be accepted at face value, but Hanlon's appears to be just a just-so idea without any logical foundation other than appealing to certain human prejudices.

In any event, "Google detractors" can say whatever they want, but to claim that people running Google are "stupid" or that the company is governed by a mindset characterized by "stupidity" is really hard to swallow.

<comment><USER14> Actually, I think it's a really optimistic saying.

Think of it more as, "Until we rule out incompetence, we shouldn't assume malice – and incompetence is far more common than malice".

</comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra Why did these contractors do that?

It's not like they sweared on forums or watched porn. Vandalizing OSM is an effort-intensive task. You dont't do that because of lack of control. You do that because you were told to, or motivated to in any other way.

I don't see how they could do that accidentally; therefore we should seek why they did that; who knew what they were doing; and how it could happen at all.

What were their job? What were they brought in for?

<comment><USER7> Say I bring you in to help promote certain properties versus rivals X, Y and Z. Now pretend you lack a good sense of ethics. Think of a few obvious ways to help my product beat these other products. I'm sure you can come up with something plausible that's similarly lousy.

A company I worked for once hired a guy to help them build up a social media profile and agreed on a pay scheme similar to "$X for every 100 followers/friends". He followed every follow-back spammer he could find and got paid rather well for gaining about 20 actual readers. I guarantee you this was not what the company wanted, but it's easy to create perverse incentives if you're not careful.

<comment><USER15> i think that's what the original commenter said.

did google hired them to 'overcome OSM in that region?' or to 'improve google maps?'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Let's drop "Google Contractors" for simply "Google." It doesn't diminishes the act and it's clearly a PR sleight of hand.

<comment><USER17> Google definitely holds some of the blame here, and I'm glad to see that they've been completely transparent and apologetic with every instance of Contractor shadiness that's cropped up in the past couple of weeks.

But don't try to drop facts because it doesn't suit your argument. They were contractors working for Google. Saying anything less than that is dishonest. You could just as easily fall further down the slippery slope and condemn the entire human race for the actions of a couple of contractors, because the contractors were humans.

<comment><USER18> Why do you think Google hired these contractors? Why use contractors on these kind of dirty jobs? Do you honestly think that Google wasn't aware of what they were doing?

<comment><USER19> Do you really think Google stands much to gain from scamming Kenyan businesses and messing up Open Street Maps (who, might I add, have received donations from Google)?

<comment> guard-of-terra We have to build a mental model of what's happening.

We have two at the moment: First, that one or more than one of workers in Google in India for some reason had strange sort of hatred towards OSM, not caused by they working for Google, which caused them to vandalize OSM objects in certain cities located in different hemisphere. Second, that they for reasons unknown were told to do that; Or the measure of their achievements could be influenced by OSM maps being worse; the profit has to be short-term and obvious for lower-level workers to fall for it.

First seems to be highly improbable; second seems just improbable :) Right now second wins. Any other mental models?

<comment> guard-of-terra Third model: a third party could be hurting Google by clumsily hurting OSM using double agents. Their goal was to make it to the news and then make Google take a PR hit.

Who could be behind this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there any evidence Google is actually taking any action like so some Google-apologists are quick to claim?

Are there any official statements? Basically all a see after these incidents is Google only responding when being pressed by individual reporters, and even then only in very superficial terms.

Sweeping it under the rug seems to be a more appropriate description of Google's response to some extremely serious accusations. This isn't just a random act of drunken mischief by someone that just happens to be a Google employee. We're talking criminal activities undertaken by people being paid by Google, using Google's corporate infrastructure and aimed at Google's competitors.

<comment><USER21> > We're talking criminal activities undertaken by people being paid by Google, > using Google's corporate infrastructure and aimed at Google's competitors.

Yikes, I think you're getting overly excited. Two contractors in India errantly changed the direction of a street and suddenly it's a "serious accusation" of "criminal activity"?

For me this falls somewhere between, "meh" and "mischievous prank" -- strongly leaning towards "meh."

<comment><USER22> Truly. The other accusations are more serious than these OpenStreetMap ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Retarded comments by Google fanboys, saying that these contractors worked out of Google's control and hence, the company cannot be held responsible for their actions.

Please tell me one thing: why the hell would any contractor go out of his way to sabotage your competition?

This can happen only if the management has insinuated in a wink-wink, nod-nod way that vandalizing the competition might yield certain rewards.

And please, if this practice continues and everyone just sweeps it under the carpet as something 'contractors and not the company did', then soon we'll have an army of contractors hired by Samsung, MS, Facebook, et al going around planting bombs in competitors' HQs.

Someone has to own up. If my dog shits on your lawn, I still have to clean it up.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is barely enough. Google now needs to make full reparations and find out exactly what was modified and return them to the correct values. The SysAdmins time on OSM is not free. Under tort, Google should be on the hook for malicious alteration of map data of its employees and contractors. Contractors or not, Google will have to exercise more oversight.

Perhaps someone can release a little utility that trawls through Apache logs called HasGoogleAlteredYourData?

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder if this was the result of unintended consequences of poorly designed incentives. May be - and this is just a wild hypothesis - Google's directive to the vendor was to improve their maps data and incentives were based on their data being better than OSMs. Which leads to some of the contractors realizing that it would be easier to be "better" than OSM by making OSM worse.

</comment><comment><USER25> Google's Response: "The two people who made these changes were contractors acting on their own behalf while on the Google network. They are no longer working on Google projects."

This does not mean they were sacked. This does not mean Google were actively seeking to destroy OSM data. I'm pretty sure if they wanted to do that, they could do so without anyone finding out.

Two people, changing some OSM data (maliciously or otherwise), from their work PC's, is NOT newsworthy in my opinion. The original accusation, yes. If they provide more details of the attacks, definitely. This post however, is not.

<comment><USER26> I don't think they were out to destroy OSM data.... I think that they were likely out to discredit OSM as a reliable source for maps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Seems like an overall issue with vendor management.

</comment><comment><USER28> If Google keeps getting taken advantage of by contractors, just imagine what happens on all the local/state/federal government contracts that has little to no oversight.

</comment><comment><USER29> "...and that the contractors in the OSM case just happened to be working in the same office."

Does anyone know how big this office is?

</comment><comment><USER30> Yet another standout example of Google's non-evilness.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm wondering why Google is so stupid to use their own IP address for these dirty jobs? I guess that's the real mistake the contractor was doing from Google's point of view. They were probably instructed to use random proxies around the world, but somehow this particular 'contractor' didn't manage to do that.

<comment><USER31> So you think the senior evil overlords at Google made a affirmative decision to deliberately sabotage OpenStreetMap to make it look bad in comparison to Google Maps. And that they instructed their agents to cover their tracks.

Seriously?

<comment><USER32> If so, that were some particularly inept secret agents...

<comment><USER31> That's exactly what I'm thinking. I mean, I know corporate espionage exists, but really. If this was really your goal why traceable sabotage? Why not break the logical connectivity at big intersections so they render correctly but break navigation algorithms? Why not offset a city 100m to the south to break GPS matching? "Deleting main roads" from a traceable IP is just... dumb.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Making of Future Man: On Hugo Gernsback (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/01/31/hugo-gernsback-making-of-future-man <comment><USER2> Another spectacularly important figure in SF was John W Campbell ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Campbell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Campbell)), a contemporary of Hugo Gernsback. He overhauled science fiction from fantastic space opera into a modern, speculative genre. This included cultivating a number of writers that later became giants in the field - including HN favorite Isaac Asimov.

And, yes, there is a Campbell award!

He was also a seriously brilliant writer, from classics like 'Who Goes There?' and 'Cloak of Aesir', to the almost-forgotten 'All'. There was a big fuss over Andy Weir's 'The Martian', but everyone seems to have overlooked Campbell's 'The Moon is Hell!' ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_Hell!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_Hell!)).

Buzz Lightyear's catchphrase 'To Infinity and Beyond!' \- Campbell wrote it first ('The Mightiest Machine', 1947)!

<comment><USER3> I've been reading a bunch of 60s/70s sci fi recently - the odd book by the likes of Pohl, Bester, Haldeman, Heinlein, Lem etc... as well as biggies like Arther C Clarke and Philip K Dick (yet to touch Asimov!).

I've been blown away by how enjoyable and fascinating it all is, given how long ago these stories were written. My hunch was that sci fi would date a lot faster than most other genres (and sure, some of the social/cultural/gender aspects seem laughably wrong today), but in the best of these books the human element is so gripping that the sci fi aspect simply becomes a perfectly fantastical backdrop against which to explore some niche part of the human psyche. "The Stars My Destination" really stuck out to me in this sense.

Another surprise I had was how much more I've enjoyed the lesser-known authors than the likes of Clarke. I've now gone through both "Rendezvous With Rama" and "The Fountains of Paradise", and whilst the _ideas_ are epic, the actual execution generated very little interest for me.

Anyway, that was all very tangential, but your comment really brought home how much further I still need to go to start touching the "source" of sci fi.</comment></comment>