Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/macs-cost-one-third-much-223047938.html <comment><USER3> I'd like to know what percentage of help desk calls are related to hardware vs OS vs software.

I can believe that the Mac hardware is more reliable. However, a lot of help desk calls I remember making were because some legacy software wasn't working which wasn't directly related to Windows, e.g. I can't read my lotus notes mail because there's a problem with my remote mailbox configuration. I'd like to know if those calls get marked as a PC problem.

I'm sure much less of the legacy software runs on Mac and therefore they get fewer help desk calls related to it.

<comment><USER4> There could be other biases too. For instance, if the Mac users at IBM were in largely technical roles (e.g. working on their MacOS integration service) vs large non-technical departments working on Windows machines (e.g. HR and accounting).

It wouldn't be very surprising that technical departments had less help-desk complaints than non technical departments.

<comment><USER5> There are definitely other biases. Macs simply can't do as much as Windows can in a business setting.

That's why companies like Disney and Google have to build their own systems management tools. I could not imagine running a financial services house, an insurance company or a warehouse without Windows.

Even simple software like remote desktop does not exist on the Mac. Yes the Mac has screen sharing but it is nowhere as good as remote desktop.

<comment><USER6> > Macs simply can't do as much as Windows can in a business setting

[https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Office-...](https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Office- for-Mac/categoryID.69404500)

> Even simple software like remote desktop does not exist on the Mac.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-remote- desktop/id7...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-remote- desktop/id715768417?mt=12)

[https://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/](https://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/)

Where on earth did you come up with this belief?

<comment><USER5> It only works from Mac to Mac though. You cannot do remote desktop from Windows to Mac. That's typical Apple bullshit that will not fly in the enterprise. RDP also comes built into Windows where is you have to buy this from Apple.

Also for anybody suggesting team viewer… Come on that's a ridiculously expensive package that does not even work as well and it's not ubiquitous.

<comment><USER7> _> "It only works from Mac to Mac though. You cannot do remote desktop from Windows to Mac. That's typical Apple bullshit"_

What are you talking about? Here are five ways:

[https://www.raymond.cc/blog/remote-access-apple-mac-os-x- via...](https://www.raymond.cc/blog/remote-access-apple-mac-os-x-via-windows/)

TL;DR: Turn on the built-in open standard VNC server on the Mac, use a VNC client on Windows:

 _Mac OS X actually comes with a built-in remote management feature that allows other computers on the local network to access the Apple computer using the Apple Remote Desktop which we mentioned earlier. However, there is a setting where you can allow third party VNC viewers to connect and control the Apple computer. First click on the System Preferences icon at the Dock and click on Sharing. Click on the checkbox for the Remote Management to turn on the service._

 _Click on Computer Settings button. Tick on the "VNC viewers may control screen with password" and type in a password. Click OK to save the changes..._

<comment><USER8> VNC is pretty laggy to use when you could have RDP instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use a Mac at work, and we've started giving managers the discretion to choose a Mac for their employees. I've been using Macs since OSX, so fairly familiar with their flaws in a corporate environment.

I have to laugh at anyone who thinks Windows would be comparable or cheaper in cost to a Mac. Everyday, I hear a continual litany of woe and despair from our helpdesk about drivers, and anti-virus, and AD issues etc ad infinitum.

Fortunately for me, my only interaction with the "Windows" environment is via SMB to our fileservers. This works reasonably well. The rest of our applications are either Java based, have a web interface, or use a console. My immediate coworkers are all sysadmins with years of experience, and even they still have to cope with BSODs, crashing applications, and all the usual crap that Windows users continue to put up with.

It's sad; they actually think it's normal. I run into the same issue when they talk about Windows server issues (I admin the *nix systems). They don't believe me when I say I don't run into issue xyz...

<comment><USER10> >> I hear a continual litany of woe and despair from our helpdesk about drivers, and anti-virus, and AD issues etc ad infinitum

Sounds like human error to me. My two young children seem to handle Windows just fine without me having to constantly monitor their machines.

Edit: what? my anecdotal evidence isn't as good as everybody else?

<comment><USER11> You should know that anecdotal evidence is frowned upon on Hacker News when it doesn't support conventional wisdom.

<comment><USER12> I thought his anecdote was the conventional wisdom?

It lines up pretty perfectly with my experience swapping in Ubuntu for Mac OS. When I have a problem I can troubleshoot it down to a specific line of code or piece of hardware, on windows.... well, I would rather not troubleshoot anything on windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, if IBM's PC image is anything like it was in the early 2000's probably > 50% of their PC issues are self inflicted by the IT people who built the image.

From buggy unsigned drivers, to crapware for security/etc, I stabilized my machine by uninstalling a bunch of things that should never have been in the standard image. If you compare the PC vs MAC images at the last couple companies I worked at, you will find that the PC's are far more heavily modified with crapware/bloatware than the macs were. Usually because having checkpoint/norton/whatever was an absolute requirement from a security perspective on the PC's but apparently the MAC's didn't even need disk encryption enabled much less virus scanners...

<comment><USER14> > Well, if IBM's PC image is anything like it was in the early 2000's probably > > 50% of their PC issues are self inflicted by the IT people who built the > image.

I'd argue that most issues people have with Windows PC fall in the category of 'self inflicted', but the point is, is that this is much harder to do on a Mac (apparently). I never heard someone building an image for a mac for example.

<comment><USER15> Not in the Windows way, but we maintain (read: throw together, once) separate images for fusion drives, on/off domain, and some other minor use and test cases.

But no one here is patching kernels or blacklisting modules to fix hardware issues on Macs, or working around some Intel security technology that disables xhci controllers on Skylake if you aren't on Win10 because the last LCR didn't cull enough of the incompatible hardware to upgrade from Win7. Things like that are why our Mac group can support as many systems as the PC team with 1/5 the staff.

And that's not including Service, who deal almost exclusively with PC issues by volume.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's only anecdotal, ofcourse, but I used to own Windows machines and as a result so did all my relatives with me being the "tech guy" in the family. Not a week would pass without me fixing a relative's PC. Now, about 7 years later, everyone in my family including myself has switched to Macs and I can't even remember the last time I was called to fix a machine.

<comment><USER17> Chromebooks have a similar experience is you want an even cheaper alternative. Applications beyond the browser are more limited (photo management is awful on Chromebooks) but it's hard to beat the price and functionality for most users.

<comment><USER18> Was trying to sell my dad on getting a Chromebook, but he insisted on getting something with a numpad...

<comment><USER12> Tape on of these to it: [https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search- alias%3Da...](https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search- alias%3Daps&field-keywords=usb+numpad)

<comment><USER18> He already had one of those on an earlier laptop. He didn't want to have to fiddle with such a thing again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Previn says that while a Mac initially costs anywhere from $117 to $454 more than a similarly configured Windows PC, over four years IBM saves between $273 to $543 per Mac compared to a similarly configured Windows PC."

Its late over here, and I could be misinterpreting this, but this feels like meaningless clickbait. 3 times cheaper to own is based on 117 * 3 ~= 543? Taking the extreme low end of one value and the extreme high end of the other feels dishonest.

Perhaps a more appropriate title would have been "In the long run, you'll probably save about $25/year by buying a Mac."

<comment><USER9> No.

The minimum savings was $273/4 years = 68.25/year The maximum savings was $543/4 years = 135.75/year

<comment><USER19> Are those savings already including the fact that "a Mac initially costs anywhere from $117 to $454 more than a similarly configured Windows PC"? Looking at it again, its not entirely clear from the way that its worded.

<comment><USER9> Lifecycle TCO would naturally take into consideration the initial purchase price. Just preface think of it like this:

"Despite a Mac costing anywhere from $117 to $454 more, it's cheaper than Windows."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Don't know about the stats, but this has definitely been the case for me. My late 2010 MBA worked for 5 years then broke one day. Apple fixed it in under 24 hours for $304.80 (that's with 8.75% NY tax) and I'm typing on it as we speak. PS the thing is basically indestructible... I have no excuse not to buy another some time in the future. Can't wait to try the 12" MB.

<comment><USER21> I agree but I would strongly hesitate to say "basically indestructible". Macs are incredibly destructible. They have a very thin glass screen, you could bend the chassis with your hands if you wanted to, and they're not even a little waterproof.

How I would describe a MacBook is "quality". It's not especially durable, it just doesn't break down over time. Other laptops break in stupid ways. The hinges snap because it's metal screwed into plastic. The cheap plastic casings wear down, discolor, and crack as you touch it. The trackpad wears down because it's plastic. The logic boards stress with the constant heat flux and end up breaking. Macs don't often suffer from that.

MacBooks aren't indestructible in any way. They're just built to a higher standard so they can withstand _daily use_. It's kind of sad that our bar is set so low, but many other laptops can't withstand daily use for years on end. Even Thinkpads, I've had the hinge areas crack because it's metal hinges screwed into a plastic chassis.

<comment><USER22> > How I would describe a MacBook is "quality". It's not especially durable, it > just doesn't break down over time.

I've definitely noticed the same thing. Almost every laptop (and computer, for that matter) has broken down within a year to a year and a half for some random dumb reason. Two of my laptops died due to messed up power supply connections on the motherboard, two others died due to the hinges completely snapping off, and another died because the hard drive failed - and that one was an aluminum iMac that I pawned off to my friend, who replaced the HDD and it works just fine still.

I've had my current MBP since 2012, and it's chugging along just fine - <USER2> for the hard drive, which I replaced with an SSD and have no problems with, and ironically enough the hinges, which totally cracked. I had to buy some replacement hinges off of iFixit, which I'm waiting on delivery for today.

Apple computers have by far been the longest lasting and least likely to crap out on me that I've ever had. I'm very happy with my old MBP, and the only reason I'm considering upgrading to a newer model is because I can tell this one might be on its way out in general.

The one thing stopping me is the price point... $1600+, yikes.

<comment><USER23> > Almost every laptop (and computer, for that matter) has broken down within a > year to a year and a half for some random dumb reason.

Consumer hardware is crap because the market doesn't want to pay for anything above crap. The laptops break after a year because that's how long the warranty is, and the manufacturer is counting on you to come back and buy next year's cheapest model when your laptop breaks.

Go look at enterprise quality PC laptops, they cost as much as a Mac does, but they last just as long.

I can tell you stories of ThinkPads which I have personally seen run over by cars, and while the LCD is broken and the body is a bit scuffed, they still work with an external monitor.

> The one thing stopping me is the price point... $1600+, yikes.

Yup, and if you buy mobile workstations, you're going to pay that much. The great thing about PCs though is that they don't retain their value like a Mac does.

This is why whenever someone asks me for a laptop recommendation, my first pick would be a 2-3 year old enterprise laptop. You can pick them up refurbished for around $300, and they'll easily last you another 3.

The only disadvantage is that companies are afraid to innovate their business laptop line, so in a lot of cases you're stuck with laptops that have a 1366x768 screen while everyone else is running around with a $2000+ extremely fragile ultrabook, which has a 3K display.

<comment><USER24> Some time ago, a coworker of mine was in a terrible car rollover accident. He escaped without long lasting injuries, but the car was totaled. His Macbook Pro was loose in the car and it got bent in the middle.

Amazingly, only the DVD drive was destroyed. Everything else continued to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's because most PCs people use are bottom of the barrel cheap. If you compare similarly priced PCs to Macs with similar business class builds (keyboards for laptops, etc) I highly suspect everything will balance out, at the very least be minimal.

<comment><USER9> If you look at the full reports, it's readily apparent that IBM isn't comparing an expensive Mac to an el-cheapo PC.

<comment><USER26> But they could well be comparing a new BYOD MacOS environment to a old corporate legacy windows setup, which isn't really comparing the performance of the OS so much as comparing BYOD with old-school centrally managed windows domains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> /r/sysadmin had a good discussion on it [1].

TLDR; the study is hardly conclusive and knowing IBM is aligned with business goals.

[1]:[https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/58j88j/ibm_claims...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/58j88j/ibm_claims_macs_less_expensive_than_pcs_for_their/)

<comment><USER8> Wow, this is a nice quote:

"Yeah I was wondering about the Linux base. I was denied a Mac when they introduced this policy as I was what they call a privileged user (most sysadmins will be)."

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The company I work at is small, at 32 employees. We standardized on macs in the mid 00s for the exact same reason: maintenance costs. Being a consultancy, the ROI calculation also included hours lost due to malfunctioning hardware or software problems, and it became very easy in the end to justify the initially higher expense of giving someone a mac instead of a PC.

<comment><USER29> I came to the same conclusion after 15 years as a Windows user, 2 years as Linux and now going on 4 as Mac.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> my first reaction is to not accept this and share anecdotes of my experiences, but maybe he's right. I don't run an IT dept. I've not done any cost benefit analysis. I just know my second hand thinkpad was cheap, works well and I won't trade it for a mac any time soon.

Maybe if I was loaded I'd buy my folks and siblings macbooks, but I'm not, and I'm happy enough to fix the odd issue on their cheap windows laptops. one or two reinstalls a year while I watch some TV in the background beats convincing them to spend money they don't really have on top of the line hardware

but like I said, different story if you're making financial decisions for a big Corp

<comment><USER31> ... that's because of the cheap second hand thinkpad, which is a marvelous piece of engineering, and probably the best the Windows/Non-Mac world has to offer in competition to Macbooks.

Even though there have been some questionable redesign approaches and a slight (perceived) slump in QC in recent years, Thinkpads IMO are still THE best machinery out there to just get stuff DONE.

They are reliable, full Linux compatibility, easy to service and have the best non mechanical / Notebook keyboard out there.

Tbh the only thing I envy the Macs for are their brilliant screens. But we have red nipples on our keyboards, so yeah...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Worth saying that IBM has a large financial interest here as they're selling enterprise Mac integration.

<comment><USER33> You're absolutely right to highlight this. I didn't wish to sound cynical but their motive is pretty clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> So they allow people to choose their platform since 2015 and then compare the support costs for brand new macs to all existing windows PCs?

Not to mention the possible selection bias since people chose a mac themselves and were not randomly sampled.

</comment><comment><USER35> I wish I could talk more about this but I'm not sure I can go into detail today. But I can say:

\- Part of the reasons macs are cheaper is that they're massively less instrumented than PCs. \- Most orgs have not migrated to Win10 because they're totally convinced they need that instrumentation on windows. \- But they don't need that instrumentation on OSX, so it calls the entire premise into question.

It's also the case that people negotiate cheap block sales of SKUs from "trusted" partners to help pre-bundle all that instrumentation. But as this data shows, it turns out that buying less customized devices with better overall specs is actually a cost savings and per-unit cost.

Finally, I'd argue that employee satisfaction is almost directly a result of not having a heavy-handed and almost entirely arbitrary series of mandates forced onto their computer.

I won't talk about my employers efforts, but I know OTHER people (friends in IT) who are experimenting with mass deploys of Win10 and Surface books with a "let's throw EVERYTHING out and pretend these are a new platform" approach, and they tell me that they see benefits. As the conversations are casual, I cannot go further.

It's sort of amazing what happens to overall cost if you accept the premise that the vast majority of IT tooling and monitoring is in fact bad, wrongheaded, and not fulfilling real security and auditing requirements.

<comment><USER26> This very much chimes with my experiences of enterprise IT. The change is in throwing out the new platform and putting in a new one, not in what they old and new one actually are.

I'll be interested to see if the waves of BYOD and lightly managed systems give way to a return to centralisation again, when people realise what they don't have any more, or if it turns out, as you say, to be that they never really needed it in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Ex-IBMer here: until 2015, Macs weren't an option for people upgrading their PCs. They're deploying new Apples as laptops age out, and employees will then have a choice of a MacBook/MacBook Pro (depending on job role), a Lenovo laptop (configured for job role), or for the special snowflakes with sufficient budget, some custom configuration. BYOD is alive, well, and encouraged at IBM.

Most IBMers with Macs were using their personally owned hardware (as was the rare IBMer using a Microsoft Surface). Early adopters (before the end of 2014) were supported internally through the community, and starting in 2015 we were required to install a configuration program that would add an IBM app store and configure the machine so it complied with the internal security rules. Many of the day-to-day headaches on the Windows machines (e.g., printing) were eliminated with the IBM development Mac tools, but other things were impossible or required a VM to do, like using an IBM internal SOCKS proxy application to connect to customer sites.

IBM has a very active and dedicated Linux community as well. I can't speak to support numbers, but the tooling was more mature and more tools were available on the RHEL distribution.

</comment><comment><USER37> I wonder whether this is a premature conclusion due to sampling bias. I suspect that the early Mac adopters at IBM were mostly developers and expert users, people that didn't need a lot of support anyway. This makes it look like IBM's Mac users are cheaper to support, when in reality the true support costs won't be known until the user base is more representative of the company as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER38> Institutional computer usage seemes designed to cost the institution money. I have to log jobs for basic installs, have 2-3 follow up calls and emails to clarify what I want. Then I wait for the team who install that category of software to be free (usually the person I need is on leave). It's easier to find a workaround, even if it makes the job take hours rather than minutes. Random machines can't access the internet for updates even if the admin password was available - internet access is an attack vector to be minimised. Maybe other large institutions are better. I see the odd Mac user and I'm sure it's cheaper for the department as Mac users get an admin password and a "dunno how to help you, youre on your own". I want this too.

</comment><comment><USER39> *for a corporation. For a single user who knows their way around a Windows machine, they are not.

<comment><USER40> I can't compare Windows and macOS, but I can compare Windows and Linux.

About a year ago my employer forced me to use a Windows machine. Fortunately, I have complete control of it (it's not managed by my employer); unfortunately, that doesn't matter. It's a complete cesspit: updates are horrible; the pre-installed crapware from the manufacturer is horrible; the pre-installed crapware from Microsoft is horrible; the interface is horrible (just trying to navigate around prompts and windows is … miserable). There is literally only one good thing I can say about Windows: the background and lock screen images are really, really nice (awesome, really; just beautiful).

In every other way using it has made my life measurably worse.

Meanwhile, I continue to use Linux on my personal machines. It Just Works™, and really well. It's reliable, fast, easy to use, _pleasant_ to use: every time I log onto my personal Linux machine I breathe a sigh of relief.

Yes, some of that delta is due to greater familiarity with Linux, but a huge amount is due to this simple truth: the Linux interface is _better_ than the modern Windows interface (which is, itself, worse than Windows 7 was). Linux feels like it was built by developers who use what they develop; Windows feels like it was built by a marketing department who use Macs.

<comment><USER41> > There is literally only one good thing I can say about Windows: the > background and lock screen images are really, really nice

You can have that in Linux too[1]. You can configure it to pull fresh images from your favourite sources, including Bing.

[1] [https://vrty.org/](https://vrty.org/) seems to be down at the moment

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Am I the only one here getting a warm fuzzy nostalgic feeling from reading this, a lengthy "mac vs. pc" discussion?

</comment><comment><USER43> OS licensing is probably cheaper as well come upgrade time. I understand macOS license is tied to the hardware so for a new version don't have to pay? With hundreds of thousands of machine that can add up.

<comment><USER44> Windows 10 is effectively now the same as MacOS, but with rolling updates: [http://www.winbeta.org/news/windows-10-last-version- windows-...](http://www.winbeta.org/news/windows-10-last-version-windows-not- end)

<comment><USER45> >> Windows 10 is effectively now the same as MacOS

MacOS has one big thing going for it that Windows doesn't - there is only one desktop edition. None of that "Home" and "Pro" crap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> To contribute some anecdotal findings to the larger IT discussion in the thread, a lot of it comes down to this IMHO...

There are three levels of understanding of personal computers and how to manage them:

A) Basic understanding, the vast majority of users/clients B) Intermediate understanding, you often find yourself walking your relatives through setting up their mail client C) Expert understanding, you have deep knowledge of networking and user permissions for each computer on this network. You don't use apps to figure this out, you have set it up, tried it, and are proud of a system you have designed to make it all work.

I've found that many issues arise from folks working in IT whom are B that think they are C, and the frustration from not having Macs work identically as their Windows networking wizards causes friction. I think as people are getting better trained in BYOD, and the fact that there's no way around better IT training to accommodate it, is causing a sea change in adopting Macs.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'll take "headlines you would never see in 1990 for 800, Alex". :)

Sadly, even today, using a PC laptop, the process is something like this:

1\. Open lid and start work. Actually no, the battery managed to drain itself again due to the power-inefficiency of the system; better go find a cord and plug it in first.

2\. Open lid again and start work. Actually no, the fancy "resuming Windows" animation has appeared. Check back after several minutes.

3\. Try to start work. Actually no, Windows has required updates and needs to install and reboot.

4\. Try to start work. Actually no, the previous update was apparently just the first; Windows has to reboot again and install something else.

5\. Repeat step 4 about 3 more times.

6\. Try to start work. Actually no, "something" in the background isn't done screwing with the machine yet so everything I click on is unresponsive.

7\. Try to click on something. Damn it, I forgot the built-in track pad is garbage and half the time I accidentally click on things I don't want. Let me go find a mouse and plug it in.

8\. Try to start work. Oh right, even the simplest applications take inexplicably 30 seconds to launch on a "modern" computer.

9\. Begin work, probably an hour later.

This happens literally every couple of weeks but usually more often. Fortunately I only have the machine because I occasionally have to sync my development to compile with Visual Studio and so the entire system is mostly a distraction.

Meanwhile, on my main Mac machine, it's virtually instantaneous to start working in all respects. Open the lid, the OS is READY and the apps are either already open or they restore nearly instantly. While the Mac can certainly have restart-worthy updates, it's _way_ smarter about this and I always retain FULL CONTROL over the process (including the "let the message sit there forever until my work is done" option). And that's before I even start listing the Unix tools, the awesomeness of "brew", reasonable terminal emulation, etc.

</comment><comment><USER48> Sorry, but Apple still needs a dedicated docking station solution provided by them. It can simply connect through a single port (USB3/Etc/Etc). I use my current work laptop for home and work and have full setups at each and its a simple one step to activate it all.

Now what I am curious about is being able to do pushes that are corporate team just loves to do and ease of connection to to z, i, and p, systems. IBM recently moved 5250 emulation to a pure JAVA solution that works on Mac/Linux and I am sure z 3270 has its solution too. A lot of IBM system admin tools have been moved to JAVA just so it would be platform independent

<comment><USER49> The Thunderbolt Display acts as a dock; it currently requires two cables but there may be a new USB-C version next week that uses one cable. Third-party docks also exist: [https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TCDOCK11PSG/](https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TCDOCK11PSG/) Just don't expect IBM to buy one for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> And some day, it might take a few years, some smart guy will quote me that Android is like Windows, back in the day, and that Apple is still Apple.

</comment><comment><USER51> purchased my Thinkpad T520 in 2011.. still running strong :)

</comment><comment><USER52> Linux is even cheaper.

I am constantly dumbfounded when I see "lean" startups shelling out for macbooks.

If you really want to save money and run a lean operation go linux.

</comment><comment><USER53> > "The challenge is, all the people that still have Blackberries can fire me, > so it's hard to force it from them," he joked.

in tears

</comment><comment><USER54> IBM reduces IT staff by 30% next quarter</comment>


The Seven Most Interesting Tech Startups Around Today - <AUTHOR> http://www.justinburris.com/posts/the-seven-most-interesting-tech-startups-around-today/

<comment><USER2> I would add coursera and udacity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good thinking! I was thinking about which edutech play was really the most interesting and couldn't quite settle on one. There's really no dominant contender yet, so I'll hold off until the next list.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can the US insurance industry afford to pay for Covid-19? - <AUTHOR> If not, can the healthcare industry afford to not be paid by the insurance industry?
edit:
Can the insurance industry even afford the costs of the testing that's about to be needed? If 60% of the 300,000,000 insured Americans need $10,000 worth of tests, that's $1.8 trillion.[1] The industry collected a total of $1.22T in premiums in 2018.[2]
[1][PDF]https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/insur201905.pdf [2]https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-industry-overview <comment><USER2> The healthcare industry can't afford to exist if they don't get paid by someone (whether that is the insurers or Medicare/Medicaid). We've seen mass closures of rural hospitals and medical practices as more rural Americans have lost insurance or gotten insurance that has large penalties for using said insurance: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18kxPz4Z_g8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18kxPz4Z_g8)

Insurers themselves are a mixed bag, many have gone broke as IIRC the gov't managed pool of money they were supposed to pull out of/put money into to ensure no insurer went under from too many unhealthy, newly insured people has been starved of funding under our current administration.

</comment><comment><USER3> One option is the government can subsidize tests, so that $10,000 becomes $5,000. It's in their best interests to do so.

I also doubt 300M will need testing - by that stage, if everyone is infected, what's the point of testing? It'll probably only be done for the first million at best.

I suppose hospitals are going to want to claim as many tests as possible for the $$$ but at some point the insurers would realize this is ridiculous and stop approving them.</comment>


Ask HN: What's your dev origin story? - <AUTHOR> What sparked the fire for you to become a developer? We're half way through the roughest year in memory. Let's get back to basics and remind ourselves of why we started building software in the first place. <comment><AUTHOR> Willing to share your story on video? We'll include it in an upcoming article (and enter you in a drawing for $100) [https://vocalvideo.com/c/linearb-2](https://vocalvideo.com/c/linearb-2)</comment>


Jekyll Data Files - <AUTHOR> http://jekyllrb.com/docs/datafiles/

<comment><USER2> Hi - I wrote the docs for this. It is a really awesome feature, but be aware that it is targeted at Jekyll 1.3 - which is not quite released yet ([https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/issues?milestone=14&state=...](https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/issues?milestone=14&state=open)), nor deployed to GitHub Pages yet :)

You can check here: [https://github.com/github/pages-gem/blob/master/github- pages...](https://github.com/github/pages-gem/blob/master/github- pages.gemspec) to find out when Pages will be updated to 1.3.X

</comment><comment><USER3> Also works in middleman if you don't need a blog baked in: [http://middlemanapp.com/advanced/local- data/](http://middlemanapp.com/advanced/local-data/)

<comment><USER4> But also if you do: [https://github.com/middleman/middleman- blog](https://github.com/middleman/middleman-blog)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mixture handles this in a slightly more elegant and flexible way via models and collections.

[http://mixture.io](http://mixture.io) [https://github.com/teammixture/mixture- collections](https://github.com/teammixture/mixture-collections)

As mentioned, Middleman can use JSON or YML. [http://middlemanapp.com/advanced/local- data/](http://middlemanapp.com/advanced/local-data/)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is great. I've found myself frustrated by the Liquid templating system, though. For instance, the print was inserting a line break that was messing with meta tags on my website.

<comment><USER4> Could you speak more about the things you dislike in Liquid? It's one of my favorite templating systems, especially if you're treating it in the same way as you would mustache templates, i.e., using a view-model or decorator to prep data from a model. If you're using a lot of `assign` or `capture` tags, it's horrible.

<comment><USER6> Specifically, the error I couldn't figure out how to remedy was the line break caused by the included statement that was in this commit:

[https://github.com/philipithomas/www.philipithomas.com/commi...](https://github.com/philipithomas/www.philipithomas.com/commit/62c76ce7eaf23fff3049934012a027976fb92d81)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not sure why OP linked to the Github file instead of the file on the site (w/ syntax highlighting, etc.): [http://jekyllrb.com/docs/datafiles/](http://jekyllrb.com/docs/datafiles/)

It's also worth noting that you could already do this in _config.yml, this just lets you split that up.</comment>


Stone Tools in Sulawesi Point to Neighbor of Flores 'Hobbit' - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/160113-stone-tool-sulawesi-hobbit-flores-archaeology/ <comment><USER3> Fascinating.

I believe we're nowhere near a full understanding of the diversity of pre-H. sapiens species. Just last year the discovery of another Homo species, H. nadeli, was claimed [1]. I feel like we're going to keep finding more and more of these folks, and - like the Neanderthals and Denisovans - <USER2> through genetic analysis that we interbred [2].

Also, the thing that complicates paleoanthropology, especially in regions like the Indonesian archipelago, is that most of the areas where prehuman Homo populations would have lived for significant lengths of time are now underwater.

Frustrating, but if we knew all the answers, what fun would that be?

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/10/new- species-o...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/10/new-species-of- ancient-human-discovered-claim-scientists) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_human_admixture_with_m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_human_admixture_with_modern_humans)

</comment><comment><USER4> "... perhaps descended from Homo erectus individuals washed eastward atop tsunami debris"

Is this really the general consensus about how pre homo sapiens human species traversed bodies of water?

<comment><USER5> It sounds a little ridiculous, but it seems just about as plausible as most things in paleo-archeology[1]. I've been on a kick of reading a lot of nautical fiction and autobiography, and you come across a lot of accounts of plant and animal life transported surprising distances in the aftermath of severe storms.

[1] Could archaeologists, or really, the media reporting on it, be more upfront about the fact that virtually everything they are talking about is wild speculation based on very tenuous evidence? I don't want to knock the people doing the work of digging this stuff up and trying to understand it; but really, when you find one jawbone and extrapolate an entire organism, complete with artists renderings and even taxidermied monstrosities, or compare incomplete, fragmentary, dried out, degraded DNA material from Hominid A and B to conclude which is more closely related to modern man, my bullshit detectors start going off. The sample size is just too small.</comment></comment>


How Did Software Get So Reliable Without Proof? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.regehr.org/archives/820 <comment><USER2> Who says it's reliable? Software is shit.

<comment><USER3> The metric is the number of deaths attributed to dependence on computers compared to the (presumed) number of deaths that could have happened in "safety-critical software controlling health equipment, aircraft, weapons systems and industrial processes, including nuclear power stations", that is, software where it was presumed that formal proofs were essential for correct operations.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law) \- 90% of everything is crap.</comment></comment>


Why metadata is bad – 3 minute video your Mom will understand - <AUTHOR> https://privacyinternational.org/node/573 <comment><USER2> Hi. I'm someone's mom, and both of us understand this. When you use mothers as a metonym for people who don't understand technology, think about who you are assuming is your audience, and who are you are excluding and insulting.

<comment><USER3> Who cares?

<comment><USER4> I do.

I was pleased when I opened the comment section to see this as the top comment.

I want to live in a world where being kind, respectful, understanding, and caring are the highest of virtues. In that world, hopefully all people will work toward working together to understand others and appreciate our many wonderful differences instead of insulting them, even in a micro-aggression, this might be funny, yet deprecating sort of way.

Although I personally don't often spend much time being offended by these culturally accepted deprecating statements, I have recently started to wonder if it is contributing toward the public policies that attempt to marginalize and discriminate against any group of people.

Moms build things. Girls build things. Women build things. I build things.

<comment><USER5> Does being kind & understanding mean allowing someone to make a joke about you? I often allow jokes at my expense if the intent was not malicious.

Also, I perceived the joke to be making fun of the elderly, not women. Honestly, you post seems like you were primed & ready to be offended by the slightest thing, which has more negative social impact than the light-hearted title of the linked article.

<comment><USER6> Why would it be OK to make fun of the elderly? Why would you stick up for that?

Also, the person to whom you're responding had, when you wrote this, _one_ carefully worded comment on the thread. "Primed and ready"? Clearly, the person on the thread most fitting that description is you. _Please stop doing this._

<comment><USER7> We make fun of all sorts of people in life. I even do so at my own expense. Its not a big deal; it's even referred to as fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Couldn't you just have said, "3 minute video that anybody can understand." Rather than stereotype people's mothers as technically incompetent?

<comment><USER9> Stereotypes wouldn't be stereotypes if there wasn't a grain of truth in them.

If we take a sample of N>1000 mothers, I bet my money more then 50% would fall under this "stereotype". Is this democratic enough to suit as an argument ?

<comment><USER10> if anyone is going to viscerally and immediately understand the impact of de- anonyimzation and the importance of privacy, it will be a woman.

<comment><USER11> Nah, it will be a black transgendered immigrant at least. Get with the times instead of perpetuating sexist stereotypes from the 50s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So everybody's complaining about the second part of the title, I'm gonna complain about the first. Metadata is a very broad and general term, and metadata is not bad. Here I thought I'm gonna read an article about why I shouldn't be storing metadata in my applications. Instead I get a video explaining how data is collected about me on the internet, mostly via social websites, and how this data can be used not according to my personal interests. That's a very specific case of metadata, and I don't even think the "meta" prefix is important here.

<comment><USER13> Agree. The non technical folk have latched on to a specific use of the word "metadata" completely ignorant of the broader use. They should just say "data" but "'metadata" somehow makes it scarier?!

<comment><USER14> The non technical meanings are "metadata" and "content".

The use of "metadata" word is designed to make it sound _less_ scary - it's a word that politicians use when they want to reassure people.

"We don't want the content! We just want the metadata - how long a call lasted for, for example".

It's a good thing that people are a bit scared about metadata. It's the metadata attacks that make tor hard. It's the metadata attacks that make end- to-end encryption weakers.

Companies collect a lot of data. They should be thinking carefully about how much they actually need, and how harmful it is to their users if it gets slurped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The video's nice and all, but I'd appreciate if people would stop using my Mom as a stand-in for "person who is not competent with technology".

Also, did they really mistake the chrome logo for the google logo?

<comment><USER16> Yes. My Mom was an analyst for the CIA and helped win the Cold War. This phrase is silly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Longer video (25 minutes) of a talk from BlackHat 2013, about how metadata was used to expose an illegal(?) 2003 CIA operation carried out in Italy. It's by a non-tech journalist, so it's also largely non-technical and provides a very interesting overview of what metadata can expose.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwGsr3SzCZc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwGsr3SzCZc)

</comment><comment><USER18> Interesting video, but it feels a bit 'icky' to me, for lack of better words.

The voice feels patronising, perhaps even scary, and towards the end it suddenly turns into a description of a dystopia. If this were an advert I think it'd have most reaching for the remote control fairly rapidly.

It's a real challenge to describe these issues without looking unhinged.

</comment><comment><USER19> Personally, as a (would say) techie, I tend to underestimate the importance of this topic.

Indeed, the times when I used Tor I felt curious about the technology and how it achieved anonymous traffic. But when people asked me why I was using it I didn't know what to answer.

"You know, those poor people under dictatorships..."

To my understanding, we miss a big public case where metadata and information collected are used against western people.

I fear we won't see any, before it'll be too late.

I have no problem with dystopian unrealistic scenarios -- and have no problem accepting it could happen, under the ghost of terrorism.

But the majority of people feel this is all too much "cyber-punk" or, worse, that "you have something to hide".

A great pop-movie about that would be great!

</comment><comment><USER14> The guidelines are pretty clear about titles, and this title is a great example of the trainwrecks that result when people fuck about with titles.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you're gonna try to explain to non-technical people maybe you should choose your title more carefully. Metadata itself is not bad. It's how it is used and who has access to it.

The thing that's bad here is:

1) Lack of personal control over your own meta data. You can' go to Google and say "Erase everything you know about me." easily. Some Google services allow you to do something like this, others don't, it's purposely a big pain in the ass. That goes for all these big companies.

2) Most (all?) governments have too much easy access to this data, and no public disclosure or oversight about what/who they are looking at and for what reasons.

</comment><comment><USER21> "It's only metadata" and "We drone strike people based on metadata" aren't exactly the most congruent of messages, are they?

Either it's close to useless to the point where we have to question why they bother gathering so much in the first place and adding to the noise, or it's so valuable that we assign assassination targets based on it.

Which is it, world governments? You can only choose one. You can't choose the middle, because that would be admitting to "assassinating people based on mostly useless information" (and therefore likely killing many innocent people because of that).

</comment><comment><USER22> Why change the headline to a blatantly sexist one?

<comment><USER23> I doubt you'd have said the same thing if it was a 3 minutes video your dad would understand.

So who's the sexist one?

<comment><USER22> That made no sense at all.

<comment><USER23> It wasn't about gender. It was about "incompetent about technology." Your mom, grandma, dad, grandpa, dumb cousin or incompetent friend would all work as well.

You made it about gender.

<comment><USER22> Don't you see that you just proved the point? You read "your mother" and you understood "incompetent about technology." That is the sexist stereotype we get irritated by.

<comment><USER24> If your experience was anything like mine, then you grew up regularly handling technology (fixing computers, hooking up VCRs, etc.) for and explaining it to people older than you. That's the stereotype at play in the title--old person won't understand tech.

It would be quite different (and have a totally different effect) if the title said "3 minute video even a girl will understand"

<comment><USER14> Google searching shows very many more hits for "your mother would understand" and "your grandmother would understand" than for father / grandfather / grandpa / etc.

<comment><USER23> The number of query results from a google search aren't evidence of anything except that your argument is weak enough that you couldn't find _actual_ evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I find it interesting and funny that this video about metadata turned into one giant metadiscussion of the video with almost no mention of the actual content.

</comment><comment><USER26> What is with the condescending bullshit?

</comment><comment><USER27> Really, how is metadata bad? ...

</comment><comment><USER28> The amount of outrage generated over a very common turn of phrase honestly smacks of a disinformation campaign. I guess privacy matters are 'passé' on HN now.

<comment><USER29> Just because it's a common turn of phrase doesn't mean we should be less outraged. In fact, we should be more outraged, because it's more likely that it's actively harming people. Ideas -- in this case, stereotypes -- are very powerful and have real effects. Language is important in creating expectations, and people are given opportunities based on expectations.

Also, it's not a common turn of phrase in my world because I don't spend time with assholes stuck in 1950.

<comment><USER7> "Actively harming people"...followed by directly referring to someone with a curse word.

Funny that the US is on the verge of electing Trump, because there are a lot of people who are tired of this tripe.

<comment><USER29> Insulting anonymous people _based on their behavior_ (and using curse words) isn't harming anyone, especially because they're anonymous.

Perpetuating stereotypes does harm people, because it degrades people _based on the way that they were born_ (or, in this case, also based on the fact that they decided to have a child).

No one is on the verge of electing Trump, by the way. More than 70% of women dislike him. More than 60% of the country actively dislikes him[1].

1\. [http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/trump_favorabl...](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/trump_favorableunfavorable-5493.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


On Being an Octopus (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/peter-godfrey-smith-being-octopus <comment><USER2> > Expressed too anthropomorphically, you would send an arm out deliberately > and hope the local fine-tuning goes right.

That's basically how playing table tennis feels like. If you wait with reaction till you decide how to bounce the incoming ball (and if the ball is fast enough) - it's too late already.

You have to decide before you see the ball and hope the automatic movements will work ok.

<comment><USER3> Ever had that examination procedure where a physician hits you knee with a hammer and then your leg moves?

It's completely different from just knowing how to do a movement.

<comment><USER2> Yes I had, and I don't see the difference. Once you decide you will do it, and the ball gets played - you don't get to change your mind. Your body will do it automatically and you only wait for the result.

This is how it works (slightly NSFW example, sorry, couldn't find a better one :) ): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvLugUUrkYA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvLugUUrkYA)

<comment><USER3> You don't decide at all that your leg will move. It simply moves. You can't even avoid it.

<comment><USER2> Once you decided it's the same.

1\. decision 2\. waiting 3\. action 4\. reaction (this part is where I don't have control)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How not to get on covered on TechCrunch - <AUTHOR> I launched my startup officially last week (Eureka Science News - http://esciencenews.com - intelligent news aggregator, fully automated, similar to techmeme and Google News, but with full content on the site - check out the /about page if you want to know more). I got amazingly positive feedback from it; got covered on the front page of Drupal with a full write-uo on how I built the site, in details(http://drupal.org/node/261340); Drupal is the open-source CMS I built my site with, so it was my way of giving back to the community.
After that, I figured 'hey! Maybe I actually have a chance with TechCrunch!'. In my mind TC covers only very high profile, tech-related startups, so at first I didn't think that they would be interested by a science news site started part-time by a PhD student in retrovirology ;) So I submitted my story via the form on their contact page. No answer for two days, so I submitted it to Mashable, which wrote a post about the site very quickly (http://mashable.com/2008/05/21/eureka-science-new/). Cool, but the traffic this link generated was much lower than I expected (< 200 views, Drupal gave me > 6000).
I then looked back at TC contact page and noticed a the 'newstip' email link at the top of the page; the contact form is much more visible, but now I can tell that the newstip email link is much more efficient; I wrote a quick mail about my site and the coverage that we got so far on Drupal and Mashable, thinking that it would help getting covered on TechCrunch.
This time they answered promptly; I was very excited! But they said that while my site was very interesting, they like to cover news first and that they were going to pass on this one since we got covered by Mashable, even if they love science.
It's very sad because Eureka Science News is the first vertical I used my intelligent news aggregator for - copyright-free press releases are readily available for most news published daily; I'm looking for VC funding to license Associated Press content to build a website covering all news categories. Getting on TC would have helped for sure!
So don't make the same mistake, submit to TechCrunch FIRST via the newstip email link, not the contact form! At worse, you'll get rejected and you can give the exclusive to someone else ;) I sure wish I did, now I won't know the kind of traffic TC can send (but I'm sure its more than the 200 hits I got from Mashable!). I even had nightmares about it last night, a thing you sure want to avoid ;) <comment><USER2> I wouldn't worry about it. TechCrunch is not always a huge traffic driver (nor is Mashable obviously) and I wouldn't want to reward their petty games anyway.

What's TC's goal? Covering web startups or covering web startups that Mashable hasn't written about? The content at TC has been going down hill for a long time, but this is really pathetic.

<comment><USER3> Having been linked from both Mashable and TC, TC drives >10x the traffic. This is worth considering when announcing a launch.

It's short sighted to not consider that a blog like TC wants to be the first to cover something; there's enough of an echo in the blogosphere already.

<comment><USER4> so, about 2000 hits. (<200 * >10x)

It sucks not to be featured on TechCrunch, but this is not a pivotal loss in the life of your startup by any means.

<comment><USER5> especially if you consider that those people are basically just other techies who just want to see your startup's technology, not use your product.

So really unless your target audience are techies, getting featured on sites like that really doesn't do much for you

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yeah TC _DEMANDS_ news from small start-ups first. I guess once you're bigger, you can kind of choose who you want to give news to...and at that point, don't forget Mashable.

Oh and PS you should definitely try to see about some coverage here:

<http://blogs.discovery.com/good_idea/>

<http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/>

<http://science.discovery.com/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow, TC is getting you to do free PR for them. Pay no mind. I doubt TechCrunch would have written about the site to start with, If you want users then then target publications in your service's niche (user numbers count, everything else is fluff). TechCrunch desperately wants to be 'the place' to launch, but the dirty secret is that the traffic they drive isn't sticky.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wouldn't say the value of TC is traffic, but more so an introduction to the VC/Tech community. TC posts so much each day that your post will be bumped off the front page in no time. However if just the right person is reading TC or picking up the feed, it can lead to good things for your startup.

Also, the posts that really seem to draw comments and the most buzz are all about the titans of the industry (Facebook, Yahoo, Google, MS) They don't exactly need the PR but that's what people love to discuss and rant about.

</comment><comment><USER9> TC and Mashable cater to similar audiences, and TC gets about double the hits. We could, perhaps, estimate that you'd get 400 hits from TC.

Unfortunately (and unfortunate for many reasons), science isn't a huge draw in a generalized audience (and both Mashable and TC aren't exactly science- oriented).

<comment><AUTHOR> I was really surprised from the low hits # from mashable, considering the traffic it gets. I think your explanation make sense, but I think I would have got much more hits from TC.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps, but the problem with both sites is what Jason Kottke calls "infoglut": they are filters with too much content, so readers have to filter the filter. Most readers are going to instantly filter out content that doesn't speak to their audience, and most readers (again, unfortunately) are going to filter out science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> TC demands to go first, eh? Feh... remind me to _not_ submit anything to TC then. That's just pathetic. Mashable or CenterNetworks or any (and all) of a bazillion other blogs cover the same space to varying degrees anyway.

</comment><comment><USER11> "but with full content on the site"

I think that republishing someone else's RSS feed in full on your site is at best bad etiquette, at worst it's just plain stealing. I left a comment about it on the drupal page you linked to.

<comment><AUTHOR> You misunderstand how the site works. I'm not republishing RSS feeds of any of the source on the site. The articles come from copyright-free press releases related to the news published by other sites (sometimes, their content is the copy-pasted press release, too, so that might have confused you).

<comment><USER12> Unless the source explicitly made those articles public domain (or they're older than Mickey Mouse), those articles are copyrighted. (No, the absence of a copyright notice doesn't mean that they're copyright-free.)

<comment><AUTHOR> You don`t seem to understand the very concept of a press release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The supposed tech crunch effect is massively overrated. imo. While being featured in TC is pretty exciting for any startup, the sudden spike in traffic that results is almost never long lasting.

</comment><comment><USER14> Have you looked at Calais 2.0 as a data source for your site? It's Reuters venture into the Semantic Web, and its free content complete with tags so you can filter science-related items. (<http://www.opencalais.com/>)

</comment><comment><USER15> Well duh. TechCrunch make their bread and butter from being the first to announce news X (and from various aggressive rants against twitter, rails, and Blaine Cook).

Isn't this fairly well known already?

<comment><USER16> Would you please stop signing your posts? They are already signed with your username.

<comment><USER17> Slightly off-topic: I've noticed that almost everyone I know signs their emails these days. I don't think that was true 10 years ago. It's always struck me as redundant.

<comment><USER18> Perhaps people emailing ten years ago were more adaptable to new technologies. More of the people who started emailing in the last ten years are likely to see emails as a form of traditional letters.

<comment><USER19> I don't see that as true- even tech savvy people seem to do it. I think it might have something to do with email sometimes being seen as a more formal type of online communication, as opposed to instant messaging, or even perhaps less formal emails (there's a distinct difference, in my mind at least, between formal and informal emails; formal emails are written much like letters, whereas informal emails are more like instant messages or Facebook comments).

<comment><USER18> Younger people still report to older people, and usually if you're emailing someone who is your superior (your boss, a customer) you let them determine how formal things will be. This doesn't hold true in every case, but it's common enough to explain the trend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am not a regular TechCrunch reader, but I find it difficult imagine that they would pass on writing about a hot new startup, just because some other site already wrote about it.

<comment><USER16> Actually they are fairly rigid about not writing about a launch that has already been covered, especially by Mashable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Make sense when you think of it, its their competitor.

<comment><USER2> No, it doesn't really make sense. What it the AP wouldn't write about something that Reuters already did? News is news, but demanding first or nothing is a very poor technique.

<comment><USER16> The AP is a wire service. They deal in commodity news. But it is very common for newspapers and magazines to agree to cover stories in return for an exclusive.

<comment><USER2> Obviously, but this is a mention, not a feature article in an entertainment magazine. Engadget will cover something after Gizmodo and vice versa. It's ridiculous that TechCrunch won't.

I stopped reading TC a while ago because the signal to noise ratio started diving, but I wouldn't read it now even if it had great content. I don't care who has what first, I'll read who's comprehensive and honest.

Mike wants to be the new CNET and that's not going to happen by being a bitch about being first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> i think it's actually quite a sensible policy, to reduce echo.</comment>


Science's Significant Stats Problem (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/4/the-unlikely/sciences-significant-stats-problem

<comment><USER2> _Ironically, low statistical power doesn't only mean real effects can be missed. It also means false effects are more likely to be reported as real, or real effects exaggerated._

That is wrong, or at least misleading. If we fix statistical significance, then changing the power of the test won't change the number of false effects that get through. Low power only changes the situation by causing us to relax our standards for significance. While I'm sure this happens, the real problem is how we interpret significance, not the power of the tests.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is misleadingly written...I am a scientist, and I disagree with the author's liberal use of language. Especially regarding the "low- probability events"...</comment>


Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2F <comment><USER2> The whole 'not mobile friendly' meme really needs to die. The sites are never at fault, a mobile browser is entirely capable of rendering sites however they see fit and to ignore or incorporate any or all elements of the style sheets and mark-up that a site supplies.

The pixel-perfect coupling that people expect between what a site should look like according to the designers and how that site is rendered by the browsers is an illusion, that's not the way the web was supposed to work at all, web sites provide information and loose markup hints and browsers then render that information in the best way suitable for the device and its user.

Don't blame the website, blame the browser instead.

Ironically, looking at ancient (pre-CSS, pre table based layouts) websites through modern browsers gives you instant adaptive design because all there was was content, no eye candy.

If we had wanted pixel based rendering we could have done a damn sight better than CSS, style sheets and markup are hints, not ultimatums to be obeyed or failure will occur.

Just think about the burden that these demands make on older websites, websites that worked perfectly well in the past suddenly need to be modified in order to be displayed properly, that's a total inversion of the way things are supposed to work. Old content and older websites should be displayed with as high fidelity as possible on newer browsers and devices. You can't fault the makers of old websites for not being 'future compatible' but you _can_ fault the makers of new devices and browsers for not being compatible with the past.

<comment><USER3> The up/downvote buttons on HN are an example of 'not mobile friendly'. They work fine with a pointer, but not with a touchscreen - you often see someone apologise for downmodding when they meant to upmod, because of this problem.

Pointer-driven UI and touchscreen UI have different local maxima. One of the reasons Ubuntu's Unity looks like it does is because they intend for it to look and work well on both UI types.

<comment><USER4> FWIW, opera (on iOS at least) did this right years ago, when I hit the area it just zooms in and highlights both clickable areas, so I can effectively click on the up or down arrow.

(OTOH, the up/down buttons on HN are not desktop friendly either)

<comment><USER5> Sure, this still happens. That doesn't change that the experience is less nice than if the website had been designed with mobile in mind. Or if it had been and app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If anyone from Google is reading: text entry boxes on Chrome on iOS are suboptimal.

[http://imgur.com/XpygcTq](http://imgur.com/XpygcTq)

[http://imgur.com/cAjceFY](http://imgur.com/cAjceFY)

The address bar takes up a lot of vertical space that could be better used to show more lines of text. That big block of empty white space on the previous item next item close menu bar is also wasted.

If Google really wants to fix browsing on mobile they might want to look at their own products as well as using their seo powers.

</comment><comment><USER7> I didn't think that was ever in doubt, was it? HN has always been difficult to use on mobile devices due to all the fixed dimensions forcing the page to render at an unsuitable size.

<comment><USER8> Apart from accidental downvoting I never had any problems with it. Get a browser that nicely reflows and that locks horizontal scrolling nicely (not too much, not too little) and it's a breeze to read and participate. I love that I can choose the font-size and zoom level myself, notblindthankyouverymuch.

<comment><USER9> What mobile browser do you use?

<comment><USER10> I use Opera on Android. Reflow text is in the settings menu.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a great example of why mobile browsers suck. It is the job of the mobile browser to be able to fix these problems automatically, to resize and reflow text so that it displays properly on the device.

<comment><USER12> ^this.

And: It pisses me off to no end that Google is in the position to decide how a site has to look like on $device.

They announce that you will get a worse SERP if your site doesn't do X and everyone scrambles to please mighty G.

If they decide that every site has to have a yellow background, starting next week, what will you do? Give in?

<comment><USER13> The whole business model of Google is knowledge about what users want to see on the web. And their judgements about it are context-specific: they are true for the current situation, when the mobile browsers work as they do. If Google is wrong, and users want the sites that are _not_ optimized for mobile, they will lose their market share.

However, if they are right, and the users _do_ want to see sites optimised for mobile, it means that while you are right technically about how mobile browsers are supposed to work, and how sites are supposed to work, the real users just don't agree with you.

<comment><USER14> What if my target audience is actually that 1% niche that doesn't care about mobile, or a niche that actually uses decent browsers and mobile platforms, so they're perfectly able to view my simple page even without stupid meta viewport tag?

It seems easy to just add the tag and a few CSS rules - but what if this is a still useful page from 2005 which I have forgotten about?

<comment><USER13> Then Google sees that they don't use mobile devices when they search and your mobile unfriendliness doesn't affect search results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It still blows my mind that the text on the HN homepage is unreadably too small on my Samsung Galaxy S4. Surely you guys have enough money and/or technical chops to fix that?

<comment><USER2> The Galaxy S4 came out _well_ after HN was built, why should the burden be on HN, why don't you say 'Surely Samsung would have the money and/or technical chops to make a product compatible with the web as existed prior to when the device was launched?'.

edit: hello downvoters, would you be equally upset that a windows 95 machine would refuse to run office 2000?

<comment><USER16> Maybe the S10 will have a 12" screen

<comment><USER2> It might, who knows. The compatibility onus is on the device manufacturers, not on the websites. That's the world upside down.

<comment><USER17> How does that make sense?

The device's web browser should attempt to adapt the page to fit the device rather than the site telling the browser how it should adapt to the size of the screen.

<comment><USER2> Either I don't understand you or we're in agreement. Yes, the device's web browser should do the adaptation, sites can tell browsers whatever they want and browsers are totally free to ignore that information, after all the browser and the device have more information to work with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To everyone saying "browsers should fix this - not site owners"

How many possible ways is there for a site to make itself hard to read on a small screen?

How many rules would a mobile browser need to have to handle them all?

How smart would these rules need to be to distinguish between intentional and unintentional design decisions?

It's beyond question that websites should be coded in such a way that they works on a range of devices screen sizes. Anything else is madness.

</comment><comment><USER19> There's great mobile choices like: [http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/](http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/)

Two bookmarks for different browsers, no big trouble. I actually like the old school table based layout of HN. One of the things that stay the same. And it works great with Vimium^_^

</comment><comment><USER5> Been annoyed by this for years. Still hoping for a fix some day.

</comment><comment><USER20> I see 3 schools of thought: 1) HN should be more mobile-friendly, so I can read it. 2) HN should be more of a platform on top of which users can build tools to use it, so let's build one. 3) Why not both?

I think both iOS and Android have already a plethora of user-made apps. (some of them ok, some of them not ok)

On a tablet i prefer the HN website to any of the apps currently available. On a phone, I think there are a few good Android apps and no good enough iOS apps...

What is the best HN experience on mobile? I think there's need for better understanding of what we "want" from mobile, apart from the obvious things (i.e. readability)

<comment><USER9> I'm yet to come across a good iOS app for HN that is both visually pleasing and is not just a reader (i.e. lets me submit/post comments).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The biggest winners of this change are the SEO companies that charge small businesses lots of money who will now charge them lots of money to make sure their website is mobile friendly (even if it already is).

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting, here is my HK clone site(Most of code r same as HK) and it's Mobile-Friendly according to Google[1].I think they can change come code for Mobile.

[1] [http://news.fdzh.org/](http://news.fdzh.org/)

[2] [https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile- friendly/?url...](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile- friendly/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.fdzh.org%2F)

</comment><comment><USER14> This site is considered by Google as not mobile friendly: [http://dosowisko.net/](http://dosowisko.net/)

Just bunch of easily reflowed text and a bit of ASCII art. Browser on my Nokia N900 shows it just fine, zooming is usable, everything seems "friendly". If Nokia could do it on Maemo long time ago, why Apple and Google can't do it now?

</comment><comment><USER23> We didn't need this test for HN, did we?

</comment><comment><USER24> I'd like to take this moment to point out that a few weeks ago, HN did try for a mobile friendly styling, and the HN population at large rose enough of a fuss about "it looked fine as it was before" that they reverted it back.

We can't have it both ways.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think one thing that will greatly help mobile experience for me is to add a reddit-style collapse comment section toggler. On mobile devices (and in some cases on desktops), it will help reach the lower comments easily without having to scroll a lot.

</comment><comment><USER26> HN is one of friedliest mobile sites around. Small footprint, no javascript crap and loads fast.

</comment><comment><USER27> Hacker news is actually one of the few sites that's kind of readable on my dumb phone.

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow what a great site to help sites work better for mobile.

</comment><comment><USER28> Luckily the community has built some very neat apps :)

</comment><comment><USER29> Time to apologise to the almighty G ;)

</comment><comment><USER30> >> _There was a problem with the request. Please try again later._</comment>


Tell HN: I wish "we use cookies" messages could be globally turned off - <AUTHOR> An irritating notice that websites keep telling me because of some European law I have no interest in.
It's like saying "this website uses HTTP, we do it to get data to and from your browser, click to agree".
Maybe the major web browsers should built a standard warning Javascript alert API in that can be globally turned off. <comment><USER3> I also used to hate this directive, but when I read the description on the website of the European Commission, it is actually much more nuanced than I thought:

"However, some cookies are exempt from this requirement. Consent is not required if the cookie is: used for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication, and strictly necessary in order for the provider of an information society service explicitly required by the user to provide that service." Source: [http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm#se...](http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm#section_2)

So it turns out the directive isn't as dumb as many believe it to be, but a lot of webmasters wrongly believe that any cookie usage implies having to put up the notice. (Or the nuance was lost on the in-house legal team who briefed the webmaster.)

I run a software-as-a-service company in the EU, but only use cookies for login management. Therefore, I do not need to use the warning. But if I would track my users for advertising etc. I'd have to insert the warning in my web app.

This thoughtless behaviour reminds me of the thousands of websites which include a "(c) YYYY" copyright notice in their footers, despite this being completely irrelevant in modern copyright law.

<comment><USER4> Yes but as soon as you use Google Analytics, you need to include the notice.

As a EU citizen, I think this example shows how stupid laws can come out of good intentions. Why stupid? Because, no matter what the intentions were, the _only_ practical effect is creating a nuisance for web users, who quickly learn to ignore the consent requests.

<comment><USER5> I never understood why they didn't force the requirement onto browser makers instead of website operators. Then users could actually enforce their cookie choice by opting out, instead of having to trust every website to be honest in their cookie use.

<comment><USER6> And browsers have had such options (block all cookies, prompt to accept, etc.) built in to them since the very beginning of cookies, except everyone turned them off because they were annoying! So now websites had to add them! And they are just as annoying! ARGH!

A more useful directive would have been some sort of legally-backed "coloured cookie" type system, where a cookie has to declare for what purpose (session, internal analytics, adverts, site-to-site tracking, etc.) it's for, so browsers can then selectively block those categories. That would be useful, because then you could punish people who lie about the purpose of their cookie.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like the misguided P3P "standard" that IE implemented which AFAIK only resulted in web developers copypasting a HTTP header they don't understand just to get facebook widgets working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The idea behind this proposal was a noble one: companies should ask permission before invading the privacy of consumers.

Unfortunately, companies collectively decided that their businessmodel does not need changing at all, and simply implemented a "cookie wall" for all their consumers. This led to consumers, like you, to quickly get "cookie wall fatigue" and try to click 'OK' as soon as possible, without thinking at all.

And all the while, we complain that privacy on the Internet is going to hell, and there is nothing we can do about it, because consumers don't care enough, or have given up...

<comment><USER8> The idea was noble, but the law was poorly done.

If you want to have a Remember me checkbox (=writing a cookie with a session id), you'll have to get the user autorization. It effectively protects from nothing, it justs makes more popups in everyones life (yay!).

I think we are living in an era where there is a huge knowledge and perception gap with the people making the laws (At least in Europe). Hopefully this gap will narrow in the next 10-20 years, and things will be shapen more correctly in the future.

<comment><USER7> The Netherlands has seen some refinement of the cookie law, and there are some sites, for example [http://www.ns.nl](http://www.ns.nl) where you now have a choice in what kind of cookies you want to allow.

Again, companies are trying very hard to hide this choice, but a tiny result from the study is that you do get this choice.

<comment><USER8> Even more popups, choices and waste of energy if you ask me :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > ...because of some European law I have no interest in.

Nobody in Europe does either. The whole thing is generally considered completely pointless and unenforceable.

<comment> jon-wood I think Rock Paper Shotgun's cookie warning sums this up nicely:

> Rock Paper Shotgun uses cookies. For some reason we are now obliged to > notify you of this fact. Not that you care.

<comment><USER10> While funny, RPS is disingenuous:

after visiting RPS, you'll get cookies from the following additional domains:

      - adaptv.advertising.com
      - adjs.net
      - b3-uk.mookie1.com
      - mookie1.com
      - doubleclick.net
      - iasds01.com
      - m6r.eu
      - mathtag.com
      - quantserve.com
      - scorecardresearch.com
      - openx.net
      - adnxs.com

This might change depending on location and time of when you visit it.

I can see how you might think: "who cares if Google Analytics tracks me? Google already has all my web searches", but it's not that simple... every one of these entities can share information about your visits with any other (search for "cookie matching"), and yet... with a visit to a single (!) website, you're loaded with cookies from 12 external different domains, all of which have the exact same purpose.

Personally, I never cared that much about privacy (or at least, this kind of privacy) but now... if only out of spite... I disable storage of 3rd party cookies in my Firefox.

So it's not only a matter of privacy, but also a matter of respect for the (your) user:

as a videogames site, you can easily (?[1]) provide advertisement targeted only to your main audience (for advertisement metrics and fraud prevention, the advertiser could just use the referrer and ip of the source, at least for a first approximation)... so it's not true that giving up (tracking) cookies would prevent advertisement

OTOH: by including random 3rd party javascript (and not simply static resources like images, css, etc. with their own tracking cookie) you are completely leaving your user to the good faith of these other companies, which are then able to use javascript to load other resources, and so on and so on... reselling your visits to other companies again

Not only is this wasteful and never done according to the explicit will of the user, but since the visits span multiple domains, this is something that not even HTTP2 will be able to help for.

Lastly, I think it's antithetic to the very original purpose of HTTP: HTTP nowadays is used for webapps and plenty of different things, but reading articles, seeing images (and possibly videos, just like on RPS) aligns quite well with the original purpose: downloading and transmitting simple documents or data thereof

Cookies are a way to circumvent the stateless nature of HTTP, but why shouldn't a news site like RPS be stateless? (the exception would be for comments, but that isn't necessarily always true either, and anyhow for that the issue is more nuanced)

[1] I have never done it, but I hope so... I hope that inserting adwords is not the only way

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is a list for adblock[1] with our own mike-cardwell contributing but it doesn't have the kind of coverage you're used to from ad lists.

[1] [https://github.com/r4vi/block-the-eu-cookie-shit- list](https://github.com/r4vi/block-the-eu-cookie-shit-list)

<comment><USER12> There is also [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/liamja/Prebake/master/obtr...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/liamja/Prebake/master/obtrusive.txt) which I use to great effect in uBlock Origin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another unfortunate aspect of this law is that it is especially annoyng for those who delete cookies after leaving a website or closing the browser. Since the users acceptance of cookies is stored in a cookie, I get that pop-up repeatedly on most sites, instead of once for each.

</comment><comment><USER14> Using NoScript works wonders. In addition, I rarely see the annoying "Sign up for our newsletter" popups that assault immediately on most sites.

<comment><USER15> You could browse with Lynx, then you wouldn't see any annoying images

<comment><USER14> Wow, what an impractical suggestion. At least scripting is possible with NoScript, but images are impossible on Lynx.

<comment><USER16> Hey, watch it. I use Lynx all the time. It's fast, and works in my terminal.

it's also super-incompatible with a lot of websites, but I know that going into it.

<comment><USER17> I also use it in a console when needs must. Using dillo over SSH/X forwarding is painful sometimes (particularly as dillo wouldn't compile due to bust FLTK source).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> We wish. Us European webmasters REALLY wish.

It is unlikely, however, since it is a EU directive and is now law in most European countries. Here's my take on why it is totally idiotic and ignorant of the underlying problem: [http://cfenollosa.com/blog/the-ignorant-eu-cookie- law.html](http://cfenollosa.com/blog/the-ignorant-eu-cookie-law.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> 'I don't care about cookies' for Chrome:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/i-dont-care- about-...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/i-dont-care-about- cookies/fihnjjcciajhdojfnbdddfaoknhalnja)

It's $FREE too.

<comment><USER20> And it only has access to all your bank logins, emails, passwords and more!

<comment><USER17> That blanket message appears to be another way of wording "it has access to what you type into a browser" (plus an Internet connection).

Who would have thought that the browser has access to what you type into it???? Surely keyboards should come with massive warning stickers to highlight the danger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Relevant:

[https://silktide.com/the-stupid-cookie-law-is-dead-at- last/](https://silktide.com/the-stupid-cookie-law-is-dead-at-last/)

[http://nocookielaw.com/](http://nocookielaw.com/)

<comment><USER22> Relevant, although mostly just to the UK. The ICO in the UK generally only goes after "worst offenders" or the biggest companies. This means anyone under a certain size can either ignore most of the laws they enforce or at least only bother to resolve the issues when ICO chase them up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I really wish the other browsers would have something like this to quickly turn on/off settings for specific sites:

[http://i.imgur.com/9qvdOfW.png](http://i.imgur.com/9qvdOfW.png)

(Opera, before it turned into yet-another-webkit-browser - and _removed_ that very useful feature.)

Since I have JS (and cookies) off by default I don't get the cookie messages much if at all, but for sites which need JS or cookies, it's almost trivial to enable them immediately.

<comment><USER24> I _really_ miss Opera's site-specific settings.

IMO, the web has gotten considerably worse in the last few years.

<comment><USER25> I highly recommend gorhill's umatrix, it's perfect. Alternatively you could give this a try: [https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/site- specific...](https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/site-specific- preferences/)

AFAIK Firefox also has site specific settings hidden somewhere but I am not sure.

RIP Opera 12... I wish they'd just freely release the sources.

<comment><USER23> Firefox _had_ site-specific settings...

[http://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/security/components/...](http://www- archive.mozilla.org/projects/security/components/ConfigPolicy.html)

...and there was even a bug to create a nice UI for it...

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38966](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38966)

...but look at the last comment on that bug. :(

Interestingly enough, IE11 still contains much the same UI for white/black/default-listing sites in different zones with configurable options that has been there since at least IE4:

[https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/kb/174360](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/174360)

<comment><USER25> Typical. I guess someone needs to implement the functionality as proprietary website then Mozilla could add it back in!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> IMHO browsers never should have gotten cookies in the first place, and they certainly shouldn't have ever allowed them to be accessed from different sites. Sure, it's very convenient for a site to recognize you when you return, but there are other way to get much of the way there.

But hey, rather than scaling back HTML 5 includes a client side database! WTF?

<comment><USER16> Out of curiosity, what would you have recommended, had you been on the web steering committee at the time?

<comment><USER26> >> Out of curiosity, what would you have recommended, had you been on the web steering committee at the time?

Cookies should have been _at most_ a GUID for a single session on a single server.

With a little dynamic content you can put a session GUID in every link on a site and not have anything stored locally on the users machine. Back in the day this was a more significant problem than it would be today. Note that this would also preserve the user ID in bookmarks. Also, it really begs for HTTPS.

There are probably other ways to do these things, but people will either claim they are inefficient or just keep their blinders on and make excuses in favor of the status quo. Of course many of the alternatives could probably be abused as well, it's just harder.

<comment><USER16> That might very well have legs. I wonder how one would support keeping a user logged in across sessions, but that might still be a solvable problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm failing to understand the supposed nobility some people are commenting on. 99% of people don't understand or don't care anyway. Annoying and confusing those people is not noble. The people that do care will likely find that turning off cookies break their favourite sites, so the warning is not practically actionable.

Some sites now offer me the choice of cookies, the choice to participate in a quick survey, a choice to use the iOS app, another iOS app choice that is identical to the first, the choice to instantly connect to a live customer service representative and no choice about watching a partner video. Might as well bring back all the animated GIFs and marquee text.

<comment><USER28> This can be said of lots of other issues like Safari's war on internet infrastructure by banning 3rd party cookies for no reason. Cookies are a known entity, easy to check and easy to clear, not to mention they also held opt-out status for all those networks that offered it. Progress should be understanding and choice, not brute force approaches like these that just fatigue users and undermine the entire cause.

<comment><USER29> Users who don't like Safari's privacy defaults can just change them, though. If you like understanding and choice, why not let users understand and choose turning third party cookies on, instead of turning them off?

<comment><USER28> The defaults are the issue, by going against the greater convention on something that only a few minority really have a big concern with. None of the other browsers do this and it hasn't really led to any privacy benefits, rather it's increased the level of tracking from something that was easily controlled and understood to now fingerprinting and even ISP level identification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The original requirement was for sites to obtain "prior informed consent", and this is essentially impossible - you cannot educate a user about the implications of cookies in a pop-up.

Further, the ICO here in the UK refused to provide meaningful advice as to what was actually required, so it's far from certain that these pop ups are a legal requirement anyway. We use them if the client wants them, but otherwise we simply make sure there is a "Cookies and Privacy" link in the footer that interested users can follow. I'm sure one day some jobsworth will tell me I need to join in this charade, but until that happens, no pop ups from me...

</comment><comment><USER31> It's not only a distraction but outright dangerous. People got used to accept every banner with word "cookie" in it. There were cases in Poland where scammers would add "and I subscribe to X and will pay Y monthly" onto the cookie banners and then send invoices to customers (as long as they could get their address, e.g. when they came via email link).

</comment><comment><USER32> These annoying messages are a bad attempt to follow a bad law. But to just block these messages in the browser seems like a bad approach. The point is to get informed consent to write+read cookies from the user. One could argue that the act of installing a plug-in for this purpose = implicitly consenting to accepting any and all cookies, but that seems like a weak inference.

Given the law, it would be better to be able to pre-emptively, explicitly blanket-consent to all cookies, or specific types of cookies (e.g. analytics tracking, or saving user settings) in one's browser (or at first, before it's standardised, with a plugin).

Of course, this solution would require web developers to follow certain standards in implementing their cookie-consent-getting method. (It would have been even worse if they tried to legislate this from the outset.)

</comment><comment><USER33> I propose a new "standard" role="bullshit" to the W3C. Developers around the world could use it to mark those bullshit fragments of their pages. Users could filter them with a browser plugin "Bullshit Block".

</comment><comment><USER34> I would actually love it. If it worked. As it is, all it says is "by using our site you agree to everything" while you already have a ton of cookies from god knows where implanted into your browser.

</comment><comment><USER35> I just moved to Europe and this started annoying me to no end. Thankfully, this Chrome extension kills them all [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/i-dont-care- about-...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/i-dont-care-about- cookies/fihnjjcciajhdojfnbdddfaoknhalnja?hl=en-GB)

</comment><comment><USER36> WARNING: This website contains cookies known by the State of California to cause cancer, and birth defects or other reproductive harm.

</comment><comment><USER37> so... has anyone made a chrome plugin to just click all the buttons yet?

We can keep a list of [ webistes -> $('#TheCookieDiv').click ] - <USER2> which we keep on github and shake like homebrew does (`cookieThing update` could be run daily)

<comment><USER37> On a legal note, I would imagine we could say "By using/downloading the plugin, I opt into all cookies, all the time"

Companies would like this too because they then could keep doing _exactly_ what they are doing (to be complaint), but perhaps we could convince them to add a file to their websites specifically for our tool to look up the DIV. Something like www.site.com/cookieAcceptDiv.txt which would list the clickable region to suppress the pop-up

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> As web developer and user of web sites I feel your pain but for the small web sites it's a matter of better being safe than sorry. Some countries have pretty hefty fines against sites that send cookies without notice.

</comment><comment><USER39> What's the point of having a pop-up that tells you "this site uses cookies" when tools can tell you exactly that without the webdeveloper's having to make a single modification to the website?

</comment><comment><USER40> The most annoying part is that blocking first-party cookies (e.g. with µMatrix) causes this message to appear _every time_ since you are not sending your "consent" back to the server.

</comment><comment><USER41> I wish cookies could be made completely illegal worldwide. You want to track me, use your database should I choose to create a business relationship with your site and login.

<comment><USER42> Sites can now use server-side cookies, where different sites even share info they glean from you. So they can auto-fill forms because you filled out a similar form on another site. Your browser is no longer complicit in 'cookie storage'.

What can be done about that? Its not unreasonable for vendors to keep and share information. Its not practical to have personal control over what they're doing up there in the cloud.

<comment><USER43> That too is subject to the EU ePrivacy Directive, so the idea is you're supposed to be able to report someone who does this to your national ombudsman, like the ICO's office in the UK, and they'll fine the offender.

The language in the ePrivacy Directive always talks about tracking terminals (devices.) It's not just about cookies, or browsers. You need the user's consent to track their device, period. (However you don't need consent for e.g. basic cookies that are necessary for a site to function, and which aren't used for tracking.)

<comment><USER42> I'm wondering if 'cloud cookies' are tracking the device, or tracking me. E.g. if I enter my name and address, it fills in the rest from the cloud. Maybe that wriggles through because there's no device tracking.

<comment><USER43> That doesn't really sound like tracking, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's funny how many sites have that "I agree"-option. Because they still put 15 cookies on my computer before I even agree to it.

</comment><comment><USER45> I don't understand why websites have these at all. Have anyone ever been fined or anything for lacking one?

</comment><comment><USER46> Javascript alert API? And not just an X-I-consent-to-your-use-of-cookies HTTP header? Please. :b

</comment><comment><USER47> This is another example of old corportate red tape getting in the way of progress

<comment><USER16> New corporate red tape. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> ...or autoaccept TOS that no one reads or cares about.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm in the EU so stupid EU laws apply to me and it is irritating, just forget it EU, no one gives a shit about cookies. ( I obviously talk for everyone in the EU)

</comment><comment><USER50> If you are in the UK, please vote to withdraw from the EU. This sort of meddling into every minute detail of our lives is only going to get worse. (See also banning vacuum cleaners and light bulbs). Also checkout cars that aren't powerful enough to go up hills due to trying to meet EU emission laws.

<comment><USER51> Or making porn opt-in on the internet. Stupid EU. Oh wait.</comment></comment>


You shouldn't have to pay to talk to your own customers - <AUTHOR> http://www.austinstartup.com/2010/07/you-shouldn%E2%80%99t-have-to-pay-to-talk-to-your-own-customers/

<comment><AUTHOR> Curious if anyone has had a problem moving away from GetSatisfaction before?</comment>