Facebook 'Spam King' Guilty for Sending 27M Messages - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-25/facebook-spam-king-guilty-over-27-million-messages-u-s-says <comment><USER2> Now we need to go after the robocall spammers. They waste so much time of so many people -- worse that email spammers. I swear they are doing +1B of spam calls per month in North America.

<comment><USER3> Many robocall spammers are located abroad. They use VoIP endpoints to connect with US phone numbers for pennies on the dollar (relative to international calling prices).

But that's not even the biggest problem, the biggest problem is that it is trivial to spoof caller IDs in the US, and many of those operators do just that.

So tracking down who actually called can be tricky, then even if you could you still need to either get them extradited for robocalls (which isn't happening) or get them prosecuted abroad for breaking US law (which, again, isn't happening).

I personally feel like it can be solved however it has to be solved like this:

\- Eliminated caller ID spoofing through technical means.

\- Once caller ID is accurate, you can both have apps/databases with known bad callers or callers from VoIP providers, and or you could fine the VoIP providers facilitating this type of activity in the US (i.e. give them a motivation to stop abusive behaviour on their services).

I mean heck, if a VoIP limited each account to just ten calls per minute, it would massively decrease the volume of robocalls overnight. But none do because they have a financial motivation to keep allowing these companies to operate on their services and zero motivation to stop them (since it is almost untraceable anyway).

<comment><USER4> Isn't this what the FCC is for? Can't they require providers to update their standards for the public?

It would be interesting if they could implement a system where you could dial (555-555-5555) or something after receiving a robocall, which would log your last received call as being fraudulent and flag it for providers to shadow ban it. Would that work for spoofing caller ID?

<comment><USER5> [https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/contests/robocalls- humanity-...](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/contests/robocalls-humanity- strikes-back)

The FTC had a competition called "Robocalls, Humanity Strikes Back" and two guys implemented a very similar idea.

Hopefully the FTC will follow through and make this widely available.

<comment><USER6> Wow, that's actually really cool. Interesting to see the FTC getting involved with the community like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those who don't know, this fellow was famous as early as the 90s [1].

If he returns to spamming again and again, doesn't it mean that the punishment is lesser than the gains to be had? And too bad.

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

<comment><USER8> It also means that eventually the courts will throw the book at him XD

<comment><USER9> The evidence suggests otherwise.

<comment><USER8> Did you and I read the same thing? He's looking at jail time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sanford Wallace is quite famous for his spamming history for those who remember the 90s: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford_Wallace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford_Wallace)

<comment><USER11> > In 2001 he was linked to a website, passthison.com, _which utilized > multiple-window launching to snag Web viewers, an advertising practice > rarely seen outside of the online pornography industry_.

It's funny how 2001 bad spyware practices used only on porn sites have been utilized by mainstream media sites via iOS/Android browser redirects in 2015.

<comment><USER12> Well, porn sites figured out it was bad for business. The demographic targeted for these spam messages easily falls for the same tricks, but aren't getting any services in exchange; only a faceless company.

Credit card farmers don't really care about repeat business, same goes for the brain pill trial guys that people for some reason give their CC info willingly. If someone catches on, you just bring up another llc, rinse, and repeat.

<comment><USER13> No, we got popup blocking built into browsers about a decade ago. Similarly, intrusive advertising is driving flashblocking and indeed total ad-blocking.

(Currenltly struggling with the fact that Plume for Android is nice to use - except when ads bounce you out of the app without being clicked on, sometimes over and over again)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is 27 million messages a lot? I'm not sure if this is a testament to how good facebook is at fighting spam, or a media error.

<comment><USER15> Facebook's usually really good about fighting spammers and multiple accounts from what I've seen. Early community was facebook was filled with spammers but it's much harder to find spam accounts nowadays. Basically every account I encounter is real....I wonder what crazy thing he had to do to get 500k spam accounts

<comment><USER16> I made a nice bit of money spamming those early community pages. . . Ahh yes the good 'ole days.

<comment><USER17> The technical term is not "made", but something more like "stole". If you put $1 in your pocket while wasting $10 (or, more likely, $100 or $1000) of other people's time, then you're not a productive citizen, you're a parasite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Holy crap, it's Spamford. I totally lost track of him for years, but this is his one-trick pony. He knows nothing else besides how to send spam, and will do it no matter what he has to break into to do it. Very obsessed.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wait, so what was the actual crime? Violating a court order forbidding any access to Facebook? Was he charged under CANSPAM? Or CFAA (was he phishing real accounts?)

I'm confused how this turned into a criminal case.

<comment><USER20> _Violating a court order forbidding any access to Facebook?_

Yes, as stated in the article.

"Spamford" Wallace has a slight history, including multiple instances of recidivism after former spamming episodes dating to 1991.

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

 _In the late 1990s, his company, Cyber Promotions, aka Cyberpromo, was widely blacklisted as a source of unsolicited email. Wallace 's high-profile pro-spam stance and unrepentant persistence earned him the derisive nickname 'Spamford'._

 _Prior to his email spam ventures, Wallace had gained notoriety in other questionable marketing circles, as a heavy utilizer of junk fax marketing, a practice outlawed in the United States since 1991.[2]_

 _In 1995, Wallace formed Cyber Promotions, entering the spam market. Thanks to a self-marketing campaign, Cyberpromo rapidly became the most successful seller of email marketing—as well as the number one source of unsolicited email. After Cyberpromo failed to become a legitimate business, Wallace returned to junk faxing in late 1997.[2]_

<comment><USER19> So why is violating a court order not to access Facebook considered criminal contempt, not civil contempt?

<comment><USER21> I read previously that he is charged criminally for hacking the 100,000-500,000 accounts. They were real accounts which belonged to real people and he may have phished them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow, I didn't know Spamford was even still around.

I still remember the hundreds of cyberout.com emails I'd get from his company back when I used AOL around 1995.

</comment><comment><USER23> Was this man prosecuted primarily because of his notorious history? I have never heard of FB spammers being prosecuted before.

</comment><comment><USER24> Anybody know how was he spamming? Using wall or messages?

</comment><comment><USER25> Pff, 250 and 700 million dollars. That seems ridiculously large for a petty spamming crime.

At least he filed bankruptcy.</comment>


Hotter than the sun: The mysterious solar corona - <AUTHOR> https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/physical-world/2019/solar-corona-temperature <comment><USER2> My dissertation attempted to refine modelling functions replicating this heat transfer and it's exciting to see this data being collected from such close proximity. I always figured the mechanism behind the heating could be used for energy generation on Earth.</comment>


FBI accidentally reveals Saudi official suspected of supporting 9/11 hijackers - <AUTHOR> https://news.yahoo.com/in-court-filing-fbi-accidentally-reveals-name-of-saudi-official-suspected-of-directing-support-for-911-hijackers-224555851.html <comment><USER3> The name: [https://twitter.com/Ali_H_Soufan/status/1260360013299830785?...](https://twitter.com/Ali_H_Soufan/status/1260360013299830785?s=20)

</comment><comment> 1-6 Why is the FBI holding onto this information without revealing it sooner to the public?

<comment> 1-6 I hope I can find a good explanation for why Saudi Arabia was involved in 9/11 while the US went ahead and attacked Iraq. Wasn't Iran blamed initially? Recall: Iran Iraq War Bumper Sticker. This looks like a major cover-up and both Republican and Democrat leaders are involved.

<comment><USER4> I study this area, so I'll try to do a brief overview of what was reported.

The US is in ideological wars with China (CCP) and Islam. Those may not be wars the US chose, but it is what it is, because there is no common ground in disparate ideologies.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) relies on the US to buy oil and act as military mercenaries when threatened by local countries.

In the short term, KSA is an ally of the US, but in the long term, there are too many ideological and religious differences.

So at some level, KSA did cause 9/11, although likely in a circuitous way (some funding here, some operational support there, etc.) It's unlikely there was formal military support in any way, because that's counter-productive to the ruling family's goals, but KSA has strong internal security and they know what's happening.

Iraq is a different story, or rather, their leader, Hussein. He invaded Kuwait, threatened to invade KSA, etc.

The US govt. was paid to defend KSA. Bush 2 felt he owed Bush 1 the removal of Hussein. And German and French ambassadors massaging arms sales told Hussein he was untouchable by the US. The US sent an envoy to negotiate a peaceful standdown, but was perceived as belligerent. So war it was.

The "fig leaves" for invading Iraq were that a man who wanted to become the Iraqi President said bad things about Hussein, and that "aluminum tubes" were found in Iraq, supposedly useful in building a nuclear bomb. So the Whitehouse pretended those were adequate justifications, and that Hussein was tied to 9/11, despite knowing immediately that most of the participants were on Saudi passports.

Ironically, Hussein was the only leader capable of uniting Iraq, despite being from a minority ethnic group. Even better, he was a US ally long before the Iraq war.

Hussein's desire to become "the modern-day Suleiman" and rule all of the Middle East led to a large part of its destruction.

But the US could have been more on top of the situation there - <USER2> better relations with Hussein, having better intelligence, training and equipping the Kuwaiti armed forces better, etc.

So there's a long backstory to the invasion of Iraq, and the US had reasons, but it wasn't what was told to the American people (I remember the absurd sound bites on TV at the time. I was like, "I can buy aluminum tubes down the street.")

<comment><USER5> With all respect, this is an absurd summary and you're obviously not in any way an expert on this topic else you wouldn't write such nonsense. There is no 'ideological war with Islam'. There are many Islamic countries closely following the western model of economy and society. The conflict with China also has long stepped beyond just ideology and is much more about realpolitik, power projection, economic clout, etc than ideological conflict between a formally-communist-but-is-actually-just-a-typical-capitalist-autocracy and the hardcore capitalist that is the US (and which some would describe as at least an oligarchy).

there is not much points going into your other arguments which are equally absurd, except of course for the obvious oil-vs-guns deals between US and KSA and the spurious arguments for the war which we all know were lies and it's just astonishing how little the US population holds its leaders to account for starting a war over faked evidence.

<comment><USER6> > a war over faked evidence

With a proof that Bush Jr. was officially informed that the justifications for the war are false some few days before invasion. (Probably someone from intelligence covering their ass, so the war wouldn't be blamed on them once bogus weapons of mass destruction were nowhere to be found).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have an amazingly hard time believing that revelation was an "accident". I cannot believe with the number of people involved that they didn't catch the error.

<comment><USER8> But nothing in this disclosure was unknown. As the article states, "Jarrah has been on the radar screen of the lawyers for the 9/11 families for some time and is among nine current or former Saudi officials who they suspect have important information about the case and have sought to either question them or get access to FBI documents that mention them."

There are no secrets in Washington, D.C., at least none that can last for years. All of this info leaked many years ago. The goal in formally censoring the details is simply to prevent legal action, and apparently officials across three administrations are convinced it would create too many diplomatic headaches. Without the official reports, these details are largely inadmissible hearsay in court, even if the whole world "knows".

At this point I'd be surprised if the FBI had any information not already publicly available. Though, the lawyers leading the civil lawsuit are probably some of the few people with an intimate knowledge of all the details, notwithstanding that the details are contingent on some unknowns.</comment></comment>


Did anyone else receive an Ello invite (to join the "millions") today? - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/EPYuJlO.png

<comment><USER2> I didn't get an invite awhile back when it was first announced but I just made up some random string and got an account fairly easily. However I never really used the account or went back since.

</comment><comment><USER3> i received one a few days ago, i just deleted it :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I will delete mine too ;)

<comment><USER4> Did you receive the invite unsolicited?</comment></comment></comment>


A new way of storytelling on the web - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9716925.stm

<comment><USER2> Essentially, this is an artist directly listening to his audience, and working with them to create art.

This is a new way of storytelling in the sense that Agile practices are a new way of running a software company. The underlying idea is the same, (tell a story / write software) but iteration is much faster and output is tightly coupled to input.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great analogy. It will be interesting to see if agile storytelling becomes as popular as agile development, and how both those approaches will have evolved in 10 (or 20) years time.</comment></comment>


How to *securely* use SMS two-factor authentication (2FA) - <AUTHOR> https://www.gluu.org/blog/how-to-securely-use-sms-two-factor-authentication-2fa/ <comment><AUTHOR> Submitted this because although some sites like Vangard allow you to used a security key like SecurID or Yubico FIDO they still require you to have SMS security codes enabled incase you don't have your key. This makes invalidates any additional security keys have over SMS on your account. Would be very interested in HN community's thoughts on this.

<comment><USER2> And Vanguard specifically only supports Chrome (last I checked), so it's a nonstarter if you primarily use Firefox, even though my Yubikey works fine on other sites with Firefox. Perhaps WebAuthn will fix that, but it's the current reality.

Instead of SMS, I wish more sites would fall back to email. There are a lot more scenarios IMO where I don't have access to my phone/SMS than not having access to email, and most email providers are better protected than SMS.</comment></comment>


Burma's capital: a super-sized slice of post-apocalypse suburbia - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/19/burmas-capital-naypyidaw-post-apocalypse-suburbia-highways-wifi

<comment><USER2> The is the World Bank's classic scam. Bribe a corrupt government to take massive loans for infrastructure it doesn't need. It goes hand in hand with the United States' New Colonialism policy, because we can then demand drilling rights and military alliance when they default on the loans.

It's just a way for us to siphon off a chunk of developing nations' GDP. That's the World Bank's charter in a nutshell.

The book Confessions of an Econonomic Hitman lays this all out. The only difference here is it appears the Japanese got the ball rolling.

<comment><USER3> John Perkins is a conspiracy theorist and sort of a nut job. The building of Naypyidaw was done by Burma under the orders of its leadership. The World Bank did not have to twist anyone arms to get this White Elephant built.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Perkins_(author)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Perkins_\(author\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For many years Myanmar was the sole country on the planet you couldn't drive your own vehicle into.. preventing a trans-europe->se asia trip without shipping your vehicle.

That has all changed in the last 12-24 months, and multiple groups have reported it's now possible.

[http://wikioverland.org/Myanmar](http://wikioverland.org/Myanmar)

(The details are still a little short, but we're getting there)

I'm planning my trip now :)

<comment><USER5> Why can't you go around Myanmar (China -> Laos -> Thailand)?

<comment><USER6> China won't let you into the Tibetan Autonomous Region except as part of an official tour party from within China. You _can_ go around further to the north (I went that way by rail a few years ago), but most people on such a road trip would like to see India (and probably also Nepal), and to then have to go back all the way to _possibly_ cross the border in disputed Kashmir or realistically to Uzbekistan is a bit of a detour to say the least.

(Central Asia is fascinating and I do recommend the trip through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan at some point).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was in Yangon (Rangoon) last weekend - it was nothing like what I've read about Naypyidaw (didn't have the chance to go). So I would recommend not using this to stereotype the entire country.

Yangon was beautiful, and ridiculously crowded. It honestly felt like a version of Delhi, down to the horrific traffic. Most impressive was that any sort of data was unavailable on AT&T roaming, but there I was standing at the [real] Shwedagon Pagoda, in a country that hadn't been open to the world until a few years ago, and I had an abundance of free wi-fi to check in to Facebook.

<comment><USER8>
        > any sort of data was unavailable on AT&T roaming

Telenor SIM cards are cheap and have data

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me a lot of Pyongyang. Empty, wide roads, few people on the streets, and a whole lot of luxery facilities for the few well-connected.

<comment><USER10> "Reminds me a lot of Pyongyang"

Or Brasilia. Three cities built on the communist central planning principles of the post-war American suburb reflect, each in its own way, the oppression and alienation that motorcar-oriented planning imposes on humans. [0]

There is an alternative to suburban hell. The traditional city humans have loved for thousands of years is still possible. [1] There are even great accessible, affordable examples in Burma and Brazil. In places like North Korea and the USA, the destruction of traditional free ways of life has been more complete.

Though if you belong to the powerful and monied elite you might be able to afford to live in the few remaining neighborhoods in Pyongyang or San Francisco where traditional city design from decades ago is grandfathered in.

[0] [http://kunstler.com/books/the-geography-of- nowhere/](http://kunstler.com/books/the-geography-of-nowhere/) [1] [http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2008/072008.html](http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2008/072008.html)

<comment><USER11> "There is an alternative to suburban hell. The traditional city humans have loved for thousands of years is still possible. [1] There are even great accessible, affordable examples in Burma and Brazil. In places like North Korea and the USA, the destruction of traditional free ways of life has been more complete."

This is nostalgia. For most of human existence, we did not live in cities, sipping lattes in outdoor, safe, cafes with clean water. We lived nomadically or in small tribes and villages. The invention of the city brought disease, slavery, slums, corruption, and a whole host of other problems. The "traditional free way of life" was not living in a city where you couldn't be a farmer, but had to work for someone else on someone else's land.

Comparing North Korea to the US is just a non-sequitur.

This reeks of hipster snobby elitism.

<comment><USER10> "The "traditional free way of life" was not living in a city where you couldn't be a farmer"

This is nostalgia. For most of human existence, we did not farm. We lived in small hunter gatherer bands in very small numbers migrating over vast open landscapes.

But that doesn't invalidate the dream of being a freehold farmer in today's world. It's no reason to prohibit being a small independent yeoman farmer the way North Korea has.

And there's no reason to prohibit building a traditional city and living an urban life the way US central planning has outside a few grandfathered exceptions which have become incredibly expensive because demand rises while supply cannot grow.

<comment><USER11> Apparently, you didn't read what I wrote "We lived nomadically or in small tribes and villages."

Interference with US city organic expansion is primarily due to zoning regulations and nimbyism, and more than anything it results from people who have a romantic love affair with keeping the city exactly the way it is without accommodating for inevitable growth.

Pretty much the only projects that can get approved are those from huge organizations who have the money and power to overcome years of opposition until they finally can get projects approved.

The average guy who wants to convert an empty building into a cafe, warehouse, or living space, or remodel an area faces excessive red tape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> All the residential houses are quite expensive and only bought by rich people who don't really live there, making it more empty.

</comment><comment><USER13> TFA claims it's 6 times the size of NYC but cost only $4 billion dollars to build. How is that possible?

<comment><USER14> I'm just speculating here, but it's probably 6x NY's footprint in square miles yet with large open areas that are not built up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The characterization "six times the size of New York City" evokes images of area with the same building density. Actually it seems to be quite sparse

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Republic+of+the+Union+of+M...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,96.0908636,9345m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x305652a7714e2907:0xba7b0ee41c622b11?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER16> I spent 3 weeks in Myanmar about a month ago. Now I regret not visiting Naypyidaw. Everyone I met, including locals, said it wasn't worth my time.

</comment><comment><USER17> For a second there I thought this was a parody about San Francisco: poor people displaced, privileged people moving in who couldn't care less, pretty looking, empty inside.</comment>


Student StarCraft AI Tournament 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://sscaitournament.com/ <comment><USER2> Years ago, when I first watched the videos of the contest, I was overwhelmed by the micro that an AI plays with a bunch of Mutalisks. It never resembles a human play - among a number of Mutalisks, each Mutalisk could be moved completely indepdendently! Human player would never be able to imitate it.

As a South Korean whose national anthem is considered to be StarCraft Terran Soundtrack[1], I really hope this contest lasts long.

[1] [http://youtu.be/GuytViFsZUw](http://youtu.be/GuytViFsZUw)

<comment><USER3> Dont worry. It's been around since 2011 and I'm not planning to leave it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Damn! I just watched a game Terran vs Protoss, the Protoss did a fast forge expand with two cannons and then expanded to a third base. The terran made a ton of marines and obliterated the third base. But then the AI thought the game should be over because a base got destroyed. So the marines just stuck around and tha AI got caught in a loop, slowing the game down and making the terran lose (maybe loss by using too much CPU).

EDIT: After watching some more, I'm seriously impressed by some of those programs. Cannon rushes, aggressive expanding, managing siege tanks and well- rounded armies, that's what I've seen so far.

EDIT2: Something is weird, that one bot has "Our vs enemy supply" but how does it obtain the number of enemy supply when everything is in the fog of war? Is it getting the number out of the game memory? Is that allowed?

<comment><USER5> Why not? Thats what the actual StarCraft AI did above a certain level. They also get extra resources per pull if you set it high enough.

<comment><USER6> I would think the goal is to create human-like AI, not cheating AI that exists solely to challenge strong players.

<comment><USER3> Cheating is not allowed actually.. and API doesn't give you the information it shouldn't. The goal is creating a strong AI players (not necessarily human- like) that win without cheating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can wholeheartedly recommend participating in this tournament as a student. I built a bot for BWAPI a few years back and it taught me a great deal about programming in hostile environments against unreliable API's and with unreliable resources.

And that's all before you even get to true AI. You can skip all that and just cut to the AI part by choosing to base your bot on one of the existing open source AI's that are already available and continuously improved by the community.

</comment><comment><USER8> As someone who lost his entire high school life to Starcraft...

this looks like fun.

</comment><comment><USER9> So how would these AIs stack up against professional StarCraft players?

<comment><USER4> They (the AIs) would get completely stomped. As far as I know there isn't an AI that comes even close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So much cheese... but still impressive! I can't wait to see them get closer and closer to pro level.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is great. What other games can I play by legally modifying code to change the way my player acts? One example that comes to mind is [http://alexnisnevich.github.io/untrusted/](http://alexnisnevich.github.io/untrusted/)

<comment><USER12> [http://www.codingame.com/contests](http://www.codingame.com/contests)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am delighted to see competitions are still being arranged with BWAPI. A few years ago I was meaning to participate in the AIIDE competition but didn't manage to cut out enough spare time to finish then. Looks like there's still new chances.

</comment><comment><USER14> How do you make use of the stream if it doesn't show any gameplay?

Is the stream only managed from time to time?

<comment><USER15> I caught it playing with over 130 live watchers for a few minutes half an hour ago, until it stopped streaming and crashed.

<comment><USER3> It's restarted after every 10 games and does offline for like 2 minutes intentionally. Btw, it had 270 viewers few minutes ago - that's the most viewed Brood War steram on TeamLiquid and most viewed of all the streams on HitBox.tv ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Any chance some participant will release the source code afterwards?

<comment><USER17> Under "Downloads & Links" see "List of Open-source Bots" (A list of bots that can be downloaded and played against. Please add your bot here if you don't mind sharing its code.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> looks like mostly slovak and czech competition :)

<comment><USER7> There's several U.S. universities represented, at least one Dutch and I also see some cities in Germany, Austria and Denmark.

But yeah, the guy who started it is from there so obviously he has an easier time marketing it to nearby universities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> awesome. something to put on my second screen at work =D</comment>


First ad i have ever seen on GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/katzer/cordova-plugin-printer <comment><AUTHOR> I was looking up a method using a remote printer on my tablet.. And i saw this...

Has anyone else saw an ad on GitHub yet?</comment>


If your website's full of assholes, it's your fault (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://dashes.com/anil/2011/07/if-your-websites-full-of-assholes-its-your-fault.html <comment><USER2> This is an interesting article. I tend to agree that site owners need to set limits for what is and isn't acceptable.

But the list of what should and shouldn't be done has some things that I disagree with.

One of the problems with moderators is that it creates the gap that trolls like to exploit. Meta = death, especially when you can whip up an argument between regular posters about the actions of a moderator.

The accountable identities thing is also odd. I've seen plenty of people posting with their real name being absolute arseholes. I think some combination of persistent identity and karma is useful. The identity doesn't need to be shown. So it's anonymous from the point of view of people reading comments, but any up or downvotes go to the person's account and accumulate.

One thing missed in the list is "DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS. DO NOT ENGAGE WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE IDIOTS. JUST DOWN VOTE AND IGNORE. OR JUST IGNORE." Indeed, this should be emphasised so strongly that people down-vote those who do respond to trolls and idiots. It's intensely disappointing to see long threads on HN where one person has a viewpoint indistinguishable from idiocy or trolling. Sure, try to learn why that person believes the freakish thing they do, but don't waste time trying to convince them they're wrong.

> Because a company like Google thinks it's okay to sell video ads on YouTube > above conversations that are filled with vile, anonymous comments.

Anything that can fix YouTube comments would be amazing.

> Because almost every great newspaper in America believes that it's more > important to get a few more page views on their website than to encourage > meaningful discourse about current events within their community

Controversialism makes page views. It's sad.

Perhaps papers need to stick to 'promoted comments'. Perhaps they need to offer small payment or prizes for best comments? Or they could find two decent commenters and ask them to have a (moderated) discussion?</comment>


Alcohol Industry Sponsorship and Hazardous Drinking in UK University Sport - <AUTHOR> http://alcoholresearchuk.org/alcohol-insights/alcohol-industry-sponsorship-and-hazardous-drinking-in-uk-university-sport/ <comment><AUTHOR> Main point for me:

> students who played a sport sponsored by alcohol industry more likely to > report problematic drinking</comment>


Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/01/apple-reports-record-first-quarter-results.html <comment><USER2> Mac sales...

      Q1 2016 5312 units, revenue $6,746m
      Q4 2016 4886 units, revenue $5,739m
      Q1 2017 5374 units, revenue $7,244m

So people are buying more new Macs despite what the press, HN, Reddit crowds are saying?

<comment><USER3> After having owned a new (non-Touchbar) Mac for the last few weeks, I cannot fathom what the meltdown on HN was about this thing. It's the best Macbook I've ever owned --- and I've used nothing but Apple laptops since the Titanium Powerbook.

I _hate_ the USB-C dongle and do miss MagSafe, but I wouldn't trade the new machine for the old one.

After everything I'd heard, particularly about the keyboard, I put off buying a new Macbook. Ultimately, I was forced by circumstance to buy one, or I'd have coasted on my 2-year-old MBP for a few more years. I feel sheepish about that plan now.

<comment><USER4> I own one and I agree it is great. These seem to be the issues others have with it:

1\. The price - Personally I don't think it is justified to essentially bump the "actual" MBP (meaning touchbar and 29w processor) by $500 for what we get. The original retina 13" were similar price wise at release, but the display was a massive upgrade. The touchbar not so much.

2\. No kaby lake - this is an intel release timing issue, if you want Kaby Lake wait a few more months.

3\. Questionable utility of the touchbar - I own one and it is useful for anything with linear editing...so audio or video. Otherwise I just use it for media functions just like I would with physical keys (I don't use the function keys.) It could be more useful in the future given more software support.

4\. Dongles - This is another temporary problem until devices are all USB-C.

5\. No magsafe - Sad, but there is one advantage in that you can now do power/display/connectivity all over one port...and I can't go back from that. I have an LG 4k monitor with USB-C so I just plug in one cable and get my 4k display, mechanical keyboard, and speakers just from that. And I can rearrange my desk to put my laptop on either side of the screen. For me I'm either plugged in at my desk or wireless elsewhere, so tripping over a cable was never really an issue for me once we hit the 5+ hour battery mark.

6\. The keyboard - I love it, and switch off from my Whitefox with Cherry mx blues on my desk. Most mobile keyboards feel squishy to me but the new switches they are using give a lot of stability and a pretty solid click as well, even though they have such little travel.

<comment><USER5> > No magsafe

Has anyone seen or personally heard of someone yanking their laptop, of any brand or model, onto the floor via the power cable? I haven't. I instinctively think it's a risk, but reality says otherwise. It seems to me like a solution looking for a problem; the only reason I ever suspected that it's a real problem is that Apple made the Magsafe connectors - maybe they had some data that I didn't. Now I suspect it was all to address unfounded fears in consumers.

I've seen it happen plenty of times with cell phones, however. I wouldn't mind a Magsafe connector for an iPhone.

<comment><USER6> >I instinctively think it's a risk, but reality says otherwise.

What an argument. Do you happen to have Auto insurance? How about fire insurance? Did your house burn down even once? Mine didn't so far and yet here I am still saying fire insurance is very much needed if you own a house.

And that is exactly what the MagSafe was. Insurance incase this happens. And as you can already tell by the other responses, this does happen. And even if it only happens once, you will look at thousands of dollars worth of damage.

So, no thank you with the non MagSafe MacBooks. Having a choice if I want that yanked off my table to the left or the right depending on which USB-C connector I used to charge it is not a selling point.

<comment><USER7> MagSafe made sense when laptops had such terrible life they were almost always plugged in out of necessity.

Now if you're at your desk you're probably plugged in to power and a few other things that aren't break-away. If you're not at your desk you're probably not plugged in. The biggest snag I've always hit is the headphone connection. It's the most likely to get yanked if your headphones get caught up on a chair.

It was a convenient solution at the time. Now it's a bit of an anachronism.

If you like insurance, get a break-away USB-C cable for each of your devices: [https://griffintechnology.com/us/breaksafe-magnetic-usb-c- po...](https://griffintechnology.com/us/breaksafe-magnetic-usb-c-power-cable)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The interesting takeaway for me is that services is now the equal second biggest revenue centre at 9%. It is still way behind iPhone, but it is growing at a phenomenal rate. By all accounts Apple is just getting started with services (e.g.: rumoured original video content, video streaming service) so we can expect this to grow even more.

Finally Apple is capitalising on its install base to sell more addons after sale. This offsets slowing hardware upgrade rates, although not sure if it is enough to offset iPad declines.

The narrative often heard is that if they want to shift to being a services company, Apple would need to dramatically change its org structure. I may be wrong, but no one has ever monetised consumers with recurring monthly revenue as successfully as Apple has (utility companies and mortgage brokers excluded!). And it didn't even need an org restructure!

<comment><USER9> > By all accounts Apple is just getting started with services ... so we can > expect this to grow even more.

That's a very ... charitable way to put it. Another take would be that Apple, whose former CEO, over a decade ago, simultaneously oversaw Pixar and sat on the board of Disney, complete and totally missed the boat on streaming, original content, and cloud services. Think back to 2006: Netflix was a service that mailed DVDs, Amazon Prime was a year old, Dropbox was not around, Spotify was not around, Google was still focused on core services like maps and mail. Considering who their CEO was at the time, his connections, and their first mover advantage on digital entertainment and cloud, it absolutely amazes me that every single one of these companies was allowed to come in and eat Apple's lunch in some form or another.

<comment><USER10> The common explanation for this is that the content owners did not let them. Terrified of what iTunes did to the music business, they cut deals with not- Apple to prevent a monopoly from becoming more important than they were.

I don't know how to prove that, but it's a story that resonates. For a while I bought all my music exclusively from iTunes but now I subscribe to three different video services.

<comment><USER11> I'm curious, is there a source for that? It would be interesting to find out the backstory.

<comment><USER12> I've heard it before, but I don't have a source either. I wouldn't be surprised to see some mention of it in a Wired article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Since September I've been reading nothing but how much of a failure the iPhone 7 is, and how removing the headphone jack was going to be the final straw for Apple. Similar story for the new MacBook Pros.

It seems that the geekerati have very different priorities from the rest of the world, and maybe Apple still knows what's it's doing.

<comment><USER14> I love my iPhone 7. I've had it for a little over a month and I've already taken some of the best photos of the last ten years, including dslr photos I've taken.

<comment><USER15> Every 2 years I upgrade my iPhone, and every 2 years I get to buy the best phone I've ever owned. Not worth arguing in these places about religious wars. I try to appreciate how amazing everything is rather than lose my mind over a plug changing formats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Meh. A bank account earning compound interest will achieve "all-time record quarterly revenue" every single quarter.

Apple's quarterly profit is only up by 2.4% per share. Let's look at earnings per share for each calendar year [1]:

2016: $8.35 (down 11%)

2015: $9.42 (up 27%)

2014: $7.42 (up 29%)

2013: $5.76 (down 9%)

2012: $6.30

Looks to me like Apple's growth spurt is over.

[1] Note 12 in annual reports at [http://investor.apple.com/sec.cfm?DocType=Annual&ndq_keyword...](http://investor.apple.com/sec.cfm?DocType=Annual&ndq_keyword=)

<comment><USER17> I've always wondered why people use EPS - What if Apple issued more outstanding shares during this timeframe?

Wouldn't that skew this metric without representing that?

<comment><USER18> EPS is only really relevant if given in the same breath as share price.

P/E ratio is the more meaningful (and shares-outstanding-invariant) metric.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My new laptop is the buggiest Apple product I've owned.

Programs are always crashing, has issues waking up, and has connection issue with the new LG monitor.

<comment><USER20> I've had no issues, and am pleasantly surprised by how happy I am with the new keyboard.

<comment><USER21> yes, I'm the same (15" MBP). I think it's the nicest laptop I've ever owned. It's thin, light, incredible battery life, very powerful. I really like the keyboard, the travel once you get used to it makes other keyboards feel heavy. Trying to use the touchbar but maybe it will become useful as time goes by. I use it for swift coding and I can't fault it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It was a 14 week quarter rather than the typical 13 week quarter. Multiply all the numbers by 13/14 and you'll see it was a year over year decline.

<comment><USER23> From CFO Maestri on the Q&A call with analysts: "2:15 pm: We had the benefit of a 14th week, but this was offset by several factors including less channel fill than last year and a one-time $548 million patent judgment receipt last year."

[http://www.macrumors.com/2017/01/31/q1-2017-results/](http://www.macrumors.com/2017/01/31/q1-2017-results/)

<comment><USER24> Channel fill is fairly irrelevant (whose fault is it that your distributors don't want more of your stuff "just in case"?) and the cash is also fairly irrelevant - what matters for momentum is the number of units shifted and that's lagging everywhere except iPhones (and, if you trust them, the Watch).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I bought into apple after falling for osx during college right around the financial crisis. I've been a fan of their approach to products since then.

But the new macbook pro's are pretty revolting to me -- I used one at the apple store for a few minutes and could barely type on the (horrible) keyboard. I played with the touchbar and immediately found myself trying to touch the screen -- something that as a fan I definitely knew would not work.

Even with just a few moments use, it was immediately utterly clear to me that to the extent that the touchbar is a good idea, a touchscreen would have been a better idea ... The good idea within the touchbar is the attempt to 'augment' the keyboard/mouse user interface with touch -- augment, not replace. Microsoft tried to make touch/keyboard-mouse interchangeable but in real-life not all elements on the screen should be touchable -- the touchbar realizes this and deserves props for getting that much right. But even after acknowledging that success, the touchbar is just ... wrong -- its not any easier to lift your hands from the keyboard and use the touchbar than it would be to touch the screen -- its actually harder because you have to take your eyes from the screen and look somewhere you would not normally look to aim your fingers.

I hope the idea of 'augmenting' the macOS user interface introduced with touchbar evolves to the main display -- where it might be a good idea ... I don't know how this would be accomplished though -- maybe the api's created for touchbar could be re-targeted towards user interface elements on the main touch display ...

<comment><USER26> > _But the new macbook pro 's are pretty revolting to me -- I used one at the > apple store for a few minutes_

Thank you for your in-depth review. Many people judged the new MacBook Pro based on its press release alone, but you went the extra mile and used one at the Apple Store for a few minutes.

<comment><USER25> To be fair to me, I wasn't trying to lie or mislead about the thoroughness of my experience ... I suppose I was talking into a void but I at least was conveying the truth of my experience.

My use at the apple store was enough to know I didn't want one -- which made me glad because I sort of need a new macbook and was worried I'd buy one on impulse.

I immediately did not like the keyboard (never happened on an apple laptop for me before the one port Macbook which I bought for my girlfriend right when it was announced sight unseen -- when using it I tried my best not to voice my (immediate) criticism of the keyboard hoping that she would like my present ... She came from an old dell so anything was better than that monstrosity. But at some point after having the macbook one for awhile she used my macbook pro and commented how much easier the keyboard on my machine was to type on ...). I found myself unconsciously touching the display while playing around with touchbar. Attempting to use the display as a touchscreen is something I've never done before - even when playing with a microsoft laptop that had a touchscreen on it.

Touching the little bar just 'felt wrong' to me ... This is certainly an unfair assessment -- but I'm not used to that feeling with apple products - the experience just legitimately felt bad to me.

I'm open to having changing my mind in the future or having it changed -- I'm not really a cargo cult'er.

<comment><USER26> Sarcasm aside, it's an interesting point you make. Apple products often have an immediate visual and tactile impact that leads to impulse buys in the store. I haven't tried the new MacBook yet (not even in the store for a few minutes) but you've piqued my interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> At the end of the day, the MBP isn't built _only_ for developers and creatives. We're a subset of the customer base, always have been. (I suspect they sell more to soccer moms and college kids than "pros")

<comment><USER28> This "professional" narrative is seriously annoying. I work on software 10h+ a day, some of it is (hopefully) at the cutting edge of biology. I even get paid. Use neural nets. And vim. So I should probably fall within the "professional" category. At least more than "soccer mom", with regards to gender, reproductive status, and offsprings' choice of sports.

I have never felt the need to plug in 6+ peripherals. 16GB work fine even with a Linux and a Windows 10 virtual machine running. If I run out of battery after 12h of working on a flight, I sleep – but I don't dream of replaceable batteries.

Whatever all these self-professed "professionals" are doing, it sounds a lot more like what I did in high school: spending weeks swapping components, recompiling Linux kernels for 2% higher values at some useless benchmark, building incredibly-convoluted setups to really finally create a media centre rivalling Fleet Street etc.

<comment><USER29> I agree, for my workflow. I just bought a new laptop, and didn't even go for a pro model. If I need more resources, I have a 60gig ram, 16 core VPS I can spin up, but for most Java, Haskell, and other dev work, and for writing my books, a plain MacBook is quite sufficient (after 1 week to get used to, and like, the keyboard). I did toss my old external monitor for a LG 4K, a purchase I am also really happy with.

For fun, I am writing iOS and Android app versions of my cookingspace web app, and the MacBook also performs well enough for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I fail to see how this was a dynamite quarter, in Cook's words.

Net income shrank year over year

Operating income shrank year over year

China sales imploded by another 12%

Margins contracted

Sales growth was a piddling 4% (it didn't contract granted, I don't see how that's "dynamite")

iPad sales continue to implode, down 19%

And there's Cook cheering on the results. It reminds me of the Steve Ballmer days under Microsoft. The profits were there, the sales were there, and yet you could easily spot the icebergs on the horizon.

<comment><USER31> > iPad sales continue to implode, down 19%

I'm a bit surprised by this. I got to try out a iPad Pro with the pencil yesterday for the first time and came away very impressed.

<comment><USER32> But it also costs more than a mid-range computer.

<comment><USER31> You can buy a laptop with a built-in LTE modem for less money than many cell phones, yet people still buy phones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you want more graphs and comparisons, MacStories created some nice visuals for the new data

[https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-q1-2017-results- billio...](https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-q1-2017-results-billion- revenue-million-iphones-million-ipads-sold/)

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder how much if "services" is due to the iCloud revenues because iPhone keep getting bigger, and the free hosting is not getting bigger..... Bugging people constantly to increase storage.

</comment><comment><USER35> From the first paragraph, record results mean the company keeps growing. How does the YoY growth compare to other years, and to other tech companies?

<comment><USER36> For me the screen almost made me impulse buy in-store, it's so much more vivid than my 2015

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is actually bad news because Apple will continue this weird strategy of pushing fancy crap for fortune.

<comment><USER38> If you think their products are fancy crap, would it make a difference if they suddenly decided to sell them for half the price?

<comment><USER37> Yes, because price and quality matters. I have luxury leather goods and they worth every penny because awesome quality and the rest of goods just junk.

Does not work with Mac, you pay a lot and a chance that you will be in a trouble with it is very high. Like with last MBP. Apple must spend more money for QA and offer better hardware. I will look on their new mac mini if it will be updated this or next year, probably it will be my last device from this company.

Apple business is one of the greatest bubbles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Looks like Tim Cook worked hard to claw his salary back :)

</comment><comment><USER40> Mac might be a victim of the high profit margins. Frequent updates and competitive pricing do no good for the profit margin. Much easier to maintain those if you sell a bit outdated hw (thinking about Mac Pro and Mini).

What would the "markets" think if Apple sold more Macs, maintained the same absolute profits but let the margins slip? Would that be considered as a bad thing?

<comment><USER41> I don't know if I would describe 3-year-old hardware as "a bit outdated" :-/

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Possibly a dumb question, but doesn't 2017 Q1 end in 2 months? How are they already reporting results?

<comment><USER43> Financial calendars are not necessarily aligned with actual calendars.

<comment><USER44> And, yes, specifically Apple's year ends with Q3 of the "real" calendar. Their fiscal year is aligned with their iPhone release cycle, which is probably a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> So why hasn't the stock price tanked yet? What's wrong with the Universe?

<comment><USER46> 17B profits should count for something. That more than 7 months of Facebook's total revenue. Apple made more in service revenue than FB made in total.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> How many Macs sold from the Apple refurb-shop helped push those Q1 Mac sales figures? I bought my brand new (2015) refurb model the week the new Macs were shown, as did several of my colleagues.

</comment><comment><USER48> China Iphone sales took a pretty big dip, but US sales looked good and their ASP hasn't gone down. The Chinese Market is more price sensitive than US market.

</comment><comment><USER49> I have the 2016 touch bar pro 15 inch. Love it

</comment><comment><USER50> I can't even fathom that amount of money.

<comment><USER51> Analysts remain "concerned" about $AAPL growth because world forests cannot produce enough paper for how much cash $AAPL continues to print.

<comment><USER52> The good news is that the Irish government uses Euros, which are made of cotton fiber, not wood pulp.

<comment><USER53> US dollars are made of cotton and linen.

<comment><USER52> I almost mentioned that too (basically nobody makes money out of paper, it's too fragile), but it ruined the snappiness of the quip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> For everyone asking about magsafe, you can buy a usb-c to magsafe adapter. (2 parts which separate)

</comment><comment><USER55> I searched and searched to find an Apple Watch for my wife for Christmas. I got lucky and got one on Christmas Eve at Target. I'm not shocked at all they they made bank this quarter.

</comment><comment><USER56> So nothing's going to change. Great...

</comment><comment><USER57> That dude on Reddit must be having a melt-down.

<comment><USER58> Who's "that dude on reddit"?

<comment><USER59> [https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/5qprhh/by_p...](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/5qprhh/by_popular_request_if_this_post_gets_5k_upvotes_i/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Now if only they would leverage their piles and piles of cash for humanity.

</comment><comment><USER61> Terrible news for developers.

<comment><USER61> OK I'll add nuance: it's terrible news for _this_ developer (and anyone much like him) that Apple is not facing enough commercial pressure to ever produce another laptop that will serve his needs as well as his current MB Pro does. This makes him sad.

<comment><USER62> I wanted to upvote your original post sooner, but it was previously flagged.

I am feeling some serious dissonance here as well.

I have been a MBP fan for quite some time now. I have watched the recent Apple conferences with distaste as I see the target audience for MBP shift away from me. I don't want to find an alternative, and I sincerely hoped the market would not take well to the newest iteration. Looks like that's not going to be the case.

<comment><USER61> That original post was a tad obtuse! Anyway yes this is the point: OS X (or macOS if I must) isn't perfect, but I have found it the best compromise for my purposes. I very rarely have to futz with it, it's unixy enough, and it has scads of truly excellent 3rd party software available. But the hardware limitations might just force me to find an alternative. The latest MB Pros tanking would have offered some hope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I will never buy a computer again. You can find lots of very powerful computers in trash bin (e.g. my current 2013 MBP). People buy a piece of very precious materials and throw it away in 2 years. I think this is one of the most unethical things a man can do.

You think that you need your computers up to date because you are a geek and you must stay up to date to remain competent. This is not true. You can manage with less and you more than anyone else know how to handle a computer with slightly less resources.

These kind of numbers from a company advocating this throw away culture makes me very sad.

<comment><USER64> >You think that you need your computers up to date because you are a geek and you must stay up to date to remain competent.

Nah, I think I need a new computer because the $900 one I have (4 core haswell oc to 4.6 Ghz, 16 GB ram, 3 drives) and the $600 server I have (4 core Sandy, xeon, 32 GB ram, 5 drives), take anywhere between 2 days and 3 weeks to finish the tasks I throw at them regularly.

Between the MLC SSDs, tons of RAM, ton of CPU power, for $1500, I wouldn't even look at MBP from the current batch, let alone one from the last one.

I am a geek, I am competent, and I am fully planning on two new computers this year. Just waiting to see how Zen turns out.

64GB Ram / ea. 1 GB SSDs, probably on ZFS, 8 cores / 16 threads (to stay in the cheap consumer range). This will probably be doable for under $2k.

So, as a geek, this is what I do to remain competent, hardware wise.

TLDR: You can't just assume that because you don't need a more powerful hardware for blogging or what have you, that the rest of us also don't need one.

I can't manage with less, because life is short.

<comment><USER65> Can't you just use AWS or an equivalent cloud service instead of owning a server?

<comment><USER64> I look into it every few months actually. It always turns out to be substantially more expensive. The disk performance in vms also either arent there, or are just too pricey.

Another part of the story is that if you roam the local sell forums, you'll find an older Xeon servers for cheap.

So, that leaves electricity, which is not that bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Wait. Isn't the revenue number _supposed_ to grow each year as long as things are just going as they were? I've never understood Apple's fixation with the word 'ever' for everything which is supposed to grow organically. Guess what? Every year I get my 'highest ever' salary.

<comment><USER66> People giving negative votes, do you have an objective reason for that, or you just don't like someone bashing Apple for their hyperbole?

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Christmas 2016 was my first time in an apple store since forever (i.e the iphone 5). I went in and bought the last iphone with a headphone jack: the iphone 6s.

I firmly believe a looot of people did exactly that too.

So, imho, the iphone 6s is the absolute best seller ever at Apple (especially since iphone 7 announcement :).

<comment><USER26> > _So, imho, the iphone 6s is the absolute best seller ever at Apple_

I know it's 2017, but "best selling" is really more a matter of fact than opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Talk about setting expectations low so that they can beat the street again.

>Apple is providing the following guidance for its fiscal 2017 second quarter: revenue between $51.5 billion and $53.5 billion

<comment><USER69> Well the coming quarter is a non-holiday.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are your disciplines to keep sharp between contracts? - <AUTHOR> You know, other than looking for another job or learning how to do your job better. <comment><USER2> Stay healthy my friend...</comment>


Reading all the small print on the Internet for a week - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/15/i-read-all-the-small-print-on-the-internet <comment><USER2> I'll happily agree to sign away my first-born. First because you can't sign away what you don't have, and second because such a clause would be void where I live (Germany). Yay customer protection laws!

<comment><USER3> What's even better: EULAs in Germany are mostly useless because they can't contain any clauses that could be considered "surprising". Basically, if the EULA contradicts most users' expectations, it doesn't hold up in court.

A recent example for this was WhatsApp getting into trouble after banning users who used unofficial clients. The courts ruled that a ban was not something users would expect because other comparable services have no such clause and that while WhatsApp was allowed to detect and block the use of third-party apps, they couldn't punish the users themselves.

</comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands Me and friend (he was a contract attorney) started a company that read and published the fine print of various products (many of it was software and smartphone contracts and EULA's) and tried to warn consumers what they were signing off on.

We didn't get far because after a year, it was clear nobody cared what was in the EULA's they were signing even if it meant giving up your personal information. They were more concerned with the ability to use a new piece of hardware or software they thought was cool without thinking about the ramifications of giving out so much personal information to do so.

It was eye opening to say the least.

<comment><USER4> I believe that the average person cannot see themselves getting into any legal trouble for the EULA that they've agreed to. Lawsuits and trials are something that happens between corporations, among business people, and with criminals. It is not common to hear of the average person in trouble for violating an EULA for something that was thought to be permissible.

Although I don't agree with blindly accepting terms, the current precedent is that if you upload something somewhere, buy something, etc., you'll retain access to it as long as you are in accordance with the law. The company will notify you in the event that they are shutting down or if you'll need to take action to retain access/ownership. There are exception to this rule (does Mt. Gox qualify?), but common sense generally applies to EULAs. Should companies start cashing in on the public's willful ignorance, then people will start to panic.

<comment><USER5> So one day, I decided to make my own Terms and Conditions of Doing Business with Me, simply as a 'goof' kind of exercise.

What gave me the idea was the very common phrasing of "XXXXX reserves the right to change these Terms and Conditions at any time and without notice."

The idea was to list some expectations for 'Customer Service' and 'Notification' like correspondence, fees for missed deadlines, etc. Basically like a parody of most EULAs or T&Cs that get signed so frequently. Some were pretty ridiculous (i.e. "If you want to collect a late fee you have to do so in person, by appointment only, and accept cash") while others were more functional and somewhat practical (i.e. "Any sale of personal information undisclosed that results in additional spam/solicitations is an abuse of this relationship and subject to a fine of $XXX").

I've got a copy or two stashed away somewhere, and while I have no doubt it'd be viewed with a very negative eye in a court of law, well, it reminds me of the childish saying "Anything you can do I can do better."

<comment><USER6> It would be great if you published this. I'd love to start using something like this with the Comcasts of the world.

<comment><USER5> Ha you think so?! I just got myself set up on Medium and I plan on putting some essays up there. I might just have to put it up for grins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminded me of Richard Dreyfuss' dramatic readings of the iTunes EULA: [1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu0lqUlHEko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu0lqUlHEko)

</comment><comment><USER8> My product has an EULA less than 200 words so I feel I'm not being too awful. About half of it is just there because of the requirements of the licences of all the libraries it uses. No reverse engineering - really? I don't care but Intel does and I'm using their library. Can't freely distribute? I don't care but the LGPL and MIT licences do so I have to put it in my EULA.

<comment><USER9> Is it distribution for the whole product -- could you say no reverse engineering & distribution for these parts?

<comment><USER8> Yep, but that turns out to take more words than a blanket restriction.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do people still use make_resourceful? - <AUTHOR>

Just curious if people are still using make_resourceful in their new rails apps.  The project hasn't seen much updating lately and I was curious if people became unlazy and started doing CRUD themselves.<p>https://github.com/hcatlin/make_resourceful <comment><USER2> How about <https://github.com/josevalim/inherited_resources>, very active (last commit was yesterday).</comment>


New Samsung E-Paper - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/29/samsung-shows-off-color-e-paper-prototype-pvi-might-beat-it-to/

<comment><USER2> I'd like to see e-paper used in places other than ebooks. Static, powerless displays could be really useful in so many areas: cell phone/computer notifications, wall calendars, daily reminders, or anything that changes less than 30 times a second.

<comment><USER3> E-books are perceived to be a large untapped market and every other display tech is basically a heaping helping of fail, so it is no wonder that this use case is in the driver's seat at the moment. OTOH, I think you are correct that in the long term we will probably see e-paper replacing a lot of displays that are currently poorly served by LED/LCD solutions. Batteries that can tell you the charge level before you stick them into something was one of the better examples of this I heard recently.</comment></comment>


"We Are [CSS] Programmers" - <AUTHOR> https://css-tricks.com/we-are-programmers/ <comment><AUTHOR> I've never understood this quest of omni-inclusivity. "Programmer" is not a fancy title that you can show of to your friends, it's a word with an actual meaning. Attempting to artificially broaden the meaning of words just leaves their original meaning without a fitting term and gives us a new name for something we most likely already have a name for (in this case: "developer").

Setting aside the fact that the article doesn't even give any sound argument for its position whatsoever, I don't think there is a case to be made for this opinion at all.

But hey, maybe someone else can share a different perspective that convinces me otherwise.</comment>


From Russia with youth: Meet the Puteens - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/puteens <comment><USER2> It would be interesting to see the project repeated in several other countries!</comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup - www.JetDeck.co - <AUTHOR> https://app.jetdeck.co/hn A CRM for business jet brokers.
While the industry may sound glitzy, multi-million dollar aircraft are most often sold with notepads and 30MB of hi-res email attachments. There are no such things as 'cloud data', 'analytics' or 'mobile apps' in the space and any software that is built for business aviation reeks of 1995.
JetDeck is a modern contact and inventory management application to fix the low-hanging fruit problems in an aircraft broker's day-to-day operations. <comment><AUTHOR> A CRM for business jet brokers.

While the industry may sound glitzy, multi-million dollar aircraft are most often sold with notepads and 30MB of hi-res email attachments. There are no such things as 'cloud data', 'analytics' or 'mobile apps' in the space and any software that _is_ built for business aviation reeks of 1995.

JetDeck is a modern contact and inventory management application to fix the low-hanging fruit problems in an aircraft broker's day-to-day operations.

</comment><comment><USER2> My immediate advice would be to get rid of that little google ad bar that looks like a navigation. It's both confusing and sneaky, even if (maybe?) that was not your intent.

Other than that, I was completely confused as to what I was looking at until I read your description here in the comments. Sounds like an interesting biz, though I don't know anything about that to comment one way or another!

<comment><USER3> I've never understood the people that put adverts on projects like this. Adverts work at scale. If you have 100,000 people viewing your website every day people are willing to pay good money for access to that audience, if that audience is 100 people the cost of advertising to them is pennies.

If someone puts 100 hours into building something like this it's clear they intend on it becoming a legitimate business, this means every single person that visits at initial release is someone that _could_ be a customer or _could_ help the site reach the goals set out by the creator. Anything that can potentially jeopardise this (poor functionality, making it look amateur -- adverts) is pointless. Trading potential success for the advert revenue adsense will bring from a HN post (most posts about the HN traffic bump talk about ~10k page views, so let's say that generates $10 in revenue with a small advert bar) is nonsensical. It'd be better to go and pick pennies up from the street!

There was a person that posted their Youtube channel on reddit a few days ago and they wanted people to review it and give them pointers. I decided to check it out, so I clicked to their channel and was made to watch a 30 second pre- roll advert, I decided that 30 seconds wasn't worth it and closed it. The channel could have been amazing; I could have been the person that watched their video and shared it with my network and that could have triggered great things, but because of very silly short term thinking they lost that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. Since this was mainly a usability test, it's good to know how horrible an ad bar will be. The message has been loud and clear so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like to colors and the layout. It's simple to navigate and all the data is very clear and easy to read.

A few minor things...There's no way to edit an action. You'd have to delete and re-add if you made a typo or forgot the date. To be consistent, you might want to add a button to the "Delete Spec" link; all the other actions look like they are buttons.

I was also slightly confused with the ad links, but now that I refresh the page, it looks like you took them off already.

</comment><comment><USER5> Usability test failed, because what looks like a main menu is a bar of ads. That is just going anger anybody who feels they have been fooled into clicking an ad. I suggest removing it asap. You're going to lose people from your site before they have even looked around

</comment><comment><USER6> Have you considered adding a web gallery? I wasn't expecting the full size image to download when I clicked on it...

That may just be me but I would rather have the original hi-res download be an option.

</comment><comment><USER7> Just FYI, the "Welcome Hacker News User" window doesn't work well on my phone (Android 2.7.3, Cyanogenmod, default browser). It only lets me see the right half of the text, and I have to scroll over to see the close button. It helped that I already knew where it was, but if I hadn't been to your non-mobile site first I might not have found it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm a bit confused. Is this a seller's screen or a buyers screen or is it the same for both? Is the "My Deck" basically my inventory? And if I add it in there is there marketplace sort of screen where I as a buyer (Not that I'm buying a million dollar jet tomorrow - maybe next week) would go and find what's available?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a broker's screen. The middle man. Buyers and sellers would never see this. However, the buyer _would_ see the spec that is sent (which is not part of this demo).

The concept demonstrated here is to enter and manage my aircraft for sale and the contacts associated with it (from a broker's perspective)

<comment><USER9> FallingMeat is a HORRIBLE name for a jet seller....

With that said - you need to put in some example inventory to show both buyers and sellers what they would really see with a fully populated listing.

Show how after entering all the features of a jet - comparable FEATURE listings come in and tell the poster the pricess for that inventory (you could monetize this feature)

Need to make it easier to select MFR such as engine maker... i.e. select an angine after selecting known manufacturer.

Also - your engine would be FAR more powerful if you preload model configs from various manufacturers. So, i can ladder through a product list based on selecting a particular manufacturer.

The key to success here is in doing all the leg work to get the data from all the suppliers.

Link this info to maintenance records, charge fees for scans to this..

Call it AIRFAX - carfax for airplanes.

Or if you prefer, call it Flightr.com --- a domain you can acquire from me if interested...

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point on the example data. Although I disabled emails from the HN test account linked to here, you can get an idea of what the 'purchaser experience' would be like from the JetDeck homepage (www.jetdeck.co) and clicking the "Try a Demo Now" button. This is a link to a demo of what the customer actually sees after a broker has entered the data in the JetDeck portal: <http://www.jetdeck.co/specs/4425542.php?name=Sam>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You might want to put some limit on what other people can upload... especially for a demo. I mean, it's been a while since I've seen the Goatse.cx guy...

Edit: offending content has been removed (Sorry that you'd had to deal with all of that).

<comment><AUTHOR> ...likewise

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So, a super nit-picky thing on the login page is the "Made Simple" text on the top right. It's styled too similarly to a link. I definitely had the urge to click it and I'm sure others will

</comment><comment><USER12> Highlighted text (Close More Deals, Beautiful Aircraft Presentations etc.) is perceived like links, a different color would be less confusing.

</comment><comment><USER13> Just an fyi, you link to app.jetdeck.co, which is a lot more confusing when you're not first given the information at jetdeck.co.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, good point. that was a rookie mistake

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How are you planning to reach your customers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question. There are actually very few customers for this app. I have worked in this industry (as a broker, for an airframe mfg and now a guidance avionics mfg) for a few years and know many personally. Enough to build it 'virally'. So short answer: email and assisting the converts to invite others. Of course, the standard tools apply as well, but it's a very small niche for sure.

The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is the market data that will be crowd-sourced, not the size of our user base.

<comment><USER14> Sounds reasonable. I figured you got to be in the industry to pick this niche. Good luck! :)</comment></comment></comment>


Radiation-hardened quine (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mame/radiation-hardened-quine <comment><USER2> Some interesting discussion from when this was first posted in 2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7276976](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7276976)

</comment><comment><USER3> They describe deleting characters, but most radiation causes bit flips, rather than character removal. Good news, this seems to work with a bitflip as well :)

<comment><USER4> I think the result would be the same no? Assuming the characters are stored in ASCII the result of a single bit flip can only possibly modify one character. Of course this assumes the program is resilient against modification in general and not just deletion (which seems to be the case).

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't assume so. A character has a lot of bits. So it kind of depends on how the stream is processed I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For people interested, another search phrase for this and more kinds of errors is Immunity-Aware Programming:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunity- aware_programming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunity-aware_programming)

Lots of failure modes to consider.

<comment><USER6> This link deserve a submission. Here it is : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18849057](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18849057)

<comment><USER5> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't get people's fascination with quines. If your language supports at least two ways of quoting strings and some basic regex replacements, you can cook up a quine just by starting with an empty string and using double-cursor functionality in any modern editor.

        ".replace(/^(.*)/, String.fromCharCode(34) + '$1' + String.fromCharCode(34) + '$1')".replace(/^(.*)/, String.fromCharCode(34) + '$1' + String.fromCharCode(34) + '$1')

"Take the previous string, print it inside double quotes, then print it as is."

Is this supposed to be profound? I don't see how this has anything to do with biology or life. It's simply a test of how cleverly you can abuse the syntax of your language.

<comment><USER8> You don't see how a self-replicating pattern in an abstract context can serve as a model of self-replicating patterns in practical contexts?

Or why studying how different formalisms in language lead to different complexity in constructing such patterns may relate to things like bootstrapping DNA?

<comment><USER7> I don't see discussions of any of the things you mentioned. I see people falling in love with "clever" code.

Quines can be made straightforward. You have two copies of your code. Copy 2 then prints copy 1 twice, creating the replica of the original 2 copies. That's it. Everything else is trickery dealing with language boilerplate and string escapes.

Similarly, I'm pretty sure the quine above is not generalizable to any language. It's all about Ruby syntax, not some fundamental property of the program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For people interested in philosophy of soft errors, I'll take this opportunity to plug a paper of mine where I use soft errors to argue that empirical evidence suggests we do not live in a computer simulation (at least not in one ultra-specific type of computer simulation):

[https://philpapers.org/archive/ALEATO-6.pdf](https://philpapers.org/archive/ALEATO-6.pdf)

<comment><USER10> Didn't expect to see a PhilPapers link on HN! I liked your paper, definitely gave me something to chew on. I've never given much thought to attempting to falsify the simulation hypothesis in any meaningful way (on account of a general apathy to its oft "contrived" nature that you elude to). However, your thought experiment regarding this supposed _x-x '_ property is quite clever. Now my mind is buzzing...

P.S. I appreciated your reference to Popper in the abstract. It prompted me to take my copy of _The Open Society & Its Enemies_ off the shelf and peruse it for nostalgia's sake. :)

<comment><USER9> Glad to set minds buzzing, it made me smile real wide to read that. I'll have to check out that book you mentioned sometime :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting! Feels like a metaphor for biological self-replication, which keeps working after minor mutations.

</comment><comment><USER12> You can harden this Quine even further (statistically) by adding lots of white space where ever it's allowed

<comment><USER13> As long as you add white space in a way such that the output of the program also has that white space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This quine is covered briefly in Yusuke Endoh's talk from RubyConf 2017 [https://youtu.be/6K7EmeptEHo?t=1500](https://youtu.be/6K7EmeptEHo?t=1500)

The whole talk is awesome if you're interested in this kind of thing in Ruby.

</comment><comment><USER15> See also: [https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/57257/3808](https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/57257/3808)

<comment><USER16> See also: [https://codegolf.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2140/sandb...](https://codegolf.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2140/sandbox- for-proposed-challenges/14977#14977)

(disclaimer: self-promotion)</comment></comment>


The Second Golden Age of Blogging - <AUTHOR> https://theotherlifenow.com/the-second-golden-age-of-blogging/ <comment><USER2> As someone with a long term interest in blogging/media/publishing, I tend to gravitate towards such headlines, but I'm struggling to grasp the author's point in this piece?

Did someone tell them "blogging is dead" so they went out and wrote a 500 word defense? And while I do agree with the conclusion, some data would have been nice to review, like the golden age vs. second golden age. Something more than just pure conjecture.

<comment><USER3> It's a confusing piece that seems to be arguing that blogging had a dip in relevance due to... well it's not stated. But now it's somehow back? As if blogging hasn't been a quiet but critical substrate iterated on over and over by both individuals and businesses.

I try not to be cynical about this but, within the cultural context of HN this reads a lot more like someone is trying to write "mainstream tech interest" articles get Other Life onto HN to submarine a ton of links to the new project white-nationalist info (you may recall in 2018 they declared they felt the political left was actually more rife for nationalist and fascist recruitment, hence this seemingly sharp left interview with Moldbug and a shame-and- sympathy piece about "internet trolls" in the roll).

<comment><USER4> _But now it 's somehow back?_

"Covid19: Giving us a new golden age of blogging as its silver lining."

;)

<comment><USER3> I'll believe those numbers jump when I see them. If I had to pick a media winner in all this, it's podcasts.

<comment><USER4> So, apparently, sarcasm fail and signaling fail (that's what the winky is for). Whoops.

Obviously, it's too early to draw such inferences. But it's exactly the right time for people to write rambling nonsense while housebound and trying to distract themselves from a global crisis.

<comment><USER2> "But it's exactly the right time for people to write rambling nonsense while housebound and trying to distract themselves from a global crisis."

ha. yeah. that and a lot of bloggers are (c19 times aside) just into hearing themselves talk and/or intellectualizing the obvious. This act may be selfishly/egotistically rewarding, but it doesn't do much to the extent of capturing or keeping an audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a Gen-Xer. I blog. I like writing, and I enjoy public feedback. But this article and its multiple references to how blogging is for the "intelligent" and the "intellectually sophisticated" individual... I couldn't get past that part. What a load of crap. Blogging is for anyone who wants to be read.

<comment><USER6> I am Gen Y and was in college during the "Golden Age" of blogging. I had to chuckle when I noticed that the author didn't mention a single blogger who got big after 2010.

<comment><USER7> "There's too many to name!"is a pretty lazy cop out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Such people think, because they don't know many institutionalized > professionals who still blog, that blogging must be dead. What they don't > realize is that the credibility premium historically enjoyed by professional > institutions is plummeting toward zero. This fact is so obvious to younger > Millenials and Zoomers that it goes unremarked, undebated, because it is > already baked-in to their reading/watching behaviors.

The idea that traditional news media is losing credibility to blogs has been around since at least the 2004 US Presidential Election, which is when regular people starting discovering blogs.

The web was a lot less populated then, and large sites did not attempt to crowd out smaller sites by generating SEO-optimized content by the metric ton. Bots didn't pollute commment sections to the point where organic communities left out of exasperation. You could create a blog and be reasonably certain of developing an audience. The idea of AOL-style walled gardens seemed deeply outdated.

FFWD 10 years, and now the vast majority of internet activity occurs in walled gardens, be it FB, IG, Twitter, Reddit, Spotify, YouTube, Twitch, you name it. People don't even bookmark sites anymore, their muscle memory causes them to open Reddit or FB and just mindlessly browse.

So you start a self-owned blog in 2020. The only way to direct traffic to it is to also post on all the other walled gardens, because that's where the people are. That sounds like a lot of addtional work just to get eyeballs on a page.

<comment><USER8> > The only way to direct traffic to it is to also post on all the other walled > gardens, because that's where the people are. That sounds like a lot of > addtional work just to get eyeballs on a page.

But it doesn't sound like overly difficult or excessive work. There's no reason to expect people to read your blog who don't know you; there's never been a time in which (nonfiction) authors didn't do promotion through engagement in public conversations.

If you start a blog or a podcast, you have to post elsewhere and show up on other people's podcasts, write articles for established outlets, and try to get TV guest spots if you're mainstream or corporate-friendly enough. You might have to start as a good poster on a busy subreddit, or as a Trump reply guy on Twitter. When doing this, you make sure that people (or potential employers) who find you interesting or insightful can find their way back to your personal outlet.

I don't see that system as very broken. The delegitimization of mainstream outlets outside of party partisans and the older hasn't destroyed them, it really just made them into _prominent blogs_ (often running on wordpress and drupal no less.) So as traditional news media loses credibility to blogs, it really was just a process of coming to a parity where they had to compete on their own merits (links to administration and intelligence officials.)

edit: Those links are the actual _cause_ of mainstream delegitimization - they're maintained by the willingness of those outlets to float government stories without any independent corroboration, and through friendly op-eds that help people and groups they want to maintain access to. I don't think this is a new process; its a balance between getting insider information and helping those insiders maintain their positions that these outlets have always made.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Those who think blogs are irrelevant today — usually Gen-Xers or older — typically underestimate the degree to which real power has evacuated traditional institutions such as academia and New York publishing houses. "

I don't know that I've seen anyone say blogging is irrelevant. Maybe I just missed that. It's not the "new hotness" now, but it still gets the job done. There's no shortage of people burned out on Twitter/Facebook/etc doing some form of blogs now (I guess the new hotness is static sites again?) or blogging at something like Medium. Though I honestly have no idea how popular Medium really is. I never see it outside of HN, but I certainly don't have eyes everywhere.

I've had a blog since the 90s and I still find my feedreader the best way to keep up with the news that matters to me. It's not all blogs, but it's mostly, and the writing being done on blogs is just as good and relevant now as it was 15-20 years ago.

<comment><USER6> I think what the author means is that it's irrelevant for people who are considering blogging as a stepping stone to something bigger...a book deal, a conference speaking gig, influencer marketing, etc.

It sounds like your blog is a personal one, so you might not have treated it as such.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > but writing and therefore blogging for the most intellectually sophisticated

Oh boy

<comment><USER3> I know white nationalists were swinging for the intellectual left, but this feels really heavy-handed for someone who's clearly got a lot of practice.

<comment><USER11> I wondered "What's the white nationalist angle on this?", then clicked through the article and saw a reference to Curtis Yarvin and Instapundit :(

<comment><USER3> Fascinating seeing Yarvin start signaling a "leftist" identity tho. They really weren't kidding at their recruitment pivot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Blogging is just another tool, and one that will probably never go away.

People who want to publish their voice often use a multifaceted approach. I have been directed to various blogs by personalities I discovered on social media. The blog serves as a permanent, long form version of their content.

If you're _really_ looking to get your voice out there, you're probably posting to multiple places - Facebook, Instagram, blogs, YouTube, or whatever else fits your particular brand of content.

</comment><comment><USER13> Social media links have to lead somewhere - not just videos and memes. Blogs fuel a lot of that.</comment>


How to Build Habits to Lead a Better Life in 2015 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@karan/exactly-how-to-build-habits-to-lead-a-better-life-in-2015-922714665e23

<comment><USER2> Good luck with your changes in 2015! I've also found that focusing on small changes can help quite a bit too when trying to change your habits. Want to lose weight? Try to find an easy way to cut 200 calories, like not putting sugar in your coffee in the morning. Once you have that down, you can move on to another small action. The small successes add up over time and the small wins keep you motivated over time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup. This is exactly how I think everyone should approach new habits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


Supreme Court to Hear Case on Cellphone Location Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-to-hear-case-on-cellphone-location-data-1496671579 <comment><USER2> In this case, police obtained the location data from Timothy Carpenter's cell phone service provider without a warrant, and that data was used to help convict him of a string of robberies by placing him near the scene of each crime.

Carpenter and the ACLU say that because police failed to obtain a warrant related to that location data, it violates his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. The government says it needs only to demonstrate reasonable grounds, not probable cause, to access the data.

The larger question, though, is not whether police should be required to obtain a warrant to access location data from cell phone service providers, but whether cell phone service providers should be providing this information to police without a warrant.

In other words, if cell phone service providers were taking their customers' privacy (and constitutional rights) seriously, then this Supreme Court case should actually be the government suing a cell phone service provider for not turning over customer data in a case where a warrant has not been issued.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the summary.

One other thing that should be scrutinized in general: correlating cell phone location with actual person location is used as concrete admissible evidence.

<comment><USER4> Another consideration: how can one challenge this evidence on-par with an hope of success? I imagine personal records showing discrepancies or outright fabrication on the carrier's part would not easily be accepted.

Finally, the carrier was provided, but the phone itself wasn't identified. Was this a dumb phone, Android or iOS device? Does it matter?

<comment><USER5> Another consideration: How easy is it to spoof a sim card? Someone might be trying to implicate the accused by duplicating their sim card and taking a phone with the duplicated sim card to every robbery they commit.

<comment><USER6> > Another consideration: How easy is it to spoof a sim card?

Spoof? No. You can clone a card if you get physical access to it and it uses the older COMP128v1 encryption as the key is just 56-bit to bruteforce. This allows you to use their IMSI.

You'd also need to spoof the IMEI of the target device, which can only be done easily on older phones (original iPhone with early baseband is one) or with custom built solutions (think SDR, hackrf stuff)

I am fairly certain most major US carriers are not using the old-style SIM card anymore for this very reason. To support 3G and later on LTE, the cards would have to be upgraded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You are obviously missing a piece of the puzzle here.

Cell phone location by cell phone radio towers (not GPS or wifi) is terribly inaccurate.

It's not credible that the guy would go to jail because he was in a half mile area around a few robberies. There has to be more evidence than that.

<comment><USER8> > Cell phone location by cell phone radio towers (not GPS or wifi) is terribly > inaccurate.

Do you speak about this from hearsay or based in some actual involvement in the mobile telephony industry? I'd be interested in hearing what you have to say if it's the latter.

<comment><USER9> normally a mobile operator would not know the 'GPS' location of a person. Just the tower IDs they were connected to. And that connection could be several kilometers away from the person. Operator knows probably the strength of signal and may be other characteristics of the devices, that would help to reduce the possible radius. But I doubt it is anywhere near as precise as GPS.

GPS location, of course is much more precise, and is likely collected by say google maps or other installed apps, if maps is turned on.

<comment><USER10> > But I doubt it is anywhere near as precise as GPS.

It's not. It can be off by several kilometers. Wifi is more precise due to many wifi APs and lower access radius.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> news [http://www.scotusblog.com/2017/06/justices-tackle- cellphone-...](http://www.scotusblog.com/2017/06/justices-tackle-cellphone- data-case-next-term/)

and case page [http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/carpenter-v- unite...](http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/carpenter-v-united- states-2/)

</comment><comment><USER12> What a scary time to be alive. We are literally on the tipping point to a feature of Orwellian surveillance.

<comment><USER13> And we just elected the most anti-civil-right president in history, who is backed by the anti-civil-rights party controlling all three houses of government. We really fell over hard last November.

<comment><USER9> I do not share your view at all. Perhaps having a diverse point from yours, will be labeled a 'hate speech' or some other form of left-propaganda- consistent labeling. I hope not, however.

US citizens just elected the best choice of the leader, that will stop blatant misuse of US's foreign intelligence services.

That will stop one-sided indoctrination of the kids in public schools.

The president, that will protect American IT workers from unfair global competition in their own local market space.

And a president, that will finally do what he was promising to do.. I bet it is refreshing for folks that voted for him.

I also hope, but this is far fetched, that he will get USA out of supporting UN [0]. While I am very much for a number of goals that UN is meant to achieve, the current organization is a disgrace.

So if you think that being monitored and unmasked without reason by CIA or FBI -- is your civil right, then, yes, you are out of luck with Trump.

Back to the original topic, I would stand with the defendant in this case. Any data initially collected by a centralized service provider, (when the person of interest was not, yet a suspect), for technical purposes of running a service, cannot be used for marketing, criminal investigation or anything else.

[0] [https://www.sott.net/article/314600-Operating-like-thugs- Ind...](https://www.sott.net/article/314600-Operating-like-thugs-Independent- journalist-investigating-UN-corruption-has-press-accreditation-revoked-and-is- banned-from-UN)

<comment><USER14> Donald Trump has been a notorious peddler of BS for over _40 years_... why anyone would believe _anything_ that comes out of his mouth about anything is beyond me; he obviously doesn't believe anything he says, why would you?

Do you actually have any evidence that he is doing any of this, or are we still at the wishful thinking stage?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Assuming there's a valid justification, I'd love for the SCOTUS to conclude that any service provided by a government-sanctioned monopoly (cell providers, cable providers, etc.) is required to provide strong protections to customers' data.

(Yes, I realize this is pure fantasy on my part.)

<comment><USER16> I think there is a pretty good justification for state enforced monopolies to be treated as an arm of the state. However, cell providers certainly don't qualify. They aren't a monopoly--there are at least four of them--and they aren't really government sanctioned.

<comment><USER15> Doesn't the FCC grant them monopolistic use of certain frequency / power-level / location combinations?

<comment><USER16> All property rights are a narrow monopoly. The local grocery store has a monopoly over their parcel of land, but that doesn't create a monopoly over the whole market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For those being blocked by the WSJ paywall, here's an alternative take from SCOTUS Blog: [http://www.scotusblog.com/2017/06/justices-tackle- cellphone-...](http://www.scotusblog.com/2017/06/justices-tackle-cellphone- data-case-next-term/)

<comment><USER18> No need for this to be a future issue: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/xray/dgkdfehohjdbm...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/xray/dgkdfehohjdbmnldpcegekjakcdjlnkg)

That works (for now)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Passion vs Execution - <AUTHOR>

Is start-ups all about execution and not passion, when we were looking for new ideas to build a startup, we got tons of them, but 10 startups(global) were already working on it, so we dropped the idea and moved to next and kept doing this till we ran out of ideas.
 The CTO of a startup where i turned down an offer (not passionate about the idea) also said, being passionate about the idea helps for a few days, but after than it all boils to execution and the daily grind.<p>Would like to get your thoughts on it. <comment><USER2> > being passionate about the idea helps for a few days, but after than it all > boils to execution and the daily grind.

Nicely put.</comment>


Amazon open-sources its own deep learning software, DSSTNE - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/05/11/amazon-open-sources-its-own-deep-learning-software-dsstne/ <comment><USER2> wow. venturebeat has found yet another creative way to show annoying ads. well done....</comment>


Telecom-backed group defends anti-net neutrality robocalls to seniors - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/29/17792946/net-neutrality-robocalls-california-sb822 <comment><USER2> Just wondering, if those guys can get away with this, what's stopping us from doing the same in support of net neutrality?

<comment><USER3> Lack of money and resources. "Telecom-backed" pockets are deep. Pro net neutrality pockets are not as deep.

Lack of ethics. Telecom-backed groups do whatever it takes to profit off communication. Pro net neutrality groups are probably less willing to participate in robo calling the elderly.</comment></comment>