Peter Thiel: We're in a Higher Education Bubble - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/10/peter-thiel-were-in-a-bubble-and-its-not-the-internet-its-higher-education/ <comment><USER3> What Thiel doesn't get is that the reason why it's a bubble is also what keeps it afloat. It's exclusionary, and something inherent in humans is a desire to categorize and compartmentalize -- credentials.

Sure, if you're starting a web startup or a basketball team, no one cares where you went to school (although an offensive lineman in football benefits from going to a top tier school -- despite football being a meritocracy its surprisingly difficult to measure how effective linemen are). But the top lawyers, doctors, professors, and even business managers will be recruited from where people think the best people are.

The ironic thing is that the only reason people listen to Peter Thiel is because of his credentials as PayPal co-founder and VC investor. There are a million people have an opinion on education and tecnology. There's too much noise -- the ideas that are listened to are those that come from people who have done soemthing in the past -- a credential. At a massive scale college is still THE credential.

And surprisingly the internet has actually made elite schools more important, not less. Pre-internet regional schools were often held in near equal esteem as Harvard/Yale. As information became more fluid (USNWR and the internet) the ranking of credentials became easier to obtain. This won't change.

<comment><USER4> Frankly, Thiel's rhetorical "Why aren't there 100 Harvard franchises?" question is a reasonable one to ask. By its own admission, Harvard turns down hundreds -- maybe even thousands -- of students each year _who are qualified to attend Harvard_. There simply isn't enough space, and at the highest tiers, it becomes a crapshoot. Kid A and Kid B could be equally qualified, and both could have made it through the gauntlet and down to the wire, but Kid B wins out in the end through a process verging on picking straws. For the rest of his life, Kid B is "Harvard-educated," while Kid A is deemed by many folks in society to be Kid B's intellectual inferior.

But what if Harvard had enough capacity to admit everyone who met its admissions standards? It's a question worth asking. Would Harvard cease to be "Harvard" if that were the case? Thiel's point is that it would -- which is indicative of a problem with our valuation of Harvard.

Be that as it may, your overall point is sound. Harvard may have some mystique baked into its valuation, but most of us still hold the valuation -- mystique and all -- in high esteem. We accept it at face value. So long as we continue to do so, the bubble stays afloat.

In order to test Thiel's thesis, we'd have to go a step further and ask ourselves: what would, in theory, cause the bubble to pop? What would it take? Given that this bubble (for lack of a better word) has been propped up for hundreds of years, and is still going strong, what straw would break the camel's back?

I'd argue that it's Stanford. Or, rather, everything the proverbial Stanford represents: Silicon Valley, something approaching new-money meritocracy, and so forth. If enough Stanfords emerge across the world, suddenly the time- honored value of the Harvard degree seems less shiny than it once was.

[Interestingly enough, Harvard does a pretty darned good job at being a Stanford, too. But, for the set of Harvard attendees who are there to collect the credential and not to start up a company, the value of that credential- qua-credential would decrease in a bubble-deflating scenario].

<comment><USER5> "Proverbial Stanford" coincides a great deal with "Proverbial Harvard" - <USER2> are wealthy private schools that admit the very best students and have society's bias towards the well-to-do sons of well-to-do fathers. If you're looking for a school to contrast with Harvard, Stanford is a poor choice.

Furthermore, _actual_ Stanford isn't doing any damage to _actual_ Harvard. The data I've found suggest that 70+ or 80+% of undergrads admitted to both Harvard and Stanford pick Harvard.

Sources: [http://college.mychances.net/college/tools/college-cross- adm...](http://college.mychances.net/college/tools/college-cross-admit- comparison.php?compare=Harvard+University&with=Stanford)

[http://mathacle.blogspot.com/2008/06/harvard-yale- princeton-...](http://mathacle.blogspot.com/2008/06/harvard-yale-princeton- and-stanford.html)

<comment><USER4> All analogies are imperfect, but I chose Stanford for the specific reason that it's been at the forefront of perhaps the greatest semi-meritocratic* drive in modern American history: the high-tech industry. I very much meant the "proverbial" Stanford when I used Stanford in this example. I meant the Stanford of the movement Stanford has helped to shepherd -- the Stanford that exists in popular consciousness, regardless of how removed that perception may be from the reality of the school.

*I must use the "semi-" qualifier here because, as we all seem to agree, there's no such thing as a true meritocracy. The wealthy have advantages throughout life that maximize the chances of generating a meritorious CV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Posted this as a TechCrunch comment but wanted to cross-post here:

The challenge higher education is going to face is that the signaling mechanism that higher education provide (i.e. you were good enough to get into Harvard so you're good enough to work for Goldman Sachs) is going to become de-coupled from the institution's ability to impart knowledge on people. A few decades ago, most of what you needed to learn to be productive in society was best learned at a university. Today, most of the what you need to learn to be productive in society is best learned on your own, online, for free. There are exceptions but 99% of human knowledge is no longer locked up within a university.

Contrast that with the cost of higher education.To go to UCLA as an out-of- state student it now costs $50K/year (<http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/budget.htm>). And that's a _public_ school. And it's rising 8% a year. So the cost of learning has plummeted to almost nothing and yet 18-22 year old kids are taking out six figure loans to "learn". This makes no sense and feels very unsustainable.

And here's what I think will change the game: alternative signaling and credentialing mechanisms. When universities no longer have a monopoly (or near-monopoly) on signaling/credentialing we'll witness a sea change. I'd offer that this is already starting to happen in certain parts of industry. Would you rather hire an engineer with a lot of GitHub followers, a great reputation on Stack Overflow and/or someone who is a Y Combinator alum or would you rather higher a Stanford or MIT grad? It's a bit of a toss-up for many people to answer that and given that the comparison is Stanford/MIT and not the 4,000 "lesser" schools, that says something.

This change won't happen overnight but Thiel is on the money here. Higher ed is a $500 billion industry in the U.S. alone and I think its value proposition has never been more questionable than it is today.

<comment><USER7> _A few decades ago, most of what you needed to learn to be productive in society was best learned at a university. Today, most of the what you need to learn to be productive in society is best learned on your own, online, for free. There are exceptions but 99% of human knowledge is no longer locked up within a university._

This knowledge hasn't been locked up for _decades_ , though. It's been possible since at least the mid-20th-century to self-teach yourself the standard material in any major field, at least at an undergraduate level, by going to a library and reading, from the introductory textbooks up through the advanced ones. There are some things that might be hard to replicate (e.g. getting hands-on chemistry lab experience), but you could certainly self-teach the equivalent of a 4-year program in mathematics or history or theoretical physics.

A few people even did. In mathematics it's not that uncommon to find self- taught people, though it still isn't the norm. But overall not many people do it. Why will people do so now? Just because the material can be accessed without going to a library? Given that it takes some effort to work your way through a 4-year physics program, was the effort of going to the library to pick up Griffiths/Feynman/Landau really the main bottleneck?

I can definitely buy some change on the margins and in poorer countries (people who had no access to a library), but I'm confused why the internet will mean that people who for decades have not been teaching themselves physics, despite the books being available, will now do so.

<comment><USER8> Yes, Christensen in _The Innovator's Solution_ talks about people buying products to get the jobs done that they want to do - we can consider a library and the internet as products, to get the job done of education.

He notes (p.94) that many companies tried to use the Internet to reshape the textbook industry, by supplying more content. But, he says, the job most students are really trying to get done "is pass their courses without having to read the textbook at all". These companies were trying to help students do something that they were trying _not_ to do. He imagines a hypothetical "cram.com" would be more successful.

Most people (not all) find self-study extraordinarily hard - how many things have you, dear reader, set out to study but not completed? I think the only ones I have managed are when I'm using a textbook to help me achieve something specific - write some code, build a business, solve some problem. I wonder, is this really "study" or just "use of references"? e.g. Looking a word up in a dictionary is not really "study", to comprehensively master a topic.

It would be incredibly disruptive if someone found a way to make study - giving useful skills - enjoyable and easy. Gameplay seems the most favourable. I don't just mean things like SO-style badges, but like physical sports (games) teach motor-skills, eye-hand coordination, teamplay and strategy. It's like the "purpose" of play is learning. Note that even animals play (e.g. dogs and wolves have a "play bow", that indicates what follows in not a genuine attack).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's what Piaw Na, a Xoogler, said about this piece-- it's worth quoting:

"When the Thiel Foundation came to a local startup incubator to pitch, it came under heavy fire. For one, a lot of their recruiting heavily targeted existing Ivy League/MIT/Caltech students. These were students who were going to do great regardless of whether or not they pursued traditional college paths.

In other words, if this is an attack on the traditional college path, Thiel's definitely sided with their filtering mechanisms.

One guy who was present said the following: "You guys denied admission to the program from the one candidate who was actually making money as an entrepreneur!"

</comment><comment><USER10> Before I went to college, higher education received the reverence of some sort of religious institution. Not only would attending college/grad school guarantee easy middle class living, it was the Path. Universities were these Higher Grounds, noble and humble institutions pursuing the best of the human spirit.

Then they sack you with six figures of non-dischargeable debt and you're back living with your parents sending out resumes.

I don't think a "bubble" is the appropriate term, I think "exploitation" is better. The value that universities provide (either as learning environments or signalling systems) is nowhere near commensurate with their costs to young people. Young people have no idea though: they don't know the performance of the university in terms of enhancing graduates' incomes nor what a reasonable level of education debt is. And universities are completely negligent (and in some cases outright deceptive) in providing this info to incoming students.

Education debt WILL be made dischargeable in bankruptcy again, there is simply too much pressure (edu debt is larger than credit card debt). When it does, you can expect tuition rates to plummet, back in line to their real net present values. In my opinion this could not happen soon enough.

The university comes from an era that never really existed of large, stable corporations providing steady employment to "educated" worker bees. The university was the 0-cost-to-employer filtering system to ensure Big Co highers the best people. That model simply doesnt make sense anymore.

<comment><USER11> >Education debt WILL be made dischargeable in bankruptcy again, there is simply too much pressure.

I'm not sure if that's possible - isn't essentially every graduate bankrupt? Couldn't every student get rid of their debts then?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I agree with Thiel's essential point. We need to take a step back and ask ourselves what benefit is being derived from sending all these kids to college. The kids also need to look carefully at the risk vs cost vs benefit of taking on debt in return for potentially higher future earnings.

Having said that, his statement "If Harvard were really the best education, if it makes that much of a difference, why not franchise it so more people can attend" misses the point entirely. Sure, Harvard probably has above average education. However, the reason it's sought after is because of the perception that all your peers at Harvard will be extremely smart talented individuals. As a society, we're hoping that that by putting all these really smart kids together in the "Harvard environment", they'll go on create things that they wouldn't have been able to on their own.

The point I'm trying to make is that the exclusivity of Harvard isn't "an excuse to do something mean", but rather an effort to create conditions where our smartest youngsters can get together and really change the world. I do, of course, agree that there are many other ways of achieving this goal than just college education.

<comment><USER13> Sharing the "Harvard environment" with talented peers can be pleasant, horizon-expanding, and occasionally inspirational. In my experience, though, it doesn't often inspire young people to change the world. Instead, it introduces them to lucrative career options (e.g., investment banking) available mainly to Ivy League grads. Given the massive salary differential compared to virtually anything else one could choose, most go that route.

<comment><USER14> _Instead, it introduces them to lucrative career options (e.g., investment banking) available mainly to Ivy League grads. Given the massive salary differential compared to virtually anything else one could choose, most go that route._

Entry-level investment banking compensation is pretty low on an hourly basis-- definitely lower than entry-level technology. IBD is about the only six-figure job available out of college, but it's awful when you consider the nature of the work and most people leave the industry within a year, not capitalizing at all on the "exit options"

<comment><USER13> Agreed that the work is not nearly as appealing as an outsider imagines. My point is merely that when I graduated (caveat: ~6 years ago, pre-collapse), a majority (literally) of graduates were going into banking or high-profile consultancies. There is no way all those folks came to Harvard with the goal to join The System four years later, so the net effect of their education was to redirect their ambitions into existing power structures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Money quote from this piece feels relevant: "Once you enable students to borrow $36,000 a year, then magically the costs of a year in college (or for- profit school offering worthless "skills" that do no more for the hapless student than a high school diploma) rise to $36,000"

[http://www.oftwominds.com/blogapril11/consumer-devolution- tw...](http://www.oftwominds.com/blogapril11/consumer-devolution-two4-11.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> I think Thiel is right - sort of. At least, if you consider the large amount of money spend on a college degree in the US. Let me compare this to Germany. In Germany, universities and therefore higher education is free. You just enroll, take classes, pay your rent and after a couple of years, you are done and usually have a degree that is very competitive around the world.

But every student knows that there are areas that lead to high-paying jobs such as engineering, while in other areas such as history, communications, philosophy, languages, you will have trouble finding a job, not even speaking of a high-paying job. Still, people are usually more or less aware of the fact that they might end up having an average-income job.

In the US, higher education is a financial investment where people expect a financial return. In Germany, higher education is mostly an investment of time and people are much more aware of the possible outcomes. We don't have a bubble here.

<comment> barry-cotter In Germany, the number of Abiturients, those who go to college prep schools has been going up for decades. They have also relatively recently opened pure universities up to certain relatively narrow classes of non-Abiturients.

Given that the number of people with college degrees has been increasing steadily by age group in Germany, and that _someone_ is paying for it, i.e. the state, i.e. the taxpayer, I don't see that "bubble" is an inappropriate word.

Germany probably has less of a higher education bubble than any other Western country though, because they have the best apprenticeship and vocational training system in the world. I believe this is only stable because Germany is enormously class and status conscious, and as a result has early streaming. I don't doubt that some potential is wasted, but probably the fact that Hauptschüler are not hindering the eductaion of Realschüler and Gymnasien would justify the system by itself.

<comment><USER17> In Germany you dont even need to go to college to get a good education in your field. They have a system where Companies train new people from school (they have to take tests and stuff to get in) for the job. For 3 years you work in the company, go to school and get paid around 600 EUR a month. After successfully completing that you have a degree that enables you to work as a Software Developer or Media Designer for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For anyone interested in learning more about the education bubble, there is a good article in this month's Fortune magazine about the creation of a new for- profit K-12 school in NYC:

[http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/04/06/chris- whitt...](http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/04/06/chris-whittles- plan-to-make-a-world-class-private-school/)

The article highlights some really interesting and shocking facts about private K-12 education (i.e. Harvard's 2010 acceptance rate was 6.9%, while acceptance to NYC's top private schools combined was 5.0%; Harvard's 2010-11 tuition was $34,976 and Horace Mann's tuition was $35,670).

[http://fortunefeatures.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/avenues_s...](http://fortunefeatures.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/avenues_school_numbers.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER19> A lot of this higher education bubble has to do with unnecessary costs of higher education, like, say textbooks: <http://hubpages.com/hub/College-Text- Books-Rent-or-Buy>

What will disrupt higher education in entirety is a properly done asynchronous class-schedule structure that allows students to take the time they need to finish the course. Coupled with some or full location independence and mandatory collaboration, it could be drastically more economical.

<comment><USER6> I don't have any evidence to back this up but my sense is that the cost of textbooks is actually _falling_ , not rising. Companies like Chegg and Bookrenter have made it cheaper for students and digital textbooks will likely help to accelerate this trend. The major increase in costs have been due to tuition and that shows no signs of abating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> providing access to everyone for something by nature devalues it. as we try to democratize and socialize the world we try to give everything away.

college is just another victim of this. no one wants to tell a parent that their new born child is ugly and no one wants to live in a world where we can't all hope to be anything.

the housing bubble was the result of parents telling their kids to buy homes, because that's the american dream.

if education is a bubble, if housing is a bubble, then the american dream might just be a bubble too.

maybe it's time we invent a new dream.

a long while a go we dreamed of working less. i feel like in a creative economy, one where the generation of creative ideas is of principal, maybe we need more time to be creative and to share.

i think largely as a whole we are at peak capitalism. capitalism seems to best fit when resources are expansive. i feel like in the next 20 years resources will be less scarce than in the previous 20, and that is a strong signal that we no longer need to focus on exploration and expansion as much as we do living within our means.

<comment><USER21> I disagree with this "providing access to everyone for something by nature devalues it"

It's not just that everyone has access. It's also that bubbles create huge numbers of over-valued objects. If these for-profit colleges were cranking out well-trained software engineers we'd see a rise in overall real value (there'd be more technical co-founders available). Instead they're charging students 25k for online classes in degrees that society has no demand for. The same way pyramid schemes sell you junk to sell to your friends. You end up with a bunch of junk you can't sell. The degrees provide little or no real value to the workforce, and they're not even a filter anymore. That's what's really wrong with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I find the discussion here as well as the article myopic in the scope. Programming/Web Startups are just a small part of the world. You still need Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers and Scientists. Sure one can question the utility of spending four years to get a degree in Liberal Arts, but most other subjects require close supervision that one receives in a college education.

</comment><comment><USER23> The bubble in education is not at the Harvard and Stanford level. Membership in that club is probably worth the cost. The bubble is in the lower-ranked schools that cost almost as much but don't deliver the exclusivity of Harvard. The people who will be hurt the most when the bubble pops are those people who overpaid for the knowledge they learned in college: People who attended average state schools who have a $600/month education loan payment for 30 years who have to compete for jobs with people learned the same thing for $600 in total.

Right now, there is no company that can give you for $600 the same education that a state school provides for $100,000. But such companies are coming. Khan Academy already is as good as any school in helping people learn. All that's missing is certification: comprehensive exams given in secure environments like normal standardized tests (SAT, ACT, LSAT, GMAT, ...) Compared to teaching, certification is easy.

The real big bubble in education is at the lower levels, at the elementary, middle, and high school level where schools are even more fungible than at the college level. Kids don't attend a middle school for the prestige. They go to learn. The bubble for the teacher unions will pop when states begin to ask why the state should pay union-level salaries for teachers to lecture when students actually do better with just a laptop and an internet connection.

</comment><comment><USER24> This may already be covered (with 88 comments), but I fear this article will go on deaf ears, not just to education, but to general readers of TC (investors, et al). In the same way that companies use higher education as an over-valued indicator of capability, so do investors use incubators, and suffer from the well-known "Group Think" mentality. The important difference is that you have to pay for higher education, whereas with an incubator you get paid. The other nice part is that you can re-apply to an incubator as many times as you want, and there's no social norm about the age you have to attend, whereas with colleges it's a 1-chance opportunity when you're 18, so if you don't get into Harvard you just don't get in (yes, you can transfer, but it's highly discouraged, and mainly in relation to the money involved).

I believe my only gripe with the article is Thiel says you should not judge Harvard-caliber students if they went to Harvard or not, because we just don't have enough Harvard affiliates. But that's very hypocritical thinking for a venture capitalist, whose community resonates the same sentiment of judging YC-caliber companies when there aren't enough YC-affiliates (cause if that was the case, TechStars and other funds would hold the same esteem).

</comment><comment><USER25> I think there are different facets to the bubble that need to be separated out to talk coherently about its implications...

You can look at the bubble from the vantage point of the schools that are competing to keep up with the spending of the ivys and have overextended themselves: [http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aoglHAxZffTI)

And you can also look at it from the perspective of the students that are emerging from mid or low tier institutions with a hefty chunk of debt relative to their likely earning potential.

Peter's (or Sarah's) focus on the Harvard kids seems to be the least compelling part of a potential education bubble. These are smart kids who either leave school with no debt in the case that they are poor to lower middle class, and with parental support (of the monetary kind) if they're on the other side of the wealth spectrum. So maybe they're "wasting" four years where they could be creating a business, but they're not in dire straights upon graduation or necessarily compelled to sell their souls. Check out Harvard's financial aid policies: [http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/financial_aid/hfai...](http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/financial_aid/hfai/index.html)

I do think there needs to be some different paths put before kids in general as they contemplate "college as the only option" but I don't think Thiel is quite right to target the ivy kids as they have the least reason to fear an education bubble bursting -- because of the lasting [perceived] quality of their degree, their lack of debt in a lot of cases, their campus-born connections to smart and wealthy classmates and alums, and their smarts.

</comment><comment><USER26> Is Peter Thiel qualified to opine on Education? (This is not a snark, but I am genuinely curious to know how to process his opinion.)

<comment><USER27> Yes, because he "predicted" the dot-com bubble and "predicted" the housing bubble. He's also a super smart dude who created PayPal, is extremely rich and successful.

Yes, I'm being snarky. I'm open to his opinion but I also missing where he's qualified to make a more informed opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Thank you bubbles for allowing people to either have work or study. There's all this bubble talk, but when it comes down to it, if everyone really was just doing useful non-bubble stuff most of us in the first world wouldn't have anything to do. Our economists aren't ready for that.

</comment><comment><USER29> People in the valley have this weird notion that what is happening in the valley is happening everywhere. It's not. Most people go to mediocre state schools with a little bit of debt when they graduate, and then live in that area for the rest of their life. Most people don't go to Stanford, Harvard, Yale or Princeton and rack up $80k+ in student loans.

The real bubble is groupthink.

</comment><comment><USER30> Brilliant and thought provoking, heretical words. Exclusionary access, prohibitive cost, insular culture, overgrown complexity concealing fundamental ideas...

"It's something about the scarcity and the status. In education your value depends on other people failing. Whenever Darwinism is invoked it's usually a justification for doing something mean. It's a way to ignore that people are falling through the cracks, because you pretend that if they could just go to Harvard, they'd be fine."

</comment><comment><USER31> Makes sense. Same symptoms as the housing bubble.

Housing bubble - people have a right to own a home, regardless of financial merit. Education bubble - people have a right to a college education, regardless of academic or financial merit.

Housing bubble - massive federal infusion of cash that drove short-term costs artificially low, spiking sales prices while putting people in large, long- term debt for something they don't necessarily need (ownership - people do need housing). Education bubble - massive federal infusion of cash that drives short-term costs of education artificially low (student loans), while putting people in large, long-term debt for something they don't necessarily need.

Common theme - long term infusion of federal cash into markets leads to profiteering at the expense of the average American citizen. (What should we expect for health care?) In particular, the artificial reduction of interest rates allows sellers to charge higher prices for the same services. The services provider collects more money. The purchaser pays the same (or potentially more if their interest rate is not fixed).

Also, and economics, duh, artificially low costs lead to artificially high demand, which without any sort of quality control, looks an awful lot like a bubble.

</comment><comment><USER15> Makes a lot of sense — especially given the amount of remedial education a lot of not-particularly-cheap colleges are having to undertake. Seems plausible that a lot of the investment (both in terms of municipal and state subsidies, as well as private debt) being made now won't bear a meaningful return for a long time, if at all.

</comment><comment><USER32> This article is horrible.

It's a superficial story about Peter Thiel and Founders Fund framed as a controversial argument about the value of higher education. It really doesn't do anything more than pose the questions and include a few quotes from Peter Thiel.

Techcrunch trolls the internet once again.

</comment><comment><USER33> In the end a University degree is just a piece of paper. What matters is the quality of the knowledge and mentoring you receive from your lecturers and from the university as a whole.

I think this situation is a result of the financial crash; Thiel is right, people have fled to something they see as a safe investment to increase their personal worth. People are going (back) to university so they have the qualitifications they need to get a job that would have previously required very little in the way of formal education. The market is flooded with educated job-seekers, so people must now set themselves apart with something else.

</comment><comment><USER34> Thought bubble: Companies use universities as a filtering mechanism, like recruiters. But recruiters get paid and universities do not. Conclusion: universities should get into the recruitment business.

</comment><comment><USER35> Thiel's going to have a lot of success with this first batch - if I may say so myself, being one of the finalists. It's remarkably generous of him to offer 100k without any equity exchange whatsoever - the terms are far better than those offered by YComb and arguably quite equal in beneficial environment acquired - particularly as it's for 2 years and not a quarter-year mini-stint. We'll see what happens in two years ; )

</comment><comment><USER36> He has a strong opinion and this will always generate a big debate. But what I like the most, is that by talking of the education bubble and creating an option for students (the 20 kids program with $100k), we're going to test his theory soon. If that works, how about some of the top education programs replicating his model?

</comment><comment><USER37> I plan to write a blog post about this later but I'm starting to think that the term "College Drop Out" has started to become more valuable than "College Graduate." This may not be completely true right now but in 5 years when today's 25 year olds are hiring, the term may possibly be more valuable.

</comment><comment><USER38> Something that is hinted at the end of the article but not fully addressed: the risk of creating a new elite (if elitism is the problem) is there just as much in the new system (such as Thiel is) as it was the original institution.

<comment><USER30> There will always be an elite. But society needs a humble, wiser elite, who lead by example, talent, and perseverance; leaders who provide valuable insight, rather than protect their advantage by raising walls. Ken Thompson is the best kind of elite, an elite mind who gave us the foundational tools to build a whole new industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I couldn't agree more.

</comment><comment><USER40> In a free competitive situation the government if it wanted to give value to higher education while hobbling other competitive items would make higher education at state schools somewhat free thus reducing the competitive edge of for-profits while also reducing the debt load per student which spurs job creation because more college graduates can afford to start businesses and startups..

At least in the USA the main reason why college is not free is that the major debate in congress occurred during the years after Vietnam Veterans returned and US congress people had a cultural bias towards giving those returning from Vietnam and those who did not fight in Vietnam a 'free college education' and like all political laws very hard to over-turn through a renewed debate..

</comment><comment><USER41> Thiel is wrong - education is valuable, college very much so.

But an English degree is not higher education, it is a fiction we created for those who want to go to college but can't hack it in the real world.

A STEM or a law degree will make you a lot of money.

<comment><USER42> > Thiel is wrong - education is valuable, college very much so.

Depending on your definition of "education", I agree with the first part of your statement. The second part of your statement I wholeheartedly disagree with. Education in general is a very valuable thing, but a classroom education is not the only one, and college _can_ be valuable but is not necessarily so. I'm a high-school dropout, yet I've never regretted it for a second -- I have a good deal of education, but it comes from self-exploration and experimentation and it's shown itself to be quite valuable so far. My case is by no means the norm, but propping college up as the only path is pretty silly.

<comment><USER41> Have you been to college?

If not, how do you know if you would have learned at lot there or nothing at all.

I can't blame you for dropping out of high school, but please don't tell me what college is or isn't if you have never gone to one.

<comment><USER43> I downvoted you because I felt that the tone of your comment is more aggressive than a discussion should be. It's just mean.

It's like saying to martian geologist, have you been to mars? If not, how do you know what rocks are there at all?

No, but that person has parsed data from probes and knows what s/he is talking about.

It's like saying that while planning a moon mission for the first time. Have you gone to the far side of the moon?

No, but we will.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>

The thing you're advocating is dogma. This person has lived through a lot of things and can offer a unique perspective based on his experiences and the data in front of him.

So, why should you not listen to him?</comment>


When you strike at a king you must kill him. - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/09/emerson_and_oli_1.html <comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps related: [http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/perm.php?c=133&q=105](http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/perm.php?c=133&q=105)

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

</comment><comment><USER2> Embrace, Extend, Extinguish... worked great for Microsoft for decades. How to extend that to web apps though?

<comment><USER3> Silverlight is EEE for the web.

First, MSFT deploys Silverlight clients broadly. In this phase, they will do just about anything to see it deployed on any platform available, specifically including Linux and MacOS. Continue until essentially all new computers include a Silverlight client.

Secondly, persuade developers that Silverlight is a viable platform. This requires (1) - mass developer adoption of a sparsely-deployed or Windows-only web platform won't happen, not even with MSFT's marketing muscle. Continue until Silverlight achieves Flash-like ubiquity.

Thirdly, either through patents, DMCA, obscurity, or all three, kill off any non-MSFT Silverlight server-side solutions. Ensure that Silverlight app quality is superior to web apps by, if necessary, sabotaging web standards efforts and keeping IE buggy.

At that point, if you want to deploy a 'serious' app over the Internet, you'll (hopefully, from MSFT's perspective) feel strongly compelled to pay the MSFT tax and buy Silverlight servers. (For extra fun, in a few years, maybe MSFT chokes off non-Windows Silverlight client implementations. That's extra- speculative, however. My core speculation is that Silverlight is best understood as MSFT's play for the datacenter.)

A lot of money has been made by companies who successfully set up 'toll booths' between buyers and sellers. MSFT's OS monopoly was based upon providing the means for application developers to deliver their wares to consumers. Game console maker's profits are based upon their ability to restrict access to the gamers who own their consoles to companies who give them money. (I'm not saying this is unethical, just how the money is made.) The web undermines this model; the standards are open and (pretty) simple, clients and servers are freely available, and therefore there's no way to erect a toll booth between app developers/content publishers and consumers.

It looks to me that MSFT would like to change that. (So would Adobe, but they're a lot less able to pull it off.)

Anyway, a little paranoia for you there. Enjoy!

<comment><USER4> This isn't all that paranoid; Adobe's business model for Flash is similar, although they haven't attacked Red5 yet.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: App that suggests Amazon products. - <AUTHOR>

I've built an app that suggests Amazon products after you've provided your Twitter username. It fetches all your tweets and calculates the tf-idf of the last tweet.
URL: suggester.me
Something similar was built by a HN member a while ago, but I've contacted him and he told me he was no longer working on it, so I decided to build my own.
Feedback would be greatly appreciated.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, the username needs to be without the "@". <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://www.suggester.me></comment>


DNA: The Code of Life - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/dna-the-code-of-life-12db4a17c66d <comment><AUTHOR> The original 'DNA seen through the eyes of a coder' writing that led to this talk: [https://ds9a.nl/amazing-dna/](https://ds9a.nl/amazing-dna/)</comment>


Robust-First Computing: Distributed City Generation (2015) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkSXERxucPc <comment><AUTHOR> A Movable Feast Machine [1] is a "Robust First" asynchronous distributed fault tolerant cellular-automata-like computer architecture.

The video "Distributed City Generation" [2] demonstrates how you can program a set of Movable Feast Machine rules that build a self-healing city that fills all available space with urban sprawl, and even repairs itself after disasters!

The paper "Local Routing in a new Indefinitely Scalable Architecture" [2] by Trent Small explains how those rules work, how the city streets adaptively learn how to route the cars to nearby buildings they desire to find, and illustrated the advantages of "Robust First" computing:

Abstract: Local routing is a problem which most of us face on a daily basis as we move around the cities we live in. This study proposes several routing methods based on road signs in a procedurally generated city which does not assume knowledge of global city structure and shows its overall efficiency in a variety of dense city environments. We show that techniques such as Intersection-Canalization allow for this method to be feasible for routing information arbitrarily on an architecture with limited resources.

This talk "Robust-first computing: Demon Horde Sort" [4] by Dave Ackley describes an inherently robust sorting machine, like "sorting gas", implemented with the open source Movable Feast Machine simulator, available on github [5].

A Movable Feast Machine is similar in many ways to traditional cellular automata, except for a few important differences that are necessary for infinitely scalable, robust first computing.

First, the rules are applied to cells in random order, instead of all at once sequentially (which requires double buffering). Many rule application events may execute in parallel, as long as their "light cones" or cells visible to the executing rules do not overlap.

Second, the "light cone" of a rules, aka the "neighborhood" in cellular automata terms, is larger than typical cellular automata, so the rule can see other cells several steps away.

Third, the rules have write access to all of the cells in the light cone, not just the one in the center like cellular automata rules. So they can swap cells around to enable mobile machines, which is quite difficult in cellular automata rules like John von Neumann's classic 29 state CA. [6] [7]

Forth, diffusion is built in. A rule may move the particle to another empty cell, or swap it with another particle in a different cell. And most rules automatically move the particle into a randomly chosen adjacent cell, by default. So the particles behave like gas moving with brownian motion, unless biased by "smart" rules like Maxwell's Demon, like the "sorting gas" described in the Demon Hoard Sort video.

In this video "Robust-first computing: Announcing ULAM at ECAL 2015" [8], David Ackley explains why "Robust First" computing and computing architectures like Movable Feast Machines are so incredibly important for scaling up incredibly parallel hardware.

I think this is incredibly important stuff in the long term, because we've hit the wall with determinism, and the demos are so mind blowing and visually breathtaking, that I want to try programming some of my own Movable Feast Machine systems!

[1] [http://movablefeastmachine.org/](http://movablefeastmachine.org/)

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

[3] [http://www.cs.unm.edu/~ackley/papers/paper_tsmall1_11_24.pdf](http://www.cs.unm.edu/~ackley/papers/paper_tsmall1_11_24.pdf)

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=helScS3coAE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=helScS3coAE)

[5] [https://github.com/DaveAckley/MFM](https://github.com/DaveAckley/MFM)

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

[7] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_construc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_constructor)

[8] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR7o8GPgSLk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR7o8GPgSLk)</comment>


Microsoft launches "Scroogled" campaign - <AUTHOR> http://scroogled.com/ <comment><USER2> I admit I'm a bit confused because in Microsoft's own video on that page they highlight Google's text that says, "Payment is one of several factors used to rank these results"

Well, unless I'm missing something...no duh. Everyone knows that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, at least Microsoft is now open about their FUD campaigns against Google, and isn't just trying to do it from behind the curtain and in secret collaborations with others, like some of the campaigns against Google that they've started in Europe. So I guess, I can appreciate that...I think.</comment>


Mozilla letter to Amazon Ring: stop sharing information with police - <AUTHOR> https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/tell-amazon-ring-stop-sharing-information-police-services/ <comment><USER2> A really odd post. I am open to the argument but don't think Mozilla makes it here. The only piece of evidence they cite for harm— hyperlinked to the phrase "facilitate racial profiling"— leads to a think piece by someone a little creeped out by posts on Nextdoor, which doesn't mention Ring at all.

I get that people don't love surveillance. But the evidence is not here that a homeowner or renter's decision to install a cloud-connected security camera on private property makes them or their community less safe. Unless you make a slew of assumptions that go undefended here, namely: cops are natural aggressors, having these cameras will attract cops, and the harm which these aggressive cops are likely to cause when attracted is greater than the combined deterrent effect of the camera's presence against other crime + their value for genuine investigative work on crimes which were not deterred. Again, I'm open to the argument, but you need to present really good evidence, not just virtue signal. Because I don't like getting packages stolen off my porch, and Ring seems like a straightforward way to prevent that.

<comment><USER3> I do not feel that "Cops are natural aggressors" needs further litigation but agree on the rest. However, how do you find Ring cameras protect your packages from theft? Do package thieves notice the camera and avoid your house, or do you send the video to the police who find the person based on their appearance or vehicle? If the former, why does the camera need to even be functional? And if the latter, why is the "cloud" necessary compared to a Ubiquiti style camera, or if you prefer a cloud camera, one from a company other than Ring who has shown extreme eagnerness to use close relationships with law enforcement as a form of marketing?

<comment><USER4> I'm a bit confused by the question. Why should people buying home security products see a close relationship with law enforcement as a negative?

<comment><USER5> You have just repeated their question in the negative without answering it. Apparently everybody has an answer they find self-evident despite it being opposite. Also, there were other questions. (I'm aware you are not the OP.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Keep in mind all Amazon/Ring are doing is making it a bit easier for users and the police to share this data.

I have Nest cameras and have shared footage with the police on numerous occasions.

Unless these camera companies deny me access to my footage, they can't do anything to prevent me from choosing to share it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cameras record facts. What if body cam makers stopped providing police body cams?

I can see not sharing the videos to the public, who are notorious for bad and racist judgement, but if the police are racist, that's a police problem, not an evidence problem.

<comment><USER8> > Cameras record facts.

What I do in the bathroom is factual, but just because something is factual doesn't mean the police have a right to see it.

> What if body cam makers stopped providing police body cams?

Are you proposing that Ring owners should be subject to the same standard of transparency as people that the government issues guns to?

> if the police are racist, that's a police problem, not an evidence problem.

Uh, it's a societal problem, that society (which includes Amazon) needs to address.

<comment><USER7> Ring cameras record in public, not your bathroom. What a straw man.

<comment><USER8> It's not a straw man, because I'm not accusing anyone of making a pro-giving- police-recordings-of-bathrooms argument. On the contrary, I'm assuming we all agree that giving police recordings of what we do in the bathroom would be invasive. This is the basis of a further argument.

Ironically, accusing me of making a straw man argument in this case, is a straw man argument. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's cool to signal your virtue - until you are the victim of a crime! Then the police better get the video from cameras in the neighborhood.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's worth pointing out that for many home security products, sharing information with the police is a feature--even a selling point.

</comment><comment><USER11> There's no way that Ring is going to stop people from sharing videos.

But making it easy to push a button to submit video to police does enable casual racism.

"Oh, there's a suspicious person, I'll submit this video to the police. _Click_ " That person has made a judgement based on looks alone. If it were harder to submit the video (download, attach to email, look up police email address, etc) then there'd be a lot less of that.

And for people who are serious about sharing video with the police, those extra steps aren't really an impediment.

In short, I think their hearts were in the right places, but the ramifications weren't fully thought out here.

</comment><comment><USER12> citations needed did an incredible episode on the porch pirate narrative. Listen to Episode 97: Porch Pirate Panic and the Paranoid Racism of Snitch Apps by Citations Needed Podcast on #SoundCloud [https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-97-porch- pira...](https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-97-porch-pirate-panic- and-the-paranoid-racism-of-snitch-apps)

</comment><comment><USER13> Why is Mozilla getting involved here at all? I would rather my browser manufacturer stay out of politics and activism. It is a customer's choice to share footage with the police. Why wouldn't we want to help police identify criminals more quickly?

<comment><USER4> The Mozilla Foundation is organized to be an internet activism company. They spun off their browser development efforts into a subsidiary (confusingly named the Mozilla Corporation) so that they could focus on activism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I support this piecemeal protest, but ultimately we really just need to defund and abolish the police in the US as they are known today and replace them with a new and different organization dedicated to public safety, that is actually legally required to help people (the police are not), and that has huge consequences for integrity failures such as lying.

<comment><USER4> The "not legally required to help" thing sounds silly in the abstract, but most people interested in police reform are going to want to keep it. A police force that's _required_ to help people is, by definition, a police force that can be sued for not policing aggressively enough.

<comment><USER14> Most of the issues with police today are not that they are enforcing the law too aggressively, it is that they are closing out call tickets too aggressively.

They are entirely different things: [https://sneak.berlin/20200628/the- problem-with-police-in-ame...](https://sneak.berlin/20200628/the-problem-with- police-in-america/)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: social polling made beautiful - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/poutsch-have-question-for/id655808281

<comment><AUTHOR> We are also proud to announce that Lara Stone just created an account. We think it's even cooler than Paul Graham...

</comment><comment><USER2> True flat design, none of that nearly flat nonsense :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> beautiful app. Nice job!</comment>


Bullshit - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2011/12/29/bullshit <comment><USER2> With Apple, I'm the customer, not a marketer. This makes me comfortable with our relationship. I don't really care about Ping or app store approval policies, so, meh...

With Google, I can see their ability to become a shady company pretty easily, but it is just too damn easy to switch search engines. Bing isn't so bad you know.

But Facebook knows so much about me, and the network effects are so strong -- this is the company I feel most unpleasantly stuck to. Not "Comcast stuck" mind you, but still, more "stuck" than I'd like. It's like my friends keep having parties at a bar I'm not super fond of... and I keep going.

<comment><USER3> > but it is just too damn easy to switch search engines.

and personal email, and collaboration tools, and project mailing lists, and photo service, and maps service, and video hosting..

If you consider google as the search engine maybe not, but if you consider google the company the it's downright scary how hard it would be to get out of their grasp, IMO.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it would be that hard. You're one MX record change away from changing your mailhost without anyone ever knowing. You can continue using your gmail.com address without ever seeing ads by connecting with IMAP. You can get maps from anywhere, including Open Street Map. You can move your photos from Picassa to your own machine and to Flickr, if you desire. Google Chat is XMPP, so you can get a new "chat provider" and still talk to all your old contacts.

People use Google's services because they're excellent, not because they are locked in. Google makes it very easy to leave and take your data with you. Google contributes as much of their internal software to the Free Software community as they can. They do need to make money, but they're trying to do it the old fashioned way: make products people they like. And that's refreshing in a world where Microsoft makes their own email protocol and Apple sells computers that you can't hack.

This is not "downright scary". It's downright refreshing.

(Yes, advertising is an annoying business model, but I don't think it will last much longer for Google. People hate advertising and the feeling of being "told what to think". The good news is that Google's products will still work even if you have to pay a few bucks a month for them. Right now, that's not in Google's interests, because advertising money is the easiest money to make. But in a few years, I think we'll see less advertising and more customer focus, as advertisers realize that nobody wants their overpriced shit anymore.)

<comment><USER3> I believe you are arguing against something I didn't posit. Google certainly has a lecit business and has gained success because of good products, and it's easy to "liberate" a lot of data.

My point was that while changing search engine is easy:

* migrating all your data is way harder

* opting out of some google online services (e.g. maps) does not free me from third parties relying on them (e.g. android, iphone)

* I can't change the habits of the rest of the world, so I'm stuck with them if I want to join ai-class.org, read something on blogger or peruse a project mailing list on groups.

* the fact that the services are good _is_ a lockin, as it makes it harder to get off of them

Just this. Changing search engine is easy, opting out of google's products is, at least for me, much much harder.

I love google the company and their products, it just seems nearly impossible to get out of their reach without resorting to RMS-style "I email myself web pages I want to read" estremisms.

<comment><USER4> So your complaint is that other people use Blogger blogs, so you can't opt out of Google? That's interesting, but it seems like what you really want is to opt out of tracking in general. Google tracks you, sure, but so do a bunch of shade-ball sites you've never heard of. Why would you trust a company you've never heard of over a company that actively lets you opt out of tracking and migrate away from their services?

I don't think you need to email yourself web pages, but I do think you need to use Tor or some other anonymous HTTP proxy. If you are paranoid about the "paper trail" that browsing the web leavers, then you need to take measures to make that paper trail less useful. Complaining about "lock in" to services that other people uses, though, is just confusing the issue; the Internet has never let you choose what service providers other people use, and you will have to live with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Marco, Gruber, MG have their own BS :

      *Android is NOT open

It gets stated as absolute fact only by Apple and its hardcore followers (Steve Jobs said Windows is open not Android first, DF, MG and MA have been religiously snarking out on any chance to declare Android not open.)

It is BS because all 3 of them do this only to promote what they subscribe to - i.e. they have no consequence from Android not being open (they use and promote iOS which is epitome of closed which in turn means they don't really care about open - they only care about pointing it out in an attempt to nullify the claimed Android advantage against iOS - hey it's not really open anyways, so get in on our team. Which to me is a obnoxious or even a little evil, cotradictory and self-promoting reason to complain about not being open.)

<comment><USER6> In all seriousness. What does "open" even mean? I've noticed that no one is saying "open source". Not that I know what that really means either. Android isn't developed in the open they just release the source code. That's the only real difference from Windows 7. So is this all just relative to the phone market? It's "open" as far as phones go?

I get the feeling "open" is not something you can _be_. It's a continuum. Things can be more or less "open" but nothing can actually _be_ "open".

<comment><USER7> Android _is_ Open Source[1], which has a real definition[2] that means something. You can fork it, and create your own distribution (as Amazon has shown).

It is open in other ways, too - Android phones can load applications from sources other than the Market (unless that feature has been disabled by your carrier - which goes back to the first point).

Most Android phones have a sdcard slot, too, which allows you to get your photos (and other files) off the phone easily. For many people that's what they mean when they say it is more open.

Others like the multiple form factors, or the different sizes. These aren't just theoretical things - I've heard people use them as examples of "openness".

Of course "open" is a continuum, but there _are_ ways that Android is "open" that really matter.

[1] Android 3.x wasn't open source. As noted elsewhere, that is a legitimate complaint that applied between February and November 2011. It is worth noting that Android 3.x was a tablet only release, though - Android 2.3 (which is Open Source) remained the OS for phones until Android 4.0 was released, which unified the tablet & phone streams.

[2] <http://www.opensource.org/osd.html>

<comment><USER8> Out of curiosity, would you call OS X "open"? You can find enough of the source for OS X to create a booting OS here: <http://opensource.apple.com/> . Obviously, this isn't _all_ of OS X, but then not _all_ of the Android OS is "open" either.

I'm not trying to be contrarian, but I think the people criticizing Adroid for not being "open" are primarily picking on precisely the vagueness that you have highlighted. There _are_ ways that Android is "open" that really matter...to _you_. For other people, there are ways that Android is not "open" that really matter. Just ask Stallman, for example.

<comment><USER9> no, OSX is not open. you can't take the published source code and compile it into a useable copy of OSX.

you can take the published android source code and create a useable copy of android from it. the entire operating system is there. android is open source. the people criticizing android for not being open are either lying, or have forgotten that we have moved on from the 3.0 branch which was not open.

<comment><USER8> You can take the published source code and compile a useable copy of OS X. In fact, for many years the OpenDarwin project did just that. What you could _not_ do is run the Aqua GUI or many of the default applications that come with a Mac bought in the store.

But that's the point. Sure, you can compile and run "Android", but is it the same as the OS that runs on a phone I buy from Verizon? Android phones sell with proprietary software that is most definitely _not_ open. Macintosh computers sell with proprietary software that is most definitely _not_ open. But enough elements of both _are_ open to the point that you can boot a device and accomplish real work.

<comment><USER5> _What you could not do is run the Aqua GUI or many of the default applications that come with a Mac bought in the store_

Which isn't very useful at all. Android on the other hand allows you to run Market, Apps, Amazon Apps, your own in house apps on your device of choice by using the provided source code. You will have to write your drivers may be but that's not nearly the same as write your CF or Aqua or OpenGL implementation plus a ton of other things to make stock OS X apps works. That goes into practically impossible category.

So in other less terse wording - you can call Darwin open source but you cannot really call OS X open source.

<comment><USER8> Sure, that's essentially my point: Parts of the Android stack are _open_ and parts of the OS X stack are _open_. Whether or not the _important_ parts are open depends on who you are. Take, for example, the other story on HN today about HTC finally opening their bootloader. That, to me, is much more important than any other part of Android being _open_.

<comment><USER10> "Open", in this context, means open source. HTC's bootloader has always been open source, as far as I know. It's been set up to only boot signed kernels, but that's "open" as in, "customers can modify their devices" not as in, "customers can view and modify the source code we put on the device."

HTC's locking the bootloader isn't exactly an issue with Android's openness. It's an issue with the openness of HTC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Facebook: "Our users want to interact with brands."

As distasteful as the hacker crowd may find it, this is probably a true statement.

A significant number of people (in the developed world) really do construct a large part of their personal identity by buying branded products from companies in order to signal something about themselves.

There's a section on this on the Wikipedia page for "Brand":

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand#Attitude_branding_and_ico...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand#Attitude_branding_and_iconic_brands)

<comment><USER12> What yeswecan said, but to expand: people _like_ brands - they will gladly and openly declare their brand allegiances on their profiles. We saw this _before_ Pages even came out.

What people _don't_ want to do is to be constantly bombarded by bullshit communications from said brands. In many ways, openly declaring your brand preferences is signaling - the "liking" of brands is for _their friends_ , not an enthusiastic wish to receive "special offers" from you. What they dislike even more are the highly intrusive ways brands are marketing themselves on Facebook.

It's great that you're running a promotion for a brand I like. No, I will not let you post to my wall as me. No, I will not spam 15 of my friends with your stupid offer before actually _receiving_ said promo. No, I don't want to be forced to "Like" your stupid brand before I can even look at your page.

Brands, I want to receive pertinent information from you. If Starbucks is opening a new store in my area, I totally want to hear about it. What I don't want to hear are bullshit "news stories" concocted by your marketing department that is entirely content-free and screams like a cheap attempt to keep your name in my head.

<comment><USER13> But it works, which is why they do it.

<comment><USER14> I work with some brands on trying to measure this and in many cases I'm not sure it does work.

The typical process works like this:

1\. Brand creates facebook page

2\. People who really, really love the brand connect with the page.

3\. The brand observes that people who have connected with them on social media are excellent customers.

4\. The brand tries to increase the number of connected users by offering promotions and similar.

5\. The new connections do not have the same value as the originals because they are attracted only by the offers and promotions. Which the brand then needs to keep offering otherwise "engagement" and other similar metrics drop off.

6\. The original connections, the brands best and most enthusiastic customers, are now trained to only purchase when a discount is offered. Margins suffer all round.

It can appear that social media offers an easy way to create revenue. The long term effects are much harder to measure (because there is a huge lag between action and measurement) but they are often negative.

<comment><USER15> Everyone stops thinking about it after 4, because connections are measurable and thus reportable by the media planners at whatever agency the brand has hired to do their social. It's simply a metric and few people at real companies think about it, they just see the numbers and think it's working. This is because agencies tell them it will and that's the worst part about it all.

Social's value is seeing how people react to your brand, absorbing their feedback, connecting directly... but the planners have reduced it to numbers, like they do everything, and sucked the life out it.

<comment><USER14> I completely agree. It looks like it is working and agencies/whoever is running social don't look any deeper because why would you when everything is fine?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> When I think of something being "bullshit", I think it is totally false. But many of these points are part-truths, not complete falsehoods.

For example, Google tracks lots of personal data to make their products better. So the sentence "We solicit all of your personal information and track everything you do to make things better for you" is partially true. Of course, something is in it for Google too. When they add new features to a product driven by personal data mining, they seek to grow market share. They also use your personal data to target ads at you better. And they may be using it for further research projects that you don't know about.

But the statement has a lot of truth to it. That's not the normal definition of "bullshit".

<comment><USER17> The sentence from Google is a falsehood. It claims that the tracking is done for the user, and implies that this is their only intention. The actual truth is that Google only does what's "good" for the user as long as it improves their market position and/or makes them money. To have a position of "well, they do care about theirs users, even if it is to make money off of them" is intellectually dishonest because you're ignoring the implications of this -- that Google, in the end, has a drive to improve its own profits and market share. Obviously Google is made up of lots of different people and there are non-corporate wings that do actual good things, but this doesn't excuse the basic profit motive that must exist. Google doesn't care if you're getting the best experience from Facebook... they still want you to use Google+. They only want to target ads at me so that I click on them and they get more money.

Google cares about my online wellbeing as much as Colgate cares about my teeth.

<comment><USER7> Now that _is_ Bullshit.

Yes, Google makes money from their advertising.

But Google does things that directly limit their ability to make money from advertising, when those decisons are in the interest of consumers.

Take the whole design and UX of Chrome. There are many, many ways Google could have changed the design to make more money from it, and yet they haven't because they aren't in the interests of the users.

Additionally many (both at Google and elsewhere) believe (and can show evidence) that advertising can _improve_ the user experience when it is done properly.

Companies (especially those with a share structure like Google's) can exist to care about more than just making money.

<comment><USER17> Also, could you provide an example of where advertising improves the user experience?

<comment><USER18> In today's heavily SEOd world, sometimes the AdWords ads are actually more helpful than the first 10 results. It's always a sad moment when that happens, but in certain verticals it's becoming almost inevitable despite everyone's best efforts.

An example (there are probably many better): I was looking for spas in London the other day, and a lot of the results seemed pretty dodgy - tantric therapy? no thanks! - but the ads for Groupon and competing services reminded me that I might be able to get a good daily deal and led me to explore quite a few options that weren't in the search results.

Disclaimer: I work for Google, but not on any advertising-related products (unless you want to take the stand that _every_ Google product is advertising- related; thought I'd head off that reply in advance).

<comment><USER19> Similarly with health-related queries. When you have a serious problem, you're after any kind of information that might help. In my personal case, several of the ads returned more interesting info than the first few pages of algorithm- ranked results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You forgot the biggest bullshit of all, Marco.

Hacker News users:

I'm so mad that the government is doing <xyz>!

I'm so mad that big business is doing <xyz>!

I'm so mad that venture capitalists are doing <xyz>!

I'm so mad that angel investors are doing <xyz>!

I'm so mad that <xyz> got funding!

I'm so mad that language <abc> doesn't do <xyz>!

I'm so mad that I can't jailbreak <xyz>!

I'm so mad that I'm actually expected to pay for <xyz>!

I'm so mad that more people don't visit my blog!

I'm so mad that so many people visit blog <xyz>!

I'm so mad that person <xyz> is a jerk!

So what did you build today?

Nothing. I can't focus.

<comment><USER21> If you think Hacker News sucks that bad, you're free to go read reddit and bitch about the users there. This comment is shitty and cynical and you should feel bad about it.

<comment><USER22> Compare:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=by%3Ae...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=by%3Aedw519&sortby=points+desc)

to:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=by%3Af...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=by%3Afunkah&sortby=points+desc&start=0)

A superficial cheap shot would be to note that you have to go _nine pages_ into Ed's results to find a comment scored as low as 'funkah's top-scored comment. Less superficial observations follow readily from actually reading the two sets of comments.

Veteran status readily accounts for the spectacularly high amount of karma Ed has here. That and name recognition surely biases the score on any given recent Ed comment upwards. But the difference in tone, effort, and craft between Ed's comments and 'funkah's is hard to miss; put more succinctly, the reason Ed has an _average_ comment score of _27_ (27!) and 'funkah has an average of 2 is that Ed doesn't write things like "This comment is shitty and cynical and you should feel bad about it." He's more likely to draw an ASCII art picture.

I point this out mostly because 15 minutes spent reading the best of Ed on HN is time well spent, and so there you have it: a convenient link off this stupid thread.

<comment><USER23> Maybe I am missing your point, but I think that judging comments on the basis of their authors karma is a bad idea.

<comment><USER22> If we're talking about my comments, I agree. If we're talking about Ed's, no. I'm not interested in a nerdy argument about whether we should have karma at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There was a very good talk at 28c3 that should remember everyone, that Apple and Google are not working for the public interest (as some fans still believe)

Partly NSFW:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh07lA9EmIc>

or:

<http://ondemand.28c3.fem-net.de/events/4676.html>

<comment><USER25> Those guys are funny! "They sell a product! How evil!"

<comment><USER26> Read the comments on this page, most of the criticism here is just that. "You are the product", thus everything is bad. Google/Apple make good stuff, so they're evil, hold power and are "dangerous"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I always, always, always find what I want from Google. So whatever they are doing is, in some way, for my benefit.

And even if I was ready to pay for every website/service I use (which I'm not), ads are not going away. So when they do whatever they are doing to show me better ads I'd say that's on my benefit too.

I'm not a Google unconditional fan (I hate Android, love iOS) and certainly they can do better. But implying they don't benefit the end user is what I find bullshit-y.

And I think that's a very poorly written article, btw. Marco can do a lot better.

</comment><comment><USER28> I know this guy is one of the HN celebrity set, but can we please modify that title to something more meaningful?

Something like:

"Bullshit - what companies really mean?"

</comment><comment><USER29> Deeply agree on that list.

But there are _some_ o at least _one_ company that I'd actually trust more than others, and support, and that's Mozilla. Because there's no share holders. Because it's owned by non-profit. And because their track record is perfect so far. Everything's open. All the development is in the open, not just the code.

Everything's made for our best interest actually.

<comment><USER30> What about Opera?

Their software is unfortunately proprietary, but I trust them. As far as I know, they never sold any data they got though their proxies with Opera Mini. And they got a lot.

<comment><USER29> I'm liking the opera guys. they do good stuff and they're small, yet still alive.

That being said, it doesn't make them good on the open source front. They're proprietary. They don't develop in the open.

So while I like them and their product, I don't trust them the way I can trust Mozilla.

In other words:

I don't trust Google, MS, Opera, or any other such company. They make good products (yes, even MS), but again it's a different matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Devoid of anything new or insightful, this article sounds like a teen being 'edgy'.

<comment><USER32> My thoughts exactly. It feels like upvotes for the author, not the content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Did marco make his blog much more link-baity, or has it always been like this? It seems like he is playing to the crowd now.

<comment><USER34> I don't know, but I can't believe I'm becoming one of those old fogies who's getting tired of blog posts with *shit in the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Does Apple actually claim that their app review process is in _everyone's_ best interests, or just their customers (which is frequently at 180-degree odds with sketchy devs)?

</comment><comment><USER36> Apple's bullshit is strictly business. Google's and Facebook's bullshits affects peoples privacy, and, if they live in a country that values privacy, actually violates their fundamental rights.

Facebook and Google are engaged in open warfare against social values and legal restrictions that are prevalent in most of the world (especially outside the US), and the lies they tell about it can not simply be categorized as "bullshit" you can decide to tolerate on a individual basis.

<comment><USER37> Do you have any citations for this? I'm curious to see how Google is unknowingly violating people's privacy to the point that it's borderline illegal in certain countries.

Facebook on the other hand, I can easily believe they're doing that.

<comment><USER38> > Do you have any citations for this? I'm curious to see how Google is > unknowingly violating people's privacy to the point that it's borderline > illegal in certain countries.

There's nothing unknowing or borderline about it.

Canada's privacy commissioner rules Google violated Canadians fundamental right to privacy: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/oct/19/google- stre...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/oct/19/google-street-view- privacy-canada)

France fines Google over privacy violations: [http://mashable.com/2011/03/21/france-fine-google-street- vie...](http://mashable.com/2011/03/21/france-fine-google-street-view/)

Korean police raid Google offices in Seoul over privacy violations: [http://gawker.com/5798135/police-raid-google-for-privacy- vio...](http://gawker.com/5798135/police-raid-google-for-privacy- violations++in-korea)

FTC settles with Google over privacy violations: [http://wjlta.wordpress.com/2011/11/18/ftc-settlement-over- go...](http://wjlta.wordpress.com/2011/11/18/ftc-settlement-over-google-buzzs- privacy-violations-gets-stamp-of-approval/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> And my personal favourite:

"A single word expletive as a headline isn't just a way of getting cheap pageviews"

</comment><comment><USER40> Microsoft must be ticked off that they were left out of the list.

<comment><USER41> What is a Microsoft?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I can think of this as well.

an "IT security company" : 1 - We secure your network 2 - Our site is down for maintenance

</comment><comment><USER43> Just wondering, why are we valuing this blog post that talks about a first world problem and brings no solution or anything critic or productive? Are we biased against Marco.org?

<comment><USER44> I'm confused, what is wrong with talking about a first world problem? and what do you mean by "Are we biased against Marco.org"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Yes, it's true the things listed are bullshit. Yes, I guess we can take it or leave it.

Sometimes the "take it or leave it" position ends up being presented in a way that it is framed that those of us who choose not to partake in the rape of our liberties are backwards luddites (non-facebook member here, also got their domains blocked to kill their insidious tracking). I hope that criticism of those who say "no" is not where this article series (if that's what it is) is headed.

<comment><USER46> They're all bullshit _except_ the 'Android is open' thing. That's just a plain fucking fact.

Despite the incessant barrage of snarky 'open' jokes from professional Apple frother John Gruber (typically redeemed somewhat by being funny) and M.G. "Mini-Gruber" Siegler (not so much), you can go _download_ _the_ _fucking_ _source_ _code_ :

<http://source.android.com/source/downloading.html>

Sure, tons of manufacturers will sell you junky locked down Android-based phones (which they can do because... _tada_... it's open), you can also just go buy the unlocked phone that Google offers, and install whatever the hell you want on it.

And if you really want to root your phone and install your own build of the OS, it's basically as easy as ↑↑↓↓←→←→BA and _boom_ -you're-done.

For any reasonable value of open, Android is. Claiming otherwise is just some weird kind of (apparently contagious) gobbledygook nonsense making the rounds among people emotionally invested in iOS. (Which I do _use_ btw; although Android is _open_ , it is still not _good_ enough for me yet.)

<comment><USER47> "Android is open" is BS for the plain and simple fact that (time delayed) source code availability is of no consequence to the vast majority of Android users. They say it as though it means something, it means nothing, rather like water vendors claiming "100% fat free" on a bottle of water.

Marco didn't say the claim was factually incorrect, he said it was BS, it is.

<comment><USER46> Although I'd love to have a few bottles of your fat-free water, it's a bogus analogy. It's more like claiming "100% trans fat free" on a package of cookies. That the vast majority of eaters don't care about or even know what trans fats are doesn't make the statement less true, or less relevant to those who do know and care.

Android's openness is consequential _to_ _those_ _who_ _care_ _about_ _openness_. And almost every Android user I know (yes, all fairly technical) likes that aspect and indeed takes advantage of it.

To such people, the open aspects -- both the fact that the OS is open source, _and_ that they can install whatever apps they want without having to find a buffer overflow bug in the OS somewhere to exploit first -- are attractive.

The "vast majority of users" aren't the arbiter of whether or not something is consequential to me, or to the other people who generally prefer their systems to be more open.

<comment><USER48> Not really. Android's "openness" doesn't include the ability to actually modify the software running on your device, which means that on its own it's useless to everyone except hardware manufacturers. It's only on the rare occasions when those manufacturers actually choose to do more than is required on them and open up their hardware to modifications that "openness" is of any value at all.

<comment><USER26> I don't really get what you're saying here. Some Android devices have locked bootloaders, but that doesn't affect the openness of AOSP. If anything, you're making an argument for GPLv3 which would require Android OEM's to allow for open bootloaders and (S-OFF (htc)).

But I can assure you, my Galaxy Nexus is running a CM9 alpha that I built from source last night.

<comment><USER49> Replace "some Android devices" with "the vast majority of Android devices". That is Marco's point.

<comment><USER26> All HTC devices since September, most devices from <=2010 (and many, many more with community support); all Samsung/LG devices; some early Moto devices (and all if you don't count the kernel via the community) can have custom software installed.

And if that's Marco's point, it's pretty damn poor. How does what Motorola does with the bootloader of their phone have to do with the code that Google puts out exactly?

<comment><USER49> As has been explained many times in the past, Android's relative openness compared to iOS at the source code level does not translate to measurable benefits for the majority of users because of carrier/manufacturer lockdown.

Rooting is a security exploit, and I don't consider it relevant to whether the OS is practically open.

<comment><USER26> Now you're just shifting around your position. I thought it was about the unlocked nature of bootloaders? Yes, in my last post I included some that require "root" but, #1, not all of those root methods are through user-facing security exploits, and #2, most of them allow custom software out of the box from the manufacturer (specifically without rooting or really any work at all), I noted the ones that require "community" support. Your characterization is disingenuous.

Now it's about the openness at the source code level? I think you should look up the CM statistics. There is a measurable percentage (or may tenth of a percent) of Android users that run custom software, so I benefit from that. I and others will only buy devices that will have CM support.

Further, the open nature of Android _absolutely_ trickles down to the users. There are a dozen different (and with different physical form factor) Android models that are free on contract to buy. There is only one WP7 that I'm aware of that that is true for. Lower development costs are passed on to users, I've discussed this further somewhere else on this thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Marco why don't you transform the post in a poll ? ;)

</comment><comment><USER51> Quite disingenuous to state that "Android is open" is bullshit and at the same time the article finds no mention of Apple's overarching "closed is better for you" attitude.

(Yes, the article hints at Apple's closed-ness. However, only relatively minor, disconnected, issues. Not the overall attitude.)

</comment><comment><USER8> Only one I really take issue with is:

> Nobody wants a [popular new product category that Apple doesn't make yet].

To be honest, when you hear that from an executive at Apple, I believe they are being sincere. You have to understand that Apple does not think of the iPhone as "a cell phone that plays music" or the iPad as "a tablet computer" or the MacBook Air as "a netbook". Yes, this is parsing things rather finely, but if you think that doing so is somehow irrelevant, then I would assert that you don't understand Apple and the way they do things.

</comment><comment><USER52> "Bullshit" is a lack of concern over whether what you've said was true or not.

"We're not tracking you when you're logged out" was a straight up lie.

</comment><comment><USER53> I would like to see a list of Amazon's bullshit.

<comment><USER24> "There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second." — Jeff Bezos

"We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn't be in this business. " — Jeff Bezos

"We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better." — Jeff Bezos

<comment><USER54> How is this bullshit? >"We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn't be in this business. "

If anything thats being upfront that Amazon is a business in the business of making money.

<comment><USER55> Probably parent implied that many AWS services are run at zero margin or at loss to block competition from entering.

<comment><USER7> Given that you can get anything AWS does cheaper elsewhere I don't think argue that.

AWS's advantages are many, but price isn't really a critical one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> If you focus on the news title itself, without clicking, it suddenly starts to make sense:

Bullshit (marco.org)

</comment><comment><USER57> Am beginning to go with google nowadays...:-P

</comment><comment><USER58> Brilliant. Now for an interesting theory of why there is so much bullshit see Harry Frankfurt's essay "On Bullshit" (Google it) :)

</comment><comment><USER59> Well said! We choose to take the bad with the good... Though sometimes companies make it tough for us to appreciate the good.

</comment><comment><USER60> And another one from Google: There's no reason to delete things, ever.

</comment><comment><USER61> Wot, no Twitter?

</comment><comment><USER62> New to realities of capitalism? Good morning America.

</comment><comment><USER63> You'd be surprised at the number of people who use Twitter for the sole purpose of following their favorite chelebrities, ergo interacting with brands. I'm going to put my toe in the water and assume the same applies to Facebook.

<comment><USER64> Celebrities may have brands built around them, but they are not simply brands. I know a lot of people who spend a significant amount of time talking to celebrities on Twitter, and they tend to draw that distinction too: If they perceive the celebrity is an interesting _person_ , they'll interact. But if the celebrity just seems to be presenting a "brand," they're much more passive, because interacting with a brand tends to feel hollow.

<comment><USER63> I wouldn't call the fifty thousand @paulg followers to be passive, exactly, as I see a lot of interaction and he only tweets about the business, nothing personal or news breaking. (I don't follow him on twitter, btw.)

And aside from his personal distaste for the artist Dale Chihuly, I havent derived much about him from either his essays or speeches, so please don't tell me that he's met all 50k of his followers and somehow convinced them that he's a great guy. So do fifty thousand people want to interact with a brand or not?

<comment><USER64> You're drawing weird lines that I wouldn't agree with. It's a false dichotomy to say "Either these people have met this guy and know him intimately or they want to interact with a brand." I didn't know any of my friends very well before I became friends with them, but they still interested me enough with what I did know of them that I wanted to know more. That's not called "interacting with a brand", it's called "interacting with people." I'll probably never be good friends with Paul Graham, but I theoretically _could_. Nobody will ever be friends with a brand.

People follow Paul Graham because they are interested in his ideas and influence on the industry, not because they "want to interact with a brand."

<comment><USER63> Even if he's not sharing any of his ideas or extending any of his influences to his followers? Wes Welker signed up to Twitter a week ago (under his own brand/name) and now has 175K followers, all of whom presumably want to interact or at least be associated with (a form of interaction) Wes Welker, the football player. They'll never get close to interacting with the person outside of a charity event or a sly hookup, so why call bullshit when a social media company claims that its user do in fact want to interact with brands when they, and we, have evidence that they do?

I don't think OP's premise holds true in all cases and it's equally valid to assume that people are interacting with a brand when they're following, liking, friending, retweeting or mentioning personified brands, human or bot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Microsoft: "Next generation web is coming"

Hacker News: "We don't read it"

<comment><USER66> HN: these discusions are more intelligent than reddit's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> At, [insert airline name here], we care about you.

</comment><comment><USER68> On that list, I think FB has the worst "bullshits".

</comment><comment><USER69> I disagree about the last line, not "everyone" has their bullshit. These 3 do have and spread massive amounts of bullshit, however.

<comment><USER70> I've never met a person that didn't have some level of bullshit going on. We all do it, so by extensions all our group efforts end up doing it. The book "why we make mistakes" has a good explanation based on how our mind works why it's part of the human experience to peddle a load of crock.

<comment><USER69> Yep, but I wouldn't equate slipping on occasion in some bullshit to have bullshit at the very core of your operation, as is the case with these three companies.

I know I do all I possibly can not to bullshit anyone. This may limit me in some respects but so do all principles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> GNU: -Spokesman has poor personal hygiene.

</comment><comment><USER72> Remember back in the 70's and 80's before cable TV? We only had channels 3,6, and 7. We loved TV but couldn't stand the commercials every 5 minutes. The internet has turned into one big TV commercial. Websites are now 10% content and 90% ads. It is so sad that we let this get out of control. Don't get me started on social networking and how they exist to be the big TV commercial to make boatloads of cash.</comment>


Free SSL on Github Pages with a custom domain: Part 2 – Let's Encrypt - <AUTHOR> https://bart.degoe.de/github-pages-and-lets-encrypt/ <comment><USER2> Interesting, as it wasn't possible to have https and a custom domain in the past, I'm using Cloudflare with the flexible https & enforce https settings.

Though in github, the "enforce https" is greyed out and says: "Unavailable for your site because your domain is not properly configured to support HTTPS (lab.openbloc.fr)". Does anyone knows what isn't actually "properly configured"? I have a CNAME file in the repo containing "lab.openbloc.fr".

The help says "If you're updating an existing custom domain, first remove and then re-add your custom domain to your GitHub account to trigger the process of enabling HTTPS." but the option is still disabled.

<comment><USER3> In your position I did these things; \- Removed the CNAME record; \- Changed my A records to point to githubs https ip's \- Deleted the site from cloudflare \- Purged my cache for the site in chrome (chrome appears to remember who your site has its cert with for a bit?) \- Profit

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm hosting my webpage on GitHub Pages, with a custom domain. Back when I set it up, Let's Encrypt would not work with GitHub Pages so instead I simply put my page on Cloudflare. Should I spend the time and set it up again but with Let's Encrypt? I've heard people say bad stuff about Cloudflare, but dismissed it since my page is really just a blog.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't really matter for a blog without auth, but when you are using cloudflare's https, the connection is not encryptes between CF and GitHub, so it's not end to end encrypted.

I recommend simply migrating even if you keep the DNS itself on cloudflare. It's a good exercise if nothing else.

<comment><USER6> It can be encrypted if you're using Full SSL on Cloudflare[1], but it's not authenticated, meaning anyone actively MITMing the connection between CF and GH could easily read and change the traffic. That said, it's not any script- kiddie who can MITM a connection between two DCs, so I think it's hardly a grave threat.

I think the only real gain is not allowing CF itself to see who is accessing your blog.

[1] [https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/200170416-W...](https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/200170416-What-do-the-SSL-options-mean-)

<comment><USER5> You can't use full ssl with let's encrypt, which is fundamentally incompatible with proxying.

But yes as I said it doesn't matter for a blog in practice.

<comment><USER6> _You can 't use full ssl with let's encrypt, which is fundamentally incompatible with producing._

I don't understand this statement, sorry.

<comment><USER5> Phone autocorrected :) I meant proxying.

<comment><USER6> Ah, ok. But how so? You can get a LE cert as long as you can serve a file in the correct URL, or set a certain DNS record. I don't see why proxying would prevent that.

<comment><USER5> Oh, of course. I was thinking of Let's Encrypt's DNS-based authentication since that's the only thing I use nowadays (though of course Github isn't using that). Ignore me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The only thing that annoys me about github pages or netifly is the lack of traffic analytics (number of visits, location..). There isn't a single metric we can have access to. Cloudflare gives minimal but useful analytics

<comment><USER8> Why not use Google (or other) analytics?

<comment><USER9> Huge percent of the audience blocks GA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone have this working for both the www subdomain and the root domain? I have the www subdomain working fine, but I get an invalid cert error when attempting to access the root domain with HTTPS. The cert it's attempting to use is for www.github.com .

<comment><USER11> You may not have had a certificate issued for your domain yet. The steps I went through for this were changing the CNAME, which made GitHub go try to get a new certificate for me.

<comment><USER10> It issued a certificate for the www subdomain which is working fine. I need it to issue one for the root domain too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just recently decided to move my GitHub pages with custom domains to netlify ([https://www.netlify.com/](https://www.netlify.com/)), since it offered free out of the box SSL (let's encrypt).

Kinda wish I waited, but it's good that they finally support it.

<comment><USER13> I did the same thing with about 5 websites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Perhaps I missed, but is it possible for anyone to use this "agent" to offer this type of service?

<comment><USER15> Are you asking whether Github is offering their agent software for others to use? Or just whether, in general, there are agents which can make use of Let's Encrypt?

The answer to the latter is yes, of course, a wide variety of suitable software exists, including shell scripts like [https://acme.sh/](https://acme.sh/) the "official" Certbot Python code and software like Caddy which implements this feature right inside a web server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've tested, it works awesomely. But does it mean that anyone who got temporary access to your DNS can issue certificates and MITM your traffic? It should not be this way.

<comment><USER17> It was always that way. Let's encrypt actually improves this by only handing out short lived certs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The best play is to host on Github and deploy Netlify.

I've previously used to do Cloudfare for SSL, but someone on here convinced me on Netlify.

<comment><USER6> Now that GH supports SSL natively, why use Netlify?

<comment><USER19> Netlify is designed for hosting so has richer functionality.

[https://www.netlify.com/github-pages-vs- netlify/](https://www.netlify.com/github-pages-vs-netlify/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is it possible to set up SSL thru GitHub and also use Cloudflare?

<comment><USER3> yeah you could setup the github ssl as per their instructions, then put cloudflare in front of it. See their options here [https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/200170416-W...](https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/200170416-What-do-the-SSL-options-mean-)

I was previously using the partial ssl option and am quite happy that I don't have to continue with this pseudo ssl that has an unsecure link.</comment></comment>


Never had an angry user? It's likely they don't care – An interview with Wufoo  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.supportbee.com/2011/02/08/never-had-an-angry-user-its-likely-they-dont-care-an-interview-with-chris-from-wufoo/

<comment><USER2> It was when we started to get calls from angry bloggers about Twingly not working I first realized we were on to something. It feels really good to have someone you never met care enough to be angry with you.</comment>