Rails 3.1 HackFest - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2011/7/14/rails-3-1-hackfest

<comment><USER2> I've been hitting the rails blog twice a day for the last three weeks waiting for 3.1 to be released.

Lets get involved and squash some bugs!

</comment><comment><USER3> New York hackers will gather on July 24 for a Rails 3.1 hackfest. RSVP <http://www.meetup.com/ruby-75/events/25578641/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Are there any IRL hackfests for the Seattle area planned?

<comment><USER5> Not sure if you've ever checked it out, but the seattle.rb meetings on Tuesdays at Vivace on Broadway are usually well attended, and both Aaron Patterson and Eric Hodel are usually there. It's like having a superstar Ruby/Rails team at your fingertips, and everyone is super helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a great idea. 3.1 is way more 'breaky' than I'd expect from a point release, but the new features are great. Let's make it an awesome release!

<comment><USER7> What major issues are you having?

<comment><USER8> I'm curious as well. While I haven't upgraded any older projects, I started a new project on 3.1.rc4 several weeks ago and (besides deprecation warnings for some testing tools) have had very few problems that grabbing a newer gem couldn't fix.

<comment><USER6> There are significant changes that I wouldn't normally have expected in a point release.

To your point, the community has rushed to support many of these changes so it's unlikely to be a big deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's interesting is that this isn't on the blog page. It's only accessible through this url unless there is some really bad caching going on?

<comment><USER4> Its at the top of the blog page for me... <http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'll probably be working on it most of saturday afternoon in Peets in Berkeley, if anyone is interested.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm interested in setting something up in Toronto. Anyone else interested?

<comment><USER12> We usually host a hack night every second thursday in Toronto, and we're going to move it to Sunday for this. If you're interested in attending (or could host people on Saturday), you're more than welcome - <http://www.meetup.com/torontoruby/events/25743841/>

<comment><USER11> Thanks Ryan. I joined up.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will add this to the weblog page if it's fine for you guys :)

<comment><USER12> Cool, thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Added

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would anyone be interested in participating together in Beijing, China?

</comment><comment><USER14> Anyone planning on one for San Francisco?

<comment><USER10> "I don't mind hosting in SF.. we could seat about 10 (with chairs) or 15-20 (if 10 people don't mind taking the floor…"

mochaleaf.com posted in the comments that they are hosting one in SF.</comment></comment>


Why It's Illegal To Use Milk Crates For Anything Besides Milk - <AUTHOR> http://modernfarmer.com/2013/08/illegal-use-milk-crates-anything-besides-milk/

<comment><USER2> I remember when i used a beer crate (what's milk?) as a TV stand. And when it finally broke I decided to buy one to replace it. It was 4x more expensive than an Ikea furniture 3x the size of it.</comment>


Why Amazon.com associates can't make money even when Amazon does - <AUTHOR> http://artymiak.com/what-amazon-com-associates-cant-make-money-even-when-amazon-does/

<comment><USER2> I've always found Amazon a bit weird/frustrating with regards to i18n/localization.

As a user, I should be able to decide, independently,

* What language I want to use the site in.

and

* Where orders should come from.

In other words, if I'm an American living in Austria or Italy, I should be able to just go to Amazon.com, have the site in English, and have it route books/whatever from the nearest/lowest tax place. In some cases, that'd be Amazon.it, in others, Amazon.co.uk, and in some cases, it'd have to send things from the US, incurring higher taxes/tariffs.

Instead, Amazon.it and Amazon.de are very much only in "the" local language (Italy actually has areas where German and French are official languages), and routing does not seem intelligent at all.

Frustrating.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, Amazon's regional stuff is really, really weird.

Base item prices seem to vary wildly between sites, and there are some real head-scratchers related to postage: amazon.es does not have free "supersaver" delivery, but amazon.co.uk will post to Spain for free for orders above £25.

Plus of course the permanent confusion about VAT: you can't get any of the websites to show VAT for a specific delivery country, it will only do so at checkout and show the VAT-inclusive price for that site's "main" country for the rest of the site. For some types of item, (mostly food and books) VAT can vary wildly between countries (e.g. 0% in UK, 10% in Austria), but there are at least small differences for all items between most countries. So bizarrely, it's cheaper for me to get non-book items sent to Spain from the .co.uk site, but for books I'm best off buying them when I'm actually in the UK. Electronics are usually cheapest on amazon.de, so I tend to get those while in Austria.

As 'bencoder says, the warehouse it actually gets delivered from mainly depends on the destination, not the website you ordered it from, despite huge price differences. Although items e.g. only available from the .co.uk site do usually get sent from a UK warehouse (so there's at least _some_ method to the madness).

And as the article says, they IP-geolocate digital downloads, although I'm assuming those aren't necessarily Amazon's fault, but rather demanded by the contracts with the copyright managers/holders. Though they _really_ should handle this better for Kindle books where they have a direct relationship with the author or publisher for all countries. (I can only assume it gets insanely messy with music and the draconian licensing schemes)

<comment><USER4> You have to cut Amazon some slack there. They have to deal with all kinds of stupid regulations that demand different compensations to copyright collectives whether e.g. Amazon.de sends a memory card to a visitor from Germany or Austria (or elsewhere) and the fact that they have merchants listed in their marketplaces from other countries than the marketplace itself (so the greedy copyright collectives from that other country demand their share) further complicates things.

As if the VAT regulations and translations for all products (and reviews and sometimes product info entered by users) and (former) price fixing on books for some countries weren't complicated enough already ...

<comment><AUTHOR> VAT and sales tax is something that kills businesses. It is a tax specifically designed to be punitive and it is a major stumbling block in growing a business.

<comment><USER3> [citation needed]

I dislike paying taxes as much as the next person, but where exactly are you getting these supposed facts from? Particularly in retail, the fact that VAT is an indirect tax doesn't really matter much as late payment basically doesn't happen. (whereas I'll accept that it can sink your company if you invoice your customer some huge amount and they don't pay and you still owe the VAT on revenue that never materialised)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We have the opposite problem, our income from the associate program is growing at such a rate that we're becoming increasingly dependent on it (i.e. changes in their terms could have a huge impact on our company). Amazon is cornering many markets because other merchants have inferior websites and are often under (illegal) pressure from vendors to keep prices high (specifically in my country).

</comment><comment><USER5> As Amazon gets more and more established, the value of their affiliate program drops. They end up giving up margin for a sale they are likely to capture anyway.

I predict that as time goes on, they will cut back their affiliate program. Once you have the data to determine on a per-product-category basis what kind of affiliates are worth it and which aren't they next step is to prune back the latter.

<comment><USER6> They've already been well on this path. Every year or so they make a change to their API which always reduces what you can do with it.

One year they removed much of the data people were using on their sites such as shipping costs and comments. Last year they removed your ability to access all the products in the Amazon marketplace (now you can only get the cheapest).

They also constantly make the terms of service more restrictive. In the last update, they added wording that completely forbids use of Amazon associate links in websites or apps designed specifically for use on mobile devices (without written permission).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amazon KDP Authors have trouble making the money they seem to be promised as well: even though my novel is available for sale through every Amazon.com website, and even though I'm supposed to receive a 70% (minus "delivery fees") royalty on sales in every market, I routinely have 15-20% of my sales in the US store get marked down to a 30% royalty. The explanation appears to be that these are sales from outside the US made on the Amazon.com website, but I fail to understand why that should affect my royalty rates. So Amazon's strange compartmentalization is at fault again. The net effect is that my actual royalty rate drops to about 64% of the sale price. This isn't a huge drop, but it certainly feels sneaky especially when apps sold through Apple net me the full 70% I'm promised every time.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the title is a bit misleading, it should be "Why blggers can't make money by linking to books". This is a very specific case. I know people who actually their only business model is Amazon association. Risky if you ask me(as always when you depend entirely on someone else), but it works.

<comment><USER9> Of course this works, but i'd wager a guess and say that those are mostly US bloggers targeting US visitors.

Once your visitors are from all over the world, it is indeed as the author described - there isn't a "proper" solution available (save for e.g. a WordPress plugin that generates the link on-the-fly but this approach has other problems like non-cachability).

If there is indeed an approach that lets you monetize like 99% of international traffic/clicks i'd like to hear it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been reading more blogs on how people are upset or confused by Amazon's economics. I'm not necessarily taking an opinion either way but it is important to realize that Amazon is commoditizing every product they can to increase their complementary product: the market itself.

</comment><comment><USER11> Amazon is a terrible company. When will people realize this? They have been abusing their Internet marketplace monopoly for years because we don't really have any other choice.</comment>


Telepromptor - <AUTHOR> https://telepromptor.com/app/ <comment><USER2> The play button is not obvious for the first time user (a.k.a. me). Perhaps you can paint it with another color.

Another possibility is to add a "Start Demo" big orange pancake button s patio11 recommends.</comment>


Ask HN: What pop-up store would you create with free rent for a summer? - <AUTHOR>

You have a large commercial space available for a summer in the Bay Area, with free rent and no restrictions. What kind of store or space would you create?I'd be interested in hearing both profit maximizing and community maximizing ideas. <comment><USER2> Easy. Don't try and make a store that will turn a profit that same summer, use it to build connections. Throw a party/conference/hack-a-thon once every couple of weeks, maybe even some sort of tournament. By the end of summer, you will know everybody in your area that shares the same interest as you, and will never have problems finding work/co-workers/advisors. Those connections will be far more valuable long-term than whatever profit maximizing scheme you can think of and implement over a 2-3 month span

</comment><comment><USER3> See if you can sell produce. I've heard amazing stories about people finding bizarre corners where folks love to buy fresh veggies and fruits... usually 90% residential.

</comment><comment><USER4> What are the demographics of the area? Peak foot traffic times? Is the area a destination on its own?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's on an arterial road in a mostly residential neighborhood with no real foot traffic except for a bar on the next block, and a double gas station corner two blocks up on the other side, but still in a very walkable neighborhood near public transit. So it's not exactly well suited to a pop-up store, it's just legal to do it and a pretty good location otherwise... it's just the kind of place people mostly drive past without stopping.

<comment><USER5> Something drivers want, like refreshments - water, non-alcoholic bear, iced tea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sell iPhone cases. Buy them for $1 and sell them for $10-40</comment>


Show HN: SlashPixels, a Google for Designers - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/slashpixels-google-for-designers#/ <comment><USER2> The owners of this site spammed hundreds and hundreds of designers and added them to a JIRA project without consent. A stunning degree of email abuse. Please do not support this website or campaign.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting service. How are you going to monetize it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Thom! We not think, that ADs give us huge money. So we planned at first grow user mass and then release few montly payd products.</comment></comment>


Adobe slips mobile Flash Player 10.1 to second half of 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/04/18/adobe_slips_mobile_flash_player_10_1_to_second_half_of_2010.html <comment><USER2> This is possibly the most partisan non-blog article I've ever read on HN. Seriously, it reads like pure anti-Adobe propaganda. Can we vote up a less rabid article on this topic instead?

<comment><USER3> Your argument promotes a false dichotomy. Isn't it acceptable to vote for this article _and_ for another that reflects your views?

Also, your would be much more persuasive if you were to list any factual errors in the post or major omissions it makes. I read it as reading like "pure anti-Adobe propaganda" because the author seems to have done the necessary homework instead of regurgitating Adobe's press releases.

So...

True or false flash on mobile devices is several versions behind flash on desktops?

True or false they're a year late?

True or false it is resource-intensive?

And most interestingly...

True or false: _If Flash becomes the primary way to deliver dynamic content, games, and apps for Android, it will frustrate Google from being able to build a competitive native platform that can attract custom mobile development. It will also impede Google's ability to push HTML5 as the preferred way to deliver applications on its upcoming Chrome OS._

<comment><USER4> True or false: "Adobe is also scrambling to make Flash competitive with the emerging HTML5"

<comment><USER3> Not sure if that's what _they_ think they're doing or if it's the other way around, but the question definitely deserves an upmod.

Anyways, to be perfectly clear I'm not saying the article is right or wrong, just that I benefit the most from a discussion about what it gets right and wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How would the performance of this mobile Flash browser plug-in be on a cellular connection? That's what people use their mobile phones on. I'm sure websites would crawl. All Adobe demos are on WiFi. Flash banner ads are 3-5 times bigger. Sometimes 200x larger if there is an autoplaying Flash video banner(20K static banner vs 2-3MB video banner).

Flash/Ad blockers are the most popular add-ons for FF & Chrome so whenever they ship it, we'll see how many people actually install Flash mobile! Besides the Farmville junkies! :)

Yes, you do have to optimize the content for it & do a whole lot of other things: [http://help.adobe.com/en_US/as3/mobile/flashplatform_optimiz...](http://help.adobe.com/en_US/as3/mobile/flashplatform_optimizing_content.pdf)

Reading that document makes me think badly written Flash apps could have bad performance & drain the battery quick.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if this _only_ affects the mobile versions, or if the desktop version of 10.1 will also be delayed. I hope not, as it contains some nice new stuff that's still not available through any other means (primarily I'm thinking of direct microphone access in the browser).

</comment><comment><USER7> Terribly biased article... Might as well add my own uninformed opinions :)

it's no surprise to me that the release is slipping. Adobe has never been 'agile' with flash player. All accounts say it's a pretty rough code base.

I've been doing flash and air programming for the past few years and the runtime is buggy and quirky and hasn't seen many improvements aside from framework type stuff in Flex/Air.

The Mac and Linux versions are even more buggy.

I bet it kinda works on the mobile platforms but the performance and compatibility is shit. This is going to be a big hole to dig out of, even if apple isn't trying to bury it.

<comment><USER8> The Flash Player 10.1 release moves to a single codebase for all supported platforms.

I would guess part of the reason for the delay is that they are rewriting large chunks of it to work consistently across very different hardware platforms -- and they've done a lot of performance and security related work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm glad they've delayed. I saw it in action at Flash Gaming Summit last month and the performance was not impressive, better for them to get it right then to get it wrong right now.

Also what a dumb article. I don't have high expectations from the ad-farming apple rumor blogs but this is pretty lame even for them. The only people missing out because of Apple's decisions are Apple's customers.

<comment><USER5> Missing out of what?? There are thousands of great apps written for iPhone & Android without Flash.

<comment><USER9> They're missing out on Flash. Regardless of whether you see it as good or bad or neutral it's all over the internet and you're not being given even the choice to see it on Apple's platforms.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: non-compete clauses in California - <AUTHOR>

I've read that non-compete clauses cannot be enforced in California. Is this true?<p>It's obviously not a good idea to break goodwill between you and a previous employer, OTOH, sometimes you know certain people are anxious to leave. <comment><USER2> I am not a lawyer. This is just what I know.

Generally speaking, non-compete are not enforceable but there are exceptions to the rule (some of which don't apply to general employees and potentially some that I may not know about).

That hasn't stopped some companies from suing if an employee leaves to a competing company and have proprietary knowledge (albeit rare).

</comment><comment><USER3> I just took a job in Calfornia and their noncomplete agreement specifically mentions that its not enforceable in California so I don't think they would have put this in there unless they basically had to</comment>


Show HN: Paccurate – An API to put things in other things - <AUTHOR> https://paccurate.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hi folks. Paccurate is our first product after working freelance in the logistics tech space for 5 years. The business has been off to a great start, but we've had the most fun seeing the API used in hackathons and other creative venues. Eager to see what applications HN can come up with.

Quickstart: Just paste this in your terminal.

curl -X POST -d '{ "itemSets": [{ "refId": 0, "dimensions": {"x": 5.5, "y": 6, "z": 6}, "quantity": 3 }], "boxTypeSets":["fedex"] }' api.paccurate.io/

</comment><comment><USER2> This looks nice!

~3 years ago I was still working in SMB/SME ecommerce IT and made an aborted attempt at building automatic small-parcel rate shopping and optimization on top of [https://www.teapplix.com](https://www.teapplix.com).

Even today it seems the big* SMB/SME players don't offer proper rate optimization tools, likely due to contractual relationships with the carriers which restrict that functionality.

*Stamps.com owns most of the major SMB/SME shipping tools: Stamps.com, Endicia, ShipStation, ShippingEasy, ShipWorks (+ upmarket tools like ShipEngine and Metapack and maybe more)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's very interesting. We haven't had too much pushback along those lines at least as we make our way upmarket. It might be because we aren't doing rating, just predictive packing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What is this that I'm looking at in the response?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's some deprecated gubbins in there mostly having to do with styling the box images. You can set "includeScripts" to "false" to omit them. What's left is a list of items and what boxes they go in, as well as the SVGs that show how to pack them. Thanks for trying it out!

<comment><AUTHOR> For the lazy:

curl -X POST -d '{ "includeScripts": false, "itemSets": [{ "refId": 0, "dimensions": {"x": 5.5, "y": 6, "z": 6}, "quantity": 3 }], "boxTypeSets":["fedex"] }' api.paccurate.io/

<comment><USER2> What's the minimal .html file required to turn the contents of the "svgs" key into something I can look at?

<comment><AUTHOR> The <figure> element should just work inside a body tag. To pretty it up though you will need some css targeting some of the child elements. For example, to make the container have a dashed border like we have, you would do:

line.volume-line { stroke: #666; stroke-dasharray: 2,1; stroke-width: 1; }

<comment><USER2> Thanks. I was also having trouble figuring out how to decode the svg figure element into plaintext I can throw into a text editor and open in the browser. (I don't have any svg experience).

I checked the docs and switched the imageFormat to png and was able to see the render.

It's awesome that with svg I could style elements of the provided image however I want!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yeah you can do some cool things with animating the svgs too, like show animated packing instructions.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chez Scheme as the Racket VM - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/racket-dev/2BV3ElyfF8Y/4RSd3XbECAAJ <comment><USER2> I'm curious why people don't prefer Chez Scheme to Racket if it is so fast and can make real binaries (I think anyway). Maybe because until recent it was proprietary. Racket is cool, but I already have Python which is similar from a performance perspective. Chez with the Racket ecosystem might be worth a switch.

<comment><USER3> Is python really that similar from a performance perspective? The highly scientific benchmarks game _cough_ seems to suggest Racket is usually an order of magnitude faster

[http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lan...](http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/compare.php?lang=python3&lang2=racket)

<comment><USER4> Racket is a lot faster. Python is generally slower than guile, which is a lot slower than racket.

Racket is according to my unscientific benchmarks, unless the problem lends itself well to an imperative style, in the same ballpark as, but still slower than, C# on mono.

Edit: pypy on the other hand is, if the project euler forums are a good source, on par with racket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm glad I've stuck with Racket. The work on it continues to surprise me in many ways. I have Chez and Racket on my box, and Wasp Lisp. Now I can look forward to a fast Racket with scheme code I can dig into vs. C, which I am only ok at.

<comment><USER6> The very same delight, over here as well :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The benchmarks for Chez Scheme are pretty impressive. Provided Racket-on-Chez is able to captitalize on that, this is pretty exciting.

Also, that makes it hypothetically possible that HN could end up running on Chez's VM because HN is written in Arc, which is I believe written in Racket, which may in the next year be written for Chez Scheme's VM.

<comment><USER8> The last time I checked, arc required a pretty old version of racket that supported mutable cons cells.

Not sure if that's still true, but AFAIK all work on arc has been stalled for quite a while.

<comment><USER9> There's a community version of the language being developed here: [https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki](https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki)

It works with the latest Racket versions and includes a HN clone. You can see it running here: [http://arclanguage.org/forum](http://arclanguage.org/forum)

It's true that pg isn't working on it though. I wonder if he's ever getting back to it.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure if its super important that PG gets back to it. To be honest, I'd love if someone made a summary of what, in 2017, makes arc unique and worth looking into.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is like a secret wish come true!</comment>


Inventor of Bitcoin's proof of work compares ethereum founder to ElizabethHolmes - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/1198899230259208192 <comment><USER2> That is a strange lie. Adam Back this must be your account, right?

Upvoting this so I hope more people can see the nonsense like Adam is spreading. He did not invent anything (plagiarized others work) and has been lying about it for years.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sadly for you he is directly referenced in the bitcoin whitepaper written by the anonymous author Satoshis Nakamoto</comment></comment>


Open Source Growth Benchmarks and the 20 Fastest-Growing OSS Startups in Q2 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/runacapital/open-source-growth-benchmarks-and-the-20-fastest-growing-oss-startups-d3556a669fe6 <comment><USER2> Great to see so many Europeans open-source project in this mix!

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, that's super interesting. Thanks!</comment>


Compelling Startup Pitch Archetypes (with examples from YC companies) - <AUTHOR> http://www.jasonshen.com/2012/eleven-compelling-startup-pitch-archetypes-with-examples-from-yc-companies/ <comment><USER2> Another one: high-margin city-level business that can be repeated in every big city in the world.

        Brick and mortar: Starbucks, Jamba Juice, McDonalds, Whole Foods, Wal-Mart, Kumon

        Online: Groupon, Uber, Yelp, RedBeacon, SkillShare, Thrillist

There are around one thousand cities with 1M+ population. If you can build something novel with 1M$ annual revenue and 20% profit margin that can be repeated for every big city, you can raise in order of 100M$ for global scaling.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an interesting one. I didn't think much about local/brick and mortar businesses. I bet there's a whole other set of pitches that work for those.

<comment><USER2> City-level startup can be both online and offline.

Besides Groupon and Uber, there are 42floors, General Assembly, Skillshare, ThrillList, Yelp etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> The thing about those is that ultimately the city-by-city approach is a distribution strategy. A single jamaba juice can exist on its own.

For Uber or 42Floors to succeed with venture backing, they really need to dominate a large market (like all major cities in the US). Thus the pitch still becomes much more high level and not focused on individual units.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ok, that one is a keeper. :-)

One I've heard which isn't specifically mentioned is the 'Experience Twist' as in "A lot of people need to X _and they do it_ but it sucks because it causes Y. We can do X with less Y."

</comment><comment><USER2> "Traction" archetype also has an enterprise version: One or few highly successful enterprise deployments. E.g. you've solved a certain high value problem for a particular corporation and raising money to solve it for all companies.

Cloudera is a typical example. It went from Hadoop platform in Yahoo to Hadoop solutions for everyone.

Other companies who could have used this pitch: Bloom Energy, Yammer, PBWorks, GitHub, Box.net

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice (and thanks for putting this together). Have to admit that as soon as I read "week over week" growth I was reminded of Demo Day Bingo [1].

[1] <http://www.thedailymuse.com/entrepreneurship/demo-day-bingo/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha. Yes, there were a lot of startups pitching traction on Demo Day, and that makes sense because strong week over week growth is impressive, and most of them probably didn't good enough month over month numbers to pitch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Another architype is Rethinking from Scratch.

Take a big market with a proven business model that failed to innovate for a long time. Recreate the product from the ground up.

        Cases: Tesla, Bank Simple, GMail, Lytro, iPhone

</comment><comment><USER5> Great post, I think you nailed it. It's interesting how few archetypes there really are, unlike business models where it's very difficult to create any sort of encyclopedia because there's no clear taxonomy.

<comment><USER6> Business models are very well defined. The online business models are product/service sales, subscription, retail, commission, advertising and digital licensing.

The pitch types listed are a good start, but are neither mutually exclusive, nor wholly exhaustive.

<comment><USER7> As someone wanting to be better versed in business models, can you point our a resource that provides a clear taxonomy?

<comment><USER8> Business Model Generation[1] seems to be the canonical work about this sort of thing

[1] <http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think Jason deserves a big thanks from the HN community, immensely helpful stuff you've been putting out man!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much Johnny! I've learned a ton from HN and try my best to share useful things with the community. Just signed up for the festivalist newsletter too, looks like an awesome project.

<comment><USER9> Awesome, don't see you in there though. We've been having some issues with TinyLetter's messages going to spam - if you have a chance, can you see if that happened to you too?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This the best article with a number in its title that I've read this year. :-)

(Although you clearly know the HN audience, having culled the number from the title here!)

</comment><comment><USER11> Are they ranked by order of effectiveness?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking about doing that, but it really depends on what kind of company you are building and what stage you are at.

One thing Sam Altman has said which is interesting is about the order at which you pitch things. I'm not sure I totally agree but here's a paraphrase below:

Pitching revenue is best. If you can't pitch revenue, pitch users. If you can't pitch users, pitch product. If you can't pitch product, pitch market. If you can't pitch market, pitch team.

<comment><USER12> I'm glad you commented on this. This entire post is very timely, but I was just thinking about what to do if multiple archetype's apply to you. I'm guessing traction/revenue is almost always going to trump the others, but the idea of mixing a few of them together (without it becoming too confusing) seems like the better strategy?

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely many startups end up using several different angles over the course of a 30+ min conversation. I think generally you'll end up have one archetype that is really the most important.

Think about it this way - when someone asks the investor why they backed you, they are going to have a one sentence answer. "Because _____" What do you want that sentence to be? That is your archetype.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Good post, but I was expecting / hoping to see videos of these pitch archetypes in action or slide decks - did I miss something there?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to provide those, but they are few and far between. It would probably take me 2x longer to write this post if I had to unearth slide decks or videos for each pitch type. Hopefully the "what it sounds like" is enough to get you started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Awesome post, thanks! FYI, the 6th Archetype has a trailing sentence at the end.

<comment><AUTHOR> Woops! Thanks, fixed.</comment></comment>


Thoughts on Rms and Gnu - <AUTHOR> https://wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/08/thoughts-on-rms-and-gnu <comment><USER2> I think this is good and wise commentary. I've met RMS and while I do admire his work, there is no denying that in inter-personal matters, he is a repulsive troll. I've sat in an audience and watched in disbelief as he rambled on while stuffing his hand down the back of his pants, rooting around back there, then pulling out his fingers and sniffing them, all without missing a beat.

He and many other people would like, I think, to live in an abstracted world where they interact mostly with other people using computers as intermediaries, so that they don't _have_ to spend what they consider to be wasted time on learning decent inter-personal behavior. I guess that's fine, as it goes, but I think we are learning that living in that mindset means that one's toxic thoughts can't help but leak through the terminal interface.

I will actually be glad when it isn't good enough for people to be technically brilliant; we also can and should insist that they be decent and respectful in their inter-personal behavior as well.

I'm reading a fascinating biography of some of the science fiction writers that produced the so-called "golden age," called _Astounding_ by Alec Nevala- Lee. The author does not hold back from mentioning that widely beloved figures like Isaac Asimov had terrible habits like snapping women's bra straps whenever he'd walk past them, or groping female fans whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Full disclosure: I myself did the bra strap thing a lot... when I was sixteen.

<comment><USER3> Well written thoughts.

I am more terse in my summary RE RMS: A genius asshole is obviously a genius, but more importantly, still a [royal fucking] asshole.

I do feel bad for RMS, aside from my criticism of him. I feel like he is a tragic figure who could have had wildly different outcomes if he had even 10 or 20% more inter-personal social skills. That said, I will never attempt to minimize or discredit his meaningful contributions.</comment></comment>


Microsoft's new AI can generate smart to-do lists from your emails - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/05/14/microsofts-new-ai-can-generate-smart-to-do-lists-from-your-emails/ <comment><USER2> email: "Go f--- yourself!" Clippy: "Would you like me to put that on your to- do list?"</comment>


Detect fraud and leaks within your networks from pcaps - <AUTHOR> http://minedata.io?src=hn

<comment> noir-york Splunk for pcap? Why PCAP data in particular? Do you do stream reassembly?</comment>


Congratulations Lyft!  It took you 3 days to lose me as a customer - <AUTHOR> TL;DR -- I downloaded the Lyft app this past Thursday.  If took 3 days for them to lose me as a customer as the result of shitty customer service.
Im new to the Bay Area.  After spending 3 years traveling and working remotely, I've been setting up shop here for the fitness startup I run.  I downloaded Lyft last Thursday to help with getting around SF.  The first couple rides were awesome!  Loved the drivers, very friendly people, easy and convenient UI.  Things are going great.  Sweet.
Yesterday (Saturday), I accidently left my phone in the Lyft.  Doh!  Big mistake on my end.  I contacted Lyft within 5 minutes of realizing I left it in the car.  Their customer support told me that I can report lost items in the receipt they email you after the transaction.  But wait, you need to confirm the transaction via your phone to receive the email receipt.  So if my phone was left in the car, how can I rate my driver and confirm the transaction, thereby receiving the emailed receipt?
I explained this to Lyft support over the phone, and was told sorry, cant help you.  You'll have to issue a report online to get ahold of our lost and found team.  Its been almost 24 hours since I left my phone in the car.  I have issued 3 different tickets online, called their support 5 different times, and still have no clue if this driver has even been contacted yet.
I can't expedite the process, because I need my phone to confirm the transaction.  Until I rate the driver, Lyft won't email the receipt.  I cant imagine I'm the first person to leave their phone in a Lyft car, and this seems like a very critical reporting issue for how to handle a lost phone.  I don't normally take to bitching on the Internet to try to get something done.  But at this point I've been twindling my thumbs for 24 hours, wondering if I'm going to see my phone again or not. <comment><USER2> Couldn't you borrow someone's phone and log into Lyft from it, rate the driver and get your email? Whining on Hacker News rarely helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> You need to receive a confirmation code on your phone to login. I agree, bitching on hacker news rarely, if ever, helps. Im just trying to point out an issue with their reporting system for lost phones.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like you are not going to see your phone again. I am sorry for your loss.</comment></comment></comment>


Why does SourceForge still exist? - <AUTHOR> Why are there still projects hosted there instead of GitHub or the other free sites that aren't ad-filled and slow? <comment><USER2> Pro tip: If you log in to SourceForge you'll never see ads. The main reason I use SourceForge is because it's better for distributing software to non-coder end users. It's set up like an app store with user reviews, and is much easier to navigate than github if you are not a developer, and are just looking for software to download. It's also not owned by Microsoft, and the new owners have been making really good strides. SourceForge also gives me more robust project stats like downloads, etc than other repo sites do.

</comment><comment><USER3> When was the last time you went to Sourceforge? How do you access it?

It isn't ad filled here. They went through a bad patch when owned by the previous owner, who was trying to figure out how to monetize it, and made bad choices in how ads were presented. These days, ads normally get presented during the period when you are actually downloading something hosted on Sourceforge. (And I visit using Firefox with uBlock Origin enabled. It works fine.)

And bear in mind that the practical definition of "free" these days is "Someone _else_ pays for it." Just who is that someone else and where does the money come from? Offerings like Sourceforge are expensive to operate and maintain, with full time salaried employees doing it. The money in their paychecks comes from _somewhere_. The usual source of the money is advertising.

Yes, GitHub is still free, but GitHub is now owned by Microsoft, and there are folks who object to that. (I am not one of them.)

Would you be willing to _pay_ for a "no ads" version of Sourceforge or similar service?

<comment><USER4> I access it when i search for restructured text docs. It's usually what shows up first, and I just want to figure out this one thing.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Ripple-share with people nearby and watch content spread around the world - <AUTHOR> http://getripple.io

<comment><USER2> I see this being useful, but the barriers are too high.</comment>


Guide to careers in algo trading - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/gauravbubna/careers-in-algorithmic-trading

<comment><USER2> Anyone following this scene knows all the companies are leaving the market making business. Reasons are not given, but it doesn't take stochastic calculus to guess it's an empty well. Everyone is throwing a 6 figure bucket at it and leaving with a bitter taste of dirt and clay.

This blog is maintained pretty well, <http://www.amsterdamtrader.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> This is one the reasons I quit as well. Even though work is interesting, the general sense I got was that there are too many players trying to chase the same little pot of gold. Also, it is getting fairly easy to setup a basic execution infrastructure and the barriers to entry have reduced quite substantially as a result.</comment></comment>


Yodl.fm: Live audio streaming, recording and broadcasting - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1347796251/yodlfm-live-audio-streaming-recording-and-broadcas?hn

<comment><USER2> Cool tech and I like the decentralized approach but how are you going to monetize it? Or are you doing it for the love?

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. No monetization in mind. We just want to have people using it. If it turns out that nobody else is hosting the server part, but people still want to stream, we might run our own servers for a small monthly fee.

<comment><USER2> Nice</comment></comment></comment>


Netflix 4K streaming goes live but only on newest TVs - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26957001

<comment><USER2> I'm the founder of a startup[1] that provides paid FullHD downloads and streams globally to 120 countries, we mainly operate in Europe and US.

Although we still serve less than 4K resolution (we've not found demand yet), I can confirm that NONE of the things said in the article like TV set age or contracted internet speed are in the top list of issues that we are dealing with on a daily basis.

In our experience, what is giving us most of the headaches is the network congestion at the time of download/stream; at weekend nights some ISPs just can't deal with the amount of traffic that this kind of services are demanding. We are spending quite a lot of resources in customer service for this reason. Unfortunately, at the end the solution is always the same, "please, try again later". Of course, this is not something people like, specially when they have paid for the contents they intend to watch "now".

Surprisingly, people who have contracted a low speed internet connection seem to be already aware of his connectivity limitations and are not much of a problem. However, the ones who have good connections are not aware of the peering agreements his provider might or might not have with other networks[2]. Some might be even suffering from bandwidth throttling without even knowing.

[1] [https://KiteBit.com](https://KiteBit.com)

[2] We use AWS Cloudfront CDN. We've talked with other netflix-like services, and although they use other CDNs, they still suffer from the same problems like us.

<comment><USER3> How netflix solves this: [https://www.netflix.com/openconnect](https://www.netflix.com/openconnect)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm pretty happy with my SD-x264 rips on a 1080P monitor served up by plex. Comcast would put a bolt in my head if I even tried regular viewing of 4K video.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wish they'll serve the 4K content even to normal HDTVs if they have enough bandwidth, if only to get better compression than the current one, even at 1080p it's sometimes terrible...

</comment><comment><USER6> In terms of display tech, I am much more excited about OLED, which makes a significant difference in image quality compared to what you get with the 4K LCD TVs that are available now. Not to mention that there is very little 4K content as of yet, though this will change soon enough.

Even when you have a TV that supports 4K (i.e. sufficient number of pixels + HEVC decoder chip in order to use services like this), a very large screen is needed for viewers to appreciate the higher resolution at a sane viewing distance:

[http://www.rtings.com/images/optimal-viewing-distance- televi...](http://www.rtings.com/images/optimal-viewing-distance-television- graph-size.png)

The article mentions an average bitrate of ~16 Mbit/s for the streamed content. Even with the awesome compression efficiency of HEVC, I would expect noticeable compression artifacts with such a low bitrate. Consider that Blu- rays (usually encoded with AVC) often have a video bitrate much higher than that. Is this going to look any better than Blu-ray? I doubt it. Better than Netflix's 1080p streams, though.

In any case, this is good news. The relentless march of technology continues! Let's hope for consumer OLED 4K TVs in the near future.

<comment><USER7> Blurays may be 25mbps H264 for 1080p, but Netflix is 6mbps for their highest quality stream. Also, bitrate used by increasing the resolution but keeping the quality the same does not scale linearly, and H265 will also improve compression for <4k streams.

<comment><USER8> If they stream 1080p at 6mpbs, I doubt that streaming 4k at 16mpbs have any sense, probably marketing dictates them to do it. You could get more quality by increasing bitrate without any hardware hassle. Content producers spend much effort and money to create HQ, high-bitrate picture and then you flush it down the toilet scaling to low values. And post production for 4k image is much more compute intensive and much more expensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> By the way, anybody who saw real 4k in action, is it really worth it? Or you'll need 120''\+ TV to notice the difference?

<comment><USER9> I may be a bit biased since I work for Netflix, but I did notice a difference when we had the 4K and 1080p next to each other.

What was really cool with the 4k is that I could get literally 2 inches from the screen and still not see the pixels. It still looked natural even at that distance.

<comment><USER4> Do you find it worth it for the massive increase in bandwidth needed? The tracker I use haves 1080P rips that are around 10GB for a movie. Nobody ever really downloads that. The 720P versions are way more popular. They are good enough for people that don't buy gold HDMI cables.

<comment><USER10> People absolutely download the 1080p rips. 10GB is really not a lot with the bandwidth and storage available today in first world countries. You're certainly not getting into "videophile" territory when you can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p when viewed on a 1080p display.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Someone needs to inform netflix that resolution is not the same thing as quality. I understand that there are streaming limitations and you can't have good quality downloading fast enough, but the consumers all seem to think that 4k would somehow be better than 1080p at twice the bitrate.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like this 15 Mbps quality would be a big improvement for 1080x1920 screens as well. But will their client software let you use it without a 4k screen res?

</comment><comment><USER7> I'll just wait until Chromecast supports 4k.

<comment><USER13> This comment was downvoted as I wrote this comment:

I assume the context that downvoters are missing here is that the streaming curretly only supports the newest TVs because only they contain the necessary hardware to decode HEVC 4K streams.

But Chromecast is one of several dongle/boxes which separates these problems out, so as soon as an external dongle supports 4K you'll be able to plug it in to a last year model 4K TV, or even a non-4K TV, and be able to take advantage of 4K streams.

There's at least one already:

[http://www.nuvola4k.com/](http://www.nuvola4k.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How is bandwidth not going to be a huge problem. I already have periodic problems with normal resolutions.

<comment><USER15> Four words: fiber to the home.

The cheapest internet package that I have available has 20mbit download, which is more than needed for 4k streaming; and where FTTH is available, nobody really bothers to offer DSL/etc anymore.

<comment><USER16> Sure, Australians got themselves FTTH and guess what, incumbent industry think tank helped during the planning phase by slipping some great ideas ... like data caps :D

data caps on the internal traffic that never leaves the network

<comment><USER17> Nope. Australians lost their FTTH when they elected a new government. They are getting upgrades to existing HFC, FTTN or wireless/satellite and the rollout is going to be much slower and more expensive and without the speed guarantees. Crony capitalism at its best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Too bad that the vast majority of Netflix' content is of a quality that would make 2006's YoutTbe blush with embarrassment.

</comment><comment> robinson-wall I guess we can add Netflix to a list of companies that the BBC are happy to provide free advertising for.

<comment><USER19> I may be ignorant but I don't know of any other UK content provider who is providing 4K streaming content.

I think there is a massive reluctance on the part of companies to stream this type of content. 3D TV demonstrated the need not to believe the hype and is considered a failure. They don't want to be burnt again.

4K has a major bandwidth issue that cannot easily be overcome by national broadcasters without sacrificing multiple channels, that is, content.

Somebody like Amazon can bring this on board without having an impact on their business.

I recently went into Richer Sounds (hi-fi/tv specialist) and although they had 4K screens for sale, the moment you mention that the standards haven't been sorted yet. they agree it's better waiting a couple of years.

Anecdotal evidence from my wife is that she can hardly tell the difference between 480 and 1080p content let alone going to 4K. I think selling it to the public is going to be hard. Harder than 3D TV.

I'm guessing you may need 4K at around the 50" screen width to begin appreciating it.

On a side note, I do believe 4K 39" displays have a place in the workplace. Waiting for a cheap one with a minimum 60hz refresh rate to come on the market.

<comment><USER13> > I don't know of any other UK content provider who is providing 4K streaming > content.

Youtube has 4K content.

<comment><USER19> Ooh didn't know that. Now to buy a monitor that can handle it :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The most useful GCC options and extensions - <AUTHOR> http://www.antoarts.com/the-most-useful-gcc-options-and-extensions/ <comment><USER2> Major omission from this article: vector extensions. GCC (and Clang) allows having first class SIMD vector values and use standard operators (+, -, *, /) to operate on them. This makes writing computer graphics and other 3d stuff a lot nicer.

Like this:

      typedef float vec4 __attribute__((vector_size(16)));
      vec4 a = { 1, 2, 3, 4 }, b = { 5, 6, 7, 8 };
      vec4 c = a + b;

What GCC does not allow (IIRC) is GLSL/OpenCL -style shuffle syntax like position.xyzw or (vec4)(a.xx, b.yy). Clang has __builtin_shufflevector but GCC doesn't have anything like it and you have to revert to SIMD intrinsics for SSE, NEON, etc.

Interesting thing about shuffles: Clang's implementation of ARM NEON intrinsics actually defines NEON shuffle intrinsic functions using a __builtin_shufflevector. I've noticed that Clang emits a lot better NEON code than GCC does. GCC's NEON backend is a lot worse than the SSE backend. And shuffle instructions are a major difference between NEON and SSE.

<comment><USER3> Can you give an example where such shuffle instructions are useful? I'm genuinely curious.

<comment><USER4> The shuffle instructions are commonly used when encoding or decoding integer serialization formats or processing integer arrays. It can also be a fast intermediate operation for some bit-twiddling algorithms, which would require multiple sequential operations to achieve an equivalent distribution of bits for processing.

If you are not working on high-performance bit-twiddling algorithms then you will probably have limited use for shuffle intrinsics. For those applications, it can save a few clock cycles for each call relative to more naive methods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I never understood why binary literals weren't included in the language.

Other nice extensions `x ? : y` => `x ? x : y`, vector extensions, C++ support for `__restrict__`, all those attributes (deprecated, format, warning, pure, etc.)

Regarding Assembler the `-Wa,-ahl` flag to get the C code interleaved.

And regarding warnings (especially for C++) the world doesn't stop with -Wall -Wextra. There are a bunch of nice warning options like `-Weffc++ -Wfloat- equal -Wdouble-promotion` and so on.

<comment><USER6> Isn't the whole point of -Wall -Wextra to include all the warnings? It seems rather unfortunate to have to add a bunch more flags to do what I want.

<comment><USER5> I thought so too. But even -Wextra does not include everything. Some Flags can certainly be a bit annoying (e.g., -Weffc++). A project I'm currently working on has a really long list of additional warning flags. But for manual calls to g++ such a long list is not practical however with the GCC spec file one should be able to add something like -Wextreme.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> At the start, I thought it was just going to point out the obvious, but there were some really useful extensions in there, such as the likely/unlikely.

</comment><comment><USER8> One piece of advice I've heard is to benchmark your app under -Os compared to -O2 or higher.

The idea is that in these days, cache misses are king, so smaller code means fewer misses.

Of course, you need a real-world load, test on correct CPU architecture for your problem etc.</comment>


Qantas keeps A380s grounded over engine 'anomalies' - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g2MVTyVspzu87qZ9GVdIqQ0VCkIg?docId=CNG.74bac5b4cc9462fd7346e1c94b90120a.121 <comment><USER2> Are engines for quad-engine planes designed and maintained as rigorously as engines designed for twin-engine planes? (I know there is ETOPS that dictates maintenance standards for twin-engine planes, but I am asking about the design process rather than day to day operation.)

Or is this just a bug to work out with a new aircraft and engine design? Or is it just random chance?

(Also, it's odd to blame Rolls-Royce for the failures, when the engines are both owned and maintained by Qantas in Singapore.)

<comment><USER3> According to Qantas CEO Alan Joyce the engines are not maintained by Qantas.

"This is an engine issue and the engines have been maintained by Rolls-Royce since they were installed on the aircraft..."[1]

[1] [http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/plane-reportedly-qantas- sheds-...](http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/plane-reportedly-qantas-sheds-parts- before-landing-at-singapore/story-e6frea6u-1225947835439)

<comment><USER3> Rolls-Royce has also recommended "basic precautionary checks" be carried out on all Trent 900 engines (i.e. the model that failed)[2]

[2] <http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/05/3057785.htm>

<comment><USER2> Interestingly, Trent 895 engines were the cause of the only 777 hull-loss incident.

I'm making a mental note to only fly on planes with GE engines from now on :)

<comment><USER4> The blame there seems to be more that the Trent 895's fuel-oil heat exchangers (FOHE) were presented with too much ice than that the design of the engine was at fault: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_38#Final...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_38#Final_report.2C_9_February_2010)

" _3) The FOHE, although compliant with the applicable certification requirements, was shown to be susceptible to restriction when presented with soft ice in a high concentration, with a fuel temperature that is below -10°C and a fuel flow above flight idle.

4) Certification requirements, with which the aircraft and engine fuel systems had to comply, did not take account of this phenomenon as the risk was unrecognised at that time._"</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple wants to block texting while driving - <AUTHOR> http://www.latinpost.com/articles/10955/20140422/texting-driving-iphone-new-apple-technology-disable-text-messages.htm

<comment><USER2> How long before people figure out just how far over they need to hold the phone in order to reactivate it? Or cover up the camera or whatever? Not to mention the irritating false positives....</comment>


Egypt cancelled DST just 3 days before the switch - <AUTHOR> https://marc.ttias.be/timezone-announce/2016-07/msg00016.php <comment><AUTHOR> Stock exchanges, airports, calendar-syncing apps, ... they are all going to have a fun couple of days.

On Linux, it's usually just a matter of updating the "tzdata" package, assuming the sysadmin(s) responsible aren't on holiday and are keeping an eye on these sorts of announcements.

For client-side apps with built-in timezone settings, updates are going to be trickier.</comment>


Trump says he is considering pardon for Edward Snowden - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-snowden/trump-says-hes-considering-pardon-for-leaker-edward-snowden-idUSKCN25B10Z <comment><USER2> I'm not American so my opinion won't matter.

Yet, in my view Snowden actions have been extremely important to set the discussions we are having today: how private do we expect our digital lives to be be it from the state or from megacorps.

I doubt that Facebook/CA affair in 2016 elections would have come to light (or have the same impact) had Snowden leaks not had happened.

I doubt that Europeans would have stoped being 100% subservient to American tech megacorps had those leaks not had happened.

I think alot of people around the world started even considering the importance of who is watching or listening to their digital life because of Snowden. Or at least, because of the conversation that his leaks started.

He wasnt alone in leaking information important to these conversations, but he definitely has become an important advocate of his leaks and his own message.

<comment><USER3> A nice example is uBlock Origin, which was (probably) created as a result of the Snowden leaks.

June 2013 - Snowden leaks NSA documents

September 2013 - the first commit to the Script HQ extension is made (which soon became HTTP Switchboard, which later became uMatrix and uBlock)

[https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/commits/master?af...](https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/commits/master?after=19d800213cafd4c20c2c3f2ab5201335ed0ac1b9+1385&branch=master)

<comment><USER4> ad blocking existed long before uBlock. uBlock was notable as being a more efficient way of doing it, not a more effective way (i.e. its still using the same form of block lists)

<comment><USER3> Yes, but HTTP Switchboard and uMatrix are more useful for privacy than for adblocking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Snowden is doing OK apparently, he should pardon Assange - who is not so well - quickly.

<comment><USER6> Trump did love Wikileaks: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnEoVzLKNPw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnEoVzLKNPw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'll be impressed when he _actually_ issues a pardon. I'd say Trump is notorious for "talking about" things without ever delivering anything. Take the issue of 50 state concealed carry reciprocity. Regardless of what you think about this issue yourself, it seems clear that Trump has tried to pander to gun owners and 2A advocates by constantly talking about this. But last I heard, there had been no meaningful action on it, or any reason to believe he was actually pushing his allies in Congress on the issue.

<comment><USER8> Trump really hasn't taken the lead in much in the way of legislative action, almost ever.

I don't think he understands or has the patience for the process.

Anything beyond what he can try to decree himself, he seems to lose interest / struggle with. Even tripping up his own party members in congress while they try to understand what he wants. He has threatened to veto things he pushed for... then signed them shortly after.

I think he might simply be incapable of anything requiring too many new steps for him.

<comment><USER9> _Trump really hasn 't taken the lead in much in the way of legislative action, almost ever._

First major tax reform in decades?

<comment><USER10> Entirely driven by congressional Republicans.

<comment><USER9> Umm... it was in his election platform.

And of course he needed help from congress, he can't actually pass a bill without congress.

<comment><USER8> Presidents typically work with their party to pass something. His own party more often complains about a lack of help or counterproductive behavior that makes it difficult for them to pass things.

Trump's lack of effort to work with his own party was a constant topic, until his partly largely quit talking about it as no help became the status quo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I agree with all these "wake me up when it happens" poster, because I just generally don't like "nothing happened" news.

But seriously, say Trump (or whoever might have been in his place) actually wants to do this as a populistic move: is it hard to do? Does it require any bureaucratic bullshit, arguing with people, forcing stuff, or is it just some paper to sign and it's done? Does it require any effort (and how much) on his side to actually pardon Snowden?

<comment><USER12> If you'd been paying attention you'd know that the President has the absolute, unquestionable power to pardon offenses against the United States, which specifically means: offences under Federal law, but not offenses under State law.

<comment><USER13> This was an idea floated recently in a backlash against the President looking to pardon Paul Manafort. ...but it is unclear if it holds any legal water.

The reality is that it is legally untested, and there's a good chance that Double Jeopardy will protect someone who's pardoned Federally, and then brought up on State charges for the same offense.

I might be wrong, but I don't believe there's ever been a case of a State prosecute even attempting to charge someone at the State level with an crime they've already been pardoned of by the President.

<comment><USER14> _> > [the president can pardon] offences under Federal law, but not offenses under State law._

 _> but it is unclear if it holds any legal water._

The claim that POTUS cannot grant clemency for a state conviction definitely holds legal water.

The plain meaning of that clause is extremely clear and its meaning is thoroughly and universally understood in the legal field.

 _> The reality is that it is legally untested_

Re: POTUS _directly_ granting clemency for state convictions, only in a sort of vacuous way. Meaning, this is true for almost everything that is blatantly unconstitutional. E.g., the president having the military disband congress is also "legally untested". I have zero doubt that the current SCOTUS would unanimously reject an attempt by the president to _directly_ grant clemency for a state conviction.

 _> there's a good chance that Double Jeopardy will protect someone who's pardoned Federally, and then brought up on State charges for the same offense._

Notice that the only reason this indirect argument is made is because POTUS clearly cannot grant clemency directly.

Although this particular theory about Double Jeopardy has not been tested, there's an entire legal doctrine that addresses this question (the Dual Sovereignty Doctrine). The Roberts Court affirmed this doctrine in Gamble.

The primary justification for the Dual Sovereignty Doctrine is that different sovereigns might have different interests. That justification speaks directly to whether the federal executive should be able to grant clemency for state convictions (no, because the state executive might have different interests in prosecution). See [https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt5_2_1_2_2...](https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt5_2_1_2_2/)

So,

1\. the President very clearly cannot _directly_ grant clemency for state convictions, and

2\. the Roberts court affirmed the Dual Sovereignty Doctrine not one year ago in a 7-2 decision. Go read that decision -- the _reasons_ for upholding the Dual Sovereignty Doctrine speak almost directly to the question at hand.

Given these two facts, it's highly improbable that the President could pardon a federal conviction and then convince the Roberts court to extend that clemency to state convictions via a significant narrowing of the Dual Sovereignty Doctrine. In fact, I'd say that a raw exercise of force is more likely to succeed.

<comment><USER12> The police officers in the Rodney King case were tried and acquitted in State court, then tried and convicted of essentially the same crime with a different name in Federal court, and the courts declined to say this violated the Double Jeopardy clause. It's not necessarily the case that the courts will allow the same thing when the State seeks to try a defendant after they are acquitted in Federal court or pardoned by the President, but it seems difficult to me to distinguish the two kinds of cases, so I'm assuming it's more likely than not that if POTUS pardons Manafort and NYS wants to try Manafort, they will be able to.

IMO the Rodney King case was a very bad precedent. It was very bad politics for the Federal courts to do otherwise, I understand, but it was not a good decision. The SCOTUS essentially held that a) Dual Sovereignty means the Double Jeopardy clause doesn't apply, b) that the courts can use the double jeopardy condition as a mitigation in sentencing. (b) can be seen as weakening the Dual Sovereignty doctrine, but (a) can be seen as a disaster because the 5th Amendment _is_ incorporated against the States, and the Double Jeopardy clause is in the 5A, so allowing the Dual Sovereignty doctrine to overcome Incorporation doctrine seems like a gross error that puts the entire Incorporation doctrine in... jeopardy. Shall we now say that only parts of the 1A, 2A, 4A, 5A, are incorporated against the States? Which parts? This invites more litigation.

Of course, that didn't happen, IIUC. There's been no litigation arguing that if Dual Sovereignty overrides Incorporation in one case, it might in others. But it could yet happen.

<comment><USER14> Reasonable. But returning to Snowden, "one executive wants to pardon and the other doesn't" is pretty much by definition a case of differing interests. IMO this question is more clear-cut than typical DJ questions.

It's just really hard for me to believe that POTUS could protect Snowden from prosecution in state courts via pardon. At the very least, a DOJ that wants Snowden in prison can side-step this whole question by leaving it to a state and keeping things out of federal court...

<comment><USER12> The case up-thread was Manafort -- NY State, IIRC, wants him in jail and may prosecute if pardoned. I'm not sure which State laws Snowden might have violated, or which States might want to prosecute him. BTW, I can see an argument against double jeopardy in the Federal->State direction as opposed to the State->Federal direction: the former, if allowed, could see a defendant tried as many times as there are States + 1, and that can't possibly be in the interest of Justice.

<comment><USER14> _> The case up-thread was Manafort_

Oh, I see. I was speaking into the even further up-thread context of Snowden :p Sorry about that.

 _> I'm not sure which State laws Snowden might have violated_

E.g., [http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/program/law/08-732/Jurisdiction/Haw...](http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/program/law/08-732/Jurisdiction/HawaiiElectronic.pdf)

 _> I can see an argument against double jeopardy in the Federal->State direction as opposed to the State->Federal direction: the former, if allowed, could see a defendant tried as many times as there are States + 1, and that can't possibly be in the interest of Justice._

\+ a lot more than 1 because of Native American jurisdictions

It's a good pint, but the crime would have to occur in overlapping jurisdictions, which doesn't apply in the case of Manafort. I think even in the case of Snowden it'd be difficult to argue for jurisdiction outside of HI and maybe any states he passed through with HDDs.

I just searched for drug trafficking and computer fraud cases that resulted in multiple charges for the same act in several states. I couldn't find any particularly egregious cases.

I'm not even sure how important this is in the case of computer crime; jurisdiction gets hairy really fast.

<comment><USER15> > a lot more than 1 because of Native American jurisdictions

Native American jurisdictions generally only have criminal jurisdiction over their own members for actions on their own land, that jurisdiction is Constitutionally an application of federal sovereignty, so where it applies it doesn't add an additional possible prosecution, just replaced (or provides an additional option) for one of the existing possible prosecutions. So, there's no double jeopardy impact.

<comment><USER14> Correct; for that subset of cases this conversation is relevant but the same conclusions hold (lara)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Snowden should be pardoned. Good for Trump if he does this

<comment><USER9> Ha! Love how this is downvoted.

Trump could cure cancer and HN would fault in it.

<comment><USER17> He has tons of fans everywhere.

'Ye but but' \--looks at the fake news bingo entry-- 'Russia!'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am excited by this development. Snowden is a patriot by becoming a whistle blower. I am also saddened by Obama's complete refusal to pardon Snowden. Why would Obama who is a progressive leader not pardon Snowden. That was a hard thing for me to swallow. I hope Trump hurries and gets it done asap. Snowden has suffered a lot for his ethical actions. I hope he gets to come home and not suffer anymore.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is it just me or is the term leaker politically charged in the context. For me, Snowden is a whistle blower not a leaker. There's a reason why he revealed secretes (he also didn't just release them, but was very careful how much he revealed), the secrete programs were unconstitutional -> whistle blower not leaker.

edit: typo.

<comment><USER20> He was not a Government employee at the time. Contractors don't get to be whistle blowers.

EDIT: Turns out the law does protect contractors, so I guess it's circumstantial that employees get branded whistle blowers and contractors get charged as spies.

<comment><USER21> Brilliant, just hire contractors to get around good governance rules :)

<comment><USER22> I mean, it works for Google and Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I suppose on his mind this might fit with some sort of fight with the "deep state".

Beyond that I would just chalk it up to some inherent capriciousness... bordering on concerning instability.

<comment><USER12> You've addressed the President's possible motivations. But, do you think Snowden should be pardoned? Just curious. (It's a tough call. I've not decided my own position on the matter.)

<comment><USER23> Snowden is charged with theft, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person, under the 1917 Espionage Act. His unauthorized disclosures of classified information caused grave damage to the national security of the United States and allowed enemies of the United States to better conceal their communications and activities.

I do not think Snowden deserves a pardon. Edward Snowden should be extradited to the United States to receive a trial and an appropriate sentence.

<comment><USER24> Almost everyone thought mass surveillance was a conspiracy theory before Snowden. On the balance maybe he still deserves prison, but denying the positives of what Snowden did is disingenuous.

<comment><USER25> I don't think so. Wasn't it common knowledge that the Government had access to emails via ISPs and shredder well before Snowden's revelations? What was revealing, I guess was some of the technical details of how it was being done.

<comment><USER26> Part of why Google decided to speed up their timeline on encrypting traffic across their internal network is because they learned the NSA tapped into it.

<comment><USER27> I was there when it happened, and basically the entire engineering org was pissed off at the NSA. It went from ongoing project to "we're flipping the switch within a month" or something like that.

<comment><USER9> Why were they pissed at the NSA? I thought Google cooperated with the NSA to provide access. Or did I misunderstand the situation?

<comment><USER28> There is nothing in Snowden's leaks to support this conclusion, much to suggest that it is false, and Google flatly denies cooperating with the NSA in clear, non-weasel-word terms.

[https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html)

<comment><USER9> Well there you go. I guess it was my own assumption based on one of the PRISM slides that show when surveillance for each company started.[1] I assumed it involved cooperation.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_\(surveillance_program\)#/media/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg)

<comment><USER28> Well, that's court-ordered production of data based on given search terms. Being ordered by a court to do something is not the opposite of "cooperation" but it's not the same thing either.

What Googlers were angry about was the stuff in the leaks that showed they were tapping undersea cables.

<comment><USER9> I see. So they were aware of some data collection, because the court forced them to, but there was other collection going on they weren't aware of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is not news. Let's see him actually pardon Snowden, then talk about it.

<comment><USER30> Considering 3-4 years ago he referred to him as a traitor, I'd say the significant shift in stance is news. Should a pardon happen, this would set an important precedent for future whistleblowers and for the rule of law in the often obfuscated corners of the federal government.

Support the efforts of Rand Paul and Thomas Massie, who have already publicly stated their support for a Presidential pardon in this case.

<comment><USER31> I think after 3 and 1/2 years, we'd all recognize by now that Trump more often than not says things just to stir up controversy. As others have said, this isn't newsworthy until he actually does something.

<comment><USER22> If stirring that controversy means reigniting debate about our collective surveillance apparatus then I'm not sure how I should feel :)

<comment><USER32> Usually the "stirring up controversy" isn't on the merits of whatever the controversy is itself, but to draw attention away from some other controversy, like the whole USPS debacle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If he actually does it I'll seriously considering voting for him. He won't, though.

<comment><USER34> It is interesting, your comment is completely insane to me. Doesn't that seem strange to you too?

<comment><USER35> It's insane to vote for someone who does things you support?

To someone with full blown TDS, sure, a Snowden pardon probably won't sway your opinion at all. But think of someone who leans libertarian and maybe doesn't love Trump but also doesn't hate him, and remembers how the Obama admin forced Snowden to flee and revoked his passport, forcing him to stay in Russia. Seeing a pardon from Trump could move them into being a mild supporter.

A lot of people have one or two big issues that their political allegiance revolves around. It can be abortion rights, gun rights, taxes, the national debt, anything. If someone's core issue is fighting the surveillance state, a Snowden pardon would be a massive change in the landscape.

<comment><USER36> I wonder though, since Trump signed the extension to warrentless wiretapping, would your vote send a message that a pardon for Snowden is sufficient without institutional change? Trump seemed to only care that section 702 allowed Carter Page to be wiretapped when the other side of the conversation was out of the country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Also repeal the "PATRIOT" Act while you're thinking about doing the right thing...

<comment><USER38> Presidents can't repeal laws. Only congress can do that.

<comment><USER37> But in this case, the president can get rid of it because it expires periodically and all he has to do is not sign the extension. But unfortunately, I don't think that he will need to sign it before the next election and also, they often include a bunch of unrelated stuff in the bill: [https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/21/fund-n21.html](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/21/fund-n21.html).

Obama promised to let it die... but he didn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> No he didn't, he said no such thing.

If you listen to the video, all he did was say he knows nothing about the issues, but he'll "look into it." That's his standard line. He wasn't actually saying he was considering it at all. Honestly, I don't think he would really have any intention to pardon Snowden. It gains him no points with the left, and would damage him with his base supporters. That's probably why the media reported it, to try to get his supporters upset at him.

It's the same thing with the whole manufactured outrage of Kamala Harris and the question posed to him by the reporter. Trump didn't even mention Harris, and the reporter brought it up and asked him whether he heard about the report. Trump said that he knew nothing about it, and he would have assumed that the Democrats would have already validated Harris' eligibility, but he would "look into it." He never even made a point about it, it was obvious it was a non-issue to him. It's a meaningless statement that the media tries to use to make him look bad, and meanwhile it just lets his supporters keep saying that the media lies, which is true when they bend the truth like they do.

<comment><USER11> I didn't see the video, but if it's true it's extremely funny (and wording @ reuters suggests it is exactly true). Nothing happened, then journalists (as usual) created a catchy title and extremely misleading news-story out of it, and here now HN users are all over themselves having a lively discussion and angrily arguing about the topic and hardly anybody even bothered to verify it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Just do it.

</comment><comment><USER41> It's obviously some kind of campaign tactic. Appeal to the nerds.

</comment><comment><USER42> Even in the title, Reuters editorializes blatantly by labeling Snowden "leaker." And the downvotes here are already clearly politically motivated.

<comment><USER8> Personally I don't see leaker as an automatic pejorative.

<comment><USER35> Agreed. There have been plenty of people labeled "leakers" inside the White House who have been celebrated by the media, like Eric Ciaramella.

<comment><USER8> Yeah I think of it as a verb, whatever good or bad is up to the person to interpret on their own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> blank

<comment><USER44> Did you miss the word "considering"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Trump doesn't do U-turns, he does donuts. Wake me up when he actually pardons Snowden; this isn't news.

</comment><comment><USER46> The Post conversation reads like Trump has just heard a pitch to attract voters, and wants to know which side of the argument could help him more.

<comment><USER47> Thats what all politicians do. They have market researches and bring up issues that are of concern to voters in times of elections.

<comment><USER46> Deciding your position on an issue and deciding whether an individual should face the justice system are two separate things to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Well, to pardon someone they first need to pass a sentence, right? This didn't happen yet, and the process would probably take longer than Trump's current term.

Can someone who is familiar with the US law system shine some light on this matter?

<comment><USER49> No, one can be pardoned at any time. I thought otherwise until recently, as well.

<comment><USER48> Thanks a lot for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Kind of hard to prosecute Assange if you're willing to pardon Snowden. I'm gonna go make some popcorn and keep watching for Assange's name in the pre- election headlines.

<comment><USER51> Assange isn't even a US citizen, nor (if I recall) was the "crime" on US soil. Further, The "crime" of booting up the drive should be independent of what was done with it. It's insane to me Assange is being prosecuted. Who in the US government is willing to stand up and say this is wrong? The person who leaked the data is going to get far less time in prison.

<comment><USER50> Citizenship is not a component of any relevant statute, to my knowledge. It's certainly not mentioned in the First Amendment.

What I'm saying is, if Snowden -- who is the alleged primary source of a leak -- gets pardoned, then how can Assange -- who may not have had any primary involvement whatsoever with the leak of the documents he published -- be held responsible? Logically it makes no sense because Assange's alleged crime is lesser than Snowden's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Politically, bringing back Snowden brings back the issue, Obama/Biden era big government spying program Prism.

Trump: Remember everyone, Biden used to spy on you.

This is similar to when he did a press conference with all of Bill Clinton's accusers. Just a means to an end for Trump.

<comment><USER53> If this is the case, not a bad strategy for Trump. In general, I assume that any move by a politician is made entirely out of self-interest.

<comment><USER52> Yeah I mean, if he pardons before the debates, suddenly that takes up a debate topic slot. All he has to do is directly ask Biden, 'You don't think Snowden did the right thing by exposing your administration's surveillance program?'. It's such an easy win, and will take mindshare away from other issues (coronavirus response, police reform, Medicare/social security cuts). Add a TikTok ban in there and take up another debate slot, fill it in with all the anti China stuff.

There are things he can do to set the stage for sure.

<comment><USER54> I think there is almost zero chance that Biden will debate him.

If he does pardoning Snowden and making that into an issue is a brilliant move. That will sting hard.

<comment><USER34> Biden already accepted invitations to the debates, last I read Trump had not.

<comment><USER9> Huh? Biden agreed to 3 debates and Trump asked for a 4th which Biden declined.[1]

[1][https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-rejects-trumps- push-f...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-rejects-trumps-push-for- more-debates-11592860503)

<comment><USER34> Not sure honestly and I can't read that article (paywall). I recently (just a few days ago) read official acceptance of the debate committee schedule had only been completed by Biden campaign. So maybe Trump proposed 4 but then hasn't accepted the actual invite yet?

<comment><USER9> Maybe. Article doesn't state he's accepted any invites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> At least one good thing can come out of Trump's stupidity. It's absurd how badly they treated a whistle blower against the ilegal machinations of the NSA.

</comment><comment><USER56> I think that Trump believes that Snowden is a Russian spy, because he cannot imagine (given their different personalities) that somebody would do what Snowden did just for intrinsic reasons.

So Trump is trying to make a deal with Snowden - find some dirt on Democrats (Obama administration) during election, and I will pardon you.

However, Snowden is most likely not a spy, so no way this is gonna happen.

</comment><comment><USER57> Trump will scarcely do something like this unless he thinks it will benefit him. Does he think millenials will love him for it or does he think Snowden has dirt on Obama? Time will tell.

<comment><USER58> I agree. But still. No way I'll vote for Trump, but I have to admit that such a pardon would have me feel just a bit less antipathy toward Trump.

<comment><USER59> I'm glad Edward Snowden leaked what he did, but I'm not sure a pardon makes any sense at all.

<comment><USER60> I think it's unlikely Snowden would ever receive a fair trial, therefore a pardon is the best course of action, erring on the side of compassion versus "justice" typically dispensed by the US justice system. What he revealed about the domestic surveillance apparatus violating US law and citizens' rights had significant value to nation.

Regardless, if this is how the pardon comes about, I happily support it even if it's not ideal.

<comment><USER8> I wonder what a fair trial means to people...his own admissions include describing his own illegal activity...

<comment><USER7> Without going too deep down the "jury nullification" rabbit hole, I'll just say that it's entirely reasonable to admit taking an action that is prohibited by law, while pleading not guilty to violating the same law. You may argue that there were extenuating circumstances that pre-empt the law in the specific case, or you may argue that the law itself is inherently wrong, etc. Yes, it's difficult to win an acquittal like this, but it does happen.

That we can't just mechanically apply the law like the axioms of mathematics is part of the very reason that we have judges, juries, and the adversarial system, to allow for some measure of human judgement in the process.

<comment><USER8> Jury nullification is so rare and really relies on a particular jury thinking a particular way...

A jury can even be sympathetic... and still convict him.

I hear folks talk about a fair trial but he's already admitted to crimes... so is the "fairness" only determined by a highly unlikely outcome, I'm not sure that's about fairness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Trump is in campaign mode, he tried to get the Latino vote after Mexican president visit. His team understand that most SV and New York tech workers are not part of their voting base, but Snowden being an important figure in this area can help him win some votes. 88022

</comment><comment><USER62> The response to this news on HN has been very disappointing. By contrast, there was a lively apolitical discussion[0] back in 2015 about the effort to bring Snowden back to the US. On the other hand, people now seem more concerned about the motivations of Trump. If it's the right thing to do, who cares about the motivation behind it or the person enacting it? This reminds me a little of the response to Trump's efforts to end the War in Afghanistan. I realize I'm not talking about individuals, but it's maddening to see communities that had almost universally supported both things for many years seemingly let political biases get in the way of doing the right thing.

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9655693](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9655693)

<comment><USER63> The main issue I see with Trump's support of anything is the impact this support has on the cause.

I believe Snowden needs to be pardoned. He made the Public aware of the shady things that are done in its name. So the Public needs to pardon Snowden for being a whistleblower and this can be voiced through the President, who is supposed to be the ultimate voice representing the Public and its interests.

However, Trumps motivations for doing anything have been fickle and marred in short-term political or personal popularity gain, sometimes to the detriment of the very thing he is supporting.

So supporting a pardon for Snowden is great but the reasons for doing so are really not clear and -as usual- not articulated in any sensible and reasonable way.

Maybe I'm wrong but this looks more like a political diversion to me, maybe a way to divert the outrage when he pardonned Stone -clearly a shady character if there was one- or just keep the news busy for a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > realDonaldTrump: ObamaCare is a disaster and Snowden is a spy who should be > executed-but if it and he could reveal Obama's records,I might become a > major fan

He should be executed, but in the same breathe he may deserve a pardon? Not going to happen.

Neither the State Department, the Justice Department, the Defense Department, or the Intelligence Community, is particularly sympathetic to Snowden's cause (for good reason imo). There has been no change on that front from the Obama administration to the Trump administration. William Barr, Mike Pompeo, and Mark Esper are no more fans of Snowden than Loretta Lynch, John Kerry, and Ash Carter were. Snowden will die in Russia or in a US prison. I know it's not what the vigilantes of the Internet want to hear, but it's the most likely scenario.

<comment><USER64> Your quote is from... October 2013 [1]. I think Trump's views and information might have changed since then, and the state of the world has changed which will modify the pros and cons of this move to trump. I expect his decision will mostly be made based on how he perceives it impacting his chance of getting re-elected.

I haven't noticed trump ever being particularly concerned about what the intelligence community thinks.

[1] [https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/39568370275766272...](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/395683702757662721?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

<comment><USER65> I expect it might be calculated to help his re-election - if he does it. Remembering how google locked down its internal network after the revelations, I would expect lots of silicon valley might align with snowden's plight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Two possibilities come to mind:

1\. My uninformed kneejerk guess is that Russia, for whatever reason, wants to be rid of Snowden. It's the only explanation for why Trump—who has no pressing reason to be thinking about Edward Snowden right now, and almost certainly does not approve of Snowden or people like him—would suddenly raise the issue.

2\. That, or it's something Trump knows will get everyone talking and he needs a distraction. Maybe both.

I could be missing something, but I can't see how this is going to help Trump in an election at all. The people who care about Snowden are not going to overlook everything else Trump has done, and at the risk of sounding callous, I don't think most millenials are really thinking about Snowden at this point.

The question for me is why Putin wants Edward Snowden gone, and when you look at the one vs. the other, the answer looks pretty clear to me.

<comment><USER8> I don't think Russia needs anyone's help being rid of Snowden...

Russia is not a very free country, if they want him silent, gone, whatever it would happen.

<comment><USER12> Clearly Snowden has been useful to them, at least from a propaganda angle, and perhaps intelligence-wise as well. By now they've extracted all the value they were ever going to extract from him, and he may just be a cost center to them now, but you're absolutely right that if they wanted to be rid of him, it'd be trivial to do it.

<comment><USER67> How would he be a cost center?

<comment><USER12> I was speculating for the purpose of reasoning about whether they might want to get rid of him. How could he be a cost center? I don't know -- maybe they provide security for him?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> The CIA will instagib Snowden the instant it is physically possible for them to do so. A pardon will never change that.

The commander of the CIA states it plainly: [https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/39568370275766272...](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/395683702757662721)

(Remember, we're talking about the same CIA that hacked US congressional computers, because the congress was investigating the CIA's torture record and they wanted to cover it up. Then the CIA lied about hacking them. Then they later lied about lying about it.)

The IC knows they would suffer zero consequences for his "heart attack".

Ed is far too smart to ever put himself in that situation.

Thus, for practical purposes, such a pardon is irrelevant.

<comment><USER68> Except a pardon would mean he could move back to the US and leave Russia

<comment><USER49> Perhaps I wasn't clear. If he ever sets foot in the US again, he will be quietly and instantly murdered by his former coworkers, even after he is pardoned.

<comment><USER69> What leaker or whistleblower has the CIA murdered? Why didn't they murder Manning?

<comment><USER49> Manning was declared guilty _in advance_ by the US president prior to her trial, and subsequently was tortured so badly _prior to trial_ she tried to kill herself twice whilst imprisoned.

[https://www.politico.com/story/2011/04/obama-says-manning- br...](https://www.politico.com/story/2011/04/obama-says-manning-broke-the- law-053601)

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/12/bradley- mannin...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-manning- cruel-inhuman-treatment-un)

She was reimprisoned _after her pardon_ , where she was subjected again to inhumane treatment, and attempted suicide a third time as a result.

<comment><USER69> Why didn't they kill her?

If you know enough about the CIA to be absolutely certain they will murder Snowden, then surely you know what line he crossed that Chelsea Manning didn't?

You might also want to point out that the torture was solitary confinement for all but 1 hour per day, which I'm no fan of, but just to be clear it wasn't torture in the water boarding or toenail removal sense.

<comment><USER49> That's the thing: it doesn't need to be "absolutely certain" to be sufficient risk to effectively bar him from ever re-entering (or even venturing too far out of the current protection detail that keeps him alive).

Even "pretty likely to be assassinated upon entry" would be enough to keep most reasonable or prudent people away forever.

Solitary confinement for extended periods of time causes permanent, physical damage to the human brain and psyche. If you have no experience with it or those who have so suffered, I don't think you have even a remote shred of justification or qualification to speak of it the way that you have.

As I have personally witnessed the intense, permanent damage caused by such things, I entirely refuse to engage with your casual dismissal, which is extraordinarily offensive to me.

<comment><USER69> You seemed pretty sure. But ok if he's "pretty likely to murdered ", then you must have some numbers to back that up? How many leakers have been murdered, and how many haven't?

What was the probability that Chelsea Manning was going to be murdered? And how was it calculated?

edit in response to your edit which included this:

>As I have personally witnessed the intense, permanent damage caused by such things, I entirely refuse to engage with your casual dismissal, which is extraordinarily offensive to me.

So you're just going to toss out unsubstantiated claims and then retreat under the pretense of being extraordinary offended?

Torture has a generally accepted meaning and most people (and our legal system) don't think that a single occupancy prison cell with an hour of human contact per day fits that meaning. The studies supporting psychological damage are generally talking about months of near total isolation, which is not what Chelsea Manning experienced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> I honestly care more about Julian Assange. His own government turned their back on him.

Snowden has been quite the show, enough so that I'm seriously wondering if he's actually a spook. His entire story is weird. He holds a six figure salary as an NSA contractor, suddenly has a moral compass, somehow downloads a bunch of top secret stuff while working remotely from Hawaii, leaks documents that are mostly redacted and missing critical information about compromised hardware, and is believed by the world wide media unilaterally without question. Then his smoking hot girlfriend says she wants to go join him. No one has found him yet while he does video conferencing using Google Hangouts.

By contrast, Julian Assange was trapped in an Ecuadorian embassy for years. He's been though hell and his origination has leaked much more crucial information.

<comment><USER71> Snowden went to Russia. Julian Assange couldn't physically get out of a FVRY nation.</comment></comment>


NASA - First Recorded Voice from Mars - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/bolden20120827.html <comment><AUTHOR> seems likes 'mohawk guy' has a clone in the room... 15s he is in the front part of the room. 34s he is next to the last row, in the back.</comment>