Google tracking a bike ride past a burglarized home made the rider a suspect - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike-ride-past-burglarized-home-made-him-n1151761 <comment><USER2> Even before all of this tech, if you looked suspicious you would get stopped or worse. A story was when I moved to a different state, I went out walking in my new area. Exploring the suburbs. I had brought a book with me, and it was starting to rain. I kept my book under my shirt to protect it. As I went home, I was suddenly stopped by four police cars; apparently a resident thought my book was a gun, and I was casing the area or something and the suburb I walked through must have been worried about crime. It was darkly funny to show them my book, which was a defense of political civility. It stopped me from walking there, though, as long as i lived there.

I think one aspect of this is the surprise that an engineer would get swept up in this, but this isn't really something that can be solved by tech.

<comment><USER3> >>Even before all of this tech, if you looked suspicious you would get stopped or worse.

Tech is IMPROVING our lives. Software is an enabler, it solves our problems. If the software is making our problems worse, then there is something wrong with the software, we fix the software. But the issue here isn't the software, the issue here is privacy invasion. Terms of Use and Privacy Policy aren't comprehensive enough to inform users what they are doing or how and when they are collecting their personal data.

From the story "I didn't realize that by having location services on that Google was also keeping a log of where I was going, I'm sure it's in their terms of service but I never read through those walls of text, and I don't think most people do either." McCoy said.

Steve Jobs had a solution for this:

"Privacy means that people know what they're signing up for. In plain English, and repeatedly. I believe that people are smart. Some people want to share more than others. Ask them...Make them tell you to stop asking them. Let them know what you're going to do with their data"

<comment><USER4> If it changes the phenomena that trigger false-positives of suspicion towards "was actually present near the scene of the crime" and away from "wrong skin color in the neighborhood," it can be argued the tech has improved people's lives.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that it isn't. The police have routinely conducted similar dragnets with racial profiling in the past.

Even in systems with less human intervention (e.g automated loan approval systems) bias is still being built in.

If anything this could provide people with the excuse of "see! it was the algorithm!".

<comment><USER6> >> Even in systems with less human intervention (e.g automated loan approval systems) bias is still being built in.

Just because there is bias in the system does not mean it is OK to open the floodgates and introduce more

>> If anything this could provide people with the excuse of "see! it was the algorithm!".

It doesn't work that way. First the person has to come up with tens of thousands of dollars to defend themselves and hire lawyers and expert witnesses. What you are stating is just a luxury of the rich. If the new system is that rich people get extra avenues of defense, you are right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article brings up one of the biggest problems I have with our justice system. When someone is falsely suspected or accused of a crime, they typically have to hire a lawyer and take time off work and out of their lives. This can cost thousands of dollars that many people can't really afford to spend. The police or court may eventually say, "oops, our bad," but the accused typically has no way to recover what they spent on their own defense. The whole situation is asymmetric given that investigators, courts, and prosecution don't have to spend personal funds to conduct investigations and try people in court.

<comment><USER8> My sister is a lawyer who works with poor clients with criminal cases (though not a defense attorney). She believes strongly that most people are better off with their public defender than with private council. I asked her if she could square this with the general perception that the criminal justice system is stacked for with wealthy, she answered that the, most of the time, the _connections_ matter more than the actual money. There are a lot of bad private lawyers out there, and it's hard for most people to tell them apart from the good ones. For a lot of us here, if we suddenly need a lawyer, then we'll ask our friends and family to help us find a good one. But if you don't know anybody who knows anybody who knows a lawyer, what do you do? Look at online reviews? If I were freaked out about criminal charges, needed a lawyer _now_ , and didn't have my connections, it'd be up to blind luck. That's the reality for most criminal defendants.

They'll hire private council and think that because they're paying for it, it's better. But it's often not. For a typical defendant with an aggravated assault charge, a public defender has handled dozens of similar cases before. Moreover, they'll have done it with your judge and your prosecutor. A private lawyer probably won't have that. Granted, this probably holds a lot less for the HN comments section.

I'll add that there is no right to defense council for civil cases. These can have consequences just as dire as a criminal case, as in immigration or eviction proceedings. An indigent defendant with no lawyer has a very poor chance. There's a movement to create this right [1]. The current Supreme Court, however, seems more likely to weaken _Gideon v. Wainwright_ than expand it.

<comment><USER9> Responding to the point about what you are supposed to do if you need a lawyer and don't know any - I needed a lawyer once and didn't know any. I first read about what I was accused of, I read the relevant parts of the law I was accused of violating, and then I googled and read whatever I could about the crime. I then looked up local lawyers and read their websites and bios and googled them to see if there was anything to read about them.

Background research done I created a list of lawyers I wanted to talk to and called them one by one and discussed the case over the phone. The crime I was accused of was somewhat rare and none of the five lawyers I called were familiar with it. I could tell fairly quickly that several of the lawyers were, for lack of a better term, bullshitting me about their familiarity with crime because I had first done the basic research so I had some understanding of what was reasonable to say about it. One lawyer was obviously reading passages from wikipedia verbatim to me, which I recognized having recently read the same wikipedia article myself. Another lawyer didn't seem to listen to me - after hearing my story he confidently assured me he could get the charge reduced... to what I was already charged with. Others just didn't seem that competent.

The lawyer I ultimately went with was a former prosecutor, which I liked because I figured it meant he would know the other prosecutors, and he was the only one who, when I called him, said "I don't know much about this. Let me do some reading and call you back." I immensely respected that more than the people who tried to pretend like they knew what they were talking about.

Ultimately, we had an extremely successful result and now if anyone I know ever needs a lawyer, I have one to recommend. It may be a bit harder if you don't have connections, but there is no reason why the average person retaining a lawyer can't go through the effort of finding one they are comfortable with.

<comment><USER10> _there is no reason why the average person retaining a lawyer can 't go through the effort of finding one they are comfortable with._

You are vastly overestimating the ability of an "average" person to be able to understand and analyze legal complications for themselves. The average person, for example, does not have a college degree [1], let alone a degree in a technical subject that has trained them in analytic reasoning.

[1] Only 37% of people age 25-30 in the US have a bachelors: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER11> And a bachelors tells us very little.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> * I'm definitely sorry that happened to her, and I'm glad police were trying to solve it," McCoy said. "But it just seems like a really broad net for them to cast. What's the cost-benefit? How many innocent people do we have to harass?"*

I understand he doesn't have the resources to fight the constitutionality of the whole process. This quote is why ACLU, EFF, and others need to work together to take it up further. Stop the police from continuing the habit of just sweeping people's data and worry about the details later.

<comment><USER13> There is no constitutional issue in this case. This person gave their information to Google and Google was asked for the information. There is no 4th Amendment protection for information a person gives to someone else. The ACLU, EFF, and others have nothing to take further.

<comment><USER14> The third party doctrine is badly outdated in the modern world where third parties hold immense volumes of information about our locations and interactions. Since it was a court ruling that brought the doctrine into being, the passage of legislation or further court rulings can overturn it or reduce the scope. There is absolutely work for groups like the ACLU and EFF to do here.

Here in Canada several of our wireless providers banded together to fight an incredibly broad request for information about everyone hitting particular cell towers during a robbery. The crown tried to simply drop the request when challenged, but thankfully the judge didn't let them off so easily. The court issued some rather strict requirements for similar requests.

[https://blog.privacylawyer.ca/2016/01/ontario-court- provides...](https://blog.privacylawyer.ca/2016/01/ontario-court-provides- clear-guidance.html)

<comment><USER15> Judicial oversight requirements should be strict, but it should absolutely be a police investigation tool. Calling it "dragnet" to imply dystopian surveillance is silly. Oversight is the crux of the issue, not the tool itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The police have far too much power in this. The police should only have the power to name a suspect and then request a single GPS fix in a window of their choosing. Anything else requires more judges to sign off. This power of dragnet, "give me everyone within 200 feet of this property in the last 48 hours" is just astoundingly one-sided.

<comment><USER17> Why? They use it to compile a witness list, maybe suspect list, rule out many people, as a first approximation. As long as the data is archived and not open for abusive use; where do you feel any harm comes in?

<comment><USER18> "Somebody walked by the outside of a house where a 97-year-old said something was stolen" wasn't _previously_ sufficient grounds to search every document you had ever written or received, but now it is.

<comment><USER15> Sure it was, if they walked/biked by the house 3 times in close succession around the time of the burglary. A completely legitimate reason to make him a person of interest and interview him. If he was picked up on a neighbour's door cam, this wouldn't even be on the news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What surprises me is that somewhere there is a police department that can afford the time to investigate a $2,000 loss.

<comment><USER20> There are too many cops in the US. So they need the work. This is also why they have police cops in all schools. Which seems horrifying to anyone not from the US. (They're often on a power trip and take even the smallest opportunities to beat up kids. A web search brings up a long list of such cases.)

<comment><USER21> They are really unevenly distributed though. Many major cities are short on police, while most suburbs have plenty to spare. This has a lot of effects on day to day, for example in most cities you aren't getting a traffic ticket unless you do something egregious, the police will see you commit a very minor offense (probably on accident), and just shrug and let it go. They have no time to spare. But in a lot of suburbs they'll come ticket you with this attitude that they've saved the world from a criminal. It's frustrating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> And also cleared him, for what that's worth. If this concerns you, go [here]([https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols](https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols)) and disable location history.

<comment><USER23> Google has a shit-ton of dark patterns making it hard to turn it off completely. Maps will refuse to center on your location even though the phone has a GPS lock and the blue pip is right where it is supposed to be.

You can restrict data to three months which would have been helpful here.

<comment><USER22> Just tried turning off all these settings and maps still centers for me just fine. Can you post a video of this happening? Are you sure you haven't denied your location to Google Maps on your phone entirely?

<comment><USER23> It comes and goes intermittently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's not just Google. It is many many apps.

Here is a posting from a month ago that didn't get any traction. It links to a Washington Post article that says that the US government is buying location data from apps. It conveniently means they don't need a warrant: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22285638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22285638)

Here is a posting from 2018 that got 253 comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938548)

</comment><comment><USER25> I love how many people in this thread think that Google's location tracking is the issue here. If you have a phone at all you are tracked. If you drive many newer cars you are tracked. If you go out in public where there are cameras you are tracked. The difference is that the individual will never be able to get access to the cell tower tracking information, cctv footage, etc. The problem if there is one, is that it is too easy for law enforcement to get access to Google's information and use it in ways that are probably a violation of the constitution. While turning your tracking off may seem like a good idea, and for some threat models it certainly is, for many users this actively disempowers them relative to corporations and states. Someone already has your data, you might want to get a copy of it too.

</comment><comment><USER26> > They also scoop up data from people who have nothing to do with the crime, > often without their knowing ─ which Google itself has described as "a > significant incursion on privacy."

This is masterful re-framing of Google's deplorable attitude towards user privacy. Apparently the _real_ incursion on privacy is _not_ when Google collects and tracks this information, but when government officials subpoena the information from Google. Amazing.

</comment><comment><USER27> I like how an innocent person needs to have a criminal mindset to avoid going to jail for a made up charge. I mean this attitude "never talk to the police" seems backwards until you realise why. Someone made a good analogy that police is the HR department of the state and you know that if an HR wants to talk to you, it's rarely for your benefit.

</comment><comment><USER28> There's a simple solution to ubiquitous surveillance: conform.

Don't do anything out of the ordinary. Do exactly what everyone does, and you won't get hurt. If you enjoy exploring and experimenting, discovering and inventing, creating and wondering, you'll need to train yourself out of that, because thoughts lead to actions.

Think Same.

<comment><USER15> The whole point is that it's the conforming behaviour (leaving the location tracker on) rather than the non conforming one (turning it off) that led to him being a person of interest. A completely legitimate one, I might add.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Do you need to take phone calls and answer messages while riding your bike?

When it became obvious to me that the scenario described in the article was going to be increasingly common, I started to carry my phone in airplane mode, in an electromagnetically shielded pouch (most of which only work marginally), when in transit from place to place. I only turn GPS on when I need it. This also has a nice side-effect of prolonging battery life.

As far as bike fitness tracking, I have and highly recommend the Sigma BC 14.16 bike computer - it runs for over a year on a single coin cell battery, comes with a barometric altimeter, and even does altitude plotting. And it does not and cannot report you to the police!

[https://www.sigmasport.com/en/produkte/fahrrad- computer/wire...](https://www.sigmasport.com/en/produkte/fahrrad- computer/wired/wired/bc1416)

<comment><USER30> I get it that this is a simple thing one can do today to help increase their privacy a little, but this is wholly the wrong attitude. One can still easily be caught up in a geofence dragnet without riding bikes, regardless of how often they turn on airplane mode.

If law makers/enforcement continue down this dystopian path, having your phone off or not with you at all may become enough to make you a suspect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Couldn't he just show the police his exact bike route for that day? It would show him passing the house only momentarily. That's probably more than enough for them to eliminate his as a suspect, especially considering they have access to Google's metadata for cross-reference.

<comment><USER29> Trying to "explain" things to the police is a very bad idea:

[https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-duane-dont- talk-...](https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-duane-dont-talk- police-20160826-snap-story.html)

<comment><USER32> Talking to cops is like being questioned by your parents as a kid. They assume the worst and don't care if they're wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> American justice system is broken; if you're arrested you get put in jail until your court date unless you can pay the bail. If you can't pay the bail then you can be in jail for months or years for something you didn't do. The prosecutor will tell you to take plea deal for a shorter sentence or risk losing fighting in court and get a more severe punishment. A lot of innocent people end up taking plea deals because the odds are against them. Court cases can drag on for years and cost a fortune in lawyer fees. The biggest lie is that you're 'innocent until proven guilty'. If you get accused of a felony and end being proven innocent, there's still no way to get that off your permanent record and will show up in background checks and follow you for life.

<comment><USER34> California eliminated cash bail in 2018. In California, a risk assessment is done to determine whether a suspect can be safely released.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This might run afoul of the _Carpenter_ decision, right? It basically held that asking for cell tower location data is a search of the person rather than a subpoena of records.

EDIT: maybe not. This one had a warrant rather than a subpoena. I'd still be interested in the interaction though.

<comment><USER13> Doubtful, Carpenter was based on the fact that the cell tower location was not a willing transfer of international, but merely a functioning of the cellular technology and so the information was still protected under the 4th amendment requirement for a warrant. In this case, suspect 'willingly' transferred that information to Google and there was a warrant request for the information. Although, I suspect that the warrant was more to make it easier to get Google's compliance than to deal with 4th amendment concerns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The police wanted all the data, so my guess is "including search and browsing data"

oh oh... time to switch to Firefox.

To be noted: real bad actors will start shutting their phones off before their actions.

<comment><USER37> > To be noted: real bad actors will start shutting their phones off before > their actions.

Which would be a signal as well. They'd rather just leave their phones at home.

<comment><USER32> Reminds me of the college kids that painted swastikas on the cement and were caught cause their phones were connected in the area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> apk-d Are there any recommendations how one can limit the amount of information Google is collecting on them, preferably without completely giving up on Android and Google services (such as maps)? I'm already considered a hermit by friends for not having a Facebook/Instagram/LinkedIn account, but to me it constantly feels like I haven't gone far enough. This shit is downright dystopian, and I'm outraged by the general lack of outrage.

<comment><USER38> So long as Google Play Services is installed, there's only so much you can do to limit it. It's essentially equivalent to giving Google root access to your phone.

The best thing you can do is cut off Google completely. Install AOSP, LineageOS or a similar ROM and don't install Play Services. Get apps from FDroid or where necessary something like Aurora Store (an open-source Play Store implementation). Don't use apps that depend on Google. There are alternative apps for maps that are pretty great, mostly OSM based (e.g. OSMAnd and the Maps.me-based "Maps" app in FDroid).

However that's not always something you can do. Some apps just won't work without some kind of connection to Google. For those, there's MicroG, an open- source implementation of Play Services that gives you a whole lot more control and even allows you to use different location backends like those provided by Mozilla or Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Tangential question about the work "burglarized":

Is there a term for a word that's the result of inefficient application of modifiers?

I would guess that "burglarized" is formed by this evolutionary chain:

A1) burgle

A2) buglar : someone who burgles

A3) burglarized : an object which has been acted upon by a burglar

But I would think a more canonical chain is:

B1) burgle

B2) burgled : an object of burgling

A3 and B2 seem to mean the same thing, so I would think B2 is preferable because both the word itself, and the chain of applied modifications, are shorter.

<comment><USER40> This is a guess, but I think "burglarize" is a back formation coming from "burglarization", the state of having been burgled or an instance of same. "Burglarization" is, naively but grammatically, caused by someone or something that "burglarizes".

It's similar to "orientate" instead of "orient". An object or person has an "orientation" produced by someone or something that "orientates". This in contrast to someone or something that "orients".

It's ugly English, for sure, but I believe it's perfectly cromulent in grammatical terms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Everything about the case is nuts but, to me, one of the worst thing is this line "They agreed to dip into their savings to pay for a lawyer.".

No money, no justice.

</comment><comment><USER42> I think it's interesting that these articles are always from the PoV of living in a surveillance state.

What about legitimate uses of geofence warrants? Does that not exist?

What if your mobile device gets stolen? Why should you not have the right to get its location easily? Happened to me in Northern California, and both AT&T and the police were useless. Part of the reason why I'm not very interested in returning to Cali.

<comment><USER43> You have a right... so long as you don't encroach on others' rights.

<comment><USER42> Well, it's my phone and service, I paid for it, and I want to give the police the address of the perpetrators for them to check out.

But, no, I'm not allowed to do that, because privacy; and, no, the police in California won't do that, either, because courts are overcrowded, and they don't feel like asking the judge for a warrant that AT&T requires.

I don't think the criminals who steal my device are supposed to have any privacy rights. Just sayin'.

<comment><USER43> Actually the real reason is probably that the GPS data isnMt that accurate nor real time enough that they can just go to the spot and it pinpoints the person, so they aren't going to go on a wild goose chase to recover your private property while other more serious crimes are being committed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It makes you wonder how many of these stories exist and are unheard of. I'm OK with Google sharing some aggregated metrics and statistic to help fight criminals, but tracking individuals is a nightmare becoming real.

It is not directly Google's fault, they are required by laws to provide the data. Laws are democratically voted, yet are people okay with police able to open their private lives with just a button?

<comment><USER38> > It is not directly Google's fault, they are required by laws to provide the > data.

It's Google's fault for collecting the data in the first place.

They could have collected it anonymously rather than tie it to a user but they chose not to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Another day, another new outrage.

 _"I would think the majority of citizens in the world would love the fact that we are putting violent offenders in jail," Armbruster said._

Remind me to bust that one out the next time anyone disagrees with me. "I would think the majority of citizens in the world would want us to watch another UFC fight, honey, instead of Stranger Things."

</comment><comment><USER46> This is a perfect example of a concrete problem arising from lack of privacy in electronic devices. It's not some abstract fear of being manipulated, but instead a simple and direct invasion of privacy that leads to dire consequences.

I didn't know police had such free access to Google data btw. This is super concerning to me.

</comment><comment><USER47> Don't talk to the police. Don't carry a tracking device.

<comment><USER48> I suspect both of these things are nearly impossible in the US. At some point you will have to talk to police, if only to identify yourself. At some point you will be tracked, if only by your license plate, or soon your face.

<comment><USER49> I do believe a license plate counts as a tracking device, which GP suggested not taking with you.

Here's a US-based criminal defense attorney saying that not only is that good advice, it's also practicable (in the US):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE)

Do not talk to the police. Under any circumstances at all. (But especially if you're innocent!)

<comment><USER50> Am I missing something? If you take your license plate off your car, you will be pulled over by a cop. It's not practical for most people in the U.S. to give up driving.

<comment><USER49> The thing you're missing: I wasn't suggesting that you remove the license plate from your car. I was suggesting that a car, with a license plate attached, is a tracking device which you should avoid.

Most cars these days also have GSM modems in them, letting the manufacturer, the cell tower, and by extension the entire military intelligence community and federal investigators know exactly where they are at all times (they receive all GSM HLR data in realtime from the carriers). It really is that bad. We know for a fact that domestic federal law enforcement is using parallel construction to conceal the fact that they are receiving tips from the military's mass surveillance systems:

[https://theintercept.com/2018/01/09/dark-side-fbi-dea- illega...](https://theintercept.com/2018/01/09/dark-side-fbi-dea-illegal- searches-secret-evidence/)

Furthermore, millions of Americans that don't own or drive cars stand in direct evidence contrary to your claim that giving up driving is impractical. Driving is actively harmful to our society, our safety, our cities, and our future well-being. Everyone should be avoiding it as much as possible, including but not limited to moving to places where it's not necessary, or only very rarely necessary.

<comment><USER48> I stand by my assertion that it's extremely impractical for most people to reconfigure their lives in this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> A good reminder that even if you have nothing to hide, privacy is still very important. The more data you make available the greater chance of a false positive. Those who protect their privacy will in the long run come out ahead. It is one of the few situations with no real tradeoffs.

</comment><comment><USER52> So if he were using an old cellphone, before the days of apps, would he still have been served a notice from the phone company for his phone tower location?

The article says: "drawn from users' GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular connection"

and cellular connection.

<comment><USER53> _That_ is the question we should be asking. If not, is it because geofence warrants have a higher legal bar if issued to a phone company? Or is it about the level-of-effort?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Bah, if riding with eg a Garmin or Wahoo it would clearly show there was no stopping at the front of the house and that should be it.

If Google Fit is a bit like Samsung Health, it would probably stop an activity at the spot of the burglary so without that there's proof of no involvement.

In Australia there'd be no point wasting money on a lawyer, just show the data and you'd be in the clear.

The whole story feels stupid, but that's probably mainly because I stem from a more (on overall) enlightened country (Norway).

</comment><comment><USER55> It's ironic that in the end the narrowness of the warrant was what hurt him. They could see he went past the house during the time of the burglary but not that he went past there regularly. By showing them more data he convinced them he was innocent.

Not that I am arguing for more pervasive powers for data collection. But rather, appreciating how poweful data is and how dangerous data without context is. People need control over and access to data about them guaranteed.

</comment><comment><USER56> How inconvenient is it to turn off all location sharing at the OS level on a mobile device? I have just started testing moments ago and am not sure what I'm up for.

<comment><USER57> It's a step in the right direction, but be aware the police could also ask the cell service provider for location information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> It took the prosecutors 10 months to follow up:

"burglary of an elderly woman's home 10 months earlier", " He looked up his route on the day of the March 29, 2019".

</comment><comment><USER59> Lets be real here. They didn't track his bike. They tracked his phone. Your phone is how you are tracked.

It doesn't matter if you're using an application where you didn't read the TOS and opted in or what. The basestations are always going to be collecting years of aggregate multilateration data on your habits of movement and saving it.

</comment><comment><USER52> "law enforcement authorities say those worries are overblown...is not enough to justify charging someone with a crime, they say."

But it is enough to justify the person spend thousands and thousands of dollars on their legal defense so they can prove their innocence

</comment><comment><USER60> I'm surprised various mobile tech breadcrumbs aren't being used to track / cross track the random ppl who getting C19.

I'm not suggesting I'm in favor of it; only that I'm surprised it's not happening. Yet?

</comment><comment><USER61> Are Apple products any safer on this issue, or not at all?

<comment><USER62> Not really. The phone companies have relevant data too for this kind of search. What's notable here isn't that Google was a single source for this data, but that they notified the user when it happened, even if it means everyone on HN now thinks they're the bad guys in the situation.

<comment><USER63> Yes the phone companies have data but it is far far less precise than GPS which was required in this case.

Additionally, Apple does not collect your location data like Google does so I am not sure why we should let Google off the hook.

<comment><USER62> You don't know that GPS was required, nor whether or not cell records were subpoenaed as part of this investigation. All we have is what Google told the guy in the story.

And as far as Apple, I don't think that's true. Apple has a location history feature just like Google does. If that data ever reaches their machines in a non-anonymized way, then it's subject to subpoena just like anyone else's data is. Do you have a cite that explains why this is impossible?

<comment><USER63> >You don't know that GPS was required, nor whether or not cell records were subpoenaed as part of this investigation. All we have is what Google told the guy in the story.

I do know that because cell tower triangulation is on average only precise within about a square mile, which is considered far too broad for these types of searches.

>Apple has a location history feature just like Google does. If that data ever reaches their machines in a non-anonymized way, then it's subject to subpoena just like anyone else's data is. Do you have a cite that explains why this is impossible?

Location history on ios is stored locally, not logged and stored by Apple. Any data that is passed to Apple is anonymized. Per Apple:

"Where you go says a lot about you. Maps delivers a great experience without Apple knowing which stores, neighborhoods, or clinics you visit. And because Maps doesn't include a sign-in, where you go isn't associated with your Apple ID at all. Personalized features, like locating your parked car, are created right on your device. Data used to improve navigation, such as routes and search terms, is not associated with your identity. Instead, that information is based on random identifiers that are constantly changing."

AND

"If Location Services is on, your iPhone will periodically send the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers (where supported by a device) in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple, to be used for augmenting this crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations."

[https://www.apple.com/privacy/](https://www.apple.com/privacy/) [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207056](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT207056)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Before you sign up for a service online check tosdr.com to see what you're signing up.

It's crowd sourced site that shows what's inside the terms of service.

<comment><USER65> I get the message: Tosdr.com is for sale

<comment><USER64> correction: tosdr.org

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> > Not long afterward, Kenyon said, a lawyer in the state attorney's office > assigned to represent the Gainesville Police Department told him there were > details in the motion that led them to believe that Kenyon's client was not > the burglar. > On Feb. 24, Kenyon dropped his legal challenge.

Here is the problem. Getting entangled he should have press harder and get them to answer precisely what they are referring to.

<comment><USER67> I think it's just saying that information provided in the John Doe motion to block Google from releasing his identity led them to believe that John Doe was not the burglar. It's not like the police had any info to rule him out, just some fragment of a location trace or whatever that said he was someone to look into. It could be some guy biking round his neighborhood or some guy who drove in to stalk the neighborhood for a burglary. If they don't know his identity, how can they even know it was his neighborhood? They don't have any reason to exclude him until they have more info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> The idea of living off the grid becomes more and more appealing every day.

</comment><comment><USER69> This is outrageous! It's bad policing.

The police in my area do this too, but they use the "anonymized" data and warrents aren't issued unless they see the same id involved with several burglaries in the area.

</comment><comment><USER70> Why the hell isn't Google challenging these sweeping untargetted searches? This is akin to giving law enforcement all of our location data without reasonable suspicion.

<comment><USER71> ctrl-F "warrant". You may disagree with the law, but Google is required to comply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Google, does do evil

</comment><comment><USER73> They can also come through and completely destroy your house in an operation that has absolutely nothing to do with you, and not only do none of the individuals involved have any financial responsibility but neither does any government agency.

[https://www.denverpost.com/2019/10/30/swat-team-destroyed- gr...](https://www.denverpost.com/2019/10/30/swat-team-destroyed-greenwood- village-familys-home-police-dont-have-to-pay-for-damages/)

In this case, police in Colorado destroyed a man's $600,000 home while pursuing a shoplifting suspect.

<comment><USER74> A shoplifting suspect who barricaded himself inside someone else's home during the pursuit and fired gunshots at the police.

<comment><USER73> Yes, starting with (from another article)

>The incident started when an Aurora police officer attempted to lead Seacat into an office at a Walmart, where he was suspected of shoplifting. But Seacat ran to a Lexus in the parking lot, jumped in and fled.

So they caused $670,000 of damage to protect Walmart from shoplifting. Not great ROI for the community.

All of that is beside the point, anyway. The point is that the government should be paying for that house.

<comment><USER75> Caused 670,000 to uphold the law and prevent us from inching that much closer to anarchy. That's the invisible benefit to most. Soon as criminals can figure out the law enforcement's cost-benefit ratio, they will start exploiting it, and there's too many examples of this to count.

<comment><USER76> I'm sure the homeowner who had their entire house destroyed to catch a petty thief appreciated the police's efforts to save him from anarchy...by essentially being anarchists themselves.

Even if you follow this logic and believe it to be true, the police decided that putting an innocent homeowner out of a house and over half a million bucks, plus the cost of all the officers spectating, and the cost of rolling out a tank, was worth it to recover a few dollars of lost income for Walmart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> This kinda reminds me of Watch_Dogs 2

</comment><comment><USER78> google knows so much about us.

how many people [have] read t&c and privacy policy?

<comment><USER79> Is there anyone that has ever had more information on more people in human history than Google or FB? They have gotten to God like levels with their omniscience

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> delete your google account.

don't use android (or iOS really).

don't carry a smartphone.

I mean, it may seem inconceivable but you're not forced to carry a spy in your pocket =).

<comment><USER56> Is this what you do?

<comment><USER81> It's what I do, and it's a huge inconvenience.

Instead, I recommend getting a smartphone known not to have dedicated spying _hardware_ , replacing the OS with Lineage OS, installing F-Droid and microG (and perhaps Yalp, but only install apps from it if you really really need them) and then keeping it usually switched off (unless you need it on).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> He sure don't look like an avid bike rider.

</comment><comment><USER83> All it would take is a curious engineer an Google to assemble location data on politicians and the 'associates' they appear to be exercising with privately to help move the regulatory needle here.

<comment><USER37> They do get hundreds of thousands of reasons per year to not do that, and stock options on top. Don't put your hope on the people that benefit from the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Surely this is a good thing about the future? Everyone is tracked and when a serious crime happens we can find out who was there. I agree it feels weird now and will need some controls worked out but seems inevitable and not that scary.

<comment><USER85> And it only costs several thousand dollars a pop to prove you're innocent! What progress!

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Of course it made him a suspect. So would anyone caught on security cameras nearby, cars passing intersections that record license plates, and so on. Or anyone a neighbor described seeing walk by.

 _And then of course he was cleared._ Because unless they then find additional evidence like him selling the jewelry on eBay or something... there's nothing there.

I don't know about you guys, but I _appreciate_ living in a world where we have reasonable tools to catch criminals, rather than live in fear of burglary and worse.

I'm _glad_ we can use cell phone locations to help catch the _actual_ criminals. Obviously _abusing_ that power is bad (e.g. a police officer using it to stalk an ex.) But as long as there are procedures, safeguards and accountability in place... this seems like a win, no?

<comment><USER26> > I don't know about you guys, but I appreciate living in a world where we > have reasonable tools to catch criminals, rather than live in fear of > burglary and worse.

Why is this the only choice? Is there _any_ evidence that crime would increase if geofence warrants were disallowed entirely? Crime has been on the decline for decades now even without invasive techniques like geofence warrants. Considering the historically low crime rates, living in fear of burglary is irrational - a "you" problem, not a law enforcement technology problem.

<comment><USER86> > _Crime has been on the decline for decades now even without invasive > techniques like geofence warrants._

So we should stop trying to lower crime further? Why don't you tell that to the families of murder victims?

> _Considering the historically low crime rates, living in fear of burglary is > irrational - a "you" problem, not a law enforcement technology problem._

Burglary is by definition a law enforcement problem, and law enforcement uses tools like technology. It always has.

You're writing as though burglary and other crime doesn't exist anymore. Lower crime does NOT equal no crime.

Perhaps if you'd ever had someone close to you be a victim of a crime, you'd be a bit more empathetic. The idea that fear of crime is "irrational" is just... one of the most callous comments I've read in a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> There's nothing in the article that indicates that cooperating with the enquiry would have been problematic (he appears to have a physical appearance that wouldn't trigger race-based police prejudices). I do mistrust US police in general, but it must be a bit annoying for them for every good faith investigation direction to be treated adversarially like this.

<comment><USER88> Should we play them the saddest melody on the tiniest violin in the world?

US police and prosecutors have a track record of bad faith prosecution.

<comment><USER87> The other thing to be said here is that, despite the risks of cooperating with a police enquiry, if the choice is between them using objective geolocation data to identify possible leads, versus them stopping off for some donuts before driving around until they find a black guy, then we surely all agree which is preferable.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Flutter and AWS Lambda for a serverless mobile app - <AUTHOR> https://read.acloud.guru/serverless-application-with-flutter-lambda-aa0d264fbefd <comment><USER3> Flutter doesn't do what I feel React Native does best, rendering down to native components for Android and iOS (also web/tvOS). Flutter seems to render to custom view components so for better or worse your apps will probably look the same on all platforms. It's interesting to see what projects Google is using Flutter though, see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia)

<comment><USER4> I'm starting to love Flutter, but I'm afraid to invest in it -- Google has a history of abandoning projects they get bored with. I took a long time to come on board with Golang for the same reason...

<comment><USER5> I'll jump to flutter once they have a convincing media player / recorder native component as well as a google map equivalent. If this has good performance on both iOS and android, with features comparable to native ones, then i don't see what can stop them.

Unless Apple starts implementing its own cross-platform sdk in swift... But judging by the slow pace at which swift is moving (compared to its "worl domination" ambitions, that is), i don't think it'll happen anytime soon.

<comment><USER6> World domination in Swift's context means iDevices OSes, outside it will be just like Objective-C has ever been.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Curious of the community's opinion on this article that was sent to me today on "Worst Programming Languages to Learn in 2018", with Dart being the #1. In light of Flutter gaining some ground, would anyone think it would push back at this conclusion?

[https://www.codementor.io/blog/worst-languages-to- learn-3phy...](https://www.codementor.io/blog/worst-languages-to- learn-3phycr98zk)

<comment><USER8> My speculation is that those who marked it "the worst language to learn" never actually tried it, and based their opinions on something they heard 3-5 years ago. But now the dart is different and its goals are different. In any case, I believe this kind of negative opinion is grossly unfair.

<comment><USER9> They based it off 3 metrics: Community, Growth, and Job Market. I'm not surprised Dart is on the list. As good as the language may be, it remains a fairly niche.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I became quite interested in Flutter recently but it was pretty much impossible to find a range of good demo applications (or any demo applications) that show off what it is capable of so I gave up. LOTS of technical documentation however but nothing to sell me on using it.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, we've got some work to do to fill out our set of examples. (Disclaimer: I work on the Flutter team.)

\- There's a catalog of simple but official examples in the Flutter repo, under the examples directory: [https://github.com/flutter/flutter](https://github.com/flutter/flutter)

\- One Flutter user has contributed a pretty impressive list of examples and learning resources here: [https://github.com/Solido/awesome- flutter](https://github.com/Solido/awesome-flutter)

\- One of my personal favorite examples is this restaurant app prototype, which is inspired by an Uplabs design: [https://github.com/braulio94/menu_flutter](https://github.com/braulio94/menu_flutter)

<comment><USER10> If you say you have a beautiful, powerful, fast, full featured application development system then you need to be able to SHOW me, and its gotta knock me out in every possible way.

Nothing here at all for Flutter, just words.

<comment><USER12> Honestly, the best way to see the advantages of the toolset is to complete the "Get started" section of flutter.io.

I develop iOS, Android, Web and Mac apps, and I was honestly blown away by the quality of the intelliJ and VSCode plugins available for Flutter. In fact, they've kinda ruined me for other language SDKs now.

Granted, the lack of material, demos and discussions makes it difficult to tackle some problems, but that seems to be changing these days. It's hard NOT to enjoy coding in Flutter, though, and I think that end up being its biggest strength.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> No one here even mentions Firebase, why?

<comment><USER14> Firebase gets expensive very quickly. And the interface it provides is unfriendly to certain types of operations. In my own experience, I've never kept an app on Firebase longer than it took to prototype the app.

<comment><USER13> I don't see the expensive part, just some rumors, but never happened to me. But I agree it's not that easy to use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Also, where is the Flutter + GCE engine example? That's what interests me.

<comment><USER16> Can you give a little more detail about what you'd like to see? What would the ideal example look like for you?

<comment><USER15> * I'd like to see an example of a single page app ( todo list or similar ) made with Flutter running on Google cloud hardware.

* Ideally this app would be designed for a desktop browser.

* I'd like to see examples of how to gracefully render this app on a mobile device.

* I'd like to see how to do the UI in a really data-driven way so that I supply something like JSON and the UI just renders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice and very concise tutorial but it generously missed the entire AWS Lambda section (and how much pain it is to work with, IAM setup, API gateway setup, SDK support etc etc). Perhaps the author wanted the focus to be on Flutter and less on backend (AWS Lambda in this scenario).

</comment><comment> nevi-me Flutter seems attractive, but the large build sizes are a showstopper for me sadly. I hope they're able to improve this in future.

<comment><USER18> A release build of an Hello World app is around 7 MB.

<comment><USER19> so... is that good or bad?

<comment><USER20> Bad - on the very bad side of things

<comment><USER21> Why is that a problem? Phones have gigs of space.

<comment><USER22> Not all phones. And not that many gigs. And not all mobile networks have so much data bandwidth. At least not where I am.

<comment><USER21> Ah, I see. Well, FWIW it starts at 7 MB, and then I presume grows at the same rate as a native app as it gets more complicated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "React Native reusable components"

What did that mean? Downside of flutter is you can't use any non Flutter UI control easily.

<comment><USER24> Yeah this is weird. Maybe they meant "React Native- _like_ reusable components". Flutter widgets take inspiration from React Native:

"Flutter widgets are built using a modern reactive-style framework which takes inspiration from React Native. " \- [https://flutter.io/flutter-for-react- native/#built-in-widget...](https://flutter.io/flutter-for-react- native/#built-in-widgets)

<comment><USER25> Indeed. It's inspired by react (diffing algorithm to determine what to render) but I saw nothing to indicate it can use react components inside flutter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Very nice.

I've been working on Lambda apps in Golang too. Here's a boilerplate app that can help you get started and understand the pieces:

[https://github.com/nzoschke/gofaas](https://github.com/nzoschke/gofaas)

</comment><comment><USER27> "Dart feels like Java". Great. Now we can have D2EE on the client and server.

<comment><USER8> Based on my own experience, it doesn't feel like java at all. It is very easy to learn for those who know java, or javascript, or C# etc - that's true. But the "look and feel" is different. And it's not only the language - <USER2> (e.g. collections) are very well designed. Just try it out- you will like it. As for flutter - there are novel, original ideas in there. It's not a copy of something else.

<comment><USER28> Maybe "feels like" is too subjective but it absolutely feels like Java to me:

* Object-oriented with inheritance (sharing the same keywords such as 'class' and 'extends'

* Non-optional semicolons

* Constructors, method overriding, calling `super.whatever` in your overriden methods

* Presence of null

* A base Object class for all objects in Dart, with hashCode() toString() methods

These are mostly superficial observations, and it's not a criticism of the language, but it certainly feels like Java to me, more than Scala or Go does.

<comment><USER29> True, there are many similarities. But it seems to me that the author of this article makes Dart appear even more like Java by ignoring Dart features and idioms.

For instance, what's the point of those Java style getter methods in the Movie class? These are public instance variables after all, and Dart has special property syntax to transparently wrap instance variables if and when the need arises.

I know next to nothing about Dart. So maybe there is a reason for this weirdness. But I rather suspect that the author has written a lot of Java and almost no Dart in his life.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: iOS App that saves videos for offline viewing (Super Bowl Ads Demo) - <AUTHOR> http://watchlaterapp.com/channels/510f05396ba60a6675000e9c?page=1&video_id=510f04366ba60a5b1f0003ec

<comment><USER2> sounds interesting... i give it at least a try.

f __* the download restriction...there are tons of apps out there with this function, and i guess google has to put these lines in there rules.

</comment><comment><USER3> How does this app get around the YouTube license restriction about downloading or caching their videos?

<comment><USER4> It's just a matter of time until Apple kills this app. Not even web browsers are allowed to save downloaded YouTube videos for offline use ([http://www.icab.de/blog/2013/01/26/app-reviews-are- unpredict...](http://www.icab.de/blog/2013/01/26/app-reviews-are- unpredictable/)).

<comment><USER5> iCab can download videos and is far and away the best browser for iOS.

<http://www.icab.de/mobile.html>

<comment><USER4> iCab Mobile had to remove the YouTube download function with the latest update:

 _Apple rejected the update. The reason was not the bugfix, they rejected the App because of a feature that was available for years in iCab Mobile and which is also available in hundreds of other Apps in the AppStore. They rejected the App because it is able to download videos from YouTube so you can watch the videos offline._

<comment><USER5> This really bad for the developer as he is on his blog apologizing for the loss of a feature. Apparently it is only disabled for YouTube, whose ToS Apple has to respect. Guess I won't be upgrading cause it is so useful to download on wifi rather than burn mobile data. Also videos disappear never to be seen again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The only product I know for watching entire videos offline.

</comment><comment><USER7> wouldn't the tech talk channels (confreaks, js, TED…) make a better demo for a place like HN?

just sayin'.

</comment><comment><USER8> Finally, Instapaper for Video!

<comment><USER9> There already was an instapaper for video. It was called Spool. First, Google asked them to not download YouTube videos, then Facebook acquired the company and they shut down.

<comment><USER10> Actually, watchlater is older than Spool...</comment></comment></comment>


Reading the Tattoos on People's Faces - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/03/reading-peoples-faces <comment><USER2> "(Gambetta dryly notes that many of these strategies work in another environment with a stable population and forced attendance: school.)"

Indeed. I think economist David Friedman noted in one of his books that posting as a tough guy is a good social strategy in school just as it is in prison, but is often a poor social strategy in environments of free association.

<comment><USER3> "... posting as a tough guy is a good social strategy in school just as it is in prison"

So here's a connection to another recent post <http://thenextweb.com/2009/11/28/chat-hacker-hacked-blog/>

(17 year old hacker).

Is the public school system, pretty much universal around the globe now, a breeding ground for sociopathic behavior because of compulsory attendance?

<comment><USER2> _Is the public school system, pretty much universal around the globe now, a breeding ground for sociopathic behavior because of compulsory attendance?_

I have entertained that thought. It is difficult to sort out all the different aspects of causation of crime, but voluntary school attendance (once the worldwide norm) seems to be better for building cohesive societies than compulsory school attendance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps my beard is a sign of my commitment to geekdom?

<comment><USER5> I don't know - is it painful to remove? :)

<comment><USER4> Hmm. I find the process of shaving on a daily basis painful, so in a way, yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article was better than the title would indicate.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone have good game theory book recommendations? This book was enjoyable, although it dragged here and there:

[http://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-William- Poundstone/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-William- Poundstone/dp/038541580X)

<comment><USER7> One highlight in the Prisoner's Dilema was the concept of letting the opponent see you "throw the steering wheel out the window" during a game of chicken.

I wonder if you could create a company around this idea. Call it "Final Offer, Inc." The company would offer contracts that "throw the steering wheel out the window" when negotiating. How it works: I sign an agreement with Final Offer that obligates me to pay Final Offer 100% of the contract price if this is not the final offer. Or a software company's sales department takes out a Final Offer contract to certify that this pricing is the lowest it can offer for 8 months. The customer is then provided with Final Offer certification they can show when submitting the offer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Link to the Juzo Itami movie mentioned in the article (requires registration)

[http://www.surrealmoviez.info/readarticle.php?article_id=169...](http://www.surrealmoviez.info/readarticle.php?article_id=16927)

</comment><comment><USER9> Getting tired of feeling obliged to make meta comments like this: Hacker News? please if you can flag it, flag it. This is getting worse lately.

</comment><comment><USER10> The idea that facial tattoos mean "this person expects to spend his life in prison" is ridiculous. I know a dozen programmers with neck and facial tattoos, one of whom is also a VC-funded entrepreneur in Seattle. I bet the closest any of them have gotten to prison is in a video game.

<comment><USER11> Which actually proves the article's point -- the criminal fraternity have to try even harder to distinguish themselves from the mainstream. I'll bet, however, that the programmers you know with facial tattoos look more like this: [http://freshfunnypictures.com/funny-pictures/2113/facial- tat...](http://freshfunnypictures.com/funny-pictures/2113/facial-tattoo.jpg) than like this: [http://www.thesmokinggun.com/graphics/art3/0130063tattoo1.jp...](http://www.thesmokinggun.com/graphics/art3/0130063tattoo1.jpg)

<comment><USER12> I was sure you were gonna post this guy as your second example: [http://www.splcenter.org/blog/wp- content/uploads/2007/08/cur...](http://www.splcenter.org/blog/wp- content/uploads/2007/08/curtis-1.jpg)

Seriously what type of life can you expect to have looking like that? It's not like it was a snap decision either, that much work would take a lot of time. This guy definitely went above and beyond to differentiate himself from ordinary people who have tattoos.

<comment><USER11> Heh ... I looked for that one but couldn't find it in a brief search. A classic example, for sure.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why JavaScript Is Doomed - <AUTHOR> http://simpleprogrammer.com/2013/05/06/why-javascript-is-doomed/ <comment><USER2> I do find it ironic that a post that talks about why JavaScript is doomed gives an "error establishing a database connection" message.

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops, somehow caching got disabled. Reenabled now. Thanks for pointing that out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a pretty shallow article. It's a lot of text for not saying much.

The parts that are actually substance consist mostly of broad unsupported claims and very general unrelated facts about JavaScript. It's as if Leo Laporte wrote it.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a really poor article. It doesn't really explain why JavaScript is doomed. It doesn't explain what's bad about JavaScript... but then he goes on to list some frameworks on top of JS that are awesome. Sorry, but if JS sucked, then how is it possibly to have awesome frameworks derived on top of JS? Surely, those are examples of how cool JS is. And how can you say Node.js is cool, but JS sucks.

Sigh... Besides that this article is a jumbled mess to read, the TL;DR of it would essentially boil down to: "I don't like JavaScript because I don't like the way it looks. It's doomed!"

</comment><comment><USER5> There are a couple of very nice points in that wall of prose;

You are not your technology - This one bites new engineers all the time, they mix up the fact that they are really facile in <tech> with they are smart capable developers. So they mistakenly react to attacks on <tech> as personal attacks. After you've learned your fourth or fifth programming language they begin to blur together.

Languages are not islands - which is to say that nobody writes 'pure' language <x>. They call libraries and those libraries provide abstractions for getting things done. So when the libraries are good for what you are trying to get done, the language is great. This is why perl is great for some things, and why C++ is great, and yes even Java can be pretty useful too. If you're trying to do thing <x> and there is a lot of support for doing <x> like things in the libraries that come with the language, then you can be forgiven for imputing that value to the language rather than the environment around it.

It's not doomed though, and it can't really be a bubble since we're not talking about money here. If some new language is developed that runs in browsers it will be wounded, perhaps mortally, but until then that spot is pretty comfy.

</comment><comment><USER6> Libraries like jQuery abstract the __DOM __more than anything else, no? The DOM is what people paper over. They want a better API for traversal, filtering, events, manipulation (incl. CSS), and so on. In that light, you might actually _want_ a language where higher-order functions are possible.

Also, it's a bit contradictory to argue that you could replace JS with any programming language _and_ simultaneously argue that JS is garbage. In fact, if you simply swapped in Ruby, your argument would be largely the same; you'd still be stuck with the DOM and CSS.

JS isn't a perfect language. The latest disappointment for me is the lack of any well-defined module or namespace system; it forces people into ad-hoc solutions when Python, Ruby, or other dynamic languages have pretty good systems.

But there's nothing egregiously bad about the language, at least IMHO. What the author really seems to hate is web development, including CSS and the DOM, and probably the fact that they hardly have any choice. (Not coincidentally, I suspect this is why many people have problems with JS. I am sympathetic.) I suppose something nuanced like that makes for a less linkbait-y headline, however.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's the thing I find about people that say JavaScript is doomed. Most of them never actually bothered to learn JavaScript. I run a shop with about 10 programmers and because, most of the time, we work in small projects for a multitude of clients we all master in different programming languages/frameworks. I've seen Perl written in JavaScript, Java written in JavaScript, C written in JavaScript. Mind you, I've hacked in JavaScript for years before actually I started learning it in depth. My C#/Java programmers spend most of their time whining about how JavaScript should have namespaces, how inheritance this and why closures that. Just because JavaScript has a low entry point doesn't mean you shouldn't invest time learning it. I seriously believe that if we invested a 1/4 of the time in JavaScript as we do with our favorite languages I'm pretty sure we would be seeing a (hell) lot less of these articles.

</comment><comment><USER8> If one of these hundred alternative languages that compiles to JavaScript takes off ( [https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of- lang...](https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-languages- that-compile-to-JS) ) AND has features that would benefit from a better underlying "assembly" language (like Dart from Google, Typescript from Microsoft, or asm.js from Mozilla), then I would say Javascript's days are either numbered, or it will finally adopt static typing, as was proposed a decade ago for JavaScript 2.0 or ES4 or whatever: [http://www- archive.mozilla.org/js/language/js20-2000-07/libr...](http://www- archive.mozilla.org/js/language/js20-2000-07/libraries/types.html) [http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/rg38/2.ht...](http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/rg38/2.html) <http://www.ecmascript.org/es4/spec/overview.pdf>

<comment><USER9> But languages that compile to javascript still presuppose javascript.

<comment><USER10> Assuming they only ever compile to JS, yes. It's possible Microsoft could get buy-in from the IE team to run TypeScript natively. Dart already runs in a VM in a version of Chrome.

<comment><USER9> That's all well and good for that one browser. But that's the bleeding edge of the bleeding edge.

For the sake of legacy code browser vendors would still have to support javascript natively for the indeterminate future as well. No one's going in and changing the umpteen million lines of extant javascript to Dart no matter how many browsers can run it or how semantically nice it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Do go on. Seems to me -- in this week where a 1080p video decoder written in JavaScript was demoed -- that .js is as capable as ever.

</comment><comment><USER12> The premise that you can just "take away JavaScript" is false and thus the implication is false.

It is exactly the ubiquity of JavaScript which makes it nearly impossible to "take away" and which makes it useful!

Dart probably won't succeed even though it is arguably a cleaner and prettier language simply because JavaScript is good enough and it is everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER13> Comparing JavaScript to BlackBerry doesn't make any sense. Most people replace their devices every 2 years. Unless you like wasting time you're not going to rewrite your app every time a new better language comes out.

</comment><comment><USER14> _"Even if JQuery isn't the reason JavaScript is so hot right now, do you honestly think JavaScript would have become so popular if JQuery never existed?"_

Yes, I do, for the simple reason that _JavaScript is the only language that runs in every browser,_ full stop.

It doesn't matter how ugly it is. It has the privileged position of being the only language that runs in the browser, so if you want to do any kind of client-side scripting, it's JavaScript or nothing.

This makes the emergence of frameworks to smooth over the language's pain points inevitable. If jQuery had never been invented, Prototype or Mootools or one of the zillion other frameworks would have taken over the world. But JavaScript's monopoly over scripting the browser is what drove all those frameworks' popularity, not the other way around.

 _"JavaScript has some things that are fundamentally wrong with it that no amount of covering up or pretending will fix."_

As long as JavaScript is the only way to script the browser, whether JS is fundamentally flawed or not is sort of an academic question. It remains the only way to get from point A to point B regardless of its flaws.

 _"Even though the world seems bright and cheery for JavaScript developers today, it also seemed equally bright and cheery for Blackberry devs not too long ago. And look how that turned out._ "

Blackberry devs are getting pummeled because there was somewhere else for Blackberry users to go. Where else are JavaScript users supposed to go to script the browser? There is no alternative.

" _Take JavaScript away and replace it with another programming language and you don't really miss anything._ "

Except that in practice, _you can't do that._ _Browser vendors_ can do that, but none of them appear to have any interest in doing so. (The article mentions Dart, but Dart compiles to JavaScript.) And that's not even considering what would happen if all the browser vendors backed different languages... oy.

Way back in the earliest days of browser scripting, it was thought that languages would be 'pluggable' -- that there'd be, say, a Python plugin for your browser, and devs would be able to script the browser in Python through it. (Which is why up until HTML5 SCRIPT elements were required to include a TYPE attribute; it was assumed that "application/javascript" would be just one type among many.) But that never happened.

 _"You can only build so much on top of something else, before you have to wipe the slate clean and start over."_

There's no practical way to wipe the JS slate clean. JS is out there, right now, baked into a gazillion different browsers and devices. Even if you come up with a better alternative, how do you get it into enough of those browsers and devices to create the critical mass required for developers to start writing for it?

The only practical answer is that you get them into _new_ browsers and devices, and then wait for all the old ones to die or be replaced. Which means that if something really does rise up and try to replace JS, you will have pleeeenty of lead time to get ready for the change. Like, _decades_ of it.

<comment><USER15> "Which means that if something really does rise up and try to replace JS, you will have pleeeenty of lead time to get ready for the change. Like, decades of it."

Amen. I am getting kind of tired of this litany of breast-beating over how "ugly and awful" JS is and how it is "doomed".

I find that the things that make JS "ugly" to a novice (functional scoping, module patters, etc.), are the same things that make it powerful and elegant in the hands of an expert.

<comment><USER16> Amen to that. Now let me in peace declare my functions that will return functions that will return closures. These articles are silly and I don't see how this is even "hacker news" (oh wait, OP is the author, makes sense)...

I don't use Lua, I have/see/envision no interest for Haskell other than as a toy, the latest Java 0-day exploit is only 15 days away[1], PHP still looks like a mess to me and I abhor C++ (and Rails too, but it's another matter). Yet I wouldn't ever call one of these languages "doomed" because I know that my personal vision isn't the vision of our industry and that even for something as strange as brainfuck, there'll be an engineer who will find uses for it[2].

What I find even more about this article is that we are a community where so many of "us" are already suffering from depression, Impostor Syndrome[3] and many other "bad emotions" and someone is still out there preaching negativity, telling us how people who "put all [their] eggs in javascript" aren't "smart".

What's the point? Didn't we learn from our own DongleGate and similar events that this attitude was in no way the winning attitude that our more talented peers exhibited to elevate themselves? If you don't want to be the next PG, Zuckerberg or any 10X engineer, go ahead! But don't try to drag anyone with you down a hole of your own making.

[1] <http://java-0day.com/>

[2] <http://modbf.sourceforge.net/>

[3] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5664839>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is this article for real? I am trying to decide if the author is being ironic, sarcastic, or doing some kind of double message.

Taken at face value, this is just link bait.

<comment><AUTHOR> The message is just that JavaScript is doomed because too much cruft has been built on top of it, and the real value isn't JavaScript anymore, but the libraries built on it. Something will come along and make it all easier, without having to build 50 libraries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think a much clearer argument would be: 'Developers want great tools. JavaScript has too many tools which induces the paradox of choice. A better tool might replace JavaScript in the future because of this.'

I personally am developing applications with minimal JavaScript a la Pinboard.

</comment><comment><USER19> i wish it were doomed... javascript should've been replaced with something more sane in the late 90's. unfortunately, that didn't happen and it is here to stay.

</comment><comment><USER20> Where does he get off talking about sweet potatoes like that? The nerve of some people!

</comment><comment><USER21> I couldn't disagree more.

</comment><comment><USER22> lol...</comment>


Pssst, Your PGP Is Leaking - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/pssst-your-pgp-is-leaking <comment><USER2> \--hidden-recipients is another flag.</comment>


Ack now hosted on GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/petdance/ack <comment><USER2> It'd be nice if these sort of links on github went to a nice friendly "What the hell is Ack?" page. With a nice summary of the project etc. Like in the big green "Sign up to github" box maybe? So people can see at a glance what the project is about.

I know there's a README after some scrolling, but it's not really obvious. There's a load of hex strings which seem a bit premature, and a source list which again assumes I know what the project is all about...

I kinda prefer how google code shows things :/

eg <http://code.google.com/p/google-caja/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I could have always have pointed it at the actually readme <http://github.com/petdance/ack/blob/master/README>

I just thought in this case the root of the project might have made more sense. Maybe they should put an excerpt from the README under the standard project blurb with name, homepage and clone url.

<comment><USER2> That's not much better for me, still half a page of 'stuff' before the README starts :)

I didn't mean to derail the thread though, but it's always irritated me about github links. I click on one and have no clue what the hell the project is.

/me is off to checkout ack (Haven't used it before, and looks useful).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ack is a joy. It's almost completely displaced my use of grep for code related purposes now.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. It turns out that Defaults Matter. Who knew?

<comment><USER5> I've been using Ack tons, love it. However, I don't like the --notext default. I find that I specify --text almost every time. Just wanted to give everyone a headsup that this is the case: I introduced some bugs in my app when I missed a whole bunch of .txt templates for plain text email variants.

<comment><USER6> Ah, but ack supports an options file, so you can actually change your own defaults. Consider adding "--text" to "$HOME/.ackrc". In case you want more, specify just one option per line.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the tip. I assumed that this existed, but hadn't gotten around to looking for it yet. My point, however, was to confirm that defaults do, in fact, matter :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm new to github. When I go to download it ("Downloads" tab at github) and click "latest" "tgz"; why do I get "petdance- ack-$extremely_long_number.tar.gz" instead of "ack-1.9.0.tar.gz"?

Same thing happens if I click the curvy-cornered "download" button with the little green downward-pointing arrow.

<comment><USER8> It is the latest commit identifier. Dont bother about it, its a normal, tar.gz file.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do we reduce the gender gap at our tech events - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN, I've been running tech events (barcamps, conferences, hackdays) for about five years now and I've seen the gender gap at our events fluctuate, it's a lot higher than other events I've seen (as we really push to make sure the event is welcoming, family friendly and has a great atmosphere, but I'm always wanting to improve..
I'm hesitant to have specific female tickets as I think that's an unnecessary divide but one of the options considered is giving tickets to local groups (girl geek dinners, girls who code etc) to give out to members.
I know there are a lot of other event organisers on HN and obviously a lot of girl hackers, I'd love to get thoughts and suggestions from the crowd, try things out and I'll write up if they work.. <comment><USER2> I would just focus on making it a constructive open environment where everyone feels welcome (irrespective of age, gender, or ethnic background).

I think the gender gap will surround technology for a little while longer, and I could write an essay on why that is (and what can be done). But I won't.

I would be careful with walking the line between being accepting of female inclusion and making them feel like they're VIP members who nobody can treat as equals as a result of their imposed "status." Such status can easily flip (i.e. "good" and "bad" statuses are both exclusionary).

I've seen several organisations who were typically male heavy attract female members, and it was always a slow grind which just essentially involved treating everyone like equals and with respect.

I would avoid trying to over-respect women too, since that breads resentment and sexism. It is also kind of condescending (i.e. "well I don't think you could get this on your own, so I am giving it to you").

So if you want to get some female speakers then make sure they are up to the standards you expect from their male counterparts, doing anything else is more than a little counter-productive.

PS - Also maybe come up with some basic speaker guidelines to make it clear that sexism, racism, etc (even as "jokes") are not acceptable. This might be "obvious" stuff but it still might need to get said.

<comment><USER3> Having a zero-tolerance policy for sexist, racist, etc. comments can be a big thing. A recent blog post talked about how people were posting really hateful, insensitive stuff on Facebook about a talk _during the talk_. Make it clear that comments of that sort won't be tolerated, and make it clear to attendees that if it does happen and is reported, it will be dealt with effectively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> With silicon milkroundabout jobs fair they often ask if you know of any other talented people that might be interested during the registration process.

Could you not ask people when they register for tickets if they know anyone of their opposite gender that would be interested (perhaps phrased more casually than that) So girls would recommend a guy they know and vice versa.

Even if you get a low return on e-mail addresses it may get people to question the balance of their own social network & they may start to look to balance that up next time they're at a networking event, it's true that a lot of people have to go outside of their comfort zone to do that. Most of my friends recommend events to me already but they have to make a point to remember to mention it, this would just add that element into the registration process.

I think it would remove a lot of friction to new people attending, with this method they already have a friend they know that is going so it's easy to tag along.

You could explain how you're committed to making your events equal opportunity. This will help you to hear of potentially interested people & it also opens up lines of communication in social groups where people start to share in wider circles.

I completely agree that adding specific female ticket section just makes me think _sigh_ I'm just making up the numbers.

</comment><comment><USER5> Invite female leaders to the event. Have them do a presentation if they are willing. This will have have their network follow in automatically.

In essence: Focus on attracting key females, and the rest will follow in.

</comment><comment><USER6> I mentioned this in a post the other day, but I get most of my local conference/meetup information from regional female dev mailing lists I'm a part of. These groups are really good about ensuring that the whole tech community knows about what is going on in our area, and they welcome male participants to post new events and job listings whenever they come up.

</comment><comment><USER7> I hope this isn't just a rewording of "where are all the girls?"

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't get the reference?</comment></comment>


The revenge of GoPHP5 being planned - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/php-fig/ogp03OHbVJ0

<comment><USER2> Great idea, but June 2014 is too early to force a transition to PHP 5.5. They'll need to coordinate this with major Linux distributions, otherwise lots of people will be left in the cold.

As some of the commenters noted in the original thread, Ubuntu's current LTS release runs PHP 5.3. The next LTS, which will include PHP 5.5, is not expected until April 2014. Since people are encouraged to wait until the .1 release before upgrading to the next LTS, it will probably take until the fall of 2014 for the majority of Ubuntu servers to get PHP 5.5.

Those who run Debian Stable will need to wait even longer, probably the middle of 2015, since Debian tends to take 2 years between major releases and the current Stable was released earlier this year.

Of course there are PPAs for Ubuntu and dotdeb for Debian, but people who run "stable" Linux distributions tend not to get third-party upgrades.

And let's not even get started about CentOS...

Meanwhile, PHP 5.4 and above are a pain in the ass for shared hosting services, because some "security features" like safe_mode are gone forever and now the hosts need to rethink the security model on their multi-tenant servers. It took much longer for my favorite shared host, NearlyFreeSpeech, to roll out PHP 5.4 than it took them to roll out PHP 5.3. Getting PHP 5.3 is a big deal for us developers, but from the point of view of a web host it's a relatively minor upgrade. PHP 5.4 and 5.5 are much more serious changes for web hosts.

A more realistic timeline would call for PHP 5.3 by the end of this year, followed by PHP 5.5 a year or two later, and after that all the major projects should vow to support only the 2-3 most recent minor releases. A gradual approach like this will get developers most of the features they really need, such as namespaces, late static binding, closures and Composer, as soon as possible (they're all available in PHP 5.3). The new features of PHP 5.4 and 5.5 would be nice to have, but they can wait another year or two.

A rolling support schedule would also eliminate the need to do another GoPHPX.X campaign ever again. PHP 5.5 looks nice now, but you don't want to be stuck with it 3 years later any more than you want to be stuck with IE 8. Once and for all, let's force web hosts to do regular upgrades even if you don't yell at them every single time.</comment>


Topographical Intelligence in Business - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/wardleymaps <comment><AUTHOR> I had this presented to me by a coworker. I like the general idea of presenting a map for value chain but I'm sceptical because it seems to me that it is mostly based on the opinion of the person who draw the map and the perspective he is seeing.</comment>


Should it be a bit harder to submit on HN? - <AUTHOR>

Just a quick question/concept: should it be a bit harder to post on HN - thus leading to higher quality links/submissions? In general, the quality of content posted is amazing, but what if a description of minimum character length was needed to post? Average number of posts per user might decline, but there might be more discussion per post, creating more value for the community.  Is this a good idea or bad? <comment><USER2> I'm not sure, but I've been thinking about quality for a bit and figure I'd share my thoughts.

Eternal September is named the way it is because in the past online communities only had to deal with influx when students got to college, but now they have to deal with a constant influx. Given this, it seems obvious to me how you go about countering Eternal September: remove the eternal.

This could be done in a few ways, but the core idea is having a period in which registration has a barrier for most of the year and periods in which the barrier is removed for the sake of growth.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's value in the links, not only in the discussion. I don't see the point in discouraging submissions (except for spam/off-topic submissions).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I think you're right - maybe there's a "push and a "pull" effect involved - creating barriers to make submission more difficult might be a "push", but something like flagging or marking spam and off-topic stuff would be more of a "pull" to encourage quality posts? I think pulls (incentives of any sort) are better for communities than pushes (barriers or punishments). Just some random thoughts...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On Maemo News we handle off-topic submissions via ability to downvote posts. And one downvote is worth 5 upvotes.

</comment><comment><USER5> No.

EDIT:

There should be the ability to be more granular in posting. More topic options, subscribability etc.

I've said it before - and I'll keep saying it - take the best aspects of Reddit and apply them here.

Why can I easily see top, new, threads and comments - but I have to go to my profile to see my submissions? I can't see if there have been replies to my posts etc.

Rather than making it harder to post - lets make what we already have better to use.

<comment><USER6> If you enable notifo, and have a supported client, you can get instant notifications of replies to your posts.</comment></comment>