Windows XP will never die - <AUTHOR> http://www.tgdaily.com/software-brief/50631-windows-xp-will-never-die <comment><USER2> Our little firm just went through this issue, having had to replace aging Windows XP computers used by our staff and being told by our IT guy and our vendors for key software components that we use (Hummingbird for sophisticated document management, Lexis for time and billing, calendaring, etc., and others) that Windows 7 clients would be incompatible with our network setup for a variety of reasons.

This meant either spending $10K or $20K for various small upgrades using Windows XP clients or triple or quadruple that amount (or more) for doing a global upgrade to Windows 7 for clients and attendant network components. While it is nice to consider bringing everything up to date at once, no business will do this without considering the cost/benefit aspects and, for us anyway, this meant going with the more incremental changes and deferring the more disruptive ones. The hardware aspects of these upgrades are pretty modest in cost. But the expense of paying tech people to reconfigure everything gets high pretty quickly.

Thus, the point made by the article is spot on, at least from this non-tech user's perspective. I assume this will also help explain why it will be comparatively hard to dislodge Microsoft from business-related markets generally - no one wants to make radically disruptive changes on infrastructure items unless they have to.

<comment><USER3> That's a good summary. I'm going to encourage my competitors to keep thinking like that. If I'm lucky they'll be sufficiently slowed down, and kept out of touch with the market needs of most users (who will have kept upgrading) that it won't be hard for me to eat their lunch.

<comment><USER4> I suspect that this won't be a problem for grellas, whose company is his law firm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not as if XP is a particularly BAD system. If the minimal amount of UI bling bothers you, it's easy to turn it off and have something that looks like Windows 2000 Professional. It's stable, it runs all the software most businesses need, and it more or less stays out of your way otherwise.

All this assumes that x86 (compatible) architectures will still be available through 2020, something I think is not certain at all (and maybe this is what MS is counting on in making this promise)

<comment><USER6> First thing I do is get rid of all the bling on xp or 7, make it look like 2000. 7 almost becomes useable with this, although it still annoyes the hell out of me. When everything works, it is just fine, but when you need to go to the control panel, or do anything out of the normal, you find Microsoft has moves everything around just for the hell of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like a defensive move to make sure nobody thinks too hard about switching to Macs or Linux machines.

<comment><USER8> Really? The cost comparison of switching to a mac or linux system vs. windows 7, infrastructure and tech support-wise, must be minimal for a large company. Or am I missing something?

I think it has more to do with the fact that people are going to want to keep XP for a long time, because it works for most business use (spreadsheets, word docs, and the internet).

<comment><USER9> It only makes sense if there's a competitive advantage to the upgrade. For the vast majority of businesses there isn't. In that scenario the cost of sticking with XP is actually a competitive advantage for those companies when the economy is weak and budgets are tight. For tech companies it's not an issue since tech is their business having the best is a competitive edge.

<comment><USER10> This is exactly it. I think XP is the first desktop OS that was truly "good enough" for typical, everyday business use.

Sure, Windows 7 is clearly a better OS... but is that going to make Company X produce widgets any faster? Probably not enough to justify the cost of licensing and upgrading to a new OS (and that's assuming that there are no compatibility issues with e.g. that old timecard app the intern wrote in 2001)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I guess the root of the problem is that no windows software maker, Microsoft or otherwise, wants the initial loss of customers that would result in not making it compatible with windows xp.

On my windows xp machine there hasn't been a single piece of software I've wanted to use which wouldn't work without an upgrade. If there was something key it probably would convince me to upgrade. I've used and don't mind windows 7 just there has been no compelling reason to change.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm still seeing 2014 for extended support

[http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en- gb&C2=1173](http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-gb&C2=1173)

Is that the wrong page? Can someone provide where Microsoft is saying it's now 2020?

<comment><USER13> Sigh... [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/xp-in-2020-not-even-close- rea...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/xp-in-2020-not-even-close-read-the- fine-print/2270)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> And therefore Internet Explorer 6 will never die.

I know someone who still uses Windows ME.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's interesting to see something we tend to think of as software winding up in the same position as firmware; left alone to it's own devices and un- upgraded, unless something is not working.

<comment><USER16> I know of some ten year old machines running critical SCADA control software on top of Windows 2000. Those machines were never intended to be upgraded. They're not even connected to the Internet, so I'd be surprised if they've even been patched. They do their job with no fuss, so don't touch them.

They're approaching the point where the hardware could start failing any day now, so they're on an upgrade path. This path is, not so surprisingly, very expensive and fraught with politics about how the replacements should be connected to the internet (hint: they shouldn't).

These things tend to happen a lot, we just don't hear about it very often. Hell, where I work we're still running CentOS 4 on the vast majority of machines because we know it works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In my compaq laptop I'm still running Windows 98</comment>


Startup wages war on the $19b wasted each year on overpriced plane tickets - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/fairfly-cheaper-flights <comment><USER2> I never understood why airlines don't have last minute rates like hotels. The plane is flying anyway, so it's mostly sunk costs but the would rather jack up the price and have empty seats than lower it and have filled ones and more money.</comment>


Show HN: Why we invited a whole city and a dog to our launch - <AUTHOR>

At Ziteboard (zoomable whiteboard in your browser) we chat a lot - when we work alone as well… Having a trusted companion with us enables creativity and productivity to exist on a higher level and makes us a bit less neurotic. To see Poppy (short haired daschund) visit the live broadcast of the launch here: www.ustream.tv/channel/ziteboard
We also invited all our friends who of course will not show up for there is a hell of a storm out there, and made the launch public to whoever comes to share their insights and experiences.
We are looking forward to have your feedback on our service which let's you draw (whatever) in a browser, and zoom in and out. It's a plain zoomable whiteboard - nothing more, nothing less. May be good for ad-hoc presentation, meetings, doodling, you tell us.
Please do visit: http://ziteboard.com
Cheers. <comment><USER2> interesting stuff. what really bugs me is the zoom does not automatically changes to pinch zoom, I have to click on the zoom icon. also a clickable link would be useful: [http://ziteboard.com](http://ziteboard.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks puffyrice. We're working on default pinch zoom and instant collaboration (multiple users at the same time) as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> it's minimal and that's why it's cool

<comment><AUTHOR> nothing that's not needed for sure.</comment></comment>


Kliener perkins new social fund - <AUTHOR> http://www.kpcb.com/initiatives/sfund/

<comment><USER2> Two hundred and fifty million dollars is a lot of money, especially for the "social media" space which I'm starting to think might be starting to reach the end of its boom phase. I wonder what sort of companies they're expecting to fund.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, you did spell three of the five words in the title correctly.</comment>


Why are Africa's coronavirus successes being overlooked? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/21/africa-coronavirus-successes-innovation-europe-us <comment><USER2> On a similar note, about Mongolia: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23278312](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23278312) / [https://medium.com/@indica/covid-underdogs- mongolia-3b0c1624...](https://medium.com/@indica/covid-underdogs- mongolia-3b0c162427c2)</comment>


Beauty Is Making Scientists Rethink Evolution - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/09/magazine/beauty-evolution-animal.html <comment><USER2> > Although never completely forgotten, Darwin's theory of beauty was largely > abandoned.

This claim is completely unsubstantiated - even my high school biology class went over sexual selection as a form of natural selection.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I was astonished by this claim. Everyone who knows anything about evolution has heard of sexual selection. There's no real dispute that female sexual preference is a major factor determining male sexual success. The only part that has been rejected is the idea that female preference is completely arbitrary, and I'm not sure anyone ever believed that in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was going to say, hasn't all of this been known for a while? I suppose it's worth continuing to publish articles educating more and more of the public on the topic, but the headline is rather deceptive in presenting this as a new concept.

</comment><comment><USER5> The writers of this piece don't even seem to know what evolution of species is. Evolution has as a premise the survival of species. To survive, reproduction is the most important consideration. Therefore, beautiful specimens (itself a subjetive notion created by evolution) have the tendency to reproduce more often and make it possible for the species to survive.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Adaptations are meant to be useful — that's the whole point — and the most successful creatures should be the ones best adapted to their particular environments."

No, they aren't. Adaptations aren't even meant to be viable. Statistically, what they trend towards is not the "objective" of usefulness, but of reproduction. As a consequence of that end, this tends to include traits that aid in personal survival, attracting a mate, and ability to nurture, protect and provide for the offspring. Beauty, while in the eye of the beholder, obviously fits into the role of "attracting a mate." Usefulness not required.

<comment><USER7> This is a common misconception thanks to the term "survival of the fittest". Evolution is a blind dumb statistical optimization by virtue and ONLY by virtue of creatures managing to reproduce. Anything that changes relative rates of reproduction changes relative distributions of genes and that's the end of the story.

Nature doesn't design, foxes are not "meant" to hunt hares and hares are not "meant" to evade foxes. It happens that the hares that evade foxes and the foxes that eat hares are more likely to survive to pass on genes. Creatures with an aversion to asymetrical (a proxy for unhealthy) mates are more likely in the long run to have healthy offspring...and so on and so forth.

The critical mistake is people adding "intentions" and "meaning" to a blind dumb statistical process akin to Russian roulette.

<comment><USER8> I think the notion of local minima fits into this. It might be optimal for male birds of some species to have very colorful flair to attract females. Within that species of birds, these males with the more colorful/visible/expensive plumage will be selected for. This will remain true on shorter evolutionary time scales. It will work for a while. However, if the males of the species develop flair that becomes too attractive to predators or makes them incapable of outrunning said predators, and most males get eaten, natural selection will ensure that things balance themselves out. That species of birds could go extinct, or it could be that there are very few colorful males left, and the females who are less selective win out because reproducing with the males that are left is better than not reproducing at all.

Evolution is non-stationary. What's making an individual fit depends on its current environment here and now: the food it can find, what predators are out there, things that make it more attractive to mates. However, predators, food, weather and mates change over time. In other words, what's being optimized for is constantly changing, there are local dynamics and some amount of "noise" that occurs, possibly resulting in silly looking animals like peacocks happening once in a while.

<comment><USER9> But a male who can be visible to predators and yet still survive must have something else (what?) that makes him more valuable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Probably the most interesting representation anything related to this I've seen is the stalk-eyed fly[1]. Their compound eyes are at the end of long stalks, and apparently the primary reason for this is to attract a mate.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalk- eyed_fly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalk-eyed_fly)

</comment><comment><USER11> I think a lot of critics of the article in these comments bailed out of the article partway through.

The article is an examination of the origin of sexual selection. Are sexually selected traits linked to adaptive traits (originally, even if they later run away and become maladaptive), are they mere random chance, or is the truth more complicated than either of those theories?

</comment><comment><USER12> There is nothing new in this article causing scientists to rethink Evolution. Sexual selection, on the basis of physical traits (weaponry or ornaments), has been known and observed since Darwin. Evolution doesn't produce the best adaptations to a given environment. Rather it produces the least worst. Reproduction of genes through generations is the name of the game.

<comment><USER13> Evolution produces random features, which remain as long as you survive and reproduce.

So you may get totally ornamental or vestigial or obsolete features simply because they were never enough hindrance to reproduction. "Enough" is a key word - even features which are hindrances but do not offset pro-survival/pro- reproduction features will remain.

<comment><USER14> Ornamental features are not obsolete. Many animals are selected for their ornamental features, which may act as heuristics for fitness (both for the opposite sex in reproduction and for the same sex in combat/competitiveness). I know not all of the book is still considered wholly accurate, but Dawkins describes this at length in The Selfish Gene.

<comment><USER13> True - ornamental was the wrong choice of wording. Ornamental features absolutely aid sexual selection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A very interesting question but the article is so bloody huuuuge!</comment>


C.I.A. Employees Face New Inquiry Amid Clashes on Detention Program - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/us/new-inquiry-into-cia-employees-amid-clashes-over-interrogation-program.html

<comment><USER2> "The committee has spent several years working on a voluminous report about the detention and interrogation program, and according to one official interviewed in recent days, C.I.A. officers went as far as gaining access to computer networks used by the committee to carry out its investigation."

</comment><comment><USER3> Nitpick time: CIA is properly called CIA not "the CIA" much as Ukraine should not be called "the Ukraine."</comment>


Google launches stand-alone contacts manager - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10233244-2.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Webware

<comment><USER2> Title should read "Google provides an easier URL to <http://mail.google.com/mail/contacts/ui/ContactManager> (since April)"

Sorry for the sarcasm but sth like this is also stated in one of the first comments.</comment>


The History of Kaiser Permanente - <AUTHOR> https://share.kaiserpermanente.org/article/history-of-kaiser-permanente/ <comment><USER2> Until very recently, and due to a job change, my family and I have had KP as our healthcare provider. So many people derided managed healthcare, and KP specifically, but we (my family, and I) loved it.

"It's like I'm a Walmart or Disney World for healthcare" is a comment that we heard a lot. So? When pressed about the Walmart comparison, it had more to do with availability than quality. I could never get a solid answer justifying the Disney World comment, but I like Disney World and so does my family.

I also liked having everything in one clinic. I didn't have to drive across the city to find a lab or a pharmacist. Friends would raise the specter of prescription price-gouging, but when we'd compare prices on prescriptions that we'd held in common, we paid quite a bit less than they had.

I also generally had the sense that the people employed there had genuine care and concern for our health and well-being. Not that they shouldn't, and not that they're better than other providers, but the notion that you're a piece in a big machine (a common argument lobbed against KP) is ludicrous and probably based more on personal bias than actual experience.

Yes, as an organization they're going to want to cut costs (another common argument against KP and managed healthcare, in general). Yep. They do. That's true. That never translated into a diminished level of care for us. It did mean that they didn't order a bunch of unnecessary tests, but our PCPs always listened to us and would suggest their course of action, and we'd negotiate a course of care if there was any sort of dissonance between us about what we wanted. This is similar to my experience in the broader "Family Practice" world too.

I've now been on UHC for about 2 months. In that time, I've had to take 3 phone surveys, and fill out 2 Internet forms confirming that nobody in my family has any other insurance. The proliferation of UC/ER pop-ups in neighborhoods is evidence of the profiteering that occurs in our healthcare industry (because of loose medical coding standards). I've always felt insulated from that side of healthcare while with KP, but right now I honestly feel very vulnerable and kinda regret taking an otherwise excellent job because of this insurance transition.

<comment><USER3> I had the same experience with UHC when I was forced to switch to it for a job. Numerous surveys, even by third party companies, that eventually resulted in them denying to pay for treatment when they really were my only provider. They kept claiming we had KP when we didn't, and claimed the claim had to go through KP first even though it was an in-network UHC provider, which is completely inapplicable to KP and would have no way to submit a claim to KP anyway. So even if we had KP and KP was primary UHC would have still had to pay, they just knew no one could successfully put the paperwork through to get them to pay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I think of when I think of the history of Kaiser is: They are pioneers of making a profit off providing less healthcare.

For reference, see the taped conversation of Richard Nixon [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Transcript_of_taped_conversat...](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Transcript_of_taped_conversation_between_President_Richard_Nixon_and_John_D._Ehrlichman_\(1971\)_that_led_to_the_HMO_act_of_1973):

And: Details about the deal Nixon made for his friend Kaiser: [https://thecriticalaye.com/2011/08/31/skyrocketing-health- ca...](https://thecriticalaye.com/2011/08/31/skyrocketing-health-care-costs- thanks-president-nixon/)

<comment><USER5> For another side of the story, a friend has stage 4 breast cancer which metastasized to her spine, requiring back surgery and very expensive ongoing treatment.

She was on a high-deductible, high-copay Bronze plan last year, and Kaiser waived all the deductibles and copays for about eight months of treatment, up through the beginning of this year when she could get on a plan more suitable for her needs.

I'm not saying you're wrong, of course. I know little about the organization's history. But I was favorably impressed with how they've treated her, both medically and financially.

<comment><USER2> I've never been anything but impressed with Kaiser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is particularly interesting in light of how much of an impact KP has had on the US healthcare industry, and the recent announcement about Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and Goldman doing the 21st century version of this.

<comment><USER7> What has been Kaiser's great influence on healthcare in the US? They were far from the first HMO and have never been the largest? CIGNA has the longest history as an HMO and before the HMO act of 73 was the largest.

Is it the model of owning coverage and delivery because that is a model that even Kaiser doesn't completely follow in all the regions it provides coverage in. And also one that has not spread widely in the US.

Maybe it is different in Northern CA and the rest of the Pacific Northwest where Kaiser is strongest but in my region Kaiser has never had a great reputation. It was the cheap insurance you bought when you were young and hoped nothing really bad ever happened to you. It is known for poor access to and quality of care. These days it is still known for that but premiums, co- pays and deductibles now equal or exceed those of other insurance providers.

<comment><USER2> I think that Kaiser's poor reputation is primarily driven by their managed healthcare model (which you rightly mention isn't consistent outside of their region). I don't have evidence to support why this is the case, but colloquially it has to do with this fear of losing choice. People would rather select their labs and pharmacies than just "go downstairs and wait for it to be filled." Additionally, they feel like they don't have a choice in PCP when they're just given a list of doctors at their nearest clinic.

<comment><USER8> Based on what do people choose labs and pharmacies? I don't get that. When I had Kaiser I loved the fact that all was in house and worked reasonably well. Now I have a PPO and I have no clue how I would choose a doctor.

<comment><USER2> I don't get it either, but it's what I hear (again, colloquial evidence). I'm also at a loss with my recent transition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Back in high school I worked for a call center that handled follow-up surveys and customer inquiries relating to recent medical claims made through Kaiser. I would handle dozens of calls a day for post-rejection follow up. People turned down for cancer treatment, heart surgery, etc. People telling me that they were now condemned to die because of places like Kaiser. Whatever you all are doing in the US for health care, it isn't working.

</comment><comment><USER10> I pay Kaiser 1.9k a month, it takes 3 months to get a doctors appointment.

The revolution can't come soon enough.

<comment><USER11> Where do you live? I've never had a bad experience with Kaiser in northern CA. Both of my children cost me $250 total for their entire pre-natal care and birth, all preventative care is free of co-pays, any time I call for an appointment there are multiple slots that day or in the next 3, prescriptions are filled in the in-clinic pharmacy or mailed to you if you prefer, consultancy can happen by phone, e-mail or in person... it seems way better than any other insurance I've had.

<comment><USER10> So Cal. County of Riverside. Our daughter was seriously ill and the by phone consultancy took over 24 hours to call us back. By that time, of course, we'd been to the hospital.

It took 3 months to get a 10 min immunization appointment. The county contributes ~9xx dollars as do we. Our medical care literally is 8x my last car payment per month.</comment></comment></comment>


The man deficit is real, but Tinder is not the only answer (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/495013/the-man-deficit-is-real-but-tinder-is-not-the-only-answer/ <comment><USER2> In the 1950's many people thought women only went to college to find men. I mean, what else would it be good for? This sexist feeling was common. My three sisters all said as much before heading off to college.

BTW, they weren't successful.

</comment><comment><USER3> Given the obvious downsides of Tinder-like apps, particularly the stereotypical-but-true "women are choosier than men" factor that distorts the use of them, I keep wondering how long until some company popularizes an "e-matchmaker" that sets up blind dates automatically.

<comment><USER4> The Dating Ring (YC in 2014) tried to do that. It didn't quite work out, at least not how they hoped. The second season of Startup Podcast was all about them.

I heartily recommend that podcast. Even if you're not all about startups, I think it's fascinating that they give you a first-hand look into the subjects' attempts to start their company, with recordings and interviews about things as they happen, rather than in retrospect.</comment></comment>


Buffett cautions social-networking investors - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20047649-93.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

<comment><USER2> really? You linked the cnet article.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2372134></comment>


12 Piano notes made visible for the first time  - <AUTHOR> http://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/musicology.html <comment><USER2> _For the first time in history individual piano notes have been made visible using the CymaScope instrument._

Except for all the times someone fed the output of a mic amplifier into a scope and watched a Lissajous figure. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissajous_curve> Not to mention Duddell's photo oscillograph over 100 years ago. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscilloscope_history#Photograph...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscilloscope_history#Photographic_oscillograph)

<comment><USER3> Yes

Still it's not clear what they are doing with the sound, and how they're plotting it

<comment><USER4> I guess they could be using "partials":

>Any complex tone "can be described as a combination of many simple periodic waves (i.e., sine waves) or partials, each with its own frequency of vibration, amplitude, and phase." A partial is any of the sine waves by which a complex tone is described.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_series_%28music%29#Par...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_series_%28music%29#Partial)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The CymaScope represents the first scientific instrument that can give us a visual image of sound and vibration - a cymatic image - helping us to understand our world and universe in ways previously hidden from view." ... you can graph change in pressure over time to get a visual image of sounds and vibrations. It is safe to say people have been doing this for a very long time. And what about the page on "sonic healing"... What a crazy site!

<comment><USER6> Like this little "fact box": [http://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/soundhealingimages/Pr...](http://www.cymascope.com/cyma_research/soundhealingimages/Principles_of_Resonance_URL.jpg), only reference to "Prime Resonance Frequency" I could find on the web was on a few new-age sites, and apparently they have managed to find the frequency at which a cell vibrates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, this is like Chladni patterns, but in 3D and high definition? Or just Chladni patterns with high framerate? I'm having a hard time interpreting this from very vague and pretty uninformative descriptions.

Frank Zappa stated on multiple ocassions that he considered himself, in essence, an air sculptor. I'd love to see few of his "sculptures" animated in 3D.

</comment><comment><USER8> So what do the images depict? Is it some density map in polar coordinates? Fourier? What am I seeing here?

<comment><USER9> Camera images of a fluid on a circular membrane would be my best guess:

<http://www.cymascope.com/cymascope.html>

<http://www.cymascope.com/gallery.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "If we sample a moment from music and analyze it in terms of its fundamental frequency and associated harmonics, and then apply that sample to, say, a circular latex membrane of known elasticity, known diameter and fixed edge, present mathematical techniques cannot predict what pattern will form on the membrane."

If you knew the resonate frequency of the membrane I wouldn't think this would be that hard to figure out using Fourier analysis <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_analysis>

</comment><comment><USER11> I think I prefer the iTunes visualizer.

<comment><USER12> Milkdrop is probably the best general visualizer ever made. There used to be an iTunes port but I think it died long ago, which is too bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> These are very pretty visualisations. I agree with others here that the page is "interesting" and seems to lack detail about the process.

The visualisations reminded me of the book "Computers, Pattern, Chaos, and Beauty" by Clifford Pickover.

[http://www.amazon.com/Computers-Pattern-Chaos-Beauty- Graphic...](http://www.amazon.com/Computers-Pattern-Chaos-Beauty- Graphics/dp/031206179X)

</comment><comment><USER14> This looks like a goofy amateur science thing.

> _"The CymaScope is a new type of scientific instrument that makes sound > visible."_

Really? Because we have been making sound visible for centuries. I have around 40 plugins in my Logic Pro that "make sound visible".

> _"The CymaScope has applications in almost every branch of science simply > because vibration underpins all matter. The ability to see such vibrations > permits a depth of study previously unavailable to scientists, engineers and > researchers."_

Really? Because it seems rather simple to make one...

> _"Music, in the absolute sense, is the invisible geometry of the cosmos, a > delicate tracery of frequencies that harmonise with each other and from > which all matter manifests."_

Only if you define "music" very loosely, and probably not even then.

</comment><comment><USER15> _MMV technology is still under development but as this excerpt from Pink Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine" shows, an exciting future lies ahead when all music can be transcribed to MusicMadeVisible._

I preferred the laser shows at the planetarium when I was a teen.</comment>


PayPal vs. Stripe for small businesses in 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://fman.io/blog/paypal-vs-stripe-for-small-businesses-in-2019/ <comment> EB-Barrington Basing these comments purely on the credit-card processing side of things:

Context - small business, using PayPal for almost five years, large transaction values, small transaction volumes, global dispersion of customers, multiple currencies.

1\. PayPal works (mostly) without issue for customers from a wide geographic region (my customers are from many countries all over the world).

2\. The exchange rates offered via PayPal are TERRIBLE. Several percentage points, on top of the several percentage points initial processing fee. Either the business, or the customer, is paying for these bad exchange rates (dependent upon the source/destination of funds). This can be an additional five percent.

3\. Customer service from PayPal is lacking, but in the case of disputes, things have worked out in the way I would logically expect, around 99% of the time. In the other 1%, PayPal refunded the money, I have never lost anything (neither have my customers) due to disputes.

4\. STRIPE has categorized my business as high-risk, and therefore won't offer me their services. I won't specify my business type here - I can safely guess there is nobody on this planet that would consider my business type "high- risk".

Some of the categories of what constitutes a high-risk business are obvious - gambling, porn, etc etc, other categories make no sense at all. (I have never had a single disputed charge in four years of operation)

Semi-regularly, I search and compare cc-processing alternatives. Mostly, due to the currency exchange fees, poor customer service, and stories of PayPal accounts being frozen/locked due to spurious reasons.

I consider PayPal the best of the worst choices.

<comment><USER2> At a previous job we also used PayPal. We tried switching to a traditional credit card processor, which was a nightmare.

We had a seasonal business that processed sales of $1 million+ revenue in a week, once a year. Around 60% of sales were international. This combination was like kryptonite to card processors. We finally got accepted by one, the fees weren't much better than PayPal. It was amusing seeing TFA describe PayPal's API as "a horrible experience" after having implemented that traditional processor's API.

We ended up going back to PayPal after one season.

Although in the end, our decade-old business was killed by relying on PayPal's fraud detection. We got hit by a flood of China IP-sourced carders and the chargebacks ruined us. This can happen with any traditional card processor as well, it was really on us for being too naive (and being spared from fraud in the past decade)

<comment><USER3> Did you have significant legitimate China business? These days it's probably not as effective a technique, but back in the mid 00s we ended up just banning entire countries at my company because well over 50% of transactions from those countries ended up being fraudulent.

<comment><USER2> We did end up banning China, but there such a delay between the transactions and the chargebacks that it was too late. We also tried preemptively refunding suspicious charges, but you get hit with the chargeback fee regardless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think Stripe might soon offer payments through Paypal in some way. A few weeks ago I tried their new PaymentIntents api. I forgot to give a valid payment method in the request and it returned me an error stating I need one of following payment methods:

      card_present, card_present_single_message, ach_credit_transfer, ach_debit, acss_debit, alipay, bacs_debit, bancontact, chf_credit_transfer, eps, giropay, klarna, multibanco, p24, paper_check, paypal, sepa_credit_transfer, sofort, wechat, or card

Note that this list includes paypal!

I asked them why that list included paypal and how that would work. They replied it was a mistake and it has since been removed from the error. But this tells me that internally they're working on paypal integration.

<comment><USER5> Or they have done at some point, scrapped it and forgot to remove it from an enum used in an error message. I wouldn't hold my breath.

<comment><USER6> How do PayPal/Stripe move money around?

Meaning, are they integrated directly with Mastercard/Visa/banks or do they use a First Data/TSYS/FiServ?

<comment><USER7> I believe the rely on the underlying network of Mastercard, Visa and Amex. Fiserv is more on the ACH side.

<comment><USER6> How does the money actually exchange hands though? Like, your business wants to charge my Mastercard $100. Who moves the money from the mainframe on my bank? I don't think Stripe is integrated with every bank in America?

<comment><USER7> The card network handles this I believe. I've never worked in payments, but I have spent some time analyzing the space for investments. As far as my knowledge with regards to online payments, the merchant gateway talks with the merchant acquirer/payment processor, the acquiring bank then pays the merchant, and the acquiring bank sends a request to authorize and settle the transaction through the card network, which talks to the consumer's bank/digital wallet. Stripe in this case is the merchant gateway and acquirer. If PayPal is used, ACH replaces the credit card network.

<comment><USER6> > card network

> merchant gateway

> merchant acquirer/payment processor

> acquiring bank

so, since no merchants integrate directly with Mastercard/Visa (it would seem that's just not the business model of the industry. I'd also gamble it isn't possible because if you're a mom and pop shop, Mastercard does not care for you to integrate directly with them), they are going through networks/gateways, which would be TSYS/FiServ/First Data, yes?

I'm just trying to picture a world where payment processor fees are lower because instead of PoS systems for businesses connecting to gateways/middlemen who need to take a cut and hike the rate up, they connect directly to the card network/the underlying bank.

But, it sounds like a service like that would be exactly the middlemen I'm describing, who need to take a cut of the fees :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I run an online Photo editor [https://www.Photopea.com](https://www.Photopea.com) , where users can pay to get a Premium account. Everything goes through PayPal and users seem to be happy.

But PayPal has quite large fees. From a 9 USD payment, they take like 10%. Also, if you are not from the US (I am not from the US), you can only withdraw money in your local currency, and PayPal has quite bad conversion rates (you lose 2-3% again).

I am still wondering, that after so many years, no big company (Google, Facebook, Apple) came up with their competitor to PayPal (everybody would switch to them, if they had lower fees).

<comment><USER9> >you can only withdraw money in your local currency, and PayPal has quite bad conversion rates (you lose 2-3% again).

Someone on HN recommended TransferWise for that purpose. I tried it and it works well: PayPal can transfer to TransferWise and then from TransferWise money can be withdrawn in local currency with a very fair exchange rate close to real-time Forex.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with TransferWise in any sense.

<comment><USER8> I used TransferWise many times and I am extremely happy with it. I have the USD account in the US through TransferWise.

The problem is, that my PayPal does not let me withdraw money to my US account, as I am not the US citizen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Been offering credit cards, paypal, and bitcoin payment options to my customers. Bitcoin is horrible. 1 or 2 transactions per month - not worth the investment it is just a hype for ecommerce. Paypal vs credit card is completely different story. On my end I get 60% of all payments made via PayPal. In general, if you are not offering PayPal as a checkout option then you are probably missing 10 to 15% of potential sales.

<comment><USER11> Same story here. I started with stripe, and constantly got emails asking to add PayPal. I get about the same rate of PayPal vs stripe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I see similar results on an ecommerce site. PayPal's UX (login, click buy) is a better experience over entering a 16 digit credit card, expiry date, csv & address. It's one or two clicks and payment is done.

It's unfortunate but people will always choose the easiest way irrespective of the costs to the merchant. It would be interesting to see what happens if you charge 2% more for PayPal (or whatever the difference in fees are / amount you need to cover the costs/risk of working with PayPal). I suspect checkout conversions would drop.

<comment><USER13> _PayPal 's UX (login, click buy) is a better experience over entering a 16 digit credit card, expiry date, csv & address._

You're comparing the UX for a customer _who already has a credit card registered to a Paypal account_ with the UX of a user who doesn't have a credit card registered with Stripe. _If_ your customer has a Paypal account with a registered card the UX is better. If they don't then Stripe is much nicer because you'd need to include the Paypal sign up process in your UX and that's horrible.

Plus Stripe offers the same benefit of remembering the customer's card details for subsequent purchases ([https://stripe.com/docs/saving- cards](https://stripe.com/docs/saving-cards)).

<comment><USER14> Paypal will happily process credit card charges without needing the customer to have a Paypal account. They call it DirectPay

<comment><USER13> Of course, and in that case as the user has to enter their credit card details DirectPay's UX is more comparable to Stripe. In my opinion Stripe is preferable in that situation as it's just looks much better, and has friendlier language around it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've done a lot of checkout integrations and The Stripe API is orders of magnitude easier to integrate than the PayPal API. As the author suggests PayPal might be more popular because not everyone has a creditcard. Another factor that helps PayPal is that you don't need to have your card at hand to make the payment, if your account is active, the only thing you have to do is click "next" 2 times and you're done.

Shameless plug related to this post: I'm integrating both Stripe and PayPal in my software licensing SaaS product where I intend to provide the nuts and bolts related to accepting payments and handing out and validating the license keys for a standalone software product. It's still a Work in Progress, the landing page can be found on [https://license.io](https://license.io)

<comment><USER16> I agree that Stripe is significantly easier to integrate than PayPal, but Braintree has options for both credit card and PayPal integrations (because they're owned by PayPal) and also has a very nice API.

(I'm not affiliated with either, but I've used both.)

<comment><USER17> +1 for Braintree. We have used several different payment providers over the years, including PayPal alone. We switched to Braintree back when they were offering $50K in free payment transactions.

The payment integration was straightforward, and getting built-in support for PayPal (which accounts for 16% of our sales) and the ability to safely vault payment methods made it a no-brainer.

<comment><USER18> My only concern is Braintree is more expensive. Stripe doesn't change any additional percentage for non local currency while Braintree charges additional 1%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Aren't there many other alternatives, too? Admittedly, I'm a bit out of the loop. When _Kagi_ [1] changed their payment structure to discourage small prices, I started using _Fastspring_ [2] for many years for an old shareware project. It works very well. However, I have almost zero sales now so there is not much to work with.

Funny story: Just a few weeks ago, a a guy from Fastspring called me up in Portugal on my landline phone. His accent was Australian or NZ, so I had troubles understanding him and I also suspected a phone scam first. He turned out to be a very nice person, he was interested in my business, how they could help us grow, and about the Lisbon developer scene in general. I had to tell him that I don't know anything about it, but I did mention Y Combinator and the local government's efforts to attract startup companies. I also had to explain the nature of my 'business' to him - that it's no longer a business, only shareware maintained for existing customers. No idea what the real purpose of the call was, but it was a nice chat and I was positively impressed by Fastspring's customer service.

[1] I remember fondly the cheques I got from "Walnut Creek" and how I had to move to Citibank because my local bank treated me like a suspected criminal because of them. Sadly, I've just learned that they shut down in 2016: [https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after- falling...](https://tidbits.com/2016/08/04/kagi-shuts-down-after-falling-prey- to-fraud/)

[2] [https://fastspring.com/](https://fastspring.com/)

<comment><USER20> I remember people from Fastspring and BMTmicro being very active in the indie game development forum i was participating at (i think the BMTmicro guy was actually the owner, not sure about the Fastspring guy). That was around 7-8 years ago, but still left me a positive impression for both companies especially since they weren't just bullshitting to appear "involved" in the community, but actually participating in the discussions with useful comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > _PayPal 's APIs are extremely difficult to use_

This is simply not true.

It took us less than one man/day to custom-wrap their REST API via libcurl to add PayPal as an alternative to Stripe. I don't know how else to put it, but it's just really dead simple.

Their own libraries are complete junk though... or at least they used to be few years back.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you seen the post I linked to in that sentence? [https://fman.io/blog/paypal-for- saas-99-problems/](https://fman.io/blog/paypal-for-saas-99-problems/)

<comment><USER21> Yes, I skimmed through it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was looking into payment processors the other day and came across Paddle[0], which seems to tick a lot of boxes that make things easier for small businesses that don't have much of a sales team, such as handling any payment disputes for you and follow up with near-missed conversions.

They also automatically remit local taxes, for small businesses that want to operate globally.

But I have not actually used them. Can anyone else chime in with actual usage experience of Paddle?

0: [https://paddle.com/](https://paddle.com/)

<comment><USER23> I've used Paddle to handle sales of my $25 macOS desktop app, by integrating their macOS SDK + using website integration. Works great, easy to integrate, good admin panel, straightforward to receive payouts. And as an EU business they handle all of the VAT stuff for me (awesome!) -- no VAT MOSS mess. You have a direct B2B relationship with them, where they give you reverse invoices your accountant can book in. Support is also friendly, helpful and very responsive.

In short: would recommend. In my opinion fees are reasonable for the service they supply, and I'm sure they would reduce them if you sell more than say $10k/mo through their platform.

I just knew I wasn't interested in building a complete billing system for 5% + $0.50 per sale, when Apple takes 30% on each sale. They also have affiliate support, which is interesting. But the $0.50 fee might be a bit steep if you're selling a product < $10 -- worth reaching out to them about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What about Braintree [1]? Owned by Paypal, but supports credit card payments directly and Paypal, Apple Pay and Google Pay.

There's also Adyen [2], used by Uber for example. Supports dozens of payment methods.

[1] [https://www.braintreepayments.com/](https://www.braintreepayments.com/) [2] [https://www.adyen.com/](https://www.adyen.com/)

</comment><comment><USER25> My experience running Pinboard (which offers Stripe and PayPal as payment options) has been that PayPal is indispensable if you want to collect payments from people outside the United States. There are also common situations where Stripe doesn't work (for example, the customer only has one credit card and it's declined) but PayPal does.

Stripe is far more pleasant to use and implement, but continue to see around 2/3 of my payments coming through PayPal.

</comment><comment><USER26> I work on the client-side javascript SDK for PayPal (documented at [https://developer.paypal.com/docs/checkout/](https://developer.paypal.com/docs/checkout/)).

We took Michael's feedback from his original article at [https://fman.io/blog/paypal-for- saas-99-problems/](https://fman.io/blog/paypal-for-saas-99-problems/) very seriously. We're not all of the way there yet; but if anyone has any remaining concerns about the integration, I'd be glad to take them onboard!

<comment><AUTHOR> Humbled to hear you're taking my feedback serious. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> PayPal still cannot get its UX right for people resident abroad when adding cards. For example, their telephone number country picker determines the zip code validation, not the country of the billing address. It was quite frustrating and silly to discover.

</comment><comment><USER28> Another reason to prefer PayPal is that you often have to fill in less fields, transferring your payment, email & shipping address is just a click vs. filling out an entire form.

I recently changed the order form for Candy Japan to ask only the minimum amount of information, and the difference is quite huge for PayPal vs. credit card: [https://www.candyjapan.com/subscribe](https://www.candyjapan.com/subscribe)

</comment><comment><USER29> We use PayPal and Stripe together.

People trust PayPal a lot more compared to Stripe. The dispute handling process is something which is really good PayPal innovation.

With Stripe people only have option to chargeback incase of any issues.

</comment><comment><USER30> I am most certainly biased since I work at PayPal and am responsible for APIs that you might end up using but I would without hesitation encourage any small/medium size business to have a PayPal Checkout enabled - it doesn't take much to put the PayPal button and you can see the results for yourself and be the judge. For a broader question of credit card processing I think there are quite a few comments already.

I completely empathize with some of the concerns around using our APIs and more broadly around some of the operational policies, pricing etc. I cannot claim to speak for all of it but since the last 2 years we have been paying serious attention to how we can surface our capabilities in a way that's more understandable, approachable and meaningful to developers.

[https://medium.com/paypal-engineering/launch-v2-paypal- check...](https://medium.com/paypal-engineering/launch-v2-paypal-checkout- apis-45435398b987) is one of the first things we have launched and more interesting stuff to follow.

<comment><USER31> Can you add a faster way to flag a suspicious transaction for review? Currently we have to call support or send an email. It should be as simple as issuing a refund.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I have a small shopify store. Transaction fee for stripe is 2% of my turnover. Paypal is 4%. Paypal is horribly expensive, but customer love it.

<comment><USER33> Do you sell really cheap products or something? Paypal's fees seem pretty normal from what I've seen: the worst rate, for low-volume sellers, is 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. So if you're selling things that are only a few dollars each, then those $0.30 fees are going to add up to a significant portion of the product. How is Stripe better?

<comment><USER34> Maybe a different region?

Here (Finland) PayPal starts at 3.4% + €0.35 domestic, 4.4% + €0.35 US customers.

Stripe is 1.4% + €0.25 EU, 2.9% + €0.25 non-EU cards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Ny biggest beef with both services is that neither Paypal nor Stripe support my Transferwise borderless account backend.

Also unpopular opinion - Transferwise for business is the most superior solution for payments rn despite its shortcomings.

<comment><USER36> I'm a fan of Transferwise and recently opened a business account with them. It was a very easy process, even compared to other UK challengers like Starling (who aren't that great, really). They give you a SortCode and AccountNumber. I'm very interested: what is missing for Stripe/PayPal integration?

<comment><USER35> Both these services require small deposit, automatic withdrawl for verification purpose, transferwise account does not support the automatic withdrawl part.

<comment><USER37> I assume you are correct about the automatic withdrawal, however I was able to confirm my TransferWise account with PayPal just last week. PayPal deposited the two small txns in the Transferwise borderless US account. It took a lot longer than I expected, but it did work. I was able to withdraw from my PayPal account into the the TransferWise Borderless account (no fees yay).

Hope that helps.

<comment><USER35> Must have been a recent development then, when I tried to link Paypal to Transferwise back in January it didn't work, I called customer-care and got them to manually add it then they again sent the verification amount which they couldn't withdraw and once more blocked my account.

Same issue trying to add it as backend to Stripe, Shopify etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Supposedly, Braintree make it possible to integrate PayPal much more easily.

I've recently gone through that process for our startup ([https://sendingbee.com/](https://sendingbee.com/)) and I can attest to that. Once both of your Braintree and PayPal accounts are set up, you just link the PayPal account from the Braintree administration with a few clicks and it's immediately available to customers (if you use the Braintree Drop-in integration that is).

<comment><AUTHOR> Is that also the case for subscriptions? Because (in my experience) that's where the real pains of PayPal were.

<comment><USER38> Yes. Once a user goes through the Dropin UI (which involves signing up to their PayPal account), you get a "payment method nonce" which is then used as a parameter when creating a subscription.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see. Thanks :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I suppose for small businesses PayPal could work, but for an event I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. I've read too many stories about accounts getting frozen just as money started to come in, and with organisers not having access to the money they needed, they had no option but to cancel the event.

Apparently sudden increase in payment triggers PayPal's 'this might be suspicious' flag, and once flagged, they apparently like to block until they're sure that the customers are getting what they're signing up for. But because they block the money, they're ensuring that customers are not going to get what they signed up for.

Of course if PayPal as payment option brings in extra customers, you'd be crazy not to accept it, but I wouldn't put all my eggs in that basket.

</comment><comment><USER40> On a side note: Fman looks pretty cool, but has a long way to go before I switch from my Total Commander!

<comment><USER20> AFAIK Total Commander was fman's main motivation (IIRC the developer mentioned that on the bootstrapers.io forum). It'll be interesting to see how it evolves, but TBH i find Total Commander perfectly fine and i love how lightweight it is (...compare win10 calc with tc...) while providing a ton of features. And while i understand the (fman) author's point about lifetime licensing, i still prefer TC's lifetime license.

<comment><USER41> Agree, I'd miss lots of features even though it's a bit quirky at some points.

I made a dark theme for it:

        c:\Users\...\AppData\Roaming\GHISLER\wincmd.ini

        [Colors]
        InverseCursor=1
        ThemedCursor=0
        InverseSelection=0
        BackColor=2105376
        BackColor2=2763306
        ForeColor=12632256
        MarkColor=255
        CursorColor=1028084
        CursorText=-1
        ActiveTitleText=0

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Back in the day, before there was the beautifully simple Stripe, I had to implement payments on Authorize.Net, which made PayPal's APIs look great. It was cumbersome, ugly, they had libraries that weren't documented. I was on the phone with their support multiple times in the week it took to implement. And then after implementing it and pushing it to production, customers started using credit card OVER PayPal, and within a month we were fielding over 10 charge backs per day. And within 2 months we abandoned taking credit cards all together which alienated a subset of our customer base who lived in parts of the world that PayPal doesn't allow accounts for.

</comment><comment><USER43> Do people periodically _withdraw_ all their pay-pal balance?

I can that doing this somehow flags you for further attention and increases risk of blacklist. Sigh...

I keep hearing this horror stories about blocking the account, AND losing all the balance. Which just seems bizarre.

<comment><USER37> I never leave any amount in my PayPal account that I'm not willing to lose. I've been flagged before which I why I do it. I was flagged for having a surge in sales, which was legitimate but meant I couldn't access my funds to service the customers who were paying me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> If you only have a few products with fixed prices, integrating PayPal is a matter of defining a button for every product in their UI, copy the HTML form that is generated next to the button and then submit a POST request to PayPal to have the user start the PayPal checkout flow.

Stripe's new checkout system works similar. You define products in their UI and submit a request with the according SKU. The advantage of PayPal is that it requires zero JavaScript. It's just a POST request.

Of course, you need to listen to PayPal's IPNs to process a payment on the server, but this is exactly the same effort as with Stripe.

</comment><comment><USER45> I service small businesses, and hook them up with payment processors on a regular basis. Not once, over 19 years has any of my clients' customers requested PayPal as a payment option (I've deployed over 100 ecommerce solutions). This must be specific to software or global purchases (my clients are in the US).

My advice always starts with the "easiest" which is PayPal. If they have WooCommerce, I recommend Stripe, before Stripe existed the advice was to go with Authorize.net.

<comment><USER46> I find PayPal works well if stripe declines a payment. I can direct customers there.

The only customers I've had request it were a few international ones without credit cards.

(Not saying stripe rejects more. It's just the default people use first)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I use both Paypal and Stripe on my website. I've had companies using Paypal to pay $1,000 a couple of times. Both work fine for me. But dispute resolutions are random with Paypal (never had any with Stripe). I just had a few on Paypal: some where I gave no information and it was resolved in my favor, other where I proved taht the customer made repeat payments from the same IP address but Paypal decided one payment was not actually done by the customer.

</comment><comment><USER20> Since this is essentially a shareware product, wouldn't some service that handles all those options for you be better, like BMTmicro and Fastspring?

These also handle hairy stuff like VAT MOSS for EU customers that -AFAIK- Paypal doesn't handle for you and you have to it yourself.

</comment><comment><USER48> Also using both. First more people used Paypal. Since emphasizing that credit cards are processed by Stripe, way more people use that. Maybe 75%.

Converting and withdrawing is very expensive. Better to use the funds to pay for other services.

</comment><comment><USER49> Its 2019 and Stripe still does not work here in the Philippines (merchant accnt not supported)!

<comment><USER50> Working on it! Put your email in [https://stripe.com/global#PH](https://stripe.com/global#PH) and we'll let you know when we start going live.

<comment><USER49> Oh please do! The online retail market here is huge and is still growing as more and more people are getting comfortable with online transactions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Use both! Customer use Paypal and Stripe 50/50 here.

<comment><USER36> If you only offered one do you think you'd see a drop off in sales? If you have the volume, would you risk an A/B test to confirm the loss in sales versus the loss in fees? I'm guessing, from other comments, that many customers prefer PayPal _when it 's available_.

<comment><USER51> Yes. No. I think yes, but some customers can only pay using Stripe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> we have PayPal and Stripe. The take is maybe 30/40 in Stripe favour. It's b2b. But those two come not close to paying with bank transfer.

</comment><comment><USER53> Have you tried BitPay?</comment>


A Dark Web Version of Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7x4g4b/theres-now-a-dark-web-version-of-wikipedia-tor-alec-muffett <comment><USER2> >That means your traffic never leaves the safely encrypted confines of Tor, keeping it hidden.

Yeah nope. He says it took a half hour to set up, that means it's not using a wiki dump, but fetching it live. That means the traffic is going from his server to wikimedia's servers, same as if you used tor to visit Wikipedia directly.

If wikimedia set this up themselves, it could be true, but this clearly isn't and can't terminate without touching clearnet.

Never trust the news, even when they cite sources and sound like they know what they're talking about.

<comment><USER3> So this is at best exactly as secure as visiting wikipedia directly in a TOR browser? TOR itself operates by routing packets through a hidden layer so that the exit node which talks to the end site doesn't know who is the requestor, just a hidden node address to send data back to. Here he is essentially operating an exit node that only talks to wikipedia.

<comment><USER4> With aggressive caching it could generate less traffic to wikipedia. So something like it could be marginally useful, at least for _reading_ wikipedia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yesterday the government in Pakistan banned Facebook and Twitter while it cracked down on religious protesters. The facebook hidden service [1] has been wonderful for me! I wish more companies opened up hidden services.

[1]: [https://facebookcorewwwi.onion](https://facebookcorewwwi.onion)

<comment><USER6> Wait until Pakistan figures out how to ban Tor, like China does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's such a Silicone Valley-centric idea to think behind every social problem is some technical solution. Technical issues aside, a tor-enabled Wikipedia is going to do nothing to help people living under murderous, totalitarian regimes.

You want to help people living in Syria? How about you give them some of your money. A little bit of your own excess will go a lot farther than these half- baked technical "solutions".

<comment><USER8> This project is about helping Wikipedia, which is an existing technical project. I don't see anything in his tweets that makes it sound like he's trying to solve some deep social issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure why this is necessary.

Wikipedia has very strong user privacy policies.</comment>


Useful Idiots: On Elif Batuman's 'The Idiot' - <AUTHOR> https://thepointmag.com/2018/criticism/useful-idiots <comment><USER2> I haven't invested the time to read The Idiot, but I will be following Frank Guan for his quality and eye-opening criticism in the future.</comment>


U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-linkedin-ruling-idUSKCN1AU2BV?il=0 <comment><USER2> I fully support this decision. If you're offering a service that is public, with the intent to your users that such information will be available publicly, you cannot then police what users of that data you consider to be "public" because it serves your business interest.

LinkedIn, of course, wants to get all the benefit of the public Internet with providing as little as they can. This, coming from someone who used to work at LinkedIn.

These companies have built their fortunes on the public Internet and now that they are successful they seek to not pay homage to the platform that give them their success. It's very clearly anti-competitive, and bad for users. LinkedIn should be forced to compete based upon the veracity and differentiation of their service, not because they have their users' public data held hostage from competitors.

<comment><USER3> This is a tricky issue that has more to do with user psychology than technology. While the data is public, most users do not understand the persistence characteristics of data, especially in the presence of 3rd parties.

In a world where there are no (persistent) copies made by third-parties, the user still is in control of the visibility of their data by updating their profile directly on LinkedIn to show/hide pieces as they see fit. With a 3rd- party in the picture, updates to user-data may or may not be respected by the 3rd party, leading to poor user-experience.

Quoting the article, "HiQ Labs uses the LinkedIn data to build algorithms capable of predicting employee behaviors, such as when they might quit."

Based on that one statement alone, as an employee, I would be uncomfortable with the use of my data to supply my employer with my future plans before I choose to disclose it myself. That choice is mine, and mine alone; not something to be monetized simply because the option exists. And while I have no control over the sharing of data, should something like this happen to me, I'd be more inclined to stop using LinkedIn, which in-turn affects LinkedIn's ability to do business.

<comment><USER4> Then don't make your profile public.

You can't expect someone to forget you once had a bad haircut just because you now got a really cool one.

<comment><USER5> The problem is you're basically saying to re-train every person who uses the internet to behave in a way completely different from what they're used to. If you think you can do that, by all means try.

But don't be surprised when you find out that your expectations and their expectations were different, and you're the one they blame, and they outnumber you by a lot.

<comment><USER6> > The problem is you're basically saying to re-train every person who uses the > internet to behave in a way completely different from what they're used to.

When did we ever teach people that you can control where your data ends up on the internet?

Aren't we trending towards teaching people to not even share data on "closed" services like Facebook and Gmail precisely _because_ they are a single source for a lot of data to be misused by the company, or hacked by a malicious actor?

Regarding data that is accessible without "friending" someone or logging in as the user themselves (e.g. Gmail), I hope people already realize that this data can easily be re-used.

> But don't be surprised when you find out that your expectations and their > expectations were different, and you're the one they blame, and they > outnumber you by a lot.

If the majority of people think that they can share nude photos of themselves on their own blog or twitter and that this won't be re-used elsewhere, well... I must be living in a different reality, or I misunderstand your point.

<comment><USER7> We taught people that they could control where their data ends up _before_ the internet, because that was an accurate model of reality. I think this is a problem that we'll grow out of as more and more people grow up in the shadow of omnipresent social media.

<comment><USER8> Junk mail, telemarketing, revenge porn, and gossip predate the internet. Different media, same lessons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is just a preliminary injunction and the court has not even heard or ruled on this case. They just allowed HiQ to access the data while they wait for the scheduled court hearing to begin. The court may eventually rule very differently once they have heard all the evidence presented and weighed up existing applicable case law.

The judge who issued this injunction - Edward Chen, is also the judge presiding over the Uber drivers as independent contractors class action case.

<comment><USER10> "This is just a preliminary injunction and the court has not even heard or ruled on this case"

This is not quite right. One of the requirements to get a PI is a likelihood of success on the merits ;)

<comment><USER11> The order discusses how less is required of the merits (need only raise serious questions) if the consequences are dire (going out of business), then discusses how they depend entirely on LinkedIn.

It's also possible that the judge is giving them affordance before killing their business to prevent appeals.

<comment><USER10> FWIW: That is actually fairly rare. Usually the answer is "well, the creditors can continue the lawsuit if they think it is valuable"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Being a programmer not a lawyer, I like the idea of more rights for scrapers. I don't want to see the internet partitioned away and owned by a few companies, especially when that information is often called a "public profile".

<comment><USER13> It gets into the incredibly murky water of how the web works. You're just issuing a request and getting things back. Sometimes in a web browser, sometimes not. But the content itself may still be copyright. You can't just take it, even though for now, the publisher/server is allowing you to view it for free.

But what if you only chose to view some of the content (e.g. block ads). What if you apply your own styles to change the way that information is displayed? You're just changing the way the browser represents that data. You're not redistributing it as your own at this point. What if you store that data, but don't republish it; just used it in some each algorithms?

There are a whole lot of interesting grey areas here, but many that already have precedents that side more with the copyright holders.

<comment><USER14> Maybe the whole idea of copyright is flawed and harmful?

<comment><USER15> There's nothing wrong with copyrights; 14 year copyrights.

<comment><USER16> Why 14, though?

I'm well aware of the historical precedent, but that number was rather arbitrary even then - it was what a bunch of people agreed upon, based on their ideas and experience, and given the environment. It's doubly arbitrary today, considering how much the environment has changed. Is a 14-year copyright on software reasonable, for example, or too long.

Rather than making it a hard cut-off point, it would be interesting to come up with a scheme that attempts to capture the spirit of term limits.

Consider: why are copyright terms even a thing? Well, copyright is a monopoly on a thing that is not naturally restricted; it does not exist in the absence of society, and is therefore a privilege granted by that society. By itself, copyright is meant to encourage creativity in the interest of public good, and at the same time, to provide some means to derive profit from one's creative expression. So there are two conflicting interests at play here - the desire of the creator to be rewarded for the fruits of his labor, and the desire of the society to enjoy growing, constantly enriched culture. The copyright term, then, marks the point at which the latter trumps the former.

Instead, what we could do is capture the fact that the interests conflict. For as long as you hold copyright, you're effectively denying society the ability to freely enjoy the culture that you have enriched. Why, then, not tax the copyright accordingly? You could consider it a kind of intellectual property tax, but with a twist: the longer copyright is held, the more the interests of society are infringed, and the larger the compensatory payment required to maintain the copyright.

So we could start with a grace period of a couple of years that is completely free, then it starts growing steadily. For some really popular work that makes significant profits, the author could easily afford payments to maintain copyright for a decade or two (or however long - that is something that can be dialed arbitrarily). For things that are too obscure, payments would cease shortly, and they would fall to public domain. There wouldn't be such a thing as "abandonware" anymore.

What use to put the money to? Many possibilities there. Publicly sponsored arts and art education is an obvious choice. Another interesting example would be offering bulk sums of money to authors of culturally important works to surrender their copyrights sooner, so that the public can enjoy them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > "We will continue to fight to protect our members' ability to control the > information they make available on LinkedIn."

LinkedIn has full control over this, it's their site. What they are fighting for is the ability to choose who gets public access to various pieces of information; which its member do not get control over.

<comment><USER18> This is still very confusing, why didn't they completely block it from scraping without a login?

<comment><USER19> Because they won't get the traffic from search engines. Searching for a full name very often leads to a LinkedIn page in top 10 results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This seems very at-odds with previous rulings (specifically, relating to craigslists many past dealings). Strikes me as being very unlikely to stand up to appeal. Also, linkedin will likely modify their websites behavior (make you click to agree before you view a profile) which would create a binding 'click wrap' stopping companies from scraping them.

<comment><USER21> That click wrap contract is kind of an interesting thing on it's own, for those of us who only enable JS when absolutely necessary. If I never see the agreement, and I am not specifically avoiding it, does it still apply to me?

<comment><USER22> There was a big ruling in Canada about this specifically around MLS, the big real estate monopoly we have, so that if you go to their sites to search for homes, like you'd see at Realtor.ca, you have to click through a clickwrapper to access any data, and even if you automate past that, the fact that a human would have to click it means that it's illegal to scrape since you are forced as a human to agree to a TOS before you view.

<comment><USER21> Ah yes, that. MLS compliance was a source of many tickets for me, in a previous job, in Canada. The employer didn't even want me to waste time trying to learn it all, just follow the compliance officer.

IIRC, this stuff varies quite a bit from region to region, even within a single metropolitan area. Attempting to simultaneously comply with multiple independently developed rulebooks was ... fun.

I can't wait for shipyard startups to disrupt the housing market. /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco granted a preliminary injunction request brought by hiQ Labs, and ordered LinkedIn to remove within 24 hours any technology preventing hiQ from accessing public profiles."

Interesting ruling

<comment><USER12> I would hope there is a special consideration for any anti-ddos technology they have. It would be hard to differentiate between a ddos'er and a scraper. Rate limiting for ddos attacks might affect a scraper, then the question ( that linkedin is asking ), is how low can we limit them without looking like we're blocking them. I have a feeling this isn't over!

<comment><USER24> I wonder if this isn't such a big deal since it's not like they're gonna verify beyond "can they scrape now?"

As long as that is true then they will likely not run in to issues. Other issues are not for blocking them and case can be made that it's a separate issue. Defending against common internet attacks is an easy case to make to a Judge. He can't be expect LinkedIn, in this case, to kill their service so someone can scrape.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How does this affect Craigslist's Cease and Desist request to padmapper? [0]

[0] [http://blog.padmapper.com/2012/06/22/bye-bye- craigslist/](http://blog.padmapper.com/2012/06/22/bye-bye-craigslist/)

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't see anyone linking to the actual ruling, so I grabbed it from PACER. Here it is:

[https://drop.qoid.us/linkedin-081417.pdf](https://drop.qoid.us/linkedin-081417.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER27> From reading the ruling, the injunction was based on a finding that HiQ raised serious questions about whether LinkedIn blocking HiQ's scrapers constituted a violation of California's unfair competition law by violating the spirit of federal antitrust law.

HiQ argued that LinkedIn has a monopoly on "the professional networking market" and is unfairly exploiting that monopoly to gain an advantage in the data analytics market. HiQ showed that LinkedIn might be developing an analytics product that competes directly with their Skill Mapper product.

<comment><USER28> Great. So in a business that makes money primarily by collecting and selling user data, they're now required to give it away for free.

<comment><USER29> Correction: user-generated data. LI get the content from their users for free.

<comment><USER30> I dont understand how you came to think that. What about the cost of hosting and serving the html forms (cpu and bandwidth), processing the content update requests, storing the resulting data structures? What about the marketing costs of making the brand known both by individuals and companies? The wages associated to any of the operations i have just mentioned?

What definition of "free" are you using here?

<comment><USER31> I agree there seems to be a problems with means and investments: if I invest to create a website with valuable data, and anyone can come and scrape my data and start their own or a competing business, riding on top of my investment, isn't that a disincentive to me?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Does the startup want to scrape the public profiles which you see when logged out of LinkedIn? If yes, this profile data is of little value because it's probably 5% of the real profile data (mainly just the summary) and often there are no public available at all, many times these profiles are turned off for public virw.

Or do they mean the 'public' profile which you see when logged in? If yes, this would be a real case because this is awesome data I would like to scrape and which you could build interesting business cases with.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm confused. Is the judge saying that LinkedIn can't use the law to ban HiQ from scraping their profiles or that they can't implement technology to block scrapers? The former seems reasonable but the latter seems like an unjustified restriction on how they operate their site.

<comment><USER34> Looks like technology... Which seems strange to me.

<comment><USER29> Less strange given that LI is a monopoly and the judge was arguing that LI was unfairly restricting competition in HiQ's business space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> So they want to forbid a startup to scrap the personal data of their users as if Linkedin was the only company allowed to have access to this data.

I mean it is completely crazy, it is not LinkedIn data it is OUR data

<comment><USER36> Are you paying the hosting costs for LinkedIn's site and database? Their users gave LinkedIn the data, it's now theirs.

<comment><USER37> That's the equivalent of sending your resume to a company for a job opening and the company saying, "since this resume is now on our control, we own the information in it."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This type of decision might also impact Yelp or any others in similar businesses. Currently their API limits a top few reviews per business via their API, and also prohibits "scraping" of data in other means.

I was going to do some experiments with larger datasets from businesses in a region, but quickly found that's not possible.

<comment><USER39> And Google search results as well. Search results are publicly accessible but if you try to crawl them, Google will block it.

If it becomes illegal to block crawlers, then Google is gonna get hammered with bot traffic.

It will also mean that google won't have to be the front-end to search results, and anyone can build on top of it, which could kill google ad revenue because then you could create anonymous google searches.

<comment><USER40> Google already isn't the only frontend to their search. Look at Startpage, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco granted a preliminary > injunction request brought by hiQ Labs, and ordered LinkedIn to remove > within 24 hours any technology preventing hiQ from accessing public > profiles.

That is actually dangerous. Why some startup or some judge can tell me to whom I can serve content and to whom I cannot?

</comment><comment><USER42> Is the reasoning in this case different from the Craigslist/3taps dispute?

</comment><comment><USER43> Does anyone know how they do this scraping from a technical standpoint. The articles allude to it being the same as data Google/Bing spiders, which can clearly access more data that average internet IP for making their result summaries. I had assumed big sites whitelisted specific crawler IP ranges or User-Agents for the search giants. Do they somehow spoof this?

<comment><USER44> I don't think they do any such thing, if anything they are rotating IPs/user agents to avoid being limited or blocked.

Google requires sites to send the crawler the same content as someone clicking a link on a Google results page would see, so even if some sites get creative covering it up with blurred boxes and similar dark patterns, the data is there in the markup.

<comment><USER43> I haven't checked the markup, but if you try and hit a linkedin profile page you just get forwarded to a login page. Perhaps if you don't follow the forwarding?

Not sure how this complies with google's requirements, I suspect if you're big enough you get a custom arrangement. However, that doesn't explain how hiQ are getting the data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I do find it odd that LinkedIn is fighting this considering they outright steal your contact list and will spam your friends and family for years.

Recently I was setting up my new phone and thought about installing their app and I thought to myself, why?

Eventually that thought came back to me when I was attempting to update my profile and simply decided to delete it entirely.

</comment><comment><USER46> Well, good, right?

This is the same outcome most of us wanted between Swartz and JSTOR, and perhaps with Malamud and PACER. No technical control can be in the right place, but we can hope for a common understanding (maybe eventually law?) that terms of service may demand or prohibit some things but not anything.

</comment><comment><USER47> I would prefer if my LinkedIn data was not public in the sense that one should have to be logged in to see it, and ideally I should be able to see who viewed it. If you have to be logged in to look, they can obviously limit the number of profiles you can view to prevent scraping.

<comment><USER47> Awesome! The day after this post I logged in to LinkedIn and they promoted a (new?) feature where you can restrict who sees your profile. I turned it off as much as possible for people who are not logged in. IMHO they should probably make that the default if they don't want people scraping data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> On one hand, LinkedIn is like Twitter, Craigslist and Delicious in that it has sat on a treasure trove of data without helping users mobilize it. (All of the premium services they offer are outright lame; if there was a _market_ for premium services we might seem some good ones.)

On the other hand, privacy is an issue too. LinkedIn lets you download a spreadsheet with the email addresses of all your connections, and if you have a lot of connections you will regularly get e-mail messages from life coaches, "managing directors", software development outsourcers, "SEO experts", and all kind of BS artists.

</comment><comment><USER49> This medium post [1] "The Birth And Death Of Privacy: 3,000 Years of History Told Through 46 Images" gives an interesting and unintuitive context about [personal] privacy, which is relevant in this debate about how to balance personal privacy w/society's value in openness [and honesty].

[1] [https://medium.com/the-ferenstein-wire/the-birth-and- death-o...](https://medium.com/the-ferenstein-wire/the-birth-and-death-of- privacy-3-000-years-of-history-in-50-images-614c26059e)

</comment><comment><USER50> IANAL but I suspect the forthcoming GDPR will make this illegal for EU customer data. It gives users greater control over their data, so I wouldn't be surprised to find that it corresponds with this judgement, i.e. if a user determines data to be publicly available, it must be made to be so.

Anyone know whether this is right?

And BTW in case you're not aware, if you hold data from any EU citizens you'll be required to comply with the GDPR regardless of where you're located.

</comment><comment><USER51> They needed to make it available within 24 hours - does that mean public profiles are now scrapeable like any other page?

I tried a year ago and obviously it was impossible.

</comment><comment><USER52> Interesting. Does anyone know how this compares to the legal cases around startups that would scrape Craigslist public data?

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm curious how a ruling in this might potentially impact Google (or not). Google is scraping those same profiles, but Linkedin clearly has no issue with that because it drives traffic to their site. But Google is also making money off of those profiles.

How can Linkedin argue that Google be allowed to scrap but other third party cannot?

</comment><comment><USER54> When these decisions are made, I hope they come with technical guarantees on ease of accessibility to data.

For instance, "buried in 6 layers of obfuscated XML" and "accessible in O(N^3) time" would both be implementations that are not "blocking" the data but they would still be extremely difficult to use.

</comment><comment><USER55> Microsoft/LinkedIn has so much more juicy and actually private data that nobody can scrape, I don't understand why they would even make a scene and tarnish their image over scraping. They know who _declines_ connection requests from whom, when a CEO starts looking for a new job, and so on.

</comment><comment><USER56> The question of "data protection" hasn't been discussed enough here - it may well be that Linkedin has no case against HiQ, but if HiQ is scraping people's PII in the EU they are _required_ to have the permission of the data subjects.

How this interacts with Safe Harbour I have no idea.

</comment><comment><USER57> Nobody can require one to forget a knowledge, nor shall anyone be entitled to do so. Collection and use of data should be legitimate. Storing data in HDD and remembering things in brain are identical. Infringement of privacy, reputation, or copyright is another issue.

</comment><comment><USER28> So does this ruling essentially outlaw robots.txt? If I only give access to certain users, that's... illegal now? We're calling that a monopoly? How is this reasonable to anyone else?

</comment><comment><USER58> Sorry a private company can do whatever it wants with its own property. They're paying for the power and bandwidth...

This needs to be overturned unless LinkedIn is violating FRAND priciples.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have a simple question: what is "public information" with respect to websites? Anything I put on a privately owned website automatically becomes "public"?

</comment><comment><USER59> Can someone explain to me why didn't the robots.txt apply to HiQ's crawler? Is crawling still legal while the robots.txt disallows your crawler?

<comment><USER33> Yeah, it is. Robots.txt is just a way of politely asking people not to crawl your site. It doesn't have anything to do with the law.

<comment><USER59> Thank you. I'm not sure if this analogy is correct but isn't that like a host of a museum telling people do not take pictures yet someone did it anyway and sold the pictures he took?

<comment><USER60> I don't quite think so. There are specific laws governing the use of of, say, photographic equipment within a private property.

If a web server, on other other hand, willingly serves content to both a browser being operated by a human, as well as screen-scraping software, then it shouldn't try to prescribe how the screen-scraper uses that information.

It would be the equivalent to, every time, asking somebody that works in the museum if you can take a picture, and them saying "yes", and then wanting to complain (or sue) afterwards.

<comment><USER61> _If a web server, on other other hand, willingly serves content to both a browser being operated by a human, as well as screen-scraping software, then it shouldn 't try to prescribe how the screen-scraper uses that information._

That's not what was happening here. LinkedIn's server was blocking HiQ, and HiQ _sued_ LinkedIn to prevent them from doing that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> HiQ signals your employer elevated likelihood of you jumping ship. Depending on situation, this could favor a pay discussion or put you at a disadvantage.

</comment><comment><USER63> The question not really answered is, what is public profile data? Is it visible to the general public, other linked in users, partially hidden?

</comment><comment><USER64> [English is not my primary language, so I'm probably wrong]

Shouldn't the title of this thread include a verb, like scraping/collecting?

</comment><comment><USER65> Here in Germany there is copyright protection for databases as a compilation separate from individual facts in the database.

</comment><comment><USER66> Does this ruling include regular anti-scraping defenses that might stop HiQ, but doesn't specifically target them?

</comment><comment><USER67> In a landmark decision that maintains you can take a picture of your community bulletin board... le sigh

</comment><comment><USER68> out of curiosity, does anyone know if this company is scraping just whats available if you're not logged in or are logging in and scraping. I believe Linkedin shows different information based on if you're logged in or not ?

</comment><comment><USER69> I wonder what would happen if some startup started using public Yelp reviews.

</comment><comment><USER70> Will this mean Google search can now also be scraped.

<comment><USER71> This is a preliminary injunction, which is a tool to prevent irreparable harm to a party before a case is resolved on its merits.

It shouldn't be taken as a strong indicator of what will be found legal in this case, much less a different hypothetical one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Linked IN could nuke this problem with a decent EULA.

</comment><comment><USER73> Shouldn't LinkedIn simply introduce captcha?

<comment><USER61> For accessing the public page of profiles?

<comment><USER73> Well, not just for accessing, but for scraping, meaning accessing a huge number of those pages in an automated way.

<comment><USER61> How would that work for Google?

If you think they shouldn't show it for Google, then that's what HiQ is suing them over :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> How does the tinder debacle fit into this?

</comment><comment><USER75> The most surprising aspect of this is having anyone manage to consider any of the data valuable at the tire-fire of a social network LinkedIn.

</comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone know where to view this ruling?

I'm curious how it passes free-association muster: you're not allowed to discriminate on particular tasks, but there's no reason you can't discriminate based on eg, behavior or user-agent or IP address.

It seems very strange to me that the judge would order MS to associate against their will prior to hearing the arguments.

<comment><USER76> [http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/2017_0814_h...](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/2017_0814_hiq_order.pdf)

<comment><USER77> After skimming the document for a bit, hiQ's argument looks really flaky. Especially grasping at straws like "Free Speech". They argue that LinkedIn is like a public mall and denying them access to the mall is denying them "Free Speech"? I don't see how this can be the case if they had no intent to "speak" at all in this place. Their data collection via scraping seems more like people-watching in the mall, if you go along with their analogy.

<comment><USER27> Indeed, and the court rejected that part of HiQ's argument.

"In light of the potentially sweeping implications discussed above and the lack of any more direct authority, the Court cannot conclude that hiQ has at this juncture raised 'serious questions' that LinkedIn's conduct violates its constitutional rights under the California Constitution."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Here's a copy of the pleading: [http://www.almcms.com/contrib/content/uploads/sites/292/2017...](http://www.almcms.com/contrib/content/uploads/sites/292/2017/06/HiQvLinkedIn.pdf)

"In a press statement, LinkedIn says: "Our members control the information that they make available to others on LinkedIn and they trust us to honor that control. HiQ is taking member data, without their knowledge, and using it for purposes our members haven't agreed to.""

I use a text-only browser. As old-timers know the first web browser back in the early 1990's was also text-only. Text-only atill works great, believe it or not. Especially for reading information like one finds on LinkedIn.

I cannot acess LinkedIn after the Microsoft acquisition.

Microsoft says members control access. Do they check a box that says

       [ ] Disallow blind users from viewing my profile as text-only.

or

       [ ] Disallow access by HiQ.

The Microsoft statement says HiQ is "taking member data" _without their knowledge_. This sounds as though members are unaware "they" had a decision to make whether HiQ can access their profile, or whether a noncommercial user can access their profile with, e.g, links, w3m, lynx or the W3 Consortium's line mode browser. Indeed I doubt members either know or care about such access.

And if Microsoft partners with a company such as HiQ, then do members get a veto on use of their profile?

I think members probably have no right to even be informed that such partnerships exist!

Did LinkedIn members have any say in whether the company could sell itself, and control over access to their profiles, to Microsoft?

Web users today generally have little ability to control how companies share their data (e.g. with advertisers and partner companies).

We saw this type of argument in the 3Taps case. Where we were asked to believe Craigslist users were the ones enforcing their copyright or that they designated Craigslist to act as their agent. Anyone who uses the web knows this is utter BS.

"U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen will preside over Thursday's hearing. At an earlier proceeding, on June 29, he appeared torn by the issues presented. On the one hand, he expressed skepticism that the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act-a criminal statute-really barred the mere use of bots to harvest public information. "You can get it manually if you hired a hundred million people to do it," he observed, "but if you want to do it quickly and automatedly, you can't do it? That is a crime?"

<comment><USER79> The vast majority of blind users do not use text-based browsers. This is a common misconception! They use normal web browsers controlled by accessibility tools like JAWS or VoiceOver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> RTFA before commenting, folks. Questions and misunderstandings in this thread that are easily fixed if you just RTFA.

</comment><comment><USER81> Fixed the headline: U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data; the judge will personally pay for the gazillion servers and man hours needed now that scrappers cannot be blocked.</comment>


Internationalization made easy - <AUTHOR> http://www.99translations.com/ <comment><USER2> Translations are definitely a poorly served area. But, I'm not sure I grok how this would fit into our workflow...and, of course, it appears to have no translators and only test projects. I guess it's just launched?

I think I'll give it a try for Webmin, and see how well it copes (if it'll cope at all, given our somewhat complex, and quite large, language files).

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes it is brand new site.</comment>