The internet has been stolen from you. Take it back, nonviolently - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@flyingzumwalt/the-internet-has-been-stolen-from-you-take-it-back-nonviolently-248f8d445b87#.xjs07vyey <comment><USER2> Some context: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_and_pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_and_protocols_for_distributed_social_networking)

What the author wants does exist already: Retroshare is a secure p2p communication platform you can install on your computer. It even uses Bittorrent's DHT to speed up connecting to peers. You can also install it on your server and use its web interface (recently rebuilt with Mithril.js). Retroshare development started 10 years ago. PRs welcome: [https://github.com/RetroShare/RetroShare](https://github.com/RetroShare/RetroShare)

<comment><USER3> From a Schneier blog thread:

"Retroshare has enough layers of security that the even the nsa will have to work really hard if they want to get in there." (Benni from Germany)

"And it's written in a risky language using shoddy libraries on platforms NSA has 0-days and automated attack systems for. I'm sure that this combination will be "really hard" for NSA to penetrate. ;)" (Nick P.)

It's a nice idea and little project worth some development, though. I agree it's the closest thing, outside Freenet, to what the OP describes. It needs to be clean-slated in a safer, but low-level, language with the risky libraries substituted or improved. The protocols will need to be verified and implemented by high-assurance security community. Covert channel analysis. The works. Then, it will be good enough to stop many high-strength attackers enough to matter.

Of course, anything like that will be throttled and filtered by ISP's. Might be best to start disguising the traffic as HTTPS connections or something like my homebrew solutions did.

<comment><USER2> This security company is reviewing Retroshare: [https://www.elttam.com.au/blog/a-review-of-the-eff-secure- me...](https://www.elttam.com.au/blog/a-review-of-the-eff-secure-messaging- scorecard-pt1/)

<comment><USER3> Good to know. What sysrems has that company built that resisted nation-state or top-tier effort to break the security? Probably nothing? Further, is this one time or will they review in parallel with each code submission?

These kind of questions should lead you to the conclusion they'll merely find and patch some flaws. Others will remain or be introduced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the immediate future at least, federation seems much more feasible than wholly decentralized systems. At least for websites / applications that are expected to gain any mainstream traction.

Building a federated Wikipedia, Reddit, Twitter, Amazon, App Store, etc. that does not have a single point of censorship / failure is perfectly doable.

Hell, any of those websites _could_ start federation initiatives today if they so wished (Waiting any day now for a Big Name to experiment with a federated model).

However from my experience p2p services (IPFS / Freenet etc.) still require a combination of technical skill and political awareness (to go out of one's way to use a service that is much less convenient -- and to develop for a platform that will make you no money) that the average user does not have.

Not to say they have no place: the internet itself was a fringe, nerds-only technology at one point. But it only became a mass phenomenon once uses were found that brought 10x improvement on things the nontechnical user already needed (sending a letter, looking up information).

Decentralized technologies (today) offer no such improvement.

And let's face it, for the average Joe, p2p offers nothing: a p2p service can _at best_ be of equal quality as a centralized service. There's no way around it: there's nothing simpler and more performant than talking directly to a central host.

With federation, the user needn't even know the difference.

<comment><USER5> While it's clear that p2p is going to face an uphill battle to demonstrate its value to the average Joe, I would also argue that federation doesn't address the underlying issues with user control of data.

Email is federated. Does it give us any more control over our data? No, because one company controls the largest email service and monitors not just that user's emails but also the ones I send to them.

XMPP is federated. One company managed to get a large enough market share, at the first opportunity they lock other federation servers out and change the protocol.

Federation for established websites is long a thing, CDNs are taking care of that for them. Central points of contact combined with P2P distribution like WebTorrent is the worst of both worlds: The centralized site still owns all your data, and in addition you're paying with your bandwidth and CPU resources to reduce their bill.

A fully client-centric model isn't anywhere near likely to make it big in the near future. However, client-first (with personal servers provided by friends & non-profits) is the only feasible approach for reclaiming ownership of our data.

For-profit companies don't have any incentives to let you store large amounts of encrypted data on their servers for free, at best they'll use it for cross- selling. At worst they'll push for a modified protocol version that relies on the central company server for crucial functionality, scheming the next lock- in.

If the past is any indication, the future looks bleak for idealists who (merely?) want a user-controlled alternative to those data-driven monopolist platform ecosystems.

The technology might be getting there, but the average user's priorities make it a super hard sell. In the face of the Google/Apple duopoly, open standards are more and more an optional gimmick - instead of standard data transfer protocols we get CarPlay and Dropbox, instead of wireless standards we get Chromecast and Apple Multipeer, instead of mini-computer smartphones we get constrained consumption devices with tracking built in as a core feature.

The value of client-first P2P is really not about censorship or failure. It's about control. By giving control over protocols and platforms to a handful of large service providers, we got more convenience in exchange for our opportunities to tinker and improve on the status quo. Instead of being able to change things as a society, now we have to rely on shareholder-controlled entities to decide what's good for us. It used to be just code and Windows vs. Linux, now it's data and Google vs. basic assumptions of privacy.

And the user doesn't even know the difference.

<comment><USER4> Agree wholeheartedly. I'm a linux/GPL proselytizer among my friends. I've customized my development environment beyond recognition; I love it. That's what technology is to me: the ability to transform the world around me using my imagination. It's a beautiful, empowering feeling that I wish everyone could feel.

Every day I am saddened by enormous drift between what I know is possible with today's already existing technology (we cary supercomputers in our pockets!) and what we are actually doing with it (supercomputers we use as neutered mass-media consumption and ad-delivery devices).

I also know a lot of non technical people. Even young people, smart professional people, politically aware people; just not technical. And to 99% of the public, control is even more of a non-issue than privacy / censorship / security. "This glowing rectangle is a black box, why should I care if company A locks it down with binary blobs or if company B releases it under some GP-I- dunno-what?"

Even technology companies choose slack over improving and extending open standards. Convenience is a bitch.

Sadly, the only selling point I see today for p2p is piracy. The only issue that will get people riled up is when they lose free access to their favorite TV show. Which only further stigmatizes the hacker mindset as a front for would-be criminals. Privacy is _somewhat_ making its way to the general population, but the message is muddled and confusing to most.

I wish I had a solution. How do you sell the inherent beauty of open, hackable technology to non-geeks? Selling it on its social merit alone seems too abstract.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems to me like the Merkle DAG decentralized infrastructure with by far the most momentum right now is IPFS. It would be great to have a usable social network developed on top of that.

This article seems to culminate in a call to action to support a github project consisting solely of a README.md. I think a call-to-action post that is much better than this one is the archive.org one: [http://blog.archive.org/2015/02/11/locking-the-web-open-a- ca...](http://blog.archive.org/2015/02/11/locking-the-web-open-a-call-for-a- distributed-web/)

<comment><AUTHOR> [CORRECTION/RETRACTION]: I misunderstood ipfs. You can totally edit your DAG in ipfs (which gives you "delete" ability). So Yes cypherpunks01 is completely right.

The explanation of how you do "deletes" in a DAG still stands.

[Original comment:] ipfs doesn't have delete. It's basically a global immutable data store. Brilliantly well suited for a "permanent web" but not well suited for the kind of communication where people want to edit or delete the stuff they've put out in the past.

<comment><USER6> Isn't the purpose of any merkle-dag infrastructure to be an immutable data store? How does hypercore support editing in this way?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you append to a merkle-dag then yes it's immutable, but you can always do the equivalent of a git rebase -- effectively removing a portion of the tree and then selectively re-applying the parts that you want to keep. That creates a new DAG, one that diverges from the DAG that was shared before. For example, if you accidentally commit a database password into your git repository and push it to github, you can go back, edit the git history to exclude that commit, and force-push the new tree to github. This completely removes the info from your git repository. Of course, if someone has already pulled that old code from github, they already have your password -- you can't change that!

<comment><USER7> I don't see a problem with the truth of the internet being reflected in ipfs.

Consider the internet to be write only, forget maybe (you are not in control of that). If you accidentally commit a password someplace the correct response is changing that password.

<comment><USER8> That works for passwords, but not for everything. What happens when someone goes "Oops, didn't mean to drop those nudes into my gallery of vacation photos"? Are they irrevocably published? Or can you unpublish them and hope that nobody noticed while they were up?

<comment><USER9> IPFS reflects the truth of the public internet (and public speech/media in general): With IPFS, and any other internet technology, you can choose to stop sharing data with others, but you can't force other people to stop sharing copies they already have (except through some means outside the protocol, such as DDoS or the law).

I think a design goal of IPFS is that if you publish your nude photos to your personal IPFS node, it wont be sent to another node unless they explicitly request it by content-address. So you can use it to share sensitive data, and you can always layer encryption on top. [1]

[1] [https://github.com/ipfs/faq/issues/47](https://github.com/ipfs/faq/issues/47)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We don't need to take the Internet back from the various platforms, we need serious and strict legislation about what they do with both what we share and what we are. There is nothing wrong with a Facebook inherently; the simple fact is we as users have been extremely complacent in what companies like Facebook are allowed to do. I think that's starting to get better as the population gets more savvy but at the same time we're still nowhere close to where we need to be.

I think it's a fundamental problem with how you approach the relationship with a service like that: They give you a Terms of Service, or what you're allowed to do to be able to use that service. I think we need to flip that around entirely and instead mandate that Facebook has to ask, explicitly, for everything. And more importantly there need to be serious consequences for when those rules are violated. Every relationship with a network of any kind starts at a position of they own everything, and then they tell you what you actually own and I think it's backwards. We should start from a position of we own everything, and this is what you're ALLOWED to take and use.

I think that's far more feasible to do than a distributed Facebook. Not saying it's impossible, just saying it's a shorter route and betters the relationship we have with the things and companies we do business with overall.

<comment><USER11> That is what just happened in the EU parlament: [http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news- room/20160407IPR2...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news- room/20160407IPR21776/Data-protection-reform-Parliament-approves-new-rules- fit-for-the-digital-era)

> The new rules include provisions on: A right to be forgotten, "clear and > affirmative consent" to the processing of private data by the person > concerned, a right to transfer your data to another service provider, the > right to know when your data has been hacked, ensuring that privacy policies > are explained in clear and understandable language, and stronger enforcement > and fines up to 4% of firms' total worldwide annual turnover, as a deterrent > to breaking the rules.

We'll see how that turns out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Virtually everything the author wants exists in a technical sense, but it's not usable for the average person.

I've said this many times, pretty much whenever this topic comes up:

A thing that works is maybe 10-20% of the way to being done. The rest of the work is making it into a product non-experts can use.

UX is tedious, time consuming, and painful. It involves a lot of the kind of work most devs hate. As a result people generally have to be paid to do it.

Almost nobody does UX work for decentralized open systems because they are free. There is no economic model. You can't make a living.

Until this changes nobody is ever going to use this stuff.

IMHO this is The Problem and if you are working on decentralization without trying to solve it you are spinning your wheels.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't get this article. Other than defining a bunch of new words, what are they exactly saying the problem is, and what are they saying the solution is?

Just saying that <the solution isn't diaspora, it's swadeshi> is complete nonsense. And the problem seems to be <something big corporations do> but they never really say what.

<comment><USER14> The problem:

> The internet has been stolen from you. Scooped out of your hands without > much of a fuss. A small number of corporations are locked in a zero-sum game > of land grabs.

The solution:

> The solution is to decentralize further, relying on a peer-to-peer > model...In short, create an app, one that you run on your computer or phone, > that writes social data (aka "posts") into local databases and then > replicates those databases to peers using a peer-to-peer protocol

Directly from the article, and it's surprisingly detailed in implementation suggestions - I'm forced to conclude your lack of understanding is willful.

<comment><USER15> > The internet has been stolen from you.

This isn't a felt need. I don't feel inconvenienced by this. I don't feel the loss of something I once owned or had the benefit of.

> The solution is to decentralize further,

The solution solves a very abstract problem. I would go so far as to say it's a religious or spiritual need only that is solved by this. Decentralization will not improve my life or meet any felt need (I am not less hungry, less lonely, more clothed, more sheltered, or more socially connected as a result of this product). The only benefit I could have is if I had a religious belief in the moral need for this type of system, and that system satisfied that moral belief. I think that's a very small minority of users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This article is idealism that's not grounded in anything close to reality. The real problem is the demand side of the equation ensures things like Facebook and Comcast are more likely to succeed to point they drown out everything else with network, legacy, and development pace effects. Anything they build must consider and conquer that problem in its design/implementation to succeed. A better, centralized offering that respects users rights down to the company's charter and license agreement is an easier start.

Funny they mentioned Diaspora. I predicted very accurately what would happen to them sometime around 2011 on Schneier's blog:

"Diaspora is a joke. The thing is being designed, analyzed and implemented primarily by amateurs. A truly safe social network must be designed by people with expertise in cryptography, protocol analysis, secure software design, and low-defect implementation. Throw some testing and UI people in there to boot. I like that there's people trying on this, but I wouldn't trust anything that project produces. The independent reviews we've gotten so far confirmed my suspicions.

As for secure/private social networking, I don't know if there's really a way to do it that would take off. Non-paid internet services depend mainly on ad revenue. An advantage of current social networking sites is that analysis allows targeted advertising & brings in lots of revenue. Take that away & you get very little revenue in comparison. This is a problem if you are running a secure web service with tons of cryptography in it, which takes MUCH more resources to achieve performance of something like FB."

People want these independent, private, secure spaces but are unwilling to pay for them. Most of their friends and family probably are both unwilling to pay and unwilling to _use_ them. Plus, you have to recreate most of the usefulness of modern web platforms. You have to do all that... very expensively to develop and run I'll add... while making almost no money on almost no users. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER15> This project doesn't serve a felt user need. If you've ever worked in a startup attempting to do a consumer product you know exactly what I mean. It's extremely hard to get a user to even use a product that solves a problem for them, and much harder if they already have a product that they think solves the problem. If they don't feel the pain of the problem being solved, it's impossible. I don't think many users have a felt need for this product, whether or not the developers believe it solves an abstract moral or spiritual need.

</comment><comment><USER16> I like the post, and the ambitious GitHub repo with a single README made me smile. We're re-discussing an existing idea to see if maybe something sticks or clicks. An idea might be the same, but circumstances change.

That said, I agree with a lot of the comments here. Like coding, let's see if we already have a library that does what we want before writing it (again). A good question is, what's the most pressing problem we face, and how does this solve it?

I don't have a problem using Twitter or Facebook to, let's say, organize a grassroots movement or lead a protest, but I ought to be concerned about the viability of these platforms for such activities when they're unpopular with the company or government behind it. How might we solve this? Maybe this project leads to some solution...?

</comment><comment><USER17> I have no idea if this project has legs, but I enjoyed reading about the concept of Swedeshi and being reminded that Ghandi successfully sought political independence by pursuing financial independence. I have my own hypotheses about the importance of independent stuff. My confidence in the viability of it sometimes falters. This was a nice read on a day when I have been wondering "Why bother?" about a lot of things.

<comment><USER3> That part I liked. I hadn't heard of the term before despite reading on Ghandi. It even sounds neat. The rest of the article... not so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> One way to motivate ordinary users to decentralize is money. Facebook et al give you all these "free" services so they can monetarize your data. If you could own your data, then you could sell it.

Also, I am surprised the author missed ipfs and ethereum, since they are pretty advanced examples of decentralizing the web.

</comment><comment><USER19> Cue: Medium-level Irony Klaxxon

</comment><comment><USER20> This project - Swadeshi - it's an idealistic and foolish idea. Which is why I'm interested in seeing where it goes. I generally make pessimistic assumptions, and I'm assuming this project will go no where. But we still need audacious ideas. Even if the concept itself doesn't succeed, the project may create and disseminate related ideas and technologies that could be transformative - a successful failure.

What follows are a few blockers, or possible failure modes for Swadeshi. The biggest potential issues are not with the technology, but with the ecosystem it has to live in.

 __Network Size __\- Facebook, Twitter, et al. have the great advantage of having huge numbers of users. To use an alternative requires not only that I adopt the alternative, but that that I convince some significant part of my friends /family/society to use the same.

It's like Bitcoin - Bitcoin is not that difficult to use, and has a number of features missing from traditional currencies. But the great potential utility of Bitcoin comes from having nearly everyone use it. Currencies, like social networks, require large numbers of users to be widely useful.

One important exception is for users who can't or won't participate in "normal" currencies or networks. Which is why Bitcoin became the de-facto currency the Silk Road and other black markets. And why, initially, Swadeshi will most likely be used by those groups who can't openly participate the normal social networks - child pornographers, white nationalists, islamic fundamentalists, freedom fighters, revolutionary groups, etc.

The danger here is that "stink" or "danger" of these out-groups will be associated with the project in popular consciousness. The network may be de- centralized, but people still think hierarchically. Swadeshi could easily become "the kid-toucher's social network" much like "Bitcoin is the Sewer Rat of Currencies"

 __Capture __\- Swadeshi is de-centralized, so there 's no single entity controlling the state of the network. But that doesn't rule out capture. Look again at Bitcoin. The idea was to create a virtual currency (which it did). But it was quickly captured by speculators to the point of crippling the network. Control and capture are two different things, and solving for one doesn't preclude the other.

 __Facebook can still win __\- Suppose the Swadeshi project gains millions of active users. That 's real momentum for a Facebook replacement. But Facebook can still win by embracing and extending the technology behind Swadeshi. Facebook could be all-Swadeshi under the hood, but present the familiar FB interface, with their value-adds of Photos, Groups, Pages, etc. Moderation could be FB's major advantage. If Swadeshi is the wild-west of social networks, FB could bolt on their anti-spam and abuse reporting mechanisms to tame the unruly bits.

</comment><comment><USER21> Posted on Medium, a central, private, for-profit publishing platform. Oh the irony.

<comment><AUTHOR> +1. And you read it because you're visiting hackernews (also central, private, for-profit). It's a systemic problem. That's why we need new tools that let us operate outside that system.

<comment><USER22> But how would I discover content if I didn't use HN? Is there a way to aggregate and rank content without an authoritative server?

Also, HN isn't for-profit (although YC is). Like, yeah, it's not a non-profit, but it's not designed to make any money either.

<comment><USER23> > Is there a way to aggregate and rank content without an authoritative > server?

Something like RSS: Pick up all posts tagged such and such from these users.

I've thought a bit about this and if we really wanted to we could get really far with just a few hundred lines of code as well as some html templates.

Problem is, most people like facebook and instagram :-/

<comment><USER24> RSS doesn't really have a method for 3rd parties to rank content, does it?

The thing about HN is voting and comments, both of which require manual moderation to be effective.

<comment><USER25> Couldn't the moderation be distributed as well? Pick the moderators you want and the posts are filtered with their moderation actions.

<comment><USER23> Agree, I could share (a subset of) my sources as could you.

We could even automate it so if my post reader notices several of my sources following another source it will ask me if I want to look at or follow that source, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interesting idea, but just reads like a lot of hand wringing to me. And comparing centralization of the web to colonial rule is ridiculous and honestly pretty insensitive.

I like that it acknowledges that running a personal web server is out of reach (technologically and financially) for most people. But I'm not sure if its proposed decentralized network is any better, because creating web content and having a large number of people see it are not easy.

At the end of the day, most people using the web do not have a technical background and really just want to microblog to their friends using a simple interface. Facebook/Twitter/Instagram and hell, even Snapchat do that. I'm having trouble imagining a decentralized network that replicates that.

</comment><comment><USER27> >The internet has been stole from you.

It was never "stolen" because "you" never owned it in the first place. The internet infrastructure has always been a monopoly.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Corporation#Monopoly](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Corporation#Monopoly)

<comment><USER28> It is kind of great to think that though the phone lines held all the bandwidth, we escaped those, right? Which means that escaping the most popular and dominating websites should be considerably easier..I like the federation idea.

<comment><USER29> But all you have to do to escape the most popular and dominating websites is not use them.

People act as if Facebook and a few other sites have literally become the web but they haven't. Extremely popular, yes, but it's not as if the web gets smaller when Facebook gets bigger. Even the linked article uses the term "land grab" as if there was a limited amount of "web" to go around.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Maps heatmap of GitHub repository stargazers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rviscomi/red-dwarf

<comment><USER2> The data for the west coast is rather unexpected for me. Does anyone have any insight into that? Maybe this is a case of my intuitive sense of the size of NYC really not doing reality justice?

<comment><USER3> Are you talking about the sample image in the readme? I don't think it says what repository that data corresponds to. The guy is also New York based so it might just be that his github social network is skewed to the right coast.

<comment><USER4> The image is from the live demo[1], which says it's from rviscomi/trunk8.

[1]<https://github.com/rviscomi/red-dwarf#about>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most interesting for me was that green patch on Iran. Didn't expect it to be that big. It's a mysterious country.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is off-topic, but Red Dwarf is also one of the best sitcoms. My nickname is inspired by it :)</comment>


Switzerland's lower house rejects basic income, but poll shows popular support - <AUTHOR> http://www.basicincome.org/news/2015/10/swiss-parliament-opposes-popular-initiative/ <comment><USER2> No suprise people on the street would be happy to receive extra cash for free, when asked.

Unfortunately money doesn't grow on trees, and politcians know that :)

<comment><USER3> I agree, it depends on how the question is framed.

They won't be happy if they know where it is coming from.

I've met folks who would not be happy to know their tax money would be going to "lazy" folks.</comment></comment>


Removing support for mobile browsers that don't support auth cookies - <AUTHOR> http://googleappsupdates.blogspot.com/2012/03/discontinuing-support-for-mobile.html <comment><AUTHOR> note - title edited to get under the <80 char title limit</comment>


Squeak Smalltalk on a PostmarketOS Cellphone - <AUTHOR> https://eighty-twenty.org/2020/08/25/postmarketos-smalltalk <comment><USER2> tonyg is also accomplished in Scheme/Racket, but Smalltalk/Squeak sounds like even a better and more interesting fit. Especially with the morphs world, and possibilities of direct manipulation programming, finding what resonates with kids for their own devices they program themselves, etc.

FWIW, I have an old starting point with DrRacket on pmOS. [https://www.neilvandyke.org/postmarketos/](https://www.neilvandyke.org/postmarketos/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks awesome. I really like Tonyg's actor library for Squeak so this is great to see and will be definitely following this closely.

Neilv's old DrRacket on pmOS also looks very interesting.

Ok - Time to take another look at pmOS.</comment>


"Curiosity" - Launch 7.30AM EST (Live) - <AUTHOR> http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/timeline/launch/watchonline/

<comment><USER2> In case you haven't seen how this thing lands, watch the link below. It's really so amazing how this is entirely automated and executed so flawlessly.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BudlaGh1A0o>

<comment><USER3> Is this the simplest sequence of events and machinery they could come up with the achieve the landing? There are a lot of motors, sensors, and propulsion engines that could fail.

<comment><USER4> At 775 kg it's too heavy to do the bouncy thing like Pathfinder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At T-4 minutes they hold for 10 minutes and the commentary said this was planned beforehand. Does anyone know why they don't just plan to launch 10 minutes later without the 'hold'?

<comment><USER6> The pre-programmed holds (as opposed to unplanned holds) exist so that if there were any unexpected temporary hitches in the launch sequence, there is still time to make the launch window. Imagine for example that you have a 1 minute launch window, and a slower than expected fuel pump means that it takes 5 minutes longer to top off the fuel tanks. Well, you just missed your entire launch. Stand everyone down, and put the spacecraft back into standby before trying again tomorrow. If you have a planned hold, you simply reduce the planned hold time, and you can still hit the launch window.

The hold is also used as a sync point between all of the different activities that have to be completed at certain points in the launch preparation. For example, at the t-4 hold for the Curiousity launch, they needed to pass the go/no-go from the entire team. If one team had been running late up till that point it wasn't a problem, the other processes just entered the hold earlier. Once the last hold has been cleared, all of the remaining processes have to stay synchronised.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> UPDATE: MSL is in good health and en route to Mars. Landing anticipated: 5 August 2012 <http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-361>

</comment><comment><USER7> If you're having trouble getting it to load, you might try here instead: <http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl>

<comment><USER8> also a mobile feed (Mobile optimized, lower quality) at <http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-mobile>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 7:30am? The official launch blog says 10:02am (EST):

[http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/launch/launch_blog.htm...](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/launch/launch_blog.html)

<comment><USER10>
        November 26, Saturday (Launch Day)

        7:30 a.m. EST (4:30 a.m. PST) - NASA TV launch commentary coverage and launch blog.
        10:02 a.m. EST (7:02 a.m. PST) - MSL's Launch
        12:30 p.m. EST (9:30 a.m. PST) (approximately) - Post-launch News Conference
        12 - 5 p.m. EST (9 a.m. - 2 p.m. PST) - Scientist in Action for MSL (Education Channel)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for the reminder! And just in time, one minute before launch.</comment>


Show HN: New way to greet visitors to office - <AUTHOR> https://signwithenvoy.com/

<comment><USER2> I like this a lot. Kudos!</comment>


Facebook Wants You To Snitch On Friends Not Using Their Real Name - <AUTHOR> http://paulbernal.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/facebook-snitchgate/ <comment><USER2> In Mexico, bloggers are disemboweled and strung up from bridges as a warning to others, by cartels.

In Syria, government snipers murdered bloggers to silence them.

In China, bloggers are imprisoned at hard labor.

In the United States, the Federalist Papers were released anonymously in order to protect the lives of their authors.

It is only the spoiled, rich and free countries who make such naive and irresponsible statements such as, "I am in support of people using their real names online."

A better question is, what actions are Google, Apple, and Facebook taking to protect our vital ability to remain anonymous online?

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't an even better question be: how do we build the kind of society where people can express their thoughts attached to their names without fear of reprisal?

<comment><USER4> A noble sentiment, but until it can be proven with solid evidence that such a thing is possible, it would be dangerous and irresponsible to force such an experiment upon people.

History is rife with examples of people imposing what they just KNEW was right upon others, with disastrous consequences.

<comment><USER3> That's an interesting point, perhaps the goal I described is impossible. It just seems like aiming for anonymity is aiming low and solving the wrong problem.

<comment><USER4> Or perhaps it is aiming high and solving the right problem. Unless one can back up their claims with good evidence, they're merely engaging in conjecture. Thus far, the only evidence we have points in favor of preserving the right to privacy and anonymity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Enforcing real names has pros and cons. For Facebook as a business, the pros certainly outweigh the value lost when accounts can't be mapped directly to real people. Names are a key part of that mapping.

In general, I prefer an option for pseudonymity, because it is much more inclusive (allowing certain people at the fringes to feel more comfortable joining in -- victims of abuse, political dissidents, etc), and is much less messy than total anonymity (which wouldn't really work for something like Facebook, not that there isn't a place for it elsewhere on the web). That said, pseudonymity can still get messy, so I see why Facebook might want to keep it in check.

One can also make the argument that the level of discourse is much higher on services where people are more personally accountable for what they say, and where confusing or offensive usernames don't get in the way of conversations. But I would say that the actual level of discourse sometimes found on Facebook throws that argument into question.

<comment><USER6> What Facebook and Google+ gain in politesse, they lose in depth and honesty. I can't assume I'll be held "accountable" in a just way by every prospective employer, apartment manager, or lover I'll ever meet, so these venues get empty pleasantries from me, certainly nothing controversial in any way.

<comment><USER7> Now imagine a whole generation socializing under these artificial restrictions. Can you imagine how stifling being raised under an umbrella of constant surveillance by your peer group, family, future employers and advertisers would be to your personality and relationships? We're developing a society of sociopatic egotists.

<comment><USER8> We are basically under constant surveillance by our peer group and family, just not in an Orwellian sense.

It's incredibly common for people to grow up afraid to say many things, having massive restrictions on some parts of their personalities due to those kinds of pressures.

We see it most obviously with the single big things such as "I can't tell my religious family I'm an atheist" or "I got ostracised for dating someone from another culture" or whatever, but it's almost certainly going on for a huge range of smaller personality facets - or ones which were blanked out before they developed.

Who would you be if you'd never had any restrictions on what you could say other than moral ones? If any interest you had, you would have been supported in following up, any comment you made would have been taken seriously and never laughed at, any attempt to better yourself was encouraged not mocked.

Maybe more and more surveillance such as you imagine will actually make it _more_ obvious that others opinions are their largely their own problem and don't affect you all that much, and you should develop more confidence sooner.

<comment><USER9> sorry I dont understand your last point - can you please rephrase it for me? thank you

<comment><USER8> I was trying to say that maybe total surveillance would feel less bad than occasional surveillance, since you would be forced to "get used to it" from an early age, and for things where there are no particular consequences other than embarassment, maybe that would be an improvement.

(Yet, that only applies if you assume the oversight is only for spotting criminals and the guides for criminal activity exactly agree with your own, and the system is fair).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The only problem with forcing real names that I've recently encountered are family members who work in prisons. They use a modified name as to make it difficult for an inmate to gain knowledge of them and where they live. Personal and family protection in a way with the ability to still use Facebook to connect with distant friends and family members.

Anyone else run into this instance?

<comment><USER11> It seems like it would be more sensible for them to use modified names inside the prison.

Of course, they probably don't get to choose what name to use in the prison.

<comment><USER12> I think that both guards and inmates should be assigned fake names in prison, or addressed simply by number, to avoid prison interactions spilling out of the prison and affecting prisoners' families etc. Of course, the danger with this is that abuses within prison would become harder to track and account for.

<comment><USER13> I going to guess that referring to inmates by numbers would be widely criticized as inhumane by many human rights groups. It would be an uphill battle to keep something like that going.

<comment><USER14> Inmates are commonly referred to by their number in prison -- as far as the prison system is concerned, they're not 'Leland Highsmith,' they're A319445 -- it's tied to their phone calls, commissary purchases, meal records, medicine records, and health records.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have been on online networks of one kind or another since 1992. I am 100 percent behind the idea that people using their real names (the rule of some networks I have been on) promotes better online community and people taking more responsibility for their personal behavior in the community. That said, I do have some friends who have long established pseudonyms that have most of the good effects of real names, because those friends still try to build up reputation for those pseudonyms. (You'll have to be the judge of how well I'm doing here building up the reputation of "tokenadult," a screen name I brought here from two other online communities where pseudonyms rather than real names are mandatory but changing names is difficult so that reputation still accumulates for each name.)

That said, I refuse to "out" my niece's dog, who has a Facebook profile. It's important to have amusing counterexamples out there so that people don't invest too much trust in Facebook. In the last week or so a Hacker News participant (I don't know his real name [smile]) suggested that Facebook could monetize by being an online payments platform. For consumer-to-business transactions, I don't trust Facebook as a payment platform because its engineers have the attitude "Don't be afraid to break things," which just doesn't appeal to me for a network that handles my financial data. For user- to-user transactions, I also don't trust Facebook because I don't trust the users unless I know them in person--my Facebook community is enjoyable because it really consists of people whose real identity I know, and who know me. If I want to do business with strangers, I occasionally do that through Amazon Marketplace, but that is because Amazon has built up its own reputation for standing behind transactions there.

AFTER EDIT: Several comments in this thread are along the lines of

 _It's not hard to imagine a near future, if not a present, in which a person's identity is entirely evaluated, shaped, and determined by a monolith such as facebook._

But most people in the world still are largely stuck with the reputations distorted for them, before they can develop their reputations for themselves, by their family or their classmates in some small community. Facebook is LESS of a "monolith," because it is made up of hundreds of millions of users, than any small town anywhere. A lot of people find it liberating to find online communities based on shared intellectual interests (Hacker News works for this too, of course) rather than just being stuck with their current group of in- person acquaintances.

<comment><USER16> > Facebook is LESS of a "monolith," because it is made up of hundreds of > millions of users, than any small town anywhere.

You inadvertently bring up a strong counter argument.

Suppose, in your small town, you are outed (rightly or wrongly) as <insert marginalized subgroup here>, and ostracized. Normally, after much introspection and reflection, you or your family could decide to move away, if the social effects were severe enough and unfixable.

With a real name policy and a permanent archive of the psychodrama, you cannot start over elsewhere without all of it following along with you, ripe for the next group of maladjusted simpletons to harrass you with. Not everyone can move to tolerant cultures, not all marginalized groups can find reliably-safe new places.

<comment><USER17> I think this also speaks volumes about the "dangers" of using large general- purpose social networks.

Think about it for a second: if I'm ostracized (using my name or a pseudonym, it doesn't matter) from a `Club 3.14: Raspberry Pi Hackers` message board; I can find other message boards with a surplus of R-Pi hackers.

If I say something stupid on Facebook... where am I supposed to go in order to replace Facebook?

The issue with Google+ is (<\-- replace with your favorite defunct social network) that it's a graveyard. (I say that facetiously; I actually use G+ and quite like the service. That being said, I can't deny that it is missing 95% or so of my Facebook friends.)

So the issue here isn't so much the ability to have pseudonyms, IMHO.

The issue is that Facebook is quickly becoming a "monolith", and that fact _combined_ with an inability to escape your ostracism via "moving" your online presence to a new identity is where the problem lies.

I feel the real problem is that Facebook is all-encompassing. They want to be _the_ platform for online community.

Therein lies the problem, if you're only allowed _one true identity_ on their platform, your baggage follows you to every sub-community _on that platform._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hey folks - I work on the Site Integrity team at Facebook. We work to keep people safe from scams, spam, fake accounts, and having their account taken over.

We're always looking for ways to better understand how people represent themselves online and improve the design of our service. We look at the results of this kind of experiment in aggregate - the responses doesn't have any impact on the user account or that of their friends.

<comment><USER19> The best way people, especially kids, have to protect their future selves from things they write or post today, is by assuming a fake identity.

Kids are quickly learning that everything on the Internet is forever. Take the option of hiding their identity away from them, and I think they will move to a service that will allow this.

<comment><USER20> My kids are sick of me harping on this. But now they use different pseudonyms for every site, including Facebook, and I'm proud of them for it.

They rarely use Facebook anymore; it seems it's becoming boring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If the responses are actually anonymous (as they claim, but I don't believe it's actually anonymous in their database), it would be easy to generate enough false positives to spoil the system.

<comment><USER16> There is a 0% chance that Facebook does not record your response to every request.

<comment><USER22> If it turns out it isn't anonymous and they are shutting down accounts over it, can there be any repercussions for them lying like that or is it just "unethical"?

<comment><USER23> Funny - it says they won't take any action over it. Do I trust that?

<comment><USER24> makes you wonder why they are asking then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Every time fb does something scummy, and people act surprised, _I_ am surprised. They've proven themselves to have the morals of a used car dealer. Why would you trust them, or be surprised when they act untrustworthy?

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." No?

<comment><USER26> Used car dealers presumably have that reputation because they still manage to fool people, otherwise the immoral ones would quickly go out of business. Part of the skill is to manage to convince people that things are different with you and them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't really think the connection that he tries to make between Facebook's real name policy and the need for anonymity for whistleblowers/oppressed regimes is really fair. Facebook wants to be a social portal were you feed your desire to be seen and make stupid updates about your life and contact your friends when you go out with them. I don't really think that Facebooks policies are crucial for whistleblowers :D

What should be done? Stop using Facebook. Everybody has e-mail, it's quick enough, it's fun and people tend to think before they send off an e-mail (something i miss with instant messaging).

The niveau on facebook has been hiding under the table since i don't know when and that is true for their policies and for how people use facebook, so instead of trying to force the niveau to come out, how about giving up already?

If Facebook is such an important part of one's life that even while being unhappy with their policies you can't give up on the service, then that's just sad....

<comment><USER28> Rumors on Reddit that employers are asking for a Facebook presence pre- interview. What then?

<comment><USER29> I do not believe that for one second. As someone who has interviewed hundreds of candidates, there are many things a prospective employer really, really does not want to know. Religion, sexual orientation, veteran status, the list goes on... A company that finds out these things and rejects a candidate for any reason, even a legitimate technical one, is begging to be sued.

That is what LinkedIn is for...

<comment><USER26> The laws about these things are there because at least some employers _do_ want to find out these things. Some of those employers would love a more innocent-sounding way of finding out those details exactly to reduce the chance that the candidate will think they have grounds to sue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This could be a good way to hasten the departure of users from Facebook. If you get the accounts of all your friends using fake names suspended, they might be more willing to move to Google Plus.

<comment><USER31> It might hasten the departure of users from Facebook, but if they're leaving because of facebook's real name policy, I doubt they're going to find G+ more attractive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> FTA: _Indeed, under the terms of the Snoopers Charter, it wouldn't just be Facebook who could access this kind of information: the authorities could potentially set up a filter to gather data on people who don't confirm the names of their friends_

Yes, and I _could potentially_ sprout wings from my ass and become a travel carrier. The rest of this article is nothing more than a ton of thinly veiled fallacies, slippery slope and appeal to emotion the least of the two.

Is the feature dodgy? Perhaps.

Did you agree to the rules of the party before joining? Yup. One of which is: "Use your real name".

Should you be surprised if you get called out on it? Nope.

You're more than welcome to protest unfair policies (whether saying you'll put truthful info on a form is "unfair" is left as an exercise to the reader), but much like civil disobedience, you have no right to complain once you are found to be breaking the law/policy and are punished for it.

This is a website. Let's try to keep perspective here.

<comment><USER33> What is a "real" name vs. one that is not "real"?

Did you mean legal name? And if so does that exclude legal aliases?

What about Madonna, is that her 'real' name?

<comment><USER32> Are you called "fleitz" in real life? No? That is not your real name then. It is a pseudonym.

This isn't rocket science.

<comment><USER34> What if people call me "T-Bone"?

The divide between "real name" and "pseudonym" is very fuzzy as soon as you step outside the "engineer box" and look at real world data. Many people in this world go by names that you would never expect to see on their driver license or passport, both of which seem to be things Facebook asks users provide to "prove" their "real names".

And lets not even get started on the fact that facebook _is in fact part of real life_. If people call you a certain name on facebook, they are calling you that _in real life_. Different names for different social situation is _far_ from unheard of. Which is "real"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> They'd love a database full of confirmed names, which advertisers could buy into. With Facebook the '900m users' are all real people not just accounts created.

</comment><comment><USER36> Oh excellent. I can help those poor neutered friends stuck as half of user like "Susan N Steve Smith" because their significant other created that account.

</comment><comment><USER37> Where is the X button? "leave me alone" ? i'm deleting my account right at this moment i had enough

</comment><comment><USER38> If nothing else this might help put the kibosh on the intensely annoying way Facebook users tend to use cutesy fake names so that you don't know who the hell they are when they comment on your posts.

<comment><USER39> Or you could unfriend people you don't like to hang out with on Facebook.

<comment><USER40> I'd rather have Facebook fix the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> There's a reason why people do not want to use their real names. Currently Facebook does not keep up with such promises. What has changed to make me have a leap of faith on Facebook?

</comment><comment><USER42> I always wondered why google+ got all that bad press and facebook didn't for real names

<comment><USER13> I'm guessing it's because a culture and expectation of using real names had already been established on Facebook by the time the masses arrived, while privacy-conscious techies were the first G+ users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Time to call it: Jumped the shark.

Is there anything more "anti-social" they could have done? Betrayal. Or... maybe they're just trying to make it more _realistically_ social?

Seriously, it's another instance of not listening to your users. Strong-arming only works as long as you are strong...

</comment><comment><USER44> Everyone has people they don't like and vice versa. People that know your real name. I suspect it wouldn't too hard to crowdsource "identification" to the audience of Facebook so that they can monetize their idiotic platform better.

</comment><comment><USER45> I was going to say that I can't believe Salman Rushdie stooped so low as to mail a copy of his passport to some website.

But it's harder to believe that he had a facebook account in the first place.

<comment><USER46> why? the man loves attention, haven't you seen his twitter account: <http://twitter.com/SalmanRushdie>

</comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands Wrot wrow, the gig might be up for myself. Hopefully none of my HS friends will out me. If so, I'm going to have to close my account.

Not that I use a lot anyways. . .

</comment><comment><USER47> Maybe it's a kind of Milgram experiment.

</comment><comment><USER48> This is really bad.

A lot of educators aren't allowed using their real names on social networks.

</comment><comment><USER49> We're setting a really bad precedent for the future here and these sorts of things need to stop now. Unfortunately, people don't seem to want to fight this.

Now we have people getting turned down for jobs because they DON'T have a facebook account[1]. What's next?

1\. [http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/109ipi/no_faceboo...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/109ipi/no_facebook_no_job_interview_is_this_seriously_a/)

<comment><USER5> No social media presence? Clearly you are a psychopathic recluse unfit for _normal_ work.

We only want employees who do _normal_ things, like obsessively refreshing a particular website all day long.

<comment><USER50> Brilliant!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I work with Matt at Facebook and wanted to reaffirm his comment below. This survey was a small anonymous test designed to improve the systems we use to keep the site safe for everyone. And, we have already confirmed that the responses collected will have _zero_ impact on people's accounts.

We believe a real name culture is core to our mission of making the world more connected and helps us to provide the best possible experience for our users.

PS One thing I did want to note is that we offer Pages where the individual admins are not listed and have been effectively used in the past by a wide variety of groups, movements, brands, and individuals.</comment>


Verizon to end unlimited data option - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/21/technology/verizon_data_plan_changes/

<comment><USER2> _With costs of maintaining their networks flying through the roof, the nation's largest wireless carriers are attempting to limit the mobile Internet usage of their most download-happy customers. Mobile Internet usage is growing rapidly, and carriers are spending $50 billion a year to build new 4G networks that can keep up with customers' demands._

That quote is disingenuous. The costs of maintaining their networks are not flying through the roof. The amount of people paying them a substantial monthly fee to use their data networks is what is flying through the roof.

The amount of extra money being spent on network upgrades is not keeping pace with the rise in revenue from smartphone data plans.

Yes, there is plenty of competition in the US wireless market. Which is why the remaining carriers are becoming more and more the same. This situation will only get worse when the FCC / DoJ inevitably approves the ATT/T-Mobile buyout.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice of CNN to dutifully report that "the problem with carriers' price tiers is customers' download demands are quickly encroaching on wireless providers' limits as mobile video usage explodes."

What nonsense.

I also love the alarmist linked graphic at:

[http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/08/technology/smartphone_data_u...](http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/08/technology/smartphone_data_usage/index.htm?iid=EL)

...which, if you believe their arbitrarily-guessed-at trendline, delivers the shocking news that by 2015, users might, on average...uh, still be downloading less than 2gig a month.

Label me entirely unconcerned with the carriers' ability to deal with this data "explosion". They just want to charge more. That's the only story here.

<comment><USER4> That is a truly ridiculous chart. Another sign that it's complete BS is they describe the growth as "exponential" yet the trendline appears linear and the axis is not logarithmic.

I think the author is conflating "exponential" with "really fast".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article is wrong about t-mobile. Quoting directly from their site (shop->plans->mobile broadband) (and note how all of them are described as "overage free")

"No overages! (After 10 GB, data speeds are slowed until the next billing cycle)"

e.g. [http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/cell-phone-plans- detail.a...](http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/cell-phone-plans- detail.aspx?tp=tb1&rateplan=Even-More-webConnect-10GB-Overage-Free-Plan)

So there is not unlimited access at the highest network speeds, but the plan is nevertheless unlimited data -- as in you don't have to watch your consumption to avoid getting dinged with $$$/GB charges.

</comment><comment><USER6> I just found out about Virgin Mobile USA this month and can't believe that it's so relatively unknown, given how much better of a deal it is compared to the major carriers for most people.

$25/month, unlimited data/text, no contract. Downsides are that you only get 300 voice minutes (can upgrade to 1200 for $40/mo), that it only uses the Sprint network (no roaming), and that they have a limited phone selection (although the LG Optimus V that I got seems pretty awesome so far). For me, and I would guess many others, the downsides pale in comparison to the benefits.

I've been recommending it to all my friends, and a few of them have started making the switch. Although one girl was opposed because she thought no- contract phones were for poor people.

<comment><USER7> There's also My Simple Mobile which uses GSM (using T-Mobile's prepaid network). The prices aren't as good as Virgin, but they're still better than the big 4 and being GSM you can bring over any phone that works on T-Mobile 3G.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Streaming services to phones and tablets are becoming more popular. Wireless companies are trying to make this switch before the average user starts consuming large amounts of data so no one notices a difference at the time of the switch. Fast forward a year or 2 when streaming netflix or sports to your phone is commonplace and people will hit that 2gig mark without breaking a sweat.

</comment><comment><USER9> I love my virgin mobile 25$ for unlimited data/text and 300 minutes with no contract.

<comment><USER10> Same here! Though "unlimited" here is constrained by their no-tethering policy. And their phones are not very well suited for eating lots of data. (I know that I tend to be hesitant to use data on my phone because I know it's just kinda sluggish, from the UI to the network. Kinda reminds me of early keyboards which mechanically limited the keystroke rate in order to prevent errors.)

<plug> And, if you are using one of their Android phones, you absolutely need my app for keeping track of remaining minutes and due dates. :)

[https://market.android.com/details?id=com.jaygoel.virginminu...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.jaygoel.virginminuteschecker) </plug>

<comment><USER9> I personally haven't felt any sluggishness. But then I am always in the wifi zone and dont really use phone for videos and stuff. Also, you can download Quick Settings app to make your phone as wifi hotspot. Turns out VM has just hide the option and not actually disable it. I will take a look at your app. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love tiered data plans, even though I never thought I would. Here's why.

I've been on T-Mobile for years, which has always just had a single data plan - $30-$35 a month for unlimited data and text messages. I thought this was a good deal, but once they started offering tiered data plans I immediately switched. I now get unlimited txts / 2GB of data for only $20 - almost half the original cost. My phone does Wifi - and almost everywhere I go has wifi - so I constantly use my phone on wifi and rarely consume data using my plan. The tiered plan saves me money.

<comment><USER12> That only works when the tiered plans are cheaper than the unlimited plans. In Verizon's case, at least, they are not. If I wasn't being grandfathered in, I'd be going from Unlimited to 2GB and paying exactly the same price.

I'd be perfectly fine with tiered if the prices were reasonable and, as you suggest, cheaper if you use less data. That doesn't seem to be the case in reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This was inevitable. The only reason I haven't paid to end my AT&T contract early is because I am grandfathered in to the unlimited data plan.

</comment><comment><USER14> Isn't this a breach of contract with their current customers?

<comment><USER15> It only applies for new and rewnewing customers.

<comment><USER16> Further reports / speculation indicate that it may only be for new phone lines, allowing existing customers to upgrade their phone and keep their current plan.

[http://www.droid-life.com/2011/06/21/current-verizon- custome...](http://www.droid-life.com/2011/06/21/current-verizon-customers- wont-be-affected-by-tiered-data-only-new-customers-and-lines/)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Prelaunch sign up app – angular, node, mongodb, Mailgun - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/eddywashere/node-prelaunch

<comment><USER2> Wow, seriously cool. I like it. Simple and good looking. Plus, you added a Heroku deploy button to the GitHub project.

I was able to setup at [https://manuisfunny-test- prelaunch.herokuapp.com/](https://manuisfunny-test-prelaunch.herokuapp.com/)

It took like 10 minutes to get it up and running. Most of that was getting signed up with mailgun (I'm kinda slow, used the wrong api key, so the average developer might get it done in like 2-4 mins).

Thank you for this app.

<comment><USER2> Check out the GitHub repo README for the Heroku deploy link to try it out: [https://github.com/eddywashere/node- prelaunch](https://github.com/eddywashere/node-prelaunch)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call!</comment></comment></comment>


Lawyers are Good People: A rebuttal of "Things your lawyer won't tell you" - <AUTHOR> http://wopsr.net/archives/401 <comment><USER2> Lawyers are hated because as a profession, they are responsible for creating the problems that are then "solved". If many doctors actually ran around wounding people, _all_ doctors would get a bad rap, even the ones that were begrudgingly employed to heal.

Laws grow without bound as to their complexity, and one has no choice but to consult with a lawyer (for the better part of a grand) upon receiving any "legal" attention. That the average person is unable to understand the law and judge the merits of their case is _already_ a violation of basic due process (nevermind the extremely high penalties that are always settled or pleaded down).

From the point of view of someone forced to retain a lawyer, the situation would be much better if _both_ sides' lawyers didn't exist, even though their lawyer is actually helping them.

<comment><USER3> The lawyers are not typically more responsible for the laws that exist than any other citizen. We all equally voted for our representation and failed to keep them from adding complexity to the legal code.

<comment><USER2> Case law (which is most of what you're dealing with in a civil dispute) is made by judges, whom are lawyers. Initial nastygrams (often casting a wide net with many tenuous claims) are sent out by lawyers. Lawsuits are initiated by lawyers. Statutory laws are certainly written by lawyers, to be phrased in a "formal" (obfuscated) manner.

<comment><USER4> It sounds like you're implying that lawyers do all this on their own initiative. In fact, they do these things because their client orders it done (with the exception of case law, of course, but why is making case law bad?). Blaming lawyers for these things is like blaming the messenger for the message.

Your description of what lawyers do is too one-sided. Lawyers not only send out nastygrams, but they help those who are the targets of nastygrams. Lawyers not only initiate lawsuits (because their clients want to sue), but also defend people from lawsuits.

Lawyers fight for the rights of the oppressed, the poor, and the unjustly accused and unjustly imprisoned. Of course, that's not all lawyers do, and not all lawyers do these things. But it's unfair not to mention the good that lawyers do, and pretend that all they do is reprehensible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lot of lawyer hate here. I don't really get it; most of a lawyer's bad reputation comes from their client -- divorcing couples that can't divide their assets on their own, annoying IP-holders that send a C&D for using their name in a review, etc., etc. None of these are bad lawyers; they're bad people paying lawyers. The lawyer just makes sure that what's happening is legally sound, they're not the ones initiating the action.

If we didn't have a legal system, disputes would be even less tasteful.

<comment><USER6> Here is an example of a "bad" lawyer from my direct experience: at our IPO completion meeting one of our advisers points out to us founders that the way one document has been drafted by the company lawyers means that we would have an immediate _large_ tax liability. Money that we as individuals simply didn't have.

Now to remove this liability would have been a small change to _one_ sentence in one document that wasn't due for submission until the following day. Except the lawyer refused to do it saying that it would take too long (it really was a couple of words).

It ended up being debated for ages - we had no real means of getting the lawyers to do anything (they were the company lawyers, not our personal lawyers).

Eventually we founders had to threaten to pull out of the IPO, which we pretty much had to do as it would have bankrupted us, and only at that point did the lawyer relent and make the change.

For me that is typical of bad lawyers - getting bogged down in silly little fights about their own egos rather than the big picture of actually getting the deal done.

<comment><USER5> _For me that is typical of bad lawyers - getting bogged down in silly little fights about their own egos rather than the big picture of actually getting the deal done._

Totally different from other professions. Programmers would never act like this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it just me, or does this fellow not seem entirely believable?? I started writing some rebuttal points, but then gave up as it would take too long.

I realize, the concept and enforcement of law is crucial to our way of life. However, the vast majority of work that is conducted by lawyers (on a dollar basis) is redundant. It is fairly well documented (in Canada at least) that lawyers have lobbied heavily, and succeeded, in shutting out paralegals from large subsets of their work.

I've dealt with lawyers on a few occasions, and it is almost always the same...they charge ungodly rates, they generally (after all, these are just normal people) have a marginal understanding of their craft.

In this day and age, a GOOD software developer has to know WAY more than a lawyer (after all, we can't just ask our assistant to figure something out for us)...not to mention, in software it seems everything changes totally about every 5-7 years.

And the ramble about standard forms, that they put so much work into refining for each particular client....you are just outright lying, period. I've been through this before. If you, as lawyers, want respect from people, then if you a re-using a contract template, you should notify us and charge us accordingly. I know you are going to charge me based on "value", but you imply that all of you are not using variations of the same template.

Long story short, I think you are lying, and you likely agree, but nothing ever will come of it. The beauty of law is that. a huge percentage of politicians are former lawers, so most of what they propose gets though legislation.

So, generally, I don't fault you for the money you make, you do server a purpose in society, but you can be faulted for manipulating legislation to make certain services only executeable by full on lawyers, etc., etc. etc. You know, there's a reason almost everyone thinks you are crooks, it's not just some stereotype we are told as children.

In my opinion, even though you are crucial in some scenarios,in the aggregate, you are thiefs (according to the dictionary definition), and your lobbying has made the world a worse place.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, lawyers charge way too much and don't have to know anything! And so do programmers! Why, my 14-year-old nephew knows how to write code, and I bet none of you "rock star" geeks are any better at it than him, so why should you get to charge that big hourly consulting rate? I'll have _him_ build my website, you'll see!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's a link to the original submission of "Things your lawyer won't tell you" on HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1146976>

</comment><comment><USER4> Also see:

"The Lawyer Myth: A Defense of the American Legal Profession"

[http://www.amazon.com/Lawyer-Myth-Defense-American- Professio...](http://www.amazon.com/Lawyer-Myth-Defense-American- Profession/dp/0804011117/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Sorry, but this rebuttal is a perfect example of turd polishing. The experience described in '16 Things Your Lawyer Won't Tell You' is exactly the experience I had with lawyers. After working with lawyers in the music industry and software industry, one thing is certain, lawyers are only practicing, but expect a big bill.

<comment><USER4> Such a shame the music and software industries are far too poor to afford to pay those bills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Weak. I liked the other one better.</comment>


CES Chief Says That Obama Administration is Stifling Innovation - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailytech.com/CES+Chief+Says+That+Obama+Administration+is+Stifling+Innovation/article17348.htm

<comment><USER2> You know, I'll merrily be the first to call the administration on its ridiculous anti-trust actions, especially towards Google. I also oppose all the nativist whinging about letting tech workers in that the last few presidents and congresses have indulged. All that aside, let's cut to the chase about the _real_ issue:

"Mr. Shapiro complains that the Obama administration isn't doing enough to make sure that the U.S.'s trade policy allows our goods to compete with cheaper goods elsewhere."

The government's thrown billions at the auto industries and banking, and Shapiro resents that it hasn't thrown similar largess at the tech industry in the form of protectionist trade policy.

(He might just prefer Team Red to Team Blue, but for the sake of argument I'm assuming he has a real reason beyond partisan dickery.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Mr. Shapiro is completely right. Nothing good ever came of government programs. Take DARPA for example. We pour billions into that program, but what has DARPA ever done to spur technological innovation? Created a few infrastructure projects like "ARPANet" and "GPS". A few high performance computing projects, some robotics and automation projects, space projects, and intelligence systems. Aside from spawning dozens of billion dollar industries without which CES wouldn't even exist, they've done practically nothing at all!

Seriously though, Shapiro represents a number of industries who owe their entire existence to government programs and initiative. His audacity in claiming that government doesn't spur innovation and entrepreneurship is either astoundingly short-sighted or simply maliciously misleading. Given that Shapiro is a technology industry representative whining about interventions in the financial and automotive industries, I have to assume that he's simply abusing his exposure to wax political about his own personal opinions.

<comment><USER2> You're trying to make an argument against his throw-away rhetoric. He doesn't care about innovation - he's got trade policy on his mind.

It's not a great argument, either. If so many billions had been spent at DARPA without creating _anything_ , that would be truly astonishing. However, compare that with what's accomplished with rather less money in the private sector - which developed crucial things, like the transistor and integrated circuit, that made GPS and ARPANet possible in the first place.

Sure, if we frame the tossed-off line as an absolutist point, it's wrong - decades after their development, a relative few of these military technologies turned out to be really useful to the private sector and consumers. However, it's hard to argue that those huge resources (both monetary and human - a lot of great engineers and scientists were recruited into DARPA during the Cold War) would have accomplished any less outside of the military. Would the Internet have been an academic curiosity for as long as it was if it hadn't started out as a government project?

Mind you, Shapiro doesn't _care_. He's simply complaining about government money _he's not getting_.

<comment><USER3> "However, compare that with what's accomplished with rather less money in the private sector"

You got a little confirmation bias on your shirt there. It's easy to look around and find successful private-industry projects that had limited budgets. It's also easy to forget about massive corporate boondoggles that sank millions or billions of dollars and were then shuttered for lack of practical use, lack of profitability, or because of project mismanagement. Generally, nobody notices or cares because the taxpayer didn't lose out.

Though we can never show it, I doubt we would have an internet or GPS satellite system today if that same time and money were spent by private industry rather than DARPA. Private industry is notoriously short-sighted, and have absolutely no interest in the kinds of projects that DARPA (and government in general) can afford to focus on. No "responsible" corporation will drop tens of billions of dollars on R&D for projects like "an open spec global precision navigation system" or "a network where any node can communicate with any other node using standardized open protocols". There isn't any profit motive.

BTW, "a relative few of these military technologies turned out to be really useful" is a gigantic understatement. These technologies spawned billion dollar industries, enabled the creation of thousands of companies and millions of jobs, revolutionized our economy and our information infrastructure, and ignited a cultural revolution. That's more than just "really useful".

As I said, either Shapiro is either short-sighted or maliciously misleading. I'm personally going for maliciously misleading to further his agenda.

<comment><USER2> "massive corporate boondoggles that sank millions or billions of dollars"

In the _billions_? Those are _very_ rare in the private sector and quite common in government.

"Though we can never show it"

No, you really can't, especially in light of how many private online services existed before the Intranet was fully opened up.

"Private industry is notoriously short-sighted, and have absolutely no interest in the kinds of projects that DARPA (and government in general) can afford to focus on."

Oddly enough, they manage to accomplish quite a bit of long-term work _without_ throwing tens of billions at any given blue-sky project by one company.

"BTW, 'a relative few of these military technologies turned out to be really useful' is a gigantic understatement."

No, it is not. Most of DARPA's work has had no civilian application at all. That decades of work _after_ DARPA made the Internet useful and that GPS was opened to civilian use doesn't change that simple fact.

"As I said"

As I said, myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Taking an abusive monopolist to task != stifling innovation. Restoring competitiveness to CPU market will benefit all innovators.

Bailing out UAW (disguised as bailing out GM) != stifling innovation. Wasteful spending maybe, but by the same token it's also stifling a gazillion other things like children playground renovation and whatnot.

What's up with this guy?

<comment><USER3> "I have a podium, and I can't resist preaching from it."</comment></comment>


Introducing sphinx-js, a better way to document large JavaScript projects - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/07/introducing-sphinx-js-a-better-way-to-document-large-javascript-projects/ <comment><USER2> More documentation libraries the better.

I myself have used [https://esdoc.org/](https://esdoc.org/) and it was wonderful.</comment>


Where are the bones of Hans Holbein? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/jul/16/bones-hans-holbein-lockdown-arts-grisliest-mystery-plague-london-renaissance <comment><USER2> If looking for some isolation entertainment there was what I thought an excellent series "The Tudors" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tudors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tudors)) which is a fictionalised, but still fairly accurate in the big picture, retelling of Henry VIII's life, probably available on streaming services (Stan in Australia). I watched it in parallel with looking up most people who appeared on my phone to get more, and more accurate, details and found it all fascinating.

Hans Holbein plays a part as Henry's favourite painter and this is how I learnt about him.

<comment><USER3> I've been watching a BBC series that does historical re-enactments, and in particular the series on building a castle, and the one on monastic farming in the early days of the Tudor Kings: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01k3b96](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01k3b96)

The historian keeps mentioning in a very jovial way that at the beginning of the Tudor era The Church was the second biggest land owner in England. That doesn't sound jovial to me. Further, the burgeoning middle class was developing in part as sharecroppers on church land, half of England's exports were sheep wool, the Church is responsible for a large fraction of the social safety net, owned many of the mills (and enforced a monopoly with the sharecroppers) and was selling booze at festivals.

It paints for me a much more complex picture of Henry VIII's motivations for breaking with the Church. There's this sort of notion that it was a frivolous thing for him to do and now I'm examining that assertion a bit more skeptically, as spin. There were so many subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which it objectively represented a threat to sovereignty, one that was growing larger by the decade.

I'd nearly convinced myself to watch The Tudors and now I think I probably will.

<comment><USER4> His break with The Church is usually considered frivolous because the focus is often put on his desire to divorce.

The real goal was to have _legitimate_ male heirs. It was never much of a problem for kings to have affairs, even out of wedlock children. For example, Henry FitzRoy - a son from an affair.

However, as you mention, the church had a lot of wealth including land. Conveniently, once Henry was 'pope' of his own religion he could go about stripping the monasteries of their wealth.

Actually I don't know what was done with that money. Presumably it was part of the motivation, but who knows.

<comment><USER3> Someone, it seems, has spent quite a lot of time and effort on a wiki page:

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

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I started to try and skim that, then realised I was not going to do it justice to summarise it!

For example, discussion of 'spiritual income streams' and advowsons, and other obscure topics. I wonder how many people have knowledge in medieval ecclesiastical accounting...

<comment><USER3> I still haven't gotten through it all. There's enough stuff here to fill a college mid-term exam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> TLDR: Likely in a common burial pit for Plague victims as has been thought for a long time.

> I had not found the remains of Holbein, but it did feel like a message from > him.

This article is more about the author contemplating death and Holbein than about solving a mystery.

<comment><USER6> Reading the article from the top, at the title, down to the last paragraph, felt a lot like Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football. 18 paragraphs of meandering prose just to end with, "Welp, who knows?"

<comment><USER7> I mean... this piece is literary nonfiction, largely about the legacy of Holbein, and only incidentally about the actual mystery. It's a good piece! It's not a news article or a Wikipedia entry and not intended to distribute facts as effciently as possible.

If you don't like literary nonfiction that is your prerogative (and I actually have a lot of sympathy). But I feel like you're being uncharitable and holding this author to the wrong standard. It's like reviewing a sonnet by saying "the rhyming is distracting."

<comment><USER6> That wasn't it at all and I appreciate literary nonfiction just fine. The author promised something at the very beginning that they didn't deliver by the end. Had the article instead started with, "I spent some covid time learning about Hans Holbein and his death", that would have been fine and I probably still would have read it, had it been posted here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Speaking of Holbein and bones, that anamorphic skull in his famous painting "The Ambassadors" has always made me feel simultaneously puzzled, annoyed, curious and amazed.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ambassadors_(Holbein)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ambassadors_\(Holbein\))

</comment><comment><USER9> > maybe Holbein let himself be thrown in a common grave

No one gets to choose where they are buried. You may put your desires in a will or even purchase a grave site, but the choice is ultimately not yours.</comment>


The Simple Technology That Accidentally Ruined Baseball - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/09/baseball-is-boring-and-this-camera/379443/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> A well played 1-0 baseball game that takes 2 hours to complete is an absolute joy to watch. A 1-0 game that lasts 3:30, not so much.

It's not the score or HRs or or the hits, it is the length of the game that is ruining baseball. Get the games back to 2 - 2.5 hours and it will be fine.

<comment><USER3> A classic take on the situation can be found at [http://www.npr.org/2011/03/30/134960461/its-time-for- basebal...](http://www.npr.org/2011/03/30/134960461/its-time-for-baseball-to- stop-wasting-fans-time)

<comment><USER4> From a related article:

 _" According to MLB.com, the average time for a nine inning game in the 1970s was around two hours and 30 minutes."_

 _" In 2010, games lasted on average about two hours and 55 minutes, according to Baseball Prospectus. The average game has increased steadily in length every season since, and contests in 2014 have averaged about 3:08."_

[http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/07/baseball-games-length- pitche...](http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/07/baseball-games-length-pitchers- pace-mlb-rules)

And lots more delays here:

[http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1271178-major-league- base...](http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1271178-major-league-baseball-why- games-need-to-be-shortened-and-how-it-can-be-done)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Both home runs-per-game and runs-per-game are down about 20 percent from > their early-2000s highs. Strikeouts are up about a fifth.

There's an english style guideline that says if you need to use a concept more than once, you should use a different word every time, lest you seem like the sort of clod who only knows one word. But doing it with numbers feels like a purposeful attempt to mislead the reader.

<comment><USER6> Not sure I understand what you're saying -- is it that runs-per-game and homeruns-per-game are the same thing? Because they're not.

<comment><USER7> No, it's (I think) that 20 percent and a fifth are the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting - in cricket there is a similar problem - the umpire has to judge if the ball was going to hit the wicket (similar problem to going 'over the plate'). They brought in a computer review system in and it also increased how often you were out LBW (similar to 'struck out').

"[ the review system ] has increased the bowler's potential target area by a remarkable 70 per cent" [1]

However, it has improved things because it forced the player to do something rather than block the ball and hope they wouldn't be given out. So, technology helped in this case.

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/engla...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/9166307/Decision- Review-System-made-wicket-70-per-cent-bigger.html)

<comment><USER9> Interesting article. DRS has revamped the motto "When in doubt not out" considerably. I also think it has helped reverse swing bowlers (Steyn, Harris) more than pure swing bowlers (Anderson) through the length of the innings. Test cricket I do think has resulted more because of drs, but also because teams have become more aggressive (a change made by the great aussie team under steve waugh).

<comment><USER10> It started under Mark Taylor

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Assuming that this is all true, and that MLB wants to do something about it, isn't there a simple solution? Simply raise the actual strike zone to put it in line with where umpires used to judge it.

</comment><comment><USER12> This article reinforces my theory that baseball is just a beard for people who love statistics, but don't want the stigma of being called a math nerd.

It's the only explanation for how a sport this dull could survive outside the British Empire.

<comment><USER13> You seem willing to assume that there are millions of more math nerds in the U.S. than I am.

<comment><USER14> Given the way that many of my friends who are in to sports talk, I'm inclined to say it's statistics for the math phobic and fantasy sports is DnD for the geek phobic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's not JUST about the strike zone being enforced so heavily. The number of pitchers a batter sees per game is higher than it has ever been. Many teams are opting for a shorter bench and deeper bullpen. Toronto this year carried an 8-man bullpen for most of the season.

</comment><comment><USER16> The whole point of sports is not about perfectly enforcing the rules. I remember an article a while back on here about speed walking, and how a staggering majority of speed walkers actually violate the main rule of speed walking (you can't have both feet off the ground), and while that rule could easily be enforced with cameras it isn't because it would just ruin the sport.

It seems to me like the easiest thing to do would be change the rules, bringing the strike zone back to what it was. It'll most likely cause outrage, but ironically you'd be going back to the way things were before. It all comes back to the fact that the reason for sports is not to perfectly follow some set of bizarre rules, its just to be entertaining.

<comment><USER17> > It all comes back to the fact that the reason for sports is not to perfectly > follow some set of bizarre rules, its just to be entertaining.

The participants or the audience?

I'm trying hard to imagine a world where the rules of chess are changed to turn it into a more spectator friendly sport.

<comment><USER18> I imagine time limits on moves are partly because of spectators.

<comment><USER17> I think those are mostly to make sure a game will actually progress rather than that one party can force a losing game to a standstill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think they should follow through on reducing to 7 innings per game (with all the rules about extra innings still applicable).

Sure, it would more-or-less destroy relief pitching as a profession, but relief pitchers are basically the placekickers of MLB anyway (people know the really good ones, the rest no one cares unless they mess up royally).

It would shorten the game enough to be enjoyable, and people would get to watch their favorite pitchers play entire games, similar to football and basketball (with obvious exceptions for one-sided games).

<comment><USER20> I expect relief pitching would quickly re-enter the picture. Starting pitchers pace themselves to go 7-8 innings (100 pitches is the unwritten rule, as much as I hate it). They might be able to deliver a higher quality start if they are targeting 80 pitches (or 5-6 innings) instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This sort of thing is a fundamental problem of professional sports, and one of the major reasons why I'm sort of agnostic about the very idea of pro sports in general.

Sports are supposed to be a game, they are supposed to be non-serious, but also competitive. Therein lies the fundamental conflict at the heart of all sports, especially at a professional level. It can quickly become difficult to find the right balance between utter seriousness and playfulness when it comes to sports. This gets even worse when millions of fans and billions of dollars play a role. They tip the scale from the playful side to the serious/business side. Sport stops being play and becomes more and more a job. A thing to be executed to the utmost at all cost.

That's why you get massive steroid and other drug use, which has been a problem in all sports for perhaps half a century, if not longer, though not widely known. That's where you get fans whose emotional well-being are tied to whether their favorite team has won or lost recently (domestic violence is heavily affected by sports outcomes, for example). Then you have sports riots, and so on. It's quite a mess all around, but it's not exactly an easy problem to fix.

<comment><USER18> I went and watched a sports riot once. The majority of the people around were like me, there to watch.

It was a small minority that were setting police cars on fire.

I don't think the sports allegiance caused the riots, they just happened to be the thing that the riot coalesced around. There was certainly a feeling in the air that there was going to be some riots in that city (friends and I drove in from ~1 hour away), and I think many of the actors went there to take advantage of the (so to speak) opportunity, not because they were upset about the loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sounds like they need to change the rules, not the cameras. If the strike zone is too big for entertaining play, shrink it.

</comment><comment><USER23> The solution is to lower the pitcher's mound... this is a variable that has been tweaked a number of times in baseball already! It has been shown that a higher pitcher's mound favors the pitcher. A lower mound would shift the balance a bit to the batter, leading to more hits, and thus a more exciting game.

</comment><comment><USER24> If you enjoyed this article and find the unintended side-effects of new technology fascinating, I would encourage you to read anything by the author Neil Postman -- particularly his works _Amusing Ourselves to Death_ and _Technopoly_.

</comment><comment><USER25> Equating runs scored with game interest is mistaken.

<comment><USER26> Agreed. This article does a lot of comparing to 2006, in which _a lot_ of technology has happened — not just on the field but off. From what I've seen, many people "watching" games these days aren't doing just that, they're multitasking with three or four other things: checking feeds, timelines, stats, other game scores, fantasy updates, etc.

To me, in-game changes seem to be only a minor contributor. More so, I'd like to hear more about how people are so easily distracted these days. Notifications for this and that, work emails checked all night, game on in the background while surfing reddit or ESPN or whatever. It's becoming extremely easy to forget you're watching baseball at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'd rather watch golf. OK, that was a bit over the top, but seriously, I don't have all that passion in the sport in order to wait for 30 minutes or so for someone to bat the ball... and see it's an out.

</comment><comment><USER28> Why not just shrink the strike zone a little?

<comment><USER20> It's possible, but it's also difficult. The strike zone is not a static box; it's relative to the batter. Thus, the umpire needs to be able to compare the location of the pitch to the batter himself, and so the zone should be defined relative to points on the batter.

Currently, the points of reference on the batter are the knees for the bottom and the team letters on the jersey for the top (though technically it's the midpoint between belt and shoulders). These are convenient reference points. Shrinking the strikezone a bit would yield something like "two inches above the knees to 1/3rd the distance from the belt to the shoulder", which would require more explicit rather than subconscious analysis from the ump.

<comment><USER14> Why not just fully use computers, then?

If the problem is that an incomplete switch to technology left us in a chimeric state where we have the worst of both worlds, why not remove one of the two? If we remove the cameras, old umpire error will move the box up; if we remove the umpires from pitch calling, the new computers will have no trouble doing a bunch of math and moving the box up.

This seems more like an incomplete implementation of an idea, rather than a fundamental flaw.

<comment><USER20> > Why not just fully use computers, then?

Because that will kill interest in watching the game much more thoroughly than a more accurate strike zone. Viewers like the subtle things, like that moment's pause that leaves viewers on the edge of their seat before the ump rings the batter up on a called third strike.

Plus, imperfection causes water cooler buzz much more than perfection (people LOVE complaining about missed calls).</comment></comment></comment></comment>