The NYT's blogs are set to be paywalled - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/02/19/the-nyts-blogs-are-set-to-be-paywalled/ <comment><USER2> Conversely, the NYT's blogs are going to end up being "reader-walled" and "traffic-walled" too.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, are people like Krugman going to accept more than half their audience disappearing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Let's just call it a grand experiment and see how it goes.

</comment><comment><USER5> The relative value of blog content vs. actual news items may be quite low in the majority of posts, looking across the general quality / salience of NYT blog posts. Though some blogs like DealBook and Economix probably have high readership, I wonder if people will really be willing to pay for opinionated tidbits.

<comment><USER6> > _I wonder if people will really be willing to pay for opinionated tidbits_

I guess it's supply and demand: people will be willing to pay of opinionated writing on the net when there is a shortage of free opinionated writing on the net. I.e. never :-)

<comment><USER7> They've tried it before.

"Times Select" was a paid feature for access to its opinion columnists (regular news was free), but it lasted just two years: [http://paidcontent.org/article/419-new-york-times-to- close-t...](http://paidcontent.org/article/419-new-york-times-to-close- timesselect-effective-wednesday/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh no! If only there were other blogs on the internet.

I suppose I'll just have to get a subscription then.</comment>


Ruby terminal apps toolkit - <AUTHOR> http://piotrmurach.github.io/tty/ <comment><USER2> Ruby is a fantastic language for writing command line tools. String interpolation and regex are great on it, easy to use OO principles as well as functional principals, etc. Definitely going to be writing wrappers over some of my favorite unix commands with this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly my view. I'm planning to give a talk about Ruby scripting this year and would welcome any references to the tools that people built with tty. Please get in touch once you have anything to show.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A great toolkit -- there's a bunch of goodies here, but tty-table is amazing, from the sensible API to the configurable ASCII to Unicode renderer. It compares favorably with Hirb, the only other library I know of that draws console tables and supports Unicode box drawing characters.

<comment><AUTHOR> Regarding tty-table, I have number of things planned including different renderer types to account for more esoteric formats and also very simple formats like tsv(table separate values) etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The progress bar gem looks pretty nice. I've been using the similar [https://github.com/toy/progress](https://github.com/toy/progress) for a long time and it's super useful.

One thing I prefer about progress is that the default config includes an ETA, which is generally the thing I care most about. It's interface is also a little nicer. It's really nice to have an estimate on when a script might complete, so I know if I have to optimize it or if I can just leave it running for a while.

<comment><USER5> Shameless plug: I wrote a progress bar gem awhile back for that exact use- case: I wanted it to be as simple as possible to use, and show me an ETA for completion. Maybe you'll find this one useful, too.

[https://github.com/paul/progress_bar](https://github.com/paul/progress_bar)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how easy it is to port all those libraries to mruby's mrbgems, so we can easily pack the Ruby-based CLI program as a single binary to get Go-like benefits.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, building Golang based command line tools is a big bag of pros and cons. There are _so_ many libraries out there for Ruby and Python but having to manage packaging applications written in those languages can be kind of annoying.

<comment><USER8> Python and Ruby really shine for scripting when the OS already has the packages installed. Otherwise not so much and a mostly self contained binary like Go produces would be better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What does everyone suggest for command-line options parsing? This seems to be missing from the gemset and I've never found any of the existing solutions to be very intuitive.

<comment><USER10> hand-roll it. a 3-minute programming task doesn't warrant pulling in a graph of dependencies a la leftpad.

<comment><USER11> Never do this. There are a basket of edge-cases and weirdness that you'll miss in your three-minute re-implementation that aren't worth that pain you'll have using or debugging later on.

<comment><USER12> There's a better alternative: don't have complex usage in the first place. You can get all the functionality you want by having multiple executables calling a common library.

Consider netcat. You read the man page, and try to do something following its advice. Often enough, it just doesn't work. Because it's trying to cover a range of unrelated usages through a single entrypoint.

It's easy to set up multiple exes cleanly. Have a non-executable module that contains the functions that your application requires (e.g. call it lib.rb). For each distinct usage, create a separate executable script that imports lib.rb, extracts a, b and c from the for just that usage and then call lib.usage(a, b, c).

Users will find this easy to discover. You will find it easy to maintain, even compared to dedicated parsing DSLs.

We don't special-case functions to do multiple things based on complex argument cases. We just create well-defined functions. We should think of executables in the same terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there something similar but for Python?

<comment><USER14> I don't think anything is missing, but you don't get it all in one package.

click ( [http://click.pocoo.org/6/](http://click.pocoo.org/6/) ) has a lot of this stuff in one package, but not everything, eg. composable command lines, progress bars, spinners, prompts, bash completion, colors, paging, launching common applications ($EDITOR) 'n stuff like that.

pyinvoke has a somewhat different focus, but also quite some stuff similar to this.

clint ( [https://github.com/kennethreitz/clint](https://github.com/kennethreitz/clint) ) is another bag of tools, with things like awesome tables, colors, progress bars, ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks modular, well-built and well documented. I'll definitely check it out next I need a terminal app or script. Thanks.

<comment><USER16> What kind of terminal apps do you write? I havent had the need for one yet and am wondering what this tool is used for.

<comment><USER17> I have a bunch of scientific data pipelines and have found rake to be an excellent tool for these. Same for a bunch of "housekeeping" scripts.

Rake is seriously underrated I believe. It allows for dependencies and rules, figures out which steps are up-to-date and skips those, allows easy parallelisation etc. Much like make, but with the familiar and sane (ye beautiful) syntax of ruby and its extensive ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've used this toolkit. It's pretty well done. The tabular ASCII capabilities tty-table are pretty neat.

</comment><comment><USER19> Looks promising -- definitely a lot of work went into it. The closest other gem I know of is Ruby ANSI ([http://rubyworks.github.io/ansi/#](http://rubyworks.github.io/ansi/#))

</comment><comment><USER20> Not sure if it's welche here, but I wrote a Seminar lib for PHP:

[https://github.com/grothkopp/PHPCliWrapper](https://github.com/grothkopp/PHPCliWrapper)

<comment> Anthony-G "welche?" – the German word doesn't make sense in this context so I presume it's another autocorrect typo (perhaps "welcome")? If so, I upvoted your post to show that it is welcome (and useful).

<comment><USER20> thank you, you're right about "welche"->"welcome

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Ruby apps are by far the most time consuming to configure and install. Nothing is simple. Nothing just works.

The whole idea of exposing end users to your apps's depencies and compilation is a broken user hostile model. The potential rabbit hole of versions incompatibilities and mismatches is a time sink that cannot be justified.

Go is by far the simplest hassle free deploy followed by PHP and Python. For a unix command line tool that seeks a userbase beyond Ruby users Go or Python would be the most user friendly choice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Many systems come preinstalled with Ruby. Bundler is a very elegant and simple solution - I don't think it is hostile. Quite often the tools that we build are written by developers for developers or system administrators. For example Puppet or Chef. In my experience, these are people how don't mind running couple commands to get started. If anything I have heard people say really positive things on how easy and pain free installation is. Of course, if you want to write portable code that works on any system then Go is a very wise solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ok neat, but Ruby needs a serious and modern GUI toolkit!</comment>


Show HN: Helpninja Is Live - <AUTHOR> https://helpninja.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Helpninja is a simple and free helpdesk system. We are a firm believer in having the whole team to help customers. With our unlimited agent pricing, you can have your whole team to work on your customer concern without worrying about the cost. We believe it increases the team morale and also the relationship between your team, product or service and your customers.</comment>


MSL: A New Programming Language for Text Editing and Fact Verification [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://mimix.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/MSL-Specifications-2020.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> OP here. MSL is a new language for representing research and text editing as programming language expressions. Our company's goal is to replace the word processor with an improved set of tools based on this language.

The history of MSL can be traced from the goals of computer science pioneers going back to the 1940's. These additional documents further explain the development process and goals of the MSL language:

Mimix Whitepaper.[0] Explains the historical precedents for moving beyond word processing.

Getting to Xanadu.[1] Explains why Nelson's Xanadu did not achieve commercial success.

Everything Old Isn't New Again (Yet).[2] Shows previous attempts at moving beyond word processing.

Recipes for Research.[3] Explains how a new language could record text editing and fact changes over time.

Nebula: Simple and Flexible Apps with (msl) Data. [4] Shows how (msl) applications can be deployed.

I welcome your questions, ideas, and suggestions.

\-- D

[0] [https://mimix.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/On- Mimix-v1.3.pd...](https://mimix.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/On- Mimix-v1.3.pdf)

[1] [https://mimix.io/getting-to-xanadu/](https://mimix.io/getting-to-xanadu/)

[2] [https://mimix.io/retro/](https://mimix.io/retro/)

[3] [https://mimix.io/recipes/](https://mimix.io/recipes/)

[4] [https://mimix.io/nebula/](https://mimix.io/nebula/)

<comment><USER2> I read the first few pages of the language spec and skimmed the whitepaper and I cannot find any compelling use case for the system. Even worst, some ideas presented are actively anti-features. For instance the inclusion of all materials that was read: in theory it looks cool, in practice this is a copyright nightmare. Again, the ability the reply every edit is creepy as hell. As an academic (whose job is thus churning papers), hiding how the sausage was made is a nice property of a PDF. Also, important thing is idea laid out in papers, not the exact stream of text that express them.

<comment><USER3> > Again, the ability the reply every edit is creepy as hell. As an academic > (whose job is thus churning papers), hiding how the sausage was made is a > nice property of a PDF.

As somebody familiar with version control and open source this is common practice.

Perhaps the chain of custody of document edits scares people who do not value transparency, but open source demands that level of transparency and criticism.

<comment><USER4> Programming and writing documents are different activities. One reason you don't want to see everything you've ever written is because it is wrong, or maybe you changed your views in the process of writing, or no longer important to the point you're making. I don't see how transparency with respect to edits you've made to a document are relevant if you've explicitly decided that you don't agree with the part that was edited.

<comment><USER5> > One reason you don't want to see everything you've ever written is because > it is wrong, or maybe you changed your views in the process of writing, or > no longer important to the point you're making.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the main point, but all of these things happen with code too. I've had to counsel people before who were scared to commit code until it was perfect, and I've had to try and push into their head that it's not bad to have Git commits that they aren't proud of. Part of breaking them of that habit was teaching them to be OK with allowing people to see their bad code and bad ideas, but another part of it just came down to teaching them how `rebase` works.

On the text side of things, I already publicly commit any edits I make to blog posts, documentation, and any websites I make after publishing -- even if they're embarassing. Occasionally I'll also publish rough drafts if they're not sensitive content. Part of that is getting over the fact that people might see bad writing. If I was worried about people seeing my bad ideas, I wouldn't publish anything in the first place. 10 years from now, I hope that I'll have matured enough that I can look back at my blog and be embarrassed about some of my writing. If I don't have anything to be embarrassed about, I probably haven't grown much as a person.

But of course, for particularly sensitive or complicated topics I generally don't push rough drafts. And that's where rebasing comes in. Version/edit tracking isn't just about public transparency. Even with sensitive topics, I still put rough drafts of blog posts in local branches and commit edits while I'm building them. My workflow with private and public content is exactly the same. It's just that when I eventually push to a public repository, I first squash the branch down into a single commit.

Transparency with edits is relevant to me because edit history is a personal/org-wide organizational tool. Those edits don't need to be pushed to the public, sometimes they don't even need to leave my computer, but sometimes _I_ like to look over my writing and see how a site/post/article has evolved.

History isn't necessarily static. It's very common in version control to rewrite history when needed, and to push different parts of history to different remotes where people have different levels of access.

<comment><USER6> > I've had to counsel people before who were scared to commit code until it > was perfect

This is a better problem to have than coworkers who push code that literally doesn't run, e.g. has syntax errors. /rant

<comment><USER7> That's a question for PR review, not what intermediate states they can push to their own branches

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A more accurate title would be 'MSL: A Lisp-like stream-based data format for history of text based on a hierarchical key-value store'.

The idea behind the format is that analysis can be done on it to uncover useful insights about the text.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but that's true of XML as well. There's got to be a point to the new thing, right?

<comment><USER8> The MSL specification is more specific on how the knowledge-containing text should be stored. It provides the 'schema' and the semantics, based on Lisp syntax. It looks like MSL is intended to be the foundation for an API that Mimix plans on building.

<comment><USER9> Is that so? After all, XML has Schema as well, and with XML you can have task- appropriate schemas.

Look, it's all S-expressions, and Lisp is certainly better than XSLT/XPath, so, sure. But there's a whole ecosystem around XML for this sort of usage that there isn't for Lisp. OTOH, Lisp is a general purpose language that lets you build DSLs as needed, so there's that advantage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here, again. Thanks to everyone who read and commented! To answer a couple of questions:

Mimix doesn't force to you reveal everything included in your work ("how the sausage was made"); it's simply there if you want to. This feature is mostly for _you,_ the author, to get to your "ah-ha" moments as Vannevar Bush called them. Right now, we don't have software that does a good job of connecting facts inside documents.

MSL is a language for building tools which we hope can eventually replace the word processor. We are at an early stage with that software which will be open sourced once it's ready.

The hybrid database on which MSL relies could be viewed as the ultimate version control system because it allows rewinding any single variable (a semantic assignment statement) to any value it had in its history.

Mimix certainly draws from the semantic web, but that's not our secret sauce. Today, Google and Stanford already have good libraries for figuring out what is a noun, what is a verb, etc. Where MSL shines is, as @MiniMax42 pointed out, in marking up that text so that it can later be analyzed or transformed in ways that are difficult with word processing documents.

While we hope to see this technology become ubiquitous, the best early use case is high-value documents like medical, scientific, legal and financial papers, as @jpalomaki said.

Thanks again! \-- D

</comment><comment><USER10> Minix seems to be a system that incorporates word processing, AI-based (machine learning?) fact checking and bibliography management. Is MSL a language for interacting with that system or something more?

Edit: *Mimix

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting work.

How is MSL related to the concept of version control/revision control? I didn't see any reference to (centralized or decentralized) VCS, but that seems highly relevant to MSL.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is an exciting idea. I would hope that we can ultimately dispense with annotation and have the computer simply _read_ the sentence and comment, or implement, or what have you.</comment>


Facebook Versus Google Circa 2004 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/01/06/facebook-versus-google-circa-2004/

<comment><USER2> This is so dumb it's almost offensive. All companies don't peak in their performance at the same time. Look at one seven year old company and another. If their numbers are the same at that moment, what odds would you place on their numbers still being the same (+-10%) ten years later? Me, I don't put much money on that at all.

<comment><USER3> Of course you can't compare them directly but I thought it was interesting to see the numbers behind Google's valuation.

Based on these numbers, if you think Facebook is overvalued today you sort of have to make the same conclusion about Google in 2004.

In fact, Facebook has even higher profit than Google did when it was valued the same.

<comment><USER4> In 2003, total internet advertising revenue was 1/3 of 2009's. Also adjust for inflation and look at the picture again.

<comment><USER3> Well, we're still at the very early stages of social media on the web. As someone else points out in another comment: owning the complete social graph may very well be the most valuable asset ever. I think the potential market for Facebook can grow much more than just 3 times over the next 7 years.

Inflation has been low the last decade, but sure, that affects the numbers.

<comment><USER5> Social media is a nonexistant. It's something somebody at Facebook (or Twitter) dreamed up to hype and justify existence.

From henceforth I declare this movemenet DuncanIdahia - you may not have heard of us - but we're growing tremendously (we grew infinitely from 5 minutes ago to now).

Whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the WSJ staffers who writes for that blog and a lot of their tech pieces, Jessica Vascellaro, dates Sam Lessin. He was in Mark's frat and just sold his company to Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER7> Facebook has stated repeatedly that it is focussing on growth, not on monetisation. If they are able to revolutionize banner ads by using the social graph outside of their own territory they might be able to earn even more than google does (imagine the increase of CPM for news, video etc. if everyone is shown ads accordings to their interests). Besides the Internet is still growing fast with the regard to the number of users (especially internationally) and the time of usage (think of smartphones and tablets).

Of course it is possible that they mess it up but the success of Google in 2004 was also far from certain.

With a pe only about 30% - 40% above that of Amazon I don't think that the valuation is that absurd.

</comment><comment><USER4> They should have put a graph of internet users and total on-line ad revenue comparing 2003 and 2010.

</comment><comment><USER8> Facebook growth is about to end though. Most of the people who could've joined facebook, have done so.

<comment><USER9> Evidence to support this claim? Facebook has around 600 million active users today, giving them several billion more prospects. Their core product, the graph of human relationships, might very well be the single most valuable business product _ever_.

<comment><USER10> Several billion more? There are an estimated 2 billion internet users, and of those not using Facebook, a significant proportion of those are in countries that ban their population from accessing it.

Facebook might have plenty of scope for revenue generation, but their actual number of pageviews and users can't grow much more without them actually _being_ the internet for the average person</comment></comment></comment>


Incompetence as a Signalling Device - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee256 <comment><USER2> _"An unexpected result of my research on the mafia," he writes, "was to find out that mafiosi are quite incompetent at doing anything" other than shaking down legitimate businesses and enforcing trade agreements among smaller-scale hoodlums. "Mafiosi are good at intimidation and stick to it.... They let the professionals and the entrepreneurs take care of the actual business operations."

Rather than getting involved in running a restaurant or dealing drugs, they joke about their cluelessness in such matters and simply collect payment for "protection."_

I came to the US as an immigrant and applied for asylum. At one of my INS interviews I was recounting a story of government corruption and organized crime when the INS agent took issue with my story.

"That's not how the mafia operates!" He said, "They don't just collect fees, they take over the business! The protection racket is how it starts but it quickly progresses to where they wrestle control from the owner and then they own the business. That's how the mafia always operates!"

This left me quite stunned and speechless, I did not know how to respond, do I tell him that The Soprano's is not a documentary. Do I try to reason with extremely impatient person.

Low story short, I won in the green-card lottery, pure luck.

<comment><USER3> Please ignore the ignorance of American security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies. I was arrested and held captive for several days, on several occasions, for no reason at all, other than carrying tens of Arabic books, on various subjects, in my car. I couldn't convince the post-911 officer that Arabic was a legitimate language, beautiful on its own, with some passionate scholars. I was translating a mathematics text at the time and had no working scientific _vocabulary_ of the field, so I had to buy every text on physics, engineering, chemistry, econometrics and civil engineering I could find. It takes one months to acquire the technical language for a discipline, the Right Thing for a scientific translator is to immerse himself in the field and find all the idioms, metaphors and the cultural signals of the language community. It was impossible for me to convince him that I really was using the texts on Stereochemistry for their topological vocabulary, and not for the chemistry; I told him the real danger was from someone with _materials_ , not theories, and he jumped on me for _knowing_ who the risk was!

What icing on the cake was when he found out I was doing this for free, HAHAHA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a fascinating article. Since it's a book review, the author isn't really taking any responsibility for the information presented. I find myself wondering how much of this is actually true.

<comment><USER5> Seconded. although it examines criminology, there are interesting isomorphisms with law, management and politics which cynics might regard as simply more mannered versions of the protection racket. Reminds me of this economist article on how the political class draws upon distinctly different pools of professional talent in different cultures: [http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cf...](http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13496638)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now I get why academics is so frowned upon in school.

<comment><USER7> Find other people in school who enjoy learning, and you need not be frowned upon. In my experience, anyway.</comment></comment>


NHTSA Has No Software Engineers or EEs To Analyze Toyotas  - <AUTHOR> http://www.thecarconnection.com/marty-blog/1042836_nhtsa-has-no-software-engineers-or-ees-to-analyze-toyotas <comment><USER2> Is it their job to be debugging car company code? I would think that their job would be to analyze the evidence about the putative danger of a vehicle and make a decision; pass that on to the car company, and evaluate the later proof of a fix (presumably by way of empirical evidence, e.g., crash test results).

I wonder if they have any mechanical engineers.</comment>


Wing Launches America's First Commercial Drone Delivery Service to Homes - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/wing-aviation/wing-launches-americas-first-commercial-drone-delivery-service-to-homes-in-christiansburg-f8e8c3b2bb47 <comment><AUTHOR> The dropline must help with the noise, but it would be helpful to know how much noise these things make.</comment>


Privacy depends on who you are and where you live - <AUTHOR> https://www.iafrikan.com/2019/08/29/whats-private-depends-on-who-you-are-and-where-you-live/ <comment><USER2> If you want to listen to this article in audio, here's a link: [https://www.listle.io/#/article/3745990139](https://www.listle.io/#/article/3745990139)</comment>


Extracting My Data from the Microsoft Band - <AUTHOR> http://jeffhuang.com/extracting_my_data_from_the_microsoft_band.html <comment><USER2> That's a bit disappointing. I was hoping to get one of these bands, but to hear them say that all data is stored on Microsoft's cloud is a bit disconcerting.

I wanted to track my heart rate while I run. I didn't want to let a large company have direct access to my health information.

<comment><USER3> Is there any band that doesn't upload everything to some cloud? It's super crappy that everything I looked at had some stupid cloud feature.

<comment> at-fates-hands I've always used a polar heart rate monitor when I play hockey to help me find my VO2 max and my target heart rate range. They're one of the few really accurate heart rate monitors out there. These also have a myriad of other functions.

[http://www.polar.com/us- en/products/get_active/fitness_cross...](http://www.polar.com/us- en/products/get_active/fitness_crosstraining/loop)

You can find a Polar Loop bracelet with the H7 heart rate monitor strap for around $150.00, which is a lot less than the Microsoft Band:

[http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=polar+h7&_from=R40&_osa...](http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=polar+h7&_from=R40&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.XPolar+Loop+%2B+Polar+H7+heart+rate+monitor&_nkw=Polar+Loop+%2B+Polar+H7+heart+rate+monitor&_sacat=0)

I apologize in advance for the janky links.

<comment><USER4> I don't have experience with any, but after some searching, it appears the various Mio[1] bands might be a good bet? Appears to be more open that the polar products, unless I'm missing something. I also found:

[https://github.com/mlt/schwinn810](https://github.com/mlt/schwinn810)

Does anyone have any experience with either?

[1] [http://www.mioglobal.com/en-uk/compare-mio-heart-rate- monito...](http://www.mioglobal.com/en-uk/compare-mio-heart-rate-monitors.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems to use a standard odata format over ssl with oauth token security. I wonder if it's possible to simply attach an Excel worksheet to the data feed ([https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Connect-to-an- OData...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Connect-to-an-OData- feed-4441a94d-9392-488a-a6a9-739b6d2ad500))

</comment><comment><USER6> _" Clearly, to get sleep events, the app is constructing a REST call."_

This is gold :) Nice write-up, Jeff.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd notice those URL parameters anywhere.

There is a very strong chance that it fully conforms to the OData spec: [http://www.odata.org/documentation/odata-version-3-0/url- con...](http://www.odata.org/documentation/odata-version-3-0/url-conventions/) \- although I'm not sure which version (most recent MSFT stuff has been 3.0).

So what you could do is hit a URL such as:

        https://prodphseus.dns-cargo.com//v1/Events?$filter=AverageHeartRate gt 90

To get the events where you pushed yourself above 90.

<comment><USER8> The source code he posted dealt with the ODataRequest class, so that's not a stretch :)

Also, the most recent OData version is 4.0: [http://www.odata.org/documentation/odata- version-4-0/](http://www.odata.org/documentation/odata-version-4-0/)

Disclaimer: MS employee, not on OData team however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Where's the money here? It's not a subscription based service, so what financial sense does it make to dump this data straight to a server?

I can't imagine there's complex data processing being done that a smartphone can't handle, so I assume the data is being sent back because it's somehow useful or valuable to Microsoft.. but how?

<comment><USER10> The network effect. Fitbit has a huge advantage right now because the user base is so large. A lot of people use its social features to compete with their friends, office mates, etc. This encourages more people to buy the hardware to participate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As he already decompiled the app, wouldn't a more promising route be to figure out the Bluetooth communication between the app and the band? Using this knowledge, you could eventually write your own (private) app and bypass Microsofts's servers completely. (Provided they don't use some crazy authentification and/or encryption schemes in the Bluetooth protocol.)

</comment><comment><USER12> I started poking around w/ mitmproxy the other day as well, since I had started to get a little tired of waiting (Microsoft has promised an open API/SDK of some sort, but there haven't been any updates to any of the software since release) w/ similar results. (I did this against the iOS app).

So I'll just post a couple notes:

* auth appears to be using OAuth WRAP (deprecated as a spec, but Microsoft appears to use it for Live logins), so I'm sure could be pretty easily extracted for an API library

* As mentioned the API mostly talks to an endpoint on and the returns are gzipped JSON _except_ for a PUT to prodwus0sts.blob.core.windows.net for the binary log of your actual data (there's a subsequent PUT that then sends the UploadId and some other metadata to the API server)

People have mentioned wanting to avoid sending your data to the cloud completely, and that should be completely possible. The easy way atm is that you could just mitm the endpoints and sync as normal w/ the app.

However, there are at least a couple of people that have successfully reverse- engineered the BTLE protocol, although I haven't seen anything fully published yet. This appears to mostly/primarly be based on digging through the Windows client's DLL.

Pic of source w/ some of the BT protocol: [https://twitter.com/JustinAngel/status/527955001436418048](https://twitter.com/JustinAngel/status/527955001436418048)

Some BT functions: [https://twitter.com/JustinAngel/status/528383467742957571](https://twitter.com/JustinAngel/status/528383467742957571)

Methods extracted from the dll: [https://twitter.com/JustinAngel/status/529876592479047682](https://twitter.com/JustinAngel/status/529876592479047682)

(On OSX, strings gives you significantly less useful information, although apparently it was built by 'ianhowle' and there's a native Objective-C "CargoKit" library)

Note, there's one open source project that has theming and plans on building live sensor output: [http://unband.nachmore.com/](http://unband.nachmore.com/)

And there's a closed source phone already that _does_ access all the sensor data in realtime: [http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/band-sensor- moni...](http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/band-sensor- monitor/68f97b41-de2f-4579-a473-5d476a5c5196)

I'm not too familiar with Windows Phone, but I believe you can access and decompile an unencrypted XAP if you have a rooted Windows Phone to see what it's doing.

I don't really have much experience/use/access to Windows stuff in general, but for someone w/ that kind of experience, I can't imagine it being very hard to deconstruct.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting they store so little on the device. Does the Band generate a lot of data?

<comment><USER3> Even if it did, the interesting stuff can be filtered from the raw data and saved on the device.

Making customers depend on online service is a really hostile move. I wonder if the protocol between app and band can be reverse engineered to allow connecting other apps...

<comment><USER14> Right. He's only reverse engineered the phone-to-server data, not the band-to- phone data.

Exercise equipment like treadmills should be able to read band data. They can use it for feedback to control speed. That's a common treadmill feature, but it's usually not wireless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The most amusing part for me is the domain name dns-cargo.com Seems like a random choice. Wonder if this was just some spare throwaway domain they had laying around.

</comment><comment><USER16> A nice hack and a good list of the things you may want to fiddle with if you want to explore phone applications calling home just in general.

</comment><comment><USER17> i knew something had to be up when syncing between band and app required internet access! my fitbit always synched with just bluetooth.

</comment><comment><USER18> So far despite the decent specs the Microsoft Band is disappointing to pretty much everyone I've spoken to who bought one. Now that I know how the data storage functions additional disappointment abounds. This is clearly no exception to equating the MS Band as the windows 8 of smartwatches. I am fanatically thrilled I couldnt find one when I wanted to buy one.</comment>


Maps Reveal the Difference in How Cities Are Perceived by Tourists and Locals - <AUTHOR> https://www.archdaily.com/920002/a-series-of-maps-reveals-the-difference-in-how-cities-are-perceived-by-tourists-and-locals <comment><USER3> Regurgitated content from more than half a decade ago. Here is the direct link with all you need to know: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/721576242091586...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157624209158632/detail/)

(Click "show more" for the description with is more verbose and honest than the aggregator spam submission).

<comment><USER4> And the direct link to San Francsico:

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/4671581511/in/album-...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/4671581511/in/album-72157624209158632/)

<comment><USER5> I've lived in SF before— this is so accurate to my experience. Went to SoMa a lot and actually never visited the Golden Gate bridge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Living in semi-touristic district, it's funny to see how locals views differ from tourists. We have a special term for it: local resident syndrome. It's when someone asks you if there is something interesting to look at here, but you don't know, despite living here since forever. Well, I can show you where that expensive nightclub is on the map, does it count? I also see people making selfies with decorative street elements (simple installations and/or statues) that were installed, say, a year ago, and really mean nothing, but are perceived as if they had _a history_. Accidentally hearing what tour guides tell to groups about locals and their traditions is another story.

<comment><USER7> That happend to me too. They take photos of stuff that I didn't pay attention to. Maybe I should take a tour guide of my own city, since there's a lot to see apparently.

Anyway, those maps could also be that way because locals try to avoid tourists. It's not a big deal where I currently live, but it is very annoying in Barcelona, Madrid, etc, that kind of places. Not only because touristy places become pricey or there's too many people, but because some tourists are... special.

<comment><USER8> Maintaining the same level of curiosity about your city that a tourist has is a challenge. You "just" live and work there, it's hard to get excited about your own city.

Some years ago I tried to be a tourist in my own city and basically treated my weekends like going on a city break as a tourist (helped that it was a city of several million inhabitants and some centuries of history, so it had some potential). I discovered some really wonderful places, sometimes right next to the streets I drove on every day for work. That made a difference for me in how I looked at the city and made my life there just a bit more content.

<comment><USER9> My gf and I started a project to spend a day in each borough of London, a couple of years ago. Originally we were aiming to complete it in one or two years, but life got in the way; it's paused at 16 out of 33 right now. I'm a born and bred Londoner in my mid-40s, and in the course of this (despite only being halfway through) have been to so many places I'd never visited - <USER2> research interesting cultural, historical, and alcohol-vending places to visit beforehand and it's ludicrous amounts of fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As someone who lived in Paris for many years now, it's fascinating how the city has sort of three identities:

1\. What outsiders think it's like

2\. What they see when they encounter the city as tourists

3\. What the city is like for a local

You'd say this is true for any city but Paris in particular has concentrated so many stereotypes together that it's almost comical to see people's attitudes yo-yo so dramatically in both directions.

<comment> blaser-waffle I'm reminded of Paris Syndrome, which is phenomenon common with the Japanese, where they assume Paris is something it is not, and get angry and frustrated upon visiting.

[https://grapee.jp/en/99643](https://grapee.jp/en/99643)

I'd say similar things about Texas, DC, and NYC, for that matter.

<comment><USER11> It is a funny article, but this line puts things in perspective:

> Out of the million or so Japanese tourists that visit Paris each year, about > 12 will fall prey to Paris syndrome.

<comment><USER12> "12 Japanese tourists let down by Paris visit each year" doesn't quite have the same oomph.

<comment><USER13> That's .001%. Why is anyone even talking about it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For the actual direct link to the 100+ maps go to Flickr [https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/721576242091586...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157624209158632/with/4671594023/)

<comment><USER15> And to view an interactive map: [https://labs.mapbox.com/labs/twitter- gnip/locals/#5/38.000/-...](https://labs.mapbox.com/labs/twitter- gnip/locals/#5/38.000/-95.000)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only one who felt like they were in the photo round of trivia night looking at the unlabeled heat maps?

<comment><USER17> I was trying to guess which cities were in North America and which ones weren't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This was particularly cool when Eric Fischer first put these up on Flickr because smartphones were fairly new and it was such a great example of teasing interesting data/visualization from data that people were recording essentially incidentally.

Google Flu Trends was also a hot topic around the same time although that turned out to be a lot less effective than it initially appeared.

</comment><comment><USER19> For London it's fascinating to see the highest density of local photography mostly east, with a particular hotspot in Hackney. It seems to support the stereotype of it being a more creative area.

I'm sure a dataset more recent than 2010 would amplify this further.

<comment><USER20> I would not call it creative these days, because I don't find those hipster beards, soul-crushingly loud factory-feeling restaurants and bars, and new shinny unaffordable residential developments designed by anti-natalists (hence no space for families) creative at all.

It should be purple on the map if the data is more recent.

<comment><USER21> "Anti-natalists"? That's a real weird flex. Surely it isn't that areas that aim to bring in the young and the creative are taking into account that _kids cost money nobody 's got_.

<comment><USER22> The issue is not the money, it's the 'stuff'. If they built decent residential areas where families could live, family homes would be more affordable. If they built more daycare facilities, daycare would be more affordable. Etc. etc.

In London in particular, it is hard, if not impossible, to find a consistently decent area that would appear safe to bring up kids in within cycling commute of the City. There does not seem to be any objective reason for that, so it seems to be a policy decision.

<comment><USER21> If they built decent residential areas where families could live, DINKs and other childless folks would move there first. Families are and are permanently expensive in post-industrial society to the point where they're nearly a luxury if you want to also live in an urban (read: trendy, young, _creative_ ) area because space, and therefore anything that depends on space, is at a premium.

Make no mistake: this sucks. But it isn't "anti-natalism". It's om-nom-nom capitalism. The fix is deeper than whether or not planners like families with kids or not: it's a rethinking of how we allocate resources. And that's a hard conversation to have.

<comment><USER20> > If they built decent residential areas where families could live, DINKs and > other childless folks would move there first

I am not sure. If I want to live without a child, I would probably not spend money on a second bedroom. I would prefer the space below my building to be a gym rather than a daycare. I will care more about good bars than good schools and parks.

> Families are and are permanently expensive in post-industrial society

There is also a chicken and egg problem: the fact that new developments target childless people is one of the reasons raising a child is expensive. It might actually be one of the biggest reason in London considering how much people are spending on housing.

<comment><USER21> _> I am not sure. If I want to live without a child, I would probably not spend money on a second bedroom._

I would. I've rented 2BRs my entire adult life. I needed an office--that room's for work (even if that work is my side projects or whatever), the rest of the house is for living. We bought a 3BR and collapsed a wall to make it a 2BR. One bedroom and one (very large) office.

 _> There is also a chicken and egg problem: the fact that new developments target childless people is one of the reasons raising a child is expensive._

New developments mostly target people with disposable income. That rules out most families.

I am, to be clear, in favor of subsidies and policies to encourage urban families; I think having kids in neighborhoods is a good thing for the neighborhood as a whole. But you're ascribing intent where none seems to exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's always fun to quantify this.

I can say that for certain I avoid the tourist things in my home city and my current adopted home city. I cannot remember the last time i was near them, actually.

<comment><USER24> But why? Tourist sights are tourist sites for a reason. The Tower of London is swarming with tourist, but its still genuinely fascinating. If only for Henry VIII's armoured codpiece.

<comment><USER25> Probably because tourists are generally awful to be around.

<comment><USER26> But as a local, you can visit off-season/off-hours and avoid the worst of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I grew up in Assisi, Italy, and lived there until ~2008.

Assisi was home to St.Francis, one of the most popular saints in Christianity, and it's a tiny village (5,000 residents) with >1.3M people visiting it every year, mostly for religious reasons.

Growing up there was really a unique experience in that regard, especially when tourism is such an important share of the local economy.

I met so many people from abroad, and befriended so many, over the years, and at the same time I almost took it for granted.

I think my mind benefited from this great influx of foreigners.

</comment><comment><USER28> I am looking at the version of this that has an interactive map of the US ([https://labs.mapbox.com/labs/twitter- gnip/locals/](https://labs.mapbox.com/labs/twitter-gnip/locals/)) and zooming in to my current location of New Orleans: [https://labs.mapbox.com/labs/twitter- gnip/locals/#13/29.9802...](https://labs.mapbox.com/labs/twitter- gnip/locals/#13/29.9802/-90.0676)

And holy shit I really _did_ do a favor for my friend when I went down to the French Quarter, met up with her, and took her to City Park instead of another day of scheduled tourist activities; there are _no_ red dots up there.

<comment><USER29> Sculpture Garden ftw, also CDM took over the morning call stand for now so you don't even have to leave there for beignets

<comment><USER28> It's not you couldn't get beignets when it was Morning Call!

But yeah the sculpture garden is awesome, I love going there and sitting in the quiet little grove around *A Battle: For The Resistance Fighters". Or chilling on a shady bench with the laptop getting shit done. You could probably see it on a modern version of this map.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I feel like this is applicable on a smaller scale than tourist/locals as well. I have lived in the same place in the same city for 7 years now and I have almost never been to any of the good bars/restaurants close to me. I'm always surprised when friends who live other places in the city recommend me places that I've walked past a hundred times in my neighborhood but never went into, and vice versa. I wonder why it is like that. I don't have a good answer myself.

<comment><USER31> When you're at home, do you go out to eat often? If so, how do you choose where to go? I'm sure the answer lies in one of these questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I lived in Amsterdam for 5 years but I never saw the Anne Frank House, because I thought I could always go there later.

<comment><USER33> I lived across the street from the Charles Dickens Museum in London for years. Never once went as "it'll always be there later". Still haven't been.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Any theory about why there is a local photo for every street in College Point, Queens? It's about 3 o'clock in the NY map here: [https://flic.kr/p/87P99x](https://flic.kr/p/87P99x).

</comment><comment><USER35> There are a couple of places here that I know as more than a visitor, and in those cases, the residents' maps are quite interesting - for example, what is it about College Point, New York, that makes it stand out?

<comment><USER36> As far as I know as an NYC native... nothing? I was wondering about that too, must be some kind of sampling artifact. Maybe there's something we don't know about, but the neighborhood has more coverage than the whole rest of Queens (besides Shea). It's probably data from one guy who lives in College Point and happens to post a ton of pictures.

<comment><USER35> Good point - maybe the amateur neighborhood historian, or possibly a group who are documenting the state of things as part of a dispute with City Hall?

+1 for calling it Shea, not Citi Field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Local resident: the library, the MacDonalds with the fastest drive through, the nice park with the ducks, except the sidewalk by the trees is always slimy with duck poop.

Of course in suburban areas that's about it 99% of the time.

</comment><comment><USER38> High time locals started to know their city better than tourists.

</comment><comment><USER39> It says "The red dots indicate photographs taken by tourists, while the blue dots show images taken by local residents" but what is the orange?

<comment><USER18> Yellow is can't be determined (because they haven't taken a picture anywhere for over a month).

[https://www.cnet.com/news/the-rise-of-the-accidental- sensor/](https://www.cnet.com/news/the-rise-of-the-accidental-sensor/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Terrible site UI. It hijacks the back/forward buttons to navigate through other content you haven't visited on that site.

</comment><comment><USER41> If you are ever in SF and visit the Exploratorium, Eric's work on these maps is shown there as well.

</comment><comment><USER42> This post is a cautionary tale of why Legends are important.

</comment><comment><USER43> Philadelphia Resident: The art museum.

Philadelphia Tourist: The Rocky steps.

</comment><comment><USER44> Well, photographed. Perception is a cognitive function that's not so easily measured as this...</comment>


Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher's Computer Books–Again - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/amazon-caught-selling-counterfeits-of-publishers-computer-books-again/ <comment><USER3> The counterfeit and review manipulation issues have rendered Amazon unpleasant enough for me that buying local is something I've started to enjoy again.

I trust the merchant to have performed some kind of vetting for merchandise sold on premise, and the price is often good or (interestingly enough) even better than on Amazon. Often enough local is still more expensive, but it beats browsing Amazon for an hour, sifting through reviews that can no longer be trusted.

<comment><USER4> I purchased some wire cutters a year or two ago from Amazon and they were fine for the speaker wire I was cutting... Until this year when I tried to cut a guitar string with them and found a perfect guitar gauged hole in my snips every time I tried to cut.

I was irate, having paid $10 for these. So I go online to leave a review and warn people off... only to find that the seller "no longer existed". They absolutely did, and were selling their awful snips but had changed their name and paid for a bunch of 5 star reviews again.

I've been far more aware as of late that whenever I search for something (say the staple gun I recently got my wife) all I get are offbrand or knockoff results showing for often several pages. I have to go, figure out which brands are reputable and then come back to actually make my purchase.

I'd rather just go to a brick and mortar at this point. I'm definitely not renewing my amazon prime.

<comment><USER5> inexpensive wire snips are usually only good for cutting copper wire, though. they aren't made of hardened steel, which is necessary for cutting the steel guitar strings.

<comment><USER4> $10 is not inexpensive for wire snips though. Which is my complaint.

<comment><USER6> $10 is nothing compared to the cost of high end, quality hand tools that will last. In the case of a expecting to cut hardened wire, the cutter needs to be of a good alloy and hardened adequately to hold an edge. $10 doesn't buy anything from the knipex catalog, for instance.

<comment><USER4> Guitar wire should be perfectly fine to cut with $10 snips. The $5 Stanley brand snips that I got to replace my terrible ones work like a charm.

I recognize I don't have the heaviest duty cut-through-anything shears that I could have with more money, but where I'm mainly doing light jobs like speaker wire and guitar strings it's not a problem... unless the snips themselves are terrible.

I don't expect to have to replace the Stanley set unless they become rusty from disuse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I knew this would blow up. Sadly, Amazon/createspace (now called KDP) apparenty has no mechanism or will to ban users who abuse the system. I am a KDP author myself, with three titles under my belt in the nature/regional category. About three months ago I noticed flagrant copyright infringement of a well-known author in my field. The title had a one star rating, because a number of people had left negative reviews pointing out (in no uncertain terms) that it was not genuine.

I emailed and then called support (twice) and pointed it out. Even after escalating the issue as far as I could, it resulted in no action. Even a cursory review should have stopped the title from being published, since it was of ridiculously poor-quality (analogous to someone publishing a title called "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Legacy by J.K. Rowling" and having an apparently legit front cover but an interior filled with almost nonsensical, semi-autogenerated text). The fact that a title like this can be published on the platform at all indicates that the review process for new titles is sadly lacking any application of common sense.

I'm appreciative that Amazon is pushing the envelope in supporting self- publishers via their print on demand services, but by failing (and actually refusing) to police it they are giving a bad name to the whole enterprise. Through their inaction they are encouraging the copyright infringers and scammers to turn what could/should be a great service into a toxic ecosystem.

<comment><USER8> There are so many glaring problems.

I don't know why you can't just highlight text in a kindle book and say:

      [x] typo
      [x] mispelling
      [x] grammatical error
      [x] garbage characters
      [x] plagiarized
      [x] missing section separator
      [x] other [______________]

maybe the REAL issue is that all of these are post-sales problems

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the Tweet about one of the counterfeits, Bill Pollock says:

> Images of counterfeit copies of Python for Kids being sold on Amazon. Legit > copies are thicker, color, layflat binding, nicer paper

I've noticed on occasion my local Barnes & Noble will have two copies of a book and one will be noticeably thicker than the other. Same edition, same cover art, same number of pages, but one just seems to be on thicker paper.

I've only noticed this in the computer section, but I generally only visit that section, other STEM sections, science fiction, and graphic novels, and of those only the computer section is likely to have multiple copies of books that are thick enough that a difference in thickness would be noticeable while browsing, so there may be selection bias here.

Does this mean counterfeits are even making their way onto bookstore shelves? Or do some publishers have a range of paper sizes they might use for a give book, and what is actually used varies from print run to print run?

<comment><USER10> No, it's likely to be different legitimate print runs. Sometimes the same paper is unavailable, sometimes a book moves to a different manufacturing method based on demand (e.g., offset to short run to print-on-demand).

The source of Amazon's problem is their third-party marketplace and their practice of "co mingling" third-party stock with their "regular" stock -- this is unlikely to be the case with Barnes & Noble

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I ordered a copy of Deep Learning [1] from Amazon last week. On Barnes & Noble [2] the book costs $76.80. On Amazon it is just $28.00. I received the book a couple of days ago. The pages look like it was printed using a low-resolution printer, and the ink color is uneven across pages. I am returning the book. Possible counterfeit, sold by a third party seller. On the other hand this book is also available free online [3]. Maybe it is legal to print it and sell it?

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Learning-Adaptive-Computation- Ma...](https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Learning-Adaptive-Computation- Machine/dp/0262035618/ref=sr_1_3)

[2] [https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/deep-learning-ian- goodfello...](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/deep-learning-ian- goodfellow/1126352242?ean=9780262035613)

[3] [https://www.deeplearningbook.org/](https://www.deeplearningbook.org/)

<comment><USER12> I ordered a textbook on control theory from Amazon. It arrived, but the material inside the covers is from a small animal veterinary textbook. Byaa different publisher. I took a closer look at the cover, it was poorly printed and didn't quite fit.

I'm still confused about how the vendor expected to get away with it. Did they just guess that half of people won't bother opening the textbook? And why not fill it with blank pages then?

<comment><USER13> Might just be that a large-scale counterfeit printing operation mixed up the covers and bound materials. There are probably counterfeit veterinary textbooks floating around that contain control theory materials.

<comment><USER6> Quite possible. It seems likely that the people assembling the counterfeits don't even read English, let alone have enough interest in the material to notice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I first heard about counterfeit goods on Amazon from HN, and at the time thought, "Hm, must be a west-coast thing, hasn't happened to me before." In the last year I've received a handful of very obvious fakes and have (thankfully) been able to return them since the items were "fulfilled by Amazon."

It's not surprising that with the volume of items pushed by Amazon there are going to be some fakes. What is surprising is how merchants fulfilled by Amazon lack any incentive AFAIK to ship real goods. For any major purchase from now on, I'm going to buy local or buy direct from the manufacturer. It's just a waste of time to hope that what you get in the mail is what you ordered in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER15> [https://qz.com/1542839/amazon-has-finally-admitted-to- invest...](https://qz.com/1542839/amazon-has-finally-admitted-to-investors- that-it-has-a-counterfeit-problem/)

Well, admitting you have a problem is the first step, so maybe now they'll finally get serious about fixing this shit.

<comment><USER16> Its hard to admit you have a problem when your problem still brings in buckets of money everyday. I dont think they care, how much can a publisher or author sue amazon for peddling counterfeit wares? That is when it will matter, when they start losing large settlements.

<comment> the-pigeon Why hasn't the US Consumer Protection Bureau stepped in at this point?

Isn't this exactly the sort of thing they are suppose to prevent?

<comment><USER17> > Why hasn't the US Consumer Protection Bureau stepped in at this point?

Because no such bureau exists?

You may be thinking of the Consumer _Financial_ Protection Bureau (which deals with financial products) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (which deals with physical safety issues), but (while physical safety issues are among the problems produced) neither one is really focussed on these issues.

The kind of fraud at issue is probably more in the bailiwick of the Federal Trade Commission and the International Trade Commission (when the original source is foreign), but probably most people affected by counterfeits are just returning products or eating the cost and not complaining to the FTC or the falsely-purported manufacturer (who, IIRC, would be the party in position to complain to the ITC).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Totally, this. As a case in point, my "Digital Image Processing and Analysis: Human and Computer Vision Applications with CVIPtools, Second Edition" text book stated right on the cover that the book was "Not for sale in the US" (or something to that effect). Seemed odd, then I read the intro in which the author was excited that he finally convinced the publisher to print in color. My book was not in color (super great for an image processing text). Two weeks later, the binding started to come undone - not just a little - literally all of the pages fell out.

Awesome, thanks Bezos!

<comment><USER19> Your situation has nothing to do with Amazon or counterfeit books.

The "not for sale in US" editions are international editions that are usually made with cheaper materials and sometimes with different graphics to avoid royalties. These books usually have the content and are usually in black and white but sometimes there are slight content changes. It's not usually the best idea to buy one of these unless you know it's identical, check the reviews. You need to use the ISBN to find the US edition if you don't want to gamble on a cheap international edition. Funny story, I bought an international edition once, used it for the semester, then sold it back to the third-party bookstore in town for more than I bought it for.

<comment><USER20> If it comes in a box that says "Amazon" on the side, then it has everything to do with Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am currently caught up in an amazon scam. The third party seller listed items, put in fake shipping, item never arrived. It's been over a month and I am still fighting amazon to get my money back. They have an "A to Z guarantee" which doesn't work, at least not in my case.

The seller didn't even need to sell counterfeit items without running off with my money. Amazon customer support has no idea what to do since the third party is supposed to refund me.

<comment><USER22> I've never had success with "A to Z" refunds, to the point it seems designed not to work — and instead, actively use Amazon's brand loyalty to enable fraud.

I wonder, was my trust as a customer who spends thousands of dollars a year ever worth more than $20 to Amazon?

Because they sure were quick enough to throw it away over $20, when one of their business partners defrauded me via their website.

(PS — if you work at Amazon, and your internal metrics show that customer trust is worth more than 0.005 dollars per customer dollar spent, you have made business decisions WAY out of alignment with your metrics.)

<comment><USER21> Its ironic as well because the customer service agents kept saying if this was an Amazon purchase they would have refunded me. Kept reassuring me that this wouldn't have been an issue if you purchased with us, we would have taken care of this. But I kept telling them this still IS Amazon. They just deflected like it has nothing to do with them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How isnt Amazon liable for this / sued?

If Walmart did the same there would be various lawsuits

<comment><USER24> More than likely, they can just claim "we're just a platform, someone else uploaded the file". This is the inherent problem with Section 230 immunity for platforms: We've given companies a blank check to be used as part of criminal enterprises, and given them no incentive to police illegal behavior on their networks.

In this scenario, Amazon is able to literally produce, sell, and distribute counterfeit material, keep the profits from doing so, and face no legal repercussions. That is the definition of a broken law.

<comment><USER25> Does Section 230 apply at all when we're talking about a physically distributed product like this? I get that, even if it doesn't apply, Amazon's defense is probably that they're an intermediary and not the seller, but I thought the DMCA applied pretty strictly to digital copyright violations, and that any lawsuit in this instance would hinge on older laws for physical-good copyright violations.

<comment><USER24> Well, for one, there is some exception to Section 230 in the realm of intellectual property, which is an angle that could be pursued, but there's been some "conflicting rulings" on it. But I think Amazon would argue that their publishing service is an interactive computer service, and that they are not the providers of the infringing information.

Which is to say, it's possible Section 230 would not apply here, but Amazon's extremely expensive lawyers would probably fight like heck to include it anyways.

<comment><USER26> But isn't this case an example of Amazon physically printing and delivering a book? They aren't just moving bits: they actually printed the book.

<comment><USER27> This is correct. 230 liability would not protect this case.

In general, physical publishers are always liable for what they print.

It doesn't matter where it came from.

(at least in this context. Things like libel are more interesting)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Amazon has little incentive to stop selling counterfeit goods.

It is simply not reasonable to believe that they are not capable of accurately preventing counterfeit goods from surviving in their site. Remember, this is the same company run by the brilliant micromanaging CEO. Everything that happens within Amazon is known to him.

If an individual setup their own website and sold counterfeit goods, the feds would come down on them hard. So you have to wonder what keeps Amazon immune from being shut down for willfully breaking laws...

<comment><USER29> It's only their job to attempt to prevent listing and supporting counterfeit products. Every individual is responsible for themselves to not break the law and sell a fake product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Isn't it more accurate that a seller is using Amazon's publishing platform to counterfeit and sell other publishers books?

The title suggests Amazon has wrongdoing here. You could make the case that they need more policing and review but it's not like Amazon is knowingly selling counterfeit here.

<comment><USER31> Considering that Amazon fulfills orders using counterfeit items from suppliers that they know have previously provided fakes to customers, and then removes reviews that point out counterfeits, I'd say they're complicit in it. I've personally had a review removed that called out an obviously counterfeit item I received. That was two years ago and the seller is still on Amazon, and Amazon is still removing other reviewers' bad reviews of them.

<comment><USER32> This seems like a long-term recipe for disaster for Amazon.

Why do it? Or am I being naive? Or is it too difficult to clamp down on fakes?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Amazon is my site of last resort (read: less that $100 per year). I'll check it for the reviews (but am always mindful they could be bogus), and to get a general sense for price. I purposely us BN.com or just about anywhere else for books.

I can't allow myself to be a regular Amazon customer. Its ethics and practices leave me feeling dirtier than I want to feel.

</comment><comment><USER34> Surely this should be an easy fix for them to be able to detect counterfeit books being created? If they are anything like other on demand self publishing platforms, you upload a pdf or similar file to create the book, and surely it's not beyond the wit of those at amazon to create an ml based system that would be able to detect similar files to those of legitimate books that they already carry and flag them to the legitimate publisher for manual review (if they can't be bothered to police it themselves as it appears)?

<comment><USER35> It is not that easy. They need a reliable system to do that. For what can go wrong, see all the hate Youtube's ContentID gets. But, identifying whole books should be simple enough.

<comment><USER36> If the official book is available on Kindle, then it actually should be quite simple for them to use a locality-sensitive hash to find plagiarized uploads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> +100

Amazon is trying hard to keep counterfeits and fake products/reviews under the rugs for as long as possible, so the more publicity to their ignorance - <USER2> merrier.

<comment><USER14> With the prevalence of counterfeits and their push to feature "Sponsored" products in SERPs, the case to ditch Amazon becomes easier every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Yup, this happened to me: I saw a very low price on a Chez Scheme book and bought it. I am fairly certain the book was an unauthorized copy. I felt like the author and publisher were cheated, but to be honest I did the simplest thing and just kept the book and I am gentle with it when opening it for reading so it does not fall apart.

</comment><comment><USER39> In Sweden BBS-lagen is applicable here. That is you run a community service where the users publish works.

5 § "Skyldighet att ta bort vissa meddelanden" The obligation to remove certain messages 2\. It is obvious that the user has infringed copyright or rights protected by regulation in Chapter 5. the law (1960: 729) on copyright for literary and artistic works by submitting the message.

Here is the US law [https://www.bu.edu/law/journals- archive/scitech/volume1/orou...](https://www.bu.edu/law/journals- archive/scitech/volume1/orourke.pdf) "contributory infringement"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributory_copyright_infring...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributory_copyright_infringement) Material contribution "second situation is when the means for facilitating the infringement such as machinery is provided by the defendant"

Providing printing press ability and the electronic means to upload/download without scanning via OCR for copyright infringement of known text and print service and the platform itself

</comment><comment><USER40> I once ordered a copy of Introduction to Algorithms (CLRS) on Amazon.

I had been a TA for Thomas Cormen at the time, and wanted the author's signature. He took one look at it, compared it to the copies he had in his office and said, "This is a counterfeit copy. Where did you get this?"

The embarrassment haunts me to this day.

</comment><comment><USER41> Here's a previous discussion when the same publisher was being pirated by Amazon previously.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546)

</comment><comment><USER42> Another trend I've seen is stores selling international editions. It's not a big issue to me, minus the usually crappier paper and cover. But it does seem shady.

</comment><comment><USER43> 90% of the stuff on Amazon is fake or counterfeit. Why would anyone expect the book division to be different? This is what Amazon has decided to be: a marketplace for garbage products, most fake or extremely low quality. Their strategy is based on the fact that consumers don't know better and if they do and start returning products, shutting those accounts off. Some copyright infringement is perfect for diversifying their business model of selling garbage.

</comment><comment><USER44> Is the problem affecting all amazon or mainly amazon.com?

I m shopping mostly on amazon.de or .fr and I didn't encounter the problem yet.

</comment><comment><USER45> Whenever I am buying something I care about I avoid Amazon. I am cancelling prime because of it.

</comment><comment><USER46> I stopped buying books from Amazon and returned to buying from a local independent bookstore.

</comment><comment><USER47> Back in the day, when song piracy was hot in the news, you'd hear of people claiming that each song pirated had cost the copyright own over $150K.

Why can't Amazon be sued for $150K per book?

<comment><USER48> That only really worked because the defendants couldn't afford good counsel. That sort of fraudulent legal claim won't work against Amazon.

Besides which I think the courts did eventually move on to realistically valuing contributory infringement (15¢ perhaps instead of $150k).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is a book by another spine still a book?

</comment><comment><USER49> These aren't counterfeit books. They're unlicensed books. You're getting exactly what you order.

<comment><USER9> They are pretty much the definition of counterfeit. The Oxford dictionary defines counterfeit as "Made in exact imitation of something valuable with the intention to deceive or defraud".

<comment><USER49> There's an implication that you're defrauding the person buying the counterfeit item. That's not true here; the person being "defrauded" is the copyright owner.

<comment><USER9> The buyer purchased a book that claims to be, and is marketed as, a No Starch Press book. No Starch Press books are known for their physical quality and their lay-flat binding. These books were lower quality and did not have a lay- flat binding.

How is that not defrauding the buyer?

<comment><USER49> kfwhp is right. It is not even conceivable that anyone is buying a book for the sake of having a No Starch Press book. Everyone buying a book is buying it for the content.

It is conceivable that someone might think that No Starch Press books offer a quality premium that might justify a higher price. In the case where that higher quality is thought to occur in the contents, that's still not relevant. In the case where the higher quality comes from the better physical quality of the book, it is relevant, but that is a negligible part of the market for books of any type, even those that do come in collectible editions.

Consider an example: I own a copy of [https://www.eastonpress.com/prod/EB8/2720043/Rudyard- Kipling...](https://www.eastonpress.com/prod/EB8/2720043/Rudyard-Kipling-s- THE-JUNGLE-BOOKS) .

If someone were selling imitations of this that fell apart after a month or so, I would indeed consider that to be defrauding the buyer. Easton Press' entire reason for being is to sell existing books at a higher physical quality than you can normally get.

But Kipling's work is available in every form factor, from free ebooks at Project Gutenberg through cheap paperbacks to high-end collectibles. If Easton Press were the only party legally allowed to sell this book, I would no longer be willing to say that cheap imitations were defrauding the customer. I'd assume that people buying the cheaper versions were just trying to read the book. With only one vendor, there is no signal that the customer wanted physical quality, and overwhelmingly they don't, so there is no reason to assume that they do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> It's one thing for counterfeits to be found among all of the 3rd party resellers ... but this is just beyond pale.

I think NYC was wrong to kill 25K jobs on the general merits - but - if Bezos wanted the counterfeiting problem solved, it would be solved. Ergo - Bezos is a counterfeiter.

Think of all of the other 'competitive advantages' that Amazon has - now they use their 3rd party an in-house counterfeiters to screw other value chain members as well.

</comment><comment><USER51> Amazon gets away with this because it's practically impossible for small business owners or authors to police their site. It's similar to Google, where they let counterfeits thrive, but real content creators get fake DMCA notices and shut down.

I really hate to say this, but large companies like this need to be regulated via laws. There's simply no other choice. Having Amazon throw their hands up and say "There's nothing we can do, we have algorithms" or hiding behind the safe-harbor laws is not acceptable.

Having their ability to shut off peoples' incomes or being victimized by counterfeiters, with no human contact and no process, is unacceptable and needs to be changed. They aren't changing fast enough and they don't want to change because it's expensive, and the only solution is to force them via laws, which I'm loathe to support but it's the only way.

<comment><USER52> Why should large companies be regulated on this specific topic but not small companies? It's equally illegal activity.

<comment><USER50> In this case, the laws probably need to apply universally.

But scale matters.

Systems (even economic systems) at scale have different characteristics than those that are not. Just like you'd implement a massive AWS system differently than you would a little, single Ec2 service - regulations would probably be characterized differently given the scale and power of the entities involved.

One major difference is risk mitigation: individual consumers may have some power to influence a mom and pop shop, especially one that has a physical retail presence. A negative local news highlight could make a big difference. A single legal grievance could have consequences. There's material risk.

At a certain scale, it seems some of these entities simply don't have to worry about fraud, because 'who's gonna do something about it?'. The only public recourse is public institutions.</comment></comment></comment>


New Android phone crushes iPhone X in speed test - <AUTHOR> http://bgr.com/2017/11/21/iphone-x-review-speed-vs-oneplus-5t/ <comment> nv-vn Let's see the actual benchmarks though. I'm more interested in seeing if it beats the iPhone on benchmarks, since these app opening races have been done a million times, and Android devices have frequently won.

<comment><USER2> At around 8:30 in the video you can see the iPhone has more than double single-core performance, and almost double multi-core.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: when can a vendor of a platform decide its development language? - <AUTHOR>

There is a lot of debate on Apple forbidding all languages except C, C++ and Objective-C on iPhone OS. Reading one more article on this topic, a question popped into my mind: why Google App Engine is different?
Google App Engine is a platform that allows only Java (or better, JVM) and Python. Ok, it is a web platform, but like the iPhone and the iPad are mobile platform. Yet nobody ever complained about this limitation.
I'm not saying they should have. I'm not implying what is right or wrong, I haven't decided by myself yet. So what I am asking is: where we draw the line? Where is the border between being able to decide the language for a platform you own and not being able to? We should complain also about Google's decisions? Or we should not complain about Apple's ones?
Are iPhone OS and GAE comparable? Maybe this is a silly question, but I'm not able to decide by myself, so I'd like to see someone here on HN to elaborate on the subject. Thank you. <comment><USER2> Obviously any platform is only going to support a few languages natively. But you can always use tools that compile from other languages into the native ones. What's uniquely overreaching about Apple's new rule is that you can't even do that anymore.

On App Engine you can run Java code that has been generated by a compiler that translates Scheme source code into Java. Apple's saying you can't do that. You can't write programs in anything except C, C++, or Objective-C.

In theory, anyway. No doubt what they'll do is selectively enforce it just to ban competitive threats like Flash. I kind of wish they were forced to enforce it rigidly, because then they'd start to feel the consequences of doing something so opposed to the way software development works.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can develop in C#, and have it converted to Python and run it on the App Engine. Something you can't do on the iPhone.

Google does not limit the language that you can use to write your app, only what languages its App Engine can understand. Very, very different.

</comment><comment><USER4> Apple disallowed options that used to be allowed. Also, there are many ways to deploy Web servers, but Apple is the only way onto the iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER5> The limitations to what you can do with App Engine are largely technical rather than largely the result of contractual obligations. That's why everyone is in a tiff about App Store.</comment>


Thinking Spreadsheet: An Opinionated Guide to Problem Solving and Data Analysis - <AUTHOR> http://joelgrus.github.io/thinking-spreadsheet/

<comment><USER2> "Populous is a generic tool for building ontologies from simple spreadsheet like templates."

[http://www.e-lico.eu/populous.html](http://www.e-lico.eu/populous.html)</comment>


Would you describe today's web browsers as "innovative?" - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1GGNnjS3yJtl_bHlLtTW_tjKMUJ26-sj6hYAgnq1sIeo/viewform?usp=send_form

<comment><USER2> No, and they shouldn't be. Modern web browsers are "streamlined", which is what they ought to be and how they best serve their users - by being a minimal window to access the real protagonist, web content.

"Innovative" ideas should be tested in the form of separate applications or plugins, not shoehorned into the core tool that people use for almost all their access to Internet; experimenting with innovative ideas in this minimal tool is likely to break some workflows for most people.

<comment><AUTHOR> So the concern about "innovation" within the context of a browser is that can disrupt how they currently work. That being said, do you think that the separate plugins and applications out there are innovative?

<comment><USER2> Some of there are, some of them don't :-)

The good think is that there's a lot more of variety on apps and plugins than there are different viable mainstream browsers, and I can use those for specific functions at different times. Bundling everything within the same application would force me to have them in my interface all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Where are you going with this? A "browser" is a delivery agent, sort of like the paper and binding in a book. The _content_ of the book can be innovative but who cares if the paper is?

Perhaps you are asking "Can you deliver the experience you want to deliver in Today's browsers?" "If not, why not?" which might inform the question of missing features, but such surveys tend to collect dreams rather than requirements ("if only the browser could read aloud the page, I'd make a kids book..." kind of thing where the thing holding back the requester is not the browser but their own inability to write a kids book)

<comment><AUTHOR> So your feeling is that the browser is more of an invisible delivery mechanism, and not intended to provide anything other than taking you to your chosen web experience. Is that correct?

<comment><USER2> I think that's a pretty common expectation nowadays.

Back in the day we already tried the monster do-everythin-and-the-kitchen- sink[1][2] bundle with the original Netscape/Mozilla suite (currently known as SeaMonkey), and it sucked. It's only with Phoenix/Firefox lean-and-streamlined approach that a serious alternative to IE6 took shape.

The expectation of flexibility is covered by the idea of having specific tools provided in the form of web applications, not part of the browser itself. The browser should have all the features required to support those "innovative" experiences, but those should be available as development platform APIs, not in the browser's user interface.

[1] [http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=2919](http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=2919)

[2] [http://www-archive.mozilla.org/docs/web- developer/samples/ki...](http://www-archive.mozilla.org/docs/web- developer/samples/kitchensink.xml)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think you might get less push-back on whether a browser should aspire to being "innovative" if you draw finer distinctions about types of innovation.

There's a big difference between innovative idiomatic APIs, innovating the first support for new specs/standards, innovative performance improvements, innovative UI/X, innovative plugin/extension engines, and (unfortunately) innovative interpretations of specs/standards.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, keeping the response open-ended has been very valuable in understanding how people interpret "innovation" in this context. In the linked survey, there is an open-ended comment box where you can explain your definition.

<comment><USER4> Certainly; if understanding how people interpret "innovation" is the goal, a broad question is a good way to draw that interpretation out of some subset of 'people'.

I left the survey without answering because I realized it'd require me to make a broad binary generalization of some sort. Questions requiring generalizations like this make me uncomfortable, so I usually avoid answering them or dispute their usefulness. I came here to dispute its usefulness, but I saw a few others had already done so in their own ways, and thought my time might be better spent trying to give you context for this push-back, rather than echoing it.

Perhaps I can unpack how I mean "uncomfortable." If you ask me an innocent question like "what's your favorite movie/book/artist/album?", I have no good prepared answer to give you without vastly more thought than I care to put to the matter. I like a lot of things, but I don't maintain any sort of ranking, and I have no fast+meaningful way of comparing the relative merits of a good comedy with a good documentary, or a book of poems with a novel. I'm aware that most of the time this is just a throwaway question for socializing and I could probably grease the interaction with a little white lie--just pick something and move on. But I also know some people live and die by questions like this, and will mine my answer for what it says about me, whether we'll get along, etc. I could state this as my answer to the question, but the asker is either just making smalltalk and doesn't need a dissertation, or they actually think the question is meaningful and won't appreciate my disdain. The question makes me uncomfortable because it feels like a lose-lose. There's no honest way for me to "answer" it, and all of the other options are undesirable for social reasons.

In your case, I don't know what kind of parameters matter to you, and I lack a fast+meaningful heuristic for weighing whether a browser is innovative on the balance or deciding what definition/qualities of innovation I want to apply. I also realize you have some purpose for asking the question, and that using a cynical heuristic would undermine you.

HTH

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It just seems a little odd asking people to share without any explanation of who you are or what the purpose of this is. For example, are you being compensated by some polling agency for collecting this data? What are you hoping to accomplish with it? What's your privacy policy with respect to the free-form comment field?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, I'm an entrepreneur and fellow Hacker News reader (not a polling agency) looking to get people's thoughts about the state of the browser industry. All responses are anonymous.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you to everyone who contributed. There were 205 total responses to the survey.

For "Would you describe today's DESKTOP browsers as 'Innovative'?": Yes = 29% No = 71%

For "Would you describe today's MOBILE browsers as 'Innovative'?": Yes = 14% No = 86%

However, the "No" category includes those who feel that the browser doesn't need to be innovative, and is simply a viewing mechanism.

</comment><comment><USER6> By asking here your answers are so biased that they're unlikely to be useful. If you're interested in getting a statistically significant sample of a larger group, there are products that will find that group for you for relatively cheap -- I know of at least Google Consumer Surveys and Survata. (Disclaimer: I work on the former.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks evmar, we're getting a really good response size here, and are focusing on the moment on the developer/technophile type of users on this site.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the survey responses everyone, and please keep them coming!

<comment><USER7> Since you're asking the community, it would be nice to later make the results public.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, they will be posted back to Hacker News.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Are you happy with your choice of browsers today? Do you feel that browser innovation is moving forward quickly enough? Please sound off and take this quick survey.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Someone asked what "innovative" means. It's purely up to your definition of the word... but feel free to add comments to explain your thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER8> We think of the tech industry as "innovative" but in many ways it moves slow as dirt.

Why do we still use IP/TCP when many of the same people who helped develop IP/TCP learned important lessons from it and moved on to new ideas such as RINA? We all know that including a port number in a network address violates the principles that the levels in a network stack should be isolated, so why have we allowed 40 years to go by, without doing anything to address this mistake?

We know there is a need for structured documents, and we have endless serialization formats for various ontololgies. We also know there is a need for a GUI that works over networks. We all know what a struggle it has been, for the last 26 years, to make HTML serve both purposes. Isn't it time we get rid of HTML and replace it with different technologies that can specialize in either being a GUI, or in delivering structured data?

Ethernet was introduced in 1980 and became the dominant wire for corporate and data center networks, despite more efficient formats being possible. Why is there such overwhelming conservatism in this area?

Polyglot programming has become the norm on servers, but the client has become a monoculture where Javascript killed off the other competing technologies (Flash, Swing, etc). An innovative browser would be one that gave us a virtual machine in the client that could support polyglot programming on the client. Instead, most "innovation" in 2015 is focused on making Javascript incrementally better.

"Browser" has become almost synonymous with the HTTP protocol, plus WebSockets (which still uses HTTP for the handshake). Wouldn't an innovative browser merely grant us a shell for handling IP/TCP, into which we could drop whatever runtime we wanted? That would enable polyglot programming on the client, and open the door to new categories of software being handled by the "browser". In fact, all software could then be handled by the "browser" as the "browser" would then become the most obvious way to enable desktop software.

For decades now, at least since the 1960s, programmers have been seeking ways to make their software multi-platform. Back in 1990 Patrick Naughton and James Gosling started working on Java, guided by the slogan "Write once, run anywhere". That slogan should still be our goal. What are we doing to move the society forward to the era when that slogan can be true?

In the 1830s and 1840s it was common for the steam engines in locomotives to explode. Early steel bridges sometimes collapsed, because engineers did not know what strain the steel could take. Our society moves forward when important technology becomes so mature and stable that the whole of society can depend on it. At what moment will computers become as reliable as locomotives and steel bridges? And what are we each doing to get us there?</comment>


Isn't it time that Cyclists had Indicators like Cars - <AUTHOR>

Cyclists et al,
Whilst cars have indicators to signal that they are turning cyclists rely on an outstretched arm to alert others of their intentions.
However, in a busy city, such as London, that arm might not always be seen or acknowledged by other road users.
So Why Not! <comment> adam-_- I would think something attached to gloves might be easier to spot than something attached to a bicycle.

That said, I can't imagine a situation where you could see a cyclist but not see them indicating. If anything, signalling makes the cyclist more visible and obvious.

</comment><comment><USER2> A similar thing already exists I believe [http://www.gizmag.com/zackees- illuminated-turn-signal-gloves...](http://www.gizmag.com/zackees-illuminated- turn-signal-gloves/30137/)

<comment><USER3> This looks like a better solution than mounted turn signals.

The Kickstarter has ended, so here's a link to the site: [http://zackees.com](http://zackees.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had battery operated signals on my 3 speed bike with highrise handlebars and a sissy bar in 1969! So yes, why not have them today, especially if you are going to ride IN traffic?

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd like an automatic one, with an inertial sensor. If I brake, the brake light goes on. If I turn, the correct directional indicator flashes.

</comment><comment><USER6> Anything that gets more cyclist to signal is a win in my book.

</comment><comment><USER7> Could you add an example of a situation where you would see an indicator light on the bottom of the bike but you wouldn't see a whole arm?

<comment><USER8> How often do you see cyclists even raising an arm.

Also most cyclists I see love wearing dark clothing, especially in winter, at night, without any form of adequate lighting!

<comment><USER9> Well in my experience as a cyclist, I'm sure you see a lot of them as most drivers are focused on their phones, their radios, the scenery -- anything but the road.

<comment><USER8> Oh! Yes! I see at least one cyclist every morning fiddling with their phone. And tonight I saw two (in Norwich) tapping away on their phones two handed , dark hoodies, and without lights on a road approaching a hairpin S bend. That said they were teenagers so I guess they figured the glow from their phones were enough ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So just like cars they would not be used?</comment>