Pro-Indian 'fake' websites aimed at influencing decision-making in Europe - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50749764 <comment><USER2> The BBC World Service started broadcasts in Arabic in 1938. That is basically the dawn of modern international propaganda. The media has likely been a hotbed of lies for much longer but our main record of the situation is the media so the evidence is scanty.

With that background, the story here is that the network has been identified and catalogued. Someone somewhere in India is grossly negligent and/or stupid if there isn't an organised group pushing pro-India stories and the general existence of such a thing isn't newsworthy.

<comment><USER3> Nobody in india is watches NDTV because they are part of urban naxal propaganda.

you can see here [https://www.barcindia.co.in/statistic.aspx](https://www.barcindia.co.in/statistic.aspx)

TRP of NDTV is lowest.

they do have enough Page Rank points on the internet but that too because of their 'tech' subdomain called gadgets ndtv.

ndtv was supporting osama and hizbul terrorists. they sympathize with jihadis.

BBC is known for their hinduphobia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC#Anti- Hind...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC#Anti- Hindu_bias_and_Indophobia)

ndtv is like bbc of india

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One big success of our current BJP-controlled govt in India is their ability to influence and control narrative on specific topics through targeted disinformation. This is not just for internal issues but also for external ones.

<comment><USER5> To be honest, they aren't influencing, they're threatening media houses. No Indian news outlet except NDTV shows the truth because NDTV is suffering from losses in revenue as Central leaders have boycotted NDTV for showing the truth.

Look at how the anti CAA protests are shown in general media. They're blaming opposition for everything

<comment><USER6> First time I learnt, news channel become more neutral when they are in loss. Conventional Response is to produce more polarising narrative to gain more views especially a target group that becomes loyal followers.

<comment><USER5> They're not "neutral"because they're in loss.

I remember since my childhood that NDTV has always been critical of the government and that's why I liked it but due to Burkha Dutt, I started to dislike the channel.

Now NDTV is the only channel which reports facts. You see Republic, Zee news etc blatantly spread govt agenda. But that's not because they're in loss, that's because they have sold their soul or never had one to begin with.

Also the media channels which kiss the emperors ring get contracts and are gaining profit. They fear monger and STILL blame the opposition even though BJP has ruled the county for six years. Of course you're surprised, you created a new just to spread propaganda here! But worry not, we won't let it happen and we have downvoting privileges, this isn't Twitter or Face book where the one who shouts the loudest is true

<comment><USER7> The personal attack is uncalled for. This is not /r/india. The rest of your post was insightful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe they are trying to counter the default anti Indian narrative of most western media outlets which sometimes takes an ugly embarrassing form [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia- india-29502062](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-29502062)

<comment><USER9> What "default anti Indian narrative"?

Also, the cartoon you've linked to doesn't seem anti-Indian at all. I get that people complained, but it's a cartoon: quite a gentle one at that.

<comment><USER6> Reuters Report about crimes against women showed how anti indian western media is.

<comment><USER5> When stats provided by government show that India is unsafest for woman I hardly see the "anti India" bias

<comment><USER10> Source? 'unsafest' relative to which countries?

Edit: btw I am not saying India is safe by any measure. The official statistics released by government doesn't match with what you say, be it propaganda, reality or just lack of significant funding into researching these stuff.

Without insightful data, how do you plan to combat anything? 'Growing' rape rates has been used as an excuse to form internet surveillance, censorship (porn ban? adult themed movies?) and other faucet of life. Did that reduce rape rates? Rapes are increasing? Why? What is happening in a developing country that makes it more vulnerable to rape cases if its true?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Finally BJP affiliation with fake news & their propaganda is being exposed.

<comment><USER12> Finally? This has been known domestically for almost a decade now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Read this with a pinch of salt. BBC writes positive spin on Pakistan. (Or a lot of anti Indian articles)

<comment><USER5> Is that the reason why these fake news outlets which sound like official newspapers were shut down after EU Disinfo lab discovered them? Is that why their websites haven't been updated and twitter and youtube is disabled?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's like an arms race. With no Winner. Sort of like World War I trench warefare.

<comment><USER5> To be honest, everyone has an agenda. So when BBC is critical of ISRO then it is not propaganda, it is just racial bias.

But what these fake news outlets(which include leading mainstream media of India) do is they blame opposition for everything.

A bridge had collapsed in Mumbai due to BJP govt alloting it 1 Rupee for maintenance for that year and all channels were "questioning" the previous congress CM.

"Built during Congress time 45yrs ago. It collapsed! Massive corruption suspected"

They didn't say that BJP spent 1 Re for maintenance.

They find a way to blame opposition about everything. Even now, although economy is screwed BJP wants to polarise the country by "throwing out infiltrators", their genius idea is of making all 130crore people stand in line to prove that they're Indian nationals and their parents are Indian born. So basically everyone needs to give documents of their parents from the 80s!

And when opposition questions it BJP Media says "Opposition doing fear mongering! Owaisi spreading deep hatred!" They literally name opposition leaders and say anything they want to suit BJP agenda

<comment><USER14> I agree everyone has an agenda but if they are all just playing the same move - Tit for Tat - provoke-react then what happens? Nothing. Stalemate.

Someone has to use some imagination and change the way they play the game. Right now, one day propaganda of one side wins and another day propaganda of another side wins. Its a trap.

<comment><USER5> I don't understand what you mean by tit for tat.

If BBC spreads something racist about Indians using their channels and Indian media does the same then it doesn't really matter does it?

Propaganda works when it's dumped upon their audience it isn't like Indian Media who sold themselves to BJP government are influential out of India.

But yes, Propaganda is bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> These days it seems to me that everyone is waging information wars against each other in less than fair ways. Each side cherry-picks information (like research or statistics) in a self-serving manner to drown out opposing views with sheer volume, regardless of whether they are ultimately correct or not. Censorship, deplatforming, fake/incomplete/misleading information, shaming, doxxing/getting people fired, etc. are all employed regularly. When facing such strategies, I don't think either side can be blamed for using any particular tactic - reaching a point of civil discourse requires mutual/societal de-escalation.

In this case, the complaints against CAA seem overblown, and a lot of it hinges on a slippery slope argument about "what's next", where of course the worst is assumed.

As an example [https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/caa-not-anti-muslim- lo...](https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/caa-not-anti-muslim-lots-of- misconception-about-it-jitendra-singh-1630444-2019-12-22)

> Seeking to allay the "needless fear-psychosis" sought to be created in > certain sections of the society, he said the only purpose of the Act is to > ensure the wellbeing of the minorities who have been "persecuted on the > basis of religion" in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

> "The Citizenship Amendment Act is not anti-Muslim from any angle and the > misconceptions and apprehensions surrounding the Act is unfounded and > motivated," Singh told reporters here.

> The Union Minister of State for PMO said since Muslims are neither in > minority in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan nor do they face any > persecution because of their religious affiliation in these countries which > have Islam as their State religion, they are obviously not included in the > Citizenship (Amendment) Act.

This seems reasonable to me. There's a pathway for refugees to seek citizenship, based on claims of religious/cultural persecution. Since the majority in these nations are Muslims, it makes sense that they cannot claim persecution under this law.

<comment><USER9> > In this case, the complaints against CAA seem overblown, and a lot of it > hinges on a slippery slope argument about "what's next", where of course the > worst is assumed.

What's next has been plainly stated to be implementation of the NRC [1], which in combination with the CAA will result in Muslims who don't have documentation to prove where their parents were born being rendered stateless. A large number of Indians don't have such documentation, but the CAA ensures only Muslims (being excluded from the whitelist of religious identities listed in the CAA) will be affected. It's not clear what would happen to them: detention centres seem a distinct possibility as some have been constructed and some are slated to be constructed.

The protest are commonly known as the "CAA and NRC" protests, so all this is commonly understood. [2]

> This seems reasonable to me. There's a pathway for refugees to seek > citizenship, based on claims of religious/cultural persecution. Since the > majority in these nations are Muslims, it makes sense that they cannot claim > persecution under this law.

There are minority groups such as the Ahmadis that are widely persecuted in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. [3] This law would consider them Muslims and therefore ineligible for admission.

The only purpose of the CAA whitelist seems to be to exclude Muslims from becoming Indian citizens. If the law's intent is to help people, it is not reasonable to exclude anyone. If they are excluding people, the law's intention is not what is being claimed. This is why tens of thousands of people are protesting.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Register_of_Citizens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Register_of_Citizens) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_Amendment_Act_prot...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_Amendment_Act_protests) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Ahmadis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Ahmadis)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Though they are pro India, the word fake sounds like they are fake news, when in fact they are just spinning existing news sites with an Indian positivity spin.

Let's be honest most major states are doing this

<comment><USER17> > Let's be honest most major states are doing this

Maybe if you exclude most western states/countries - not sure I have noticed a pattern of US media talking it up - quite the contrary - and I have not really gotten the impression that press of UK, Australia, France or Germany is in the business of putting positive spins on domestic matters either.

<comment><USER18> Oh the UK media definitely does.

Example: Removing the working time limit? Let's ignore that it's going to lead to more overtime even for those who don't want it, it will increase household revenue! Good news everyone!

[https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5156079/brits-post-brexit- over...](https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5156079/brits-post-brexit-overtime- boom-eu-limits/)

It's currently opt out if you want to work more than 48hrs/week, but scrapping that law will make it _even better_ heh

<comment><USER19> The Sun is a terrible newspaper imo</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Almost perfect: the rise and fall of WordPerfect Corporation (1993) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wordplace.com/ap/index.shtml
<comment><USER2> So this was published a year before the company was sold to Novell for big bucks, AFTER this guy was canned. So there is an ax to grind, for one. Not to say the history isn't interesting, but this is one of those memoirs written from the perspective of the ousted dude (who wasn't even a founder) who is so sure he was the wronged party.

It's still a good read.

The book I would always like to read would be from Bruce Bastian, the co- founder that got Peterson (the author of this book) the job. Why? Because he was Peterson's brother-in-law.

So Bastian is a really interesting guy. Peterson writes him off as being kind of a "dreamer" and downplays a lot of his brilliance, but others have noted the importance his smarts played with making WP good. Anyway, in 2000 or something, he came out of the closet, which is like a huge deal if you're like the pinnacle Mormon software company in Utah. IIRC, he was totally shunned by a lot of people from his former company, including his co-founder.

He now gives money to charity, donated millions to equal rights causes and generally seems to be a good, decent man.

Anyway, I'd really love to read about what it was like to be closeted in that type of environment in that period of time, while also building what was at one time, a massively successful software company.

<comment><USER3> timeline isn't exactly accurate. i worked at wordperfect/novell from 1992-2000 as a system and then software consultant (WordPerfect SWAT then Novell Consulting) and bruce was already out of the closet when i started.

i ran into him in the slc airport once when i came back from a business trip to sydney australia. my visit happened to coincide with sydney's gay and lesbian mardi gras. when i saw bruce i said "hi" (even though he had no idea who i was) and told him i had been to sydney on business. he said "i went to sydney for pleasure."

didn't seem like he felt the need to be "closeted" or even shy about his sexuality then. iirc, this was around 1995.

fwiw

<comment><USER2> I trust you. I know he was still married and wasn't "out" when it sold to Novell (at lawyer, not publicly), but by '95 that could have changed. I last read up on this stuff (including Peterson and Ashton's hateful comments about him) seven years ago or so.

<comment><USER3> novell bought WP mid-1994 iirc. i went to work for WP late 1992. i don't know the details of when a divorce was final or any such thing so he might have technically been married then. i also have limited knowledge of the culture of outing and what criteria people use to say they are now "out" as opposed to "in", so i can't really speak to when the official outing was.

all i know is that as early as late 1992 it was well known throughout the company that bruce was gay and that he had a boyfriend assistant working for him.

in the office water coolers i was around (when i wasn't traveling) there seemed to be a lot more concern about perceived nepotism than perceived homosexuality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of my favourite passages discusses what they tried to discourage in the office (from Chapter 11 – [http://www.wordplace.com/ap/ap_chap11.shtml](http://www.wordplace.com/ap/ap_chap11.shtml) )

> Things like celebrating birthdays, throwing baby showers, collecting for > gifts, selling Tupperware or Avon, managing sports tournaments, running > betting pools, calling home to keep a romance alive or hand out chores to > the children, gossiping or flirting with co-workers, getting a haircut, > going to a medical or dental appointment, running to the cafeteria for a > snack, coming in a little late or leaving a little early, taking Friday > afternoon off, and griping about working conditions were all inappropriate > when done on company time.

This stands really in stark contrast to companies today. Can anyone who has been in the industry long enough chime in on how they feel changes like these have affected things like morale, productivity, etc?

Edit: grammar.

<comment><USER5> from ch 11

       WordPerfect Corporation was not a platform for personal achievement, a
       career ladder to other opportunities, or a challenging opportunity for
       personal improvement. The company did not put the needs of the individual
       ahead of its own. The company was not concerned about an employee's personal
       feelings, except as they related to the company's well-being.

       WordPerfect Corporation was not intended to be a social club for the
       unproductive. While other companies might condone many personal or social
       activities at the office, ours did not. Things like celebrating birthdays,
       throwing baby showers, collecting for gifts, selling Tupperware or Avon,
       managing sports tournaments, running betting pools, calling home to keep a
       romance alive or hand out chores to the children, gossiping or flirting with
       co-workers, getting a haircut, going to a medical or dental appointment,
       running to the cafeteria for a snack, coming in a little late or leaving a
       little early, taking Friday afternoon off, and griping about working
       conditions were all inappropriate when done on company time. Even though
       these activities were condoned by many businesses across the country, we
       felt there was no time for them at WordPerfect Corporation.

This guy sounds like a real dick. I mean, sure -- running a betting pool at the office is a big waste of time. But this guy is independently wealthy, so of course errands are no problem: you can almost always trade money for time. But going to a medical or dental appointment is not to be done? When exactly are you supposed to see your doctor, given they work M-F 9-6? And I bet they weren't shy about asking for extra time from employees when it's crunch time or there's an urgent bug.

<comment><USER6> from ch 15

"A year after I left, I received an anonymous letter from someone at WordPerfect Corporation. This person used WPCorp stationery, WPCorp postage, and, no doubt, WPCorp time to tell me he was glad I had left the company. Even though the writer admitted he had never met me, and that he had never worked for me or in a department which reported to me, he had gone out of his way to tell me what a poor job I had done. I was a little hurt by the comments, but I was even more upset that this employee would misuse company resources to send the letter. He was obviously not focusing in on the purpose and objectives of his employer."

Seems like he had a dick reputation that lasted some time after he left the company.

<comment><USER7> Wow. That's like out of a supervillain's script in a movie. "Sure, you may hate me, but what really bothers me is wasting a few bucks!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm old enough to actually have been a user of both WordPerfect and Word in the early days, so I saw the rise and fall of WordPerfect, along with the rise of Word and MS Office, through the eyes of a user.

Basically, Wordperfect was the best word processor out there during the late 80s to early 90s. Keep in mind that at the time, most people did not do their own word processing.

WordPerfect 5.2 I remember as being the very best word processor out there. However, Microsoft came out with MS Word for DOS, and I remember distinctly using Word 2.0. At the time, there were a lot of issues where sometimes when you typed on Word, you would get snow on the screen, but it was pretty fast compared to WordPerfect. The rumor was that Microsoft was using special APIs that WordPerfect (and any of their other competitors) didn't have access to that allowed them to have faster performance and smaller latency when dealing with larger documents, etc. But WordPerfect was clearly the superior program.

The key was that WordPerfect didn't adapt well to Windows. When Windows 3.1 came out the version of Word for Windows was excellent, vs the version of WordPerfect. WordPerfect was really clunky from what I remember, and as Windows took off, they never really got any traction and as more version of Windows and Word came around, the difference between Word and WordPerfect grew cavernous. By 1995, if I remember, no one even considered WordPerfect as viable compared to Word.

Then the whole Corel/WP debacle occurred which cemented the death of both of those companies.

<comment><USER9> I'm must be older than you I guess :) . I was heavily involved in typesetting work between 1986 and 1990 (offset litho printing [0]). One of the tools we used for authoring was WordStar (and PostScript - we wrote a pile PostScript using WordStar's very capable text only editor mode).

WordStar beat the pants off of WordPerfect for technical layout and hackability when it came to printers and the like for rush documents. I used to mod WordStar to support printer escape sequences where there were none using a hex editor. That dated back to at least around 1985.

I still miss WordStar, its keycords (^K^B to begin a block), context menus and loads of other things outshone WordPerfect for technical writing. I wrote thousands of lines of DBase II/III and C using WordStar's text mode. Hell, even Brief (circa 1988) implemented the same keycords as WordStar, it was really popular with DOS app programmers back then (e.g. the Clipper season based releases before Clipper 5 arrived).

But then that was maybe the dev in me. WordStar _was_ more versatile as a tool for both Word Processing and as a text editor. However WordPerfect was more loved by the non-technical writers and I can kinda see why, but I could never get my head around the function key sequences.

* caveats here being that I wasn't introduced to vi until 1987, just as I left college, and didn't have affordable access to unix until I stole a copy of SCO Unix for x86 around 1992.

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

<comment><USER8> George Martin, author of the Game of Thrones series, STILL uses Wordstar on DOS to this day. :)

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/05/14/george_r_...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/05/14/george_r_r_martin_writes_on_dos_based_wordstar_4_0_software_from_the_1980s.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think a missing part of the story here is what happened to WordPerfect after it was sold off to Corel. Corel realized that Microsoft would be one hell of a competitor with Office, and (correctly) feared that Microsoft would abuse their Windows monopoly to push it.

Corel responded incredibly boldly, by rolling their own Linux distribution and bundling Wine, which in turn was sponsored by Corel. Unfortunately, they were a bit too ahead of the technology with this move, as neither Wine nor Linux were quite ready enough to usefully run desktop applications other than WordPerfect.

<comment><USER11> WP 8 was native Linux/Unix. It used Motif, and was very stable - a superb word processor. This version was bundled with Corel's Linux OS deluxe edition. With a bit of effort, it even runs comfortably on modern systems.

(The included docs mention a terminal version of WP 8, but, sadly, it doesn't exist...)

Version 9 onwards used WINE.

<comment><USER12> Those were good days, I remember buying the boxed version of WP8 (with Tux on the cover) from CompUSA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Strange. All I know about WordPerfect is that my company's lawyer, a classic loyal WordPerfect for DOS type, tried really hard to make the first version of WordPerfect for Windows work for him, but it kept dropping all his tables and/or illustrations to the bottom of his documents, and he gave up.

That strikes me as more than "a little buggy" as I read skimming the last few chapters; granted, I heard they did better than their other competitors who couldn't even make something that wouldn't GP fault. I also seem to remember reading about some craziness where it insisted on using its own printer drivers, a competitive advantage they had in the DOS era, in Windows.

So I have to wonder how much technical merit or lack thereof had to do with their failure; then again, the afterword's figures are appalling, without revenues initially suffering they overspent wildly, removing their margin for recovering from any number of screwups.

<comment><USER14> It's a myth that the Windows version of WordPerfect was bad software; I'm not sure where that comes from.

1) The initial version had some problems but was fine, I think by v5.2. Regardless, by WordPerfect 6.1 for Windows, most software reviews picked WordPerfect as superior to Word. I and many others I know preferred WP into the 2000s, at least. It was good software.

2) IIRC, a major reason Word became dominant was because of anti-competitive practices by Microsoft. Microsoft required computer manufacturers to purchase an Office license for every Windows license. As a result, every new computer came with Office installed. I believe Microsoft was convicted of violating anti-trust law or settled with the government, but too late for WordPerfect. My memory is vague on this point, however, and I'm surprised nobody else mentioned it.

3) Also, IIRC, Office was easier to integrate with other software, in part because it was object-oriented and because of Visual Basic. That made it appealing in the corporate market.

Finally, many here wonder why the legal industry preferred WordPerfect for so long (as did government). IME the reasons were A) Legacy; attorneys were heavy users of WP for DOS, when it dominated the market; B) Word offered no benefit in return for retraining users and converting all the legacy data, customizations, and macros; C) WordPerfect was better for power users, due to the fine formatting control, and many legal secretaries and others were power users. I recall one legal secretary's response to Clippy: 'No I don't want help formatting a letter -- I've been formatting them for 20 f!@#%! years!' D) Government liked WordPerfect's built-in SGML editing. I always thought WP should have used Reveal Codes and some updates to sell itself as a low-end XML or HTML editor.

<comment><USER15> > It's a myth that the Windows version of WordPerfect was bad software; I'm > not sure where that comes from.

Besides that it was slow and never felt like a native Windows app, the biggest problem I remember was that it tried to replace the Windows printing subsystem with its own driver system, which was very confusing and caused problems for other Windows programs. It could not even install on Windows NT.

That said, Word for Windows 1.0 also had many quirks. When Windows 3 came out, the push buttons in Word did not change to the new 3D style, as they had custom-coded every single control, including standard buttons and text boxes.

Amipro (later bought by Lotus) was i.m.o. by far the best early Windows wordprocessor. They, (and not WP) prove that the best software did not win in the market.

<comment><USER14> > Besides that it was slow and never felt like a native Windows app

I'm not sure what version you used, but by 6.1 it felt lighter and quicker than Word IMHO, and I'm pretty sure it had a standard Windows interface -- at least neither I nor the many users I supported had problems with the UI.

> it tried to replace the Windows printing subsystem with its own driver > system, which was very confusing and caused problems for other Windows > programs.

Maybe you are thinking of the initial Windows version. I supported many users and systems who used WP for Windows, and I knew others who did the same, and these were not common user problems that I recall. WP did use its own print drivers or provide those as an option, I think to provide more accurate WYSIWYG. Occasionally WP itself would have problems because it somehow integrated the print driver in WYSIWYG (a good idea if you think about it), but I don't recall other applications having problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Utah tech sector was really made by Word Perfect and Novel. The University of Utah and Brigham Young University provided the tech talent that really didn't want to leave the state, and WP and Novel provided the jobs and, ultimately, the capital that started many of the companies south of Salt Lake City that turned the area into a tech hub (the UofU's graphics program was crucial to companies like Evans and Sutherland further north).

It is unfortunate that, today, we don't have that kind of "anchor" company in our "Valley". Omniture was starting to take on that role, but it sold to Adobe. Adobe has turned the area into a second home, becoming an anchor to quite the little tech office community between Salt Lake City and Provo, but it's not the same as having a company headquartered and growing capital here.

I started working in the area right as WP was starting to ramp up speed on its downward slide. I remember working at a small company, going through resumes of people laid off from WP, seeing one guy who had spent the last 5 years working on the "File" dialog. These guys were also making double or more the going rate for software engineers.

As a young software engineer, I learned an important lesson at that time: make sure I keep learning and changing, because every company fails and it's really hard to get a new job when your career has been as the "File" dialog guy. I also learned some important business lessons about what _not_ to do from WP and Novel, most of which came from hubris more than anything.

</comment><comment><USER17> I was a technical writer in the late 80's and early 90's, and had the opportunity to extensively use most of the popular word processors.

One thing I remember about WordPerfect was how much they bragged about having a large customer service center to answer user questions. They often showed pictures and advertised how many reps they had and how many calls they took.

WordPerfect was difficult to use even for professionals like me.

When Word for Windows came out, with a more intuitive interface (not that much different from some Mac word processors that had been launched years before), lots of people jumped to the easier UI, and stopped calling WordPerfect.

A lesson here is that if you have to staff up to handle customer calls, there is probably somebody out there who is going to disrupt your business if you don't fix the problem.

</comment><comment><USER18> "While running a business profitably is arguably as difficult as any other profession, almost anyone is allowed to give it a try, whether they are qualified or not. It is like an inalienable right, available even to the foolish, the young, and the senile." My favorite quote.

</comment><comment><USER19> When WordPerfect built their first Windows version back in the early 1990s they didn't even _try_ to make it look like other Windows applications. While the UI might have been fine on it's own it looked bizarre next to every other Windows app (not just other word processors). Some existing customers who were used to the DOS version were willing to make the transition but they hardly attracted any new customers.

The fact that Microsoft's Word developers were able to take advantage of undocumented Windows APIs was also a factor, but a much smaller one. If WordPerfect hadn't completely failed on the UI they might have at least had a chance.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was posted about five years ago, but it's a fantastic read full of great lessons and worth having here again. Many of the lessons in this book showed up as lean software development twenty years later, while the discussion on funding is interesting to compare to today's situation.

</comment><comment><USER20> I attended grade school in Canada and I remember Corel's suite of productivity software was what we were all taught in "computer" class.</comment>


Operation Warp Speed for Vaccine Development Needs to Go to Warp 10 - <AUTHOR> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/06/operation-warp-speed-needs-to-go-to-warp-10.html <comment><USER2> Have you looked into the details of developing a vaccine?

There are dangers. For instance, for polio, from sciencehistory.org:

During his lifetime Sabin staunchly defended his live-virus vaccine, refusing to believe any evidence that it could cause paralytic poliomyelitis. Salk, for his part, believed that killed-virus vaccine produced equivalent protection in individuals and in communities without any risk for causing paralysis.

That's just a hint of what could go wrong with a virus vaccine. Can you imagine the response from the anti-vax movement?

There are issues with the "delivery mechanism". Remdesivir requires injections. Lab tests with monkeys gave injections 12 hours after first exposure and every 24 hours after that. Are you willing to get that many injections... starting 12 hours after (potential) exposure when symptoms don't show up for 4-5 days?

Remdesivir requires about 8.5 liters of starting material and about 20 "process steps" to create each injection. How do you scale that up to 7 billion people?

There are issues of "simple" treatments with antibodies. But they don't give protection against re-infection. A vaccine may give "clearing" (reducing the viral load) or "sterilizing" (eliminating the virus) protection.

There are a thousand issues with a vaccine.

Oh, and corona viruses have been known since the last 1930 and there is still no vaccine.</comment>


'Fiction is outperforming reality': how YouTube's algorithm distorts truth - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/02/how-youtubes-algorithm-distorts-truth <comment><USER2> I put on some science video and walked away recently... came back latter and the autoplay had navigated itself deep into k00ky flat earther stuff.

People raising concerns about superhuman AI grey-gooing the planet have their priorities wrong. Incompetent narrow AI will happily navigate man kind into a wall when the pattern of bricks by chance happens to look like a tunnel.

Don't be evil... we have automation for that.

<comment><USER3> pro tip: never fall asleep to youtube without disabling autoplay. conspiracy nut vids make for some interesting dreams.

<comment><USER4> Not as interesting as in-depth documentaries on the Donner Party.

(source: personal experience. yikes!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting results. Though I wonder to what extent some of them reflect the outside world. (Not reality. Just what people outside youtube focus on.)

The Clintons have been the subject of conspiracy theories since the 90s at least. So, it's not surprising that this would extend on to Youtube.

(I haven't made an extensive study of this, but my impression is that the American right wing is prone to conspiracies about people or events, whereas the left wing is prone to conspiracies about institutions.)

The article also mentions Trump speeches were more recommended. There's an innocent recommendation: people find Trump more engaging. Of the two candidates, Clinton was far less charismatic - she even admitted she wasn't a natural like Bill Clinton was. So, it's not exactly surprising that Trump was more recommended and more watched.

This isn't to take away from the broader thesis. The recommendation algorithm is certainly worthy of study. And the fact that the algorithm quickly moves from normal to polarizing is disconcerting.

But, it does seem as though the recommendation algorithm to some extent mirrors what we see in talk radio and other media segments in America.

<comment><USER6> _But, it does seem as though the recommendation algorithm to some extent mirrors what we see in talk radio and other media segments in America._

I'm not sure what you think the significance of that fact is. YouTube's recommendation system is specifically trying to maximize time spent by users watching videos, and what's turned out to be the case is that sensationalistic, politically polarizing, conspiratorial, etc. videos are _excellent_ for promoting engagement.

It sounds as if you're saying that because such extremist content exists and engages people in other media, there's no real significance to the fact that YouTube's recommendation system creates a feedback loop for this content. But YouTube most definitely has agency there: First, promoting videos to users isn't just holding up a mirror to reality, but is an overt act. Second, the design of the recommendation system--what aspects of user behavior to cue off of and what metrics to optimize--reflects decisions on YouTube's part; they don't fall out of the sky.

<comment><USER7> It's to some extent self-destructive for YouTube - the I've noticed that when looking for entertainment I wind up being rapidly bored by the recommendations because they're only ever a mirror of exactly what I've seen before - they're not an attempt to challenge or expand on my preferences.

Which of course is what you get from blind correlation driven user feedback - "did you like this?" \- if I'm not sure because I'm now exploring outside my comfort zone then that goes back into the algorithm as "no".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know, guys. The world before complex algorithms generating clicks on the Internet was pretty biased and stupid. I don't think autoplay is going to be the thing that destroys our collective intelligence for us.

If we want our society to be less prone to fictitious nonsense, education that encourages critical thinking and a rudimentary of statistics should be encouraged, but that's often not interesting enough to write about for many journalists, nor is it an easy problem to tackle.

<comment><USER9> I would say that we should start by critiquing the implicit claim by Google, Facebook, Waymo, and others that new means of computational statistical analysis can serve as a reasonable replacement for human intuition and judgment. Turns out some of the world's most valuable companies are betting on lots of poor assumptions and easily-gamed algorithms, and we're just starting to see the fallout of our failure to call BS on the ever-louder hype machine.

I certainly agree that deep learning has delivered some impressive results, but the acceptance by VCs and the media that his new wave of AI will bring a revolution in Internet time to established real-world infrastructure and processes is a major failure of basic critical thinking on a broad scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Youtube personalization is eerily well-tuned from a tech perspective, and has undoubtedly been good for their business. But one of the least expected side-effects of new technology has to be the fact that Youtube's 'related videos' algorithm has given rise to a generation of Flat Earth believers.

Despite that, I gotta say, I'm uncomfortable about the series of media 'hits' on Youtube over the past year. It is based on self interest as a tech professional (I want to be able to create a social network without having to highly moderate everything!) but also, everytime it happens, a bunch of Youtubers who are innocent of what the media is alleging (objectionable content, etc.) lose their ad revenue. It's true that the 2016 US election has prompted the Anglosphere to subject social networks to more scrutiny, but when clamping down on user-generated content (or how it's displayed and monetized) we gotta look at the collateral damage, too.

<comment><USER6> _I want to be able to create a social network without having to highly moderate everything!_

No one (in the context of this debate) is asking YouTube to ban videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's not a given that social media had anything to do with the result of the election, the few scientifically researched reports out there suggest that good ol' mainstream media was by far the prime channel of influence: [https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud](https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud)

That aside, so what if "fiction was outperforming reality"? it's a marketplace of ideas and people choose to spend their time watching what they may, stop infantilizing them.

I realise that the media has been under "attack" lately (if you really consider name calling as serious attack) but they would benefit from some introspection, not only are they scapegoating social media and calling for it to be regulated - freedom of speech be damned - they also keep advancing the invented notion of a "backlash against tech firms" projecting their own aversions onto the rest of the world.

See: no real evidence of any such backlash:

[https://www.wired.com/story/davos-big- tech/](https://www.wired.com/story/davos-big-tech/)

[https://www.edelman.com/trust-barometer/](https://www.edelman.com/trust- barometer/)

</comment><comment><USER12> This whole "fake news" and "big tech is horrible" trope is tiresome.

That being said there is a bunch of nonsense on YouTube and it is annoying when trying to find legitimate information. Watch an informative video on history or archeology or something and two seconds later they are pushing a video about aliens creating the pyramids and the worst part is, because it's a video, you might have to watch it for a few minutes to find out it's utter rubbish unlike text where you can scan quickly and determine.

I don't really expect (nor want) YouTube to curate though, the moral hazard in that seems even more undesirable. Some kind of an expert rating layer would be cool though for objective topics (lets leave politics out, I'm not interested in that kind of a rating layer and don't watch those kind of videos). I can't follow every legit poster on every topic I might become passingly interested in and it's troubling to see nonsense presented right alongside informed commentary.

</comment><comment><USER13> Don't blame algorithms for human nature. That thing is ultimately just minimizing a loss function and if recommending garbage gets the best results, that's what it will do.

</comment><comment><USER14> The Guardian calling YouTube out for distorting truth? This is the pot calling the kettle black.

<comment><USER15> The guardian certainly has a strong editorial position, but I've never found its' reporting to be anything other than honest, well researched, and written with integrity.

I think that they believe what they write with a high level of conviction, which is more than you can say for some of the more egregious videos floating around on YouTube.

<comment><USER16> The Guardian plays with heavy distortions, biased selective reporting, and dishonest ideological clickbait tactics all the time.

<comment><USER15> I respectfully disagree...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The fact that we're all so easily influenced in ways we don't even realize makes me believe AI deities are only a matter of time. I'm legit terrified of a future where some programmer creates a cult AI figure that will direct people to either harm themselves or others.

<comment><USER18> People have been harming themselves and others in the name of religion for millennia. You could argue that it's easier to destroy or modify an actual AI than an imaginary god.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If the algorithms are designed to maximize engagement, then the opposite is true from a certain point of view. The result is an _undistorted_ reflection of our nature.

<comment><USER20> Can't follow you

<comment><USER19> I'm saying it reveals truth about ourselves because it gives us more of what we want. The growth of certain communities is an exposure of something that was already there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > An ex-YouTube insider reveals how its recommendation algorithm promotes > divisive clips and conspiracy videos. Did they harm Hillary Clinton's bid > for the presidency?

So the reason people didn't vote for Hillary was that they were fooled by videos they saw on the Internet? Is this what people who are upset their candidate didn't win believe, even one year after the election?</comment>


X-Men' Director Bryan Singer Accused of Sexually Abusing Teenage Boy - <AUTHOR> http://variety.com/2014/film/news/x-men-director-accused-of-sexually-abusing-teenage-boy-1201158645/

<comment><USER2> Some weasel words to make him sound more like a pedophile

Teenager = 17, OK technically a teenager, age of consent in lots of Western countries.

> forcibly sodomized him

that's a bit more than "sexual abuse", round here we call it "rape".

So why not just :

"X-Men' Director Bryan Singer Accused of Rape"

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you, however I didn't write the title. I just used the one in the article per HN rules. Thought people here would be interested in this story since it's related to the new X-Men movie director.

<comment><USER2> Oh I know it's not of your doing, HN would have changed it even if you had put a different title.</comment></comment></comment>


How Boston Police Used Facial Recognition Technology to Spy on Thousands - <AUTHOR> http://noisey.vice.com/blog/beantowns-big-brother

<comment><USER3> I've been trying to beat this drum for a long time, sometimes on this very forum.

Face and gait recognition really is the scariest thing going on these days. I don't like the NSA snorting _all_ the phone calls and the emails, either, but there are reasonable countermeasures.

To avoid this shit, you can't go anywhere, ever, unless you're in disguise and you breakdance/shuffle down the street.

It's a short jump from license plate recognition to face/gait recognition. Sure, the software isn't as good yet as it is with license plates (near perfect), but everybody on this website knows it will get there. And 'they' will be able to do all the same things they can do with license plates.

Not only track where you are and whether you go to this place or that place; they can decide _ten years from now_ to find out _where you went over the past decade_.

And, they don't need a black budget and the complicity of major corporations to do it. In this case, _they_ can be the Sausalito police, Starbucks, or your local shopping mall.

<comment><USER4> > To avoid this shit, you can't go anywhere, ever, unless you're in disguise > and you breakdance/shuffle down the street.

Make no mistake: in a world with that breed of surveillance, not going anywhere or breakdancing down the street in disguise will be guaranteed to flag you as "interesting" and a good candidate for "special" investigation.

And that's a feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is happening in NYC too. Over the past couple years, they've installed cameras just past each subway turnstile which are perfectly positioned to capture an image similar to the one shown in this document. Link that data with the swipe-data from your metrocard, which is more-times-than-not associated with a credit card, and you've got a pretty good way to not only pair a face with a name, but also follow somebody around the underground. Additionally, subway stations are gradually adding cell service, providing additional vectors for use in monitoring using Stingray or some other tracking technology.

</comment><comment><USER6> What's astounding to me here is not that they're doing this kind of surveillance, but that they uploaded everything to an unsecured FTP server.

<comment><USER7> That's really the galling bit, isn't it? There's a lot of [imho] justified outrage about the liberties taken by government enforcement groups, but that they also seem to be lousy at it is unsettling. On the one hand the carelessness is worrying, but on the other I feel reassured they'll never get their act together well enough for a full MiniLove. There's a terrifying potential for finesse in oppressive targeting - and reports tell of it happening - but it seems to botch and backfire enough to keep it public and exposed. At least, some industrious reporter or watchdog hacker will spot it and publicize it.

So perhaps we just need to get better at exploiting that propensity to screw up. Though it's a bit worrying incompetence is one of our checks and balances on the government.

<comment><USER8> ^ this. so now we know the govt may not be on top of it enough to really utilize this info, but it is all out there..and when these activities get privatized, there will be a larger cause for concern

<comment><USER9> If you want to talk about private companies already conducting appalling and creepy levels of tracking, look no further than downtown Palo Alto - <USER2> has got you covered.

<comment><USER6> Shhh! They're listening!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Once facial recognition technology is deployed on a large scale, it can be leveraged in some scary ways.

First, when it's tied into a network of surveillance cameras, the cameras become useful for tracking a person rather than a location. They could easily search for any video caught of you, forever.

Second, when you have a network of cameras you can track everyone's location at a very fine resolution, orders of magnitude better than tracking via cell phone towers. (And the cell phone tower data can be used to help with facial recognition since you can narrow down candidates of who might be in the photo.)

Third, once you're tracking locations in a network, the accuracy becomes pretty much 100% since you just need to match an unknown person once and then you can propagate their identity as they move around.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Spy" on people at a public event where there are thousands of people taking pictures and posting it online. Also, it was IBM doing the test, the BPD just let them run the test and evaluated it for the future. BPD is not using this system yet as it not yet released by IBM.

<comment><USER12> > "Spy" on people at a public event where there are thousands of people taking > pictures and posting it online.

The people in those pictures are not being identified, and it's not being done by a law enforcement agency (or being considered as an option by a law enforcement agency).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seems to rely heavily on the following source, including subsequent parts of an ongoing series of articles:

[http://digboston.com/boston-news-opinions/2014/08/boston- tro...](http://digboston.com/boston-news-opinions/2014/08/boston-trolling- part-i-you-partied-hard-at-boston-calling-and-theres-facial-recognition-data- to-prove-it/)

</comment><comment><USER14> > We really need to get a handle on what exactly government agencies are > doing. Not just thinking about it, but actually acting on public concerns > about how this technology is going to be used against us, and actually > passing laws that restrict some of the ways.

Ever since the ruling shooting videos in public is a constitutional right is going to make this extremely difficult. Especially so when you consider human ability to recognize people has always existed meaning this is only a more efficient version of what police/private businesses can already do.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sounds like always wearing sunglasses when in public should be a basic measure of getting privacy from the government.

Creepy shit.

<comment><USER12> > Sounds like always wearing sunglasses when in public should be a basic > measure of getting privacy from the government

I've heard about that solution, but I wonder if it really works. For example, using just the shape of your sunglasses and the shape of your chin, probably you could be uniquely tracked if not identified. To identify you, other physical features may work (nose, chin, gait, etc.).

<comment><USER16> Biometric ear recognition. Google it, there's plenty of research in this area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Liberty or security. Choose one.</comment>


Ask HN: Making a course on development from novice to employable? - <AUTHOR>

I am considering creating an online course that would teach web development, from novice to employable. It would use videos, screencasts and texts. More than anything, I'd like to make it free.
Why? I have been a developer for the past 15 years. I started as a junior coder and arrived to an IT manager position in a large corporation. The twist here is that I never sat a single day of my life in a CS course. I am entirely self-taught, like many in the field. Over the years, I noticed that I have a passion for coaching and teaching developers.
At a high level, here's what the course should teach: HTML -> CSS -> Programming basics -> JavaScript -> Ruby -> Rails -> Advices on how to land a web developer's job. I'd intend this course to be a comprehensive set of skills needed to be able to apply for a junior dev position.
In order to build this course, I would need to take 3 months of unpaid leave. I would also need some trivial resources like some software licenses, a good microphone, etc. My idea is to start a crowdfunding campaign to first see if there's an interest for such a course and of course, to have the resources to work full time on it.
What do you think? How would you tackle this and spread the word about the crowdfunding project (no, I don't have a large following on Twitter and the likes)? Is the idea completely stupid, and why?
Thanks for your input! Before jumping in, I'm interested in getting some feedback. <comment><USER2> Not a bad idea, I'm sure you will get funded if you put this on kickstarter my only thing is don't go with Ruby on Rails or is that your main skill?. Ruby on Rails is not something a beginner will understand it really just seems like magic as opposed to PHP and MySQL. I definitely recommend you try PHP since that will give beginners a great opportunity to understand and follow along it also gives a high level overview of what is really going on under the hood of server-side scripting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your answer. Kickstarter is not an option for me as I'd be required to have a US social security number. I don't have one, I'm Swiss. I'd go with Indiegogo. Crowdfunding is not my expertise at all. How would you go to spread the word about the campaign? I know my target audience doesn't lie within the pro coders crowd but rather within designers, start-up founders, people willing to make a career change and maybe CS students.

As for Rails, yes, there's a lot of magic happening but my goal would be to decompose that 'magic' to explain what really happens behind the scene as the goal would not be to teach how to copy code (like many, many online courses are doing) but rather how to write it. My main skill is C# and ASP.NET but I don't consider it either as a good starting point for a beginner.

PHP could be good as well but writing good code in PHP is very challenging for a beginner (in my opinion and experience). Also, PHP, even though it's used on loads of sites, is not a 'hot' technology anymore.

Lastly, I would like to have fun creating this course... ...and I'm having loads of fun writing Ruby!

<comment><USER2> Hot technology? PHP has more jobs than Ruby and Python put together. Theres still a lot of legacy code. You teach a beginner Ruby on Rails he will have less of a chance finding a job than you teach with PHP. Only people using Ruby on Rails is mainly startups and I'm sure they are not looking for people who just started learning Ruby on Rails. PHP gives you a clear overview how you can embed code in an HTML and also use a database with it makes much more sense. I will definitely pay for it if you went this route but I got my fingers crossed good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. Actually, PHP, I don't want. For several reasons: I want to teach concepts used in real world situations such as test driven development, object oriented programming, MVC, etc... and for all of these reasons, PHP is not a strong candidate. I know there are more jobs opportunities for Java, PHP, .NET, etc... but my goal is also not to produce corporate drones but passionate people :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

In order to answer the various questions raised on all the outlets where I asked 'what about this idea?', I created a faq here: [http://howtocode.io](http://howtocode.io)

Let me know what you think (I know it's ugly but the purpose is served)!

</comment><comment><USER3> you should sign up for your competitor's online bootcamps. See what they do, how they approach teaching the subject matter, etc... 2 years ago, michael hartl owned the marketshare for learning rails. Now, theres dozens of online courses teaching rails.

source: myself...I am an expert at "Learning Ruby/Rails"</comment>


Ask HN: Look for help order and deliver birthday cake in SF - <AUTHOR> Hi, I need someone in SF help me to order and deliver birthday cake. The cake link: http://www.schuberts-bakery.com/mousse-cakes/chocolate-mousse-with-whipped-cream-cake.html Deliver to San Ramon, east bay. I am currently not in US and my credit card was expired. The cake shop does not deliver so you either order and deliver yourself for me or make an order for me via TaskRabbit. I can pay you via Freelancer.com or paypal. Thank you very much. <comment><USER2> The problem with Paypal for such a task is that the recipient has no protection from chargebacks in such a case.

SF to San Ramon and back is quite a drive, so be prepared to pay accordingly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your reply. Payment can be done via Freelancer.com escort service. Yes it's about 2 hours from SF to San Ramon and back. How much is appropriate for order and delivery? If there is similar cake shop around San Ramon, that would also be great.</comment></comment>


Texas Man Arrested for $4.5M Bitcoin Ponzi Scheme - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanmaglich/2014/11/06/texas-man-arrested-for-4-5-million-bitcoin-ponzi-scheme/

<comment><USER2> I remember seeing pirateat40's scam happening live. I could not believe that anyone could possibly fall for a fund offering 10%+ per week, and when I found out that he ran off with 150k bit coins, I laughed _so_ hard. The bitcoin community always found ways to amaze me.

<comment><USER3> What's really hilarious is that not only did the vast majority of the bitcoin community _not_ get scammed, but you don't have to be a bitcoin user to be ponzi-scheme'd, since it happens to people everywhere all the time! It's so funny.

<comment><USER4> reactive defensiveness and insecurity isn't actually very funny imo

<comment><USER3> The whole situation is not funny. That was my point.

<comment><USER4> if you can't find humor in the absurd level of fraud in the bitcoin sphere you're poorer for it

<comment><USER3> This reply is in direct contradiction to your first reply to me, which was a write-off of my laughing at the situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am shocked! Shocked that an unregulated asset class that has attracted every technoutopian, financial naïf, and get-rich-quick dreamer would have a Ponzi scheme in the community.

Every once in a while something happens where possibly some of the old rules don't apply; suddenly a lot of people believe that none of the old rules are of any use at all. E.g., the dot-com bubble, when the new economy changed everything! Until it all came crashing down.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm hoping for more of these Internet crimes, if only because the transcription of Twitter posts into official court documents amuses me. Or is that "#amusesme"?

<comment><USER7> its called #seeyouindeposition

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone know more about this story? Could he have gotten away with this if he were in a country with less regulations? Was part of the pitch that he was from the US or was that irrelevant to his investors?

<comment><USER9> You can rarely get away with Ponzi schemes. For an example of a less regulated country, check out the Albanian schemes [1] which reached 50% of GDP and then led to rioting, civil war, the fall of the government.

[1] [http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/jarvis.htm](http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/jarvis.htm)

<comment><USER10> But they ~got away with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 11% per _week_! If it sounds too good...

<comment><USER12> If it sounds too good to be true, then you'd better put all your savings into it quick before it gets shut down?

<comment><USER13> You're liable for clawbacks. Madoff investors who pulled out early and received more than they should have at the expense of others were all sued by the trust responsible for recompensing victims. Best to just stay out of it.

<comment><USER12> Wow, I had no idea. I was joking, but that's interesting just the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> With ponzi schemes, I always have wondered if they "work" because some people even see that they are ponzi schemes, but believe themselves to be part of the early investor set that will receive they promised shares and "outsmart" the person leading the scheme.

</comment><comment><USER15> Should've tried Kickstarter instead.

<comment><USER16> I assume that's a joke, but there's a lot of shady crowdfunding, "crowdsales", IPOs, and "ICOs" going on in Bitcoin land. They're not Ponzis because they don't promise any specific level of return but the effect is similar and the SEC is cracking down on some of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> 4.5 million bitcoin scheme, 40 million in fines? Ridiculous. According to the article he took around 1 million for personal use and returned the rest.

<comment><USER18> He kept _150,000_ Bitcoin.. Today they'd be worth over $50M. If you stole a stack of stock certificates on a day when they were only worth $10 and were arrested on a day when they were worth $100, you couldn't just pay back $10 in cash and walk away with the stock, why should BTC be any different?

<comment><USER19> Failure to repay is subtly different from going out and stealing in the traditional manner. If you fail to repay stock and get super lucky with the value I think you _should_ be able to pay cash+interest+penalties* and walk away. (And play roulette next time, less likely to end in jail.)

They're not going to demand less money if the stock goes down, are they?

*penalties perhaps meaning you pay $30 plus interest</comment></comment></comment>


Thank You HN: From 30 people whose lives you saved - <AUTHOR> Three months ago we launched Watsi.org (first global crowdfunding platform for healthcare) here on HN, and the response was amazing.
I hope this doesn't sound too corny with Thanksgiving tomorrow and all, but I wanted to thank the HN community for giving us our start. Not only did HN directly fund every medical treatment we had on the site at the time, but the buzz that resulted gave me the confidence to quit my day job, take the plunge, and dedicate myself to Watsi full time.
Most important, thank you for the feedback you provided. It's funny, but whenever I feel like we're losing focus, I come back to the comments on our Show HN (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4424081) to remind myself of what's really important.
In our first three months our volunteer team has processed nearly $30,000 in donations, 100% of which have gone directly to patients in need. And while this is just the start, we wanted to take the time to say thank you HN. Not just from us, but from the 30 people who've received life-changing medical care because of you, and the 3 million more to come. <comment><USER2> I've been following Watsi for a while, and it's great to the continued success. They're currently tied for first in a HuffPo competition to win $10k which would help them reach even more people in need of medical aid. If you want to help them out, you can vote in 10 seconds for them here [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/14/millennial- impact-c...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/14/millennial-impact- challenge-finalists_n_2128936.html?utm_hp_ref=impact)

<comment><USER3> Voted for Watsi. They're currently ahead by less than 3%, so they could use a little push!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Your open Google doc is what persuaded me. I've always felt uncomfortable donating to charities - knowing well that my money may never go towards the cause they're touting, but on TV ads, expense accounts, PR Campaigns etc. While some argue it's operation costs but it's just not transparent enough.

Your easy to access and understand table really lifts the veil, as well as your clear separation of Donations going to the patients vs. Donations to the operating costs. I think people are definitely more willing to open their wallets knowing that 100% of the money go towards directly helping the patient.

Definitely suggest setting up a recurring payment option - while some people would love to help out continuously, they may not have the time to read each case (and then having to decide who to help) and come back once in a while(paradox of choice) - just take $100 bucks each month out of my account and let me know how that $100 was spent. Also give the option of deciding a % of the donation go towards operation and a % go towards the patient (like a slider style) so people don't have to feel compelled and work to donate in 2 flows.

And knowing that you guys may have a challenge of getting operation donations, offset it by giving us easy to add social widgets or just a simple graphic to add to our blogs and sites. I have no problem showing it next to my Dribbble and LinkedIn icons knowing that you guys have a really tight budget and may not have PR money. (I think free social advertising works better than those in your face PETA campaigns anyway. Makes us feel like we're directly helping out by displaying it on our sites :D)

</comment><comment><USER5> Oh my god! I missed this for a while but .. wait a minute. You're saying that I can find $580 and help save this kid Cesar ?!

Or Alan even ?!

This is absolutely FANTASTIC!! I'm really curious as to how you carry out on the ground execution (getting the money to the family, carrying out the needed medical procedures, etc.) and stuff but I absolutely love the idea. Amazing work guys!

EDIT: Just donated $25 :) Oh yeah, just noticed this. If I click on "Tweet" on the site, the pre-filled tweet says "via @sharethis". You might want to change that to say "via @watsi_org" so that you know when someone shares your stuff =)

EDIT2: Just voted for you at the huffington post thing. Looks like it's close! 51-48 so far :O

EDIT3: GOOD GOING HACKERNEWS :D I just checked the site and:

 _There are 0 people on Watsi that need your help!_

AWESOME!!! (<http://watsi.org/fund-treatments>)

</comment><comment><USER6> Clickable to Watsi: <http://watsi.org/>

Clickable to original thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4424081>

</comment><comment><USER7> Great work Adam, and the Watsi team!

However, its the time to scale up higher. I came to the website and saw that there were no patients to help. Surely this means that the scouting team should be enlarged. Tie-ups with other NGOs would help, who can provide you details about patients who need help.

Here in India, there is a very reputed hospital called AIIMS, who have subsidized treatment, but still ask for some nominal payment. Also, patients have to buy medicines on their own. Watsi could be a great help to these patients, since the amount of money they require is only nominal, and many times, these patients can't even afford that. Some of these medications would cost as little as $20/month. Partnering up with such institutions would get you a credible list of people needing help, and this list is perfectly aligned to the 'low-cost, high-impact' patients you aim at.

I'm willing to help you with operations in India, if you are willing to expand.

Keep up the great work!

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, this is so, _so_ awesome. You made the right choice to quit your job for this. :)

I am really really looking forward to see this become big. Kudos to you for building this thing. I should also note that you've made a beautiful site as well, I can't find any faults in it by any aspect. I wish you much success.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a wonderful idea being executed completely by volunteers. It can be a game changer for those in impoverished countries. You can help out even more by voting in the Huffington Post IgniteGood contest. Watsi has a 50% chance of winning $10,000.00. Please vote for them so they can continue doing this amazing work. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/14/millennial- impact-c...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/14/millennial-impact- challenge-finalists_n_2128936.html?utm_hp_ref=impact)

</comment><comment><USER10> Congrats on the great work! Just a quick question; have you considered making a WordPress plugin to display today's top causes?

I worked on a project similar to that for Oxfam Novib (Blogsfam) which didn't make it due to organizational friction but won several awards nonetheless.

It might be an interesting addition to your platform...

</comment><comment><USER11> Do you have a way yet to charge on a recurring basis? #shutUpTakeMyCreditCardAndChargeItMonthly

</comment><comment><USER12> It literally takes half a second to get what the site does and how to help. Brilliant.

I'd put the mailing list or something similar more prominently above the fold, because more people would regularly return if they'd get a weekly or monthly email with success stories and new profiles/stories that still need funding.

F.e. currently every project is fully funded and I almost fear forgetting about the site.

Anyway great project if you need someone to help with some marketing ideas or anything else from time to time (of course for free), send me a mail (me[at]ilkthomas[dot]com). I'd love to help.

</comment><comment><USER13> Your website is excellent, I've helped five people so far.

Just two suggestions:

1\. Please give me a way to view who I have helped. A followup story would be great too.

2\. Please give me a way to find out about new people

<comment><USER14> Also, on your "donate to help cover our overhead" page, you might consider giving suggested donation amounts. I have no idea what your overhead is, what amount would help you reach more patients, what your current funding is, etc.

Providing suggested amounts may also boost donations (see [http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669882/how-touchscreen- buttons-...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669882/how-touchscreen-buttons-made- nyc-cabbies-a-lot-richer))

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do. This is a great idea. We're hoping to even have a fundraising bar ($X raised out of $X needed this month) to encourage people to give.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Since everything is fully funded you should give people the option of funding in advance.

Be open about it of course, and send them an email as soon as you know who the money is going to.

Also give people the option of getting an email when there is someone in need. (To avoid annoying people perhaps limit the email to the next 3 people, then stop sending them for a user specified time.)

<comment><USER16> Another option is to donate to their operating costs here (<http://watsi.org/about>) under the Donate to Watsi heading.

<comment><USER17> Wonder if there should be an option to over-donate. I'm particularly sympathetic to certain illnesses that I've lost loved ones to, and covering the cost of the immediate treatment is lovely but I wouldn't mind giving that person a little more so they can be comfortable while recovering and cover future bills from follow-up treatment too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I just tried to access the site and got a Heroku error page. Looks like you guys are under some significant load? This is an excellent idea.

I'm left to wonder how well this idea would transplant to a country like the United States. Everyone has varying degrees on Obama's healthcare act depending on where you fall on the political spectrum - but wouldn't it make the entire conversation moot if the private sector were able to fund stuff like this?

What about directly funding and putting a face to the efforts of someone who is homeless finding a job? Plenty of people give to organizations like Goodwill and United Way, but you very rarely get to have a picture put with where your dollars are going. There would be a lot of details to work out, and the idea is certainly ambitious - but if Watsi is able to succeed this much then hey, someone should give it a shot.

So much good is happening here. You guys are brilliant, and I'm thankful for people like you. Cheers.

<comment><USER19> Check out giveforward.com for a US version of this.

<comment><USER18> Good to know. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I can't help feeling that there's some of the ingredients needed to create an entirely new form of health insurance in here.

I'm ridiculously glad its working as well as it is. Its like watching the start of an avalanche. You don't really know what exactly is going to happen, but the ground is rumbling and you're sure its going to be huge and exciting.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is my favorite comment of all time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Every now and the something comes along that is a real game changer. The internet was such a thing and it in turn engendered with web, which gave us WikiPedia, the Khan Academy and now this. What a super concept!

I hope you guys will be able to avoid the various pitfalls and traps that other charities seem to fall in to (where it becomes more about them than about those they help), by the looks of it you will be in excellent shape in that department.

Edit: you've covered this in the faq, but you may want to make it more plain, your donations are tax deductible, you might want to emphasize that. Especially for corporations that's a big thing, and it could get you corporate sponsors willing to name you. I know you're peer-to-peer but don't underestimate corporate dollars and riding their PR machine for free.

</comment><comment><USER22> Great work guys. I agree with the other comments, I just felt something powerful as soon as I hit the landing page, and just had to donate (and I don't do that much).

It's amazing that just 10 minutes ago Cesar needed $500 and now he's fully funded. Keep up the awesome work!

</comment><comment><USER23> Wow, that's a pretty great site.

You should make it easier for people to give bigger gifts -- to do so people need your tax ID and address info, so they can set you as beneficiary for 401ks (if you die before collecting), etc. And most people don't know anything about this, so maybe a 1-pg on "how to save 10 lives for free*" or something.

Also, a lot of people donate specifically before the end of the (tax) year, so a focused campaign in December would make a lot of sense.

If you possibly can, get reviewed by Givewell.

</comment><comment><USER24> I am a student at USC. I could not do much on the financial side of it but I sure did spread the word on Twitter and other channels. I e-mailed them about the awesome work they were doing and told them that I would help them from the technology side if they required me. Then I got a reply back from Chase (co- founder) himself. In life very seldom you get a chance to do something meaningful, they are doing it! Hats off. Go Watsi!!

</comment><comment><USER25> @chaseadam It would be quite nice to have an option to use this in a gittip sort of way. Also how do you go about finding people to donate to? I have contacts with a Ugandan Hospital and I'm sure others here have have worked on the ground with folks that would love to link up with you guys. Thanks for your awesome work and good luck

</comment><comment><USER26> This is such a brilliant idea, and looking at the site now everyone is fully funded. And major kudos for taking the risk of quitting your day job to head such a great non-profit. If you ever need any extra dev hands, I'll happily help any way I can.

</comment><comment><USER27> The problem would be verifying that the people are real, they have the claimed illnesses, they get the claimed treatment, it's the right treatment, they ask for the right amount, have the claimed outcomes and checking where remaining money goes.

</comment><comment><USER28> If there are any plans to expand to Asia, I would be happy to bounce ideas. I think this is a fantastic idea. I have been involved in healthcare startups (co-founded one) for the last 2 years in Singapore, so this is extremely interesting to me.

</comment><comment><USER29> Congrats, this is really awesome. We're building a crowd-funding site in the charity space. Where one can fund a project directly and relieve updates on project progress. So that your money is going directly to help.

</comment><comment><USER30> You guys rock man!

I would love to meet you guys if you are in SF. This is the kind of deep impact stuff that I want to be doing or at least sponsoring.

</comment><comment><USER31> Woah @ prefunding-treatement. Brilliant! I hope it scales - It can, I think, if you keep momentum.

</comment><comment><USER32> Gratitude is never too corny for Thanksgiving. And thanks for putting the platform together :-)

</comment><comment><USER33> Well done! Support for Google Checkout and Amazon Payments will help a lot, I think.

</comment><comment><USER34> You guys are absolute heroes. The concept behind this site is amazing. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER35> Here's to another 30 more!

</comment><comment><USER36> you should build widgets so that others can embed the top stories from your site and get distributed exposure, I'm sure it would provide sustained exposure.

</comment><comment><USER37> chase - this is great :) if you're up for it, we would be happy to donate some iOS time to the mobile app.

</comment><comment><USER38> 795 donations so far totalling $28,515

</comment><comment><USER39> Holy shit. I can't remember a time when a website had an immediate impact on me like this. I mean, literally 5 seconds after landing on the site I got what they were trying to do and couldn't click the fund button fast enough. Such a simple idea but maybe that's what makes it so damn brilliant. So cool.

Edit: When I first went to the site 15 minutes ago there were two profiles of people in need of medical care. The total outstanding balance for both treatments was around $650 USD. In just 15 short minutes both treatments have been fully funded according to my inbox. That's just phenomenal, and I bet this story on HN has a lot to do with that!

<comment><USER40> this is indeed THE BEST web service that I've ever seen EVER. @chaseadam17 Do you take advantage of mobile apps/fb/twitter/etc.?

One thing I realized about your service. It's sustainable. Resources are NEVER depleted. I have a lot respect for Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, but according to them they intend on spending ALL their money on charity in their lifetime. So that means the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will be non-existent 100 years from now. Watsi is a gamechanger imo.

<comment><USER41>
      > So that means the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will be
      > non-existent 100 years from now.

Not necessarily. Put $100 billion into a trust and you can spend billions of dollars a year from the interest generated without depleting any capital. Barring unforeseen economic catastrophes, this can be sustained indefinitely.

<comment><USER42> Bill & Melinda Gates want to avoid the foundation spending money and energy staying alive. So the rule is that all the money has to be spent 50 years after they die.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> We did it Reddit!</comment>


Streaming services disrupted in Venezuela as Guaido speaks following uprising - <AUTHOR> https://netblocks.org/reports/streaming-services-disrupted-in-venezuela-as-guaido-speaks-following-public-uprising-xyMGnbAZ <comment><AUTHOR> Nice article showing how Maduro regime uses social media:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/04/30/social-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/04/30/social- media-remains-key-venezuelas-opposition-despite-efforts-block-it/)</comment>


Come Build a Company in a Weekend in Baltimore (Apr 15 - 17) - <AUTHOR> http://baltimore.startupweekend.org

<comment><USER2> I just heard about the event and wouldn't miss it for anything! I have a great idea that has a lot of potential for world wide mass attention. I am looking forward to pitching my idea and meeting a lot of great, like-minded people.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is going to be a great event. I believe there are about 100 folks registered so far. Please inform developers outside of the traditional startup scene about this so we can ensure a great influx of new blood into the community.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm participating in my first StartupWeekend at this event, and am looking forward to it.

I know that Mike Brenner and company have been doing a TON to make sure that we have a great space, good accommodations, and zero friction (that can be prevented).

</comment><comment><USER5> i'll be there :D</comment>


London's fatberg on show: 'We thought of pickling it' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/feb/04/fatberg-museum-london-display-pickling-age-waste <comment><USER2> And this is why you never wash cooking oil or fats down the drain. If they don't clog your drains, they _will_ collect like this and cause huge problems in sewers and water treatment plants.

Pour it in an empty milk carton or whatever and throw it in the household trash. And pour a full kettle of boiling water down your kitchen sink drain once in a while, it'll prevent fat from collecting and it'll kill any nasty smells, too.

E: "Ninety three per cent of its complex structure was said to consist of the element "wet wipe""

And don't flush wet wipes! Why do people still think this is OK?

<comment><USER3> >>And don't flush wet wipes! Why do people still think this is OK?

Because it literally says "flushable" on them?

<comment><USER2> Which is something the manufacturers continue to get away with, for absolutely no good reason.

Consumers' trust in marketing is mindblowing.

<comment><USER3> >>Consumers' trust in marketing is mindblowing.

On the other hand, I don't feel like consumer should have to care about this at all. If it says flushable, it should be flushable. I'd trust relevant agencies to enforce this, just like they already enforce "free range", "organic" and "juice" \- at least here in UK those terms have a legal meaning behind them and consumers can safely know they get what they pay for. If a wipe says "flushable" but it isn't, then that should be rectified on the regulatory level.

<comment><USER2> I think one should expect at least some level of critical thought.

Wet wipes are stored wet, for weeks, months or years. They do not decompose, in fact they stand up very well to liquids without losing structural integrity.

Applying just a bit of critical thought based on those observations, makes it abundantly clear that wet wipes will not dissolve in the wet environment of a sewer, and will in fact very easily get caught and cause a blockage.

<comment><USER3> I've literally just looked at the packet I have at home - it says "flushable and biodegradable". If these are not, in fact, true, then the manufacturer is pushing some impressive bs on people.

<comment><USER2> I believe they are, and I can't believe they're getting away with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >A third of Londoners admitted they didn't know you weren't supposed to flush fat down the sink.

So what _am_ I supposed to do with it? Put it in the trash? That's not acceptable for the same reason that putting anything liquid in the rubbish bin isn't acceptable. :/

<comment><USER5> Quite often you can wait for it to solidify before disposing of it.

<comment><USER4> I have a tiny kitchen with only room for a few pots and pans, which is pretty much the norm in London. That's not a terribly viable solution, I'm afraid.

This isn't quite as bad as saying "don't poop in the toilet; wait for it to dry out before putting it in the trash", but it's in the same neighborhood.

<comment><USER6> You pour it back into the container it came in when it's cool, and then you throw it out, or take it to your local household recycling centre where they can dispose of it for you.

<comment><USER7> Or keep a food tin around after emptying so you can pour the waste fat into it. Or seal it in something reusable and use it as the fat for your next fryjob.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone know why the fat doesn't get broken down by bacteria; why doesn't it just rot away?

<comment><USER9> London's water supply is pretty heavily chlorinated. Wouldn't that surpress bacterial activity?

<comment><USER10> Is it really though? I've lived three places in London and made sourdoughs with tap water in all with no trouble. If it can't kill nacent yeast cultures, I wouldn't expect it to have many chances against sewer bacteria.

<comment><USER11> TLDR: It's not as simple as "apply bleach - things die."

Yeast and bacteria are not the same thing. Practically, bleach doesn't kill yeast - if you try to kill fungus in your shower or on a wall with bleach, what that does is make it white. Which to us is a strong indication that it's dead, but it probably isn't.

To clean fungus from your shower, for example, you need to mix vinegar and fresh bleach with cold water (of which the fumes can actually kill you as well) and use the solution properly, or use an industrial cleaning agent.

Of course, someone who bleaches their shower will probably also wash it after (you should wash it _first_ before applying bleach), which might simply _physically remove_ most of the fungus from the surface. But depending on the solution you use, the fungus won't actually die.

Note that the above is mostly true in household use of bleach, and not in correct use. Bleach _does_ kill most fungus if used correctly, but essentially noone does. Hot water significantly reduces the effectiveness of bleach, and so does using _more_ than you should, and also it loses effectiveness rapidly when it comes in contact with unclean surfaces, fat/organic material (which there is plenty of on your wall), etc, and also doesn't have a long shelf-life (20% effectiveness lost yearly if stored properly). It also needs 10-30 minutes of contact time, compared to some prepared solutions that are 90% effective in a few seconds, and 95% effective after 10 seconds.

<comment><USER12>
      you need to mix vinegar and fresh bleach
      with cold water (of which the fumes can
      actually kill you as well)

All the results I can find on Google for "bleach vinegar" say "Do not do this, chlorine gas is poison" \- where can I learn more about how to do it properly, and why it works?

<comment><USER11> I _believe_ it was Charlie Talley on this podcast: [http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/3/9/0/390da96899933961/bbr03-29-07...](http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/3/9/0/390da96899933961/bbr03-29-07.mp3?c_id=1452161&expiration=1517859027&hwt=a5f7704d3178c89acade9ab7473b9bc4)

Essentially, you use the vinegar to adjust the pH of the water to the correct level - 8.0 - to get the right effect from the bleach (chlorine). Again, I have to stress what I said in my first post, that this _can be deadly for you_ if you don't use it correctly.

[http://podbay.fm/show/75092679/e/1175200200](http://podbay.fm/show/75092679/e/1175200200) might be a better link, I'm not sure. Interview starts around 9:30.

Charlie is the inventor of Star San, a sanitizing solution used in breweries and by homebrewers. Which should make you skeptical, but don't be. He's essentially an expert who made a fantastic product, and only wants to help. In the podcast he outlines how to use normal household products as replacements for his products.

I haven't listened to it since 2012 or so, so if I am mistaken about the source, please let me know and I'll find the correct source of the information in my original post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _Flushers report finds of motorbikes, prams, coins, phones and jewellery – > and once a live hand grenade._

OK, I understand coins, phones, jewellery and even hand grenades. But how do you flush a motorbike or a pram? :-O

<comment><USER3> I imagine people open the sewer cover on the street and push stuff in.

<comment><USER14> Or dump them in creeks and open channels which may drain through combined sewer systems. It's common to have signs posted around storm drain systems telling people not to dump waste in there, which obviously means people _do_ dump waste in there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A plumber I know once told me he could tell the ethnicity of the family that lived in a home by the type and color of grease clogging the drain.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wish they could somehow preserve it more perfectly. Could they encase the thing in a cube of acrylic? Maybe the heat of the liquid acrylic would damage it?

The fatberg should be preserved as a monument to the staggeringly wasteful nature of our current culture. Then keep it on exhibit even after we reach a sustainable future, to remind people what things were like before we started acting more responsibly towards our planet.

</comment><comment><USER17> I like to think that in some small way, I helped make this piece of art :-)

</comment><comment><USER18> This is truly disgusting. (Sorry.)</comment>


Would the last spy out please turn out the lights? - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE53729120090408

<comment><USER2> No surprises there.

I've written software for a electricity generation company that provides operator guidance on the level of generation requested by the market on a real-time basis.

Eventually, said company is interested in linking that software with their control systems to automate the regulation of the power plant. This is, to my mind, kind of scary. The regulatory bodies seem to agree - should that happen my software would be subject to audit as a "critical cyber-asset".

<comment><USER3> What sort of network is/would this be on? I would like to think this would be on a dedicated network but is a vpn more common?

I'm assuming this isn't going to be publicly accessible.

<comment><USER2> The app lives on a dedicated server, running a "secure by default" OS (hint hint), on a private network. The network firewall is configured to only allow inbound connections for one protocol from two public IP addresses. All other public traffic is outbound-only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can anyone explain (or at least speculate) a little bit more about what kind of vectors the "cyberspies" might have used?

The article didn't seem to imply physical presence, so my mind goes next to social engineering and e-mail trojans.

I'm assuming our power grid doesn't have externally-accessible web servers that are linked to the actual management functions...

      http://uspowergrid/admin/show_grid.php?plant_id=19';DROP TABLE powergrid;

That would be really frightening.

<comment><USER4> Some Slashdot-spelunking resulted in a few comments that seemed reasonable:

[http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1191575&cid=27502...](http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1191575&cid=27502107) The poster makes some odd similes in advancing an argument that the biggest problem is not central computers, but the endpoint devices at substations and such.

[http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1191575&cid=27503...](http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1191575&cid=27503427) This poster asserts that a drive to create interconnectability has resulted in more open access.

I feel like I have more information, but not much more understanding of the answer to my original question. :-)

<comment><USER5> The first comment notes that the security risk is in the protective relays. Well, maybe. It also carries an implication that digital relays are in and of themselves a security risk. I intern at a major manufacturer of digital protective relays, so I know how these communicate. (None of this, as far as I'm aware, is trade secret.)

The purpose of a protective relay is to detect a line fault (lightning strikes, arc flash, the distribution line is knocked down). Upon detecting a line fault, the relay trips a circuit breaker to protect the rest of the grid from voltage irregularities. Relays are located along major distribution lines, and to find the substation these relays are located in, all you really have to do is find a major distribution line (easy enough from the air) and follow it until you reach a substation. There are maps of the major electrical distribution lines, and they're not difficult to find.

The "smart grid" depends upon digital relays, but the grid has been smarter than we've given it credit for because digital relays have been around for 25 years. The power industry is very conservative—electromechanical relays worked for decades—so digital relays were a hard sell in the first place. So certain features were added to them. The first was fault location—a microprocessor- based digital relay, even in 1984, could calculate the location of a fault and store that information upon detection. Digital relays were and remain significantly less expensive than electromechanical relays, so they were originally sold simply as fault locators. (Due to cost, power consumption, testability, and maintainability, digital relays have advantages over electromechanical relays anyway, but these advantages weren't enough to convince power companies 25 years ago. Even now, 60% of North American relays are electromechanical, and 90% of world relays are electromechanical.) Over time, more features were added. One feature, developed largely in response to the New York blackouts a few years ago, is synchrophasors. Synchophasors allow a control station to monitor the voltage angles on distribution lines and maintain better control over them. This is a very, very time-sensitive process, but it also requires relays, synchrophasor processors, and computers loaded with control software to be networked together over large geographical areas. I'm not an EE so I don't have a full appreciation of what this means, but it's important.

A typical protective relay from a top-of-the-line manufacturer accepts connections over an RS-232 serial connection, but it also supports TCP and telnet over an ethernet interface. Relays will often be connected to a single communications processor that will allow several relays at once to communicate over large areas. These comprocs, again, support RS-232 serial connections as well as networking.

If you can access a comproc, you can access any of the relays, clocks, or other devices connected to it. That means you can cause trips, alter settings, and do all sorts of nasty stuff. Which makes it vitally important that power companies do things like change the default passwords and secure their communication networks—something largely outside the manufacturer's control. It's possible (and encouraged) to implement it securely but in practice it's not always done.

<comment><USER4> I really appreciate the time you took to reply, and feel like I have a much improved understanding of the landscape.

And now: a short thought on default passwords!

It feels like default passwords should not mean "operate normally". When you have the default password set on a router, it ought to keep bugging you to change it before it works as expected.

It'd need to be an industry standard to avoid companies touting theirs as "easier" because it doesn't require setting a password.

Though this would make it harder to steal a neighbor's wi-fi while one waits for one's own installation after moving into a new apartment.

Tradeoffs, tradeoffs.

<comment><USER5> While that's true for consumer goods, one would hope that a power company would know well enough to change the default password.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"The Chinese have attempted to map our infrastructure, such as the electrical grid,"_

So as to learn what NOT to do?

In the last two big nor'easters I've spent half a week without electricity each. That's not what I would consider first world infrastructure. Winter happens - predictably so, it's time we stop being surprised by it.

<comment><USER7> Get a generator. I live in the Northeast US too and it took only 1 snow storm with no power (or water) for 5 days to take the plunge. Your problems are more local than 'national'. I agree we have problems all around, but your personal experience does not reflect the national challenges we face with our grid.

<comment><USER6> I rent, but if I buy, I'm buy a generator along with house.

However, I've heard pretty much the same story about predictable outages from other parts of the country like the Midwest.

Obviously the south has hurricanes, but I'm not sure even hurricanes should cause long term outages.</comment></comment></comment>


Tumblr blog running on Meteor - <AUTHOR> http://q42.nl/blog Using the Tumblr API, we ported our Tumblr blog to Meteor. Source code:
https://github.com/Q42/q42.nl/blob/master/server/blog.js
Actual Tumblr blog:
http://blog.q42.nl
When you first load the blog, if there are no posts, it fetches them with the API and puts them in our MongoDB, which is synced to the client's minimongo store by Meteor. Since everything is reactive, if we post a new post, it will automatically show up without visitors having to refresh the page.
So far we're very impressed with Meteor, our main site at q42.nl runs on it too. Try it out yourself: http://meteor.com or join a meetup: http://meetups.meteor.com <comment><AUTHOR> Using the Tumblr API, we ported our Tumblr blog to Meteor. Source code:

<https://github.com/Q42/q42.nl/blob/master/server/blog.js>

Actual Tumblr blog:

<http://blog.q42.nl>

When you first load the blog, if there are no posts, it fetches them with the API and puts them in our MongoDB, which is synced to the client's minimongo store by Meteor. Since everything is reactive, if we post a new post, it will automatically show up without visitors having to refresh the page.

So far we're very impressed with Meteor, our main site at q42.nl runs on it too. Try it out yourself: <http://meteor.com> or join a meetup: <http://meetups.meteor.com></comment>