Ask HN:  Flash websites? - <AUTHOR>

I remember way back in the day, all the "hip" people were building flash websites, yet the web gurus would advocate against them because of slow connection speeds (dial up was still the norm back then), + SEO problems, among other things.<p>What has changed since?  Were there other reasons (not) to build a website in flash? <comment><USER2> The main reason is that almost all flash websites are a huge pain in the ass to use, you can't link within them, you (usually) can't copy text out of them, and they generally put whiz-bang visuals above the users' ability to, y'know, _use_ them.

</comment><comment><USER3> SEO is still quite valid. Accessibility is/was also an issue (screen readers, etc.) In addition, today, more and more people have HUGE monitors, and I have -never- seen a good fluid width/height flash site.

</comment><comment><USER4> have you noticed how most flash sites make you wait to load, then put an intro,then when you go in, you have to wait for the site to load again. Then the whole page is about 800x600, and you have to keep clicking to see 10% of what you could normally see on a normal website. I think they also deliberately make all those flash page scrollers narrower than possible.

</comment><comment><USER5> doesn't work on many platforms including the iphone</comment>


Apple's AR Glasses Are Hiding in Plain Sight - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/apple-ar-glasses/ <comment><USER2> Something wonky is going on. I just get this text-only error message:

{"statusCode":404,"error":"Not Found","message":"Not Found"}

I must have missed the action since the post got 6 points. I doubt it was for the unhandled 404 message.

<comment><AUTHOR> Weird. Link works for me. Maybe a ad blocker or something

<comment><USER2> Whatever it was, it has sorted itself out and I see it properly again.

The error message I saw isn't because of ad blockers or whatever, as what they displayed isn't the kind of output professional sites normally present to humans.

But it's history now, so we're all good. Hopefully they can fix their error handler some day.</comment></comment></comment>


Canary analysis: Lessons learned and best practices from Google and Waze - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/devops-sre/canary-analysis-lessons-learned-and-best-practices-from-google-and-waze <comment><USER2> There are 2 gaps here, at least as they relate to my understanding of what "canaries" are (based on experience):

1\. Requiring manual validation of canary results is antithetical to CI/CD principles. If you can't trust your canaries enough to automatically promote or block based on results, doing manual validation is just a band-aid that will have to be ripped off painfully eventually.

2\. Canaries should run continuously against all deployment stages, not just as a one-time approval process in your pipeline. Good canaries give visibility into baseline metrics at all times, not just when validating a new application version.

Overall I would say this guide aligns more with what I would term as a non- CI/CD load-test approval workflow rather than a "canary".

<comment><USER3> Author here.

1\. Yes. This is what the article explains in the "Monitor your new pipeline before you trust it" section. This is more of a "how to get started", and when you just created your canary config, you probably don't want to trust it just yet to push to production.

2\. I'm not sure I understand here. What version of your application is your canary running if you're not using it to validate a new version? The same as the baseline? But then, what are you using it for?

<comment><USER4> For #2 canaries are commonly run against the stable/"production" deployment on some sort of periodic basis. This is used to approximate a customer experience and detect faults in underlying components, intermediate infrastructure, or changes outside of "the software" like configuration data. Its an adjunct or backstop to metric based anomoly detection. From what Ive seen.

Edit: as an aside theres a very interesting area of discusssion around the spectrum of integration tests, canaries, & user experience monitoring. If you change the periods and the sources they seem to blend in to the same outcome. Ie write your integ tests to cover the ux. Run them continuosly. Associate results with underlying inputs. Suddenly theyre very much the same thing.

<comment><USER5> I suspect you are confusing the terms.

What Google/Netflix call a "Canary" other companies call "deploying a single host/percentage of production traffic with a new version". When other companies talk about canaries they mean regular tests against production to detect issues.

<comment><USER4> Youre correct. I didnt catch the distinction when I first skimmed the article and parent comment. Part of it is that my active "canary" tests themselves emit relevant TSD indicative of system performance.

The general concept outlined Id lump in to "approval workflows." The gradual, intentional, deployment of mixed versions to the same workload Id call something like A/B or red/blue version deployments.

<comment><USER6> At least from what I've seen red/green (I've heard blue/green) or A/B deployments represent a different thing. A blue/green deployment says you have 2 environments, each able to handle all of your traffic. So you have 2x the servers you need running, and move traffic between environments to upgrade. Its double buffering, but with binary versions.

The (traffic) canarying process that Google and Netflix use, and that is described in this article is distinct from that, since you don't need a significant amount of overhead.

<comment><USER4> Huh. Nomenclature. FWIW Ive also never heard of A/B being limited to binary or requiring full N sets of resources. I've only seen it as small subsets of traffic that is ramped up to some confidence interval. Similarly two concurrent variants is the simplest and minimal value. But Ive also seen literally thousands of concurrent variants with enough workload & consumers. Agree on overhead, as it's essentially a version management + stable routing problem you dont/shouldnt increase resource requirements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> joatmon-snoo For clarification, "canary" in this article refers to rolling out a new release to some small subset of production traffic, a la canary release (eg [https://martinfowler.com/bliki/CanaryRelease.html](https://martinfowler.com/bliki/CanaryRelease.html)).

At least a few other people in the comments are saying that in their experience, "canaries" are black-box monitoring programs that simulate critical user journeys. This is not what this article is discussing.

</comment><comment><USER7> > Spinnaker is an open-source, continuous delivery system built by Netflix and > Google

Politely correct me if I'm wrong...isn't Spinnaker originally a Netflix system, having nothing to do with Google? Unless perhaps the author is alluding to open source contributions by Google after the tool went open source?

<comment><USER8> It is originally a Netflix creation but Google has been a contributor since it went open source. In particular, the canary analysis features were co- developed with Google. (I was a contributor on the Netflix side.)

<comment><USER9> That is correct. Google played a big role in open-sourcing Spinnaker alongside Netflix back in Nov 2015.</comment></comment></comment>


Boeing admits knowing of 737 Max problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48174797 <comment><USER2> I'm sure Boeing knows of many problems with their aircraft. The question is whether they are a serious threat to life and safety. In this one, they miscalculated.</comment>


Breathing May Change Your Mind About Free Will - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200206080449.htm <comment><AUTHOR> The interpretation of "free will" by the researchers for this paper is that of voluntary decisions.</comment>


We Built an API for iMessage - <AUTHOR> https://usebalto.com/blog/balto-origin-story%20 <comment><USER2> Just came across this. Quite cool - the premium communication hook could be a pretty big pull.

I'm building a chat app that doesn't need phone numbers for communication and I'd love to have a brief chat (email/text) if its ok with you. Just want to get your thoughts on the problem since it's in a slightly similar space.</comment>


X Is For... - <AUTHOR> https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/x-is-for/ <comment><USER2> As a non native English speaker,I find letter X fascinating.My mother tongue doesn't have it,unless math is involved.For many years I thought that Xena,Xeon or even Xerox were pronounced with 'ks' rather than 'z'....

<comment><USER3> Just out of curiousity, would xerox essentially be spelled zeroks in your native language, or something else?

<comment> andrew-v In Polish the situation is similar. 'X' does not appear in the Polish alphabet, but is understood as 'ks' (or 'ee-ks' when spelling). For example, 'xero' is pronounced 'kseh-roh' and sometimes written as 'ksero'. I guess it's true for many languages with Latin origns/influences (but I'm not an expert). So 'Xerox' would sound like 'kseroks'. And Windows XP sounds exactly backwards: instead of 'eks pee' you have 'ee-ks peh'.

The letter 'X' was widely used in Polish language 100-200 years ago in loanwords. Nowadays, you can't really see it anywhere, because the language adapted, and the ortography of those words changed. So now you can even see the pronunciation in the writing. A couple of English-Polish pairs of words in writing as an example: \- maximum - maksimum \- xylophone - ksylofon \- text - tekst</comment></comment></comment>


Ways to Improve the SEO of Any Website - <AUTHOR> http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/improve-seo-website-design/

<comment><USER2> 1\. yes, leads to more content 2\. irrelevant to SEO 3\. irrelevant to good search engines, eg Google. PS: Speed is relevant, yes. 5\. Irrelevant to actual rankings from what I know 6\. Duh. It's not a design if you don't tailor the site to your client.

Nothing new, many questionable statements. Move on, you won't miss anything.

PS: improve "SEO"? The O stands for optimisation.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's something about SEO like this that really bothers me. We should be designing and building websites for other human beings, not for robots and algorithms. However, search engines being the de facto way to find websites nowadays we'll continue down this slippery slope.</comment>


Show HN: Clusterpoint Cloud – NoSQL database-as-a-service - <AUTHOR> http://www.clusterpoint.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I would be glad for feedback on how Clusterpoint database seems in comparison to MongoDB or other NoSQL databases.</comment>


Is Cursive Handwriting Dead? - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5323302/is-cursive-handwriting-dead

<comment><USER2> My uncle had horrible handwriting, and then learned calligraphy, so he now writes beautifully. I would be sad to see that art form die off. But other than that, I'm happy to see cursive handwriting disappearing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Let's hope so. It's incredibly hard to read.

</comment><comment><USER4> I write in a mixture of cursive and print. Sometimes I'll write in cursive to offset text written in print, or vice versa. Ever since I learned cursive in the 4th grade, I've preferred writing in it. It feels more natural, more flowing.

I'd like to think my cursive is legible, but I generally write notes, papers, etc. for others in print.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am a programmer by trade but still find myself writing a copious amount on paper, I like the tactile feel. My writing is a mixture of print and cursive. I think that when hand-written notes and letters were a major component of communication it was much more important to have a standard writing system for communication's sake. The reality of the situation is that normally the only person reading anything I've handwritten is me, so I write in my print-cursive hybrid and read it just fine. If I'm writing to someone else it will more than likely be typed. This isn't really anything to be happy or sad about, just the reality that time marches on and things change.

</comment><comment><USER6> I never learned cursive. Even at 3 years old, when I was learning to write, it made no sense to me.

I still write "non cursive" (not really "print", just that letters are disconnected and I write each separately- each letter has a distinctive shape and some flourishes and so on) and my handwriting is clear and legible, but it seems to shock people when I _tell_ them I don't write cursive. Thay aren't shocked when _reading_ something i wrote. Strange, now that I think of it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Formal cursive was taught to kids (including myself) rather poorly, with no emphasis on practical use or even readability. It was just supposed to look like the shit in the picture. It seems to have mostly fallen out of the curriculum in US elementary schools, it's not like they don't have plenty of other crap to teach by rote in its place.

But flowing connected lettering is not bad! Cursive : Print :: Touch Typing : Hunt & Peck

At some point I realized that I was developing my own cursive style, starting with print letterforms drawn without PENUP. It looks pretty decent, but my mom's formal cursive is _amazing_ with a fine felt pen -- especially because her fingers aren't dextrous (she moves her whole arm) and she was forced to be right-handed as a child.

</comment><comment><USER8> Cursive may make sense if you're right-handed, but for us lefties, I say, good riddance.

I need to take my pen off the paper fairly often just to keep from losing track of what I've already written.

</comment><comment><USER9> As someone who is left handed I always had a hard time keeping the flow of cursive writing going while trying not to smear what I was writing. As soon as cursive was no longer required in school I opted instead for all caps, all the time because I can better control what I am writing and I like the aesthetic. Unfortunately when I write quickly some of the letters such as A, D, O, P, R devolve into lesser forms and start to look alike. Maybe it's a subconscious optimization?

</comment><comment><USER10> A friend of mine has a 2 year-old daughter. She's already learning how to type on the keyboard, though she's still a couple years away from entering school. Most likely, when she reaches age 5 or 6 she will already be able to read and write fluently with a computer, maybe have an IM account and even chat, but she will not be able to do handwriting.

</comment><comment><USER11> I always found it extraneous to force elementary school students to learn another form of writing. Why not just focus on refining existing print writing skills. In the end, everyone develops there own personal style anyway which inevitability inherits some of the characteristics of cursive.

How will this impact signatures?

</comment><comment><USER12> So, how about 'is handwriting dead ?'

I find that I sometimes can't even read my own notes after a couple of hours, forget about weeks or months.

The faster I get with a keyboard the worse it seems my writing skills are.

</comment><comment><USER13> I never noticed this before, interesting.

</comment><comment><USER14> It should obviously be replaced with Pitman Shorthand.

[http://cyberspacei.com/englishwiz/library/stenography/images...](http://cyberspacei.com/englishwiz/library/stenography/images/pitman1.jpg)

If you're in school and not allowed gadgetry and you need to write a lot, for years, often based on someone talking, why don't they teach _shorthand_?

It's phonetic - each part of a shape represents a sound and they are chained together, and they are designed to flow neatly when written unlike the awkward joining of ordinary characters. There are shortcuts for common patterns like endings ('ing', 'shun'). It's positional (high/mid/low per each line). Vowel sounds are dropped where not necessary, and where present they are the dots and dashes - positional (left/mid/right). It can make a distinction between light and dark pencil strokes to indicate voiced and unvoiced sounds.

In short, there are fewer marks to put on paper and the marks are simpler and more fluid to write.

</comment><comment><USER15> I took penmanship in school.I never used it, and now write in all caps when using a pen and paper. It's just as fast, and a lot easier to read. Penmanship is an art, beautiful as an art form, but really inconvenient as a form of communication.</comment>


"China's Tesla" NIO slashes thousands of jobs as losses mount - <AUTHOR> https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/China-s-Tesla-NIO-slashes-thousands-of-jobs-as-losses-mount <comment><USER2> China has around 25 electric car manufacturers not too unlike Detroit in its hay-day in 1920s. Sooner or later many will crash and burn and some merge to become bigger players. Long story short, industries with heavy CapEx sooner or later end up being handful of players.

BYD buses and ABQ rapid transit saga is an interesting one. Most of the Chinese electrics are not up to the snuff and so Albuquerque decided not to order any new buses and send back the ones delivered.

<comment><USER3> Are you including Geely in your list of manufacturers? Geely owns Volvo, and I'm eagerly looking forward to the (electric) 2020 Polestar 2 going on sale[1].

The tech will likely percolate downwards to Geely's non-flagship cars over the next few years.

1\. [https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/volvo-spinoff- polestar-...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/volvo-spinoff-polestar- reveals-its-battery-ev-the-polestar-2/)

<comment><USER4> So far no Volvo's built in China have left China, the Volvo's driven in the rest of the world are built outside of China. Will be interesting to see how Chinese vehicle production for international market works out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems to me like China wants the electric car manufacturing revolution to mainly be under their control/borders. My guess is that the reason they allowed Tesla so willingly is that Nio and other local companies had already started crashing hard and BYD with their tiny battery packs were unlikely to drive sufficient adoption, especially for export. The only way to grab the market was to lure in the best and drive more internal competition.

<comment><USER6> > _The only way to grab the market was to lure in the best and drive more > internal competition_

Post-Xi China isn't really about internal competition. More likely they're hoping to replicate Tesla's IP. (Tesla, in turn, bets it can gain more from selling in China than the IP it will lose in domestically-fabricated components.)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for being a realist. All the significant "competitors" domestically are arms of the Chinese state. Tesla's calculations have to be aware of that.

<comment><USER8> Elon has said that the key Tesla technology is the factories. The battery factory and the car factory that they are constantly evolving. That's much harder to replicate in China, mainly because those companies can operate very inefficiently thanks to State sponsorship.

[https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/30/automating- intelligentl...](https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/30/automating- intelligently-is-teslas-manufacturing-advantage/)

<comment><USER9> Tesla doesn't seem to keep engineering of new factory processes out of china [0]. The batteries for GF3 seem to be bought from LG Chem [1]. So yeah, I don't see Tesla being that worried about their IP or something like that.

[0] [https://old.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/d8un7f/tesla_i...](https://old.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/d8un7f/tesla_is_building_a_major_engineering_team_in/) [1] [https://old.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/d7i0vk/lg_chem...](https://old.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/d7i0vk/lg_chem_has_begun_to_mass_produce_batteries_for/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am convinced that everyone prefixing headlines with "China's Tesla" is trying to short Tesla.

<comment><USER11> Yes, everyone criticizing the company is a short seller making up lies to earn a few bucks. The lawsuits, fraudulent buyouts, sketchy accounting, executive overturn, ridiculous promises, lousy financials...

It's all made up. A giant conspiracy of short sellers.

<comment><USER10> You deliberately misinterpreted me. Criticizing Tesla or NIO is fine. Using headlines like this is intentionally misleading, carefully crafted to get ROI when the news hits the public (and when it hits the bots).

Tesla stock is down almost 8% today. Wonder why?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well the problem with cars is they cost a lot to make and the leeway for do overs is very less. China can co-opt IP but getting things right is very different with cars compared to consumer electronics, where they can iterate and improve.

</comment><comment><USER13> Somewhat tangential, I just visited a Polestar 2 booth set-up downtown Toronto, it's designed by Volvo but will be manufactured in China, it is really impressive vehicle, both looks and specs.

<comment><USER14> While I agree the Polestars are neat from a performance perspective, Volvos are some of the most unreliable vehicles that you can buy. But Luxury && Performance != Quality.

<comment><USER15> Is this an opinion or is your position supported by evidence?

The only thing I think of when I hear "Volvo" is safety. Not luxury, not performance, not quality, not reliability, not anything but safety.

I would be very surprised if they were less reliable than most sports cars.

<comment><USER16> I wonder why the American listings put Volvo at bottom (as there is no comprehensive annual inspection like the MOT or TÜV checks in Europe). In Europe, the bottom quality tends to be American and some French and Italian cars.

A fairly detailed statistics is from TÜV annual inspection reports, found here: [http://www.anusedcar.com/](http://www.anusedcar.com/)

There, Volvo is rather average. Where I live (Finland), Volvos tend to get a bit more kilometers than most other brands, so being not at the bottom of listing means they're doing reasonable quality.

<comment><USER14> Volvo is down there with American brands in the American reports...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I once wrote about them here. I questioned their rationale of trying to "beat" Tesla when Tesla itself was deep in red.

Were they took the enormous amount amount of money they got from investors, and put it into making electric Suzuki Alto lookalikes, they would've been bathing in cash now.

But no, those guys not only did not recognise Tesla's failure, but they doubled down on it, and ran a car company as if it was some Internet dotcom.

<comment><USER18> Tesla has not failed and is clearly not a failure.

<comment><USER19> Let's wait a couple more quarters before being able to say it is clearly not a failure. The only reason they are still alive is the hype around Elon Musk.

<comment><USER20> I have been waiting for Tesla's failure for 10 years. Tesla naysayers have been asking us to wait for couple of quarters for a decade now

<comment><USER21> Yeah I guess no one expected investors (and government subsidies) would keep pumping money into a sinking ship, yet here we are.

<comment><USER22> So they're all dumber than the naysayers, or.... ?

<comment><USER21> Well, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "China's Tesla" IS Tesla

</comment><comment><USER24> It took Tesla 16 years to become profitable, does Nio have enough cash to last another 12?

<comment><USER25> Is it profitable?

<comment><USER26> Not yet.. [https://ir.tesla.com/static- files/1e70a30c-20a7-48b3-a1f6-69...](https://ir.tesla.com/static- files/1e70a30c-20a7-48b3-a1f6-696a7c517959)

<comment><USER27> > yes [https://ir.tesla.com/static- > files/1e70a30c-20a7-48b3-a1f6-69...](https://ir.tesla.com/static- > files/1e70a30c-20a7-48b3-a1f6-69..).

from your link

> GAAP operating loss of $167M, GAAP net loss of $408M, including $117M of > restructuring and other charges

So, no they aren't profitable

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Has an "X" Killer company or product ever actually Killed X?

<comment><USER29> Mozilla comes to mind.

<comment><USER30> What has Mozilla ever killed? If you're about to say Internet Explorer--Google did that.</comment></comment></comment>


Will the Future of the Web Be More Like the Present? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/27/will-the-future-of-the-web-be-more-like-the-present/ <comment><USER2> He's wrong. The semantic web is about to hit a critical mass, and then amazing stuff is going to happen.</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any technology/geek radio stations online? - <AUTHOR>

I listen to a lot of podcast, but lately i don't get time to listen or watch all episodes. I was wondering if there are any technology related, non music, radio stations. One could just tune in when free and get some tech news, anything interesting.
I tried looking sifting through shoutcast, but couldn't find anything similar. <comment><USER2> no idea about radio stations... checkout some podcasts by people behind stackoverflow. Revision3.com -- checkout some shows related to hacking.</comment>


Time is more valuable then money - <AUTHOR> http://kennedysgarage.com/articles/time-is-more-valuable-then-money

<comment><USER2> Than __

<comment><AUTHOR> Every time!</comment></comment>


Cryptography pioneer Marty Hellman calls for compassion in threats - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/27/cryptography-pioneer-marty-hellman-on-using-compassion-in-personal-cyber-and-international-threats/ <comment><USER2> "International" solution sounds like a horrible idea. Who would this really benefit?</comment>


Early Copy Protection on the Apple II - <AUTHOR> http://www.fadden.com/techmisc/cassette-protect.htm <comment><USER2> My earliest memory defeating copy protection went like this: typical for games of my system in those days, programs were loaded from tape, and often consisted of a small stub program in BASIC to do loading/protection, followed by raw assembly loaded directly into memory .. if you tried to break out of the game and return to the BASIC interpreter, the stub loader would trap the break and issue a "NEW" command, 'wiping' the program from memory.

Well, someone figured out that all the NEW command did was set a single byte to #400, which was the top of usable memory or something, and then the interpreter would see .. nothing. So we wrote an "OLD" command that simply replaced that value with maximum memory avialable - and voila, program loaded again! I'll never forget the joy of typing in that 10-line OLD command, loading up a protected game, breaking into BASIC, seeing that the game had been 'wiped', then typing 'OLD' to get it all back again .. so I could save it to tape again. That moment sent me off on a wonderful journey that is still not over, 30 years later .. I think copy protection is responsible for motivating more software development by hackers over the decades than, perhaps, any other aspect ..

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, that brought back some memories. I used a darkStar SYSTEMS Snapshot board on my II+ to copy the contents of a program running in RAM to disk so I could then use assembler to edit out the copy protection. While my original Snapshot board is long lost, I still have the IIe version. I believe this would qualify as a hacking unicorn:

[http://defaultstore.com/copycat.png](http://defaultstore.com/copycat.png)

</comment><comment><USER4> The later protections were very interesting also.

The Apple II disk drives featured head movement that was operated by programmed I/O. For increments of a stepper motor were required to go from one track to another. This made it possible to write data in quarter track increments, giving rise to one copy protection scheme.

A conventional track-by-track disk copy program would not correctly copy data written in a spiral pattern using quarter track increments.

There were also schemes whereby tracks were written at a different speed. The logic-state-sequencer state machine for shifting bits from the head would still read the data correctly, but the program could tell a copy made at a conventional speed from the genuine article, due to the different size and content of the gap.

Programs that did this sort of thing would tend to have to be cracked by removing all the checks, and replacing their disk loading routines with conventional ones that read ordinary tracks that are copyable with any disk copying utility.

<comment><USER5> The way folks used to duplicate disks protected by custom head-positioning schemes was through a variety of track-by-track copying programs (Locksmith, Nibbles Away, and Penulticopy were the most popular IIR) that could be fed parameter files with custom instructions for head positioning/rotation speed to duplicate the data for a given piece of software.

These parameter files were generally created by the community, who raced to be the first to gain fame publishing the keys for whatever just released or impossible-to-crack software came out. For a brief time, there was a thriving underground of parameter file traders.

I knew of someone who'd actually compiled a book of parameters, got it printed at a local copy shop and would sell it for $16 at swap meets. He eventually got a C&D from the makers of Locksmith claiming that the parameters he was publishing were covered under their copyright (even though they were created by the community). Not sure if they actually had a legal case, but he wasn't about to find out.

<comment><USER4> The makers of Locksmith took a position which might be called "ironically consistent", as in: "We make a utility for breaking copyright, so, darn it, it behooves us to demonstrate deep ignorance of copyright!". :)

I used Nibbles Away and Locksmith, but never for disks that needed the parameters; just ordinary "garden variety" copying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not mentioned was the A2FS1 Flight Simulator Game, I still remember hacking it to make a tape copy.

1st stage loader was easy, but when I started the game from the tape copy it just printed:

"Stolen aircraft!" "Stolen aircraft!" etc.

Much later and after some Jolt Colas I got it running on the copy :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> aah - a trip down memory lane</comment>


Russia promises legal action over NSA surveillance scandal - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/politics/internet-surveillance-western-prevent-928/ <comment><USER2> As Americans I think we have reached some kind of milestone for irony when we are being (validly) lectured by the heirs to our cold war nemesis about privacy.

BTW, I think modern day Russia is pretty epic to visit, and there are a lot of brilliant engineers there.

<comment><USER3> I can vouch for there being brilliant engineers.

I recently went to an ACM ICPC practice week in Zurich. The teams present were mostly evenly matched, except for the Russians. They kicked ass completely. They won every single day by a long way.

<comment><USER4> I suspect that's a math-heavy competition? This goes back to the times of Dijkstra, who - when visiting Russia - wrote quite unflatteringly about most stuff Soviet but the one thing he praised was that his Russian lecture attendees were uncommonly well-grounded in math and the theory of computation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting that this event may spur countries into making their own electronics, rather than depending on multinational corporations which may include "special features" for the US government.

This encouragement of nationalism may be what we need to reduce the number of unemployed.

<comment><USER6> Good for consumers too. I wouldn't mind seeing... say... Indonesia's take on the app store concept. Growing middle class there that all want to teach their kids english.

These sorts of crises generate massive opportunities.

I think this gets filed under "Creative Destruction".

<comment><USER7> I want to see "Made in USA" on more electronic devices.

<comment><USER6> Given the late surveillance system revelations...

I don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is really just a distraction.

Currently Russia is using Syria and this as a distraction for much more low- profile energy consolidation moves in Eastern Europe. Russia doesn't care a white about NSA surveillance (they do the same thing after all with impunity) - what they do care about is keeping world focus away from moves to consolidate influence in their periphery.

<comment><USER9> Just like Qatar and its western allies are trying to use Syria… makes no difference to ordinary citizens in Syria…

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> lol: "NSA Is No Match for the FSB"

[http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/nsa-is-no- matc...](http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/nsa-is-no-match-for- the-fsb/481913.html)</comment>


Show HN: European Great Atlas of Profanities - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/matteofabbri/EuropeanGreatAtlasOfProfanities <comment><USER2> Why a git repo? Why not a card deck on anki or some other service?

<comment><AUTHOR> because is easyer to update and add. We collected some entries in this weekend but there still many terms to add :D But great idea to add in the future, tnx</comment></comment>


The Impossible Burger is a wake-up call to the meat industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/has-the-impossible-burger-pushed-america-to-peak-meat/2019/04/05/72235e52-57cc-11e9-9136-f8e636f1f6df_story.html <comment><USER2> Perhaps when they start to taste like an Angus burger. But, that's my opinion, just as this article is another guy's opinion.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your most profitable side project? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> For me this is [https://www.LinksSpy.com](https://www.LinksSpy.com) \- a CRM for getting white-hat inbound links.

I started it in April 2014 and it's making about $1,000/month. Haven't invested time into it (busy day job) in the past 2-3 months. I've got a bunch of ideas how to grow it, but time is a serious constraint

</comment><comment><USER3> Commencepayments.com, costs me $40 a month to run (though if I wasn't lazy I could drop it significantly - $20 for heroku + ssl and $20 for cloudflare) launched last February and just hit the $1000 mark!

<comment><USER4> Very nice. Very cool! How did you start getting customers in the first place?

<comment><USER3> a lot of time spent in Stripe's IRC chat room, recommendations from Stripe support to users

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mine is [http://www.watermark-image.com](http://www.watermark-image.com) a windows downloadable watermarker - oldschool but still making more than $1000 a month :)

I am using the income to help fund my new project [http://timeblock.com](http://timeblock.com) a resource/time management and project overview system that is made with a makers schedule in mind!

</comment><comment><USER6> My most enjoyable is williseeashark.com and the point hasn't been profit as it's really a passion project. It looks at shark behavior along the California coast by compiling data from scientists, social media and fishing/whale watching boats. I have quite a bit planned for it in the future.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's not tech. It's a rental property.

<comment><USER8> word

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does this question only cover products? I was doing side work for two companies, and I quit my job of 8 1/2 years to go full-time independent, doing automation and sysadmin stuff for them, have a couple more customers coming on too. Gave myself a HUGE increase _after_ taxes and insurance.

To clarify, I have signed contracts that are committing to certain lengths of time. It's not something that I would have quit my day job for, without a significant part of the risks mitigated.

</comment><comment><USER10> Mine is [http://www.boxo.coffee](http://www.boxo.coffee) \- monthly coffee exploration.

Started this while living in Hong Kong as a way to bring in coffee from the popular roasters in the USA, and expanded to the states within 8 months. Good times so far, and it's still a side project. Used the profits from the HK side of the business to launch USA side.

</comment><comment><USER11> $0, but my most successful is definitely standardresume.co.

I'd be interested to hear how people with profitable side projects went from side project to profitability.

<comment><USER12> I'm not job seeking at the moment but when I was, I would have paid for a site like this that would allow me to create tailored resumes for each application, manage the list, and ideally have some version control. Might be outside the scope of what you were working on but definitely a way to go from side project to side business. Contact me if you'd like more feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [http://jekyllthemes.io](http://jekyllthemes.io) \- 3 months old and making ~$50/mo through Adsense and affiliate links. Hosting is free for the next year from AWS and the domain is $30/year.

<comment><USER14> How many visitors/page impressions do have on average?

<comment><USER13> 15k impressions per month on average.</comment></comment></comment>


The Google-Waze aftermath: The good, the bad and the ugly - <AUTHOR> http://geektime.com/2013/06/12/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-in-the-google-waze-deal/

<comment><USER2> Thoughtful analysis. I wonder if the Israeli startup eco-system can now really start balancing b2b and b2c investments, and become the east coast meet west coast it can be.

</comment><comment><USER3> imho the assumption that this deal will cause the industry 180 degrees change is incorrect. It's an amazing company & an amazing deal but not a game changer deal.

<comment><AUTHOR> I never said it wasn't. I just said it turned a lot of heads around when it was bought for such a large amount of many. I've talked with many investors who will now start to re-think they investment strategy considering they automatically disqualified consumer oriented companies because they thought companies like these won't be able to make it from Israel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting analysis.</comment>


You Don't Get to Define 'Quality'  - <AUTHOR> http://www.cindyalvarez.com/blog/decisionmaking/you-dont-get-to-define-quality <comment><USER2> This reminds me of the infamous comparisons between the M16 and the AK47 assault rifles. The M16 is a superior weapon by almost every standard - it's crafted out of lighter, aeronautical materials, it has a beautiful, elegant design, it's far more precise and has far less recoil.

Except nobody cares. What people want is to pull their weapon out of a muddy hole after it's been there for a week, and have it reliably shoot thirty rounds.

<comment><USER3> That's what _some_ people want. Some of the time. Which I believe is the point of the article.

Unless you know all the circumstances of what someone needs a weapon for, you can't say the M16 is better _or worse_ than the AK47. (People who don't have to store their weapon in a muddy hole or go weeks without resupply may and do prefer the M16 for its characteristics)

Simply: there is no universal measurement of quality for any designed product.

Even _hammers_ have trade-offs in their design that prevent absolute quality measurements.

<comment><USER2> I disagree. That's what most people want most of the time. There are specialized situations where M16 is a better choice, but for the most part people want the AK47. The numbers speak for themselves - more AK47s were sold in the world than all other assault rifles combined.

There is no universal scale of quality, but if you're trying to hit it big you have to keep in mind what most people want most of the time, and it's usually not what first comes to mind.

<comment><USER4> _more AK47s were sold in the world than all other assault rifles combined._

Don't you think that that is more due to price and availability than anything else. I imagine buying a case of M16s can be quite tricky in the middle of the mountains in North Pakistan, while you probably have at least two people in your circle of friends who knows I guy who makes AK47s in his workshop.

So to draw the AK47 analogy to its logical conclusion, If you want your product to hit it big make it easy to build give away plans on how to built it to everybody without any sort patent, copyright or royalty claims. Remember that the vast majority or AK47s bought are knockoffs and that the original company doesn't see a dime from those sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of the bit in _Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance_ where he asks the Indian guy what sort of dog it is, and he says "its a good dog". Value judgment, not brand awareness.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have an important chunk of video stuck on a Flip. The Flip's insidious custom format and the software it needs to install in order to do video transfers is keeping me from retrieving the video that I took.

I _hate_ the Flip for this.

People keep confusing quality and simplicity. I didn't get a Flip because I'm fond of mediocre products, and if I knew it wasn't even going to _work_ , then I wouldn't have gotten at all. I got it because it's simple, and simplicity has its own quality.

Some of the points in the article were good, but in the end, it sounded like it was starting to migrate over to the camp that believes that mediocrity is a good business strategy.

Fine. You might even be financially successful producing mediocre products and services, things that barely work, services that frustrate people but not quite enough that they actually decide to wage a crusade against your business.

But I'd rather see more companies offering excellent products and services, and including simplicity in their equation for quality.

</comment><comment><USER7> I say that people still care about 'quality' and know what high-quality products are (from a designer's POV). But consumers care about products which produce high quality FOR THEIR USES. Flip phones produce good YouTube videos for instance _with great form factor_ \- if that's what a consumer cares about, they should go for it!

</comment><comment><USER8> Good article, but a bit dismissive of the claim in the Wired article that things like MP3 are preventing people from discovering "real" quality.

<comment><USER9> I think the great majority of people wouldn't know real quality if you showed them an example side-by-side with the thing they know. I think we often use price queues to figure that out.

And I think people have different needs at different times. I listen almost entirely to MP3s and Internet radio, except when I go to the symphony. I watch a lot of videos on YouTube and Hulu, except when I go to the movies.

High quality isn't something everyone wants all the time.

<comment><USER10> Reminds me of Negroponte's observation (in his book _Being Digital_ from sometime in the mid 1990s). At the time, digital television was hung up in debates about what high-definition standard to use. He said that for most people most of the time, standard def was fine and that in focusing on a level of "quality" that most people did not care about, a lot of other potentially interesting and useful things you could do in the same bandwidth were not being developed. At least, that's what I recall now. It's been at least 10 years since I looked at that book.

<comment><USER8> Although it seems now that for most people HD is something they notice and care about. So perhaps that hints at the need for people to be trained to appreciate quality?

In other words, do they like HD because it's better or because they've been told that it's better?

I noticed a difference immediately when I saw an HD demo. It was in 1999, and I saw it at a science center (COSI, Columbus, OH). But some of the people I was with literally could not figure out which TV was which.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why does Microsoft think we want to draw on webpages? - <AUTHOR>

I just watched the ad for Microsoft's new browser. They make it a big deal and show that you can finally draw circles and smileys on web pages. Why does Microsoft think people want to do that? It looks to me like they always struggle with products :-/ <comment><USER2> Useful for corporate users.

For example - if I want to show a coworker how to navigate to a specific area on a website to accomplish a task. Removing a few steps and making this easier can save quite a lot of time. It also allows IT support to do the same for customers, which could make sharing instructions easier as well.

Remember a large portion of Microsoft software users are Corporate - not only Personal.

</comment><comment><USER3> The new feature Microsoft is offering allows their Egde browser to be divergent enough to stand out. All while allowing a push for a more dynamic web experience where the user is not just a content consumer, but a content creator. This ability to remix content is the future of a more collaborative web. It is also reminiscent of Genius push for annotations. I actually really like the product vision MS is offering here and look forward to actually using Edge.

The future of the web is a real time collaborative medium that dynamically shapes around us. We have been traveling down the info super highway in an analogous individual experience to being in a car. The future of the web will be more of collaborative group experience of traveling down the info super highway in a magic bus. Given this new feature allows us to get one step forward to that remixable future.

</comment><comment><USER4> And who uses voice control? There should be as many different input options as possible.</comment>


Software Foundations - <AUTHOR> https://softwarefoundations.cis.upenn.edu/ <comment><USER2> I'd recommend people interested in learning formal methods _do not_ start with things such as Coq or Isabelle/HOL. Most people find the process of learning or using those so difficult that they quit with a potentially-permanent aversion to the term formal verification. In engineering, it's often advised to use best tool for the job esp with highest ROI. So, if you're interested in formal methods, I strongly encourage you to start with so-called, lightweight methods that give a lot of return for little investment. They teach you how abstract specifications with tool-assisted reasoning can quickly catch deep errors tests often won't.

Two of those with lots of benefit in realistic projects are Alloy Analyzer (esp for structure) and TLA+/PlusCal (esp for order):

[http://alloy.mit.edu/](http://alloy.mit.edu/)

[https://learntla.com/introduction/](https://learntla.com/introduction/)

These are immediately useful. Especially in distributed systems for TLA+. Then, you get a book such as Chlipala's Certified Programming with Dependent Types or Pierce et al's Software Foundations. Chlipala is also doing a new one called "Formal Reasoning About Programs." You can try to use those to get some elementary stuff done with the heavyweight methods. It will probably take you 1-2 years to get proficient enough for real stuff. Two outcomes are common:

1\. You don't make it. Don't get mad: most don't even when they're smart. Good news is you enjoyed lighter stuff that you'll probably continue to apply and expand on for rest of your career. If other users are lucky, you might have run into their limitations enough to start improving the tooling, documentation, or something else. Those will get better since you learned them but avoided heavyweight stuff.

2\. You made it! Now, best result for us IT folks is you apply your skills to real-world software formally-verifying useful algorithms, protocols, compilers, OS's, and so on. For inspiration, be sure to look at CRYPTOL, miTLS, CompCert, CakeML, RockSalt, seL4 or VAMOS, Verdi, verified garbage collectors, foundational backing of static analyzers like Verasco, tools with automation such as SPARK Ada, ACL2 for hardware, and maybe rewriting-based stuff like C semantics in K Framework.

If you can understand heavyweight verification, then apply your knowledge to more stuff like that since you'll (a) possibly be having real-world impact and (b) be doing work challenging enough that you can be very proud of your successes.

<comment><USER3> Inspired by your post, I spent a few minutes reading the Allow web site. I'm wondering exactly how to benefit from Alloy? I have a problem that involves multiple interacting state machines communicating over protocols that I don't necessarily control, over unreliable network connections. Lots of retry/recovery arcs.

So assuming I could specify this system with Alloy, what would I learn? I'm guessing I would at least detect gaps in the protocols and missing error recovery arcs in state machines. But that doesn't yield a correct implementation... it might help me fill in gaps in the validation test coverage space. Is this what I should expect?

<comment><USER4> Most practically: your personal knowledge of the system will grow tremendously through the process of trying to formalize it and debug the errors you encounter. It's likely that basic assumptions you have about the protocol are false and that real bugs arise due to these subtle imperfections.

Some formal system technologies let you "extract" algorithms into other languages. Model checkers like Alloy don't. What you take away is what you learn and what you can use of that learning to convince others.

A good concrete takeaway would be information you could use to design a test suite that breaks the system even where others believe it to be solid.

<comment><USER3> My backround in hardware and software validation is long and deep, so I clearly see the benefit of getting information about the test space that needs to be covered. Still, it seems like it ought to be possible to do some kind of automated test stimulus generation using what Alloy already does. I am imagining a machine-readable report in some format that is easy to feed into a problem-specific test generator script.

In a past life, I worked on automatic test pattern generation for sequential logic circuits. Which, if you want to tilt at windmills for little $return (1), is as good a pursuit as any. But it strikes me that this is a very similar problem. Given a description of a state space, create stimulus that covers it, sensitizing all the logic paths in a way that produces an observable result that differs from expectations.

(1) The central lesson of trying to sell test: Electronic Design Automation dollars are like western US water law, the first to divert wins. In the case of EDA, the up-front design tools get all the dollars, and there is hardly a trickle of money left by the time it reaches test phase.

<comment><USER2> Hmm. I don't use Alloy nor do I know hardware yet. I'll still try to dig up something. (comes back) It looks like a lot of CompSci folks built test generation in Alloy for languages such as Java. Might have not released any general tools for Alloy, though. Good news is they describe the benefits and some specifics where hardware people might get ideas for homebrew tools.

[https://repositorio- aberto.up.pt/bitstream/10216/59949/1/000...](https://repositorio- aberto.up.pt/bitstream/10216/59949/1/000145607.pdf)

[http://www.dcc.fc.up.pt/~rvr/resources/MAP-i/2014s7c-mapi.pd...](http://www.dcc.fc.up.pt/~rvr/resources/MAP-i/2014s7c-mapi.pdf)

One application to hardware with Alloy:

[http://www.samkirk.com/atpg-in- alloy4/ATPG_in_Alloy.pdf](http://www.samkirk.com/atpg-in- alloy4/ATPG_in_Alloy.pdf)

Honestly, I'd have thought TLA+ would be better of the two for hardware given it deals with concurrent things. Also, it can do stuff similar to SPIN model- checker that was used extensively for hardware verification in the past. For hardware, I'd have experimented with SPIN for lightweight method with ACL2 for heavyweight esp thanks to Jared Davis at Centaur contributing ACL2 components he used.

[http://spinroot.com/spin/whatispin.html](http://spinroot.com/spin/whatispin.html)

[https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~jared/publications/2011-memocode-...](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~jared/publications/2011-memocode- centaur.pdf)

Just for kicks, I did some quick Googling on test generation for sequential circuits to see if I could find anything interesting for you. Me, too, as I enjoy seeing what people do in your field. Most were paywalled but this one wasn't:

[http://www.smc2017.org/SMC2017_Papers/media/files/0080.pdf](http://www.smc2017.org/SMC2017_Papers/media/files/0080.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the links. My current application is not test generation for hardware, though. I'm working with autonomous robots that need to interact with real world obstacles that can't be easily predicted (laundary carts, golden retrievers, bride's maids....), need to navigate spaces where WiFi comes and goes, and need to interact with other automated systems running their own state machine that I don't control. Something that could identify "Recovery scenario needed here" has good value.

<comment><USER2> Apparently, I totally misread what you needed. Sorry. Your domain is very interesting. I briefly studied it a long time ago. They were using fusion of data coming from different components with quite non-deterministic algorithms such as fuzzy logic or neural networks. There wasn't any way to verify them at the time. I've seen a few attempts at such things but would need to know what kind of algorithm you use for sense, learn, and act (or whatever they call it). No guarantees here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is really neat, but in my opinion conflating theory _and_ actual verification through Coq might be a bit too much for a newcomer.

For those who are looking for a softer introduction to the field, I highly recommend _" Reactive Systems: Modelling, Specification and Verification"_ by Aceto, Ingólfsdóttir, Larsen, and Srba (full disclosure, I am a student at Aceto's current affiliation).

</comment><comment><USER6> These are the perfect books to work through on a Sunday afternoon. Did the first part of Logical Foundations three years ago, and still look back on that day with fondness. Nothing has scratched that itch for perfect machine- enforced certainty in quite the same way since then.

</comment><comment><USER7> These are very pretty books, and at the same time very ugly. Thank god I already know the material in these books, I wouldn't want to learn it this way.

</comment><comment><USER8> Do these books come with a free license?

<comment><USER9> click through, they're in html

<comment><USER10> Ironically, they are rather hard to click through. You have to return to the toc to get to each next chapter.</comment></comment></comment>


Ubuntu Touch Boasts Support For 34 Devices, 22 On The Way - <AUTHOR> http://www.thepowerbase.com/2013/03/ubuntu-touch-boasts-support-for-34-devices-22-on-the-way/

<comment><USER2> Very few of them are real glibc based ports which allow using normal X.org (let alone Wayland). Most are SurfaceFlinger based version.</comment>


Show HN: Papermail.me – the easiest way to send physical mail, online - <AUTHOR> https://papermail.me/ <comment><USER2> Your privacy policy is troubling, especially with wording like "We are the sole owners of the information collected on this site". Does this mean that the letters I write belong to you?

</comment><comment><USER3> could this privacy policy also mean that if something illegal was collected on the site it is now yours and you are the sole owner?</comment>


Spotify Premium Now Includes Hulu with Ads - <AUTHOR> https://www.spotify.com/us/premium/ <comment><AUTHOR> I think this is an interesting play to improve market share. I wonder who approached who.</comment>


White House Names Google's Megan Smith the Next CTO of the US - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/09/04/white-house-names-googles-megan-smith-the-next-chief-technology-officer-of-the-united-states/ <comment><USER2> My first reaction was "I didn't know the US had a CTO" and after a quick Wikipedia search it appears as they didn't until 2009 under Obama who appointed the first one.

The article nor Wikipedia make it clear exactly what a CTO's job in the White House would really entail. It sounds like a bunch of random stuff which utilise technology in some way or another.

But at least, for now, they have a technologist with decent technology credentials. I wonder how long until those role gets given to someone with the right political connections (or someone with good relationships with technology contractors/lobbyists)?

Because, to me, this role's primary job should be to wrangle in the technology contractors who are near constantly ripping off the US Government and under- performing/failing to deliver.

They can try to spread technology in schools and such, but then they run into the limits of the White House's powers and or the states right's dilemma (although this could definitely promote third party educational resources, like Coursera or Khan Academy).

<comment><USER3> Considering they took a Google executive, this could already be "someone with the right political connections". Google is one of the biggest lobbyists, I wouldn't be surprised if this had something to do with their efforts.

Still, at least it's somebody with proper qualifications. A techie, not a politician, so I'm hopeful either way.

<comment><USER4> Seems like their would be a conflict of interest when making decisions about search, web-based mail, self-driving cars, mobile phones,... (Google stuff). But I agree a techie is better than anything else.

<comment><USER5> Would you rather have an exec from an ISP instead?(Comcast, Verizon, etc)

<comment><USER6> [https://fiber.google.com](https://fiber.google.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Macgillivray, though, also does a bit of engineering of his own. After leaving Twitter, he hand-coded a script for resurfacing old Gmail messages to which he hadn't yet replied."

The article links to [https://gist.githubusercontent.com/amac0/6b17b0ca497e9cb1f37...](https://gist.githubusercontent.com/amac0/6b17b0ca497e9cb1f375/raw/awaitingresponse.js) , which has a comment that says:

* This script is based on and is nearly identical to: * [http://jonathan-kim.com/2013/Gmail-No-Response/](http://jonathan-kim.com/2013/Gmail-No-Response/)

I don't think modifying an existing script counts as "hand-coded". Anyway, I still find it interesting that WashingtonPost links to a javascript file directly.

<comment><USER2> If you remove the top comments from both, there are only four lines changed and one additional line (var searchLabel = 'inbox') added.

2 of the 4 lines changed simply alter the labels from "AR" (awaiting response) to "No Response."

So really is is two lines of actual logic different and some labels.

<comment><USER8> I think the takeaway here is not "he didn't change much" but "the new deputy CTO for the US uses Github and knows enough about coding to adjust scripts to his liking".

<comment><USER9> Well, that just takes the wind out of our hate-sails. That's the charitable (and probably objective) interpretation. I guess people are taking issue with "hand-coded", which is an odd term that may imply things that aren't really true. It's possible it did indeed mean "customized" though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Megan Smith is a complete package. Hyper brilliant. Very excited to see her make a substantial impact!

</comment><comment><USER11> Having briefly met with Megan a couple years ago, I'm pleased with this appointment. She asked good questions and seemed to think through the consequences of rough conceptual ideas diligently.

</comment><comment><USER12> Just to give some idea of the scale of things we're talking about, there's a Federal CIO council[1], with scores of memebers. The Feds have tons of agencies spending hundreds of billions on IT. Most all of these agencies were created by _Congress_ , not the president, and although they report up the executive branch, they're also accountable to various and sundry legislative committees. Many times the decisions around tech and contracting have been legislated in some fashion. They just aren't made off-the-cuff.

The CTO is truly a stupendous job, even for someone working at Google scale. I would be very surprised if this turned into an operational role. I imagine it would be advisory and policy-based only. There's simply too much to get your head around and not a lot of levers to pull to make things happen like it does in the commercial world.

Still, I am very optimistic that there is much goodness to be done here. It's just not a CTO job in the way most of us would understand.

[1] [https://cio.gov/](https://cio.gov/)

</comment><comment><USER13> On the surface of it, I don't mind that they recruited from the industry.

However, if the CTO is in a position to influence government contracts or other spending towards Google, then I would be against this - same principle applies to ex-Goldman Sachs execs taking up key finance related Government positions.

<comment><USER14> What other choice do they have? They're not going to hire someone right out of college and there aren't a ton of people already in government that have the qualifications for that job. It's difficult to blacklist people who have former employment at a company when that company hires the best in the industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If there was any doubt that Google is in the sack with the US government, this consistent funnel of execs from Google to the White House should quell it.

<comment><USER16> If the Whitehouse isn't recruiting top Silicon Valley talent to fill technical positions, would you rather they fill them with executives from Washington D.C. area beltway bandit management consulting companies?

They've got to go somewhere for the talent pool and credentials, and that means tapping Google, Twitter, et al. It helps that Google and many Bay Area companies lean progressive and helped both Obama's campaign, as well as fixing ACA Web sites.

If the suggestion is this somehow proves some nefarious NSA connection because a few employees went to work for the government, that seems pretty fallacious to me.

<comment><USER17> I think the contrast is to the complaints we often hear when a top financial position is an ex-Goldman exec. Or in general when a top regulator is recruited from the industry they will soon regulate.

In those cases too, you could say "well, how else would you rather they fill those spots?" And yes, it is likely the a Goldman exec would have lots of expertise in the financial sector, so it's a natural place to recruit from.

Still in both those cases, and with Google here, there are large potential conflicts of interest. People that complain about Goldman execs in Washington will also complain about this appointment, and there are valid reasons for such complaints.

<comment><USER18> One big difference is that the CTO role is _not_ as regulator, so you don't have the large concerns you have with putting a cable company exec in charge of the FCC, or an RIAA lawyer in charge of the DOJ's copyright enforcement policy.

There may be some instances when a conflict of interest comes up, but as others point out, that's virtually impossible to avoid for anyone with expertise. Many here might not object to an academic being appointed to the role who specializes in open source and advocating for the limitations of copyright, but of course there's a huge conflict of interest there, too.

<comment><USER17> What would be the "huge conflict of interest" with an academic in this role?

<comment><USER18> Sorry, I missed your response.

The conflict of interest would be their tendency to see everything from the lens of their life's work, and of course to actively advocate for their values, which are already well formed in the relevant domain.

Barring financial conflict of interest (e.g. stock still owned from the previous job), it's just as much of a conflict of interest as someone previously at one of these related companies but no longer employed there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I find this conflating of the US as a country and the US Government annoying. Megan Smith is the CTO of the US Federal Government, which is an entity separate from the US as a country.

It doesn't make sense for a country to have a "CTO". Do all technology decisions made anywhere in the US have to have her approval?

Logically, if she were the CTO of the US, she would have as direct reports all the CTOs of all the companies in the US.

<comment><USER20> The President is "of the United States" not "of the US Government", it doesn't mean everyone in the country reports to him - I think you might be over- thinking the terminology a little bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wow, I wonder if the Washington posts jaw hurts after writing this fellating sack of courage propaganda horseshit.

</comment><comment><USER22> I hope that sometime in my lifetime government will stop trying to ape the nomenclature of business.

</comment><comment><USER23> US need CIO, not CTO

</comment><comment><USER24> Because US citizens need somebody from Google's business model and school of thought fighting for us on the inside and helping the gov't formulate our data and privacy policies?

<comment><AUTHOR> Alex Macgillivray has a reputation as a staunch free speech and privacy advocate.

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/30/twitter- al...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/30/twitter-alex- macgillivray-free-speech)

<comment><USER25> ... who was happy to work for Google.

<comment><USER26> My how history gets rewritten so quickly.

If you want to assault Andrew's credentials as a staunch defender of free speech, etc, you are going to have to do better than "he worked at Google".

He worked at Google at a time when Google really was on the front lines of defending this stuff, and _he_ was the one doing it.

If you want to blame Google, blame Google. Amac is pretty much unassailable, IMHO. He was on the right side of every legal/policy decision I can think of during his tenure. He eventually left, IMHO, precisely because he saw an opportunity to be a staunch advocate for these kinds of things at twitter.

<comment><USER25> Fair enough. At least you acknowledge that Google no longer stands for these things.

<comment><USER26> I have never claimed Google no longer stands for these things. I just don't believe Google is on the front lines anymore, because people (like you) damn them either way.

<comment><USER27> Their security teams do important work, and largely it seems because they profoundly give a shit about these issues. They're still the front line technically.

<comment><USER25> On security, yes. On "free speech, etc.", no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm really happy this position was given to a chick. Hopefully inspire more girls to enter tech and help to mitigate the sausage fest that is the technology industry.

<comment><USER29> Her sex has nothing to do with this and I was hoping that for once the HN thread wouldn't involve either side of the debate.

<comment><USER30> No kidding. I would simply hope that the best PERSON for the job was appointed to the position, gender (or race, religion or sexual orientation for that matter) be damned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> US government has a CTO? Moldbug has advocated[1] turning the USG into a corporation for some time now. Not the first prophet to be called a kook at first.

[1] [http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2007/04/formali...](http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2007/04/formalist-manifesto-originally-posted.html)

<comment><USER32> Not the first kook either.</comment></comment>


Airbnb CFO Departs Amid Tensions, Leaving IPO Timeline Unclear - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-01/airbnb-cfo-departs-amid-tensions-leaving-ipo-timeline-unclear <comment><USER2> 'Tosi, who turns 50 next week, was focused more on cutting costs and pursuing businesses that were revenue-generating instead of world-changing, they said.'

For now, Airbnb has the luxury to make these kinds of decisions, but they can't exist in the world of paper valuations forever. A lot of the 'world- changing' things they've been working on seem a lot more targeted at the luxury market than transforming the industry as a whole (luxury retreats, premium business products, experiences that cost $200+). Will be interesting to see how this plays out..

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I've never really had any luck getting stuff that is really cheaper than traditional options.

<comment><USER4> Ditto. IMHO their business model isn't hard to replicate, they didn't invent it, and their biggest asset is inertia-eyeballs. Although they are a YC darling, the fact is they scaled with loads of marketing dollar versus established competition (eg. in Europe) and what this shows us is huge financial backing and aggressive media engagement can create a sector-specific behemoth. For all intents and purposes in the current world it has already plateaued, though. There's a school of thought that they are probably one of the last paper-valuation giants to climb out of the centralized marketplace world.

In future, perhaps consumers won't use branded marketplace apps and will instead publish data independently, branded search engine apps will rank and return it and third party reputation services will assist with filtering. Why? Because nobody wants a damn middleman app demanding its own permissions/login/customer service loop for everything they do, and people are slowly ceding anonymity for promises of assurance as the resource-constrained, higher-density, more urban world moves toward the political right.

A cryptocurrency AirBNB clone could take a serious chunk out of their market, since so many hosts are flying close to or beyond the legal or strata relations radar and would prefer not to declare earnings.

<comment><USER5> Looks like The Bee Token is already on it: [https://www.beetoken.com/](https://www.beetoken.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> AirBnb has recently been made illegal in my state (New York State) for stays under 30 days. Of course a lot of people don't know or don't care about the law, but they're giving out fines left and right. This is likely true with other states as well.

<comment><USER7> AirBnb is illegal or short term rentals? I recently stayed in a short term apartment rental that I booked through booking.com. It was fully licensed, etc..., but was an apartment in a building of otherwise long term renters.

<comment><USER8> With major cities that are in demand, long-term rentals on AirBnb can disturb housing equality and rent control programs. So we hear about long-term rentals being curtailed a lot.

The states don't need to address what's already being addressed by the major cities, unless it's a big problem outside of the major cities because the housing demand isn't as high. The long-term rental issues aren't as bad outside of the major cities. The short-term rental issues, however, are a bigger issue, because those living in a less urban area have more expectation of knowing their neighbors.

<comment><USER9> You say "can", but I live in one of those cities and I assure you it's not a possibility but a reality.

<comment><USER8> Oops. Unnecessarily using a qualifier is a mistake, albeit one made while trying to avoid making other mistakes. I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am surprised with the comments again airbnb here. I have used nothing else but airbnb for last 3 years. They have amazing properties with prime locations for reasonable price. I normally dont care for hotel services i.e. gym,in-room food etc so its perfect. Usually the cost comes down to half than the hotels.

<comment><USER11> I think a key issue with them is they've caused a harmful reduction of available affordable rented accommodation in many areas. All those _" amazing properties with prime locations for reasonable price"_ are now no longer available to local residents to rent.

It's a thing that's happened around my rural'ish village. There used to be a reasonable supply of rented properties but many have turned into AirBNB lets where, for half the year, they're practically unoccupied, and even during the holiday season (northern hemisphere summer) they're never fully occupied.

I know this is just how market forces work, but in some localities AirBNB are a somewhat destructive force.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> They released this last week: [https://press.atairbnb.com/brian-cheskys-open- letter-to-the-...](https://press.atairbnb.com/brian-cheskys-open-letter-to- the-airbnb-community-about-building-a-21st-century-company/) ... The part that caught my attention was: "To begin measuring how well we are serving all stakeholders, in March, we'll release Airbnb's first Annual Stakeholder Report." ... You only come up with this crap when you don't want to go public. You know...because reporting to stakeholders is what public companies do.

</comment><comment><USER13> After the absolutely horrible customer service experiences I've had with Airbnb, I hope they rot in IPO hell.

<comment><USER14> FWIW I've had the exact opposite experience. Called in late at night about a host in Barcelona blowing me off, and within a few minutes had a US-based support rep check the message log and immediately move me into another place along with an additional credit for the problem.

<comment><USER15> I had one terrible experience too. And never an amazing one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tried to use it this next 2 day trip to Berlin. Had low trust in the quality of the matches against my budget and bedcount, and found better deals from hotel aggregator websites I've used before with some confidence on what they tell me

TL;DR can't trust the model when it doesn't out perform alternates with better basis in search/price matching.

<comment><USER17> AirBnB is basically banned in Berlin.

<comment><USER18> Not anymore. The ban had been successfully challenged on numerous occasions now. Seems unenforceable

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Obligatory shoutout: [https://www.cryptocribs.com](https://www.cryptocribs.com)

</comment><comment><USER20> When AirBnB finally does IPO, who will want to buy it? What more growth could possibly come out amidst the increasing regulation?

<comment><USER21> Who cares? They're in one of the most profitable niche in the planet. They don't need IPO.

<comment><USER22> Airbnb employers and Investors. Most funds have a 6 - 8 year timeline where they plan to cash out to certain extent, so there will be pressure from employees and investors alike.

<comment><USER23> To make it worse, the fund gets dissolved after a while. So now instead of one VC firm you have to deal with dozens of investors.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I tried starting a manufacturing unit in India. A tale of bureaucratic nightmare - <AUTHOR> https://superr.in/economy/i-tried-starting-a-manufacturing-unit-in-india/?unapproved=176&moderation-hash=9ceb026caef6d25f56bb6151fca38736#comment-176 <comment><USER2> Its a lot of work to do anything in a government office here. Long queues, decades old certificates and forms are needed, employees are not familiar with tech, and so on.

Its very easy to just pay them (bribe) and get all the required clearances. Corruption is extremely high for this reason here. Sometimes you can't even get a thing done without bribing someone.

Its getting better every year. There is still some hope.</comment>


Man shoots down drone and is now arrested - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com/news/man-shoots-down-drone-hovering-over-house/

<comment><USER2> Drone porn? The next logical step from 'upskirt porn'?</comment>


Japanese electronics maker creates Origami-style drone - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com/news/helping-an-origami-crane-fly-with-a-little-help-from-some-modern-technology/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure I would call this a drone as much as a bird robot. They hint in the article that they will release the design. I hope it is fully open source. I can imagine that many variations on this design will be created once the design is available.

Here is another approach to the flying bird robot

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg_JcKSHUtQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg_JcKSHUtQ)

I saw a DARPA video that simulated little birds as spying robots. can't seem to find the video right now.</comment>


Drug dramatically reduces diabetes symptoms in mice - <AUTHOR> http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=11134 <comment><USER2> As a type 1, this article disappointed me

</comment><comment><USER3> Not eating any food for several days also greatly reduces diabetes symptoms in mammals. I am not clear why this is not the default treatment. If people have trouble with will power then they can always check into a clinic that specializes in fasting. There are thousands of retreats, meditation, and medical clinics that help facilitate fasting. 20 or 30 days without food will resolve most symptoms in most humans.

I've read that in the pre industrial era, humans spent about 10% of their lives facing famine conditions. Our bodies expect a certain amount of starvation. Millions of years of evolution did not prepare us for a world where you can walk into a grocery store and for $8 or $9 get a tub of strawberry ice cream containing as many calories as 2 foxes or a baby antelope (any of which would have taken some work to acquire).

I realize that companies can not get a patent on fasting, so perhaps there is less money in it, but it is still a good option and should be considered for anyone whose other medical conditions do not preclude it.

<comment><USER4> > 20 or 30 days without food will resolve most symptoms in most humans.

Your advice is much more lethal than you think. You should not pretend to know things about medicine when you don't.

<comment><USER3> Do you realize that there have been hundreds of studies suggesting that fasting has health benefits? There are too many listed on Google for me to link to them all but here is a random sample of a few.

Start with this one, which was on Hacker News for awhile:

Total Starvation – 382 days without Food

[http://cristivlad.com/total-starvation-382-days-without- food...](http://cristivlad.com/total-starvation-382-days-without-food-study/)

"I recently came across this study from 1973 in which a 27 years old male has fasted for 382 days under the supervision of researchers from a Scotland University. This is the longest fast ever been recorded.

This patient weighted in 456 pounds (~207 kg) and weighted out 180 pounds (~82 kg). So, he lost 276 pounds (~125kg) during his fast. Five years after the fast ended, the patient's weight has been constantly around the values of 196 pounds. A.B. had no ill symptoms during and after the fast."

Medically supervised water-only fasting in the treatment of hypertension

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11416824](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11416824)

Intermittent fasting: a dietary intervention for prevention of diabetes and cardiovascular disease?

[http://dvd.sagepub.com/content/13/2/68.long](http://dvd.sagepub.com/content/13/2/68.long)

Wikipedia lists all the fasts undertaken by Ghandi, his longest being 21 days:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fasts_undertaken_by_Mah...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fasts_undertaken_by_Mahatma_Gandhi)

There are all the Christian sites that promote fasting so you can be more like Jesus:

[https://danielfast.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/christian- fastin...](https://danielfast.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/christian-fasting/)

There's endless other religious sites I could link to. In India the yogis are known for very long fasts.

You should try to educate yourself on this subject. There is an abundance of information that is only a Google search away.

<comment><USER4> First of all, intermittent fasting is different from calorie restriction is different from prolonged fasting. Prolonged fasting is much more dangerous than the other two.

And second, what applies to healthy people, metabolically speaking, usually does not apply to people with diabetes. I did a Pubmed search before I posted my comment, and wasn't able to find a single example of prolonged fasting having even been tried in T2DM patients.

As someone with T1DM (the kind caused by autoimmunity, not the kind caused by obesity), my expectation is that a T2DM who tried this in an ICU would probably experience hypoglycemia and abort, while someone who tried it outside an ICU would probably die.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


App Engine releases full-text search - <AUTHOR> http://googleappengine.blogspot.com.es/2012/05/looking-for-search-find-it-on-google.html

<comment><USER2> Some folks wondered for a long time whether AWS would roll out a search product, and they finally did like 4 weeks ago. And as the blogpost mentions, full-text search has been a long time coming to App Engine. Does anyone have insight into whether the release of CloudSearch caused the App Engine to release this sooner than they otherwise would have?

</comment><comment><USER3> The full text capability itself is great to have added, no more rolling our own indices / stemmers and taking StringListProperty to the max and using hacks with parent keys[1].

That said, bummed that the compound filtering expressions are apparently not powerful enough to find ranges [2], and therefor filter based on location. Sigh, guess we're still stuck with geoboxes for a while longer.

[1] [http://www.billkatz.com/2009/6/Simple-Full-Text-Search- for-A...](http://www.billkatz.com/2009/6/Simple-Full-Text-Search-for-App- Engine)

[2] [http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=72...](http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=7247)

</comment><comment><USER4> interesting to see GAE from Google to have search capabilities coming so late. I have tried to use custom search, however it does not have the same index and quality as the google.com

</comment><comment><USER3> cool that the search expressions are s-expressions:

[https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/python/search/o...](https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/python/search/overview#Query_Language_Overview)

<comment><USER5> Huh? Presence of parentheses != s expressions. For starters, the expression "foo" AND "bar" is valid, but not an s expression.

<comment><USER3> Ha, whoops, you're right. Ironically, I jumped to assume this because internally the "structured search" api was in fact s-expression based (at least as of a couple years ago). Looks like they made it infix for the public api? WTH

<comment><USER5> IMHO an s-expression api would be awesome, but I think any public facing input would have to allow the "conventional" format. I guess App Engine doesn't want to force app developers to make that conversion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You know what's wrong with this post? The date! If it was May 8, 2010 instead of May 8, 2012 it would have been something.

</comment><comment><USER7> hooray! i have been hoping for this for a while.

<comment><USER8> Why?

<comment><USER7> It makes a bunch of app ideas that I had feasible.

<comment><USER9> Was Sphinx too much of a PITA to make those workable before?

<comment><USER10> Sphinx, Solr[1] etc cannot be run on AppEngine.

[1] Technically you can make Solr run by using a AppEngine port of Lucene and a lot of hacking of the Solr code, but it doesn't work well.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I just didn't figure that GAE's limitations would hold him back on a cool idea, so I was wondering if this made cool things much, much easier. The alternative explanation would be that he uses GAE to the exclusion of all else nowadays.

<comment><USER7> I meant for pet projects is all. I spend too much on VMs otherwise.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nokia: Where it all went wrong, by it's former CEO - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/nokia-where-it-all-went-wrong-by-the-man-who-made-it-the-worlds-biggest-mobile-company-7000023046/ <comment><USER2> One of the biggest mistakes was American style stock options in Nokia and the way it was implemented (to make the VP level management rich and leave others with nothing).

What do ambitious people grown in Nordic culture do when they become rich and financially independent? They either leave to start their own business or pursue other interests with passion. Those who did stay were not the cream of the crop and lost their ambition.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It seems much of the problem was not being as good as Apple/Google/Microsoft at OS development which they needed after the iPhone came out eg.:

[Vanjoki] "was in charge of its MeeGo smartphone OS with 2,000 people serving under him, but still Google managed to get better results with some 500 Android engineers."

<comment><USER3> Maybe it was an execution problem, too, but I think it was mainly a strategic problem - i.e. the leadership didn't _want_ to try and replace Symbian very quickly. They still thought Symbian could be made into an iOS/Android competitor if they just put touch on it. They thought that was the only real problem with Symbian - not having touch. When in fact there are many other major problems with it, such as being very hard to develop for, and having a big problem from an image point of view (nobody thought Symbian could ever be as good as iOS or Android for touch).

Olli just refuses to take responsibility. He kept dismissing both the iPhone and the adoption of Android for its phones for _4 years_ after the iPhone came out. That's a ridiculous amount of time in today's tech world.

> In the end, timing is all about intuition.

Saying he needed intuition, is like saying any advanced technology is like "magic". He didn't need intuition to "get it". He just needed to understand the disruption innovation theory and to have read Innovator's Dilemma (seriously, how can any CEO ignore the teachings of that book 10 years after it came out? It should be every large company's BIBLE. If they don't really get it, they should be reading it again every single year until they do).

<comment><AUTHOR> Ta for the reply. I'll have to read Innovator's Dilemma one day.

<comment><USER3> I strongly recommend reading Blue Ocean Strategy, too. Innovator's Dilemma focuses on technology mostly, but Blue Ocean is a similar theory that applies to _any_ industry.

They are pretty much the same theory, though. They are not that "new", just much better researched by these two books, and more fleshed out. Peter Drucker was actually talking about this strategy in his book Innovation and Entrepreneurship decades ago, although while it was obvious he "got it" himself, his book doesn't do a great job of explaining it to the reader in a way that he can understand it very well and then go and apply it. But I think Innovator's Dilemma and Blue Ocean Strategy authors were inspired by that to research their theories.

Innovator's Solution sequel is also pretty great, if you want to read it after Innovator's Dilemma (especially for the integration/disintegration insights).

But really these books and these theories have taught me so much about how technology companies can succeed or fail, and I think they are so critical to a CEO, especially a large company's CEO, that if I was a board's Chairman, I would not hire a CEO that doesn't have a deep understanding of the disruption innovation theory.

Oh, and btw, Steve Jobs was a _big fan_ of Innovator's Dilemma (it's mentioned somewhere), and I remember thinking years ago that Steve Jobs is the CEO that is applying the most the disruptive innovation/Blue Ocean theory, out of all existing CEOs in the world at the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ta. I had a read of the Amazon reviews at any rate. It takes so long to read an actual book! I'm supposed to be launching a business that's kind of Blue Ocean so we'll see how that goes.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best service to remove info from online data brokers? - <AUTHOR> A family member was the victim of highly damaging identity theft which took them forever to correct. Some of the information used by the thieves came from one of the many data brokers out there which thrive without meaningful data privacy laws in the U.S. Removing information from data brokers looks like a time-consuming and slow process, and some of them require you give other personal information to "claim" your account, such as a photo of your driver's license (note you can black out all the info except your name, something they won't tell you). What's the best data protection service out there? And what measures should you take to keep your data from data brokers? <comment><USER3> co-founder of DeleteMe here. removal from myriad numbers of top data brokers is a onerous process but it can be done free. our service, DeleteMe - www.joindeleteme.com (NOT sadly the obvious url) has both a FREE option which guides you through each removal OR our paid annual "we do it all for you" service. some of the data brokers make it pretty easy, others display criminal-esque behaviors. it is a shady business, and privacy laws are going to be important in controlling it better. @PangurBan is right to use separate emails when possible (Abine has a freemium product for this called Blur). also, Onerep is a competitor to DeleteMe - it is newer, cheaper and the team is in Eastern Europe but we believe they're a legit service. Happy to answer any other questions from HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great to see you here and thank you for offering free guidance and services. Looking forward to reading your site. I agree we need real data privacy laws with enforcement. Unfortunately most people don't understand how their data is being abused and don't understand that the regulation tech companies are asking for isn't the answer - they'll just water it down with well-funded lobbyists. A few questions:

1) Why can't DeleteMe remove info from more services and why is OneRep able to remove from many more? For example, DeleteMe will tell you there are a number of services they can't remove from, and that any data left on those sites will just be scraped again by the other sites DeleteMe already removed from.

2) Given your expertise, which data privacy practices do you recommend? When using another email to sign up for all services and ecommerce, do you recommend that email not be a Gmail?

3) How does DeleteMe's Blur product help guard your identity and privacy beyond using a separate email?

<comment><USER3> thanks for the questions. 1. DeleteMe's been focused on the biggest and most cumbersome to remove sites. We pride ourselves on doing a thorough job and we use real people to make sure searches are comprehensive and removals complete. we're careful about the quality as we add new data brokers. that said, we should - and are adding more and more. our experts also help with custom requests. what we call "repopulation of data" is also a systemic hard-to- control problem. this is why DeleteMe's a subscription service that keeps checking and removing for a single price all year.

2\. best practices are things most HN concerned people are doing... pass manager, tracker blocker, not everything in a single cloud, vpn, etc. the most interesting thing our Blur product does is let you "compartmentalize" key credentials for each 3rd party you exchange data with. meaning: Blur gives you unique emails, phone, and credit cards as well as passwords, stores them locally, and has a proxy server to route between your private credentials, and the new ones you generate. you can use gmail as your "private mail"

lastly, i'd stress: these things help a bunch to make it harder to correlate your identity cross-domain. that said, anonymity is - and has long been - <USER2> difficult to attain and expensive to maintain. don't kid yourself on the difference :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looking for the same. I've heard of DeleteMe, based in Boston, which looks reputable but says it can't remove from certain sites, such as Radaris, and says you have to handle those. Also found a company called Onerep.com listed as a DeleteMe competitor, which claims to remove from more sites at a lower cost, but it looks sketchy (company appears to have an all-Russian or Eastern European team yet listed in McLean, VA with telephone number in upstate, NY and reviews by supposedly American customers are all in stilted English). Keep in mind that it's important to remove info from all or as many data brokers as possible, as they scrape each other so data left on one will repopulate others.

As far as measures to keep info from data brokers, I use a separate email for all ecommerce and any forum postings; never give your phone number to companies unless you absolutely have to, and when you do use a fake number or only share a Google number when you need a callback; avoid putting any personal info on any public forums and give out as little personal data as possible.

Some other general privacy measures: Firefox for browsing with all privacy protections (same for Chrome and Safari); use ad blockers; all privacy settings on mobile and services turned on and highly limited location sharing only when needed to use an app; use Google and Facebook (very sparingly) on Firefox using Containers and with VPN.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have been a fan of DeleteMe now for almost 6 months. It promised to be the best product available, and they delivered. Great service (does exactly what it says it will), customer service, and easy to use. Big thumbs up.

</comment><comment><USER6> The cross sales are the scariest. When I receive ads that are focused on me that could not possibly come from my account; it is gets very concerning. It's the point where you know your data has been resold.

We are a European company and we need to comply with GDPR. The right to be forgotten is basically a human right.

DeleteMe works best where we have seen the worst re-sellers, which are often the hardest to remove completely.

<comment><AUTHOR> Another account created an hour ago. And quite a reputable user name to choose...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> DeleteMe - I have been a customer here for last 5 years. Very fast in deleting and provides awesome service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Care to elaborate?

<comment><AUTHOR> Another account created today...</comment></comment></comment>


JeffCroft.com: Ten things that annoy the fuck out of me on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://jeffcroft.com/blog/2009/dec/16/ten-things-annoy-me-twitter/ <comment><USER2> Do we really need a post full of swear words? This is link bate.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Twitter

2\. See above

Also, this guy has issues.. really.</comment>


Twitter to judge verified users' offline behavior - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/16/16667668/twitter-verification-removal-judge-offline-behavior <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I own some twitter stock, and have interest in the stock going up.

This drives me nuts.

If they just opened verification to everyone and charged a fee for it. It would be a significant money maker.

Then once you a huge amount of verified actual humans, there are so many business ideas, you can dream up or try from there.</comment>