A former lead designer of Gmail fixes Gmail with a Chrome extension - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90338929/the-former-lead-designer-of-gmail-just-fixed-gmail-on-his-own <comment><USER2> > "Go look at any desktop app and tell me how many have a huge fucking logo in > the top left," rants Leggett. "C'mon. It's pure ego, pure bullshit. Drop the > logo. Give me a break."

Sure, not many desktop apps have a huge top left logo, but almost all websites do. Acting like this is a unique failing of Gmail is strange to me.

<comment><USER3> To compare, FastMail has no such logo. Just a big giant menu button that is easy to find and click, unlike the five different tiny menu buttons, only some of which are actually menus, hidden behind obscure icons and littered about GMail's interface.

<comment><USER4> Per usual web tradition, FastMail has a logo in top left corner, which opens the menu when clicked. Source: I have it open in another tab.

<comment><USER3> Your FastMail is different than mine somehow. Mine just says "Mail" with a drop-down arrow in the upper-left corner.

Note also that, in GMail, the logo isn't a menu. It is just a link to the page you are already on. There's a hamburger menu _next to_ it, but that just opens the sidebar.

<comment><USER3> Too late to edit, I guess there _is_ a logo (an envelope with a swirly bit), but there is no brand name like GMail has.

<comment><USER4> Yup. That particular envelope with this particular swirly bit is their logo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm going to admit I wasn't even aware of the current design, probably because other apps function well for my phone, and I've been using the basic HTML alternative on my desktop for many years.

Neither of those examples actually look useful, the fix is definitely more easy on the eyes though. The empty space between the rows of email messages seems unnecessarily big. I get this was done for design's sake, and yes it looks 'pretty' and 'light' in the flat minimalistic way, and otherwise you'd have this dense chunk of the screen. I still think having twice (or comparing to mine, even three times more) the emails displayed on a per row basis makes scanning for things easier at a glance.

That fix actually resembles something I do to websites, ad-blocking away all the unnecessary elements, siderails, wrappers, navbars, footers, etc. It's very cathartic spending a few seconds resculpting a website to reveal only the relevant content. And the end result always convinces me that less is more when it comes to web design, that regular text and simple formatting should be prioritized higher.

<comment><USER6> @RenRav Whats your workflow for 'ad-blocking away all the unnecessary elements'? Sounds like a lot of work to me, but I do not work with the web.

<comment><USER5> It's mostly something I do after discovering a useful site I'll likely be revisiting in the future, sites with appreciable content but are otherwise marred with poor visuals. When you've been doing it for years revisiting the same sites, I think it pays for itself in terms of delivering more presentable information.

Addons for Firefox include Aardvark, (generic) Element Hiding Helpers, Lizard, Nuke Anything. You press whatever shortcut is assigned and highlight the element your cursor is over (or highlighted text/section), an interface pops up, you specify the domain filter (twitter.com), and filter by attribute (import-prompt), OK, and the rule "twitter.com##.import-prompt" now forever hides twitter's annoying import flex module.

The addons for Firefox I've seen are mostly GUI-based. An exception is Nuke Anything, which I believe can be done through keyboard and context menu options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't use gmail so I'm surprised at how low the (useful) information density is, in either version.

Extrapolating from that screenshot, it looks like that window could hold about a dozen emails. I use the no-frills Mail.app on macOS and a window that's takes about half or two thirds of my screen, and fits 40 emails. In my case I also get to see the "To" address in the list, helping me quickly triage the emails that are not sent to me alone.

Do people really prefer low density interfaces these days?

Removing the visual clutter is certainly an improvement but desktop apps have the menu bar where they can put all the actions, whereas a web app is more limited: it's either a mess of buttons or hamburger buttons which often end up a bit clumsy.

<comment><USER4> I blame mobile, and the desire to reuse design (and often code) between devices. Touch interfaces need big things because phone screens are small relative to fingers. On desktop, such interfaces are unbearable to me; I hate them to the point I actually installed Stylus extension and now hot-fix websites I visit frequently with quick CSS work, to increase information density (and by increase I mean double or triple).

<comment><USER8> Ironically, Inbox was a million times more mobile friendly than Gmail is. Turns out, tabs make for poor mobile experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm curious if the HN crowd knows how one maintains such extensions sustainably...

Just by glancing at it, I'd imagine that it's tightly coupled with the markup and styling of Gmail. If Gmail changes anything about its layout, the extension has to change, too. Does this mean that your extension is periodically broken (and you have to be available to fix it after every layout change/tweak) or is there a better way (e.g. some Gmail-specific APIs or some such)?

</comment><comment><USER10> Direct link to extension discussed in the article:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simplify- gmail/pbm...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simplify- gmail/pbmlfaiicoikhdbjagjbglnbfcbcojpj?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER11> I was on board with this guy until: "...before landing at Nori, a company addressing climate change with blockchain where he still works..."

<comment><USER12> Oh man, I thought the same thing! I though to myself "all that electricity needed to maintain the blockchain, and they want to handle climate change?!"

<comment><USER13> Not all blockchains use a lot of electricity.

Electricity can also be generated in large quantities without changing the climate.

<comment><USER14> It's a zero sum game.

That electricity could have been used to replace polluting power-sources.

<comment><USER15> No, not if they expressly are finding a renewable source of electricity. Say they have enough rooftop space to install solar panels to cover their needs (don't nitpick that; just say it is true).

Yes, this company could have bought the solar panels and then sold their electricity on the market, perhaps displacing some conventional energy source, but that isn't their business.

Their business is this crypto market for carbon credits; they have a need for power, they fill that need with a renewable source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd actually use that clutter around gmail and I have my settings on for the densest text, so this isn't an extension for myself or everybody. That G-mail logo on the upper left on the screen needs to go though. He's right about that.

</comment><comment><USER17> Cool, but it would have been nice to see that effort go to improving a non- Google mail reader (Thunderbird, whatever) instead of furthering Chrome's dominance.

</comment><comment><USER18> Most of this seems like a perpetual problem for UX designers. Feature creep doesn't (usually) happen in a vacuum. Each feature exists because somebody somewhere wanted it. OK, sometimes it happens because a mucky-muck wanted to roll out a new product release, for income or attention, but that's not GMail's line, since they make their income from ads rather than sales.

I honestly can't tell you whether the decluttering here is better or worse for the average user. It's the kind of thing that's hard to measure, and the aesthetic judgment is subjective. I can say that desaturating some of the widgets looks nice: I myself have to constantly fight with my team who wants to draw attention to their new feature by giving it a color pop.

But I myself don't feel that GMail's UX is so radically broken that it's worth the effort of installing a browser-specific extension, thus binding me to that browser and requiring me to re-install on every device.

</comment><comment><USER19> This change doesn't even touch Inbox. It removes the surrounding "chrome" and adjusts the whitespace. That's not nothing as it focuses the UI, but Inbox was far more than that. Not that I don't appreciate the time invested.

The design was welcome, to be sure. But there were far more important features to getting email out of the way. Automatic, inline message grouping by travel, priority, sender, etc; Advanced snooze that included "snooze until delivery date" for packages; Infinite Snooze, which was great for bookmarks with notes; Big, clear done / delete buttons; No ads - not that I expected that to last.

It's been long enough that I've begun to forget the other features since I switched back soon after the announcement, but moving back to gmail has been jarring. The old design is confusing, yes, but I can manage as I'd used it for a decade prior. The design was essential, but mostly icing.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's funny, I was thinking that Inbox did this nicely, and of course he did that too.

</comment><comment><USER21> Interesting. Always had the feeling that Inbox could be the ONE interface to all (main) Google products but somebody had stopped the train on the way to this idea. Seems I was right about my feelings...

</comment><comment><USER22> Here's the HN discussion of the extension: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19558661](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19558661)

</comment><comment><USER23> Gmail works awful on Firefox (slow, heavy memory usage, etc).

Some things are fixed in the last releases of FF, but according of what I read recently, Google is doing this on purpose.

Any addon or userscript recommended?

</comment><comment><USER24> I do inbox zero so I am not usually looking at the email list, but to the actual emails. I also started using larger fonts as I am now 40. So, the amount of space the left and the top frames take up is quite a lot. I haven't tried this but hopefully this can fix that.

By the way, here are the tricks I do to do inbox zero on gmail: [https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/290175](https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/290175)

<comment><USER25> Thank you! The "moving backwards up the list of emails" might be just the thing I need to clear out my email backlog and stay on top of things. I didn't know gmail could do that.

You're being downvoted for being off topic perhaps, but in years of looking at threads like this I'd never seen that tip. And not using the UI at all is a viable approach.

Incidentally I must be on an old UI, my gmail looks nothing like that. Either version looks harder to navigate than the classic one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> To me fixing gmail would mean fixing in-message quoting, so that it actually works, and adding some option to discourage top-posting in e-mail conversations that obviously don't use this style of responding.

Bonus points if the gmail webmail would re-flow quotations correctly and not break the lines inappropriately.

Hiding some icons fixes nothing. It's just a style chnage.

</comment><comment><USER27> Are there any paid for chrome extensions ?

I just seemed like an odd thing to keep emphasising "a free chrome extension"

I thought they were all free

<comment><USER28> Some are tied to paid services

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So very relaxing. A bit like the night time writer modes for editors.

Also it's interesting to see this guy's history. Many of his ideas were great but failed to sustain themselves as-is. But he keeps coming back with other great ideas.. I hope he gets something out that gets a nice and long spot.

</comment><comment><USER30> >Michael Leggett is even more annoyed with Gmail than you are.

Then why he doesn't give Google the boot?

<comment><USER31> He quit Google last year, he's working at a blockchain startup now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Switched to plain HTML version after the redesign was rolled out and have no regrets about it.

</comment><comment><USER33> I tried the extension for a while and ended up removing it since it removes the top toolbar when seeing a single email.

I hated the design of the new gmail when it came out, and now I tolerate it, but that toolbar is handy nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER34> I would prefer an alternative web client that talked to the Gmail API, because the normal UI is not only unusable, it's too heavy and slow and that extension doesn't fix these problems.

</comment><comment><USER35> > he did a short stint at Facebook working on Messenger, before landing at > Nori, a company addressing climate change with blockchain where he still > works.

Blockchain. Interesting.

<comment><USER36> Be hilarious if it relied on an algorithm that needs mining.

<comment><USER37> Quoting from the Nori whitepaper at [https://nori.com/white- paper](https://nori.com/white-paper) :

Carbon Removal Certificate (CRC): a digital asset, or electronic certificate, that is stored on the Ethereum blockchain in the Nori application. One CRC represents one tonne of CO2-equivalent heat trapping gas that has been removed from the atmosphere and stored in an industrial, terrestrial, subsurface, and/or aquatic reservoir.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Why move the "select all" checkbox away from the messages you're trying to select? Talk about bad UI...

</comment><comment><USER39> gotta love this guy: "I'm not the world's best designer by any means" ... where's that place the current gmail team then?

</comment><comment><USER40> Pretty? Yes! Practical? No!

</comment><comment><USER41> > before landing at Nori, a company addressing climate change with blockchain > where he still works

Oh come on...

<comment><USER42> Elaborate?

<comment><USER43> Well first of all, blockchain technology has become so overhyped that its bound to draw scoffs even if the business case were legitimate. "Blockchain" anything almost sounds like a joke at first pass these days.

But in this specific instance, it is even more ridiculous as one of the biggest concerns surrounding blockchain technology is that it is insanely inefficient in terms of energy usage, and concerns have been raised about how widespread usage of blockchain technology could exacerbate climate change.

<comment><USER42> It's sad to see YT community members being so ill informed. Proof-of-Stake is coming in leading blockchains such as Ethereum, Polkadot, Cosmos, etc. This is changing. It's a new technology it takes time to improve. Anyway, do your homework before commenting on things you don't understand.

<comment><USER41> > Proof-of-Stake is coming

There have been so many proposed algorithms on this idea over the past years, yet here we are, still waiting. For now, it's either vaporware or it has a security flaw.

Or, like traditional proof-of-work mining has become, it will coalesce into the very thing it was meant to remove: control by a few powerful and centralized authorities.

Regardless, blockchain is not going to help solve climate change. A distributed carbon credit market is not going to solve climate change.

I want proof-of-stake to work. I really do. But I just don't believe it can anymore...

<comment><USER44> > There have been so many proposed algorithms on this idea over the past > years, yet here we are, still waiting. For now, it's either vaporware or it > has a security flaw.

There are several proof of stake networks running right now. Care to elaborate on the security flaws?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Does Your Company Need a Chief Blogger? - <AUTHOR> http://nobosh.com/s/does-your-company-need-a-chief-blogger/48172/

<comment><USER2> Non-linkjacked: <http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=126326>

</comment><comment><USER3> Can't read the article for some reason, on Firefox 3 beta 5 on Mac. Keep getting a blank page when I click on "Take me to the full article".</comment>


Social Networks: Your online friends aren't real - <AUTHOR> http://valleywag.com/tech/social-networks/your-online-friends-arent-real-299646.php <comment><USER2> Well, this of course points out that there are not many online equivalents of going to a friend's party, volunteering with others or a business mixer -- facilitated real-life scenarios where people are, effectively, socially introduced. Somewhere you can meet someone, have some one-on-one chat and maybe exchange a business card, phone number or email address. That's a socially acceptable starting point for a friendly relationship.

People need those starting points. If you meet some guy at a TechCrunch party and talk for a couple minutes, it is perfectly acceptable to email him with some question a week later. But if you just comment on a blog post he makes, even if he responds in another comment, you're still effectively a stranger. You can email them, but it better sound a little apologetic. You sure as heck aren't going to ask to add him to your social network.

<comment><USER3> There's still nothing stopping you from emailing him a question after that kind of exchange on a blog, unless he doesn't post his email address publicly.

<comment><USER2> I totally agree (I'm reasonably comfortable with total strangers emailing me), but if I, say, meet someone at a trade show then there seems like there's a higher level of acceptability to it than "hey, remember me, I responded to your blog post." Maybe it's just me, though?

<comment><USER3> Agreed, but I think the distinction is becoming increasingly arbitrary over time.

<comment><USER4> And I have to disagree with this... or at least, I don't want the distinction to become arbitrary. The Internet and Web were meant to make communications easier. But it seems like all this online social network crap is replacing real world meet-ups.

<comment><USER3> Well, "agree to disagree" and all that.

Might be a generation gap, I'm solidly Generation Y. Are you Gen X?

<comment><USER4> I forget what all the letters mean, but I'm 21. I guess I'm just old fashioned!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You guys are cool with me. Ever in South Jersey, we'll meet up for a beer.</comment>


CVS will limit opioid prescriptions to 7 days - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/22/health/cvs-prescription-restrictions-opioids-bn/index.html <comment><USER2> Of course filling more smaller prescriptions will increase their revenue.

Doctor at hospital had me fill a 30 day supply after a back injury, last year, but it was actually longer because of the weaning schedule.

It would have been great fun to drive to the pharm a week after being released from the hospital to get another weeks worth of pills when I couldn't push the goddamn clutch without being paralyzed by pain.

<comment><USER3> >Of course filling more smaller prescriptions will increase their revenue.

How so?

<comment><USER2> Minimum cost for a filled prescription ($10 for one generic valium for instance) and/or processing fee per order in addition for the cost per pill for the staff's attention and handling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They are talking about CVS Caremark here (A major PBM), this is not CVS Pharmacy the retail chain. Express Scripts (another major PBM) has already starting limiting opioids to 7 day supply (since 2 months ago), anything further requires a medical justification to the PBM provider by the prescriber. Again the Media likes to blur the lines and cause panic/confusion.</comment>


Ask HN: If you have had a FTTN broadband rollout, how is it? - <AUTHOR>

Brief background. I live in Australia, where, as many people may know, we were getting a Fibre To The Premises broadband rollout, organised by the government.
As many people are likely also aware, we in Australia had a change of government last weekend, with the incoming government dedicated to Fibre To The Node, instead (citing a faster rollout, and lower costs).
I run www.weneedthenbn.com (I'll put a clicky below), which is one of the many sites which have appeared in the last week, attempting to rescue the FTTP broadband network plan.
What I'm asking for is this: Have you had FTTN or FTTP/FTTH broadband? What can you tell us (from a user experience perspective) about stability, access, speeds, cost, etc. I would like to build up some user stories, either to use as "this is why we need FTTP", or to show me that I should stop worrying, and learn to love the node. <comment><USER2> I live in the US, and I have had both FTTP (via Verizon FIOS) and FTTN (via AT&T U-verse).

FTTP was by far, the best internet service I ever experienced. The latency was super low, download times were always fast, uploads were synchronous, and the service had amazing uptime in the 3 years I had it.

FTTN was by contrast, a miserable experience. The hardware was finicky, the latency was terrible (thanks to a DSL Interleave), the downloads were inconsistent, upload speeds were laughable, and the hardware was total crap and couldn't stay up at all.

Unfortunately, Verizon has halted new development of it's FIOS product even though it was awesome, due to cost. AT&T has pushed forward with it's crappy U-verse solution and has eclipsed FIOS installs in my local area.

My takeaway from this is that fiber optic cable is far and away one of the most stable and solid technologies since the invention of the copper wire. But unfortunately it comes at such a steep price, that it gets sidelined when it comes up against the "Last Mile" problem of getting a connection from the node to the residence.

I would love to see an opt-in option for FTTP where you pay the difference to the service provider to have the fiber optic cable run into the residence. Even if they charged me at cost ($2-3K USD last I checked), I think many would pay for it due to the better experience. Over time, this cost would fall and everyone would opt in.

</comment><comment><USER3> My understanding is that a lot of people had bad experience with FTTP/FTTH when it was first rolled out in the US, because the telco would cut the copper cables that lead to the house. This meant that once you switched to FTTP/FTTH, you had no way to switch back to ADSL (or that it was prohibitively expensive to do so).

In my neighbourhood in Canada, FTTN is quite common, and speeds of 25Mbps/10Mbps and 50Mbps/10Mbps are commercially available using VDSL to cover the last mile between the node and the home (and this is well below the theoretical capabilities of VDSL, since the telco is also using VDSL to deliver the TV component of a triple-play package ). While a new modem is still required, since the last mile is still copper, it means that switching from ADSL to FTTN+VDSL and back is easy (alleviating concerns that a FTTH provider might suddenly jack up prices knowing that you can't switch back to ADSL).

I believe the local telco has started rolling out FTTH to select areas, but:

\- it's available in far fewer neighbourhoods than FTTN

\- the monthly fee is much more expensive (think $150 CAD/month, compared to $40/month for FTTN)

\- there's an expensive installation fee for FTTH

\- the bandwidth cap on FTTH doesn't increase proportionally with bandwidth compared to FTTN or ADSL; the caps are so low that you're basically on usage- based billing for all usage above the base monthly fee

</comment><comment><USER4> I haven't experienced FTTH yet, but reports from people who do have it seem really good.

I have however worked supporting both FTTP and FTTH on a private network. In my experience, FTTH was so much simpler to diagnose. If there was an issue you would check the exchange, and their house. The Fiber converters we had where tiny compared to the ones NBNCo offers too.

The FTTN users where a lot harder to deal with. All the network equipment is still fairly young (under 10 years iirc), but we would still get cables from the pits that needed to be rerun. Our nodes supported 4 houses at most. Though most of them only had 1 or 2 users attached to them.

</comment><comment><USER5> I lived in West End, Brisbane for a while and due to the closing of the local ADSL exchange (to build a new childrens' hospital) Telstra upgraded the whole area to FTTP.

Getting it set up was a nightmare but this was entirely the fault of our ISP (DoDo are the worst.) After it was installed I had 3 months of perfect internet access until moving out of the area! Shame I could only order 30mbit at the time.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.weneedthenbn.com](http://www.weneedthenbn.com)</comment>


Could driverless cars own themselves? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30998361 <comment><USER2> How about an ownerless house that keeps its own rent money? An ownerless McDonald's franchise? Ownership is not just about money. Driverless cars don't really change anything about the concept of ownership.

If you think driverless taxis are such a great idea and you want them to be operated in a non-greedy way, start a non-profit, or start a corporation and make it public so that anyone who wants can invest and share in the profits, and pay dividends. If you insist "nobody" owns and operates the fleet of cars, it will probably end up being the government, who already programs the fare boxes in taxis.

<comment><USER3> Why would this necessarily be true?

Several authors have written about algorithmically generated & operated companies or entities (Charlie Stross, the Ghost in the Shell) either as litigation shields or entities which outlived their owners but continued to operate.

The idea is certainly odd, to essentially create autonomous and roughly speaking self-sufficient/directed artificial creatures, but it's consistent at least.

The thought that makes me saddest i think is just that the core quality we'd imbue humanity's first autonomous creations with would be capitalist wage- slavery (a literal non-hyperbolic one in this case).

<comment><USER4> For some entities it makes sense (the lobsters in Accelerando clearly benefit from it and their emancipation does not do any harm) but for society as a whole it is surely a dangerous idea.

<comment><USER5> >but for society as a whole it is surely a dangerous idea

By what and who's metric? There is no stable, verifiable entity "society as a whole".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Competitive markets always end up with zero economic profit, all the 'profit' is compensation for the efforts and risks in allocating capital.

If there is no need for a human doing the allocation of capital anymore, and the market demand is so liquid that the capital risks are zero, then yeah we'll get autonomous profitless (in economic and accounting sense) cab networks.

This is not a 'new' type of corporation. It's just a corporation with one more task automated.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think the legal consequences would by far surpass any of the more practical aspects mentioned here ? Something of value NOT owned (ultimately) by a person of a government ?

What if there is a flaw in the decision software and something goes horribly wrong ? Would not be the first time... The software is written by someone, the decision to use the software was done by someone, etc. Still if really no one else is to blame, then the government is responsible ? So if nobody else then they 'own' it ?

It also means abandoning the risk taking and therefore profit potential / earning power for people.

Challenging.

And once solved why not use the same concept for rental apartments, clothes ?

<comment><USER8> Although the article talks down the use of AI at face value, my gut reaction to this is; Right, that would be the vehicle's responsibility.

In regards to risk specifically, I would like to believe risk/route evaluation at the least is considered as part of a profit algo for the vehicle itself. Yes, this is a assuming a more abundance of data points available to the vehicles itself — but I'd like to assume infrastructure to streets and safety are being enhanced along side of the vehicle(s) themselves.

<comment><USER8> And I think for the sake of the thought exercise you have to consider what happens to related markets — specifically in this scenario, risk. If vehicles are no longer being sold to people, neither is auto insurance (at least in today's form).

<comment><USER9> Car insurance is sold to companies today, which are not natural persons regardless of bizarre laws.

<comment><USER7> Ultimately companies (the shares) are owned by persons and managed by persons. This is very fundamental to our (Western ?) system. Its nearly impossible to start a company or have a bank account without identifying the Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO). Only possible in a very few (questionable) places.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Perhaps set your sights a little lower first? [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53855.msg642768#msg6...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53855.msg642768#msg642768)

There are tons of complications before you get to the point of worrying about machines that might kill people if something goes wrong. :)

<comment><USER11> The key bit of it is this:

> StorJ is not able to find new hosting environments on its own, due to a lack > of sufficiently powerful AI— but it can purchase the knowledge from humans: > When an instance of StorJ is ready to reproduce it can announce a request > for proposal: Who will make the best offer for a script that tells it how to > load itself onto a new hosting environment and tells it all the things it > needs to know how to survive on its own there?

The 'AI' doesn't have to be smart it enough to do everything itself, it just has to be smart enough to be able to hire a human to help it. This step could be broken down into lots of mturk-style tasks, each done by a different human:

1) Find hosting providers who accept Bitcoin

2) Evaluate the service provided by these hosting providers

3) Sign up for an account on this hosting provider

4) Setup an account on this server with this SSH public key

You could even deal with legal issues that way - have a retainer with a law firm, and if any issues crop up send them an email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _" To be clear, these robots-on-wheels would not be self-aware. ...

But they would be programmed to seek self-improvement in order to avoid becoming obsolete."_

No, no, no: we are not going to apply evolution, we will simply let the fittest survive!

</comment><comment><USER13> Well, there is a tree in Athens, Georgia (USA) which legally owns itself. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_That_Owns_Itself](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_That_Owns_Itself)

<comment><USER14> Potentially significant bits from the above wikipedia page:

The original transfer of the deed would not be valid because 'Such a deed, even if it did exist, would have no legal standing. Under common law, the person receiving the property in question must have the legal capacity to receive it, and the property must be delivered to—and accepted by—the recipient.'

and ' Athens-Clarke County confirms that the tree is in the right-of-way, and is thus "accepted for care" by municipal authorities;'

however,

'Regarding Jackson's deed, one writer noted at the beginning of the 20th century, "However defective this title may be in law, the public recognized it."[13] In that spirit, it is the stated position of the Athens-Clarke County unified government that the tree, in spite of the law, does indeed own itself.[14]'

So, while if you wished to do this with some land you owned, and a tree, it probably would not be considered legally valid in the US (at the moment), but there might be a chance you could get it to be effectively the case?

<comment><USER15> A tree can't give consent, ergo it can't be on the receiving end of a contract.

That the public plays along has more to do with novelty and tradition than with a serious legal precedent. Saying that the tree de facto owns itself despite the lack of legal underpinning is like saying Emperor Norton was de facto the emperor of the United States because people accepted his fake money as legal tender and acknowledged his claims.

Consider if Emperor Norton would have engaged in an armed conflict with the US government, for example. It'd be pretty obvious that he would be treated as an American citizen, not as a foreign head of state. Likewise if the Tree That Owns Itself's supposed legal status were ever at odds with the well-being of humans (to a degree that dwarfs its cultural value), it's pretty obvious who's side the courts would be on.

At best, the tree could be treated as a corporation with the municipal government or the public acting on its behalf.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The biggest problem with driverless cars will not be the safety technology but the people controlling them.

It's not hard to imagine a scenario where most regular cars have been outlawed or restricted in favour of safer driverless ones and bus services are replaced by fleets of self driving cars. It wouldn't be long before restrictions are be placed on the journeys for the sake of profit.

Even if the self driving cars were to stay in an individuals possession I can imagine restrictions being placed by the manufacturers or insurance companies, almost like a drm for cars.

</comment><comment><USER15> What? No, that's silly. Even if the US grants personal rights to corporations (see Hobby Lobby), it's a bit much to imagine any court of law granting rights to an "autonomous" non-entity created by a third party.

Until we develop truly sentient machines, it's preposterous to think that a "thing" could own itself in any meaningful way (even corporations have humans acting on their behalf).

Also, what is the _incentive_ to do this? It's far more likely that autonomous cars will be handled like train and bus systems.

And finally, as a programmer, any notion of (non-sentient) computer programs being granted autonomy is a nightmare to me. Yes, we can make very nice semi- autonomous toys, but the real world is simply far too complex to expect any machine to be able to handle all of it. This is why we have emergency overrides.

Our tolerance for errors made by machines is far lower than our tolerance for errors made by humans, anyway. If a machine autonomously made a mistake that resulted in the loss of human life, it'd be an outrage even if no human could have fared any better under the same circumstances. The liability alone would be a headache.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a cool concept for lots of things, maybe even big things like companies and utilities. A for-profit entity that operates just like a normal one, but is programmed to not to simply maximize profits but to maximize social good. It would work well on things that don't require too much human thinking to run (just balancing equations and running equipment), but are normally hindered by self-interest.

<comment><USER9> Just be careful that you don't let your "social good maximising" AI talk to your "global resource management" AI.

That is how Skynet happens.

<comment><USER17> The vision I had was that these things wouldn't be run by some strong AI trying to figure out what's best, but just companies and machines that don't need complicated ideas to run. Just application specific "AI" that's good enough to balance the books and keep everything running, save enough for a rainy day, and keeping the consumers interests in mind.

But I guess if left unchecked, as technology improves, things would tend towards Skynet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The article mentions that the cars could hire programmers to improve them. Why not also let them hire drivers - that way there would be no need to wait for the technology of driverless cars to become feasible.

<comment><USER19> Yes, absolutely everything in the article is possible without driverless cars.

In fact most of it is being done currently, except the owner-less bit.

It seems a common mind screw up.

People think when technology X is released all these other advanced technologies will come with it.

Voice recognition is an obvious example.

Just because a computer can understand the words perfectly, it still has no idea what you are saying.

For it to do that it'd have to be close to passing the Turing test.

This fallacy should have a name if it doesn't already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> to own itself, first someone would have to give that ownership (and consequent profit) to it. Why would someone do that in the first place? Will humans not care about their own needs anymore?

</comment><comment><USER21> Would self-owned cars have a need to know the implications of its actions? Legalities?

Will they – like humans – be able to take on small losses in order to survive? Can they be expected to uphold the law like humans are? What if they act as getaway drivers for a bank robbery? Drug mules?

Would their programmers be legally responsible for their illegal actions? Or would they, as the buyers and evaluators of the software, be responsible? Or the programmers of the evaluation software?

</comment><comment><USER22> If AI starts to sort of work, we may get to see some kind of corporation run by computers, owned by other similar corporations. Probably out of some financial haven such as the Seychelles or Cyprus. This is more likely in the financial space than in the self-driving car space.

I could see someone setting this up and retaining some minority ownership so that they get dividends, while the thing runs itself.

</comment><comment><USER23> I would suggest that current trust laws, where legal fictions like companies can be trustees, could be a foundation for creating a programmatic trust deed for cars been trustees.

The trustee (car) is given legal title to the trust property (car, software, service contracts), by the settlor (manufacturer company), but is obligated to act for the good of the beneficiaries, humans.

</comment><comment><USER24> Here in Boston, The Subway system has been completely shutdown by the snow and the executive in charge of the system has been fired. The MBTA performs poorly and consistently goes further and further into debt.

I wonder what a system built of self-interested-interested transport robots would look like, especially in times of disruption and crisis.

</comment><comment><USER25> Article keeps with the rule: 'If a headline is question, the answer is no'

</comment><comment><USER26> This is an interesting idea, probably ahead of its time. I can't help but think of this quote: "Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

</comment><comment><USER27> Now it's getting spooky. What's next, self-aware computers? With their own impulse for self-preservation? Oh noes!

<comment><USER28> The article very explicitly states that this is not about self aware cars. Merely about cars which are programmed to make enough money to pay for their own gas/electricity, repairs and insurance. And probably repay cost of being built to its manufacturer too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> What happens when an autonomous taxi hits a pedestrian? Is it fined? Does it go to jail? Death penalty?

</comment><comment><USER30> This is like asking if the automatic doors at the supermarket can own themselves.

</comment><comment><USER31> Who's gonna sue me if I spray-paint a dick on the windshield?

</comment><comment><USER32> This reads like the golem collective in Discworld.

</comment><comment><USER33> Who pays for the manufacturing of these cars?

<comment><USER34> A loan from the autonomous self owning bank?

<comment><USER35> And who sets up the bank?

<comment><USER34> Turtles all the way down is one answer - but if that doesn't satisfy you... a human who then accepts an offer for his controlling interest by the AI?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Everyone should read Saturn's Children.

</comment><comment><USER36> No

</comment><comment><USER37> Yeah, this breaks down as soon as one of them gets into an accident and a million angry mothers introduce responsibility legislation.</comment>


Ask YC: Have you participated in a Startup Weekend? - <AUTHOR>

My friends and I from Cleveland, Ohio are thinking of attending a Startup Weekend in late July.  It is being hosted in Columbus, about two hours away (http://columbus.startupweekend.com/). Has anyone here attended a Startup Weekend before, and if so, how was the experience? <comment><USER3> It was a blast. I attended the Bloomington, IN weekend. The actual product didn't go much of anywhere, but that wasn't the point. The event sold out-- capped at 100 attendees. I met some great people and it really clarified to me how much startup and tech is happening in Bloomington and surrounding Indiana University.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's good to hear. The main reason we're hoping to participate is to just get our feet wet and better understand the startup environment. What project did you work on and how is the startup tech environment in Indiana?

Part of the reason we're driving down to Columbus is to see different startup tech areas in the Midwest. I love the area, but Cleveland isn't exactly cutting edge in terms of technology right now.

<comment><USER3> Bloomington is amazing for it's size. It's a university town with a ton of people focused on UI, usability and programing coming out of IU's School of Informatics. IU also has a great music and business school. The rest of Indiana is certainly behind, but I think Bloomington is starting to take shape as a little tech mecca in the Midwest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have and have continued working on it with three others. Skribit - <USER2> Atlanta November 2007. Things are going well and we served 3.9M pviews this past month (granted most are widget serves..)

<http://skribit.com>

</comment><comment><USER5> Hi Jim - Cleveland Local here as well. There's a few of us headed to Columbus for the event. I've attended previous SW and enjoyed it very much - I also host the Startup Drinks in Cleveland - you should check us out.

Shoot me an email (ak @ MyYCUserName . com).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey I sent an email, did you receive it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I attended Startup Weekend in West Lafayette (we were the first team to actually launch within the weekend) and San Francisco (we were the only team to do a non-profit app), and I can't recommend it enough.

The actual startups created were worthless, but fun. And above all, it was an amazing networking opportunity: I lined up work for over six months now on two different (good) startups based on the contacts I made at Startup Weekend.

One thing though -- the original organizer who set up the SWs I went to (Andrew Hyde) is no longer the organizer. He's started working for TechStars and has handed the reigns over to a guy named Raymond.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd like to, but Boston is ~#39 on the list, after having had one back in October. I'd say it's worth it for that nifty badge, if nothing else. :-P

Besides, networking with other startup founders is invaluable. Regardless of what you're working on, there are some business basics that you'll all be going through; getting advice for those things is great.

A bunch of us are available online in #startups on irc.freenode.net - [http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.freenode.net&channel=%...](http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.freenode.net&channel=%23startups)

</comment><comment><USER8> Do many "rockstar" developers show up for these events in Midwest ? people who can architect and kick off PHP, PERL, Ruby apps without looking up documentation all the time.

<comment><USER9> i dont know but I just signed up. I've been doing RoR for almost two years now ( 8 months at a small company, and 11 months at JP Morgan Chase).

see ya there!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It was a great experience in DC. We met many nice people. I don't know that the startup will survive, and there were less than a handful of exceptions. But in the end it was good to feel the energy and connect with other like- minded people. I recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I was an attendee of the NYC event and was substantially less then impressed by either venue or product. However, the people were fun.

</comment><comment><USER12> Are they still trying to claim the bs 5% of your company?

<comment><USER13> No. Startup Weekend, LLC does not take an interest in any company formed out of the weekend. They used to, but changed it at some point. I think it was from the Boulder II event.</comment></comment>


The accidental invention of the Illuminati conspiracy - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170809-the-accidental-invention-of-the-illuminati-conspiracy <comment><USER2> _It's hardly instigated the mind-blowing epiphany – the realisation that it's all fake – which the proponents of Discordianism had originally intended._

The article doesn't emphasize this quite right.

The key insight of Discordianism is that all of human society is "fake". If you can kick it, it's real; if you can't kick it, it's exactly as real as Eris is -- which is to say, the way people behave is in accordance with the way that they truly believe.

The first level of Discordianism is to think that Discordianism is a joke.

The second level is to realize that it's true.

The third level is to realize that it's a joke that teaches you that everything that exists in and shared between minds has the same ontological basis: Discordia, Islam, Christianity, the US Federal Reserve System, Google -- they all exist because people believe that they exist and behave in ways that indicate that belief.

<comment><USER3> I remember reading RAW back when I was 19 or so. I think it was the Shrodinger's Cat Trilogy, then the Illuminatus!

Just amazing stuff. And a massive piss take on the post modern novels of the day. Kallisti!

<comment><USER4> Wow, what a synchronicity. I was just thinking how the images from Charlottesville could almost have come straight out of Illuminatus Trilogy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This guy is actually fairly ignorant of the history. The Illuminatus! Trilogy was a _parody_ of conspiracy literature and was released in 1975. There were hundreds of books about the freemasons and the illuminati going back to the 18th century. There was a whole anti-Masonic political party in the United States in the 19th century. In particular, the book parodied the John Birch society.

The real innovation in the book was how freely they mixed and matched conspiracy theories from the left and right to turn them into a gigantic ur- conspiracy.

<comment><USER6> Yes, and even the idea of a parody of conspiracy literature wasn't all that new at that point. Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49" had been published in 1965 and the group it describes, the Trystero, is the Illuminati in all but name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the Illuminati, and other conspiracies, are so popular because it's comforting to believe that someone, no matter how megalomaniacal, is taking actions that lead to a higher purpose. The thought that nobody is really in charge - that there is no higher purpose - can be pretty damned scary and isolating.

<comment><USER8> Its not like wealthy, powerful, privileged people could actually get together and forge some kind of sinister plan to expand their wealth power and privilege - Right?

If that would be possible there would be clear signs of it all over the world. It would require great effort not to notice it.

<comment><USER9> They pretty obviously can and do. However, explanations of world events quickly get ridiculous when it's posited that there's one such group in charge rather than multiple ones in conflict/competition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The real reason for the prevalence of conspiracy theories: some of them turn out to be true!

See the recent LIBOR conspiracy.

Hundreds if not thousands of people knew about it, yet it never leaked until some chance emails turned up during discovery of some other financial malfeasance.

<comment><USER11> The phrase "conspiracy theory" was coined by the CIA. [1,2] It is one of the greatest counters to the exposure of secrets ever invented. This article is a good example of why it is so effective. Who's going to question the authority and veracity of the BBC?

[1] [https://projectunspeakable.com/conspiracy-theory- invention-o...](https://projectunspeakable.com/conspiracy-theory-invention-of- cia/)

[2] [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-23/1967-he-cia- created...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-23/1967-he-cia-created- phrase-conspiracy-theorists-and-ways-attack-anyone-who-challenge)

<comment><USER12> [3] _Foucault 's Pendulum_, Umberto Eco.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What re-initiated the conspiracy theory was an Anti-Semetic Illuminati book written by William Carr in 1958 which linked it to the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers.

Also the conspiratorial aspects were real but represented how the Jesuits behaved in 18th century Bavaria. The Illuminati was modeled off the Jesuits and the Rite of Strict Observance, a controversial Masonic lodge that falsely claimed the Freemasons were attributed to the Knights Templar.

The Illuminati ended in 1793 but did have some connections to the moderates of the French Revolution through Bode, Bonneville and Thomas Paine.

The hysteria and exposure of the Illuminati, which was a rationalist secret society fighting for Enlightenment ideals, inspired countless other revolutionaries and secret societies, many Communist in nature.

One of the most famous, was the conspirator, revolutionary and Freemason Philippe Buonarroti. Then there was the OTO and Aleister Crowley, which really had no connection to the Illuminati.

In the 1920s, Milner's Kindergarten did engage in the Cecil Rhodes secret society promoting the Imperial Federation and Round Table movement. That did become the Royal Institte of International Affairs and the Council on Foreign Relations. It was modeled on the Illuminati, but again that was the structure of the political secret society of the Vatican (Jesuits).

Lord Rothschild was involved with Rhodes and Milner but he was against Imperial Federation. Mayer Rothschild was not involved in the Illuminati (all the members were made public) but a few Illuminati members were affiliated with him.

But their philosophy was more akin to Thomas Jefferson and their structure just a political device to promote classical liberalism.

The Illuminati was against the occult, but did reference the Alumbrados and Illumines of France. The core of all the esotericism is mainly from the 14 & 15th century where writers merged ancient Greek philosophy with Jewish mysticism.

The conspiracy today is more an affront to classical liberalism, with ultra wealthy people believing in economic integration. The Establishment today is the complete opposite of what the Illuminati were fighting for.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER14> Like any organization, big or small. You will always have people with more influence and visibility at the top.

Remember that the term Illuminati stems from the Latin word "illuminatus" which means "enlightened". I don't believe when people mention the Illuminati today that they're referring to the same Bavarian Illuminati historians reference but rather a new generation of the "enlightened". If pay close attention you're starting to see this today in tech as some of the industry veterans start to get closer with politicians and the Government through lobbying and advisory roles. The Illuminati concept often falls into the old "Us vs. The Man" mentality. Zuckerberg went through the same issues with privacy and now he's positioned to be a Global Leader.

Hate to break it, but the Illuminati in some form does exist through various social clubs and organizations. I'd say it's not as direct as people position it but those groups definitely have an influence on world events and the future of our everyday lives.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's a shame that the author has effectively written out RAW's co-author, Robert Shea: he's not even named, mentioned only in passing as "another Playboy writer".

</comment><comment><USER16> Hehe, KLF is gonna rock ya! They are supposed to respawn this August, so I am curious what would happen (after a 23-year hiatus). I am pretty sure Scooter will ape them again though...

Anyway, over here in Ingolstadt the original Illuminati were nothing like what Deus Ex depicts; it was mainly a club of nerds competing with another club of nerds called freemasons; the latter group making fun of the former that their "secrets" suck and only the first few levels had some "secrets", the rest had none. Simply a silly game that people took way too seriously out of boredom. They then practiced the art of spying on each other and as the mutual mistrust developed, they later disappeared.

<comment><USER17> They're justified and they're ancient and they drive an ice cream van...

The KLF (and Bill Drummond in particular) are truly inspirational in how they engage with popular culture while still being deeply conceptual artists. And have a ton of fun.

John Higgs' book on them is a good read. It goes into detail about the illuminati and Robert anton wilson (fun fact: Drummond did the set design for the play mentioned in the article).

The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds [https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1780226551/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_I....](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1780226551/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_I.hKzbX1CB8G5)

<comment><USER16> So, let's conspire a bit here...

The KLF (Kopyright Liberation Front) had a hand in creating music genres such as trance, acid house, ambient; the song "What Time Is Love?" is arguably the most remixed song ever (you can even see Armin performing it in Greece). They took a retired US country singer and made her sing about an ice cream van, then a Deep Purple singer to spoil America's 500th anniversary, and used a grind-core band while firing blanks from M16 during Brit Awards. They did the wicker man burning, obviously to popularize Burning Man in Europe. They deleted their back catalog in order not to allow anyone to re-release their music and burned the only million they got from their music.

Upon closer analysis and research, this all is so improbable it obviously couldn't be an accident, so there must be somebody behind them making all this happen! I know who that is, it's the Illuminati v2.0!

<comment><USER17> Oh my goodness, it's all starting to make sense!

Don't forget the contract signed on the side of a hire car and subsequently pushed off a cliff. Or mysterious rites on the Isle of Jura...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> " _Then, an Illuminati role-playing card game appeared in 1975 which imprinted its mystical world of secret societies onto a whole generation._ "

Ahem.

 _Illuminati_ came out in the early '80s ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati_(game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati_\(game\))).

</comment><comment><USER18> Adam Gorightly, author of a couple of books about Kerry Thornley, has been documenting the early days of discordianism at Historia Discordia. Lots of gems from era, info on various Illuminatus Trilogy related things, etc, on that site.

[http://historiadiscordia.com/](http://historiadiscordia.com/)

<comment><USER12> [https://www.principiadiscordia.com/index.php](https://www.principiadiscordia.com/index.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Listen, everyone has an urge to belong to some group.

You might not act on the urge as Woody Allen:

"I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member."

The illumaniti exists and it's at the top of the pyramid.

But they are just like you and me, the only difference that they (or their ancestors) climbed up first.

What do they see? No step to climb higher only others below clambering up.

<comment><USER20> Groucho Marx was the author of that quote, I believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> On the one hand, this is a fascinating fnord look into the history; on the other, how much should we believe the sources? It's presented as a factual article, but it would be the very essence of Discordianism for at least one of the named sources not to exist at all...

</comment><comment><USER22> The title should say "conspiracy theory". "Conspiracy" is not synonymous.

</comment><comment><USER23> Great, so how do I tell my old pastor who made us watch hours worth of illuminati exposes In pop culture which relied on a lot of sharp shooting fallacies?

</comment><comment><USER24> Wait, so Tom Hanks' _Angels and Demons_ wasn't a "recreation from actual events"?

<comment><USER25> They want us to believe that so nobody finds out that the Kremlin has that flask of antimatter stored in the basement.

<comment><USER12> You don't?</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Investigating Questions over MSN China joint venture's Juku feature - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/dec09/12-14statement.mspx

<comment><USER2> I don't know much about what it's like to hire an independent contractor (i.e. how much oversight and control is typically practiced), but is it really possible that Microsoft wouldn't have noticed how blatant the ripoff was before pushing the site live?

To me, the "independent contractor" excuse is pretty lame, and seems pretty common (the fusiongarage guy's ripped-off article uses the same excuse, just off the top of my head). If you hired them to do a job under your name, then it's your responsibility to make sure that job meets your standards before publishing it under your brand.

<comment><USER3> This happened to Microsoft recently with their Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool: <http://wudt.codeplex.com/> . They (apparently via a 3rd party development house) used GPL code from the ImageMaster project without releasing any of their sources. MS did the right thing in the end and released the code, but like you say, it shouldn't happen in the first place. You should hold contractors to the same level of code quality that you'd expect from your employees.

<comment><USER4> "You should hold contractors to the same level of code quality that you'd expect from your employees."

Copyright violation is orthogonal to code quality. The protections against this kind of behavior are usually legal, not procedural.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Courtesy of jf: <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=996118>

</comment><comment><USER5> This seems more like an issue with IP mentality in China than with Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER6> They waited until morning in China ? - at software companies I've worked at they would have woken people up for something as major as this. This isn't the sort of thing where you want to be caught behind the news cycle.

<comment><USER7> Well the damage was already done.

Why wake some developer to check if the code actually looks similar to the competitor. who then would get back to you, then you contact some other people to decide what to do and then you contact the Infrastructure guy to take the site offline.

The outcome: the site would have been taken out a few hours earlier.

I don't think this situation warranted such measures, the PR nightmare had already begun. This way they were able to analyze the situation, contact the guilty vendor and do a preliminary investigation before deciding to take the site offline instead of doint it as a kneejerk reaction.

<comment><USER6> Those few hours can be critical when you're trying to stay ahead of the news cycle, because you have to race with news deadlines (at newspapers, PR wires, tv stations, etc.)

The difference of a few minutes can be the difference between a minor story of "Microsoft withdraws website over legal issue" and a major story "Scandal: Microsoft rips off competitor; ignores allegations".

Geeks embbeded in a 24-hour web-newscycle often forget that most of the worlds news cycle still revolves around newsroom deadlines.</comment></comment></comment>


Why do the Chinese save so much? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bakadesuyo.com/why-do-the-chinese-save-so-much

<comment><USER2> Because before 1949, life was hell. After 1949, life was better, but still struggle in poverty. Recent years has been the best for Chinese for a couple centuries. People learn to live with what they have and always save money to prepare for a rainy day.

Although, Chinese are willing to spend big bucks on education, especially for their children.

<comment><USER3> Related to the above, but not really covered in the submitted article, is the 4-2-1 problem. The old model of having your children take care of you when you're elderly breaks down when 4 grandparents have 2 parents who have 1 child.</comment></comment>


Trunk.ly picks up the torch of del.icio.us - <AUTHOR> http://trunk.ly/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been using delicious since 2004. It's no surprise to see Yahoo abandon delicious finally but it still hurts to see a promising product failing to get the attention/resource it deserves. Back in 2005/06, when tagging and folksnomies were at their peak, I could see delicious as the "central" memory for links.

Fast forward to 2008. I was in foocamp. There was a night session called "Computational Photography" and it was Joshua who hosted it. I went there and found PG, Tim O'Reilly and a couple of other folks interested in AR were there. Joshua wanted to show cool videos on youtube but just couldn't find it. Here is the conversation between Joshua and Tim that has stuck in my mind ever since.

      > J: Forget it. I just can't find it.
      > J: I wish there is a service I can share my links with others.
      > T: That'll be delicious!

3 months ago, @timbull and I started developing trunk.ly. To me, it's picking up the torch of delicious and delivering a promise of "never forget a link again". Trunk.ly pulls in all the links you've shared on different social networks, twitter, facebook, and of course delicious, and make them full text searchable.

Trunk.ly is still in its invite-only pre-beta stage. It's not as aesthetically attractive as we'd like it to be. It still has minor bugs. But we'll try out best to send out as many invites as possible so that you can pull in all of your delicious bookmarks before Yahoo completely shut it down.

Here are what others have said about trunk.ly:

Fenn Bailey, founder of Adioso, YC09 alumni

      > I honestly thought I'd only need to use it
      > sporadically ... however within the day of
      > installing it I was already reaching for
      > Trunkly to find something I'd said

Rand Fish, founder/CEO of SEOmoz

      > Trunk.ly is a deceptively simple …
      > I've been surprised at how often I use
      > it just to find the things I tweeted!

@bootload, fellow entrepreneur

      > with #delicious rotting and rumours of shutting
      > down this makes #trunkly a great #geek #christmas present

<comment><USER3> Very neat idea. I like the idea of aggregating all the breadcrumbs one leaves across the internet. I just dropped my email for an invite, it looks like a fun service.

<comment><USER4> Likewise, looks nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is funny. Tim and I woke up this morning thinking about the contract job we've been working on. Then we saw the delicious thing and I wrote this post. Not expecting anything major. But 3 hours later, we're on the HN front page. And our invite queue is jammed with requests.

What the heck. Tim and I just decided to pull out our credit cards, remove the invitation thing and open up the registration.

A big Thank You to the HN community. You've made our day.

We just launched!

<comment><USER5> I see you get a lot of traffic - cannot authorise my delicious account for the last couple of hours. Is there any way you can distribute the traffic? I guess you wouldn't want to use other people's hosts due to passwords being required, but can you spin up some cloud vps type of hosts to cleanup the queue the next days and import more links?

You don't seem to have any flattr/paypal/whatever link on the website, but I'd be happy to click it, if it meant more accounts migrated ASAP :)

Also, just adding an idea: if you provide a delicious-compatible api endpoint, people could reuse the existing browser plugins - is there any chance you could do that?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're working on EC2 instance to catch up! We've been flooded. Yes, a delicious-compatible api endpoint is a brilliant idea. Already in our etherpad. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> On "import links from delicious"

In trunk.ly, you can pull in all your delicious links and notes with only one step. Your tags will be imported as well.

For 99% user, your links will be imported very smoothly. However, trunk.ly is still pre-beta, a fews of things I worth mentioning:

1\. If, very unfortunately, you've merged your delicious account with your yahoo accounts, you won't be able to import.

2\. Trunk.ly is not https just yet. Yes, we're working on this right now.

3\. If you have over 50,000 links, you may have problems importing them. We're using lxml's DOM to process the yahoo message while we really should'of used the SAX model to deal with super large messages.

<comment><USER6> You can use ElementTree's iterparse() function (also available for lxml) to do incremental parsing while still having XPath-like functionality available for the elements you like (manually calling the .clear() method to release memory).

<http://effbot.org/zone/element-iterparse.htm>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A few trunk.ly pages:

* mine: <http://trunk.ly/alexdong/>

* tim's: <http://trunk.ly/timbull/>

* rand's: <http://trunk.ly/randfish/>

<comment><USER7> interesting, my first impression is "hey, it's a linkblog!" rather than "hey, it's a delicious clone!". This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just my observation.

a few things I see that I'd kinda miss from delicious:

1) instead of seeing how many people are linking to something as a number, it instead has an "also shared by:" feature instead. I honestly like just seeing a number of how many people are sharing it more than seeing if a few random people are also sharing something. It also helps me judge whether someone linked a "big news item" or something they were personally digging for info on.

2) multiple tag filters - i.e. search multiple tags for my personal bookmarks. I don't use this much, but it's comfortable that it's there.

<comment><USER8> _2) multiple tag filters - i.e. search multiple tags for my personal bookmarks. I don't use this much, but it's comfortable that it's there._

I use this frequently enough that I probably won't use trunk.ly without it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if Libya will take back the domain name if we save pr0n links.

<comment><USER10> I wonder if the US will seize their servers if we save Wikileak links ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> alex, very cool.

so I used to use delicious to track others bookmarking and I have a nice group of people that I followed. is trunkly able to import my connections from delicious? this is how I used it mostly and I think that it is a very valuable source of info that I'm losing

<comment><AUTHOR> hmm, even if we can import the "following" list, I'm not sure how we can invite those people in though. There is no way we can notify those people, that's the challenge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How cool would integration with Greplin be?

This seems like a really good idea. Ingeniously simple.

<comment><AUTHOR> We love Greplin! I think we're using similar technologies and facing similar challenges as well. Greplin guys, if you see this, please drop me a message at me AT alexdong DOT com. I'd love to talk to you and see whether we can do something together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The invite form Submit button on your front page won't work without JavaScript enabled.

I hope you fix that, but more importantly I hope you make sure trunk.ly works correctly without JS enabled. Delicious does, which is very nice.

Note that I'm not some anti-JS gremlin. I've been using the web since 1997 and have only disabled JS in my primary browser (Opera) last month. Wish I'd done it sooner. (I browse JS-heavy pages in Chromium or FF; previously they were reserved for pages that depended on Flash).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm also a w3m/vim guy so I appreciate what you feel.

Guess what. Tim and I just decided to open up the registration. Screw the invitation thing. Let's see what's going to happen.

<comment><USER14> It's still asking for a beta code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Neat! Do you plan to add the ability to add new links (and add tags to them)? I saw your trunk.ly page (<http://trunk.ly/alexdong/>), and the first thing that struck me was - besides building a searchable index of all the links that I shared on different services, if you give people the ability to tag/bookmark new links, you might just be the service that Yahoo failed to grow out of Delicious.

<comment><USER16> That's exactly what historio.us does, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A suggestion: When I submit my email address for the invite, the email field does not get cleared, and instead a small message appears underneath saying "Thank you for your interest!" - I completely missed it, and kept trying to submit again and again!

Looking forward to using the product, good job.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wish you luck! Check out archivd.com and dowser.sf.net; there are lots of good ideas to steal. (I wrote them both, but they are not under active development.)

<comment><AUTHOR> achivd.com looks really interesting. But it threw back a 500 page: <http://demo.archivd.com/list/detail/87UfnvACqpGz5z>

<comment><USER18> yeah -- it's been rotting. :( Here is a "public" list:

<https://www.archivd.com/public/detail/dEuLp5fXxS772U>

It also has fulltext search, etc. You can sign up for free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> FYI, it keeps crashing Safari on my iPad when I try to visit the home page.

<comment><AUTHOR> dude, upgrade your iOS. This is a bug in Safari. [http://liftinteractive.com/news/2010/sep/22/why-your-site- mi...](http://liftinteractive.com/news/2010/sep/22/why-your-site-might-be- crashing-safari-ipad/)

<comment><USER20> Now that iOS 4.2 is out Typekit has changed how we support for iOS devices. We've stopped supporting iOS3 and earlier, which means users that haven't upgraded yet won't get browser crashes.

There's more details at [http://blog.typekit.com/2010/12/06/updates-to- typekits-mobil...](http://blog.typekit.com/2010/12/06/updates-to-typekits- mobile-support/) but to summarize, you should probably republish the kit for your site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How does it compare with others? Diigo, Stubmleupon, Xmarks...

<comment><AUTHOR> Trunk.ly is not designed to be yet another bookmark service. It's your personal search engine. It builds a search index just for all the links you've shared.

Why bother tagging each link if you can full text search them?

Try mine at <http://trunk.ly/alexdong/> Search for "chinese financial", or "ruby erlang" and you'll see.

<comment><USER21> I enjoy tagging. Google has automated tagging on his Chinese QA system (they used Lated Dirichilet Allocation algorithm for this), and it is in general usefull when you want to have personal opinion on a link.

Besides that, it seems nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do notice myself tagging more after I start to use trunk.ly daily. And I agree that "tagging" is a great to do attach personal opinions on a link.

Trunk.ly can import delicious tags. We'll soon add the ability for you to add a tag to your link as well.

Having said this, we found most people do not tag, they just search what they want and continue with their life. Based on the existing user behavior data we have, 1% people clicks tag in two weeks. 7-10% uses search at least once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> that's a bit similar idea I got some time ago and even started building, later abandonned it. are you planning on releasing an API?

<comment><AUTHOR> API is definitely on our roadmap. May I know what are the API methods you're having in mind?

<comment><USER22> currently the basic ones that would allow to integrate with trunkly - <USER2> favorites, add favorites

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just signed up, can't wait for my beta code!

</comment><comment><USER24> Chrome bookmark imports coming?</comment>


Why isn't anyone talking about Google's spam problem? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cederman.com/?p=112

<comment><USER2> Nowhere is this worse than Google Groups.

Once the best source of timely technical information from USENET, Google Groups is now completely polluted by spammers. The situation was radically worsened by Google's misstep in allowing user to create "Google Groups" (user- defined non-USENET sites which are searched by the Google Groups service), Spammers have used Google Groups to create tens of thousands of spam groups and links. Google pays for support of the spam and the user gets buried in it.

Google could, at the very least, partition Google Groups into USENET and "Google Groups" per se. Or they could provide a separate search option for USENET only.

Is there any internal Google discussion of these problems? I have been unable to find any evidence of interest, yet it is unbelievable that Google is unaware.</comment>


Ask HN: How to deal with a superior who is unresponsive to a security issue? - <AUTHOR> Our CMS people brought in a new shiny frontend for internal review today and I was asked to comment. Knowing the CMS-peoples' history I took a quick "curl -X POST"-look at the API endpoints and was harvesting the entire customer database through several injection attacks after a few pokes and tries. I told the CMS people - who are contractors - and the superior who is responsible for the CMS not to bring that frontend anywhere near production and what the problem was. When running into him and asking about it, the superior (who is actually not my boss - he can crash on the moon as far as I'm concerned) just shrugged and laughed about how he didn't read my email after it became too technical. I told him about our obligation by law to report data-breach incidents to the authorities in case the thing had gone online and been picked up by a bot. He didn't seem to see the light yet.
How should I deal with the situation? I don't want to be seen as an attention-whore at my company yet the people involved are obviously insensitive to what actually almost happened.
Please spare me with advice about how to strong-arm someone, go off the deep end and post our customer database to /b/ or start looking for a new job... I'm asking for real-life advice here :-/ <comment><USER2> I would suggest a formal letter to said person rather than an email outlining your concerns and where you believe laws are being (or could be) broken. Depending on your environment you could also state that you feel you have an ethical duty to report the company to any applicable authorities should any vulnerabilities not be rectified.

</comment><comment><USER3> (1) Talk to your Boss, (2) Start looking for a new job.

In most companies you can't change your environment via communications, politics, all that. You can't even change the way things were in the company by leaving, but you can change your environment by getting a new environment.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried talking to him but from their point of view the thing is that nothing actually happened - it was internal review time. I tried explaining to them that if one goes to the local car dealership, takes out a car for a test-drive and instead of just the seats and the mirrors being in the wrong place gasoline starts gushing out of the air conditioning and incinerate the driver, under no circumstances that would be considered an otherwise uneventful misfire. Yet they don't see the point.

<comment><USER3> Let's put it this way.

The new head of the CFTC says that cyber attacks are the most severe threat to the global financial system and he is right.

The main reason for that is that the kind of attitudes you are talking about are widespread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have been in this situation a couple times, and it can be really stressful.

You will continue to be viewed as "the boy who cried wolf", and you should expect to be excluded from the decision making process in the future.

Put your thoughts in writing, and start applying for other jobs.</comment>


Reasons Django 1.3 will be awesome - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aawsolutions.com/another-reason-django-13-will-be-awesome <comment><USER2> What is it with these mainstay frameworks that they never adopt the mature ORM on their respective platform but instead keep growing their own, less than half-baked alternative?

We have this in django vs SQLAlchemy and Rails vs datamapper.

The arguments that I've heard were mostly that the respective ORMs either weren't around when the framework started and/or that anyone "can just plug their preferred ORM in anyways". Neither really cuts it for me. Even in java- land (yes, java!) they make more sense in that regard - everyone just uses hibernate.

Well, however other than this unrelated rant (triggered by the mention of the removal of a most basic ORM-wart...); Good work django guys. :-)

<comment><USER3> Wasn't one of the major reasons for the giant Rails 3 switchover to allow datamapper or other ORM's to be used in place of activerecord?

<comment><USER4> It's not so much that they couldn't be used before, but the coupling was so tight that there was a high burden on the maintainers to fix things when they broke.

With the creation of a stable internal API for all of these kinds of things, DataMapper can now be just as much of a first class citizen as ActiveRecord.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Completely agree about "models.ForeignKey(on_delete=<CASCADE|PROTEXT|SET_NULL|SET_DEFAULT|SET()>" - really looking forward to that, it would have saved me a bunch of time and hassle in the past.

</comment><comment><USER6> Before django implements new features it should rework some of the crappy old stuff:

Auth is terrible, models and forms need to be more flexible. Also a lot of little things like forms myform.as_div are missing.

<comment><USER7> "Django" doesn't implement new features: _people_ do. In this case, Ben Firshman led a group of about a dozen or more to get generic views refactored, and Carl Meyer took point on the long-requested on_delete work.

They had itches to scratch, and they scratched them.

I agree that auth's gotten long in the tooth, but not enough to be motivated to work on it. The fact that it's stayed unresolved for so long indicates perhaps that most contributors feel similarly. That means that it's going to stay as it is until someone steps up, like Ben or Carl did, and takes the lead in getting something done.

Alternatively, I'm available for consulting work and would happily take money to work on any problem you like. My rates are fairly reasonable.</comment></comment>


New Microsoft Windows chief 'shocked' by Sinofsky defenestration - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/15/new_windows_chief_shocked/ <comment><USER2> For a minute I thought it wasn't a bad pun. Please enquote 'defenestration' instead of 'shocked'.

</comment><comment><USER3> Minor quibble, there is a difference between being in a state of shock, and being shocked by an occurrence.

Makes no difference, most articles about this sort of thing tend to be on the level or reading tea leaves anyway.

</comment><comment><USER4> Defenestration: Latin word for throwing someone out the window. While they may have done this figuratively, I do not think it means so literally. I'm sorry, but I can't help being a pedant.

<comment><USER5> huh? "defenestration" isn't a latin word, it's an english word derived from the latin.

<comment><USER6> Is it really latin? The reason I ask is Fenster is the German word for window.</comment></comment></comment>