Facebook News is filled with stories too mainstream to do well on the rest of FB - <AUTHOR> https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/06/the-new-facebook-news-is-filled-with-stories-that-are-way-too-mainstream-to-do-well-on-the-rest-of-facebook/ <comment><USER3> You know what's weird?

I discovered that the following link shows my FB feed in chronological order:

[https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr](https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr)

I thought, oh, great, this is the key to making FB decent again.

 _But_ after a while of using it, it usually shows almost nothing. Sometimes literally nothing. People are still posting stuff though that I can see with the default view. I almost think I may have triggered some sort of adversarial logic that is trying to force me to use the engagement-driven ordering.

Edit: In fairness, it could be that they are hostile to uBlock origin, either deliberately or as emergent behavior. I wouldn't mind ads in principle, normal ads like you used to have in print media, but I often get ones that are very unpleasant if I don't use the blocker.

<comment><USER4> I have experimented with Chronological order in the past, and it almost invariably provides a worse feed. It's like email with no spam filters. The grim reality is that most of the content that is uploaded to Facebook is repetitive and uninteresting. In my personal experience the friends who used to post the most interesting things have mostly stopped, and all that remains is the chaff.

<comment><USER5> Yeah this is less a statement on chronological ordering and more a product of subscribing to all of your uncles. I do think chronological ordering can help you diagnose this problem quicker.

<comment><USER6> It's always baffling to me to read about people who complain about their Facebook feed because their friends post shit, and because they like pages who post shit...

Facebook can't magically fix your feed for you, you have to curate it yourself, how come people don't understand that?

<comment><USER7> It pisses me off when someone reassigns the blame to the user and not to the cancerous Facebook shit and it's scumbag leadership. Just because WE are too stupid to "curate it ourselves".... Here are the three top search results when searching (in DDG) for: Facebook timeline psychological experiment

1: [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/every...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything- we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/)

2: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook- apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users)

3: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook- manipulated-689003-users-emotions-for-science/)

Now then.. are we all so stupid, or is Facebook ran by a bunch of scumbags who care only for "user engagement" no-matter-what? And it may be that some people get confused by its practices, then understand the dishonesty that is causing the confusion and give it up (abandon FB), while others get trapped in it, so net-net FB made more £€¥$ and kept the bad practices.

<comment><USER6> Stuff on your timeline doesn't appear there because Facebook picks stuff at complete random to display to you. Your feed is built from the sum of what your friends post, and what your liked pages post. Granted, Facebook does an enormous amount of shenanigans to highlight the most engaging/enraging posts from that source, and they're manipulating your friends to re-post engaging/enraging things they've seen, so it can spread to you.

But at the end of the day, the source for your feed is what your friends post. If all your friends post nothing but cute baby pictures, your feed is going to be 100% cute baby pictures, and nothing else. If your friends post nothing but cute cat pictures, it's caturday forever on your feed. And if your friends keep posting political bullshit that you hate, then that's what you're going to keep seeing.

The position I don't understand is the one where people endlessly complain about how Facebook has turned to shit, and then expect Facebook to magically fix it for them? That's never going to happen. Either curate your feed, or stop using Facebook. Those are your options.

<comment><USER8> I disagree. My friends almost post nothing, but what they post I wamt to see. What they do much of however, is like and comment on pages. Fb, for some reason, think that's interesting to see. However, I cannot stop fb from doing so. I cannot say I don't want to see things this person comments on, then I have to mute them.

I don't care that they comment on some post to win some product, or is tagging a friend in some viral video. I don't want my feed to be full of fake engagement. But I guess that's all Facebook is now, as no one really posts anything anymore, so that's what they show to make it seem things happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reading through the list of top news stories on Facebook scared me. It is clear that news can't be chosen based on engagement and that Facebook can't change.

Related: Wikipedia's current events portal [1] acts like a user sourced news feed which is a pretty good representation of reality. I wonder if you could commercialize a similarly moderated aggregator.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events)

<comment><USER10> >It is clear that news can't be chosen based on engagement and that Facebook can't change.

Why can't news be chosen on engagement? That's what people want to read. Must Facebook control what news people are reading?

Wikipedia's current event portal may have a more even representation of what events are happening, but Wikipedia also has users that are interested in a wider range of topics. Most people mainly care about sports and politics. Scientific discoveries, economics, and international relations are simply not as interesting to as many people. Why shouldn't Facebook just have news based on engagement and a separate list with equal representation of events from many different topics?

<comment><USER11> > Why can't news be chosen on engagement? That's what people want to read. > Must Facebook control what news people are reading?

They can optimize only for engagement with no curation, but they shouldn't. It shouldn't be done that way because people won't understand that this is the mechanism for content selection. They will think that because content shows up in a news section it has factual merit, and that the content being presented is an accurate representation of the current world context. If you only prioritize engagement, what you will create is a propaganda section masquerading as a news section because the most inflammatory, baseless, bullshit content is what draws the most engagement. That is in no one's best interest long term and it undermines the credibility of news media in general. If they want to create this, it should be labeled as entertainment, not news.

<comment><USER10> And if you curate news, you likely create a propaganda section selected by individuals or a small group of individuals. It's not as if an unbiased AI hand-picks which stories are of factual merit and representative of the current world context. Is a story from Facebook's curated feed about protests over a children's TV show more significant and accurate than "NASCAR's Bubba Wallace wants confederate flags banned from race tracks"? Is J.K. Rowling doubling down on a "transphobic manifesto" more significant and/or accurate than the sister of a slain police officer asking "Where's the outrage for a fallen officer who happens to be African American?"? A group of curators selecting content does not necessarily make that content any more factual either. Curated news greater possibility of being propaganda because the news selection is in the hands of the few instead of the many.

Is a propaganda section a propaganda section if it contains propaganda from both sides? I suppose, in that it is a section that contains propaganda, but the section itself does not serve as an unequal biasing agent for viewers, unless your issue with the engagement-based recommendation is that you believe it is biased in a certain direction.

That seems like quite the assumption to assume that people will think content has factual merit because it shows up in their news section. People should not be treated with kid gloves and herded in certain directions out of fear that we will harm ourselves. Facebook should clearly label news sections as "Selections Based on Engagement" and "Selections By Facebook Curators". People are capable of understaning that the selected news is biased.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Facebook needs to have separate feeds for politics and news sharing vs original content and family photos.

In general, being able to let people filter and control the parameters of the algorithms defining their experience.

<comment><USER13> The reason fb wont do this is because there is so little to show on the friends and family front, it will do nothing but drive users away and solidify its market positioning as a political news reader.

To pull off separate feed fb needs to fix trust so people actually posts friends and family content as much as before.

<comment><USER14> I thought I remembered Zuckerberg announcing they would be deemphasizing news over personal content a few years ago.

<comment> 0x5f3759df-i They even did a cute commercial they played in movie theaters about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why on Earth should this be a surprise to anybody?

Social media news is really a polite way of saying unsubstantiated rumors, gossip, and bullshit. Tabloids are higher quality stories. The new FB News is journalism, which is about as similar as TikTok videos to Harvard Law textbooks.

<comment><USER16> ...except all of the popular stories were from reputable journalist outlets as well.

They were simply different stories from those that FB news wanted users to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The key question here is how will the recommendation engine behave.

If they go down their previous path as using engagement as the sole KPI then it will be no different than news feed.

To reestablish trust and shake off the regulatory scrutiny fb will need to nudge people to more mainstream content, at the detriment of engagement.

<comment><USER17> The issue is if there's two sections, one "very engaging" and one "somewhat engaging," then we won't solve anything. "Very engaging" will far outpace "somewhat engaging" because, well, that's what people want to engage with.

I think you're right about the need to shift people but in order to do so, engagement is key. They should maintain engagement as the primary KPI, and instead nudge the content towards less inflammatory. Engagement is, IMO, a primary measure for if they going to be able to reestablish trust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would be blown away if Facebook wasn't using an algorithm based on what publishers you used the most to show you news. Unless you can set up a 1000 computer clean room study with clean ips and everything and prove that they all get the same news no matter how much they go to one side first there's no real way to know.

So basically what we know is this author likes NYT and the verge

</comment><comment><USER19> Social Media works by curating content that a user like and building a safe bubble around the user by showing them the content that will positively reinforce their belief systems. Thereby keeping them shielded from views that are challenging or contradictory to their belief systems. Creating a positive reinforcement loop for the user to depend on it even more.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Engagement" seems to be the key word that doesn't appear in OP but is mentioned in many sibling comments. This metric is great for driving ad revenue but is irremediably broken for constructive social discourse.

</comment><comment><USER21> Mainstream is what works well on the rest of FB. Facebook News is the radical propaganda that the people are being snuffed out with.

</comment><comment><USER22> Does not that mean the mainstream media is no longer mainstream?

It is important to get info from multiple sources including left, right, because they all have their biases diverting from the truth and often reality. You cannot simply trust that one side is presenting all the relevant facts.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's funny that mainstream now means what most people don't care about.

<comment><USER24> Well, it's what most FB users aren't reading. My theory/hope is that they visit normal news stories outside of Facebook, so when they see the same headline on FB, they think "ah I've read that already". Meanwhile when the user sees a click-baity title on FB, they haven't heard about that on mainstream sites, so they end up clicking on it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> People still use Facebook for their news? I've been off it for 1-2 years and started following some local/national agencies instead. Much more level headed coverage of everything

</comment><comment><USER26> I think social media is bad in the sense that sensational news gets attention. This does mot necessary mean that news that are news worthy get attention.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is often the case with top social media companies that they deal with a ton of content sponsorship requests.

<comment><USER27> Most of these requests I would assume would be for the most visited one - <USER2> front page

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is that a laughing reaction to George Floyd's brother tearfully calling for police reform? Christ Facebook is even more toxic than I thought it was.

</comment><comment><USER29> Where people are getting their news from when left on their own:

Fox, Fox

NPR, NPR

CNN

Daily Wire

Sean Hannity

People

NBC

Newsweek

Where FB Editors source stories from:

NYT, NYT, NYT

NBC, NBC

NPR

CNN

The Verge

Comic Book

<comment><USER30> This ignores the impact of advertising and FB's advertising algorithms, which promote stories from Fox etc. onto the feeds of users who otherwise wouldn't see them. Thus I don't think you can say this is an accurate representation of what people do "when left on their own."

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Popular news stories on Facebook: mostly right wing.

Stories on Facebook news: mostly New York Times.

Does the title really fit the article?

</comment><comment><USER32> So clearly from that list, the proliferation of social media is what has led to the radicalization of the right wing.

<comment><USER33> More like radicalization in general. Left wing got similarly radicalized, if not more so. When everybody lives in their own bubble people get pushed to the extremes :-(

<comment><USER34> There are no communist activist violent groups, so no not to the same extent. At least none visibly active anywhere reported. That argues that the radicalisation has been predominantly right wing, as there are many active violent fascist groups now, and weren't a few years ago.

<comment><USER35> Have you not heard of Antifa somehow? It's a communist activist violent group.

<comment><USER36> Just to clarify, antifa became an issue after trump started quoting a twitter antifa account, which was run by a right wing, white supremacy guy.

It is a good example of social media being used to radicalise the right wing, in fact.

<comment><USER37> I vaguely remember a story a few years ago about a guy receiving a blow to the head from a bike lock and requiring therapy for potential brain damage from said blow.

<comment><USER38> Let's be clear, that sucks, but it's nowhere near the radicalization we've seen on the right. Boogaloos shooting cops, neo-nazis responsible for numerous synagogue / church / mosque shootings, driving cars into crowds, etc. aren't really comparable to a bike lock to the head.

<comment><USER39> The Jewish deli shooting, the Dallas cop shooter... the list goes on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> > A few other things I noticed scrolling through:

> There are very, very few politics stories

What? This is contradicted by the list of top stories given just above!

1\. "'It's a lot of pain': George Floyd's brother tearfully demands police reforms during emotional hearing" (NBC News)

2\. "Jon Ossoff wins Georgia's Democratic Senate primary" (NPR)

3\. "Trump will return to campaign trail with rally in Tulsa" (New York Times)

4\. "Coronavirus is making a comeback in Arizona" (NBC News)

5\. "2020 is the summer of the road trip. Unless you're black." (New York Times)

6\. "Starbucks is closing up to 400 stores in shift to takeout strategy" (CNN)

7\. "Amazon bans police from using its facial recognition technology for the next year" (The Verge)

8\. "J. K. Rowling doubles down in what some critics call a 'transphobic manifesto'" (NBC News)

9\. "The protests come for 'Paw Patrol'" (The New York Times)

10\. "Upcoming Nintendo Switch exclusive canceled" (ComicBook.com)

2 & 3 are explicitly political, 1, 5, 7, 8 and 9 are perhaps not about electoral politics, but still focus on hot-button political issues of the day.

In what world are these "very few politics" stories?

<comment><USER41> In the world of people that finished the author's sentence -

"""There are very, very few politics stories — almost nothing about the Trump/Biden race, for instance."""

They explicitly bounded what they meant by politics.

<comment><USER40> Grammatically "for instance" is a non-restrictive clause in that sentence. It adds information, but it doesn't narrow the meaning of what preceded it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> OT-ish: There was just a political story on the FP, about a open letter from a college that starts with B. It disappeared, which makes sense considering that political stuff is strongly down rated on a tech site, so I went into /newest and went back many days looking for the [flagged] and or [dead] item, and I dont see it. So I used the search interface, but it does not show flagged or dead stories, if logged in, is it possible to have the search interface include those too?

<comment><USER43> You can search and limit to the last 24 hours

<comment><USER42> No results. The story is very likely flagged or dead, I'm trying to find out of there is a query string to showdead in the search results.</comment></comment></comment>


PayPal sues Google + ex-PayPal VP for Google Wallet - <AUTHOR> https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2011/05/paypal-files-lawsuit-to-protect-trade-secrets-a-reason-worth-fighting-for

<comment><USER2> After reading briefly through the lawsuit[1], it seems that Osama Bedier was working as a senior manager at PayPal creating a product similar to Google Wallet (referred to as a "mobile payment" point of sale). He then interviewed and left for Google (whilst PayPal and Google were in negotiations for a separate business deal), and PayPal claims that he used trade secrets from PayPal to help Google create Wallet.

Stephanie Tilenius broke her contractual agreement with eBay after she recruited Bedier (and attempted to recruit many other PayPal employees).

"Bedier was the senior PayPal executive accountable for leading negotiations with Google on Android during this period. At the very point when the companies were negotiating and finalizing the Android—PayPal deal, Bedier was interviewing for job at Google without informing PayPal of this conflicting position. Bedier's conduct during this time amounted to breach of his responsibilities as PayPal executive."

I'm not a lawyer, but it looks like they have pretty good reason to be upset.

1\. [http://www.ebayinc.com/assets/pdf/fact_sheet/2011_PayPal_DOC...](http://www.ebayinc.com/assets/pdf/fact_sheet/2011_PayPal_DOC.pdf)

<comment><USER3> > ... [Bedier] not only used trade secrets from PayPal to help Google create > Wallet, but also poached Stephanie Tilenius ...

You have that switched.

> Google hired Bedier after another former eBay executive, defendant Stephanie > Tilenius, solicited and recruited him.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, updated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What struck me the most in that lawsuit (which I haven't yet finished reading, but seems pretty compelling) is:

"Bedier transferred up-to-date versions of documents outlining PayPal's mobile payment and point of sale strategies to his non-PayPal computer just days before leaving PayPal for Google"

and

"At the time he left PayPal, Bedier admitted that he had confidential eBay information in locations such as his non PayPal computers, non-PayPal e-mail account, and an account on the remote computing service called 'Dropbox'"

It goes on to explain that PayPal has requested that Bedier removes the information from his personal accounts and returns it to PayPal. Bedier has not yet done that.

This almost displays _intent_ to share this information with outside sources. Wow. This sounds like a massive shitstorm is brewing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Reading the suit, a lot of the evidence that Tilenius recruited Bedier was based on the content of Facebook messages and text messages. Anyone know how they got access to these supposedly private communication?

Case in point: "Tilenius reached out to Bedier by text message and again attempted to change his mind. On or about December 3, 2010, Tilenius messaged Bedier, "I still feel like I am missing something, for example what if we increased your offer, would that change things?"

<comment><USER6> If these communications occurred from within Paypal's coporate network or using Paypal equipment they could have been gathered using employee spying systems that they might have in place.

<comment><USER7> Paypal has company phones that log all your text messages?

<comment><USER8> Not sure about paypal but I'm a lawyer at at a publicly traded financial services company and all communications on company blackberries (bbm, sms) automatically get logged along with all emails. All of these communications are searchable via a system we use for discovery during litigation.

The law isn't the employee's friend here...employees have no reasonable expectation of privacy on company devices.

<comment><USER9> Does this apply to in-going mobile communication as well?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> PayPal, that exhalted bastion of ethical business practices, will be very successful in this appeal to public sentiment.

<comment> brown9-2 Even jerks are sometimes right, or in this case, have legal standing.

<comment><USER11> However, it helps to pay one's own debt to society before calling in someone else's.

I personally had to file a fraud dispute with my credit card company after receiving two promises over two months to reverse an unauthorized charge PayPal put on my card at their own (not a third-party vendor's) behest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This seems like a good illustration of the principle: "Ideas are worthless. Execution is what matters."

Paypal had the idea first and a good 10 years worth of trying to make it work (payments from mobile devices was, after all, their first product, even pre- dating online payments). And in this case, they even had some of the same _team_ working on the idea, but they just couldn't make it happen. Google could, and did, so they'll win.

I can understand why PayPal would be upset. But really this just strikes me as another reason why we shouldn't get too worked up about the value of ideas.

<comment><USER13> Devils advocate stance, Google couldn't make it happen until they hired the people from PayPal who had been working on it for ten years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Talent moving from company to company is not new in SV. And to be more specific, if you've been working you're whole career in maps technology and then move to maps division in another company, that shouldn't be shocking. Also, I have a hard time believing this one guy was the entire lynch pin on wallet and was the difference between Google doing it or not. A payment wallet is not a new concept.

This is a clear sign of paypal's weakness. Rather than compete, sue. It's like zuckerberg said: If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook.

I'm not a lawyer, just an engineer so maybe i'm missing something but doesn't seem as dramatic as some of the comments here imply

<comment><USER15> It's neither the career move nor the concept of the e-wallet that is in dispute... refer to the Mark Papermaster hiring fiasco that involved Apple and IBM a few years ago. The complaint is about a high-level executive acting against the company's interests while being employed in that capacity by stealing company information. I'm not a lawyer but I seem to recall quite a few similar cases e.g. someone from Coca-Cola who jumped shipped to Pepsico (or was it the other way around) and got charged with violating trade secrets laws.

Edit: OK I got the details of the Coca-Cola/Pepsico case wrong. Apparently some Coca-Cola employees tried to profit from selling trade secrets to Pepsico. Article here: [http://www.allbusiness.com/crime-law-enforcement- corrections...](http://www.allbusiness.com/crime-law-enforcement- corrections/criminal-offenses/11497994-1.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hopefully, this means Paypal sees Google as a legitimate threat. Good. The world could only improve if Paypal ceased to exist.

<comment><AUTHOR> And why is that?

<comment><USER17> People get upset about the way Paypal deals with fraud because they lose a lot of money to it and take extra precautions. While that is reasonable, they do a lot of things other people (and I) find to be ineffective and hurtful to users. For example, Paypal escapes banking regulation in the US due to loopholes. If you have your account locked for any reason they will hold your money for 6 months without interest. No exceptions. Their customer service sucks, it's nearly impossible to get ahold of a human and they'll require documentation they have no legal right to in order to unlock your account (example: complete bank statements: [http://openca.mp/blog/paypal-hates- conferences-especially-op...](http://openca.mp/blog/paypal-hates-conferences- especially-opencamp/)). I believe the world without Paypal would certainly be a better place. I emphasize with their difficult issue of preventing fraud but that doesn't make their actions ok.

Edit: In response to following comments, I amended above where it made it sound like Paypal escaped a banking regulation to withhold your money. My issue is that they use the 180 hold on account that haven't been locked for good reason.

Some people may be able to get customer service. They offer different kinds of accounts and maybe with a merchant account through Paypal or a business account. I've personally found Paypal to be lacking when trying to get in touch with them. I had someone attempt to scam me out of money by doing a chargeback for an eBay product I shipped via USPS (no tracking number). When they opened a hold on the account because the person said they didn't receive the item, Paypal had a field where I could put the tracking number. Having no tracking number, I tried to attach a note saying I shipped via USPS. I tried contacting support and no one ever answered. I offered to sign something making my personally liable if there was a lawsuit (as I had shipped the item). After all of that, their response was to refund the money so I was out the product and money, and close my account.

Don't act like I'm the only person who's got problems with Paypal. If you have had only great experiences with them, more power to you, but there's many more people who have been wrong by Paypal than other money processors:

"paypal sucks" About 65,800 results

"visa sucks" About 3,970 results

"mastercard sucks" About 1,760 results

If they had a true competitor, they'd be struggling to stay in business.

<comment><USER18> Holding your money for 6 months without interest IS the banking regulation. That's a rule that comes straight from the Visa Operating Regulations which was written by the member banks that comprised Visa and MasterCard. Those regulations specifically say 180 days and that the funds be held in a non- interest-bearing account. It's exactly the same policy enforced on every merchant account underwritten by every regulated bank in the country.

PayPal has customer service by phone, and they answer on the first ring. No automated system on the business support line either.

Your opinion on PayPal is __entirely __baseless.

<comment><USER19> Except PayPal is not a bank (in the US), and your account with them is not a merchant account. Consequently the 180-day hold rule does not apply.

I don't agree with proexploit's assertion that we'd be better off without PayPal, but I also wouldn't carry signs and chant slogans in the streets if the US government forced them to be better stewards of their customers' hard- earned money.

<comment><USER18> To be fair, PayPal does offer real merchant accounts underwritten by real banks. PayPal Website Payments Pro accounts are underwritten by one of these banks: JP Morgan Chase, HSBC, Wells Fargo and National Westminster Bank.

The point of my comment was that proexploit makes it sound like the 180 day hold follows from PayPal not being a regulated bank, where the reality is that regulated banks have the same 180 day hold.

I fear I may sound fishy standing up for PayPal considering its unpopularity (despite so many on HN using it without problems), but I don't like to see the perpetuation of untruths. The people that write these complaints must have never read a merchant account agreement. The list of banks that underwrite the Payments Pro accounts are on the PayPal website under the Legal Agreements link. I do read every contract I agree to.

<comment><USER17> You're absolutely right that my initial comment made the 180 day hold sound different than it is. To be fair, I'm not talking about PayPal Website Payments Pro accounts at all but basic personal or business Paypal accounts. It sounds like you've had a pleasant experience as you've been using a different product. Speaking of baseless opinions: "despite so many on HN using it without problems". I'd love to see a source for that. The fact is, even if 80% of people using Paypal have a great experience, too high of a percentage is being screwed over.

<comment><USER18> If 20% of PayPal users were having a negative experience, you'd see a _lot_ more complaints than you do. That'd be around 46 million people.

Even if only 1% of PayPal's users were dissatisfied you'd have much more activity than a couple dozen forum posts a month spread across the web and an outdated PayPalSucks site. That'd be over 2 million people with a reason to vehemently complain. The level of chatter you hear makes it much more likely that significantly less than 1% of their user base has serious problems with the service.

No, I'm not using a different product than you. I've been using the plain-jane standard PayPal payment links and subscriptions since 2000. I'm not immune to their risk department either; someone called me just this month to express concern at my account's refund rate after I cancelled some suspicious looking orders.

I'm sure my account has enough notes on it that I'm a single mis-step away from being frozen myself through no fault of my own. But that's nothing less than I'd expect from any of my payment providers. This is business, I understand why their policies are what they are, and I'm prepared for the chance that they may choose to stop doing business with me at some point in time. A little bit of basic knowledge about the financial industry they operate in and you'd run your risk department the same way.

For a good read, get a copy of the book "Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days". One of the stories is that of the founding and early growth of PayPal. The only reason they are here today, where their great many competitors during the dot-com boom aren't, is that they figured out how to manage fraud risk. They were hemmorhaging tens of millions of dollars a month to fraud losses, but they held on long enough to build the risk management systems you need to provide payment processing to the masses.

<comment><USER17> Other companies have to manage fraud too and do it without upsetting so many people. The exact number doesn't matter, it's a lot higher than other financial services companies. The fact that they had to lock down against fraud to keep their business from failing doesn't excuse their business practices and customer service. There's multiple open loopholes for scammers that do not treat honest people well. We could debate this forever but we're going to have different opinions as we don't have a lot of exact statistics and perfect knowledge of their company policies / fraud prevention measures. I will continue to recommend people do everything they can do stay away from Paypal and you will continue using it. That's ok because we don't have to agree and although I feel differently, I recognize your right to your opinion.

<comment><USER20> It is hard to compare PayPal to other companies. Their business is 100% online payments (higher risks then B&M transactions) with a huge share of international transactions (even higher risks).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What's with the "Does" in the lawsuit? They are mentioned on the front page, but not anywhere else.

I realise "Doe" is "John Doe" - a pseudonym for an unknown person. But I can't see why they are included in the suit (all 50 of them).

<comment> brown9-2 Because PayPal is seeking to also sue people whose names they do not yet know:

 _6\. eBay and PayPal (collectively "Plaintiffs") are ignorant of the true names and capacities, whether individual, corporate or otherwise, of defendants named herein as Does 1 through 50 and Plaintiffs sue said defendants by their fictitious names. Plaintiffs will seek leave to amend this complaint to assert allegations against the Doe defendants when their true involvement in these matters and capacities are ascertained._

In other words, PayPal employees that PayPal alleges that the former employees recruited to Google.

<comment><USER22> As I understand it, this is very standard lawsuit boiler plate, such that if they later realize there is another party involved, they can just tell the court, "so-and-so is Doe 1," allowing them to very rapidly fold in new parties without refiling the suit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why is everyone a Delaware corporation? That makes me feel like my company should be a Delaware corporation. ;-)

<comment><USER24> Why corporations choose Delaware [PDF]:

<http://corp.delaware.gov/whycorporations_web.pdf>

<comment><USER25> Corporations choose Delaware because the lawyers who incorporate them (usually contracted from big firms) choose Delaware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How can this be trade secrets? Japan has been doing this for years! [1] This is not new technology.

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaifu-Keitai>

</comment><comment><USER27> This seems like a desperate move. I'm not aware of the timelines but it seems ridiculous that Paypal just sat around knowing their "secrets" were taken to Google and hoped the person(s) that took them would remove all traces and not divulge them to Google. Would make me believe that Paypal was incapable of actually delivering a quality product and Google seemed like a more viable candidate for actually getting the idea implemented. Lawsuits like these are increasingly only a mechanism for the lazy or inept to feel validated. I guess this is why we're told ideas are pretty much worthless.

</comment><comment><USER28> What could be secret about a mobile wallet? The technology involved can hardly be secret? The idea itself isn't original, either.

</comment><comment><USER29> We've had M-Pesa in South Africa for ages.

Mobile was the next obvious step.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm sure this makes it at least a little harder to hire talent. I wonder how much. I know I'd never work for a company that thought it owned me, and was entitled to control who I could recruit to work with me after I left. I wonder how many other people feel the same way.

<comment><USER31> Reading the complaint, it's not just that a PayPal employee went to work at Google. According to the complaint, Bedier (one of the defendants) was negotiating a payment deal between Google and PayPal _while interviewing with Google_. And soon after Bedier left, Google apparently scuttled the entire deal. And there's the matter of Bedier putting PayPal strategy documents on his personal machine days before leaving PayPal for Google.

Of course, we're only hearing one side of the story at this point, but at least from PayPal's perspective, this isn't just about losing a couple of executives to Google.

<comment><USER32> Osama Bedier was a big deal at PayPal. He ran the whole mobile and point-of- sale organization. Everyone know who he was, and everyone was shocked when he left for Google.

This could get ugly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I am not sure how but I hope Google beats the heck out of PayPal.

Remember Yahoo Wallet?

</comment><comment><USER34> Makes one think that we are moving from a world of corporations to a world where only people matter, and everyone works as a contractor directly with a VC.

</comment><comment><USER35> That article was entirely unhelpful. What are Osama and Stephanie's backgrounds, and why do they deserve to be sued?

<comment><USER2> Read the lawsuit, it says everything you need to know: [http://www.ebayinc.com/assets/pdf/fact_sheet/2011_PayPal_DOC...](http://www.ebayinc.com/assets/pdf/fact_sheet/2011_PayPal_DOC.pdf)</comment></comment>


Developing Modularized Web Apps with ReactJS and Webpack - <AUTHOR> http://www.terlici.com/2015/08/04/react-apps-webpack.html

<comment><USER2> Wow, I have to say React looks pretty nice. I can't yet say I see a major improvement from Gulp to Webpack yet. Anyway, thanks for the quick intro!</comment>


The Futility of Vengeance - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/sunday-review/the-futility-of-vengeance.html

<comment><USER2> _" If anything, vengeance escalates the conflict, leading to an increasingly malicious game of tit for tat"_

No mention of, _" Tit for two tats"_ (effective), __" co-operative behaviour "* (Dawkins, Selfish Gene) or _" Game Theory"_ (Avinash Dixit). [0]

[0] [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/nash/sfeature/sf_dixit.html](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/nash/sfeature/sf_dixit.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Can an app make you fit, wealthy, and productive? - <AUTHOR> Sometimes I fantasize about a tool/service that we can just follow without thinking and reap the benefits towards goals we configure it for.<p>Obviously, we can plan with all the charts and calendars we want, but it would still fall on us to follow thru with the plan. Minus the usual sudden emotional trigger or attempts to temporarily increase willpower, how could an app actually get a lazy person to act consistently towards their goals? <comment><USER2> Short answer: no.

There are a variety of apps that _assist_ you with becoming fit, wealthy, and more productive. But the app itself isn't the golden ticket. It still takes dedication, commitment, and perseverance.</comment>


"No, North Korea Didn't Hack Sony" - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/24/no-north-korea-didn-t-hack-sony.html <comment><USER2> The most damning argument is, as mentioned in the article, that the NK+The Interview conclusion was not mentioned by the attackers until the media started speculating.

That those responsible for investigation have not looked at the relation to the embarrassing attack on the Playstation network from years ago, that also resulted in droves of user and likely employee data that could be utilized for future attacks, is astounding.

This isn't 2002 where the US Gov can make a claim on hidden evidence and have people believe them, be they the world or its own people. Either put up or shut up.

<comment><USER3> But the attackers did confuse a lot of people when they threatened with '9/11-style attacks' should any cinema show the movie in question. So either someone else is speaking on their behalf, or they are at least partial sympathetic to the North Korean regime.

Edit: Or perhaps - as the article speculate - they were simply using the opportunity to threaten threats they couldn't live up to, but it wouldn't have mattered as their identity remains anonymous and whether or not Sony caved would be irrelevant to the argument on whether to make the threat.

<comment><USER2> I agree the logic of the threats makes no sense. There are very few state actors that are this detached from objective and logic. In-fact it feels like the work of a troll, aka anonymous or a reincarnated Lulzsec. The same people responsible for the last Sony hack and whom some might be still sitting on the data trove from that attack. Then again, N.K. could claim to be the original troll.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Exactly. But NK is a convenient bogeyman for the _real_ aim: CISPA:

[http://www.zdnet.com/article/white-house-wants-congress- to-r...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/white-house-wants-congress-to-revisit- controversial-cispa-style-cybersecurity-laws-after-sony-attack/)

<comment><USER5> Interesting. Do you have you have more than this article to go on (I found it's connection tenuous, but it could be just this report). Has the white house nudged CISPA specifically? What's quoted in this article is sort of a blanket "partnership with private sector" statement.

The problem is that there are tons of different ways that national and military partnership expresses itself and especially in the case of cyber partnership. For example here's a quote from Richard A. Clarke, previous National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter- terrorism for the United States, on the private sector and cybersecurity: "There are certain circumstances under which private sector companies may be legally targeted by national militaries both in kinetic and cyber conflict. Under the law of armed conflict and the principle of distinction, civilian infrastructure is generally considered to be separate from military objects, with military installations always targettable during international conflict and civilian infrastructure off limits from direct attack. However, even in the physical realm, there is often ambiguity about what constitutes civilian infrastructure...

Without extensive private sector involvement, governments would not be able to devise international cyber norms that would work or be accepted. Beyond the need for their expertise, private sector cyber corporations also have equities in the conduct of governments in cyberspace. Private actors must participate in the development of international norms related to cyber war if for no other reason than they are potential targets for attack."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remain agnostic and can't think of a basis for arguing one side to the exclusion of the other. On the one hand, it's not unthinkable that NK had a mole at Sony, or that the attack succeed beyond expectation owing to Sony's abysmal security practices, using vectors that have supposedly been known to black hats for a while. And of course it's possible that the U.S. has hard evidence that can't be revealed. On the other hand, there's the "trust me" problem with the US Govt, the constant push for a free hand from the agencies (and the contractors who supply them and the politicians who enjoy their campaign contributions), and the embarrassment to a Hollywood that overwhelmingly supports the President and his party. Finally, there's the curious statement by Obama last Sunday that this isn't "an act of war," but rather "an act of cyber vandalism"\--odd way to characterize actions by a hostile state if he knows that to be the case.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Taking a look at these addresses we find that all but one of them are public proxies."

I think this is a very key point for another reason. If this was perpetrated by North Korea, why would they use an anonymizing proxy in the first place? What would be the point? Have we ever known North Korea to not crave media attention? If they were behind the attack wouldn't they want the world to know? If it was North Korea then why are they suddenly trying to stay out of a spotlight they've never avoided before? Retribution? Doubtful.

<comment><USER8> >I think this is a very key point for another reason. If this was perpetrated by North Korea, why would they use an anonymizing proxy in the first place? What would be the point? Have we ever known North Korea to not crave media attention?

Yes. When they do something provocative they try to maintain plausible deniability, because otherwise the target of the provocation would have to _do_ something. The best example is the sinking of the _Cheonan_. Everyone knew it was the Norks, but they played coy because otherwise South Korea would have been forced to respond. Probably by sinking the North Korean navy.

Also, if the cyber attack was DPRK, it was likely carried out by the unit that does espionage, and for a unit like that proxies are just standard procedure.

All that said, I'm skeptical that it actually was North Korea. They do have this kind of capability, but they tend to use it for more concrete gains, like uncovering spies and stealing technology. A big in-your-face attack on a company like this is out of character for a regime that wants to retain its cyberwar capability for clandestine uses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > It is this piece of evidence—freely available to anyone with an enquiring > mind and a modicum of cyber security experience—which I believe that the FBI > is so cryptically referring to when they talk about "additional evidence" > they can't reveal without compromising "national security".

The evidence mentioned here are the addresses of the Command and Control servers. But the author does not give any reason for why he or she thinks _this_ is the thing the FBI is being cryptic about?

First of all, there might be several things to be cryptic about. Second, the article gives nothing that I can see to connect that bit of information to being something that FBI would hold back on. Third, the author just revealed it, so if it _were_ what the FBI was keeping secret, that seems silly.

Did I miss something?

<comment><USER10> I believe it's implied that the FBI can trace past the proxy servers (not much of a stretch). Naturally, the FBI does not want to give up information on how it does that to avoid cybercriminals counteracting that method of tracing. Just a guess.

<comment><USER11> The FBI doesn't have any special ability to trace connections, especially not outside the US. The NSA might, but it's questionable that they would tip their hand and release classified covert intel just because one company got hacked. China has been hacking our corporations for over a decade but you never hear this much about it in the press.

Edit: then again, China doesn't threaten to bomb our theaters. Could be NK just goofed. But the whole thing is too ridiculous to be plausible.

<comment><USER12> > But the whole thing is too ridiculous to be plausible.

This is my take as well. State sponsored attacks, or at least the attacks that have allegedly been state sponsored up until now, have been quiet little things that go on for months or years so far under the radar that they only get revealed months afterwards by accident. They aren't filled with green-on- black text and pixelated skeleton images. Something just doesn't feel right about blaming North Korea for this. Maybe it came from the DPRK, but if so it had about as much to do with them as 9/11 did with the Saudis.

Does anyone also feel that the media is the only one that really linked the DPRK to this? I don't recall hearing about North Korea until after the "whodunnit" questions started coming out and speculation between the DPRK's denouncement months ago about The Interview and the very weak correlation between Chinese IPs being frequently involved in attacks and the DPRK's relationship with China, and the recycled malware that has some loose ties to Korea were thrown in a pot and mixed together. Once that started rolling, it seemed that the hackers started playing the Korean card, more for lulz than anything tangible. And now, long after the media has shifted from Poor Sony to Damned Korea (with even the President stepping in with his opinions), we're really heard very little from the attackers. It honestly feels like a bunch of guys in a basement collectively said to themselves "Oh shit, the President of the United States is talking about shit I did, time to cool off". From what I've read about the abysmal security at SPE, it wouldn't be surprising in the least that it didn't take a state sponsored group to do as much damage as they did. Blaming the DPRK only helps Sony sound less like a failure.

The only facts I can be sure of is that Sony did everything wrong in response. Every CIO should learn from this as what _not_ to do when hacked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Obama signed five new cybersecurity bills into law on the 18th. The FBI announcement was Dec 19th.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have been looking for close to a week for Infosec professionals who believe DPRK was responsible for attacks.

So far I have found two.

One is @daveaitel, who sells security solutions to governments.

The other is @thegrugq, who believes that everything we've heard from FBI is a lie, and the NSA simply told them who it was.

Neither is particularly convincing. Does anyone know of any others?

<comment><USER15> Does Brian Krebs count? [http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/12/the-case-for-n- koreas-rol...](http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/12/the-case-for-n-koreas-role- in-sony-hack/)

<comment><USER13> Krebs absolutely counts, but if Krebs says yes and Schneier says no, which he did, then it's a very open question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is it possible the FBI/NSA/XXX agency is suppressing evidence in order to protect an informant?

Example scenario: US intel has agent or informant in NK, working high in cyber command. That person shows US intel code used to hack sony, and/or simply tells them that yes, NK did it. Consequently, FBI is confident NK did it, but cannot reveal reason for confidence without jeopardizing safety of informant.

<comment><USER17> Yes, it is, and this point is actually addressed in the article. The problem is that it's grown more and more difficult to just allow the government to hide behind the veil of confidentiality when they've shown they abuse this power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> North Korea does not have the sophistication to carry out this attack. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hUegMTSh0U#t=59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hUegMTSh0U#t=59)

<comment><USER19> NK has nukes. NK sends its elite citizens to western university. NK has its own linux distro.

Most of NK would have no clue how to perform this hack - but you could say the same of America. Give a computer to an illiterate Appalacian and see how far they get. NK will carefully train some elites. Those people will have access to the wider Internet and will uave the knowledge to pull off this relatively simple hack.

That's not to say that NK actually did it - just that saying NK is unsophisticated and thus couldn't have done it misses the point.

<comment><USER18> The linux distro is probably unpatched to every linux vulnerability discovered in the last 10 years-easy to get a shell and start an attack.

You assume NK people think like Americans. Every scientist is working out of fear and therefore is doing the minimal amount possible to not be scolded. I lived in a communist country and the same way the economy was in the hole, so was scientific advancement. A good analogy is Cuba- they have one of the most rigorous schools for becoming a doctor, but they wouldn't know how to operate an MRI since none exist in the country. An NK citizen may have taken security class at an university, but may not have the talent, like a logical anarchist, required to become a great hacker. The number of skilled, motivated hackers outside NK is greater than those inside. Look at the video-how do you find the 10x programmer in that computer lab?

NK's way of keeping 24M people from protesting is by controlling INFORMATION. To have a hacker untraceable and talented enough to enter SONY, they must be read on the latest trends. This same hacker, if informed, would be smart enough to google his way out of the horrible living conditions in NK. The nuke scientists copied 1950's tech.

To me this sounds like the WMD's of the early 2000's. If NK doesn't have any credibility they will be easily blamed for political leverage with no evidence.

I welcome the FBI to open source the malware, traffic and trace logs for community analysis.

Come back and read this comment when hackers acquire this data themselves and provide technical proof of NK NOT being at fault.

<comment><USER20> _A good analogy is Cuba- they have one of the most rigorous schools for becoming a doctor, but they wouldn 't know how to operate an MRI since none exist in the country._

A report here from 2006 says otherwise:

 _Cuba spends ∼16% of its GNP directly on the health system, roughly $320 per year per person. As would be expected, tertiary medical facilities lack both the amenities and the technology found in industrialized countries. A recent modernization campaign, however, has brought interventional cardiology and MRI, for example, to the 48 referral hospitals and ultrasound and endoscopy to polyclinics._

[http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/4/817.full](http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/4/817.full)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Python 3.7.2 and 3.6.8 are now available - <AUTHOR> https://pythoninsider.blogspot.com/2018/12/python-372-and-368-are-now-available.html <comment><USER2> Something I've been wondering for years: I understand the rift between 2.x and 3.x.. But what is the rationale for maintaining multiple 3.x branches? And how do I choose the right branch for a fresh project? From experience, it seems like it doesn't really matter.

<comment><USER3> Per the 3.6 release schedule[1], 3.6 was the stable branch until the final release of 3.7.0. After that, it was to receive two more bug fix releases and then switch over to security fixes. 3.7.0 final was released a few months ago, so this is the last bugfix release for 3.6.x. 3.7.0 is now considered "stable". However, 3.6.8 will still receive security fixes for anyone that is depending on it.

This is generally done for those who want "stable" releases with minimal bug fixes. The 3.7 branch has newer features and therefore, potentially more bugs.

If you want the latest stable version, get 3.7.0. If you want the latest version, get 3.7.2.

[1] [https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0494/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0494/)

<comment><USER2> How does that justify 4 different 3.x branches continually updated in the last year, from 3.4 to 3.7?

That still doesn't explain why it makes sense for python devs to be split among what, 4 different 3.x branches in the last year? I can understand keeping one stable LTS branch and one "up to date" branch, but the current system seems like a waste of resources and extra complexity, though I assume there's a good reason I'm not familiar with. For example, 3.4 .9 was released after 3.7.0. [1]

Maybe I'm just missing something about the numbering scheme?

1.[https://www.python.org/downloads](https://www.python.org/downloads)

<comment><USER4> > I can understand keeping one stable LTS branch and one "up to date" branch

If you did that then lots of distro packagers would just stay on the LTS until the next one comes along, and so you'd increase the number of users that are on older versions. With the selected approach, there is more work involved to backport a fix to the 4-5 supported versions, but this gives the benefit that OS distros can bump their Python versions more frequently, and so end users get updated Python3 features more often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dicts now retain order now (in other words all dicts are ordered dicts). I support this, but I also guarantee this is going to bite me in the ass at least once sharing notebooks with someone on an older version of python as I expect to use this liberally. Ah well.

<comment><USER6> Just to clarify. This behavior is expected since 3.6:

As of Python 3.6, for the CPython implementation of Python, dictionaries remember the order of items inserted. This is considered an implementation detail in Python 3.6; you need to use OrderedDict if you want insertion ordering that's guaranteed across other implementations of Python.

As of Python 3.7, this is no longer an implementation detail and instead becomes a language feature.

[1] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39980323/are- dictionarie...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39980323/are-dictionaries- ordered-in-python-3-6)

<comment><USER7> CPython implementation detail vs. Python language feature remains a relatively meaningless distinction.

<comment><USER8> CPython is not the only Python interpreter out there.

<comment><USER9> The documentation sometimes suggests otherwise, but since there is no Python language specification, declaring something "part of the language" seems to have no meaning if it's not "implemented in CPython".

PyPy has had ordered dicts for longer than CPython, and Jython and IronPython don't look like they're ever going to support Python 3, so I'm not sure who this declaration is even even hypothetically relevant to.

<comment><USER10> It's relevant in the fact that you shouldn't rely on it as a programmer prior to this release. Changing it would have been considered a none breaking change.

<comment><USER9> Good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A hefty list if improvements to asyncio. When I tried working with asyncio in Python 3.4 it seemed half-baked and unpythonic. I look forward to trying out the more mature implementation.

<comment><USER12> I am responsible for maitaining a Python 3.4 asyncio app at work, and recently in charge of building a new (not replacing) system in 3.7. The difference is truly enormous in a very pleasant way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Python 3.7 is a great release. Finally is faster than 2.7 for almost all of our use cases.</comment>


Jamaican bobsleigh team raises $25k in Dogecoin - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/20/jamaican-bobsled-team-raises-dogecoin-winter-olympics <comment><USER2> I'm not familiar with how much 26MM Dogecoin is in relation to the total amount of Dogecoin that's been mined, but it will be interesting to see what happens to the exchange rate as it gets converted into "real" money so the team can pay for the trip to Sochi. The article mentioned that the fundraiser may have raised the price of Doge itself, and I expect that bubble will pop as soon as the Jamaicans find out that you can't buy plane tickets with Doge (yet).

<comment><USER3> 100,000,000,000 dogecoin will be mined total (one hundred billion)

[https://dogechain.info/chain/Dogecoin/statistics](https://dogechain.info/chain/Dogecoin/statistics)

32.32%(!) of that has already been mined. That's 32,323,788,534 dogecoin.

26 million is .08% of all dogecoins that have been mined.

<comment><USER4> About a billion coins are being added per day. That will change 2 weeks from now when the block reward halves. What's kind of interesting about Dogecoin is that there are so many people mining it. The rapid rate at which coins are being released combined with the large number of miners means that currently the top 100 addresses only hold 36.9% of all coins, the lowest concentration of wealth of any altcoin by a wide margin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't wait for Cool Runnings 2: wow very sponsored.

</comment><comment><USER6> Didn't know that Jamaicans are into bobsleigh. Didn't know that Dogecoin exist.

Today is the Knowledge Day.

<comment><USER7> Jamaicans are into sprinting - it is basically the national sport. In the bob, three skills are needed: sprinting while pushing a bob, sitting very still, and steering, and only one person needs to do steering. And the sprinting bit is quite important. Bobsleigh is like a natural pivot into a new market for sprinters.

</comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord It seems to me that it's now inevitable (for better or for worse) that Dogecoin will become the bronze to Litecoin's silver, or in other words 3rd highest valued cryptocurrency.

<comment><USER8> Dogecoin has surpassed Litecoin's transaction volume in USD for the last two days. It's still finding its place in the world, and it's possible that place isn't 3rd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe this is fueled, at least in part, by others who had the same experience I did?

1\. Hear the Jamaican bobsled team needs cash to get to Sochi. 2\. Want to help- surely there is a fund online people can donate to? 3\. Search google, find nothing. 4\. Search reddit, only related thread is in /r/dogecoin.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, in the article it said that this actually affected the dogecoin/bitcoin exchange rate.

>So many people had been donating, in fact, that they seemed to raise the price of the currency itself; in 12 hours, the Dogecoin to Bitcoin exchange rate rose by 50%.

<comment><USER10> The rise was due to a single investor in China manipulating the market. Even if the entire donation was purchased in the exchanges, 25k isn't enough money to significantly affect the price.

<comment><USER11> According to some rumours, I honestly don't believe it. Not impossible though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Joke currency" my ass!

<comment><USER13> It still is. Can you name a single business that accepts it other than the exchanges? (And there's probably a few, but nobody knows them).

Of course, doesn't mean it will stay that way, though I have a hard time believing it will ever lose its joke status.

<comment><USER14> On the numbers, I think more businesses accept dogecoin than bitcoin. And the volume of dogecoin transactions exceeded bitcoin transactions the other day. The transactions and businesses are smaller.

All cryptocurrency is 'joke status' to a certain extent with the vast majority of people. Personally, I think it'd be genuinely funny for dogecoin to grow to be the most popular and valuable cryptocurrency.

<comment><USER15> > On the numbers, I think more businesses accept dogecoin than bitcoin. And > the volume of dogecoin transactions exceeded bitcoin transactions the other > day. The transactions and businesses are smaller.

Any chance the business plans for these businesses is _" Make doge jokes on reddit, collect dogecoin donations"_?

<comment><USER14> Yup. That plus art, poetry, and all kinds of little one-offs that individuals can make online and get money for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> think Dogecoin will succeed precisely because it's perceived as lighthearted,

this is reminiscent of lots of internet successes: twitter, reddit, dropbox, etc.

friendly wins the internet

</comment><comment><USER17> Most of the $25k donation was from a single, large owner of Dogecoin. Flagged for being little more than shameless pumping of a "joke" (tee hee!) currency. (disclaimer: I own some Dogecoin to hedge my sheer annoyance with it against the money I'm making from its absurd success).

<comment><USER18> Well, it's over $34k now, so I'm not sure that it's just "shameless pumping".

It's a fun story about a joke cryptocurrency. Roll with it.

<comment><USER17> Fair enough, I unflagged the story. My annoyance probably stems from all the dogecoin fans calling it a "joke" currency to mask their greed. It was a joke currency two months ago. Now it's a liquid, $MM cryptocurrency second to Bitcoin.

<comment><USER18> It's still a joke, which is why it does well. It's got a serious strain, but it's firmly rooted in internet sillyness and people throw it around willy- nilly right now specifically because it's a "joke" with some minimal amount of value. People treat it as functionally equivalent to reddit karma or whatever - at the moment, it's broadly used as kind of a secondary upvote. Just because it's a joke doesn't mean it can't also be a serious cryptocurrency. It's just rebranded Litecoin, after all.

As far as "second to bitcoin", not quite. Its market cap jumped quite a bit in the past day, but it's still 8th on the list according to [http://coinmarketcap.com/](http://coinmarketcap.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow.

<comment><USER20> Such wow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> dogecoin is going through the roof [http://coinmarketcap.com/](http://coinmarketcap.com/)</comment>


Idea behind Smilerr - Use work email to find the right match. - <AUTHOR> http://smilerr-blog.tumblr.com/post/27547403862/welcome-to-smilerr

<comment><AUTHOR> We found out that one very important factor about building a good relationship with a person is what she or he does for living - their profession. Profession of a person gives us a lot of idea about them. People are more likely to connect with and meet the person if they work at reputed organizations.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Currently, Smilerr is exclusive and open only to people working at Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google & Microsoft. They can sign up on Smilerr for free at <http://www.smilerr.com> with their work email.</comment>


Using rope physics to simulate cabling a data center in VR - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/8xn9ta/using_rope_physics_to_simulate_cabling_a_data/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me of this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY1XB0rrYes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY1XB0rrYes)

The cabling looks so perfect it kinda seems a little alien even.

</comment><comment><USER3> That was uncomfortable watching - having been responsible for data centers in a past life my nightmares were haunted by those with no, or worse, little knowledge re-patching critical infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER4> This puts the focus in the wrong place.

When wiring a rack, you've got to start with an understanding of what you want each piece to do. If you have a switch where all the ports are untagged or on a common VLAN, the only thing which matters about cable placement in the switch is how easy it is to trace later on. If you have multiple VLANs, you need to have a map right there in front of you saying how the ports are assigned.

On the physical level, dealing with intermittent connectivity issues (cable not plugged in properly, cable damaged by mechanical stress) and difficulty extracting cables (RJ45 lock lever too small or stuck) are relatively common issues that won't be adequately simulated in VR anytime soon.

<comment><USER5> My thought is this is probably an attempt to bring a physical paradigm to a software-defined network, since it's apparently a Cisco project.

Though your comment brings to mind a couple of things that might be useful in the world of physical networking:

1\. An AR tool that identifies the physical switches and overlays the port VLAN assignments, trunks, etc. Bonus points if it could color-code the cables accordingly, though I don't know how you'd track them through a knot somewhere.

2\. A physical switch with RGB port LEDs with color-coded port assignments would also be nice. Very nice.

<comment><USER4> 2 would be pretty easy to do the second one in software right now: "Switch, steady orange on all untagged ports, blinky orange on all VLAN 601."

Port LED status lights are already multipurpose: [https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/release- independ...](https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/release- independent/junos/topics/reference/specifications/port-ex4200-network- leds.html)

It would be nice to get the ability to control them more generally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Perfect for my new video game, "Sysadmin Simulator 2018"

<comment><USER7> Halon dash mini-game.

<comment><USER8> That presumably is in the BOFH DLC :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really want to co-opt this to create a "physical" representation of my VmWare or Xen environments. Could be a really interesting way to demonstrate virtual appliances and networking haha

</comment><comment><USER10> I wish real cables behaved like that but that's not what actually happens. The worst is their tendency to coil which happens when different layers of the cable are twisted and exerting twisting force with regards to each other.

</comment><comment><USER11> Similar to cloth physics, except it's 1D.

E.g. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04nXlhdPxB4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04nXlhdPxB4)

<comment><USER11> Question: can cables be woven into a fabric, so that it _can_ simulate cloth?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> When the virtual HVAC fails, do the VR cables lessen their rigidity as the temperature heats up?

</comment><comment><USER13> It is not clear to me what the intention is with this stuff.

I mean, in a datacenter, aren't there "top of rack" switches that everything below gets cabled into and then you have the top-of-rack switches aggregating traffic into fiber and the fiber going into a much larger central switch?

Where in a datacenter do you have to worry about patch-panel concerns unless one is routing to testing tools of some kind?

<comment><USER14> I don't know the intention, but there are a lot of different use cases for cabling. It's not always top of rack, it's not always in a data center, it's not even always in a rack. And certainly not everyone uses fiber backbones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Would be fun to hook this up to crossbow or another robust virtual network stack. Virtually wire up virtual networking. Throw in a little virtual PDA to configure and spin up new VMs (spawning them into rack on demand).

</comment><comment><USER16> Pretty cool, but they need to upgrade the physics, add a dust simulator and badly sized power cables so the player can make proper rats nest

<comment><USER17> I'll throw in a feature request for zinc whiskers.

[http://www.ecmweb.com/power-quality-archive/how-do-zinc- whis...](http://www.ecmweb.com/power-quality-archive/how-do-zinc-whiskers- affect-todays-data-centers)</comment></comment>


Googlers Buy More Junk Food Than Microsofties (And Why Rapleaf Is Creepy) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/22/googlers-buy-more-junk-food-than-microsofties-and-why-rapleaf-is-creepy/ <comment><USER2> Speaking as someone who works for Google (in New York), I can't speak for Microsoft buti basically get fed 3 meals a day during the week. The same is true for Mountain View and for other larger offices.

So for many Googlers there's no reason to cook at least 4 nights a week, if you're so inclined.

In New York in particular there's really no reason to cook at all as it stands. My fridge has soda and expired milk in it. Sad but true.

Maybe Microsofties buy more foodingredients because they have to fend for themselves?

<comment><USER3> Do your wife and kids eat at Google regularly too?

<comment><USER4> He obviously doesn't have either. Although perhaps that was the joke behind your comment?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Am I alone in thinking it is strange that so many people use their work email for non-work stuff? I'm guessing the data originates from a grocery rewards program. I assumed everyone (at least a tech co. employee) uses a personal email for these kinda stuff by now.

<comment><USER6> This kind of mapping does not require that you use your work email to sign up for the loyalty card.

I've talked to a company who does the same thing for retail shopping. They're cagey about it, but it sounds like they'll map your work email to any credit card spending you've done under that address -- which in turn maps to your billing address and opens up the entire pandora's box of your shopping behavior. The loyalty card is tied to your cc from spending, but you don't even need that -- name combined ZIP+4 has a pretty viable level of uniqueness.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the explanation. Adds to 'creepiness' level of the method. I find it sort of funny. A startup is making money from the data mined from Google employees and it is being called creepy. I say it is poetic justice :)

<comment><USER6> That poetic justice cuts right to the heart of the do-not-track debate, too.

Big players have an angle to weasel out of the proposed legislation -- if you can see enough packet traffic (think Akamai, Juniper, Google, Comcast), who gives a fuck about cookies? The big guys can sell ad targeting galore, and little guys are hosed. It has the potential to lock up the ad monetization ecosystem.

And for all the creepy online targeting -- how about what happens offline? Way more data. Way more detailed. No one seems to give a crap.

FWIW, the rapleaf guys seem perfectly nice in person. They just can't seem to get out of their own way with this 'ick factor' stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pretty sure these correlations aren't statistically important. N events will give a deviation of ~sqrt(N) - which for N = 6000 is > 1%. Therefore seeing that 12% of Microsoft people buy Capri Sun but only 10% of Googlers is pretty meaningless.

Furthermore, we don't know how many items the test was against, leading to only those items that had large discrepancies being reported.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias#The_file_drawe...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias#The_file_drawer_effect)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd like to know what the average age of Microsoft employees is vs Google employees as well.

<comment><USER9> The document attached to the article shows the age distribution for both companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Kroger loyalty programs gave me the creeps several years ago when I first moved out and had to buy _my own_ groceries.

Since you have to be a member of the tracking program to take advantage of any specials, I signed up, but I used the stores address, phone and contact information. The cashier asked for a driver's license which I had _misplaced_. She wasn't an idiot. She just didn't sufficiently care.

It bothered me that I had to lie to protect my privacy and be able to get any of their advertised specials at the advertised prices, so I found an alternative grocery store in my area. It's a greenbacks only, bag it yourself in your own bags store.

They carry good produce, meats, and the usual grocery items -- except that there's very few well known brands, but I got used to the "sort of Coke" and "almost Cheerios". Which was easy to get used to when I saw my total grocery spend was cut in half.

Unfortunately, I value my money over my privacy in most cases. Fortunately, this was one of those cases where valuing my privacy turned out to be a win all around.

EDIT:: Punctuation.

<comment><USER11> In my experience, giving any information at all for a Kroger card is completely optional - I picked up a form with a card attached, threw away the form, and the card's worked fine ever since.

I suppose if you talk to a clerk they may be trained to pressure you into giving away info, or it may vary by region/brand, or policy may have been different then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think a more accurate title would be "More Googlers Buy..." rather than "Googlers Buy More...", and for honesty, there ought to be a "Very Slightly" in there somewhere.

The interesting story here is about identity and privacy, though.

</comment><comment><USER13> Here is the post from RapLeaf's blog with analysis from their team.

[http://blog.rapleaf.com/blog/2011/03/22/whats-cooking-in- the...](http://blog.rapleaf.com/blog/2011/03/22/whats-cooking-in-the-silicon- valley/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I like it how the author is all about reapleaf "being creepy" for doing what they do, while publishing their results to get visits.

</comment><comment><USER9> This headline is pretty deceptive. The first graph also shows that Google employees buy more fresh fruit and vegetables.

</comment><comment><USER15> Does Microsoft have as much candy on-site as Google?

<comment><USER16> Depends on the group. Each team gets morale money ($/head/year) to spend at their discretion on events, swag, and snacks. Your administrative assistant, top-level manager, and group culture will set how things go. When I worked on the Visual Studio Environment team, there were frequently M&Ms, snickers, etc.

When I was leading a team, most were sort of health nuts (even by MSFT standards, where 9/10 people seemed to be avid hikers or ski/snowboarders) so we mainly had fresh fruit and granola bars. And Alaskan Amber beer, though not too often :-)</comment></comment>


Deconstruct Files, Talk Transcript - <AUTHOR> https://danluu.com/deconstruct-files/ <comment><USER2> Always glad to see another Dan Luu article.

Also props to Sqlite for being one of the last ones standing when it comes to fighting filesystem crashes. It is truly an incredibly high quality piece of software AND it's free, what a world to live in.

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps the author should also link to the source of the material more directly: [https://www.usenix.org/node/186195](https://www.usenix.org/node/186195)</comment>


What's wrong with USB sticks that you need 3 tries to plug them in correctly? - <AUTHOR> https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/123560/whats-wrong-with-usb-sticks-that-you-need-3-tries-to-plug-them-in-correctly <comment><USER2> Very wordy answers, and as far as I can see no single answer has both points:

1\. The connector is symmetric. If it was asymmetric like HDMI for example it would be easier. 2\. There's no bevel to guide the connector into place, so you can be _very_ close and it still won't go in. That feels exactly the same as if you have it in the incorrect orientation.

All the stuff about the logo is misguided. Nobody reads the logo of HDMI or ethernet cables to plug them in.

<comment><USER3> > The connector is symmetric

No it's asymmetric. That's the whole point of this discussion. If it was symmetric it could go in either way and there wouldn't be an issue.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h The outside, which is readily visible, is symmetric. The inside of the plug isn't. The difference is the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> An additional reason why people may not be confident in their initial alignment -

Even if a user knows about the icon indicating "top" of a USB plug, and is aware of the top side when plugging in a plug, there's no such affordance for the socket.

The top side of the socket _should_ be on top, but the socket might be rotated 90 degrees, and might be on the backside of the device, requiring _correctly_ rotating your mental model of the socket just to know which way the plug goes in!

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll answer this like most of my software vendors do:

Please upgrade to USB-C to solve this issue, we are no longer supporting USB 3.0 or below.

<comment><USER6> * incomplete protocol support may exist and vary by cable, host or client device

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's a trick I use: most PC ports have the flat plastic (inside) on the top half [0], I have noticed. So, if you look at the USB dongle/stick/cord it will have some small holes punched in either flat side usually. Just look for the holes that aren't blocked by the flat plastic part [1] and make sure those are up, then you should get 95 percent of them correct.

[0] [http://i.imgur.com/k09dgzL.png](http://i.imgur.com/k09dgzL.png) [1] [http://i.imgur.com/6sChr0E.png](http://i.imgur.com/6sChr0E.png)

<comment><USER8> Or just try plugging it in, and if it doesn't work, flip it over. It's not a big deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really do not understand how people still have trouble with this. We've had years and years to get used to these plugs.

The 'top' of every USB-A plug I've ever seen is smooth, while the 'bottom' has a seam down the middle. And you can tell the receptacle's orientation from a glance just as easily, but you don't have to because the 'top' side of the plug should face the 'top' of the device it is plugging into in almost every consumer device I've used.

Top of plug = top of device. Easy. It seems more like a cheesy running joke that people just go along with at this point.

(Wow, of all the things to become a touchy subject...what am I doing with my life, typing stuff like this out? This isn't helping anyone. Please ignore my pedantic bullshit.)

<comment><USER3> > The 'top' of every USB-A plug I've ever seen is smooth, while the 'bottom' > has a seam down the middle. And you can tell the receptacle's orientation > from a glance just as easily, but you don't have to because the 'top' side > of the plug should face the 'top' of the device it is plugging into in > almost every consumer device I've used.

I can't tell if you're joking. You've just written three hundred characters about how to plug in a cable. Why is it that complicated? Why didn't they design it to go in in any orientation?

<comment><USER9> Okay, how about this?

"Plug in the cable face-up."

It's just less accurate for edge cases like tower PCs with slots facing the side. And fair's fair, I hadn't thought about how annoying it is when you have to reach behind a machine to plug something into one of those.

But then again, it's usually hard to plug things together when you can't see them. I dunno, it just really doesn't seem like an issue in practice.

<comment><USER3> > "Plug in the cable face-up."

What's the face? Which way is up? Can't you see that these descriptions don't work?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> USB type A connectors are fermions with spin 1/2\. You have to rotate them 720 degrees to orient them correctly.

<comment><USER11> [http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-10-04](http://www.smbc- comics.com/comic/2011-10-04)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The point about superpositions and observations is because USB memory is based on semiconductors, and semiconductors are based on quantum physics.</comment>


The "Everyone gets the source code, donations get you binaries" software model - <AUTHOR> http://lunduke.com/?p=3606

<comment><USER2> I hate hate hate hate this model, because it just splits off people who could be using, advocating for, and contributing to your product (by documentation, by bug reports, by leaving positive reviews, ...) into two groups of people: those who are willing to pay for the program before they get to run it, and those who will just google "program name +free" and click on the first link.

It also eliminates significant amounts of feedback that would be sent to you as the developer and instead splits your mindshare among you and whoever compiled your program and has the best SEO. In the worst case scenario, somebody compiles your program with a suboptimal set of optimization flags, or with a bad library, or any number of things, and it makes your program look terrible. People start posting that "Foosoft makes terrible software" because they downloaded a version that is terrible, and you get all the blame for that - do you think they'll even remember that they downloaded their binary from free-foosoft-binaries.com.net.mx.biz.cc?

I also take umbrage to calling this a 'donation'. If you get something in exchange for it that people who don't donate can't get, it isn't a 'donation', it is a purchase. Call it a purchase. Say you're buying the binaries. It isn't a "contribution", a "donation", or "feel good warm fuzzies", it is a cold hard transaction of cash for something of value.

<comment><USER3> How hard is it to run ./configure && make && sudo make install (at least on a *nix-compatible OS)? Most of the time the defaults work fine.

I have no idea how this would translate into the world of Windows though.

<comment><USER4> For 98% of the world's population? Very hard, approaching impossibly hard.

<comment><USER5> We have top-notch programmers which have never heard of configure, and to them anything opensource that does not compile straight in Visual Studio is not worth it.

You can't even get them to learn a little bit about make, but then again some of them glamorize XML as the best thing ever.

<comment><USER3> I'm genuinely curious and I'm not being antagonistic, but why do you call them top-notch if they refuse to learn and shy away from a problem that should be (to them) relatively easy?

<comment><USER6> Because they are the best at what they do?

Someone are just the best programmer in Windows/Visual Studio environment. And being "top-notch" should not be reserved to only those who use command line.

<comment><USER7> I think he was referring to the "top notch" developers being unwilling to learn, which to me would disqualify them from the category of "top notch", no matter what how good they are at using their preferred toolset. I'm curious, if they are so resistant to learning new things, how well do they deal with changes in MSVS? Like for instance going from 2008 to 2010, the solution file format changed (and the importer is far from perfect), and things were moved around in the GUI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hopefully he will be able to maximize his income by making it as difficult to compile on a given platform as possible, with all sorts of specific dependent libraries needed and not specified from a variety of locations. It also helps to make sure that it breaks instantly when you try to compile and fixing that takes days of work and research to find out all the problems.

<comment><USER9> Interesting that you say this because that is what I was thinking. Giving away the source, but not dependencies, makefile, etc.

Another possible model:

\- Source (stripped) = free

\- Source + dependencies and build instructions = small donation/contribution.

\- Binaries = larger donation/contribution to save the hassle.

<comment><USER10> This is not allowed under the GPL, which he is using.

<comment><USER11> Sure it is. Under the GPL you are not allowed to distribute a binary without also distributing the source and dependencies. But it is fine to distribute the source code without bundled dependencies.

<comment><USER12> The problem is that you also need to supply the dependencies that you used to build it (makefiles and such).

<comment><USER13> not to people to whom he's not distributing a binary

<comment><USER14> But once he distributes them to one person who gets the binary that person can distribute them freely to everyone else.

<comment><USER13> and he's perfectly fine with that

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, for me to donate I definitely want to try it first... This creates an unnecessary barrier to even trying, meaning I will try a 'competitor' first and only come back if I didn't find anything else of interest.

And I probably won't be as inclined to donate if you forced me to compile it first...

<comment><USER16> Hold them horses. There are many applications distributed ONLY after payment (called commercial) who are doing just fine. To sell an app and then let people have the source is just nice and kind.

<comment><USER15> Well, just as I'm skeptical about donating to an application I haven't tried I'm skeptical about buying an application I haven't tried.

Most commercial applications allow you to try them in one way or another before buying, if I'm not allowed to do that (which by itself smells bad) commercial applications more often have reviews (at least user reviews) and if I'm ultimately about to buy an application that I haven't tried or really got a feel for you can bet that it is because I'm becoming desperate and haven't found anything else decent (in other words I've put in quite some time in exploring alternatives before even considering to buy that application).

The same goes for this software model, only when I buy an application I usually get some support etc. If I donate, I usually, already have what I'm donating for. Quite a big difference.

And honestly, if the author is deliberately trying to make my life difficult just to trick me into donating I'm going to be annoyed, and since I deeply disagree with that type of model (donations should be earned, it's not a form of annoy-ware) I will, out of principle, be _very_ hesitant of donating (I'd like to say that I'd never donate, but if the application was truly exceptional I'd probably donate anyway (but I'd attach a comment describing that I dislike it)).

I can put up with quite a bit of tinkering to get something to run, but not if it is because the author have deliberately kept the make-file to himself (as he implied in the comments) just to get people to donate. Huge difference.

I'd probably be more recipient towards a commercial application with a decent trial-version. I much rather pay for something than getting it for free from someone being rude about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> XChat does this for Windows. But inevitably, free-as-in-beer alternatives appear, like XChat-WDK.

<comment><USER18> I think it's worth noting that even with several free alternative builds, some of them more frequently updated from source than the official binaries, people still buy and pirate the official one. I'd be really interested to compare how many people have paid for Xchat against download numbers for Xchat-WDK and Silverex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This model only works for unsuccessful software. As soon as the software gets popular somebody will redistribute his binaries in an easily accessible place. Also, like the support model, this creates an incentive for the developers to make their software worse (in this case making it harder to compile).

</comment><comment><USER19> So it's not a "donation".

<comment><USER20> By that logic, PBS sells a lot of $100 beer-can insulators.

<comment><USER21> It's self-evident that people aren't giving $100 to PBS because they really want the PBS-logo beer cozy and can't find it cheaper or easier elsewhere.

That's a donation, and along with it the donor does some advertising exposure via the cozy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > wants more donations from users

> makes users compile software by hand

> because new users will want to try his software so much that they'll > manually build or donate cash to try it

</comment><comment><USER23> One problem is that I'm happiest when I can install software from software repositories I'm already pointed at, and here I either don't get that convenience or the donations are irrelevant when someone else builds it for the distro.

</comment><comment><USER24> "Donations". Programmers are collectively very stupid, as far as economics goes.

</comment><comment><USER25> I really don't like the software as a service business model since it under- values the coding part of things. I wish more people would experiment with partially commercialize open source projects like this.

</comment><comment><USER26> Another possible variant is: Paid users get the newest version + support + immediate patches/bugfixes. Everyone else gets it with an n month delay + GPLed source code + binaries.

<comment><USER14> This is basically the model Couchbase (though Apache licensed, not GPL) and some other products already use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I really, really don't like this guy. But the idea is very neat, it's basically the "sell support, no licenses"-model, just with support beginning in the pre-distribution stage.

<comment><USER28> You don't like the model he chose to use or you "don't like this guy"?

<comment><USER27> I do like the model - I don't like the person. @jason: My dislike for him is based on his apperances on the Linux Action Show.

<comment><USER9> I see.

I can understand being displeased with someone.

In this case your comment is sort of not relevant to the content of the submission.

But your point about the model is taken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Will the links be nofollow, or follow links? If follow, I imagine you will get a lot of potential donators from people who aren't even interested in your software.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is what MySQL implemented long time ago. They stopped providing windows binaries download but provided the full source code access

<comment><USER31> Are you sure? I see a giant Windows banner here: <https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/>

You can download that without even registering (tiny link on second page).

<comment><USER32> I think that must be new. I also remember a login prompt when attempting to download binaries from MySQL. I remember it being non-obvious that there even was a version without paid support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> He's basically just selling his software for a monthly fee, same as loads of other software companies. I don't see what the issue is.

</comment><comment><USER34> Also know as the Red Hat model

<comment><USER35> You may want to review the Red Hat model, I think you must have it mixed up with something else.

<comment><USER36> Uh...

Red Hat gives its source out for free as it is legally obliged to do (which CentOS and others take and build).

To get official RHEL binaries (which also come with support), you must pay for a subscription.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> side note, that is so cool that you have an old bbs running! that sent me back about 15 years. awesome

<http://lunduke.com/?page_id=1316>

</comment><comment><USER38> Interesting model. Is the binary free to distribute?

Even if it's not, someone will just make something like lunduke-free.com and put up compiled binaries.

<comment><USER39> It has to be, since it is GPLed.

(If not, he could sue himself for copyright infringement).

<comment><USER40> As long as all the source is his or has been contributed under a less restrictive license, he should be free to release the binaries under another license.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: DOMgroup – define a group of elements by merging 2 or more selectors - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dosyago-corp/domgroup#readme <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN,

I developed this algorithm a couple years ago, but just got around to releasing it into a proper format.

Feel free to try it out and submit an issue or PR. It's a work in progress, but still very much production ready and useful.

Thanks for stopping by! :)</comment>