Ask HN: How can I create a decentralized GNU-social-compatible website? - <AUTHOR> Hi! I'm working on this project, it's a reddit-like open source social network, written in django.
Beta is almost complete, and now I really want to make it decentralized and compatible with GNU Social. I've never done this before, and some advice would be really useful to me at this point.
Where do I start? Which technologies should I pick? Are there any great resources/tutorials about this stuff? <comment><USER3> So I have quite a bit of bias, since I work on a specification in this area. So yes, if you want to make sure it's GNU Social (formerly StatusNet) compatible specifically, use OStatus, which is a number of protocols combined in a specific way.

The most unfortunate part of all this though is that all these different applications, GNU Social, Diaspora, Pump.io, etc all speak different protocols and aren't all really interoperable. This leads to a "fractured federation", which really isn't great. I've been participating in the W3C Social Working Group to try to standardize federation. Here's our spec, ActivityPub:

[https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/)

Some background: it's derivative of the "Pump API", which is sort of the successor of OStatus, in the sense that the primary author of StatusNet (now GNU Social) wrote the Pump API in response to some perceived shortcomings in OStatus. We've done a lot of analysis to make sure that the protocol can handle all the kinds of things that you expect from the "big player" social networks, but in a federated setting.

Interested? Now's a great time to research and give feedback. We're looking to move to Candidate Recommendation status shortly, which means we're looking for feedback and implementations.

PS: I'm also involved in MediaGoblin, and we definitely intend to implement there. If you're interested in a bit of news from that end, here's a moderately fresh blogpost, including info on how to give your feedback: [http://mediagoblin.org/news/tpac-2016-and-review- activitypub...](http://mediagoblin.org/news/tpac-2016-and-review- activitypub.html)

We're planning on using it for MediaGoblin.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not directly answering your question, but does anybody know of any server software I can run to take part in such decentralised/federated/etc. networks, which isn't complicated by multi-user, Web-frontend bloat? GNU Social, pump.io, etc. and even Matrix, XMPP and IRC, etc. all seem to assume I want thousands of simultaneous users. I don't; I'm the only user, but I want to integrate into the network.

Signing up for an account on someone else's server seems to defeat the point, yet I haven't found anything which I can run persistently on my server, access in a simple way (e.g. via SSH, a shared secret, a named pipe, etc.), and doesn't make me uncomfortable allowing it online (i.e. dynamic Web stuff).

I used to use Laconica (AKA StatusNet AKA GNU Social) a lot via XMPP, but then identi.ca switched off their bridge, and then switched to pump.io which doesn't seem to work with anything other than a Web frontend.

How would Usenet compare? I never got into it, but hear it's filled with spam :(

<comment><USER5> If I'm not mistaken, with Matrix you do not have to run a front-end per se. I _believe_ you can simply setup a matrix home server, and then interact via an open source mobile/desktop/web application. This is not unlike old school email, where you can host your own email server, but manage email via any mobile/web/desktop email clients (of which you don't need to host the client side) .

For example, I'm running a private (matrix) synapse home server for _ONLY_ my family; as a test. I only interact via the mobile (open source) riot application (formerly named vector.im), though they do also offer a web application at [https://riot.im](https://riot.im) . I simply point the client to my server's (appropriate matrix) url, and am off to the races - <USER2> internally for my family and I only at this point.

My plan eventually is to keep running my own matrix home server, and open it up so that my family and I keep using any old client (like [https://riot.im](https://riot.im) or whatever) _BUT_ begin to interact with other users using matrix clients/servers, etc.

My understanding is that what you wish to do ("...I'm the only user, but I want to integrate into the network") is actually quite common for folks beginning to use matrix. Give this a look-see: [http://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix- now.html](http://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html)

Alternatively - less ideal of course but - you can always lurk around on certain matrix-related rooms on the first/original matrix.org home server, and ask questions (on how you can set up your own server, etc.). Because I'm still in my own test phase, that's what I'm doing. Here are a few channels (via riot.im): * [https://riot.im/app/#/room/#matrix:matrix.org](https://riot.im/app/#/room/#matrix:matrix.org) * [https://riot.im/app/#/room/#riot:matrix.org](https://riot.im/app/#/room/#riot:matrix.org) * [https://riot.im/app/#/room/#homeowners:matrix.org](https://riot.im/app/#/room/#homeowners:matrix.org)

Good luck!

<comment><USER4> > If I'm not mistaken, with Matrix you do not have to run a front-end per se. > I believe you can simply setup a matrix home server, and then interact via > an open source mobile/desktop/web application.

If by "front-end" you mean Web server, then as far as I'm aware none of these networks (GNU Social, pump.io, Matrix, XMPP, email, etc.) require one per se. The problem is finding an implementation which doesn't bundle one.

Looking at the servers listed on matrix.org, it appears that Pallium makes this separation: you can run Pallium stand-alone, and connect to it using client applications (which may or may not be Web-based). Unfortunately, browsing the code for all of those servers, they _all_ seem to include facilities for user registration, authentication, etc.

Maybe that's a requirement of the way Matrix works? I know that, say, an IRC server which only allows a single user would be a lonely place, since chatrooms are hosted by a particular server which all participants must connect to (logically, at least; I know there are ways to implement redundancy like FreeNode does).

<comment><USER5> Head on over to: [https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse#synapse- installation](https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse#synapse-installation) ...Then scroll to the last paragraph of this section, "...By default, registration of new users is disabled." The little command line method is what i used to manually register the (3) accounts for my family on my private matrix server. If you plan on using it only for yourself, it might be best to keep registration disabled, and only add yourself manually via the command line...and then you would be done.

As far as "web server", I think i know what you mean now, and admittedly I have my private matrix home server running behind nginx...but that's _only_ because I've set it up via DigitalOcean, and simply picked one of their pre- set "LEMP" server images. I believe others have installed/run a matrix home server without nginx or apache, etc. Again, since this is all just a test for my family, i literally went into my DigitalOcean account, generated a new droplet (what they call their virtual servers), and picked a "LEMP" pre-set server. From there, i went installing the synapse server. Because nginx was already installed, I did have to forward/proxy stuff from nginx to synapse...I fully expect to kill this test matrix server off. Now having lived this, I would not have picked the LEMP image, instead just use a basic linux server from DigitalOcean _and then_ install synapse (and any associated requirements/dependencies), that way it doesn't have nginx/apache, etc.

I have no experience with Pallium, but I suppose because there are several different implementations (python-based, Go-based, etc.) of the matrix homeserver, there could be different nuances for implementation.

 _Side note_ : The DigitalOcean droplet that I'm using for my private test matrix home server is the $5/month version (w/512MB memory, 20GB storage). Once I create the production matrix homeserver for my family, I was thinking on using the next level up $10/month version (1GB memory, 30GB storage).

<comment><USER4> > "...By default, registration of new users is disabled."

It's good to know that it can be disabled, but I'm mostly concerned with attack surface, minimalism/hackability and not getting caught on an upgrade treadmill. At the moment my personal Web site is static, the Web UI to my git repos is static and read-only, pushing to those repos is done via SSH, I accept patches by email, etc.

I'm hesistant to run anything dynamic at all, let alone something more complex than I need (e.g. a Web frontend) with the capability to perform destructive actions which I don't need (even if they're marked 'disabled').

It would be nice to have an Internet-facing server which only deals with untrusted data, accumulates incoming updates to a file (e.g. sqlite), pushes out posts from a queue (e.g. a directory) and serves the necessary public info when requested, maybe using static files for stuff like my profile. I can then read and write those files over SSH, maybe transforming them into some easy to consume format like maildir.

Of course, the first rule of security is don't write it yourself, but this is beginning to sound like a nice weekend project :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> AFAIK GNU Social uses OStatus, which uses WebFinger (for identities), Salmon (for replies), ActivityStreams (for posting), etc.

Some relevant links from Google:

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

[https://github.com/andstatus/andstatus/issues/378](https://github.com/andstatus/andstatus/issues/378)

I'd look for some libraries which implement those specs. If you can find some in Python, then integration would mostly be a case of marshalling data between your representations and those standards. If there's no Python support, then you could either make a library yourself or use a supported language to make a standalone translation server to convert between the standard formats and some some simple raw serialisation of your data.

Edit: also, security/encryption might be a hurdle. I played with Salmon years ago (using it as a plugin for the ocPortal CMS) when it was first announced; the example code was trivial to get up and running, but it required some not- so-straightforward crypto/certificate stuff to properly implement the "magic signature" part. IIRC this couldn't be done up-front by a developer; it would require some work for each deployment.

</comment><comment><USER6> I looked into this a while ago. Here are some notes I made:

\- [https://git.heldscal.la/roger/the_wired/wiki/OStatus](https://git.heldscal.la/roger/the_wired/wiki/OStatus)

\- [https://git.heldscal.la/roger/the_wired/wiki/Salmon](https://git.heldscal.la/roger/the_wired/wiki/Salmon)

Hope it helps. Essentially, you can basic functionality going by implementing webfinger and an atom feed. This old guide might be helpful: [https://web.archive.org/web/20120306210855/http://ostatus.or...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120306210855/http://ostatus.org/2010/10/04/how- ostatus-enable-your-application)

</comment><comment><USER7> You'll probably want to start with the GNU Social source code and also take a look at mastodon to see how they hook into GNU Social.

As for decentralizing, my thought would be that it should have been a developed around that from the start. I'm not an expert in it but I think that projects would be built around the decentralized idea and not later modified to be decentralized.

</comment><comment><USER8> You're on Python, but it might make sense to look at the choices made by [https://github.com/hotsh/rstat.us](https://github.com/hotsh/rstat.us) and [https://github.com/gargron/mastodon](https://github.com/gargron/mastodon) , to get some ideas. They're in Ruby, but the language is more similar to Python than PHP is, and some of the tooling and libraries in Python and Ruby are inspired by each other too.

It always helps to look at those who came before you.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is GNU social a spec?

You might be interested in general P2P decentralized tools like [https://webtorrent.io/](https://webtorrent.io/) and [http://gun.js.org/](http://gun.js.org/) . There are tutorials that go with them, but nothing specific to GNU.

<comment><USER4> > Is GNU social a spec?

It follows [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus)

> You might be interested in general P2P decentralized tools like > [https://webtorrent.io/](https://webtorrent.io/) and > [http://gun.js.org/](http://gun.js.org/)

Would client-side solutions like these be useful for a django app? GNU Social uses federated servers (like email), so I think it would make more sense for the poster to do federation server-side too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been thinking about building some reusable django app that could be used in other projects to integrate and make them compatible with gnu social, but I never put the idea into practice (I still think it is a good idea).

Recently someone posted here on HN a compatible server ([https://github.com/Gargron/mastodon](https://github.com/Gargron/mastodon)), it isn't what you are searching for, but these 2 posts about the topic in a short period of time shows there is an certain interest.

Maybe its the push I need to start building that reusable app. Regarding your question, you should start by looking at [https://www.w3.org/community/ostatus/](https://www.w3.org/community/ostatus/) and the wiki.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you are interested in continuing to leverage your python skills (I assume this because of your ref. to Django), then perhaps building a bridge between Matrix and Gnu Social would be something _BOTH_ communities would benefit from: [http://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix- now.html#servers](http://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html#servers)

</comment><comment><USER11> Have a look at Diaspora, it could be at least an inspiration: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_\(social_network\))

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder whether it would make sense for work in this area to (like Git) distinguish between plumbing and porcelain. So once the plumbing is written (with a reference implementation in Python or similar) it would hopefully be an easy matter for people to write porcelains to top of it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Use IPFS [0] and take a look at Identi.ca [1].

[0] [https://ipfs.io/](https://ipfs.io/)

[1] [https://identi.ca/](https://identi.ca/)

<comment><USER4> [http://identi.ca](http://identi.ca) runs on [http://pump.io](http://pump.io)

It used to run on (what is now called) GNU Social, which is what the poster is asking about.</comment></comment>


NSA Controversy Doesn't Sway Popular Opinion of POTUS - <AUTHOR> http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/19/obama-job-approval-holds-steady-economic-views-improve/

<comment><USER2> This is why it is so hard for people to make informed decisions about anything anymore. I turn around and with one quick Google source I can find the opposite being written. [http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/17/cnn- poll-oba...](http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/17/cnn-poll-obama- approval-falls-amid-controversies/)

FiveThirtyEight is essentially the only source I trust on polls anymore :-/</comment>


How Graphics Cards Work - <AUTHOR> https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/269335-how-graphics-cards-work <comment><USER2> Anyone have a better article addressing the question in the title? This one felt more like a grab bag of basic terminology with a little bit of history thrown in - less how they work and more of how to compare specs of related cards.

As an aside, untextured polygons is making a huge comback as an art style. I can't think of it even having been common in early era of GPU's like the article suggests. I personally really like the look but it could end up over used just like other lofi styles. Strangely it's referred to as "low poly" even though the defining feature is lack of textures and often the poly count is fairly high, it's just not hidden from view.

<comment><USER3> i like these two resources:

[http://bps10.idav.ucdavis.edu/talks/03-fatahalian_gpuArchTer...](http://bps10.idav.ucdavis.edu/talks/03-fatahalian_gpuArchTeraflop_BPS_SIGGRAPH2010.pdf)

[https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/category/graphics- pipeline/](https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/category/graphics-pipeline/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's quite misleading to call GPU's SIMD lanes "cores" and then compare the core count to actual CPU cores (that have SIMD as well).

In fact it's often mentioned that the reason GPUs are fast is that they have "a lot of dumb cores". It's true, but that's somewhat unrelated to the SIMD width.

One of the big reason why you can get away with dumb cores is that since you have so many independent threads (actual threads with independent PC), you can go with super-wide SMT (up to say 64 instead of 2 for intel HT).

This way you keep a deep pipeline full cheaply (by issuing from each thread in turn), while a CPU has to scramble and spend power/area to do so (branch pred., OoO, ...). Well, I guess the huge register files are not quite cheap but still.

The barrel processor style is to me a way more defining characteristic of GPU vs CPU design than the SIMD capabilities.

Then of course, wide SIMD on top of that is good for flops.

<comment><USER5> A minor correction: as far as I know, none of the modern GPUs or CPUs by Intel, AMD, or Nvidia are barrel processors. The Xeon Phis were the only exception, but I don't know whether they kept that part of the design after KNC.

edit: This document [1] on pages 26-28 describes both execution on pascal and volta GPUs and how they differ. AMD/Intel GPUs are something similar.

[1] [http://images.nvidia.com/content/volta- architecture/pdf/volt...](http://images.nvidia.com/content/volta- architecture/pdf/volta-architecture-whitepaper.pdf)

<comment><USER4> I guess I think of SMT as the logical successor to barrel in a way : as long as you can store more state and have independent instruction streams you get a full(er) pipeline.

You're right though that GPU schedulers are more advanced that plain round robin since they work around stalls and issue insns from multiple thread / cycle when the backend can take it.

I have no experience with KNC/KNL, but I wish I did :-)

<comment><USER6> > I have no experience with KNC/KNL, but I wish I did :-)

No you don't, believe me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The ads on this make mobile reading near impossible. It's a shame ads are still this invasive.

<comment><USER8> adblock</comment></comment>


Show HN: Teamstory – Social Network for Startups and Founders - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/teamstory/id834137499?mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> Teamstory is a social network for founders just like us. We've recently launched 2.2 where you can now message other founders 1-on-1. Hope to grow this unique community for founders all over the world. Feedback and suggestions are welcome!</comment>


Covid-19 reached my city but company says no to WFH so I'm looking for a new job - <AUTHOR> https://yourepl.tumblr.com/post/611884311182016512/coronavirus-reached-my-city-company-doesnt-let <comment><USER2> "I have experience doing Unit testing, E2E testing"

Is this what people search for these days? "I do tests" and everything else is a side point?

<comment><USER3> I have been interviewing candidates regularly for over a decade. What the candidate says on his resume and the actual level of his skill is not at all correlated.

I have met many very good candidates that were obsessively worrying about gaps in their knowledge. At the same time poor candidates seem to be very confident thinking they are master developers but can't solve simplest task on a whiteboard.

<comment><USER2> Yes, sadly my experience is very similar. The more confident a candidate is, usually the poorer they are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good! Companies which don't allow WFH for their employees in these circumstances should be punished for their greediness and incompetence.

<comment><USER5> State of NY still hasn't changed the rules for WFH for civil service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> According to these news [1][2][3] the first case of COVID-19 in Colombia was in a 19-year-old student who arrived in Bogota from Milan, Italy.

[1] [https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america- latina-51772405](https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-51772405)

[2] [http://www.china.org.cn/world/Off_the_Wire/2020-03/07/conten...](http://www.china.org.cn/world/Off_the_Wire/2020-03/07/content_75784101.htm)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbl71sqE6NI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbl71sqE6NI)

</comment><comment><USER7> Many managers don't actually know how to handle WFH well. To help with the transition we decided to give away our eBook on the subject (which is usually paid). You can download the ePub/PDF here: [https://knowyourteam.com/m/managing_remote_teams](https://knowyourteam.com/m/managing_remote_teams)

Maybe share it internally and see if they change the policy. Getting a new job now might be tricky.

</comment><comment><USER8> What's the flu death rate vs Corona for over 70s? This feels like an overreaction.

<comment><USER9> So... from the purely personal perspective of the author who quit: yes, realistically WFH isn't going to keep you alive. If it becomes a pandemic, eventually we're all going to get it. That's what pandemic means.

But straightforward management strategies like remote work still have value, because in a pandemic the problem just that everyone gets stick, it's that _everyone gets sick at the same time_. So... now you have to compare the mortality rate of a serious but normal flu infection when treated at a well- equipped hospital to the mortality rate of contracting COVID-19 in a city with effectively no hospital space available.

That's what we're trying to fix. And it's doable, but not if everyone (including, very frustratingly, our leaders) tries to pretend like nothing is wrong. If your office environment is plausibly exposed (and in the modern world of international geeks, almost all tech offices are), and you can WFH, you should WFH. Period.

<comment><USER5> "If your office environment is plausibly exposed (and in the modern world of international geeks, almost all tech offices are), and you can WFH, you should WFH. Period."

I work for a government agency, and I asked my union rep about this, and was told, oh, if there are more cases, maybe they will do something then. You know, you live and die by the rules, and the rules say you can't WFH whenever you want, even though everybody _has_ laptops, unlike when I worked in the private sector.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What good alteratives are there to Google News? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> [https://legiblenews.com/](https://legiblenews.com/)

It scrapes headlines from Wikipedia once per day at 8p PST. It's encrypted. There's no ads. It loads fast, as-in one request. Your activity isn't logged.

I built this because I got tired of all the shitty tricks news websites play: obnoxious ads, "breaking news", auto-play videos, pumping megabytes of crap into your browser, lack of privacy, and lack of citations.

Legible news is boring. It's non-addictive. If you click on a link you might accidentally learn something about the historic context of a news story. I don't log anything because I don't care. Daily headlines delivered in one HTTP request (look at it in an inspector) over a CDN. It's fast. I hope you like it, but if you don't no worries, I built it for myself.

<comment><USER3> Is the code open source ? I live in Europe, and it would be great if, with the same product, we could choose the time at which we want the news to be delivered, and the language in which we want it delivered.

<comment><USER2> Its not OSS at the moment.

I've thought a lot about this use case. My vision is that a few KB of text is delivered once per day to whatever-device at a desired time. No more. No less.

What language and locale would you be interested in?

<comment><USER4> Both the English and the German wikipedia, maybe something along the lines of:

[https://legiblenews.com/?l=de,en](https://legiblenews.com/?l=de,en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll throw a vote out for the New York Times daily briefing:

The sample looks like [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/briefing/north- korea-cnn-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/briefing/north-korea-cnn- volvo.html)

It is exactly what it sounds like—a quick daily briefing of the most important things that have happened over night—kinda as if you're the President.

There is a URL that you don't need to update each day to hit, but for the life of me I can't remember it at the moment.

<comment><USER6> Is there a link I can bookmark to go there?

I don't use feeds or notifications but manual bookmarks so I can choose the time of reading.

<comment><USER5> I think [https://www.nytimes.com/briefing](https://www.nytimes.com/briefing) was what I was thinking of. I kept trying different versions including the word daily, but just briefing works.

<comment><USER6> Awesome, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised Blendle ([https://blendle.com](https://blendle.com)) hasn't been mentioned yet - you end up paying a small amount for each article, but I've found the quality of curation pretty decent, but not perfect yet.

You have to apply for beta access, but it didn't take long for me to be accepted in. It's probably more of a marketing beta program, to feel exclusive.

<comment><USER8> +1 from another happy blendle user.

Curation is a valuable service. It's worth paying for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The daily hour-long version here is the only regular news I consume(minus notify NYC RSS): [https://www.youtube.com/user/PBSNewsHour/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/PBSNewsHour/videos) I find them to be less jumpy than similar news sources, probably due to the lack of incentives to bring in massive profit.

If I am interested in something specific/real time, I will open up google news, reddit news, twitter, local news, web search, popular newspaper sites(nytimes, washington post etc.) and/or other relevant places.

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.leftrightcenter.io/](http://www.leftrightcenter.io/)

I'm working on an alternative to Google News that shows the same event from multiple news outlets/perspectives so that you can draw your own conclusions. Let me know what you think!

<comment><USER11> Interesting idea but the design right now is, well it feels like it's assaulting my eyes. Looking it on a laptop right now and each story element is just way too large. The font size is almost comical. The size of each story should be cut down like 50-75% I think.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Gives that google news is filled with spam ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14730945](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14730945)) it would be useful if there was a good alternative.

</comment><comment><USER12> Should adjust this question to say desktop aggregation version, and I am assuming this ASK is in response to the recent Google News redesign that pretty much removed the desktop version of the site.

Apps and mobile is cool and all, but high density or high volume data consumption is not the use case for those platforms.

<comment><AUTHOR> The redesign isnt an issue...works well enough on desktop. I just refuse to use a news service where 50% or more of the health stories are viagra spam. Completely unacceptable. Especially since people have been reporting it to google for the past month. It makes me wonder about the quality of their curation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events) to have the most important things on it.

</comment><comment><USER14> I haven't recently found a news organisation that is consistently rational and has done their homework. Given that news is still worth reading, in moderation.

I roll my own sources including: 1\. A variety of newsfeeds through a desktop reader. (Can be improved by writing your own rating system.) 2\. A list of news sources on a web page, this evolves. (Would also benefit from code that throws out the things I'll never read.) 3\. Blendle. 4\. People I correspond with (they dig out good stuff, I reciprocate). 5\. Less obvious (to some) news sources like HN... are on that web page list. ...

Google used to do custom feeds defined by an arbitrary search string, that had some power.

There are tools out there that help identify material worth reading (DNN's etc.).

I find likes and dislikes are often valueless even if you "assume the opposite".

Your most important weapon may be the realisation that most journalists are under extreme pressure and don't do their job at even a basic level. Makes it easier to quickly ignore the garbage..

<comment><USER15> I find the print version of The Week to be surprisingly consistent in their balanced review of high quality news sources. Sadly, the online version is a bit click-baity, but the print version is amazing.

<comment><USER16> Why is it that their Android app hasn't been updated in three years?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Bing News is unfashionable, but it looks like old Google News: [https://www.bing.com/news](https://www.bing.com/news)

<comment><AUTHOR> Initially Bing News looked good, but after using it there are a few issues:

\- Payday loan spam (two spams on the front page)

\- No way to customize your interests

\- Duplicated stories with near identical headlines appear from multiple sources. This isn't usually an issue with Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> A better question would be what good alternatives are there to news in general. When I see the same headlines with the exact same wording across many different news outlets, I begin to wonder why anybody trusts anything the media has to say about anything.

<comment><USER19> Presumably a lot of stories are being run from wire services-AP and Reuters. Most news organizations don't have resources to originate every story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nextcloud [1] with the News [2] app. Feed it whatever RSS/Atom feeds you want - which can include Google News feeds - and let it rip. You can read the feeds in a browser or in one of the compatible apps [3] (14 of them are listed here, there might be others).

[1] [https://nextcloud.com/](https://nextcloud.com/)

[2] [https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/news](https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/news)

[3] [https://github.com/nextcloud/news#sync- clients](https://github.com/nextcloud/news#sync-clients)

<comment><AUTHOR> Im looking for a curated major news service i.e. stories curated from various major newspapers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why not use something like feedly, with your own rss feeds ?

<comment><USER22> I have (and still use) a feed reader, but it doesn't really replace Google News. It's often helpful to have an algorithm tell you what's important on other news sources you're not reading. It's also nice that it filters out a lot of the noise/click-bait that all publishers use nowadays.

<comment><USER12> Second this, in that I mostly don't want to maintain a current and relevant RSS list of a size that I would want to have. RSS is also a firehose which can be just as bad as a small list of sources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I scrape Wikipedia[1] for my website[2] like another user from this thread, it's pretty good to have a quick look at what happened during the day.

Then I check only the top news from some subreddits[3] and hackernews[4], and I usually hide what I read to avoid seeing them again.

And if I need more I can get the headlines of major news websites[5].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events/2017_Jul...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events/2017_July_8)

[2] [https://news.vinc.cc/search?q=wikipedia](https://news.vinc.cc/search?q=wikipedia)

[3] [https://news.vinc.cc/search?q=reddit+science+environment+tim...](https://news.vinc.cc/search?q=reddit+science+environment+time:week+sort:top)

[4] [https://news.vinc.cc/search?q=hackernews+time:week](https://news.vinc.cc/search?q=hackernews+time:week)

[5] [https://news.vinc.cc/search?q=newsapi+the-guardian- uk](https://news.vinc.cc/search?q=newsapi+the-guardian-uk)

</comment><comment><USER24> I migrated to The Old Reader ([https://theoldreader.com](https://theoldreader.com)). I even tried to wirte the emacs mode for it (just for education), but didn't manage to finish it yet ([https://github.com/jerry40/the-old-mode](https://github.com/jerry40/the-old- mode)).

</comment><comment><USER25> There's one thing on reddit called "multireddits" which is an aggregation of multiple subreddits; so I picked my local news subreddits + world ones and this is my daily news. I like it very much. Only complaint is that it seems to show the same news multiple days in a row even though I "read" it already.

</comment><comment><USER26> I have been working on a news aggregator site- [https://news.r1b.solutions/](https://news.r1b.solutions/) github- [https://github.com/r1b/news-wires](https://github.com/r1b/news-wires)

<comment><USER27> FYI - this is my actual HN account. It seems that one of my..fans has created another :)

Happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER28> Very nice. Bookmarked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've been using this mobile focused site:

[https://article.rocks](https://article.rocks)

It's a short digest of articles from a number of sources. It's not specifically hard news but it covers important stories of the day and interesting reads from across the web.

</comment><comment><USER30> [http://foreignpolicy.com](http://foreignpolicy.com) is a good source... the digital subscription is worth the price. You need to pay for good curation. I like the links to source documents. They also provide names of officials. I highly recommend.

[http://www.middleeasteye.net/](http://www.middleeasteye.net/) is another good site. good analysis and helps me understand what is really going on. They link to source documents. Very useful.

</comment><comment><USER31> [https://www.allin.wtf/current-issue](https://www.allin.wtf/current-issue)

I wrote this as a daily briefing, also for myself. It scrapes around 45 sites that I have handpicked. Links are ranked based on shares across social platforms: the usual suspects.

I curate each issue based on what looks good each morning and send it out at around 7am AEST.

I wrote more about it here: [https://www.kripy.com/alt-all- in/](https://www.kripy.com/alt-all-in/).

</comment><comment><USER32> I usually don't want to be the wise-ass responding profoundly to a question that was not asked, but I can't resist.

Ignore news and focus on things that are more important, like family, health and work.

It's probably overall beneficial to have a rough idea what is going on in your city, your nation and the world - in that order - but try to do it on a larger timescale, rather than be a squirrel chasing the "news cycle" \- which is what sites like Google News are geared towards.

</comment><comment><USER33> Offtopic, but I've never found a newsfeed / RSS reader that compelling. After a while you've subscribed to say many things that you don't want to (and can't) spend the time required to catch up on everything.

Personally, I subscribe to one newspaper, watch one cable news network and browse HackerNews and Reddit (HN trending upward vs. Reddit in recent months) and listen to a few podcasts and I'm able to keep up with the world on a wide range of topics.

</comment><comment><USER34> [http://www.f3nws.com](http://www.f3nws.com) \- Aggregates news from various news sources and present a reading view.

[http://www.f3nws.com/mobile?amp](http://www.f3nws.com/mobile?amp) \- is the fast mobile/AMP version of the same site.

[http://www.f3nws.com/feed](http://www.f3nws.com/feed) \- RSS Feed

<comment><USER35> Nice looking — what's the long-term plan on copyright? That is, if you get big, won't publishers get angry that you're repurposing their content? In the meantime, I'll give it a try.

<comment><USER34> I'm working on a system that summarize a news. Not sure if it stand a chance to get big as there are many sites like this, :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> [https://statesreport.com](https://statesreport.com) is a project I wrote as an alternative.

</comment><comment><USER37> RSS feeds, I currently am subscribed to over 1200 feeds ranging from cooking, to hunting, to bikes (motor and pedal), to fashion, arts, humanites, economics, social science, world affairs, programming, finance, coupons, hockey, china, you name the subject you are interested in and you can find hundreds of fees for your preference.

Only sheep passively consume news as its fed to them.

</comment><comment><USER38> Is there actually interest in a site which does what Google News does, but better (somehow?).

What exactly would people want to see different to Google News?

I've been mucking around with various things in this area for over 15 years now, but I'm just not sure what is useful to others?

Please tell me, because I'd like to build it. Reply here or email or Twitter.

<comment><USER39> I'm curious - do you mean you've been playing around with news aggregators for 15 years or something else?

I'm not the OP but there's clearly some pretty widespread dissatisfaction with the current news production and consumption landscape. I think there's a huge appetite for bias identification and noise identification and filtering. Given that the idea of a "fact" is something the two main political parties cannot agree on, it seems that's there a huge opportunity for someone/something to come in and disrupt that.

<comment><USER38> I've been writing code to do things in this area since 1999. I wrote a RSS parser in Delphi in '99, was in the RSS/RDF/Atom wars, wrote a aggregator with Bayesian filtering in 2003, and I'm one of the authors of the ROME Jave RSS library. I'm currently running a research project in news event prediction and detection.

I don't think anyone wants bias detection.. or maybe they do so that they can only read things that they agree with?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm trying to start a subreddit for twitter moments.

I think the moments format is really good for dispensing information quickly and easily linking to more detailed information when needed.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/twittermoments/](https://www.reddit.com/r/twittermoments/)

</comment><comment><USER41> Check out [http://contentgems.com](http://contentgems.com). It's similar to Google News but gives you more filtering options and ways to share content.

Disclaimer: I'm a cofounder.

Edit: [http://contentgems.com](http://contentgems.com)

<comment><USER42> > Check out [http://contengems.com](http://contengems.com).

Think you may have a typo, and intended to direct OP to [http://contentgems.com](http://contentgems.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Depends, what do you use Google News for? I just read HN and Tweakers.net (Dutch). If you want multiple sources, why not visit a few of its sources? Or does Google News have an app that is convenient or something? I don't understand what you are looking for exactly.

</comment><comment><USER44> Hi, we're now building nupinion.com which might address your needs. You can use it for multi-sourcing, understanding propaganda and detecting unreliable content quickly. You can also use it to track topics or to store articles for later.

</comment><comment><USER45> Friends of mine have built Inkl [1]. I think it's a pretty good alternative to Google Newsstand (I assume that falls under "Google News").

[1] [https://www.inkl.com](https://www.inkl.com)

<comment><USER35> I'd be interested in talking with this team about partnerships. Any chance you could make an intro? Also, the animations on their site load so slowly (at least for me), that often I was scrolling and just seeing white. By the time the animation loaded, I was already halfway past it.

<comment><USER46> I'm an SVP @inkl, how can I help?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> For a quick, U.S.-centric overview of current political news headlines, Memeorandum is pretty good:

[http://www.memeorandum.com/](http://www.memeorandum.com/)

</comment><comment><USER48> [http://eventregistry.org/search?type=events](http://eventregistry.org/search?type=events) if you're looking for an API source

</comment><comment><USER49> If Twitter is your thing, see [https://thefeed.press](https://thefeed.press). Curates news links shared by your friends on Twitter

<comment><USER50> What's the difference between this and nuzzel?

<comment><USER49> For the most part, it is that the articles are extracted (Pocket/Instapaper style) for easy read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Techmeme is a good aggregator like Google News specific to startups and tech.

[http://www.techmeme.com/](http://www.techmeme.com/)

</comment><comment><USER52> I like newsmap.jp, but Feedly is my news source of choice.

<comment><USER12> newsmap.jp is a great tool. Wish it was opensource, or was for profit so I could pay for it.

<comment><USER53> I'm surprised nobody has cloned it, treemaps aren't exactly obscure and they're criminally underused. Thanks for reminding me about this, I'd forgotten about it and it's just what I needed to unpin the now-ruined Google News.

People put a lot of the blame on FB, but I think Google is as much to blame for the epidemic of fake/crap news as anyone. I have been appalled at the shitty quality of stuff showing up in my google news feed and treated as being on a par with other sources over the last year or two. It's obvious taht google only cares about this as a market rather than anyone there being invested in News as an end in itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> [http://www.upday.com](http://www.upday.com) if you are on Samsung Android (currently only in Europe).

</comment><comment><USER55> [https://virwire.com](https://virwire.com)

Continuous stream of socially curated news, formatted for mobile.

</comment><comment><USER56> [https://flipboard.com/](https://flipboard.com/)

</comment><comment><USER57> Twitter + Feedly works great for me.

</comment><comment><USER58> [http://politips.us](http://politips.us)

</comment><comment><USER59> Feedly is the reason I no longer follow Google News.

</comment><comment><USER60> /r/news and other interest specific subs.

</comment><comment><USER61> reddit.com Just subscribe to the subreddits you are interested in.

</comment><comment><USER62> Reading books?

<comment><USER63> Idea for a browser extension: randomly when you go to a time sink site (even if the sink is only a few minutes), pull up some ebook text to read instead.

<comment><USER62> The best would be site recommending ebooks related to the news you just started to read giving background or historycal information on the issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Usatoday.com

Federalnewsradio.com

Bloomberg.com

</comment><comment><USER65> omni.se if you are in Sweden

</comment><comment><USER66> Lobste.rs is a better website, but a smaller community.

[https://lobste.rs/](https://lobste.rs/)

</comment><comment><USER67> QuiteRSS

</comment><comment><USER68> Protip: identify the news sources you don't like and ban them wholesale under "Manage Sections / Sources" in Google News. Banning just a few improves the experience tremendously. HuffPo and Buzzfeed are prime candidates for the ban hammer.

<comment><USER69> This is a great tip (eg banning TMZ seems like a great idea). Unfortunately, if you switch between US & regional Google News often (maybe you mostly read Google News Australia), it has a tendency to delete all your carefully curated settings on both sites.

You can also add preferred sources now, which helps a lot (when they don't delete it). I found adding WSJ, Deutsche Welle, FT, Bloomberg, Financial Review & similar sources improved things for me. I wish I could add blogs I follow there too.

I'd love to see a Google News alternative that used a customisable whitelist of sources, and mute filters to block topics I'm just not interested in.

<comment><USER68> I actually think it just loses your choices completely on its own and local news thing is unrelated. If you add them a few more times, they stick.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Not really a direct alternative, but applicable to the spirit of the question:

I don't really like any news organization very much, so instead anytime a political/current events piece pops up here and I like it, I check to see if the author has a Twitter account, and follow them on there. Then, via their RTs and posts, I discover new journalists. If they consistently put out good stuff, I follow them too.

As an example, someone here once put out a piece about Silicon Valley and politics by Emmett Rensin, which I thought was spot-on. Rensin showcased Nathan Robinson, then Abi Wilkinson. And so on and so on.

If you keep a sufficiently varied crowd of followers, geographically and topically, you always see RTs of pertinent news events from eg: BBC, Reuters, AP, or what have you.

In essence, what some of these services do algorithmically, I rely on humans for. As a result I seem to be aware of just about any current event topic that comes up, so it's working for me.

Don't use Twitter like Twitter itself suggests, e.g: "Follow Lebron! Follow Donald Trump! Follow CNN!". Add people very very judiciously, so that your feed looks like the news aggregator you wish to see.

</comment><comment><USER71> In the Czech Republic, for several years now, google news has been filled with fascist propoganda. I think that no one sane from Google, who understands Czech, ever looks there to see what kind of shit they're promoting.

<comment><USER72> Am I missing something? I translated a bunch of articles from the current Czech Google News page and didn't see anything remotely fascist.

It seems there is a trend of those on the left referring to anything on the right as fascist. IMO this is dangerous because it dilutes the actual meaning of fascism. I'm not saying fascist ideology isn't out there btw.

Can you point out an example?</comment></comment>


Werc, minimal plan9-based web framework, receives updates after over 3 years - <AUTHOR> http://code.9front.org/hg/werc/rev/fb460a671d19 <comment><AUTHOR> The last commits were done by Uriel himself back in August of 2012.. great to see this project still lives!

The main page is here: [http://werc.cat-v.org/](http://werc.cat-v.org/)</comment>


Rust and SPARK – Software Reliability for Everyone - <AUTHOR> http://electronicdesign.com/industrial/rust-and-spark-software-reliability-everyone <comment><AUTHOR> This is definitely the article I've been waiting for at least on the SPARK side. I was shocked when author said he worked at AdaCore. He was way more fair to Rust than I expected even throwing AdaCore under the bus in the section on their GPL and community handling. They deserved it but I thought it would be an outsider doing it. End result is similar to what I came up with: SPARK wins on anything static or verified w/ Rust winning on dynamic or flexible concurrency; SPARK wins on predictability with Rust on productivity. Now, author needs to do a detailed comparison between Rust and Ada 2012 which is its actual competition.

That good stuff said, author was way off on the historical aspect. Should be corrected.

"Rust is probably the most notable indication of the growing need for languages with safety in mind."

The forced introduction of GC'd languages for apps by Sun and Microsoft were the indication. A need for safety is strongly established. Rust is first push that's popular to do safety with no GC.

"while Rust was being developed, another effort was undertaken by a different community, also trying to raise the bar in terms of safety."

Maybe he's just trying to be impartial. One of inventors of software engineering, Dijkstra, was using formal specs with code on his OS in 1960's. CompSci, Defense, hardware industry, and some in safety-critical were all building or using tools for formally-verified systems for decades. Most of industry and FOSS ignored it. British researchers defined SPARK in 1988 with it spun off to Praxis Limited for industrial use. This effort actually reduced amount of safety and verification vs full, formal verification with aim to automate as much as possible at code level for increased adoption by non- experts in formal methods. After many iterations and a partnership with AdaCore, the tool eventually achieved its goal on tech side with an open- source version, too. Another effort at similar time with similar aims on specification side was Eiffel method by Meyers.

On Rust side, I don't have the big picture. I do know their core capability, the memory safety, came from Greg Morrisett's work on Cyclone language that modified C to be safer. Greg was an expert in type theory and language-level security with enough overlap to tie him into high-assurance field. He also worked on extending ML's. Graydon wanted a safe, fast language. He combined unique capabilities he saw in Cyclone with features from other languages or paradigms. He likewise wrote the compiler in an ML (Ocaml) for fast, reliable development. He was sponsored by Mozilla with teams focused on the tech and strong community (AdaCore's failure). The rest is history.

[https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~jgm/jgm.html](https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~jgm/jgm.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_\(programming_language\))

Long story short: the forces behind both SPARK and Rust have always been there. Just ignored. Roughly three, smart people paying attention to it and building on it was all it took to get the two languages started. Imagine what would happen if more people did this. That is, more CompSci people tried to be practical (in FOSS not patents!) or more developers building on strongest stuff from CompSci. Anyway, both have work underway to specify them for later full, formal verification with SPARK being added to CompCert compiler. Both are usable now for robust apps. If you do safety or security, you should be defaulting on them unless good reason otherwise.

Note: The Archive.org page for Morrisett's old site at Harvard showed his publication in 2006 was first time it got many users. Then, it was pretty small until 2016. I attribute that to Rust mentioning Cyclone was one of its influences. It's a good illustration, though, of what I talk about here of tech in high-assurance security or systems… often CompSci itself… taking 10+ years to reach mainstream. Gotta smash that barrier somehow. I do what I can sharing links but "I am but one man."

EDIT: Dude is apparently funny too.

[https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Professor-Greg-Morrisett-so- fon...](https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Professor-Greg-Morrisett-so-fond-of-cows)

<comment><USER2> > It's a good illustration, though, of what I talk about here of tech in high- > assurance security or systems… often CompSci itself… taking 10+ years to > reach mainstream.

I think it might be less of "it just takes a long time" and more that it needs a champion, and that champion can't _just_ have that one aspect, it needs to be attractive for other reasons.

Rust is attractive for its safety, but not _just_ for its safety. It also takes performance seriously. It also goes to great effort to provide convenience, where it doesn't interfere with safety. They did the same thing D or Nim did, but instead of just new and modern syntax and some garbage collected STDLIB stuff (which to be honest, you could just get out of a very comprehensive libc replacement), they added something you couldn't really do with a library, and you couldn't completely do with the same language semantics. So, it's not just a more modern and cleaner C/C++, it's also something you can't quite approximate in the C/C++ ecosystem, and that sets it apart.</comment></comment>


Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/27/amazon-echo-audio-data-murder-case/ <comment><USER2> I'm curious if the police will push this, as it could reveal how much voice information is actually stored. Amazon has declined to answer how much voice information is stored online[1] and how much if that is tied to your identity. We do know that Alexa stores a list of queries you've spoken, and you can "delete" these records, but it is unknown if this impacts the actual voice data behind them.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201809740) and [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- switch/wp/2014/11/11...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- switch/wp/2014/11/11/how-closely-is-amazons-echo-listening/)

<comment><USER3> Wait a minute, we'd already know if Alexa was recording everything by the network traffic that obviously has already been sniffed. We can assume that Amazon is storing every "Alex,..." query that you've ever done. So what is there to know?

<comment><USER2> We know they are streaming it to do all the NLP in the cloud. This is obvious from the computational costs alone of doing NLP.

The important question here is "What happens to the audio data streamed to the cloud, a few seconds AFTER the query has been identified (or not identified) and the results sent back to the Alexa device?"

The nieve assumption is "all audio data is deleted after processing". The reality is that data is still valuable to Amazon for a variety of uses such as

(1) further training their voice recognition software

(2) advertising data mining [how many people are in the room, things they are talking about --- note, Facebook's mobile app infamously does this]

If they just store the query text, that is 'best case' from a privacy perspective. If they just store query text and query audio, that is less than ideal, but not too bad. If they store all audio, ever recorded, for an indefinite period of time... that is what this police request could reveal: Audio data stored for a non-keyword-trigger, and for days/weeks after the fact.

<comment><USER4> > computational costs alone of doing NLP

The speech recognition part could run on a Pentium 133 in the nineties (Nuance software, Dragon naturally speaking), the Echo device has probably a more powerful CPU than that.

The NLP part could run on the device as well, it's mainly a storage problem, you need dozens of GB, at least 32GB sdcard.

Ideally only the search phrases would be sent to Google/Amazon/etc. That's also how Bill Gates vision was described in his 1995 book The Road Ahead. A personal agent in a wallet PC would surf the information super highway for you. ...well we are "almost" there but with a different solution.

<comment><USER5> Speech recognition in the 90s was absolutely turd.

<comment><USER4> Speech recognition worked fine in the late 90s. You could optionally train it for 15min with your own voive to improve the results. The Nuance software was better back then than what shipped with Win Vista inbuilt by default in 2006 and later. The same Nuance software runs nowadays on servers to power Siri, Google Now, Cortana. And who in the right mind would think every user gets its on dedicated super-computer. In reality, cloud based speech recognition and NLP has the advantage of a central database to collect different voice samples (to train) and a multi Gigabyte central NLP database, etc. But you won't get more CPU cycles than what would be available on a modern smartphone or a Smart TV or (what would fit in) an Echo like device. An offline-available software assistant as kind of premium feature for people who care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The device doesn't start listening when you say the wake word, the device is _always listening_. It's only the UX that responds when the presence of the wake word is detected. This means that the device is continuously monitoring the environment for the presence of the wake word we know about ("Alexa").

Can the device monitor for other words that trigger other UX sequences? Of course it can!

Can Amazon deliver an OTA update to this network connected device to change behavior after it leaves the factory? There is _no reason_ to believe that they cannot.

So, no, I don't believe the police are wrong here. In fact, I would be in favor of law enforcement having the ability to "tap" these network-attached microphone appliances with a warrant. Then, perhaps, people will begin to understand what they've really bought.

EDIT: Passive monitoring ("listening") is not the same thing as storage ("recording"). In some cases below, these are being conflated.

<comment><USER7> You're making quite a few assumptions.

1) The device is storing any amount of locally recorded audio. So far evidence says no.

2) Amazon would OTA all echos to upload everything it hears. So far evidence says this hasn't happened. It also likely won't because IMO security people monitor these devices more than anything else on the planet. Some I believe for good reasons, the others just want to play gotcha.

3) If 1 and 2 are true, Amazon keeps the data for an extended period of time.

Can we please not tinfoil hat the hell out of these devices like we do the rest of IoT sometimes?

<comment><USER8> (I think) the argument your parent is making is that Amazon could easily send a software update to a specific Echo to make it record everything it hears.

<comment><USER7> If at the request of the government, yeah that's a problem unless there is some kind of warrant, right?

I'm all for people being suspicious, but the intent of this was to say "the cops are hoping it might catch something" as in it was accidentally triggered.

<comment><USER9> _If at the request of the government, yeah that 's a problem unless there is some kind of warrant, right?_

Nope: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third- party_doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine)

<comment><USER7> Yes and that's a problem with law not catching up with technology. Unfortunately for many people in the country, other social/financial issues are more important to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Alexa listens only to the words after the wake word. What's more it doesn't capture more than 10-12s past the wake word. If you have a device you can check this yourself (Alexa, One Mississippi, Two Mississippi…).

It's actually hard to get it to capture this much. Take a breath or pause to long and capture stops sooner.

The request of the police is nutty and indicative of not understanding the technology. Unless the murdered woman yelled out "Alexa {pause a little bit for wakeword recognition} Heeelp, my husband is killing me, call the police" or the husband asked "Alexa, how do I clean a bloody hottub", nothing material will be discovered.

I have 4 of them. After the first one I checked what was captured, what was stored, what was streamed. Nothing that mattered.

<comment><USER11> > Alexa listens only to the words after the wake word.

It only _records_ after hearing the wake-word. It listens all the time.

> After the first one I checked what was captured, what was stored, what was > streamed.

How did you MitM the SSL?

<comment><USER12> Alexa is the service in the cloud - Alexa doesn't get the words that are spoken before the _device_ (the Echo / Dot) detects the wake word.*

This sounds like a small distinction, but it is critical to a clear discussion of what's going on.

If you review the interaction history in the Alexa app or on Amazon's web site, you won't see those utterances that did not result in detection of the wake word, because that audio _was not streamed to the cloud._

* Technically, there is a very short buffer of audio that is captured on a rolling basis in order to detect and stream the front of the wake word sound.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We were playing with one this xmas and of course someone shouted "Alexa, how do I get rid of a body?" Its answer was to call the police.

We all laughed but it made a few of us nervous. Brave new world we live in!

<comment><USER14> The answer was "call the police," or it actually called the police as an answer? I assume you meant the first, but I'm not quite 100% on that.

<comment><USER13> It just said to call the police, but given it can also turn the tree lights on and off it's not far fetched to imagine law enforcement being looped in via some nutty integration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From the privacy perspective, IMO, once you put a device in your home that you know is always listening, and is forwarding an unknown amount of audio from your home to a third party, at that point, you have surrendered your right to privacy.

Edit: not just my opinion, it's a matter of law. (thanks @mnm1) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third- party_doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine)

<comment><USER16> No, you haven't, any more than when you buy a cell phone with a camera and microphone built in. People still have rights regardless of the products they buy.

<comment><USER17> Actually, according to the third party doctrine, you have. The difference between this and a cellphone is that you voluntarily give up this information whereas a cellphone does not transmit such data voluntarily. There are surveillance laws and other problems if a phone is recording you unknowingly. With Alexa, the recordings are submitted voluntarily. I'd be shocked if the police don't get their hands on this data. It's not like Amazon can claim, like Apple, that they can't themselves access it because it's encrypted.

'The third-party doctrine is a United States legal theory that holds that people who voluntarily give information to third parties—such as banks, phone companies, internet service providers (ISPs), and e-mail servers—have "no reasonable expectation of privacy."'

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third- party_doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine)

<comment><USER18> How is any smart phone that supports OK Google and Hey Siri different from an Echo in this respect?

<comment><USER16> It's not. I think the poster may be confused about how the Echo works - it's not constantly streaming audio or transcripts back to Amazon, just when it's directed to do so via the "Alexa" trigger word.

You are absolutely not consenting to send full transcripts of your conversations to Amazon. If they are in possession of it, it's entirely illegal, and the third party doctrine doesn't apply.

<comment><USER17> Whether the device constantly streams data or sends it every once in awhile is irrelevant. In the agreement with Amazon you agree to give them them the data, including the voice data. Amazon even lets you manage/delete the data after the fact. They're not collecting it illegally. Whether it is full voice transcripts or not that you're agreeing to send to Amazon is not 100% clear, but that's also irrelevant because by using Alexa you've agreed to send that data. It really depends on Amazon's definition of "when you interact with Alexa." I'm pretty sure that's quite broad.

This isn't Apple fighting encryption backdoors. This is Amazon impeding justice.

"1.3 Voice Services. You control Alexa with your voice. Alexa streams audio to the cloud when you interact with Alexa. Alexa processes and retains your voice input and other information, such as your music playlists and your Alexa to-do and shopping lists, in the cloud to respond to your requests and improve our services."

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201809740)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Alexa only waits for the wake word "Alexa." It would cost more money than God in hardware to store every thing Alexa ever heard. She saves you're requests. And shows you those request in the Alexa App. And you can also delete it if you wish.

There is no data for the police to have, because beyond requests, there is no data.

Unless someone knows more about this than Amazon is telling us?

<comment><USER20> It would cost about $30m a year if you tailor the system to flagging specific data for storage and don't naively store every moment (e.g. you scrap silent moments and use VBR encoding).

Storing a year's worth of 96kbps audio costs 380GB. If you don't record silence and you assume the people around an Alexa are only speaking for at most 4 hours a day on average, that goes down to 76GB a year.

So if you then assume 5m Alexa's are active at any given point in time that works out to 380k PB. Ok, that doesn't work yet.

However, if you then layer on a flagging system, where only certain users' full record is stored, or only "suspicious incidents" are stored, and you get this down to only flagging 0.1% of all data, you arrive at 380PB of storage.

Amazon Glacier costs about $88.000 a year per PB, but there's a profit margin included in that, so I'll assume it costs Amazon just $75k a year.

In conclusion, it would cost Amazon about $28.5m a year to run such a system. That's certainly within the realm of possibility and of what LE/SIGINT clients would pay; I assume the NSA would gladly pay that sum x100 for that capability. Sounds like it'd be booming business for Amazon.

<comment><USER21> I really like the math here, but isn't this a bit pointless? The system wants to parse meaning from audio; storing just the text it parsed is a lot smaller. Store just the text and whatever machine learning score of how probable the text is correctly parsed and that sounds like something prosecutors would love to bring into court: "Please read this line and let's see what score you get . . . "

<comment><USER22> For improvements they'd store the raw input so that when a mistake happens they can manually try to figure out why the machine got it wrong (e.g. a hi- hat was hit while they were saying "deuce" so it sounded like "douche").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The part that listens for the "Alexa" word is analog not digital.

It cannot be updated remotely by firmware.

Crack open the device, test the analog component and confirm the signal only fires when you speak alexa and nothing else.

Having said all that, I wouldn't buy it. NSA is known to temper with devices behind the back of companies (no matter how trustworthy you think Amazon/Google/Apple are). Check what they did with Cisco equipment sold to foreigners. They intercepted the shipment, tempered with the device and no one was any wiser until the Snowden leaks. Cisco now ships via proxy to guarantee no tempering.

American businesses shouldn't fear globalization or chinese disregard for intellectual property; their own government is fucking them.

<comment><USER24> > The part that listens for the "Alexa" word is analog not digital. > It > cannot be updated remotely by firmware.

I used to think that about my phone, that it was hard-wired to "OK, Google". I had a Moto X (first generation), which is one of the first phones to have this always-listening feature. They claimed that it had special hardware that allowed it to work using very little power.

But after a software update, they added a feature that allowed me to retrain the activation phrase to whatever I wanted. They recommend using something with 5 syllables or more. It works. I haven't addressed my phone with "OK, Google" for years.

If Motorola (owned by Google at the time) can do it with Moto X, I'm sure Amazon could do it with Alexa too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I would never put a closed source hot mic in my house. You can trust big brother all you want, but I'm going to stay clear.

<comment><USER26> Every smart phone ever can do this. You have no way to verify the mic isn't in use, you have no way to verify cellular data transmission is not taking place, and you have no way to know the modem is not doing a remote execution injection to change whatever aftermarket free software OS you have running on the device is doing.

<comment><USER27> So just because my phone is potentially not secure means I should just open up my home to all other sorts of intrusion/attacks?

Yes, phones generally can do that, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about what the Echo is doing.

<comment><USER28> No, it means that you're sitting in your house without a roof, and saying "I would never forget to close my windows during a rainstorm." Never mind the rain is pouring through your roof.

You're seriously willing to carry smartphones, which have both microphones and cameras, and give no indication visible or otherwise, of when they are listening or recording or sending data, and run whatever dodgy code some asian device manufacturer wanted it to run, but you won't trust a device made by Amazon that people have run wireshark captures against and lights up with big blue LEDs whenever it is listening.

Reality called - it wants the tinfoil hat back.

<comment><USER26> In defense of the downvotes (albeit its bad manners whoever is downvoting you), camera / mic LEDs are nonsense. They are all software controlled, and the control software is almost always proprietary, and thus you cannot trust those either.

Additionally, I'm pretty sure the Amazon Echo is just rebranded third party mic / soc boards put together by Amazon. It is still "asian device manufacturer" firmware.

<comment><USER29> Downvotes are not bad manners.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171)

But saying "Reality called - it wants the tinfoil hat back." seems like bad manners to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> >Police say Bates had several other smart home devices, including a water meter. That piece of tech shows that 140 gallons of water were used between 1AM and 3AM the night Collins was found dead in Bates' hot tub. Investigators allege the water was used to wash away evidence of what happened off of the patio.

When every house is IoT connected, we will be very close to a 'post-crime' world.

<comment><USER31> Or a world where hackers frame innocent people for murder by modifying their water usage stats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Surprised so much confusion around this.

You log into [http://alexa.amazon.com/spa/index.html#cards](http://alexa.amazon.com/spa/index.html#cards) and you see all sorts of queries Alexa/Echo heard from you but didn't understand complete with the audio snippet.

If Amazon gave them the account details they just need to log-in to hear them.

</comment><comment><USER33> This brings up an interesting question. If I say "Alexa, call the police!" or "Alexa, I need an ambulance!" will anything happen? It doesn't officially say it can be used to request emergency response and I'm scared to try it.

I wonder if they've received a lot of these requests and/or if they have an emergency team on standby.

<comment><USER34> This would be of interest for the elderly, "help, I can't get up" with an omnidirectional microphone instead of a fragile, not waterproof, awkward beeper that you carry everywhere

<comment><USER35> I'm going to look in to this and develop a skill that allows someone to ask for help. Unless it has already been done,will check it out.

<comment><USER33> Awesome idea. Even if it is just "text my emergency contact" that could be really helpful in a pinch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Interesting that the police is going after this electronic speech data, reminds me of the instance where a parrot witnessed a murder that was posted on this site couple of months ago, in that case the parrot was not able to testify...

Also interesting that the lawyer is going for the reasonable expectation of privacy regarding that data, if that holds, then it could allow them to argue due protections from the 4th amendment.

But let's ask the question here; is data regarding usage of utilities private? It seems that something that you installed for water usage, should be. Could this data not have been acquired from the water department?

</comment><comment><USER37> Late to the game here and apologize if this has already been mentioned but may shed some light on what is actually stored. A while back facebook officially announced what they "store" in regards to what they record when the app is open and has access to your microphone. The app itself turns your voice audio into a profile that is then sent to the server, it does not send your actual audio. This light(er) weight audio profile is then matched to words which are then used for marketing. I wouldn't be surprised if Echo, Google Home, etc do something similar since sending the full audio recordings would be both bandwidth and storage heavy.

<comment><USER38> "Audio profile" meaning MFCC coefficients? That's still enough to fully reconstruct a meaningful audio stream. Obviously, since it's enough to do speech recognition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The article states:

>"A ring on the top of the device turns blue to give a visual indication that audio is being recorded. Those clips, or "utterances" as the company calls them, are stored in the cloud until a customer deletes them either individually or all at once."

Is there a technical reason for storing this after NLP processing has been completed on the "utterance."? Wouldn't an ephemeral cache be sufficient?

</comment><comment><USER40> Probably wouldn't be a horrible thing to be able to add to your will instructions to release data if possible.

</comment><comment><USER41> I see that a lot of people say that police did that because it is incompetent. But what if this is actually a way for police and other low tier agencies to check how much Amazon collects? I bet NSA would never work with police and most likely not much with FBI etc. So this might be just a check? This is just a speculation, but we should not assume stupidity of some of the agencies just because its an easy answer.

</comment><comment><USER42> Alexa, how do you hide a dead body?

<comment><USER9> Alexa would be an expensive proxy for [http://ask.metafilter.com/7921/If-you- killed-somebody-how-wo...](http://ask.metafilter.com/7921/If-you-killed- somebody-how-would-you-dispose-of-the-body-without-getting-caught#155715)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Well, that didn't take long.

</comment><comment><USER44> "Alexa, who is the murderer?"

"I'm sorry, I can't find the answer to the question you asked."</comment>


Microsoft: Yeah, we make Office 2019 and Internet Explorer, but don't use 'em - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/02/microsoft-yeah-we-make-office-2019-and-internet-explorer-but-dont-use-em/ <comment><USER2> Has to be soul crushing to be in a team working on those products.

Coworker 1: There is a brutal video ad out there undermining our product.

Coworker 2: Which of our competitors did this?

Coworker 1: Err, we did it to ourselves.</comment>


Wherein Twestival screw us over with their egregious unprofessionalism. - <AUTHOR> http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2009/08/28.html <comment><USER2> Not that I'm condoning the behaviour of the Twestival organisers, but I find it hard to sympathise with the venue, given that they continued reserving the date for 'months' with no contract and no deposit paid. They took a risk on a clearly flakey client, and it didn't pay off.

<comment><USER3> "We sent a contract, and asked for a deposit. Months went by. A few times they asked when they could stop by to drop off the deposit, but never actually did so."

The venue's actions seem pretty reasonable to me. They gave the organizers some slack, assuming these are basically decent people. It's not like they're dealing with some unknown or shady operation.

Still, discovering a Twitter-related operation turned out to be much noise/little signal shouldn't be _that_ surprising :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's jacked. I used to be an event promoter and that kind of behavior from fellow promoters would end up harming me in some way (not being able to book a venue, extra heavy deposits, etc). Amateur at best, unprofessional completely.

On a side note, I am now blind because of the lime green on black. 1994 is calling and wants its "cyber" vibe back.

<comment><USER5> That color scheme dates back to about:jwz, in the first version of Mozilla. =)

<comment><USER6> If I ever find out what Project Xanadu's default color scheme was supposed to be, then I will probably switch a web site to it. In loving memory of a future that we exceeded and still failed to live up to.

(Xanadu was the first idea of a hypertext system. It was more heavyweight than the current system, which may be why it never caught on -- but it was incredibly visionary. Sometimes I read futurist writing from that time, and I'm struck by how much better we've done and by how much of its early promise we have left unfulfilled.)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski>

</comment><comment><USER8> Their website still lists DNA Lounge as the venue...

<http://sanfrancisco.twestival.com/>

<comment><USER8> They've since updated it.

<comment><AUTHOR> They've also deleted blog posts mentioning DNA Lounge

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Twestival posted a response: [http://sanfrancisco.twestival.com/2009/08/29/our-side- smiles...](http://sanfrancisco.twestival.com/2009/08/29/our-side-smiles/)

<comment><USER10> Either they or JWZ are lying, then. I know who my money's on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't get it. Why do they need to close on a Friday night? There are a zillion DJs in San Francisco, and people often come to DNA Lounge just because it's DNA Lounge, without knowing what, if anything, special is planned that night.

<comment><USER12> In a nutshell, it's more expensive to open the club and book bar staff, DJs, security staff etc. than they are likely to take in on that evening with other big events on and no time to promote (ads to the local newspapers have to be submitted a few weeks in advance). The number of people who go to a nightclub just because it's there is likely to be less than 1-200, and a club the size of the DNA lounge needs at least 4-500 to break even.

<comment><USER13> And a club that feels empty come 10 or 11 PM will remain empty all night because nobody wants to be where nothing is going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> somewhat off tangent:

1\. it seems that people are more likely to reschedule and not hold to commitments than 20 years ago.

2\. has the population changed, or some other external factor, or has the culture changed?

3\. why?

<comment><AUTHOR> Mobile Phones. Pre-mobile there was no way of letting someone know you are running late, or changing arrangements last minute.

<comment><USER15> You've never worked with a subcontractor on a home remodelling project, have you? =)

These guys carry three cellphones AND a pager, but will never show up on time for an appointment or call to tell you they're not going to be at your house on the day you took off of work. But when that bill is due lookout: they're magically available and on the phone with you constantly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I know the central people behind twestival, and have worked with them before. I think it is important to know how things are actually run. You have a few central people who are helping a ton of people organize meetups. This lets those at the center get great reach, and makes the global event really big. It is amazing that a global event is essentially organized by a handful of people.

Like the internet, this kind of decentralization requires relinquishing a bit of control. It is daring from a branding perspective to let locals plan events under your brand's global name.

So I wouldn't say this story is the fault of "the twestival" - but of those local SF organizers who dropped the ball.

<comment><USER17> Then the Twestival SF organizers are flakes, and your friends who do the central coordination need to do a better job vetting their local organizers. Otherwise, your friends will earn themselves a bad name.

<comment><USER16> I agree. Lots of local organizers have been booted for various reasons. I think there are something like 150 cities. There is basically a person or two vetting the whole thing. I think that deserves respect regardless of a few bad examples.

I mean, there is money involved, and charities to donate to. That extremely sensitive issue is essentially already settled.

<comment><USER18> Trouble is your usually defined by mistakes. Finding the "rotten apples" is a thankless task and when you get it wrong people notice.

I feel myself siding with the venue right now: Twestival seems to be playing the "but it's for charity! c'mon" card a little too strongly for my taste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can someone explain to me how it is that club promoters work? Back when I was living in LA, I'd meet lots of people who would tell me they're a promoter for club X, but I never understood how they fit into the business model.

<comment><USER10> The promoter is an entrepreneur, their product is the event. He or she arranges the venue, the performers, the advertising, etc and whatever's left from the door price/ticket sales once everyone's been paid is their profit.

Lots of people do this part time looking only to break even, in that case their profit is in the form of social capital.

</comment></comment><comment> bjelkeman-again The Twestival consists of hundreds of volunteers in lots of different locations. The people the I and my colleagues have worked with for four different events have so far been very professional.</comment>


Robot sea snakes and shoal-swimming subs - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39496255 <comment><USER2> Are they hiring? :D</comment>


Ashley Madison: Two women explain how hack changed their lives - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34072762 <comment><USER2> _It 's not clear what has happened in this case, but it's possible that the database was downloaded by hackers before the date on which Amy paid for her information to be removed._

According to the Gawker breakdown of the Ashley Madison database ([http://gizmodo.com/almost-none-of-the-women-in-the-ashley- ma...](http://gizmodo.com/almost-none-of-the-women-in-the-ashley-madison- database-1725558944)) deleted accounts were never actually removed from the database; they were just flagged with a deletion tag and delisted from the public-facing website.

</comment><comment><USER3> "If my husband were to come home from work today and say someone found my information I would be open and honest with him about it"

Right, honest but not too much haha.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, she'll be "open and honest with him" _if he finds out_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So why should the privacy of cheaters be any more important than the privacy of people like...Donald Sterling????

Sorry, but when the ends justify the means because you don't like someone's behavior/beliefs/actions, I have no sympathy when the same thing happens to you.

This should open up a discussion about protecting all privacy, but somehow I doubt it.</comment>


Double your reading speed in 30 seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.spritzinc.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm impressed. Was able to hit 1K WPM in minutes.

Just tried some use cases. E-mail, forums and other content where there are some spatially organized choices, and content. Not so good, but doable.

For something on say, Medium? This rocks, and I would add a capability to position images off to the side for peripherial viewing while reading. For a lot of things, this would work well.

However, that aside, I just took in a few pieces at a much improved speed. Waited, went back, read them normally and found my retention and comprehension were solid.

Very well done!

Honestly, this, a wearable thing, voice recognition, and some improved formatting / navigation smarts makes a wearable device useful.</comment>


The End of the Job maybe a Good Thing - <AUTHOR> http://smartpei.typepad.com/robert_patersons_weblog/2011/08/the-end-of-the-job-the-end-of-the-corporation-as-we-know-it.html

<comment><USER2> This is why I think automation of even more complex jobs is a _good_ thing. Usually (always?) automation of something means a lower barrier to entry. But if "automation" becomes so intelligent that it ends up replacing nearly all jobs, for who exactly does it lower the barrier to entry, if not for employees?

I think it lowers the barrier to entry for entrepreneurs. The trend is clear. Because of the Internet, there are more and more entrepreneurs, and fewer "employees". The impact is not that great yet, but the robot workforce revolution will accelerate this trend.

Imagine a future where almost everyone is an "entrepreneur". That future will be much like the past (think 100-200 years ago), where most people were actually entrepreneurs. Except this time an entrepreneur will be able to offer a service or product on a much larger scale, not just for his family.

But is that sustainable? Can everyone offer services to everyone else? I say yes. We already have a ton of services on the Internet that we don't necessarily think we _all_ need, but many of us are using them to keep those startups in business.

If the last century was mostly about everyone being an employee and working in a large factory or for a large corporation, this century will be about everyone being an entrepreneur. The more "automation" we'll have, the easier it will be for everyone to start a business, and implement many of their own ideas, or sell their own skills as a freelancer, which I think is still a type of entrepreneur.

<comment><USER3> I don't disagree with you. In fact, I largely after with you... That type of society is sustainable. The question is, however, how we get from our current system to that one. It does not look like it will happen naturally. Instead it looks like we're headed more toward a "the people who have the wealth now will retain it for a long time to come" future.

I don't see starting a new, successful, business, as getting easier, like you seem to.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think we are moving to an economy that is made up of the very small aggregated to the large in a network and quite local - a new line on the old of 200 years ago.

Imagine several Fab labs in your community making things on demand - a food system where many small units say 300 hen flocks + a few cows, pigs, sheep on pasture also aggregated. Imagine every house and building collecting and distributing energy.

The automation enables us to do this as right now we can make movies etc at a fraction of the costs and so you and I can do things that before woud have taken a lot of capital.

Using the network effect a good local system can have a large infrastructure based on the aggregation at a cost we can all cope with

Do I make sense?

<comment><USER4> Makes perfect sense.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It can't be easy - I think desperation will help - look at Urban food in Detroit and Cleveland

I am doing this [http://smartpei.typepad.com/robert_patersons_weblog/2011/08/...](http://smartpei.typepad.com/robert_patersons_weblog/2011/08/the- queen-street-commons-helping-very-small-businesses-our-emerging-mission.html)

Building out from what is where I live</comment>


"We Bring Fear" - <AUTHOR> http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/07/we-bring-fear

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, discussion about this article seems to have fallen into the meta-wastebin.

It is a good submission.

</comment><comment><USER3> Its an enlightening article, but I don't see how its appropriate for HN.

<comment><USER4> It's not enlightening at all, this is exactly the kind of thing that puts me off about the media. Like noticing terrible mistakes on a note on some technology you really grok, reading articles like these makes me reconsider what I've read regarding other international issues (e.g. Iran). There are many things stated as fact here that are simply not true. Freedom of the press, for example, is very much alive. Reporters are not afraid of the police or the government, just pick up any random national newspaper.

<comment><USER5> Apparently some reporters are. Maybe just more local to Juarez? How can you state that there is no problem on basis of a few positive samples (I'm guessing you mean articles critical of the military)?

Are you saying there is no problem with army suppression of dissent? press or otherwise? Just wondering how you are more qualified than the author of this article to say one way or the other.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I'm saying there is no problem with suppression of dissent. I can't say no reporters have ever disappeared in Juarez, as I can't say no bartenders have ever disappeared there either. Juarez is a dangerous town ruled by narco- gangs. I'm saying it's not something common in Mexico; reporters aren't normally scared for their life or anything of the sort. As I said, just pick up any random Mexican newspaper, there is a fair chance you will read criticisms of every government branch, the police, and the military. The part at the end where the reporter explains how the military is in control of the government is especially ridiculous.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Do you guys know of any website blocking software? - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys like the title says do you gents know of any website blocking software to prevent employees from wasting time surfing popular sites like myspace , facebook and the like? thanks a bunch! <comment><USER2> Just install a logging program in your router and post the logs in a public place. That way, your employees will have to own up to any wasted time instead of find ways to circumvent it. It's also a good accountability program for your employees.

This idea just came to mind. Do you guys think something like this would work?

As far as your original question goes, I don't know of anything off the top of my head, but you could always get a sort of parental guardian box the plugs in between your router and your internet connection. Those usually have a block by site function built into them, as well as password protecting certain sites (you know, if you want to bypass your own security to get to HN or whatever).

<comment><USER3> It's a reasonable idea, but I don't know if "public" is the best approach. Unless you meant "internally-public", in which case I think it's a pretty good idea.

Unfortunately, in most cases it is not simply employee laziness that drives people to waste time online, but a dull, non-challenging task which could be completed in an hour or two if it did not mean simply receiving additional work with no real benefit. In other words, I feel like the situations where it would be necessary would almost always be the same situations where the employee is actually acting rationally.

<comment><USER2> Yeah I meant internally public. You can't have outsiders (competitors) knowing what your employee's surfing habits are. They could have certain projects compromised.

Of course if your employees are visiting these sites out of sheer boredom, then there's another issue taking place. If the management (don't know how large this company is) is good enough, they could watch the trends in their employee's surfing and turn it into a time to learn why they're spending so much time on non-work related sites, and hopefully provide them with more meaningful and efficient work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Use a linux box at your gateway, squid and squidguard:

<http://www.squidguard.org/>

Then use iptables to do a transparent redirect of all outbound web traffic to you squid server:

[http://www.squid-cache.org/mail-archive/squid- users/200404/0...](http://www.squid-cache.org/mail-archive/squid- users/200404/0560.html)

This way you can actually have your employees end up a page of your design that says "Quit wastin' time foo'" whenever they hit a site you've placed on the block list. Mr. T. is optional of course.

</comment><comment><USER5> YC's own <http://8aweek.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I just installed one on my browser the other day. But I want something that I could help me keep logs of their browsing so come review time I have something that could keep them on their toes.

<comment><USER6> Btw, we'd love to chat more with you about this. Please email firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure Zack will email you as soon as I have some free time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If each employee is using Windows on there workstation you could modify the hosts file to redirect the domain to some other address, like your company intranet. They will never figure it out. This is free and dead on easy.

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=window...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=windows+host+file+block+websites)

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://www.google.com/search?q=%22start+using+cgiproxy%22>

The point of installing blocking software is so you can fire people that circumvent it and go to facebook without your explicit, written permission?

</comment><comment><USER9> Trust your employees to act like adults.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish it were that simple friend.

<comment><USER10> It is that simple. If you can't do that then you've got more problems then a few people surfing some websites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Opendns.com does what you want and a lot more.</comment>


DeepMind Hype vs. Reality - <AUTHOR> I wanted to get HN's opinion on DeepMind. It seems that they have a lot of the talented AI researchers working for them, and since AlphaGo (maybe since Google bought them in 2014) there has been a lot of hype surrounding the company. Is this hype deserved?
Is seems that their main goal is ultimately to develop an AGI. If an AGI is possible, would it be fair to say DeepMind is winning the race?
If you were offered a job there would you take it? <comment><USER2> AGI is so far off it's not worth factoring into the question at this time.

Demis has history of over hyping tech, however a collection of smart people and massive backing from google, joined together to work on interesting problems, sounds a better place to work than most!</comment>


The elaborate scam of automated bookmark spam - <AUTHOR> http://blog.del.icio.us/?p=1225 <comment><USER2> God. I did the majority of anti-spam stuff for delicious, which at times reached 50% of the total volume. Zero support or staffing from my management, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> The amazing thing here is that this whole miniature economy was resting on a premise that _absolutely could not work_ , since the bookmarked links were getting marked as nofollow and were therefore 100% useless for the purpose of generating Google-juice.

From the reproduced ads, it looks like at least some of the sellers of spamming services explicitly marketed the resulting links as "dofollow" \-- i.e. not having the nofollow attribute applied. But that's an assertion that even the simplest fact-checking would have knocked flat, so you have to assume that the only people who would buy the service are people who are either too clueless or too dumb to investigate whether it actually did what it claimed to do before buying it.

(Which is a testament to just how many clueless and dumb people there are running around out there, I guess.)

<comment><USER4> > Which is a testament to just how many clueless and dumb people there are > running around

This is snake oil. It's not the first and it certainly won't be the last case of it.

It's the same premise that powers sales of lots of products from

      * "holistic" / non-FDA-approved medicines: {"male enhancement", hair regrowth, weight loss, anti-aging, muscle-building} drugs
      * fortune telling
      * "get rich quick" schemes
      * multi-level marketing promises of success

You are sold an emotional appeal of wealth / health / success / sex / whatever. If it triggers your emotions, your lizard brain takes over and your cognition takes a back seat. Everyone at some point with the right appeals, will fall victim to the right sales pitch. Addictive personalities and those with "blind faith" tend to be the first to be sold and extreme skeptics tend to be the last, but they are all weaknesses in human behavior.

It's not very far from the same basic sales techniques used in spear-phishing.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best lectures about plant science? - <AUTHOR> I've been binging on plant biology, and would love to find outstanding lectures or research presentations with clear and compelling explanations and thought-provoking results. Any plant biologists reading today? <comment><USER2> Check this out [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTsAFpSXj7Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTsAFpSXj7Y)</comment>


Knock-Knock Door Lock: Unlocking your door with a secret knock sequence - <AUTHOR> http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-279814 <comment> Pick-A-Hill2019 This is a genius bit of 'bored at home' hacking.

Some other links to similar projects.

[https://www.instructables.com/id/Secret-Knock-Detecting- Door...](https://www.instructables.com/id/Secret-Knock-Detecting-Door-Lock/)

[https://hackaday.com/2020/05/25/secret-knock-unlocks- door/](https://hackaday.com/2020/05/25/secret-knock-unlocks-door/)

</comment><comment><USER2> "One day, Ali Baba is at work collecting and cutting firewood in the forest, when he happens to overhear a group of 40 thieves visiting their stored treasure. Their treasure is in a cave, the mouth of which is sealed by a huge rock. It opens on the magic words "open sesame" and seals itself on the words "close sesame". When the thieves are gone, Ali Baba enters the cave himself and takes a single bag of gold coins home."</comment>