Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-23/google-will-stop-reading-your-emails-for-gmail-ads <comment><USER2> I know I shouldn't be surprised, but it seems weird that the reporter nor any of the 140+ comments so far seemingly don't mention the recently published proposal for a new ePrivacy directive in the EU that will make it a lot harder for Google to scan e-mails in the first place.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-privacy- idUSKBN14U1FL](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-privacy-idUSKBN14U1FL) [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/10/whatsapp-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/10/whatsapp- facebook-google-privacy-rules-ec-european-directive) [http://www.kemplittle.com/site/articles/kl_bytes/the- draft-e...](http://www.kemplittle.com/site/articles/kl_bytes/the-draft- eprivacy-regulation10-things-you-need-to-know)

<comment><USER3> That directive might be related to what's happening.

But let's not be naive: if Google will stop reading our emails in order to send us personalized ads, that's because it doesn't really need to. People share just enough outside their email environment for Google to do its thing. Another sign of which those worrying about privacy should be aware.

<comment><USER4> Or, maybe: the extra information gleaned from reading your emails is just not that valuable. Not because they have this via other means, but its just not that valuable, period - whether it comes from reading emails or scrutinizing your browser history. We like to imagine that if advertisers knew enough about us, they'd be able to direct our spending, but I think that is far from true.

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure scrutinizing your browser history is still extremely valuable. But I find it quite plausible that email _in particular_ has lost value as marketing information.

People still use email for all kinds of business, of course. But their day-to- day personal activities, the kind that marketers care about ("I've taken up kayaking!", "I'm pregnant!") don't usually show up in emails any more, they get posted on social media.

<comment><USER6> This makes sense. Possibly the value of increased corporate sales of G Suite is worth more than the loss of the information gained from reading diminishing numbers of personal emails, as people turn more and more to social media and phone apps for personal communication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I never understood the argument that some automatic scanning for keywords is like "reading" your mail. By that same logic isn't Gmail's spam filter still "reading" your mail? It is classifying your mail based on content after all...

<comment><USER8> It's like my accountant reading my receipts to create my tax return versus a sleazy salesman sneaking a peek at them to find new ways to sell me stuff.

<comment><USER9> It's more like your accountant preparing your tax return for free in exchange for aggregating data about your receipts and offering you goods and services you may be interested in.

<comment><USER10> Let's split the difference. It's like your accountant preparing your tax return in exchange for using that tax return to develop a model of your spending habits. The value of this model is more than the cost of them doing your tax returns, and in fact is such that if you were simply to collect that data yourself, sell it on the open market, and spend a portion of the proceeds on the tax prep service, you would end up with profit, and the tax prep service would still exist.

<comment><USER11> > The value of this model is more than the cost of them doing your tax returns

It's likely the value Google got out of scanning your email wasn't worth that much in terms of modelling profiles for ads.

Probably because having both your search history and "anonymized" Google analytics, plus the sea of data that comes from owning Android is more than enough data that Google/Doubleclick needs.

From a purely capitalist perspective I'd bet the utility of them scraping this data no longer outweighs the privacy costs.

But at the same time Google is still scanning attachments for child porn and likely other data out of national security interests. And they still can access your data on a case-by-case basis which from a FISA perspective is a rubber-stamp away from accessing your data from 2 hops away from someone who may or may not have done something bad.

I personally will not weigh using Google vs any other email service in terms of privacy any different after this measure. But I still appreciate their efforts to reduce the "standard pratice" nature of scanning private email. If I do use anything Google-related I will not associate my personal identity in any way with the service, which is still requirement for Google play.

You can still use a fake gmail account and prepaid Google gift cards bought with cash to disassociate your identity from using the service. Although that's still well beyond the investment the majority of people are willing to make.

Regardless privacy comes at a cost these days. Good OPSEC > trusting cloud services privacy policy. You can either not use the services or invest in protecting your data when using them.

I will still cheer on Google's efforts to make those of us who care about privacy live's easier. I'm not naive enough to ignore how their business model works but that doesn't mean they always have to take the easy route and hand everything over without considering the costs - as many ISP/Telecom companies seem to do.

<comment><USER12> Eh? That assumption of "not associating my personal identity" doesn't actually work. Your profile IS your personal identity, and can be associated trivially. If not algorithmically, then via one connecting piece of information supplied by various databases and no such agencies. You're living in a dream.

<comment><USER11> > Your profile IS your personal identity, and can be associated trivially.

I'm hardly new to his stuff and to say it's trivial is nonsense. Most people make it trivial but it's not trivial to associate identities of people who put basic effort into obscuring them.

Merely disconnecting your primary profiles from your online activity is enough to throw most mass-surveillance/drag-net stuff off, aka 99.9% of advertising firms and most government programs.

If you're an activist or someone interested in keeping your internet activity private then the bar is far higher (and the targets of which are ever expanding as governments and private organizations get better at this stuff). FBI agents, or likewise in your country of residence, have plenty of forensic tools at their disposal to connect disparate identities. It takes some real time investment and requires being super careful to evade these measures. But I'm not talking about that here. I mean the average person in 2017.

I've personally done the total anonymity stuff as an experiment so I know what that takes.

Having studied many documents from the various global national security organizations and being fortunate to have dated a defense attorney in the past who engaged with police surveillance reports on a daily basis for their work I'm convinced that even basic privacy measures such as never using your real identity when using internet services, creating full legitimate sounding backstories (and subsequent online profiles) for your fake identity, and changing the ID you use often enough will throw off most basic surveillance measures.

I'm not doing anything to get people really invested in uncovering my online identities, as most people aren't, which is what I'm talking about.

The simple fact is the vast, vast majority of people reuse the same username (and passwords) across the internet and use their real name and emails everywhere. So it's really not hard to track people online from an LEO or 4chan doxxing perspective.

But I'm not convinced you have to be isolated from the utility of most online (cloud) services. You just have to invest in using them intelligently to not associate your actual identity with the services.

Ad companies aren't interested in deanonymizing people anyway. They are looking for low hanging fruit and there are more than enough people to fill databases who fit this profile. So I'm not that concerned about those who don't.

<comment><USER13> It's not trivial to match any arbitrary profile with an offline identity, but it is possible to cluster pseudonymous profiles into "almost certainly the same individual" by patterns and peculiarities in how they use their devices. If the same patterns later show up for an identified user, they can be linked with high probability.

With the sites Google runs plus running their own JavaScript on a sizable fraction of other people's web pages, they can pick up a lot of patterns, many of which would be inaccessible to police and intelligence surveillance.

Some people have nervous habits like moving the mouse around, clicking/tapping on whitespace, scrolling up and down, etc. Some always/never use the scrollbar. Some always/never open links in new tabs. Some tend to put the adjective before/after the noun in their searches. Some will rapidly open up the first 5 search results in new tabs. Some always disable instant search, and some of those change their settings to 20 or 50 or 100 results. Some use search features like the calculator, searching for "weather", stock symbols, etc, and others never do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I very recently switched to fastmail and couldn't be happier. For $90 a year, I don't have to deal with people snooping and tracking me around for ads. I know google is trying to give me value with all their facial recognition and recommendations, but I don't think it is going to end well. When it does end badly, it will be too late for the user because we would've given up all the data. I don't want Google to build models to track my toddler's face when he isn't even capable of consenting to such tracking.

<comment><USER15> Is there any reason not to go with ProtonMail? They seem to be the big recommendation lately for encrypted email service.

<comment><USER16> I'd really love to support ProtonMail but one thing I can't swallow is that there's no server-side search of email bodies (only to/from & subject) because it's encrypted. This kills the possibility of searching through years of newsletters & stuff :/

<comment><USER17> [I'm stupid they have 2FA, ignore this comment.]

Another huge problem is the lack of two-factor authentication. How can a security-oriented service not offer TOTP or even SMS 2FA.

<comment><USER18> 2FA has been out for almost 6 months.

<comment><USER17> Oops, my Google-fu is worse than I thought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So this never really bugged me. It is a damn good free service. I also love how it picks up on plane tickets, hotel reservations, etc and puts them in the calendar. Makes life simpler.

If ad companies fix something please fix the I searched for something and bought it but I get adds for it for the next 4 weeks. That bugs me.

<comment><USER20> Frustratingly, by reading my emails Google should know that I've bought something and so don't need ads about it.

But hey, they don't seem to have used that data.

<comment><USER21> At that point, it's on the advertiser. It's a weird dynamic where they want to enable the advertiser to factor that in and not advertise to you _, but they want to maximize rev and imperfect advertisers increases rev.

(_ = edit for grammar)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't understand why there isn't an option for me to pay for Google to remove ads from gmail.

I've already paid for Youtube Red and couldn't be happier.

<comment><USER23> [https://gsuite.google.com/products/gmail/](https://gsuite.google.com/products/gmail/)

About $60 a year

I have about 8 accounts that I use.

<comment><USER24> This hardly frees you from Google's data gathering. They will have records of your IP address used to collect the emails and your access history, so they know (roughly) where you live, what times of day you are active, and can probably infer stuff like when you are on holiday. If you are in the same house as someone else, they probably use Google too and the shared IP address lets Google tie the two identities together. So they get to discover your relationships too.

<comment><USER25> So will any host. When you are paying for it though, the terms of service clearly define what is collected and what it's used for, and you can choose to enable or disable that type of data matching

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> <rant> Slightly off topic: I was very annoyed that this article didn't provide any links to Google's official statement/declaration about this change and when it's coming. Even if Bloomberg interviewed Diane Green for this article or asked questions and got official statements, it could've still provided an official link for the change. </rant>

I found the link [1] here on HN.

[1]: [https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction- in...](https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the- enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/)

</comment><comment><USER27> I should probably get fitted for a tinfoil hat because my immediate reaction was, "Oh shit! They must've developed something now that tracks you better and is less obvious."

<comment><USER28> My educated guess would be that given the proliferation of services offered by Google, it indeed has many more sources of information on each individual, and having email as one of them perhaps proves less beneficial today as it did when Gmail was first introduced. Now there is the Android OS which gives information about apps you use, locations, activities, and online searches, map queries, bookmarks, sentiments via G+, etc. So, it can disable auto- scanning of emails perhaps as a PR move (or, should I hope it is going to eventually evolve its email service to include encrypting emails, and this is one step in that direction??).

<comment><USER29> The article explains it plainly: they weren't getting the message to business people that Gmail on Google Apps _isn 't_ scanned despite free Gmail being, so they stopped scanning Gmail altogether.

<comment><USER30> _stopped scanning Gmail altogether._

Note that this is not what the article says. It says that they stopped scanning Gmail for _ads_ , but does not say they stopped scanning email for non-ad purposes.

<comment><USER31> To be more accurate the article says they stopped scanning for ads that appear _inside gmail_. Whether they still scan emails in the free gmail for use _outside_ gmail is unknown, but I may be being pedantic...

<comment><USER32> (disclosure, I work on gmail, although nothing related to ads)

I can't find a citation, but I'm fairly confident that that's never been the case. Ad targeting from emails has always been siloed to within gmail. To quote the post:

>Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalization after this change.

That's pretty unequivocal.

<comment><USER31> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This most likely is a pragmatic financial decision. Contextual advertising is generating a lower CPM than data/person based advertising.

Said differently the relevance that can be extracted from your specific email is less than the cumulative knowledge that Google has about you from other sources.

<comment><USER34> Gmail ads were no just contextual. Advertisers were able to target people who received email from a particular domain. Can you imagine the power of being able to target customers of a competitor that has been developing their customer relationships for years?

This is 100% conjecture, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was this domain targeting (which is what many advertisers were using) that was the thing that Google's big clients were complaining about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Will there still be a way to opt-in?

This seems like one of those decisions that is a net negative for functionality in favor of quelling some misguided privacy concerns. Hopefully this doesn't lessen the quality of ads by much.

<comment><USER36> This is the first time I've ever heard a person worry about the quality of the ads that are served to them.

<comment><USER37> I've often wondered why nobody brings this up more.

If you're going to see ads for things, why on earth _wouldn 't_ you want them to try to better target you? The whole point is for you to find out about things that might be useful for you.

Why would I want less of the useful things? Why would I want worse advertising?

<comment><USER38> I think some people make the assumption they are targeted for products that might be beneficial for them. But why would that mostly be the case ? Someone with an online shopping problem would be a perfect target for a flurry of ads, and getting better targeted ads would just be screwing that person more and more.

Even in a saner scenario, the most informative ad you can imagine will still isolate you from the information you would have got by doing your own research. But since you have most of the information you wanted to have, you won't bother checking that much more.

IMO even in the best case scenario, helping people to be lazy on things they are interested in is counterproductive in the long term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Hope this increases the chance of E2E encryption

<comment><USER40> How would you search your inbox? Or filter spam?

<comment><USER41> [https://protonmail.com/blog/encrypted-email-spam- filtering/](https://protonmail.com/blog/encrypted-email-spam-filtering/)

I remember there was a recent paper that dealt with this, too, but I can't find it right now. But it basically demolished this argument that it's impossible to stop spam if the email is encrypted.

<comment><USER42> That blog post doesn't actually say anything about how they do spam filtering on encrypted emails. Everything they talk about is bog-standard spam filtering, including comparing against known spam and Bayesian filtering, both of which are impossible to do on encrypted emails. It's not clear if they're doing reputation analysis, which is the other big anti-spam measure impossible on encrypted email (I suspect it's the main component of their "we're not telling you what we're doing"). The SPF/DKIM/DMARC and blacklist checks are the only things you can reliably do on encrypted email.

They do say "In future blog posts, we will cover the challenges of preventing ProtonMail from being used by spammers and the challenges of doing spam filtering with end-to-end encrypted emails which we cannot read", but I can't find any such blog posts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> "The decision didn't come from Google's ad team, but from its cloud unit, which is angling to sign up more corporate customers."

Interesting timing with the story earlier this week about Wal-Mart telling vendors to stop using AWS

</comment><comment><USER44> That sucks for me as an advertiser. Gmail ads were great for B2B marketing.

<comment><USER45> Man I am super sorry my basic privacy are getting in the way of your marketing effort.

Edit: removed "rights"

<comment><USER46> Google can't read your post office mail. It can't read your Yahoo mail. But you certainly have no right that says it can't read your Gmail mail.

You're confusing a want with a right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Google will still show ads in Gmail, just not based on email contents.

</comment><comment><USER48> Interesting - as an advertiser I generally recommend using the email address "sent from" as your main source of targeting but combining that with specific keywords within the gmail campaign can be super helpful at finding people at the exact right time.

<comment><USER49> Yeah, targeting competitor domain names tends to perform pretty well. Do you know if domain targeting is disappearing with this update?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Good for them. Though it goes without saying email is insecure. If enterprise clients dislike an algorithm scanning their email contents, maybe they should also consider that email generally has unencrypted transit and storage.

<comment><USER51> Very few servers store/transmit emails unencrypted...

<comment><USER29> Not that few - more than 1 in 10 emails sent and received by Gmail are unencrypted: [https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/saferemail/](https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/saferemail/)

<comment><USER51> That's higher than I would have expected. The question though, is who is not allowing encrypted emails? I wonder if it's mostly just China.

<comment><USER52> Looking at the data ([https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/saferemail/#region...](https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/saferemail/#region=142)). The major Chinese players QQ and 163 do employ TLS, while the worst offenders of security are mostly Japanese.

The Chinese government can just ask QQ and 163 for your email such that they don't need to see it in transit. Less work, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> It basically means that they already track so much information about you that they don't need to monitor the contents of your email anymore.

Now Google knows: \- all your searches (know your interests), \- a great percentage of the pages you visit (ads and analytics) \- all your contacts and how frequently you connect to them (metadata in gmail) \- the places you visit (geolocation in Android) \- Google logins (know the sites that interest you the most)

Your email contents is completely unecessary.

</comment><comment><USER54> Title should be: Google Will Stop Using Your Email Data for Gmail Ads.

</comment><comment><USER55> Not scanning emails for ads? Corporate business?

I wonder if Google will be pushing end-to-end email encryption? They have already had some experiments on it.

They have the majority browser, they have the lions share of email hosting. It they played their cards right, they could claim the entire email ecosystem, except for the small portion who won't use Google products on principle. The questions would be would 3rd party clients be allowed, and how would Apple fight it.

Or maybe this is all just a smoke screen to sucker dumb corps. In the existing architecture, your emails still need to be scanned so they can be indexed for search. You could get the same result scanning these indexes as scanning the emails themselves, so from a privacy perspective it could be a non-event.

</comment><comment><USER56> And I am in the middle of migrating to icloud from google. Not going to stop at this point.

<comment><USER57> Not sure if sarcasm or serious stupidity. Please clarify.

<comment><USER56> neither, serious, why?

You seem to comment frequently here on HN where I consider most users to be above average in the level of intelligent replies so your trolling seems quite out of place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> But will they stop using Hangouts IM content for customer segmentation? I probably say much more relevant things in Hangouts (from a marketing perspective) than in email.

</comment><comment><USER59> I will never use a enterprise google product unless they have customer support. The customer support team should have humans and not robots.

<comment><USER60> Enterprise customers have support. It's not as feasible in the consumer space, the volume would be overwhelming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> My guess is that with Google Drive, they are getting way more information on individuals and companies than they ever got via email.

</comment><comment><USER62> I think I've become jaded because I just don't believe it. It's like Google Home. A wonderful device but when I heard it may start listening to everything I say... I just figured yeah, that should be expected. So now I just expect Google to read, listen, and analyze everything I do with their products.

<comment><USER63> Maybe I don't understand google home because I don't have one, but to be able to detect whatever keywords cause it to listen to you doesn't it have to listen to everything you say?

I feel like any device that has a microphone is suspect if you want total privacy, but listening to what you say seems like an integral part of the device. You can only hope (and independently verify) that they don't _store_ everything you say.

<comment><USER64> It's my understanding that there's a low power, always-on service listening for stuff like "Alexa"/"OK Google", and only when it hears a keyword does it start "listening" and sending data back for parsing/processing.

I could be wrong and/or they could be lying about how the product really works. Could probably monitor your network traffic if you really wanted to find out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> What happens to the data that was already collected. Legally they can still use that data right?

</comment><comment> m-p-3 But they'll most likely read them for another purpose, for example training their AI.

</comment><comment><USER66> I wonder what the conversion rates on these within-client ads are. I know I've never opened any no matter how well-targeted or 'interesting' the ads were, because the immediate response is to just want to sweep the inbox clean.

</comment><comment><USER67> Even though it never really bothered me because Apple Mail does not pull anything but the actual email message from Gmail, so I never see them, I still would like G to stop scanning anything personal. Period.

</comment><comment><USER68> OK but will Google stop reading my email for _other_ types of ads?

For example, if I write "I love coffee" in an email, am I more likely to see a Starbucks ad when I visit watch a YouTube video?

<comment><USER48> Wee yeah - it says they will no longer scan emails.... Instead they will use your youtube data, search data, website visit data etc.

<comment><USER69> In addition, I suspect, given that every time you walk into a Starbucks your phone is probably connecting to the network "Google Starbucks", that they probably know how you feel about coffee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Actually I'd prefer they did so they can optimize their cash flow and my targeted ads so I can continue using their free product and all it's nice features without any compromise.

</comment><comment><USER71> Some of my emails are "read" (as in shown as I have read them) when I have literally just received them. Is this referring to the same thing?

</comment><comment><USER72> How many of you have successfully prevented Google and Facebook for tracking your web habits ? What all steps do you take to prevent the tracking ?

</comment><comment><USER73> It's about time! I wonder if this is due to the fact that if email encryption becomes common, the content will be inaccessible to Google anyway.

<comment><USER74> I doubt it. That's a pretty big "if".

<comment><USER75> If they're not using it for ads, there's a good chance that it's in Google's best interest to not know the contents of people's email. It lessens the impact of a potential breach, and it greatly simplifies their responses to gov't requests to 'we have no method to access this data, you must contact the account holder directly'.

<comment><USER52> And then Google gets inundated from angry customers who forget their password or key for the encryption of their emails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Is free Outlook account scanning me email or for building ads profile or for any other purpose ?

</comment><comment><USER77> I suspect that means they no longer need to, and have better ways of targeting ads at you.

</comment><comment><USER78> Title is misleading, it should be G will keep reading your emails except for G Ads.

</comment><comment><USER79> Seriously, there's private, ad-free mail for 1$ a months: [https://posteo.de/en/](https://posteo.de/en/) or [https://mailbox.org/en/](https://mailbox.org/en/)

</comment><comment><USER80> Wonder if it's also a move that will help encrypted email become supported

</comment><comment><USER81> Won't people keep assuming gmail reads their emails at this point though?

</comment><comment><USER82> How do you know? That's the problem with closed source software, and software that runs in someone else's computer. You have no idea what it does. You aren't in control. Someone else is deciding what code runs on your computer. That's a problem.

<comment><USER83> Big companies can't hide this stuff forever, you can eventually figure out, it is just better business-wise for them to just state they read your emails for ads, it can cost them a lot if they don't, plus most people don't really care.

A few weeks ago a friend and I were talking exclusively through WhatsApp about a trip to London(in Portuguese with our very unusual jargon), I didn't do any search for anything related it was all within our conversation, a couple days later Facebook had a post on my timeline saying: "heading to London? Check what your friends did there".

I don't remember reading anywhere that WhatsApp reads your conversations for ads, but it was clear to me that's where they got the information, it was spooky at first.

<comment><USER84> WhatsApp doesn't read your conversations for ads because it can't. Message content is end-to-end encrypted. You must have leaked your plans through some other medium inadvertently.

<comment><USER85> This is called retargeting and is even worse from a privacy perspective: now your data is going through multiple layers of ad buying tools, analytics, ad exchanges, aggregators, ad networks, etc.: [http://2bd2y2367xnj3kpntjsifzmf- wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-c...](http://2bd2y2367xnj3kpntjsifzmf- wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/LUMA-Display-Ad-Tech- Landscape-for-AdExchanger.jpg)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> It was interesting (but I suppose a random bit) that after reading this article a new email showed up in my gmail inbox that was spam. I wonder if this isn't the first move in a plan to create a 'pay' gmail service for individuals.

</comment><comment><USER87> So what method have they adopted to display adverts in emails?

<comment><USER88> It's literally in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> But they will still track links you click from gmail.com ?

</comment><comment><USER90> Will they also stop tracking clicked links in gmail?

</comment><comment><USER91> Almost as if they want to do no evil. Almost.

</comment><comment><USER92> The fact of reading emails for ads is disputable even if it's used for a new purpose, YT.

<comment><USER92> HAL: Ads will continue to appear inside the free version of Gmail, as promoted messages. But instead of scanning a user's email, the ads will now be targeted with other personal information Google already pulls from sources such as search and YouTube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> Too little, too late IMO

</comment><comment><USER94> Thank you EU.

</comment><comment><USER95> Gosh, thanks.

</comment><comment><USER96> Switch to Protonmail.

</comment><comment><USER97> To be clear, Google is not saying they'll stop reading your emails, only that your emails' contents won't be used to generate ad content.

</comment><comment><USER98> Quite obviously Google feels their profiling of users from other sources is good enough that they can afford to throw them a bone - not to mention save themselves a bit of effort since they will no longer need to maintain two systems for GMail.

</comment><comment><USER99> Their AI knows what you are thinking anyways. The singularity is here!!

</comment><comment><USER100> Well this is an interesting turn of events.

I wasn't expecting this from a company that makes most of it's revenue through advertising. Sets a cautiously positive precedent.

</comment><comment><USER101> Oh, the doublespeak... They will read your emails for everything else, like Google Now, just not to show you ads. ahahahahahahahah

</comment><comment><USER102> word

</comment><comment><USER103> How nice of Google.

</comment><comment><USER104> Fine. Can they please make Google Apps users first class users in the google ecosystem?

</comment><comment><USER105> Does that mean that Google now has no more use for Gmail, and soon millions of people will be scrambling to cover yet another product sunset?

That would certainly cause an enormous loss of goodwill, but.... imagine this scenario:

Google has some slow growth quarters, they need to keep the numbers up for shareholders. They start to examine what they can squeeze. Gmail costs them X (hundreds?) millions per year, but doesn't gain much from it...

Certainly its unlikely, as it is also a SSO tool, etc. Still....

<comment><USER106> Considering gmail is a major part of google apps as well, I imagine they're making plenty of money off of it

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> So much for the argument "how else is Google going to make money if it isn't reading your emails?!"

Companies can make money without tracking you 24/7 and reading all of your private content. They just choose not to, because it's easier, and then spread the propaganda that those things are "needed" to stay in business.

<comment><USER107> Google can stop reading your emails _because_ they track you so well you elsewhere. You wouldn't want to cite this example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> Google will stop reading my emails for Gmail ads because I will stop using Gmail. It's kind of a sad story, because they are the good guys, but once they built a huge company they started to focus on maintaining it, possibly at any cost. This is a cautionary tale: power corrupts. You, me, everyone. And yes, the web will produce dictators we never imagined possible, because the Internet is so powerful it will enable them.

<comment><USER109> I agree that the web is extremely powerful.

I also think this power is symmetric in who it enables. Unlike land ownership or TV broadcasting entry isn't expensive and the needed tools can easily be smuggled. Anyone can easily gain immensely from this free-flowing font of knowledge and communication.

A potential dictator must take great pains to use gain that huge power in the Internet era and I think you are right that we will see some insanely powerful dictators. However, I think we see fewer than in previous eras though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER110> I think there is some interesting middle ground where you could use machine learning to go from 'show only relevant ads' to 'show only ads you might actually click on with greater than .001 probability'. I guess this is like 'extreme' outlier detection but it'd be interesting to see what revenue the ads at the 'long tail' of likelihood generate anyway. My guess the bulk of it is from the standard high CPC stuff like Mortages and Insurance. Google says it does this but i'm not too sure - I've never intentionally clicked an adword and yet they're still shown to me.

Anyway this may solve the tragedy of the commons situation we're in now and allow us to move away from the technology war of ad blockers, ad blocker blockers, ad blocker blocker blockers, etc.

edit: removed comment on clarity of Gsuite vs Free due to downvote brigade.

<comment><USER111> > Paying Gmail users never received the email-scanning ads like the free > version of the program, but some business customers were confused by the > distinction and its privacy implications, said Diane Greene, Google's senior > vice president of cloud.

Google doesn't read e-mails from GSuite. So the change is to stop reading from Gmail's free accounts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER112> I'm fine to let them scan my emails for spam filter, yet they use it as an excuse to justify their data collection and other things they do with my data, which is unacceptable for me. How would I know if they are going to do things against my interests one day? Ads targeting is already against mine.

I used to see Google as a stalker. How naive I was. There are billions of people being stalked, exploited, and the whole process is automated. It comes to me that users are not victims of stalking, they are lab rats.

Now Google stopped reading emails for ads, but they'll still read for other purposes, which still makes me as a user feel insecure. I value my privacy, I have my dignity, I shouldn't be a lab rat that they can just observe however they want only because they provide free cheese.

Even if I start using a paid account to stop them from reading my emails (assume paid account with better privacy protection is possible), I couldn't stop them from reading others'. Stopping the data collection of one user won't change the situation, they still have other lab rats' data they could collect and analyze, which enables them to learn or predict other rats' behaviors.

The worst thing is, Google is not the only company doing this right now. Surveillance technologies are developing, it's like every data company has grown their teeth and become more thirsty for blood.

Edit: words.</comment>


What do I do with a good idea? - <AUTHOR>

I have an idea that takes a new approach to teaching programming and development online. I've never seen anything anywhere similar to it (and I do know of a lot of these sites http://goo.gl/W0UQNq )
I've been sitting on this idea for over a year now  and occasionally add a few notes to my overall vision.
I've built two websites, but nothing to the dynamic level that I'm thinking of. This would be something that would require a few people working together even at its basic level. I once tried to outsource getting something in place, but my $5,000 budget was outbidded. (I now have a $7,000 budget but I don't think that's big enough.)
What I'd like to know from HN is how I can find either people willing to help with this, where to find investors or anything that could help me get started. <comment><USER2> I believe 7k is good enough money to put together a MVP if you know little bit of programming. Or talk to a programmer and convince him to work on this project on a 50% partnership along with 5k monetary compensation. I believe if you contact few programmers and clearly express your idea and where will it go in long term then somebody is going to help you. At least to build a MVP which you can test to see if it has any potential to go anywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you know of a good source to seek people? I'm skeptical of most freelance sites because they're generalized and used by a lot of people who just want to "make money online".

If you were seeking a programmer, where would you go to?

<comment><USER2> Yes there are good programmers in those freelance sites. You need to find the needle in those haystacks.

1\. Post a project on Elance or Guru or other freelance sites where you specifically ask them for their Github and stackoverflow profile. I believe every good programmers do not maintain regular Github profile. But most of them do and from their Github profile you can have an idea on quality of code they can deliver.

I found a programmer from Russia who had a very high reputation score on Stackoverflow and arguable he came out as a proficient one. But convincing a programmer to work on your project is another challenge. They have enough projects under their belt. So your projects need to challenge/thrill them to work on. Else they will not stick for long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you validated your idea by asking your peers if they would be willing to pay for your service?

This would be my first step before committing several thousands of dollars to an idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I've validated it with two professors who think it's worth pursuing (which also led to a couple lengthy discussions on educational theory).

<comment><USER3> How will your service be funded?

Without wanting to put you off, most people will say that its a good idea if the service is free. It's a different story if they have to pay for it.

Are the professors your target market? If not, find your target market and validate with them.

Its so important that you validate the idea before spending all your time, energy and money on it.

Good luck with this, sounds like you're passionate which is a great start.

<comment><AUTHOR> In one word, freemium. I think there are some things worth paying for and others not. The first things I want to implement are the things that would require payment.

And you're right about finding a target market, the initial target would be others which I'll have to talk to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hack together an MVP, share it, iterate iterate iterate, who knows ...

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious, what is your take and how does it differ from everyone else?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not a fan of any sites that teach programming. They're too passive, don't take things seriously, or are meant for children (like the Head First series).

I'm not absolutely opposed to dumping all the unique features of what I've got so far on the interwebs, but not just yet.

The biggest feature that the company I was bidding for liked is a way of submitting programs and finding if they're correct or not (grading).

I've implemented a few thoughts from Salman Khan's book. The plans cover a much larger demographic and the site can be easily used for a lifetime rather than to just get a start.

But that's all I'll say for now. :p

<comment><USER6> I agree with the advice of validating your idea by asking the target users if they would be willing to pay for the service.

Maybe start making a prototype (Balsamiq/Prototype of Paper rather than code based).

As to keep it hush-hush:

"An idea for a startup, however, is only a beginning. A lot of would-be startup founders think the key to the whole process is the initial idea, and from that point all you have to do is execute. Venture capitalists know better. If you go to VC firms with a brilliant idea that you'll tell them about if they sign a nondisclosure agreement, most will tell you to get lost. That shows how much a mere idea is worth. The market price is less than the inconvenience of signing an NDA."

[http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html)

Just start. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> While quotes are sometimes nice, there are a few assumptions you've made that don't match this post at all.

1\. I have extensive plans on paper to include visual design.

2\. I have a little bit of code and I'm working project by project to get to the level required to build this site. (The whole reason for me building the other two from scratch.)

3\. Again, hush-hush isn't the issue. But throwing everything out every time I ask a question? That's not good. I'm not pitching, I'm asking for general advice. (When I bid for a design company they had the full plans with no disclosure agreements and I did that knowing the people I was competing with were doing a similar style site. I don't believe in IP, but I do believe in common sense.)

I thank you for your response though.

<comment><USER7> Personally, I think you took his comment the wrong way & it's actually one of the most accurate comments on here.

So you have some designs on paper, great! Show these designs to anyone, everyone & gauge their interest. Remember, what a user says is very different to what a user does. Just because they say they WOULD sign up for something, doesn't mean they WILL sign up for something. Friends, family (& professors) are likely to be biased out of love, widen your reach.

I wouldn't code anything until you have done the above. The PG quote is basically reaffirming that your idea is worthless right now. Millions of developers are out there with ideas. Thousands are even out there with an MVP. Get user feedback from day one & make sure you're idea is actually worth something (& remember that 90% of good ideas aren't).

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't made any claims to worth.

In the same way that I asked someone to send an e-mail via my website instead of simply posting my e-mail, I've no interest in the passively curious. I'm not cautious in talking about the project, but I am cautious in blabbering off to anyone who doesn't care or just wants to look at something shiny.

This is something that comes up in conversation with friends often. The question here is where can I go to find help. Not how do I validate the idea. That's taken care of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What is your e-mail? Let's chat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you mind going to [http://www.ethanglover.biz/](http://www.ethanglover.biz/) and clicking the "E-mail Me" button at the bottom left? I trust HN users, but I think it's bad practice posting my e-mail address on a public forum. :)</comment></comment>


Are the Cool Kids Leaving Facebook?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.markevanstech.com/2008/01/04/are-the-cool-kids-leaving-facebook/ <comment><USER2> The Cool Kids aren't leaving Facebook; the Cool Kids were never on Facebook.

Facebook, like Myspace before it, gained popularity for the same reason as sports cars are popular -- people used large lists of "friends" just like powerful car engines to compensate for their feelings of insecurity and inadequacy.

This isn't to say that social networking sites have no useful purpose: Just like sports cars provide the service of getting from point A to point B, social networking sites provide mechanisms for manycasting news. But this is a secondary function of far less importance than compensating for genitalia size.

<comment><USER3> What he said.

I don't think that the cool kids ever were on Facebook. They're all too busy on Hacker news.

<comment><USER4> Hear, hear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Like a hot night spot, each social networking site will eventually fall out of favor to the next cool place.

The business-arc of social networking sites will be much shorter than for non- social applications, and I'm not sure how anyone can ever build a decades-long success on social networking.

T

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the next hot social networking site is your own website.

I've been improving my blog with stuff like Twitter/Jaiku widgets, OpenID, Gravatar, photo albums, etc. I can push my presence out using RSS. Piece by piece I'm adding all of the useful features of Facebook.

I can own all of my own data and control all of my own privacy.

I use the Wordbook plugin for Wordpress to bridge to my Facebook profile.

<comment><USER7> I agree! I actually stayed up all night the other night doing that. I registered www.jeremyraines.com and it just uses ruby's xml and rss parsing libraries to scrape certain pictures from my flickr account, certain kinds of posts from my tumblr, and it has my friendfeed widget on it. I had more fun building it than I've ever had on facebook -- I learned some stuff about XPath, Ruby, CSS and regular expressions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, I'd like to leave, primarily because I don't trust facebook with my personal information, or at least I want to be in control of how it's used. But I often find sending messages with facebook more pleasant than sending them via my email account for some largely aesthetic reasons. And I really enjoy being a little closer to (knowing about, basically - photos, status updates, etc) my geographically distant friends and email does not permit that at the moment.

I'd definitely leave for an open, easy-to-use system where I am in control of my personal data's usage. Perhaps an open protocol that email providers could abide by. But until that day I'm sure I'll stay, albeit while attempting to minimise the personal data I exude (which is difficult, I know).</comment>


Don't trust the locals: investigating prevalence of persistent client-side XSS - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/04/10/dont-trust-the-locals-investigating-the-prevalence-of-persistent-client-side-cross-site-scripting-in-the-wild/ <comment><USER2> Discovered a cookie-persisted version of this at a large multi-national (Global Fortune 100). It affected almost all of their SSO pages. They all had multiple XSS issues, and then they read from a cookie and then wrote that value to the page inside some Javascript(!), so I was able to persist the XSS on the user's machine indefinitely (until they cleared their cookies).

The result was the ability to capture user credentials at any of their login portals, and the "infection" mechanism would have just been the victim clicking on a link to one of their login portals.

The company has a bug bounty that awards "schwag", which I knew going in. So now I have two of the same really dumb t-shirts.

<comment><USER3> You have two tee shirts and some random dude on hacker news eternal gratitude — me.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Highlights, to me:

\- do not trust localStorage

\- quote: The most challenging pattern in our dataset consists of scenarios in which applications use the persistence mechanisms to deliberately store HTML or JavaScript code, e.g., for client-side caching purposes. In this setting, the attacker is able to completely overwrite the contents of the corresponding storage entry with their own code. We could identify in several cases these flaws are actually introduced by third-party libraries, among them CloudFlare and Criteo.

<comment><USER5> Isn't "do not trust localStorage" another variant of "do not trust the client"?

Taking client-controlled storage and inserting it unsafely into the DOM sounds like a bad idea, although it's not something that is popularly discussed as a trust boundary so awareness is key (this article is a great example).

<comment><USER4> Exactly so. The use case of Local Storage is usually "application cache." When you're building out features, it may not even be obvious that you're injecting application state _that originated in localStorage_ into the DOM. That's why this is such an easy problem to fall into.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Use one XSS, like reflected URL parameter, to store the code to localStorage for locally persisted XSS. Looks like fun.

</comment><comment><USER7> XSS coupled with a vulnerable JSONP endpoint can also be chained to a persistent client-side XSS via service workers. [https://c0nradsc0rner.com/2016/06/17/xss-persistence- using-j...](https://c0nradsc0rner.com/2016/06/17/xss-persistence-using-jsonp- and-serviceworkers/)

</comment><comment><USER8> The proposed solution, to use the ServiceWorker as a trusted cache, is OK when you own the entire origin. Unfortunately, for 3rd parties this is not an option. There can be only one global ServiceWorker per document/scope. Clobbering the global one by a third party would be unwelcome by page owners, and there's no standard for graceful cooperation here.</comment>


An LZ Codec Designed for SSE Decompression (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://conorstokes.github.io/compression/2016/02/15/an-LZ-codec-designed-for-SSE-decompression <comment><USER2> If you're interested in results, it's also worth reading the follow-up which show that on equal footings LZSSE8 is a more general choice than LZSSE2 which works well on text and in high compression scenarios ([http://conorstokes.github.io/compression/2016/02/24/compress...](http://conorstokes.github.io/compression/2016/02/24/compressor- improvements-and-lzsse2-vs-lzsse8)).

</comment><comment><USER3> posts involving vectorization are always nice, especially if it involves compression. I'd love to see a vectorized version of arithmetic coding, that would definitely be interesting

<comment><USER4> [https://arxiv.org/abs/1402.3392](https://arxiv.org/abs/1402.3392)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty cool. It competes well with lz4 even if it is amd64 only. I wonder what an ARM version would look like. Here's to hoping he author keeps working on this.

<comment><USER2> LZSSE author here, Evan Nemerson has started a portable version of LZSSE that uses his own SSE emulation layer and has apparently got it working on the Raspberry Pi 2.

<comment><USER2> For anyone wondering, that project is called LZSSE-SIMDe and is available here ([https://github.com/nemequ/LZSSE-SIMDe](https://github.com/nemequ/LZSSE- SIMDe)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Has anyone seen any work done on a virtual machine bytecode that leans on Intel AVX to do its work in parallel?

<comment><USER7> Many intermediate languages support vector extensions...

<comment><USER6> I was referring to actual execution of bytecode in parallel, not just support for vectorized math.

<comment><USER8> Probably wouldn't work in the general case, as each of the bytecode streams would generate memory accesses that are completely independent.

Not to restate the obvious, but SIMD relies on locality of data access to keep the SIMD unit fed with enough data bandwidth.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Wave: too complicated for its own good - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2232311/pagenum/all

<comment><USER2> I think people who think Google Wave doesn't get it will be eating their words later, much like those who thought the same thing about the iPod (most of the geek communities turned their nose up at that too).

I can see instant usefulness to Wave. I have my invite, and one of my colleagues does too. I can't wait for my other cofounders to get access so that we can use it for real work. Email really just sucks in so many ways.

Edit: It's worth adding that a lot of articles and pundits seem to be comparing Wave and, say, Twitter. Wave is nothing like Twitter, nor does it aim to be anything like Twitter. No, we're not going to start using Wave instead of Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, etc... because that's _not_ what it's for! Wave might end up being useful for social communications too, but the most important pain points that it resolves are business pains, problems that people encounter when they're trying to work together remotely.

<comment><USER3> >> "I think people who think Google Wave doesn't get it will be eating their words later, much like those who thought the same thing about the iPod (most of the geek communities turned their nose up at that too)."

I'd somewhat bet the opposite. Geeks will be raving about wave and how it's realtime, XMPP federated, technically impressive etc etc, whilst the average person on the street will have no clue what it does and why they need it.

<comment><USER4> So the question is whether or not it remains a niche tool like RSS (which is to say only used by the technically savvy) or does it get abstracted into a transparent technology and used as a leverage tool like AJAX?

<comment><USER5> I don't think RSS is a niche. What major email client does not have RSS integration? What major websites do not offer RSS feeds?

<comment><USER4> I don't know about you, but the only people I know who actually _use_ RSS are more technically advanced than 90% of the internet users I meet.

<comment><USER6> RSS is too complicated and constrained for the "average joe" on the street, which is why most "non-techies" I know just Google wherever they want to surf. Google speaks a language most people understand, while RSS still sounds like useless jibber jabber to these casual users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I stopped playing with it when I realized that the option to turn off instant- typing-relay wasn't implemented yet. Sorry, instant deal breaker. I've ^H^H^H'ed far too many obscenities directed at friends and clients for that to fly.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand why instant-typing-display was implemented in the first place. Or rather, I understand that it's supposed to speed up communication, but the drawbacks to it seem so huge in comparison to the tiny benefit that it really just feels like engineering-porn; i.e. a "cool" feature that does more to showcase technical brilliance than to serve any real need.

<comment><USER9> I think it serves a very real need: discipline. By making it the most basic wave feature, they're committing to making sure that the system can always handle a constant stream of realtime updates from every user. If anybody breaks it or introduces a performance regression, everybody will notice. It also means that people writing robots and extensions can assume that they can deal with updates in realtime, on such a fine grained level. If extension writers had to worry that per-character updates might introduce too much overhead, it would hamper their creativity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What I find fascinatingly baffling about Google Wave is that it's partly one of the most impressive communications tools I've used, and partly a compilation of features I saw removed from other sites for being poor design.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think we'll see high level abstractions of a wave. My bet is google will introduce it to the generally population with most of the features turned off, so they don't even notice.

For example: \- In Gmail, when you hit reply it will be in a wave. When you hit replay-all, it will create a wave, auto-invite the recipients and it just looks like Gmail version 2.0.

\- In GoogleDocs, the document can be shared now, but you'll be able to rewind the stack and see peoples changes. There will be commenting on documents (dunno is there is now?).

So I think most of googles apps will be wave-ified gradually and most people wont really notice. I think at the moment, you have the full wave hose turned on and people are getting a little freaked out.

</comment><comment><USER12> Google needs to do two things with the GWT client UI:

1) clear up the confusion between collaboration spaces and conversation spaces, by making each wave have one collaboration space at the top and conversation space below it;

2) confine live typing and editing of the contributions of others to the collaboration space.

I wouldn't apply these same strictures to gadgets necessarily.

Also, they need to stop trying to use the Wave brand to mean two things. It's stuck as the name of this one client experience; the protocol should get an acronym or something.

<comment><USER13> Yup. This nails it. The biggest problem with wave is I think they took it just one baby step too far in abstraction. The thing needs to clearly separate these two uses (collaboration, conversation), and all of my main gripes of the thing will disappear. Not sure of the _best_ way (one could imagine a fixed layout as you suggest, another way would be to allow users to filter things more easily, whatever) but without this Waves (at least, the big ones) degrade to the least-common-denominator of the various use cases: chat rooms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think Google Wave will succeed...eventually. I'm not sure if they are aiming it as a replacement for GMail. Most non-technical people I talk to have no clue what Google Wave is and when I explain it to them, they usually could care less.

The concept is a big change from what we people are familiar with today and I think the only way for Google to try to make it a household name like GMail is to slowly merge the features into GMail. Once they get a large enough population raving about it, these people will usually make their friends/family/colleagues try it out, and from there adoption will gradually increase. But if Wave is not a replacement for GMail, I'm not sure people will go out of their way to use another service that most of the time their email program will do just fine.

Now, if you like the Google Wave concept, I ask you to give MooGroups (<http://moogroups.com>) a try. You get the power of centralized discussions directly in your inbox, without ever having to leave your inbox, without having to create an account, and while using any email program. Plus a polls gadget based on free-form text.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think for Wave to be ultimately successful, they'll have to ditch the "live typing" feature. Typing is a low-bandwidth form of communication, because you lose all of the other conversational cues (tone of voice, facial expression, etc.) that make sure your proper meaning comes across. Thus, when you're typing to somebody, you often have to double-check what you've written to make sure that it's not taken the wrong way. With live typing, you don't have that option. The cat's already out of the bag before you can reach for the delete key.

I can't count the number of times I've retyped a sentence on IM because the original was too ambiguous and could be misconstrued.

They're going to have to either kill the feature, or turn it off by default.

<comment><USER16> I wish they wouldn't. I always missed that feature from icq and I've never felt self-conscious about missteps and corrections. That is, after all, how talking works.

<comment><USER15> Unless you talk in a monotone, talking and typing are inherently different. Talking has a dramatically higher bandwidth, because you can alter the pitch, stress, and semantic meaning simultaneously.

For example, sarcasm is trivial with spoken communication, and remarkably hard in written.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Posted on this yesterday: [http://www.teabuzzed.com/2009/10/google-waves- creepy-feature...](http://www.teabuzzed.com/2009/10/google-waves-creepy- feature/)

Definitely agree with the OP. Wave should allow this feature to be disabled easily for chat.. I can see it being used for doc collab but for chat it's a horrible idea for a number of reasons.

Is it that hard to get a conference call going via Google Voice and actually talk to other users in real time using your voice?

</comment><comment><USER18> It reminds me of ICQ...

</comment><comment><USER19> Google Wave is the next Zombo.com, as far as I can tell.</comment>


Ask HN: Who's looking for Ruby/Javascript startup employment near San Francisco? - <AUTHOR>

This is a more specific version of the the previous post "Who's looking for employment" in hopes of narrowing the scope of the question.  My company (styleowner.com) is hiring but this post is intended to help others who have the same specific need we do.<p>ps. Our specific situation would allow telecommuters as well given the right amount of experience. <comment><USER2> who did your video? it's pretty well done

by the way I don't know what your user distribution channel is, but the first thing I thought of when I visited your site is that fashion gurus on YouTube (the girls who talk about makeup and stuff) might be good early adopters

sorry if my comments are random and don't really address your post directly</comment>


Ballmer (and Microsoft) still doesn't get the iPad - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/07/ballmer-and-microsoft-still-doesnt-get-the-ipad.ars?utm_source=Ars+Technica+Newsletter&utm_campaign=601043dd81-Aug_5_2010_Newsletter&utm_medium=email

<comment><USER2> I doubt very seriously that they "don't get it". What's Ballmer supposed to say?

"Hey guys, we completely missed on this. Apple brought out this really cool device that we have no answer for. Our bad. _shrugs_ "

No, I'm sure that they firmly understand what's going on. The question is, do they still have the technical expertise to actually do anything about it? I'm not really sure. They remind me of Nokia actually.

Little known fact: Nokia was working on a touchscreen device LONG before the iPhone came out.

The problem was two-fold: they didn't understand how to innovate the interface. Their attempt was largely click based. Your finger was supposed to be more or less like a mouse.

Second, when the iPhone did come out they lacked the technical competency to respond. Their base operating system, S60, was a poorly engineered mess and at the lower levels everyone knew it. Trying to bolt on a next-generation interface was a dead-end, but that didn't stop them from trying. To this day, the engineering culture at Nokia shows little ability to actually keep up and compete.

I fear Microsoft is in much the same position. Do they know they're getting their butts kicked on tablets (and mobile for that matter)? Yep. But unlike previous times they've gotten beaten up (think netscape/Internet) they just don't seem to have the ability to respond. In the past they'd hire their way out of it... but Google has already snatched up and incredible amount of mobile talent (like Matias Duarte). Not that it matters, because the culture at Microsoft appears to have become frozen. I'm just not sure that they have the will, as a company, to respond in any meaningful way.

<comment><USER3> Did you read what Ballmer keeps saying though? He flogs Windows as the answer to everything, and points at the existence of pen-controlled laptop/tablets with flip-around screens that can run some special tablet-designed software (on top of stock windows) as evidence that Microsoft "gets it". He talks about how wonderful the MS Surface (the giant table thing) is. Etc. Etc.

Microsoft's strategy would be completely different if they "got it". They would've taken their billions of dollars in the bank, and hired a team of people who could get a new platform built. They'd have set internal expectations high, and kept a tight focus on meeting real needs with an interface that could delight users.

I think the individual technical expertise probably exists somewhere inside Microsoft: they do all kinds of neat research, and employ plenty of smart people. Evidently, though, the institutional structure of Microsoft, with competing teams vying for resources and squabbling over areas of perceived overlapping expertise, has prevented them from executing.

In my opinion, everything Microsoft has done over the last 5-10 years (if not forever) has been a game of catch-up, trying to copy competitors when they see those competitors as more successful, and seldom if ever really innovating, at least not in shipping products. The Microsoft product vision seems myopic and incoherent.

<comment><USER4> Curious, how do you know MS isn't doing exactly what you said? How do you know that project isn't called WP7?

Ballmer may be doing a Jobs. "Nobody reads anymore"... well not until I release iBooks that is.

At this point there is so little reason to play their tablet hand if it is WP7. They already have 3rd parties working on apps. The only thing they'd get is scrutiny.

Update: This is basically exactly what the TechFlash article referred to in another comment says.

<comment><USER3> You're right, they probably are dumping money at the problem and trying to catch up. After all, that's how we got Windows Mobile smartphones, Origami, WebTV, Ultimate TV, MSN TV, PlaysForSure (haha), the Zune, Bing, Windows Phone 7, and on and on.

The question is: are any of these platforms actually successful? If Microsoft "got it", wouldn't there be some notable successes here among all the failures? Wouldn't the company be able to make _something_ other than Windows and Office reasonably profitable, if they truly understood where technology was going and what users wanted?

<comment><USER4> Well you've conveniently left off a lot of products where they did come from behind and do quite well: XBox, C++ (remember Borland C++?), C#, Excel, Word, Hyper-V, SQL Server, even Bing has had 13 straight months of growth.

And even WinMo came out and did match their chief competitor at the time, Palm OS.

The problem isn't that they can't make products successful -- Zune makes a profit. It's that they need to make a profit that moves the bottomline, which is hard if you have Windows and Office.

<comment><USER3> Well, first, most of those are very old. Second, did any of those actually _innovate_? My personal opinion of Word is that it was great as a Mac application, through version 5.1, and has been shit ever since; I refuse to use it, after too many horribly frustrating experiences. Excel killed off superior spreadsheets, and is arcane and needlessly difficult to use. MSN and now Bing get market share just by being the default in Windows; not sure that says much about them.

The problem (from my consumer perspective) is that Microsoft's existence (at least for the last 15 years) doesn't result in any products that are fundamentally better than those that would have been around anyway. The comparison to Apple (the original topic here) is like night to day.

<comment><USER4> Honestly, I think your problem is that you're probably not the target audience.

Lets take Excel as an example. What is a superior spreadsheet to Excel today? It is by far the easiest spreadsheet that I've used. Much easier than Google's or Open Office's. Plus has capabilities that neither has. For example, check out its support for pivot tables and pivot charts, including accessing RDBMS and OLAP stores. And with PowerPivot now supports GB in memory warehouses. Really, give me a spreadsheet that can do what Excel can do, yet I can give it to a 10 year old kid and they can keep their batting average tracked in it?

And don't forget that Excel and Word (and the rest of Office) come with powerful addin models. I've seen companies build their entire workflow in Office. Something you simply can't do with any other product in the market.

Sure Excel may not be innovating in the sense that it doesn't have an external antenna. But there's a reason that people pay money for it, despite these free products. And its not because they're idiots. It's because when you actually stack up the apps, and look at the features, Excel kills it. And Excel 2010 adds a LOT of new features that paying customers want (and have asked for). Sure, I don't expect the 10 year old kid who is tracking his RBIs to care about about new built-in calculations or embedded filters in charts, or no PIA deployment, but for people who demand a lot of their spreadsheets, it can't be beat.

And you don't think Kinect is a little innovative? Really? Sure, maybe not your cup of tea, but if people are falling all over themselves for the iPhone 4's gyroscope you have to give MS a little props for Kinect (not to mention XBox Live).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Microsoft is trapped in a classic innovator's dilemma.

For those who aren't familiar with the book, the basic idea is that well- managed firms are structured to direct resources toward the needs of their most profitable customers. In Microsoft's case, that's the corporate IT department. Licenses to home users are lucrative, but consumers only buy Windows with new PCs, and MS has little influence on when they upgrade. Corporate customers have more discretion. Microsoft is built to serve them.

The best proof of this interpretation is that the most successful consumer- oriented projects within Microsoft have been the ones that were incubated in isolation from the rest of the company - XBox and the Zune.

It's going to be extremely difficult for Microsoft to compete with iOS and Android devices, because their corporate customers simply don't care about them. As a result, middle managers in Microsoft largely don't care about them, and will never give those projects the attention and resources they would need to be competitive.

<comment><USER4> Based on what I'm hearing from folks in Redmond, WP7 is top priority right now. I honestly think they'd push back the schedule on Windows 8 for it. I don't think many middle managers are able to tell the WP7 team, "you're not important... I'm focused on my enterprise customers". I think it would be escalated to Ballmer, Sinofsky, and the guy who runs Office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm partial to the theory that Windows Phone 7's UI is actually part of a larger "touch" strategy that would cleanly apply to tablets/pads/slates: [http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/07/why_microsoft_isnt_...](http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/07/why_microsoft_isnt_putting_windows_phone_os_on_tablets.html)

<comment><USER7> I saw a demo of it at Maker's Faire. A young MSFT hacker was using the accelerometer and touch UI to drive a t shirt cannon that was controlled by Microsoft's robotics studio. He could rotate the phone, tilt it up or down, and aim the t shirt cannon. It was really cool.

On top of that, the UI that I could see was rather nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Steve Ballmer couldn't find his ass with a stick and a mirror. (Thanks, Lee Childs.) What amuses me is that people can't bring themselves to say the obvious: the CEO of Microsoft is a fool.

</comment><comment><USER9> Very similar discussion a little while back:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1563021>

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes, we know. MS aren't big and scary anymore and they're not really controlling things anymore. Does NH need their opinions on the iPad? Who cares?

<comment><USER11> Your first claim is false: if MS isn't big, what is?

Second, if MS ever wakes up, they will most certainly be scary. That isn't likely to happen with Ballmer, but if Bill was ever to return (or even appoint a new CEO) Microsoft may return to being scary.

<comment><USER10> 'Your first claim is false: if MS isn't big, what is?'

You're paraphrasing me. I said MS isn't big and scary anymore. Like a big scary monster. Of course they're still a large company.

But now anyone doing something in computing is worried that MS will either incorporate what they're doing into Windows or buy their competitors product instead of theirs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Please, people, listen to me:

 __tablet != slate __

That is all, back to work now.

<comment><USER13> No one has mentionned price yet. Tablet PCs usually sell over 2000$, that's a lot of money for a "cool gadget". That is why netbooks are selling like hot pancakes, you pay only a few hundred bucks for a low power device. The gab between the iPad and the Tablet PC prices is so huge that no technology seems to be able to justify it.

<comment><USER14> The tablet PC I am using now was only $850 when it was new. HP TX2 from Best Buy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I still don't get the iPad.

<comment><USER16> It's quite simple: the iPad is Steve Jobs' second attempt to create the UberShiny, after the Macintosh, which was version 1.0. (Ignore the Newton; that was not a Jobs program.)

It's got the same core ingredients as the Mac: utterly, shockingly new user interface paradigm that is _easier to use_ , a machine which at launch is locked down tighter than a bank vault (and dismissed as a toy by people still wedded to the old paradigm), plug-in-and-go computing.

This time, he's added a couple of new twists: the app store (so Apple can veto apps that don't mesh with their vision of where the platform is going, the smaller portable gizmos (phone and ipod touch), syncing to a mothership for backup.

I expect in the longer term, (a) the sync hub will migrate from the (dying) Mac platform to the cloud and/or Apple's MobileMe service, and (b) we'll eventually see some opening up of the platform -- I'd _love_ the iPad equivalent of the Mac II, but that's probably a couple of years away.

For now, Apple have got their pure and shiny platform back, better than before and _not_ liable to being cloned by Microsoft in the short term (unlike the Mac platform, which was visibly losing its UI lead over Windows with Win7 and facing parity as of Win8). I don't think this one will keep them ahead anything like as long as the Mac did, but it's got to be good for 5-10 years.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's his 3rd, actually -- his second was a dismal failure in spite being a promising idea, mainly because the execution stank (NeXT -- with a black and white display, and even slower than the aging contemporary 68K-based mac with a color display , it cost 3x more).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Published first Android game and no one is downloading it. What to do? - <AUTHOR> Hi all,
I recently published my first Android game (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.foogacy.chainy.free) and no one is downloading it. I really mean no one. 0 downloads excluding a couple of friends of mine.
The game is very simple with an even simpler graphic (I am not really good at it!) but I do not think that's the issue as there are worst things out there.
What can I do to advertise it for free? I do not want to spam here and there.
Many thanks! <comment><USER2> I would say the reasons I wouldn't download it: \- No video showing game play. \- The static screenshots don't really tell a story. \- The icon doesn't speak with me or convey a brand or idea. Sure it says Chainy but as I scroll through a million other apps in the store it doesn't catch my attention. I doubt I would even give it a pause.

Give Chainy a more eye catching icon, maybe a YouTube video with some sample play. I think those two things would definitely help grab a few more downloads. Oh and post a link, the video and a description around on blogs, forums, reddit, etc but don't be pushy.</comment>


Ask HN: Alternatives for gvpr - <AUTHOR> I've found Graphviz gvpr to be very useful for programmatically generating graph visualizations. For example if I'm creating a visualization for a graph algorithm, and want to show each step of the algorithm as an iteration of the graph mutated from the previous state, gvpr makes it pretty easy to. This makes it very nice to make changes earlier in the algorithm (such as visual style) and have them propagated through all the steps. However, the language is ancient and it's easy to imagine a lot of additional features in a tool like this. Are there any alternatives in this space? <comment><AUTHOR> I spent some time playing around with NetworkX (python library) today. It has all the necessary features for graph building, and the graphviz (dot) file writing seems to have enough features to accomplish what I was looking for. The small proof of concept script I put together seemed on par with what I could do with gvpr.

</comment><comment><USER2> Igraph is a great general purpose library for manipulating graphs, with interfaces in both R and Python.</comment>


Perl 6 Books – The Time Is Ripe - <AUTHOR> https://perl6advent.wordpress.com/2016/12/06/day-6-perl-6-books-the-time-is-ripe/ <comment><USER2> Yay! It was about time for some useful books to appear!</comment>


Ask HN: Why can't I just install stock Android? - <AUTHOR> Why can't I install stock Android on my phone just like I can install Linux on pretty much any PC? Is there a fundamental difference with phone hardware which makes this especially difficult? <comment><USER2> You can, sometimes:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooting_(Android)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooting_\(Android\))

The Wikipedia article explains it quite well in the introduction. The fundamental difference lies in the economical model of smartphone sales, where you may be limited (legally or technologically) in what you are allowed to do with the hardware by the carrier or manufacturer.</comment>


How Apple tracks your location without consent, and why it matters - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/04/how-apple-tracks-your-location-without-your-consent-and-why-it-matters.ars <comment><USER2> I'm disappointed with Ars on this one. There is a lot of fear-mongering in the article with a strong implication Apple is taking the data. There is not any evidence the data is being used by Apple at all.

Yes, the file should not be in the clear (it probably shouldn't exist in its current uncapped form), but can we stick to the facts, please. When we know something is being sent to Apple, we can turn on the hate.

<comment><USER3> It seemed pretty factual to me. I wouldn't exactly call it fear-mongering, an actual portrayal of the situation is fear-educing enough. It would be irresponsible for Ars to not point out the ways this data could be compromised and the severity of that happening.

>Yes, the file should not be in the clear

No, that file should not exist at all.

>When we know something is being sent to Apple, we can turn on the hate.

So it doesn't matter that they're collecting the data to begin with? At all? I'd prefer to be asked for permission, not for forgiveness after the fact. Only what they decide to do with it matters? Even though they've left it lying around for a year in a format you admit was inadequate?

<comment><USER2> The problem I have is I don't see it as "they" are collecting the information. It is information I am collecting on my phone (until proven otherwise). Concerns about Michegan abusing my data should engender outrage...at Michegan for violating the fourth amendment.

I'm not keen on the file and will take steps to nuke it, since I jailbreak. I just thing the the level of anger is premature, until we know why the file exists (eg does it give me a better experience) or we know Apple or Google are taking the data off my phone.

<comment><USER3> >I don't see it as "they" are collecting the information.

This is an interesting distinction, that I don't really know where I stand. _They_ wrote the software, but it runs on a device _you_ choose to own and operate.

Allow me to as a few hypothetical questions, that I don't want to imply relate to this situation, but instead challenge some notions of who the actor is in their context: If I get a virus that encrypts my files and demands ransom, did I do it to myself? Do I run my website, or do I tell my hosting provider how to run it? If I have a device that uses TPM to make me completely unable to change, modify or understand what the code on it does, am I the one performing the actions of the software or is the writer? If I compute 2+2 serverside vs in javascript clientside, does that change who is doing the adding? If it is the owner of the device is the actor, what if the software is (unbeknownst to the user) stealing credit card numbers from the POS terminal it is installed on. Who is legally responsible then?

Software operates on its own, and can do so simultaneously for more than one party, with potentially conflicting interests. I think our shuffle to the cloud is going to run into some complex ownership, responsibility, liability and transparency questions soon, I'm interested to see how it all shakes out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I haven't seen any mentions of this data being sent to Apple. Until that comes out, I'd prefer to turn this tracking off but I don't particularly care about it.

It's not like anyone can get access to it without breaking into your computer and it's not a real time feed. On top of the fact that it's only recording the gps location of the cell tower you're connected to (supposedly) it seems about as much of a security issue as my 4square feed.

<comment><USER5> From everything I have read, it doesn't go to Apple at all and the data isn't very accurate. This is a non-starter to me.

<comment><USER6> Kinda like saying one didn't inhale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good to know, I suppose, if you're worried about a spying spouse, but hard to care much -- the carriers are already tracking you anyway, after all. (And probably monitoring texts and phone calls, too (a la Carnivore). Or am I too cynical?)

<comment><USER8> That's actually the point of the article - law enforcement does have access to tracking data, but the barriers to access are high.

By storing a user's data in an easily-accessible, unencrypted way the barriers are low enough that private investigators, stalkers, and other unsavory types have a similar level of access to someone's data, but with none of the legal hoops and hassles.

<comment><USER9> If stalkers and other unsavory types have unmonitored access to my computer and phone, them getting a file listing places I've been is the least of my worries.

<comment><USER8> You're a police informant. You're an undercover cop who didn't realise all this was accessible, but the organisation you've infiltrated just did.

Look, it's so easy to conceive of situations where someone's well-being is seriously impacted by having this location data stored so sloppily that it's almost not worth arguing about. Almost! ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Having location services enabled and recording location history are two completely different things. A am very surprised more people are not concerned about this. Wonder if Microsoft or Google is doing the same thing on their phones.

<comment><USER11> Well considering AT&T can just as easily log the same thing and you wouldn't need to go to all the effort of going to someone's house and confiscating their computer and/or phone, I'm not sure why anyone should be any more concerned than they already are.

<comment><USER12> Because no one other than AT&T is AT&T, obviously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a data addict, I actually wish my phone had this feature :)

<comment><USER14> Doesn't Google Latitude do something similar? What phone do you use?

<comment><USER15> It does, but you have to turn it on: <https://www.google.com/latitude/b/0/history>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> When this story broke this morning, my first thought was "this must be something related to or used by the MobileMe 'Find My iPhone' feature." I'm not entirely convinced of that, but I'm willing to wait for the official 'reality distortion field' answer before I start grumbling. Even then it may not really bother me.... It's not terribly different from how my car phone provider back in the mid-90s provided triangulation "guesses" for call locations. (It's just always on.... but in that respect so is my phone.)

What does bother me, though, is how easy this data is to get to.

<comment><USER17> All of the data on your phone is easy to get to. If privacy is a concern then you should encrypt your backups (regardless of which smartphone you happen to use).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> When you consider something like this...

[http://www.geek.com/articles/news/michigan-police-can- scan-a...](http://www.geek.com/articles/news/michigan-police-can-scan-all-of- your-phones-data-in-less-than-2-minutes-20110421/)

...where the Michagan State Police believe that your cell phone data is searchable without a warrant, something like your cell phone storing your locations does matter. I'm a bit surprised to see this being hand-waved away by many of the commenters.

</comment><comment><USER19> As far as "without consent", one can as well go to Settings>Location and see all the apps which access your location.

Also a point to note is the device these are on (iPhones and iPads) is making them accessible to these, so saying "without consent" seems like the wrong word. The device will have that information by default and nature of it being the middle layer.

Why Apple is putting it in an unencrypted format is a different story altogether.

</comment><comment><USER20> He added, he continued... These are press release words. I wonder why they're showing up here?

</comment><comment><USER21> Without consent? You have to have location services turned on and they're off by default when you get your phone.

<comment><USER22> I believe the article mentioned that the data comes purely from triangulating your position with what cell towers you are connected to. The consent related to location services seems to be only related to the GPS data. The author mentioned a trip to China where he turned off cell data services and used the GPS and Wifi and that none of those locations were tracked in the file.

<comment><USER17>
      I believe the article mentioned that the data comes purely
      from triangulating your position with what cell towers you
      are connected to.

Correct. Wi-fi triangulation data is cached in a different file (which is also stored in your backups).

      The consent related to location services seems to be
      only related to the GPS data.

No, Location Services includes everything: Cell tower triangulation, Wi-Fi triangulation, and GPS.</comment></comment></comment>


The Grift Goes On - <AUTHOR> https://www.eschatonblog.com/2020/05/the-grift-goes-on.html <comment><USER2> It's fraud. It should be illegal to offer a "pre-order" of consumer features that take more than 12 months to actually deliver. And by claiming the car's value will jump this much, it's effectively gambling which is also illegal in most jurisdictions.</comment>


WikiLeaks: Iraqi children in U.S. raid shot in head, U.N. says - <AUTHOR> http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/08/31/122789/wikileaks-iraqi-children-in-us.html

<comment><USER2> The worst part of the USA is not the inhuman bastards that planned and executed these atrocities. The worst part of the USA are those that let this happen without rebelling, without saying nothing... they just do nothing about it and let it happen. Over and over again.</comment>


57 updates 1016.18 MB will be downloaded - <AUTHOR>

I just noticed that there are new Ubuntu updates today, 57 of them totaling over a 1 Gig. It looks like one large item is libwebkitgtk-3.0-0-dbg weighing at 461.9 MB, the other is also for webkit around the same size (massive). Is it just me or does this seem like a really huge library? <comment><USER2> Assuming -dbg implies versions of the frameworks with at least symbols, if not full debug information (file, line, type info, etc).

Even something trivial like #include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char __argv) { printf("Hello world\n"); return 0; }

Is around 4-5% larger with debug info, and that's a single trivial C program with a single call, and only build in types.

WebKit is largely C++, so a fairly trivial C++ program (that has no function): template <typename T> struct MyFoo { T m_field; template <typename U> void add(MyFoo<U> rhs) { m_field += rhs.m_field; } };

int main(int argc, char __argv) { MyFoo <float> f; f.m_field = 1.5; MyFoo<int> i; i.m_field = 1; MyFoo<double> d; d.m_field = 0; d.add(i); d.add(f); }

Has a 10% size difference in size between deployment style builds and builds with debug info.

As the code size increases that amount of information needed in debug builds starts getting very large, as the description of classes and functions starts getting even larger than pure C versions.

The size of a debug build can vary quite a lot, as there are different forms of debug info, most commonly stabs or DWARF (and DWARF2). But even these are fairly bad in terms of space efficiency (stabs is evil), mostly as there isn't any real reason for focusing on that - fairly "trivial" space optimizations aren't implemented at all which means there are huge amounts of duplicated information, and the debug formats aren't really C++ aware, so each instantiation of a template results in a complete duplication of all the data describing it.

It would be nice if these problems could be fixed (eg. debug info that's aware of templates is the biggest problem in webkit), but other places where information is duplicated needlessly is also fairly crappy. But there's stuff pushing back against such optimizations:

Debug symbols are primarily used in _debug_ builds, while debugging. When you're debugging you want the build to be as fast as possible, and any work the compiler+linker do to reduce debug data size is going to add to compilation time, which everyone will then complain about.

(Of course without SSDs we'd have probably reached the point we're writing such large amounts of data out would be taking longer than reducing the size and writing less data in the first place...)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think you need packages that are suffixes with -dbg, unless you need debug symbols.

<comment><USER4> Exactly, -dbg packages only contain the debug symbols. This is to ensure that the actual library package is quite small while allowing people to install debug symbols if needed, without compiling from source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use apt-cacher-ng as a caching proxy for Ubuntu packages. Highly recommend it if you're updating multiple machines.

As other commenters have noted, your particular system's bloat is likely due to a -dbg package (with debugging symbols). It might be time for a fresh OS reinstall to purge the accumulated junk. (A new Linux Mint -- my personal distro of choice -- will probably be about a month after the Ubuntu 12.10 release.)</comment>


Ask PG: What is a good size for a YC idea? - <AUTHOR> When submitting your idea to YC, is it better to select something which has great potential but is almost certainly too large for the scope of 3 months, or to select a subset (ie one feature) and just submit that? <comment><USER2> We (Virtualmin) got in and the problems we solve are big and take a huge volume of code (though we had a 9 year jump on the problem when we applied, in our Open Source projects).

Parakey got in, and their problem set sounded really big...but I didn't understand what they were talking about most of the time, so I may have misunderstood. They also had a leg up, by being Blake Fucking Ross and Joe Fucking Hewitt.

Versionate is a big project, but they were well-started by the time of application.

Octopart is a big project. They faked it until they made it, and did so beautifully (their presentation was among the best on Demo Day for WFP07).

Loopt is a big set of problems, most of them non-technical, and pg considers it the best thing out of YC to date (and I see why...Sam's kicking ass).

Zenter was hard. But they broke the rules and pretended like it was easy and actually produced something that mostly worked in a few months.

So, yeah, while the majority of YC companies are pretty small ideas that can be executed by a very small team, many success stories (or success stories in the making) out of YC have been big ideas.

<comment><USER3> is there a way, any way, for us plebeians to have a look at the presentations done on demo days?

<comment><USER4> I doubt we'd make them public, since (a) most of the startups haven't launched yet by that time and (b) even the ones that have tend to describe future plans they'd rather not have get into the hands of competitors.

<comment><USER5> One option would be to record them, then let the startups themselves decide whether to distribute the videos or not.

<comment><USER6> That's a good idea, though the startups could just repeat the presentation later in front of a camera, which might be a better idea (they can do multiple shoots, etc).

<comment><USER7> While it sounds like a good idea, that seems unlikely to work. Why would they put in the extra effort? I think it would be one of those good ideas that get postponed indefinitely.

<comment><USER2> Yes on all counts. I wouldn't want our Demo Day presentation disseminated because it kinda sucked. And I wouldn't do it again, because when I next present I expect a big fat check to follow within a month or so. But maybe I'm just lazy.

<comment><USER3> How can there not be any value in this? If not for the practice at least for the fanatical viewing this particular audience will do. And I'm also surprised at how little the companies communicate their product idea or vision. But maybe I'm focusing on the wrong thing.

<comment><USER6> I tend to agree. People may be underestimating the benefit that the increased awareness would give. Serendipity is powerful because "random" people often know the "right" people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We like big ideas. Just say what the end goal is and what you currently expect to do first. There's always some core you can get done in 3 months, and we are now quite good at figuring out what it should be.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds good, that's the answer we were hoping for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What I'd like to accomplish: Become Master of Space and Time

What I expect to do first: Apply to YC

For some reason, I'm having some trouble with some of the steps in between. (grin)

<comment><USER9> Consider a tag cloud.

<comment><USER8> I was thinking what I needed was a sock puppet, or maybe a website with a name with too many vowels, like ooweblioo. I'm also considering a folksonomy of avatars, or maybe a paradigm-shifting web 3.0 application that virtualizes social dynamics in a new dimension.

Dang! That sounds great! I think I'll call the puppet Bob. Man, I'm almost there.

<comment><USER10> Wow, it IS like 1999 all over again, isn't it?

I remember shopping for capital in '99, and we had quite a few problems getting VCs interested because we weren't asking for enough money, had a CEO who actually had 20 years C-level experience and a name that didn't start with the letter e.

About 2 years after we shuttered and sold off most of the code to various people, EMC implemented something very similar and made a few hundred million dollars off of it :/

<comment><USER8> There's some similarity. Only this time, the big companies are buying up the little fish early in the game and absorbing them into operations -- which is probably a much saner thing to do than everybody betting they have the next Google.

We're seeing the beginning of "retail startups", where we can spit them out like six packs of Coke, fund them, get them bought up by Amazon or whomever. The industry really wanted to get to this point in '99. They've made a lot of progress since then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think a good answer would be, "Anything that could be possibly scalated to a 'world domination' plan"</comment>