IE9 To Support CANVAS Tag (plus VIDEO, AUDIO, and SVG) - <AUTHOR> http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/info/ReleaseNotes/Default.html <comment><USER2> Wow, this is a tremendous piece of news. Not only is Canvas supported, but a huge list of other impressive standards-related stuff as well.

To boot, there will be support for ES5. I'm not up to date on where the other browser-makers are at this point, but could it actually end up that Microsoft will be the first out of the gate with a widely-distributed ES5 implementation?

<comment><USER3> In my opinion this is just Microsoft doing some hand waiving to confuse people. IE9 wont work on XP which means a majority of users won't have IE9 with in the next 5 years.

BY doing this Microsoft is able to say "Hey, we are standards compliant, we are the good guys now" and still actually be not standards compliant and prevent inovation on the web. To me this seems like normal Microsoft FUD[1]

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt>

<comment><USER4> Wow.. MS just can't win with some people.

IE6 and Windows XP are essentially the same age... Just as people need to upgrade their browser, they should be upgrading their OS.

<comment><USER5> Really? Because I can still buy a brand new computer with a brand new copy of XP, from Microsoft.

XP was the most reliable operating system from Microsoft, and I really don't like Windows 7. In this, I am not alone. I see absolutely no benefits in getting 7, and I have having to use it at work. I have found 7 to be less reliable, and more annoying to get simple stuff done. It really seems Microsoft keeps moving things around for no reason. The only thing I like about it is the improved task bar, and I can install that on XP (and have done.)

Firefox/Safari/Chrome/Opera still work ok on XP, Microsoft have just decided to leave XP alone.

<comment><USER6> How do you buy a copy of Windows XP, let alone a computer, from Microsoft?

<comment><USER7> Go to a Microsoft Store? <http://store.microsoft.com/Locations>

Actually, they probably won't sell you a copy of XP, but I'm sure they'll sell you a computer. They actually negotiated deals with OEMs to supply no-crapware versions of their computers for the stores.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'll never forgive them for the lack of innovation after they won the browser war back than, against Netscape.

Web would be a totally different place if they continue improving IE versions with, say, a built-in DB, native push / sockets, enhanced JS api, more standards, more of everything.

(I'm a developer on the MS platform)

</comment><comment><USER9> _IE9 JavaScript Engine

Features Available

Support for ES5 specification in IE9 Standards mode, including support for

\+ Enhanced Object Model - Accessor properties for JavaScript objects, Object.defineProperty, Object.defineProperties, Object.create, Object.getPrototypeOf, Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor, Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor, Object.keys, Object.seal, Object.freeze, Object.isSealed, Object.isFrozen, Object.preventExtensions, Object.isExtensible

\+ New Array Methods - indexOf, lastIndexOf, forEach, every, some, map, filter, reduce, reduceRight

\+ Other Computational Methods and Functions - String.prototype.trim, Date.prototype.toISOString, Date.parse, Date.now, Array.isArray, Function.prototype.bind_

This just made my day

</comment><comment><USER10> 83 on Acid3.

That's a pretty nice improvement for a team that says they're not focused on ACID. And Javascript perf actually appears to have improved. This is going to be some browser battle royale.

<comment><USER11> No! Not a battle. A culture of rapid development will be set in motion where users _learn_ to expect frequent browser upgrades to get the latest features, but where all browsers support today's suggested minimums out of the box. People already expect to upgrade TV sets every 2-3 years, and mobile handsets every 1.2 years, to get the latest features, why not browsers?

There will be no battle because no single browser has enough market share, both in terms of users and developer loyalty, to create a proprietary technology incompatible with the rest. IE's ActiveX crap is a remnant of an era past, the last vestige of the first dotcom. Since then, the developers have been moving towards the center and adopting standards. Not even ardent FOSS-heads had the stomach to release XUL apps into the wild, even for in- house stuff.

Today it's canvas, audio, video, geolocation, storage, etc. tomorrow you can expect some browser accelerated vector/numeric libraries, microphone support, webcam, phone sync, etc. I am not sure what's gonna drive it, but it could either be a portable hardware device, or a game, something that has to do with "having fun" or "friends", but it will push the browser further into desktop territory. The more resources web apps demand, the more browsers "cheat" and speed things up by bundling native hooks to provide that functionality. After blazing fast javascript, my first bet is on GPU accelerated javascript BLAS.

<comment><USER12> TV Sets every 2-3 years? Are you serious? Mobile Phones I'll give you in the 1-2 year range -- but normal people are not upgrading their TV every 3 years.

<comment><USER11> Who do you think is buying all these varieties of large-screen TV technologies from Plasma, DLP and projection technologies, including their HD variants? It's not just people who kept their old CRTs from the early 90s and waited. Go to Craigslist and you will see people selling TV sets that have HDMI, USB2 and memory slots ..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yeees <3 you Microsoft, now I just need to wait 3-4 years till IE 6,7 & 8 dies and I can start using canvas.

<comment><USER14> I believed so until recently, when I started to read about about action script (the stuff behind flash).

Action script is very close to javascript, close enough that it ought to be possible to write a crosscompiler so that you can give standards compliant HTML5 to chrome, safari and the mobile browsers and flash to IE and only editions of firefox y (since firefox stupidly does not include Chromes automatic update system).

<comment><USER15> Interesting that you mention that.

I haven't played around with it too much, but the guy who (made? works on? is in charge of?) jQuery made a Flash=>JS interpreter.

<http://paulirish.com/work/gordon/demos/>

It's fairly nifty in the demos that I saw, and works on the iphone with no problem.

<comment><USER16> Also consider haXe: <http://haxe.org/> It's an actionscript-inspired unified language which can be compiled into JS, Flash, PHP, C++ or interpreted on (yet another, sic) VM as an apache mod.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Gotta give them some respect for including the Opera 10.60 beta, which lowers their position and which they could have been excused for not doing.

I am really happy that MSFT is finally taking IE seriously.

</comment><comment><USER18> I hope they will in the future support WebGL. I'm building an app using it and would really like them to do so. It's not a deal breaker for us, our user base is mostly scientific users which don't usually mind having to install firefox/chrome/safari if they aren't already using it. With that said, one more browser supporting it can't hurt.

</comment><comment><USER19> Under video "<video> MP4 H.264 playback support, using hardware or software decoding. Support for WebM software is not included in this release."

Does that mean that IE9 is planning to support WebM? All I can find is mentions that IE9 can use codecs installed on the users computer but I can't find any commitment to WebM being bundled.

<comment><USER20> Microsoft isn't bundling the codec, but they have promised to make IE9 work well with it. Halfhearted support.

<comment><USER21> That's called being technically competent, not being halfhearted. Codecs do not belong in browsers.

People want video outside of browsers. Should everything that wants to support video have its own built-in copy of every codec? That's bloated.

In addition to bloat, if each thing has its own implementation, there will be subtle (and probably not so subtle) differences in them. It will annoy users if their videos look different depending on whether they are in a browser, or they downloaded the file and are playing it in a media player.

If the codec has user-setable options, the user has to set their preferences in multiple places.

<comment><USER22> Gotta disagree with you a bit. Most content that users watch online isn't (easily) downloadable and playable anywhere except in a browser. And even if it was, I'm not sure that anyone except a very small minority of users would ever take advantage of it. To a growing number of users, the OS is just something that you need in order to run a web browser, nothing more.

I think it's far more important to ensure that video plays easily and looks consistent across multiple machines, at least when played in the same browser. I can see someone understanding if a video doesn't look the same in Firefox as it does in WMP, but I suspect they'll be pretty annoyed if it works in Firefox on the computer downstairs, but not on the computer upstairs.

Most users don't know what the hell a codec is and don't care. They just want the software to work, and they want it to work the same across multiple computers and platforms. And if bundling the codecs in with the browser makes stuff 'just work,' then that's where the codecs ought to live, bloat be damned. Bits are cheap, goodwill and usability are expensive.

Web video is too important to a user's experience with a browser for browser developers to leave it up to the underlying OS. Bake it in, and it's guaranteed to work. If you let it depend on plugins or underlying media frameworks, then you're just asking for trouble.

That said, some sort of option to let the OS handle video wouldn't be bad, with a fallback to the embedded decoder -- this would let users take advantage of OS features or plugins that are tailored for their hardware (or just bleeding edge), while still ensuring that everyone gets at least basic video support just by virtue of installing the browser.

Put bluntly, video is a core part of the web and has been for some time; it's part of what many users _expect_ a browser to do, and do well. You don't outsource core features if you want them to be done right and consistently.

<comment><USER10> MS can't do due dilligence on every codec in the world. I suspect they spent a fair amount of money and time getting confidence in H264. Just because one of their rival companies pushes another codec hardly seems to be justification to take on responsibility for it (which they would if they shipped it).

<comment><USER20> Nobody's suggesting they should perform due diligence on every codec in the world. WebM is the only codec that has any chance of actually becoming universal — that's why they should support it. The next two biggest browsers in the market are already supporting it zealously. If Microsoft really supports Web standards, they need to support WebM.

<comment><USER10> If Google indemnifies all users on all browsers (and also pick up any losses due to injunctions and such that may occur in the process of a lawsuit), that would be a good first step to having more web vendors pick it up. Until then, I think most companies are more comfortable not shipping it. Putting it in the box puts a lot more legal repsonsibility on you.

<comment><USER20> It's already shipping from Google and Mozilla, and their site suggests that Nvidia and ATI are building hardware decoders. It's not like this is some rinky, fly-by-night operation. And I don't see how any of what you said is not true of any other video format. Does MPEG-LA offer indemnification? I'm pretty sure not.

<comment><USER10> I don't believe MPEG-LA offers indemnification, but that's why MS has been planning this for literally years. I've talked to people that say MS has spent millions just in due dilligence around this specific codec. Plus you can go to every vendor in MPEG-LA and you'll get the same response, that it looks safe so far.

What about WebM? If it were me at MS, I'd do exactly what they're doing. Support the codec if its there. If it turns out that this codec looks good with respect to IP (start investigating now, knowing it will take a while) then add support in IE10 or IE11.

There's very little upside to rushing adding this in the box. And they're not blocking its use. They're simply saying, we don't want to ship it right now.

<comment><USER20> Is that similar to how they were not blocking Netscape back in the '90s, because you could use it if you decided to install it? (I mean, ignoring the fact that a computer user in the '90s was vastly more likely to have the knowledge and inclination to install Netscape on Windows than the average consumer is to install a video codec nowadays.)

The fact is, bundling MPEG-LA's wares and not Google's is the same thing as supporting MPEG-LA over Google. Microsoft can wave their hands till the cows come home, but merely allowing a user to go through the difficult and technical process of installing a video codec _is not "support."_

<comment><USER23> Is Microsoft's non-support for WebM any different than Mozilla's refusal to let me play H264 videos in their browser? You can't just look the other way cos you like the underdog. To my mind it's the same thing. My mac can play h264 videos, but not in Firefox. Cos they're having a standards tantrum.

<comment><USER24> One word: patents. This is why I believe schools should require more rigorous legal training of engineering and computer science graduates. I've met too many engineers (one would be too many) who, when confronted with potential IP issues, say "who cares anyway?" Since Mozilla wants to distribute a free product to millions of users in the US, they have to care about patents, and that prevents them from including H.264. However, contrary to H.264, WebM is explicitly designed to avoid patents that aren't owned by Google/On2, so Microsoft could implement WebM with significantly less risk than Mozilla could implement H.264.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hardware accelerated canvas is pretty slick.

<comment><USER26> Are you sure about HW acceleration of canvas? I didn't find any mention of this in release notes.

I just ran few of my canvas demos in IE9 preview and while being pretty fast, they didn't seem to be HW accelerated.

Performance seems to be roughly on the Firefox level, which is less than Chrome and Opera (all current browsers do software rendering AFAIK).

Anyways, great news, web just got richer. Now let's start our prayers for WebGL ...

<comment><USER27> "Like all of the graphics in IE9, canvas is hardware accelerated through Windows and the GPU. Hardware accelerated canvas support in IE9 illustrates the power of native HTML5 in a browser." [1]

They have a demo linked on that page where I get 1 fps when I run in it chrome. Their screenshot of IE9 running the demo shows 60 fps. I suppose hardware can make a difference, but thats its a _really_ impressive.

[1]: [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/06/23/html5-native-t...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/06/23/html5-native- third-ie9-platform-preview-available-for-developers.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Finally!

Those of us poor suckers in enterprise can start doing quality work.

Now to build the business case for upgrading legacy apps :\

<comment><USER28> Further: curious if this means that the .NET team in charge of ASP.NET are being introduced to far better ways to build web apps (no single form implementation, no mixing ID and Classes between back and front end, ditching the use of session as a "state" store, quality URI patterns etc)

<comment><USER29> Asp.Net MVC for web has everything you just mentioned. The real push is towards Silverlight for web apps.

<comment><USER28> _shudders_ why run a web app in a movie?

<comment><USER30> huh?

<comment><USER28> "The real push is towards Silverlight for web apps." « _shudders at that_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Some amazing additions, the hardware acceleration is nice... but I find it funny that IE still doesn't support text-shadow even though most other browsers have been able to do so for a while.

Now that canvas is going to be supported by all the big names, my biggest nightmare is that it becoming a total flash replacement and all the kids using it to make really inappropriate design decisions. It's also really ripe for abuse in so many ways as you can practically design anything within its domain... a certain Stan Lee quote comes to mind :)

</comment><comment><USER32> Awesome news! I'm shocked... Cross-platform support for cool canvas apps! Maybe this will encourage more canvas development!

</comment><comment><USER33> There you go Microsoft, now was that so hard? Now we can all play happily together. I almost forgive you for IE6 .. almost.

<comment><USER34> The problem was not IE6, the problem was the gap after IE6. It was a pretty decent browser at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Websockets are still missing though. :^(

<comment><USER36> As awesome as websockets are, websockets are an incredibly volatile standard in very early stages. The only shipping browser to support is (Chrome) does not even conform to the current draft.

<comment><USER37> Given microsoft's history of browser releases, I'd prefer an out-of-date implementation that js libraries can wrap to a wait-and-see approach. It would be better than nothing -- websockets solve an important and annoying problem.

<comment><USER36> So you want another IE6? That's why we were stuck with an incorrect box model implementation. When they implementation that standard before it was finalized, we got years of broken layouts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Now I know how the diehard American soccer fans felt, crying after the US beat Algeria.

</comment><comment><USER39> Could IE actually become awesome? It certainly looks that way.

</comment><comment><USER40> I wonder if they'll also fix dictionary implementation to be O(1)* instead of O(n)

* actually hash lookups are O(inverse ackerman) but that's kind of silly

</comment><comment><USER41> Good work Microsoft. Welcome to 2008!

</comment><comment><USER42>
      <video>
        * MP4 H.264 playback support, using hardware or software decoding
        * Support for WebM software is not included in this release

      <audio>
        * MP3 and AAC audio support

Somehow, I'm not surprised that Microsoft once again chooses to be different from everybody else. I can encode in Vorbis and Theora/VP8 for Chrome and Firefox, or MP3 and H.264 for IE9, but there's no set of codecs which works on all three major browsers.

<comment><USER43> Microsoft, Apple, and Nokia all seem to have the same policy on <video>.

<comment><USER42> The only browsers which matter are IE, Chrome, and Firefox. The market share of every other browser might as well be a rounding error.

<comment><USER44> iPhone definitely matters. Which means Safari.

<comment><USER42> According to W3Counter[1], the iPhone OS has 0.83% market share among web browsers. Even assuming every single user is using the built-in browser, that's less market share than even Opera.

So, no, the iPhone does not matter.

[1] <http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php>

<comment><USER44> W3Counter is just one way of measuring/estimating general browser usage world wide, with the emphasis on "general". It may or may not be relevant to your business needs. The only way to know is measure what is hitting your site(s). In our case we are now getting 17.2% Safari (and growing); and we don't even intentionally target iPhone.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: JSkit vs disqus - what do you use? - <AUTHOR>

There are three plug-in comment vendors: jskit, disqus, and intense debate.<p>Which one do you use, and why? <comment><USER2> I use both Disqus and JsKit on different sites.

I find Echo more complicated and more difficult to style. A bunch of what seems to be older legacy code is running around, their help and tutorials are complex and sometimes difficult to follow. They also seems to have slightly slower page loads, and deliver more javascript and objects. However, with the complexity comes more power and more options. They do require some payment, but this also gives you better sign-on options, ability to remove their branding etc.

Disqus feels cleaner and the because there are fewer choices it is simpler to use. Overall it feels lighter weight (in a mostly good way). However, the reduction in options means that if it doesn't do exactly what you want out of the gate, it may not be possible to do what you want at all. Single sign-on and white label requires you to contact them -- pricing is not public on their site.

I have had difficulties with both with regard to Facebook login (post OAuth 2.0) but I expect both to resolve these shortly. Tech support has been responsive for both (both unpaid Disqus and paid Echo).

Integration for both into wordpress was mostly ok, though there were a few bugs with migrating comments inside of Echo it wasn't anything too difficult to address.

In short, I would say I would use Disqus where you prefer a free, simpler, easier to manage solution, where you do not need to white label (remove disqus branding), don't require or don't mind multiple logins (logging in to your site and also to disqus).

Use Echo if you want more options, greater ability to customize, the ability to white label and to do single sign on.

In both cases you will need to do extra work to get SEO credit for blog comments and deal with occasional network slowdowns. You also have to live with their time lines for rolling out updates and features. If commenting is core to your site you may well want to bring it in house, otherwise either of these products work well.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use Disqus for my personal blog. They are really cool people and they're users here on HN. However, I've had problems with Disqus not showing comments after a few hours, and I've since read at least one other blog that has had the same problem. I'm sure it's something they'll fix eventually so I wouldn't necessarily let that dissuade you. I don't have any experience with any of the other comment systems.

<comment><USER4> It does get frustrating when you have an article with 40 or so comments, and only the last two visible. I like Disqus a lot, but if it simply doesn't work - it doesn't work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are more comment vendors than those three, but I use DISQUS. Some blogger friends use intense debate and comment luv. Both of those comment platforms seem to be gaining steam, but i am partial to DISQUS

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been using js-kit, or Echo as it's called now, since they first came out a few years ago. They've had some problems before (slow loading, delayed moderation), but they've been good lately.

I like that you can style the comments almost any way you want them with custom css. I like the analytics they give me, and the fact that they're pretty versatile with what they offer (custom html, video/picture embedding). Of course there's also the social aggregation feature which is pretty cool if you find it useful.

The pricing is a bit steep though.

</comment><comment><USER7> It depends on what you want to use it for.

DISQUS seem to be wanting to cater to the long tail of blogs, JSKit/Echo is looking to super-serve "pro publishers" (they power comments on a lot of news websites, etc)

I like what Echo is doing but if it is just for a small blog you might find it overkill, plus I believe it isn't free.

However, the feature set is interesting.

As it happens, I don't use either on my blog. I don't see much value add in the end.

<comment><USER8> DISQUS serves both: <http://disqus.com/vip/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use Disqus on my personal blog. (I've never run a big news site before, so I have no idea what their needs are.)

I use it because I like to pull in the retweets as 'social proof.' My users aren't very good about commenting (which is sad, because I have call-outs and everything), so any social chatter I can pull in makes a richer, more interesting site.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've used Disqus in the past but switched back to plain WordPress comments because proper theming was almost impossible. I used CSS overrides to hide elements and make them fit the layout, later they changed some code and I had to do it all over again. Changing the path of my blog also caused problems.

</comment><comment><USER11> Livefyre.com - I work there as an intern this summer and I really like the system. You have to sign up for the beta as we're still rolling out, but should be quick.

</comment><comment><USER12> Disqus. Didn't know of the others. Disqus do a great job with the UI, threaded comments, liking, etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> intensedebate seems to have lost mindshare. I'd go with either jskit echo or disqus.

<comment><USER7> Original question: "Ask HN: JSkit vs disqus - what do you use?"

your answer: "intensedebate seems to have lost mindshare. I'd go with either jskit echo or disqus."

..um!

<comment><USER13> Oh - the original question actually had intense debate in the title. It was removed - perhaps because they have lost mindshare? :)</comment></comment></comment>


How to Hack an Election - <AUTHOR> https://www.patreon.com/posts/how-to-hack-cohn-41121274 <comment><USER2> Actual methods, some quite ingenious and worthy of HN discussion, are documented here:

[https://nypost.com/2020/08/29/political-insider-explains- vot...](https://nypost.com/2020/08/29/political-insider-explains-voter-fraud- with-mail-in-ballots/)

Plugging the holes, even if you don't believe they are being exploited, is essential to restoring bipartisan trust in our elections.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lax voter ID laws and making it really easy to steal votes through the mail is a good start.

I find it odd that seemingly intelligent people ignore these glaring security holes to further their own political agenda.</comment>


Ad.watch – Breaking open Facebook's machine of political persuasion - <AUTHOR> https://ad.watch/ <comment><USER3> I've been an investigative reporter for a long time, and data like this are essential for reporting on campaign activity in the digital age. Only looking at contributions and expenditures in disclosure reports isn't enough anymore.

This isn't the most intuitive viz on the planet. But dear smart tech people and data scientists with a strong public interest streak: Please keep doing this and get it online. At least for me, when I see it, I'll put it in front of other journos on social. We compete but help each other out by sharing tips like this through professional orgs and journalism boards like Y Combinator (which I've followed closely for years).

Many of us are particularly keen on helping young journalists become natural investigators, and the next generation has a huge amount of data smarts already. Let's put it to work for justice and fairness and all that mushy human freedom and better leadership stuff.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Thanks for saying this. I'll add, just as general observation from within the industry, that because of the shrinking profits and massive budget cuts insisted upon by a lot of corporate parent companies many outlets are short- staffed.

The enormous (and I've personally witnessed enough to suit the use of that term) reduction in editorial and arts staff at major outlets has stretched the surviving teams pretty thin. It gets harder and harder to source and confirm this kind of data, and then present it, within the timelines available.

<comment><USER3> Word is born.

<comment><USER4> I believe it's word is bond implying your word is your honor.

<comment><USER3> I'll leave it up to Run DMC. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=word%20is%20...](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=word%20is%20born)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is something that Facebook and ad-serving companies should be fully transparent about.

* Who is paying for their political propaganda?

* How much was spent?

* What were the ads?

* How was it paid?

Not being able to track ad spending by political parties, governments or individuals opens opens a huge opportunity for political corruption.

<comment><USER6> There's a problem in how do you classify ads into political and non-political. But then, why not make _all_ ad spending public? What benefit is there to society in keeping the source of ads secret?

<comment><USER7> Facebook does - at least in the UK. Try to run a "political" ad and there's a lot of hoops to jump through.

<comment><USER8> Right, but again, what is "political"? A research group trying to sell their new whitepaper which just happens to have a provocative title and abstract? Commercial, surely? Any such definition will be worked around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dawg- I love the idea, but the interface needs some work.

In my humble opinion, your home page should be the interactive map part - <USER2> people the good stuff as quickly as possible. Those who want to read about the project will find their way to the info.

Also, the map should be a little more intuitive to use. Don't make people dig for the gold.

<comment><USER9> Agreed.

Mobile accessibility would also help get this information in front of more eyeballs. I couldn't make heads or tails of the site on my phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is a major problem with the "Region" selection when viewing the United States data.

It includes all sorts of global regions and even "(null)" when it should simply list US states and territories.

<comment><USER7> > It includes all sorts of global regions and even "(null)" when it should > simply list US states and territories.

Yes because political adverts don't run anywhere apart from the U.S.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems quite similar to [https://whotargets.me/en/](https://whotargets.me/en/)

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a fantastic website and I'm excited to see how it will look in 2020! It seems to be missing some political actors though which makes it appear like some democratic candidates aren't spending money on ads which isn't the case. Some candidates are being tracked; others aren't.

</comment><comment><USER13> Didn't Facebook make this data available months ago?

Where is the pressure for google to do the same?

<comment><USER14> [https://transparencyreport.google.com/political- ads/region/U...](https://transparencyreport.google.com/political- ads/region/US)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's unbearably slow

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure if I'm understanding the map correctly:

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (literally the top of the list alphabetized by first name) spent $1.5 million on 9,576 ads, garnering 60 million impressions, mostly for fundraising, and it all started _after_ she assumed office? And the ads are spread out across the country with California edging out her home state of New York?

What a weird coincidence - both Ocasio Cortez and Cory Booker placed more ads in California than their home states (New York and New Jersey), but Kamala Harris put more ads in New York than her home state California.

I don't know what this data means, I'm uncomfortable with Facebook getting heat when other tech companies aren't (because people think Facebook helped Trump), but this is a really interesting data set if you start to play around with it.

<comment><USER17> >> Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (literally the top of the list alphabetized by first name) spent $1.5 million on 9,576 ads, garnering 60 million impressions, mostly for fundraising, and it all started after she assumed office? And the ads are spread out across the country with California edging out her home state of New York?

These ads are probably for fundraising purposes. Congresspeople face re- election every two years and thus spend a lot of time fundraising. Also, if she raises extra money she can put it into a PAC and use it to support/oppose candidates in other races. This is a practice that was perfected by Lyndon Johnson who used campaign cash from his friends in the oil industry to bolster support for his policies amongst his peers.

>> What a weird coincidence - both Ocasio Cortez and Cory Booker placed more ads in California than their home states (New York and New Jersey), but Kamala Harris put more ads in New York than her home state California.

This is because they already built donor/supporter bases in their own states where their name ID is strongest. Rather than advertise at home where they are already household names it make sense to take out ads in other states which they want to win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am not able to understand what it is: can somebody help?

<comment><USER19> From my understanding, it's a dataviz of Facebook ads linked to politics.

For instance, if we select "Browse per country" and then "France", you can see political ads, with their political party, their content, their settings, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Really don't fully understand why facebook is being accused of creating this. And the AD and PR agencies are being let off scott free? Granted, facebook are culpable ethically for not appreciating that the manipulation afforded to advertisers could be utilised towards political persuasion. Why, then, if the tools are so powerful, are we not examining the power of the advertising industry for utilising the latest studies in psychology and anthropology? Making us request specific drugs from our doctors, or beer for our fridge, or thinking that some items may make us happy? None of which may be the best choice for us, or actually work.

Why is it different for political organisations to manipulate the population using those tools than it is for multinationals?

<comment> 52-6F-62 It's not different, and advertising has been a focus of many since the 80's.

Ever seen they live? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8AMRbqY6w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8AMRbqY6w)

[https://www.adbusters.org/](https://www.adbusters.org/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n7GfVFC6K8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n7GfVFC6K8)

<comment><USER18> ah, no I got it: "They live", by John Carpenter

(great that [https://www.adbusters.org/](https://www.adbusters.org/) thanks!)</comment></comment></comment>


The New Calculations of TV Scheduling - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-calculations-of-tv-scheduling-1431250441 <comment><USER2>
        To Read the Full Story,
        Subscribe or Sign In

Nope.</comment>


The Non NDA NDA - <AUTHOR> http://blog.weatherby.net/2009/12/the-non-nda-nda.html

<comment><USER2> I've seen a ton of those. I hate them, not because they're insulting, but because they fill the page with garbage when I print e-mails.

How could they be legally binding?

<comment><USER3> a simple example would be accidentally receiving priveleged financial data that will affect prices the following day and using that data. The consequence here being insider trading

<comment><USER4> Insider trading is already illegal; you don't need a disclaimer on your email for that.

<comment><USER5> 1+ -- there simply isn't a rationale for auto-appending these disclaimers to emails.

As someone else has pointed out, you'd think the mere fact that someone auto- appends these things to every email diminishes the likelihood that a court would take them seriously.

Consider also the absurdity of the sender using an inherently insecure communications channel to communicate information with a demand that the receiver keep it confidential...

<comment><USER6> > Consider also the absurdity... ..inherently insecure communications > channel... This is not only absurd but also irresponsible, irresponsible in > a sense that could be made valid in court.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Heat energy can travel through empty space - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-12-energy-space-quantum-weirdness.html <comment><USER2> "Heat energy" here means "phonons", not "infrared light."

> for many years, textbooks told us that phonons cannot travel through a > vacuum," said Xiang Zhang, the professor of mechanical engineering at UC > Berkeley who guided the study. "What we discovered, surprisingly, is that > phonons can indeed be transferred across a vacuum by invisible quantum > fluctuations."

It's due to Casimir interactions.</comment>


Jobs for Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://jobsforhackers.com/

<comment><USER2> You should put some numbers there. How many job offers can one expect from your mailing list for instance. Or how many happy hackers there are because of your service.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know these numbers :-)

An hour after official announcement, I hope two or three offers per day and a lot of happy hackers. But it depends on the companies and their offers, of course. We'll never publish bad offers and we prefer an empty day.

<comment><USER2> Then at least put a "no spam" text of some sort there. I find it hard to trust my email with a service if they don't even bother telling me that they won't abuse my email. I think you'll collect more emails that way.

Also emphasize how job offerers can put a word about a job out there using your service. I think that a small text in the footer is not enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll consider it.

And it's better not to use your main email account for this kind of services. Open a free account and use filters to resend good ham emails to your account.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Online Shopping During COVID-19 Exceeds 2019 Holiday Season Levels - <AUTHOR> https://theblog.adobe.com/online-shopping-during-covid-19-exceeds-2019-holiday-season-levels/ <comment><USER2> Yup at one point, it was almost the only option, for any type of shopping.</comment>


Talkshow – Team videos in non-real-time - <AUTHOR> https://www.talkshow.team <comment><USER2> Hi everyone. Founder here. I'm flattered that this popped up on HN. I'm a long-time lurker and browse multiple times a day but seldom post.

For some context, you guys are looking at an MVP. It took me a month to build this. The marketing site was done in 2 hours (today, fuelled by coffee). I'm bootstrapping after leaving my corporate job last year.

Not trying to make excuses, but I think a lot of questions can simply be answered with "it's one month of work, by one dude, and it launched today" :)

It's live now. That's the easy part over with - the hard stuff begins now!

<comment><USER3> Show HN is reserved for the maker to post what they have made [1]. Who posted this if it was not you? Seems like a marketing ploy...

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><USER4> I didn't know that either, so I posted a couple of Show HNs that is not mine before. I have read the FAQ and guidelines before, but never stumbled across this page.

<comment><USER5> Easy misunderstanding. Yet assuming you didn't know this, it would logically raise a question as to why all posts featuring some form of product or service were not Show HN then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the idea, but it's targeted for extroverted people, probably more for marketers and bizz in general, rather than programmers. Introverts like me, will always prefer text conversation over recording myself. Also text is searchable where video is not.

<comment><USER7> > Also text is searchable where video is not.

Transcripts could help there.

<comment><USER8> With next-gen speech-to-text (voicea), it is modestly possible. Am sure that could get better by time!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's an interesting idea, but I have a tough time with the premise that people will choose to record a video of themselves for everyday asynchronous communication rather than type a message. There are situations were video or audio deliver more value than text, but what are those situations and are they enough to become a team's main mode of communication? I'm skeptical.

<comment><USER10> Like you I would never think of using this but then I asked my kids and they looked at me quite as a benevolent advanced alien race might look down upon us: there there old man, no wonder your world is so tedious...no one _writes_ their ideas down anymore...video, poor soul, is the only way we do things now.

I suppose I did something long ago when my parents told me to write home and I said they could use my PC and modem and use compuserve.

Sigh.

<comment><USER11> > there there old man, no wonder your world is so tedious...no one writes > their ideas down anymore...video, poor soul, is the only way we do things > now.

I inadvertently read that phrase with the voice of Gina from Brooklyn 99 (Maybe because I've been binging that show). Here in Mexico a lot of people almost exclusively communicate with each other (ab)using Whatsapp audio messages and I get so angry when somebody sends me an audio message. Just type!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why use this when I can record a video from photobooth and upload it to Slack, where all majority of team conversation already happens for the majority of tech companies with remote workers?

Cool idea but doesn't need a separate app.

<comment><USER13> "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software."

<comment><USER14> [Dropbox]

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great idea! Some feedback:

\- Too much info required to start (you should streamline signup, job title shouldn't be mandatory IMO)

\- Creating a new message should be fast! Meaning:

       - title, body & content should be optional, why can't I just send a video?

       - clicking Save should automatically upload video - right now video is ignored if Save is clicked mid-recording

<comment><USER16> Zulip has the only sane threading model among chat clients. Call it a topic rather than a title, but it absolutely should be required IMO.

<comment><USER17> I would LOVE to see Talkshow integrated with Zulip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For context yongfook is one of the origional 'digital nomads' from before people started calling themselves that with a straight face. He did the excellent opensourcefood.com and i suspect he has more of an idea of what makes a good product than the majority of clichéd responses on this thread.

</comment><comment><USER3> Love the idea and would have helped me in many remote work situations. Could also be good for documentation.

However, from the home page I cannot determine what this really provides over recording a video and sending via slack, telegram, or other methods of chat - I mean, i guess it will allow you to label and comment and put the videos in a hierarchy, but anything else?

<comment><USER19> So do Slack threads with videos in them.

Or a #standup channel where people send in videos, that's what we do.

<comment><USER20> What do you use to record videos?

<comment> VvR-Ox Have you seen people lately who don't have a smartphone with them? :-P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What I'd like to see (which would likely make me use it) is an integration inside of Gmail. I click one button to record and then I send that email. The no 1 value for me would be that it's much faster than writing. And it's also easier to talk while walking to the subway than to write. So create that and I'm in!

</comment><comment><USER22> Spent like 30 seconds trying to click the 35 second video on the home page trying to see the video with the cute girl or any of the links on the page image.. boy that was disappointing

</comment><comment><USER23> team videos...not a single video on the homepage :(

</comment><comment><USER24> If ever there was a product that demanded an explainer video on the homepage... this is it.

<comment><USER2> I agree, it's pretty high up on my list of post-launch things to improve.

</comment></comment><comment> VvR-Ox This is a perfect example for software that tries to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

It can be done with whatever: \- record video (notebook / smartphone / ...) \- send / share / embed into some other software (messenger / wiki / ...)

You are obviously good at marketing stuff (to people who don't know better) and monetizing stuff that is basically free.

That cries for an award with a title like "silver ferengi medal" ;-)

<comment><USER25> This is a perfect example of a comment that undervalues simplicity and ease of use ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224) is another one).

<comment><USER26> I don't think it gets much simpler than "open camera app" > "press record" > "press 'send video'"

<comment><USER26> But the service is free, so it's definitely worth a try

<comment><USER27> The service might not cost money to try. When you want to properly evaluate this tool for your team though, there will be quite a bit of time invest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There's also [https://standups.io](https://standups.io) which has been on the market for over a year, has traction, lots of cool features, an iOS app an Android app, and Slack integration.

<comment><USER26> There's also... just sending video files back and forth via SMS, Slack, Email, Facebook, Google Photos, or shared iCloud albums.

But this service is free so that's a big plus to just give it the old "try"!</comment></comment>


Dropbox's Smart Sync lets users open a file stored only in the cloud like normal - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/30/dropboxs-smart-sync-lets-users-open-a-file-stored-only-in-the-cloud-like-any-normal-file/ <comment><USER2> So will this ever be available for paying customers that aren't on a business plan? If not, that is incredibly frustrating.

I pay for their service every month. I am not a business, so why should I pay more to have a feature that should be standard? Plus loads of features I don't want or need?

<comment><USER3> The FAQ[1] says:

> Smart Sync is available in early access for Dropbox Business users. It is > not yet available for individual accounts.

Maybe they are rolling it out to Business customers first because they think they can provide better support to them?

I've had Smart Sync (Infinite) on my personal Dropbox account for a long time. It is awesome. When I recently added Dropbox to a new computer it started with all the files "in the cloud". It was so nice to have all my files available in the Finder and from command line, but not have to sync my whole Dropbox.

[1] [https://www.dropbox.com/help/9293](https://www.dropbox.com/help/9293)

<comment><USER4> Could be also just a way to push people towards business edition. This is a pain point when you have lots of data in the Dropbox folder. Managing things with the current "selective sync" is painful and if you have lots of data, the full sync may take ages.

This is handy for example for the use case that you travel with clean laptop and sync needed stuff at the destination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Local filesystem interface to files which exist "only" on the cloud is basically the way Keybase FS operates. If this is a "killer feature" for you, consider giving it a try. The downsides at the moment are (a) alpha software, and (b) 10 gig limit. It is free though, very convenient, and does a lot of things "right" (by my way of thinking).

[https://keybase.io/docs/kbfs](https://keybase.io/docs/kbfs)

<comment><USER6> The major thing it does wrong is that it mounts the directory in the fs root, rather than my homedir. That means it was effectively invisible (if it's not in my homedir, I never see it), so I never used it. Dropbox, on the other hand, is always right in my face at ~/Dropbox.

It's too bad, because kbfs really gets many things right.

<comment><USER7> it's just fuse, right? looks like you can control the mountpoint: [https://github.com/keybase/kbfs/blob/master/kbfsfuse/main.go](https://github.com/keybase/kbfs/blob/master/kbfsfuse/main.go)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Smart Sync will be available for all Dropbox Business and enterprise > customers today for early access.

I really hope us regular users will get it soon as well. This is great and how file syncing should work.

<comment><USER9> I've been a dropbox pro user for many years, but have lately gotten the impression that they (dropbox) are focused on Dropbox Business and not so much regular consumers. Curious if other people have had similar experiences?

<comment><USER8> My impression as well. I am a long-time pro user. I don't mind that much, except that I really want this feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's interesting how much this sounds like NFS. NFS works great, and serves a fairly obvious use case, but obviously requires some working knowledge of Unix and ssh technologies etc. Smart Sync gives a one-click install and forget solution. It makes me wonder why it took so long for this to be made, and what other things we Unix-heads take for granted that could easily be ported and marketed to a wider audience.

<comment><USER11> So, like NFS - what happens if your internet connection is interrupted while you're reading the file? What happens if another computer saves to the same file while you're reading it?

Dropbox has smart people and I'm sure they would have wanted a feature like this from day 1, so if they're introducing it, I'm sure they have good answers. I'm just curious what they are!

<comment><USER12> NFS will, depending on mount options, block forever or start returning errors if the connection is lost. It's not really suitable for non-LAN use for a number of reasons.

It also will let you overwrite or interleave files unless both sides use advisory locking.

<comment><USER11> Yup. We use NFS at scale at $dayjob (including across continents, which is sometimes exciting) and I'm pretty sure everyone wishes we had something with the simplicity of Dropbox.

I'm curious how Dropbox has made this safe to use for people who don't want to think about things like "close-to-open consistency" or "stale file handle".

<comment><USER13> one cool thing I've seen "Smart Sync" do...on OS X it seems to fill out the thumbnail cache for images that are "online only". This means you can see the preview for what an image looks like without forcing the client to download it.

Also local files behave exactly like other local files so in that case (the typical case) all that pain you feel with NFS/FUSE goes away

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think I'll pass on giving Dropbox a direct line into my computer's kernel.

<comment><USER15> It's had that for a long time. one of the hallmarks of their OSX tight integration has been in memory patching of different OS versions to display dropbox files tightly integrated with finder.

be scared.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Any chance they will let us store more than 1TB on the individual paid version of the product? I have a terabytes worth of RAW file format photographs that I currently have to store on S3, but I'd much rather keep everything on Dropbox if I can. [https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/160](https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/160)

</comment><comment><USER17> I gave up on Dropbox long time ago. Maybe I am wrong, but with data loss and other issues, especially limit on space, I found BTSync better suited for my needs. It's been working for years now.

I think Dropbox could've innovated much more then they did, to make their offering more compelling to guys like me. They didn't and that is unfortunate. I think they feel pressured now but it might be a little late and their solutions are kind of artificial and inspired by others... (paper for example)

<comment><USER18> I currently use both, but I am thinking of switching fully to Resilio Sync. Given Dropbox disregard for proper security, I don't want them to run in kernel space (via a kext).

The only downside of Resilio Sync is that the sharing story is not yet great.

<comment><USER17> I've been using it for at least 2 yrs if not more now. Zero issues.

Well, once I deleted files in misguided effort to move them. They were deleted from all machines :). It wasn't a big deal, it just shows it works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Dropbox's first blog post about Smart Sync (aka Infinite) and discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11570888](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11570888)

<comment><USER20> What's happened since then? Is it that the project was announced back then and is now available to businesses, as predicted? Or is that it was available to businesses back then when announced, and will be available to individuals?

<comment><USER19> I haven't read both articles thoroughly, but two quotes from the articles will answer your questions:

Blog post: "Project Infinite _will_ enable users to seamlessly and securely access all their Dropbox files from the desktop, regardless of how much space they have available on their hard drives."

This post: "Dropbox _today released_ Smart Sync..."

So the blog post was a demo about feature in the future, while this article says it is already released.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wish I could enforce this as dropbox administrator to my users... like when they install, have "smart sync" on specific folders instead of default to downloading everything.

</comment><comment><USER22> How does this compare technically to iCloud[1] and (lesser known) Upthere[2]? And any other cloud storage providers that treat local files as purgeable / do selective syncing.

For example one major difference I've noticed is iCloud can sync while asleep (Power Nap). This has proven to be _very_ useful with my iCloud Photo Library, which has tons of syncing to do every day and night over a slow connection.

Another distinction with Apple's approach, maybe not directly comparable to Dropbox Business, is how it is integrated with apps. I mentioned photos, but it also covers iTunes music and movies/TV. It lets it be smarter than a purely filesystem level sync, like downloading photo previews and purging movies only after you've watched them. In other words it has a direct Dropbox competitor in iCloud Drive, but also adds domain-specific syncing.

Are there any advantages to Dropbox's approach?

[1] [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206996](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT206996)

[2] [https://upthere.com/technology](https://upthere.com/technology)

<comment><USER23> Dropbox is cross-platform. I'd love iCloud features on my Linux Desktop, but I'm unable to consume it.

<comment><USER22> iCloud supports Windows, at least:

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204283](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT204283)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So how does this work with stuff like virus scanners or text-searches that read all the bytes of all the files in a hierarchy?

Does it load up all the files locally and then LRU-discard them only to load them all up again the next time the virus-scanner runs?

<comment><USER16> Would also be curious to know how this would work with something like Lightroom that can operate on pre-computed downsampled versions of the RAW originals.

<comment><USER25> If this would allow me to keep the original image files in the cloud and only pull down the ones I want to work with, that would be awesome! I have the downsampled images on my laptop now and the originals on an external hard drive that's backed up to the cloud, but it would obviously be a lot more convenient to have the hard drive hold the backup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm really interested in the last part of the article where the file is store locally (with checks against space) for very large files and where only the diff is synced between the cloud and the local machine. That might work wonders for people that share large files constantly but it might also be a headache if you're trying to determine a diff for a binary file instead of something simple like ASCII text.

</comment><comment><USER27> ExpanDrive on Mac and Win gives the same experience, but with almost any cloud storage backend. I combine it with unlimited Amazon Cloud Drive.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've wanted this forever now, if they enable this on normal pro accounts I will finally pay for dropbox.

</comment><comment><USER29> This has been available since forever in any of the Dropbox FUSE implementations.

<comment><USER30> But muh Windows

<comment><USER29> I've never used it, but Dokany seems to open a FUSE-shaped hole in a Windows kernel driver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Wonder how this compares to NFS/pNFS.

<comment><USER32> It doesn't. It's basically offering local proxies for remote files.

NFS was/is a networked filesystem protocol, where multiple clients access the same remote volumes.

<comment><USER33> Is that substantially different somehow?

<comment><USER32> Yes, in the same way that ssh to a server to get a file is not the same as a hard or soft link.

<comment><USER33> If that hard / soft link hides an ssh connection behind it, and the ssh connection is presented as SSHFS[1] (since that's practically what NFS is), then I really don't see much of a difference. Protocol, implementation, sure. But it's the same end result.

[1]: [https://github.com/libfuse/sshfs](https://github.com/libfuse/sshfs)

<comment><USER34> The main difference is that you are always one click away from switching between the "nfs mode" (so to speak) and the fully cached offline mode, which is the default for Dropbox and is unavailable with network filesystems. And I mean switch file-by-file or directory-by-directory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is this available for Linux? I couldn't find information one way or the other on Dropbox's site.

</comment><comment><USER36> iCloud removed a 800MB Photoshop file while I was working on it today, and I had to download it again (luckily I had saved my work, but the file was still open).

I didn't expect that. I guess if it's open but not modified it isn't locked?

These things are not that intuitive, just yet.

<comment><USER37> Are you running out of local disk space by any chance? macOS has a feature where files stored in iCloud are removed from the local computer if disk space is getting low.

You can change the setting in System Preferences > iCloud > iCloud Drive Options. Uncheck "Optimize Mac Storage".

<comment><USER36> Yes. That's the featured that caused the file to be removed.

It's just that I didn't expect macOS to remove a file while it was open.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If the business package could upload photo's from phone devices I would consider it.

</comment><comment><USER39> This sounds like NFS for the .js age

Slower, buggier and less reliable (and I mean, yes, compared to NFS)

<comment><USER40> You have literally no idea what the performance or UX of this service will be like, but you've decided to have a pop at it anyway. That's not a very endearing quality. You'll recall of course the similar short-sighted comments when Dropbox first debuted…

Have a look at some of the technology - there is some interesting stuff in there - before writing it off.

<comment><USER41> Normally I'd agree, but there's a pretty substantial history of vendors trying to solve these problems in the filesystem context, and it's pretty clear that it's _hard_ problem from many different perspectives. It's very reasonable to the skeptical.

Microsoft gave up in OneDrive (where they used stubbing for awhile), and moved to a model where they, in Windows 10 deliver a filesystem replacement that looks and smells like a traditional filesystem to end users, but is in fact a Dropbox-like mobile client.

I'm sure that when I get to use it (I'm merely a chump paying $100/year for Dropbox) it will be great for 90% of my needs. But there are _many_ edge cases where things will break for users or applications that don't handle high latency file operations well.

If anyone has a chance to pull this off with a UX that people can grok, it will be Dropbox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Haven't they had that for years, except with more local caching?

<comment><USER43> No. You could turn off syncing a folder completely (Selective Sync).

This is a rebrand of their Project Infinite ([https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/04/announcing- projec...](https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/04/announcing-project- infinite/)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Still no .ignore list :(

</comment><comment><USER45> I ditched Dropbox years ago - I have no tolerance for any platform that requires an invisible (and not terribly inspectable) patch to my kernel.

Plus, it ate batteries like nobody's business.</comment>


How Twitter usage could change forever? - <AUTHOR> http://libertweet.com

<comment><USER2> Smart way to write more than 140 chars ! Even though it breaks the "Twitter concept", it should come handy once in a while.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. Overusing this plugin will make Twitter a Facebook-like-landia :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Meteor Candy, a hackable admin dashboard for Meteor.js - <AUTHOR> http://www.meteorcandy.com <comment><AUTHOR> I had a hard time finding freelance work, and was like, everyone in the Meteor world needs a dashboard.. so here it is :)</comment>


Scoble's Recent Hogwash About The Common Web - oscar-the-horse http://www.horsesaysinternet.com/people/scobles-recent-hogwash/ <comment><AUTHOR> ... Um, I don't think he really gives a shit about his Klout score. The point is that new systems are within their closed ecology as the norm. People accept and even expect systems to be closed. And he's against that, and was back when there was actually a fight to be had over it. That was his point. He's saying he thinks things are too far gone for any kind of moral stand to matter.

I'd take it even further and say that we'll have to wait for the ebb and flow to work its magic, and only time will solve (change) this.

</comment><comment><USER2> Are you confusing Robert Scoble with Michael Arrington? Scoble worked for Microsoft and now works for Rackspace.

Arrington worked for Techcrunch before parting ways with parent company AOL. Interestingly, he is more commonly the recipient of the type of scorn embodied in your post.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Scoble> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Arrington>

</comment><comment><USER3> A fairly pointless blog post with very little content.

</comment><comment><USER4> I got the distinct impression that John really expected he was getting in on the ground floor of some kind of huge trendy movement by being a virtual facebook martyr. When said movement failed to materialize en masse he was left only with a nagging suspicion Pierre, his wife's farmville partner may want to do more than trade pumpkins but John sadly lacks a suitable account to stalk around and check.</comment>


SimCity's first post-release DLC is a Nissan ad - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/04/simcitys-first-post-release-dlc-is-a-nissan-ad/

<comment><USER2> SimCity's first free and optional DLC is a Nissan sponsored recharging station.

Is it DLC? Yes. Is it a sponsored piece of DLC? Yes. Does it 1:1 replace a small park? Yes (in terms of in-game cost, and all other functionality).

Basically it is an in-game park re-skinned as a Nissan Leaf re-charging station. Given away for free to those who purposely go and download it from EA's web-site, and then purposely build it in their city.

Oh the horror?

Plus SimCity is one of those games that broadly speaking benefits from real establishments and real brands appearing in the game. It is much more fun to see McDonalds on your little digital street than it is to see "Generic Burger House 10101."

This whole article and the people that whining about this are just looking for any reason to beat up EA/Maxis. This is not a valid reason.

There are tons of valid reasons: The broken game, the small city sizes, their misleading remarks (e.g. always on DRM), amongst other things. People are misfiring here.

<comment><USER3> > It is much more fun to see McDonalds on your little digital street than it > is to see "Generic Burger House 10101."

I beg to differ.

I loved SC2000. I would have purchased this SimCity right away had it not required DRM or constant online connection.

But after seeing the first McDonalds or other licensed or paid-placement crap show up in the game I would have never played it again.

<comment><USER2> > But after seeing the first McDonalds or other licensed or paid-placement > crap show up in the game I would have never played it again.

You mean the optional "paid-placement crap" that you have to purposely go download and then purposely build within your city?

That isn't at all rational. Tons of games have had sponsored promotional items, World of Warcraft's Mountain Dew thing for one very large scale example.

But just like WoW's Mountain Dew thing this too is entirely optional.

<comment><USER3> As long as it's optional, I have no problem with it.

Do I expect EA to be able to resist the urge to try to slip this crap in with other parts of the game? Do you?

<comment><USER4> Given that EA's Monopoly for the iPad has a built-in Prius to serve as one of the game pieces, I'd say not trusting them is wise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought it was a pretty sad commentary. The sad part is that the thing doesn't even _pretend_ to be part of the city, no power requirement etc. Ah well, I was waiting to buy a copy once the bugs had been worked out, apparently I can skip it entirely.

<comment><USER2> > no power requirement

It is solar powered.

It is identical to parks in terms of how it functions.

<comment><USER6> > It is solar powered.

Oh that's good that it sounds authentic, because cities all across the world must get enough solar power to charge electric cars without pulling from the power grid all day long, right?

<comment><USER7> [http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-25/tesla- fires-...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-25/tesla-fires-up- solar-powered-charging-stations)

<comment><USER8> Those are connected to the grid though and will send excess power to the grid, and I assume when there is on solar power they will get their power from the grid. Having them connected to the grid makes way more sense since then you can sell excess power and use the grid to fuel the few cars arriving at night.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The huge problem here is not just that there's a blatant ad in a SimCity game. Product placements and tie-ins are actually pretty common in Facebook games. Advergames date back to the '80s.

The deeper problem is that SimCity is being presented as a relatively serious simulation. The mechanics of the game are intended to represent an approximation of the real world. People will learn about how the world works through playing the game--I know that I learned about zoning and traffic engineering and a whole host of urban problems through the original SimCity. And so did a lot of other people.

In fact, a lot of people recognized early on that SimCity had the potential to educate and influence a lot of people. It's even been criticized on the ground that it limits the ways that the various problems can be approached, for example disallowing alternate methods of taxation to completely replace property tax. (Ian Bogost has argued that the best way to deal with this is procedural literacy, that is, learning to critically read a game system like we would a book or a film.)

Introducing a magic electric car recharging station isn't just a tasteless ad. It's deliberate propaganda. Even if you support the cause (more electric cars) the way the system works subverts the basic mechanics of the game. This isn't like Maxis adding the recycling centers to SimCity 3000, or the way that nuclear power has always been risky since the first SimCity. Don't forget, this isn't just any electric car, this is a "Nissan LEAF(R)". Players who play the game with this DLC will be subjected to the continual message that adding a Nissan(TM) charging station to their city makes everything better, with no downsides. That may be an agreeable message if it gets us more electric cars, but it subverts the basic urban simulation model in service of propaganda. Imagine if it was, say, Shell or BP doing this with a regular filling station. Or McDonalds. And you'll note that Tesla doesn't have a SimCity recharging station...

Even players who see through the transparent propaganda will be influenced by it, in the same way that advertizing always influences our behavior, even when we realize that it is having an effect on us.

And for the subset of the player who might be skeptical about electric cars, this building also won't help. Because the building has no downsides, what happens when the player learns more about the real world and realizes that there are, in fact, problems that such a building would create (like drawing down a lot more power than just the solar panels can provide). Disillusionment is bad for advocacy. The resulting cynicism won't just sour them on Nissan, it'll sour them on electric cars in general.

If they had created a more balanced building (or even a whole system of electric cars and public transportation) supported by Nissan as an in-game ad it would be less disturbing, because it would fit with the system and be a less transparent cash-in. (On the other hand, there's something to be said for the blatant transparency, since at least it's blindingly obvious propaganda.)

</comment><comment><USER10> My main issue with this is that the special building doesn't actually play by the rules of the game. It's a charging station that somehow doesn't draw power from your grid. Bizarre and stupid (like so many decisions EA made when developing this game).

<comment><USER11> Didn't you notice the solar panels on the top? _Of course_ those panels generate enough electricity to power all give charging ports at the same time.

However, I agree with the promoted comment on the site, they are pushed advertising over fixing serious issues with the game, or at least that's how it appears.

<comment><USER12> I'm just surprised they found a company willing to associate themselves with the SimCity brand given the past month of turmoil. Presumably there was already a contract in-place for this deal - but still, you've got a bunch of pissed off fans for a game that still sits with a massive 1-star rating on Amazon, and that's scheduled to have a new wave of Mac users come on-board putting additional stress on their infrastructure. Plus how many people are going to rush out and buy a Leaf because they saw it in SimCity?

<comment><USER13> A month, when the Nissan deal has probably been in the works (at least) for a year and will go on for years (unless EA claws back IAPs at some point). To them the "turmoil" is a momentary bit of nerd rage leading to some copy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it just me, or has EA gone completely off the rails? How does this happen? Do all organizations lose their ability to care about their customers at some point along their growth?

<comment><USER15> the key factor here is how a corporation works. by definition, they can't do anything besides pursue short term profits

<comment><USER16> This is an oft-repeated line that is entirely false. Ben & Jerry's ice cream spent decades turning down good business deals to stay true to their ideals. The Chicago Cubs notoriously refused to play night baseball games at home for decades after it became popular, and were even sued by shareholders to try to force them to install lights at Wrigley. The Court ruled that management of the Cubs could choose to ignore short-term profits from night baseball if it thought that the franchise was best served by keeping the traditional purity of the game.[1] (Of course, the Cubs ultimately relented, but maybe that's why they haven't won the World Series). Craiglist, to the extreme consternation of its investors, has prioritized a certain long-term vision of the service over lots of short-term profits.

Even publicly-traded companies can choose to pursue long-term goals over short-term profit. Autodesk is rumored to be setting up a subsidiary that blends profit and non-profit motives, and plenty of companies have done other acts that are not in their short-term interests.

[1] Shlensky v. Wrigley, 95 Ill. App. 2d 173 (1968).

<comment><USER3> > Ben & Jerry's ice cream spent decades turning down good business deals to > stay true to their ideals

If, instead of succeeding, Ben & Jerry's had joined the ranks of the many other failed food retailers wouldn't the corporate officers have faced the potential of shareholder lawsuits for having blatantly "turning down good business deals" along the way?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Its positive effects are so lopsided that you're practically obligated to accept the advertising in your city.

<comment><USER18> sounds like real life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I dislike this not for what it is by itself, but for the door I fear it opens in the industry.

When Activision thinly disguised their DRM by calling Diablo 3 an MMO, it was a notable and large step for the industry in the direction of removing value rather than adding it in order to accomplish an objective. If anything, I wish the backlash was much harsher, enough to convince EA not to do the same thing with SimCity.

It may be disproportionate to the case at hand, real brands may be actually appropriate in a game of this type. I prefer that door remain firmly closed, rather than opened with some cause and later reopened with none at all. EA has a very bad track record. Having brands in SimCity would only add to the immersion of the experience if they were all over place, which EA couldn't do if they wanted to.

</comment><comment><USER20> Sim city 4 has a lot of user made mods that replicate real life buildings, like mcdonalds as an example. So while this may seem like a cynical advertising ploy, the fans themselves set the precedent that this is a desirable feature.

<comment><USER21> I think intention has a lot to do with acceptability. User-made mods to add realism are _much_ different in intent than an ad that, while functionally the same thing, is meant simply to sell ad space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I found it funny that below this article about in-game advertising creep, the first comment is a "promoted comment," pinned to the top of the list and praising the ad effort.

</comment><comment><USER23> B.E.S.U.R.E.T.O.D.R.I.N.K.Y.O.U.R.O.V.A.L.T.I.N.E.

</comment><comment><USER24> Wouldn't expect anything less from EA!</comment>


God Invented Economists To Make Astrologers Look Good - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2013/10/13/god-invented-economists-to-make-astrologers-look-respectable-so-why-do-economists-get-all-the-nobels/ <comment><USER2> Economics as a profession has been captured. Mainstream economics exists to do nothing more than justify the behaviour of politicians with the veneer of science. Keynesianism/Chicago school is simply not descriptive of reality, and when viewed through the lens of proper economics, is actually the transfer mechanism of wealth from the lower to upper classes: "Look, our best economists say we need to keep acting irresponsibly which just happens to enrich our wealthy benefactors!" Krugman is the highly decorated king of these idiot keynesians.

Austrian economic theory is much more descriptive of reality (although probably not fully descriptive), and yet is cast as voodoo science because if followed correctly there's no opportunity to steal from us through debt and inflation: Government debt is bad, expansionary monetary policy is bad, most economic interventions will lead to unintended consequences worse than the original problem.

When I talk to young economics graduates, many have never even HEARD of Austrian economic theory, let alone studied it in college. At some point in the future, this era will be looked back upon as a dark time in economics in the same way that the medical profession now looks back at seemingly valid theories at the time of "bad humors" causing disease. Our descendents will say "We can't believe those idiots thought they could just print money and spend themselves into debt and there would be no long term consequences."

The king has no clothes.

</comment><comment><USER3> > On past form, the winner will be an aging Anglophone, Caucasian male. He > will also probably be a dangerous crank.

So... much like the author of this rant?

It's a cute quip in the title but there's nothing more to that article. Mood affiliation in its pure form.

And Krugman is the notable exception? The guy who cheered the real estate bubble on?

</comment><comment><USER4> This column mentions Ha-Joon Chang, a great commentator on the discipline of economics from the inside. I really enjoyed this recording of a talk he gave at the LSE: [http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/pub...](http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=1584)

That definitely has more substance than the submitted piece.</comment>


When GCC's "-ffast-math" isn't - <AUTHOR> http://programerror.com/2009/09/when-gccs-ffast-math-isnt/ <comment><USER2> -ffast-math does two types of things: it changes the code generation, and it mucks with the floating point settings at startup in a bid to make them faster. On x86 systems with SSE2, this involves writing to the MXCSR register.

It would be interesting to separate these two effects. You can get the former by /compiling/ with --ffast-math and the latter by /linking/ with -ffast-math.

BTW, to all the library writers out there: never ever link a shared library with -ffast-math. See [https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55522](https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55522)

<comment><USER3> Oh wow, that's a nasty bug. From the linked openjpeg issue:

        >>> s = '4.74303020008e-322'
        >>> f = float(s)
        >>> print(str(f))
        4.74303020008e-322
        >>> import osgeo
        >>> print(str(f))
        0.0

<comment><USER4> Well... The option _is_ called "unsafe-math-optimizations".

<comment><USER5> I'd never expect such an option, no matter how "unsafe," to affect code outside of what was built with it.

<comment><USER6> The number used in that example is called a subnormal or denormalized number [1]. When you get into the really tiny ranges, the fpu can compensate by shifting the number further and further to the right, at the cost of lost accuracy, and a lot of speed. The example given only is only a few binary places from zero [2], so is indeed one of the smallest numbers an fpu can operate on.

One of the things that happens when you enable "unsafe" options is that it sets a flag in the SSE control register to set subnormal numbers to zero. Because subnormal numbers slow things down considerably, making them not happen is one of the unsafe ways to speed up code. Importing that library will run initialization code that sets the control register to get the extra, precision-losing, speed, and as a consequence, set all those tiny numbers to zero, hence the results you see.

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

[2] [http://www.binaryconvert.com/result_double.html?decimal=0520...](http://www.binaryconvert.com/result_double.html?decimal=052046055052051048051048050048048048056101045051050050)

<comment><USER5> It makes sense given what's going on, but I think that flags which affect global process behavior when you merely use them in a library ought to be called out much more heavily. The default ought to be to either leave these global flags alone, or save/restore them at the library entry points. If you really want to change the whole global state, it ought to be described as something beyond merely "unsafe" in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What would be more interesting is the analysis of what went wrong in the optimizer with -ffast-math!

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I came to post the same thing. What /exactly/ is this code doing that makes turning off optimisations faster? What does the assembly look like, with -ffast-math and without? Can these differences be used to draw a hypothesis, one that could be tested empirically?

Despite the title, which promises an article with some interesting technical depth, I just don't feel like I _learned_ anything. On the whole the piece comes off like a glib anecdote; lazy and not very informative.

<comment><USER9> Further, after six years they might have fixed the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've seen floating point 'optimizations' cause issues with iterative methods that depend on the specifics of strict IEEE754 behavior (causing massive spikes in the number of iterations and thus hurting overall performance).

</comment><comment><USER11> (2009)

</comment><comment><USER12> Aw I read the title as " __WHY __GCC's "-ffast-math" isn't " and was confused as to the missing explanation. Also, smart quotes in the title, ugh.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm pretty sure the VC++ version of fast math really is faster.</comment>


Osquery Security Audit - <AUTHOR> http://yahoo-security.tumblr.com/post/118445868880/osquery-security-audit

<comment><USER2> It would be cool if there were links to the reports and/or more detail about the issues they found.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, without details for others to learn from this post seems little more than self-promotion.

<comment><USER4> The "bad guys" aren't waiting around and complaining that no-one's spoon feeding them working exploits, they're busy right now reading the git commits.

There's a whole group of commmits around the 4th that I'd look at in detail if I were curious:

[https://github.com/facebook/osquery/commits/master](https://github.com/facebook/osquery/commits/master)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Could someone please explain why I would want this over or possibly in combination with ossec, which I am enjoying greatly these days.

</comment><comment><USER6> Facebook is hiring for open source security engineers, by the way: [https://www.facebook.com/careers/department?req=a0I1200000G4...](https://www.facebook.com/careers/department?req=a0I1200000G4M4hEAF)</comment>


How People in America Spend Their Day - <AUTHOR> http://flowingdata.com/2009/08/10/how-people-in-america-spend-their-day/ <comment><USER2> Hasn't this already been on the frontpage?

<comment><USER3> Yes

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=737466>

for people who weren't here that day to see that discussion

</comment></comment><comment> onreact-com It's funny that "household activities" are not labeled "work". Don't tell your wife about that.

<comment><USER4> That's... quite an old fashioned assumption you have there.

<comment> onreact-com To suggest that household work is not work is old fashioned to say the least. Studies have shown that not "working" mothers actually work 80h+ weeks doing "household activities" like child rearing, cleaning, cooking, washing dishes etc.

Men even when they stay at home do only 60h of it as far as I remember the numbers.</comment></comment></comment>


Grant Sanderson (of 3blue1brown) contributes to Khan Academy (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.khanacademy.org/math/multivariable-calculus/multivariable-derivatives/gradient-and-directional-derivatives/v/gradient <comment><AUTHOR> I'm excited because I can earn some more energy points (points from Khan Academy) from watching these!</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone here been asked to solve the travelling salesman or similar? - <AUTHOR> Hi all,
I work for an estate agent. I need to optimize the time of the salespeople that do our viewings.
Anyone here had to do something similar and have experiences to share? Have you encountered the travelling salesman problem or similar at work? <comment><USER2> I am working on a product that does point to point trace distance calculations for an arbitrary number of points of interest.

It uses google maps distance matrix api and a ton of maps stuff.

The customer is focused on time to arrive and round trip times.</comment>


Ask HN: Using the Socialcast API using PHP? - <AUTHOR>

Can someone help me understand how to use Socialcast's API with PHP? I'd like to grab the data from this URL - https://demo.socialcast.com/api/messages/search.xml?q=enterprise (note: the demo username/password are email@example.com/demo) using PHP so that I can format it and display it, but I'm not sure how to go about doing that.
The documentation for their API is below and unfortunately they don't provide any code samples:
http://developers.socialcast.com/api-documentation/api/messages/search/ <comment><AUTHOR> I figured it out. Using the username/password as part of the URL string (i.e. [https://email@example.com:firstname.lastname@example.com/api/me...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com:email@example.com/api/messages/search.xml?q=enterprise)) worked. I'm sure that there's a better way to do this, but this is just for fun anyways.</comment>


Melting Arctic Could Supercharge Climate Feedback Loop - <AUTHOR> http://www.climatecentral.org/news/melting-arctic-could-supercharge-climate-feedback-20440 <comment><USER2> I just can't get over, what seems to be the masses apathy regarding this issue.

<comment> King-Aaron It's because a vast percentage of the population who do hear about this news live in urban areas. Climate change is something that's talked about on TV, but when they're cold or hot, they have a thermostat to fix that.

Because it's not directly affecting these people, they literally don't care due to "all the other things in their lives" that take priority.

I'm sure if you are a pacific islander who's whole Island gets consumed by the ocean, you'll be pretty direct in your attitude towards climate change. But it's going to be so far beyond too late by the time that happens to an urbanised area, that even if a good sized city goes into the drink and people wake up, we won't be able to fix it.

The pessimist inside me says we've already passed that point, and I've seen studies that agree. Doesn't help the existential feeling of dread, knowing that there is a slim yet real possibility that everything will go tits-up in our life time.</comment></comment>