Buy on Google is now open and commission-free - <AUTHOR> https://blog.google/products/shopping/buy-on-google-is-zero-commission/ <comment><USER2> This doesn't seem to solve the main problem I have with Amazon: even when I know exactly what I want, it's impossible to find. Amazon hides the thing you want behind the items they want you to buy instead, and they allow fakes and spammers to flourish. They never have the right aspects in their search filters, either. Looks like Google is the same way. I can't find an A19 LED light bulb with 2700K color temperature and CRI 90 or better. I'm going to have a much better experience in an actual store.

<comment><USER3> If I search for Pixel 3 case on Amazon, it will also return Pixel 3 XL cases.

If I search for 1440p IPS monitor, it will mix in some monitors that aren't 1440p, and some that aren't IPS.

I'm not sure if it's because they don't want to solve the problem, because they don't care, or because somehow having customers need to spend more time on Amazon to research their purchases perversely leads to people spending more time on Amazon seeing other items they might also later buy.

<comment><USER4> Another possibility is search is hard. If all they returned is things with "Pixel 3" well, that includes "Pixel 3 XL". Ok so they look for exact string "Pixel 3". Now nothing matches like "Red Pixel 3 Case"

note, I have never implemented search but suspect it's hard problem.

Still Amazon's search is pretty awful. I've found adding something in the category I want to my cart gets me better results than being on the item itself. In other words I might search for "wrench" and it shows me 50 items of which 2 are remotely close the the type of wrench I'm looking for. I click one, get new page for that product and below it shows other wrenches but they aren't remotely like the one the page is for. So I add it to my cart and suddenly it suggests a bunch of stuff that is actually close to what I wanted.

I also don't understand the pitching me things I already bought. I get pitching me disposables I already bought. I don't get pitching me a monitor or soldering iron or another mouse or keyboard. I'd think either via statistical analysis or via manual tagging they could figure out what items are more likely to be purchased again and not recommend another PS4 just after I bought a PS4? But who knows. It could be this is harder than it sounds or it could also be they suck at search or haven't gotten around to it yet or ...

<comment><USER5> Pretty sure that Amazon search is bad on purpose... For a while they didnt even allow you to sort search results unless you selected a category (some products can be in multiple or wrong categories so you ended up hiding good results if you selected a category).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used to like buying with Google Checkout back in the day. And does anyone remember Froogle? They used to have free product listings, and then they started charging. One of the reasons I heard for that change was that they were getting a lot of spam.

I guess by partnering with Shopify they can let someone else worry about that, but likely they'll have a counterfeit problem if this gets any traction.

<comment><USER7> "It's now free to sell on Google"

[https://blog.google/products/shopping/its-now-free-to- sell-o...](https://blog.google/products/shopping/its-now-free-to-sell-on- google/)

<comment><USER6> This tells us that Google isn't charging, but not what else you need to set up and how much they charge. That part seems pretty opaque.

<comment><USER8> "We're not saying you _have_ to pay us $50/month, but what will potential customers think if your business isn't Google Guaranteed while all your competitors are..."

[https://searchengineland.com/google-offering-upgraded-gmb- pr...](https://searchengineland.com/google-offering-upgraded-gmb-profile-with- google-guaranteed-badge-for-50-per-month-338064)

<comment><USER9> That's not an arbitrary service. You're paying to have Google review and dispute claims for business through local services.

<comment><USER8> Absolutely! I didn't intend to give the impression they weren't providing a service for that fee, but meant it in relation to skybrian's comment about _" what else you need to set up and how much they charge"_.

The type of service offered by the $50/month GMB fee is designed to engender consumer confidence. As that Google Guaranteed status starts to propagate, companies showing up without it will start to be at a distinct disadvantage from the ones that do show it in their listings.

Scaling up the enhanced/paid GMB profiles at the same time as announcing the open and commission-free product listings is likely not a coincidence. The product listing change will result an accelerating need to adopt that paid GMB service as a baseline requirement in order to remain competitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is 'The Anti-Amazon Alliance' as Ben Thompson puts it. Curious to see if customers will adopt it. I think it lacks two key value props of Amazon: uniform guarantees (Amazon guarantees regardless of seller) and super fast shipping.

<comment><USER11> My guess is that Amazon will start banning vendors that also sell on Google.

<comment><USER12> This would almost certainly be illegal (antitrust violation) and probably wouldn't be worth the firestorm even if it was legal.

<comment><USER13> OK they'll raise seller prices and offer discounts for exclusivity.

<comment><USER11> Exactly. Or just lower vendor search rankings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Has anybody seen the UX? It's very deceptive. I went to a local business listing and tapped on Menu, expecting to see a deep link to their site. Instead it shows a Buy On Google page with hosted menu. It was hard to leave that page; my browser history could only start over the search since it was an SPA of a local listing.

Buy on Google is the new AMP, except now it's taking over the rest of commerce, not just web publishing.

</comment><comment><USER15> They need to solve shipping. Partner with Uber (or hey, Waymo) to pick up and drop off packages from shops to consumers.

An alternate model would be to make search good enough let consumers find stores within a radius of their current location selling X, and price compare them. E.g. I need a widget - stores a, b and c are selling it. Store a is $14.99 and 5 miles away, store b is $8.99 and 15 miles away, store c is $11.99 and 20 miles away.

<comment><USER16> "Solve shipping"... Shipping packages is a solved problem in many countries. You order something, before the shipping company picks up the orders for today at the sell, anywhere from 17:00 to 22:00. It shows up at your door the next day or a pickup point of your choosing.

<comment><USER15> To truly compete with Amazon, they need convenience. Buying packages from mom&pop retailers to ship can yield anywhere from 1 day to 3 week delivery times. Aside from a strong anti-Amazon conviction, where's the motivation for consumers to do that?

To achieve convenience requires either building out a logistics infrastructure on the scale of Amazon, which is clearly a business Google doesn't want to be in, or to approach the problem from the opposite direction. Brick and mortar retail is declining, especially post-pandemic (but also pre); that said, there is _already_ an infrastructure that exists transfers goods to retail locations - it's just spread over 10,000 companies rather than 1. However, if you can write software to better utilize that infrastructure so that you allow consumers to find items that are already physically close to them, and ship using either "last mile" crowdsourcing (and eventually auto-driving vehicles), or at least direct consumers to where the items are so that they can travel less than 30 minutes and get _the_ item they want, then you can come up with a credible anti-Amazon alliance.

Example: I want to buy a sun shade for a pergola. There are probably 10 stores within 20 miles of me that carry them, but I have no idea ahead of time the brands, the price, the color, the size, etc. I could spend an hour calling the stores, and have irritated minimum wage cashiers do inventory searches for me an attempt to answer my questions. Alternately I can go on Amazon, make a purchase, and have it shipped in 2 days from a warehouse 900 miles away from me.

<comment><USER16> The US, and other large countries, may be the special case in this situation.

Having something shipped from Amazon, and other non-local webshops means waiting for a few days, or weeks. While ordering from any online store (even the mom and pop retailers) within the country will almost always be next day delivery, and you get to pick between at least two shipping companies.

For selection and availability, pick any local price comparison site, and just order from which ever is cheapest and have the item in stock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sounds noble but if google are at the helm then that's the opposite of what I want.

I'm not Amazons biggest fan but Google are the last people on earth I'd want to have my purchase history.

Yeah they look all corporate good with their no commission / seller first attitude but it's just another data harvesting excersize & I'd rather not buy at all than buy through Google for 'free'.

<comment><USER18> If you use google for email they already have your order history...

<comment><USER19> I noticed Amazon has stopped informing you what you actually purchased in their confirmation emails (though the emails still have other purchase suggestions in them). I'm guessing that might be partially to prevent the info from being conveyed to Google in Gmail.

<comment><USER9> I can almost guarantee it's to get you to click back into the store for re- engagement.

<comment><USER20> I think it can be for both giving less data to Google and to get you to re- engage at Amazon.

<comment><USER9> Nope. Google hasn't been mining gmail emails since 2017.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is Google's head of payment systems really called "Bill Ready"?

<comment><USER22> Nintendo's CEO's last name is Bowser.

Our AG is named "Barr" (Pun on a Bar association)

Is there a cool collection of these somewhere? These are the only evidence I feel that we're in a simulation and the engineer is fucking with us.

<comment><USER23> I believe there was a man named Armond Hammer who was the CEO of the company that owns Arm&Hammer (the baking soda company) at one point.

<comment><USER24> I notice that in my home state, the head of more than one auto dealership had the same last name as the brand of car sold by the dealership, for reasons that were coincidences.

I wonder if there is some kind of unconscious social bias at work in these cases?

<comment><USER19> If your name matches a brand of a car it might be rational to sell that brand; assuming it's otherwise a completely arbitrary choice, it probably helps name recognition and memory, since some customers will probably mention it as a mildly interesting anecdote to their friends and family.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Selling on Google has gone through a lot of iterations for them now as nothing seems to end up working out how they want. They are unsure whether they should just advertise products, or if they are selling whether they should handle shipping, customer support, returns, seller reputation/reviews, payment processing and making money from fees or just as a play to keep people on Google and away from Amazon. At various times they have scaled up with real employees to try and drive the service and work with merchants, at others they have stuffed the whole process behind contact forms and Indian first level support.

I would assume that the current results indicate that their commissions are either loss making after all the value add services they are providing like customer service/ returns, or the amount they bring in is so small that it isn't worth having them there as a roadblock to adoption.

</comment><comment><USER26> Could they just bring back froogle already?

If it's free to list, why not just make a special shopping filter on google to find stuff for sale. Amazon included.

I miss the day when I could google for products and find the best price quality. Amazon search shows more ads than search results and the world really needs a shopping google.

</comment><comment><USER27> The author Douglas Rushkoff ("Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus," etc.) has a lot of good things to say about the long term dangers of relying on huge retailers like Amazon (and now apparently Google).

I am making an effort to find much smaller online retailers. About 4 months ago I started using VitaCost for some food items, an to be honest their service initially was not great (possibly they were overwhelmed at the beginning of covid-19 lock-down). However, they just kept getting better and better and now I use my shopping history to reorder very quickly. Reading their privacy policy, they do share your purchase history with marketing partners and I can only hope this is on a smaller scale than having Google having my purchase history.

A counter example: my wife and I needed a new coffee pot and I knew the brand I wanted. I went to that company's web site, tried to order, but was referred to Amazon and Walmart Online. Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER28> War of attrition with Amazon. This could be fun, if only Amazon wasn't the ultimate champion of competition destruction.

</comment><comment><USER29> So many questions... the big one: How does Google make money from this?

<comment><USER30> It's 100% about slowing down Amazon. They want people to search on Google instead of Amazon.

<comment><USER31> More specifically they want people to search on Google and stay there. Pretty much everyone starts their search on Google.

<comment><USER32> Lots of people will start with Amazon when shopping. It's definitely a threat to Google because those are some of the most valuable searches.

<comment><USER33> You mean a lot of Americans will start with Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> _timeo Danaos et dona ferentes_ [1]

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

</comment><comment><USER35> I doubt this will make a dent to Amazon's monopoly. Amazon is not winning because of they're closed and have high commission. If somebody can compete with Amazon will be companies like JD, coupang, Walmart.

<comment><USER36> Walmart's search makes amazon look good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Anyone remember when ATMs were free?

<comment><USER38> EU bank cards will mostly allow free withdrawals across Europe (with some strange exceptions). Some countries like Belgium have fully prohibited national banks from charging customers of rival banks. It's not a technical/financial issue, it's a policy choice...

[https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial- pr...](https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-products-and- services/payments-transfers-cheques/faq/index_en.htm)

<comment><USER33> They still charge you for the privilege of using a card though.

<comment><USER39> I have 3 cards that don't cost me a Euro cent. 1 is debit, 1 is de facto debit because the credit limit is nominal so I cannot spend money that I don't have in my account. The 3rd one requires me to pay the bill 2 weeks after its issued to avoid (high) interest. But they are all free if used correctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What i need a price_parity for amazon and my local country south africa. I agree.its mostly import duties by my misguided government.(we dont make cpus, why tax them ?). Im thinking the next n big thing in online shopping is getting the global-village-catalogue at my doorstep with a reasonable shipping price, ppl in America dont know how lucky you are to have free shipping. We can pay 2x the price in dollars just for shipping.

</comment><comment><USER41> Well, this is a good shot across the bows for Amazon. I feel Amazon was getting a bit abusive towards its sellers.

To those who fear Google will become abusive in the long term: yes they might, but then there will be other competitors (perhaps a reformed Amazon) to hold them to a fair cut in the future.

Market working as intended in other words.

</comment><comment><USER42> Does anybody else think this is in response to Apple's privacy crackdown on third party tracking data? If you buy on Buy, then you are still first party for Google and they can still get your signals.

</comment><comment><USER43> Sorry if this is a silly question, but is this in any way replacing Stripe?

<comment><USER44> No, Stripe is not a direct competitor here. Also, Shopify Payment is built on top of Stripe

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Google's e-commerce had been floundering for years, I'm glad they brought in fresh leadership and upped investment to keep Amazon from having a near- monopoly. Customers will benefit.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is what happens when you kill third party cookies. The signals have tremendous value, so networks will move them into first party activities . Expect further consolidation

</comment><comment><USER47> > These changes are about creating a monopoly and profiting from it later

</comment><comment><USER48> I would not trust a sellers business on Google with their history of customer support. Why risk your lively hood?

</comment><comment><USER49> Not going to happen. The company with one of the worst customer support vs the most customer centric. Maybe some dont care, but I know a lot that prefer Amazon over any other Shop because of the service.

</comment><comment> asdfk-12 Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 204 times, shame on me.

[https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)

<comment><USER50> "companies don't try new things" \- HN

"Google kills products" \- HN

99% of the people here would gladly work at Google. But what's the next best thing .. downplay the company you couldn't get into :) Carry on !

<comment><USER51> I was trying to get into Google 3 times in my life. Results so far:

\- some (all? one?) interview failure (no feedback), rejection

\- interviews passed, no degree in CS (which was known to them prior of the interviews), rejection

\- interviews passed, this time missing CS degree is not a problem, no cultural fit, rejection

I think I am done. You are assumption is without merit though.

<comment><USER50> There are many many people without CS degrees at Google.

<comment><USER51> [https://www.axios.com/google-apple-college-degree- hiring-a29...](https://www.axios.com/google-apple-college-degree- hiring-a290bca8-65a7-4de2-8fa9-d93b4c30457a.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Commission free until Google get's traction and then all kinds of bullshit rules and games, and ZERO customer support . . . would you really trust the same people who just arbitrarily cut off peoples gmail accounts and such, and you have ZERO ability to contact them and sort it out ?

then, imagine them taking it to the next level holding on to your money and not responding . . .

I can certainly sympathesize with that YouTube lady last year who went to YouTube headquarters and starting slinging lead . . . bastards.

</comment><comment><USER53> Free until they dominate the entire market

<comment><USER54> You really think Google -- who has floundered in this space for years -- is going to dominate a market that is already dominated by a company (Amazon) with a 50% larger market cap?

Walmart and Target have been trying to chip away at Amazon's lead, and they're only getting buried deeper in the dust. Google doesn't exactly have a reputation for entering new markets and dominating them, either...

<comment><USER53> People don't search things on amazon, they search things on google, which link to amazon.

So yes, they have a huge potential.

They always have sucked doing things IRL, so it's not a certain win. But owning the road to the competition shop is powerful.

Not to mention they can force the hand of small shops: use our API or go down in ranking.

<comment><USER55> Is that still true? For most products Amazon search seems much improved to me, it used to be quite poor. Plus on mobile people may be biased to search via the app.

<comment><USER53> Most people don't even know what an URL is. They can't tell the difference between an app and a website. They think google is the internet. Hell, even the ones that do know better type the site URL into google to go to the site they want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Did somebody shoot Amazon a second asshole?

</comment><comment><USER57> It's not 2000's anymore. Nobody falls for the "free" as in free while we increase our user base anymore.

<comment><USER58> Well... "free" has been used like this for thousands of years. Traders/merchants spouting free this or that, like a car dealer giving free oil changes, or midas with a free inspection.

Nothing is free. Ever.

What's changed is you personally know this now. Many still fall for this, and there are always more humans to be scammed.

Bear in mind, most of humanity can't read. Are not really literate. The UN's definition of literacy, is reading at a grade 6 level.

Not how you read in 6th grade, but whatever lets a 6th grader, make it to 7th grade.

Can someone read a stop sign, do not enter sign? That's pretty much 'literate'.

While street smarts exist, bear in mind how many 'stupids' exist...

So yup.. lots of fresh pigeons.</comment></comment>


Tech companies, bristling, concede to government surveillance program - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/technology/tech-companies-bristling-concede-to-government-surveillance-efforts.html <comment><USER2> Lately, I've come to realize that the September 11 attacks actually destroyed America.

In the grand scheme of things, the attacks themselves caused minimal damage and casualties. We're only talking about ~3,000 deaths and ~$30 billion damage.

But look at the aftermath. The Iraq War itself cost the USA $5 trillion, and another ~4,500 lives (American lives, that is. The total number of casualties is well over 100,000). At home, the PATRIOT Act enabled countless breaches of freedom, and the TSA has cost untold number of hours wasted at airports. And now this NSA bullshit.

All of this is beyond Osama bin Laden's wildest dreams. The guy just organized a couple of airplanes to be rammed into the WTC towers. Heck, he didn't even expect them to go down, and was pleasantly surprised when it happened. In light of all the freedoms America lost since then though, he must be dancing in his grave right now.

<comment><USER3> This is an understandable but ahistorical perspective. There was a time not long ago when wiretaps weren't yet considered searches, and where voicing support for communism could get you dragged in front of a tribunal. The ideals of this country aren't an end-state; they're a goal that we will constantly struggle to achieve.

<comment><USER4> If we're going to discuss McCarthyism, we need to remember that the US government _was_ riddled with soviet spies during the Roosevelt administration[1][2][3][4]. Communist spies outside of government were also instrumental to soviet espionage efforts, including the theft of nuclear technology[5][6]. McCarthy was responding to real threats, although my high school history class didn't talk much about them. Members of the Communist Party USA were instrumental in the Soviets obtaining weapons to destroy life as we know it and the lesson we take from the period is that _McCarthy_ was a bad guy.

McCarthy wrote a book arguing that the Soviet Union was the real winner of WWII[7], thanks to the help of willing US accomplices. Looking at the map of Europe before and after the war you have to admit the guy has a case. But who would read a book by Joseph McCarthy?

[1] [http://foseti.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/harry-dexter- white/](http://foseti.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/harry-dexter-white/), [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Dexter_White](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Dexter_White)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Silvermaster](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Silvermaster)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlo_group](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perlo_group)

[4] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alger_Hiss](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alger_Hiss)

[5] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Rosenberg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Rosenberg)

[6] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittaker_Chambers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittaker_Chambers)

[7] [http://foseti.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/review-of-americas- re...](http://foseti.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/review-of-americas-retreat-from- victory-by-joseph-r-mccarthy&#x2F);

<comment><USER5> Espionage efforts are one thing, but when people are jailed for "inciting rebellion" for the "crime" of distributing the writings of Karl Marx, the undeniable fact that there were lots of spies here (as we had lots of spies there) falls so far short of justifying the sorts of abuses that went on.

The government argued that the Communist Party USA had no right to spread political _ideas_ in the US, and targetted _lawyers_ who dared to defend them.

Whatever the extent of Soviet spying in the US (and it would have been extensive for obvious reasons, as with the other side), the McCarthy era was an assault on the foundations of democracy in this country. If you want to justify that because the threat is real, I suppose we should just give up on this whole Constitutional Rights thing....

<comment><USER4> Of course, there is no moral equivalence between US spies and Soviet spies, since there is no moral equivalence between subjugation to the totalitarian soviet state (which soviet spies were fighting for) and the liberal democratic capitalism of what remained of the West.

Violence is a nasty thing. But violence in service of slavery is a far nastier thing than violence in defense of human rights and freedoms.

<comment><USER5> That's an interesting defence of McCarthyism, that we must do away with American liberty because otherwise we will lose it to the Soviets.

<comment><USER6> +1 best summary of McCarthyism ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a lesson in the power of language. The companies involved and their denials of knowledge of PRISM were not lies, but clearly they were making it easier for the government to extract data for surveillance, under an unnamed program with specific point people in each company who were only allowed to talk to the government and not talk to their CEOs about the extent in which the government was extracting data. It may go even deeper. We just don't know.

The thing that upsets me most is that I suspect nobody except for the whistleblower will take any real heat. I hope more will come forward with more details in the coming weeks, before the government makes an example of the whisteblower.

Will this incident change user behavior? I doubt it. We're too dependent on these companies to cut them off en masse.

<comment><USER8> I dunno, it sounds to me like the companies in question were being hit with a lot of government requests and they did the natural thing to take them seriously and make it easy for their employees to deal with: make an API for it and automate the parts of the process that can be automated.

It is inevitable they are going to be hit with requests for information, they could dig their heels in on some things but ultimately they legally have to provide some of the information requested. They could have implemented APIs without any idea of how the NSA structured or code named the technology internally on the NSA's side. And I'm sure Google, Facebook, et al implemented whatever they implemented with little knowledge of how other companies were complying or not.

What I imagine happened is that any company that took compliance seriously, likely for their own staff's benefit, as a side effect became a stronger asset to the NSA than companies like Twitter who resisted.

And lastly, I'm not saying any of this is good. It just seems extremely plausible and not part of a massive conspiracy to give the NSA access to as much data as possible.

<comment><USER9> > _It just seems extremely plausible and not part of a massive conspiracy to > give the NSA access to as much data as possible._

Wait, why can't it be _both_ of those things? What could the phrase "massive conspiracy" _mean_ if it doesn't apply to a situation like this?

"conspiracy" suggests a bunch of people were trying to accomplish a goal in secret, at odds with the interests of the general public. Yup!

"massive" implies significant scale - that it was a LOT of people sharing a LOT of information. Check!

I'm not seeing anything missing...

<comment><USER8> Some things happen in secret but are not part of a conspiracy. Conspiracies require secrecy because they are unlawful or unethical. It is codified into law (which is public) that the US gov will make classified information requests like the ones presented to the companies in question. Automating the exchange of information that the government has announced will by law be exchanged is not a conspiracy even if the specifics of what information is exchanged and the mechanics of the exchange are a secret.

<comment><USER9> This data exchange is arguably both unlawful and unethical. Unlawful in that it's an illegal search under the 4th amendment to the constitution. Unethical in that it makes liars out of these companies when they claim their customers have a reasonable level of privacy.

What conceivable "probable cause" could justify data collection on the scale being discussed? Practices being "codified into law" (largely secret laws, being interpreted in secret ways) doesn't really let anyone off the hook here. Or it shouldn't, at any rate. (Congresscritters and presidents still have an oath of office that promises to defend the constitution, right?)

<comment><USER8> That is not the case according to the article. I understand how you could believe this is happening but specifically with the SV companies we have no evidence of it and even the Washington Post is backing down from some of their boldest claims (e.g. NSA had direct access).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So basically, PRISM is just a system for negotiating electronic dead-drop locations to pick up data when companies are compelled by an NSL to archive and copy an individuals data? If it were done by printing out the data and dropping a physical box in a pre approved location, would be be as scandalous?

What are we to believe PRISM is now? Is it

a) a firehose feed that allocates arbitrary, indisriminate, ad-hoc querying over large swaths of user data in cloud datacenters?

or

b) is it an automated system for sending out National Security Letters, and the polling dropbox locations for compliance, and then importing the data into some centralized government intelligence repository?

a) is an absolute outrage, there should be rioting in front of congress and the whitehouse

b) is pretty much just making delivery of information they are compelled to legally deliver more efficient. Although if I were these companies, I'd make it as painful as possible by printing all of the information requested on sheets of paper in Comic Sans and mailing it USPS.

<comment><USER11> Is mailing hard copies more secure? I tend to think of phone calls and hard copies as less secure.

<comment><USER12> I don't particularly mind the security implications of the technique. However, It certainly is less convenient if you are the recipient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _In one recent instance, the National Security Agency sent an agent to a tech company's headquarters to monitor a suspect in a cyberattack, a lawyer representing the company said. The agent installed government-developed software on the company's server and remained at the site for several weeks to download data to an agency laptop._

Uh, wow.

<comment><USER14> Sounds like...direct access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _In at least two cases, at Google and Facebook, one of the plans discussed was to build separate, secure portals, like a digital version of the secure physical rooms that have long existed for classified information, in some instances on company servers. Through these online rooms, the government would request data, companies would deposit it and the government would retrieve it, people briefed on the discussions said._

If true, that would explain the very carefully worded language of both Google and Facebook that they did not give the NSA "direct access" to their servers.

</comment><comment><USER16> _In at least two cases, at Google and Facebook, one of the plans discussed was to build separate, secure portals, like a digital version of the secure physical rooms that have long existed for classified information, in some instances on company servers. Through these online rooms, the government would request data, companies would deposit it and the government would retrieve it, people briefed on the discussions said._

So _THAT_ is why all the responses repeated "direct access".

</comment><comment><USER17> Does this mean I was right? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5843051](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5843051) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5843029](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5843029)

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably, although IMO this was pretty obvious from the $20mm budget. The only question was "is it a repurposing of the existing law enforcement API" or something slightly unique, and was it "Google/FB in the loop" or totally automated.

NSA presumably wouldn't want most Google employees to know they're FISAing info on KSM. They may be willing to read in a few Google employees to handle turning over the data, though.

There may be some special magic to hide the actual target from Google while Google still gets to review the order itself. (the name of the target is presumably non-meaningful to Google).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If I'm reading the OP correctly, then, based solely on what they've reported, it seems that the denials made by FB and Google were not only truthful, _but sincere_ (as opposed to being either weaselly or outright dishonest or both)...Here's the key passage:

\---

> * "The U.S. government does not have direct access or a 'back door' to the > information stored in our data centers," Google's chief executive, Larry > Page, and its chief legal officer, David Drummond, said in a statement on > Friday. "We provide user data to governments only in accordance with the > law."*

 _Statements from Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, Apple, AOL and Paltalk made the same distinction._

 _But instead of adding a back door to their servers, the companies were essentially asked to erect a locked mailbox and give the government the key, people briefed on the negotiations said. Facebook, for instance, built such a system for requesting and sharing the information, they said._

 _The data shared in these ways, the people said, is shared after company lawyers have reviewed the FISA request according to company practice. It is not sent automatically or in bulk, and the government does not have full access to company servers. Instead, they said, it is a more secure and efficient way to hand over the data._

 _Tech companies might have also denied knowledge of the full scope of cooperation with national security officials because employees whose job it is to comply with FISA requests are not allowed to discuss the details even with others at the company, and in some cases have national security clearance, according to both a former senior government official and a lawyer representing a technology company._

\---

The NYT is talking only about FISA requests, which are a secret process but, as far as everything reported about that process has said, targets individuals. Moreover, when FISA is used on Americans, it's a process that involves a court-approved warrant.

So you can argue that FISA is wrong or that it is administered with a rubber stamp (and in my opinion, yes, this is most definitely worth scrutinizing, and it has been for however many years it's been put in place), or that no ethical company should ever comply with a FISA request...but that's not the same ballpark as what's being alleged with Verizon or with PRISM.

The point about these companies making it "easier" by creating a systematic delivery process, such as a "lockbox", to send over the requested data is an interesting detail, but kind of a non sequitur. __Either FISA is OK or it is flat out wrong __...what does it matter which digital process is set up to fulfill that request?

<comment><USER19> This article seems to make the most sense. As a hypothetical example, Google might have been manually fulfilling thousands of FISA requests. It sucked up time, took engineering resources, was error-prone, and lacked the legal paper trail to track such requests. In addition, the government wanted something faster, that used fewer agents to submit/collect data, and could more easily get updates.

So one day, an NSA agent negotiates with Google to build fisarequest.supersecret.google.com. NSA agents can directly upload FISA request documents, as easily as submitting expense receipts. In turn, Google's legal department can view each request and decide to comply with the click of a mouse, as easily as approving an expense report. If authorization is granted, the NSA can now view the emails of the requested user, and new emails can simply be viewed with a refresh of the browser. As Schmidt and Drummond say, Google can decline a request if it's improper or overly broad, and ask for additional information -- again, as easily as a manager looking at a questionable minibar expense on a trip report.

Said NSA agent does this with multiple companies, internally brands this as PRISM, puts together a Powerpoint deck, and declares victory. It's "direct access" since it's coming straight from Google and on a Google server, and it's "real-time" in that a request can be authorized quickly, and there are no more .zip files with data dumps involved.

Google has never actually heard of PRISM, and only knows that they built a tool to make it easier to do what they were already doing with legal FISA requests. To them, the NSA doesn't have "direct access," which is a loaded term for unfettered superuser access.

The entire program costs only $20mm because the government now requires only a few agents to submit requests and collect data. The cost of building the tools is borne by the companies, who see it as a cheaper way to comply with an existing legal obligation.

<comment><USER20> Google has specifically stated that they don't take this ("drop box") approach:

"We cannot say this more clearly—the government does not have access to Google servers—not directly, or via a back door, or a so-called drop box."

<comment><USER21> The drop box could be an NSA server and not a "Google server", depending on who manages the hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow, one second of unconcentrated reading, and a bunch of weasel words fly right through the blood barrier into your brain.

 _They opened discussions with national security officials about developing technical methods to more efficiently and securely share the personal data of foreign users in response to lawful government requests._

Really, NYT? More _securely_? And the users, they are all _foreign_? And all the government requests, deemed _lawful_ from the outset?

Come on, at this point, are they even trying with the balanced reporting thing? Tech companies may be _bristling_ , but the NYT is surely lodged in the government wing.

</comment><comment><USER23> Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems like an overreaction. The specific allegation is that companies have set up "digital version of the secure physical rooms that have long existed for classified information, in some instances on company servers." Why is this a problem? Do we honestly except companies to print out paper copies of digital data just to inconvenience government agents who ultimately have a legal right to that data?

I understand wanting to narrow the scope of the data available, but no one has put forth evidence yet that Facebook is periodically giving the government the equivalent of an SQL dump. Unlike Verizon, they appear to be producing limited information in response to a specific request on foreign nationals.. Streamlining this process doesn't raise the same issues for me as does the Verizon order.

</comment><comment><USER24> Twitter said no? I like twitter more!

<comment><USER25> Twitter by nature is very public messaging platform and therefore this data is less private.

I'd be curious how many DMs are sent compared to public tweets.

<comment><AUTHOR> Plus anything on SMS can already be monitored easily in the clear at the telco level. Most of the "interesting" twitter users are probably using SMS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Huh?

"Each of the nine companies said it had no knowledge of a government program providing officials with access to its servers, and drew a bright line between giving the government wholesale access to its servers to collect user data and giving them specific data in response to individual court orders. Each said it did not provide the government with full, indiscriminate access to its servers."

Tech companies do not allow widespread open access to their data. They respond to legal requests that come from FISA for records on individual users. Huge difference.

<comment><USER27> > They respond to legal requests that come from FISA for records on individual > users.

We were reassured about the 'individual users' part by the tech companies yesterday. And yet:

> FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad sweep > for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms, lawyers who work with > the orders said.

What's the truth here?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Something still doesn't add up for me on this.

1\. How does this explanation relate to the slide that the US is the World's Telecommunication Backbone? The only explanation I can think of is that Google, etc... were only providing information for servers that were physically in the US.

2\. How does this prism name relate to the program? To me, the prism name seems more linked to fiber optic cable than to this sort of data monitoring. Perhaps it's an allusion to splitting the data stream and reflecting it to the NSA.

<comment><USER27> Yes, the second slide from [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/special/politics/prism-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents&#x2F); sounds more like this [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/us/16nsa.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/us/16nsa.html) doesn't it?

> Officials would not discuss details of the overcollection problem because it > involves classified intelligence-gathering techniques. But the issue appears > focused in part on technical problems in the N.S.A.'s ability at times to > distinguish between communications inside the United States and those > overseas as it uses its access to American telecommunications companies' > fiber-optic lines and its own spy satellites to intercept millions of calls > and e-mail messages.

Maybe the second slide in the WaPo selection refers to the wiretapping operations, the third and later ones reproduced by WaPo refer to the "FISA API" operations involving Google, MS, Facebook etc. and the transition between the two topics is in the omitted slides between 2 and 3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> _> The data shared in these ways, the people said, is shared after company lawyers have reviewed the FISA request according to company practice. It is not sent automatically or in bulk, and the government does not have full access to company servers. Instead, they said, it is a more secure and efficient way to hand over the data._

That sounds to me like PRISM _is_ in fact just a name for an overall consistent system of routing data from specific individual requests.

</comment><comment><USER27> Meanwhile, [http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanhall/2013/06/07/washingt...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanhall/2013/06/07/washington- post-updates-hedges-on-initial-prism-report&#x2F); "Washington Post Updates, Hedges on Initial PRISM Report"

</comment><comment><USER30> Can someone sum up the actual evidence for the claim that PRISM, or something like it, exists? What do we have besides a PowerPoint presentation?

And what are the sources for the claims in this article?

> _In one recent instance, the National Security Agency sent an agent to a > tech company's headquarters to monitor a suspect in a cyberattack, a lawyer > representing the company said. The agent installed government-developed > software on the company's server and remained at the site for several weeks > to download data to an agency laptop._

> _In other instances, the lawyer said, the agency seeks real-time > transmission of data, which companies send digitally._

I would like to know the source of this information, and to be presented with evidence that it is true.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is the important bit:

 _Google, Microsoft and Twitter publish transparency reports detailing government requests for information, but these reports do not include FISA requests because they are not allowed to acknowledge them._

 _Yet since tech companies' cooperation with the government was revealed Thursday, tech executives have been performing a familiar dance, expressing outrage at the extent of the government's power to access personal data and calling for more transparency, while at the same time heaping praise upon the president as he visited Silicon Valley._

So Larry Page and Zuckerberg are just deceiving the public because they are ignoring FISA requests.

I'm so outraged right now.

</comment><comment><USER11> Maybe it is just me, but could PRISM just refer to secure portals where data that was summoned from a FISA request (either as spartan as access logs, or as deep as emails, depending on provider), could be securely delivered upon collection? It doesn't have to describe the actual COLLECTION system, just the exchange between government and corporation. As someone has just mentioned, a secure Dropbox. Just as if they had a legitimate search warrant for details, you would hope they had a secure way of providing that information to the requesting agency.

</comment><comment><USER32> Systematically using private companies to spy on foreigners and further the state's security regime. Hmm, sounds like what the U.S. was recently castigating China and Huawei for.

</comment><comment><USER33> "SAN FRANCISCO — When government officials came to Silicon Valley to demand easier ways for the world's largest Internet companies to turn over user data as part of a secret surveillance program, the companies bristled. In the end, though, many cooperated at least a bit.

Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were more compliant, according to people briefed on the negotiations. "

Twitter is heroic. Shame on Google, Facebook and all the other state-stooges

</comment><comment><USER34> Effectively what these companies are trying to do via stronger and stronger denials is prove a negative... which of course is borderline useless. Regardless of the truth, to PROVE they were not involved is impossible.

For those companies called out but not involved (as the Post walks back its language), it has to be an exceptionally frustrating experience.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm more upset about Larry Page trying to deceive the public than about Obama. I trusted Google. I feel betrayed.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've posted this a few times, but I'll do it again:

Why aren't we all using Bitmessage already?

[https://bitmessage.org](https://bitmessage.org)

[https://www.youtube.com/embed/t_dTotavJZ8](https://www.youtube.com/embed/t_dTotavJZ8)

<comment><USER35> Why aren't we already? It's new, unproven and most of us haven't even heard of it yet. A quick glance at the website suggests you have to install a native program, which, compared to a web app, adds friction, makes it harder to use and requires trusting the authors with full access to your computer. There isn't a mobile app. OS X support is "only lightly tested".

And, even if none of that were the case, the most important reason we aren't using it already is because the people we want to talk to aren't using it, either. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect)

<comment><USER31> Bitmessage is open source.

[https://github.com/Bitmessage/PyBitmessage](https://github.com/Bitmessage/PyBitmessage)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I haven't seen mentioned here that Intel is one of the companies mentioned. I find this particularly worrying: if the hardware itself is compromised, it's game over.</comment>


Unbalanced reads from SSDs in software RAID mirrors in Linux - <AUTHOR> https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/UnbalancedSSDMirrorReads <comment><USER2> I tried to get a patch in to do round robin reads in Linux RAID1 a few years ago due to this, but there was too great a request for doing a lot of benchmarks to show that it was ever useful that I abandoned getting it upstream.

[http://www.rkeene.org/viewer/tmp/linux-188.8.131.52-2rrrr.diff.h...](http://www.rkeene.org/viewer/tmp/linux-126.96.36.199-2rrrr.diff.htm)

<comment><USER3> My guess is that using the same disk performs better then round robin ... the disk could for example already have the data in cache, while the other disk has not. When it comes to optimization - the results are often unexpected. And you would have to do a lot of benchmarks on different disks, loads, use cases etc to make a conclusion, and you might find unexpected outcomes that you did not think about, like both disks being self-bricked at the same time as they have almost the same rw count.

<comment><USER4> One could do delayed round-robin. For one day (or other time period), the first-choice disk is disk A, the next time period, disk B... etc. And for intentional non-uniformity, you can vary the time-period.. it's one day for disk A, half a day for B. etc...

<comment><USER5> What is the gain?

<comment><USER4> Possibly pushing the likelyhood of first failure out, preferably beyond capital lifetime assumptions? Possibly increasing system performance over the lifetime of the SSDs.

But, it's possible that this solution is not particularly useful depending on what mixes of equipment and workloads one expects to operate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pro tip: use RAID10 instead of RAID1 with Linux md to have the same level of redundancy for arrays with only two legs. RAID10 will properly stripe/balance reads across them, effectively doubling linear read throughput. The only real downside is that you will have to find and actively choose a sensible chunk size that fits both your hardware and workload.

<comment> ryan-c I think you have to specify layout=far2 with two drive raid10 on linux if you want that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if there are cache effects involved as well - continuously using the same SSD most of the time may reuse cached metadata relevant to the SSD innards that the kernel FS cache can't help with.

<comment><USER8> The FS cache sits above the raid driver.

<comment><USER7> Well, it could hardly be below, could it. Was there an insight you wanted to mention?

<comment><USER8> Let me clarify. All the VFS caches are above the md driver. The cache we care about, the buffer cache, is not below the md driver.

You'd need some kind of cache below the md driver to cache "metadata relevant to the SSD innards". Since there isn't one therefore there can't be a penalty due to caching to switch between SSDs in a mirror. That answers your question.

But since you want an insight, here's one for you. There is no "metadata relevant to the SSD innards" available. The md drivers do not have this information. I wish they did. When I was still playing with the md code I'd love to know the block and page sizes of the drives. But that information is two bytes. Not really something that would need a cache.

<comment><USER7> Let me clarify what I was saying: I was redundantly (for clarity) talking about cache on the SSD, trying to make it extra clear that I wasn't talking about any kernel cache.

I'm trying to figure out how, exactly, you've read my attempt at excessive clarity; it's not clear to me yet what you misread, since it seems like you're trying to correct some misunderstanding, but it hasn't worked because you haven't said anything that isn't already blindingly obvious.

 _There is no "metadata relevant to the SSD innards" available. The md drivers do not have this information_

This is not an insight.

The cache I'm interested in is tied up in how the SSD presents as a block device, but isn't implemented as a block device, as block devices are normally understood (wear levelling and remapping, hidden parallelism / striping, etc.). Yes, the FS cache can't help with this. Yes, the RAID implementation can't help with this. Of course. It's internal to the SSD. It's innards. I don't see what information you added.

<comment><USER8> I may have misread your original post but your hostility isn't helping to clarify things. Instead of replying back "I was talking about the SSD cache" you replay back with "Well, it could hardly be below, could it. Was there an insight you wanted to mention?" So instead of clarifying things you decided to be rude.

Now that I know what you're talking about, let's try to answer your question. There are SSD controllers that don't use a RAM cache on the drive. It's not necessary for performance and doesn't do as much as on a HDD if present. The main benefit of a drive cache while reading is for read ahead. This is not needed for an SSD as it doesn't have to wait for the sectors to show up under the head.

The only thing that will affect things is reading file system blocks from the same SSD page/block. The md code already does this. If the next block requested is after the last blocks read it will use the same SSD.

If the block is from somewhere else then it doesn't matter if it comes from this SSD or that SSD. Access time will be the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> AFAIK, there is no need to do "wear leveling" for reads, SSDs have "unlimited" life cycle reads. So the first SSD seeing ten times the reads will not make it fail sooner.

<comment><USER10> Even if reads did wear out an SSD, wouldn't it be better to wear them out one at a time rather then wear them all out equally so they all fail in rapid succession once they reach the end of their life cycles?

<comment><USER11> I would say no, you'd want the whole disk to fail then so you can just replace it vs. it getting smaller over time, which would make capacity planning pretty complex.

<comment><USER10> We're talking about RAID1 here, so multiple SSDs. I'm saying you don't want multiple disks to fail in rapid succession, which is what you'd maybe get if you exactly equalized the wear on them.

<comment><USER11> That makes sense, and you actually do see RAIDs fail like that in the real world sometimes even on non-SSDs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Back when I still ran Linux on my personal servers I noticed this. I was adding TRIM support to the md drivers before the maintainers finally got around to it. That's when I noticed the balancing code tended to favour one disk.

I added round-robin code and experimented with splitting large sequental requests between idle disks.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does it matter? Do reads affect lifetime of SSDs? It can't be affecting performance, as if the drives _were_ busy then it would be balanced much more evenly.

</comment><comment><USER13> Balancing reads may lead to improved performance if an individual SSD is near it's ops or datarate limits.

<comment><USER14> But if this were the case the disc would not be idle, right?</comment></comment>


Steve Forbes: Don't let states disrupt Trump admin's 'net neutrality' rollback - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/10/fcc-net-neutrality-rollback-getting-disrupted-at-state-level-steve-forbes-commentary.html <comment><USER2> > The 80-year-old so called Title II regulations were originally used to > regulate railroads and then the Ma Bell telephone monopoly of the 1930's. > [...] The lunacy of applying old, rotary-dial telephone regulations on > something so dynamic is self-evident.

The 2015 Open Internet Order:

• Bans paid prioritization

• Bans ISPs blocking their customers from accessing legal internet content

• Bans ISPs degrading access to legal content

Which of these does Forbes think is "old, rotary-dial telephone regulations"?

Forbes argument is like saying that the First Amendment should not apply to web sites because the First Amendment is 200 year old newspaper regulation. That would be incorrect because it confuses speech, which is the subject of the First Amendment, with the technologies that may be used to transmit speech.

He's making the same error with net neutrality. He's confusing the content and purposes of communications (which is largely the same now as it was in the 1930s) with the technology that happens to be used for that communication.

He seems to have overlooked that the 2015 Open Internet Order specifically excluded over 700 provisions from the Title II rules from applying to internet. That's where all the things he fears would hurt investment were.

We _know_ that light-touch Title II regulation, such as that of the 2015 Order is compatible with investment, because that's how wireless voice has been regulated for over 20 years.

I'm kind of surprised he didn't also include the old Republican talking point about the 2015 order being 400 pages of regulations. In fact, it was about 8 pages of actual regulation. That document the FCC issued also included hundreds of pages of analysis to explain _why_ they made the regulations they did and responses to the points raised during the public commentary period.</comment>


Usenet history: the first "worst episode ever" post - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/alt.tv.simpsons/msg/44d7c1808394313f?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off

<comment><USER2> How did you find this? Google's Usenet search has been horribly broken for years. It's criminal how they've let their Usenet archives rot away.

</comment><comment><USER3> Worst Usenet post ever.

(The thread is pretty good, actually. If you read a few posts up where they discuss Steamboat Itchy, you can see that people were even more clueless about copyright in 1992 than they are now.)

</comment><comment><USER4> What's the significance of this? (Serious question - I'm not a Usenet user and I'm not too much older than this post.)

<comment><USER5> It's the first recorded online instance of the "worst * ever" meme, which ended up making its way back into The Simpsons by way of the Comic Book Guy.</comment></comment>


Appeals court rejects petition for rehearing in podcast patent case - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/eff-destroys-the-podcasting-patent-one-last-time/ <comment><USER2> > " _In the petition, Personal Audio also complains that the IPR process gives > organizations like EFF an unfair advantage. Personal Audio lawyers accuse > EFF of working together with defendants in some of their litigation. "

> "The proliferation of 'public interest' organizations that obtain funding > from multiple third parties to collectively invalidate patents is a change > encouraged by enactment of the AIA," states Personal Audio in its petition. > "Collective efforts to invalidate patents severely tilts the playing field > in favor of the party or parties seeking invalidation._"

Isn't this effectively just complaining that companies aren't allowed to bully individuals?

<comment><USER3> "Whhhaaaaa! This law that was supposed to make it easier to overturn bullshit patents has made it easier to overturn my bullshit patents!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do the companies which paid out get their money back now that the patent has been invalidated?

<comment><USER5> Unlikely, most patent licenses include a clause that handles invalidation of the patent, without revoking the license.

<comment><USER6> But it is possible to negotiate a license with a clawback clause in the event of invalidation.

<comment><USER7> When sued by an entity with no assets to speak of that uses its funds to fund suing other parties you are probably not getting your money back no matter what it says.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting article, But can we please put a moratorium on the word "destroy" in headlines for the next 10 years?

<comment><USER9> And any other word you'd expect a comic book villain to utilize when describing their world-domination plans(decimate, eviscerate, blasts, etc.)?

<comment><USER10> Incinerate, rupture, enervate, deconstitute, liquefy, melt, vaporize, expurgate (maybe), evanesce, squidify, particulate (particulize?), atomize, gluonification, skeletonize, exsanguinate, devertibraification, and maybe even defenestrate.

Those are just the ones off the top of my head, I'm sure we can come up with more. Regardless of the verbage, the EFF deserves a pat on the back (and my recurring donation).</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook apologises for legal threat over Cambridge Analytica story:live updates - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2018/apr/26/facebook-chief-mike-schroepfer-faces-grilling-at-mps-fake-news-inquiry-live <comment><USER2> "We're sorry we got caught and now we have to apologize for it."

<comment><USER3> Google is next. We really need a whistleblower there... Maybe we could start a crowdfounded project to award anyone for revealing provable information about google breaches of privacy.

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

I just don't understand why some people see them as any different.

<comment><USER4> > I just don't understand why some people see them as any different.

Facebook has been _far more_ careless and scandal prone, and it's business model (ads targeted to a person) _requires_ a much more intimate invasion of privacy. Google may collect more private data, but its use is probably much more peripheral to its business (e.g. search term based ads can be pretty effectively targeted _without_ an individual's profile). IMHO, Google's attempts to "improve" its products with private data has actually made them _worse_.

There are similarities though. Both companies have massive, concentrated influence over the information people see, and have the ability to make decisions that make all this Cambridge Analytica and fake news stuff look like child's play. There are also the economic distortions they both cause by having massively dominant market positions.</comment></comment></comment>


A Small Company's Response to Monster Cable Patent Infringement Claims - <AUTHOR> http://www.audioholics.com/news/industry-news/blue-jeans-strikes-back <comment><USER2> He really appears to have relished flexing his legal muscle in crafting his response. His rebuttal only improves with each paragraph. Nice for a lawyer to be one of the good guys...

</comment><comment><USER3> Best quote, near the end: "Not only am I unintimidated by litigation; I sometimes rather miss it."

</comment><comment><USER4> A nice bit of PR for Monster:

"I assume that Monster Cable International, Ltd., in Bermuda, listed on these patents, is an IP holding company and that Monster Cable's principal US entity pays licensing fees to the Bermuda corporation in order to shift income out of the United States and thereby avoid paying United States federal income tax on those portions of its income;"

I don't think this is going the way Monster expected it to go.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ooohhh, ouch! That is a brilliant response. One can't help but feel a little uplifted after seeing a small company stand up for its rights against a behemoth who attempts to persuade solely via its size and financial resources.

</comment><comment><USER6> He should use this opportunity to hire someone competent to design the Blue Jeans Cables website, and then convert the amazing publicity he's generating into sales.

Perhaps he could turn this into the tipping point for his company. Right now, the site is so hideous, I wouldn't trust it with my credit card information.

<comment><USER7> Um, because the most important quality in audio equipment is whether or not it comes from a pretty website?

You _do_ realize that putting cheap crap into fancy boxes is how Monster Cable makes enough money to afford their team of shyster lawyers...

<comment><USER6> There's a difference between "fancy boxes" and a reputable website design.

You think the current website is sufficient for the company to gain significant online purchases? It's not.

They don't have to overdo it, just make it usable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Brilliant. Blue Jeans Cables is a plucky company. I've regarded them quite well in the past, and now even more so. I think I know where I'm buying my next set of cables from :)

<comment><USER9> If it's for digital devices, your next set of cables ought to be the cheapest ones you can find that meet the spec that you'd like them to support. It is pointless to buy fancy cables--in digital, it either meets the spec and works, or it doesn't meet the spec and fails to work. More than 10 bucks for pretty much any short-run cable would be nuts. HDMI 1.3 spec (the kind that'll carry 1080p and even higher) cables can easily be found for under 10 bucks.

Even in analog signals, a quality pure copper cable of sufficient gauge with quality connectors put together correctly, is all that matters. All of the BS from Monster Cables (and other "boutique" cable vendors) has clouded the market with ridiculous nonsense. Blue Jeans Cables appears to eschew that nonsense, and build quality "normal" cables. They are a little pricey, but not terrible, I guess...maybe two to six times the price I'd pay, vs. the 10 to 100 times Monster charges. What amuses me is that if you were to buy one of the "low end" Monster cables (which are relatively small gauge), it would perform measurably worse than bulk 10 or 12 gauge copper cabling from an electronic parts outlet and cost significantly more.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Advice for young stock investor? - <AUTHOR> How did you start out investing in stocks? How did it pan out for you?<p>-one young investor <comment><USER2> Do you enjoy gambling? As in, do you enjoy games of pure chance where you could lose your money? If not, don't invest in stocks. No one beats the market. Put your extra money into index funds with low fees if you want something safe. If you want something riskier with better upside (where skill is actually involved), try something like urban real estate. Obviously you still have to know what you're doing, but there are opportunities for people with enough to buy places in cash.

In short: do not do this.

Further reading:

[http://cashcowcouple.com/investing/stock-picking-always- losi...](http://cashcowcouple.com/investing/stock-picking-always-losing-game/)

Key passage:

> _Professionals Can't Pick Winners

> The New York Times article, "The Prescient are Few" (1) offers a great look > at the study (2) by Professors Laurent Barras, Olivier Scaillet and Russell > Wermers about the performance of 2,076 professional mutual fund managers > over a 32-year time period.

> The result are what I'd expect. They found that from 1975 to 2006, 99.4% of > these managers displayed no evidence of genuine stock picking skill, and the > 0.6% of managers who did outperform the index were "statistically > indistinguishable from zero."

> Professor Wermers goes on, "This doesn't mean that no mutual funds have > beaten the market in recent years. Some have done so repeatedly over periods > as short as a year or two. But the number of funds that have beaten the > market over their entire histories is so small that the False Discovery Rate > test can't eliminate the possibility that the few that did were merely false > positives"_

Also:

[https://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2014/11/06/mission-i...](https://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2014/11/06/mission- impossible-beating-the-market-forever/)

[https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2015/04/16/ridiculo...](https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2015/04/16/ridiculousness- of-stock-picking-waste-of-time-young-investors/)

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickferri/2012/03/12/why- smart-p...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickferri/2012/03/12/why-smart-people- fail-to-beat-the-market/)</comment>


The iPad's 'Ultimate Typing Accessory' Is A Dud - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2012/07/11/the-ipads-ultimate-typing-accessory-is-a-dud/

<comment><USER3> I spent ten minutes with mine and threw it in the trash.

Edit: But I'm not disappointed. First, I expect a certain failure rate with venture funding. Second, it was worth it to me just to see if they could pull it off. If I got a working keyboard overlay out of it, that would just be a bonus. Finally, I didn't expect they'd pull it off, because it's a really hard problem (which is why Apple doesn't have a solution for this).

</comment><comment><USER4> Another dud, an iPhone case that blocks reception: [http://a.wholelottanothing.org/2012/01/lessons-for- kickstart...](http://a.wholelottanothing.org/2012/01/lessons-for-kickstarter- creators-from-the-worst-project-i-ever-funded-on-kickstarter.html)

It actually surprises me that more big kickstarters don't fail on fulfillment, but I think that is because they are Strongly Encouraged to outsource it to one of kickstarter's partners.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are also positive reviews like these:

[http://www.zdnet.com/touchfire-ipad-keyboard-enhances- text-e...](http://www.zdnet.com/touchfire-ipad-keyboard-enhances-text-entry- and-is-made-in-the-usa-review-7000000536/)

[http://www.padgadget.com/2012/07/11/hands-on-with-the- touchf...](http://www.padgadget.com/2012/07/11/hands-on-with-the-touchfire- keyboard-overlay/)

</comment><comment><USER6> One thing that's come up in this article, it seems that Kickstarter's members are often willing to give free money to developers. Why?

Kickstarter is referred to again and again, even by posters in this discussion, as a "micro-investment" site. That's a nice thought, except that Kickstarter funders get zero equity in what they produce. This makes great sense in funding an artist to create a new piano concerto, or produce a documentary on Rwanda. It also makes sense for development or improvement of Free Software, where the world will benefit from the result. It makes much less sense for people to fund the for-profit development of hardware that will ultimately be sold at a mark-up.

Have we somehow fooled ourselves into thinking that we are improving the world by bankrolling the creation of a more stylish iPhone dock? Or, is it the street cred of saying, "Yeah, I knew them when they were on Kickstarter..."?

</comment><comment><USER7> It's worth remembering that Kickstarter is ("merely") a way to codify and publicize promises.

 _Keeping_ promises is no easier than it's ever been.

<comment><USER8> A very good point and something that needs to be built into the Kickstarter framework. Some way of keeping ideas 'easy' to fund, but still hold the initiators to a high standard for excellence/delivery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How an "entrepreneurial reporter" gets his editors to print his article - <USER2> sure to bash an "Apple" product and be plenty insulting to "Apple" fans.

Of course, there are plenty of Kickstarter products that produced crap, plenty that folded for no reason. But only the "Apple" ones get you a certain article.

Garbage.

<comment><AUTHOR> In blogging there's little editorial oversight, thankfully. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to write anything. Here's how the article came about since you seem to view journalism as some kind of conspiracy: The Touchfire people reached out to me, sent me the Touchfire for review, and I reviewed it. Simple as that. I'm not bashing Apple fans since I clearly am an Apple fan in that I make known that the Touchfire is unworthy of a "beautiful" device - i.e the iPad. (Yes, I had fun with the lede though.) As for some kind of Kickstarter bias, I wrote a very positive review about the Zboard which was a Kickstarter project. I'm all for informed pushback from readers, but that's an awful lot of unfounded speculation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting, the article slams it for fit and finish (manufacturing issues) rather than functional issues. I suspect this will be the biggest thing people learn using kickstarter, manufacturing is not straightforward as one might hope.

<comment><USER11> It criticizes both aspects, although it spends less time on the functional issues, presumably because it really doesn't do that much. Here's the paragraph dedicated to the problem with the functionality:

'One benefit touted by the Touchfire creators is that you can rest your fingers on the keyboard without accidentally producing a string of nonsense. The problem with that statement is that it's not true. Especially when typing on an angle, my resting fingers easily made it through the thin plastic layer to create fun words like "eoran" and "nadskj".'

It also says that it's "pretty gratifying" to type with, so it seems to be a mixed bag, functionality-wise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> That makes the whole keyboard cover for Surface really interesting. Microsoft has made keyboards for many years though so I am hoping that they are aware of possible problems and hopefully will be able to avoid it.

<comment><USER13> I agree, the Surface keyboard cover looks like it might make it the best of both worlds...a tablet that I can actually use on the road with me to get some typing done, and then docked at home into my normal keyboard/mouse/monitor. As it is now, I hate typing so much on the iPad that I use it mostly like a larger phone. Just a little tactile feedback will go a long way.

BTW, I'm still awaiting my TouchFire to arrive, and I'm still hopeful that it improves touch typing on the iPad, especially since this review was a bit of a mixed-bag

<comment><USER14> My apologies, I should have replied to you:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4232558>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm more worried that products like this will put an end to the ease of crowdfunding.

A few more duds like this that raised over $200,000 for developers and engineers clearly without the technical know-how and prowess to pull something like this off and deliver what they promised just makes it that much harder for people to have their projects taken seriously on kickstarter in the future.

<comment><USER16> I'm not worried about that, I'm hoping it happens. It obviously _should_ be harder to have your project taken seriously and raise 200k. I adore kickstarter, but it shouldn't be a gold rush for anyone good at making videos, but not products.

<comment><USER17> I agree with this point and I too adore kickstarter. Generally, the startup advice I've been receiving is to show vision by creating a really solid pitch rather than actually building (or only build for pitch purposes). I understand why this would be the case since if I can build the right emotional state which leads to the same or better outcome (raise $$) at a fraction of the time/cost, why wouldn't I? However, this has caused me to be jaded. Instead of getting excited about new products, I'm now very cautious. I'm asking myself... is the focus on the sales approach right for this product or does it weaken its credibility?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I help fund the iKeyboard, which was (is) very similar to the Touchfire. It's an excellent execution of what I now see as a fundamentally flawed concept. Having to remove an object from my iPad when I want to switch apps, which is often, sorta sucks.

IOW, the suck of messing with the iKeyboard > the suck of trying to touch type on the iPad.

<comment><USER19> I'm not familiar with the iKeyboard — you have to remove it to switch apps? Do multitasking gestures help with that at all?

<comment><USER20> Any attachable keyboard on the iPad will be the same. When the keyboard hides itself (on the home screen, or any other screen without the keyboard input selected), you are left with a keyboard covering 25% of your real estate. However this review seemed to note that it is possible to click through the keyboard, which is a good thing in that regard.

<comment><USER19> I'm sorry, I don't follow. If the keyboard is hidden, why is there then "a keyboard covering 25% of your real estate"?

<comment><USER6> What he is saying is, if you have this plastic keyboard attached to your iPad, then you are stuck in software-keyboard mode. If you dismiss the software keyboard, then you have no access to the UI now displayed on the bottom half of the screen, without pulling off the plastic keyboard.

I tend to agree -- there are only a very few iPad apps that are designed to be used 100% of the time with the soft keyboard displayed. Even in mail, for example, you switch back and forth between browse and edit mode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I recently received a DVD that was a reward for sponsoring a Kickstarter project back in the days. At first, I was worried that the DVD might be region-locked, considering I live in Europe and had it shipped overseas. And while that wasn't the case, what _if_ it had been? What would people do?

It made me think that there should be a satisfaction rating available to users, after they receive their reward, digital or physical. It doesn't have to do anything at first; it's just there for the people behind Kickstarter to see if someone seriously fucked up. People like these guys or these guys: <https://twitter.com/jb/status/214437340737843200>.

They could divide the reviews into two categories. 1) Did you receive your product? 2) Did you not receive your product?

The first is more relevant, because it describes the end product rather than the logistical issues that aren't - usually - as important. They can be ignored at first.

It's going to bite the Kickstarter people in the ass, and I think we need some kind of middle-of-the-road solution between goodwill and project creator ratings.

Who knows, maybe we'll see companies who offer Kickstarter insurances in the future.

<comment><USER22> You should remember that the rewards are not supposed to be the main goal of a Kickstarter project, but more like an appreciation token for your donation.

<comment><USER23> It's not the goal of the project, but I'm sure they are pretty much the only goal of the donation... Or do you think people would donate _at all_ if there weren't any gifts?

<comment><USER11> And that's exactly the problem. There's a massive mismatch in expectations. People treat it like a store, where it's more like a micro-scale venture capital investment, without the potential for a huge return.

<comment><USER6> Kickstarter is actually NOTHING like a micro-scale venture capital investment. It's not an investment at all. It's a donation.

<comment><USER11> But it's not a donation at all in many cases. Frequently, you give money in exchange for a product, promised at some future time, generally for a discount over the ultimate retail price. That's an investment, with the finished product being the reward, and the risk being the potential failure of the project. Yes, Kickstarter _calls_ them donations, but when people are putting up money in exchange for a promise of being delivered a product, it's hard to believe that's what they really are.

<comment><USER6> That's not an investment, any more than buying a keyboard or an iPhone dock at the local computer store is an investment. It's an advance downpayment on a product purchase, with no recourse if the seller never delivers you the product, or delivers something that doesn't meet your expectation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Which websites do you visit before work each morning? - <AUTHOR>

I rotate between checking email (Gmail), CNN, Quora, HN, KnoxNews (local) Twitter, a quick Duolingo lesson, then my guilty please of a few subreddits I'm subscribed to.  1 hour tops and that's a full morning rotation.  Any other useful websites I should add to it? <comment><USER2> StackOverflow and its variants are part of my morning routine. Never know when the random question you read today will solve a future problem!</comment>


Netsukuku release 1.0 – physical P2P decentralized network to replace Internet - <AUTHOR> https://lab.dyne.org/Netsukuku_Dev/1_0/README

<comment><AUTHOR> For those who are not familiar with netsukuku:

Short description: [http://netsukuku.freaknet.org](http://netsukuku.freaknet.org)

Netsukuku aims to be a mesh network or a peer to peer protocol that generates and sustains itself autonomously. It is designed to handle an unlimited number of nodes with minimal CPU and memory resources. Thanks to this feature it can be easily used to build a worldwide distributed, anonymous and uncontrolled network, separated from the Internet, without the support of any servers, ISPs or authority controls.

FAQ: [http://netsukuku.freaknet.org/files/FAQ](http://netsukuku.freaknet.org/files/FAQ)</comment>


Show HN: I made a boardgame about cryptocurrency trading - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1729352959/crypto-rampage-the-bitcoin-and-cryptocurrency-boar <comment><USER2> Are there any legal issues with using people's photos on the paper money? Especially the baby-meme on the $500 bill...

I also would love if you went more into your playtesting process.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think so - it falls under parody/fair use and those are derivative sketches. If someone's going to really complain then I'll change it for production.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It is all about cryptocurrencies lately, so why not having a board game! Cool! :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks interesting, but why Kickstarter?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it's not cheap to produce and I can't see it being a huge seller in a bigbox store.

<comment><USER5> But why Kickstarter instead of an ICO?

<comment><USER6> I think an IBO (Initial Board Offering) would be more fitting.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bedtime phenomenon: scientist develops book to send children to sleep in minutes - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11803484/Bedtime-phenomenon-scientist-develops-book-to-send-children-to-sleep-in-minutes.html

<comment><USER2> I'd like to see a double blind experiment published in peer review journal before having more thrust in this than in astrology. (The control group can listen to "The cow wants to ruminate.")

This sentences is very suspicious:

> _Forssen Ehrlin even played recordings of the book to his own child Leon > while he was still in the womb, and now puts on the audio book to help him > fall asleep._

It reminds me a lot of the "Mozart effect": [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction- ba...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-babies-ex/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Frequencies (2013) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spa1BLMFqQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spa1BLMFqQU)

</comment><comment><USER4> Yup, integral calculus textbooks have this interesting effect...</comment>


Is libreoffice online a viable alternative to gdocs? - <AUTHOR> https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/<p>The only thing keeping me with google is gdocs. But I'd rather not keep my private data with them. Libre office online does not appear in google search an an alternative and hn has mostly ignored it. Is it not ready for prime time? <comment><USER2> Surprised noone has mentioned OnlyOffice here: [https://www.onlyoffice.com/](https://www.onlyoffice.com/).

We use it via the integration I wrote for Alfresco: [https://github.com/cetra3/onlyoffice- alfresco](https://github.com/cetra3/onlyoffice-alfresco)

<comment><AUTHOR> Never heard of OnlyOffice! They had a good comparison between them and libreoffice/collabora: [https://medium.com/onlyoffice/onlyoffice-vs-collabora- a-crit...](https://medium.com/onlyoffice/onlyoffice-vs-collabora-a-critical- comparison-18a5ba0dee62)

<comment><USER3> That's not a good comparison. It's just an advertising piece bashing Collabora.

If it had been a good comparison, it would have listed pros and cons of both solutions, rather than only pros for one, and only cons for the other.

The "comparison" really only points out three issues:

Collabora runs an instance of Libreoffice on the server. This must be taken into account when considering resource limits when scaling, and latency and bandwidth to the client(s).

Collabora's handling of OOXML (.docx/.xlsx/.pptx) is much worse than OnlyOffice's. You must take them at their word for this!

For collaborative editing, modes (bold/italic/font sizes etc), Collabora uses the same state for all clients. You must take their word for this. I also tested Collabora very briefly (using NextCloud's demo[1]), and the toolbar is client side, which means it could very well be that modes are not shared.

Of course, none of this is particularly surprising considering it was posted by OnlyOffice themselves.

[1]: Instant trial on [https://demo.nextcloud.com/](https://demo.nextcloud.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> LibreOffice Online is a viable alternative in my opinion. It integrates with NextCloud and allows you to easily share and collaborate. You can even get a "share link" for your documents like in Google Docs. There are some caveats though. Latency is unacceptable. Google Docs renders documents client side allowing characters that you type to immediately echo to the screen. LibreOffice renders documents server side with a noticeable lag. LibreOffice has the benefit of better interoperability with MS Word than Google Docs has.

I would also recommend trying OnlyOffice as some have recommended.

<comment><USER5> "Viable alternative" with its "unacceptable latency" amounts to being just a viewer, which are dime a dozen, including most phones doing that out of the box, countless JS libraries and browser extensions, and every storage service like Dropbox having, if not basic editor, then at least very competent viewer.

I guess it's a start…

<comment><USER4> I am willing to put up with the latency because I really do want to do anything with Google. And I only recently learned about OnlyOffice which seems a more viable solution going forward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You should ask reddit's /r/selfhosted. HN crowd is not much into self-hosting

<comment><USER7> Heh, isn't this where Sandstorm was introduced...?

<comment><USER6> Sandstorm is popular as a technology but most people here don't use it. Most sandstorm users hang out on the irc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Apparently google search is also what's tying you to google. I say that to say google will have measures to stifle competition (no matter what they say otherwise). Also, what's the issue with just running LibreOffice on your computer? They also have portable versions which you can just put on your thumb drive

<comment><USER9> > what's the issue with just running LibreOffice on your computer

The key advantage to Google Docs, an otherwise ordinary if not fairly lightweight word processer, is the ease of sharing (even if only with yourself on multiple devices) and collaborating with others.

I've never heard of LibreOffice online, but depending how well it does those things, it might or might not be viable.

As a word processor alone, Google Docs is nothing special and LibreOffice probably has more features.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ease of sharing is precisely why it's so powerful. I can send a link to a shared spreadsheet without the person having to login. Very little friction. Also, being able to co-edit in real time is very powerful. I think libreoffice offline is great, but for 80% of my use cases, gdocs is more convenient and useful. But I'm no longer comfortable with google having so much of my personal and business life.

<comment><USER10> Have you considered G Suite? If you are going to stick with Google Docs, at least you can get a legal agreement that bars Google from mining or otherwise using your documents.

<comment><USER11> What legal agreement? It's not like they won't weasel out of it anyway. I'm fairly certain they were scanning emails for ad targeting up until the past year or so.

GSuite is ok when it works most times, when it doesn't it's a nightmare. Google is literally the worst company I've ever done business with. In fact, over the past decade I've had to reach out to various support levels on different products and can say they stand at a remarkable 0% solve rate. (Chromium's bug tracker I've had some success with but it's not 100% a Google product)

The latest contract breech I've had with them is regarding their SLA agreement. We had a client's account become inaccessible for a week. This caused them 2 days of work downtime as their quotes and business correspondence were all tied up in the account. The SLA defines a Downtime as:

"Downtime" means, for a domain, if there is more than a five percent user error rate. Downtime is measured based on server side error rate.

We wrote about the issue, figured out the cause was likely due to an error in the half-assed rollout of the new admin panel (they currently have two in production), and yet we were not granted a half-month credit for the downtime as the SLA stipulated.

<comment><USER10> > "What legal agreement?"

This is the agreement that I was referring to: [https://gsuite.google.com/terms/dpa_terms.html](https://gsuite.google.com/terms/dpa_terms.html)

Specifically, see section 5.2.

Also, Google advertises this as a feature to G Suite users: [https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650?hl=en](https://support.google.com/googlecloud/answer/6056650?hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A full suite of SaaS open source tools there : [https://framasoft.org/](https://framasoft.org/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Other options include Zoho Writer, Apple Pages (has web-based version), MS Word Online. I seem to remember an OSS effort to make one (other than libreoffice online) but can't remember what it was.

</comment><comment><USER14> One specifically negative thing about gdocs ... well ... gsheets ... is that if you create a document with many (e.g. > 5 or so) charts on a single page ... it will slow waaaaaaayyyyy down. Multi second latency/response times for things like scrolling, cell interaction, etc. It becomes effectively unusable.

Gdocs as a whole are ok, though you are giving Google the right to read your docs as I remember (in their terms of service).

<comment><USER15> Gsheets is utterly useless for importing and browsing a several MB size CSV file. Where the same file imported into native x64 libreoffice is totally smooth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> For Google Docs-like tasks I prefer a combination of Org and git.

Org is a powerful-but-easy-to-learn document structuring language. You ca write it in any editor, but in an Org-aware editor your document really comes alive. The oldest, most feature-complete implementation is in Emacs. Org documents can be exported to virtually any final format.

I don't specifically recommend git so much as any distributed VCS, to share changes with collaborators in a controlled and structured way. I find it much easier to catch up on other's work when it comes as a self-contained, clearly labeled commit in the correct branch rather than a jumble of tiny edits here and there.

If you are working with lazy people who don't want to learn stuff, you may want to consider whether you'd be okay with keeping your private data with GitHub instead. If your Org document lives in a repo there, anyone with commit access can edit it in the GitHub web editor, with a formatted preview available.

<comment><USER17> Your comment implies that there are other editors, besides Emacs, supporting Org mode...

Could you please elaborate on this?

<comment><USER16> I intended that implication, but I don't think I have a whole lot more to say about it, unfortunately.

\- On my Android phone, I use Orgzly to capture notes, tick off finished tasks, and see various filtered views of my agenda.

\- I see there are implementations in Vim, namely Vim-OrgMode and VimOrganizer.

\- If you want to embed something on the web, org-js is supposed to be good. There is also the GitHub editor, of course.

\- Further out of my comfort zone, there is something for IntelliJ IDEA called org4idea, and I saw you should be able to get orgmode support in Sublime Text. I also found Organized for Atom, but that appears to be a sort of Markdown-Org mashup, so not necessarily the right thing.

\- Then, as unwelcome as this last point may seem to some, it's worth pointing out that Emacs is not _an_ editor in singular. If you don't like the default editor that ships with Emacs, there are other editors to choose from which all run in Emacs. This includes the seriously fantastic Vim port called Evil. From what I can tell, the AutOrg project is even specifically packaging Emacs+Org in a way to make it more approachable to beginners.

Note that many of the options have not successfully replicated the full Org feature set yet. However, in the context of this discussion I have limited myself to the features that are also supported by Google Docs, which are... not many.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Softmaker Office is pretty good. And works on all platforms (including Linux). [http://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker- office](http://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office)

</comment><comment><USER19> No. GDocs is one of the best pieces of software in existence. Each component is very capable on its own. The sharing turbo charges it past all others. You'd have to really be a google hater to choose not to use it.

<comment><USER20> The best pieces of software is Office 365. GDocs just free but vendor-locked.

<comment><USER19> How is gDocs more vendor locked than Office?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not sure if anybody mentioned Zoho Writer ([https://writer.zoho.com](https://writer.zoho.com))

I find it has more formatting features than Google Docs. Best of all: no Ads and document reading bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER22> Discussed in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11563009](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11563009)

<comment><USER23> It's had considerable development in the past two years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why does the title not contain a link as normal hn posts?

The link below is not clickable, must be copied and pasted manually... no fun on mobile...

<comment><USER25> This is intentional:

How do I make a link in a question?

You can't. This is to prevent people from submitting a link with their comments in a privileged position at the top of the page. If you want to submit a link with comments, just submit it, then add a regular comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Honest question, can you just run simple symmetric encryption on your data before uploading to gapps?

<comment><USER27> OP's use case for Google Docs seems to be editing. Encrypting your document would mean that you wouldn't be able to edit it using Google Docs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> There's also NextCloud, although you'll need to pay for it or host it yourself.

</comment><comment><USER29> just use graphitedocs.com

</comment><comment><USER30> LibreOffice is one of the software I like the least.

It's super-ugly, doesn't have hidpi support on Linux, it's slow, it has a confusing UI.

Google Docs is about 100 times better.</comment>


Yelp Now Has Court Permission to Change Business Ratings for Money - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfweekly.com/foodie/2014/09/05/yelp-now-has-court-permission-to-change-business-ratings-for-money-dont-forget-it <comment><USER2> As outlined in Oolon Coluphid's latest blockbuster, "Well, That About Sums It Up For Yelp"</comment>


Show HN: We made a really addictive fact app (using content from Reddit) - <AUTHOR> Https://polyfact.co?hn2 <comment><USER2> I first read the title as "We made a really addictive fart app" :D</comment>


Ask HN: Going full stack with JavaScript, any regrets? - <AUTHOR> Those of you who have been early adopters of Node.js, what are the cons and pros you have identified over a period of time?
Have you witnessed any negative impact on your development performance or have your coding skills improved as a whole?
I'm looking forward to hear your stories.
Cheers. <comment><USER2> I would agree with Xenopticon, as a solo operator, it's been a huge boon. However, I have noticed a bit of a split in the way I code.

The problem is that I tend to write two kinds of JS. On the server I write ES7 and use currying, iteration, and promises as the main paradigm, while on the client side code I tend to write more compatible, imperative, event oriented code.

It's a bit of a bizarre split, and it does impact my productivity. Perhaps I would be better off using Babel, but I tend to avoid adding steps to my toolchain, since I'm the only one who will maintain it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have noticed the same thing, even as a "newbie" around Node.js.

It's true that with the use of a transpiler you fix things in a way.

Thank you both for your feedback folks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I went full JS three years ago from a Java/Spring background and never looked back.

As a solo developer I noticed a huge increase in productivity and the time it took to ship code to production. My use case is a SaaS application with ~50 users.

Coding skills did improve but I think that's just a natural progression for everyone and wouldn't attribute it to a specific language.

Pros: very open community, lots of learning resources, no enforced standards.

Cons: it's easy to get things wrong, keeping up with new libraries is intimidating.

Tip: start small, create a twitter bot or something, use ES7</comment>