Social Network for Gamers - <AUTHOR> http://dpadd.com/

<comment><USER2> I don't think this has any chance of competing with Steam. Though it may offer a more polished experience, it requires much more effort to use. Why would a gamer manually type in what they're playing when Steam automatically broadcasts that to their friends?

<comment><USER3> What about all of the games you aren't playing on Steam?

<comment><USER4> You can add non-steam games to steam.

I'm not sure if it tracks your playtime though (I think it does)

<comment><USER5> I think it says "playing other games"

<comment><USER6> No, it says "Playing non-Steam game" with the name of it below.

Which you can overload for your own amusement. When on my Windows machine, Steam friends see me playing Visual Studio 2013.

<comment><USER7> Ha I did this once with Outlook except I changed the icon and the shortcut name to Half Life 3 Beta. People on my friends list were freak. Ing. OUT

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As someone who has been on gaming forums since 10 years old, a Facebook-style social network would _never_ work for the gaming niche since _anonymity is crucial_.

See the Real ID fiasco with Blizzard: [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29347/InDepth_Why_Was_Bli...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29347/InDepth_Why_Was_Blizzards_Real_ID_Such_An_Issue.php)

<comment><USER9> FWIW: users on Dpadd only need to set a username. No real names are used even if people sigh up with twitter/Facebook. Gamers are welcome to use their real name as a username if they choose but it's up to the individual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This idea has been tried many times, but for me, it's still missing a compelling use case.

I think such a service should be centered first and foremost on gaming clans/guilds. Give guilds a nice-looking, easy-to-setup forum + a few apps (a calendar, maybe something to track rankings and currencies such as DKP) and you'll get them by the score.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, the real use case for a site like this is for guilds, and ESPECIALLY teamspeak/voip support.

I imagine if this site offered guild support, websites, and free voip, it'd have an easier time gaining traction.

<comment><USER12> I founded GuildLaunch.com [http://www.guildlaunch.com/](http://www.guildlaunch.com/), that is exactly what we do and a whole lot more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure I see the difference between this and Playfire [1]?

My cofounders and I had the same idea a few years back when we started Evolve [2]. We just took things a step further and actually provide a client that tracks games independently of the gaming platforms (e.g. Steam, Origin, Uplay). We currently track 9.5 years (!) of playtime every single day. Gamers are crazy... :)

[1] [https://www.playfire.com](https://www.playfire.com) [2] [https://evolvehq.com](https://evolvehq.com)

</comment><comment><USER14> How is this different from Raptr.com ?

<comment><USER15> I came here to ask the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> One killer feature which would persuade me to sign up for a gaming website would be a way to set up online games with other people who like rare games. I recently bought "code of princess" on the 3ds and I do not know anyone else who owns it, and whenever I try to join a game, there is never anyone else trying to join a random game at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER17> Gamers like to chat (and argue) with their friends about games a lot and I can see the value in this sort of service. I love to talk about games, but I don't want to clog my Facebook wall with discussions about it and annoy my non-gamer friends.

Having to manually update what you're playing is a weakness that could be fatal to this social network. There's so much good data about what people are playing on Playstation, Xbox, 3DS, and Wii U locked away and inaccessible. It's unfortunate that there's no easy way to share that.

My own friends and I have in the past attempted to start a sort of "game playing book club" where we'd write emails back and forth about our thoughts while all playing the same game. It was tough to keep going in an unstructured format via email however. Maybe it'd be easier with something like this.

</comment><comment><USER18> Games = Clans. Yes, there is a ton of players that casually play your latest AAA games, but they would never use this, or any other service.

Me on the other hand would LOVE to have one place where i could have all my team mates on one place, right now when we need to train i send the email to one half of the team and FB messages to other.

Maybe you should try to fix that problem instead of creating FB like wall.

<comment><USER12> I founded GuildLaunch.com - team support is being overhauled as we speak for the exact reason you describe. Our team used to be very focused on MMO pvp. We are reworking it to support the moba, clan tournament, skirmish and "random get together" style of play that a lot of teams/clans have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Site creator here.. Always fun when you get off a plane to find out that someone has posted your site to HN and it's been on the front page for a couple hours. My phone had a bit of a twitter/support ticket/feedback email explosion when I turned it back on. Happy to answer any Qs about Dpadd, just reply to this comment.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is there something like this for German-style board (and card) gamers, as a way for them to meet up for games? That would be really interesting and useful.

</comment><comment><USER20> I know HN is not the place for this type of comment, but social and gamer in the same sentence, ha ha!

<comment><USER20> You can continue downvoting this comment, but I stick by it because it is an honest expression of my feelings.

<comment><USER21> Downvoting doesn't necessarily mean people disagree with you.

Downvoting also means that you're not saying anything. Which you knew perfectly well when you posted.

<comment><USER20> Yes, you are right. I expected the downvotes. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A little-known airline has linked Cairo and Tel Aviv for decades - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/air-sinai-ghost-flight <comment><USER2> I've actually flown Air Sinai once! And not from Cairo to Tel Aviv, but to Yasser Arafat International aka Gaza Airport (GZA).

The plane was a standard 737, but completely unmarked, sitting in a remote bus bay far from the terminal. Load was abysmal, maybe 20 or so people. Service was the usual surly Egyptair (aka "Misery Air", _Misr_ being the Arabic name for Egypt) experience, but it was a short flight of only an hour or so.

On arrival at GZA, we were driven over to the nearby Rafah border, herded into a holding area, instructed to identify and open our luggage, and then moved to a different room to be frisked and interrogated by Israeli security while another set of guards pawed through the bags, sight unseen. All staff involved were very much not in a hurry, and all in all, it took about four hours (!) for the 20 of us to go from wheels on the ground to getting into the airport terminal, through Palestinian immigration and then Gaza proper. And I didn't even get a passport stamp. (I did get one from the Erez border when crossing by land into Israel proper later, which raised some eyebrows later when leaving Israel...)

At the time, the airport served around 2 flights per day (Cairo and Amman, Jordan, IIRC), but the departures board optimistically listed a whole slew of fantasy flights from all over the Arab world and Europe (Milan! Istanbul!). I remember seeing a school group on a tour through this airport and thinking that odds are very high that all these kids here will live their lives without ever leaving this 40x6 km slice of land (large chunks of which are off-limits buffer areas), packed with 2 million Palestinians living cheek to jowl.

Shortly thereafter in 2000, the al-Aqsa Intifada started and the airport was bombed by Israeli fighters. It's been in ruins ever since.

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

<comment><USER3> There's plenty of other places where people are living much denser: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_popul...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population_density)

Monaco's density is higher, and it's considered a paradise:

[https://www.infoplease.com/world/population- statistics/popul...](https://www.infoplease.com/world/population- statistics/population-density-square-mile-countries)

And many people can and do take vacations. In fact, that's how coronoavirus entered gaza -- from someone returning from Pakistan on Vacation: [https://www.geo.tv/latest/278852-gazas-two-confirmed- coronav...](https://www.geo.tv/latest/278852-gazas-two-confirmed-coronavirus- patients-attended-tablighi-ijtema-in-pakistan)

<comment><USER4> It's unclear to me what are you trying to suggest. The parent comment never said Gaza was the densest place, or even that density == hell. Are you saying that Gaza is a sparsely populated paradise?

Yeah, some people take vacations. It's often impossible to do, and those people are by far not even close to being the majority.

<comment><USER3> The post I was responding to said:

> that odds are very high that all these kids here will live their lives > without ever leaving this 40x6 km slice of land (large chunks of which are > off-limits buffer areas), packed with 2 million Palestinians living cheek to > jowl.

I was giving some other information. Don't assume bad intent. One of my 4 grandparents was born in Gaza City in 1909, and left in 1929 when he was kicked out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article said the planes were unmarked but I went looking for pictures anyway and found some photos.

Here's one from the 1980s with markings. [https://www.airliners.net/photo/Air- Sinai/Boeing-737-266-Adv...](https://www.airliners.net/photo/Air- Sinai/Boeing-737-266-Adv/0472889/L)

Unmarked photos are here. [https://onemileatatime.com/air- sinai/](https://onemileatatime.com/air-sinai/)

</comment><comment><USER6> A trip report of flying them

[https://youtu.be/v8O0WUwiweQ](https://youtu.be/v8O0WUwiweQ)

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if it's profitable...

<comment><USER8> The prices are crazy high but also I would suspect a route which props up peace at the Middle East would have no trouble finding secret government subsidiaries...

<comment><USER9> > I would suspect a route which props up peace at the Middle East would have > no trouble finding secret government subsidiaries...

I am not so sure about that.

If all (or at least most) sides wanted peace, we already would have. The problem is: all sides only want peace _on their terms_ and there do not seem to exist "common peace conditions" which all (or at least most) involved countries and organizations are okay with.

<comment><USER10> You are making a general point, but this is an actual issue in a treaty two countries already signed and that both sides (by which I mean Egyptian and Israeli governments, nobody else) want to stay valid. Chances are that there are dedicated budget items somewhere in the bowels of both governments, far from prying eyes.

<comment><USER8> > by which I mean Egyptian and Israeli governments, nobody else

Oh there a LOT of other players, most importantly the USA here. If you want to paint a 10000 ft picture of the last few decades, it's the USA stuffing the Israel with enough money so the real crazies can't raise to power. Unleashing the full military might of Israel in a traditional war again would be absolutely horrible: they have armed unmanned ground vehicles, main battle tanks which can intercept even the most advanced MANPADS and more.

<comment><USER11> I'm pretty sure that's the US policy for Egypt and Jordan, US aid to Israel is about 2% of its GDP and comes with a lot of strings attached, Egypt gets pretty much the same deal. Jordan relies heavily on US support for stability.

Israel's public has a very strong aversion to casualties, much more so than when the state's survival was at risk.

The Israeli public couldn't tolerate the 120 soldiers killed in the 2nd Lebanon war there is absolutely nothing to back that there is any political will in the general public or the politicians to pursue an actual traditional war not to mention that there is no one to wage war against.

Waging war against Egypt would serve no strategic purposes Israel is rather happy selling them gas.

Waging war against Jordan would be taking over 8 or so million Palestinians which again for what purpose?

Lebanon it's in Israel best interests for Lebanon to sort it's shit out internally the last time it formed an alliance with the Free Lebanon Government during the Israeli-Maronite alliance it didn't end up well. Lebanon is slowly but surely heading into another civil war and Israel would likely stay the fuck out of it unless Hezbollah would drag it in.

Syria is a failed state there is absolutely nothing for Israel to gain by going beyond the Golan Heights that provide a good natural defensive barrier and Israel has absolutely nothing to gain by potentially dragging Russia into the conflict since Syria is their only open warm water port.

Yes Israel has a very capable army, it likely cannot be matched in a true traditional war in the region but it has nothing to gain from waging one.

Israel always had goals in each conflict and war it engaged in (regardless if you agree with their goals or not) and unless there will be a drastic geopolitical shift in Egypt, Jordan, Syria or Lebanon there would be no reason to wage an all out war against any of them.

P.S. MANPADS stands for man portable air defense systems these aren't anti tank weapons. While Israel has deployed active defense systems for ground vehicles these surely won't be used against MANPADS.

<comment><USER8> > The Israeli public couldn't tolerate the 120 soldiers killed in the 2nd > Lebanon war

as if a (un)healthy dose of good ole' propaganda couldn't fix that

<comment><USER11> I don't know what you've been smoking but the bulk of the Israeli army relies on reservists they literally cannot go to war without it having a major economic impact.

Also the benefit of having a mandatory conscription is that nearly every household would be affected all of a sudden propaganda doesn't work anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There was also a bus route from Tel Aviv to Cairo, opened in 1977 as a result of another peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

It didn't last very long (a few years), though you can still technically go the whole way by multiple busses.

[https://www.egged.co.il/Days-Article-10228-A-tale-of-two- cit...](https://www.egged.co.il/Days-Article-10228-A-tale-of-two-cities-Egged- s-historic-line-to-Cairo.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER13> Such ghost flights are relatively common, for example from London

[https://simpleflying.com/the-story-behind-london- heathrows-g...](https://simpleflying.com/the-story-behind-london-heathrows- ghost-flights/)

<comment><USER14> This is quite different. The ghost flights you describe are empty flights, only flown with a skeleton crew to avoid losing an airport slot. The ghost airline in the article is one that flies actual paying passengers, but isn't advertised, has no markings, has (basically) no online presence, and isn't clearly listed on airport departure screens.

<comment><USER15> Sounds similar to Janet, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_(airline)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_\(airline\)) the non-existent airline that flies area 51 employees from Vegas.

<comment><USER16> Again, similar but different. Janet is private jets owned and run by a government which only people invited by that government can travel on.

Air Sinai is a regular passenger airline flying regular scheduled passenger flights available to the public using Egyptair staff and aircraft, just one which is only kept open for political purposes and isn't actively marketed [except, apparently by an overseas GSA] due to conflicting political sensitivities.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Shorter Workweeks Would Wipe Out the Much-Hyped Threat of Robots Stealing Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.alternet.org/economy/why-shorter-workweeks-would-wipeout-much-hyped-threat-robots-stealing-our-jobs?akid=14343.2563486.j-rsgB&rd=1&src=newsletter1058194&t=22 <comment><USER2> It increases the cost of human labor, giving more of an advantage to replacing them with robots.</comment>


How FBI Entrapment Is Inventing 'Terrorists' - <AUTHOR> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/how-fbi-entrapment-is-inventing-terrorists-and-letting-bad-guys-off-the-hook-20120515 <comment><USER2> I don't see anyone commenting on a specific part of the article where basic it implies that white-supremacy groups are basically flying under the FBI radar.

Isn't that quite the bothersome perspective? It's to me in the same level of awe as the part of hand-leading people into terrorist acts. Probably even related, as a police state can make use of home-grown hooligans that are just waiting for the oportunity to put their 'peers' in line through violence.

How much further along is there before the US turns into a full-blown totalitarian regime?

This all seems eerily in line with this bleak proposal: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/ten-steps-to- close-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/ten-steps-to-close-down- a_b_46695.html) (2007)

<comment><USER3> Except for the fact that the bulk of the arrests on terrorism-related charges in the past year have been white supremacists and "militiamen" who share your apparent fantasies regarding an oncoming fascist state I guess you would have a point...

<comment> brown9-2 Do you have a source for this claim? I'd like to read more about this.

<comment><USER4> Your phrase "source for this claim" implies to me that you didn't read the Rolling Stone article under discussion. It is a "source for this claim."

Quoting from the article: "But don't worry your pretty little heads over the epidemic of far-right insurrectionism that followed the election of Barack Obama: all told, according to a forthcoming data analysis by Neiwert, there have been 55 cases of right-wing extremists being arrested for plotting or committing alleged terrorists acts compared to 26 by Islamic militants during the same period. The right-wing plots include the bombing of a 2011 Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane and the assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller in 2009."

It links to [http://www.csgv.org/issues-and-campaigns/guns-democracy- and-...](http://www.csgv.org/issues-and-campaigns/guns-democracy-and- freedom/insurrection-timeline) which includes a list of "incidents of insurrectionist violence". It also links to a book, "Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane" by the aforementioned Neiwert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The damage inflicted goes beyond those who are being entrapped. This type of behaviour develops a culture which lives in irrational fear. The type of irrational fear that makes a population believe that body scanners at airports are acceptable, that all muslims must be Terrorists, and that no one is trust worthy anymore.

We need to remember what our core principles are. We have allowed terrorists to influence the way we live our lives, and in doing so we have allowed them to win. That's right, we ALLOWED them to win.

</comment><comment><USER6> I last reread Solzhenitsyn's _Gulag Archipelago_ not long after 9/11. What was particularly salient is how many of the people he describes had been charged with terrorism by Stalin's organs.

There's nothing particularly shocking in the rolling stone article. Terrorists are so designated for political ends.

That's not to say that they're never criminals, just that conspiracy to blow up a bridge is already a crime.

<comment><USER7> Terrorism is opposition to the current political setup.

Totalitarian regimes' innovation is making opposition to the current political setup terrorism.

<comment><USER8> I disagree with defining terrorism so broadly. An act (or the ability to execute an act) of violence targeted against a civilian population is necessary to be considered terrorism. The FBI has been attempting to widen the definition over the past ten years (successfully I might add) & has clearly focused on helping groups gain (very minimally) the capabilities of executing a terrorist act.

<comment><USER6> > _"An act (or the ability to execute an act) of violence targeted against a > civilian population is necessary to be considered terrorism."_

By this definition, much of the bombing of Germany and Japan during the Second World War would be terrorism.

Conversely, the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole would not be.

The usage of the term is different from the definition proposed.

<comment><USER8> I am not sure if the Pentagon is considered a military building or a civilian building (I think there is a valid argument to make that it is a civilian building.) I do not believe that the attack on the USS Cole should be classified as an act of terrorism.

As far as acts that resemble terrorism during war, they can be classified as war crimes. Actions during war have their own categories of law, so I would disagree with using the fire bombing of Dresden or the bombing of Tokyo as examples.

<comment><USER6> _"The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself."_

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

If you go there, you will find soldiers ready to use lethal force in order to protect portions of the building.

<comment><USER8> You can find soldiers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, that doesn't make the tomb a military installation. The mere presence of military personnel does not make a facility a military installation. Since the Pentagon is where the civilian leadership of the military is located, the building is arguably a civilian facility.

<comment><USER6> The Joint Staff is headquartered in the Pentagon, as is the Secretary of Defense who is second in the chain of command after the president.

The Pentagon is no less a civilian target than Tora Bora.

<comment><USER8> I am aware that JCS meets in the Pentagon, what is the point you are attempting to make? The fact is no troops are trained, quartered, & mobilized for war in the Pentagon. The Pentagon is a civilian location. In the U.S. civilians run the military (in other words the chiefs answer to their bosses, the secretaries, who answer to their boss the SecDef.)

Tora Bora is where the Taliban trained, mobilized, & quarter troops (even if they were irregulars.) This is the distinction between a military facility & a civilian facility that happens to deal with military affairs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh dear. Have all the proofreaders at the Rolling Stone been locked up in a similar entrapment case?

> "[...] the indictments of Animal _Liberal_ Front activists who burned down > [...]"

> "In the Harrisburg 7 trial _of in_ 1972 [...]"

> "They have no place in _American_ and those who advocate them have no place > in this government."

<comment><USER10> I hate to be the one to break it to you, but _you are_ the proofreader for Rolling Stone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> DHS needs to justify its budget and spying on Americans. To do so they need homegrown terrorists. Put yourself in the position of a DC bureaucrat. It's a lot safer to deal with losers than dangerous wackos.

<comment><USER12> Also true -- but FBI is not part of DHS, it's part of the DoJ.

<comment><USER11> You're right of course. Thanks for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm sorry, but I have little sympathy for someone who was able to be convinced to blow up $thing with nothing more than a "Gee, it would be nice to blow up $thing wouldn't it?"

That's not entrapment. Any sane, law abiding person would react viscerally and negative to such a suggestion.

I don't even like Congress, but if you were to suggest that setting a bomb in the building was a sane course of action, I'd ask what you were smoking.

<comment><USER14> This isn't a question of sympathy, it's a question of what types of behaviour on the part of the police are in society's best interests. I don't have sympathy for a shoplifter, but if the police beat a confession out of him, I am troubled by their actions.

The world where the police can suggest targets to a group and supply the materials for action is also a world where you can take your taxes to an accountant, have him suggest some "aggressive" reporting of expenses, and when you agree you are arrested when it turns out the accountant was an undercover fraud squad officer.

It's a world where you can take a Porche out for a test drive and discover that the sales man who gave you directions to a deserted highway and suggested you speed was really an undercover police officer padding the unit's statistics.

I can't even imagine how badly this could go if undercover police officers were to pose as high school students. Actually, I can, there has already been at least one case where a female officer suggested a male citizen procure drugs for her and then arrested him when he complied.

I don't need to sympathize with tax cheats, fast drivers, or love-smitten young men to fear the police state that doesn't have enough criminals to catch and therefore must manufacture some of its own.

Summary: yes, these people are unsympathetic. But also yes, it's important to ask questions about the choices the police are making to prosecute them.

<comment><USER15> "This isn't a question of sympathy, it's a question of what types of behaviour on the part of the police are in society's best interests. I don't have sympathy for a shoplifter, but if the police beat a confession out of him, I am troubled by their actions.

The world where the police can suggest targets to a group and supply the materials for action is also a world where you can take your taxes to an accountant, have him suggest some "aggressive" reporting of expenses, and when you agree you are arrested when it turns out the accountant was an undercover fraud squad officer."

You're right, it's not about sympathy. It's exactly as you said, what is the in the best interests of society.

But the scenario you present of an accountant is a totally incorrect comparison in my view. An accountant is executing a complex task on your behalf presumably in good faith. We hire accountants because they are masters of a certain domain of knowledge, experts that guide us. Your scenario uses totally ambiguous language, and it would be understandable for the client of the accountant to be confused as to whether "aggressive" means "I'm using all my tools to save you money in a good faith effort" or "I'm going to pull one over on Uncle Sam".

What is NOT AT ALL ambiguous is the idea that someone has an intent to BLOW UP A BRIDGE, a desire to harm the infrastructure of this country and waste millions of dollars IN THE BEST CASE SCENARIO. At worst, loss of life and death to our fellow Americans. I can't even begin to understand how these two scenarios are in any way similar.

The FBI agent that guided these people through a process they willingly participated in is not comparable to an accountant. This is not some ambiguous undertaking where a poorly chosen phrasing of words can lead to a misunderstanding where an illegal action could potentially take place. The world is not black and white, but when you get to the point where you are actively participating in an effort that is frantically scanning the pages of the Anarchist Cookbook to produce explosives... I'd suggest that this scenario is pretty easily understood as wrong.

And the original poster is 100% correct: "That's not entrapment. Any sane, law abiding person would react viscerally and negative to such a suggestion."

This is not a movie. This is real life. This is not V. You don't get to run around executing on a plan to blow things up, regardless of who is leading you and their intentions, without some real serious consequences and without the FBI taking you down.

This isn't about me, or my sympathy's or tolerances (of which I have none and little, respectively) but it is about what we will tolerate as a society and what is in our best interests. As you suggested.

I think it's in society's best interests to roll these people up. I have absolutely zero qualms about taking people off the chess board that think it's a great idea for everyone to pile into the van and visit the bomb site.

These are grown adults, not children. It's not about my pop-psychology either, but I think if we all think about it for a moment, it's not hard to imagine that these people already had the core of this in them. Anyone who vacillates on whether or not building bombs to blow things up is right or wrong... These are super well balanced people who were led astray and corrupted in a series of weeks?

"Summary: yes, these people are unsympathetic. But also yes, it's important to ask questions about the choices the police are making to prosecute them."

Ask away. In my view, it's easily answered. If you don't find it to be an easy answer, I can say that I honestly can't begin to understand your perspective, but I'd be interested in your response.

<comment><USER14> _I think it's in society's best interests to roll these people up. I have absolutely zero qualms about taking people off the chess board that think it's a great idea for everyone to pile into the van and visit the bomb site._

Hunh, I think that's the same argument to be used for illegal wiretapping, slapping GPS transmitters on cars, and on an on. "We're after nasty people, so society's best interests are served by having us use every tool at our disposal and letting us choose who, when, and why without oversight." And yes, the answer may be easy for you, but it's also easy for me. I don't think the fact that these people may be nasty has any bearing on what should or shouldn't constitute due process. I also don't think that discovering their nastiness after the fact justifies the police actions before the fact of their nastiness has been established.

I suspect there are deep, deep philosophical divides at work here. For your reading interest, I present something that happened during the a long-ago spate of successful domestic terrorism events:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO>

Which leads naturally to a group of actually nasty people:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_(organization)>

I almost forgot. As a Canadian, I am especially interested in this difficult moral case:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_crisis>

<comment><USER15> No. It's really not at all.

And you're taking the same mischaracterization that an above post takes: I do not feel this was okay because "these are nasty people", as if my delicate sensibilities cringe at the idea of "icky people", people that are different than me or have different view than I have.

That is a false representation of my views.

I think it's okay to roll up on these people because ___they think it's okay to blow up bridges, and because they took all necessary actions to indicate intent_ __, which would clearly and unequivocally be a crime.

Due process? They will get their day in court. If it turns out that they were just minding their business, being upstanding citizens in our society until an FBI agent kidnapped them and forced them to participate in a bomb plot, then I will gladly eat crow and be on the side of their exoneration and justice.

I am sure there are many things our government does that would not stand up with respect to a hard, realistic look at constitutionality. I am not naive enough to believe that "because the government does it, it's not illegal" nor am I for the wrongful persecution of political or religious organizations "just because I don't like them".

But here is my bottom line: people that plot to blow up pieces of American infrastructure and who then take steps to follow out that plan are criminals. I'm kind of amazed I even have to state this.

<comment><USER14> _people that plot to blow up pieces of American infrastructure and who then take steps to follow out that plan are criminals. I'm kind of amazed I even have to state this._

I'm amazed you are stating this _because it isn't the argument against what the police are doing_. The argument solely concerns what measures are appropriate for identifying and gathering evidence about criminals.

We can agree that they are criminals. My point is, I have questions about the way in which the police are conducting their "investigation," and I don't care whether they people being investigated turn out to be criminals. I get that you think they are criminals and you have no sympathy for criminals.

It goes back to my example of the police beating a confession out of a shoplifter. Or a murderer. Or torturing a terrorist. The guilt of the suspect is not the issue to me whatsoever.

And just so you know, I want domestic terrorists caught and convicted. We're simply discussing how society should go about it.

<comment><USER13> _My point is, I have questions about the way in which the police are conducting their "investigation,"_

I don't, in this case. We can take a few things as given, yes?

1) There is no legitimate reason for an individual to attempt to blow up a piece of domestic infrastructure.

2) Any person who, given the materials, has no qualms committing the act in 1, is a criminal and should be taken off the streets.

This isn't even like most other stings. Drugs, speeding, whatever. There are legitimate reasons, law notwithstanding, to do both of those things. However, a person who takes steps to blow up a building and kill a bunch of people.. nope. There's zero question in my mind about someone who would do that. There is no legitimate reason. I suspect that the FBI will have a 100% success rate with these actions, and zero false positives.

What are the chances someone will be innocently caught in this dragnet? Pretty much zero. So where is the harm to society?

<comment><USER16> What of the harm to peaceful protesters who aren't going to be arrested? Should they be allowed to organize and plan peaceful actions without police officers continually derailing their discussions by trying to incite violence? What of the people scared away from protesting peacefully by that scary guy in the corner who keeps talking about blowing shit up? Should they be continually fearing that any expression that can be taken out of context as indicating they're advocating violence (Such as riffing off a Batman quote [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/some-men-just-want-to-watch- th...](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/some-men-just-want-to-watch-the-world- burn) )

Which might be moot if I believed any of the groups mentioned would have committed these acts without the involvement of police officers or informants. But I don't, so.

[edit: Looking up another reference, I found a case you might find troubling.

"In the case of the Fort Dix Five, which involved a fake plan to attack a New Jersey military base, one informant's criminal past included attempted murder, while another admitted in court at least two of the suspects later jailed for life had not known of any plot." from <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/20/fbi-informant> , more info at <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,449728,00.html> ]

<comment><USER13> >Should they be allowed to organize and plan peaceful actions without police officers continually derailing their discussions by trying to incite violence?

This is what's called harassment, and it's illegal. Furthermore, I challenge you to find a record of any such ongoing such actions.

<comment><USER16> In the Guardian link I posted it lists a mosque gaining a restraining order against a FBI infiltrator. They also reported him to the FBI, but as the FBI was employing him, they didn't do anything about it.

<comment><USER13> Ah.. that's what I get for not clicking.

In any case, the FBI was out of control.. (as usual it seems..) - But they got a restraining order. Isn't that what you're supposed to do when someone won't leave you the hell alone?

<comment><USER16> I'd rather have a government that you don't need to get restraining orders against.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Legally it is not entrapment. Entrapment requires that the defendant not have a propensity to comment the offense.

<comment><USER18> I totally called this (here - [http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/tdw6j/tsa_agents_i...](http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/tdw6j/tsa_agents_in_salt_lake_city_destroy_teens_10000/c4lwzq9) ). If you read my followup comment, you will see what people are really afraid of.

Nobody cares if someone innocent is busted for saying "Yeah, let's bomb a bridge!" What people are afraid of is that the FBI is the only thing pushing real terrorism forward. That but for the FBI, it would ALL be just talk. That's pretty dangerous if you ask me.

(To my follow-up comment, I forgot to add: what if the person who precipitates the terrorist plot and manoeuvers into being the final link in the chain simply CAN'T be that link. Maybe they get EXTREMELY ill, maybe they die, maybe someone else convinces the rest of the organization to let THEM do it, what if all the pieces are laid and then the informant is simply replaced by someone who doesn't know enough not to set the thing off at the end...)

<comment><USER19> The bombs are duds. Meaning that even if they attempt to set them of, nothing will happen.

And, presumably the FBI is keeping so well tap on them that if they somehow got acces to real explosives (which can't be that hard, considering Tanerite is legal, as is fertilizer if purchased in small enough quantities) they would be arrested earlier.

<comment><USER20> They may be 'duds', but there are plenty of instances of the FBI providing actual explosives even if the 'detonator' is not going to work large quantities of high explosives in and of themselves are dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Moving a serious conversation about blowing up "a bridge" versus a "cargo ship" using bleach explosives to a "big bridge" using C4 isn't "inventing terrorists".

<comment><USER22> If every conversation among people of all political persuasions was exploited, you'd see a very different picture. You really think conversations among Tea Partiers, Democratic party drones, and other mainstream-type groups never bring up fantasies of violence on their supposed enemies? Or do you think there are no unstable and insecure people who could be turned among these political blocs?

<comment><USER23> It's not illegal to fantasize. It is illegal to attempt to blow up a bridge. Federal law is remarkably consistent on this, whether you vote Democrat, Republican, or Ron Paul.

<comment><USER24> Conspiracy to commit foo, is illegal for many foo. So, it is illegal to fantasize out loud.

<comment><USER25> That isn't how conspiracy to commit works. There has to have been foo (or an attempt at foo), and demonstrable knowledge of that act of foo (or highly probable knowledge), and actions to further the committing of foo (direct or indirect I believe). Just exploring stuff in the hypothetical is completely legal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Any of you beancounting/game theory types fancy analysing this trend in the FBI's behaviour from an economic perspective? What is the driver or incentive for them to do this?

<comment><USER27> It's not so much an economic perspective as a political one, the government derives its power (and income) from the current federal reserve system, if something were to undermine this system the government would be left toothless and facing a very angry populace.

A full investigation of the banking system would cause credibility to be lost by the banks which would unravel the whole system as the fractional reserve system collapses. Thus the government needs to remove credibility from those who pose a threat to this system.

As to why white supremacists aren't targeted, white supremacists don't pose any fundamental threat to the banks or to power because their ideas are unpopular, occupy touches upon an angry thread running through the country that the average person cannot get ahead. Threads like these unseat governments, an unseated government cannot prevent an investigation into the banks.

<comment><USER8> It's not simply a political factor (although it mostly is.) This has nothing to do with the Fed (which I believe should be done away with.) The powers the USG use to go after groups that potentially threaten it existed before 1913 (even though more powers have been added since then.) The Fed has nothing to do what so ever with this discussion.

Edited for some grammar & clarity.

<comment><USER27> I thought we were debating why and not how. Why it's important to get rid of occupy is because of the threat it poses to the banking system.

For sure, the powers don't stem from the Fed but the reasons do.

<comment><USER8> I misunderstood your comment then (my apologies for down voting it then.) My best guess is that there are probably a number of reasons why the Feds are targeting specific groups.

It could be as simple as the Occupy movement represents a target rich environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Articles like this are pointless. Americans as a whole will not band together to prevent or rectify problems like this because of one or more of the following:

FEAR) We're all expecting the government to view anything related to freedom as an act of terrorism that will get us into pound-me-in-the-ass prison or worse.

DENIAL) That will never happen to me if I just keep my head down. Only bad people have that happen to them.

DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONSIBILITY) I'm nobody, so how could I change government policy? That is something that important people can do, but not me, I'm just a(n) __________.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is great. We need more of it.

</comment><comment><USER30> Suppose I went out and sought out people who I think might have a beef with the american government, proposed a terrorist plot to them, and supplied them with the tools to do it (and the FBI has supplied real explosives in the past to these groups).. and then they do it and all die in the process, but cause death of innocents as well.

If I did all that, would I be guilty of something? Probably conspiracy and a dozen other crimes.

Ok, now, if I'm doing the exact same actions, but I'm a member of the government, does that make my actions less of a crime?

If something is a crime, does the criminality of it change depending on who is doing it?

Is it ok for the president to murder someone but not for a distraught spouse?

Is it ok for an FBI agent to set up a terrorist plot that gets foiled, but not ok for a truck driver?

Imagine in both cases, before the plot can be put in motion, that law enforcement swoops in. The plot hasn't occurred yet, so they haven't actually committed an act of terrorism. But they did plan one and engage in a conspiracy to do it.

In that case, isn't the FBI agent legally as guilty as anyone else in the conspiracy?

How can the law be relative and let certain members of society off the hook- especially if, as it appears, those members were the primary conspirators, and without whome nothing would have happened?

Whether this is "entrapment" or not is besides the point here-- if participating a conspiracy to commit a terrorist act is itself a crime, then isn't organizing the same also a crime?

And shouldn't' criminality apply to anyone, no matter what their profession.

If the law starts treating certain members of society differently than others, you don't have the rule of law so much any more and you start having two classes- the untouchables and the common.

Police getting away with speeding doesn't always hurt society (thought it does cause wrecks) but over time, it seems natural that more and more laws will apply to the common folk and not to the "elite" and the elite will come to use their powers more and more for their own advantage.

This disconnect is corruptive in nature, I believe.

<comment><USER31> I think you make a strong argument. Here's a question: What happens when the smart anarchist turns in the snitch to the local police department with full documentation of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act?

<comment><USER32> The same thing that happens when it wouldn't be a snitch. What happens to that person should be decided in court by a judge/jury not by the police.

<comment><USER22> The only problem is, the state attornies/feds don't press criminal charges on the person if they don't want to.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Russia gov report Snowden Greenwald are CIA frauds pt1 - <AUTHOR> http://homment.com/3K3xdsYD7a <comment><AUTHOR> I'm unclear on the quality of the source, but this tweet announcing it was retweeted by Glenn Greenwald: [https://twitter.com/therealroseanne/status/67637437306689126...](https://twitter.com/therealroseanne/status/676374373066891264)</comment>


Programming abstract art - <AUTHOR> https://smalldata.tech/playground/the-artist <comment><USER3> There is something wrong with the Hacker News algorithm if this kind of simple box drawing algorithm with minimal content gets to second place.

<comment><USER4> I am going to guess that it means there is a thirst for more artist submissions. There is not enough color in the links submitted these days - <USER2> the slightest bit of color grabs the attention.

I upvoted this because I want more that is in this vein, though I also don't think its algorithm is worthless - it is good to start somewhere. (Personally, I find it 'wrong' that the Equifax article right now is first! Not that it is unworthy - just that I don't care to read it.)

<comment><USER5> If you're eager to find more "creative coding" type works. Going on instagram and using hashtags like #creativecoding are a great way to find amazing work. Also twitter is a great source of absolutely mind-blowing artistic work that leverages technology. I've spent far too much time just browsing all the amazing stuff out there.

<comment><USER4> Ok, I did this - this is great, there are some 'neat'/'inspiring' things there. A few other questions for you:

* How do I find more hashtags? I would have never found #creativecoding - is it known to be a community or is it just an ad hoc hashtag like #lostinthehashtags (which I just made up - but which has posts!) I guess what I'm saying is - I don't sense that these hashtags are a community - or are they?

* As 'neat'/'inspiring' as these are, they are mostly only (very small) images and (very short) clips. I ultimately can't see myself using Instagram or Twitter much because you just kind of skim and can't go deeper. They lack the 'hypertext'. (This is similarly to the OP's trouble with this post just being a simple 'box algorithm' \- where do I go for more?

* Most of these look like art I've seen on t-shirts or album covers. Dating back even to the seventies. It is still beautiful and remarkable - but I can't help but wonder: Where is innovation happening in tech+art?

I will say that I do follow a lot of things happening in vaporwave - any idea what else is happening out there? Thank you for your time, HammadB. I am eager.

<comment><USER6> > is it known to be a community

indeed, also look up "new media art". Also, obligatory [https://www.openprocessing.org/](https://www.openprocessing.org/)

... and obligatory self-promotion - I work in the field on a sequencer for creative coding : [https://ossia.io](https://ossia.io)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a great difference between people with a computer science background who try to generate art with programs and artist who try to use algorithms to generate art. There are many people of the first kind, but a few of the second kind. I advice you to study the works of people of the first kind, before you present your algorithms as art. For example, have a look at [http://www.pstruycken.nl/EnWorkaImgList.html](http://www.pstruycken.nl/EnWorkaImgList.html) with work s of one such artist. (It is only about halfway the page that the first works made with computer programs appear.) Take notice of his colour use.

<comment><USER8> Can we please stop this "only artists are allowed to make art" nonsense? The lady of the lake didn't come out and bless special individuals as "artists" and the rest of us as foolish undeserving heathens.

<comment><USER9> By choosing to make art, you become an artist, so in that sense only artists _do_ make art.

This isn't art, though. Art isn't functional, art creates thought and emotion. Art has thought and emotion behind it. Code can make art, but there has to be a genuine artistic intent behind the code.

At best, this is design, but in reality this is a code snippet that generates random boxes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.tylerlhobbs.com](http://www.tylerlhobbs.com) <— some really good generative pieces on here

</comment><comment><USER11> For a creative generative art coding tool - [http://gif.com.ai](http://gif.com.ai)

I suggest playing around in the chrome or ff console once inside if you've got JavaScript chops.

Some of the best :

[https://imgur.com/uTZzuba](https://imgur.com/uTZzuba) [https://imgur.com/qGgo9ik](https://imgur.com/qGgo9ik) [https://imgur.com/mPtuLkz](https://imgur.com/mPtuLkz) [https://imgur.com/kaNkhT8](https://imgur.com/kaNkhT8) [https://imgur.com/FN1BgNx](https://imgur.com/FN1BgNx) [https://imgur.com/mBTSPcD](https://imgur.com/mBTSPcD) [https://imgur.com/8LdcFn5](https://imgur.com/8LdcFn5) [https://imgur.com/vzttkax](https://imgur.com/vzttkax) [https://imgur.com/mHJd0hr](https://imgur.com/mHJd0hr)

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been experimenting with generative art too, so I'll share a few of my favorite images: [https://miketeter.smugmug.com/First- Light/](https://miketeter.smugmug.com/First-Light/)

The code behind them is a Python abomination (because it was really about the experiments and parameterized/randomized algos.

The biggest challenge for me was testing different theories and then being able to capture/remember the details of which algo variation produced which image. If my code were properly abstracted I could embed the parameters in the image; but currently, each image is only ever generated once, and it will never be re-generated.

<comment><AUTHOR> The first image is really cool, would be great if you could share your code or just the idea behind it!

<comment><USER12> Thanks. Like I said, the code is truly unpleasant to see. But I can summarize the concepts that create images like these.

It boils down to some number of iterations, where each iteration is addition of some shape (having some properties) to the canvas.

Those properties include the type of shape (dot, line, polygon), size, position, and color.

The number of iterations, along with the type of shape and its size determine the density of content on the canvas.

The other properties have their obvious effects.

The magic, if there is any, is in choosing ranges of acceptable property values (randomly). For example, if you make every property be a random value between the min and max acceptable for that property, you generally end up with some variation of noise. It's not really artistic in my opinion.

So what I did was play with narrowing ranges of acceptable properties, especially tying those ranges to the previous values of the previous shape (that was drawn on the previous iteration). Position is the best example. The first iteration would have no previous shape, so its position would be randomly somewhere on the canvas. But the next iteration would some random distance from the previous one, within a range that itself might have slightly randomized boundaries. That would result in clustering... which is generally pleasing, but ultimately monotonous. So I would provide some % chance of a "break out", such that the new position could be totally random rather than related to the previous.

I applied the same concepts of managed, previously-related randomization of value ranges to the other properties of the shape being drawn on the given iteration. For color, I might have it vary only one channel of the RGB, and only a small amount. But again, I would have a low % chance of a completely random/new color. And one of my favorite little additions was the complementary color chance. Once in a while, the next drawn shape would be close to the complementary color of the previous shape.

Finally, since "tuning" the randomization boundaries and exception chances was a bit tedious, I added a layer of similar randomization behaviors to the boundary rules themselves. That means that some images could be total chaos, and others could theoretically just be a single blob of garbage in one spot of the canvas.

Like a "good" photographer, I let it generate hundreds of images. Then I chose some that I thought were compelling. The rest went in the trash.

I have considered training a NN against famously popular and unpopular paintings, hoping to teach it how to recognize art that other people would like. Then I would setup a pipeline of generate-judge-keep/delete-repeat processes that should churn out abstract art that would make me famous and finally prove my value to the world. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The Code Golf StackExchange had a "make an image with all the colors" challenge (challenge spec'd 15-bit colors, a bunch of people did the full 24-bit, 16-million colors) that gave some pretty cool "art": [https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/22144/176](https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/22144/176)

</comment><comment><USER14> Long list of generative art links - [http://blog.hvidtfeldts.net/index.php/generative-art- links/](http://blog.hvidtfeldts.net/index.php/generative-art-links/)

Spirolaterals - easiest and simplest to start with, but can make beautiful structures

</comment><comment><USER15> The biggest and best generative art forum on the planet : [https://www.reddit.com/r/generative/](https://www.reddit.com/r/generative/)

<comment><USER11> and least active these days :(

<comment><USER15> Least active? What are you talking about. There's a steady stream of posts. New stuff every day.

If there's a more active generative art forum I'd love to hear about it.

<comment><USER11> 2-6 posts a day isn't very active. I'm active myself on it but besides one other user who posts and comments and a mod, it's practically a ghost town. I wish it was more active. It's the perfect sub for my GIF AI tool. [https://gif.com.ai](https://gif.com.ai)

<comment><USER15> 2-6? That's actually more than I thought. And I consider that to be satisfyingly active. But I guess it's a relative thing.

The crazy edge of machine art. It's a small community. There's no getting around it.

<comment><USER11> Check out [https://www.reddit.com/r/proceduralgeneration/](https://www.reddit.com/r/proceduralgeneration/) and the resource links. The net-art community is bigger then you may think.

<comment><USER15> procedural is 5 times the size but has half the posting-rate.

/r/generative is the superior

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> See what I did few years ago: [http://www.gioblu.com/GiO/web/kipplr/editor](http://www.gioblu.com/GiO/web/kipplr/editor)

</comment><comment><USER17> People who enjoyed this might enjoy Rafael Rozendal's Abstract Browsing - [http://www.abstractbrowsing.net/](http://www.abstractbrowsing.net/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Love the flipping effect of the links on your root page.

EDIT: Oop, that was on the workshop.rs page you link at the end.

</comment><comment><USER18> what about white paintings, you know, like the ones at the Witney?

[https://whitney.org/Exhibitions/MaryCorse](https://whitney.org/Exhibitions/MaryCorse)

</comment><comment><USER19> Ugly colors, no form. 1/5

</comment><comment><USER20> What's the point? It's not even sizecoded for 256b, 1k or tweet length.</comment>


Slope-Finding Functions - <AUTHOR> http://advancedmathyoungstudents.com/blog/2014/05/22/slope-finding-functions/

<comment> hungarian-eel I don't see the point of plotting the derivative on the same graph as the function, and I think this will confuse students who are exposed to the derivative for the first time. Functions and their derivatives have different units, and only rarely do they need to be plotted together.

Once it is understood that the derivative is an expression that gives us the slope of the tangent at any point of the original graph, then it may be interesting to remark that the derivative is in fact a function, and may therefore be plotted, or differentiated, or set equal to zero to find its roots.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you read his previous post "Hairy Questions" he warns that the next few posts are for up and coming AP calculus students. It is assumed that they already have a sense of what derivatives are and what not so I think it is justified.</comment></comment>


User Data Requests – Google Transparency Report - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/ <comment><USER2> What these documents refer to:

1\. Criminal investigations within US.

2\. National security investigations when they need NSL.

3\. Criminal investigations outside US when foreign government officials contact Google.

There is no mention of the main goal of PRISM: national security investigations when they apply to people from foreign countries. They don't need NSL, because warrantless surveillance to foreign powers is allowed by FISA.

>The presentation claims Prism was introduced to overcome what the NSA regarded as shortcomings of Fisa warrants in tracking suspected foreign terrorists. It noted that the US has a "home-field advantage" due to housing much of the Internet's architecture. But the presentation claimed "Fisa constraints restricted our home-field advantage" because Fisa required individual warrants and confirmations that both the sender and receiver of a communication were outside the US.

>"Fisa was broken because it provided privacy protections to people who were not entitled to them," the presentation claimed. "It took a Fisa court order to collect on foreigners overseas who were communicating with other foreigners overseas simply because the government was collecting off a wire in the United States. There were too many email accounts to be practical to seek Fisas for all."

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech- giants-n...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa- data)</comment>


GCC 7.1 Released - <AUTHOR> https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2017-05/msg00017.html <comment><USER2> "The C++ frontend now has experimental support for ALL (emphasis added) of the current C++17 draft, with the -std=c++1z and -std=gnu++1z options, and the libstdc++ library has most of the C++17 draft library features implemented too.

The Address Sanitizer can now report uses of variables after leaving their scope. GCC now can be configured for OpenMP 4.5 offloading to NVidia PTX GPGPUs."

The above are some really intriguing nuggets, I will have to check this out this weekend.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did I overlook gcc 7.0??

<comment><AUTHOR> New releases start with .1; .0 corresponds to the release candidate.

<comment><USER4> It's an interesting convention but on the other hand makes quite explicit the common wisdom that "point-oh" releases are rarely production quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's wonderful news. But here I am stuck on the latest centos running 4.8. They haven't even made the switch to abi breaking 5.0

<comment><USER6> Then that's wonderful news to you: your long-release-cycle OS insulates you from every single worry about this update. This is why distributions like CentOS and Debian Stable exist.

(I just realized that might sound sarcastic to The Kids These Days, but it's 100% serious: that's the whole point of these long-term distributions, and those of us who have to manage large numbers of systems love it.)

<comment><USER7> ... which in turn resulted in TensorFlow not being able to be used in clusters for a long, long time: [https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/110](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/110)

<comment><USER6> Which was the point. That was a long, long list of TensorFlow bugs that were avoided.

<comment><USER8> I just want to add to that, just to offer a perspective that people not concerned with the upkeep of software always realize: In the general case, when you keep software around for long some bugs will linger. But as long as the issues are well known that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Sometimes you have to work around some corner case or performance anomaly in another layer. You don't want to apply fixes to underlying software willy- nilly without first re-evaluating what you did.

So sometimes stable distributions will avoid fixing bugs for good reason. (That doesn't go for security issues, of course.) And if that's not what you want most distributions have a more suitable branch for you.

<comment><USER6> > most distributions have a more suitable branch for you

Exactly. CentOS has Fedora, Debian has sid/ubuntu/derivatives, Slackware has -current. If you don't require a stable platform (and most _developers_ don't) then you're welcome to join people on the unstable side of things, making the next stable side of things.

<comment><USER7> The problem is most of the time developers working with clusters do _not_ have control of which distribution to use. TensorFlow was considered stable (or at least stable enough for research) for a long time before it can be used with glibc 2.12.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Uber strips power from ousted CEO Travis Kalanick - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/03/technology/business/uber-board-kalanick/index.html <comment><USER2> I don't know whether it's real or imagined, but there has been a drop in my subjective experience with Uber in the last few months since Travis's removal.

\- While in a rush, I've had back-to-back mid-day waits of 15+ minutes for any and every Uber I called (hailed a cab instead).

\- A day where I experienced $50+ non-surged fare estimate from downtown SF to the Sunset, something I've never seen before (usually $22-ish... I took MUNI.)

\- Increased rate of bad driver behavior: I've had drivers straight up cancel calls if I'm not outside immediately, drivers start a fare before I get in the car (and then lose the ability to find my true pickup point), and worse.

\- Inability to pinpoint my location when there's a conference or venue nearby - I had to call a Lyft yesterday because Uber insisted I was at an Oracle conference (I wasn't even that close)

And more. Pretty much every reason I've had for not taking cabs over the past few years is now becoming a problem with Uber. If they can't regulate the quality of their service, there's no benefit to Uber in a major urban center (hailing a cab is far, far faster).

I hadn't used Lyft in three years until about two weeks ago. I've started using it more frequently and have had a fantastic experience. I'm unbelievably disappointed - internal company politics aside, I had been a huge fan of Uber. I haven't fully converted to Lyft yet, but every experience I have continues to push me in that direction.

<comment><USER3> Sounds more like there is more demand of rides than there are drivers. Whether that's from less people driving or more people riding is the question. Maybe Lyft is starting to become more popular. In my area, Lyft wasn't popular at all for a long time. You would wait forever meanwhile there was always an Uber driver in the next neighborhood. Now, they are pretty much the same in experience, wait times, and prices. Only time I've ever had "bad" drivers are when they call me before pickup and ask me where I'm going and demand I cancel since my destination would take them too long which I somewhat understand. There should be some sort of system to help drivers limit the amount of non- fare driving (giving them fares that might be a little further away to pickup but the drop off is right near the driver's home, kind of like pooling where the driver's home is the last "drop off").

I think both companies need to make sure that their drivers are happy. There will always be a demand for cab services so making sure you can keep drivers to match the demand will keep the fares coming in.

<comment><USER4> Uber could add an option to specify your destination, and provide the information (or lack of info) to the drivers.

<comment><USER5> ? I always have to specify my destination before booking.

<comment><USER6> neither uber nor lyft share that with the drivers till they register that you are in the car, presumably to prevent just this sort of thing.

<comment><USER7> That makes little sense to me, if they can't get drivers to go to certain routes, then the fare should increase as an incentive should it not? Some sort of market matchup between drivers and passengers is part of what Uber/Lyft should be supplying in their platform.

If a driver has say 15 mins of time part time, or left on their intended shift, as a passenger I really don't want that driver for a 45min trip thinking they need to be somewhere else..

<comment><USER6> i used to feel that way, but then i started thinking of the "bad neighbourhood" problem. it's historically been a huge problem for people living in certain neighbourhoods (and typically poor and/or heavily non-white ones) that cabs don't want to take them there.

<comment><USER7> The most I've run into route avoidance is with drivers who don't want to spend 2 hrs on a trip to the airport during rush hour.

Is the "bad neighborhood" problem a race problem, or a problem of not enough fares in that area (i.e. by taking a fare in, if the density is too low then you lose the time/cost of fares getting back out of that area...). and of course, if historically, if fewer fares go there, that problem is exacerbated.

I suppose one way to rebalance that issue without changing fares, is to preferentially schedule a driver for later fares until the earnings/trip/time etc are rebalanced. If Uber itself valued getting more uniform coverage, it seems like it could offer drivers to "undesirable" areas more, and shift some of the profits over from other areas into the low coverage areas too.

But all of this seems more complex and less transparent than increasing fares. The whole point of a market is to exchange information and come to some double ended voluntary deal that is good for both parties. If you fix bad neighborhoods by imposition onto drivers who don't know what they're getting into in terms of start/end points.

It's a hard set of tradeoffs.

<comment><USER6> it's a race problem in that it disproportionately affects communities of certain races, due to historical systemic issues. so even if no single uber driver specifically thought "i don't want to go into a black area", all the other factors affecting that decision would tend to affect black people more than white people.

this is nicely illustrative of how these things can feed off each other: [https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-amazon-same- day/](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-amazon-same-day/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think we're heading for a massive bubble, if Uber collapses investors everywhere will be spooked, "too big to fail" comes to mind.

Every ride Uber loses money. If they raise prices, then people jump ship, to Lyft, to a local service, to taxis. If self-driving cars don't start being used they can't cut down the cost... Of course, they also have lawsuits hitting them, and the Waymo lawsuit pretty much halted their self-driving car program.

Combine all this with the ridiculous number of lawsuits, investigations and criminal proceedings outside of IP that they are facing ("Grey ball" for instance) and I just don't see how they can maintain their status. Even with another $1 Billion or $10 billion.

How can they come out of this?

Couple that with having a large number of "chefs in the kitchen" so to speak and well... you get the idea.

<comment><USER9> I don't see how Uber is considered "too big to fail". They aren't the banking system, they are a ride hailing app. If they go away, people go back to using cabs.

<comment><USER10> One ride from another app, and people will forget Uber ever existed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the most remarkable thing here is that Benchmark voluntarily gave up their own weighted voting rights. It tells you just how bad they think Kalanick's influence is that they think they're better off this way.

</comment><comment><USER12> 17 person board. Are there other examples of startups that have been taken over like this with a successful outcome?

<comment><USER13> Lots of examples of investors succeeding in diluting a founder's power in their own startup.

One person's takeover is another person's power restructuring.

EDIT: Tesla is a good example (Elon Musk pushing Martin Eberhard out).

<comment><USER14> The question was are there any that are successful for the startup [longterm]?</comment></comment></comment>


Propose HN: Boycott submissions with inaccurate titles to eradicate linkbait - <AUTHOR>

I've seen the rise of linkbaiting in the last few months and I feel that the problem has achieved mythic proportions and that it will only be getting worse because of the obvious incentives:
Linkbait title = more people look at the article = more people upvote it = people see that linkbaiting is a valid strategy
As I remarked on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=503422, if a sizeable proportion of HN starts boycotting submissions with inaccurate titles, then the new way to get people to read your article would be to write an accurate title! The dynamic would be flipped on its head:
Linkbait title = nobody reads the article = nobody upvotes it = people see that linkbaiting is self-defeating.
So I propose we implement this. Here's the algorithm:
When clicking through to an article, summarily verify that the title is an accurate depiction of the content of the article. If it isn't, don't read the article, and post a comment with something to the effect of: "I refuse to read this article on the grounds that the submission's title isn't an accurate depiction of the content of the article", then state what the article is actually about. If somebody else already posted that and their summary appears accurate after a summary inspection of the article, upvote the comment.
I'd also advocate not to start any discussion (even if worthwhile) on a submission guilty of linkbait. I suspect a lot of people look at the number of comments as a proxy for interestingness of the article. Any worthwhile discussion that could take place in that bad submission's comments thread could very well grow on a good submission's...
Of course I wouldn't want to skip on great articles because the first submission has an inaccurate title, so I encourage new submissions of the same article with accurate titles. The anti-multisubmission feature, or whatever it's called, could get in the way, I'm not sure what to do about that yet.
The best would be to always have accurate titles, but obviously it can be hard to summarize the submission correctly in just a few words. I'd settle for just eliminating submissions with titles that were obviously crafted for maximum viewership with complete disregard for accuracy.
Who's with me? <comment><USER2> ...Take off every Zig?!

You're making this really complicated. Just flag everything with a linkbait title. If enough people do that, it will get an editor's attention, and they can (hopefully) determine the reason for all the flagging is the title (linkbait titles are easy to identify) and change it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think that's quite enough. There's a finite amount of editors and it will always take _some_ time before they can fix a title, if they do so at all.

And by the time they rectify the situation, the submission will likely have gotten a number of upvotes in the most critical part of its life, due to the linkbait title.

Also, AFAIK we normal users can't see the number of flaggings a submission has had, so with due respect, I don't want to rely 100% on editors to have the initiative in this whole affair, in this time and age I'd prefer something more crowd-sourced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> From your algorithm:

 _When clicking through to an article, summarily verify that the title is an accurate depiction of the content of the article. If it isn't, don't read the article ... then state what the article is actually about._

Is this a joke?

How about a 'linkbait' link next to the 'flag' link. Or just tolerate it.

Linkbait titles are a problem, but your solution is not for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Linkbait titles are a problem, but your solution is not for me."

I'm fine with that. It's just version 0.1. I was trying to go for a solution that doesn't require more code.

But sure, what about just flagging all linkbait titles and, crucially, _showing the number of flaggings_ for everyone to see.

<comment><USER3> Maybe the karma accrued to the submitter should equal upvotes to the article, minus how many linkbait clicks it receives (with a floor of zero).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I've seen the rise of linkbaiting in the last few months and I feel that the > problem has achieved mythic proportions and that it will only be getting > worse because of the obvious incentives:

Is it (otherwise) nice to live in a world where HN linkbait is that significant an issue?

</comment><comment><USER5> _If it isn't, don't read the article ... then state what the article is actually about._

At the very least I hope that you would read the article before deciding what it's actually about.

<comment><AUTHOR> But you don't need to read it in full to know what it's about, a quick skimming should do. I don't count that as reading the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gee, we just met. I can't accept this ring.</comment>


Tarsnap and the prepaid billing model - <AUTHOR> http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2009-04-18-tarsnap-prepaid-billing.html

<comment><USER3> This is partly the micropayment problem. The other way around it is to extend credit, and bill people. I can see this is against your profitability rule. Just saying it's another solution, in general.

You didn't ask for feedback, so feel free to ignore the following :-)

It would be nice to have a demo service, to play with before paying the $5. You could limit it to a trivial amount of storage (like 100 bytes) - <USER2> purpose is not to store stuff, but to have a play. An easier on-ramp helps adoption, gives people a chance to kick the tyres.

 _If your account stays below zero, your backups will be deleted._ This is a bit scary for a backup service. I'm sure you haven't actually deleted anything, but it would be reassuring if you gave a schedule, e.g. emails every day for a month (perhaps mimic the warnings of a domain name registrar). The main thing is to reassure people, by communicating what you will do before deleting their stuff.

One warning about "a service that you would use". A multinational corporation has different values from an individual, and they will happily pay more than you can imagine, if you can solve their problems. I guess this doesn't apply to you, because bigger customers would setup their own backup, instead of using your service (as you say). I'm just saying that your own sense of value doesn't always translate to different needs - unless you can imagine yourself as a multinational corp, I guess. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> _It would be nice to have a demo service_

That might happen in the future -- the current architecture of the tarsnap server makes this difficult (I don't have "total storage used by user X" updated in realtime).

 _If your account stays below zero, your backups will be deleted_

Right now what I do is send out an email when an account balance falls below 7 days worth of storage, another email when an account falls below zero, and then I wait a week after that before deleting anything. These timelines might change in the future, which is why I haven't specified anything precise on the website.

 _...multinational corporation..._

You're quite right -- but I didn't start this because I wanted to make life easy for multinational corporations. I started this because _I_ wanted a good backup system, and it seemed to me that while multinational corporations had lots of good options available, there weren't really any good options for people like me.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your answers. You email timeline seems reasonable to me, but what I meant was that you need to communicate this on your website. Otherwise, _the user thinks_ that if they forget to pay, their backups are suddenly and instantly lost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > But I'm building tarsnap first and foremost to be the backup service _I_ > would want to use -- and who wants to pay more than necessary? I certainly > wouldn't.

Always good to see someone scratch thier own itch _then_ sell the solution as _they_ would want it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! To be honest, getting rich has never been on my list of reasons for building tarsnap -- I really just wanted good backups. But my idea of good backups is a backup service, and in order for a backup service to be sustainable it needs to make money, and in any case I couldn't afford to spend two years writing code for tarsnap without a good chance of earning some money from it later...

<comment><USER4> A reliable revenue model only increases confidence in a service such as backups. It is always good to know your backups won't disappear because the service has gone bust.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely -- and there have been more than enough examples of backup services going out of business lately to make people worry about this. This is the main reason I wrote my previous blog post: [http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2009-03-09-tarsnap- reaches-p...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2009-03-09-tarsnap-reaches- profitability.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _I find pricing tiers distasteful in general_ \-- A man after my own heart!

How do you manage the float of your users' prepaid balances?

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment, I'm not really managing it. It's just sitting in paypal.

Unfortunately being a Canadian makes it hard to get USD out of paypal without having paypal convert it to CAD at a really horrible exchange rate -- I'm going to get a US bank account soon (a USD bank account at a Canadian bank isn't good enough) to get around this problem, but I haven't made it that far yet. Given how horrible interest rates are right now it's not as if there's a huge amount of money to be earned on the float anyway -- the main reason I want to get the money into a USD bank account is so that I can pay AWS costs in USD instead of having those converted to CAD (at a really horrible exchange rate) so that they can be billed to my CAD credit card.

<comment><USER6> While you're a startup it doesn't matter much, but if you become a larger company, having the user's money that they haven't "spent" yet can be quite irritating for accountants, depending on which accounting method is being used.

In essence you have may have to refund "unconsumed" funds and this affects how you do your books.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, users' balances can be refunded whenever they want -- I'm not going to hold onto someone's money if they want it back.

As for the accounting side of things: My understanding is (at least as far as Canadian accounting goes, which is what matters to me) that it's handled as a liability called "unearned revenue". So while it's certainly something to be aware of for accounting purposes, it's not a big problem.

<comment><USER7> From the user perspective, I find this a very attractive policy. I considered it for my own business model.

Do you refund 100% of the initial fee or do you deduce some processing charges ?

I'm thinking of this 7 day full refund law abused in the domain name business. People would get a name, test its "responsiveness" in hits, and ask for a refund of names below a threshold.

What protection do you have against such type of abuse of your refunding policy ? Are the refunding cost "payed" by other clients ?

<comment><AUTHOR> _Do you refund 100% of the initial fee or do you deduce some processing charges ?_

At the moment I refund 100% of any unspent amount. In light of payment processing costs, I might change this to deduct a small processing fee (say, $0.30 + 3%) in the future; but so far the number of people asking for refunds has been sufficiently small that it isn't really necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> prepay is a good tactic for small customers -- getting the entire lifetime value up front in most cases.

but why are you bothering with customers spending <$1/mo? (we avoided pay-as- you-go for this reason)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "why are you bothering", so I'll answer both versions of the question I can imagine you meaning.

If you mean "why bother charging them instead of making it free" -- as I explain in the post, I don't want to get into a situation where I might have enough small non-paying users that I end up losing money.

If you mean "why accept them as customers at all" -- well, thinking as a user of my own service, I'd be really irked if I got told that I couldn't use a great service simply because I didn't want to use it enough! But from a purely business perspective: In my experience, small-scale users are some of the most important ones to have, since they tend to be the ones who go around telling everybody they know about tarsnap.

<comment><USER9> And they might turn into larger scale customers later.

<comment><USER10> This is the very important part. I probably had my S3 account for a year until one day I dumped hundreds of gigabytes into it. I used S3 because I already had it setup and it was convenient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there anywhere I can read more about Tarsnap's features/architecture? You're obviously a bright guy, and you say you've been working on it for over 2 years, so I'm just curious about what exactly you built ...

For example, what advantages does tarsnap have over some bash scripts I write in a few hours that give me off-site encrypted backups with the help of GPG and rsync? (That's pretty close to the system I use now). I'm sure there are some, but I just don't see them enumerated tarsnap.com ...

<comment><AUTHOR> The tarsnap website links to several of my blog posts about tarsnap, but this one probably has the most information of interest to you: [http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2008-11-10-tarsnap-public- be...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2008-11-10-tarsnap-public-beta.html)

 _For example, what advantages does tarsnap have over some bash scripts I write in a few hours that give me off-site encrypted backups with the help of GPG and rsync?_

It's hard to say without knowing exactly how your scripts work, but I'd guess that one big advantage tarsnap has is that it works with a snapshotted model of backups.

<comment><USER11> Thanks, that answers my questions. Your snapshot system reminds of a reference counting GC - neat trick.

<comment><AUTHOR> As it happens, tarsnap's snapshots work via reference counting -- fortunately, it works better for tarsnap than it does for garbage collection. (Reference counting breaks if you have circular references; this is a problem for garbage collection, but not for tarsnap.)

<comment><USER9> Why didn't you go for a 'real' GC?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no clue what your question is trying to ask. Can you clarify?

<comment><USER9> Why did you choose to do reference counting instead of more sophisticated techniques?

I can imagine that ref. counting is much easier to implement and the drawbacks are unimportant in your domain. However I'd still like to read about the reasons for your decision, since you will have thought about that issue much longer and clearer.

But I guess I should take a deeper look at [http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2008-11-10-tarsnap-public- be...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2008-11-10-tarsnap-public-beta.html) before writing anything..

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, now I understand. Methods such as reachability analysis require reading lots of memory locations; but for tarsnap, "memory locations" are blocks of data stored remotely, so this gets expensive (and slow) very quickly. With reference counting, the counts can be stored locally and no extraneous data needs to bs transferred to or from the server.

<comment><USER12> I guess there's a precedent there in the fact that unix file systems use reference counting for file links, presumably for the same reasons. Considering how well-architected tarsnap seems to be, I suspect you've taken steps to avoid losing data via inconsistencies in the reference counter?

<comment><AUTHOR> _... you've taken steps to avoid losing data via inconsistencies in the reference counter?_

There are some sanity checks built in, but in the extreme case what you're suggesting is impossible. Reference counts are managed on the client side, and the client has the keys necessary to delete blocks from the server; if the client is functioning correctly, it won't get the reference counts wrong, but if the client is malfunctioning then it could go berserk and delete blocks without even looking at the reference counts.

I have taken care of the obvious issues, though -- as long as the OS implements fsync() properly, there's no way that tarsnap or the client system crashing will result in corruption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I actually quite like pay in advance. If you're not really using a service like you thought you can extend the use over a long period making it worthwhile. Of course the same applies to pay for what you use, after the fact, but then there is some ongoing mental load with remembering to either keep or cancel your account.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you're going to stick with this model you should definitely add an auto- recharge feature. This is how I use my Skype account. I auto-recharge $10 every time my balance falls below $2. Very convenient. I don't have to have $100 sitting in there for no reason, but I'm never out of credit.

<comment><AUTHOR> _If you're going to stick with this model you should definitely add an auto- recharge feature._

I might do that at some point, but right now that would kill one of the key benefits of the prepaid billing model -- right now, I don't need to store credit card numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm guessing that this wouldn't be competitive in the market at a higher price point? From a personal viewpoint if I was going to pay for a backup service i'd be open to paying more.

I guess free alternatives would make that hard to be a competitive business move though?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are certainly backup services which are more expensive than tarsnap -- Mozy, for example, charges $0.50/GB, and rsync.net charges $2.10/GB for their georedundant storage (which is probably still far less reliable than the backing storage for tarsnap). But I don't particularly want to find out exactly how much I can gouge my customers; I'd prefer to have a comfortable profit margin and hope that reasonable prices result in more people using tarsnap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Too bad this is not available in Canada. I would love to pay for this service.</comment>


The Most Annoying Web Design Trends of 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://www.websitetooltester.com/en/blog/annoying-web-design-trends/ <comment><USER2> Every one of these has me tearing my hair out. Good post!

Being a marketer myself, I'd love to know what people see as a solid alternative to pop ups asking for emails? It's a difficult balance to maintain between making it obvious what you want someone to do, whilst maintaining high quality content.

Something like a scroll up box in the bottom right corner I think could represent a happy medium, but would be interested what people had to say.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! It looks like the scroll up boxes are the latest trend and they are probably less annoying since they are no interruption. The "welcome gates" are another trend but basically they just completely hide the content you intend to view. I guess I'd prefer the unintrusive 'end of the blog post' sign up box that promises added value. Promoting your newsletter on Facebook and Twitter every once in a while can also work.</comment></comment>


Dutch police seize servers of MaxiDed, a provider known for hosting malware ops - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/police-seize-servers-of-bulletproof-provider-known-for-hosting-malware-ops/ <comment><USER2> There sure are a lot of Eastern European hackers arrested in Thailand. Is there something about Thailand that makes it easier for international police forces to arrest people there?

<comment><USER3> Thailand is just a popular destination for Russians, thought by some to be a safer destination than EU.

In practice this is probably not the case given how easy it is to move around EU without an ID.

<comment><USER4> Also, unless you dwell only around the "tourist areas" (which are I believe tightly controlled by the Thai Police for security/antiterrorism reasons) it is a tad bit difficult to not stand out (in more rural areas) as "The Guy From Europe", particularly if you speak no Thai and are tall, fair haired and with blue eyes as an Eastern European is likely to be.</comment></comment></comment>


Roundup may cause half of all children to have autism by 2025 (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://healthimpactnews.com/2014/mit-researcher-glyphosate-herbicide-will-cause-half-of-all-children-to-have-autism-by-2025/ <comment><USER2> The link should be changed to the following. [https://www.snopes.com/fact- check/glyphosatan/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/glyphosatan/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Organic food actually causes autism, not glyphosate

[https://us-east-1.tchyn.io/snopes-production/uploads/images/...](https://us- east-1.tchyn.io/snopes- production/uploads/images/graphics/news/autismcause.jpg)

/s</comment>


Come On, Really: How Influential Is TechCrunch?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.betabeat.com/2011/09/08/come-on-really-how-influential-is-techcrunch/

<comment><USER2> _Mashable, for example, writes about similar topics and has more traffic–but a Mashable hit isn't as coveted as a TechCrunch hit._

In either case, the kind of "hit" you get from either site is of questionable value when you're trying to build momentum as a company. It's like Reddit or Slashdot traffic. Huge spike, crickets afterward. Drive by readings. You don't build companies with links from TechCrunch.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, considering it got qwiki funded...</comment>