Is It Possible to Have a Company with No Office Politics? - <AUTHOR> https://daedtech.com/company-no-office-politics/ <comment><USER3> It's impossible to have anything involving people that doesn't have some kind of 'politics'.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. Plato's definition of politics is "the relationship between three or more people".

That definition has served me well to remember over the years.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. Obvious question is, why is that two people is excluded?

<comment><USER6> Because with two people it's just the two of you together. There can be no subgroups. With three there is the possibility of two aligning against one. With more than three you can get even more subgroups and different alliances that can form.

<comment><USER7> >Because with two people it's just the two of you together. >There can be no subgroups.

Groups of one is a thing. The two people can be against each other. Common.

See also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18666445](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18666445)

<comment><USER6> Right, but if there's two of you and you don't get along, you just separate. There's no backroom conniving that can go on to get the upper hand on the other person, because you'd need other people to connive with. You either come to an agreement or move along.

We're talking about groups of people. Not the mathematical definition of a group.

<comment><USER7> >Right, but if there's two of you and you don't get along, you just separate.

Not all pairs may be able to separate (immediately or even later). Real life stuff.

>There's no backroom conniving that can go on to get the upper hand on the other person, because you'd need other people to connive with. You either come to an agreement or move along.

Sure, about the conniving. But scheming against the other person is quite possible (and done plenty) for a single person against another single person. Real life again.

>We're talking about groups of people. Not the mathematical definition of a group.

I did not say or imply otherwise. I meant it in the real life sense.

<comment><USER6> Two people can be against each other sure, but that's just adversaries. There's no politics because politics implies wrangling other people to your side against a different side. Politics is about building coalitions and alliances.

If there's only two of you and you're working against each other, there's nobody for you to build an alliance with. You can't be an alliance of one. You don't have to convince yourself to do what you want to do because by definition you already want to do it.

<comment><USER7> You could be right, for some definition of politics. Maybe we were thinking of different meanings of it. It's an overloaded word.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Replace "no office politics" with "functional office politics", the answer is yes.

The problem isn't politics itself. It's dysfunction, aka "dark patterns" aka antisocial behavior. The other problem is headlines like this one which, as other commenters have already pointed out, create confusion around an otherwise worthwhile topic.

<comment><USER9> Even non-antisocial dynamics lead to organizational dysfunction. Looking out for your friends, preferring to associate with people like yourself, and being rewarded for loyalty are all natural dynamics in human relationships, but are often at cross purposes with an organization's mission.

The solution: good process and good-faith transparency, which takes work.

<comment><USER8> I see what you're getting at, but you are conflating some genuinely pro-social behaviors (loyalty and looking out for friends) with others which are more like human social defaults (preferring people like yourself). Also, if loyalty and ethics puts you at odds with an organization's mission, #1, welcome to the real world, aka why I work for myself, and #2, probably a sign that that particular organization is dysfunctional. As opposed to all organizations.

I agree with process and translarency. Although again in dysfunctional organizations these are the first to be gamed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Doubtful, but office politics can be reduced by _correctly aligning incentives._ For example, when everyone had the same incentives (e.g., increase profits) then there were fewer misalignments because you could at least try to point everyone in the direction of greater profits. I've seen a lot of organizations do silly things like make promotions purely dependent on how many direct reports you have (rather than impact/output/production)-- this creates a bad incentive -- people hire more and _reduce_ profits however, increase their personal profits.

(Obviously there is another set of politics of how those profits are split, but that is a separate topic.)

<comment><USER11> Another fun way to suppress office politics is to light proverbial (or literal!) fires that require cooperation to fix.

This obviously has the negative property of not at all feeding and watering anyone involved, which leads to people burning out, quitting, imploding, exploding, etc., but if your sole goal is to squash office politics, continually having your team jump from fire to fire will do the trick!

<comment><USER12> > _Another fun way to suppress office politics is to light proverbial (or > literal!) fires that require cooperation to fix_

Strategic thinkers will use the fires to throw others under the bus. This negative behaviour will likely surface as management deliberately torturing employees drives the good apples away.

You see this, too, at a national level. A single, meaningful crisis brings people together (think: Pearl Harbor.) A single, meaningless crisis makes people cynical (think: Vietnam). Repeated crises, regardless of meaning, inevitably tear societies apart.

<comment><USER11> Good point! I wrote my comment to try and illustrate that politics, while often seen as evil, is critically important to a sustainably functioning team.

Society, offices, all groups of people need politics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Politics is being given a bad rap but in reality politics is probably one of the best inventions of mankind. It enabled humans to organize large groups to the benefit of all involved.

What you mean with "Office Politics" is dysfunctional politics. They exist everywhere but to a different degree. I would be really scared of a company that claims to have no office politics.

<comment> mark-r I once heard that you could judge a company by the number of Dilbert cartoons you found. Obviously having a lot is a bad sign, but having none is just as bad - it probably means there's an official policy that doesn't allow them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Most everyone's job, at pretty much every company, is to make life easier for their coworkers.

Let's say you're asked to build a signup-with-facebook button.

The task is not to build a signup-with-facebook button. The task is to make it easier for people to sign up. Presumably the signup-with-facebook button is a good way of doing that. At least some people in the company think it is.

But the task isn't to get more signups either - it's to gain an audience - potential sources of revenue.

Your company wants to gain the revenue because, well that's what companies do. Companies aren't people. Doesn't matter what the company wants.

But your co-workers want to gain revenue because either it will make their work lives easier (less pressure. Possible promotions) or their personal lives easier (bonuses. Raises. More PTO. Less stress at work).

The Facebook button was never the job. The job was to make your co-workers lives easier.

If you keep your head in the weeds and view the sign up button as "the job" \- you'll be surprised if you build it, it underperforms and you don't get recognition or rewards.

But if you view "the job" as making lives easier for those around you - <USER2> optimize to do that well - then you'll be surprised much less often by the results of your work. Even if there are some surprises

Higher powers might still make decisions that throw you under the bus. Though this is essentially outside of your control. Regardless of how good at your job you are.

This has one exception - If you are at a non-profit organization full of selfless people. Then the actual job might be to make the biggest impact regardless of the well being of your coworkers

</comment><comment><USER15> A more relevant question for me is whether it is possible to provide 80 % of your time to 'actual work' and yet have a fulfilling and successful career. Especially if you are introvert, not able to sell yourself, not using fancy jargon.

<comment><USER16> Depends on how you define "actual work". In any professional field, keeping people informed and convincing them you're right is a core job responsibility, even though it largely intersects with office politics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> No. I used to work at a company with an alleged meritocracy, rather than office politics. They claimed to value opinions based on the quality of the opinion, not who it came from or how senior you were. Somehow the senior people always ended up having the "best" ideas, and because this was a "meritocracy" it obviously meant those who were higher up were there on their merits, not for political reasons. I left for other reasons, but the constant need to pretend that what would be described as office politics in any other organization was a result of this company's superior culture was frustrating.

<comment><USER18> That was, I believe, the original meaning of the word "meritocracy."

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm pretty sure Office Politics is like bugs in code.

The only way to not have a bug is to not have any code.

"Politics" are simply an expression of differing world views. Unless your startup is a cult, you will have drastically differing world views.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is it possible to have a group of people interact for a lengthy period of time with no politics? Even family units have politics, and no bond is greater than the ones established by blood.

</comment><comment><USER21> No. Not if humans work there.

There will always be politics, and what's more, they will be significantly impacted by factors seemingly as trivial as location and geometry.

For example, if you have a large open workspace with square cubicles, flanked on either side by balconies with longer and narrower rectangular cubicles, you may find that the balcony employees will affect an air of cliquish superiority over the floor employees, and will furthermore form a rivalry pitting left balcony against right balcony.

Then, whatever mad scheme it is that forms organically out of the workspace geography, it will be propagated via the personnel, even after you move to a new office. There will always be _something_ that subtly influences all the decisions not having a direct impact on the work. Whenever you try to extinguish one that has been allowed to grow toxic or rotten, another may creep up behind you to supplant it.

The dangerous thing is when a player consciously influences the natural politics to gain power over the workplace beyond that granted by the organizational hierarchy, or to secure a promotion. The probability of such an individual joining your group and upsetting the previous homeostasis during a given interval increases with the size of the company. If it is possible for someone to transfer in, cause chaos, and get promoted up or out, then that pattern will eventually be exploited.

</comment><comment><USER22> There's always some kind of politics, but the worst kind happens when you have technical frauds.

I'm of course talking about firms with a lot of technical staff, that are providing some sort of expert service.

What is a technical fraud? A person who on paper has technical chops, but in fact does not. I used to work with a guy who had a Phd but didn't know what Kuhn-Tucker conditions were, or the rank of a matrix, or version control.

What's so bad about them compared to other staff? Most people are going to know that your sales guy who studied philosophy is not an authority on technical matters. He knows it too. So when it comes to influencing decisions, he doesn't pretend he has authority over such matters. He says stuff that you generally don't need anything other than common business knowledge to think about.

Your technical fraud tricks sales guy and other non technical staff into believing him. Things he say need to be carefully disassembled to be argued against, eating up time and effort. He seems confident because it's easy to seem like you've thought things through. It's like inverse proof-of-work: it's easy to say things like "we can guarantee ordering and once-only delivery". It's hard to deconstruct it, and it will certainly wear out the non technical decision makers.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have two issues with this article:

" _As companies scale, they begin an inevitable process of selling out their initial principles and sacrificing quality and purity._ "

This assumes small companies have "initial principles" and believe in "quality and purity". I've known some that focused on quality and purity, and they've almost universally spent a lot of money to no particular result. "Initial principles" tend to go out of the window as soon as you have _a company._

It's possible in a small company to seem to have no unhealthy politics, by virtue of all agreeing on the same goals and values, in turn by virtue of sharing a "culture". The downside is that anyone who is not a "good cultural fit", who didn't go to the same schools and have the same life experiences and what-not, is most definitely not welcome. And, on the other hand, it's entirely possible to have healthy office politics and a drastically toxic culture.

" _But knowledge work requires something different. It goes best when the people closest to the work make decisions._ "

The extreme extension of this is everyone doing their own thing. If you've ever worked in an environment where everyone does their own thing---usually because they don't want to get into the politics---, well, I believe you come to the conclusion that it isn't pretty.

Most people don't care who makes decisions, as long as those decisions are what they agree with; likewise, if they disagree with a decision, it doesn't matter who made it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Yes, it's called a sole proprietorship.

<comment><USER24> You can still have a sole proprietorship but have employees. Sole proprietorship means that you are the sole owner.

I think what you meant is 1 person company with the owner being the only person working for the company... Agree with you on this point.

<comment><USER23> Yes, but you understood that I clearly meant a single employee company, didn't you? Communication successful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Arguably, given politics is how we reconcile diverging interests, it is what you get when people are not aligned to the same principles. When you have peers without clear principles, you have politics.

Poor leadership causes people to reach for whatever tools they can find to ensure their personal interests prevail. In a startup if you have politics, it is because you don't have direction and you are basically burning cash while everyone re-negotiates how they relate to one another at each new interaction.

If you are in a company that is political without being profitable, I suspect they're already dead and would use it as a platform to get your next gig and split. If it is profitable and political, I would opt to take cash, as their stock will have more downside than upside because they are optimizing for survival not growth. No politics and no profit? Probably a cult. Profitable with no politics? Sell everything you own to buy options.

In a large company, you are basically the minder of capital or assets, with survival and continuity prioritized over growth. When it stops growing at a sufficient rate, it's going to stop producing value and growth and enter a cycle of pathological optimization. Setting people against one another in this fixed resource environment is economical when you have a stable business that needs optimization. Fittest survive, etc. But for growth, that misalignment just creates massive opportunity cost.

Where you have managers sitting on a pile of capital with no sense of how to grow it, they end up operating a death spiral as they switch from the growth strategy they were not equipped for, to more familiar optimization strategies.

Management anti-patterns are the effect of incentives, and clear leadership (vision, direction, alignment) has the ability to resolve those. Leadership obviates politics, and in places where it's good, people know what is expected of them and others, and where they fit in.

For this reason, I think professional managers often don't belong in startup environments because they are trained to optimize for fitness and not growth.

</comment><comment><USER26> The better question is: is it possible for people to be diplomatic? (with empathy and care towards each other and the environment).

</comment><comment><USER27> You have more then two people their is politics.

Work, home, school, government, church you name it.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is it possible to suppress human nature in my office full of humans?

Surprisingly, no.

</comment><comment><USER29> With a sole proprietorship, certainly.

With a partnership, maybe.

Anything bigger, unfortunately not.

</comment><comment><USER30> I would hope so. My employer fucking blows.

</comment><comment><USER31> Really good article!

I think the one point is really valuable. Decision making and who does it.

Practically every software engineer will debate SVN vs git; but when someone up the chain decides clear case, that's politics.

Also makes me think, "The Pheonix Project" book. The underlying thing they never really discuss was who made the decisions. I wonder if that's really the root cause.

<comment><USER32> As someone who has worked on geographically distributed remote teams, I can assure that politics can be just as ugly as in the physical office. In one place I'd say politics was even worse, everything in Slack was as performative as a Twitter exchange on a controversial topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm extremely skeptical if my anecdote has any value since I'm very young and only worked in a couple companies. But in the current company I'm working (which I've been working the last 7 months) we really don't have office politics. So, I suppose the answer to title is yes?

<comment><USER34> Did you catch the definition for "politics" that the article uses?

> Politics is the process of making decisions that apply to members of a > group.

So if you have a group of people, and that people makes decisions using some process, then you have politics.

My general experience with mentoring young employees relatively new to the workforce (say, 5 years or less) is that many of these employees think that they can just do good work and keep their head out of office politics. But in a very real sense, the only reason that this can possibly work is because someone else on the team is actively looking out for these people, and if you ignore politics indefinitely, you will eventually be in a position of seniority where it is your job to look out for the new employees.

If you believe that your office doesn't really have office politics, my prediction is that if you end in any kind of leadership position, you will have either changed your mind by that point about whether you have politics, or you will suffer from some avoidable failures.</comment></comment>


Tiger Mom: Some races are just better - <AUTHOR> http://nypost.com/2014/01/04/tiger-mom-some-groups-are-just-better-than-others/

<comment><USER2> tldr; whipping up controversy to sell her new book.

<comment><USER3> tldr; whipping up controversy to sell the article.</comment></comment>


Why I want to become rich - <AUTHOR> http://chriseidhof.tumblr.com/post/8512446980/why-i-want-to-become-rich

<comment><USER2> I'm doing very much the same thing as yourself. Living out of a suitcase, that is. In my office. I want wealth to give me options. Changing the world isn't hard when you have... reach. I'll use my reach to employ people. Lots of people, I hope.

Oh, and a million won't be enough. With inflation and all, I'm focusing on a multi-billion dollar empire before I hit 30. That's more than one decade. It's been done.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you have a roadmap to reach your first million? It's only 32 months so you have to earn 31k per month on average. Or are you just hoping for a (lucky?) hit?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not in detail. But it's a very good idea to make one, I completely agree. I do have some ideas about how to get there. I'll write another post on that later!

<comment><USER2> This is more important than you know. If you don't believe you can do at least 31K per month at some point very soon, you probably won't be going anywhere!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome! Same dreams and hopes but my problem is that I'm exactly 30y. old :) I'm working on my way up, 32 is my goal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! Age doesn't really matter imo. For proper goal setting, you need a quantifiable goal and a timeline, that's why I chose 30. Good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Live the dream! Be pervert with your dreams and make love with your wishes! I'm sharing similar point as you Chris. Wishing you the best fucking luck you can imagine for yourself!</comment>


Bing Gains More Ground - <AUTHOR> http://blog.efrontier.com/insights/2009/06/bing-gains-more-ground.html <comment><USER2> I would switch, but Google.com is more than just a search engine for me now, it's also a portal to tools like Gmail, Adwords, Analytics and Webmaster Tools, all of which I use extensively.

Perhaps someone could write a greasemonkey script to give me easy links to those tools from Bing.com instead? :o)

Before anyone says it, yes, I'm fully aware I could just add them to my bookmarks bar, but I'm used to the way things work now and it would confuse me for weeks to come changing my daily routine.

</comment><comment><USER3> So for every 100 clicks Bing was getting before Microsoft spent a brazilian dollars on advertising, it's now getting 113 clicks. If I worked on Bing I guess I'd be happy about the bump, but it seems awfully expensive...

Also, how many clicks did Bing start out with? Is this actually as significant bump in market share as compared to Google?

<comment><USER4> Their click share is about 5%, way behind Google and Yahoo. The trend would have to continue for a long time to count as a foothold...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bing results do seem impressive to me (atleast comparable to google) , but I guess I got kinda used to the UI and feel of google homepage that I find it hard to switch.

<comment><USER6> I thought so too initially, but after using Blind Search for two days to get an unbiased view, I still think Google is the best, Bing is about on par with Yahoo, and Yahoo is better than I thought.

Bing and Yahoo fail badly on longer searches (i.e. several keywords rather than one) and (Bing especially) on ambiguous words.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Need help picking a title - <AUTHOR>

So I know that we generally believe that titles are meaningless, but my role at the startup I'm working at (~30 people) is expanding and I've been given a chance to submit some ideas for what my new title should be. About what I do: The best way to describe it is as a business generalist. I do mostly sales and sales ops, but also pitch in on projects across the business team -- marketing, ops, client services, etc. The new role will be an expansion of this, with more direct responsibilities and ownership of projects, as well as working directly under the CEO to help take stuff off of his plate.
I'm fairly junior at the company so I'm not a manager/vp and I'm definitely not a rockstar/ninja/etc.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. <comment><USER2> I'd recommend crafting your title as a pointer towards wherever you want to go. In the next few years what's your ideal title? If you can "jr" or "deputy" that title, (or in some other way place yourself logically on track to that title) it might help in the long run.

It seems like you're trending towards eventually being a COO role, so something like "Deputy COO", or "Operations Manager" might be nice. If those feel too senior for you, keep stepping it down until it feels right. And of course if you're actually pursuing something other than COO long term then adjust accordingly.</comment>


At Build, Microsoft Expands Its Cognitive Services APIs - <AUTHOR> https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/at-build-microsoft-expands-its-cognitive-services-collection-of-intelligent-apis/ <comment><USER2> Is there any indication of when we can create apps from the portal? [https://ds.microsoft.com/portal](https://ds.microsoft.com/portal)

Also, how is it different from this? (If at all) [http://mwtds.azurewebsites.net/](http://mwtds.azurewebsites.net/)

EDIT: Ah, Custom Decision Service is a multi-tenant version of MWT, according to [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/multi- world...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/multi-world- testing-mwt/)</comment>


Dungeon Master Skills You Can Bring to Work #2 – Deliberation - <AUTHOR> https://spin.atomicobject.com/2019/08/18/team-decision-making/#.XVqjBBZkEEQ.hackernews <comment><USER2> Reading this series reminds me why I don't DM D&D but I do DM Toon, Paranoia and Call of Cthulhu.

In those games if the behavior of players gets out of hand you can use the environment to put them in their place without them feeling that you've wrecked the character that they've invested so much emotionally in.

Also I hate all the crazy dice in D&D and much prefer games that have a limited set of dice. It is not fun searching for the third d4 that slid behind the couch.

When I "improv" Paranoia often the characters never make it to the briefing room but they still have fun.</comment>


Beware of Google Bearing Gifts - <AUTHOR> https://notonihilism.org/2019/04/12/beware-of-google-bearing-gifts/ <comment><USER2> > The vast majority of classes are based on Google products: Learn to manage > projects with Google Sheets; get your business online with Google My > Business; discover new job opportunities with Google Search. In other words, > Google is further entrenching their business monopoly under the pretence of > helping entrepreneurs and job seekers.

I don't see this as any difference than any other company trying to promote their products by giving away free classes and tutorials.

When I was a kid, there was a huge push from Apple to get their computers into schools -- because people were more likely to buy Apple computers for the home.

<comment><USER3> I came here to say this. Literally every company ever does this. In marketing it's called a value-first proposition. I don't see it as evil by any means

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The reality is not quite so cutting-edge: In addition to the Google product- > based courses, there are classes like "Design an Effective Resume" and > "Optimize Your Energy for High Performance" and "Coach Your Team to > Success." These are important and valuable skills, to be sure — but they are > not "digital skills." The marketing of this project is an ingenious and > insidious bait and switch: offer glitzy and in-demand tech skills, but limit > the actual courses to the walled garden of Google products

Yes, being able to put a resume together and coaching a team is something which is of absolutely no value whatsoever outside Google's walled garden.

Google has also probably done more than any other organization in human history to make information on careers (and any other subject) easily and readily available to people - without needing to use Docs, Sheets etc to do it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure I agree 100% with all of it, but that last paragraph I'm 100% with!

"Local government officials should follow Google's example: look to public libraries to help create equitable paths to prosperity and ongoing education."

</comment><comment><USER6> A company offering free classes on how to better use their services... oh no... terrible... the horror...

</comment><comment><USER7> This article is completely over the top. Everyone understands that Google would use its own software as a tool in classes it teaches. It reads like the author started with a greivance or philosophical objection to Google, and then shoehorned some observations into an unrelated argument.

It's ironic this is hosted at a site called "No to Nihilism." This is the most nihilistic world-view blog post that I have read in a while.

</comment><comment><USER2> Mods and everyone. The anti-google slant going on in hackernews is getting pretty awful lately.

There isn't anything particularly newsworthy or notable about this story other than the fact the author hates Google, and then derides them for giving free classes on their technology.

<comment><USER8> Author maybe got bitten by one too many changes or shutdowns lately? I know most of my work lately have been to adjust our systems to whatever Google has changed. Worst was probably the map prise hike. The kind of thing you do when you want to get rid of some tenants.

<comment><USER2> Well then what's wrong with being honest about it and writing about their unhappiness directly, rather than making a hit piece which demonizes what most other tech companies do in this space?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why the flag? Seemed like a typical HN post.

Are we flagging posts for being critical of Google all of a sudden?

</comment><comment><USER10> Why would you expect a company to do something for free and with no benefit to them?

<comment><USER11> You wouldn't, but hopefully you'd consider what accepting the gift is likely to end up costing you and those you're responsible for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> >The money spent on this glorified PR stunt could have been used to support the original programming of the initiative's partner organizations, like the New York Public Library, which already offers free classes on subjects like basic computer skills, creating a resume, and social media marketing. Unlike the Google Learning Center, the NYPL won't close up shop in five months.

>Students are limited to just three classes at the learning center, a fact that is not mentioned either in Google's promotional material or in any of the launch publicity.

I remain surprised and somewhat dismayed that many people still believe any company has the best interest of the public anywhere on their priority list.

<comment><USER13> From an outsider perspective, Patagonia appears to care about the environment. [https://www.patagonia.com/the-activist- company.html](https://www.patagonia.com/the-activist-company.html)

<comment><USER14> It comes down to alignment.

Patagonia is deeply aligned with its customers' interests. Preserving the natural world which its customer base enjoys and for which they buy the company's products. That makes it an easier choice.

Google profits off of its users in ways that are not aligned to their interests. They ride a fine line because users tolerate the inconvenience in exchange for the product.

My rule of thumb is "follow the money". In this case, Google is a more aligned with their customers (who pay them money) than with their users (who _might_ be or become customer of its customers). Of course, there is a nuance: Google can't alienate its users, otherwise it will lose its customers. It's serving 2 sides at a time. But when there are competing interests between the users and the customers, there is a bias towards the customers.

<comment><USER4> > Google profits off of its users in ways that are not aligned to their > interests.

See this is not clear cut. Google profits off me, primarily when I click on an ad through search or through the display network. It's not clear either of these are non-aligned to my interests, or that I do all that badly out of it.

If Google shows me a search ad and I click on it, generating payment for Google, it's because I've searched for the item in the first place. I've shown an interest in the product. That's not obviously _not_ aligned to my interest. At best, it's kind of orthogonal. Google's entire search value prop, bear in mind, is 'only pay for people who are interested in your product'.

If I click on an ad through the Google Display Network, again it's likely because I've been on the website of the company that is retargeting me in the first place. Again, not obviously not in my interest.

On the other hand, the benefits that Google provides to me as a customer are so immense in terms of search, mapping, email, organization that it's difficult to say that I don't do enormously well out of the deal.

I'm putting up with a company making a profit from something that I was theoretically already interested in - in order to have an incredible service for free.

For Facebook and other third party ad networks it is less obvious, as their net contribution to society is arguably much more negative. But Google, it's really not clear.

<comment><USER14> Maybe I visited a site about a product that I'm interested in, but it's not in my interest to buy it right this second. Yet in this case Google will repeatedly bring this product to the forefront of my mind, skewing my perception and my decision-making.

The value proposition of advertisement is not to lay out unbiased facts to aid me in making a decision, it's to push me to purchase a product that I otherwise would not have purchased, or that I would have delayed in purchasing, for example until I properly saved for it or until I really needed it.

To summarize, it's not in my best interest to pay interest on a product I'm merely interested in, as opposed to actually needing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Warn HN: Flickr Photo ID is about to overflow a 32 bit unsigned int  - <AUTHOR>

Flickr is just about to have photo id number 4294967295 which is otherwise the size of an unsigned 32 bit integer. If you have any code which typed to an 32 bit unsigned int or if your database column is of type unsigned int its probably time to change it. I predict (at a rate of 5000 uploads a minute taken from http://flickr.com/photos/? ) it should reach that number in the next 2 hours.<p>If you were wondering what image it was that caused the overflow it will appear hear: http://www.flickr.com/photo.gne?id=4294967296 <comment><USER2> Even better: stop storing photo ids as numbers entirely. From Flickr's API docs: "These IDs should always be treated as opaque strings, rather than integers of any specific type."

<http://www.flickr.com/services/api/misc.overview.html></comment>


Taptalk makes Snapchat feel like writing with a quill and sending via pigeon - <AUTHOR> https://taptalk.me/download

<comment><USER2> I've been using it for a couple of weeks now and I didn't think I would like it at first. Then friends started to transition from texting me to send taptalks instead and after a while I really started to enjoy it. Beautiful interface that is designed to do one thing really well. Stick to that.</comment>


The Origin of the <blink> Tag - <AUTHOR> http://www.montulli.org/theoriginofthe<blink>tag

<comment><USER3> Huh.

I'd always imagined more circumscribed pentagrams were involved. And some chanting. And a cubicle.

<Blink> on, Lynx lovers. It _does_ make sense in that context, especially after my recent 4-month battle with Ncurses.

edit: wow, this guy is influential. And no _wonder_ he was considering Lynx in this: <http://www.montulli.org/lou>

</comment><comment><USER4> My favorite bit:

"The evening progressed pretty normally from there...with me meeting the girl who would later become my first wife."

He seems to be have far more interesting normal nights out than me.

<comment><USER5> He seems to have a much smaller number of normal nights out, when meeting his future wife is normal. (Since it can't happen very often almost by definition.)

<comment><USER6> Not sure. He said his _first_ wife. Who knows how many wives he had...

<comment><USER5> The number of wives will probably be dwarfed by the number of nights out.

<comment><USER5> And actually: Meeting your first wife for the first time can't be repeated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm glad that Lynx never got <blink>. I use it on a day-to-day basis!

Why? Well, I used to check the Internet too much while working. I discovered that Lynx can fetch news and not much else, so I decided to use it for my personal browsing at work. It's useful enough to ease my curiosity, and useless enough that I prefer working. Combined with a webpage-blocking browser extension, I can actually complete a decent amount of work during a day.

Thanks, Lynx!

<comment><USER5> You may also want to have a look at links (or links2).

(They even support displaying graphics. If started with "links2 -g".)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The web page for our internal build monitor (which summarizes Hudson status) uses the blink tag to flash the word Building when a build is in progress and the marquee tag to scroll the names of the people who broke the build. In most circumstances these tags are annoying, here they are useful.

<comment><USER9> _In most circumstances these tags are annoying, here they are useful._

...at least in the case of <marquee>, precisely _because_ it's annoying.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Minor bug report: The url has > & < stripped rather than escaped, so I needed to resubmit with the > & < replaced with > and <

</comment><comment><USER10> While we're talking about <tag> origins:

[http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www- talk.1993q1/0182.ht...](http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www- talk.1993q1/0182.html)

"I'd like to propose a new, optional HTML tag:

IMG"

-Marc Andreesen, 25 Feb 93

</comment><comment><USER11> Thanks, I actually have more respect for them knowing this was a practical joke and not a seriously advocated feature.

<comment><USER12> I always assumed IBM or someone requested it as part of the bundled 3270 emulator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This page has blink tags, but oddly/sensibly they don't seem to work on my version of Chromium:

<http://www.goer.org/htmlhorror/htmlhorror1.html>

<comment><USER14> Seems to be on purpose on the Chrome/Chromium team's part. Fortunately, there's a userscript workaround! <http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/74241>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can also remember the <marquee> tag, equally annoying. It's impossible to concentrate on the content of a page when something is moving in the corner of your eye. Luckily, back then I used Opera, which had the ability to make the marquee texts stop scrolling.

<comment><USER16> I know of commercial software that uses a marquee - god knows how it is implemented but is _really_ annoying. It's a service desk system - <USER2> it is there to deter people from submitting requests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> <blink>12:00</blink>

<comment><USER9> That's so 90's.

The _new_ thing that technically unsophisticated people do is buy a new HD television and leave the aspect ratio set to stretch their 4:3 picture out to 16:9, making everybody look fat.

I think that I can safely say that I've only seen one single wide TV in a home that was _not_ set that way.

<comment><USER18> CNN is always shown this way in airports and I fly so much that it now looks normal to me.

I assume my brain has learned to compensate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting story there.

Lou Montulli says he is the inventor because he mentioned something on those lines over coffee. Sadly he doesn't even state the engineer's name who actually took his joke to implementation to get <blink> into the browser.

<comment><USER20> The engineer who implemented it has been in hiding since the late 90s.

<comment><USER21> Somehow I got it in my head that jwz implemented it. And I'm not the only one. But I can't find actual proof of the evil deed, and jwz in fact denies it -- although he does take credit for adding "MilSpec blinking". It seems that at worst jwz was responsible for eventually adding it to the linux version of Mozilla. While the original implementor fessed up last year, and actually got into mozilla's credits for it at long last: [http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/gerv/archives/2009/03/credit_...](http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/gerv/archives/2009/03/credit_for_blink.html)

Urk, now I'm remembering one time when I walked by jwz somewhere in SoMa, and thought "if he wasn't on the other side of the street already, I'd have to cross to avoid that evil blink tag creator". And now I'm feeling all regretful. Will the pain that tag inflicted on the world never cease?

(BTW, Microsoft are responsible for marquee.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Previously:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=961266>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1439403>

<comment><USER23> Good thing it got resubmitted, because those 2 have 2 votes each

<comment><USER24> Amazing what a realitively slow news day will do for some resubmitted news articles.</comment></comment></comment>


Is diet partly responsible for differences in Covid-19 death rates? - <AUTHOR> https://ctajournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13601-020-00323-0 <comment><USER2> "In addition, Saarland is a special case as half of the deaths, unlike in the other German states, occurred in only a few long-term care facilities where a high number of people were infected in a short time and all deaths during the episode were attributed to Corona without autopsies being made."

wow.</comment>


Getting media coverage for your startup: making the pitch - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupottawa.com/?p=2183

<comment><USER2> As a writer who sometimes covers tech startups, I can also add that it helps to get in touch _before_ an event or official news release happens. It can sometimes take a while before a story gets ok'd by the editors.</comment>


Congestion Pricing Was Unpopular in Stockholm – Until People Saw It in Action - <AUTHOR> https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/11/28/congestion-pricing-was-unpopular-in-stockholm-until-people-saw-it-in-action/ <comment><USER2> That's bullshit. What could we do? No political party were seriously against it, and it's not a huge question to form a new political party around.

They did a 'trial run' after the investment which I guess was to make it look more democratic, and there was a public referendum which I actually believe was not in favor, but ignored. (Or was it in favor by only the 20% living inside the toll gates where allowed to vote, and the surrounding 14 regions arranged their own ignored referendums.

They spent a bizarre amount on implementing this, basically paying IBM the complete development cost for a plate reading system but gained no ownership rights into the product, simultaneously implemented a radio based system that was later ditched, hired hundreds if not thousands of people working with the billing and help desks (so how automatic was it), and campaigning on how good this is for the society.

The cost for adding 20 something camera based toll gates were almost half of the cost of building a 5 km long tunnel that was finished a few years before and constitutes about a quarter of an incomplete ring road. 3 billion SEK compared to 6 billion SEK. ($340m vs 680m)

The incomes did not cover the _running_ costs the first years and I can't find any facts on if it's actually covering it's amortized costs now.

Coincidentally, a similarly unloved project in Gothenburg to build a relatively unnecessary train tunnel to huge costs DID actually spawn a new political party that gained 20% of the votes. Maybe there's hope.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think they are overlooking a very important point, and that is public transportation costs at the same time.

The Stockholm region is divided into three public transit zones, and you have to pay for each zone you cross. So travelling across town would cost you three coupons, but going a few stops would just be one coupon.

The problem was you pay based on how many zones you travel in, not distance. So if you took a subway two stops and crossed a boundary: bam! Two coupons.

When they introduced congestion charges they also imposed a "one coupon" rule: you never had to pay for more than one coupon.

So public transit became a lot more attractive over night at the same time that cars got more expensive. Small wonder that people switched.

Now they've gone back to three coupons though...

And anecdotally: the inner city feels just as congested now as it did before the charges.</comment>


Class Action Suit Filed Against Apple Over Broken iPhone 4 Glass - <AUTHOR> http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/01/calif-man-files-class-action-suit-against-apple-over-broken-iphone-4-glass.html

<comment><USER2> As a lawyer and an iPhone user, I have only one thing to say about this plaintiff and his lawyers.

"Whiny bastards."</comment>


Study finds that Tylenol reduces empathy - <AUTHOR> https://news.osu.edu/news/2016/05/10/empathy-reliever/ <comment><USER2> I'm going to take _more_ Tylenol thanks to this study.

</comment><comment><USER3> Your regular reminder that publication bias is a thing, and you should just ignore any single study and wait for the meta-analysis and replications.

Also, never read the university's own PR blurbs under any circumstances. :)</comment>


Show HN: A Package/Cli App/api to Search and Display Lyrics.Would Love Feedback - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/BharatKalluri/lyricfetcher <comment><USER2> Hi there! Looks good, but something weird happened:

      $ lyricfetcher bob dylan "like a rolling stone"
       Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "/usr/local/bin/lyricfetcher", line 7, in <module>
        from lyricfetcher.main import main
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/lyricfetcher/__init__.py", line 1, in <module>
        from .main import get_lyrics
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/lyricfetcher/main.py", line 4, in <module>
        from lyricfetcher.sources import get_lyrics
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/lyricfetcher/sources/__init__.py", line 1, in <module>
        from lyricfetcher.sources.AZlyrics import AZlyrics
      File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/lyricfetcher/sources/AZlyrics.py", line 1, in <module>
        import urllib.request

ImportError: No module named request

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello!

You need to have python 3 for the library to work.

You can Check your python version by typing

python --version

It seems You have 2.7,I really recommend you move to 3.6,it's much more Stable and fast!

<comment><USER2> Well, i do have Python 3. But the fact is that if this package only works with python 3, you should specify such in the pip package info file. Otherwise, I'll just pip install and try to run it with Python27 because pip for 2.7 installed it with no problems. Cheers</comment></comment></comment>


Christian Git: A collection of aliases to sanctify your Git workflow - <AUTHOR> A while back, I began creating aliases for some basic git commands. Eventually, I began to explore how to alias the "git" command itself (for example, 'g status' would execute 'git status'), and the best way I could make this new alias portable and distributable.
As a result, I turned to creating a Node package for this as a first-time run. Christian Git is what came about: a collection of Christianized aliases to sanctify your Git workflow.
Check it out and offer feedback. If you want, feel free to add to the list of aliases yourself.
https://github.com/alexmacarthur/christian-git npm install christian-git -g <comment><USER2> Oy vey.</comment>


Send your pics as postcards for free worldwide - <AUTHOR> http://www.freepostcards.me

<comment><USER2> Why go the donation route? Why not first one is free and future ones cost pennies? If people found it valuable they will pay for it. Going with free also encourages those that want to send ads to use your service and so you would spend a bunch of time stopping them while still not making money.

Lastly how are you printing the postcards?

</comment><comment><USER3> previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9877099](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9877099)

</comment><comment><USER4> Little bug where the wix ad element is covering up some of your text: [http://imgur.com/wWjlOfd](http://imgur.com/wWjlOfd)

Latest version of chrome</comment>


Show HN: Junk Systems – share your linux shell for BTC, compute on the cheap - <AUTHOR> https://junk.systems/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi! My name is Andrew and I want to introduce you a piece of junk I scratched in a couple of weeks - a CPU-ridesharing service Junk.Systems

I've had a few projects lately that require extremely cheap computation without any need for reliability or security - I needed just raw computation, and my demand is pretty constant.

So I calculated that I can build computing farm from used hardware and operate it profitably for the price 10 times lower than google's preemptible machine for my projects. But building a computer farm yourself is not in trend nowadays, right? So I thought of uberizing the CPU sharing by just providing a non-privileged login to linux machines with no guarantee. If the machine gets screwed up for any reason - no prob, just reboot/reinstall/whatever. According to my calculations with current price a $10k farm will earn about $1000 in bitcoins a month so that may even be a kind of business. If the whole idea works, or course. At least, if somebody will use the computations - you can get a "free" heating source from your junk :)

I'm thinking of making the whole thing work entirely on smart contracts for the best transparency and survivability of the project - as I believe that cheap computation is the key to prosperity of the Humanity.

Please let me know what you think about this stuff and I am open for ideas and any type of collaboration, Thanks!

<comment><USER2> This is a cool idea. The price as listed is "cheap", but for the feature set, it's not really that cheap. It's half the cost of a digitalocean droplet with no security and possible surge pricing.

I think it's a fantastic idea and the implementation here seems easy to use, but needs to be significantly cheaper.

<comment><AUTHOR> cjsaylor, thank you for your feedback! Yes the price is not so low I just had to have some figures to start with.

But as you may know - the $5 machine you are referencing here is not suitable for any meaningful work as you will have about 300MB of RAM after you boot it for your use - and this is about the amount or RAM you will need just for your framework to load up. So you should basically compare it with the $10 or $20 machine. Also you should take into account that the price here is the actual CPU-time - while DigitalOcean charges you the wall-hour - so I estimate the price like 5x-10x lower depending on your task.

But yes I know where to move from here - for example switching to accounting in GigaFLOPS-hour rather than machine time to allow usage of power efficient laptops for example (old laptops are usually slower but are still very energy efficient) and also for the owners of faster hardware to benefit

The absence of any authentication on both sides is arguably a disadvantage though. You may choose to compute anonymously for privacy related reasons and Junk.Systems is the only platform that allows you to do so AFAIK.

<comment><USER2> Fair points. I guess it wasn't super clear from the pricing example. I think, as you say, expressing the price per CPU time rather than wall clock time is what would better sell me on it.

I could actually see a pretty good use case for academic computing (think SETI at home, or the genome project) to where they could get cheaper access to CPU.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Curse of the Diaeresis (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis <comment><USER2> Also, it is rare enough that it completely messes up scripts and stuff that hopes to match [a-zA-Z], or even locale-sensitive \w's.

<comment><USER3> Better check for characters that aren't letters in ASCII, and assume that everything else is a letter (i.e. including Unicode). Not 100% correct, but simple and future proof.

And when it comes to the diaeresis, it's rare enough that it will create confusion for people who are used to German, Swedish, Finish, etc. (except for in words like naïve where there's no risk for confusion).</comment></comment>


Bank of America Gets Pad Locked After Homeowner Forecloses On It - <AUTHOR> http://www.digtriad.com/news/watercooler/article/178031/176/Florida-Homeowner-Forecloses-On-Bank-Of-America <comment><USER2> How does something like this even make it to court in the first place? I mean, they couldn't even have had a lean on the property.

It is astounding to me that a bank would be so bull-headed as to ignore the evidence at hand and plunge headlong into a foreclosure hearing.

This reminds me of a spat I had with a local hospital here, who sent debt collectors my way on a bill I had already paid. I even offered to mail them copies of my credit card statements, showing the payment the hospital denied receiving. They refused to look at them. I finally just ignored them until they stopped calling.

</comment><comment><USER3> This also happened to Wells Fargo a few months back. Similar in spirit, groups of neighbors have successfully sued the owners of crack houses in small claims court. The individual awards were small, but if enough people are involved it gets to be serious money.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sweet!</comment>


The Business Case for Curiosity - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2018/09/curiosity <comment><USER2> Curiosity is a great thing.

Sadly, to expect that mainstream corporations embrace it in any way is pretty much a pipe-dream. You can't hire for it, it doesn't appear on the "deliverables" time-line of derpy project managers, and it won't be recognized during the ordeal of annual performance evaluations, EVER.

If corporations really wanted to act on "the business case" for curiosity, they would have to do the one thing corporations suck the most at: let go-- ease off on controlling stuff.

That said, curious people are everywhere in spite of today's typical corporate environments. They just exercise their curiosity in "out-of-band" ways on projects or in the background during interstitial times. There are benefits for the corporate overlords, they just don't recognize it.

I get the feeling, however, that there's going to be a comeuppance for the ever-increasing data-driven performance management BS that seems to be out of control these days. At some point, employees are going to be performance- managed to the point where it is no longer possible to just satisfy your project managers and then have the luxury of exploring stuff on your own. When that happens, motivation will plummet among the most creative and productive workers and they will either rebel or quit.</comment>


'Anonymised' data can never be anonymous, says study - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/23/anonymised-data-never-be-anonymous-enough-study-finds <comment><USER2> The headline is wrong. It depends on the size and range, but more than 3 attributes may not be used in anonymized studies anyway. This study talks about 15 attributes, which of course leads to trivial deanonymization.</comment>


How a band got into Y Combinator: The Earbits story (YC W11) - <AUTHOR> http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/05/27/how-a-band-got-into-y-combinator-the-earbits-story-yc-w11/

<comment><USER2> I'd be interested to know how they are planning on dealing with the major labels, as the article says they don't have the majors on board yet.

<comment><USER3> I used to think I cared a lot about major labels, but there's nothing good coming out on major labels anymore.

Just use what.cd to download the entire catalog of old artists you might like (or rip your CDs, or iTunes, or whatever), and use earbits for discovery of new music.

(Similarly, about 2 years ago, I realized I'd prefer to give up all broadcast TV/movies than Youtube...)

I would prefer if earbits did a little more fine-grained curation of channels; the programmatic "stations" from Pandora are a great idea.

The one thing I like about Pandora is how well it categorizes music I already have, but the licensing terms (limited-skip) even for Pandora One, make it kind of painful if you listen long enough.

<comment><USER4> Nowadays, all label names mean to me are filters for companies whose CDs I shouldn't by because of moronic DRM that might prevent me from ripping them or play them in a player altogether(!).

EMI is infamous here for that, at least with some local artists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm interested in whether anyone from the traditional radio industry sees this as payola. I suppose all they need to do is label it 'sponsored', though I suspect they don't / aren't legally required to.

<comment><USER6> It really depends on how we approach it. We may technically charge for the ad space you get while your song is playing, and just give priority to those songs for which we have advertisers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good luck guys, sounds like a great model. Always great to see more innovation in this space.</comment>


Ask HN: How to reach a lot of people for a master thesis questionnaire - <AUTHOR> I am student in psychology and want to ask some programming people some questions. Is there a way to reach a lot of people? The questionnaire do not take more than 20min. <comment><USER2> Presumably you want to use the results (statistics) of your questionnaire as data to prove or disprove some hypothesis. How you choose your sample will determine whether your results reflect the actual population. You should consult a good statistics text to learn about selecting your sample. Self- selection is generally not a good strategy.

How you frame questions in your questionnaire will also have a significant impact on the answers you receive. If you expect to rely on the answers, you need to study and characterize the questions. Wording and grammar and question redundancy are important. Questionnaires need to be validated experimentally. There is, of course, a substantial literature on questionnaire formulation.

One more thing, p-value tests of significance, once the gold standard, are now controversial (at best) and discredited (in some circles). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value)

</comment><comment><USER3> GoogleForms

[https://www.google.com/forms/about/](https://www.google.com/forms/about/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats true but I do not have so many contacts, to send them the link to the form. I need a platform to post the link. :-)

<comment><USER3> Is it the only difficulty?

I didn't do that, but I know person who did. He just posted link to his questionnare in the FB publics devoted to psychology. He asks his contacts (he is also have not a lot of contacts) to repost, describing how it important to him. It allowed him to gather a few hundreds of participants in a week.

As for my thoughts, I think that it is important to make a short introductory description of questionaire, to tell potential participants why this research is important. Motivation is very important. It would be great if after answering questions participant will be rewarded, for example, if you tell him/her something interesting for him/her. The most of participants have a hope to learn something about himself, if you can give him feedback of this kind, based on questionaire, I belive, it can help to attract more participants. Alternatively you can promise them feedback in the future after data processed. It can help, I participated one time in such a research.</comment></comment></comment>


Hubble Serves Up a Holiday Snow Angel - <AUTHOR> http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/38

<comment><USER2> See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3358487></comment>


Small ISPs use "malicious" DNS servers to watch Web searches, earn cash - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/08/small-isps-turn-to-malicious-dns-servers-to-make-extra-cash.ars <comment><USER2> Tellingly, the article almost completely ignores the apparently sizable number of US ISPs that return something very different from NXDOMAIN ("not found") when you ask for a nonexistent domain name.

A working DNS server is a good thing.

<comment><USER3> This is why I use Google's DNS servers (126.96.36.199, 220.127.116.11).

I was surprised by this rather recently, when my girlfriend and I moved in with her brother to conserve finances (both his and ours, since their other brother had just moved out leaving him with larger-than-payable bills). I mistyped a URL and it came back with an ISP-provided search page, which infuriated/surprised me. As it turns out, I only had the wireless connection set to use GDNS, but I was temporarily using a wired connection until I could buy a new wireless router (the previous one was a modem/router combo from the ISP, despite the fact that when I returned it the woman at the desk "corrected" me when I told her I was returning the router, saying that they don't deal with routers. I just smiled, did my business, and left.)

<comment><USER4> Comcast and Verizon both do this. Verizon's been pointing to YellowPages website with a frame above notifying the user that the domain does not exist.

<comment><USER5> Comcast hosts anycast DNS servers that opt out of the "domain helper" feature (and support DNSSEC):

126.96.36.199 and 220.127.116.11

<http://dns.comcast.net/dns-ip-addresses2.php>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My ISP (Windstream DSL) started redirecting nxdomain responses years ago. I noticed when I mistyped a host alias I had set up for ssh and got back `connection refused` when it was not even a fully-qualified name.

Thankfully VeriSign did this to .com once with their SiteFinder service, so FOSS DNS servers generally have good support for assigning a particular IP address as "this is really NXDOMAIN". (Nowadays, I'm running Unbound locally anyway for DNSSEC.)

EDIT: the opening paragraph used to read "My ISP started doing this," but a closer look at TFA indicates this issue is about intercepting DNS queries to _existing, legitimate_ search providers in order to substitute paid results.

</comment><comment><USER7> If disclosed, and the customer also receives an indirect benefit (cheaper service), is this any worse than similar tracking via the Google Toolbar, and all the various page-insert sensors (Analytics, AdSense, +1, etc) reporting a significant and growing amount of all web activity back to the MotherPlex?

(That is, setting aside the obviously evil practice also alleged in this article of sometimes using these redirects for click fraud.)

<comment><USER8> This assumes that the customer has the option of choosing another service if they don't want to "opt-in" to such bullshit.

Sadly, in many places in the US, especially those places served by the ISPs mentioned, that is not the case. In the absence of reasonable choice (roughly the same speed of service) this becomes something that should be regulated.

Again, these kind of things would all go away if we had public last-mile fiber that ISPs could lease. Regulation is a poor substitute for true competition.

<comment><USER7> The customer usually has the choice of self-help against such bullshit, even without changing ISPs, via using alternate DNS servers, a VPN, or other techniques. Education remains a better solution than regulation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In SouthAmerica the ISP "Speedy" (Owned by Telefonica) also does this, here's the domain they use for this: <http://www.ayudaenlabusqueda.com.ar>

</comment><comment><USER10> Time Warner does this too - but offer a control panel allowing you to disable this. Would be great if the control panel actually worked or remembered that setting since I see it again every few months.

<comment><USER11> Looks like they redirect to _dnssearch2.rr.com_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My rather large ISP, Charter, has been redirecting not found domains requested from a browser to a query on 'searchassist.teoma.com' for a few years. Very annoying; I block it in my hosts file.

<comment><USER13> Why not just change your DNS servers to 188.8.131.52/188.8.131.52? Or one of the the other public DNS providers?

<comment><USER12> Last I checked, Charter blocks outgoing DNS to servers other than theirs. Based on searching around, it sounds like they go back on forth on that policy.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps it varies by area? I'm in Wisconsin and I've been using 184.108.40.206 and/or 126.96.36.199 since I started getting service from Charter about a year ago, and I've never had a problem with it. Of course, doing that means I never noticed that they hijack NXDOMAINs, which definitely drops them a few notches in my eyes. I've had other ISPs do that to me; it's kind of infuriating.

<comment><USER12> Thanks, I'll check it out again. It sounds like it does vary by area... and I tried was 2-3 years ago. I'm in the UP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, instead of watching the terms you type into Bing, it watches the terms you type into the address bar. So if you put "apple" instead of "apple.com", the DNS server will redirect you instead of sending NXDOMAIN and letting your browser handle things (either failing or searching with your configured Google/Bing/etc engine).

When I first saw the headline, I thought the DNS server was reading my URLs, which would have been really interesting because it's impossible :)

<comment><USER11> Actually, when your browser sends a DNS request to your ISP's DNS server, it seems to redirect you to a proprietary search page providing suggestions for an invalid request. The whole URL isn't involved, but the domain part is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is also OpenDNS which does basically the same.

<comment><USER17> OpenDNS returns ad pages for not-found domains, if you are using their free service. Or is that what you mean by "the same?"

<comment><USER18> Yes, that is exactly what the article is trying to describe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's funny- my initial response was going to be "use the Google DNS servers! 220.127.116.11, 184.108.40.206!", but I suppose they could be logging all sorts of information about me, too...

<comment><USER20> The privacy policy for Google's public DNS servers is quite reasonable, actually:

<http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy.html>

<comment><USER21> In other words, they store every request you send, but it's okay because they only store geolocation data to identify you with.

<comment><USER22> That geolocation data isn't any more granular than city/region, which they have a valid reason to want to know about (network latencies vary with significant physical distance). We're not talking about your street address here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This was a really sloppy write-up, they didn't make it clear what is going on at all. This is redirection if you type in a domain name that doesn't exist, which isn't a new trick.

My ISP (Virgin Media) does this, but you can opt out. In fact, their opt-out page gives a much better explanation than the article: [http://www.virginmedia.com/myvirginmedia/advancederror/feedb...](http://www.virginmedia.com/myvirginmedia/advancederror/feedback.php)

</comment><comment><USER24> Interesting. There were two links posted before arstechnica, both dealing with the same issue, one from eff I think, and neither made it to the front page.

Vote Rigging or just brand brainwashing or maybe groupthink?

<comment><USER25> The EFF link is at #27 on the fornt page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> <http://wiki.opennicproject.org/ClosestT2Servers> won't log your requests</comment>


Rise of the Anti-Recruiters - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2013/08/23/recruiters-jobs-matchmakers-developers

<comment><USER2> Yes! Recruiters are spamming their way to the bottom as their ship goes down.

But I'd love to see some recruiters who act like they care about both sides of the deal, and make things easy on us.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting article, but it basically boils down to calling the best recruiters matchmakers and reserve the word recruiters for the bottom of the barrel.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's just a name.

But when recruiters revamp their techniques, treat both the developer and the employer as their customer, and use the communication technology that respects people's time (e.g., not spam of any sort), then you have something different -- by whatever name you want to call it.

<comment><USER3> Except that I already know excellent recruiters that work just like you describe.

The problem is that I know two or three of them, but have interacted with hundreds by now.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Larry and Sergey Should Win the Turing Award - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@marinsmiljanic/why-larry-and-sergey-should-win-the-turing-award-126f50b4387c <comment><USER2> Author makes a good point. Hard to dispute that they made a massive difference in organizing the worlds knowledge.

>artificial intelligence about five even before Hinton/Bengio/LeCun when it actually started working.

That's hilarious

<comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't resist the little jab about AI. :)

Saying this as a big fan of the old guard, McCarthy in particular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Who else do you think should win?

<comment><AUTHOR> As a distributed systems guy I'm partial to Nancy Lynch. But that's distributed systems, a field which has already had awards.

Search engines getting a couple of awards seemed like a no-brainer.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: For Facebook, what's the most efficient way to erase data from backups? - <AUTHOR> Mark Zuckerberg just said to the Congress that Facebook erases users' data from their backups when a user deletes his account.
For 1 small database, I'd restore the dump, delete the data and redump without the data. But at the scale of Facebook, what's the most efficient way to achieve it?
I don't know in how many instances of MySQL my data are, or what's the backup periodicity & retention time. But let's say my data are in 1 MySQL, backed up every day, kept for 1 week. That makes 7 dumps of several petabytes. Let's say I have also some data in other DBs (Cassandra, Redis, etc). And let's say there are 10,000 users who delete their account every day. How Facebook does it? <comment><USER2> If you interpret "deleting" data as making the data inaccessible, would discarding the encryption key of encrypted data count as it being deleted?

For example, let's say I encrypt each of my users data with a different, unique encryption key. In order to access the data, I need to fetch the contents of that user and then use their decryption key to decrypt them. The data can be regularly backed up and archived. If I ever need to delete a particular users data, I could simply discard and lose that users decryption key. While I do have mangled data that can be transformed back to the users data, I no longer have the ability to read the information and I wouldn't be able to access it (assuming you don't have the power to easily crack the encryption).</comment>