Brebis, the fully automated backup checker - <AUTHOR> http://www.brebisproject.org

<comment><AUTHOR> fsniper:

Thanks for your remarks. They are really much appreciated. Below are some answers I hope can help:

Extensive list of supported features: [http://brebisproject.org/projects/brebis/wiki/Extensive_list...](http://brebisproject.org/projects/brebis/wiki/Extensive_list_of_supported_features)

How does Brebis work:

Brebis in the first run creates a list of files inside the archives with parameters about these files. In the second run, Brebis verifies the files thanks to the list of files it previously generated.

A full example about how to use Brebis is available at [http://carlchenet.com/2013/10/17/brebis-0-7-the-fully- automa...](http://carlchenet.com/2013/10/17/brebis-0-7-the-fully-automated- backup-checker/)

Compatibility with mainstream backup solutions:

At this time I could not perform a full study of the compatibilty of Brebis with the mainstream backup solutions. Given the fact Brebis supports classic archive formats (tar, gzip, bzip2, lzma, zip), Brebis is compatible with tools using archives in this format. It could not be "plugged" easily though at this time with mainstream backup solutions.

Automated tape devices: At this time I didn't test Brebis with a tape device.

</comment><comment><USER2> There must be some better documentation.

\- What are the features? \- How does is check and validate backups? \- Is it compatible with mainstream backup solutions? \- Can it work with automated tape devices

I can't find any answers to these questions easily.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> fsniper:

\- Why do you need a backup checker ? First chapter on the webpage of the project; link: [http://brebisproject.org/projects/brebis/wiki#Why-do-you- nee...](http://brebisproject.org/projects/brebis/wiki#Why-do-you-need-a- backup-checker)

\- Documentation : Second chapter on the webpage of the project; link: [http://brebisproject.org/projects/brebis/wiki#Documentations](http://brebisproject.org/projects/brebis/wiki#Documentations)

<comment><USER2> Sorry to inform you that I have gone over these documentation before I've wrote that comment. Still my questions are not answered with the available documentation.

Also I never asked about the need of a backup checker.</comment></comment>


Rice professor sees probabilistic method revolutionizing computing  - <AUTHOR> http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6252697.html

<comment><USER2> "Numbers that fool the Fermat test are called Carmichael numbers, and little is known about them other than that they are extremely rare. There are 255 Carmichael numbers below 100,000,000. The smallest few are 561, 1105, 1729, 2465, 2821, and 6601. In testing primality of very large numbers chosen at random, the chance of stumbling upon a value that fools the Fermat test is less than the chance that cosmic radiation will cause the computer to make an error in carrying out a "correct" algorithm. Considering an algorithm to be inadequate for the first reason but not for the second illustrates the differences between mathematics and engineering." footnote pg. 53 SICP

<comment><USER3> "In testing primality of very large numbers chosen at random, the chance of stumbling upon a value that fools the Fermat test is less than the chance that cosmic radiation will cause the computer to make an error in carrying out a "correct" algorithm."

Where are the numbers for that ?

If the fermat test already fails for 255 numbers out of 100 million input values then that would make it one in about 400K numbers.

I would really be surprised if computers were that susceptible to cosmic radiation. Or should I start shielding my machines with u-metal ?

<comment><USER4> I have a result which shows that a squared number minus 2, if put through the fermat test (modular exponentiation), is always prime. I got some 30k digit primes this way, but I couldn't get mathematicians interested in it. They'd just ignore it and say it was obvious.

Is anyone interested in me writing a little document and posting it to Hacker News?

<comment><USER5> Do you mean (1) n^2-2 always passes the Fermat test (to what base(s)?) or (2) if n^2-2 passes the Fermat test (to what base(s)?) then it is actually prime?

<comment><USER4> Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I'll post about this to HN soon.

<comment><USER5> Um, I was asking _which_ ; #1 and #2 are very different. For instance: A result of the form "n^2-2 is always a Fermat pseudoprime to base SOME- FUNCTION-OF-N" would probably not be interesting. A result of the form "n^2-2 is always a prime provided it's a Fermat pseudoprime to base SOME-FUNCTION- OF-N" would be much more so.

(Where "interesting" means "interesting to me"; no one else need share my interests.)

<comment><USER4> I just know I've never found a prime with this method, that PFGW didn't say was a prime.

n^2-2 doesn't always pass the Fermat test, but if it does, it is always a prime. I think it's base 2.

Is that an okay answer? I'll clarify in this thread if you need.

(Posted Lisp code to: <http://www.decompiler.org/r2primes.htm>)

<comment><USER5> On that page, you conjecture that no Carmichael number has 2 as a quadratic residue. This conjecture is incorrect; 304^2 is congruent to 2 mod 6601, and 6601 is a Carmichael number.

Even if it were true that no Carmichael number has 2 as a quadratic residue, that wouldn't give an efficient way of finding very large prime numbers, because to prove something prime given that it isn't Carmichael you still have to run the Fermat test to _every_ base, which will take ages.

Now, that isn't the same as saying that n^2-2 is never a Carmichael number. I've no idea whether that's true, but it wouldn't be very surprising; hand- wavily, the "probability" that m is a square is on the order of 1/m, and the "probability" that m is a Carmichael number is something complicated-ish that's less than 1/(log m)^2, and so the probability that m is both is less than 1/m(log m)^2, whose integral is finite, so there should only be finitely many Carmichael numbers of the form n^2-2, and if there aren't any small ones then probably there aren't any at all. But, again, even if it's true that n^2-2 is never a Carmichael number, that doesn't give you an efficient way of generating primes.

It's also not the same thing as saying that n^2-2 never passes the Fermat test _to base 2_ without being prime. That also might be true, for the same hand- wavy reason as above (the number of Fermat pseudoprimes to a given base satisfies an upper bound of the same general form as the number of Carmichael numbers). Most likely it's either very easy or very difficult to prove, if it happens to be true.

In any case, for practical purposes, if you generate a very large number at random and it passes the Fermat test to any one base, then it's almost certainly prime. (For your numbers with thousands of digits, if a single Fermat test says the number is prime then it's more likely to be wrong because your computer has malfunctioned than because you happened to pick a non-prime that satisfies the Fermat test.)

<comment><USER4> Thanks so much for taking the trouble to tell me why it's impractical, hard to prove and not interesting. I'll probably remove the webpage. I'll move onto my other (software) projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The big problem I see is that if you ever want to do something which has to be precise, you'll have to have two processors. Perhaps in the future we'll see chips with a "probability drive" in addition to the normal cores.

Now we've just got to develop an _improbability_ drive...

<comment><USER7> Or just do everything twice - if it really runs seven times faster than "today's best technology" than it shouldn't be an issue.

It's a very interesting idea...wish they had more details in the article.

<comment><USER8> You might have to do it far more than 7 times to converge on a suitably reliable answer... but perhaps precise recomputation could be deferred to off- hours, or lagged batch processing, or after disputes, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone have any technical info on how this is accomplished?

<comment><USER10> Google Scholar has picked up on Krishna Palem's previous publications. There should be a law that internet articles about scientific research have to back everything up with links to a journal article or something.

[http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Krishna+Palem+probabilis...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Krishna+Palem+probabilistic+computing&hl=en&lr=&btnG=Search)

For example, here's an interesting paper that talks about saving power by making AND/NOT gates probabilistic.

[http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/TC.2005...](http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/TC.2005.145)

I guess there's an inherent assumption that that reduced power consumption will scale up to the level of "checking email and browsing the internet".

<comment><USER11> Maybe. I think it may work in computer graphics applications. Most calculation is done for only a single frame and then discarded.

If it were a little off there would not really be any bad effect.

<comment><USER12> The libavcodec has an option that does exactly that. It skips steps in the filter loop that only affect the single frame. It makes things quite a bit faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _"To compensate, engineers increase the voltage applied to computer circuits to overpower the noise and ensure precise calculations."_

"Precise"? How about "correct"?

<comment><USER14> Most floating point calculations are only correct according to a standard.

<comment><USER13> Yes, but who said anything about floating point numbers? I guess I should have explained, but my point was that in "normal" microprocessors the voltage level has nothing to do with the precision of the computation... if it's low enough that errors are introduced the results will be wildly incorrect, not merely imprecise as that statement implies.</comment></comment></comment>


A close look at how Oracle installs deceptive software with Java updates - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/a-close-look-at-how-oracle-installs-deceptive-software-with-java-updates-7000010038/ <comment><USER2> Just to tell my experiences on this, I was _forced_ to install the crapware last week. There was no way for me to uncheck or opt out of the checkbox.

I have a machines which I connect to that do not have any mouse connected. I have no problem in navigating systems with a keyboard and can run through installers probably quicker than most people with a mouse can, but when this dialog popped up for me, I was stumped for about 10 minutes. I employed every shortcut in my keyboard-shortcut arsenal and fell short.

I genuinely felt like this was not just some programming mistake (because the "Next" control was already highlighted waiting for me to hit Enter). It is a dark pattern that was purposefully introduced to their installer to make it impossible for users like me to opt-out of their installer.

A consequence of their deception was that they did get a dozen installs from me, but my dislike for Oracle increased tenfold, and in a quiet-protest, I'll make damned sure that I suggest any alternative to an Oracle product when I have reasonable alternatives (Without cutting off my nose to spite my face).

<comment><USER3> _I employed every shortcut in my keyboard-shortcut arsenal and fell short._

One good one to remember is ALT+Left Shift+NumLock

Then you can use your keypad as a mouse. / and - toggle which mouse button 5 is.

<comment><USER4> Also, pressing shift 5 times is an easy way to enable sticky keys in Windows.

<comment><USER5> I have accidentally enabled this a million times and I've no idea what it does other than messing up my keyboard.

<comment><USER6> It's an accessibility feature. If you don't have the dexterity to hold keys down yourself, you can enable sticky keys and (if I remember correctly) it will make certain keys act as toggles so you don't have to do finger-yoga to hit certain key combinations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ladies and gentlemen, introducing THE fugliest company of all time - ORACLE.

The company that sued Android unsuccessfully, The company that fucked up JAVA, The company that fucked up MySQL, The company that fucked up OpenOffice, The company that doesn't like anything good happening within the tech sector.

I _really_ miss those days when Oracle was highly respected and used to be a great workplace to be a part of.

<comment><USER8> Oracle fucked up Java? Not my view. Installing Java on Windows installed unwanted stuff for years during Sun's days. (Was it the Yahoo toolbar? I forget).

Oracle, for all its faults, has actually managed to get the new versions of Java back on track. Sun seemed to be unable to get Java 7 out the door. Oracle did so, and is making good progress on Java 8.

<comment><USER9> I won't speak to Java itself, but I will say that -- crapware side-effects aside -- the Java SE installation process has actually improved since Oracle bought out Sun.

Whether coincidence or causative, I don't know.

It runs more quickly, and it only has a single instance of a single level of nested installers (for the JRE). A couple of years ago, the installation process had gotten simply bleep-awful, especially after they tacked JavaFX onto it, which installation seemed to take even longer than the installation of the rest of the SE package.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a nice racket Oracle has. Every time they release a security fix, they make a few hundred thousand bucks on drive-by installs. Security holes as business model.

<comment><USER11> They don't even need to release a fix. I have been prompted to update several times in the past year, where I go through the install process (including having to uncheck the Ask box), only to get the message at the end that version x.y.x is already installed.

The updater is just plain buggy. Ed Bott mentioned the problems with limited user accounts, but I didn't see him mention the issue with jucheck ignoring the update settings:

[http://superuser.com/questions/130961/how-to-stop-jucheck- fr...](http://superuser.com/questions/130961/how-to-stop-jucheck-from-running- java-wont-remember-check-for-updates-automat)

I also had an XP system where the %appdata% environment variable somehow got deleted. This completely breaks the installer.

<comment><USER12> Is the Ask.com toolbar installed before or after Java, and if java fails will ask.com be rolled back?

<comment><USER13> When you check for the Ask toolbar and click next in the Java installer, the toolbar installer is fired off in the background, and installs itself after 10 minutes, regardless of what you do with the Java installer.

<comment><USER12> That's incredibly shady.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This sums up everything I find wrong about the Windows philosophy. Software whining for updates. Unwanted background programs. Installers that want to install more than you ask for. Usage of the phrase "We recommend" where recommend means "we get money if you".

I've never seen any of those terrible anti-user behaviours in a Linux package manager, or makefile.

I would be fine with an actual security fix being downloaded and installed silently (without any other payload of course).

<comment><USER15> This has nothing to do with Windows specifically and everything to do with software developers prioritizing profit over all else.

What does the 'Windows Philosophy' have to do with the decisions Oracle makes about _Java_ anyway? Do you really think Java follows the 'Windows Philosophy'?

<comment><USER16> > This has nothing to do with Windows specifically and everything to do with > software developers prioritizing profit over all else.

I don't know about philosophies, but Windows is the only OS I have used which suffers from these problems. I have never experienced this on OS X or Linux.

I don't particularly care why, just that it happens.

<comment><USER17> I strongly suspect that the fact that this doesn't happen as often on OS X and Linux has very little to do with anything intrinsic to those two operating systems. It's just that they're less fertile ground for this sort of thing.

For one, each having fewer users should not be ignored. 90% fewer users means 90% less potential profit. That's a big number even when you aren't relying on a revenue generation model such as ads.

But not just that - also because the average user on both platforms (particularly Linux) is more computer-literate, and therefore better-capable of defending against this sort of thing.

And on the OS X side, remember that for a long time the Java run-time was distributed by Apple. The agreement to start having it be distributed by Oracle might well have included a "no crapware" provision.

On the Linux side, well, that's where all their enterprise customers live nowadays. They really do _not_ want to piss off their enterprise customers like that.

<comment><USER18> OS X and Linux apps don't have to be bundled in a custom installer. In OS X you simply drag the app into you Application folder and now there's an App Store that makes the whole experience even simpler and curated.

Linux distros have great package manager and you won't get greedy crap-ware from the Open Source community.

It's a shame that Windows installers have become so bloated. The other day I've seen one with a check box labeled "I agree [to install this crap ware]" just bellow the license text. Really deceptive.

Hopefully the Windows Store will help improve that experience.

<comment><USER17> Sadly, the Windows store is only for Don't-Call-it-Metro apps that can run on the tablet version. So it really doesn't offer anything to help desktop users - for the most part they're still stuck with the same old Windows Installer quagmire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So are the Feds going to go after Oracle and Larry for "unauthorized access to a computer" and "wire fraud"? With, like, real jail time?

<comment><USER20> Considering I clicked Java Installer.exe and got Ask.com toolbar installing, it sounds like a clear cut case of identity fraud as well.

Taking up real estate in my toolbar is basically criminal trespassing, so throw that in. I mean, it's not like in real life you can just say to an inattentive person, "I'm about to break into your house unless you tell me no" and have it be okay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looks like YC should make an investment!

<comment><USER22> It does seem to meet PG's critera

1\. The user has an opportunity to opt out.

2\. Calling Ask Toolbar "crapware" is only an opinion. Someone may actually want it. _sniggers_

I think bundling software is fine so long as it is relevant and genuinely useful. Ask Toolbar fails on both accounts. Bundled software shouldn't be offered during minor updates or security fixes... or at the very least, during these minor updates, it should be opt-in instead of opt-out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Well when after the last security issue there were articles calling end users for uninstalling java completely, I was pretty mad at the missing distinction between the plugin and the runtime.

But now I really think this is a good thing to recommend under windows.

I will still continue using OpenJDK for server projects under Linux, but will press for different solutions whenever installation of Jav on a Windows machine might be required.

</comment><comment><USER24> Can someone comment on how .NET platform + tools compare?

As someone who is not invested in either camp, between the two, .NET seems like a much better place to be invested in right now.

Edit: Thanks a lot for the replies, I'm much better informed.

<comment><USER25> I had about a decade in both, and really they're two very different worlds. From a code standpoint I'd much rather be in C#. It's one thing that MS has done really, really well over the last 10 years. They've taken a pretty aggressive stance towards adopting new features and although it's become fairly complex as of 4.0 and on, it really has some great features, some functional-inspired things like closures and collections api stuff that reminds me of Ruby in a lot of ways, and a great web framework in MVC that is honestly almost as fun to code for as any of the open source web frameworks out there. If you had to choose between one of the big J2EE stacks and MVC, no question, MVC is far, far better. The infrastructure is still a big 'ol MS GUI world, and I'd rather do <badPainfulThing> than spend a lot of time configuring and deploying IIS apps, but then TomCat and WAR files et. al. ain't exactly fun either.

Java's JVM/bytecode infrastructure on the other hand has undergone a renaissance as a VM platform for a lot of very cool languages: Scala and Clojure being the two big examples there. But that's _Really_ not the same thing as Java, obviously. And there's Android -- a completely different ecosystem, and somewhat truncated as a Java dialect, but still basically the Java language and able to employ most of the libs you're used to having: Guava, Guice and so on. No dynamic code gen, which stinks, but I know why they did it. So if you have Java under your belt and want to get into mobile stuff, that's a huge plus.

So, as a general-purpose language skill, Java is still really, really important to know and will have legs for a long time to come. ASP MVC is a great framework, and if you can't work in something like Django or Rails or the like, it comes in nice 3rd or 4th place in terms of making for general coder happiness. C# is a far more progressive and interesting language than Java, but that's a philosophical difference between the gatekeepers of the two languages: Java intentionally moves slow for the sake of stability and continuity, C#'s minders have apparently embraced a little of the 'move fast break things' attitude of some parts of the open source world. I prefer the latter, but understand the rationale of the former.

Me, I'm a Rails coder these days but also get to hop back into Java for Android dev and the rare foray into ASP work and they all have strengths and tradeoffs and they'll all be around a long time. The only thing I think I would avoid on principle, for my own sanity, is any enterprisey J2EE framework. That truly does feel like a massive leap backwards.

<comment><USER26> Agreed with this. I used to code C# for a living but have moved on- however, I'm now playing around with MonoTouch in my spare time and I'm loving using C# again.

MonoDevelop is a poor man's Visual Studio, but it's a lot less demanding and runs on OSX. Backend frameworks like Nancy.fx are really great for being even simpler versions of MVC, too.

<comment><USER25> I was shocked how well MonoDevelop worked out when I used it briefly a couple of years ago. But my expectations were pretty low -- I was expecting a compatibility quotient something close to Wine circa 2001, and got instead a basically functioning C# environment on my Mac, which was pretty dang cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 You would think that a company Oracle's size wouldn't need to resort to install commissions from something like this.

You would think that after several years of conning people into using their search engine, the employees at Ask would feel dirty to have to engage in such tactics.

<comment><USER27> Even Google is supporting these shady practices by powering some of the search toolbars and probably paying the toolbar owners for ad clicks. See MyWebSearch (<http://home.mywebsearch.com/>) mentioned in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> One additional note regarding the installer: to opt out of the toolbar installation, you have to click _the checkbox itself_. You can't click the text label associated to it. I call it a bug, but certainly it's a feature in this context.

<comment><USER29> Actually, that's very common. It's one of my pet peeves for web design but I see it often in installers and the applications themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This problem has been known and complained about for _ages_. What's the community response? We have OpenJDK, why does anyone put up with an abusive installer from Oracle?

<comment><USER31> Because Windows is not a supported platform? You have to find an unofficial build or build it yourself.

<comment><USER32> Is anyone distributing 64bit OpenJDK builds for windows?

EDIT: I found: <https://github.com/alexkasko/openjdk-unofficial-builds>

<comment><USER26> Just the word 'unofficial' is enough to stop most large companies using them. It is (was?) the same with Firefox- they never offered an MSI installer for use on corporate networks. There were unofficial versions, but you could never be sure that someone hadn't bundled something extra in there.

<comment><USER33> "but you could never be sure that someone hadn't bundled something extra in there".

Irony,

With Oracle, your are SURE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Java could have been such a good thing, even in the browser (ok, as platform, ignoring the language's shortcomings, but still...). Whys did both Sun and Oracle strive so hard to fuck it up? _It's as if these guys have a "how to fuck things up for the end user" brainstorming meeting every week!_

<comment><USER35> I think the last few years have shown conclusively that the it is not a good thing in the Browser because the sandbox security model is too complex to be implemented correctly.

<comment><USER34> > the sandbox security model is too complex to be implemented correctly

...is there any other simpler security model than this? Java even seems a simpler and more "well behaved" language than JavaScript, and JVM bytecode is said to be even simpler (though I'm not an expert on this...), and browsers had they own share of Javascript related exploits but people rolled updates quickly, acted responsibly and _didn't do anything particularly stupid_ (as opposed to the described crapware incident perpetuated by Oracle).

EDIT+: one can buy browser exploits cheaper on "the x market" and they are more useful than JVM exploits so "security" is not Java's Achilles' heel, and it's Swiss cheese all the way down if you at most web-facing software unfortunately...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I really hate the crapware, and I hate more the "opt-out" crapware. But the "summary" of the article is a little unfair:

 _Oracle's Java plugin for browsers is a notoriously insecure product. Over the past 18 months, the company has released 11 updates, six of them containing critical security fixes. [...]_

The updates and security fixes include not only the plugin, but all the Java runtime that is much bigger and complex. (For example, one of the updates was: [http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/javacpuoct...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/javacpuoct2012-1515924.html#AppendixJAVA) ). This is like accusing Chome or Dropbox of being insecure, because they do a lot of updates (that are automatic, invisible and don't offer crapware).

</comment><comment><USER37> Crapware-free downloads ARE available.

If you go to Oracle's Technology Network area to download (or Google for the specific version e.g. "java 6u38" or "java 7u11 oracle" because of all the press) you can agree to their binary license and download crap-free offline installers.

The link for 6u38 is [http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre6...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre6u38-downloads-1877409.html) and the link for 7u11 is [http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre7...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre7-downloads-1880261.html)

</comment><comment><USER38> Interesting how many comments about desktop Java being dead, when the highest selling video game still available and being developed is Minecraft, written in Java, which runs on the desktop... (over 9 million registered users, and still increasing... enough to make it the #9 all-time selling video game)

I will admit tho, for traditional desktop apps, it is very dead.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm glad this was said in a much larger avenue than my paltry Twitter account. To bundle a toolbar installation in with a major security fix is not only dishonest, it's unethical and who's to say that toolbar isn't the next piece to contain a security hole?

</comment><comment><USER40> A sleeping add-on installer that waits ten minutes? Sounds kind of rootkit-y, opt-in or not.

</comment><comment><USER41> I can't sympathize with this article and most users in this thread because I don't understand why anyone uses Java within web browsers. Today, Java is for server-side code. Full stop. Okay, I know some people still have to use Applets, but none of us here, right?

Kidding aside, I've installed the Oracle JDK on dozens of Windows machines and not once have I been prompted to install a toolbar or bloatware.

1\. Navigate to java.oracle.com

2\. Select Java SE.

3\. Select to download JDK SE 7u11

4\. Accept license agreement

5\. Download Windows x64

6\. Open installer

7\. Select to install "Development Tools" and "Source Code" (disable "Public JRE")

8\. Wait and then close installer

9\. Run c:\java\bin\java.exe

10\. Review Windows' "Programs" and note only JDK has been installed; no toolbars

11\. Celebrate

I suspect many people are installing the JRE, which is something I've never done. Since the JDK can run Java code, why install the JRE at all?

<comment><USER42> Because many people are still stuck using applets in the browser. The JDK won't run those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Last update I received I clicked the next button a little to fast. I realized after I went through the dialogs too quick and I figured no big deal I'd just cancel it when the McAfee dialog came up. It never did... all of the installation was in the background.

Shady!

</comment><comment><USER44> I think the Java plugin should start to be flagged as malware given the persistent presence of holes that allow remote execution of arbitrary code, the clever bundling of questionable software and the update wizard behavior.

</comment><comment><USER45> Sun was installing toolbars before Oracle bought them. I remember them bundling the Yahoo toolbar with Java.

</comment><comment><USER46> What really upsets me about this is that it's Java that they are stuffing this adware into... Java a previously legitimate requirement that many applications have chosen to build on top of as a language/platform. For the average user it looks like all of these other programs are promoting this... I'm surprised that they can get away with it.

</comment><comment><USER47> Fuck Oracle. And unfortunately, I guess that means Fuck Java too. This is the exact kind of stupid behavior that kills great technologies like Java, by stupid, greedy people that care more about money than technology. If this is how they expect to treat their users, I'll switch permanently to Python, PHP, and anything else besides Java.

</comment><comment><USER48> I happily uninstalled Java from all of my machines/OSes last week. Glad to be rid of it.

<comment><USER49> I decided to try the same. It's been ages since I last played Minecraft, and I have frankly no idea what other apps I'm using might be using Java; the only way to find out is to uninstall it. It's not like I can't install it again if I need it.. but the days of just having it installed "just in case" are over for me. I might even uninstall Flash just for kicks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I think this is in a large part due to the way programs install on Windows perhaps.

These programs seem to rely on getting the user to make a choice during installation time. Windows is the only major OS that seems to rely on "installers" being programs in their own right.

For example on debian, .deb packages provide a standard installation process. Whilst it would still certainly be possible to inject all types of crapware into a .deb the actual install process is not really conductive to this, because there is no way (AFAIK) to pop a custom screen during the install.

</comment><comment><USER9> One reason I always download the full installer (even to upgrade), rather than using the Java update notification service (it runs, but when it prompts with an update -- if it does so before I manually upgrade -- I use that notification as a cue to go download the full installation; I _don't_ let the service upgrade me).

</comment><comment><USER51> My experience is that the one from java.sun.com does not have the crapware. Especially if you install jdk?

The one from java.com does.

I'm not 100% certain though.

BTW, there is a process to install java without the installer and without admin rights on Windows. The process is described on say StackOverflow but I have it scripted.

I should put it up on github sometime!

</comment><comment><USER52> Too bad Google missed out on buying Sun.

</comment><comment><USER53> I was just about to decry ZDNet for calling the kettle black here, but it seems they removed the scummy invisible pop-up ad click target they used to put in the negative space next to the column.

</comment><comment><USER54> I do not have any such issue. Are you sure this sidebar comes with the official java installer from www.java.com?

From what I've heard, I guess it comes with Java installers from 3rd party sites.

</comment><comment><USER55> Do not take this article Seriously. This is garbage post and problem is with ASK and not Oracle here.

</comment><comment><USER56> And this is why Apple creates their own install packages for Java.

<comment><USER57> Not anymore, they don't. (Source: <http://bit.ly/947yQJ>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> This seriously changes my opinion of Oracle.

</comment><comment><USER59> Isn't it a little ironic that we're reading an article about foistware where the author searches for his own book on multiple search engines?

</comment><comment><USER60> I used to work with Sun for quite some time; I can say without failure every single Sun tech I came across was pretty damn cool, knew what they were doing and was hooked up in the Sun-universe enough so they could provide excellent pointers and ultimately that translated into happy customers. On top of that a lot of their enterprise-y software wasn't half bad to begin with, it was just always terrible getting good documentation and information as an "outsider" oh and there were a couple of years when you could just forget the sorry excuse they passed off as "support". But there was always the possibility of going "black-ops", just de-compiling and providing your own fix and although this is far from great, things just worked and everyone was happy. Sun's suits didn't really matter from our point of view anway, they did no harm, stood in nobody's way, shook hands and invited folks to dinner when appropriate. Fair enough, you cannot really ask for more, anymore and it would literally be paradise, so I was happy with that. Even-though I never got that project manager I was basically paying for...

Enter big red. Talking to brain-washed zombies cannot feel very different from talking to Oracle's sales drones and customer relation dummies. You were talking about "A", they would start trying to sell you pricey-addon for the database when you weren't even talking databases in the first place. Whoever was a useful tech contact inside Sun before now turned into a walled-off zombie as well and I guess I was lucky they didn't just slap a price tag on picking-up the phone or simply answering an email. And to top it off I had to suffer one of their pre-sales dummies loudly telling an oh-so-ridiculous story how, can you imagine, bigcorpA was running tomcat(!) in their production environment! And not the abomination from hell that Oracle gets away with charging huge amounts of money for!! Well can you imagine that!!!

Another case of too-big-to-fail and nobody ever got fired for buying Oracle, hm?

<comment><USER61> Bit Torrent makes all its money through Ask's tool bar. Ask props up a whole economy, it seems. But hey, at least Oracle figured out how to make money on Java! Sun never did that.

<comment><USER17> Which raises an interesting question - how _do_ you make money on a platform like this?

I've been wondering because I think that my preferred managed environment (.NET) is doomed if Microsoft continues keeping it tied to Windows. On the Microsoft side, I suspect that Microsoft's market share in the server and enterprise space is going to continue dwindling for the foreseeable future, which means that their current plan for making profit is far from certain. But neither Sun nor Oracle seem to have figured out a way to distribute Java for free to the world at large and make a profit off of it, and it's hard to imagine that Microsoft is any more capable of pulling that rabbit out of its hat.

Perhaps the trick is that you don't try to make money on it, at least not directly. And there's a great project out there that's trying to do it that way. But, well. . . . ugh. I love Mono; it seems like it has everything going for it. From a technical standpoint it's been rapidly closing the gap with Microsoft's implementation, which I suspect means it's probably already ahead of the Java platform in many respects. The flagship language is certainly way ahead. And it has the singular distinction of being the only Free platform in this sector, which would make you think that folks would be extremely interested in seeing it win. Why that doesn't seem to be the case continues to mystify me. I know it's still got a few Big Business cooties on it, but it's got way, way, way less of them than Java does.

<comment><USER62> > Which raises an interesting question - how do you make money on a platform > like this?

Professional services. Hardware sales. Turnkey solutions (you want to support industry X using Java? ...). Development tools (to the extent not provided by third-parties). Certification/compliance. Associated products (nice Java app you've got there, need a database to go with it?).

Here's a thing: making money off of software _by itself_ is _hard_. One of the lost messages in the recent trash-talking of Microsoft is that the fall of the House of Redmond also means the fall of software as a standalone, unit-sold, high-value product. Nobody but nobody else operates this way, certainly none of the current tech leaders: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon. Two sell ads, two sell things. None sells software.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Your Instagram photos aren't really yours: Someone else can sell them for $90k - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2015/05/25/a-reminder-that-your-instagram-photos-arent-really-yours-someone-else-can-sell-them-for-90000/?tid=sm_fb <comment><USER2> I can't take a photo from nat geo and sell it. It's implied copyright. I'm pretty sure one of the original photographers could sue.</comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone else feel like Google is pushing polymer too much? - <AUTHOR>

I like the platform and the idea, but the amount google has tied in its services to sell it is kinda disappointing. I use to look forward to seeing Google IO each year for talks about new web tech, but this year feels like a advertisement for their frameworks only. Yes I know, its their conference, but it wasn't always like this. <comment><USER2> What does have Polymer have to do with Google's services ? What did you really mean ? Your concerns are not very clear.</comment>


Chrisann Brennan on Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3258888/The-new-Steve-Jobs-biopic-travesty-says-ex-Cold-Ruthless-Obsessive-No-FAR-worse-denied-father-child-ROTTEN-CORE.html <comment><USER2> Although the tabloid could hardly have framed this article in a viler way, what Brennan actually wrote is reflective and poignant and deserves to be read. If there's another URL we can switch to, we'd be happy to (I tried but couldn't find one).

If you comment on this article, please be charitable and please stick to what's interesting about it.

<comment><USER3> I do not understand the need to be charitable to Steve Jobs.

If he was not the brilliant leader of Apple we would simply say he was a douche bag. Just because he was great in one area does not excuse behaviour in another. Is there any level of business achievement that says that it is ok to have millions whilst the mother of your daughter is struggling to survive whilst bringing up your daughter?

As a business man he was brilliant. As a father he was a loser.

<comment><USER2> It isn't about excusing anything, but about avoiding tedious tirades. Articles that are interesting enough to be on HN deserve discussion about what they actually say. Being charitable involves stopping and reflecting rather than spewing a prepared statement, which most of us are all too ready to do, especially when given a shot of anger. HN is about seeking to understand, which is not compatible with reciting pre-existing judgments. (Edit: I'm not referring to you here, but to a tendency we all have, which consequently tends to build up in HN threads.)

Brennan's piece struck me as a pretty good example both of seeking to understand and of being charitable without excusing bad behavior. If anyone has reason not to do those things it's her, so I don't see why we can't too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> He was a disgusting person to have treated people this way. It's mildly annoying that he was also brilliant because people end up rationalizing his faults away.

<comment><USER5> A lot of people use those types of biographies to justify their own destructive behaviour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just checking: You know that a bunch of people took Nazi propaganda, changed the word "Jew" to "migrant", and posted it to the Daily Mail comment section, and that those comments were upvoted by DM readers?

[https://medium.com/@bestofthemail/i-was-upvoted-for- posting-...](https://medium.com/@bestofthemail/i-was-upvoted-for-posting-nazi- propaganda-about-migrants-in-the-daily-mail-8996899810b4)

And, scarily, the Nazi propaganda was mild in contrast to other comments openly calling for the murder of migrants?

Look at the upvotes on these comments: [https://twitter.com/DMReporter/status/650656856529092608](https://twitter.com/DMReporter/status/650656856529092608)

DM engages in the worst kind of click-bait. They are the scum of the earth.

Posting links to the Daily Mail on HN is like flinging excrement at your readers.

<comment><USER7> I am probably missing something, but I take it you're okay with The Guardian as a source? How is this not clickbait? [https://twitter.com/somuchguardian](https://twitter.com/somuchguardian)

<comment><USER8> I do not know if the original commenter(commentator?) is okay with The Guardian as a source, but that twitter account is trash.

Sadly, one thing the original commentor(commentator?) seem to not understand that it's about what's being said, rather than who's saying it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3s-qZsjK8I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3s-qZsjK8I)

<comment><USER2> You've posted several random comments about Steve Jobs that have nothing to do with this article. Those are not substantive comments. We don't need an "I love Steve" vs. "I hate Steve" discussion here—as generic as it is tedious.

<comment><USER9> Random?

<comment><USER2> Yes. This isn't the all about Steve Jobs thread, it's the memoir excerpt by Chrisann Brennan thread. By making the discussion more generic you make it less interesting. Please stick to the content.

<comment><USER9> whoops, thought context was important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Also interesting on a related note- "Steve Jobs made Warner Music sue my startup" [https://medium.com/startup-study-group/steve-jobs-made- warne...](https://medium.com/startup-study-group/steve-jobs-made-warner-music- sue-my-startup-9a81c5a21d68)

</comment><comment><USER9> How Steve Jobs used Carly Fiorina's HP iPod deal to preinstall iTunes on millions of PCs and prevent HP from creating its own iPod competitor [http://www.techmeme.com/151004/p7#a151004p7](http://www.techmeme.com/151004/p7#a151004p7)

</comment><comment><USER10> Ick, ick, ick. I wish I could downvote this. I stopped reading when it became clear what Brennan was doing - betraying a lot of confidences with Jobs to make a lot of money. I believe that he was often genuinely awful, and for all I know, Brennan could have been cheated out of a lot of money. But there are things in here that could hurt Jobs' wife and kids. Brennan should be ashamed.

<comment><USER11> The abandoned mother of the abandoned child of a multimillionaire is justified in recounting any awful behavior she cares to recount.

<comment><USER12> "We should not seek revenge on those who have committed crimes against us, or reply to their crimes with other crimes. We should reflect that by the law of karma, they are in danger of lowly and miserable lives to come, and that our duty to them, as to every being, is to help them to rise towards Nirvana, rather than let them sink to lower levels of rebirth." — the Dalai Lama

<comment><USER11> Is this a religious discussion now? I'm not sure that applies, anyway; ISTM that Jobs is already a dung beetle, or whatever. Besides, TFA is hardly "seeking revenge". The tone isn't even particularly harsh. It's just: here's some shit that dude did.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


New York Has a Great Subway, If You're Not in a Wheelchair - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/opinion/new-york-has-a-great-subway-if-youre-not-in-a-wheelchair.html <comment><USER2> I highly suspect it is plain cheaper (and more convenient) to just subsidize private car rides for disabled people than making entire transit infrastructure in huge city to account for them.

Better yet, take the money that government would otherwise spend on building all the wheelchair accomodations, and just distribute that between wheelchair users. I am sure many of them would prefer that over subway improvements which they might never use.

"Disabled people cannot reach their [work, school, childcare, w/e]", if true, is a valid problem. There are multiple ways to solve that problem. "NYC subway does not have wheelchair accomodations" is a useless outrage over circumstantial symptoms.

<comment><USER3> Remember that it's not just people in wheelchairs who benefit from accessibility though. The elderly, injured infirm, people with small children etc. also find accessibility helpful.

Modern accessibility policy is focused in a large part around allowing people with accessibility requirement to live as normal a life as possible. It's not going to change overnight, but by making sure that all new construction and refurbishments are accessible, over time the situation will improve. The only quibble is over the extent of funding that will be made available.

<comment><USER4> >Remember that it's not just people in wheelchairs who benefit from accessibility though.

In addition to that, I wager there's value in extending the current infrastructure so as to not ostracize disabled people even further.

<comment><USER5> I think grandparent comment's point was that at some point, greater good for disabled people can be delivered by specifically helping them rather than re- engineering the world to fit them. Considering that each has a concrete price tag attached to it.

The "wheelchair that can climb stairs" vs "adding ramps everywhere" comparison.

I feel like in the past the latter made more economic sense, but at some point technology might tip the balance the other way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's the same situation in London, only about 25% of Underground stations are accessible[1]. This seems to be the cost of old infrastructure - when most of the network was built, accessibility simply wasn't a consideration. Neither was having a decent mobile signal, or air conditioning. Fortunately, we've learned from this and newer systems like the ones in Shanghai and Taiwan seem to be far more accessible.

[1] [https://tfl.gov.uk/transport-accessibility/wheelchair- access...](https://tfl.gov.uk/transport-accessibility/wheelchair-access-and- avoiding-stairs)

<comment><USER7> Progress is being made, however. Stations are currently being retrofitted for step-free acccess at the rate of around 30 stations every 5 years.

OK, it'll be many decades before every station is fully accessible at that rate. But progress is being made. The Tube is infrastructure which will likely still be around for decades or centuries to come, so it's worth doing.

TfL's online status tools and journey planner are also pretty good at keeping track of any lift outages, etc, so it's unlikely anyone will turn up to a station to find a broken lift unexpectedly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There have been other attempts to bring awareness to this problem. Here is a half funny, half sad version: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhpUJRGrZgc&ab_channel=Cereb...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhpUJRGrZgc&ab_channel=CerebralPalsyFoundation)

I like the approach of sharing some data / statistics; but it would be nice if we could combine the two. The saturated humor when combined with the real information might make more of an impact.

</comment><comment><USER9> > only 92 of the system's 425 stations accessible

> On average, 25 elevators a day stop working

Do 27% of elevators really break down on a _daily_ basis? That is abysmal if accurate.

<comment><USER10> I don't see too many elevators and hopefully it gets fixed with the push the governor is making towards modernizing stations across NYC.

It's important to remember that a lot of the stations, in Lower Manhattan especially, are way too small (4-5 foot wide platforms with 2 stairwells). I don't see elevators happening at those stations. A lot of these smaller platforms are connected other small platforms via stairs (think Canal Street - JZQNR6).

Good luck if your stop is on a bridge in Brooklyn or Queens.

<comment><USER11> They could install stair lifts?

<comment><USER12> In London (Clapham Junction at least) they have tracked vehicles that can take a wheelchair up the Victorian stairs

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Same in Paris, we just vacationed there for five days, with a two year old. Very difficult to navigate in a stroller (good proxy for a wheelchair - I can lift it down the stairs, but my wife cannot alone). However, there it's quite a difficult problem to solve (I recognize) because a lot of the transfers between different stations are a bunch of underground hallways with staircases in all directions, so it's not simply enough to add elevators from the stations to platform level.

<comment><USER14> In Paris, the accessible stations are indicated on the maps. While that doesn't fix the accessibility issue, it can help a little bit with finding alternate stations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's certainly past time that some tiny fraction of the billions of dollars spent on accessibility were spent subsidizing modes of travel that don't require such bland and dehumanized environs. Elevators on medium-sized buildings (and subways) are a nuisance, in that they make most of the population less healthy in exchange for 0.7% of the population being able to explore every nook. If the law hadn't cemented handicapped rights to use dated technology, many people already would be using something capable of climbing stairs. Yes, that "something" would probably cost more than a wheelchair that could have been manufactured in 1950. Since the mobility of the handicapped is in society's interest, society can subsidize it, rather than mandating that brick-and-mortar businesses do so.

<comment><USER16> This is true. For example, carrying an apartment's worth of furniture up to the 7th floor will drastically improve your cardiovascular health. Or kill you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Vienna retro-fitted every subway station with wheelchair and stroller compatible elevators.

Don't discount the latter, so much easier for parents to use the subway that way.

It totally can be done. The US carved off a slice of every sidewalk to allow for ramps for wheelchairs, nationwide.

<comment><USER18> It's simpler in Vienna though because they have a proof of payment system. You just need one elevator to the platform. In NY, you need one to the turnstiles, and then another one to the platform.

<comment><USER19> why they use actually turnstiles in NY? seem very inefficient on par with jams i experienced in Beijing which user them too

though i can understand need for them in China where people even refill their bottles in IKEA at self serving driving machines, but one would think that Americans are more honest

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Given that 1 in 10,000 people in NYC are in wheelchairs,

I really think it would be orders of magnitude more cost effective for the government to pay for disabled persons cab fares than to make public transit accessible. Has anyone run the numbers?

<comment><USER21> Would there also be interest paid for time lost in traffic? New York roads are tight and always busy, something the public transit system is supposed to workaround.

<comment><USER22> Public transport is supposed to alleviate congestion on the road. That there exists those unwilling or unable to make use of it is irrelevant, so long as a sufficient percentage of the driving population can and do use it over driving themselves.

There is no reason to imagine that compensating those not using it (for any reason, be it disability or in a niche area in the city, or simply unwilling) would be a part of the goal of providing public transportation.

It is _not_ a gift to the people from bottom of the government's heart, that they would try to offer an alternative gift to those unable or unwilling to partake in this wonderful service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What about mothers/fathers with baby buggies?

<comment><USER24> You carry the buggy up the stairs together and if you're on your own a stranger will help you. It's very common to see this (and to help people when you see they need help) in NYC.

Beside our reputation, we're a friendly bunch here.

<comment><USER25> It's also true of wheelchairs.

My wife and I helped a man in a wheelchair up some stairs in Brooklyn, since his alternative was taking the train about five stops down to an elevator- equipped station, then getting on a bus, and coming right back. At that time of night, we optimistically estimated an hour for him to do so... or about 60 seconds for us to carry him up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> When we were in Paris last year my girlfriend broke her foot and I had to push her around in a wheelchair. It's a real pain to see that some elevator is not working and you have to walk half a mile to find the next one. Since then I have much more respect for people who have to deal with this every day.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't agree that New York has a Great Subway. It is really dirty. The homeless people use it as their home as they don't have any where else to go.

<comment> charles-salvia It runs 24 hours and extensively covers 4 of the 5 boroughs. Yes, it's dirty, but the coverage + availability is what makes it a great system - it's certainly unparalleled in the Western hemisphere. Everytime I go to San Francisco I realize how awesome the NYC subway really is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think MTA should also consider putting a barrier on the edge of the platform. So that we won't get dozens of people being pushed off to the rails.

<comment><USER29> Do you have a source for how often this happens? I can't find anything specifically about subway pushers in NYC. As far as I can tell, it's a very rare occurrence.

That being said, I see fairly high numbers of deaths in general, mainly attributed to suicides and alcohol/drug use.

How would this barrier work? Would it withdraw once the train pulled up or something?

<comment><USER30> have you ever seen the tube system in London? it's a fully blocking barrier with a set of sliding doors that lines up precisely with the doors of the train cars when they pull in to the station.

that's probably the ideal solution, but not practical for New York because the system was never designed with precision stopping points on the platform in mind. there's a margin of error that is at least a meter or so in either direction right now.

<comment><USER12> Only on new lines with straight platforms. Older ones are almost all on curves, a guy in the sliding doors business told me they looked into but the cost was too high as each station is on a different circumference bend so they would all be custom jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Zach Anner recently did something similar showing just how long it takes to get across New York when in a wheelchair [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhpUJRGrZgc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhpUJRGrZgc)

</comment><comment><USER32> You could have "service stations" where people who want to do service aka do good could go. Wheel chair people could wait there for someone who was going to ride the subway anyway to walk past and, wanting to do good in the world, help the disabled person get on.

</comment><comment><USER33> I remember reading the news story about the author's accident. Very interesting/sobering to read about life since then. More on topic, I'm considering a move to NYC and the thought of navigating the city with young kids is almost stressful itself.

</comment><comment><USER34> Yet they are slated to raise the prices again next year. It's already $2.75 for a regular swipe. FeelsBadMan.

<comment><USER35> As someone who recently moved to NYC from the SF Bay Area, it's a pleasure to swipe for a ride, even at $3.

That's a static fee to go _anywhere_. In the Bay Area, your BART ticket fee is dependent on where you want to go--at it's most extreme, can be up to $20/ride.

$2.75-$3 to get anywhere in NYC is an absolute bargain.

<comment><USER36> Up to 155 miles on one fare, if you have 14 hours, don't mind 54 transfers, and, one supposes, really don't like yourself

[http://www.citylab.com/navigator/2015/09/a-man-rode-the- long...](http://www.citylab.com/navigator/2015/09/a-man-rode-the-longest-nyc- subway-ride-so-you-dont-have-to/403924/)

<comment><USER37> He's going to have to do it again. The SUBWAYTRON5000 found an even longer ride.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This article paints a pretty negative view of it, but looking at the numbers, that might not be the case:

425 stations total 92 stations accessible

Boston has 53 stations, with "90% wheelchair accessible", sounds like 48 to me.

So "lousy" NYC has almost double the number of wheelchair accessible stations as "great" Boston, and 8 times the total number of stations.

Sadly, retrofitting more elevators into existing stations, especially many of the smaller ones, is a tough sell. It would at least be nice if they could do a better job of maintaining them and keeping track of the ones that are down and what the best alternative route is.

And the program, mentioned elsewhere in this thread, to provide discounted van service, is probably much better, considering the challenge of getting to and between stations when disabled.

<comment><USER39> > So "lousy" NYC has almost double the number of wheelchair accessible > stations as "great" Boston, and 8 times the total number of stations.

That's comparing apples to watermelons.

Boston has a population of 650,000; New York, 8.5 million. So in Boston there is one accessible station per 13,500 residents. In New York, one per 92,400 residents. (The _total_ residents per station is much more comparable, at 12.2k and 20k respectively).

This suggests that a more like-for-like basis, New York is roughly 4 to 7 times less accessible than Boston.

Edit: Actually, here's a better way to think about it, which does work a bit more in New York's favor. A variant of Metcalfe's law[1] applies to transport networks, in that the utility of a network is proportional to the total number of journeys that can be taken within it. So Boston has (48^2 - 48)/2 = 1,128 accessible origin/destination pairs, while NYC has 4,186 O/D pairs. So 1.73 accessible O/D pairs per thousand residents in Boston, versus 0.49 in New York.

For an able-bodied resident, Boston provides 2.12 trips per thousand residents, 10.6 trips per thousand residents for NYC. So if you're not in a wheelchair, then NYC is five times better than Boston. But if you _are_ in a wheelchair, then NYC is 3.5 times worse.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law)

<comment><USER38> Thanks, that's an interesting calculation, and I didn't take population into account. The 650k to 8.5M sounds like a higher ratio than I'd expect though. If we take the MSA from rrdharan's post, NYC metro population is 4x greater rather than 13x with your numbers. If we use those numbers, then we'd get accessible pairs per thousand residents of 0.2093 for NYC, and 0.2256 for Boston, which makes Boston about 8% better.

I'm not sure how valid that is though, since at least for the NYC area, that MSA population is for the tri-state area, which is served by a number of other rail lines, and the majority of which isn't directly accessible to the NYC MTA system that those numbers are for. I don't know as much about the Boston area, but seems like a fair guess that those 5M people mostly don't have direct access to the Boston city transit, and may or may not be served by various other transit systems. Can any Bostonians confirm or deny?

<comment><USER40> A someone working with MBTA data I can chime in.

The story is rather complicated. Boston's subway system serves a population of around 2 million, including administratively separate cities like Somerville, Cambridge, Brookline and Newton that are more like boroughs than separate cities. The rest is served by the commuter rail system and bus system, which do a good job of covering most people (probably about 4 million of 5 million).

There's actually 145 subway stations (though that includes a few underground stations on the silver line, technically BRT for now), but the article didn't the green line (America's first subway, 1898), because it's a "light rail" subway, not a "heavy rail" subway. Those stations all got retrofitted with wheelchair access or else were already above ground stations with access.

It's fair to say that those 145 stations serve about 1/4 the population of the MTA in New York.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


YC startup accused of stealing design from CBInsights - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/atestu/status/563004733519302659 <comment><USER2> I know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but Techlist's analytics capabilities have an uncanny resemblance to CB Insights.

In addition, 12 folks from their team have signed up for our free trial since September including the CEO, head of product, designer, product manager and a senior ruby developer.

Take a look at their heatmap. The color scheme to even the text underneath is exactly the same.

Here is our heatmap which we launched 2 years ago: [http://cbi.vc/1AsvNy3](http://cbi.vc/1AsvNy3)

Their industry graphs are also the same. Here is ours: [http://cbi.vc/1Asw0kR](http://cbi.vc/1Asw0kR)

On the bright side, this is a bit of an ego boost, and we're flattered that these guys liked CB Insights so much that they wanted one just like it for themselves.

Note: I'm the CEO of CB Insights.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think they just copied you to launch rapidly/MVP and if successful/raise then they would have resources to go in their own design direction?

<comment><USER2> To be honest, I don't care :)

And copying our work was good enough to get them into YC so guess mission accomplished. Hopefully YC doesn't condone this type of behavior.

When the CEO and 11 other employees sign up for someone else's service to copy it, it seems originality might be in short supply.

<comment><USER3> It seems like people think you're commenting about this because you want them stopped, which doesn't seem to be the case to me. You just want it acknowledged that they did this shitty thing. I agree that it's shitty and I assume it's not actionable and think you're right to just be right out in the open saying "well, they stole our design and got away with it... more power to them." I do wonder if HN leadership has any comments on this type of behavior, because it really does look shitty coming from one of their teams.

<comment><USER2> I didn't post the original link. Honestly, I'd love for them to be stopped but this is the internet after all :)

I, like you, am curious if YC condones this type of copying esp since the CEO admitted it on Twitter.

But it's shitty and our team does a lot of hard work so I do hate to see it copied. That said, we've seen plenty of unoriginal folks do similar stuff in the past, and they've all failed as they focus on us while we focus on customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You didn't come up with the idea of a heatmap. Their designs are different enough that I wouldn't consider it stealing. You're in the same space it looks like, of course there is going to be crossover.

<comment><USER5> Have a look at the non-heatmap pages. They seem to be a copy of each other down to the order of the various parameters; even the labels tend to be identical or slightly rephrased...

<comment><USER4> It's still different. This is a common layout for charted data. Likewise, Ford can't sue Mercedes for coming out with a 4 wheeled car; that's what makes the most sense.

There's different fonts, different colors, different spacing, some less important elements are in different places. Forget it, this is just a tweet to stir up discussion and generate some page hits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They both look like Bootstrap sites to me.

</comment><comment><USER7> Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2015, 10:24 a.m. My view of the point of this story: Copying a design is efficient business. Implementing someone else's idea instead of creating your own is lazy and lacks integrity. Profiting from someone else's work, without attribution or mutual agreement is stealing, is unethical and lacks integrity. Apologizing for acting wrongly is an act of integrity. So is ceasing one's unethical behavior.

The rules are: Take responsibility for your potential and for your actions. Don't be lazy. Don't steal. When you act wrongly, acknowledge it, stop it, fix it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would have reached out personally to the CEO, instead of publicly shaming.

<comment><USER9> Why is that better? (Not trying to pick a fight, just curious how this would lead to a better outcome.)

<comment><USER10> Well, look what happened. In public. Really doesn't make anyone look good.

<comment><USER11> Makes CBInsights look pretty good, actually.

<comment><USER12> I'll second that. It makes CB Insights look good because it now is well-known that a slightly more unscrupulous competitor stole the otherwise brilliant design of CB Insights because they were unable to come up with something they could call their own (or do better than CB Insights).

It's the lazy way. The beautiful thing about it? Those who copy (blatantly) are doomed to fail. In most cases, they will lack the understanding and foundation of how you arrived at the designs in the first place which certainly consisted of iteration and changes based on interactions with & feedback from customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A good design team would look at a competitor's site and say, "we can do better". A poor design team would look at a competitor's site and say, "we can copy that".

</comment><comment><USER14> Normally when you accuse people of plagiarism you present side by side screenshots. That allows rapid comparison.

Linking to a twitter stream is suboptimal. (That's true for any reason except directly linking to a specific comment that some person has made, but especially true here.)

<comment><USER15> Read the blog post again- there are side-by-side screenshots

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> shame

</comment><comment><USER17> Sounds like you might be their Xerox.

</comment><comment><USER18> Honestly, their site looks a lot better. Taking inspiration from your KPI charts and flow is completely normal, everyone looks at their established competition for inspiration.</comment>


Andreessen Horowitz Makes First Space Investment with Satellite Startup Astranis - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2018/03/01/andreessen-horowitz-makes-its-first-space-investment-with-satellite-startup-astranis/ <comment><USER2> > Another unique feature of the company's satellites doesn't come from their > hardware, but their software. Many communications satellites today employ > analog radio. But Astranis' satellites have software-defined radio.

That's interesting. I would have assumed analog radios in satellites would have been scrapped sometime in the 90's.</comment>


Do we need Control Groups (cgroups) for the Web? - <AUTHOR> https://www.igvita.com/2016/03/01/control-groups-cgroups-for-the-web/ <comment><USER2> Interesting but it is another technology increasing the complexity of building web sites, also to consider what happens with chains of dependencies and scripts loaded by things like require.js. I don't think it's required, browsers should just have an arbitrary limit of resources a single tab can use, useless the user promotes it somehow (like unity webapps) or apps running in an electron wrapper. I'm all for Google and Bing analyzing client side performance and penalizing in ranking those that are considered abusive but pushing the responsibility to all eyeballs doesn't seem like a good idea to me. This is Ilya Grigorik though so somewhat desired to retract my opinion.. wait.. click add comment</comment>


Ask HN: Do you work on improving your memory ? - <AUTHOR>

If I read an article on Harvard Business Review or if I read some books like Good to Great by Jim Collins and I go to some kind of networking events and talk to some CEOs and while I share my ideas and the next thing is that I can't even recall what I just read from those books/articles and I can't prove myself or defend my ideas to these people or while I'm in negotiations.<p>Anybody else had the problem when your talking to your colleagues or while in negotiations you can't recall the stuff you read and do you think how strong you memorize stuff might be single most predictor of success in your career ? <comment><USER2> I think it's far more important that you learn from the things you read and are able to apply those lessons in other contexts. As such, you might not even remember where you first read an idea or even that you read it at all!

I would be worried if you were regurgitating articles _at_ your collocutors. Memorising things rote won't help you to provide relevant insights.

As I understand it, the brain stores memories by the repeated use of synaptic pathways. So don't be afraid to re-read texts and find related material - preparing your argument/ reading-around the topic is vital for making your case. You'll find it easier to recall useful insights from what you've read if you can identify pattern (e.g. by considering how new ideas might work in other contexts - particularly ones you're working on. I've read (somewhere) that it's easier to make sense of quantitative conclusions if you've got a qualitative explanation (or story).

Finally, don't worry about not having author-date-publisher citations to hand (unless you're studying!) - if you've integrated what you've learned into a consistent world view then you will be able to defend/ explain your ideas yourself. In other words: present the idea first, worry about credibile references later.</comment>


Creator of pop-up ads apologizes for inventing 'internet's original sin' - <AUTHOR> https://www.rt.com/news/180740-online-ads-apology-zuckerman-essay/ <comment><USER2> My local cable provider (Verizon) displays pop-up ads while I'm trying to navigate the channel guide. Worse, the ads are modal -- you have to read and dismiss them before you can continue. One more reason to cut the cord.</comment>


Humanoid robots – in pictures - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/gallery/2015/jun/06/humanoid-robots-in-pictures

<comment><USER2> Dog-like, bug-like, snake-like. Not a lot of human-like really.</comment>


Ask HN: How is tracking done across devices? - <AUTHOR> I was watching a movie called Pad Man on Netflix App on my Amazon Stick. The movie was about sanitary napkins. When I opened a webpage (on procrastination which was on the top page of HN yesterday) on my iPhone, I was shown an ad about sanitary napkins.<p>I don't think it is a coincidence but I am keen to understand how such user tracking works. <comment><USER2> In general, every time you buy something or browse a site where you have logged in on multiple devices your user agent details are stored for each device (and generally sold). There is an inherent uniqueness to much of the UA details stored. That combined with your browsing habits allows companies to collect this data from multiple sources and then resell it as targeted ad marketing. So if you use multiple devices they can still track and target you as a person instead of a device. The advantage of this method and others like it, is there is no dependency on cookies or other things that can cause cross site issues. Content providers use this data to advertise you things which you might have an interest on based on content you have consumed, hence your sanitary napkins ad.

You can check out companies like Geocommerce, they do location based targeting, but also follow the user from device to device.

There are other methods as well, just giving you one data point. My knowledge comes from having done it, and yes I glossed over a lot of the details.

<comment><USER3> Some other methods to fingerprint a device:

TCP Headers SSL Cookies language headers fonts

Different browsers will render the same page in different ways which results in resources being loaded differently, you can detect this. They will also send different headers for different types of content, for example a picture could be byte served html generally isn't.

You can easily detect if its a mobile device and then ignore ip but instead track an ip range.

There are lots more ways to track a device online without cookies or IP, its fairly easy. The devices are often connected by sharing a login or an ip if both are on your wifi. Once the connection is made between devices its never forgotten.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I mentioned that in my essay/overview BTW.</comment>


Curses, Fooled Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/27/opinion/curses-fooled-again.html <comment><USER2> I feel cheated that this isn't about the terminal control library.

<comment><USER3> Then the title should've been "ncurses, fooled again", unless someone fooled you into using old curses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like this advertorial for Candid Camera, appearing in the New York Times, is a meta-prank on the reader.

Seems like the show relies on the kindness of strangers and that still exists, even in a smartphone world.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't get it. These "pranks" are all just slightly silly, but not completely absurd.

For those behind a paywall, this is about Candid Camera, and some newer material they're trying. Among which :

\- Postman telling people their mail will be delivered by drone (With a drone coming by dropping it off)

\- People getting told that they'll be charged $10 "in store fee" for not buying online

\- People being asked for 3 forms of photo ID to pay by credit card

\- hired a cop to enforce a "2 m.p.h. pedestrian speed limit."

The political ones are a bit sillier

> We showed New Yorkers petitions to recall state officials, but the names > were all fictitious. Most people supported the effort, among them a lawyer > who carefully explained that one should never sign anything without complete > knowledge of the facts, and then signed anyway.

>our actress posing as a candidate obtained dozens of campaign signatures without ever stating a position, a party or even her last name.

The last one shows an example of "real life" bikeshedding though:

> I told residents in Queens, N.Y., that they would now be required to > separate household trash into eight different color-coded bins. I can't > imagine someone being more passionate about any world controversy than the > gentleman who was incensed about a bin devoted to "poultry waste." "How," he > asked, "am I going to eat enough chicken in two weeks to fill that up?"

<comment><USER6> _I don 't get it. These "pranks" are all just slightly silly, but not completely absurd._

Yeah, I got that feeling too. It's not surprising that people are "taken in" when the pranks seem actually not that far off given the rate of technological progress. In a few years, chances are mail WILL be delivered by drones in some parts. Stores already effectively charge a premium compared to online purchasing. Credit cards are so insecure in the US that they ARE long due for an overhaul (e.g. getting the PIN system that's in place in the rest of the world). Two mph walking speed limit? Wouldn't be the most ridiculous law in a country that features "free speech zones" and cops that wait at pedestrian crossings to ticket people for jaywalking if they cross on a red light.

This is so mild, it's a bit as if you used a police car with sirens to get someone to stop on the motorway, and then told them "haha, I'm not real police".

I think those people's reactions are perfectly sane and reasonable. Kudos to the 80-year old dude who doesn't bat an eyelid when told yet another element of his life is going to be turned upside down by technology.

If the Candid Camera folks want to make an interesting show, they should perhaps consider doing things that are _actually_ outlandish/extremes. I'm not even sure what that would be in today's world, though - in a world of absurd government, extreme violence, rapid technological change and general craziness, anything goes, really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Those weren't very good pranks, IMO. They're all very similar to things that already exist.

Separating garbage into 8 categories? We already do 3 in real life. It's a matter of time before it's more.

A broken yogurt machine? It happens.

The political ones aren't even surprising. They could have put real names of city council members on the list, and I'm sure 90% or more of the participants wouldn't know if they were real or not.

<comment><USER8> The apartment building my mum lives in (in Sweden) already has six bins: paper, compostables, clear glass, coloured glass, metal tins, and remaining household trash.

Also, there are several things that can currently not be thrown away in the bins at all and needs to be driven to the recycling center (batteries, electronic items, large items, ...) so it would be easy to think of some more bins to add.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Skip the article. Three points seem most important:

> "I am Allen Funt's son!"

> A Candid Camera remake is coming soon. Watch it!

> The NYT can't find enough news, so it fills space with entertainment

<comment><USER10> This is an Op-Ed article, so it's not a replacement for news content. That said it does seem to be a few notches below the grey lady's usual standard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good commentary. I also see people walking their dogs while reading an article on their smartphone or listening to an audiobook and completely missing the point of taking the dog for a walk in the first place.

<comment><USER12> You mean getting the dog exercise?

<comment><USER11> No, I mean really smelling the dog poop. Everything else, in my opinion, takes away from the experience and is a distraction that needs to be cast aside.

<comment><USER13> The point of walking the dog is getting the dog exercise.

<comment><USER11> Not really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Perhaps in an effort to ensure success with their reboot of Candid Camera, it seems like they decided to go with pranks that are more plausible than were historically done. I think this'll end up being more sad than funny.

The Candid Camera episodes I remember watching often involved slapstick humor and ridiculous clown music. What music will they play during the scene where New Yorkers agree to recall imaginary state officials?

</comment><comment><USER15> Great I don't feel stupid laughing at Candid Camera because it's on New York Times!

</comment><comment><USER16> What a terrible article. Why even publish this NYT?

</comment><comment><USER17> sorry candid camera, /r/dashcams has you beat. you're about 20 years too late.

</comment><comment><USER18> cannot view without login.

<comment><USER19> Chrome extension which bypasses the paywall: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gorbachev/mfojdgde...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gorbachev/mfojdgdehneodbdffllmjmmklcojacoj?hl=en)</comment></comment>


Shadowsocks, the tool China's coders use to blast through the Great Firewall - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1072701/meet-shadowsocks-the-underground-tool-that-chinas-coders-use-to-blast-through-the-great-firewall/ <comment><USER2> I really think I would have to leave China if not for Shadowsocks. It is my only reliable tunnel to the outside internet. I'd love to meet Clowwindy one day and hear about his experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have been im China recently and it is still quite easy to access the unblocked internet. the lazy solution is to subscribe to one of the many VPN solutions available. I subscribed to ExpressVPN and could use it all the time with fullspeed on my phone and my girlfriends phone. They also have server close to China so the delay is human. It wasn't so easy on my Chromebook. First I tried to tunnel my traffic through SSH to my german linode host but got blocked down to near zero bandwith. After a little bit of searching I found shadowsocks and set it up on my chromebook and linode. It worked flawlessly. After that I downloaded the shadowsocks android app (via VPN) and used it from the on. Interestingly shadowsocks plus a cheap node is actually cheaper than a VPN subscription. Just don't forget to use a node close to your location.

</comment><comment><USER4> I thought plain Shadowsocks is not enough to get through the GFW so Shadowsocks R came to be supporting more obfuscation features. Am I wrong? It seems like the Shadowsocks R community is pretty much gone as about a month ago the identity of the main Dev leaked. Does someone know if development is still going on somewhere? The Shadowsocks (R) setup is mainly complicated as many resources are only available in Chinese.

<comment><USER2> I'm using plain Shadowsocks with no issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How is this any different from setting up a VPN? The user still needs technical knowledge to setup a server outside the GFW.</comment>


Oakland Man Charged with Arson After Throwing Molotov Cocktails at Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Molotov-Cocktail-Beer-Oakland-Man-Charged-With-Arson-After-Fire-at-Google-in-Mountain-View-385569611.html <comment><USER2> >In an interview with police and prosecutors last week, Diaz said he "felt Google was watching him and it made him upset."

Well, they are.</comment>


PSA: You an view newest comments on HN. Help moderate them - <AUTHOR> https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments

<comment><USER2> It's probably more valuable to look at newly-posted articles than it is to look at newly-posted comments because:

\- There's no limit of space for comments, but the number of slots on the front page is limited to only 30. So flagging off-topic and repetitive postings to keep them from hitting the front page is probably more useful.

\- Interesting articles will never see the light of day unless somebody notices them on the "new" page and upvotes them.

Comments, on the other hand, will be seen by whoever reads the articles where the comments have been made. And if nobody ever reads the article, a bad comment there won't make any difference.</comment>


Spotify trying to lock-in users just after IPO (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://freeyourmusic.com/blog/spotify-trying-to-lockin-users/ <comment><USER2> Spotify was salty after Apple was mean to them; this is a good example of the fact that they aren't concerned about "fairness" as much about their own business. Users that have poured time into Spotify playlists aren't going to transfer if they can't move them. Spotify didn't even have to develop something here, they blocked the work of someone who did it for them. This isn't fair. Which is fine, but it is then okay for Apple to be "unfair" about their business too.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly why I posted this with title "Developers to Spotify: Stop Locking-In Users, Time to Play Fair" first.

Spotify is being hypocritical af :(.

Our users experience degradated a lot and every few weeks our hacks stop working and we need to update user agents we use to simulate browser. Spotify is actively trying to bring us down.

<comment><USER3> So you're just looking after your own interests while calling Spotify hypocritical for doing the same?

We're all hypocrites, and we're all looking after our own interests...

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course I am looking after my own interests. I am human, that's how we evolved, that's how we made it to the moon.

How am I hypocritical? I am just in favour of not locking in users, and we do not lock in users.

Spotify wants Apple to not change TOS to their favour while doing exactly the same.

<comment><USER4> >Of course I am looking after my own interests. I am human, that's how we evolved, that's how we made it to the moon.

So why the surprise that Spotify is doing the same? Yes, it's hypocritical for them to say "Apple locking in users is unfair" then do the same in a situation that benefits them. But to your point, it is human to look out for one's own interests and Spotify is a group of humans doing just that. That doesn't make it right, but would you behave differently in their situation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't even recall the number of "music curation" and "share your playlist" type services I used in the '00s, and how they all folded.

For that reason, I've never bothered to make Spotify playlists, because I realized I might be locking myself in to begin with. The current generation of streaming users are now discovering something similar to what I did back then.

I do have some playlists on Youtube (whose selection is far bigger when you consider bootlegs, B-sides, unreleased tracks, demos etc), but I take a screenshot of it every now and then so I'll have a copy.

I nearly always own a digital copy of what I listen to, so there's really no reason to store your playlists on Spotify at all.

<comment><USER6> It's possible to take a full page screenshot of any of your playlists or saved songs in the Spotify web player. That would probably be the easiest way to save them, but not the most usable. For a little more effort a scraper could be written that would generate simple text file with artist - album - song.

<comment><USER5> I have a "full page screenshot" Chrome extension that does this. YT is annoying though because they lazyload scrolling content, so a list of say, a 100 items would be tough to export. My playlists are around 15-20 songs each, so it's not too bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Should be marked (2018)

It would be awesome if music licenses were portable. Holding collections hostage reminds me of how carriers made it difficult or impossible to keep your phone number when moving between them.

<comment><USER8> They are portable if you don't buy through those channels.

<comment><USER7> I acknowledge this point, though there are efforts to reduce the value of non- subscription digital licensing. For example, exclusive or advanced content only available to streaming subscribers.

While brand new exclusive content is hard to imagine being portable (since it is often locked to a particular service) it seems to me that generic user music collections should be made portable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I built a tool for exporting your Spotify playlists and library to CSV spreadsheets: [http://www.streamexport.com/](http://www.streamexport.com/)

It doesn't 'move' your playlists to other services but it gives you a record of all of your playlists that you can control and store locally.

</comment><comment><USER10> Now you just need a tool that OCR's screenshotted playlists and imports them... at which point Spotify will start using a less legible font... the end State will be that Spotify's main font will be "Captcha"

<comment><USER11> For anyone wondering "would that actually work" there are helper tools for PoGo that actually work like this:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cjin.pokeg...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cjin.pokegenie.standard&hl=en_US)

<comment><USER12> Yup, even an open source one: [https://github.com/farkam135/GoIV](https://github.com/farkam135/GoIV)

Unfortunately it's not as good as Calcy IV. There are also iOS apps, but they require manual screenshotting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Stamp is in violation of Spotify's Developer Terms, which prohibit > developers from integrating Spotify Content (including metadata) with third- > party services

So ... It's forbidden to use Spotify's API?

I currently stay with Spotify because of its decently good UX (despite constant, nonsensical A/B testing) and because I had the impression they were behaving well. This perception is fragile.

I'm not sure making your service less attractive to users will increase your stock price either.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's was always ok to use their SDK and make money as long as you did not make money from music listening.

We make money from user playlists data (which we believe should belong to user) and I don't treat our usecase as integrating with others, as we do it in 3 steps: download from Spotify, then import to somewhere else.

It was all fine for 2 year, but after IPO they changed their TOS for Developers.

There was either making our service less attractive or removing Spotify all together, so we had no choice. Don't really care about stock price ;), just want to keep the project going and allow others to be able to migrate between different services.

I like that with email on your own domain you can easily switch providers (which I recently did with google to protonmail). But there are many other solutions which are not so easy to switch which halts competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amazing! If you want others to play fair, you should too

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the support ! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The worst aspect of this post that it lacks a call-to-action. Without that, it didn't have a chance to make an impact.

The second-worst aspect of this post is that it proves Spotify's point. Not only does the author attack and threaten Spotify from start to finish, but they reinforce that the primary use case is to leave Spotify for competitive services.

<comment><AUTHOR> Replace Spotify with Apple Music in the article. Same case. If Spotify wants others to play fair, it should start playing fair as well.

<comment><USER16> Not sure that is the case as your playlists are accessible from AppleScript. Here's their titles, you can further iterate and get the info about the tracks in the playlists.

        tell application "iTunes"
          repeat with p in playlists
            log name of p as string
          end repeat
        end tell

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny you mention AppleScript, because before there was Apple Music API, we were using it and pure applescript was exactly how we have started.

[https://www.producthunt.com/posts/stamp-2](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/stamp-2)

Bit of a history now, but it was just an applescript that used CSV to click through iTunes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Google Play Music and Apple Music also do this. I don't think I'm able to move any of my playlists off their services.

<comment><AUTHOR> We (FreeYourMusic.com) support both Apple Music and Google Music, so you can easily migrate ;)

Apple Music has official SDK for both web and mobile. (even on Android)

Google Play Music is same case now as Spotify. We mimic their web API, but it's far from perfect as you need to use "app password" for login.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, you can always issue a GDPR request for all your data. They're obliged to comply, aren't they?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but the GDPR doesnt say "make it easy so apps like STAMP can exist". Spotify could create export process that takes 3 days, you get zip file of JSON with format changing every day, and it would still be GDPR compliant.

<comment><USER19> Arguably it does:

> The data subject shall have the right to receive the personal data > concerning him or her, which he or she has provided to a controller, in a > structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to > transmit those data to another controller without hindrance from the > controller to which the personal data have been provided

> In exercising his or her right to data portability pursuant to paragraph 1, > the data subject shall have the right to have the personal data transmitted > directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible.

Whether that will be enforced in any meaningfully useful way is debatable, but the format changing every day would seem to break the spirit at least.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, good to know!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Select all songs in the playlist

> drag into textedit or equivalent

Tada

<comment><USER21> On Mac OS this just gives me a list of open.spotify.com links.

Not very useful for portability unless you plan on scraping the metadata from each URL.

<comment><USER20> True, but it is the playlist in Song - Artist format. I don't think Spotify has any obligation to provide interoperability with other platforms, but getting the basic song information out seems pretty straight forward. My off handed solution wouldn't work for mobile though so don't know if there's an equivalent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Who cares if you can't export your playlists. You probably used their proprietary recommendation systems to generate them anyways. And its not like I can't write down all of my playlists and recreate them elsewhere. Why should Spotify go out of their way to make it easier for me to switch off of their platform. I refused to get fired up over this non-issue.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, the context for this is that spotify recently launched a website & EU legal complaint against apple for not opening up its platform sufficiently to competitors (or not sufficiently prioritizing feature work desired by competitors).

I assume OP found spotify's actions hypocritical, which is why they posted this.

Then the question is whether we should see spotify's 'time to play fair' website as a true statement of principle, or a cynical attempt to sway public opinion against actions that harm it as a business, but that it would be more than happy to engage in itself if it were in apple's position.

<comment><USER24> Making it so your data structures in a Saas platform can't instantly be ported to a competitor is standard and a no-brainer business practice in my opinion.

Spotify's complaint against Apple is that they're abusing the App Store platform to an anticompetitive end because non-Apple apps have disadvantages on the platform that Apple's competing apps don't.

I think this owning-the-platform-while-also-selling-on-it situation we see Apple, Amazon, and others in is something that we will see formal regulations appear on in the coming decade.

<comment><USER23> So would it be similar if Spotify created some of the media that it put on its own platform?

For example if it just bought two podcast companies?

<comment><USER24> I would assume there would not be the same application of antitrust law, if any (IANAL) because Spotify isn't a marketplace that sells the podcasts.

That situation would be more comparable to Netflix since you're just paying a bundled subscription and you're getting 3rd-party work as well as Netflix originals. While openness would be awesome to have, they don't really have any obligation to provide it.

Of course it's not exactly like Netflix since you can self-publish onto Spotify so there's wrinkles. But my point is that it's a lot different than operating a buying/selling marketplace.

<comment><USER23> Because spotify owns the podcast companies, and podcasts have paid ads, spotify directly benefits if they are played more often. That is not the case with netflix.

But they are doing some things the same as netflix, in that they are also creating exclusive podcasts to drive traffic to their platform.

<comment><USER13> > That is not the case with netflix

It is. They do a lot of product placement ([https://www.whats-on- netflix.com/news/is-product-placement-g...](https://www.whats-on- netflix.com/news/is-product-placement-going-to-become-the-norm-in-netflix- originals/)).

They also don't have to pay others for views, though I expect that to be less of a motivation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>