UK surveillance "worse than 1984" says new UN privacy chief - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/08/uk-surveillance-worse-than-1984-says-new-un-privacy-chief/ <comment><USER2> Seriously, I read several posts here that I'm absolutely sure where written by NSA/GCHQ agents working very comfy to try and manipulate technical opinion. Anyone with a brain and enough technical knowledge (which can be assumed of HN readers) knows the situation is much worse than 1984, beyond Orwellian, absurd, ridiculous, disgusting.

If you where a Secret Agency, and you knew the top 100 news/forums for opinionated technical people, would you not set a division of monkeys to try and confuse people? They win if some people even "doubt" or "question"... we must all be 100% sure of what is happening, 24h a day, ready to feel threatened and abused by cameras, abusive permissions, tracking devices, dragnets. We must feel the disgust 24h a day.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I definitely get this vibe quite strongly too. We know they're out there, if not here. HN readers understand the scope of the dragnet and the systematic analysis of content and metadata. In part, this is why I am patrolling around to offer good objections to the idiots. I am highly suspicious of very-upvoted yet very dumb/uneducated/intentionally misleading comments in this thread, also.

The objections are too canned/simple/easy to shoot down, and they rely on emotion rather than facts.

The tech crowd's acquiescence to the surveillance state is absolutely necessary for it to function as designed.

<comment><USER2> "The tech crowd's acquiescence to the surveillance state is absolutely necessary for it to function as designed. "

Well said!

Since we have the toolset to understand what is happening, we must be the main source of outrage. When we come online and do our stuff, we represent our families, our friends, or coworkers. Everyone around us that do not have the same tools to understand/interpret the abuses and the propaganda.

We like to think that everyone should understand what is going on, but this is impossible in a short/medium or even long term. People use the Internet like they use the building they live, or the house. They haven't built it and they don't understand, and don't need to understand how it was built or its internals. They are the users. They presume the architects/engineers involved where responsible, good people, that did a good job and wanted for them, future residents, to have a nice home.

If you are an engineer building a Shopping Center, and you get to know how the company you work for is abusive towards its employees or how they are overpricing resources in a public contract or manipulating prices, or doing a dirty job using an unsafe structure or bad materials, it is you who should act. You can't expect someone else or everyone to act, to understand what you understand because you are in a position to understand. If you do not act, if you do not take a position, if you do not represent the ones that are unaware, you become the same as them.

The only way we can make out of this bizarre situation is if everyone of us takes his role in society, whatever society, with his/her heart. Do it with love towards your neighbour. There is no other way. In tech, we are often quite cold because we deal with machines, but we are still flesh and bone behind screens, and our love should be directed to protecting the users.

<comment><USER4> It would sure help if we didn't have to act alone. If we were part of some larger organization (Engineers' Guild or some such) that would protect members with money or legal aid, when they took a moral stand. Even advise about the right path.

Loving your neighbor is good; but income for my family will probably take precedence most of the time.

<comment><USER3> So we need a union? I agree.

How about something along the lines of the Guild of Engineers and Scientists? A broader base of smart people would be helpful, but I'm not sure if it'd dilute the effectiveness of speaking out.

<comment><USER5> Unions have become antiquated and corrupt..

A Guild/Collective for Tech Engineers, Scientists

      • Transparent decision making + expenditures (opt in/out services)
      • Challenges and certifications for members
      • Recruiter / job match type service

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All these words and nobody is talking about Tempora[0]?

I mean, tempora is pretty bad, rank and file stronger than the collection obtained by NSA, metadata is stored, content is stored, there are examples of "owning" certificate authorities and even examples of downgrading SSL/TLS to not include perfect forward secret ciphers.

And this is done for any content that passes UK borders. :|

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora)

<comment><USER7> The whole reason the privacy debate hasn't reached critical mass amongst the general population is because there is no actual impact. It's entire theoretical for almost everyone. 99.99 of people aren't being actually spied on. Despite the fact that the western governments can spy on everything you do. They just don't. They can't spy on all of us.

Sure they can get my info. Or anyone's info. And they could totally reconstruct my life. But they only have the resources of to do this to maybe a couple thousand people. Out of a billion westeRners.

Sure my emails are probably buffered for a little while. But as long as I don't ride a jet into the Sears tower nobody will actually read them.

The people asked themselves: if a tree fell in the woods and nobody heard it, did it make a sound. And our answer is no it didn't.

The fact is the biggest intrusion in our lives is Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. Google literally exists to spy on you. It's a many many billion dollar industry.

The nsa could potentially read my email or track my location. But Google definitely already does.

<comment><USER8> "The nsa could potentially read my email or track my location. But Google definitely already does."

From the leaks we know that they both do the same thing, which is to use their computer resources to sift through all emails they get their hands on, build profiles of people and connect them with each other. Neither could afford to have humans reading all the data coming at them.

The difference is that Google uses their conclusions to show you the most profitable ads, while the NSA keeps their conclusions to themselves until the day of your potential arrest.

Whether people consider the creation of such a profile to be spying is up to them, but my personal suspicion is that people would strongly object if they understood what was being done with their data.

<comment><USER7> The NSA doesn't get my email unless it gets a FISA warrant since I'm in the USA. Court records show they get about 3000 warrants a year. I'm pretty confident I'm not one of those.

The problem with google though, is that anything Google knows about me can be sought by the NSA with just one of those FISA warrants.

Google and Facebook are essentially NSA Reserve Branch.

The NSA also isn't charged with making criminal cases. There is a conspiracy theory about "parallel construction" but too much crime is totally unsolved for the NSA to be secretly feeding law enforcement data on a large scale.

I also wouldn't be so sure that Google or Facebook won't fuck with your life. Plenty of American companies have done extraordinarily evil things before. Then again so has the government.

<comment><USER3> Did you really just call parallel construction a conspiracy theory? Hell no it isn't, and you are being dishonest or ignorant by claiming it's not well founded.

Let's quote Wikipedia:

"In August 2013, a report by Reuters revealed that the Special Operations Division (SOD) of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration advises DEA agents to practice parallel construction when creating criminal cases against Americans that are actually based on NSA warrantless surveillance. The use of illegally obtained evidence is generally inadmissible under the Fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine.

Two senior DEA officials explained that the reason parallel construction is used is to protect sources (such as undercover agents or informants) or methods in an investigation. One DEA official had told Reuters: "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day. It's decades old, a bedrock concept.""

That's a formal government advisory to its agents that they should cover up the way that they actually encountered evidence. And that is total bullshit because it completely invalidates your right to a fair trial, among other rights. This isn't the NSA, solving crimes, it's the government law enforcement agencies querying the NSA database in order to solve cases they've already opened.

[0]:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> People here are missing the point, where it's "less", "more" or "just the same" level of surveillance as 1984 is kind of besides the point.

The point is he's asking for a Geneva convention for the Internet, and I think that would be a good thing to have, even if some abuses will exist, at least we'll have a _framework_ other than the current "whatever the spy agencies can come up with in terms of surveillance is a-okay".

<comment><USER10> Correct. In the same way that government-organized torture in Singapore wouldn't be published in La Haye because they've never signed any international treaty about it, citizen spying is legal in the Western world because there is no global treaty about it.

You're right that we need a framework, like a Geneva convention for the Internet. However, I'm afraid that the willfulness and the balance of powers isn't the same as for the Geneva convention itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >So the situation in some cases is far worse already."

So, that's the thing, in some ways it's worse. It has more detail, it's voluntary and less intrusive. The one thing which is quite different is it's not a system to control people, by control I mean controlling as in Orwell's vision.

And, for the most part, with few sheepish objections, people are willing to trade in their privacy in exchange for services rendered. People in practice value free resources and services over privacy, else we would have seen a system of micropaymets or economic alternative take root but it has not.

At some point people may change their minds and may want to hold on to their privacy and begin paying for services, maybe, but for most people that is not the case at this time.

<comment><USER12> Most of the people I know do not understand/realize the extent to which they are spied on. If GCHQ was opening their paper mail every day and keeping a copy of all their correspondance and they knew it, they would start a revolution.

<comment><USER13> They just don't care. Even when Cameron said: "In our country, do we want to allow a means of communication between people which […] we cannot read?" nobody cared. Maybe if they start implanting transponders into peoples heads there would be a small uproar, but forget a revolution in the UK against surveillance, this will never happen.

<comment><USER14> That they "just don't care" is not in my experience true. When it is explained most people I've spoken do care. However, then they ask "and what can we do about it?" and the answer is either "change everything about how you do things" or "not much"... And then they don't care enough to go beyond this stage or they are just confused and scared. Either way back to facebook the next day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Disclaimer: I am one of the most paranoid people I know and I know some pretty radical left-wing hippies.

I never understood why people hate CCTV cameras - they are in public places. Places where anyone can film you at any time. Public places are not private. Online surveillance has better arguments against it but 90% of Internet surveillance is by permission (possibly given by people who are not fully aware they are giving it). It is not as bad as this hyperbole makes it out to be.

But if articles like this is what it will take to finally get mesh network projects off the ground then I'm happy to be outraged.

<comment><USER16> I don't have any citations to back this up, but I had an interesting discussion with someone from one of the defense research labs in the UK regarding the accessibility of private CCTV cameras to the security services (I collaborate with them as part of my work). He said that what people don't realise is that in fact a very significant proportion of the private CCTV cameras in the UK have their management outsourced to a few large private sector companies. Gaining access to their systems is obviously a much easier proposition than having to negotiate with the actual owners of the properties. Whether this happens already I don't know, but I think it's a relatively plausible way for a government to build up a worrying monitoring capability.

<comment><USER17> You can rest assured that the cameras are being used by the government. All over the West, they're clearly showing us they don't want us to have any privacy.

As for the article, it is, of course, _some_ sort of propaganda. I guess they're just acclimating us to being aware that we're monitored all the time, everywhere.

That way we're easier to lead down the slippery slope all the way to where ever we're headed. But it's not good.

People need to wake up and start seeing that governments are _obviously_ not working towards _our_ interests. It's amazing how the masses still don't see it.

Do we _want_ surveillance? No. Are we going to be surveilled anyway? Yes, of course. It's not about what _we_ want - it's about what _our rulers_ want.

<comment><USER3> Yes, the propaganda is quite thick on this topic.

They don't want us to have privacy because (duh) knowledge is power, and they want even more power. Maligning opting out is covered safely by the "if you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide" cliche (which is never challenged in the public channels) and allegations of surveillance are still shut down by the "conspiracy theory" smear.

They're ready for widespread rebellion and attacks on government installations. Many of the people-tracking systems that they have in place were tested against guerrilla IED networks in Iraq, and they've armed every government agency to the teeth-- even the US Department of Education has a SWAT team [0].

[0]: [http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2011/06/beware-t...](http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2011/06/beware- the-us-education-department-swat-team)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In '1984' every room of every house and apartment was monitored, if this is currently not the case in the UK, the quote is hyperbole.

<comment><USER19> Orwell was right about many things, perhaps not the letter of tech details. Some are far worse.

He was right about the military industrial complex, about being at constant war with somebody for a manufactured purpose, about shifting alliances and villainization of the new enemies. He was especially right about a government using ubiquitous information about its populace to control it, and the crime of speaking out against the government.

And you are wrong about the every room thing: it's not just TV's in every room but everywhere.Your cellphone follows you along with its mic, gps, camera, wifi, BT, NFC, UTDOA, GPS, and CGI. If you leave that behind, then face trackers, license plate readers, UAVs, RFID tags, ezpass, TPMs, etc etc follow you everywhere you go.

He especially did not see the compute power of correlating thousands of inputs on each individual.

<comment><USER20> > He was especially right about ...the crime of speaking out against the > government.

You lost me here. In 1984, the populace was afraid to speak out against the government, even in private to close acquaintances. I don't believe this is the case at all in our society -- both individuals and the media seem very willing and able to criticize the government freely.

<comment><USER19> Instead of thanking whistleblowers for their bug reports and fixing the problem, the current administration is pursuing them with every means at their disposal.

Edit - things are not looking great for journalists either.

<comment><USER21> Whistleblowing, like all things must be done in a correct and legal way. Randomly spreading FUD because some large institution functions in ways you don't fully understand is not going to help as much as it will force them to spend money on damage control because you caused them damage. It's a vicious cycle and neither affected party is good when both are doing unlwaful things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Whereas today there are many parts of the English countryside where there > are more cameras than George Orwell could ever have imagined.

As a regular visitor to the English countryside, where are these rural cameras ?

<comment><USER23> Hanging round the necks or sitting in the pockets of tourists, most probably.

Seriously, most CCTV cameras are attached to buildings. If there are people genuinely expecting privacy standing outside because they can't see anyone inside the building observing them, then I have an invisibility cloak to sell them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is the UN chief worried that hes being surveilled by every company and government? It's always ok when it's happening to everone else but when it hurts those in power then things change.

</comment><comment><USER25> Not sure what the UN or any organization would be able to accomplish in an ecosystem of organizations and improving tech.

The genie is out of the bottle. Welcome to the big data revolution.

[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169)

</comment><comment><USER26> A lot of CCTV cameras in the UK are privately owned, not state owned. I would guess the majority are actually.

<comment><USER27> But they would happily, or at least with a warrant, give the recordings to the government should they ask for them.

<comment><USER26> But that is still far away from the '84 doctrine of "watching everyone all the time".

<comment><USER28> You don't need a video link to be meaningfully watching someone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Sorry this guy sounds like a minor career technocrat angling for a budget increase and pandering to the crowd.

Possibly pointing a finger at the Euro states that still have mandatory ID cards and allow local government to run their own secret police as well as the main federal ones - might be more useful.

<comment><USER30> Relevant link: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_identity_cards_in_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_identity_cards_in_the_European_Economic_Area#Overview_of_national_identity_cards)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Christopher Hitchens has an amazing book called "Why Orwell Matters" and I strongly advise reading it. He also does a takedown of Kissinger in "The Trial of Henry Kissinger".

</comment><comment><USER32> UN privacy chief "sensationally cites 1984" says commenter on Hacker News.

<comment><USER29> All he needed was a reference to Gun Control, Hitler and Bob Heinlein and he would have a full house :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Enough with the hyperbole.

The fact that you can criticize the government without being sent to minilove for crimethink is proof enough that things aren't "worse than 1984".

<comment><USER34> _Surveillance_ is worse. In 1984 there was one camera and one microphone per room. Now we carry multiple cameras and microphones and tracking devices everywhere we go. In 1984 the party had to break into an apartment to read a person's journal. Now our most private thoughts are stored in text messages, private Facebook posts, and Evernote, within easy and undetectable reach of governments. Behavioral analysis can tell surveillance operators things about us that we don't even know about ourselves. Every person we talk to on the phone, every page we like, every link we share on our blogs can be wired together into a graph of our identity, ideas, and social networks (see software like Palantir).

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Perhaps the UN privacy chief should actually read 1984, then he would realise how silly he sounds.

<comment><USER3> It's perfectly reasonable: in 1984 they didn't have cell phones or internet histories.

No chances for Big Brother to snoop on what kind of information you're seeking or what kinds of comments you'll make when you think you are anonymous. No physical tracking device on people at all times. No network construction of who each individual talks to and when; no harvesting of metadata.

1984 had a bunch of CCTVs without enough people to monitor all of them, no recording capacity, and an extreme political indoctrination regime to help make up the difference by having informants. Ingsoc is a child's view of dystopia, now-- we have far surpassed it.

<comment><USER36> Do you _really_ believe you are in a dystopian world surpassing 1984?

<comment><USER37> I think he means we have the capabilities to be in a world surpassing 1984.

<comment><USER36> Doesn't mean much if the capabilities aren't being exploited. 1984 wasn't a book about technology. It did feature mass surveillance exceeding anything we have today, even if described in 1940s state of art terms.

<comment><USER3> The actual surveillance of 1984 was facile compared to today; today we are infinitely more surveilled than was described in the book. We carry cell phones which are fountains of data regarding our communications and movement, and we use the internet, which is a very large window into the content and often intent of our minds, not to mention ANOTHER fountain of information about our location and communications. On top of that, there are probably more CCTV cameras, dashcams, airborne cameras (with ARGOS), and body cameras today. Hell, they even have microphones and cameras in public buses / bus stops / metro trains.

These cameras are all infinitely more utile than in 1984 once they are linked to facial recognition and gait recognition technology. In 1984, you could be an unnoticed face in a crowd if you weren't under investigation-- not so in our reality. You step outside, and the fact that you did so is tied to your identity and dossier and noted for later.

Like I said before, Ingsoc of 1984 was a primitive surveillance society which still relied on humans to manually collect data on each other's conversations and movement patterns. It just doesn't scale as cleanly as an automatic computer system does. There wasn't any ability to create dossiers on 100% of people passively, nor was there any ability to sort people based off of various patterns, nor was there any ability to build sentiment maps, etc.

As far as exploitation goes, I'm not going to say that our society is blatantly coercive using surveillance in the way that Ingsoc was. Wild abuses of the surveillance apparatus is utterly undeniable, however. Consider that whistleblower Russ Tice has said that Obama was being surveilled before his presidential term. Consider the terms "LOVEINT/SEXINT" and the JTRIG group. These are serious, democracy-eradicating abuses whose purpose is blackmail, not finding terrorists. I will also say that the current trend of politicians trying to outlaw cryptography and the sentiment there there should be nothing beyond the government's reach is taking us even further into totalitarian territory.

Then there's the whole "we never voted or asked for this and now it won't go away" thing. As far as I can tell, the government doesn't have the consent of the governed to pursue these programs.

<comment><USER38> > We carry cell phones which are fountains of data

But only because we choose to. We don't have to.

<comment><USER39> There is a perfectly plausible way to implement all the things we want, without all the surveillance. The surveillance is not necessary, and by and large isn't even incidental, to the good parts we want.

And even if you forgo your own personal spy device, all of the other mobile, stationary, and airborne devices will make up for the hole, mostly. Choice doesn't really come into it.

<comment><USER36> My mom still says "not over the phone" when discussing any sensitive subject, in 2015. She learned this trait from my grandmother. Now grandma wasn't an anti-communist or dissident: she was a Party member and a WW2 vet. She was for world peace and for victory of Communism worldwide.

This was just basic communication hygiene routine, one of the many, you had to do in USSR to stay alive and well. People doing it didn't even think it was wrong, it was as natural as washing your hands after taking a dump.

You guys thinking that the West outdid 1984 just because there are DPI switches around are making me cringe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Fuck off with hyperbolic mouth-frothing; in the novel _1984_ , the government cameras were _in your house_.

Even China and the UK haven't done that yet, nor are they close to it.

<comment><USER41> Oh, really?

[http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/462230/Edward-Snowden- re...](http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/462230/Edward-Snowden-revelations- GCHQ-harvested-webcam-pics-including-sexual-material)

<comment><USER40> Yes, really. That the government is hacking private webcams en masse is a flagrant criminal act. The collusion of purported democratic governments to do this kind of thing is a threat to the rule of law itself.

It's a very serious problem, and absurd, over-the-top exaggeration doesn't help.

Like when people say, "Working at McDonald's is slavery!" No, it isn't. Actual slavery is a whole different level of badness. Obviously.

And along those same lines, odious though it is, government spies hacking your webcam to see your dick pics is not as bad as the government _installing mandatory government cameras inside the homes of all citizens_. Obviously.

So I don't think Cannataci is helping with this kind of hyperbolic statement. It could reasonably be argued that government surveillance in the UK and the US today is worse than it was in East Germany and the USSR -- and that's very alarming. The notion it's as bad as the fictional dystopia of _1984_ is absurd and unhelpful.</comment></comment></comment>


Write freely – tools for anonymous publishing - <AUTHOR> https://writefree.ly/ <comment><AUTHOR> All these tools are basically improved pastebins, or a "lighter Medium". But it's nice having choice with all these new ones popping up.</comment>


What Blackberry Is For Outlook/Exchange, Android Is For Google Apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/01/what-blackberry-is-for-outlookexchange-android-is-for-google-apps.html <comment><USER2> _IF_ you install the expensive blackberry integration stuff, no? Our company uses exchange but won't install that after market blackberry server something- or-other. As a result, my Droid, with native exchange sync, gets MUCH better service than my coworkers with the blackberries.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a way to read email from a different service, using an android phone? Because I am thinking of getting a droid, but I would rather not give google access to all my mail.

<comment><USER4> Yes, it supports other standard protocols. POP, IMAP.

<comment><USER5> It supports some non-standard too, e.g. ActiveSync.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What Blackberry is to Exchange: a device that doesn't sync calendar and contacts until you plug it into your desktop computer using unreliable client software. A device which syncs email, if you give your windows domain username and password to the cellular phone company so they can check using Exchange Web Services and proxy the email on to the blackberry.

What _he_ describes is Blackberry + blackberry enterprise server + Exchange. Which is a bit silly these days, since there are phones which speak Activesync over the air directly to Exchange, including iPhones, Nokias and Windows Mobiles, and that can include calendars and contacts.

Since Google's Phone does not require you to give your Google password to a third party network company so they can proxy a subset of the information to you, nor does it require you to buy and locally install server software to proxy between Google App Store and your phone, the comparison isn't very good.

> But I just could not get Outlook or any other Exchange client to scale to > the size of mailbox I operate

Cue: Me, the grumpy IT guy saying "well operate a smaller mailbox then! Are you going for an award for most misused text messaging system in history? Are you that desperate to have weeks and weeks of archives at your fingertips yet also too stubborn to get a proper archiving solution?"</comment>


The future is e-books - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2013/01/the-future-is-e-books/ <comment><USER2> I disagree with his point on the Bible remaining in physical form. There are huge advantages to being able to use hyperlinked footnotes to read more of the context of the prose "in-line". In many Catholic study versions, you can find almost half the page devoted to footnotes. It's a cluttered mess that we put up with when there is no alternative, but is much more elegant in electronic form. I also tend to skip around and read related passages as well which is easier and more efficient electronically.

</comment><comment><USER3> Still amazes that this is still an open question and is argued upon. May be you can argue when you will have ubiquitous e-books.</comment>


Infinite Multiplayer Minesweeper - <AUTHOR> http://sweeper.unobtanium.de <comment><USER4> I visit HN for experiments like this. Love it.

The aliasing or whatever on the gridlines is causing that moire effect optical illusion for me and making it hard to enjoy looking for more than a few minutes.

<comment><USER5> Good point. I'll fix that. Do you mind telling me your screen resolution? I think this problem may be more pronounced on relatively low-res screens.

<comment><USER4> When I get home I'll give you a dump of info. It's a 4k screen with something like 150% UI scaling. Windows. Chrome. I'll test it in Ubuntu and on my other pc.

Something to be aware of is to use integer math where possible when dealing with canvas coordinates and drawing. I found I ran into similar issues when I allowed fractions to get into my system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems it was hugged!

Nice game, was able to play it for a bit, got 8 right tops.

It seems like the density of bombs is much larger than a regular minesweeper? Or I've just been playing on easy mode in other times...

<comment><USER7> Not working for me either right now. There was a game like this before, something like minefield.net, but it eventually disappeared. Played it every now and then with a couple colleagues during lunch break.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Needs a different size grid for mobile so you don't fat finger mines, otherwise pretty cool.

Do not trust other people's flags though as they can be wrong - <USER3> intentionally.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, adjustable viewport size is on my TODO list.

> Do not trust other people's flags though as they can be wrong - <USER3> > intentionally.

Yes, this is intentional. I want to see how people start collaborating across very limited channels. Or how they start playing against each other :)

<comment><USER8> Great work, and the adversarial aspect is an interesting twist.

One quick suggestion on the scoring.

Currently scoring favours quantity over quality so the best strategy is to just find the big empty areas rather than thoroughly clearing around bombs. If the score also factored in the adjacent bomb count for each revealed position it would make that a more viable strategy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice but:

1\. Do not debug in production (console.log ...)

2\. Secure the session (do not display the session ID in high-scores)

3\. This is not infinite (in64 * in64) square + weird border :)

4\. Balance the score for big discovered area

5\. For the new players start the position on an playable area

6\. Limit the total of high-scores returned by the ws

7\. Limit the ws data as much as possible

...

Thanks and sorry :)

<comment><USER5> 1, 2, 6, 7: All good points, I've fixed those.

3: 64 bits are close enough to infinity :)

4: Good idea. Maybe something like a logarithmic curve on the number of discovered fields would be good.

5: Also a good point. I'll try to build that

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 502 bad gateway

<comment><USER11> Probably someone found a mine already.

<comment><USER5> In a way, yes. It's fixed now.

<comment><USER12> 504 again. It sounds pretty cool, though!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Very Good Word Count Tool - <AUTHOR> http://wordcounttools.com

<comment><USER2> Your tool is awesome, bookmarked. I am just wondering. Your tool has a great feature: it tells you how easy the text is to understand.

You need to be a college grad to understand: "The best word count & character count tool online. This word counter & character counter tool is the web version of the popular Firefox add-on and Chrome extension that provide an extensive report about the number of words, characters, sentences, paragraph, unique words, characters without spaces... "

Is that really so hard to understand (imho: no)? Have you considered using another method to find difficult words?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your suggestion. The readability of a text in this tool is measured by the Dale-Chall Score as described in the introduction section. Of course there are other alternative algorithms but anyway this tool focuses more on counting the number of words in the given text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice! Gives a lot of detail! I also created a word count tool a while back but it is not quite as feature filled as yours:

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

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a fan of the unix command wc. It also counts lines and you can do things like piping the output of ls or git file listings into it to get totals for a directory or entire repo</comment>


Crowdsourcing Earth's magnetic field - <AUTHOR> http://cires.colorado.edu/news/press/2014/crowdsourcingscience.html? <comment><USER2> I totally want to do this, but I'm kinda disturbed by the fact that they don't explicitly mention how the anonymization is done. Given that they want to study dynamics, I'm guessing they are going to be collecting timestamped location data, which is one of those data sets that is intensely personal and really hard to properly anonymize.</comment>


Black hole caught snacking on a star - <AUTHOR> http://www.futurity.org/top-stories/black-hole-caught-snacking-on-a-star/

<comment><USER2> Previous submissions of this story, in case you want to read it from other sources:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3927666>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3921788>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3921226>

None have comments.</comment>


Apple Sued an iPhone Repair Shop Owner in Norway and Lost - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3yadk/apple-sued-an-independent-iphone-repair-shop-owner-and-lost <comment><USER3> "Apple does not 'own' the product after they have sold it"

I think this is the crux of the issue. The guy was importing refurbished parts with the logos covered even. They weren't counterfeits. How does a manufacturer have the right to sue for copyright infringement when it's just end users reselling authentic parts? The owner even states he in no way markets them as OEM parts.

Frankly I think it's pretty obvious apple is just trying to squeeze every cent out of these phones and it's a really bad hat to wear.

<comment><USER4> I don't think they want to squeeze every cent. I think they just care about the brand. They want people who bought iphone to have the best experience they prepared for them. Even if you buy some used iphone. If somebody buys some used iphone and it acts weird or the build quality seems imperfect because some parts were replaced, then this person may spread opinion that iphones suck.

I'd guess that's their reasoning. But I'm not on their side here. I think they should be allowed to design products to make repairs as hard as possible if they want to, but once I buy it I should be able to do whatever I want with it. Plus there's not that much great experience to protect lately..

<comment><USER5> At Ford™ we care about our brand. We want people who bought a Ford™ car to have the best experience we prepared for them.

Other fuels may contain additives which make your Ford™ engine seem imperfect. A few misguided people are tempted by the siren call of the independent fuel suppliers to use something other than the Ford™ fuel specially made for your needs. When things go wrong, they spread rumors that Ford™ vehicles suck, when it was simply their misguided fault.

And that's why, as the proud owner of a Ford™ vehicle, you must go to a Ford™ gasoline station to buy Ford™ fuel. That's Ford™ fuel, available from a Ford™ station somewhere in your state.

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't car parts be a much more accurate analogy, though? Apple isn't suing anyone for not using Apple-branded electricity to power their phone.

<comment><USER7> No, but they are making it very difficult for anyone to use, for example, non- Apple-branded cloud storage. And they are making it nearly impossible for anyone to use non-Apple-approved apps.

<comment><USER8> Isn't it nearly impossible to so much as download a file from the Internet on an Apple device, or have they changed that?

<comment><USER9> No, you can totally do this even on iOS.

<comment><USER10> Ah but isn't it true that iPhones have no right click?

<comment><USER9> Uh, yes. Why is this relevant, though?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I worry they're going to come after us programmers next. Only "authorized" programmers will get the access code required to change anything. Microsoft, Apple, Dell, etc will control the access codes. "Programming is hard, and these untrained self-taught programmers can mess up your machine, they might install malware, or they might be hackers, or they might overclock your CPU and damage it, or they might use the system for terrorism. Really, they should only be allowed to access the machine if they were appropriately trained by us."

<comment><USER12> Isn't this exactly how iOS works currently? You literally cannot develop for it without signing an Apple contract (even non-App store apps require a user account/agreement).

<comment><USER13> And with rumours of Apple moving to ARM chips for their laptops, they could well try to take the opportunity to lock out unsigned code entirely...

Before long they could even choose to make you buy an expensive Mac Pro or iMac Pro, or even require an 'iOS dev kit' if you want to develop for their platform.

And if Microsoft had succeeded in the mobile/tablet space, they'd be doing exactly the same...

<comment><USER14> >Before long they could even choose to make you buy an expensive Mac Pro or iMac Pro, or even require an 'iOS dev kit' if you want to develop for their platform.

Hopefully this was sarcasm, since this is literally what is required right now to develop for iOS - you need a Mac (windows is not allowed) and a $99 developer account.

<comment><USER15> FWIW, this has gotten better. It used to be that you could only use the Xcode simulator when developing iOS apps and had to have the $99 developer account to put apps on real provisioned devices. Now you only need to pay to put the app on the store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Every time someone purchases an Apple product, they are endorsing their practices, whether wittingly or unwittingly.

Time and time again, we have observed that patents are a tool of the haves to prevent competition from the have-nots.

While this case may have been about 'trademark' infringement, it's clear that if patents didn't exist one could procure genuine replacement parts that don't 'infringe' on Apple's trademarks (which in this case is obviously a dubious assertion).

Every time a 'tech person' buys and espouses Apple products (and other patent encumbered products), others less educated in technology suffer.

Reach for free and open source alternatives whenever viable, and try to educate others on the important compromises they have to make when it comes to freedom. We could lose free software and any resemblance to right to repair or open hardware in a generation if we're not careful.

<comment><USER17> I agree with you completely, but sadly I think time has proven that generally speaking (there's exceptions, you and I for example) people will choose the path of least resistance regardless of principles. This is true in other aspects of life, such as politics (who voted for, in their words "the lesser of two evils" instead of 3rd party last election?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> After watching things like this (Louis Rossmann), [https://youtu.be/FeUBdMU2qA0](https://youtu.be/FeUBdMU2qA0) , if I ever buy an Apple product I'll basically treat it as unrepairable.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, but still their laptops are much more durable than the competitors'; [https://i.imgur.com/eKq8ZCG.png](https://i.imgur.com/eKq8ZCG.png)

Someone who repairs a single brand of products will have a skewed image of the big picture. He'll basically only receive items too damaged to be repairable by others, but he has no data on whether he receives 1/million or 1/2 whatever and makes the assumption every single one of them are like the ones he receive. I've watched Rossmann's every video for a couple of years on my youtube subscriptions until he started with his political opinion and investment recommendation talks. It's a guy who thinks his opinion is the infallible fact and that there are no other possible explanations, and it undermines his professional opinions as well.

I've done repairs on my own Apple products once they've been out of warranty and it's not as bad as he makes it sound. Parts are easily accessible either as China-clones or working spare parts from dismantled products, because almost every model of anything Apple makes are made for a very long time and in large volumes. You'll have a much harder time finding something like a spare motherboard for a 5 year old random Acer laptop and such. Apple does carry service parts for a _long time_ for their products as well and they're accessible to the authorized service providers, but the pricing is very steep and not really worth it unless it's the only option you have, or if it's paid by insurance.

<comment><USER20> > [https://i.imgur.com/eKq8ZCG.png](https://i.imgur.com/eKq8ZCG.png)

> "microsoft" has the highest breakage rate

is microsoft really bad at making hardware or something? or is it all the technically inept people thinking their windows laptop is made by microsoft?

<comment><USER21> Apple sells as a luxury product to a pampered demographic which will have a very different work life and span than a $200 Netbook.

I suspect that graph is misleading and says nothing about brand durability, only about damage incurred to products at specific price brackets, demographic and use cases. It would much more revealing to break down by those segments.

It also excludes breakages within service contracts so we can't tell if the difference is simply that Apple is selling a higher percentage of AppleCare contracts (potentially because of their high repair costs) than their competitors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> in case you never saw them, Louis Rossman has many videos about apple products. I can accept a bit of excentric design when you're pushing the boundaries of style and thinness but some things are just mindblowingly flabbergasting (fragile keyboard and rivetted to chassis; as repairable as a renaissance painting)

<comment><USER23> That guy is freaking awesome. Smart, to the point, insightful, and with lots of integrity. Definitely worth hearing what he has to say.

<comment><USER22> I personally find him annoying after some time but he does have lots of knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This will get canned on the appeal, guaranteed. The article is a bit misleading because they're not going after him because he's doing aftermarket repairs. They're going after him because he's claiming that the repaired devices are using genuine parts from Apple, which even have the Apple logo on them, yet they weren't purchased from Apple.

This is my biggest complaint with the "Right to Repair" movement. They're constantly conflating what Apple is fighting against (counterfeit parts and being compelled to provide documentation and manuals without oversight) with the valid complaint of users not being legally allowed to repair their own devices. Apple has never been against that and isn't fighting that. They're fighting the fact that these bills, every single one of them, wants to force Apple to provide instructions and parts for repair shops that aren't Apple authorized for which they can't verify or guarantee the quality fo the repair. That's a completely understandable position and yet people keep falsely claiming that it's simply about Apple wanting to keep people from repairing their own stuff. That's not it at all and it's doing a disservice to the "Right to Repair" movement to continue to do so.

<comment><USER25> It's not that simple. Until literally 3 days ago I held exactly your same view "why don't they just become Apple authorized repair shops?"

Well, apparently Apple actually restricts the repairs you can do. For example, if you have water damage, you aren't allowed to just fix the actual components (capacitors, etc) that blew, you have to replace the whole board, resulting in much higher costs and eWaste for customers. (This is from Louis Rossmann, a well known YouTuber who fixes MacBooks). You are basically restricted to mostly replacing boards and things like that, not fixing individual chips.

For a company that toots their horn about being Green, their policies sure generate a ton more waste than necessary.

And I say this as someone who almost exclusively owns Apple stuff. I am holding out with my 2015 MBP dearly for the next iteration of their laptop keyboards that don't require a $500 repair because of a spec of dust.

All this has made me a STRONG proponent of the right-to-repair movement. If Apple actually cared more about less flashy and sexy parts about being green, they'd make these parts readily available.

<comment><USER26> Louis Rossmann, who openly admitted to using illegally obtained schematics and internal documents from Apple? I wouldn't be throwing that name around as a talking point at all in this discussion.

The reason why Apple doesn't want any Joe-schmoe just yanking and replacing caps and other components is simple: quality control. I can barely count on two hands people I would be comfortable working on the innards of a PC, let alone my phone and even then let alone desoldering and soldering new components onboard.

Apple isn't doing this because they don't want people to repair their stuff, but because for most consumers it isn't feasible without ruining the rest of the product. These are small, compact, and complicated devices. It's not like swapping out some RAM or a GPU on a desktop rig at all.

So yes, replace the whole board and recycle the old (as Apple does with most of their parts).

<comment><USER12> > Louis Rossmann, who openly admitted to using illegally obtained schematics > and internal documents from Apple? I wouldn't be throwing that name around > as a talking point at all in this discussion.

So you're discounting someone's opinion because they were forced to use unauthorized repair manuals since the manufacturer stopped producing repair manuals for devices customers have paid for? That's the whole crux of the issue, that people have lost the "right to repair" their own devices due to suppressing information, suppressing reverse engineering efforts, and suppressing compatible replacement components (and software).

Effectively you're saying that if someone supports and tries to uphold the "right to repair" their opinions should be ignored because they did something a large corporation told them not to.

> Apple isn't doing this because they don't want people to repair their stuff

See, I thought it was financially motivated.

> but because for most consumers it isn't feasible without ruining the rest of > the product.

Someone has a broken device, they shouldn't be allowed to try and repair it themselves because they could make it worse? In either case they have a broken device. And Apple is well within their rights to refuse a repair after someone has tried a DIY repair, but often that isn't a financial possibility which is why a DIY repair was tried to begin with.

You don't have to go far to find an anecdote of someone who took an older Macbook into an Apple store and the repair cost was nearly as high as a replacement cost.

<comment><USER26> > So you're discounting someone's opinion because they were forced to use > unauthorized repair manuals because the manufacturer stopped producing > repair manuals for devices customers have paid for?

Yes, because it's a legal case we are discussing here and that's called "breaking the law". Failing to understand that means I cannot discuss this article with you at all since a really important common understanding has been missed on your part.

<comment><USER27> Please don't cross into personal swipes. If you can't discuss something, it suffices not to discuss it.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> _" Norway's customs officials had seized a shipment of 63 iPhone 6 and 6S replacement screens on their way to Henrik's shop from Asia and alerted Apple; the company said they were counterfeit."_

Wow, talk about snitches! Has anyone notified Apple about amazon.com? Pretty sure _they 're_ selling 'counterfeit' iPhone screens too.

<comment><USER8> Apple determined 90% of the Apple chargers sold on Amazon were fakes, but it seems to only be going after individual sellers as opposed to Amazon. [http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2016/10/apple- su...](http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2016/10/apple-sues-mobile- star-for-selling-counterfeit-power-adapters-and-charging-cables-through- amazon.html)

<comment><USER29> I know multiple instances where Apple made false claims about infringement - <USER2> wouldn't trust that figure unless I see independent evidence.

I myself would estimate 10-30% of chargers sold are counterfeit, I see some sellers that are obviously selling fakes but 90% seems extremely unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I agree with Apple going after someone for the counterfeits, I don't agree that it makes sense that they go after the retailer. Unless he is knowingly making fraudulent claims that he is using authentic Apple hardware, in which case it seems entirely appropriate to send him a cease-and-desist demanding that he disclose he is using knock-offs.

If the parts are branded fraudulently with apple logos and such, they should go after the supplier for that.

<comment><USER31> Yeah though the the parts in this article were "refurbished screens" rather than counterfeits.

Talking of counterfeits, I wish the replacement part manufacturers would put their own brand on like the Floureon battery I've got in this macbook rather than saying genuine Apple when they are not like all the iphone battery replacements I've come across.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> _By becoming "authorized," repair companies have to pay Apple a fee (and buy parts from the company at a fixed rate.) They are also restricted from performing certain types of repairs_

...and likely upgrades too:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16780181](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16780181)

</comment><comment><USER33> There are two different futures: one in which manufacturers gives this up. Another in which every part is cryptographically signed to not be possible to counterfeit.

You might think people would stop buying products from those who do the latter. But no.

</comment><comment><USER34> Just stop buying apple products, please?

<comment><USER30> Who should I buy from instead?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> IANAL but the appeal isn't going to fly. In the states this guy would probably be homeless by now tho :o

</comment><comment><USER36> >Apple sues PCKompaniet

I assume Kompaniet is Company in Norwegian.

>Apple sues PC Company</comment>


Yinyang K-Means: A Replacement for Classic K-Means with Consistent Speedup - <AUTHOR> http://jmlr.org/proceedings/papers/v37/ding15.html

<comment><USER2> Huge, if true.

Researchers included a link to (C++) source code: [http://research.csc.ncsu.edu/nc- caps/yykmeans.tar.bz2](http://research.csc.ncsu.edu/nc-caps/yykmeans.tar.bz2)

<comment><USER3> I agree it's useful although there also exists a more scalable approximate variant of classical k-Means and the new Yinyang k-Means (referenced in the paper), namely Mini-batch k-Means:

[http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~dsculley/papers/fastkmeans.pdf](http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~dsculley/papers/fastkmeans.pdf)

This approximate method is implemented (at least) in sofia-ml and scikit- learn.

<comment><USER4> Another approach is to transform the dataset into a smaller but representative dataset, called a core-set, and running k-means on that core-set instead which produces a "(1+e )-approximation for the optimal cluster centers".

See [http://people.csail.mit.edu/dannyf/kmeancoreset.pdf](http://people.csail.mit.edu/dannyf/kmeancoreset.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Overall average Speedup (X) of Yinyang over Standard (9.36), Elkan (6.12), > Drake (3.08)

There wasn't a single mention on GPU use. So I'm wondering if the yinyang algorithm would port well to the GPU.

Just a quick google led me to reports of GPU speedups of 2x to 75x.

</comment><comment><USER6> I haven't read the paper yet, but I'm about to. Before I do, I want to ask: do people usually implement O(n^2) distance calculations in k-means when trying to find the closest centroid that each point is to? I think that's what I usually see, which seems so dumb to me. Are metric trees that obscure?

<comment><USER3> That would be interesting to investigate but you have to keep in mind that the centroids move between each iterations. So you have to re-build a new metric tree at each iteration. kd-tree / build time complexity are between `n log(n)` and `n (log(n))^2`. You don't benefit from the classifical speed-up of metric trees where you build the tree once and then do many queries on the same tree.

Also metric trees such as k-d tree and ball tree do no bring any speed-up in high dimensions.

<comment><USER7> >Also metric trees such as k-d tree and ball tree do no bring any speed-up in high dimensions.

This is not true. Only their naive implementations don't bring speedups in high dimensions and it depends on the number of data points, query points, and dimensions. Best bin first is one common optimization.</comment></comment></comment>


Star Trek Communicator Badge - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.io/project/19700-star-trek-communicator-badge <comment><USER2> I wish this becomes available as a kit one can just solder and start using.</comment>


HP's $99 TouchPad Fire Sale Can Teach Everybody A Lesson  - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hps_99_touchpad_fire_sale_can_teach_everybody_a_le.php#.TlJ5Ne32Ubc.hackernews

<comment><USER3> No, here's the lesson:

You can't sell a me-too tablet for the _same price_ as the "real deal" ipad. People with $499 get ipads, not Galaxies.

You can either be much better or much cheaper. If you've got neither then you've got nothing. Apple is damn hard to beat on the better front, but if you show up with a capacitive multi-touch screen and you're at least half as good, but cost a lot less, you get sales. Lots of them.

Nobody can do that yet, but now we know what happens if they figure it out.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've seen this written by a couple of different people over the weekend and it terrifies me every time. It's as if the author is completely divorced from reality.

As if "just price it lower" is some kind of poignant observation that no one thought of. As if it were easy to compete on price when Apple is buying parts in quantities you couldn't hope to match.

I'm always critical of people who make the argument that "free is the right price" for services but at least that is somewhat valid. Suggesting companies like Samsung target "$200 or less" is just crazy.

<comment><USER5> Ultimately, price drives decisions. My neighbor doesn't understand why he can't sell his house. The reason is simple -- he's asking 25% more than the market price without giving people a compelling reason to spend the money.

The Touchpad is telling you something about the iPad market (there is no such thing as a "tablet" market). People are willing to line up to spend $500 on an iPad. But they are also willing to spend $99 on a tablet that does/will do less than an iPad.

So, you need to: \- Take massive losses on hardware (Microsoft, for example, could afford to do this) \- Build something that takes advantage of advantages that you have over Apple. (ie. Apple doesn't get enterprise at all) \- Come up with some other value proposition (integrate with my car, use as interactive visual display, etc)

<comment><USER6> That last one is why Amazon is the one to watch. They have a plausible "sell the Kindle-pad at a moderate loss" scenario, in that they have numerous for- pay services they can hawk from a privileged position on their tablet, and with Amazon Prime's integration with their video service, a plausible way to turn a Kindle-pad into a recurring revenue stream as well, a recurring revenue stream that encourages additional one-time purchases of media content.

Contrast this with Google, where I don't think even "lots of ads" is enough of a per-customer-value proposition to enable them to take a couple hundred off a tablet's price very easily.

<comment><USER7> I honestly don't think that Amazon or Barnes and Noble consider their devices to be iPad competitors, though. They're selling them as eReaders that just happen to be able to play Angry Birds, not as full-featured tablets.

<comment><USER6> That's what they are selling them as... _now_.

Have you seen this? [http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=sa_menu_aiv_piv_t10?ie=UTF8&...](http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=sa_menu_aiv_piv_t10?ie=UTF8&node=2676882011) Or anything else on the left sidebar under "Instant Video". Or their music plays. Or [http://www.amazon.com/mobile- apps/b?ie=UTF8&node=2350149...](http://www.amazon.com/mobile- apps/b?ie=UTF8&node=2350149011) .

There's a lot of things they've been doing over the past year or two that makes a lot of sense in the context of planning to create a blessed Amazon media player. It does not exist yet, but it's hard to imagine it won't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pricing them at $99 with the current inventory amounts to almost a hundred million dollars in what would have been losses to establish a beachhead.

Except, there is no beachhead to be established here. Its not like the kindle because HP has no track record in selling media like Amazon, and its not like the iPad because they don't have the vertical integration like apple does, and its not like android because they don't have the massive advertising business to 'justify it.'

The only way to justify this was to stick it out long term and build a profitable product, and they chose not to. I still think it may have been a big mistake, but $99 bucks isn't a strategy.

<comment><USER9> It would be much more loss than that. The components alone cost over $200 more than that price. I'm sure HP is willingly swallowing 500+ million in losses to get out of the consumer computing business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Nook Color is an example of a $250 tablet with less functionality than an iPad. Though Barnes and Noble has not released any official sales figures, it is easily outselling all other tablets except for the iPad. This seems supportive of the authors assertions and I'm surprised this information was not included in the post.

[http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110708005437/en/Medi...](http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110708005437/en/Media- Tablet-Sales-Lag-Optimistic-Quarter-Targets)

And the following is the first 2 paragraphs of a Q1 digitimes report:

Barnes & Noble already takes delivery of 3 million Nook Color e-book readers, say sources

Yenting Chen, Taipei; Steve Shen, DIGITIMES [Monday 28 March 2011]

Barnes & Noble has taken delivery of close to three million Nook Color e-book readers from its production partner, according to an estimate by sources from the Nook Color supply chain.

With a clear differentiation to Apple's iPads in display size, targeted market and pricing, the Nook Color, priced at US$249, has actually taken up over 50% of the iPad-like market in the North America market, indicated the sources.

EDIT: inserted (accidentally omitted) word

<comment><USER11> But compared to an ipad or a Samsung Tab its terrible. I have one. Its VERY slow, it has no hardware buttons (annoying), no camera, no GPS, heavy for the size, underwhelming battery, etc. Using it as a tablet is a hack. I can get an Iconia for $399 right now that blows it away. Is an extra $150 worth it? Absolutely. Another $100 gets me an iPad2 or a Samsung.

I'm not sure what the magic price point is to get Joe Sixpack off his couch, but its probably around $200-$299. He just won't be happy with a Nook Color. I love this stuff, deal with its issues, and have a lot of patience with Android and I still find it annoying. He will just return it.

Of course, as an ebook its very nice, but an ebook is not a tablet. Half-assed tablets really is hurting Android's tablet image. Pre-Honeycomb junk on slow processors with no hardware buttons shouldn't be recommended.

<comment><USER10> You're absolutely right that Nook Color is a far worse general purpose tablet, for all the reasons you mentioned. If the question though is how to carve out niches in the overall tablet market, then Color Nook answers with one possibility:

A sub $300 e-reader than can, in a pinch, work poorly as a tablet. The Color Nook can do quite a bit of what a typical person wants, right? Like consume news (Pulse), check and respond to e-mail, and browse text-heavy sites.

You can of course do so much more and so much better on an iPad or Galaxy Tab. But not everyone needs "so much more" enough to pay for it.

Surprising tidbit about the Color Nook: women love it for the women's magazines:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/business/media/23nook.html...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/business/media/23nook.html?_r=1)

Not the profile of a typical hacker news member but hey - if there's a niche for a device you can stick in a purse to substitute for a handful of women's magazine's - what's wrong with that?

Maybe the market will bifurcate into iPads at Galaxy Tabs at the top, and a bunch of niches serviced with less expensive devices?

EDIT: reworded awkward sentence

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> $99 is obviously just 'get rid of them' pricing, but there's a big gap between $499 and $99.

$249 or $299 pricing may have lost HP a bit per sale, but during that time, they could have really established a bigger presence without using much advertising budget.

Is it better to have lose $30 per device and sell a million - which then gives you a million + devices in the marketplace with a unified hardware/software platform - or try to sell at $499, then spend $x on nebulous marketing/advertising which may or may not make a dent?

HP would have sold far more at $299 than $499. They'd have still had a business - even if they wanted to sell it to get out of hardware. It would have been worth far more than a massively damaged brand due to a total abandonment of a market that you've been public touting for more than a year.

<comment><USER9> The parts alone cost $328[1] I think it's safe to say that your pricing plan would have them losing $100+ per device. So selling a million Touchpads (which wouldn't even be that great) has them losing at least 100 million. And who knows if they would have even sold that many at $299. There are Android tablets priced at what you're suggesting, but I doubt their components cost as much, and I don't think their sales are anything massive.

[1][http://www.techfever.net/2011/07/hp-touchpad-parts- estimated...](http://www.techfever.net/2011/07/hp-touchpad-parts-estimated-to- cost-only-328/)

<comment><USER12> Most of the Android ones I've seen at that price are pretty abysmal compared to webOS. Personal view, obviously, but webOS in general is a nicer experience.

So... they paid $1.2billion for a company, but another $100 million (I suspect the delta would have been less) is too much to put in to an investment?

If you actually had a million of those devices sold even within 6 months, that'd be a big momentum for a third party player. Devs would have paid money to be part of their dev program - jumping on a unified platform bandwagon for $99/year (same as Apple) would have led to some revenue as well to offset some of those "losses".

<comment><USER13> Even if they sold 1 million of them at a loss, that'd still put them about 30 million units behind Apple - so still a distant loser, especially with Android being in the game too. Besides, then all they'd have bought is a chance at selling to roughly that same small group again next year, _again at a loss_ because most of the folks that only bought this year because it was super- cheap aren't going to be willing to buy at $500 next year.

The key to a sustainable platform is to make a profit on each device _or_ be able to make it up with highly profitable post-device sales (video games for consoles or blades for razors).

<comment><USER12> "Android" is not a standard hardware platform - it's pretty much whatever any manufacturer wants to ship. The TouchPad had the potential to be much more akin to the iPad/iOS line because one company was controlling the hardware experience.

<comment><USER13> I agree it had that potential in theory, but in practice it had nearly none of the market advantages of the iPad. It didn't have the Apple (or iPod / iPhone) brand name to catapult off of nor a large base of users that already own similar devices; it didn't have many apps nor much developer support; and, importantly, it didn't have the iTunes ecosystem of easily-obtained media. It'd be awfully tough to out-Apple Apple right now. Without some really strong differentiator, I don't know why anybody - least of all those at HP - <USER2> have thought they had a chance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Charles Eames once said that reducing the cost often makes a product more useful, if quality is not compromised. I was intrigued, but I couldn't find a tangible example of it.

Now we have one: suddenly it's not stupid to stick a tablet to your fridge for convenient online grocery shopping, or in your home office as a display for monitoring your servers. At a $99 price point it makes it useful using it even as a digital portrait!

</comment><comment><USER15> I think if HP has to flood the market with zero margin devices to make a dent it did the right thing by getting out of that business once and for all. It has better ways of occupying its resources.

EDIT: I fully realize the TouchPad costs more to make than $99 and the margin during the fire sale was less than zero. If anything it probably barely covers the cost of supporting the units and software through the support period given some fixed costs of support and the small number of units. That only drives home the point further that HP was right to just shut it down and get out.

<comment><USER16> I don't think the firesale was even zero margin; I think it was just cheaper than dealing with the shipping/storage/recycling costs. I expect the hardware cost more to make than they were sold at.

<comment><USER17> You're right: According to iSuppli, the BOM for the hardware was about $300.

[http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/HP-TouchPad- Carr...](http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/HP-TouchPad- Carries-$318-Bill-of-Materials.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The key factor everyone's missing from a loss leader strategy is that the consumables _must_ be a requirement to use the device. Consoles, razors and printers can all sell for a loss because they are worthless without games, blades and ink. You can get by on a tablet (and I bet a majority of non-tech savvy users do) by just using the built-in apps and/or free apps.

If HP went with this strategy with the TouchPad, it would require that a user spend $1000 on apps to make up for the $300 loss on each TouchPad. At an extremely generous $5/app, that's still 200 apps per user. And what happens when the TouchPad 2 comes out? Does HP sell it at a loss, necessitating yet another $1000 to be spent on apps, or do they bump the price up and deal with the negative press?

The best thing HP could have tried would have been to negotiate better component pricing from its suppliers. The problem here would have been that they have no leverage, despite being the world's largest PC manufacturer, since their traditional PC components consist of hard drives and Intel chips, neither of which have any place in the mobile market.

</comment><comment><USER19> HP, with their non-Android based WebOS, was the only company capable of making a dent - or a beachhead - against iPad sales. When you have two parties making h/w and s/w for a tablet all you get is finger pointing and blame when problems arise. My LG Optimus smartphone crashes/reboots about once a week. Nobody takes responsibility. I cannot pay $50 to get Android 2.3 or 3.0. As soon as I buy the device the support is gone. It's the disposable feature- phone market all over again, but this time with tablets and Android.

It's not always the tech or sexiness of the Apple brands that attract people, it's their commitment to fixing bugs. (I'm not saying they're superb at it, but nobody else seems to be trying at all)

</comment><comment><USER20> The best strategy for this would be to do a contest or limited daily deal sort of offer. You would never have to slap a reduced price next to your device so people won't feel entitled to get the reduced price indefinitely. We live in an era with Internet riots over a $7 NetFlix price increase after all. With a contest/daily deal type of offer you would have people going out of their way to register on your site everyday to win. All the tech sites will give you tons of free advertising. Give the winners the free, or heavily discounted, device and upsell them on accessories in the process. Throw in $10-$20 worth of App Store credits to make developers very happy.

</comment><comment><USER21> Isn't this exactly what console manufacturers did? Microsoft took a huge loss on the original xbox (and the 360?) and made a shitload of money on the xbox live + a few in house games. In short, they created a platform/ecosystem and took a loss up front.

It's riskier, and can only be done by companies that have significant runway. But it's likely the only way to compete with someone like Apple, who has an enormous domination in the current market.

</comment><comment><USER22> HP's fire sale will actually aid all Android tablets in the long run (assuming an android port does follow for the touchpads). Cheap tablets for hackers/developers will result in better software for the entire Android ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if people understand they are buying a discontinued product that will see no future development. Is that being made clear by the retailers?

<comment><USER16> I don't think anyone who actually managed to snag one was under any illusion about what the device was or wasn't. You had to be on the top of your game to locate a device; it's not like you stumbled into Costco and went "Oh, that looks nice." It was a process of hours of researching, phone calls, queuing, refreshing...

<comment><USER24> i hopped on bestbuy.com and bought one. granted ship to home went down about 5 minutes after I was done checking out. Guess I got lucky. (or unlucky if i get a cancellation email).</comment></comment></comment>


Announcing O'Reilly Answers - <AUTHOR> http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/11/announcing-oreilly-answers.html

<comment><USER2> I think this is clearly a response to StackOverflow. If I can get a lot of high quality content on the sorts of things O'Reilly publishes books about in a free online place (StackOverflow) why would I waste money on purchasing their books?

Notice that they will be 'rewarding' contributions with points redeemable for books. This site exists because O'Reilly is afraid StackOverflow will result in a loss of sales of their books and they have no original idea on how to combat the problem.

<comment><USER3> A good publisher has nothing to fear from Stack Overflow.

I suspect the site exists instead because the company wants to have a web site with a lot of traffic but isn't willing to pay anyone to write things people want to read. Thus their solution is to reuse material from books and convince people to contribute original material in exchange for badges and coupons.

The company's launched quite a few experiments on the web, only to abandon them a couple of months later. Perhaps this one will last longer than three months; it appears they've actually put some money into it.

<comment><USER4> > _I suspect the site exists instead because the company wants to have a web > site with a lot of traffic but isn't willing to pay anyone to write things > people want to read. Thus their solution is to reuse material from books and > convince people to contribute original material in exchange for badges and > coupons._

And the material not reused from books (both some posts and most of the answers so far, perhaps all of the answers so far) comes from various O'Reilly employees who have a new responsibility: "seeding O'Reilly answers."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure I can say how awful that site is.

To focus on one thing, nearly all of the current posts appear to be snippets taken from their books, with prominently placed ads below. These are _not_ questions: they're just advertisements. (I also wonder if the authors were asked about the use of their work in this way.) The posts that aren't by authors are by editors or other O'Reilly employees. The thing is sheer astroturfing, not a QA site.

It's sad to see a company that does something so well (their books are generally excellent) so desperate to capture every market. They feel a bit like Starbucks a few years ago.

<comment><USER5> > The thing is sheer astroturfing, not a QA site.

When reddit launched, nearly all the posts were by reddit devs or YC insiders. Give it time to see if the model takes off among external users.

<comment><USER4> Nah, not buying it.

Were the reddit devs aware that they were making those posts? I'm guessing yes, but I'm guessing that easily 50% of those "posters" over at O'Reilly Overflow have no idea what they've been up to.

Were the reddit devs selling their books by posting? (Yes, I understand that Reddit sells stuff, but the posts are not directly linked to selling what they're posting about. That's what makes the O'Reilly site astroturfing.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It looks like it's not based on the actual stackoverflow code.

<http://builtwith.com/?http://answers.oreilly.com/>

Says, PHP / Rails. Where as Stackoverflow is ASP.MVC.

<comment><USER7> Why the investigation?

 _I'd like to acknowledge the projects that have proceeded Answers and inspired us, such as SitePoint Forums (we distribute their books), StackOverflow, Yahoo! Answers, Knol, and many others_

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Soo.... their answer to the silos of information is yet another silo. Nice.

</comment><comment><USER9> What type of companies would O'Reilly be interested in acquiring?

<comment><USER10> I might be blind to it, but I don't recall hearing of any newsworthy O'Reilly acquisitions well.. ever. Well, except Esther Dyson's Release newsletter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yet another SO clon.</comment>


A primer on Bezier curves - <AUTHOR> http://processingjs.nihongoresources.com/bezierinfo/

<comment><USER2> Bah! How's about all the spline types, broken down into immediate-to-use code, with easy to understand explainers showing how they are all related?

<http://www.cubic.org/docs/hermite.htm>

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, this is amazing! Much more detailed than my own interactive Bézier curves demo:

<http://www.jasondavies.com/animated-bezier/>

</comment><comment><USER4> A lot of material about Bézier curves here: <http://www.tinaja.com/cubic01.asp>

</comment><comment><USER5> All well and nice, but it doesn't explain how to actually DRAW something! I used to write a lot of text in Latex, and used metapost/tikz/pgf to draw box and arrows diagrams. Drawing straight lines was OK, but trying to make nice curved arrows going around nodes was a PITA and based mostly on experimenting. I knew where to find the math behind Bezier curves, but it was (and still is!) mostly useless from the perspective of a "end-user" not using a GUI.

</comment><comment><USER6> wow, more than i was expecting.

Some of the figures take longer to load than desired, but the presentation is really nice.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm currently in a curves & splines course, this will make excellent review material right before the final in a couple weeks. Thanks! (As well as to all the other commenters here sharing other resources.)

</comment><comment><USER8> And here I thought the site was only about the Japanese language. That's a nice tutorial.

The main site has a lot of information on studying Japanese for those who are into that sort of thing, BTW.

</comment><comment><USER9> I use bezier curves to animate these tentacles: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMwJXP8EOU4></comment>


My NSA signature, plagiarize as needed - <AUTHOR> http://www.taoeffect.com/includes/images/signature.png

<comment><USER2>
      --
      Name
      Email: email@example.com
      PGP Key ID: XXXXXXXX

Please do not send me anything unencrypted that you are not comfortable also sharing with the NSA.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the most interesting iPad Pro 12.9 (big tablet) apps/features? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, we are working on an app that will be used on an iPad Pro in car dealerships. I am looking for inspiration for big screen design and interaction. Let me know if you worked on something similar or you've seen something cool recently. Thank you!</comment>


Ask HN: Feedback on my mobile motivation site - <AUTHOR>

Shove.mobi
I coded the majority of this in one evening. Spent a few days tweaking the code to make it display better, allow bookmarking of quotes, etc.
I am in a long journey to get healthy and undo the travesty I have laid upon my body. So with that I need some motivation. Shoves if you will...
I looked and looked for a widget to put on my phone that would load from my own custom list of quotes. To no avail. I don't know how to program Android so I turned to what I did know: web development. It's really a simple widget, not even a full webapp. But I hope it will take off and help others on their journey like mine.\
I have plans to split out into multiple Shoves for different types of motivation. We'll see where it goes :)
So what do you think? I haven't been able to test extensively on different mobile browsers so please let me know of any glitches or problems along the way. <comment><USER2> Pretty cool (and now bookmarked) - kinda like The Courage Wolf but in a more serious light.

Looks great on my iPhone! Also, I'm not sure if you've got an Apple developer license, but if you do you could submit this to the Apple Web Apps list for more exposure - go to <http://www.apple.com/webapps/> and there's a link on the right that says "Submitting Applications"

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks and works good. I like the quote "Strength is the product of struggle."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://shove.mobi>

</comment><comment><USER4> Tested on chrome. works fine. tested on htc desire. didn't work. Browser version webkit 3.1 . I swiped.. tapped.. swiped.. several times. Then it suddenly started changing and all the taps and swipes happened with a really delayed reaction.

Oh but i like the site a lot! :) cheers

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm, I haven't run into any lag issues yet. It may because I try to be fancy and do transition effects when I may just need to switch out the text. Thanks for the bug report.</comment></comment>


Alexa Toolbar: Give your full browsing history, so it can get free statistics - <AUTHOR> https://www.alexa.com/toolbar <comment><AUTHOR> It exists for Chrome and Firefox. It has access to all sites you visit, and collects everything you do.

Over 600,000 Chromium users have it installed.

<comment><USER2> What made them to install this ?

<comment><AUTHOR> They don't actually know how much this is collecting. It advertises other features like site rank [https://i.imgur.com/qfitydx.png](https://i.imgur.com/qfitydx.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Whoa are browser toolbars still a thing? I thought they became irrelevant over a decade ago</comment>


Under Legal Threat from Atari, Jeff Minter Cancels TxK - <AUTHOR> http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/03/game-developer-jeff-minter-sparks-feud-with-atari.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The original YikYak post seems to be swamped, but I think this is a copy: [http://pastebin.com/HHCZwyEd](http://pastebin.com/HHCZwyEd) The juicy bit is at the end, starting with "Wouldn't it be nice..."</comment>


Why is Kik free AND ad-free? - <AUTHOR> http://help.kik.com/customer/portal/articles/654821 <comment><USER2> Perhaps they are talking about the mobile application, but what is the section on their home site named "Apps That Kik", that seems like an advertisement for those applications.

Perhaps they are applications which their company also produce, so I could be wrong.

<comment><USER3> That's just a discovery page for apps that use the Kik API.</comment></comment>


Google to shut down non-profit platform One Today - n-exploit As a technology professional in the social sector, I wanted to share an email that I received just a few minutes ago. It looks like Google will be shutting down the One Today platform, a social hub for non-profit organizations to share and promote fundraising initiatives.
"Hello,
We have an important update to share with you.
We launched Google One Today seven years ago to help people donate to causes they care about. In the last few years, we have seen donors choose other products to fundraise for their favorite nonprofits.
As a result, we will shut down One Today on February 6th, 2020.
New nonprofits will no longer be able to sign up for One Today. The Google One Today app will be turned off, and any open projects will be deleted. We will ensure that 100% of funds donated on One Today prior to February 6th are disbursed to the relevant nonprofits.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the One Today team.
Thank you for your donations and partnership.
The Google One Today team"
https://onetoday.google.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if they have these emails created as an email template:

"Hello,

We have an important update to share with you.

We launched Google ${ProductName} ${DateCreated} ago to ${ProductTagline}.

As a result, we will shut down ${ProductName} on ${ProductEOL}.

${GTFOMessage}

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the ${ProductName} team.

${HeartfeltClosingSentence}

The Google ${ProductName} team."

<comment><USER2> Surely by now there must be a Google product deathpool somewhere on the intarwebs.

Perhaps it exists as a Google Sheet?

<comment><USER3> > Surely by now there must be a Google product deathpool somewhere on the > intarwebs.

> Perhaps it exists as a Google Sheet?

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am reading this right? They are giving 8 days of notice?

I'm inclined to think that they are doing this for legal reasons or something.

<comment><USER5> Possibly found a major security issue and just don't want to spend the effort to fix it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, I am surprised since it was an easy way to give money without ending up on an email list, as well as being good optics for Google.

</comment><comment><USER7> Stadia when?

</comment><comment><USER8> According to the he Play Store reviews, the product was abandoned years ago.</comment>


Google Details PNaCl Native Client LLVM Bitcode - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQyNTE <comment><USER2> A couple of notes:

"Google has begun making public the details concerning their Portable Native Client (PNaCl) implementation."

To be completely fair, PNaCl is part of Chromium, and hence an open source project from the start. The code is freely available for anyone to see, check out and build, and has always been.

"Portable Native Client comes down to compiling Google Native Client applications to a subset of LLVM bitcode that can then basically run anywhere that Native Client is supported. "

I suppose Michael Larabel meant to say "compiling C and C++ applications" instead of "Google Native Client applications" here.

<comment><USER3> > To be completely fair, PNaCl is part of Chromium, and hence an open source > project from the start. The code is freely available for anyone to see, > check out and build, and has always been.

I think the most important thing here is _not_ the code, but rather the refinements to LLVM IR bitcode to make it more portable. Most of LLVM IR is already CPU/platform agnostic but parts of it are closely tied to the target architecture (which makes sense since LLVM IR was originally targeted at compilers).

A standard portable subset of LLVM IR would be very welcome.

<comment><USER2> Well, there's a portable subset of LLVM IR there, for sure. Comments are welcome - we are very interested in feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Blogspam?

[http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2013-July/064394....](http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2013-July/064394.html)

<comment><USER5> Worse, it's Phoronix.

<comment><USER6> Hate all you want on Phoronix, but I still don't know any other good "news aggregator" for X11, Linux GPU drivers and optimization news. It's not like everything on Phoronix comes from -announce mailing lists, they do a pretty good job at filtering noise from development mailing list and providing fresh news. They also always link to the original source if you're not happy about the quality of their articles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is me alone who sees NaCl as another kind of flash? It is just a blob running into a rectangle. No js accesible, almost no browser control over it. How web is this?

<comment><USER8> tbh, I see it as (possibly) a better java applet. with better OpenGL support, so "real" games are actually feasible, and not even that hard.

Chrome is positioning itself very, very strongly as a _platform_ , not just a browser, and this is a necessary part of that. I'm not a fan of this ever- widening set of things browsers have to do (separate from each other / external libs / etc) since it just raises the bar for any competitors, but I must admit it is nicer for the user than all the past attempts.

<comment><USER9> > _Chrome is positioning itself very, very strongly as a platform, not just a > browser_

That makes no sense, because the browser is by definition a platform.

<comment><USER10> I don't know your definition of a browser, but in my opinion, a browser used to be mainly a document viewer. This is changing now, but the original statement does make sense in this context.

<comment><USER9> When? In 1995?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Almost the speed of native.

As secure as possible.

As portable as possible.

It's definitely an interesting feature set. I personally hope ASM.JS is able to "catch up" to NaCl, but if it doesn't, then I hope PNaCl becomes widely available.

</comment><comment><USER12> I hope this approach wins instead of asm.js</comment>