Never connect to ProtonMail using Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/9yl94k/never_connect_to_protonmail_using_chrome/ <comment><USER3> I would make the advice more general: avoid dealing with Google.

Recently I had to install Hangouts app on the Android phone (it was easier than using it on desktop because I don't have the latest Chrome). One has to register a Google Account in order to use it, and I had to answer a lot of questions as if I was applying for a visa, including a phone number (of course I used a fake number) and date of birth. Then the app displayed a terms of service page with boring legal text. But I noticed that there was a small button to show more details, and when I clicked it, the page expanded and I saw checkboxes (lot of them), most checked by default, like "share my location with Google" or "record web & app activity". Of course, I turned all of them off and thought that I am smarter than a typical user that would not even see these checkboxes.

It turned out, I have been tricked too.

First, the Hangouts app somehow added this newly created account into all other Google Apps, so Google Play (which I have never used before) has started itself up and said that I need to update several apps (no, I don't) and then Mail App said that I got an email (this boring kind of email they put into your inbox upon registration). Also, Hangouts app added this new Google Account into the phone settings. And enabled sync for everything - <USER2> contacts.

Luckily, I mostly use phone as a dictionary and it didn't have any personal information - but if it had, it would be irreversibly copied into the Google Cloud.

These settings are not easy to find. For example, to learn about sync, you have to go to Settings -> Accounts -> click word "Google". Only then you will see that your data are being uploaded to Google. Google doesn't even give a warning, let alone asks you whether you really need it. To disable location tracking you need to notice a tiny button at terms of service page or find it at the settings. I am sure that most of users don't even realise that they've agreed to be under constant surveillance by Google.

I must admit, Google is good at sucking data out from people and deceiving them. After all, it employs smartest people on the planet.

<comment><USER4> This looks like a good reminder that Google isn't just a loose bunch of tools, they have developed a full integrated ecosystem.

If it's not what you want then it is overly intrusive and exceptionally hard to manage so you control just the functionality and personal security you want.

Most end users, I think, just want something to work and are happy for all the magic to just happen. When you embrace it a lot of what it does is very clever and very useful. Most people I know who have embraced it just find the integration fantastically useful and don't have most of the concerns the more technically aware people do.

<comment><USER5> I find I can replace just about everything Google makes except for Google Docs & Google Sheets. I wish I could find self-hosted, open-source versions of those, which I would install on my own server. I can just use desktop apps and sync the files through my server with git or rsync when I'm the only user (but using multiple clients), but as you're saying about the general public, for sharing with friends and family, Google's solution works so much better....

<comment><USER6> Maybe LibreOffice online would fill the role? It is still pretty new, but showing great potential. [https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice- online/](https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/)

<comment><USER5> Sorry I'm late getting back to this, but thanks for the suggestion. I hadn't heard of an online version of LibreOffice, so I'll definitely check it out. I really hope there will be a way to have the benefits of server-based word processors and spreadsheets without handing our private data to people whose business is profiling us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you care about privacy these days:

Remote self-destructible VM for browsing with Firefox in incognito mode (only sites you NEED to, that REQUIRE JS), through multiple VPNs over multiple proxies.

Everything else is command line HTML parsers (also on different, remote VMs), or API endpoints (HN API as an example?).

Need email service? Self-hosted, tiny email-server somewhere in eastern Europe. DDNS etc.

Local machine is always clean. Imagine you had to have iPad as your primary work machine? Very similar spiel.

Good thing is that most of it can get into a habit very quickly and most tedious parts can be automated :)

Keeping it up offline? Cash-only, prepaid phones (these give you internet access as well, 80$ no contracts, activate, use 20GiB until the end of the month, discard the phone, destroy and repeat), prepaid debit for "card required" purchases.

Easy-peasy! no idea what people are complaining about....

<comment><USER8> why eastern Europe?

<comment><USER9> Heh, the Netherlands is enough. No one gets stuff from some of those vps providers.

<comment><USER10> Except the government and the police, just like every other country.

<comment><USER11> With heaps of oversight and red tape.

<comment><USER12> Both the government and the police oversee themselves, the secret service has access to whatever they want and the tax office is even allowed by the courts to demand whatever they want. It's for security and if that doesn't work it's for the children.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> RTFA - the user discovered that chrome was sending all text from all webpages to the translate service.

The advice in the thread isn't "never connect to protonmail using Chrome." It's "don't use Chrome".

100% agree. Firefox is so good now, there's really no excuse.

<comment><USER14> And if you don't like Firefox Quantum for its own egregious privacy issues, you can use Waterfox. The next major Waterfox release will have all the speed enhancements of Firefox Quantum without the privacy issues.

<comment><USER15> What are Firefox Quantum's egregious privacy issues? All I'm aware of is the encrypted DNS experiment which is a huge, unqualified privacy win. I'm not aware of anything it does that's objectively worse than the privacy catastrophe which is the status quo.

Perhaps you are angry because it doesn't send your DNS requests in the clear to Google's 184.108.40.206 service? Perhaps you are angry because you don't like encrypted communication protocols?

<comment><USER14> Perhaps you are making assumptions without merit?

Off the top of my head, forced telemetry (even if you turn it off in about:settings some stuff gets reported back to Mozilla); Pocket and Sponsored Tiles, the former sends Mozilla the URL and form data for every site you visit, the latter has complete access to your browsing history so it can show you "relevant info"; Adobe DRM and Encrypted Media Extensions (some people don't like any DRM in their browser, I don't have an issue if it's trustworthy but you're asking so I'm listing); and a minor, easily corrected nitpick but they went back to Google as their default search engine. My problem with that is every update (so far) ignores user settings and changes it back. This can lead to unexpected unwanted searches via Google.

<comment><USER15> Literally all of these are (debatably) controversial from a PR perspective, not from an actual privacy perspective. Most of them aren't even privacy issues, which suggests to me that you haven't even researched them.

More generally, if any of these things actually offend you, I'm sorry to tell you but you're not the audience for a web browser—after all, general web browsing is far, far worse. Every website you visit gets your IP address and your user agent string. Ooooh noooo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't understand how this is related to ProtonMail. It reads more to me like "never use Chrome [if you care about all of your web content being sent to Google]". Sure, ProtonMail is likely to have personal, private stuff in it but so does a bunch of other things, eg. internet banking.

<comment><USER17> It's related because that translate feature was disabled for those languages, but Google Chrome decided to disregard that specifically on ProtonMail and send the whole thing to Google servers anyways.

<comment><USER18> Where does the post say anything about it being disabled for those languages or that Chrome "specifically" ignored this on ProtonMail?

It just says they had to turn off the suggest translations feature, which would apply to all sites/languages.

<comment><USER19> _> translation had been disabled for both French and English websites_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Chrome is fun, today I learned you cannot turn off auto-complete for a page in chrome. Possibly some really creative hacks can do it but those seem to be "fixed" every so often as well. Which is great when you're building a HIPAA compliant page and would prefer that people's medical information not get cached by chrome (and then uploaded to their cloud storage if you're logged in).

<comment><USER21> URLs should not contain PII data. That is a very bad design.

[Edit] I've got the wrong end of the stick it seems.

<comment><USER20> Where did I say URL? I'm talking a POST based form.

Put a value into it a text field and Chrome will helpfully save it for future auto-completion. Then it'll upload it to your account on their cloud if you're logged into an account. How do you think it's able to fill out your name, address, etc. on all those web forms?

<comment><USER21> I'm sorry. I'm out of date it seems. I thought autocomplete="false" worked for non authentication/non common fields. I'll have to check this out in the office later.

<comment><USER11> It looks as though Google have gradually eliminated support for this because "reasons" [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30053167/autocomplete- of...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30053167/autocomplete-off-vs-false)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you care about privacy, you really shouldn't be using a browser that was created by a company that makes its money by learning everything about you and reselling it to the highest bidder.

<comment><USER23> > and reselling it to the highest bidder.

This isn't a thing that Google does

<comment><USER24> It sorta is, via ad targeting.

<comment><USER25> No it isn't. It's the difference between "Here's some money, please show this to young Democrats" and "Here's some money, please give me a list of young Democrats." That's a pretty damn big difference.

<comment><USER26> > _That 's a pretty damn big difference._

There's certainly a difference. I'm not sure it's a very big one though.

The latter is an extra problem in a few specific areas:

1\. your foremost fear is a bad actor getting your private details (e.g. identity fraud / doxing). These are legitimate fears, but certainly not a primary likelihood in the majority of cases.

2\. discrimination based on background checks (jobs/loans/etc.). Also completely legitimate, though background checks tend to be plenty invasive in isolation these days anyway, so I'm not sure how much of a negative impact Google's data would potentially add here.

Other than these specific threats, the two seem exactly equivalent for most reasons people are concerned about privacy.

<comment><USER25> Can you name some of those reasons? Because they seem very non-equivalent for almost any reason I can think of.

<comment><USER26> This is an odd question. If you can think of reasons where they're non- equivalent, why not state those reasons in your comment?

You're asking me to give counter-examples to examples/explanations you haven't given.

<comment><USER25> Well, that's pretty much my problem. The only reasons I can think of would pretty much be the two you've already listed (and explicitly said it's not equivalent for those purposes).

This isn't some gotcha thing, I'm trying to understand these concerns better, because I really don't. I'm not asking for "counter-examples" to anything, I'm just asking for examples. It's not an odd question.

<comment><USER26> Ah, ok, apologies; I didn't realise those two items I listed were your only reasons.

The main reasons people are concerned for privacy, I would say, are around influence and personal autonomy. There are plenty of people (many of them on HN, I've read many comments here to this effect), who want to cede decision- making about their own consumption to service-providers. There is an attractive convenience to this. Privacy advocates are typically not these people, and are concerned not just for their own individual autonomy, but also often motivated by broader societal concerns like those discussed by Pariser (obviously a hot topic right now w.r.t. Trump and Putin), as well as less- political aspects of selective exposure theory around societal trends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> When I visit a website in a foreign language I've never translated before, Chrome asks my permission to translate the site, it doesn't do so automatically. You could argue they could give you more details on what it will do when you click the 'Translate' button, but to argue they shouldn't offer the feature as a permission-requested option at all seems pretty extreme.

I read a lot of foreign websites, and the built-in translate feature (which you can request in the right-click menu, or from the Toolbar) is a life saving feature, like, literally, I've been traveling, and Chrome built-in ability to translate helped in a medical emergency.

<comment><USER28> Question is, how does it know to ask?

If it is based on analysis done by the local machine, no problem. However, if it is based on analysis done by google servers, big problem!

<comment><USER29> > Question is, how does it know to ask?

The html tag has a "lang" attribute, and the server itself can send a Content- Language HTTP header. Most CMSes these days set one or both once multi-lingual is enabled.

Additionally the browser can utilize the OS or it's own spellcheck word database: check every word in every dictionary and the dictionary with the most matches is likely to be the relevant one.

<comment><USER30> > Additionally the browser can utilize the OS or it's own spellcheck word > database: check every word in every dictionary and the dictionary with the > most matches is likely to be the relevant one.

Every word seems excessive, especially if a page has an excessive amount of text on it.

<comment><USER28> I have noticed that 'certain' sites that obfuscate titles by homoglyphs are recognized as vietnamese by chrome. That seems like something based on the actual content of the page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I just don't understand how so many people in the HN community, who are so vocal about privacy, turn around and use Chrome.

Don't feed the beast.

<comment><USER32> I have been using Firefox since version 1.0. I don't understand the desire to use google's browser. However, why would even trying view secure data in your web-browser... Not even just Chrome. Things may get cached ect... Although, Mozilla has been doing things that I find annoying at times. Like adding pocket ect...

 _Little Rant_ Although, I have looked at some of the other forks. What I find more depressing is how few up to date browser engines exist. It's a sign that web standards are getting too complicated. We already going to have a 3rd version HTTP as well... Both HTTP/2 and potential HTTP/3 are based off of work from google. Those protocols are a lot more complicated than HTTP. So it's much harder for a small group to implement them. That's just the protocol layer. Let alone JS, HTML, CSS, and all the other little things. It's like big companies keep bloating the standards. The result is the browser is probably one more complicated pieces of software regularly use.

What ever happened to "KISS".

<comment><USER33> > I don't understand the desire to use google's browser.

It was the only browser with a decent Javascript sandbox, at least until recently. Wikipedia claims Firefox got a sandbox _this month_ , but I think I've seen earlier claims:

> Until November 2018, Firefox was the last widely used browser not to use a > browser sandbox to isolate Web content in each tab from each other and from > the rest of the system.[120][121]

<comment><USER34> Also it was the only browser where every tab ran in its own process so a crash would only take down that tab.

<comment><USER35> Microsoft's browsers got this functionality pretty early as well (I believe around the IE9/10 timeframe), though they of course had and still have numerous other issues that would make them undesirable for regular usage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> the language detection is done client side; many years ago I pulled the code out to use it in another project!

presumably she had "automatically translate" on...

<comment><USER37> what are the rules that cause a page in your own language to be translated?

<comment><USER38> Whenever I visit a non-English page I get a popup saying "do you want to translate this page". I assume the user in this case clicked the "Always translate" button.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is a really awesome project: [https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled- chromium](https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium)

I've really tried to use Firefox... Chrome just runs so much smoother, especially for media.

<comment><USER40> Vivaldi is a nice de-Googled project, a Chromium fork with all (?) Chrome plugins working on it.

<comment><USER41> Yeah Vivaldi is pretty nice, and is updated frequently. I use Firefox and Vivaldi as my main browsers now. I don't have the energy to completely de- Google myself (yet) but this is a start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Isn't problem simply with the user (his wife)? She had enabled auto- translation and didn't notice.

Similar thing would happen to anyone with email account setup to forward all emails to a public mailing list or something of that nature.

</comment><comment><USER43> if this shocks you or anyone then you dont't know G-world. Remember, it's their world and we just live in it. Anytime you connect to G-world via any of their services, they "own" everything you send over it.

i just dont understand why people go "no way" over this kind of things -- it's google for F sake.

</comment><comment><USER44> 1\. _If you WANT be public, upload videos to 'own' YouTube channel, post in 'own' blog on Blogspot_ — use Google.

2\. _If you WON 'T be public_ — don't use Google! Keep _uBlockOrigin_ & _uMatrix_ in your web-browser always turned ON or use _Links_ [0] as default browser!

As for me, I want manage 'own' YouTube channel ( _spoiler!_ ), but I will newer use 'own' GMail or other Google's services for serious things non on home PC, non on Android mobile.

P.S.: How many of you has LinkedIn profile? ;-)

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16191843](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16191843)

</comment><comment><USER45> Can't ProtonMail just solve this with a meta tag...?

<meta name="google" content="notranslate">

<comment><USER46> I don't think that's the point. The problem here is that we seem ro forget that by using Chrome, Google has direct access to absolutely everything we do on the internet.

Go to [https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity](https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity) and you will see all the things they track. It's bizarre.

The one that pisses me off the most is that they track the apps that I open by binary name and I own an iPhone and use Safari. I don't even know how the fuck they do that.

<comment><USER47> I'm heavily into Google and have 2 Macs and 4 iOS devices all signed in using Google apps. I don't see any iOS app activity in that link you posted except Chrome and Google Maps. Can you tell me where I can find other iOS app activity you mentioned?

<comment><USER46> They just appear there. In my bundle view I have logs like the following:

"Used com.shazam.Shazam"

"Used com.teamblind.blind"

It seems they log app usage for apps that have some sort of Google SDK installed or are serving Google AdSense. Definitely not all the installed apps, but several.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I wish I knew how to effectively communicate to people not to copy paste sensitive data into translate.google.com whenever they need a translation.

Even some dedicated translation apps that you install on your desktop actually upload everything to a 3rd party server for translation. I would love a list of local-only translation software that were close to as effective as the various online options... or even online but with a good data policy.

</comment><comment><USER49> "But the conclusion is frightening : it means that the content of every webpage visited using Google Chrome is sent back to Google."

This is how it always worked and the number one reason I'm avoiding Google Chrome.

<comment><USER50> This neither is nor was true though. In this context pages are sent only if you are on a page which looks like it could be translated and you request the translation. That's a long way from "every page"

<comment><USER51> In another thread here the OP is quoted as saying Chrome sent the data even when translation is disabled.

<comment><USER50> Disabled for specific languages. That means either: the page was misclassified as a different language, or there's a bug affecting those preferences, or it was a user mistake and the translation was turned on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I've been going through Google Analytica courses a bit recently, just because I'm interested. It is frightening how many techniques Google uses to gather meta-data and how much you can make out of it all. Thanks for sharing this, I use ProtonMail myself but avoid google all the time, one more reason to do it.

</comment><comment><USER53> My opinion about Google has completely changed in last few years. More scary than Chrome's monopoly is Android. Android is basically a black box. It's very hard to find what apps have access to what on the device. We desperately need a third competitor in mobile space.

</comment><comment><USER54> Analysis of web browser and ProtonMail: don't.

Source: [https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/1121.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/1121.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER55> Is Google Chrome sending browsing history and webpage content to Google (via Google Translate) even when sync is off? I didn't see anything about that in the settings.

<comment><USER56> Webpage text is only transmitted when you have Chrome translate a page.

Language detection happens offline using [https://github.com/google/cld3](https://github.com/google/cld3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Nice info. [https://techtriyo.com](https://techtriyo.com)

</comment><comment><USER58> lol... you mean never enable auto-translate. If you use a similar plugin with Firefox, it's the same exact thing.

</comment><comment><USER59> Have you got an answer from PM staff ?

</comment><comment><USER60> So much for "Don't be evil"...

They really have as an Organisation lost the plot on what's acceptable.

</comment><comment><USER61> does google use static server addresses to break our privacy? could I blacklist those addresses at the OS/router level?

</comment><comment><USER62> Google is an Ad company, 80% of its income is from serving Ads, mostly targeted Ads.

So any Google software is serving this goal - phishing as much user data as possible. That is Chrome, Android, GMail, iOS Google Maps, iOS Gmail, Google- Analytics scripts on websites, Google DNS, any software written by Google.

Don't.

</comment><comment><USER63> I've said it before: Chrome is a data collection app with a built-in web browser to keep you entertained while it does its real job.

<comment><USER64> Source?

Google makes Chrome because they can default the URL bar to search on Google without paying Traffic Acquisition Costs (Google pays browsers _a lot_ of money to have Google be their default search).

Google only makes money from Chrome by driving more traffic to their profit centers (like Search). And it works really, really well.

Chrome itself is not monetized and does not collect client data. Please, provide evidence to the contrary.

<comment><USER63> _Please, provide evidence to the contrary._

Uhhh, this whole article is literally about Chrome exfiltrating personal data to Google... all the evidence is above.

<comment><USER64> No, it isn't. This isn't even an article. It's a reddit post from a French user who had configured Chrome to automatically translate French (this is not a default behavior) and was then horrified when Chrome tried to translate his web page.

Maybe Chrome incorrectly detected French as the language, but we have no way of knowing because they didn't post any screenshots or additional information about the alleged event.

<comment><USER65> > It's a reddit post from a French user who had configured Chrome to > automatically translate French (this is not a default behavior)

First of all, the option was not to automatically translate. It was to _suggest_ to automatically translate. Which is the default in Chrome for all languages other than whatever the system language is. Now, the whole thing about "suggest" is that it shouldn't just blindly translate, but ask first. But in this case, apparently, it just translated anyway.

And second, the user specifically said that they disabled translation for French. Which is almost certainly true, as anyone who is not a native English speaker but uses an English OS and browser can testify (you get bugged by Chrome about whether you want to translate every time you open a website in your native language, so after the first 2-3 times you click "Never").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> don't use web browsers, they can see the web pagess you can see :O:O:O:O

<comment><USER66> you might seem this is shocking, but it make the request and parse the content handle the encryption for you. literally access to all of the bits! :O really! if u care about privacy don't use web browser!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> To what extent is this a browser extension model bug?

</comment><comment><USER67> > But, on her computer, my mail appeared like it has been translated from > French to English then to French again... After a bit of fiddling, I > discovered that disabling the "suggest to automatically translate a website > in a foreign language" option solved the issue... That every email, even in > ProtonMail, is sent to Google even if, in this case, the translation should > not happen (translation had been disabled for both French and English > websites so there was no reason to think PM would be translated).

Sounds like a bug. I am going to disable the translation feature now, I never use it but have never bothered to turn it off completely.

<comment><USER68> It's a bug but what is to stop Google from sending everything you type in any textbox to Google? Have they said anywhere that they won't do such a thing? Completely trivial to do and extremely useful in providing data about you to Google that they could potentially never look at and use to train AI.

<comment><USER69> And what's to stop Mozilla from doing so? Or any other browser?

<comment><USER70> The simple fact that Firefox is Open Source, therefore auditable, while Chrome is not.

ps. Nope, Chromium is not Chrome.

<comment><USER71> So use Chromium?

<comment><USER72> Chromium already got caught side loading a black box binary plug-in after it was installed. One of the chrome devs. even made it clear that it worked as intended as the DRM support it implemented was core to the Chrome product and saw no reason not to silently download and execute it. So it is the same as chrome, only run it if you unconditionally trust Google.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Flying high: Computer graphics researchers make drone navigation easier - <AUTHOR> https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2018/Q4/flying-high-computer-graphics-researchers-make-drone-navigation-easier.html <comment><USER2> This looks very fluid in the video. I assume it will also make drones safer.</comment>


WebRTC Working Group Charter extended for two more years (until Feb 28 2015) - <AUTHOR> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webrtc/2013Mar/0013.html <comment><USER2> Please don't tell me this is because of Microsoft. At least if they're extending it this long, I hope they will put the finalized VP9 codec in it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well the extension is because the group hasn't been able to come to consensus on many things and appears to have outsourced some of the hard decisions to the IETF. IMO using SDP has brought a great deal of challenges, which the group didn't anticipate.

The decision for the MTI (mandatory to implement) video codec will be made in the coming week (or months, depending on various issues): VP8 or H.264 or both or neither.

I presume this decision can be updated at a later point (as and when) new codecs become mature (VP9, ..., H.265 etc.)</comment></comment>


Start-Up Founders: Take Your Spouse on a Date - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/note-to-start-up-founders-take-your-spouse-on-a-date/

<comment><USER2> I'm curious why so many negative articles on startups keep coming from the NYT. It's like they are sinking with the Titanic and laughing at people in the lifeboats.

<comment><USER3> Laughing, throwing stones and getting drunk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is also worth noting the burdens on the children of startup founders and early stage employees. Founders should also consider time they may lose with their kids. Feel free to bring the blackberry to the baseball game, but at least pay attention when your kids at bat.

</comment><comment><USER5> Suppose I'd have to take time off to _get_ one of them things first. I mean, I was dating someone not too long ago. How long ago was 2006? How time flies when you're fighting a war / building a business.

If there's anything I hate more than made up holidays it's... okay, I can't think of anything I hate more right now.

</comment><comment><USER6> Spouse 2.0 day! Gee, I hope I can find a babysitter and dinner reservation on this short of notice.

</comment><comment><USER7> reported as inaccurate. startup founders don't have spouses.

oh wait, this isn't digg..

</comment><comment><USER8> more kindling for the "startup-culture-as-cliche" bonfire</comment>


Ask HN:Can you please critique my web app? - <AUTHOR> http://jamafriend.com/LargeMap.aspx

<comment><USER2> First off, kudos for getting something out there! That seems to be half the battle.

One thing I noticed was that I completely missed the "Enter a valid location" label and I tried typing "breakfast" in the text box. I'm not usually an early bird so that may be why, but I'd still consider moving the label either directly above or the the left of the text box.

Also, I would personally prefer the app to display all of the radio buttons as checkboxes (defaulted to "ON") and then kind of like how Zillow does it, let me deselect the ones I don't want to see. That being said, if you decide to expand and have a whole ton of choices, be prudent as to which ones are checked.

Lastly, I'd like to see the whole thing centered in the page - just kinda seems lopsided to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm no UX expert, but the interface needs a lot of work here. You have a lot of competition here as well. You've got a decent start.

A few points: My eyes don't know where they're supposed to go. I don't know where I'm supposed to start. I don't know the PRIMARY purpose of the site. Why choose this site over 1000 other? The radio buttons for the "food, bars, etc.) items is the wrong metaphor - some sort of button or tab would be better. The search results kind of just appear in a weird way and i don't know what i'm supposed to do with them. What's the search range? Are there ratings on anything?

"A quick way to see the world..." doesn't tell me anything. That could describe 1,000,000 websites. "SURF THE WORLD" doesn't tell me anything either.

The "News" isn't returning any news for me, just a bunch of random links. And the box is so small it's a pain to view anything in.

The "Events" tab doesn't tell me anything either. What types of events are they? They seem VERY generic.

Weather isn't available in my area.

The feedback button on the left overlaps with the search results and things. It seems cramped.

By the way, I live in Sydney, AU.

Hope some of this helps.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hi

Quickly looking at the LargeMap you're linking to.. What's the problem you're trying to solve? What's the benefit of using this as compared to normal Google maps?

For me, it starts showing London. If I scroll and zoom in to my area and click one of the "Show nearest", it's still showing 'generic central London' spots, rather than where I've zoomed. Looks like this feature has been lost in your tool.

If I type my postcode in, first thing I see is that weather results are not available. Weather results aren't that specific, so I'd think that the weather result for Westminster would qualify for Shoreditch too.

I get some "MSN Web" results, but apart from the 1st one (which is yellow page type page for a company on my street) I can't see how these results are related to this area.

If it's clearer what the benefits of using this tool would be, perhaps you'd get more feedback.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know I submitted this before but I haven't had any reactions or feedback so I'll try this again. This is a personal project of mine that I did during my free time. I'm kind of not sure of the design/ui so I would like some expert insight from you guys. Can this be a helpful tool to you? Thanks in advance for your time.

</comment><comment><USER5> Definitely useful. Not sure what valuevth map adds, but you may want to let the user click the box to zoom into the info and drop the map. Cool app, I'd use it.</comment>


Show HN: Save Notes in Markdown Directly in the 'New Tab' Page - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/plibither8/markdown-new-tab#markdown-new-tab <comment><USER2> It's a great and useful idea, plus I love the minimalist black and white theme! Congrats!

Maybe it's just me or maybe it's a bug, but I'm trying it in Firefox and, with Power Mode enabled and Shaking disabled, it still shakes everytime I type.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, OP and developer here.

Thanks for your feedback. I'll be getting time to work on this later on in the day, and I'll have a look at this issue/bug. It'd be great if you could also create an issue on its GitHub repo so I can better track the issues. Thanks once again :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> really nice</comment>


Breaking open the Mt. Gox case, part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wizsec.jp/2017/07/breaking-open-mtgox-1.html <comment><USER2> So according to the following, Vinnik was aware of the origin of bitcoins that were sold on BTC-e:

> Some of the funds moved to BTC-e seem to have moved straight to internal > storage rather than customer deposit addresses, hinting at a relationship > between Vinnik and BTC-e.

and he was stupid enough to deposit them back to his account on MtGox:

> Moving coins back onto MtGox was what let us identify Vinnik, as the MtGox > accounts he used could be linked to his online identity "WME" > [http://archive.is/6cFcY](http://archive.is/6cFcY)

All in all, there a strong suggestion that he participated in money laundering and was involved in the whole scheme.

I wonder, if BTC-e somehow artificially pumped the bitcoin valuation leveraging the huge amount of bitcoins they put hands on, same as what MtGox did.

Also, it looks like that Mark Karpeles wasn't involved in the whole scheme, and the hack was that simple thanks to the low or no security and engineering culture at MtGox:

> In September 2011, the MtGox hot wallet private keys were stolen, in a case > of a simple copied wallet.dat file.

> the shared keypool of the wallet.dat file lead to address reuse, which > confused MtGox's systems into mistakenly interpreting some of the thief's > spending as deposits, crediting multiple user accounts with large sums of > BTC and causing MtGox's numbers to go further out of balance by about 40,000 > BTC. None of these users seem to have reported their "sudden luck".

<comment><USER3> >All in all, there a strong suggestion that he participated in money laundering and was involved in the whole scheme.

Well duh, anyone involved in the Bitcoin community was very well aware of this. BTC-e has been flagrantly disregarding AML and KYC laws for it's entire existence.

<comment><USER4> Lots of people in Bitcoin hate KYC and AML laws, and consider them invasive. I am one of these people.

In itself, it's not an indicator of wrongdoing.

<comment><USER5> Hating KYC/AML law may not be a strong indicator of legal wrongdoing; breaking it, OTOH, is not merely an indicator of legal wrongdoing, but is itself such wrongdoing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The coin flow graph is terrific: [http://wizsec.jp/images/theft_flow.svg](http://wizsec.jp/images/theft_flow.svg)

Is this type of visualization common in Bitcoin? Is it a tool anyone can easily use?

 _Edit_ , let me restate my question. "Is there a tool that generates Sankey diagrams from blockchain data that is easy to use?"

<comment><USER7> These are called Sankey diagrams.

<comment><USER8> Actually more specific is 'alluvial diagram' [1] since the style emphasizes a 'flow' character.

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankey_diagram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankey_diagram)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This would have all been avoided if MtGox had transferred its coins to a new wallet after the 2011 breach. I guess they assumed that any attacker that got access to the private keys would have immediately emptied the wallet, and the fact that this hadn't happened proved that the private keys hadn't been compromised by the breach.

I have to admit, that is a reasonable assumption. This may show the limits of the usefulness of heuristics, and the importance of organizations like exchanges, that have very significant fiduciary duties, to undertake a systematic process after a security breach to eliminate all possible remaining vulnerabilities, no matter how unlikely and counterintuitive.

<comment><USER10> >I have to admit, that is a reasonable assumption.

I really have to disagree. You get breached, you change your private keys. There shouldn't be a debate about that.

<comment><USER11> You don't have to disagree. I dont think he's arguing that you shouldn't change the keys based on that assumption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can't wait to get my refund :)

It's still insane to me that MtGox never moved coins to a wallet or acknowledged the breach until long after it was too late. You would think if you have billions of dollars sitting somewhere and you realize someone is starting to take them you would, you know, _do something_.

<comment><USER13> >Can't wait to get my refund :)

I had like 0.000001 BTC in mtgox and it was worth it for the cute sticky unfoldy postcard thing I got from the Japanese court.

<comment><USER14> Same here, I saved mine to show to my kids some day. "Hey look kids, your dad was summoned to a Japanese district court over the loss of 0.0001 bitcoin!"

<comment><USER15> Since bitcoin is deflationary (max supply) it's technically possible that 0.0001 might be worth something one day.

<comment><USER14> My holdings are much higher than that so it's a drop in the bucket either way at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It sounds like MtGox must have had no auditing of their wallets, or completely ineffective auditing.

How did they not at least perform a simple sum of coins held by their wallets and compare it against the amount expected by their databases? Or is the attack more sophisticated than this would detect?

If I were building a system like this, I'd want to run an auditing system continuously that looks for discrepancies, and then "shuts down everything" if they're detected.

<comment><USER17> The site was originally made for trading Magic The Gathering Online cards by one guy who later got bored and then got into Bitcoin but I have no idea and wikipedia doesn't mention if they reused any code or just the domain name itself.

It's a fun piece of trivia one crypto currency guy told me and it seems to be true.

<comment><USER18> It really bothers me how often people repeat it like it means anything in this case. Like they forget Amazon was just selling books. Also no idea if it still uses any of the old code or just the name itself.

<comment><USER19> Jed McCaleb built a beta release of a Magic trading card exchange for the MtGox domain. He then read about bitcoin in a Slashdot article posted on July 11th, 2010 after which he decided to write an exchange. McCaleb insists that the bitcoin exchange was completely different from the Magic cards exchange, but Mt Gox went live as a Bitcoin exchange _July 18th, 2010_.

So either McCaleb built a brand new exchange from the ground up in one week, or he reused code from his Magic card trading service.

McCaleb sold the site to Karpeles 8 months later, and 3 months after that, it was breached for the first time. Allegedly, the hacker used McCaleb's old admin credentials to arbitrarily assign himself any amount of bitcoin, which he then started selling off to crash the price. Since the price crashed to $0.01, the dollar value of the withdrawal limit represented several thousand bitcoin, which the attacker promptly sent off-site.

No matter if the site was reused code from a Magic card exchange, or was written from the ground up, it never should have been within a thousand miles of anything of value.

<comment><USER18> > So either McCaleb built a brand new exchange from the ground up in one week, > or he reused code from his Magic card trading service.

Or he spent some time writing the new service while the previous one was still running.

<comment><USER17> How could he have spent time writing a new service if it went from him getting the bitcoin idea from slashdot to launch in 7 days?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > By mid 2013 [..] the thief had taken out about 630,000 BTC from MtGox.

630,000 BTC to USD = 1,560,069,000.00 US Dollars

Crazy.

$1.5 billion USD = 2.5% of Bitcoin's market cap ($40 billion) and someone stole it.

<comment><USER21> Around Mid 2013 Bitcoin supply was around 11.5M coins so 630K was more like 5.5% of total Bitcoin. Just using a different kind of math. There's more coins now so using todays market cap % makes it seem less then it actually was.

<comment><USER19> But mid 2013, the price of Bitcoin was ~$100.. So 630k was "only" $63 million. A much larger percentage of a much smaller asset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I remember a time when BTC-e was the most logical exchange to use, especially in the fallout of MtGox. I really enjoyed how straightforward the exchange was, and how easy it was to get started using their API. I don't think they're coming back after this.

<comment><USER23> Was never the logical choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Never a dull moment in Bitcoin.

<comment><USER14> If penny stocks are the cocaine of the finance world, bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies are like freebasing crack.

<comment><USER17> More like krokodil.

<comment><USER25> Give BTC a little credit, it's capable of giving you a solid rush and getting you(r bank balance) high. It doesn't _always_ bankrupt you. That's a lot better than you can say of krokodil.

<comment><USER14> I don't even know what krokodili IS so I'll take your word for it, ha ha

<comment><USER26> It's what you get if you walk into a gas station determined to mix everything they have on their shelves and hope this results in a drug. It's a very cheap and easy drug to create, but its ability to destroy the user's body far surpasses more conventional drugs like heroin.

The life expectancy of a user is 1-2 years as their tissue starts to die.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Unrelated to the actual topic at hand, but anybody know which software generated this svg?

[http://wizsec.jp/images/theft_flow.svg](http://wizsec.jp/images/theft_flow.svg)

I like graphs like this. They remind me of Charles Joseph Minard's famous Napoleon graph:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Joseph_Minard#/media/F...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Joseph_Minard#/media/File:Minard.png)

<comment><USER28> D3: [https://bost.ocks.org/mike/sankey/](https://bost.ocks.org/mike/sankey/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> If they recover some coins, will they be transferred to mtgox bankruptcy trustee.

<comment><USER23> If they can prove that they came out of it, I hope so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is the diagram simplifying things? It looks like in a number of cases, coins were stolen, sent to a single wallet, and then sent to an exchange. That doesn't seem like a particularly ambitious attempt to launder. I must be missing something...

<comment><USER28> If the exchange doesn't know its customers and doesn't keep logs then it might be successful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Until today, I'm still waiting for my Mt.Gox refund :(</comment>


Before Nobels: Gifts to and from rich patrons were early science's currency - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/before-nobels-gifts-to-and-from-rich-patrons-were-early-sciences-currency-66360 <comment><USER2> A more accurate title might have been "before NSF."

The practical effect of the shift from patronage to grants is a transition from multipolar to unipolar science. Any one rich patron may or may not have an instinct for what research deserves support, but their collective judgment should be a fairly wise crowd. Few rich people were born yesterday.

In a grant-funded ecosystem, even multiple funding institutions which are branches of multiple governments tend to merge into one big meta-institution, with one big opinion. This is how we get intellectual monocultures across many fields, especially fields without practical feedback from a commercial application. One big opinion is hard to change. Unfortunately, science is kind of about changing our minds...

<comment><USER3> There are plenty of billionaires rich enough to support scientists for their whole careers, and certainly much more than in the past. So to make your point, you have have to argue that some sort of cultural/status effect is keeping unconventional scientists from just taking billionaire money, or disincentivizing them from giving it away.

<comment><USER4> Isn't the existing system of grants disincentivizing billionaires from giving the money away? "My taxes goes to X institution" "I donated to Y institution"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Several countries offer tax schemes to support local movie productions: private investment in local movie production is incentivized by way of tax breaks to the investors.

I am not aware of equivalent tax breaks offered to investors to support science or technology development, it is seems to me it could be a great way to incentivize scientific progress.

Does anyone know why tax schemes to support science are not being used?</comment>


What Happened to Howard Stern? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/arts/howard-stern-sirius.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below <comment><USER3> Late career Howard Stern show is a fantastic show. Yes, there are the usual collections of low-brow humor, stunts and fart jokes. However, every now and then there will be an A or B level movie/TV/sport star on and Howard can spend an hour or hour and half extracting every little juicy story out of them. He can get people to tell all kinds of stories about their lives and keeps them on task and focused on telling the story. You hang on every word and every sentence and you just don't want to get out of your car when you listen to him. I really believe that there is simply no better interviewer than Howard Stern. He has the ability and the medium to do such a fantastic job.

<comment><USER4> What's ironic is that most longtime fans hate the late career Howard Stern.

I've been a daily listener since 1997 and enjoy both pre-Sirius and post- Sirius shows immensely.

<comment><USER5> That's because in the 90s Howard Stern filled the same role as Tucker Max. He was the douchebag people dreamed of being. He said the things you couldn't. On the air. He banged the chicks you couldn't. ...On the air.

Now that he's become a judge for one of those talent shows and that, and hobnobbing with celebrities, he's mollified his image, and it isn't as ZomgRebelliousAlternativeEdgy as his fans were craving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great article (I'm a fan of the show.) If I may turn the discussion toward something a bit more HN-relevant, a few questions:

* The engineer in me is always intrigued by the operations of the show. Does anyone have any details on the equipment / software they use? I tried to gleam some juicy stuff from this shot:

[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/07/31/arts/31STERNJP1/3...](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/07/31/arts/31STERNJP1/31STERNJP1-superJumbo.jpg)

But the blur effect makes it hard to make anything out.

We get to hear littles glimpses of things in the Gary-to-Howard banter ("Howard check JD Page 3 in Blue").

* Any sense of what Fred uses on his end? He obviously has a library of clips from the ages that he can pull up pretty quickly.

* Does he get real-time feedback / jokes / stuff from his writers / Benjy? Does that work over IM, or are people handing him slips of paper?

<comment><USER7> I don't have any solid answers, but...

* You might have some luck browsing [http://www.bhphotovideo.com/](http://www.bhphotovideo.com/) to try to match up the hardware. B&H has a lot of Pro-sumer and straight up Pro products, in addition to all their consumer stuff.

* In radio parlance, devices/software that lets you store and play various clips is called a "soundboard". Or at least it was last time I knew anything about radio... might have newer terms now that everything's definitely digital.

Like I said, nothing solid, but this might help you look into it a bit more.

<comment><USER7> Jeez... Downvoted for attempting to help? Rough crowd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands I'm seriously surprised its taken this long for the Times and the media in general to realize what an incredible interviewer he is. He pulls stuff out of people you never hear anywhere.

I can say some of the celebs they have on there I truly despised, then I hear Stern interview them and come away actually liking them. He just seems to get people to open up and then tell some heartfelt stories.

Case in point - never a huge Billy Joel fan. Stern had him in a few years back. Billy sat at a piano during the interview and would plunk around and sing parts of songs while Stern asked questions about everything. It was simply one of the best interviews I've heard. So laid back, and Billy is one smart cat. So many things I learned about him and how his brain ticks and his process for creating music.

I came away from that having a huge change of heart and a ton more respect for what he's done in the industry. No one, and I mean no one, could have an interview like that with Billy. I'm convinced Stern was the only guy capable of pulling out the stuff that he did and the piano and everything, just amazing.

The other interview I will always remember was the TV show he had where he would interview celebs. He was the last person to interview Phil Hartman, with his wife there no less, days before he was murdered. Another great interview that showed a lot of his insecurities and how talented he really was. At the end, Stern had this list of accents (around 8-10 I think) and Hartman, in classic fashion whipped through them all, flawlessly I might add to end the interview.

I think if you weed through all the sexual innuendos and stripper games, you can see not only is Stern incredibly talented as an interviewer, but the love he has for his guests and the rest of the people he works with (Robin, Fred, Ba Ba Booey, Scott, Richard and Sal) is clear.

<comment><USER8> What did Howard pull out of Phil? Coincidence?

<comment> at-fates-hands Took some digging, but here you go: [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k3lgWD6rUo9JaR31UDa](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k3lgWD6rUo9JaR31UDa)

<comment><USER9> "So this is the woman you're going to spend the rest of eternity with". Hoo boy

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I made a typical snarky baby boomer comment at a dinner about the talent of Lady GaGa in her meat dress days.

Someone sent me a link to a performance of hers on Howard Stern. Told him now I have two reason not to listen to it ;<).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cce36nhHTP8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cce36nhHTP8)

But I listened and was blown away. For those not listening Stern said after she was done that it was one of the best live performances in the history of his show.

<comment><USER11> GaGa is actually an incredibly talented singer and musician.

She just knows the value of heavy handed marketing (after her initial, more natural, career in NYC didn't take off she pivoted... and the rest is history)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Love Stern, listen to him almost every day. I also generally don't care for celebrities, but when he interviews them I do care. It's the most real you'll ever see them.

<comment><USER13> Any specific interview you recommend? The few I tried listening to were not worth finishing... simply un-interesting. I'd like to hear one or two of the memorable ones that his fans really enjoyed.

<comment><USER14> This is not a new one, but dives into a world most aren't familiar with, that of the independent cartoonist. This particular interview is with the creator of Ren and Stimpy, and his antagonist, the voice of Stimpy, who had a major falling out:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PheypE68BKc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PheypE68BKc)

<comment><USER15> Just watched all of that, thanks for posting. As an old (young?) Ren & Stimpy fan, I had no idea of the backstory. Also, even though Howard Stern's dad weighed in, I'm not sure who I side with. I can honestly see both sides to the argument and that's... unsettling.

Bonus Godwin's Law reference for those that didn't want to watch, it's about 45 seconds from this start: [https://youtu.be/PheypE68BKc?t=30m32s](https://youtu.be/PheypE68BKc?t=30m32s)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> NYT can't go a single, off-topic article without crap-smearing Trump. When a media outlet covers a person 100% negatively, at what point does its readership begin to realize there may be a conflict of interest? Or does the collective cognitive dissonance take care of that all by itself?

<comment><USER17> It's two sentences. You might be overreacting a bit.

<comment><USER18> 2 sentences in a large number of unrelated articles becomes tiresome I'd imagine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> His 1997 (semi?) biographical film _Private Parts_ is full of lascivious shenanigans that you might expect from a "shock jock", but it's also thoughtful and charming.

<comment><USER20> That's why I'm at w loss for the titling if the article. Stern has always been wonderful, ahead of the curve and a game-changer for radio. Private Parts is a great primer for anyone not familiar, and is not bad at all for a biopic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> My wife, a conservative Christian, was dismayed when he joined America's Got Talent as a judge, due to his radio antics. But he quickly won her over as her favorite judge—he was good, he was insightful, he was serious and honest in a way the other judges never managed. I was impressed how he managed to show a very different side to himself from what people expected, and I'm sure it won him a lot of new fans. It was a great move on his part.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd just like to point out that in addition to his radio show he had a very unique and entertaining sketch comedy/variety show. Known to many fans as the "Channel 9 Howard Stern Show" (as not to be mistaken for the "Howard Stern Show"). It ran from 1990-1992 on Saturday nights and contained all original content and skits (as opposed to video of his radio show like the E! show that came later). Extremely entertaining and original, definitely worth checking out for anyone who has an interest in the evolution or career of Howard Stern.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Howard_Stern_Show_(WWOR)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Howard_Stern_Show_\(WWOR\))

</comment><comment><USER23> Sirius did a huge audio production called "The History of Howard Stern" which they'd play when Howard went on vacation or filming America's Got Talent. It's absolutely massive. Must be 60+ hours.

It goes into incredible detail of every point of his career and plays all the old key moments. It's an amazing listen. Really interesting watching his personality evolve from a geeky Weird Al type guy into what he's become.

I loved it so much I converted it into a podcast feed for myself to listen to whenever I have free time. I think I'm only like 75% through and I've been listening to it for over a year.

</comment><comment><USER24> Howard has always been fantastic at interviews, no matter what time frame you're looking at. Its everything else that has changed. I miss Artie.

<comment><USER25> The Artie period was the best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Howard Stern, the vanguard of the Society of the Spectacle.

<comment><USER27> As in Guy Debord? In what way? I've only heard his show a few times but it didn't really scream "commodity fetishism" to me. Although I suppose there's an essay you could write on living vicariously through his celebrity guest stars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "What stops us from looking at ourselves and seeing ourselves is that we're kind of ugly, if we really, if we look really hard," Mr. Murray replied. "We're not who we think we are. We're not, uh we're not as wonderful as we think we are."

Classic example of an ugly person who has limited awareness of the fact that he is an individual who is individual from other people.

<comment><USER29> I got lost in the levels of indirection there. Can you flatten that out?

<comment><USER30> I think they are saying "speak for yourself".

<comment><USER17> Probably, but nobody will ever believe them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What an odd article to be posted on hacker news. Stern is the consumate shape shifting media personality, in turns erudite, vulgar, brash, sensitive - <USER2> to keep the listeners tuned in and consuming the ads. He's a variant of the Kardashians - famous for being famous having adopted the style of an eighties rock musician.

Anything to stay in the limelight...

<comment> at-fates-hands Last time I checked, the Kardashians got famous because of Kim's sex tape. Before that, I hardly think many people who know Kim, remember her far more famous dad Robert who was an attorney on the OJ case.

<comment><USER32> I always figured that most people that know of the Kardashians know of them as just some amorphous blob. I know the name, know they are famous for being famous, but couldn't tell you anything in particular about any of them. I don't even know how many there are, and until reading your post, didn't even make the connection to the OJ case.

<comment><USER33> To me, they're famous for South Park making fun of them all the time. Other than that, I couldn't tell you much about them.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Open sourcing all my private projects - <AUTHOR> http://blog.alexmaccaw.com/open-source-all-the-things

<comment><USER2> After seeing so many "dump and run" code drops on sourceforge, and now on github, I really don't think we (in the global sense) are in want of code.

What would make the world a better place? More well documented AND maintained examples of code that satisfies some need.

<comment><USER3> As a meta-reply:

Do people find value in unmaintained codedumps? I registered a dedicated github account last year for all the small stuff I wrote during train rides (I do a lot of them, 5 hours apiece) and never really finished. The idea was that I put a README on each of those and just leave it there for anyone to look at. But most of them are just tiny experiments in Ruby, so I decided not to release them for precisely the reasons mentioned in the parent post.

<comment><USER4> I really like reading other peoples code (even more when the topic/language/whatever is interesting to me) even if it is only some small proof-of-concept or idea / unfinished code, i.e. not really useable as-is.

For really small tests/examples, I have a playground directory: <https://github.com/albertz/playground>

Everything else which is slightly more than a single file or has some other justification to be an own project, I just created a repo for it. <https://github.com/albertz> <http://www.az2000.de/projects/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've debated doing this a few times, but the stuff I haven't released is usually such a mess of undocumented code that's been rewritten a few million times I'd be afraid it would make me look bad. Congrats for having the discipline to keep even the stuff you aren't releasing in good enough order to be able to do something like that.

In case there's any doubt, the above statement is 100% sincere and includes no sarcasm.

<comment><USER6> You know, I used to worry about that too. Now I realize that I was maybe a bit arrogant--in the first place, almost nobody is going to read my code! In the second place, when somebody actually _does_ read my code (e.g. a potential employer or friend), they don't mind if I have a bunch of projects with dubious code quality. I think every programmer understands that bad code is unavoidable; sometimes it's even the best option! (Trying to write a 20 hour project in a 16 hour hackathon does not leave time for neatness.) As long as you have something to show you _can_ write good code (a halo project, of sorts), it should be fine.

And, given this, there is no reason not to release your little projects. Let the rest of the world back them up for you ;).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice gesture from an accomplished programmer. Makes me be appreciative of the field I am in. SO much of what I have learned over the years has been the same way. I always say Github has been the most humbling experience of my career. Just when I start to think I'm the smartest guy in the room I'll crack open a project I haven't seen before and be amazed at what other people have thought of that never even crossed my mind before, yet I'll see the immediate benefit in it.

This is seriously one of the cooler things I've seen any engineer do. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes, good idea.

I'm starting to open source some office tools that I use on innovafy. The kind of tools that most offices could use, but no one ever bothers to build.

Anyhow, open sourcing is more of a gain than a loss.

</comment><comment> why-el Why does Alex's Heroku redirect to Twitter? I tried testing a couple of projects he hosts there and it strangely asks for my Twitter credentials.

<comment><USER9> I believe that the app demos he is hosting on Heroku require Twitter authentication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> People, open source your code.

I never regretted that decision. ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> hermes looks similar to fluent.io :) you might have some insight as to how they can improve their app (it's a great app btw)

</comment><comment><USER12> Way to be! I like this attitude because it's like if you're not going to maintain it or try to profit from it then why keep it to yourself? I'm much the same way. I'm sure we all have little projects that have the potential to make us a few bucks but if you're not willing to keep them up and follow through then you might as well share. Either way it's not like you were going to do anything with them.

And you never know who might want to take over or what kind of great new enhancements someone else might contribute that make you proud that you started the project to begin with. Even if the code languishes on github or sourceforge at least there's the possibility for someone to pick it up. What's more, you never know who's picking up abandoned projects and using them privately. Just because there's no cmaintainer or community activity that doesn't mean there isn't the odd person here and there who finds an abandoned project and uses the hell out of it. Contributions from the open source community isn't the only measure of a project's success or usefulness. Individuals finding a use for abandoned projects without contributing back is still a great thing in my book.

I don't know about everyone else but I do it for the love of the game, not to see my name in the source code of another project that uses my code. As far as I'm concerned, unless I'm planning to make a profit (in which case I wouldn't publish the source), you can fork, close, distribute and charge whatever you want with my code.

I like Alex's style on this one a lot.

<comment><USER2> Do you know of an example of someone taking someone else's unfinished project and running with it?

(And just to be clear, I'm not trolling -- I'm actually asking.)

<comment><USER13> The Cassandra project was in really bad shape when FB open sourced it, and it languished like that for several months before Jonathan Ellis picked it up and ran with it. Now it's a thriving Apache project, with contributors from many companies, and even commercial support through DataStax.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: nnn – the missing terminal file manager for X - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jarun/nnn <comment><AUTHOR>
      # Features

      - Modes - basic, detail, disk usage analyzer (du)
      - <USER2>
        - Familiar, easy shortcuts (arrows, `~`, `-`, `&`)
        - *Navigate-as-you-type* mode with dir auto-select for the maverick
        - Handy bookmarks, start at bookmark, pin and visit directory
        - chdir prompt with tab completion (interprets cd ..... too!)
        - Roll-over at edges, page through entries
        - Show directories in custom color (default: enabled in blue)
      - <USER3>
        - Directories always listed on top
        - Sort by file name, modification time, size
        - Numeric order (1, 2, ... 10, 11, ...) for numeric names
      - <USER4>
        - Superfast directory content filtering with *search-as-you-type*
        - Desktop search (gnome-search-tool, catfish) integration
      - <USER5>
        - Open with desktop opener (default) or specify a custom app
        - Create, list and extract archives (needs atool)
        - Optionally open text files in EDITOR (fallback vi)
        - Customizable bash script [nlay](https://github.com/jarun/nnn/wiki/all-about-nlay) to handle actions
      - <USER6>
        - Detailed stat-like file information
        - Media information (needs mediainfo or exiftool, if specified)
      - <USER7>
        - Create, rename files and directories
        - Batch rename/move/delete current directory entries in vidir (from moreutils)
        - Spawn SHELL (fallback sh) in the current directory
        - Run custom scripts in the current directory
        - Copy absolute file paths with/without X (*easy* shell integration)
        - Change directory at exit (*easy* shell integration)
        - Open any file in EDITOR (fallback vi) or PAGER (fallback less)
        - Open current directory in a custom GUI file manager
        - Terminal screensaver/locker (default vlock, customizable) integration
      - Unicode support
      - Highly optimized code, minimal resource usage</comment>


Silicon Valley Bank Launches In London To Bridge The Tech Funding Gap - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/11/silicon-valley-bank-launches-in-london-to-bridge-the-tech-funding-gap/ <comment><USER2> Bad article that shows fundamental misunderstanding of the startup scene in London.

The tech funding gap in London isn't at the growth stage but rather at seed stage (where SVB don't get involved). Once you're making money and you're looking at growth funding there's plenty of angels and VC which would be interested (and SVB provides a valuable alternative).

<comment><USER3> That being said, most UK banks suck (having tried a few, I know), and I am in fact seriously considering switching my company's bank account from Lloyds to these guys, since presumably they are not ass-backwards retarded when it comes to simple tech things that you expect in 2012.

<comment><USER2> Probably the most useful thing SVB could do for seed-stage startups is to offer painless merchant accounts structured with startups in mind (i.e not requiring a 100k deposit if you're only going to be processing 30k in payments, etc.)

<comment><USER3> They don't list merchant accounts as part of their account services, but I suspect that can't and won't be their main differentiator. After all, BrainTree has now expanded to the UK (and I believe they offer accounts-with- merchant-account-included), and surely a Stripe-in-the-UK clone (or even Stripe expanding to the UK) is not far away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had an investment meeting with them in their London offices late last year and was given lots of [free] advice and support; confused re launch article as they have been around in London for a while now, however, congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER5> All the talk with regards to funding is generally focussed around either bootstrapping with customer revenue from day 1, and/or taking funding from angels and VCs. Where does Silicon Valley Bank fit into the picture? I've basically never seen any blog posts, dicussions or articles advising of the pros and cons of going down this route. Any suggestions or experiences to share?

<comment><USER3> A corporate bank's primary purpose is easily stated as: to help its customers manage and raise money.

Traditionally, this has included both equity funding and debt funding. Banks will help with public offerings, and with issuing bonds - or loaning directly from the bank's cash pile.

Most established businesses use some amount of loans to "leverage" their business. Some smaller (and even larger) businesses even depend on the loans to operate day to day. However, startups normally don't get access to this type of money, because banks see them as far too risky.

SVB presumably has its own custom risk models and procedures to deal with startups, which enables them to loan money to startups even though most banks wouldn't.

Why would a startup want to get a loan rather than raising some money? Because borrowing money is about a billion times better/cheaper than selling a chunk of the company, that's why.

This won't be replacing seed funding - that's always going to be too risky for a bank, which needs most of its money to be repaid with interest - but for startups with sustainable revenues and growth, SVB can presumably come to a sensible analysis as to whether this company will be able to service its debt, and so make a loan where a traditional bank wouldn't, in a growth funding situation. And the startup would be stupid not to raise at least part of their growth funding with a loan rather than selling more equity, if they can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Holy ripoff Batman. Check out their fees ! Sorry but they seem to charge for just about everything you can do. I'm not expecting free banking service but 25 GBP/month just to have an account there ?? 2.75% for using the debit card ?! WOW !!

<comment><USER3> Everything's negotiable... (at least, it better be...)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Discuss code and docs in repositories (on Sourcegraph) - <AUTHOR> https://about.sourcegraph.com/blog/discuss-code-and-docs-in-repositories/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN -- This is something I've been working on recently and really advocating for at Sourcegraph.

I'm extremely excited about improving how code gets discussed in general, and I'm really excited to hear any feedback and answer any questions you might have about this. Let me know what you think (I want to hear your harshest criticism!) =)</comment>


Ask HN: Apple Watch as a Heart Monitor? - <AUTHOR> I have heart palpitations sometimes and sometimes-high blood pressure (and acute anxiety), and with all the stuff coming up around COVID and heart health it's got me wondering if I should be monitoring mine (for an undiagnosed condition, or otherwise).
I've heard good things about the Apple Watch as a monitoring device but I'm wondering: is it good enough to buy it purely for that reason? I can live without having phone notifications on my wrist and I wouldn't really use it as a "workout device", exactly. Just a passive way of tracking my day to day health.
Anybody have thoughts/anecdotes/informed opinions? <comment><USER2> I am not a doctor nor do I have anything to do with the medical field...

Have you been diagnosed by a doctor? Specifically a cardiologist? They'll recommend a device to monitor your heart if they are worried about it.

If they're not worried about it and you want to monitor yourself, Apple Watch would probably be fine. Although pricey if all you really care about is HR. Personally, I wasn't that impressed with it. I found it was always off by a few beats per minute. And there were times that the sensor didn't work at all (which I attribute to having very dark tattoos on both arms right where the sensor sits).

If you just care about heart rate, there are cheaper alternatives out there. LETSCOM, Lintelek, etc. on Amazon have HR wrist monitors that are <= 30 USD. For me, that is in the "grab one, if it isn't great, get rid of it" range.</comment>


What talent wants - <AUTHOR> https://visible.vc/blog/what-talent-wants/ <comment><USER2> Author here, thanks for sharing this. Know that there is a bit of a tendency in the startup world to scoff at the idea of management which would probably lead many to dismiss someone like Peter Drucker...interestingly, many of the management principles he championed 50+ years ago (flatter organizations, autonomy, etc.) would probably resonate quite well with both managers and individual contributors at a lot of early stage companies. Definitely recommend reading Drucker.

His ideas, along with our own personal experiences, sparked the idea for this post. Would love to hear what you think.</comment>


Researcher found new type of Water known as Ice VII from Diamonds deep in Earth - <AUTHOR> https://weekfacts.com/2018/03/researcher-found-new-type-water-known-ice-vii-diamonds-deep-earth/ <comment><USER2> duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16552303](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16552303) , with plenty of Vonnegut references among the 72 comments.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yikes! That's awfully close to IX!</comment>


How Pathogens Fight Drugs - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/38661/?ref=rss <comment><USER2> From an evolutionary perspective, it is a beautiful thing. This is how natural selection has favored the species with the best adaptability to survive. It also speaks to a larger issue - life elsewhere. It really demonstrates how tenacious and robust life is. (Life outside of Earth...without a doubt!) Back to the article...the tech is very cool and will surely yield benefits. But how does one "attack the process of resistance acquisition"? In essence, you are trying to prevent mutations from occurring at the DNA level. Mutations are the basis for creating new forms of the same species and whether it survives or dies depends on mutation and the environment. I wonder if this is what the researchers mean by designing drugs that target the 'resistance acquisition' - ie preventing cell replication.</comment>


Crossrail blames software 'bugs' for possible two-year delay - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/1358fa0a-675b-11e9-9adc-98bf1d35a056 <comment><AUTHOR> Several UK rail projects have been badly hit problems with software.</comment>


A Critique of the GNU Hurd Multi-Server Operating System [pdf] (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://walfield.org/papers/200707-walfield-critique-of-the-GNU-Hurd.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> In 2007, Hurd developers Neal Walfield and Marcus Brinkmann gave a critique of the Hurd architecture, known as "The Critique", and a proposal for how a future system may be designed, known as "The Position Paper", and began working on the Viengoos microkernel for HURD. As of 2009, development on Viengoos is paused due to Walfield lacking time to work on it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd)</comment>


Download large files from remote servers using Nginx and Docker - <AUTHOR> http://tutorials.pluralsight.com/devops/download-large-files-from-remote-servers-using-nginx-docker <comment> chad-autry Don't quite understand why this would be better than sticking an sftp server in a docker container.</comment>


Silicon Valley Is Not Wall Street: Tom Perkins - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704454304575081591449816712.html

<comment><USER2> Note to self: If you ever publish something in the WSJ, make sure you get all the important stuff into first 2.5 paragraphs, before the paywall comes down and everyone stops reading.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you search for the title of this article in Google News and click on the link there you can see the entire article without subscribing. (I'm guessing it's the referrer header that makes the difference.) Well worth the effort.

<comment><USER4> Here's a link: [http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&...](http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=Silicon+Valley+Is+Not+Wall+Street+)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I love this bit:

"The first practitioners, including Eugene Kleiner and me, had familiarity with Wall Street operators and we set up our partnerships to avoid specifically problematic practices.

These parameters included: no leverage; audited statements; never investing personal capital where the partnership could or should do so (that is, no "cherry picking" at the investors expense); no profit participation until the investor's entire capital had been repaid; limited partnership life and no investments of new capital in older deals. These early ideas have become nearly universal over the decades. And in my opinion, they have kept our industry healthy, profitable and largely scandal-free.

It is time the venture industry is rewarded for the work that we do and how we go about doing it. We are not asking for bailout money or additional tax breaks. We simply want those in the Beltway to leave us alone and let us do our jobs—which means creating more jobs for our country."

</comment><comment><USER5> It is time the venture industry is rewarded for the work that we do and how we go about doing it. We are not asking for bailout money or additional tax breaks. We simply want those in the Beltway to leave us alone and let us do our jobs, which means creating more jobs for our country.

<comment><USER6> You might want to indicate that that's a quote from the article. Unless I'm totally out of line and you're really Tom Perkins, then I apologize.

<comment><USER5> Good call sorry about that, it appears I can no longer edit my post. I meant to put quotes around it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One problem: there's a lot of crossover between investment banking and venture capital. Although the fact is appalling, it's easier to get a VC job with an IB gig and an MBA than with 4-10 years of experience in technology. So you have a lot of the same people.

VC would be a lot better-run, however, if it recruited technology people instead of ex-bankers.

<comment><USER8> Having been (or been close to) all of the above types, I'm pretty sure this isn't correct.

You actually want someone who has 1) an eye for the future 2) an understanding of risk 3) a clue as to how to run companies and 4) the ability to say no.

<comment><USER9> I also want a pony.

Those are all rare qualities individually, together they are more rare. I'd be interested to know which probability is higher: the probability that one has those qualities given that one works closely with technology, or the probability that one has those qualities given that one has an MBA.</comment></comment></comment>


How to fold the world-record-setting paper airplane "Suzanne" - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2014/11/18/how-to-fold-the-world-record-s.html

<comment><AUTHOR> > Collins's narration is delightful, the gentle admonishments to precision and > care typical of any obsessive craftsperson or supernerd. The book itself > uses paper airplanes as a jumping-off point to explore the scientific > method, with each plane variation as an experiment designed to prove or > disprove an hypothesis.

Looks like an awesome way to introduce kids to the scientific method.</comment>


Mayday: The Internet has a superpac - <AUTHOR> https://mayday.us/internethasasuperpac/

<comment><USER2> Really hope this goes trough</comment>


Knuth 3:16 (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://www.larry.denenberg.com/Knuth-3-16/ <comment><AUTHOR> There are comments in the source of the website, explaining most of what people have asked here, including where he has taught, his organ, mistaking his identity for a football coach and bird watcher, and a plea to not be emailed that Donald Knuth is still alive.

On the other pages there appears to be more information available about passages chosen, and other fun bits. Check it out.

</comment><comment><USER2> Is this supposed to be satirical? I am obviously missing something... What site is it satirizing?

<comment><USER3> It is satirical. If you go to the main page, at [http://www.larry.denenberg.com/](http://www.larry.denenberg.com/) , you'll see this is described as "a celebration of Don Knuth". The jokes require you to understand who Donald Knuth is and what he's done. A premise is that we're in the far future (20002), and some of the details are fuzzy.

It starts with the title. "Knuth 3:16" makes it sound like Knuth wrote one of the books of the bible. Among CS researches, Knuth's works are held in high esteem.

The "3:16" part more specifically refers to Knuth's study of chapter 3 verse 16 of every book of the Bible. See [http://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/316.html](http://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/316.html) .

The analysis is of the 16'th sentence of the 3rd chapter of some of Knuth's (presumed) most famous works, plus commentary.

"He was an enthusiastic musician" likely refers to the organ in his house [http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/organ.html](http://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/organ.html) .

The text "he started life as a college football coach" refers to Knute Rockne, who is shown in the picture. This is a joke on the similarity of Knuth and Knute, with the premise that in 20002 these two famous people have been blurred into one.

"Big Dummies Guide to Visual Basic" refers to a Dr. Fun (2000) cartoon at [http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr- Fun/df200002/df20000210.jpg](http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr- Fun/df200002/df20000210.jpg) as if it were real.

<comment><USER4> I didn't get the joke. I headed over to wikipedia to confirm that Knuth was not dead.

<comment><USER5> You made me feel a bit better that I wasn't alone in this.

<comment><USER6> I did exactly the same...

<comment><USER7> Came here to report this too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >" _He was an enthusiastic musician, though exactly which was his instrument is a subject of some dispute (the most likely candidates are the accordion, jew 's harp, and flugelhorn)._"

It seems the author missed or forgot the legendary pipe organ.

[http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/organ.html](http://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/organ.html)

<comment><USER9> I think this was a joke (along with all the other details of Knuth that have been lost or confused in the intervening 17,986 years)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Luke 14:34-35

</comment><comment><USER11> The title should really read "Knuth 3:16 (20002)"

>> Copyright © 20002 Larry Denenberg

<comment><USER12> I think we'll go with [https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.larry.denenberg.com...](https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.larry.denenberg.com/Knuth-3-16/).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How are domain names priced? - <AUTHOR>

If a domain name is available, how is it the registrar can pick the price they would like for an available domain? How are all available domain names priced? <comment><USER2> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_registrar>

Basically, each TLD (.com, .org, .io, etc) has an approved organization. Different companies (hover.com, godaddy.com) get a license from the parent organizations to register domains for those TLD's. Of course, this requires the registrars to get separate licenses from each parent organization.

At this point, its the free market, more or less. This is the level where different licensed companies sell the domains at whatever prices they set.

*Edit: Some TLD's have the same parent organization. Not sure if that was clear.

<comment><USER3> To further clarify, here's OpenSRS's pricing structure, which breaks down the registry cost, ICANN fees, and their charges:

<http://www.opensrs.com/services/domains/domains-pricing></comment></comment>


Facebook's Land Grab in the Face of a Downturn - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/08_48/b4110084423202.htm

<comment><USER2> _"We're in this game not just for five or 10 years," says Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer. "We're in it for 20 to 30 years."_

That makes you sound like an idiot when your CEO says he won't have a business plan for some years.

<comment><USER3> How so? I fail to see your reasoning. Are you suggesting Facebook is going to die in the foreseeable future?

<comment><USER2> I'm suggesting that it's silly to think 20 years into the future when you can barely see 5 years.

Also, when your CEO says one thing and you say another, there's a communications problem. Their PR department should be keeping a close watch on what the executives say...

<comment><USER4> I think it's silly to put a limit on "how long you're in the game for" at all...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's because Facebook is burning through cash they don't have. Unless they continue to grow they are going to be in hot water, fast.

Sometimes the Facebook valuations make me think of that Southpark episode where Butters' gay dance earns him 10 million theoretical dollars.

When Facebook show a real consistent monitization stream then I'll be more interested in stories like this.

<comment><USER6> they should become the new email</comment></comment>


'Over my dead body': Booker prize archives reveal unknown judging battles - never-the-bride https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/06/over-my-dead-body-booker-prize-archives-reveal-unknown-judging-battles <comment><AUTHOR> Sayre's Law: "In any dispute, the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the issues at stake. ... and this explains why academic politics are so bitter."

<comment><USER2> From the Man Booker Wikipedia page:

> The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured international renown > and success; therefore, the prize is of great significance for the book > trade.

Sure, the Sayre quote is pithy and funny, but there _does_ seem to be a lot at stake in choosing the winner here.

<comment><USER3> There isn't very much at stake for the jury members.

<comment><USER2> The stakes for the decision are high, even if they are not high for any jury member personally. This is true for any jury.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Symbian, a post-mortem - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r04yjaQoL1c_vuwQr-CdbDQ8EjGVGOL_1V6BNVWaR1c/preview?sle=true

<comment><USER2> This is just from my limited experience trying to develop mobile software around 2002 (J2ME and investigating Symbian) and developing for Android and iOS nowadays.

I developed 3 apps on J2ME at that time and investigated Symbian. The impression I got of Symbian of that time was that it was painful to develop against. J2ME was less painful but very, very limited. Think no animation support, just bitmaps, and I have to write my own game run loop, collision detection, etc.... This was most probably due to the limited hardware of the time but nonetheless, it was primitive.

In comparison, iOS and to a lesser extent Android are basically fully featured OSs with mostly full exposed functionality. iOS gives you core graphics, opengl es, core text, core animation, grand central dispatch, networking, etc... Android gives you views, animation, background tasks, activities, intents, etc...

The distribution model was also broken. If you wanted something distributed, you had to basically go with a carrier. There were attempts at an app store but there were not successful.

Contrast this with the App Store, Google Play, and iOS enterprise development program where you don't have to go begging to a carrier to get your app distributed.

To summarize, Symbian was coming from a previous era and had no chance. If you compare RIM's situation to Nokia's, I bet you will see a similar chart.

<comment><USER3> I am just curious but what changed after the iPhone? It seems like there were a couple of app stores (e.g. GetJar) before the iPhone, but I don't know if they differed before the iPhone or if they were basically a less popular earlier version. Did carriers have to approve apps that went into the store or did they have to approve the store as a whole?

<comment><USER4> The app stores were not built into the phones. You had to navigate to those third party app stores via the web and download them to your phone. But that web navigation was done via your computer rather than your phone itself. The phones were serving a baby form of HTML that had to be routed via through the carrier if memory serves.

<comment><USER5> Many carriers intercept web traffic and, sometimes, inject headers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fascinating read. I always enjoyed my Symbian phones, since the interface was pretty damn good for the keypad form factor, and I have a big soft spot for sliders; the behind-the-scenes mess that grew out of the late-90s platform tech goes a long way to explain more about why quality apps were so few and far between.

True background multitasking on a phone in 2006 was really fun, though.

</comment><comment><USER7> I pre-ordered a Nokia 5630 XpressMusic (S60) in April 2009 and recieved it late May.

It was awesome! Great camera-recording, WiFi, 3.5mm audio plug, good looking, slim. Maybe not a competitor to the iPhone 3g but I felt it was on par with Android devices at the time, and available at only ~260€ without contract.

This feeling lasted for 5 minutes, then it crashed. And it crashed again. And again. 20-30 times that night as I tried different features, before I just gave up. I started to regret my purchase.

It got better over the following year with updates but it never fully stopped to crash. Often it would crash while playing music, which really sucks for a phone sold to me as THE music smartphone. By June 2010 I had switched to a HTC Desire (which I'm still happy with, now with a custom ROM).

It is interesting to read in this post-mortem that 'Testability' was really hard on Symbian, and that problems or bad choices on how e.g. email polling should work, that must have been caught by engineering, somehow slipped through the cracks into the hands of customers.

If testability had been easy and quality the highest prio at Nokia, then the 5630 could have been the phone I still use, and I would have recommended it to friends back then instead of saying 'Stay clear!'. I might even have considered buying another Nokia phone. Things could have been different.

</comment><comment><USER8> bear in mind that seeing why something failed (or is failing) is pretty easy after the fact, ridiculously hard to do before the fact. that said, i think many people saw the handwriting on the wall before "the fall", even at nokia. so, why did they continue to slip and become irrelevant in the smartphone ecosystem?

inertia. plain and simple. not market inertia - although that plays a part - but internal inertia. and nokia had around a decade of inertia, some of it is technical debt that gets harder to pay off, some of it comes from big customers and partners you acquired. but underestimate the weight of that at your peril.

every business has stakeholders, internal and external. when you recognize a significant shift must be made, these stakeholders still have to be satisfied. you have teams of people - customers, partners, business units - invested in the way things are. to make changes to your core technology and violate the expectations of those stakeholders is insanely difficult to pull off. RIM is going through this, as well. one cannot simply "just adopt android (or windows mobile)" and be done with it. you have to see contracts and expectations (e.g. core applications and solutions) through with those stakeholders.

clayton christensen did a great job of elaborating on this in "the innovator's dilemma", everyone should study it. this is a ruthless market with fickle customers - developers, end users (witness the crash of motorolla in about one year!), everyone you need to win over - and an insanely fast cycle, much faster than your platform and hardware development cycle. today's darlings will be tomorrow's road kill, they always are in this business.

<comment><USER9> Little tangent <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great read. I once did a project for S60. Initially I thought to use C++ but its implementation for this platform required to learn a lot of platform- specific quirks. I ended up implementing the project in Python. I'm really happy that I did not waste my time on learning the platform. This rises the obvious question: how to choose a platform that really deserves the effort to study it?

<comment><USER11> That is indeed a very good question. Other than waiting, it's one I have no answer to. The best technology doesn't always win as we all know. I remember being extremely excited about Moblin, a little puzzled when it switched to Meego, and downright disappointed as it slowly fizzled away, one paper cut at a time by a company with no leadership.

I was in total shock when they killed it. I think most people would be too if they just saw someone (in this case Nokia) commit suicide right in front of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was going to make a version of Ted Nelson's Zigzag for the Symbian platform (circa 2002). It never worked out. I worried recently that I didn't catch the wave (eg, Symbian), but now I know that the iPhone changed distribution, and actually the time is ripe for Zigzag to take off on mobile phones.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting: when I visit this doc (on Google Docs), there's a line at the top of the page that says:

"Wow, this file is really popular! Some tools might be unavailable until the crowd clears. [Try again] [Dismiss]"

This strikes me as a strange choice by the Google Docs team; rather than fixing the problem, they just tell you it exists. I mean, this is Google; don't they have lots of bandwidth and server capacity? Why _can't_ they handle traffic spikes? Can anyone here shed some light on this?

<comment><USER14> It's good software engineering.

The reasonable case for multi-person editing of a document is several people at the max editing the document concurrently.

Having thousands of people doing that is not a real-life scenario.

It's better to protect yourself from extremes like that by disabling editing functionality in that case than try to engineer a system that actually allows thousands of people editing a document concurrently (because it would be very expensive in engineering time and especially testing time).

There's literally no business case to be made for supporting thousands of concurrent edits - no one actually needs that functionality.

<comment><USER15> > It's good software engineering.

> The reasonable case for multi-person editing of a document is several people > at the max editing the document concurrently.

On the other hand, I suppose it would be good UI design to not show that warning to everybody who only have read-only access to the document,

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For a second a read Sybian, totally different technologies.

</comment><comment><USER11> Excellent article. The first part reminds me of the fragmentation and stupid decisions made for the Android ecosystem. More importantly, however, it really explains a lot about what happened _since_ the death of Symbian with Moblin and Meego as well as Nokia in general.

Quite a sad story, IMO, but unfortunately one they seem doomed to repeat with Elop "running" things. On the verge of what could have been the first GNU/Linux smartphone (N9) to take real market share, he killed both Moblin and Meego. It's amazing they still released the N9 and yet still switched to Windows.

Elop absolutely deserves a place next to ex-Sun's ex-CEO Schwartz as two of the worst CEO's tech or not in history.

tl;dr: Nokia is dying itself, slowly being killed by Elop. In two years or less, we'll probably get Nokia's postmortem, and it'll be a sad story for all.</comment>


User Voice cert expired - <AUTHOR> https://uservoice.com/

<comment><USER2> May be you want to direct this to UserVoice support. How does this belong here? Just curious as to why this was posted on HN in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not the one for subdomain: <https://buffer.uservoice.com></comment>