Facebook, Google, Twitter agree to delete hate speech in 24 hours: Germany - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-internet-idUSKBN0TY27R20151215 <comment> rm_-rf_slash If it's speech condoning or encouraging harm against others, then it should be removed. But if people are just voicing their opinions, even hateful opinions, then it doesn't take a genius to figure out that banning such speech makes the sentiment run deeper, and only offloads it to even less "tolerant" parts of the web, like 4chan.

<comment><USER2> What about: "The US and Western Europe should attack ISIS soldiers", or "Convicted murderers should be executed by the state". Both of those statements are condoning and encouraging harming others. Should they be removed?

Can you not see the impossibility of regulating which speech is justified, and which is not?

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's not impossible. It happens all the time already.

The HN system which allowed people to downvote you is limiting your speech. Facebook removing posts about sex is limiting your free speech.

I find it really perverse that people are ok with banning people talking about sex, but are fine with them calling for murder.

Take a guess which society has tens of thousands of murders, and millions in prison? The one that takes away free speech about sex, but protects people calling to kill immigrants.

<comment><USER4> It's not limiting free speech unless the government is asking for or compelling it.

[https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)

<comment><USER5> >It's not limiting free speech unless the government is asking for or compelling it.

The First Amendment applies only to the government, but the principle of freedom of speech is broader. Large corporations, especially those that effectively operate as common carriers (e.g., ISPs), are rightfully criticized if they block speech due to its viewpoint. Facebook has a legal right to censor speech on its own website, but others have the right to criticize Facebook for doing so, and the principle of freedom of speech is a valid reason for such criticism.

<comment><USER6> So at what point does a private business become a 'common carrier'? Because pretty much everyone agrees a business can chuck someone off the premises for just about any reason, and most internet forums and communities end up being more about 'what the owner wants to allow' rather than anything else.

Do you suddenly lose the right to tell people what they're allowed to say or do if your community becomes popular? How about if it's the leading resource in a field of study, or half the population end up using it?

Because this is what's bugging me about these arguments. Why can a community like a forum, mailing list, Usenet group, Slack group or subreddit choose what people can say and block comments for any reason, but say, Facebook gets criticised for the same thing? They're all communities, they're all privately owned...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The title of this article needs to be changed. There is a world of difference between "anti-immigrant comments" and hate speech that incites violence (which is what's really being discussed here.) @dang

<comment><USER3> Yes, why was the title changed to "anti-immigrant" rather than the more accurate "hate speech" that the original article uses?

Facebook previously would allow hate speech(like calling for violence), but take down comments by people talking about sex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't understand how deleting an online record of hate speech and threats of violence is going to do anything to help solve any problems. It will make the net look prettier, but the people who would post such things will still be there thinking and feeling exactly as they do now.

<comment><USER9> Post-WWII Germany has had strict controls on public hate speech of all types, as a legacy of national shame/disgust about the Holocaust. I'm all for free speech, but I can't really blame them for exercising caution, all things considered.

<comment><USER10> The law against it actually already existed previous to WWII, starting with 1871. But it wasn't strongly enforced, and worded not clear enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They are now introducing "hate-crimes" here in the EU. This punishes there mere act of publicly saying or writing a hateful comment. (non threatening, non endorsing or inciting criminal acts)

If people take offence, you will be persecuted. So it's a great law to further tighten the control over what can be discussed and what can't.

And if that wasn't enough, our government now allows NGO's and other non state organisations to police Facebook and other social media to prevent and contain types of thoughtcrime that haven't been yet criminalised.

No approval from a court needed, some privately funded NGO will in future decide for us.

<comment><USER3> Which law precisely are you talking about? Racist hate speech was already illegal in Germany.

I'm genuinely interested if you could link to something describing what you are talking about.

<comment><USER11> Example (sorry, it's in German):

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung)

The second item of StGb 130 (updated in 2015) is interesting here:

die Menschenwürde anderer dadurch angreift, dass er eine vorbezeichnete Gruppe, Teile der Bevölkerung oder einen Einzelnen wegen seiner Zugehörigkeit zu einer vorbezeichneten Gruppe oder zu einem Teil der Bevölkerung beschimpft, böswillig verächtlich macht oder verleumdet,

It states that if you attack/insult the dignity of a person or group with a statement, you are a to be punished.

This part in specific: "oder zu einem Teil der Bevölkerung beschimpft" -> or some group within the population without further specification.

So if a prosecutor feels like it he/she might persecute you for insulting for example Feminists.

Compare this with the version of the same law from 1871:

"Wer in einer den öffentlichen Frieden gefährdenden Weise verschiedene Klassen der Bevölkerung zu Gewaltthätigkeiten gegen einander öffentlich anreizt, wird mit Geldstrafe bis zu zweihundert Thalern oder mit Gefängniß bis zu zwei Jahren bestraft.

Seems more reasonable to me, only inciting violence is criminalised here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Don't like what someone is saying? Point out why they're wrong, but don't send guys with guns (the police) to force them to shut up. That's far more unethical than anything anyone could say.

</comment><comment><USER13> Free speech, European style.

<comment><USER14> Free speech, the correct way. In my opinion, of course.

(The following is not so much directed at you; I don't know you, after all. It's just that I need to rant, as always when Americans lecture us on free speech. "You" is not the personal you, but "you Americans on web forums")

Don't mistake your version of free speech for a canonical implementation.

Keep your hate speech and school shootings, be proud of it, and bury your dead.

We just happen to live in peace and don't need or want your constant superiority complex in our face.

Just remember, after WWII you had a wonderful opportunity to force your free speech on us. You deliberately chose to force something else on us. And had it written in our constitution. Because Nazis. Now don't you dare blame us for having it. You wanted us to not extend free speech to Nazis. You wanted us to defend our new constitution.

You don't get to come back after seventy-five years and ask us to please be nicer to Nazis. And Scientology. And whatnot.

Have you noticed how wherever you engage in nation building, you never implement your political system? How come? Isn't your system perfect? Maybe it's only for the enlightened American people and other peoples are too backwards and savage for that?

Okay, maybe Puerto Rico, which is almost an American state. They have your system, as well. Except... all their political organs serve at the US congress' pleasure. Very colonial.

It's great that you identify with your system. Really. But please enjoy it. Feel free to tell us how much you enjoy it. But stop disparaging others who disagree.

<comment><USER15> Thank you for writing this (and I say that as an American). We as a country are are gargantuan hypocrites about this whole thing; the idea of free speech in our Constitution--to say nothing of plenty of other privileges that we pretend are rights--is one of many things we _don 't_ pass on to the people we claim hegemony over.

We are tremendously bad at owning our shit. I wish we were better.

<comment><USER16> As a human...

The GP was just as condescending as the GGP. His rush to stereotype Americans was largely comical. He makes it quite clear at the beginning that his buttons were simply (and easily) pushed; and this his rant was justified in his eyes. He simply emoted all over this thread to the benefit of no one but himself.

It is not my status as an American that I defend or his status as a German(?) that I attack when I point out the hypocrisy or limits in his version of free speech. Nor does my acknoledgement of those limits imply I am not familiar with the history and hypocrisy of the United States and its voracious appetite for hegemony, empire building, and oppression of peoples (including the restriction or punishment of ostensibly free speech) both within and without its borders.

This entire thread reads like a bunch of petulant children pointing fingers. Neither side defends the merits of their version of free speech nor makes salient points about the others' version of free speech; leading to no greater understanding and apparently prompting people to take sides in a conflict that doesn't even have to exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it's a really good idea to read the wikipedia article about the law this is based on:

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

It makes some things clear, what is allowed, what isn't and why.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't follow the topic closely but it seems there would be a difference between "hate speech" and not wanting large numbers of immigrants from a poor violent region immigrating into one's society. I suspect the second is sometimes confused with the first, maybe on occasion deliberately by policy makers or others with an agenda.

<comment><USER3> The title used here on HN is inaccurate, and not what was used in the article. It's not what is actually happening either.

People can still say they don't want immigrants.

What they can't do is ask people to burn down houses where they live or do 'vigilante justice' on them. These are actual things that people have asked others to do, and actually done.

Facebook previously limited speech for things like sex, but was ok with keeping up criminal posts calling for murder.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Re-inventing an acquired & closed Startup, Need Advice - <AUTHOR>

Me & my co-founder started working on an idea 4 months back we are 50% into it. And two days back I stumbled across a post about another startup/product which had a same product(approximately it is a 90% overlap). This previous start-up ran for around 2-3 years, and was eventually bought by Google for rumored 10+ mil $. Google had shutdown the product(tech pundits commented that it was basically acqui-hired), Also founders have a patent about how they technically implemented the idea. The product was widely used and had an install base of 100+ mil.<p>Me & my co-founder are not co located, and are working. This weekend I am travelling to meet him and decide the future course. Thought of getting some advice from HN community first. Please advice if you would continue with development, or start looking for another problem to be solved(Idea). <comment><AUTHOR> An answer from a guy ' Matthew Kane' at Quora - [http://www.quora.com/Startups/Copying-an-acquired-closed- Sta...](http://www.quora.com/Startups/Copying-an-acquired-closed-Startup-Need- Advice)

"My advice would be to reach out to the team who had the startup which was acquired and get their feedback. They will be able to tell you if what you are doing is worth pursuing, if there is still a need in the market, if there are any legal/IP issues etc. I wouldn't waste anymore time on the project until you have spoken to them. They should be more than happy to help especially considering they already have exited their investment and are locked up at Google"

</comment><comment><USER2> two questions you need to ask yourself:

1\. did google kill the project for a lack of potential or did it just not fit into their larger picture?

2\. are you bringing something to life (i.e. killer feature) that the other project didn't have?

just so you know sometimes a project can be too ahead of its time. sometimes someone can do a very similar a few years later and have a real hit: a good example would be that founder of zynga first did a social networking site like facebook (tribe.net) which failed: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pincus#Career>

<comment><AUTHOR> We know that the market for the product is their as the startup has been acquired less than 6 months back, there are no popular replacements. And this has created a noticeable void.

<comment><USER2> i'm seeing this 3 days later, but it sounds like you have a clear path. although keep in mind that other people trying to do the same thing is a form of validation of concept on the flip side. good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is it Etherpad? Did you invent Etherpad again?

<comment><AUTHOR> No it not Etherpad. If you want some pointers, it is in B2B space, where end users is still internet at large.(Think outbrain/disqus)</comment></comment>


Never Trust Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://wellpreparedmind.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/never-ever-trust-facebook/ <comment><USER3> Facebook has value, but no matter what your privacy settings are set to, no matter what you delete, always assume that anything you write or do on Facebook - in any context - will be embarrassingly public. 1) Because it will and 2) because it just makes life easier.

When my wife and I were first dating, for religious and cultural reasons her parents didn't know. Her parents are conservative Muslims and mine conservative Christians. She had a picture of the two of us as her profile picture, and it was set to private (that existed once). More importantly in the picture she wasn't wearing the hijab (the head scarf).

One day Facebook removed the ability to have private profile pictures - automatically converting every profile picture to public. Her sister saw the picture and long story short that was the last time she talked to her parents. That was 2+ years ago. Facebook can't be blamed for the cultural and relationship issues at play here, but they can be blamed for how they went about this. And we can be blamed for trusting them.

I still use facebook. I don't blame them for trying new things, pushing the boundaries, etc. I have however learned that no matter what that data isn't mine. It's facebooks. And whenever facebook decides to innovate they will do whatever they want with their data to try doing it.

<comment><USER4> You are way too easy on FB for destroying your girlfriend's relationship with her parents. Clearly, FB deserves at least some of the blame.

Without your consent, they made private photos public. You didn't do that. You used their privacy settings which they created to prevent this type of situation. To have FB disregard their own privacy settings is 100% on them.

But, instead of blaming FB, you blame yourself. In light of the total collapse of privacy we've experienced recently, it's really sad that that seems perfectly rational.

<comment><USER5> On the contrary I think that his view is far more realist than yours. Her girlfrind gave her private picture to a third source. If you want to keep information secret you never give it away, not on internet not on the real life. Is not like facebook went to her homea amd took the pictures from her camera. I don't think that facebook did a good job here of course. But it's more that it acted like a catalizer in a situation that was heading on tha direction any way.

<comment><USER6> > If you want to keep information secret you never give it away, not on > internet not on the real life.

How do you apply that seemingly unassailable stance to something like iPhone/iCloud, where photos you take with the only camera you have on you during once-in-a-lifetime-moments are immediately and automatically uploaded to a third party for safekeeping?

The solution to all of this data retention/spying stuff is not "start being meticulously paranoid with all of your data", not the least of which is because that won't scale to the majority of the population (and it must, if we are to retain a free society). Furthermore, communications metadata (such as email envelopes with your residential IP and timestamp, cell tower logs that reveal your location, or call logs that reveal your social graph) can't be kept secret unless you _stop communicating with people_. It's a non-starter.

The solution is to alter the legal environment such that these large troves of centralized data are much harder to exploit for evil, both by service providers and military intelligence organizations.

<comment><USER7> > How do you apply that seemingly unassailable stance to something like > iPhone/iCloud, where photos you take with the only camera you have on you > during once-in-a-lifetime-moments are immediately and automatically uploaded > to a third party for safekeeping?

I apply it equally. The same goes for VPS, EC2, etc., and (especially given recent revelations) it's clear it should apply even to unencrypted communications over the Internet even between nodes you control.

<comment><USER8> Do you think if you pay an ISP specifically to not divulge your data to others, and they do, then you should be able to get restitution legally, since they broke the contract?

At what point can you actually have a basis for legal recourse?

Once again the problem is that we don't have decentralized technology that would store our data encrypted and serve it only to those who we have granted access. But we will. Actually the new MegaUpload is encrypted.

<comment><USER7> I absolutely think that you can and should make contracts that provide for restitution, if possible. It's up to each individual what sort of restitution they would require for leaking certain pieces of their data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> FB has, over the years, gradually lost my trust until I deleted my account in November 2010 after having been a member since late 2004 when FB was college- only.

As a 20-something living in SF, it's a daily thing now: I don't get invited to parties, I don't know about birthdays, I don't see my friends' photos, I don't have any contact with anyone from high school or college anymore.

There is a real social cost for someone in my situation to not be on FB. I struggle to quantify the harm, but it's there. I struggle too to explain to my friends why I'm not on FB. And yet I still think I'm better off without it.

The whole situation contributes to the isolation I already experience as an introvert and someone who doesn't much care for bars, clubs, or alcohol -- though I suppose I don't need to remind this audience that being alone != loneliness.

I guess it doesn't matter much anyway, since FB is still collecting information on me (and other 'shadow profiles' of users not on FB).

<comment><USER10> Growing number of my friends are in FB with fake names and identities. It's more complicated when you add new friends or they want to add you, but otherwise it's ok for keeping touch with close friends.

Yes, its against FB user agreement but fuck that.

<comment><USER11> In theory it sounds like a good idea, but imagine a scenario where your bank needs to confirm your identity and they outsource this task to a 3rd party that has incorrect data about you (actually happened to me) and when you provide the correct information they tell you it's incorrect and conclude you are not who you say you are. In my particular case they just had old data that was simply inaccurate. Is it unlikely that 3rd party would buy data from Facebook or some entity that obtained the inaccurate data from Facebook? I don't know but I think you see my point. Incorrect data that was inadvertently connected to you could potentially come back to cause you frustration in the future. That said, I don't necessarily disagree with what you're doing and hope Facebook is soon replaced by P2P software.

<comment><USER12> >Is it unlikely that 3rd party would buy data from Facebook or some entity that obtained the inaccurate data from Facebook?

Probably. Using a fake/altered name is incredibly common on Facebook, especially among younger people. I think any 3rd party assigned with that task would realize that and avoid it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My name is Scott Renfro, and I'm a software engineer at Facebook working on security and privacy. I thought I'd post the comment I submitted on the original blog post here as well. We've put a lot of work into making deletions permanent, so I can imagine how frustrated you must be. I'm pretty sure those story deletions are permanent, and I can't think of any place where we can or do automatically restore user-deleted content months later.

If you happen to have any more details about specific stories that reappeared, I'd love to try and figure out exactly what happened. Admittedly, that may be difficult now that several months have passed.

As one of the other commenters mentioned, your Activity Log is a better place to get a full list of your activity and delete it item-by-item. It also shows posts that Timeline omits and includes other types of content such as likes and comments. This help page may be useful [https://www.facebook.com/help/activitylog](https://www.facebook.com/help/activitylog) and you can find your Activity Log at [https://www.facebook.com/me/allactivity?privacy_source=activ...](https://www.facebook.com/me/allactivity?privacy_source=activity_log&log_filter=all&filter_onlyme=on)

I couldn't tell from your description, but one possibility is that you only saw and deleted the stories rendered on your Timeline, which is just a summary of your activity.

<comment><USER14> As long as you're here, any comment on the (current) top-rated comment by lukejduncan? How can we trust that our private information today won't be similarly exposed by a settings change tomorrow? (I _hope_ that nothing I've posted would endanger my relationship with my family, but I know others aren't as safe.)

<comment><USER13> I'd like to think we wouldn't need to make such a fundamental change again in the future, but if we did decide it was necessary, I hope that we would give everyone plenty of time to make whatever change to their account was necessary to avoid painful outcomes like that.

<comment><USER15> "I hope" isn't much comfort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I deleted my Facebook account a few years ago. The whole deal - waited the requisite month or so to ensure that it was gone, and any further login attempts wouldn't re-instate the account.

Six months later I signed up with a different email address, and Facebook forced me to confirm my account with my phone number. Javascript Error - <USER2> phone number is associated with another Facebook account. I click OK, and I'm redirected to my "new" account with all my old Facebook friends (on the opposite side of the country) showing up as "people I may know."

Nothing is deleted from Facebook, ever.

<comment><USER17> How did you delete your account ?

Because no where in Facebook does it allow you to do this. Only deactivate your account.

<comment><USER18> You can request to have the account deleted. More info here: [https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674](https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I find rants like this quite interesting, especially when they end with lines like this:

> That is why I may delete my Facebook account. And that is why you should > too.

"May". In spite of this pretty egregious behavior/bug, it's still a " _may_ delete my Facebook account". That alone says something about the longevity of the business.

<comment><USER7> It says something about the immense social utility that Facebook provides.

<comment><USER20> ... because everyone is using it. It says nothing about the difference in social utility between the current state of the world and an alternate state of the world in which everyone would be using a federated social network. Facebook is a local optimum from which it will be hard to move away.

<comment><USER7> I completely agree. However, when my mother wants to locate an old friend from her childhood, my description of a currently non-existent widely-used federated social network is of little use to her, but Facebook seems to serve her quite well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There seems to be a philosophical difference in how users versus services view ownership of data and posts like this. If you write status "foo" and someone else comments "bar," who owns what? Do you own the comment because it is subordinate to your post? If your post was just a letter, and someone wrote an essay in a comment underneath it, do you own that essay and can you delete it without permission from its creator?

No, we shouldn't trust facebook. But no, we also shouldn't pretend that the word delete means the same thing on your personal computer as it does on a shared resource like facebook. It's way more complicated than that. It _should_ be simple, but it isn't, at least not yet.

Also, not upvoting this because of the eye-rollingly overdone "merriam-webster defines..." line. God, I can't stand that!

<comment><USER22> When you send someone a letter, you might have a copy and they will have a copy, but the post shouldn't. If you burn your copy, you don't expect the post to send you a backup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Another thing to note is that they don't want their users to delete stuff or do any action that may suggest abandoning the platform. I thought that I deleted my profile 1.5 years ago but I tried logging in last week (after seeing a similar HN thread) and was surprised to find that it was all there. It occured to me that I must have deactivated my profile. Then I tried looking for delete option but couldn't find it anywhere. All I could find was a _deactivate_ button. I had to use a third party (Google) to find out about how to delete my profile.

Facebook has made it unnecessarily hard to delete accounts and instead pushes the _deactivate_ option in a very psychologically manipulative way. Even after using the delete option, I'm sure that they're going to retain my data for as long as they like. I still did it for my own sake, prevent myself from using it at all.

</comment><comment><USER24> Perhaps the way to delete the information in the account is to replace the status posts, comments, photos with junk. Words and sentences that don't mean anything; photos that are noise. Perhaps there's a way to do that in an automated fashion. I'd use that.

<comment><USER25> I'm sure that any edit is really a new version which is then displayed. =/

<comment><USER24> You're probably right.

Then what about replacing it with junk? THen doing it again? Then again? Then again?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While I agree with the gist of the argument (Facebook shouldn't bring back user-deleted posts, and you shouldn't trust Facebook), the semantic arguments over the term "delete" are frivolous. It's not unreasonable for Facebook to keep storing things that I delete. Windows has the Recycle Bin, word processors have undo, databases have backups, etc. The problem is restoring the content _without the user 's permission_. Citing a dictionary definition then overfitting your argument to that specific definition is something I expect from a high school speech class.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is the frustrating thing about facebook. They often have bugs that make things suddenly become public, or settings for visibility of new posts all of a sudden reset to 'all friends' or public. G+ handles this kind of stuff far better.

I really wish there was an auto-delete items older than X months. Most of the value of facebook goes away after a month, anything older than that is usually negative history digging and stalking by others.

<comment><USER27> Except that this isn't a bug. The user asked for the content to be deleted. For it to become public, they must have used a "delete" flag or something similar. The point is they didn't actually delete the content, rather just flag it as deleted.

<comment><USER28> Actually deleting content would be a very expensive operation at Facebook's scale. Flagging it as deleted is the most optimal way. What's troubling is that this content somehow got undeleted on its own. Not once, but twice.

<comment><USER29> Every operation at Facebook scale is expensive. But they have the resources. They don't do something because they don't want to, not because manipulating their data is hard. They do complicated things to their data all the time.

<comment><USER30> Agreed. I'm not buying the "its hard/expensive" argument that so many people seem to be submitting in this thread.

The fact is, when Facebook gives you the option to "delete" something there is a reasonable expectation that by doing so that post, picture, etc... will be deleted. Removed. Gone. Permanently. If they want to give you the option to retrieve it later in case you accidentally delete something then call it "Flag for deletion" instead.

To do ANYTHING else is disingenuous at best. Otherwise known as a lie.

This is yet more proof that users of Facebook are the product and will be treated as such. Whoever pays Facebook actual money gets to dictate the terms and they are the people that want Facebook to never delete your data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if I could get my account really deleted and my data put offline by breaking the terms [1] (posting ads and logos or sharing my password for example).

I'm afraid it would not work, though. Probably they delete the recent content, leave the rest online, and refuse me to log in...

Did anyone try?

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms](https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms)

</comment><comment><USER32> I understand this is not good. I do.

But I'm surprised people think entity like Facebook, Google and any other web businesses delete records permanently. It's not worth it on so many level:

\- People that actually want to retrieve their stuff,

\- It's harder to implement a full delete than it is to add a flag,

\- They would have to give up on data-mining assets.

I don't endorse, but I understand.

<comment><USER33> Flagging items as deleted as opposed to actually deleting them is one thing. Of course it's not ideal for someone who wants to revoke facbook's access to their data, but there is more or less no difference from a user perspective. If I understand correctly, what's going on here is that after the posts and other content were flagged as deleted, they were somehow unflagged and became fully visible again. That's different, and really not okay at all.

<comment><USER32> I agree with you: It's a bug and it's bad.

<comment><USER34> Except that a bug implies it was accidental. Everyone deserves the benefit of doubt, but Facebook's history is exceptional in this regard.

Similar to the OP, I have ethical concerns with some aspects of what Facebook does, or at least obvious harmful side effects of what they do. But I think for me the reason they bother me more than Google or others often lumped into the same category is the consistent and, as far as I can tell, completely unabashed disingenuousness they display (e.g., the history of public statements made every time this has happened going back almost to their founding days).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Timeline shows only popular posts you make. If you delete the posts on timeline then only a subset of your posts are deleted AND they will get replaced by other less popular posts you made in the past. You'd need to go into user settings and delete items directly from the activity log. This clearly isn't a huge usecase (1 by 1 item deletion).

This is just another case of user misunderstanding/error which gets blamed on facebook.

</comment><comment><USER36> I stopped using FB over a year ago, and I deleted my account there last December.

Once you delete your FB account your profile remains visible for another two weeks, provided you don't login during the interim.

Today I can happily say that I am no longer on the publicly-available Facebook site, but who knows if FB maintains an LEO version of the site for use by the fascists (spies) and other government entities...

</comment><comment><USER37> Every time this sort of articles come up, I feel glad I don't have a Facebook account. As I see it if you care enough about somebody, you have their phone number and their address.

</comment><comment><USER38> Perhaps FB automatically decided that the deletions were in fact unauthorized tampering with the account and nicely restored the "damage?"

<comment><USER39> Thats what I was thinking, Im going to go ahead and guess that not too many fb users go through their entire timeline and delete Every.Single.Post. Flagging something like that as hostile and then "restoring" your timeline makes sense. However, I feel like there should be some kind of communication going on in email before something is actually done (for the mass deletes and auto restoring) and a simple "click here if this is what you really wanted to do" would suffice..

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I did the very same thing with my account, and also noticed everything that I deleted still showing up in the timeline. Pissed me off.

Need I remind everyone that Zuckerberg himself said people were "dumb fucks" for trusting him with their data?

</comment><comment><USER41> Just create a fake FB account for things like authentication, or getting coupons, etc...

I don't trust FB, but I do need it for certain things. Keeping in touch with friends/family is definitely not one of them

<comment><USER42> In a very creepy aspect of this. I closed my account a while ago, and I opened a dummy one with another email, because I still needed to mod a few communities. The recommendations were the usual: friends of people in the communities and such. About a month ago it started recommending family members, classmates, and friends. Really accurate. It's creepy: I don't have a smartphone from which it could syphon the contacts, I'm not using my real name and I was using an email that I only use for facebook. I have no idea what data it's using. But I was not surprised, I just thought. "Damn it, they found a way"

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I always think back to that time when Zuck was on stage a couple of years ago, and he was talking about user-generated content, and he slipped, and referred to it as Facebook's. There you go. Anything you put on their site is their property, to do with as they like. I really think their days are numbered. Not anytime soon, but eventually, they are going to become as obsolete as Friendster, Bebo, and MySpace are now, but first a new social network that is built in that same style must emerge.

</comment><comment><USER44> I wonder what facebookers who are HNers have to say about this. Do you guys have any opinions about this -- it is by design? Are there ways around it? Will there be ways around this?

</comment><comment><USER45> I just remembered a very interesting tale.

There is a social networks for some stuff that you don't want known (for example, sexual fetishes, or gay stuff, or anti-government stuff, and so on).

I know a case where someone (that was never found out who, although there are some suspects) in one of those social networks started to attack some other people there. Until things started to get out of hand, with the person finding the Facebook profiles of those involved (even if they had completely fake profiles) and posting on that network, and then getting their profile in that network and posting back on Facebook...

Then the attacker posted on the niche social network the Facebook profiles of children of the victims, stuff escalated to the point of people hiring private investigators and professional assassins (some of the victims were soldiers and/or military police shock troops, and were not amused at all at threats toward their family... and happily supported plans for a assassination).

Happily the attacker suddenly gave up, and things de-escalated... But it made me much more aware that social networks can be VERY dangerous...

Of course (considering the tone of social networks here, professions of those involved, and that people wanted to do illegal stuff) I cannot explain better or give more information.

<comment><USER46> "To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem." ― Douglas Adams

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Not having facebook makes you look like an anti-social element irrespective of what it does to your mental health and well being. At the end of the day, I feel like make a small circle of friends that engage with you on deep level and not just superficially. What kind of friend it would who couldn't or forgets to text or call you?

<comment><USER48> That's exactly my feeling on it. Since I left Facebook at the start of 2011, I've seen my friends just as much --- perhaps more --- than when I was on there, and I hear from them at least as frequently. The only difference is that I don't get the occasional, insincere message from people I went to school with who are bored and looking for something to do.

<comment><USER47> Also it is more fun to hear about them face to face and not read a generic message on facebook and they tend to have more things to say to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I've had similar issues with Facebook. After it became clear they were using my "likes" and profile information (favorite movies, books, tv shows, etC) to serve me ads I removed every single "like" I had ever done and all information from my profile. Yet I still get targeted adds based on that information.

<comment><USER11> That info has been resold 100 times already ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Thank you. I didn't know that you can actually delete your facebook account until I saw you post. The only option I knew was to deactivate the account. From the UI, I couldn't find any other option, but a single Google point me to the delete account form. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER51> I bet when you "delete" something facebook (and many others) just marks it as "hidden" so you will think it is gone.

The same happen to me but with yahoo, I had an old account that was long unused, because I didn't want to lose any contact that could happen I redirected it to another email, then, after a couple of years, I decided to delete the account because only spams were being redirected. A year later I notice that emails started to come from this "deleted" account again and so I tried to login and for my surprise it was active.

So don't expect to "delete" anything, and I think we shouldn't expect to have our rights respected, these companies provide a service that is not really for us.

<comment><USER11> Supposedly I don't have a Yahoo account, deleted it several years ago. It was very difficult to delete. They make you talk to the fraud/abuse dept, ask you personal questions to prove who you are, ask you over and over again are you absolutely sure, it's a long process. Same with Amazon, it's a long, frustrating process. Then I get an Amazon gift card. To claim the money I signed up for an account (used a different email address) and surprise, surprise, they had all my data saved, old purchases, etc.

This should be illegal and I bet there are some countries that don't tolerate it. Germany?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> One thing that has always bothered me it's that if you ever decide to post a comment on a site that uses the Facebook commenting system and you decide not to publish that comment on your timeline, then you have no way of recovering it (and thus deleting it, if you ever decide so). You have to resort to search engines that behave poorly for this kind of things.

I admit that after some mishaps Facebook has greatly improved the privacy controls on the site and allowed user to more easily control what they share and with whom, but I guess pretty much everyone would agree that it's not enough yet. We need the ability to delete the very content that we create, everyone has the right to be forgotten should he decide so.

<comment><USER53> Is it not even present in the "Activity Log" screen?

<comment><USER52> No, it's not. If they're not on your timeline they're gone forever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Clearly they have a bug, but as far as actually deleting your data; I am willing to be it'll never be deleted.

They couldn't possibly manage the data if you could remove pieces, since everything on facebook is intertwined (likes, comments, shares, etc).

aka this doesn't surprise me.

<comment><USER55> I spent a fairly large amount of time trying to completely delete my account - it involved emails, 'hidden' links, and multiple confirmation boxes using a nonstandard UI for facebook.

A few days ago I made a brand new account (but using the same email as before) and was greeted with the suggestion to add ALL of my old friends right back again.

Clearly nothing has been deleted, and I now feel confirmed that it never, ever will be.

<comment><USER56> Just a theory, but could it be that all those friends have your email in their contact list, and when they've done a bulk import Facebook has remembered that connection so it can suggest them to you if you ever join (and vice versa)? The data isn't on your side, it's on there's.

Of course there's a whole other (worthy) debate about that, but it doesn't necessarily mean Facebook didn't delete the data you added.

<comment><USER55> That's a solid point. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> There is one part of this that I agree with, that is the part where you say that if you delete all items one by one (why don't they have a delete all?) you want them never to be visible for anyone again.

The part I don't agree with is that you expect that the data is physically deleted from the server. I think and expect that big companies don't wipe all your data on command, they simply set a flag for deleted records. Really deleting the data also has a technical impact for them, it probably depends on the company's policy. It would be great if they did wipe all data but I really think most of them don't and have some sort of an aging process or really never delete your data.

</comment><comment><USER58> Personal story, but nevertheless humiliating and tied to facebook. I was never able to get an explanation or even contact FB's support about it.

Within a matter of hours, I lost over 150 facebook friends. Somehow, it was also tied into instagram and I unfollowed all my friends. Not sure how this happened. But you could imagine that it's embarrassing to have to re-friend people on facebook and explain that you didn't do it on purpose. I'm sure there are some people I forgot to refriend who think that I just de-friended them for personal reasons. This just ties into the fact that whatever happens to you on facebook will be broadcast to your entire social network.

</comment><comment><USER59> I think this is far more likely due to incompetence on the part of Facebook than malice.

<comment><USER60> I tend to be more lenient of malice than incompetence. If your goals don't align with mine, fine, maybe we can still work something out. But if you are in the data-handling business (Facebook, Google etc. are) and you fail to handle data properly, you should rather die today than tomorrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Facebook lost me a while back when the Android app first came out. Logging into the site and finding contacts that had no account in my facebook "phonebook" felt like a breach of trust. I figured they'd act in good faith and enrich Android contacts with facebook data. I did NOT think they'd yank my contacts the other way, doing who-knows-what with it. Shame on me for not reading the app permissions with more scrutiny.

Leaving facebook removed a distraction I did not realize I was weary of. At risk of sounding dramatic, it felt like I got a few minutes a day of my life back.

</comment><comment><USER62> Sequel to the article incoming:

"OMG! I deleted my Facebook account two months ago, and my friends just told me that they wished me birthday on my timeline last night. OMG! Facebook, I trusted you! Why!? OMG!"

Seriously, I love the last sentence of the article: "That is why I may delete my Facebook account. And that is why you should too."

If Facebook will not delete the posts on the Timeline, why is the author still believing that deleting the account will genuinely delete the account? The data you disclosed to the social network is here to stay. The only way you can stop is to not give it more.

</comment><comment><USER63> I wonder if this is the case because those wall posts aren't specifically yours. You posted those onto another user's timeline, and thus it's probably not within your power to delete them. I'm not saying that this is the right thing to do, but it fits with the available data. If you removed all your photos and they're still gone, but wall posts are still there, it's an issue with how Facebook view data ownership. If you delete status updates or relationships, work etc, they stay gone too I imagine.

</comment><comment><USER64> Ditch Facebook and join Diaspora. It's a great project that Rails/Javascript devs can contribute to.

[http://diasporaproject.org/](http://diasporaproject.org/)

</comment><comment><USER65> Yesterday I started deleting all my FB content. My FB account got locked and released 24h later. When I logged in, all my content was restored. I'm still trying to understand why.

</comment><comment><USER66> "That is why I may delete my Facebook account. And that is why you should too."

We should also do something that you're not even certain you're going to do yourself?

<comment><USER48> Previously on the same blog (and linked to at the bottom of the post no less!):

``Don't Be Fooled Facebook Is Forever''[1]:

        I stopped using Facebook because I distrusted them,
        and what I discovered yesterday only confirms that
        I was right.

and ``Facebook --- The Last Straw''[2]:

        All this may take a while, but I'm going to remove
        myself from Facebook and I'm going to do it on my
        terms, not theirs.

[1]: [http://wellpreparedmind.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/dont-be- foo...](http://wellpreparedmind.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/dont-be-fooled- facebook-is-forever/)

[2]: [https://wellpreparedmind.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/facebook-t...](https://wellpreparedmind.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/facebook- the-last-straw/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Similar,

I deleted my twitter profile picture as well as account in 2008. I had a url of the profile image saved. After five years the the link works and image is still there.

<comment><USER68> Clear your cache?

<comment><USER69> I wager his cache has been cleared somewhere in the past 5 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> I just went and looked too and all my content going back to 2007 which a painstaking hand deleted is back(!)

I hope mark zuckerberg ends up broke doing LAMP consulting.

</comment><comment><USER71> For the 100th time, the only reason any of us are on Facebook and not Google+ or MySpace or Friendster or whatever is because all of our friends are on there with us.

Facebook can and will do whatever it wants to abuse this fact, and as long as they provide the most convenient way to communicate with other people, there is nothing we can do about it, period.

So rant away, my Internet friends, it's all we can do anyway.

<comment><USER11> -1

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> The only reason I am on Facebook and also not use AdBlock on Google Search is, I am in the internet business. And if you are in the internet-business, you do have to be a part of the system: all in.

I do not want to mull over a social media monetizing idea and wonder if Facebook has already figured it out. I just need to be there and know it myself.

Sad reason, but that's the way it is.

</comment><comment><USER46> _I am not going to waste time deleting all of my content a third time._

I did that once, there's a Firefox extension (the name escapes me at the moment sorry) you can use to create macros. Sure it's useless in a way, but it's also fun in a way :D If it pops back, it's macro time again -- better than nothing, right?

<comment><USER65> I used one of the userscripts.org extensions for that and it caused my FB account to get locked for 24h. When I came back all my content had been restored (I know that because while the script was working, I had another window opened checking the progress).

Now the extension does not work anymore (the button it adds to the setting pages is not showing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Thats exactly the reason why we built [http://pixter.in](http://pixter.in) . Facebook's incentive is to get as much data of you and retain it. Our incentive is to build the best product. If your incentive's are clear and aligned things like this won't happen.

</comment><comment><USER74> Regarding: >> Or is it? If Facebook doesn't understand what should happen when I delete my wall posts, who's to say that if I delete my account, it won't come back too?

I thought I had deleted my account in 2009, but I was curious when I saw this. It turns out I can still log in. Curious...

</comment><comment><USER75> I'll give you a little advice that's been working wonderfully for me so far - don't ever post something that is politically/ethnically/whatever questionable and you'll be fine. Even better than that, it'll play in your favour.

<comment><USER76> You probably have one of the most bland profiles out there.

(This may be a good thing.)

<comment><USER75> I also run a pretty tight ship on Facebook. Only closest friends and family (13 people in total), visibility to friends only and such things.

Father created Facebook account a week ago to keep up with our favourite sports team. I sent him a friend request but he managed to hide it and didn't find it later. Yesterday he received an email saying something in this style: Do you know these people? A list with 13 people was underneath it and these 13 people were my friends.

Thankfully he knows most of them so it didn't get awkward but still a massive, massive worry for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Should you enter your real information on any internet site? It's kind of like when stores ask for your phone number: there's no real obligation to them to not use it for spam or re-sell it. I always give a fake and ask them to email.

</comment><comment><USER78> "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

It's simple folks. If you still trust FB with anything at this point you're going to get hurt. If you do trust them with something and they burn you then it's your fault.

</comment><comment><USER79> I think the title is an overreaction. Just because something can and has violated your trust doesn't mean you should never trust it. Never is a very strong word.

</comment><comment><USER80> In the EU, there was a law in the makeing around "the right to be forgotten". Looks like we really need it, probably for Google as well.

</comment><comment><USER81> Facebook always does this. Everytime there's a privacy policy change in some way, they restore everything to default (public) again.

</comment><comment><USER82> Just use better alternatives like Diaspora.

</comment><comment><USER83> In this context, it's worth noting that as a Facebook user, you are not their custumer, but their product.

</comment><comment><USER84> And Google doesn't delete your emails, either. Even if you click delete.

They own you.

</comment><comment><USER85> So if you break their T.O.S. bad enough, will they delete you for real?

<comment><USER7> Why would they do that when they could just lock you out of your account?

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> I read other posts by this guy and he really seems pissed of at FB.

</comment><comment><USER87> It is probably issues with cache and/or data replication.

</comment><comment><USER88> Do you think facebook is going down?

<comment><USER89> Looking at the trends, I suspect Facebook will be the goat in the tech group cull that's being contemplated.[1] The reasons for thinking this are three- fold:

a) Extremely poor share performance post-IPO (which has irked a lot of heavy- weights) and demise of Zynga's revenue sources. Although ad revenue is there, there's a lot of industry research showing that $/click return is minimal at best (out of all of these models, FB appears to have the lowest, and easiest to Bot). FB ad revenue has more to do with the current glut in Corporate $cash holdings than real returns, fyi.

b) Lack of utility outside data mining / advertising (all others, even dead ducks like Yahoo! have secondary and tertiary utility, not to mention the shining lights like Google who are still willing to push the envelope). By this, I'm not referencing Social Utility, but Business Utility.

c) Their ties to NSA / current security concerns go so far beyond the base level of acceptance that it's a given they'll suffer hard blow-back. Those Bilderberg meetings weren't about unicorns and skittles and any serious business should be concerned about having their employees mined so easily (and in certain fields, more open to Social Engineering hacks directly due to this intel). Even as an American company, you'd want this be considering this; for the rest of the world, it's a major concern.

You can argue about these, but I suspect as they hit their 10 year mark, there will be a hotter, faster, hungrier and probably more honest model to replace them (i.e. "We will do X with this data - agree, and get Y benefit, or even better - we'll pay you Z for it, and not in Farmville Tokens, or even "pay Z+1 to go dark").

Anyhow, since this is free commentary, YMMV. But, realistically - the age of the "Dumb Fucks" is closing. Wild Wild West is ending, and the Buffalo ain't roaming no more. If you need that explained: a large amount of the cash generated by web 2.0 (e.g. Huffington Post sale) was created by parasitical leveraging of user's ignorance & goodwill. I suspect that's about to change with a newer generation; although, hey, Pop Idol still makes money, so perhaps not - but it will only be farming the ignorant, which is hardly "cutting edge". Face Book as the online Walmart - there's an image to take to heart as you look @ it's stock price over the next 6 months.

Full disclosure: Never had a Face Book account, because Privacy / Anonymity is the coolest thing in a connected world, nor do I hold any FB stock, nor am I shorting FB stock in any manner.

[1]FT - Real progressives believe in breaking up Google (no link, as it is pay walled). I don't agree with the opinion piece, I'm merely using it to denote a recent trend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> wow after reading this I went and closed account.

</comment><comment><USER91> Is this real life?

Do you really think it's still necessary to state that you should not trust a company that works with the NSA?

Does anybody do any thinking after reading the news?

What exactly do you need to wake up?

EDIT: :-D just keep downvoting and burry your heads deep in the sand...

</comment><comment><USER92> "My name is Scott Renfro, and I'm a software engineer at Facebook working on security and privacy. We've put a lot of work into making deletions permanent"

Had to LOL at this comment</comment>


Show HN: New way of managing user' feedback with three-dots system - <AUTHOR> https://voxes.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> I launched feedback and product roadmap management tool. I got an idea to extend products that are on the market with dots system which allow users to pick between nice to have, important and critical features to give more precise feedback.</comment>


New Study Shows Decline in Lgbtq Acceptance Among Young Americans - <AUTHOR> https://variety.com/2019/data/news/glaad-lgbtq-study-acceptance-1203250993/ <comment><USER2> Based on the article, it looks like the study was done very sloppy. There is a big difference between lgb and t+. If I learned that my doctor was lgb, I wouldn't care. But if I learned that my doctor was t+ then I would treat it as if I learned that my doctor was schizophrenic.

> Just last year, reported hate crimes rose 17 percent

There is no source given, but if they are using the FBI reports, then even the FBI says that it cannot be used for measuring trends, as their method of information gathering changes.</comment>


Ask HN - My manager called Rails passé.  Is he wrong? - <AUTHOR> My manager called Rails passé this morning.  It was in a conversation about upper management trying to get our team to start using a single page architecture and he called it a trend just like rails was a year ago.  I disagree (on both fronts actually), but I'm have a hard time formulating a good argument.  Can HN help me? <comment><USER2> What kind of company is it? Is it a tech company, services company or other?

That said, I believe he is a bit right in that Rails is no longer the new kid on the block, but you should read Jeff Atwood's post on Ruby (and maybe steal some arguments from him!):

[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/03/why- ruby.html](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/03/why-ruby.html)

"Ruby isn't cool any more. Yeah, you heard me. It's not cool to write Ruby code any more. All the cool people moved on to slinging Scala and Node.js years ago. Our project isn't cool, it's just a bunch of boring old Ruby code. Personally, I'm thrilled that Ruby is now mature enough that the community no longer needs to bother with the pretense of being the coolest kid on the block. That means the rest of us who just like to Get Shit Done can roll up our sleeves and focus on the mission of building stuff with our peers rather than frantically running around trying to suss out the next shiny thing."

<comment><AUTHOR> We're a decent sized tech company. I have actually read that, but I had forgotten about it. Thanks for the reply and pointing me back to the article!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's just an irrelevant and unhelpful way to evaluate anything in software. Rails is no longer the height of fashion, but it's still a superbly productive way to develop web apps. There are newer options that optimise for different things and that might be a better choice in some cases, but they all bear the same foibles of immaturity that Rails had a few years ago. "Boring" is a complement to software, not a criticism - it implies that the software is sufficiently mature to just work.

</comment><comment><USER4>
      > My manager called Rails passé this morning [...]
      > our team to start using a single page architecture

What server-side framework does your manager think should be used with the client-side framework?

      > a trend just like rails was a year ago.

Rails was a trend a year ago (2012)? Out of curiosity, what was Rails between 2005 and 2011?

<comment><AUTHOR> He seems to be in the "if it works now, why change it?" camp. So at the moment that means using Java Server Faces on the front end. I haven't had much exposure to the server-side, but I'm so not sure there is any good framework in place as it's closely coupled with the front end logic.

Your second comment is a good one. What I think he meant by "trend" was that last year Rails was what all the architects and leaders at the company were pushing for. His argument was that this year it's the same thing except with single page architecture (Backbonejs in this case).

<comment><USER2> From an entirely outside experience, I saw at the company I work for a very bad experience with a project where the team pushed for a single page application - they got delayed for months because of the technology, the problem was not single page applications in themselves, but that they seriously underestimated the learning curve and they were absolute novices (no-one had prior experience in SPA). And I definitely believe they could have cut months from the development time by sticking to known tech.

For a company where development is not core, I wouldn't recommend it, but if the company is a tech company, I would evaluate devoting resources to learning single page applications and doing some pilot projects, then leveraging the experience and pushing it into the main projects if applicable :) .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well I think you need to articulate the business case. For example:

Using Rails will save us '$x' over time and use 'y' less engineers.

On the flip side, you do have to calculate the ramp up time of learning the technology.

To make a convincing argument, try to understand the other person's value system.

</comment><comment><USER6> _In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock._ \- Thomas Jefferson

It's (intendedly) a simplification, but one that aptly describes how to respond to a situation like yours.

There is value in both style and principle, but there's a _distinction_ between the type of value each provides. As a member of Society, Style has obvious social value.

Programming is a society as any other. The social value of following trends (swimming with the current) is that often many of the most creative & adventurous of us are early adopters of trend. Being the best people is so important, that it's often worth taking a leap based on that.

Usually genuine programming trends starts with a small group of bright hackers imagining a different future. They've probably got at least a couple inspiring ideas and it's worth taking a risk that these are _the right ideas_.

Every good hacker (or scientist, engineer, founder, writer, artist, thinker) has first principles. Whether they've explored their own intellect as much as say Paul Graham, unlikely, but if your moorless at sea, your simply at the mercy of every current that comes along. You simply wouldn't get anywhere.

To wrap up this wordy spiel, here's an summary:

> Use the current (Style) to arrive at your rock (Principle)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well said, thanks for the insight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> He is right.

Rails was part of the old paradigm where a webapp runs on the server and sends HTML pages to the client.

The new paradigm, which I would not call single page architecture for historical reasons, sends the app to the client in when they open a page, and then runs on the client and only calls back to the server to get/post data. And maybe load some additional code blocks. These apps are built in Javascript with underscore, backbone, angular, ember and related tools. They are also typically MVVM or MV(something other than C).

<comment><USER4>
      > Rails was part of the old paradigm
      > where a webapp runs on the server

Web apps no longer run on servers? They insert data directly into databases from the client? Isn't that insecure?

The developers of Rails::API should be informed about the new paradigm so that they stop wasting their time.

[https://github.com/rails-api/rails-api](https://github.com/rails-api/rails- api)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That being said, I am learning rails right now... Is it time to switch to a different language? What would you learn today in preparation for the next big thing?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think learning Rails right now is a bad thing. I've been doing some side projects in it for ~2 years and definitely don't regret it. As some other folks in here have mentioned, there is always going to be something newer and better out there. If Rails is your first or even one of your first web stack experiences, it is a great way to learn the fundamentals and it makes learning the next new thing that much easier. In short, the "next big thing" is ever changing and I don't think anyone would call Rails old. It's just no longer new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I might say the same thing. What is passe or not is a matter of opinion. Doubt you can change your managers opinion.

Realistic options are

a) Deal with what the manager wants you to code in

b) Find a new job</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a place for developers/designers to meet and barter services? - <AUTHOR>

As the title suggests, this will involve no money exchange. only services swapped in return for the desired skills/services. Win-Win for both parties and a possible method for bootstrapping a MVP.<p>Is there a current website that does this? I'd be the UI/UX Designer in that picture, looking for a developer. <comment><USER2> Not sure if there's a web site for this, but I'm a developer looking for a designer. Email me (in my profile) and let's talk.</comment>


Could Neal Stephenson Be Satoshi Nakamoto? - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2019/06/05/if-we-told-you-neal-stephenson-invented-bitcoin-would-you-be-surprised/ <comment><USER2> Could Betteridge's law of headlines apply here?

</comment><comment><USER3> No.

To paraphrase Boromir, 'One does not simply invent blockchain'.</comment>


Go 1.1 beta 1 Released - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/golang-nuts/sbjJDgxLqiE/xqWJ1ybaiKoJ <comment><USER2> I think this is an amazing milestone; I contributed to Go in the early phases and was very excited about the project. I even had Rob Pike OK some of my patches (which was a huge nerd ego boost, obviously).

However, the direction the language took ended up being quite predictable and somewhat of a bore. The problem with Go is that it doesn't seem to fit any particular niche. Some other design decisions were questionable (no exception handling, for one).

I kind of like Go, but I haven't used it for years. There's no real reason to NOT write something in C (or, rarely, C++) or Java, or if I need some serious scaling, Erlang (or just use either something like libevent for C or Kilim for Java).

Go is very D-like. D, like Go, can't really find its niche. If Go or D were more idiomatic, perhaps they would be adopted in early programming classes (high schools and colleges -- like Python, for example), but even though goroutines, channels, and fast compilation are interesting concepts, they aren't really enough to detract from writing in the many other languages that do just about the same thing (and are a lot more popular).

<comment><USER3> Have you used it since 3 days after it was launched, more than three years ago? (That's when you contributed.)

The language, libraries, and ecosystem are miles ahead of where they were back in 2009.

Why not use C? Because C has no sensible packaging system, is unsafe, requires manual memory management, and offers a degree of control that is unnecessary for most tasks. Why not use Java? Because it is verbose and picky and basically forces you to use an IDE to get anything done, etc etc. If there were nothing wrong with these languages (they're the main ones we use at Google) we wouldn't have developed Go.

Use Go more! You'll see why people love it, and why we created it.

<comment><USER4> I'd love to use Go to replace some projects I've written in C and Java.

I evaluated Go last week (2013-03), but there is no meaningful Eclipse IDE support. goclipse doesn't work half as well as CDT, and not a patch on JDT.

I won't move away from eclipse workflows and project management, the context switch is more expensive than any language benefit.

I'll keep checking for comprehensive Go support in Eclipse, but until then it is a showstopper.

<comment><USER5> I use GolangIDE[1] after getting fed up with Eclipse. It's really nice as it's a much lower memory footprint, yet basically does everything you need an IDE to do (ie edit code, debug, etc)

[1] <http://code.google.com/p/golangide/>

<comment><USER6> I second the recommendation for LiteIDE

More common main page: <http://code.google.com/p/liteide/> Downloads: <http://code.google.com/p/golangide/downloads/list> Code: <https://github.com/visualfc/liteide>

<comment><USER7> Third. It works and is actively being developed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a C++ and python programmer with some basic experience in JavaScript. I started learning Go, as I looked into D some years ago, an was a bit puzzled by some design choices.

I don't understand the need to enforce the use of { } and that the if of for line must end with a {. I don't like this writing. My preferred syntax is the one of Pythons, which is the most concise and clear. It seem Go could have used : and indentation as in python instead of { }.

Another puzzling choice of Go is slicing which differ from Python's and D's. In Go slicing is limited by the capacity and not by the number of items it contains. Returning 0 as default value looks to me like an open door to silent bugs.

The way Go handles errors looks original and interesting, but I'm lacking experience to determine how it compares to exceptions from the usage perspective.

From what I saw, I would say that Go is a better C and D is a better C++ where better means also closer. As a consequence Go seams simpler than D to learn and use. Thus I expect we will see much more Go programmers than D programmers in the future. Simplicity has been proven many times to be trump.

<comment><USER9> So use Nimrod instead: systems programming with indentation based syntax. It also has unmatched meta programming facilities, a realtime GC and checked exceptions done right (however, not in the 0.9.0 release).

<comment><USER10> It looks it could be another language to use for writing native code across iOS, Android and Windows.

<comment><USER9> Indeed. In fact Nimrod has already been used on Android (<http://forum.nimrod- code.org/t/61#319>) and iOS devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been using Python almost exclusively since 2004. Go is the first language that has made me want to switch. I can't put my finger on it, but it's fun to work with. Actually, I'll try to put my finger on it:

1) Fast build times

2) Goroutines. If you've tried using any async library in Python or are waiting for Tulip to come into mainline Python around v3.4 - stop wasting your time. Goroutines along with channels just works (TM) and is unbelievably easy to use. No callbacks, no threadpools, no having to CTRL-C your way out of a bug. It's a pleasure to work with.

</comment><comment><USER12> What's the standard graphics library for Go That Just Works(tm) ?

I'm looking for something for Go like PyGame is for Python. I like to get surfaces rendered on my screen in pretty much no time as I like to learn a language by doing simple graphical demos and experiment from there.

There are few SDL bindings for Go but none of them worked. One of them did work to some extent after a lot of tweaking without the help of many examples. I quit learning after I realized I'd have to learn more how the graphics bindings were written than how to program in Go.

<comment><USER13> building a "standard graphics library" into a language that is not part of a write once run anywhere managed environment is a terrible idea and has never worked.

On the other hand a more solid native 2d drawing library like java2d would be more welcome.

Weekend project #34532

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> FWIW, I benchmarked a basic Revel web app. Go 1.0.3 = 2850 req/sec ... 1.1 = 10928 req/sec.

<comment><USER15> Any chance you can post the code you used to benchmark? That's an insane difference.

<comment><USER14> It was a basic newly generated Revel app running in production mode.

Not hitting a DB. Benchmarked with 'ab -n 10000 -c 30 <http://localhost:9000/some_action>.

See also: <https://github.com/davecheney/autobench> BenchmarkHTTPClientServer 373216, 52646 -85.89%

<comment><USER16>
        bench old_ns/op new_ns/op delta
        "BenchmarkHTTPClientServer 373216, 52646 -85.89%"

That bench is 7 times faster in Go 1.1 than 1.0.3.

<comment><USER16> Sigh. Sorry about the mess.

I opened the thread first thing after waking up this morning, commented before having cup of coffee and resulted in misreading the whole point of that comment.

I'll try to drink more coffee from now on. Sorry knotty66.

<comment><USER14> Ha ha, no worries. I'm sure my lazy English contributed with the 'see also', too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The new data race detector looks great. I have a script I run daily that panics maybe once a month. I've never been able to figure out where the problem is. One run after building with -race and I now have a juicy data race report. Awesome!

<comment><USER17> Turns out exec runs two goroutines, one for Stdout and one for Stderr, and if I run both into the same bytes.Buffer, that's a data race. No wonder I couldn't find it, I was looking in my own code for the goroutines. Thanks go1.1beta1!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The changes concerning function returning[0] are really welcome. The merits of implicit vs. explicit else blocks were debated, but I think everyone should be glad to get rid of forced panic("unreachable").

[0] <http://tip.golang.org/doc/go1.1#return>

</comment><comment><USER17> Very cool.

I don't see a tip in the hg repo for go1.1beta1. Anyone know what the right revision is? I'd rather install the known beta source than whatever's at the tip.

<comment><USER3> The beta isn't tagged. As mentioned in the article, beta1 is cut from revision 267bb9854177.

But as only fixes will be submitted between now and the 1.1 release, it's definitely better to use tip.

<comment><USER17> Ah you're right, I missed seeing the 267bb9854177 in the mail. But I guess I'll use tip if that's better. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there a decent web framework using Go can that be competitive to Rails or Django someday?

<comment><USER20> There's enough built into Go that frameworks feel very unnecessary.

The only thing I'd strongly recommend is Gorilla Mux: <http://www.gorillatoolkit.org/pkg/mux>

And you can get an idea of how people build websites using Mux and Go by looking on github: <https://github.com/jimmykuu/gopher>

If you're very new to Go, then reading that last link repo you probably want to read these files in this order: [https://github.com/jimmykuu/gopher/blob/master/src/server/ma...](https://github.com/jimmykuu/gopher/blob/master/src/server/main.go) [https://github.com/jimmykuu/gopher/blob/master/src/gopher/se...](https://github.com/jimmykuu/gopher/blob/master/src/gopher/server.go) [https://github.com/jimmykuu/gopher/blob/master/src/gopher/ur...](https://github.com/jimmykuu/gopher/blob/master/src/gopher/urls.go) and then to take a look at the files in this folder for the handlers and html/template calling: <https://github.com/jimmykuu/gopher/tree/master/src/gopher>

<comment><USER21> In older versions there seemed to be a websocket package, but I can't find it anymore - do you know what hapenned to it?

<comment><USER20>
        go get code.google.com/p/go.net/websocket

The html processing lives in there too:

        go get code.google.com/p/go.net/html

If you see people refer to go.net, they mean that repo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great stuff, looking forward to the final release, thanks to the Golang developers for all the hard work.

</comment><comment><USER23> Exciting stuff! Can't wait to see Go 1.1 in the benchmark games.

<comment><USER24> I'm interested to see if it is still going to be clobbered by Java and Scala the way Go 1 was.

<comment><USER24> Curious downvote for a factually accurate post...

source: [http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u32q/benchmark.php?t...](http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u32q/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=go&lang2=java)

<comment><USER25> Probably downvoted for not providing a link to the benchmarks that show Java and Scala out-performing Go 1.0?

I know of Collin VanDyck's web service showdown ([http://boundary.com/blog/2012/09/17/comparing-go-and-java- pa...](http://boundary.com/blog/2012/09/17/comparing-go-and-java- part-2-performance/)) which showed that Java had lower latency and higher throughput for highly concurrent tasks based on a _very_ simple code base, but net/http performance in Go 1.0 wasn't a high priority. It seems that it has since been bumped up the priority list and a lot of work has been going on ([https://groups.google.com/d/topic/golang- nuts/zeLMYnjO_JA/di...](https://groups.google.com/d/topic/golang- nuts/zeLMYnjO_JA/discussion)).

The thing is, Go isn't just for writing web apps. If you have a look at some of the real world use cases for Go (there's a list in another comment here somewhere) you'll notice that these aren't just web apps.

Every bit of Go code I've written (web app, mp3 database generator, encryption library) has been blisteringly fast, and it seems Go 1.1 will bring substantial performance improvements again.

Oh, and I didn't down-vote you, I don't yet have that privilege.

<comment><USER24> Thanks, I've added the link now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Kudos to the team. Go is going from strength to strength. I'm about to start a small project with it.

</comment><comment><USER27> What makes Go so cool?

<comment><USER28> Google staff upvote every article about it.

<comment><USER29> I am guilty of upvoting every Go post. But my work has nothing to do with Google. I just really love the language and want it to succeed.

Go maps very closely to how I think about programming. It has more useful features than other languages, like channels, slices, and range. Yet despite this it is a beautifully simple language. It has fewer keywords than C and you can express the same operations with less code.

<comment><USER30> Me too. I'm also not a Google employee, just love the language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is Go a good choice to create a CRUD web app? between the stdlib, gorilla toolking and the pg driver seems it wouldn't be so much of a pain, but the pg driver doesn't look ready for production use.

<https://github.com/bmizerany/pq>

<comment><USER32> For just plain CRUD, you'll probably get where you want to go faster with Django or Ruby -- they get you up and running faster, and their template engines are more mature than anything in Go.

Once you're beyond just plain CRUD to the point where the language you're using matters more than how fast you can get going with defaults, then you might like Go more (or less) than Ruby/Python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> For someone who wants to spend a week hacking on a project in Go, what kind of project do you recommend?

<comment><USER34> The only real way to get hobby projects is to find a problem you've been having and _solve_ it. So what are your problems? :-)

Here are some of mine, that I turned into Go code: (restricted to "week long hacking" or less)

        A simple blog application.
        A command that when run, sends the output of other commands to your email.
        An image viewer.
        A simpler interface to `xrandr`.
        A parser for the new TOML configuration format.

Or, you could pick a small program that you wrote in another language and port it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Still no generics :(

<comment><USER35> And you'll never get them because they're unnecessary.

<comment><USER36> The Golang authors had to create a custom keyword (make) for the two generic types in Go (slice and map). The reason they give for implementing a native map type is that a map type written in Go would be cumbersome (!).

If you want other types with generic functionality (e.g. caches) that perform well (interface{} does not), then you have to use external code generators.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I get a 404 at the changelog link they provide...

<comment><USER38> The correct link is in the first reply on Google groups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think this is really the one language/tech that's going to take off. It's just too early, but it's going to make it's splash.

</comment><comment><USER40> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5489054>

<comment><USER41> Unrelated (Google's Webkit fork -- zilch to do with Go 1.1 beta)</comment></comment>


Show HN: My first product. Thoughts? - <AUTHOR> http://www.mandarintap.com/

<comment><USER2> I've been in this market for a while. From running an English school in Taiwan to trying out products as an avid learner myself to chatting with friends who have basically been building the dominant platforms for teaching Chinese, I've seen a ton of apps like this.

And I have to say that yours is refreshing. Lots of new Chinese learning apps are coming out and 90% are just flashcards with an SRS. From a learning perspective, just memorizing words is a terrible way to go.

(I explain why in the final minute of this video: <http://youtu.be/3cjnP6mogEU>)

Don't get me wrong. I love SRSes and even contributed to Anki. But ultimately any language learning effort focused on single, decontextualized words is doomed. Learners need bigger chunks, like whole sentences or ideally extensive reading. That's why I see your app as a step in the right direction.

<comment><USER3> Are there any other apps / methods that you can recommend as good examples of how to learn a language? I'm trying to learn Lithuanian (GF), and there is very little material available, so I'm looking to build something myself.

<comment><USER4> Play narrative-heavy computer games that are translated into Lithuanian. I did this to supplement other methods I used while living in Poland. The Diablos were especially well-localized. Bonus is, it teaches you all kinds of obscure words and expressions that even native speakers sometimes aren't familiar with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For me to seriously consider that app you should have a mode where hanzi is deemphasized (or even gone entirely).

For me it's just not worth the effort to learn. I have enough trouble with spoken Chinese as is and I have little to no use for hanzi symbols.

My Chinese teacher used to tell me that most of her students had the same attitude. It's to be expected. Few people stay in China for very long.

Other than that the app looks really nice, actually. The examples are well- chosen and I like how it shows you how the words are constructed.

<comment><USER6> I agree...I started learning mandarin through the Rosetta Stone program and skipped all the Chinese character reading parts. It's just too much to learn when there's already enough to grasp with just speaking

<comment><USER7> I disagree. This is how you learn things deeply. It may take more effort and focus initially, and feel harder - though that's a bit of the point -- you remember things better during stressful situations, and the additional information allows your mind to connect more different pieces together, and in different parts of your brain (visual and langage). It might take a year of review before it starts to really click, and understanding the process of learning and so setting your expectations accordingly is how you can be more successful, faster.

<comment><USER6> So obviously I am only speaking through assumption here, but isn't the Chinese character set almost entirely orthogonal to the language? That is, very little is lost by learning it through Pidgin? The extra year it might take to fully memorize the Chinese characters would seem to have only a glancing effect on how much conversational Chinese you could speak

<comment><USER8> Largely true in my experience, but without hanzi you're illiterate in China. Definitely a plausible thing for a short visit, but if you stay for a longer period I think it'd be very paralyzing. This comes from an experience I had traveling with a friend when I was a beginning fluent reader and speaker and he just a speaker. Over the few months in Beijing his confidence deteriorated and he ended up staying at home ordering the same food from the nearby market every day. I think his illiteracy contributed to that.

<comment><USER5> I don't get it.

If you're a foreign guy in China there are always tons of girls who'll go with you to wherever you want to go and who'll translate for you. If you speak just a little Chinese you can have a very comfortable life there.

<comment><USER8> Sure, it's not _impossible_ to get around. You're just always going to be dependent on said girls. Even with the foreigners-don't-need-to-know-Chinese excuse, being illiterate is difficult.

<comment><USER5> Sure. I guess we're just disagreeing on how much of a problem it is and after how much time this will get to you. I suppose it's a subjective thing.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, my experience was stated above: I spent 4 months there and some a persons confidence deteriorate. Being slightly literate myself was frustrating but extremely manageable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Excellent! I'm moving to China in a few weeks and know no Mandarin, so this has already been a huge help. Obligatory feature request: I would love to be able to repeat a specific phrase. If I miss a character or want to hear the pronunciation again, I'd like to be able to fix it before moving on to the next phrase inside a lesson.

Thanks!

<comment><USER10> Highly recommend you try Skritter in addition to Mandarin Tap. No affiliation, just completely and utterly blown away by how much faster I could study Chinese during a year long intensive immersion course solely by using Skritter (threw away my notecards).

From experience, Skritter can reduce your weekly study requirements from hours of painful rote memorization to "roll out of bed at 9:30, study 20 minutes before weekly quiz and ace it every time". It's fun and enjoyable to use, and furthermore you can load vocab lists from textbooks, and work through them in the proper order. This means building your vocabulary in logical ways while also learning how to write Chinese.

I wish I had Mandarin Tap too though. In Skritter you can load from textbooks and customize long sentences, but I like how Mandarin Tap gives you neat categories from which to pick. This can be more expedient than working through a textbook, though working through the textbook can still be irreplaceable.

TLDR; get skritter too, it's truly an amazing piece of software. Wouldn't be surprised if the founders are on HN. It's also $10/mo recurring whereas this is $3.

[feedback after purchasing and using Mandarin Tap]

\- The app's title on iPhone 4S is "LearnFastIOS", not Mandarin Tap. You can do better on the icon.

\- The app doesn't scroll smoothly on iPhone 4S

\- Interface is really lacking

I'm really busy today, but I may come back to Mandarin Tap when I'm more focused on refreshing my Chinese. I'm overall not impressed, for $3 I want an interface better than a poorly scrolling big long list.

<comment><USER11> I'll second Skritter if you're trying to practice character writing (which Mandarin Tap doesn't cover). They use spaced repetition and import vocab lists from textbooks, if you're using one. I picked up a cheap drawing tablet and it really helped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am a senior software engineer in 北京 and my wife works at 人大. We are both quite involved in teaching and have to say; Good pronunciations and the idea of constructing patterns and sentences is nice and refreshing. Wish we could also have a similar tool to assist with teaching English. Small issue, the app is called learnfastIOS on install.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for point that out! Correcting it promptly! (I renamed the app, as I prefer the name MandarinTap)

<comment><USER12> Makes more sense...

Oh yeah, changeable font would be nice as Chinese characters are mostly about pattern recognition. And as you know, they have the stylized and abstract way... Clerical, regular, etc. This can sometimes lead to confusion to newcomers as endingsvare more fluent, angled, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> woh bu dong.

Seriously, it looks handy. I was in Shanghai a few years ago and this would have come in handy to prepare. My brother speaks Chinese - I've fwded this to him.

Your "app store" icon for the Apple one is distorted.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you don't mind, could you share your development stack. Are both the apps written using native languages (objc and java) or are you using frameworks that are cross platform (phonegap, titanium, etc)?

<comment><USER15> I was wondering the same thing. I was surprised that it looked like he launched Android and iOS versions at the same time, which makes me think it's probably a cross platform framework. I'd definitely love to hear more about the dev stack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks great! I tried to check it out in the ios App Store but the link took me to a blank page (ok chrome/ios6) and didn't launch App Store as expected: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mandarin- tap/id588224825?ls=...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mandarin- tap/id588224825?ls=1&mt=8)

Removing the parameters at the end works as expected: <https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mandarin-tap/id588224825>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I shall correct this promptly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looks great. Reminds me a little of Duolingo <http://duolingo.com> You might want to check them out to get ideas for improving your app.

</comment><comment><USER12> Found some issues in the Chinese and usability issues where the progress is wrongly calculated, question area scrolls upwards, overlapping text, etc. Have screenshots if you need.

Example of a mistake in Chinese is '跑步' (running) pǎobù which is written as pǎbù.

Also, the iOS examples has the .idea directory included and the Capture module and all art assets.

The next button is active and therefore shows a dotted line around the button.

</comment><comment><USER18> I like the design of the landing. It's very simple and effective. The only thing I would change is the font. It looks a bit boring and bootstrap-y. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Speaking of apps for helping you learn Chinese.

I don't know how difficult it would be to create something like this, but an app that could help with mastering tones would be very useful to me.

I'd buy such an app even if it was very simple. Like if it had a start and stop button and would graph the tone of what you said in between.

But, yeah, I don't know if it's feasible to create.

<comment><USER12> Some applications exist to help you recognizing tones based on the pinyin, but you want a comparison between the model and your voice? Thought Rosetta did this..

<comment><USER5> I can't seem to find this app.

What I want is a graphical representation of the tone of my voice (over time).

I've been told that my voice is monotone when I speak Western languages so I don't really have a good feel for what I need to do to speak in a high or low tone. If I had a graphical representation of what I was in fact doing then I think I could gain control over the tone of my voice more easily.

I guess the obvious alternative is to record and play back my own voice.

<comment><USER12> Look at a demo of Rosetta Stone. Haven't touched it recently, but it should be able to do most of what you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice to see a fellow language educator. Very interesting to see your translation and audio outsourcing to Elance.

We've done something for the Irish language, which has its own pronunciation complexities. The site itself is very simple as it is, just wanted to share in any case: <http://www.pronounceirish.com/>

</comment><comment><USER20> I love the idea. My thoughts about the app. 1# where do you get the information for doing the grammar and pronunciation? 2# what is your end goal for producing this?

The only consideration I could say is to high a higher level view of the main application screen. Something that allows you to jump to levels/tutorials more effectively.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, it does need a little more hierarchy for navigation. Too much scrolling at the moment.

#1 I outsourced all the translations (and audio recordings) on www.elance.com

#2 The goal was to spend 3-4 months playing/experimenting with product design. The project is a learning exercise in how to craft something original (hopefully) and useful (even more hopefully!). I enjoy building things and playing with ideas. I guess the end-goal is to help me shape my career direction and find my next full-time job :)

The reason for it being a Mandarin learning app is that I was frustrated by the existing products in the marketplace. Designing this was a very iterative process, I have a set of test users and tried all manner of mechanisms to help them learn. First couple of mechanisms I threw away because it didn't help recall and were too confusing. I had the luxury of being able to discard ideas that didn't work very quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looks great. I'm interested in something like this for my 5 year old, who is already in a language immersion program. Might consider a children's version ... she's not so interested in asking about train schedules and other adult concerns, but would love to know the names of all the animals in a zoo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, I'll add in a animal wordset. I'll do the animals of the chinese zodiac (pig, dog, tiger, horse, monkeys etc). I'll also do another for the zoo (penguins, eagle etc)

Please feel free to suggest new word sets. Next major release will have new lesson sets. (two weeks from today)

</comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady I really like the design of the app and the voices are good too (I've tried several language apps where the phrases are poorly stitched together and difficult to understand). It seems like an interesting way to learn Mandarin.

</comment><comment><USER22> It would be hard to evaluate as I know how to speak in Mandarin (and the hardest part comes to the written language, which again I can't evaluate.)

Not alone there are different favors of the written form.

</comment><comment><USER23> I would prefer if after I complete a sentence / word and it repeats it back to me in Chinese, that I could replay this so if I didn't hear it or I wanted to really memorize the pronunciation I could.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, expect this feature a week on friday. (11th Jan)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Any idea how to get your head around the tonal part of the language? I took three years of mandarin in high school and a year as an extension as an adult.

I still struggle with the tones.

</comment><comment><USER25> Looks great, the interface seems very minimal and easy to use. Voices are well recorded. Overall design could be improved, but at least its not ugly.

Seems very usable. congrats

</comment><comment><USER26> Any thoughts about making something like this for Japanese?

<comment><AUTHOR> For Kanji, certainly. It probably won't suit Hiragana and Katakana.

<comment><USER27> Yes, for Kanji. These hieroglyphs is what most people are having trouble learning in Japanese and Chinese, as far as I know. Grammar is hard but it's not such a barrier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I just downloaded this and went through a few lessons. Very well done!

One feature request: a review mode that pulls from all completed lessons

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, feature/bug fix backlog is full for the next two weeks but I'll implement something like that in the version to follow. Some like "Exam Mode" where it retests you on everything you have studied so far.

Could also have a another list which is only words that you have made a mistake on. "Revision Mode"

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Looks great! Only two remarks: I think the app icon would look nicer without shine + without the white line at the bottom of the icon.

<comment><AUTHOR> The logo/icon is weak, it does need to be replaced. (and will be)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Bought it.. seems like a nice way to get started with the very very basics, also nice to show people to explain it

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you sir, your thoughts after using the app would be very interesting to me :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This app looks pretty good. I would happily pay for it if there was a promise of more lessons/content later.

<comment><AUTHOR> There shall be more lessons in the future :) If you have suggestions for what high-level word/phrase sets you would like, let me know.

Unfortunately, at the moment I'm just guessing as to what people want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I have never seen an app like this. Interesting concept maybe do the same for Japanese or maybe Arabic?

</comment><comment><USER33> Nice and simple, although I would change the default bootstrap font.

</comment><comment><USER34> Nice work. What did you use for the voice over in your demo video?

<comment><AUTHOR> I outsourced the voice over on elance.com. Lots of voice-over providers to choose from. (any language/accent you want)

<comment><USER34> Interesting, I thought it sounded computer generated. Do you know if it was?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope definitely not computer generated.

I seriously recommend getting professional voice overs. Originally the demo was narrated by myself, but having a professional do it makes a HUGE difference. If I showed you the same video with my voice, you would laugh :)

<comment><USER34> Cool thanks. Makes me think of my own video voice overs.. equally horrible..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Surprised to see that tokenadult hasn't commented yet.

</comment><comment><USER36> im gon get this</comment>