Windows Calculator invalid input with 10^x function - <AUTHOR> https://www.tenforums.com/software-apps/111414-windows-calculator-invalid-input-10-x-function.html <comment><USER11> In comparison, Windows 7:

        powten(43429) -> Overflow
        powten(43430) -> Invalid input
        powten(4.3429) -> 22024.192788839535553954884105294
        powten(4.3430) -> 22029.264630534561834283309977748
        powten(4.3431) -> 22034.337640198758473587650545525

In Windows 10, 4.3431 results in "Invalid input" but 4.3429 does not. (Nor does 4.3430, but obviously so.)

What's the significance of 43430?

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting. The XP calc.exe/Calculator Plus is able to compute 10^43429 (and the result is 1.e+43429), but not 10^43430.

 _What 's the significance of 43430?_

        e^99999 = 1.0325137485899245994533393888277e+43429
        e^100000 = 2.8066633604261231793183858185717e+43429
        e^100001 = Invalid input for function.

(XP calc.exe)

According to Mathematica,

         e^100001 = 7.6293020112481304176946586569717e+43429
         e^100002 = 2.0738593021001839250781552880629e+43430

and likewise,

         ln(1e+43429) = 99998.968003638410011217350885487
         ln(1e+43430) = 100001.27058873140405690136887694

It's off by a tiny bit, but it's round enough to give some hints: 10^x is internally being computed using e^x.

Edit: some more interesting, possibly relevant search results for the numbers 43429 and 43430:

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33515746/why-is-this- c-p...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33515746/why-is-this-c-program- crashes-on-windows-and-works-fine-on-linux)

[http://delphiforfun.org/NewsLetters/Nbr32.htm](http://delphiforfun.org/NewsLetters/Nbr32.htm)

<comment><USER12> Nice work! The internal use of e^x also was confirmed below for the Windows 10 calc (using another method).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://imgur.com/a/ukSUOhM](https://imgur.com/a/ukSUOhM)

Holy crap. How on Earth did they manage to break _Windows Calculator_ , of all things?

<comment><USER14> By writing a whole new one without considering the 20%. It's also missing a lot of features compared to the old one. (Features that may not matter to everyone, granted, but I found that there were more things that weren't there for my typical uses than ones that were.) Installing the old calculator[1] isn't much of a problem, though - although you do need to pin it to make it easily accessible without finding yourself opening the new uselessness accidentally about 50% of the time.

[1] [https://winaero.com/download.php?view.1795](https://winaero.com/download.php?view.1795)

<comment><USER15> If you're going to add something, add something better than the old Calc, unless you really need some feature that only exists on that Calc. I use their PowerCalc Powertoy for Windows XP. [1] There's also SpeedCrunch which in some ways is probably better (minus the plotting) but personally I'm used to PowerCalc.

[1] [https://imgur.com/gi0jmdI](https://imgur.com/gi0jmdI)

<comment><USER16> I launch apl in my terminal if the calculation I need to do is simple and Wolfram|Alpha otherwise

<comment><USER15> APL as in... the programming language? Or something else? I'm not sure what you're referring to.

<comment><USER17> It wouldn't surprise me - I'll often do the same with Python on non-Windows systems rather than bothering with the native calculator; I'm not even sure if Linux has one (or if it's the same across distros), and Python is ubiquitous, fast, and has familiar syntax.

<comment><USER18> Same here, I don't have an actual calculator program so python is generally the quickest way for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Seems the issue occurs at some range (10^0,39794 - ?]

      10^0,43407 - Invalid Input
      10^0,00001 - <USER10>
      10^0,50001 - Invalid Input
      10^0,40001 - Invalid Input
      10^0,30001 - <USER10>
      10^0,35001 - <USER10>
      10^0,39999 - Invalid Input
      10^0,37501 - <USER10>
      10^0,38751 - <USER10>
      10^0,39375 - <USER10>
      10^0,39794 - <USER10>
      10^0,39795 - Invalid Input

But when I tried better approximations things got weird

      10^0,397941 - Invalid Input
      10^0,397940000001 - Invalid Input

Seems six or more decimal places result in Invalid Input

      10^0,39375 - <USER10>
      10^0,393751 - Invalid Input
      10^0,39376 - <USER10>

Even well outside the range

      10^0,123456 - Invalid Input

<comment><USER12> There seems to be a clear pattern for > 5 digits after the decimal:

      5 digits - Valid: <=0.39794, Invalid: >=0.39795
        10^0.39794 < 2.5
        10^0.39795 > 2.5

      6 digits - Valid: <=0.043429, Invalid: >=0.043431
      7 digits - Valid: <=0.0043429, Invalid: >=0.0043431
      8 digits - Valid: <=0.00043429, Invalid: >=0.00043431

The pattern seems to continue as the number of decimal places increases.

<comment><USER20> 10^0.043429 ~= e^0.1

10^0.0043429 ~= e^0.01

10^0.00043429 ~= e^0.001

So that gives some insight into the algorithm that is being used

<comment><USER19> Using this we can actually predict the smallest exponent that fails for other bases:

      base	exponent (6 digits)
      10	0.043429
      11	0.041703
      12	0.040243
      2	0.144271
      3	0.091024
      4	0.072135
      1000	0.014476

(the calculated exponent for two is actually 0.144270, but since it ends in zero the first failure occurs at 0.144271)

<comment><USER21> Just checked, calc fails at 11^0.41703 (curiously not at 41703, but 41704, maybe a floating point thing). Maybe it changes base to e and uses the Taylor series for e^x, but fails if x is too precise for what it expects?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I love how the first comment is from a "guru" with nothing better to say than:

> Do you really think it is going to make much difference to the final answer?

Doesn't matter, it should work.

<comment><USER23> You think that's bad? I once reported a bug in Apple's calculator in OS X, and it was fixed by the next release.

If you started out with a cleared calculator with default settings and computed 14479.14 - 152.36 you got 14326.78.

If you started out with a cleared calculator with default settings and computed 1143/78, and _then_ computed 14479.14 - 152.36, you got something like 14326.779999999999.

The number of people on forums who completely missed the point and lectured me, often rather condescendingly, on how neither 14479.14 nor 152.36 are exactly representable in finite binary floating point and so that is why the subtraction was not exact was astonishing.

The bug is not that the subtraction is inexact. The bug is that the _same_ subtraction result was displayed with different rounding depending on whether it was done immediately after a clear or done after computing 1143/78.

How 14479.14 - 152.36 displays should only depend on the calculator settings. That it changed depending on previous calculations suggest that there was probably a scratch variable used during calculations that was supposed to be reset before the next calculation but was not.

Speaking of the MacOS calculator, their RPN mode really annoys me (although not as much as Windows 10 calculator which doesn't even have an RPN mode!). Suppose you want to compute (2+3) x 4. The obvious key sequence works: 2 enter 3 + 4 x.

How about (2+3) x pi. The obvious key sequence is: 2 enter 3 + pi x. The result of that is an error beep with pi in the display, or, if you had anything on the stack before you started, that thing multiplied by pi.

That's because rather than pushing pi onto the stack, the pi key replaces whatever is on the bottom of the stack with pi. In other words, instead of acting as if you had hit the keys 3 . 1 4 1 5 9 ... 7 9 3, it acts as if it pops the stack, invokes the function

      def pi(x):
        return 3.141592653589793

on the value it popped, and pushes the result.

What you have to do is: 2 enter 3 + enter pi x.

Suppose you decide you don't want to have to remember the distinction between the pi key and numerical entry, and decide to just always put in that enter.

So: 2 enter 3 + enter 4 x. That gives you 20 like you would expect...but also leaves a 5 on the stack above that.

For comparison, that does not happen on an HP-15, or on software calculators that follow HP RPN rules, such as pcalc on iOS. On those, when you press enter it duplicates the item currently on the top of the stack, just like Apple's calculator, but it sets a flag that says if you immediately enter a number, that overwrites the top of stack instead of pushing.

This flag was a key thing that made data entry on the HP calculators feel natural.

On the HP-48 they made a significant change to this. When you pressed enter it did not immediately dup the stack and set the flag saying numerical entry should overwrite. Instead, pressing enter did not immediately do anything to the stack. Instead, it set a flag saying that if your next action was to enter a number, first dup the top of stack.

The RPN mode on pcalc lets you select if you want HP-48 stack behavior or classic RPN behavior (it is in advanced settings when you are in RPN mode).

Here's an article on how RPN evolved at HP: [http://h20331.www2.hp.com/hpsub/downloads/S07%20HP%20RPN%20E...](http://h20331.www2.hp.com/hpsub/downloads/S07%20HP%20RPN%20Evolves%20V5b.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> _How 14479.14 - 152.36 displays should only depend on the calculator settings. That it changed depending on previous calculations suggest that there was probably a scratch variable used during calculations that was supposed to be reset before the next calculation but was not._

...and my guess is that "scratch variable" is actually a flag that switches calculations between fixed-point and floating-point mode; the first subtraction was done in fixed-point mode, but when it did the division it used floating-point, and then kept that mode for future calculations until explicitly cleared.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The differentiation is neither "digits" nor "significant figures". 10000 throws the "invalid input" error, while 0.00000001 does not. Both of these numbers have exactly one significant figure, and the latter clearly has more digits.

<comment><USER12> It seems that 0.00001 gives "Invalid Input", but 0.00000001 works.

EDIT: Strangely, now all inputs seem to work, even 0.00001 and even when I restart the calculator. Not sure why ...

<comment><USER13> Just tried again - .00001 works for me, but .43407 still doesn't...

<comment><USER12> Confirmed, on mine .43407 gives "Invalid input". I was getting "Invalid input" earlier for 0.00001 and 0.00003 (the first two examples I tried), but now they seem to work.

EDIT: Manually typing in 10, the x^y button, then 0.43407 also gives "Invalid input".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's baffling to me why they don't implement arbitrary precision arithmetic. bc (a calcuator for unix) can do that since 1975 :)

</comment><comment><USER26> This is from June and looks like it is fixed, I can do 10^x functions on my work PC in the Windows calculator.

Edit: see comment below

<comment><USER24> Not fixed for me, fully patched 1803.

<comment><USER15> What is your full version number? If you open the command prompt it should say something like Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.17134.???]. You could also run 'ver'.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, I guess I can tell you that. I'm on 10.0.17134.191

<comment><USER15> Yeah same as mine, that should be fully patched indeed. Except I can't reproduce the problem on mine, so this is really bizarre: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17675413](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17675413)

<comment><USER27> You should probably be looking at the calculator version (menu button -> About. mine is 10.1806.1821.0, and has this problem) rather than the OS version. Apps can be updated independently of the OS.

<comment><USER15> Whoa, very interesting, great call! I see 10.1712.10601.0 as the version for mine. Why would it not have updated along with the rest of Windows? EDIT: Oh, because I've disabled automatic app updates. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I see this as perfect opportunity for Microsoft to show how they're all open and transparent.

1\. Introduce a bug which only 1% would encounter. 2\. Wait for it to get noticed. 3\. Fix the bug, explain the causes in detail, thank everyone. 4\. Profit ;)

</comment><comment><USER29> Can confirm I have this and I'm on the fastest insider build ring. There seems to be differences between how input is made etc which leads me to think there is something more to it than just "makes the wrong calculation".

</comment><comment><USER30> I wouldn't trust the windows calculator anyways for anything beyond trivial arithmetic. Use an environment where you have actual control over how the calculations are performed.

</comment><comment><USER31> This doesn't appear to be only with the 10^x function - the x^y function exhibits the same behaviour (both for x=10 and at the least x=9; I haven't tried many others)

</comment><comment><USER32> I guess when you are Microsoft you don't have to test software internally since millions will do it for you for free. Also for what it's worth I didn't have any problems with these numbers on `kcalc` in KDE (not that I expected to see it, but worth a shot)

</comment><comment><USER33> bc works well for me. See [http://phodd.net/gnu-bc/](http://phodd.net/gnu-bc/)

<comment><USER34> Also emacs calc is a beast!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What can we do about global warming? - <AUTHOR>

As developers (or just hacker types), it seems as if there should be opportunities to leverage our abilities to fight global warming. I've been wanting to put some energy into this, but haven't found much in the way of projects or organizations. What are some ways we can use our skills for action or awareness for what may be the biggest crisis of the upcoming generation?<p>PS - For a perspective on how unprepared we may be to deal with global warming and how difficult the solutions are, check out: http://www.vox.com/2014/6/5/5779040/7-reasons-America-fail-global-warming <comment><USER2> > leverage our abilities to fight global warming

How could you tell that the global warming is _caused_ by or even _affected_ by human activity?</comment>


Ask HN: Non-Citizen US Visa Holder Working on Charityware? - <AUTHOR> So I live in the US but on a temporary visa hence I can't have a money-making side projects. However, I really want to make this side project and have people pay for it in a way that X% of the profit goes to operating cost (AWS hosting, CDN,domain,etc which I hope would altogether would be small in comparison to revenue in the long term) and 100-X% would go to a charity. None of the profit would go to me since I have a full-time job already (and legally can't anyways).
I have several thoughts about how to do this and would love your ideas:
1) Is this legal for me? (This might be hard to answer)
2) Should I request for funds directly or make it an honor system? (this possibly negates me having to worry about question 1).
3) Has anyone done this successfully or something similar?
4) Any other things I should be thinking about? Is this a foolish idea? <comment><USER2> Get a us citizen as partner, open a corp and do it that way. You are allowed to take yearly profit.

</comment><comment><USER3> 4) Without talking to a immigration attorney, probably. That's the place to start.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why don't you ask a lawyer?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea. For the time being let's say it is all legal. I'd like to know thoughts in general about the idea.</comment></comment>


Unconscious Patient with 'Do Not Resuscitate' Tattoo Causes Ethical Conundrum - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/unconscious-patient-with-do-not-resuscitate-tattoo-caus-1820881602 <comment><USER2> Spoilers: He dies at the end</comment>


The reason that Postgres can't kill Oracle, it's not the technology - <AUTHOR> https://www.techrepublic.com/article/theres-one-big-reason-that-postgres-cant-kill-oracle-and-its-not-the-technology/ <comment><USER2> Are there any known instances of a company dropping support for Oracle? My employer supported both Oracle and MSSQL for our now-legacy desktop offering but opted to support MSSQL-only when we rewrote for the cloud. Our testing and operations effort was reduced significantly and on-premise customers have dealt with those implications but I'd say it's definitely a net positive for us.

Not saying that MSSQL is any better than Oracle, or Postgres for that matter.

<comment><USER3> Yandex did. Russia's version of google. If you YouTube search "yandex postgresql" you will find them giving a talk about the wins for them in switching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been waiting for Oracle to slowly die for 20 years. But they kee growing. Enterprise, once gained, is really hard to lose. Novell is still in business, as one example.

The article touches on this, but it's a factor of new companies eventually growing up without needing Oracle. That could take 50 years.

<comment><USER5> Databases often house an organization's key data and related business logic. It's not trivial to port such over. PostgreSql is not 100% compatible, and testing and adjusting takes time.

That being said, an org should foster open-source RDBMS for _new_ projects that don't need heavy data-sharing with Oracle instances, and slowly expand. For one, Oracle sales-people will give you better deals if they know you are nurturing alternatives within. It's better if Oracle has you by one nut instead of two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was once told by an IT manager of a supermarket chain, that no db was able to handle the high-volume of transaction they had during the peak hours. It was anecdotal without any hard proof and he did not want to get to the details as it will reveal their inner workings. They have 50 branches with each store having 30 counters.

Any truth to that?

<comment><USER7> Without specific details it sounds pretty unlikely.

Maybe they were meaning within some (unknown to us) budget? That'd make more sense.</comment></comment>


Just How Much Money Do "Influencers" Make? - <AUTHOR> https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/how-much-do-influencers-make <comment><USER2> My wife and I are considered local "influencers" in our city by virtue of a local lifestyle blog we run and our social media presence. We're part of a local bloggers group, we get invited to tons of exclusive social events, we attend branded events, brands reach out to us directly for help with marketing. People and companies we interact with tend to assume we're making great money doing this. Brands tell us the dollar value of the event they're inviting us to as a way of apologizing for not paying us for it, and our followers sometimes seem to expect we're owned by a major brand or at least under contract.

In reality, in the three years we've been doing this we've made a grand total of $38.50 in cash. Just like how people expect artists to work for "exposure", "influencers" (I really dislike the term, we're just local bloggers as a side project) are often expected to work for free or for perks. We've tried to collect cash for obvious advertisements we're asked to make, and nothing shuts a brand up faster than asking for payment. The reason for that, I'm speculating, is that when we ask to be paid, there are a dozen more "influencers" in the area willing to do it for a free sample of the product.

We've since pretty much determined that we're doing this for fun and for the local influence/access and perks we get, and not for cash. We started as a hobby without the intent to make money, so it's not like we're losing anything. As an added benefit to this approach, we can afford to be super picky and only advertise the brands we actually enjoy using and the places we actually enjoy visiting. If a place/brand we hate asks us to promote them, well... we take cash or card. And 99% of the time, that's the end of the conversation.

Too many people are willing to shill for free, which hurts anyone trying to do it for money.

<comment><USER3> > Too many people are willing to shill for free, which hurts anyone trying to > do it for money.

But you're still a shill either way. Maybe I'm just old but when I was growing up being a sellout was a pejorative. Now it's considered a virtue. I frankly don't get it.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I'm honestly perplexed as to why anyone would follow any of these people. I'm on the various social platforms to varying extents. I use Facebook but primarily interact with friends an family. Ditto with Instagram, but I also follow some people I don't know; a few great photographers, seph lawless (photographs urban decay), the folks with the dog and cat they take camping, etc. No part of me is interested in following someone who is a celebrity for celebrity's sake, let alone a person who is ONLY a celebrity because they're attempting to monetize their following. I don't mean that would explicitly turn me off (although it probably would), I mean, I don't see the impetus to follow in the first place. What value or enjoyment would I get from content that is without value?

<comment><USER5> It's children.

Fun rule: if you're ever wondering why something odd or stupid is popular, it's probably kids.

<comment><USER6> Nope. Alcohol, drugs, watching sports, these things are really odd and really stupid in my view and yet it's not kids who drive the sales the most.

<comment><USER7> In the context of the article / thread, children is probably accurate.

<comment><USER6> No, it's not. There are surely lots of "kids", which I'm guessing includes teenagers, but there's also a high percentage of people aged 20-40 or even more who follow those "influencers" much the same way. People don't really grow up from being naive, susceptible to social fashions, etc.

<comment><USER8> It is, you aren't right here. 16 year olds with a smartphone and IG account make up a big spare of those likes/shares/whatever... The other big party is bots/fake accounts/you get the idea.. And i'm generous here, even 11year olds have the ability to move trends nowadays, i can't give numbers, only anectodal reference, but i assume that's what OP meant.

<comment><USER9> I'm in my 40s. I follow lots of popular accounts (so influencers, right?) in the cycling world.

My wife does the same in interior design.

There are lots of kids, true. But try looking at mommy-instagram and you'll see a whole other world.

<comment><USER7> True. But following is not engagement. If you average X likes per hour on say IG and your teen doppelganger also is X p/h but they're on IG 5 or 6 times as much as you. Well, I think you can see the difference.

<comment><USER9> Yeah perhaps.

But older people spend lots of money on non essential items.

Also have you seen how much time a stay at home Mom spends on social media? They'd give any teenager fair competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As far as anecdata goes, I know someone who makes around $800K a year even without some crazy-impressive a follower count on Youtube (around 600K). This is not factoring in free trips, etc.

As with any commercial exchange, there's a lot of variables other than size of audience, including the composition of the audience, how good the channel is at moving a specific product, whether there are side-opportunities related to the main influencer role, how good of a B2B salesperson one is, etc.

This particular person works as hard as anyone in a startup, around 100 hours a week, and treats it as such. She also happens to be pretty good looking which helps with the videos.

It used to piss me off a little bit, given how hard I have had to work to get to this stage, but one can think of it as very similar to modeling with probably a similar income distribution too (and I seem to intrinsically understand that top tier models make a lot and am ok with it).

My question is -- of all the people making a lot in their 20s and early 30s, how many are going to be making the same amount in their 40s and 50s? I suppose by then their peer generation will also be the same age so it's hard for me to project. I also expect it to be much more of a mature market at that time.

<comment><USER11> _> It used to piss me off a little bit, given how hard I have had to work to get to this stage_

There are only so many hours in the week, only so many years in a career, and thus there's a limit to how much more one person can work than another. And yet there are people making 2x, 10x, 100x, 1000x, …, 1 billion times what others are. Compensation is largely unrelated to the amount of sweat, time, and effort we put in. Rather, it's a result of the depth of the value we provide and the number of people we provide that value to. Outcome > input.

I believe that understanding this makes us less jealous of people who seem "undeserving," and also helps us make better decisions in our own careers.

Another way to reduce envy is to realize that, ultimately, it's luck all the way down. There are plenty of talented, hard-working people who will never see even moderate success, simply because they were born in the wrong country, in the wrong decade, to the wrong parents, etc. It seems that cursing the people above us is a natural tendency for humans, but we'd do well to spend more energy thinking of those behind us, as well as appreciating our own circumstances.

<comment><USER12> _Rather, it 's a result of the depth of the value we provide and the number of people we provide that value to. Outcome > input_

Not really. It's mostly family connections.

<comment><USER13> According to [https://www.cnbc.com/2014/10/03/two-thirds-of- billionaires-m...](https://www.cnbc.com/2014/10/03/two-thirds-of-billionaires- made-it-themselves.html), about 2/3 of billionaires have self-made fortunes.

So clearly family connections help. But that doesn't appear to be most of the picture.

<comment><USER14> Is Bill Gates self-made? Or was it the fact that his father could cut a $25,000 check on a whim?

Having lots of ready liquid cash gets you the ability to make deals that normal people do not have access to.

You don't even have to be that rich. Take a look at Craigslist at the end of the month before rent is due.

<comment><USER15> > Is Bill Gates self-made?

Yes.

> Or was it the fact that his father could cut a $25,000 check on a whim?

There are millions of Americans like that, and only one Bill Gates.

There's no evidence, either, that his father bought the success of Microsoft. The early success of Microsoft did not require anything more than rather trivial amounts of cash.

<comment><USER16> That amount of cash is not trivial for the vast majority of Americans.

<comment><USER17> There are vastly more people with access to $25k in cash than there are people who end up making an impact as large as Gates had. It still takes an enormous amount of work and savvy to pull off what he did.

<comment><USER16> Sure. But if he didn't have access to that money, would he still have been able to do that?

<comment><USER15> Yes. An aggressive entrepreneur like Gates would be able to rustle up a few paltry thousand in investment capital. People do it all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _> 96.5 percent of YouTubers don't make enough annual ad revenue to reach the U.S. federal poverty line... $12,140._

I'm surprised it's that low, honestly. May be a question of definition of a "youtuber", which I didn't see in the article. There's a long tail of "influencers" who actually make a living at it—and some a very good living—but I bet it's way less than 3.5%.

<comment><USER19> One also has to take into account other revenue streams that Youtubers will often have. Most channels nowadays will start up a Patreon account once they get a core following, and even a monthly dollar per Patron is more than all the adclicks that viewer would give. Merchandising is also big (1 T-shirt > 1000s of views), and bigger channels (100k+) can get a decent amount of revenue through sponsorship where they give in-video advertisements (like what Squarespace and a lot of VPNs do).

After the instability of Youtube's ad platform this past year ("Adpocalypse 1, 2 and 3"), many on the platform have given up on the idea of depending solely on adclicks as it's just too risky to leave your future to the discretion of a black box algorithm.

<comment><USER20> I see youtubers with 6 figure followers list each of 'this months patreon supporters' by name every month, they better be donating 3 figure amounts for that to be more than beer money...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Single datapoint: Asking rates from a young white attractive female with 65K+ Instagram followers

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

</comment><comment><USER22> This article missed discussing the real influencers: niche influencers. I follow a number of Sailing and Hiking YouTube vloggers and I know they aren't getting rich but it does allow them to keep doing what they love to do. Sailing Delos and Sailing La Vagabonde are the two power house sailing vloggers that make enough money off of Patreon, YouTube and sponsorships to keep sailing around the world and living a really great lifestyle. I know that Sailing La Vagabonde did well enough to get a good deal on a new catamaran, free clothes and bathing suits to keep them going for a long time. I would not be surprised if Sailing Delos got a good sponsorship from Amel boats to keep sailing for many many more years.

<comment><USER23> > good deal on a new catamaran

You mean free?

Notice how that channel hardly ever goes as in depth on major maintenance requirements as the other sailing channels do? It's all fun and adventure. Not to say that's wrong -- I enjoy watching that channel.

There are soooo many sailing channels right now (I can think of at least 40 somewhat popular ones) and the vast majority of them are filming low quality content and sticking their hands out.

Side note: If you want to gauge which channels aren't getting heavy sponsorship dollars, it's the ones that _almost always_ anchor vs tie up at the marina.

<comment><USER24> _> Side note: If you want to gauge which channels aren't getting heavy sponsorship dollars, it's the ones that _almost always_ anchor vs tie up at the marina._

Can you explain this for someone who doesn't know anything about boats?

<comment><USER23> Marinas generally charge by the foot (and sometimes additionally by the hull, as in 2x for catamarans). A one month tie-up in a marina will run you several hundred to several thousand dollars depending on the above factors, the location and the season.

Anchoring is free, but then you need to come to shore in (and store) a dinghy

Basically yachting is very expensive. A Panama Canal crossing in your pleasurecraft these days will run about $2k. Those youtube channels are basically lifestyle advertising -- some of those cruisers are heavily (financially) supported.

<comment><USER25> _> Basically yachting is very expensive._

Yachting _can_ be very expensive. Annie Hill, Moxie Marlinspike and many others prove that it can also be extremely cheap.

[https://www.amazon.com/Voyaging-Small-Income-Annie- Hill/dp/1...](https://www.amazon.com/Voyaging-Small-Income-Annie- Hill/dp/1888671378)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lwbHYOFD-4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lwbHYOFD-4)

<comment><USER23> I plan on being a frugal, liveaboard, solo cruiser by the time I'm 40. Those examples are a bit at the extreme though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I can say from experience that an Instagrammer with 100k followers is unlikely to get anything near $2700 to post a photo. This was probably true several years ago, but these days the number is closer to $1000.

<comment><USER27> I'm curious how brands come up with these numbers- is the ROI really that good?

<comment><USER28> The ROI used to be that good, and then the market became crowded and the consumers became more savvy.

Now the ROI is worse, the advertisers start lowballing, and the content creators keep accepting (because rent is due and nobody else is offering any higher, sooooo)

<comment><USER26> This is spot on. It's just like any other marketing tactic - it works well until everyone else starts doing it.

As for the pricing of posts, the lowballing is getting more and more dramatic, because there are many more "influencers" now. The only brands really shelling out are large corporations with large budgets looking for something very specific. Smaller brands can just reach out to a bunch of influencers offering only product in exchange for a post, and someone will say yes.

<comment><USER28> Totally agree, thanks for writing :)

I think we should all tread carefully here. In reality, monetizing content is not particularly easy and usually isn't ethical or sustainable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > _"an influencer with 100,000 followers on Instagram can charge around £2,000 > per picture (approximately $2,700), while celebrity influencers with between > four million and 20 million followers can charge £5,000-£13,000 > ($6,700-$17,500)."_

So 2.5x the price for 40x the reach? These numbers just don't seem to make sense.

<comment><USER30> I agree I don't think they know how to do basic math.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> YouTuber with 30k subs, 50k on twitter. Programming content. My sponsored offers from random marketing firms are almost always $100-$250 / video. Not sure how it scales up to larger channels.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's very much a power law curve. There are a few at the top making most of the money, and pretty much no one else is. It's true for fake internet points too -- there are a few top users on reddit who have most of the karma.

<comment><USER33> I think it varies by industry, and would probably be hard to see the power law curve if not accounting for this. Paul Graham found that the #1 startup for art galleries in the 90s wasn't worth a whole lot. [http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I work for "free", posting beautiful photos of food, and cocktails on Instagram. In exchange I get fed, I get invited to every social event, every new restaurant opening, every special sit down, and I'm now well connected to every major player in the local food scene. When I release my new product(the reason for the last two years of work), I'll have that network to deploy it to.

<comment><USER35> Care to share your Instagram username? I don't see anything in your profile, but I am interested in the niche community/local business space, and how to drive customers to those places that I am proud to recommend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> So is an "Influencer" simply just another word for a YouTuber?

<comment><USER2> An influencer is someone with a strong social media presence, who has a large number of real human followers and the ability to "influence" the purchasing decisions of those followers.

If Linus from Linus Tech Tips says not to buy the latest AMD Radeon X921gtstx, a large number of people won't buy it. That's an influencer.

<comment><USER37> How do they measure their ability to "influence" the purchasing decisions of their followers? How do their clients calculate ROI?

<comment><USER38> My understanding is that the metrics used to calculate ROI differ from client to client. It's more an art (or scam) than a science, with a ton of grey area. Whatever metric the client's boss is really into at the moment can be marketed hard and inflated using unverifiable data if needed. A lot of people are incentivised to tell the story that influencers provide value to brands. I believe that this is less and less true every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Instagram influencer with 30k +150/day. Can confirm that it is difficult to get paid. I do get about $5k in premium products a year. I'm also picky on what I post to not dilute the feed with ads.

<comment><USER40> > 30k +150/day.

What does this mean? You have 30K followers and are adding 150 new ones / day?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is a form that a high end hotel requires potential influencers to fill out when asking for free stuff. Cognitive dissonance generator. [https://twitter.com/hels/status/954404411425607681](https://twitter.com/hels/status/954404411425607681)

</comment><comment><USER41> Here is some info for YouTube celebs:

[https://capitalandgrowth.org/questions/414/how-much-do- youtu...](https://capitalandgrowth.org/questions/414/how-much-do-youtube- celebrities-charge-to-advertis.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Revenue is not ROI. I personally know someone with 500k YT subscribers and his / her eyes go blank when asked about less obvious KPIs. Their #1 strategy for increasing revenue is to spit out more content.

Rat on a wheel doesn't feel like much of a biz model to me.

</comment><comment><USER42> I read this since "influencer" is roughly the business I am in. While I use number of followers on Twitter to demonstrate my reach, I do not think of social media as the primary channel for influence. Tech industry analysts, bloggers, and writers are hugely influential and derive a living wage from their work. Other than Walt Mossberg I have not heard of anyone making seven figures.

</comment><comment><USER43> I've always wondered how accounting/taxes work for being a US-based influencer. If I'm comp'd a hotel room and meal in return for an IG feature, I assume I have to report the net dollar value of that somewhere. Doing that year 'round seems like an accounting mess, even with an accountant helping.

<comment><USER44> I'm not an accountant, but my understanding is that gift tax is paid by the gifter. I'm not sure if that applies to perks, though.

<comment><USER43> I think it could also be interpreted as a barter transaction. [1]

[1] [https://www.wicproject.com/ponderings/blog- taxes/](https://www.wicproject.com/ponderings/blog-taxes/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I wonder how does someone like KM Music on Youtube make money.

They have near 400M views and 600k subscribers but all their videos use big commercial pop hits.

Do they actually get a cut or does all the ad revenue flow to music authors and Youtube?

</comment><comment><USER46> I don't know about anything else, but those three quoted Instagrams are perhaps the most tedious thing I've ever seen, and they make me feel sad inside.

</comment><comment><USER47> Omg, what a waste of time. I'm so glad almost no one is making money doing this stuff. Shill for free, shill for money, the shilling part is the common part.

</comment><comment><USER48> I wonder whether the advertising reach of 'influencers' is due to the lack (or absence) of enforcement of advertising regulations. I don't know about the rest of the world but in the UK many 'influencers' certainly seem to skirt the line and the Advertising Standards Authority is increasingly paying attention [0].

[0] [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43470227](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43470227)

</comment><comment><USER30> I think their math is off. Flipping burgers at McDonalds full time in Portland, OR, USA would make you $19,240 a year.

</comment><comment><USER49> influencers !== content creators

</comment><comment><USER50> This thread seems like the perfect place to plug a side project.

WP Commission ([https://wpcommission.com](https://wpcommission.com)) is a WP plugin which helps influencers maximize affiliate revenue. The plugin makes sure all Amazon.com links are tagged with an affiliate tag - and we even follow, expand, and tag shortened amzn.to links as well.

Additionally, we provide a shortcode which creates a carousel displaying products that have been linked to in prior posts. We've found that showing a pretty carousel can lead to substantial revenue improvements, especially when on the home page of a blog.

WPC charges a token fee to keep the servers running, but anyone doing a few thousand in revenue should see a net profit from the service. At the end of the day, we're publishers who want to help quality content creators monetize so they can support themselves.

We're putting together some case studies about sites who most effectively use the Amazon Associates program. The study is up here: [https://medium.com/@sku_67047/how-kinja-earns-so-much-in- com...](https://medium.com/@sku_67047/how-kinja-earns-so-much-in-commission- revenue-af69d3e7a952)

<comment><USER51> I was a beta user and it is very good indeed.</comment></comment>


Microsoft begins dropping OneDrive's 2GB file size limit - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/article/2600836/cloud-storage/microsoft-begins-dropping-onedrives-2gb-file-size-limit.html

<comment><USER2> 'Dropping' sounds like they're reducing it ... can I suggest a rename to 'eliminating'?

<comment><AUTHOR> That would certainly make more sense</comment></comment>


The Awe of Mathematical Beauty - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/15/opinion/sunday/the-worlds-most-beautiful-mathematical-equation.html <comment><USER2> Great article! I always feel this way, but not many understand me!</comment>


Coinbase publishes your name and email publicly - <AUTHOR> https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site:https://coinbase.com/checkouts/

<comment><USER2> Same comment as I made on the other thread. These are not your email addresses. These are buy it now / donation pages. If you haven't created one of these you aren't effected.

</comment><comment><USER3> ...if you create a page that is designed to be public.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Originally found on [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1bq2p8/coinbase_pub...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1bq2p8/coinbase_publishes_your_name_and_email_publicly/)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is really bad... writing a harvester to go over all these links and fetching your name, email and phone number is super easy.

In my opinion CoinBase should immediately disable the end-point.

</comment><comment><USER5> Holy shit, they have to take it down immediately.

</comment><comment><USER6> Guys will suffer from highly targeted spam.</comment>


Tell HN: AngelList told my employer that I'd updated my profile - <AUTHOR> I recently updated my AngelList profile and they emailed my employer, pretending to be me, to "confirm" the project I'd added. How can they think this is a good idea? <comment><USER2> This might be "false personation" under California law. See California penal code 529.[1] This is slightly different from identity theft. It's a criminal offense. The key elements of this offense are that someone else impersonated you in some way, and they derived some benefit from doing so. Because this is a criminal offense, AngelList's TOS's arbitration clause does not apply. You can file a police report with the SFPD. If several people do that, something might be done about it.

[1] [http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi- bin/displaycode?section=pen&gr...](http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi- bin/displaycode?section=pen&group=00001-01000&file=528-539)

<comment><USER3> Unless you have authorized them to do this under the Terms and Conditions of course.....

<comment><USER4> No! If an offence is criminal it can't be magically made OK by a contract.

I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't it make it impossible under California law to have an agent that impersonate me? Have them tweet from my account, reply to emails in my name etc.

<comment><USER6> These are two different things:

1\. Hi, my name is John, I am contacting you on behalf of wojt_eu to confirm that he has been added to the "Cool New Project" as lead DEV.

2\. Hi, it's me wojt_eu, I just wanted you to confirm that I've been added to the "Cool New Project" as lead DEV.

You can legally authorize someone to act on your behalf, in basically any Western Nation - although rules as to how this work will vary, but authorizing someone to impersonate you I don't believe would be made legal anywhere because impersonation is not just something one does on your behalf but also something one does to someone else. Both the person that acts on the impersonation as being real and the person being impersonated can be harmed by an impersonation, and therefore it is not adequate that the person being impersonated gives the impersonator the right to do so.

<comment><USER7> > authorizing someone to impersonate you I don't believe would be made legal > anywhere

I think you're confused. Celebrities hire third parties to tweet for them all the time. That's essentially impersonation.

<comment><USER6> well, no, I guess in a non-legal context it might be considered impersonation but if you gave me that example and asked me would you consider that impersonating someone I would say uh, no, not if you were hired by that person.

Then it's more like acting/broadcasting.

If you had an account on twitter and said you were The Real Steve Jobs and everyone believed you were the real steve jobs and not a joke then I would say yes that would be considered impersonation - at which point the context I left out of my answer, considering it a given because I thought it was quite apparent from the top of the thread was that laws against impersonation also have to identify in some way the harm the parties affected by the impersonation suffer.

In the original post a statute was linked to [http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi- bin/displaycode?section=pen&gr...](http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi- bin/displaycode?section=pen&group=00001-01000&file=528-539) ,this describes a number of ways harm can be incurred in the act of impersonation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hi there,

I'm Dave and I work at AngelList on our Talent platform. Please accept our sincere apologies for what happened here.

Sending an email without giving you a heads-up or control over its content was wrong. Here's what we're doing to fix it:

* We've made it clearer that tagging a company on a project may notify them by email.

* We've revised the project tagging email to clarify that it's automatically generated by AngelList.

* We're looking through all emails we send on behalf of our users to make sure that a) it's clear when an action may generate an email notification, and b) any automatically generated notifications come directly from AngelList.

As long as you keep your profile up-to-date by tagging your current and previous employers, we won't show them you're looking for a job— they won't see your name or resume appear when using our recruiting tools.

Again, please accept our apologies. We're working to make this better. Please let me know if you have any further questions or concerns -- firstname.lastname@example.com.

Thanks, dave

<comment><USER9> I'm speechless. That's an absolutely terrible idea.

Are you guys trying to sends us all back to LinkedIn?

Any kind of notification is a dead give away you're looking for another job.

I guess this goes to show that AngelList is all about the "Angels" and gives no f*cks about the talent.

Shameful and sad. Time to kiss AngelList goodbye.

<comment><USER10> How many upvotes do you have? I think this number could be interesting either way.

<comment><USER11> 20\. You can check because they're a green user, and they have one comment, from their profile.

<comment><USER12> I just upvoted them again. That number is still at 20.

I wonder if they're seeing a higher number? Or maybe my upvotes aren't doing anything? (Except I just upvoted you, and that seemed to increase your karma.)

<comment><USER11> Pretty sure the upvotes do something, but green accounts take longer to update the karma for. Or something like that - not entirely sure, but I'm pretty sure the 20 is indicative of their karma at some unspecified point in the past. dang, what's causing this?

Also, I just upvoted you, and your karma didn't change (stayed at 35897.) Interesting stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> When our CEO added me to our angel list account, I recieved this email from them:

      Hi [My Name],

      I'm building an AngelList profile for [our company] and need your help.

      Can you do me a favor and confirm that you're a team member by clicking here:

      https://angel.co/l/[shortlink]
      To prove that you're the real [My Name] you will be asked to create an account if you don't already have one.

      This is important to us; confirming that you're a team member will help us build our profile.

      Thanks,
      [CEO's Name]

      P.S. If you would like to visit our profile first, go here: https://angel.co/[our company]

They're really aggressive about impersonating folks, my CEO didn't write that and was very suprised by the content of the email.

<comment><USER14> I got that message a while back and up until this moment had genuinely believed that was a message from our CEO.

<comment><USER13> I did too!

I can understand why they do it, but it seems like a very hill-climby optimization.

This was basically my first interaction with them and it engendered a lack of trust in their product.

I filled out the minimum amount of info in my account and don't intend to use them much going forward, mainly given how creepy I found this interaction.

edit: phrasing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I quit using AngelList when a recruiter confirmed that he'd seen that my profile was actively browsing the site. The old adage about who is the customer and who is the product rang so true with AngelList. I hadn't realized that it was even possible to build a scammier version of LinkedIn until that point.

</comment><comment><USER16> Want to know something funnier? I am a non-HR and non-recruiter employee at my company and I can see recruiting tab (angel.co/candidates).

On a related note, I try to avoid applying to jobs through AngelList. I'll usually go directly to the company website itself and apply.

<comment><USER17> I second this and it's arguably scarier than OP. I've seen this tab before - it shows everyone in our industry who has ever expressed interest in our company through AngelList. It lets me CRUD job listings and contact/reject any candidate. Presumably I got this incredibly far-reaching access simply because I was confirmed as one of 50 employees with an AngelList account. As far as I know, there was no intervention or approval from our recruiting lead.

From applicant perspective: as soon as you apply for a job through AngelList, everyone who ever works at that company (now and future) can trivially find you and decide your fate.

This is really uncomfortable from the company's perspective too. I could just as easily have been an employee who isn't expected to recruit / shouldn't be making first contact with candidates / shouldn't be able to touch job listings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> They do something similar (though less creepy) when you add a team member to your own org. I've got replies from people to emails sent out with my name, and my address in the reply-to field. They're deliberately crafted to seem personal, with I/you/me/us peppered throughout the body and "Thanks, [your name]" in the sig.

Ultimately it's a social network with accounts for orgs and people - it's no surprise that people are getting _some_ notification, but the impersonation is a little discomforting. It would be totally find if they just showed it as a template and said "hey, we're about to send this, okay?"

</comment><comment><USER19> Edit: Oh cool, Hackernews still has this account rank-banned so the comments always stay at the bottom of the page no matter how many upvotes they get.

So happy that I'm not the only one who was extremely surprised and upset about Angel List's impersonation tactics.

In my experience, 100% of the people who received this impersonation email that angel.co sent, thought it was written by me. If the system wants to send a message on my behalf, it must AT LEAST show me what would be sent with my signature on it, and allow me to confirm or cancel any email that's signed with my full name before it's sent. Angel List is sending out emails with your signature and other impersonation tricks, totally behind your back.

I've had people impersonate emails from me in the past as well. Even if the emails aren't offensive, just the idea that someone else now thinks they have my permission to send whatever they want to, while impersonating me behind my back makes me feel extremely uneasy.

Here's the impersonation email they send to cofounders when they're added to a profile. As you can see, signing the email with the user's full name, as if the user had written the letter, is a clear impersonation that the user never consents to.

        FROM: <MY_FULL_NAME> <email@example.com>

        Hi <RECEIVER_NAME>,

        I'm building an AngelList profile for <PROJECT_NAME> and need your help.

        Can you do me a favor and confirm that you're a founder by clicking here:

        https://angel.co/l/54223434234234583948593475

        This is important to us; confirming that you're a founder will help us build our profile.

        Thanks,
        <MY_FULL_NAME>

        P.S. If you would like to visit our profile first, go here: https://angel.co/<PROJECT_NAME>

Email headers used:

        From: <MY_FULL_NAME> <firstname.lastname@example.com>
        Reply-To: <MY_FULL_NAME> <email@example.com>

<comment><USER20> In the past couple of weeks I began signing my emails with PGP. Those who are technically inclined can ensure that I sent it, and those not would be a little more suspicious of an automated looking email without a random string of characters at the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Thank you for sharing the news. I have just deleted my account. In case someone has problems as well finding out how:

1\. Click your profile picture on the top right corner

2\. Click settings in the dropdown.

3\. Click Delete account

4\. ?

5\. Profit

<comment><USER22> Before deleting your account you should edit out and overwrite as much information as possible. Things like your name, e-mail, and any other fields should be falsified before deleting. You have no way of knowing if their "delete" mechanism just flips a deleted bit or if it actually erases your data.

The problem, in this case, is that the company might notify your employer that you're making those changes. Not sure what I'd do in this case. It might be worth creating some dummy accounts to see what actions actually trigger notifications.

<comment><USER23> It flips a delete bit. But here's the bigger problem: your pages return a 404 error page with status code 200, so Google takes a long time to clear them from their cache (real 404s clear semi-instantly).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> You're giving me cold sweats now thinking that angel list emailed my company

</comment><comment><USER25> Wow, I'm _never_ going to use AngelList if this turns out to be true. What an unbelievable betrayal of trust.

</comment><comment><USER8> UPDATE: To everyone worried about their privacy on AngelList: We're sorry. Thanks for all your feedback.

We've made more changes:

1) We stopped using the first-person on all emails. We wrote that first-person notification literally 5 years ago when we had a few thousand users, and we never re-visited it. It was pretty stupid. Now they all clearly come from AngelList.

2) We won't send notifications to companies when you add them to a project. We used to because the project shows up on the company profile too. But it's not what people expect, so we stopped, and we stopped showing the projects on company profiles too.

Thanks again.

Dave

AngelList

(Posting at top-level in case people miss it as a reply)

</comment><comment><USER26> When you say "pretending to be me" do you mean that they spoofed your email address in the from and/or reply-to fields?

[edit: typo]

<comment><AUTHOR> They used my name in the email from and reply-to fields, and to sign my name. I've replied to my original post with the actual email.

<comment><USER26> Thanks, that spells it out. Damn, that is fairly messed up.

I had a similar experience with F6S sending emails in my name so I know how uncomfortable it feels.

This is a shame and hopefully just a one-off error.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Thank you for the heads up, I just deleted my account there. How do these companies think for a second that being sleazy like this is OK?

</comment><comment><USER28> Was the project based off of something you did with your employer? I don't know why this thread is so angry, when this _could_ have been a user error.

Everyone should put down their pitchforks till we get more information. This is something HN REALLY needs to work on imo.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the original email. My name is Oliver Sisson and I work at Coursera.

From: Oliver Sisson <email@example.com> Date: March 20, 2016 at 10:02:25 AM PDT To: firstname.lastname@example.com Subject: [recruiting] I created a project for Coursera, could you confirm? Reply-To: Oliver Sisson <firstname.lastname@example.com>

Hi Coursera,

I created a project for Coursera: [Project description redacted] Could you please confirm the project, by following this link:

[https://angel.co/l/3248d1520e525149b6bf36369d0b519a/MbVzt](https://angel.co/l/3248d1520e525149b6bf36369d0b519a/MbVzt)

Thanks, Oliver Sisson

<comment><USER29> [http://careers.stackoverflow.com/](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> AFAIK, AL asks confirmation only if an entry is related to -that- company/person/etc. You might add -your- project (i assume not related to your employer) some how as if it is related to your employer.

</comment><comment><USER31> Just deleted the account. Thanks for the tip, OP!

<comment><USER32> Same

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Depending on the details, it could be a minor felony for fraud.

<comment><USER34> Clarify? Who would have committed a felony, in what circumstance?

<comment><USER35> See this for a related case.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett- Packard_spying_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett- Packard_spying_scandal)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Yeah Angel List does this whenever you list an incubator as well.

</comment><comment><USER37> If this is true, I'm deleting my account immediately.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm expecting a response from angel list here. If one does not happen in closing my account.

</comment><comment><USER39> Just deleted my account, this is unacceptable.

</comment><comment><USER40> What kind of TOS would allow that 3rd party involvement? If none - then it's grounds for law suit.

<comment><USER17> You can ask them yourself:

      firstname.lastname@example.com

Let us know what you find out?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> That's fucked up.

</comment><comment><USER42> _account deleted_

</comment><comment><USER43> I like user andlarry's characterization: "very hill-climby optimization". The other technical CS term is "greedy".

This is related to a much less bad (but still kinda bad) thing that companies often do, namely sending smarmbot emails: [http://blog.beeminder.com/smarmbot](http://blog.beeminder.com/smarmbot)

You could call what Angel List sent "nonconsensual smarmbot emails".

</comment><comment><USER44> Hah. Good to know how this happens. I thought it was an personal insider convo...

</comment><comment><USER45> Wow.. This is insane. Just deleted my account. How can they be so insensitive.

</comment><comment><USER46> They do the same impersonation trick to confirm investors and co-founders as well. It gives them cleaner data & is great for growth.

<comment><USER47> do you see any difference between these two statements:

"John Fraser has just added you as an employer, can you confirm? -Linkedin"

"I'd like to add you as an employer on linkedin, can you confirm! -John Fraser"

<comment><USER46> Of course I do. I wasn't meaning to condone their behavior, only to share that it's something they do extensively and give some context on their potential motivation for it.

They send these emails from firstname.lastname@example.com but the name and content definitely gives the impression it came from someone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Instructions on how to delete your AngelList profile: [https://angel.co/help/general/delete-user- profile](https://angel.co/help/general/delete-user-profile)

</comment><comment><USER49> Thanks, deleted myself.

</comment><comment><USER50> Does anybody else find it strange how this unethical "growth hack" has backfired on this company?

They were steadily becoming THE place for listing your startup and get seen by investors, but then this happened.

I wonder if we will see a trickle down and this gets reported on those popular SV tech sites.

May just be a bump in the road though.

Kudos to the person recommending filling your profile with dummy data before deleting your account. Then again, every company and their dog is doing "big data", so your real info is probably trapped in an AWS server until the end of time.

</comment><comment><USER51> Wow. Deleting account now.

</comment><comment><USER52> "We've made it clearer that tagging a company on a project may notify them by email."

I had not previously heard of AngelList but I am grateful that this declaration appeared early in these comments as I can now stop reading, knowing with full confidence that AngelList is an organization that I will never, Ever, _EVER_ do any kind of business with. OMFG...

</comment><comment><USER53> account deleted, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER54> So what happened as a result? Anything?

</comment><comment><USER55> account deleted! later, AngelList

</comment><comment><USER56> Just to erase any doubts, I've deleted my account. I can survive without AngelList

</comment><comment><USER57> Angel list trying to be shady like linkedin

</comment><comment><USER58> I had big problems with the "Angel List" web site, because it was extremely flakey and appeared to be a typical piece of garbage that some dime-a-dozen huckster with very little experience had just thrown together after watching the Ruby on Rails Make Your Own Trendy Dot Com Crud Web Site in 10 Minutes screencast.

Major features were totally broken. Many things about the design were devoid of thought and just haphazardly thrown together, as if I was using a mock-up that was nowhere near ready for prime time. Obviously whoever implemented it and runs it had no intention of using it themselves, and puts no time into maintaining the site or supporting the "customers" (who are actually the product). The only "design" apparent was in the most shallow surface details and of the least meaningful kind.

Their support is absolutely non-existent. I heard nothing back from them whatsoever, after sending several emails. Lights are on but nobody's home. It has the feel of yet another ghost town scam web site run by a sociopathic all- talk-no-chops frat boy "idea man" who long ago went on to something else after pissing off and driving away all their developers who worked for free on the promise of equity, and is now letting it run on autopilot. Too many self described "Serial Hacktrepeneurs", not enough programmers.

Because I encountered so many problems that I have no control over but should, it's an embarrassment to be listed with so many glitches that I am unable to work around, which cause investors to see my profile in such a haphazard state. Their carelessness makes it look like I'm the one who's careless.

I hope Silicon Valley does an episode parodying AngelList, or at least somebody writes some fanfic about it. [1]

[1] [https://www.fanfiction.net/tv/Silicon- Valley/](https://www.fanfiction.net/tv/Silicon-Valley/)

<comment><USER59> Insulting, bordering on abusive hyperbole. You seem to have a major chip on your shoulder. Did Angel List eat your baby or something?

Also, if you hate them so much but seem to have some sort of reliance on their service, why not take yourself off the site and make a competing product?

<comment><USER58> I don't make a competing product because I don't have 10 minutes to watch a Ruby on Rails screencast.

<comment><USER60> The whole, "If it sucks, make a better one," is a terrible argument. I don't want to make something better - I want to use this. It is totally reasonable to expect the people who built this tool/software to deliver with core working functionality.

<comment><USER59> The poster I responded to literally said he could have done it better. My point is, if he has such harsh criticisms and apparently some idea's about how to fix it, why wouldn't he?

<comment><USER58> Since you asked "why wouldn't he?", here's why:

I spent quite some time trying to work around the glitches, which I was helpless to do anything about. So then I spent some more time writing up a detailed problem report including screen snapshots of Chrome debugger traces showing where some of the problems were. When I didn't hear back from them, I put even more time into trying to work around the glitches, and found even more, different glitches. So then I spent even more time writing up those problems in detail and sending them in. Then I continued to wait for a reply. And waited. And waited. And so far I have never received any acknowledgement of any of my problem reports. And none of the problems have been fixed. I have much better things to do with my time than to help AngelList debug their web site, and wait for a response before finishing my profile. Now my profile is still in a half-finished inconsistent state, because I went on to more important tasks, and have never heard back from them since then.

The first problem I reported was related to inappropriate unsolicited email that Angel List sent to my former employer on my behalf without my consent, applying for a job at a company I used to work for, presumably with forged headers and first-person pronouns making it seem like it came directly from me:

I added an entry for a company I worked for, XXX, and when looking at that page, I was surprised to see a button that said "[checkbox] Sent" in their Jobs section. I did not mean apply for a job there, and I do not remember doing anything that expressed my intention to apply there — I used to work there, but I'm working somewhere else now. There does not seem to be any way to list all of the jobs that I have applied for (or that AngelList applied for on my behalf without telling me), or DELETE any applications that I may have mistakenly made. Can you please remove my application for a job at the company I used to work at, XXX, or explain to me how I can do that myself.

How am I supposed to fix the problem myself, without access to their source code and servers and databases? Don't you think the ball is in their court to reply to my bug reports, after I've spent so much time unsuccessfully trying to work around it myself and writing up and sending in bug reports?

Or are you suggesting I start my own web site from scratch to compete with AngelList, instead of spending my time reporting problems that I have with AngelList to their team who ignores me, or even spending my time on my real job that I'm trying to describe on AngelList?

Was I wrong to spend so much time trying to work around the problem and writing up bug reports, when I should have instead spent my time watching a Ruby on Rails in 10 Minutes screencast, developing my own competing web site, deploying all the infrastructure required to publish it, hiring people to maintain it, getting the money together to run it, and renting office space? Should I use AngelList to get funding for that, in spite of all its flaws? Or are you offering to fund my AngelList competitor yourself?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Wow fail - looks like AngelList is going the way of LinkedIn. Anyone have any suggestions to alternatives before I delete my account?

</comment><comment><USER62> this doesn't even scratch the surface of what shady people in the funding industry do to put entrepreneurs or wannabe entrepreneurs in terrible positions.

</comment><comment><USER61> Unacceptable. You guys fucked up. RIP AngelList

<comment><USER63> wow that escalated.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash It's the gist of about 1/4 of the posts on this thread.

It's a little worrying that people will be upset by something that didn't happen to them and throw it all away without a second thought.

There was an op-Ed in the New York Times the other day about a former UN bureaucrat saying the UN is broken and needs reform, and the astounding reader reaction was essentially to burn it down and start fresh.

I don't think many programmers here would seriously advocate the same approach with large systems.

<comment><USER64> Ummm... This is a forum for people interested in startups, which are defined more as "start fresh, then use it to burn down the old thing." Not exactly the same thing, but offend driven by the same sentiment.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Yes the sentiment is the same, but it takes little historical understanding to see how tearing down is always easier and more exciting than building up.

What works at a startup often can't work at a big company. Or a university. Or a government. You have to work with the system you have. For those that leave angellist without a second thought, what are your alternatives? LinkedIn?

<comment><USER63> was thinking about this just now. how easy it is to influence people over the internet through mediums like reddit, HN, etc. as soon as something gains enough upvotes, it becomes the truth.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Watch "century of the self" and thank me later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> You recently gave critical information about yourself, including your employer's email address, to some guys with a website. How can you think this is a good idea?

</comment><comment><USER66> HN users confuse me quite a bit.

How would they confirm if you are lying or Telling the truth? I believe the only wah would be to confirm from the organization owner. Or else, ANYONE can claim to have done any project.

I believe they do the same verification (it's simple verification) for roles in an organization.e.g Adviser, Co founder, Investor etc. And the verification is the other way too. If an employer adds you as an employee, you are to verify it too.

I struggle to find what the issue is. Perhaps they should have told you they were going to verify your project?

Animats / John, when you invite your friend on a social network and they send a message on your behalf, is that criminal too? Remember, OP(Oliver) took an action by claiming he did a project in an organization. It could have been true or false.

Don Hopkins, take a deep breath man. You can pass a message without being mean. Except that's the intention for a reason not stated here. In that case, it's all good.

<comment><USER67> Employers are necessarily oppressive and may fire employees over this sort of notification if the listed project or the AngelList profile in general is against business interests.

If it wasn't clear already, this sort of move shows exactly who AngelList is serving. After all, as you said, how will the employer, in their contractual fantasies, ever be able to confirm that a potential interviewee is _telling the truth_?

<comment><USER66> I don't work for AngelList however I think this is overblown.

If you add yourself to an open site, your employer will see it. It is indexed on Google. It shows up when you search the site for the organization.

Are you saying as an owner of an organization, you are happy for anyone to claim to be an employee and to have done any project at your company without you knowing?

Should I be able to claim I did the Dropbox AWS migration without the folks at Dropbox getting notified I am making the claim?

It would be bizarre for an employer to fire an employee for stating (s)he works at the company and did a project.

But what do I know.

<comment><USER68> The creepy part to me is that the email pretended to be from the employee, not AL. I am actually curious to know exactly what that email looked like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> If you're looking for a place to list your projects that _doesn 't_ do spammy/scammy stuff like this, check out MakerSlate, a résumé tool I created that's tailored to devs and designers. I built it partly out of frustration with these sorts of practices.

[http://makerslate.io](http://makerslate.io)

</comment><comment><USER70> AngelList lists startups, so why are you registering there if you are employed? That's likely a violation of your contract in the first place, and their ToS, and it's public info anyway. AngelList is for companies, not projects. You do realise this info is meant to be public? AngelList is a public register of startups showing the people behind them. If you don't want that info public, don't register there.

<comment><USER71> There is also a "JOBS" section. If they are not protecting the confidentiality of the potential candidates, well, they are not making any favour to the startups or their business.</comment></comment>


Does anyone know of a good alternative to Techcrunch? - <AUTHOR>

I want to follow the startup scene, just want to know what else is out there. <comment><USER2> <http://www.readwriteweb.com/> & <http://www.technologyreview.com/web/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I found this site the other day called <http://www.technobuffalo.com/>. It is a couple of youtube guys who got together and started a blog. It duplicate's a lot of the stuff you read on Techcrunch, readwrite, gizmodo, etc...But I found these guys way more personable. Check it out :)

</comment><comment><USER4> I agree, it would be nice to have a resource focused on STARTUPS and not on well established web giants - such us facebook.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.gigaom.com/> is a fairly good alternative. Balanced coverage of startups and new products from existing companies, though they do tend to cover more enterprise tech.

</comment><comment><USER6> See this newer YC post <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2153038>

</comment><comment><USER7> If you want a less filtered hose there are sites like Killer Startups. Almost any new site will get reviewed there: <http://www.killerstartups.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> With fear of stating the obvious, I also read venturebeat.com. I like the suggestion of killerstartups.com -- I didn't know about this site.</comment>


Why do people keep saying my week-end project? - <AUTHOR>

What value does that add? Who cares if it's a two hours project? Since there is no possibility people would sacrifice a project's performance to just brag about how quick the implementation was, I see a trend where people might start to lie about the actual hours of work. <comment><USER2> I don't think most people refer as a "weekend project" to brag about performance and how much they did with little time, for me it's a general term that refers to something you do on your "free" time or time outside your normal work schedule.

<comment><USER3> Yep exactly! Something thats perhaps a little different to your 9-5 grind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You either believe what people say or you don't. There are plenty of comments on HN along the lines of "when I was at google..." or "our site does 500 req/sec". Not sure why weekend project claims would, somehow, be less trustworthy.

The reason I say it's a weekend project is to let people know that a relatively small amount of time was spent on it..so it might not have the polish of a more exhaustive system.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've always seen it as a way to key people in to the fact that this is something one did just to try it out, and not something one is emotionally invested in. Communicating that may, in theory, get people to be more honest/brutal in their opinions rather than trying to "be nice" about it.

It doesn't necessarily mean "look, I did it in a weekend!" but "hey, I was messing around with this in my spare time..."

</comment><comment><USER6> It is a way to convey that the project is somewhat unfinished. Because it is mostly a personal project, the project may not be entirely accessible, it might not be the most scalable, it might not be locale sensitive or otherwise reminds the projects user's that it's not a finished production product.

</comment><comment><USER7> My understanding of weekend project is not that it was developped in one weekend, but that it has been developped in evenings/weekends by someone who has a day job.

So it's not really saying it was developped in less than 48 hours, just that it's not their full-time gig.

</comment><comment><USER8> I guess it does not necessarily means 1 weekend project. A week-end project could be the one I have been working on for past 3 weekends :).

Week days are usually busy with normal work, so weekend is for leisure development anyway :)

</comment><comment><USER9> "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story"

Honestly, it doesn't really matter if people lie about how long they took, it'll just make the rest of us rage, and try do better - which in my books, is good for programmers.

</comment><comment><USER10> This adjective clarifies nothing. We don't know how many weekends it was or if you're telling the truth. Besides it's irrelevant what days of the week you pushed the keys. Call it "a project" or MVP, IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER11> when i post weekend projects it usually is 1.5-2 weeks. It's not supposed to mean something for the time it took to develop, it's more of a generic term to describe something that is not finished. It's a warning to readers that they shouldn't be too harsh on details and also that it's not meant to be a business (but if it does i would be all too happy).

I would gladly use another term if there was one

<comment><USER12> WIP (Work In Progress) is usually used for design work, I think. That seems suitable.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Kickstarter for designs? - <AUTHOR>

Is there some kind of website where you can upload a design (poster/t-shirt), and get people to pre-order, but it'll only go into production at X amount of orders?<p>Of course I could just get people to pay via Paypal and refund if I don't reach my goal, but that looks a bit sloppy. <comment><USER2> Threadless?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not really what I'm looking for. If I design a t-shirt, and I find 10 people who would buy it, then that's no guarantee it's going to be sold on Threadless.</comment></comment>


Facial recognition: School ID checks lead to GDPR fine - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49489154 <comment><USER3> Good. Not only does this ensure that the students enjoy privacy, monitoring children in school with surveillance systems could have come straight out of foucault's discipline and punish.

Maybe we should think about how we make schools spaces of freedom for our children rather than turning them into the next panopticon.

<comment><USER4> School is the most authoritarian experience one typically experiences in a democracy. Here is a place where a strict hierarchy is enforced, through means of parental and peer pressure, anxiety over your future. Your schedule is planned by the minute, even peeing requires an authorization. Chatting is banned except on very limited time spans.

The fact that we have kept a part of middle-age inside our modern societies keeps fascinating and frightening me.

<comment><USER5> I can think of a few HR departments over time, that would make the worst school experience look like a walk in the park. Let's be fair, I never got a written warning for slouching in a chair at school...

<comment><USER6> A written warning for slouching in your chair? Quit your job holy shit

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The regulator noted that although some parts of the school could be deemed to be "public", students had a certain expectation of privacy when they entered a classroom.

It said there were less intrusive ways that their attendance could have been detected without involving camera surveillance."

Yeah, especially considering the students do not have a choice about being there.

<comment><USER8> Eyeball surveillance. I remember school. The teachers eyes were far more piercing than any camera.

Seriously though, where exactly is the privacy if attendance is taken either way?

<comment><USER9> That depends on the person, who tracks attendance.

If the teacher sells attendance reports (together with detailed lesson transcripts and audio recordings) to Google, Amazon, Netflix, US and Russian governments, all major data brokers and The USA Association of Rich Pedophiles, all at the same time — yes, there is no difference. Otherwise there is a substantial difference.

It is amazing, that a person, directly reporting such detailed information to elsewhere, would be considered a pervert and criminal, but using an automated camera to do the same thing is somehow alright?!!

<comment><USER10> Its alright if your job depends on that sort of business model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good! I was forced to use biometric data (fingerprint) to purchase food and read books in the library (yep) for seven years at my UK school. That was already too much. Facial recognition has zero place in a school.

<comment><USER12> The only time I liked to give my fingerprint is for the fitness lockers. Not needing a key or remember a pass code is great.

<comment><USER13> could wear a bracelet instead

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is a disturbing trend of using schools as beta test groups for invasive surveillance.

<comment><USER15> True..

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The main parts of the wrong-doing:

\- The school had obtained consent from the pupills and each one of the pupills could opt out at any time. The Swedish Data Protection Agency (DPA) did however find that due to the power balance of a school vs a pupill, these consents are not "freely given", and thus are void. The school therefor have no legal basis of processing special categories of data/sensitive data, which processing face recognition data ("biometric information") for identification purposes is. Violation of GDPR Article 9.

\- The school had not completed a sufficient Data Protection Impact Assesment which properly identified risks of this processing. In addition, due to the nature of this processing, they would have been obliged to consult with the DPA about this impact assessment before starting. Violation of GDPR Article 35&36.

\- The DPA also found that the processing was more extensive than necessary, since attendance could be taken in less invasive ways. This a violation of GDPR article 5.1c (the data minimisation principle).

I hope the decision will be appealed by the school, which is run by the municipality. There are several interesting questions, such as if consent can be freely given in schools, if the data minimization principle was really breached (the school claimed this way of taking attendance saves a calculated 72,000h of teachers time per year in just this school), etc. I am not sure however that the municipality has the right resources and competency to make a competent appeal.

<comment><USER4> > the school claimed this way of taking attendance saves a calculated 72,000h > of teachers time per year in just this school

Which is 197h per day. I find this number extremely dubious.

<comment><USER17> The figure I saw (on the BBC article and the linked Swedish article) was 17,000 hours per year in this school.

That still seems suspect: estimating a school year of 35 weeks that's 175 days, thus 97 hours per day across all teachers. Even if it were some mega school of 1,000 pupils and maybe 100 teachers that seems high, would imply they spent perhaps ten minutes of every hour in a six hours day taking & dealing with attendance on average! (obviously based on assumptions, so this could vary)

It feels like a number that was come up with (or at least inflated) to justify the project.

<comment><USER18> Perhaps it is a number based on the time that would be required for teachers to perfectly track attendance. But of course they don't in practice!

<comment><USER16> My fault. 17 280 h per year was the calculated savings

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Collected data can be used later - for example, the school or teachers can sell face models to advertisers, shopping mall owners, data brokers, Facebook, Google etc. So it is a right decision to shut down such a dubious project.

The school could simply use RFiD cards for tracking attendance.

<comment><USER20> My friend can use my RFID card too.

Why not use a fingerprint reader if automation is needed, or just place trust in the teacher to not cheat and give them a web page or app to enter absences?

Attendance is a safety thing (or viewed that way). If my 8 year old unexpectedly doesn't show up to school, I would like to find that out at 8:30 rather than 15:00.

<comment><USER21> > My friend can use my RFID card too.

Yes, just like you and your friend can do a lot of other cheating in school. And the mechanism used to prevent that is severe punishments once caught by a teacher.

I don't see much difficulty in spotting an empty desk that should be occupied according to today's automatically generated seating chart.

On another note, I feel like I'd be more okay with facial recognition and other biometrics in the form of you going to a scanner and initiating a scan. But certainly not surveillance with recognition built on top. Article doesn't seem to specify what they used, though the image chosen implies surveillance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm struggling to see any actual harm from this use of facial recognition if the video is deleted promptly after processing and conversion to an attendance list.

<comment><USER23> In order to make a positive ID of a student, you need to have a biometric photo of them, or a set of unique indicators that your recognition system will be able to compare against.

This facial fingerprint will need to be pretty strongly unique so as to avoid false positives or false negatives. If that information is stolen, the thief has the fingerprint for your face, which is very difficult for you to change.

The level of protection for that stored information then must be very high, because the damage to the individual in case of its loss is very high. The GDPR is in place, in part, to make certain that the justification is sufficient for an organization requiring you to handover such personal and valuable data.

"I want to take attendance" is apparently not sufficient. Further if someone wanted to get creepy, we can imagine what could happen should someone place a foreign agent along the video-recognition-attendance workflow, which then told its owner when and where certain students positively were at any time.

<comment><USER24> I couldn't find online if Anderstorp High has Student IDs, but assuming that they do, the school _already has_ a photograph of every student.

<comment><USER23> Student ID photos and biometric photos aren't necessarily the same, and a software system that tracks with certainty where each student is anywhere in the building has implications, as I mentioned just briefly above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > According to the DPA ruling, although the school secured parents' consent to > monitor the students, the regulator did not feel that it was a legally > adequate reason to collect such sensitive personal data.

It's this kind of second-guessing which is extremely concerning about GDPR- type regulation.

Not that the information was not secure, or leaked, or mishandled, or consent wasn't obtained, but even if all that is done, just, "We don't think you had a good enough reason."

<comment><USER25> The GDPR doesn't specify what you _can 't_ do with personal data, it specifies what you _can_ do. Personal data is private by default; you can only use my data if it is explicitly lawful for you to do so. If you're not absolutely sure that what you're doing is in line with the GDPR, you shouldn't do it. That's by design, not by accident.

The GDPR's fundamental principles are set out in article 5. You should collect the least amount of data possible, you should process it only for specific, explicit and legitimate purposes and you should delete it as soon as possible once you've finished.

Can anyone legitimately argue that a facial recognition system is the least intrusive way of collecting attendance data? Would any reasonable person believe that constant video surveillance with facial recognition technology is no more intrusive than taking the register at the start of class? I think not.

The actions of the school authorities were in flagrant breach of the GDPR and they fully deserve to be fined. There's no second-guessing in this case, no grey area, just an organisation that used advanced surveillance technology to monitor children without giving a moment of thought to the privacy implications. This fine is precisely in line with the intentions of the European Parliament when they signed the GDPR into law.

[https://gdpr-info.eu/art-5-gdpr/](https://gdpr-info.eu/art-5-gdpr/)

<comment><USER26> The issue with the GDPR as worded and this ruling is that they remove the possibility of informed individual decisions.

In this case it seems that all involved were informed and OK with it but that did not matter.

I would also think that knowing where pupils are at all times is quite a legitimate aim for a school.

<comment><USER25> Recital 38:

 _" Children merit specific protection with regard to their personal data, as they may be less aware of the risks, consequences and safeguards concerned and their rights in relation to the processing of personal data."_

Recital 43:

 _" In order to ensure that consent is freely given, consent should not provide a valid legal ground for the processing of personal data in a specific case where there is a clear imbalance between the data subject and the controller, in particular where the controller is a public authority and it is therefore unlikely that consent was freely given in all the circumstances of that specific situation."_

A school cannot rely on consent as a lawful basis for processing the personal data of pupils.

[https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-38/](https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-38/)

[https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/](https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/)

<comment><USER5> Does Google's et all EULA cater for this as fairly sure many childrens phones track them and fall foul of this.

Oyster cards in London, your journeys are tracked, consent not asked for. Let alone giving special privilege for children.

Then the whole aspect of under-age (children) commiting crime and evidence. A smart lawyer could abuse the whole aspect to squash any evidence that placed them at a scene of a crime as they never gave consent and if they did - <USER2> didn't know what they were doing.

Basically - if a school can't rely upon consent from children - nobody can.

<comment><USER27> _Basically - if a school can 't rely upon consent from children - nobody can._

I think that is a fairly well established legal principle. In many places, a contract cannot be enforced against a minor no matter whether it was freely entered. Statutory rape laws say it doesn't matter if the minor consented. And so on . . .

<comment><USER5> "Statutory rape laws say it doesn't matter if the minor consented" that is probably an extreme example that some might find unpalatable, but it does support the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What is the personal data being unnecessarily collected here? Reference pictures for facial recognition? Cause attendance would be collected regardless...

<comment><USER29> The biometrics of the face.

Linked article states: "The General Data Protection Regulation, which came into force last year, classes facial images and other biometric information as being a special category of data, with added restrictions on its use."

<comment><USER30> But the school probably already has pictures of the students for ID/yearbook....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Meanwhile in the US, we still use a 10 digit number for our identification, regardless of who is holding it. I'm not sure which is worse :/

EDIT: phone numbers are 10 digits, SSN is 9.

<comment><USER32> I thought we use a passport or drivers license for identification?

<comment><USER33> Yes, but no.

Most folks don't have passports. Children do not have drivers licenses or state ID's. Some places want more than one form of ID and some require a SS#, though you don't always need the card.</comment></comment></comment>