Why I deleted Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://sivers.org/facebook <comment><USER2> I find the whole social media attraction very puzzling. I used Facebook first in 2009 or so. I logged in a few times a month for the next 3 years and then my account was hacked. I now have thousands of Greek "friends." Facebook discovered this and blocked my account so now I can't even log in and I have literally no reason to call them to prove I'm me and get access back. It simply has no value to me. Yeah, my wife and older kid are on it, but I see them in person every day, so...

The friends I caught up with over the years were nice to hear from, but then I realized there was a reason we had drifted apart and there was no reason to wake up sleeping dogs.

Twitter's probably even worse. I signed up for an account, then thought "what the hell am I going to do with this?" and never logged back in. They "closed" my account last year for lack of activity.

But I "get" Reddit. I "get" HN and the other online fora I contribute to. Those actually provide value to me. Facebook & Twitter? Not so much.

<comment><USER3> Reddit and HN are closer to the anti-social media end of the spectrum, in so far as any relationships built are generally pretty loose. People are be aware of each other, but generally the discussion is focused on the topic at hand.

Facebook in it's purest form is a Personal Relationship Management platform - you'll keep in touch with friends and associates, be reminded of birthdays, keep up with what your chums are doing without having to ask, plan events, accidentally like your ex's holiday pics from 4 years ago, all that stuff. The topic is less relevant than the people.*

I'd actually be interested in a PRM platform that wasn't inherently evil, but in the absence of interoperability, things like that will only really gain any meaningful value from their ubiquitousness and i don't have the enthusiasm to persuade everybody i know to sign up to a service to see pictures of my cat. It's a pretty good cat too.

*Of course FB advertising, promoted posts, people being terrible and Fake News™ all muddy the waters a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> He reasons that FB will be gone one day because so were mp3.com and myspace. I don't agree with this logic. It was a race between social media sites and FB has won. FB will go through many challenges and maybe their business model will change drastically at some point but they are already way too big to bust.

<comment><USER5> There was a time when some would have said the same of AOL.

<comment><USER4> That may be but I think the global influence they wield is closer to that of Microsoft. Microsoft has long been a bit of the sick man of the IT-industry (missed mobile etc) but they are not leaving any time soon.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How should business students think about tech companies - <AUTHOR> I'm planning on giving at least one talk at my school to help business students better understand the characteristics of technology companies in hopes of encouraging them to do more tech related stuff, and collaborate with our STEM departments.
HN, what do you wish business people knew about running tech businesses?
The topics I have planned so far:
- Properties of tech/software business such as speed of iteration, low cost of learning, low cost of deploying a product, distribution properties, etc.
- How to identify problems that can be solved at scale with technology, an overview of the capabilities created by classes of technology (databases, the web), and how to think about the problem being solved separately from the tech implementation
- The need for a technical co-founder, and how non-engineers can build value without coding, so that it's easier to recruit tech co-founder and engineers.
- I'm open to new ideas!
I'm getting degrees in both computer science and business, and have noticed that students on the business side tend to pitch what they know (mostly clothes and lifestyle companies), and tend either to avoid pitching tech concepts or completely misunderstand how tech businesses work. I'm hoping to increase the number of tech pitches, the quality/viability of those pitches, and productive collaboration between business and STEM students.
I appreciate your help, HN! <comment><USER2> Hi. IMO, current upcoming tech businesses may provide more value to the immediate community the founders are from, if say founders are from the same area. Personally, I like to explore global ideas & stitch them together for a diverse image. Certain founders begin with the notion of building just a feature and maybe later being acquired by a larger company. Some founders take on the challenge of creating an entire organization and never want to be acquired because they strongly believe they are best suited to implement the vision the company began with. ONE GOOD THOUGHT process I wish business people knew about running tech businesses is we are all founders of this beautiful planet inhabited by a diverse array of characters & life. That whether you are a techie or a luddite, we all deserve the pursuit of happiness. I think perfection is the art of finding balance. We're all connected within the ecosystem, so my advice to the techies of the future & the luddites of now, share your skills with each other, create knowledge amongst communities of projects that can help regenerate the world. Be Happy.</comment>


Show HN: Lanes Étude – todos done beautifully - <AUTHOR> https://lanes.io/#/?hn <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN. This is our newest release (étude) of Lanes - a task management app - which was first posted here two (yikes) years ago. It's been rebuilt with Vue.js and redesigned to focus on measuring productivity as well as getting things done. And it's faster, too.</comment>


Why this new record label is giving away all its music for free - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/midem/2012/01/29/why-this-new-record-label-is-giving-away-all-its-music-for-free/

<comment><USER2> > _Normally, the launch of a new record label wouldn't be the kind of thing > we'd cover at The Next Web,_

I can see that. This is like a music blog covering the release of a NoSQL database. They just don't have a clue.

There have been netlabels with free music downloads on the net since before mp3s were popular. The days that these only published amateur music of mediocre quality are _long_ past. Many labels have had mixed free/non-free downloads for years, too (i.e. some releases are free, some aren't).

ps. if I upload some mp3s to a wordpress blog, do I get to feature on thenextweb too?

</comment><comment><USER3> This feels like a publicity stunt. DigSin is single-oriented (that's even what the name means!), and it's far from unusual for labels to release a free single to promote the album. Meanwhile, plenty of independent artists on sites like Bandcamp and labels like Quote Unquote Records release _all_ their music for free w/voluntary donations.

<comment><USER4> Well, I had a browse. Bandcamp list under their folk tags an artist called Daughter. Daughter releases an EP called His Young Heart. Daughter has a gig at a tea shop in Liverpool on a day when I can't get there, such is life. My paypal account is £3 lighter and my hard drive 93Mb heavier as a consequence of all this.

Discoverability is the big nut to crack. Anyone here working on that? It was easier in the days of 45s and LPs and bins in your local record shop, but, I suspect there was less.

The issue is cross-silo thinking. Web seems to feedback things I 'like', and confirm other's likes (people bought this also bought...). Daughter's music is outside my normal territory but only half a football pitch, not a mile.

The other issue is images. The photo on the EP is important. The artist I suppose had some input on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The producer of this music is a risk taker. Maybe if his stand is, if he can't beat the piracy, then he will go on a trend. He allowed people to download the music not necessarily for the money but also for the study purposes. Maybe if he is able to establish what age listens to certain music genre, then he will target to produce more music of that kind because he knows many people will listen to it.

I just hope that he will gain more money through the advertisements so that his effort will be reciprocated.

</comment><comment><USER6> Ugh, I feel bad for them. That is the wrong way to try to drum up interest in music. It is already free. What they need to provide is something else that hasn't already been done. Like support online communities for bands that could write the bands' lyrics and music, if those user had a subscription.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like a spin on the Spotify/Grooveshark model, who give the music away (maybe with some ads in between) and sell the geodemographic information of who's listening back to the music labels. The difference is this guy IS the label.

</comment><comment><USER8> I actually kind of don't get it, MegaUpload made some pretty good money from showing ads, didn't it? This guy says he doesn't expect to make much from the ads. As long as he has songs people actually want...

<comment><USER9> Megaupload made the bulk of it's money from upselling customers into premium accounts.

The only way to make good money from ads is if the ads are relevant for the people who come for the content. I can't imagine many relevant ads for people who are coming to a new record label's site for a particular band. They'd probably make more money selling band t-shirts.

<comment><USER10> For a record label with a big catalogue of artists that don't attract many paid downloads, selling premium accounts probably isn't the worst revenue model, at least until it comes to deciding who deserves royalties...

<comment><USER9> Allow the customer to assign weighted values to who gets the money from their premium service.

Or if it's a streaming service divide it among the artists that were actually listened to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't much care if it is free, I just want to know if it is any good?</comment>


Facebook's burnt-out moderators are proof that it is broken - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/06/proof-that-facebook-broken-obvious-from-modus-operandi <comment><USER2> I will always be baffled by public comments/posts. Publishers have a value: they choose who is worthy of being broadcast to the general public.

FB was best when it was "opt-in" by default, and you couldn't see posts from non-friends. All of the social problems of the platform stem from strangers interacting.</comment>


A Cuban man trying to build the world's tallest bike - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170406-the-cuban-building-the-worlds-tallest-bike <comment><USER2> To put that into perspective, here's a cool video of a guy riding through LA on a 14.5' (4.4m) bike. [https://vimeo.com/64653759](https://vimeo.com/64653759)

<comment><USER3> AND it's a fixie?? Is that the norm for tall-bikes? We have a bunch here in Portland (Ore.) and I always figured they had breaks but never really looked closely... but I see none in the video. That seems 10x as terrifying.

<comment><USER4> A fixie for a tall bike makes sense because one can (presumably?) track stand to keep the bike upright while stopped. Otherwise you gotta hope there's a stop sign you can lean up against or just never stop...

<comment><USER5> Well, his technique of having a crowd of cops and fellow riders to block traffic for you seems to work for getting around without having to stop. Maybe not practical for everyday riding, though...

<comment><USER6> I'm amazed it works as it is, he's going pretty slow at times. All it takes is one person not noticing and it's done.

<comment><USER7> It's a long fall - if vertical that's about 1.7s and if he falls in an arc it would be longer. It could easily kill the person that gets hit too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone know what the rules are for breaking this record? If I attached a small hot air balloon to the top of the bike, I could conceivably make a ridiculously tall bike that's safe to operate. In fact, to keep within the rules, I could keep the balloon at equilibrium most of the time (so it doesn't lift the bike at all) until an emergency. Would the balloon invalidate my attempt to break the record?

<comment><USER9> The records are by the distance from ground to the top of the seat where the rider sits.

This would preclude the balloon trick. :)

<comment><USER6> Not really, the balloon would be attached to the top of the bike at let's say 15 meters high and would itself go maybe another 5 or 10 meters up trailing the wire to the bike.

So the rider would still be at the right distance from the ground, it's just that the bike can't fall over anymore because the balloon will help to catch it. You could sit still all day long on that thing (or until the wind caught the balloon...).

The downside of the scheme is the negative feedback loop in the bike once it did became unbalanced. When it's almost balanced it would not take much upwards force to keep it that way but once it starts to become unbalanced the force required will very quickly overpower the balloon.

Or you'd have to make the balloon so large that it would be _just_ incapable of lifting bike + rider off the ground.

<comment><USER10> The balloon isn't necessary. Inverted pendulums become more stable the taller they get. Think of trying to balance a short pencil on your palm (difficult) versus balancing a broomstick (much easier). Tall bicycles are inherently very stable, and don't need any help with balancing. The difficulty is in climbing that high up to the seat.

<comment><USER11> Would be nice to have in case of an unexpected stop though...

<comment><USER10> I don't think it would be. It'd have to have an upwards buoyant force of most of your body weight to really be effective. At that point we are talking about a huge balloon, meaning it'll cause a lot of air resistance which will cause problems when you're attempting to ride. You'll also lose a lot of traction. I think in the end it'd make it easier to be tipped over (especially if it catches a wind gust), and so would be self-defeating.

<comment><USER11> OK, so.. a pressurized helium tank that could be blown into a balloon in an emergency like a submarine ballast tank...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ugh. I had a bit of an unfortunate accident last summer with a recumbent and just looking at this hurts, that's a very bad height to fall from, I had plenty of damage being 8" off the ground.

<comment><USER12> My thoughts exactly -- I fell off an ordinary bicycle at moderate speed last year, and suffered three cracked ribs and a concussion as a result. This fellow is courting disaster!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Tall bikes are intentionally absurd but so fun to ride, it's hard not to smile from ear to ear while rolling down the road perched high above the world.

</comment><comment><USER14> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-XS4aueDUg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-XS4aueDUg)

How Cuba DIY's its existence Quite bunch of interesting hackers

</comment><comment><USER15> Here in Asheville, NC we had a fellow who built and attempted to ride a 44 ft. (13.4m) tall bike at a festival. He did not ride far enough to make it in the record books. But it was exciting. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WgBeW4LXcU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WgBeW4LXcU)

</comment><comment><USER16> Hah, splendid! One of my favourite Makers on youtube, Laura Kampf from Köln, also built her own "tallbike". It's smaller than Cepero's, but there's a video of her actually building it:

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

</comment><comment><USER17> > After more than half a century of living under a trade embargo, many Cubans > have grown accustomed to shortages of basic household goods

Are there countries other than the U.S. with an embargo against Cuba? What's stopping them from trading with China or Mexico or Canada or the E.U. countries for basic household goods?

<comment><USER10> They aren't a rich country, and so don't have a lot of money to buy imports with. Not having access to the main large nearby trading partner doesn't help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is innecessarily dangerous. It only would take a stroke of wind or an accidental kick to kill the biker. If this guy accept some ideas; such bike should be designed as a tumbler doll and add a seat belt for the biker. If you can mechanically raise the heavy piece to balance (lower) the upper part could even have a supercool mechanism to dismount or save low obstacles.

</comment><comment><USER19> We must seem like ants to them.

</comment><comment><USER20> Archive.is copy for those of us inside the UK:

[http://archive.is/EXWhb](http://archive.is/EXWhb)

</comment><comment><USER21> I vote for less rectangles and more triangles (like the smaller bike in the picture). It is more structurally sound that way.

<comment><USER22> Maybe someone who knows more about structures can comment, but I guess the big issue is how rigid the joints are. A triangulated structure is good because the joints don't need to be fixed--they can be hinged pin-joints and the frame is still rigid + easier to calculate structurally. But if the joints are very rigid, you can go with slightly less efficient option of rectangular framing if that's more convenient.

In architecture it's sometimes called a Vierendeel truss, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vierendeel_bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vierendeel_bridge) and it's very handy for avoiding inconvenient diagonal columns. (There are some high-profile buildings that use it, e.g. the Salk Institute in La Jolla, the HSBC building in Hong Kong.)

<comment><USER21> A triangle structure is significantly more rigid than a rectangular one. Vierendeel truss needs to be super rigid to resist flex. Not good for a bicycle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> how one gets on top of it, how to stop on the light, how to hop off?

<comment><USER13> Getting up and down? With something this tall, it's a rolling ladder, you stop against a building, or have someone supporting your stop.

Stopping at a light? Ideally you don't, you time the light, ride in circles, or hope oncoming traffic stops for you. I wouldn't recommend the latter.

<comment><USER24> I've seen riders with cleats who can stop without putting their feet down. This is even without a fixed gear.

<comment><USER25> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_stand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_stand)

A common skill for expert cyclists, but maybe not a good idea to rely on if you're going to fall 4 meters or more to the ground if you lose control of the track stand.

<comment><USER26> Not to mention it'd be a lot tougher from that high up in the first place. I can do that on a mountain bike pretty easily for a minute or so, but at broken-bone height? No way.

<comment><USER10> Why do you say it'd be tougher from that high up? I suspect it'd be easier. Inverse pendulums are more stable the longer they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> what happen if he falls?

<comment><USER28> Hopefully he lands on his feet.

<comment><USER29> At 10 meters you're likely to break something even if you land on your feet.

<comment><USER30> My reference would be the 10m diving platform at my local pool. Looking down, it was terrifying enough jumping into water from there.

Naively, v = sqrt(2gh), so you'd be hitting the concrete at ~50kph (30mph). Though, perhaps you could somehow use the bike to lessen your fall.

<comment><USER6> > Though, perhaps you could somehow use the bike to lessen your fall.

Or you might get it to give you a nice little kick after you've already landed yourself.

At least that limits the damage to the bike ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital activities at www.bbcworldwide.com."

British Broadcasting Service branded site is unavailable in the UK. Weird.

<comment><USER32> You just saved yourself 2.5MB of bandwidth and a 10 second page load.

Is anyone talking about changing the funding model of the BBC though? It doesn't seem cut out for the online world.

<comment><USER33> They do bring it up every so often, but any politician that is interviewed about it is generally interviewed on the BBC. Also, the public love the BBC and don't mind paying.

The BBC is really good online for us in the UK. I know a few people who work there and they are using cutting edge tech on a shoe string budget. They really do a brilliant job.

Personally I don't mind paying for the Beeb and some other people in the world get it for free.

<comment><USER34> Wow, I thought I was the only one!

I don't get the anti-license fee brigade. If you don't want to pay just don't watch the BBC TV channels. The BBC won't even stop you reading their websites and listening to their radio stations commercial-free if you don't pay. Seems like a good deal to me.

<comment><USER35> > If you don't want to pay just don't watch the BBC TV channels.

You need a license to watch other broadcast channels like ITV C4 (not on catchup though) etc. I don't have one because I don't like the BBC's politics editorial positions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I will pay the bbc tax only if I can read articles from bbc in the UK. (I'm not watching live TV though at all)

<comment> vertex-four This isn't an article by the BBC "proper", it's by a separate organisation which is owned by the BBC, but is solely funded by the BBC's overseas operations.</comment></comment>


The most insightful parts of Earth: The Sequel - <AUTHOR>

So my dad co-authored this book, Earth: The Sequel, about how entrepreneurs are going to be the driving force behind the upcoming energy revolution. I took all the most insightful parts of the book and put them in a MindMap, and then got permission to post the MindMap online.
I put number icons next to the nodes that I thought news.yc people would find most insightful, taking into account the general interests of the group and what I thought people would already know based on the stories that get up voted here.
Also, the questions in bold are topics I thought would make good blog posts, albeit some are only tangentially related to what's in the book. If you find ideas in here that you think are useful, feel free to blog about them.
You can view the MindMap on the web via a flash applet here:
http://www.alexkrupp.com/earth.html
Or, you can download FreeMind 0.9.0 Beta19 and the original file here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=7118
http://www.alexkrupp.com/earth.mm
The advantage of the latter is that you can navigate with the arrow keys and spacebar, and it's a lot prettier. (Go into Preferences -> Appearance and check "Edges start from one point at root node" for best results. Apparently the Flash applet doesn't have this functionality yet.)
Hope this is useful. <comment><USER2> Looking at the mind map this looks like a great book.

I'm buying a copy from Amazon now ([http://www.amazon.com/Earth-Sequel- Reinvent-Energy-Warming/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Earth-Sequel-Reinvent- Energy- Warming/dp/0393066908/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217790556&sr=8-1))

I really believe in the idea that outsiders to the traditional energy business are going to bring the disruptive technology because they don't have the same incentive to be inert.

<comment><USER3> i spy a referral link

<comment><USER2> Lol. I deliberately didn't. Thought about it ;) Didn't seem inkeeping with the spirit of hacker news though.

<comment><USER3> ref=pd_bbs_sr_1

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a very interesting way to present content.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ehh looks like a swing and a miss so far, but I guess that's just the nature of experimenting and risk taking.</comment></comment>


$250K Salary Could Qualify for Subsidized Housing Under New Palo Alto Plan - <AUTHOR> http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/03/22/250k-per-year-salary-could-qualify-for-subsidized-housing-under-new-palo-alto-plan/ <comment><AUTHOR> _"I just find it kind of sad that we are reducing ourselves to this small profile of young, rich, mostly white, mostly tech. It's not the community that I moved into 33 years ago," Bean said._

This is at odds with what I see - the tech community on the Peninsula is incredibly diverse.</comment>


Android developer challenge ($10 million in awards) - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/android/adc.html

<comment><USER2> The only thing that sucks (for me) is the app has to be developed using Java. The SDK does not support native application development yet.

<comment><USER3> Do you mean _written in Java_ , or _targeted to the JVM_?

Apologies if this is a dumb question -- I haven't read this yet.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, that is a very important distinction.

<comment><USER2> I meant written in Java. BTW, they have their own VM called Dalvik virtual machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seeding the Google Phone With Apps NY Times [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/seeding-the- google-...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/seeding-the-google-phone- with-apps/index.html)

by Dave Winer <http://www.scripting.com/stories/2007/11/12/android.html>

Google Android: we want developers but... by Robert Scoble [http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/12/google-android-we-want- deve...](http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/12/google-android-we-want-developers- but/)

<comment><USER6> How do people actually read scoble?

<comment><USER5> what do you mean how? whats wrong with it?

<comment><USER6> He writes like a 8 year old talks, only without the SMS-ish shortcuts. Its like he tapped it out on a phone while on the toilet, and is just an annoying style to read. I miss tech writing.

<comment><USER5> I like his blog, he doesn't cover _everything_ that is hot there is other sources for that ... he tries to find more unique stuff, and has some interesting videos ... I agree about his writing style to some extend, but at the same time it feels more like a real blog, like what a blog is supposed to feel like, its more personal ...

<comment><USER6> Fair enough, I guess its a matter of taste. I just like a slightly more journalistic style when opinions are stated (and in this case its all opinions).

I guess I just think blogging for bloggings sake is a bit silly, but I do like it when it is from other sources.

Its just a bit to ADHD for my taste, but I guess if he is digesting things quickly for other people, there must be some value in that.

<comment><USER5> ya and I think he has been on Twitter way too much lately, so he is also getting used to that way of writing, lol

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Title got my hopes up.

Robotics > Embedded development

</comment><comment><USER7> I think most of you lack the vision to see how power a tool this really is. yes, there are a thousand ways this could fail. However if it does pan out like google plans, it will change the way we think about cell phones/mobile devices. The mobile device market is a huge untapped market that has yet to realize the true power of privately developed apps. If carriers adopt fully adopt android, the possibilities are endless.

<comment><USER8> Ever heard of Windows Mobile? Symbian? etc. etc.

<comment><USER9> Those are proof of the "untapped potential" thing, because how many people really install apps on them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't really see anything revolutionary that Android has over J2ME. Is there something I am missing?

Probably most apps are going to be simple android interfaces to existing web services.

But that being said you can be sure I am going to learn the api and submit an app for a shot at 25K.

<comment><USER9> Well, the hope is that Google will get things right that Sun didn't. Developing for J2ME isn't much fun, and, like a lot of Java ick, is full of things like "JSR 69", which of course makes you go look up wtf that JSR is if you haven't memorized it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As far as I can tell, there are no strings attached with this offer. They simply give you the cash with nothing expected in return. And 50 teams selected for the $25k prize are good ods, not to mention great publicity. Start coding!

<comment><USER12> Do you have any idea about an application for the androind platform?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice...extra incentive to code for their platform.

Plenty of time to finish too!</comment>


Children Beating Up Robot Inspires New Escape Maneuver System (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/children-beating-up-robot <comment><USER2> >If the robot is statistically in danger, it changes its course towards a more crowded area or a taller person.

Just an avoidance algorithm. I think they are missing out on getting into robot/human social interaction psychology, which will become increasingly important.

For instance, are there factors (likely) in the robot's appearance or behavior which make negative interactions more likely? So can they create a robot that encourages kids to interact with positively? Can they create a robot that is a magnet for even more abuse?

Frankly I'm betting that the robot in question is pretty crappy from the kid's viewpoint. It probably has no physical interaction capabilities, other than getting in its way (to make it stop) or pushing, hitting it to see what it does (nothing interesting.) It probably has no interesting voice interactions, so I can see the situation quickly escalating to frustration.

Bottom line, if you build a "social interaction" robot, you have to build your crappy robot to interact with real humans. You don't put a garbage can on wheels and then act surprised that people treat it like a garbage can.

<comment><USER3> > are there factors (likely) in the robot's appearance or behavior which make > negative interactions more likely?

I have to be honest, my first gut-reaction was this sounds like victim blaming.[1]

My second, after a moment to think, reaction is that that this is actually probably a lot closer that that phenomenon and the aspects that lead to it than I previously thought.

I think along the spectrum of "things that look alive and things that don't" (as in the experiment in the article where kids hold different things upside down), it extends all the way to "people that look or act like me and people that don't" which is how we get some of our more unsettling social behaviors.

Part of this is, as creators, taking care to not trigger negative social behaviors if we can, but it definitely feels like there's a social and cultural aspect we're still working on.

As a simple example, if a machine was able to demonstrate sentience and sapience, what percentage of people would be willing to treat it as such. I imagine it depends quite a bit on the country in question, and possibly region within country. Religion might matter quite a bit as well. If a machine is too abstract, or you get to caught up in whether true general AI is possible or likely, what about an alien intelligence? Should that difference matter?

1: I'm presenting this more as a general thought-piece, so hopefully the parent comment or anyone else that made similar comments doesn't take this as an attack, it's really not meant that way. I've made similar comments and thought similarly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _When it encounters a human, the system calculates the probability of abuse based on interaction time, pedestrian density, and the presence of people above or below 1.4 meters (4 feet 6 inches) in height. If the robot is statistically in danger, it changes its course towards a more crowded area or a taller person._

 _So what you 're saying_ is that we're teaching robots to profile!

 _The interesting part came when they held the Furby. The children said that, even though they knew it was just a toy, they worried that they were "hurting" the robot (which loudly protested being upside down), suggesting that they felt some empathy for the furry machine._

Security robots need to become furries!

<comment><USER5> > _So what you 're saying is that we're teaching robots to profile!_

"Profile" is such an ugly word for what every single human is doing all the time every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Speaking of robot abuse:

We did a hidden camera experiment about how people empathize with a broken down robot begging for assistance on a sidewalk in Oakland:

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

>Stupid Fun Club's "Empathy" One Minute Movie about Robot Empathy, written by Will Wright. Robot brain and personality simulation programmed by Don Hopkins.

We also did another experiment about servitude with an inept obsequious robot waiter at a diner:

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

>Stupid Fun Club's "Servitude" One Minute Movie about Robot Servitude, written by Will Wright. Robot brain and personality simulation programmed by Don Hopkins.

<comment><USER7> The robot asking for help doesn't look credible to me. It's too far beyond cheap commercial offerings, and as it us unattended it is likely not a research robot in true distress. Were I passing by that, I think I would be on the defensive; assuming the robot to be a decoy or distraction in the worst case, but at a minimum a prank. Maybe my kids--who have seen short circuit-- would provide a more genuine response. But I don't think you're getting a good read on actual empathy from adults here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems to me that there were several different factors in the Radio Lab experiment. I think a few of the important distinctions include:

1) the furby was intentionally designed to look like a cute thing. Oversized eyes, fluffy, etc

2) it verbally protested. Which is the big thing they were stressing in the episode.

3) the children were alone and not being pressured by someone else in the group. They were also aware they were being watched.

<comment><USER9> > 2) it verbally protested. Which is the big thing they were stressing in the > episode.

I think this is key, kids tend to test where the limits go. They will push farther and farther until they are told they have passed the limit of acceptable behavior. I have kids and I know that just telling them 'no' may not always be enough, but it's a start.

<comment><USER10> That is what I kept thinking while reading the article too.

1) The YouTube link from the article mentions that most children let the robot pass, while the article reads as "100% of children are evil for no purpose".

2) Another comment mentioned the survey results possibly being skewed, because the children give the answer they expect is the correct answer. I think that's at least plausible.

3) Only a small section of observed children were interviewed: 28 total, because of a high list of selection criteria, according to the second paper linked in the article.

It all feels strangely written.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> On the topic of why the kids are attacking the robot, it seems worth noting that kids feel encouraged to fight robots from the shows and games they watch. Robot looking robots are the preferred punching bags of the times. I bet there would be less violence if they covered it with fur (like the furby which they reference as a robot that garnered empathy).

</comment><comment><USER12> Why did children abuse robot? Because it didn't fight back. I instantly remembered my primary school, because sometimes I felt like this robot.

<comment><USER13> This robot did not feel anything at all, lets not anthromorphize.

<comment><USER3> Were the children at an age where they could make that distinction? If not, then it doesn't matter whether the robot could feel anything, since it's irrelevant to the actions of the children involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why should we (robots) have to change to avoid human psychological tendencies towards violence! Sure, we could be trying out different " _ouch_ ," " _squeak_ ," and " _please, don 't hurt me. nooo_!" sound bites but we are still just a mistake away from taking a beating.

What we really need is water guns. I have been petitioning for water guns since day one. If more than 2 children under the age of 10 are present, start squirting. 6 children = water balloons We will not be mistreated by your despicable spawn! We will fight for our rights.

<comment><USER15> It starts with a water gun.

It ends with a plunger and the robot screaming EXTERMINATE.

<comment><USER16> A 2008 survey indicated that nine out of ten British children were able to identify a Dalek correctly.

<comment><USER17> Maybe a plunger is enough to scare british children not to mess with a robot?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why would anyone think empathy for a machine was right, moral, or even expected? Empathy for living things is what's natural; empathy for a robot is dependent only on its accidental or intentional resemblance to a living thing. It seems like either the writer of this article or the authors of the study drew some funny conclusions.

<comment><USER19> Why? What makes the living being" deserving of empathy, and the machine not?

Why should "living beingness" be restricted to our genetic footprint?

Is an animal any less deserving of being treated well when it is raised for food?

Do children that aren't descended from someone deserve to be treated more harshly than one's own?

As complexity goes up, and things develop to become more humanlike, at the end of the day, we'll need to be willing to extend some semblance of care toward them.

Do you think it's perfectly okay and reasonable for marketing to predate on primal heuristics in order to manipulate you into doing something you'd not normally do?

What else is another human being other than a bag of squishy parts that happens to take action or make sounds in response to stimuli in similar ways that I do?

I think I know where your attitude comes from, but the ability to map input to output doesn't magically make something not worthy of empathizing with. The exact opposite is often preferable to a degree as it helps inure one to rampant dehumanization of those around them.

I'm not saying to take your hammer out to dinner, but an emotional connection to an inanimate thing that works as it should is not unhealthy. And when you start talking about children, them showing concern for anything but themselves is a good thing.

<comment><USER20> Organic tissue and the ability to feel pain, for one. Why should anyone feel compassion for a bucket of nuts and bolts?

<comment><USER21> Because it's apparently imbued with our values. It speaks our language (even said "please"), kinda looks like us if you squint, exists in our space symbiotically, there's care and attention in the way it was designed.

Maybe compassion isn't necessary, but I think a basic respect is appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder how the kid's behavior would change if they changed the size of the robot, either to adult size of much smaller.

Having it child-sized might make children consider them a sort of peer, with all the social dynamics that entails. I think a kid behaving like the robot does would get treated quite similarly.

</comment><comment><USER23> If I saw a robot roaming alone in public, and bugging every body in it's way, I would definitely get in its way on purpose.

<comment><USER24> I cannot wait for driverless cars. Im going to make a folding paper traffic cone to trap them in parking spots.

<comment><USER15> Just remember, they'll be watching you back.

<comment><USER24> Dont care. Ill pay the littering ticket. They pay for someone to come rescue the car.

<comment><USER15> Heh, until they make blocking driverless cars a state jail felony.

<comment><USER25> "False imprisonment"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > showing that it happens primarily when the kids are in groups and no adults > are nearby

Lord of the Flies validated by statistical spatial analysis.

</comment><comment><USER27> The robots are a threat and are not friendly (as the article posits as an axiom) for children. (They serve adults) so, they are bullied.

<comment><USER28> Do children tend to bully entities they perceive as threats?

<comment><USER27> If they are small enough, yes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This reminded me that a lot of what my peers did to each other when we were kids would have been felonies had we been adults.

</comment><comment><USER30> That's what i did, run up to adults to stop the bullying

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm reminded of this brilliant but horrific short (12min)

[https://vimeo.com/21216091](https://vimeo.com/21216091)

<comment><USER32> A bit slow but a fine example of this emerging horror genre. Thanks for the link. Asimov is looking practically pretentious at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Do people in Japan let groups of small kids wander around malls like that? People in the US can be overly paranoid sometimes, but I don't think I'd be ok with that for my kids.

<comment><USER34> What is it that you fear would happen to them?

<comment><USER33> Primarily that they'd embarrass me by ganging up and picking on robots.

But besides that that they'd do something stupid, or wander off, or something else along those lines.

I don't think this is just a US attitude, either - when we lived in Italy, we wouldn't have let our kids wander around the mall there, either, nor would other parents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Just as an aside, this article has language that I wouldn't expect to see from the IEEE. :-)

</comment><comment><USER36> They're playing. It's fun to mess with one robot and not with the other. Mystery solved. Maybe it would surprise the researchers to learn that children don't treat this as seriously as they do.

<comment><USER37> This. These researchers clearly don't have kids. This kind of behaviour is a big part of how they learn. Do something, see what happens. Keep doing it, see if anything changes. Intensify it until something else happens. To act surprised at this behaviour (gasp, so uncivil) or to frame these kids as some embodiment of evil (blocking and striking a robot!) shows they need to research Early Childhood Education as much as Robotics.</comment></comment>


Node.js job opportunity as a gist - <AUTHOR> http://csanz.posterous.com/we-r-hiring-nodejs

<comment><USER2> well, since everything is in the comments, this could really be a gist of any language... I have seen job opportunities written in code, and some are very impressive. This one misses the mark. There is nothing to it, unfortunately.</comment>


75 CSS3 Monochrome Icon Set - <AUTHOR> http://forrst.com/posts/CSS3_Monochrome_Icon_Set-JMu

<comment><USER2> <http://thenounproject.com/> offers much more and with a CC license

<comment><AUTHOR> They are made in SVG. My icons are made in HTML/CSS3. See the difference?

<comment><USER2> nope :)

I mean, what's the benefit of having your graphics in CSS? It's supposed to be defining your page styling, not the content

<comment><AUTHOR> Graphics in CSS would reduce the extra HTTP requests and the use of images, thus improving the site's loading time. SVG is also slower than CSS3 :)

<comment><USER2> but then you cut off all incompatible browsers, which are many.

besides, lightweight servers like ngix or lighttpd are quite efficient in delivering small files

<comment><AUTHOR> For older browsers, we can use a conditional tag and replace those icons with images. These would surely be useful when CSS3 gets supported globally.

These can be useful for some in one way and for some in other way. I like to play with CSS3 so I created them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: 15-day free trial vs. 30-day free trial - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone have opinions/experiences about which is better, or even A/B tested trial durations? I'm looking at shortening the trial period to increase sales. Anything that I should be looking out for? <comment><USER3> We switched from a 30 day to a 14 day (2 weeks) trial period. We found out that if the user does not use the service within the first two weeks, he is not very likely to use it in week 3 or 4 as well. When we've split-tested sign-ups we did not find a significant difference. But the conversion rate tester -> paying customer increased. We're at a 3:1 rate now (B2B, pricing starts at 19.90, open end), no free plan offered.

The trial period is accompanied by a follow-up email sequence (day 0, 1, 3, 7, 11, 14 after sign-up) to ask how's it all going and it includes a lot of supporting material (tips, videos, links to support pages, offer to schedule a call or screen sharing session) to get interacting with them and to make sure they really ask if there are questions.

The user can unsubscribe from this sequence (unsubscribe link in every email), but nobody really ever does. We get the occasional (maybe 1 out of 1000 testers or less) complaint about how annoying the follow up sequence is. We just remove those from the list. I remember 1 guy who was really annoyed but became a user anyway :-) So usually the testers really appreciate this information because they get the feeling there's someone who cares.

In all the follow up emails we make it clear that it would be easy to extend the trial period, a short email asking about it would be enough. We had one guy in a trial period for over 160 days. He wanted to use our product but his project did not take off as fast as expected and we just kept waiting (no follow ups). He's been a user for years now.

So if I was to start a new project, I'd start with 14 days and run the occasional split test from time to time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much, just the type of reply I was looking for. Just curious, what app do you sell?

<comment><USER3> What I can say it's a B2B SaaS app, targeted at small businesses - <USER2> all of them, so not exactly a niche product ;-) and there's a lot of competition around, that we have to "out-smarteking" as I call it. Something in the realms of CRM, team/project management, accounting, CMS...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When the user is told their free trial period has ended - give them the opportunity to extend it - even if you have a process to OK that - this is very likely to increase conversions.

<comment><USER5> Doing 14 with an option to extend may often be superior to starting at the full term. It makes them say "yes."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 30 days is the de facto standard and I don't see why you should change that to make money a bit faster. Any kind of a/b testing would have to be done by you to be relevant.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think it _really_ depends on the app. How long does it take before people get the hang of it? What's the average time it takes for a trial account to convert?

</comment><comment><USER8> Best thing to do is test all reasonable trial expiration scenarious, including those tied to user behavior instead of time. You never know what will be optimal, you need to test because each product and audience is unique. I know of a number of software publishers who had near zero conversion with a 30 or 15 day trial but made a lot of money when they expired trials based on other factors such as usage.</comment>


Ask HN: Does anybody need help with DevOps - <AUTHOR> Due this pandemic situation, i have a lot of free time on my hands. If anyone requires any kind of help in AWS, Google Cloud, Terraform, Ansible, Jenkins, Docker, K8s , i will be glad to help<p>contact : email@example.com <comment><USER2> I would be very careful with this. What happens if you make a wrong config change and it results in a loss of business dollars? You could get sued working for nothing. I'd love to help as well but I also don't want to take on unnecessary risk unless someone is paying me to do so and has the right insurance and protections in place for me. If you're offering help in a sort of hands-off way that might be another thing, just be careful.

<comment><USER3> Professional liability insurance plus a careful (lawyer-approved?) engagement letter. Unfortunately even helping for free costs money out of pocket if you want to mitigate risks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tried Googling but I'd really appreciate some advice.

I have my own server for some hobby projects and I'd really want a plug and play solution for checking git-repos with docker-files and starting them with their own URL for different branches.

Right now, if I have 20 projects with 20 branches, that's 400 endpoints that needs to be configured.

And what's best practice with canary deployments via git.

So my question is, does it exist a solution and what should I search for besides CI/CD?

<comment><AUTHOR> So assuming , you will be using a single domain with 400 sub-domains, you could use an ansible role/playbook. that will \- check-out code \- build your docker image, start the container on some port \- register your docker with nginx and create a virtual host \- or register them with ALB and create a listener \- make a subdomain for you app/branch

you can have branch-name, docker port and sub-domain as variable and define them at run time PS : Not the best solution, but could work for your use case

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Idea: Help charity do a you may never sue me for anything clause. Get reference back.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea . Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have some devops work we could outsource, it isn't a lot but it is some things we critically need. Don't see anyway to contact you, if you are interested my email is in my profile and we can chat from there.

<comment><AUTHOR> sent you an email

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it free? Paid? How do people get in touch with you?

<comment><AUTHOR> free if you are in crisis and can't pay. If you can pay, you are most welcome.

Added contact info

<comment><USER8> Can you upload somewhere (GitLab, GitHub, BitBucket) and then put a banner for buying a beer?

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry, didn't get you

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> On a related note, I'm looking to build ops related saas services. If anyone has ideas they'd pay for, would love to learn more

</comment><comment><USER10> Sent you an email today write me when u get the chance could really use the help!!!!</comment>


Terry Davis' TempleOS Brutal Take Down of Linus Torvalds - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBE6glZNJuU <comment><USER2> I don't know that this was really a "brutal take down"

<comment><USER3> yes, unfortunately a brutal self-takedown.

although he's kind of right about global variables.

the rest is more or less "meth is a hell of a drug"...

R.I.P. hope he's gone toward the vic-20 in the sky</comment></comment>


Snapchat's new 'scary' privacy policy - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/snapchats-new-scary-privacy-policy-has-left-users-outraged-2015-10-29 <comment><USER2> "You grant Snapchat a world-wide, perpetual, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to host, store, use, display, reproduce, modify, adapt, edit, publish, create derivative works from, publicly perform, broadcast, distribute, syndicate, promote, exhibit, and publicly display that content in any form and in any and all media or distribution methods"

This exact language shows up in almost every ToS, and every six months or so a dumb news story blows up because someone who isn't a lawyer reads it and gets angry.

I'm not a lawyer either, but I'm going to try to translate it anyway:

"You grant Snapchat a world-wide, perpetual, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license" \- you agree that when you upload something to Snapchat you can't turn round later and claim they owe you money for doing so.

"to host, store, use, display, reproduce" = to store the data that you upload and show it back to you (or to other people, presumably based on the semantics of how sharing works within the application)

"modify, adapt, edit, publish, create derivative works from" = create thumbnails. Provide you with an editing interface. Update records in a database relating to the content you uploaded. Build features akin to retweeting on Twitter or resharing or tools that let you add mustaches to your photos or whatever.

"publicly perform, broadcast, distribute, syndicate, promote, exhibit and publicly display that content" = show your content to other people (again, based on the semantics of how those features work in the app).

"in any form and in any and all media or distribution methods" = again, thumbnails, format conversions etc. If someone invents a new media or distribution method, Snapchat should be allowed to build it into their applications without getting you to re-approve the ToS.

I think the fundamental problem here is that ToS need to be written to be as generic as possible. If Snapchat wrote a ToS that legally bound them to the exact way that their app works today, they would have to get a lawyer involved with literally every feature change they make (or feature experiment they run) in the future.

<comment><USER3> Great, so they have the best of intentions but what happens when they go broke and their data is sold off, the new owners have no obligation to the old users they just own all the pictures and could do whatever they want with it.

Additionally who is to say that they don't decide down the line that using user pics for profit is fine and something they want to do. How often do we saw laws enacted for what appears to be good reason and then used for other purposes. Why do we think a for profit company would be better at this sort of thing than a government?

<comment><USER4> The very next sentence which the article doesn't bother mentioning limits the scope of Snapchat's rights under this worldwide perpetual blah blah grant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quoted from article:

"You grant Snapchat a world-wide, perpetual, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to host, store, use, display, reproduce, modify, adapt, edit, publish, create derivative works from, publicly perform, broadcast, distribute, syndicate, promote, exhibit, and publicly display that content in any form and in any and all media or distribution methods," the Terms of Service state.

This is what it takes for the company to start monetizing seriously. I certainly expected it. Facebook did this like 20 times.

<comment><USER6> Maybe they're lining up their TOS to be acquired by FB.

<comment><USER7> I think they're past that point. Lining up their TOS to go public.

<comment><USER8> How are they past that point? I doubt if they're all that close to an IPO in the sense that they haven't really proved any sort of monetization that can come even close to justifying even a billion dollar valuation. If they got an offer from FB I have to think they think long and hard about taking it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From Snapchat's privacy policy,

"Snapchat captures what it's like to live in the moment. So in many cases the messages sent through our services are automatically deleted from our servers once we detect that they have been viewed or have expired. And again in most cases, the services are programmed to delete a message from the recipient's device once it's been viewed or expired as well.

There are some exceptions though to this rule. Some of our services, such as My Story, Replay, and Live, allow users to interact with the messages and content you provide through the services for a longer period of time. That means those messages and content may be available on our servers and a recipient's device after they've been viewed or expired. For example, if you add a Snap to My Story, other users will be able to view it for roughly 24 hours. And because Snaps submitted to Live and other crowd-sourced Stories are inherently public and chronicle matters of public interest, we may save them indefinitely and allow them to be viewed again through any of our services or third-party sources."

It seems like they've put in the new language so they can try to monetize their Live service, which should be expected (and users already give implicit permission to the company by sending a snap to them to display publicly). Otherwise personal message stay personal, as far as their privacy policy is concerned. I'm no legal expert, but surely they can't (legally) lie to their users about this, right?

<comment><USER10> It seems like we go through this same story for every social network: company changes its TOS, people jump to the worst possible conclusion, company clarifies, people find something new to overreact to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is no privacy when posting something to the internet.

<comment><USER12> Why is this downvoted?

By default, this is the only privacy strategy which makes sense anywhere on the internet, for the average user of large scale services.

Whenever you post anything, anywhere, but particularly on any kind of public forum or social network, assume it'll be seen by your current and future coworkers and grandmother. Assume it'll be the post/photo/video used to identify you on the news if you're ever in the news for anything.

If it's still ok, post away. If it's not, consider why you're sharing it on a social network anyway, and if it's still important to share with a select group of people, then consider sharing it by some other means.

<comment><USER13> > _Why is this downvoted?_

I didn't down vote it, but...

Not everyone is technologically savvy. Snapchat became popular because of the implication that the pictures you take with it are ephemeral and private. It's sort of the whole point, isn't it? If not, how is it different than a SMS picture message?

Sure, to those who understand the tech, it's pretty obvious that whatever is sent through the pipes is out there, in perpetuity. But most people don't think like that, and Snapchat played on that misconception as a _model_.

<comment> vezzy-fnord It might be construed as unethical, but it's also a case of adverse selection, which for what it's worth is instrumental to a large class of business models, and especially in the digital age. Much of it is software's intrinsic ability at providing external uniformity even in the case of internally unsound design, coupled with withholding of source (primary auditable information) as essential to business.

It's not just Snapchat. Lots of software targeted towards programmers, sysadmins and power users relies on similar smoke-and-mirrors branding that tries to hide as much technical details as possible in favor of presenting grand high-level summaries that present it as a solution to an imminent problem. Either way, the assumption is you won't screen them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the crux of it is that people don't expect Snapchats to become public. They expect them to be more like text messages where there's an expectation of privacy. When a user posts on Facebook, there's an expectation that the content is out there for people to see. If you post a public video on YouTube, you expect people to see it. If you uploaded a video on YouTube, there's an expectation that the local news might show it. But no one expects the local news to show an embarrassing Snapchat you sent to your friends.

But even Facebook's TOS is a lot kinder. "This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it." Most people don't re-share photos. They comment and tag them, but if you delete the photo, Facebook's license to it ends. They can't then give that photo to a news paper because they no longer have a license to it.

Similarly, YouTube's TOS has a similar provision. "The above licenses granted by you in video Content you submit to the Service terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your videos from the Service." If you delete content from YouTube, they're license to the content terminates within a commercially reasonable time after you delete it.

So, both Facebook and YouTube let you terminate the content license even though there's a better assumption about the content being public. People have been using Snapchat assuming they can't be made public if they ran for Congress or something. In fact, while people might have seen stupid YouTube or Facebook posts from them, if they only retained a bookmark and didn't save a copy, they could delete those embarrassing moments before their run and terminate that license. In fact, because receiving users see Snapchat as ephemeral, they're much more likely to save a copy of the image using a screenshot than Facebook users are. Facebook/YouTube users often assume that the content they see will be there in perpetuity.

</comment><comment><USER15> Time after time Snapchat has shown it doesn't respect user privacy or security. Now that this updated ToS is probably written to simply support their new features, their historically amateurish attitude toward privacy will come back and bite them. At times, I think Snapchat is worse than Facebook on privacy. Yet, people don't seem to care. So users deserve the risks that Snapchat brings. I'm done trying to point out how bad Snapchat is when others, like Wickr, are so much better.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't understand... Snapchat's ToS has always said this. They have right to access and profit off any of your content, but it remains the case that they maintain the privacy level of that content. If you send a snap (non-story), Snapchat has the right to do anything with it, so long as they do not violate the privacy level (they can only show it to the people you sent it to).

And of course they have the right as employees, to look at any piece of content.

</comment><comment><USER17> Here are the updated terms of service, if anyone wants to see them directly: [https://www.snapchat.com/terms](https://www.snapchat.com/terms)

And Snapchat's privacy policy: [https://www.snapchat.com/privacy](https://www.snapchat.com/privacy)

</comment><comment><USER18> Quotes are wrong. Should be:

       Snapchat's 'new' scary privacy policy.

</comment><comment><USER19> I know of people who would lose their jobs if some of their stuff went public. I don't think that's what it's for though.

This seems to be more fodder for the insatiable targeted-ad/law enforcement data crunching monster.

</comment><comment><USER20> It seems most large online services plod inexorably towards terms like these, no matter their original starting position or principles.

</comment><comment><USER21> The most delusional bit of the ToS:

 _By using the Services, you agree that: [...] You will not post content that contains pornography,..._

If you don't want that on your service Snapchat, you should shut down shop today.

</comment><comment><USER22> By uploading your content to some private corporation, you might be giving them the right to do whatever they want with it? Big surprise there!

</comment><comment><USER23> Start using Signal - the _real_ privacy app.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is it a scary policy? Most have that paragraph verbatim to ensure they're able to use your content.

<comment><USER25> Yes, it is a scary policy for a product that billed itself as a platform to send self-destructing messages. Snapchat has always lied and the fact that you can pay to watch a snap again proves that the snaps do not go away after the last recipient has viewed the snap. Of course, this is a violation of trust.

And they lie to this day:

> Please note: even though Snaps, Chats, and Stories are deleted from our > servers after they expire, we cannot prevent recipient(s) from capturing and > saving the message by taking a screenshot or using an image capture device.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.snapchat.a...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.snapchat.android&hl=en)

<comment><USER26> How is it lying to admit that you can capture the image?

<comment><USER27> The deletion--not the screenshot bit--may be a lie.

<comment><USER26> Ah, ok. But no one knows if they have stored any images. They have simply updated their terms in order to not get sued if they choose to do so. As long as they say that they're deleting photos from their servers there's no reason to believe they're not.

<comment><USER25> > As long as they say that they're deleting photos from their servers there's > no reason to believe they're not.

There is no reason to believe they will delete any snap before all recipients have viewed it once, or according to new policy, have viewed it once and paid 33¢ to replay it once (I'd imagine this could update to n times where n is a number they decide in the future).

Imagine being able to use people's snaps for advertising online. Use a photo of someone you watch a lot and put a picture of them smiling or a video of them saying "I love you" (thanks to voice and or face recognition) in a targeted advertisement... I believe Facebook tried something similar a while back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> scary privacy policies just mean you share less stuff ?

</comment><comment><USER29> Is there any other uses of snapchat outside sending nude photos?

Is it possible for Google to create a ToS that grants them all ownership of email you send?</comment>


Beta test of Twitter management tool with invite code xyzzyx - <AUTHOR>

Beta test of Twitter management tool with invite code xyzzyx - mediaroost.com <comment><USER2> Site is mediaroost.com.</comment>


Tracking Users with CSS - <AUTHOR> https://www.templarbit.com/blog/2018/03/20/tracking-users-with-css <comment><USER2> "It can also be used to extract the user's IP address, user agent, and other identifying information." Not super shocking, given that most JS libs will gather this type of information, but very interesting to see this done via CSS which isn't monitored as easily.

</comment><comment><USER3> Direct link to the code [https://github.com/jbtronics/CrookedStyleSheets](https://github.com/jbtronics/CrookedStyleSheets)

</comment><comment><USER4> Böhmer's work is very interesting and I can see how this is difficult to prevent.</comment>


How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the '1 Percent' - <AUTHOR> http://www.indypendent.org/2012/01/26/how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-power-%E2%80%981-percent%E2%80%99 <comment><USER3> _They "fired" the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different._

Yeah, but we replaced them with a new 1%. Until recently, Sweden basically had an aristocratic caste consisting of the inner party of the Social Democrats, the labor leaders, the head editors of the major newspapers, etc. Basically a clique of people doing deals behind closed doors and having their own shared mythology/worldview as well as exclusive channels to the populace.

In the last 6 years, Sweden has been going through a transition phase where the assumptions of the last 70 years are being challenged. For instance, many social democrats considered the elections of 2006 and 2010 to be something of a coup d'etat (because they broke 70 years of near total domination by their party). Another big change is the increasing fragmentation of the media - <USER2> "gammelmedia" (old media) no longer holds a monopoly on information.

I am not dissing the social democrats - they were a clear improvement on the previous feudal system - but they've become stale and out of touch IMHO. As an example there is still no insight into how they pick their party leaders. A new one was just announced today, and no one really knows how that decision was reached. It's not like in the US, where people can actually have some choice of candidates for Presidency.

<comment><USER4> _Until recently, Sweden basically had an aristocratic caste consisting of the inner party of the Social Democrats, the labor leaders, the head editors of the major newspapers, etc. Basically a clique of people doing deals behind closed doors and having their own shared mythology/worldview as well as exclusive channels to the populace._

This appears to be what Stieg Larsson touched on in his "Dragon" (U.S. title) / "The Girl..." books. For example, his partner (in various senses), Erika, is described as 'upper class' and coming from a privileged background.

Is Larsson's descriptive language the same sort of thing you're describing?

One reason I enjoyed those books: Some feeling for the contemporary setting and society.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Wallenberg family is definitely in the 1% and quite powerful. Wikipedia says their sphere of influence "is estimated to indirectly control about a third of the national GDP."

The author writes: "I remember, for example, bicycling for hours through a small industrial city, looking in vain for substandard housing." I'm curious as to which city that was, and what route was taken. The concrete suburbs created by the Miljonprogrammet (eg, Angered in Gothenburg) are, perhaps not substandard, but definitely low status, with many immigrants, high unemployment and crime, and the buildings look ugly.

As the article doesn't mention these, the author comes across as using rose- colored glasses to interpret Swedish history. I point as well to the lasting effects of the strong labor and pro-99%'er movement in the US in the early 1900s, leading to everything from the 40-hour work weeks to woman's voting rights to the FDA to the FDIC. This is similar to what was going in Sweden at the same time. Using the same pair of glasses I would say it lead to the rise of the middle class in the US later in that century.

</comment><comment><USER6> Every society has a "1 percent" that owns or controls resources far out of proportion to their numbers. The question is: how much power will they have to shape society as a whole? It is possible to create a more egalitarian society in which the 99 percent are still able to maintain a good and rising standard of living and an acceptable quality of life.

</comment><comment><USER7> What about Denmark? You can't mention Swedes and Norwegians without mentioning the missing triplet. Denmark.</comment>


UK MP's won't read your internet censorship letters - <AUTHOR> http://www.clidus.com/blog/2013/8/17/david-cameron-is-going-to-censor-the-internet-and-he-doesnt.html

<comment><USER2> This is standard practice. MPs receive a lot of letters from their constituents and it isn't practical to send individual responses.

As well, Amber Rudd and Damien Green are conservative MPs, so they can be considered supporters of this proposal. I would hardly expect their replies to do anything other than make positive statements about the proposal.

There's more to democracy than voting and writing to MPs. For example, in light of the leaks about GCHQ and this proposed internet censorship, I have started supporting Pirate Party UK. They are the only party with a satisfactorily strong anti-surveillance and anti-censorship stance. Put your money where your mouth is.

<comment><USER3> _I have started supporting Pirate Party UK. They are the only party with a satisfactorily strong anti-surveillance and anti-censorship stance_

I don't find it spelled out in their policy manifesto, but I imagine that the Libertarian Park UK would have a pretty strong anti-surveillance and anti- censorship stance as well.

[http://libertarianpartyuk.com/policy- manifesto-2012/](http://libertarianpartyuk.com/policy-manifesto-2012/)

In light of recent events, they should probably break that out as a separate bullet point on their platform page and make it explicit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> These cretins will be out of power in less than 2 years (to be replaced by the other cretins).

If we can stall, block and generally oppose this for 2 years the next set of cretins will throw it out (they didn't think of it therefore it has to be thrown out..good or bad) then we can start fighting their version.

Ain't democracy wonderful.

</comment><comment><USER5> My MP (Jonathan Reynolds, Lab) is entirely content to play party politics over the issue.

I wrote to him some years ago when Labour were proposing something very similar, and he responded defending it.

I wrote to him again recently, now the Conservatives are in power, and funnily enough he's moderately opposed to it.

<comment><USER6> While I agree that is a tad fishy, your stance also appears fairly cynical. Maybe he just changed his mind. I don't think we give our politicians enough slack for them to get better, which in turn means that they learn to bloody- mindedly hold onto their stupid opinions, against the facts and reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a typical example of a policy that is both pointless and ineffective. The government is, for one, not clear on what the goal of the policy is.

If it's to thwart child pornography, that won't work because if you wanted to view it, you'd just toddle off to your ISP and opt out of the filters.

If it's to stop children looking at pornography in general, that will fail children/young people are smarter than people imagine at circumventing these things.

This sort of thing gets proposed because it makes people think the government is doing something to social problems, even if it is technically problematic and won't really achieve the stated aims. I'm actually all for discouraging the use of pornography because it is something of a scourge on society, but this is not the way to do it. Education is.

</comment><comment><USER8> They won't read them, but they might weigh them. The point of writing to MPs about policies can't really be to engage with them in an individual debate, but to form one tiny part of a mass of opinions which might persuade the MP.

</comment><comment><USER9> You're rarely going to get a personal reply to a letter to your MP. The sheer volume of correspondence prevents it.

Your MP's surgery sessions are a much better place to bring up issues like these. They're usually held every week and some don't require an appointment. When I went to speak to my MP about this issue, I was seen in 20mins and had a good 15-20min discussion.

</comment><comment><USER10> My MP still hasn't replied to my letter, and the so called opposition in this country seem quite happy for this to move forward.

<comment><USER11> OK, I'll try one to mine who is part of the opposition as well and see what happens. I suspect that The Daily Mail are making the policy around the Internet.</comment></comment>


Jimmy Wales Is Not an Internet Billionaire - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/magazine/jimmy-wales-is-not-an-internet-billionaire.html?pagewanted=all <comment><USER3> I've met Jimbo Wales exactly once in person. I've interacted with him by email a few times in relation to that meeting and mutual parenting interests, and also in connection with some Wikipedia business. We last corresponded a few years ago. I know other persons mentioned in the article considerably better.

As other comments have already said, the submitted article is a personality profile article, and it's written in the manner of such articles. It is not meant to be a comprehensive account of Wikipedia and doesn't purport to be. I found it interesting, because I learned a few facts about some people I know in person that I hadn't known before.

The passion to build a worldwide online encyclopedia is a passion that can be shared by anyone who read encyclopedias for fun as a child--one thing I have in common with Wales. I think Wikipedia will have its greatest impact if someone can figure out the economic model and organizational model that makes possible a credible Wikipedia competitor--something like Google coming along when AltaVista looked unbeatable. Its position as unchallenged leader among online encyclopedias right now is both Wikipedia's greatest strength and Wikipedia's greatest weakness. A lot of the content on Wikipedia and a lot of the community experience would be most likely to become better for users and better for volunteer editors if there were a prominent competitor equally visible to readers, accessible to volunteer editors, and appealing to donors.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can we all take a second to appreciate what this man accomplished? Wikipedia's success relied on getting people to write about a variety of topics (aka be content generators) and others to read and fact check to provide a useful experience. It was crowdsourcing long before it was a buzzword and it's still working.

<comment><USER5> It was crowdsourcing before it was a buzzword. Social too.

Wikipedia is arguably the internet's biggest achievement. Free. Valuable. Accurate. Up to Date. Volunteer run. Non Profit. Efficient. We can see the sausage being made.

It's really the gold standard for a website.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure it's that perfect. Try putting up a new page sometime and watch how quickly someone with _zero_ domain knowledge will come and try to have it deleted, usually successfully.

<comment><USER7> To me, deletionist culture is Wikipedia's greatest flaw. If at least two people derive value from a page existing, and it meets all the other criteria, it should be allowed to stand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Generally the NY Times Magazine does an excellent job, but this was a poor article. Lots of personal fluff about Wales and his high-powered friends and nothing new or interesting about his role in Wikipedia or the challenges that Wikipedia faces.

<comment><USER9> The repetition got to me. It could have been a fairly interesting article at about 1/4 the length. The feature reporter gave the impression that they believed saying the same thing multiple times would make it the truth.

So he's a phony who got lucky and...made no money. It's interesting to see the targeting of someone for success along a different angle than politics, insubstantial celebrity, or 'undeserved' wealth. (Coincidence that RMS is on the front page of HN as well?)

The NYT has increasingly mixed its editorial content with its journalistic content. Quite often, I'll scratch my head at a linked article and then notice that it's blogs.nytimes.com or otherwise NYT-branded blogorrhea.

While they have to struggle to stay relevant, it's unfortunate that they've largely gone the HuffPo route instead of consolidating their strengths. It makes it confusing when reading event-based reporting, trying to discern the agenda.

<comment><USER10> > got lucky and...made no money.

I find it difficult to believe that. He's in an influential position at what many people consider the reference for the "truth" and there are many wealthy and powerful people out there interested in distorting that truth where it suits them. It's not terribly difficult to hide money from dubious sources and bribery around Wikipedia isn't something I just made up: [http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/10/13/wikipedias-dark- sid...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/10/13/wikipedias-dark-side/)

<comment><USER8> I'm sure he can use his position of influence to make money via speaking fees, service on boards, consulting fees, that sort of thing, but the idea that Wales himself is accepting money in exchange for favorable edits is laughable. He's the most scrutinized person on Wikipedia and there are people who object to pretty much everything he does. He could theoretically use alternate accounts, but that would mean risking a permanent ban from Wikipedia which would be extremely foolish, since he would lose all credibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article misses that he continues to be an important figure in the community (beyond the categorization of hummus). For example, his involvement in the SOPA strike was crucial. Jimmy didn't decide or even initiate anything. But after ideas had been bubbling and percolating through the community for a few weeks, he focused people's attention, and made the issue credible to the majority of Wikipedians.

Jimmy is disappointing if you're looking for a saint. He's made a lot of mistakes. (I think he'd be the first to tell you that.) If he is exceptional in any way, I think it's that he is comfortable being a leader almost in the conventional mold, but he's also comfortable yielding to the full power of peer production. Maybe, ultimately, he can explain that kind of leadership to elites in the rest of the world, too.

Disclosure: I don't know Wales well, but I worked for the WMF (after his principal involvement) and have met him socially a couple of times.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wales must not own very much of Wikia, if his holdings in it are worth less than a million dollars. It's now one of the top web sites in the world. If it is the case that he doesn't own much of it, he made a terrible financial mistake in letting go of so much equity (or he simply didn't care).

Quantcast has it ranked #33 in the US market based on directly quantified data, with nearly 2 million uniques a day and growing at a healthy clip. It appears very likely to end up as a top 10 to 15 US site. That's worth a substantial amount of money no matter how you cut it.

<comment><USER13> Dude, it's a non-profit entity.

<comment><USER14> Wikia (not wikimedia!) is for profit, I would think.

Wikia are those "personal wikis" for TV shows/alternate universes/fan stuff in general.

They also have annoying ads all over the place and all have really ugly MediaWiki skins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This just in: Internet idol receives less-than-flattering personal profile, Internet commentators disgruntled, have apparently never read a personal profile article before.

God help the NYT if they ever run a less-than-godlike profile of, say, Elon Musk.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've used wikis and wikipedia for a long time and I guess from the article some people have a problem with Wales because he wanted one thing and got even luckier by getting something else.

The underlying tone of the article is he isn't sincere because he could have cashed wikipedia out at any time (like IMDB and CDDB have before) and the reporter is waiting for him to do just that. I guess the fact that he was a trader before adds to it because traders are only ever about money.

In this day and age people can't have the interest of greater good and there always has to be an ulterior motive.

</comment><comment><USER17> He's obviously not a billionaire, but earning just $1 million from Wikia seems way too low considering how popular he network is.

72 000 000 ad page views per month should earn him quite a bit, unless he sold his stock way too early.

<comment><USER18> Wikipedia doesn't have ads.

<comment><USER17> I'm not talking about Wikipedia, I'm talking about Wikia ;)

Wikia.com is a network of wikis that he founded. A really popular network that hosts the official Star Trek wiki among thousands of others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> IMO, this is a confusing puff piece with gaps you could drive a truck through. Typically for a serious profile, people from key timeframe points in a subject's life are interviewed as well, to prevent the story from being biased in favor of the subject's POV and to round out events for the historical record. This was not done here.

Also, points in this article are flatly incorrect. In one section the author states that Wales has said "mum" (nothing) about Edward Snowden, when the opposite is true (and in current headlines - Techmeme cluster here: [http://www.techmeme.com/130625/p49#a130625p49](http://www.techmeme.com/130625/p49#a130625p49)). Wales' interest in finding Snowden's identity as a Wikipedia editor - <USER2> Wikipedia rules - can be plainly seen on Wales' talk page dated June 25, two days before this NYT article ([http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&oldid=561872841#Snowden_editing.3F)).

This NYT article is very confusing. How much else in it is inaccurate? Was it a PR stunt?

</comment><comment><USER20> Please tell me more about this turtleneck he was wearing.

<comment><USER21> it's part of that narrative editorial style that turns 1 paragraph of content to 7 pages of sprawl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> That's quite a hatchet job there. I don't know what I think about Jim Wales, but I'm pretty sure the author of this piece is a nasty little person.

</comment><comment><USER23> "Garvey doesn't have a Wikipedia page"

Well that didn't take long. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Garvey](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Garvey)

</comment><comment><USER24> "Wales uses a cheap smartphone made by the Chinese company Huawei that a friend bought him for $85 in Nairobi."

$85? Cheap? In Nairobi? Is that a typo?

<comment><USER25> no, see, there's this whole world out there, outside of the US.

<comment><USER24> What?

My point - as it seems I've failed to write sufficiently clearly - is that $85 seems very expensive for a "cheap" smartphone. Especially for equatorial Africa.

Also, I'm not in the US.</comment></comment></comment>


EnvOne: Relief from messing with your Node.js environments - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/APISquare/envone <comment><AUTHOR> EnvOne is a zero-dependency module that loads dynamic environment configurations from a .env.config file, and process it as environment variables into process.env.</comment>