Editorial board of Index and more than 70 staff members resign - <AUTHOR> https://index.hu/english/2020/07/24/editorial_board_of_index_resigns/ <comment> throwaway-34512 To put this in context: for imagine the largest, and one of the last remaining independent news site in a country where most of the media is centrally controlled. Criticism of the government in that media is unknown. This site is read by close to half of the online population. The government is clearly irritated by this.

This site was Index, in Hungary. The editorial board resigning is a response of the takeover attempt from government sources.

Going forward, the largest, independent news outlet accessible to Hungarians will like be the Guardian and the New York Times.

If this was happening in an autocratic country, we'd just shrug. But this happening in an EU country, in a democracy.

The question begs itself: can a democracy with no independent, local press be considered a democracy still?

<comment><USER3> Democracy? With guys like Victor Orban? Nope. You think you live in a democracy but it is something else entirely.

I'm not playing smart. I'm a Greek myself and our govt is mimicking Orban to a large degree. TBH I'm afraid that democracy is going down the drain for most of EU anyway. The way yellow-vests were treated in "democratic" France (hint: plastic bullets shot at demostrators' eyes) kind of convinced me on that one. As for Greece, well, yeah. You won't find anything but praise for the govt in the mass media. A few fringe ones daring the other side of events survive on readers subscriptions. All tied up in a tightly knitted nexus of political friends, family, friendly businessmen, huge debt (govt party has a massive debt on its own as most mass media also do), ever expanding police-state, religious leaders (Orthodox Christian Church) and God knows whom else.

So, anyway, all the best...

<comment><USER4> I mean, we (US) helped set the stage for these kind of governments in Greece a few decades ago:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_junta#American_influence...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_junta#American_influence_in_Greece)

<comment> john-shaffer 1949 is not what most people would consider "a few decades ago".

<comment><USER4> Greece's junta government lasted until '74\. That's still ~50 years ago but it's not like this stuff goes away immediately.

I'm from South America where the US experimented with setting up dictatorships after WWII as well, and the effects are still felt today.

<comment><USER5> > I'm from South America where the US experimented with setting up > dictatorships after WWII

Source?

<comment> munk-a Here:

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

Though I'm pretty amazed it isn't just common knowledge - America has a long history of fixing democracies... It takes working democracies and replaces them with military dictatorships.

<comment><USER5> Thanks.

"Common knowledge" of history (ancient and recent) differs vastly from country to country. In Norway, we basically just learn of USA that it's the country that turns the tide of war whenever it enters; for which we learn of two occasions: 1st and 2nd WW; not much else.

Pardon my english.

<comment><USER6> I'm really sorry if that is all you got out of Norwegian history classes. Though I might add that what you get out of it is indeed highly dependent on _who_ you get as a history teacher, because the books themselves are appalling. I would know. I'm an adjunkt (official Norwegian teaching title).

Personally I think I'm quite lucky. I got a self-appointed, and rather proud Marxist as a history teacher in upper secondary school. He solemnly declared that, while this was indeed his conviction, he would not let it _colour_ his classes. Then he went on to give us college lectures about WWI and the Russian Revolution, because he trusted us to be smart enough to understand it anyway.

I shall never forget these amazing classes, but this style of teaching didn't sit well with the, shall we say, less aware pupils in the class, who promptly wrote up a complaint against his use of difficult to understand concepts and use of academic language.

After a meeting between us, him and the principal, he declared that he was very disappointed with us, and that—despite the authors retracting the complaint—he would not continue as a teacher for our class anymore. Then he donned his motorcycle gear and rode off on his Harley. I'm telling you! You can't make this shit up! :D

The next day we got a brand new history teacher. Instead of _teaching,_ he would merely read up passages from the pre-approved history book, in the most passive and uninspired way possible. Then he would give us the lamest of lame assignements such as, "describe who was the prime minister of Great Britain during World War II and why," and other such mindblowingly boring stuff. Meanwhile the Marxist teacher would tell us interesting tidbits about Churchill and his role in the sinking of the USS Lusitania, and fascinating stuff like "contra-factual hypothesis", and so on.

You're probably wondering how I feel about Marxism now. Well, let's just say that I think it's a failed philosophy. But the stories that extremely Marxist teacher shared with us, were so good and so captivating, that they have simply stuck with me and everyone who were lucky enough to have this true rebell as a history teacher.

Anway, if you're still not satisfied, and just want bloody good "history lessons," then I can highly recommend the podcast _Blueprint for Armageddon,_ about WWI as told by Dan Carlin.

<comment><USER5> > I can highly recommend the podcast Blueprint for Armageddon, about WWI as > told by Dan Carlin.

I've been reading so much english lately, that I'm losing grasp of my native norwegian. (Yet I can't seem to get my syntax quite right.) This is frightening and also the reason I'm always trying to find norwegian books on whatever subject I'm interested in — which isn't always easy...

<comment><USER6> Don't worry about it. As long as you avoid obvious anglisisms, you should be fine. Considering how much Norse has affected English, it's really just going full circle. And if you're ever stuck, there's always "Det norske akademis ordbok"[1] (a Norwegian dictionary). :) It's particularly good because it includes etymology.

[1]: [https://naob.no/](https://naob.no/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Index has been a very rare example of an actually profitable online news site; it's been the oldest and most popular online media. It is worthy for the ruling party to simply destroy this value (similarly to what has happened to other big players) because they have enough public money for them anyway.

A while ago various oligarchs have bought almost all of the Hungarian media, and then donated (for free) them to a single 'non-profit' organization. Now the local newspapers looked like this before the last general election:

[https://external- content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...](https://external- content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.keleten.hu%2Fwp- content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F05%2FMegyei-lapok- online-M%25C3%25A9sz%25C3%25A1ros-L%25C5%2591rinc.jpeg&f=1&nofb=1)

(Title: 'Vote for Fidesz')

<comment><USER8> > _A while ago various oligarchs have bought almost all of the Hungarian > media_

Let's not pretend this didn't already happen in the US, UK and all of Western Europe decades ago. Using derogatory terms like "oligarchs" doesn't change the story.

<comment><USER9> You're not wrong, but the big difference is who the oligarchs answer to. For instance most big French news outlet belong to various rich people, but they're all somewhat independent and are not watchdogs for the authorities. That might still cause significant conflicts of interest but it's not directly on the government's leash.

Meanwhile if you look at, say, the Echo of Moscow, a popular Russian radio, the main shareholder is Gazprom, the natural gaz company that's state-owned and has extremely close ties with the political power.

That's always the problem with this "whataboutism", it's true that there are many problems with western democracy and freedom of information but it's dishonest to say that it's the same thing. It's really not. I've been learning Russian for a few years and I read (slowly) quite a lot of Russian news and it's really unlike anything I've seen in France or the USA for instance.

<comment><USER8> > _You 're not wrong, but the big difference is who the oligarchs answer to. > For instance most big French news outlet belong to various rich people, but > they're all somewhat independent and are not watchdogs for the authorities._

Oligarchs don't answer to anyone, they just have their own interests - <USER2> in Hungary they express by aligning with the government, while elsewhere it's fine to align with one side like the media in the US do. It's not like the quality of papers like the oligarch-owned WaPo is any better, they just had to settle a major defamation lawsuit due to their "progressive" propaganda.

[https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-washington-post-to- pa...](https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-washington-post-to-pay- covington-student-nick-sandmann-after-250-million-lawsuit/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For EU to take action against Hungary you need all other members to agree. Unfortunately Poland and Hungary are backing each other up and veto any action against the other.

<comment><USER11> The EU needs to get either more federal or break up.

<comment><USER12> I hope not for this future, we don't need a bigger leviathan which is disconnected from local population.

<comment><USER13> I'm afraid EU is a necessary evil. Local population delegated some powers to nation states, otherwise the would cease to exist. How are you gonna stand up to China, India or US in the future?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria. Disgrace of the EU. Wonder how long this can go on. Probably forever because the whole leadership of the EU is incredibly weak and divided.

<comment><USER15> With the UK leaving, Poland and Hungary and others sliding into very uncomfortable territory from a democracy perspective, and far right sentiments growing even in the western countries, the EU is heading towards a pretty dramatic identity crisis.

A big issue is the lack of tools to take meaningful measures in this, or similar cases.

There is the suspension clause [1], but using it is difficult, and could eventually lead to multiple additional departures. See this (older) article for some background [2].

The most viable (medium-term) way forward for me is to transform the current EU back into a a looser, mostly economy focused association. With a subgroup of states pursuing stronger, value-based integration.

I think that multiple world-powers are pretty happy about this development. Russia obviously wants to gain back influence and would love to destabalize the EU. They are funneling money to EU sceptical parties all over Europe, including supporting Brexit. They also have "web brigades" for online propaganda campaigns. [3]

But I also think the US grew unhappy about the economic (and partially political) strength of the EU in the mid 2000s, where we saw not only the Iraq fallout, but also the Euro established as a important currency. In the Obama years relations cooled off considerably. I don't think the US would be unhappy about a EU that is not broken, but weaker and more susceptible to influence. (the failure of TTIP is an interesting data point here)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_7_of_the_Treaty_on_Eur...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_7_of_the_Treaty_on_European_Union)

[2] [https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-can-still-block- hungarys-...](https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-can-still-block-hungarys- orban-veto-on-polish-pis-sanctions/)

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

<comment><USER16> > With the UK leaving

What do you mean "leaving"? The UK ceased to be part of the EU six months ago.

<comment><USER17> The UK's departure 6 months ago is a milestone that's more political than actual. During the transitional period of the withdrawal agreement, the UK is effectively a non-voting member this year as it has no option to opt of EU regulations or budget contributions until the end of this period. Other parts of their departure, like the Northern Ireland backstop have their own conditions before the UK can adjust them.

Describing the departure as in progress rather than done is very much accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The largest Hungarian news outlet is crushed to ground amid political pressure.

See background and previous events [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23932073](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23932073)

</comment><comment><USER18> \--The government can send their version IRS every other day to find something wrong in applying loosely defined laws. Crippling fines.

\--No government advertising, your competitors can make millions from them.

\--Frozen out of any government contracts for businesses owned by the media owner.

\--Pressure for companies not to advertise on your media. Might not even need a wink and a nod, "smart" companies know it.

So next time a smart-ass says but "USA too" they need to look at these examples. Of course they are worse cases, you can get jailed or killed by a state-sanctioned mobster.

<comment><USER19> > The government can send their version IRS every other day to find something > wrong in applying loosely defined laws. Crippling fines.

You mean like the Obama administration? [1]

All these things you describe, describe governments in general. Some group achieves political power and wields the government in benefit of their friends and in detriment of their enemies.

1: [https://www.npr.org/2017/10/27/560308997/irs-apologizes- for-...](https://www.npr.org/2017/10/27/560308997/irs-apologizes-for- aggressive-scrutiny-of-conservative-groups)

<comment><USER20> >It later emerged that liberal groups had been targeted, too, although in smaller numbers.

<comment><USER21> > It later emerged that liberal groups had been targeted, too, although in > smaller numbers.

Yes, because if you look at the targeting criteria they've obviously been targeted less. Just going off wikipedia[0]:

      - referenced words such as "Tea Party", "Patriots", or "9/12 Project", "progressive,"   "occupy," "Israel," "open source software," "medical marijuana" and "occupied territory advocacy" in the case file;
      - outlined issues in the application that included government spending, government debt, or taxes;
      - involved advocating or lobbying to "make America a better place to live";
      - had statements in the case file that criticized how the country is being run;
      - advocated education about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights;
      - were focused on challenging the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—known by many as Obamacare;
      - questioned the integrity of federal elections.

Whether the keyword "progressive" was really being used in the same manner has been called into question too. Again quoting off wikipedia:

      On June 27, 2013, responding to letters from Rep. Sander Levin, the ranking member on the Ways and Means Committee, Inspector General J. Russell George's office released a letter to Levin about the scrutiny of groups with "progressive" in their names. Contradicting earlier claims of George's office, the letter acknowledged that he knew that the word "progressive" had appeared in IRS screening documents. However, he said that the "Progressives" criteria was on a part of the "Be On the Look Out" (BOLO) spreadsheet labeled "Historical", and, unlike other BOLO entries, did not say how to refer flagged cases. While he had many sources confirming the use of "Tea Party" and related criteria described in the report, including employee interviews and e-mails, he found no indication in any of those other materials that "Progressives" was a term used to refer cases for scrutiny for political campaign intervention. The letter further stated that out of the 20 groups applying for tax-exempt status whose names contained "progress" or "progressive", 6 had been chosen for more scrutiny as compared to all of the 292 groups applying for tax-exempt status whose names contained "tea party", "patriot", or "9/12".

And on top of that applications were on hold for 2 years (!) for some organizations with conservative keywords. While liberal organizations were being processed in weeks. No liberal organization, even those subject to extra screening, was put on hold like this.

Also it doesn't seem like there have been any major lawsuits over this by liberal groups. Conservative groups (total of 469 in 2 lawsuits) have sued and settled, with IRS acknowledging misconduct.

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

<comment><USER19> We'll never see real change in the US because each party has insulated themselves from any information that might be damaging to their own party.

They're seriously about to vote for a guy that voted for the Iraq war and the Wall St. Bailouts. I don't expect stuff like this to even register with most. I don't think they can internalize the information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 60 Minutes had a great episode on the state of politics and populism in Hungary last week.

"We do not want to be diverse": Why Hungary is paying its citizens to start families

[https://www.cbs.com/shows/60_minutes/video/M777NaE_R1H9_e4sn...](https://www.cbs.com/shows/60_minutes/video/M777NaE_R1H9_e4sndefiqKgyy4UgkLV/-we- do-not-want-to-be-diverse-why-hungary-is-paying-its-citizens-to-start- families/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Do you know what's the worst of all of this? It's that less than 40% of the populace is supporthing this government and most of those people are either paid down or outright intimidated by them.

Yet somehow through the use of gerrymandering, extortion, and other shady maneuvers they managed to maintain a 66%+ majority which is enough for them to control everything.

This is an autocracy, there is no question about it. The problem is that whenever the sanctions come it will punish the general populace, not the mafia which is what you call the Hungarian government.

</comment><comment><USER24> Tangentially related: in Poland, the so called "good change" (conservative party) fired or made resign dozens of journalists in public TV and radio over last 4 years, with the culmination two months ago, where hit-parade results were "censored" after an anti-gov song won the charts [1].

So many people were fired or left that basically a whole new crowdfounded internet radio has started broadcasting this month, featuring many of them.

The gov is thinking out loud about 'repolonization' of all private media, citing they are all pro-German, but they have a problem as the main one they dislike (TVN) is US-owned in fact, and Trump-led US is the only country that is not our political enemy yet.

[1] [https://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-52721152](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52721152)

The difference with Hungary though is that this month's political elections showed a huge divide in Poland (51:49), and this 49% of people are really sick of the ruling party.

<comment><USER25> You seem to be forgetting these ones which are owned by German capital:

RMF - biggest radio station, second biggest is owned by French capital

onet & interia - (biggest?) online portals

Fakt - biggest daily newspaper

Newsweek - biggest weekly newspaper

<comment><USER26> > Fakt - biggest daily newspaper

A bit of context: Fakt is a tabloid owned by the same company that also owns Bild Zeitung -- the biggest daily newspaper (air quotes) in Germany, and producing the same kind of journalism (air quotes).

Today's front pages: [https://imgur.com/a/BZ1DOBx](https://imgur.com/a/BZ1DOBx)

Bild Zeitung and its owner are staunchly conservative and recently very critical of Angela Merkel (when they aren't talking about sports or tits or celebrity gossip); ie. they are positioned at or beyond the very right edge of the German conservative party -- like the government of Poland, so I'd expect them to get along just fine for the most part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Germany is silent as Hungary recently saved the German military industry by placing the largest order it ever received from outside. (Since WWII)

Russia is a friend of Orbán as the country pledged to spend 10% of its GDP for the next 25 years on Russian built nuclear power plants.

China likes Orbán as Hungarian taxpayers are paying for part of the new China- EU rail that goes through the country.

This scandal will fade away, but "illiberal" (quasi dictatorship) countries are more and more common. The new normal. As world leaders like to do business with them, they will stay.

</comment><comment><USER28> Wondering, how viable would be a new portal hiring all the resigned staff.

</comment><comment><USER29> Somewhat naive question: can they/will they move to a different country that respects press freedom better? Perhaps working in Hungary is essential for them to carry out their job properly.

<comment><USER30> Foreign media has very limited legal rights compared to local media.

Employees of a website operating from abroad would not be able to access the Parliament building, buildings of state or local government bodies. Moreover, heads of national institutions, government officials, executives of state- owned and government-owned companies, and persons performing official and public duties are allowed to ignore requests for information, data or comments from the foreign press, but not from the Hungarian press.

If the government could interfere with the operation of press based in Hungary, they'll have a much easier time messing with the operation of nominally-foreign press.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Principled - bravo!

</comment><comment><USER32> I haven't seen any comments defending Hungary or Orban and such unanimous opinions make me wonder, especially when someone's enjoying popular support in their home country.

Doesn't Orban have any redeeming qualities? I seem to remember that he was one of the young hopes after Hungary turned its back to communism. How did he become an autocrat, as claimed here by some?

There's an interesting book called "Populism and the culture wars" by Frank Furedi. I have only managed to read a couple of chapters, but it paints quite a different picture of a fight between cosmopolitan elites and traditionalist Hungary. So far it has not addressed whether Orban is corrupt, but it does argue that it's legitimate to reject anti-national, anti-traditionalist values coming from Brussels.

Another short book that tries to explain the difference between Western and Eastern Europe is "After Europe" by Krastev. He's clearly writing from a liberal perspective, but identifies globalization, migration, economic insecurity and faceless Brussels politics as the main reasons behind the Eastern rejection of European values.

</comment><comment><USER33> Meanwhile: after the EU budget talk all representatives of the dictatorship boasted that they could avoid the provision which ties the budget to rule of law.

Basically they were proud that they won't have to be lawful.

And the EU just let them.

<comment><USER34> There is another interpretation floating around: the deal language is reported to be very vague, and apparently, the only thing agreed is that the EU will soon _decide_ on the case against Poland (which would act as "prior" for the Hungarian case, in general.)

Clearly, Poland and Hungary have bought some time during the negotiations. But once the budget and recovery plan are formally approved, I would not be surprised if there were... suprises on this front.

Still. The EU has no armed forced or obvious legal levy to condemn a democratically elected government of a sovereign state to... respect democracy.

I suspect it's not going to last forever, but that's the sad state at the moment.

<comment><USER33> "democratically elected"??? It is not true. They oppress opposition and lie to people. They did not need to cheat in the day of election, as they cheated before. Gerrymandering, fining parties to death, buying people in other parties, making mainstream media unreachable for opposition, changing laws to make sure no one can outvote them, and this could be continued through pages. They have stolen a huge part of the previous EU budget, in plainly criminal ways. Why did the EU gave them more money with a licence to steal?

<comment><USER34> I was refering to their initial elections:

I don't remember that Duda's first election at the time caused any trouble (it was a defeat of the the incumbent) [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/05/duda-wins-polands- pre...](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/05/duda-wins-polands-presidential- election-150525164751445.html)

Also Orban's initial election was a surprise, but not undemocratic for what I know (I remember there was a number of scandal about oponents before.)

What happenned after the elections, of course, is a different thing...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Man With a Plan To Build a 70-Foot Car-Juggling Robot - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/the-man-with-a-plan-to-build-a-70-foot-car-juggling-rob-1596515424

<comment><USER2> It seems more than a little crazy to suggest this could really be doable. Then again some of the videos of what kinds of precision quad-coptors can achieve with their movements will make you think this could be done.</comment>


ECDSA Key Extraction from Mobile Devices via Nonintrusive Physical Side Channels - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~tromer/mobilesc/ <comment><USER2> I tried looking to see if there was a CVE assigned but there appears to be none.

While my understanding is this is probably not that easy to achieve, I find the statement that OpenSSL considers "hardware side-channel attacks are not in OpenSSL's threat model" to be concerning.</comment>


Oculus announces new VR headset prototype: Crescent Bay - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/20/6660901/oculus-announces-new-vr-headset-prototype-crescent-bay

<comment><USER2> I feel bad for the folks who still haven't gotten their DK2...</comment>


Ask HN: Would you use Facebook's original native app now after Paper?  - <AUTHOR>

Facebook just released its new app Paper, which essentially takes out the newsfeed from FB and presents it in an amazing fashion. But apart from groups and events, I think it has all the necessary things required for a regular Fb user. So would you want to ever use the Facebook app again? <comment><USER2> I think I would enjoy Facebook Paper a lot more if it removed the Facebook news feed entirely. I think it should focus solely on news, not the fact that your friend changed their status or profile picture or whatever. Although, if I want to read non-Facebook news stories, I would probably just use something like Flipboard.

</comment><comment><USER3> Paper doesn't work on Android yet, right?

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/02/03/facebook- launc...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/02/03/facebook-launches- paper-app/5185753/)

</comment><comment><USER4> The learning curve is steep. After using it for a while, I still can't figure out how to do certain things.

I don't understand why they decided to hide the status bar.

<comment><USER5> To make you stay in the app longer

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I still can't download it to my 5th gen iPod Touch for some reason. So can't my colleague. Anyone know why? The App Store says it's compatible.</comment>


Is it cruel to kick a robot dog? - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2015/02/13/tech/spot-robot-dog-google/index.html <comment><USER2> Leaving discussions about robot sentience aside, I think what it does for our own minds (to be angry and kick things in general). Even if robots can withstand the damage, the intention of our acts is important (to each one, if not to anybody else).</comment>


Flash mob during LinkedIn's all hands meeting - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZrMa_lw2b0

<comment><USER2> I thought that was pretty cool. It was obviously all the "In"terns at LinkedIn. Although the suit guy in front didn't seem too happy with the interruption...</comment>


Show HN: Financial Portal Demo, Integrating CEX.IO, WebSocket, Node.js, AnyStock - <AUTHOR> https://www.anychart.com/technical-integrations/samples/websocket-cexio-anystock-demo/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a picture of how it looks, just in case: [https://i.imgur.com/ExxyA0v.png](https://i.imgur.com/ExxyA0v.png)</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone using short videos (indexed) instead of chat form company comms? - <AUTHOR> The tech is there (extract text from audio, index it). It could avodid lots of meetings, help with solitude, etc<p>As long as you can find them again, that is (indexed, text search possible)! <comment><USER2> Not exactly this, but I recall reading about some unique methods out of Bridgewater that might be of interest to you.</comment>


Chapter on Mercurial in the book "Architecture of Open Source Applications" - <AUTHOR> http://www.aosabook.org/en/mercurial.html

<comment><USER2> You can order the book on Lulu.com and use a $7.00 coupon code: (SUMMERBOOK11)

<http://www.retailmenot.com/view/lulu.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> Ha, thanks for linking this.

If any of you have any questions (or remarks on how to improve the chapter!), please let me know.</comment>


Advanced Form Techniques using Scala and Play - <AUTHOR> http://workwithplay.com/blog/2013/07/10/advanced-forms-techniques/

<comment><USER2> your articles are very useful to learn Scala!</comment>


CatalyzeX – Browser extension that links code for ML papers anywhere on the web - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mlai-code-implementation/aikkeehnlfpamidigaffhfmgbkdeheil <comment><USER2> This can definitely be a useful supplement to the current theoretical way in which ml is taught, instead focusing on more practical applications

<comment><USER3> For sure! The easier it is to go from ideas/theoretical papers to tangible code that one can play and build with, the more and faster we'll see interesting breakthroughs in industry as well as other fields of research (medicine, robotics, space) imho.

<comment><USER3> This I hope is one meaningful step in the right direction :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi, I'm one of the creators of this extension. This chrome/firefox extension automatically finds and links code for ML papers anywhere on the web (Google, Arxiv, Twitter, Scholar, and more). The general hope is to start bridging the gap between academia/research and builders & makers with code.

Open to all feedback and requests here, and would love to hear from you, cheers!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For those using Firefox instead, here's the add-on: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/code- finder-c...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/code-finder- catalyzex/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks! I was looking for this as I really don't prefer Chrome.

<comment><USER3> Lmk if you run into any issues with the firefox add-on as it's newer, but fwiw tested it and it works well!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome work Gaurav & team!

<comment><USER3> Thanks Nipun

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really useful. Great job

<comment><USER3> Glad you like it! I'm one of the folks building CatalyzeX. Let me know if you have any requests or issues anytime.</comment></comment>


Amazon Does Right Thing for Women in Tech at the AWS Public Sector Summit 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/code-like-a-girl/women-in-tech-shine-at-aws-public-sector-summit-2016-692ce0d3f821#.m7dsyoo3z <comment><USER2> Sounds like it was a good time, wish the article covered what the topics were a bit more, or maybe a transcript.</comment>


Tell HN: Thanks for all you do for startups & VCs - <AUTHOR>

I've been using HN for roughly 2 weeks now and just wanted to personally say 'thank you' to everyone involved w/ YCombinator & HN including staff members, contributing startups, startup applicants, VCs, commentators & anyone else I may have forgotten to mention.
I'm so glad there are people out there who are much smarter than me, otherwise life wouldn't be nearly as fun and entertaining as it is!
Now, Tell HN why you're thankful for them? <comment><USER2> I've been reading HN for years and have learnt so much - coding, hosting, design, pricing, strategies, funding, sales... the list goes on.

All this knowledge is power. Some risks have been reduced. More importantly, others are the same but I now have a much better idea of what they are!

HN provides me whole new level of confidence!

Thank you everyone, especially those of you who share all the nitty gritty details of your successes and failures!

(ps related thanks to proggit and the BoS forum as well)</comment>


US calls for land reclamation 'halt' in South China Sea - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32941829/ <comment><AUTHOR> This story has so many fascinating aspects to it:

Firstly, that coastal land territory, a kind of currency of nationhood, with immense value, can just be created from nothing.

Next, that the faraway US is almost demanding that China stop, while most of the APAC nations whose sphere of influence is being encroached upon, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, seem to only make some barely audible sounds of displeasure. Vietnam and the Philippines have raised more significant objections, I think.

Of course, apart from those issues, there is also the interesting question of the assumed rise of Chinese power, assumed weakening of US (and Western) power.

<comment><USER2> It goes a bit further than that though.

Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Taiwan have all been running reclamation projects for some time in the very same disputed areas. The US now decides, since China has started doing so, that China should stop ???

Why, on EARTH, did we not get out in front of this problem and put the smack down on Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan when they initially started down this road ???

It just makes our foreign policy look overtly transparent to third parties. I mean, the average EU citizen or South American probably looks at that and says... "Are you shitting me ???"

<comment><USER3> Nah, it's not too difficult to understand why it's a problem now. Did you read the article?

"China claims almost the whole of the South China Sea, resulting in overlapping claims with its neighbours."

<comment><USER2> ???

The thing is ...

ALL of the claims overlap with the claims of neighbors. That's the entire problem.

The claims of Vietnam overlap with the claims of Malaysia. The claims of the Philippines overlap with Taiwanese claims. (In fact, Taiwan's official position is that the entirety of the South China Sea falls under their sovereignty.)

The fact is... this is a mess that we should have either refused to wade into... or been unmistakeably strict in enforcing our view. This is no place for waffling.

<comment><USER4> Did you look at the map in the article? China is overextending far beyond what any of the other countries are attempting. In some places there almost isn't any water left between the boundary of China's claim and the shores of the other country!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a dispute in which only the direct stakeholders (countries whose territorial waters adjoin this area) or international institutions such as the United Nations should get involved. That the US thinks it has the right to barge in is actually the most worrying aspect of this whole situation.

<comment><USER6> what's actually happening is the Chinese have started harassing neighboring countries in an area 600 miles offshore China and within 100 miles from other countries like Vietnam and other south East Asian countries. By harassing I mean arresting fisherman, cutting seismic cables from oil exploration companies and getting aggressive with any other ships. All these countries want the U.S. to assist in protecting their sovereignty and are asking for help. The UN won't help and no other sea power aside from the U.S. has the ability to help. Look at a map of the red line area China is assuming control over and you will see where some of these areas are. It would be like the U.S. Building artificial islands 100 miles from Spain, building airstrips and arresting any Spanish ships the come nearby. This is not US imperialism it is Chinese expansionism and other countries are asking for our help. It's clear the Chinese wants control of south east Asia and they are acting aggressively to take it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Building new land where none previously exists seems like the absolute least harmful way of obtaining resources - the only bad part being that it's in a part of the ocean subject to disputed ownership.

Compare that to the invasion of countries in the Middle East or the overthrowing of democratically-elected governments. The US doesn't exactly have the moral high ground here.

<comment><USER8> Moral high ground or medium ground or low ground matters little when your partners in the area are asking for your help right now, today. You've got to do something, and the entire U.S. is part of that process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looking at the map, China's claim on these waters seems pretty wild. Sort of like Portugal claiming ownership of parts of the Mediterranean Sea.

<comment><USER10> No wilder than Greece and Cyprus or the UK and the Falklands.

<comment><USER9> Interesting, I didn't know! Is it this red area you are referring to [Greek claims]?

[http://www.guidopicchetti.it/Il%20CPPM%20di%20Pnt/News%20201...](http://www.guidopicchetti.it/Il%20CPPM%20di%20Pnt/News%202010/image/121006_UNEP_Med-1.jpg)

Though, that doesn't make it less wild :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The US has engaged in half a dozen wars in the last two decades. It has incited military coups in South America for the last century. It claims the Northwest Passage through Canada is an international strait.

Big powers will try to exert dominance over smaller countries, both for the material gain, and to show their power. China is much less aggressive than the US, and yet gets much more attention.

<comment><USER8> So China just gets to overrule every nation adjoining the Spratlys because you think they are less aggressive than the US? Doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER11> No I never said that. My point is that articles like this are written and promoted for ulterior reasons. The right wing believe that the US must maintain an iron grip on the world. Even left wing newspapers like the New York Times have an anti-China bias, because they think that a battle between superpowers is a healthier expression of outgroup-hatred than domestic racism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good thing we got NL finished before this became policy.</comment>


Why Zig When There Is Already CPP, D, and Rust? (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ziglang/zig/wiki/Why-Zig-When-There-is-Already-CPP,-D,-and-Rust%3F <comment><USER2> "C++, Rust, and D have a large number of features and it can be distracting from the actual meaning of the application you are working on. One finds themselves debugging their knowledge of the programming language instead of debugging the application itself."

It's an interesting point. My experience with it, though, is that if the language is too simple, the complexity gets pushed off into the application. The result is "boilerplate", a lot of code that gets routinely cut&pasted into applications.

The thing about complexity in the language, on the other hand, is once you do learn the language, that skill follows you with every app you work with. With complexity pushed to the app, you have to re-learn it with every app.

A screwdriver can do a lot of things - chisel, hammer, scraper, prybar, punch, paint stirrer, shim, etc. But I prefer having a set of tools designed to be chisels, hammers, etc. My projects come out a lot nicer.

<comment><USER3> _It 's an interesting point. My experience with it, though, is that if the language is too simple, the complexity gets pushed off into the application. The result is "boilerplate", a lot of code that gets routinely cut&pasted into applications._

This is a frequent complaint I hear about Go: they made the language too simple in certain places. People also tend to cite Rich Hickey's distinction between "simple" and "easy".

So the question about Zig becomes one of what exactly was kept simple, and what was allowed to become complex?

I think the world would benefit from a Hyperpolyglot-style comparison here. Rosetta Code is too much of a mess; ideally, I want to see a thoughtful side by side comparison of the same program written in several languages, with commentary.

<comment><USER4> Zig might get away with it by restricting itself to a narrow niche where this kind of simplicity is advantageous. Go tries to eat a much larger piece of the pie, and the deficiency is felt more as a result.

<comment><USER5> There's a profound wisdom to knowing the niche you're in, and Zig does seem to have that. The applications part of the stack is saturated with options, all trying to encroach on each other, but when it comes to the genuinely low- level, unsexy stuff...the viable options are all pretty old languages, and languages that patch over those old languages.

And with respect to discussion of boilerplate, you can, of course, always have a "Zig++" language that patches over Zig. By cutting out its own metaprogramming functionality, it's much more straightforward to generate useful Zig source. There are a lot of advantages to restraint in the design, and Go does share that, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm just happy that D was mentioned. Yay, D! Also, D's metaprogramming is an utter joy, almost lisp-like, without the craziness of C++ templates. Give it a try!

An intro to one ingredient of the magic of D metaprogramming, compile-time function evaluation:

[https://tour.dlang.org/tour/en/gems/compile-time-function- ev...](https://tour.dlang.org/tour/en/gems/compile-time-function-evaluation- ctfe)

An example of the kind of introspection available in the D stdlib:

[https://wiki.dlang.org/Finding_all_Functions_in_a_Module](https://wiki.dlang.org/Finding_all_Functions_in_a_Module)

This one's really cool, a library that lets you build an entire grammar of your choice and evaluate it at compile time:

[https://github.com/PhilippeSigaud/Pegged](https://github.com/PhilippeSigaud/Pegged)

Nim's metaprogramming seems quite similar, and I sometimes wonder if perhaps it took some inspiration from D.

<comment><USER7> > compile-time function evaluation

Sorry, potentially stupid question incoming: I thought this was pretty standard for c++ optimizing compilers. What makes D's version of this special?

<comment><USER8> It means you can run compile time programs without resorting to crazy template metaprogramming

<comment><USER9> C++ now has constexpr, so that pro is now shared by both C++ and D, somewhat (ignoring templates, D is still more versatile).

That being said, C++ template metaprogramming can be pretty elegant[1] (there was a video where she describes the template functional style, but it seems to have been deleted).

[1]: [https://github.com/hanickadot/compile-time-regular- expressio...](https://github.com/hanickadot/compile-time-regular-expressions)

<comment><USER2> constexpr accretes more power with every iteration, but it's still got a ways to go:

[https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/constexpr](https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/constexpr)

[https://dlang.org/spec/function.html#interpretation](https://dlang.org/spec/function.html#interpretation)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Eschewing all hidden function calls is a reasonable design choice, but you give up a lot.

No destructors means no smart pointers – and Zig doesn't seem to have a garbage collector, so I guess you need to free() things manually.

No operator overloading means, among other things, no custom numeric-like types – including wrapper types for units (e.g. Feet) unless the language provides separate support for those (e.g. Go does, Zig seemingly doesn't).

<comment><USER11> C++ and Rust need destructors because they both have unwinding and thus need to know how to destroy things. If there is no unwinding then calling destructors manually is not that bad if compiler checks that you do it. That said, I haven't used zig and don't know how it actually works.

<comment><USER12> I have yet to use Zig seriously, but I'm pretty sure "defer" is its solution to this problem: [https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#defer](https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#defer)

<comment><USER13> I asked this in another thread, but how do generics work in the absence of destructors? Let's separate the idea of a destructor from the idea that a destructor is implicitly called at the end of a scope.

In C++, if there weren't automatic destructor calls, you could still clean things up manually with a pseudo-destructor call, x.~T(), where T is the type of x.

In C, there are no (user-defined) generics, so you always know the concrete type of x, so you know whether it needs to have a destructor called and what the name of that destructor is.

In Zig, how would generic code create an instance of a generic type T that may or may not need to have a destructor called, ie. how do you know if you need to use defer and what the deferred expression should be? How would tooling be able to check that destructors were called if there is no special way of marking that a destructor exists?

<comment><USER14> Having used Zig a bit, and C++ for years, I personally believe that this sort of scenario is pretty rare. You can always add a no-op dealloc method to your type if you want a generic function to handle it correctly. Moreover, Zig has awesome metaprogramming support so you can probably think of a way to check the type parameter for a dealloc method and only generate the dealloc call for those types.

<comment><USER13> Pretty rare? What about ArrayList? I want ArrayList(T) to work whether T = i32 or T = ArrayList(i32).

> You can always add a no-op dealloc method to your type if you want a generic > function to handle it correctly

You're looking at it from the perspective of the generic consumer, not the generic author. The generic author generally does not have the ability to edit the type. Plus there are many types that do not have methods at all (integers, points, etc.).

> Moreover, Zig has awesome metaprogramming support so you can probably think > of a way to check the type parameter for a dealloc method and only generate > the dealloc call for those types.

Yes, you can detect and call a method called deinit that has the appropriate signature using @reflect. You can even put this in a function and call it a pseudo-destructor. But there's no guarantee that deinit has the actual semantics of a destructor without some kind of language-level agreement between class authors.

<comment><USER15> > I want ArrayList(T) to work whether T = i32 or T = ArrayList(i32).

This will work fine. Do you have a more specific example?

<comment><USER13> When I call deinit on an ArrayList(ArrayList(i32)) do the elements have deinit called on them?

<comment><USER15> How are you expecting to call deinit on an i32?

<comment><USER13> Not sure what you mean. The elements of an ArrayList(ArrayList(i32)) are ArrayList(i32)s.

To answer my question, no, they're not deinited. All deinit does is call self.allocator.free on the slice of elements, and for many allocators that's a nop. In fact none of ArrayLists methods take any kind of ownership of its elements. If you shrink an ArrayList(ArrayList(i32)) by one you leak the last ArrayList(i32). None of the methods call destructors on the elements because there is no generic notion of a destructor, only particular ad-hoc ones like deinit methods. ArrayList appears to solve the problem I mentioned above about generics not knowing if a generic type needs to have a destructor called by only supporting types that don't.

In C++, you'd write the function that clears a vector something like

        void clear() {
            for (auto p = ptr; p != ptr + len; ++p) {
                p->~T();
            }
            len = 0;
        }

For a vector<vector<int>> the syntax p->~T() calls the destructor on a vector<int> element. While for an vector<int> the syntax p->~T() is a pseudo- destructor call, ie. it does nothing. This makes the same generic code work when the elements of a vector need to have a destructor called and when they don't.

<comment><USER16> > Not sure what you mean. The elements of an ArrayList(ArrayList(i32)) are > ArrayList(i32)s.

I believe what he was wasking was "given an ArrayList(i32), how would you expect it to call deinit on the member i32s?". The answer, of course, is that you don't, which is also true of ArrayList(ArrayList(i32)). ArrayList absolutely supports heap-allocated types, you just have to free them yourself before calling deinit() on the ArrayList itself.

<comment><USER13> Which only brings us again (putting aside what virtue recommends that design over having destructors) to the same original question. If I have an ArrayList(T) for a generic type T, how do I know if the elements need to be freed before I deinit and how do I do that if they do?

<comment><USER16> I'm having trouble imagining a scenario where you'd have code that was so generic it could take an ArrayList of any arbitrary type and would also be responsible for its destruction.

But if you did, you could use `@TypeInfo` to inspect the inner type for a function named `deinit`, or some other criteria that made sense for this determination.

<comment><USER13> Any generic data type with a private ArrayList(T) member is an example. Unless you also expect callers to manually run destructors for elements of a type's private members, and their private members, etc. And it's not just about destroying the ArrayList entirely. Any function which just removes elements from an ArrayList needs to know how to destroy elements or else pass the buck for half its purpose to the caller. When I call shrink on an ArrayList(ArrayList(i32)) I'm supposed to preloop over the shrunken-over elements and call deinit on them before I call shrink? When I call the function that removes elements satisfying a predicate I'm supposed to preloop over the elements and call deinit on the ones I'm about to remove? Obviously not.

I already mentioned that hack. All you're doing there is introducing the ad- hoc notion of a destructors as a method named deinit. Again, in order for that to work in generic code that convention needs to be blessed by the language.

<comment><USER16> > Again, in order for that to work in generic code that convention needs to be > blessed by the language.

Technically it only needs to be blessed by the standard library in this case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > There are some standard library features that provide and work with heap > allocators, but those are optional standard library features, not built into > the language itself.

Note that this is also true of Rust. Programs build using `no_std` and `libcore` don't have an allocator. A surprising amount of functionality is still available, like sorting and string splitting.

<comment><USER18> Yes, but zig takes it a step further by allowing you to pass a heap allocator into the standard array/vector type.

There are discussions about implementing something similar in Rust, but it doesn't exist yet...

<comment><USER19> C++17 allows that too with all the containers in the std::pmr namespace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I still don't get why they provide a warn() to stderr but no print() to stdout. [1]

[1] [https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#Hello- World](https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#Hello-World)

<comment><USER21> If you have a command line application, you probably either want to use a library that provides colors and more features, or output to file (where writing to stdout is more appropriate than "print").

When developing, "print" is more commonly used as an aid for the developer. Most "print" messages should either be removed or outsourced to a library when the program nears completion. "warn" fills a similar purpose as "print".

If you really want "print", a small function that writes to stdout is quick to write.

<comment><USER22> If I'm writing a command line application then, most of the time, I just want to let the user know what's going on. It doesn't always have to be fancy and I don't want to track down a third party library to tell the user all went well and give basic statistics. I'd go ballistic if I had to download a library to print out "35 records processed." It just doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER15> Then use std.debug.warn?

Quoting the docs linked above:

> Usually you don't want to write to stdout. You want to write to stderr. And > you don't care if it fails. It's more like a warning message that you want > to emit. For that you can use a simpler API:

        const warn = @import("std").debug.warn;

        pub fn main() void {
            warn("Hello, world!\n");
        }

<comment><USER23> The message "35 records processed" isn't a warning, nor should it necessarily go to stderr.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> From what I've seen so far, I really like the clean syntax of Zig. I want to like Rust, but it looks so verbose and loaded with special characters.

<comment><USER25> I'm curious. What do you (or other people) dislike about special characters. For me, they are _more_ readable than text (maybe I should start writing APL ;-) ).

Granted, I'm dyslexic and apparently dyslexia only affects characters which are phonetic. This has also been my experience and I _love_ Chinese characters in Japanese text because it's _much_ more comfortable for me to read. So that's why I might prefer symbols.

I'm wondering, though, why people dislike symbols (and I know it's a very common thing). It's just like any other letter, except that it has a meaning. I wonder, it is because it's hard to read phonetically (just the opposite of my problem)? Whenever I've asked people they say "Symbols are ugly", which is kind of an unhelpful response. It's like saying, "I don't like it because it is unlikable". I hope someone has a slightly deeper insight into the reasons.

<comment><USER26> The more symbols used, the less it looks like a human-consumable language (note: "looks like", not "is").

The more symbols, the harder it is to unpack the code into (and restate in a) human language. Even in your head. IOW, if you're mostly monoligual, and you think about code in English (or whatever your preferred language is), more symbols can actually make it harder to think about the code.

Trivial example: _a = a+b_ is slightly easier to say (and think) in English than _a += b_

<comment><USER27> > The more symbols used, the less it looks like a human-consumable language

I read this as "the more symbols used, the more it looks like mathematics". I guess this is really a matter of personal taste :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > C++, Rust, and D have a large number of features and it can be distracting > from the actual meaning of the application you are working on.

I've just started working in Rust and found it to have the right number of features compared to C++.

</comment><comment><USER20> The article states

> Zig has no macros and no metaprogramming

but then in another place about zig[1]:

> Compile-time reflection and compile-time code execution

This does sound arbitrary more complex than macros (and is what actually got me interested in zig).

[1] [https://www.patreon.com/andrewrk](https://www.patreon.com/andrewrk)

<comment><USER29> I think the original idea behind compile-time evaluation is that it simplifies metaprogramming (compared to e.g. templates or macros), because there's only one set of evaluation rules - so the language works the same way, it's just that some parts of the program are run at compile time.

<comment><USER30> Compile-time evaluation is for faster startup (initialization is done at compile time).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is a tetris clone made in zig [https://github.com/andrewrk/tetris](https://github.com/andrewrk/tetris)

I bit hard to follow without the syntax highlighting, but seems a good example of what a larger application would look like.

<comment><USER15> Here's an even better example: [https://github.com/Hejsil/pokemon- randomizer](https://github.com/Hejsil/pokemon-randomizer)

Also here's a game: [https://gitlab.com/dbandstra/oxid/](https://gitlab.com/dbandstra/oxid/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> What I want in a systems language is heap allocations that are typed. A Monad basically to wrap the heap context.

</comment><comment><USER33> Heh, property keyword was my favorite in Delphi/C# and I really missed it in C++. So Zig is not for me.

</comment><comment><USER34> I have nothing against Zig, but... am I the only one feeling "new programming language fatigue" lately? Seems like there are several new ones per week these days.

<comment><USER35> It's getting easier to build them.

<comment><USER36> It's not - it's getting harder to build worthwhile ones.

The barrier to entry is higher, the expectations on the size of the standard library are higher, the expected quality of tools is higher.

<comment><USER37> But it's getting easier to just implement a language at all. That might be all you need to hit HN. No one said anything about "worthwhile" ones.

<comment><USER38> That says a lot more about HN than about anything else...

<comment><USER37> It says that we look for more in an idea than pure utility, that cleverness and beauty also count. That's a good thing.

<comment><USER38> > That's a good thing.

Maybe, maybe not, but luckily that question's not very important. Here's what is:

Where is the cleverness and beauty in _Yet Another Boring LLVM Frontend_ (tm)? Zig and Rust are more than that, I'll readily grant - but that description does fall under the umbrella of "implementing a language".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Beware of criminals pretending to be WHO - <AUTHOR> https://www.who.int/about/communications/cyber-security <comment><USER2> > Make sure the link starts with '[https://www.who.int'](https://www.who.int')

This should include a trailing slash, otherwise something like '[https://www.who.int.example.com'](https://www.who.int.example.com') qualifies as "starts with '[https://www.who.int](https://www.who.int) '".

Edit: strangely, if I try to edit my comment above to remove the space between .int and ', HN serves me a 502 Bad Gateway.

<comment><USER3> \--I'm writing this comment because I want to see if I can reproduce that bug.--

Well, I give up. Whether or not I get the error appears to not only depend on the text I'm trying to change _to_ , but also the text I'm changing _from_. It does look like HN is trying to parse the URL, and is unhappy with a URL that ends with the three characters <'".>. But the weird hysteresis... I can't guess.

(How on earth am I supposed to quote a string like <'".>?)

<comment><USER4> > (How on earth am I supposed to quote a string like <'".>?)

Well, obviously... "'\"."

:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't worry, we won't be fooled again.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm sure it works but it is an interesting angle for a scam.

I can't imagine a reason the WHO would contact me directly, ever.

Now my wife, she gets constant calls from the "FBI" demanding information. I mean that's hard to belive too (they're very mean and threatening but somehow have never found us...) but at least the FBI seems like a government organization that I would belive would have some sort of ... jurisdiction.

But I suppose when I have a lot of government related conversations with people and have to have the "that's not how it works ... at all" type discussions, I guess a lot of people just don't know.

<comment><USER7> My current favorite is Jerome Powell telling me I have a metric tonne of money to claim.

That said, WHO is an interesting choice. Would anyone really act based on their demands? edit. CDC seems better.

<comment><USER8> I kinda wonder what the overlap between people who know who Jerome Powell is and the people who would fall for this

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> After reading this story: [https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-mom-broke-into- prison-wa...](https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-mom-broke-into-prison- wardens-computer/) , one should also be wary of people claiming to be from the local health authorities.

Imagine that, people in hazmat suits barge in, claim someone called them from your office building, they're there to secure the building, etc, etc...

<comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_(security)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_\(security\))

If you ever need to be somewhere important put on a reflective vest and a hard hat and walk around with a clipboard saying excuse me excuse me and more often than not you can get right on thru.

<comment><USER11> I used to work in penetration testing. It's funny (scary?) how far dressing business casual, carrying an open laptop, and claiming to be IT gets you.

<comment><USER12> I've done quite a few wireless surveys as a consultant in businesses, colleges, etc. I pretty much was never questioned when walking around, knocking on doors and going into offices with my laptop opened and saying that I was "scanning the wifi signal level for IT". I sometimes was given a set of keys and if they didn't work on a door I'd ask someone in the department there if they'd let me in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Isn't point #1 and (partly) #2 incredibly dangerous? Sender field is easy to spoof, and while advice to go directly to their website is sound, it doesn't explain what "checking the link" actually entails, and many might not know a link in an email can say one thing and take you somewhere different.

So people reading this might be _more_ susceptible to future, more sofisticated, attempts of the same type, rather than less.

<comment><USER14> Receiving an email from @who.int isn't a guarantee that the email is legit, but it is a minimal requirement and they aren't claiming otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was happy to see WHO has coronavirus.com.

Edit: Ha, not even owned by them.

<comment><USER16> not WHO owned, registered 2002, wow that's some foresight

now they are getting search rank by getting people to link to it and later they can redirect it or put whatever content they want on it

<comment><USER17> Not really. COVID-19 is not the first major coronavirus. SARS and MERS come to mind.

[https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases- conditions/coronaviruses](https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases- conditions/coronaviruses)

<comment><USER18> Outside of those two (now 3), I thought also there were a bunch of relatively harmless coronaviruses that people just consider comparable to common cold.

Wikipedia says:

Coronaviruses were discovered in the 1960s.[8] The earliest ones discovered were infectious bronchitis virus in chickens and two viruses from the nasal cavities of human patients with the common cold that were subsequently named human coronavirus 229E and human coronavirus OC43.[9]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus#Discovery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus#Discovery)

And later:

Coronaviruses are believed to cause a significant proportion of all common colds in adults and children.

The coronaviruses HCoV-229E, -NL63, -OC43, and -HKU1 continually circulate in the human population and cause respiratory infections in adults and children world-wide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> chuckle at the ironic title, better prep yourself if your country's CDC still listen to WHO for advice

</comment><comment><USER20> I thought the WHO were the criminals

<comment><USER21> I thought The Who were a rock music band.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Call for the resignation of Tedros.

[https://change.org/p/united-nations-call-for-the- resignation...](https://change.org/p/united-nations-call-for-the-resignation- of-tedros-adhanom-ghebreyesus-who-director-general)

<comment><USER12> Would it really have made any difference? As far as I have observed each and every country ( and in some cases states and provinces) are setting their own levels of containment and will continue to do so.</comment></comment>


What no code tools are currently available? - <AUTHOR> Which tools are already out there to create web apps without need for coding? Which ones are you currently working on? <comment><USER2> Plethora of them out there:Depending on what you want to build.

[https://www.Webflow.com](https://www.Webflow.com) [https://www.dronahq.com](https://www.dronahq.com) [https://www.airtable.com](https://www.airtable.com) [https://www.bubble.io](https://www.bubble.io)</comment>


Clang Static Analyzer checker-268 adds interprocedural analysis for C++ and ObjC - <AUTHOR> http://clang-analyzer.llvm.org/release_notes.html#checker_268

<comment> throwaway54-762 While the potential is really exciting, there isn't much of a story here. I'm sure someone will eventually write a blog post showcasing whole classes of errors detected by the new checker -- I'll upvote that.

</comment><comment><USER2> In case anyone else is wondering what this means: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interprocedural_optimization>

<comment><USER3> This is most certainly _not_ for interprocedural optimization. This is part of Clang's static analyzer, which is for finding bugs.

<http://clang-analyzer.llvm.org/>

<comment><USER2> Oh, apologies.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Want to Acquire Thinkpad T400s - <AUTHOR> Hello, I'm currently using a librebooted x200, and I want to upgrade to a t400s (for the screen, increased CPU cache, and touchpad). However I can't seem to find one anywhere. I was wondering if there's a cabal of thinkpad enthusiasts who could help me look somewhere better than ebay. I already own a t400, but it's honestly too bulky to fit properly in my backpack with the rest of my belongings. <comment><USER2> Btw. what happened to the XO-4 order? (I couldn't leave a comment on that post of yours because I found it too late)

</comment><comment><USER3> Set an alert in eBay/Craigslist.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yo I didn't know about this feature, tyvm.</comment></comment>


Ubuntu VMs Under Windows with Multipass - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/22/multipass/ <comment><USER2> Snapcraft recently moved to Multipass as the default build environment for building snaps. I am excited that this might open the possibility to build snaps on Windows.</comment>


Google Cloud Storage now provides server-side encryption - <AUTHOR> http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2013/08/google-cloud-storage-now-provides.html

<comment><USER2> Server side encryption? We want client side encryption and the server doesn't get to know the key.

</comment><comment><USER3> > To help, Google Cloud Storage now automatically encrypts all data before it > is written to disk, at no additional charge. There is no setup or > configuration required, no need to modify the way you access the service and > no visible performance impact. The data is automatically and transparently > decrypted when read by an authorized user.

In other words, if someone is able to gain remote access to Google Cloud data, Google handles the decryption for them automatically. Google data centres have damn good physical security, so getting access by other means is not big concern.

While this improves security marginally. This is just Google PR move trying to distract users from the fact that they have the keys and they give those keys to NSA when they ask for them.

ps. If they would allow users to set and manage the keys as they please, they would make NSA snooping little more difficult. Instead of having instant bulk access to everything, they would need to investigate the apps running and that would involve humans.

<comment><USER4> Not every feature is about the NSA nor every upgrade is a "PR move", this is a standard feature that Amazon also offers, and keeping law enforcement out isn't its main objective although it would make things a bit difficult for them since a warrant would be necessary to get the keys as a court order won't do, but if you are so inclined no one is preventing you from encrypting your stuff before uploading.

<comment><USER3> My understanding is that google cloud storage is not offering disc space. Data goes always trough their interfaces and databases. That would make difference to Amazon's offerings.</comment></comment></comment>


Did Facebook's faulty data push publishers to make terrible decisions on video? - <AUTHOR> http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/10/did-facebooks-faulty-data-push-news-publishers-to-make-terrible-decisions-on-video/ <comment><USER3> I have unlimited 4G data but I never watch videos. For one I don't want sound blaring out of my phone. Second I can actually read faster than your video. Information density.

Our ancestors invented the script for a reason and its not going anywhere.

<comment><USER4> For videos to work, I would assume that you'd need the audio to play as well, in most cases anyway. The thing is, I don't know anyone who doesn't mute their phone (or computer) all the time, and old un-mute when they really want to watch, and hear, a video.

It's certainly Facebooks fault for giving out wrong statistics, but I also feel like the advertising industry have failed to do extremely basic research.

<comment><USER5> I don't. I keep the ringer volume muted, but the media volume turned up - <USER2> usually serves me pretty well.

...until I hit an autoplaying video somewhere, but I usually just learn to avoid sites that do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If the ads are in any way related to conversions, the data comes home to roost very, very quickly.

Ad spends are measured and results are tracked.

The value of those ads is a function of how far the needle is moved.

It's only when the needle can only be loosely measured can this go awry. For example, in a brand awareness campaign, it's sometimes hard to measure effect.

If FB was reporting '80% viewed' when it was '20%' then it's basically fraud.

What some guy says at a conference about 'the future of ads' is almost irrelevant, people are saying things all the time, and even if companies were to allocated more budget there ... they should see the results for themselves and adjust.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, time viewed is really only a vanity metric that only someone building a campaign with no direct result at all would look at.

The kind of big business campaign just blowing money on branding is probably getting an even worse return on TV.

<comment><USER6> Time viewed is not a vanity metric for a brand awareness campaign (fyi those a 'real things'), or even an indirect campaign say for a movie launch where a 3 second view is not the same as a 25 second view.

If you're launching a big film like Avengers, a 25 second view is a like a 'soft lead' and you can correlate that to how many tickets you're going to sell.

Brand awareness is much more intangible, but they are in the end real things.

But yes, the softer metrics are massively abused by agencies, and in-house marketing teams trying to justify spend, hires etc..

Weirdly, so much of the 'conversion' stuff is utter crap, like ads for 'photos of Jet Fighters' or 'actresses with and without makeup' where they jam 40 ads on the screen each time. It's this kind of crap that really ruins the internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's simplistic to lay publishing's woes so squarely at the feet of Facebook's video stats. This was contributing factor, certainly, but the executives who pivoted to video weren't abandoning 7% margins on text in search of 15% margins — if they were, they'd likely have left the text operation intact and built video atop a successful business. Editorial operations were already struggling! In some cases, the promise of video may have spurred additional investment in publishers that wouldn't have been able to get it with just text. While video is more expensive to produce, the CPMs are also higher, which creates a bigger cashflow. It seems likely that this was a factor in Buzzfeed's NBCUniversal rounds.

<comment><USER9> Many orgs had to let a bunch of people from text to free up resources for video, video being so much more expensive than text/audio.

<comment><USER10> Hold up - they didn't "have to" let anyone go, they chose to because they wanted to hire other people.

<comment><USER11> No. They didn't "had to" produce more video content. But once they decided to do just that, they _had to_ let people go because producing video is more expensive. That's what the GP is saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It wasn't just Facebook metrics that made people jump on the video bandwagon. The whole video ad stack from player to ad server to header bidding wrapper to bandwidth is full of ways to spend 4-6 figures per month on fixed overhead and variable cost to run a player at scale, let alone production. Most pubs have been financially burned on video by an industry that can't quite understand why it isn't working. All the while, marketers continue to have the largest and most impactful influence ever with TV.

I know why it isn't working: human hands are made for interacting with things. While sitting in front of a TV, we humans tend to believe what we're told, and we're typically prone, not on guard. Who wants to hold an ad in their hands? Who doesn't feel burned when a video ad interrupts their flow of their digital (fingeratively) pleasure trail?

Now imagine what kind of influence can be had over another when they are in a fully immersive digital (binary) experience. Its like handing over your entire limbic system to the machine.

Malevolent influence at scale is remarkably accepted by humans, it is our past. I hope our future moves towards respecting the sovereignty of individual human consciousness.

Laws, attitudes, and behaviors need to change. We all who have been Branded have had a piece of our identity conformed to serve the ambition of another. I think the average American brain walking through the grocery store is analogous to a chairlift pole covered in stickers, a wall covered in layers of gum. Any exactly how do you clean away an Impression?

I'm a recovering internet marketer. I've felt lousy for a long time for having been so cavalier with influence. I've been trying to see what better looks like for a long time. What do you think better looks like? Feels like?

<comment><USER13> I believe people are just applying whatever worked on TV blindly, but on the TV you are buying a part of the flow, while on the web you are buying an interruption to the flow which should discount its cost right out the door. And while there are many ways with which text ads can fit in a document layout, there is not many ways to lay out an ad in a video. I find the product placements that many youtubers do is more appealing, and a better way to promote a brand rather than "this ad will close in 20 seconds"

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Weren't people spending more time on video on Facebook due to Facebook prioritizing video and pages turning still images into videos of still images?

Anyone else know what I'm referring to here? You see an image someone shared, but it's a video, so you click it, and it's still a still image, because page admins were trying to game the system.

<comment><USER15> What? Really? I don't use FB but sounds like something anyone would do to game the system

<comment><USER14> Yerp. Here are a few links regarding the issue:

[https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-post-short-videos-of- sti...](https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-post-short-videos-of-still-images- on-Facebook-instead-of-just-an-image)

[https://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/facebook- cr...](https://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/facebook-cracks-down- static-images-video-and-fake-video-play-buttons-new-algorithm)

<comment><USER15> thanks, people always trying to outsmart others...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How is this different from Volkswagen? They inflated a metric by 600+% according to the legal documents on the article, for 2+ years. And kept all the revenue from the 'mistake' while crushing competitors that lost business for those two years.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure if you are suggesting FB should face similar consequences as VW or that FB's conduct is excusable because others do similar things.

Some differences are that VW plead guilty and paid a 2.8B $ fine, the CEO resigned, executives have been facing criminal charges, and a slew of international cases are still outstanding. Another difference is that VW's deceit had direct human health consequences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> From the the linked post in the article ([https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-overestimated-key- vide...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-overestimated-key-video-metric- for-two-years-1474586951)):

> Ad buying agency Publicis Media was told by Facebook that the earlier > counting method likely overestimated average time spent watching videos by > between 60% and 80%, according to a late August letter Publicis Media sent > to clients that was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

From the FB post ([https://www.facebook.com/business/news/facebook-video- metric...](https://www.facebook.com/business/news/facebook-video-metrics- update)):

> The metric should have reflected the total time spent watching a video > divided by the total number of people who played the video. But it didn't – > it reflected the total time spent watching a video divided by only the > number of "views" of a video [...].

How does this work?

<comment><USER19> They explain that a "view" is when the user watches the video for more than 3 seconds.

View time is probably highly heavily skewed towards plays that last less than 3 seconds. (also because facebook autoplays videos without any pause time)

If 60% of viewers play the video for 0-3 seconds, and only 40% view the rest of the video, you're grossly overstation the average view time.

Removing users with less than 3 seconds seems 100% intentional (to avoid exposing the fact that most viewers are not _really_ viewers, they immediately dismiss the video), not an error.

<comment><USER20> Right on.

In other words, fb measures were correct for "people watching videos for 3 seconds or more". But they didn't: 1\. Qualify their numbers with that. 2\. Disclose how many people were NOT watching videos.

Without these two critical details, the numbers represented "all Facebook users".

<comment><USER21> No, they were still incorrect for "people watching videos for 3 seconds or more." For that to be correct, the total view time (numerator in the figure in the article) would have to be view time only for those users who watched >3 seconds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > "The best way to tell stories, in this world where so much information is > coming at us, actually is video," Mendelsohn continued. "It commands so much > more information in a much quicker period. So actually, the trend helps us > to digest more of the information, in a quicker way."

This opinion is hard to swallow. This is not . at . all true. If the "information" you're trying to convey is colors and bokeh, sure...

<comment><USER23> A few months ago I would have agreed wholeheartedly. I recently had to replace the alternator on my 2008 solara and after finding instructions in text form unclear I found a video on YouTube that made the process extremely easy. Thing is, there were a few tiny details I was able to glean from the video that made the difference being very frustrated and very successful.

<comment><USER24> For complex instructions like vehicle repair, videos can be amazing -- especially with good focus and lighting.

For letting me know what Trump tweeted yesterday, I don't need a five minute video with commentary. Even for protests and marches, a few pictures and a paragraph will pretty much do. Most news I'm happy to just read about.

<comment><USER23> Agreed. I guess video vs text is like most tools. Use the one that's the best fit for the job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been in and around the commercial spot industry for most of my employable life. I've seen the rise & fall of production work due to the lower cost to entry to professional quality gear and the bottom falling out in '08. TV ad sales have never gone away though. The production budgets fell, but not the ad buys. There now exists video productions solely for online, and it will never see TV. From my conversations with these agencies, online ad click through rates are still a drop in the bucket from their TV presence. How they justify this I don't know, and I know that's supposed to be a huge selling point of online advertising.

Does that mean video is more effective than text?? Depends on your agency I guess, or maybe depends on the campaign.

<comment><USER26> How is the ROI or whatever the TV equivalent of click through rates measured for TV commercials? Is the measurement different between ads that focus on selling something vs those that focus on maintaining brand awareness (like Coca Cola and the big car makers)?

<comment><USER25> That's what I've never understood. I'm in the camera department, so I'm just concerned with with acquiring the picture. I've chatted with some of the ad peeps on set, but they are mainly concerned with getting the spot produced. I've never properly chatted with the analytics folks. I'm assuming in the old days, it was Nielsen ratings. Today, I'd assume your digital cable box is providing all of the analytics ever needed. Still don't know how comparing eyeballs viewing an ad translates to people spending dollars in a store.

I have had direct conversations with small market clients. The client hired a new agency, and that agency hired us to shoot the spots. The agency came up with a decent small market campaign. The next time it came time to shoot the next series of spots, the client mentioned the spike in business from the ads after they started airing. Yes, the agency also had radio and online campaign, but it was the TV ads that resulted in the spike in calls. ROI must be pretty good. In a single day shoot, we can shoot 6 spots for this client. They then air 1 spot per month.

I'd imagine the smaller market clients can see a significant ROI vs mega- clients shooting brand awareness campaigns. If you've ever seen Mad Men and how they put agencies on annual retainers, then you'll get what I mean. The Madison Avenue crowd probably have tons of research, but that's so far out of my circles of interest.

<comment><USER13> My theory is that all is faith-based. Because the amount spent on advertising is relatively small, advertisers are happy to spend whatever the publisher asks, and their management will still be happy. As long as both advertisers and publishers believe they provide value to each other (and they definitely do, they just don't know how much) the model is not questioned and everybody 's happy.

Online banner advertising is often similar , with the major difference that there is a limited 24 hours in a day in which the TV budget gets allocated, while there are vastly more publishers on the web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > In one, Facebook had inflated Average Duration of Video Viewed from 2.0 > seconds to 17.5 seconds (an increase of 775%); in the other, Facebook had > inflated Average Duration of Video Viewed from 2.4 seconds to 17.3 seconds > (an increase of 621%).

How does Facebook measure the success of video viewership? From my experience, Facebook forces you to view the whole ad. This contrasts with YouTube: You are forced to watch for a few seconds and can opt-out later.

This gives an important signal: The viewer was not interested and thus bailed out. He didn't watch the whole video. This can't happen in Facebook: You are forced to watch the whole video-ad if you want to carry on watching your original video.

Another complaint: Auto-Play. If I'm watching a video, Facebook will auto-jump to another video in a ridiculously short-amount of time. There is not opt-out of this behavior. You are forced to watch the next video; and potentially the next ad.

Again, this contrasts with YouTube: Auto-Play is opt-in. The time before the player jumps to the next video is significantly longer. The time before the player jump in Facebook is so short that I almost always fail to prevent it.

So dark-patterned Facebook these days. It is really annoying, scary and unfriendly.

</comment><comment><USER28> >"The best way to tell stories, in this world where so much information is coming at us, actually is video," Mendelsohn continued. "It commands so much more information in a much quicker period. So actually, the trend helps us to digest more of the information, in a quicker way."

How bad of a reading disorder do you have to have to think you can extract information more efficiently from video than text?

</comment><comment><USER29> Nobody is mentioning video ads. I would gladly consume more video on my phone if there wasn't an adroll.

I can use adblock on my computer, but it's more difficult on the phone (DNS66, etc) so less likely I will have adblocking on the phone.

As publishers moved more to video to capitalize on video plays, so did ads come with them, thus video became less appealing for me.

That's how it played out for me the past 2 years, and probably you too.

<comment><USER16> Why is it more difficult on a phone?

it is _exactly_ the same process as a desktop. First install a decent browser (not the crap one shipped by the OEM), for example, firefox for Android. Then install your favorite adblocker extensions (which should be uBlock Origin). Done. No step 3!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This sound bite from WNYC Marketplace [1] reminded me of how shakey creative industry has always been.

"Who cares how long people watch videos on facebook? News organizations...thinking video was where the ad money was." [...]

Ben Bradford (reporting). [...] Just months after he was hired, Gonzales was let go [as a video producer for Mic].

Gabe. And we started seeing the same happen everywere. Any you know I think at that point you realize the jig is up, right?

[1]: [Marketplace Business: A look back at the "pivot to video" after a new lawsuit alleges Facebook misled about video viewership]([https://www.marketplace.org/2018/10/18/economy/facebook- pivo...](https://www.marketplace.org/2018/10/18/economy/facebook-pivot-video- news-journalism-jobs-advertisers))

</comment><comment><USER31> > _What does seem clear now is that Facebook's executives' statements about > video should not have been a factor in news publishers' decisions to lay off > their editorial staffs. But it's hard not to conclude that publishers heard > that rhapsodizing about the future and assumed that Facebook knew better > than they did, that Facebook's data must be more accurate than their own > data was, that Facebook was perceiving something that they could not. That > their own eyes were wrong._

If you're making massive, sweeping changes to the structure of your business and product offering based on Facebook PR, you deserve to go out of business.

What FB said could have even been true and these organizations could have staffed up on all video only to later become victims of an algorithm change or some arbitrary FB rule in the future.

</comment><comment><USER32> Did internet ad fraud con advertisers? Direct clicks and conversions are such lowest common denominator crap. Suitable for ponzi schemes and snake oil sales. Tesla advertises amazingly well online. Their conversion rate is clearly zero. Not close to zero, not "they don't care" It is zero, nothing, not one single conversion.

Across the breadth range of companies built on advertising from coca cola to chanel as far as I can see they don't use internet ads. These companies have not gone away. Google, Facebook, ebay etc etc all have poster ads in my town. I guess targeted internet ads didn't work for their purposes.

<comment><USER33> What you are describing isn't a con. A coke billboard fills a different purpose than a coupon or a transactional online ad.

What is a con is telling advertisers that I watched something for 5 minutes, when in fact I watched for 5 seconds. Imagine if you were an advertiser who paid for a product placement in videos. Your campaign was a total waste of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The moral of the story: if what the "person/organization who ought to know about these things" is telling you doesn't make sense or doesn't match with your own experience, consider the possibility that they might be just plain wrong. Especially if it would be wrong in a way that makes them look better.

<comment><USER35> What about the equally important take away that you can trust Facebook to lie at any chance it suits them?

<comment><USER36> I'm curious why Facebook chose to share the wrong metrics. What was the intent?

<comment><USER37> "why Facebook chose to share the wrong metrics"

Why did you choose to include that bug into your code?

Srsly, people don't choose to make mistakes (but sometimes they choose to do cover up).

Also, there is no such things as "Facebook". Facebook didn't choose, someone inside Facebook either make mistake, or deliberate decision. "Facebook" is not single entity with single agenda and plan, but complex company, with different people optimizing for different things (i.e. security/privacy and growth and ads). There is shared high-level vision, but not every decision is made at single place.

<comment><USER36> State a falsehood with the intent to deceive is implied by "lie." I'm curious what intent people are ascribing to this action.

You say it was a mistake, at the same time you give many reasons why it likely wasn't a mistake: many people vet the public-facing communications of such a large company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> From the linked FB post ([https://www.facebook.com/business/news/facebook- video-metric...](https://www.facebook.com/business/news/facebook-video- metrics-update)):

> This error should not stand in the way of our ultimate goal, which is to do > what's in the best interest of our partners and their business growth.

<comment><USER38> Hooo wait, I thought it was about connecting the world!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > "All the while, Facebook continued to reap the benefits from the inflated > numbers"

I don't see how Facebook benefited from the data being wrong. Facebook wins by having publishers to produce formats and content that users actually want to see.

<comment><USER40> Facebook was launching it's own competing news thing wasn't it? eg clearing away some of the potential competitors

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This seems like that lawsuit against Google adsenes while back. the settlement, if any, will be very low and will go mostly to lawyers. like google, Facebook is very, very good at winning its cases and paying very little otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER42> This reads like a carefully disguised defend, deflect, and dilute piece crafted against the publishers on belhalf of Facebook. Are we sure it is not paid for by Facebook or some entity aligned with Facebook?

</comment><comment><USER43> This truly feels like an article that doesn't understand the landscape of digital advertising. It is naive to believe that publishers are taking queues from Facebook on how to publish their content. All publishers ( including Facebook ) take their content queues based on what advertisers want. This is their source of revenue, and the only way to move the bottom line as a publisher. Video advertising is far more lucrative than banners. In order to create a consistent user experience, you cannot have video ads alongside static content. While the miscalculation is certain metrics might have made Facebooks inventory look a little better, it 100% did not have an industry changing influence as indicated here.

</comment><comment><USER44> I knew it! But seriously I've heard about this " trend" for years but anecdotally most people I know don't consume random videos on social networks.

Vids from friends?

That seems to be a different story.

</comment><comment><USER40> So Facebook repeatedly gives publishers incorrect info, and some of those publishers go broke.

Meanwhile, Facebook is getting it's own (news) publishing operation off the ground. Which could probably do with having less competitors.

That could be viewed in a rather specific light. "Operating in Bad Faith" might be the nicest way to put it? ;)</comment>