1.85% of Steam users run Linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.itsmdaily.com/2014/01/01/1-85-steam-users-run-linux/ <comment><USER2> Very exciting times for Linux gaming this year. With next quarter's Intel Broadwell chipset - which incidentally runs off _official_ open source drivers on Linux [1] [2] - we should have a pretty awesome Steam experience on Linux. As the Intel dude puts it :

* Intel's Ben Widawsky, who works on Intel's Linux graphics driver efforts, says that "Broadwell graphics bring some of the biggest changes we've seen on the execution and memory management side of the GPU… [the changes] dwarf any other silicon iteration during my tenure, and certainly can compete with the likes of the gen3->gen4 changes."*

Pretty the much the only reason I'm putting off buying a laptop right now.

[1] [http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/12/30/1550239/intel- releas...](http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/12/30/1550239/intel- releases-5000-pages-of-open-source-haswell-documentation) [2] [http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_bro...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_broadwell_linux&num=1)

</comment><comment><USER3> Anecdote.

I actually installed steam yesterday (for the first time, I'm not a gamer) to see the available games for Linux.

I was pleasantly surprised that there were a few that looked okay. So I bought a couple. None worked -- mysterious launch errors, etc. No luck after a couple hours of debugging.

DISAPPOINTED!

I seriously question how many people actually _run_ on Linux vs. login and browse the store? That said, I'm sure the experience will improve and it's great to see Linux as a growing platform for games!

<comment><USER4> Most games work, but the problems fall into a few categories:

1) Missing libraries: Almost always 32-bit/64-bit problems.

2) Missing executable: this is usually fixed sooner or later.

3) Graphics problems: This shouldn't be a problem on NVIDIA systems, and the Intel Mesa drivers are pretty good these days, but it still can occur.

<comment><USER5> Ergo StreamOS.

I wouldn't bother running Steam on a non-valve distro, it just doesn't seem practical given the options available (Win/OSX/SteamOS).

Full disclosure: I use Steam on OSX & inside a Windows VM. My biggest peeve is that Valve restricts the Steam client to a single runtime (meaning: I can't run steam on OSX & Windows at the same time "This account is logged in elsewhere"). So I'm always switching between the two, which causes a bit of user fatigue. Come on, just allow unlimited instances/logins from the same IP. I digress.

<comment><USER6> Steam on Windows isn't all that great either. It's 2014 now and Steam still ignores the "multi user" aspect of Windows.

Have Steam installed and want to logon automatically so you don't have to enter your password everytime? Great, just tick the appropriate checkbox.

Works great for me, but when my brother uses the PC with his own Windows account, you already know what happens when he tries to start Steam and wants to play using his Steam acount. Correct, he gets auto logged in into _my_ Steam Account. Because as far as Valve is concerned, 1 PC == 1 Steam Install == 1 Steam User.

Granted, Windows wasn't always "multi user" but I think it has been for quite some time now ;) Seeing this and looking into their Linux efforts and their SteamOS for the "Family" and "Living Room" I really see some problems for them unless they finally change this behavior. In a family and in a living room you are bound to have multiple users with Multiple Steam Accounts and especially on a TV, I bet many people would like to log in automatically instead of having to log in manually using a controller to type out the password.

<comment><USER7> Last time I tried, I solved this with just copying the Steam folder and each person starts Steam from their own Steam folder. A lot of wasted space since we got duplicates of all games, but it worked.

<comment><USER8> windows supports symlinks, you might want to try symlinking the steamapps folder, each steam user has their own settings bits inside steam anyways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Out of the table, it seems 0.85 percent run some flavor of Ubuntu. That leaves the other 1.00 percent running some other flavor. I've got it running on Debian GNU/Linux (Testing) and play TF2 and CS:S from time to time. I even picked up CS:GO during one of their mega sales for five bucks or so in the hope that they eventually port it over to Linux.

<comment><USER10> I'm running it on Fedora 20. Haven't tried any of the really complicated games yet, but just bought some new ones during the sale, so will know soon what's up.

As a data point: I wouldn't have bought anything during the sale, had they not had so many games that work with Linux. I reboot into Windows so rarely that it seems like an ordeal to do just for a game. Likewise, I'm considering canceling my Netflix account because I haven't used it in two or three months...don't want to reboot, and Amazon Prime videos work fine under Linux.

<comment><USER11> Netflix runs swimmingly well on my Ubuntu setup using the Pipelight plugin in Firefox. I haven't touched my Windows VM in forever!

<comment><USER10> Cool. That's relatively new. Last time I did research on the subject, you had to run a browser under Wine, and it was just too much trouble for me to go to the trouble to do it. Still seems a little complicated, requiring Wine, and a Silverlight install, but I guess it's an improvement. And, there _are_ a bunch of things I want to watch eventually that aren't on Amazon for free.

<comment><USER12> The magic is that pipelight is actually still powered by Wine, we've just automated some of the more annoying steps through the use of packages. Pipelight even embeds its own custom version of Wine so you don't have to mess with any of that either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This percentage is _huge_ since its fairly new and not all games are ported yet. When you think about this, majority of gamers were already rocking a windows dual boot or separate machine for gaming. This is 1.85% of the user base who switched over to Linux even though not all games were available to them yet.

<comment><USER14> This is not true at all. Most gamers aren't rocking dual-boots, and most gamers are still comfortably running with just a single Windows install of various flavors.

For a personal anecdote: I've been a gamer my entire life, but I didn't start dual-booting (or using two systems) until I decided to get serious with programming and hacking.

<comment><USER15> For me, even then, I didn't dual boot, for a long time I was happy programming in Windows and Linux was but a curiosity until I started working at iStock and one of the technical leads convinced me to give Vim a 2 week challenge where I immersed myself in it. Since then programming with linux as my IDE and Vim as my editor has ruined Windows for me, only thing I use it for now is XMBC + Netflix and Gaming.

I bought a dedicated laptop for programming. I have a dedicated box for gaming and one for media. With steam and pipelight it's the beginning of the end for my windows machines. I figure it's going to be gaming, as ever, that will keep the life support on my windows machine going, but it will be relegated to living in the utility room with my htpc if/when the Steam Machine streaming is proven.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is great! To me it's surprisingly high. I think this will be a slow process, because spending a day to backup & reinstall your OS is not a fun process. When I have time to game, I just want to turn my computer on and start gaming. I support gaming on Linux, and honestly even I've been too lazy to setup Linux on my gaming machine.

I think the shift will happen as people upgrade their computers, or have to reinstall their OS because of malware. I wonder what percentage of these gamers are using a pirated version of Windows, because my anecdotal experience is that anyone who's built a computer has pirated a copy of Windows. When building a computer on a budget, spending an extra $100 on your video card is more ideal than on the OS. So going legitimate and free would be a very attractive option for gamers.

<comment><USER17> Thanks, that was my initial reaction as well. I'd have expected it to be a few enthusiasts, maybe something like 50.000 worldwide. 1.85 % of the Steam user base is more than a million players!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think the big story here is that ~4% of Steam users run Vista. The year of the Linux desktop is very, very, very far away.

<comment><USER19> The Linux desktop will come when Microsoft loses its leverage over hardware manufacturers and they start to preinstall linux and stop putting up barriers to adoption (e.g. remove windows -> lose warranty).

It's already better than the windows desktop (xubuntu anyway, not unity, however). The barriers to uptake are no longer technical and haven't been for some years. It's all market + legal now.

<comment><USER20> Remember the netbook craze? They put linux on there, but they didn't start to sell in volume until they replaced it with windows.

When people buy something in a PC form factor they expect it to run windows. Linux on the desktop will not happen in a traditional desktop form factor because people don't want it and/or don't see the point. The one possible exception are chromebooks, because a laptop that only runs chrome and is therefore cheaper / lighter is something people see the point of.

Besides, linux as mass market OS has already happened, it's called android.

<comment><USER19> >Remember the netbook craze? They put linux on there, but they didn't start to sell in volume until they replaced it with windows.

Not exactly how I remember it. They sold like wildfire initially when linux was first put on it. Then MS started giving away windows licenses because they freaked out over linux adoption overtaking them.

Somehow them and intel managed to prevent all the hardware manufacturers from improving their specs (each year they got progressively worse).

Something very fishy went on with that market.

<comment><USER21> (BTW, congrats on having a post ID of exactly 7000000! [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7000000](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7000000) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Gaming on Linux still has a long way to go:

1) The drivers are still crappy. It's getting better but it still needs a lot of work. To simply manage multiple screens or to change resolution requires a restart! Nvidia is still better than AMD drivers.

2) Many games just get the Linux ports to a "working" condition and leave it at that. The games are really buggy. Valve games are top notch and deserve a lot of credit for creating a good experience. Thank you Valve.

3) Ubuntu needs to create a stable platform people can build on. Getting people to use LTS is good but it is still buggy (I have a lot of issues with Unity). Also, LTS software gets stale really quickly - there needs to be a solution for this (without PPAs).

<comment><USER23> The open source drivers for my ATI card are pretty good. Performance isn't spectacular but it's acceptable, and I've not run into any serious bugs for years, and I have no trouble changing resolution at all.

<comment><USER24> Is there any kind of hardware acceleration for 3D graphics? If no, then those drivers are pretty much useless for gaming.

<comment><USER25> There is hardware acceleration for the open source fglrx (radeon) drivers, nouveau (oss for nvidia), and closed source nvidia drivers.

<comment><USER22> For me, the open source radeon drivers do not work at all. I am on an AMD 7790 on Ubuntu 13.10. Is the hardware not supported yet?

Is the AMD open source driver better than the closed source one?

<comment><USER26> Support for the Radeon 7000 series in the open source driver arrived pretty slow. You should check to see what version of the driver is included with your distribution, as it could easily predate the 3d acceleration support.

For older hardware, the open source driver is getting competitive in terms of performance, and of course has the usual benefits of open source drivers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For what definition of "users" and "run"?

I signed up for Steam and installed it on linux, downloaded TF2 only to find that it would not work with Wheezy/my integrated Intel GPU _(I didn 't investigate beyond some "you don't support GLX_WHATEVER message, it could have been either)_, then deleted the installation and haven't done anything with it since.

I presumably am not counted in this statistic since I did not do that within the past month, but I wonder how many other people like that are.

<comment><USER28> I had the same issue. If I recall correctly, there is a relatively simple solution on the Ubuntu forums somewhere.

<comment><USER25> The solution isn't so simple on wheezy if you want to keep your install sane. AKA don't install debs from ubuntu/other repos.

When I last checked, what was necessary is backporting a new verison of libgl1-mesa and possibly other things. Haven't had time to see if that fixes it yet though.

<comment><USER29> Oh well, maybe 2015 will be the year of linux on the desktop.

<comment><USER30> For me and my wife and me for work it was 2007.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Mac users are still very low. I am a Mac user and I play games on my laptop. I hope they can release more games for the Mac platform as well. Although BF4 is not on Steam platform, it'd be nice to have a Mac version.

<comment><USER25> Linux -> Mac ports and vice versa will be much easier than Windows -> Mac ports so you might be in luck!

<comment><USER31> I wonder how much work they have to do to support retina.

<comment><USER32> Retina is just Apple's marketing term for high-density display, and is something that's been common in PC gaming for a decade.

Before the age of LCD my monitor had a whopping 1920x1440 res, many gamers opt into similarly high (16:9) resolutions now.

The higher pixel density isn't necessarily a plus, though. I find 1080p does just fine for everything and want my gpu to be able to render with AA, anisotropic filtering (check out Skyrim with and without AF), and other details. There is a constant tradeoffs in an industry where software demands much more than hardware can supply.

<comment><USER31> Thanks. I know a couple desktop tools have issues with retina (or high-density resolution as you said) support that's why I asked. It seems like there might be addition code have to be added.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> My boys have used the Steam client on Bodhi Linux for the past 6 months or so - it probably registers as Ubuntu. Half Life, HL2, Portal, Team Fortress all work very well. They also play a lot of Minecraft on those computers (not on Steam obviously).

They make very serviceable gaming computers.

</comment><comment><USER34> I took the survey while I was playing DotA2 on Ubuntu, but since taking the survey I no longer use Steam on Linux. The main reasons are that only 4/50 games in my library are available on Linux, and because graphics performance still sucks (Intel HD4400).

I'll try it out again whenever a new game is available or when there's a graphics driver update, but at the moment I'd much rather reboot into Windows than pull my hair out over how bad Linux is for gaming.

</comment><comment><USER25> I use steam on linux without problems on xubuntu. The problem is my main OS is debian wheezy and mesa is too old. That means I would have to backport libgl1 (iirc) and not fail (like the past 3 times).

I reboot into Xubuntu when I want to game though, and don't have any problems. Well except when I hook up to an external monitor... but I have a hacky xrandr script for that. I don't things are quite "there" yet for most people to game on linux.

<comment><USER30> >> I don't things are quite "there" yet for most people to game on linux.

You mean Debian Linux which is what you're running. Ubuntu runs Steam just fine even with the Unity interface. I can Alt+Enter to go back to the Desktop and do stuff then get back into a game.

<comment><USER25> No, I mean it's not there for Xubuntu/Ubuntu either. I have the same external monitor problem with both. The graphics drivers however have worked fine for me. However, my girlfriend who is running xubuntu with fglrx (radeon card) has slight issues with textures staying on screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I use steam on Linux extensively with a lot of more 'Indie' type games like Awesomenauts, Anomaly 1/2 and Guns of Icarus. Mostly no problems.

The thing that's always surprised me about Steam for Linux is how close the numbers are to those for Mac users.

</comment><comment><USER36> I wonder what percent of Steam games run on GNU/Linux. From my experience this is currently a very small value, as most of the games I want/wanted to play are/were not available.

Let's check my library... 82 titles total (not counting the junk/demo/beta entries), 18 of them have declared GNU/Linux support, that's 21%. Way more than I expected (before I started counting I thought it would be somewhere between 5 and 10%), but still almost none of the games I'd play (new ones I haven't played yet or old ones with personally high replay value).

So, it's still WINE and/or dual-boot for gaming. No changes here.

</comment><comment><USER37> What's more interesting to me is 20% of the users are on Windows 8/8.1

</comment><comment><USER38> Keep in mind that this only shows how many Linux users run native steam clients. A lot of us also run Steam through Wine so that we can play Windows- only games. It's a buggy experience, but what can you do...

</comment><comment><USER39> Part of the reason I use linux is that I want control. I like games too, but Steam doesn't give me control. I would prefer Steam didn't manage my games, I want everything separate from each other. Until I can do that, I won't use Steam (I've tried)

It wouldn't surprise me if there's a fundamental difference in thinking between linux vs other users. It's great that Steam's been providing Linux games, but that's just not enough for me.

</comment><comment><USER40> Bigger Question: Do linux folk spend money on software?

<comment><USER41> I seem to remember some statistics showing Linux users generally donating more for Humble Bundles than Windows and Mac users.

That doesn't mean they are more inclined to buy Steam games of course, but it does seem to indicate they do not mind spending money on games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Don't want to rain on the parade but - What is the error margin of this poll/survey? A margin of error of +/-2% would be very good for most polls.

There is definitely a need for a 'third' choice when it comes to desktop gaming platforms, hopefully Linux can take off sometime in the future.

<comment><USER43> Thats data that is automaticly gathered by steam - it's not a "survey" where you can pick OS.

<comment><USER42> Is it opt-in or opt-out?

Edit: Nvm found my answer

[http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey](http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey)

Its optional. Also other people have mentioned that steam randomly chooses users to take part in the survey and then asks them if they want to participate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I would too if AMD made decent graphic drivers for Linux!

<comment><USER10> I've found they've gotten pretty good. I have a 7970 and a couple of R290 GPUs, as well as whatever ATI GPU is in my laptop (a 6000 series Mobility GPU), they all seem to work fine under Linux. Admittedly, I don't do a lot of gaming, though I just bought a few new games in the winter sale, since they've added so many Linux games (and some of them are freakin' awesome games).

I haven't actually tried any of the really tough games, like Half Life or whatever yet...but, I'm actually super excited about playing Left 4 Dead 2 on Linux on one of the new GPUs. So, we'll see soon enough.

<comment><USER44> I have a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650(not very powerful and quite old now) and I can play Dota 2,Left4Dead and other games on windows with no problem at all,while on Linux(Ubuntu 13.10) I can barely open the games.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I must actually install native linux steam at some point, think I'm still running under wine!</comment>


Hacking the Casio F-91W to Handle 1000 Psi - <AUTHOR> https://dvt.name/2019/06/03/hacking-the-casio-f-91w-to-handle-1000-psi/ <comment><USER2> _Some sources suggest heating the mineral oil to ~50° Centigrade, but I'm not exactly sure what the reasoning for that might be, so I stuck with room temperature._

The likely explanation is that heating lowers the surface tension [0] and viscosity of the oil so that it can creep easier between the parts. I also considered heating for a problem where a liquid had to enter very narrow cracks.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E%C3%B6tv%C3%B6s_rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E%C3%B6tv%C3%B6s_rule)

<comment><USER3> Could it also dissolve solved air contained within the oil, as it happens by boiling water?

<comment><USER2> The liquid should be able to hold less gas at higher temperatures, yes.

What you observe with boiling water though is not solved gases leaving the water but actually water turning into steam. Steam is exactly the same stuff as water, just a lot less dense.

Actually if you increase temperature and pressure enough, there will be a point at which it makes no sense to differentiate between water and steam anymore [1]! Which is a fun thing: _you can turn water into steam without boiling it_. Raise the temperature and pressure enough while keeping it liquid, reduce temperature while keeping the pressure up and then reduce the pressure as far as you like, as long as it doesn't make the water condensate.

Voilà, steam without boiling!

What is happening there is taking a detour around the critical point instead of crossing the blue line (which is where water boils) in the following graphic[0]:

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_point_(thermodynamics...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_point_\(thermodynamics\)#/media/File:Phase- diag2.svg) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_point_(thermodynamics...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_point_\(thermodynamics\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know if I would even remotely trust that not to leak. The same watch is notorious for _not_ having a quality seal and quickly fogs up in the shower. I would rather trade some meters and use straight up petroleum jelly injected into the casing at a high pressure; I'd be much more comfortable wearing _that_ (and, yes, it is technically a liquid even at "freezing" temperatures).

<comment><USER5> How about "potting" it with clear epoxy, or is there some required internal movement?

<comment><USER6> Can do, although you might be better off using a hard conformal compound (black stuff used for potting electronics) where possible. It has a lower viscosity and is less prone to bubbles. I'm not sure how much small bubbles would actually affect it, though.

There's one other good reason to use conformal coating: it has very little change in size when it dries. There are a few spots on the board that would be affected by that, most importantly the load capacitors for the timekeeping fork. Ceramic capacitors have a piezoelectric effect and change shape ever so slightly (they stretch and squash, alternately contracting around their midsection and then expanding). It's not enough to break the solder or the epoxy but if you pot them it changes their apparent capacitance, which will change the frequency of timekeeping. Probably not enough to matter, but still measurable. Large inductors have similar problems and can eventually break loose from epoxy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mineral oil breaks down latex quickly. What material is used for the seal? Oil expands and contracts with changing temperature. An air bubble will appear soon after if there are no special steps taken to prevent this.

The real advantage of an oil filled face is the greatly increased readability of the watch.

<comment><USER8> True. There is a Liquid you can put on top of eg marmalade which seals it from air. I think it is a from of liquid silicone (mind the final _e !) which I think is not aggressive to rubber.

<comment><USER9> Did a little research, and it seems like pure silicone oil is much less aggressive to rubber/latex than mineral oil (and you can get it from Amazon pretty cheaply).

Does anyone have any idea what the chemical differences between the two are that affect how they interact with rubber? I'd love to learn more.

<comment><USER10> Good point.

Mineral oil, contrary to the remark in TFA, is 100% organic. Unlike olive oil, though, it's saturated. Does that matter? It's not exposed to air, so no. _But_ olive oil goes cloudy when cold.

The watch is unlikely to have latex in it, but quite likely to have silicone parts and seals that might soften in silicone oil.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Mineral oil, contrary to the remark in TFA, is 100% organic.

Thanks for the correction! From what I was reading, olive oil goes rancid (and acidic; but mineral oil does not).

<comment><USER10> Olive oil, like any unsaturated oil, may go rancid on exposure to air. But in a sealed watch there will not be enough air.

("Organic", outside of agriculture, means "composed of carbon compounds". In practice, that usually means compounded by something alive, because life has been at the carbon for a long, long time.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am frustrated that he didn't have a way to test it and so has no idea if it actually works.

<comment><USER12> If you live near an ocean, just tie the watch to the end of 700m of string, and start lowering it over the side of a boat.

Pull it back again and see if it still works.

Obviously you need a deep ocean, so check a map first.

<comment><USER13> A deep ocean indeed.

You're probably going to have to go off the continental shelf[1] to get 700m it greater depth.

This will make your plan somewhat less trivial.

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

<comment><USER14> -Off the shelf, or, if you happen to live in a country designed by Slartibartfast, find a fjord.

The view from my office window includes a fjord more than 500m deep; a couple of hours drive to the south, you can get down to 1,300m/4,000ft or so a few hundred meters from the shore.

Edit: Xylakant beat me to it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Before this became the de factor standard in tech dive computers, advanced divers would often do the same and fill their units with mineral oil.

For anyone interested in how this can go wrong, Raising the Dead - a book about scuba diving at its limits - has a passage about a rescue diver repairing his dive computer in the field, re-filling the oil, and noticing that he'd lost a drop or two in the process, with a resulting tiny air bubble...

</comment><comment><USER16> How does the piezo buzzer get affected by this?

Is the alarm louder or quieter?

Is the tone any different?

I have no plans for deep sea diving any time soon, however, I do like getting up in the mornings. Would an oil filled Casio help me in this practical regard?

I also wonder about how fragrant the oil could be, if you used some oil based perfume, could the watch that is not waterproof be made to smell nice, if only slightly so, but mitigating the odour of bacteria that accumulate on the back of the watch when tightly worn?

<comment><AUTHOR> The buzzer is definitely more "muted" but still beeps! I'm not sure if a fragrance would "keep." I used odorless mineral oil so I can't give much insight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wish someone would test if it's even water resistant for a period of time in a deep pool. I bet it is. I wish he would at least done the pool test.

If it's waterproof, it's a killer hack for its simplicity and overall cost.

</comment><comment><USER18> You could pull vacuum over the oil bath to positively coax all the air bubbles out of the watch.

<comment><USER19> > _You could pull vacuum..._

Unfortunately, that would also destroy the LCD and quite possibly the crystal oscillator (not sure how strong the metal can enclosure of those things are). Battery wouldn't survive it either but you could easily take it out and insert it after the vacuuming.

<comment><USER12> The metal can for the oscillator surely doesn't fill with oil, and would therefore crush at 1000 psi?

Filling this with mineral oil might actually reduce rather than increase its pressure withstanding ability.

<comment><USER19> I have no idea how tightly those things are sealed. Given some of the watch tests in this thread (the olive oil one), it surely can withstand the positive pressure but I'm not certain it could withstand negative pressure. If oil got in there, that oscillator would never keep the correct frequency again.

Hopefully someone does some tests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Very interesting. I'm intrigued to know if anybody with experience knows why there is a common recommendation of warming the mineral oil, versus room temperature which the author did.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Would also love to know if any chemist/physicist knows the definitive answer to this :)

Also: why do some watches _purposefully_ leave an air bubble in the watch? Is this an aesthetic choice or is there any benefit/detriment to it?

<comment><USER21> Maybe a de facto expansion reservoir?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > _I decided to switch to a reddish tint after my first failed attempt._

What happened with the first attempt?

<comment><AUTHOR> The buttons were misaligned with the contact pads so I had to take it apart again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What's the problem with the LED, does the liquid filling cause TIR off the watch-face/external air boundary? If that's not the problem, you could try side-mounting the led, as here: [https://www.instructables.com/id/Watch-LED- Light-Mod/](https://www.instructables.com/id/Watch-LED-Light-Mod/)

Does the oil leak out of the buttons when they're pressed?

How about the buzzer? I think it's attached to the back of the watch so shouldn't be affected too much?

Someone mentioned improved readability. I assume underwater that is definitely the case, as you no longer get TIR reflections off the back of the watch- face/internal air boundary at steep angles, but how is readability affected in air?

</comment><comment><USER24> Looks like a fun little project to do next weekend. Does anyone know where to get a strap like the one shown in the article?

<comment> w-ll It's just a NATO strap. Very cheap and functional for people that don't like hard watch straps. It seams the color combo is Navy/Crimson/Ivory

Found this on Amazon

[https://www.amazon.com/BARTON-Watch-Bands-Crimson- Standard/d...](https://www.amazon.com/BARTON-Watch-Bands-Crimson- Standard/dp/B00ZO6GA8Q/)

<comment><USER25> > It's just a NATO strap

Which ironically aren't a NATO standard, but a UK MoD spec.

<comment><USER26> I don't think these even are NATO straps - they don't fold back on themselves like the issue ones do, and these have an extra fabric flap that issued ones don't.

This is a genuine 'NATO' issue strap:

[https://www.cwcwatch.com/collections/m-o-d- spec/products/cwc...](https://www.cwcwatch.com/collections/m-o-d- spec/products/cwc-nato-watch-strap-1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is super cool! Kinda want to try it next weekend...

Seeing a lot of commenters wondering if the seals on the watch will manage to keep water out/oil in. Anyone know if it's possible to replace the o-rings or anything like that?

<comment><USER27> The entire watch is 10$.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I'm aware. I wouldn't really care if the watch itself died, but leaking oil would be a bit annoying and making things that should fall apart last longer is often a fun challenge.

<comment><AUTHOR> The o-ring is pretty flimsy (you can see it in a few pictures), but some have done this mod and have worn their F-91Ws without any leakage for 5+ years, so I expect it to be "good enough."

<comment><USER9> Good to know. Thanks for the info and for writing the original post about this!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tushar-r That watch looks amazing with the red tint and that strap! :-)

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder whether any mechanical watches could cope with this technique (and maintain any semblance of accuracy).

<comment><USER9> I'd imagine that any mechanical watch in which the mechanism wasn't designed with the viscosity of oil in mind would be completely incapable of accuracy if one were to add oil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Well... trying to hack it.

No confirmation if this works.

</comment><comment><USER30> Does anybody know what dyes he used?

</comment><comment><USER31> I like the F91W because it refuses to die, keeps good time, has as an alarm and a hour minder. However, to repurpose it into some kind of frankenwatch to behave as a diving watch, is counter-intuitive to the fact that, it will lose most it's useful features, freely admitted to by the author in the article.</comment>


Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) Book - <AUTHOR> https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-text/book/book.html <comment><USER2> This is one of the best books I have read on any topic. It's marvelous. If you want to run the code you can use Racket with the SICP language mode: [https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp- manual/index.html#%28part....](https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp- manual/index.html#%28part._.Installation%29)

There's an interactive version as well: [https://xuanji.appspot.com/isicp/](https://xuanji.appspot.com/isicp/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I was fortunate enough to encounter this book in a first-year programming course (Informatik, RWTH Aachen). The years before, they had used Modula-3 and in the years afterwards they switched to Java.

While it certainly changed my life - first encounter with functional programming - and I will always appreciate it, it is now 23 years later and I think it is time to acknowledge some shortcomings.

The thing that comes to my mind first is the lack of any discussion pertaining to coding against interfaces, with components (and their interfaces) evolving over time.

Data abstraction gets discussed very early on, but the evolution of interfaces, its twin sister topic, does not get much air time. This is a pity since the goal of data abstraction (avoiding making assumptions on data representation) is pretty much the same, being able to change things later when the need arises.

<comment><USER4> There is an exercise - 2.29 where you implement a tree-like structure of objects.

Part d of the question is:

" d. Suppose we change the representation of mobiles so that the constructors are

(define (make-mobile left right) (cons left right)) (define (make-branch length structure) (cons length structure))

How much do you need to change your programs to convert to the new representation? "

It may not be discussed in depth - I suspect they decided it was out of scope for the book, but they were definitely thinking about it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I finally read SICP half way through my career, but at that point it was too much old news to keep me interested, even if I recognized that it was a really well written book. So I actually stopped half way.

Does anyone know of a good summary or alternate text of all the knowledge in it?

<comment><USER6> There is at least [http://www.sicpdistilled.com](http://www.sicpdistilled.com)

<comment><USER7> That's gooood. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you decide to work through this book, I suggest to follow along this YT channel [1] as the owner of this channel is going through each chapter (and exercises) roughly every week right now (currently at chapter 4.1)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA- FdE3KV88&list=PLVFrD1dmDd...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA- FdE3KV88&list=PLVFrD1dmDdvdvWFK8brOVNL7bKHpE-9w0&ab_channel=code_report)

</comment><comment><USER9> There is an adaptation of SICP written in JavaScript. It is used by the University of Singapore and it's frequently updated. It tries it best to retain the essence of the original but gives a new flavor to it by applying the concepts in ES6.

Here is the link to the book: [https://source- academy.github.io/sicp/](https://source-academy.github.io/sicp/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I make a point of re-reading Alan Perlis' preface from time to time:

[https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full- text/...](https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full- text/book/book-Z-H-3.html)

Fun is important, and it seems all too easy to lose sight of that.

<comment><USER11> If i had to retain one thing from SICP, it would be this from the preface of the first edition:

 _First, we want to establish the idea that a computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations but rather that it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute._

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> code_report has been doing a great series of SICP videos recently [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA- FdE3KV88&list=PLVFrD1dmDd...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA- FdE3KV88&list=PLVFrD1dmDdvdvWFK8brOVNL7bKHpE-9w0)

</comment><comment><USER11> html5 version: [http://sarabander.github.io/sicp/](http://sarabander.github.io/sicp/)

more resources: [https://bitbucket.org/Tetsumi/workspace/snippets/ke6jL4/sicp](https://bitbucket.org/Tetsumi/workspace/snippets/ke6jL4/sicp)

<comment><USER13> That HTML port is more complete than the one below, but this link has a built- in interpreter for playing around with code (without having to install some heavyweight runtime):

[http://jaredkrinke.github.io/learn- scheme/](http://jaredkrinke.github.io/learn-scheme/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> An easy to remember short URL if you need a PDF copy: [https://git.io/sicp.pdf](https://git.io/sicp.pdf)

<comment><USER2> IMO opinion this is the best version around: [http://sarabander.github.io/sicp/](http://sarabander.github.io/sicp/)

Also available as epub: [https://github.com/sarabander/sicp](https://github.com/sarabander/sicp)

<comment><USER15> Do you have a working link for the epub version? The one on the page downloads a text file with three lines, with tags version, oid and size.

<comment><USER16> After some clicking around:

[https://sicpebook.wordpress.com/](https://sicpebook.wordpress.com/)

Second post on the page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you only ever buy/read two computer science books, get your hands on Abelson/Sussman's SICP and Knuth's TAOCP.

I could program before studying at uni, but thanks to our two-term course Algortmics I+II at FAU Erlangen (part I based on SICP), it seems a fog that I wasn't even aware of cleared.

<comment><USER18> Have you read TAOCP?

<comment><USER19> I'm not GP, but I read and worked through almost the entirety of Volume 1. I found it both approachable and enlightening. I have read (but not worked through) large chunks of Volumes 2 and 3, I have not purchased a copy of Volume 4 yet.

Volume 1 really works well if you also work through Concrete Mathematics (my professor and I started on Volume 1, diverted to CM, then back to Volume 1). CM provides enough additional math to get through chapter 1, where I was having a bit of trouble on some of the math heavy portions.

<comment><USER18> I want to work through the book I can barely find time for that.

<comment><USER19> Fair enough, I don't have the time anymore myself. College and my mid-20s were the best time to do all of those things. Now that I'm approaching 40 I have very little time and have to be more selective in how much time I dedicate to these kinds of resources.

I actually started working through TAOCP one summer during a very boring sys admin job. I couldn't actually change the system to improve it, just complete whatever tasks were given to me and help customers. Maybe 1-3 hours a day of actual work effort. And in the pre-smart phone days, a book was easy to work through without distractions until the next ring of a phone call or ding of an email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's pretty annoying that the location of the "next" link keeps shifting as I turn the pages. It seems like it would be better if the navigation links were at a fixed position so you could easily flip forward or backwards several pages.

</comment><comment><USER21> The very first Computer Science course in college. It was all downhill from there.

<comment><USER4> The thing that I always find interesting is a bunch of fearless 18 year olds just throw themselves at SICP. Feel the pain and some survive.

Then some Ruby/PHP/JS developers who have 5-10 years of coding experience tip their head at the book and say it's too hard or "only for senior people".

Unlike the gym, with intellectual pursuits the only thing you can injure when you fail is your ego. If you learn to let go you will realise how much you hamstring yourself with your own preconceptions in life.

<comment><USER22> "intellectual pursuits the only thing you can injure when you fail is your ego" well, construction, mechanical and electeical engineering might have a different opinion.

<comment><USER4> Sorry to clarify - the act of studying knowledge from a book, carries limited risk. What you do with that knowledge or practical learnings are out of scope here. :)

<comment><USER22> Well, you can also learn things the wrong way and this can give you the impression you are an expert while the opposite is true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I keep meaning to work through this book, and keep getting distracted by other things. Maybe this will be the time I actually manage it! Probably not though...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_of_Computer_Programs)

">Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) is a computer science textbook by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman with Julie Sussman. It is known as the Wizard Book in hacker culture.[1][2] It teaches fundamental principles of computer programming, including recursion, abstraction, modularity, and programming language design and implementation.

The MIT Press published the first edition in 1985, and the second edition in 1996. It was formerly used as the textbook for MIT's introductory course in electrical engineering and computer science. SICP focuses on discovering general patterns for solving specific problems, and building software systems that make use of those patterns.[3]

The book describes computer science concepts using Scheme, a dialect of Lisp. It also uses a virtual register machine and assembler to implement Lisp interpreters and compilers.

Characters

Several fictional characters appear in the book:

Alyssa P. Hacker, a Lisp hacker

Ben Bitdiddle, a hardware expert

Cy D. Fect, a "reformed C programmer"

Eva Lu Ator, an evaluator

Lem E. Tweakit, an irate user

Louis Reasoner, a loose reasoner

Coursework

The book was used as the textbook for MIT's former introductory programming course, 6.001.[5] That course was replaced by 6.0001,[6] which uses Python.[7] Other schools also made use of the book as a course textbook.[8] It is used as the textbook for MIT's Large Scale Symbolic Systems class, 6.945.[9]

Reception

Byte recommended SICP "for professional programmers who are really interested in their profession". The magazine said that the book was not easy to read, but that it would expose experienced programmers to both old and new topics.[10]

Influence

SICP has been influential in computer science education, and several later books have been inspired by its style."

<comment><USER2> > Alyssa P. Hacker, a Lisp hacker

I always thought "Alice P. Hacker" would be much better

<comment><AUTHOR> Witty Response: She's a Lisp hacker _AND_ a SAP programmer(!)([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP)) -- that's why her name is "Alys-saP." and not "Alice P."! <g>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My girlfriend has told me a couple times she wants to learn to program but this is the only intro book I own. I feel bad giving it to her because it just beats you with recursion right from the beginning (that isn't to say it's bad, I love it, that's why I own a copy. I just feel like you'll appreciate it most if you already know a little of some non functional language.) On the other hand she took it with us on a picnic the other day and didn't seem to mind, in fact the simplicity of scheme's syntax actually seemed to help a lot (she tried python once and there were too many different syntactic structures, but that was me giving her a tutorial rather than going through a book so maybe I'm just a bad teacher.)

Does anyone have any suggestions?

<comment><USER25> SICP was used as the reference book for the introductory course on programming on my degree. People with prior experience had the most trouble with recursion. Students with no programming experience whatsoever grasped the concept pretty easily.

I would try it out. It might need some analytically wired thought process, but again that is true for any kind of programming paradigm.

<comment><USER26> Recursion seems to be one of those inflection points that some people just can't get past.

<comment><USER27> What I personally see in academic setting is that when recursion is taught, it's taught using examples where you would not want to use recursion.

It's easy to understand why recursion is useful when you are tasked with traversing a file system. It's not when the first example you are given is calculating Fibonacci sequence.

<comment><USER19> I like the way SICP handles this, actually. They state clearly (in the text, haven't watched the videos) that the naive recursive form for Fibonacci is only illustrative, then they proceed to provide the iterative form. Following that they have this paragraph:

> One should not conclude from this that tree-recursive processes are useless. > When we consider processes that operate on hierarchically structured data > rather than numbers, we will find that tree recursion is a natural and > powerful tool. But even in numerical operations, tree-recursive processes > can be useful in helping us to understand and design programs. For instance, > although the first fib procedure is much less efficient than the second one, > it is more straightforward, being little more than a translation into Lisp > of the definition of the Fibonacci sequence. To formulate the iterative > algorithm required noticing that the computation could be recast as an > iteration with three state variables.

Hopefully a professor in a course would make similar statements (I know mine did, repeatedly). And, at least in my early programming courses, we quickly (within a week or two) went on to those other problems where recursion was a natural and useful solution. The professors [0] introduced problems where recursion was either necessary (using for/while loops would be a non-trivial transformation with no performance gain) or, like naive Fibonacci, natural expressions of the problem.

[0] I transferred universities, not all courses lined up so I got to see the second school's introduction to this topic even though I was past that point academically. I was an unpaid TA (technically I guess I was paying to be the TA).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Debit cards with APIs - <AUTHOR>

Anything like this out there? Looking for a way to issue some kind of debit/gift (refillable would be ideal) card that has some kind of API to track spending. <comment> rob-anderson There are various prepaid MasterCard / Visa companies out there - <USER2> the company I work for www.paymentcardsolutions.co.uk

</comment><comment><USER3> blackhawknetwork.com</comment>


Native style momentum scrolling to arrive in iOS5 - <AUTHOR> http://johanbrook.com/browsers/native-momentum-scrolling-ios-5/

<comment><USER2> I'm hoping this will be the death of that hideous OnSwipe Wordpress theme which tries to make a perfectly functional smooth-scrolling website and turn it into a faux iPad app with jerky, glitchy scrolling and none of the usual site navigation. On top of that, the "View as standard site" link doesn't work 90% of the time.

<comment><USER3> Oh, that theme is so awful. Besides the horrible scrolling it is also very buggy for me, especially after rotating the device. Who had that idea?

Browsing websites on the iPad works great. There is no need whatsoever to turn a standard website (like a Wordpress blog) into a web app. That's just stupid. This should be used for web apps, not for websites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh, finally. One of my projects recently (which I have yet to complete) has been a scroller that, unlike any other I've seen including Apple's own, correctly imitates iOS' native behavior. But I wouldn't envy myself having to make it run smoothly, and in any case it would be all wrong on other operating systems; this is a much better alternative.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems a bit inelegant to introduce a CSS property for this. Those vendor prefixes should be reserved for properties that either are in the process of becoming a standard or that the vendor wants to become a standard. I don't know how that property fits in there, it doesn't seem like something that should be part of the standard, it seems very iOS specific. That's not what those vendor prefixes are there for.

What meaning would that property have on other platforms?

By the way, there's even more good news for web apps. contentEditable is supported in iOS 5, in fact Apple devoted a good chunk of a WWDC talk to contentEditable.

<comment><USER5> its not ios specific, this is a commmon problem on all touch devices, I am actually very curious as to when this is going to hit android.

<comment><USER3> Hm, ok. I guess the syntax rubs me the wrong way. Why does "overflow- scrolling: touch;" mean "use native scrolling"? What are the other values? What does "overflow-scrolling: touch;" mean on the desktop?

But I guess that's really not such a big problem.

<comment><USER5> There are lots of context specific css attributes, what does overflow:scroll mean when printing a page.

as for the actual names, yeh I imagine there was already a lot of bikeshedding involved and could go on for years, I am just glad the code is there.

<comment><USER6> _what does overflow:scroll mean when printing a page._

Something different than _overflow: visible_ , I'd imagine. Maybe _cursor: pointer_ would be a better example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > window.onerror is now supported.

I find this even more exciting.

</comment><comment><USER8> Scrolling with bounce is nice, but does this mean you can finally use position fixed and have it fix to the actual phone window? That's always been the real issue: you couldn't fix a toolbar to the top of the window, for example.

<comment><USER9> Position: fixed is also coming in iOS5, but it's not a perfect implementation yet. For instance, zooming does weird things to fixed elements if it's enabled, and it still covers the scrollable page area.

For my own purposes, native div scrolling is a godsend. The JS hacks were okay, but they still weren't as smooth, and worse, I had to do a lot more event juggling to handle both scrolling and the other touch controls within divs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Any idea if this will be ported into the typically gimped UIWebView?

<comment><USER11> That's an excellent question. I'll try to find out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> how useful is this feature, given the share of ios users still on 4.x? i imagine we have a ways to go before anyone feels comfortable using it freely?

<comment><USER13> Well, I think the number of users on 5.0 will go up a lot when 5.0 is actually released...

But really, 5.0 has a huge upgrade-incentive, and I think it will be pretty safe to assume people who know how to save a webapp to their homescreen will update.

<comment><USER14> Not to mention iCloud, hugely improved notifications, iMessage, etc. I don't think Apple will have any problem convincing people to upgrade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> And, of course, there's fine print, down at the bottom of the post in very pale letters: "Note that this is in the second beta, and that it's not dead certain that these features will arrive in the final version of the operating system."

<comment><USER16> Well, it's barely conceivable that Apple would take it out before the final but it's not very likely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Glad to see that this will not be a part of a patent dispute that hurts everyone, but something that all Webkit-based browsers may benefit from.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your goals for your startups in 2010? - <AUTHOR> Everyone has goals, what are your top goals for 2010? <comment><USER2> Actually make enough money to live a comfortable life. I'm sick of being poor.

</comment><comment><USER3> $45k in bingo card sales. $30k in bingo profits. Paying customers for something other than bingo.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ramen profitability. Stat.

<comment><USER5> Good hunting Ashishk. What's your business?

<comment><USER6> myzamana.com

<comment><USER7> Are you A/B testing your landing page? Most dating sites have pictures of faces on their landing pages..

<comment><USER4> I have a separate landing page that I use for marketing. And yep - A/B testing is critical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My goal for Tarsnap is the same as my goal for life: I plan to end 2010 with 10x as many customers as I start it with.

<comment><USER9> if you would offer your service to canadians, you would already have 3 more customers ;)

<comment><USER5> hehe

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Faster iterations, better analytics, happier users.

<comment><USER11> mixpanel.com! =)

<comment><USER10> Thanks! we use KISSmetrics right now, i need to give mixpanel.com another look

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Launch one of 3 projects as an actual startup, quit dayjob.

1) infrastructure/platform related to security 2) hardware device with social network features 3) consumer-focused webapp in data aggregation/presentation

I've spent the last couple months since getting back from Afghanistan working on all 3 at early stages, finding potential cofounders, clients, funding, etc., and am pretty much at the decision point. Should be going full-time with one of them in January (I need to hit a vesting cliff of 12-31-2009 before doing so, counting down the hours...)

</comment><comment><USER13> When I applied for YC'10 I was told my plans are not sufficiently ambitious. One of my goals, therefore, is to grow ambitiousness of my (other) goals.

And yours should be, too. Dare to aim high.

<comment><USER14> I was told by during YC'10 our plans are too ambitious. Want to join forces?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I guess I posted this in the wrong thread. Here are mine:

Plans: (1) Add a few more members to the team. (2) Lease our own office instead of sublease. (3) Release the new version of our app. (4) Expand two more verticals. (5) Get more mainstream press. (6) Finish moving our core team to New York City. We're currently 2 of 4 in NYC. (7) Start our newsletter. (8) Do more charity work. (9) Start a meetup. (10) Get involved in local NYC art/design scene more than I already am.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1) Discovering the value proposition that brings in users by word of mouth to our social/semantic search page.

2) setting up our own rock solid ad network + stats

3) generating revenue from ads/affiliate links

4) hiring our first consultants/freelancers (may shift to employees but we'll let it happen based on relationships with the folks that we work with)

5) making a ton of connections across industries and skyrocketing my businesses chances of massive disruption to the ad and search markets

</comment><comment><USER16> By february, want to reach $12000 a month, from about $8000 at the moment. Want to diversify and do something I can be more proud of and actually boast about, while increasing sales to bring in $30.000 a month = $1000 a day.

I don't yet know what I can do to reach my target, but will work on it. Also, want to improve my management skills so I am more diplomatic but still get things done in the right way.

</comment><comment><USER17> Actually reach profitability with my News plattform, move the platform oto a reliable VPS , Make my mobile plattform service a standard for bloggers and implement a revenue Model for Bloggers in the plattform. By the end of 2010, the mobile plattform should be a must have for every site out there.

</comment><comment><USER18> \- Taken on two extra staff for my first startup and get it to the point where I just check the numbers once a week whilst providing three people a great income and me with an awesome, passive income.

\- Create an awesome new SaaS business with a really smart cofounder and see where it takes us.

\- Live the dream :)

</comment><comment><USER19> 50.000 free users: <http://wasitup.com/stats/>

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd like to just put together an idea and see it through to the end. The success of the project isn't all that important to me really. I'd just like the experience of doing it. Maybe someday I'd have a _really good_ idea and would be prepared to make it happen.

<comment><USER7> Do something small.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Make money by writing an algorithm for trading. I've tried the startup thing for so long now (over 20 yrs), and haven't succeeded and so I think I just don't have what it takes. Time to move on and try something else for a change instead of beating a dead horse.

</comment><comment><USER22> \- Launch 1 new app in our industry

\- Launch 2 new apps in other industries

\- Hit 2M in sales

\- Get a provisional patent and some prototypes done for a physical product/invention I have in mind

</comment><comment><USER23> I want to launch the first beta of my news aggregator focused on promoting discussion of controversial political topics by February

</comment><comment><USER24> I would really like to see my current startup through to the end without getting sucked back into the easy money of consulting.

<comment><USER7> Charge more for consulting, by a lot.

<comment><USER24> That's the current plan.

But starving isn't so much fun either. The trick is to find the right rate as quickly as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think my top goal is to get at least 1000 customers. I currently have about 25, so scaling up will be an exciting process.

</comment><comment><USER26> 1- Hundreds of happy customers.

2- 200K in sales.

3- Two full-time employees.

4- Fewer mood swings!

<comment><USER27> Best of luck, Zaid!

<comment><USER26> Thanks Chris! We gotta catch up soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Add 1000+ new members, find contributors/partners, make site the best it can be ! oh and make a couple of bucks too !

</comment><comment><USER29> Making my side project a full time project.

</comment><comment><USER30> Other than keeping our customers happy, our goal for 2010 is growth. We just hit sustainability in early December.

</comment><comment><USER31> Launch this bad boy <http://beepl.com> \- maybe in few weeks time....

</comment><comment><USER32> Spend _far_ less time on hackernews/reddit/facebook/etc and _far_ more time doing productive work.

</comment><comment><USER33> Launch at the start of February Expand nationally by the end of the year Ramen profitable by 6 months

</comment><comment><USER34> Month-over-month traffic growth.

</comment><comment><USER35> goals in general:

Market and grow to 50,000 users, find way to hire full-time developers.

Keep experimenting with monetizing my blog and grow to $3-4k/month.

Eat less red meat and jog more.

Pay off more student loans.

Buy a laptop/netbook for newborn nephew and get him hooked.

Find a girlfriend again.

Move my money around (read: ditch Bank of America).

</comment><comment><USER36> Get to $1 million in revenues, get an office, start hiring employees.

</comment><comment><USER37> launch my 3 year old web app to the public and watch the data flow from a pile of people using it. Get the code efficient enough that the pile doesn't break the bank in server costs.

</comment><comment><USER38> Build a product that I (bold I) am happy using as an unbiased user.

<comment><USER39> Be _bold_!

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> 1\. Shipping the game 2\. 10 000+ people buying it because it's fun

</comment><comment><USER41> Graduate College, Get Married, Launch Second company.

Maybe that is too much :(

</comment><comment><USER42> disrupt an industry that overcharges their customers because their hardware and infrastructure requirements are out-dated; they haven't innovated since the 1990's.

</comment><comment><USER43> Start my business in some way shape or form. :D

</comment><comment><USER44> pricing structure (please God). also, hands-off approach to marketing and sales with an affiliate force

</comment><comment><USER45> leave my not-so-technical job to discover a real passion

</comment><comment><USER46> revolutionize. Everything else will fall in place.

</comment><comment><USER47> find a cofounder for my project

</comment><comment><USER9> ~100K$</comment>


When Bad Things Happen in Slow Motion (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/19/illusions/when-bad-things-happen-in-slow-motion <comment><USER2> The clock test is quite poor IMHO, for the reason that the brain doesn't have to speed up uniformly. What if visual processing remains at normal speed, but decision making and other processes speeds up?</comment>


TSA's Roadmap for Airport Surveillance Moves in a Dangerous Direction - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/12/tsas-roadmap-airport-surveillance-moves-dangerous-direction <comment><USER2> Important to note that the TSA has largely been ineffective: "In a 2016 survey by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General (IG), the TSA missed 95 percent of the weapons and assorted contraband carried into commercial aircraft cabins by undercover investigators"

[https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/366998-the- tsa...](https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/366998-the-tsas-lax- performance-amounts-to-security-theater)

<comment><USER3> It acts as a deterrent, similar to door locks in homes.

Lockpicking is relatively easy, and there is always brute force.

<comment><USER4> I suspect the better deterrent, and the reason we haven't seen another attack remotely similar to 9/11, is that the terrorists know we won't fall for that again. There would be a whole airplane full of people willing to take down a would-be terrorist.

The TSA is just a pacifier for people who buy that they're effective.

<comment><USER5> This might be a stupid question, but, airplanes are computerized, can they be programmed such-that they simply won't fly into buildings, cities, restricted airspace, etc..

<comment><USER6> I think that would set a dangerous precedent. Systems mess up in all kinds of strange ways. The human pilot needs the final say, especially in an emergency situation.

<comment><USER7> I think they were saying the autopilot only kick in if the pilots fail to acknowledge it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> if you think TSA is getting hard to handle with unreasonable surveillance, you havent taken a road trip lately.

Riding my motorcycle from the east coast to the southwest I was stopped by "border patrol" at least 100 miles from any border I could see. After refusing to answer any questions, I was detained for an hour near the AZ border until agents could photograph my sugar skull patch and empty all my bags on the side of the road.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure if there are more than usual now but those of us in TX have dealt with interior checkpoints traveling anywhere near MX I'd say most of our lives. We go out of our way to take paths that avoid them. If you didn't know they existed it makes sense that they'd surprise you. I didn't know until moving to TX and going on aimless roadtrips in my Jeep, quite the surprise. And yeah, they'll harass the hell out of you. Everyone has some friend who was detained for something or other then released. That's why we avoid them if we're not actually going to MX. Specifically I remember a friend getting detained for an expired drivers license when he was just a passenger.

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

edit: Evidently there are some near Canada as well, didn't know that.

<comment><USER10> Border checkpoints _inside_ the country?

<comment><USER11> California has it's own checkpoints, although they're purely about keeping pests out: [https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/plant/pe/ExteriorExclusion/borders.h...](https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/plant/pe/ExteriorExclusion/borders.html)

<comment><USER7> And more often then not they flag you through before you can even slow down. They're just really interested in trucks. Hawaii also does a checkpoint when leaving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What is going on in the world? Why are governments bringing in authoritarian measures all the time? I don't get it. It can't always have been this way.

<comment><USER13> Authoritarianism is the historical norm in every human civilization. In fact America is one of the only examples of an empire that has been democratically governed since its inception. America is also a rare example of a revolution being followed by a lasting, multi-generational democracy (and that was a close call -- remember that our first president was the commander of the army that fought for revolution); the typical pattern is for some military leader to refuse to give up power after a successful revolution, or if a democracy is established it will usually end quickly after it is challenged by some crisis. Examples are plentiful and can be found in the histories of every region of human habitation on this planet, and it is a fantastic example of a phenomenon that seems to transcend things like technological development, culture, religion, and so forth.

Remember that for a democracy to work people have to be active participants, and most people have other things to worry about in their lives. Democracies tend to erode over time; every crisis will lead to a bit of erosion of a democracy, and if the democracy is not reinforced following the crisis, it will be eroded even further during the next crisis. The decline of the Republican system of Rome is an interesting case study -- crisis after crisis weakened the democratic institutions until Caesar struck the final blow.

<comment><USER14> Right, but this doesn't explain the speed of recent change.

Maybe Steven Pinker jinxed civilization the same way that guy did who wrote a book a few years before WW1 about how globalization made war between modern states unthinkable.

<comment><USER13> What makes you think this is unusually fast? If anything the example of Rome was unusually slow, which is why it is so easy to understand the sequence of events. The current trends are proceeding far slower than the decline of the Weimar Republic: in 1928 the Nazi party won less than 3% of the vote; in 1930, over 18%; in 1932 they were the largest party in parliament with nearly 38%; after 1933 free elections stopped being held and Hitler was given the power to enact laws without a parliamentary vote.

[Edit: Edited to correct the vote totals for the Nazis in 1930 and 1932.]

<comment><USER15> > Hitler was given the power to enact laws without a parliamentary vote

It's worth noting that no _bill_ passed recently to create this new behavior. It's all done through executive orders and other bureaucratic measures.

Congress has been happy to delegate its authority to the executive branch, the executive obviously likes it, and the judiciary isn't going to contradict _both_ other branches, so more detail oriented democratic measures (legislation, constitutional amendments) have basically fallen away.

Thankfully the U.S. still has peaceful transmission of presidential power between the major parties. For now at least. If there was one-party rule in the executive branch for too long, things would stop looking democratic pretty fast since neither the legislative nor judicial branches seem to be up for getting Congress to do its job again [1].

[1] Like actually declaring war, requiring legislation go through the legislature, balancing budgets, passing trade deals, overturning broken laws instead of rewriting them from the bench, and just about everything else besides approving judicial appointments (which is actually happening at a steady clip for the moment).

<comment><USER16> > Thankfully the U.S. still has peaceful transmission of presidential power > between the major parties

Let's not be _too_ hasty there. It's being severely curtailed at the state level (several states gutting the power of Governor after democrats took that seat in the last election) and who knows what will happen with Trump. He's already screaming about voter fraud, if he loses who knows what's going to happen.

<comment><USER17> I'd argue Trump is a product of an already one party system, at least when it comes to the most important issues. With respect to anything of real substance HW, Clinton, W and Obama were more or less indistinguishable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The idea of airport surveillance is itself dangerous, since "profiling" is prohibited. Either do it the way El Al does it (obsessively complete inspection of all persons boarding an aircraft) or forget it. Half measures don't accomplish the stated purpose and are only a means to population control, not for "security."

<comment><USER19> If security was private the companies involved could do it however they wanted, including using AI to profile. The TSA was created not for security but to shield the airlines from liability, and also a bit as a jobs program. In those regards it is a success.

<comment><USER7> And now the airlines and airports want private security. Go figure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> One thing to consider is anything that the government is allowed to do will eventually be maximized by technology. The slightest allowed oppressions will be amplified exponentially. Since tech is going to serious amplify anything we do that makes the root principles all that more important.

</comment><comment><USER20> The article mentions that this push to collect biometric information is happening at the same time as biometric information is being used more frequently in device security.

While I don't know if it's reasonable to think DHS is sufficiently organized and competent to actually put these two parts together w/r/t their "going dark problem", this is probably as good time as any to reiterate that as a best practice biometrics should only be used as _username_ information, not password information.

</comment><comment><USER21> Given that 9/11 style attacks have been mitigated with cockpit locks and guns are kept out with metal detectors what exactly are they trying to prevent?</comment>


Google Search Result Redirect Page Hijacked For NodeSummit - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/search?btnG=1&pws=0&q=nodesummit

<comment><AUTHOR> Click the top link (NodeSummit)

The Google redirect is landing on a page with malware by the looks of things.

Edit: Picture of the page it redirects to ...

<http://i.imgur.com/EgwKs.png>

<comment><USER2> Nodesummit.com is hacked, not Google. Redirect is active for referrer:

        curl --head --referer 'http://www.google.com/url?{...cut...}' http://nodesummit.com
        HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
        Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:32:36 GMT
        Server: Apache/2.2.9
        X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.17
        Location: http://costabrava.bee.pl/
        Vary: User-Agent,Accept-Encoding
        Content-Type: text/html

<comment><USER3> Why '302 Moved Temporarily'? Wouldn't '301 Moved Permanently' serve hacker's purpose better?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I dealt with this a lot at a hosting company I worked for. This is almost certainly a .htaccess file that is set to only redirect based on referrer. It is normally under several hundred blank lines, to make it look empty to the casual observer.

<comment><USER3> It can't be.

I can't access the linked url (it's https: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3575029>), but as far as I remember, if an HTTPS page links to (or redirects to) another page that is not on the same domain, the HTTP REFERRER field will be empty.

<comment><USER2> Google's redirect is not an HTTPS link, so it sends referrer (see my comment below).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We (nodejitsu) sponsored NodeSummit, but have no control over nodesummit.com. I have reached out to Charles Beeler (the conference organizer) to make him aware of the issue.</comment>


Ask YC: Develop for iPhone or Android? - <AUTHOR>

Which platform would you choose to learn and develop applications for the next few years and why? <comment><USER2> One has a fairly stable SDK and excellent hardware and millions of loyal and satisfied users and other has a mediocre SDK and hardware is still vaporware. What do you think would, currently, be a better choice? :)

<comment><USER3> p.s. One of those has a storefront that will handle transactions for you and provide the end user with a convenient location to find and download your products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What about the OpenMoko? I mean you might not have nearly as large an user base, but shiney? :)</comment>


Ask HN: Best anti-virus for Mac? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Sophos Endpoint Security is the "best" I've seen. It seems to have negligible performance hits. Please don't take this as a glowing endorsement.

Everything else seems to be complete garbage, especially the respective products from McAfee and Symantec. ClamX is clunky and not very functional.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are protecting Windows users then mcafee and clamavx seem to be recommended but panda, Sophos and kasperky exist.

If you are protecting yourself uninstall your weaknesses, Microsoft office, java and flash.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ubuntu</comment>


Chi Square and Modulo 512 to find TrueCrypt Files - <AUTHOR> http://16systems.com/TCHunt

<comment><AUTHOR> I neglected to mention that the method for detecting TrueCrypt volumes is described, somewhat, in the FAQ.

</comment><comment><USER2> That's rather interesting, though it seems rather simple for the truecrypt developers to defend against this. Add some random noise the end of the file, or fake a file header.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can this be used to detect TrueCrypt Hidden volumes (the ones it stores in the free space of other TrueCrypt volumes, for deniability purposes)?

<comment><AUTHOR> From the FAQ:

Q. Can TCHunt locate hidden volumes?

A. Yes. However, TCHunt cannot differentiate between a standard volume and a hidden one.

<comment><USER3> I took that to refer to volumes that are just stored on a normal filesystem with their hidden bit set, or a dot prepended. If TCHunt could really find the "stored-in-free-space" Hidden volumes, it definitely _would_ be able to distinguish them, or the disclaimer would at least read "TCHunt cannot differentiate between a _deleted_ volume and a hidden one," because that's what it would look like--data in the filesystem without a corresponding inode/MFT entry. Plus, depending on whether or not it _is_ trying to find these deleted volumes, its scanning algorithm would have to be completely different--one just following down the directory tree, the other working across the block device with a resizable window.</comment></comment></comment>


The Battle for Rust Knowledge Supremacy - <AUTHOR> https://rustbattle.net/battle/straight-finch-8-e4f4 <comment><USER2> Are there only four sets of questions? It would be nice if the game would show some kind of "You got them all, now invite your friends!" or similar instead of simply looping me to loop city without explaining anything.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesomely ludic! Do you know similar things for other languages or frameworks?

<comment><USER4> it says "try java" with a link to [https://javabattle.net/](https://javabattle.net/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How to change location on the map? Stuck in struct town. Nice gotcha with vec![0usize, 3] though.

<comment><USER6> You need to "swipe", on my laptop this means drag-and-drop the image a little in the opposite direction from where you want to go.

There is a 1-2s delay after releasing for it to work.

Pretty bad UI tbh but there are only 4 nodes so it's survivable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Unfortunately, the UI is broken. After awhile, the "Next" button stops working.

<comment><USER8> It worked fine for me. There are only four questions, and a "lock it in" button after the last one. I didn't even have to allow amazonaws.com JavaScript to run.

Oh, I see. If you don't answer all of the questions, it doesn't let you past the last one. You need to go back and answer the others first.</comment></comment>


Larry Page: "We're still waiting" for Facebook to unlock user data - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/21/larry-page-on-charlie-rose-were-still-waiting-for-facebook-to-unlock-user-data/

<comment><USER3> While I am fully expecting this to be buried (as google is much fawned over.) I'll persist and point out the hypocrisy that I see between how Google paints their competitors and Google's own behaviour.

The first hypocrisy is the idea of 'Openness', Google often describes their competitors customers as 'hostage' when they won't allow Google access into their system, or 'walled' because they use a closed model. However there is nothing preventing Google from allowing facebook to access Google's data, merely stating reciprocity isn't a reason to keep their own customers 'hostage'. It's simple business, Google wants there to be no competitive advantage. Facebook is significantly larger than Google+, meaning that sharing data will always be in Google's favour. This is why Larry talks it up, not because he's much concerned about users being held 'hostage', but rather he wants an easy way to leech users from facebook into Google+

Next is the idea of 'choice', Google often paints their competitors as giving their users less choice. However when it's convenient for Google's business model, choice is eradicated - between Google's online services and Android users are funnelled into google's services above all others. A trivial example is search where YouTube is highlighted, while 'video' is relegated to the last menu option under 'more'. (YouTube mobile and webm is another example of this leveraging.)

Another often touted soundbite is that Google is all about being truthful, again implying that their competitors blind or mislead their customers to keep them loyal. However Larry would know perfectly well that Chrome's recent ascent to largest market share is a side effect of pre-loading pages, and not representative of actual use. However it's convenient for Google to claim victory here rather than represent actual web use, which sadly appears to still be well within the dominance of IE.

The point I'm making is that Google spends a lot of time trashing it's competitors for doing the exact same things that Google themselves are doing. The only difference is that the competitors aren't sanctimonious by holding up virtues that they can't legitimately claim.

<comment><USER4> I wish google would let me crawl blogger pages for my index. I don't think that is fair that google can index the web, but has created a walled garden for the content they host.

Basically, if you start indexing the web, and some sites are hosted in blogger, google will block your crawler if I remember correctly

<comment><USER5> What are you talking about? The only aspect of Blogger that is robot restricted are the search pages (as they should be).

<http://googleblog.blogspot.com/robots.txt>

<comment><USER4> Talking about this

[http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=86640)

There other ways of blocking crawlers other than robots.txt

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There'll probably come a time when the Congress will get involved, and mandate that any personal data that was provided by the user should be transferable to another server upon the user's request. Sorta like number portability.

<comment><USER7> That sounds like one of the most awful ideas I've ever heard.

<comment><USER8> Because it prevents lock-in? How's that awful?

<comment><USER9> Right off the top of my head, having given it literally 5 minutes of thought:

If it were implemented as a "convenient" export button, then it would offer a "convenient" way to easily steal _all_ your data. Leave your computer for a second or accidentally forget to log off at the library or apple store? Anyone can come in and download your entire history and pictures and chat logs and who knows what else.

"that's not realistic because it would take too long" or "just ask for password again when you export". OK, but now you've made it even more enticing to steal someone's password since you've created a super easy vector to then gain access to all their info, possibly nicely organized as well. In this sense its kind of nice that its pretty difficult to get old info off of facebook currently.

Secondly, what counts as social network data and what doesn't? Should amazon be forced to provide you with an export of all your purchases so that another web store can offer you as good suggestions and prevent lock-in to amazon? Arguably amazon (or any web store) has already proven to better use this data, and it's as real or more real than facebooks data. How about my Starcraft stats and battle.net chat logs? I know, let's have a long series of litigations to figure this out, in the meanwhile creating a scary and perhaps prohibitively expensive proposition to _any_ new startup that plans to use your prior behavior/data to enhance your future experience.

<comment><USER10> > Leave your computer for a second or accidentally forget to log off at the > library or apple store?

If you left your computer, then you have bigger issues to worry about (i.e., it being stolen, searching through your emails for CC info, etc). In other words, the malicious use of an export button is no bigger of a problem than it already is to leave your belongings unattended in a public space.

> But now you've made it even more enticing to steal someone's password

It is already enticing to steal someone's password because more often than not people use the same password across services anyway.

I can see where you're coming from on your second point, but I'm of the opinion I should be able to take the data I'm putting into a service (reviews, chats, messages, etc) with me -- it doesn't prevent the service from still monetizing that data (through ads, suggested products, etc), and if anything it continues to give the service an incentive to make their platform better so I would want to stick around with them only because of their superior recommendations and whatnot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Obviously none of the existing comments in this thread have bothered to read the link. All that is really behind the headline is Page saying that users should be allowed to export their data to another service easily if they want to, not that google wants to index all facebook data...

<comment><USER12> I watched the entire interview last night and you are absolutely incorrect. Google absolutely wants to index all of Facebook's data, and used the repricosity idea as an example to frame it as a philosophical debate between openness and walled gardens.

Larry Page said repeatedly the future of search, the next step, is learning about you. You personally and how when you search for "Ted Smith" the results show the results relevant to the Ted Smith you are connected to.

There would be huge benefits to having all Facebook data searchable by Google, but the issue is privacy and whether people should have the choice to keep this information separate. The debate is both for a business one for the companies involved and a philosophical one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Speaking about not keeping users hostage, I'd suggest Page to stop forcing Android users to do a FACTORY RESET in order to log off from their Google account.

Burnt me pretty badly when I lost all my apps.

<comment><USER14> I've never tried it, but on my phone you just select the account in settings and in the menu is "remove account". Does that force a reset when you select it?

Edit: it appears this might have been added in Ice Cream Sandwich, but I can't find mention of it as a new feature, just people recommending the upgrade to avoid the reset.

<comment><USER13> Yep, it's sneaky too.

It appears as an option so you'd assume it just does it, but when you go ahead and try it, it's just a friendly message telling you that you actually need to do a factory reset and a friendly warning that you will lose all your information and installed applications. There are ways - 3rd party apps - <USER2> easily restore/backup app lists but you usually lose any app information you had there, like hiscores or contacts for instance, and of course paid apps.

Google social engineering at its best.

<comment><USER15> Wait a minute. The apps you've downloaded from the Android Market / Play Store are associated with a Google account. If you log off of that Google account you should lose _everything_ associated with that account - including apps you've downloaded. Logging off wouldn't be complete otherwise.

Plus you have to lose all of data stored in any non-downloaded Google apps, for the same reason. There are a few things left (e.g. alarms and the non- Gmail email app), but I think it is entirely reasonable that Google didn't spend a lot of effort on that corner-case - especially since the main privacy risk is an incomplete log off that leaves behind something it shouldn't.

<comment><USER13> An association I don't ask for, and I'm willing to waive in order to keep my apps physically in my device. Note that these are largely non-DRM apps.

But wait, there's more. They also delete the contacts, both those stored in the account (those, understandably) and those stored in the phone. Did I mention they force a FACTORY RESET? call logs, notes, saved app data, you get the idea.

If you root your phone you can solve this, and even without rooting there are still hacks to avoid the deletion, proving that this is perfectly possible. But Google prefers to make it a DESTRUCTIVE thing for you to try and circumvent being tracked at all times.

It's not a corner case. A lot of us don't want to be tracked at all times.

<comment><USER15> But now you're asking Google to intuit which bits of privacy you want (no Google app data) and which you don't (non-Google apps associated with your Google account are ok).

What about non-Google apps that use Google services / APIs on your behalf? What about apps that were non-Google when you downloaded them but were later bought by Google? And on and on.

Plus, other people are going to draw the line in different places. Should Google present a giant switchboard where you can decide exactly what to keep and what to get rid of? I feel sure that if they had, someone else would be here talking about Google's "social engineering" because they make the process of deactivating your Google account on an Android device so complicated.

The overwhelmingly commonest case for deactivating the primary Google account on an Android device is because you're giving that device to someone else. In that case you almost always actively want a factory reset. It is entirely reasonable for Google to keep things simple and optimize for that.

In most other cases, the data (not apps) you're talking about is either backed up to your Google account and/or can be straightforwardly backed up another way (e.g. apps letting you export to the SD card, emailing yourself notes, etc.). Dealing with those sorts of issues in your corner case isn't an unreasonable burden (contrast this with the Facebook situation, where almost everyone exporting their contacts from Facebook wants the email addresses, too).

<comment><USER13> No.

It's pretty simple really. I just want them to let me delete the account and just the account, leaving my stuff alone and destroying nothing. Just like it happens when you do it with a rooted device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The problem here is that the whole security model is upside down. No one else should see or have access to my data.

I am sure that Congress could eventually interfere and set certain rules around the handling of personal data, but more likely, we will soon start seeing alternate technical solutions which puts each user's data in that specific user's hands.

There will come a time when it will not be ethical for companies to store un- encrypted personal data.

<comment><USER17> > The problem here is that the whole security model is upside down.

I had to scroll two screens down to find your comment.

At some point Google and Facebook(and everyone else, these two are just the most popular right now) inverted the rules. Years ago it was completely unacceptable for any piece of software to mine any piece of data without your consent. Screens had to be shown explicitly "do you authorize we contact server X in order to send data Y?"

Fast forward a few years and these companies are out there providing Javascript libraries that are essentially urchins on every web page. Every web site which uses Google gadgets for example, like maps or adsense or whatever is giving their visitor's client data to Google - screen resolution, IP address, web browser used, allows them to set tracking cookies, etc.... Same with Facebook javascript gadgets. Since when is this OK?

This would have been completely unacceptable a few years ago but somewhere it got lost. Now it's not only ok for Google and Facebook to track you everywhere, it also seems to be OK to FIGHT over having access to even more data!

The whole privacy thing has been turned upside down. These people are not fighting for our privacy, they are fighting over who gets to access MORE of our personal data.

<comment><USER16> The problem is that showing explicit screens and granting authorization and doing all this stuff manually is not a viable solution. I think it is natural that companies won't do this, specially when they make tons of money from the current model.

Privacy needs to be baked into the internet. This is more central to human needs than a google search or facebook connection. People are doing what is easy and using these services, but once a true privacy service comes up neither Larry/Sergey or Zuch will know how to respond. This will likely be outside of their mental framework and new privacy centric companies will emerge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm still waiting for Google to explain to me why they banned me from adsense and stole my money.

</comment><comment><USER19> FB does allow you to export your data:

1\. Go to Accounts Settings in Facebook. 2\. Find a link "Download a copy of your Facebook data".

Data includes all your wall posts, photos and friends names plus their email addresses.

<comment><USER20> Email Addresses?

Really?

Those were removed for quite a while. If they're available now, it's kind of a big deal.

<comment><USER21> If the friends has their email address viewable on their profile then yes. Makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hopefully, an open source (and open-data) alternative will come along and we won't have to wait anymore. Not that these data need to be accessible by google anyway.

<comment><USER23> There are for the most part viable open and closed alternatives to facebook... we just need to overcome facebooks socially enforced vendor lockin

<comment><USER22> I doubt any of them are good enough to sustain the enormous traffic that facebook carries. I believe their amazing infrastucture is the #1 asset of facebook right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> We're still waiting for Facebook to unlock user data . . . so we can index it and exploit it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Question:

Google makes data available through the (roughly) 27 APIs, but a lot of them would be expensive to use on a large scale.

Does Google expect FB to provide user data for free or very low cost, or are they offering real money?

</comment><comment><USER26> I suspect that may arrive around the same time Google lets people export the full history of every search and click from their browsers (as recorded by not just search but google+, analytics, adsense, etc.).

<comment><USER27> <http://www.google.com/history>

<comment><USER26> (1) The exportable RSS format is only 'recent', with 'recent' undefined. (In my URL-tampering, I can get about 1 month's data in the exportable format. Unsure if I'm hitting a time or item limit.)

(2) There's no way to get my tracked clicktrails as collected by other Google properties (analytics, adsense, G+, etc.)

Related, but going beyond my original point: Google is also unlikely to ever allow exporting all the signals about me they've collected, and are now using to 'personalize' search results. Fine, they're protecting the proprietary advantage they've built up, with my acquiescence, over time. But so is Facebook.

<comment><USER14> In addition to what icebraining said, analytics and adsense aren't associated with your account. Adsense (which uses the doubleclick cookie) actually _can't_ be associated with your account under Google's agreement to acquire doubleclick. That's why the ads preferences page is somewhat off base for most people and is empty if you clear or block the cookie or view the page in incognito mode.

I wish people would read privacy policies before they're critical of them...

<comment><USER26> It doesn't matter to me that they can't link the click data with my Google account due to the arbitrary rules of prior agreements. They're collecting it; they're using it; they should let me have it -- simply by me providing the cookie that they're using as the master key, even if that's not my Google account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm still waiting for Google to stop asking for my mobile numbers.

<comment><USER29> Your mobile number helps Google keep your account from getting hijacked. Criminals are very keen to hijack the accounts of Google users, and if you have enrolled your mobile number it's vastly more difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Interesting, when Bing used click data(only search term and link that was clicked) from the Bing bar users who gave permission to do it, Google raised a big fuss about it.

But now, the user data belongs to the user and not Facebook and they want to access it.

</comment><comment><USER31> I suggest Larry read T&C of Facebook.

<comment><USER27> Is that where they say that Facebook contact information may be exported to yahoo and hotmail, but not to gmail?

<comment><USER32> In fact, the only way I was able to import my Facebook contacts before closing my Facebook account was to import them to a temporary Yahoo account first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> So Google can index and put ads on them? I'm moving away from Google's services and I don't want them accessing my user data.

<comment><USER34> As compared to Facebook that will index and put ads on them. There is no lesser evil here - not in principle at least. All firms seem to be in the same business of selling advertisements. Facebook might be able to do better display advertisements as compared to Google and they seem less intrusive to users - a viewpoint that I subscribe to. But other than the extent of intrusion, both Facebook and Google are using the data you provide for targeted advertisements.

[Edit: Typos]

<comment><USER35> This isn't a judgement on ads. This goes to whether I can move networks if I choose to.

<comment><USER34> And with that, I agree. Actually FB is providing some level of data movement. I was just replying to my parent comment that was indicating that data should be not be given to Google but to FB because the former will put ads on it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Turn any website into word swarm - <AUTHOR> https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/beenotung/swarm.js/blob/dist/dist/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> The script converts each characters on the website into a moving span.

I made this script to have fun when I was old-school about javascript (no framework, no dependencies, no VDOM).

It's quite relaxing to see the words 'reactive' like atoms.</comment>