Day Against DRM - <AUTHOR> http://www.fsf.org/news/may-4-day-against-drm

<comment> mkr-hn This press release sounds like a declaration of war on content creators. You won't kill DRM by tut-tutting it. You kill DRM by changing the minds of content creators who use it. You won't do that by waging a war on them.

What does one do to participate in this anyway? The press release wasn't clear.

<comment><USER2> They link to <http://www.defectivebydesign.org/> which seems to be main organising point.

<comment> mkr-hn Seems very misguided. It takes aim at DRM, not why DRM exists. People don't care about DRM. Think about how many people buy the products this site calls defective. But people do care that the people who create think they need DRM. A public awareness campaign focused on getting people to convince creators that DRM is bad would be more effective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> From 2010. Don't people look at dates before posting?

<comment> mkr-hn Don't Repeat Yourself, in classic UNIX fashion. They're reusing the same blog post for each year.

<comment><USER4> I don't see this linked in the news/event boxes on fsf.org, I think the person who posted this to HN used an old link -- not the FSF.

<comment> mike-cardwell I just went to the front page of fsf.org, search for "day against drm" and clicked the link. It took me here:

<https://www.fsf.org/events/international-day-against-drm>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Recently I've been researching autonomous cars, and I haven't explored this idea much, but could DRM have a role in preventing users from modifying the software that drives their car, or other life-and-death scenarios?

Like I said, it's just an inkling at this point, any thoughts?

<comment><USER6> I think in issues of public safety like that, it would be more a matter of law and not digital rights. Tinting your windows too dark, cutting a brake line, or adding distracting lights to the exterior are all ways to modify your car that are illegal (where I live, at least), so there's really no need to have other protective measures against that built into the car. I'd suspect driving software modifications would be treated similarly, with DRM or some similar system mainly being used to detect the illegal modifications as opposed to trying too hard to prevent them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> lol irrelevant

<comment><USER8> @skerrit_bwoy If you want to really participate in a discussion on HN you should stop trolling and present your opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would take posts like this from the FSF more seriously if they proposed or endorsed a solution, rather than simply proposing a protest.

FSF may claim to be about "Free as in Speech, rather than Free as in Beer," but DRM straddles both of these points. Yes, we're restricted in the products that can utilize DRM files, but DRM also exists to protect ownership rights. Its a complex system, and one that can't simply be "abolished" without some suitable alternative to protects both interests.

There are lots of theories and examples of alternatives to DRM that protect the rights of both the creator and end user. I'm just disappointed that the FSF didn't propose one of these, or their own, as a viable solution. It's easy to point fingers, it's tough to propose meaningful solutions.

<comment><USER10>
        [DRM] can't simply be "abolished" without some suitable
        alternative to protects both interests.

It can be and in the music industry largely has been. iTunes has no DRM. Amazon's mp3 store has no DRM. Bandcamp has no DRM.

The solution is getting rid of DRM. DRM does not prevent people intent on pirating their media from doing whatever they want. It hurts legitimate users.

The existence of DRM has nothing to do with preserving the freedom of content creators. Your presentation of it as something that does is naive. It exists to protect the interests and power of media publishers. The publishers--not the creators--are the ones making the choices about DRM. Its use is an attempt to prop up outdated business models, because that's easier--and, in the short term, safer--than change.

<comment><USER9> In my earlier post I was referring to publishers -- they are partial owners on the content.

I agree that their business models need an overhaul, but simply pointing a finger from afar, and telling these entrenched organizations to change won't get far. These industries are too big and entreneched to just dies either. The most practical answer is to have some sort of compromise.

It'll be hard to go back to pre-DRM, too. You can't unshift a paradigm like DRM for big media

<comment><USER10>
        You can't unshift a paradigm like DRM for big media

Yes, you can.

DRM was pervasive in the music industry. It no longer is. DRM was pervasive in the ebook industry. We are beginning to see signs from publishers (Tor books being the most recent example) of a willingness to sell ebooks without DRM. "DRM-free" has become a selling point for smaller companies in the games industry.

It is not easy, and it is not fast, but it _is_ possible, and it _is_ happening.

<comment><USER11> DRM-FREE is happening in many ways and it's a great thing. But in the music and movie industry they are leveraging streaming technologies like Netflix and Spotify to create solutions that still have DRM that just feel less intrusive then others. For E-books I think companies like O'Reilly are not only making users who are aware of DRM happy, they are taking a competitive advantage of a segmented DRM market(Nook vs Amazon vs Kobo vs whoever else) by going DRM- FREE.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What If a Female CEO Acted Like Elon Musk? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/elon-musk-new-york-times-interview-ceo/567835/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Yes, what if a female CEO had founded the first private space launch company and had made it into the world's most successful and revolutionary, and had brought a small electric cars company to huge worldwide success and astronomic stock market valuations. What if she had spent days and nights at the factory, working 140-hours weeks for months, never taking holidays longer than a week in the last ten years?

Then, would we pardon her an emotional interview and a few tears? I'm completely, absolutely sure we would.

<comment><USER2> What's the reason for the downvotes and the flagging? All I've said is that people are judged for what they do, not for displays of emotions or tears. If Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, gave an emotional interview saying it's been a lot of hard work to get the company where it is- do you think that the shares of AMD would have as much as a blip? No way, she's doing a fantastic job, nobody would give a damn about her display of emotions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there a woman, even a woman in history, that is the equal of Elon Musk in terms of accomplishment?

<comment><USER4> Good grief. No more MuskMania on HN, please.

<comment><USER3> In my defense the article _is_ about Musk :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Love Generating SVG With JavaScript? Move It To The Server - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/05/26/love-generating-svg-javascript-move-to-server/ <comment><USER2> SVG is just xml. You can use any xml generation library to make them, which many languages have. Or not use any at all and just echo/print the xml out. It seems like extreme overkill to fire up phantom js to generate some xml.

The things that libraries like d3, react, etc provide are transitions / tweening / animation, usually bound to datasets. Generating SVG on the server is a neat, but it does nothing to solve the animation and data binding issue.

</comment><comment><USER3> Where are the React.js utils for creating SVG charts?

<comment><USER4> There's ReactART ([https://github.com/facebook/react- art](https://github.com/facebook/react-art)), React bindings to ART drawing library. It can render to SVG, VML or Canvas. Not sure thought how it can be used on server but I suppose it can be done.</comment></comment>


A Dusting of Gamification - <AUTHOR> https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2018/04/13/gamification/ <comment><AUTHOR> > These are big problems. There's a lot more we can and will say about that > over the next few months, and we've got a lot of work ahead of us trying to > make Stack Overflow a more inclusive and diverse place so we can improve the > important service that it provides to developers everywhere.

I thought this was interesting - it looks like they are going to actually make some real changes about how reputation works.

Hopefully they will also be looking into moderation, as there are big problems there too (as has been discussed many times on HN).</comment>


Ask HN: Best database for tree storage and traversal? - <AUTHOR>

The gist of what I'm trying to do is have a tree, traverse through every possible branch until all leaf nodes have been visited.
I need to also be able to modify any node along a branch. I originally thought about using MySQL but it seems really complicated. So I turn to graph databases.
I want a python example which does this but can't find it in the docs for Neo4j, OrientDB, ArangoDB <comment><USER2> files and directories

</comment><comment><USER3> Did you try using any MPTT libraries for your framework/rdbms? I've found that fairly simple to use. But of course performance should be better with NoSQL.</comment>


Why Hostility Can Bring People Closer Together - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-hostility-can-bring-people-closer-together/ <comment><USER2> I see this pattern a lot in history. Things are bad until something worse comes along.

There's some quote about each country needing a reasonably strong enemy. Without one, the country starts trying to find enemies and conflict within.

Same thing might be happening in these mediations. By adding a bigger "enemy", the two parties probably quickly back down from trying to defend against to enemies and compromise with each other.

It's a sad state of human nature but apparently works.

<comment><USER3> There's supposed to be some sort of Arabic proverb that's something along the lines of "Me against my brothers, me and my brothers against my cousins, me and my brother and my cousins against the world".

It feels like a lot of attempted global social policy of the past 50 or so years has been trying to create a stronger consciousness of "humanity" as a thing, with our new enemies being abstract issues like poverty, hunger, climate change, drugs, inequality, etc. The "War on [...]" branding is part of that. Doesn't seem like it really gets the blood going as much. We'll probably have to have conquering aliens to fight against before that happens.

<comment><USER4> I wish people felt the same about going to space as I do. I think that if we were more knowledge focused as a species that we'd be racing to the stars which would mean an insanely different mentality than the 'tow the line' kind of thing I think we have nowadays.

<comment><USER5> Im a huge fan of learning about space, but sending human bodies seems impractical outside the novelty.

Everything is unfathomably far away.

There are lots of obstacles, near light speed travel is a necessity and we are nowhere near this ability, or that ability with a human undergoing the acceleration to light speed.

EDIT: So I suppose I'm suggesting putting our resources toward those beneficial causes on earth is better use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On the same note, sometimes when I introduce two friends who don't know each other, I get the conversation rolling by (not overtly) getting them both to poke fun at me.

<comment><USER7> You have any lines or ideas you use to do that?

<comment><USER6> Probably not useful specific ones, as they're mostly about my own idiosyncracies. But if you can find a natural way to introduce some foible you have into the conversation, especially if it's something they've joked about before, that's a good start.

For example if you're perpetually late to things you could say "...as you both know, punctuality is important to me." And that gives them something to swoop in on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think a related phenomenon plays a significant role in the current American political divide. Americans whose self-identity is threatened by increasing technology and connectivity make up for the loss by banding together against identifiable groups of _others_. Whether the opposing party did something to deserve the hostility seems to matter very little. What matters is that they can be blamed enough to facilitate a collective bond _against_ them.

<comment><USER9> Reminds me of the starting quote of "The Toxoplasma Of Rage"[0] - "Nobody makes an IRC channel for no reason. Who are we doing this versus?".

\--

[0] - [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of- rage/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is a great Austrian theater piece (now a movie as well) showing how a skilled mediator can unite a couple.. against him: [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6904262/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6904262/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Of course, if a paid therapist is the mediator, this advice can only have a very limited impact on their method regardless. They have a business to run, and that depends on them being liked.

</comment><comment><USER11> Couldn't this simply be a test of the reciprocity principle? People who feel like they've wasted someone else's time are probably more likely to make an effort to resolve the problem so as to be less of an inconvenience to the other person, or to meet the other person's expectations. If the mediator is chipper no matter what, then nothing is socially at stake for the negotiators, and it shows that the mediator is unattached to the outcome(which isn't or shouldn't be true). On the other hand, the perception of being a nuisance also comes with the social implication that one isn't pulling their own weight of effort, and most of us naturally want to be judged well by the group we are a part of.

So perhaps it's less about hostility per se, but the covert social _communication_ made through the hostility.

</comment><comment><USER12> A hostile mediator also sounds more fair. Hearing your faults straight from someone who is not afraid to say it as it is might convince you to accept them.

</comment><comment><USER13> Closeness-building hostility towards Emmanual Goldstein is literally a plot element of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

</comment><comment><USER14> You can definitely see that in Russian politics. It's very "enemy" oriented. Everyday we see on national tv that west countries are bad and against us. That we have our own path and so on and so on. And it's very frustrating that it works because it's the only news sourse for many people. It's psychological thing that a common enemy brings people together. Really hope it will change. We even have this idiom — my enemy's enemy is my friend.

<comment><USER15> "...Everyday we see on national tv that [insert enemy here] countries are bad and against us. That we have our own path and so on and so on. And it's very frustrating that it works..."

This works everywhere in the world, there is nothing endemic to Russia in this strategy. I'm born and raised in the US, and this is pretty much how news has been since I was a kid watching talking heads drone on about how dangerous the world is. (Especially, Arabs, Latin American rebels, and pretty much anyone from Eastern Europe.)

Nowadays we throw in China and certain other Asians as "dangerous", but you get the idea. I'd bet the news is like this in most other nations as well, just with a different set of "enemy" people or nations.

<comment><USER16> It's funny how every time anyone says anything negative about Russia, someone feels the urge to say "USA is not any better". But not the other way round.

Like, seriously, notice any debate where Russia is mentioned, and this pattern is everywhere.

<comment><USER17> It's an old Kremlin technique[1].

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: 13" Retina MacBook Pro, is it worth? - <AUTHOR>

I tried 15" Retina on Apple Store several times and liked it but now 13" MBP Retina (8gb ram + 128gb ssd) is $1700 which I consider pretty affordable.  (I'll return my brand new MB Air to buy this.)<p>How would 13" Retina look like, what would be its resolution (specs not available on Apple online store afaik) and do you think is it worth? <comment><USER2> Can't speak for the 13.3" retina, but I recently upgrade from a 2010 13.3" MBP to a 15" retina. The retina was a bonus from a client for finishing a big project ahead of schedule. The speed was the major selling point for me. In fact I almost didn't want the screen, but since it was free I went ahead and got it. The speed is incredible compared to a spinning HD, but the screen is simply amazing. I look at my old MBP and the screen is harder to read. The strain on my eyes has been reduced as I get far fewer headaches with the new screen.

TLDR; Going from a spinning HD to SSD is worth it. Once you have the screen you will wonder how you dealt without it, but I still wouldn't pay that premium out of my own pocket.

</comment><comment><USER3> Worth it? How do you use your laptop? Do any of the features provide additional/incremental value to you? As with the majority of goods, value (and therefore, worth) is highly subjective.

EDIT: For me, the 13" Retina MBP does nothing that I wish I could accomplish with my 2011 13" MBP with 8 gigs of RAM and an SSD. It doesn't make anything that I currently do faster/easier/better. Therefore, not much incremental value to me. When I look to buy my next laptop, the Retina series (if its still a different product line by then) will be at the top of my list. I'd love to buy a laptop with an SSD, RAM and that wonderful screen - they just don't provide enough value to overcome the acquisition cost for me.

</comment><comment><USER4> It has integrated hd4000 and an i5. This is pushing 2560x1600... I think I will wait to rev 2.

<comment><USER5> You think rev2 will have an Nvidia GPU? Unlikely, but you're welcome to wait for that perfect pc.

Is it me or did they finally remove the superdrive?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Depends what you're using it for.

A Retina laptop might be pretty annoying if you plan on running Windows on it. As Windows gives you literal resolution rather than converting it into a DPI increase (i.e. Windows makes everything REALLY tiny).</comment>


Show HN: Plan Together – Map Platform for Citizens - <AUTHOR> https://plantogether.city/ <comment><USER2> This is great, I like it. I bought the domain chattymaps.com to do something similar but gave up on it. I would really recommend you release this as a generic open source project that others can build on. It will be hard to monetise one specific implementation of it but I can imagine there will be quite a few people out there who would want to build something similar for their community.</comment>


What does an atheist say to someone who is grieving? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/23/atheist-grieving-what-to-say

<comment><USER2> > When you can no longer say 'I'm praying for you'

Except, you can. I'm essentially an atheist, and if a friend said he's praying for me I'd take in the spirit given, friendship and love.

Certainly not everyone feels that way, and it's case by case, but I think in all things on both sides of any interaction we can all mostly just lighten up.

<comment><USER3> You are unlike 99% of the atheists that it has been my experience to encounter, for what that's worth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "I'm sorry for your loss. I'll keep you in my thoughts. I'm here if you need anything."

</comment><comment><USER5> A popular & insightful quote notes (edited for relevance):

 _A human being should be able to ... comfort the dying, ... die gallantly. Specialization is for insects._ -Robert A. Heinlein

Hard enough for the religious, TFA author notes it's nigh unto impossible for atheists.</comment>


How will we ever get back our casual web browsing experience? - <AUTHOR> http://www.codelitt.com/blog/how-will-the-average-person-browse-the-web-privately-now/

<comment><USER2> I think this article is extremely spun in the direction of paranoia and fear.

Just because X VPN connections could be "decrypted" doesn't mean that current ones are. Unless there is a report pointing to which VPN connection mechanisms are vulnerable this is silly.

I use VPN with a pre-shared encryption key ( as many people likely do who use Open VPN files... ) I doubt very much that these are vulnerable.

Also, SSH can be broken? If you verify the signature, then I don't think you will have any problem. Most people ignore the signature and could be MITM attacked easily, but if you are serious about security then you will check and SSH will not be a concern.

SSL is broken? There have been so many discussions explaining what is broken here and what is not it is absurd. Suffice it to say, modern SSL implementations are not broken. Many are; if you care, you can make it secure.

Intel Management code is a backdoor? LOL. If so, how can TrueCrypt be a problem? Shouldn't the bad guys be using the backdoor to log all keystrokes or something? The management code is exactly what it sounds like; for diagnostic management. This is like saying that PCI Express slots are a hardware backdoor for reading memory. Theoretically you could hot plug a special device into PCI Express slots in order to read live memory...

<comment><USER3> Not sure if you are sincerely talking, trolling, or misinforming on purpose.

<comment><USER4> Probably an NSA Agent to misinform.

<comment><USER3> I had the same feeling..</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The American Who Manages the Decline of a Japanese Hamlet - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126056499927587793.html

<comment><USER2> _Mr. Irish moved to Japan in the 1980s after studying the language and history at Yale. He landed a job at Japanese construction firm Shimizu Corp. in Tokyo, rising through the ranks to become a vice president in the New York office. But he wanted to see a different part of the country: the vestiges of "Japan of the past."

He left Shimizu and moved to a fishing village of 1,000 people in Kagoshima prefecture at the southwestern tip of Kyushu. He spent the next three years on a fishing boat catching mackerel, sardines and squid, an experience he described as "an anthropological field study."

After publishing a book about life in the fishing village, Mr. Irish landed a job writing a column, in Japanese, for a local Kagoshima newspaper. Having decided that he wanted to live in a farming community, he hopped on a scooter and rode around the prefecture until, in 1998, he came across a hilltop cabin with breathtaking views in Tsuchikure._

Always good to see someone make a career out of being interesting.

<comment><USER3> _Since the prefecture owned the property, he negotiated with government officials a yearly rent of 2,500 yen, or $28_

What

<comment><USER4> Many of the rural Japanese prefectures will give property away for a song just to get you to live there. My previous job (technology incubator in central Japan) had a deal with the government where we got housed in the apartments normally used for government employees. My rent was $20 a month -- which "skyrocketed" to $60 in my second year.

Think of it as the modern Japanese analog to the Homestead Act.

It makes excellent sense to the prefecture: they have the property whether someone is living in it or not. If renting it out (free to them) induces one professional at the margin to live there, they get roughly ~20% of his wages in taxes and much of the remainder gets spent in the prefecture.

P.S. If any of you want to start a startup in Central Japan, and have some way of finangling your own visa, I can give you the forms to essentially make you ramen profitable for two years by government fiat.

<comment><USER5> I'd like to take you up on the offer for the forms. Tokyo is getting old, and I find the city quite depressing; wouldn't mind spending some time in the country side. Are you in Japan at the moment?

<comment><USER4> Yes, I live in a sleepy town in central Japan and have for the last five years. Please feel free to email me -- my address is easily discoverable.

<comment><USER6> How hard was it to organise a visa?

My brother has been living in China on short term tourist visas for close to 5 years. In the mean time he has built and sold one (non-technology) business and claims not to feel worried about the possibility that one day they will stop letting him back in despite substantial real assets in the country.

I'd been considering it, but in my case everything I own is easy to transport across borders :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Somehow, this reminds me of an Asimov tale. A planet called Solaria, in fact:

The Solarians specialized in the construction of robots, which they exported to the other Spacer Worlds. Solarian robots were noted for their variety and excellence. They also exported their grain, which was used to make a delicacy known as the pachinka.-- from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaria>

No offense to the Japanese of course; all I'm saying is fiction is often an extrapolation of stuff all around us.</comment>


Mass Surveillance Isn't the Answer to Fighting Terrorism - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/18/opinion/mass-surveillance-isnt-the-answer-to-fighting-terrorism.html <comment><USER2> I think that people need to understand that the concept of terrorism is next to impossible to stop. Once people understand that I think that their reactions to a horrific situation like the Paris shootings or Mumbai will be less severe and more effective.</comment>


Knot Strength: Structures That Make a Natural-Fiber Knot Strong or Weak (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://allaboutknots.blogspot.com/2010/11/knot-strength-structures-that-make.html

<comment><USER2> BD has a brief blog post testing knot strengths: [http://blackdiamondequipment.com/en/experience- story?cid=qc-...](http://blackdiamondequipment.com/en/experience-story?cid=qc- lab-what-is-the-best-rappel-knot)

</comment><comment><USER3> While the article claims there are no strength benefits to dressing a knot, it is almost certainly still a good idea if only for the fact that it is easier to recognize a mistake in a knot if it is dressed than if it is not.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is he reason why when working with lines, splices are significantly better.

My go to reference is Brion Toss -- [http://www.briontoss.com/](http://www.briontoss.com/)

<comment><USER5> Where "better" means less likely to fail - in many cases, it could mean "quick" or "easy to teach" for example, which splices are not. Given the tremendous strength of much modern synthetic cordage (especially Spectra / Dyneema), quick-to-tie knots that weaken the line, even by a significant percentage, may be preferable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For anyone interested in knots and knot tying, the _Ashley Book of Knots_ [1] is a wonderful book to have. I've spent many happy hours pouring over the knots and their descriptions in this book.

[1] - [http://www.amazon.com/The-Ashley-Book-Knots- Clifford/dp/0385...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Ashley-Book-Knots- Clifford/dp/0385040253)

<comment><USER7> It is _the_ book on knots, although it does miss knots invented later in the 20th century, like the Zeppelin bend. I was amazed to learn that it was used as a reference book by mathematical topologists. They will refer to a bend in space as Ashley#1024 for example, since all the knots in the book are numbered in a referential fashion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The palomar knot is one the strongest knots for tying a hook to fishing line...unless you do not wetten the knot while tying it.</comment>


How Bad Is It to Forget Someone's Name? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/10/im-sorry-whats-your-name-again/572614/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I'm pretty bad at remembering names, but my wife and I have worked out a system. If we're in a social setting together and I start to introduce her "have you met my wife..." she will jump in and introduce herself directly to the other person "hi, I'm Colleen...", which prompts the other person to directly introduce themselves to her (and thus taking me off the hook). As a result, if someone is introducing me to someone else, I tend to do the same thing -- hijack the introduction and introduce myself directly -- just in the case the person making the introduction needs an assist. Of course, if they've already greeted the other person by name, then no need.

<comment><USER3> In my college days we were brutally honest when we had forgotten someone's name. It was such a large school that if you simply stepped outside every day you met someone new all the time, one way or another. Many people you would only meet once and then never see them again. So it was common to hear some version of "It's good to see you again! Sorry I haven't gotten your name down yet, I remember you but I've got to meet someone like 5 times before their name sticks" and it was no big deal because the other person would say the same thing back.

I like to think that in the real world being honest about forgetting someone's name doesn't hurt, but then again remembering someone's name is way more impressive.

<comment><USER4> This is a much better tactic than the worst thing you can do, which is pretend you know and then use a wrong name. I lost a decent retail account by calling an owners friend 'Ashley' when she was really 'Melissa' when I met them at a party 3 months after initially meeting them at a trade show.

<comment><USER5> Harsh. I've seen this happen many times and on every occasion it's been taken light-heartedly/no offence/whatever. I think you were incredibly unlucky.

<comment><USER4> Yes, these individuals turn out to be rather snobby, you could say. Not people I'd endorse as friends or business partners on a personal level, but, it's business and it's worth knowing how to not lose customers, even if not means coddling them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That was mostly about forgetting people. Not about forgetting their names. Very different.

I rarely forget someone. I also rarely remember their name, even after being told it multiple times. When I meet people I totally tune out when they say their name, partially cause I'm socially nervous, but also my mind is jumping ahead thinking about interesting things/questions, like what they do or the meaning of their t-shirt slogan. I just don't find names interesting themselves... They're just labels. And labels don't matter, they things being labeled do.

But there is also some sort of mental block, like a brain stutter, going on. Cause I often(like 1/2 month) can't bring to my lips names of best friends, people I've known years interact with weekly if not daily. It's usually only a few seconds or a minute before I can get their name. But, it's weird and low- level worries me.

<comment><USER7> If it's of any help, everything you just said exactly applies to me as well, in exactly the same way you said it.

Spared me from writing this comment I guess, lol

<comment><USER8> Ditto. I'm awful with names and much of what the grandparent wrote applies to me.

Couple of things that sometimes help, thought not as much as I wished they did -

In meetings, I have a notepad out and write them down. Or ask for business cards. Sometimes with cards I can't remember which belonged to whom, but it narrows the possibilities way down, at least.

Sometimes if I can quickly think of someone else I know with the same name, it will anchor it a bit for me. Without repetition I'll just forget it later, but it gets me through a conversation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I forget and "re-meet" people regularly.

A few years ago, I picked up a habit I saw Michelle Obama use: she says "nice to see you" instead of "nice to meet you."

The phrase feels warm and appropriate to new folks, but keeps the ones I've met before from feeling forgotten.

<comment><USER10> I go with, "What's your name again?". When they tell me their first name, I say, "No sorry, I meant your last name?".

Works every time.

<comment><USER11> No it doesn't. Everyone with a mild bit of common sense knows what you're doing

<comment><USER12> What, they refuse to answer? How rude.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h As rude as lying to save face?

<comment><USER12> The lie would be for the benefit of the person whose name was forgotten, not to "save face". From what, forgetting a name? Nothing is more human.

I do agree that to lie at all is a terrible idea.

<comment><USER13> Now I'm curious. If lying in general is a terrible idea, how does the person whose name was forgotten benefit, otherwise what makes the terrible lie worth it?

<comment><USER12> White lies are confusing things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Possibly something better discussed with a psychologist, but I'll throw it out there.

Often I wonder if "memory" is a skill that I never properly learned. It seems for me that simply remembering an arbitrary past event in any significant detail isn't really possible.

Only if it's a story I've retold on several occasions (and likely by now as much fiction as non) am I able to retain a firm grasp on a particular past event.

Forgetting names or faces? They slip away almost instantly, and holding onto them is like trying to carry water across a room in my hands.

Childhood is more like an abstract notion. If asked to write about it, certainly I remember basic facts but they are as much deduced as they are seen in my minds eye. A few moments here and there—again, probably stories that I retold at some point—but mostly anything firmly in long term memory isn't really accessible in "true color" like it seems most people can have it.

I presume there's an anatomical explanation that could become apparent upon autopsy, although nothing so remarkable as to alert on a full body MRI.

Then again, I can remember code that I wrote 15 years ago. Not exactly line for line, but when I've had the occasion to revisit old code, it's as if I never left it.

Again it seems to come down to creation versus observation. Observations which aren't actively re-encoded just end up in /dev/null to a great extent for me.

My wife says I'm blissfully ignorant, and it certainly seems to have served me quite well as a coping mechanism. Hard to carry a grudge when it just doesn't occur to you how angry you were about something last month.

I'm not even sure it's something I'd want to "fix" even if I could, except perhaps the names and faces thing.

<comment><USER15> I've noticed this in myself as well, especially with changes in context.

When I lived in my hometown (until I was 16), memories were always vibrant -- I suppose kept alive by constant association.

After I moved away to college, I gradually started forgetting things from my hometown, even things as recent as my high school years.

After graduating from college, I moved to the countryside in Japan. I found that I started forgetting things about my college years -- even people I hung out with fairly regularly. As for things from my high school or junior high years? Forget about it.

Six years ago I moved to Tokyo; the context change has apparently been enough that I'm forgetting a lot of things about my time in the countryside.

I've always attributed it to a combination of a lack of importance (that is, I consciously or subconsciously decide certain people just aren't important enough to commit to memory) and a lack of associative cueing. Out of all the people I knew in college, I only talk to two -- and them rarely. I don't talk to anyone from high school or before then at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am lucky in that I am very good with names and faces. I don't know why but I can meet someone once for a brief conversation and remember key points (job, family, where they are from, etc) of the conversation without having to try and still recall that information many years later.

The strangest example of this is when I was in a coffee shop in London a couple of years ago and instantly recognised a man in the queue with me as someone I met in an airport over 10 years ago and had a 5 minute (max) conversation with. I remembered his name, that he had a new born son and his sons name, that the birth had been stressful and he was going to take longer off than his planned two weeks so his wife could recover, that he worked in bio-pharmacy research and a few other details.

Needless to say he was pretty shocked and clearly didn't remember me (because why would you?!) but we ended up chatting in the queue again and he was amazed I could remember so much detail from an airport conversation. This isn't the only time it has happened either. It happens more often than I realised until my wife pointed out my "freak super power". I don't think I have ever thought of this person after meeting them either. At least not consciously. Yet when I saw his face in that Costa coffee shop it was like an HD video started playing in my head of when we met in Charles de Gaulle all those years ago. The brain is an amazing thing.

Now if only I could channel this "super power" (freakish as it may be) for good rather than just being the person friends and family look to when they say "Ohh I recognise that person, what other film/tv show have they been in?" as I always seem to know the answer.

<comment><USER17> You remind me of a border-guard.

Waiting in line, he walked up to me. "You are visiting $PLACE" I replied yes, sweating slightly as the location was thousands of kilometers from this entry point. "I remember you were working for $COMPANY, are you still there?" Who is this guy was all I was thinking, do I know him? I'm still in the queue awaiting immigration. "Can I see your passport?" Border crossing and border guard. Presenting this and flicking through pages, he smiled widely "See my badge, I stamped your entry 2 years ago (the stamp had his badge number)". He walked off happily. I went through routinely. I'd only ever used this entry once before, that time when seemingly he was behind the immigration desk.

<comment><USER18> That is truly remarkable. What a nice moment, a human shining through the bureaucracy. And a smiling immigration agent, which is itself a rare treat. Thank you for sharing it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Although remembering people's names is a powerful social tool, you shouldn't infer from the article that forgetting someone's name (a very common faux pas, in the title of the article) is tantamount to forgetting having met someone (the leading "Jerkface" example in the article).

Recognition and recall are two very different things. The article conflates failures of recognition (X doesn't remember ever meeting Y) with failures of recall (X doesn't remember Y's name).

</comment><comment> the-dude I was bad at names. Until I was reading "How to make friends and influence people" and went to a talk of Daniel Dennet where he talked about "installing Apps into your brain".

Most of "How to make friends..." has come naturally to me since I was a child, except for the names.

So I just started, with Marjolein. After the introduction I turned around and repeated to myself "this was Marjolein. Marjolein". After a couple of times it becomes natural.

Being able to call out people by name, showing you remembered their names, is very powerful.

<comment><USER20> I believe studies of note-taking suggest a link between retention and the physical act of writing. My habit is to imitate writing the person's name on my palm several times after an important introduction.

In general though, my brain is not optimized for this. I rely in no small way upon having a digital extension to my memory. Usually, not being able to remember months and years of my life is more of a personal concern than not being able to remember names or faces. But, it's not clear that the broader issue is solvable, so I write on my hand, and apologize for the necessity.

<comment><USER21> One of the few things I remember from that one neuroscience class I took in high school was that the more physical senses you involve in something, the more likely you are to remember that thing. I think you're totally right about writing something down, even if it's just miming the act of writing.

It's the same effect, I think, where writing down a reminder means I remember it even when I lose the reminder note.

<comment><USER22> I also read it was a good idea to use multiple senses, so now I lick people when I meet them and they never forget meeting me.

<comment><USER23> Hey, I chuckled. You just dropped that in here. Nicely done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't forget people's names, but I am faceblind. I will remember an interaction involving me and this person named X—and then that story won't come to mind when I see X, unless/until they tell me their name again.

If I never found out the person's name, then I probably won't remember them at all.

The memory is _there_ —I just have no look-up key (where for most people, that would be the person's face.)

<comment><USER25> Prosopagnosia sufferer here -- what clues do you use to ID people?

I rely mostly on gait, height /build, dress habit, hair / facial hair, voice. If someone grows / shaves a beard or gets glasses, I'm pretty hosed. Example : my own uncle cut his hair and shaved his moustache, I didn't recognize him until he spoke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The headline indicates that forgetting someone's _name_ is bad, however the article treats that as forgetting someone entirely. I'm curious what the impact of the inbetween would be; that is "I remember I've met you before, but I can't remember your name".

<comment><USER27> The article also seems to conflate forgetting appointments with forgetting facts. I can easily see how if someone forgot an appointment with me, it would be annoying and damage the closeness of a relationship. I have zero resentment, however, for someone forgetting my name. I have forgotten people's names far too many times to get angry over such things.

<comment><USER28> > I have forgotten people's names far too many times to get angry

Same here. I've forgotten enough names on people, even people I've known for ten years and deal with on a weekly basis, to be bothered by it. I generally remember the name some minutes later, but it's often too later by then. I've never found asking someone for their name ("Dude, I'm sorry, I'm completely blanking on your name", depending on the formality of the event) to cause any particular problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> When I've only met someone once or twice and haven't seen them for a while, I just take my best guess at a name while using my tone of voice and body language to show that I'm making an effort. I remember faces very well, rarely forgetting anyone, but I'm not a natural when it comes to names.

I've found that when I make it clear that I remember a person and _want_ to say their name, they are always very forgiving and any potential awkwardness is diminished. It also gives the other person an opportunity to try to guess my name as well! I'd say most people don't remember other people's names on the first try, and the typical coping mechanism for that is to avoid saying names all together. To allow myself to stumble also allows _them_ to stumble, which is a relief to both parties.

This isn't to say that it's better than actually remembering a person's name from the start, but not remembering a person's name isn't the faux pas a lot of people believe. It may seems that way because we know how good it feels to be remembered, and we _want_ to be that person who remembers everyone else's names, but instead we come up with excuses in our heads to just avoid names as much as possible.

After such incidents, I almost always remember the other person's name thereafter because I now have a rapport with them. Rapport is key because, without it, the garbage collector in our brains chuck out "orphaned" data. Well, at least mine seems to. But I've gotten much better.

<comment><USER30> For what it's worth, I think I significantly prefer "sorry, I know we've met before, but I've forgotten your name" (with bonus points for 'I remember you from [x]'), rather than "hi... [wrong name]?"

The first is just straightforwardly honest (and forgetting my name is completely understandable), whereas the second can feel a bit disrespectful, though it's hard for me to analyse exactly why. It's not a big deal, and I've done it myself, but personally I wouldn't recommend guessing unless you're reasonably confident you'll get it right.

Mostly I think remembering the person is much more important than remembering the name, anyway. If someone forgets me entirely, that can be hurtful if I remember having an interesting interaction with them. Even if they remember my name, that doesn't mean very much if it soon becomes clear that they don't remember anything from our last conversation. But if you remember me, I don't much care whether you remember my name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I remember faces but not names. I'm sort of the opposite; I won't engage because I know I have forgotten the name. This is mostly because names are arbitrary and usually common "Hi Matt!"

<comment><USER32> Ditto. And I am much likelier to remember random facts: where they work, where they live, what type of food they like--than what their name is. I assume it's because, at some level, my brain is saying this is some arbitrary symbol that doesn't really matter and I'm not very interested in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I tend to have a slightly different problem when meeting someone for the second time; although I'll remember meeting the person before (and usually recall their name), I'll often not recognize that it's the same person if I didn't end up talking with them for a long time the first time I met them. I never realized that I had this issue until freshman year of college, when it occurred around weekly with various people I met on campus. Like others have mentioned about forgetting names, I found that simply being honest about it was the best strategy; people tended to be pretty forgiving of it, especially since I would able to recall all the details of our previous conversation, which I could bring up after the person identified who they were. It still occasionally happens either at work when I met someone new who joined the company or when meeting someone at a meetup or conference for the second time, but in many circumstances it actually ends up breaking the ice quite well, as the other person has forgotten my name.

<comment><USER34> I also have a mild degree degree of prosopagnosia (1). I'm constantly embarrassed by it, but most people are cool about it if you explain. It's the ones that I might be regularly blanking that I worry about.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Moonwalking with Einstein is an interesting book related to this topic. It's about Joshua Foer's journey becoming an American memory champion a few years back. Some parts delve lightly into remembering people's names, among other memory techniques. Was one of Bill Gates suggested reading when it come out too. If you're interested in this sort of stuff, I suggest picking it up.

</comment><comment><USER36> I used to be really good at remembering names. To the point where sometimes people i met briefly would get weirder out I remembered their name. As I've gotten older and met more people I've started forgetting names more often.

I've never really noticed anyone get offended when i've forgotten, thouhg i guess i don't know their thoughts, and personally I don't get offended when most people forget my name. I dunno I find after a quick little reintroduction and then moving on it's usually ok. Heh actually there's a friend of a friend I see occasionally and we've introduced ourselves to eachother every time. Technically we've known eachother for years now but it's just how it goes I guess.

The thing i've actually been bad with is using people's names in conversation. I don't know why but I used to feel weird saying people's names to them. I've come to learn though it's a bad habit and most people enjoy hearing their names.

</comment><comment><USER37> There is a cultural aspect to it as well: when I lived in Switzerland, I noticed, it is very common to use the name of the person in almost every sentence when referring to another person. Be it greeting, asking something or leaving the place. I would often times try to mimic it, yet would not be able to come up with the name of the person fast enough, even though I knew the name. I guess it's a matter of practice.

</comment><comment><USER38> I meet a lot of people professionally, typically in a single week 10 to 15 new faces which I need to interact with intensely for a week and then I will most likely never see them again. So forgetting names is something that happens to me and my crew all the time.

My personal trick is to ask someone how to spell their name, this usually works just fine, unless they are called John Smith.

<comment><USER39> This is me, and I suspect it hurts my career, as I'm lucky to remember the guy's name two offices over, much less the people who introduced themselves and we chatted for 5 minutes over a beer the nigh before.

And before you talk about lack of empathy/caring, this happened to me all the time when I was younger/meeting women. Back then I would forget their name after about three sentences, so I tried to run a background process "I really like this girl, her name is $NAME, and it reminds me of $SOMETHING". But frequently that itself would cause problems as people can detect when you aren't paying 100% attention to what they are saying..

I suspect some of us, have the perfect genes for survival in the jungle with our 20 family members. The new large group social skills are something we can't deal with. So we are being selected out of the pool along with our killer instincts for other methods of survival. Frequently I wonder if some of frank Herbert's (there is some more recent similar stuff) science fiction where the human race is devolving into ant/bee like colonies is where we are all going.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> It seems like (the stories in) this is more about remembering faces than names. Prosopagnosia is face blindness which people often mask by matching hair clothes and other features... while remembering a name or a meeting is something else. You can be great at one and terrible at the others.

</comment><comment><USER41> Just as some people have great technical aptitude, others (I believe) have great social aptitude. While memorizing acronyms comes naturally to some, memorizing faces comes naturally to others. And the other group must work harder to compensate and keep up.

<comment><USER42> You can also have both or neither. There is no dichotomy between tech aptitude and social aptitude.

Moreover, there not one tech aptitude, but more like multiple different aptitudes that makes you more or less suitable for different positions.

<comment><USER43> These categories seem senseless to me. What does remembering a name have to do with holding a compelling conversation? What does remembering language syntax have to do with performing quick mental math? If someone has been doing poorly socially they may tell themself, "I'm a brainy tech person, not some vapid socialite" or if they are struggling with a difficult technical concept they may say, "I'm good at talking to people, I'm not a nerd." I think the truth is that any behavior has a corresponding skill and any skill can be learned. Which skills come more easily, I believe, are a matter of past experience and conviction of one's ability to learn that skill rather than a matter of "giftedness". Licking a wounded ego is tempting and people love to be a part of some group that bears a shared identity. Doing so, however, doesn't make you more skilled and likely does the opposite by depriving you of the conviction that a skill can be learned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I don't get upset/disappointed when somebody doesn't remember me, mostly because I forget way too many people too.

I'm getting happy when somebody remembers me.

Focusing on the positive things in people is a great way to enjoy social interactions.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think it sucks. But, I end up doing it. And I try dammit!

Funny, I can remember all sorts of crazy things. But I will choke on a name. Frustrating!

And because it happens, despite honest intent to avoid it, I never let anyone else, who gets stuck with this damn thing, feel bad about it.

Good as it gets. I am sorry in advance.

How else does one play this?

Edit: To the poor, deserving soul forgotten, I usually express some variation on my frustration expressed here, and let them know I am totally good for a save, or favor, whatever in return for understanding. Just say the word.

Usually goes well, but some people have trouble getting past it. Understandable.

(I really hate missing a basic like names. )

</comment><comment><USER45> I had a colleague that would make it a habit to greet everyone by name in the morning. E.g. 'Goodmorning Dave', 'Goodmorning Ben'.

It felt a bit weird at first but overtime him showing up was a point where the whole team felt connected and would chat about the weekend etc. He was former military (and would shake your hand if he had the opportunity) and he forced a bunch of tech people to bond unknowningly.

I kinda do this now, at least when I come into the office if I run into someone I try to say some type of greeting with their name.

<comment><USER46> I do this. Didn't realize it came off as weird.

<comment><USER30> I think it can come across as a bit forced, depending on context. But if it's natural for you, that will shine through.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I struggle with that because I can't recognize people well. I don't forget them, once I recognize them or they tell me their name, I usually remember quite well what they've told me but without context and if they're not wearing similar clothes to what they usually wear, I just can't recognize friends in the street.

This has caused me repeated embarrassment and really annoys people.

<comment><USER48> I'm in my mid 20's, and while I remember people from my past, I frequently forget where I knew them from.

I will talk to high school friends and mention people I knew in college, and they will say, "Who?" I'll do the same thing with college friends, mentioning high school friends, forgetting that I knew them from separate places.

And after a year or so goes by of me not having seen someone, I pretty much have to re-meet them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I think the key to these situations is remembering that others are just as likely to forget your name as you are to forget theirs. Thus, when seeing someone whose name I've forgotten, I always lead off the conversation by reintroducing myself (without asking for their name).

This often prompts a reintroduction by the other party and will soothe their anxiety if they've forgotten your name as well.

</comment><comment><USER50> My name, being a traditional Hindu name, is a difficult one for non-Hindus to remember, so it often gives me a get out of jail free card. No one remembers my name, so can't feel offended if I forget theirs. The fact that I often do remember people's names means that I'm often the one left feeling a bit offended (but I don't take much offence anyway).

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm not so much bad at names as I am bad at catching them when they're slightly unusual in pronunciation. The trick to getting around that for me has just been to make a big deal as to how you say it right upfront which gives me a chance to say it a few times in a row to get it to stick (also I think adds more events to the memory which also helps).

</comment><comment><USER52> I've created enemies by forgetting names. Socialites are unforgiving.

I've learn to never ever say "good to meet you" and always say "good to see you" instead.

Worse, attraction plays a big role, and being married, leads to many conversations, generally of comedic value at this point. Maybe not the same conclusion in the early days. But one borne from confidence and time.

</comment><comment><USER53> I've been listening to the Harmontown podcast a lot recently and I've noticed that the "comptroller" (host) regularly forgets people's names when they call them up from the audience. He just asks them again and it seems to be fine. "What was your name again?"

I've done it a few times and nobody seems to really care.

</comment><comment><USER54> I learnt a trick with the "Schindler's List", that tended to mention characters with full name - get to know the surname, which helps to memorize the first name, perhaps because it creates a hash list of ethnic origin inside the brain?

</comment><comment><USER55> I remember names until that person is in front of me. Once they've gone away, I remember it again. It happens all the time. I guess there's a name for this?

</comment><comment><USER56> Anyone understand why if I get the name twice I'll remember it forever but once is maybe 1/100\. And then it'll have to be an interesting name...

</comment><comment><USER57> Some people are good at remember names, some people are not. Some people can spell, some people cannot. Some people are good at math, some people are not.

Frankly, I find it unnerving if someone I barely met remembers my name. Is this person stalking me?

Even weirder is when someone just comes up and say "Hi <my name>"...because they hung out with my brother in high school (he is 6 years older than me) and remember me simply because I look like him. This has happened twice, both in my late 30's. Seriously, you aren't supposed to remember people that long.

</comment><comment><USER58> Is this where you use your AR augmented glasses to surreptitiously recognize their faces from your face recognition database.

<comment><USER59> That is the only reason I wanted the glasses, but I seem to remember that use was banned by Google because of privacy concerns?

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I've a QR code on my blazer which anyone can use to find the public info about me.

<comment><USER61> And you have people walk up to you and point their phone at a specific part of your body, stare at the screen and away from you while they wait for the info to load, and then say, "Hi Ted"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Damn these kind of problem are best solved by augmented reality glasses with face detection or simply some QR code scanner which scans other's glass. Name can be made public yeaa

</comment><comment><USER62> I never forget a face but often forget a name

</comment><comment><USER63> Depends if you're married to them.

<comment><USER64> For sham marriages, this is a real problem!</comment></comment>


Announcing EthicalAds: a privacy-focused ad network for developers - <AUTHOR> https://www.ethicalads.io/blog/2020/08/announcing-ethicalads/ <comment><USER2> Are you doing anything about the computing footprint of ads themselves? I often end up blocking ads because of the sheer amount of Javascript bloat they load, which often slows down my light-weight laptops/phones. I would be less opposed to blocking them if they were a simple image and link.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our javascript is super small in terms of loading the ad, and we don't allow advertisers to add their own JS. So it shouldn't effect performance at all.

You can see our JS here: [https://github.com/readthedocs/ethical-ad- client/blob/master...](https://github.com/readthedocs/ethical-ad- client/blob/master/index.js)</comment></comment>


Battling Fake Accounts, Twitter to Slash Millions of Followers - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/technology/twitter-fake-followers.html <comment><USER2> Kudos to twitter on this. This is one of those moves that harms them in the eyes of short term investors, but is The Right Thing To Do.

I've always been astounded that nobody seems to notice that Facebook continually announces record users, record MAUs and then _usually_ a week or two after their quarterly numbers announces that they have removing millions of fake accounts. Always after they've 'beaten' on those metrics.

Facebook these days, for me, is 90% dealing with fake friend requests from people that are either clones of real profiles, or just complete garbage. It's part of my dislike of their platform, but they're more afraid of bad metrics than genuinely delighting their customer base.

It becomes a negative feedback loop too. We used to spend significantly on Facebook for several businesses I'm involved in, but now that most clicks are garbage/fake, we don't.

I know twitter gets a bunch of hate for not doing more, but realistically they are actually leading the way. I'm impressed with how they're operating more and more.

<comment><USER3> As a twitter user, it doesn't matter to me. I don't see these bots & fake users. What annoys me with all these platform is that that they choose what to show me. I wish to see all posts/tweets in the exact order it was created. That's it, don't decide who's I should see. Every once in a while, I'm shocked to come across someone I was following and havent' seen their tweet only to check their profile and see they have been tweeting tons! Meanwhile, I see tons of tweets from people I don't follow only because someone I followed retweeted it. What I've done is to unfollow a good amount of folks to reduce the noise.

<comment><USER4> Exactly this.

My other beef with twitter is a more sophisticated way to filter my timeline. I mean something that would make sense to a programmer, not the typical user friendly useless thing.

<comment><USER5> Yes I haven't become a bigger Twitter user because it's a huge time suck to actually get to the few topics/groups I care about. Medium also needs to do similar.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. Basically, it is akin to having a second fulltime job. Except you don't get paid anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh my absolute fuck. Every single Elon Musk tweet is followed up by an account with an identical image, and a one-character-off twitter account pretending to continue the conversation with a 'surprise'. It's always a link to some crypto BS. How in the hell Twitter can't auto-block that, particularly when the source account is a verified one, is behind my comprehension.

<comment><USER8> The problem is so much worse than this now. There are dozens of fake accounts under every one of his tweets and it doesn't even seem like these accounts are trying anymore. Their names are sometimes random strings of letters, and they just change their profile picture to a screenshotted version of Musks. Oh and once you report one of these accounts it can take weeks for Twitter to do anything

I also find it so strange that Twitter hasn't done anything to specifically limit these accounts. They could even naively block normal users from having a verified user's profile picture and this problem would virtually not exist.

<comment><USER9> > _They could even naively block normal users from having a verified user 's > profile picture and this problem would virtually not exist._

I'm all for Twitter doing more, especially as they seemingly do nothing at all to combat fake accounts. However I'm sure these spammers could just adjust a few pixels on the profile image and a naive block wouldn't do anything.

<comment><USER8> Yeah I agree with that. Maybe they'll need a more sophisticated solution that can check for visual similarity. But It just feels like they haven't even acknowledged this as a problem, so I would be happy with any countermeasures right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Odd that they counted in the first place. Maybe this is part of a phased roll out to identify first (refine the models), then take punitive action?

The cynic in me says they counted in the first place because it helped everyone's ego (and wallet)

"Most of the time, according to Twitter, the locked accounts are not included in the monthly active user count it reports to investors each quarter, a critical Wall Street metric for social media companies. But the locked accounts were nevertheless allowed to inflate the follower counts of a large swath of users.

That choice helped propel a large market in fake followers. Dozens of websites openly sell followers and engagement on Twitter, as well as on YouTube, Instagram and other platforms. The Times revealed that one company, Devumi, sold over 200 million Twitter followers, drawing on an estimated stock of at least 3.5 million automated accounts, each sold many times over."

<comment><USER11> > The cynic in me says they counted in the first place because it helped > everyone's ego (and wallet)

I don't think you're being cynical. They counted in the first place because it helped their _metrics_ – Twitter is in the business of selling advertising and made the decisions they did in service of their advertising metrics.

<comment><USER12> I remember skimming their quarterly report a year or two ago and being shocked that they focused so much on user acquisition as a core KPI given it was clear how goosed those numbers were. I was expecting slightly more complex CLV type numbers but instead they were fawning over a glorified "select count(*) from users".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's really only one solution to Twitter's problem, and anything short of it is just nonsense placating. They have to open up profile verification to _all_ applicants. It would fix the platform overnight. You could just immediately ignore anyone who's not verified, yet it would still be optional for those who don't care.

<comment><USER14> They started to do this but then paused all verifications because bots were getting verified.

<comment><USER15> I saw one of those Ethereum scambot dopplegangers on a high profile tweet that was verified. Really looked awful and definitely caused more damage since people are trained to trust it.

<comment><USER16> Any hacker that manages to get the credentials of any verified user can just change that account's name and picture to that of a famous person for easy impersonation.

<comment><USER17> Just the fact that you can get a verified account and change the name to anything without the need to get verified again is a massive loophole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> the-pigeon I'm curious if this is a real crack down or they are just trying to act like it.

All of the big social networks have tons of bot activity to the point that most likely the majority of their requests are from bots. If they actually stopped all bots activity it would tremendously hurt their user counts and thus their valuations.

<comment><USER18> I'm curious how many "suspicious" accounts will be real people simply expressing their views. Twitter does openly admit to censorship [0], so it's not exactly a wild thought.

[0] [https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/4766f54d-...](https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/4766f54d-d433-4055-9f3d-c94f97eeb1c0/testimony- of-sean-edgett-acting-general-counsel-twitter.pdf)

<comment><USER19> Human logs on ,sees suspension notice, goes through unsuspension process.

Bot dies.

Those humans are usually very bot-like retweet mills anyway, in my experience. Thou complain'st too much.

<comment><USER20> Nope.

Human logs in, sees Twitter demanding personal information like a phone number or worse, goes away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a person who buys ads on Twitter and Facebook, I really need them to step this up. It is killing customer acquisition costs when the majority of clicks come from fake accounts.

<comment><USER22> We stopped our (tiny) $1500 per month Facebook campaigns for exactly that reason. So scammy: we pay real money for a bunch of bots to "engage." Until robots start buying our product, I won't be buying ads where bots are the largest source of engagement.

<comment><USER23> I regularly see comments like this about Facebook's ad program. Personally, it strikes me that there was no tracking of ROI in the first place -- and if you can't reliably track ROI, why were you spending $1500?

If you're spending $1500, but getting great ROI, then fake engagement would be no reason to stop the ads.

<comment><USER21> People are tracking ROI, and constantly testing new targeting parameters to keep eking out a few more points of ROI. A lot of Facebook Ad spend is experimental (especially at that low of a price). There used to be a time when you could get real engagement for pennies each and build up a following of real people based on a few ads then not have to spend anymore and go off your organic growth and audience.

Now the second you stop the ad spend your engagement drops to nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It'll be fun seeing which accounts lose the most.

I expect a _lot_ of whining about it, particularly in the political realm.

<comment><USER25> Instagram is a space where influencers were deeply affected by a purging of bot accounts (although I can't remember the year this occurred). People made posts in droves complaining to Instagram, asking for them back, and in one case a user cried that "those were users I will never get back".

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interesting to see social media platforms finally starting to be (somewhat) more accountable to their users. Their motives are a dichotomy. On one hand, their revenue comes from advertisers, so they must be attractive in the "metrics," but by padding the metrics, they lose the users that those metrics are supposed to reflect. It seems that Twitter has finally reached an inflection point where having more engaged users is more important than just having "good numbers."

As social media matures, I'm sure we'll see where the advertiser-friendly vs user-friendly line is drawn. Reminiscent of the banner ad boom that initially made great revenue for the sites, but in the end netted negative for the sites because of the users it drove away.

</comment><comment><USER27> These are not bots.

I've encountered many people complaining that Twitter thought they were a bot. Sometimes that was that, The End. Sometimes there was a demand for "real world" identification, like a phone number, which got refused because people like their privacy.

The common feature seems to be following or retweeting political users toward the right, and using hashtags associated with that. Do that exclusively, and twitter will assume you are a bot. The same does not seem to apply if you are on the other side of the political spectrum.

I think Twitter is well aware of this, and they consider it an intended result, but they can't just publicly admit it.

<comment><USER28> That may not be Twitter's fault exactly. Twitter is overrun with left-leaning SJW types and why is the W short for "warrior"? It's because again and again these people use whatever tactics they can get their hands on to defeat their perceived enemies i.e. anyone with conservative views.

Most likely there are people on Twitter who make it their mission to report conservative tweeters as spammers, knowing full well that it will cause Twitter to auto-harass them on their behalf. They do it in the hope they can get these accounts shut down and thus "cleanse" Twitter of wrongthink.

This sort of behaviour should be easy to stop, but frankly Twitter's spam team was never that good (just check account prices on the black market). Lots of trivial techniques were never implemented by them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Good. If you follow any remotely popular people you'll run in to bots. You can see bots spamming replies to people even with just 80,000 followers --less than the million mark.

</comment><comment><USER30> The reality is, that Twitter could have easily and simply fixed this issue long, long ago.

But, to do so they would have to place some power in the hands of the users. They don't want to do this because it means a loss of their control over what you see.

We already know that FB experimented with pushing people's mood and views on subjects around; Twitter is not immune to such temptation also.

Simply: assign 2 scores to every user, each out of say, 1000 (100 is not enough given Twitter's large userbase).

1 score is a category score, such as "lgbt politics" or even finer-grained than that, easily done by simply reading all of a user's tweets and using Bayesian (or some other classifier) auto-classification. This is a measure of how the user is perceived by others, inside that category.

The other score is a combination of per-region or per-country (because in general, people care about the people in their own country or region more), plus number of times a user gets a like or retweet in that same region, etc.

Then, simply let people filter based on those 2 scores. If I set score 1 at (cutoff everyone below 900) I will get top tweeters in each subject; if I set score 2 at (cutoff 200) I will let most tweets across the world reach me. etc. etc.

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if bot sellers will see an increase in sales? and Twitter announces a lot of new users soon.....

</comment><comment><USER32> The comments here are overwhelmingly misunderstanding twitter's action: it will not lower their MAU numbers, where these accounts had already been excluded. Twitter is now just following up by also removing spam accounts from individual accounts' follower count.

</comment><comment><USER33> This has been the elephant in the room for Social since the beginning.

</comment><comment><USER34> if you've invested in twitter, join the class action fraud lawsuit where twitter knew about the 95mil+ fake accounts (conservative estimate), cause it's 101 obvious fake accounts that any idiot could spot, and still projected growth numbers including these accounts, and used those to help raise money. classic silicon valley fraud.

</comment><comment><USER35> How can an account be fake? An account impersonating someone else? That's very different from an account that exists solely to boost follower counts. What's the problem with people paying to boost their follower count?

<comment><USER36> There really isn't, but then again, I don't know why they'd pay at all; it's hilariously easy to get a "following" on Twitter by simply following random people. I never use Twitter, but I once tried just following random people to see what would happen and I had about 200 "followers" within a few days, all from maybe an hour or two total of randomly clicking. Now 200 is peanuts, but imagine if I had kept it up for longer! Hahaha. It's so ridiculous how easily people will just follow each other on Twitter. It means virtually nothing, with or without fake accounts or people paying to boost their count.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> the amazing thing is, much of the comments in response to Donald Trump and other major figures are real. the bot problem probably has to do with fake followers, hahtag spamming, and keyword spam of sorts. Much of it is invisible to the naked eye.

<comment><USER38> This sounds like something a bot / Russian troll would say.

<comment><USER39> Please don't break the HN guidelines, which ask you not to insinuate astroturfing or shillage without evidence. This is a particularly toxic variant of that poison, and it's important not to use it here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER38> I guess I forgot to add "/s", which I didn't think was against the guidelines (just low value).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Crazy that Twitter still sells ads and soooooo many of the accounts are bots. They have an obvious interest in inflating the total numbers.

It's a super, super simple problem. If they really cared, they'd eliminate bots entirely. Not that hard.

<comment><USER41> > _It 's a super, super simple problem._

No offense, but that's incredibly easy to say when you're not the one responsible for doing it.

<comment><USER40> Verifying humans is a solved problem.

<comment><USER41> Please fill us in.

<comment><USER42> I share your skepticism.

CAPTCHAs are at best a game of cat-and-mouse, and are always open to relay attacks anyway.

You can still verify in-person, and even check documents, but no web company would even consider doing that, even for something like an optional 'fully verified account' tag.

<comment><USER41> Even something like checking a phone number just means that you're limiting the number of legitimate "bots" or alternate accounts people can have.

<comment><USER42> Indeed, that's a good way to raise the bar.

For small websites, even a completely trivial email check is enough to keep out most spammers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Most programmers don't know what Expect can do for them - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Most+programmers+don%27t+know+what+Expect+can+do+for+them <comment><USER2> One of my most fond programming experiences was using tcl/expect to create a custom web interface for an IBM Tivoli tape library. The stock web interface was too expensive for a college with a few thousand users, and didn't provide adequate access control to allow our users to restore ONLY their own files.

Yes, wrapping a telnet session is a hack... But it was a hell of a hack that did everything we needed!

<comment><USER3> I'd still use expect instead of docker/ansible/salt ... if I could get away with it.

<comment><USER4> Those aren't alternatives; you'd create a Docker image with expect installed, for example.

<comment><USER3> Yeah ... but I don't want to touch Kubernetes. Kubernetes doesn't spark joy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If, like me, you still weren't sure what Expect does then this is a great explanation [https://www2.lib.uchicago.edu/keith/tcl- course/topics/expect...](https://www2.lib.uchicago.edu/keith/tcl- course/topics/expect.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> I've written so much code in Tcl/Tk/Expect - but it was all pre-Java; literally before Java 1 was released. Tk was used in lots of Linux apps, most notably Zircon, an awesome IRC client.

I used to think that knowing Tcl was a kind of super power. It was incredibly productive. It was far better for quick scripting than either bash or awk - but large programs could get somewhat unmanageable.

It would be great to see a renaissance of TCL usage, though I'd be pretty much re-learning it today.

<comment><USER7> TCL is still in use everywhere in hardware development. Practically every EDA tool has a TCL interface.

I'm afraid I don't share your fondness for it. :)

<comment><USER8> It's also in other places, like F5 load balancers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Lots of talk about TCL in this thread. Everyone should be familiar with the TCL/Guile and GNU scripting story. Also Ousterhout's dichotomy is a useful concept to understand:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ousterhout%27s_dichotomy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ousterhout%27s_dichotomy)

<comment><USER8> Ousterhout also co-invented raft distributed consensus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I used expect long ago, it was fun but a bit cumbersome.

Quite recently I was working on some python that used netmiko, which is similar but more ssh-oriented.

Having used both, I don't know when I'd ever use expect. Maybe if there was no python available for some reason.

The developer ergonomics on netmiko are just better. It's not anything about python vs tcl, it's that netmiko "does more out of the box", and expect is a bit lower-level.

</comment><comment><USER11> I ended up rewriting most of my Expect code in Pexpect and found it both nicer to write and much more robust.

<comment><USER12> [https://github.com/pexpect/pexpect](https://github.com/pexpect/pexpect) Python module for controlling interactive programs in a pseudo-terminal

<comment><USER8> There's also Perl's Expect.pm. I know Perl isn't popular here, but it excels in this sort of use case. The compact syntax for regexes on responses makes it a good match for expect scripting. It can also be paired with IO:Pty for some advanced stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Whenever I need to "screen scrape" an interactive console application, I usually end up running the process under tmux and interacting with it via Python after wrapping send-keys and capture-pane.

<comment><USER14> Do you know there's an expect clone for Python?

<comment><USER13> I do now. Thanks!

<comment><USER14> Happy to help!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I winced at this as I've only ever used expect for dirty hacks like wrapping ssh (or telnet to strange devices without real management). I wouldn't discount it though, it's a decent tool when heavier machinery isn't viable.

<comment><USER16> I used expect for wrapping router-setup, via telnet, back in the day. Hard to think what I'd use it for these days, thanks to puppet, ansible, docker, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Expect is nothing short of a blessing for those who need to automate tools that actively resist automation. When some janky cli script decides to read the tty and not stdin, I reach for expect.

<comment><USER18> For years I thought "I should learn to use expect...", and finally I used it for ~ integration tests for a project ([http://onemodel.org](http://onemodel.org) \- my AGPL, highly efficient desktop- and keyboard-oriented personal knowledge organizer that I use every day, slow progress lately but lots of plans...), and: expect is very useful, and has depth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wish there was something like expect that was like, "ok I've done what I needed to init, now get out of the way." I've always had to create a loop that just reads and writes everything eventually. Maybe I could ldpreload a tcl interpreter and change some pointers but yikes.

<comment><USER20> Isn't that what interact is meant to do?

[https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/interact](https://wiki.tcl- lang.org/page/interact)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> tcl brings out cries of "dead language" in a way that few other languages do. I'd not hesitate to write a tcl stript today, knowing that it'd still run correctly when I die.

Just in the past week, I've heard tcl, ruby, perl, and java all declared dead. Oh well. Internet comments are cheap and meaningless.

<comment><USER22> TRAC is dead. (Now I hope to hear from people using Mooers' TRAC in production code. Or CART or SAM76. I _have_ talked to people who used TRAC back in the 1980s.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I do know what it can do, but it seems like a specialized tool for screen- scraping command line apps that don't have a proper API. That seems like a rather unusual task these days?

<comment><USER17> I've wrapped expect scripts around prompt-happy config scripts supplied by third-party vendors. What they intend to be idiot-proof usually ends up as an unwieldy tool that takes no options and/or assumes bad defaults. The vendor didn't intend for it to be run more than once per site installation, but such intentions don't play nice with disposable environments like VMs and/or containers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The root of the problem is that too many programs require a tty.

<comment><USER17> This. Why do programs do this when they don't have to? I'm genuinely asking here; I'm trying to understand the thinking that motivates this kind of decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Working in a quite popular b2b betting company. TcL is used for much of the backend and development is still active today. Expect is used , too.

</comment><comment><USER12> [https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/expect_modul...](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/expect_module.html)

[https://github.com/ronniedong/Expect-for- Java](https://github.com/ronniedong/Expect-for-Java)

</comment><comment><USER26> I used expect once some years ago, but changed to using ruby's #expect method[1]. I think the reason I changed was because, in TCL, some functions seem to keep track of stuff by setting variables in the caller's scope. So, if I took some code I wrote and defined a new function with it, substituting the code with a call to the new function, stuff would break because calls to predefined expect functions wouldn't have the same caller's scope anymore.

I wish I had a concrete example to share so someone here could confirm, but like I said, it was some years ago.

[1] [https://ruby- doc.org/stdlib-2.6.4/libdoc/pty/rdoc/IO.html#M0...](https://ruby- doc.org/stdlib-2.6.4/libdoc/pty/rdoc/IO.html#M002150)

</comment><comment><USER27> I created coprocesses in iTerm2 because I missed Expect but I also hated Expect because it had a very expect-y way of doing things that never felt comfortable (though I shan't say a nasty word about Tcl!) Also, what mzs said about "now get out of the way".

</comment><comment><USER28> I've used Expect a couple times in the last 8 years. First to make backups of Cisco configurations into version control. And second by Ansible (indirectly it's used to read the sudo prompt).

So more people use expect than know it.

The issue I feel is that it's flimsy to wait for some expected output. I mean, it's even in the name! Especially when working with unknown APIs like Cisco IOS CLI.

So whenever I've done manual expect coding I've always felt very much out of my element and out of control. I am a control freak btw.

It works while it works but as soon as something unexpected happens it all goes to sh*t.

</comment><comment> denton-scratch I tried to use BATS (Bash Automated Testing System) with Expect and Tcl to test a series of interactive scripts. It turned out to be something of a rabbit-hole. I didn't spend long enough on the task to get really good at it, and the result was tests that were hard to read (i.e. not what you want). Perhaps there was a 'wrong tool for the job' factor at play.

</comment><comment><USER29> I need to connect to various machines throughout the day and as a first step, need to sudo to a service account. Expect has been a godsend to automate the interaction/input my credential (I know that it is far from being the most secure thing but the convenience of typing an alias and being connected including sudo is significant).

</comment><comment><USER30> The test suite for the grody old IRC bot a few jobs ago was written in Expect. One intern season we set a project to, when announcing a new PR was published, to format the primary reviewer's handle slightly. It ended up taking 3 days to update the tests, understanding expect, then writing a filter to strip out IRC color codes.

</comment><comment><USER31> I use expect to write little "drivers" for serial devices all of the time. I don't have a lot of experience with hardware and often its the easiest way to set up an interface. I never really knew how much it could do until one of my coworkers recommended it to me for this purpose one day.

</comment><comment><USER32> TIL, Tcl is pronounced as Tickle, but not Tee-see-el.

<comment><USER33> Either is fine and used. Joke is "tickle" among the initiated/familiar, tee cee ell if you're talking to management. However, never name a file test.tcl, regardless of how you pronounce it.

<comment><USER32> I'm a total stranger to the Tcl universe, but I'm curious what does happen if a programmer names a file "test" ? Some kind of conflict, bug, error ?

<comment><USER34> "testicle"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Doing anything with expect is basically only coding for the happy path. It's fine for some throw away script but as soon as you need any kind of reliability it's useless.

<comment><USER36> Have you ever stopped and asked yourself: What is a conditional statement?

<comment><USER35> Have you ever asked yourself if an API can return an infinite amount of responses how many conditional you would need to handle that?

The output of a terminal is just simply too unstructured to work in any high reliability environment.

<comment><USER36> I would agree that using a pure CLI (Unix Shell) requires significant operator skill to not accidentally blow things up. But that is also why you write scripts, test them, etc.

Sitting at a root shell executing untested or uncertain things is pretty high on the list of don't do these things.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should GitHub use as a political discussion platform? - <AUTHOR> the current top trending repo on github is https://github.com/sikaozhe1997/Xin-Yue, which is regarding a sensitive case in China.<p>A portion on the issues is arguing whether should this kind of repo use Github as the discussions platform <comment><USER2> In my opinion, it shouldn't be used that way. But people have few choices. If a server is within the country, it gets controlled by the government. For servers outside the country, all blogs and forums are censored. Only those utility sites are accessible, because otherwise companies can't operate. They will be a bit more cautious on censoring those sites. That's why they started DDOS on those sites to force them to remove those contents.

p2p forums/social networks should be a better solution.

</comment><comment><USER3> What about a decentralized p2p github? Or ZeroNet type of github?

[https://github.com/cjb/GitTorrent](https://github.com/cjb/GitTorrent)

<comment><USER4> secure scuttlebutt has a github impl. too, i heard (didn't try yet)</comment></comment>


Sony makes it official: Playstation 5 won't natively support PS1, PS2, PS3 - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/09/sony-makes-it-official-playstation-5-wont-natively-support-ps1-ps2-ps3/ <comment><USER2> Yawn. Hardly anyone here should be surprised. PC gamers on Windows have been enjoying their games and backwards compat since the 1990s.

PCs have emulators for these consoles so you're not missing anything unless you want to play the exclusive PS5 games.</comment>