Meditation: Why Bother? - <AUTHOR> http://www.vipassana.com/meditation/mindfulness_in_plain_english_3.php <comment><USER3> _Go to a party. Listen to the laughter, that brittle-tongued voice that says fun on the surface and fear underneath. Feel the tension, feel the pressure. Nobody really relaxes. They are faking it....These are not people who are at peace with themselves. Watch the news on TV. Listen to the lyrics in popular songs. You find the same theme repeated over and over in variations. Jealousy, suffering, discontent and stress._

And here we have the crux of it. This is Nietasche's _ressentiment_ , the origin of moral feeling. Observe the hatred he has for the successful and the contented. They have won at the game of life, in that they fit in, are laughing, are enjoying themselves, yet the author feels that there _must_ be something wrong with them. They must deserve his scorn because he has not achieved the ease and confidence that they show. It must be a chimera. Meditation sets the author apart. He has stamina. He has determination. He has 'grit', and for this he is despised by the masses. Bullshit.

And isn't it suspicious that meditation _always_ leads to a higher place? Isn't it at least possible that meditation might merely unveil yourself to you? Or maybe, more laughably, help you to obscure yourself from you? Or, even more laughably, to obscure the nature of reality from yourself so that you can continue to believe that you have the high ground in some realm of ideas, despite your losses and discontentment in the observable universe? It strikes me as suspicious that someone with this obvious contempt for the masses could take hold of a meditative practice and use it objectively, to discover the true nature of anything, let alone any inner 'true' happiness.

We have only the observed facts that the author has provided, minus his 'insights' into the 'true nature' of these observances or the 'ulterior motives' of the actors he observes.

Zarathustra's advice would be well taken by him, and all who find this article compelling: "Always love your neighbor as yourselves -- but first be such as _love themselves_ "

<comment><USER4> Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. Have you been to a party recently? I mean, a serious beer- pong-playing, beer-bonging, naked-ignorant-frat-boy flailing party? They're terrible. Everyone is clearly pretending to have a good time. Everything smells like beer or puke.

Also, have you watched the news lately? I don't think that needs elaborating.

Popular music is exactly as the author describes. No one could possibly be content listening to...wait, they're piping that shit in through the loudspeaker at the baseball game now? Fuck.

The fact that you accept the possibility that those people at the party and stadiums are masking their misery with beer and baseball says more about yourself than it does about the author. You seem to agree, but don't want to come right out and say it.

Starting a company is not socially acceptable. It seems 99% of startups fail. I could easily fit in and survive by getting a job at some major software company, get benefits, paid vacations, etc. Actually, I did and it leaves me with the feeling that the author describes.

I believe the author's "ressentiment" is born out of the belief that the drones at parties and baseball games have somehow given in and given up rather then getting what they actually wanted. Many people, yourself included, mask their personalities with a phony sense of optimism and say, "Hey, mang, leave my friend alone. He may be happy here at this baseball game, getting drunk and probably later falling asleep in your garden."

Also, the author implies that contentment can not be had from the material universe. Again, this may be reason enough to detest the phony atmosphere that permeates the environment of every antisocial activity.

In a way, we have to deal with the drones' innane bullshit, because they can't work out properly what they want. Racism, sexism, nationalism, extremism, isms galore. They'll grab any new idea that works rather than what works the best.

I'm a drone, just a lesser one. Proudly so. I'm not going to get worked up and punch a guy in the face because he dissed the Sox. This shit happens at every game. Every single one.

If meditation slows these people down and forces them to ask things like, "Why am I like this?" or "Is there another way?", then I'm willing to take my chances.

<comment><USER3> _The fact that you accept the possibility that those people at the party and stadiums are masking their misery with beer and baseball says more about yourself than it does about the author. You seem to agree, but don't want to come right out and say it._

To what part of my comment could you possibly be referring? Let me state that this is a direct invitation for you to find in my previous comment the line or lines that supports your statement about my purported beliefs about 'those people at the party' and that I 'agree but don't want to...say it.' Put up or shut up.

 _Many people,_ yourself included _, mask their personalities with a phony sense of optimism and say, "Hey, mang, leave my friend alone. He may be happy here at this baseball game, getting drunk and probably later falling asleep in your garden."_

You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. First, "Have you been to a...naked-ignorant-frat-boy flailing party?", implying that I haven't, or at least haven't perceived the true nature of it, and then, "Hey, mang, " & etc., seemingly implying that this is my lifestyle and that I'm defending it. It's telling that your _hypothetical_ example individual not only is not 'happy...at [the] baseball game,' but that, as proof he is not, he later '[falls] asleep in your garden.' Again, point to the part of my comment that supports your allegation of a 'phony optimism' or retract your insipid allegation.

It's also telling that the author's non-specific use of the word 'party' induces, in you, the concept of the most objectionable kind of party you can think of, one in which the participants are engaging in some kind of blatant mass stupidity, by your judgment. Why would one compare oneself to this particular set? Why choose who one believes are _the worst of the worst_ to which to compare oneself, _unless one wants to aggrandize oneself_? That is the root of the suspicion. Why not say, "Go to the boardroom of Google. Feel the tension. Everybody is faking it."? Indeed, some do, but only those who wish to waylay the corporate as inherently evil. And they do so by making the corporate out to be _the opposite of themselves_ , who are by definition, 'good'.

 _Starting a company is not socially acceptable._

I want whatever you're smoking.

 _I believe the author's "ressentiment" is born out of the belief that the drones at parties and baseball games have somehow given in and given up rather then getting what they actually wanted._

Look at the pejoratives: 'drones', 'given in', 'given up', 'parties' as frat- boy free-for-alls, 'baseball games' as a collection of drones, and 'rather then [sic] getting what they actually wanted'. I submit, based on this portion of your comment, that _you_ are so accustomed to committing Nitezsche's ressentiment that _you_ cannot even see when you are doing it, nor the sheer number of spurious value-judgments that you must make in order to support it.

It may help you to understand that ressentiment is not just dislike for a class that has bested you, but the transmutation of that dislike into a moral statement, the statement that "They are wrong for winning, and all of the qualities that make them the winners are evil, and all of the qualities that make me the loser are virtues."

 _Actually, [having a software job with benefits and vacations] leaves me with the feeling that the author describes._

I leave it to you whether this feeling is a function of your psychology or a function of the lifestyle in which you were engaged. Was it subjective, rooted in you, or objective, rooted in the circumstance?

<comment><USER4> First of all, starting a company is not socially acceptable. Having less money cuts out a lot of my options. It means I can't go out as much with friends. After enough times of, "Sorry, guys, can't go out, I have to work.", it becomes very socially unacceptable.

Secondly, and most importantly, I do not view a free-for-all frat party/charade/parade as winning. They aren't smart. They aren't funny or clever. They are definitely NOT winning. I am definitely not jealous or envious of their situations. Maybe a bit jealous that they get all the girls, but I can look past that once I see one of them break a bathroom mirror over their head.

A party at Google is a party of people who "got it". They went after what they wanted and got it. That simple. It's not at all a party made up of mindless drones that the author of this article is talking about. I wouldn't even call a party of Googlers a party unless they were doing body shots off Sergey and singing Sweet Caroline at the top of their lungs. But then what? They aren't mindless drones, but they can still party hard. At this point, the author would say, "Perhaps, while they seem to believe that they have gotten what they wanted, they actually have not. Look how they party. They seem to want more."

If what these party drones are doing is "winning", then they are certainly in the wrong in my mind. Ah, it has just hit me. I know what "ressentiment" is.

It's seeing amazing potential going to waste and "transmuting" my disgust for that into a moral imperative to actively prevent that from happening to myself or anyone I care about.

You're right I have ressentiment, but it's for everyone who's potential is going to waste. It's for all the smart people who got caught with a few grams of pot, or some smart girl who only married the guy because he got her pregnant or the philosophy major who spends more time and energy procrastinating, writing HN comments, then he does finishing his thesis or socializing or socializing about his thesis or socializing at frat parties while expounding on his great ideas in his thesis.

I would think the latter being the most beneficial at least so I have someone to talk to at those damn parties.

EDIT: All I'm saying, is that there should be nothing wrong with believing television is terrible, pop music sucks, and belligerent drunks are losers. All are a waste of time, money, resources better not spent at all. If Nietzsche says I have "ressentiment", then fuck it, that's what I have. If meditation furthers my distance from those things, then that's what I'll do.

<comment><USER5> _A party at Google is a party of people who "got it". ... It's not at all a party made up of mindless drones_

Obviously you have not been to a Google party recently...

<comment><USER6> LOL! Yeah, Google is like 20,000 people now, and most of them joined when Google was a "safe" career choice. A Google party is probably much like an IBM or HP party now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Meditation doesn't solve any real problems; at least not more than any other religious belief. It seems really strange to me that nerds frown on certain religious beliefs while lauding others. We're in the territory of the unmeasurable here, so I'd say that tolerance goes first.

But a lot of smart people bash the belief in God when it presumably gives meaning to depressed people, or helps drug addicts and criminals get their lives in order. The same smart people praise psychotherapy or meditation for the same results. It's hypocritical. I'm a tolerant guy and as long as other people's beliefs don't get in my way, I accept them. But when rationality and reason are your most important virtues, it's contradictory to support a schism like this one.

These questions are always questions of the current immeasurable, unprovable part of human nature, and should be treated as such. You can't use the words meditation and scientific in the same sentence.

<comment><USER8> Do you know anything about meditation? While its origins are religious, it's a secular practice that's about learning to stabilize your mind and develop inner balance.

It's only religion if you think that you're developing a communion with God through meditation. If you meditate to commune with yourself, then it's entirely sensible to laud meditation while bashing religion. Meditation is not superstition.

<comment><USER9> Meditation is not superstition, true, but one should still be aware. It does tend to attract the same people. I'm an atheist meditating, and occasionally I have to grit my teeth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I do vipassana but with a different organisation (www.dhamma.org). For the last five years I have meditated for the recommended 2 hours a day (mostly every day). Its a big time commitment and I often wonder how different things would be for me if I'd taken up painting or playing a musical instrument instead.

However, I don't regret the time I've spent meditating as (knowing me) I would have squandered those hours anyway. Its often easy to forget the benefits of meditation and I sometimes question whether I should carry on. However, in common with others I have talked to, when I stop for a few days all the old thought patterns come back such as anger, fear, arrogance, sadness and desire for material gain. I still feel these things when I've been meditating but they don't control my actions and distort my thoughts nearly as much. Yeah, if I stop meditating it becomes obvious I should start again as soon as possible.

Meditation isn't for everybody. Only a small proportion of Westerners who try it actually carry on practicing long term. However, I'd recommend anyone thats curious to give meditation a go.

<comment><USER11> The feelings you state above come back, and you view them as a problem, because you've not really made an attempt to understand them. When you view them as problems, and not ephemeral conditions, they become problems.

"Whatever it is, sit with it."

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Meditation changes your brain structure which changes your experience. This is in the domain of science, not faith: it is measurable.

[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090512134655.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090512134655.htm)

At the beginning it reduces the impetus of your emotions. Your emotions do not change, but you do not feel you have to follow them. The biological change is more inhibitor neurones from your neocortex to your hyppocampus.

[http://www.cogsci.uni- osnabrueck.de/%7eleggert/lucas_eggert_...](http://www.cogsci.uni- osnabrueck.de/%7eleggert/lucas_eggert_bachelor_thesis.pdf)

Further down the path, it changes the left/right balance of your brain functioning leading to a more pleasant and holistic experience. This can also occur with a left-brain stroke, but you lose brain functionality that you don't with meditation. Eg:

[http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=...](http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=104154403&m=104184856)

While there is a lot of superstition, it is foolish to assume that all pre- scientific experience is invalid. Just like many people with high school science believe in a "scientific religion" (i.e. it doesn't fit with theory therefore is wrong, rather than doesn't it fit with theory? hmm. how interesting!), many Buddhists believe in a Buddhist religion. That does not mean that there is no valuable knowledge gained by the best practitioners of Science or of meditation.

</comment><comment><USER13> "The feelings you state above come back, and you view them as a problem, because you've not really made an attempt to understand them. When you view them as problems, and not ephemeral conditions, they become problems."

very close to a religious discussion imo. Without acepting the underlying dogma of the mystical school (vipassana in this case), the above sentence makes no sense at all. By this logic two Christians arguing whether music is allowable in Christian worship and its impact on a worshippers mind is valid discussion on HN.

People making unverifiable claims about inner states and so on. What's next - a discussion of the subjective effects of various recreational drugs on the human mind?

I suspect the subjective descriptions of mental states would be very similar "I got high and I observed my thoughts arising blah" "No you didn't do it right .. you should have ... "

"I been conflicted about whether to pursue Buddhism. "

Ok. Great for you.

I would have preferred it if this pseudo religious stuff were left off HN. I am very surprised that this made the front page of HN, leave alone such a high place in the rankings.(I tried to phrase this carefully so as not to violate any HN guidelines).

</comment><comment><USER14> cutting TV is more important than meditation. If meditation forces you to watch less TV then that's probably where some of the "benefits" are coming from.

<comment><USER9> Dropping TV is the single most life-changing thing any modern person can do. Mostly because it gets you to wander "what do I want to do tonight?"

<comment><USER5> _Dropping TV is the single most life-changing thing any modern person can do._

I used to think that. Then I did it, and it was true for about 8 years. Now the internet has all the TV I'd ever want to watch in an immediately summonable window right next to all the other info-crack which had taken the place of television. I'm thinking dropping the internet is going to be the next big life changer. I went on a laptop free vacation a couple months ago and felt like I had 6-8 hours of extra time per day. Watching a couple TV shows in the hotel room at night was actually kind of relaxing and quaint, like I'd taken a time machine back to a simpler age...

<comment><USER15> Same here - I waste a lot of time with the internet, including watching some TV online.

It's said that alcoholics and drug addicts have a clear path to getting clean - completely cut out the addiction from your life. But people who have problems over-eating can't make as simple a change to solve their problem. After all, you need to eat to live.

The internet is kind of like that for me - it's something I need to do work on and learn from, but is something I frequently over-use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I been conflicted about whether to pursue Buddhism. Its ideals of not wanting too much makes a lot of sense. However, civilization thrives and life expectancy increase because we work towards our ambitions and wants.

Another reason is that I admire Zen Buddhist practitioners Steve Jobs and Phil Jackson (zen master). Ironically, take Steve Jobs for example, his demanding and often angry management style is the opposite of Zen teaching.

I love to hear yalls opinion on how great achievement and Buddhism can co- exist.

<comment><USER17> Buddhism is primarily about reducing the amount of suffering in the world, in both ourselves and others. Part of this includes trying to let go of the cycle in which you think you need _ to be happy, strive to get it (perhaps successfully, perhaps not), then forget about it and reflexively start worrying about the next _ . This sort of behavior ("retail therapy" and subsequent credit card debt, for example) usually causes problems which get in the way of great achievements, or even being able to think clearly enough to enjoy our day-to-day lives.

(This is a quick attempt to summarize the idea usually translated as "desire is the root of all suffering.")

One can do great things because they seem like the best thing to do with one's time, not just because they're terrified by the feeling that they'll never be happy / have a meaningful life without it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> We should note that Vipassana is a form of Buddhist meditation, which takes as its base observances the four noble truths. The first of which is: To live is to suffer.

Perhaps if the author tried a form of meditation that isn't based on such a fundamentally negative philosophical basis then on his journey to enlightenment he may find a more enjoyable and charitable viewpoint.

My first encounter with meditation was with a Tibetan Buddhist tradition. I fully respect what I learned from their teachings, particularly about cultivating compassion, but I was put off with this negative base assumption. Later on I learned a form of meditation whose philosophical approach characterises life as a glorious struggle to expand ourselves in every possible dimension of existence, and along the way overcoming our flaws and weaknesses.

To some, struggle might also seem negative, but struggle is NOT equal to suffering - just ask all those struggling to get their startups off the ground whether hard work and effort are suffering?

That's not to say that suffering doesn't exist - of course it does, but I personally don't accept that it is the fundamental condition of humans.

Once you take a different philosophical basis then many of the observations of the condition of others also take on a very different hue.

<comment><USER19> It's a bit disingenuous to claim that Buddhism has "such a fundamentally negative philosophical basis"-- one shouldn't forget that the third noble truth is that there is a way to end to suffering, and the fourth noble truth is the description of that way.

Furthermore, a lot of translators think that "suffering" is not the most felicitous translation of "dukkha"-- the root words mean "a wheel with a bad axle", and it might be better to translate it as "unsatisfactory".

<comment><USER18> Sorry, my intent wasn't to dissuade anyone from Buddhism or to be disingenuous, only to point out that it isn't the _only_ form of meditation and also that the fundamental assumptions taken as the basis for meditation can and do (heavily) influence your approach and view of life.

Personally, I chose not to accept that to live is to suffer or in your words that life as a human being is inherently unsatisfactory, rather that it is a state full of potential and opportunity to grow and help others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There is no doubt about the effectiveness of meditation. It is a tool. And certainly Vipassana seems to be as methodical and systematic an approach as can be possible, when it comes to learning(and seeing results of) meditation. However, as in programming, it is important to go beyond the tool/s. And the same is true about this peace thing. There is a similar path (non-dual advaita based on self inquiry), where in addition to meditation, emphasis is given on the root of the problem(or identifying and fixing the root of the problem, which they identify as "I" or mind). In fact, it is very similar to Zen Budhism, in the sense it is very direct, but is geared more more towards knowledge-based /intellectual bend of mind. Here is one interview by Daivd Goodman on this: <http://www.davidgodman.org/rteach/jd5.shtml>. I am sure there must be lot of internet resources on the same.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Zazen is good for nothing!" --Sawaki Roshi

<comment><USER9> That would be a zen joke. Or a very serious thing, depends on the mood.

I'm having trouble with the whole "short-circuit the reason" thing in zen. I get it that it is useful, but it just might not be for everybody.

<comment><USER17> They're called koans. People in the US seem to be really attached to the koans from Rinzai Zen, to the point where anything that's vaguely surreal is a "Moment of Zen". On the other hand, Soto, the other major schools of Zen buddhism, doesn't even use koans (it emphasizes meditation), and they arguably have about as much to do with conventional Buddhism as getting your picture taken with the Santa Claus at Macy's does with Christianity.

Historically, the association seems to be because the beats and hippies (who were also pretty fond of surrealism) had a big part in popularizing Zen Buddhism, while comparatively, most other forms of Buddhism haven't spread that far past immigrant enclaves.

<comment><USER9> Yup, I know. But Soto has its share of "faith", starting with the quote above: if you do zen for any purpose, you're not doing it right. I get the point and the logic, and I agree with it. But it's just too damn hard to swallow stuff like this without chewing, and if i'm chewing it... well it usually makes sense, but it's still not easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Obviously if you go to a _party to relax_ , you are going to be disappointed.

Have you noticed the similarity with the magic business model?

1\. Sit down and watch your thoughts 2\. Magic! 3\. "harvest your crops of faith, morality , mindfulness and wisdom"!!!!

When you are happy, you are not really happy. If you observe really closely (I mean like really closely), there you will spot it. The horrible horrible evil undercurrent of all-pervading universal sadness.

When the car is moving, it's not really moving. If you observe really closely, you will see that actually it's not moving at all!

>the essence of life is suffering, said the Buddha.

Well perhaps, he was wrong?

It's like saying the essence of the electromagnetic spectrum is red.

Even before we ask whether to bother with meditation or not, let's ask what is the probability that Buddha even formulated the problem correctly?

The first step to solving a problem is to state it correctly.

</comment><comment><USER23> The purpose of every educational system is to prepare humans for life. Supposed this we should include at least two new school subjects - <USER2> and a teaching on HOW to consume information. We see our body as a machine but tend to exclude our mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> " _The purpose of every educational system is to prepare humans for life._ "

If only, if only. Very little schools teach us how to deal with the latent abilities of our mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> In case it's not obvious, the rest of the book is here:

[http://www.vipassana.com/meditation/mindfulness_in_plain_eng...](http://www.vipassana.com/meditation/mindfulness_in_plain_english.php)

</comment><comment><USER25> "The harvest is great, but the laborers are few"

</comment><comment><USER26> I have been for vipassana. My conclusion is that there approach is to cauterization human emotions. I have also tried other meditation practices and find the zen method more to my liking.

</comment><comment><USER27> There are thousands of attempts to say what the meditation is, but in fact, one should realize it by oneself. For me, for example, that was about to stop looking "into the mirror" and suffering, and starting looking around, but not judging, just see. But this is just a theory. Meditation is the another name of some very simple practice. It could be described as "watch your thoughts". When you can "see", then you can try to "control" this flow, and after that you can try to stop it. Suddenly, after hours and hours of failures you will catch that very moment, and realize this short "gap" between thoughts, while last one already gone, but next one still not arise. Everything will be obvious after this experience, like when you saw the light in the dark stormy night. Of course, this moment was not that when you will drop and forget all your flawed habits or booze and dope addictions, but you will finally have something to compare to.

</comment><comment><USER28> Why spam?</comment>


Introducing Posterous Spaces - <AUTHOR> http://blog.posterous.com/introducing-posterous-spaces-the-easiest-way

<comment><USER2> Isn't this just like G+'s circles or Facebook's friend-list feature?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, seems almost the same!</comment></comment>


JavaScript Fatigue – a Sonnet - <AUTHOR> https://thosakwe.com/javascript-fatigue-a-sonnet/ <comment><USER2> Bravo, I know it's beating a dead horse but Web App Frameworks and Web Programming in general :S

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, thanks.</comment></comment>


Manservants – A real service from SF - <AUTHOR> http://manservants.co/

<comment><USER2> Well... I'm not quite sure what to say about this... other than that you can't specify that convicted felons can't apply, for legal reasons. Uh, otherwise this is kinda just bizarre. A male escort service that's trying to convince me it's not a male escort service?

</comment><comment><USER3> Escort as a service?</comment>


Using State Machines to Power Citus Cloud (our Database as a Service) - <AUTHOR> https://www.citusdata.com/blog/2016/08/12/state-machines-to-run-databases/ <comment><USER2> Crickets?

Nice to see novel thinking carried through to example approaches.</comment>


Lessons from Freelancing - <AUTHOR> http://joelklettke.com/freelancing-2-years-230000-and-9-big-lessons-later/ <comment><USER2> Funny how this made it to #1 on Hacker News only to get bashed. It falls into the class:

      1. I did something.
      2. I want to share my experience with you.
      3. This is about what I DID, not what I THINK.
      4. Take from this what you want.
      5. Hope it helps.

I'm a programmer, not a writer, so this advice isn't a perfect fit for me, but it's pretty damn close.

If one good idea from a 5 minute read is gold, then this post is platinum. Excellent advice, even more valuable because it comes from hard earned experience.

Thanks Joel for the bulletin board material. Keep it coming.

<comment><USER3> HN community also bashed Dropbox when it was new.

<comment><USER4> ... and Slashdot bashed the iPod.

<comment><USER5> CmdrTaco / Rob Malda criticized it famously, but it appears the comments were pretty supportive.[1]

[1] [http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases- ip...](http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Im sorry to say: this is a piece of rubbish. Lots of open doors.. and lots of bold statements. Im sure this only made it to HN because the headline contains a large figure. And thats what the author intended to do.

"Yes, you can work in your underwear, wake up at 11:00pm and drink beer all day if you want to.

But you shouldn't."

YES YOU SHOULD. But not every day and only at the right moments. It depends on what you think of what is important. What is worth more to you. Your undies, or a pay check.

Trust your gut feeling and do networking. And if your gut feeling sucks and you think you are bad at networking... know how to deal with it or stop freelancing. You cannot apply a 'guide' like this to yourself. There are many many examples of successful (=happy?) people who do not apply this guide to their selves. Like me. I'm quite successful and happy! And do work in my underwear sometimes. And like to go kitesurfing in the middle of the week (and work my ass off in the weekend if necessary). I can make more money if I want to, but I dont. I prefer having fun, broaden my mind and sure do enjoy the freedom of being a freelancer!

<comment><USER7> Author here - new to HackerNews, so forgive me if I stink of "n00b".

You are absolutely right in that your freelance experience might differ from mine - and I did try to say at the end of the piece that money is just one factor. If you can operate well on a job and work in your underwear (and not feel like a sub-human after 3 days), power to you - DO IT!

There's room for disagreement and I'm not trying to run anyone else's freelance life - just share what's worked for me.

These are MY lessons. They're not meant to be absolutes for anybody. I couldn't have dreamed this would wind up on Hacker News - I wrote it for my (small) community and I'm thrilled to see it get traction, but I didn't try to game any system and get on here.

<comment><USER8> Welcome to HN - where the trolls are loud and proud...

<comment><USER9> I don't necessarily think this is accurate. I've observed a strong and useful pattern here where posts are deconstructed in the comments in a logical fashion which I believe is, and should be seen as constructive.

Even if you come down strongly on one side or the other of a topic, it's a good discipline to look for logical weaknesses, edge cases and other potential holes in any given argument.

HN is great for this because for any given post you can typically find well thought out rebuttals which may or may not sway your opinion, but will in many cases be instructive in the very least.

Of course, the other option is to simply attack the commenter directly and fail to learn anything at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One thing which really stood out for me was about focus. Trying too many things at once - write a blog, freelancing, create a source might pull you in so many directions that achieving the first dream might become difficult.

What really does interest me though is - talk about subcontractors. This is one aspect I have been struggling on a bit. how does one find good subcontractors or outsource work properly.

<comment><USER11> > how does one find good subcontractors or outsource work properly.

If you do that, you're not a freelancer ... you're an agency. Different conversation.

<comment><USER10> yea maybe but then if you look at his work, he does talk about sub- contracting, so does that make him an agency of sorts? Then where does freelancing come in. Just trying to understand that part.

<comment><USER7> Happy to clear this up:

I did subcontract a very small portion of work, which I did eliminate from the number I crunched. On the whole, it contributed less than $10,000 to the total, and as I mentioned, the time I invested trying to make it work actually made it such that I more or less came out even, but not at a profit.

Right now, I'm handling all the work I'm sent personally. I do plan to scale up in the future, at which point, I don't think it would be fair to call myself "freelance" any more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's my lesson: you can think it's "eek out" and still make that much money as a writer these days. Advertising is hilarious!

<comment><USER13> Also, random bold, underline and italics all over the place.

<comment><USER14> Hey - it's copywriting.

 _EXPECT CAPITAL LETTERS!_

I think it makes some good points, especially about marketing. (See also EL James, who is now a multi-millionaire because of a very clever marketing campaign, and certainly not because of her literary ability.)

I also think the fact that it's all about marketing and not ability is kind of sad. And the fact that it's hard hard hard to make $$$$ doing cool artistic work that isn't about selling stupid shit for someone else is even sadder.

But still. There we are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Freelancing is a job just like any other except that you're wearing more hats so you have the opportunity to be compensated at higher rates. In a corporate job you're giving up potential income because other team players are doing the marketing, accounting, networking.

If you really want to wake up every day at 11pm and drink beer all day you have to separate income from hours worked. A really successful freelancer might be able to increase project/hourly rates to the point where they don't need to work that often but residual/passive income is a better long term strategy. Create technology and license it, create copyrighted materials and publish, write a song and collect royalties, purchase income generating real estate and find someone to manage it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hmm, I had thought the upside of freelancing was to make more money, at the expense of doing all the stuff listed here. The same amount of money plus all that is not really an appealing prospect. Though I suppose you could argue it's a better position overall because your name is "in the market" so to speak. But for me I would feel dumb if I busted my ass a lot harder than I do now just to make the same money.

<comment><USER17> YMMV of course but, no, by and large freelancers (freelance writers at any rate) don't generally make more money than those who have more or less equivalent jobs at companies. They're either freelancers because that's increasingly the way markets are organized (good full-time paid gigs are relatively hard to come by) or they just like being their own boss.

<comment><USER16> Sure, definitely understandable. Just seems like so much extra work on top of your work-work, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Barely eek out a living" is my favorite malapropism of 2015. "Eek! A living!"

Also: someone did get a home run from a bunt, in MLB no less.

<comment><USER19> Technically nobody in the MLB has ever gotten a home run on a bunt. Steven Souza Jr rounded the bases on a bunt, but that was a bunt single, then advanced three bases on two errors.

[http://www.baseball- reference.com/boxes/WAS/WAS201506170.sht...](http://www.baseball- reference.com/boxes/WAS/WAS201506170.shtml)

<comment><USER20> I'm shocked that the Phillies were not involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Lots of great insights in this article! I especially liked the part where he advises us to treat freelancing as a business.

<comment> k-mcgrady Surprised anyone freelancing would need that advice in the first place...

<comment><USER22> Data point: most freelancers I've been coaching during the last years do /not/ realize they are running a real business. It usually takes a life changing event (birth, or a big tax issue) for them to change their way of doing it, if this changes at all.

<comment><USER17> Based on various people I've known, that's a great if surprising point. It's actually pretty easy for many to just sort of drift along on the edge for a long time and essentially pretend that everything is good--until it's not. Maybe the client that's 50% of their business up and leaves for whatever reason or, as you say, something happens in their life that makes no savings and no real plan suddenly untenable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> For some more down-to earth lessons from freelancing, check my post on the topic:

[http://www.developingandrails.com/2015/06/freelancing- with-f...](http://www.developingandrails.com/2015/06/freelancing-with- fiverr.html)

<comment><USER24> Interesting, some similar lessons like here: [https://medium.com/@RecurVoice/how-i- made-100k-freelancing-a...](https://medium.com/@RecurVoice/how-i- made-100k-freelancing-and-absolutely-loved-it-ebbf8791707a)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I enjoyed this post, and it's not like we can say "you made that up" or "you're just trying to get fake Internet points" because it's been tried and tested. Joel's telling us exactly what he did and his awesome results. Thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER7> Cheers and thank you, Rachel :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Nicely written and inspiring. I like how it shares his failures and how he recovered from them, putting the needle back on the record. I also like it how it defines success to the individual with only comparing to other people for inspiration but not validation.

<comment><USER7> Thank you very much for the kind words. There are more failures I could have mentioned - failures to properly qualify clients, failures in overbooking, failures in trying to scale up, failures in time management..

But at the risk of running a cliche, if I'm not failing, I'm not learning. And that's all this post is - sharing what I've learned.

Appreciate your kind response :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Prefer these lessons: How I made 100k freelancing and absolutely loved it

[https://medium.com/@RecurVoice/how-i- made-100k-freelancing-a...](https://medium.com/@RecurVoice/how-i- made-100k-freelancing-and-absolutely-loved-it-ebbf8791707a)</comment>


Beware The Hype Over Big Data Analytics - <AUTHOR> http://seekingalpha.com/article/441171-beware-the-hype-over-big-data-analytics

<comment><USER2> I am not sure if I disagree with the central thesis of the article, but the argumentation seems rather weak in many places, for example he says:

 _Let's take the example of the number of people who walk into a store and buy a certain product. By studying 10 customers you can get an estimate of the probability of the purchase and predict sales; by studying 100 customers you get a better estimate. By analyzing 1000 customers you have a very good estimate. You could study a million customers, but the results are unlikely to be vastly different from the results of analyzing 1000 customers and probably not worth the expense._

This makes sense only for very low-dimensional data sets, but most real-life problems are very high-dimensional and in high-dimensional spaces a million customers (or any other number of samples you might reasonably expect to gather) might still very well be only a small sample. So, there are situations where because of various constraints you will never be able to get to this level where more data stops yielding better results. You can watch a nice presentation from Peter Norvig about the unreasonable effectiveness of data:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvDCzhbjYWs>

Or read about the well-known curse of dimensionality:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_dimensionality>

<comment><USER3> That specific point stuck out as incorrect to me as well. And given that it's one of the only technical points in the article, doesn't really inspire confidence in the author. That said, however, I do tend to agree with the overall hypothesis that the value add of "big data" is very marginal for most established industries, for exactly the reason he mentions: they've all been doing this for 20 years now. It's just become cheaper and easier recently. There are certain domains where modern data techniques can have a transformative effect, he mentions one (law). I don't think the data analytics solutions and companies that are being talked about are capable of generating these kind of transformative innovations though; so, I think the author is absolutely correct to say that the big data hype is overblown. There _will_ be big opportunities for big data, but they will come from disruptive startups finding new ways of doing old jobs. Not from crunching a few more GB of your data for a few less bucks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article seems to be discussing a very different 'Big Data' to that I see. I'm sure the author's points are true in their world, but largely they aren't in mine (mostly online media stuff). Here's a rebuttal of a sort:

This data collection is a recent phenomenon: only since media moved online has it been cheap enough to collect sufficient data to do interesting things. Furthermore, you can actually use that data is more meaningful ways (e.g. recommendation systems) that weren't possible before.

That value is not being extracted by the companies that do currently collect data: surprisingly true from my discussions with media companies. The largest companies (Yahoo!, Netflix, etc.) sure do, but the second tier don't.

That companies will need outside help to extract insights: This perhaps indicative of the biggest difference between our worlds. It seems the author is talking about batch jobs, where you do some rudimentary analysis on a data, makes some slides, present to management, and go home. The people I know are talking about deploying automated systems into production (think recommendation systems again). This requires a large array of skills (machine learning, software engineering, distributed systems, etc.) that many companies don't have. "Minitab, SAS, SPSS, Systat" are not sufficient tools in this world.

The insights gathered from ever larger data sets have more value and are more accurate than insights gathered from smaller data sets: The conventional wisdom in machine learning is that more data trumps more sophisticated algorithms. E.g. [http://anand.typepad.com/datawocky/2008/03/more-data- usual.h...](http://anand.typepad.com/datawocky/2008/03/more-data-usual.html)

Unstructured and cross functional data have huge value waiting to be extracted: Here we agree!

<comment><USER5> Perhaps, but many of the basic warnings still apply. In industry and web businesses alike I see the biggest issue is not capturing or storing the data; it's one of picking up the tools and data already at their disposal and using them to help customers. That's not a gap outside consultants are going to help a lot with as it is mainly a cultural thing, and smart web businesses have that from the start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This guy comes off as a cynical MBA, and he actually is one. His valid points are:

\- big data is overhyped

\- potential benefits are likely smaller than you think (this is true for most new technologies)

BUT:

\- he seems unaware about modern analysis tools and their power

\- state of the art in machine learning has actually advanced a lot in the last 20 years

\- as a result a lot of problems that were intractable back then are being solved (Jeopardy, Go)

\- there are completely new problems (all the social stuff, huge recommender systems)

\- big companies are not good at innovating

\- outsourcing is MUCH harder than it seems, especially to Bangalore

</comment><comment><USER7> Glad to see somebody paint the counter-point to all the hype. I don't believe that there is no substance to the 'big data story' but these points hold up well.

</comment><comment><USER8> A rebuttal to these arguments: [http://www.applieddatalabs.com/content/beware- hype-over-big-...](http://www.applieddatalabs.com/content/beware-hype-over- big-data-analytics)

</comment><comment><USER9> A big reason companies need outside help is because they don't share data and results - if something works at company A and saves them a lot of money, that information isn't passed to company B and thus you have everyone trying to re- invent the wheel.

A third party that works with many companies builds up a vocabulary of techniques, data sets, and experience that allow them to enter a new environment and be 10 times as effective as any internal team of analysts.

Don't know if anyone has heard of Lattice Engines (<http://www.lattice- engines.com/>) but they are today integrating external data with internal cross-functional data to extract insights that are saving large companies (that I'm sure already have teams of very talented analysts) millions of dollars.

</comment><comment><USER10> startup + custom analytics + fast response = good

big corp + generic big data + corporate management = ???

Established corporations may be too sluggish to incorporate the insights from the data they are sitting on. Smaller companies will be able to do magical things with machine learning techniques, and will have the agility to act on their insights.

Thus, it is not so much that big data doesn't have value, but that you need a whole management-fat-head-free organizational structure to take advantage of the value.</comment>


Senate votes to overturn Ajit Pai's net neutrality repeal - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/05/senate-votes-to-overturn-ajit-pais-net-neutrality-repeal/ <comment><USER2> I am on the one hand happy to hear about this, but I couldn't help but laugh at the way it was reported on NPR. They said Democrats see this as an issue that can bring voters to the polls. I immediately thought of how few people even know what the heck net neutrality is (about 1 in 4 [0]). Either NPR is making stuff up or the Democrats are seriously in need of some new advice.

[0]:[https://americanactionnetwork.org/wp- content/uploads/2018/02...](https://americanactionnetwork.org/wp- content/uploads/2018/02/AAN-NN-Memo.docx.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Well thank you senate. Looks like att needs more than a 600k trump bribe to Cohen. I'm sure their lobbyists are going to be shooting money guns at the house republicans for the next month.</comment>


Sailors aboard Roosevelt carrier retest positive for Covid-19 a 2nd time - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Five-sailors-aboard-Roosevelt-carrier-retest-15273804.php <comment><AUTHOR> The sailors tested positive, but were asymptomatic. They quarantined for 14 days. They tested negative twice, 48 hours apart. Then sometime later (the article doesn't say when), they become symptomatic and test positive again.

This is discouraging to see. What is the most likely explanation? The incubation time is much longer than we think? Maybe the first tests were false positives?

Has anyone else seen other cases like this? What is the leading hypothesis right now?

<comment><USER2> Based on studies in South Korea, it's because the first tests are false positive, so "asymptomatic" really means "not infected" the first time. In cases in South Korea where they were hospitalized, and then retest positive, it's because the second tests were false positive. So far no cases of getting truly sick again after resolving the first time (once they get to the bottom of initial/subsequent false positives).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's not a second infection, it's just epithelial cells turning over in the lungs, releasing just enough viral RNA to amplify into a positive test result: [http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20200429000724](http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20200429000724)</comment>


Ask HN: How do I become SAP programmer/consultant? - <AUTHOR>

There are a lot of high paying jobs available that are related to SAP software. For jobs that involve Ruby, Python or PHP for example, lots of information and tutorials are available. For SAP, this is not the case. Where do I even begin searching? <comment><USER2> SAP is a proprietary software that is not easily available on the internet to be trained at. However I know that a lot of people sell SAP trainings on ebay. Also, SAP is a giant which has many modules. Are you interested in ABAP ? Sales and Distribution ? MM ?

<comment><AUTHOR> ABAP sounds interesting ( if I'm not mistaken it's a programming language to customize SAP software ). What does MM mean?

Thanks for your answer by the way :-)</comment></comment>


The SLA Is a Lie - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sla-lie-guise-bule

<comment><USER2> Ooh you posted this already, I was just about to.</comment>


Intel lets you manipulate encrypted data - <AUTHOR> http://semiaccurate.com/2012/06/27/intel-lets-you-manipulate-encrypted-data/#.T-wPCiVGw-w.hackernews <comment><USER2> My friends is doing his masters on homomorphic encryption, it's a fascinating subject. But like the article said, the current demand for information storage/manipulation is directly proportional to current demand for information.</comment>


Anti-SOPA, PIPA lawmakers want Internet Bill of Rights - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57450392-93/anti-sopa-pipa-lawmakers-want-internet-bill-of-rights/ <comment><USER2> 2\. Openness – digital citizens have a right to an open, unobstructed Internet

10\. Property – digital citizens have a right to benefit from what they create, and be secure in their intellectual property on the Internet

It seems to me that 10. would often times conflict with 1., 2. and 6. How would these conflicts be solved?

<comment><USER3> Why do we need to secure a "right to benefit from what they create"?

If it's not beneficial for authors, they can go do other things. Is there reason to believe this will lead to a loss of authorship? Abolishing copyrights would make derivative works' authorship possible, and that's probably a more significant source of creativity than brand new works. And we're currently sacrificing it for the former one, as well as various rights.

<comment><USER4> Of course when it comes to busting terrorists on Facebook, it's all "then don't share it on the Internet"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Proposed bill of rights (with comment section): <http://opengovfoundation.org/digital-bill-of-rights/>

<comment><USER6> "10.Property – digital citizens have a right to benefit from what they create, and be secure in their intellectual property on the Internet"

<comment><USER7> As a photographer, I support this part of the bill, at least in the spirit of that section. I don't want my photographs used in professional situations without AT LEAST my permission.

Could you please expound upon what you've said instead of quoting the last right?

<comment><USER6> I support the idea. PG's dismissal of IP in general is quite a bad idea, in my opinion. Yes it will be very difficult, but I think it is important.

<comment><USER8> They say that good fences make good neighbors. The problem with IP is that there's no good way to fence off anyone's property. I'm not convinced there can be, because maintaining the metaphorical fences require controlling everyone else's computer.

So I put more hope in new ways of doing business to help artists profit from their work.

<comment><USER7> I suppose, perhaps, our current system can work just fine. Whenever someone is caught doing something illegal with another person's artwork (for example, using a photo-manip'd version of a photo that person took as part of a CD album cover) take them to court for copyright infringement.

From what I can gather, anything more than that is draconian. I mean, what artist really cares if their artwork is used as someone's desktop background?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Before they try building that, they should take a look at what these guys have been building so far:

<http://www.reddit.com/r/fia>

<comment><USER5> You might want to tell them about it in their discussion, so maybe they can collaborate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Simply stating, in law, that the Bill of Rights applies to the Internet would suffice (I would hope).

As for the right to use the Internet, that would invalidate Three Strikes laws. So expect major watering down if this ever makes it to a floor vote.

<comment><USER11> I'd actually rather it make it to the floor without watering down and fail than make it to the floor in a form that could pass. I'd really love to force every member of congress to be on the record voting on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The ironic thing to me is that in order to enforce the idea of an Internet Bill of Rights, you have to throw anonymity out the window. How do you defend an anonymous user in court?

It's not a bad idea, but how do we defend the anonymous users?

<comment><USER13> _How do you defend an anonymous user in court?_

See this specific example: <http://www.aclu.org/national-security/doe-v- holder>

More generally, groups like EFF can represent the interests of groups of users without naming them individually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why cant these damn people just keep their noses out of the internet? Seriously, leave it alone. Yeah, yeah, I know, but really, poke the thing enough with a stick and in then end you'll kill it.

<comment><USER7> Because someone else won't leave it alone. Someone needs to establish our rights online. At least they're trying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Because Bills of Rights have a lot of meaning outside of the internet, right?

I know that doesn't really mean we shouldn't have one in first place, but these days seem to be more about tools than text and I think that's what the internet community has always been really good at.

We already have a declaration of independence btw:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Declaration_of_the_Independen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Declaration_of_the_Independence_of_Cyberspace)</comment>


DeleteFB: Selenium script to delete all of your Facebook wall posts - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/weskerfoot/DeleteFB <comment><USER3> I don't trust the "delete" button to scrub it from FB's database.

I'd be slightly more confident ( _slightly_ ) that editing the post might cause the core data in the db to be updated, however. In which case, I think the more effective script would be one that goes through all of your FB posts and scrambles them, or replaces the text with gibberish.

<comment><USER4> Lots of people in this thread are claiming that it doesn't based on gut feeling, but consider:

\- Facebook publicly claims it does [1]

\- Mark Zuckerberg testified in-front of congress and stated they do [2]

\- Multiple government regulators have specifically checked that it does in their privacy audits. [3]

They might be lying and actively conspiring to not delete it, but they'd have to have a _very_ good reason to take on that much legal risk.

Now, consider:

\- A infinitesimal fraction of facebook users try to delete anything.

\- Facebook makes money from your data by showing you ads. If you stop using facebook, you stop generating any revenue and your data becomes a liability, not an asset.

What reason would there be to lie about it?

[1] [https://facebook.com/help/250563911970368](https://facebook.com/help/250563911970368)

[2] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- switch/wp/2018/04/10...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- switch/wp/2018/04/10/transcript-of-mark-zuckerbergs-senate-hearing)

[3] [https://www.pdpjournals.com/docs/87980.pdf](https://www.pdpjournals.com/docs/87980.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Was the nature of deletion explicitly defined as "deleted records are removed from all databases, data warehouses included"?

They technically wouldn't be lying if they only deleted the record from application systems, but retained it in historical data by simply setting a bit flag (eg "IsDeleted") to 1.

The question about what motive they have comes down to whether or not the types of posts a person deletes indicate something meaningful about their personality. Ad analytics are ultimately seeking to understand the kind of person you are, after all.

<comment><USER5> I read the audit, and here's something I noticed (other than that it's 8 years old):

"In determining appropriate retention periods for personal information, data controllers can have due regard to any statutory obligations to retain data. However, if the purpose for which the information was obtained has ceased and the personal information is no longer required for that purpose, the data must be deleted or disposed of in a secure manner. Full and irrevocable anonymisation would achieve the same objective." (Page 69, under 3.4 Retention)

So basically, as long as it's anonymised, the data can be retained.

<comment><USER6> But "if the purpose for which the information was obtained" was to enable better ad targeting, then "data retention" is still "appropriate", eh?

Under this reading, is there even an obligation to anonymize? And how anonymous does anonymous need to be? Does a simple base64 encoding count as "anonymized"?

<comment><USER5> I had that thought originally too - however the keywords here are "statutory obligation" (basically, legal reasons.) So if the FBI asked them to retain the data, they can do so as long as the FBI needs it.

And the matter of anonymisation is a great question - "irrevocable" anonymisation certainly has a different meaning back in 2011, when swapping a name for a guid would do the job. Nowadays, it would require at least deleting all relationships as well, since social network analysis is much more advanced these days (especially at FB, of all places.) It wouldn't be impossible to derive the identity of an anonymous account/record based on the undeleted data associated with it. And since FB's "ghost profiles" are something we know exist, I think it's safe to assume those relationships are being maintained somehow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> About a two years ago my friends and I used to scroll back into each other's posts from the early days and 'like' some of the most cringeworthy posts and photos we could find. It would cause them to bubble up into everyone's newsfeeds again. Was a fun game.

This script would have saved me some manual labour back then.

(Edit: we also used to endorse each other on LinkedIn for the most bizarre skills we could find. Toilets, divorce and animal husbandry to recall a few)

<comment><USER8> A fun artifact of deleting your facebook account is that all of your comments get deleted (hidden, I guess, is more accurate) too, which means that in old threads people who interacted with you now appear to be interacting with themselves.

My friend had a profile picture in which he was doing something silly with his eyebrows. I commented "Nice eyebrows" and he replied "You're just jealous." I've since deleted my account and now there is only one comment on this profile picture, by the person the picture is of, reading "You're just jealous."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What do you think the chances are that Facebook actually does any delete operation on their data? I'm sure this is simply marking it as hidden in their database. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but to me the only way to take back something you say on social media, is to never have posted it in the first place.

<comment><USER10> There are a million reasons to agree that the data is never actually deleted

* need to retain data to fulfill government requests

* internal auditing

* it's all backed up in some "data lake" somewhere to do internal ml or analytics on

* hundreds of copies in database backups from different times

* internal logs that contain the data

* it's already been analyzed and aggregated into learning products and models that aren't going to be recomputed

It's not being "paranoid". As someone who has worked on large scale saas, I say: there is zero, 0, ZERO, 0.00 chance of that data every actually being deleted

<comment><USER11> Ever is a very very long time indeed. Facebook will go out of business or get sold eventually and delete it all to save money or by accident.

See also: Myspace accidentally dumping everything pre-2015 [https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/18/myspace-lost-12-years- mu...](https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/18/myspace-lost-12-years-music- photos/)

<comment><USER12> For similar reasons, I doubt very much that they actually deleted everything they said they did. I know that they were backing up to tape and storing it at Iron Mountain years prior.

<comment><USER13> But someone has to pay that bill. If Facebook ever fails, I doubt that someone would keep data centers full of information around without getting paid.

<comment><USER12> They would sell it with their other assets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wrote a similar tool in Node a while back that can delete by year and category:

[https://github.com/spieglt/fb-delete](https://github.com/spieglt/fb-delete)

And one to download all "Photos of you", which Facebook doesn't include when downloading your data:

[https://github.com/spieglt/fb-photos](https://github.com/spieglt/fb-photos)

<comment><USER15> Seeing as we're sharing, here's my (previously posted to HN) effort:

[https://github.com/Jaruzel/DeleteFacebookActivity](https://github.com/Jaruzel/DeleteFacebookActivity)

It works very well, but needs Windows.

<comment><USER14> Heh, your blog post about that was the inspiration for mine, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone know if there is an equivalent to delete Facebook friends or unlike pages/leave groups? I really want to clean out my Facebook since I've had it for a very long time and much of it doesn't appeal to me anymore, but I don't necessarily want to lose the tiny social ecosystem I've created with my family.

However, I would like to remove the hundreds of friends and pages that I don't talk to/don't represent me/are mining my data even more than the platform is.

<comment><USER17> I did this a year ago, and it considerably improved my Fb feed's signal/noise ratio.

Specific procedure I'd recommend is to make this a regular process: open fb feed, read until you find a thing which does not improves your life, click on owner (author / group) -click "friend" -> unfollow. Iterate until sanity is restored.

And one moral of this story (hi Facebook, please understand this) is that people are multidimensional. Just because you know someone once, in one context in real life, does not, actually, imply positive relationship on informational ecologies for all time in the future. "Authentic self" as defined by Facebook as a single coherent identity is a lie.

<comment><USER18> Maybe I'm too forgiving but I'll generally just snooze a person unless they're genuinely consistently horrible.

People change. I had friends who would post tireless political rants that just post memes now.

<comment><USER16> My experience is that I have hundreds of people to snooze, and would rather just have a fresh start and let those people trickle back in if they want to. Maybe I should just make a new account.

<comment><USER19> I did that last year, created a new account. Added back only a few real friends.

But slowly started getting requests from many of the previous friends. Some thought I had unfriended them, so had to explain to them that it was a new account. Felt obligated to add back most of the people. Now my feed is useless again.

Perhaps this should be yearly ritual.

<comment><USER20> Things to remember when you create a new account: 1\. an alias for profile name rather than real name 2\. don't put your picture in your profile

This way, you can add people you want to, and you'll not get requests from people you're hiding from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So I have been putting together a way for people to more easily make their own blogging platform. It would kind of mimic a social media platform, but since everything is committed to a repository using the JAMstack it could easily be converted to a full website or in your case you could simply delete the repository or any number of your posts because they are just files in your repository. Any feedback would be wonderful. [https://your- media.netlify.com/post/make-your-own-media/](https://your- media.netlify.com/post/make-your-own-media/) Everything is owned by the end user. This is only providing a recipe for people to use. I will also mention that [https://www.stackbit.com/](https://www.stackbit.com/) is doing basically the same thing but more from a "Make life easier for Website designers" perspective.

</comment><comment><USER22> Here's a good app idea: Take all your facebook posts and replace them with copywrited sections of books. I.g. my cringy posts from highschool become chapters from Harry Potter.

No doubt Facebook would delete these posts permanently and DMCA them.

<comment><USER23> This may work against you, especially if Bloomsbury Publishing issues an infringement notice to Facebook. In that scenario, Facebook need to place your account on 'legal hold', retaining the account and history indefinitely while the copyright case is resolved. It's possible this would be cold-storage and all past edits.

<comment><USER24> Exactly the reason why I stopped using sources like Unsplash for free graphics when I was as a young designer. Imagine the Enis' surprise when their shiny new website came under attack by a zealous photographer for copyright infringement. This woman is now a chief editor for a major publisher. This is an awesome idea though, I think I'm going to go with Hunter S. Thompson though. ]:\

<comment><USER25> Could you give more context to this story, perhaps a link?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> You need to add a requirement that you had Chromedriver installed. I had Chrome, homebrew and Python3 installed originally but without running:

brew cask install chromedriver

The script wouldn't work. Works great now!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I just added a note to the README mentioning it. I'm not sure how I forgot it.

<comment><USER27> OP: I'm close to getting this to run but I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "./deletefb.py", line 3, in <module> from seleniumrequests import Chrome ImportError: No module named seleniumrequests

Any idea what's to be done?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like you're trying to run it from source?

If so the steps would be:

1) virtualenv -p $(which python3) ./venv

2) source ./venv/bin/activate

3) pip install -r requirements.txt

Then you should be able to run it, assuming you have google chrome and the chromedriver installed. It's called "chromium-chromedriver" on Ubuntu

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've seen other people recommend the Social Book Post Manager extension [1] in the past.

One of the nice things is you have more granularity in what you remove - <USER2> can leave things that mention certain words, or in a date range, etc.

Because it runs in your browser, it should work with MFA logins, etc, without submitting credentials to an external service.

[1] - [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book- post-m...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post- manager/ljfidlkcmdmmibngdfikhffffdmphjae?hl=en-US)

</comment><comment><USER29> Is there a "Marie Kondo" for the digital world? Seems like something or someone that could be just as relevant if not more than organizing your physical world.

<comment><USER30> The book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport has a concept called _Digital Declutter_ that's a similar concept but towards distracting tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is beautiful: succinct and powerful.

Back in the day there was a similar js bookmarklet that could be used to export all your friends' contacts (name + emails) so you can leave without worrying that you'll be missing out on all your "connections." It would be nice to extend this with a "backup my posts + contacts" info before deleting everything.

<comment><USER32> I was just thinking the same thing.

Seems like it would be easy to pop the text (and even comments) into some sort of structured dataset for archiving's sake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've been through this before and some posts 'came back'. The only way to be sure is to delete your account. If you really want an account just make a new one.

<comment><USER34> This was my experience using a Greasemonkey script some time ago. Some posts would "come back", and there were pockets years back it couldn't even find to delete, but were still accessible on my profile. Wound up just deleting my account and making a new one that I never, ever post on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Alternatively, my friend turned on the "on this day" feature that would send her a notification every day of what she did on facebook for that day of the year.

So every day she just took a minute to the cringiest of that 1/365th of her content and in just one year she was free.

<comment><USER36> So it takes an entire year to maybe disassociate yourself from Facebook?

<comment><USER37> No, it takes a year to clean out the stuff you want cleaned out if you want to remain on Facebook and not sit down to the task for hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Is there anything similar where i can see all of my posts on one page and just check a series of checkboxes to delete the ones I want rid of?

</comment><comment><USER39> Any chance a feature could be added to delete posts by year?

Would love to scrub like 5 years or so but keep some more relevant memories.

Thank you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea. I had also thought of adding a feature to unfollow/unlike pages, but haven't had much time yet to work on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Some sure fire ways to get your account actually deleted, and quickly: post large amounts of hardcore porn, extreme gore, and anything that puts Jews in a negative light like Nazi symbols combined with the prior two methods. The moderation team will nuke your accounts very efficiently.

<comment><USER41> Why was my reply flagged? This has actually happened for some FB users.

My flagged reply was: "Also, anything criticizing Islam or LGBTTQQIAAP rights"

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Love this script! I'm trying to use it to wipe 10 years of Facebook dumbness. It can handle about a month's worth of posts before it crashes though. Is there any try/catch/repeat loops you could add to resolve this?

        Message: no such element: Unable to locate element: {"method":"class name","selector":"layerConfirm"}

Or... is there a Python equivalent of "nodemon" I could run it behind?

Thanks for the great work! I was thinking Jumbo.app would implement something similar by now but I realize the problem was hard to solve because facebook doesn't let apps delete posts.

<comment><USER43> we are working on facebook.... :)

CEO, Jumbo Privacy.

<comment><USER42> Super excited to test it, didn't intend for facebook piece to be a criticism of your app, which I highly enjoy and use regularly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> At least FB lets you remove them from public view.

I recently tried to script clearing out my twitter linkes. (Some of which date back to before <3s, when a star could mean "yikes, I don't want to RT this but I want to note it". Others were just from when my twitter was more personal, and now that I use it for professional purposes I don't need random likes from the 2012 election lying around.

But Twitter now says I have about 4k likes, but only displays the ones since I tried to run my script.

Occasionally, a weeks or months later older ones resurface, but if I try to unlike them in bulk they disappear again to return at a random interval.

</comment><comment><USER45> I can't imagine this is more likely to actually delete the data on their end than just deleting your whole account.

However, I am really interested in learning more about Selenium so I'm curious to look at your project.

</comment><comment> a-wu Similar, but OT: does anyone know of a script that will delete your tweets from before X date? There's tools that bulk delete, but I want to delete from before a certain date.

<comment><USER42> Jumbo App is easiest!

IIRC twitter's API doesn't allow you to bulk delete tweets from the outside. I've found that exporting all tweets, getting the IDs, and then deleting them in the browser using the twitter.com only browser API will allow you to delete tens of thousands of tweets with no rate limits. I did something similar here: [https://github.com/kylehotchkiss/fakeblock](https://github.com/kylehotchkiss/fakeblock) but it's not documented well and Twitter's export file format actually tends to change on a somewhat regular basis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Is there a way to export the data beforehand? Just in case there are old photos or anything one may potentially want to keep saved...

<comment><USER47> [https://www.facebook.com/help/1701730696756992?helpref=hc_gl...](https://www.facebook.com/help/1701730696756992?helpref=hc_global_nav)

See "How do I download a copy of my information on Facebook?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Kudos - this is very much useful. Anybody know of a script that will wipe __all __content from facebook?

</comment><comment><USER49> Sweet and Simple. I have the habit of writing complex scripts leaning of super clean code that deviates from the actual purpose. This is so clear. I could understand the code in 5 min...That means it's super simple. And looking at the votes it has received, it works!

Great work fellow programmer.

</comment><comment><USER50> Facebook throttles me when I delete posts manually. So doing this automatically will only make it worse.

<comment><USER42> Hmm, I was catching this same issue while running this script today. Only in the chrome instance that Selenium opened though. Facebook was working at normal speed in my primary chrome instance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> There needs to also be an obfuscate profile method.

Any data is probably never deleted. What makes more sense if a long running script (multiple years??) that updates / inserts / deletes your profile with random information.

</comment><comment><USER52> Wait about a week, guessing this won't work if it builds up any significant traction.

I want the ability to delete everything after some period of time. Every message I send, every message I receive, I want it all to work like conversation -- not contracts.

I don't want someone digging up an email from the past where I said something stupid in a moment of anger, or frustration. If all tech worked like Snap Chat, or Signal, I'd be really happy.

I have no trust that Facebook actually deletes anything. Guessing anyone who tries to delete things actually flags the user and then their team of Zucks go in and look at the juicy content you were trying to delete... seems like 5 years from now, Facebook will charge for the "not have anything dumb you said in your 20s show up in public search" feature. Cool. Cool, cool, cool.

<comment><USER40> Oversec might be able to help you

[https://www.oversec.io](https://www.oversec.io)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> In most of the tech companies, deleting only means flipping a flag in the column of the row so that those things won't show up to the user. "Hard delete" is what you want.

<comment><USER54> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19965287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19965287) seems to disagree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Whenever I try to delete old Facebook posts, I just get indefinite loading bar. _Shrugs_ Seems like a well tested feature. /s (or maybe my posts are just stored in ice).

<comment><USER56> One of your friends were probably hacked and data mined your facebook anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Delete Facebook and download the new way to connect [http://foxie.cool](http://foxie.cool)

</comment><comment><USER58> Regarding selenium, is there a better way to wait for a specific state or element etc rather than simply sleep for a few seconds?

<comment><USER59> It's considered a better practice to explicitly wait for an element on a page before acting. How to do it is documented for the Python bindings here: [https://selenium-python.readthedocs.io/waits.html](https://selenium- python.readthedocs.io/waits.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> This says wall posts. Im sure there's plenty of people that would like one for comments, too. Anybody know scripts for that?

</comment><comment><USER61> What about something to scrub comments, or photos or likes (on others' content)? Is there a similar script available?

</comment><comment><USER62> Is there a guarantee that `pip install` download the exact same script as the GitHub one ? If not it seems risky.

<comment><USER63> You can do pip install git+[https://github_repo_url](https://github_repo_url) if you want

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I'm wondering - won't it trigger some antiscrape / antibot measures and lock account?

</comment><comment><USER65> Facebook keeps all the posts or references to posts in a proprietary graph database.

</comment><comment><USER66> now how do i delete all of the comments ive left on facebook posts?

<comment><USER54> Your comment is gone if post author removes his post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> well, shoulda posted this ages ago

[https://github.com/chriszimmerman/fbcleaner](https://github.com/chriszimmerman/fbcleaner)

<comment><USER68> does this one still work?

<comment><USER67> I have no idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> To my knowledge, there is no way to actually do this correct?

</comment><comment><USER70> Would prefer migration to a decentralized alternative

</comment><comment><USER71> after a decade of use I just permanently deleted my account on a whim, then was told it will be deleted in 30 days...

</comment><comment><USER72> Fantastic! Now the same for Firefox please.

<comment><USER73> I'm a user and fan of FF, I left chrome a while back now, but for one piece of one-off automation why couldn't you use Chrome?

<comment><USER72> My new year resolution for 2019 was to keep my computer Google free. It's less of a statement and more a "fun" geeky game. So I rather not install Chrome:-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Got one for linkedin and discord?

</comment><comment><USER74> Facebook will just rate limit you

<comment><USER75> I did have this happen to me when I tried to delete many of my posts at once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> How about name it rm -rf for fb

</comment><comment><USER77> How long will this work for?

</comment><comment><USER57> love this

</comment><comment><USER56> I want scrape, save, delete.

So I can have my old thoughts</comment>


Firefox: Can this Web browser be saved? - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/firefox-can-this-web-browser-be-saved-7000000624/

<comment><USER2> Mmmm.. interesting stuff. I've only just recently switched _back_ to using Firefox as my primary browser after going with Chrome for most of the past 2-3 years. FF performance finally seems to be mostly on par with Chrome, and the extensions situation is as good or better. After going back to FF about 2 months ago, I can honestly say that I see no real reason to prefer Chrome at this point.

I'm speaking as an individual / developer user though. For enterprise use, I haven't stayed up to date on what their response was to the brouhaha over the rapid release cycle stuff. Perhaps that is still a concern for organizational use.

<comment><USER3> > FF performance finally seems to be mostly on par with Chrome

It's always been faster for me, especially with a nontrivial number of tabs and on start-up.

> the extensions situation is as good or better.

Much better, especially for the things I care about, such as themes. I can't find out how to theme Chrome; if you don't like the default, you're apparently still stuck with it.

More to the point, Firefox respects me. I can turn off the speed dial feature in Firefox. I can't in Chrome. I can theme Firefox to a level unheard-of in Chrome. Firefox extensions seem to be able to dig deeper into Firefox than Chrome extensions can into Chrome.

It's about respect: Firefox allows me to shape it the way I want to, whereas Chrome constantly demands to shape me.

<comment><USER4> > I can't find out how to theme chrome

<http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/ThemeCreationGuide>

(searching for "create chrome theme" gives many more tutorials, online tools, whatnots)

<comment><USER3> Can I move the tabs to below the address bar? Can I give Chrome a permanent status bar?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"Really Mozilla? Does the world really need another mobile operating system?"_

The overwhelming majority of Firefox's market share is on Windows. Judging by the trajectory of Microsoft's intentions with Windows RT, a browser targeting Windows desktop users may not be viable for much longer (contingent on whether or not things play out as Microsoft expects, of course). In this brave new world of sandboxed apps, he who controls the platform controls the universe. If Mozilla _hadn't_ announced their intention to create a platform of their own, I'd have jumped ship by now, with a heavy heart, to Chrome. As it stands, I'm enamored by their audacity. "And my axe!", etc.

<comment><USER6> Boot2Gecko is a brilliant idea... it's essentially Chrome OS for phones, with no chrome, no Chrome, more Mozilla, and deeper integration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does Firefox need to be saved?

Chrome isn't bad, and it has a huge amount of marketing dollars behind it, and it gains market share because of it. But does Firefox need a 100% market share, 50%, 30? Firefox exists, it makes the web better and it is probably the best browser out there on quite a few platforms.

Chrome might be the new IE in many ways, but I don't think that Firefox needs to be saved. If Mozilla wants more market share, they probably need better marketing, not a significantly better browser.

</comment><comment><USER8> I can't help but wonder that with the way things are going if it would be smart for Mozilla to focus on getting the Gecko engine used in more third party projects. Webkit is practically everywhere, and while Safari and Chrome are the "big" projects using it, I can think of many, many more projects that use it silently.

For example, when my smartphone broke, I spent $50 on a (used) feature phone a few weeks ago to use for the last month and a half of my contract. I found that it had a Webkit based browser, why wasn't that Gecko/Mozilla?

<comment><USER9> I've heard it's really hard work to integrate Gecko in to other software, but WebKit is easier. Maybe that's to do with it - would love to see a "Gecko control" that can be dropped in to other apps.

<comment><USER10> I've written embedded browsers based on Gecko (ages ago), Chromium and WebKit. Gecko was a big pain (they were redoing graphics at the time, moving to "thebes/cairo"). At some point the GNOME guys were complaining hard about not having a stable API to Gecko, and Mozilla said "we're not interested in that, we're doing Firefox". Really wish they hadn't taken that path.

Chromium is going in a similar direction, they used to have a very clean "WebKit" implementation (the bit which every port does itself, sits on top of WebCore) but over the years they've added a lot of policy to it and now it's hard to do anything which uses Chromium WebKit that isn't "Chromium". And the code outside of WebKit is very very hard to disentangle (they did some work on that for Chrome on Android, breaking out "content" which is a minimal embeddable browser, but it's hard to do any work on "content" and I have no faith that they'd want to merge anything they're not directly using).

Chrome for Android is closed source, too, so it's not like they have any real commitment to OSS at all (and I think this hobbles Android as a platform -- maybe it's just a reaction to the Kindle Fire, but the Android team do still seem to be working on WebView as well).

WebKit recently (2010?) started on WebKit2, which is a peer to Chromium's WebKit and is very straightforward to hack. WebKit2 supports multiple platforms and the WebKit project accepts contributions that aren't used by Apple, etc.

So I would say that if there's a big hole that Mozilla drove into, then Google Chrome is diligently driving into it too. WebKit is on good track, though, and benefits from a lot of the Google contributions (though V8 WebCore integration is a point of contention).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Compare Firefox's share to Opera. They're still a huge player in browsers, and I don't think people are asking "Can Opera be saved?" Firefox has indeed been through a rough patch, but I think the next few releases clear everything up and will be truly silent like Chrome updates.

</comment><comment><USER11> These are _great_ days for Firefox. Chrome definitely made the devs focus on performance, but that's how the market works. As others have said, Firefox is generally on par with Chrome regarding performance, and is arguably better feature-wise (addons). With the rapid-release process in place and updates getting more and more silent, Mozilla is poised to bring more and more awesome things to Firefox quickly.

And now with Firefox OS, we can experience the same amount of openness and freedom with a mobile OS as we do with Firefox (Firefox OS will also be built to run on lower-end phones that iOS or Android can't handle, opening up new markets in other countries).

The reasoning behind "why don't they focus on Firefox" is ridiculous, as if throwing engineers at one product will inherently improve it. We all know that one product only needs a few core developers with several other supporting devs, and Mozilla is big enough to support several projects.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does it need saving? The graph they link to shows Firefox down slightly at about 26% market share (although with a little uptick at the end, belying the rumours of it being "ruined" and its reputation "killed") but holding pretty steady overall at what must be several hundred million users - most of us would be fairly happy with numbers like that. Meanwhile IE is plummeting, and I don't think "the real battle" is between it and Chrome any more. The kind of momentum their trajectories are taking suggests that IE can't hope to take back the no.1 spot any time soon, and in fact appears likely to be competing with Firefox for third spot soon.

So no, I don't think it needs saving. Not having 90% market share doesn't make it a failure, especially for a not-for-profit organisation like Mozilla.

</comment><comment><USER13> I recently switched back to FF after a year or more using Chrome. I don't care all that much about performance, what drove me back to firefox was intolerable levels of ads.

<comment><USER14> There is adblock+ for Chrome.

<comment><USER13> I tried it several times, but IMO it is barely functional and ridiculous to configure. I know the developer does what they can, but Chrome seems to intentionally make it difficult for extensions to block ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> it's really amazing that chrome has gained so much traction. It wasn't too long ago that most people thought firefox had pretty much the market for browsers, with internet explorer being legacy software. Even though chrome has a very spartan interface (where the hell is the bookmark button??), every version of firefox became more and more bloated than the last, until it became unusable. Chrome by contrast was lightning fast, and used very little resources.

<comment><USER16> _(where the hell is the bookmark button??)_

It's the little star icon at the right inside the address textbox. If it's yellow it means the url is already bookmarked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Couldn't pay me to use IE. Chrome's extensions leave much to be desired. Firefox hits the sweet spot and is plenty fast. Since it's on a par with Chrome, I see the use of the word 'saved' as journalist-speak for "I've nothing to say today but I'm looking for attention".

</comment><comment><USER18> biggest mistake of Mozilla: jumping in to "faster updates" race without implementing proper background & automatic updates.</comment>


Examples of unexpected mathematical images - <AUTHOR> http://mathoverflow.net/questions/178139/examples-of-unexpected-mathematical-images <comment><USER2> The Terry Tao was an awesome surprise

I have two questions

1) how important is Terry Tao and his group to compressed sensing?

2) I'm interested in signal processing and compressed sensing. How can I get into it with a math background instead of an EE background?

 _Edit_ sorry I posted this comment three times. I pushed the comment button on my phone and nothing happened so I assumed nothing happened

<comment><USER3> If you're using the materialistic hacker app like I am then the flow is

\- submit \- send \- close window

So if send takes forever you press the button again, which doesn't disable itself.

<comment><USER2> Good to know. I just visit the website but I'll check out that app

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm going to make a claim: almost all mathematical "images" (2D graphical visualizations) are unexpected. This is because the set of expectations is most likely countable and the set of all mathematical images is not.

</comment><comment><USER5> From the title I expected to see the Batman curve

[http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BatmanCurve.html](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BatmanCurve.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Donoho proposed basics pursuit 10 years before it was proved in his joint work with Terence Tao.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am surprised that the Mandelbrot Set is not here.

</comment><comment><USER8> a spectacularly unbiased example, multiple measurements, experimental and simulated, of the same thing :)

[http://imgur.com/a/m2GRZ](http://imgur.com/a/m2GRZ)</comment>


Justice Department Wants Apple to Extract Data from 12 Other iPhones - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2016/02/23/doj-vs-apple-12-court-orders/ <comment><AUTHOR> So much for Comey's claim that they don't want to set a precedent - "The San Bernardino litigation isn't about trying to set a precedent" (this macrumors article comes from a WSJ article, but WSJ has a paywall)</comment>


Chinese Nationalism Jostles with Academic Freedom in Australia - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/world/australia/china-students-censorship.html <comment><USER2> What is academic freedom? I think this is a question everyone has gotten away from, especially in western countries. The fear of offending, or making someone/group uncomfortable, has silenced a lot of fact, critical thought, debate, and education.

The first example in the article "Chinese officials are truthful only when careless or drunk." That's incendiary and presumptuous. But to say that China is a communist one-party country, and Taiwan, is a free and independent country, is another, however both have incited rebuke from Chinese students in Australia, despite being 100% fact.</comment>


ClipX - <AUTHOR> https://bluemars.org/clipx/ <comment><USER2> Bluemars helped me to discover ambient music. Thanks Francis Gastellu.</comment>