Prediction: Facebook Will Enter the Search Market Next Year - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/26/prediction-facebook-will-enter-the-search-market-next-year/

<comment><USER2> It's obvious that FB would want to enter the search market, and the post doesn't even mention the biggest reason: search ads are more valuable than social ads.

And I think the obvious reason for that is: Ads on a social network are basically spam. They're explicitly trying to distract you from what you're doing. Search ads augment your search and harness your intent. Google gives you things you might actually be looking for when you're looking for it.[1]

And also, I don't think social search is as important as people think. The whole point of harnessing the power of the entire web for search results is getting stuff that we didn't have access to before the internet. I've always been able to ask my friends their opinion. The web lets me ask experts on the specific subject at hand.

Why _wouldn't_ FB want to do this? Because FB doesn't really want to send people away. They never have. Everything they do is designed to keep you on the site, and their external stuff is designed to draw you in.

Also, it's super hard (which the post does mention). Which makes me think it's way more likely that Google will eat FB's lunch than the other way around. Seems to me that Google already has a lot of FB's tech/infrastructure built, while FB has much less of Google's.

[1]: I've written about what a weird position this is, though: [http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/7590977101/googles- existentia...](http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/7590977101/googles-existential- crisis)

</comment><comment><USER3> The idea of using social graph data, somehow, in calculating search relevance is a nice idea, but you have to avoid incorrect assumptions like "You will like the things your social connections like."

StumbleUpon has used social graph data for a while, to make website recommendations (but they're not a general-purpose search engine):

<http://www.stumbleupon.com/technology/>

Ness is seems to be using social graph information, in a clever way, to make restaurant recommendations:

[http://www.building43.com/videos/2011/08/25/ness- personalize...](http://www.building43.com/videos/2011/08/25/ness-personalized- search-results/)

To me, the taste graph (a phrase coined by Hunch, I think) is much more interesting than the social graph, as an extra source of relevancy information. It you know my tastes, and you know the taste graph, then you can say what else I might like (with probabilities).

Will Facebook or Google ever use these additional sources of relevancy information? My bets are on Google.

</comment><comment><USER4> _He is an angel investor in media and e-commerce companies._

I wonder if he has invested (or plans to invest) in Facebook? Full disclosure would be nice.

 _Next year, search advertising will be a $15 billion market in the U.S. alone, growing by 14 percent, according to eMarketer. And, if Facebook can capture half the share of that market that Google has today, it could easily add an extra $25 billion or even far more to its value._

Is it just me or does the math not add up. If search advertising is $15B next year, how can Facebook add $25B of value if it takes 50% of the market share? I assume he means globally (versus the $15B residing in the US alone), but with those kinds of numbers, he's got to back it up somehow otherwise he's just pulling them out of the air.

<comment><USER5> If Facebook were to get similar margins to Google, then they'd earn $2B in profit on $7.5B in revenues. $25B of value on $2B profit is a 12.5 P/E ratio, which is quite conservative, given search is still an emerging market, and quite strategic for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This whole article is predicated on "social search" being better than pagerank-scored search, which is only sometimes the case.

Sometimes I care what my friends think about a search query, e.g., "sushi restaurants near foo." It might help me to know that my friend Bob, who I trust, has been somewhere and thought it was good.

Sometimes I do not care at all what my friends think about a search query, e.g., "medulla oblongata." In fact, showing results that my friends might have liked in connection with that phrase may distract from the scientific information I am looking for, especially if they are pages of quotes from Fight Club.

Being able to distinguish this intent, and putting a good UX on top of it, is what Facebook needs to do to make a significant entry into the search market. (I'm not holding my breath.)

<comment><USER2> Honestly, even the sushi restaurants example is questionable to me. I think a better algorithm would check to see what/what kind of restaurants I liked in the past, compare that with other people with similar taste, and give me a suggestion. Netflix recommendation for food.

It's what I've always wanted from Yelp and Urban Spoon, but never got. It seemed like Google's Hotpot was going there, but that seems to have fizzled. I guess it's not one of the arrows that Larry Page chose.

But back to the point, that's not a social algorithm. It's not a page-rank one either, but I'd expect Google to be better at this than FB.

<comment><USER7> Kind of like Ness? "Pandora for restaurants" according to GigaOm: <http://gigaom.com/2011/08/25/ness-restaurant-app/>

Haven't tried it yet but saw it on HN just yesterday!

<comment><USER2> Yes, exactly, but i'm not an IOS user. Even a Web client would be nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Speculation. And a bad idea. Facebook is good in social "notworking", and competing with Google in Google's territory is not a good idea. Since we're in the field of speculation, I predict a huge loss of money.

<comment><USER9> I agree. Facebook's strategy ought to be to lock down and defend their niche in social networking. The signs seem to indicate a greater emphasis on connecting person to person: I predict more location and mobile-based features, and more aggressive expansion in developing markets.

Only then would a search product make sense, though it would be tempting to rush it out as a partnership with Bing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Microsoft may be less than pleased, given the level of Bing integration right now.

In fact, Bing already exists as a Facebook-augmented search engine. I don't use it, but I find the concept fascinating as it's one of the few places that is using Facebook's _massive_ data store of all the pages and sites that users have 'like'd.

<comment><USER11> Good point. If people aren't using Facebook/Bing, what makes you think they'll use Facebook search? Unless they replace the front page with a search box bing/google style no one will notice the difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Search is about taking you to the place you want to go to; facebook really wants to be the interesting place.

Their whole strategy seems to center on making sure everything in the web is a gateway to facebook but that facebook itself is where the fun is at. See for example those boxes websites can use saying "such and such friend liked such and such article"; they take you to facebook, never out of it. I really don't see entering search as something they should even want to do.

</comment><comment><USER13> Facebook has already entered the search market. Any pages that have like buttons and the proper meta tags are index and can be reached through search in Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER14> Entering the search market would require hundreds of employees and a significant upfront capital expenditure. Without going public, I don't think there is any question--they will not enter search.

If they go public, then it depends on the opportunity costs. Is there a better place for ~5Billion dollar investment? Probably yes. Two things come to mind; an ad distribution network and a 'social' browser.

<comment><USER15> Facebook don't need to take on the huge capital cost of launching a search engine. They can take advantage of the fact that Microsoft already did.

Facebook can enter the search market by deepening the connection between its data and Bing's technology, and then making some UI changes.

<comment><USER16> Um, and if they do that, who takes the profits from the search engine? Microsoft, who has "invested" billions and billions of dollars and who would presumably like to recoup some or all of their losses, or Facebook? And if that's the case, how much value does that add to Facebook again? It's an interesting and open question, but methinks predictions that Facebook would get all of the profits, when Microsoft has put in the all or most of the capital costs of a money-losing search engine system, seem to be a little hard to believe, don't you think? And that's of course assuming Microsoft can be successful in search, which has yet to be seen at least from a business perspective...

<comment><USER15> I didn't claim that Facebook would take all the profits in such a scenario. Of course Microsoft would have a valid claim to some profits from a joint venture, the two companies would strike a deal over the exact split. As has been noted in other threads, though, even a small share of the search market can be worth a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I guess we'll be seeing this prediction every year until it either comes true or Facebook ceases to exist as a company.

</comment><comment><USER18> .. and will probably fail just as google failed/ing? with social networks.

If you want to dominate an existing market, you have to put everything you have into into it (+ new idea), and that might not be enough.

</comment><comment><USER19> I said the same thing when they came out with the "like" button last year. Liking something is just a new-fangled way of doing page / domain ranking.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you make producing a habit? - <AUTHOR> How do you get out of the consumption rut and make producing work in any form a habit? <comment><USER2> As with any habit, there's no silver bullet. You just have to make a concerted effort to produce something, however small, every day. For example, you could force yourself to comment on a Hacker News post every day, or write 100 words the second you get up in the morning, etc.

The second thing is to just produce things that you're passionate about, not what you think other people will enjoy. Producing work is inherently a personal endeavor; writing about something you hate is a surefire way to kill a habit before it even starts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Creating for its own sake runs the risk of burning you out. It is important to have the skills to bring an idea to fruition. Selecting the right idea that fits with your goals is equally important if not more important. Polishing a MVP into presentable finished product is another area where people fail.

What are your goals?</comment>


Ask HN: Best non-business books to read on vacation - <AUTHOR> I'm forcing myself to take a vacation from my startup. Looking for some good stories to get lost in. No business books. Help me Hacker News, you're my only hope. <comment><USER2> Some suggstions on my end would be: Ready player one - Ernest Cline Mistborn trilogy - Brandon Sanderson A short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson Dune - Frank Herbert

<comment><USER3> i second these suggestions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Children of Time_ by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Sci-fi action-adventure involving AI, terraforming, and a man-made race of intelligent spiders.

 _The Book of Tea_ by Okakura Kakuzō. Philosophy, history, and aesthetics in a 1906 treatise on tea.

</comment><comment><USER5> Try Murakami, Knausgård and Ursula Le Guin.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the end of the world is the most scifi Murakami. Wonderful stuff. Then read all his others. Knausgård 'My Struggle' is a very compelling personal story (5 volumes!) where you get inside his head. Not a novel. Ursula Le Guin - the Lathe of Heaven. More scifi.

</comment><comment><USER6> Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett. I'd start with the DEATH series (Mort is first book in that one) but a lot of folks like the City Watch. (Guards! Guards!). Lighthearted, hilarious, and some real insights into the human condition in a tongue in cheek way.

Can't go wrong, good vacation reads. M

</comment><comment><USER7> Some suggestions:

Any of the "Laundry Files" novels by Charles Stross, or _Glasshouse_ also by Stross.

 _Permutation City_ by Greg Egan.

 _Off To Be The Wizard_ by Scott Meyer.

Any of the "Dresden Files" novels by Jim Butcher.

 _The Shockwave Rider_ by John Brunner.

 _Neuromancer_ by William Gibson.

 _Snow Crash_ by Neal Stephenson.

<comment><USER8> Neuromancer is horrible. One of the few books where I gave up midway through. My expectations were so high. I guess it's famous because it pioneered the genre.

<comment><USER7> Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I couldn't disagree more on _Neuromancer_. I've read it 3 or 4 times and - FSM willing - will read it a couple more before I die. It's definitely one of my all time favorites.

I guess that's what makes these threads so interesting. Seeing just how radically different two people's respective opinions on the same book can be.

<comment><USER8> I wanted to love that book. The only bigger sci fi disappointment to me is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the movie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm on book four of The Expanse series. They are long, but easy reads. I picked them up at the start of the month. Depending on how long your vacation is, you could start with the first three and probably have enough to last.

It's a fun series. If you are a fan of the show I think you really should read the books. Even if you haven't watched the show I think most people will enjoy the books. They are page turners and I've stayed up way to late almost every night since I got them.

</comment><comment><USER8> Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

 _Kurt Vonnegut 's novel Slaughterhouse-Five has also faced censorship for its political message. Published in 1969, Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the most censored books in recent years._

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke

 _The story follows the peaceful alien invasion of Earth by the mysterious Overlords, whose arrival begins decades of apparent utopia under indirect alien rule, at the cost of human identity and culture._

<comment><USER10> I'd actually recommend almost anything by Vonnegut. Somehow I lost my collection of Vonnegut books in my last move, which makes me a bit sad because I had the Library of America editions and hadn't finished reading his later novels (a bunch of missing books, like someone left a box on a curb).

 _Slaughterhouse-Five_ is a great read, and really gets to Vonnegut's style of writing.

 _Player Piano_ is his earliest novel and reads very differently (a more conventional style), but the story and writing are fantastic. It's a world where machines can do most kinds of work, so the majority are unemployed except a few specialists (primarily management and engineering).

 _Cat 's Cradle_ is closer in style/tone to _Slaughterhouse-Five_. While dark, both of them are, it's another really good read.

 _Mother Night_ is among my favorites, if not my favorite, of his writings.

<comment><USER8> I need to read more of his books, his writing style is beautiful, very simple and clear yet so deep. Player Piano sounds interesting.

<comment><USER10> If you tend to collect books (like I do), I can recommend the Library of America editions of his books. I think they have all his novels and most, if not all, his short stories in them. Those are the copies that disappeared in my last move.

<comment><USER8> Will check it out. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The trilogy Remembrance of Earth's Past by Cixin Liu:

The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, Death's End.

I really liked this sci-fi trilogy, can't talk more about it without spoiling it. Enjoy your vacation!

<comment><USER12> I had a really tough time with the Three Body Problem. The first chapter is so strong and then it goes downhill from there.

It straddles subgenres, like the author thinks that all science fiction needs to be Hard SF, but has never actually read hard SF. You can leave things unexplained in speculative fiction, but if you're going to explain them, at least make the explanations sound plausible to a lay-person like me.

Nevermind the fact that nothing in the story has to do with a 3-body system or the 3-body problem. It is referenced in name, but the author botches that too.

The characters are so flat, you can't even call them 2-dimensional with the exception of the cop, who btw has the magic gift of always being able to outthink a roomful of scientists. The other characters are so interchangeable I had to take notes to remember who was who.

I tell friends to avoid this book at all costs. When the big reveal came, I got so angry I threw the book on the floor, left the room and debated finishing it at all. The setup is so intriguing and the reveal is so hackneyed, unpredictable only because who would choose to write something so mundane?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you want non-business non-fiction, I've always enjoyed Robert Greene's books. They're short history snippets first and foremost, with some Aesop-like morals of the story.

</comment><comment><USER14> I liked _One Man 's Wilderness_.</comment>


How To Live Forever - <AUTHOR> http://www.dansdata.com/gz092.htm <comment><USER2> Several decades back I read a SF story (by Fred Pohl?) where the crew of a near lightspeed craft needed to be continually replaced by new members teleported in, because the existing crew was being killed by radiation. For some nominal payment you stepped into a booth and a copy of you was teleported to the starship. You collected your payment and went and had a nice dinner or somesuch. Meanwhile your copy on the starship tried to cope while dying some horrible death.

The angst of who is me and who is alive and who is dead has kept me from trying teleportation or brain downloads. I know that, when the organic part is shut off, my personality will continue to live. But is it really me?

<comment><USER3> The Ship of Theseus has a rather interesting application to this concept, explaining a way to do brain downloads _without any risk of losing "you"_.

We basically know for a fact at this point that the "soul" is not stored in any one brain cell--that is, you can lose any single brain cell and you're still who you are. Thus, if we take one brain cell, digitize it into some form in which it exactly replicates the function of the original, including ability to reconnect to other cells and so forth, it will continue to function as the original cell.

So you do this one by one for every single cell in the brain. In practice, this might be possible with nanotech or something of the sort.

Since no single cell can store consciousness, and you ever have one less cell than normal in your brain, "you" must logically be fine. Yet once the process is done, not an atom of the original "you" remains. The only way I've found to poke holes in this concept is the idea that there is something "not replicable" about brain cells, which seems unlikely--for example, it's doubtful that there is a significant quantum effect on consciousness. This would of course stop one from doing this, since quantum states cannot be duplicated.

See the last paragraph of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus#Other_examples> as well.

<comment><USER4> Reminded me of Ise Shrine (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Shrine>) and also Shirky's reference to it (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1TZaElTAs>). The point there is that function is also a meaningful definition of is-ness.

Besides, aren't all of the cells in a human body replaced every x years already?

<comment><USER3> Brain cells aren't normally replaced regularly, AFAIK, so they're an exception to the rule.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> " _The problem, it seems to me, is discontinuity._ "

It's really just a philosophical problem. It's also hard to explain why.

<comment><USER6> "just" a philosophical problem!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Insightful perspective on what might happen if you gradually augmented your brain. Kurzweil covered a lot in The Singularity is Near; this narrative on consciousness is more playful. The brandy in the chocolate here is his existential musings on the Omega Point - blew my mind.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you believe in an uncopyable soul, a teleporter like that about would be a way of creating actual, honest-to-god P-zombies. Fun!

On the other hand, if you don't, then it doesn't seem like it's such a big deal. Diaspora, by Greg Egan, has a lot of this kinda thing happening in it (in fairness, they're software minds, which simplifies things).

<comment><USER9> Indeed, Greg Egan's short story "Learning to be Me" is on exactly the argument (both sides!) that the article is trying to make: <http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/361474/learning_to_be_me.html>

<comment><USER10> Let me use this opportunity to make a plug for another excellent writer. If you like Greg Egan, chances are you will like Stanisław Lem, who tackled some of the very similar questions in his work. One good place to start is: [http://www.amazon.com/Star-Diaries-Further-Reminiscences- Tic...](http://www.amazon.com/Star-Diaries-Further-Reminiscences- Tichy/dp/0156849054/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Loved this article. Its the first such article in a long time that essentially sums-up my own thoughts on this topic. I also appreciate all of the other commenters (and HN overall) because everyone is commenting on this with respect, open-mindedness, and thought. Its way, WAY too common for people who don't really understand what's going on to say how this is all sci-fi, won't/can't happen, etc. The great thing about being one of the people that wants to upload is that eventually, all the people who don't believe I'm still alive will die off.

</comment><comment><USER12> Topical: [http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/BORDER/Complete/Bor...](http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/BORDER/Complete/Border.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> My favorite variant on this is:

every 20 years, have science advance enough to extend everyone's life by 30 years

(doesn't take care of things like getting hit by bus, but takes care of 'regular' life extension)

(iirc, there was some ted talk on this)

</comment><comment><USER14> I think to the best of my knowledge that in teleporatation when one grabs the quantum information from the original location one destroys the physical content from the original location, then transmits the information to the second location, and rebuilds the original physical content. In other words the original physical content is destroyed in the act of analyzing the content. So there is not a danger of leaving a "copy of oneself" at the original location. Necessarily to measure quantum spin and so on, the original physical material is destroyed, or more precisely, is re-arranged into indecipherable form.

<comment><USER15> Good point.

One question. If you know the exact location of all the particles as you do this, and you "teleport" them, but at the same time create a copy in the old location with the same quantum information, aren't you back to the same problem?

<comment><USER14> Had not thought about that. I suppose once one has all the quantum information one needs, one could "splice the signal" into an arbitrary amount of copies. Unless there was some entanglement going on. That is, if Origin Point and Destination Point where put into some kind of EPR entangled state to preclude both points having a "copy" at the same time.</comment></comment></comment>


Ikea Pitches Its 2015 Catalog as the Coolest Gadget Ever - <AUTHOR> http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/ad-day-ikea-hilariously-pitches-its-2015-catalog-cutting-edge-technology-159846

<comment><USER2> Also, Ikea doesn't suck (at least, not in this case):

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/08/20/roman_mars_99_...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/08/20/roman_mars_99_percent_invisible_jules_yap_hacks_ikea_products_at_ikeahackers.html)</comment>


The ESA says preserving old online games isn't 'necessary' - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/20/esa-dmca-online-gaming-petition/ <comment><USER3> They should be careful. Copyright is a trade-off of rights. We grant copyright as an artificial carve-out of public rights in order to promote creation. But if those creations increasingly get walled off and locked away from a public that still wants access to them, by combinations of legal and technical means, we need to assess if the balance is right or if we need to reduce the copyright protections.

As it currently stands, support for copyright is overall quite strong - <USER2> mainstream belief is still that a fairly substantial degree of protection is justified. But the more peoples ability to continue to access things that are important parts of their memories gets locked down, the greater the chance that more people will come to see copyright as more of a hindrance than benefit.

My son, at 8, still regularly gets upset when he thinks of a fairly inane role playing game he didn't spend all that much time on, whose online servers were shut down about two years ago, and has more than once expressed anger towards the developers for doing so.

He still has not experienced a "serious" loss in this area in the sense of a game he's invested countless hours in and made friendships in. With a culture where more and more time gets spent in these virtual worlds that people invest a lot of time, energy and even money in, if it gets taken away there will be increasing levels of anger as well (if, say, Roblox was to shut down I'll never hear the end of it)

They're going to find themselves threading a fine line here, with new generations likely to be increasingly negative to actions that will be seen not in terms of just shutting down unprofitable games, but as hostile and destructive unjustified attacks on real communities.

<comment><USER4> Great comment. I would add that part of the tradeoff is that in exchange for the exclusive right to sell a certain product there is the expectation that the product will enter the public domain after a period of time.

But the copyright law in the US grants that protection for 70 years. 70 years seems like plenty of time for an art piece, a book or a piece of music to be useful to its creators and still remains useful for the public after that time. I don't think the same time frames are relevant for online multiplayer: imagine sitting down 50 years from now and trying to reverse-engineer a WOW server.

What if copyright only applied to the supported life of a game? For instance, copyright can apply to a game for up to 70 years, or whenever one of the game's core components ceases being supported plus 5 years, whichever is sooner.

<comment><USER5> 70 years is insane to begin with. Keeping art out of the public domain for that long does seem hardly in the interest of the general public.

They'd need to justify these 70 years really well. Which they have not.

<comment><USER4> I think its just from a long time ago. The idea back then was to give a specific author the ability to profit from their own work while they were alive and for another generation or so and then free that work to benefit the general public; 95/70 years was just like 'that's way longer than anybody lives'.

As usual, though, once companies could have copyrights they used some of the money to bribe politicians to extend that original idea to add time and cover all sorts of things to prevent the public from benefiting at the expense of the copyright holder, while claiming the opposite.

Its not unreasonable they would do that (longer and more expansive copyright means more value for shareholders), I just wish it wasn't the only thing anyone with the power to change it was thinking about.

<comment><USER6> > The idea back then was to give a specific author the ability to profit from > their own work while they were alive and for another generation or so and > then free that work to benefit the general public; 95/70 years was just like > 'that's way longer than anybody lives'.

Copyright was originally 28 years, and has been increasing linearlyish ever since: long copyrights are a recent phenomenon. Also, it's 70 years plus the author's lifetime. There are nice charts in Wikipedia.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Giving access to the proprietary server code could hypothetically lead to > preservation societies building their own infrastructure and charging for > access. Thus, they'd be a direct competitor to the original developers and > publishers, which is something the ESA isn't exactly keen on.

This is ridiculous. Since when did "businesses not wanting to compete" justify anything? Of course they don't, but that's what our economy is supposed to be built on!

Are they actually admitting that their modern games cannot compete with older titles _they_ shut down because _they_ decided they were no longer profitable? Besides, nothing is stopping _them_ from also hosting those old titles again. They've just admitted there's a market for it!

I suspect the real problem here is that older titles don't support the "live services", GaaS, and modern monetization strategies they've been pushing for the last few years. Sure, an old MMO like Everquest might be profitable to host, but it can't rake in the kind of money a lootbox scheme can.

Copyright is not inherently a bad idea, but articles like this indicate to me that our current implementation is very broken.

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe ESA isn't worth preserving..

There should be no issues making an emulator for a server for defunct games just as there is no issues making emulators for dead consoles.

Microsoft tried really hard to push for single player online DRM too with the launch of the xbox 1. Luckily the gamers wouldn't have any of it and it became the worst PR blunder they made in gaming yet. They are trying again with the games on windows store. They are encrypted, unmoddable and with online checks.

I hope the gaming community will stand fast on this subject in the future as well as.

<comment><USER9> >Microsoft tried really hard to push for single player online DRM too with the launch of the xbox 1.

Another issue with this push is that online DRM really hurts people who live in areas where internet connections are non-existent or extremely limited. Forced updates on dial-up or satellite internet with 2GB a month caps are not compatible. This move discriminates against those who live in these areas, and while for adults it is their choice to live where they do, for children it is not.

I see this in areas of life more important than gaming as well. These days kids get sent home with homework that requires an internet connection to complete, despite these rural areas being so far from any public access that there is no way for the child to do their work. This creates a situation of helplessness for the child, which has the potential to lead them into a situation of learned helplessness with school work because the school system assumes infrastructure that doesn't exist for all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a shame. I still play Ninja Gaiden for the original NES--on the original NES, with the original cartridge, with the original controller.

I'm cynical I know, but in 30 years no one will remember these short-sighted fools, whereas I'd bet $100 the original Ninja Gaiden will still be around (and I hope so!).

<comment><USER11> My 3 year old plays Galaga on my Atari 7800, Super Mario on my NES, Donkey Kong Country on my SNES, and so on. They've all lasted 25 or 30 years so far, and they're sure to have good years left in them.

ESA has been around for 23 though, and produces the E3 expo. I think they'll be around for at least a chunk of that 30 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I know it's from fantasy's series, but what I'd like to see is that as soon as a company (or rights holder) shut down official servers or make game unplayable in other ways, such act counts as the rights abandon and game goes to public domain. I'm not against companies making money from old games, but I still want to play HoMM3 released in 1999 and probably will want to play it 30 years in future (it's like chess for me), so just make it possible.

</comment><comment><USER13> Preservation is central to the purpose of copyright, hence the (inadequately enforced) deposit requirement. If preservation of games isn't essential, they should not be subject to copyright at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> Who's involved at the other side of the issue?

I hope the EFF gets involved if it isn't already. Particularly, it'd be rude not to, as they're getting quite a lot of donations through Humble Bundle.

<comment><USER14> The whole industry is. The problem is- games do not age out as we are all made to believe. Well made games are fun, even twenty or thirty years after release. And while graphics are important for selling them- they are actually irrelevant for playing them once they fulfill there purpose.

Thus Southkorea still plays StarCraft, and if it weren't for backwards incompatibility slowly grinding old software to dust- a lot of people instead of buying new, dlc infested - constructions sites that might contain fun in the future- would play the old titles.

The industrys idea of revenue here is to churn the wheel of decay as fast as possible, with as much as additional sales while the customer does not buy the actual product.

The old idea of a game was to provide as much entertainment, often as long as possible (bind the customer to you)- and this means there are still shards with Ultima Online, still people playing RedAlert2 and CC:Generals. From a business point of view- this is the secret oil of the industry- there is a finite amount of people, with a finite amount of time. There are different grades of people (aka income) but that can change.

Something like MineCraft is a world destroying catastrophe in these eyes.

If you carefully look, you can see the ripples of "Long Value Release" and Studios closing due to people not buying games for years after.

So, what does the industry fear? A summer where all play some old forgotten modded title, while not even the flys circle over the loot boxes in the stores.

Thus, loosing control over the online service- has nothing to do with piracy, but everything to do with loosing control over the end-of-life of your product.

You cant patch some games balance into oblivion to sell the successor- if you do no longer control the servers.

<comment><USER15> There is some nuance here.

Company like Bethesda or CDProjekt are showing that having one long running game can work too. (Bethesda is a bit strange due to their military contracts but still).

CDProjekt are even more interesting because they are behind GOG.com . Which spend time making old game playable on recent PC, but sell them for a price when they were abandonware before. Most of the time without DRM. The interesting part is they do make money through it. Which shows that you can keep a small but longterm income from your backcatalogue.

At the same time, they are making abandonware harder to support through copyright exception since copyright holders now make money again ...

<comment><USER16> > Bethesda is a bit strange due to their military contracts

I am curious to know what you are talking about. I've never heard Bethesda getting money from the DoD. And I've found nothing, since all search results are mixed with info about the military base in the city called Bethesda.

<comment><USER15> My mistake. Was meant to be Bohemia Interactive.

<comment><USER16> Thank you for your answer.

Bohemia Interactive created a division, Bohemia Interactive Simulations, to handle the military training software, which has worked with other NATO countries.

But from the Wikipedia page, the division has been bought by an equity firm, The Riverside Company, in 2013. So Bohemia Interactive doesn't deal anymore with the military, even if they might still have contact in the military, since they have developed military simulations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love this part:

> _" The prevalence of reissues of older games belies any claim that game > companies lack incentive to preserve older titles," the ESA writes._

Yeah. It shouldn't matter if Lord of The Rings ever goes out of print because, after all, we have _several_ movie adaptions of it. What more could we ever want?

</comment><comment><USER18> Note that ESA is the "Entertainment Software Association". It has nothing to do with the "European Space Agency".

<comment><USER19> Also nothing to do with the European Speedrunner Assembly, which coincidentally is streaming a week of video game speedrunning right now.

Link for the interested: [https://esamarathon.com/](https://esamarathon.com/)</comment></comment>


Introducing Workers KV - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-workers-kv/ <comment><USER4> Holy return of tuple spaces! Are there any features for controlling consistency, or is it just YOLO last write wins?

<comment><USER5> Last write wins. There are several features for controlling consistency that we have been prototyping. Based on how storage is used we will enable those as the product matures.

<comment><USER6> So why not strong eventual consistency and CRDTs? As they fit perfectly for such functions running on edge nodes and no silly limitations of 1 write per second necessary.

<comment><USER7> Indeed. This is just stage 1 of our storage plans. We have some really cool stuff in the works but we wanted to get basic KV functionality out there for people to start using ASAP.

<comment><USER8> OT: we need to read more about your website-in-kv-thingy setup.

<comment><USER7> It was pretty trivial. I just stored each page into a value and served them out of there, with some stupid code to infer content-type from file extension. I meant it as a dumb demo because I wasn't feeling creative. I didn't know John would mention it in his blog. :)

Currently this isn't a great way to serve content because the values are limited to 64k, you have to infer content-type (which makes your URLs ugly), etc. So I don't recommend it. We'll come up with something better in the future. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The feature aside, this is a really great blog post: learning a bit about the history of the feature, even if only tangentially related (Babbage and the Analytical Engine) in the intro is great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you; that's kind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is really cool. Webapps are basically programs that are executed across the network; having fine-grained control over what happens at each layer (client, client service worker, edge nodes, proxy server, origin server) means more choices and complexity, but also so much more power.

<comment><USER11> The question I would ask is: once you have the ability to run code and store data on the network itself (which Cloudflare effectively is), why do you need an origin at all?

<comment><USER12> You work for Cloudflare so that's a fun question but realistically there are still plenty of limitations. The script size, number of routes, KV consistency, write limits, and simple get/put API, etc.

It can work for simple apps but there's a long way to go before any serious enterprise system will be hosted entirely on a FaaS system like Workers.

<comment><USER13> If you're having trouble with script size and route limitations, would love to chat. We're working on providing more flexibility in that realm. rita at cloudflare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A bit offtopic: could you guys move the "please enable javascript"/captcha page to a separate, but cloudflare owned domain, so at least people who don't want to enable javascript for random websites behind cloudflare could enable it for your domain and pass all your browser checks?

</comment><comment><USER14> Great job - was trying to something similar by setting up three etcd raft nodes on each continent, but this is like 150+ nodes. Mind sharing of you're using good clocks, paxos or raft to coordinate?

Would also be great if CF could do websocket / sse fanout at the edges - if I have a couple million websockets connected on ws.cf.com/key1 and I update the value, would be great if the new value could be broadcast. That would help with a lot of media / real-time / sports games, apps and websites.

<comment><USER11> Can you talk more about your specific use case?

<comment><USER14> The simplest example is liveblogging - someone is sitting at the next iPhone launch, and sending out photos and commentary that's being updated as they send on a large number of readers' screens worldwide. The Verge has a good system that they do with polling S3 for new data, but there's really much more effective ways to do it.

The more specific cases include opening ticket sales for movies in India - <USER2> some big movies tickets are sold out really quickly, so there'll be hundreds or thousands of people with browsers / phones open on a seat layout and they all need to see which seats are being sold in real-time.

Then there's broadcasting stock market movements and tips to thousands of traders in real-time.

The only existing solutions that seem really scalable are fanout.io - <USER3> like pusher.com and pubnub.com have pricing that's not conducive to serving a large number of simultaneous users / broadcasting. Fanout.io gets this right, but would be nice to have cheaper alternatives / make it a commodity.

Given that the CF nodes do support websockets, I assume they terminate and re- create new connections to origins as well - so the nodes are capable of holding a large number of websockets open, right? Can Workers intercept websockets / stream data into them? And given that the KV store is capable of propagating new values to all the nodes, there could be a way expose incoming change notifications on keys, which would handle this use case. Could also implement as continuous addition of new timestamps keys, prefixed with a topic.

<comment><USER11> Fundamentally what I think we want to do is build the primitives you would need to create your own fanout. That means we need the ability to push events to Worker nodes, and for Workers to be able to terminate WebSockets for you.

If you can accept up to 10s of latency, I agree that KV could solve the 'pushing events' problem for you. (A tuple store is semantically equivalent to message passing, and it will get easier when we support range queries).

<comment><USER14> Yes, both points make sense. And I assume the 10s latency is also geographically related - i.e. it's worst case 10s for the longest distance on the network topology graph? That should be fine.

Low latency requirements also tend to be geographical, I think - stock markets are mostly specific to a single country, examples like ticketing are usually specific to a single city / edge. For general news being broadcast globally, that kind of latency is fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Pretty awesome to see Charles Babbage credited in the introduction.

<comment><USER16> If you're interested in his work, you might want to check out another project of JGC: [http://plan28.org/](http://plan28.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Best link is probably the blog: [http://blog.plan28.org/](http://blog.plan28.org/)

<comment><USER17> Any reason it doesn't serve HTTPS?

<comment><AUTHOR> Turns out I never enabled HTTPS in Blogger. Just clicked the button... [https://blog.plan28.org/](https://blog.plan28.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good work Kenton Varda getting his initials into the product name!

<comment><USER7> [https://twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/1041998948733472768](https://twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/1041998948733472768)

> There's no truth in the rumour that a KV store is a @KentonVarda store. Nor > that it maps kentons to vardas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> With this and the changes to their worker caching API it's now completely possible to write a custom pull origin CDN service that you have complete control over.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm curious but I haven't seen anything about cache expiration on keys. Eg Expire all keys 'key-1' after 30 minutes or expire at a globally recognized time frame. Does anyone know if this is possible?

<comment><USER11> We haven't exposed it yet, but it's implemented internally. Follow our blog and we'll update you when it's released.

<comment><USER19> Awesome, I'll be sure to keep up on that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are you planning on releasing any of the architectural details behind this service?

If you're truly replicating to every PoP that's quite a fan-out and I can see why you're limited to 1 write per second per key!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we will. This is something we built internally and we'll talk about architecture at some point.

<comment><USER21> Thank you! Lots of super cool stuff coming out of CF these days, the pace is hard to keep up! Not that it's a bad thing necessarily :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how the Fastly crew feels about all this. Great team over there, and they were originally the super configurable CDN, but it seems that is now completely beaten by Workers.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is very cool, but how do you limit an end user to only being able to read a given set of values. It seems to me that this scheme puts all credentials for access in the browser, and they'll be able to just run roughshod all over your data without constraints in place.

Can you create data spaces/keys for ones that are read-write per-user and others that are read-only for a given user?

<comment><USER11> You write the Worker code which runs on our infrastructure, not in a browser. You have complete control over who can access which piece of data, as it's your code doing the accessing.

<comment><USER22> Thanks, I misunderstood that part... very cool indeed. What are the overhead limits for workers?

Aside, it seems like this could be _really_ interesting combined to make an entire API with static delivery from S3 or Azure Blobs, with a backend on a cloud hosted database. With a lot of flexibility in between.

<comment><USER11> The ultimate goal is to let you do all of that within our network!

When you say overhead limit, are you talking about latency? Our goal is to keep reads on the order of 5ms in the 90th percentile.

<comment><USER22> I mean compute/memory for the workers... just a rough comparison of what that might look like. Will probably sign up for the early access and play around with it soon.

<comment><USER11> We limit you to 50ms of CPU and 128 MB of memory now, but we're working on ways of raising those limits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> With the shopping cart example, I'm not sure I understand how session identity can be preserved if I clear my local storage/cookies?

<comment><USER11> It's moving that shopping cart data from being stored at a single origin, to being stored in the network all around the world. The advantage of that in that use-case is you can render your site just as quickly as if it was a static website, but it can contain the customer's personal shopping cart data.

<comment><USER24> The shopping cart is still stored somewhere, but when the user has cleared their cookies, etc., what information do you have that will let you it's their shopping cart so you can find it again?

There's a (K,V) pair somewhere, but in order to get V, you need K, which you've lost.

<comment><USER11> It would work just as most shopping carts do I imagine. You could store a session id in a cookie, and then use the data in KV to map that session id to a user account (if they're logged in) and their cart. So you would have a namespace full of sessions, and a namespace full of carts.

You could also store carts by session id until they're logged in, and then store the carts by account id when they are.

<comment><USER24> > _You could store a session id in a cookie_

But the person you responded to asked what happens after "I clear my local storage/cookies". So you don't have access to the session id. It was in a cookie that is now gone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Are there any plans to provide browser detection in the worker API? I imagine it's possible to implement as a user now, but may be clunky to provide a dataset to work from. This seems like a killer feature to have on edge workers to allow serving optimized builds for based on browser feature support without paying the overhead of client side detection.

<comment><USER11> If you can find a good Javascript library for doing it you can build it into your Worker with Webpack.

<comment><USER25> It's not finding a parser that I find problematic, it's the dataset needed. My understanding is that the workers are limited to 128MB of ram and that they may be 'restarted' at any time. Datasets for accurate browser detection would be really tight in fitting into that amount of RAM when combined with whatever else you may be doing and you have to deal with load / parse time whenever a worker is restarted. This seems like a common enough need that cloudflare could provide it as an API and their implementation wouldn't have such issues.

<comment><USER5> Using storage along with worker code to perform the function should make this possible.

Our hope is that anyone could create such an API, not just Cloudflare. Just like we are building storage on top of workers, we hope to eliminate the distinction between what is possible for a Cloudflare employee and what is possible for any of our customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> @jgrahamc could you link to the technical post near the top, and maybe copy in that table 'Limits and Pricing' on this post? Because it would be really helpful to have that info in the general post, otherwise it's not clear what the details are (like write rate). Great posts BTW!

</comment><comment><USER26> Shit, the Cap'n Proto website is like 10ms faster than the HN frontpage now.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is there an API method that can list existing/matching keys in a namespace with a glob or prefix or similar?

Like, "show me all keys that match xyz∗ in this namespace"

<comment><USER11> We're planning on adding support for range requests (which becomes equivalent to prefixes a la CouchDB). Is there a reason you need glob specifically?

<comment><USER22> well, for one example off the top of my head would be using geohashes for proximity in records... if you could glob every geohash with the same first 6-8 characters, you could do range queries pretty quickly.

I've considered similar for shard keys in terms of proximity related information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Dupe [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18092660](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18092660)

<comment><USER29> Those are different blog posts. Also, the OP of both is CTO of Cloudflare.

</comment></comment><comment> sahin-boydas @jgrahamc what a great service. It might be great to have cloudflare credits like aws/google/azure credits for CL Workers for startups.

<comment><AUTHOR> Take a look at the pricing.

$5/month for

        - 1 GB of KV storage and up to 10 million KV reads
        - 10 million requests

After that it's $0.50/month

        - per million requests
        - per GB of storage
        - per million KV reads

I think that's well within startup money. I mean, if a company has to give out credits perhaps it's just too expensive :-)

<comment><USER30> Heck, I think that's well within hobbyist budgets. Thanks for pricing it out nicely :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tuplespaces?</comment>


Are you mansplaining? A helpful chart - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180727-mansplaining-explained-in-one-chart <comment><USER2> I'm assuming since there's a comments section the chart is open to discussion.

Why does the chart need to be a he/she thing?

Being a "know it all" although stereo-typically a male trait doesn't need to be.

And being on the wrong side of "tech" arrogance certainly isn't limited to women.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi!

As a woman in this world, but also in tech, I don't believe that being a "know it all" is a male-only trait, though assuming that someone knows lesser when they clearly know more tends to be. There are many times when the males in my workplace, even if well-meaning, attempt to explain integral parts of my job to me like I'm a child. The chart in question goes through to talk of situations when this could not be considered mansplaining (like when a male counterpart has more knowledge or experience, or when the female counterpart asked for an explanation), but then also goes through scenarios that are _definitely_ mansplaining, such as when the male counterpart has fewer experience and knowledge on the topic.

While you may not be a male that mansplains, other males (or even females) on this page might find themselves mansplaining. I have been mansplained to numerous times by my coworkers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What's the difference between "mansplaining" and being patronising?</comment>


Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap – Reverse engineering the 1989 original - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedragonstrap.com/blog/post/201609_ReverseEngineering/ <comment><USER2> What nostalgia-- I loved this game as a kid, and haven't seen it brought up for a long time. Technical details aside, I would love to play this in widescreen.

Edit: wow, I just checked out the domain, they are completely updating it?? Everything looks true to the original. I love it. [http://www.thedragonstrap.com/](http://www.thedragonstrap.com/)

<comment><USER3> I never played the original, as I was a Nintendo brat, but this looks really fun. I can't wait until they release, and I can buy it and add it somewhere in the playlist I have of a few hundred steam games from humble bundles...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is the disassembled and annotated code online somewhere?

I've had a lot of fun reading disassemblies of Pokemon Red [https://github.com/pret/pokered](https://github.com/pret/pokered)

</comment><comment><USER5> While I admire the sheer skill necessary to reverse engineer a game to that degree (and starting from making a hardware dump!), I can't think but helping that the approach I propose at [http://gabrielgambetta.com/remakes.html](http://gabrielgambetta.com/remakes.html) would take far less work than recreating the game from scratch.

<comment><USER6> That _is_ what they're doing. They're not recreating it from scratch.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the clarification. I didn't get that impression on a first read, but ended up having a chat with the OP and I'm now even more impressed by what they're doing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is really neat.

I'd curious to see the movement code they ended up using in their own game, though it's understandable if they don't want to share it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Every time I read things like this, I am fucking awed by the skill of the authors. I consider myself fairly technical but this stuff is next level. Deconcstructing a game is one thing, but writing and teaching about it is a whole different ballgame. Very impressive.

</comment><comment><USER9> Neat. But why does he say that the original ran at only 30 FPS?

Virtually all of the sprite-and-tile games of the era ran at 60 FPS. Is Wonder Boy III so complex that it only updates sprite and scroll positions every second VSYNC signal?

<comment><USER10> Weren't most TV's running 25hz or 29.97hz? Double for interlace, but that would still be ~30 fps?

<comment><USER11> PAL TVs had 50Hz interlaced screen refresh (each refresh updated only half of scanlines, but that's not the same as having a 25Hz refresh). NTSC was 59.94 Hz.

The console hardware had to drive an actual 50/60Hz signal and you had to account for that - including doing some updates/color switches/bank switches in horizontal blank interval (when the cannon was returning to the left side to start a new line) and vertical blank interval (a longer one, when cannon was returning to the top to start displaying another interlaced field - "frame"). So you couldn't just behave like you have a 25/29.97 Hz refresh.

A lot of games did the refresh in lockstep with this frequency so there were actual issues porting them between regions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've played all (I think) the Monster World games, from the Sega Master System, to the arcade (on MAME), to the Sega Genesis, to the ports on TurboCD and Game Gear -- I'm really looking forward to this one too. It's just too bad it's not coming to Vita, where I play the majority of my games these days.

<comment><USER12> Please please please come to GoG. I'll buy it wherever it comes out and I can play it (Vita/PS3/Windows/Linux(!) ) Just don't bother too hard on Vita; I'll never be able to play it on mine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDpP2X6-ia4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDpP2X6-ia4)

Excellent remix of the theme for the game .... its Saturday evening after all :)

<comment><USER3> I think you mean late-morning coffee music. :P</comment></comment>


Fix Windows 10 - <AUTHOR> https://fix10.isleaked.com/ <comment><USER2> I think Microsoft messed up the messaging and wording of their features, bigtime. Many products these days are integrating analytics to see how their users use their products. Personally, I prefer to disable such tracking, but I don't view it as malicious.

MS should have realized by now that people don't quite trust them with this stuff, and they should have make it clear at the outset that they are never going to use this data for "sharing with their partners" or any purpose other than explicitly as a signal for improving specific Windows features.

They used legal language that allows them much more latitude than what they require. This is most likely intentional (probably for future competition with Google), but IMO they should have gone with a very narrow data use policy.

<comment><USER3> > They used legal language that allows them much more latitude than what they > require.

It's the same trap that people fall in to when site terms of use ask for worldwide, royalty-free, irrevocable license to content that you post. Yeah, that sounds like it's a horrible nastyness, but from a legal point of view that wording is a safety net for the company, not an attempt to claim actual rights over contributed content.

MS has completely failed to control the message here, and everyone's working themselves into a groupthink riot, just like they did over the Ok Google binary blob nonsense.

<comment><USER4> I think in both the examples you give, what starts out as 'innocuous' and 'well meaning' will inevitably be subverted for something far more nefarious.

Not everyone with a different opinion to you is incapable of forming their own conclusions, or susceptible to groupthink.

Is Bruce Schneier also a victim of this 'nonsense'?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I look at this list and I think of my grandmother, who would never do this, never even think to do it.

"The windows" is her friend, and she's relatively tech savvy for a person of her generation.

Heck, people my mothers generation would not think to do this.

Heck, even my brother would not think to do this, or to look for this. If it's not a single place, if you have to open the command line (on windows) then the ability for a reasonable user to gain privacy is nonexistant.

the option might as well be a toggle switch in the middle of Tanzia, it will be noticed all the same.

<comment><USER6> Frankly your "grandmother" is better off not doing this anyway.

She needs the anti-phishing filter, the anti-malicious app & URL filter, and will want useful features like Cortana, predictive search, page compatibility modes, allowing websites/apps to ask for her location (e.g. Google Maps), and her files to be backed up when her computer fails.

You can argue if certain things help your "grandmother" (e.g. telemetry, advertiser IDs, etc) but this seems like to throws the baby out with the bathwater.

PS - Windows 10's defaults could be better. But this takes it to the other extreme, disabling legitimately useful functionality (in particular security focused functionality).

<comment><USER7> >will want useful features like Cortana, predictive search, page compatibility modes, allowing websites/apps to ask for her location (e.g. Google Maps), and her files to be backed up when her computer fails.

Have you ever had a grandma? My grandma literally plays solitaire and checks her email, that's it. She wants nothing to do with cortana.

I set my grandma up with Ubuntu and set the homepage of firefox to her email. I've never had a problem.

<comment><USER6> My grandma also mostly plays games and checks her email/Facebook, but she also occasionally has to search the web and has used Siri on her iPad, I don't think Cortana would be that big of a stretch to get her into (e.g. I've seen her use Siri semi-regularly to check the local weather).

To be frank, she would likely be better off with a Chromebook. But unfortunately she has a few games she plays which are Windows binaries (e.g. those $5 CDs containing "2500 card games").

Cortana is no more or no less accessible than Siri.

<comment><USER8> The problem with Cortona and Siri is that they process everything on remote servers while it could easily be done on a local machine. They do this to be able to save all that data (and take away your privacy).

Apple saves Siri's audio for 2 years for example... not sure what Microsoft's policy is on this...

<comment><USER9> > The problem with Cortona and Siri is that they process everything on remote > servers while it could easily be done on a local machine.

Please enlighten the HN crowd and provide a reference for this claim.

<comment><USER8> sorry I was thinking mostly about voice recognition... which would already be a big plus if it was done locally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not the first attempt I've seen to summarise all the fixes for the privacy leaks. But given I've seen 2-3 articles on the HN homepage so far this week that MS still sends all kinds of crap and of course has the ability to patch these workarounds - consider me sceptical!

This is a game people are going to lose. If MS cared about privacy this wouldn't have happened in the first place. Just don't use Windows. Use your favourite Linux distribution.

<comment><USER11> Microsoft has had the ability to push updates without user consent since XP!

[http://www.informationweek.com/microsoft-updates-windows- wit...](http://www.informationweek.com/microsoft-updates-windows-without-user- permission-apologizes/d/d-id/1059183)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In my opinion, if those privacy issues bother you, the first step should be an overview of non-Microsoft operating systems.

<comment><USER13> and the alternatives are?

osX invented all this. MS is just catching up. and apple don't even allow you to disable things.

android? chrome alone sends more info than whole windows 10+edge.

now, you could say Linux. but sadly your grand mother has no publicly available product she can buy with that OS.

<comment><USER14> > no publicly available product

Yes. Sometimes doing the right thing to protect your rights and the rights of others _requires sacrifice_. Freedom is not always free (as in beer).

As long as you insist that any potential alternative have the same features, you might as well give up. The incumbent can always create and market a new "feature" guaranteeing any alternative is always playing catch-up.

As time goes on, the lock-in increases and the cost of change becomes more expensive. Do you want to pay this cost now. or do you want to pay an even higher cost in the future after Microsoft - emboldened by the profits from selling user data to their "partners" \- decides to make the spying even more invasive?

Do you even want to own a General Purpose Computer? You better make a decision quickly; when Intel's SGX instructions become widespread, it will be next to impossible to disable these "important security features".

<comment><USER15> Thanks for bringing SGX into my attention!

I thought I was more or less following the development of PC hardware, but I never heard of this one, and it's not very new already. Wikipedia article [1] on the subject is surprisingly concise, and only quotes Intel homepage on the subject.

Do you have any pointers to independent discussion or analysis of this technology? As with all such new technologies, it might require more than just reading its name or manufacturer's description to understand its implications: like e.g. with Trusted Execution Technology, it takes some research to form an opinion: is it actually about me, the computer's user, or someone else who is going to trust this computer?

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can't help but feel like some of this is fear mongering. There are some good features in there that are being disabled for the sake of "privacy" like sharing of Windows updates with other computers to speed up downloads. And how do we expect things like Windows Defender or Microsoft's handwriting and voice recognition to improve if we refuse to share back any anonymized information with Microsoft?

<comment><USER17> > And how do we expect things like Windows Defender or Microsoft's handwriting > and voice recognition to improve if we refuse to share back any anonymized > information with Microsoft?

By opt-in approach and full transparency on what data's sent.

Seriously, ask me "hey, can you help us?", provide an option to let me see what data _exactly_ was, being and will be sent (NOT some multi-page legalese with notice that everything in there could change at company's discretion) - and unless you're sending something I really don't want to share (like actual raw texts I typed instead of processed statistical data), you're very likely to have my help. And, given the current situation, even praise the approach and suggest other to help the noble intent.

There's a giant difference between this and a pre-installed black box that sends some data which contents I don't even know.

<comment><USER18> You often hear the phrase "It's better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission" especially hear on Hacker News and around start-ups. Microsoft is taking the same approach. I agree that opt-in and full transparency would be the best in an ideal world. But the reality is that people don't care enough and most people wouldn't opt-in willingly or wouldn't realize what they could opt-in to.

<comment><USER19> > You often hear the phrase "It's better to ask for forgiveness than to ask > for permission"

The more common phrase is _easier_ rather than _better_. (Which is why the initialism form is EAFP rather than BAFP.)

And it _is_ easier. Also, however, more prone to adverse consequences when the answer to what you ask is "no".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> From what I can see, this blog post has approximately the same length as the beginners' guide for installing Arch Linux [1]. What a user experience...

[1] [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners'_guide](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners'_guide)

<comment><USER12> Apples, oranges...

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/FAQ#Why_would_I_want_to...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/FAQ#Why_would_I_want_to_use_Arch.3F)

<comment><USER21> > "you believe an operating system should configure itself, run out of the > box, and include a complete default set of software and desktop environment > on the installation media."

Can't get more orange than Arch, for the sake of that comparison!

<comment><USER12> Just a note. The quote Eiriksmal posted is from the section: _Why would I NOT want to use Arch?_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wish the steps were this straightforward for my android phone.

<comment><USER23> They are:

1\. Install an AOSP ROM without the proprietary Google Apps or Google Play Services.

2\. Install the F-Droid market to download whatever programs you like.

3\. Enjoy using an Android phone without the anti-privacy Google tracking.

<comment><USER24> Unfortunately 90% of useful apps aren't on F-Droid.

<comment><USER23> That's just your opinion. 90% of the apps in Google play are junk that don't respect user rights or privacy.

I'm perfectly content using only the apps available in F-Droid, and have been for years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > _7\. To disable telemetry (...)_

Why should I disable that? What does it do? My understanding is that it's only statistics on data usage, which I find useful?

<comment> UK-AL Nearly all of the windows privacy issues come from useful features.

If cortana wants to automatically recommend appointments from emails? Guess what? She has to read your emails.

If you want to be blocked from downloading malware? Guess what? You have to check with a central db first.

etc

Apple, Google devices etc have had this stuff on for ages.

<comment><USER26> > If you want to be blocked from downloading malware? Guess what? You have to > check with a central db first.

Or it could download the db and do the checks locally. There wouldn't be privacy concerns about MS knowing which sites one's browsing.

<comment><USER6> You realise Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft all use Google's database[0] for this and have for at least seven year. Why is this anti-phishing blacklist all of a sudden an issue in 2015?

[0] [https://developers.google.com/safe- browsing/developers_guide...](https://developers.google.com/safe- browsing/developers_guide_v3)

<comment><USER17> As far as I know, that should be okay. Browsers don't query the database online like some RBL, but download it locally and check visited sites against a local copy. No URLs are sent to Google.

Which is - as far as I know - is very different from how Windows anti-malware system works. At least I think I saw a network requests from Windows 8 machine when "untrusted" applications (.exe) were started.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This would be better as a Windows app (with a single step, and an undo) rather than a blog post.

<comment><USER28> [https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking/](https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking/)

No undo function, but you can choose between disabling or permanently removing tracking features.

It only removes the most "controversial" features of the OS (the "keylogger" part), but it may be of interest for those who still want some features, like everything related to security and/or the cloud.

Maybe it can serve as a basis for a more advanced software which will offer more cleaning options. Or maybe such a software already exists (I didn't search much).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Unfortunately, the ad under "Does this banner show ads based on your interests? If yes, you have been tracked" is a link to what I can only imagine is malware, given that it's an "Update Drivers Now" ad. As such, this site isn't really appropriate to send to the average non-technical user, as given my experience from working at an IT help desk years ago, people will end up clicking that ad and installing the malware...

<comment><USER30> That's Google Ads. So I guess most of the internet isn't really appropriate to send to the average non-technical user?

<comment><USER31> Pretty much, no, really.

This is why I consider an ad-blocker part of any standard security suite.

<comment><USER32> I keep going back and forth about installing one for my parents, after having had to deal with a couple of full screen "ads" that mimicked Windows having a security crisis.

I say "ads" because while the thing was a obvious (to me) scam, it came while browsing Facebook of all places. As such, the only way i could see it happen was via the Facebook advertisement system.

<comment><USER33> Why do you go "back" on it? The internet is a better, safer, faster experience without ads.

<comment><USER32> I wonder what it will bork up for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I get where some of this is coming from, but I'm not sure that "fixing" Windows by disabling automatic security updates is actually a good idea.

<comment><USER24> The guide shows how to disable sending updates from your computer to other computers on your LAN or on the Internet. It doesn't suggest disabling updates anywhere...

<comment><USER35> I don't understand why you would want to disable LAN distribution of Windows 10 updates to your other Windows 10 machines. It seems like a great way of avoiding multiple downloads of the same thing, and I'd love something similar for Linux (aptorrent or something; manual rsync of /var/cache/apt/archives isn't quite the same, neither is apt-mirror).

Disabling uploads to other external machines does make sense to me, though.

<comment><USER24> Probably not much point in disabling that. Disabling downloads from other machines on the web makes more sense if you have a data cap or are charged per MB, which is common in some countries. It's not really a privacy-related change as far as I can see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Ubuntu in comparison: [https://fixubuntu.com/](https://fixubuntu.com/)

<comment><USER7> I thought this was taken out in the latest releases?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The "Fix Firefox" version: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop- firefox-making...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox- making-automatic-connections)

<comment><USER37> Replying to self: Microsoft would have more credibility (especially to enterprise users) if they were to provide this kind of one-stop documentation themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I had been looking forward to deploying Windows 10 as well as using the opportunity to update all of our hardware. Instead I find myself disappointed and, frankly, confused.

Why? Well, mainly because we do not have the time and cannot afford the risk of dealing with and navigating through a security and privacy gauntlet.

We need an operating system, not Facebook, running our systems. Before anyone suggests it's no big deal please consider the idea that, when it comes to an OS used in a business/professional context privacy must be a non-negotiable default.

If Windows 10 had a single "Private Mode" switch that turned off all data leaks and monitoring it would be fantastic.

Some might suggest it isn't a big deal because it is annonymized data. The fact that a question exists means we have a problem. It's that simple. And, yes, some of it is FUD.

Suggesting a change to another OS simply isn't reasonable. For one thing, in our case we have a number of engineering applications that will only run on Windows, and that is the case for many professional users.

<comment><USER39> What I really want are all these annoying fixes rolled up into a tool or PowerShell script so each time a family/friend tells me how wonderful/shitty Win10 is, I can at least quickly deploy this for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I expect Microsoft provides their corporate customers with a solution that includes confidentiality and end-user control (i.e., IT department control) of machines. Many business users would not and could not share this info with Microsoft.

Instead of trying to discover and disable each confidentiality threat in the consumer version, the best solution probably is to obtain of that corporate version. Likely you also need to read up on how to configure those featues on TechNet, but generally Microsoft's documentation is complete (if sometimes difficult).

<comment><USER41> Yep, Win10 enterprise edition has the no telemetry option for example and it is not difficult to get for businesses who pay for volume licensing (though there is the mandatory software assurance that costs a bit more). It also has other goodies like the Long Term Support Branch for critical systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> How naive it is to believe that Microsoft will obey these settings? It is very time-consuming to make sure if they fulfill the promise because that requires reading disassembly as Windows is closed-source. And, even if they were caught not following the settings they could use the word "bug" as an excuse.

Also, it should be emphasized that providing options to disable privacy- invasive features doesn't justify invading the privacy of the non-tech savvy people, who cannot disable privacy-invasive functionalities.

</comment><comment><USER43> Two things that irked me: \- child accounts need to have an e-mail address to be manageable under Familiy Safety (which in turn requires you to go to a web site instead of setting time limits locally) \- to complain about a mis- feature (like the above) you are directed to use the Windows Feedback app, which in turn will only work if you set diagnostics to on.

</comment><comment><USER44> There is something deeply aggravating about having human hands manually adjusting these settings, when we should have some mechanism to automate it. Compters - our tools for automation - are not automated! It's ridiculous, demeaning, disheartening, and sad.

</comment><comment><USER45> Any scripts out there that go on the offensive, rather than just opting me out? Something that sends reams of plausible data to Microsoft so that any semblance of usefulness is lost in the chaff.

</comment><comment><USER32> The number of options related to easing network access and location awareness demonstrates that Win10 is more aimed at laptops and tablets than desktops etc.

</comment><comment><USER46> Uhm..

As someone who havn't used Windows for a long time, can't you just create a PowerShell script to do all these things?

<comment><USER47> Yep, this one does all that and more: [https://github.com/Ugion/Win10PrivacyForGits](https://github.com/Ugion/Win10PrivacyForGits)

<comment><USER48> I thought it was shown that Windows ignores the hosts file when sending the data. So wouldn't this fail?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How does on normally set up a number of computers according to the template like this one?

</comment><comment><USER49> The bulk of these options were in 7 and 8 as well.

</comment><comment><USER50> Or just use a Mac. Or Ubuntu.

...sorry, it had to be said :)

<comment><USER47> >Mac

Which sends search queries via "Spotlight Suggestions" and "Bing Web Searches" by default?

>Or Ubuntu

Which sends all your search queries to Canonical by default (via the shopping lens)?

<comment><USER51> I've been using a Mac for over a year now and I can count on one hand the number of times I've used Spotlight. (And when I did use it, it was useless at solving my problems.)

However, on Windows the start menu search is actually useful to me, and I use it regularly.

<comment><USER52> I hear you. I've been a Mac owner for over 19 years. I tried using Spotlight once a couple of weeks ago, and found it completely useless. The classic (pre- OS X) Mac OS had a great search feature, though it didn't use a content index.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> This is just a FUD article.

<comment><USER54> Without an explanation which part of the article sows FUD, it makes me think you just don't even know what that acronym means.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Fix Windows 10: Say no to Microsoft and don't install it. Don't tell them this model is successful.

<comment><USER5> they're pushing these things to windows 7 and 8 though.

<comment><USER55> Don't install. Gladly, WU is broken beyond repair in those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Shutting off smartscreen is short sighted and wrong. Its no different than the lists Chrome and FF use to block malicious sites. These lists are shared via a shared security initiative between the major browser makers. Disabling this is a good way to make sure you get cryptolocker.

Shutting off cloud-based protection in Defender is equally stupid. Now you're not getting instant and up to date virus definitions from the cloud-based system of honey pots, third party hashes, etc. All you have then is day or days old virus defs that are pretty much useless against modern polymorphic threats.

I really hate it when people purposely conflate security and privacy to win political points. None of the above is controversial and if you run any AV or use any browser, you're already doing this and you didn't have a problem with it before. I think its pretty clear that the person who made this list just found all the sliders for 'no' and doesn't realize what he's doing from a security perspective. If you use Windows, you should be using all the security features you possibly can (on top of running behind a router doing IPS/IDS and making sure to use a standard non-admin account - the UAC fails in many places limited standard users don't). Signed, a Windows sysadmin.

edit: really downvotes? Telling people to disable security features in an OS shouldnt be applauded, especially on a tech forum. This is "grandpa" level IT advice here.

<comment><USER57> Let's clarify: disabling smartscreen for privacy reasons is different that keeping it enabled for security reasons. Smartscreen sends urls you visit to Msoft, and since Win8, it sends filenames of downloaded files to Msoft too.

As for the security argument, smartscreen only works in IE, so for those of use who don't want any of that turned on, and use FF (instead of chrome), where we download the blacklist instead of sending it outside our network, we can still maintain the same level of security while adding a layer to our privacy.

The same for cloud based Defender. There is no reason I shouldn't be able to turn it off if I have an approriate replacement that protects my privacy.

Which also means you are wrong when you say "if you run any AV or use any browser, you're already doing this". Nope, not at all, and either you are unaware of what you speak of or you are being disingenuous.

<comment><USER56> >The same for cloud based Defender. There is no reason I shouldn't be able to turn it off if I have an approriate replacement that protects my privacy.

Your AV is doing exactly what Smartscreen does and so do many security products. Its a common feature, where are the privacy guides for that? Oh right, there's a double standard for MS.

Also, the author didn't disable Defender because he is using a different AV. He left it on and just disabled the cloud definitions feature, meaning he's not going to be up-to-date on definitions. Cloud defs are a bit different than what you get via WU. Its a dynamic list of suspicious hashes that's constantly being updated via honeypots and such. The author clearly does not understand what he is recommending.

<comment><USER57> "Your AV" you don't know what AV I'm using, and you're wrong. I have setup a local update server which regularly downloads updates from the vendor and then updates endpoints on the LAN with no traffic going from LAN->Cloud for that.

"so do many security products. Its a common feature" That also is why I don't use those products, and many others would agree.

"where are the privacy guides for that?" I don't know, but are you trying to pretend there are none? If you are asking did you even do a couple of searches? I doubt it.

"Oh right, there's a double standard for MS." Nope, same standard for all things. I don't like it if you send any of my or my computers info to servers without my knowledge of the content or purpose and I explicitly approve.

"Also, the author didn't disable Defender because he is using a different AV. He left it on and just disabled the cloud definitions feature, meaning he's not going to be up-to-date on definitions."

Once again... wrong. The cloud feature is for sending info about what is on your computer to MS so they can use it to update the definitions, it does not provide the definitions itself.

"Cloud defs are a bit different than what you get via WU. Its a dynamic list of suspicious hashes" if this is true, then I would be wrong on the previous section, but I have seen no documentation that specifies this. Care to provide a source for this info?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sadlock Bug - <AUTHOR> https://sadlock.org/ <comment><USER2> My thoughts on every branded vulnerability since Heartbleed.

<comment><USER3> I don't know...log jam was a pretty big deal

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was expecting yet another marketed heartbleed clone, instead I found a parody. That was pleasantly surprising.</comment>


When Abacus Bank Was Accused of Fraud - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/12/the-accused-jiayang-fan <comment><USER2> >Cyrus R. Vance, Jr.

This guy is a real piece of work. Look for extra context when you see his name. He was the DA in the Aleynikov case as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fascinating that despite years of "inflating or exaggerating [borrower] assets, incomes, and job titles" this bank maintained a delinquency rate less than a twentieth of the national average. In 2009, they had 4,399 mortgages and only 16 were in trouble.

<comment><USER4> In part it's because they were inflating/exaggerating _legally recognized_ incomes (which were being systematically understated for the purpose of tax evasion), in a fashion which corrects the number towards a borrower's actual ability to repay the loan.

Part of me wonders whether in addition to the cultural factors counseling loan repayment whether some buyers did not have an actual, and possibly reasonable, fear of the bank taking extrajudicial measures to collect on debts. (i.e. "If you don't pay, we send thugs to beat up your family.") This is suggested as a standard enforcement mechanism for _hui_ , which were known to be a common funding practice for the bank's borrowers, and those borrowers might naturally assume that the big, well-connected bank had levers stronger than sending a strongly worded letter in the event of default.

One imagines that the yakuza have a better repayment rate than borrower profiles would suggest, too, but that isn't primarily a consequence of their fluffy-bunny-community-involvement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9955507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9955507)

</comment><comment><USER6> I didnt understand why the two protagonists, Jie Chen and Ariel Chi, lost their down payment because the bank withdrew the loan offer _at the closing_

<comment><USER7> Once you give them your down payment, you go into attorney review, at which point each side review details of the contract. Usually, during this time, you'll write into the contract that the buyer has 30 days to acquire financing (or some number like that). At this point, the buyer places the down payment (or a percentage of it) into escrow as a good faith payment. If the buyer is unable to acquire financing by the date, the sale is cancelled with the down payment being returned.

However, once financing is guaranteed by the bank, both sides agree that they are going through with the sale, and any reason to cancel now means the buyer would lose his down payment.

In this case, the bank pulled funding at closing because they realized that documents were provided fraudulently. Hence, lost down payment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Autoplaying video ad that overlays the content isn't a great first impression for any website.

<comment><USER9> Are there still people who don't know about ad-block?</comment></comment>