SaaS providers: Please publish your prices - <AUTHOR> https://www.flomei.de/en/blog/2019/06/30/saas-providers-please-publish-your-prices/ <comment><USER2> With "get a quote" you're not tricked, you're outpriced. The website targets another type of customer, those leading to 10-100x revenue. In enterprise B2B it's custom to contact/schedule/email companies, often to get a written quote and sales cycles are weeks to months. I was surprised to see that even with all prices listed on the website companies would still email us asking for quotes ("it's right there on the pricing page!").

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting point and this might be true for some of those sites. But the company that pointed me to their price list after asking for it, had completely normal prices, just like the competitors, too.

Besides that I think that B2B business is changing, too. We're always becoming more agile, have a more distributed stack of tech and services and things, at least for me, get added (and dropped) more easily and often. I think that's good news for smaller vendors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm probably removing prices from my site, or most of them above a low usage threshold. One is the Enterprise quote reasoning, the other is we don't know our pricing model yet. I do plan to keep something for the self-service type of people, but only at the low end.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment.

I think this is fine, especially in the way you want to handle it. Even a rough estimation for the price helps, at least me, to make a decision or get further in contact.

And I also understand that vendors are not showing prices _if_ the product is complex. As mentioned, As an example, all the ticketing or live chat solutions are probably not a complex enterprise-grade software (at least not the ones I looked at) so there is no reason not to show prices, imho.

Out of curiosity: What's your product?

<comment><USER3> [https://hofstadter.io](https://hofstadter.io)

low-code for developers initially, "express your ideas" (making tech accessible to more humans) is the vision.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah! Probably nothing I need right now, but interesting nevertheless. I wish you all the best for your project!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey! I just started blogging in English and thought you wonderful people on here might find it interesting. :-)

Enjoy your sunday and I'm looking forward to your thoughs on this topic.</comment>


Thanks, Comet Pluto. Solar System Nomenclature Needs a Major Rethink - <AUTHOR> http://www.universetoday.com/128836/thanks-comet-pluto-solar-system-nomenclature-needs-major-rethink/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/730719094111109121](https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/730719094111109121)

> More than half of its volume is ice. So nobody should be surprised it shares > properties with comets.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your ultimate dream job? - <AUTHOR> What is your ultimate dream job? It could be anything you can think of: "VP of AI at Google in Mountain View", "Fisherman in the north pole", "President of the United States", "CEO of YC", etc. What would it be?<p>No one will judge you here. Be as honest as possible. <comment><USER2> Building intelligent robotics that humans can digitally transfer our consciousness to, like a host. I see our bodies as just hosts to our minds. I'd love to be a part of the next step in human evolution (Tech, biotech).

But ideally, ultimately, my goal is to manage a firm that ties into this technology, moreso strategy and operations.

So yes, C-level of a Biotechnology company building advanced technology that evolves humanity to the next step so that we can explore and expand our species throughout the galaxy and beyond

<comment><USER3> My dream job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My dream job would be:

-Modifying genes, biotech.

-Building intelligent and powerful systems.

-Building fb like system that is so powerful that it can manipulate your behavior using your data.

-Data Analytics (Working at Cambridge Analytica)</comment>


Being Eric Schmidt (On Facebook) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/10/being-eric-schmidt-on-facebook/ <comment><USER2> I started getting emails from Facebook, because someone had used my work address to create an account. (I get a lot of spam on this address - it being cb@... .com)

Really, very annoying! I guess this is kind of to be expected of Facebook, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure what to make of this farce, but I'm definitely not following Mike's suggestion to create a facebook account and list all my email accounts there.

<comment><USER4> You can create an account, add all of your emails, but then limit their visibility to 'Only Me'. That way people can't impersonate you, and you don't need to reveal all of your emails to everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can do this with Twitter too.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's a tradeoff really, had they required an email validation before any actions there would definitely be a drop off rate in completing signups, especially early on when people didn't have large social graphs on facebook to pull them in.

<comment><USER7> It's not a tradeoff, but an externality paid with time instead of money. Facebook won't suffer any inconvenience, only non-users of Facebook will.

Add this to their opt-out by default when adding new features, and Facebook is becoming more and more a spam platform.</comment></comment>


Preparing for server-loads that make Digg spikes look like a joke - <AUTHOR> http://www.stateofsearch.com/behind-the-code-hoxton-hotel-sale/

<comment><USER2> How many hits did they have to handle? Without this figure, it's a bit hard to put things in context.

</comment><comment><USER3> I might be missing something significant but it looks to me like the site was just static HTML and JavaScript with the JavaScript being updated at some rate.

If that's true why wouldn't you just do /xxxxx/clock.js and /xxxxx/data.js on S3 + CloudFront? The /version/ means caching is never going to get in your way because you're incrementing it each time you update.

Then the entire diagram is reduced to the web server + S3/CloudFront with software pushing new versions of the JavaScript.

Also is that for real about GAE cutting you off under load regardless of being paid? What's the point of using it to scale if there's a very low ceiling on how high you can go.

<comment><USER4> Having built the system I can probably answer some of those questions.

The cloudfront solution won't work because you need to push from s3 and as we found out during the previous sale that can take up to 20 minutes. That's no fun for anyone, believe me. I'd be pretty reluctant to ever use cloudfront again.

Gae cut you off at 500 rps - they downgrade you back off billing. You can apply to have the limit lifted, which we did but they didn't lift it for us.

There are other things too, like it can be a struggle to update content in a bucket when it's under significant load.

I'm sure everyone looks at the architecture and thinks it's overengineered but we got burned previously and just wanted as much stability and redundancy as possible. It's an interesting problem too, how to survive DDOSing yourself on a monumental scale.

Ultimately we ended up with a stable system at negligible cost and didn't get slated on twitter. That's good enough for me :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> LivingSocial just did a similar $1 sale today in DC to launch their new Instant Deals, which are location based paid coupons. They advertised on the front page of the free commuter newspaper, the radio, even had people walking around Chinatown with distinct orange shirts.

Needless to say, their servers were having a rough time keeping up. The main web page served up timeouts every few page requests and the member creation system didn't work for a coworker. However, it seemed like the order processing system seemed pretty snappy, and the iPhone app stayed solid too (I'm referring to the server-side parts of course).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> In response to all of the comments, would be great if you could direct them to the post itself. The team behind the site/push have said they are happy to address/answer questions so please fire away.

</comment><comment><USER6> Every time I see a HN story about "how i made my site handle lots of traffic" it's people re-learning the same lessons. We really need a basics-of-building- big-webapps FAQ.

Step 1: Make your site as static as possible, or at least relying as little as possible on server-side processing. Pretend your app is made of Java and thus assume it will hog memory, be slow and crash every other day, so plan to handle those kind of 'reliability' issues.

Step 2: Get a CDN or a buncha cloud-hosted servers (like, 100). You may need 5-10 of them to serve static content using a caching web server solution ala Varnish (or just Apache proxying/caching; yes, it works fine), and 50-100 for application and database processing.

Step 3: Make sure as little of your site as humanly possible makes use of database calls, and for gods sake try not to write too much.

Step 4: Use a lightweight (I SAID LIGHTWEIGHT!) key/value memory store as a cache for database elements and other items you might normally [erroneously] get from disk or network or database.

Step 5: Don't rely solely on 'cloud' resources. Eventually you will get bitten because they're not designed to scale infinitely and probably do not care about you (especially if you don't pay for them or pay very little).

Step 6: (optional) Re-create this solution on a different hoster in a different datacenter on the opposite coast of your country. Not only will you end up with a DR site, you'll see load and latency improvements for many users. How to effectively and cheaply replicate content between datacenters cross-country is left as a lifetime career goal for the reader.

</comment><comment><USER7> Digg still exists? Wow. It appears to be so!

</comment><comment><USER8> this scares me, yet I like it.</comment>


Opera Software Released Opera Dragonfly as an open source project - <AUTHOR> http://my.opera.com/dragonfly/blog/opera-dragonfly-open-for-business

<comment><USER2> Not being familiar, I had to look this up (the article didn't state, but linked to their wiki).

"Opera Dragonfly is Opera's debugging toolkit. It consists of tools such as a DOM, CSS and network inspector, JavaScript debugger, error console and command line. Opera Dragonfly is distributed with the Opera desktop browser"...

<comment><USER3> Dragonfly is a built-in (as usual with Opera) developer tool like Firebug. It is pretty cool! (But often fails to load at all for me)

<comment><USER4> How does it differ from Firebug with a few other FF addons? I'd be interested in knowing the pro's and con's.

<comment><USER5> Having used Dragonfly, Firebug and Chrome's internal dev tools a fair bit, I can say the following:

Dragonfly is slow to start up compared to the other two. Also, opening Dragonfly for the first time in a session necessitates a full HTTP hit to reload. Firebug and Chrome don't suffer from that problem.

Firebug and Chrome let you right click on a page to "Inspect Element", which brings the DOM inspection tree right to the right-clicked element. Dragonfly had previously not had this, but they just added it, according to the OP: "One of the biggest usability issues has also been solved, with inspect element being available from the Web page context menu."

Firebug and Chrome let you toggle individual CSS rules. Dragonfly has no such facility [yet].

Firebug and Chrome let you search the DOM using CSS or XPath. In Dragonfly, you can only do a plain text search.

Overall, Firebug and Chrome have that "native UI" feel, but Dragonfly really feels like it's running Javascript.

I still think Dragonfly has a ways to go to catch up to the others, but it's good enough for me to pop it open if I just want to quickly inspect the HTML tree. For more complicated web debugging, I turn to Chrom[ium]. But now that Dragonfly is open source, I'm certainly going to explore the code, and possibly even contribute patches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dragonfly is particularly interesting because it uses the "Scope Protocol" (<http://dragonfly.opera.com/app/scope-interface/>) to access Opera. In other words you can remotely debug a page on a headless machine running Opera. Or, if other browsers implemented the Scope protocol then you could debug them with Dragonfly too.

On the flip-side you could build your own debugger for Opera which used the Scope protocol to access what was happening in the browser.

I think this is something that the industry really needs, to decouple browser debugging, from browser plugins. I'm glad Opera are making this step.

</comment><comment><USER7> I really hope this is a step they mean to extend through their browsers. Opera have always struck me as the most innovative of the browser developers and I often look to them to see what will be commonplace next.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have been using dragonfly for a while now and am really happy that it is open source. Its about as powerful as firebug but there are still some needed features that opening it up could bring.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been using Opera for years, and I go back and forth between Dragonfly and Firebug. Firefox + Firebug is sooo sloooww. But, Dragonfly isn't quite as full featured.

BTW, Opera 10.5 is really fast. The Beta RC is still crashing quite a bit, but I really like the new features that have been added.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think this is an excellent move. I used Opera for a long time, but found it to be too buggy so I stopped and DragonFly takes a long time to load and isn't as good as FireFly, so I just stopped using Opera, but I do like it.</comment>


Starting Now at Netflix: Unlimited Maternity and Paternity Leave - <AUTHOR> http://blog.netflix.com/2015/08/starting-now-at-netflix-unlimited.html

<comment><USER2> What if I never come back?

<comment><USER3> "unlimited" in quotes -- as much as you want for the first year.</comment></comment>


On the imminent phone number shortage - <AUTHOR> http://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201306#09

<comment><USER2> I love the PBX analogy for alternative ideas. I mean, what if we were actually working towards a scheme which essentially put one 32 bit address inside another, and you explicitly specified gateways? It might work really well for real-world use cases.

Say I'm a small business and I sign up with the local cable modem provider and get a static IP address from them: A.A.A.A. Then I have my machines configured inside my network as 10.0.0.1, 10.0.0.2, 10.0.0.3, and so on. Just like now, right? Well, now let's say I want those machines individually addressable from the outside world. We'd need some way to encode that in the headers, and by extension, into things like DNS.

        serv1.example.com.     IN A+    A.A.A.A:10.0.0.1
        serv2.example.com.     IN A+    A.A.A.A:10.0.0.2

So things change and now I want a second ISP. They also give me a second static IP address: B.B.B.B. I add this as a second gateway and use it to extend the possible ways to reach my machines.

        serv1.example.com.     IN A+    A.A.A.A:10.0.0.1
                               IN A+    B.B.B.B:10.0.0.1
        serv2.example.com.     IN A+    A.A.A.A:10.0.0.2
                               IN A+    B.B.B.B:10.0.0.2

Yep, my same systems are now accessible either way. I just "multi-homed" my network without getting an ASN, setting up BGP and peering, buying a huge router, or any of that. It didn't require any coordination between the ISPs, and I didn't need to get "portable" IP space.

Now, obviously, the clients would need to know how to speak this. But hey, the backbone doesn't have to change at all. To the rest of the Internet, it looks like (slightly fatter) packets flying around to A.A.A.A and B.B.B.B. They might have some extra IP options on board (to encode the internal address), but who cares?

I'd think this would start showing up in systems which are mass-produced and which nail up a _bunch_ of connections to servers - game consoles, cell phones, that sort of thing. The fact that only the endpoints need to know about it makes it even more obvious. And hey, the servers don't even need to know about this scheme if the gateway manages that for them.

(Sound familiar? It's because I wrote about it in April as a "half-baked idea": [http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/04/22/ipspace/](http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/04/22/ipspace/))

<comment><USER3> What you're describing is essentially 6to4, minus the anycast gateways.

The problem with using 6to4 as the IPv4 upgrade path is that it solves the easy problem (pushing big addresses through the core of the network), but not the hard problem (updating all the edge devices, and every piece of software that stores or manipulates an IP address.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thinly veiled opinion piece on ipv6. Like it or not, ipv6 is happening.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is just dumb. It's on the same level as "why not make the whole plane out of black-box stuff".

</comment><comment><USER6> The thing is, there are no good alternatives to IP addresses with the Internet, whereas with phone numbers, you can easily do without. Between SMS, e-mail, Facebook and Twitter, plus Skype/FaceTime, who really _needs_ a phone number these days?

</comment><comment><USER7> _You might not realize it, but there 's an imminent phone number shortage._

Citation needed.

<comment><USER8> He's actually talking about IPv6 ;)

<comment><USER9> What's the PBX fix equal for the ipv4 issue?

<comment><USER8> Well.. The fix would be entirely different, so I'm not sure.

Everyday people type phone numbers.. Sysadmins type IP's. His argument that "people never type phone numbers anymore" is entirely without any backing in truth IMHO, which makes the whole article moot.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple doesn't own iPad.com? - <AUTHOR> http://www.ipad.com/

<comment><USER2> "iOS" or "iPhone" are trademarks of Cisco, but Apple is still doing pretty well.</comment>


Luxon - <AUTHOR> http://moment.github.io/luxon/ <comment><USER2> Library author here, if anyone has any questions.</comment>


Show HN: Toggl user? TimeNotify will keep your clients in the loop for you - <AUTHOR> https://www.timenotify.co <comment><AUTHOR> I use Toggl to track time I spend on client projects and I built TimeNotify to send them automated reports daily, weekly or monthly. It keeps them always in the loop with minimal effort.

Use the code SHOWHN on a Plus or Premium plan to get 10% off forever.</comment>


Ebooks of "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" - <AUTHOR> http://boredzo.org/blog/archives/2012-12-30/ebooks-of-%e2%80%9cthe-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs%e2%80%9d#.UOFsglcSAWo.hackernews <comment><USER2> Looks real nice on my KPW. This would be my third. So maybe this time I can get all of the way through! :)</comment>


Secondhand Vapor? Americans are Split on Public E-Cigarette Use - <AUTHOR> http://survata.com/blog/secondhand-vapor-americans-are-split-on-public-e-cigarette-use/ <comment><USER2> > _" many believe welcoming e-cigarette use in public places would erode the > decades of progress made in banning public smoking."_

Assuming that the intent of indoor smoking bans is to minimize the amount of smoke that is indoors, and assuming that e-cigarette use indoors is not causing an increase in illegal smoking indoors (why would it?), then I don't understand this specific concern.

<comment><USER3> e-cigarettes still emit a smelly, visual byproduct. The proponents claim "It's not smoke—it's vapor!" Just wait until you're sitting next to an 80 year old nam vet on an airplane who insists on "vaping" because "hey, it's not smoking."

<comment><USER2> _" e-cigarettes still emit a smelly"_

Not to be overly crude, but so does my ass after I eat to much mexican food. So do my burps, after shotgunning a bunch of vodka-redbulls. As for visual byproduct.. would it be better if it were invisible? My behavior after too many vodka-redbulls is far more of a public nuisance, yet they still let me drink those indoors (actually, I am not allow to drink them _outdoors_. Weird.)

Anyway, I have a few friends who use e-cigs. Can't say I notice it. My hypothesis here is that people primarily get bent out of shape over e-cigs because they feel that the users are "cheating", and nobody likes a cheater. That or they forget what somebody actually smoking is like.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but I don't go around farting/burping in peoples faces. So don't blow your e-vape shit in my zone.

It's about common courtesy.

<comment><USER2> I _really_ doubt that anybody here thinks that blowing in other peoples faces, _with or without_ an e-cig or burp, is socially acceptable.

The question isn't _" can I burp in your face?"_, the question is _" can I burp indoors?"_

<comment><USER5> Farting or burping is something that is involuntary, natural, and brief.

Smoking or vaporizing is something that people choose to do for extended periods of time, and doing so in an enclosed space, especially many people doing it at once, can fill air in that enclosed space with the byproducts, which may be harmful.

If people drank something that made them burp constantly, permeated the air with the smell of those burps, and that vapor was harmful, then absolutely that should not be allowed (beer does not quite count; you don't generally burp continuously while drinking it, though it may cause an occasional burp, and it doesn't cause a lingering, carcinogenic vapor to permeate the space).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How can people be against it, unless there's a FUD campaign I haven't heard of or people just don't know what an e-cig is and think they're talking about real cigarettes.

It's literally harmless to the people around you. The jury is still out on what the health effects are of using an e-cig (but people can generally agree that it's probably not as unhealthy as tobacco), but there is 100% no health impact to anyone else. The exhalation is water vapor, which people normally breathe out anyway.

In conclusion, people are morons who make decisions from emotion and without facts.

<comment><USER7> The vapor also contains Propylene Glycol, the active ingredient in Febreze.

<comment><USER8> This sounds like scaremongering. PG is in tons of products, including toothpastes, beers and boxed cake mixes.

Also, PG isn't really an "active ingredient", it's usually just a thickener or carrier.

<comment><USER7> As I pointed out above, you are bringing the negative context to this, not me. Fearmongering requires intent. I'm flatly stating that was not my intent, no matter your interpretation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> People are split because the smoking thing long ago transitioned from reasonable public health measures to a moral panic. The evidence for damage from second hand cigarette smoke in unconfined places is nonexistent, yet we have laws pushing smokers further out into parking lots and "smoke free" college campuses.

My prediction is if the FDA finds there's no increased risk for anything bad from eCigs there will still be a sizable percentage of the population that wants to ban them.

<comment><USER10> While health concerns are an obvious concern for second hand smoke, for me, the smell is a huge issue, and drives me away. If the e-cigarettes are accompanied by any odor, please keep them away.

<comment><USER11> The smells are different depending on the device. Devices producing lots of vapour will give off a smell, while less vapour has less of a smell.

The smell each juice gives off is similar to the taste and dissipates really quickly. The flavours in my devices are currently "honeydew melon" and "tobacco+caramel" which has a caramel-ly smell.

As long as someone isn't blowing the vapour directly in your face you'll either barely notice, or it'll be like walking by someone that's wearing perfume or aftershave.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If it doesn't hurt me it doesn't bother me. Lots of things people do in public are annoying. No reason to ban vaping just because it _looks_ like smoking. Live and let live.

</comment><comment><USER13> I can't STAND smoke from cigarettes, cigars, etc. But the vapor from these e-cigarettes? Doesn't bother me at all. It doesn't smell bad, and I'm given to understand it's mostly harmless.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think most of this is smoker hate. In an office or on an airplane, vaping could be inappropriate because of the tight shared spaces. Otherwise, let these people be.

<comment><USER11> On planes I just vape in the toilets. For awhile they were acceptable on most airlines, but many have brought in policies (not law) banning them. I heard (no citations, sorry) that the majority of people complaining on flights were smokers that couldn't hack not smoking when others were vaping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Beside the point, but the graphics are a little hard to read because they don't range from strong approve to strong disapprove. The first graph is:

      Strong approve
      Approve
      Strong disapprove
      Disapprove
      Neutral

It would make much more sense in the spectrum from negative to positive. It would also look like a bell curve on that particular graph.

      Strong approve
      Approve
      Neutral
      Disapprove
      Strong disapprove

This happened to the other graphs in this article too.

</comment><comment><USER16> Some of us are sensitive to nicotine as well as smoke. Don't be blowing vapor around like it's doing no harm while inside. I'll have a reaction, (starts with tingling lips), then I'll have a polite reaction to tell you to take it outside.

If you need nicotine, use a patch or gum, not a device that may spew shit in the air. If you "vape" take that stuff outside.

<comment><USER17> And what exactly makes your 'sensitivity' override someone else's will? We haven't banned peanuts entirely from society and the effects on those who are allergic is much more severe than your symptoms.

<comment><USER18> >And what exactly makes your 'sensitivity' override someone else's will?

Assault laws? I'm pretty sure blowing powdered peanut into the air is unacceptable once someone says they have a peanut allergy</comment></comment></comment>


Moderna failed to disclose federal funding for vaccine patent applications - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2020/08/28/moderna-covid19-vaccine-coronavirus-patents-darpa/ <comment><AUTHOR> They buried the lede, IMO:

> In arguing for an investigation, the advocacy group maintained Moderna is > obligated under federal law to disclose the grants that led to nearly a > dozen specific patent applications and explained the financial support means > the U.S. government would have certain rights over the patents. In other > words, U.S. taxpayers would have an ownership stake in vaccines developed by > the company.</comment>


Twitter to be fined $250M for using 2FA numbers for ads - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200804/01231345032/twitter-about-to-be-hit-with-250-million-fine-using-your-two-factor-authentication-phone-numbers-emails-marketing.shtml <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24051665](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24051665)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm more paranoid about big companies selling me out for ad money than I am about phishing attacks. There's a number of sites where I feel like I should add 2FA for security, but I won't do it for privacy reasons. Logging into Microsoft Office for my job is a pain in the ass because they redirect me to the "Add your phone number" page twice for each app that I use. I have to click "skip this step" 4 times, since I'm using Teams and Outlook. Was the world a better place when every transaction you made in a retail store didn't come with a request for tracking? "Can we get your email? What's a good phone number for you? Do you have a rewards card? Do you want one? Any way we can peg you with a unique id and sell it to a data broker?"

<comment><USER4> If a company wants to know who you are they can find out. Data brokers are pretty cheap and they share so much data between each other it's bonkers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 2FA is only as good as the company that employs it otherwise it just gives people a false sense of security and privacy.

<comment><USER6> I've become pretty convinced that sms-based 2FA is an anti-pattern. I've seen too many articles and anecdotes about sim-swap attacks to feel at all comfortable trusting sms as an authentication method.

<comment><USER7> SMS 2FA is still superior to nothing. Most account compromises aren't because of SIM swapping. Phishing, password spraying, and (especially) password reuse are the most common and SMS 2FA completely defeats the latter two and makes the first one harder.

Most people/groups who phish are pretty technically inept so they struggle to automate things like OTP capture/use, so they're stuck doing it live, and that obviously doesn't scale well.

<comment><USER6> > SMS 2FA is still superior to nothing.

It's better than nothing, but given that it's trivial to go from that to just an authenticator app, I would personally not have any of my accounts set up to accept sms 2FA.

Of course, the best thing would be for people to use actual passwords instead of "Watermelon23", but that's easier said than done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This page was loading so many trackers for a full minute (doubleclick, openx, google.ca???) that my laptop started heating up. I'll wait for another media source to read about it, thanks.

<comment><USER9> Or, use an Ad Blocker if you're so averse to this website making money off their content?

<comment><USER10> > this website making money off their content

That's an interesting wording. I would say it's making money off your data than their content.

In other situations, we'd normally call this doxing.

<comment><USER9> > In other situations, we'd normally call this doxing

No we wouldn't.

If you're going to complain about ads, but still want the content, then shutup and pay the website for it. You're not going to do that either, though. Want to have your cake and eat it too?

No, instead (generic) you just wants free content. (Generic) you isn't going to pay $12.99 monthly per website to support the content and operation costs. (Generic) you just wants free stuff.

How many people on HN complain about Paywalled websites and immediately seek ways to circumvent the paywall? Paywalls are the alternative.

There's real costs with running a website - even more-so with producing content people are interested in (clearly evidenced by front page of HN).

Or, just use an Ad Blocker and be on with your day. It's the complaining that's annoying - and petty. Solutions to your perceived problem are super easy and well within reach. It's literally 3 clicks to install uBlock Origin.

<comment><USER11> The problem is systematic: There is currently no realistic way to pay and be done with the medium; there is no spotify or netflix for websites. Those services kinda prove that people are willing to pay after a decade of torrenting and burning DVDs.

HN readers typically know how to deal with ad blockers, our less technical fellows don't, and we ultimately owe them to work against this bullshit, like we expect them to steer their respective fields and professions to the common benefit, that they make their products and services healthy and safe.

A computer literally heating up due to who knows what arbitrary javascript is executed on that person's computer is notable, and the advertising-tech- complex is very much on topic for HN.

Finally, there can be NO DEAL between a website visitor and a bunch of third party javascript that cannot be understood or audited, and if the operation is not profitable, tough. There were cool websites on the internet before ads and we will have websites in the future.

<comment><USER9> > there is no spotify or netflix for websites. Those services kinda prove that > people are willing to pay

The overwhelming majority of Spotify accounts are Free Accounts, supported by... you guessed it... Ads.

People don't torrent music because Spotify is easier. Spotify earns money through advertisers paying them to advertise on their platform. Spotify pays part of that to artists who put music on their platform. Everyone is getting paid, and it costs the user nothing. That's why Spotify is so popular.

> There were cool websites on the internet before ads and we will have > websites in the future

What is it your are arguing for? Charging $0.35 per every single page view? Or people running websites should just foot the bill out of the goodness of their hearts? Someone has to pay the hosting bill...

Some of the tech-elites on HN will pay this out of principle, but the overwhelming majority of people will not. Be realistic.

A world where you must pay for every page view is effectively antithetical to everything the web stood for. The _free_ distributions of knowledge to everyone simply would cease to exist.

It's actually amazingly clever. We've tricked 3rd party advertisers into footing the bill for literally _everything_ on the internet. You are free to consume content without paying a single penny - someone else is paying it for you. The trade? You gotta look at some ads once in a while. Oh the humanity!

If someone is this principled - they should run an Ad Blocker. Most people simply don't care. You can make a case that they should care, but then you'll need to come with with a robust system to pay content creators to ensure they aren't buried in expenses of running a website for a bunch of freeloaders.

<comment><USER11> Advertising is not free lunch. We pay by being manipulated into spending more. Would have been nice if there was a free source of money, but clearly this cannot possibly be true. Even if advertisements wouldn't work, the cost of advertisement is still baked into prices.

There is also no contract, no trade. People go on a website, ignore any and all terms of services and privacy notes and try to read what's up. Presenting such terms of services etc. is acting in bad faith (as no layperson is able to understand it and no lawyer has time to read all of it). Third party code is executed on their computer. Could be bitcoin miners or even ransomware.

Your example with spotify may be true, but you can't ignore that Netflix and others are raking in a lot of money and provide a really expensive product (compared to website articles which yes, were produced for free by many people for years, on some level). I used to subscribe to The Athletic and will probably do so again if there's football in autumn.

I really wouldn't mind seeing some ads. On a shoe website, see a banner ad for shoes, with a hyper link to another shoe website. No tracking, no code, just a link.

<comment><USER9> > No tracking, no code, just a link.

I think the problem there is those types of ads aren't effective. And therefore, advertisers won't pay for them, which then goes back to the original problem of "who's paying the hosting bill"? Let alone paying the salaries of a dozen journalists or content creators.

If tastefully done, ads can be discrete and effective. There are bad apples out there, who plaster every pixel of page space with ads and more ads and more ads.

I don't think anyone enjoys that experience - but that's not the ads fault, it's the webmaster who did it! Eventually, that strategy won't pay for itself anymore as people stop using the website.

Netflix is a strange thing to relate to here, I think. People have always paid for movies - so I think it was a natural progression to pay for a movie streaming service.

Websites have mostly always been free - and the ones that successfully run a subscription model absolutely limit their market appeal and userbase. Making people pay for every page view (the effective equivalence of running impression-based ads) is simply not going to work; you'll have an immense challenge to convince people what was previously "free" is now going to cost them actual money directly from their bank account.

At the end of the day, there's two arguments going on here.

1) Tracking is a violation of expected privacy, and should not be done.

2) Ads are bad and should go away.

Number 1 is true! However, the result of stopping would be unrelated ads being shown to people with practically zero percent chance of converting into a transaction for the advertiser (showing diaper ads to a single man that lives by their self, for example). That could be fine, but again, reduces advertising effectiveness which means advertisers will pay less for the ad space. This could work... but will have ramifications that are potentially not great (more paywalls, for example).

Number 2, in my opinion, isn't true, and isn't realistic for the reasons laid out above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if they write off fines as expenses and still turn a profit.

<comment><USER13> They will. All fines are deductible except IRS ones[0]. It has nothing to do with them turning a profit either way though. They still have to pay the fine even if it isn't counted towards their taxable profits.

[0] [https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/102915/are-irs- pena...](https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/102915/are-irs-penalties- tax-deductible.asp)

<comment><USER14> GP is wondering if it will be financially worthwhile despite the (non-taxable) fines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> [deleted]

<comment><USER16> No throwaway? Someone is going to out your company.

<comment> Funes- Let that happen, then--if he/she is in a safe position now, it would only be fair that the company was outed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm pretty sure many other companies sell this information as well. I'm pretty sure Comcast sells it as I share an account with someone but it uses my phone for verification & support. I received a spammy text with their name. It's the only account we share.

<comment><USER18> Facebook has also been caught doing this (as mentioned in OP article as well).

[https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/yes-facebook-is-using- your...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/yes-facebook-is-using-your-2fa- phone-number-to-target-you-with-ads/)

<comment><USER19> Why do they keep doing this type of stuff? It's obviously not allowed, so why risk it? Is there so much money to be made?

<comment><USER17> No one gets promoted for making the same amount of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Prison time is the only serious deterrent. Specific people in the upper management need to have non-suspendable prison sentences.

Start with maybe 3-6 months, then escalate for repeat offenders. That fact that these decisions were made internally to a business should not indemnify the executives who allowed it to happen from criminal charges with mandatory prison time that cannot be suspended or avoided.

</comment><comment><USER21> Doesn't Twitter also require a unique phone number to make an account these days?

I'm guessing that number has no protections the way 2FA ones do?

<comment><USER22> They do. There are also operators whose numbers Twitter won't accept for signing in. I had to borrow someone's phone to sign up for Twitter because they didn't like my number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Geez, it's a good thing I removed cell 2FA from all my accounts after getting hacked (SIM card transfer via social engineering)

<comment><USER24> The problem with Twitter is they don't allow adding more than one security key (like Yubikey, NitroKey etc) per account. Google, FB, Github and almost everyone else who supports security keys does support multiple keys. Without it, I wouldn't disable SMS auth on Twitter, yet (the security key could die at any point, hypothetically speaking; which is why you have a backup or two).

<comment><USER6> Why wouldn't you just record the authenticator code somewhere?

You can easily generator OTP codes the same as any of the "authenticator" apps using, for example, oathtool [1]

You don't even need the code to be stored on a computer. Just write it down somewhere safe if you're paranoid about getting hacked. The seed codes are usually 16 characters or so.

[1] [https://www.nongnu.org/oath- toolkit/oathtool.1.html](https://www.nongnu.org/oath-toolkit/oathtool.1.html)

<comment><USER24> You're right, that's exactly what I've got. I'd forgotten the exact setup I have on Twitter. I just checked and I've got a TOTP app (with backup codes on paper) + Yubikey. I'd disabled SMS for 2FA last year, around the time when Jack Dorsey's Twitter account was compromised with a SIM swap attack.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stripe Employees Who Relocate to Get $20k Bonus and a Pay Cut - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-15/stripe-employees-who-relocate-to-get-20-000-bonus-and-a-pay-cut <comment><USER2> What's missing in some salary discussions on HN:

Compensation Trajectory: Sure, I can relocate from [HCOL city] to [LCOL city] and come out ahead today after factoring taxes, home prices, etc. What happens in the long term? Will I have a harder time getting promoted because of lower visibility? Will my annual raises and stock refreshes be lower than my counterparts who did not relocate? In tech-dense areas like the Bay Area, I can switch jobs and negotiate a substantial salary increase. Will LCOL areas allow me to substantially increase my salary when I switch jobs?

Home Prices: Folks often cite cheaper housing as a reason for leaving HCOL areas. I generally agree with that. But housing is an investment, not necessarily an expense. You might be paying seven figures for a small townhouse in the Bay Area. However, you'll get your money back when you sell your home in the future (assuming a sufficiently long time horizon and the ability to wait out dips in the housing market). Like any other investment, there are risks associated and ROI is not guaranteed, but my point is that spending $1M on a house is not the same as spending $1M on a luxury car.

Purchasing Power: Earning more money in a HCOL city (relative to earning less in a LCOL city) goes a long way once you leave your local economy. Want to send your kids to a private university? Most tech employees won't qualify for financial aid regardless of where they live. In that case, tuition for [private university] is the same regardless of whether you live in San Francisco or rural Oklahoma.

<comment><USER3> Historically, nationwide, housing is not an investment. The average house in the US appreciates at approximately the rate of inflation, perhaps a bit better. And you always need somewhere to live; unlike stock or a business investment, you can't sell your house without needing to buy or rent another one. Your money should be put elsewhere for investment purposes. There are certainly some hot markets where this isn't true, however.

<comment><USER4> But they offer 10x leverage with the right first time buyer incentives. Invest 50k, earn 4-12% in appreciation on 500k.

<comment><USER5> Or lose 10-20% or more (see Vegas 2008)

Also the average cost to sell a house is around 10%. So 10% appreciates means you walk away with what you put in.

<comment><USER6> for those curious, here's Vegas data: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LVXRNSA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LVXRNSA)

<comment><USER5> I am shocked at how much it has recovered since the bottom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't this just make it a little too obvious that the company is more interested in paying you as little as they can get away with rather than paying you for the value you bring. The employee equivalent of this is accepting the wage they're offering and then optimizing to do as little work of value to the company as possible.

<comment><USER8> Maybe not at Stripe, but a lot of big tech employees (especially at Google and Facebook) would get substantial paycuts if they got paid for the value they brought to the company rather than the market price ("as little as they can get away with").

the average FAANG engineer does a shockingly small amount of work that has any impact on revenue

<comment><USER9> The average FAANG engineer is partially being compensated for NOT working at a competitor- i.e. the best talent is also the biggest threat and if there isn't a salary cap then the NY Yankees are sometimes going to sign redundant players just to keep them from improving competitive teams.

<comment><USER10> This arguments fails on so many dimensions that it must just be a meme. I'll use Google as the example. For it to work Google has to be able to monopolise the buying of talent. Most damning, the premise itself is self defeating. Somehow Google is picking the most talented people (delivering far in excess of say $1M marginal returns), yet somehow it is paying well below that to steal that talent and furthermore Google is then wasting that talent (employee delivering value below their pay+overhead). To assume Google chooses to waste talent merely to achieve some low value outcome (damaging a competitor by $1 doesn't magically enhance Google's returns by $1 so the factors are way out here) seems to assume the Google is somehow acting against their best financial interests. I don't think Google is as poorly run as that.

Also:

1\. Occam's razor: Could it be that a Google is actually getting good value by paying very high salaries?

Yes. The average revenue per person for Google is about 160G$ / 115kiloemployees = 1M4 per employee. I do note that using an average is silly because the value distribution is not flat, but neither is the employee salary distribution flat. But the figure is so large, average does say something useful for back-of-envelope calcs.

2\. Can Google monopolise by buying power alone?

No. Other companies have similarly high returns per employee (Apple is 260G$/160kiloemployees, Netflix is 20G$/20kiloemployees) so for Google to outbid them, it needs to outbid above the marginal revenue per employee, which clearly is well above a 600k$ salary.

3\. Can Google corner the market for talent by restricting supply?

No. We know that there are plenty of talented developers because Google isn't the only company making over $1M revenue per employee. Google employs about 115000 people. Let's say 50000 of those were "overpaid" to remove them from the competitors. If the total pool of equivalent talent were as small as 250000, then Google couldn't monopolise talent. Yet other companies with high revenues per employee have a sum total of employees higher than 250000. Furthermore Google's returns per effective employee become ~$2.8M/employee, so Google can obviously afford to pay $1M for talent it really wants!

Your sports analogy fails because sports are designed to be _zero-sum_ where there can be only one winner, so the best player can capture more of the winnings.

<comment><USER8> Current employees are not the only revenue generators within a company, especially in a high margin monopoly business. Most of the value in Google was created over a decade ago when they achieved market dominance so revenue per employee is an unhelpful metric in their case.

I don't disagree with your other points, just the first.

<comment><USER10> I agree.

However making the argument that the marginal gain from an employee has to exceed the marginal cost is much more difficult, so using an average is just a fair proxy for making the point.

My assumption is that Google are smart enough to know extremely well their marginal gain, which must be an upper bound of what they would rationally pay for an employee (salary plus overhead plus opportunity cost plus variance).

Anyone that thinks a Google is employing people at a loss to cause damage to other businesses is a double plus badthinker IMHO.

<comment><USER9> Key word was 'partial'\- in no way do I believe that they want valuable employees completely sidelined- just that if they are paying slightly above market and are carrying slightly more employees than they really _need_ , it ends up being neutral or a net benefit to Google to do so.

<comment><USER10> That seems like a weasel-word, and "partial" was not the gist of your comment, and I have seen similar comments to yours like it is a meme.

Your implication is that the pool of talent is limited and that there is some sort of zero-sum game being played.

The pool of talent is clearly not limited and there are multiple indications of that e.g. a rockstar developer would be employed at rockstar prices of millions (or signed on at millions as per your sports analogy).

If Google were to take a talented person out of the pool, the loss to the competitors is the marginal difference in talent to the next lower talented person.

Put simply, the variation in measurement of talent is large, and training can make huge differences to talent levels. Your premise can't work without some sort of perfect oracle.

That isn't to say it doesn't happen at some microscopic level, or that it doesn't happen with some particular individuals... Edited: there are just too many sensible reasons why I think it couldn't happen systematically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't get why where I live is any of their business. Why on earth does it matter what it costs for me to live the life I want? All that should matter is what they need to pay me to compete with other companies who want to hire me too.

If the act of paying remote people differently based on where they remote from is successful then it means the free market isn't working right and engineers for these jobs are commoditized.

<comment><USER12> If you live in SF, your job market includes non-remote SF jobs. If you live in Idaho, it doesn't. Therefore your market wage is lower in Idaho even if you are doing the same work. Seems pretty clear-cut to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Will employees who stay have the option of paying Stripe $20k for a 10% raise?

</comment><comment><USER14> In the context of a 100% remote company, 'where I live' feels like it's none of the company's business. The parallel is a non-remote company paying you less to commute from Oakland than San Francisco.

Tying pay to location makes sense in the short-term as the industry transitions, but I don't see these policies holding over the longer-term.

</comment><comment><USER15> Cost of living adjustments are nothing new, so I'm not sure why people seem surprised by them. If a person moves somewhere with lower taxes or housing costs, they'll easily come out even after a 10-15% pay cut. Also it sounds like only salary is affected, so it's an even smaller percentage of total comp.

<comment><USER14> So should Oakland residents be paid less than San Francisco residents?

<comment><USER16> Oakland residents and San Francisco residents are in the same job market, so they have the same salary.

<comment><USER14> Exactly. And now with full-remote work, NYC & Tulsa the same job market too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's weird that nobody talks about what it means when you relocate. For Stripe it might not be an issue, but large companies probably have people in all different locations. This means that if you relocate to a place where someone else is already working, is it fair if someone moved there and is now being paid much more than you?

Also, what about if you had all women at a location and a man relocates there and gets to keep their higher salary. I think the women would feel that this is not okay either. This applies to any other protected categories where legal issues can come up.

There are other considerations when talking about salary, and whether people can keep higher salaries when they relocate from a place where there is high competition for employees and a high average salary to a place with lower competition for employees and lower average salaries.

</comment><comment><USER18> Even though this is the same thing as pay cut, it makes more sense to me when described as: company pays you averaged living expenses + extra depending on position. It's in company's interest that you live in a low cost area. It's in your interest to make sure the "extra per position" doesn't go down when you move. As long as both sides are happy here, I don't see an issue.

</comment><comment><USER19> good deal if you were looking to quit soon so long as there's no vesting period but i'm guessing there's a one year term on it.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm reading on hackers news that in SV engineers are making 200-400k, geez, suck it up, stay put and get paid, my friends

</comment><comment><USER21> If you move to a non tax state then you might come out ahead. Cali taxes are killer

</comment><comment><USER22> You can come out ahead if you relocate to a lower taxed state like NV or TX.</comment>


15 Incredibly Creative Resumes - <AUTHOR> http://www.demilked.com/creative-resumes/

<comment><USER2> If I were an employer these would make me laugh and annoy me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most of these do more to underscore the lack of creativity in the candidate than it does to emphasize it.</comment>


Indian startup Snapdeal caught in crossfire due to bollywood actor's comments - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/558447/bollywood-actor-aamir-khan-took-on-religious-intolerance-and-snapdeal-got-caught-in-the-crossfire/ <comment><AUTHOR> I changed the heading so that non-Indians could figure out relevance from the heading.</comment>


Show HN: A <chess-board> HTML element for any web page or app - <AUTHOR> Hello HN,
For a few months I'm been working on a fun side-project to port the (awesome) chessboardjs library to an easily reusable and embeddable web component. The quarantine has finally spurred me to put the finishing touches on it.
https://justinfagnani.github.io/chessboard-element/
It works in plain HTML files just by writing an HTML tag:

    <chess-board></chess-board>
 And it works in any framework because it's just an HTML element.
Styling is encapsulated and customizable with CSS properties and parts:

    chess-board {
      --dark-color: darkmagenta;
    }
    /* Highlight the e2 square in red */
    chess-board::part(e2) {
      box-shadow: inset 0 0 3px 3px red;
    }
 I hope it's useful or fun for anyone who wants to do chess things on the web. You can try it out in plain HTML here:
https://jsbin.com/jajijab/2/edit?html,output
Or in a React app here:
https://stackblitz.com/edit/react-chess-board <comment><USER2> I would want to be able to see the FEN string and move list even if document scripts and CSS are disabled, or if the client software does not implement some feature it uses.

(I have now written a document about <widget> and <widgetset> elements (and some extensions for


JavaScript for OS X Automation - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/mac/releasenotes/InterapplicationCommunication/RN-JavaScriptForAutomation/index.html <comment><USER3> I found this nice simple, contrasting comparison of syntax from the last discussion about this (thought it would be worth sharing).

Here is some of the new JavaScript syntax:

      Mail.outgoingMessages.whose({subject:'JavaScript'})

Here is what it looks like in AppleScript

        tell application "Mail"
            set msgs to every outgoing message whose subject is 'JavsScript'
        end tell

While the AppleScript sounds logical, the JavaScript syntax just feels so comfortable and familiar (obviously).

<comment><USER4> I've always found AppleScript to be a read-only language. It is obvious what it does once written, but writing it is very frustrating as you have to get the phrasing just right.

<comment><USER5> Someone should marry Perl & AppleScript: the best read/write language ever invented!

<comment><USER6> or the worst.

As Larry Wall said: "The potential for greater good goes right along with the potential for greater evil."[1]

[1]: [http://www.wall.org/~larry/pm.html](http://www.wall.org/~larry/pm.html)

PS. I always wanted to quote this :-)

<comment><USER5> True. Actually, it probably wouldn't be too hard to just write AppleScript within Perl to begin with. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It has not been entirely well received: [http://lists.apple.com/archives/applescript- users/2014/Sep/m...](http://lists.apple.com/archives/applescript- users/2014/Sep/msg00009.html)

<comment><USER8> That post is extremely negative, but I don't see a single specific complaint or reply to that thread. Does he have any constructive feedback?

<comment><USER9> Given that he mentions he was in contact with the dev team, we can be pretty sure he provided feedback. Ten years ago I participated on that list and 'has' was full of opinionated feedback for everyone. He's the one who wrote appscript, mentioned elsewhere on this thread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd rather have Lua to be honest... But JS is better than AppleScript in this regard. While easy to understand, it wasn't suited for large projects and debugging was kinda nasty.

<comment><USER11> The Open Scripting Architecture (OSA) used to support additional languages instead of just AppleScript, I recall that Perl was one of them in the past. Unfortunately, this changed at point. I'm hoping that Javascript support points to them re-opening this.

<comment><USER12> OSA does not support things, it's the underlying platform hook. AFAIK third parties have always been free to implement OSA bridging. In fact one bloke did exactly that[0] when JfA was first announced.

[0] [http://lists.apple.com/archives/applescript- users/2014/Sep/m...](http://lists.apple.com/archives/applescript- users/2014/Sep/msg00009.html)

<comment><USER13> Yes, you could already do Lua (see LuaCocoa) and other languages like Python (PyObjC), Ruby (RubyCocoa/MacRuby), and even JavaScript (JSCocoa) via ScriptingBridge way back from 10.5.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The WWDC session on this is pretty epic. [https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/#306](https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/#306)

Also, I'll just leave this here: [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most- valuable-programming-...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-valuable- programming-language-to-know-for-the-future-and-why/answer/Kevin-Suttle)

<comment><USER15> That WWDC session changed my world. You really can do amazing things with the JavaScript <-> ObjC bridge.

Checkout: [https://github.com/node-app/Nodelike](https://github.com/node- app/Nodelike), and my own side project [https://github.com/cucumber- instruments/cucumber-instruments](https://github.com/cucumber- instruments/cucumber-instruments)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Previous discussion from a few months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7862973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7862973)

The general consensus at the time was that this was an experimental replacement/supplement to AppleScript.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'd like to be able to use something as a universal scripting language. I'd much prefer javascript to something like bash or batch files.

Recall the "Joel test".

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html)

In particular, item two:

      2. Can you make a build in one step?

I take that one pretty seriously. If I have piece of software I'd like people to be able to use, I'd like to be able to tell them to do the following:

      * git clone <url>
      * ./local_clone/bootstrap_script.js

Ok, that's two steps but the point stands. Hopefully they already have git and a javascript runtime included with a fresh install of their operating system (assume they just brought the computer home from the store), and the script included in the project takes care of everything else from there.

What I definitely _don 't_ want to have to say is "Set up this whole massive toolchain for language X [and Y [and Z]] before you can run the project."

Can this be done today on the latest releases of, say, Windows, OSX, and the most popular two or three Linux distributions? If not, are we close?

</comment><comment><USER18> Naturally there's already a npm module for interacting with it: [https://github.com/brandonhorst/node- osa](https://github.com/brandonhorst/node-osa) (note the git repo is at 0.1.0, a couple months newer than its published npmjs counterpart at 0.0.2).

Anyway, the author gives a nice, simple overview of limitations of this approach, as well as simple reasonable use cases for it.

</comment><comment><USER19> I saw this a couple of months ago when Yosemite was first announced. I'm pretty damn excited now.

Now if these APIs were usable via node-webkit...

</comment><comment><USER20> This seems interesting because it feels like I can gain more control over the desktop which previously I felt limited to by Bash or Python. Being a web dev I never wanted to get into Obj. C or Swift so this seems like it's opening some doors to a broader audience. It's funny they are showcasing Mail - <USER2> anyone actually use the desktop mail client? I thought that's been dead since 2003?

Can you leverage this API from within Node.js running on OSX ? Then we can start to see some cool, realtime desktop stuff.

EG: How I think this could be used for a developer: "Applet" or script that opens up a dev project you're working on. \- Open Sublime text (or whatever IDE) \- Pull latest down from Git \- Fire up your respective local server if needed \- Run tests \- Release unicorns if everything goes Green through Desktop notifications of some type

<comment><USER21> OSA was always AppleScript, and it's not really that bad of a language.

<comment><USER22> I don't agree - it's a hideous, imprecise, undocumented language. Truly awful to work with.

<comment><USER21> AppleScript is very thoroughly documented?

And I don't think hideous is a complaint, hideous is a personal opinion.

Imprecise, you'll have to expand on.

While certain things, depending on you want to do turn into a wild goose chase requiring multiple hundred lines of code to get something simple. That will not change with JavaScript, in some instances it looks like it may require even more lines with JavaScript. And it is a natural language, language. I don't think it is as terrible as you make it out too be.

<comment><USER23> _AppleScript is very thoroughly documented?_

As a recent Mac OS user, there were a bunch of things I wanted to automate with AS. I looked and looked for documentation and basically never found a coherent set of docs _anywhere_. So, I'd (still) love to see the thorough documentation.

<comment><USER11> Well, AppleScript is well documented. See Apple's Developer Site,

[https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/AppleS...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/AppleScript/conceptual/AppleScriptlangguide/introduction/ASLR_intro.html)

But, that's just AppleScript. The problem is that the scripting dictionaries for applications are inconsistent. But, that's the fault of the developers and you'll run into the same problem with Javascript.

Oh, for a good overall site, I'd recommend Mac OS X Automation,

[http://www.macosxautomation.com](http://www.macosxautomation.com)

which has pointers to a lot of resources for AppleScript, Automator, and Services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> For those curious about the history of AppleScript, how it was developed, etc:

[http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/wcook/Drafts/2006/ashopl.pdf](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/wcook/Drafts/2006/ashopl.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER25> I wrote up a script a couple of months ago using JS for Automation that will automatically rotate a Keynote file from portrait to landscape (for use in prototyping on Keynote for iOS that only supports landscape). It was my first experience writing any automation script, so there was a lot of trail and error and google searches. I personally would much rather work in JS than Applescript. Here is the script in case you want to take a look at some more JS for Automation:

[https://gist.github.com/ericallam/a5cd76651c327b116a6e](https://gist.github.com/ericallam/a5cd76651c327b116a6e)

</comment><comment><USER26> This is an ok idea, but go look at the API for iPhoto, Contacts or iTunes and you'll realize it is irrelevant what scripting language is used. Really sucks that Apple doesn't open up their apps to scripting better.

<comment><USER27> Apple has its issues with scripting in its apps but other companies like Microsoft and Adobe have robust scripting support in their applications. Developers like me have created significant workflows using scripting that save my company money, time, and errors. Apps like iPhoto and iTunes are really small potatoes by comparison. Having Javascript with Cocoa for scripting is truly powerful stuff.

<comment><USER28> Adobe's scripting APIs are usually 2 versions behind in functuality and very buggy. Anyone with significant workflows that script Adobe apps got there through lots of pain and suffering.

The grass isn't always greener.

<comment><USER27> Yes, I know because I script for them all the time, but at least Adobe's API's _try_ to be more robust than Apple's. My point was really more towards there being more to scripting than just Apple's own apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I recently wrote a blog post about this here: [http://robbycolvin.com/javascript-automation-in-os-x- yosemit...](http://robbycolvin.com/javascript-automation-in-os-x-yosemite/)

</comment><comment><USER15> In Instruments since iOS 7 this has been somewhat possible but the JavaScript context was fairly locked down. I wanted to drive my UI automation tests with Cucumber (Ruby) so I wrote a little driver that patches Instruments to get access to the JavaScript context and expose it to a rudimentary server which listens for commands from your Cucumber tests.

You can check it out here [https://github.com/cucumber-instruments/cucumber- instruments](https://github.com/cucumber-instruments/cucumber-instruments)

<comment><USER30> Have you used Appium? It does pretty much the same thing. I have an alternative Ruby library for it too:

[https://github.com/songkick/rubium-ios](https://github.com/songkick/rubium- ios)

You can use it with Cucumber or Rspec or whatever.

<comment><USER15> Yes, when I wrote this some time late last year I vaguely recall that Appium wasn't quite able to fit my need. It looks much nicer now.

I want something even less complex for the developer to set up. I want something that shows almost no brittleness. One way to do that is to use Apple's UIAutomation directly. I also wanted to be able to use Ruby and Cucumber, so I built as simple a bridge as I could.

Selenium is popular though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I play a stupid game (think farmville with tanks) that requires a lot of easily scripted clicking patterns.

It was pretty easy to record with automator and then have cron run that at a given interval. But that didn't work with click and drag.

Luckily there is a pretty simple way to do this with Python.

Here is a sample with clicks and dragging. [http://pastebin.com/fG1d081k](http://pastebin.com/fG1d081k)

</comment><comment><USER32> You've been able to use alternative languages for a while haven't you? I remember looking into using Python at one stage and the hooks seemed fairly mature: [https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/apples...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/applescript/conceptual/applescriptx/concepts/osa.html)

</comment><comment><USER33> Interestingly this popped up in my RSS feed as I'm watching Sal Soghoian present what's new in 10.10 automation at [http://macsysadmin.se/](http://macsysadmin.se/)

No better way to learn than straight from the person who's responsible.

</comment><comment><USER34> Now someone just needs to write the wrapper that makes the apps available as *nix processes!

<comment><USER35> In what sense? Apps show up in ps output, can be signaled with kill...

If you mean "capable of participating in plumbing," then you'll be disappointed. The app developer has the responsibility to add such functionality to consume stdin and produce to stdout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm excited about the potential this will unlock. Applescript, while not too complicated, is a pain. Being able to throw together something quickly with javascript is going to make simple app scripting much more accessible.

</comment><comment><USER36> This looks so much better than AppleScript. But, maybe, that could be just me.

</comment><comment><USER37> Does this work with JSC REPL for trying things out? I don't have Yosemite to try it.

JSC usually is here: System/Library/Frameworks/JavaScriptCore.framework/Versions/A/Resources/jsc

<comment><USER16> > Does this work with JSC REPL for trying things out?

It does not: just tried it. The document lists the places it will work:

> The component can be used from Script Editor, the global Script Menu, in the > Run JavaScript Automator Action, applets/droplets, the osascript command- > line tool, the NSUserScriptTask API, and everywhere else other OSA > components, such as AppleScript, can be used. This includes Mail Rules, > Folder Actions, Address Book Plugins, Calendar Alarms, and Message Triggers.

It doesn't have a proper REPL mode, but the closest thing to what you're looking for is probably osascript.

<comment><USER38>
        $ osascript -l JavaScript -i
        >> [1,2,3]
        => [1, 2, 3]
        >>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm not familiar with AppleScript at all, but this does seem like it could be useful.

One question I have is whether any new functionality is added or if this is just a straight replacement?

Can any AppleScript gurus chime in?

</comment><comment><USER40> Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Hopefully this represents a system they can easily extend to other languages in the future. There's an obvious candidate after all...

<comment><USER12> > Hopefully this represents a system they can easily extend to other languages > in the future.

The system ("open scripting architecture") has been there since the 90s, before OSX. Apple used to ship support for alternative languages, and osa's always been there for third parties to interface with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Awesome! I wonder if this could be used for end-to-end testing for iOS apps. For instance, automating turning on/off items within the Settings app.

</comment><comment><USER42> AS is not going away yet, right? I have a ton of scripts I've written that we use at home.

</comment><comment><USER43> Can this be used to fix the input source switch problem plaguing OS X forever?

</comment><comment><USER44> I love this. Wish one day I can use javascript to build an ios app.

<comment><USER45> [http://ionicframework.com/](http://ionicframework.com/)

AngularJS + Cordova Framework for building hybrid apps

<comment><USER46> Ionic is amazing. I started using it last night.

PhoneGap by itself is too much of a blank canvas. This framework is opinionated and you can get something sophisticated up and running fairly quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This looks like the replacement of AppleScript

<comment><USER48> Yay. I loved that the scripting framework existed and that so many native apps implemented it, but I've hated the actual AppleScript language ever since I first learned it 20 years ago. Has we not yet learned the folly of the "natural language" programming language? Luckily I'm not old enough to have ever used COBOL.

<comment><USER11> Many of the problems of AppleScript come from inconsistent scripting support from the applications. A command in one application will work subtly different in another one. Unfortunately, this problem will continue with Javascript.

Back in the OS 9 days, there was support for additional languages instead of AppleScript. I recall that someone did a Perl implementation and I think there was a later Javascript implementation. This support was pulled at some point in the OS X days. I'm glad to see that at least Javascript has been added back.

<comment><USER12> > This support was pulled at some point in the OS X days.

The underlying tech ("open scripting architecture") has been there all along though, so third parties could have implemented OSX bridges regardless of what Apple shipped. I can only assume nobody really cared much, leading apple to remove alternative implementations and nobody to take up the slack (because nobody really cared much)

<comment><USER13> ScriptingBridge which was a layer to formally connect other languages to OSA is still there (unsure about 10.10), but neglected. It was introduced in 10.5 along with official support for PyObjC and RubyCocoa in that release. Apple also touted being able to do the same from Objective-C.

Other 3rd party language bridges such as LuaCocoa and JSCocoa provided ScriptingBridge support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Why not support this through node?

<comment><USER50> Why should it be supported through node?

<comment><USER51> Because node + npm have much broader appeal and libraries already available, and those that Apple is offering could very easily fit into this system. For that matter, Apple could have pre-published them as npm modules to the local global store for their platform.

node/npm exists and is very vibrant. Embracing it would have been a better move imho. Much the same reason they didn't creat ATML (Apple Text Markup Language) as a system for documents that only macs can use. They probably would have been better served by embracing a JS platform that already works well on Macs with libraries/modules that would have worked well for their platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Grr.. I don't get why they didn't just embrace node, and release some native/platform modules for use on OSX.

<comment><USER52> Because Apple have their own Nitro JavaScript engine, so why would they use Google's V8?

Node isn't JavaScript. If you want packages/modules use CommonJS, AMD, or Harmony.

<comment><USER51> Exactly, Node isn't the same as JavaScript.. node + npm is a very vibrant cross-platform ecosystem of utilities and libraries that Apple could have fit very will into.

Yes, it's based on a different JS engine than what they use... that really isn't the point... just like Python, Ruby and Java aren't Apple platform inventions.

I am simply disappointed that Apple chose to embrace NIH instead of a broadly supported, and growing system that would have been a great fit for this purpose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Apple just caught up with Windows Script Host (1999).

Edit: fixed typo. Thanks.

<comment><USER12> AppleScript and the Open Scripting Architecture[0] long predate OSX, and could be used by third-party scripting languages[1], that just never caught on with developers/users.

Apple had caught up with WSH before WSH even existed, the underlying technology[2] dates back to System 7 (1991)

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleScript#Open_Scripting_Arch...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleScript#Open_Scripting_Architecture)

[1] [http://svn.python.org/projects/stackless/Python-2.4.3/dev/Ma...](http://svn.python.org/projects/stackless/Python-2.4.3/dev/Mac/Demo/applescript.html) note how this is an OSA bridge on top of "classic" MacOS, not OSX

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_event](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_event)

<comment><USER53> Ok, that explains why I missed it.

Classic Macs were nowhere to be found in Portugal except for computer magazines and a few university labs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> It seems I remember some talk about Swift eventually replacing AppleScript but I can't find anything, does anyone know?

</comment><comment><USER55> I predict this will be used to write malware. Many more people know JavaScript than AppleScript.

<comment><USER56> Won't most popular languages be used to write malware, at some point?

<comment><USER57> Not sure if this is what OP was getting at, but it's possible that the attack vector will baloon if more 3rd party apps are pressured to provide logical scripting interfaces

<comment><USER13> Considering Apple has been locking down the system with App Store distribution and Gatekeeper (and sandboxing), the attack vector risk will probably be constrained.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Uber used secret spyware to try to crush Australian startup GoCatch - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-18/uber-used-secret-spyware-to-try-and-crush-australian-start-up/10901120 <comment><USER2> General news have the usual problem with technology: terminology.

This doesn't sound like spyware at all, but rather like software to spy on your competitor.

[https://www.techinasia.com/uber-allegedly-secret-program- spy...](https://www.techinasia.com/uber-allegedly-secret-program-spy-grab) is more clear: "Called Surfcam, the program developed by an Uber staff scraped data that competitors "published online" to figure out how many drivers were on their systems in real-time and where they were, the report said quoting anonymous sources."

<comment><USER3> yup, webscraping is not spyware.</comment></comment>


We've found the first truly Warm-Blooded Fish - <AUTHOR> http://nerdist.com/weve-found-the-first-truly-warm-blooded-fish/

<comment><USER2> Prior discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9547539](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9547539)</comment>


Ask HN: Conversion rates for ads? - <AUTHOR>

How much should I be paying for customer acquisition via facebook/google ads? What has been your experience with facebook vs google ads? Facebook approved my ad very quickly (within an hour?) and Im getting about a .045% click through rate at a cost of about $1/click. About 20% of the click throughs are registering. Still waiting for google to approve-- they are slow! 1) What kinds of conversions do you normally expect? 2) What is the cost of acquisition that I should expect? There is a quora thread which suggest $5-$6 and that under $10 is good. <comment><USER2> What matters is the bottom line of your business, not your conversion rates in and of themselves. Let me give you an example:

Charles sells financial services and a conversion for him is worth $4000 dollars on average. Paying $100 per conversion is a great deal. Paying $500 per conversion still makes financial sense.

Tim sells ring tones and conversions are worth $1.50 for him. Paying $100 per conversion won't make sense here, but paying $0.15 wouldn't be too bad.

Figure out how much you will make per customer and set the upper limit of your conversion cost to 33% of that price and you'll be on the right track.

<comment><AUTHOR> right now we dont have revenue, we are just experimenting with customer acquisition to find out how much it actually costs.

<comment><USER3> You'll likely find that how much it costs is a variable factor, where the cost of your service is the variable.

Given the above analogies, a ringtone service has a lower barrier to acquisition, since the average purchase price of the customer is much, much lower than, say, a financial service.

If you can get customers for $0.15, and your service costs $20 a month, you're doing a mind-blowingly good job. The cost of acquisition will generally rise as the cost of your service goes up, and that is expected. There are 'tipping points', which is to say, you might keep about the same cost of acquisition for a service that costs $10 vs a service that costs $15, but if that service goes up to $100, then you should expect your cost of acquisition to rise as well.

The magic is in finding the sweet spot, where the cost of acquisition per dollar sold ratio is the best you can get, but in order to truly measure that, you'll likely need to know the expected lifetime revenue of a given customer, which you're going to have a hard time measuring with early numbers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's your target market? - $1/click seems high to me, the only ad network I'm pay that amount for is on LinkedIn.

I'm currently writing a series of articles about advertising on Facebook and the first one is about CTR/CPC rates, I'll probably be posting it sometime next week. Just check my twitter (@imranghory) mid-week and it should be up on there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, will definitely look for it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Facebook just upped the rate to $2.5/click. Impressions dropped from 150K/day down to 7K. Is this normal?

<comment><USER4> Are you paying CPC?</comment></comment>


Containers Patterns - <AUTHOR> https://l0rd.github.io/containerspatterns/#1 <comment><USER2> Is it just me, or is the linked page completely blank? In any case, no content visible.

Windows 7, Google Chrome "Version 64.0.3282.167 (Official Build) (64-bit)".

Update: Seems to work fine on my phone, Android Chrome "64.0.3282.137". Weird.

Update 2: Reason for not working is likely a failure to load this script (changed "https:" to "hxxps" to prevent unwanted link): hxxps//remarkjs.com/downloads/remark-latest.min.js

<comment> Anthony-G I had to allow scripts from remarkjs.com in order to read the content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> These slides would be much more valuable as part of the recording of a talk. (Also, with translations from French.)

<comment><USER4> I'm the original author of the deck. I've created it for a talk I've presented at snowcamp.io a few weeks ago and I did not expected to find it on HN (although I'm pretty happy about that :-). That explains why a couple of slides are in french.

Unfortunately there was no recording of the talk but anyway it was in french. I will present it again at rivieradev in May but that will still be in french.

<comment><USER5> You should a blog post about it, even in French. It's really nice to put clear names on all those different patterns that people are using without knowing them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for posting this! It's a nice breakdown! I've been working on some ways of visualizing our container systems, networks, roles, dependencies, and you know ... the whole ball of wax. It's for a specific app, but I'm going macro level.

I found Karl Wiegers Software Requirements about eight years ago and have been evolving a high level model based off his visual model superset of UML and I've found it not quite to cover the complete roles of the container process. You've helped me bucket some fuzzy black boxes with your colored boxes!

Something I've been chewing on at the middle level of visualizing container roles is not just the role blend you specify here but now the overlap of networks, container technology, federation, and similarity from development, to release staging/production, to customer bare metal deploys, to legacy CI then staggering that over AWS, GKE, my personal OSX machine, my new Linux machine, the rest of my teams OSX machines.

We are a small company that is on the bleeding edge of cloud GPU stuff, we have a code base with some legacy warts that we are growing out of and channels that need to be distributed through them. The containerized GPU ecosystem is growing FAST! OSX is not really going to support nvidia-docker any time soon because of xhyve. The fuzziness of containers just being one thing adds to so much operational confusion! To do a lot of things sometimes the systems and roles you're using containers for can feel like "Who's on first?"

To be clear, I'm aware that I'm over thinking what follows, I think it's interesting and most of it is just built out of a sense of play. I'm still just playing with the concepts as they relate to cluster operations. No models I've used from before quite cover the relationships at a glance that we now have while using containers. Especially to people who are just getting into them it can feel majorly overwhelming because at first they just see them as VMs. I really like your banding for the contexts. I'm totally going to work this into the ops flow.

Anyway here's a whacky thing I'm dreaming up, I started by thinking about the system similarities in buckets that I made into hexes, I put color sections on the hexes for overlap. AWS, GKE, and OSX would be hex tokens. Route53, GoogleDNS, Consul/Dnsmasq would be lets say their yellow corners. Some system deployments rely on different parts so you can look at a key, but I can corner label a green, orange, purple set of hexes then just light up the matching overlap. So like I'm doing a pretty standard UML layout but I can throw some Star Trek style pips on the container and at a glance you can know what it touches. I just got out of the system wide sketch phase with this and I'm really digging it.

I've also been doing experiments[1] with procedural color[2] and shade so instead of picking items at random a base can be picked then branches from it are mathematical so you can infer context, state, or connection even if you have to shift pallet because you've drilled down into a subsystem.

A bit over a year ago I came up with this system relationship flow that I'm calling "The Lotus"[3]. It came from looking at the hexes and trying to put them in appropriately adjacent context then realizing the system "joins" sort of fan over each other and end up making a lotus thing pattern. This spawned from being asked to outline a VERY complex font matching system in a way that was "not technical" it started out as tongue in cheek and still is pretty weird, but inside these experiments I'm starting to see some patterns grow that I really like. Especially as it relates to containers.

This all feels like a massive rambly overshare, but I really liked how you put it together and I thought I would share some of the weird stuff I'm thinking about.

Thanks again!

[1] [https://github.com/millerhooks/GraphTerm](https://github.com/millerhooks/GraphTerm)

[2] [http://devmag.org.za/2012/07/29/how-to-choose-colours- proced...](http://devmag.org.za/2012/07/29/how-to-choose-colours-procedurally- algorithms/)

[3] [https://github.com/millerhooks/SystemVisualizationConcepts/b...](https://github.com/millerhooks/SystemVisualizationConcepts/blob/master/FontSystemProcessFlow.png)</comment>


Google Unveils Plan for New Corporate Campus - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/google-unveils-plan-for-new-corporate-campus

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure how they will make these stacked modular structures safe in an earthquake, but I'm looking forward to what they come up with.</comment>


Facebook browser: Should Facebook buy opera? - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/helloworld/27884/

<comment><USER2> A browser isn't just a "feather in the cap". It's a big, complicated machine.

There isn't really a point in the article, except that facebook should buy opera "to feel like it has come of age". What would facebook do with a browser? Provide a better user experience on the Facebook Browser TM? No, I think it would separate them a bit too much from their Mission of Helping Everybody Share Everything.

</comment><comment><USER3> > I had actually been unaware of Opera before today

I can't really take him seriously after that.</comment>


Vue Props Validations – Best Practices - <AUTHOR> https://nordschool.com/vue-props <comment><AUTHOR> Hey folks!

I wrote a tutorial about vue props validation and best-practices

Some of the topics covered:

\- Basic Validations

\- Camel-Case => Kebab-Case

\- Native Constructs Validation

\- Function Constructor Validation

\- Custom Validators Functions

\- Default Prop Values

\- Best Practices & Guidelines

Some of the best-practises I could think of:

* Always validate your props.

* Always have a default value for non-required props.

* Don't add a default value for required props.

* Never mutate the prop, it may affect the parent's state in case of mutating objects & arrays.

* Validator & default functions should be stateless since they run before the component is created.

* Avoid declaring more than one type to a prop.

Any feedback is appreciated, cheers!</comment>


Google: A friend or the "new Evil Empire"? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/07/MNMF1AUFBM.DTL

<comment><USER2>
        Google Books is a prime example

For the purpose of demonstrating that Google is an evil empire then Google Books is an appalling example.

        But the consensus is the company fomented an avoidable
        backlash by forging ahead with its controversial plan
        without consulting the parties with the most at stake.

In the list that follows you may have missed that Temple fails to mention 'consumers'. His perspective stems from a common evil perspective - that the world should rotate around the interests of the current elite.

<comment><USER3> Books is a good example, because Google violated copyright law without even consulting the owners of the content. They didn't do this for consumers, they did this to fight Amazon -- who _did_ obey the law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I understand Google has made some questionably evil decisions, but I'm bothered by the number of articles written about Google's evilness just because they have a recognizable brand. December 3 marked the anniversary of the Bhopal disaster. An article on December 7 about Google maybe being an evil entity seems like a joke when placed next to what Union Carbide did and continues to do through inaction.

</comment><comment><USER5> _Google Books is a prime example, Enderle said. It's an open debate whether the plan to scan millions of books and make them searchable online will prove the benefit to humanity that Google promises - or hand it a monopoly over certain digital works, as opponents allege._

The issue I have with statements like this is that it is really _searching_ for the "evillness" in something. If "doing it first" is the new definition of monopoly then that sort of sucks ;)

<comment><USER6> It's a monopoly because Google has been granted the exclusive right (via a lawsuit) to digitize and distribute orphaned books. It would be a copyright violation on a grand scale if anyone else were to try.

<http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/google_books/>

<comment><USER5> Reading the whole article I cant come to the same conclusion really.

As I read it Google has "sidestepped" the copyright violation via this lawsuit; a step which any other company doing the same thing would also have to do.

It's untested (and therefore somewhat difficult to assert with way) whether anyone else could win a similar lawsuit to attain similar rights. Also it is not yet tested whether publishers could be approached with a license model for orphaned work without it having to go to the courts.

I think _granted the exclusive right_ is simple an opinion; because none of the court documents appear to grant an exclusive right.

<comment><USER6> Today Google is the only entity with the legal right to do what they do with the books. If I were to try it, I'd be sued into oblivion by the publishers.

For Google, forgiveness was easier than permission. For anyone else, forgiveness won't be an option.

The settlement and ruling applies to Google and only Google. Perhaps in the future some organization will slog through the legal system and change that situation. If that happens, it won't be a monopoly anymore. But today it is.

[http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/04/the-fight-over-the- wo...](http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/04/the-fight-over-the-worlds- greatest-library-the-wiredcom-faq/) (Questions #17 - #21 make the point much better than I am able)

<comment><USER5> > If that happens, it won't be a monopoly anymore.

I think the problem is the definition of monopoly. It's arguably a very good thing (tm) [for consumers] that Google have done - if the fact they had to fight the legal system in a way that is beyond the means of most companies makes it a monopoly then that, to me, seems a bit screwy logic. What about the argument they have now paved the way for much simpler lawsuits - or even opened the way for people to convince publishers to license content without needing the courts....

Till someone else bothers to try (note: bothers) this is impossible to judge either way.

Also lets be careful here: monopolies aren't necessarily (in a legal sense) "bad". Unfair monopolies are what we have to avoid - and evil ones. This was evidence for Google being an evil corporation; to my eyes it seems hard enough to argue this is really a monopoly let alone one with "evil" intent :)

(ultimately the argument does seem to come down to: Congress needs to fix a silly situation)

<comment><USER7> Specifics of the particular case aside, I do not like that Google has the weight to simply buck the system if it disagrees with it. It sets a terrible precedent. The legislative process for changing the laws is flawed, but there are good reasons it exists: for example, multiple voices and interests can express their concerns.

I think it's a rationally defensible position that, in the books case, Google is substituting an democratic process for an enlightened dictatorship. If nothing else, that's a problem because it's a single point of failure. Obviously, that way of phrasing my viewpoint is rather severe and totally loaded, but I think it's also a concise summary of both my opinions and my feelings on the topic.

<comment><USER8> Given that the judiciary and the legislative branch have equal footing in the founding documents, how is democracy being side-stepped?

<comment><USER7> The judiciary branch had to intervene to prevent Google from sidestepping the law, which they were attempting to do. If Google had gone to the courts to try to upend copyright law, that would be using a democratic process. That's not what Google did; they ignored the law, and the judiciary branch was invoked by someone else to step in and stop them.

<comment><USER8> In the end, it is the court's opinion on the legality of their actions that matters, not how the case came before it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Google says it does recognize the threat. Like Microsoft a decade ago, it > has dramatically scaled up its lobbying and public relations efforts.

Hmmmmm.

<comment><USER10> Lobbying and PR is a defensive measure that IMHO is justifiable without being evil. There are plenty more competitors out there who _will_ use _their_ deep pockets to curry politicians into doing things to harm you... having your own lobbying strength helps defend against that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It depends on who's running the company. If they have someone at the top who has strong ethics, they should continue to be benevolent.

</comment><comment><USER12> I worry more about Google's future than present - benevolent dictators are great until they decide to stop being benevolent.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't see Google as evil, but I do see them as frighteningly hungry.</comment>


'Penguin' Anomaly Hints at Missing Particles - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150320-penguin-anomaly-hints-at-missing-particles/

<comment><USER2> > When the LHC resumes bashing particles together in May, LHCb scientists will > continue tracking penguin decays in hopes that the anomalies in the data > will climb to 5-sigma certainty, signifying an indirect discovery of "new > physics."

Large sigma values only rule out statistical fluctuations, not systematic errors.

Adam Falkowski's Resonaances is the go-to particle physics blog for these sorts of stories. On this particular anomaly he has this:

> The measurement moved a bit toward the standard model, but the statistical > errors have shrunk as well. All in all, the significance of the anomaly is > quoted as 3.7 sigma, the same as in the previous LHCb analysis...So how > excited should we be? One thing we learned today is that the anomaly is > unlikely to be a statistical fluctuation. However, the observable is not of > the clean kind, as the measured angular distributions are susceptible to > poorly known QCD effects. The significance depends a lot on what is assumed > about these uncertainties, and experts wage ferocious battles about the > numbers. See for example this paper where larger uncertainties are > advocated, in which case the significance becomes negligible. Therefore, the > deviation from the standard model is not yet convincing at this point. Other > observables may tip the scale. If a consistent pattern of deviations in > several B-physics observables emerges, only then we can trumpet victory.

[http://resonaances.blogspot.ca/2015/03/lhcb-b-meson- anomaly-...](http://resonaances.blogspot.ca/2015/03/lhcb-b-meson-anomaly- persists.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> curiously, looking at the article's graph

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/03/LH...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/03/LHCb_Graph-300x209.jpg)

what i see is that SM generates completely different prediction curve than the experiment results. It isn't just a 4th and 5th bin there SM predictions are different from the experiment results - as far as i see the whole [interpolated] curves are different. The SM generated one is much steeper and kind of like goes extremal with energy increase what is typical for physical theories when they hit borders of their applicability while the experimental results behave pretty well, i'd say even beautiful, into the higher energies. It looks like SM is really due for correction which should also affect its predictions for smaller energies - while may be measurement wise the difference between predictions and results in the first 3, lower energy, bins may be not that big, it is obvious from the curve steepness that SM describes different physics than experiments show, and that the same difference just grows and becomes obvious at 4th, 5th bins...

</comment><comment><USER4> The article has a different way of thinking about the "shattering" of colliding protons. Perhaps this is a long standing "in joke" among particle physicists, but it was the first time I read it:

       The hopes of thousands of particle physicists
       are riding on the protons that in the coming
       years will collide there, shattering into
       petabytes of data that may carry long-awaited
       answers to fundamental questions about nature,</comment>