Why is spacebar broken on some of the websites? - <AUTHOR>

Yes, I still use spacebar to scroll, and feel frustrated when on some websites it is broken. Why is that?<p>* Is it responsive website design in CSS?<p>(i use FF20) <comment><USER2> Because some people don't use the spacebar for themselves, or use a browser that doesn't support spacebar page-down scrolling, and think shortcuts are smart. For them it's OK to experiment and remap a key to some feature, even though only them are aware of it, and most other people won't see it and won't use it, or will get bitten as you are.

Tumblr is a a particular nest of this kind of websites.

That's unfortunate, and funny at the same time. Internet is also a playground, a sand box, a place to learn.

Best you can do is contact them, and teach them a polite UX lesson.

</comment><comment><USER3> probably:

        if (event.type === 'keypress') {
            event.preventDefault();
            doSomethingElse();
        }

<comment><USER4> I don't think the author is talking about the spacebar being disabled entirely, at least that hasn't been my experience. What I've observed is that the space bar fails to act as a complete page-down - it only moves the page by lines.</comment></comment>


Amazon's roadmap for Alexa is scarier than anything Facebook or Twitter is doing - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2019/11/08/amazons-roadmap-for-alexa-is-scarier-than-anything-facebook-or-twitter-is-doing/ <comment><USER2> Original article discussed earlier:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21501341](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21501341)

<comment><USER3> Now this article is marked as [dupe] and won't appear in HN's pagination. Shouldn't the comments be merged into the original then?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Meh. I've owned an Alexa for a few years and I've been pretty underwhelmed.

Most of its functionality was pretty useless once the novelty factor wore off. I don't have a smarthome or anything crazy like that, so the extent of useful functionality remaining is setting timers by speaking while i'm cooking, and asking about weather when I'm in a rush in the morning.

Even that it performs poorly. Sometimes it just starts talking when I didn't address it, which is annoying. Often it cant hear me from the next room over, which is annoying. It has difficulty understanding accents which is annoying.

I've certainly never found it would be more convenient to use for making amazon purchases as opposed to using my computer or phone, and I don't subscribe to _any_ music service, which alexa bugs me about every time I tried using it for playing music, so I just don't do that anymore.

Even the most simple novelty commands ("alexa bark") have managed to find ads attached to them in recent months (really. She advertises some advanced bark skill to me).

If Alexa started summoning me it would be unplugged that day.

<comment><USER5> I do have a bunch of smart home gadgets (most rooms in the house have Philips hue, some smart plugs for things like a christmas tree, a smart Air Conditioner, plus the xbox control skill) I also have 2 Echos and 2 Google home (nest home?!) products.

In my experience Alexa sucks at voice recognition in creatively bad ways. Most importantly, if I want to turn on lights for a room, it has taken to making a very subtle variant of the room I asked for and then goes into a lengthy 'I could not find the room 'living rooms' what device did you mean?' (or my personal favorite, turning off the Xbox instead which turns off the tv, while you sit there dumbfounded staring at the off TV now[It sometimes turns our tv on if I turn on the bedroom lights too!]) But she says it rather slow and it's really annoying as you wait the extra 10 seconds. In most cases it would be faster to get up and actually use the light switch.

To think this is actually much better than it used to be, back at 1.0 it was very bad, finding things very far off or responding to 'turn on living room' with 'According to webster's, a living room is a room where..' Obviously the only response as a human is: 'I KNOW WHAT A LIVING ROOM IS, I'M IN A DARK ONE, I WANT IT TO BE BRIGHTER.'

The Google(NEST?!) home works great and is generally right, but saying 'okay google' is pretty dumb. (also creepy)

<comment><USER6> I prefer muscle memory before voice battle any day of the week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "If you're one of the eight or nine people on the planet who has never interacted with Alexa"

I love when people live in a bubble. I know exactly one person who has a voice assistant, and it's not even Alexa.

<comment><USER8> You know exactly one person who owns an iPhone?

<comment><USER7> Well, two, but neither one of them uses Siri.

<comment><USER9> I find it weird people cannot understand, some dont see a point in using an assistant. Most productive people i know actually completely negate those "fancy" techs and stick to known old stuff. And those are not grandpas but 30-35yr olds.

<comment><USER10> I'm over 50. I use Alexa and Siri every day. Of course, I've always been this way. I've heard that the old thing "does everything I want it do it" for decades.

There are plenty of people on the Internet, for example, explaining why electric cars won't work for them today because they need to drive 500 miles every Monday...

People think we'll have self-driving cars within a decade but voice assistants will remain primitive?

Now that there's a financial incentive to improve voice user interfaces (VUI), they will improve rapidly. Hopefully, there will be a great open source option (like Linux), but I'm not waiting... After watching Star Trek and HAL as a child, I thought we'd be talking with computers decades ago.

<comment><USER9> Comparing voice assistant to an electric car is like comparing ebook to a private jet..

<comment><USER10> Do you think the technology in a voice assistant is in the hardware device on your counter?

The Deep Learning in natural language processing is probably more difficult than in self-driving cars.

<comment><USER11> Language processing can compare inputs to stored voice samples.

It is simpler than self driving cars which have to navigate a completely dynamic environment with many autonomous actors and make good decisions very quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Of most tech privacy concerns, this one seems like the least of my worries.

Because after 5 years, Alexa _still_ doesn't work well enough for most people except to set a kitchen timer, play music, or check the outdoor temperature.

So a more "proactive" Alexa will realistically mean... what? Probably nothing more than the kind of notifications you might get on your phone already, only spoken. At best, "Leave early for your commute because traffic is bad." or "You might be running out of toilet paper, should I order more?"

If even that. Google knows a lot about me -- it can infer events from my e-mail, commutes from my Maps usage, etc. All Amazon knows is what I shop for and maybe occasionally watch on TV. Not a whole lot to be proactive about there.

<comment><USER13> > Because after 5 years, Alexa still doesn't work well enough for most people > except to set a kitchen timer, play music, or check the outdoor temperature.

Same with the others. Google's seems to be the best, but it's still not great. Given where we were with custom-trained (to your own voice) locally-processed speech-to-text almost 20 friggin' years ago, it's hard to imagine that wouldn't be at least as good as the spying cloud AI mumbo-jumbo by now, had those being available and "free" not taken all the money, interest, and talent away from that.

<comment> dawg- I got a free Google home mini last year for buying some other thing...I was blown away by how truly bad it is compared to what the marketing leads people to believe. It's honestly useless for most of the tasks they advertise it being able to do. Most of the calendar functions only work 50% of the time. It can set timers pretty consistently. Sometimes I can get it to change the thermostat. It usually plays the music I ask for. More often than not it takes 2-3 different tries before I can word my request in a way that it will understand.

Honestly if I had paid for it I would have probably wanted my money back. Maybe that's why they are giving them out for free.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, kitchen timers & alarms are about the only thing Siri gets right often enough that it's not less work, on average, to just go do what you need to do with tappy-tappies instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > "If you're one of the eight or nine people on the planet who has never > interacted with Alexa"

What?? Replace "planet" with "United States". I doubt outside Europe and North America Alexa is that pervasive. I only know one person who has it in their home, and I know a bunch of rich people who shop at Amazon. It's just nowhere near common in my large, very populated country.

<comment><USER15> > Replace "planet" with "United States".

Not even. Replace United States with... some very small subset of the United States.

I guess the bubble is very real.

<comment><USER16> The Valley Effect is real.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have Alexa via the Fire TV stick. I like it because you have to physically push a button to activate the microphone. It's nice to search for a movie without having to deal with the onscreen keyboard, but that's about it.

The article is very vague about what exactly Amazon is going to do. It doesn't sound like it would be anything more than Google Assistant is already doing by reading your email and automatically adding flights and hotel reservations to your calendar. I've even had Google automatically suggest a gas station on the way to return a rental car based on the reservation info, which was a little creepy, but I have to admit, convenient.

</comment><comment><USER18> I take extraordinary measures to thwart, disable, or otherwise interfere with "voice assistants" within my home. One of the trends that's very upsetting for me is the injection of connectivity with voice assistants and IOT into EVERYTHING. It's impossible to buy a decently rated / high-end washer and dryer that doesn't want to connect to WiFi to sync to Google/Amazon for Alexa and Works with Google Assistant, and until you connect it somewhere they leave open a Bluetooth endpoint. This is commonplace with many household items.

Good news is, at least for now, it's easy to thwart Internet connectivity. Simply create a new SSID, connect them to it, and then delete the SSID. Make sure you set up WPA2 as part of it, so that if someone in the future creates the same SSID as a rogue/spoof, that it'll fail to connect. Once most devices connect to WiFi they internally disable Bluetooth automatically as it's used for IOT setup.

I look at what Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and others are doing with voice assistants and IOT and I just stare in abject horror. We're setting ourselves up for a dystopian cyberpunk nightmare of a future and everybody just seems to be okay with it. These roadmaps don't give me much hope for the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for this "workaround", I'm definitely going to look at doing this when, inevitably, all devices I replace when they fail will come with IoT nonsense.

Also, I'd argue that the "Alexa is so dumb, it doesn't understand half of what I tell it" crowd here are missing the point, and the point is what you said

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'll be more concerned about this when my Alexas can turn my lights off an on consistently, without issue, day over day for a period of weeks.

</comment><comment><USER20> I really like the sound quality of Amazon's newest Echo Dot generation compared to it size and price.

However, in my experience Alexa is still pretty stupid. The only things it does well, is to play music, switch lights and read Wikipedia articles.

The one thing I'm scared of is Alexa sending everything it hears to Amazon, and not only things I said after the trigger word. I know for a fact, Alexa constantly records even today, because it can filter "trigger word in the middle of a sentence" scenarios, when no actual request is intended. I really do hope, that only actual requests (or false-positives) are currently sent to the AWS cloud.

If that won't be the case anymore in the future, I'll be out.

<comment><USER19> I spent some time taking apart how Alexa must work myself. My thinking on this is guided by the fact that there are only a handful of Wake Words available. Given that there are only 4, I'm thinking the ability to recognize those Wake Words is in firmware on the device (such tech was commercially available back in 1995 when I played with a demo piece of hardware that did just that). Decoding a wake word from a stream of audio locally on the device without making a persistent recording of it or sending a recording off-device is fine with me.

However the more complex parsing of what ever comes after the Wake Word needs to be sent off as an audio stream to some cloud operation for parsing where more horsepower is available. This also seems quite reasonable to me. Sure, it could be done on the device but this would mean a hotter CPU on the device and a generally more expensive Alexa. Certainly no more $29 Echo Dots.

Is Alexa listening all the time? Hell yes it is! Is Alexa recording everything you say, everything you watch on TV, every time the dog barks and sending it back to Amazon for archival? Its possible but consider the economics of storing that much data as audio. Storage is cheap but thats quite a burden. Is AMZN keeping a parsed version of everything it hears from your device and dumping the raw audio version? Its technically possible but again, consider the economics of such a thing.

Not to mention, how many Alexas are going to be sold after someone here posts smoking gun proof Alexa is constantly or even at some batched interval sending off large chunks of data which are in fact full voice recordings?

I'm not going to waste my time on this experiment but anybody who is good with Wireshark could perform an analysis to quickly disprove this whole notion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> " If you're one of the eight or nine people on the planet who has never interacted with Alexa."

Really? Alexa is not available everywhere and it supports a limited number of languages, so if their language is not supported then people may not buy it, because not everyone wants to converse with Alexa via a foreign language. (Also, pronunication issues can cause speech recognition problems if one speaks, e.g. English or Spanish with a heavy accent.)

<comment><USER21> I wouldn't have a voice assistant in the house myself but even so I've still interacted with one. Mostly in the form of "Hey Alexa play Rick Astley as loud as you can" at the end of video calls with one of my colleagues...

(before hanging up obviously. I mean I don't want to have to hear that. :P )

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think the CCPA is going to scare the shit out of people when they realize it isn't just a subpoena for a murder investigation that will get your Alexa history dumped, but some random dude who has a photocopy of your drivers license can now get a massive dump of every single thing Amazon recorded through your Alexa. That's scary.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think the author hasn't looked deeply at what Facebook and Twitter are doing.

<comment><USER13> Facebook, sure, but what's Twitter up to? Muddling along until they get cheap enough that Microsoft decides to buy them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If only there was a way to avoid having an Amazon smart speaker in my home...

<comment><USER25> I've refused to buy one, but my daughter has one that she uses as a voice- activated radio and alarm clock. I think most people want the voice activated features and are unaware of the data collection capabilities of the device. There must be some balance between them. This might be a role for government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Oof that header image. Good indicator that the article doesn't have much going on - other than the author cooking up yet another dystopian future where robots steal our medicine, or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER27> "Simply put: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are all trillion dollar companies because data is the most valuable resource in the world, and Alexa is among the world's greatest data collectors."

... the value of which is a massive bubble due to the (mistaken) notion that if we _just pile up enough garbage_ we can somehow wring gold from it. The gold, of course, being the ability to manipulate people into buying _a different type of garbage_.

</comment><comment><USER28> The difference is that Amazon's core business is not built around extracting private data and packaging it into an ad targeting platform.

<comment><USER29> What do you think Amazon do? Their entire store is an ad targeting platform.

<comment><USER30> I almost wish this were true, Amazon's recommendation algorithm is terrible.

I'm always reminded that Amazon started with books, when I buy a vacuum cleaner and the site concludes I must want to buy a whole bunch more vacuum cleaners.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've never had a voice assistant ask "Was that answer correct?" or say "Ohh that's what you meant" [Edit: I've only used Siri]

The idea of voice assistant predicting what the user wants seems impossible without that feedback.

If companies can convince the user that their assistant knows what they want, then it can actually just push out what it wants and users will comply.

<comment><USER32> For what it's worth, Alexa does ask for feedback about the accuracy and helpfulness of it's answers now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Biggest issue I found with Alexa is... Amazon doesn't know enough about me. Specially here in South Africa, where most stuff is still Google Dominated.

Alexa, doesn't know: -Where I live

-My Music Preferences

-That I have YouTube Premier

-That I listen to afrikaans artist

-My Search history, and what I expect whey I ask/search for general stuff.

-Can't talk to my ChromeCast(sic ?)

-Didn't know where i drove to yesterday.

Basically I need to get a Google-Home

</comment><comment><USER34> None of that is scary. Moreso invasive and annoying. Perfecting Alexa in any meaningful way will take decades unless business interest shift away from it completely.

This is jus another hack some suit is probably pitching Bezos on but has no real roadmap for actually achieving it.

Propping the product up with more crap.

</comment><comment><USER11> Do most people in the US use some smart speaker at home and give commands via voice?

I'm not in the US, so I'm curious how pervasive it is. Is it the minority who doesn't use Alexa and co.?

<comment><USER13> No, far, far from most. Most people in certain tech-heavy cities, maybe.

Now, if you count voice assistants on phones, tablets, and laptops/desktops, most probably _have access_ to at least one of those and maybe even most have tried it at least once. I doubt most (as in, over 50%) use them on a regular basis, though. Probably way under half.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> "If you're one of the eight or nine people on the planet who has never interacted with Alexa, you're both missing out and not really missing out."

First world arrogance. First world problem.

<comment><USER36> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World) First World is a term used for countries that are aligned with NATO. It has no basis in what you think it means.</comment></comment>


Basic Intro to Elliptic Curve Cryptography (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://qvault.io/2019/12/31/very-basic-intro-to-elliptic-curve-cryptography/ <comment><USER2> Nigel Smart's _Cryptography Made Simple_ is a great book which covers elliptic curve cryptography amougst many other topics; despite its name it's a very technical book, but it's easily accessible to anyone with a CS/EE/Maths/Physics degree.

You can grab a copy from SpringerLink for free at the moment here: [https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-21936-3](https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-21936-3)

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Also Christof Paar's book [1] and 25-episode YouTube series[2] do an excellent job of explaining not only elliptic curve cryptography, but also RSA and a lot of other cryptography, including symmetric ciphers and cryptographic hash functions.

The blog post seems to be essentially, "I read these good posts on Ars [3] and F5 [4] [5] and here is my summary of my understanding of them". Nothing wrong with that, but the post has some issues and doesn't add anything to the sources cited IMO.

[1] [http://www.crypto-textbook.com/](http://www.crypto-textbook.com/) (ironic that https isn't available?!?!)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1usFRN4LCMcfIV7UjHNuQg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1usFRN4LCMcfIV7UjHNuQg)

[3] [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/10/a-rel...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/10/a-relatively-easy-to-understand-primer-on-elliptic-curve- cryptography/)

[4] [https://devcentral.f5.com/s/articles/real-cryptography- has-c...](https://devcentral.f5.com/s/articles/real-cryptography-has-curves- making-the-case-for-ecc-20832)

[5] [https://youtu.be/dCvB-mhkT0w](https://youtu.be/dCvB-mhkT0w)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Ars Technica article linked in the article is much better-written and more comprehensive. [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/10/a-rel...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/10/a-relatively-easy-to-understand-primer-on-elliptic-curve- cryptography/)

Fun fact: elliptic curves (specifically the Taniyama–Shimura conjecture about their relationship to modular forms) played a key role in Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, one of the most famous problems in mathematics.

<comment><USER5> Yea. This article just hijacks all the graphics from the ars technica article and makes it harder to read.

</comment></comment><comment> loup-vaillant Those who seek to go a step further and actually implement elliptic curves should see the ECC Hacks talk by djb and Tanja Lange: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEt-D8xZmgE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEt-D8xZmgE)

A couple claims there are a little outdated (we now have better ways of dealing with short Weierstraß curves), but the advice there is sound.

<comment><USER6> What class would one take to understand this?

I had a cryptography elective I wanted to take in undergrad but it was in the wrong semester.

<comment><USER7> If you want a to get this stuff into your head reasonably fast, go implement a curve. Then do it again, but in Rust (or C) and in constant-time. Then do it again, but actually computationally efficiently (i.e. optimize the hell out of a Rust or C implementation once it works). Choose a different curve each time. Then go and cook your own curve for shits and giggles.

You may easily spend a year upwards on this, but by the time you're done, you've basically run into every resource worth knowing about and are able to decently reason about elliptic curves (but by no means are in a position to write papers still).

<comment><USER8> Basically, doing this now. I tried to implement x25519 in a highly optimized way in cpp/c and I'm in my 8 month. I dogged through countless of articles and learned a ton of abstract algebra. Though, I still feel like a beginner in this field.

I've done a few hard projects in my career (compilers, and graphic editor). And I think implementing a elliptic curve in a optimized way, without a math library, must be one of the hardest thing in programming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It looks like several of the images in this post are taken (without credit?) from Cloudflare's primer? [https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-relatively-easy-to- understand-...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-relatively-easy-to-understand- primer-on-elliptic-curve-cryptography/)

<comment><USER10> Images (at least now) link to an ArsTechnica article [0] written by Nick Sullivan, the same person who wrote said blog post (the article and CF's blog post are the same thing, with ArsTechnica going up a day later).

[https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/10/a-rel...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/10/a-relatively-easy-to-understand-primer-on-elliptic-curve- cryptography/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool stuff. I wrote a similar post explaining and implementing RSA in python on Colab[0]. I did NOT leave the math out because that was the most exciting part that I enjoyed while studying RSA. Maybe you'd wanna make a similar implementation for fun for ECC.

[0] [https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1ccyVKHHXFczk_3u5WoV...](https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1ccyVKHHXFczk_3u5WoV-3OGtyS- FJnO3?usp=sharing)

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm assuming that given a starting point A and a number of operations n, there's a much faster way of computing the end point than just iterating n times?

Otherwise, determining n given A and an end point would just be a matter of iterating from A until you hit the end point and counting, right?

Also, how do you actually use the keys to encrypt/decrypt?

<comment><USER13> > Also, how do you actually use the keys to encrypt/decrypt?

One of the changes in modern cryptography compared to stuff from the 1990s is that we rarely have cause to use public key _encryption_ at all.

A typical modern design uses a key agreement algorithm to choose a large shared secret known to both parties which is then used to do encryption with symmetric algorithms.

The elliptic curves show up in the key agreement algorithm and in a Digital Signature scheme used after the encryption switches on to prove who you really are, but we often don't use them to actually encrypt anything (and so likewise we don't use them to decrypt anything either).

<comment><USER12> Sure, fine, but even in RSA signing there's some message you transform with one of the keys and then undo the transformation with the other key (the transformation is encryption when the first key is the public key, and signing when the first key is the private key). I just mean, given these EC keys, how do you actually apply them to data?

<comment><USER13> I mean, firstly, no. What you're describing is what we call "Textbook RSA" and that's a classroom exercise rather than a technology you should use in practice - it's unsafe. Perhaps more importantly while you can (almost) do this in RSA you really can't do it with something like Curve25519.

As a classroom exercise you can use RSA to encrypt the message "I like toast". You turn "I like toast" into a big number. Using a public key you do the (textbook) RSA operation and out comes a different big number. The recipient uses the private key to get the first big number back - and it translates as "I like toast". Nobody did that in real crypto systems, even in the 1990s, and the way you'd do it as a classroom exercise is inherently unsafe, but you can watch it being done and it's somewhat helpful in understanding RSA.

Nothing like that is usually done with elliptic curves.

Fortunately we didn't want to send a message like "I like toast" with public key crypto anyway, we always actually want to agree symmetric cryptographic keys.

And agreeing keys we can do with elliptic curves. Such as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic- curve_Diffie%E2%80%93...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic- curve_Diffie%E2%80%93Hellman)

What's the difference? The key agreement protocol doesn't let you choose the message. Alice and Bob will definitely agree on some shared key at the end of the protocol, but neither Alice nor Bob can choose what it is. For a key this doesn't matter, indeed it's arguably desirable to use random keys nobody actually picked, lots of things to like about that outcome.

Does that help?

<comment><USER12> > I mean, firstly, no. What you're describing is what we call "Textbook RSA" > and that's a classroom exercise rather than a technology you should use in > practice - it's unsafe.

? I'm not talking about encrypting data with RSA, but how else do you perform signing with RSA except by using the private key to transform some message that can then be verified with the public key?

I see now the article's trying to describe elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman, which makes much more sense (but makes the comparison to RSA in the article confusing...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> On an unrelated note, DKIM's latest RFC includes ed25519-sha256 but nobody is actually accepting a properly signed email using this signature algorithm. Bummer

<comment><USER15> That would be RFC8463 "A New Cryptographic Signature Method for DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)" [0]

The biggest improvement on using EC over RSA in DKIM is that the public key will fit in a single DNS TXT rr.

The problem here is that email servers are often horribly outdated, so don't expect widespread adoption of the new RFC anytime soon.

The suggested transition method would be include both a EC and RSA signature in the email, and publish both keys under separate selectors. The receiver should ignore the EC signature if it doesn't support it, and when it is supported the receiver should _only_ use the EC signature. However, it wouldn't surprise me of this is going to be poorly implemented and you'll en up with the receiver validating both signatures, thus performing multiple DNS lookups.

I'm planning on doing a write-up about support for RFC8463 in popular email services.

Disclaimer: Founder of an email hardening service.

[0] [https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8463.html](https://www.rfc- editor.org/rfc/rfc8463.html)

<comment><USER14> I wanted to point out this thing because I'm in the middle of migrating my mail server and wanted to improve the whole setup by using chasquid and a set of dkim tools [1] that I've forked an improved to include ed25519-sha256. Unfortunately pretty much nobody has implemented RFC8463 yet, and my DNS provider doesn't allow me to use RSA 2048bit DKIM keys because they have a stupid limit on the TXT field value :(

[1]: [https://github.com/denysvitali/dkim](https://github.com/denysvitali/dkim)

<comment><USER15> You shouldn't rely on only ed25519 for DKIM, always double-sign your email with RSA as a fallback

The problem with email will forever be that there are so many badly configured email servers out there. Any new standard in email will always need a backwards compatibility ad infinitum.

In your case I'd recommend moving your DNS to another DNS provider. Just pick any and go with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very cool. I would love an ELI5 why some curves are more or less secure than others (e.g. p256r1 is the hot curve now, but why?)

<comment><USER17> When you say p-256r1 are you talking about secp256r1 or Brainpool?

The security of a curve is defined by p, the prime field over which it is defined, a and b the curve co-efficient.

There exists attacks against curves in various ways, composite order attacks, anomalous curves (where the curve order === field order).

<comment><USER16> secp256r1

> There exists attacks against curves in various ways, composite order > attacks, anomalous curves (where the curve order === field order).

This is where I need the ELI5 part. :) But I realize some things just require hard work to understand... like ECC theory.

<comment><USER17> Haha, well I guess.

To start you off:

Composite order attacks: things that are prime tend to be hard to attack. If your curve doesn't use prime stuff then you can take the factors of the thing and attack it in little groups.

Anomalous curves: elliptic curves have a total number of points. We call that the order. So does the "field" (kinda like a box) that the curve lives in. If the number of elements in the field and the number of elements in the curve are the same, you can kinda "lift" the curve out of its box and put it in another box that's easier to smash it in. :)

<comment><USER16> Thanks, this answer is helpful for focusing my search terms!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Jeremy Kun also has a good blog series on ECC. Although from memory it gets pretty technical into pure maths pretty quickly.

[https://jeremykun.com/2014/02/08/introducing-elliptic- curves...](https://jeremykun.com/2014/02/08/introducing-elliptic-curves/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I finally get it now. I feel like "public key" is a misnomer. It's really a "public safe". You put something in the public safe and then it's locked. Then only the person with the private key can unlock it.

<comment><USER20> i saw someone on twitter suggest that public keys should be called 'padlocks'; definitely a more intuitive way to think of them

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How trustworthy is ECC? Considering it was developed in collaboration with the NSA.

<comment><USER17> ECC wasn't developed by the NSA.

Elliptic curves have been studied in mathematics for 150 years. Elliptic curve cryptography was introduced by Victor Miller and Neal Koblitz in 1985.

The NSA just released some compromised tech using curves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't know much about Cryptography but this article made me want to ask this:

In his example with facebook and trump, the original handshake to get facebook's public key isn't encrypted, isn't that a problem ?

I may be totally not understanding this at all, but lets say when somebody connect to Tor if the original connection isn't encrypted and everybody know that I just connected to Tor isn't that bad even though they can't tell what I'm doing afterward ?

<comment><USER23> I down voted the other responder. Because Trump is using public key to encrypt the message. You can share your public key as much as you want and people will be able to send you messages that only you(owner of private key) can decrypt. There is no problem. That is normal use of public key to send encrypted messages to the owner of private key.

You can do it also the other way around, encrypt data with private key and only people who have your public key will be able to decrypt it. Which is a bit less useful but it can confirm your identity. So they can be sure that you sent the message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I can't even escape US internal politics on a cryptography blog

<comment><USER25> Yeah, maybe it's just the fact that things are particularly tense here at the moment, but the choice of example definitely adds some extra baggage that wasn't necessary. For me personally it interferes a bit with my ability to simply read and enjoy the post.

<comment><USER26> Just read the original Ars Technica article he "borrowed" all the images from. It's a great article I've referred back to many times; it's better-written and still easy to understand for those not familiar w/ the concepts.

The ECC-specific content begins on page 2.

[https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/10/a-rel...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/10/a-relatively-easy-to-understand-primer-on-elliptic-curve- cryptography/)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: intelliPaste – Paste clipboard URLs as shortened links - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/LucasHMS/intelliPaste <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, here is my first Python project ever (and post), nothing fancy nor well done, just a simple tweak for easy the life. I'd really appreciate ANY advice on how to do things better.</comment>


Taxonomic vandalism and the Raymond Hoser problem (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/taxonomic-vandalism-and-hoser/ <comment><USER2> As someone with a background in microbiology, it is really weird that apparently with reptiles a self-published journal counts for taxonomic priority. With microbes, there are only a few places where an accepted taxonomic change can be published and so such "vandalism" isn't possible there.

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem is Wolfgang Wuser. Not Hoser. [http://www.smuggled.com/scientific- fraud-wolfgang-wuster.htm](http://www.smuggled.com/scientific-fraud-wolfgang- wuster.htm)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm really curious if Hoser is serious or trolling...at some level this is just a profoundly interesting hack of the baking of oglrganisms. For all the frustration he is creating, the system will be better afterwards...it just won't be from the information he contributed but rather his actions and the response they generate.</comment>


The e-mail Larry Page should have written to James Damore - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/international/21726276-last-week-newspaper-said-alphabets-boss-should-write-detailed-ringing-rebuttal <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15020532](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15020532)

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty good article. The economist can be counted on for insightful takes on current events. I recommend everyone add it to their daily reading list.

There is one problem with the article, though. It's not going to bring along any of the right-leaning people who are upset about anti-male discrimination and other such things. The article opens (smartly) by calling out "motivated reasoning". But by the end, it references a list of lefty (from their perspective) links. Perhaps a better interpretation of Damore's own references would have been better.

Is it so unacceptable to admit that yes, men and women are different, but not mutually exclusive, and that women have plenty of the things the company wants?

Edited last sentence for clarification.

<comment><USER4> I entirely disagree on the "Motivated reasoning," point. Making that suggestion serves to discredit an argument without providing evidence (and complicates the debate) and it's doubly un-useful because either side could use it here (or in almost any argument)

<comment><USER3> That would only be true if the criticism was "motivated reasoning" and nothing else. Going on to cite and discuss evidence for your claim is a good argument.

You could say the same about "ad hominem" or "straw man". I could just argue against anything by saying those things, even if they aren't true.

Let's look at motivated reasoning in this case. Google has diversity initiatives. What is their motive? Google exists to make money for their shareholders, the greatest beneficiaries being the executives and the board. Google has determined that they can be more successful (and therefore make more money) by being inclusive. Seriously now, how likely do you think it is that a company like Google is willing to give up their technical edge?

<comment><USER5> > You could say the same about "ad hominem" or "straw man". I could just argue > against anything by saying those things, even if they aren't true.

These sorts of arguments are easy to refute. Motivated reasoning is impossible to prove in either direction.

<comment><USER3> I disagree with that. And even if it was, what difference would it make? Between two people with incongruous assertions, one has to be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Larry doesn't really send company-wide emails anymore, that's Sundar's job now.

</comment><comment><USER7> Pretty sure in a critically charged environment this article would fare far worse than the one it is criticizing. And the tone is so snotty and condescending.

</comment><comment><USER8> It baffles me how this rebuttal is convincing to anyone. Damore argued group differences are _in part_ responsible for the relatively fewer women in tech. I can't see how that over-arching point has been refuted here, no matter how snarky the response.

<comment><USER9> Because he didn't provide any proof of his claim except a few cherry-picked misinterpreted Wikipedia articles. What proof is there that biological differences are _at all_ responsible? Damore clearly can't seem to find any, or he just didn't care enough to try to find any.

His over-arching point is fundamentally incorrect (as evidenced by the fact that other countries see engineering as a stereotypically female job), and even if it _were_ correct, he didn't provide any actually acceptable proof of said claim.

Let's ignore what I just said though and look at your "group differences are _in part_ responsible" line there. What does it matter if something is _in part_ responsible? How does that at all completely invalidate the possibility that Google is discriminatory? Let's say for a second that Google actually does discriminate against women. Is that perfectly fine now because biological differences are _in part_ to blame? How does that at all invalidate the actual problem being addressed by the diversity memo?

<comment><USER10> For the articles to be "cherry-picked" they must be picked from ones that draw an opposite conclusion.

There is a difference between proving something is _possible_ and that something is True. Damore may have only demonstrated the first, but this is enough to refute the claim "There is sexism in tech because the gender ratio is not equal".

This is why it is important that group differences are in part responsible - it puts a burden on Google et al to _find_ the magnitude if that influence, rather than attribute _all_ of it to sexism. In other words, you can't attribute anything to sexism (without proof) as soon as there are multiple possible influences/causes.

<comment><USER9> >For the articles to be "cherry-picked" they must be picked from ones that draw an opposite conclusion.

No, it means he picked articles that supported his viewpoint while ignoring the ones that didn't.

>There is a difference between proving something is possible and that something is True. Damore may have only demonstrated the first, but this is enough to refute the claim "There is sexism in tech because the gender ratio is not equal".

Damore demonstrated the first, and then used that to say that to completely discount any sexism in tech.

>This is why it is important that group differences are in part responsible - it puts a burden on Google et al to find the magnitude if that influence, rather than attribute all of it to sexism. In other words, you can't attribute anything to sexism (without proof) as soon as there are multiple possible influences/causes.

That exact statement could be used against Damore and his supporters.

EDIT: to add to this, Damore would've been completely justified if he had said this to open a dialogue, but he didn't. He should have said "There are multiple possibilities, let's not immediately jump to conclusions.", but he didn't. He took a handful of Wikipedia articles, twisted around what they said to fit his confirmation bias, then said "I'm right, you're wrong, deal with it." and then claimed that was the truth (his twitter handle is @fired4truth). He's very clearly a narcissist who can't handle that he could possibly be wrong.

<comment><USER10> > it means he picked articles

That's what I mean, He picked those that drew one conclusion, apart from those that drew the opposite, which were not picked.

> then used that to say that to completely discount any sexism in tech

What do you mean "discount"?

> That exact statement could be used against Damore and his supporters.

How? I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying Damore and his supporters are claiming there is no sexism in tech, i.e. the influence of sexism is zero?

> I'm right, you're wrong, deal with it.

Right about what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> FLUX-YOU What a dumb pretense for an article. If you want to write something criticizing James' memo, just do _that_. Don't use Larry Page as a scenario for your message and headline.

<comment><USER4> I almost wonder if they're hoping people will misread the article, think it was an email, and share it on that mistake. It's strange to contrive hypothetical headers.

<comment><USER11> I don't disagree with your point, but this is a literary device that the Economist uses sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great article.

If anyone who agrees with James Damore's point is motivated to see the reason these arguments are summarily dismissed by many, I recommend reading "the mismeasure of man", by Stephen Jay Gould.

The idea of biological determinism has one fatal flaw... the grouping.

<comment><USER13> Stephen Jay Gould was later found out to have mismeasured data he used in that book.

[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/science/14skull.html?r...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/science/14skull.html?referer=)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This was definitely the best takedown I've read of not just the claims but the ideas behind the claims made in the memo.

</comment><comment><USER13> The article makes many of the same errors that they accuse Damore of making. It's inherent in rhetoric, also known as "motivated reasoning". I guess whoever draws the line between rhetoric and comprehensive, good-faith arguments wins the day.

</comment><comment><USER15> > Your memo was a great example of what's called "motivated reasoning"

Guess he'll have to join the throngs of people fired for motivated reasoning to arrive at 'diversity is strength' and 'everyone is equal'.

<comment><USER16> I see you are interested in logical fallacies. You may also be interested in the one called "tu quoque."

<comment><USER17> By that logic, you are never allowed to notice the unbalanced application of a rule or principle.

Slightly off-topic, most "logical fallacies" actually have very important heuristic uses. Just to get the ball rolling, "ad hominem" becomes extremely useful in a world in which we have limited access to full information, and have to constantly evaluate the reliability of outside parties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> so not only has the Economist taken to quoting Game of Thrones, but it now-- taking as axiomatic the validity of said quote--projects this assumed validity onto the interpretation of real-world events? What a time to be alive.

<comment><USER6> Generalizing from fictional evidence! This is a thing!

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/k9/the_logical_fallacy_of_generaliza...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/k9/the_logical_fallacy_of_generalization_from/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Decries "unsupported claims" then goes on the make a whole bunch of unsupported claims.

Not very compelling, which is too bad because I was hoping to read something a lot more succinct.</comment>


Show HN: Instoo – Safe and effective Chrome Extension for Instagram automation - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/instoo-social-automation/ncmgopomkpfhceppdgdllmieddphieba/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'd appreciate any feedback: Just launched last month. Built based on feedback from a previous cloud instagram automation service. Growing constantly and profitable thanks to the in-app upgrade to premium and referrals. Doesn't need your password like other cloud-based services. Constantly iterating based on user feedback, and our users love it.</comment>


Heaven's Gate website, untouched since 1997 - <AUTHOR> http://heavensgate.com/

<comment><USER2> PGP key is from 1996:

<http://heavensgate.com/misc/secure.htm>

Also see the site from '96: [http://web.archive.org/web/19961222130009/http://www.heavens...](http://web.archive.org/web/19961222130009/http://www.heavensgate.com/)

More info on the owners of the site:

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Heaven%27s_Ga...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_%28religious_group%29) (the original owners)

<http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread113809/pg1>

<http://www.apologeticsindex.org/t00.html#telah>

<http://www.factnet.org/cults/heavens_gate/property.htm>

</comment><comment><USER3> Found this gem referenced on the Heaven's Gate wikipedia page: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_abduction_insurance>

</comment><comment><USER4> Except it's been touched repeatedly, and all changes revolve around selling various editions of what's surely a very interesting book..

</comment><comment><USER5> And to think these people knew the exact date they would die, and they didn't bother to get their affects in order.

</comment><comment><USER6> who is paying for the hosting on this thing I wonder?

<comment><USER2> <http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread113809/pg1>

More info in my previous post.</comment></comment>


Why Web Designers Suck at Web Design - <AUTHOR> http://blog.astrofinch.com/why-web-designers-suck-at-web-design

<comment><USER2> I'm a developer who has spent the better part of the last year engrossing myself in UX and design education. I disagree that designers are inherently perfectionists; that is simply an effect of trying hard to be your best. I have found that being obsessive about making awesome code has transferred quite well to web design.

The "just learn it yourself" camp is being a little delusional if they think you're going to be able to pick up something and do it well. I respect the bootstrappers who are making lemonade out of their lemons, I'm one of them myself, but it takes more than a couple weekends to develop quality skills. Sometimes you should just bite the bullet and delegate where necessary.

I hired an illustrator for one of my recent side-projects because I found it more important to have good work done rather than doing something badly myself and wasting a bunch of time in the process. If the skill is something you will utilize frequently in the future, then it might be worth the up-front cost. But sometimes it's more efficient to raise the money to pay a real pro rather than do it yourself, even as a one-man team. Frugal means not only saving money but also saving time: both need to be considered in the equation.

<comment><USER3> I'd second netmau5's first point.

Designers actively refine their craft on the job; especially in startup environments, where one regularly attempts the unknown. Having pride in your work can be the elbow grease that keeps you learning after Photoshop quits.

Moreover, consider the position of a designer in a startup. You are often outnumbered by engineers, who can mindmeld to solve really tricky problems; you are responsible for the coltish first days of the company brand; you are the de-facto copy-writer, publicist, and user advocate. You are the weak link in the iteration chain; if you call in sick, there's no one to put lipstick on the pig. Engineers will force you to defend decisions you experienced as intuitions, and there is little expectation that engineers learn your professional vocabulary. (See: for example, the sneering aside the author makes about typographic leading)

In response to that pressure, I've learned that it's important to refocus on what the user needs. If most users are newcomers, and the front page has a gigantic bounce rate, then it's time to throw down some dank design work. (If the engineers balk, explain and continue). If most users bounce on the FAQ, maybe its time to think about "vertical rhythm," or typeface choices, or navigation schemes.

As long as you're fighting for the user, there's no harm in picking your battles. You're the design professional; make a professional design, and the company succeeds in helping the user.

<comment><USER4> re: (See: for example, the sneering aside the author makes about typographic leading)

That sneering aside illustrates precisely one of my pet peeves. Namely, that the current tools for web typography embody a tremendous leap backwards in ease of use, compared to print design tools.

In the print world, it's quite easy to create variations in leading. Contrary to the author's assertion, leading matters a great deal.

The current requirements that one write code to achieve sophisticated typography remind me of the terminal-based typesetting machines that were common up until the early 1990s. You entered your text on a green-screen monitor, added codes for size, italics, bold, and so forth, and it came out of a Linotronic machine on photographic paper. After being developed, the paper was pasted into the layout.

Hopefully the state of the art in web typography will one day advance beyond technology that was obsolete in the print world some twenty years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems to be a lot of stereotyping here: "The sites they make for themselves tend to be minimalist and hipster-ish." - Seems to me like the author is cherry picking his examples in order to make his point.

IMHO, design isn't about just making things "pretty" — a web designer should be concerned with how the interface works and persuading someone to do something (sign up, read more, etc), and making the interface pretty is only part of the equation. It's also making things readable, making things easy to use, your conversion elements easy to find. It isn't just popping yourself into Photoshop and learning how to make a gradient.

Learning how to do this yourself takes _a lot_ of time, and a lot of trial and error to find out works and what doesn't. Great web designers do this instinctually, it isn't something you're going to magically pick up after a few hours and your first design.

I'm all for scrapping something together to launch something as fast as possible, but having someone around who specializes in making your interfaces work and convert is important at some point.

<comment><USER6> I'm not convinced that great designers do things completely instinctively as they go along but fact of the matter is it _does_ take a lot of time (especially if you're spending 90% of your time learning how to do everything), and I have no doubt that a great designer can do at least as good of a job as I in a fraction of the time (and probably a much better job at that).

In the end, I don't see design being all that different from coding. Sure a PHP kiddie could write some crazy first person shooter by copying/pasting code for a couple of years, but Carmack will sneeze during dinner and put him to shame with his phlegm alone.

So sure, people should go and do things themselves if they have the luxury of time and patience. Everyone else can go and hire someone better than them, if they have the luxury of money and practicality.

<comment><USER7> Instinct is nothing more than using memory's bias.

Check out AIGA's case study on how Second Story redesigned their archive viewer:

[http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/case-study-aiga-design- archi...](http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/case-study-aiga-design-archives)

I talked to the lead UX designer, and he really emphasized their iterative process. AIGA's site isn't graphically styled heavily, but it is very well designed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It should be possible to make a point in a blog post without such ridiculous linkbait titles.

</comment><comment><USER9> What the author describes is the equivalent of premature optimisation for design. I regularly advocate a "get something up then refine" approach to our clients but it's difficult. They don't want to bear the extra costs and usually don't understand the need. And when you present that first comp to them and it doesn't look perfect, they will balk, first round or not. Startups are more interested in the approach, but then they _really_ don't like the extra costs :-)

Secondly, as other people have pointed out, design isn't just aesthetics. It is also, and primarily in the case in web design, about functionality and usability. If you have hired a good design agency are only using them to "make things pretty" then you are underutilising them.

Finally 20% can mean a lot of value. In some cases it's the "winning edge" over your competitor (aka life of death) and in others it's 20% of revenue. Admittedly spending huge amounts on a site that only nets a few thousands a month is silly but if the site is big enough it makes perfect sense.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you want to learn usability, this is a good introduction:

<http://okcancel.com/comic/1.html>

The real reason Web Designers suck at Web Design is that they use different tool from the developers, and a pixel perfect layout will not survive contact with 'the enemy'. Where 'the enemy' = different default font sizes, fractionally different rendering rules for different browsers (and different versions of the same browser), etc etc.

EVEN APPLE CANNOT GET THIS RIGHT. Yeah bitches, you read me right. :D Even Apple screws this up.

Classic Example: Using Safari, to view the Apple store, <http://store.apple.com> all you needed to do to screw up their beautiful layout was to change the default font size.

Also, when they introduced the iPhone, it wasn't available in all countries, so in countries where it wasn't available there were weird gaps, and other basic errors in their layout.

Also... grey text on grey background... not good.

\----

Funnily enough, anyone that holds themselves up as a usability expert is almost guaranteed to have a website that induces seizures and/or vomiting. Jakob Nielsen (sp?) being the classic extreme example of this.

</comment><comment><USER11> The lesson of "good enough" is an important one to learn, but when all your competitors are "good enough" too, you need a differentiator; if you're going to differentiate yourself with better design, that's where a designer who does think about things like incremental leading can make a difference.

The designers are the people who don't just tell you that something looks good or even tell you why it looks good; they're the people that _make_ it look good.

If you're getting results from designers that you believe anyone could replicate, maybe the problem isn't that all designers suck, it's that your designers suck.

</comment><comment><USER12> in my experience, its relatively easy to hit that 60-80% (or what have you) spot where your design neither "sucks" or is "awesome". most people have a low threshold for what constitues good design, and i agree that a lot of little details that we put into our work sometimes just end up being overlooked.

THAT SAID, i disagree w/ this guys notion to just focus on that 20% and neglect the rest. granted this is pure opinion, but there's something extra that can't be describe when you see a design that just "works". i believe those designers who achieve that never got there by just being satisfied with throwing a bunch of web 2.0 elements on a page w/ a grid and calling it a day.

<comment><AUTHOR> If only 0.5% of your visitors will notice something, but this is 0.5% of a very large number (because your site is already successful), then go for it. The point is that perfectionism is not the right attitude when you're building a minimum viable product.

<comment><USER12> i agree, if you're trying to put out an MVP you have to know when to something is good enough and to just put it out there. i'm not advocating that you sacrifice a deadline or goal for perfection (if that's even possible)

i was speaking more to the attitude of the article. it's not so much what percentage will notice, but a designer's motivations for doing so. the best designers i know have this attention to detail, almost to a fault, and it shows in their work. do they still get things out on time and know when to cut corners? of course. but it's precisely that attention to detail that pushes them to improve.

sorry that was really longwinded, but imo, guys that embrace the attitude of that author tend to have a skewed sense of what is "adequate", anyway. he could have better proved made his point by showing the tradeoffs vs. this blanket, designers suck stance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think in the end it's how saturated the market is. If all your competitors have polished fronts, having one that's rough around the edges will certainly put you at a disadvantage, and vise versa.

</comment><comment><USER10> Also, for the love of all that is (un)holy, please stop with the Web 2.0 trend of using 30%+ white space on either side of the page. If I have a 1600 pixel wide screen, why should 1000 pixels be dead space??? It's insanity!

<comment><USER14> It has to do with ideal line widths for reading, not with Web 2.0. Having lines that are 1600 pixels wide is a nightmare for readability.</comment></comment>


My Y Combinator Interview - <AUTHOR> http://areallybadidea.com/34320844 <comment><USER2> Wow, some of this is even surprising to me. Interviews were 40 minutes? We only asked for 4%?

(Now that I think about it, the very first time we didn't think in terms of percent. Instead we decided on a valuation for each company, and the percent was whatever 6k per founder worked out to at that valuation. So it was probably 4 point something, not exactly 4.)

I still remember meeting Emmett and Justin quite well. What impressed us most was how good their demo looked. Also that they'd met in second grade. I remember thinking that Justin looked as if he'd just gotten out of bed, because his hair was standing on end and his eyes had that surprised look you have when you've been jolted awake. I didn't realize till later that he often looks that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I remember that they were based on valuations. I'm almost positive the valuation you gave us was 300k (can't remember if that was pre or post though), so the 12k was 4%.

I knew the demo cinched in for us (remember, this was back when people didn't know if it was possible to write fancy web apps with things like calendar appointment dragging). Looking back on the emails and our application (thanks, Gmail) I was surprised how much better our application was than I had remembered.

<comment><USER2> Hmm, ok, in your case it would have been an integer percentage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great to see some posted content from Justin, as he represents my unofficial favorite YC company. The reason is the way justin.tv started out with him live-streaming every moment of his life (video and audio) wearing an always on camera. I still remember watching some of those times, with who knows how many other thousands of viewers from TechCrunch and elsewhere... By far the most memorable event for me was Justin, true to his commitment, taking the camera in with him to use the bathroom, and then watching a user's text come up in the chat room saying, "You just took a crap on live tv! That takes balls man!!!" I'll be able to look back on that part of Internet history and smile for a long time. :)

<comment><USER4> :) I was watching when Justin.tv jumped the shark, when Justin took the camera off just when his date was getting good.

<comment><USER3> I remember that! :) Justin always took the camera off to go to sleep, but still pointed it at himself. IIRC, he kept this protocol up with the date but darkened the room...or was it putting up a sheet? Hard to remember it was so long ago... So, yeah, a bit disappointing for the audience, but still pretty impressive IMO. Near the beginning of the date I posted in the chat "if he doesn't get a kiss I'm never watching again." Others concurred. Justin didn't disappoint. He walks back into his apartment/headquarters and the room explodes with cheers. Good times. :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Should Google release a calendar along the lines of Gmail, they would be the competitor we would fear most by far._

Wow, that was prescient.

I'm curious whether this kind of application would stand a chance these days. It's hard to say obviously, as you'd have to ignore the product-specific answers.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the first time I've looked at our app since we sent it in (that I can recall), and I was extremely surprised about how prescient we were on some things. Not only Google Calendar, but who would be potential acquirers (we were talking to them during Kiko and actually had a verbal offer that fell through, although that is a different story to tell), that social networking features would be important in all web applications, that javascript client applications would be actually a good thing to do.

The only thing we weren't good a predicting was our release schedule :)

<comment><USER5> The social/personalised advertising remark struck me as very forward-thinking too. It took Facebook a couple of years to get that one right, and now it's making them stacks of money (they may have been ignoring it deliberately to focus on expanding; I have no idea).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Business plan from around that time: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/24386920/Original-Executive- Summar...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/24386920/Original-Executive-Summary-for- Kiko-from-early-2005)

</comment><comment><USER7> "Social networks have an abundance of data which they should be using to display context relevant advertising."

I wonder how the author feels about the way Facebook advertises, if that is what they imagined or if it's better/worse if it isn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> We were specifically thinking in terms of time based contextual advertising. I.e. showing you an ad for a Taylor Swift concert if you had a free Friday night (because you didn't have any events on your calendar) and we knew you liked pop music. In retrospect, we might have been better off just creating the time based advertising platform and making an API available to other calendaring services.

I still think this is a cool idea and would be excited to see someone execute on it.

<comment><USER8> Especially if you have a patent! I kid, I kid. I really enjoyed reading that and I'm glad you have found success beyond Kiko. I remember when Gmail released their calendar and everyone was talking about how it would crush your project. If I remember correctly, someone bought your IP? I wonder what they did with it.

<comment><USER9> Tucows acquired Kiko in an eBay auction: <http://gigaom.com/2006/09/05/tucows- bought-kiko/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have added this to my list of links to blog entries about YC interviewees.

The list is here: <http://ycuniverse.com/interviewees.php></comment>


Ask HN: What apps/businesses has Apple just rendered obsolete? - <AUTHOR>

Of course Apple is not coming out with all features supported by the apps below. But for average users like myself, Apple's new offerings will force me to abandon these apps, as they seem to cover most of my needs.
Off the top of my head:
- Dropbox (cf. iCloud)
- Instagram (cf. iOS5 Twitter integration in Photos)
- Zinio, Flipboard (cf. iOS5 Newsstand)
- Instapaper, ReadItLater (cf. iOS5 Safari Reading List)
- Camera+ (cf. iOS5 Camera)
- reQall, Remember-The-Milk, etc (cf. iOS5 Reminders with location support)
Any other unlucky souls? <comment><USER2> IMO, most of the mentioned services are not in danger if they focus on differentiation:

Dropbox: How long will it take until all Dropbox-enabled apps are upgraded to iCloud and Dropbox integration dropped? Differentiation for Dropbox: Ease of use across MULTIPLE platforms.

Camera+: Has a lot more to offer than just crop and rotate. Focus on best post-processing and sharing, turn it into a universal app. Camera+ can read the photo roll, so it can be used to optimize photos taken taken with the new camera app as well.

Instapaper, ReadItLater: Focus on social features, cross platform sharing.

Flipboard: Nothing in iOS5 seems to come near a "personal magazine". Newsstand? Not really something that comes near a 'personal social magazine'.

To-do apps: What about cross-platform, collaboration, reusable lists? Lots of room to differentiate.

In addition, all these developers either have made money through direct sales or advertising. Money they made by using an ecosystem built by Apple. They may make less money in the future if they can't differentiate. But as long as Apple isn't banning e.g. Dropbox-enabled apps, I don't think they are so 'unlucky' souls and nobody is forced to abandon these apps.

<comment><USER3> It's interesting, I wanted to teach myself iOS development and the best way for me was to come up with a project and see it to the end. My project was location aware reminders. I wasn't going to get rich or anything, just was solving a problem I had and learning a new framework/environment.

Seeing Apple's new Reminders app has really de-motivated me to finish it. Also before you point out TaskAve or any others, I only learnt about them today, in this thread. I purposely didn't go looking for location aware reminder apps as I knew it would de-motivate me to finish mine, and hence not learn what I wanted.

Although I can't miss reading what is coming in iOS 5 :)

Oh well, I'll have to think of something else to keep me interested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you actually looked at iCloud? I can't imagine why a paid Dropbox user would abandon it in favor of such a scanty offering.

<comment><USER5> I found Dropbox's UI so easy & sensible that I'm surprised the iCloud folks didn't try to model their product more on Dropbox. But perhaps they will in a future version.

<comment><USER6> I think Apple would like to make the file system disappear (from an end user perspective). With that goal in mind, iCloud has no reason to emulate Dropbox's behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps my app Remindly, but am waiting to see how easy they made it to schedule a reminder, as Remindly is intended to make creating an reminder simple enough that you can perform it in only a few seconds while multitasking, driving, on phone, etc.

The screenshots of Apple's location based alarms do make it appear much more robust than Remindly. I'm looking forward to playing with it to see how accurate they are, that's something I encountered huge issues with.

</comment><comment><USER8> Dropbox, along with the rest of these, I imagine, have plenty of non-mac users.

<comment><USER9> To add to your comment: I use Dropbox on both my Macs as well as a couple PCs (and my Android phone). iCloud won't work for my type of usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The guys at TaskAve (Location aware notes - <http://taskave.com/>)

On twitter they immediately said "PIVOT!"

<comment><USER11> Which they then removed and replaced with "Ouch."

<comment><USER10> Sorry, I should have clarified pivot was from one of the founders (@skanwar) but ouch says the same thing ;-)

<comment><USER12> As much as I like Satish and wish him the best, their "product" was really a feature from day one.

Still, great learning lesson they won't soon forget :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The chromebook. Now that everyone's iThing can sync and back up, what need is there for this cut-down web browser OS?

<comment><USER14> I disagree becuase the chromebook functions under the idea that 99% of what users need to do happens within the browser. OSX makes the guess that what the users need to do happens within the Apple Entertainment Ecosystem... (Disclaimer: I use both)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interestingly, the Twitter app is itself obsolete since it'll be built into iOS. All the negative attention that Twitter got over advising against implementing additional clients and then adding the dickbar to their client was for nothing.

<comment><USER16> iOS can tweet, not read. Twitter for iPhone is really good for searching, seeing trending topics, profiles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The big win for me with Instapaper is the cross-platform and cross-browser support. Apples offering is Safari and OSX centric. What use is read it later when I potentially can't get access on the device I'm using?

</comment><comment><USER18> The "Red Pop" Kickstartr project suddenly looks less exciting also.

</comment><comment><USER19> it's bigger than just apps. telecoms are in big trouble due to imessage and increased voip. also, all these new icloud features are going to put a heavy burden on their network. as soon as a relatively cheap and reliable data only service comes out, that's pretty much all you're going to need.

</comment><comment><USER20> Well, I'm not going to use iCloud, and I'm sure I'm not alone, so probably none of them.

</comment><comment><USER21> Have you ever used instagr.am? The appeal has nothing to do with twitter integration.</comment>


What analysts should ask Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.macworld.com/article/145846/2010/01/analystquestions.html

<comment><USER2> This was one of the most thorough Apple articles I've read in a long, long time. It demonstrated a really strong grasp of the way Apple runs their business and how they decide what information to share and how they share it. The advice was sound and analysts would do well to pay attention to it. Sure, some of it is catering to the types of questions Apple _wants_ to be asked, but the suggestions of asking about security measures and the App Store review system are both within bounds and highly relevant.

</comment><comment><USER3> "The analysts are supposed to tell their clients what this currently-non- existent product means for Apple's bottom line throughout the rest of this fiscal year, and they have no more clue than you do about whether it exists or what it does. They have better sources than you do (reporters, executives at lots of companies, manufacturing contacts in east Asia), but most of them aren't trained as investigative journalists. They're biz whizzes."

Hey...I just figured out what we can do with all the unemployed investigative journalists when the newspapers collapse!

</comment><comment><USER4> in other words, there is almost no new information you can pull out of apple besides what they decide to say.

<comment><USER5> What company _does_ allow you to pull out information that they didn't already decide to say?

...correction:

What _well run_ company allows you to pull out information that they didn't already decide to say?</comment></comment>


Classmates.com: Social Networking's First IPO - <AUTHOR> http://mediabiz.blogs.cnnmoney.cnn.com/2007/10/10/investors-gear-up-for-social-networkings-first-ipo/?source=yahoo_quote

<comment><USER2> If investors fall for this, it will be the worst sign to date of a bubble. There is nothing to this company except that (by a stretch) they can claim to be in the same category as Facebook.

<comment><USER3> My sentiments exactly. I am continually amazed that this company continues to exist, so it's downright shocking that they are attracting this kind of interest.

<comment><USER4> Who do you think the press is going to go to for "the opposing view"? Isolatr?</comment></comment></comment>


Bye Apple, Hello Tux - <AUTHOR> https://robots.thoughtbot.com/bye-apple-hello-tux <comment><USER2> He'll be back. I did the same thing and went back to my MacBook. The Mac plus brewports is the perfect platform for me.</comment>


Fire One, Fire Ten: Implications of the Torpedo Scandal of World War II (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2018/2/8/fire-one-fire-ten-implications-of-the-torpedo-scandal-of-world-war-ii <comment><USER2> One of my favorite piece of WWII trivia is that Albert Einstein actually worked on fixing the Mark 6 exploder of the Mark 14 torpedo.

Back then, Einstein was not employed by the military at all; he was an academic at the Institute for Advanced Study[0] in Princeton. Lt. Stephen Brunauer from the Bureau of Ordnance sent an unsolicited letter to Einstein basically saying: "Hey Einstein, can you help us with our torpedo problem?" and Einstein happily obliged[1]. Their entire correspondence is in the national archives; here's an example: [2].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Advanced_Study](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Advanced_Study)

[1] [https://mathscinotes.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/torpedoesan...](https://mathscinotes.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/torpedoesandeinstein.pdf)

[2] [https://catalog.archives.gov/id/305254](https://catalog.archives.gov/id/305254)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a great read.

If you study the Pacific carrier battles carefully, you'll notice that the Americans sank no Japanese carriers with torpedos for 2 years, while the Japanese had great success.

So all of the US torpedo planes and pilots were sent fruitlessly for that period of time. Usually the performance of their obsolete planes was blamed, but that doesn't matter when you're dropping duds.

In later wars, the US repeated similar disasters ...

The F-4 didn't have a gun, early air-air missiles either didn't work or were sensitive to carrier landings and stopped working, the Zuni rocket had electrical issues, the F-14A had the wrong (bomber) engine, carriers were loaded with tons of "expired" bombs to reduce costs which contributed to the USS Forrestal inferno, etc.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire)

The USA has always taken a while to spool up for war, but has then been unstoppable. It would be nice to break the pattern of early failures though.

<comment><USER4> > This is a great read.

It is not. I found it maddeningly superficial.

It talks about "crippling flaws in all three control mechanisms." but fails to provide any information whatsoever about what those flaws were and what effects they had.

The story about how the flaws were isolated and fixed is confined to a _single sentence_.

It is completely unclear how "Lesson 1: Indecision can thicken the fog of war" has anything at all to do with the faulty torpedoes. Why and how did "operational consequences of this startling strategic decision masked the true nature of the torpedo problem"?

<comment><USER5> It's not a technical article about torpedo design. From that perspective, it is superficial but that's not what it's about. You can easily research the torpedo design if you want.

The article is actually about the organizational and strategic failures that led to and exacerbated the problem. From that perspective, it has plenty to offer.

<comment><USER4> Even from that perspective, it has very little to offer because it completely fails to explain how those "organizational and strategic failures" actually had anything to do with the torpedoes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I had a chuckle while reading this: Switzerland is currently starting an evaluation of a new ground-to-air missile defense system.

The Swiss military decided that due to the enormous cost of the missiles, the evaluation will not include a firing test, but rely on a big questionnaire for the manufacturers of said system.

<comment><USER7> If you're buying a weapons system for deterrence then it doesn't actually have to work reliably. It just has to present a credible appearance of possibly working some of the time in order to complicate an adversary's plans.

<comment><USER8> Plus, it's Switzerland. They're surrounded by friendly NATO countries. Their Air Force has office hours and relies on France/Italy outside them.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2014/feb/19/swis...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2014/feb/19/swiss- air-force-ethiopian-airlines-hijacking-office-hours)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> noir-york For a worse screw-up read about the bureaucratic slug fights around the M14 rifle (the shortest-serving US standard issue rifle), and the M16 (substandard ammo, etc) in Vietnam that needlessly cost American lives. There are good reasons the Springfield Armory was closed down by McNamara in '68.

</comment><comment><USER9> In such stories there's always a group or person that remains in denial long enough to frustrate the overall objective.

I see it in tech when developers often try to tell me there's no problem until weeks later admitting there is one.

Why not spend the time investigating instead of denying?

</comment><comment><USER10> The USS Barb's story is amazing. It is detailed in the book _Thunder Below! The USS Barb Revolutionizes Submarine Warfare in World War II_ by _Eugene B. Fluckey_ who was the commanding officer for 5 deployments. Another good book is _Sink 'Em All Submarine Warfare in the Pacific_ by _Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood_ who was the US Navy commander of the Pacific submarine fleet during World War II.

Both discuss the torpedo problem and are available as Audiobooks. Fluckey says in his book that they installed stiffer springs in all torpedoes before sailing on his first deployment as Barb's captain.

</comment><comment><USER11> > As a result, the Bureau of Ordnance developed highly artificial testing > procedures that were designed, in part, to safeguard their practice > torpedoes so they could be used for multiple tests.

Reminds me of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars)</comment>


Goodbye, Arch Linux , SystemD took over  - <AUTHOR> http://sporkbox.us/blog/?r=page/95&p=2

<comment><USER2> ns5.he.net is not answering authoritatively for this domain despite being listed as a primary at the .us level. This will lead to significant amounts of pain until it is resolved.</comment>


In 1967, the US carried out the largest educational research project in history - <AUTHOR> https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1299729473647108099.html <comment><USER2> The use of choral response is fascinating. It's how Abraham Lincoln was taught in his blab school. The fact that it requires active involvement is also oddly reminiscent of some of the Japanese quality control stuff, like the pointing used in the railways.

It all makes sense.

We don't manage to solve the more-limited problem of reliably teaching kids to read, so I really don't have a lot of hope for Direct Instruction. Known-good reading technique, which is phonics, is pushed aside for known-bad techniques that fit people's trendy ideas of how reading might be done. We've also started to really screw up math, pushing weak students to ape the mental shortcuts of the more-advanced students before getting a solid foundation that produces reliable results.</comment>


Deleting Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.entertainingcode.com/archives/deleting-code/

<comment><USER2> Future tip for any other blog authors with code: don't make assumptions about people's browser geometry/fonts.

Even worse than the horizontal scrolling (a link to a popup or plain text would've been better) was the fact that you couldn't have the horizontal scroller on the screen at the same time as the top few lines of code on many screens (like mine).

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that made if more difficult to read then it already was. Ironic that, at least by my understanding of ironic it is.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Starvish.com - <AUTHOR> http://Starvish.com <comment><USER2> As of right now, this is a super cool site to fire up my email client to send you an email?

Edit: There is no description for what I'm supposed to do once my email client opens up.

"Deploy your personal army of designers and developers." that means I can get projects for me and the other developers on my team with a single email? For some reason I think you've described it wrong, and what you really mean to say is "Hire us to build whatever you want."

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually its a site to send an email with project details for a design or development project. You send your project, we agree over the price and we finish it within 48 hours. If we don't you'll get a full refund. We are actually a new approach to digital studios.

<comment><USER2> I think you need to explain that on your site. I would never have guessed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback, we'll fix that ASAP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The website we've been working on for a while now is finally finished. Our concept is simple: deploy an army of designers and developers with a single button.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is some terrible branding as "starvish" makes negative associations with starvation!</comment>


New (?) security flaw in Facebook networks access - <AUTHOR> http://www.errant.me.uk/blog/2009/03/facebook-security-flaw-in-networks-access/

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies for the self-submission (I know it niggles some people) but I thought this was interesting.

The MOST interesting thing is FB seem uninterested. I dropped them an short email 24hrs ago with no response. Oh well :)

I published on advice from some other people: it's not exactly the worst or most gaping flaw in the world (as the access can be obtained through other means) but it is a bit of a noob error!

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting.

Thanks for the article (and self post). Don't ever worry about promoting your own work. That's what you're supposed to be doing.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks - the worrying thing is given this and other work weve seen appear this last week simple, trivial exploits like this are all over new Facebook. Individually not a massive headache: all together maybe more so? ;)</comment></comment>


Privatised London: the Thames Path walk that resembles a prison corridor - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/feb/24/private-london-exposed-thames-path-riverside-walking-route <comment><USER5> I used to live on the Isle of Dogs - just down and to the left from the intro photo on that article - on the Thames waterfront, albeit in a relatively modern 15-storey, multi-building estate.

I was always torn between wanting more access along the waterway edges - <USER2> would make a fantastic bicycle route into town, as well as further outwards - and wanting more privacy / protection from the kinds of idiots that thought partying in front of a residential building at 3am was acceptable behaviour. By partying I mean music, shouting, glass bottles being smashed, and so on.

The estate was in on-going 'discussions' over the previous several years with the local council about gating half the street, and consequently access to the foreshore. It was moot in terms of providing east-west access, as estates left and right had already gated their access. And it's clear this is one of the problems being described in the article - the 'let's make it less appealing so you want to _use_ it less so you can _lose_ it more easily'.

I'm back in Australia now, where I believe (IANAL and the information may be apocryphal) access to all tidal foreshore up to some distance, I think 30 metres? - was provided by law with two notable (military) exceptions. Whether that's the case or not doesn't affect the fact that it's practically impossible to obtain public access to foreshore areas in and around our capital cities.

<comment><USER6> Aren't UK police effective in dealing with small-scale nuisance like loud partying at 3am?

<comment><USER7> Most likely people are noisy "in transit" rather than actually sitting outside a residence for several hours. It's unlikely you'll see a policeman in under 30 mins at which point they're just going to wake you up again to talk to you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a little disappointed that none of the photos particularly resemble a prison corridor.

</comment><comment><USER9> London's developers are hell-bent on snapping up the best bits of the city for the wealthiest clients, and the government doesn't seem very motivated to protect them for public enjoyment.

It's pretty frustrating as a citizen feeling that no one's got your back - <USER3> rich and the powerful work hand in hand for their benefit and everyone else is left with the scraps - little bits of fenced of public space as a charity gesture for the people who made the foolish choice of not being filthy rich.

<comment><USER10> While I get how it must be tricky for Londoners to escape the chaos for a few hours, the UK is a tiny island and you're never more than a short train ride away from countryside.

<comment><USER11> Great Britain is the 9th largest island by area in the world[0]. It's not tiny by any measure.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_by_area](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_by_area)

<comment><USER12> but you're also never more than 72 miles away from the coast.

<comment><USER11> Well, yes, but that would be also true for an island with the shape of a rectangle that is 144 miles wide and 10000 miles long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Who has, wants, and/or needs access to a riverfront is a marvellously practical problem to solve. A lot of high-school kids are equipped with the scientific know-how to get a relatively robust answer to this question, and there are many, many smart mofos in universities around the globe who could get a pretty damn definitive answer, taking into account relative harm/benefit and everything!

But no, that just won't do. Instead let's reformulate it in ideological terms - who _should_ have access? Now the whole planet is entitled to chip in. Facts just became irrelevant. Yay. "So let's go collect some 'facts' for our story," said someone at The Guardian before cherry-picking a few half-notable views from the (now global) distribution of opinions. One tiny little change to the premise and this problem went from something well-defined and manageable to a thinly veiled pitting of rich against poor with no objectively defensible outcome. The Guardian - our dear moral leaders who spend their days paving the path to social equality - pouring petrol on the class warfare fire to sell papers? Well I never.

This is all fine if the point is entertainment, but this bullshit - <USER4> with a super out-of-date version of democracy we like to get sentimental about - is how we _govern_. It's madness. It's certifiable, crack-a-jack, put-you- on-strong-pills craziness of the highest order.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra They totally should implement a Marvin John Heemeyer Bulldozerway there.

Of course people who got hand on a part of city will try to ruin it for their profit. Build fences, destroy historical sight, build up waterfronts.

The solution is in regulation. You only buy property, but you end up owning a part whole of city experience. Preserve it or suffer.

</comment><comment><USER14>
       > Wapping and Limehouse have certainly been radically altered

Yes. Thank fuck for that. Eagerly awaiting the articles pining for 1980s NYC O_o

</comment><comment><USER15> I do not see what the big deal is.

So there a few CCTVs cameras and an increase in private property - since the public seems not to use it anyway - along a river ?

London is becoming a city for the elite bankers and capitalists, everyone knows it. The world is a massive place. Rather than working like peasants I suggest to the people complaining to have some dignity and create wealth somewhere else where they think is a much fairer place.

I am slightly frustrated that so many young people spend their prime years enriching a city that cares little for them and takes so much wealth from them.

<comment><USER16> I honestly don't even know how to begin to explain this to you.

There are highly valuable pieces of land (as happens with nice waterfronts) that developers have promised to make accessible to everyone in exchange for being able to develop there. They then make those places as unappealing as they can to the public by using misleading architectural cues, being less tahn helpful in enabling the access they promised, or even having guards flat-out lie about the public's access to a space. If this does not seem like a bad thing to you, and I mean this with no malice, I don't believe there is enough common ground between you and I for me to be able to explain why it is.

If you think this is just a London thing, it's happening in San Francisco (which, yes, has similar issues with inequality) [1] and is an ongoing issue along the entire coast of California where the beach is public up to (at least) the high tide mark, and often with trails to get to it too. But landowners there also put up fake signs, block off access paths, and hire security guards to lie about whether the general public is allowed there or not.

[1] [http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2015/01/little-known- publ...](http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2015/01/little-known-public-open- spaces-soon-history.html)

<comment><USER17> This is also an issue in Oslo. Traditionally (and currently) the population has the right of assess 2 meters inland from the high tide mark. People with houses (typically elite suburbs) on the waterfront have tried to stop this as they don't want someone walking across their front lawn or parking their boat there.

Given Norways egalitarian society, I was more surprised the people pursuing this felt it was worth their effort given the likelihood of success.</comment></comment></comment>