Linux desktop market share over 3% - <AUTHOR> https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=9&qpcustomb=0 <comment><USER2> Been running Linux since 2002.

I do have to say, though it took 10 years longer than I thought it would, the combination of hardware standardization in consumer laptops and maturity of Linux kernel has meant that, in the last few years, Linux has "just worked" more often than not (and WAY more often than it used to). I recently upgraded from a Lenovo X220 to a 4th-generation Lenovo X1 Carbon, and installed Ubuntu GNOME 17.04. Didn't need to tweak a single thing about the hardware. Everything just worked.

That said, I did hit a weird GPU bug[1] that reminded me that no matter how good Linux on the desktop has gotten, there's always something. :-/

[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg- video...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video- intel/+bug/1710051)

<comment><USER3> To be blunt, those i915 GPU drivers are shit. I battled a brand new Dell XPS 13 for like two weeks before I hit a stable mix. Once I fixed everything it is great.

In particular virt-manager/virt-viewer/libvirt/KVM have come a long way. I don't need Workstation or Virtualbox any longer. Having Docker and a real X11 server is nice. Everything /generally/ works. A few things I have to run a VM for like Webex.....

Regardless I don't think I experience much more bugginess than my Mac peers now, and most things work out of the box.

Linux on the desktop: Most things work out of the box ;)

<comment><USER4> My XPS 15 with i915 + Mobile Nvidia GPU has been really un-fun to deal with, but it's finally getting better now. Docking and undocking is still an adventure every time, though.

<comment><USER3> It's interesting, most of our company is on Macs and people experience lots of issues waking up from sleep. Mac didn't used to be that way for many years.

I run i3 and just logout before any sort of monitor changing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That seems like a suspiciously large bump. I could imagine a scenario where the numbers are right, though. Is Chrome OS counted as Linux? School is starting up again in many areas...

<comment><USER6> If you're counting operating systems by the kernel, why would ChromeOS be counted as anything _other_ than Linux. Sure it is a variant, but so is Fedora or Gentoo or Arch.

<comment><USER7> I don't think you should really count the operating system by the kernel. You should count it by the API it exposes. That's what really matters.

Under this system Android and ChromeOS wouldn't really be counted as Linux because you can't easily run normal Linux programs on them. Although they may use Linux under the hood, that isn't really visible to user-space programs. Android, and especially ChromeOS could easily switch kernel with no visible effect to apps. The kernel is an implementation detail.

<comment><USER8> Many people that count on Android as Linux, just because of the NDK, usually don't have any idea how little of Linux is actually exposed to developers using the NDK for app development.

Basically any POSIX like kernel with enough support for libc and libc++ would do the job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This partially thanks to Apple, every developer I know using Apple has some issues with OS X quality and/or the increasing price (they already subscribed to the premium idea years ago but the touchbar price boost was a new level of kicker). Strangely I suspect Microsoft may of actually dented some of this, social media around win10 and wsl generally seem positive. Disclaimer bounce: Long time ubuntu user, just listening social media.

Also, I'd be interested to know if chromebooks factor into this stat?

<comment><USER10> I can only chime in with my anecdote but I started hitting hardware limits on my macbook and I went to shop for a new computer.

The cheapest mac that solved my bottleneck (ram) was a $900 Mac Mini but that computer had no upgrade room and I recently got a 4k display and I didn't want to find out whether the Iris graphics were up to the task.

I built a badass linux box for $850 - Ryzen 1600, 1050 ti, SSD, 32 gb of ram. It's hard to make an linux to apples comparison because mine is just a desktop and most macs come with displays but the apple premium just wasn't worth it.

I had a few issues out of the gate (not getting it running, but installing Nvidia drivers and getting tensorflow to use GPU acceleration) but it was an excellent learning experience and a few hours of time (which was honestly an enjoyable use of time) saved me considerable money over Apple. My desktop is the performance peer of an $2,400 iMac.

I'd pay a premium for an Apple but not 3x as much. And I'll probably continue to use a Macbook as a secondary device but when my Macbook fails, it's going to be harder and harder to shell out Macbook money when I know that a used Lenovo with Ubuntu will get the job done.

<comment><USER11> Any specific reason you used a dedicated eh GPU instead of just the integrated one? Or do ryzen igp's not do too well?

<comment><USER12> Ryzen plus IGP products are not available yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As of about a month ago I'm officially Windows free. I have an iMac for desktop and had a 2012 MBP for laptop (that dual booted Windows via Bootcamp). A torrential downpour that soak my backpack ended up destroying that MBP so I bought a used Dell Precision workstation (that came with Windows 10) and put Fedora 26 on it. I don't miss Windows at all. I can play my games on my Mac and while I'm a professional C# dev, I'm working on migrating away from that stack so it isn't like I'm any worse off.

Edit: One thing that I do wish was on Linux is Microsoft Office. I'm working on a book (which I will need Windows for, so I'll have to run it in a VM until I finish the book) but being able to use the Word on Linux would make things so much easier.

<comment><USER14> Have you tried LaTeX? It has a learning curve but the output is far better than MS Word.

<comment><USER15> I've had good luck with Wine on all my Linux machines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I question the reliability of these statistics. Look in particular back 1 year (before the default view) at April 2016. In that month Windows was < 90% and the Mac was nearing 10%. Is there really such a large variability? Regarding other comments on Windows, it's all about where your starting point is. If your starting point is April 2016 then Windows is actually up.

Further I would like to see ChromeOS separated into its own category. Are we going to start counting Android running on a laptop as "Desktop Linux?" Do we care about the kernel or the userland?

</comment><comment><USER17> Linux is ready for a lot of people. Inset my parents up with Ubuntu six months ago and they like it. Not super tech savvy, they can wait word docs, email, and browse the web. All their purchase price went to hardware and none to Microsoft!

<comment><USER18> Have Ubuntu quit making a separate partition for /boot on install by default? In my experience, this was the reason most non tech savvy people quit using linux a decade ago.

The symptom was always the same : "I can't upgrade anymore". And the reason was always the same : like 20 different kernels in /boot, which has no more free space and was breaking upgrade process for any package.

EDIT : sorry to have to ask that, by the way : I'm on kde neon myself, but I always make my own partition scheme, so I can't answer that question.

<comment><USER19> Most Linux distributions do that by default today, Ubuntu included.

It is definitely one of those things where the default case has been made to cover everything and has gotten really complicated.

But the upgrade tool really should be smart enough to clean up the oldest kernels when /boot gets full. That's pretty sad if they haven't fixed that yet.

<comment><USER20> I think it's a fear thing. Do you wanna be the dev who introduces a bug to the /boot cleanup code and accidentally nukes all the kernels?

<comment><USER21> It's basically done already:

apt-get autoremove

It's just not enabled by default, you have to put it in /etc/cron.monthly, if you want it to just run for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I switched my gaming desktop over to Linux this year because I just couldn't stand Win10 any more. Ubuntu is, if anything, _less_ stable and _less_ user- friendly than when I left it nearly a decade ago (8.04 or 8.10 was when I got fed up and left, I think, mostly over Pulseaudio ruining everything), but Win10's just intolerable. I mean, 8 was bad, but this is another level of garbage. I've been a user of almost every desktop Windows since 3.1 (only exception: ME), plus a couple of the server/workstation versions (NT4, 2K), but 10 finally got me to drop it.

If the Mac Mini gets an update and external video card enclosures stop costing as much as an entire mid-tier video card and/or manage to convince me I won't have to replace them every 2-3 years to keep up, I'll probably go that way. Until then, it's Linux.

<comment><USER23> > Ubuntu is, if anything, less stable and less user-friendly than when I left > it nearly a decade ago (8.04 or 8.10 was when I got fed up and left, I > think, mostly over Pulseaudio ruining everything), but Win10's just > intolerable.

Give Debian a shot. Given that Ubuntu is based on Debian, plus some decisions of dubious worth, Debian is basically all the good parts of Ubuntu and none of the bad.

Agreed re. Windows 10. I have a Windows 10 laptop for use with software & websites which don't work on Linux (as an aside: websites that don't work on Linux: how is this even a thing in 2017?), and it's just appallingly bad. I have to wonder if the people behind its UI have ever actually _used_ it. This isn't an issue of unfamiliarity with Windows metaphors on my part: although I'm primarily a Linux user, I've been using Windows secondarily since the 90s, and Windows 10 is essentially unusable, at least on a laptop without a mouse.

<comment><USER22> > Give Debian a shot. Given that Ubuntu is based on Debian, plus some > decisions of dubious worth, Debian is basically all the good parts of Ubuntu > and none of the bad.

Debian and Gentoo were my main distros before I went to Ubuntu for its sensible defaults (c'mon early 2000s Debian, obviously I don't want Galleon or whatever, I want Firefox, and so on for basically every other Debian default program) and pretty good just-worksitude, but maybe I do need to give Debian another shot. If Ubuntu 17.10 isn't a big improvement (Wayland is finally a thing now I guess? Mostly-vanilla Gnome as the default DE again which is obviously the right move assuming they're not willing to jump onboard with one of the retro-Gnome DEs, so maybe it'll be good?) I might visit my old friend Debian.

> Agreed re. Windows 10. I have a Windows 10 laptop for use with software & > websites which don't work on Linux (as an aside: websites that don't work on > Linux: how is this even a thing in 2017?), and it's just appallingly bad. I > have to wonder if the people behind its UI have ever actually used it. This > isn't an issue of unfamiliarity with Windows metaphors on my part: although > I'm primarily a Linux user, I've been using Windows secondarily since the > 90s, and Windows 10 is essentially unusable, at least on a laptop without a > mouse.

Yep. I ditched Windows on my home desktop, but I have a Surface3 at work I have to use for certain testing. I don't know how people can be productive on it. The Surface3 itself is pretty bad (I was kind of excited to try it because I know the Surface line has a lot of positive buzz, but am now very confused where all that came from) but the hardware plus Win10 is a total disaster. Just, wow. And like you've I've spend a _lot_ of time over a _lot_ of years in Windows, so that's not the problem. Every time I use it any desire to go back to Win10 on my desktop vanishes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My notebook with Arch is my favorite. The reason: I can run the system without any desktop environment. I use just i3 as my window manager. Can't do this neither with Windows nor macOS.

<comment><USER25> Tiling WMs are just too good to pass up. In some ways I prefer my workflow on my 13" laptop with arch/bspwm to my massive dual monitor windows setup at work. As soon as you get used to it you wonder how you ever used a laptop without it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> As nice as Linux on the desktop can be sometimes, it was actually refreshing to come back to Windows 10, especially after my time with Arch.

I had forgotten how nice having certain things simply work out of the box was (wifi drivers, bluetooth drivers, etc).

I like Linux a lot, but its hard to see myself using it as a primary computer anymore, especially as a more personal, recreational machine.

<comment><USER27> > _I had forgotten how nice having certain things simply work out of the box > was (wifi drivers, bluetooth drivers, etc)._

If this is what you want, why did you pick Arch Linux out of all distros?

I'm using Linux Mint and it ran flawlessly out of the box on my ThinkPad.

<comment><USER26> Yea, I've used Mint. I didn't care for it. Arch was not my first pick, I used it after using it a bunch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Linux Desktop is definitely gaining more users. Personally, I didn't start really using Desktop Linux until Ubuntu 16.04. Now I use Ubuntu at work and Manjaro at home.

<comment><USER29> A fellow Ubuntu & Manjaro user!

<comment><USER30> All of that bump can be accounted for by back-to-school Chromebook purchases. That gives ChromeOS what is still a very low penetration, but perhaps as much as a third of "desktop" Linux, and a very high growth rate. I could see it outpacing legacy Linux distros in a year and challenging Mac OS in three years. Fast changes in a market that barely budges year to year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Are there really more than half as many Linux desktop users as Mac users? If so, it's heartening our share increasing, even if's still tiny.

FreeBSD and OpenBSD are pretty great OSs too. I wonder if their share isn't so tiny because BSD enthusiasts have an easy option of running a Mac and still have access to BSD tools under the hood.

<comment><USER32> > FreeBSD and OpenBSD are pretty great OSs too. I wonder if their share isn't > so tiny because BSD enthusiasts have an easy option of running a Mac and > still have access to BSD tools under the hood.

Yea and the driver situation for laptops on FreeBSD doesn't help. I've never had problems installing FreeBSD on server or desktop hardware, but on laptops either the wifi doesn't work or suspend and resume doesn't work, or of course both. But this reflects the goals FreeBSD so one shouldn't really be that surprised.

<comment><USER33> I run FreeBSD on my Laptop (X230) and i can assure you that both, wifi and suspend/resume, are working perfectly fine..

edit: Typo.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, awesome, what about the tens of thousands of other laptop models on the market?

<comment><USER33> Well, i can only account for the machines that i have, of course.. Most Business Laptops come with Intel Chipsets (Wifi, Ethernet, Graphics, etc.) throughout and at least these should be working fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is this finally the year of the Linux desktop???

<comment><USER36> Well how many years have they been predicting this? I guess it has won mobile.

<comment><USER35> Nobody uses Linux on mobile. Phone users use Android. Android uses Linux. Phone users do not use Linux.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Interesting, looking at their past data windows had a 5% drop in market share over the last 10 years (~95.5%>%90.5%) which is much larger than I was expecting.

</comment><comment><USER38> I've been a "Linux user" since 1998, but never have used it as my primary desktop. I recently tried going to Linux on an XPS 15 (with 4k display). I plugin into multiple monitors at home an work: 2 1920x1080, 1 2560x1440, and one 4k. I tried multiple distros, and even both Gnome and KDE Plasma. I'm sure given enough time I could have made it work, but eventually I had throw in the towel and go back to my MBP.

</comment><comment><USER39> One less user, as I've switched to macOS. Unix under the hood, working software/hardware with no or little fuss, sudo port ... works with all the free software I could want and the rest generally compiles relatively easily), and I can buy devices at a store and they 'just work.' Kernel is open source, and the rest is 'good enough'. I'd use linux for embedded, but as a desktop, not anymore.

<comment><USER39> macOS let's me get work DONE with the computer, not just work ON the computer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now to flip this over a bit, I wonder what the Linux mobile share is and the Linux embedded share is.

Not too many Windows CE devices around, and even some SCADA systems are moving to Linux.

Perhaps I'm biased, having used Linux on the desktop since late 1999/early 2000 or so.

<comment><USER40> Microsoft make more money from Android than their awful Windows phones.

Personally worked on SCADA systems for powers stations but never on windows, all DEC-Unix and Linux in fact how I got into linux in '97.

My kids both nearly teenagers have known only Linux and Apple (except Windows at schools*).

I recall also how many of those years were hailed as 'Year of the Linux Desktop'.

Also 'Linux' desktop - please people don't forget all the work by unsung heroes on e.g. KDE and Gnome apps, package managers, Drake installers, Compiz and Beryl, getting winmodems working, nvidia drivers, goddamn pulseaudio,... you get my drift.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Worth noting this is international. The share in a poor country where the additional cost of Windows matters paints a much different picture than the share would in the US, for example. (drilling down to country requires an expensive upgrade)

<comment><USER8> Most poor countries just pirate, so licenses don't play any role.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> When my 5 year old MacBook Air dies, and it doesn't look like I will have a replacement in the price range, I will go for a really lightweight laptop (I hope there'll be one like Air and similarly priced) and install ElementaryOS[0] on it.

My needs are simple - sleek, lightweight ~13 inch laptop with normal computing needs for movie, music etc and little bit of coding in Vim (or some other text editor) and all.

Linux Desktop has indeed come a long way since 2006 (that was when I introduced to them).

[0] [https://elementary.io](https://elementary.io)

<comment><USER42> How is this different from other linuxes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> makes sense. as majority of the population moves away from desktops, windows and mac will lose market share. the hardcore Linux users that aren't going anywhere will gain market share.

</comment><comment><USER44> Other source, PL traffic only, 2.36% in W34 2017: [http://www.ranking.pl/en/rankings/operating- systems.html](http://www.ranking.pl/en/rankings/operating-systems.html)

No visible bump in data, just slow growth from 1.55% in Q3 2015 through 2.00% in Q3 2016 to 2.40% in Q3 2017. So oversimplifying a bit it means about 4 converts per 1k citizens annualy.

</comment><comment><USER45> Having a Linux desktop is a no brainer. Linux laptops, on the other hand... Has anyone had a good experience with a Linux laptop? As soon as that's possible I'd happily ditch MacOS

<comment><USER46> I've had various Lenovo T series laptops at home and at work for over 10 years, either running Linux only, or as Linux/Windows switch-boot systems. The only reason I've ever had windows on any of those laptops is to run embedded development tools required by employers. The Linux part of the experience has been largely smooth and painless. Before purchasing, make sure that the video and wifi are well supported by Linux and meet the needs of your application, but I've found with most Lenovo's the laptops hit all the checkboxes for me.

I'm not trying to shill for Lenovo, there are certainly other quality laptops out there. I happen to like the pointing device and keyboard and general build quality, and I try not to spend a lot of time over-optimizing my purchases with a lot of research.

So, yes, I've had great experiences with Linux laptops.

<comment><USER47> The biggest trouble I had with my current T was due to me buying it immediately after launch, and it took some months before the usual distros started working with wifi and 3g modem without hickups.

<comment><USER46> Fair enough. Waiting until the pioneers' questions have been crawled by Google is a good strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> "This report contains preview data that has NOT been reviewed by Quality Assurance."

Does anybody know the methodology here?

I mean it could even be a spike from user now using chrome headless from cloud linux server.

<comment><USER49> Seems to be explained here: [https://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Methodology](https://www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Methodology)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> It's funny how it is ready for grandmothers and devs, but everyone in between will struggle with the commandline or 3rd party software at some point...

</comment><comment><USER51> I wonder if Windows 10's WSL is counted as Windows or Linux when computing this stat.

<comment><USER52> Are WSL users running _browsers_ from WSL? curl at least sends no user agent unless you manually enter one.

<comment><USER53> I somewhat regularly use Firefox from within the WSL. It's a privacy by obscurity thing for me though.

<comment><USER54> Doesn't that give you an amazingly unique fingerprint?

[https://panopticlick.eff.org/](https://panopticlick.eff.org/)

[https://amiunique.org/](https://amiunique.org/)

<comment><USER53> Seems so. But I meant more privacy on a local machine basis. That is, someone would _really_ need to dig through the filesystem to find browsing information, rather than just looking at the standard locations.

I recognize it's a weak privacy measure, but in my situation it gives me a mostly private browser on a shared user account.

<comment><USER54> OK. This sounds like a perfect use for either private browsing mode or another profile with history etc set to false though.

<comment><USER53> Private browsing wouldn't save any browsing information, which is something I want. Also, using another profile would reveal that the profile exists in the first place. Using the WSL is much more hidden.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Not sure this methodology can be trusted all that much. The same headline, 4 months ago, would read: "Linux desktop market share now less than 2%".

</comment><comment><USER56> So lets go back to 2009 when it was obvious Linux would kill Windows:

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/181640/linux_will_kill_window...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/181640/linux_will_kill_windows_says_former_microsoftie.html)

<comment><USER57> The point that the source for that article was making is that FOSS will kill proprietary software, not that necessarily that Linux will (near term) kill Windows. One only needs to look at Microsoft's open source push (e.g. [https://github.com/Azure](https://github.com/Azure), [https://github.com/Microsoft](https://github.com/Microsoft)) to see that that article's larger prediction is coming true.

<comment><USER58> It hasn't killed proprietary software at all though; if anything the average person interacts with more proprietary software per day than ever before. It's just than now it's all behind a web interface. It's notable that the Linux stats are being boosted significantly by Chromebooks. Ask RMS what he thinks of Chromebooks…

Weirdly an entire generation of developers have managed to convince themselves that by working on proprietary web apps they are somehow fighting the good fight on the side of FOSS.

<comment><USER8> That is the biggest irony of all, isn't it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Chiba-City Linux is very close to perfect as a "decision support and design" workstation. Tool performance, ubiquity, interoperability and stability are the big targets there. We have to name as a goal data and media asset durability and tool compatibility over years or decades.

Linux has virtues that end up conflicting. An occupational hazard of Linux as a tool and OS innovation platform are disruptions, disappointments, instability and dropped balls.

Other people are goofing off without enduring responsibility for a large user base. We confuse design criteria we inherit from the commercial world. Easy to use, easy to remember, easy to diagnose problems and "quick to getting going" are not the same always compatible design targets. The Window Manager wars took up tons of Linux desktop attention. Gaming is naturally an arena for hardware churn and 1-upmanship.

I have great hope for Linux desktop stability with government deployments and thus a global tug for stability against rushing breaking changes. The Linux platform and package manager contents are remarkable achievements.

<comment> Chiba-City Did I make a mistake? Is it unfashionable to be for well documented, reliable and stable Linux And OSS tools? I like old and new programming languages too. Those are not so incompatible. Is there a thematic disatisfaction I am missing?</comment></comment>


Time for third-party data brokers to emerge from the shadows? - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/its-time-for-third-party-data-brokers-to-emerge-from-the-shadows-94298 <comment><USER2> The fundamental issue is that the average person in the United States and Austrailia simply don't really care for their online privacy. Offer something free and people will happily sign up and give all sorts of personal information without any hesitation. Offer a loyalty card at a store with discounts, and people will happily sign up for it.

Even after the Snowden revelations, not much really happened to the government or the NSA. Even after the Experian breach, the credit rating agencies are still making good money.

The underlying reason for this is that except for minorities, most people in these countries never really experienced the downsides of this type of loss of privacy. This is in contrast to Europe, especially Germany where people in living memory experienced first hand how the government could use your private information to literally cause you and/or your family to be imprisoned, tortured, or even killed. Hence, there is a much greater appreciation for privacy in Europe and especially Germany.

It is for these reasons that I am pessimistic that the United States and Australia will really take privacy seriously at all in the near future.

<comment><USER3> People do care. They have very limited ability to make meaningful changes.

But you can look at the national do not call registry in the US, and it's popularity to see that when there are options, people are happy to use them.

<comment><USER4> I respectfully disagree with you. Most people (in the US) do not care. I used to work for an adtech company which engaged with all sorts of third party vendors (like Axciom, BlueKai, etc) and every time I would explain my job to most friends or strangers, people often rightly assumed that shady data dealing is what was going on behind ads and services like Facebook and seemed not to care. There has been little appetite to change this until recently, and frankly only because of Donald Trump. No one seemed to mind the Equifax hack, and no one wants to change their lifestyle or stop using services they enjoy just to support privacy. Until a company like Google or Facebook gets completely hacked and some truly incredibly embarrassing personal information gets made public on a mass scale, I think that sentiment in the US will continue.

<comment><USER5> Most people in the US may not care, but that's because they simply do not understand how it will (or already is) affect them.

The average person thinks that, at worst, they'll just see ads that are more _intelligent_ or targeted. Who cares, right?

The do NOT realize that these troves of data are going to be used to someday deny them health insurance, get them fired or not hired for some job, get screwed in job pay and benefit negotiations (due to companys like Experian selling you pay history to employers), be charged more than other consumers for the same product (due to being able to pay more), getting denied for loans or charged higher interest rates, not accepted to a school, refused entry in establishments because you're not a 'good' customer, etc.

And that is just what big business will do.

Wait 'till big governments around the world see just how much power the Chinese are able to exert over their populace playing the same data games.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps Americans are just confident that if these things start happening there will be ample opportunity to implement legislative fixes.

I mean c'mon...."Refused entry into establishments"? Unless the Civil Rights Act of 1964 somehow gets repealed I don't see this as very likely.

<comment><USER7> Legislative fixes would need to be implemented by the Congress — an institution trusted by only about 25% of Americans [1]. So I don't think it's fair to say that there is widespread confidence that this can be fixed with legislation.

[1] [https://www.npr.org/2018/01/17/578422668/heres-just-how- litt...](https://www.npr.org/2018/01/17/578422668/heres-just-how-little- confidence-americans-have-in-political-institutions)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would like to see a network graph of the gathering and exchange of people's information between these data brokers. It would simultaneously be really interesting and really shocking. I can't imagine how many thousands of DBs out there are with a smorgasbord of personal data.

<comment><USER9> Something like this existed for ad tech several years ago, showing which companies were brokering/selling what. It was basically just an infographic with company logos arranged on it, but it was still enlightening.

<comment><USER10> Maybe [http://idlewords.com/2015/11/the_advertising_bubble.htm](http://idlewords.com/2015/11/the_advertising_bubble.htm) ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't meanto be a party-pooper, but what I fear that will ultimately happen is "move slow and change as little as possible".

For FB to stop being the devil/cancer they are now, they have to drop all the current practices and burn many bridges/income with any outsider, and make a living with "just advertisments".

They will still make a good living from that, but greed is in human nature.

</comment><comment><USER12> The third-party brokers aren't the root problem. The problem is that Facebook themselves have unfettered access to all of this data.

It's a lot of trust to place in one company, whose motives inevitably won't align with your own, and who realistically you can't hold to account.

<comment><USER13> Google has as much data collected if not more. Every search you've ever typed, from where, and when. Every internet video you've watched and liked. When you're awake, when you're asleep, etc.

<comment><USER12> Indeed. I wasn't clever enough to avoid creating a Google account in the first place (although I'm pretty sure it was just a "Gmail" account back then).

I switched away from Gmail and Google Calendar a couple of weeks ago. I also disconnected my Google account from my phone. I haven't regularly used their web search in years.

I've used an email address at my own domain for years, precisely so I wasn't tied to Gmail, and therefore I haven't needed to spam my contacts or change a load of user accounts to a new email address.

It's almost a shame Google+ never took off, because then the non-tech media might be talking about Google in the same way as Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> my data, someone elses money

</comment><comment><USER15> backup: [https://web.archive.org/web/20180409214613/https://privacy.o...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180409214613/https://privacy.org.au/2018/04/09/its- time-for-third-party-data-brokers-to-emerge-from-the-shadows/)

<comment><USER16> Or, since it's reprinted with permission, here's the original article: [https://theconversation.com/its-time-for-third-party-data- br...](https://theconversation.com/its-time-for-third-party-data-brokers-to- emerge-from-the-shadows-94298)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yeah! Maybe we can model it after the big 3 consumer credit agencies! We can centralize all ppls info in one easy to access place!

This new organization will be much more honest than the current ones!

IMO For this to happen correctly it has to be decentralized, perhaps blockchain style.

<comment><USER18> ..or, people can just wise up to what is happening to them. For me, the key moment, was when Microsoft gave away Windows 10. I knew then, that I was the product, however I suspect that most people would not chew on why.

<comment><USER19> For most people that was great. It was microsoft finially listening to people who refused to pay so much for an OS.

I wonder how much it would take for people to wake up. Maybe if Microsoft came out in full support of Donald Trump maybe then people would start writing and caring about their privacy.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Aren't There More Female Entrepreneurs? - <AUTHOR> http://bothsid.es/G5Y

<comment><USER2> I read a fantastic piece a few years ago which discussed behavioural differences between men and women. They argued that there are two essential behavioural differences between the sexes:

1\. Women tend to have more intimate social networks than men. (Fewer people, stronger connections).

2\. In almost every aspect of life, women tend to deviate less from the mean. For better and often for worse, men are bigger risk takers.

This second point I find really interesting. Lots of statistical gender differences can be explained by this one fact. Apparently, if you plot male and female behavioural patterns on just about any scale (income, crime, exam marks, etc), women cluster around the mean more than men.

Some of the effects of this:

\- There are more men in prison.

\- More men run big companies.

\- Statistically, girls do better at high school. This is because the dropout guys bring the mean mark down more than the high achievers bring it up.

The best evolutionary justification I've heard is that humans were polygamous for large periods of our evolution. In a society where the top blokes got all the babes, it made a lot of sense to be a big risk taker. -- How else do you compete with attention from war heroes?

There was no benefit to risktaking behaviour in women because most women would reproduce anyway.

<comment><USER3> I think the article you're referring to is called "Is There Anything Good About Men", and has been submitted to Hacker News multiple times. Even though it doesn't have anything to do with technology it's one of the most insightful articles I've found here.

Here's a link to the article: <http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm>

(Note, I think this location copied the article from <http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm>, but I find the formatting on the first link is a bit nicer and easier to read)

If you want to browse the comments on previous submissions to HN, you can just follow the links on HNSearch: [http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=anything+go...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=anything+good+about+men)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps part of the problem is that, if you are the rare female wanna-be entrepreneur like I am, most of your co-founder possibilities are male. In an ideal world, this would not matter. But in practice, it can be a problem. For example, a coworker and I met up outside of work several times to see if he and I could successfully build some sort of project together outside of our main jobs. I was 26 and female. He was older and had a family. Something about hanging out outside of work together in the evenings without our spouses was just ... awkward. His wife was supposedly fine with it, but I have to wonder if she really was. There was a whole layer of weirdness about it that just wouldn't have existed if we'd been the same sex. It didn't work out in the end, but for reasons other than the social awkwardness. Still, the unusual nature of our relationship didn't help matters. I think that if I were to start a company, it would probably have to be with another woman.

<comment><USER4> Interestingly, the author of the blog post also says (in the comments) that he will not have 1-on-1 dinners with women because he doesn't want to make his wife uncomfortable!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Suster is playing catch with a bottle of nitroglycerin and doesn't see the danger.

It's DANGEROUS. I know: She DIED.

Warm advice to all concerned, girls, women, fathers, husbands, etc.:

Take it easy. Don't push it. At the first sign of problems, BACK UP.

Yes, there is an E. Fromm statement:

"Men and women deserve equal respect as persons but are not the same."

He continues with an explanation: During the French Revolution, Western Civilization got the idea that any difference was a threat of injustice and, thus, worked to eliminate as many differences as possible.

But, I warn you and urge you to assume:

Mother Nature was there long, long before Mark Suster, feminism, etc. and has deep defenses we do not want to encounter.

Or in simple terms, women who were really good at what men were good at are mostly not our ancestors.

What was good for Mark Suster's mother and Fred Wilson's wife and some other women I can list need NOT hold for your sister, wife, or daughter.

If your wife wants to spend time with your daughter talking and reading about people, being sensitive, sympathetic, and empathetic, trying hard to fit in and get praise, acceptance, and approval, building emotional intelligence, etc. and your daughter wants to play with dolls, help her mother with 'women's work', have vicarious emotional experiences reading stories about people, be pretty, meek, and sweet and avoid technical and mechanical topics, football, baseball, and basketball, then LET IT BE.

If she wants to major in art history, performing arts, theater, literature, the psychology and sociology of child development, etc. instead of mathematics, physical science, engineering, or business, then encourage her in her wishes and let it be.

Sure, she is likely on a path to a career with low pay and will need a good husband to take care of her. Right. Sorry 'bout that.

But, trust me, that's better than having her pursue some direction in 'men's work' where she keeps failing and finally dies trying.

It's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature. Warning: Don't try.

The goals of feminism and 'equality' go way back. There has long been 'tension' there. Don't expect the tension to go away. But, still, don't assume that the goals of feminism and 'equality' are available for your sister, wife, or daughter.

The assumption that women are just like men and can do just what men do except for the most obvious physiological differences just represents a potentially fatal lack of understanding about women. Sorry 'bout that.

In particular, in much of K-12, the girls, especially when the teachers are women, in academic performance commonly knock the socks off the boys. And in some fields in college, the young women retain some strong advantages over young men. But do not assume that even the very best performances in K-12 and college, e.g., Valedictorian, 'summa cum laude', PBK, mean that she can, of course, be 'equal' doing 'men's work' in the world of work. The real situation is MUCH more complicated than that.

If she wants to try, okay. But if there are problems, fairly quickly just assume that Mother Nature is getting her way and BACK UP.</comment>


Why Scala is Not Very Good (a knee jerk reaction) - nexus-uw https://nexus-rage-quit.blogspot.com/2016/02/why-scala-is-terrible-knee-jerk-reaction.html <comment><AUTHOR> Seriously? 6 hours when there are literally a dozen different libraries to do that in 10 minutes? When there are even some classes to support it built in the standard _Java_ API?</comment>


Mattermark Valuation Data for 40,000 Startups - <AUTHOR> http://mattermark.com/early-access-to-mattermark-valuation-data-for-40000-startups/

<comment><USER2> *(with signup and nonguaranteed selection)

The submission title is a little dishonest.

</comment><comment><USER3> hmm I don't know if it's just me but when I click the button, there's no way for me to tell whether my information was submitted.</comment>


Ask HN: How many tabs do you currently have open? - <AUTHOR>

How many different tabs/windows do you currently have open? <comment><USER2> ~200 ^_^, all in Firefox: On my 32 bit XP system used for email (Eudora) and Flash/video, 17 in 2 windows.

On my 64 bit Linux system, two instances: ~80 in 4 windows for system (e.g. BackupPC console) and technical stuff (e.g. HN, Clojure development) and ~100 in 8 windows for general news, politics, recreation, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> 83, across three windows in two browsers (chrome + firefox). I should probably cut them down a bit...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For me:

General + site related(email, actual site, admin panel, twitter, facebook etc.): 19

Entertainment(online radio/HN): 2 (i usually try to do all the distracting stuff in a single tab)

Business related resources: 50

</comment><comment><USER4> 32 Here. I treat them, with some exceptions, as a stack of stuff I've saved to read later. The exceptions are reference stuff I keep coming back to and HN.

<comment><USER5> What happens if your browser crashes?

<comment><AUTHOR> firefox saves your browsing history, so it just reloads when you come back(and you can even hit the back button)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 11\. I have ADD so I get upset when I have too many open, it's better for my concentration to close them down except for a select few, including HN.

</comment><comment><USER7> 39, typically anywhere from 25 - 75 if I'm working on something that requires me to do a lot of web research.

</comment><comment><USER8> I can have as many 142 tabs open. Performance on firefox is good, although they do eat memory :-)

</comment><comment><USER9> I have 42 tabs open. I use Firefox's tree tabs add-on. After pruning, I now have 22 tabs open.

</comment><comment><USER10> 12, but normally around 20.

</comment><comment><USER11> 13, including the 6 (such as this one) that I just opened from HN.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have 5 tabs open, including this one.

</comment><comment><USER13> 30, and it's usually higher,

</comment><comment><USER14> 2, but its usually near 10.

</comment><comment><USER15> 3 - but usually around 10.

</comment><comment><USER16> 12</comment>


Ask HN: Why do we drink coffee? - <AUTHOR> This morning an interesting shower-thought came to mind...why do we drink coffee?
Caffeine is the first thing I think of when I hear the word "coffee". Is that why we tend to drink it though? Let's create a thought experiment:
Product: average cup of coffee
Cup size: 8oz
Caffeine amount: ~95mg
Price: ~$2.50 USD
For fun, let's now double our cup size to be around 16oz, rough the caffeine amount to be ~200mg, and call it the average coffee drinker's cup size in the morning. These numbers are a rough estimate. Focus on what we are after here, not the average coffee drinker cup size per se.
If our sole purpose of drinking coffee were for ingesting caffeine, we are not being as efficient as we could be. Caffeine tablets are on the market. Here is what I found at my local grocery store:
Product: box of caffeine tablets - 40 count
Caffeine amount per tablet: 200mg
Total price: $8.29 USD
Price per tablet: $0.21 USD
If our sole goal here is caffeine intake, we just now found an alternative for caffeine ingestion for $0.21 USD per 200mg of caffeine, or one tablet in this case. Now we are being more efficient.
Now think of all of your typical morning interactions where you and others may be drinking coffee and replace that mental visual with all of you ingesting caffeine tablets instead. That picture does not look right to me. It would be and feel weird, would it not?
So why do we really drink coffee? Is it more than just for caffeine? It is for social acceptance? Is it a preconditioned cognitive response? Is it something else entirely?
What do you think? <comment><USER2> $2.50 for a cup of coffee? Only if you're paying for the "convenience" of take-out like Starbucks.

I buy locally roasted beans, grind them myself and brew my coffee in an Aeropress for sub-$0.50 a cup. It's low calorie, gives me a buzz, and I love the taste and comfort of a warm drink, especially in the Canadian winter.

Seems like a deal.

</comment><comment><USER3> People who take caffeine pills are more at risk of dangerous abuse.

It is like beer vs whisky. All the water in that coffee dilutes the caffeine.

There is a sensory experience component to addiction; I tried caffeine pills but wasn't satisfied and went back to coffee and sometimes tea.

</comment><comment><USER4> It tastes good? That's why people drink decaf

</comment><comment><USER5> For the aroma. Just the smell of a good cup of coffee at the right time can make my arm hairs stand on end.</comment>


Output Redirection With Bash - <AUTHOR> http://www.skorks.com/2009/09/output-redirection-with-bash/ <comment><USER2> Looking at your submissions, the most recent 30 (I didn't check further) are all from the same web site, a web site whose name bears a remarkable similarity to your username.

Also, most of them appear to be really, really trivial. Maybe that's just my viewpoint, but really, redirection in Bash? Have you tested these in other shells? Are they specific to Bash? Do they work in other operating systems?

Have you done anything other than write down something off the top of your head?

Maybe I'm being unfair, but I expect things lunk to from HN to contain some evidence of work being done. This, and all your other submissions, just look like blog spam.

<comment><AUTHOR> I write about new things I learn, old things I've forgotten more than once before, opinions on trends I see as well as my ideas about improving the software craft in some way. I submit the stuff I write to 2-3 places to spread it around, I figure that if I found it useful or interesting, other people might find it useful or interesting also.

I don't hide the fact that I submit the things I write, I also don't spend hours trawling the web for random things to submit. Instead I spend my time learning new things, coming up with ideas and opinions, reading and writing stuff in a format that others might find interesting.

I don't ask for votes or anything else from people, if they find what I write interesting they will read it, if not - they won't. By submitting something I give people a chance to read it and trust them to make up their own mind.

You find what I write trivial - don't read it. That's right, redirection in bash, i can't tell you how many times I've forgotten how to do it, and how many other people have as well. It is specific to bash, it doesn't work in other shells, it doesn't work in other OS's, if it did I would have said so in the article.

In this case, I've written something down off the top of my head; no offense but what have you written down lately? I hope that before you go ahead and label other people's work as spam, you will have produced a lot of high quality content of your own that can put all this 'trivial' stuff to shame. That's only fair right?

I am going to assume that your last 30 submissions were of the highest caliber and were all both educational and insightful. I could check of course, but instead I am going to go and learn something new and then write about it.</comment></comment>


India's millions of new Internet users are falling for fake news - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indias-millions-of-new-internet-users-are-falling-for-fake-news--sometimes-with-deadly-consequences/2017/10/01/f078eaee-9f7f-11e7-8ed4-a750b67c552b_story.html <comment><USER2> The obvious problem is that the dissemination of news these days is determined by how many arbitrary or ignorant individuals have clicked "like" or "upvote" on whatever social network they're using.

It doesn't need to be true, it just needs to be shocking, and people will promote it.

This is only fixed by good moderation, with prominent (and powerful) "flag" buttons like Hacker News has. Hacker News and Reddit don't suffer from nearly as much fake news, because moderation teams tend to do a good job of weeding out garbage, and have an easier time with the prominent report buttons.

Facebook and social networks have absolutely no moderation.

<comment><USER3> >Facebook and social networks have absolutely no moderation.

Sure they do. They just have zero incentive to remove fake news content. It makes them money, brings in users, everyone is happy! What could be wrong? What's good for Facebook is good for the world!

<comment><USER2> Oh, you're right. I forgot that they moderate things that are illegal in nature.

But it's still the bare minimum.

<comment><USER4> You sound like you want them to do more moderation?

It amazes me that we've reached the point where there are commenters on _Hacker News_ arguing in favour of online censorship.

<comment><USER5> > _It amazes me that we 've reached the point where there are commenters on > Hacker News arguing in favour of online censorship._

Why? Do you think that HN is a moderation-free bastion of unfiltered speech?

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I emphasised HN because I perceive it to be a place where "enlightened people" (in a non-sarcastic sense) tend to hang out. And therefore, of all the discussion forums I can think of, HN is the one that is most likely to have a view on censorship that prefers freedom of speech rather than suppression of wrong-thinking.

<comment><USER6> > _And therefore, of all the discussion forums I can think of, HN is the one > that is most likely to have a view on censorship that prefers freedom of > speech rather than suppression of wrong-thinking._

You appear to be suffering from the misapprehension that "freedom of speech" means "the HN community should tolerate bullshit" rather than "you can't be put in jail for bullshit". The difference is extremely important to many of us.

<comment><USER4> I wasn't talking about moderation on HN at all. I was talking about moderation on Facebook.

<comment><USER6> > _I wasn 't talking about moderation on HN at all. I was talking about > moderation on Facebook._

So was I. But you're talking about the people here.

I don't see why you think it matters where scam blocking happens. So far in these comments you seem to be saying that scamming needs to be defended as a practice. That's a hugely psychopathic position, so I hope the interpretation is wrong. But when you use the phrase "freedom of speech" against moderation of fake news, which are scams perpetrated on the vulnerable public, not a synonym for "news you don't want to hear", it becomes hard to interpret otherwise. I think that most people here would probably say that Facebook isn't a place where social responsibility should vanish, and part of responsibility, part of having a conscience, is protecting people, both individually and collectively, from scammers. Because Facebook is not a copper wire. Facebook is an interconnected network of its participant members, just like HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This has nothing to do with poverty. The US population is just as guilty of believing in fake news, they even elected a president based on rumors. And now the president himself fabricates and spreads such fake news with support of his propaganda machine.

<comment><USER8> _The US population is just as guilty of believing in fake news_

Because it's pushed to the top of algo-driven newsfeeds, and originates with people with blue checkmarks after their names

<comment><USER9> For anyone else who didn't know what the "blue checkmark" means in this context:

Twitter et al. apparently us the blue checkmark to indicate they have vetted the identity of that social media account, and they vouch for @ev[0] being Mr Williams while @finkd may or may not be Mr Zuckerberg.[1]

At least on Twitter, it has a "first-prize ribbon" look to it, as if being the blue-checked Mr Williams were an achievement superior to that of the second (red) Mr Williams and the others on down.[2]

[0]: [https://twitter.com/ev](https://twitter.com/ev)

[1]: [https://twitter.com/finkd](https://twitter.com/finkd)

[2]: [http://www.trophies2go.com/wp/wp- content/uploads/2016/03/RBB...](http://www.trophies2go.com/wp/wp- content/uploads/2016/03/RBB2BS.jpg)

<comment><USER8> _Twitter et al. apparently us the blue checkmark to indicate they have vetted the identity of that social media accoun_

Not anymore - now it means Twitter endorses what they say. I mean does someone stop being themselves once they break the ToS? If not, why withdraw it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Simple minded people - those without a willingness to question and consider, will always be led around by false information. It doesn't matter whether it's rural Texas or India.

Until we instill in people a willingness to think, question, and consider, we will continue to be plagued by ignorant masses. It doesn't help when there exists an active, malicious business model designed to keep ignorant people as willfully ignorant followers. *autocorrect fix

<comment><USER11> You are forgetting there is a real time & cognitive cost associated with performing analysis, especially if you are already biased on the issue. It's the same reason people can't stick to diets. People want to feel good now. So if you can give them another reason to like/hate Trump, you will find little resistance.

<comment><USER12> Sure but there is a coarser option (especially on social networks) - unsubscribe from bad groups and generally keep yourself away from stuff that has proven itself to be an unworthy source of information. It requires some amount of thought upfront but after that, it improves your experience. This is similar to you subscribing to a good newspaper rather than any tabloid rag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm optimistic this will be solved in the near future -- it is a UX problem. Like the "Not secure" in browser, what we need is a "Potentially fake" icon that can be flagged/used on various platforms.

The advent of the fact-checker platforms is the first bit. Next would be API/automation, followed by the UI/UX changes.

<comment><USER14> The problem is that the incentives are perverted. With "Not secure", the platform has an incentive to deploy https. With fake news tho, they are potentially making money from explosive news so why would they go out of their way to combat it.

Like facebook is claiming to be combating it but I don't think they care that much. I can't help but feel they are combating it due to the uproar, not due to the goodness of their heart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is going to be another Rwanda-scale genocide somewhere because of rumors on social media, eventually. Billions of people without the intellectual toolchest to determine truth from falsehood, eventually it's going to get out of control and a lot of people are going to get killed.

One can argue it's already happening to the Rohinga.

I think we as a species need to make a serious effort to educate people in really basic critical thinking skills and teach people a healthy skepticism, and how to evaluate evidence and chains of reasoning.

It's counter to everything we've been teaching the masses up till now, which is to respect authority, because it's easy to control them that way.

Without centralized mass media, that's no longer an option. Manufactured consent will no longer be available as a means to maintain stability in society, and we'll have to figure out how to do it with everyone able to think and learn for themselves.

<comment><USER16> Be careful what you wish for. Skepticism about official experts/science/the government is helping fake news a lot, eg here in Italy.

<comment><USER15> 'healthy skepticism'

My point was that teaching people to just trust what they read has lead them astray. They used to trust the 'mass media' who largely hewed to the 'the establishment' line. Now that the mass media isn't the only source of information for most people, they'll believe basically any nonsense.

People _should_ be skeptical of the establishment media. They should be skeptical of _everything_. What you need to teach people is how to properly apply skepticism to figure out what might or might not actually be true, and why.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Many fake news stories appear to support India's ruling Bharatiya Janata > Party and its right-wing Hindu nationalist agenda, said Jency Jacob, > managing editor for boomlive.in, a fact-checking website.

That right there is a "fake news" in itself. Both sides of the aisle has to be blamed for the situation. As much there is agenda from the right wing, there has also been concentrated effort from the left wing too.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think that humans are going to find out that algorithmic news feeds are not a good way for people get information. AI shouldn't decide what knowledge is consumed. RSS and Atom are much better solutions.

<comment><USER19> Why would they stop using algorithmic news feeds when those bring in way more clicks and ad revenue than RSS style feeds? I just don't see it changing ever now that sites can tailor their pages for each viewer to maximize their profits and keep people on their site.

<comment><USER18> > Why would they stop using algorithmic news feeds when those bring in way > more clicks and ad revenue than RSS style feeds?

The probably won't. They shouldn't kid themselves that they are making the world a better place though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Lots of people hate the way China does things (including me) but they have a long history of "harmoniously" controlling large populations and probably have learned a thing or two.

So my guess is the future consists of more "harmonizing" globally. Which I don't like, largely because it's opportunity for corruption, but the cost of that might ultimately be less than the cost of the current free for all.

In some ways I feel like we are living in the twilight of a form of savage freedom. Which I personally relish because it's what I'm used to.

I imagine for some the transition will be similar to what happened to Aboriginal peoples throughout history.

"You mean I have to wear pants and show up at 8AM for school every day? Are you crazy? That's horrid! Why would anyone do that? I certainly won't be!".

 _" Yes, but then you'll have all the food you can eat and will never be cold!"._

"Eh, I don't know. I'd rather do what I want and go hungry sometimes. No deal!"

 _" Ok, now you are causing problems for others who want to have all the food _they_ can eat. Look here, now see this gun?"_

</comment><comment><USER5> > _Last week, newspapers here carried full-page advertisements by Facebook > that explained how to spot false news._

I guess that's cheaper than hiring additional moderators, or figuring out how to temper this issue with technological solutions - but shouldn't this be a big flag to Facebook that there is indeed a huge problem?

<comment><USER21> Do you like end-to-end encryption? Because this is what you get with end-to- end encryption.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, are you saying that Facebook can't see the content that's stored on their servers? That when my mom posts a picture of some roses, that nobody between me and her can see what the image is of?

<comment><USER21> Not Facebook. Whatsapp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The majority in this thread are not willing or able to put 'fake news' in correct context with propaganda and censorship. I even see a comment basically saying that freedom of expression in the West will eventually be like it is (not) in China and suggesting that is probably for the best anyway.

So I believe that apathy or this lack of/incorrect context will have very significant consequences.

I just hope that people will research the long and ongoing history of censorship and propaganda and try to see the correct connection with "fake news" and the suggestions for suppressing it.

</comment><comment><USER23> The bigger threat than Facebook is Whatsapp. India is Whatsapp's biggest market and while sometimes people point out the fake news on Facebook, the fake WhatsApp forwards go completely unchecked. There can be hopes that Facebook will manage to curb fake news in the future, but the senseless rumors and propaganda will continue on Whatsapp.</comment>


Metasploit Framework 3.3 Released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.metasploit.com/2009/11/metasploit-framework-33-released.html

<comment><USER2> I'm very interested but don't get it. What does it do and how does it work.

<comment><USER3> It's a network security tool used for exploiting security holes in Windows systems in order to inject a remote control payload. It does have white-hat utility, but my sense is that it's mostly used for grey and black-hat activities.

Unlike the usual "script kiddie" Linux rootkits, it is largely focused in exploration and control of a single machine, but the building blocks Metasploit provides could easily be used to construct botnets, especially in dense networks like college campuses or medium-sized businesses without a strong IT security focus.

<comment><USER4> Not only for Windows systems. It can be used for exploits against any OS.

And it's used in exploit development as well as execution.</comment></comment></comment>


Only have a 5 percent chance of avoiding 'dangerous' global warming - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/07/31/we-only-have-a-5-percent-chance-of-avoiding-dangerous-global-warming-a-study-finds/?utm_term=.4bae9019b9dd <comment><USER3> I don't know how anybody can take models like this seriously. It's about as valid as any of these economists models. Hell, it is partly an economic model.

Reading the paper, they make a big deal about the out of sample testing - <USER2> given that there is a clear trend, is anybody surprised the model fits? Do you even need a fancy Bayesian hierarchical model or would a regression have predicted the same thing.

To top it off there's not mention of the CO2 cycle and the forces sucking CO2 out of the air they just assume the CO2 is cumulatively stasis in the air for perpetuity.

Shit like this, wins you great points with the environmentalists, who want ammo to throw at polluters. I get it - pollution is shit. But we shouldn't use falsehoods to achieve an outcome even if it's a good outcome. This is the reason why there is growing discontent for climate science. We need it now more than ever, but the academic community just publishes bullshit and yells at us if we doubt the veracity of their models.

We've had a period of cooling that none of their models have predicted, and instead of saying, hey we aren't that good at modelling, they and everyone else who went all-in politically on these models have started a hate campaign against skepticism.

It's a strange world where scientists use the word 'skeptic' as a derogatory term.

<comment><USER4> > I don't know how anybody can take models like this seriously. It's about as > valid as any of these economists models. Hell, it is partly an economic > model.

Because bill nye, leonardo di caprio and Al Gore told us it is 100% correct and they are the greatest scientists in human history.

It's crazy how this global warming political movement has hijack science to push their agenda.

> We've had a period of cooling that none of their models have predicted, and > instead of saying, hey we aren't that good at modelling, they and everyone > else who went all-in politically on these models have started a hate > campaign against skepticism.

It's funny how model after model has proven rather suspect and yet you will get called anti-science or a denier if you don't accept their model 100% without question.

If only the global warming movement had more humility of scientists rather than the total conviction of a cult members, I'd take them more seriously. And if they were more honest about the data and the science of climate rather than lying about it.

<comment><USER5> Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, two things: 1) that your assertion that environmentalists and public figures in media, politics, and (what we'll call, with marginal disrespect, "pop") science are lacking in humility and unwilling to admit any flaw in their predictions or assertions is a fair assertion, and 2) that they are generally correct in their concern about pollution in general and the effect of carbon emissions on global temperatures and weather patterns in particular, and that this is a risk to the welfare of many people around the world.

Do you suppose that environmental activists are more likely to achieve their important objective of dramatically reducing carbon emissions by admitting even mild uncertainties in the rationale for their position in effort to appeal to educated, reasoned people like you, or by adhering to a steadfast narrative, increasingly accepted by the masses, that anthropogenic climate change is creating a severe risk to the welfare of people the world around?

<comment><USER6> there's another thread of articles currently high up on Hacker News about Baltimore cops planting evidence. I don't like police doing that, and I don't like climate scientists being cavalier with the science "for the greater good".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yeah, well, this has been basically obvious for a while now: the world simply didn't develop the political will to deal with climate change in time to make a difference. It's probably still worth pretending that we have a chance, if that fiction helps us make changes that will mitigate some of the effects, but we're really just deciding whether we're going for "bad" or "worse". If we were going to achieve a good outcome, we'd have to have gotten serious a decade or two ago.

</comment><comment><USER8> "So you're saying there's a chance"</comment>


Research to Measure Typosquatting Perpetrators and Funders - <AUTHOR> http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2010/02/17/measuring-typosquattings-perpetrators-and-funders/

<comment><AUTHOR> Yet more proof that the world appears to reward those who behave unethically rather than creating something of value.</comment>


Ask HN: How to work with a designer? - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys,
I'm sure this question is pretty naive. I'm a developer that has mostly done software. The web stuff I have done has been enterprise, where presentation and design has not mattered as much as the functionality.
I want to get started in producing some nice looking public websites as side projects and hiring a designer online when needed.
Having not worked alongside a designer before, I'm not really sure of the best process for doing so.
I'm used to working with web frameworks like ASP.NET MVC and just using the available controls then adding some images etc and presto!
What process do people use for working with designers to establish a pixel-perfect design early and then integrating that with your web framework of choice?
What things should I ask of a designer to ensure the process goes fairly smoothly?
Thanks!
T <comment><USER2> Don't just find someone who does good graphic design, you want somebody that understands interaction design/HCI who is familiar with affordances and can help you flesh out the key use cases.

remember that design is not just lipstick for your app, it starts at the beginning of the journey by analysing what you want to achieve, what you want your users to be doing and, ultimately, how you go about designing the system itself to help users achieve their goals. you would be surprised at how heavy an impact design can have on your architecture.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey, I'm pretty badass. I'd like to send you a few examples of my work and way of working. You'll be impressed. Mail me at email@example.com.

Oh and btw, you might want to add a way of having people contact you via hn; just for future reference.</comment>


Why Medieval Castle Staircases Ran Clockwise - <AUTHOR> https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/609669/why-medieval-castle-staircases-ran-clockwise <comment><USER2> I feel like this is the kind of content that is slowly ruining the internet. Take a single interesting fact (cribbed from a different blog), put it in the second paragraph, write three other paragraphs of gunk to surround it, press publish, and repeat dozens of times a day for twenty bucks a pop or whatever a freelance writer gets paid for this kind of content.

And there it is, indexed forever, clogging up search results, and stopping you from finding more substantive articles on the same subject.</comment>


Health Insurance for Dribbblers - <AUTHOR> https://dribbble.com/stories/2017/11/08/health-insurance-for-dribbblers <comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious. Is there anything preventing larger players from moving in on insurance?

I'm not familiar with the insurance industry, but announcement this has the gears turning in my head. It would seem like Facebook, Google, Snapchat, and Twitter have the data to determine if you smoke, drink or take drugs. Perhaps, they would be able to price risk more accurately that traditional insurers?

Thinking beyond health insurance—they know how often you lose, break or replace your smartphone. I'm both amazed and frightened by the opportunities.</comment>


Google's Plan to Kill Internet Explorer? Google Wave - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/09/22/google-wave-internet-explorer/ <comment><USER2> This presumes that Wave will be compelling enough _to IE users_ that they will finally install a different browser. My prediction: it won't be. But I hope I'm wrong.

<comment><USER3> Google is on a roll right now. Wave looks great. The question is if it'll become as prevalent as Gmail or as ignored as Google Docs.

<comment><USER4> Why do you say Google docs is ignored? It's unglamorous and low key, but I use it heavily, as do many of my friends.

<comment><USER5> Not that anecdotal evidence is anything to go by, but I know nobody who uses Google docs. Absolutely nobody. In fact the only place I see this mentioned as a real competitor to anything is on reddit and HN.

Whoever I know who needs a Office-suite and doesn't want or have access to Microsoft Office just installs OpenOffice.org instead.

There is simply no way to claim that Google Docs has hit the mainstream, not even among so called power-users. I very much respect Google Docs on the technical merits of actually making it work, but I just prefer a local desktop application for this kinda work.

<comment><USER4> Google docs isn't a replacement for office apps, in my opinion. The main benefit, to my mind anyway, is that it allows for super easy collaboration across the internet. It takes so few clicks to create a document and share it with a few people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> IE6 must die, anyone that tried to develop a webapp and make it compatible with IE6 knows the pain. It is broken and orders of magnitude slower than any other browser.

The are not trying to kill IE, they are just trying to fix this. Any attempt to make IE6 users upgrade is good for them and for the developers

</comment><comment><USER7> Those who see this as a move somehow "against Microsoft" should realize that nothing would please Microsoft better than to no longer have to support IE6.

<comment><USER8> So why doesn't Microsoft just announce that they will no longer be supporting IE6?

What are the companies who have IE6-only applications going to do? They'll have to upgrade or consciously continue to use an obsolete browser. Did they sign contracts with businesses that state they'll support IE6 forever or something?

Microsoft employees may hate supporting IE6, but someone in charge there doesn't mind it so much.

<comment><USER9> _So why doesn't Microsoft just announce that they will no longer be supporting IE6?_

They have, it's the same as XP's (8 April 2014). You answer your own question: products as widespread as IE6 cannot just be withdrawn overnight. It's quite a sensible move have the end-of-life the same as XP, when the corporate desktop moves from XP there IE6 will effectively be dead. Microsoft would like this to happen earlier I understand: it has to cost them money to maintain so much code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't think that requiring a plug-in (i.e. Google Frame) qualifies as 'killing' IE.

<comment><USER9> Agreed, it's extending the usefulness of the platform. Saying nothing of IE7 or IE8: which are IE too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How Microsoft of them.

<comment><USER12> Outlook Web Access requires Internet Explorer 6 or higher to allow you to use the full version.

That is more up Microsoft's alley. The article is a better example of doing good through some bad, a moral quandary.

Microsoft's schtick is to sit there and tell you with a straight face that browsers like Chrome, Firefox & Opera (and all Mac browsers) can't possibly display a calendar in a month view. This is a feature unique to the rendering powerhouse that is IE6 or higher.

It just doesn't seem like the same thing to me. One seems to further the progress of the web through less than reputable means, the other is intentional crippling for no gain whatsoever other than locking out your competitors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have an unsubstantiated theory: gmail's rich features, chat, cal etc -- that didn't originally work on IE -- got a lot more people to switch to FireFox than security concerns.

</comment><comment><USER14> Whatever gets the job done. Can't wait for it to happen.

</comment><comment> onreact-com I'd prefer a more matter of fact source like this one: "Google Chrome Injects Itself Into Internet Explorer With Chrome Frame" [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_launches_chrome_...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_launches_chrome_frame_internet_explorer_plugin.php)

</comment><comment> onreact-com The German government is advising NOT to use Google Wave for privacy reasons.

<comment><USER15> I know I don't take advice from highly censorious individuals, let alone government bodies :)</comment></comment>


Running Your Own Private Docker Registry - <AUTHOR> https://notes.ceondo.com/docker-registry/

<comment><USER2> Is it possible to restrict images uploading with authentication, but keep images downloading without authentication?

<comment><AUTHOR> I suppose yes, as you can do basic authentication on POST/PUT and let without basic authentication on GET. But this will require you to setup the correct rights at the Nginx level.</comment></comment>


Vitamin D: A dosing down? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2010/11/vitamin_d_a_dosing_down.html

<comment><USER2> I'm a person currently battling Stage IV cancer, with a 30% chance of surviving 3 years, and which I got from a vitamin D deficiency (Advanced Nodular Melanoma). My Vitamin D deficiency was off the charts, attributed to an entire life in front of a computer (to say i'm "pale" would be an understatement, as i'm sure is the same for a lot of us on this site).

Every few days a new link is sent to me about "new studies" showing that Vitamin D in 'x' amount or 'y' amount is required/dangerous/whatever.

I see one of the best Oncologists in the country about my ongoing treatment, and he has had me on 3000IU a day over the last 6 months, and it has made me feel better in so many ways. Everyone says I look healthier, I have more energy, I sleep better, and I just feel more "alive", even as the cancer eats away at me inside.

I'm not knowledgeable enough to weigh in one what the perfect amount is, or what the limit is, as I don't understand most of it, but 1 thing I know is that the deficiency vs how I feel now is 2 different people, so it's definitely an important health aspect that needs to be better understood.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dr Will Davis has a post on the brief. [http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-institute- of-...](http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-institute-of-medicine- should-have.html)

Section of Text:

Instead of a careful, science-minded conclusion that meets the painfully conservative demands of crafting broad public policy, the committee instead chose to dogmatically pull the discussion back to the 1990s, ignoring the flood of compelling evidence that suggests that vitamin D is among the most important public health issues of the age.

Believe it or not, this new, though anemic, RDA represents progress: It's a (small) step farther down the road towards broader recognition and acceptance that higher intakes (or skin exposures) to achieve higher vitamin D levels are good for health.

My view: Vitamin D remains among the most substantial, life-changing health issues of our age. Having restored 25-hydroxy vitamin D levels in over 1000 people, I have no doubt whatsoever that vitamin D achieves substantial benefits in health with virtually no downside, provided 25-hydroxy vitamin D levels are monitored.

<comment><USER4> Here is the vitamin D Council's rebuttal to the IOM's new recommendations, written by John Cannell, an MD and long-time commentary-man on vitamin D science: [http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/vdc-statement-fnb-vitamin- d-r...](http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/vdc-statement-fnb-vitamin-d- report.shtml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Things missing in the report brief:

What form of Vitamin D? D-3?

How does this play into the fact that an adult body in direct summer sunlight produces several thousand units within a half hour?

<comment><USER6> I used to take 3000IU in the morning and 3000IU in the evening regularly (but not for a long time - for a few months, maybe 4-5). I can't point and say "i felt better here and here" though. I didn't feel any negative effect too. I'm still taking Vitamin D3 regularly, but often forget, so on average I may take about 10000IU a week.

I don't remember the source, but I think a lifeguard on the beach would produce about 8000IU of Vitamin D during a day.

<comment><USER5> The figures I've seen are much higher than that. By the end of the day, the lifeguard should have produced 20,000IU, but that is mostly because after the concentration reaches about 20,000, the sunlight begins to break down any excess, so it cannot climb higher than that. Interesting chemistry.

So it begs the question - where did the "4000IU max intake" figure come from?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The big problem here is that no one actually really knows just how much vitamin D is necessary. So their claims of X units per day recommended are just as bogus as those claiming 2X or 3X.

Until we can actually figure out just where all that vit D is supposed to be used in the body, we're just making it up.

(It should be noted that this study only seems concerned with bone growth-- something we are not sure of yet is vitamin D's only function)

</comment><comment><USER8> The actual 'report brief' is a lot better. It's at [http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2010/Dietary-Reference-Intakes- fo...](http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2010/Dietary-Reference-Intakes-for-Calcium- and-Vitamin-D.aspx)

The takeaway is that the maximum daily level intake they have is 4000IU for adults and their recommendation is 600IU.</comment>


Ask HN: Downvoting etiquette - <AUTHOR>

What is the etiquette with regards to downvoting?  Although I haven't accumulated sufficient karma to downvote, I always thought that you should upvote posts you agree with,  respond to reasonably argued posts you disagree with, and only downvote content that actually doesn't contribute to the discussion.<p>Is there some other standard people use?<p>(Yes, I'm asking because I received my first downvote today, in this thread - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1207721 - where my post, while contrarian, did seem like it was part of the discussion). <comment><USER2> For a contrary (but perhaps former) view of the site founder, see

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171>

"I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.

"It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against that."

A few months ago, the site founder, pg, asked about whether implementing more flagging options for marking comments would help make more clear what the community thinks of various comments.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006589>

There was some interesting discussion in that thread. On my part, I will just try to follow the local cultural rules and do what I can to contribute interesting content to the site, and to discourage postings that don't contribute to the site. I am just one participant among thousands here, and I don't get to set any of the rules.

I will ask an informational question here. You wrote, "I always thought that you should upvote posts you agree with," but that is not parallel to your idea "only downvote content that actually doesn't contribute to the discussion." In other words, is it possible that some kinds of content deserve upvotes even if you don't agree with it? And, on the other hand, is it possible that we all should downvote certain comments whether or not we agree with them? But let me emphasize the positive, as I have attempted to do before,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1065084>

and ask everyone reading this thread, "What Kinds of Comments Should Be Upvoted?" What comments are good comments, and contribute to the discussion even if you don't agree with them? I like comments that add new verifiable information to the discussion, even if they force me to change my mind.

</comment><comment><USER3> No, people shouldn't be downvoting comments just because they disagree with you. However, if you say something that goes against the grain, you're going to get downvoted every now and then anyway. It helps to develop a thick skin, or better yet, try to ignore comment scores altogether.

</comment><comment><USER4> My experience tells me that (1) people certainly _do_ downvote simply for disagreement and (2) it's simply not much worth worrying about.

The Guidelines seems to me to get it just right (see link in the site's footer):

>> Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.</comment>


The tricks behind nature documentaries - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/21/AR2010092105782_pf.html <comment><USER2> Regarding Man v.s. Wild: The entire premise of the show is false. They claim to drop Bear Grylls in some remote location where he has to make it back to civilization. But in reality they seem to just drive around and film him doing stunts, see e.g.:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UpSlpvb1is>

Worse, a lot of the behavior on that show is terrible survival behavior. E.g. when they did the episode in Iceland Grylls at one point jumped into a water filled ravine to make it to the other bank, and planned to dry off in some geothermal area he could see in the distance.

Firstly there's no ravine like that in Iceland that you couldn't easily walk around in 5-10 minutes without getting yourself wet, and secondly jumping into freezing water in the wilderness and thinking you can dry yourself off in some unfamiliar geothermal area you can spot in the distance is beyond stupid.

Most of the world's geothermal areas (including Iceland's) are just a collection of steaming holes in the ground, or water either too hot or too cold to dry off in. It's much better to stay dry than to take such a chance.

There are examples like that in virtually every episodes. E.g. Grylls climbing down a waterfall that he could trivially have walked around.

<comment><USER3> Any more examples of terrible survival behavior?

<comment><USER4> Its very hard to find examples of good survival behaviour in Grylls' work.

Essentially, if you are on your own, with no rescue coming, you must be super conservative in everything you do. A simple and common broken ankle is now a fatal wound.

With this in mind, you don't charge around everywhere like Grylls does. You don't climb anything you could fall off, you don't make any big jumps. You move slowly and carefully, conserving energy and minimising risk.

Pretty much everything he does, from start to finish, as he runs around for the camera, while entertaining television, is a terrible survival template. You find very few experienced mountain guides that run around like Bear does.

<comment><USER5> I think the entire notion of finding your way back is silly. One of the keys of survival is letting someone know where you are and when you will be back.

If you go missing, people will come looking with a general idea of where you are, and how far you could have traveled. Once you start trekking around because you saw a river and rivers always lead to civilizations, that's what Bear said, you start increasing the area you could be, while wasting calories and risking injury.

Conserve your energy, make yourself visible (fire, mirror, bright colors, signals), and try to have a decent time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was up in Churchill, Manitoba this past summer, home to many polar bears. Some locals told me stories about film makers who come to the North with their "the bears are all dying" narrative already set, and being very distraught when they couldn't be taken to a skinny polar bear, because they were, indeed, all fat at that time of year.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Survivorman" is much more tame than "Man vs Wild", but I doubt "Survivorman" would actually get more rating.

Who would want to watch a guy starve half of the time and subsists himself on the small flora and fauna he can catch? Nobody. But it's much more realistic and I think much more informative.

<comment><USER8> I always wish they would make clear "rules of engagement" in shows like Man vs Wild. In other words the crew is not allowed to provide any assistance or interference until the person trying to survive says its an emergency, and they would show that moment on film. That would add drama and achieve a clearer view of what the experience is really like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some of these examples are silly. Adding sound effects (Foley) is completely standard practice. The fact that Winged Migration involves training birds to fly next to cameras is fully documented in the "making of" feature on the Winged Migration DVD and was never hidden.

On the other hand giving multiple animals a single name and pretending there's an unbroken drama is disturbing because it genuinely distorts stories and might teach the wrong lesson, for example that a species is doing fine, when in fact it's facing major obstacles.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is sad. What made environmental programs worse for me is the human interaction (and human interest) stories that they try to create. Usually it is a person catching or wrestling with a wild animal (they usually try to justify this for some obscure reason instead of admitting it is for television).

Probably the best example of this is Steve Irwin's shows.

But this probably just mirrors what people want. Everything should be instant gratification - like getting drive through hamburgers.

I personally think that if they set up nice highres cameras at a watering hole (with nice internet connection) it would be better. You would then be able to watch the water hole all day and it would be cheap.

Imagine laying on a couch on a Saturday, reading a book while eying the watering hole in HD on your television/PC...

<comment><USER10> I believe there's definitely a role for "curated" [to tie it back to another ongoing discussion] nature/environmental programs, but I really like your idea of an HD watering hole feed. Does anybody know of anything like it? Something that could just be left to run on your TV and maybe you might happen to catch something amazing if you looked up at just the right time?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Image is always manipulated one way or another, willingly or inadvertently, for the form or to change its meaning. Nothing really that new there. Like the sound of the bear paw ion the water example: did anyone really think they had a mike pole right above the beast? Did I miss something?

<comment><USER12> I would like to see it again but I think Flaherty's Nanook <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013427/> feels much more real than most of more recent nature movies. Even if there is always some artificial human hand behind (be it only the cutting of the reels), some movies are good and some aren't, and in this documentary genre "good" should not mean bloody spectacular, it should mean just real. In the article someone draw the line to Gorilla suits, I would draw it much closer to Flaherty's way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if one can define a loose version of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for all documentaries: the more closely involved the film-maker is to the action, the more he/she influences it.

A scene which vividly comes to mind is in _Harlan County, USA_ , where the film-maker gets shot at (!) by one of the anti-union thugs.

<comment><USER14> There is a fantastic documentary about a documentary, Santiago, ( <http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_(document%C3%A1rio)> , unfortunately in portuguese), that explores this very issue. When he was young, the director tried to shoot a documentary about his family's former butler, but ended up discarding the footage. Years later, after the butler was dead, he came back to the footage and realized what a dick he was during the whole process. He then edited it to tell a story of the common blindness of the documentarist. It's touching, and makes it so you will never watch a documentary in the same way after watching it. I have no idea if it was released internationally, but it's definitely worth seeing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I always like to imagine "Planet Earth" is free of most of this stuff, and I hope I won't be proven otherwise.

<comment><USER16> One of the great things about the BBC natural history unit's programmes is that on the DVDs/Blu-Rays/Broadcasts they tend to show additional footage of how certain scenes were captured. They do tend to have the whole 6 weeks out in the middle of nowhere waiting for the perfect shot stuff going on, but of course that tends to be for one scene.

The other thing I've noticed the BBC do is they reuse footage from one documentary in another, which I guess is fair enough if it's good footage. I'd also be surprised if there wasn't some clever editing with audio to get the results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think the real point of the story is the push towards animals as entertainment rather than the fact that some hard to get footage is staged (though the two points are mixed together). The Economist had a good article on just how profitable wildlife show are, [http://www.economist.com/node/16793496?story_id=16793496&...](http://www.economist.com/node/16793496?story_id=16793496&CFID=144070123&CFTOKEN=64988477). Consequently it is easy to see why content creators are keen to reduce costs (cut corners ?) and boost ratings.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've heard Chris speak and he's a fascinating guy. I haven't bought my copy yet but I imagine the book is a great read based on his engaging speaking style.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think that the title of this HN posting is misleading. The actual title of the article is _Wildlife filmmaker Chris Palmer shows that animals are often set up to succeed_

</comment><comment><USER19> If this surprises you, I've got a fantastic investment opportunity I'd love to discuss...</comment>


Manning Books – Half Price on All MEAPS - <AUTHOR> https://www.manning.com/dotd <comment><USER2> I don't like Manning books in general. The writing is often unnecessarily verbose and their books contain lots of redundant diagrams.

With the last book I bought from them they refused to honour their refund policy for MEAP releases, because at the time they _read_ my request for a refund, the full book had already been released (which was nearly two weeks after I had actually sent them a request). They still allowed me to exchange for another book, but this was not a positive experience.</comment>


Pressure mounts on WWU to preserve computer science department - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2011/pressure-mounts-western-washington-university-preserve-computer-science-department

<comment><USER2> A comment from a related article makes me question the competence of the people making this proposal.

 _From someone who was present at a meeting discussing this:

"This decision, apparently still potential, is a permanent statement of the University about the future of Computer Science. The impression conveyed in the meeting with the Provost and Dean was that we had reached the End of History. Now that everyone has a computer and a spreadsheet and a wordprocessor, the contribution of computing to the life of the mind has been exhausted. I do not write this sarcastically. This was the sense of the meeting."_

[http://www.geekwire.com/2011/western-washington- university-c...](http://www.geekwire.com/2011/western-washington-university- computer-science-department-faces-ax)</comment>


Show HN: HackerThings - My 48-hour weekend binge project - <AUTHOR> http://hackerthings.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I stayed up most of the weekend working on this. This is basically a ThisIsWhyImBroke but for the programmer/hacker/hardware hacker scene. I tried to keep the products as tech as possible without sinking into the "for geeks" area (e.g., little to no video game stuff or gadgets for the sake of gadgets).

There are no affiliate links.

Please let me know what you think! Especially of interest to me is what products I should be including on this page that I am not, and what products I should remove from the page because it's not 'hacker' enough. :)

<comment><USER2> Awesome site man. Wondering if you'd considered a revenue model? I checked for affiliate links before coming here and seeing your post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is AWESOME! Just the thing I was trying to achieve with various Delicious tags. Already bookmarked

Some quick comments and ideas:

* I think it would be great if one can sort based on categories and price (and also "show more like this" but that's harder with little user data). It would also be nice to gave a total count of the things you have in your db, e.g. say "26,756 toys for the serious hacker", etc. at the top, this gives a sense of how big your site is and provides "security" that you don't miss a lot of the stuff that I might be interested.

* Didn't see much stuff from ThinkGeek, they make awesome toys, which can be hacked.

* Maybe add hackable IKEA stuff, this is not commonly known and would be useful.

* Links to Instructables or other online sites (when possible) that shows how a particular item can be used in a project.

* A checkbox for each item so that I can make up lists of links and mail them to myself.

* Hacker apparel is an area that doesn't usually get a lot of attention I don't mean just T-shirts, but comfy shoes, pants, etc. too).

* Would be nice to have a thumbnail view lister so that I can see more on a screen.

Overall pretty good for just a weekend project!

<comment><AUTHOR> This is really good advice... lots of things I didn't even think of! I'm definitely going to start working on this. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is so cool! It's such a shame you've posted at such a busy time. There's too much going on on the homepage right now, so unless this gets lots more votes quickly, it's going to die off.

If you don't get on the front page in another 10 minutes, repost as an Ask HN post.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I did pick an awful time. Perhaps I'll have more luck with the Ask HN at a later date. Maybe mid-week or something.

Though you know what's weird? "A Brief History of the Brain" is on the front page right now with 3 votes after 26 minutes, but this post had 4 votes by 20 minutes and even now is nowhere to be found (even 5 pages deep from the front page). I think HN artificially drags down things with "Show HN" in the title. (Since that was abused for awhile).</comment></comment>