"How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?" - <AUTHOR> https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/26000016 <comment><USER2> There are three active threads about this, the present one and these other two:

"WhatsApp is going to share your phone number with Facebook": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12358751](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12358751)

"Looking ahead for WhatsApp": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12358205](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12358205)

Normally we'd merge the threads, but the discussions are large and come from three different perspectives, so that might not be best. HN practice is to have one front-page thread at a time about a story, but if you're concerned about the topic you might want to check in on the other discussions.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an incredibly ugly dark pattern.

The 'share information with Facebook' nugget is hidden behind a toggle at the bottom of the screen, and will be guaranteed to be missed by the 99% of users who just want to talk to their friends.

Then, once you've agreed to the terms and conditions, you've got a completely arbitrary 30 days to read an online article which tells you what you've signed up for before WhatsApp is irrevocably sharing your data with Facebook.

You can build an incredibly accurate picture of people's lives from metadata alone - WhatsApp know it and Facebook know it.

Not only that - when WhatsApp start building out these 'brand' relationships which will look a lot like helpful information at first - you'll be loading your data into that brand's custom FB audience too. And you won't have an opt out because, y'know, reasons.

This is very obviously not the WhatsApp that promised not to fuck with its users when Facebook bought it out.

<comment><USER4> Most don't like hearing this: if you don't want your personal information to be shared, don't use these "social media" tools.

I suspect that you'd be familiar with LinkedIn dark patterns [0] too.

[0] [https://medium.com/@danrschlosser/linkedin-dark- patterns-3ae...](https://medium.com/@danrschlosser/linkedin-dark- patterns-3ae726fe1462)

<comment><USER5> "Don't use these tools if you value privacy" is not that far off from "If you have nothing to hide, why are you afraid of surveillance?" An observed life is not a free life. Many people have to use social media to communicate with family, work associates, etc... In many cases, facebook messaging has replaced methods of communication that did not rely on the content or metadata of messages for profit. All that really matters is if this was legit and FB assumed people would have no problem with it then they would not have hidden it.

<comment><USER6> Is email not sufficient to communicate with family, work associates, etc.?

<comment><USER7> I've thought about building something that gives a social network type experience that is built on top of email. Any status update would get sent out to an email list of your connections, and all the emails could be put in a specific mail folder using standard rules. A front end app would then scan that folder and give you a personalized page that represents the latest status based on what it sees in that folder. The raw messages themselves may contain various control messages (such as "friend requests" and "drop requests", but otherwise can be directly viewable too. But the main interface would be from a front-end app that runs on the user's PC or mobile device.

<comment><USER8> I love this idea (if only for the motivation behind it).

How would your "normal" mail client filter out the messages that are for this app? People have lots of different mail clients which they might not be able (or willing) to configure. Or would you expect a dedicated address.

<comment><USER9> The problem, of course, is who builds/maintains this, how do they get paid, and how do you pay the server fees.

<comment><USER7> The app would run on the user's local PC or phone, and it would access data directly from their mailbox (and create a local DB from that data). So no backend server to worry about.

<comment><USER8> Without a third-party managing associations, how do you maintain that "friendship" is consensual? In other words, how do you prevent "I have your email address" from meaning "you're my friend now."

<comment><USER7> When you send a friend request to someone, their stuff is shared with you only if they accept the request on their end. If they reject the friend request, then anything coming from you that they don't want can be handled as spam (the client side software would just filter the content itself in that case).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Man, remember the late 90s and early 2000s, when the IM scene was a mess of incompatible networks like ICQ and AIM and MSN Messenger, and people were like "fuck this" and came up with this protocol that was interoperable with all the others through gateways and also it was extendable, and we could all be happy together?...

/grump

The worst part is that WhatsApp is actually _based on_ Jabber >:(

<comment><USER11> I recently started looking into XMPP again a few days ago. I have a few ideas for projects built on top thereof.

Can anybody recommend XMPP servers? I know duckduckgo has an XMPP service up and running, but I can't seem to find any relevant API documentation. All I found was this [0], which doesn't go into details about encryption settings and isn't very useful for programmatic interaction.

[0] [https://duck.co/blog/post/2/using-pidgin-with-xmpp- jabber](https://duck.co/blog/post/2/using-pidgin-with-xmpp-jabber)

<comment><USER12> Conversations.im has made great progress in making XMPP usable on mobile devices, although its services don't seem ready for public adoption quite yet. There are very few XMPP servers which support the XEPs Conversations does so while federation is theoretically possible, it is not yet a reality.

[https://account.conversations.im/](https://account.conversations.im/)

<comment><USER11> Thanks. I can't really justify using a paid XMPP service, though. I was hoping for something indefinitely free.

(Maybe I should look into running my own server...)

<comment><USER13> You do not need an account at conversations.im – the app works without it.

<comment><USER11> Ah, okay. I misunderstood. Cool!

<comment><USER14> Yep. In addition to that, it's also FOSS¹ and you aren't limited to only getting it from the Google Play Store; it's also distributed² on F-Droid³ too. One thing to note though is that the version of Conversations on F-Droid doesn't support push notifications, since that functionality uses _Google Cloud Notifications_.

――――――

¹ — [https://github.com/siacs/Conversations](https://github.com/siacs/Conversations)

² — [https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=eu.siacs.convers...](https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=eu.siacs.conversations)

³ — [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-Droid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-Droid)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's kind of pointless, Facebook owns Whatsapp so they have all that info anyway.

'The Facebook family of companies will still receive and use this information for other purposes such as improving infrastructure and delivery systems, understanding how our services or theirs are used, securing systems, and fighting spam, abuse, or infringement activities.'

<comment><USER4> Exactly. Moreover, a look at the permissions required by Facebook app would reveal how much information it collects about you:

      Device & app history

        retrieve running apps

      Identity

        find accounts on the device
        add or remove accounts
        read your own contact card

      Calendar

        read calendar events plus confidential information
        add or modify calendar events and send email to guests without owners' knowledge

      Contacts

        find accounts on the device
        read your contacts
        modify your contacts

      Location

        approximate location (network-based)
        precise location (GPS and network-based)

      SMS

        read your text messages (SMS or MMS)

      Phone

        directly call phone numbers
        read call log
        read phone status and identity
        write call log

      Photos/Media/Files

        read the contents of your USB storage
        modify or delete the contents of your USB storage

      Storage

        read the contents of your USB storage
        modify or delete the contents of your USB storage

      Camera

        take pictures and videos

      Microphone

        record audio

      Wi-Fi connection information

        view Wi-Fi connections

      Device ID & call information

        read phone status and identity

      Other

        download files without notification
        adjust your wallpaper size
        receive data from Internet
        view network connections
        create accounts and set passwords
        read battery statistics
        send sticky broadcast
        change network connectivity
        connect and disconnect from Wi-Fi
        expand/collapse status bar
        full network access
        change your audio settings
        read sync settings
        run at startup
        reorder running apps
        set wallpaper
        draw over other apps
        control vibration
        prevent device from sleeping
        toggle sync on and off
        install shortcuts
        read Google service configuration

<comment><USER16> What happens if you deny it those permissions? (Android >= v6).

<comment><USER17> I've turned them all off and nothing has broken so far, but then again I'm a pretty passive user of Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Or... you know... just use something like Telegram that isn't owned by Facebook. Their data-sharing / privacy policy is pretty simple [https://telegram.org/privacy](https://telegram.org/privacy)

 _1\. Sharing data_

 _We never share your data with anyone. No._

<comment><USER19> If only more people used Telegram.. I love it, but only a couple of friends use it.

<comment><USER18> There was a serious FUD campaign started by one of the developers of now competing app Signal a few years ago. Now if you mention Telegram on Reddit you're immediately bombed with "OMG TELEGRAM CRYPTO IS BROKEN!" even though 0 people on earth have ever provably decrypted a Telegram message. They even offered a $300K bounty where you could act as the server... no takers.

<comment><USER20> Does Telegram use E2E encryption by default now, yes or no?

<comment><USER21> Probably not, but the hilarious thing is that a year or so after attacking Telegram for that, the developers of Signal took a substantial chunk of cash from Google to promote Allo as using Signal Protocol and end to end encryption, even though it's disabled by default so Google can mine your chat history for ad targeting (and enabling it has the inconvenient side effect of disabling your own local chat history).

Basically, it's about the cash. Signal's business model is to convince everyone that their protocol is the only secure one and charge everyone to licence it. If that means promoting non-E2E services that store and mine chat history, that's fine so long as they pay up.

<comment><USER22> > charge everyone to licence it

What?

The protocol is publicly described. They've blogged about it. I can imagine people being able to reconstruct it from memory.

The first Google result for "signal protocol license" is [https://whispersystems.org/blog/license- update/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/license-update/) , clarifying that it's under GPLv3 (i.e., patent grant) with an exception for the App Store. Has anyone paid money to license the protocol? Has Signal asked for money? Is it even possible to give them money for the protocol?

<comment><USER23> GPLv3 is cool as open source goes, but is pretty restrictive. Basically you can't link to it and distribute your app without it being open source. A company like Google can probably not use it.

<comment><USER22> What I meant with GPLv3 is "and they are even willing to grant any patent rights to the general public". I don't know if they hold patents on it, but if they either don't, or are willing to license them freely, then you can implement the protocol from the public documentation of it.

<comment><USER23> That's not true. The patents grant in GPLv3 or other licenses (like APL) only holds if you're actually using that project in your work. So either you fork the GPLv3 project, and comply with a compatible license, or you don't have a patents grant.

This is basically why Google could be sued by Oracle, because Dalvik and their class library based on Apache Harmony were not a fork of OpenJDK.

Of course I cannot speak for Signal's protocol. Maybe it has no traps. I'm just commenting on that license. It's a strong license that makes some demands: good fit open source but bad for Google.

<comment><USER22> Sorry, I am being unclear. I don't mean that GPLv3 gives you a patent grant for all implementations, yes. I mean that _the willingness to license code under GPLv3_ means that there's an upper bound on how much Open Whisper Systems cares about licensing the protocol for money.

Which brings me back to the original question—why do we think that OWS's pushing of Signal Protocol is about money? Yes, I expect that for Allo they got paid by Google to write and maintain some code. But I don't think that their general claim "Signal Protocol is good crypto for everyone solving this problem" is motivated by money, because so many people solving this problem _could_ use the GPLv3 version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My problem with whatsapp is that there's no way to use it without giving access to my entire contact list to the app. And that's out of the question for me.

<comment><USER25> I thought with Android Marshmallow and iOS you can deny access to contacts. I guess if you're not on Marshmallow or higher, you're not going to get this benefit

<comment><USER26> A lot of apps these days will not run unless they get access to the data they request. What I would like to see is android having the ability to give empty sets of information if so chosen instead of denying access, or to compartmentalize applications access to shared resources more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> _The Facebook family of companies will still receive and use this information for other purposes such as improving infrastructure and delivery systems, understanding how our services or theirs are used, securing systems, and fighting spam, abuse, or infringement activities._

</comment><comment><USER28> So when you remove that tickbox "Share my account info" \- your data still gets shared:

"The Facebook family of companies will still receive and use this information for other purposes such as improving infrastructure and delivery systems, understanding how our services or theirs are used, securing systems, and fighting spam, abuse, or infringement activities."

Never does it say, you won't get ads. But if you share, you will get "improved ads".

Am I reading this right?

<comment><USER29> I would just assume anything you do on the Facebook family of applications, is using your information to maximize revenue. Regardless of what tick boxes you check.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't have the _Share my Account_ option on Android.

<comment><USER30> Perhaps you accepted the new terms more than 30 days ago and instead of showing a greyed-out checkbox, they simply hide it altogether.

<comment><USER20> More likely he hasn't received the relevant update yet.

<comment><USER31> Or maybe because Facebook app isn't installed? I don't have it on mine, so maybe they're not 'linked'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Linkability at its best. Been saying for years that FB is trying to help establish the single-sign-on for all to access the internet. Thats why every major email and social outlet are demanding you input your phone number and secondary email alongside your existing account info. Eventually this will help the government know who is behind each IP address. No need to keep avoiding the phone number security prompt at the top of FB anymore, they already have it through their acquisiton of whatsApp, what a shame.

</comment><comment><USER12> How much do you want to bet they will make sharing mandatory in 6-12 months? Opting-out is a fig leaf to head off bad press in the short term.

</comment><comment><USER33> Are we supposed to congratulate WhatsApp for doing something that should be expected with 1.0? Furthermore, your default is incorrect; sharing info is opt-in.

<comment><USER34> > your default is incorrect; sharing info is opt-in.

Uh, I mean, that's the whole point of facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> So this was quite expected anyway. Though initially the acquisition seemed to be a defensive one where FB prevents Wechat kind of features coming from Whatsapp, the amount of data whatsapp has, is a treasure trove for all the advertisers and as a public company, FB just did what is expected by the shareholders.

But it's kinda scary that emperor Zuck has so much power over the people, like FB/Messenger/Whatsapp/Instagram are the top apps everyone uses. I am glad Snapchat didn't sell out.

<comment><USER36> So much power? You give him power. Just delete your facebook account and uninstall their apps!

<comment><USER37> And watch your friendships grow stale, lose touch with your family members, opt out of knowing about upcoming events...

The phrase "network effect" exists for a reason. Where people don't think about keeping in touch with others in any terms other than Facebook, refusing to play along with Facebook comes with serious consequences.

<comment><USER38> _" And watch your friendships grow stale, lose touch with your family members, opt out of knowing about upcoming events..."_

And how exactly do you think these things worked _before_ Facebook?

"Friends" who don't want to make the effort to stay in touch outside of a dead-simple social app aren't friends, anyway.

<comment><USER39> "worked" is the key word here.

When the letters were the common way to contact people, people would contact you by letter. If you refused to communicate in different ways than with letters, people would communicate less with you than with others, because it would be a pain in the ass. They'd organize a party on short notice, and then realize that the letter won't reach you in time (or that they don't have envelopes and stamps anymore because they no longer send letters).

The same applies to this sort of app today, sadly.

<comment><USER37> Only more so. Back when people kept their address books in actual _books_ , you wouldn't, for example, miss getting a wedding invitation, because you weren't sent one, because the people getting married forgot to think about anything except their Facebook contacts list when they made their invitation list. Because everyone's on Facebook.

I almost caved, the second time that happened. What stopped me was being prompted for my email account credentials, so Facebook could mine my more than decade-long correspondence for social graph data. I know enough about abusive relationships not to overlook an opening boundary test like that. So that was the end of my Facebook experiment. In any case, by that point the damage was probably done.

Someone else here said something about having his Facebook departure be a conversation starter. Doesn't always work that way. When I tell people about that email prompt, they just look at me funny and go "you know you can skip that, right?" Which, of course, I do know, but see above re: abusive relationships. Maybe I can talk my way out of taking a punch this time, but every time?

That metaphor doesn't seem to cut much ice with anyone, though. No idea why. Maybe it's a little over the top. Maybe people are just so accustomed to think about Facebook as part of the environment, and take it totally for granted, that it doesn't occur to them to regard what I'm saying as anything but incomprehensibly weird. Maybe I'm an obstreperous pain in the ass. I'm sure at least one of those is true. But who knows? I mean, I don't ask; I just steer the conversation somewhere more mutually enjoyable, because I go to bars to drink and enjoy talking with people, not to pretend to be Richard Stallman.

<comment><USER40> Yeah, it is too over the top for most people. I don't move in tech circles, and the few friends who I do speak to about this, tend to dismiss this as tin foil hattery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm trying to find more info about [https://wire.com](https://wire.com)

They would seem to be doing all the right things, such as OTR and not rolling their own protocols, but I've only been able to find a couple of opinions and nothing concrete.

The fact that they've made effort to open source it and are letting people write their own clients for it is encouraging, but not proof that it's a solid system.

<comment><USER42> I discovered Wire a few months ago and have been impressed with its feature set. While Wire states that it is using axolotl ratchet, note that it is not the same as the Signal protocol used by Signal. Apparently Wire took the axolotl ratchet (the one Signal started with) and created a custom version for its own use. Moxie stated something of this sort in a comment recently on HN. There have also been some conflicts between Wire and OpenWhisperSystems (searching the web, in addition to reading up on Wire's site, will show you different sides of this).

To avoid confusion about axolotl ratchet and its usage, OpenWhisperSystems changed the name of the protocol used to Signal protocol in March. [1]

[1]: [https://whispersystems.org/blog/signal-inside-and- out/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/signal-inside-and-out/)

<comment><USER41> Thanks for the response. My sense from the information is that the protocols are extremely similar, the implementation is the primary difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I am reading the opt out agreement as far too specific. It says do not share info with Facebook for improved ads experience. MEANING SHARE info WITH FACEBOOK anyways, even if you are not interested in ads.

I don't want any of my info shared. Yet there is no way to opt out of it.

<comment><USER44> FTA

> The Facebook family of companies will still receive and use this information > for other purposes such as improving infrastructure and delivery systems, > understanding how our services or theirs are used, securing systems, and > fighting spam, abuse, or infringement activities.

So you can't not share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> If only there existed a peer to peer solution that doesn't require trusting a central host

<comment><USER46> A fundamental limitation of the peer to peer setup for messaging is the lack of a reliable way to send a message while your contact is offline. If your answer to that is to have intermediaries that are always available and can store and forward, you run into issues of needing a lot of these intermediaries in a mobile centric(low power, intermittently online) world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I had few enough people who I've communicated with via Whatsapp that I was able to simply delete my account. I hope that means they'll actually purge my data rather than sharing it with Facebook.

This is one of the problems of digital identity--privacy has a latent value. The company you choose to share data with today, may choose choose to share with / merge with a third party in the future.

</comment><comment><USER48> Having removed the app a while back but not formally deleted my account, seems like I have to re-install, dig up my account again, then opt out.

What a hassle.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't see the data sharing opt-out thingie with FB as the big news today.

The big news is that your eye-balls are officially for sale now. Marketing is specifically mentioned as a new form of communication towards the users. No banner ads (yet), but other formats.

It was good, while it lasted.

PS to WhatsApp: If you manage to launch a no-data-sale privacy option for x$/y, I signup in a heartbeat.

</comment><comment><USER36> Guys, there's only one solution. Delete your accounts and uninstall the apps. That's it!

Here's the link to delete your account. [https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account](https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account)

<comment><USER42> I deleted my WhatsApp account the moment I learned it was acquired by Facebook. Unfortunately, I have to use Facebook for certain purposes to reach certain people. So Facebook very likely has more information (including my phone number) from other Facebook users and WhatsApp users who have me in their contact lists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What if I don't have that option in Whatsapp? Does it mean you can't opt-out after 30 days?

<comment><USER49> That's how it looks to me. I don't have the option.

<comment><USER19> Probably they didn't update the app yet?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I wonder, what are the odds of success if someone starts a paid social network say for 5$/month. Ad-free, no-snopping, secure social network. E.g. Diaspora pod with good UI and more features. Would you be willing to pay for it?

</comment><comment><USER50> I thought an SSL encryption would not let 'anyone' else read your messages. So that means even if whatsapp promises SSL encryptin, they can read our messages? Is it technically possible? Forgive my ignorance.

<comment><USER51> from [https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/](https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/)

 _\- Your messages are yours, and we can't read them. We've built privacy, end-to-end encryption, and other security features into WhatsApp. We don't store your messages once they've been delivered. When they are end-to-end encrypted, we and third parties can't read them._

So they can share location, phone number, contact book, maybe chat group names if they're not encrypted, and maybe the people participating in those groups, the online/offline status, who and when you call, what else am I missing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I just got the prompt to accept the new terms.

1) you did not have to scroll to opt out. 2) opting out brought up a toast saying "when you tap 'agree', your account info will be used to improve your Facebook ads and product experiences" 3) there was a " X not now" option in the top right corner.

I chose that.

Edit: no app update was required. I'm guessing in the future, the could push ads the same way

</comment><comment><USER53> This seems like a potentially stupid question, but the link only shows how to do it on an android device. The terms sprung up on me in the iOS app (I have yet to update it) and thankfully I found the hidden toggle button. There does not seem to be an equivalent way to turn off the sharing of data on my iOS device, so if anyone has found a way, please tell me about it.

</comment><comment><USER54> You can't. According to them, even if you opt out:

> __The Facebook family of companies will still receive and use this > information __for other purposes such as improving infrastructure and > delivery systems, understanding how our services or theirs are used, > securing systems, and fighting spam, abuse, or infringement activities.

</comment><comment><USER55> hi, am Anderson, i had my friend help me hack my ex's email, facebook, whatsapp,and his phone cause i suspected he was cheating. all he asked for was a his phone number. he's email is (email@example.com)..IF u need help tell him Anderson referred you to him and he'll help. Am sure his going to help you do it, good luck

</comment><comment><USER56> If people want to use snazzy services but don't want to pay, and then outlaw collecting private information, presumably the owner of the snazzy service will find some more complicated or secret way to monetize its users?

</comment><comment><USER57> It's interesting that Facebook Messenger still doesn't have ads. It even supports using it without a Facebook account (although you do need a phone number and it appears to be slightly limited)

</comment><comment><USER58> I cannot wait on Matrix protocol, I just hope it will be used.

</comment><comment><USER59> sooo, apparently there's only a limited time period (30d) where you are allowed to opt out of the data sharing...

>> After you agree to our updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, you will have an additional 30 days to make this choice by going to Settings > Account > Share my account info in the app. If you do not want your account information shared with Facebook to improve your Facebook ads and products experiences, you can uncheck the box or toggle the control.

</comment><comment> et-al There's already two threads on the front page about the WhatsApp TOS change, do we really need a third when this link is already in one of the top-voted comments?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12358205](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12358205)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12358751](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12358751)

Duplicate threads like this just dilute the conversation especially when the comments made here are already opinions voiced elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER60> Ironically, I just whatsapped all my "non-IT" friends on how to "not agree" by finding the hidden data sharing checkbox.

</comment><comment><USER61>
      The Facebook family of companies
      will still receive and use this
      information for other purposes...

Answer:

 _YOU DO NOT._

</comment><comment><USER62> I wonder how Moxie feels about being used in what looks to be a pretty spectacular privacy bait-and-switch.

</comment><comment><USER52> One question no-one is answering. Will this be pushed in the future, or have we accepted the terms earlier?!

</comment><comment><USER63> My phone does not show 'share my account info' option... Please can you help me

</comment><comment><USER64> So what does this change mean if you're using WhatsApp while not having a Facebook account?

</comment><comment><USER65> that's not a serious question right? why you are even using anything Fb touches/owns/operates is the real issue

</comment><comment><USER66> in Dutch we have a word for this, called "poppenkast".

Translated literally it means "puppet-show"...

</comment><comment><USER67> Simple, just don't use WhatsApp.

<comment><USER42> I'm not sure how much help this would be, but also make sure to delete your WhatsApp account before you stop using it (instead of just deleting the app and abandoning the account).

</comment></comment><comment> et-al > _the discussions are large and come from three different perspectives_

The discussions have ballooned, but having read the other two in the morning, this one just feels like a rehash of the same privacy concerns folks have raised. And for anyone reading about possible solutions to their concerns, they'd have to jump between 2-3 different threads now.

I'm glad there's at least WhatsApp thread is on front page for everyone's sake, but personally I felt like the _Looking ahead for WhatsApp_ discussion covered much of what's being said here. The difference is that poster didn't have as good of a title and submitted it when much of the West Coast was still asleep.

Also, while this site doesn't have the resources to comb and diff each new thread to make sure it's not a dupe, I wish more users would point this out when it does happen. At the very least, thanks for pointing out the two existing threads, but we shouldn't be afraid of merging threads to make it easier for future users to reference (if they do).

<comment><USER2> Fair enough, but I don't see a clearly better solution. Do you?

Since this is a bit meta I've detached the subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12361031](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12361031) and marked it off-topic.

<comment> et-al Edited my comment to clarify some things, but a solution is that if someone points out a thread is a potential dupe, be more open to the possibility of merging that discussion?

Especially since the bulk other thread was already talking about privacy concerns and most users would go down that route.

Also, you already do a great job moderating here, but this is just one of those few situations where I'm in disagreement with you on this particular instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> \-->How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?

Answer: Don't use Facebook.

<comment><USER69> Not true. They still build shadow profiles of you.

<comment><USER68> That's the NSA funded wing of Facebook. (Don't tell anybody)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Share, rediscover and keep track of all the gems you find on HN - <AUTHOR> http://socialhn.r12.railsrumble.com/

<comment><USER2> Alternatively you can just upvote the stories you want to save and then go to your HN profile.

<comment><USER3> Yup, that's what I do. And then I have a little scraper that pulls the RSS and auto-adds to my Pinboard account (using IFTTT).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Share, rediscover and keep track of all the gems you find on HN"

By 'gems' I initially assumed they were talking about Ruby gems.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm a Firefox user so I couldn't try it and went on to read the comments instead, especially since the linked website didn't explain anything.

It may be interesting to you that I didn't really understand what this is doing until I read the following comment from citricsquid (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4656462>): "Yeah, I save lots and it's always the ones that I don't save that I want after the fact, heh :("

So, this extension allows to search through all the stuff user clicked on from HN? That's great!

If that's true, I'd change the title to this: "Share, rediscover and keep track of everything you find on HN" and also do a better job of describing what it's doing on the website.

P.S. Does it also search the content on all those pages linked from HN?

<comment><USER6> you are right and yes, it search the title and content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is really cool. I was just thinking I needed something like this the other day.

One thing that's not clear to me is how to use the Chrome extension? Is there anything for it to "do" or is it just a background thing that injects info into pages?

<comment><USER6> it works in background, the code is in github: <https://github.com/SocialHN/social-hn-chrome>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why does this extension require access to my data on all websites, and not just HN?

<comment><USER6> not sure why it says that. we only ask permissions for HN: [https://github.com/SocialHN/social-hn- chrome/blob/master/man...](https://github.com/SocialHN/social-hn- chrome/blob/master/manifest.json#L17)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does this rely on an external server (assuming so with the API key) and if so how taxing is it for you, is it just going to become too expensive one day and get shut down, or is operation trivial?

It's a really great idea, I had exactly this problem earlier with reddit (I saw a submission about the redbull stratos jump that had a comment I was interested in, but I couldn't relocate the submission...) and it's happened here before too.

<comment><USER10> Just FYI re:Reddit - Reddit has a nifty save button on every thread and comment. You can see your saved links in your profile.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I save lots and it's always the ones that I don't save that I want after the fact, heh :( They have a side bar item that lists the last 5 clicked stories, but it's clientside so it's not helpful either!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> in your free time ;o) could you add a way to track users here? i think it would help the site by making personalities more persistent. the idea is that you can associate (private) comments with different users - perhaps they would be displayed when you moused over the username. then you could, for example, add "nice person; helped with XXX" next to someone and try harder to help them out some point later...

<comment><USER12> Just thinking out loud here:

I wonder how things would be different if we could "review" other users, Amazon style, on HN. And those reviews would show up at the bottom of your profile.

I wonder if that or something like that would make this a better, or more interesting (or more communal) place. I think the idea as I just spouted it wouldn't help much, but there _must_ be similar concepts worth exploring here.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It was done by a few friends during Rails Rumble. It allows you to share and see what your friends are sharing. Basically, just install the extension and keep upvoting interesting posts as you always do, it will appear in the app automatically. You can also get suggestions.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's something that I am going to use regularly. Well done

<comment><USER6> thanks man, if you have feature requests please let us know. We are already working on a plugin for Firefox.

<comment><USER14> I was just about to ask for a Firefox plugin. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is anyone else bothered by the lack of smoothing in the "How many times you have seen interesting..." font? looks like "Ubuntu", sans-serif. maybe I need to just get a higher dpi monitor...</comment>


Marc Benioff says unicorn startups manipulated private markets - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/billionaire-ceo-and-investor-marc-benioff-says-unicorn-startups-manipulated-private-markets-and-hes-done-investing-in-them-2015-12 <comment><USER2> Isn't Marc one of the people who kinda caused this?</comment>


Review my first jQuery plugin. SliderTabs - The multi-purpose content slider - <AUTHOR>

As my recent project and first jQuery plugin I decided to build SliderTabs (http://lopatin.github.com/sliderTabs). I've been studying jQuery plugins and decided to build this as practice. The first motivation for this was the Sliding Tabs $8 CodeCanyon plugin (http://codecanyon.net/item/sliding-tabs-jquery-plugin/141774) as you can tell by the names. I don't like the fact that such a seemingly simple plugin should cost money so I built a plugin with the same idea of scrolling tabs and I plan to add more and more configurable controls to make it truly a universal content slider.<p>What does HN think? I'm very open to suggestions and bug-fixes. <comment><USER2> Nice plugin, it's really useful. A little UX thing though. Because the box resizes based on the content, and I guess you wanted to have the arrows always be vertically centered, they move around, which prevents you from just clicking through the slideshow without looking.</comment>


Are we starting to fall out of love with Silicon Valley? - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/386571/are-we-starting-to-fall-out-of-love-with-silicon-valley/

<comment><USER2> This article seems to make no point, and certainly doesn't answer the question. It gives examples of tech firms doing things differently, then it gives three examples of tech firms doing things that regulators frown on, and signs off by making a true comment that applies in specific cases, and probably not to any company mentioned in the article.

You could write a similar article about any industry that has both positive and negative stories.

<comment><USER3> Hardly qualifies as an article. It's what, 4 paragraphs?

The funny thing is that I remember an article on Microsoft in the late 90s where the author predicted MS' demise would come due to its arrogance. In particular, because an interview subject at MS didn't respond to voicemails.

It's easy to look at a company that's coming under regulatory scrutiny, accuse them of arrogance, and then smugly nod your head when the regulators impose sanctions.</comment></comment>


'New' Python modules of 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rtwilson.com/my-top-5-new-python-modules-of-2015/ <comment><USER2> Hands down, my favorite new library is schema:

[https://pypi.python.org/pypi/schema](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/schema)

Here's a schema I use in production, see how readable it makes the parameters of the API and how quick all the validation _and_ normalization is:

[https://www.pastery.net/mhwwnv/](https://www.pastery.net/mhwwnv/)

At the end, you get an object called data, and you can do data.title, data.language, etc, and be sure that everything is as you expect.

<comment><USER3> For those of us more dictionary oriented, there is [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/voluptuous](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/voluptuous) (which is OK for the most part, as long as you are only trying to do validation, and nothing too crazy)

<comment><USER4> Similar, I've used this library with a lot of success: [https://marshmallow.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](https://marshmallow.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)

<comment><USER5> I've tried truckloads of Python serialisation libs over the last few years and marshmallow is the one that finally makes me feel like I don't need to look for another one.

<comment><USER4> It's very easy and does everything I've needed it to!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Python module I learned to love this year is Click. Gets me better command line interfaces fast. URL is [http://click.pocoo.org](http://click.pocoo.org).

It does progress bars too...

<comment><USER7> docopt was inspiring in its own way, but click was 'simpler' do toy with.

<comment><USER8> I find click to be much more natural too. Docopt was always touchy about more complicated CLIs when I used it (probably because a lot of "magic" happens behind the scenes), whereas click lets you drill down and arrange things just so. It also feels very well designed, hats of to Ronacher as usual for being good at designing Python libraries.

I also find myself using click even when I don't want a CLI. The pretty- printer (`secho`) and progress bars are extremely handy, plus some of the other stuff in utilities. It's quite nice that they handle detecting when output is an interactive terminal versus piping to a file.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm feeling a lot of love for Pandas. Any (biology related) project I work on starts with multi-headered dataframes and ends in beautiful Seaborn graphs. In combination with Jupyter notebook I breeze through large data sets while leaving a perfect trail of what goes on in the data pipeline. Python is great.

<comment><USER10> For those interested, you can also get nice styles with just matplotlib (including seaborn style) using stylesheets:

[http://matplotlib.org/users/style_sheets.html](http://matplotlib.org/users/style_sheets.html)

<comment><USER11> I had no idea it existed, very useful, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not really 2015 but Q! [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/q](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/q)

Print-debugging on steroids. This really does make things so much easier, especially when dealing with huge apps you don't have time to learn. Not just useful as a dev but also as a sysadmin.

<comment><USER13> What's the advantage of Q over pdb?

<comment><USER2> First of all, pudb is fantastic, just use it over pdb all the time.

q is for when you want to log data, pudb is for when you want to step through and evaluate lines in-context. It's very possible that you'll want to use both together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wow, there are some great new tools to explore. Thanks!

Some of the new libraries I'm using this year that I've found really handy include:

Odo - [http://odo.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](http://odo.readthedocs.org/en/latest/) It is ridiculously handy for converting data from one format to another - especially for transforming a table from a database or csv into a DataFrame and back.

Arrow - Makes for quick datetime processing. - [http://crsmithdev.com/arrow/](http://crsmithdev.com/arrow/)

Xlsxwriter - [http://xlsxwriter.readthedocs.org](http://xlsxwriter.readthedocs.org) \- I'm building beautiful reports, with charts, using this tool. As someone who moves data around a lot, but has to work with less technical business and analyst folks, this is becoming my goto for handing them some data to play with.

Blessings - [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/blessings](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/blessings) \- as I get older staring at simple black and white text on the screen seems to be getting harder. Putting a little color and flare in my command line interfaces cheers me up even if it doesn't do much in the way of actually getting the job done.

Lastly, switching from curl to httpie was a huge help in working with API's of all sorts. It solved a problem I didn't even know I had. [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/httpie](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/httpie)

</comment><comment><USER15> I am using Scrapy a lot. [http://scrapy.org/](http://scrapy.org/) It is very well designed web crawling library.

<comment><USER12> I found out, through reddit a couple of days ago, about Pomp:

[https://bitbucket.org/estin/pomp](https://bitbucket.org/estin/pomp)

It looks like a much cleaner Scrapy-inspired spider framework, without the twisted dependency. And it's python 2+3 compatible. I'm very excited to try it out.

<comment><USER15> It looks very promising. I will give it a try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting list. I love Anaconda!

A few years ago I tried to set up a Mac with a scientific computing stack and it took me days to hack my way through all the various dependencies and incompatible versions. Anaconda now lets me do that in a minutes.

<comment><USER17> Me too...I taught a python class by making everyone download Anaconda's distribution of 3.x...and everyone could do the assignments no matter what kind of computer they used. Anaconda does a little too much for me to have it be my own default install but it does quite well in on boarding beginners. I use pyenv to install maintain Anaconda on my own machine when I need to replicate student work

<comment><USER18> What does it do that ends up being a little too much for your use?

<comment><USER17> It takes precedence in the path over everything...and in the last version I used (before I upgraded to OS X El Capitain and wiped out everything), things like `curl` were provided [1] ...which I completely understand for Anaconda's use case, but it caused a lot of confusing grief to me when I hadn't expected that and OpenSSL was having its rough times.

I don't know if that's the case (curl being part of the package) now, with Anaconda 3 2.4.0+? It certainly isn't so when installed via pyenv, so I'm happy with that. But there were other issues in the past build...BeautifulSoup was inexplicably broken. I mean that it simply did not correctly parse non- trivial HTML pages and yet threw no errors. The results could be replicated for all of my students but I never could isolate the issue... I installed Python 3 and the same version of BS4 from scratch and had no problems, but I can't imagine where the Anaconda build would have gotten wrong. It ended up being OK since I just switched to lxml which I now happily use over BS4 on any day, but it was frustrating to not be able to diagnose the problem (I didn't get a response in the support forums either). I'm assuming this problem has gone away in subsequent versions of Anaconda though I haven't tried since lxml is perfectly fine to me.

And finally...well, I have to admit it, but I use Python like a goddamned moron in that I still don't know how to use virutalenv/venv to do proper dev isolation. And from the brief research I did, I see that Anaconda has its own conventions, or work flow...something with the conda utility. Again, I can see why it's necessary for Anaconda's use case (people who want to do data science and not hand-tweak their environment every time they upgrade a package over pip), but it added too many layers for me at the time.

[1] [https://groups.google.com/a/continuum.io/forum/#!topic/anaco...](https://groups.google.com/a/continuum.io/forum/#!topic/anaconda/XCSUmZbNqn4)

<comment><USER19> > And finally...well, I have to admit it, but I use Python like a goddamned > moron in that I still don't know how to use virutalenv/venv to do proper dev > isolation.

I was the same way for quite a while, until I bumped into pyenv-virtualenv[1]. Just install that plugin, and you can do, eg,

        pyenv virtualenv 3.5.1 my-project

to get a virtual environment called `my-project` based off of Python 3.5.1 (assuming that you've installed 3.5.1 via pyenv, of course). Or, you can just do

        pyenv virtualenv my-project

to make a virtualenv called `my-project` based off of the current version of Python that you're using.

Once you do that, pyenv treats `my-project` just as another installation of Python. In fact, `my-project` will show up in the list of installed versions (`pyenv versions`), and you can switch to it:

        pyenv global my-project

(Or you can switch at the local or shell levels. Whichever.)

And voila! You have your own virtual environment that can contain its own list of libraries.

And no, I'm not a shill for the creator of pyenv, I just really like the software.

[1]: [https://github.com/yyuu/pyenv-virtualenv](https://github.com/yyuu/pyenv- virtualenv)

<comment><USER17> Thanks for this...wrapping it up in pyenv is a lot more familiar to me. And why would you apologize for shilling for pyenv?...it's amazing :) (as is rbenv, its inspiration)

<comment><USER19> You're very welcome.

And ehhh, I've been downvoted and bitched at about evangelizing pyenv before. Just thought I'd preempt that. But yes, it's an amazing piece of software. :)

FYI, I've put together a bash function for my .bash_profile that adds an indicator to my prompt showing the current Python version/virtualenv in use[1]. That's saved me a bit of frustration when going into a directory where a local pyenv version overrides the global version.

[1]: [https://github.com/jackmaney/bash- profile/blob/ddb57091aab44...](https://github.com/jackmaney/bash- profile/blob/ddb57091aab4425995c8d52466183ec421d6cc5b/.bash_profile#L21-L32)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've got a lot of love for py.test right now. [http://pytest.org/latest/](http://pytest.org/latest/)

I feel I'm able to write much more concise test scripts than I could with unittest.

</comment><comment><USER21> Looks down (503), here is a cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Bf9Iv63...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Bf9Iv63AAD0J:blog.rtwilson.com/my- top-5-new-python-modules-of-2015/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Pyrasite. When you have a running python app that is behaving oddly and you can't replicate the bug elsewhere, you can run python code inside the running process - without any preparation beforehand - to display stack trace, output vars,...

</comment><comment><USER23> Anaconda has been a lifesaver, because it can be installed and managed quite easily without root privileges (it even installs pip). Some of the sysadmins where I work are slower than molasses when it comes to installing python packages (as in, it takes months of repeated emails from multiple people to get anything done), and what is installed is often years out of date.

</comment><comment><USER24> While we're on the subject of python modules: sqlalchemy is, and will probably continue to be, my favorite library for any language.

</comment><comment><USER25> > I went looking for a pure-Python NoSQL database and came across TinyDB…which > had a simple interface, and has handled everything I've thrown at it so far!

Why would anyone need a simple NoSQL? Why would you go the NoSQL route if it isn't a HUGE complex database?

<comment><USER26> You've already got a perfectly fine KVS built into the language.

<comment><USER27> Could you name it?

<comment><USER28> This is probably what he meant:

$ py

Python 2.7.8 |Anaconda 2.1.0 (64-bit) ... on win32

>>> import bsddb

>>> print bsddb.__doc__

Support for Berkeley DB 4.3 through 5.3 with a simple interface.

For the full featured object oriented interface use the bsddb.db module instead. It mirrors the Oracle Berkeley DB C API.

<comment><USER29> bsddb is deprecated as of python 2.6 and removed in python 3

<comment><USER30> That particular back-end is deprecated, but the same API is provided by the dbm/gdbm/dumbdbm modules. Those still exist in Python 3, although they've been consolidated under one top-level module.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Folium + Geopandas is my new goto GIS toolkit this year

</comment><comment><USER32> We've transitioned our local/dev/prod instances to use conda on Heroku, and couldn't be happier. It was a tiny bit of work to get it set up, but now everything is consistent, and we can set up new local environments in seconds.

<comment><USER33> So I have been considering this. does conda track pypi or does it lag it? I have been concerned about moving over my requirements.text for a webapp with lots of dependencies

<comment><USER32> It slightly lags, but you can include pip requirements in an environment.yml file, and they install normally.

I really only use conda for the non-python bits of our stack: numpy/scipy/pandas etc - packages that are a pain to install on Heroku.

<comment><USER8> It's also pretty straightforward to set up your own Conda package tree. Nice for packaging your app for deployment or making sure you have very precise dependencies.

[http://conda.pydata.org/docs/custom- channels.html](http://conda.pydata.org/docs/custom-channels.html)

<comment><USER33> I think deployment is a solved problem with docker. Its libraries like blas,etc that are a huge pain. I'm not sure why static linked bumpy is not possible - even anaconda could not achieve it.

<comment><USER8> If you've ever tried to dive into the NumPy build process you'd see why. It's _unbelievably_ complicated... not that they really could do it better given that they are compiling about a billion scientific libraries and support alternatives and optimizations (like MKL).

<comment><USER33> Yes - unfortunately I have and I failed miserably. These days I'm trying to see if there's a docker build that can build a great numpy (with all optimizations). Interestingly there are even docker images to call cuda APIs from python.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Obiwan pypi.python.org/pypi/obiwan/

validating JSON

also: type checking on function signatures

<comment><USER28> jsonschema:

Using JSON Schema with Python to validate JSON data: [http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2015/12/using-json-schema-with- pyt...](http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2015/12/using-json-schema-with-python- to.html)

[https://pypi.python.org/pypi/jsonschema](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/jsonschema)

[http://json-schema.org/](http://json-schema.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I really like lists like this. I get updates daily on which of my github friends (is that what they're called?) have starred and there is no real reason why they're following a project. I can look at the README and guess. I did see someone start following this project the other day [https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch-dsl- py](https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch-dsl-py), which seems pretty interesting. Has anyone used it?

<comment><USER36> It's something like Django models but with Elasticsearch. You can create object classes and then save them to Elasticsearch, query them, etc. It's built on the lower-level [https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch- py](https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch-py). Very handy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> tqdm looks super promising. progressbar and progressbar2 end up being complicated and weird enough to use that my company ended up making wrappers. Why maintain that when you can just use a library that works out of the box.

It would be great if it had ipython notebook support. I often end up doing long operations that scrape services for data but have no idea what their progress is.

For me 2015 has been the year of tox. It is a great tool and worth using for just about any python project.

<comment><USER38> tqdm is failing for me on Windows at the moment. To be fair, it might not be its fault (I'm mixing it with Blinker signals), but still I'm slightly disappointed.

A lot of these "magic" tools fall apart when you're trying to do something slightly more structured than "throwaway bunch o' functions".

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> progressbar2, can also takes iterables as input, for easy display of progress bars

<comment><USER40> There's something to be said for the nearly non existent api provided by tqdm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> "python-bond" also came out in 2015: [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/python- bond](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/python-bond) allows a simple interface between python runtimes and php/perl/nodejs.

<comment><USER42> There is a lot of overlap between these languages, and I wonder what any of them can do that can't be done in pure Python.

<comment><USER41> It's not much about language, it's mostly about code/ecosystem re-use (that is: if you have a library available in system X and you're writing for Y you can still take advantage of it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Easy platform independent gui as webpage. Used it on my pc a robot and raspberry pi.

[https://github.com/dddomodossola/remi/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/dddomodossola/remi/blob/master/README.md)

</comment><comment><USER44> I haven't used Python in a while, but I shall once more look into it. Python was always fun. Guess I'll do that over christmas, see where it takes me.

I might even get around to learning Python 3 after only ... what? seven-or-so years?

<comment><USER2> Just write the next thing in Python 3, there's not really that much to learn right away as much as there are minor surprises that you can very quickly get up to speed on as you encounter them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Are there any ruby alternatives to tqdm?

<comment><USER46> or node?

<comment><USER24> It's only around 100 lines of code. Should be easy to replicate in language of choice: [https://github.com/noamraph/tqdm/blob/master/tqdm.py](https://github.com/noamraph/tqdm/blob/master/tqdm.py)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This is a tangent, but the most annoying change in the latest Python versions is you can no longer write print "foo". Now it has to be print("foo"). Damn kids ruining my language.

<comment><USER48> > This is a tangent, but the most annoying change in the latest Python > versions is you can no longer write print "foo". Now it has to be > print("foo").

The statement-to-function migration for print is, IMO, generally an improvement, but in any case its not a change in the _latest_ versions of python, except with an unusually broad interpretation of latest; its a change in Python 3.0, which was released a little over 7 years ago.</comment></comment>


Announcing the Enterprise Site Discovery Toolkit for Internet Explorer 11 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2014/10/24/announcing-the-enterprise-site-discovery-toolkit-for-internet-explorer-11.aspx <comment> o0-0o Well, this basically eliminates me wanting to use IE at work anymore. I am really not expecting a total level of privacy anyway, but come on, this is just a level of control that makes me want to take a shower and wash that IE smell off.</comment>


NASA to Launch Planet-Hunting Kepler Spacecraft Tonight - <AUTHOR> http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090306-kepler-planethunter-launch-preview.html <comment><USER2> To me, this mission has the greatest potential for truly advancing space science of anything we've seen in a while: direct measurements of extrasolar planets.

I'm really pumped about this launch. Let's keep our fingers crossed that everything goes okay. It could truly change at a gut level the average man's view of how he fits into the universe.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, this is the best project in a while that might not necessarily produce amazing scientific results (I think theres a lot more projects on earth that will reveal more about the universe, namely the LHC), however this will potentially change how everyone sees space science again.

I mean this has the potential to bring funding to space agencies like landing on the moon did. This could finally bring the money into the space agencies that they can do both science and manned missions, not one or the other.

IMO all the knowledge of the universe is useless if humanity is never going to get out of our dirt wallow and explore it. Not to mention, avoiding the whole cataclysmic failure of our planet will be a plus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hope this doesn't fall back to Earth like the carbon observatory did.</comment>


Tails Has Zero-Day Vulnerabilities Lurking Inside - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2014/07/21/exploit-dealer-snowdens-favourite-os-tails-has-zero-day-vulnerabilities-lurking-inside <comment><USER2> This article smells weird. First, what is Forbes' bias in this - what skin do they have in the game? Second, this line: _All users, including Snowden, should be wary of using Tails with a false sense of security, though it's still more likely to protect anonymity than Windows_ comes only in the final paragraph. TAILS has zero-days - but Windows is still worse, eh? Why not mention that in the headline?

This smells like a PR Hit for some TLA.

<comment><USER3> Spot on. The old adage rings true, "be careful". If you have a specific need for TAILS and the tools it encapsulates then make sure you're running current, patched versions of the tools and that you're aware of their pitfalls.

eg. don't use TOR with js enabled in your browser.</comment></comment>


Apple approves first adblocker that works within mobile apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2ac67d3c-6b49-11e5-8171-ba1968cf791a.html <comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about the paid link, but here's the relevant portion:

>> Apple has approved a piece of software for its digital store that enables iPhone users to block advertisements from appearing in mobile apps such as those of Facebook, Yahoo and The New York Times.

>> Been Choice was launched in the US this month and is more powerful than other types of adblocking software on the market, which are only able to eliminate ads from web pages. The service even prevents Apple delivering ads to its own News app

...

>> David Yoon, co-founder of Been Choice, said he created the company to give consumers "a choice about who gets their data, how it gets used, and who benefits from its value".

>> To make money, Been Choice plans to allow users to sell their data through the app. The company is offering to pay people $20 a month if they consent to being shown ads and allow Been Choice to collect information about how they use their devices.

>> Mr Yoon said the company gives users "a clear choice" about whether they want to block ads or share in the value created by their data.</comment>


IPad: an Apple for Mom - The uncomputer for the people - <AUTHOR> http://danieltenner.com/posts/0015-ipad-an-apple-for-mom.html

<comment><USER2> In the MMO genre, this divide is called "themepark vs sandbox". A game like World of Warcraft is a themepark - you're given a lot of direction in terms of where you're supposed to go and what you're supposed to do. EVE Online is a sandbox - you do whatever you want and you get fewer roadsigns that say "go this way" or "beating this means you win".

Current computers are sandboxes - you can do with them whatever you want, run arbitrary code, create your own workflow, and operate without rules. The iPad is a themepark - it has specific programs that do specific things, and then it's got little roped off paths between them. For many users (the proverbial Mom), a well-developed theme park is more attractive, because all they really wanted to do anyhow is ride the roller-coaster or the Ferris wheel. People like the average Hacker News reader (or even the average reddit or digg reader) can't stand the roped off paths, but for Mom, those laid out sidewalks are a relief.

<comment><USER3> There's no reason why Apple can't sell "sandbox" versions of this kit. The hardware would be 99% the same. The markup and the resulting margins would be _very tasty_ to Apple.

EDIT: They'd still be selling the "Theme Park" version to the other 95% of us.

<comment><USER4> I think the reason is user experience. Future computers will be "theme parks", because non-geeks don't understand the proper limitations of hardware.

For example, 99% of annoyances of computer users is that they install too much software for the resources of the machine they have. Then the computer starts suddenly working slower and slower -- and they don't know why. This happens with Macs and Windows.

In a machine like the iPad Apple can control what software will run and make sure that it is adequate to the resources of the machine. Also, from what I see, they limit the possibility of concurrent running programs to interfere with the user experience.

<comment><USER3> _I think the reason is user experience. Future computers will be "theme parks", because non-geeks don't understand the proper limitations of hardware._

Yes, but there is no reason why you couldn't sell the unlocked version of the same kit. If a non-geek has a bad experience, then let them downgrade the thing. Heck, a company other than Apple might charge them another fee for that.

<comment><USER5> What's the point of officially supporting a jailbroken product, given all the new problems it will bring? To me it's like asking Apple to support Hackintoshes.

Apple has been doing this for decades and it's nothing new. If you want freedom and flexibility, you should look elsewhere.

<comment><USER3> Well, if Apple did it, it wouldn't be "jailbroken," would it? The point would be the same as Apple selling the Aluminum towers. If you want freedom and flexibility coupled with world-class design, then you do buy an Apple -- with top dollar, meaning high margins for them.

Apple's been doing that gig for years.

<comment><USER5> "Well, if Apple did it, it wouldn't be "jailbroken," would it?"

It's still a jail, and if Apple officially removed it - you can still say 'jailbroken' but that's a minor point.

"If you want freedom and flexibility coupled with world-class design, then you do buy an Apple -- with top dollar, meaning high margins for them."

Not true. I can't officially run OS X on non-official Apple hardware with official Apple suppport. Not to mention if I didn't buy Apple hardware then it would most likely kill their margins ;) iPad will eventually have the same 'freedom' as OS X and iPhone.

What most of us don't see right away is that there are financial costs for supporting freedom and flexibility. These costs are in marketing, support (reliability and usability), and security. Given the right target techie segment, these costs don't matter for freedom. Unfortunately if you're targeting the masses of non-techies, that's a completely different story.

(FYI I am an OS X user)

<comment><USER3> FYI, I am also an OS X user. (MacBook, iMac, iPhone) The fact that you felt you had to mention this and a few other things make me think you didn't completely comprehend my idea.

 _It's still a jail, and if Apple officially removed it - you can still say 'jailbroken' but that's a minor point._

I never said about _removing_ the jail. Just building a cozy luxe visitors center just outside the wall.

 _Not true. I can't officially run OS X on non-official Apple hardware with official Apple suppport._

In my idea, people would be running non-official Apple _software_ without Apple support.

 _iPad will eventually have the same 'freedom' as OS X and iPhone. Nothing less, and nothing more; and certainly nothing new._

You're dead wrong. If the iPad is to become as pervasive as they would like it to, Apple is going to have to open it up enough so that it can operate as a general purpose computer _for the small segment of the populace that wants it._

The key is in the italics. There is no technical reason why Apple can't have their "walled garden" and still let a few people do dangerous things if they want. Will it be what the FSF calls "free?" No way.

Actually, they are already doing some of this. It's called the "iPhone SDK."

<comment><USER5> "I never said about removing the jail. Just building a cozy luxe visitors center just outside the wall."

It essentially has the same problem as a jailbroken iPad/iPhone/Hackintosh. There are costs with supporting issues that arise from this if it's official.

"In my idea, people would be running non-official Apple software without Apple support."

Well then why complain when in all likelihood a 3rd party will give you what you want for Apple products - ala unsupported jailbreak?

"You're dead wrong. If the iPad is to become as pervasive as they would like it to, Apple is going to have to open it up enough so that it can operate as a general purpose computer for the small segment of the populace that wants it."

Given the history with iPod, iTunes, & iPhone I'm going to disagree. All of them are closed systems with the same critics. Yet all of these products have been wildly successful despite that. I'm not saying that this would work with any company, but it works with Apple; it's the part of their company DNA that has proven time and again to work. As I've said in previous posts, there was a time when Apple was more 'open'; and it was a total failure that almost took down the entire company.

"There is no technical reason why Apple can't have their "walled garden" and still let a few people do dangerous things if they want."

I agree but there are a myriad of other reasons as to why they shouldn't such as extra costs, making their content partners (movies, music, and books) happy (I suspect this is a really big reason), and so on. It's not perfect for everyone; but it's worked for non-techies, Apple stock holders, and Apple's partners.

"Actually, they are already doing some of this. It's called the "iPhone SDK.""

Then why complain? Just pay the $99 and be happy.

I suggest moving on and helping either the Chrome OS or Linux hardware movement if you really want officially blessed freedom. You're not going to get that from a mainstream console maker; we are a niche audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Even a technophile like me wants to just sit back and be a "regular person" once in a while; to sit back with a book, do some reading on the web, or watch a movie on the couch. The iPad doesn't have to have shell access to be an incredibly useful device for technophiles either. There are SSH programs for the iPhone; there will be similarly useful utilities built for the iPad too.

<comment><USER7> >| There are SSH programs for the iPhone; there will be similarly useful utilities built for the iPad too.

The idea of typing shell commands on a touchpad makes me cringe...do people really do this?

<comment><USER3> It can be a lifesaver in a pinch.

<comment><USER8> example pinch?

<comment><USER9> Remote administration on the train to or from work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _A better comparison is with the Nintendo Wii. While Sony and Microsoft competed in the cut-throat market of consoles for gamers, the Wii also created a new product category: consoles for everyone else. It worked pretty well for them – it turns out that there's a lot more non-gamers than gamers, and making a device that appeals to 95% of the population sells better than making one that appeals to only 5%._

Daniel hit the nail on the head. The industry has been tending towards making high-spec machines while often neglecting human interface issues. People complain that all of this email/booting up/installing/URL stuff was too complicated, and we techies blamed them and told them to RTFM.

In the meantime, others directly address their concerns, and _surprise_ \-- people give them money.

<comment><USER2> Yes - the majority of people view computers as appliances. They don't want a computer, they want an email machine and a word processing machine and a "show me this website" machine and a music-playing machine. They don't need 2560x1600@120fps, and they don't care about having 16 processors. They want to sit down, bang out an email, and do something else, or sit down, type their paper, and be done.

Apple actually had something like this in the mid-90s called "At Ease", designed as a child-safe file manager. You had programs on one tab and files on the other. I remember it from elementary school, and always felt that a more modern version of that would help less computer literate people.

<comment><USER3> _Yes - the majority of people view computers as appliances. They don't want a computer, they want an email machine and a word processing machine and a "show me this website" machine and a music-playing machine._

More precisely, they want a backplane into which they can effortlessly plug in various appliances. Press Buy, download it, plug it in, it just works.

<comment><USER2> Users want to complete tasks. Each of these tasks should be as simple as a toaster. Push button, insert input, push button, win.

Open Mail, type letter, hit send, hear "sent mail" swoosh.

Open Safari, enter URL or search term, click Go, get webpage.

Push lever, insert bread, wait 30 seconds, eat delicious toast.

Open Word, type stuff, hit save/print/email, get happy boss.

Open Youtube, enter search/URL, push Go, Laugh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Entrepreneurial genius consists of a knack for acing your competitors out of key markets through innovative means.

John D. Rockefeller did this by taking a nascent and highly localized oil industry (originally only in Pennsylvania and then Ohio) dominated by wildcatters and other independents and transforming it into a highly integrated and even ruthless competitive machine by which he could always beat his competitors on price while serving major emerging new markets. This was _not_ based on any genius he had about the oil products themselves. He was not technically trained concerning such products. What he understood was business and innovation in emerging markets for these products. Hire the best talent. Gain control of the railroads that were vital to ship the products cheaply and efficiently, first by pressuring them through building a system of pipelines that threatened to undercut their business and then by entering into deals with them involving secret rebates so as to incentive them to deal with Rockefeller either alone or on highly preferential terms. Use legal innovations to set up trusts and partnerships that allowed a series of corporations, one in each state, to function as an integrated whole at a time when it was (people forget this) _illegal_ for a corporation to do business across state lines, thereby gaining hegemony in the U.S. oil market that no other competitor could come even close to matching and eventually using this as a springboard for international dominance as well. The result (setting aside the illegalities involved): the building of an empire that grew exponentially in relation to anything else around it owing to its ability to offer quality and cheap pricing to consumers.

It is not too far-fetched, I think, to say that Steve Jobs is doing something similar in taking on the wildcatters of today in a quest to win the major markets of the information age. He has so managed to unite amazing product development with tightly integrated and company-dominated distribution channels with ground-breaking arrangements with the telcos (who are the vital connecting links, or "railroads," of our day) as to build a formidable empire that threatens to crush any direct competitors in its field. The genius is undeniable, even down to having set up retail outlets of a type that everyone would have laughed at just 20 years ago.

Who can tell where this quest for hegemony in today's open-systems world will go but the implications are both intriguing and frightening at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been thinking much the same thing - I'd love it if the non-technical people in my life were using an iPad. They'd get in to much less trouble (of course, the same is true for Chrome OS).

The question posed at the end is an interesting one: at the moment, the iPad appears to require a regular computer (just like an iPod touch does). Presumably a future version - or even a software update for the existing model - will get rid of this dependency.

<comment><USER12> So the question is how would things go if you have an single mac (when you really need it) and several pad's. What cool things would you do if everyone had a few lying around. While it might be able to replace a desktop several years from now I think it can only be thought of as an accessory to a desktop at this point.

Edit: Also hearing so many people saying: "My mom should get one of these" is really them saying "I wont buy it, but _someone_ else should". Really makes me ponder just how successful it really will be.

<comment><USER13> >I wont buy it, but someone else should".

No. Its not about that.

Since most _such_ people already use a laptop throughout the day and have iPhone. So its something they think might be more used by people who are not carrying a computing/entertainment device throughout the day.

<comment><USER14> I agree. I own a computer repair shop. 90% of our customers, all they want to do is surf the web, check email, look at pictures, and keep in touch with the family. The iPad is great for this. If I could give an iPad to every confused PC user who wanders in looking lost and forlorn, a good majority of them could walk out 10 minutes later, knowing how to do all of the things they want to be able to do on the web. Not everyone needs or wants to do all of the things we HN readers need and want to do on the web, so not everyone needs a device that will allow them to do more. For a lot of people, the restrictions actually make it easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Steve Jobs foreshadowed in an October 2008 conference call that they are creating the $500 iPad and not going after those people who want multi-tasking (even if its _just_ : "I want IM/irc running in the background, listening to pandora and browsing at once"). And those who want shell access and total admin control. All of which probably requires Mac OS X - which the PA Semi A4 chip presumably does not yet support.

"What we want to do is deliver an increasing level of value to these customers, but there are some customers which we choose not to serve. We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk; our DNA will not let us do that. We've seen great success by focusing on certain segments of the market and not trying to be everything to everybody, and you can expect us to stick with that winning strategy."

-Steve Jobs, 2008 October

<http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10072393-37.html>

<comment><USER16> Make no mistake about it--they could run Mac OS X on the iPad a year ago, if they wanted to.

The iPhone OS (3.2) that supports the iPad is a full-fledged Mach/BSD kernel, as much as 10.6, and it's just a matter of which kernel extensions and system and user applications you include in the total build.

<comment><USER15> As I sit here on my Windows machine, looking at Process Lasso Pro - I'm fascinated by the background processes eating up my performance. Virus scanner to Outlook to winlogon.exe. Even if Mac OS X could run on the new A4 chip, I think Apple is concerned about 3rd party apps that are multi-tasking degrading the performance/overall experience.

<comment><USER3> I predict that Apple will come out with a background-task API that puts hard realtime constraints on the work a background thread does. Basically, you register a block of code as a background task, and select an Apple defined "level of service." If your code block doesn't complete during the time interval allotted to it, then the dev is SOL.

If they did this, they could have background tasks that would satisfy 80 to 90% of what devs want to do, but preserve battery life.

<comment><USER17> I think this is exactly right. I also think there'll be some persistent indicator (I'm thinking a little icon in the bar at the top that contains the clock) for each ongoing background task. So people won't have background tasks eating up their battery/RAM without knowing they're still running.

<comment><USER18> They could follow the pattern used for the iPhone, where background tasks which the user should car to know about (Voice Recorder, Phone.app) takes up a double height status bar at the top.

<comment><USER17> Good point. I could maybe see room for both models -- something that's going on RIGHT NOW and you need to continue to be aware of gets the big status bar while just little ongoing "wake up every 20 seconds and check for new messages" tasks wouldn't necessarily need that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is probably the best post someone has put together on everything so far. My mom already wants this device. My roommate who had a macbook then decided to drop having a computer all together for 6 months is going to get this. It's kind of what Litl was trying to do with the web-book. It's about making computers simple and easy to use again. Less headaches, less complexity, and robust functionality.

I think the iPad is something special, because it's going to open the door for us to rethink what a computer should be. Maybe this is the chance we have to rewrite everything.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's not a good sign that the best people can say about the iPad is that their mom could probably get by with one, even though they would never use it.

We've been hearing that refrain for decades, and it's never worked out in the marketplace. People who don't care about technology want to spend the least possible to get a fully-capable product. They want _one_ computer that does everything and lasts forever - not a niche device that has to be tethered to a real PC anyway.

The Wii is a poor example because it didn't succeed by being simpler - it sold by offering a compelling gimmick and content that was not available on other platforms, for an underserved market of children and baby-boomers. The iPad doesn't offer any content you can't find elsewhere, and the 'touch' interface is one that's failed to find a significant market in full-sized computers for over twenty years.

<comment><USER21> _They want one computer that does everything and lasts forever - not a niche device that has to be tethered to a real PC anyway._

Yeah, that's a lot closer to describing my mom - housewive all her life, approaching 70 - but since the kids left home she has gotten one laptop after another, and her use is actually quite sophisticated by now - certainly beyond "browser only". I did give her an iPod touch but her only interest in it is inflicting pictures of her grandchildren on innocent civilians while she's out on the town - she uses her laptop for everything else. She has no particular interest in spending money on something like a tablet.

And don't forget the generational thing too - _I'm_ going to be the mythical "grandma" one day, and when I retire and have an empty nest I am going to _tweak my gentoo box all day long_ :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> That was the best iPad review I read since the launch. What makes us say "meh" is exactly what mom needed since she first laid her hands on a computer. I could remove all functionality from her computer, leaving just the browser and she would be perfectly happy with it.

In that sense one could argue that Chrome OS' hardest competitor will be the iPad. I wonder if they saw that coming.

</comment><comment><USER23> While I agree, what bothers me a little is that all this time Apple had already claimed that Macs are so easy to use etc. So I guess they finally admit that it's not really true. At the same time I hope it will be at least more true for the iPad. Until mom asks why her favorite flash game doesn't work.

Things I have recently helped relatives with:

installing software for their navigation system, so that they could update the maps

Getting their internet radio connected

scanning, printing

installing a webcam and skype

In fact my impression is that "non-power" users often try to do even more hardcore stuff with their computers than I do, simply because they don't know which technologies are just hype and which ones are ready for prime time. For example my father tried speech recognition and used on of those horrible fax/scanner/printer units that hijacks your computer.

</comment><comment><USER24> Another similarity between iPad and Wii: People ruthlessly made fun of the name when it was first announced.

<comment><USER12> People only stopped making fun of the Wii name when it was successful. If the iPad isn't a success then it will be laughed at forever.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nowhere near as much as if it had ended up being called iSlate, though!

<comment><USER13> iSlate = is Late!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The one fly in the ointment is that the iPad does require an external computer somewhere to keep its system software updated, backed up, etc.

Perhaps we family-support geeks will now have to have a Mac dedicated to keeping all the iPads in our extended families up to date. ;-)

<comment><USER25> Unfortunately, your media libraries will all be identical as well. I really don't want that much Billy Joel sitting on my local hard drive all the time.

<comment><USER26> Not necessarily, it would just be the union of all of your media libraries on your computer, and a subset (sync play lists [Billy's iPad, Martha's iPad] ) for each iPad. With todays 1TB $100 hard drives, how much will it matter to have everyone's iPad library on your computer?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (Clarke's Third Law)

In my opinion, Apple is one of few companies that works on their product design until it appears magical, and their meteoric rise is the result. The standards for "Mom" are Star-Trek-high.

</comment><comment><USER28> Why must a lack of a camera be in every article on the iPad? Am I the only longtime MacBook owner that never uses that little camera above my screen?

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably, yes.

Many people use their computer for Skype calls with family. Having video is a really nice bonus there.

<comment><USER3> This sort of device has the potential to really disrupt the telecoms industry.

I think huge swathes of the populace would be just fine with spending $15 a month, and having their friends and family IM them as a form of paging and calling back with Skype.

<comment><USER29> If it's through ATT, if it's anything like the iPhone, that's $30 a month, and there's a restriction of < 10MB downloads. It won't be $15 a month.

I do feel sorry for ATT's network, though. Think of the strain that the iPhone put on their network, and now they're accepting a computer!? makes me happy I switched to Verizon.

<comment><USER3> _If it's through ATT, if it's anything like the iPhone, that's $30 a month, and there's a restriction of < 10MB downloads. It won't be $15 a month._

You didn't watch the presentation, did you? It's indeed under $15 a month for 250 MB a month. Plenty for IMs, emails, and the occasional Skype call.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I am not sure. Many of my technophobe relations are Multitaskers (messy ones to be sure but multitasking nonetheless) and have a problem abandoning the nested folder system they hold so dear (and Itunes will not help there) They are familiar with office applications (by which they send jokes etc) and will resist unfamiliar tools)

many older people rely on their computer to keep contact with their relations through skype etc.., and it does not offer it.

If it was a little more robust, did not require a persistent connection to a desktop (to manage files) and had Flash then maybe so, as it stands i just don't know, im fairly confident my mom wouldn't like it.

</comment><comment><USER31> I totally agree that this device could replace the PC for many many people. I see the iPad as the universal remote-commander for all kind of media and entertainment. Imagine you could buy a film on iTunes and beam it into your television screen...

<comment><USER3> Apple should sell such kits with an Apple TV bundled with an iPad. (Flatscreen and sound system optional.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Totally agreed. However, I think the iPad should come with a more robust photo app — something that lets you import and manage photos (all through fun drag and drop, of course). In my experience, many light computer users still take digital photos. It would also be nice if this thing could manage video importing, with maybe some very basic editing functionality similar to what's on the iPhone.

<comment><USER33> I would be shocked if there isn't. You can import pictures from memory cards or digital cameras (with an attachment).

I see myself using the iPad for this sort of quick-and-dirty post-shoot curation and showing off. Especially if I'm traveling and don't want to lug my full-on laptop with me.

<comment><USER3> I thought my HP slate would be the cat's meow for photo touchups in the field. Come up with a well designed way to connect cameras, Port Aperture to the iPad, and you'd have one kickass piece of kit for photo work.

I wonder if someone could come up with a Bluetooth or WiFi enabled mini-USB micro-dongle you could just leave plugged into the camera behind its media- port panel?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Before the iPhone came out, I was itching for a powerful phone that came close to being a browser-enabled computer in my pocket. The only devices I could get at the time was WEP browsers with very high data fees. The iPhone brought us a full browser with a $20 unlimited data plan. I bought it the first day it became available. It was a big leap forward compared with its peers. It allowed me to do things I wanted to do, and not just the things my telco allowed.

The iPad has a different set of peers. We're not living in a world where the only tablet devices are the Kindle and Nook. There are actual fully functioning tablet PCs that can run the things normal PCs can. Apple is trying to move us from open devices to a closed one.

</comment><comment><USER35> I thought it was meant to be a netbook replacement? I would be surprised to see it attract that segment of users. I'm wandering around a university campus now, where netbooks are quite popular. When I look at people's screens, the most common activities seem to be IM, facebook and email. Would these users rather be thumb typing their messages? I doubt it. I love my iPhone, and I can type reasonably fast on it, but I don't think I've used it to send an email longer than 3 sentences in the 18 months I've had it. I do agree it has a place in living rooms, though.

</comment><comment><USER36> Most people _do_ need computers. I'd say the majority of computer users are younger people and there's not one young person I know that uses their computer only to read new York times. Most computer users use it for _work_ , and that's something the iPad is not optimized for. It's an entertainment casual device, but it's not mobile. I think there's a nice use for it because it let's you walk around your house with some of the information you used to have to sit down for. But to think it's really for the people who use 10 year old computers is naive.

</comment><comment><USER37> The iPhone has been successful as a platform because programmers want to use it. Programmers carry phones and take pleasure in improving their gadget- environment. Good software is written by people who use it.

The iPad is not for developers, so applications developed for the iPad are going to be applications written to make money. The developers will test the applications, but they will not write applications for their own use unless they really need the hardware UI provided by the iPad.

This is a console with a web browser, not a computer.

<comment><USER3> I can immediately think of a multitouch stats application. And yes, I am a programmer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm a hardcore geek and I want to add an iPad to my toolchest. It'd join an array of devices and be used for web browsing on the couch and in bed. Touch based web browsing is superior to a mouse IMO. Seems like an amazing device for that.

</comment><comment><USER39> If the iPad is the "apple for mom", then what was the iMac all this time? Whatever happened to OS X and "it just works"?

<comment><USER40> OS X _is_ easy to use ... compared to other PCs. But this thing is easy to use the way your car is easy to use.

<comment><USER39> My mother and grandmother would be insulted to be told that they need a "simpler" computer. This idea that regular computers are "too difficult" for "normal users" is nothing but pure condescension. Why should we believe that now, after all of the other "simplified computer for 'normal users'/internet appliance" devices to ever hit the market (including Apple's own AppleTV) that _this_ one is going to make it?

<comment><USER40> It's not about _needing_ a simpler computer. It's about _wanting_ one. Not all people; not even all mothers or grandmothers. And not all the time.

The iPad has, in a sense, already made it. It, despite some people's protestations, _is_ just a big iPod touch. Whether this form factor works or not, people have responded extremely well to its abstractions and simplifications, despite the limitations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Probably iPad 3.0 will be widescreen and they will call it an inovation.

</comment><comment><USER42> My grandma uses her printer all the time, to print photos and greeting cards. She has a program that makes greeting cards for her, not web-based. She does family history research with a separate program. She uses video chat.

She doesn't really like computers, but she's determined so she knows how to use them. I think that the group that just wants Facebook will start to want something else once they're used to Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER43> Except nothing moms consider cool work on this thing..

</comment><comment><USER44> No. The iPad is something new and products like this have to go through the diffusion of innovation from early adopters to get to the early majority -- and I personally know of no early adopter who is happy with it (all of whom had an iPhone when it launched, etc). The word among early adopters is "bullshit". I don't care who Apple is, or who they think they are, they can't beat the diffusion curve.

<comment><USER3> I'm an early adopter, and I like it a lot.

<comment><USER44> Yes, you're an early adopter, but you're one who drinks kool-aide. There are about 5% of you.</comment></comment></comment>


Reflections on six months of Swift - <AUTHOR> http://khanlou.com/2016/05/six-months-of-swift/ <comment><USER2> The language backward compatibility with future versions is a big deal. Is this article accurate as to the state of the world?

The thing that was always amazing about Java, was that with every release of the JVM and language, they never broke backward compatibility in one release. They gave people a good 2 years between versions that had breaking changes.

Is swift just not stable enough yet?

<comment><USER3> Java would have been a better language if they had breaking changes. However, they prioritized compatibility. Type erasure is a big compromise, for example.

Personally, I thinks it's better to have breaking changes and a good conversation tool.

Apple will have most Swift developers on Swift 3.x this year. Next year everyone will do the quick upgrade to Swift 4.x. Apple really takes advantage of migrating its users and developers to their latest versions.

Swift is much less verbose than Objective C. I think it's better to deal with the changes. You'll still write less code:

[http://ctarda.com/2016/05/clarity-is-more-important-than- bre...](http://ctarda.com/2016/05/clarity-is-more-important-than-brevity- sometimes-you-can-have-both)

[https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/should-i-use- objecti...](https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/should-i-use-objective-c- or-swift-for-writing-ios-apps/)

<comment><USER2> Sure, but look at the python community, 3 is still not being used everywhere because of non-backward compatible changes to the language.

It's an easy thing to say, but I think the success of Java was mainly due to this. I agree that tyoe erasure was a horrible compromise, and they should have revisited it sooner, but the language never left you behind.

<comment><USER3> That's because the Python community had a choice to stick with 2.x. If you go with Swift, Apple will make you upgrade.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


List of genocides by death toll - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides_by_death_toll <comment><USER2> That list is incomplete. It is missing the whole colonialism era and genocide of indigenous people [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples)

Especially Spanish colonization of the Americas: _It is estimated that during the Spanish conquest of the Americas up to eight million indigenous people died, marking the first large-scale act of genocide of the modern era_</comment>


Google AI Challenge Winner Post-Mortem - <AUTHOR> http://quotenil.com/Planet-Wars-Post-Mortem.html <comment><USER2> Postmortem of the previous winner: <http://a1k0n.net/blah/archives/2010/03/index.html>

Shocking how similarly they begin. Is something going on here of which I am not aware? Why do they both start so similarly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Its a tribute, as he states in the first sentence that is his own. And links to a1k0n's post.

<comment><USER2> Oh wow. I missed that completely. Thanks for pointing it out.</comment></comment></comment>