US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-cell-carriers-selling-access-to-real-time-location-data/ <comment><USER2> Throwaway account.

I work in location / mapping / geo. Some of us have been waiting for this to blow (which it hasn't yet). The public has zero idea how much personal location data is available.

It's not just your cell carrier. Your cell phone chip manufacturer, GPS chip manufacturer, phone manufacturer and then pretty much anyone on the installed OS (android crapware) is getting a copy of your location data. Usually not in software but by contract, one gives gps data to all the others as part of the bill of materials.

This is then usually (but not always) "anonymized" by cutting it in to ~5 second chunks. It's easy to put it back together again. We can figure out everything about your day from when you wake up to where you go to when you sleep.

This data is sold to whoever wants it. Hedge funds or services who analyze it for hedge funds is the big one. It's normal to track hundreds of millions of people a day and trade stocks based on where they go. This isn't fantasy, it's what happens every day.

Almost every web/smartphone mapping company is doing it, so is almost everyone that tracks you for some service - "turn the lights on when I get home". The web mapping companies and those that provide SDKs for "free". It's a monetization model for apps which don't need location. That's why Apple is trying hard to restrict it without scaring off consumers.

<comment><USER3> I'm in the space as well. I've tried telling my congressmen but they ignore me. I'm waiting for the backlash, especially will all the recent privacy issues. It hasn't happened yet and the problem is so large that I honestly doubt whether the public will ever truly grasp what the scope.

The advice I always give when this topic comes up us to be very careful with what you install on your phone. The least expensive mobile location data tends to come from random apps collecting the data to sell it, and ad networks. Permission to use your GPS is permission to track you until you uninstall the app.

<comment><USER4> Can you name and shame the congressmen that ignore you?

Or can you make a tip to one of the newspapers? Given the facebook privacy news saga this might get picked up.

<comment><USER5> I don't think naming and shaming will do anything, but maybe when somebody's location data embarrasses them, they will do something about it. I think a good analogy is the Video Privacy Protection Act.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's funny that this is coming up now. The other day I was on the phone with Geico's roadside assistance and they wanted to know my location. I told them I didn't have their app downloaded, they said it wasn't a problem and they could get it without it. Sure enough they could. I checked their disclaimers [1] and they purchase the data from my cell carrier. They didn't even have to know which one.

[1] [https://www.geico.com/web-and-mobile/mobile-apps/roadside- as...](https://www.geico.com/web-and-mobile/mobile-apps/roadside-assistance/) (see disclaimers at the bottom)

<comment><USER7> Wow. The fact that they can just get this with "oral approval" (relayed by them to your carrier) is shocking to me. This is ridiculous.

<comment><USER8> They don't need oral approval or any approval. GEICO is only asking so that their customers won't freak out when GEICO magically knows where they are. The customer service rep probably had the data up on their screen already when they asked.

<comment><USER9> I wonder if they use this data to price insurance -- they would easily know when their drivers are going over the speed limit (or, if such data is not so precise, if their average speed over 10 minutes exceeded the speed limit).

<comment><USER10> More likely is approximating number of miles driven and price discriminating based off that. More miles driven = more risk of an auto accident. Basically pay-per-mile car insurance, but hidden.

<comment><USER11> How do they know you are driving? Seems too error-prone to be useful.

<comment><USER10> They don't need to know you are driving to do price discrimination. They could just as well take the zip codes where you live and work and assume you're driving, and make a profit giving discounts to folks with a shorter commute regardless of whether or not they actually drive it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I believe the relevant T-Mobile privacy policy (that I _definitely_ read before signing up...) is:

"With your consent. We may provide location-based services or provide third parties with access to your approximate location to provide services to you." [https://www.t-mobile.com/company/website/privacypolicy.aspx](https://www.t-mobile.com/company/website/privacypolicy.aspx)

That is why a text message confirmation is required to get a cell phone's location from [https://www.locationsmart.com/try/](https://www.locationsmart.com/try/)

For those on T-Mobile, there are privacy settings that can be adjusted here: [https://my.t-mobile.com/profile/privacy_notifications/advert...](https://my.t-mobile.com/profile/privacy_notifications/advertising) I already had all of them disabled, and I was still able to get the location of my cell phone from LocationSmart.

I chatted with T-Mobile support yesterday to see if I could opt-out of them sharing my data. Not surprisingly, the support agent was less than helpful. "Don't worry, your data is secured"

Are there any US carriers that respect privacy and _do not_ share private information with 3rd parties? Or is that a pipe dream?

<comment><USER13> Well, the locationsmart fails completely on my Google fi phone.

<comment><USER14> Are you using your Google Voice number? Fi numbers are GV and in cloud.

Somewhere in your sim/about under settings you can find your underlying phone numbers for Sprint/TMO that you can look up.

<comment><USER12> I would be interested to know about that... I don't see anything mentioned in the Project Fi Terms of Service ([https://fi.google.com/about/tos/](https://fi.google.com/about/tos/)) about Sprint, T-Mobile, or US Cellular. I assume that by signing up with Fi you are also subject to each of their privacy policies, but I'd be happy to be corrected!

<comment><USER14> My fi number has always been blocked from everything (banking, paypal, whatsapp, etc) for being VOIP. Doing some xda-dev stuff, I see two separate underlying numbers for the two profiles. I can't receive texts on either of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Kevin Bankston, director of New America's Open Technology Institute, > explained in a phone call that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act > only restricts telecom companies from disclosing data to the government. It > doesn't restrict disclosure to other companies, who then may disclose that > same data to the government.

It seems like intelligence services spend a lot of their time dreaming up ways to do an end-run around the law. This is the same reason US intelligence does partnerships with foreign intelligence services.

<comment><USER16> I'd rather them try to do end-runs around the law than run it up the gut... (If I had to choose)

<comment><USER17> Just think of how amazing the museum will be for your great grandkids when we completely dismantle them when, inevitably, their stated mission goals supersede common sense and a responsible relationship to the American public.

<comment><USER18> I doubt any of the privacy invasions are going anytime soon.

The big tech cos pull in ~100B in revenue precisely because they can capitalize on the data.

As long as there is crazy amount of money to be made, it will keep on getting worse. Having hope on the US govt to do anytime is wishful thinking. Govt and corporations are hell bent on knowing everything about you. It gives them the power.

<comment><USER17> [http://www.stasimuseum.de/en/enindex.htm](http://www.stasimuseum.de/en/enindex.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Carriers have been providing these services to 3rd party providers since at least 2006

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/feb/01/news.g2](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/feb/01/news.g2)

A few points to note:

* Obtaining consent is entirely left to the provider to implement. It does not appear to have any auditing. A provider can query any number they like.

* The opt-in process used by many providers is easy to exploit, by spoofing SMS replies or abusing the SMS template so that the surveillance target does not get notified

* The providers have are well aware of the potential to exploit this and have been for some time. It has never been resolved in over 10 years.

<comment><USER20> Is it even considered an exploit?

It's a cell carrier providing data about the radio communications between hardware they own and someone else. At a moral level, seems somewhat equivalent to a web server providing data about clients that access the server.

To opt out, stop using some third-party corporation's owned hardware to route your communications near lightspeed around the world. Hey, the Amish communities may have something in their overall philosophy of "Don't be beholden to strangers who aren't part of your community."

<comment><USER19> I'm not clear if you missed the point here? This isn't aggregate data, it's obtaining the location of a specific individual just by knowing their phone number. It can be done without their knowledge or consent.

By your webserver analogy, the equivalent would be more akin to google publishing the contact details and search queries of anyone using the service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am starting to wonder what all have I consented to? Every week I learn I have consented to this and that because of a news article as I never read those contracts or TOS. I wonder if there will be a way to phrase long contracts into bullet list of ideas for someone simple minded like me in the near future.

<comment><USER22> One of the things that GDPR requires is real informed consent, small print hidden inside a thirty-page EULA is not acceptable.

<comment><USER23> And unlike some of the recent proposals in the U.S., it's generalized to all industries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was aware the cell phone companies were selling anonymized data for some time (not revealing the numbers and adding some jitter to the location data to avoid identifying users).

This is the first I'm hearing that they're releasing detailed personal tracking by phone number. When I sat in on a recent presentation with Verizon execs they flat out said they were not doing this. Oops.

</comment><comment><USER25> The worst part is there isn't any possible way I know of to defend yourself against this other than not having a phone.

<comment><USER26> Until/unless they modify the law - turning off your phone thwarts it. While your phone is powered off, it has no ability to track & record your location movements. Obviously your active location will then be picked back up after you power it on, it won't have a record of anything inbetween.

A simple example of limiting the invasiveness using this approach, would be to have your phone on only at work & home, or similar. In absence of phone snooping, someone can already easily locate you at those two standard destinations, and can easily discover when you'd typically be at those places (ie you're not giving them much by using your phone there under normal circumstances).

<comment> gm-conspiracy So, use Google voice or setup your own w/ Twilio (try all numbers), and have a work cellphone and a home cellphone, a one-way pager (for when you are traveling), and another travel phone without a battery that you would use if necessary, based on the pager message?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The most obvious use of the data appears to be by credit card companies to detect fraudulent use of a card and decline those transactions. This is something I'm relatively comfortable with, though it's plainly in the interests of the bank and I only indirectly benefit from the tracking.

<comment><USER28> The most obvious use is insurance companies looking for excuses to deny claims.

<comment><USER29> As blocking fraudulent claims could remove a reason for my premiums to he higher, I can't say I'm against that.

With the caveat, for course, that people are not always where their phone is so this taken on its own would be circumstantial evidence: one would hope decisions are not made directly based on this information.

<comment><USER18> It's not in the interest of insurance companies to lower premiums. They only do it if competition is eating them alive. Geico has been raising their margins ever so slightly. I bet they are also the purchasers of ungodly amounts of data for targeting marketing.

Insurance companies #1 goal is to make maximum profits for their shareholders without getting caught with their pants down.

<comment><USER30> GEICO is a private company. There are no shareholders. GEICO is owned by Birkshire Hathaway which is owned by Warren Buffett.

I am sure your point is still valid with publicly traded insurance companies.

[http://investsnips.com/complete-list-of-insurance- companies-...](http://investsnips.com/complete-list-of-insurance-companies- listed-on-u-s-exchanges/)

<comment><USER31> > GEICO is owned by Birkshire Hathaway which is owned by Warren Buffett.

Berkshire Hathaway is publicly traded. Warren Buffet owns 36.8% of it.[1]

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Two related stories:

I went to a recruiting event in 2013, or 14 perhaps, for a major telecom network in Canada. They were proudly showcasing their ability and interest to analyze people's data. I was shocked, so I spoke to the hiring manager:

"You should be concerned about google and Microsoft, they have much more data" he said. They do, but much less sensitive data. And I am paying you! And google gives me free excellent services. You are an expensive oligopoly with not the best customer protection track record.

2\. I had a free modem from a major network that came with the internet. I used the modem at another location while I was away. I got charged for my usage! The modem was not just a modem, it was sensing more information to their system. That is how they tracked my usage, if that is the only thing they tracked. Their technical customer service avoided any form of discussion. Cancelled my internet line with them, and using VPN for trackable stuff ever since.

I am seriously considering cancelling my cell phone until their practices changes.

</comment><comment><USER33> The way I understood it is that the requester of the location is trusted to have gotten consent from the subject of the query. The providers will answer any queries.

So Securus works on the "we're sure our customers are getting consent for their inquiries" presumption. What are the consequences if a company is found to not have gotten consent? Business sense dictates there to be no consequence at all if Securus can avoid it.

The way this should work is that the carriers can get permission to share location data with third-parties. They should not do it without having gotten permission from their customer. But then they probably get that when you sign the contract. Or do they just not mention it?

</comment><comment><USER34> Carriers are also selling your billing records. They offer a service to return the carrier billing address/name based on the mobile number.

Not only this but late last year all 4 of the major US carriers are offering APIs to convert mobile IP to a billing record (name/address/phone number).

<comment><USER35> This is even more disconcerting - just out of curiousirty what does this cost?

<comment><USER34> 9c on the high end, under a 1c on the low end (with volume/long term commitment)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Previously discussed yesterday, and again two days before that: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17069459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17069459)

This is one of the reasons I use a public-facing Twilio number, which forwards to a private number which I never hand out.

This isn't something that people should have to do to opt-out of tracking like this, but it doesn't seem like there are many other reliable options.

<comment><USER37> If you take that cell phone home with you regularly and don't live in a multi- unit building, it would be relatively trivial to figure out your identity using this data.

<comment><USER36> Undoubtably. Not a strong protection against doxxing, but might offer some semblance of protection from 'drive-by-lookups'. With a modern smartphone and location services, there's only so much you can do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> What if I as an European visit the states? Am I protected by through some agreements with my local provider or even GDPR?

<comment><USER39> Through FISA, all foreigners are legal monitorable, no matter what.

This is part of how US mass surveillance works. We record _everything_ and if it turns out to be a citizen, we're supposed to throw it out. Of course in reality, it goes to the Parallel Construction Department who uses the information to build a case against someone through other means, knowing the answer in advance.

<comment><USER40> > Of course in reality, it goes to the Parallel Construction Department

Not the case. US Person Information cannot be queried. You are referring to a practice used against foreign targets to obfuscate methods of surveillance (Reasonable folks can object to this as well of course - my only point is that your portrayal is not accurate).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wondered how the spam callers knew what area code I was in while traveling out of state.

I would assume that through clustering analysis (eg coworkers/friends travel together) even fairly coarse position data can allow you to construct relationships. Then they can spam/fish both you end your coworkers with the same fake number. That makes it seem more important to answer and more organic.

<comment><USER42> A friend of mine just got back from NYC and then received a fake call from an NYC area code. I get several every day from random area codes, and we had to wonder whether it was coincidence or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Anyone have a link to jeans with faraday pockets?

<comment><USER44> Would airplane mode work?

<comment><USER45> Airplane mode would work, yes. But it only works against the cell provider. The on-phone GPS can still work and sync the data later.

<comment><USER46> I would imagine the airplane mode deactivates GPS signal recipience?

<comment><USER47> I can confirm that it doesn't, at least on the iPhone 7. I recently took one on an overseas trip and left it in airplane mode the whole time. The photos I took during the trip were all properly geotagged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Another 'fun' implication of this are the increasingly large number of sites that try to obtain your phone number either through SMS messages during account setup, two factor authentication, or any other number of ways. The accounts you have on those sites link directly to your physical presence. Taking it one small step further, any accounts on other sites you have linked to those accounts are similarly effected. Taking it one step even your dynamic IP address at any given moment can end up working as a physical identifier.

The amount of information the NSA has on people is going to be phenomenal. It'd be interesting to be able to glimpse the data just to see how much we all give away. Here's to hoping we never once ever end up putting a 'bad' person in high office because the amount of targeted damage somebody could do with this information is just staggering to even consider.

</comment><comment><USER49> Does anyone know of a way you can request consent status from your service provider?

<comment><USER50> Send a letter to their legal department requesting the information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> _> the Electronic Communications Privacy Act only restricts telecom companies from disclosing data to the government. It doesn't restrict disclosure to other companies_

Clearly the US has their priorities completely the wrong way.

<comment><USER52> Part of the American mythology is that government involvement is always bad. It's hard for me to know if this developed because of the myths of the America Revolution, that a small colony won it alone and not because of external factors, and how much is due to people preaching small government politics. Regardless a distrust of the government seems to be ingrained in the American psyche IMO.

<comment><USER53> Ahaha what? There's no myth that we won it alone. Elementary school texts on the subject lay it out fairly clearly that we did it with the French.

<comment><USER52> They may talk slightly about the French help but none talk about The Spanish[1] also England was having trouble recruiting for the unpopular war so much so that about ~1/3 of the British fighting forces were mercenaries[2]. The Revolutionary war was won basically because the British Empire was starting to show it's cracks and other countries jumped at the chance to speed up it's demise.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain_and_the_American_Revolut...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain_and_the_American_Revolutionary_War) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War#Rec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War#Recruitment)

<comment><USER54> There's no doubt that those were factors that aided. As always nothing in world history happened due to a singular factor or cause. But it is not mythology that a lot of brave and enlightened people fought an empire and have become a very successful country. What next? Are we to discount the Allies win over the Axis because well the Third Reich was worn down due to fighting in Russia? I am a US born citizen and criticize our country quite a bit, but it is insulting to say that the uprising here wasn't the main factor in us achieving our independence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> There was mild discontent when the Data Retention laws [1] were being rolled out across the EU in the early 2010s. This was a legal harmonization of existing collection practices for law enforcement purposes. It did receive a lot of press coverage and some small protests (even though in reality the collection was already widespread).

In 2009, Malte Spitz (German Green Party politician) sued his telecom provider for all the information they had stored on him in the last 6 moths. He and others made a good (and spooky) visualization showing how it tracked his entire life [2]. He did a TED talk about it [3], which received a spirited applause and unfortunately minor press coverage.

I think many naively bought the idea that all this detailed data was only for LE (maybe a side effect of all the reporting on the Data Retention Laws?), despite constantly seeing clauses in their EULA's saying their data will be shared with third parties.

\----

People only care about these issues once they become evident and widespread, and they personally are affected. I remember the shock my friends had when Google Maps released the location history feature. Up until then, its just a theoretical concern.

Good demonstrations, hard hitting expositions and good press coverage are essential.

\----

[1] - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention)

[2] - [https://www.zeit.de/digital/datenschutz/2011-03/data- protect...](https://www.zeit.de/digital/datenschutz/2011-03/data-protection- malte-spitz)

[3] - [https://youtu.be/Gv7Y0W0xmYQ](https://youtu.be/Gv7Y0W0xmYQ)

</comment><comment><USER56> Turns out that Stallman was right.

</comment><comment><USER57> The individual rights under the Constitution have been deemed, in the U.S., to only apply to government and government institutions.

The private companies are exercising their free market rights, unfettered by inconveniences like privacy rights, and thus can (as per the article and the random65... whistleblower user at the top of this thread at the time of this writing) track behavior and sell the data.

Therefore, does it follow that government canNOT be the buyer of such data? That police departments or the FBI or others cannot access this data?

Is there a Chinese Wall in place to prevent such things from happening. Or...?

</comment><comment><USER58> > _one of the biggest gaps in US privacy law._

Gaps? How about lack of?

[https://content.next.westlaw.com/6-502-0467?transitionType=D...](https://content.next.westlaw.com/6-502-0467?transitionType=Default&firstPage=true&bhcp=1&contextData=\(sc.Default\))

General Laws: Not Applicable.

Sectoral Laws: There is no national law.

\----

How outrageous and disgusting that congress can make a big show of questioning facebook over privacy, when they don't have the courage to pass even moderate data privacy laws. How much do you want to bet this location data will be ignored by congress?

</comment><comment><USER59> I met a high-level executive at Ericsson who told me that he had met with Tim Armstrong (CEO of AOL) could make $5 billion more a year if he had access to location data with <50m accuracy.

</comment><comment><USER20> So as a private citizen, I can pool some money and get the same level of tracking that American intellignece services have of individual cell hardware?

Sounds like a win for the citizens.

</comment><comment><USER60> > Cook: What would he do if he were Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg? His answer: > "I wouldn't be in this situation."

Sounds like one of those situations to me...

</comment><comment><USER61> It's funny to me that this is news to anyone. This has been going on for quite some time - at least the length of my career. For the longest time it was wide open for anyone to access who had an inkling of knowledge about how mobile devices worked.

Did this _never_ come up at defcon or in an issue of 2600? Are people really _that_ focused on web security?

</comment><comment><USER62> When are we going to wake up and reform privacy laws?! This cannot be the new norm.

Something about this has to be illegal.

<comment><USER63> Have you heard of our lord and saviour, GDPR?

<comment><USER62> This article is about the US telecoms

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Isn't this covered under CPNI [1]? Something that consumers can opt out?

[1] [https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Customer_proprietary_network_inf...](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Customer_proprietary_network_information)

</comment><comment><USER65> This exploits a vulnerability in the SS7/MAP protocols that power mobile networks worldwide; the cooperation of the carrier isn't even required (even if carriers were against this; bad actors can and will get this data anyway).

<comment><USER40> You are referring to the command used to request where to route an SMS message, I assume? If so, carriers can (and have been albeit very slowly) restrict this activity so it is less of a free-for-all.

That said, it seems they are intentionally selling this data as well, which is a whole new issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> After reading this post a couple hours ago, I was able to play around with LocationSmart's API. Indeed seems quite powerful/comprenhensive. As of an hour or so, they took down their try/demo webpage and related open API.

</comment><comment><USER67> Don't banks use this data when you create an account nowadays too? I just created a capital one account and they were actually pretty transparent that they'd be checking the location of my phone via carrier.

</comment><comment><USER68> I assume this is how we get real-time road traffic information, is it not?

</comment><comment><USER69> I tried location smart website said location accuracy was up to 14 miles off. They were really 4 miles off. So not that accurate. If it was 2 blocks like other poster I'd be worried.

</comment><comment><USER70> It is very tempting to go full "tin foil hat" at this point. I am seriously considering removing my cell battery and powering it up semi hourly to check for messages.

<comment><USER71> How much do you typically move in 30 minutes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> i havent read all 504 comments, and dont plan to, but this should come as no suprise to anyone, unfortunatly it does. cogress, dc, will not help there is too uch to gain, posting the info in real time of the ones in power, will shine a light on the issue, they will make it look like this has been taken care of-while it continues. the ONLY solution in my opinion its a revolt- against big data/tech, not a boycott, and exodus to DIY open source tech.

</comment><comment><USER73> Does disabling the location data via the settings make any difference, and is there an app which will turn off location data after a set period?

<comment><USER74> No, I tried with my number, all location data off. GPS landed right on my house, very room phone was in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> The article mentions banks tracking your credit card usage to detect fraud. Are there known instances of banks reselling this location data?

</comment><comment><USER76> Has anyone suggested a practical way that people can avoid being tracked? (Aside from Airplane Mode or keeping your phone in a Faraday Cage)

<comment><USER77> I see a lot of suggestions about reducing or shutting off your signals, but what about _boosting_ them in certain directions? As far as I understand cell tower triangulation, having a stronger signal in one direction might offset your calculated position in that direction. I wouldn't expect that to decrease connectivity, just require special equipment and more battery life.

<comment><USER76> Interesting concept, although I don't even want my general vicinity to be tracked or shared without my consent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Once the books are all burned, there will be no more book-burnings.

</comment><comment><USER79> Isn't this how teralytics.net gets the data it sells?

</comment><comment><USER80> Isn't carrier IQ been always doing that?

<comment><USER81> Carrier IQ was far more invasive than just location. Their "Experience Manager" was supposedly tracking every app launch, time spent in that app, metrics on key & button presses within that app, and other misc interactions.

They got accused of being a "keylogger" which they rightly said they weren't, but that ignores how invasive and creepy Experience Manager was (is?). Their whole argument was that carriers can use this app data to see what apps are draining battery, which is kind of bs since carriers are in no position to resolve battery issues or advise customers.

The reality is that carriers wanted more information on how customers were using their devices, Carrier IQ provided that raw data, and both got rich. They survived the scandal because the critics focused on keylogging, instead of the highly invasive usage analytics which it really was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> We don't have a problem when google does it ?

<comment><USER83> You don't have to use a Google powered phone. But the modern economy almost demands you have a cell phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> One of these days, most of you will finally understand just how right RMS was and is...

It's just a shame so many can't see it, and worse, give those of us who do shit.

<comment><USER85> RMS = Richard Stallman?

<comment><USER86> Correct

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> It's so strange--I never would have expected the boot of tyranny to come from private corporations, but here we are. And what all this proves is that technology is value-neutral and can wipe us all out, or just make us incredibly miserable, if we let it.

Hopefully there will be a way to opt out. Otherwise, I should start selling faraday bags for devices. Probably should anyways.

<comment><USER88> This tracking abomination is an emergent phenomenon of the merger of private industry and government in the US. See for example both legalized bribery (a.k.a. unlimited campaign contributions by corporations thanks to Citizens United) and outright bribery (Cohen) by telecoms like AT&T, ensuring that they will have the flexibility to perpetrate such garbage as this tracking data sale.

Why not distrust _both_ government and industry? The rule "power corrupts" holds in either case.

<comment><USER89> Are you saying AT&T bribed Cohen in order to have the Justice Dept. sue AT&T over its acquisition with Time Warner?

<comment><USER88> I'm saying AT&T bribed Cohen, which is what we have evidence for so far. Perhaps there will be additional communiques exposed later which reveal specific requests.

They did not get the outcome they wanted with the acquisition, but there was also the matter of the administration wanting to punish CNN. Maybe AT&T should have paid more.

But AT&T has still done remarkably well vis a vis the FCC's selective deregulation of net neutrality, which makes it much easier for existing ISPs to leverage their quasi-monopolies and compete unfairly within other verticals.

The American system of legalized bribery needn't produce a bill of sale for regulatory capture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Very much a tangent, but this song is the perfect soundtrack for privacy / tracking articles like these: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ttTf8N7Bwg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ttTf8N7Bwg)

 _" The Hymn Of Acxiom"

Somebody hears you. you know that. you know that. Somebody hears you. you know that inside. Someone is learning the colors of all your moods, to (say just the right thing and) show that you're understood. Here you're known.

Leave your life open. you don't have. you don't have. Leave your life open. you don't have to hide. Someone is gathering every crumb you drop, these (mindless decisions and) moments you long forgot. Keep them all.

Let our formulas find your soul. We'll divine your artesian source (in your mind), Marshal feed and force (our machines will) To design you a perfect love— Or (better still) a perfect lust. O how glorious, glorious: a brand new need is born.

Now we possess you. you'll own that. you'll own that. Now we possess you. you'll own that in time. Now we will build you an endlessly upward world, (reach in your pocket) embrace you for all you're worth.

Is that wrong? Isn't this what you want? Amen._

</comment><comment><USER91> I think that Snowden comment fits here:

"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say,"

</comment><comment><USER92> How do I get into this business? PM me if you want to collaborate.

</comment><comment><USER93> I'm shocked that anyone is shocked about this! Transportation departments have been buying this data since the late 90s.

More creepy are the planning solutions for commercial development. You can buy datasets that will tell you the average income of drivers on larger highways in hourly buckets.

<comment><USER94> We don't _all_ work in adtech, you know?

<comment><USER95> And thank god for that...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> I've just started using Signal and was surprised by how good the call quality is. For those that aren't aware, Signal calls are encrypted, so you effectively give nothing to the cell carrier when you make a call through it (except that you used some data).

<comment><USER83> Unless I misunderstood, this has nothing to do with what apps you use to communicate. It has to do with connecting to the cellular network at all. I think the only way around this would be to run airplane mode with wifi only, and then taking lots of steps to keep your wifi use private too.</comment></comment>


Git's new pre-push hook - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ittybittyapps.com/blog/2013/09/03/git-pre-push/?ref=hn

<comment><AUTHOR> This is my first ever blog post. Would love any feedback.</comment>


The Importance of Observability - <AUTHOR> http://blog.serverfault.com/2013/11/26/the-importance-of-observability/

<comment><USER2> Really nice. Sort of a 'best practices' guide in a sense. And found a few new tools, thanks for that link from Etsy.</comment>


Does your hand fit your phone screen? - <AUTHOR> http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/smartphone-ergonomics/

<comment><USER2> This is an interesting subject and a clever way to approach it, but post- Snowden, I can't help wondering what will happen to all the biometric data harvested from the hand measurement section.

You could also check your personal compatibility with the latest mega-devices by folding a piece of paper or card to the dimensions of the phone you're interested in (or using a similar-sized object)

It looks obvious that evolution will eventually select for longer thumbs</comment>


Things Every Programmer Should Know - <AUTHOR> http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/97_Things_Every_Programmer_Should_Know

<comment><USER2> The making of a crowd sourced book.

Unfortunately, they are planning to pay the crowd with copies of the book.

</comment><comment><USER3> Previously discussed at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=802883></comment>


Baby steps for Dexter the robot - <AUTHOR> http://news.com.com/Baby+steps+for+Dexter+the+robot/2100-11394_3-6174922.html?tag=nefd.lede <comment><USER2> Watching Dexter jump for the first time in person was surreal. I liked this part from the article:

 _Anybots aren't designed to be witty sidekicks, like the robot in Lost in Space. Instead, Blackwell envisions that they will perform dirty or dangerous jobs that are unattractive or too risky for humans, like working in environments with hazardous chemicals, moving boxes of papers into storage and helping in situations where one person has to be in several places at the same time._

The Anybots make ASIMO seem like a toy.</comment>


HN Shanghai meetup - Sept. 7th 2011 - <AUTHOR>

When did the last HN meetup occurred in Shanghai? Was there even one?
Let's start or restart such gathering! Shanghai is a small world and we already have crossed one another paths more than once, it would be nice to get you all involved to share your past experiences, projects, latest geeky stuff, etc.
Where? Let's head to the Abbey Road, at the corner of YueYang road and DongPin road in the French Concession (Puxi). A couple of beers at special prices, finger food, old faces, new faces, Chinese, Foreigners, you are all welcome to join in!
 http://www.abbeyroad-shanghai.com/
 http://www.dianping.com/shop/2129929
When? Wednesday September 7th 2011 - starting at 7pm.
Please send us an email to hn (at) wiredcraft.com in order to book tables, the 10 first to confirm and arrive will get their first beer on the house. <comment><USER2> <http://wiredcraft.github.com/hnshanghai>

All the technology addicts in the Shanghai area are welcome; meet us next Wednesday at Abbey Road for beer and geeky chatting. Personally, we're into things like node.js, GIS, Android or full text search engines (Sphinx, Elastic Search), but eager to chat about anything.

First round of beers on us.

</comment><comment><USER3> I won't be in Shanghai at that time, but I'd love to meetup with you and anyone else between 6th-18th of October...

<comment><AUTHOR> We'd actually like to have such event on a monthly basis, your schedule for October would match !

We'll keep you posted for the future meetup.</comment></comment>


Amazon RDS on VMware preview announced - <AUTHOR> https://www.techrepublic.com/article/aws-announces-amazon-rds-on-vmware/ <comment><USER2> Link to AWS page: [https://aws.amazon.com/rds/vmware/](https://aws.amazon.com/rds/vmware/)

Interesting. Does this signal that AWS believes some enterprise workloads will remain in private DCs? This is certainly a big value to those running on-prem databases.

Anyone have an idea on pricing?</comment>


Mobile roaming charges within EU should end, official says - <AUTHOR> http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6039506,00.html

<comment><USER2> If this goes through, I predict the operators will offset the losses by jacking up the data fees to unprecedented levels of ridiculousness. When the lower caps came into effect this year, Vodafone UK responded by increasing the data roaming fees fivefold while having the nerve to claim they were making it cheaper. Roaming outside the EU is also likely to become unimaginably expensive.</comment>


A Baby's Gaze May Signal Autism, Study Finds - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/a-babys-gaze-may-signal-autism-study-finds <comment><USER2> I am the father of an autistic child, and from experience, early intervention makes a hell lot of difference in an autistic child's progression towards social/ sensory issues. This might be a breakthrough study.

<comment><USER3> Just out of curiosity, how old is your child? Where does he fall on the autism spectrum?

I've been an educator for groups of autistic children (as well as other various handicaps)- and it was some of the hardest work I ever did. It must be fucking intense as a parent- respect to you.

<comment><USER2> My son is now ~7. The hardest part was when he was between 3 - 5 years old. His language hadn't developed at the time, and finding out what exactly was bothering him was really hard. He is moderately autistic.

Yeah its hard to be the parent of an autistic child. Eventually one learns to increase patience and fortitude.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought this had been known for a while, how the baby interacts with others?

</comment><comment><USER5> Relevant: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEVM6bM- fNs&feature=share&lis...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEVM6bM- fNs&feature=share&list=PLsRNoUx8w3rNKEUE5hk31sO5gr5x4LyP8)

As a Wittgensteinian (follower of L.W. on the way to P.M.S Hacker) I must simply reiterate:

        Brains do not behave, nor do they fail to behave; humans behave.

Regardless of the neural correlates of developmental disorders, the behavior (map) is not a substratum (territory) – to reinforce this point, check out [http://eyewire.org](http://eyewire.org), where our judicious participation guides the mapping of the human brain, in a modular way (starting with the perceptual system). The perceptual system follows (eyes, e.g.) what we believe following entails. ("I believe X means nothing more or less than that I am disposed to behave in certain ways under certain conditions" – where "certainty" involves pre-theoretical commitments emergent by our own evolutionary tract.)

The intensional-extensional domain distinction of the number theory is directly structurally relevant to the discussion of inside-outside (internal- external) behavior of neuroscience. Ultimately, "rules" are ordered, and some are self-organizing (like π): "autism creates itself", as A. Klin notes.

</comment><comment><USER6> Early detection and adequate knowledge for parents will greatly help in managing an autistic child.

</comment><comment><USER7> there is a technology for that, that in early stage it can be detected and this is an advantage for parents so they can find remedy as early as possible.</comment>


Hidden limitations of Google App Engine - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/565963/hidden-limitations-of-google-app-engine <comment><USER3> I have completely fallen in love with AppEngine since the beginning of this year. It is a brilliant dev platform for prototyping and the BigTable DB is a pleasure to work with.

My prototyping platform is essentially: tornado.web with the tornado request, response, escape, auth and locale. OpenID from web.py. My own WSGIApplication that inherits from the built-in so that it uses my Controller class (which has a plugin arch), Django for templates, JSON, BeautifulSoup, Markdown, a generic 'asset' module implementing something akin to ActiveRecord on the standard DB with memcache support, a generic HTML5 getting started template, a CSS toolkit (can't recall the name) then jQuery and backbone.js with some of my own JS glue code that maps the server models to client models.

Using this stack, I can prototype form-driven web apps in hours.

I wrote a relevance view for Twitter (with Twitter oauth support) in half a day. I don't think I will use the RDBMS even when they release it - <USER2> is excellent (it will be confusing if you schema the same way you schema with an RDBMS).

It is great to be able to have an idea for a quick app, register an AppEngine app, fire the code up, commit and deploy and have the app live for others to try out within hours.

The admin interface allows you to spot errors and choke points in production and fix them quickly. The pricing is better than AWS or any of the others and the platform includes hidden gems such as the MapReduce lib, multitenancy, xmpp and Google data libs (including auth)

The only real limitations that I have bumped into are:

* The max request time is around 20 seconds, so you can't have open Ajax requests

* No HTTPS support as yet (coming soon, apparently)

* Limits on the number and size of files. It isn't ideal for serving a large number of static files, but it does have zipimport support for libs

* For best performance, you need to define the indexes yourself rather than relying on the defaults that the lib generates

* There are a lot of sys calls blocked, so you can't run Tornado or any cpython modules

<comment><USER4> Is your last point the reasoning behind not using Tornado's templates? And why not Jinja? Django templates have always rubbed me the wrong way in performance and flexibility measurements.

<comment><USER3> Using Django with my prototyping framework is by no means an endorsement, it just happens to be what I fell into because when I designed the generic HTML5 template I plugged in Django vars and helpers (stubify, etc.) without really thinking through a decision on which templating lib to use.

That said, I did create a generic sketch.template wrapper for Django templates, and I have managed to swap in web.py, tornado and cheetah (sketch being the name of the framework). I have never used Jinja in production, but have been meaning to go back to it, your comment will prompt me to do just that (I assume by asking about it, it is your pref).

I will eventually push the entire framework public once I clean up some parts - it is simple and has a narrow scope/purpose but it is working really well for me

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> AppEngine has made some great leaps in the last year. We built <http://gri.pe> on it earlier this year and have been impressed by the platform.

The last two months have seen the platform mature a lot as well. The latest 1.4 release has some amazing features: async datastore queries, app keep- alive, longer timeouts for background tasks, etc.

<comment><USER6> And 1.4 has the Channel API for everyone!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The architecture limitations exist b/c App Engine essentially scales effortlessly once you abide by them.

If you insist on using SQL, then use a company like Heroku, but realize that if your app gets popular you will be paying Heroku a lot of money for the same level of performance you could get for a few bucks a month using app engine.

After I wrote my first toy app a few years ago, App Engine doesn't really feel like it has any significant limitations other than the absence of naked domains and SSL. The recent reliability problems have been a nightmare, but as of Nov 6, I feel like they have been resolved.

I should add that I love app engine and use it whenever I don't need naked domains or SSL. _(SSL is only available via_.appspot.com domains)

<comment><USER8> On Heroku ... I chose to build by own stuff on EC2, and it is a lot cheaper. And now with the free tier account I also get some freebies.

And yeah, app engine is great for entry-level prototipes, since you can forget about sysadmin tasks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The biggest limitation I had was while writing to the database, the database would sometimes return an error for no apparent reason. I'd then be forced to catch these errors, and resubmit. But if you had lots of traffic and resubmit too quickly, Google App Engine would throw more errors back at you. This was all over a year ago, not sure how it is now, I would never go back to using it.

From <http://code.google.com/appengine/articles/life_of_write.html>

_There is an expected failure rate on writes as Bigtable tablets are sometimes unavailable, for example, when they are being moved or split. The presence of more indexes increases the probability of hitting an unavailable tablet as an exception will be raised if a write fails for any of the indexes. In those situations, your application will need to decide how to handle the exception. One option is to add a task to the task queue to retry the write at a later point in time. Another idea would be to respond with an error from the app and have the client retry. This tends to work with things like AJAX requests where there is client side logic which can handle an error message from the server._

<comment><USER10> This might have been reduced by the release in February:

[http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2010/02/app-engine- sdk-1...](http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2010/02/app-engine- sdk-131-including-major.html)

See the section "Reduced error rate with Automatic Datastore Retries".

I haven't kept a close watch on what's changed since then though.

<comment><USER6> That helped some, but there was a release (to the backend infrastructure, not the AppEngine SDK) about a month ago that made a huge difference.

Edit: Here's the link that shows the improvement: [http://code.google.com/status/appengine/detail/datastore/201...](http://code.google.com/status/appengine/detail/datastore/2010/11/06#ae- trust-detail-datastore-get-latency)

<comment><USER11> Yes that day looks impressive, but if you look at the following days, the improvement does not look anywhere near as dramatic. [http://code.google.com/status/appengine/detail/datastore/201...](http://code.google.com/status/appengine/detail/datastore/2010/11/18#ae- trust-detail-datastore-get-latency)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Notice the date of this question is Feb 20th, 2009. Almost 2 years out of date. I imagine at least some of the limitations mentioned are gone by now.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you're sick of these limitations (and use Django) head over to www.djangy.com and sign up for the private beta :-)

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if the simplenote guys can provide some input?

<http://simplenoteapp.com/about/>

</comment><comment><USER15> The biggest limitation is that they only support two languages - python and java.

Not that there's anything wrong with these particular languages, but I'd prefer more choice. It would be cool if they supported C++, PHP, Javascript (V8), Ruby, Erlang.

<comment><USER8> You can run Ruby and Javascript stuff on top of the Java support. The pipeline has to be pretty light though and I wouldn't run Rails on it.</comment></comment>


You — Not Your Competitors — Define Your Destiny - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2011/02/24/you-not-your-competitors-define-your-destiny/

<comment><USER2> Sun Tzu: Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.

<comment><USER3> In chinese: 知己知彼 百战百胜</comment></comment>


Labor Costs Will Explode After the Pandemic. Here's How - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/labor-costs-will-explode-after-pandemic-here%C2%B9s-how.html <comment><USER2> > While that might turn out to be true short-term, it ignores the lesson of > history, which is that pandemics have always resulted in labor unrest--often > to the point of armed insurrection.

The pandemics (except for the 1918 flu) listed actually caused demographic collapse. It took over a hundred years for the populations to recover. I don't think anyone thinks COVID-19 will cause anything like that. In addition, those pandemics killed a lot of young, previously healthy people, whereas with COVID-19, the mortality rate among young, previously healthy people is really low.

These pandemics in the past caused a labor shortage by killing a large percentage of people in their prime. Again with the exception of 1918, the economy of the day depended heavily on manual labor, hence the labor shortage was felt more acutely. This is not the case now.

I think the article is making superficial comparisons to reach a conclusion that is unwarranted.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure if I would agree or disagree with the conclusion. I could see it going either way.

I do agree with you that the examples the author gives do not directly support the conclusion.

The first two examples were essentially about taxation. Sure, the reason taxes went up was because people died and the rulers expected the same output, but that was a choice by greedy leaders forced upon people (in a power structure quite different from ours no less).

The third example has little to do with the pandemic. I would argue (just as vaguely as the author has on their point) that the end of the war and other catalysts simulated the economy into the roaring twenties. That stimulated economy makes employers more likely to improve working conditions either because they are more financially viable or there is more demand for labor which gives laborers more power in negotiating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problem with unionizing and demanding better wages is that workers who do it will be replaced with cheaper alternatives, namely, overseas workers or robots.

People on the street recognize this, at least the overseas workers part. It's a big reason why Trump was elected.

Biden seems to have figured it out; he recently released a quite hawkish political ad accusing _Trump_ of being too pro-China.

Actually it's good if labor costs explode: That means ordinary people are earning more, and a robust middle class is essential for a healthy society. It might have painful consequences for quarterly P&L, but if the plebs can afford a nice middle class lifestyle, they're unlikely to storm the mansions with torches and pitchforks.

If you own a company, you should read "exploding labor costs" as "pitchfork insurance."</comment>


Digg Reader shuts down today - <AUTHOR> http://digg.com/reader <comment><AUTHOR> Received this unexpected email this morning:

        We are shutting down Digg Reader today. We would like to thank our community
        for using Reader for the past five years. It's been fun.

        You'll still be able to export your feeds, diggs, and saves from Reader. Please
        export your feeds from Reader at digg.com/settings to save your subscriptions
        to use in another reader service like Feedly, Inoreader or a number of others.
        Read more about all that in our FAQ.

        Contact us at firstname.lastname@example.com if you have any questions.

        Thank you for all of your support. We love you.

I always preferred Digg Reader to Feedly for some reason. Sync between the app and website was seamless from the start so when Google reader was shut down I wasn't quite so annoyed.

Shutting things down same day out of the blue is quite surprising though.

<comment><USER2> It was announced last week [https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/14/alas-digg- reader-is-shutti...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/14/alas-digg-reader-is- shutting-down-at-the-end-of-march/) ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16588027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16588027))

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, thanks. Turns out I did not pay a visit in the browser, and did not receive any foreword through the mobile app.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Fun with Reveal.js and WebGL shaders - <AUTHOR> http://www.taodyne.com/presentation/index-reveal.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is based on Reveal.js. You can download the source code directly from the web site. To see changes in background shaders, move left and right using the arrows at the bottom right of the page. Note that this requires WebGL to work ;-)</comment>


Ask HN: Hacker's netbook recommendations below $250 shipped? - <AUTHOR>

My HP laptop is dying slowly and I'd like to replace it with something smaller that can comfortably run Ubuntu and maybe a bit of Clojure + Ruby dev work on the side.  I'm completely out of the loop when it comes to the netbook market.  Should I look at eeePC?  Dell Minis?<p>Thanks for your help. <comment><USER2> The Dell Mini 10n comes with Ubuntu out of the box, which may be a consideration.

I'd recommend getting something with a near-full-size keyboard, which means at least 10" screen. I picked up a used Acer Aspire One a year ago. It was cheap, and still runs great, but the small keyboard is a pain.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can't speak for the Dell or Aspire, but I have used ubuntu on the eeepc, classmate pc, hp mini(~6.5 hrs on battery) and the samsung nc210. Among these atleast I prefer the samsung, which im using currently(int warranty, good keyboard, ~5 hrs on battery, no driver probs and incedibly cute to boot). You might have to run a few scripts, but driver support is generally pretty good on any netbook(consider ubuntu unr). Also, some IDEs dont display as well on smaller screens, so do keep that in mind.

</comment><comment><USER4> I got my wife an eeePC a while back. It's stock windows of course, but the machine itself seems well made and hasn't had any issues.

I'd recommend it.</comment>


Predator Drone Spotted in Minneapolis During George Floyd Protests - <AUTHOR> https://www.govtech.com/security/Predator-Drone-over-Minneapolis-Stokes-Surveillance-Fears.html <comment><AUTHOR> Related news articles:

[https://www.yahoo.com/news/predator-drone-spotted- minneapoli...](https://www.yahoo.com/news/predator-drone-spotted-minneapolis- during-153100635.html)

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7wnzm/government- flying-...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7wnzm/government-flying- predator-drones-american-cities)

[https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/29/21274828/drone- minneapo...](https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/29/21274828/drone-minneapolis- protests-predator-surveillance-police)</comment>


RELRO: a (not so well-known) memory corruption mitigation technique (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://tk-blog.blogspot.com/2009/02/relro-not-so-well-known-memory.html <comment><AUTHOR> Posting this as I've just learned about it due to this commit enabling it by default (on supported platforms) in the Rust compiler: [https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/43170](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/pull/43170)</comment>


How to Fix iPhone 4S Wi-Fi Grayed Out – With a Roofing Nail and a Blow Torch - <AUTHOR> http://martindrapeau.tumblr.com/post/116344427765/how-to-fix-iphone-4s-wi-fi-grayed-out-with-a

<comment><USER2> People use methods like towels, hair dryers, heatguns, and ovens to do the same sort of repairs on PS3s and xbox360s so this doesn't surprise me too much.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thats an amazing trick, but my question is why does a significant thermal shock affect it in this way?

<comment><USER4> I'd guess that the problem is solder joints under (in?) the chip cracking. The solder joints attach the chip to the circuit board, and also provide the electrical connectivity to the chip. A cracked joint means the electricity does not flow and so things don't work.

The "in the fridge" temporary fix is causing thermal expansion/contraction, which is providing enough mechanical movement to close gaps in the solder joints, thus getting the electricity flowing again, and making the WiFi work. The fix stops working when everything gets back to room temperature, meaning the cracks in the joint open up again.

The permanent fix is heating the chip until the solder joints melt, so the solder can flow back together, repairing the cracks in the joints. Hence the use of a bit of solder on the nail to monitor the temperature, so one can stop when it reaches the melting point of solder.

It's worth noting that such extended duration heating would be a no-no in production, where high yields are important, but in a case like this, do whatever works.

<comment><USER3> great explanation, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Amazing</comment>


Aragon – the decentralized app to run Blockchain organizations - <AUTHOR> https://aragon.one/core/ <comment><USER2> Not sure I see the use case. I would still need lots of legal advice to start a company with investors. And from the perspective of an investor if I don't trust the company I given money to why would I give it to them.</comment>


Ask HN: Website that generates promotional screenshots on Apple Devices - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
A little while ago somebody created a site that enabled you to upload an image ie a screenshot of your web page and it would automatically overlay the image onto a photo of a guy's macbook... or ipad or whatever else you wanted it to be. I can't for the life of me find it again.
Does anyone have the link to it? <comment><USER2> Here you go: [http://placeit.breezi.com/](http://placeit.breezi.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you blahbap!!! That's it!!!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why did Etherpad, Stypi & Simplenote give up on their original products? - <AUTHOR>

Etherpad and Stypi got aquihired. Simplenote is pivoting to become a Parse-like PaaS platform. All these companies had enthusiastic users and good traction on their original products, what happened? <comment><USER2> Did the original products have revenue sufficient to support the companies and their investors?

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess that's part of the question - why were these products not able to generate the required revenue. Is this the type of product that people are just unwilling to pay money for and one that's not supportable by advertising?

Evernote - seems to be doing fine though - given that they have a product in a similar vein.</comment></comment>


Using prime numbers to avoid cron task collision at sametime - <AUTHOR> I would like to get input from you all. We have legacy system (bit of a pain to maintain) where multiple corn jobs runs (8 to be precise) and engineers who created the system put everything to run at 5 minutes interval. Computationally task is heavy and often results into a crash or running out of memory but business owners are fine if things are delayed by like an 1 hour or so.
My idea was to run on prime intervals instead of every 5 minutes. Couple of them have depend on output from others tasks but that should not be an issue.
Job 1 - Every 5 minutes ( computational less intense )
Job 2 - Every 7 minutes
Job 3 - Every 11 minutes
Job 4 - Every 13 minutes
Job 5 - Every 17 minutes ( computational more intense )
.... and so on
This should put a significant dent in avoiding them running at same time and leaving some room for each task to finish itself. I was just wondering if there is any other alternative that I can explore here.
Thanks for any suggestions in advance. <comment><USER2> If the owners don't care then just have

      */16 * * * * bin/RunJob_1
      2-59/16 * * * * bin/RunJob_2
      4-59/16 * * * * bin/RunJob_3
      6-59/16 * * * * bin/RunJob_4
      8-59/16 * * * * bin/RunJob_5
      10-59/16 * * * * bin/RunJob_6
      12-59/16 * * * * bin/RunJob_7
      14-59/16 * * * * bin/RunJob_8

If that doesn't work for you then tell us why. As it is your problem is underspecified.

Also, you say some are more compute intensive - have you actually measured the load and time-to-finish?

Prime numbers and similar techniques can help, it just depends if you actually just want to kludge something together, or do it properly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is your goal to avoid all collisions?

If so your current scheme won't prevent that. For example, Job 1 and Job 2 will both run at 0035, 0405, 2025, etc. (assuming that both jobs start at 0000).

<comment><USER2> That depends - cron time steps always restart from 0 in the hour, so what you say is valid, but the most obvious way of implementing what I think is being suggested doesn't have _exactly_ that problem.

<comment><USER3> Ah, didn't know that, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I was just wondering if there is any other alternative that I can explore > here.

Investigate task spooler: [http://vicerveza.homeunix.net/~viric/soft/ts/](http://vicerveza.homeunix.net/~viric/soft/ts/)

This will let you queue up the tasks, and each will run as soon as the last has finished, but you won't get a "thundering herd" where they all are trying to run at once.</comment>


Fantasy Map Generator - <AUTHOR> http://bl.ocks.org/Azgaar/b845ce22ea68090d43a4ecfb914f51bd <comment><USER2> Very nice, except for that "Works best with IE6^WChrome" \- even more so when I _am_ on Google Chrome (for Android)</comment>


Show HN: Threadless for socks - <AUTHOR> http://swag.sockclub.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm fairly certain that all those logos in their are copywritten and thus illegal for you to stick on socks and sell.

<comment><USER3> Is it possible to get a copyright on a logo? I thought it wasn't and hence the reason for Trademarks. Still illegal, just curious.

<comment><USER4> A specific logo design is as protected as any other original image you can create. That logo can contain words or shapes that are protected by trademark. They're not mutually exclusive protections.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How is this "Threadless for socks"? The whole point of Threadless is that they're crowd-sourced art that the community votes on.

This just seems like standard corporate merchandise printing, like when you get your logo on a bunch of pens.

<comment><USER6> So, I guess more like "Cafe Press for socks". Apparently, Threadless already has a sock option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Really cool widget, but to me your tagline seems wrong. You give away tshirts at conferences because people notice them, they don't notice socks. Just say, make cool socks.

<comment><USER8> There is something to be said for the novelty of giving out socks. I might even say that many people don't notice tshirts due to "banner blindness," they tune out the myriad logos on shirts and don't form a lasting impression.

I would definitely remember the company giving out wacky socks, especially if they were wearable (in terms of material quality).

<comment><USER9> People may or may not notice t-shirts, but the people _wearing_ the t-shirt assume they're going to be noticed. It's a subtle, possibly not-entirely- conscious decision. But it's a decision. The idea is that people wear t-shirts as signifiers/broadcasters of their self identity. They don't necessarily think of socks the same way -- partially because they're not thinking socks will be seen, and partially because it's just not an ingrained psychological pattern.

I'm not saying novelty socks can't happen, and certainly there are a few fashion labels making a pretty good buck off of socks with fun, quirky, and unique designs. That's sort of an emerging space in the apparel business, actually. But the use case is somewhat different from the novelty t-shirt market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would love if you could also make something a la thredless/spreadshirt/lafraise ...

Because I'm always looking for "fantasy" socks (e.g. not just plain socks, don't know the proper English idiom for that) and they are quite hard to find.

I understand that you need a certain volume for a batch to be worth doing, hence the "let people create design, vote and then sell the most popular one" idea.

</comment><comment><USER11> So...This is what it's come to.

<comment><USER11> But anyways, let's assume it gets funded for $1M+. Here's a few thoughts:

\- The workflow from design->buy should be a lot simpler. I was expecting more of a CustomInk experience. (1. Pick the type of sock, 2. Design, 3. Buy in ANY quantity). \- Buying socks should definitely not be an email-only experience, and definitely not with a minimum of 500 pairs. I understand making, say, just 10 pairs is much more expensive, but if someone is at the point buying "Sock Swag", they're probably willing to pay a premium. \- Please autosave. \- Use a better way to delete an 'image'. I selected an image and pressed backspace which took me back to the home page. \- The hash you're using for a saved design URL is tremendously long. If Google docs can get by with shorter unique URLs, so can you. \- I just made a sock with pictures of my face. Just because I could. Is that going to be publicly accessible through any sort of gallery? Please make the privacy options more clear.

<comment><USER12> Adding:

\- Separate the controls for resizing and rotating an image. I don't want to be resizing and rotating at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Been waiting for something like this for a while. Having tried a ton of socks, I find build quality varies quite a bit. Dont see any discussion of this on the site - can you elaborate?

<comment><AUTHOR> I build quality is good. The socks are similar to the socks made by the company Sock It To Me

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is really cool! A few things:

The design tool allows the full spectrum of colors and the uploading of high- res photos. I'm doubtful that this [1] would print.

Also, I'm sure you need large orders for this to make sense, but 500 feels pretty high. If you allow orders of 50 pair, I'm in for 50 of these [2]. :)

1\. <http://cl.ly/image/0C3o1l1i3F2t> 2\. <http://bit.ly/105rXVf>

</comment><comment><USER15> Have you looked into expanding to the UK market? I don't think you understand how big the market is for colo(u)rful socks here!

<comment><USER16> You should check out <http://www.northbranchmerchants.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The design-a-sock widget (link at the top of the page) is actually pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER18> Very cool, but the site is pretty much unusable on android chrome.

</comment><comment><USER19> I like this, I really do, but is there any way to easily offer smaller batches at higher prices per sock? I understand that it is easier to make in bulk.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting idea - however, without some close-up example photos of how those patterns would look on a sock, I wouldn't want to purchase any of those.

</comment><comment><USER21> Cool! Are you printing and shipping these yourself or do you have a fulfillment partner/service?

</comment><comment><USER22> tees have an advantage in that they can say something to others. socks don't, usually.

unless your feet are up on the table.

anyway, it's a GREAT idea. hope it is profitable.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah that is true but I think that is also an advantage for socks. you will where them more because you don't feel like your advertising for someone else.</comment></comment>