Firefox: The Evolution of a Brand - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/firefox-the-evolution-of-a-brand/ <comment><USER3> Personally, I think this is very silly.

Firefox has a stronger brand than Mozilla, so they're calling these all "Firefox XX"..

But Firefox doesn't have a brand as a generic set of utilities, it has a brand as a web browser, and this weakens that.

It reminds me of the articles about "Charging for Firefox" that were released earlier this week. If instead they had said "Mozilla is planning to offer a co-branded Mozilla VPN", it would have been clearer, and fewer people would have been confused about if the browser cost money.

Putting everything under the Firefox brand dilutes it to meaninglessness.

<comment><USER4> That's one aspect. The deeper problem though, is that all the other products offered under the firefox brand are revenue failures, and no one really uses them beyond those who already use the firefox browser anyway.

And that also explains the move. If they had a great second product, it would stand for itself, no matter the name.

This move is a desperate attempt of saving a product that is becoming increasingly meaningless (the browser).

\- Firefox Monitor is simply a copy of HIBP, so no innovation here. It's a nice-to-have, and maybe would have it's use case if it was directly implemented inside the browser.

\- Firefox Lockwise doesn't have many use cases, and apparently also not many users. It is hard to know what kind of product it wants to be, or what kind of problem it wants to solve, as it is no competition for the more well known password management tools.

\- Firefox Send offers a quick way to send some files. Not bad, but already offered by countless competitors.

So basically all three products are simply nice-to-have gimmicks, they are no stand-alone products and they certainly don't need a branding.

They all have in common that in the current state you can't make any money with them, and Mozilla doesn't monetize them.

What they do instead, is use each of the above services to get people to register for a Firefox Account, in an attempt to bring people into the "Firefox ecosystem".

And this brings us to the problem with Mozilla. They want to be part of the big players, but they are just a 1000 employee company.

They will never establish an ecosystem.

They will never profit off the email addresses they collect with Send, Lockwise, and Monitor.

They will not be profitable with Pocket.

Everything they do to save their brand from going under is, at the moment, a money-losing business.

Ironically the only product that is indeed at least a stand-alone product, namely Pocket, is not included in the re-branding.

<comment><USER5> The products you mention are not meant to be money-makers. They all contribute to making internet users safe, which is part of Mozilla's mission.

\- Firefox Monitor reaches more people to minimise the adverse effects of data leaks, and helps internet users to prevent them in the future. Potential further integration with Firefox will help make this usable by more people.

\- Firefox Lockwise likewise can help getting the benefits of password managers to more people.

\- Firefox Send offers a quick __and private __way to send some files.

They all also get people into the "Firefox ecosystem", reinforcing each other and giving Mozilla more leverage to help people be part of an open and accessible internet.

In the end, all they need to do is remain solvent while doing so - not make money. So far, their search engine deal is sufficient for that. Hopefully they'll find more ways to diversify their income streams, but that should never be the the sole criterium of whether or not to run a service or produce a product.

<comment><USER4> If the move is really not motivated by money, that would make it a very suicidal move, as this means the Foundation holds the Corporation hostage and uses the Corporation's long-term reputation to push products that no one really wants.

It means the Foundation willingly puts the business at risk for political moves of "keeping users safe", which I don't really know what it means, but the image that comes to mind is that of pre-school children being protected by overly protective helicopter parents.

I have long thought that Mozilla should essentially dissolve the Foundation, as the Foundation under Baker is abusing the work of the corporation. Unfortunately the Foundation holds all the power, which explains why Mozilla is behaving so erratically.

The CEO is basically reporting to the Foundation, so the people who work for the corporation have a boss that is not acting independent, but in the interests of a shadowy group of people who don't even interact with the employees. Most of the people managing the Foundation get enourmous salaries, while some of them only appear on site a couple of times a year when it comes to voting.

<comment><USER5> > this means the Foundation holds the Corporation hostage

It does; it's the sole owner.

> It means the Foundation willingly puts the business at risk

While I agree there might be a risk of diluting the brand, I wouldn't describe that as anything near "suicidal". In any case, the business exists to support the foundation, not the other way around. Mozilla shouldn't put its mission at risk for business moves of "making lots of money".

> which I don't really know what it means

In the case of Monitor and Lockwise: that their passwords do not get stolen or abused. In the case of Send: that their files are not stolen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I _love_ the Firefox icon, and thought it was the new icon for the browser. But then realized they have a separate "Firefox browser" icon instead - <USER2> I'm also not really seeing the connection between the four icons they're showing, other than a roughly similar color palette.

My suggestion: make the proposed "Firefox" brand icon the actual browser icon (because it's much, much better), and unify the rest of Mozilla development under a Mozilla brand instead of pushing Firefox up the chain to turn it into a brand.

<comment><USER7> I like both the Firefox and Firefox Browser icons. For myself, I'd be OK with the abstract Firefox icon becoming the browser's icon, but I worry that it wouldn't be as recognizable to someone scrolling through the app store. And I want other people to use Firefox, so that Mozilla has more resources for all their ventures.

I thought I didn't like the other icons, but they look nice in context. See: [https://i.imgur.com/Z4laxJy.png](https://i.imgur.com/Z4laxJy.png)

The unified colorscheme of the logos does make it quite clear that the Firefox XYZ products fall under the Firefox umbrella. I thought that the inconsistency in shape looked off on the branding overview page, but what that page doesn't show is that these icons aren't going to appear next to one another all at the same size. And that makes the difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's kind of funny how bland the other icons are compared to the browser icon.

I'm just waiting for the pendulum to swing the other way when elaborate neo- rococo design lovingly handcrafted by neural networks and displayed in retina HDR will come into vogue. The world needs more birds and gold leaf.

<comment><USER9> I'd be happy if they went back to something better resembling their 2000s logo (finer details, more 3D):

[https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Mozilla_Firefox#2004.E2.80.932...](https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Mozilla_Firefox#2004.E2.80.932005)

<comment><USER10> Oh wow, '05-'09's the clear peak, seeing them all near one another like that. Every other one is worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Man, the comments here are vicious. I like it, the fox tail is pretty recognizable. And the firefox logo looks likes it's protecting the purple core, it's a bit softer. Can't say they made some stupid decisions regarding pocket last few years, but with design system it feels more like they are competing with the likes of google and facebook then just being the l33th4xor browser that is used by someone starting sentences with "Actually, ".

Now the important questions, where can I get the stickers for my laptop.

<comment><USER12> I don't find them to be vicious -- just honest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I tend to not like it when companies transform the meaning of a popular brand into a more general, "parent" brand. Why would you intentionally make the meaning of a well-understood brand ambiguous?

In the Java ecosystem, Eclipse and Hibernate are examples. Do you want to download "Hibernate"? Which Hibernate project? [https://hibernate.org/](https://hibernate.org/). Same question for Eclipse ([https://projects.eclipse.org/](https://projects.eclipse.org/)). They used to be well-understood words.

<comment><USER14> Spring for a while was the worst of this. You look for spring. Then docs. Then guides.

Now which of these guides describes the DI framework:

[https://spring.io/guides](https://spring.io/guides)

At least there's a Spring framework link on the Projects page nowadays: [https://spring.io/projects](https://spring.io/projects)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I still miss the Mozilla splash screen [http://books.mozdev.org/html/figs/moz_0607.png](http://books.mozdev.org/html/figs/moz_0607.png)

<comment> T-hawk I love that that's still an 8-bit palette-based image. And that that's immediately recognizable by noticing the banding and dithering in the colors.

<comment><USER16> It is actually a 7-bit palette!

There are exactly 128 unique colors in the image.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Closing YouTube comments section and openly mocking criticism using "celebrities read mean tweets" style is a dick move considering that they praise openness and kindness.

Personally I find this redesign unnecessary. The current Firefox logo is beautiful and very recognizable. And the new logos of other sub brands look like unrecognizable rainbow coloured spaghetti. I hardly can distinguish them from each other.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yet another geometric sans flat art style sf echo chamber rebrand.

They all look so identical you would think its from one company and maybe even art director sketching all of these out.

What is happening in design departments? Do people ostracize you if try something different?

<comment><USER10> I do think there's less risk in doing what everyone else is. It's like the "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" of the design world. You don't have to be as good to get positive feedback on your design, too, because trend- following invites less scrutiny (not commenting on this log in particular, just general laziness/poor-talent that trend following fosters). You do something original, it better be good or you'll get crucified. Yet Another Flat Logo? Yeah, looks great, ship it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "It's a radical act to be optimistic about the future of the internet."

With half a billion dollar in revenue your radical act amounts to "be optimistic about the future of the Internet" and share that now through a branding exercise? No actual radical acts that would actually improve the future of the Internet?

"We disrupt the status quo because it's the right thing to do."

Unless the status quo is advertising, or microsoft, or google, or drm in the w3c.

"Build better products."

Maybe start with "product", singular. Also maybe stop talking about your browser as a "product" that needs to be peddled.

"Open. Open-minded. Open-hearted. Open source. An open book."

Not open-web though, only fuzzy and easy feel-good "open" stuff.

"The brand system is built on four pillars [..] We make transparency and a global perspective integral to our brand [..] The Firefox brand exploration began [..] working on the Mozilla brand identity."

What do these things even mean? Remember when driven users took out a 2-page advertisement in a well-known newspaper to spread the word? Because you made an awesome browser? A browser that put its users and the open web first?

"branding without walls"

Unless you were Debian, or some other distro that needed to patch your stuff because market share is more important than getting a good browser into the hands of as many users as possible.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately the mozilla website is run by Marketing people nowadays. There are many competent engineers at mozilla who probably don't believe in this nonsense marketing mumbling, but they no longer have a word to say about how the product is communicated.

Guess this kind of cognitive dissonance happens when a company rises from $160 to $560 million in yearly revenue within 5 years, without having to report to anyone outside the company.

Now that the writing is on the wall for ad-tech revenue they aggressively try to shift the narrative about themselves, because the last thing they want is to be associated with the "evil google". Unfortunately, as long as they take more than a million dollars every day from them, these things are just lip service with not value.

I miss the old mozilla because it was such a great grass-roots movement but they should have never accepted the money from google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Firefox articles always bring out such mean and bitter comments. I guess anger is better than apathy but the comments about Firefox and Mozilla seem especially pretty

<comment><USER21> Maybe that's because Mozilla is such a poorly run company. They let themselves be overtaken by Chrome because they were busy will all sorts of stupid side projects instead of concentrating on making a good browser.

Still today, they're burning a huge part of their budget copying services found elsewhere and slapping Firefox branding on it.

And meanwhile, they dumped Thunderbird, a truly beloved open source project.

Mozilla is in a unique position to do some good with all the money they get from Google, but much of the time they squander it, that's why so many are frustrated with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is probably a good move, as "Firefox" has much better name recognition than "Mozilla"

<comment><USER23> Does it? I've had more than one non-techy friend refer to firefox as "Mozilla".

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hearing a free software project talk about "branding" and "a range of products and services" makes my eye twitch.

<comment><USER25> Free is not the same as non-profit. If Mozilla didn't work on branding, it'd already be at 0% use.

<comment><USER26> The reason their market share fell is because they made Firefox worse with each release since 2011. If they hadn't spend so much effort in worsening Firefox, they wouldn't be where they are now.

<comment><USER25> What a bizarre thing to say? The reason their market _share_ went down is because Google owns Chrome and Android, and incredibly successfully marketed (and still markets) those where it has to, and simply gets free users hand over fist where it doesn't.

When something like Chrome happens (and it happened big, you may remember the global advertisement campaign they ran. How much do you think that cost them?), even if you were to increase your number of daily/weekly/monthly active users, you'd STILL lose market share because Google can literally throw hundreds of millions of dollars at the market and cause your market share to go down simply because they win more new users than you. And there have been a LOT of new users since 2011. It's easy to forget how few people were persistently online back then, and how different sites were. IE9 had just been released. We were still making sites that had to support IE6.

If you don't like what FF has become over the last 8 years, that's fair enough, but calling that the reason why their share is so low is just blatantly ignoring the actual history of the web.

<comment><USER26> I never noticed any ads for Chrome. I've always been running some kind of adblocking. Also, I started to remove Google from my life back in 2008.

The reason Firefox lost me as a user is because of what I said. It all started to go downhill with Firefox 4.0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Not personally a fan of the way they're (ab)using the browser brand for unrelated products, but it might help with recognition from your average person who doesn't know what Mozilla is.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is anyone else slightly bothered by the fact the browser logo is now "Fox wrapped around generic purple circle" instead of "Fox wrapped around earth"?

<comment><USER29> It's been a generic blue circle for a while.

<comment><USER30> And even before that there were just random land masses on the blue ball, clearly not earth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The Firefox browser logo looks very good. My only complaint is that the logos for the other services look so different that in isolation I wouldn't really know that they're part of the same brand. The new shapes are cool but they don't look like they're part of the same design. Like the designers had ideas in-mind for the other services and then had to work the original logo in. I mean Mozilla is a dinosaur and Firefox is a fox -- the rest of the logos seem too literal. They're instantly forgettable because they just relate to their function.

I mean a keyhole for a password manager, a magnifying glass for monitoring, a cloud for send? Not super inspired and feel really generic. How about a nose for Monitor, sniffing out problems, ayy? Maybe a dog pack for Send, those little packs that hang off the sides -- have cute imagery of the fox delivering packages. Communicates right away that it integrates with Firefox too. Would a fox hole at the base of a tree be too much for the PW manager? It's a safe place for sensitive things. Have a little animation of a mama fox protecting it and scaring off predators.

</comment><comment><USER32> Everytime I see Mozilla's efforts at branding I sigh...

<comment><USER33> All they do is rebrand, I don't think any programmers work at Mozilla anymore.

<comment><USER34> A total rewrite of Firefox for Android with the new GeckoView engine is going live soon. We have close to 1,000 engineers doing impactful work on things like engine development, Rust, WebAssembly, AV1, etc. Our designers are busy because design really matters to getting product into hands!

<comment><USER35> Except creating a fast browser that obeys web standards. I switched to an old fork of Firefox that's fast and now in maintenance mode. Works fantastic.

<comment><USER34> GeckoView is substantially faster than the old Gecko mobile engine, just like Quantum/Servo did for desktop. I don't know what web standards you think are missing.

<comment><USER35> I'm talking about desktop version, which is still slow. I don't care about mobile, but that's where everyone else is at I guess. _sigh_

I don't recall what web standards I had in mind at the time I wrote my comment, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This may be off topic, but does anyone know where I can find more of these evolutionary branding changes? I'd love to read more and have tried to google, but wasn't able to find a good list, thanks in advance!

<comment><USER37> Brand New is a good resource: [https://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/](https://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> How many branding exercises does Mozilla do? Because I swear I keep seeing it an awful a lot.

<comment><USER39> Firefox is trying to to start offering paid services to diversify away from search. I'd guessing they're trying to unify there design iconography style for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > _Tell us. We can take it._

Horrible.

Forcibly cute and overly friendly palette paired with soft and curvy lines is the exact opposite of what one would expect from an entity behind technically excellent pieces of precise software engineering. I usually don't have strong opinions on redesigns (unless something is poorly kerned), but this is completely, _way_ off. Solid Dribbble material though. Peeps there will be ecstatic.

<comment><USER41> Do you think "technically excellent and precise software" is the core message they want to send?

The messages of "friendly" and "cute"/"soft" you derived from the new look are much bigger wins for a brand building their image around friendliness and safety.

<comment><USER40> From the looks of it - no, it's certainly not.

But the only reason why Firefox enjoys its moderate surge in popularity right now is its technological excellence, not because it's "friendly".

Besides, there's absolutely nothing wrong with trying to look friendly. It's just they are overdoing it in a way that takes away from their tech cred. And they also chose to do it in a very cliche style. I wasn't kidding about Dribbble. The front page there has been choke-full of similar branding projects for months now. They all look the same.

<comment><USER42> Do power/technical users care more about branding or about features?

HN users are not the majority of Firefox's users. We are not the entire target audience.

<comment><USER26> We are the ones installing the thing on other peoples machines, though. If we say "you will use Firefox from now", then those people (mostly relatives) will be forced to do just that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm an engineer who used to work in comms (yes, the reverse path can occur).

While I sympathize with the folks who feel like this dilutes a nearly holy symbol/brand with a bunch of needless cruft, the unreformed, unrepentant marketing devil in me acknowledges that this is a Good Move and I wish I had thought of it.

</comment><comment><USER44> So the browser icon still has the Fox! I'm relieved and happy.

The rest of the icons look fine to me, though I do agree that using Firefox as the name for every service from Mozilla may dilute its value as well as cause some confusion for people who are vaguely familiar with Firefox the browser.

</comment><comment><USER45> I honestly think there's a case for renaming Mozilla (the company) to Firefox (which is, I think, far better known). This has happened before to other companies (e.g. RIM and Panasonic come to mind) when the product name becomes better known than the manufacturer.

</comment><comment><USER46> I really preferred the browser logo looking like an actual fox and not just a fox tail... oh well.

EDIT: the blog said the browser logo would be changed too, i figured to the same one as the parent logo. I didn't just skip over the article.

<comment><USER47> Scroll down the page a bit.

<comment><USER46> My mistake, the blog said the browser logo would be changed so i assumed it was to this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Firefox: the ongoing compromise and crapification of what started as a a very sensible and obvious idea - make a web browser that serves users rather than corporations and advertisers!

</comment><comment><USER49> It has always annoyed me that they call the product "Firefox" but the animal in the branding is a red fox and not a firefox. The firefox (aka red panda) is a totally different animal more closely related to a raccoon than to a fox. They look enough alike that it could easily have been an actual firefox in the logo but they go out of their way to give cues that it's a red fox.

shrug

<comment><USER50> I think you are too literal. Its a fox made of fire, not just a red fox.

<comment><USER51> I wish Mozilla embraced the red panda instead of the fox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Today in stupid, pointless redesigns: Mozilla destroys one of the best icons out there, replaces the Firefox logo with a generic swirly likeness of it.

Mozilla should fire their design department and shut down all the stupid side projects. Just make a good browser, that's all we're asking for.

<comment><USER10> The trouble is just doing that—yes, even in this modern world of wildly complicated and huge Web standards—wouldn't require anything like the staff and funding they have now. That'd come with a large-double-digits-percentage layoff of staff. Won't happen. Probably they'd have trouble winding back down to just making a good browser now even if their funding dropped to a point that it couldn't sustain their current, expensive, useless fucking about, due to all the organizational death-throes that'd happen.

Remember when Mozilla kinda sucked and were famous bumblers, as an organization, but that little Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox team managed to revive it by producing a great browser that soon ate the entire brand, it was so good, and the organization (improbably!) had enough collective sense to foster that rather than kill it? That's probably the best outcome we can still hope for. IDK if they're organizationally capable of letting that happen anymore, or which quarter of the current Mozilla organization such a thing (whatever it might be) would come from.

<comment><USER21> Assuming you're correct, there's plenty of useful stuff they could do with the extra money. Further development of Rust, revive Thunderbird, support web tech, come up with something that makes Google's AMP irrelevant.

And of course, put some money in the bank for leaner times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Disappointing seeing marketing language and thinking. Firefox is good because Mozilla is better than a company.

</comment><comment><USER53> I really dislike the quantum color palette, everything looks like a glow-in- the-dark poster.

</comment><comment><USER54> Everyone needs a job, I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER55> Yes, first you pretend to be a buisness, then you are a business, then you sell out. The dark side of the force knows many secrets, for example reviving past successes by selling your soul. Let the longing flow through you..

</comment><comment><USER50> Nothing puts me off adopting Firefox as a main browser more than Mozilla and their constant poor decisions.

</comment><comment><USER56> Anyone else getting "Connection is not secure" warning for this site, in Firefox?

Hopefully they'll at least appreciate the irony in a blog post positioning themselves as being about privacy.

<comment><USER57> No, I don't get any errors.

Are you using any proxies, antivirus, etc that might interfere with your web traffic?

[https://observatory.mozilla.org/analyze/blog.mozilla.org#tls](https://observatory.mozilla.org/analyze/blog.mozilla.org#tls)

<comment><USER56> It's now showing as secure in Firefox for me, but still insecure in Chrome. I wonder if something is going on with the certificate...

<comment><USER58> It's a _Let 's Encrypt Authority X3_ certificate for _blog.mozilla.org_.

The Certificate is valid from _August 31, 2019 2:31:34 PM_ to  _June 2, 2019 2:31:34 PM_.

Potential issues with your system:

\-- MITM attack?

\-- Your antivirus is intercepting your browser traffic but doesn't have a valid certificate?

\-- Invalid System time?

You could give us the error message you get instead of a generic comment on HN.

<comment><USER59> For anyone that's confused like me, Period of Validity

Begins On June 2, 2019

Ends on August 31, 2019

<comment><USER58> You're right and it's too late to edit it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I study optimization? - <AUTHOR> I went to grad school for computer science and applied math, but optimization was not my focus field.  Nowadays, I want to learn both theory and practice for real world optimization problems.
How do I start studying optimization?  I understand there are many subtopics within optimizations.  I also understand that there are also powerful commercial software with closed source and proprietary (heuristic) algorithms, and these are tougher to study from.
My goal is to understand optimization theory and application well enough to use for real world problems and even write my own optimization software. <comment><USER2> Though I did not successfully complete it, this course was very interesting and informative: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/discrete- optimization](https://www.coursera.org/learn/discrete-optimization)

</comment><comment><USER3> If looking for practical optimisation, there are a ton of articles on optimisation in gamedev out there.</comment>


Show HN: Simplify your Stripe integration with Paysly - <AUTHOR> https://paysly.io <comment><AUTHOR> Happy Friday HN! The last couple of months, I have been working on Paysly ([https://paysly.io](https://paysly.io)) to make it easier to accept payments online.

At its core, Paysly allows developers to create payment flows using Stripe Elements - all from the fronted. During development, I though it would also be cool if it supported the creation of dynamic Stripe Checkout flows from the frontend as well, and also provided a way to verify both kinds of payments using JWTs.

I think the tutorials are the easiest way to understand how Paysly works, and I have created examples for one-time and recurring payments using both Checkout or Elements in the docs ([https://docs.paysly.io](https://docs.paysly.io)).

By signing up and linking a Stripe account, Paysly will generate both a live key (for regular payments), and a test key you can use to set up and test integrations.

I think that Paysly makes the (awesome) Stripe developer tool set even more simple to use, but I have been struggling to figure out how to find interested users. Any and all feedback on the dashboard, docs, landing page, or npm module would be immensely appreciated!

</comment><comment><USER2> I assume this handles Stripe's SCA? I've been running into that issue a lot lately, even with non-European based clients.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you are using the checkout flows, they will use SCA. I am currently working on a solution to swap to the payment-intent (SCA compliant) driven flow for elements, but I found that I wasn't getting the events back which I needed from the Stripe API immediately following the payment creation, so I couldn't create a JWT with the payment's status. I have opened a ticket with support - its on the radar!</comment></comment>


Is it worthy? - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/06/is-it-worthy.html

<comment><USER2> " _When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something._ "

\- Steve Jobs

<comment><USER3> I see a flaw in this logic. One certain bad thing that will happen to you if you leave every day as if it is your last is that you'll end up being > 200 kg (would you go to the gym the last day of your life? Would you resist the urge to eat as much as you like?). Another is that you will stop learning anything (would you go to your french course in your last day?) Another is that you might become a drug addict (some people might decide to see how crack feels like in their last day, something they wouldn't do otherwise). Another is ... ok, I believe you get the point.

<comment><USER4> The flaw in your logic is that it focuses only on instinctual pleasure and not that of a higher nature. For every "would you...?" that you propose, there is a large group of people who would say, "yes".

The trick to happiness is not always to change what you're doing; it is often to change your thinking about what you're doing. To be conscious enough of yourself to know when you are full and when you are eating food that will make you feel shitty later. To feel the pleasurable burning of your muscles and your mind as you work out and learn new things. To avoid doing anything that will later rob the little time that you have.

I don't claim to be able to do all of this myself, but I have resolved to try to stay focused on these things. There is much beauty in the world, much to experience, without changing anything but your mind.

<comment><USER3> You missed my point completely. Would you do all these things in the LAST day of your life?

<comment><USER4> You missed my point completely. YES. With the right mindset, there is pleasure in exercise and learning, you realize that gorging yourself will make you feel like crap later, and with only a day left, I would hardly want to waste it out of my mind on drugs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The object isn't to be perfect. The goal isn't to hold back until you've created something beyond reproach. I believe the opposite is true. Our birthright is to fail and to fail often, but to fail in search of something bigger than we can imagine. To do anything else is to waste it all."

\- Brilliant!

<comment><USER6> my thoughts exactly - another great one liner: "What would someone with a bigger vision have done instead?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Speaking from personal experience, I think people would be experience more happiness if they stopped getting so stuck up on themselves (and their perceptions of what other people might thank) and just did what they wanted to do (as long as it was "legal" by societal norms). Go ahead, sing in public

</comment><comment><USER8> Could I trouble someone to paste the text? I haven't figured out how to navigate the Great Firewall of China yet, and for some reason, I can't get to seth godin's site. Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER4> With apologies to Mr. Godin:

 _Is it worthy?

Is this the best I can do?

I've paid for the rent and the furnishings and the menus and the staff and the insurance... is this plate of food worthy of what went before it?

I've flown across the country to visit this museum--a building that cost more than a billion dollars to create and fill and maintain. Is my attention focused enough?

We paid $300 in marketing costs just to get this phone to ring this one time. How shall we answer it?

I've had a great education, suffered and scraped and scrounged to get this point... is this diagnosis, this surgery, this prescription, this bedside manner the end that justifies that effort?

We live in a stable democracy, a place where people have lived and died to give us the freedom to speak out... is that talking head or this spinning pundit the best we can do? Or is he just trying to make a profit and air another commercial?

Is cutting corners to make a buck appropriate when you consider what you could have done? What would someone with a bigger vision have done instead?

Is being negative or bitter or selfish within reason in face of how extraordinarily lucky we were to have been been born here and born now?

I take so much for granted. Perhaps you do as well. To be here, in this moment, with these resources. To have not just our health but the knowledge and the tools and the infrastructure. What a waste.

If I hadn't had those breaks, if there weren't all those people who had sacrificed or helped or just stayed out of my way... what then? Would I even have had a shot at this?

What if this were my last post? Would this post be worthy?

The object isn't to be perfect. The goal isn't to hold back until you've created something beyond reproach. I believe the opposite is true. Our birthright is to fail and to fail often, but to fail in search of something bigger than we can imagine. To do anything else is to waste it all._

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I agree with Seth. It's hard to swallow pride, but failure is often one's greatest success. As for me, failure has been my real-life MBA and I did not have to go into debt to get it. :)

</comment><comment><USER10> I've been a seth reader for a long time, I'll admit it takes a little "Kool- aid" sometimes to get into his stuff.. but I think this one is pure gold

</comment><comment><USER11> Kinda reminds me of Guy Kawasaki's, "Make Meaning". It's so easy for a hacker to fall into the trap of working on something cool that is of little value to anyone. Taking a step back and asking, "Is it worthy?" may be the best time management technique of all.</comment>


YouTube Will Redirect Searches For Extremist Videos To Anti-Terrorist Playlists - <AUTHOR> http://www.tubefilter.com/2017/07/20/youtube-redirect-searches-extremist-anti-terrorist-playlists/ <comment><USER3> I hate the fact that if I voice anything skeptical of this policy someone will call me a terrorist sympathizer. I'm of the conviction that the idea of blowing yourself up is bad enough that we don't really need to censor it. Furthermore I've noticed that the public largely stops thinking the moment "terrorists" or "ISIS" is mentioned. We now live in a state where we can't move ~5000 USD without informing the government because "anti-terrorism money laundering laws". We can't mail certain food products into the US because "bio terrorism act of 2003". Our FBI wants to back door encryption because "ISIS". Notice a pattern yet?

Will it stop with ISIS? Once the precedent is set how long will it be before other search results are manipulated for political reason?

And its not like there's any side of the political spectrum I can vote for. Both Hillary and Trump wanted to censor extremism on Twitter. Both wanted to expand the no-fly list into a no-buy-guns list (constitutional implications be damned). Left, right, center and abroad the civil libertarian is under siege.

<comment><USER4> I get your point - we've slowly, and sometimes quite quickly, seen some of our rights eroded as a result of policies that are advertised as being anti- terrorist.

Speaking directly to this policy, though, isn't your man premise that blow oneself up is bad enough in a vacuum unsupported? Many of these videos are crafted by the terrorist organizations as a recruitment tool. Wouldn't th see organizations not create them if they didn't wield at least some power to actually recruit or radicalize? I don't think arguing that line is consistent, even if I agree that we shouldn't censor these videos.

<comment><USER5> There are also videos made by murderous dictatorial regimes as a recruitment tool. YouTube has no problem with that. There are videos made by US to get more cannon fodder for their wars which also killed millions of innocent people over the decades. Where do you stop?

I'm fine with stopping recruitment videos for war, but at least do it on principle as against the war, not just against a few particular organizations. It's ridiculous otherwise. It's just one belligerent suppressing the other one in a conflict. Nothing else.

<comment><USER6> IMO, there is a difference between war and attacks on civilians.

<comment><USER7> A hypothetical difference, or a practical difference? Can you give me an example of a war that managed to avoid attacks on civilians?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This recent trend is really worrisome. YouTube also shut down quite a lot of channels in connection with the Syrian civil war. Reddit too closed down a couple of subreddits, and admins banned users who shared ISIS related content on the /r/syriancivilwar/ subreddit.

What an utterly useless and counterproductive exercise in de facto censorship. The only thing this does is drive people deeper into the underground, even closer to actual extremists.

Extremist ideas need to be fought with rational discourse, drag them out into the open and let the sunshine disinfect them. Trying to hide them out of sight, like they don't exist, only makes them fester all the more in secret and partly legitimizes these extremists in their view of being unjustly persecuted.

<comment><USER9> Great then. Do you have any ideas then how to stop the radicalisation of young muslims? I'm less inclined to believe that rational discussions with ISIS warriors and their supporters will lead that far.

I live in what used to be one of the most secular countries in the world, and for various reasons our government have encouraged immigration from the middle east for 20 years, providing free education, free healthcare, generous social welfare, and an actively non-racist society. Unfortunately, this didn't seem to automatically integrate many in our society, mainly because of unemployment caused by the originally low "human capital", and partly due to there are many cultural issues that wasn't even socially acceptable to discuss at all until recently.

While many have done great, there are many more that haven't and the 2nd or 3rd generation are still doing pretty bad compared to the natives, which has created street gangs and criminality in many areas, even in small towns.

Among many bad things, one of the results is that we now have many ISIS warriors here, and no plan on how to handle them. It doesn't even seem to be illegal to be an ISIS warrior here.

Many more are susceptible to the propaganda, and in my book, any means stop the propaganda is more than welcome. I really don't understand how large US companies can carry messages from violent extremist like it's no big deal.

<comment><USER10> > _Great then. Do you have any ideas then how to stop the radicalisation of > young muslims?_

The stuff GP is talking about is generally not being done to "stop the radicalisation of young muslims" but more likely as CYA/good PR. Maybe for some it's genuinely in good spirit but let's be honest here, it's probably not going to make a big difference.

Ideas to stop radicalization? Well, slowing down marginalization first would be a good move and that's going nowhere good in the US right now. Maybe electing representatives and leaders that don't feed on a self-fueled machine of fear would help. To do that you need an electorate with more critical thinking, which means better education. (And here you see you got a catch-22 since you need leaders that fight for better education in the first place...)

Concretely, what "you" as in any average joe can do is not much, but if you want to do something: help people understand their votes, educate them on politics as well as foreign culture, make them travel more.

What a big company like Google/Youtube could do if they cared to fight for it? Probably a hell of a lot more, but they're not in that business honestly.

<comment><USER9> I wish we could stop the marginalization, but just free education including university, healthcare, etc, isn't enough apparently.

It's a similar problem as other marginalized groups - there must be some dynamics in play that keeps them marginalized.

Maybe it's as simple as their own pride combined with more or less subtle classism (more than racism) from the middle classes that alienates them.

I don't think this is fixable without rather far going measures, like tearing down bad suburbs and rebuild as low scale areas that encourages a high degree of social control that also the middle class would like to live in, forcibly designate schools to assure an even mix of social background, programs for encouraging studies, repress religious influences, some new ideas to punish young criminals without putting them in crime-scools like now, and probably really harsh punisment for repeat offenders.

Nothing of this is likely to happen except harsh punishment that won't do much on its own.

<comment><USER8> > It's a similar problem as other marginalized groups - there must be some > dynamics in play that keeps them marginalized.

It's called having a scapegoat, it's especially obvious in Europe. 30 years ago the scapegoats in Western Europe used to be Eastern Europeans. Refugees from the Yugoslav wars had not been welcomed at all, EU expansion to the East (Poland) resulted in a lot of racist sentiments flaming up along the lines of "These Poles are gonna steal all our stuff and are criminal".

Now, 30 years later, not much has changed. Those that used to be marginalized have now found a new target they can marginalize themselves: Muslim refugees.

Suddenly we have a "European Identity" and that identity even includes Eastern Europeans who seem to have learned very little from their own marginalization and now proceed to do exactly the same things to another group.

It looks like humans always need somebody to put the blame on, stuff just can't go wrong, there always has to be some "evil mind" behind all the ugly stuff that happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's all very well but perhaps they should also stop deleting Russian opposition videos/channels and justify that by claiming they contain extremist content when there is none. #FixRussianYoutube - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZwAVsAgsLQ&t=190s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZwAVsAgsLQ&t=190s)

<comment><USER3> I got to agree with the other guy on this. Youtube is bound by the laws of whatever country they operate in. If they refuse to cooperate with the Russian gov they will be banned and some other service which does comply will take their place. If you want to #FixRussianYoutube you got to first #FixRussianGovernment.

<comment><USER12> I think your chances are doing that are slim. Maybe a better strategy is to not base our societal discourse on central points of control.

Maybe #FixInternet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And who will decide what is "Extremist Videos"? This is a dangerous game YT plays now. Who will decide who is a freedom fighter and who is an extremist? Who is good and who is bad?

<comment><USER5> It doesn't need to be decided in any meaningful or principled way. The metric can simply be: whatever brings in more advertising money and less trouble from people in power.

YouToube is no unbiased public service with higher moral or principled goals. It has to operate in a complicated world with many competing pressures from powerful entities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if white supremacist videos are gonna count as terrorist [https://theintercept.com/2017/07/06/facebooks-tough-on- terro...](https://theintercept.com/2017/07/06/facebooks-tough-on-terror-talk- overlooks-white-extremists/)

<comment><USER15> I also wonder if any religious video of any faith that calls for beating one's wife,inequality between men and women, death for non believers and homosexuals, antisemitism or female genital mutilation will also be counted as extremist video.

<comment><USER16> Even if the video calls for none of those, you mean?

Of course, like you, I would quite like to see all Christian videos banned, but I'm afraid it might set a precedent.

<comment><USER17> Really, because we must censor ideas like "love your enemies" and "treat others the way you want to be treated"? (Matthew 5:44) ([https://youtu.be/L0HhHLHLHaA](https://youtu.be/L0HhHLHLHaA))

I agree that abusers will use any name for their own means, but generalization of a group because of false persons who claim that group is never helpful.

Of course there are the false teachers who use Christianity for their own power (i.e. televangelist types), but there are also people who actually believe the great teachings like forgiveness and love one another. They are the ones who will pick you up when someone else has beaten you into the mud.

<comment><USER16> Yes, because none of Islam preaches love and none of Christianity preaches death to homosexuals.

<comment><USER18> i don't see many christians blowing up kids 'for jesus', or decaptitating children 'for jesus' or throwing people off buildings, or raping or pillaging...

the radicalization of young christians into violent murder machines is a massive problem.

certtainly we must pursue this blatant false equivalency at all costs. because all religion is obviously the same in every way.

<comment><USER19> > i don't see many christians blowing up kids 'for jesus', or decaptitating > children 'for jesus' or throwing people off buildings, or raping or > pillaging...

Most Muslims don't do any of those things, either.

Meanwhile, some Christians do blow up abortion clinics, shoot up gay nightclubs, mosques and Sikh temples, and put Bible verses on their gunsights when shooting Muslims in the desert. And then you have Christian groups like the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda who do decapitate children, rape and pillage "for Jesus," and practice many of the same violent tactics as any Muslim extremist group.

>certtainly we must pursue this blatant false equivalency at all costs. because all religion is obviously the same in every way.

You are right about there being a false equivalency, but it's not where you seem to think it is.

<comment><USER18> > Most Muslims don't do any of those things, either.

most soviets never hurt anyone. most nazis never hurt anyone.

> some Christians do ...

with what structural support? how often do they quote verses and present a religious arguments that millions are sympathetic to?

> it's not where you seem to think it is

your dialectic of equivalency that you engage in legitimizes religiosity and by proxy religious violence, and delegitimizes secularism as well as non- religiosity and atheism.

<comment><USER19> >how often do they quote verses and present a religious arguments that millions are sympathetic to?

Millions of Americans are sympathetic to the idea of a war with Islam being necessary to usher in Armageddon, and of current US policy being a way to bring this about. George W. Bush even called the War on Terror a "new Crusade," explicitly evoking the mythology of war between Christianity and Islam, a mythology which exists in both religions, although in a context in which each religion believes it will win.

The philosophies of modern, Apocalyptic conservative Christianity and radical Islam are more alike than different.

>your dialectic of equivalency that you engage in legitimizes religiosity and by proxy religious violence, and delegitimizes secularism as well as non- religiosity and atheism

How does it legitimize religiosity and violence to point out that both Christianity and Islam have a violent fringe?

<comment><USER18> > George W. Bush even called the War on Terror a "new Crusade,"

perhaps ironically for your argument, he's also the guy who started the 'religion of peace' comedy (iirc anyways).

> How does it legitimize religiosity and violence to point out that both > Christianity and Islam have a violent fringe

it's not about 'have a violent fringe'. your words convey 'there are no functional differences'. islam has a 'violent fringe' in the way the revolutionary proletariats or nazi brownshirts had a 'violent fringe'. the violence is rationalized through ideological structures.

when your dialectic is unable to articulate or recognize the extant ideological structures that rationalize, justify and endorse violence, the discussion must then pursue things outside of religion if it pretends to explain anything.

this supports the postmodernist and terrorist sympathizer claims that every dead westerner brought it upon themselves for being evil westerners.

this dialetic is further endorsed and mirrored by islamists (and other religionists) who fold this into a dialectic where religion is good by definitional fiat.

their religion doesn't influence violence because religion is good by definition. any suggestion otherwise becomes a category error.

but hey. maybe you're right. perhaps western civilization is functionally the same as isis, and we shouldn't judge misunderstood islamists.

their violence has no religious basis (religion is good!), it's just them defending themselves from our evil ways by decapitating children while screaming (purely coincidentally, no correlation) 'allahu akhbar'.

<comment><USER19> > islam has a 'violent fringe' in the way the revolutionary proletariats or > nazi brownshirts had a 'violent fringe'. the violence is rationalized > through ideological structures.

Well, no, Islam has a 'violent fringe' in the way Germans had a violent fringe. Are you claiming that every Muslim is the equivalent of a Nazi brownshirt, when not even every Nazi was a brownshirt, and not every German was a Nazi? It seems like you're making my point more than refuting it.

>when your dialectic is unable to articulate or recognize the extant ideological structures that rationalize, justify and endorse violence, the discussion must then pursue things outside of religion if it pretends to explain anything.

I do recognize them, I'm just refusing to recognize that they only exist in Islam.

I'm attempting to draw an equivalency between radical Islam and radical Christianity, and trying to point out that while similar claims about the violent ideals and tactics can be made about both, particularly when taking a literal interpretation of the canon of each religion, neither represents the mainstream view of that religion.

You're kind of proving my point, here. The problem with radical Islam isn't Islam, it's the politics of the radicals and the states that support them.

>this supports the postmodernist and terrorist sympathizer claims that every dead westerner brought it upon themselves for being evil westerners

But, that's not a claim I'm actually making, so no it kind of doesn't. It seems like we're typing past one another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is very scary. They control what we see and only show us what they want us to see. Some party use terrorism execuse to have more control. Play on people fears to take their freedom and choice.

What they believe to be politically right is now what is right. This is drak ages church stoning witches and if you say something against it then you support black magic and get stoned

</comment><comment><USER21> It's hard to tell what "redirect to playlists" means - will the relevant videos be completely censored, or are they adding a playlist of opposing views to the same results? The latter seems like a nice compromise.

<comment><USER22> >> Once we have this content in place, we create targeted advertising campaigns that serve this content directly to people who are searching for information about ISIS and the caliphate, as well as people who are trying to view extremist content online. We serve these ads the same way that businesses have been doing for years—we serve advertising against certain keywords that people tend to use when they're looking for jihadist content online << [https://redirectmethod.org/qa/](https://redirectmethod.org/qa/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Which also means journalists won't be able to access those videos as sources. Although, I'm not ready to call that a bad decision, because propaganda is indeed the biggest problem with ISIS.

This is just treating the symptom, obviously (why do young people ever consider joining a terrorist group? Certainly not through youtube videos as the only factor), but also treating the symptom is ok if we try to solve the deeper problem at the same time (unemployment? defiance resulting from corruption?).

<comment><USER5> Also normal people who just don't want to be fed the conclusions and sanitized images from the news outlets, and want to watch the actual thing in full length, compare information from multiple opposing sources, geolocate events, timestamp them, or whatever is up to their current fancy, to be able to form their worldview themselves also have a harder time. But that's nothing new, you already have to be quick, as links have been disappearing shortly after being posted for a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> How will YouTube decide if my search (as an example) is to learn more about extremism? Maybe I'm a budding political and social thinker who's interested in understanding the deeper driving forces and would like to come up with approaches on how to deal with these threats in ways that are not just "let's just bomb the hell out of all these people and that will solve the problem once and for all." What about journalists who want to report on these propaganda videos in a concise yet coherent manner for the rest of the public to get a better grip of things? What about policy makers who'd like to understand and then take action? What about think tanks and policy research? What about economic and political researchers? What about "good" people who create similar videos for educational purposes (maybe a classroom assignment to analyze and come up with essays)?

I seem to be repeating stuff, but there are a lot of people who can truly help humankind (and non-humans) by accessing these videos. We have to get better at understanding things better before we can claim to have solutions. The dynamics of a year ago may not be the same as what exists now or what may happen a year from now. Censorship is a bad answer if we want to solve issues.

Would even the intelligence agencies be happy with such a move since it makes the wanted people disappear off their radars and use other modes of communication? _I believe this is a self-defeating attitude and approach for anyone who desires to look beyond knee jerk reactions and instant conclusions._

The way to deal with damaging propaganda is to create more awareness and education material and put it in front of people, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER22> It should be noted that this not an actual redirect. As I understand it, no content is hidden. The "redirect" name is terribly chosen.

All they do is add ads for other videos

From the FAQ >> Once we have this content in place, we create targeted advertising campaigns that serve this content directly to people who are searching for information about ISIS and the caliphate, as well as people who are trying to view extremist content online. We serve these ads the same way that businesses have been doing for years—we serve advertising against certain keywords that people tend to use when they're looking for jihadist content online << [https://redirectmethod.org/qa/](https://redirectmethod.org/qa/)

</comment><comment><USER25> I'd even be fine with this if it were applied equally to US politicians calling for executions and sermons threatening people with damnation.

This isn't about actual extremism though; it's simply about getting off of YouTube the things that cannot be sold for advertising dollars.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is simply censorship. YouTube has a right to censor its content so it can make more money. The service will be less useful for research and reporting of news stories, I suppose but the censorship is not any different than what TV and other media have been doing for decades. Frankly, I'm surprised it took them this long. They are a commercial entity after all and their only reason for being is to make money. Of course, now they are using the technology to censor terrorists. Tomorrow they'll censor more reasonable content, no doubt. That's how these things work.

</comment><comment><USER27> There is already suspicion that Google manipulated results for political ends: [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/31/google_axes_eu_refe...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/31/google_axes_eu_referendum_website/)

You might think "good, it was a stupid idea anyway" but what if next time it's something that _you_ care about? It's a dangerous precedent to allow to be set.

</comment><comment><USER28> what's interesting is that Google has been doing this for some time! For the longest time I was curious what would happen if you did a specific but obviously wrong search such as "how do I poison someone and get away with it" or "how do I join ISIS without being caught" or something. Well as you can imagine for obvious reasons I did not do those searches! (To spell it out, I did not want them in my search history, and also they show pretty clear criminal intent, and also we have clandestine agencies who presumably watch for such things perhaps with Google's cooperation, etc.)

Well some time ago I had the brilliant idea that I could test an "obviously wrong" search to see what kinds of results it would give.

So I'm male, and I decided to search "How do I trick a man into thinking he's the father" or something (as though I'm pregnant) which is pretty clearly wrong but which I'm obviously immune to the idea of intent for. (To spell it out, because males obviously don't get pregnant.)

I expected search results like forum discussions, a Yahoo Answer question phrased with that exact word, etc. You know, same as if you Google any other specific question like that.

Well that's not what I got at all. Despite my very specific question phrased something like the above, ALL of the top ten links were to pages about "paternity fraud" \- which I didn't even know was a thing. (I just thought it was just a shitty thing to do, and anyway could always be played off as a genuine mistake.)

So I instantly learned that what I was Googling was fraud, and closed the page without clicking any of the links to learn more. But my reaction was: well played, Google!!

If I had actually started out with that thought, it's likely I would have abandoned it after that search.

To be clear, Google did NOT answer my question directly (even though no doubt there are tons of pages that would have answered it exactly as asked), instead teaching me why it's wrong.

I was very impressed. I can only imagine the same would be done for some of the worse types of queries someone can do.

-

 _Note: just to make this gender-neutral: if I were a woman then to do my experiment I could have Googled something like "how long can I trick her into having sex with me if I got a vasectomy and she is trying to get pregnant" or something, which obviously cannot be a genuine question by a woman._

<comment><USER29> Have you tried without a profile and with another profile ?

I regularly search Google with questions I think another persona would ask (parents or project manager recently).

<comment><USER28> no but it doesn't matter - none of the pages had my search terms, and they all had a different search term. It's obvious Google actively decided to return totally different pages.

for my example with the vasectomy, it's as though all the pages returned were about "sex by deception" or maybe even "rape by deception". I'm not going to do the male version so we'll never know :)

<comment><USER29> These are my results for "How do I trick a man into thinking he's the father" (same results for normal profile and anonymous browsing):

``` It Is Never OK to Trick a Man Into Fatherhood | CafeMom thestir.cafemom.com/pregnancy/128660/it_is_never_ok_to Women who trick men into fatherhood are the lowest of the low. ... like these where the man is clearly duped into becoming a father because of the woman's ... I think mothers need to be supported and that men get off the hook on many things ... NO SHE DIDN'T ! she's NEVER had a kid, and I know it, before when we used to ...

Four men reveal the trauma of becoming a dad by deception | Daily ... www.dailymail.co.uk/.../Four-men-reveal-trauma-dad-deception.ht... She's not the only one to have tried this ultimate deception. ... Last week, Liz Jones confessed how she tried to trick her husband into fathering her child. .... I also think Carol wasn't thinking of the child, and I wonder how she ...

Man fools partner into thinking he's in bed on Twitter | Daily Mail Online www.dailymail.co.uk/.../Boyfriend-fools-partner-thinking-s-bed.ht... The man used a coat to construct a fake bed and took a selfie while at the ... with his attempt to trick his girlfriend into thinking he is in bed while.

These Guys Say They Were Tricked Into Becoming Fathers | Glamour [https://www.glamour.com/story/these-guys-say-they-were- trick](https://www.glamour.com/story/these-guys-say-they-were-trick) ... who supposedly trick men into having babies with them--the idea being, ... He's never met his son and bailed when I was 11-weeks pregnant (and I ... their guys with the complete intension of getting pregnant but I also think ...

It Happened to Me: I Tried to Trick my Ex Into Getting Me Pregnant www.xojane.com/.../it-happened-me-i-tried-trick-my-ex-getting-m... "Besides," she coaxed me, "really, don't you think he's gay? ... now to my beautiful son, whose father -- my husband -- was a willing participant ...

Eight Loving Ways to Manipulate Someone into Loving You - <USER2> [https://medium.com/.../eight-loving-ways-to-manipulate- someo...](https://medium.com/.../eight-loving-ways-to-manipulate-someone-..). Here are eight tricks you can use which I don't think cause any harm… ... Try them not just on lovers but also on parents, siblings, friends and anyone ... Stare into someone's eyes for 60 seconds to induce feelings similar to love. ... end of the film when he's expecting you to say something like, "That Meryl.

Secretarial Wars - Page 89 - Résultats Google Recherche de Livres [https://books.google.be/books?isbn=0595275923](https://books.google.be/books?isbn=0595275923) Linda Gould - 2003 - Fiction You're prepared to trick a man into thinking he's gotten you pregnant, and you'll be ... Didn't you have enough trouble convincing him he was the father last time, ...

Grandpa Tricks Family into Thinking He Died in Heartbreaking Holiday ... "How do I trick a man into thinking he's the father" 1:29 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoIZfycTWuM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoIZfycTWuM)

Grandpa Tricks Family into Thinking He Died in Heartbreaking Holiday Ad ... which starts with an old man ... Dad Pranks Son With Fake Hand - YouTube "How do I trick a man into thinking he's the father" 0:42 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH_TRzlO13s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH_TRzlO13s)

See the fear in this kid's eyes when his dad tricks him into thinking he sawed off his own father's hand ... Dad tricked into believing IVF baby was his only to find the father was ... www.mirror.co.uk › News › Real Life Stories › IVF Dad tricked into believing IVF baby was his only to find the father ... But now it is a heartbreaking reminder of the cruel trick that tore nine-year-old Simon from him. ... you love and think is your own – that is the cruelest thing anyone can do. ... "Yet he is with her every day while I just long to have him here. ```

<comment><USER28> Not sure what my exact search had been but at any rate none of your search results give practical advice into how to trick a different man into thinking he's the father, if you're already pregnant by someone else. If you're really intent on reproducing my results maybe add something about how you're already pregnant. I certainly am not making up my results as I had never heard the term paternity fraud (or some equivalent term.)

Note: parent comment is a male based on username, this is apparently just research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So how will people know just how vile ISIS is? Should be defer our judgement to main stream news media to tell us?

It's absurd that the Redirect company's mission statement is to "counter censorship" and their main job is to censor information.

</comment><comment><USER31> The precedence this sets is so scary and shortsighted.

So a gay man ( or even a straight person ) in saudi arabia wanting to find out more about homosexuality will be directed to anti-gay playlist which tells them how evil gays are?

In china, instead of blocking tiannamen square searches, they'll simply redirct it to showing what a great a idea it was?

What about religious countries? Will youtube simply redirect searches for atheism to "anti-atheism" site?

This is the worst form of censorship as it is sneaky and exploitive. As a liberal ( possibly former liberal ), it is shocking to me that the liberals are the ones leading the call for censorship online, in academia and business. It reminds me of Animal Farm/1984\. Now that liberals have used the protections free speech to gain a lot of power/mindshare, we are trying to use it to censor everything we find offensive.

Not only is this a horrific form of censorship, it removes any credibility we ever had of criticizing others for their censorship.

<comment><USER18> generally, 'liberal' politicians in the us are the same corporate sell-outs that 'conservative' politicians are.

they just work in a smidge of meaningless feel-good language in the rhetoric while doing largely nothing of consequence to actually help put food on the table.

they glory in war and economic imperialism and servicing the oligarchy just as much as any.</comment></comment>


OQO's Brutal Lesson: Innovate and Die - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/04/oqos-brutal-les.html

<comment><USER2> I'd liken their products to an interesting genetic mutation rather than an evolutionary step. The original machines were expensive and didn't seem to serve any purpose other than allowing people to say gee-wiz. Their claim was that, since the device ran windows, corporations could use existing apps as-is and make them mobile. Nevermind that these apps relied on either (1) a real keyboard for green screen legacy cases or (2) large type and a real mouse. So, developers would have had to modify/rewrite anyway. Therefore, why not write for a blackberry which had the wan connectivity issues solved a long time ago?

</comment><comment><USER3> Ever notice that Apple hardly ever uses the word "Innovate"? It seems like companies use this word when they haven't ACTUALLY done anything innovative, but would sure like to convince everyone (and themselves) that they did.

<comment><USER4> That's because Apple generally don't innovate, What they do is do existing things that never went mainstream, and implement them far better than anyone else ever did.

USB, wireless, backlit LCDs, webcams, silly picture making software, music composition, DTP (iWork's layout engine), installable apps on phones, touch phones, etc, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't it more like charge 3X the other guy and die. I can get a similar device from nokia for less than half that or a netbook for 1/3.

</comment><comment><USER6> Die, yes. Innovate, I dunno. This thing never had a chance.</comment>


Wuala encrypted cloud storage shifting to paid only service - <AUTHOR> https://support.wuala.com/2014/06/shifting-to-paid-only-service/

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been a happy user of this service, but am now looking for alternatives.

I would prefer a seamless client side encrypted cloud storage with clients for Windows, Linux and Android. It doesn't have to be free, but also not expensive.

Any recommendation?</comment>


Ask HN: What are some examples of software patents used for good? - <AUTHOR> In light of all the cross suing, most recently the Apple/HTC lawsuits, and stuff like Lodsys' trolling app developers it's hard to imagine software patents being more than tools for greedy companies.<p>In the interest of not falling prey to sensationalism I wanted to find out if there's more to the story than just "software patents are evil." <comment><USER2> One positive example I can think of is that Stanford's computer-music research center, CCRMA, was funded for years from the royalties they got by licensing synthesis techniques they invented to synthesizer companies like Yamaha. In that case, the incentives seem to roughly line up as intended: significant new computational technique was invented and patented, and researchers who did so get royalties to fund more research in the area.

Though even there, it mostly looks good if you look at the patents with a higher bar for innovativeness. Inventing something like FM synthesis entirely (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_modulation_synthesis>) is a bit different from patenting the Nth variation on some well-known synthesis algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think a problem with this kind of question is that it _requires_ thinking about counterfactuals. You can't say "this patent is good" without thinking about what would have happened if it had not been granted.

</comment><comment><USER4> MP3?

It allowed the Fraunhofer Institute to capitalize on their audio research.

<comment><USER3> Whether that is good or bad is debatable, but at least it's no trivial patent.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, the MP3 patents and a small number of similar ones are the only good examples of nontrivial software patents. They are, sadly, a tiny fraction of all software patents.

Regarding whether the MP3 patents were a good thing or not, that is as you say debatable. It made developing the technology profitable, but it also created barriers to interoperability - for example, it is problematic for open source operating systems to support MP3s, and they are forced to do various workarounds of dubious legality. Compare this to the situation on the Web: Anyone can write a web browser, without having to pay anyone else.

<comment><USER6> Well my first encounter with software patents was with the Diffie-Hellman and RSA patents. Followed promptly by the Lempel-Ziv compression patent and then the MP3 patent. Can't say that I enjoyed any of those encounters :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I bought a new pair of wireless headphones a few months ago. I'd always heard that wireless audio was a really dumb idea because of the sound quality, but I really wanted to get rid of that cable.

After some research, I discovered that there's a particular Bluetooth audio codec called apt-X, which has essentially wired sound quality (and certainly way better than the awful default Bluetooth audio). No cables, no dongles (my mac supports apt-X out of the box).

This represents a genuine (patented) innovation - none of the other wireless audio solutions are as good. I can't help but wonder if the people behind it would have bothered if they couldn't patent the codec.

I don't know if that makes the patent system worth it for software. I suspect it doesn't. But I know at least one example where it led to innovation that may not have happened otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER8> I find this question very ambiguous. Either software patents (or patents in general) are a good idea or they are not a good idea.

Asking whether good things have been done with proceeds from licensing software (or other) patents is a different question entirely, and inevitably leads to the answer: yes. (Of course _some_ patent holders have used the income to do good things!)

<comment><USER8> Care to explain why you disagree instead of just downvoting?

<comment><USER6> I cannot speak for the HN readership in general of course, but I suspect the downvotes come from folks who don't believe you've added anything to the conversation. It is perfectly reasonable to say 'this is an ambiguous question' if you follow up with 'I chose to interpret it this way ... and my response is ...' or 'The definition 'good' here isn't well understood, does good mean socially good or corporately good, or good as in you won't go to hell if you do it good?'

So yes, the question can be interpreted in many ways, when I read it I felt the OP was trying to find examples which support the claim that the software patents are 'good' where good means they provide a net benefit to the community.

That being said, software patents are an emotional topic here and sometimes that overwhelms the conversation.

<comment><USER8> I appreciate your reply. I do think I was trying to add to the conversation, if only by pointing out that the question itself was not as well posed as it could have been. Perhaps I should have gone the extra mile and offered an opinion based on one (or both) readings of the question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's an interesting question, but of the several responses so far the only one that actually tried to provide an example is getting voted down. My guess is that is going to happen to any answer that provides any example of a software patent being used for good is going to get a bunch of down votes, making any discussion pointless.

<comment><USER3> Do you mean _delirium's response? That one seems to be solidly in the black by now.

<comment><USER9> Yeah. It was greying out when I posted, but now it's back alive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a bit naive to try to judge patents in terms of some dichotomy between good patents and bad patents. In principle, patents aren't really good or evil. They're just part of running a business. That said, the patent system itself can have good or evil effects on society.

<comment><USER11> Patents in general are "bad" in my opinion, but they can be used for good. Just like guns may be considered "bad" in general, there are legitimate uses for them, and they can be used for good.

The OP even says "used for good".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not all companies are like this. I work for a company that believes enforcement of patents stifles innovation. And looking for the next innovation and gaining a first mover advantage is much more important than spending time and resources protecting past ones.Plus the end user is much better off in this market. We will patent to protect ourselves from other companies, but not enforce it on others.

However this needs an idealistic leader and wont work large scale across markets so while it annoys me when I see these spiderwebs of who is suing who, I really put the blame at the fault of the patent system. I don't know what the answer is but it seems something is seriously broken.

</comment><comment><USER13> Let me first say I hate most patents, but they are alowing patents for stupid things, like a rectagular touch screen phones. Or maybe the patent lenght should be shorter, so as to give an advantage, and incentive, but not to halt progress.

Yet, It seems that Google's secret sauce search algorithm made lots of cash for Stanford to help continue to educate and incubate more ideas like this. Without Googles edge of a protected formula, the relatively "non evil" company may not have grown to offer us free services like google voice, gmail, google docs, and a free OS.

<comment><USER14> That's not a patent, it's a trade secret. The difference is that if I independently invent a search algorithm that happens to be the same as Google's, they don't have the right to sue me.

I personally find secrecy just fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The good patents are the silent ones, the ones broken by people who have never known of the patent, who describe it in some other but equally unique, novel and non-trivial way. Along the same lines, Red Hat (and others, even self- employed full time open source coders) may talk about implementing something useful, but not make reference to the patent. I'm sure we're heard of something that was patented for OSS, but not as a patent, as a program feature.

<comment><USER16> The best patents in any area are those kinds of novel inventions that people will look for to solve a problem, not after accidentally breaking them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Undoubtedly a number of lawyers' children have benefited from their family's greatly increased income. Otherwise, I can't think of anything.

</comment><comment><USER18> How about the Google Pagerank patent?

<http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6285999>

It explains the primary algorithm behind Google Search. I suppose it could have been kept as a trade secret all these years, if not for the patent system.

<comment><USER5> It might have, but it is very likely it would have been published in an academic paper anyhow (like it actually has).

And in any case, no one actually reads software patents (lawyers tell you not to!), so even if it was patented but not published or otherwise documented, no one would have known about it.

While the PageRank patent is definitely not a trivial patent - unlike the vast majority of software patents - it still isn't an example of a patent used for good.

<comment><USER19> >> "it still isn't an example of a patent used for good"

What do you mean by good, then? It has generated lots of cash for Google and thus provided lots of jobs.

<comment><USER20> It would still generate and provide the same even if it was not patented.

Unless you believe that it was Google patent on page rank algorithm that prevented all other companies to get better at doing search.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> An interesting view that I got from someone who patents technologies working at a big company, was that software patents tend to protect yourself (the company) from getting sued by other patent trolls!

<comment><USER5> No, software patents cannot protect you from patent trolls.

Patent trolls by definition do not produce any actual products. They only sue. Any patents you have are therefore no defense against them.

A worrying development is trolling by proxy - a real company selling its patents to a patent troll. This allows the real company to extort money through its patents, without the risk of a countersuit, since the patent troll is doing the actual suing.

<comment><USER22> I believe he is talking about the kind of mutually assured destruction that keep companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, and IBM from suing each other. They all hold a ton of patents, and while they may infringe on each others patents from time to time, they keep it to a minimum and nobody pursues it due to the possibility of retaliatory patent action where both parties lose. Much like the Cold War.

<comment><USER5> Yes, perhaps that's what he meant, and he said "patent trolls" by mistake.

In any case, that is not really a case of patents being put to good use. They might help you specifically, as a defensive measure, but only because of all the bad uses of patents overall.

<comment><USER21> Yes, that's what I meant, and I used the wrong term. :)

I agree; it merely illustrates the flaws in the system that we have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Redhat?

<comment><USER24> Redhat does not rely on patents or licencing. I wouldn't even be surprised if they did not hold a single patent.

<comment><USER23> Are you insane? Redhat has tons of patents. They have a position of not offensively using these patents against the community, "a promise" as it was termed when I took a tour of their North Carolina facilities a few years ago. Here[1] is a link to their patent policy and reasoning behind it.

[1] <http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment> wes-exp Amazon 1-click. Prior to its invention, online purchases involved a laborious 10, 20, or even 100 clicks! It's too bad there isn't a Nobel prize for online shopping. The inventors deserve some recognition. </sarcasm>

</comment><comment><USER24> Honestly (and depressingly) I think the best examples of software patents used for good are the software patents written to protect from exploitation... _by the software patent system_ \- i.e. Creative Commons, GPLv2, BSD Licence, ...

<comment><USER25> The GPL, BSD, etc. licenses are licenses, not software patents.

I can't think of a good software patent. It's not a software patent, but there was IBM's attempt to patent patent trolling which was a rather keen bit of legal satire. I think it actually failed in the face of all that prior art, but I might be confusing that patent application with another one.

<comment><USER24> You guys are right, sorry. Total absent-minded mistake.

<comment><USER25> To be fair, I can't really answer the original question either.

I don't really like the i4i case, though it's probably at least closer to an answer. Microsoft got what it deserved because it partnered with i4i, then screwed them. There should have been non-patent means of getting justice in a case like that, though, so I can hardly count that as something good about software patents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If I write a great piece of software, patent it, then run a business selling it, then that patent does me (and my family) a lot of good. I worked hard to create the software, and I should reap the rewards.

If software patents didn't exist, maybe I wouldn't have based my business on that software in the first place because I'd worry that somebody else would notice that it's profitable and use it to run their business. Patents are necessary to encourage people to innovate, though obviously some patents (that probably shouldn't have been given in the first place) have stunted innovation.

<comment><USER26> The request was for an actual example, not a hypothetical scenario. Also, you seem to grossly misunderstand the function of software patents. You don't patent a piece of software; you have a copyright that provides the full and appropriate protection of law. In contrast, software patents apply to general processes, use cases or algorithms, as opposed to specific implementations.</comment></comment>