Google emphasizes popularity over accuracy - <AUTHOR> https://www.superhighway98.com/google <comment><USER3> IMHO Google has been in decline since ~2010 or so, but it's only recently that the dive in quality became very noticeable. Try searching for anything even mildly technical outside of software, and you are presented with pages upon pages of completely irrelevant SEO spam. Automotive repair manuals (for very old cars) are one example; it used to be that you could easily find a link to a PDF, and the results were otherwise mostly relevant; but now you get only sites claiming to sell it to you, and more SEO spam.

Two more examples are error messages and IC part markings --- searches are flooded with results that _do not even contain all the words in the query_. I didn't put those words there for no reason, ignoring them is absolutely unacceptable. This becomes ridiculous when you search for error numbers, where a search containing the exact number and the word "error" gets flooded with plenty of useless results about _other_ errors.

<comment><USER4> I'm just glad I'm not alone, sometimes I second guess if _I_ am the problem.

Currently just to get basically workable results I'm finding myself putting "every" "keyword" "in" "quotes" (to make sure they're actually in the result pages at all), the site: modifier to restrict it to real sites, and negative modifiers (-"keyword") to remove some SEO results.

Google used to be "magic" in that it knew what you were thinking, and gave you what you wanted instead of what you asked for. These days it is just page after page of auto-generated results, pages that don't contain anything relevant to your query, or just low quality results.

I'm not going to pretend I'm an expert in Google's search, and I'm sure they're meeting some metric or another, but from my perspective things have gone seriously downhill to the point where I am looking elsewhere.

It used to be THE technical search engine de jure. Now it feels like a search engine you have to hack to get it to work well. Not a good place to be.

PS - I have read, in HN comments (so pure rumor) from self-proclaimed ex- Googlers, that Google's internal culture punishes people for improvements/maintenance to existing products, and that promotions come from developing new products/features. If even semi-accurate might go a long way to explaining why Google Search feels neglected aside from changes which seem to exist to improve their button line/promote sister products.

<comment><USER5> The problem isn't just SEO, it's that Google itself aggressively rewrites queries to produce more results (which I suspect they want to do to show more "relevant" ads).

On the most extreme end of this, I've seen four-word queries produce results, in which three of the words were stricken out. More often, it's just one word, but it's usually exactly the one that makes the difference between a very specific query, and a very generic one.

Worse yet is that they try to do synonym substitution, but their algorithm has a ridiculously low bar for that. Like, you might be searching for "FreeBSD", and it will substitute that for "Linux", or even "Ubuntu". Or search for a specific firearm model, and it finds "gun".

Quoting keywords suppresses all of that, but synonyms are actually useful - <USER2> it did them accurately...

<comment><USER6> I left Google in 2010, so it's just a wild guess, but I suspect a big part of the issue is learn-to-rank is probably being trained on everyone's searches. I think it would probably do much better if they used the presence or absence of search operators as a simple heuristic to separate power user searches from common searches, and trained a separate ranking model on power user searches.

Maybe they're already doing this, but it sure acts like learn-to-rank is always ranking pages as if the query were very sloppy.

It's been a long time, and I certainly never read the code, but I vaguely remember a Google colleague mentioning something (before learn-to-rank) about a back-end query optimizer branch that would intentionally disable much of the query munging if there were any search operators in the query. There was some mention about using cookies / user account information to do the same if the same browser/user had used any search operators in the past N days, but I'm not sure if that was implemented or just being floated as a useful optimization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my opinion, "the Feed" ruined the internet. The news feed, the Twitter feed, the Reddit feed, etc. The addictive nature of the Feed, and the tendency to reward dramatic or outrageous or ridiculous content leads to the herd mentality and mindless dogpiling that occurs on these platforms. And then, because expression is compressed into short form soundbites, pics and videos, the platforms actively inhibit constructive, complex discussion. This is one reason I like podcasts and why, for example, Joe Rogan has become popular. The demand for long form, complex discussion is higher than the supply the internet currently provides.

<comment><USER8> A very good thought, but I don't think all feeds are equal. A strictly chronological feed under user control is a wonderful thing. I have that, for example, in my RSS reader. What sucks is the popularity-contest nature of most feeds. At the top of my Facebook or Twitter or Google News feed is a bunch of stuff that I think is crap, any semi-sensible algorithm could tell that it's crap, it shouldn't be shown to me _anywhere_. Meanwhile, content from my actual friends or people who I have demonstrated interest in is pushed way down or all the way out. All because of popularity and some very misguided notions of engagement. _Bad_ feeds ruined the internet.

I actually do think likes, stars, upvotes, whatever you want to call them are valuable forms of feedback. I like specific reactions - love, laughter, anger - even better. But I do wonder what it would be like if those _only went to the poster_. If they weren't shown to anyone else, and didn't affect _what_ was shown to anyone else. I suspect that it would make "the feed" a usable model again, instead of the abomination it has become.

<comment><USER9> You can't prioritize some content without deprioritizing other content, which effectively amounts to censorship. Algorithmic "timelines" (which aren't timelines at all) are one of the biggest mass scams ever perpetrated. It allows giant companies to sit and mediate personal friendships, and extract rent for anyone who wants more reach (even within their existing, opt-in audience).

I think daily about ways to get people to stop donating content to these censorship and surveillance platforms. Most people don't run businesses, so they never realize the rent-seeking nature of these jerks.

<comment><USER10> _You can 't prioritize some content without deprioritizing other content, which effectively amounts to censorship._

This would imply HN "censors" the front page. Of course that's nonsense. Sometimes sorting by an algorithm is just sorting.

In the case of HN it's up votes, and in the case of Google it's a basket of hundreds of criteria (including up votes if you think of clicks on results as voting). Google probably does have some "censorship" rules like filtering out illegal content, but I'd be surprised if they're not impartial about everything else.

<comment><USER9> > _This would imply HN "censors" the front page._

That's precisely what they do. Everyone's allowed to censor what they wish on their own webpage. I, for example, censor from my own webpage (which otherwise contains a lot of information about me) anything someone could use to physically harm me.

The issue comes up when the censorship is used, for example, in DMs or timeline posts between friends (as it is on Facebook and Instagram and Discord), versus one's own content on a webpage.

There's a difference between moderation and rent-seeking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Search for "GM" and the Gmail homepage ranks prominently. Is Google pushing > its own products on people? Well, yes, but not here. This is an example of a > query refinement algorithm at work. Google is altering its results in > recognition of the fact that many people who search "gm" subsequently search > for "gmail."

I tried this and there are three news articles about General Motors, an infobox for General Motors, 4 search results for General Motors (their web page, another of their pages, a New York Times article about them, and the Wikipedia article about them), a box containing tweets from General Motors, two more news articles about General motors, and finally a link to GMail. Then the other "GMs" start, including GraphicsMagick for node.js. I think they did a pretty good job interpreting "GM" here, and I don't think the Internet is exactly ruined.

<comment><USER12> Just tried this. GMail was the first link, validating "the Gmail homepage ranks prominently." Also, all the suggestions were gmail (before the search.)

The rest of the results were GM related news/Twitter/links.

<comment><USER13> Are you sure you're not confusing Google and DuckDuckGo? (I know I do from time to time)

For me, a Google search returned only General Motors results in the top spots, while a DuckDuckGo search had Gmail as the first result after the news stories.

[https://i.imgur.com/m2iXSN9.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/m2iXSN9.jpg)

<comment><USER14> I get the same as you for DuckDuckGo, but my Google does look different. I guess Google is customising the results: [https://imgur.com/dccAZBg](https://imgur.com/dccAZBg)

<comment><USER15> To add another data point, my Google results for "gm" look like those on your screenshot, with a market summary card and then GMail being the first result, and General Motors second - with one extra difference that "Top Stories" card in my case is above, not below the GMail result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Every complaint in the article is about the behavior of the website named google dot com. Google dot com is not the internet. If the complaints were about how Google is changing the behavior of other websites I could maybe somewhat get behind that. But in light of the content of the article the title makes no sense whatsoever.

"Google sometimes gets things wrong" would be a more accurate title. It wouldn't get any upvotes, nor deserve any (surely it's obvious that a website trying to be as many things as Google does will sometimes be inaccurate). But it would be more truthful.

<comment><USER17> Agreed, but even "Google sometimes gets things wrong" isn't entirely accurate.

So it favors popularity over accuracy. So what? Google is not in the business of providing the most accurate search results. It's in the business of generating ad revenue. If popular links make Google more valuable, then favoring them is "getting things right" from the perspective of a private company.

<comment><USER16> I don't think it's correct to say that it favors popularity over accuracy. Actually I think that is a seriously editorialized take as well, not in keeping with the spirit of HN. I think it would be more correct to say that much of the time popularity _is_ accuracy, in that it's what the searcher is looking for. When there are a variety of interpretations of a query, the most popular interpretation is the rational prior expectation. When not -- for example, when I search for "go" with a history of searching for programming related topics -- Google tries to give me what I'm looking for.

But it's also just a hard problem. That featured snippet about the dentist for example: Google's computers aren't investigative journalists. The purpose of the featured snippet is actually to favor accuracy over popularity by deferring to journalists when Google senses that the searcher is looking for information about an event that was covered in the news. However, if the journalists get it wrong, how is Google going to know? Dollars to donuts, if Google actually knew the right answer, that's what they would surface.

<comment><USER17> > I don't think it's correct to say that it favors popularity over accuracy.

I'm not the one making that claim, I'm just starting from that assumption since the parents are claiming as much

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Have to be honest, I'm surprised the article wasn't about SEO. That gets a lot of blame for ruining the internet, especially on tech sites.

But Google's propensity to reward sites/pages that are popular or new rather than those which are actually more accurate/better in terms of quality is definitely an issue.

<comment><USER19> If you have a good suggestion on how to rapidly measure site accuracy and quality I know some VCs who would very much like to chat.

Well, no, I don't. But I highly suspect that they exist and would want to chat.

<comment><USER20> > If you have a good suggestion on how to rapidly measure site accuracy and > quality I know some VCs who would very much like to chat.

Bring back some variety of DMOZ, perhaps in a federated (easy to fork) version. That was quite successful at surfacing the best-quality online resources by topic, and even the early Google index seemed to rely on it quite a bit. But it wasn't a VC-funded project, of course.

<comment><USER21> DMOZ, really? Yes, at the beginning, yes. But 5-6 years later I know plenty of companies and even bloggers who would locate a "volunteer" and ply him with hundreds or thousands of dollars to get them in, get free traffic, and that beast of a PageRank 7 link.

<comment><USER20> Yes, but this only ever impacted categories where for-profit links are common (and over time, people learn to disregard these links). And Google Search still does a pretty good job of searching for relevant businesses, since it's one of the main things that people use it for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One example I came across recently: if you search for "Amiga floppy disk capacity" ([https://www.google.com/search?q=amiga+floppy+disk+capacity](https://www.google.com/search?q=amiga+floppy+disk+capacity)), you get "1.76 MB", which is completely wrong. Of course, the Wikipedia article which Google's algorithm chose to extract this information from doesn't mention the actual capacity of "standard" Amiga floppies (880 KB): "Most Amiga programs were distributed on double-density floppy disks. There are also 3.5-inch high-density floppy disks, which hold up to 1.76 MB of data, but these are uncommon." \- so Google picked the first number it found (the "uncommon" one) and ran with it. I'm just wondering which executive thought having this "feature" would be a good idea?!

<comment><USER23> You can provide feedback on the answer card. I've had a few answer cards fixed after providing feedback. Notably "https port" used to yield the http port.

Edit: I think you've actually managed to find a really terrific example of a case where modern ML systems are going to have trouble, because of how that Wikipedia page is worded in relation to the query.

* There isn't a single phrase that answers the query directly, so the ML model would need to make very good use of context (attention), both within multiclause sentences and between paragraphs.

* There are many different numbers on the page, so the model has to determine the right one. It can't just get lucky by guessing here.

* A wrong number (1.7MB) has close proximity to literal keywords in the query (floppy, disk). (The right number [880KB] does too.)

* The model has to understand and properly make use of "most" vs "unusual" in its decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Google has become a card catalog that is constantly being reordered by an > angry, misinformed mob.

Ever heard of PageRank? Google was literally founded on an algorithm that uses the endorsements of "an angry, misinformed mob" to determine importance/relevancy. Obviously this is only one factor in search results (and may not even be used anymore), but this approach is what has made Google successful.

I don't disagree with the general point that the amount of content in today's Web makes the job of a search engine much harder. Perhaps some of Google's techniques lower the result quality for some users, for some queries. That's a much more boring title for a blog post, I guess.

<comment><USER25> > _founded on_ ... _the endorsements of "an angry, misinformed mob"_

I started grad school at Brown in 1997 and I remember a talk there, by someone from Google or connected to it, about PageRank. PageRank was still new, Google was still in beta. Free swag from dotcoms was literally growing on trees. But I digress.

I remember that the narrative about PageRank at the time was not about popularity, but about expertise. I _really_ remember that the presenter brought up a possible threat to validity—what about gaming the system?—and pointed out that if you wanted to persuade the system that you were an expert on a thing, you could get lots of people who talk about the thing a lot to point a link at your site. BUT, he says: that shows the system works! If you can get that many people who are at least mini-experts on the thing to point to you, the _only way to do that_ would be if you, too, were persuasively an expert on the thing.

(These were... naïve times in many ways.)

Twenty years ago this was highly persuasive. It was an un-game-able system, because "gaming the system" meant the system changed you. I can be pretty cynical about a lot of things, including and especially Google, but I really do think that even Google itself believed this. The company was _founded on_ an algorithm that _rewarded expertise_.

It turned out that the algorithm also rewarded angry, misinformed mobs, so cmckn isn't exactly wrong here. But I think it's important to be clear that to the extent that Google's algorithms have always done this, they a) weren't meant to, and b) actually _didn 't_ in the very earliest days, because the WWW link structure really did, in the 90s, work like they thought it did. (Then the measure became the target, etc etc)

<comment><USER26> PageRank is not how Google tanks pages now. It's not the reason Google serves so much junk.

<comment><USER27> Links are still the super-major-almost-100% factor in determining ranking though, whether you call it PageRank or some other algorithm.

It's why buying expired domains and throwing your totally unrelated content on them works great.

It's why subdomain/folder leasing is a thing where affiliate sites will pay "high PR" sites to reverse proxy a subdomain or folder to them _and_ (that's the important part) link to it from their main site. And boy, does that work. The same content that would be > page 100 suddenly is in the top 3.

There are other factors, but they don't matter nearly as much as Google's "we have 200 factors that contribute to the ranking" stuff makes it seem. You can throw the most atrocious low quality content on a site with lots of incoming links and it will rank at the top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> We've rewritten the linkbait title, as the site guidelines ask. I used what seems to be the first netural and representative phrase from the article itself. If someone can suggest language that's more neutral and representative, we can change it again.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> When I first starting making websites in 1996 I would market them by going to other similar websites and we would link to each other. Also, there were webrings and directories. Now if you link to each other Google thinks you are gaming their search engine and will demote your link and possibly your entire site.

</comment><comment><USER30> Fun experiment - try finding something on the World Wide Web without using a search engine.

It's not as impossible as you might think. But it's certainly not easy.

<comment><USER31> Out of curiosity I have no idea how to approach this. Are there indexes of websites available to the public that you are suggesting that can be searched via grep or some simple scripting? Or are you suggesting writing a web crawler to build our own index? Or are you suggesting finding curated links to sites?

<comment><USER32> I miss the time when Internet was so small that a curated list was possible (Yahoo was priding itself to be biggest curated list[1])

[1] [http://web.archive.org/web/19990208021747/http://yahoo.com/](http://web.archive.org/web/19990208021747/http://yahoo.com/)

<comment><USER33> I still have a paperback book that claimed to be a _comprehensive_ , not _curated_ list of internet sites. It didn't even come with electronic media as became customary with computer books later on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Some years ago when i wanted to search for something, my only concern was to guess how it may be written dont on a page, so Google can find it for me.

I could click next as long as i needed. I could refine query to get better results.

But now result list is extremely limited. Refining query gives the same result.

Google was once a search engine that allowed to discover content. Now, it is not.

You could write an article and Google indexed it and showed it if people searched for it. Now it does not work that way. If your audience visits other pages than yours, it will show irrelevant info from these pages rather than perfect match from yours.

And also Patelisms. Once, a short post was enought for Google to index it. Now it has to be essencially a book. It does not need to answer any question, as long as it has a length of a book and thousands of illustrations.

I wished there was a search engine that finds pages matching query, not guessing answers. Giving the freedom to explore rather than giving cheap crappy answers.

<comment><USER35> > If your audience visits other pages than yours, it will show irrelevant info > from these pages rather than perfect match from yours.

I empirically disagree. For me Google often shows small sites with perfect matches before big sites with vague matches and a few of my small sites also rank very well next to giants.

> I wished there was a search engine that finds pages matching query, not > guessing answers.

Why not use quotation marks?

<comment><USER34> It only proves Google is unpredictable. And this is also a sad reality. I often see "my" Google is better adjusted to find some answers but extremely lame at 90% of other queries.

Ps. Quotation marks help in some degree. But the response pool is often very small. Also sometimes quotation marks return broader results than expected to

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > The web was supposed to forcefully challenge our opinions and push back, > like a personal trainer who doesn't care how tired you say you are.

What does this even mean?

The web wasn't "supposed to" be anything. Though I'm not sure what magic search engine OP actually has in mind and how it's supposed to work.

Besides, one of the modern mysteries is that we're in the age of instant information yet you'll notice how many people will write up an entire comment online or bicker IRL instead of doing a cursory search. I don't think it's the internet creating human stupidity / laziness. Unfortunately we had that long before, and search engines simply try to show the best results with minimal context.

Also, I think discussion around tech would be much improved if we tried to come up with a better idea whenever we go through the trouble of complaining about something. Anyone can enumerate why things are suboptimal, and usually when you try to come up with alternatives, you find out it's just trade-offs with no ideal solution.

Trying to pitch an alternative solution (like how a search engine should work) helps drill down into real conversational bedrock that's much more interesting.

<comment><USER37> I support the author here. There was a promise of a marketplace of ideas, making the world a better place, that being interconnected would make the world smarter and democratize knowledge. All that may be true, it may be out there, but it's damn hard to find.

Google, Youtube, Reddit, and Facebook all prioritize freshness. Instead of being exposed to things outside our comfort zones, we take solace protected inside filter bubbles.

Instead of the best answer, what usually floats to the top is the most repeated, the most seod, the newest, the most politically correct.

Google's results are considerably worse than they were and part of that is google trying too hard to think what we want instead of guiding us to ask better questions.

<comment><USER38> > There was a promise of a marketplace of ideas

Said commenter, as they type a comment in a marketplace of ideas where people discuss fairly complex ideas.

The internet is a tool, not a solution. I absolutely disagree that it's hard to find for anyone looking for it. The issue is that most people aren't looking for it, and you can't force them.

A lot of people are just looking for entertainment, and that's perfectly fine. They spent their whole day working hard, come home, and now you want to force them to spend their night studying and discovering new ideas? That may be the internet _you_ want but it's not what people want. The internet can be for more than one thing.

<comment><USER39> > Instead of the best answer, what usually floats to the top is the most > repeated, the most seod, the newest, the most politically correct.

This happens quite often on Hacker News. One of the fastest and easiest ways to accumulate karma is to be the first to post something like "$hated_company has always been doing $horrible_thing, they need to change", which most people agree with, every time a popular story about them shows up. (Thankfully, usually only a couple of these appear in most discussions, and usually people don't spam this.)

> Said commenter, as they type a comment in a marketplace of ideas where > people discuss fairly complex ideas.

Hacker News can be great for complex discussions, but it's not free of filter bubbles and echo chambers.

<comment><USER40> > Hacker News can be great for complex discussions, but it's not free of > filter bubbles and echo chambers.

Nothing on or off the internet is. That is why it is important to keep an open mind and read widely and voraciously.

<comment><USER39> Right. I think Hacker News does pretty well for itself, and it shows: the users that accumulate karma the fastest usually have insightful comments, which is rarely true elsewhere.

<comment><USER41> No. Exactly like reddit, it awards people that have the most popular comments.

Some people are more insightful than most, but its the exact same system as reddit

<comment><USER39> Well, of course, that's tautologically true. The difference is that the most popular comments are more often to be insightful, and the people with the most karma have it because they post insightful things, rather than the type of comment I mentioned above. (Believe me, I would know if people were spamming those; there are only a handful of people that accumulate karma faster than I do, and they all do it "fairly".)

<comment><USER42> HN suffers from fanboy'ism just as much, if not more, than elsewhere. Though I'll admit there's many more critical comments as well.

<comment><USER39> I consider both kinds of comments to be low-quality, and yes Hacker News has both. But the really nice comments aren't just straightforward praise or criticism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> What a bizarre piece.

We have low-quality content generation not because of Google but because of the low cost of publishing (which the author even mentions). It's exactly why we have email spam: it costs nothing to send. To repurpose a Chris Rock bit, "if sending an email cost $5,000 you'd have no more spam email".

What's the alternative being touted here? No Google? Making things harder to find? Seriously?

I'd say a far bigger issue is people sharing content from and to people who think the same, creating these myopic echo chambers of self-reinforcing beliefs.

Google may do a questionable job at filtering out provably false content but people are way worse at that.

Within such a system it's too easy to foster fear, anger and hate and to propagate provably false information. Anti-vaxxers are just one such group that seem to thrive in this informationless world.

<comment><USER44> Over last decade or so google is becoming less and less helpful. Results are not user-oriented and they can be far removed from original search queries. This is google's fault, they are for-profit organization with own agenda. Google's usage of your personal data to custom-tailor results to your bubble also contributes to echo chamber.

There are also other factors. There is a vast decrease of internet's signal- to-noise ratio due to low-cost content you mentioned. For a while we could rely on google to get us through the jungle to useful information. Now every SEO is targeting google search. Most other search engines use google's results, so no help there.

Blaming google doesn't help, their interests are not aligned with user interests. Author is actually criticizing us and our dependence on this one- size-fits-all source of information. The alternative is building and adopting better alternatives to google search.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> As an experiment, I have taken the habit in the past year to write down search queries I'm making along with a short explanation of what I expect to find (and sometimes even comments on the results) as I was also starting to wonder if I'm the problem given results seemed to get less and less relevant for a while.

With the benefit of hindsight, I'd highly recommend it and confirmed my suspicion that my queries weren't the problem, unfortunately.

It also showed queries are usually only advanced topics as one of my other habits (writing down summarized information in my wiki) lets me usually skip searching online for low-hanging fruits or information I already encountered.

</comment><comment><USER46> I really wish there still existed a search engine which would absolutely, without reservation of any sort, simply respect the quote and minus operators. I searched both DDG and Google this morning for something with a minus operator, and the search results for both included the unwanted keyword in the bloody page title. And no, quotes never ever meant "search for similar terms", but the big players now just ignore all the syntax the power users have been used to for decades. Luckily the "site:" prefix still seems to work, but for how long?

<comment><USER47> Check out Runnaroo. It will respect those operators better than most.

Disclosure, this is my side project. It aggregates results from about 30 different vertical search engines based on the query. Google is actually the source for the web results.

Here's an example search for "GM" (saw that discussed earlier in this thread):

[https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=GM](https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=GM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> The real problem that happened to Internet and is more or less predestined to happen to anything popular enough:

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

<comment><USER17> Gives a whole new meaning to that Green Day song

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Google was designed to prioritize popularity from the very beginning: that's what their original PageRank algorithm did. Their algorithm has no way of knowing a concept like "accurate". If almost all of the links on a given topic go to BlatantlyWrong.com, and when everyone clicks on the BlatantlyWrong.com link and not the AccurateButBoring.org result that is #2 on the page, the users will reinforce the wrong answer.

</comment><comment><USER50> Seems like the hidden complaint is that online news media is mostly bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER51> Alternative thread:

Google shapes the Internet and that shape leaves many things in ruins.

Google shapes the Internet by motivating so many people to produce content to make money through advertising. Most people make virtually nothing, a few people make a lot. There is an enormous amount of content on the internet whose driving purpose of making money is secondary to that of sharing something with the world.

Google shapes the Internet through it's algorithm. Ever read or angrily scroll through pages of BS when trying to find a recipe? The only reason anyone does that is for google. My grandmother's recipe for deviled eggs was stored on an index card in a box on the stove. I bet it didn't have 200 bytes of data. A search algorithm can't do much with that so everybody has to add a grand story about their grandmother, her toenails, and how nice a vacation to the Balkans was which nobody ever actually took. It also has to be on top to force people to spend more time on the site, so they're more "engaged".

I just want to know a good amount of time to hard boil eggs in an instant pot, but fuck me for wanting to know the number of minutes. "Organizing information" became being as much of an impediment as possible and directing me to the winner of the SEO race.

Before Internet advertising was so popular people would put things out there much more just because they wanted to, not for some profit motive. Now everybody doing that is doing it on somebody else's platform, making somebody else money, and often tracking everybody who comes past.

Much of the ruins are "caused" by Google, because Google won the race, next in line would have done the same thing. Probably.

It occasionally brings up the question of how to fix it. That probably requires new transport layers, new browsers, and well chosen limitations. Doubtful it would get off the ground. Decentralized solutions tend to get overwhelmed with extremely unsavory things. A new "browser" based on an entirely different stack would be hard to compete, especially if your goal was eliminating ads and tracking and general money-grubbing.

</comment><comment><USER52> Google didn't stop there. It ruined the internet even at protocols level. Google engineers didn't understand the beauty and simplicity of the original internet protocols, and were in a position to trace the evolution path of such algorithms without any of the elegance and equilibrium the original designers had. Now if you want to make an HTTP query you have to understand an incredible amount of details. Before that with adsense Google forced the web to evolve into a clickbait arena. Google is the worst thing that ever happened to the internet.

</comment><comment><USER53> A lesson in optimizing the wrong cost function. The internet set information free. And like the millennia before, the masses congregated to gossip, laugh, fight, and whatever else helps pass the time.

</comment><comment><USER54> Can anyone suggest alternative search engines, please? I research the following two areas (1) history and (2) website maintenance and SEO info. Thanks in advance.

</comment><comment><USER55> I tryed to search an article / press release, I saw about Corona in january. But it seems I can't search for "just from january" there is now so much news about Corona out there, there is no chance to find this article. And much worse, even I know some key words, Google does present most of the search results by totaly ignoring the half of my keywords.

<comment><USER56> I don't understand. Are you filtering by date? This is one of the search tools from Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> This person's argument is arguably weaker with their gmail address written out inside a H2 tag at the bottom of the page

<comment><USER58> Actually, it isn't. It makes it immeasurably stronger. You see, you just _can 't_ get around google. They've poisoned the well in so many ways that you just have to use their products or you will end up being cut out. Email is the best example of that. Google determines who can and who can't email and the best defense against that is to make the problem worse: use a gmail address.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> There's actually a person named Henry Beard.

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

(I have several of his humorous Latin phrasebooks.)

</comment><comment><USER60> I think I am much more likely to find the truth about a question I have with Google than asking on a BBS forum or browsing through a curated list of links on Yahoo.

That's like saying Gutenberg ruined books because now I can find books full of BS.

</comment><comment><USER15> Speaking of popularity over accuracy:

> _Instead, Google has become like the pampering robots in WALL-E, giving us > what we want at the expense of what we need._

I'm guessing this is referring to "WALL-E shows how the technology will make us lazy and fat" meme. I've watched WALL-E for the first time quite recently, and I notice little details, and I can say that WALL-E is _not_ showing that message. It's actually explained quite explicitly in the movie that the fatness of people is the side effect of prolonged stay in space, and not of their dependence on technology.

<comment><USER61> Not sure I got that message, considering the bulk of the population motors around on their little cushy chairs, drinks slurpies all day, and is endlessly served by robots, never doing any strenuous work at all, and only interacts with their screens. The spaceship has artificial gravity, artificial sun, artificial everything.

The movie is one huge anti-consumerism screed.

<comment><USER15> It was a cruise ship converted to an ark. It was meant to stay in space for a short time, precisely because of (as one scene in the movie explained) long- term exposure leading people to grow fat and weak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> The irony of the big 'gmail' address at the bottom of the blog post...

<comment><USER63> It always seems odd to me when owners of a domain don't use their own domain for email.

<comment><USER35> Why bother?

<comment><USER63> 1\. portability, you are not locked into a provider like gmail

2\. especially for businesses, it comes off as unprofessional if you are using gmail, yahoo, etc as your contact address

<comment><USER62> It's not overly expensive either to get a custom G Suite domain if you enjoy gmail, but don't want the domain name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> The worst is when you search for important information and you get flooded with SEO crap.

Try searching for 'retirement for French people leaving in the UK'... It is close to impossible to find anything relevant.

</comment><comment><USER65> My thesis is that smart phones ruined the internet with the rise of Apps and a different, less text-based interaction with the internet.

In general, I think we would all be better off if phones just supported calling and texting.

</comment><comment><USER66> Google's mission is/was "to organize the world's information". There was no adjective on "organize".

"Worse is better" wins again.

<comment><USER23> Google's mission statement is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."[1]

According to a Wikipedia citation (The Guardian) this was the original mission statement.[2]

[1] [https://about.google](https://about.google) [2] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/03/larry- pag...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/03/larry-page-google- dont-be-evil-sergey-brin)

Disclaimer: I work at Google.

<comment><USER66> Useful to whom is the question of course. I stopped using google a while ago because it gave me a useful response less and less frequently and I had to scroll over a lot of cruft to find a good answer if any. When google started it had the best results and no cruft.

Like people who complain that the latest macs are "terrible", perhaps I'm simply not google's audience any more. That doesn't make google, or me, wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Google has been emphasizing click-baity results for years now. A moderately complex query for X will usually be filled with "Top 10 X" or ignores the context. Their results (on web search as well as YouTube) also seem to be biased against Apple and Microsoft which feels a bit scummy.

</comment><comment><USER68> Complains about Google ruining the Internet, has no RSS link on the website. Stop wining and be the change you seek.

</comment><comment><USER69> 100% correct. I am right now doing an experiment and observing that posting everyday some low quality text spinned articles amplified the high quality articles at the point where some obscure high quality articles with ZERO organic traffic for months suddenly received organic traffic.

</comment><comment><USER70> It's all perspective.

Google didn't ruined the internet. In fact, the internet isn't in ruin. Perhaps the author should reconsider treating Google, or any search engine, as sources of truth.

And if Google ruined the internet, then why give them more power by using Gmail?

</comment><comment><USER71> Rubbish! I just searched for `gm` no capitalization, nothing and got a page full of results for General Motors, from news articles to the wikipedia page.

I searched for `dentist pulled ex boyfriends teeth`

You do see the excerpt, but right underneath that you see the Snopes link.

I don't think Google should be in the business of debunking articles written years ago. As long as it's relevance algorithms can brings up contrasting sources, in this case the ABC news article and the Snopes stories. It's bad journalism from ABC that they haven't marked that article as redacted even though it's been proven false.

Recently I remember, seeing that the google card UI for the news marked an article as Satire, because in-fact it was a Satire article. I'm not sure if that's because the original article embedded some information that helped Google discover this.

They do a pretty good job at organizing information and making it available.

</comment><comment><USER72> It also emphasizes liberal media over conservative media. It's often more challenging then it needs to be to find conservative content even when you know what you're looking for and you're trying to find it again.

</comment><comment><USER73> Who cares whether you return accurate results if you can send the user down a rabbit-hole of some completely irrelevant topic?

</comment><comment><USER74> Well, if you can solve Google's deficiencies, you can become the next internet billionaire.

</comment><comment><USER75> which are some interesting search engines, do ya folks recommend. I recently ran into dogpile.com. really relevant results. please don't recommend ddg | bing as ddg simply mirrors bing.

<comment><USER76> No they use other search engines and have their own web crawler as well.

<comment><USER76> That is, they use other engines besides Bing. They are not simply repackaging Bing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> ITYM Google ruined Google?

</comment><comment><USER78> Oh, is it just Google? I thought it was ... everything.

</comment><comment><USER79> Happily no one is required to use their services

</comment><comment><USER80> google has never been good. Sheeple just jumped on the band wagon and started using it despite it never being any better than the compition. People are dumb and instead of trying to learn they would rather just follow.

<comment><USER81> /s ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> The internet is not ruined just because Google sucks.

<comment><USER83> How does Google suck here? Do people actually expect Google to hire millions of extra employees or develop hard AI to rank every single webpage in their index by accuracy? I don't see any practical alternative to how it already works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> tldr; (don't shoot me i'm just the messenger): if google says it's true it must be. This is bad because people are dumb so they will just look at what one search engine says without checking sources and believe that to be the truth.

</comment><comment><USER85> The author had a few bad queries and chalks the whole thing up to "Google Ruined the Internet". This is akin to having a bad experience with airline food and declaring that flying has ruined travel. It is absurd, it reeks of the stallman-esque style of negative, borderline luddite spew. Instead of offering a solution, this person just rants.

Google has been a pivotal center of the internet - information has never been easier to find! Ease of access to information does not, however, alleviate the need placed upon the reader to sift out fact from fiction.

As a thought experiment, would our luddite-esque author friend prefer that Google was the arbiter of truth, rather than trends? I certainly would not.

<comment><AUTHOR> "information has never been easier to find!"

I think it depends what you're looking for. I realize this is obscure, but I can't find any reference online to a big Facebook Platform developers' conference that happened in 2007. It drives me nuts because I was there at Chelsea Piers with 1,000 people, but it's like it never existed.

<comment><USER86> Was it this?

[https://web.archive.org/web/20080808121324/http://www.facebo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080808121324/http://www.facebook.com/press/releases.php?p=9171)</comment></comment></comment>


R.I.P. Google Wonderwheel - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/official-the-google-wonder-wheel-is-gone-84105

<comment><USER2> It's not necessarily dead forever, it's just that we don't currently have the engineering resources to bring it back in a stable way and don't have a timeline we can commit to for when those resources will become available.</comment>


Streaming with linear types - <AUTHOR> https://www.tweag.io/posts/2018-06-21-linear-streams.html <comment><USER2> One thing I think will eventually come out of linear logic is that in classical linear logic there's no intrinsic division between inputs in outputs. In LL it's the case that implication, which corresponds to functions in programming, is decomposed into a linear implication, which is a pure application, and an exponential which handles copying. But even further than that, in classic linear logic there is a symmetric version of implication called par. A -o B is the same as Not A `par` B.

It's this symmetry that intrigues me, because it points to a way of programming beyond functional programming that still maintains its fundamental good properties.

<comment><USER3> I recommend looking at _fusion calculi_ , which are based on the idea of input/output being symmetric. They were invented independently by B. Victor together with J. Parrow, and at the same time by Y. Fu. See [1] for some links. NB this is an old page, and I don't think anyone currently works on this.

When it was first released, Microsoft's BizTalk was based on a generalisation of Fusions. (L. Wischik, the author of [1] what on the BizTalk team.)

[1] [http://www.wischik.com/lu/research/fusions.html](http://www.wischik.com/lu/research/fusions.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Linear logic is the shit. I've been reading up on it and I believe that 21st century will be built on top of linear logic. For example I have a hunch probability doesn't need to be founded on measure theory, but can be founded on linear logic instead.

<comment><USER5> Super interesting! I had never heard of linear logic before you just mentioned it, so my first question was, how can it be described in terms of category theory. So I googled it, and apparently there is a lot to be said. The first link (pdf) is over 200 pages!

[1] [https://www.irif.fr/~mellies/mpri/mpri- ens/biblio/categorica...](https://www.irif.fr/~mellies/mpri/mpri- ens/biblio/categorical-semantics-of-linear-logic.pdf)

[2] [http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~schalk/notes/llmodel.pdf](http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~schalk/notes/llmodel.pdf)

<comment><USER4> I invite you to look into it. I feel like it's the last tool I will ever need. Hit me up over email (it's in my profile) if you want to talk more.

<comment><USER6> I am not the dude you talked to but I looked at your profile and I found multiple points of overlapping between your interests and mine.

I think that if I had known you IRL we would have been good friends. Or maybe sworn enemies because we might share interests but have really really different opinions on those things, to the point where we could not reconcile our differences :P

But I live in a different country all together so the point is kind of moot I guess. (I live in Norway.)

<comment><USER4> Haha. Email me, we'll talk over Skype.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How does one control runtime operations with this? Ok compiler/optimizer might have a notion of "fastest execution possible" (which most likely have some local time minimums). But what about latency/bandwidth relationship? What do I do if I need minimal latency possible? Or maximal bandwidth possible?</comment>


R/Windows10: How not to backup [W10] (you might get a get-out-of-jail-card) - <AUTHOR> https://www.instapaper.com/read/1310916258 <comment><USER2> I simply use standard Windows backup + File History. I does warn when space on the target is running low.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Nobody does like I did on this forum, surely not.</comment>


Show HN: All student jobs and internships opportunities at YC companies - <AUTHOR> https://entryleveljobs.me/yc-students <comment><AUTHOR> Starting your career at great startups can create breakout opportunities in the future.

To make it easy for students looking for joining great startups, I have filtered out all the internships and new grad openings from all the YC backed companies and compiled a list. It includes opening from the companies like Airbnb, Stripe, Flexport, Podium, Front, Dropbox, Pagerduty and so many others.

Few weeks ago YC launched 'Top 100 YC companies'list and in the past YC started work at startup. Along, with that this additional resource can be useful anyone looking for applying at YC companies and can accelerate their career.

As Sam Altman said: "If you join a company, my general advice is to join a company on a breakout trajectory."

</comment><comment><USER2> I would love to have such a resource when I started my career. Nice execution!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. It will be useful resources for people starting their career now.</comment></comment>


Pakistan Aids Insurgency in Afghanistan, Reports Assert - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26isi.html

<comment><USER2> Wikileaks link: <http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Afghan_War_Diary,_2004-2010>

The notion that the ISI works with the Taliban is an open secret; it's alluded to more or less directly in a Frontline episode from last year, for (one) instance.

Pakistani politics are not simple. It is probably a mistake to view Pakistan as a single, coherent state. The ISI in particular does not appear to be accountable to "civilian leadership", which who knows if that even exists.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like they are going to take some consideration of operational security in the relase of these documents:

"We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from the total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually, in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits."

</comment><comment><USER4> > _Nonetheless, senior lawmakers say they have no doubt that Pakistan is > aiding insurgent groups. "The burden of proof is on the government of > Pakistan and the ISI to show they don't have ongoing contacts," said Senator > Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Armed Services Committee who > visited Pakistan this month and said he and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, > the committee chairman, confronted Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza > Gilani, yet again over the allegations._

Wait... _what?_ Granted, it looks pretty bad, but what does this imply about our good Democrat's view of "innocent until proven guilty"? If they have evidence, bring it out and be done with it; if not, that's a rather backwards claim.

<comment> barry-cotter Innocent until proven guilty is for courts of law. In real life I don't go back to that restaurant that probably gave me food poisoning even though I can't prove it.

Anyway, the U.S.'s attitude to Pakistan is illogically friendly, for more see: [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/10/whats-pakistans- secret...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/10/whats-pakistans-secret.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In Kandahar fields the poppies grow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Kandahar fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Kandahar fields.</comment>


The Cancelled Comma One Would Have Embarrassed the Car Industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedrive.com/tech/5772/the-cancelled-comma-one-would-have-embarrassed-the-car-industry <comment><USER2> > _Hotz 's initial tweets suggested his move was in response to an inquiry > from NHTSA, stating that he "would much rather spend life building amazing > tech than dealing with regulators and lawyers,"_

well, this is not some stupid web-app that can't harm anyone even if it tried (except from maybe overheating your smartphone). This can kill people, i can't seriously buy dangerous stuff from somebody that says something like this. What's next? Producing food without following proper hygiene regulations? Disrupting the medicine-industry by testing your headache-pills on your customers (those regulations are only slowing us down!)?

<comment><USER3> You would have won so much Irony Points if only you had written "Producing food without following proper hygiene regulations? Disrupting the medicine industry with revolutionary tests without sufficient scientific validation?"

<comment><USER4> Let me introduce to you: Theranos

<comment><USER5> We all got that. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've said it before and I'll say it again: you can't apply Silicon Valley disruption to every industry because most software has a failure-rate that would be considered _appalling_ in any real engineering discipline.

And building a control system that can follow a perfectly black asphalt road with bright yellow and white lines between the lanes isn't even 1% as difficult as building a system that can actually be relied upon to safely convey its passengers under less ideal circumstances.

<comment><USER7> Reminds me of that old joke from the '80s(?) about what if MS built cars? You would get the blue screen of death while driving on the highway, and have to stop your car and restart it, you would get cryptic error messages when you were running out of gas, etc....

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a bit of weak spin on the obvious news that they _probably_ couldn't comply with the government requirements.

<comment><USER9> They weren't given any government requirements, with the the possible exception of the FHMVSS rule that you can't remove the rear-view mirror of the car. The NHTSA Special Order asked only for documentation of extremely basic test plan stuff (road, speed, weather, and traffic limits for the device, along with user documentation).

<comment><USER10> The Special Order might be of the "we're looking for a justification to fine you and issue a recall" type, which it looks like they often are.

<comment><USER9> People have a lot of theories about what this letter meant, but the people on HN who have actually worked with NHTSA orders say the order means just what it says it means, and that NHTSA is pretty reasonable to work with.

Certainly the questions in the order --- I posted them on the first thread about the comma one --- seemed pretty basic and reasonable.

<comment><USER10> The questions were reasonable, but the cover letter was very negative.

Could you point me to comments with first hand NHTSA experience? I didn't see any.

<comment><USER9> The cover letter was very "do not blow off the NHTSA". One commenter who had experience with NHTSA provided examples of orders they sent other companies with similar language.

<comment><USER10> I assume you mean this comment? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12819423](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12819423)

The listed special orders were the pretext to $70m, $35m and $105m fines. Doesn't inspire confidence.

It might just be reporting bias, but I couldn't find an example of a special order that wasn't associated with a massive scandal.

<comment><USER11> The idea is that you comply with the request, not ignore it. Those fines only kick in if you decide to go ahead anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's 2 possible reasons.

1) It really is near vaporware just being shown off in perfect conditions to seem exceptional.

2) It actually does work that much better with only $1000 worth of hardware and responding would give away the secret sauce.

I don't give much credit to the theory that they didn't see this coming and were caught flat-footed by the sudden requirements.

Oh and: _Final speculation: there's a reason it was called the Comma One. Where there 's a Comma One, there's likely to be a Comma Two_

I was really hoping it was actually a C64 reference, namely: "where the 'drive' goes"... ,8,1

<comment><USER13> I have yet to see the simplest proof that comma ai work is just a cute trained NN over a camera, piped to basic controls, with some potential creative ideas (in a conf, hotz mentioned working on time based depth inference instead of the traditional stereo camera setup).

I'm biased for conservative companies, I have no idea what they're doing and how much resources. Maybe they're doing something at the same level. I believe they have more refined physics model to compute surroundings and car physics in a way to ensure sane and safe behaviour. Exception made of Tesla AP, which I always found borderline lying.

The medias and the crowd seeems to believe wild hacking and current year tech is giving you better products, but physics are physics. I'm still waiting for a proof of solid math, system and safety engineering there.

psedit; I forgot, I peaked at commaai github repo, the NN code is way above my head and what I could imagine, so I have to give hotz' team that.

Some people really have magic auras.

<comment><USER14> Actually all my money was on google, i expected them to drive into the scrapfield, after the car companys and Tesla pushed each other into a early market situation and upped Legislation, kicking themselves out of the market, with a carnaggedon. But they backed out, because their managers want the chicken to exist before the egg. So, why not bet on the outsider?

<comment><USER13> I liked Google's approach a lot. It seemed justly dimensioned, came out of Thrun DARPA success, had years and millions of miles of testing. What's not to love. Also G has the lever to accelerate and change tech if their old approach is obsolete.

Sad they went silent since a year or so.

I said it in other place, including HN, I don't consider Hotz an outsider, but mostly glorified hacker (his attitude with institutions and media don't help me clear this impression); and I don't think hacker mentality bodes well with this task.

<comment><USER15> Isn't Google's approach dependent on expensive LIDARs and high resolution 3D maps [0], or have they changed that? I don't see that kind of system scale well.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXylqtEQ0tk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXylqtEQ0tk)

<comment><USER13> I've read LIDAR cost was dropping fast, it was expensive at the time and as a short production item; nowadays it's even small.

About the 3D mapping you're probably right, I somehow expected it not to be a deep problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "[comma.ai} was functionally superior and theoretically safer than the ten legacy manufacturer systems"

A journalist on record saying "theoretically safer" literally makes my hair stand up on end.

<comment><USER17> Even better, "The system worked, sometimes better than everything on the market."

Oh boy, I just gotta have a self-driving system for my car that can sometimes work really well!

<comment> hash-set 80% of the time it worked every time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> And that's how you get to walk away with your dignity intact when you can't ship a working product on your self-inflicted insane timeline.

<comment><USER19> With your dignity intact? The guy basically lost all his credibility with this action.

Walking away with dignity intact would be replying to NHTSA, "Dear Government, we've found out we are unable to provide the information you asked for because the product is nowhere near mature enough. Therefore we are officially abandoning all public tests and sales effort, and are going back to the drawing board until such time that we are able to get back to you with the answers you requested."

<comment><USER20> I think he meant "ego" instead of "dignity". This is how you walk away with your over-inflated ego intact. Behaving this way indicates that you have no dignity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> We don't need another crap Level 2 system. Lane keeping plus auto braking just isn't enough. (Crap auto braking, as with Tesla, is even worse. Four collisions with big, obvious stationary vehicles so far.)

The NHTSA, Google, and Volvo have it right. Systems where the driver has to back up the automation will not work in practice.

<comment><USER22> The thing is that you evaluate "big" and "obvious" with the sensors that you have. They obviously werent obstacles for the algo that was driving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think it's far more likely that the NHTSA was caught flat-footed by Tesla's autopilot system, and didn't react in time, with fatal results. Now they're seeing a scrappy startup trying to dive into the same space where multi- billion-dollar car companies ought to fear to tread, and they've done their best to nip it in the bud before every tom dick and harry with a webcam and a graphics card starts trying to send their car on solo missions.

</comment><comment><USER23> The NHTSA letter pretty clearly calls out the removal of the rear view mirror as being a problem, and a violation of safety regulations.

</comment><comment><USER24> Worth noting that Alex Roy and Hotz probably have/had a business/working/personal relationship:

"From August 24th-27th of 2016, Roy and teammates Warren Ahner & Streetwars founder Franz Aliquo broke the Electric & semi-Autonomous Cannonball Run records again, driving a Tesla Model S 90D 2,877 miles from the Portofino Inn to the Red Ball garage in 55 hours, breaking the prior record by 2 hours & 48 minutes. Tesla Autopilot was engaged 97.7% of the journey. GPS data and video evidence was captured using both a US Fleet Tracking device, and Comma.ai's Chffr video logging software."[0]

It would not be a leap to assume that Roy might have a vested interest in puffing up his acquaintance. Also, Alex Roy is a "journalist" insofar as he probably got paid to write that piece. But other than that...

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

</comment><comment><USER25> Remember a few weeks ago when it was a headline that the "going rate" for talented engineers working on self-driving cars was $10 million per head?[1] Meanwhile, comma.ai the company only got $3.1 million from a big-name investor?[2] Yeah, don't quit your day job...

[1] [http://www.recode.net/2016/9/17/12943214/sebastian-thrun- sel...](http://www.recode.net/2016/9/17/12943214/sebastian-thrun-self-driving- talent-pool)

[2] [http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/04/technology/george-hotz- comma...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/04/technology/george-hotz-comma-ai- andreessen-horowitz/)

</comment><comment><USER11> The only embarrassed entity here is George Hotz. I find it extremely hard to come up with a charitable narrative in all this but at least the system appears to be working: hacked together crap is not going to be sold to consumers.

It's one thing to break other systems, it is an _entirely_ different thing to produce safety critical software systems interacting in real time with hardware under real world conditions and it is not a given that someone who is good at the one will also be good at the other.

</comment><comment><USER22> I guess that being a brilliant hacker doesn't necessarily make you an engineer.

</comment><comment><USER26> Hm, well the article certainly is flattering toward Hotz, the project, and the impression (having first-hand experience with several systems does strike me as important).

Still pretty staunchly of the opinion over here that he's got something worth still working on and this isn't the last of it. AKA contrary to a good number of comments which basically say he's either a fraud, huckster, or otherwise dumb for not being interested/willing/prepared to engage with the NHTSA at this stage.

Eh time will tell, right?

</comment><comment><USER27> > Asked if he was genuinely intimidated by NHTSA's letter, he said, "I've got > two words for you: stealth mode."

I've got two words for you: knob end

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm wary of self-driving systems based only on cameras. He should really wait until cheap LiDARs are available in a few years.

<comment><USER23> The comma only works on a few (maybe just one) Honda car that has a built-in front facing radar that they're able to tap into. With that, comma is using roughly the same sensor package as the V1 Tesla autopilot.

<comment><USER28> Thanks. I didn't know Comma One also uses front facing radar. Do you happen to know what state of the art millimeter wave radars are capable of? I found some references from 2013 about Panasonic product with resolution of 20cm, but maybe there are better options now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A certain type of click bait journalist has an interest in creating EEStor- type narratives. True believers in the Magic Product keep clicking links for months or years at a time.

</comment><comment><USER30> What this article tries its damnedest to elide is the narrative-wrecking fact that Holtz, confronted with a standard request to demonstrate that his product meets regulatory standards, took his ball and went home. /Exactly/ why he threw a tantrum is anyone's guess -- but there doesn't seem to be any real good possibility. Either his product couldn't meet standards and this is an attempt to obfuscate that inconvenient fact, or he withdrew a working product because he was so affronted by the fact that the NHTSA dared challenge him -- hardly a defensible, or confidence-inspiring, behavior.

<comment><USER31> Well, maybe the reason is that these regulator requests costs tons of money to fulfill because no, you cannot you give simple laymans answers to the questions, you need a team of lawyers to do this work, because everything you say in these "simple" requests can and will be used against you.

And perhaps there are better uses of their time, and better regulatory environments where they can release their product.

Maybe in a couple months we are going to hear about the imminent release of the Comma Two in Not-America. I seriously doubt they've gone home. There are tons of places where they could starting selling right NOW.

America's loss, other countries' gain.

<comment><USER20> > _Maybe in a couple months we are going to hear about the imminent release of > the Comma Two in Not-America. I seriously doubt they 've gone home. There > are tons of places where they could starting selling right NOW._

Then I'm very thankful for the NHTSA we have in America. I don't want a bunch of half-ass, poorly-engineered self-driving cars on our roads. I use those roads, and so do my family members.

While I'm looking forward to self-driving cars taking over, I don't want the Comma One in the field if they can't handle the most basic safety inquiries.

<comment><USER32> The guy that you're replying to seems to have no idea how these things work. I worked for an automotive manufacturer in India (hardly a paragon of virtue in terms of regulatory strictness), and we had rules about even seemingly-inane stuff like the HVAC being able to cool the car down in a certain amount of time, and maintain a given temperature overnight on a cold night etc.

You can't just walk in being an arrogant, know-it-all whiz kid and demand that the rules be bent and mere mortals be forced to step aside in deference to your superior intellect.

<comment><USER31> Nowhere, in the ENTIRE WORLD of 7 BILLION PEOPLE could you release something like this?

It doesn't matter if most people reject your idea, you only need a couple cities to say "approved for preliminary testing for a limited number/couple thousand beta testers" to go into Prod. And then when you go into prod you get real life data and can prove that your product really is as awesome as you say it is, THEN you go back to the countries that said no, but this time with more money and actual facts to back you up.

This isn't some super expensive product that is out of reach for the world. This is a thousand dollar conversion kit. If these things were available and I owned a Honda, I would have bought it to just mess around with it instead of buying the HTC Vive that I got last night.

I am sure there are lots of beta customers around the world who would be interested in getting a prelim beta version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The letter sent by NHTSA to Comma.ai[1]. I'm a layman but to me the penal provisions ($21k/day up to $105M for not responding by 11/10, prison sentence of 15 years for falsifying/withholding information) sound kinda harsh. Can someone confirm that these conditions are standard in requests of this type?

[1] [https://www.scribd.com/document/329218929/2016-10-27-Special...](https://www.scribd.com/document/329218929/2016-10-27-Special- Order-Directed-to-Comma- ai?content=10079&ad_group=Online+Tracking+Link&campaign=Skimbit%2C+Ltd.&keyword=ft500noi&source=impactradius&medium=affiliate&irgwc=1)

</comment><comment><USER14> Honest to Odd, could have a normal, shed-hacker fullfill these requirements? Even if he had the money? Is there a way to shrink the requirement- like building cars that can drive not faster then 20 mph in full automated mode?

</comment><comment><USER34> I think it got cancelled because it is a real startup now.

Let me explain! Put yourself in CEO's shoes: you have employees who love working for you but you need to get them a paycheck. From that perspective, it is easy to see that it is kind of crazy to enter into these lengthy government discussions that could possibly ruin your business and delay the entire industry! No thanks!!

If they're all really engineers who just love doin' the work, they will be a valuable contracting outfit doin' the exact same work for a steadier paycheck.

<comment> crooked-v What? Refusing to cooperate with the government in a highly regulated industry will 'ruin your business' anyway.</comment></comment>


Apple Approves Tethering App For the iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://tether.com/iphone

<comment><USER2> This will be banned soon. For those of you who don't want to drop $15, there's an open-source tethering app available: <https://github.com/tcurdt/iProxy/wiki/> Note you will need to have an Apple developer account to be able to build and install this on a real device

<comment><USER3> "We were very clear with Apple what our app did. They asked us a bunch of questions and then approved us."

<https://twitter.com/tethercom/status/141415159376781312>

<comment><USER4> That doesn't matter. Back when I wrote my first iOS app (which used private APIs extensively), I had long conversations with several reveiwers (e-mail and phone) where they said it was fine.

We all know how _that_ played out...

<comment><USER5> What was your app?

<comment><USER4> WiFinder

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can confirm that it works, however, you do need to keep the app front-and- center to keep the connection alive. Also, it only works over USB, not WiFi or BT, and you need to have the custom Tether app installed on your PC. Looks like it's creating an Ethernet-over-USB interface to the phone, then I can't tell if the app is contacting network servers directly, or if it's proxying it all back to Tether.com's servers (traceroute didn't want to run for me).

Interestingly, if I have WiFi active on the iPhone, it routes the connection over the WiFi network, which could be really nice in certain circumstances (you pay for a WiFi roaming plan on your phone, but don't have access to it on your PC).

Speedtest was showing 2.3 Mbps down, 0.9 up over 3G. Not too shabby.

I only plan to use this occasionally, to check emails from the road; I hope AT&T doesn't try to yank my unlimited data plan...

[I'm posting this comment over the Tether link now]

</comment><comment><USER7> I just tried the iPhone app with my Macbook Pro and can verify it works. You have to keep the iPhone app front and center, not in the background in order for it to work. It still works when the iPhone is in sleep mode.

Now going to check if it will work with my iPad3G connected to my Macbook Pro.

Hope this info helps confirm/answer questions out there.

<comment><USER7> Confirmed. This works using my iPad 3G connected to my Macbook Pro.

Now turning on Internet sharing from Ethernet to Wifi to see if I can have my Mac act as a Wifi hotspot using the iPhone tether.

</comment></comment><comment> matthew-wegner More information here, since the site is down: [http://www.macrumors.com/2011/11/29/itether-app-offers- inter...](http://www.macrumors.com/2011/11/29/itether-app-offers-internet- tethering-on-your-iphone-for-one-time-fee/)

</comment><comment><USER8> All the iPhones here in Canada has tethering enabled. Under settings you can turn on personal hotspot.

<comment><USER9> All the carriers in Australia offer free tethering and wifi hotspot as well.

<comment><USER10> Does Optus still charge for it? I know you can't use it on Pre-Paid.

<comment><USER9> I don't know about prepaid but my brother has an iPhone on a post-paid contract and he gets free tethering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was going to ask what the point of this was, because I can just do it already on my iPhone. But from the comments I guess they charge you extra for it in the US? That sucks.

<comment><USER12> I'm curious how much data you get, and for how much money?

<comment><USER11> Me? I get 5GB of data on my plan which costs $89 AU a month. That includes unlimited phone calls, SMS, voicemail etc The only thing with a cap of any kind on it is the data, and I never use even close to 5GB, even with my iPad and MacBook tethering occasionally.

<comment><USER12> For comparison, here are some US rates:

T-Mobile: Unlimited txt/voice, 5GB data == $89.99 USD (2GB is 10 less, there is no cost overage after the cap, but the speed drops to less than 2G)

Sprint: Unlimited txt/voice/data == $110

ATT: Unlimited txt/voice, 4GB == $115, 2GB == $95

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is one of the reasons I decided against the iPhone after using it for a week - it leaves a setting that should be under the control of users to the carriers.

Saying that your carrier allows it for free is missing the point...

<comment><USER14> This isn't an iPhone issue, it's a US carrier issue. Americans need to be asking ourselves why we let ourselves get pushed around so much more than other first world countries on these kinds of things.

<comment><USER15> What exactly should the American consumer do in protest? Not buy smartphones until carriers are nicer?

<comment><USER14> We need better, more efficient regulation. Basically, we need to get back in control of the government. Big business owns it right now so life is getting better and better for them at our expense.

<comment><USER15> It does feel a bit like a runaway train, but I'm not sure it's the government's place to police the carriers on features and price (my biggest issues with them). What we really need is one solid competitor who aims to do things differently. We need an Apple / Google in the carrier world.

<comment><USER16> > I'm not sure it's the government's place to police the carriers

> We need an Apple / Google in the carrier world

if the government does not have the solution, and a major competitor to the big 4 (perhaps soon to be 3) carriers has not begun emerging, what do you think we should do? continue to wait for such a competitor to emerge? do you think one ever will?

<comment><USER15> It's an entrepreneurial opportunity. Someone needs to enter the carrier market, much like what BankSimple is doing to banking and Square is doing to payments. Those are both huge markets where a startup has entered. The carrier market is arguably smaller than the banking market (albeit not by much), so it's not inconceivable to see a startup enter this space.

Obviously the people behind this startup need to have $$ and not have their heads up their asses (like the other carriers).

<comment><USER16> that's not my point. clearly you and i do not have enough money to start such a carrier. why do you think such no one else has started such a carrier? should we wait around for someone to start one? what if we wait 10 years and no such carrier emerges? or should we push for new regulations?

<comment><USER15> Gotcha. I guess we wait, unless you have contacts / $$.

:)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's no question that this will be pulled soon. The question is: will Apple also disable the app remotely for all those who purchased it, something that is possible, but (I believe) unprecedented.

<comment><USER18> That seems unlikely. I think there already was a tethering app which Apple pulled from the Store but didn't pull from devices. I do think that Apple is serious when they say that their ability to remotely pull apps is reserved for malware.

The much more elegant solution for Apple is to make this app silently stop working with the next OS update.

<comment><USER19> This is correct. The app was NetShare, and it still resides on my phone.

<comment><USER18> Does that app still work with the current version of the OS?

<comment><USER20> Yes. I had sporadic trouble with it under ios 4, but it resumed working properly in ios 5. Never liked uncommon ports, though.

<comment><USER18> That's very interesting. Wouldn't it be very easy for Apple to break the app with an OS update? You would almost expect that an app stops working after so many OS updates (not because someone purposefully made it stop working but rather coincidentally).

<comment><USER21> Chances are NetShare reused existing code from an open source SOCKS proxy implementation, which would probably just use standard UNIX APIs. Combine that with the simplicity of the GUI, and it's very possible that none of the APIs it is using have changed since release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> App store link: <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/itether/id477971193?mt=8>

</comment><comment><USER23> Site seems to be having issues.

The video suggests you have software on your computer and your phone, and that handles tethering circumventing the software built in to iOS.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=p...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pCocSOgfPxI)

Also, it seems they've targeted it at very non-technical users.

</comment><comment><USER24> I managed to buy the iPhone app last night, but now it looks like it got yanked from the app store - at least in the US?

Edit. Looks like they did. Glad I got it when I did last night:

[http://www.loopinsight.com/2011/11/29/apple-pulls-itether- fr...](http://www.loopinsight.com/2011/11/29/apple-pulls-itether-from-app- store/)

</comment><comment><USER25> I was wondering what this is about since iOS has the personal hotspot feature for a while which turns your iphone into a WiFi Router and works flawlessly. Seems like US users dont have this ? Thats really bad.

<comment><USER26> US users do have it, but it's an additional fee on top of the regular metered data plan on most US carriers. For example, AT&T charges $20 additional per month to activate it, and adds 2 gb to the monthly allocation as part of the plan. So, more bandwidth if you tend to use a lot on your phone, but for just occasional use, it's an expensive option.

<comment><USER16> i've heard that (on AT&T) you can get that activated for a couple days at a time (say, when you're traveling), and they'll prorate the fee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Seems to have been pulled from the UK app store. It was there this morning but no longer.

Hopefully a glitch rather than full exclusion, but my gut tells me I should have bought it this morning.

</comment><comment><USER28> There is no way Apple will keep this up if it snuck through review.

</comment><comment><USER29> Other than the US, are there any other places in the world where "tethering" even exists as a concept?

</comment><comment><USER30> will it work on iPad?

</comment><comment><USER31> And its already gone. Nobody saw that coming.</comment>


[XSA-148] x86: Uncontrolled creation of large page mappings by PV guests - <AUTHOR> http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-148.html <comment><USER2> Here's some analysis by the Qubes team: [https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes- secpack/blob/master/QSBs/qs...](https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes- secpack/blob/master/QSBs/qsb-022-2015.txt)</comment>


Next steps for Gmane - <AUTHOR> http://home.gmane.org/2016/08/29/next-steps-gmane/ <comment><USER2> This is great, and I hope they keep the (or a) JavaScript-free interface, because that's the #1 advantage over things like Google Groups which defy any browser convention and you have to fight for usability. If I'm reading an archive of posts, I don't want a web application that tries to override the browser's controls and fails to deliver.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. While javascript heavy, google groups always gets the job done fine for me.

What I really dread is having to use something like the Postgres mailing list, which is painful with conversations split between multiple pages and block quote formatted so it takes mental effort to even figure out what's the previous message and what's the reply. I'm not familiar with gmane and am young enough not to have been a heavy newsgroup user.

<comment><USER4> > block quote formatted so it takes mental effort to even figure out what's > the previous message and what's the reply

You think it takes mental effort to read proper quotes, e.g. in [https://www.postgresql.org/message- id/CANP8%2BjKvbe2jwOzUMGo...](https://www.postgresql.org/message- id/CANP8%2BjKvbe2jwOzUMGotX7ajzh- qQ7%2Be2AT2qoU_ktAvZQN%2BPg%40mail.gmail.com)?

That's proper quoting style. It's incredibly readable, much more than the top- posting scourge we must deal with on so many mailing lists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I came to Gmane back when I needed to search newsgroups (NNTP) archives, then later on, mailing lists.

Maybe I'm nostalgic but I really miss the newsgroups that focused on just the messages, and could be consumed by any client, stored offline, searched, etc.

<comment><USER6> > _" Maybe I'm nostalgic but I really miss the newsgroups that focused on just > the messages, and could be consumed by any client, stored offline, searched, > etc."_

I don't see anything nostalgic about that, there's value in the benefits you list and rightfully associate to application-layer protocols.

A few months ago I stumbled upon a good article that praised them too, over today's "HTTP for everything", but I'm sadly unable to find it in my bookmarks. Anyway; more than anything, it lauded the interoperability that comes with those protocols.

I'm sending email from Thunderbird, and can reply minutes later from my iPad, and follow-up/search my archive at work from Outlook or Mail.app. Transmission merrily talks to uTorrent or Deluge or rTorrent. My windows box reads video files from a Samba share.

What now? Apps interfaces are at worst totally obscure (Skype), or at best exchange readable but undocumented JSON/XML over HTTP(S). Put differently: had email been designed & implemented today, we would hardly enjoy the same interoperability. There seems to be little interest around designing new protocols (and maybe little help coming from languages/libraries too?). IRC v3 ( [http://ircv3.net/](http://ircv3.net/) ) comes to mind, but it's pretty niche. Anyway, I'm ranting. Can anyone complement from experience trying to do such protocol design/implementation today and the challenges associated with it?

<comment><USER7> HTTP won out because it's the 'universal' protocol: you GET a resource, you say 'I prefer text/html but really anything is fine', the server puts bytes on the wire, it includes some metadata (headers, Content-Type), and then your user-agent interprets that Content-Type and displays the result. It's an extensibility advocate's dream. Using this and the jack-of-all-trades datatype HTML, we developed documents that link to other documents. When we were no longer okay with static pages, we hooked up programs that wrote HTML onto stdout and at the end of the day, everything just came across as a sequence of bytes. There's no formalized, official application-level logic to the HTTP state machine (although there are third-party attempts [1]).

Using these universal building blocks, we built applications where state transitions consists of GETs and POSTs. Eventually, when we wanted machine- structured data, we did XML-RPC, later codified into SOAP, before the backlash against hard-to-understand standards led to JSON being traded between server backends and client-side obfuscated, minified Javascript state machines.

Not enough people make new running-on-TCP or running-on-UDP protocols because new protocols are hard to design, they don't work with the one application where everyone spends 70+% of their time (the web browser), and they probably get blocked on a middlebox except if you use port 80 or 443 and fake being HTTP anyway. For all but very specialized use-cases, vomiting blobs of JSON (or if you want to feel extra good, some custom binary serialization format like protobuf or Thrift or Cap'nProto or MessagePack) across HTTP endpoints is pretty okay.

[1] [https://github.com/for-GET/http-decision-diagram](https://github.com/for- GET/http-decision-diagram)

<comment><USER8> Yet HTTP 2.0 is a bit like TCP on TCP, given its new binary only format.

<comment><USER7> Oh absolutely [1]. But the HTTP/2 endgame is likely to re-define it in terms of a protocol over QUIC, a situation the QUIC folks are eagerly anticipating [2]. This is no surprise considering both originated at Google.

QUIC is a secure transport protocol (subsuming most of the features of TCP and TLS) that runs on top of UDP (because they wanted to craft a 'better' TCP, and the only other not-blocked-by-default transport protocol is UDP).

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9548138](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9548138)

[2] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hamilton-early- deployment-...](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hamilton-early-deployment- quic-00#section-10)

<comment><USER8> I sadly know QUIC.

Since Google pushed it into Android Chrome, I cannot log-in into our customers WLAN infrastructure on Android 4.3 only with 4.4+ devices, not even by disabling it via the flags menu.

And some of our devices are on 4.3 and now need to make use of HSDA for network access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > I petitioned some of our directors

What directors? I couldn't figure out from the post who Martin Danko is or who he works for.

<comment><USER10> The about page on gmane.org has been updated, the new owner is hosting company Yomura (Delimiter)

[http://gmane.org/about/](http://gmane.org/about/)

<comment><USER11> Interestingly, Yomura Holdings have almost no presence on the Internet at all. Indeed, almost the only reference to them is on forums where people ask who they are. Very odd …

<comment><USER12> This is entirely reasonable -- one of the reasons Gmane was taken down was constant threats of litigation. Keeping it a separate business entity owned by the same holding company means that a lawsuit aimed at one won't sink the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thanks so much! Gmane is such a great resource for the world.

And thanks again to Lars for his years of service.

</comment><comment><USER14> For the uninitiated, what is Gmane? From their home page it looks like it's similar to Google Groups. Is that a fair assessment?

<comment><USER7> Gmane is a bi-directional gateway from Mailing Lists to NNTP (the 'Newsgroups' protocol), with some extra features like spam control, search, web interface, and RSS feeds.

It's also an archive of the above. This archive functionality is in common with Google Groups.

See the 'About' page [1].

[1] [http://gmane.org/about/](http://gmane.org/about/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It might not be as complete as Gmane perhaps (I didn't stop to compare them on a feature-by-feature basis), but I have been happily using [http://markmail.org/](http://markmail.org/) for a while as a gateway to many mailing lists.

<comment><USER16> Markmail is great. If only they could replace their Flash-based graph by some sort of <canvas>. Also, I think Gmane has more coverage in terms of number of mailing lists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is there a plan to make the server code free software and publicly available? It would help avoid this situation in the future:

> As part of the agreement, we have received the INN spool with all the > articles but none of the code that drives the site.

<comment><USER16> Better get the spool without the code than the code without the spool.

<comment><USER17> I was talking about the new code being written so if a similar situation happens in the future we don't need to go through another rewrite of gmane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I never use Gmane, but I'm happy to see that projects like this find people to keep them going.

</comment><comment><USER2> I assume the old links to threads/posts will be alive again soon.

<comment><USER19> Whoah! It seems like they are! [http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/881...](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/88108)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> lars posted some of his gmane backend code at his github, but who knows common lisp nowadays?

[https://github.com/larsmagne/reticule](https://github.com/larsmagne/reticule) for the NNTP gateway, gwene (in perl) for the rss parts.

</comment><comment><USER21> THis is really great news.

</comment><comment><USER22> Any way we can get Gmane up on Baqqer so we can donate/support operations in some way/form?

<comment><USER23> \- Founder of Baqqer

I don't have a problem with self-promotion, but if you're more interested in supporting Gmane than in promoting Baqqer, it shouldn't really matter if the donation is via Baqqer, Gratipay, Patreon, a Bitcoin address, or even just a PayPal donation link.

<comment><USER22> We built Baqqer for this reason. I wanted to know if we could get them on there so we can _actually_ help. I can't really help them set-up or maintain their presence on other sites, but on Baqqer I can instantly provide them with support, features, or even minimize fees if it helps. It's win-win.

Just a member of the HN community trying to help out how I can. :)

Edit: According to your resume you've been a contributor to Gratipay.

<comment><USER24> Totally awesome, a true philanthropist.

<comment><USER22> I can't tell if you're being facetious. :) What more can I offer than time, money, and services to help facilitate their endeavor?

<comment><USER25> You're doing a good job. Ignore the cynics.

<comment><USER22> Thanks! :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Game Design Insights: John Romero and Brenda Brathwaite - d-lectable http://blog.betable.com/game-design-insights-from-john-romero-brenda

<comment><AUTHOR> "Ultimately, games are trying to deal with the human desire to clean things up." That's a fascinating way of looking at things.

In games like Quake, the "cleaning up" is eliminating opponents. But even in educational trivia, one could say the "cleaning up" is getting as many correct answers as possible. Our instinctual desires to organize, i.e. "clean".

<comment><USER2> I prefer Raph Koster's way of putting it, that good games are really just "satisfying work".

<comment><USER3> True, in fact, having played World of Warcraft and having observed other players, I think the satisfaction "pay-off moments" can be interleaved with huge stretches of monotonous activity (essentially waiting) - people show surprising reserves of patience for some games. In other words, the happiness of playing that kind of game comes from optimistic waiting, not the "pay-off" itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Has Romero done anything worthwhile since touching Quake? and who is Brenda Braithwaite? Maybe I am out of date...

I'd take it all with a pinch of salt - but then I am a game programmer talking about game designers - so take me with a pinch as well. :)

I think Valve have the right idea on game design from what they have shared. For one thing they actually ship consistently good games - for another they take a very scientific and reproducable approach. No confusing, unsubstantiated theories floating around, or guesses based on vague psychology... just iteration based on experiment.

Its a shame more developers don't share more with their crazy NDA happy approaches. I think it would be good if game design was considered more seriously as a field, but its not going to happen when academia and industry are far apart and the industry is keeping all of its knowledge of the field locked away behind NDAs.

[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3408/the_cabal_valves_...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3408/the_cabal_valves_design_process_.php)

[http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2006/GDC2006_HL2De...](http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2006/GDC2006_HL2DesignProcess.pdf)

[http://www.computerandvideogames.com/147512/interviewslookin...](http://www.computerandvideogames.com/147512/interviewslooking- back-half-life-2-episode-one/)

<comment><USER5> Brenda Brathwaite is the responsible for the Wizardry videogame series, if you're old enough to have played them. She also has done extensive work in teaching game design, you might like Challenges for Game Designers, which she co-authored with Ian Schreiber. More info: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Brathwaite>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "the human desire to clean things up."

I'm not sure I like where popular game-design seems to be headed. Core game mechanics driven by completing tasks, leveling up, reducing entropy, and competing with friends certainly have their place, and you probably couldn't dissect 'mafia wars' any other way. But it irks me that this is a trend, and that they're trying to hack through the average gamer's mental framework.

I've played at least 20 games that've mesmerized me and gotten me addicted purely through their graphics, characters, soundtrack, ambience and game world. My experience with the Final Fantasy series early on, was memorable despite the core gameplay mechanics. I was mostly drawn in by the vivid, dreamy environments and the interesting/quirky characters.</comment>


US Navy Pandarra Fog System: Carbon fiber clouds against anti-ship missiles - <AUTHOR> https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/carbon-fiber-clouds-hiding-naval-destroyers-from-anti-ship-missiles.340685/ <comment><USER2> I don't beileve that this is nearly as good as the Greek chorus on this forum says it is. As long as you can see a ship with your eyes, a missile can probably hit it.</comment>


Facebook Beats NSO's Attempt to Crush WhatsApp Malware Suit - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-17/facebook-beats-nso-s-attempt-to-crush-whatsapp-malware-hack-suit <comment><AUTHOR> The ruling:

[https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/30721390/WhatsApp_I...](https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/30721390/WhatsApp_Inc_et_al_v_NSO_Group_Technologies_Limited_et_al)

> U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton on Thursday denied NSO's request to > dismiss the lawsuit. NSO unsuccessfully argued the court lacked jurisdiction > because the company was immune to legal action as a contractor of foreign > governments. NSO is an agent of the Kingdom of Bahrain, the United Arab > Emirates, and Mexico, according to Facebook's complaint.

> Hamilton did, however, grant NSO's request to dismiss a claim that NSO > wrongfully interfered with WhatsApp servers.

> The case is WhatsApp Inc. v. NSO Group Technologies Limited, 19-cv-07123, > U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (Oakland).</comment>