Economics of Google Fiber and what it means for U.S. broadband - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2012/07/26/the-economics-of-google-fiber-and-what-it-means-for-u-s-broadband/ <comment><USER2> One aspect I've not seen discussed is the impact of a commercial fiber service on city- and county-owned networks.

In the past, when local governments have tried to roll out high-speed municipal internet access, they've faced bitter opposition from entrenched network providers (Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, etc). These companies refuse to roll out fiber, but also lobby for state laws against government-funded fiber[1]. The end result is that residents are left on decrepit old copper lines.

Now there's a large[2] company rolling out fiber, and they have shown explicit desire to work with local governments. Depending on how the laws are written, it might be possible to achieve something close to a municipal network by contracting out to Google. And the Google fiber seems to be cheaper -- I can't find any municipal fiber services offering gigabit for less than $120.

(bias disclaimer: I work for Google, but am not involved at all in fiber stuff)

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/03/cable-backed- anti...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/03/cable-backed-anti-muni- broadband-bill-advances-in-north-carolina/)

[2] Sonic.net deploys fiber, also priced at $70 a month, but they are a very small regional ISP. [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/06/1gbps-fiber- for-7...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/06/1gbps-fiber-for-70in- america-yup/)

<comment><USER3> As I commented elsewhere, perhaps Google is the party with the deep pockets and legal expertise -- and lobbyists -- to take on and beat these entrenched monopolies/oligopolies.

When a community of some thousands goes up against a corporation of 10's of thousands and a largely captive customer base of millions, in e.g. lobbying the state legislature, well, the deck seems kind of stacked.

In Illinois, I recall specifically, SBC -- now AT&T -- received hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks and incentives, specifically with the agreement to promote and complete universal high speed access.

They then promptly set their lawyers and lobbyists to finding ways to break their side of that agreement -- while keeping the incentives, of course.

If Google wants unfettered access to unfettered customers (or eyeballs, if we're going to call the advertisers the customers... not to go there, at the moment), such partnerships might be a good way to identify and speed deployment.

And... plenty of publicity about what people in many other countries are paying. Little seems to motivate the American consumer -- and voter -- more than a bargain, or feeling they're getting ripped off.

And, since I'm typing away here, I hope Google will do it while treating their linepersons (technicians, etc.) decently. As a recent story here, with its high rating, pointed out, people are tired of seeing the line workers being abused.

I'm not familiar with sonic.net in detail, but its CEO, Dane, seems a decent sort, and I bet they're not the worst employer -- whether direct or contract. (And since Google's already talking to him, maybe you all can pick his brains in this specific area.)

Google still does some things that piss me off. [1] But I support this initiative -- I'll sign up as soon as I can, if and when -- unless Dane beats you to it.

[1] Mentioning just one item: Give it up, already, with the "true names" initiative. Anonymity has its value and place within the online domain. Not just one of convenience, but one of necessity, for many people and contexts.

P.S. I'm pretty tired, and I'm probably being to optimistic/idealistic, here. OTOH, having directly observed the crap dished out by AT&T, Comcast, and the like, I can readily believe there is plenty of room for improvement.

<comment><USER4> Some of what you're describing sounds similar to "The Great FiOS rip-off": [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/the-great- veriz...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/the-great-verizon-fios- ripoff_b_1529287.html) .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Imagine for a moment, if they fudged the numbers a bit on the storage capacity of every box going into your home. They advertise the usable capacity of 1 or 2TB. In reality, it has 30-200% more storage that is not usable by the customer.

They just made a very fast, low latency, distributed mesh CDN that the customer pays Google for the connectivity AND electrical bill.

<comment><USER6> Isn't the point of a CDN to push content out close to consumers because the last mile "pipe" is significantly slower than a content-provider's network? If the consumer is already on the content-provider's network, and operating at the same speed as the backbone, you don't need a CDN.

<comment><USER7> The point of a CDN, at least a significant one, is to reduce latency. To put your content closer to your customers. It also lets you handle larger load, is more resilient to DDOS, etc, but, at least in my view, those are often secondary... the main issue is latency, and perhaps capacity.

Gigabit to your house won't remove latency, other than perhaps to apps hosted by google (including google, obviously)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Isn't the more obvious conclusion that Google Fiber is just a bargaining chip for Google to use against traditional ISPs and cell phone networks? It won't even serve all of Kansas City for the foreseeable future, much less the rest of the country. What it does do is demonstrate that Google has the will to play the carriers' game, without actually committing the capital necessary to build out a competitive network.

Remember how gung-ho Google was about network neutrality, before it became necessary to choose between net neutrality and Verizon's support with Android. I find it hard to believe that Google's shareholders would appreciate the company devoting the massive amounts of capital necessary to build out a fiber network across the US, unless it was an existential question. And even then it will only be built out to the degree necessary to punish the carriers.

<comment><USER9> Google already has a massive nationwide network to serve as a CDN for stuff like youtube. They are peered with every ISP of any significant size, and have data centers and points of presence in every major city. Not to mention they have bought up almost all the "dark fiber" they could get their hands on for the last 10 years. Their network already exists, and its everywhere, the only thing remaining is rolling it out to residential areas.

There is a large upfront free that customers have to pay for the installation. If the economics have been worked out correctly by Google, the customers themselves will pay almost all of the roll out costs.

Edit: I should clarify, a large upfront fee, or a reasonably large monthly fee.

<comment><USER8> What fee? The only requirements are a 2-year contract, or a $300 upfront fee for the free option. And they give you a free Nexus 7 tablet with the contract. At $70-120/month, the money they're collecting on a 2-year contract isn't remotely enough to cover construction of the network and the end-user electronics.

<comment><USER9> $120 a month for 2 years is $2880 guaranteed, not to mention it is unlikely customers will leave considering the competition comes nowhere even close to that kind of offer.

Some of that will be eaten up by fixed costs of providing the service (for stuff like bandwidth, Google can probably get better prices than almost anyone else in the world, due to extensive peering), and for the provided electronics (which Google can order in huge quantities and pay comparatively little for, or even build themselves, like they do with their own internal servers and networking equipment). Whats left over is still a very large chunk of change, especially when you consider the fact that Google wont roll out fiber till a decent percentage of a neighborhood is willing to sign on (their calculated numbers are almost certainly designed to cover roll out costs)

I think this will easily pay for their roll out costs. Remember, they don't need to build out a national network to serve tons of places, they already have one. YouTube itself already uses something like 40% of the internet traffic to residential connections.

The important thing to consider here, is as far as Google is concerned, they only need to break even, they arn't in the same game the other ISPs are where it is their only profit center.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a layman, newb, wannabe hacker etc. this does nothing but excite me.

I long ago conceded the privacy vs convenience point regarding google. I've been a long time customer. I felt (read: convinced myself) then as I do now that the engineering backbone would stifle less than acceptable behavior by the company.

I live in the largest city of a northeastern us state. My options for acceptable Internet are nil. +$120/month for (possibly) 70 Mbps. Which, from experience, is heavily weighted on concurrent usage.

Everything else aside, I want so bad the option to have [insert company (google is winning the race)] to come in an offer me something better.

If nothing else, as has been stated in other threads, this will be an enormous boon for technological state of ISP's in the so far backward US.

<comment><USER11> > My options for acceptable Internet are nil

And it will remain that way for a long time. Google doesn't serve the whole metropolitan areas they are in and there is no known plan to expand beyond the two areas they are in. Google has stated they do not want to be an ISP so no plans to expand may not just be them being quiet.

So what does this mean for existing large ISP's? Nothing. The same nothing that every little regional ISP means to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So a key part of the "cost saving" is that AT&T gave them cheap access to poles. Doesn't that mean they are relying on one of the very competitors they will displace to collaborate with them in this? Seems to me that either AT&T was forced to do this by competition laws OR they indulged this little experiment as a one-off but the chance of them or any other telco letting Google scale this up to the point where it matters is zero.

Does anybody know which one it is?

<comment><USER13> I believe most of the poles are not AT&T's, but rather owned by the county and it's Board of public utilities. The combined power and communication poles have a standard fee for attachment. Google got a special deal to use the power area of the pole for free as part of their enticement. Labor cost is higher for the power area of the pole.

The AT&T deal is probably for just the odd pole where the communications approaches a building from a different path.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Kansas City is pretty close to the geographic center of the US.

 _... to reduce the cost of the actual last mile to users' homes it's telling people in Kansas City that if they want to be the first to get fiber, they'll have to convince their neighbors to sign up. The goal is to get a critical mass of between 5 percent and 25 percent of the homes in a given neighborhood (Google calls it a fiberhood) committed to signing up for Google Fiber before ever sending out technicians._

Speaking of cost-per-mile as it relates to "the last mile", population-density surely has to factor into how cost-effectively this service can be unrolled. In a densely-populated area, less fiber can serve more people, and can probably greatly reduce the cost-per-household to install.

Seems like the Midwest would require more cost for fewer households able to benefit, at least in the beginning of this endeavor. Wouldn't it make more sense to start on both / either coast, and literally reduce the "cost" of unrolling it marginally to the less-dense areas of the country, proportional to physical distance?

<comment><USER15> Kansas City's metro area is as population dense as any other developed urban core. It's not like they're starting out in a wheat field in Kansas.

<comment><USER16> This table seems to disagree: <http://www.demographia.com/db-uscity98.htm> . From the totals at the bottom, I found that the average population density for the 600 largest cities in the U.S. in 2000 was (total population)/(total land area) = 99,000,000 / 34,000 = 2911 people per square mile. Kansas City's density is 1100-1400 people per square mile, meaning that not only is it false that it's as "dense as any other developed urban core", but in fact it is not even half as dense as the _average_ city (with population 50,000 or higher).

<comment><USER17> I think part of that is the way the city is laid out. I think Kansas City is more consistent than most cities in having major roads travelling about every five or six blocks. This probably helps when physically putting the fiber down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "From the infrastructure on the back end to the TV and Wi-Fi routers in the home, Google has built its own stuff. Most carriers rely on outside vendors to sell them networking gear and even set-top boxes."

If I were Comcast I would _really_ be afraid at this point, because Google now has access to top-notch set-top-box, as well as other CATV equipment know-how through Motorola Mobility's Home division. If then can incorporate that knowledge into their system they would have an end-to-end entertainment delivery system.

<comment><USER19> I really hope they are. Comcast did some lobbying some time ago in Utah which prevented local fiber ISPs from being able to install new lines in many cities. It's very frustrating!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone in Australia want to take a stab at what this is likely to mean for the politics of the NBN?

<comment><USER21> I thought NBN already planned to do fiber to the door for most of the country.

<comment><USER20> So one side of politics will claim this proves that FTTP is the correct solution. The other side will claim that Private Investment is the way to build Fiber rollouts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm not a big fan of my current provider, but I think I prefer them to the privacy concerns I'd have using Google.

Almost every existing Google service is based on snooping people's browsing and serving up ads. They've made billions and billions of dollars doing it, and as the ISP they'd be able to snoop on _everything_. I'm sure they promise not to, but I just don't trust them, and I think there's too much money to be made for them not to do it.

<comment><USER23> You trust your current ISP?

I've never understood these arguments. Google doesn't 'snoop' on your browsing—they anonymously track your habits to give you better ads as their business model.

You used to get terrible ads on the internet—flashy popups, tricky spam ads, etc. Google has changed this, since they realized that they could avoid needing to trick people into click on ads by delivering ads that are actually relevant.

Your current ISP can 'snoop' on everything you do too. Why don't you have this odd mistrust of them?

<comment><USER24> Your own comment explains why: Google has built an empire upon the ability to efficiently compile information about people.

I've worked for a small ISP. They are not nearly as competent in that regard. Most of the time, they're just hoping they can finish the day with fewer tech support tickets than they started the day with.

I trust Comcast / SBC / others less -- especially since they voluntarily opted to cooperate with the RIAA/MPAA against their users' interests ([http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ISP-Six-Strikes-Plan- Arri...](http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ISP-Six-Strikes-Plan-Arrives-in- July-118834)) ... but I trust Google least of all, speaking just from a privacy standpoint.

I realize that it's a little irrational, especially since, as you pointed out, the information is anonymous. (We think.) However, it's not so much that I'm concerned with what Google is doing with that information _now_ ; I'm concerned with what they _might do with it later_. Once the data has been collected, it's impossible to ever know for certain that it's been removed. Data collected about customers will survive middle management and CEOs and entire company boards. It may be sold at any time to anyone for any reason -- or given away freely. It may be used for purposes which I am not imaginative enough to conjure up.

That probably sounds a little paranoid, but then again, when I was dialing in to eWorld in 1995, I could not have imagined that 17 years later the cable company would be my ISP and they'd be snitching on me if I downloaded unauthorized content. 17 years is not beyond the life time of current storage methods; who knows what will come next?

Finally, Google can't survive forever on advertising. I frankly expected the online advertising market to be having greater problems by now than it is. Still, AdBlock Plus is popular and I've seen a few articles recently that are tentatively suggesting that buying advertising on Facebook probably isn't worth it. Google's building some actual consumer hardware now, which is super neat, but their core competency is in data mining. I think it would be foolish to believe that if the online advertising market started to really struggle, Google would just drop the thing that they're best at and move on to something else.

So I don't think it's such a bad idea to treat Google with a little mistrust.

(But their fiber project is really damn cool.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Curious why they don't have another mid range offering, 5Mb/s free then 1000Mbs at $70 are the only options? I would love something in the $15-$25 range.

<comment><USER26> By making the low tier free, they avoid many costs. Billing. Tech support. Compared to their gigabit-chewing neighbors, the free tier isn't even using bandwidth of any significance.

Supporting a middle tier would cost as much as the high tier in everything except bandwidth. The one-time payment of the free tier helps pay for the infrastructure in the neighborhood, but doesn't incur any real costs after that. (I expect customer support for free will consist of a web form to report an outage, and a wiki.)

<comment><USER27> > _customer support for free will consist of a web form to report an outage_

And how do you get to the web form if there's an outage? :)

<comment><USER28> Cellphone? However, I suspect they could automatically detect outages based the in home battery backed up router not responding or losing contact with all other devices on the network.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why does Uber need ID to DELETE account? - <AUTHOR> A friend of mine was asked to send a copy of her government-issued ID to confirm her account. It freaked her out too much -- they kept on creepily insisting she immediately send a copy -- so she wanted to close the account. Now they won't let her close her account either, and demand to see a copy of her ID. Her number, email, CC info hasn't changed, so why in EARTH does Uber want someone's ID to DELETE their account? So now they've locked her out of her own account (they still have her CC info, and other highly personal info, mind), and won't take any action until she shows her ID.<p>If someone from Uber's lurking here, I wouldn't mind help with the support. It is getting ridiculous <comment><USER2> They need the ID to progress with the account at all. Requesting an account deletion is progress.</comment>


Q&A with Higgs discoverers - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2119266,00.html <comment><USER2> Just out of curiosity, is "discover" really the correct terminology here? Didn't these scientists, more correctly, observe the Higgs? Not only that, but didn't they also observe phenomena that coincides with the existence of the Higgs without actual observation?

I'm not arguing with the title, simply curious as to what the correct terminology is for when something is previously hypothesized as being in existence.

<comment><USER3> They didn't know if it existed or not. Now they know it exists. Most high- energy particle physics is done by analyzing decay products of short-lived particles, so I don't begrudge them that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "they had at last confirmed the existence of the elusive Higgs boson"

Last I heard they have not yet found the Higgs boson, they found something that is LIKE the Higgs boson. Is this not correct?

<comment><USER3> It's probably the Higgs. There are some decay paths that have not yet been observed, some because they haven't analyzed that data yet, and at least one that just doesn't appear to happen as often as predicted (very interesting). But it's acting almost exactly as the Higgs should act, so while it's not absolutely sure, there's no real reason to think that it's not the Higgs.

<comment><USER4> That's awesome, thanks for the info =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Out of curiosity: Even if they discover higgs boson, is there any chance for standard model to be changed again later on? (when somehow we discover yet another component)

<comment><USER6> > Even if they discover higgs boson, is there any chance for standard model to > be changed again later on?

Yes.

No matter what they discover that is consistent with the standard model, there's always a chance that a later discovery will invalidate the standard model.

One difference between science and math is that you can prove things correct in math. In science, you can only prove things incorrect.</comment></comment>


Eggs Thrown. Steve Ballmer Scrambles. - <AUTHOR> http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/363766_ballmer20.html

<comment><USER2> Video: <http://youtube.com/watch?v=mtBQ4UCXQeo>

</comment><comment><USER3> What better way to represent your cause than to act like a completely moronic child. Seriously, way to represent dude. ("Ballmer or the protester?" joke in 3, 2, 1....)

<comment><USER4> I really thought you were talking about Ballmer up until the last bit.</comment></comment>


Why aren't there a lot of old programmers at software companies? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Why-arent-there-a-lot-of-old-programmers-at-software-companies/answer/Michael-O-Church?srid=LEl&share=1

<comment><USER2> There is a much simpler explanation: growth.

Most of the companies you're thinking of when you imagine software companies are very new -- much newer than "old" engineers. Meanwhile, many of the best engineers are only ever on the market for a new job once, when they go looking for their first job. The number of developers grows every year as well, with far more new entrants coming from younger generations than older ones. As a result, most of the new developers you see will be younger.

As long as the market needs more qualified developers, the growth will favor the young.

</comment><comment><USER3> fired, replaced by fresh blood (cheaper)</comment>


Ask HN: What is the most hackable car? - <AUTHOR> I am in the market for a new (used) car and a Tesla is outside my budget. I would like a hackable car that I can customize and/or integrate with other systems.
My previous car (VW CC) had fairly limited functionality of the OBD 2 and CAN-Bus interfaces. It also didn't have any radar sensors. However, it was open enough that I was able to install an android head unit that was a vast improvement to the stock experience in almost every way.
I am wondering, is there a hacker's car. Something that is relatively open and will be a good platform for hobby upgrades, and more importantly, is likely to be supported by future projects from other developers / companies in the next few years.
It seems like it may be possible that things like adaptive cruise control or self-parking could be an aftermarket reality in the not too distant future.
Maybe there are some HN car hackers that have a preferred platform? <comment><USER2> according to [https://commaai.blogspot.com/](https://commaai.blogspot.com/) it'll be Definitely: Honda Civic 2016/17 with Honda Sensing (all Touring edtion)</comment>


Ask HN: Practical applications for bb8 - <AUTHOR> here's what i am pondering with at the moment: what would be a present day application for bb8? if it were to exist, would it have things it could do today or it only makes sense in a SW universe or long distance future? <comment><USER2> Herding sheep, visually monitoring crops, fetching and transporting very small items, this: [http://store.sphero.com/products/bb-8-by- sphero](http://store.sphero.com/products/bb-8-by-sphero)</comment>


Here's What to Do If Both Your Pilots Die on a 737 - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a19397/heres-what-to-do-if-both-your-pilots-die-on-a-737/ <comment><USER2> Please stop linking to the page-that-talks-about-the-page.

They're actually referring to this Quora page: [https://www.quora.com/What- should-I-do-if-the-pilot-passes-o...](https://www.quora.com/What-should-I-do- if-the-pilot-passes-out-and-I-with-no-flight-training-have-to-land-the-plane)

</comment><comment><USER3> If both pilots die I'd land that pig.

One of the benefits of prior experience working on flight simulators is I actually have practice landing 737s (testing is fun).

Talk to the control tower, request a runway for approach. Dial in the navigation station to the specified ILS beacon. Pray to god there's no cross wind. Decrease speed @ 5-7 nautical mi range and switch flaps to 20 degrees. Watch the ADI for the cool little runway indicator to popup when the runway is in range (the analog ones are especially cool). Drop landing gear. Adjust approach to stay within one dot on the horiz/vert glideslope indicators. Land. Reverse thruster to slow down. Steer and brake using the foot petals.

The change in flaps is necessary to increase lift @ slower speeds and slightly upturn the nose on landing for that nice rear-wheel-first touch down. Do _not_ attempt to land @ 0 degrees flaps. I've done it before in a 747-400 sim while testing the EGPWS, "you're doing it wrong" callouts. It only took the 5 tries to hypothetically not crash and die.

If you're in an Airbus, 'land' mode is the equivalent to 20 degrees flaps because European pilots aren't smart enough to understand geometry.

Useful tips:

Don't wear yourself out fighting the yoke, the little up/down triggers on the yoke will adjust the trim to compensate for wind and/or resistance. Pitch/roll on the yoke, yaw with the petals. Don't manhandle the yoke, a light touch is enough. Avoid roll on approach. Use yaw to compensate for wind. It's better to be slightly above altitude than touch down short of the runway. If the first approach sucks add power and go around.

 _Aside: I totally probably forgot something critically important._</comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage to keep improving your ML models accuracy? - <AUTHOR> Hello everyone,
What do you guys do to improve training data set labels to get better success rate? Are you using some framework or doing it manually after some time?
We have been working on topic modeling stuff, and managing everything manually is quite hectic, so looking for some better solutions.
Thanks <comment><USER2> From an engineering standpoint, the question is understanding where the bottlenecks are.

For instance, your feature set might limit your accuracy. Let's say you are interested (or uninterested) in posts about the Go programming language on HN and you are classifying based on the title. "Golang" predicts "Go Language" accurately, but "Go" does not. No matter how much you train, you will reach a limit unless you have beyond-bag-of-words features like "Go Development", "Go Implementation", ...

Many NLP projects fail because people decide up front to throw away critical information that they can never get back. Beyond BoW is not trivial, however, because if you vastly increase the number of features, most will be poorly sampled and you won't learn from them.

Past feature engineering there are very interesting questions in active learning that are not covered well in the academic literature, largely because active learning experiments are not reproducible in a Kaggle-like competition. There is also the human factor; you can destroy people psychologically by making them split hairs that don't matter; realistically you can get 2000 judgements a day out of a person if that is all they do, 200 is more likely from an expert who does other things.

Click on my profile link and send me an email and I can share what I know.</comment>


Blast Canada: Manifesto Writing in the True North - <AUTHOR> http://www.berfrois.com/2016/08/manifesting-canadas-identity-julian-hanna/ <comment><USER2> My own attempt to develop "manifestos" for the web is based on a concept of "Propositional Writing".

The major characteristic of Propositional Writing, vs "normal" writing, is that the headlines are the primary content, and the paragraphs are secondary.

In "normal" writing, the content is in the paragraphs, and the headlines are a secondary annotation.

[http://thinkinghard.com/propositional/index.html](http://thinkinghard.com/propositional/index.html).

<comment><USER3> Very interesting. I never knew the name for what I do. I treat the paragraphs of my writing as the "proofs". If you trust me and don't need details, you can get all you need from the section headers.</comment></comment>


"3G" is a crock. Here's why. (Also, it kicked my puppy.) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ksplice.com/2010/08/3g-and-me/

<comment><USER2> 4G on my new Sprint HTC EVO is a joke. It sucks down on the battery like a thirsty yak and it has terrible indoor reception. Not to mention it doesn't seem noticeably faster than 3G.

So I use the 3G radio 99.9% of the time and the 4G radio sits there idle because someone in Sprint's marketing team though it would give them an edge in marketing the device.

I'd put money on the table and say that if Dan Hesse himself carries around an HTC EVO he has the 4G turned OFF.

"How's that for a wireless revolution... Pretty awesome huh?"

</comment><comment><USER3> This G thing has been getting out of hand for quite a while now. A friend was recently telling me how much better his new phone was because it is 4G. He said he didn't really know what that meant, but it was definitely faster than 3G.

Also, a coworker of mine refers to his company provided Nextel Blackberry as "half-G".

<comment><USER4> It's just a marketing term for marketing to people who don't care about link protocols or multiplexing strategies. The problem was originally started when 1xRTT and EDGE were branded as 3G. This should have never happened, but that's what happens when marketing drives your business instead of engineering.

Honestly, even EVDO isn't really a true 3G protocol, as voice and data are completely separate protocols. UMTS phones don't drop to a voice-only technology to make a call, they use the data signaling, and IP connectivity isn't lost during phone calls. However, the fact that CDMA folks decided to go with a less ambitious, but easier to deploy megabit+ broadband technology meant they were able to beat the GSM networks to the punch. Worse is better.

That being said, WiMAX and LTE are legitimate 4G technologies. They both step up to using OFDMA instead of CDMA, which gives them a much higher theoretical bandwidth ceiling. Yes, HSPA+ networks have been pushing into WiMAX's bandwidth territory by adding MIMO and 64QAM modulation, but that's pretty much the ceiling for HSPA. The only future it has is in multi-carrier or multi-tower arrangements, which don't increase the spectral efficiency and are pointless in dense urban areas.

<comment><USER5> Technically WiMAX and LTE are _not_ 4G technologies. LTE-Advanced is to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There seems to be a few mistakes.

First, partially it sounds like a branding problem. It would be interesting to know where/how it happens: is it just an American thing? At least in Europe I've not really heard of anything of the sort. Sure they may rebrand 3G as "High Speed" and 3.5G as "Super high speed" but that's about it. At least they don't change a term they have already been using. I guess here we are also "lucky" that the protocol is displayed much more prominently.

Second point I think the comparison with wirelines didn't convince me too much: 3G/4G/whatever are more like DSL/ISDN/Cable. They can't simply advertise the bandwidth, because you actually need to have the right piece of hardware. Imagine if they sold you a "1MB/sec" connection but it didn't work: "Oh, I am sorry dear customer, but you need to have a UMTS phone for that". I'd be really pissed at that point. :)

Edit: actually another such case is Flash format. You get SD, SDHC, SDXC, for example. It's important they advertise that because that's what may decide if you can read or not the card you just bought. Then sure, they also advertise that the card is 8GB, 16GB or what have you, but you can't remove the information on the protocol.

</comment><comment><USER7> The best wireless internet experience I ever had was from a sailboat in a little bay in Colombia. There was a cell tower up on a hill, servicing a half dozen houses and as many boats on the water. At any given time you could be reasonably certain you had the whole thing to yourself.

I don't think you'll ever have it that good in New York City, nomatter how fast your phone and how much money the carriers throw into infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER8> It took a while but the guy makes a great point towards the end. Cell phone companies have sold an idea of the service that you will get but never give you the specifics of how it will be. For instance the new 4G network is coming. We know it's fast or should be but have they given a list of the speeds that you will expect while using this new 4G service or simply the idea that it will be fast so use it?

<comment><USER9> I think they aren't marketing the details like you expect because to most people it doesn't matter. Most people wouldn't know the difference if it had 1mg download or 1mbs or 10mbs (though they'll understand that the second is faster).

This is the marketing difference between Apple and Microsoft. Apple says 'it's faster' and you believe them. Microsoft says 'it's 64bit and can run 192gb of ram, which makes it blindingly fast.', but the second only means something to a small percentage of customers, and the message that gets through is Apple's 'it's faster'.

<comment><USER8> While you do have a good point, it's more than that. They don't market the details so that they do not have to live up to them.

<comment><USER10> Aren't you begging the question here?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Tell me you got a new phone where you pay to get 1 Mbps and 100 ms rtt to major exchange points. When the market moves forward enough to make that a reality, that'll be a generation worth celebrating._

It's not quite 100 ms, but not too shabby:

       --- svt.se ping statistics ---
       21 packets transmitted, 21 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
       round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 86.396/133.311/257.719/44.787 ms

According to another test app I'm getting 1Mbps down and 130kbps up. Time to celebrate my iPhone?

I think I was getting better speeds before switching to another operator, too. (And the bandwidth test app seems to agree, it classified my result as merely "acceptable" and not "good").

<comment><USER12> My RTT is similar here in Alexandria, VA on T-mobile. Of course, my N900 usually shows 3.5G instead of 3G. Having not paid much attention, it's not clear to me what that means in real speed terms.

<comment><USER13> That 3.5G is HSPA+ which has a max downstream of 21 megabit versus 3G (HSDPA) at about 7 megabit down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Correction suggestion: "3G" _in the United States_ is a crock. So is "4G", which as far as I understand is not actually even LTE/WiMax in some places (which themselves are pre-4G).

.eu side, at least, things are a bit clearer.</comment>


Ask HN: Pain points in influencer marketing campaigns - <AUTHOR> What are the pain points - solved & unsolved - in measuring influencer marketing campaigns? How does a marketer "acquire"influencers/ambassadors for their brand? Subsequently, how do they measure the effectiveness of their influencer in promoting the brand? <comment><USER2> tying engagement to ROI is a pretty difficult. It falls into the larger attribution modeling issues that marketers run into. You can try to use affiliate links, but that can only measure webtraffic/last click conversions. it doesn't do a great job at identifying high assist channels similar to YouTube acquisition.</comment>


First quantum effects "seen" in visible object - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18669-first-quantum-effects-seen-in-visible-object.html

<comment><USER2> Sure, you can see the object, but the effects only last 17 nanoseconds (expected to be 100 nanoseconds eventually), so you still can't _see_ the quantum effect. Props to the researchers on making such a large object dance to quantum mechanics, but the headline still manages to make the breakthrough disappointing.

<comment><USER3> If by "effect" you mean a superposition of quantum states, then it doesn't matter how long it lasts, you still cannot "see" it. Once you make the observation, you will see just one of the states. The distribution of results from repeated observations is the quantum mechanical effect you can see.</comment></comment>


Super-Intelligent Humans Are Coming - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/34/adaptation/super_intelligent-humans-are-coming-rp <comment><USER3> I don't know if there is any statistical correlation or not, but (as the article alludes to) it does seem that super intelligent people are more prone to some kind of other deficiencies, and particularly social issues.

Can anyone shed more light on whether this is true or not?

Anecdotally, one of my best friends (extremely intelligent, Cum Laude engineering student) went "off the rails" a few years after graduating. I always had the feeling that he was seeing things 5 steps ahead of everyone else, and had such an extremely deep insight into every day things. I think it just became too much for him to handle.

<comment><USER4> The only health problems associated with higher intelligence (as opposed to either low intelligence or completely independent of intelligence) are [1] high functioning autism, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Two can be treated with pills when they are disruptive with relatively high success, and the other (Autism) is to me not a particularly net negative condition when high functioning (several immediately family members have it, so this is anecdotal). So the only byproduct of selecting for these genes, is it would compound the likelihood of one of these conditions. It sounds like your friend was in a period of disintegration [2]. Happens to most gifted people at some point early in life.

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science- news/1212254...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science- news/12122545/Intelligent-people-are-genetically-predisposed-to-be-healthier- experts-find.html) [2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Disintegration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Disintegration)

<comment><USER5> "high functioning" kind of autism is a misnomer - even if you aren't the kind that bangs their head on the floor / avoided being non-verbal, life can be quite challenging.

I agree that it isn't necessarily a net negative, but the success of an individual on the spectrum seems highly conditional on life circumstances.

The thing is, genetics for autism also seem to produce people with adhd (reciently rolled into the spectrum) and generally coincide with decreased ability in executive function - leading to the absent minded professor syndrome. It also has a high prevalence of sensory processing disorder which can lead to a lot of issues with dealing with day-to-day life.

Even in cases where people with ASD happen to be of above average intelligence, it doesn't necessarily lead to success. I score 99% percentile in almost all academic areas, but I can't even feed myself right now. I'm functionally retarded when it comes to interacting with people half the time and the high-stress that comes from normal every day things means I might as well be agoraphobic.

Under the right conditions I have no doubt that I can flourish. I'm actively engaged in getting my life back on track (grew up in poverty, diagnosed late in life) but there's a reason that suicide rates and general unemployment levels for people on the spectrum are astronomical compared to the general population.

<comment><USER4> I agree with this. I would be ADHD if my parents sent me to school and/or believed in those diagnoses. I have yet to meet a gifted child male that does not qualify as ADHD. It is interesting to hear what you have mastered vs. struggled with. I can't say that my anecdotal evidence suggests that people always get a net benefit, just that in the right environment, people with autism can have complete, fulfilling and engaging lives. Unfortunately it seems to take a lot of will power and brute force intelligence to make it so, and not everyone is successful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here are a few patterns I've seen in studies or surfaced:

1\. Intelligence is an ability to observe, gather feedback based on past observations, and see patterns at a speed much faster than others at a lower general level. The growth in insight can be exponential, but it also means you start thinking at levels of abstraction and patterns that are layers above people at other levels. You struggle to communicate.

2\. High Intelligence is not correlated with high moral or other views - <USER2> its base, it means speed in some directions an individual is prone to have. If they find a career path that allows them to speed in that direction, they thrive, if not, you see a lot of psychological challenges over time.

3\. Socially, the higher your IQ, the more likely you are to skip steps in explaining your thoughts and to be misunderstood because your thinking might be several levels of abstraction above the people your're talking to. People at the 150IQ general level are rarely happy working with or friending people below 120. Given a propensity to specialize it a field rarely touched by others - one can get quite lonely in their thoughts and lose the social skills needed to develop normal friendships. Unless you are lucky enough to be surrounded by peers, you may be very unhappy. That unhappiness can shift to negative, downright trolling behaviors for some people.

4\. Given the above, a lot of potential is lost. For every Einstein, there are likely several hiding in corners wondering what is wrong with them.

I've been thinking about and working on prototypes for a platform that would be helpful to unite people with niche and advanced interests, so they can collaborate freely. Would love to connect with others interested in the topic. (Edit: typos)

<comment><USER6> Sources: 1\. On Intelligence: [http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff- Hawkins/dp/080507...](http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff- Hawkins/dp/0805078533) 2\. [https://www.quora.com/Whats-it-like-to- have-a-150-IQ-Is-life...](https://www.quora.com/Whats-it-like-to- have-a-150-IQ-Is-life-easier) 3\. Some article shared in the MENSA group years ago I'd have to dig in to find.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't agree with the premise of the article. The idea that there are "better" versions of each intelligence-influencing allele - and that they simply linearly combine - seems ludicrous to me.

It is equally plausible (and to my mind much more likely) that the many parameters influencing intelligence are linked in complex ways with no simple global optimum in sight.

<comment> loup-vaillant I've read that many gifted children are utterly unfit for normal school. Some are even prone to killing themselves if not taken care of properly.

Assuming we can indeed select for gifted embryos, and do so, the consequences are going to be… interesting.

<comment><USER7> I'm a bit wary of "giftedness" in intelligence discussions...

I think the author's argument is very weak, analogous to:

"Scientists have identified thousands of parameters influencing the efficiency of petrol-powered cars. Each parameter seems to influence the outcome by a small amount. If we simply chose the best value for each parameter, I predict that we could see cars with efficiency in the range of 500 miles per gallon".

A related argument (I think the one you are making) is that generally optimising one thing is going to trade off other things. So going all-in on fuel efficiency might impact crash resistance, for example.

The author's argument for general intelligence might be true if the basic architecture of our brains has a lot of room for improvement. This might be true, but it seems that evolution should have already exploited any low- hanging fruit.

This whole thing reminds me of the "humans only use 10% of their brains" flavour of reasoning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Screw genetic modification, I'd be interested to see what wacky deviations we see in a generation or so without it. Right now we've got assortative mating going on at a scale relatively unprecedented in history.

<comment><USER9> _Right now we 've got assortative mating going on at a scale relatively unprecedented in history._

What exactly does this mean? Is there a place where I can learn more about it?

<comment><USER10> I recommend reading Coming Apart by Charles Murray, where assortative mating is discussed extensively.

There are also some interesting articles you might want to read: [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/upshot/marriages-of- power-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/upshot/marriages-of-power- couples-reinforce-income- inequality.html?hpw&rref=upshot&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well- region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/upshot/rise-in- marriages-o...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/upshot/rise-in-marriages-of- equals-and-in-division-by-class.html?_r=0)

[http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595972-how- sex...](http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595972-how-sexual- equality-increases-gap-between-rich-and-poor-households-sex-brains-and)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some of the assumptions in this article are very ambiguous and makes the reading quite disturbing. I don't grasp the author's notions of IQ. Maybe it's me misunderstanding the writing, but IQ is more of a normative scale than an infinite scale. You don't push your IQ to 1000. It's not an anime energy level. This makes no sense.

Then there are things like "Right now we've got assortative mating going on at a scale relatively unprecedented in history" (assumption or data-based fact?)...

<comment><USER12> With only 7 billion people on the planet the theoretical IQ maximum is around 190. You can calculate this value from the CDF (cumulative distribution function) of a normal probability distribution having a mean of 100 and std of 15 (the definition of the IQ graph). Unfortunately the integral of normal pdf is the error function which is difficult to solve with high precision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Allowing for all the assumptions in the article I'm not sure I'd want to go ahead with it.

Living in a world where you are that much smarter than anyone else could be intensely isolating, imagine been so smart that you would find every conversation with anyone who isn't similarly boosted boring.

> The alternative would be inequality of a kind never before experienced in > human history.

That is a pretty chilling sentence and it's hard to argue, if you could engineer children for intelligence and it was fantastically expensive then that has some really nasty potential sociological outcomes (something that has been a Trope of sci-fi for at least a hundred years).

</comment><comment><USER14> > This means that there must be at least thousands of IQ alleles to account > for the actual variation seen in the general population.

Or that IQ is only governed by genes to a very small extent in which case the rest of the argument goes out of the window.

<comment><USER15> You're right that the author (unless I missed it) didn't say what proportion of variance in IQ is explained by additive genetic effects (narrow sense heritability) . I think a quick search would likely answer that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The issue I see with changing so many alleles is that we may not know all of the phenotypic consequences of each allele. Moving 10,000 alleles to the best intelligence settings might make people smarter, but genes are highly pleiotropic. Mutating 10,000 genes could have 10,000 phenotypic side effects.

How do you optimize: maximize intelligence subject to not messing up the organism too much. How would you do this for multiple phenotypes? Maximize height and intelligence subject to not messing up the organism too much.

</comment><comment><USER16> Superhuman intelligence needs to have the corresponding nurturing factor as well. It won't do much good if you are born super-smart but are trapped in poverty or circumstances which limit your potential.

Plus there is also the EQ (emotional) quotient. Not many people are going to want your company if you are a super-intelligent asshole either.

<comment><USER17> > It won't do much good if you are born super-smart but are trapped in poverty > or circumstances which limit your potential.

I'd argue the opposite. If you're in a tougher situation, there's a lot more for you to gain by applying your intelligence.

<comment><USER18> Poverty causes much more than can be helped. Bad schools that are falling apart, a lack of opportunity, and the effects of long term stress on the brain are all things that will affect any person regardless of intelligence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Tldr? Title seems clickbaity and I don't want to reward that.

<comment><USER20> I wish there were a way to quantify that impulse, because that is often my first thought when presented a click-baity link: "Shall I award my attention to this"?

<comment><USER21> Sometimes I want to click on an enticing clickbait article from buzzfeed, but can't let myself because its buzzfeed and a listicle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Several comments have mentioned that high intelligence can result in a very lonely, isolated, and depressing existence, as you find that you can communicate with very few people, and how sometimes very bright people wind up either anti-social or suicidal.

I wonder about the implications of this for super-intelligent AI...

</comment><comment><USER23> Übermensch!

Haven't we heard this before?

<comment><USER24> And it hasn't lost its allure one bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can confirm. Daughter turns 13 in 2 weeks. Pretty soon she's going to know everything.

</comment><comment><USER26> I would gladly fork out the cost of a university tuition for CRISPR therapy to give my children the edge. But many would be adverse to this, probably to the extent of being a same sex marriage/abortion level of debate.

</comment><comment><USER10> If I understand correctly, techniques like CRISPR might allow for for gene editing in adult humans.

If so, how much would you be willing to pay to have your IQ increased by say 10 points? I think I would be willing to pay $10,000 if the risks of something bad happening because of the treatment would be low.

<comment><USER27> You would also need some way of re-inducing plasticity in the brain's connectome. This seems less likely to be feasible after adulthood.

Also, IQ is a lousy measurement scale. Ten points means a lot more to someone with an 85 or 95 IQ than to someone with 120.

<comment><USER7> Sci-fi story plot twist: it's possible, but your personality completely changes and you lose your earlier memories. You don't get actually any smarter, but you have a brief period in your life where you learn super fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> interesting study .. but it seems to be heading to a rather narrow direction .. humans are multifaceted beings that are far beyond what IQ can describe .. I wonder if the authors could conduct a study to measure IBM's Watson and see conclusion one could arrive at .. Have fun!

</comment><comment><USER29> And why exactly should we assume the "additivity of small effects" assumption holds far from the center of the current g distribution?? Stack up enough of these variants and you're into unknown territory, including possibly inviable embryos.

</comment><comment><USER30> I just hope that they watched enough Planet of the Apes movies to not test it on monkeys first.

</comment><comment><USER31> "the case for substantial genetic influence on g is stronger than for any other human characteristic."

How does that fit with the popular notion that intelligence is independent of race? Isn't the definition of race essentially just different genetic background?

</comment><comment><USER32> if you haven't seen it, the film Gattaca covers this very well [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/)

</comment><comment><USER33> Unintended side effects are the risk here. You can't legally 'test' this out, so it would have to be trial and error by parents. Wouldn't want to be an early adopter here.

</comment><comment><USER34> That must be a somewhat daunting procedure for scientists in the genetic field; creating humans that are much, much smarter than themselves, likely rendering themselves obsolete very quickly.

<comment><USER35> There'd still be at least a generation before the kids are up to speed. Even if they're of the "finish HS by 12, BS by 13, PhD by 16" types, they still have to accumulate a large amount of knowledge and practice, to actively participate in the science.

<comment><USER36> And I think science is not a zero sum game.

<comment><USER37> There's only so much science to go around, so don't go hogging all the discoveries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Unrelated to the article but the design of that website is so nice

</comment><comment><USER39> From the article: ". . . if combined in an ideal fashion, could lead to individuals with intelligence that is qualitatively higher than has ever existed on Earth: Crudely speaking, IQs of order 1,000, if the scale were to continue to have meaning."

That's an amazingly ignorant comment. First of all, the better evidence is behind the idea that currently observed high human IQ, when the "g" factor is factored into consideration, consists mostly just of luckily lacking deficiencies in function that other human individuals have. In other words, the centuries-long factor-analytic approach mostly suggests that high-IQ individuals luckily lack "general stupidity," but still are subject to hard limits on human cognition (Mackintosh, _IQ and Human Intelligence_ second edition 2011, pages 155-156).

And the hard limits on human cognition are intractable, and actually illustrated by the article kindly submitted here. Psychologist Keith R. Stanovich points out in his book _What Intelligence Tests Miss_ that even very high-IQ individuals (studied in studies of members of high-IQ societies) are still subject to most human cognitive biases, and they can be MORE subject to delusional beliefs than members of the general public because they can make up elaborate rationalizations for anything they choose to believe, including a belief in superintelligence.

I doubt the statements in this article also because there is a long line of research that goes back to before when the article author was born on selective breeding of mice and rats for high intelligence in their behavioral context. (One kind of test of intelligence given to rats and mice is running through mazes to find food.) Since before the author was born, there have been purebred strains of "maze-bright" and "maze-dull" rats that have been tested by psychologists. Now that there are gene technology methods in animal research, there are transgenic mice with knocked-out genes and added genes, and the author significantly fails to mention any experimentation in animal models that shows that his speculation is likely to become true.

The Wikipedia article on IQ classification adequately cites references to demonstrate that the IQ scale is strictly ordinal, so indeed a notion of "IQ 1000" is meaningless.

If you'd like to read a more thoughful article on genetic influences on human IQ, by a researcher who has been closer to the research for longer and who has published in better journals than the author whose essay was kindly submitted here, see Wendy Johnson's article "Understanding the Genetics of Intelligence: Can Height Help? Can Corn Oil?"[1] which has an excellent review of decades of research on genetics and on human intelligence.

[1] [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Understanding+the+Genet...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Understanding+the+Genetics+of+Intelligence+Can+Height+Help%3F+Can+Corn+Oil)

</comment><comment><USER40> I dont think we need smarter humans, i think we need more normal-intelligence humans who like working hard.

<comment><USER41> Yes, we definitely need more mindless wage slaves and worker drones who _like_ being used and exploited.

<comment><USER42> "You should just feel lucky to have a job at all, who cares that they aren't paying you in level with the amount of service/product you produce for them..."

I hate this embrace your servitude mentality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Have you watched CNN lately? I don't think so.

</comment><comment><USER24> As if intelligence per se were some kind of virtue. All it does is give you an edge over the less intelligent, like a boatload of money gives you an edge over poorer people. The utility lies in the difference. If you lift everyone's level simultaneously, nothing changes. When all is said and done, human stupidity will still be infinite.</comment>


A napalm attack, an orphan, and a message three decades later - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/the_boy_in_the_photo <comment><USER2> Two things... one personal and one technical. I was in that war. I was a silent conscientious objector (I thought the war was about oil and money.) I went because I had an obligation to go. I have many stories but the best one is this. When the war ended, we sold our portable hospital to the Kuwaitis. We went to Kuwait City to deliver it and saw the destruction; the six miles of death. When I jumped off the truck and the people, families rushed up to me(us) and kissed my cheek, bowed and kissed my feet—I could not make them stop. They would raise up and say in cryptic English "We thank The United States, President Bush and you." I was touched and changed—it changed my opinion of the cause. What if I was sent back home directly after the war? To this day I would have said what I thought before.

Technically, this website is well done. Just scroll down and down. It's a little long but I like some of it.

<comment><USER3> From what I understand, Iraq reached out to the U.S. for approval, through diplomatic channels, before going through with the mission. U.S. said they have no opinion, then doubled back to defend Kuwait from the "evil invaders."

[https://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/23/world/confrontation-in- th...](https://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/23/world/confrontation-in-the-gulf-us- gave-iraq-little-reason-not-to-mount-kuwait-assault.html)

>In the two weeks before Iraq's seizure of Kuwait, the Bush Administration on the advice of Arab leaders gave President Saddam Hussein little reason to fear a forceful American response if his troops invaded the country.

>The Administration's message to Baghdad, articulated in public statements in Washington by senior policy makers and delivered directly to Mr. Hussein by the United States Ambassador, April C. Glaspie, was this: The United States was concerned about Iraq's military buildup on its border with Kuwait, but did not intend to take sides in what it perceived as a no-win border dispute between Arab neighbors.

>In a meeting with Mr. Hussein in Baghdad on July 25, eight days before the invasion, Ms. Glaspie urged the Iraqi leader to settle his differences with Kuwait peacefully but added, ''We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait,'' according to an Iraqi document described as a transcript of their conversation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What a great read. I had to setup a VPN to read it since the country I'm in (Vietnam) blocks the BBC, but it was well worth it. The scrolling feature of the article was also interesting... at first I reloaded my page because I thought it timed out loading.

<comment><USER5> I am also in Vietnam. The block on BBC is quite weak, they just do it at the DNS level. Set up DNSSEC and it will work fine without a VPN. I also find that using bbc.com sometimes works as well.

<comment><USER6> What does DNSSEC have to do with bypassing a BBC block? The BBC's zones (like virtually everyone else's) aren't DNSSEC-signed. Do you you mean DNS-over-TLS?

<comment><USER5> I'm sorry, you are correct. It was late and my mind was thinking of DNSCrypt, not DNSSEC. DNS-over-TLS solved the issue for me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


SimCity launch a disaster – error messages and random disconnections - <AUTHOR> http://m.cnet.com/news/simcity-launch-a-complete-disaster/57573053

<comment><USER2> What makes the Internet-required single player a deal breaker for me isn't even the launch problems (those will go away), but the fact that the game will ultimately be terminated once EA no longer finds it worthwhile to run the servers.

Someone will probably eventually reverse-engineer the system to create a local fake server, but that's no substitute for a game to not be broken by design.

</comment><comment><USER3> This sort of cock-up is just one of the reasons why always-connected DRM is an immediate deal-breaker for me.

> What we are doing is deploying more servers over the coming two days, which > will alleviate many of the ongoing issues.

The issues are entirely artificial and should have been no surprise to EA. _Every single time_ a game protected by always-connected DRM has been launched, this same sad story unfolds. Einstein's definition of insanity seems like a relevant item to mention here.

Always-connected DRM is a crutch for companies who are unable or unwilling to replace a business model built around the premise that duplicating a digital product is costly, which is simply not the case. Making it costly through DRM only punishes paying customers, and makes cheap/pirated versions that much more valuable.

<comment><USER4> For a more obscure game I had been raving about, Anno 2070, has a similar issue. If you earn any achievements (which affect ingame stats, enough to break a game if they go missing), and your internet connection or more likely, their teeny weeny little server goes down, those achievements go missing. This thing was enough to dissuade me from buying a game I had been raving for months about (read the reviews first, all about this DRM problem).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Penny Arcade and at least a couple other reviewers anticipated this:

>My recommendation? Don't preorder or buy the game unless you'd be fine with non-functioning servers tomorrow. If that sort of thing would make you angry, hold off until you know things are stable.

[http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/why-you- sho...](http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/why-you-shouldnt- trust-our-simcity-review)

That said the game is getting glowing reviews from reviewers who didn't have to deal with the server issues. When these issues settle down I think it will be a well received game. Personally I tend to play games like this when I'm traveling and have no internet connection, so I'm not going to purchase it until I know there is a way to play without an internet connection.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is the kind of story I always see, but rarely get to hear a post-mortem or how they eventually fixed it.</comment>


How to share your 2011 conference plans using Lanyrd - <AUTHOR> http://lanyrd.com/blog/2011/confs2011/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone else find the Lanyrd UI sloppy?

* Eigerdals Bold font: "i" character is messed up (it's way too tall)

* "Sign in with twitter" overlaps the text below it

* The other "Sign in with twitter" button is cut off

* Conferences today section is just poorly designed

* Trending topics: what does "trending" mean? Is this twitter?

* Topics page: tags that wrap onto 2 lines aren't vertically spaced

* Profile page: columns are too narrow + text too big for list of conferences

In general I think the site lacks some polish and focus. The coverage and books sections just seem tacked on without much thought.

I really like the idea I just think the site needs a good UX overhaul.

<comment><AUTHOR> We know we still have a lot to do. Generally, we're trying to find the right balance between building new features that are strategically important to the product and cleaning up the stuff we've already built.

We're a very young site - we only went live in September, and we've actually been travelling on honeymoon (Morocco, Egypt, South Africa) while building the site at the same time. We're now focused on it full time, so expect a lot of improvements.

Out of interest, are you on an iPad? We've only recently seen the site on the iPad, and there's a bunch of stuff we need to fix there.

<comment><USER2> No, I was viewing the site on Chrome 8 and Firefox 3.6 (both Windows).

I'm glad you guys are always working on improving it. Lanyrd was one of those sites that made me go "how come this didn't exist before".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Questions for the Lanyrd team (Simon & Natalie):

      1. Do organisers contact the "tracking" members when it's getting nearer to the date of the event?
      2. What's the breakdown between attending vs. tracking? Do these change over time?
      3. What other data are you planning for and making public?

Something that could be interesting is following the tweets for an event alongside the provided slideshows and videos.

Thanks. Keep up the great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Tracking doesn't actually do much at the moment, but we have a bunch of features planned that will use tracking to help keep people updated about new information about events.

We haven't looked at tracking v.s. attending trends yet, that could be really interesting - thanks for the query :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The idea of Lanyrd is great, but there are some annoyances with the way the information is presented. I'm browsing it right now because we're letting all our employees choose a conference or two to attend this year.

1\. Once signed in, the homepage displays "Your Calendar" and then events that are going on today. Why? It's not like I can get up from my desk right now and go to Palo Alto or London. The home page would be much more useful if I saw events grouped by my interests, region and social circle, _not_ ascending dates starting with today.

2\. Events show COUNTRY / CITY and each links to the /places/ lookup. Really need to put the state in there for US people.

3\. I feel like the topics/tags are messy and are just going to get worse. There's UX, User Experience, User Experience Design, Usability, User Interaction, etc. Maybe these have subtle technical differences but it makes it a pain to use. Maybe I'm in the minority but I think un-moderated tags for a site like this are bad. General categories would be a good thing IMO.

Anyway, not my intention to be overly-critical ... just some suggestions on making the site more useful (to me)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. We have a new, improved version of the dashboard coming soon that will hopefully address your points in 1) - the current version was designed when we had very few events on the site, but now that we have thousands of conferences it's important to be able to filter them.

2) is a really interesting suggestion - we've been treating every country the same, but since the US is our largest market it makes sense to make States a special case.

3) is something we've been thinking about quite a bit - again, our topics worked fine when we were smaller, but the strain is beginning to show. Metadata is hard!

We'll be iterating constantly over the next few months, so keep an eye on our blog/twitter account for updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Simonw, have you considered using other methods than Twitter for signing in? I don't feel comfortable tying services together both as a user and as developer. I'm curious as why have you chosen for to only allow signing in with Twitter?

<comment><AUTHOR> See my answer here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1981364>

Short version: we don't just use Twitter for auth - we also use it as a way of linking conferences to speakers who have not yet created their profile on our site. Doing that with other providers is fiddly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like this. I've logged in and added a handful of conferences I'm interested in attending. Now I'd like to be able to subscribe to my conferences through Google Calendar so that it automagically syncs with my calendar on all my devices. As it is right now, I have to grab the .ics link for each conference and add them to my calendar individually. Otherwise, this is neat. Thanks for posting.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a link to an ICS feed of just your conferences at the bottom of the right hand column on the homepage once you sign in - we need to make it easier to find.

<comment><USER6> Thanks! That did the trick. I was looking for it on this page: <http://lanyrd.com/people/DavidCuddeback/> ("profile" link), because the main content for that page is the conferences I'm tracking. I figured the ICS feed would be linked to from the same page as the content, FWIW. Thanks again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How about a "tweet this" link on the profile page to make it easier to share?

</comment><comment><USER8> I just logged in to add the Founder Conference and see whether this site would help. Oops, it was already listed! Good job in seeding your database :-)

</comment><comment><USER9> Anybody knows when and where is the next Startup School?

<comment><USER8> Where? Bay area (Palo Alto or Mountain View).

When? No idea, could be June through October. Last time it was announced only a month ahead of time. I hope it's late this year, so you have two great conferences on starting startups, Startup School in October and the Founder Conference in May (mine :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting approach to sharing data Simon :-) Really like the fact that you're pumping out the micro formats.</comment>


Yahoo – Moving Search Forward - <AUTHOR> http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/116552621189/moving-search-forward <comment><USER2> If it's Yahoo, they think the problem with search is that there aren't enough "one weird trick" ads blended in.</comment>


Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe (free download) - <AUTHOR> http://craphound.com/est/ Made for a highly enjoyable evening's reading -- does anyone have any other good science fiction books to recommend? Free ones, even? <comment><USER2> I dislike Cory Doctorow's writing style. I like his ideas but his writing is awful. I could never complete any of his books.

<comment><AUTHOR> What is it about his style that you dislike? For example, is it the colloquialisms, the pace at which the story moves, or is it something more structural?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are you recommending this book today (opposed to when it came out) for any particular reason?

I prefer Charles Stross for a bit of a mind-bend. Accelerando is available for download here: <http://www.accelerando.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> No particular reason -- I just read it several days ago, enjoyed it, and was hoping others might have suggestions as to further reading. Thanks for the link to Stross, I'll check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really liked Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom but wasn't a fan of this book.</comment>


Equifax endangered millions. It's now hoping you won't seek $125 in compensation - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-07-25/column-equifax-facebook-privacy-settlements <comment><USER2> Is it weird that I don't trust the settlement link at the end of the article?

<comment><USER3> You can follow the link from hereL [https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases- proceedings/refunds/eq...](https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases- proceedings/refunds/equifax-data-breach-settlement)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Endangered" and just 125$ in compensation in the same sentence doesn't sound right

<comment><USER5> This is how class actions lawsuits work. They're not meant to completely compensate all the victims, but rather sue the defendant on behalf of all the victims with a single case to efficiently enact a larger punitive financial penalty.

Or at least that's my armchair IANAL understanding.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Pixle.cc - <AUTHOR> https://pixle.cc <comment><AUTHOR> Pixle.cc is a free image/audio/video converter which converts JPG/PNG/GIF/WEBP and some Audio/Video files.

<comment><USER2> Thank you so much for creating, i was in search for a similar service from couple of months. Your product is definitely going to save a lot of time for me. Happy to share it with my friends, also please post the product on ProductHunt and subreddits.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for checking it out!

Funny you mention the saving on time... I created it for work! I'm a web developer, so there are times when I need to extract a "video thumbnail" for my clients from a mp4 and it gets annoying when they have to run the entire video just to tell me which screenshot to grab. So with this, I can send them a zipped file of all the thumbnails extracted from the video clip. Or grabbing the thumbnail from a YouTube video is pretty easy.

I'd have to go searching for a tool for all my needs. And there are plenty out there! But it would require that I bookmark the page and have to search for what I need. Sometimes I'd forget. This kind of put everything in one place.

It has saved me so much time. Since I'm also on a Chromebook for everything else, I don't really have any "easy access" to a converter that can do it all so I created this one to do as much as I can get it to do. I'm still expanding it so that any conversions I come across.. I'll try to add. I just added PDF to JPG/PNG/WEBP.

Very happy to share! Happy to help! Hope it helps you as much as it has helped me!

<comment><USER2> I have to do a lot of conversions in a single day. So, basically searching proper site to achieve this job and struggling to convert file and downloading is a tough job to manage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully I've made your day a little easier. It seems we find a way to "ease our pains at work" by building what we need to solve some of our problems. There is also a JPG to JPG and PNG to PNG which will attempt to compress the file into a smaller version of itself.

I've also run into the issue of CMYK colors within the JPG which can either cause bloat as those colors are very well defined as they are menat for a print version and converts it to RGB colors. These are just things I needed for work at work in order to work.

I do plan on adding multiple file support as well as an API service in the future which would just zip up all the files and download them to your way or share with you every individual file converted via API and then a developer would just download them remotely.

<comment><USER2> It will be awesome. Loved the idea about the api thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What technologies did you use to create it?

<comment><AUTHOR> CSS framework ( [https://bafs.github.io/mu/](https://bafs.github.io/mu/) ), PHP and Javascript. Some of the conversions are handled by PHP while others Javascript is much more efficient at processing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> mb != MB

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for checking out Pixle! I had it lowercase, but have now removed that as it was purely for asetics. But it makes sense to have it as its regular size! Thank you!</comment></comment>


Chinese Mobile App UI Trends - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2013/11/08/a-new-way-to-look-at-competitors/

<comment><USER2> Pretty sure OP meant this article - read it as well, thought it was very good: [http://dangrover.com/blog/2014/12/01/chinese-mobile-app- ui-t...](http://dangrover.com/blog/2014/12/01/chinese-mobile-app-ui- trends.html)

The Chinese market has a lot of beautiful apps (as a designer) - they're a little different from our North American apps, there are definitely a lot of lessons we could crib from them though.

</comment><comment><USER3> The title of the submission is wrong. The article is 'A New Way to Look at Competitors' from 2013 and not related to China.</comment>


What Hiring Should Look Like - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/getify/4f4b7886d181d5fe9c6b1bfdf134709f <comment><USER2> There is data suggestive of what hiring should look like and how to largely eliminate prejudices from the hiring process. People refuse to follow it because of various forms of selection bias that they cannot live without.</comment>


Lukashenko's claim of landslide victory sparks widespread protests - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/09/belarus-election-lukashenko-landslide-victory-fixing-claims <comment><AUTHOR> Belarusians finally are feeling hope united and continue peacefully resisting brutal riot police and military, which is using flash grenades and rubber bullets. Lukashenko's personal unofficial plane left Belarus for Turkey but it's unknown who was on board. Lukashenko had been running the country for 26 years.

More on BBC: [https://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-53717834?xtor=AL-72-%5...](https://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-53717834?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_custom4=BCC7D45C-DA97-11EA-8A73-53CA4744363C&at_medium=custom7&at_custom3=%40BBCWorld&at_custom2=twitter&at_campaign=64&at_custom1=%5Bpost+type%5D)</comment>


10,000 Year Clock (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.10000yearclock.net/index.html <comment><USER2> Naw, steampunk confabulations are mere mechanics' electrolysis eroding permutations, dust to dust. I'm going with encoding human DNA. Humans are persistant and I'd wager they make it through the next arbitrary melleniums.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also see [http://longnow.org/clock/](http://longnow.org/clock/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Any status update on this? 2011 was a while ago. :)</comment>


Show HN: Instant search for Spotify - rukmal-w http://rukmal.github.io/SpotifyInstant

<comment><AUTHOR> looks good.. you can also add OnLoad="document.FORMNAME.search.focus();" to your beginning <body> element to auto-select the input field, google-style. FORMNAME being the name of your form.

<comment><USER2> How is it different from adding the autofocus property to input field?

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Nice! I would make the widget bigger.

<comment> rukmal-w Thanks for the input. I'll work on it!</comment></comment>


Code Conventions for the JavaScript Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://javascript.crockford.com/code.html <comment><USER2> Some are good, some arbitrary:

Is the 80 col limit still valid in the modern day with such large screen displays? . His line indentation convention is inconsistent. In one place he says to use 8 spaces, in another he says to use 4. Then when you look at a switch, its 0. . variable declarations: If he's referring to the way that JSLint enforces it, that's stupid. ex:

        function foo(){
           myGlobal = "foo";
        }

        var myGlobal;

_"All functions should be declared before they are used"_

Yes, but not in the way that JSLint enforces it. See above.

 _"Inner functions should follow the var statement."_

umm, no? This has a different meaning from a function declaration.

 _"Do not use _ (underbar) as the first character of a name. It is sometimes used to indicate privacy, but it does not actually provide privacy. "_

It's private because you weren't invited to use it, not because I have a bomb waiting for you.

 _"If privacy is important, use the forms that provide private members. Avoid conventions that demonstrate a lack of competence."_

Whatever, show me an efficient, non-convoluted pattern that allows inheritance of privileged members. Avoid conventions that demonstrate a lack of concern for memory consumption and efficiency.

 _"Global variables should be in all caps."_

umm, no. That convention is reserved for constants.

 _"Each group of statements (except the default) should end with break, return, or throw. Do not fall through."_

Arbitrary. I think DRY is preferable when it's warranted.

 _"Avoid use of the continue statement. It tends to obscure the control flow of the function. "_

It's ok to use labels, but not continue? I don't understand this logic.

 _"Avoid doing assignments in the condition part of if and while statements. "_

It's a legitimate convention if wrapped with an extra pair of parenthesis. Note that Mozilla's strict mode will honor this convention.

<comment><USER3> Few of the examples you listed are arbitrary, in fact Crockford describes precisely why he chose them as conventions. In nearly all cases he came up with these conventions to help coders avoid common pitfalls due to unfortunate aspects of the JavaScript language.

        function foo(){
           myGlobal = "foo";
        }

        var myGlobal;

This is clear if you only have this one function, but with a large js file I know I'd rather not be searching through the code for global variables. That's also why "Inner functions should follow the var statement", it's an easy way to keep track of scope.

 _"Do not use _ (underbar) as the first character of a name. It is sometimes used to indicate privacy, but it does not actually provide privacy. "_ _It's private because you weren't invited to use it, not because I have a bomb waiting for you._

No, it's private because it throws an error if you try to use it outside of the proper scope. From what I can tell about Python, for example, adding underbars enforces privacy, JavaScript doesn't.

 _"Global variables should be in all caps."_ _umm, no. That convention is reserved for constants._

That convention _in other languages_ is for constants. Crockford points out that js doesn't have constants. He also constantly points out the dangers of global variables, how you should minimize their use. The purpose of all caps is to give a visual cue that they're global, the purpose of all caps in other languages is to give a visual cue that they're constants.

 _"Each group of statements (except the default) should end with break, return, or throw. Do not fall through."_ _Arbitrary. I think DRY is preferable when it's warranted._

Crockford used to think the same. He tells the story of a user who suggested fall-through should be flagged by JSLint. Crockford gave him a detailed response explaining that there was nothing wrong with fall-through. The user agreed, and included a bug report for JSLint in his response. Crockford found the bug in JSLint and it was caused by... fall-through.

 _"Avoid doing assignments in the condition part of if and while statements. "_ _It's a legitimate convention if wrapped with an extra pair of parenthesis. Note that Mozilla's strict mode will honor this convention._

Crockford points out the problems you can run into doing that:

Is

        if (a = b) {

a correct statement? Or was

        if (a == b) {

intended?

It's easy enough to tell if you're the one who wrote it, but what happens to the poor sorry schlub who's trying to debug the code later on (especially if that schlub is you 6 months later)?

<comment><USER4> _From what I can tell about Python, for example, adding underbars enforces privacy, JavaScript doesn't._

That's not true, an initial underscore is simply used as the convention to indicate that something is private:

        >>> class Foo(object):
        ...   def __init__(self):
        ...    self._bar = 48
        ...
        >>> a=Foo()
        >>> a._bar
        48

<comment><USER5> Au contraire, double underscore does make it "private". Trying to access a double underscore attribute directly will throw an AttributeError.

        >>> class Foo(object):
        ...     def __init__(self):
        ...             self.__a = 42
        ...     def look_here(self):
        ...             print self.__a
        ...
        >>> f = Foo()
        >>> f.__a
        Traceback (most recent call last):
          File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
        AttributeError: 'Foo' object has no attribute '__a'
        >>> f.look_here()
        42

<comment><USER6> A bit off topic, but double underscores don't actually make members in Python truly private, but mangles the attribute name to prevent you from accessing it unless you _really_ need to: [http://docs.python.org/tutorial/classes.html#private- variabl...](http://docs.python.org/tutorial/classes.html#private-variables)

        >>> class Foo(object):
        ...     def __do_something(self):
        ...         print 'something was done'
        ...
        >>> f = Foo()
        >>> f.__do_something()
        Traceback (most recent call last):
          File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
        AttributeError: 'Foo' object has no attribute '__do_something'
        >>> f._Foo__do_something()
        something was done

<comment><USER5> You are 100% correct.

This is a good example of Python making it harder for you to do the wrong thing. Sure.. you could access that "private" attribute, but you have to do it in a way that isn't obvious, and definitely more hard to read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are arguments for and against tabs and spaces. Crockford mentions one of these arguments and concludes that everyone should use spaces. Similarly for other "conventions".

I would rather replace the whole article with "Write readable code". Following these conventions are neither sufficient or necessary to accomplish that.

<comment><USER8> 1\. The people for whom "Write readable code" is sufficient guidance are the same people for whom that guidance isn't needed in the first place.

2\. For a body of code written by multiple people to be readable, it helps considerably if the conventions those people follow are consistent. A document like this one can help with that.

3\. It doesn't seem reasonable to expect that the author of a document like this should provide all the counter-arguments to every position he takes. It's not an in-depth analysis of what constitutes good JavaScript code, it's just a set of coding conventions.

<comment><USER9> _For a body of code written by multiple people to be readable, it helps considerably if the conventions those people follow are consistent._

I'm not convinced of this (at least it doesn't hold true for me). I _used_ to believe it, mostly because it seems to be common wisdom. But I've realized over time that I can just as easily read code that's written using K&R style braces, or BSD style, or even Whitesmiths, and it really doesn't matter to me whether indentation is 2, 4, or 8 spaces.

I think some of my point of view comes from being a heavy Emacs user and having written a lot of Lisp code in the past. I don't tend to _see_ braces/parens much for example - I let the editor take care of them.

<comment><USER10> I can easily read code that's written with 2, 4, or 8 space indentation. I can't read code that's written with 2, 4, or 8 space indentation _at the same time_.

The most important part about code conventions is that you have them. It really doesn't matter what they are. In fact, I wish fewer styleguides would pretend to be _right_ and more would just acknowledge that they're simply whatever the originator prefers. But it's still very important that everyone agrees to follow them, even if they disagree with some of the individual aspects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Unsurprisingly not too different from Perl Best Practices by Damian Conway (ref card: [http://refcards.com/docs/vromansj/perl-best- practices/refgui...](http://refcards.com/docs/vromansj/perl-best- practices/refguide.pdf)).

But one difference I noticed was the use of "cuddled" else in Crockford's list:

        } else {

instead of PBP's:

        }
        else {

Conway believes this is more readable and inline with K&R style (used in both conventions/practises).

</comment><comment><USER12>
      "Avoid lines longer than 80 characters."

This one really bugs me. 80 characters doesn't fit a whole lot of stuff. In a case where a line is more than 80 chars long I would rather see this:

      document.getElementsByClassName("externalLinkBig")[0].setAttribute("class", "externalLinkSmall");

than this rather ugly solution:

      document.getElementsByClassName("externalLinkBig")[0].setAttribute("class",
            "externalLinkSmall");

<comment><USER13> Personally, I find both examples from your post rather unreadable. I always chain method calls like this:

        document
            .getElementsByClassName("externalLinkBig")[0]
            .setAttribute("class", "externalLinkSmall");

<comment><USER14> That's ugly (IMHO) and not a good idea in js where semicolons are optional...

For all we know it may execute 'document' as a statement, and then the next lines.

Not nice IMHO

If you can fit 160 chars on the display, use 160.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Some of this contradicts jslint with "The Good Parts" options. It will complain about multiple var statements and missing space after function.</comment>


Ask HN: I'm director of engineering but don't like it. anyone else? - <AUTHOR> i'm director of engineering for a team of 20 engineers for a startup.<p>i'm good at it, but i don'treally like it anyone else? have tips? should I quit? <comment><USER2> I was Associate Director of Development and I quit. I wanted hands on keyboard again. I was tired of the endless meetings, politics and dealing with the client. I wanted to be a developer again. So I stepped down and went back to development. Best idea ever.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would help if you explained a little more about what parts you _don 't_ like and what parts you do enjoy if any. What aspects of your job brought you to posting online about it in the first place?

Without giving us any context at all, we can't help you.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you're not happy maybe re look into why. Is it someone on your team, the whole team, or just not what you expected at all? If you still enjoy what you do then you know you're not the problem. Is your team dry, you feel as if you are doing all the work?

</comment><comment><USER5> How long did you manage people? did you jump from contributor to director?</comment>


Cisco Sued By Chinese Political Prisoners Over 'Golden Shield' - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/fighting-chinas-golden-shield-cisco-sued-over-jailing-and-torture-of--dissidents-20110816-1ivkv.html

<comment><USER2> Kinda paints a rather troubling picture of one of the biggest tech companies in USA.

Also, Cisco intimidation tactics: [http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/cisco- resorting-i...](http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/cisco-resorting- intimidation-tactics)

A pound of flesh: how Cisco's "unmitigated gall" derailed one man's life:[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/a-pound- of-f...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/a-pound-of-flesh-how- ciscos-unmitigated-gall-derailed-one-mans-life.ars)

<comment><USER3> Every billion dollar company is capable of this and more. A billion dollars changes people. You can watch it play out year after year over a lifetime.

<comment><USER4> Warren Buffett too, despite the positive reception to his altruistic political suggestions by others on HN?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In a previous GFW internal disclosure, most of GFW devices are actually from Huawei and ZTE. GFW is a national defence project from the start, there was a Taiwanese spy intel leak that was successfully intercepted by GFW few years ago, which leads to decline of ISBase and rise of VenusTech. VenusTech is currently de facto operative company of GFW.

People of Fa1un Gong has tried to sue Cisco for years over Golden Shield project, which what they meant to sue is GFW. The funny thing is, GFW project has totally nothing to do with Golden Shield project. They are totally different projects run by different government divisions.

</comment><comment><USER6> How do these suits work? Presumably, Cisco has done nothing wrong in China and therefore isn't liable.

<comment><USER7> ATCA - [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Alien_Tort_St...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Alien_Tort_Statute)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> While this is definitely pretty crappy of Cisco to do, it also doesn't seem illegal. Working with the Chinese to block peoples' freedom isn't something the US legal system has any jurisdiction over. Cisco was simply turning profit on a very un-American project.

<comment><USER7> That's actually not true. See _ATCA_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Complicit = guilty

</comment><comment><USER10> Flagged for utterly inaccurate title!

They are being sued for creating free-speech blocking, and people tracking, technology.

Jailing and torture may have been done by the Chinese, but it has nothing to do with CISCO - not even indirectly.

Submitter did you even read your own article? Not even the people filing the suit are claiming that.

And I quote:

"They aren't just selling routers to a corrupt regime. They are selling the technology, training and software specifically designed to monitor, censor and suppress the Chinese people," said Mr Ward.

"And they are doing so knowing full well how the CCP treats dissenters."

<comment><AUTHOR> The title of the article is "Fighting China's Golden Shield: Cisco sued over jailing and torture of dissidents".

The HN submit tool wants < 80 characters, I figured that "Cisco sued over jailing and torture of dissidents" is more informative than "Fighting China's Golden Shield".

I've been warned before by pg about "editorialising in the title" so I reused the title of the article verbatim. If you have a problem with that, take it up with pg

<comment><USER10> The title is:

Cisco Sued By Chinese Political Prisoners Over 'Golden Shield'

It seems to have a second title though, but the first one is much more accurate.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've updated the title to be the title of the target page now, rather than the "headline" (I guess that's what you'd call it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Every time I read one of these anti-China articles, I secretly chuckle at how I've never once met a Chinese citizen who has felt oppressed, in China. The chuckling goes a step further when someone inevitably responds, "they just don't know they're being oppressed!" Yeah, there are a few cases that are less-than-acceptable by our standards, but what do these people expect, when they try to cause a Cultural Revolution 2.0?

Anyway, back on topic:

I can't imagine Cisco losing this case. They're competing in a market, and not _trying_ to torture people, or enable it. If they win, essentially any company providing supplies to China could be considered aiding in torture. Ridiculous.

<comment><USER12> _I've never once met a Chinese citizen who has felt oppressed_

Same could be said about NK.

<comment><USER13> That was probably true a decade ago, as North Koreans were effectively brainwashed. That's been changing, due to obsolete Chinese media devices getting smuggled across the border, which North Koreans buy on the blackmarket (along with other illegal stuff like, um, food). They share South Korean TV shows, and start to ask questions.

Chinese generally know what is going on in their country. They are often pretty blunt about not liking the government. But they don't generally feel oppressed, as the government only cracks down on stuff that's an existential threat to them. Try to overthrow them, and you will get oppressed. But otherwise, the government tends to be quite liberal.

OK, the government does hold huge amounts of land, which is an invisible kind of tax. They also have high taxes, on the people who pay tax. And low interest rates, and controls on banks lets them create other invisible taxes. There's also a big difference between the rules, and what is _regularly_ enforced, so people think they are very hands off, when they can be officious pricks at times. And criminals - drug dealers, thieves, etc. are punished very severely. But really, look at a street in China, and a street in the USA. See which one looks "freer".</comment></comment></comment>


40K Designers Taking The Lead With Webydo, Find Out Why - <AUTHOR> http://despreneur.com/40k-designers-taking-the-lead-with-webydo-find-out-why/

<comment><USER2> So Dreamweaver all over again?</comment>