Ask HN: When we will see the rest of the Snowden docs? - at-fates-hands It's been widely reported he took more than 50,000 docs. To my knowledge, only 400 documents to date have been released. Does anybody know when we might see the rest of the documents he's still in possession of? <comment><AUTHOR> Hasn't he talked about returning to the US? Releasing more (if he has them) probably would have to be considered, along with the wishes of his current hosts.

</comment><comment><USER2> I have a followup question: Was Snowden a villain?

I certainly was interested to learn what the NSA was doing, and very unhappy about the fouth amendment implications. But forget all that.

What specific publicly available info indicates he had nefarious intentions or was an agent of a hostile power?

<comment><USER3> Isn't he residing in Russia now?

A related follow-up question is: could his knowledge of our systems and processes somehow have helped Russians do the hacking prior to 2016 US elections? Not that they couldn't have done it without him but did he help in an indirect way?

<comment><USER4> > Isn't he residing in Russia now?

The only country that has demonstrated the ability to resist pressure to extradite people wanted by the US? Yes.

> ...could his knowledge of our systems and processes somehow have helped > Russians do the hacking prior to 2016 US elections?

bwahaha, so now he is involved in muh Russian collusion? The answer is yes, which is what makes your insinuation really funny - they did all the things he would have advised them not to do. So you could interpret that as evidence that he didn't provide them that information, and is therefore not a Russian spy.

<comment><USER5> > ...is therefore not a Russian spy. Hopefully you're right - lotta respect > for how eloquent and well-spoken that kid was given the enormity of the > pressures on him. As the years have passed, I'm a bit less sure about the > motivations however.

<comment><USER4> > As the years have passed, I'm a bit less sure about the motivations however.

If you've got evidence, or even a coherent rationale, that would cast doubt on his motives - I'd love to hear it. No, fleeing to the only country that would be out of the reach of a president who prosecuted more whistleblowers (and reporters) than every prior administration combined... that isn't evidence of Snowden being a Russian spy. That would be like insisting that a prisoner who accepts food from his captor is also expressing approval for his captivity.

BTW, looking back at all the articles about Obama's legacy in regard to whistleblowers, written after the election - darkly predicting that Trump will start jailing reporters because Obama had established the precedent... lol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Those documents are now a commercial asset. When the steady drip of Snowden stories stops making money for the media, everything left will be probably be dumped in a box and shelved somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER7> First off, the official narrative is that he passed them off to reporters.

Secondly, what in the releases in the intercept public releases specifically compels you to want to see more classified info?

I might suggest a military path if you want a strong chance to be in the intelligence community, then you can be privy to sensitive info that is need to know.

If you believe info should be free I respect your right to believe in that and the service members of our military also fight for your right to do so as well, while keeping classified info private.

<comment><USER4> > ...and the service members of our military also fight for your right to do > so as well, while keeping classified info private.

Combat vet reporting in: you have my permission to view the rest of the Snowden documents. While secrecy does have a role in operational security - taken too far it does much more harm than good. I'll never forget the news rolling in about the leak, and how vindicated many security folks (including myself) felt in regard to how insane the surveillance apparatus had become. It was hilarious watching them drip feed the leak, see the predictable government lie, then see the next leak proving that the government just lied.

<comment><USER7> Most people in the military I speak to absolutely have the opposite conviction. In fact all of the people with whom I've acquainted myself are against the Snowden leaks. Maybe it's geographical. I'm talking to people in my state only.

My take on the follow up leaks is that they were chosen to give the impression of a trail to something much more insidious, but were actually picked in some attempt to obtain maximum impact in embarrassing United States.

Also, why would you want classified info that's not related to domestic surveillance shenanigans leaked to the public? Everything that has been released since the initial revelations seems to be related to military operations. Maybe I'm missing something.

<comment><USER4> Most of the people I served with share my conviction. It likely has less to do with geography and more to do with experience and culture. I fought in Fallujah as a Marine infantry machinegunner, and did a bunch of S2 work as well. You know what good the NSA and CIA did us? None. I can't tell you the number of times we were sent of wild goose chases for Zarqawi by an intel echelon above battalion... So nothing Snowden leaked would have touched operations in the al-Anbar province. Manning on the other hand... he leaked fresh company level operation logs - which I certainly disagree with. It is a very strange experience to be able to go through wikileaks and find mission debriefs that I submitted over a decade ago.

> ...obtain maximum impact in embarrassing United States.

That only worked because the government repeatedly lied in an attempt to minimize the last leak, only to be proven a liar with the next leak. That wasn't the ultimate goal though, just a hilarious side effect. The ultimate goal was to dominate as many news cycles as possible, because the public has a limited attention span.

> Maybe I'm missing something.

You are. The NSA is so incredibly tilted toward offensive operations that it is ridiculous. They've so inundated themselves with surveillance data that they've got analysis paralysis and can't effectively use the data for its stated objective. It makes no sense for the US to dominate in offensive cyber operations, because we have no technological peer... unless the NSA is cool with industrial espionage. [0]

That effort should instead be redirected to defense, which is supposedly a mission of the NSA, because of the asymmetrical relationship between the difficulties in exploitation and hardening. Any banana republic can gather a team of hackers and electrical engineers, but it takes some serious resources to harden code and infrastructure. This is the reason why we stopped pursuing biological weapon development and shifted to an unmatched defensive posture.

[0] [https://theintercept.com/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans- use...](https://theintercept.com/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans-use-economic- espionage-benefit-american-corporations/)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for your insights. May I ask why you believe too much info is leading to analysis paralysis? Because of Binney or Snowden?

Also, I read the document just now that Snowden leaked related to the corporate espionage. What our IC was doing is nothing compared to the broad theft other cultures engage in without any moral concern as a matter of course in that culture. I find Snowden and Greenwald leaking such a document to be hugely offensive and anti-American. The intercept's analysis of some "subversion of society" is totally overblown. Such an underworld of spies is bound to be dirty and the general public doesn't know enough of the reality to understand that. I believe in the American way and disagree that we should not have an offensive cyber strategy as well, but agree about fortifying (and reinventing) our defenses. Offensive biological strategy is something different, not seeing the parallel.

As for your insights about Iraq I'll ask around. Good to get your info here.

<comment><USER8> You talk about the American way, I assume that means "form a more perfect Union", "promote the general Welfare", "secure the Blessings of Liberty", "establish Justice" you know all that good stuff thats in the American constitution.

But everything you have said in this thread has been the opposite, you encourage espionage without moral concern that's not Liberty. You see America as a cult not a country or culture, questioning its actions are not seen as trying to establish Justice but are instead hand waved as anti-american.

Earlier you talked about the leaks being embarrassing, maybe you should encourage your country to stop doing things which embarrass you and your country, instead you blame other people for talking about your embarrassing actions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> He's not in possession of anything. He handed over everything he had to journalists in Hong Kong.</comment>


Shanzhai Electric Car Revolution - <AUTHOR> http://sites.asiasociety.org/chinagreen/shanzhai-electric-cars/# <comment><USER2> only in China would a nickname like "Shanzhai" be acceptable :P</comment>


Facebook's e-mail debacle: One 'bug' fix, but rollback impossible - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57465433-93/facebooks-e-mail-debacle-one-bug-fix-but-rollback-impossible/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title <comment><USER2> Ouch. Talk about not thinking it through. Relating back to a common topic here, one of the things that distinguishes between senior engineers and not senior engineers in my experience is the ability to visualize both secondary and tertiary consequences of a particular change to the system. They stop and say "Ok, we change this, that means ..." and then walk forward past the change in their mind exploring the ramifications. In order to do that they have to have a broad understanding of the system involved from both a technical and operational perspective. They come back with "Oh if we do that then we'll get this effect and that would be bad, how can we prevent that from happening?" and if the answer was "We can't." then they spike the feature.

One of the most frustrating things for me as an engineer at Sun early on was bouncing some whiz bang idea off Bill Joy only to get one of his one line zinger 'but that breaks X' type replies. Always annoying but often right as he would take what was proposed, extrapolate two, three, or a half dozen steps and then point out the now 'obvious' flaw.

<comment><USER3> This.

The problem is not limited to engineering. I have often had to push back with product guys responding to feature requests from users to address edge cases.

The trouble with doing so in social networks is that the potential for the law of untended consequences to strike is much greater in it as it is nearly impossible to test for every permutation and combination available.

<comment><USER4> If, as described elsewhere, the overwriting is due to using a specific and common API, the only unintended consequence is user reaction. No need to test for every possibility there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quoting:

> Today Facebook also admitted that its API for contact sync on phone and > device apps was set -- on which devices and systems we're not told -- to > take an individual's most recently added e-mail address and overwrite their > correct contact e-mail in everyone's address books with the new e-mail.

and

>> Since Facebook changed the email addresses on contacts, I've actually lost every single one of my email addresses including those for work.

From this article it sounds like actual data loss occurred on some address books, where non-facebook.com email addresses were permanently deleted from contacts. For those people who don't have a backup of their address books, it might now be impossible to recover those lost email addresses.

Isn't this more worrisome than any issues around how Facebook handles incoming messages?

<comment><USER6> It is. Everything else seemed to me to be whining about how someone who saw you on Facebook will maybe not be able to contact you because your default mail is a Facebook one (but why would anyone contact you by mail if Facebook messages are better? They both a) show notifications on FB and b) send notification e-mails to your real address).

But this, this is real, and worrisome, and it has done real damage, and it will be damn hard if not impossible to reverse.

<comment><USER7> So Facebook messages are better because instead of getting your e-mail, you now have to jump through hoops to read it?

Got it.

<comment><USER6> Facebook messages are better when the person who wants to contact you _found you on Facebook_. They are better because they show in two places: your normal, original (not the Facebook one) mailbox AND in Facebook itself. So it is at least as good as sending an e-mail, and likely better.

<comment><USER7> If someone went looking for you on facebook, chances are they know how to simply click and message you.

If they're going the extra mile to copy and paste your e-mail address, chances are they want you to e-mail you, and not send you something through facebook.

Aside from the simple fact that not everyone has the same notification settings, it's already been shown that facebook has been losing people's e-mails. No notifications, no nothing, just gone.

[http://www.rluxemburg.com/2012/06/29/bad-facebook-email- scre...](http://www.rluxemburg.com/2012/06/29/bad-facebook-email-screwup/)

In no possible way is this better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sometimes it seems to me that FB doesn't have an impact assessment process. This is a very important data change you're making to 900-ish million records on a system that is inter-woven with and syncing to... everything. I understand bugs happening, but really, the cascade effect of this email change had to have been foreseen by someone... no? Bueller? Bueller?

I really don't mean to trash FB as a lot of good people work there. However... when I read about something like this, and then I see a company like Google figuring out a time smear function to seamlessly account for a leap second in their servers to avoid cascading system changes... it's hard to feel the two companies are functioning on the same level. (I know, a mis-balanced and irrelevant comparison, but it's just for a 'gut feeling' sense)

<comment><USER4> They knew what they were doing. Not having a complete rollback was intentional.

<comment><USER9> I believe Facebook is capable of doing sneaky things to advance their business goals, but Hanlon's razor [1] comes to mind here.

[1] <http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/h/HanlonsRazor.html>

<comment><USER4> I know what Hanlon's razor is, and I can guarantee you FB Engineering knows what a rollback is and how to know whether you need one or not. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that they're that stupid.

<comment><USER10> Would applying such a 'rollback' involve replacing facebook.com email addresses with the original external domain addresses in the contacts list on the devices affected by the write-over issue?

If so: Facebook have taken private data and placed it in a central location

If not: it isn't a rollback that I understand

Disclaimer: I'm not a programmer

<comment><USER4> Yes, a (hypothetical) "complete rollback" would involve replacing removed data. Sure, data privacy would be a concern, but it's beside the point that rolling this back would necessitate un-overwriting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> More good reasons to never:

a) Associate your phone number with your FB account.

b) Download the FB app.

The more you can keep Facebook sandboxed on your devices (and in your life) the better.

<comment><USER12> c) Associate your real email address with your FB account

Facebook gets an email address I don't use anywhere else. No one has me listed in their contacts under the only email address facebook knows for me (well, I presume. It's not hard to guess the address I use for facebook if you know my real address, but there's no good reason anyone but facebook would use it).

I've done that on general principle for more than a decade any time I have to give my email address to anyone other than an individual. This instance is the first time in a while where it's actually felt worthwhile. Originally I did it more for spam tracking. GMail's excellent spam filter fixed that problem for me years ago. But I never stopped doing it.

<comment><USER11> Indeed, I do the same.

And I'll also add: d) Never associate your real name with your FB account.

I use my first name plus a family name that matches my middle initial. It's generally recognizable and accepted by friends.

When I first set up my account this way (items A through D) it did seem a little "tinfoilly", and this last measure still does to some extent. But since Facebook doesn't actually let you delete your account, I'd rather err on the side of prudence. It will be nice to at least approximate a hole in their databases if their policies ever get too onerous.

<comment><USER13> I'll see your tinfoil and raise you. I've also poisoned their automatic facial recognition by tagging random faces as my own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can anyone point to a Facebook representative saying that rollback is impossible? (I don't care at all what the CNET author says.) It seems like they should just put everything back to the email address they had before it was auto-updated to @ facebook.com. Then their apps would put them back to what they were on people's phones.

Lastly, if they were truly going to fix the problem, they would pump through all the emails they got a chance to spy on, this time to the correct address, maybe with an attachment or sending the email as an attachment with their official apology.

Can't rollback the delay and that impacts a lot, but email is theoretically unreliable anyway. Hurry up guys and gals... show me someone at Facebook actually cares about the product (their users) they are selling to their customers (their advertisers).

<comment><USER8> A couple issues pop to mind. My understanding was that this update took a week(+?) to roll out and may still be in progress. It could take them awhile to even start to roll back. Then if you do roll back what do you do about all the people that have changed their settings in the meantime? They have updated their email addresses, perhaps with different ones, so do those get over- written with the old data in all cases? I'm sure it could be figured out but how timely it would be is questionable... not to mention that FB may still be trying to salvage the bump in use for @Facebook.com they were aiming for in the beginning.

<comment><USER14> I agree it's not a simple fix. Since they have everything stored, they could act as though the address had never been changed. (Primary email should be most recent non-auto-change. Email should be sent to value of primary email address [without auto-change] as configured when email arrived.)

This mistake/bug/zuck-style enhancement has had a colossal negative impact on many people. If Facebook tries to salvage anything from it then it's even more clearly time to walk away. I am not cheerleading for Facebook at all on this, I just want people's contacts back to normal and their emails delivered to where they want them. I think we agree this is possible, in fairly direct contradiction to the title of this article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Move fast and break things" should still require that you think through what you're doing. The problem seems to be that the complexity of Facebook's system is beyond the understanding of anyone who reviews these changes.

<comment><USER16> I'm pretty sure that FB knew exactly what they were doing. They did think things through and decided the the short term PR loss was worth the benefits of gaining access to the email of 90% of their user base.

<comment><USER17> Exactly. Users are stupid. Not because they cant read minds and find hidden features, but because they take it.

Its the same thing with things like internet censorship. Every one bleats on and on, and they just do it any way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Let's say 1% of all their users is fed up because of this and 0.1% actually closes their account. This leaves Zuckerberg with 98.9% control over e-mail traffic from 900+ million users. Well played, Zuck, well played.

<comment><USER19> Couldn't this be construed as an abuse of a monopoly(antitrust)? They have a monopoly on social networking(there are alternatives, but they are very very small in comparison) and they are leveraging that to expand massively in another sphere, namely as email providers.

</comment></comment><comment> grey-area The problem here is not one of competence or failure to think through implications. Facebook know exactly what they are doing, and you can be sure the potential implications of these changes were debated at length within the company at a high level. They were taken precisely because of their implications for non-technical users, not in spite of them - FB has replaced users contact details because they want Facebook to be the only way most people can contact others online.

Facebook have always wanted to replace the internet entirely with a system they control. Hence the walled garden approach with incessant prompts to signup to view content, the use of address book import to spread virally, the use of beacon to track and announce users activities, the use of like button js to track activity, the launch of Facebook apps and single sign-on to attempt to corral web developers within their ecosystem and make them dependent, the launch of a competitor to email/IM etc etc.

This latest move with email is simply the latest in a long line of moves consistently attempting to steer users into spending all of their online time within the confines of Facebook, it is entirely consistent with their past behaviour and we should expect similar moves in future.

So the arguments about how they could have done this differently, or whether Facebook has made some mistakes here are largely irrelevant - they will always push to own your data, email, photos, and digital life, because it's in their DNA, this is not a mistake, it's a pattern of behaviour - they can and will control your digital life if you choose to hand it over to them. Consider the quote from FB on the way their FB email works:

 _Regarding the "email loss" this may actually just be confusion around the Messages Inbox: By default, messages from friends or friends of friends go into your Inbox. Everything else goes to your Other folder._

All messages which do not come from FB contacts go into a folder which is effectively a junk folder - they want you to use their email for everything (hence the recent changes), they want your address book to contain nothing but FB contacts, they want you to forget email even existed, and they want you to encourage your friends to join FB so that you actually receive their messages. That won't work for all their users of course, but their hope is that they keep enough of the user base on board that they can dominate the internet and replace email with FB and the web with a network of sites where they control login and user info and all roads lead to FB.

So replacing email with FB mail wherever they can, hiding other contacts and trashing user address books is not a mistake, it's part of a broader strategy, one which is not in the best interests of their users, but which they hope most will go along with anyway.

<comment><USER20> I deleted the Facebook app from my phone a long time ago and I only use it from an incognito browser window. So that's how much I trust their reach. But I find it a little incredulous that Facebook, in their quest to control all their users's mail would deliberately overwrite email addresses in users' contact lists. It seems like the kind of dumb plan for world domination that only a caricature of an evil villain would execute.

<comment><USER14> How many times must the same type of thing occur before Hanlon's razor falls to Occam's? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I used to have an Android device, and let the thing sync my Facebook contacts into my phone. What I wound up with was a mix of people I'm actually friends with, and also a big collection on "Facebook friends" ... those people I'll never ever call, but knew from back-in-the-day and wanted to connect with on Facebook. I don't need them in my phone today because the extend of my correspondence with them will be what I consider "two-way read-only". They can look at my FB stuff. I can look at their FB stuff, but that's pretty much the extent of our relationship.

I'm on an iPhone now, and know that iOS6 will give users the same option ... to link your device w/ Facebook ... sucking in all your "FB friends". I won't be enabling that feature, and while the software apparently indicates you can disable this part of the connectivity, I'm reluctant to even link it for fear that it'll immediately hose my contacts in a way that requires me to manually clean out that kid I went to middle-school with many years ago.

</comment><comment><USER22> There were so many obvious problems with associating a @facebook with everyone's account. As soon as I heard the news, I thought.. hmm.. someone could easily scrape 1 million facebook usernames, and be able to send 1 million emails to all of them using their facebook email address.

And make it all uber-personal because they know their full name AND all their friend's names AND what they liked AND their hometown AND the college they went to, etc, etc,. That's a spammer's wet dream.

<comment><USER19> The @facebook was always there and could always have been used to reach a person's FB messages via email. Also, most of that other information would probably be marked as only available to friends or friends of friends. So you wouldn't be able to scrape it.

Don't get me wrong, this is a _horrible_ move by facebook, but spam isn't the reason why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Apple might be able to salvage the relationship with Facebook, but it's pretty clear that Facebook's relationship with users has hit the rocks."

I very much doubt that. Statistically no one will leave FBook over this.

<comment><USER24> >>> Statistically no one will leave FBook over this.

If that's really true, it's very unsettling. If this doesn't trip a significant number of users' "not worth it" detectors, what would?

<comment><USER25> Um. Hi. I use facebook, this pissed me off.

Then I changed my email address back to what I want it to be, and I have ceased caring. I will continue using facebook to coordinate bar meetups with my friends.

<comment><USER26> I think you kind of hit the nail on the head with your last sentence. You will continue to use the service for fairly meaningless tasks. It seems Facebook wants its users to use their service for more than that. So while this debacle may not make many people delete their accounts, Facebook may find its apparent goal more difficult to achieve going forward.

<comment><USER27> I hope this is true.

I've always had a very healthy mistrust of facebook, based on their past actions, and I never let facebook sync up with anything else I use (and I don't use services that only authenticate via facebook). They simply can't be trusted with anything important; not because they are incompetent, but because they have no moral compass that prevents them from screwing users over.

This is just one more reason for me to continue to silo facebook off into its own world, where it knows nothing about the rest of my life, particularly the really important stuff.

<comment><USER28> I agree. Facebook seems to have little concern about customer satisfaction. That is why I use Facebook minimally.

<comment><USER23> FBook cares very much about customer satisfaction. Those are the advertisers.

You're the product. You're inventory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've been using a great work around to the numerous Facebook issues, including the lack of meaningful interaction with Friends and Family; I use a combination of email, telephone and physical interaction to maintain and form social connections.

</comment><comment><USER30> So this whole debacle has taught me that I have an "Other" folder, which I never saw before, and it turns out I have 20+ messages from people from the past few months which I didn't know about!

I'm trying to find a way to get Facebook to send me an e-mail notification when I receive a message that goes into "Other", the same way it sends me an e-mail notification when I receive a message that goes into "Inbox".

But I can't find any option for this anywhere. Does anyone know? Otherwise, how am I ever supposed to know I have a message from someone on Facebook who I'm not already friends with?!

<comment><USER30> Wow, this is infuriating. According to _Slate_ :

 _So how can you make sure you find your lost laptop, appear on Israeli TV, and respond immediately to job offers? Unfortunately, the Facebook rep informed me, you can't change your settings to get email notifications for your Other messages, the way you can for your main messages. Your best bet: Make checking the Other tab part of your daily Facebook routine._

So since I never log into Facebook, but use it as a place to receive messages, which I find out about via e-mail... I am doomed to never find out about possibly important messages from people who are not already my Facebook friends.

This is possibly the worst design decision I've ever come across on the Internet. Facebook has created a black hole for messages. Even when you log into Facebook, it doesn't show a number next to "Other", so you can't even find out if you have messages there without navigating to the "Other" page.

I can't wrap my mind around how insanely stupid this is. WTF, Facebook?

<comment><USER31> Time to use selenium [1] to automate it and send you emails?

[1] : <http://seleniumhq.org/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "Facebook is indeed intercepting messages -- the e-mail is clearly passing through Facebook's servers, but this seems to be where it stays, as neither sender nor receiver are getting a copy."

Is this really appropriate use of the word "intercepting"? Typically intercepting carries a negative meaning -- like "the FBI is intercepting my postal mail and opening it before it reaches me". However, with their use of the word, every email I send is "intercepted" by multiple servers before it reaches its destination....

<comment><USER14> Facebook is intercepting messages by replacing the destination address (which email clients often do not readily display [opting instead for full names, even photos, etc.]), and now claims to have done so inadvertently. Multiple servers relay messages before they reach their intended destination, yes, but that is by design.

To continue stretching your analogy, I could claim that the post office x-ray/bomb scanners are 'intercepting' mail sent to me when in fact it is an understood part of the process to anyone who cares enough to research how things work. Someone moving my mailbox [edit: filling out a 'change of address'] and photocopying everything sent there is pretty clearly a reasonable use of the word 'intercepting'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I can't stop my @facebook.com address from appearing on my timeline. The option shows up but clicking on it does nothing. Similarly, I can't make my @gmail.com address show up on my timeline. The mouse listener is also missing.

</comment><comment><USER34> "Since Facebook changed the email addresses on contacts, I've actually lost every single one of my email addresses including those for work." -Complaint from iOS 6 user

My suggestion, don't use the very first beta release of a operating system on anything important. Digital darwinism at work there.

<comment><USER7> What about all the Android and Blackberry users who had their addresses replaced?

What's the lesson there?

<comment><USER34> Oh that is Facebook screwing up. I'm not trying to pardon that. I just hate people who complain about stuff when they take a well defined risk and it backfires on them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Given FB is already having a hard time generating revenue from mobile clients, doing things that make mobile users afraid to use their service seems like a really bad idea.

<comment><USER36> Well, given that they can't monetize mobile usage and they can monetize desktop usage (if somewhat poorly), technically driving users back to desktop usage from mobile would be good for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm still confused. Did the address book trashing affect only iOS 6 beta users?

<comment><USER7> It affected anyone on Android and Blackberry using contact sync, IOS6, and Windows Phone 8

<http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18687044>

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Now what happens if other sites and apps do the same? Will our address books change every day and contacts fill up with dozens of unused email addresses? Many of Facebook's growth techniques have been imitated by other startups so going into the territory of manipulating data that has always been off-limits is a big step. If another social site uses those techniques against to manipulate data on Facebook profiles, will Facebook change it's mind?

</comment><comment><USER39> i uninstalled FB app about 8 months ago, never used sync on it anyways since i use FB more like a glorified twitter. been using mobile site since then (which is quite good), posting photos by sending an email to a special status address. so much more privacy. if they ever get rid of the mobile site to force me to install the app, byebye facebook on mobile.

</comment><comment><USER40> I like FB so I won't be doing one of those "hey everyone, look at me I'm quitting FB" acts. But I highly recommend that you don't put FB on your phone...it's amazing how even a five second glance to check for new notifications will ruin your train of thought. And also, not having it mess up your phone account is nice

</comment><comment><USER41> There is the product life-cycle which has the phases: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.

The point is that facebook needs to understand that "Move fast, and break things" is an appropriate approach in the earlier phases, but it is quite incompatible with later phases, when people start to rely on a service.

</comment><comment><USER42> Why don't FB openly admit their mistake on their engineering blogs? At least they can salvage already messy situation

<comment><USER43> They don't see it as a mistake.

<comment><USER4> Or a mess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Of course, they do thoroughly test their new ad options, limiting them to region first, then measuring impact.

</comment><comment><USER45> Why anyone would delegate handling of their address book to Facebook is beyond me.

</comment><comment><USER46> this is why i have never sync'ed to fb or hotmail.

</comment><comment><USER47> If lawyers are reading this, a question:

Our governments are treating our emails more and more like real mail (aka. letters).

Is there not a law prohibiting third party people or companies to mess with(fake) my mail addresses?

Fact is, I do not want a facebook email address. And I have given no consent for my email address to be changed.

<comment><USER4> It's more like someone sending a change-of-address card to the post office to have your mail delivered to their Mailboxes Etc. store.

<comment><USER48> That's actually a really good analogy. And the GP is right. There should definitely be some laws to prohibit these kinds of things that Facebook is attempting (doing), now that electronic mail/communication is becoming standard.

<comment><USER4> As a matter of fact, the (US) Postal Inspector considers this to be Identity Theft.

<comment><USER48> Interesting. I wonder why no legal action has been taken against Facebook for this recent fiasco... or has there?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Bankers Own the Earth - <AUTHOR> http://libertytree.ca/quotes/Josiah.Stamp.Quote.69BB <comment><AUTHOR> "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws." [1]

[1] [http://libertytree.ca/quotes/Mayer.Amschel.Rothschild.Quote....](http://libertytree.ca/quotes/Mayer.Amschel.Rothschild.Quote.8BED)</comment>


School Board Wants Civil Disorder De-Emphasized; Students Walk Out - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2014/10/03/353327302/school-board-wants-civil-disorder-deemphasized-students-walk-out

<comment><AUTHOR> Thought this was relevant in the face of the Hong Kong protests: [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/01/joshua-wong- tee...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/01/joshua-wong-teenager- public-face-hong-kong-protests)</comment>


The Linear Algebra Mapping Problem - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.09421 <comment><USER2> Whether you want a language to do this or not is a fundamental matter of design philosophy. I would be quite unhappy if a language changed multiplication by the inverse of a matrix into backslash without my permission: that is not the computation I told you to do. In a language that did that automatically, how would you check the difference in the result between using the inverse and using backslash? You would try to compare them and conclude that they produce identical results, because the system had surreptitiously changed both computations to do the same thing behind your back. Then you'd get user reports about this and have to add a way to opt out of the optimization when it wasn't wanted. And of course that's not the only time you want to suppress an optimization like this—sometimes it will give incorrect results. Optimizations should either be truly indistinguishable from the correct answer or be opt-in.

In Julia we take a very different approach: make it as easy and convenient as possible to ask for the efficient version, but not automatic. For example, you can wrap a matrix that you know to be symmetric in the `Symmetric` wrapper type and leave the rest of the code the same and dispatch will call specialized BLAS and LAPACK routines for symmetric matrices. This approach had been designed by people who live and breathe numerical linear algebra and it allows them to write the naive version of an algorithm, and then tweak it to use the most efficient available kernels with minimal effort and without fundamentally changing the shape of their code.

What that means for the evaluation in this paper is that while the naive code may not do the fastest, cleverest thing, a very small variation on the naive code will do the fastest thing, using optimized kernels. You ask for this explicitly, but it's easy and convenient to ask for. We've found this to be a very pragmatic and effective approach. It keeps optimization explicit but easy.

It would be an easy layer on top of that to add a code analyzer to look for patterns that might be possible to optimize further, but that seems like a problem that is better suited for tooling like a linter than being baked into the language itself.

<comment><USER3> The paper also talks about reordering matrix multiplications by automatically adding parentheses (despite the fact that floating point multiplication is non-associative).

Is there a way to achieve this in Julia? If not what syntax might you introduce to do it? You can't really annotate just the matrices or multiplication operators since you are optimizing a whole expression.

<comment> photon-torpedo Matrix chain multiplication can be seen a special case of tensor contraction, and the [https://github.com/Jutho/TensorOperations.jl](https://github.com/Jutho/TensorOperations.jl) package has an implementation which tries to optimize the contraction order (macro @tensoropt).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The follow-up paper should include the deep learning and linear algebra compilers:

\- Halide

\- Tiramisu

\- Ngraph

\- Weld

\- PyTorch JIT & PyTorch Glow and Tensor Comprehensions

\- TVM

\- Futhark

\- A toy MLIR language build on the linalg dialect. I'm sure Google would love to help them.

to name the main ones.

Everyone is moving towards a compiler approach.

I'm actively researching the domain and I think Halide is the most promising: by separating the algorithm from the schedule you can leave the algorithm side to the researchers and optimization is done by HPC devs or automated methods without having to rewrite in C/Fortran.

Much more attempts in the past:

\- [https://github.com/mratsim/Arraymancer/issues/347#issuecomme...](https://github.com/mratsim/Arraymancer/issues/347#issuecomment-459351890)

\- My own domain specific language and compiler: [https://github.com/numforge/laser/tree/master/laser/lux_comp...](https://github.com/numforge/laser/tree/master/laser/lux_compiler/core)

      there are a low_level_design_considerations.md and challenges.md that should be interesting as well.

Unfortunately I didn't go beyond the proof of concept as I need to revamp the Nim multithreading runtime to improve composition of parallel linear algebra kernels.

One thing for sure is that OpenMP is today something that needs to be workaround due to it's lack of composability and GCC implementation is a contention point due to using a single queue protected by a lock. While traditional linear algebra algorithms can deal with static distribution and no load balancing, some algorithms would hugely benefits from a more flexible task system, for example Beam Search.

<comment><USER5> How viable do you think SPIR-V is for computation? I am thinking of researching (that is, creating my own) DSLs targeting SPIR-V.

<comment><USER4> Good question.

I can't find a single SPIR-V AXPY (a*X+y) example which is the Hello World of linear algebra in Vulkan/SPIR-V so I'm not optimistic on ease of use.

You can probably do texture hacks like what people did in 2006 when they realized that GPU were fast for linear algebra and OpenCL/Cuda did not exist ([https://igoro.com/archive/how-gpu-came-to-be-used-for- genera...](https://igoro.com/archive/how-gpu-came-to-be-used-for-general- computation/))

The best would probably be to follow this Halide issue and the corresponding branches: [https://github.com/halide/Halide/issues/2296](https://github.com/halide/Halide/issues/2296). Note that Halide is a compiler so it automates lots of the boilerplate that is probably needed to Vulkan for compute compared to Cuda.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks like "you cannot automate every decision", which is rather true and a very relevant problem imho: I teach at a school of Engineering and it looks like everything now boils down to "let the computer do it".

<comment><USER7> > you cannot automate every decision

Disturbingly too many people don't seem to recognize the difference between letting the computer do something they don't have time to do and trusting the computer to do something they don't understand.

<comment><USER8> I think that people think that they are doing the former when they do the latter: "I don't have time to understand this technique, so I'll let the computer understand it for me."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Numpy was quite difficult to get working efficiently. J actually outperformed numpy pretty much any way I compiled it: [https://github.com/vmchale/matrix- benchmarks](https://github.com/vmchale/matrix-benchmarks), even doing basic stuff like multiplying two matrices.

</comment><comment> ur-whale Looks to me like the age-old standard problem of using higher abstractions and expecting the machinery underneath to be smart enough to deploy it optimally to the underlying hardware.

For similar instances of the same story, see: compilers, java, haskell, cuda, etc...

News at 10: you always pay a performance price when you use high level abstractions, aka you can't have your lunch and eat it too.

<comment><USER10> Theoretically you are correct, but taking the skills of the user into account, I think the very opposite is true. In practice, hardly anyone has the skills to actually implement anything with high performance anymore (especially in numerics) and it is thus (in most cases ) more performant to simply stick to stuff like numpy.

In most cases, "working code, fast" is more important than "fast working code".

<comment><USER7> > "working code, fast" is more important than "fast working code"

That depends on who you ask. If you ask the people who are managing the schedules, whose job reviews and bonuses are tied to meeting a specific date? Yes, absolutely, performance is a "nice to have" as long as the dates don't "slip". Now ask the users, and the number one complaint I hear most often is "why is this thing so damned slow?"

<comment><USER10> > Now ask the users, and the number one complaint I hear most often is "why is > this thing so damned slow?"

Good point. My viewpoint is rather focused on numerical linear algebra, since I worked there and the article is about it. If you skim through the paper mentioned, in the article you can e.g. compare numpy and armadillo. You will see that the speedups from using a (arguably) much more complex C++ framework instead of numpy are marginal and will not be visible for the user. The increased production/maintenance costs due to a more complex code, will be visible for the user.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Ruby APIs. Which gems/frameworks are you using nowadays? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious to know which gems/frameworks do you use to build your Ruby APIs nowadays.
Is Grape or Sinatra still a good choice?
Is there something new on the market for this purpose? If I want to start on this field, which path - most in-demand framework - do you guys recommend to start with?
Best, <comment><USER2> These are still a great option if you want a concisely written and highly customized program. I think there's a reason we dont see such a big framework as rails gaining popularity in the node world and thats because people don't want their code hidden behind a big boilerplate. That being said rails is still the best ruby framework for an organization looking for something "safe" and generic.</comment>


Review this startup - Gift Certificate Factory - <AUTHOR> http://www.giftcertificatefactory.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw this, and though I have no connection to the company I thought I'd see what you all thought. Well, sometimes it's nice to be nice!</comment>


The Remixing Dilemma: The Trade-off Between Generativity and Originality - <AUTHOR> http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/the-remixing-dilemma <comment><USER2> I used to work on a Mozilla Webmaker project for "remixable web games", so, similar to Scratch. Your first point that more polished projects would be less remixable is spot-on, and the primary reason we stopped working on the project.

The more polished we made a game, the less there was left for anyone to add onto it. Meanwhile, our low-fidelity game prototypes had far more user activity. We wanted to make high-quality & highly-remixable games, but we never suspected those goals would conflict with each other so much.</comment>


Show HN: MathHarbor's private beta, and our next iteration. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mathharbor.com/post/67047324274/salut-le-monde

<comment><USER2> This is great, looking forward for the alpha release.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Do sign up here - regular updates..plus fringe benefits :)

[http://eepurl.com/FCLgr](http://eepurl.com/FCLgr)</comment></comment>


Linux News #3, with an interview with Linus Torvalds (1992) - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1xjpys/linux_news_issue_3_with_an_interview_with_linus/

<comment><USER2> Why would you link to another link instead of just linking to the article?

The article: [http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/ldpResearch/ldp- historic/L...](http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/ldpResearch/ldp- historic/LinuxNews.03A)

<comment><AUTHOR> Arf, sorry. I copy-pasted the wrong thing. Mea maxima culpa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This had me chuckling quite a bit :-)</comment>


The Command Line - The Best Newbie Interface? - <AUTHOR> http://www.osnews.com/story/6282

<comment><USER2> No. Not in a million years.

Anything that requires typing obscenely cryptic commands in the right order and getting very variable-quality feedback about the results is not user friendly by any definiton let alone newbie friendly. Just because you and I know how to hack the command line doesn't make it easy or good and we shouldn't kid ourselves.

<comment><USER3> Commands don't need to be obscenely cryptic and if they get too long you can easily teach autocompletion. If you have basic verbal skills, then you know stuff like context, so there should be no problem with the "variable feedback". I used DOS when I was 5 - learning to create text files, run programs, navigate the file system wasn't hard at all. My mom explained to me those things only once or twice. I certainly didn't need to "hack" anything in any sense of the word.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So it goes something like this then: Aunt Tilie wants to go outside so she goes to her desk and writes on a sheet of paper door open then presents it to the door which responds with a paper that says how do I know it is you aunt Tilie some one could have crawled in the window last night. To which she hands the door another sheet of paper with her password.

Riiight. She approaches the door pannel and visually identifies the door's current state and manipulates objects on that panel until it is in the appropriate state then she can open the door.</comment>


Why we sold to GM - <AUTHOR> http://www.side.cr/why-we-sold-to-gm/ <comment><USER2> I remember meeting these guys ~3yrs ago. Ridesharing was new, no one anywhere had heard of Uber. Guess it just goes to show, it doesn't always matter who is first.</comment>


All Internal States Of Erlang/OTP Random Module Are Practically Computable - <AUTHOR> http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2014-December/082254.html

<comment><USER2> In case anyone's concerned, Erlang's _random_ module is not meant to be used for cryptographic purposes.

Quoting from a follow-up msg [0] by Anthony Ramine in that thread:

 _The Erlang documentation says:

> It should be noted that this random number generator is not > cryptographically strong. If a strong cryptographic random number generator > is needed for example crypto:rand_bytes/1 could be used instead.

I am not sure I understand the alarming tone._

(Here's the Erlang docs page for the random module being referred to: [1]).

And, for a really comprehensive (and thus a bit long) look at random-number generation and Erlang, the next msg after in the thread [2], by Jesper Louis Andersen is worth reading.

[0] [http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang- questions/2014-December/0...](http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang- questions/2014-December/082260.html)

[1] [http://erlang.org/doc/man/random.html](http://erlang.org/doc/man/random.html)

[2] [http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang- questions/2014-December/0...](http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang- questions/2014-December/082262.html)</comment>


Amazon is constantly trying new things - <AUTHOR> https://teleread.org/2017/09/26/the-secret-to-amazons-success-its-constantly-trying-new-things/ <comment><USER2> This was perfectly exemplified by a statement at their new product announcement today:

> "Fire tv has been a surprising success for us"

[https://twitter.com/fmanjoo/status/913105004369666048](https://twitter.com/fmanjoo/status/913105004369666048)

</comment><comment><USER3> Having the ability to throw enormous amounts of human and monetary capital into many different projects simultaneously, plus top notch technical talent, certainly helps.

<comment><USER4> There are plenty of companies out there who have the same resources, but are nowhere close in terms of results.

<comment><USER5> It's almost as if success is not purely a function of talent and capital. Who knew?

<comment><USER6> No offense to you, but I am getting really tired of luck-driven nihilism.

Survivorship bias doesn't mean everything is hopeless, it is just a reality you should hedge for.

<comment><USER7> I didn't interpret the comment as meaning luck driven. I thought it meant that execution and being prolific can also be factors, in addition to talent and capital. Samsung seemed to learn a lot by trying lots of form factors and seeing which ones sell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article claims the secret to success is "trying new things." That's misleading because it implies that AMZN management doesn't have a strategic plan.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is my first ever comment on Hacker News after reading it for years... Inspiring article. This is one of the tenets I've built my 'career' on. For me, constantly trying new things is not only a necessity in business, it's something I can't live without in life, because it's so exciting. It's utterly possible to 'Fail Upwards' and you can do what Amazon does, with very little resources too. I bring many ideas to life, a huge proportion of them don't make tons of money, but that's mostly not my metric of success. Living a life less ordinary and being creatively fulfilled are some of my primary drivers. I encourage anyone to try more of their ideas - and if you're interested, my books and speeches cover this area of 'constant innovation' too - just Google 'Shed Simove'. Post over. Cherry popped. Xxx</comment>


YouTube privacy mirror Hooktube can't mirror any more – forced to embed - <AUTHOR> https://hooktube.com <comment><AUTHOR> Quoting from site Changelog

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

rest in pieces

It was a good run, 1.5 years. Started as a quickly made addition to the norbot project, and within long the server had to be upgraded several times. Of course YouTube Legal was an inevitability at that point.

Special thanks to the many people who created plugins and extensions for hooktube, /g/, the five people who donated anonymously, and BitChute for working hard on a real YouTube alternative. See you in the next project.

July 16: YouTube api features are back but mp4 <video> is replaced with the standard YT video embed. HookTube is now effectively just a light-weight version of youtube and useless to the 90% of you primarily concerned with denying Google data and seeing videos blocked by your governments.

July 11: HookTube no longer uses YouTube api for anything, and most features (channel page, search, related videos, etc) are gone. No choice.

June 25: Cyrillic unbanned from search, for now.

November 16: Front page a lot faster. Theater mode button.

... Etc...

</comment><comment><USER2> anyone knows details about the threats?

<comment><AUTHOR> From what I make out of their changelog, it's simply Youtube messing with their API, which hooktube depended on to get raw video files. From the public's view, it's viewing without the tracking, but from Youtube's, it's leeching without the revenue. At least I think that's what's going on.</comment></comment>


The World's Greatest Collection of Live Music - <AUTHOR> http://www.musicvault.com/

<comment><USER2> Here's a list of all the videos on the site currently:

[https://gist.github.com/d67c247c8c66399888f7](https://gist.github.com/d67c247c8c66399888f7)</comment>


Google App Engine community support is moving to Stack Overflow - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/google-appengine/Z6XN_64cA7w

<comment><USER2> They would probably never say this publicly but I will speculate...

The move is meant to move those(the majority) who would rather send an email off rather than do their own research, or read the docs, to a more appropriate forum.

And google employees can beef up their SO reps for answering the same questions over and over again. There's no incentive in answering most of those kinds of questions on a mailing list. And email is easy to ignore.

</comment><comment><USER3> How is this news? It's been announced March 23rd.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!searchin/google...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!searchin/google- appengine/stack$20overflow/google-appengine/aG1R_Kzj8jA/GVCveoYAF-wJ)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Google group thread is ugly, code is not highlighted. This move will make life easier.

<comment><USER4> Groups has code highlighting but you have to use the web interface.

[https://support.google.com/groups/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...](https://support.google.com/groups/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1050526)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah ok, now StackOverflow is trend/standard of Q&A. We know how to use it and don't want spend few minutes to know how to highlight code or upvote post on google groups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google is doing the same for Chrome extension development ([http://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/group/chromium- exten...](http://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/group/chromium- extensions/browse_thread/thread/94dc6552a173f2da?pli=1)).

</comment><comment><USER6> Does this move by any chance mean that Google is slowly giving up on Google Groups?

<comment><USER7> No, it's users giving up using forums for Q&A.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> even before they made the switch official the AppEngine devs were active SO users and the site had become an unofficial knowledge base for the product.

</comment><comment><USER9> If Google buys SO it will suck.

</comment><comment><USER10> Google beat by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky of Stack overflow in community support? I believe it, Stack overflow is the news.ycombinator of community programming help.

I've been listening to Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood's podcasts and frankly, they are the best podcast I've ever listened to. Insightful, funny, creative, enlightening. I've burned the mp3's to CD's for easy listening in the car. All programmers should listen to all of these.

<http://blog.stackoverflow.com/category/podcasts/>

<comment><USER11> My only complain is the episodes are too long for my commute.

I catch their podcast via the IT Conversations aggregator: <http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/>

Very worth listening (and easy to subscribe)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Again?!

</comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like they are going directly into the StackOverflow database.

If not, Google should reconsider. A lot of people got screwed when StackExchange dropped support for custom "stack exchanges" a few years ago.

<comment><USER13> There are still custom, thematic stack exchanges.

<comment><USER14> Based on their own judgement on what is popular or not, in the "community".

<comment><USER14> I am pretty sure this is a correct and relevant factual statement. Yet someone with more privileges than me voted it down. Am not impressed.

<comment><USER15> Your statement is mostly incorrect, the metric they use to evaluate the performance of a site is clearly indicated on Area51 and you can see the progress (or decline) on the proposal page of each website.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is Kickstarter covering up a scam? An open letter to CEO Yancey Strickler - <AUTHOR> http://joanielemercier.com/is_kickstarter_covering_up_a_scam/ <comment><USER2> I was surprised to learn that the familiar "Kickstarter Staff Pick" badge can be used by any project and is sometimes an outright lie. That's ridiculously deceptive.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand how that isn't a huge trademark issue for kickstarter, since american trademarks are on the base of "protect it or lose it".

Edit:

To make it clear, here are some quotes from [http://www.inta.org/TrademarkBasics/FactSheets/Pages/LossofT...](http://www.inta.org/TrademarkBasics/FactSheets/Pages/LossofTrademarkRightsFactSheet.aspx) :

"it is possible to lose rights in a mark by allowing third parties to use the mark without controlling how it is used. This can include _failing to control the nature and quality of the goods_ and/or services offered under the mark by the third party."

"improper use by a _trademark owner_ or third parties also may result in the loss of trademark rights. A trademark should _not_ be used in a manner that _strips its significance as an indicator of the source_ of goods and/or services."

(emphasis mine)

<comment><USER4> You can only use it within the context of kickstarter projects. You can't use it if your crowdfunded project is not on kickstarter.

<comment><USER5> I know someone who is currently running a Kickstarter and who is also a 'Staff Pick.'

As far as I understand, some (not all) campaigns receive an email at some point to congratulate them on being named a 'Staff Pick.' The email isn't 100% clear as to what being named a SP means. KS actually discourages the campaigns from putting up a badge, but many of the projects do anyway.

There is little to no policing. So, my guess is that some projects use the badge regardless of whether or not they're a SP.

Personally, I think they should formalize the process and bop the heads of those that are misrepresenting themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those who don't know Joanie Lemercier, he is a famous artist that have been working with unusual displays,projections and hollograms for the last 15 years. I think he should be taken very seriously by anybody who is willing to pay for Holus.

493 backers have paid 600$ in average for something they might not expect. If you have a friend that backed that project, at least make him read the article. If he still want to spend money on this so be it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think what we're seeing here is that well-funded projects get a "most favoured nation" pass to flout the already weak oversight that Kickstarter exercises.

A true indie shop running a crowd-funding campaign has very little money to buy marketing and PR, so they're essentially consuming Kickstarter's brand and traffic.

Whereas, some of these new-breed well-heeled campaigns spend more money on marketing than the campaign is designed to raise. These campaigns are not consuming Kickstarter's traffic and brand, they're contributing to it.

And whatever we might think of using words like "hologram" for this magic pixie-dust product, the odds are reasonable that _something_ will ship to the backers, so Kickstarter's reputation is less likely to be tarnished by a VC- backed campaign than by a truly independent project where they don't have the budget to hire an experienced team.

So from Kickstarter's perspective, well-funded "crowd-funding" campaigns that are actually marketing stunts is very good business, and I predict they are going to shift more and more of their emphasis this way, just as consumer- facing companies often gradually shift to becoming enterprise-facing companies.

As a prospective backer, this is far less attractive to me, so I am not advocating for this shift. But I do believe it is happening, and I believe that this explains why Kickstarter seem to have done little more than send an email saying, "Hey, bro, cut out the CGI, this gadfly is turning into an embarrassment for both of us. And good job, please bring us more campaigns, we love doing business with you."

p.s. I'm curious as hell about their pricing model. I wonder if VCs can secretly negotiate lower fees than indies.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd suggest that unfortunately the incentives for sites like Kickstarter/Indiegogo/GoFundMe etc are to get as many projects successfully funded as possible that that predicates against rigorous scrutiny of them and exclusion of dubious projects.

There have now been quite a few examples of crowd-funded projects that just haven't delivered and never will (Eyez was a good early example [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zioneyez/eyeztm-by- zion...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zioneyez/eyeztm-by-zioneyez-hd- video-recording-glasses-for) $343,000 taken in with nothing to show for it)

<comment><USER9> To be fair, Kickstarter et al. are not shops. We had this discussion many times over the year, the point of crowdfunding was to invest in potentially interesting ideas, and not to have a preordering venue. So the risk of a project not delivering was always there, a part of the game. But when Kickstarter was busy explaining people they're not a preorder store, startups and VCs figured out that crowdfunding is an excellent marketing channel, so I don't know if anyone is sure what the whole concept is supposed to be anymore.

EDIT: to commenters responding - fair enough. There's no equity so technically it's not investing. Maybe "patronage" is a better word.

<comment><USER10> > Kickstarter et al. are not shops. [...] the point of crowdfunding was to > invest in potentially interesting ideas, and not to have a preordering venue

A purchase is when I give you money in exchange for a product. You're right, this isn't exactly Kickstarter's business model. However, an investment is when I give you money in exchange for an equity stake. This certainly isn't Kickstarter's business model.

If you give a Kickstarter money, you might get a product; you won't get any equity. Whatever that makes it, it's more a shop than it is an investment platform.

<comment><USER11> > If you give a Kickstarter money, you might get a product; you won't get any > equity. Whatever that makes it, it's more a shop than it is an investment > platform.

Its a donation platform with _the possibility_ of receiving something for your donation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The device proper appears to have some major flaws - [https://vimeo.com/133052667](https://vimeo.com/133052667).

It is deceptive at 3m in that video the co-founder says "we try to bring this holographic experience to families" \- weasel words for sure. The word experience is there in anticipation of a future claim of fraud. He continues saying "most of the holographic displays and similar device, products, are focussed on [...]".

At 4:02 you can see that the system uses 4 separate images projected and is not 3D holography. In views on an angle you can see the image doesn't wrap (eg 2:51).

Flaws to my mind include the massive opaque bezel and the poor viewing position - all viewers need to be the same height. In the other use videos you can see people craning to sit at the same height as the device - seems adults and children or different height people of any age would struggle to use this together. Also you can't view from above.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm still very confused about the staff pick badge… Is there anyone here that ran a campaign that could confirm?

There are numerous articles dedicated to maximize one's chances to be a staff pick, and numerous advantages like being in the newsletter, promoted on their social network accounts, etc.

That would mean that there really is a staff pick category with hand-picked projects, but that the badge itself can be added by any campaign. Is this really true? I need more evidence, it doesn't seem reasonable.

edit: found some more info about it from a campaigner [http://stonemaiergames.com/kickstarter-lesson-140-the- kickst...](http://stonemaiergames.com/kickstarter-lesson-140-the-kickstarter- staff-pick/). It does seem that being a staff pick means that _one_ staff member flagged the project, and the badge icon usage is largely unrelated.

<comment><USER7> What we know to be the case is this:

Kickstarter does feature some campaigns as its staff picks, Kickstarter does notify campaigns when Kickstarter selects them as a staff pick, but Kickstarter will not admit that this particular project is abusing the staff pick appellation, and Kickstarter is refusing to say anything that could be interpreted as agreeing that this campaign engaged in unethical behaviour.

My personal conclusion is this:

This project gets a free pass. There is no evidence that any arbitrary project can give itself the badge and not get censured by Kickstarter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This story had 7 points and was #3 on HN 7 minutes ago, then it dropped 20 spots. Are people flagging it?

Anyway, the Kickstarter project looks impressive. There's an entire company built around it? If it's a fraud, it ends at 8am EST.

<comment><USER15> It'd look that way, but perhaps Kickstarter incurs a penalty automatically? Or maybe it's the crappy headline which sounds clickbaity. Maybe the author should have used something solid, like "Kickstarter is promoting scam company with fake holograph".

The video they have looks like it could have cost a fair bit of coin itself. And they claim to have a CFO, CTO, and CEO, already? Their "Our Story" page [1] says they've been around a couple years and have 20 people. So a $250K campaign gets them what, another 6 weeks' runway? It's gotta be for the press value.

1: [http://www.hplustech.com/our-story/](http://www.hplustech.com/our-story/)

<comment><USER16> I believe the product to be actually real, and that it _will_ ship to the customers. So in that sense, the project is not a scam, the users will get something out of it. You can see people playing with the device in their Vimeo: [https://vimeo.com/132837598](https://vimeo.com/132837598) I would be willing to bet the price paid is actually a reasonable price for all the custom-made components that the device is made of.

On the other hand, the product if far from something I'd call an holographic display, so it's in a bit of a gray area for a Kickstarter, especially since they CGI'd the first trailer with faked 3D views.

<comment><USER17> > I believe the product to be actually real, and that it will ship to the > customers.

I have no doubt that a bunch of people are going to get 4 inclined triangles and a screen. I have some seaweed, which cures cancer, that the backers might be interested in too.

<comment><USER12> FWIW your claim "I have some seaweed, which cures cancer" is illegal in the UK.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Act_1939](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Act_1939)

<comment><USER17> That's extremely awesome. So many desperate people get caught out by claims like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wouldn't have much hope that its going to be addressed. I've been following another kickstarter scam, [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/181239886/jaesa/descrip...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/181239886/jaesa/description), promising legitimate AI far better than anything that actually exists that appears to be little more than ELIZA plus ads. Its had over 50k USD in funding and is 9 days away from its one year funding anniversery. Obviosly, no real progress towards an AI has been made but the group has managed to keep the scam, recently having claimed to be acquired by on of their backers who is in talks with multiple investors for funding " to the level of a global competitor".

Another example was the Goblins Comics board game, which featured the web comic writer teaming up with a supposed board game maker who than ran away with the money, scamming the board game maker and the comic writer. See more at the second to last post here on the writers continued attempts to help his backers despite being scammed by the board game maker: [http://www.goblinscomic.org/the-blog/](http://www.goblinscomic.org/the-blog/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Sorry, but I can't help but chuckle. The low-information populous just spent $600 a pop on this thing because the pictures were pretty? Good for them. I hope they enjoy their angled pyramidal screen. Someone probably shared it on facebook, their friends clicked it, looked at the pictures and clicked to back them then clicked share. Just like seems to be the norm with satirical stories anymore.

<comment><USER20> $600 seems above the level of impulse buy, but you may be on to something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> A scam? On Kickstarter? You don't say! There are a ton of those, and some of them have bigger budgets than this thing. Like the infamous Arist coffee machine [1].

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/236195807/arist- brews-c...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/236195807/arist-brews-coffee- like-the-best-baristas-anytime)

<comment><USER22> ...or the SmartMaker scam by Harold F. Timmis and Dimitri Albino, which kickstarter and indiegogo didn't stop. (1,2)

[1] [http://kicksucker2013.blogspot.com/2014/09/be-maker- smartmak...](http://kicksucker2013.blogspot.com/2014/09/be-maker-smartmakers- harold-f-timmis.html) [2] [http://www.mathias- wilhelm.de/arduino/reviews/smartmaker/](http://www.mathias- wilhelm.de/arduino/reviews/smartmaker/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> To be clear, this device costs a couple million of VC to create. This Kickstarter is a market launch activity and not raising useful money for this project.

<comment><USER24> Is that allowed on Kickstarter? Kind of defeats the purpose...

<comment><USER25> Lots of Kickstarter projects are "proof of interest" ventures. If you make your target, it triggers additional funding you've pre-negotiated..

I don't see how it's a problem in general (not talking about this particular KS here) since it's a useful tool for showing investors that enough people are willing to pay for your product.

Doppler Labs' recent KS for "Here Active Listening" closed successfully last week with $635k in funding, and they just announced a $17M series B funding round this week.

I'd have to assume these two events are related, and as a backer of the KS campaign, I'm actually happy to see this, since it means the product probably won't be a one-off, and they will continue to update the software post- release, etc..

<comment><USER24> I think a successful kickstarter to trigger funding is better than a fully funded product which has a kickstarter as a launch. The latter isn't really "fundraising" at all and so seems to stray from the KS mission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's a little strange that they share their offices with an investment bank? [https://www.bnymellon.com/ca/en/index.jsp#ir/offices](https://www.bnymellon.com/ca/en/index.jsp#ir/offices)

<comment><USER27> Generic shared space office building, I would be more interested if other Kickstarter groups had offices there or members of the Kickstarter in question were part of companies before their current.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Kickstarter will promote _anything_ that has the chance to make it big. Their only goal is to make sure most pledged dollars go towards ultimately funded projects, and that hype and funding grow in them to the maximum extent possible.

Documentaries and so on, that's another story, I guess their cash cow are non- art projects while what they enjoy are art projects. So don't expect a tech project to undergo minimally rigorous analysis if it looks like it will make it big. They only question your project to the extent it could be a waste of real estate in their website for not getting funded.

</comment><comment><USER29> It reminds me of this old video game:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_%28video_game%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_%28video_game%29)

</comment><comment> norea-armozel This is why I've never pledged any money on Kickstarter or any equivalent site. It's too easy to make something look too good to be true in an age of CGI and clever pitches. I'm all for micro-financing, but the way I see sites like Kickstarter as just another way to get around the known regulations for financing (some which seem dumb, but some that are very effective imo).

If folks really want to help creators and artists make cool stuff then I suggest do your homework and give directly to those people (and avoid Kickstarter).

</comment><comment><USER30> Isn't the startup mantra "fake it til you make it"?

\sarcasm.

<comment><USER9> Of some, definitely, with the meaning of "make it" not related to making a working product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Holus is a 2D display based on "Pepper's Ghost". The reflected image has no depth, and has nothing to do with the term hologram. "

Wrong and Right. The reflected image will have depth and can be viewed from a (small) range of angles. Just like a reflection in a mirror is actually 3d. But NO, this has nothing to do with holography as stated.

<comment><USER32> _> The reflected image will have depth and can be viewed from a (small) range of angles. Just like a reflection in a mirror is actually 3d._

Isn't that the same as saying that a drawing on a sheet of paper is actually 3D because you can change the viewing angle? At least when viewing a real 3D object through a mirror you could potentially get more information by changing your viewing angle. This project, however, appears to be more akin to viewing a flat screen through a reflective surface.

<comment><USER31> >> Udo 3 hours ago

> The reflected image will have depth and can be viewed from a (small) range > of angles. Just like a reflection in a mirror is actually 3d.

Isn't that the same as saying that a drawing on a sheet of paper is actually 3D because you can change the viewing angle? At least when viewing a real 3D object through a mirror you could potentially get more information by changing your viewing angle. This project, however, appears to be more akin to viewing a flat screen through a reflective surface.

Oh well that's different then. TFA likened it to an illusion that reflected an object. If that object is an LCD panel then no it's not 3d.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I got the chance to play with Holus last month during one of H+'s open houses. The unit itself is pretty neat and the holograms (yes, they are just Pepper's Ghost) is of good resolution. The use of iPhones and iPads to control the perspective is really cool, but still glitchy.

However, my friends and I found no practical non-game application of the technology yet; maybe this is the case with anything new, where it answers a question nobody has yet to ask.

I do agree with the OP that the images in the KS campaign aren't real (or even possible). The Holus simply doesn't look like that and I wouldn't be comfortable if my company was promising images in a KS campaign like that. At the very least, H+ should have added an asterisk on each image that said "CGI rendered" or something to that effect to inform potential backers.

</comment><comment><USER34> Finally received a response from Kickstarter's CEO:

[http://joanielemercier.com/is_kickstarter_covering_up_a_scam...](http://joanielemercier.com/is_kickstarter_covering_up_a_scam/?fb_comment_id=880462758667910_881188285262024#f252aeb9c8)

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't know if they cover up scams but they do not provide any good means for people to voice concerns. I looked at a project for a portable wind charger (on Kickstarter I think) and the claims that were made for it were rather implausible so I did a few simple calculations and sent a message to the promoter. All I got back was some well meaning waffle. And in this case I don't think they were trying to cheat anyone, they just weren't competent. If anyone is interested I'll try to remember which project it was.

<comment><USER36> [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/skajaquoda/trinity- the-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/skajaquoda/trinity-the-portable- wind-turbine-power-station)

Is this it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I quit Kickstarter after that Potato Salad kickstarter crap got popular. It lost all legitimacy to me at that point. I can't believe more people didn't put up a fuss.

</comment><comment><USER38> The Kickstarter bubble is finally starting to burst, for better or worse. That's a bit troubling for the creative and tech community. Bad press due to these failures/ scams is a scary thing. I had personally written to KS about another scam that unfolded right in front of eyes, but they didn't respond. I even pinged the founders on Twitter but they didn't care a bit. So much for trusting this system.

</comment><comment><USER39> Yancey Strickler answered. Here's my response: [https://medium.com/@sableraph/kickstarter-failed- us-e7b6d98f...](https://medium.com/@sableraph/kickstarter-failed- us-e7b6d98f2342)

</comment><comment><USER40> While Kickstarter clearly need to get sharper about identifying fraudulent pitches, I think as a whole Kickstarter is a "hate the player, not the game".

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't know man. No one got this upset with the Potato Salad kickstarter.

</comment><comment><USER34> some update on the holoscam. [http://joanielemercier.com/kickstarter_is_broken/](http://joanielemercier.com/kickstarter_is_broken/)

</comment><comment><USER42> To be fair, why don't you let people spend money how they want? People should have a right to be fooled if they wish so...

<comment><USER15> Blatantly lying to people by showing fake products and fake badges hardly counts as "if they wish".

<comment><USER9> It's funny how people talk about voluntary trade when the whole point of advertising and marketing is to remove the 'voluntary' part.

<comment><USER43> The "whole point" of advertising isn't to remove the voluntary part of trade. It's to improve discoverability and to encourage you to buy. At no point does it compel you to buy.

<comment><USER44> > At no point does it compel you to buy.

What?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing) & [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising)

It's a little more than brand names on bill boards.

<comment><USER45> compel: force or oblige (someone) to do something.

nope, that's not what happens. really, really, really, really wanting something is not the same as being forced to buy it. it's not even close, in fact, even if the desire is super strong. the inability to make this distinction is not a useful argument, it is a personal failing.

<comment><USER44> I see. When compel is used with an object, it always means "to force". And advertising textbooks go out of their way to clarify that ads persuade but they do not compel. Though you could call an ad "compelling".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Trailing slash in URLs - which style is preferred? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5948659/trailing-slash-in-urls-which-style-is-preferred

<comment><USER2> I hate to be "that guy", but how is this news? Strikes me as just a random question from SO, asked in 2011 no less.

<comment><USER3> Personally, I thought it was an interesting discussion and was happy to see it on here.

<comment><USER2> Sure, but it's "Hacker News" not "Interesting Hacker Discussions" :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://moz.com/community/q/trailing-slash-at-end-of- url](http://moz.com/community/q/trailing-slash-at-end-of-url)

Here is my understanding about trailing frontslashes.</comment>


AWS Lambda enables functions that can run up to 15 minutes - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/10/aws-lambda-supports-functions-that-can-run-up-to-15-minutes/ <comment><USER2> This is fantastic news for projects like PyWren!

</comment><comment><USER3> Now I can run a web server on Lambda by using only ~5 functions per hour! All hail the serverless king!

<comment><USER4> Also with your sarcasm, you rushed the math. 4*15 = 60

<comment><USER3> The domains of satire and mathematics don't intersect.</comment></comment></comment>


Meta search engine for taxi aggregators - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.scootapp

<comment><AUTHOR> The process of opening multiple apps to hail a cab not knowing which one will have better availability not only consumes time and mind space but a little frustration inadvertently seeps in too. This is the problem scootapp solves and makes cab hailing process smarter by comparing availability and real time ETA of cabs across different cab services/aggregators like Uber, Lyft, Sidecar , Hailo, Ola cabs(India), Taxiforsure(India), Bookmycab(India)</comment>


Stealing Session Cookies with Tcpdump - <AUTHOR> http://nullprogram.com/blog/2016/06/23/ <comment><USER2> Years ago i created this tool [https://github.com/b1nary/KruemelMonsta](https://github.com/b1nary/KruemelMonsta) that does not only visualize connections but also pushes cookie into a proxy i then could use within a normal browser. It was fun that not even some IT people expected that i could get into their facebook within seconds if we share the same network. This was before widespread SSL tho, today you need that extra step.</comment>