Sovereign Software: peer to peer democracy - <AUTHOR> http://sovereign.software <comment><USER2> Is there a reason that almost every blog post/platform/organization I've seen that involves some sort of block chain tech invariably starts spouting hyperbolic, overblown rhetoric about overthrowing the social order? Block chains are a really promising technology, but these types of manifestos really hurt the community's credibility.

<comment><USER3> Many people get excited and interested in blockchains because they want to radically alter the existing social order and they see blockchains as the most effective path to bring this about.

Thus, when these people make progress they cast it in those terms (radical social change). This becomes a feedback loop which attracts more radicals to the blockchain space and also amplifies the current radicals belief that they really can make a difference. This has both negative and positive effects:

* the negative effects are hype, the desire for ideological purity, expectations which can't be met, and irrational optimism,

* the positive effects are large numbers of smart motivated people who are willing to think big and irrational optimism.

I think spaceX and the startup world in general operates under a similar feedback loop (see "making the world a better place").

<comment><USER4> Irrational optimism is a positive effect?

<comment><USER5> From the perspective of those who aren't irrationally optimistic, I think sometimes.

Self-defeating example: betting on red in roulette is a bad idea. Having your friend bet on red is a better but still bad idea. Having a stranger bet on red, and buy you a drink if he wins... It's free money.

Applied example: starting an electric car company (at least looked like) a bad idea.... trying 1,000 different approaches to a light bulb, especially after 500 failures (at least looked like) a bad idea... etc.

<comment><USER4> People chasing long shots under a delusion can sometimes be profitable for someone else, but if a movement is built on irrational exuberance surely there's a cost to be paid sooner or later.

<comment><USER3> >if a movement is built on irrational exuberance surely there's a cost to be paid sooner or later.

I worry about a Blockchain winter, then again AI has made fantastic progress despite the AI winters[0].

Would fusion as a power generating technology be further along or further behind if it had followed the AI model (progress -> hype -> winter -> progress)?

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The main problem to solve here is _legitimacy_. It does no good to have a government if nobody thinks it's legitimate. This is why democracy is so hard to implement and protect. At the heart of it, democracy should be simple. You get people to vote on rules, and then whatever gets the most votes, everybody agrees to follow the group decision.

But that all gets turned on its head once somebody doesn't want to play ball. In a weak regime, they simply ignore the decision and do whatever they want. Example here might be a group of friends playing tag. A slightly stronger regime might be a role-playing game. Here if someone doesn't like an outcome, there's a bunch of rules you can fall back on, but if they still don't like that, then they can make enough noise and kill the game altogether.

Skipping up a few levels, a still stronger regime would be something like an HOA, where legitimacy is granted by contract law and precedence and the broader housing market. If someone doesn't like it, there are escalation procedures in place, and if all else fails, they can try litigation.

On and on all the way up until you get to heads of state wielding hard and soft power backed by nothing more than the threat of extreme violence or trade sanctions and such.

Technology can't solve the legitimacy problem. You can't force people to play by rules just because people voted on those rules. Without something to give those decisions teeth, a would-be democracy platform is really nothing more than an overblown webforum.

Unless you are the head of state of your regime, willing to give up power to let your peons make decisions on their own, the pathetic rubes, then nothing like this will be seen as legitimate. Maybe an HOA can use something like this as a platform for owners to make their preferences known. But everyone's going to know where the real power is, and it won't be with the app.

It's not government if it doesn't have the power to compel.

<comment><USER7> I agree with everything except that first point because legitimacy isn't the problem worth solving. Striking the right balance in governing tools and keeping interdependent systems interoperable as they mature are problems worth solving which this works toward. Arguing on grounds of legitimacy would have failed to see Wikipedia as a citable source or Facebook as an election debate host 15 years ago. So the time from no credibility to global legitimacy is at least faster than a generation can reach the age to vote.

edit- Also, keep in mind there are billions of new humans coming behind you that have no deep feelings about any of the things you think about. Good or bad. They hold none of the complexity of this world in their minds that you use to navigate now with minimal effort ("How does a bill become a law?"). Some revolutions are born from the generations that see leap frogging as an easier and better way forward than repairing the old model built for a world that doesn't exist anymore.

<comment><USER6> Wikipedia has its legitimacy problems like any other political entity. It's legitimate as an informational resource mostly for lack of real alternatives. It fills a need that no other resource does.

And political evolution is not political _revolution_. Sure, the 100th generation after ours won't care how a bill becomes a law, but that doesn't mean the underlying political truths are going to become obsolete.

Revolutions don't really change anything, they just shuffle things around on the surface. Things might evolve after the revolution, but it's by no means sure.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure if you're responding to me or just adding your perspective but each of those points can be summarized as "not necessarily" and ya, this is complex stuff, lots of possibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am struck by how little attention is paid to the voting system: is it first past the post? Single transferrable vote?

The voting system determines the class of proposals that can be decided without voters needing to model each other's behavior to get what they want. Voters are forced to choose between what they want and what they think they can get; "I prefer candidate/policy A, but I think B is OK and stronger; I definitely don't want C. So I guess I'm voting B."

FPTP is only good for deciding boolean proposals. For selecting from a larger set of alternatives, STV allows voters to be more fearless ("First pick is A, second is B"), and so more honest.

Block chain-style distributed verification is good, but that shouldn't be the killer feature of this app.

</comment><comment> dj-wonk At many levels, we would benefit from better decision-making tools. This includes voting tools with various ballot options and good accountability.

Better tooling and awareness around collective decision making is valuable for groups at many levels. Such tooling and awareness does not _have_ to be linked with large changes to country- or world-level governance. It can start with replacing an unstructured Slack discussion with a lightly structured collective deliberation tool, for example.

Political change is hard. I support people who want to better their situation through political means. At the same time, I advocate for better collective user experience design, so I want to see small victories around social and deliberative technology.

<comment> dj-wonk Do you have favorite tools and algorithms for collaborative decision making and/or voting? Please share.

Also, I would appreciate responses and feedback on an old post of mine titled "Better Online Voting": [http://djwonk.tumblr.com/post/42305919307/better- online-voti...](http://djwonk.tumblr.com/post/42305919307/better-online- voting)

Some areas I've followed include... papers about blockchain technology applied to voting... cryptographic consensus algorithms... I'd like to see what else people recommend. Thanks.

<comment><USER9> My problem is not to find a good tool/algorithm. I rather experience the problem to get people from unstructured (no tool/algo) to structured decision making (any tool/algo).

For example, finding a date for a meeting can easily keep a few people busy chatting in a WhatsApp group. A link to [http://doodle.com/](http://doodle.com/) is ignored. It might help, if WhatsApp integrates a simple pool mechanism into group chat.

Annotation: Please, use a good UI. Not a chat bot, which leads to even more messages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ok, it looks nice, but... can someone explain what it does for me in a couple of lines?

IMHO they need a marketing guy.

<comment><USER11> Yeah I was trying to figure out the same thing. Their main page [http://democracy.earth/](http://democracy.earth/) is a bit better.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> hi hackernews, i'm the founder of [http://democracy.earth](http://democracy.earth) and lead coder of [http://sovereign.software](http://sovereign.software). happy to answer any questions and doubts regarding this project (and past ones we started like the partido de la red and democracyos).

</comment><comment><USER12> Regarding the flag used [http://democracy.earth/](http://democracy.earth/), why not use the [http://www.flagofplanetearth.com/](http://www.flagofplanetearth.com/)?

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra I'm so glad somebody works in this direction.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't want to be negative but once again I have no idea what the software does. The homepage is full of hyperbolas but does not explain what is it that I am looking at. So many companies/products do this mistake.

</comment><comment><USER14> Off deep end:

>> I declare the planetary social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

>> Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.

Funny, right after disclaiming the concept of property they remember to protect their project with an MIT license ... a concept baked in western IP traditions.

<comment><USER15> > Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where > bodies live.

Unfortunately, our/their bodies _are_ made of matter, and are subject to laws and government enforcement. That kind of ruins much of the logic of the manifesto.

> We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her > beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence > or conformity.

That seems somewhat overstated compared to the reality, in light of recent events (great firewalls, DDOS attacks, and online attacks based on viewpoint).

> We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we > continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves > across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

Yeah... that "rule over our bodies" turns out to actually affect cyberspace.

To be fair, the manifesto was written in 1996.

<comment><USER3> >To be fair, the manifesto was written in 1996.

Too soon to judge as we are in a moment of backlash against these trends, lets see how 2196 views the manifesto.

<comment><USER4> > we are in a moment of backlash against these trends

What makes you think so? As far as I can tell, it's over and the idealists lost.

<comment><USER3> >As far as I can tell, it's over and the idealists lost.

Could be true, could not be, I don't know. The present often seems like the end of history because it is very difficult to see beyond it.

Some lost cause today will be a dominate ideology tomorrow, with the "nutty- idealists" reframed as visionaries ahead of the curve.

Fun game: if history remembers RMS, what role will he be cast into, what future trends will try to claim or denounce him?

<comment><USER4> When the Internet was new, there was a perception in some quarters that it was New and old orders were about to be overturned. That's the sentiment reflected in the manifesto.

Now we can see that it was just another medium that would in (short) time come to be dominated by the same forces at play everywhere else. Those particular dreams are dead and they aren't going to be revived now that we know how the Internet is actually used. The Internet revolution has played out. It is now part of the background, just like the printing press.

<comment><USER3> >When the Internet was new, there was a perception in some quarters that it was New and old orders were about to be overturned.

And they still might be overturned, it is much too early to call it in either direction.

>The Internet revolution has played out. It is now part of the background, just like the printing press.

The Gutenberg printing press was invented in 1440, the protestant reformation didn't start until 1517 (77 years later). The growing impact of the printing press was still being felt 200 years later. Imagine someone writing in 1480 about the printing press being played out.

"People always overestimate the impact of a technology in the short term and underestimate the impact of a technology in the long term."

<comment><USER4> Perhaps I am overly pessimistic.

Having seen the promise of the early Internet turn into a vehicle of control, surveillance, consumerism, and whatever you want to call Facebook, there is little room left for optimism.

Has it made life easier and more convenient? Yes. Will it empower the oppressed and create a more equitable, a more enlightened world? It sure isn't looking that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the planetary social space we are building to be naturally "

This is comedy gold.

<comment><USER17> I'll describe democracy, and you tell me how comical it sounds:

"A group of people, within a geographic region marked by invisible lines drawn by human aggression, all gather once every 2nd rotation of the Earth around the Sun to put papers in a magic box. The people believe once an arbitrarily large number of papers are put into the box, it grants the owners of those papers the right to force their will and ideas on others within the invisible lines. The box does amazing things, for instance: the very minute before all the papers are counted, it could be immoral theft to take something from others without their explicit, individual permission, but just after counting the papers, magically, if by some form of mobtastic incantation, it becomes 'legal' and totally accessible to take that thing from others via harm and violence."

Holy shit folks, if you don't find that to be magical comedy gold, I don't know what is. It's like a bad M. Night Shyamalan script, except humans actually do it.

<comment><USER16> Your definition of democracy is ridiculous and none of it is relevant.

Whoever wrote this manifesto is both naive and arrogant: he doesn't speak for anyone but himself, ergo, it's just a 'youtube comment rant'.

It's funny unless you take it seriously, in which case it's maddening.

Most people in the world actually work for 'governments and semi-large to large corporations' and are fine with it. In the real world those are 'communities and groups working together to 'make stuff and services' and to create positive outcomes'.

The childish ranters can go off to an island and create their IP-free and 'big company-free' utopia if they want. Good luck with it.

<comment><USER7> ahh, yes, hacker news. so full of curiosity and inviting critique. I'm with you on giving yourselves an island but ya'll would never stay there, the visibility invites the validation you crave.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Does it really rain all the time in Seattle? - <AUTHOR> http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2012/12/does-it-really-rain-all-time-in-seattle.html

<comment><USER2> I think what most people observe as "raining" is when the ground is wet and the sky is overbearingly gray, looking like it will rain. From indoors, it's quite hard to determine if it is actually raining, and to most people there isn't much difference. The lack of sun and wet ground is more bothersome than precipitation.

If it rains 50% of days, that means the ground is almost always wet, and the sky is almost always dark and cloudy. To most people, that is rainy weather. Furthermore, the air is often misty and wet, but would not be measurable precipitation.

I'd love to see a similar analysis of sunshine. I did find on most days in the Seattle winter, the sun would peak through for a few hours, though usually too low in the sky to promote much Vitamin D production.

Seattle has amazing natural beauty, and sometimes the weather can be excellent even in the winter. Summers are flawless. However arguing that it doesn't "rain all the time" in the winter in Seattle might depend on whether your definition of raining is as meteorologist, or on whether you have to wear waterproof shoes and carry an umbrella.

<comment><USER3> Well that last one is pretty easy: nobody in Seattle carries an umbrella, for any reason, ever.

<comment><USER4> I live in LA and refuse to own an umbrella on principle. Sounds like Seattle is the same but for the exact opposite reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He's arguing based on a technicality. When most people complain about the rain, they are really talking about the lack of sunshine. If any given day has a 50-70% chance of rain at some point, imagine the probability of any given day simply being gray.

The fact is, during non-summer, almost every day is without sunshine. So much so that the local news will report the consecutive number of sunny days during the summer. During the winter, getting any kind of sunlight is such a big deal that the local forecasters use the term "filtered sun" to describe cloud coverage that is thin enough to allow light through. Having grown up on the east coast, this was a novel term to me.

I've lived in Seatle a number of years now, and it has a lot going for it, but the weather absolutely sucks. I'm not at Microsoft anymore, but when I started, they asked if I'd be okay with the weather as it is apparently a major problem for them with people not being able to handle it (not sure if this was specific to my recruiter or a company-wide thing).

</comment><comment><USER6> Two months of the year (roughly centered around August), it's the most beautiful place on earth. The other times, it's dark and cloudy and raining so you can't see the beauty.

If you grew up in a Sunny place it might be difficult to live in Seattle area.

</comment><comment><USER7> The funny thing about Seattle being known as the rainy city is that there are several large cities in the midwest and east US that have more rain, more rain days, and less sun days, I believe.

So why does Seattle get the rainy city tag? I think it is because here in the Seattle area the rain is usually the worst thing we get. No one is going to talk about rain in Buffalo, for instance, when that rain came with 10 feet of snow.

Question for my fellow Puget Sound area residents--do you use an umbrella? The rain is light enough most of the time that it doesn't soak through my jacket, so I just wear a hat to keep my hair and glasses dry.

<comment><USER8> Vancouver, BC native. I'm 31 and I hate umbrellas.

When walking around other people's umbrellas always manage to poke at my face.

I also find it very awkward to wield an umbrella.. I've tried once or twice but tossed the thing because it got in my way.

I was in NY for a vacation in fall a few years ago. It rained for one day and was 100x worse than anything I've ever experienced in Vancouver.

Same thing with Calgary. The weather coming off the mountains onto the high plains means you have to pull your car over when a rain storm hits because you can't see 2 feet in front of you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are many ways to present the data such that situation in the pacific northwest doesn't seem so bad."If you look at the total inches of rainfall in Seattle, we really don't get that much rain." "Oh sure, most days it rains, but by hour it really isn't so bad." "No, you can go outside. You just need to wait for a small break in the weather, and then you can do all your errands or go play outside briefly."

Well, I suppose this is all true, but it doesn't change how depressing this is. After living in the PNW for 22 years, and then moving to Florida, I understand a lot more about how bad it is. Sure, it rains a lot more in Florida. In fact, I'd be willing to be there are more rainy days here. But, you don't spend all day waiting for that small break. You go outside, enjoy the day, and then the sky dumps several inches of water over an hour. Afterwards, the clouds are gone and the sun is back.

Gone are the days of walking through the fine mist of rain, which just seems to hover in the air and somehow soak you to the bone despite your waterproof coat. No more constant drizzle which have lasted the entire week.

The pacific northwest is a wonderful area. Beautiful scenary, wonderful hiking, amazing summers, and for the most part interesting people. But there is just something just wrong about it. Maybe it's the rain, or the overcast, or something, but now that I don't live there, I am happy.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes, please stay in California.

</comment><comment><USER11> And even if it is "raining", the water droplets only comprise a vey small percentage of the air volume.

</comment><comment><USER12> When it's raining in the city, it's snowing in the mountains! If you enjoy snow sports, it's hard to get upset about the rain. The snowiest mountain in North America is within a few hours of the city. The Seattle Grey is like the Seattle Freeze -- it only bothers you if you believe in it.

</comment><comment><USER13> No, but it does in Manchester (UK)

<comment><USER14> Same for Dublin

I guess I haven't seen a day (that is, a 24h period) without any sort of water falling from the sky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's been raining for the past month solid at least. That combined with the constant stupid cold has basically convinced me to move back to the south. I hate the weather here..

<comment><USER16> The complaints about the cold really reinforce my suspicion that everyone complaining about Seattle weather is used to California weather. Having grown up on the east coast (various places between DC and NYC), two things about Seattle weather stand out to me: it never _properly_ rains (really it just "mists downward". Give me rain drops!), and it never actually gets cold. I really miss good proper cold weather, but it just doesn't happen in Seattle.

<comment><USER17> Meh. I grew up in NY, NJ, and MA, and I hated the Seattle gray whenever I visited. It indeed never _really_ rains, which means in Seattle you have to accommodate rain _all the time_ while not actually getting to enjoy a good solid storm.

I like the way we have it here in Haifa. Practically no rain whatsoever for half the year, and in the winter months it oscillates between winter sun (which is still quite bright here, we share our latitude with Florida), Seattle-ite gray+drizzle (on a bad day), and thunderstorms to rival inland New England (on a _good_ winter day). And then back to nothing but sun, heat, and coastal humidity in the warm half of the year.

<comment><USER16> I am by no means a fan of Seattle weather, but I just can't see it as standing out as unusual in any extreme way. It is exceptional only in mediocrity.

<comment><USER17> Yes, that's the point. I don't like "mediocre" weather. I want _either_ the dry heat _or_ the storming rain. No permanent middle ground for me, thanks, I'm a man of extremes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What the author doesn't take into account is the number of inches that it rains. Seattle rain is almost always light, only occasionally requiring a waterproof get-up. You can usually get by with a hat and thick coat.

In any case, while it doesn't rain 'often' it's certainly almost always overcast. I recommend to everyone (especially those moving from California) to pick up a bottle of vitamin D supplements.

</comment><comment><USER19> Same in Vancouver. It rains only once, but for 6 months.

<comment><USER20> What I never understood about living in the GVRD, (Greater Vancouver Regional District) - back around 87-92, is how we had water _shortages_ in which sprinkler restrictions were in effect, you weren't allowed to wash your car with a hose, etc...

What was that all about? I would think there would be pretty much endless amounts of water in all those reservoirs... Was that just a incredibly freak occurrence/facilities impact (down pumping station) - or has there ever been a "water shortage" in vancouver again in the last 10 years?

<comment><USER19> I think there are just two reservoirs, both in North Van. One of them is behind the Capilano dam, so you could actually tell that it was running low on the water volume in hotter summer months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is similar to Melbourne, Australia in that it is pretty rare to have full days of rain and many days where you will get period of rain, with decent sunny periods as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> He should do this for the convergence zone east of Arlington (about an hour NE of Seattle). I'm pretty sure it actually is raining all the time there, and hard.

</comment><comment><USER22> Yes, it does.

</comment><comment><USER23> the sound rain against a roof top at night, what could be more relaxing ?</comment>


The default position of HN is skepticism - <AUTHOR> I've noticed recently that for almost every submission that hits the top page, the top-rated comment is a skeptical response to the thesis of the link content or the poster's argument.
Go ahead, pick any 5 of the front page posts right now and see if I'm right or not.
In general, this is a good thing as taking the skeptical position forces a minimum degree of critical thinking, which makes that comment more useful.  And it's an excellent form of filtering out the large amount of BS we come across everyday.
But I certainly would like to see more top comments that agree with what the poster said, or expands on their argument.
(Eagerly awaiting the top comment to this post !!) <comment><USER2> In my opinion, this is because there isn't a downvote button on stories.

Because there isn't a downvote button on stories, posting a comment that disagrees with the premise of the story has become the de facto "downvote" button.

It's easy karma to get, all you have to do is disagree with the sentiment of the post with barely more detail than "no, I disagree".

Then, when people come into the comments to argue that they don't agree, they see that there is already a comment that says essentially what they want to say so they upvote it.

The newest type of default comment that we're starting to see is the "disarming comment". On reddit this showed up as pun threads. I'm not sure exactly the form they will ultimately take here, but they're usually pretty highly rated as well. In any contentious thread there will be supporters by way of upvotes, detractors by way of the critical / skeptical comments, and people who attempt to make peace with comments that are either light-hearted or attempt to be conciliatory.

It's not just an HN thing though. Any community has these sorts of behaviors. It's just that there isn't a default way for someone to register their disagreement in the same numbers of ways there are for them to register their agreements; especially since comments that do nothing more than agree whole- heartedly with the submission and add nothing new to the conversation tend to stagnate or get downvoted.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do I downvote this comment? You're disproving my argument ;)

<comment><USER3> You can't downvote direct replies, and icey's comment is a direct reply to your post. You should be able to downvote a grandchild, if you have sufficient karma.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I took your challenge. The top 5 posts, in order:

1\. "There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it". Top comment: jacqquesm. Character: sceptical ("Nano machinery is real, it exists, it powers the world, it's called biology.")

2\. How to minimize politics in your company. Top comment: abalashov. Character: critically supportive ("There are certain problems [...] that simply cannot be solved or mitigated entirely"; "A few points to add:")

3\. Rapid prototyping as a burnout antidote. Top comment: riffer (but admittedly only 16 minutes ago). Character: supportive ("Yes, this really works...")

4\. Apple seeking to patent spyware. Top comment: ubernostrum. Character: "sceptical" ("vicious lying stinking reeking bullshit FUD")

5\. HTML5 presentation. Top comment: sofuture. Character: meta-sceptical ("I don't have a better answer, and I'm not even saying HTML5 is the wrong path, just pondering!")

That's 2 out of 5 which are basically in support of the article, 2 out of 5 which are sceptical of the article, and one (the HTML 5 presentation) which doesn't address the article so much as address a trend which the article exemplifies.

Given that giving a sceptical response is much easier than giving a vote- worthy non-sceptical response (the latter requires specific domain knowledge, the former doesn't, necessarily), I think that's a pretty good ratio.

Sorry for the sceptical response. :)

<comment><USER5> It's not just that giving a voteworthy supportive response requires domain knowledge — you also need something to add to the original article. I've seen lots of good articles on topics I know about, but usually I'll just upvote rather than comment because the original article did a fine job by itself. If I do comment, a lot of the time it will just be a minor clarification or tangential thought rather than something that merits a lot of upvotes.

Skepticism, on the other hand, is automatically something meaningful you can add.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1) I don't read HN for the stories, I read it for the insight the community brings to a topic. I will often upvote an article that I disagree with, but that still brings up interesting questions. Maybe others do this.

2) Sometimes there is just less to discuss when you agree with a submission, apart from adding your own piece of anecdotal evidence.

3) It's important to challenge ideas and to be able to call bullshit. People are good at that here.

<comment><USER6> > I will often upvote an article that I disagree with, but that still brings > up interesting questions. Maybe others do this.

That's exactly what I like and hate about r/programming and r/netsec on reddit. People tends to upvote irrelevant submissions just to see insightful responses. But it's the exact kind of submission made those subreddits eternal septembered. Upbait is the new flamebait and trollbait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The community values articulate cleverness, and sometimes folks optimize for this by trying to be more clever than the author of the article under discussion.

The easiest way to move community norms is to write the comments you want to see on the site. (I'm trying to be better at this myself.)

<comment><USER8> You know skepticism is a good thing, but too much of it makes people reluctant to learn and even share things. I just think that an argument is something no one wins. [edit: as arethuza pointed out what I am truly against is cynicism i.e. crab behavior. I know you're wrong because I know what's right and you can't be right because I know I am right. That is exactly the sort of thing that the world doesn't need]

So, whenever I think someone is wrong instead of just screaming it out on them like I used to and sometimes still do. I try to be nice and genuinely listen to what they have to say. If I realize that I'm indeed right I try to gently nudge the idea into their minds.

I am not that good at it right now, since old habits die hard, but someday...

<comment><USER9> I think your description of "too much skepticism" is really describing cynicism:

[http://chipberlet.blogspot.com/2005/06/skepticism-or- cynicis...](http://chipberlet.blogspot.com/2005/06/skepticism-or- cynicism.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Skepticism is generally the rational position - unless the evidence contained in one article is overwhelmingly conclusive.

The whole idea of the Scientific Method is to not believe something until proven. Just flat out believing anything you are told without questioning it is what leads to flat-earth maps and golden chariots pulling the sun across the sky.

<comment><USER11> Right. And a skeptical discussion isn't necessarily a negative thing, or even indicative of disagreement. I certainly use a Socratic way of extracting deeper information, and this frequently comes across as disagreement or even being argumentative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not true currently. The top comment of two of the top five posts are supportive:

 _Rapid prototyping as burnout antidote_ , riffer: "Yes this really works"

 _Things I've Learned from Traveling Around the World for Three Years_ , acabal: "I can attest that everything in this article is true."

Irony prize: _There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it_ , jacquesm: "For those that are skeptical about nano machinery, google 'ribosome' and be amazed." Skepticism about skepticism! Perhaps he counts double for the purposes of your argument :)

<comment><USER13> And right now 4 of the top 5 are positive! It'd be interesting what the proportion is in a bigger sample size over time, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it is generally a good thing as long as it's not skepticism for the sake of skepticism, without any substantial argument.

To illustrate this, I've often found myself totally agreeing with an article until I read a rebuttal from an HN comment which helped me put the article in perspective.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have a theory as to why the default HN attitude is one of skepticism.

Here's a quote from an article from Philip Greenspun, who company's board (ArsDigita) was taken over by VCs:

 _....But for most of this year Chip, Peter, and Allen_ [the suits] _didn't want to listen to me. They even developed a theory for why they didn't have to listen to me: I'd hurt their feelings by criticizing their performance and capabilities; self-esteem was the most important thing in running a business; ergo, because I was injuring their self-esteem it was better if they just turned a deaf ear. I'm not sure how much time these three guys had ever spent with engineers. Chuck Vest, the president of MIT, in a private communication to some faculty, once described MIT as "a no-praise zone". My first week as an electrical engineering and computer science graduate student I asked a professor for help with a problem. He talked to me for a bit and then said "You're having trouble with this problem because you don't know anything and you're not working very hard."_

<http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/>

(I found this from a link in the footnotes of pg's essay "A Unified Theory of VC Suckage" <http://paulgraham.com/venturecapital.html>)

In many areas in the hard sciences, maths and engineering, when you are wrong, you are wrong. No discussion. Many on HN have a background in these areas, hence their skeptical attitude to things that are fuzzy or as yet unproven (such as in the marketplace). People here often seem to assume that whatever is being discussed in a given article is dubious (or bullshit as the case may be). I believe this is healthy. The opposite attitude leads to all sorts of problems.

<comment><USER16> seeing the world in black and white is typically reserved for teenagers. as we mature, we are able to understand more perspectives and see how numerous factors influence a problem, and how solutions can have complex and unexpected consequences. we tend to see bigger and bigger pictures. discussions becomes more than arguing over particular numbers; now they include the meanings of those numbers, and then the experience of the discussion itself matters.

Being critical and firm is fine, but being mean is unnecessary energy. If anything, we should encourage creativity and boldness. We should strive to be ourselves open and lead by example, as teammates not enemies.

I went to MIT. The cultural "no-praise" was both present, and yet seemingly lifting, if not in academia itself, then in the more mature "millenials" (!$! _& @!(@!#(!) who seem to have more optimism, and thus more guts and less defensive reactions. In general the computer hacker culture has been broadening and is filled with a more inventive than argumentative mindset, which I think spirals positively on itself in terms of inclusiveness.

I've had the good fortune to have incredibly smart _mentors*, who not only solve hard problems, but also lead by example on how it is possible to be a great engineer and socially fantastic.

So, to respecify the problem, if we could separate the skeptisism and interesting perspectives from reactionary negativity and meanness, that'd be hot.

I'm not sure skeptism or meanness is actually a problem---many have stated why skeptism tends to prevade the top and/or majority of comments---I just wanted to separate the problem domain into two distinct problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17>
      But I certainly would like to see more top comments that agree with what
      the poster said, or expands on their argument.

There are plenty of those, but it's easy to mistake them for sceptical comments. Questions, side notes, alternate interpretations, etc. _are_ expansions of an argument, into territory not covered by the original post. When someone starts a comment with 'However ...' or 'I mostly agree, but ...', the remainder of the comment is usually supportive, constructive and littered with tidbits that add to understanding of the point under discussion. However, simply due to the way the argument starts, we view it is 'criticism', because it sets itself up as countering the article, due to the use of an 'inverting' word/phrase, like 'however' or 'but'. There's probably a word for those words and this effect in English, but I don't know it.

</comment><comment><USER18> People are more likely to post when they disagree with something because what is there to say when you are in full agreement? "Spot on! You rock!"? That kind of non-informative comment HN frowns upon.

Not that I disagree with you. :-)

</comment><comment><USER19> I sometimes wonder if there are camps or cliques forming on HN. Sometimes the top voted stories are junk (sorry), and may have been submitted and voted up by Group A users. Group B users then voice their opinion of the submission in the comments, with the best of these negative comments getting voted up.

It would be interesting to see the data and trends behind submission upvoters and comment upvoters.

</comment><comment><USER20> The default position seems to be we're supposed to applaud certain things automatically... anything YC-funded, any attempts to dislodge Flash using js/canvas games that are garbage by post-1980 standards, ridiculous stuff with CSS.

Some of the stuff and companies applauded on here are in my opinion really, really weak. There's no downvoting of submissions so you can only express dislike in a comment.

<comment> loup-vaillant Unlike actual disagreement, mere dislike is not informative. Just saying that the post is not for HN will get you down-voted, and the guy who writes that you should just click on the stories you want to see on HN will get as many up votes.

Mere Dislike doesn't explain the top comments that disagree.

It could be that someone who doesn't like a story thinks about how he could disagree with it, and write the comment in the hope that it will stop the story to get up-voted. But that strikes me as a bit convoluted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > In general, this is a good thing as taking the skeptical position forces a > minimum degree of critical thinking, which makes that comment more useful.

One thing I've noticed is that comments which basically start off with "Bullshit" followed by a heated, not obviously wrong rebuttal tend to get a lot of upvotes.[1] And it can still accumulate upvotes even after another comment has shown that rebuttal to be wrong, and not even wrong in a good way.

Default skepticism is a good thing, but I think we're overly susceptible to assuming that anything resembling a righteous debunking from another HNer is right.

The other thing I've noticed is that if a submitted article isn't popular with some faction, but seriously damaging criticisms have not been forthcoming, then a comment demonstrating that a non-critical claim is wrong, or merely uncertain, will tend to get highly upvoted and treated as if it justified dismissing the whole article.

[1] Recent example: back in the New App Rejection Reason thread, the most downvoted top-level comment initially had 9+ karma, and had the structure I just described. Thankfully, more thoughtful people showed how it didn't make any sense, and it quickly got downvoted into oblivion. But a good number of people got fooled.

</comment><comment><USER22> My impression is that HN readers write more intelligent and critical comments than other places.

I gave up on Slashdot back in 1999 because, back then, I was somewhat aware of what was to be biggest drop event for domain names in history. A certain story was a link to a clueless article about the topic, and the comments were dominated by people who knew nothing but sounded authoritative, so they were getting their comments voted up.

Then I thought about it and realized that the information I had was commercially valuable, why the hell would I share it with a bunch of people who couldn't tell right information from wrong information.

The drop event came, our detection system worked, and we grabbed 6000 names that we wanted before anybody else.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think it goes along with having a mostly technical / programmer audience. It reminds me of a saying (not sure origin):

"When crossing a one-way street, a normal person looks one way. A good programmer will look both ways. A good tester also looks up."

</comment><comment><USER24> Something I noticed quite some time ago is that any sufficiently long comment thread on HN will converge on a semantic argument.

</comment><comment><USER25> I must say that I love it this way. I see a headline that _seems_ interesting, and there's a discussion, I read the skeptic first comment before all else, because it usually states quite clearly what the author of that headline is trying to _sell_. It's Anti-PR. I find this useful in more than one way.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think part of it is just the nature of what gets posted here. One could make the argument that articles favor sensationalism for the purpose of link-bait (or a less cynical argument might be that they subconsciously favor sensationalism to stand out from the crowd), but if a large portion of "news" is inherently inflammatory/hyperbolic, then I think a skeptical response is both warranted and natural.

Also, a lot of articles that get posted here are technical blog entries whereby someone makes a pronouncement on the positive or negative effects of some technology/methodology. These are fundamentally opinions, and will immediately garner a response from someone who holds a differing opinion.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'd wager this doesn't happen though on things which are truly laid out in front of us as a great idea/ argument/ event that has no perceivable flaw or downside. I think it is healthy to be sceptical by default though otherwise you end up with close enough is good enough. Things that actually need work/ refining are given unreserved praise and that discourages future pieces on the idea.

Interestingly enough if you go onto search yc and check the top submissions ever by karma most of the top comments are what you are looking for more of. The difference there are that some of those posts are defiantly great and don't warrant that level of skepticism.

</comment><comment><USER28> My gut feeling (and this is completely not scientific) is that Hacker News tends to have a large percentage of people who are contrarian... which kind of makes some sense since if you were just following the crowd then you'd probably not be on HN, or possibly not even a hacker.

But the end result is that people take a lot more pleasure in showing that they can debunk or argument against something. Saying: "I totally agree" may feel a bit like you are following someone else's thought, and most people here take pride in thinking differently.

I also think patio (HN values cleverness) is another important factor.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think HN proves that skepticism + optimism = entrepreneurism! Skepticism in using critical thinking to question everything, including the standard way of doing things. Skepticism leads to new insights in improving the way things are done (wrongly or rightly). Optimism kicks in and the HN'er runs off to build the new tool that will facilitate this new insight.

Alas, entrepreneurism!

</comment><comment><USER30> I believe the term "skepticism" is, many times, just a curtain to hide plain and simple ideological bias.

But this is not exclusive to HN. Reddit is the same, although in a more leftist way, while HN has more conservatives. But it is funny how each place has its own paranoia and conspiracy theories.

</comment><comment><USER31> My default view on _anything_ is skepticism. I imagine that most HNers, being critical and logical thinkers, have similar positions. The abundance of skeptical posts makes sense to me.

</comment><comment><USER32> I always thought a healthy dose of skepticism was considered a good thing. We can't always take what we read at face value.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's going to be skepticism, of course.

When someone comes up with a new idea, it's up to them to present it. If they fail to, only skepticism will result. If they do well, there will initially only be skepticism and a few people who 'believe'. 'Belief' is not scientific. You have to wait a while for confirmations to come in, and a fast-moving news site like HN is going to drop the story before confirmation has had time to happen.

That's just life.

</comment><comment><USER12> The highest rated reply to this comment will disagree with what I've written here.

<comment><USER34> I disagree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I just looked at the top three articles and the top comments are all positive.

</comment><comment><USER36> Hear hear!

</comment><comment><USER37> Prove it</comment>


What strategies do you use to keep your password hidden from video cameras? - <AUTHOR> I work in an environment with many video cameras. When I am at my desk there are two video cameras filming me, one from behind and the other from the front. I have determined that there are only two locations in the building where I can safely sign into my computer or mobile device.
1. up against the bathroom door / in the bathroom itself 2. at my desk as long as I put a blind up around my keyboard / device.
Since I have been working in this high security environment I have become hyper-sensitive to camera locations when unlocking my laptop / mobile device both at work and in public locations. I have a habit of unlocking my device at my desk before moving about and if I forget I walk back to my desk and sit down just to unlock the device.
I am curious how others cope / avoid having their password recorded by video cameras when bio-metric authentication or password management apps are not an option. I am also curious how many have just not been considering this threat and now have their passwords recorded by an unknown number of security cameras. <comment><USER2> Are these personal devices or work devices?

If personal then this is no different than any camera in any "public" place and I'm not sure there's anything you can do about it.

If work devices then you should raise this issue with your it/security department. Ask them is it ok that the security team with access to the cameras have access to your it passwords. If yes, no issue. If no, they should figure out a solution.

Side question: why are biometric and/or password managers not an option?

<comment><AUTHOR> These are work devices. That is good advice to raise this issue with my department manager. The experience has made me more aware of my surroundings even with my own personal devices. I have never worked for a firm before with such high surveillance.

Biometric / password managers are not an option simply because the devices that I have been issued are not setup for it. I am still not totally sold on biometrics for authentication, but I agree that they would solve this particular problem.

Thanks for your input.</comment></comment>


America's aging population is leading to a doctor shortage crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/06/americas-aging-population-is-leading-to-a-doctor-shortage-crisis.html <comment><USER2> The doctor shortage has to do with the American Medical Associate (AMA), a cartel, that successfully lobbied to reduce the number of residencies available for doctors. They also make it difficult for new medical schools to be created -- this is intentional, since as a cartel they want to limit the number of doctors so that they can demand hire wages.

[https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/25/american-medical- associati...](https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/25/american-medical-association- opinions-columnists-shikha-dalmia.html#15cc1fd42f28)

<comment><USER3> I don't work in the healthcare industry so I have no skin in the game, but in what situations do you consider labor cartels ok because unions are exactly that and many people here seem to advocate them. Becoming a doctor from what I have read sounds like a horrible return on investment: You have to delay real wages for like 8 years while you get educated, those 8 years make you massively in debt, once you become a doctor, you have to pay off those 8 years of debt while also paying massive insurance rates. I'm not suprised doctors are trying to secure some wages after 8 years of investing in themselves while going massively in debt.

<comment><USER4> The 8 years could be streamlined but it's setup to weed out many and tire out the remaining. Many of the brightest most curious people get turned off by the process the people that remain are the ones who could stand the beatdown. Then they get out start working and have to see 25,000 people a year (100/day) as a gp.

There is a huge burnout process going on. I see so many doctors try to make a business on shark tank/dragons den work or they try to become media personalities.

Many seem stuck because the job isn't what many would expect. They have invested heavily time/effort in study, they have high debt and they have increased expectations from family/community.

<comment><USER5> Personally I'd rather they set up a more sustainable training approach - I'm not overly keen on having a doctor who's been "tired" out. I've seen a junior NHS doctor treating a partner in such a state of tiredness that they had to rely on mnemonics and tell us the number of things they'd be checking so that he didn't forget two minutes later and miss any out.

<comment><USER6> Peter Attia discussed on his podcast a time when he fell asleep and fell on top of a patient while operating on them during his residency. Pretty insanely bad system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It appears that Medicare keeps the fee for an office visit low. This causes the doctors to schedule frequent, short exams. They also do frequent diagnostic tests to increase revenue per visit. Less frequent, more thorough visits would seem to be more efficient for all.

Lots of senior care is pretty elastic, since most visits result in no change in drugs or procedures for the patient. They are simply monitoring chronic and/or progressive conditions.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well the medical debt bubble has gotta burst eventually. My guess is right before it does the state of healthcare in the US will be so bad that women will be giving birth in minute clinics because everyone will be priced out of hospitals by then. We won't have a shortage of anything until we fix our shortage of insurance providers.

</comment><comment><USER9> The doctor shortage would be lessened if medical resources were allocated more intelligently. As it is, doctors have a tendency to make work for themselves. The system needs lots of doctors simply to keep their charade going.

We all get to a point where we need less doctoring, not more. During the 'obamacare' debates some stupid politicians called this transition in the goals of treatment "death panels" [1], but the realists on the other side of the aisle didn't figure out how to intelligently point out that sometimes letting people die gracefully is kinder than subjecting them to every possible medical treatment.

My brother works with old people in Arizona. He's paid a salary, and makes a game of trying to spend his employer's resources efficiently. On a recent visit I noted his comment about how he's just doing palliative care. Most doctors aren't on salary, and are paid via the standard medicare "fee-for- service" (FFS) [2] model, which is a good way to make people profitable to their medical providers.

[0] My earlier comment about my mom's elderly friend's predicament: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20224523](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20224523)

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee-for- service](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee-for-service)

</comment><comment><USER10> Is it just me that feels like recently the word "crisis" is being overused? not just online but by the media also

</comment><comment><USER11> Shouldn't this point to the actual report not thin reporting on its publication?

[https://news.aamc.org/content/downloadable/209/](https://news.aamc.org/content/downloadable/209/) [PDF, by way of CDN redirect]

Or at least the (interested sponsors) press release on the study linked in this news article?

[https://news.aamc.org/press- releases/article/2019-workforce-...](https://news.aamc.org/press- releases/article/2019-workforce-projections-update/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Rural America really really needs more doctors. The amount of time it takes to get an appointment to diagnose anything is crazy long already.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nope there's no doctor shortage. There is hospital administration greed and crappy working conditions where patient throughput is valued above all else leading to doctor burnout. I am angry at whomever wrote this for fueling the wrong argument and possibly trying to detract from the real issue.

<comment><USER14> The doctor shortage isn't really about hospitals.

It's a huge issue with family and primary care physicians, particularly in rural areas. Paper work requirements and misguided reimbursement goals are making it unsustainable for doctors not involved in large health systems.</comment></comment>


DHS Launches Smart City Sensor Pilot in St. Louis – Nextgov - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2019/08/dhs-launches-smart-city-sensor-pilot-st-louis/159517/ <comment><USER2> "I'm sensitive to it," >Speicher said. "I don't know the scale or scope at this point in time but I don't see it as being fundamentally different than our other experiments in the sense of ensuring that we can evaluate the tech without any exposure or concerns with privacy-related data."

He is "sensitive" to privacy but he doesn't even know the scale or the scope. In the big data (data harvesting) era privacy is never priority. Always comes in second or third place</comment>


Ask YC : How to hire moderately skilled help at a startup? - <AUTHOR>

At our startup we have various tasks that require some technical knowledge but no real training. For example, system administration work, running UI tests and this sort of thing. So, basic linux knowledge would be useful and any programming skills an added bonus.<p>We are wondering if we could find an undergrad intern or someone else looking for experience to do this kind of tasks - where does HN suggest I look? Would some stanford undergrad be interested in this and could we potentially setup something for course credit with additional, more interesting work? We are a semantic web startup operating out of moffet field in mountain view. <comment><USER2> I've run my own business by hiring people who are new (or down on their luck) that are obviously smart and have potential. I've done this for several years, and while the business has not done well (I attribute that to my own incompetence) I can point out a long trail of people who worked for me at $10-$15/hr who left my company to get real jobs paying more than 5x that.

Uh, but yeah, actually I've had more people asking me for work than I have money of late, though, so if you shoot me an email firstname.lastname@example.com I can send you a few promising resumes.

buy me lunch or something if you like one of 'em.

but yeah, how do I find people? Uh, the first was a few years after the .com bust. The guy was my roommate, randomly. Obviously he was really smart, and an excellent programmer, though he was chronically unemployed. I paid his rent and used him on my 'book price search' venture, which flopped due to competition, and on some consulting gigs. He left for a real job, and hasn't had trouble keeping a job since.

the second was a guy I worked with during the first .com boom. I met him working in a deli a few years after the crash. I hired him for a little more than what the deli was paying, he worked on my current xen vps hosting venture.

The third was that guy's roommate. I really got lucky that time.

The forth was a guy just out of highschool who I met when I spoke at the LUG in Davis. He was a customer for more than a year before I hired him.

Uh, that's the other thing. You have _much_ more flexibility if you are willing to let 'em work from far away. I haven't listed the foreigners I've hired, but there have been a few, good and bad.

But yeah, overall, make sure your social circle includes people who are both poor and smart. Make offers if you know people working jobs that are beneath them. But the thing is you are looking for a market inefficiency. these are rare things. People who are good don't stay cheap for long. Be patient, and don't hesitate to act when you spot someone good.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're looking for undergrad help, most of them hang out at universities.

Yes, I'm being facetious, but it is true. I think the best thing for you to do is to find the best school in your area, and post the job in whatever bulletin board or website they use for these things.

Good luck. Hopefully you can find a real geek though and someone who's not just "taking computers".

</comment><comment><USER4> I would recommend putting the word out via your friends/extended social network followed by Craigslist. Especially in the Valley it doesn't seem like it should be hard to get mediocre contractors for a reasonable rate (this is what you want, right?).

</comment><comment><USER5> If you consider necessary jobs that you don't understand, like system administration and user experience testing, to be something you can just get anyone to do because they "require some technical knowledge but no real training", you'll get what you deserve.

A good system administrator will assist in scaling and performance and take care of a lot of other stuff that you had no idea needed to be done. A good UX person will produce reports in such a way that the developers will be able to fix things much faster than without.

If you think you just need someone to add accounts on your mail server, why are you not outsourcing this to something like Google Apps?

<comment><USER2> If he doesn't know how to do the jobs, you are correct, he's screwed unless he hires someone who does, and the median Sr. SysAdmin in this area is paid $140K (full load) per year. The market tends to agree that an experienced SysAdmin is worth a lot.

      However, if the original poster does have someone on staff who knows how to do the tasks in question, but lacks the time, (and enjoys and is good at teaching)  then there is value to be had in Jr. SysAdmins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would be interested in a clarification, how do you find people who want to work as equity partners for your startup?

IE: smart developers who want to be a part of a growing company.

</comment><comment><USER7> Underclassmen would probably be your best bet.

Facebook ads on the Stanford network maybe?

</comment><comment><USER2> oh, yeah. ask friends. Let everyone you know that you are looking for someone willing to work cheap to gain experience. Many people have siblings and other contacts who are useful in this context.

</comment><comment><USER8> I agree. Craigslist it?</comment>


It looks like rclone has been banned on Amazon Cloud Drive - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/njcw/status/865319897580097537 <comment><USER2> Not much info other than several 3rd party tools not working. Is it really banned, or just broken by an Amazon side change?

<comment><USER3> It actually is banned according to this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/6bv8a4/rclone_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/6bv8a4/rclone_has_stopped_working_with_acd_user_claims/?st=J2W7GNS8&sh=bbcf4a30)

<comment><USER2> I suppose if the tool is popular with a crowd called "data hoarders", I'm not that surprised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Crap I wonder about Arq5? Didn't get any error today so maybe not. Though I wonder if its just a matter of time... Back to SpiderOak then.

</comment><comment><USER5> rclone is the sole reason for why went with ACD. Let's hope it's just a hick up. Could it be related to the "I can see other people's files"-issue?

</comment><comment><USER6> Just let people upload unencrypted .mkvs without it being an issue and deduplication (of a very finite number of releases) will be a cinch. Everybody wins.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here are my thoughts and what I know (not affiliated, but actively looking for tons of cheap storage, so very interested in ACD)

This is the public world record for high you can go with ACD if _all_ the planets align: [https://i.imgur.com/kiI4kmp.png](https://i.imgur.com/kiI4kmp.png) (small screenshot) / [https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/5s7q04/i_hit_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/5s7q04/i_hit_a_bit_of_a_milestone_today/)

At the other end of the spectrum, I learned from some archivists a little while ago how someone hit some kind of impenetrable brick wall at only 100TB. I unfortunately don't know what their upload size/time ratio was like or if the data was encrypted.

Here are my thoughts.

Amazon are selling unlimited storage, and clearly have the capacity to actually support surprisingly deep file lockers, so they're making good on their promise and letting people just feed them files all day long.

But when you get to this level of scale, you have to seriously think carefully about what you're storing.

If it's encrypted, _why_ is it encrypted? If it's PCI-DSS data, that shouldn't be on ACD, that's commercial usage. If it's surveillance footage, home environments don't _generally_ create terabytes of footage as the months go by (unless the DVRs are garbage). Etc etc.

My point: it's generally hard to find a home/personal use to store data that must categorically be encrypted, so the only reason data will be encrypted is either a) paranoid types who want to keep their data to themselves or b) people who have something to hide. (a) are annoying, but (b) are a liability.

One thing I can imagine some types of people leaping at ACD for is storing encrypted tomes of porn, the kind that generates FBI visits and makes people go away. Considering that Amazon is making good on their offer to actually provide tons and tons of space for ~$60/yr, the _scale_ of data that is being stored becomes a liability if it's encrypted, because you don't know if it's bad material.

The reason for this is that, if the keys to the encrypted tome(s) get out, and a _lot_ of content is discovered in one place, it's _possible_ Amazon could get caught in the ensuing mushroom cloud. That would be _really_ bad PR at the very least, and it would be a miracle if there wasn't any legal fallout as well.

So considering the worst case scenario...

...UNencrypted personal media collections are essentially just a nuisance, not an imminent legal disaster, in the grand scale of things. Everyone has files of "interesting" origin nowadays; it's the Internet. (A recent article on here noted how Spotify seeded their collection with media obtained from scene torrent releases.)

Plus, if your data is _not_ encrypted, Amazon can deduplicate everything so much more easily as well - and considering that Amazon probably have a copy of near every possible permutation of data in existence (S3...), it's a whole lot easier to handle "I don't ever want this FLAC to go away" if you can use refcounting to do it. And no two encrypted files should ever match.

I realize I sound like a shill either/both for Amazon and/or the scary vulnerable kind of end-user transparency. I do feel weird recommending this. But I come from the standpoint of trying to figure out what's likeliest to actually work out in practice when using ACD. In the reddit example above, the majority of the data was not encrypted, and even though it was porn it went through fine.

That being said, I do have to admit I'm not quite ready to just go ahead and tell Amazon about the music or videos I've _obtained_ , even though my collection is really tiny.</comment>


Show HN: React Futures – manipulate asynchronous data synchronously - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/achung89/react-futures <comment><USER2> It looks cleaner but it is important for js devs to learn how promises work and hiding it away is not good</comment>


TunnelBear Joins McAfee - <AUTHOR> https://www.tunnelbear.com/blog/tunnelbear_joins_mcafee/ <comment><USER2> I'll save some of you the task of searching through their FAQ if you want to cancel your account.

[https://www.tunnelbear.com/account#/remove](https://www.tunnelbear.com/account#/remove)

<comment><USER3> "We're sorry but we can't cancel your account automatically. Please contact support."

Yeah...

<comment><USER2> I had the same issue, was hoping it was isolated to my account. What unfortunate timing.

<comment><USER4> Seemed so. I was just able to delete my account.

<comment><USER5> I also had no problem cancelling my account.

<comment><USER3> I retried. Still doesn't work.

Looks like I'll be forced into human to human interaction.

<comment><USER6> Last time that happened to me I just called the bank and told them to block payments. I think it was either stamps.com or siriusxm. Really no reason to prevent someone from cancelling right away... just a shady tactic to retain people.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Bunch of wankers that want a 10 minute call just to cancel, you can't even cut them off 'listen mate, i just want to cancel and finish this call' as they don't process it. NEVER subscribe to WSJ even if you get 6 months free - there is no online cancellation and cunts refer to debt collection agencies for renewal fees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is the opposite of privacy and you should be ashamed. You sold all of your customers' info to Intel/McAfee at a price.

<comment><USER9> They have a very detailed and plainly written privacy policy which details what information is gathered and how it is used. If their customers put a premium on privacy they should have read the privacy policy prior to using the service and understood Tunnelbear's obligations under it. As long as Tunnelbear has met them they have nothing to be ashamed of. It even addresses the possibility of being acquired and the impact that may have regarding the data they have collected.

"If our organization structure changes (i.e we undergo a restructuring or are acquired), we may need to migrate your Personal Information to a third party related to a business transaction, but, we will ensure that such a third party has entered into an agreement under which the use of your Personal Information is only related to purposes necessary for the transaction."

<comment><USER8> OK, so you're blaming the customers for not carefully reading the privacy policy? I understand that people should read things, but they don't. They read the marketing text where Tunnelbear claimed to "really really" care about privacy.

Further, they gave all of the personal information since it was all necessary for the transaction.

Unsustainable VPN companies that operate at low margins to sell to the highest bidder like this are the exact opposite of privacy conscious. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> RIP marketing department budget at Linus Tech Tips

<comment><USER11> That was my first thought too, I hope Linus will talk about it at some point. They seem transparent and upfront about their income.

<comment><USER12> I don't see them keeping TB around as a sponsor after this. Pretty darn bad press.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't know what all you Tunnelbear users were thinking. Do you believe other commercial VPN services are doing a better job of protecting your privacy? Spoiler: they are not. Commercial VPN services offer the safety of coffee shop open wi-fi, in The Cloud, from the convenience of your own couch.

Stop using commercial VPN providers.

Honestly, at least now they have the McAfee security team working for them. There are better teams, but anything is better than getting a single point-in- time audit and slapped "independently audited" on your front page.

<comment> dorian-graph > Stop using commercial VPN providers.

What would you recommend, BYO?

<comment><USER14> For BYO, you might consider Algo VPN [https://github.com/trailofbits/algo](https://github.com/trailofbits/algo) \-- it gets IPSec right -- or, if you're feeling more bleeding-edge, WireGuard.

<comment><USER15> Do any of the planned clients exist yet, for WireGuard? Without that, it's not all that useful to most people.

<comment><USER13> No. WireGuard, right now, is mostly useful to people who can run Linux (or people who want site-to-site VPNs). There's a cross-platform userland client in progress; a couple different organizations (us included) have kicked in to fund it.

<comment><USER15> Yeah I've heard that but the Wireguard site never seems to say much about it. Is this happening somewhere outside the Wireguard repo/main project?

<comment><USER13> No, I think it's more that Jason is a serious engineer and researcher and not as serious a marketer. It'll get better over time.

<comment><USER15> Hmm, not really important but I looked at it again and I don't think whatever is happening on the userspace client front is going on in their server repo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Whelp, that singlehandedly kills any credibility tunnerlbear had in my mind. I hope the buyout was worth it guys. The exact market for services like tunnelbear are the same ones that avoid the likes of mcafee (the company) like the plauge. I can see them jumping like rats from a burning ship. They should just find a new name at this point, ala comcast, blackwater, etc. Even their literal namesake disses them publicly.

<comment><USER17> Whilst they probably lost a certain market, they certainly gained another one, and I'm not convinced it's a net loss as a business.

Once this reaches Mcafee.com (as opposed to tunnelbear.com) I am entirely confident executives will inform me the product is an important part of our security strategy. At some future point, there will probably be a Gartner Quadrant rating them highly.

McAfee has a poor name on HN, but this isn't generally reflected in business. This should be self evident- they'd be broke if it was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't see how this purchase changes anything. How was "TunnelBear: an independent VPN provider" ever any more trustworthy than "TunnelBear: A service from McAffee"?

In both cases, I have no idea what they're _actually_ doing with my info.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice while it lasted. Any alternative recommendations for less tech-oriented folks? TunnelBear has been what I pointed friends and relations towards historically.

<comment><USER20> Private Internet Access is my suggestion given their support of EFF, FFTF, Creative Commons, as well as the greater FOSS community.

Full disclosure: I work at Private Internet Access.

<comment><USER21> Can second PIA. Used it for years now and its solid. And I'm not affiliated in any way with it, just a happy customer

<comment><USER22> Thirded, used for years and have never had a problem with their service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Also important: "TunnelBear is now part of McAfee, a US based company" =

customer information can be subject to US court orders.

</comment><comment><USER24> I can't wait for the mcafee themed bear photos! Bears on drugs , bears hiding in Mexico, and bears trying to sell you cryptocurrencies in back alleys.

<comment><USER25> You do realize he hasn't been involved with the company since the 90s?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> FWIW, I'm pretty sure the market segment of tunnelbear users were people dodging network restrictions, not people who valued privacy much.

That aside, there are exceptions and someone is getting fucked over.

</comment><comment><USER27> Tried them until they implemented the policy to block the torrent protocol. WHY. WOULD. YOU. DO. THAT. TUNNELBEAR. That's a legit protocol where legit downloads happen barring the overwhelming illegal activity that happens there.

</comment><comment><USER28> F __*, just renewed at $49.99 for a year.

Cancelling automatically downgrades, how unreasonable.

</comment><comment><USER29> Someone should let Linus (the Tech Tips one) know. Not sure if he'd want to be endorsing tunnel bear now that its owned by McAfee.

</comment><comment><USER30> Well, goodbye nice looking VPN.

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't get this kind of purchases. If McAfee intends to just let TunnelBear be TunnelBear, then what they're after must the business (as in the profit). In that case would there be more business sense in not selling, from the TunnelBear perspective?

Edit: Also TunnelBear isn't joining McAfee, or I doubt that they are. McAfee BOUGHT them. Joining implies that you merged the two businesses with no money changing hands.

<comment><USER32> > Joining implies that you merged the two businesses with no money changing > hands.

Not at all. Saying you "joined" a company is often used as a less transactional (that is, warm and fuzzy, not cold and financial) way of saying you were acquired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> IMHO all users should consider switching to some reputable VPN with no logs policy [https://vpnspecial.com/tunnelbear-has-just-been-purchased- be...](https://vpnspecial.com/tunnelbear-has-just-been-purchased-best- alternative-vpns/)

</comment><comment><USER34> Why does Intel wants TunnelBear?

I dont see the logic behind this, any one could explain?

P.S Is anyone still using McAfee ? It seems Symantec has taken up most of the enterprise sales, while consumer are happy with Windows default protection.

<comment><USER35> Intel no longer owns McAfee, they were spun out a year and a half ago. [https://venturebeat.com/2016/09/07/intel-teams-with-tpg- to-s...](https://venturebeat.com/2016/09/07/intel-teams-with-tpg-to-spin-out- mcafee-security-unit-in-deal-valued-at-4-2-billion/)

Lots and lots of people still use McAfee. Symantec's management products are still light years behind McAfee. Symantec really wasted a big opportunity with what they did to Altiris.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I don't understand why people used them they didn't had an explicit no logging no retention policy and they are located well within the reach of the US legal system as they were a Canadian company.

<comment><USER37> Because my threat model is a Wifi pineapple. I don't need protection from the entire Internet and all the governments of the world. I want to make sure an overzealous college kid isn't stealing my cookies.

<comment><USER36> And there were much better and cheaper companies for that like NordVPN and VyprVPN.

Neither of them would protect you against governments that much, but they do protect your privacy.

Do you want another place where all your data has been logged? I bet McAfee will have a field day with all the data tunnelbear has accumulated over the years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Canceled my subscription.

</comment><comment><USER39> If you can't trust a goofy bear who can you really trust then?

If you think about it all the goodwill Tunnelbear had was built on quirky/irreverent front end client.

</comment><comment><USER40> Someone tell Linus Tech Tips

</comment><comment><USER41> I'll save you the trouble of ctrl+f'ing:

"We'd like to thank you for being part of the journey so far, and we look forward to sharing more about our plans in the coming weeks."

[https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

<comment><USER42> This one was only a regular journey though. Must have been less money than the usual buyouts

<comment><USER43> Perhaps it was still incredible by previous years standards, but it did not keep up with the journey inflation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> TunnelBear never had good security. It's Canadian HideMyAss. Well, it was.</comment>


Web Development Has Never Been So Beautiful  - <AUTHOR> http://webreflection.blogspot.in/2013/10/web-developing-has-never-been-so.html

<comment><USER2> First thing I see:

[http://i.imgur.com/HZitOzl.png](http://i.imgur.com/HZitOzl.png)

Still a long path to make webdev beautiful...

Oh the irony :(</comment>


With 450M Users, Facebook Events Is Primed for a Standalone App - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/29/will-facebook-launch-an-events-app/

<comment><USER2> Apparently it's Daily Users, so I'd be really surprised if the standalone app turned out to be a success. Messenger and Instagram get away with that because people open them several times a day. I don't use Events nearly enough to have it take some space on my home screen.</comment>


Why Nest acquisition raises the bar - <AUTHOR> http://blog.whitesmith.co/why-nest-acquisition-raises-the-bar/

<comment><USER2> I don't wont this product. Its another backdoor to my home.</comment>


Is it the end of the desktop PC? - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USTRE50601320090107

<comment><USER2> _The age of the desktop PC appears to be over_

Tell that to gamers and I promise they'll laugh in your face.

<comment><USER3> ... while they play their Xbox 360...

<comment><USER2> I for one, don't have a console and I game pretty hard. On a desktop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There will always be a large corporate market for desktops. They'll always be cheaper and harder to walk off with.</comment>


Ask HN: What is going on with mainstream website usability? - <AUTHOR> I don't keep a blog, so posting this here.
Over the past two years or so, I've noticed that the basic usability of most of the mainstream websites I either try to read myself, or see linked by others, has massively deteriorated.
I'm not referring to making things screen reader friendly, or the UI/UX principles behind the navigation panels, etc. - I'm referring to the ability to scroll and read the content.
Admittedly I do a lot of browsing on an iPhone 6. No, not the most recent bleeding edge mobile tech, but still quite a fast "machine" to fit in one's pocket. Surely it should be able to handle reading an article, no?
Yet time and time again, between the ads loading one on top of the other, trying to hit a little "X" button that moves out of the way as I try to tap it (because some other ad has either loaded or decided to resize itself), I'll find myself scrolling and getting major lag - or the whole screen going blank and then refreshing, etc, etc.
The meat of my question is - are the engineers, product managers, and even top level business people that run these web sites even trying to use their finished product? Feel free to chime in if my anecdotal data is way off base, but I'm amazed the average person even makes it more than 1/3rd of the way through a typical page before giving up and moving on. How is this a net positive for the businesses, even with the advertising revenue? Are the engineers of these sites just constantly not being given time to fix such issues, or being over-ruled on poor decisions?
Sure, sites such as HN work just fine - however I feel like we (as engineers at the least) have failed that something as simple as reading static content should work so poorly given the power of modern devices. <comment><USER2> You guys know what would be really cool? An adblock plugin that worked on page popups (not on the ads, just the shit that takes up your screen asking for your email or other random thing)

This wouldn't help you on your phone but at least if you were in front of a computer maybe it wouldn't be as bad.

</comment><comment><USER3> I keep JavaScript turned off on my phone for this very reason. A lot of sites are almost unusable because of how long they take to load or the performance once they do. I have about 15 sites on my exception list but other than those if I can't read content on a site without JavaScript on, I just go somewhere else.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll add my anecdotal data point to yours. The experience has deteriorated to the point that I am afraid to click on anything on a site that has a lot of adverts. Or at least I wait quite a bit to wait for the layout to stabilize. I do move on often if it is too annoying.

</comment><comment><USER5> not even mentioned the amounts of data needed to read simple articles.. I also have JS turned off on my phone and just close websites that not load without JS, i also disabled image loading in chrome settings but for some reason they still load :(

<comment> le-mark I hypogthesize that has to do with whether the image is from an image tag or from a css background image attribute. Does anyone reading this know for sure?</comment></comment>


Amazon 'willing to be misunderstood for very long periods of time' - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2011/amazons-bezos-innovation <comment><USER2> Why is Bezo able to take risks into new territories? Because "we can analyze quantitatively rather than to have to make intuitive judgments." What's so great about this type of business model is that it does not rely on luck throughout the process. It only relies on luck at the front end of the risks, minimizing the risk throughout the enterprise. Bezo is the current king of data driven decisions, and I think that over time it's enabled Amazon to not only pass it's many competitors (buy.com / half.com / yahoo.com / google products etc.) but also quickly overcome dis-advantages. Compared to the amazing roll of luck, insight, cunning, and high risks / high rewards culture of Apple, Amazon is really the company to emulate. Without Jobs, can Apply keep it's streak alive? No one is certain. It sometimes feels that with each not product Apple is betting the company. That's certainly what people were saying about the ipad. And that's what makes watching Apple so thrilling. Without Bezos, Amazon appears to be poised to continue it's great leadership. Watching Amazon might not be as thrilling, but the details are simply spectacular. While Jobs may get the accolades, I think think that Bezos deserves the crown.

<comment><USER3> While I support the endorsement of Amazon's data-driven culture and strategy, I don't think it's fair to describe Apple as its opposite. Apple is not the gut-driven, "bet the company" firm that the general public seems to think it is. Its bets are very data-driven, albeit not quite as real-time-data-driven as a company like Amazon's, whose business model allows for more real time data in the first place.

In broad strokes, I think I'd describe the two companies this way: Amazon innovates through optimization of new markets, while Apple innovates through creating new markets. This isn't a wholly fair description of either company, and as we know, there are exceptions in either direction. But that's the business model of the two companies at a 30,000-foot glance.

As you've hinted, probably the best way to differentiate the strategies of the two companies is on the risk/reward dimension. Amazon operates on a risk- minimization model, while Apple is risk-seeking in favor of outsized rewards. This is partially because Apple is still a hardware company (for now, at least), and it needs to keep reinventing its products to stay ahead of the commoditization of hardware.

<comment><USER2> "Amazon innovates through optimization of new markets, while Apple innovates through creating new markets"

Well said.

<comment><USER4> Amazon has created new markets. The article mentions Kindle and AWS. The ebook reader and ebooks did not (really) exist before Kindle. Same with AWS.

<comment><USER3> True. There are exceptions to the statement I made, which is why I pointed out that it's not wholly fair. In fact, Amazon's entire existence can in many ways be said to have been the creation of a new market.

Even still, I think it's fair to say that Amazon primarily innovates these days through rapid and extensive iteration, especially on its consumer side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You have to admire Bezo's approach to new ideas...

"On the day you decide to give up on it (hypothetical idea), what happens? Your operating margins go up because you stopped investing in something that wasn't working. Is that really such a bad day?"

<comment><USER6> I do appreciate the silver-lining attitude, but this really only applies to risks that are marginalized by the amount of success you're already experiencing. It wouldn't be all that great a day if say, we were talking about how much more expendable income you have now that you've foreclosed on your house.

Still, I think that's a big part of his point.. to take risks early and often enough that you can (afford to) think about them this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find the product development strategies of the major technology companies quite interesting. I'm talking about Eric Schmidt's "Gang of Four". [1]

On the one hand you have Apple. Apple innovates as good as, and perhaps better than the other three. But it doesn't have very many products. And while I have no knowledge of this, I'd bet it doesn't start-and-stop products as frequently as the others. And it probably doesn't have as many "active" products going on at any one time. (Maybe it does behind the scenes, but I would be surprised if it did.)

It may take some iteration and prototyping to see that you could actually turn an iPhone into a tablet.

But I'm pretty sure Jobs "saw" the tablet long ago. In his mind, it was just a matter of when.

In the case of Apple, I see experimentation occurring as a result of the vision laid out by Jobs and other senior executives.

When it comes to the others, Amazon, Facebook, and Google all seem to implement the "fail fast" strategy. In this case, experimentation leads to vision. Instead of vision leading to experimentation.

What's interesting is that Apple used to be more like the others. It had many products and segments. And very little vision. But that strategy brought it close to death. [2]

Discovery is important to all of them. But the journey seems to be different.

[1] [http://allthingsd.com/20110531/eric-schmidts-gang-of-four- do...](http://allthingsd.com/20110531/eric-schmidts-gang-of-four-doesnt-have- room-for-microsoft/)

[2] I could see why Apple sets vision first because designing and developing physical products is different than organizing information and logistics.

<comment><USER8> I think Jobs stated that they started first with a tablet then put it on hold to launch the iPhone.

[http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2010/06/02/d8-jobs-...](http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2010/06/02/d8-jobs- says-apple-actually-developed-ipad-before-the-iphone/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What I was literally struck by was the fact Bezos seemed to echoing the book, Little bets how breakthrough ideas emerge from small discoveries. I've stated before that I believe that is directly related to the concept of lean startups <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2475535>

<comment><USER10> Hope you're OK after that literal strike :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > I can guarantee you that everything we do will not work

I suspect he means "not everything we do will work". Either that or he's hinting that it's time to sell AMZN.

<comment><USER12> I've seen this particular sentence structure before. It seems to be an American English thing, though the seminal example comes from Shakespeare:

"All that glisters is not gold".

<comment><USER13> I don't think those are the same: two different uses of "that". The example from Bezos seems flat-out wrong to me. I had to read it three times to figure out what he meant. Would be interested to see other examples.

<comment><USER12> Sorry, I don't have any 'real world' examples in mind right now. But I have seen this sentence construction before.

"All votes are not counted".

"All persons are not equal".

The problem is that they can be parsed two ways and they lend themselves to the _opposite_ of what, in context, might have been meant.

In the same vein I am amused by "we're not going anywhere!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "By the time you are betting the company, it means you haven't invented for too long."

See: Windows 8?

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a great quote on vision and execution: "We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details"

That "Why We Do This" doesn't change (and hence it's important to have the Why instead of 'here are X cool features') but the execution can differ. Great stuff from a great business leader.

</comment><comment><USER16> Really great advice - I find it refreshing to read this kind of candid, straightforward talk.

<comment><USER17> Candid straightforward talk that makes Amazon look really good to stock analysts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love the bit about making a lot of small bets early. You can always count on Bezos to drop some knowledge.</comment>