Google Photos is making photos semi-public - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@robertwiblin/google-photo-is-making-your-photos-semi-public-and-you-probably-dont-realise-6fcc74e40ac6 <comment><USER2> This is exactly what I, and everyone else I know, wants to happen when you share a link to a photo. Do we not remember what the alternative is? Sharing with someone's Google account, I suppose? Oh, but now when you send that link to your iMessage group, you have to know every one's Google account name. And then half of them will be logged into their work accounts (or not logged in) at the time and it will fail, and the whole message thread turns into a discussion of how 3/4 of the people can't see the photo.

What are the easier alternatives? Emailing maybe? But then you've moved the bits into someone else's account and they are there forever and can be forwarded anywhere. Maybe print a physical copy? Then that copy is around forever and can be handed to anyone else.

They only extra security I would tolerate is an optional expiration, defaulted to a year or so. I love taking photos, I enjoy sharing them, and it's important to me to keep that simple and accessible. I think of these share links as bearer auth, which is used all over the web and is a perfectly valid way to secure a resource.

<comment><USER3> In my opinion, the main problem is that the interface doesn't make it abundantly clear that you're generating and sharing an unauthenticated link to the photo.

Compare this with OneDrive/Office 365, where all the language around this functionality is explicitly about _links_ ("Get a link", "share a link", as opposed to "share with this user"), and the UI prompts that appear are very explicit about what the link does ("Anyone with the link will be able to edit the file", "Anyone in this organization with the link will be able to view the file").

<comment><USER4> I agree that office has a nice granularity there, but the UI is not very good. People don't understand that they have to share a specific link to a document and they can't just copy & paste the address of the page they are seeing ... Link shared -> "don't have permission" -> sender replies confused that the link works for him is an exchange I have seen way too many times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Once you have the full URL to the image, you can share that too - authorization checks dont happen when fetching the image.. from googleusercontent.com as far as I can tell..

But really - once you share an image to some one, there is no stopping them from downloading the image and sharing it out somewhere else anyways.. So I'm not sure the point of this.

<comment><USER6> I noticed that Facebook does this too. If you share a photo or video in a secret or closed group, then you do have to be a member of that group to view the post. But the raw photo and video have URLs that anybody in the world can access with no authentication checks at all.

<comment><USER7> A long URL is essentially an authentication check. It's long/complex enough it can't be guessed, same as an auth token in your cookie. I'm not sure what guarantees they have regarding changing access, deleting images, etc but those would be the trade-offs. The advantage is the CDN doesn't have to perform auth checks which speeds up response times.

That said, I was under the impression Facebook's CDNs did support auth checks from cookies, such that passing URLs around didn't bypass this. So I kinda doubt the claim.

<comment><USER8> Alternate model for how I would guess this works: Facebook CDN urls are unauthed (in the sense that the CDN probably doesn't know how to evaluate the entirety of Facebook's permissions model). Instead, the web/api server that enforces permissions checks will hand an authorized client a signed CDN url that expires in some bounded time. If that url leaks, anyone can view the underlying image, but only for a short window, after which a client would have to go back to the auth-aware web/api server to get a new signed CDN url.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's too bad HTMLMediaElement seems to only be for audio and video. If it also could do photos you should be able do a photo sharing site that lets you upload encrypted photos, distribute the URLs of those uploads, and have them only be viewable to people you also distribute the key to, without those people needing any special software to decrypt the photos. Such software is already built into the major browsers, as part of the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME).

People mostly think of EME in the context of DRM, providing a uniform framework across browsers for proprietary DRM plugins for streaming movies from services like Netflix.

But EME can actually be used without any plugins. The spec requires implementations to support a thing called "Clear Key", where you provide the decryption key directly to EME instead of it coming from some DRM plugin. See this article for more information [1].

I've tried this with video and it works fine. I took an encrypted video, put it on my web site along with a page that had an HTMLMediaElement containing the video, and a text box that let you enter the decryption key, and could play it back when I supplied the right key.

I wonder if doing a photo as a 1 frame looping video would work?

[1] [https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/eme/basics/](https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/eme/basics/)

<comment><USER10> What google is doing now is not too far off from that.

The URL contains a long string which is the shared secret (functionally equivalent to a decryption key), and each person you share that URL with may view it without needing any special software.

Anyone you don't distribute that URL to can't view it.

<comment><USER7> > functionally equivalent to a decryption key

Not from a security point of view.

<comment><USER11> Why? What's the threat vector that's specifically enabled by the key in the url?

And why is that vector defeated by submitting the "decryption key" (password) as part of a POST body (or some other method you can explain)?

<comment><USER7> Google doesn't embed a decryption key in their URL. AFAIK, they are just long lookup keys that are unguessable.

The difference between that and local encryption is if you trust the storage provider. If you were a journalist in China, you wouldn't want your documents accessible by your hosting provider.

In the above scenario, you obviously wouldn't want to submit a decryption key to the server as part of a URL/POST. Look at how services like mega.nz are designed. They popularized an approach where the decryption key is in the URL's label, which is not submitted to the server. The files are decrypted with javascript locally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Semi-related: I had a very creepy bug come up recently. Amongst all the collages, animations and videos Assistant makes, this auto-generated video came up: [https://streamable.com/bd2y1](https://streamable.com/bd2y1)

There's no image/video source for this (accidentally syncing downloaded folders etc) that I could find and typically the jangley music the videos come with don't include any narration, so the source must be a video? This is the first thing I've ever contacted Google Support over, and obviously, there's a 0.001% chance of anything being resolved.

<comment><USER13> Its a Deep Mind induced messaged from the future

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a non-issue. The URLs are way to unique to guess (you'd have an easier time guessing an email/pass/2FA). And ones ability to access the URL at all is the same as their ability to access the bytes of the image. Once accessed, they could capture and share either.

This would be an issue if it were mutable data.

<comment><USER15> Agreed, I was looking for something more substantial than this, too. I was thinking it was some clever unpatched way to scrape semi public Google photos links. Turns out it's just the sharing feature working as expected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> He says the easy thing is to use the Google drive sharing model, which only works with other people that have Google based accounts that can be authenticated. The sharing model in Photos is meant to lower the barrier for sharing with people with non-Google accounts. It's also worth noting in the demo he showed, many of the recommended sharing links were sharing with a user account and not via link (which would be gated behind authentication still).

<comment><USER17> The point of the video is that he is sharing with a user account and not via link, and that is not being gated behind authentication.

<comment><USER18> If you share a google doc to public, it does the same thing. This is at best a case of user confusion, but is hardly insecure. Photos aren't even mutable, so having continued access after you see it once isn't relevant.

<comment><USER17> Yes, but here you aren't sharing the picture to the public, you're sharing it to a specific person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> You can get similar behavior with Dropbox [https://www.dropbox.com/s/pcutvzhj8nc4auu/indy_asleep.jpeg](https://www.dropbox.com/s/pcutvzhj8nc4auu/indy_asleep.jpeg) And OneDrive: [https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqxVBILuAH4kssIAdGJhBtwUCm5DhA](https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqxVBILuAH4kssIAdGJhBtwUCm5DhA)

{I assume Box has something similar but I don't feel like finding my creds}

Screenshots of the dialogs: [https://imgur.com/a/lijzeli](https://imgur.com/a/lijzeli)

The big difference I see is that that the Google Photos share model feels related more to mobile-sharing scenarios than access control - ie, you're sending your buddy a link! Vs you're granting access, and that distinction isn't super blatantly called out.

Disclosure: I work on OneDrive for Microsoft

</comment><comment><USER20> If I share a link to the photo and the link gets shared by the recipient it is "semi-public".

If I share an authorized link to the photo the recipient can still share the photo if by no other way, taking a screen shot.

If in the case of the Google Photos iOS app, if I share a photo via the share shortcut and send it in a message, that photo can also be shared.

All that to say, no matter how you share the photo - it's out of your control after that.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a perfect example for things like:

Techies: Well duh... what did you expect? Magic?

Non-techies: WHAT?

I think people often forget that most don't actually know how computers or the internet work. Since this topic keeps coming up it really seems like we need to think clearly about this and do a better job of informing people how things work.

<comment><USER22> More like they want the same UI as Drive, as stated multiple times in the article?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Every uuid image link would be public, but virtually private. You would need to know the exact link to see the image.

Can't see how this is different from images stored in FB or other services.

There's no reason to panic, guessing the URL's is (virtually) impossible.

<comment><USER24> Exactly. If it's a long enough url then the url is basically a secure password.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Macaroons: Cookies with Contextual Caveats for Decentralized Authorization in the Cloud" (2014)

Abstract

> Controlled sharing is fundamental to distributed systems; yet, on the Web, > and in the Cloud, sharing is still based on rudimentary mechanisms. More > flexible, decentralized cryptographic authorization credentials have not > been adopted, largely because their mechanisms have not been incrementally > deployable, simple enough, or efficient enough to implement across the > relevant systems and devices.

> This paper introduces macaroons: flexible authorization credentials for > Cloud services that support decentralized delegation between principals. > Macaroons are based on a construction that uses nested, chained MACs (e.g., > HMACs) in a manner that is highly efficient, easy to deploy, and widely > applicable.

> Although macaroons are bearer credentials, like Web cookies, macaroons embed > caveats that attenuate and contextually confine when, where, by who, and for > what purpose a target service should authorize requests. This paper > describes macaroons and motivates their design, compares them to other > credential systems, such as cookies and SPKI/SDSI, evaluates and measures a > prototype implementation, and discusses practical security and application > considerations. In particular, it is considered how macaroons can enable > more fine-grained authorization in the Cloud, e.g., by strengthening > mechanisms like OAuth2, and a formalization of macaroons is given in > authorization logic.

[https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub41892](https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub41892)

</comment><comment><USER26> Ah, and it would be so easy to fix this in one way or another:

1) Make the link temporary, only working for X days

2) Make the link only bring up a page which lets you link to a Google account, and after that you need the account to view the images and the link has effectively expired

3) (2) with a time limit

et cetera

<comment><USER27> But why?!??! Why would you want them to do any of that.

Of course Google _could_ add more 'secuirty' controls on top of the sharing feature. They could require a password, or passphrase, or make the link one- time use only, or only available to Google accounts.... But for every extra control they add, thousands of users would get frustrated and essentially be shut out from the feature. Somebody's grandfather wouldn't be able to open pictures of their grandkids, somebody's aunt would get frustrated sharing pictures of her cooking.

Security is like marketing in that it can be a big black hole that you can dump more and more resources into with no benefit. There is a very real cost to security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This 'security issue' is of the same category as a previous article about Trello desktop app storing an authentication token locally ... that is, a non- issue that let's the author pretend like they found a security issue in a major consumer product.

Google Photos is a consumer product meant to be used by regular by tech savvy and non-tech savvy consumers. You can always add more security-based workflows but then your grandparents will get frustrated when they can't see pictures of their grandkids you emailed to them, or can't figure out how to send you images that they took of their garden.

What is the alternative that the author proposes? Use Google account access controls? Great idea if everyone has a Google account and is logged into the right browser. But that's not reality. I see proposals in this thread about sharing encryption keys or passwords, or using Google accounts sometimes, but not other times. Suggestions that range from Kabuki theater, to frustration of regular consumers.

There is no issue here, and Google has the right idea.

</comment><comment><USER28> What are the odds of guessing that URL? It appears it would be far more difficult than guessing the user account password.

URL consists of uppercase, lowercase, 0-9 and is 17 characters in length- that's 1.28E65 dudes. That's enough combinatholions you could probably make a URL for every photo ever taken for all of human history and never find one in a billion years.

<comment><USER29> > What are the odds of guessing that URL

Very high when someone accidentally forwards it in an email, copy / pastes too much into a document etc. The attack vector isn't someone randomly guessing the URL.

<comment><USER24> I can also accidentally share a file of the image.

<comment><USER29> Pretty hard without explicit / malicious intent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> in all fairness, what would one expect the app to do in the first place? sharing through the app is fundamentally different than sharing through, say, your photo gallery, as that just shares the image itself. within the app, and the general ecosystem that surrounds it, the method of sharing is by exposing that image as a resource to external parties, and given that http(s) is the transport that makes the world go round, it would stand to reason that a url would be created and associated with that resource, and furthermore that anyone that gets that url would be allowed to access that resource. of course that's just generalized sharing, there's also more granular sharing at the level of Google accounts where you can provide specific access to specific individuals etc. but either way. i see no reason to be surprised or even particular bothered by this. if anything it's to be expected

</comment><comment><USER31> This has been covered so many times by so many different people that I'm surprised this is at the top of hacker news yet again.

</comment><comment><USER32> I used to be the tech lead for the sharing and permissions side of a file storage service. In my experience with designing systems, participating in user studies, trying to problem solve with coworkers, and so on, this is an extremely hard problem to solve, because (as can be seen in the comments), there usually isn't a right answer. Different people expect very different defaults, and get frustrated and upset when things don't match their a priori expectations. The temptation is to solve these differing use cases with lots of configurability, precise descriptions, and lots of user education but users don't read (usually), and rarely do they understand the tricky implications of different settings. Not only that, but mistakes they make in configuration or use will understandably cause them to be more scared of using your service.

I don't think anyone has solved access control, not Facebook, Google, OneDrive, or even Apple.

</comment><comment><USER33> 2017*

Since this article didn't include instructions to fix this:

On desktop (I couldn't find a way through the app) Go-to [https://photos.google.com/sharing](https://photos.google.com/sharing)

You can see what's shared Select an album, go to options (is a menu under the three vertical dots in the upper right)

Uncheck share. Then click delete

<comment><USER17> What does "2017" mean here? It's not the year of the article, it's from today.

<comment><USER33> It's not new news, it looks like a rehashed version of this article I found [https://www.alexkras.com/do-not-share-your-google- photos/](https://www.alexkras.com/do-not-share-your-google-photos/)

Reading that one closer I found [https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/23/8830977/google-photos- sec...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/23/8830977/google-photos-security- public-url-privacy-protected)

Which is from 2015.

<comment><USER17> Ah, I see. But, this is a new article about an old issue, not a link to an old article, so it shouldn't get a date in the title.

That people keep rediscovering this issue and being surprised by it is says something.

<comment><USER34> Does it say something, though? If you have hundreds of millions of people using a product, you'll find _someone_ surprised by any given behavior of that product. Combine that with the fact that anything even tangentially related to privacy gets bigtime upvotes on this site, and it's not hard to see how an article like this gets written about a feature that is in fact behaving as most people expect.

<comment><USER35> "that is in fact behaving as most people expect"

Pretty subjective, what's your sample size? Oh, one? Look ,this is me being equally as dismissive and contrarian, it's not too fun is it.

<comment><USER34> You're entitled to your beliefs and estimations, and I'm not offended by you disagreeing with mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is old news though [https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/23/8830977/google- photos-sec...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/23/8830977/google-photos- security-public-url-privacy-protected)

But I do agree, google can do better messaging that

</comment><comment><USER37> OneDrive lets you set an expiration when you share a photo with a url, I usually pick a month with the assumption the other person will download the photo to their own collection.

</comment><comment><USER38> From what I remember this was in the original specs [1]. If people don't check specs how can we expect society to work?

[1][https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/23/8830977/google-photos- sec...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/23/8830977/google-photos-security- public-url-privacy-protected)

</comment><comment><USER39> This is the reason why I pay for Dropbox to host my pictures. The problem with Google is often not about severe privacy problems, it's about 'you never know' and getting educated and finding the right setting is hassle everytime. Worse here is FB.

</comment><comment><USER40> iCloud sharing works the same way, however the public links expire. (When you share photos with someone via iMessage and it creates an iCloud link rather than iMessaging the photos, it's just a public, unguessable URL).

</comment><comment><USER41> Facebook does the same thing right? Not necessarily defending the choice but it's standard. Wonder if there are similar examples outside of social media sites, like for banking pdf statements generated or something like that...

</comment><comment><USER42> If you use an end-to-end encrypted messaging app like Wire (app.wire.com), your photos will only be visible to the specific accounts _and devices_ which were in the group at the time of sending the photo.

</comment><comment><USER43> Not an issue, it will only became an issue if you can predict the photo URL.

<comment><USER44> Or, any of the other ways for a URL to leak, which is the authors point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Is there any practical way to review all the links to my shared Google Photos and maybe disable sharing of most of them quickly ?

</comment><comment><USER46> Are there any good alternatives to Google photos?

<comment><USER47> _ahem_

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> for what its worth, github suffers from the same issue. it's a "feature"

</comment><comment><USER49> Is this an actual risk? you would need to guess a link.

Serious question

<comment><USER50> This is actually a pretty common type of report to public bug bounty programs. ("Anyone can see your private data if they can guess the GUID in the URL".)

Barring something extraordinary, it would be acknowledged as intentional behavior and classified wontfix. For most purposes, no, this is not an actual risk.

<comment><USER51> The Earth will be swallowed by the sun before you guess that GUID.

<comment><USER50> Ah, but if you network a bunch of cloud computing resources to guess in parallel...

Sorry, bad bug bounty memories. ;)

<comment><USER51> What if, like, you had a quantum computer that could guess every password simultaneously? Checkmate, nerd. Give me my bounty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Glad to see it trending again. I raised the same concern years ago, and was mostly ridiculed. Nothing has changed since then.

I've been using Google Drive integration to share photos securely, but Google just announced that this will be going away.

In addition I realized that Google strips out metadata from my files during conversion. Common sense, but not something I thought about before.

Time to switch. If anybody has good alternatives I am all ears.

[https://www.alexkras.com/do-not-share-your-google- photos/](https://www.alexkras.com/do-not-share-your-google-photos/)</comment>


Ask HN: Possible to get Rust job without C++ background? - <AUTHOR> I have been learning Rust in my free time for the past 6 months. I would love to be able to find a job that works with Rust full time as I'm bored with the .NET stack that I have been doing for the past 8 years. My worry is that, from my understanding, many companies are using Rust to replace their C++ code base however, I have very limited C++ experience. Is it worth pursuing Rust in the hopes of landing a job with it? My other thought was to learn Go, as I know there are some Go jobs in my area and they seem don't seem to require C++ knowledge. <comment><USER2> I haven't seen many jobs that are for explicitly replacing C++ code, for what it's worth.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Steve. I think I'm influenced by what a single company was doing and assumed that many others were doing that same thing. There's a company in Chicago that is trying out Rust by replacing some of their C++ code base with Rust but I don't think they are actively hiring Rust developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You're overlooking something important: they can't hire C++ people. They just aren't around. Sure, if you're directly competing against someone who has a lot of relevant experience, they're likely going to try hiring the other person first. You're not likely to run up against that in the real world.

<comment><USER4> > They just aren't around.

How do you mean?

<comment><USER3> I mean that if you're trying to hire people with C++ experience, you're having a very hard time. It's a very small pool to draw from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Of Course. But you want to be good at systems/basics.</comment>


Ask HN: Learning Javascript & AJAX - <AUTHOR>

Hey Everyone,<p>I've taken a class in javascript before, and I've been using mootools and JQuery for awhile - but I haven't really kept up with it enough to become a hand coder. Can anyone recommend any great books or online tutorials? <comment><USER2> I'm going to recommend Douglas Crockford's "JavaScript: The Good Parts". It will really show you how to get the most out of the language and avoid the nasty pitfalls.

As a side note, I attended a talk by him last night on this topic, and wrote up a summary. For a preview of the book, you may be interested in checking out [http://www.felixcrux.com/posts/douglas-crockford-talk- waterl...](http://www.felixcrux.com/posts/douglas-crockford-talk-waterloo/)

<comment><USER3> In addition to Douglas Crockford's book, which is excellent, I'd also recommend the 2nd edition of "Professional Javascript for Web Developers" by Nicholas Zakas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would honestly recommend reading through some of the code and trying to figure out what it's doing. Find a function in jQuery you use all of the time and figure out how it accomplishes it's goal. Also, John Resig has a decent (albeit may miss some of the points you'll need) tutorial application: <http://ejohn.org/apps/learn/>

(Edit: I'd also recommend any time you _need_ anything, look to see if it exists first regardless of how small it is. And <http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/> will help you enormously.)

As far as AJAX, I'd recommend to just understand how it SHOULD work. Understand what the Xhrconn object you have should contain and what you should be able to retrieve from the "raw" object if you need to do so. Trying to understand where it fails in IE, Firefox, Safari, and Opera is overkill (there are so many little bugs!).

</comment><comment><USER5> There's nothing wrong with continuing to use jQuery. In fact, there is actually something wrong with "hand-coding" things for the sake of avoiding jQuery. Spend your time where it will make a difference.

<comment><USER6> What you're saying might be true, but some of us, like me, like to understand what's under the hood. Learning javascript from scratch, in my opinion, is a great way to fully take advantage of what javascript has to offer.

<comment><USER7> The trick, with something like jQuery, is to learn enough to begin to understand why you're lucky you didn't have to implement it yourself.

At that point you stop, thank the deity of your choice for the existence of people who abstract away browser incompatibility so you don't have to worry about it, and move on to something else.

<comment><USER8> Yep. Spend your self-education time on something more productive than recataloging the bugs in Internet Explorer.

<comment><USER9> Well stated. You loose momentum in becoming a better programmer by getting bogged down in trivia of no real consequence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was in the same shoes as you were. I really enjoyed Javascript & AJAX 7th ed. by Negrino & Smith. It's an easy read and has great examples. It nicely builds up from simple javascript to DOM manipulation, JSON, AJAX, and ends with a brief touch up on javascript frameworks.

As I was reading this book at the same time I set myself a goal to build a simple implementation of Lightbox without using Jquery or any framework. As I read more, the easier it became. So as you read, you might want to choose something to construct to practice and fully understand what you're reading.

A great continuation for it was Pro Javascript Techniques by John Resig.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just wanted to add, that I don't plan to stop using JQuery or MooTools,

I want to understand javascript better, so my implementations of mootools and JQuery tools could become more impressive.

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://fecklessmind.com/2009/02/09/top-5-javascript-books/>

[http://www.reddit.com/comments/6y1km/ask_reddit_good_javascr...](http://www.reddit.com/comments/6y1km/ask_reddit_good_javascript_books_what_do_you/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9gy1e/askproggi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9gy1e/askproggit_whats_the_best_javascript_book_for_a/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8ptt5/ask_reddi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8ptt5/ask_reddit_best_bookswebsites_to_teach_myself/)

usual suspects: Flanagan, "Good Parts" and Crockford's Videos, Resig, Harmes/Diaz...

</comment><comment><USER11> I will recommend the book i'm currently reading: Secrets of the Javascript Ninja: <http://jsninja.com/>. It is written by Jquery author, and it shows you basically how a framework like JQuery would be written. It is not a book for the faint of hearts, very in depth treatment of various aspects of javascript, such as functions/closures/timers/cross platform javascript development etc. You probably need Wrox Professional Javascript for Web Developer (2009) to brush up on the basics first. Happy coding!

</comment><comment><USER12> I rarely use anything other than O'Reilly's"JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, Fifth Edition" (<http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596101992/>). It may be a bit advanced if you haven't done much programming before and is probably more of a reference book, but it covers a ton of topics and has a lot of working examples.

</comment><comment><USER13> Jeremy Keith's "Dom Scripting" is a pretty good guide for getting up to speed with the basics of good JavaScript coding. If you want to transition to something more advanced later, I'd suggest "Pro JavaScript Design Patterns" by Dustin Diaz.

</comment><comment><USER14> I am a huge fan of JQuery.

I think the JQuery website provides a great resource for learning and using it.

<http://docs.jquery.com/Main_Page>

</comment><comment><USER15> I want to echo the sentiments of others regarding the value of continuing to use those libraries. A lot of real world programming is about knowing when to use libraries and which libraries to use.

<comment><AUTHOR> I felt that knowing javascript in an expert fashion would enable to do much more amazing things with those libraries.

<comment><USER15> It sure would, I just don't think there's any reason to mess with low level stuff like XMLHttpRequest objects. For javascript itself, this book is always good : [http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Definitive-Guide-David- Flan...](http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Definitive-Guide-David- Flanagan/dp/0596101996/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255795344&sr=8-1) If you haven't seen O'Reilly's safari yet, that's quite a nice program if you are still in school learning a variety of things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like <http://www.xul.fr/en/> tutorials.</comment>


No, you're not the center of the universe [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=746043185466080&set=vb.230759990327738&type=2&theater

<comment><USER2> I understand how its supposed to make the universe look so much bigger than a human. But I think that saying "you're not the center of the universe" isn't very relevant because the size of the sun doesn't have anything to do with a "tiny human being's" everyday affairs. I don't know, that idiom annoys to me.</comment>


Moujez: open-source persian text summarization agent focused on news - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kharazi/moujez <comment><USER2> I wish there was more info on this. They leave out many details.</comment>


Hottest Rain on Record: Rain Falls at 119°F in Imperial, California - <AUTHOR> https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Hottest-Rain-Record-Rain-falls-119F-Imperial-California <comment><USER2> To save a conversion, that's 48°C.

</comment><comment><USER3> Off topic Question.

What is the story behind Celsius and Fahrenheit? What US continue to use F when the rest of the world is now on C?

<comment><USER4> Fahrenheit is great for measuring weather.

0 is roughly the temperature on the coldest series of days in most of the continental United States and Europe, and 100 is roughly the hottest.

Celsius is great for measuring water while cooking. 0 is freezing (at sea level, assuming a normal room temperature) and 100 is boiling (again, with caveats).

The metric system has everything evolving around a cubic meter of water, so Celsius is easy to grok, and feels logical.

But, having lived in the U.S. and Europe roughly an equal amount of time, Fahrenheit is much much more accurate to estimate outdoor temperature with.

And as it turns out, that's what most people are doing.

Cute asides: The meter is based on a miscalculation of the distance between the equator and North pole. The SI couldn't find anything absolute that actually matched their arbitrary size, so made it dependant on a bar in the SI building, and then realized the bar is changing sizes with time! (This is finally being rectified with some atomic measure.)

On the other hand, my sixth grade teacher taught us that 0 is the freezing point of beer, and 100 is the body temperature of a cow. So, the theory is that some drunk scientists thought a cow had fever..

<comment><USER5> _Fahrenheit is much much more accurate to estimate outdoor temperature with. And as it turns out, that 's what most people are doing_

Which most people are you talking about?

I don't know anyone outside the US and occasionally the UK who uses Fahrenheit. That's not "most people".

<comment><USER6> It's just a unit of measurement, neither is more accurate, they both mean what they mean. Also it is surprisingly easy to switch. In Ireland we moved from speed limits in miles to speed limits in kilometres. It was easy and people adjusted without any problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder what this would have felt like since it would not stay humid for more than a few minutes after it stopped raining. Humidity of 100% above 90F feels like 130F+ so this must have been wild.

<comment><USER8> I can answer that. Ive worked in this region many times, in summer, with extreme humidity due to riparian veg and monsoonal weather.

It feels like dying. At 120 with over 80% humdity walking more than a couple hundred meters induces nausea and tunnel vision.

The lede is sort of misleading because extreme temps can coincide with rain all over the SW, especially in the Sonoran and Mojave deserts. It's not that weird. However, the imperial valley is definitely the worst for working conditions. Even in dry air, shadeless work is tough. Your feet can be burned through a boot sole because the surface temps are much higher than shade air temps. If windless, your sweat fails to cool you; too much wind and you cannot possibly drink enough water to be hydrated.

It's a tough place. Now try working in that and writing code in basic so your sensors resume coms to loggers.

<comment><USER9> This is a bit on an exaggeration, it's not pleasant but it takes time and effort to overheat. At 80% perspiration and evaporation are still working so keep damp.

If you have access to a steam room at a gym you can experience a likely higher temperature depending on the room's thermometer (pour some cold water on it :)) and full condensation for yourself.

The primary issue with extreme humidity on top of extreme heat is that perspiration can become nearly ineffective. High heat, lower humidity isn't that bad provided you have enough fluids to stay hydrated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ming the Merciless must be at it again. The last time he tried hot hail was in 1980.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have family/friends that visit often from Celsius using countries and every time the weather comes up, they ask me what xx F is in C. Tired of trying to answer them, I figured out a quick, ballpark conversion --

50 deg F = 10 deg C

For every 10 def F, there's roughly a 6 deg C change.

So (approximately)

40 deg F = 4 deg C

60 deg F = 16 deg C

etc.

I find that it works reasonably well for frequent requests from said Celsius understanding visitors.

*Edited for line breaks

<comment><USER12> Very close over human ranges:

        C = (F-30) / 2
        F = 2 * C + 30

Exact conversions:

        C = (F-32) * 5 / 9
        F = C / 5 * 9 + 32

Table:

        C     F
      -40   -40
        0    32 (Approx water freezing point)
       10    50
       20    68 ( ~ 70)
      ~21    70
       30    86
       37    98.6 (body temperature)
       40   104
       50   122
      ...   ...
      100   212 (Approx water boiling point)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Death Valley almost broke the highest recorded temperature ever.

<comment><USER14> I would think the Big Bang would probably hold the record for that...

<comment> Digit-Al Possibly, but no one was around to record that so it can't be the highest 'recorded' temperature ever.

<comment><USER14> I disagree.

Whether we record a temperature on earth or estimate the temperature of the big bang, we are dealing with the same class of rules and laws, of physics, and performing the same basic task of coming to a conclusion about the some hidden property based on some other observable properties.

The machines we make to measure temperature come from the same stuff as the universe does, so there isn't anything special with regard to reading a value from a machine vs. calculating a temperature based on the properties of the stars and galaxies in the universe. Therefore, regardless of _when_ the temperature has occurred, or _where_ it happened, we are still measuring it. And as long as it was written down, it has been recorded.

<comment><USER15> Ok, but by being pedantic you're deliberately ignoring the obviously implied "on earth" of the original statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's 48.3°C for those who prefer the metric system. Weather reporting is one of the cases still quite stuck with imperial one.

<comment><USER17> Fahrenheit makes sense for weather. 0° is really cold and 100° is really hot; most weather-related temperatures will fall within that range. 50° is chilly but manageable. 75° is almost in the sweet spot, while 25° is cold but not ridiculously so.

Compare with Celsius, where 0° is pretty cold and 100° is painful death (and also unprecedented as far as meterology goes). Even 50° is absurdly hot.

I'm all for using Metric units everywhere else, but they ain't exactly intuitive for weather reports.

<comment><USER18> Honest to God, mate, you're just comfortable using your system. That's fine, to be honest, but all this is invented justification. The intuitiveness of these units is overrated.

<comment><USER19> I will stand up for Fahrenheit as originally conceived, for the convenience it was intended to provide: easy calibration and marking of thermometers. As originally designed, the reference points -- a self-stabilizing brine mixture, and human body heat -- make it easy to set up a situation where the difference between any two adjacent already-marked points is a power of two, after which filling in the rest is just a matter of marking halfway points between previously-marked points.

Unfortunately, that got ruined by a later reaction to Celsius; the Royal Society redefined in terms of freezing/boiling of water, fixed those at exactly 32F and 212F, and as a result the original second reference point was no longer exactly 96 (it became 98-ish).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Monsoon season during a heat wave in SoCal. I doubt that this extreme was unprecedented, we were just lucky enough to have gear on the ground that recorded precip.

</comment><comment><USER21> When will we start sacrificing to prevent climate catastrophe? There isn't enough global concern. Especially in the US. Everything else aside no President should be able to deny reality.

<comment><USER22> When Manhattan or Miami get hit by two mega storms back to back in consecutive years. When the damage is such that we can't rebuild fast enough then it will be a wake up call.

<comment><USER23> > When the damage is such that we can't rebuild fast enough

Never gonna happen. People are far far far more resilient and capable than that.

<comment><USER22> It definitely will. Sandy caused so much damage to southern Manhattan that it took 6 months just to get back to functional. Had another storm happened the next year it would have destroyed things still being rebuilt.

And once the pumps fail on Miami Beach it's game over for a while. Hit it twice in a row and who knows what will happen. Miami Beach will likely be the first wealthy city in the US that will have to be abandoned. They'll build a wall to protect Manhattan and the subway, but no one is building a wall for Miami Beach.

And look at Puerto Rico. If it gets hit again this year you might as well just evacuate the island. The power grid is still being repaired as we speak from last year. Another massive storm and certain areas can expect to have no power or running water for years.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Just Realized Microsoft Updated Office for Mac - <AUTHOR> https://products.office.com/en/mac/microsoft-office-for-mac <comment><AUTHOR> Is this news to anyone else? I am pretty much on GDocs so I haven't needed it. Just checked for my brother.

What's the consensus? Any good?

<comment><USER2> Much better than the previous version. However, still seriously lacking in the Outlook front versus the MS Windows counterpart.</comment></comment>


Facebook Takes $5.7B Stake in India's Jio - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-takes-5-7-billion-stake-in-indias-jio-11587521592 <comment> a-ve This is bad.

One executive at Jio already confirmed they use DPI to monitor traffic on their networks, and their apps, be it their MyJio, JioTV, JioNews, etc. ask for almost every permission there is.

Also, it looks like the Zuck hasn't given up on his internet.org thing yet. He failed the first time, might as well join hands with a person who literally is the Government in India.

Can't switch to Idea because they were hacked by the NSA and they're about to go bankrupt, so I guess long live the Jio-Airtel duopoly!

<comment><USER3> > _a person who literally is the Government in India_

Out of the loop: can you clarify what you mean by this?

<comment> a-ve It's mainly due to his disregard for any rules that may exist.

The telecom regulator in India bent rules in favor of Jio: [https://m.economictimes.com/news/economy/policy/vodafone- gro...](https://m.economictimes.com/news/economy/policy/vodafone-group-ceo- terms-trai-predatory-pricing-rule-unfair/articleshow/63082025.cms)

Rs 11,000-Crore ONGC (state owned oil and gas corp) Gas Shifted to Reliance Industries Fields: [https://www.ndtv.com/business/rs-11-000-crore-ongc-gas- shift...](https://www.ndtv.com/business/rs-11-000-crore-ongc-gas-shifted-to- reliance-industries-fields-d-m-1246122)

They literally took out full-page advertisements with Modi's image on it: [https://thewire.in/economy/modi-reliance-jio- advertisement](https://thewire.in/economy/modi-reliance-jio-advertisement)

<comment><USER4> You are over-blowing his control: My quick search brings following two things which is opposite to what this thread is claiming.

1\. Reliance Jio may not be pleased with govt's spectrum moratorium to telcos: [https://www.businesstoday.in/sectors/telecom/why-reliance- ji...](https://www.businesstoday.in/sectors/telecom/why-reliance-jio-wont- happy-with-govts-moratorium-telcos/story/390780.html)

2\. India Trying to Stop Reliance From Selling Assets, Times Says: [https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/india-trying-to- stop...](https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/india-trying-to-stop- reliance-from-selling-assets-times-says)

<comment> a-ve Telecoms in India are in a tremendous amount of debt. So much so, Vodafone and Idea had to merge but still they have immense financial problems. They are asking for the moratorium because Jio gave away their services for free, undercutting every player there is and the telecom regulator did nothing about it. WRT your first link, it was posted on November 21, 2019. This year the Supreme Court ordered the telecoms to pay their dues: [https://m.economictimes.com/industry/telecom/telecom- news/sc...](https://m.economictimes.com/industry/telecom/telecom-news/sc- directs-telecoms-to-deposit-dues-by-march-17/articleshow/74129276.cms)

As to your second link (Dec 23, 2019), yes, the Govt. did try to stop the 20% sale to Aramco, but "Aramco officials and bankers on the deal have been working at Reliance's offices in Mumbai" says otherwise: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-18/reliance-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-18/reliance- aramco-said-to-accelerate-refinery-stake-sale-talks)

<comment><USER4> Regarding telcos dues, AFAIK those companies have been avoiding the dues for decades and they must be held accountable some day isn't it? I can't comment on whether or not TRI should have intervened when JIO started offering free services - if it was allowed as per the regulation intervening by TRI could have given a message that it was acting for protecting existing players and if it wasn't allowed by regulations, Telcos would have gone to court.

Regarding the on-going talks of selling asset, since court has already ordered Reliance to reveal assets, they just can't do away with whatever is the liability set. Indian court system is not a joke.

My original point was that Reliance or Mukesh do not rule India; yes they are clever and do lobbying as any other capitalist does but they don't control the nation or gov.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So Facebook paid 5.7 billion dollar to buy "influence" in India. The biggest influencer of India is Mukesh Ambani who has strong influence in Indian politics. Now it will be a matter of months and WhatsApp payments will get regulatory approval to go ahead to launch WhatsApp payments in India. That is the boss move here IMO. Jio is just a way to solve for regulatory hurdles in India.

<comment><USER6> Jumping the gun here. Jio's founder, Ambani has his own ambitions in this space and he is highly unlikely to carry water for FB. This is akin to saying when Microsoft took a stake in Apple that they would carry water for Apple.

They are frenemies at best and outright competitors. FB gets to deploy its cash hoard into a relatively safe and perhaps lucrative investment and buy some insurance to being treated fairly on Jio's platform.

<comment><USER7> So no solace, because it's even worse. Jio is a bigger danger than FB to us Indians, we just don't seem to realize/care (as in being an information monopoly). I don't think even Jio realizes it. They may believe that they are doing God's service in providing affordable 21st century services to the masses. But that's how the really bad stuff usually starts.

<comment><USER6> Twice Mukesh Ambani has built telecom services that have lowered prices by an _order of magnitude_ and _greatly expanded coverage_. Reliance Communications which Anil ran into the ground was built by Mukesh and changed the competitive landscape the first time around. Jio did it again and now India has the cheapest data in the world.

I am struggling to understand what exactly is the problem and why is Jio a danger? Because in the future they might become some unknown danger to morals and economic well being of Indians/humanity. Crush freedom in some inexplicable way that you cannot imagine but are sure they will. I am genuinely curious.

<comment><USER7> I am not sure why I am biting this, but here goes: If you are the only Internet people know and can afford, it doesn't matter if you are a private entity or the Govt.

I can't satisfy your curiosity because I too also sincerely don't know what flavor of undesirable behavior a monopoly creates but that they create bad behavior is as intuitive to me as is breathing to anyone else.

A first person anecodote which doesn't necessarily further my point but still - I had Jio fiber installed for a relative, I was visiting in a small north Indian town - unbelievable price, offering, everything great. But it took me 3 days of multiple hours on the phone, and I still couldn't access Hackernews, or reddit or even New York Times. Pages for these and quite a few other sites just wouldn't load. The first canned response - 'Reliance only blocks what the Govt. has told it to block' (paraphrasing). I didn't anymore have the energy to analyze if it was a technical problem, casual censorship or just customer service issues because of fast scaling.

<comment><USER8> > If you are the only Internet people know and can afford, it doesn't matter > if you are a private entity or the Govt.

The only thing worse than a monopoly is the non existence of the particular service.

Before Jio, reasonable speed Internet was non existent in rural India. The plans were priced so high that using Opera Mini with cloud compression was a reasonable decision, to save on data cost. I used to switch off 3G to ensure data doesn't get all consumed.

> But it took me 3 days of multiple hours on the phone, and I still couldn't > access Hackernews, or reddit or even New York Times.

What do you mean by "not load"? Are you sure this was not something unrelated to Jio?

<comment><USER7> "not load" \- nothing happens and eventually connection timed out (unfortunately I don't have exact recollection if there was a message or just nothing happened). But I did research it and closest evidence I found that this was not a technical issue but deliberate blocking was from some discussion on Center for Internet Security: [https://cis-india.org/internet- governance/blog/reliance-jio-...](https://cis-india.org/internet- governance/blog/reliance-jio-is-using-sni-inspection-to-block-websites)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Mark Zuckerberg in his FB post:

There's a lot going on in the world right now, but I wanted to share an update on our work in India. Facebook is teaming up with Jio Platforms -- we're making a financial investment, and more than that, we're committing to work together on some major projects that will open up commerce opportunities for people across India.

India is home to the largest communities on Facebook and WhatsApp, and a lot of talented entrepreneurs. The country is in the middle of a major digital transformation and organizations like Jio have played a big part in getting hundreds of millions of Indian people and small businesses online.

This is especially important right now, because small businesses are the core of every economy and they need our support. India has more than 60 million small businesses and millions of people rely on them for jobs. With communities around the world in lockdown, many of these entrepreneurs need digital tools they can rely on to find and communicate with customers and grow their businesses. This is something we can help with -- and that's why we're partnering with Jio to help people and businesses in India create new opportunities.

I want to thank Mukesh Ambani and the entire Jio team for their partnership. We're looking forward to getting started.

[https://www.facebook.com/zuck](https://www.facebook.com/zuck)

<comment><USER10> This isn't a good thing for India's Digital Transformation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'll take a contrarian view. This is good! All investment into India is good. (Yes even Chinese investment.) We are a poor capital starved country. We need every bit of cash we can get and that $5.7B will generate employment and create another strong telecom player. I strongly supported net neutrality in 2016 in India, but circumstances have changed. Jio needs the money, as does India. The poor cannot afford principles.

<comment><USER12> _The poor cannot afford principles_

??? Really how much do you get paid to shill that hard

<comment><USER13> Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? It unfortunately looks like you've been doing that quite a bit, and it's not what this site is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

<comment><USER12> Apologies if it comes out as such. My only intention is to make thought provoking comments

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> From that Zuckerberg statement it feels like a payment play. FB and Jio will launch a payments system possibly using their blockchain and I will also bet they will integrate deeply with whatsapp, there by cloning wechat. Right now the only payments system in India is paytm and Jio is in a great position to disrupt that. They get to give fb a shot and get a cut of the revenue if it works.

<comment><USER15> Yes, its a payment play, but not using Bitcoin. WhatsApp is trying to roll out a UPI based payment solution in India for 2 years now.

Google, on the other hand, rolled out Google Pay (Previously Tez) based on UPI platform by teaming up with major banks. Its really popular these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> With this FB becomes largest investor in any single India tech company - <USER2> largest player in this segment.

Previously Softbank was the largest because of its $2.5B investment in Flipkart (which was India's answer to Amazon.. last year Walmart bought it and Softbank had a successful exit).

</comment><comment><USER16> I wish government would stop these foreign investment sometimes especially into important pillars of the internet. I am okay with small startups getting investment but this is just bad. Jio is already terrible at tracking and they are the first ones to censor you when some high court cries foul.

<comment><USER17> India is a developing nation and it will have to depend on foreign investment unless zero corruption government help local business out. What is required to do that ministry keep a close eye before agreeing on such deals and afterwards like in case of internet.org initiatives.

>I am okay with small startups getting investment They can also be worst. During the period April 2015-March 2020, of the 30 Indian unicorns (companies with over $1 billion valuation), 18 were funded by Chinese companies and we all know how much china firms is controlled by their government.

What India required is: 1\. Company themselves don't sellout morality for money. 2\. Regulators keep a close eyes. 3\. Indian citizen too make their voice heard on wrong things.

<comment><USER16> Small startups are not unicorns. Small startups don't have the ability to censor you as much as your ISP especially if all your friends and family use the same one. India's net neutrality laws are already a joke when nothing is enforced and you can't access normal sites on jio in some states. I am talking about reddit, github, and heck even stack.

What india needs is to invest in their own businesses and stop using imported goods just because they are cheap. They are cheap because their countries invested in infrastructure to make it possible while indian government continues to raise taxes on imported goods while doing nothing about the abysmal lack of infra and good education. It hinders those who need imported stuff because it's not available in india. The regulation is a joke too. We don't need more regulations than we already have. We need less but have them more strictly enforced and accessible so people can actually see stuff rather than hearing it from a lawyer who isn't updated on the issue themself

<comment><USER18> In which state GitHub cannot be accessed on Jio's network?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> And India's fight against Facebook's walled garden, the Round 1 of which, it had won so admirably in 2016, now faces a setback. With this, and the crumbling of BSNL, a good part of India's telecom infrastrucure is now controlled by foreign players. Anyone who remembers Marc Andreesen's execrable remark on colonialism should be concerned.

<comment><USER18> Jio is building most of its 5G tech without involvement of foreign players.

<comment><USER20> That seems impossible or is 5g tech that easy? They are going to source all equipment from one or another European country at the end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wow! Very interesting news. (Bad for us consumers ofcourse.)

Reliance Jio is focusing on vertical integration by even building and rolling out their own 5G tech ([https://content.techgig.com/jio-develops-in- house-5g-tech-ai...](https://content.techgig.com/jio-develops-in- house-5g-tech-aims-to-reduce-cost-and-foreign- dependency/articleshow/74548652.cms)). And I am sure they plan to expand to other countries in 5 years or so. It will be very interesting to watch how they change the telecom industry in these countries too, in the future.

Speculating because I don't know the details, but feels like Facebook got the better end of the deal - FB bought WhatsApp, a messaging platform, for $19 billion. $5.7 Billion for 10% stake in one of the largest mobile network in the world sounds a real bargain ... right?

<comment><USER22> >(Bad for us consumers ofcourse.)

explain?

<comment><USER21> \- They've crippled the indian telecom industry by driving out many competitors through their anti-competitive behaviour of offering FREE services for nearly a year under the guise of "testing" their network. They were aided in this by the government who ignored the protests from the other players.

\- Then they offered services for very LOW prices.

\- Once the competitors were driven out, they've RAISED prices. And are now lobbying with the government to reduce inter-connection charges and to stop "Free" calls which their remaining competitors are still offering.

\- They are also extremely INVASIVE in collecting data on you through their services, apps, and even deep packet inspection of your secure connections. They are also suspected of creating shadow profiles and trying to link it to real profiles by data from their other businesses (e.g. Reliance Retail stores) and also through data they purchase from data brokers.

\- They lobbied AGAINST NET-NEUTRALITY and tried to offer Facebook services for free, but luckily for us failed.

\- I can bet that Facebook and Jio will now SHARE DATA and use each others service more. Goodbye privacy. For ever.

<comment><USER23> India went from charging some of the costliest data plans in the world to some of the cheapest, thanks to Jio.

What exactly was holding back the hands of the entrenched players when they charged INR 10 per MB of data?

<comment><USER24> How?

India had some of the cheapest plans in the world, and the indian telecom market is famous for having the lowest if not among the lowest ARPU rates in the world.

Do you have a source or reference point for this?

<comment><USER23> [https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-years-ago-india-lacked- fast...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-years-ago-india-lacked-fast-cheap- internetone-billionaire-changed-all-that-1536159916)

<comment><USER24> I checked that, and the difference was that we went from among the cheapest internet costs in 2017, to even lower.

2017 figures and 2019 figures are significantly different if you are poor, however that doesn't mean that prices were high.

And there isn't anything like a free lunch - Reliance has achieved these costs through a variety of means, both legal and supra legal.

Their "creative" ways to abuse the network testing period for example (and the non response from the regulator), their use and harvesting of private data to inform other parts of their empire and their efforts to take over the market bode ill for India.

Remember that Net neutrality was won because we got lucky and there was enough political capital for people like Nilekani to also advocate for it through the government machinery.

However when NN 3.0 happens, Reliance will not let it pass.

With a market without competition, they will succeed - since they have to spend less effort competing and can afford their lobbying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is a proxy move by Facebook for all the same shady motives that led to Internet.org. GoI should look into this very carefully from a long term perspective of India's internet space. Zuck can't be allowed to take hold of Jio's scale in India.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is too much control for one company.

This is really bad for democracy.

JIO is deeply embedded into the rural populace. Exactly the ones who are vulnerable to disinformation campaigns.

And facebook just bought a key to the gates.

<comment><USER27> Does India have less free speech protections?

<comment><USER16> Probably but are laws real without enforcement?

I have seen few people getting beaten up badly and two dying due to mob killing them with law enforcement involved for speaking against "religious stuff" and a politician.

Just a recent thing that got some attention - [https://twitter.com/ShefVaidya/status/1251818372343439361?s=...](https://twitter.com/ShefVaidya/status/1251818372343439361?s=19)

But I assure you, this happens way more in small towns and villages.

<comment><USER28> Your Twitter reference has nothing to do with what you described above. Nice try with the rumor mill.

<comment><USER29> Very disingenuous reply, you can clearly see what happened in the video. Unconfirmed reports from different media sources (which hesitated to report this extensively for obvious reasons) indicated rumors from the fact that they were organ harvesting to that they were thieves etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> As an Indian, I find this scary. Govt and Jio has deep ties.

</comment><comment><USER31> The idea that the Facebook has a direct data pipeline into Jio's 370 million subscribers and vice versa and that Jio has a direct pipeline to the Indian govt. is a very frightening thought.

</comment><comment><USER32> Why does Zuck want India so bad? [this is rhetorical, we know the business potential] Is this some sort of ego-compensation ever since China sent him home?

<comment><USER16> Because most indians will glady sell their data for saving up a dollar?

Inequality is a great thing and it works pretty good for ad networks as well as social media. The population hops to the cheapest solution while locking in the others with them due to the network effect.

<comment><USER33> > Because most indians will glady sell their data for saving up a dollar?

Keep it it mind that a single dollar can buy cooked meal for two persons, or major ingredients like flour rice potato etc for 3-4 persons.

Obviously not everybody is so poor in India, but World Bank defines lower middle class household as somebody earning $10-50 a day [1].

Personally, I had used Jio Sim cards, prepaid, in data dongle, but never installed any of their apps because never felt like I needed. And yes, the reason was exactly you described, best rates, about $5 for a month, for 3GB daily.

Jio is also memed as Oil (Mirror image of Jio), because Data is the New Oil.

[1]. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_India#cite_note-7](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_India#cite_note-7)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The fact that Zuckerberg and Facebook are making this bet, using the data they have, suggests that the Modi era will continue for quite a while. Ambani's fortunes are closely tied to Modi.

This is as much a political statement as a financial one.

<comment><USER6> Ambani fared well under every govt. Can you cite what this govt has done that has been favorable to Ambani?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> non paywalled link - [https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/facebook-...](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/facebook- buys-9-99-stake-in-reliance-jio-for-5-7-billion/articleshow/75283735.cms)</comment>


Aladdin: Open Source Hardware Key to Your Online Security - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/aladdin-key

<comment><USER2> Name overloading, I think - there's already a USB security key family called Aladdin.</comment>


How to read a business book - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/05/how-to-read-a-b.html <comment><USER3> "The goal of the reading, then, isn't to persuade you to change, it's to help you choose what to change."

\- Well said. I have read my share of business books, and wish I had stuck to this philosophy. I have begun to take a lot of notes on index cards, and attempted to apply at least one principle from each book that I read (think of it as "Deliberate Practice" [<http://tinyurl.com/6da4ey>]).

Don't get me wrong, there are a _lot_ of bad books out there, so its hard to know whether you are wasting your time with a bad book, or wasting your time because it happens to be a really good book but you don't happen to do anything with it. The problem that I face is separating the wheat from the chaff - most business books that hit the bestsellers normally have a huge marketing engine behind them, which does not necessarily make them great books. On the other hand, books like "Think and Grow Rich" which you can pick up at Half Price Books for $3 is something I read every year (once).

On a side note - "Programmers get amazing value because for $30 they are presented with everything they need to program a certain tool." I disagree. A lot of programming books I have read just don't cut it and provide little or no value. Mainly because a lot of authors are playing catch up with the latest and greatest technologies and invariably the book is rushed to the printers just so that they are not a version or two behind. The ones that provide real value are the ones that have proven to be timeless (SICP, PAIP which I am yet to read).

<comment><USER4> You may like this: <http://www.squeezedbooks.com>

("Business Knowledge - Extracted, Compressed, Discussed")

<comment><USER5> Is that your site?

If more people contribute this would be great. (and maybe some design work)

<comment><USER6> It's my site, actually. Thanks kirubakaran for posting the link:-)

Frustratingly, that's about as good as I seem to be able to do in terms of design. Another good reason to get a cofounder who covers for some of your skill gaps, I guess.

In any case, yeah, I'd love for more people to contribute, at least to discussions, if not to the summaries. As note takers like ajju below have found, I absorbed the material a lot better by creating some of the summaries, so there is some benefit for summary creators, beyond just the value of sharing.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the great site, David.

I have a feature request. Can you please display a simple html table with title, author, link etc as columns for all the books squeezed? That will help find books.

<comment><USER6> Where would you see that linked from/to? Find books?

<comment><USER4> Yup. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _The recipe that makes up just about any business book can be condensed to just two or three pages. The rest is the sell. The proof. The persuasion._

I agree with the first sentence. But it seems to me the rest is generally mere bloat. Nearly all business books consist of an essay's worth of ideas diluted with a book's worth of words. Why are perfectly good essays ruined in this way? People pay for books, and they seem more impressive on CVs.

My advice about how to read business books is: don't. You'll learn a lot more by reading biography and history.

<comment><USER8> I agree in general, although I can think of a (very) few counterexamples - <USER2> particular, "The Essays of Warren Buffett", which collects fragments from Berkshire Hathaway annual letters into related topics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> No, business books sell well because of the fantasy aspect.

Business books are overwhelmingly bad - and still sell - because it's very difficult to verify anything said empirically. Most of the time, business isn't treated as a science (a mistake), and a lot of business books are written by people who are good salesmen, but not much else.

Good business books are very rare. They don't have marketing titles like "small is the new big", they don't feature the author's face on the front cover (where else but ego-centric business books does that happen?) and they don't endorse moronic checkbox routines like "Decide, before you start, that you're going to change three things about what you do all day at work. ".

Seth Godin is very much a junk author.

<comment><USER10> I have been sitting management accounting exams for fun. (Well, really to keep in study mode - half an hour a night every night is maintainable - unless you stop, then restarting is hard.)

I would highly recommend them to programmers. Because the maths is frankly trivial for anyone with an engineering or CS degree the textbooks are easy enough to skim, and once you have digested them they give you a solid theoretical basis to attack business problems.

Understanding cost and revenue behavior may not be as sexy as making people stand up in meetings, but it's a damn sight more useful. At the very least it can give you a hint about which people you should make stand up.

<comment><USER11> Works for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I posit that the 3rd point "share your book" is as much about increasing the word of mouth for Mr. Godin's books as about helping readers increase value derived from the book.

I am a fan Seth Godin and his books. His second point about keeping notes is actually very true. If I am not making notes, I just read the book for the vicarious pleasure. Putting in the effort of taking notes forces me to digest and revise the points just to get returns on the effort I put into taking the notes.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think it is also helpful to understand one's own motivation for picking up a given business book. For example, Kawasaki's Art of the Start is very useful for most startups, but invaluable for those chasing external funding. But Porter's Competitive Strategy is less useful (note: not necessarily <i>useless</i>) for a startup than it is for an established player looking to compete effectively in an established marketplace. The point being that if you understand the problem / context you have that requires resolution or action, then you can better judge whether reading a book is more or less likely to be a productive use of your time.

I do very much agree with Seth's second point: markup the book with tags and pencil as you read. I find this essential if I am to retain both the content and how I think/feel about implementing it in my own situation.

<comment><USER6> Heh, I picked up Competitive Strategy and am not sure what to think yet. It's fairly slow going in some ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Programmers get amazing value because for $30 they are presented with everything they need to program a certain tool."

There have been a few technical books that have more than paid their cost based on finding the answer to just one vexing problem (DHTML bible, for example). Theoretically, the answer could have been googled but opening the book found it.

<comment><USER15> Where does he get that $30 amount? Every single technical book I've bought has cost me at least $50. Except for the _Learn C++ in 21 Days_ book, which was on sale at Wal-Mart for $20.

I admit that the price is worth it in some cases, but $30?? Where's he find those books?!

<comment><USER16> It really does depend on the book. Looking at Amazon, the Django book, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, The Pickaxe, CSS Mastery and The Ruby Programming Language are all <$30 each and are all well regarded. I'm sure there's plenty more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "It's not about you, it's about the next person."

Not just for business books, but for everything we do.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Wreck a roast chicken and it's $12 down the drain. Wreck a product launch and there goes your career..."

God help us if that was actually true. Temporarily hurt it, maybe.</comment>


New Android Maps API around the corner? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.recursivepenguin.com/?p=96 <comment><USER2> > Decompiling Field Trip reveals some secrets about the new Maps API. The > application tag in the app manifest references > "com.google.android.maps.v2.API_KEY" ...

I can't believe this person didn't realize the key he published in his blog (the part I didn't copy) is a particular developer's unique API key for Google Maps access -- and now it's been made public.

Requiring a developer-specific API key to access Google maps is hardly a "secret". And now there's one more non-secret.

<comment><AUTHOR> The key is linked to the signing key of the app. So even if they have the key they still need the signing key to use it.

<comment><USER2> My point is there's a reason for the key's presence in the app, and making it public undermines its purpose.

In the general case (not necessarily for Android), having a Google Maps API key is enough to gain access for anyone's online use of GM. The keys can be gotten easily enough, but each has a traffic cap and a few other constraints. Publishing a key undermines the system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fancy. Looks like a response, sort of, to Apple Maps. I wonder if this api will debut in updated maps apps for both Android and iOS? One can only dream.</comment>


Visualizing TCP - <AUTHOR> http://research.swtch.com/2010/12/visualizing-tcp.html

<comment><USER2> Anyone else notice the pronounced optical illusion that makes the bars in the final graph appear to slant to the right?

<comment><USER3> All the rows look slanted to me.</comment></comment>


Birth, death and shopping: The rise and fall of the shopping mall - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10278717 <comment><USER2> "Developers are technically correct when they point out that the mall is private property, not the village square. According to a Gallup Poll in 1990, nearly three-quarters of shoppers surveyed believed the mall should keep out political activists, which is consistent with what we know of the average person's tolerance for commotion (especially when it interferes with shopping). And yet the fact is, the mall phenomenon took the place of the town square, the public zone."

[http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2004/02/2...](http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2004/02/29/are_malls_democratic/)

Next time you browse in a bookstore, check out Paco Underhill's "Why We Buy" and "Call of the Mall"</comment>


Pirate Bay founder copies songs to /dev/null to bankrupt the music industry - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/this-season-a-notorious-pirate-gives-the-music-industry-an-expensive-gift/ <comment><USER2> Cute. But piracy does in fact hurt the company or person that created the content. It devalues it over time, almost like currency counterfeiting. It's worse than theft because it's pretty easy to account for simple theft, but nearly impossible when your actual product becomes nearly worthless.</comment>


A community-driven vim distribution inspired by spacemacs - <AUTHOR> http://spacevim.org/documentation/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13315845](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13315845) (3 Months ago, 176 comments)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the link.

<comment><USER2> No problem, you are welcome.

If you don't know it already: You can find older post via search box on the bottom. Or, if you submit links via the handy bookmarklet like me, click on "past" in the top line with the points. I'll delete my posts usually if there was a recent (<1 year) submission.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I just find it in my profile page. there is link for all my old post and comments.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Dynosaur, An autoscaler for Heroku using Google Analytics Live - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.harrys.com/2014/01/02/dynosaur-a-heroku-autoscaler.html

<comment><USER2> I'm curious why people put so much effort into scaling Heroku when you could outperform the maximum number of Dynos with only a handful of AWS instances for a fraction the price. It doesn't make sense. We're literally working around a problem that shouldn't exist.

<comment><USER3> We certainly don't use Heroku for the price. I've got a fair amount of experience running distributed apps on AWS and I have found that Heroku do provide a lot of value-added services on top (from deployment to database provisioning). For us, the best reason to use Heroku is that when AWS has a problem, Heroku can actually do something about it. Try calling AWS support when a whole availability zone just went down!

Of course, we are a Rails shop who have been on Heroku since we launched, so Heroku is really tailor made for us. If you're happy on raw AWS, good for you. Every hour I'm not thinking about AWS is an hour I can be writing a feature for our 10-month-old startup. The extra cost of Heroku is negligible when viewed in that light.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Dynosaur author here, if anyone has questions.

<comment><USER4> Have you done any comparisons/benchmarks vs Adept Scale, Bounscale, or HireFire? Also why Google Analytics default as opposed to some other service?

<comment><USER5> Just speaking off the top of my head here, but services like HireFire ping the Heroku API to poll for information on when to scale. The Heroku API is a little rate limited. You'll probably get a more responsive result using GA.

<comment><USER6> HireFire uses New Relic. I would think that's more responsive than GA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't it make more sense to scale based on New Relic response times? Why are you guys using # of users? Depending on the page they are requesting and how the requests are clustered that could produce vastly inferior results.

<comment><USER3> We find that neither New Relic nor Analytics gives the full picture: some of our pages are heavily cached, others (e.g checkout processing) are computationally expensive, database heavy and communicate with other systems (e.g payment processors) that can be a big bottleneck. Both New Relic and GA tend to just average those together (although with GA you can create new views that focus on specific pages). You are right that 'number of visitors on site' does not reflect our site performance in every respect.

We first conceived of Dynosaur as a plugin-based autoscaler (with GA and New Relic plugins to start with), but we've found the times we really need to scale fast are the times we have a lot of traffic generated from press stories etc (like this from today, if you will excuse the shameless plug: [http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/a-start-up-run-by- fri...](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/a-start-up-run-by-friends- takes-on-shaving-giants/)) and using the analytics live API allows us to react a little quicker than if we waited for New Relic to tell us our response times are getting slow. So far, we're happy enough with just a Google Analytics plugin.

One possible improvement would be to scale differently based on different traffic / performance metrics across the site. I think New Relic or other performance instrumentation would be very useful for that.

<comment><USER7> Nice work, looks pretty solid. If you want to offload the responsibility of determining which GA metric events signify a potential spike, you could abstract it out and instead make the plugin use GA intelligence event alerts setup by your analytics team. This would help keep the respective subject- matter experts in their realms of expertise ideally allowing for a more on- going tailored approach to what, where, and how can trigger scaling fluctuations and the dev team isn't responsible for on-going management of the scaling trigger rules (well, to a certain extent).

Just a thought. I know you abstracted it out the way you did so as not to tie it to just GA, but if GA is your analytics platform of record, it could be worth pursuing. Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's kind of surprising that Heroku hasn't cracked this nut on their own. Perhaps it isn't in their best interest to scale down? Scalability certainly is often touted as one of the benefits of "the cloud".

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately auto-scaling is incredibly application specific. It would be a great feature, but it seems likely to be quite difficult to make a particular solution that is useful to more than a small subset of users. You can get some sense of this from the other comments above (ie how analytics wouldn't be a good scaling metric for them).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So I'm curious, how many users per dyno are needed for a typical CRUD rails app?

<comment><USER3> That really depends on your app and your caching strategy. If you are doing something complex or memory intensive (or your app is poorly optimized), or if your users are highly engaged, it could be in the low tens of users! If you are doing a lot of caching you should be able to serve static pages on the order of several hundred or more per dyno.</comment></comment>


Physics in 100 Years - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.07735 <comment><USER2> My speculation for the next 100 years, that Wilczek does not propose, is that a notation revolution will happen.

The standard way of representing mathematics today is tedious to write and extremely non-intuitive in many ways. Unfortunately alternative representation systems of physical processes (e.g. block diagrams, Feynmann diagrams, etc.) don't yet provide a way for the user to operate on higher-level objects while staying on an abstracted level. One has to tear open all the black boxes, rewrite them as integral/sigma/matrix/bra/ket soup before they can be operated upon.

Most of the time when I read a physics paper, even in my own field of research, I spend abount 95% of my time and brain power parsing and 5% of the time understanding. This should be reversed.

In addition, a startling problem is that it now takes about 25-30 years of education from birth to the time before any individual can be productive to society in physics research. They are subsequently only productive for another 30-40 at most. As fundamental science continues to become more advanced, the increasing number of required education years to catch up with all of human history, even for a highly narrow, specialized field, is not a sustainable trend. Either modifying the brain or adopting a new framework of thought will be necessary to sustain progress; a notation revolution may facilitate the latter.

<comment><USER3> I don't know if I'd predict it, but I agree that it's hard to imagine a more transformative technology than a dramatically improved notation for something as broad as mathematics. It might mean that "notation" is actually a higher fidelity, more dynamic medium for communicating mathematical ideas only possible within computing. (See Bret Vector, etc.) One has to wonder what the world would be like if physics knowledge (at all levels) were disseminated via a medium beyond static text.

<comment><USER4> Sussman tried to use scheme as a mathematical notation ([http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/s...](http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/sicm/book.html)) to avoid ambiguities. I don't know how many people saw this, and what the critics were.

The traditional static symbolic notation of math may be the most efficient one, It's constrained, but forces abstraction to emerge. If people had Excel before, we'd never know Gauss sequence sum formula, we'd let the system help us.

<comment><USER5> > The traditional static symbolic notation of math may be the most efficient > one... If people had Excel before, we'd never know Gauss sequence sum > formula, we'd let the system help us.

I think some people in this thread must be using "notation" in a different sense than I am accustomed to. I don't think of the computer's ability to automate addition as an innovation in "notation", per se.

<comment><USER6> That wasn't Sussman's point. The problem is that the same notational forms -- the same orthographies, if you will -- can mean different things in different contexts. It doesn't help at all that one must, on occasion, slip from context to context in the same argument, producing adjacent or near-adjacent statements that have similar general forms but wildly different meanings. His solution to the problem was to use a notation that also happens to be valid statements in a computer language he had a large hand in designing. That part isn't necessary, but disambiguating mathematical notation by some means is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Frank Wilczek is both a highly accomplished physicist and an exceptional writer, two things that don't often go together. You can find all of his 2014 writings here:

      http://frankwilczek.com/2014

And 2015 in progress:

      http://frankwilczek.com/2015

</comment><comment><USER8> I like his suggestion to replace 'Standard Model' with the name 'Core Theory'

"The quantum revolution gave this revelation: we've finally learned what Matter is. The necessary equations are part of the theoretical structure often called the Standard Model. That yawn-inducing name fails to convey the grandeur of the achievement, and does not serve fundamental physics well in its popular perception. I'm going to continue my campaign, begun in The Lightness of Being, to replace it with something more appropriately awesome: Standard Model → Core Theory"

<comment><USER9> Is this a joke? Sounds like some bureaucratic decision where you'd create a committee to come up with New Coke. Most people aren't going to care.

<comment><USER10> I bet the folks who coined the term "global warming" sure wish they'd thought of "climate change" first.

<comment><USER11> You do know the history of those terms and the replacement of one by the other, right?

<comment><USER12> Science Sparring Society had an interesting (and short) episode on this recently:

[http://www.acmescience.com/2015/02/sss-14-global-warming- vs-...](http://www.acmescience.com/2015/02/sss-14-global-warming-vs-climate- change/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was at first upset that he seemed to focus heavily on fundamental particle physics. I was delighted however, that he did mention other discoveries we'd like to see happen in other subfields of physics, like the hope for the realization of the quantum computer.

One thing that is rather hot now and likely will become a richer field over the next decade or so (and will likely leave it's imprint in future technology and life in 100 years) is the merging of physics with biology. Mainly, the use of physics and quantitative methods in biology is the next area of innovation for this century, in my opinion. That might fall more under "Biology in 100 years," however.

<comment><USER14> He's a particle theorist, so it's not too surprising he focuses on things he knows more about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Brett Victor also has some interesting ideas about the symbology of math: [http://worrydream.com/KillMath/](http://worrydream.com/KillMath/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I know that English is the wrong way of expressing the ideas, but the text on page 6 about bleaching and colours and the tasteful application of rules producing a scheme is straight out of 16th Century alchemy.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is an exercise in paradigm paralysis. How about: I predict that if I were teleported 100 years into the future, I would have no fucking clue what was going on, you wouldn't be able to explain it to me and I would probably die from the culture shock. You have evolve and develop and turn into the future. You can't just go there willy-nilly, nor, at this point, can you confidently make predictions about it. That too is a prediction, though. For all I know Rudy Rucker is right and we will be a black hole in 100 years. But even if that prediction is right, our guesstimate of the phenomenology is all wrong.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't seem to me that if someone from 1915 was transported to the present day, it would be impossible to explain to them what was going on and they would die from the culture shock.

What's so hard to explain? Airplanes and cars? You had them then, they're just more common now. TV? Yeah, it's like radio and movies combined. Cellphones? Ok, phones are portable now. Computers? Alright, just tell them what a computer is.

They can handle it. They were human then too, not some alien species of comparative primitive idiots.

(If the argument were instead that it's unreasonable to expect someone to accurately predict the world of 100 years hence, I would agree; long-term prediction has not historically been something anyone has been all that good at. But the difficulty of predicting the future doesn't mean one couldn't handle exposure to it.)

<comment><USER18> > Computers? Alright, just tell them what a computer is.

Do you really believe that it would be so simple? I think that it's hard to appreciate how much computers have changed the shape of our lives in large and small ways. For example, imagine bringing Turing to the present day. Would he have any trouble understanding what a computer _is_ , as a mechanical or mathematical device? Probably not. Would he be baffled by, and initially uncomprehending of, the way that computers have changed our lives? I'd say almost certainly. (I often am, just thinking back on the way things were as recently as 20 years ago, and I lived through the change.)

<comment><USER5> Yes, I really believe it. That's why I said it.

Computers have changed our lives in many large and small ways. Great. Tell that to the traveler from 1915. Show them. They'll understand; they've witnessed the same phenomenon with the technological developments of their own time. They won't be used to our modern world, but their mind won't violently reject exposure to the concept.

<comment><USER19> I was about to disagree with you (citing that the change of 1815-1915 is much less than the change of 1915-2015). But then I realized that for certain places on Earth, the norm of technology might not be that much more advance than 1915 (this is a bit of a stretch, but you get the point) -- and I 'm not sure those people won't be able to adapt if they got move to the US.

<comment><USER5> The technological change of 1815 to 1915 is pretty drastic: railways, the automobile, the airplane, the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, photography, moving pictures, radio transmission, refrigeration, plastics, lightbulbs, x-rays, anesthetic surgery, the work of Semmelweis/Snow/Pasteur/Lister on medical hygiene/sanitation(/the germ theory of disease!), the spread of indoor plumbing and the flush toilet, ...

And culturally? Well, for one (U.S.-focused) example, there's that whole Civil War/end-of-slavery thing smack dab in the middle of it.

It's by no means clear to me that the changes of 1915 - 2015 somehow completely outstrip the changes of 1815 - 1915.

(I see that you agree with my general point, and with good illustration, too. I just wanted to point this out as well.)

<comment><USER20> Problem: a lot of those items/techniques were exclusively available to the very rich in 1915.

The UK still had slums with limited indoor plumbing during the 1950s. It wasn't until the slum clearances of the 1960s that the standard became an indoor bathroom in a house with central heating.

The big change between 1915 and 2015 is that the technological GINI coefficient has shrunk so much.

Being rich gets you few technological perks. You can buy a supercar or a private jet, but that's a difference of degree, not a difference in absolute access.

Most people have cars, and almost everyone can afford to fly. And all but the very poorest have Internet and electronic media access.

Likewise for cultural differences. Sexual morality - at least as publicly presented - is completely different now.

Work culture is somewhat different. Politics and finance have probably changed least of all.

The point being that someone from 1915 may just about be able to understand the Internet and computing. But they're going to have a really tough time learning how to parse Buzzfeed or TechCrunch or Reddit. Never mind what happens when they find PornHub or Tinder.

There are three things to learn, not one. The first is what the technology does. The second is the vocabulary of new names and the new concepts used to describe. The last is the social scripting that defines appropriate and inappropriate behaviour.

Those last two will take longest and be hardest.

I'd expect similar challenges in 2115, with the difference that there's likely to be much more social and political change, and not less.

It would surprise me if the definition of "human" hadn't changed fundamentally by then, together with almost everything we think we know today about culture, politics, and economics.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>