YouTube's ban on "hacking techniques" threatens to shut down infosec YouTube - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2019/07/03/nobus-r-us.html <comment><USER2> Other discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20346865](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20346865)

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem here is that "hacking techniques" to a black hat are also, equal- and-oppositely, _legitimate security research and prevention_ \-- to a white hat / security researcher / ethical hacker...

In other words, they're aspects of the same thing...

The idea that you're going to ban something because one aspect of it has a negative social purpose is philosophically unsound... We don't ban videos on electricity or electrical engineering because people can be electrocuted... We don't ban videos on chainsaws because they could be used to cut a person in half... We don't ban videos on cars because they could be used to run people over... Everything in the universe can be used for a positive or negative purpose, when you start banning things because some people use these things for negative purposes, you misunderstand that those effects are caused by the actor, _not the information and /or the tool that's being used_...

<comment><USER4> > The idea that you're going to ban something because one aspect of it has a > negative social purpose is philosophically unsound

Uh, guns?

<comment><USER5> We're not banning knives though, are we? Guns are different, and they're banned for the same reasons that, say, carrying around a bioweapon is banned.

\- Their primary purpose is to inflict harm.

\- The harm caused is potentially / easily lethal.

\- Their existence escalates nearly all situations.

\- They're dangerous items that can very easily cause accidental harm.

<comment><USER6> "we"? In the UK you are not allowed to carry a knife with you, unless you just bought one and are bringing to home or are a certified chief who needs one for work, or are going camping.

<comment><USER7> Hmm, how is it actually regulated? So, e.g. if I am going to my friends and carrying a bottle of wine altogether with pocket knife bundled with a corkscrew to be sure I will be able to open it, then I am in a grey zone or even illegal?

<comment><USER8> As long as it's a small, non-locking pocket knife, you're fine. If it's larger, you're fine as long as you have a good reason (eg. needed for work).

<comment><USER9> That's dangerous advice in many areas of the United States. In NYC if a police officer finds any kind of folding knife, regardless of how harmless, if he wants to arrest you he probably can under NYPD's absurd perversion of the law by considering it possession of a drop knife. If the officer can open the knife by holding it and flicking it open via inertia then he can arrest the victim for possession of a drop knife. They usually don't hold the handle to try and flick it open either, they'll hold it from the tip of the blade as that makes it very easy to just arrest anyone with a pocket knife.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15372404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15372404)

The first man mentioned in that article was convicted and sentenced to 6 years in prison on the sole charge of possession of this knife.

[https://www.amazon.com/Sheffield-12113-One-Hand-Opening- Lock...](https://www.amazon.com/Sheffield-12113-One-Hand-Opening-Lock- Back/dp/B0001WBSK8)

<comment><USER10> Try with a slightly-stuck Opinell. You're more likely to throw the knive or cut/puncture your finger than you are to flick it open. You can push it open with the thumb while retaining the handle with the ring? finger, but that's not flicking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Yesterday, Youtube froze Kody Kinzie's longrunning Cyber Weapons Lab channel

Did his channel get unbanned? Kody's website links to this active channel with its first video uploaded in Oct 2017: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgTNupxATBfWmfehv21ym-g](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgTNupxATBfWmfehv21ym-g)

edit: Yep looks like the ban was a mistake

> In a subsequent comment, a YouTube spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that > Cyber Weapons Lab's channel was flagged by mistake and the videos have since > been reinstated. "With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes > we make the wrong call," the spokesperson said. "We have an appeals process > in place for users, and when it's brought to our attention that a video has > been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it."

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/3/20681586/youtube-ban- instr...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/3/20681586/youtube-ban- instructional-hacking-phishing-videos-cyber-weapons-lab-strike)

<comment><USER12> It is always same story. If a problem concerns someone "well known" who is able to attract attention, than Google, Facebook, etc. are stepping back.

If it were some random "amateurish" hacker channel, it would be banned and nobody would give a crap. The problem is that many valuable things started as some "amateurish" stuff put together by some clever guys in a garage.

<comment><USER13> I'll actually be a counter example to that, I recently started a security podcast with a couple friends, talking about the latest in exploit development and mitigations, and whatever news we find interesting.

Shortly after we uploaded our 4th episode we were banned on Youtube. We appealed the ban and were allowed back on pretty quickly (hours) and we are by no means a large channel even now (~50 subs).

<comment><USER14> What's the name of your channel? :)

<comment><USER13> Day[0] - [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXFC76FDHZRVes6_lZqwLBA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXFC76FDHZRVes6_lZqwLBA)

We are not putting out any new episodes right now though, I'm currently off on a long-distance hike.

<comment><USER15> What trail? I'm reading this from northern California on the Pacific Crest Trail

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The internet promised so much, but is being ruined by corporations and governments.

I can't help but feel the ruining is accelerating.

I hope the infosec community can come up with some kind of decentralized way to actually share free speech. If anyone is capable, they are.

The discovery problem is an illusion. If you build it, they will come.

<comment> yusi-san >I hope the infosec community can come up with some kind of decentralized way to actually share free speech. If anyone is capable, they are.

There are decentralized/open/ethic friendly services alternative to big corporations services. In the case of Youtube there's PeerTube[1] for exemple (even if in that case there's a IP leak due to the p2p protocol if I remember correctly).

The sad thing here is that people decide to stay on the "big" services due to the network effect, and few people decide to boycott them just to follow principles.

[1][https://joinpeertube.org/](https://joinpeertube.org/)

<comment><USER17> In some video sectors people issue "preview" videos on YouTube (for discovery, network effect) and have a full video elsewhere that doesn't have to comply with YouTube's terms.

That would probably work here until YouTube move on to "can't signpost content that's not allowed here".

<comment><USER18> This approach implies that YouTube actually pays attention to the details of their terms, rather than just using wide sweeping keyword filters.

<comment><USER17> It seems to work in the sector I was thinking of (lewd ASMR).

I guess if YouTube blocks content by keywords we'll need to get creative with the thesaurus or ROT13.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's like banning Karate & Judo because it teaches violence. (When it actually improves personal security/safety)

<comment><USER20> YouTube is less and less about You.

<comment><USER21> It's like they've got too much content anyway, so why not just start banning stuff?

<comment><USER22> Ironically, they remove the videos that people watch, not the thousands of terabytes of videos with 3 clicks in the last 6 years.

<comment><USER23> It would be sad if they removed the videos with 3 click in the last 6 years, because those are the ones of your granddaughter, living thousands of km away, taking her first steps, or reading her first reading primer by herself. These are the things that help families stay in touch. Just because they don't attract mass clicks (and aren't _intended_ to) does not detract from the value they have for the small number of viewers to whom they matter.

<comment><USER24> WTH, don't keep that stuff on YT.

<comment><USER23> Well,... for some people that seems to be the easiest way to distribute it to the whole (widely dispersed, extended) family.

What would you suggest as an alternative?

<comment><USER24> I'd recommend Firefox Send ([https://send.firefox.com/](https://send.firefox.com/)) or maybe Dropbox.

<comment><USER25> Or whatsapp or signal... Or google drive. Just not YouTube.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What's next, cracking and reverse-engineering? Debugging? (Anti-authoritarian) _programming_?

As usual, Stallman tends to be quite prescient: [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to- read.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html) (perhaps more like "right to watch" in this context.)

<comment><USER27> I always think he's mostly right, but a little too uncompromising, but then everything he says comes true. I don't know how he predicted so far ahead at the time, it's humbling.

As a software author working at startups, am I part of the problem? I don't understand how to make a good living without locking down the code to some extent, with few exceptions (it's hard to found red hat)

<comment><USER26> I think he was a bit off with regards to source code/open source, because while having source code helps in understanding and modification, it's not essential; you could similarly imagine a world in which open-source wasn't a huge movement but instead the right to reverse-engineer (or basically, _understand_ ) software was guaranteed, and it would have as great an effect on freedom; perhaps even more so, because now it'd be the norm for people to disassemble/decompile anything they wanted, and the lack of any "chilling effects" would greatly increase advances in program analysis in general. It could even be argued that the rise of open-source lead to a decrease in interest and skills of RE.

In fact, PC magazines of the 80s and early 90s used to contain articles specifically about patching software to do interesting things, complete with instructions of the form "change byte at X to Y"; AFAIK they didn't violate any copyrights because they didn't distribute copyrighted material. Then there's the whole series of "undocumented DOS/Windows" books written by people like Matt Pietrek, Andrew Schulman, and Mark Russinovich; all of which required substantial amounts of reverse-engineering and analysis, but instead of them being persecuted, two of them now work at Microsoft.

"If you outlaw freedom, only outlaws will have freedom."

<comment><USER28> Sometimes I wish people had developed an expectation that commercial software should come with the source code, rather than as (only) a binary blob. Licensing terms could be the same, but people would look at you funny and feel cheated if you tried to sell them a binary blob.

<comment><USER29> This was a shift in viewpoint -- earlier in the life of computers, the hardware was seen as the really valuable part of a computer. So companies would provide the source code because that was simpler (the software was "just a toy"). But then software became the valuable component, and so businesses (as is a recurring theme in capitalism) didn't want to give away something that might be potentially profitable. And so we now have proprietary software. This shift in viewpoint by users was an intentional move, pushed by soon-to-be proprietary software businesses.

<comment><USER28> I think you may have missed my point. I _want_ businesses to profit off of their software... I just _also_ want them to provide customers with the sources used to produce the software they just paid for.

Copyright law can still apply. Just because I have your sources doesn't mean I can go and use them in my own software, or re-implement your patented algorithm.

"But how can I be sure that my customer isn't stealing my work?"

Well, ask someone to look at the source code they provide to _their_ customers. Remember, we're in an imaginary world where source-included is the _normal_ way to sell software, and anyone peddling binary blobs is seen as shady.

<comment><USER30> You having the sources does not change the incentive of the software's creator. The unwanted functionality (which the software creator is pressured to include) will instead be put in:

1\. Obfuscated code. This is a classic, employed back in the day when raw machine code wasn't quite as much of a barrier like it is nowadays. Less common now since its importance has lessened, but still ever-present, and could be re-employed instantly.

2\. The very design of the software. For instance, the software might require a phone number for every user, and this is baked in at the very fundamental design level, making it impractical to change. Other design choices might encourage you to share your contact lists, for say, backups, and your data is now leaked.

3\. The software is merely a collection stubs calling a cloud service. Very common now with so-called "apps" for phones. This design has come to its pinnacle with "web page apps", where only the front-facing UI portion sits on the user's control, and the rest runs remotely.

This is why "shared source" and the like _is not enough_. The end user must have the practical ability to, _reasonably easily_ change the software, either by themselves or by hiring anyone they like and/or trust to do it for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The thing that bores me the most is that the sentence not event makes sense. "Showing users how to bypass secure computer systems". If you can bypass a computer system, in which way can it be considered secure?

<comment><USER32> Because every security system is potentially flawed, contain bugs and therefore is vulnerable to hacking.

<comment><USER33> But knowing the flaw makes it insecure.

<comment><USER34> It was insecure whether you knew it or not.

<comment><USER35> So, it's not protected by YT's definition.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, YouTube's definition is self serving, and breaks apart for many important use cases. Their real definition is "we allow/block whatever makes us look good in the court of public opinion", and to think they have any real definition beyond that is a fallacy.

<comment><USER17> I expect it's a slight more meta metric, I doubt they care about the court of public opinion beyond its relevance to company profit.

<comment><USER34> Sure, but the medium term relevance to company profit isn't a metric you meaningfully have until it's too late to do anything about. You can actually react to the court of public opinion, and reacting to that will pretty much give you a level of CYA as a decision maker, so there's not really a down side on that end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Overbearing youtube, 10 years from now if it's still a medium it may be a far- cry from an expressive and genuine platform (Even worse-so than it is now). How long until biohacking, and other things are blocked based on the same sensitivity triggers for the topic?

<comment><USER37> _Overbearing youtube, 10 years from now if it 's still a medium it may be a far-cry from an expressive and genuine platform_

Yahoo's not the place it was in its heyday. Facebook's not the place it was in its heyday. Even Google's not the place it was 10 years ago. I don't think anyone is immune. The best you can do it to make sure the trajectory is positive. Netflix isn't the place it used to be. I think that's positive, though.

 _How long until biohacking, and other things are blocked based on the same sensitivity triggers for the topic?_

All the really cool stuff _should_ disappear from YouTube. That's just the natural order of things. They no longer want to be edgy. They want to be fat and happy off those big establishment corporate dollars. They've positioned themselves to be the next cable. That just means they want to be the current "vast wasteland."

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

The faster YouTube becomes the next cable, the better. The less time the public discourse spends squished under the pressing thumb of the corporate oligarchs, the better.

<comment><USER38> Short of moving hacking tutorials to pornhub, is there anywhere out there more interested in serving our fringe cases?

<comment><USER39> I'm not sure if using hidden services is considered a viable solution here on HN, but it seems to to me to be the solution. Don't know any video streaming services but I assume that such sites already exist. The main selling point would be relative difficulty to take down a specific video through a legal action. I assume that youtube takedowns are either results of complaints/legal threats that they have received or a preemptive action to avoid such legal problems happening in future, i.e. their legal department assessed that the risk of such motions in future to be likely. On the other hand, considering bandwidth requirements for video streaming deanonymization of such service appears to be relatively easy, hence possibly some service centered around ipfs would be viable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> YouTube needs to accelerate their banning process so they can become solely focused on mainstream psychological brainwashing clickbait. This way my favorite creators can actually move to other freer platforms and get paid without fascist payment processors and trying to abide by YouTube's insane terms and conditions. YouTube is going the way of cable TV channels dedicated to infomercials. The interesting stuff will be purged soon. The writing is on the wall. Backup and escape while you can. It will not get better.

<comment><USER41> I donated to youtube-dl and started archiving my favorite channels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Corporate, ad-supported platforms are inherently prone to arbitrary censorship... they always have been and always will be. If you want freedom, viewer/donation-supported distribution not tied to corporate interests is the only way to go. But, you have to get someone to pay or it all comes crashing down.

</comment><comment><USER43> Now might be a good opportunity for Pornhub to offer a reskinned version of their site. They already have the infrastructure and people do host non-porn related content there.

<comment><USER44> Fantastic idea, and honestly Pornhub's values are a good match. They're used to hosting explicit, controversial content, resisting even copyright takedowns (unfortunately), yet they do a good job of keeping outright atrocities off the platform (e.g. snuff films, child porn etc.)

But how would they make money off it? Infosec expats from YouTube are probably the most likely population to use ad-block of anyone!

<comment><USER45> Political extremists

Potentially dangerous science experiments

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Solution: Publish your infosec tutorials as fetish videos on pornhub.

I bet they have a better monetization model for creators anyways.

</comment><comment><USER47> I've noticed quite a few free software enthusiast posting their content to LBRY[1]. Doesn't seem like a perfect solution for every type of video getting messed up by YouTube lately, but I think infosec could find a good home there.

[1] [https://lbry.com/what](https://lbry.com/what)

<comment><USER48> Absolutely not.

Its more "decentralized crypto blockchain" nonsense. Nope, nope, and just nope.

<comment><USER49> LBRY would be perfect without blockchain. As someone that talks about blockchain since 2016, I see no reason why they need a slow database

<comment><USER50> Care to explain how to make a censorship resistant system without a blockchain? It's one of the best use cases for it, and everything LBRY promises would not be possible without it.

[https://spee.ch/a/doyouneedablockchain](https://spee.ch/a/doyouneedablockchain)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Well, well, well.

Does a high tech community need Youtube as a video platform though?

The famous German hacker community "chaos computer club" simply uses their own platform to begin with: [https://media.ccc.de/](https://media.ccc.de/)

<comment><USER52> The benefit of YouTube isn't primarily video hosting. The benefit is discoverability and (to a certain extent) community.

<comment><USER53> It's the same with Github, sure you can host on your own domain, but "search for voctoweb on Github" is so much easier than "oh just go to my homepage at sdkljfsdl.sdf".

<comment><USER51> If you use google instead of github search you can find it even if it's on a self-hosted gitlab, though. And since both use git as API nobody is stopped from forking from gitlab to github either.

<comment><USER52> Yeah good luck searching for something unfortunately named that doesn't already happen to be super popular, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> This is what happens when you have no real public space on the Internet. Corporations will hide under the guise of private property.

We really need to redefine the public space on the Internet.

<comment><USER55> What do you suggest?

If you intend on redefining it in a way that takes away property rights, then I won't support it and neither should you.

<comment><USER56> How about a trade-off, something like:

In order to receive "Safe harbour" copyright immunity for uploaded user content, you have to have fairly lax rules on content (e.g. only blocking actual criminal content, which is all youtube have done before this, right?).

If you want to significantly curate your content, you can't hide behind the legal protection of "uncurated user content".

<comment><USER55> > If you want to significantly curate your content, you can't hide behind the > legal protection of "uncurated user content".

Is YouTube gaining some benefit from pretending to be an open platform? I'm not sure what you're saying here.

Likewise, isn't copyright infringement is a criminal offense?

<comment><USER56> No, I'm suggesting changing laws.

Youtube currently benefits massively from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act) as they are not directly liable for people uploading content they don't own.

I'm suggesting that we only let people have that immunity if they aren't significantly curating their content.

If they significantly curate their content, they should be able to curate copyright too.

<comment><USER57> YouTube very aggressively curates copyrighted content. This idea seems like the ideal way to stifle any competition to YouTube because the little guys cannot afford to implement a sophisticated machine learning copyright dragnet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> The "instruction hacking.." bit at the end seems a bit out of place given the rest of the page. What it feels like is that its a poorly written attempt to ban software cracking and the computerized version of the previous "Instructional theft" ban without giving people the mental strings to discover how to get free warez and bypass things like hotel keycards, free token cards for the arcade/etc.

Frankly, I'm frequently surprised by what I stumble upon on youtube..

(better article with the TOS bits in question) [https://www.malwaretech.com/2019/07/youtubes-new-policy- on-h...](https://www.malwaretech.com/2019/07/youtubes-new-policy-on-hacking- tutorial-is-a-problem.html)

<comment><USER59> Obviously the spirit of the law is for youtube to have a way to remove "how 2 script kiddie" videos. But the letter of the law matters, and right now the letters say they can ban just about any video discussing the details of vulnerable systems.

<comment><USER58> That is true, but youtube is full of things which basically violate these principals. I will pick the second item "Extremely dangerous challenges" because its nice and safe/generic to talk about. I think everyone understands what they are talking about, but youtube has tons of instructional videos for doing things which could severely maim/kill careless or poorly trained individuals. The infamous Shanghi tower climb/etc video (83M views on just one of the versions) is actually on the tamer side of this, likely only violating a couple of the guidelines. Even, less scary are all the "this is how you run a table saw" like videos.

So they have broad guidelines that don't seem to be blanket enforced.

<comment><USER60> > "Extremely dangerous challenges"

I think you're misinterpreting this part of the ToS. I don't think it's meant to apply to videos of dangerous conduct in general. Instead, it's meant to apply to videos which are explicitly presented as a "challenge" for other users to complete -- along the lines of the ALS "Ice Bucket Challenge", but explicitly harmful (think "Drink a Gallon of Bleach Challenge").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> On the other hand everytime YT removes something interesting it makes it easier for open alternatives to grow.

<comment><USER39> Yes and no. While it solves users/audience problem for alternative platformm, there is another barier of entry: bandwidth costs. I recommend anyone to do a simple math excercise of simple multiplication: size of 20 minute 2K video * 50'000 views * price per GB of traffic on your favourite cloud/hosting platform. To make the excercise more interesting now multiply whatever result you got by the number of videos your platform is supposed to host. Assume this number to grow each month. Also assume that some users will want 4K.

<comment><USER62> You can monetize from the start, and get the full cut. If the monetization doesn't work out, you can pull the plug before the costs occur. You could probably even code it so that you never serve more than you made in income. You might also say you don't get to 50k views by multiplication, but by addition. I mean, if your videos are _so_ popular that you get 50k hits in the first minute of uploading one, your audience will between them find a way to finance you.

> To make the excercise more interesting now multiply whatever result you got > by the number of videos your platform is supposed to host.

Multiply income by the same amount though.

> Also assume that some users will want 4K.

I wouldn't assume that for all types of content anyway, and certainly not for all connections. In this case, that some users don't get what they want doesn't matter to those who don't want it. Whereas YT censoring things can turn off even people who aren't interested in the censored content per se, on principle, I doubt you'll find that with "not supporting 4k, because you only got started self-hosting and making ends meet". People sometimes are supportive of people in ways they aren't of companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Next, they'll refer to these as "military grade software techniques" or "military grade tools".

<comment><USER64> End to end encryption was once classified as a munition.

If the data is not end to end encrypted, then it is public.

Everyone should understand this.

<comment><USER63> Encryption is still treated as munitions under ITAR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I believe this is a dupe, much wider discussion in this post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20346865](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20346865)

</comment><comment><USER66> We should just go through and report all the defcon and black hat talks, along with most other security talks, including those by google researchers.

<comment><USER67> I reported Google's recent video about their CTF hacking competition. We won't be safe as long as dangerous videos like that exist on Youtube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> The LockPickingLawyer, even with his 100M views, must be getting worried about this.

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm9K6rby98W8JigLoZOh6FQ/](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm9K6rby98W8JigLoZOh6FQ/)

<comment><USER42> Heck, anyone offering insider advice or education in many professions and trades should be worried: medicine, nursing, legal, engineering, aviation, maintenance (automotive, aviation, industrial and many more), physics and more.

<comment><USER69> Its also nothing new, just look at the problems Cody'sLab had and has.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I dont think youtube can run their business without infocsec personal. But the US community as a whole also doesnt seem to have a problem with working for for 3 letter agencies, so its not really surprising that youtube doesnt have to worry about their personal leaving. Please think about what kind of effect your work has on the wider world. Some here are likely in the privileged situation that changing the job because of your conscience is a possibility.

edit: I would add to think about the next generation of us and what example those actions sets, but i dont think i have to. Too many people here already grew up in an environment where taking jobs at 3 letter agencies is nothing out of the ordinary and the head of the NSA gets to speak at DEFCON while kids rot in jail for the same curiosity that made us who we are today.

</comment><comment><USER70> I wonder if this will give a boost to a new Peertube instance dedicated to infosec content. Seems like this should be right up infosec's people alley.

Peertube uses web torrenting to distribute videos, so it should be possible to host it without needing the massive delivery infrastructure of Youtube.

<comment><USER71> More about PeerTube: [https://joinpeertube.org/en/](https://joinpeertube.org/en/)

I've volunteered my instance ([https://video.freeradical.zone](https://video.freeradical.zone)) to host infosec videos, in accordance with the theme of my Mastodon instance at [https://freeradical.zone/](https://freeradical.zone/) . This is explicitly within my terms of service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> This is what you'd expect a video sharing site run by a major defense contractor to do.

</comment><comment><USER73> This ever-increasing censorship is the inevitable result of buying into the idea that speech can be "harmful" and that big tech companies have some kind of "responsibility" to remove it.

<comment><USER74> Tell that to the surviving members of families who died at the hand of isis who do their recruiting on Facebook of all places.

<comment><USER75> that's so shallow.

One could easily counter you with "tell that to the surviving members of families who died at the hand of terrorists who walked into the europe without a right to do so"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> So like, no more defcon talks? That'd be enough to make me switch

<comment><USER77> As far as I can tell, defcon hasn't gone anywhere and the one security researcher who's videos were taken down by mistake were promptly put back up once the researcher pointed out the mistake to youtube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Banning is the new book burning.

</comment><comment><USER79> Maybe, PornHub will be the best website for "hacking techniques" video.

</comment><comment><USER80> I'm just going to shamelessly plug an open source Golang project I've been developing to stream my own videos from my YouTube channel, but in a self hosted privacy-focused way.

Builtin Tor onion service support so you don't need domains or a static IP address, automatic RSS feeds, no database (the video data is read from MP4 metadata), and no JavaScript (the player is just HTML video).

In terms of self-hosting, obviously it's problematic if too many people access it this way, but my experience so far is that modern video compression is really good. I can get one of my 15 minute videos at 480p in around 50mb or so.

That's like loading weather.com five times. And since it's streaming the bandwidth is spread out enough to support plenty of connections (especially with Golang's IO support).

Check it out: [https://github.com/wybiral/tube](https://github.com/wybiral/tube)

</comment><comment><USER81> This creates opportunities for niche driven video sites to show up, if they have not already.

For example "YouTube for infosec".

The web is going to go more towards specialisation as the "one place for all kinds of content of this format" model is becoming too big to handle. For various reasons, from searching, to moderation, to curation.

<comment><USER82> But video is the most expensive thing to transmit over the interwebs. How do we afford it? Where do we get the interest to fund it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> The most upsetting thing for me is, that YT acts in both legislative and executive functions here.

It's one thing to make a rule, to ban "hacking techniques".

But there should be an independent party who get's to decide whether a particular video is about "hacking techniques" or not.

> Is teaching kids how to use wireshark(1) already hacking?

> How about the Chrome dev-console?

The current state of things, where:

a) a proprietary algorithm decides if a rule is violated or not and

b) you have no way to appeal decisions taken by YT,

is appalling.

Update: Well, there appears to be a YT-internal process to appeal censoring decisions. But who knows how well that works. In the past, appealing to copyright take-downs was practically impossible.

<comment><USER84> The issue is that effective free speech is now facilitated by private entities who are not legally beholden to it. The public forum is now privatised and more and more monopolised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> I could almost see this being an attempt to try to back people off from encouraging them to moderate. Pick something that they can make a very plausible claim to be doing for "public safety" but that they know will cause an uproar from respected voices in tech for being counter productive. Then they can faux throw their hands up in the future and say, "it's in everyone's best interest for us not to moderate".

I'm not really saying strongly this is the case, it's a bit tin foil hat, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was true either.

</comment><comment><USER86> This is fantastic news. The best possible way to get new platforms is to kick technically competent hackers out of existing ones. We should encourage other platforms to deplatform vulnerability researchers too.

</comment><comment><USER87> [https://d.tube/](https://d.tube/)

Decentralized. Based on ipfs. Uses [https://steemit.com/](https://steemit.com/)

Works like a charm

</comment><comment><USER88> Curious, googlers post here. Do any people who work on youtube read these? While googlers do reply to these sorts of comment sections I've never seen one from youtube do so.

</comment><comment><USER89> They're killing off mousetrap Monday too.

"Cruelty to animals"

May they be infested with plague rats.

<comment><USER90> And yet there are hundreds of videos of animals suffering (electrocution, glue, etc) by non-English channels with hundreds of thousands of views and they don't seem to care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> Time to revive the cypherpunks! We are hackers we can crack the hell out of these capitalists that are trying to shape reality or we can build our own platforms, people go where the hackers go, the internet was created by hackers lets take it back! www.gnu.org is a good place to start.

</comment><comment><USER92> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIdZ2oPyB1Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIdZ2oPyB1Y)

Counterpoint; LiveOverflow (also a channel on YouTube featuring reverse- engineering) had this to say on the manner, in very broad strokes, YouTube monetization, and hosting, is a luxury and they as a private org can choose what or what not to host.

</comment><comment><USER3> YouTube should just ban _EVERYTHING_ , I mean, absolutely every video -- except for highly edited, highly censored, Barney The Purple Dinosaur(tm) children's videos, where the political party that is in power in the region of the world where the video is shown -- gets to do ALL of the editing... <g>

</comment><comment><USER93> Most of people of course don't like the pressure, but it's looks too classical: Youtube is a monopoly in video hosting. Monopolist always dictate his own rules, so better be prepared to adventures.

My channel monetization was banned and I'm very grateful, there's a lot of bigger things to do.

</comment><comment><USER94> They (and all other creators who produce anything that YT might at some point deem even remotely controversial) should just move to BitChute. It kinda looks ugly, but it basically provides the same functionality, without YTs overbearing politics and hostility towards the 1st amendment.

</comment><comment><USER95> If there is any group capable of finding a new home and thriving it's the infosec crowd.

This is another move from YouTube to limit their content to more advertising friendly genres. I don't like it but it gives me hope there may be some competitors rise up in that space.

</comment><comment><USER96> Time to start hoarding the ippsec videos, and lock picking lawyer for good measure.

</comment><comment><USER97> Looking forward to Floatplane, youtube's terms and conditions have been awful for years, not to mention the outright ban on anything even remotely controversial and the automated tyranny.

</comment><comment><USER98> I hope people will support distributed alternatives like BitChute.

<comment><USER99> BitChute is really nice. I use it quite a bit now. I've been trying out some Reddit alternatives recently too. They all get hardly any traffic, but they've reminded me how much I miss the "anything goes" culture the web had a decade ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> Is this considered to be "evil" that google said it would not do?

</comment><comment><USER57> Imagine a video site where you had to pay money to have your videos hosted. In this scenario, the platform would be obligated to host your content as long as it was legal.

</comment><comment><USER101> "YouTube"? More like "OurTube". amirite?

</comment><comment><USER102> Ah yes, the best way to combat "hackers" is to purge them to darker corners of the web and remove their space to play freely and openly.

</comment><comment><USER103> Can anyone else advise of some other infosec channels like Null Byte? I want a chance to binge some of this stuff in case they disappear.

</comment><comment><USER104> Has everyone forgotten that you can easily just host your own website and throw up whatever video content you want there?

I can't imagine creating a ton of educational content and then having it all depend on the whims of a single platform.

This is not the end of infosec or hacking videos.

<comment><USER105> Its much much much more expensive to host video content than anything else.

<comment><USER106> This time is different, because hackers are more likely to have the ability to solve this problem (even if it weren't for the fact that YT already solved it once more than a decade ago). YT probably made a big mistake here.

<comment><USER107> If I understand correctly, YT is able to solve it because it has huge data centers which can cache the videos at appropriate locations all around the world. Honest query: do you think an individual/small group can replicate this?

Perhaps GNU can take this up as an initiative.

<comment><USER108> GNU doesn't have the money to pull this off

<comment><USER91> What they need the most is contribution from coders

<comment><USER109> Eventually, somebody has to pay for electricity to spin the disks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER110> Every day I hate more theses big corporations that treat us like fucking sheeps, rebellion is a duty in our time !

</comment><comment><USER111> Well, I think that almost 60% of these videos are totally useless and possibly malicious. sucks anyways

<comment><USER112> They teach some people tools of the trade for their actual jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> Lock-picking is probably next then...

</comment><comment><USER114> This comes down to what advertisers want, they call the shots on the content on youtube.

</comment><comment><USER115> Why do these things have to be on YouTube specifically? PeerTube exists.

</comment><comment><USER116> It's inevitable. In Fahrenheit 451, books start getting banned because every person who ever gets offended starts asking for the thing that offended them to go away and people comply.

This is what happens to big targets. It's why it's important to preserve the independent host.

<comment><USER117> That's an ironic book to reference in this context, since the book had such a dim view towards video.

<comment><USER62> Not just video:

> > "And in her ears the little Seashells, the timble radios tamped tight, and > an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming > in, coming on on the shore of her unsleeping mind."

> _So, even as she rests, Mildred is surrounded by noise, by constant > entertainment, just like she is during the day with her t.v. walls. Montag > 's society uses these seashells for two purposes. The first is to control > information, and hence, thought and potential rebellion. If they are the > ones controlling what information you get, they can tell you whatever they > want, giving only one perspective, and painting a rosy picture so that > people are never discontented. They also use the shells to relay important > information. For example, when Montag escapes at the end, they send a > message through all of the seashells for everyone to look out for him, and > to turn him in if they see him. They automatically have a huge civilian army > at hand, through the use of the seashells. Secondly, if people are > constantly "plugged in," they don't have any spare time for their minds to > be on their own. If people never have silence, they never think, and so > never have the kind of discontented thought that come from meditation._

> _Mildred stays "tuned in" so much that she really has no mind of her own. In > this sense, she is a perfect citizen of her society. I hope that these > thoughts helped; good luck!_

from [https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/fahrenheit-451-what- tec...](https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/fahrenheit-451-what-technology- mildred-use-go-99129)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER118> Knowledge is power for the people. Best to keep the people powerless.

</comment><comment><USER119> money quote

"just ask all those American cities that are paying out to ransomware creeps who got hold of a defect that the NSA kept secret so they could use it against "bad guys."

</comment><comment><USER120> Does this mean all those lock picking videos have to go too?

</comment><comment><USER121> At this point, it's time to finally quit YT.

</comment><comment><USER118> Don't be evil, unless ______.

</comment><comment><USER122> a black box im not allowed to look at? sounds like a fun security research problem. :3

</comment><comment> rv-de One word: Vimeo.

<comment><USER123> Vimeo recently banned Project Veritas (which is still up on youtube), Alex Jones and plenty of other channels. Not sure it's a less censuring alternative.

<comment> rv-de I think every platform has the right to censor and also the duty to do so. Like gore or cp etc. This shapes a profile for a platform. In vimeo's case they distanced themselves from some conspiracy theory fanatics which is fine with me. Meaning I endorse that profile as a visitor and who doesn't just needs another platform.

And one reason why those outlets (like Alex Jones & Co.) often aren't accepted around for long is because they attract rather garbled minds with some tendency towards toxic social interaction.

<comment><USER124> Do platforms have the right to collude with each other to deny service to a particular individual? Even if you think Alex Jones is a crazy person (and he is), you should still condemn Apple, Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube for attempting to remove him from public discourse. If anything, it only made his crazy conspiracy theories seem more credible.

<comment> rv-de They have the right. I don't think censorship is a smart answer to "alternative truths" or debatable content, though. They could just downrank it. The solution must be free and public education enabling a majority of society to make up their own mind in an informed and rational fashion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER125> first they came for alex jones.

</comment><comment><USER126> what do they trying to achieve?

</comment><comment><USER127> so use a different service?

</comment><comment><USER128> Every news about authoritarian overreach prompts some discussion about the need for decentralization.

Yet, decentralization of services is moot if the underlying physical connectivity layer can still be controlled/filtered from a single point. Then there's the matter of discovering decentralized/distributed services.

We have literally _billions_ of devices capable of sending and receiving signals, including millions of independent computing devices that are powered 24/7\. Do we really need centralized entities to keep our species connected?

<comment><USER129> Regarding content and video distribution, we already have a working decentralized platform: BitTorrent. We even have clients allowing searching and previewing videos from torrents (PopcornTime and the like). The infrastructure is already there, the only barriers are psychological at this point.

<comment><USER128> > _the only barriers are psychological at this point._

For me, the barriers are: eating up more than the file's size from my limited ISP quota, and CPU and battery usage when unplugged.

The CPU and battery issues can be resolved by seeding only while charging/idle/under a specific CPU temperature. One hemisphere could serve the other while half the world sleeps every day/night.

As for data caps, we again see the need for decentralizing the physical connectivity layer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER130> A channel dedicated to creating point-and-click cracking tutorials for complete [expletives] gets banned (go figure.) People cry: waahhh, free speech, think of the [security researchers.] Sorry, but I fail to see how any of this relates to infosec.

If it were really about security research then most of the content would be about theoretical topics like classes of vulnerabilities, how PoCs work, how to write basic shell code, links to assembly programming, and so on. But instead these geniuses give us gems like: how to run [this script] to break this [system version], a guide for tween dummies.

They distill their knowledge and weaponise it for use by anyone, and that's not security through obscurity. That's knowingly building a loaded gun, showing people that its cool to fire it, handing it to children, and then saying: lol, don't use this okay, totally for research only! Yeah, sure. Anything for dat ad revenue, right? Face it, none of the people watching these videos are there for education.

The only people this benefits are the script kiddies. InfoSec researchers sure as hell aren't using YouTube for their vuln disclosures and don't need to be spoon fed cooking recipes for doing pen tests or R & D.

<comment><USER131> >People cry: waahhh, free speech, think of the [security researchers.]

What do you think free speech means? Speech you like?

And yes, think of not only groups you can think of like "security researches" (sic) but all those groups you can't think of. These policies are a dragnet. Yeah, they'll MAYBE catch some guys you think shouldn't be on there (and by the way, I'm pretty sure YouTube was banning those guys anyway), but they'll catch a hundreds times more. People who maybe doing peripherally related things, like educational content, or historical content, or satirical and comical content, or a mix of all those and infosec stuff, in all kinds of languages, etc., etc. etc.

But you'll say "They can just appeal", and you know what, if Twitterverse makes a stink about something, maybe it'll work, but 99% of those will never appeal and that content will be lost. Or maybe they'll lose their appeal because what constitutes infringement will fall on the interpretation of some offshored minimum-wage worker (much respect to them), or capricious whims of executives who don't want bad publicity.

>The only people this benefits are the script kiddies.

You sure about that? Really? Really really?

How about them reporters in censor-happy countries, I bet you they are script kiddies too because they aren't programmers.

That's one example, but how about all those other groups you and I can't even think of because we're just not that aware of all the things that happen in the world.

And how do you think you learn about infosec? I bet a non-trivial amount of InfoSec professionals started off as 'script kiddies'. In fact, I bet all the good ones were 'script kiddies' (pretty sure Snowden was a script kiddie).

You know what the difference is between a vulnerability testing tool for use in securing your network vs probing another for nefarious penetration? Nothing.

\---

I fully get the motivation of these companies. They want safe content for advertisers, so YouTube will never be a free speech zone.

What I don't get are cheerleaders, usually on the left now, who want these behemoths to keep adding more and more restrictions. Who want a corporate behemoth to act like their mommy and daddy and protected from things they are afraid of and do the same for others too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER132> I agree with youtube in this case.

Any video that gives an opportunity to malevolent people to do harm must be banned from youtube.

But it must be banned from general purpose video viewing sites only, not from the internet.

Specialized sites should be allowed to host these videos.

Altenatively, youtube must create a new category of videos that are viewable only when the real identity of the viewer is confirmed.

<comment><USER133> > Any video that gives an opportunity to malevolent people to do harm must be > banned from youtube.

What if those same videos help oppressed people do do good?

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> I'm on the fence about this.

Script kiddies have always been the proverbial joke, but if you ask me, this category of hackers collectively is a bigger problem for the average person. They usually can't do much damage individually, but when you have so many of them that know how to cause even a minimal amount of mayhem and distraction for others, that adds up as a burden to society.

I also have no respect for hackers that have no desire to put in the time and effort toward the pursuit of becoming masters at what they do, and virtually everyone who is watching hacking tutorials on YT is just looking for a shortcut so they can hack a little bit on the side between League of Legends games.

So good riddance to the videos (though not sure how much difference it will make at this point).

However, the real issue here is that Google is applying changes to its censorship policies at a gradual, subtler pace, rather than deciding on a coherent principle and applying it consistently. There's too much fear that Google will continue to tighten restrictions, and that next on the chopping block will be either our favorite content or stuff we produce/upload ourselves. Nobody really knows where it ends. This is something I'm definitely _not_ okay with, and this ban is just another example of this trend.

<comment><USER74> Disagree. I found the channel to be useful and educational. For example, I knew people could crack WiFi passwords but never actually understood how until I watched null byte videos. Now I can be more vigilant about protecting my WiFi. I really hate these generalizations about these wannabe hackers being kids playing League. I'm 33 and I would venture a lot of people watching those vids have legitimate interest in exploring the ethical hacker profession. You may not get the proper education nor exposure but it's a start. Also I feel like mischief is part of adolescence that's required to develop interest in a more serious pursuit. As a kid I did plenty of this type of "hacking" but on a more basic level. This in turn made me more fascinated about how things work, got me into game exploiting, which lead to virtual sales, e-commerce and ultimately a decent paying job.

I'm not happy that today's society wants to monitor and deter everything. It leaves no room for exploration, growth, mistakes and learning.

<comment><USER134> > I'm not happy that today's society wants to monitor and deter everything. It > leaves no room for exploration, growth, mistakes and learning.

YouTube isn't even the worst example of this. The digital surveillance in schools really creeps me out the most.

<comment><USER135> What kind of surveillance goes on in schools nowadays?

<comment><USER62> recently:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20342264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20342264) "Welcome to the K-12 Surveillance State"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20312642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20312642) "Schools are using unproven surveillance technology to monitor students"</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: anyone doing a start-up, but have a non-technical full-time job? - <AUTHOR>

Does anybody here works on a technology start-up project and got a full-time job which isn't related to technology such as truck driver, nurse aide, carpenter etc. you know what I mean? Like for me, I work full time as a nurse at night and work on my start-up project at daytime or during my days-off. What is the rate of success for this kind of situation in a start-up? And how would you do this if you're in this situation? Are you gonna quit or just keep doing it? <comment><USER3> I think it's unusual, but if your startup is in the same field as your non- tech nursing job, you have the fantastic advantage of domain knowledge - <USER2> actually _know_ the problems and frustrations of the field; and you can also speak its language so you can communicate with people in it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Tesla was digging ditches for influential ex-Wall-streeters after quitting the Edison company. During lunches he would tell about his ideas - this helped him to get financing a few years later. Just an example

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes. I used to work in the oil industry (now distribution) and continue to work on side projects. It's hard work but you have to do whatever it takes.</comment>


Calling a real estate robocaller back - <AUTHOR> https://www.philly.com/business/robocall-scam-philadelphia-home-buying-selling-20190430.html <comment><USER3> We all hate robocallers and scammers. We all hate getting called every day by them. But did you know there's something worse? My wife recently discovered a not so fun side effect of spam calls...

Scammers have this popular trick of spoofing the caller ID for a number local to you. People are more likely to pick up the call if it's a number that seems familiar to them (like, the first 6 digits are the same as your phone number).

I've known about this trick, but I never really thought about the collateral damage. See ... that number they're faking is a _real_ phone number. And it's someone else's phone number. It's not the scammer's number.

Well my wife's phone number got used. You wouldn't believe the number of people who call scammers back! She was getting hundreds of calls a day; non- stop. Most people were calling back trying to figure out who called them. Some were angry. A few threatened her with violence.

And there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. You can't stop someone from spoofing your phone number on Caller ID. You can't stop people from mistakenly calling "you" back. You're just stuck in phone hell. The only solution is to change your phone number ... not really a great option.

It lasted about a week; we resorted to just keeping her phone on Do Not Disturb.

What a nightmare.

<comment><USER4> I'm totally ignorant here, so I'm sure there's a good reason: why is secure caller id so hard?

<comment><USER5> The telephone network was designed with total trust for "network operators" who essentially have "root" to do anything.

This worked OK when the only operators were the various national phone monopolies (Cap'n Crunch notwithstanding), but today that level of access is much easier to get and abuse, and is difficult to trace.

There are efforts to bolt-on security to the telephone network but it's really hard.

I think it's more likely that (over the next handful of decades) the phone network fades into obscurity as more voice calls are connected over data links which offer much improved security models.

<comment><USER6> > Cap'n Crunch notwithstanding

I assume you mean Captain Crunch, not the breakfast cereal... :-)

<comment><USER7> He probably does mean the cereal, since it had the whistle that gave Captain Crunch (AKA John Draper) his name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There's an idea for a dystopian comedy skit somewhere in this:

> _Will's so busy leaving messages all over town that he never answers the > phone when you call him back...Sometimes calls were forwarded to a host of > people who went by "Pat." They said they worked for PATLive, an answering > service firm that takes calls for businesses when they're busy or closed. > Pats were taking messages for "Steven's Office" in Alexandria, Virginia._

> _Asked why there were several Pats, a Pat said: "We're all Pat."_

> _"We all go by Pat to keep it easy," said Pat. "But we do have some Pats in > the office."_

<comment><USER8> I read their "how it works" and other pages, and the sales pitch isn't bad. They should be more selective about clients though. [https://www.patlive.com](https://www.patlive.com)

<comment><USER9> Am I the only one who thinks this is bullshit? How is PATLive not also complicit in the crimes they're looking for "Will" to prosecute in?

I get so tired of these B2B service providers who get caught up doing borderline illegal shit and then just shrug their shoulders and say "not our responsibility." Everybody has these clauses doing the ass covering so they can sell services to anyone who knocks and they're never held responsible because of some bullshit contract.

WHY is that allowed? You're doing business with an individual/organization that is breaking the law, and you know it, or you would know it if you cared to look. That's gotta be at least worth a charge of negligence?

I'm just saying the "Will"s of the modern era would have a much harder time if the call centers, teleco providers, internet hosters, etc. were held responsible when they were found to be operating in cahoots with a scammer and I don't understand why they aren't.

Vet your fucking clients. And if you don't wanna do that, then shut your doors.

<comment><USER10> On a related note - I've had the opposite experience but it wasn't with telecom related services - it was cloud services. A friend of mine started a business that focuses on the highly anticipated luxury clothing and sneaker releases. He basically does a proxy business that routes traffic through his network so that people can use multiple IPs that aren't banned on those retailers websites so that they can purchase multiple units of these products which are usually restricted to one per customer.

We had a lot of trouble finding a reliable cloud services provider. Even though none of this is illegal at all, a bunch of them have clauses against it in the service agreement. So we avoided those. We figured the ones that didn't have it shouldn't have any problems because nothing was illegal and it's not like we are abusing the cloud services - we're talking about a significant amount of time with nothing on the network (that we pay them for) and then a short burst of traffic that is still low on bandwidth while all the clients are trying to hit the sites up at the same time. But one after another kept cancelling our accounts, citing a violation of the terms of service. We pressed a number of them for an explanation. Many just ignored us. A few outright lied and said they received complaints from ISPs about our IPs sending spam emails. I challenged them on that because nothing of what we did or any of our client did was sending emails. And we tightly controlled the network traffic, ports, etc. So it's simply not possible, they were lying to get rid of us because their terms didn't account for it. To this day, I still can't figure out why all these providers were so against what we were doing. Eventually my friend explained his use case to the CEO of one of the companies and they signed and agreement and were totally fine with everything so I'm really perplexed.

<comment><USER11> I applaud them. Reseller middlemen buying up the releases so they can profit are awful and inhibiting that activity is a greater good for society. In the ideal world sneakers could only be sold at retail, let the people who actually want to wear them buy them.

<comment><USER12> yeah internet scalpers suck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Will" doesn't want to buy your house. Will wants to collect the lead, determine how appealing the property is, and sell the lead to someone local. Will isn't touching that property with a 10 foot pole. Phil on the other hand, just bought the lead and will make a lowball offer.

Oh, and "Will" on the voicemail isn't Will either. It's a voice actor off of Fiverr that likely has no idea their voice is being used for this scheme.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've had people wanting to "buy" some property you have. Once they get you to agree to sell, then they ask if you can self-finance the sale (i.e., you become the bank and "sell" for nothing and they give you a monthly mortgage payment.) Sounds OK in theory, but you'd need a lot of paperwork/legal to vet the whole deal and you have no idea if the person can even pay until you spend even more on credit checks, etc. And If at some point they stop paying, you have to spend yet more on foreclosure and all the other stuff real banks have to deal with.

<comment><USER15> >Sounds OK in theory

Sounds terrible in theory!

<comment><USER16> It's not if the income stream and high yield rate from a seller financing deal is more important to you (as the maker of the note) than a lump sum of cash. Everyone has different financial requirements, collateral they're willing to put at risk, etc. You're using today's dollars (or assets) to find ways to buy more of tomorrow's dollars ("investing").

The paperwork isn't too difficult to put together either.

<comment><USER17> I can't imagine why this ever would make sense. Only scammers would benefit would accept this, because of the lack of clarity in ownership, it's like a deliberate attempt to circumvent normal financial transactions, which only benefits scammers.

It strikes me as the same thing as the fake-check auto purchase scams that infest different on-line auto sales channels.

<comment><USER16> You should read more on seller/owner financing to understand why one would use it in a transaction before dismissing it as a scam. To think only scammers would benefit is an ignorant position to hold if you don't understand why counterparties in a real estate transaction would elect this financing mechanism over conventional financing. Ownership interest is still recorded with the local jurisdiction, so nothing is hidden (although with a land trust, you _can_ hide beneficial interest [it's treated as personal property and handled with trust docs; you could think of it as tracking real estate ownership "off ledger" since it's not recorded with a deed] so people don't know who own a parcel).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In the UK I get robocallers phoning me about car accidents or triple glazing grants.

I always say "yes", then you get a real person who picks up.

Then I will do the old bait and switch. Start talking about how my car got written off after the great M25 exodus of 2018. That I lost my foot from a low flying scooter delivery driver. The story then becomes more and more ridiculous and eventually they will hang up.

Since opting for this tactic my phone call count has gone down considerably.

<comment><USER19> Even more cruel: say yes, listen to the start of the spiel, then gently lay the phone down. They'll call back not knowing if it was a line malfunction. Now rinse and repeat.

I got some so angry that they threatened to come over and break my face at home. This technique has up to now never failed me.

<comment><USER20> I once decided to talk with a "Hi this is Windows your computer wanted me to tell you it has a virus" guy once, and he's going through his script, trying to determine whether I have a Windows box or a Mac by describing whether I have a command key or a win key on my keyboard. My fancy-pants programmer keyboard happens to have neither, but in trying to explain this to him, he got so mad I literally heard him throwing things off his desk, last of which being the phone itself. I assume my family is still cursed, though I never took his physically improbable suggestions.

<comment><USER21> I got one of those on the rental's land-line while away on vacation once. Since I was on vacation, I decided to have some fun. So I said I had two computers wired to the Internets, and could he please tell me the IP address of the one that had the problem. The answer, of course, was 127.0.0.1, so then I pretended to log in to my imaginary computer. He was magically able to see that I had logged in, and he told me that yes, my computer was definitely infected with a very bad virus.

I played along until I got bored pretending to be a fumbling, bumbling, low- knowledge user, and revealed that I was not really at my computer, or any computer at all, and I was just messing with an obvious scammer for fun. And that induced a spluttering, heavily accented rage-stream of insults, which was also fun. "I am not scam people! _You_ are the scam!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Forgive me for being out of the loop here, but why is it so hard to make this business unprofitable and easily trackable? For any kind of contracted relations as mentioned in the article (automatic call centers etc), the law enforcement can get a trace. For off-the-shelf temporary SIM cards, make them rate limited and block them when a complaint is filed. Is there something I'm missing here? Given the numbers, this seems like a huge problem, is there simply no incentive to solve it?

<comment><USER8> The patlive.com service does seem to be the obvious place to track down who their lawbreaking client is. It's a US company, which was probably a mistake. I assume "Will" could have contracted with a service outside the US.

On the plus side, patlive.com charges $1/minute as their cheapest plan. Robodialing them back, with a sufficiently clever script, would be costly for "Will".

<comment><USER23> I looked at PatLive's FAQ and there's no contract required. You pay by Visa, MC, or AMEX. If you can use a reloadable card then they probably don't know who you are.

<comment><USER17> Since the patlive service and all those 'answering services' that you get are basically faciliating a scam, I'm sure a serious prosecutor could get a court order telling them to pass the information on that they had about the underlying person.

If it was a reloadable card, you can still figure it out with more effort. You threaten to sue them into oblivion as facilitating criminal actions, and you get them to get you on a real phone number with the scammer, and then you track them down that way. You just have to try harder.

A reporter could pursue this by getting a job with that firm and tracking backwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I want a phone service that automatically charges the caller a small amount ($1-$2). I can waive the charger for known numbers. Each time an unknown caller calls, I get an SMS right after the call to waive the charge for this and all subsequent calls or to proceed with the charge.

<comment><USER25> And how would you expect to collect on any of that?

<comment><USER26> I think it's easy, right? Forward your number to a voice that says, "to call me, please type your credit card number on the keypad. a charge of $2 will apply." If they pay, you connect the call. If they don't pay, the call disconnects. Easy.

Nobody will call you, of course, including spammers.

<comment><USER27> Why not just not have a phone line, instead of inexplicably paying for a service to not have a service?

<comment><USER26> I think the point is to send a message.

<comment><USER27> And that message is "Don't call me."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I regularly receive calls from an agent at a reputable (or at least I used to think) brokerage here in Silicon Valley.

They use the typical trick of calling you twice simultaneously, so the second call can go straight to your VM box. The message was boiler plate: " _we 're looking for a home in your neighborhood for a client, but inventory is very thin as you know so we're wondering if you know anyone who might be open to selling._"

The thing is, there were 3 houses for sale on my street at the time, so it was immediately clear this wasn't based on an actual client. I had recently spoken with an agent from this brokerage firm and I sent her a follow-up email to let her know that her colleague's (illegal) shenanigans were undercutting her company's reputation.

</comment><comment><USER8> An investigative reporter had no luck figuring out who it was. I'm curious if STIR/SHAKEN makes it possible to find the culprits, or if it just drives them to more niche VoIP providers.

<comment><USER29> It will prevent the robocallers from using local numbers to call you without actually buying/renting said numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just going to throw out the call/sms blocker I use and love:

[https://github.com/kaliturin/BlackList](https://github.com/kaliturin/BlackList)

I have no connection to the software other than being a satisfied user. Yes, it's open source. Yes it's Android only.

Yes, it's SMS app is bare-bones. And the UI is ugly.

That's the tradeoff for this kind of thing. It's a shame there isn't an active development community around it making it so much better.

The basics are all there and they work great. Mainly if the UI was updated, and certain "extras" were added to the SMS app (for me, that'd be emoji/smiley usage and photo upload/download) - it would be perfect. But I'm willing to put up with the "bad" to gain the "good" parts of the app.

</comment><comment><USER31> There is an effort underway to end spoofing. It is called Caller ID Authentication. See [https://www.fcc.gov/call- authentication](https://www.fcc.gov/call-authentication)

</comment><comment><USER32> I tracked down one of these robocallers once. I'd been getting multiple calls a day from the same number. The number was tied to a business name, which had an old domain name registry in some online index. From there, I was able to find the original domain name purchaser name and phone number. I also found his Facebook page, with poor privacy settings - and a few other details about the guy. So I gave him a call. He was very surprised to get a call - <USER2> listened, and accepted that a phone call wasn't where I'd stop if his calls continued. They stopped that day.

</comment><comment><USER33> Why is it so hard to catch them? Can't the FTC set up a house sale, and when the buyer presents himself at closing, have him arrested? Eventually the buyer needs to be available to close the sale. I suppose it can all be done electronically (I bought property with an electronic closing) but for the demographic they're trying to market from, electronic signatures and document handling may not be easy. Someone will have to meet with them, and there an arrest can be made (for the robocalling).

</comment><comment><USER34> What many of these real estate investors do is have a phone number on their bandit signs or use in their robodialer voice mails that forwards to the answering service. That phone number might be provided by services like callfire or callrail where you can generate lists of numbers. Some services let you script all actions.

Callfire allows for things like enabling recording on the call forward (potentially illegal) when someone calls it. Then investor themselves or pays a virtual assistant like $3hr to sift through all those calls for any potential leads. You can hear the entire call to patlive if you wanted to. Or they just trust patlive to forward messages as they're the answering service.

So long as your answering service or where you're generating your numbers doesn't blow your cover then you can keep this game up for a long time. That's what these answering services are trained to do is protect their clients identities. But I doubt that holds up when the FTC comes knocking.

</comment><comment><USER35> Why are Robocalls so common in the US, but not in other countries?

<comment><USER36> Because unsolicited calls are not legal in other countries

<comment><USER37> They're often not legal in the US either, but it isn't enforced. It has more to do with enforcement than it does legality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm seriously contemplating cancelling my cell plan. The annoyance I get from robocalls spam (plus monthly cost) is far greater than the utility. Relatives and close friends can always send messages through other services

<comment><USER39> I believe you can disable incoming calls at the telecom level. Not sure who offers this but I do some phone banking and run into this about 1/100 calls.

Apple really needs a way to enable permanent do not disturb for just phone calls, ie your phone only rings if you are in the contacts.

<comment><USER40> > Apple really needs a way to enable permanent do not disturb for just phone > calls, ie your phone only rings if you are in the contacts.

That's a really great feature idea. I hope someone here who works at Apple or Google reads it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Not sure if this is carrier-specific, but the phones my family uses will receive robocalls, but they come in with the name "Scam Likely." So somewhere, someone is keeping track of the various numbers that are used in a list, and using that to alter the carrier ID information to our benefit.

It doesn't catch all, but it hasn't incorrectly flagged one yet.

<comment><USER42> Google does on my phone. Sometimes it will ask me after a call if it was spam.

Works surprisingly well considering it is Google in 2019, but now that I think of it I can see a number of ways they'll mess up this as well ;-)

<comment><USER23> I use Google's Call Screen service. It answers the call and tells the caller to state their name and reason for calling. The response shows up on my screen as text and I can decide to pick up at any time.

99% of the time, the call just disconnects.

I really wish Google would let me set my phone to ring only for numbers in my address book and give everybody else a busy signal.

<comment><USER43> On android, you can go to settings of the caller app, and enable "filter spam calls". Not exactly the same thing but still... You might have some trouble if you are a fi user.

<comment><USER23> I am a fi user.

The problem with settings like that is it still lets the call go to voicemail and I don't want to deal dozens of 4 second messages every week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Can someone explain why it's so easy to spoof caller ID? And can someone else explain why spoofing caller ID isn't a felony worthy of life imprisonment?

<comment><USER30> Not that this explains it, but IIRC, caller ID information is sent (or was, at one time with land lines) "out of band", in a particular data format, that occurs between the first and second rings.

IIRC, it's done using frequencies that either can't be heard (ie, outside the freq response of the phone), or the sound is "switched off" between rings (quite possibly this, since the "ring" voltage is completely different from the "line-in-use" voltage - so this voltage change can be detected and switch the signaling as needed).

At any rate, it's a known thing, and if you understand how it works, it's possible (well, again, was - for land line phones) to build a box that can inject these signals between the rings so the phone being called will display it. Normally, this is done (IIRC) by the CO, but I think if the info is already there, it doesn't override it.

I might be completely wrong, though; it's been a couple of decades since I last read about how it worked; also, I have no idea how it works in cell-phone land, but likely it hasn't changed because "inertia" and having to support older land-line phones...

<comment><USER45> When you have an incoming call ringing on a landline, the ring signal is very much out of band - it's 48 volts, with enough current to drive a solenoid to move a mechanical hammer against a physical bell. (You do not want to be electrically in contact with a phone line when ring comes in!)

The caller ID information comes as a frequency-shift-keyed (FSK) message (I think). As you said, it's between the first and second rings. But you can't hear it, not just because it's not a normal audio tone, but also because the phone is still on hook and isn't playing any audio that comes over the line.

That's regular caller ID, which is type 1. Call waiting caller ID is type 2. It's also an FSK message. (That is, I'm sure that it's an FSK message. I _think_ type 1 is also FSK, but I'm less certain of that.) This comes immediately after the call waiting "beep". It's short enough that I don't think your ear can pick it out of the transition from the beep tone to the regular conversation that the beep interrupted.

I'm not sure whether you could get fake caller ID that you send through a CO. The phone line isn't "off hook" yet, so the CO isn't passing audio. (If you say "hello" into the phone while it's ringing, I don't think that audio goes down the destination phone line either.) But that's only how I _think_ it works; I don't _know_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Is it just me or does this article end mid-thought?

</comment><comment><USER38> does everyone has a subscription to Philly? I've never been to the site and wants me to pay to read 1 article

<comment><USER47> I was able to see the article without any issue. There was a banner telling me I should subscribe, but that was it.

<comment><USER38> Changing to Firefox worked. It seems Philly is able to work around privacy mode in Safari.

<comment><USER48> I've noticed that certain newspaper-oriented sites (like the Denver post) ask you to subscribe if it detects you're running in incognito mode.

That said, I viewed this page in incognito on chrome without issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> "Hello this is Lenny..."</comment>


Product Is a Mindset - <AUTHOR> https://lifeofkeshav.substack.com/p/product-is-a-mindset <comment><AUTHOR> Two reasons why I wrote this piece:

(1) As a first-time Product Manager, I learned the importance of being intentional. Intentional about what problem I am solving, who I'm solving it for, the value I am delivering to users, and the value I generate for the business. It's been really helpful to think about these dimensions before building a product.

(2) I chose to get into Product because I thought that's the only way you can be "product-minded." But it's not a skill set — it's a mindset, and anyone can be product-minded if they ask the right questions and break down how to get there.

I feel like more people need to know about this because Product Management can feel like a black box because tbh it is!</comment>


Best Online To-Do Lists - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2221758/pagenum/all/#p2

<comment><USER2> My favorite online todo list is Now Do This. Simple and brilliant.

<http://www.nowdothis.com/>

-m

<comment><USER3> Love it. The only thing I wish is that completed tasks would be shown somewhere in strike-through. Half the fun of using a to-do list is basking in the feeling of accomplishment when tasks are complete.

<comment><USER4> Not only is seeing your completed tasks fun, it's a psychological motivator to keep checking things off. I'd consider it a crucial feature of any task list!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is more of a subjective 'this is what works for me' review than an objective analysis of the various offerings. Not that worthwhile in my opinion. Try them each and see what works best for you - this article isn't going to help you much.

<comment><USER6> I have no idea what an objective analysis of todo lists would look like. A simple list of features? That wouldn't be very useful.

<comment><USER5> I would think it would be a feature matrix - you know features down the left column and the different apps across the top. It would be really useful to have a review of each app that explains how they might improve a particular feature, or how it is lack support for a feature in the list but how you can do it another way or something.

<comment><USER6> This leads to product design where the goal is to have as many features as possible and not give a shit about user experience. It's not objective because you've subjectively assumed that feature count is the most important factor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have tried different approaches over the years. The best seems to be to have a todo.txt file and use my favorite text editor. It is very flexible, I indent to show subtasks, I can make notes anywhere. Use - as a bullet for uncompleted tasks and + for completed tasks.

<comment><USER8> If you are using emacs, give org-mode a try. I also keep this todo lists in git repo to sync among various machines that I work with.

<comment><USER9> I use org-mode and symlink ~/org/ to my dropbox folder. I love this setup, though I really wish Dropbox had an iPhone app and a public API. Both have been promised for quite some time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I want Sandy back. :)

No really, anything like it out there, or will I have to make my own?

</comment><comment><USER11> I built my own: <http://www.reallygoodtodolist.com>

It's based around how I use a todo list: I have categories for work, home, projects etc. and I add the tasks to each. I use 'Summary as Prose' as a starting point for my journal. The sign-up is low friction - a random key is generated that you can use to log in from anywhere. Features aren't brilliant but it does what I need.

</comment><comment><USER12> I use Remember the Milk, and over the last 10 months it has become ingrained into my workflow. I actually cite RTM's $25 a year freemium model as a good example of a startup not using ads to fund themselves. I gladly pay $25 a year for it because it helps me organize so well.

Slate put it in 2nd because they didn't seem to need all the features. For me the iPhone interface is all I need to pick it as #1.

<comment><USER13> I circumvent that $25 by using Twitter and Google Calendar on iPhone to remember RTM (95% of my interfacing with RTM is via Gmail).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've had this idea for a while for an app called ghostbin. It basically a note-taking (or todo) webapp that you didn't have to log in to—the blurb I wrote to remember it was,

'[username].ghostbin.com has a single input box with a submit button. at any time any user can enter a note which will be submitted to that account.

if they want to review or edit their notes, they can enter a password and see the admin page. notes can be viewed, maybe blog style'.

The idea was that when you're on the go, or you simply don't already have a cookie in your browser, you can dump some notes from a meeting, or something to followup later, just by going to an easily memorable URL, and then deal with actually managing the things later on, when you've got the time.

I have no idea how I'd build the thing, though.

<comment><USER15> If you can skip the idea of using a subdomain for each user(They don't work with wildcard subdmains yet.), you can check AppEngine. You can get something working in a matter of hours, you you have any experience with programming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've plugged this here before: I am a big fan of Tracks (<http://getontracks.org/>). I think I fall much more on the featureful side of the spectrum than people who like the text file approach or something spartan like Gmail tasks.

I'll have to check out Todoist - it sounds like they offer nice grouping features, which is something the vast majority of apps are badly lacking.

</comment><comment><USER17> i actually like taskpaper (it's a mac app, but they recently introduced a online service as well).

the nice thing about it is that it understands what you type and displays it nicely formatted.

Taskpaper is created by: <http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper>

</comment><comment><USER18> <http://pat.io>

It's simple yet still aesthetically pleasing.

</comment><comment><USER19> UnToDos.com I get along with it better I believe because of the looser, and simpler categorization of ->Do right now, ->Sometime soon and ->Whenever. And to a lesser extent the fun!/no-fun flagging of activities.

</comment><comment><USER20> Lifetick.com has been an interesting trial too, I didn't see that one.

</comment><comment><USER21> uh, time for shameless plugging again

<http://www.qwikitodo.com> \- no sign up, collaborative, wiki-ish editing, past revisions</comment>


For Shame: Why Americans Should Be Wary of Self-Esteem (1992) - <AUTHOR> https://newrepublic.com/article/90898/shame-why-americans-should-be-wary-self-esteem <comment><USER3> Although I agree with comments that this particular article meanders and could have been more focused, what stunned me was not the idea presented by the article, but how much more verbose and lengthy articles like this were 25 years ago.

I am all for brevity and often skip to the TL;DR summary of long posts, but sometimes I think we have taken brevity too far. Not all ideas can be distilled into PowerPoint bullets.

<comment><USER4> I don't think the New Republic or Current Affairs have changed massively in terms of the verbosity of their articles.

<comment><USER3> Fair point. If the New Republic still publishes articles this long perhaps they feel shorter because the language is less dense? Maybe it is just my perception then based on how the writing style has changed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "the vast symbolic fields of the humanities no longer form the shared matrix in which psychoanalytic work is organically embedded...owe very little to the best psychoanalytic tradition and suffer accordingly."

Sorry, no. Study after study is demonstrating that any one of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Mindfulness practice, mediation, or even exercise benefits patients more than psychotherapy. There is truly no point in marinating a patient in past traumas or broken modes of thoughts - for years - <USER2> awareness alone to produce useful behavioral change.

<comment><USER6> > Study after study is demonstrating that any one of Cognitive Behavioral > Therapy, Mindfulness practice, mediation, or even exercise benefits patients > more than psychotherapy.

First, CBT is also psychotherapy. Secondly, many newer studies have demonstrated the efficacy of psychodynamic therapy as equal to or better than CBT. One study even shows how CBT's efficacy has declined over time.

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/07/therapy- wars...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/07/therapy-wars-revenge- of-freud-cognitive-behavioural-therapy)

[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0081246316653860](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0081246316653860)

[https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-65-2-98.pdf](https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-65-2-98.pdf)

[https://uit.no/Content/418448/The%20effect%20of%20CBT%20is%2...](https://uit.no/Content/418448/The%20effect%20of%20CBT%20is%20falling.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Meant to say psychoanalysis. You have a point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmm, this "article" (let's be charitable and call it that) should probably be named "For Shame: Example of Bad Writings that Make You Want to Hurt the Authors."

I still am at loss of what is the message (which someone insists to be too simple for such long writing). The article/random-musing/writing/thing starts with history of treatment of Shame, then crosses over to self-esteem, then switches back to warnings of something with Freud last name (who's Anna Freud?), then links the failures of heeding that advice with some political failures (apparently), then makes some weird assertions about democracy (somehow, magically, Democracy becomes single standard; since WHEN did Democracy mean single standard, three fifths a person notwithstanding?), then it jumps to comparison of psychology treatments and something about deep understanding, and finally ends with how good religions are.

Phew. I hope I collected all the main points of the writing piece. At some point, my eyes glazed while words and paragraphs floated around without really making any sense.

Can somebody help with how this pops on Hacker News' front page?

<comment><USER8> Anna Freud was ostensibly Sigmund's doctrinary heir. Whereas Jung, Adler, Reich and others started developing their own ideas.

Jacques Lacan later claims to be a "return to Freud" too, but is entirely different.

\----

The key thing to realize about psychoanalysis is that it's a sham psychological treatment in utter opposition to current scientific practices. As far as psychotherapy goes, it's basically fraudulent -- at least in the light of today's knowledge.

However: in the process of building psychoanalysis, many interesting ideas about society and language and even politics were floated. These ideas are salvageable in part, IF one keeps in mind that their original goal (building a psychotherapy oriented by leading patients to sudden insights) has long been known to be a dead end.

So... stop thinking psychology, the good parts in Jung and Lacan etc. are not the psychology.

<comment><USER9> > _These ideas are salvageable in part, IF one keeps in mind that their > original goal (building a psychotherapy oriented by leading patients to > sudden insights) has long been known to be a dead end._

^^^ Yes. My favorite example is that Freud's original name for "The Oedipus Complex" was "The Nuclear Complex" \-- it demonstrates that he came up with the idea by noticing an interesting pattern in contemporary society (relating to the nuclear family). My speculation is that he renamed it because he believed himself to be doing Science and Medicine, rather than pure Philosophy or Sociology, and wanted the theory to be seen as more serious (and what could be more serious than invoking the ancients?).

In particular, reading Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams" after having read Foucault's "History of Sexuality", a lot of the issues and commonalities Freud identifies are not so much medical conditions as they are deep insights into how living in modern society shapes us.

It's interesting to see how much of the rhetoric around "mental health" still directly stems from his writing. Such as, specifically and most controversially today, the idea that mental illness is a strictly physiological illness requiring medical treatment, rather than a set of patterns emerging from our shared social and developmental conditions.

Dream analysis is also a fun hobby, and a lot of his ideas about free association seem interesting and personally useful, although they are certainly not serious science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 41 Points and no comments? That's a really rare phenomenon around here...

<comment><USER11> Hacker News lacks bookmarking functionality, so upvotes are used as "save for later read" feature.

<comment><USER12> That used to be true but HN has had a bookmarking feature for a while now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article was written by a historian, someone who either reads or writes for a living. Yet, this article is practically illegible. The longest sentence is over 80 words long. As one example, readable.io gives this text a D for readability.

If an author cannot write clearly on a subject, that author is likely not an authority on the subject.</comment>


The Seeds That Sowed a Revolution - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-seeds-that-sowed-a-revolution-rp

<comment><USER2> Lovely illustrations, quite aside from the interesting content. Illustrator's website @ [http://www.gabydalessandro.com/](http://www.gabydalessandro.com/)

How pathetic, though, that an 1847 article is still being charged for by academic publishers.</comment>


The Big Dig: Istanbul's city planners have a problem: too much history (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-big-dig <comment><USER2> Elif Batuman is a fabulous writer; I suggest anyone who likes this article to check out her stories on Gobekli Tepe and Turkish soccer hooligans as well.

She also just published a novel, The Idiot, and is promoting it. I haven't read the book, but I plan on seeing her give a reading this Tuesday in D.C.

<comment><USER3> The Bells - How Harvard helped preserve a Russian legacy. [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/04/27/the- bells-6](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/04/27/the-bells-6)

[http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/elif- batuman](http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/elif-batuman)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Istanbul's city planners also have a (likely) greater problem with unplanned rapid expansion. A lot of haphazardly constructed buildings pop up fortnight, squatting empty lots.

This form of expansion is not just at the urban borders, but also within the city. The government has some plans to prevent this and revert the damage, but it's not particularly well-executed.

<comment><USER5> Fortnight?

<comment><USER6> A Fortnight is a period of fourteen days, or two weeks.

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

<comment><USER5> Fortnightly then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was in Thessaloniki, Greece 2 years ago visiting friends. The city is unbelievably congested and similarly to Istanbul a lot of city expansion plans are stopped because sooner or later the construction crews start unearthing ancient ruins. Probably an issue with a lot of European cities.

<comment> david-given My brother's an archeologist, and spent a lot of time in Cyprus. (Fabulous place. Go visit. Some of the best food in the world. Also, did you know there used to be tiny elephants and hippos living there?)

There's a lot of history there. I heard him on several occasions complaining about all that nasty modern Roman trash cluttering up his dig sites.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand the article's comment about the "big difference" between Roman artifacts vs Byzantine artifacts. Did she mean Roman artifacts are well- studied enough that archaeologists find them uninteresting? Or was the reason political?

<comment><USER9> Actually, the takeaway I had was that the Roman artifacts were precious and would be taken seriously, whereas the Byzantine artifacts were considered disposable.

I suspect this happens for two reasons. One is that the Byzantine era, being later and more prosperous, simply has more artifacts and is more well- understood, so new finds are less interesting. But I suspect the bigger reason is that the Roman Empire has a better reputation in history as the glorious pinnacle of Western Antiquity whereas the Byzantine Empire is denigrated as 1000 years of stagnant decline (although neither of these characterizations are very accurate).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _No other race has brought such devastations and massacres, such lasting derangements, into the life of other nations, ..._

True, but the same can be said of any empire, including ours

</comment><comment><USER11> What a nice problem to have!

<comment><USER12> it sounds like it from the outside but it really isn't. having bad infrastructure is something that really affects your day to day life vs historical artefacts that are mostly interesting to tourists (not saying they should destroy them, just that it's not really a nice problem for the locals).</comment></comment>


Report: Google to Launch a Gear VR Competitor, Build VR into Android OS - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/report-google-to-launch-a-gear-vr-competitor-build-vr-into-android-os/ <comment><USER2> Is anyone developing games/apps for Google's VR headset?

Oculus has probably the biggest developer following, releasing two dev kits over the last couple years for people to work with. I don't see how Google can compete with that if there's secrecy around it, and I would wonder if it'll end up like the Windows/Amazon phone -- few decent apps, resulting in a not very useful product.</comment>


Show HN: Is anyone interested in the implementation of Kubernetes app template? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/takama/k8sapp <comment><USER2> Did I miss something or this is actually a SHOW because I see no code/demo ? Should have been in ask.

<comment><AUTHOR> It shows project description/plan/prototype. Any project should start with concept. I have already tried to implement it more than once in my real apps. I would like to make this useful for myself and for many people as a template, in which you do not need to spend a lot of time on the deployment and access to the environment. Another goal is to help beginners run an already-ready application with the implemented requirements of Kubernetes</comment></comment>