Ask HN: Inbox for everything? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious if anyone out there knows of a tool or service that can serve as a unified inbox for email, Facebook messages, Twitter mentions/DMs, text messages, IM, etc?<p>I've always wanted something like this but I'm not sure if the problem just applies to me or if someone else has solved this problem already. <comment><USER2> I think we call 'em smartphones. THose are the only things I know of that give a unified inbox view: at least for WP8 and BB10, they tie in contacts and conversations across mutliple social and email platforms and give you combined views.

However, you raise a good point - a nice cross-platform solution for desktop use would be a great thing to have. It's kind of odd that it's been done so well for phones, but barely touched for desktop.

One problem related will be the constant influx of 'services that may be interesting', with disparate APIs - any solution should have a good plugin system.

<comment><USER3> The Blackberry Hub (i.e., the unified inbox) is one of two reasons I'm still using a Blackberry (the other reason, of course, is the physical keyboard).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use Bitlbee as a unified messaging platform and it works great for me: [http://www.bitlbee.org/main.php/news.r.html](http://www.bitlbee.org/main.php/news.r.html)

Obviously it's a little neckbeard-ey but once you get it setup, it's awesome to have AIM, FB, Google Chat, HipChat, Campfire (and any other Jabber account) all in one little box.

The only thing it's missing for me is iMessages support.

You can also wire up Twitter with it, but I found it too tricky to parse tweets without avatars / inline images, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks pretty sweet, especially for IM, but doesn't have Email which is important, at least for my usecase. Thanks for sharing it!

<comment><USER4> Yeah, no email. I use mutt for that :)

Sure thing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a great idea. I had the idea for a unified messaging service, where you would have one client that connected to Google Chat, Facebook Chat, Skype, IM and SMS. When you wanted to talk to someone, it would communicate using the best service.

But then I bought a MacBook, and Apple's 'Messages' app does everything I need it to. It's IM when both parties are online, and SMS otherwise.

I would also love to see something that tries to unify Reddit, Hacker News, and Google News, although I'm not sure how it could be done.

<comment><AUTHOR> That only applies to people who have iOS devices, so it still leaves a whole swatch of people out of the equation.

<comment><USER6> Doe you not mean swath or swathe rather than swatch? (Genuinely curious I think this might be a locality thing)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, I mean "swath" :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You need a trendier, buzzier name for it, and perhaps a three-letter acronym. "Inbox of Things" (IoT) should work to gladwellize the minions and get people talking.

But since the chatterati think email is the spawn of old white european males, you need to get rid of "Inbox" all together. Way too emailesque.

Also, we live in the most narcissistic, shallow society ever to have sat idly on this good planet earth, so you need some combination of self, selfie, me, my, myself, you, etc.

Of course, in the selfie-sphere the major issue you will face is appearing "needy" if you respond to pings quickly or respond in a personal, non-selfish way. The proper form of communication in narcissistic society is merely post inane self-expressions in hopes of garnering hip-metrics of reblogs, retweets, likes, upvotes, and other simplistic pings.

So what you really need is an one-way orifice for self-expression that merely reports social metrics back in gamified form. Sort of like a toilet with an AI success coach built in.

The flushing metaphor has its limtis, because "flushing" makes it seem like you don't care about water conservation and other hip non-selfish, selfish things that aid your image-crafting. An "air flush" would solve the water conservation issues. So what sound would an "air flush" make? A swish, a blow? That's it.

So we should call a universal inbox in the selfie age? How about: "Blow Me"

</comment><comment><USER8> A few years back, when web2.0 was the buzz word and RSS-based mashups were all the rage, I believe a few websites tried offering this service.

I don't remember the names of these services now but IIRC, input.io (or something like that) was one of them. The site is dead now - didn't get any traction or funding and shut down. A couple of desktop based clients also happened but fizzled out for the same reasons.

Looks like they were quite ahead of their time. :)

</comment><comment><USER9> I never saw it but I think that would be a really good idea, I would love to "archive", "mute" and my facebook wall, twitter, etc... If that could work as GMail that would be perfect.

I'm the kind of reading every post on Twitter and Facebook and unfollowing/muting people that post too much useless things so that would be perfect for me.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure you can get email notifications from all of these services.

Text/IM really doesn't belong in the inbox in my opinion, because as others have stated these are in a different category of communication, with different urgency levels. IM and SMS are for when you need to get in touch instantly or near-instantly, email is for more asynchronous and/or one-way communication.

That said, IFTTT sounds like the perfect solution: [https://ifttt.com](https://ifttt.com)

"If This Then That", or IFTTT, lets you trigger actions from events. So, if you get a Twitter mention, or an SMS, you could have it email it to you.

</comment><comment><USER11> [http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/how-to/wp7/people/what- is-...](http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/how-to/wp7/people/what-is-the-me- card)

</comment><comment><USER12> Mozilla Raindrop, now inactive used to do that. [https://mozillalabs.com/en- US/raindrop/](https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/raindrop/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Know if the open-sourced it or is it just dead and gone?

<comment><USER13> [http://hg.mozilla.org/labs/raindrop/file/42b1a25c3061/LICENS...](http://hg.mozilla.org/labs/raindrop/file/42b1a25c3061/LICENSE)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Once the volume surpasses decent threshold, the UX would be quite difficult to build without some sort of complex grouping or intelligence. The key to a successful unified inbox would be learning what is "important" to each user and customizing the experience accordingly. Otherwise, people would start ignoring busy twitter feeds and focusing on individual emails, IM's, etc, which they could achieve by simply opening each service in a separate browser tab.

<comment><USER15> Agree completely. It would be possible to abstract away all of these services into a common dialect (so that grouping and filtering works across multiple services) and then let the user "build" different UX approaches by allowing one to group and filter different sources into specific view: ex, group tweets and irc messages and have that group display only some UI stuff, group rss/fb posts and have the UI display some other stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is one and it's called...wait for it...[http://unifiedinbox.com/](http://unifiedinbox.com/) :)

But they are in beta still afaik.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, I'll signup for their beta and give it a look-see

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Half the value of all these platforms is they each provide a different experience and thus are good for different things. SMS is urgent, Facebook messages are not, email for important thoughtful things, tweets for helping get attention of busy people with the viral factor. UX is critical to shape your users behavior.

</comment><comment><USER18> There was a really nice thing called Engagio but I'm not sure of it's still alive [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/engagio/odlmlfcabm...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/engagio/odlmlfcabmeeigaadlnooehikkbonnfd)

<comment><USER19> Acquired then shutdown earlier on in the year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> [http://www.wuphf.com/](http://www.wuphf.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice one ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Do you need a unified inbox where you can read all the messages, or do you actually want to be able to search across all your inboxes (like you could with Greplin) or aggregate notifications that you received a new message (Chime)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ideally it would be an inbox in it's simplest form where I can communicate on any platform from one simple interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't know of a service that includes everything, including email... but someone I know made this aggregator for twitter, facebook, and instagram.

[https://dwibbles.com/](https://dwibbles.com/)

</comment><comment><USER23> For integrated Google Apps: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/integrated-gm...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/integrated-gmail/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Something like Trillian could work. [https://www.trillian.im/](https://www.trillian.im/) It's more of an IM client but it includes email integration.

<comment><USER25> haha oh man this brings back memories... I used to use this as a substitute for MSN messenger on my school computers when I was a teenager

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you're looking for a business solution, try something like Desk.com. It doesn't handle text or IM, but it works well for email, Facebook, and Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER27> First thought you were talking about Inbox for everything as in literally everything, including physical mails

</comment><comment><USER28> Cloudmagic? [https://cloudmagic.com](https://cloudmagic.com)

</comment><comment><USER29> Lots of ideas, not a lot of products.

Niche? :)

</comment><comment><USER30> Chimeapp.com?

</comment><comment><USER31> Browser tabs?

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea would be to have something with a bit more sophistication. Associating contacts on multiple platforms into one thread. Reply to people on multiple platforms from one location. Having a conversation trail with each person on multiple media.</comment></comment>


120,000 Apps in BlackBerry World, 47,000 by one developer - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20130821/120000-apps-in-blackberry-world-spoiler-47000-made-by-one-developer/ <comment><USER2> "Developers in all app stores employ a number of different monetization tactics. BlackBerry World is an open market for developers and we let market forces dictate the success or failure of these tactics"

Damn right. It's completely hypocritical that on one hand we point fingers at Apple for their closed market policy, then laugh when a developer floods an open market with apps.

Make your mind up.

<comment><USER3> It's unrelated.

OP is making the point that app numbers mean nothing, given that someone can just find some RSS feeds and turn the handle to produce thousands of apps. Fine if BB wants to allow such apps, but it weakens the point of the CEO proclaiming the number in a keynote.

Apple does make some attempt to block blatant cookie-cutter apps, so I'd give Apple's app figure (900K) more credence on that basis. If apps like those 47K BlackBerry apps are allowed, maybe that's a Good Thing or not, but either way, it renders the app count completely arbitrary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is from August.

About a week ago, the situation got much much worse. S4BB, the offending company, submitted another 138,792 apps: [http://crackberry.com/s4bb-submits- additional-138792-apps-bl...](http://crackberry.com/s4bb-submits- additional-138792-apps-blackberry-world)

BlackBerry is an embarrassing joke of a company for permitting this (and from quotes I've read, even encouraging it).

</comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know a way to contact BlackBerry World? Somebody copied my html5 game and is making money from it. It's been two years and my DMCA requests have been ignored. I have both tried email and Twitter.

[http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/41515/?count...](http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/41515/?countrycode=FI&lang=en) (The same author has several other ripoffs as well)

<comment><USER6> You should write a DMCA demand letter and send it via registered mail to BB. If you have a friend who is an attorney, ask them to send it on their stationary. You should get a response quickly. If you need more help, email me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Brief article, light on detail, about S4BB: [http://crackberry.com/thinking- big-worlds-most-prolific-app-...](http://crackberry.com/thinking-big-worlds- most-prolific-app-developer-s4bb)

The figure of 47,000 apps really surprises me, let alone the additional 140,000-odd they've added ;)

Even if whole swathes of them are auto-generated, this represents a substantial amount of maintenance in terms of metadata alone. I have never worked on a product that required 47,000 of _anything_ , let alone even 4,700, because of the amount of effort required to keep on top of that much stuff. 4,700 minutes is nearly 80 hours, for example...

Assuming you can keep on top of the organisation, though, as a business model, this seems like a good one! Given the race to the bottom for mobile app pricing, might in fact be the _only_ good one ;)

(I often wonder about some mobile developers, and how they ever reliably make money off their work. Those that I know personally do it part time, seem to be funded by a one-off previous success, and/or have client work that pays the bulk of their bills. By contrast, I don't wonder about these guys...)

[EDIT: re-reading the article, and checking their web site, it turns out they are based in Hong Kong. I'd got the wrong end of the stick and assumed they were based in Europe. So that might explain the metadata issue: perhaps they just do it the hard way anyway, taking advantage of cheaper mainland labour to keep costs down.]

</comment><comment><USER8> Blackberry really could have still made it. They really could have.

They didn't. What they needed was to improve software and keep new devices and pushing for touch, pushing for a better operating system. I mean, we've still been stuck with the ancient BB software for YEARS until FINALLY QNX came out this year. THIS YEAR.

Competitors have had modern operating systems for over half a decade. Blackberry couldn't keep up. How I wish they had; the keyboard is one of the biggest selling points I can think of. I'll miss them.

I predict that by this time next year, Blackberry will cease to exist as the company that it is (or was). It may be a subsidiary, but you can expect that we're not going to see any innovation from the struggling company anymore.

<comment><USER9> In case anyone missed it: [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on- business/the-inside...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the- inside-story-of-why-blackberry-is-failing/article14563602/?page=all)

There are apparently some factual issues with this article, but it's good for getting a general feel of what was going on with the development side of things, why they couldn't have advanced UIs, etc..

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you want to see something similar, search for "1st4fans" in the Windows Store. Looks like this: [http://i.imgur.com/XlkSF5K.png](http://i.imgur.com/XlkSF5K.png). I believe this guy has even more apps than I can find here.

</comment><comment><USER11>
        120,000 Apps in BlackBerry World, 47,000 by one developer (allthingsd.com)
        16 points by casca 1 hour ago | flag | share | 7 comments

It's probably 470,000 by now.

        120,000 Apps in BlackBerry World (Spoiler: 47,000 Made by One Developer)
        AUGUST 21, 2013

</comment><comment><USER12> Try adding color to the app? Don't only use the default assets given by Apple? I'm guessing that'll add just enough for them to approve it, but still compared to other things on the store that looks like it should be approved, but hey it's Apple's famous app store approval team.

<comment><USER13> Wrong discussion? This is about the BlackBerry App store, not Apple's.

<comment><USER14> I guess this[1] was the post he meant to comment.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6619690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6619690)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is it really necessary to pile on at this point?</comment>


MicroSIP – Lightweight VoIP Sip Softphone for Windows - <AUTHOR> https://www.microsip.org/ <comment><USER2> It says: "small footprint (>2.5MB) and RAM usage (>5MB)." If this is your website, perhaps you meant "<" (less than) instead of ">" (greater than)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not mine, but perhaps they meant "requires at least 2.5MB of disk space and 5MB of RAM".</comment></comment>


How to automate all the things with Gulp - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@adnanrahic/how-to-automate-all-the-things-with-gulp-b21a3fc96885 <comment><USER2> Gulp is, without a doubt, a 100% improvement over manually compiling your higher-level code into JS/CSS (shudder) or over Grunt (the task runner du-jour that preceded it). Anyone just starting out in front-end web development today, though, would be _vastly_ better served by investing time in learning npm scripts [0] rather than learning how to roll their own build pipelines in Gulp. The actual tools that you're orchestrating with Gulp (lessc, webpack, uglify, whatever) pretty much all ship with command-line executables. Why build pipelines in Gulp (or Grunt, or Broccoli, or whatever) using plugins or wrappers when you could just...script the executables directly?

That's pretty much what NPM scripts are. Don't learn gulp-webpack-whatever; just...learn webpack.

[0][https://css-tricks.com/why-npm-scripts/](https://css-tricks.com/why-npm- scripts/)</comment>


How to exploit the x32 recvmmsg() kernel vulnerability CVE 2014-0038 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.includesecurity.com/2014/03/exploit-CVE-2014-0038-x32-recvmmsg-kernel-vulnerablity.html

<comment><USER2> On recent versions of Ubuntu, ordinary users do not by default have access to either System.map or any decompressed kernel images (I did however notice that on my RHEL system they have read access to System.map), and ptmx_fops does not appear in kallsyms. Is ensuring correct permissions on System.map and kernel images enough to render the exploit harmless?

Edit: On second thought, given that the kernel isn't custom, using files from another system with the same kernel is a trivial workaround.

<comment><USER3> Removing read access gives an illusion of security. To avoid this false impression, it is better to leave the permissions.</comment></comment>


Is Fab.com worth the $8 Million investment? - <AUTHOR> http://fab.com/z6dgto

<comment><USER2> We're doing our best to put the $8 million to use to build an awesome service that people love to use. Hopefully we'll be able to achieve that. Ultimately our users will judge how we do on that.</comment>


How Utah Became the Next Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/utah-became-next-silicon-valley

<comment><USER2> How S̶i̶l̶i̶c̶o̶n̶ ̶S̶l̶o̶p̶e̶s̶ _Utah_ became the next Silicon Valley. #WeAreUtah

</comment><comment><USER3> _sitting in software company office in Draper_

About time they start paying some attention :)</comment>


Ask HN: Why YC companies never hire remote worldwide? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It's non-trivial and often expensive to hire international employees (legally [0]). $Billion tech companies can afford to do this (staff HR teams and shell out visa-related fees), whereas lean, small startups cannot.

[0] There's a significant difference between "employee" and "contractor".

</comment><comment><USER3> Loss of productivity. It's a lot easier to talk to people face to face and whiteboard a hard problem together than it is to do it via video conferencing.</comment>


Terence Tao: The "Mozart of Math" - <AUTHOR> http://www.college.ucla.edu/news/05/terencetaomath.html

<comment><USER3> Terence did in fact win the Fields Medal in 2006 (this article is from 2005). He has a very good blog over at <http://terrytao.wordpress.com>

<comment><USER4> The blog is incredibly open. seeing it all go up with the notes around the creative process is quite fascinating even if you cant follow all the math [and I guess only 50 people in the world can].

Having the math inline works really well [wordpress renders latex formulas as pics with the latex as alt text] - you don't have to jump into a pdf viewer while parsing the main text. Its one way to get started with latex, ie. by example.

Terry and Timothy Gowers are experimenting with an approach to creating math with lots of small involvements by many contributors online - <USER2> [http://gowers.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/can-polymath-be- scale...](http://gowers.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/can-polymath-be-scaled-up/)

<comment><USER5> the math is pretty transparent, once you've gotten a wee bit of combinatorics, measure theory, real & complex analysis, plus group theory under your belt.

.... though i guess that makes it pretty nontransparent by normal standards</comment></comment></comment>


Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/can-you-call-a-9-year-old-a-psychopath.html?pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> No. Someone being young and immature is not a psychopath, and it is demeaning to label someone that way.</comment>


Google Copies Facebook Badges and Icons Pixel for Pixel - <AUTHOR> http://www.launch.is/blog/google-copies-facebook-badges-and-icons-pixel-for-pixel.html

<comment><USER2> Maybe I need sleep, but I am confused. The article says that Google copies Facebook pixel for pixel, and illustrates this by.. uh... two screencaps from Google. Which show that Google and Google are identical, with arrows between the Google version and the Google version for emphasis.

No?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, this is a terrible headline. Google's emulating a Facebook widget (sort of). Nothing deeper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Isn't that the point, to have consistency between integrating social networking buttons on your site?</comment>


Show HN: Monitoring a portfolio's performance via lightbulbs - <AUTHOR> https://trevorprater.com/#hue_portfolio <comment><USER2> I was a little bit confused by your page's layout, because I was expecting it to be an article and I tried to skim. Until I realised that only the first paragraph is part of this "Show HN" and the rest are your other blog posts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fun stuff. See also the Ambient Orb: [http://www.ambientdevices.com/about/consumer- devices](http://www.ambientdevices.com/about/consumer-devices)</comment>


How is news marked as disputed on Facebook? - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/help/733019746855448 <comment><USER2> It's impossible to assign a "true"/"fake" value to all news stories... especially with our increasingly biased and divided media.

Here's an example of what happens when we try: Politifact, a consistently liberal-biased source, didn't like that Trump took credit for a hard and proven fact. So they called it "mostly false" even though nothing he said was false.

[http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2017/feb/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2017/feb/25/donald-trump/why-donald-trumps-tweet-about- decline-national-deb/)

This thing Facebook is doing is bound to just end up becoming crowd-sourced echo-chamber censorship. And they probably know that.

<comment><USER3> Seems like there should be a new category for statements which can hold up to "technically true" but are intended to mislead.

<comment><USER4> The heading on that article says: "Why Donald Trump's tweet about national debt decrease in his first month is highly misleading"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Won't people just mark disputed to stories and articles they don't agree with? There should be a penalty for doing this. Perhaps remove their ability to dispute stories after two or three confirmed offenses.

Even on Hacker News where the average user is much more responsible and thoughtful, I've gotten downvoted and flagged to death for opinions/comments/links that don't fall within the echo chamber.

<comment><USER6> So who gets to be the ultimate keeper of truth? If CNN spins a story to be police brutality, but you happen to be an eyewitness who saw that it was actually self-defense, can you mark the CNN story as disputed? Who decides if you are right or wrong?

<comment><USER7> Truth is the ultimate judge of truth -- world-views are tested against the world, and those which don't correspond, sufficiently, to reality, are shown wrong. It's an evolutionary process (in several deep senses).

There is a philosophical discipline devoted to establishing Truth: epistemology. "Criteria of Truth" describe how people can, and do, _make judgements on the truth of propositions_ , in the face of information which is incomplete, confusing, and out-of-date. Correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic theories are the strongest, though other fallbacks, including authority, tradition or custom, and majority opinion are used, _despite the fact that they are unreliable_.

The _ultimate_ keeper of truth isn't quite the right question, but in general, _those who are trusted with distinguishing truths are those who have shown the capacity, ability, and integrity to serve in that role_. That is: who judges truth? _Someone who is very good at doing just that._

Authorities aren't absolute, they're not perfect, and they're not immune to bias or corruption. But, over time, they should show themselves to be _sincere in their efforts to uncover the truth, inclusive of admitting their errors and changing their judgements in the face of new evidence_.

The problem is a complex one, but not a greenfield.

<comment><USER8> This is why I consider places like Politifact/Factcheck useful. I don't always agree with their assessment, but they detail their reasoning and are generally fair. I can follow the logic, figure out where we diverge, and form my own opinion.

It's the same with SCOTUS rulings. They give a detailed account of their reasoning. Even conservative justices who I think routinely use backwards reasoning to make idiotic decisions at least tend to follow a logic absent in rulings from their conservative peers in lower courts (who tend more toward non-reasoning like "gay is bad" and "why do you hate capitalism").

I can at least follow a bizarre logic and understand how they came to the decision because there _is_ a logic, even if the logic comes from a mindset that conflicts with my own.

<comment><USER7> Politifact / Factcheck _are_ useful. But they're not the end of the story.

Getting the answer to the question right isn't particularly useful if the question itself is wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This page shows, for me, simply:

      How is news marked as disputed on Facebook?
      This feature isn't available to everyone yet.
      How helpful did you find this answer?
      :< :( :| :) :D

Of course, I clicked the saddest-face feedback button.

<comment><USER10> That may be your adblock/noscript, but:

> This feature isn't available to everyone yet.

Really refers to the fact that Facebook is partnering with mainstream media in each individual country, and so they need time to roll this out internationally. Most countries don't even have a developed fact-checking infrastructure.

<comment><USER11> Now I'm curious - what countries _do_ have a developed fact-checking infrastructure? For the public, I mean, so intelligence services don't qualify if they don't publish their findings ;)

<comment><USER10> The US has (Politifact, Snopes, etc). Many countries just don't have well- known companies doing this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What happens when I dispute The Onion? What happens when FAKENEWS_OUTLET gets disputed and claims it's The Onion? It feels like Facebook is taking us for a ride here...

<comment><USER13> 1) When you dispute the Onion, Facebook should take no action because it's legitimate satire (well known, founded 30 years ago)

2) When you dispute FAKENEWS_OUTLET, Facebook should decide against the fake news outlet, because it's not The Onion. FAKENEWS_OUTLET should have a means of being notified and disputing the decision.

Further, Facebook should not allow anonymous disputes, track what individuals dispute, and should use something that looks a bit like PageRank to determine complainant credibility (credible complainant are ones that report many fake sites, fake sites are ones reported by good complainants) supplemented by social graph metrics (eg, lots of credible friends, or follower of sites known to be uncredible).

Or was that rhetorical? I'm glad Facebook is doing this.

<comment><USER14> Surely you can't be suggesting that an entity can only be considered a "legitimate" satirist if it's been around for a long time and there's a high amount of consensus regarding it?

Also, you _cannot_ use network effects as an accurate proxy for critical thinking. Humans inherently defer a ton of thought to crowd consensus; this crowd consensus becomes less reliable as the subjects involved become more complex. The increasing complexity of modern society only further necessitates the need to train our critical thinking skills. Codifying network effects as a proxy for critical thinking, as FB is doing here, only accelerates the unreliability of groupthink.

<comment><USER13> I respectfully disagree with you on both counts. I have no illusion that FB cares what I think and will take my approaching and it's not perfect, but it would improve FB's situation. To address your other response, that is why I invoke the Pareto principle (you can solve 80% of malicious news feed entries with 20% of the effort).

Anyway, let me also note I find it strange that you are approaching this the way you are. FB is a proprietary, private platform. They will take actions that are best of the long term growth and profitability of the corporation on behalf of the owners (the shareholders). This whole epistemological/political element perplexes me, I think it entirely misses the mark of why FB is doing this.

edit: I should also mention, your comment about groupthink makes me think you misunderstand me. Gaming a PageRank like algorithm is certainly possible, but the eigenvalues of the Markov process on the adjacency matrix of complainants/news sources would take a away a large part of the human bias element. And counter-counter-measures are pretty well researched.

<comment><USER14> You express a vital misunderstanding of capitalism. Companies do not take the actions that are best for their long term health. They take the actions that are best for their health in the _foreseeable future_. Further, FB is a private company that _owns largest forum for online socializing and public discourse._ They are a _private_ entity that controls the _commons_. I don't care about FB's profit motives; I care that their actions directly erode one of the core requisites of a healthily functioning complex society, so that is what I will talk about. It is not okay to make money by fucking shit up.

edit: I don't understand your stance on satire outfits. Was the Onion a satire publication in 1988? If so, how do you square that with your claim?

edit2: You refer to "malicious newsfeed entries." It's interesting that the only large scale activity that can even begin to consistently be considered such is the creation of "dark posts," which FB's censorship program does zilch to combat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Taking a long/high level view on this: When people are uncritical about that immediate reaction to share, repost, reblog, retweet anything that feeds into that dopamine high of "this coincides with my preconceived notions of _n_ " regardless of how factual or accurate it is, how effective do we really expect Facebook-a site that actively _encourages_ rabid sharing to be with something like this?

How effective will _any_ tool, widget or service be at weeding out "fake news" when one can't counter a questionable news source in social media without being called "snowflake" or some other pointless pejorative for committing the cardinal sin of disagreeing?

Am I asking this the right way?

<comment><USER7> It's absolutely valid to point out that the entire incentive structure, from advertising to outrage to virality to dopaminagenic, of the current state of online media, is antithetical to promotion of truth.

Yes, the systems themselves, and their incentives, are at fault. And must be changed. For the sake of the Liberal Democratic Experiment (referencing liberalism, not the similarly named political party).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is actually a link to discover _why_ a story is marked as fake.

How do I mark a news story as fake? [https://www.facebook.com/help/572838089565953](https://www.facebook.com/help/572838089565953)

</comment><comment><USER17> What about "grey" things for which different groups can be correct in some way. Adding clarity to the information can improve things more than "disputing" it.

Some scientific articles are click-bait like: "Reality does not exist until we measure it". [http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until- we-m...](http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-measure- it-quantum-experiment-confirms) But it says: an atom can be in superposition state until it is measured. Which tells something about a single atom, not about reality.

Or things that are claimed by officials or experts, but for which there is not enough evidence, no evidence at all, or even contrary evidence? Like: Is Russian hacking disputed for which there was no real evidence? Or is wikileaks disputed who exposed quite some corruption? Is Snowden disputed? Is dirty wars (drone assassinations) disputed?

Or can we ask deeper questions, like: How much are we being spied on by Facebook? Is Facebook trying to change what we think? What organisations are behind Facebook?

I think that both sides should have a fair say in things. With the emphasis on fair. If we declare it disputed and only show one side, we push people apart and stop any deeper discussions. Stupidity is caused by knowing only one side of the story.

Adding a joke from the U.S. army: How can you tell if an official from the pentagon is lying?

Answer: მиιʌow ƨι ʜ⊥now ƨιʜ.

<comment><USER18> What are the two sides? Why should they have a say? Some information can be definitely marked as False without taking opinion into account.

I have three feet. <= False

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why aren't we focusing on the source of news instead of the truth of it?

Nothing is purely true or false because everything falls on a continuum. Words can be strictly true but the sentiment can be false or vice versa.

So, a better system is one that attempts to trace back to the source and then you let the reader decide if it's true. Lots of things happen along the way until a news story gets to you.

Even direct access to the POTUS twitter account isn't the original source, he's just reciting something he heard. Until there is a technological system that quickly and immediately traces news stories back to the source we will all just continue to be stuck in our own confirmation biases.

News outlets protect their sources? Fine. Then the endpoint is that news source. I can then use analytics to discern how true that source has proven to be in the past and/or if the person saying it is typically left/right etc.

Based on data you can decide what to believe.

I'd also like to see some data on why the POTUS may be lying and not just the fact that he is lying. Sometimes its ego but other times its a red herring.

I like John Oliver (in doses) but after watching a few shows it's clear that his show is full of cognitive biases. It is impossible that he doesn't know that he's cutting corners at a minimum.

It got me thinking after his show on Apple and encryption. It was pretty clear that in that show he definitely took some creative license. After I thought about it, it makes sense; his whole show is about how ridiculous something is and not to provide both sides of a story.

Here's how you know the media is biased. When was the last time you turned on MSNBC and heard them say anything positive at all about the POTUS?

Even by accident he must have done something they would normally consider good.

You will lie to yourself (cognitive bias). the media lies in a number of ways, politicians lie in many different ways for different reasons and all of that comes to you by way of massive corporations who, well, you get my point.

Forget trying to find the truth. Focus on the source of the story then tear apart that source with data and analytics until you can reach some kind of consensus about the degree of truth you are hearing.

<comment><USER10> Every media is biased, especially TV since it's so segregated by ideology.

The problem is people being emotionally invested and biased. Many Trump supporters will look at the Politifact rating posted higher in the thread, and call Politifact "fake news" whereas the reasoning they give is solid. They wouldn't give Politifact a chance, or build counterarguments, but just throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is on both sides, and many people.

No technology can fix that, unless it's really subtle and targeted (in other words, be mindful of your audience).

<comment><USER19> I think technology can help.

Your point about people being emotionally invested and biased is a valid one. There are a lot of smart people on both sides of the political spectrum, so, a while ago I decided to venture into the other side. I listened to all the popular talking heads and read what they read and spoke to many of them to find out what they believe and why.

I found it hard to believe that so many people are suffering from mass delusion, so, I asked friends and family what they believed. I tried, the best I could, to put myself in their shoes and remove my own biases.

In my very unscientific little, flawed study with a far too small sampling of people I found out a few things that everyone probably already knows:

1\. Confirmation bias is real. Yes of course people tend to read the news they agree with, but, they also live and work around people who they mostly agree with. You are the average of the 5 people you associate with most.

2\. Social Proof is a big factor. Is EXTREMELY difficult to change your viewpoint because you are fighting against social proof. Have you ever noticed that young people tend to dress the same as their friends. You'll see two young people walking along and wearing just a slight variation of the exact same outfit. Two 16 year old boys both wearing striped shirt, hat on backwards, ripped jeans and untied basketball shoes. That is social proof.

[https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Social_proof](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Social_proof)

Now imagine coming into your job where you are among your peers saying the opposite of what all of us believed yesterday: you'd be rejected even if it was based on evidence.

Don Draper knew it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9rrhKgusYs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9rrhKgusYs)

3\. They simply focus on different subject matter. Not "alternative facts" different things all together; "Spin". "Yes my politician did do the horrible thing you are saying, BUT, look at THIS great honest thing he did."

4\. Its exhausting. You are attempting to fight against the belief system that you've trusted and your peers support possibly your whole life. You are hearing and reading things that you have a negative visceral reaction to and it's very, VERY hard to keep listening to or reading it.

\--

The idea that an average person can spend the time to find out what is actually, objectively, completely true is unrealistic.

In my opinion a great first step is to give everyone a quick, free, way that simply points to the source of each story. That eliminates the echo chamber and cuts through a lot of bullshit.

At that point we can at least think about some sort of truth level indicator.

<comment><USER10> Great comment. Agree with you on the solutions (sourcing).

I don't have a clearly defined political identity, so, mostly by accident at first, I tried changing my own ideology. I discovered every ideology has a pretty much coherent worldview. Just frame the world in a way that's unjust, and _threatens you personally in some way_ , assign low social status to opponents, and make it a part of my identity. It's crazy how I managed to identify with everyone from the social-justice-left to the alt-right, including the Clintonites, Trumpers and social conservatives in between). Fun to do if you want to learn about cognitive dissonance.

The only thing that determines which ideology you end up with isn't facts, but temperament (personality) and social circle.

All of these ideologies are coherent, and therefore don't provoke much cognitive dissonance (if they did these ideologies wouldn't be evolutionarily "fit", and the ideologies would die out). BTW, if Facebook wanted to be more evil/involved, they could change the political opinions of vast swathes of the population by deliberately triggering cognitive dissonance, and then exposing them to material from the other side when they're much more receptive to it. The only reason why that doesn't work so often currently is that cognitive dissonance hasn't yet been completely weaponized, but as we understand it more, it will be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "This feature isn't available to everyone yet."

How do they determine who to make this feature available to?

Only demographics, or some other parameter?

<comment><USER21> Facebook does gradual releases. One can guess this is available only in the US (or even just a part of the US) for now.

<comment><USER22> It's launched in the US, Germany, and France so far. It started in the US, and Germany and France both have elections coming up. Launching depends at least on having factcheckers or mainstream media outlets doing factchecking active in that country and willing to join the scheme.

(I work for a factchecker in a different country).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Considering that anyone can publish anything online, and then collect money for advertising dollars on that topic, this seems like a very reasonable feature regardless of the political climate.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is what greets me:

"This feature isn't available to everyone yet."

I get no info from the linked page.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think people will just mark anything they don't like as disputed. IMO they can try suggesting posts with different view points than the one users click 'share' or 'like' (combining ML and user provided data to pick the articles). Maybe that will help people have a bit more balanced view on the matter.

</comment><comment><USER25> In my country the people who maintain facebook have a clear agenda which they are not afraid of showing. These people have already went as far as blocking the accounts of people who dared to question them in the guise of "verification" (that is, being forced to send your actual ID or having your account blocked).

Now they'll be able to decide which news are real and which ones are fake. I'm sure that absolutely nothing wrong will come out of this.

</comment><comment><USER26> Do we all get the message saying the feature isn't available for erveyone or do some (logged in, I presume) get an actual explanation?

<comment><USER21> No explanation on my end (Europe) either

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Media does not spread free opinion; It generates opinion" \--Oswald, 1918 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West)

</comment><comment><USER28> I just get a "This feature isn't available to everyone yet" message. Is it just me?

</comment><comment><USER29> All I see on the OP link is:

> This feature isn't available to everyone yet.

</comment><comment><USER30> Third party "fact checkers"???-- factcheck[dot]org "FactCheck.org was launched in December 2003 by Brooks Jackson, a former Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, and CNN reporter" Just sayin.....</comment>


Take just one teeny-tiny little month off - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@avalot/take-just-one-teeny-tiny-little-month-off-7696f58d36dc#.1nacv2gj0 <comment><USER2> A question for those who have been around this field longer than I. Programming is very much a use-it-or-lose-it skill, how would following advice like this article affect one's proficiency in this industry?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been programming since I was 8. You can quit for years and pick it right back up. It's not at all a use-it-or-lose-it skill. It's an intensity skill. You should get into the flow, and code without regard for the clock once you're in the zone... but once you get tired, go do something else for a while.

Life and youth, on the other hand, are use-it-or-lose it. Your proficiency in the industry is not the point of life. The point of life is to live it. If you're rested, relaxed, balanced, connected to the world and to your family and friends, you'll be more successful at life and happiness.

<comment><USER2> Sure you could pick it right back up, but you'll have to go through the learning curve again to pick up whatever the technology of the day is. That is more what I meant, knowledge becoming outdated, rather than forgetting how to code.</comment></comment></comment>


Installation begins on Bezos-backed 10,000 year clock - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/20/jeff-bezos-10000-year-clock-installation/ <comment><USER2> Ah so this is more of a kinetic sculpture than a timekeeping device.</comment>


A Woman's Story - <AUTHOR> http://raganwald.posterous.com/a-womans-story <comment><USER2> _There were a lot of questions about numbers such as guessing the next number in a sequence. There were some logic puzzles, the kind where you have to figure out that it's the baker who rides a bicycle and the mechanic who lives in the house with a red door. There were some strange questions where she was given a sketch of a three dimensional figure such as a cube with some missing pieces, and she had to guess which shaped piece would fill the missing space, or guess which of several other pieces was the same thing rotated or reflected._

This is essentially an IQ test, and what they discovered is that Gwen was highly intelligent. They then did the smart thing and judged her based on her demonstrated aptitude rather than on the prevailing prejudices of the day. Indeed, there was an obvious financial incentive to do so, which serves to remind us that _unfounded prejudice is unstable in a competitive market for labor_.

Nowadays, it is effectively illegal in the U.S. to give IQ tests to job applicants, and in the state of California it is illegal to give a black child an IQ test even when administered by a school psychologist as part of a professional assessment. To their proponents, such laws are mere "progress", but stories like Gwen's show how misguided these rules can be. When there is a clear incentive to discover the truth, objective assessments _undermine_ prejudice rather than promoting it. It's a lesson we would do well to remember.

<comment><USER3> _This is essentially an IQ test, and what they discovered was that Gwen was highly intelligent. They then did the smart thing and judged her based on her demonstrated aptitude rather than on the prevailing prejudices of the day_

Actually, if you read the whole thing, they didn't believe her "demonstrated aptitude" because of their "prevailing prejedices". She had to fight to get them to see her demonstrated aptitude. Many people would be tired of fighting and would have given up then (or earlier in the process). If the applicant was in the privileged position, they would not have had to fight.

 _it is illegal in the U.S. to give IQ tests to job applicants_

That's because in the past, the IQ tests were not fair, objective and colour- blind, but were set up in such a way as to bias _against_ poorer people (which will be mostly black in the USA). This is easy to do with IQ tests, just ask lots of questions that require good schooling and education (e.g. word questions).

Companies used to use IQ tests, and hence claim not be racist, and then be racist. The ban on IQ tests in job interviews stems from this US Supreme Court case <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Company> and has hence probably _improved_ equality.

<comment><USER4> > That's because in the past, the IQ tests were not fair, objective and > colour-blind, but were set up in such a way as to bias against poorer people > (which will be mostly black in the USA).

This isn't true at all. They haven't been shown to be biased, merely that blacks score lower. Extensive research has show that IQ tests have equal predictive power for blacks and whites. "Disparate impact" merely means that blacks score lower, not that the tests are biased.

> This is easy to do with IQ tests, just ask lots of questions that require > good schooling and education (e.g. word questions).

The black-white gap is as large or larger on tasks that require very little education, e.g. "reverse digit span", which merely requires that you repeat a sequence of numbers in the reverse order from the direction you heard it.

> and has hence probably improved equality.

I've never understood why eliminating one of the few objective measures and making the hiring process entirely subjective was an improvement.

<comment><USER5> "They haven't been shown to be biased"

When I think about that question, I think about questions that would be harder for me (white caucasian) than somebody from another "race" or culture. That is easy: for example imagine selecting some kind of image puzzles involving kanjii symbols, or telling apart chinese faces. They are just images, right, so no bias? But it will be much more easy to tell them apart for somebody with a chinese background than for me. If such questions exists that are biased against me, it seems at least very plausible that other questions could be biased against other "races" and cultures. Another example I read about is how different cultures see the drawing of a box (a 3d wireframe). Apparently in western cultures people would see it as a drawing of a 3d box, whereas some poor test takers in Africa just saw a 2d drawing. This was then interpreted as Africans being less intelligent, when really they were just as correct as the people who saw the 3d shape. It just wasn't such a common meme where they lived to draw 3d shapes like that.

<comment><USER6> If you have the time, I'd be curious to know your answers to the following (95% confidence intervals if you want):

1\. how many seconds did it take you to think up this refutation of IQ tests? 2\. how many psychologist/psychometrician man-years do you estimate go into developing any particular IQ test like the RAPM or BOMAT? 3\. what probability do you give that psychometricians have not also thought of your objection? 4\. conditional on their thinking of it, what probability do you give that they have done nothing to cope with it? 5\. how many seconds would it take you in Google or Wikipedia to find the real answers to 3 & 4? 6\. how many seconds did it take you to write your comment?

<comment><USER5> Ok, now I have some more time.

First of all, the thing with the 2d vs 3d drawing was an actual real world example that I read about. So clearly there are some psychologists/psychometrians who were wrong about the interpretation of their tests.

As for 5: if it only takes a few seconds to find those answers, why don't you do it and give the answers to us?

Edit: I just tried googling "RAPM cultural bias" and didn't get any useful results. You really should provide the links. Of course your tone makes it likely that discussing with you is probably a waste of time anyway :-/

<comment><USER6> > Of course your tone makes it likely that discussing with you is probably a > waste of time anyway :-/

Not really. I ask these questions because I've noticed that astonishingly often, people online will write a definitive refutation of some scientific position or new study, which took them only a few seconds to think of and which is wrong; but _why_ do they do this?

I can think of many possibilities, and I'm never sure what it is: do they think so poorly of the scientists conducting the study (anti-intellectualism)? do they think so highly of their own thoughts (Dunning-Krueger)? are they too stupid to realize any of this (low IQ)? are they too lazy to look up the answers in Wikipedia or Google Scholar? or is it a cynical ploy for getting upvoted comments where they count on their fellows not being knowledgeable enough to call them on it?

Hence, I ask questions to try to isolate what might be the issue and incidentally point out to the more reflective readers why comments like yours are fundamentally bad ideas.

Sometimes the spectacle is just horrifying; on a mailing list with a fairly high level of discussion of cutting-edge research on working memory and dual n-back, someone posted proudly about how they thought IQ tests were biased against Africans, and though I point out that this was obvious to him and me, even more obvious to psychometricians, he never once looked up how the tests might have been defended against or corrected for cultural biases, despite me sometimes explicitly naming the names he could punch into Google or Wikipedia.

<comment><USER5> What makes you so sure that the research around IQ is not flawed? Never mind that there are probably thousands of researchers with differing opinions.

I am still waiting for your refutations. But honestly, your initial assumption that every internet commenter is wrong will make it difficult for you to communicate or learn stuff.

Frankly, I fail to see how pointing out possible flaws in a theory can ever be "a bad idea". In my opinion to doubt everything should be the default stance of a scientist.

You mentioned RAPM, I looked it up and it says it was invented 1934 in an attempt to avoid cultural biases - therefore it uses more graphical elements than language. My examples show that even graphical elements can have a cultural bias. So while it is a nice attempt, you can not be sure RAPM succeeded, even if their intentions were good.

The 2d box vs 3d box thing is an actual event from the history of IQ research, where IQ testers apparently got it wrong. So these people are fallible, too. Finally, cultural bias is one of the standard mistakes people (Even if they are scientists) make.

Note that I didn't even claim the IQ tests are flawed. It bores me if people confuse my comments with stuff other people said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The biggest lesson I see here is how much family solidarity and positive expectations makes in a childs education and life. Without her male tribe, and presumably the female tribe who sent the male tribe along, Reg's mum would have taken a different path.

As a father of a young family with a spotty family past I wanted to focus on things I knew for my children. Perhaps I need to focus more on building that kind of supportive family or pseudo family.

Inspiring stories have a tendancy to inspire things not first thought of.

Thank you

<comment><USER8> If you want to raise your child to be successful look at the mars-mellow experiment. Unlike IQ they could come up with a really strong correlation to school performance and later success and it seems (at least partially) to be something the family has some influence over.

<comment><USER5> I've read about it recently and found a snippet interesting that said the kids who could wait longer were better at distracting themselves with other stuff. Interesting because the initial thinking would be "discipline", but just teaching your kid discipline might not be the thing that helps them over the marshmallow challenge...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I love this story because it shows how important it is to be persistent and stand up to authority. Lois had to challenge the principal not once but TWICE, and she was smart enough to get her male relatives involved. Gwen had to fight for her job application TWICE - once to receive the test paper and again to be credited for her answers. This persistence is even more impressive because in each case it involved personal confrontation with someone in authority.

This cultural element of success is underrated. People understand the importance of intelligence, hard word and luck, but don't realise that 'culture' is also vital. Without a family culture of standing up to authority going back three generations, Gwen would not have got that great job. (Malcolm Gladwell devotes much of his book, 'Outliers' to this theme).

</comment><comment><USER10> That's a wonderful story; wonderfully written.

If you don't mind, it reminds me of an Asimov story I've always loved, "Profession". <http://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> Superb. As a fellow Torontonian, programmer, and just a guy with a mom, this story warms me up. She sounds badass.

</comment><comment><USER12> I immediately knew it was about your mother after the first few paragraphs. Just a bit sad that the debate here quickly degenerated into the political correctness of IQ tests and the very loaded debate of IQ and race.

When you omit skin color and gender from the story, it's an inspiring story of family values triumphing over environment. It would also be reasonable to say that this family probably has a higher level of native intelligence than the average but they also have instilled the value of hard work and perseverance to make the most of their potential so even if they were average, they would get better results given the same potential.

I'm always puzzled at how quickly intelligent debate breaks down among Americans the second gender or race become part of the discussion.

</comment><comment><USER13> Captivating as ever, Mr Braithwaite. We all need heroes, and it's especially satisfying when such a hero is also a parent.

</comment><comment><USER14> It is a wonderful and inspiring story. It is the best way to honor one's parents. Thanks for sharing it with us.

</comment><comment><USER15> Goodbye HN. After repeatedly demonstrating your racism and sexism I just cannot take it anymore. It was nice knowing you.

<comment><USER16> Don't go please, I really appreciate your comments and submissions, although I'm really not active here. You're one of the few users that I always read comments from, raganwald also is one.

There's always a histrionic minority that read about some research and always come here bragging about it (ie, mainly about women, blacks or whatever else), this type of people, although mainly libertarian have a real dislike for the individual that is telling of their real beliefs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Fascinating article. I am reminded of things my grandmother said about breaking into the field of physics (and later really helping greatly expand the field of astrophysics). I am also reminded of women complaining about the problems with trying to raise a family and get tenure as science professors today, and conclude that in many ways my grandmother had it easy.

So it sounds like Gwen's experience wasn't unique. It may be that we are actually becoming _more_ rather than less hostile towards women breaking into male-dominated industries.

<comment><USER18> I think we are more hostile to women now than in the past if only because we say we aren't hostile at all and in the past women and minorities knew they needed to fight their way in. If you know you're up for a fight vs just thinking you're evaluating possibilities you're approach is going to be different. Basically, since the younger generation has bought into the idea that sexism/racism is on its way out they are more likely to believe someone when they say - you can't be any good. And why be persistent if maybe you aren't actually any good?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There are a lot of stories lately of women not taken for intelligent or made fun of, but I don't see that happen here at all.

Recalling from a previous news item, a women said that men always told her to "lighten up" (assuming that means something along the lines "don't whine, I didn't mean it that seriously", it doesn't translate). Well either I'm one of the bastards, or the culture is different here. It appears here we, men and women, have a lot of... liberties I guess you could say.

Looking at the list of countries allowing gay marriage lately, I was surprised to see the Netherlands listed as one of just a few. I once read a quote, "Mom, why do those two women hold hands? - Because they love each other.". I didn't get why it was upvoted at all (site similar to bash.org, don't remember which though). It seems rather obvious to me, like a girl asks her mother why a man and a woman hold hands. Now that I've learned that gay marriage is not actually that common, I get the point.

Is this true for (black) women in America too? I don't get the impression the USA is 'behind', but reading these stories you'd almost think it is. Of course, this particular one is a story from many years ago and either way a good read. But still, it is one of many last days which make it to the front page, covering pretty much the same subject.

I'm not saying people should stop posting or upvoting them, nor do I intend to offend anyone or any country. I'm just wondering aloud what the motivation is behind posting and upvoting these stories.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps this story is also about a person who overcame many obstacles to do somethng nobody thought was possible. If that doesn't belong on HN, what does?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone else think it's weird that the principal seemed to have authority over where she could go to secondary school? Was that standard? Is it still true today?

</comment><comment><USER21> The comments seem to have degenerated into a debate about the merits of IQ tests, but I wanted to say thank you for a beautiful and uplifting story.

</comment><comment><USER22> Damn, I need to put more effort in my dance lessons.

</comment><comment><USER23> It sounds like this woman was lucky to both be incredibly intelligent in her own right, and to have an excellent family who believed in her and were persuasive to overcome some societal obstacles. And to live in a place with excellent schools and jobs.

I wonder if she would have gone to work for a big company today, or if she would have tried to do a startup.

</comment><comment><USER24> _'In Toronto, they could marry, but they couldn't rent an apartment together as landlords were afraid of "trouble."'_

A bit off-topic, but I'm somewhat shocked by this (and my own ignorance). I know about the US, but this was an issue in Canada?

<comment><AUTHOR> In theory they could live anywhere they chose. But the gap between theory and practice is narrower in theory than it is in practice.

<comment><USER25> My parents came to Toronto from Ireland in the 1960s and also experienced their share of covert racism. It may be hard to imagine that a city that is so cosmopolitan† today was so repressive and ethnocentric just a few decades ago.

† Notwithstanding the Toronto Sun, et al.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The most sencere respect for what Gwen did and achieved. I can't tell more and only draw my hat (bad translation of a german saying, please don't hold it against me!).

<comment><USER27> OT, but it sounds like you're trying to say "I've got nothing more to say, I just tip my hat [to her]." As in, no more words required, just a show of respect.

<comment><USER26> Yep, that's it! Hope that's not considered spam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> That was a very inspiring story about your mother, raganwald. Thanks for posting it.

</comment><comment><USER29> IQ is very biased depending on the environment you grew up.if u grew up in zimbabwe or a country with high literacy levels the iq tests will be just too easy.

</comment><comment><USER29> The idea that some race have low IQ because of their race shows how low your IQ is and you ability to think outside box.

</comment><comment><USER30> To moms. To women. Thanks Raganwald.

</comment><comment><USER31> Really nicely written post, thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is delightful! Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER33> thanks for sharing, a really inspiring story.</comment>


The Feds Promised to Protect Dreamer Data. Now What? - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/daca-trump-dreamer-data <comment><USER2> TLDR - Who runs "the feds" can change. New admins aren't obligated to keep the promises of the old admins, particularly when those promises include things like "we promise not to enforce law X or law Y".

<comment><USER3> Indeed. If you could rule by promise, and those promises were binding on future administrations, then executive power would be practically unlimited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't say I blame her for deciding either way (apart from coming here without authorization.) It was a calculated gamble -- essentially 5 years of guaranteed immunity in exchange for being easier to find if the feds had decided to show her the door.

Had she stayed in the shadows, she might have been caught and deported regardless. I don't have the data to accurately weigh her chances either way.

In any event, her most likely outcome right now is deportation, then sneaking back in.</comment>


Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/WindowsForBusiness/End-of-IE-support <comment><USER3> Am I the only one who finds all the happy faces Microsoft have injected into the page a bit weird? It feels like they are trying to sell me some bad news but make me feel happy at the same time.

Don't get me wrong - I think it's a good move to discontinue support for older IE versions... There is just something with all the smiling and laughing faces all over the page that make all my alarms go off

<comment><USER4> Manipulation (aka advertising/PR/marketing) techniques 101. Showing pictures of happy faces makes the audience (not you in particular, but the average reader) have more positive feelings about the announcement. There's no other plausible reason for using a row of random smiley faces as a page separator in an announcement like this.

<comment><USER5> But in this case they overdid it, and now it feels a bit like a scam/domain hijacked website with tons of stock photos. I might not have noticed a single row, but it has 4 rows!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thank goodness. IE 11 has enough warts and weirdness; having to deal with all the brokenness in IE 8 was driving my front-end colleagues to alcoholism...

I have a beautiful dream sometimes, where I go to work, and I only have to care about supporting Chrome...

<comment><USER7> > I have a beautiful dream sometimes, where I go to work, and I only have to > care about supporting Chrome...

I understand the sentiment, but to be clear: Ideally we do not want any one vendor with a majority browser share. Otherwise someone will get complacent and we'll have a repeat of the dark times (IE6). Having multiple browser vendors is good for the web.

<comment><USER8> Yeah... but I kinda wouldn't mind if they were all using the same open source rendering engine under the hood.

<comment><USER9> ... But that's exactly what they're saying we DON'T want. A lot of browsers re-used IE 6's rendering engine because it had a monopoly. That only made the situation worse.

A browser's rendering engine is the ONLY part that matters, and if anyone has a monopoly that is "bad" because competition helps innovation.

Each rendering engine winds up, for good and bad, with a small group of people deciding what features do and do not get put in. If they simply decide that feature Y doesn't get put in, and that rendering engine has a monopoly then feature Y is a non-entity as far as the web is concerned.

For example, if Google controlled the web's primary rendering engine do you think Do Not Track would be in it? NO! It took all of their major competition to add it before they did, starting with IE.

<comment><USER10> > A browser's rendering engine is the ONLY part that matters

Active X would like to disagree with you. We're currently dealing with a massive (revenue/company) product that only runs under IE < 10 because it _still_ uses Active X.

I don't think a common rendering engine is at all a bad thing. Maybe two to keep them honest. But blink + webkit + trident (?) + Gecko (?) seem like wasted engineering talent.

<comment><USER11> South Korea has(or had, they may have changed it in the last few months) a law that enforces the usage of ActiveX for everything which needs security (e. g. online banking, online shopping)

<comment><USER12> That sounds like a prime example of incredible technical incompetence of the lawmakers or incredibly good lobbying by MS. Maybe both.

<comment><USER13> It made some sense at the time the law was conceived. SSL was crippled to uselessness by US export restrictions. IE 6 had a monopoly. So they built their own much more secure encryption (using ActiveX to plug into IE) and mandated its use for everything that matters.

The incompetence was in mandating a certain implementation instead of writing a technology-neutral law requiring a certain security level.

<comment><USER14> Interesting! So bad actions by the US gov led to bad results for US companies....

<comment><USER15> Bad actions by the US gov led to bad workarounds by other govs

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> An unfortunate datapoint: for one of our products I'm still seeing >25% users on IE8.

This is a (primarily UK) product most of whose users are on internal bank networks. It's come down from about 40% 2 years ago, so it's heading in the right direction - but I'm not sure I see it going away any time soon.

There's huge organizational inertia inside these banks around IT systems - <USER2> we want to serve them, we need to support IE8 for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER17> They are probably XP users. You can create a small notification on top of your website, notifying them that they should move to Firefox or Chrome because their browser is not safe anymore...

<comment><USER18> "they should move to Firefox or Chrome because their browser is not safe anymore..."

You are assuming that they have a choice. A large chunk of them most likely don't.

<comment><USER19> The wording on those messages needs to be tailored for that: "Please contact your system administrator to request a secure browser"

The only way enterprise IT departments will upgrade is when they start having to take responsibility for security problems. As long as they can lie to their users and claim there's no need to upgrade, they will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The document makes things wildly unclear as to which versions of IE are actually supported by Microsoft.

In practical terms it's still IE9 and IE11 for a while (so far as I can tell)?

[https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/lifecycle#gp/Microsoft-I...](https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/lifecycle#gp/Microsoft-Internet-Explorer)

I'm sure there is still a load of Windows Vista SP2 machines around...

<comment><USER21> My thoughts too. If versions of Windows less than Windows 7 are supported which cannot run IE11, and IE11 is the only version being supported, are those older versions of Windows still really supported?

Windows Vista has support through 2017 and Windows Server 2008 has support through 2020.

<comment><USER22> IE9 remains supported on Vista (as it's the last release of IE that runs on it). IE9/IE11 is all that remains supported on client releases on Windows (Server and Embedded versions of Windows continue to use pretty much everything from IE7 upwards).

[https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/gp/microsoft-internet- ex...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/gp/microsoft-internet- explorer?wa=wsignin1.0) provides a clearer overview of what the supported version where is. (Note that it excludes OSes that are currently supported by end support before 12 Jan 2016.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love the way they can't even give a straight answer to their own questions:

"Does this mean Microsoft is changing the support lifecycle policy for Internet Explorer?"

"The latest version of Internet Explorer will continue to follow the component policy, which means that it follows the support lifecycle and is supported for as long as the Windows operating system on which it is installed. Focusing support on the latest version of Internet Explorer for a supported Windows operating system is in line with industry standards."

A simple yes or no will do.

<comment><USER24> > A simple yes or no will do.

Haven't they done better than that? Except they've dealt with the possible issue that the reader has an incorrect understanding of the support lifecycle policy for Internet Explorer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> From the document - "older" means < 11.

<comment><USER26> The latest IE for Vista SP2 looks to be IE9, so it looks like it'll continue to receive updates. [https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/lifecycle#gp/Microsoft-I...](https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/lifecycle#gp/Microsoft-Internet-Explorer)

<comment><USER25> _Sigh_ I blame Microsoft's confusing description:

> What is end of support? Beginning January 12, 2016, only the most current > version of Internet Explorer available for a supported operating system will > receive technical supports and security updates. Internet Explorer 11 is the > last version of Internet Explorer, and will continue to receive security > updates, compatibility fixes, and technical support on Windows 7, Windows > 8.1, and Windows 10.

Not a single mention of Vista/etc.

<comment><USER27> Vista left mainstream support three years ago [1].

[1] [http://windows.microsoft.com/en- au/windows/lifecycle](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows/lifecycle)

<comment><USER28> Mainstream supports means no more features, but it's still getting patches, I imagine.

<comment><USER29> Nope.

 _" End of support refers to the date when Microsoft no longer provides automatic fixes, updates, or online technical assistance. [...] you will no longer receive security updates"_

<comment><USER30> That refers to the end of extended support, which just recently happened for Windows XP. Vista is under extended support until April 2017, as mentioned on the page you quoted from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Apologies for the rant, but this is the second article today that I've seen about a company discontinuing support for outdated software. (The other being a gnu rant about Windows not supporting XP.) And there was a third a couple days ago about an open source community announcing pending EOL of an old version.

What bugs me is so many negative comments along the lines of "What about all those poor helpless trillion dollar megacorporations that are stuck on an old version because they use proprietary custom software? Microsoft is evil because they don't guarantee to support and repair everything that they've ever made for free until the heat death of the universe!"

Those companies and organizations are stuck not because of Microsoft, but because they mismanaged their own proprietary software or web applications. For more than a decade, they never even bothered to plan for maintenance, although they routinely plan, budget, and schedule depreciation and maintenance for everything else in the business - things that move much slower than software and far far slower than web development. I'm no fan of Microsoft, but that's their fault, not Microsoft's.

My Windows machine is still on Windows 7 now, and not ready to upgrade to 10 yet due to compatibility issues. But I have 4 more years to get things working in a virtual environment, or find replacements. Software that I run dates back to the 70s, so some didn't work by default in 7, but in the end there was only 1 program that I couldn't replace or get working with an upgrade or VM. I reverse engineered the data to migrate it (it used an obsolete floating point format from before floating point ops were standard in PCs). If I can do that, a company or large organization can do it.

For web software, the pace of the state of the art is even faster. Most anything over a few years old probably needs a rewrite and data migration if it hasn't been maintained properly (and possibly even if it has). Especially anything that used old plugins.

But the focus on browser versions is weird. I strongly dislike the practice of web developers/designers speaking of 'supporting' IE6/IE8 or whatever. That's a Microsoft product, Microsoft supports it or not, you and I don't. We support the websites that we build, which we build to current industry standards (such as they are). If you try to access it using a nonstandard client like IE6, Arachne running on DOS, Hyperlink on a C64, or a line mode browser on a teletype, then your experience will be different. The server side will work fine, but your client may not do what it's not capable of.

You can't expect to stick a blu-ray disc on a record player or shove a flash drive full of MP3s into an 8-track tape deck and have the end-user experience be the same. It just doesn't work that way. Sure we can try to build custom client-side workarounds, but is that worth the cost (especially given that new browsers are free)?

Overheard at a meeting once:

Client: "Our stats say that'll be fine for our customers, but our executive team mostly has older versions of IE, so this won't work for them. We don't want it to look bad to the CEO."

3rd Party Agency Manager: "We'll order new laptops for them and have them delivered, just tell us how many and where to send them. It will be much cheaper for you and save us all a lot of time."

<comment><USER32> > "You can't expect to stick a blu-ray disc on a record player or shove a > flash drive full of MP3s into an 8-track tape deck and have the end-user > experience be the same. It just doesn't work that way."

Can anyone disagree with this analogy? If not, I'm going to start using it all the time!

<comment><USER33> I disagree. It totally depends on what your expected end-user experience for each of those might be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Interesting that the meta tag for this page is "end-of-xp-support"

</comment><comment><USER35> After that day we only need a really bad 0-day exploit to make everybody actually update their browser or switch to Chrome.

<comment><USER36> Let's save a step, and simply create an exploit that automatically installs Firefox/Chrome, and uninstalls IE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> There are a lot of businesses that use older versions of Windows and use Internet Explorer as their default web browser and use group policy from a Windows Server to prevent the install of a third part web browser. Forcing everyone to use IE.

They will be vulnerable to attacks because of this and they will refuse to pay money to upgrade from XP or Vista to go to Windows 10. It will be because their business software only works with older Windows versions. They can't afford someone to migrate to Windows 10 or they lost the source code after programmers retired or got fired and took it with them on their personal laptops because they lacked a source control system.

It is a big mess out there. Colleges are even worse as is the federal government who use outdated Windows Updates by three years and expired antivirus products.

<comment><USER38> In many cases we are talking about organizations using software that requires not just an obsolete internet explorer version, but an _ancient_ one. There have been many years to assess and fix this problem, and just because companies stuck their heads in the sand and expected it would always be someone else's problem. I have little pity for the companies, but I feel deeply for the IT employees that will have to deal with the fallout from poor decision making from management.

Buying or developing technologies that rely on weird proprietary quirks of _free_ versions of software isn't very sane. There's not even a business model in place you can rely on to continue to want to support you since it's free.

That brings up an interesting point though, a special NPAPI plugin that aimed to provide perfect compatibility with older IE versions for a small per-seat license fee could do really well...

<comment><USER39> > Buying or developing technologies that rely on weird proprietary quirks of > free versions of software isn't very sane. There's not even a business model > in place you can rely on to continue to want to support you since it's free.

It's all very well saying this now, but I wouldn't be surprised if at the time these technologies were seen as JavaScript is now. I remember Adobe Air was when it came out...

<comment><USER38> Javascript has a standard (or more accurately, current javascript is the implementation of a version of the standard). It's a much safer bet that either there will be backwards compatible implementations later or that you will have other options. To my knowlesde, IE's feature set was always "what's supported by the current release".

It's sort of like having a codebase which you can't change which makes use of a bunch of weird proprietary C extensions from some old compiler, and the compiler itself not only has the capability to introduce bugs and security flaws, but has a track-record of doing so. You _know_ it's a ticking time bomb now, and you _should_ have seen it in the beginning (although so many didn't :/ )

<comment><USER37> Even back in 1997 JavaScript worked differently based on what OS and web browser you had.

I had open sourced this script to detect the OS and web browser so that it would run JavaScript code using if statements for each platform to solve compatibility problems. It should still work today but the ActiveX detection is broken because of the way JavaScript changed.

[http://www.javascriptsource.com/repository/javascripts/2005/...](http://www.javascriptsource.com/repository/javascripts/2005/09/721471/UserDetail.html)

<comment><USER38> I understand there were plenty of non-standard features, but keeping to standard features should have been possible, and JS didn't change that much between browser versions (and where it did fixed could be implemented, as your detection script would have helped with).

It took quite a while for some standard JS features to be added[1], but a mostly stable subset was possible (as evidenced by the sites that worked in all the major browsers of the time). The real problem was companies not wanting to devote the time to doing this and taking the shortcut of using the non-standard IE features MS had included at the expense of browser interoperability (which would have provided some protection against using features that would be dropped).

1: [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/s4esdbwz(v=vs.94).a...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/s4esdbwz\(v=vs.94\).aspx)

<comment><USER37> The problem with Internet Explorer at the time I worked with it is that it had a version of JavaScript called JScript that ran in the background that had differences with the JavaScript used in Netscape and other web browsers. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JScript](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JScript)

In my experience I had to write JavaScript code that detected the OS the web browser type and even the processor so that I could use if statements to run the correct JavaScript code for each platform that worked.

I've been out of it for a decade due to a disability, but I see that Microsoft has updated JScript and has used some form of JavaScript in Windows 8 Apps as well. I never really liked Metro/Modern UI and Windows 10 kind of changed it to Universal Apps.

I like that they have made improvements to JavaScript like Node etc and even run JavaScript in the OS and the backend as well as the frontend.

<comment><USER38> Yeah, I'm familiar with jscript, and have used it in the past. You should check out the "Comparison to Javascript"[1] section of that article. JScript was just MS's way to get around Sun and the trademark issue. In a lot of ways, it's the same as Google and Dalvik compared to Java. Same language, different name to get around legal issues.

Now, I know MS's version of javascript (JScript) had it's own quirks and issues (such as no trailing comma allowed in objects and array syntax), but it shouldn't have been too hard with a minimum of testing to make sure it worked on both IE and Netscape and/or Firebird (before it was renamed to Firefox). The problem is that many didn't both at all, and didn't even attempt to figure out which bits that they used were standard parts of Javascript or the ECMAScript standard and what were MS extensions.

That said, there was a major benefit to people forging ahead with MS specific extensions. The wide acceptance and update of XMLHttpRequest was spurred by MS's introduction of that type of call through custom ActiveX objects[2].

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JScript#Comparison_to_JavaScri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JScript#Comparison_to_JavaScript)

2: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest#Support_in_Inte...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest#Support_in_Internet_Explorer_versions_5.2C_5.5.2C_and_6)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Some of the lower tier (but very common) LAN network hardware requires old versions of IE to function during firmware upgrades and configuration changes with no CLI equivalent options.

In most cases the hardware vendors never address the browser compatibility issue (due to focus on new products) and only provide a warning sign upon login. Likewise the hardware isn't easy to replace in some environments.

This use case is completely absent from the web browsing traffic usage patterns on the internet which predominate in browser usage statistics.

<comment><USER32> Use the old, unsupported, insecure browser only during those upgrades and a modern browser for everyday use. The end-of-life-ed browsers will continue functioning, they just won't get updated. Might require use of a VM, but the cost of that added complexity is vastly inferior to what web developers worldwide spend supporting those old browsers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wow, I'm _all_ for EOL'ing old versions of IE, but I'm surprised at the complete lack of notice (on a corporate scale). Was this known to be in the works for a while?

My thinking is just that most larger companies will have zero chance of hitting a January deadline, and once the deadline passes, there's really no urgency to upgrade by any particular time. I would think a ~12 month deadline might be more effective in getting people to upgrade (as well as resulting in fewer compromised browsers).

<comment><USER41> This was announced in August 2014: [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2014/08/07/stay-up-to- dat...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2014/08/07/stay-up-to-date-with- internet-explorer.aspx)

<comment><USER30> Cool, thanks. Perhaps a year and a half is too long! More likely I just didn't notice at the time since I don't use IE.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's pretty interesting to see Microsoft edging out onto this limb of abandoning their long held policy of supporting their software for long periods of time. There is pretty much no alternative, so on the one hand it is not like their enterprise customers have anywhere else to go. On the other hand, it's one less argument for companies to stick with Microsoft if they are already on the edge. I'll be interested to see how it turns out if they keep pushing in this direction.

<comment><USER43> This IE "change" isn't so much an abandoning of their long held policies as clarifying them and fixing some wrong assumptions companies had made in the past. Microsoft's support policies for the OS components has long held that what they will provide (extended) support for is the most recent Service Pack version that has kept up with Windows Updates. For various reasons, companies have tried to take advantage of the fact that IE is an OS component to qualify it for extended support and also taking advantage of the concept that IE updated/versioned at a slightly different pace from Windows Service Packs to assume that they could claim the extended support timeframe for an individual IE release as if it were entire OS versions.

The amazing thing is that Microsoft took this long to correct what should have been an obvious mistake: that IE versions apply like other Windows components and they should only need to support the most up to date one for that OS version.

The kind thing here is that Microsoft has taken ownership of that mistake, publicly admitted that they made it and that the fix was coming, and given companies more than a year and a half (and advertising to that effect, such as the site linked here) to adjust to the fix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> ok, microsoft wont support it.. but my customers will support it forever. As a webdeveloper i have still customers that are using internet explorer 8 because it is their company policy (big company)

<comment><USER45> Making a corporate decision to stay on a 6 year old browser that doesn't receive security updates because "that's the one we certified" (or whatever the reason may be) is madness.

The whole point of microsofts' action here is to say that it doesn't work like that. If you have an infrastructure of webapps/intranets/whetever then you must carry the _continuous_ cost of making sure they sure they work on new browsers _all the time_ , because old browsers will be quickly become insecure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> We _still_ have customers with IE6. Risk adverse institutions like airports _really_ don't want to upgrade things.

<comment><USER47> I'd say they are not very risk averse if they are still using IE6. In fact, I'd say they are living on the edge. I hope the CTO has a really nice golden parachute because they will need it when (and not if) the proverbial poop hits the proverbial fan.

<comment><USER48> I hope they _don't_ have a golden parachute

<comment><USER6> How about a parachute _made of_ gold...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> [https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/lifecycle#gp/Microsoft-I...](https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/lifecycle#gp/Microsoft-Internet-Explorer)

As Vista is still supported, the IE9 lives on.

</comment><comment><USER50> So does this mean I no longer have to test my website with Windows IE (6!) 7-10 at all ever, under any circumstances? And be able to tell clients that IE11 onwards is all that has to work in IE-land?

<comment><USER51> You can tell your clients you only support whatever you want, and they can tell you they won't be a client of yours anymore unless you support what they want.

<comment><USER24> It depends on what type of client / relationship we are talking about. It might go like this:

Theodores: I only want to support IE11+

Client: No. What if our users have older browsers?

* later *

Theodores: I only want to support IE11+

Client: No. What if our users have older browsers?

Theodores: That should be exceedingly rare, Microsoft have actually pulled support for those versions recently. See this link.

Client: Oh, ok then, great. IE11+ it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Random thought that popped into my head when reading this (apart from the obvious...stockhappyness): I'm curious and know very little about this topic in general. How does an announcement like this affect 0-day prices? My guess is that IE11- 0-days should skyrocket for a bit but then fall because for a while they'll be really valuable and no patches will come but then eventually too many people migrate to the higher version? Could 0-day prices actually be a decent way to forecast future adaption?

</comment><comment><USER53> Of course this doesn't change anything for the 70% of our users who are still on XP and Vista. At best we get IE9, at worst IE8

<comment><USER47> You should start nudging people to use alternative browsers. I'd suggest Mozilla Firefox. You do not need administrative privileges to use Mozilla Firefox and with the extended support releases, there is no reason why anything other than legacy internal services (running on internal network) should use Internet Explorer at all.

Assuming your application does not need IE specific features, what are some reasons that prevent you from nudging users this direction?

<comment><USER54> Related: "Today, we're announcing the end of Chrome's support for Windows XP, as well as Windows Vista" [http://chrome.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/updates-to- chrome-plat...](http://chrome.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/updates-to-chrome- platform-support.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Just updated [http://noaiee.com](http://noaiee.com) to reflect the new countdown deadline and discovered that conditional comments aren't working in IE10. Anyone know how to detect IE10 without using JavaScript?

</comment><comment><USER56> This is good news for those who aren't using older versions of Windows (older than Windows 7). For everyone else (which is still a lot of people), this is very bad news.

<comment><USER9> Actually it is not a lot.

Windows XP already lost support for their latest release of IE years ago, so this doesn't impact them.

This may impact Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 but both are out of mainstream support, and Vista's numbers are extremely low overall. Supposedly 1.74-1.77%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Our front-end team welcomes this news, but I still think a non-trivial amount enterprises who do their own security work will still be using IE 8 into 2017.

</comment><comment><USER58> Are there any guesses when the support for IE 11 ends? Or when will Microsoft remove IE from Windows? Never?

<comment><USER43> The impression I get from this site and similar blog posts:

IE 11 ends with Windows 10. Edge the Browser isn't classified as a Windows component, to my knowledge, and so also shouldn't classify for "extended support" like IE has in the past. It certainly sounds like the intention is to drop IE entirely once Edge has feature parity and user adoption on its side.

(Things are a bit trickier when talking about EdgeHTML the Renderer which I would think is a Windows component still, given that it runs some of the Windows Universal Platform, but here also the benefit of forking it from IE is that they can keep the support policies clear from day one as opposed to having to fix up things after the fact like they did here.)

<comment><USER58> Edge cannot have feature parity. For example, it will not support plugins. I don't think they can drop IE from Windows due to enterprise use and LOB applications.

<comment><USER43> By parity here I do not meant "exact same feature set" or even really "equivalent feature set", but "enough features to get the job done and feel like a real browser". For instance, Chrome-style JS extensions (~plugins) are coming soon enough.

Beyond that, if an enterprise has not gotten the message not to build LOB applications as browser plugins and not to build for one and only one browser model any time since IE6 has been deprecated, then IMNSHO they deserve what they get when IE11 dies as the last "IE". Given the support timeline expected for Windows 10, enterprises have presumably roughly a decade of extended support to adapt before IE dies. Really hope enterprises are paying attention to that (but of course we know a bunch will not and will complain in ten years about lack of support and those of us that got the memo today can proudly mock them then).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> My work ICT department recently upgraded us.

To IE 9. :(

</comment><comment><USER60> Are they just going to do what they did with XP and extend support to those that have the cash?

</comment><comment><USER61> Oh... And we must support IE 8 ¬¬

</comment><comment><USER62> everyone smiling there is a frontend dev

<comment><USER63> we'll still have to support it, now I can just consider more recent versions of IE as 'legacy support' which it is.

My definition of a modern browser is one that self-updates, this is essential for security. There are plenty to choose from, but if you're using a browser that doesn't keep itself up to date you're asking for security problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Best Christmas gift ever!

</comment><comment><USER65> How will I sleep tonight...</comment>


The Desperate Journey of a Trafficked Girl - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/10/the-desperate-journey-of-a-trafficked-girl <comment><USER2> Part of the world used to buy slaves from another part of the world, and a war was fought to halt the buying part.

It doesn't seem like the selling part of the world has stopped selling. Wars aren't like they used to be though, and probably can't stop this sort of thing anymore. AK-47's and pick-up trucks create fluid conflicts that have no clear start or finish.

So what settles the score in a lawless country? What stops irrational violence in its tracks?

<comment><USER3> > Part of the world used to buy slaves from another part of the world, and a > war was fought to halt the buying part.

Do you mean the US civil war? The importation of African slaves was banned in the US _well before_ the civil war was fought. This was much less controversial than ownership of slaves because it served as a protectionist measure for current slave owners (who, by then, had their own supply of American born slaves). See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_Prohibiting_Importation_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_Prohibiting_Importation_of_Slaves)</comment></comment>