Favicon bug - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/benjamingr/favicon-bug <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author of the GH repo and I just want to give full credit for figuring out Chrome does this to this guy: [https://twitter.com/a_de_pasquale](https://twitter.com/a_de_pasquale)

All I did was think "if it works for 65mb why not more?" and write a quick proof of concept. Gets to 10gb on my 4gig laptop and then crashes. (MBA, OSX 10.10).

<comment><USER3> Wow, the twitter replies suggesting this was an accidental "tar cvf * backup.tar" sound right on the mark. Especially considering favicon.ico is probably the first file in a wp install, alphabetically.

<comment><USER4> For everyone struggling with tar, please be aware that you can use long-form arguments. So instead of "tar cvf filename files" you use "tar --create --verbose --file file.tar files" or maybe another order like ""tar --create --file file.tar --verbose files"-

It is much more sensible and intuitive.

<comment><USER5> Once you've used it more than once or twice, however, you will find that writing cfv is much more convenient than typing --create --verbose --file every time you want to tar something.

<comment><USER6> But if it's code you're only writing once - like in a script - you might consider using the longer ones to avoid screw ups and improve maintainability.

<comment><USER7> _always_ use long form flags when writing scripts...have some consideration for the person who has to fix your code when you move on

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Even better - this works with compressed favicons.

Take [http://pastie.org/10242118](http://pastie.org/10242118) and create yourself a favicon file:

dd if=/dev/zero of=favicon.png bs=1M count=4096

gzip -9 favicon.png

you can now crash lots of browsers with minimal bandwidth usage :)

demo: [http://dev.tomjepp.uk/](http://dev.tomjepp.uk/)

<comment><USER8> This makes a 4GB file when decompressed and is plenty large enough to crash a 32-bit browser. You may need a larger file to reliably crash 64-bit browsers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What prevents someone from doing this with a 1 px junk image that is many GB large?

edit: to clarify, i'm talking about in the page itself rather than the favicon.

<comment><USER10> Just a couple of off the cuff thoughts on that. Nothing out of the box prevents what you describe as far as I know but one of the points made in the article is that favicon is downloaded without any update to or indication from the status bar. An image on the page will at least throw up a "waiting for evil.com" in the status bar giving a user some indication that something being downloaded is causing a major slow down.

Typically an ad-blocker or script blocker can be used to prevent the image from downloading. But I don't know of a blocker add-on that worries about favicon.

Overall while annoying and a bit strange that this wasn't anticipated and fixed long ago I'd say this is probably a non-issue. As another poster said I don't see a payoff here so I doubt it will be actively exploited in some "internet screeching to a halt" kind of way.

<comment><USER11>
      > Overall while annoying and a bit strange that this wasn't anticipated and fixed long ago I'd say this is probably a non-issue. As another poster said I don't see a payoff here so I doubt it will be actively exploited in some "internet screeching to a halt" kind of way.

favicons can also be inserted dynamically. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/260857/changing- website-f...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/260857/changing-website- favicon-dynamically/260876#260876)

If some site has a js injection bug, or there is someone doing MiTM like the Great Firewall, I suppose they could inject a favicon link that referenced some location on another site, with the intent towards DoS.

<comment><USER10> Well I don't disagree but on the other hand the article is focused on what it does to a client so I wasn't thinking it through the way you are.

It also occurs to me that given the ability to insert yourself between the client and the server has to open up a number of possible attack vectors that are more worth while than crashing the client. I get (I think) the point about if censorship is the goal this is a way to make clients stay away from a particular server but if you're in a position to MITM them why not just return 404's and be done with it?

Not trying to argue, :-) Just want to make sure I'm understanding your point correctly...

<comment><USER11> I assume you can (untested) reference https endpoints with a favicon?

If you can inject html though, a hidden image would probably would just as well. Although the behavior of chrome apparently still requesting the favicon file after the tab has closed, and possibly storing it in the history or bookmark file, may make this more or less appealing. Unsure.

[http://www.netresec.com/?page=Blog&month=2015-03&post=China%...](http://www.netresec.com/?page=Blog&month=2015-03&post=China%27s-Man- on-the-Side-Attack-on-GitHub)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So a screwed up favicon can eat a wireless user's whole bandwidth for the month with them knowing it. Great...

<comment><USER13> Only if you mobile browser actually download them, ios for example from what it looks like doesn't.

<comment><USER12> Some folks use cell (direct or tethered) on our laptops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of a bug I found in an internal tool. We only had about 200 users, but somehow Apache would run out of workers because they were all busy serving some kind of request. Turns out our Apache configuration was wrong specifically in the case of serving the favicon. If you requested the favicon, it would get in a redirect loop, increasing the length of the url a little more each time until it hit the maximum url length and gave up. A new job like this would get kicked off every time any user visited a page, and it'd take several minutes before it finally gave up. So every user was unwittingly opening tons of long-running requests, with no indication that they were doing anything.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I hit something sort of similar but on the client side: While clicking around a single-page webapp, Chrome would manage to use up all its outbound connections (10 or so) trying to download non-existent favicons, leaving none for real use. And those favicon requests somehow never timed out. Chrome's favicon handling is pretty bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I pray once or twice a month that someone somewhere will just end the favicon.

Or at least make it's absence a non-logworthy event.

Or replace it with something sane, like a .png.

<comment><USER17> All major browsers support PNG favicons

<comment><USER18> Not only is there support in practice, but PNG files have been technically- valid .ico files for a decade.

Edit: Actually on further investigation they might be omitting a header, but they're still 99% valid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Just doing some quick back of napkin maths, even assuming Apple's 128x128 app icons, and 48 bit colors (32 is more typical), we're still talking about a sub-100 kb max for a favicon.

So if Chrome set it even at 20 Mb that would still be orders of magnitude more than any favicon should be for at least the next five or so years (even assuming 256x256 became common for app icons).

<comment><USER20> "The most memory anyone needs is 640k"...

<comment><USER21> Hard limits aren't much of an issue if updates are rolled out ever 6 weeks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In reply to both this and the original discovery[1], I wonder if this is a valid (albeit morally dubious) method of backing up (or at least ensuring the survival of) information that is at risk from _government /<insert 'bad person' here> censorship/removal/other_.

 _NB: Not that I condone this._

[1]: [https://twitter.com/a_de_pasquale/status/608997818913665024](https://twitter.com/a_de_pasquale/status/608997818913665024)

</comment><comment> TD-Linux Did you file bugs for either of these two browsers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500639&t...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500639&thanks=500639&ts=1434390736) [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1174811](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1174811)

<comment><USER23> Is this a Mac only bug, or have you only repro-ed it on Mac?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why do browser people always forget about favicons? Most browser saved favicon on private browsing and then this.

<comment><USER25> ...and used favicons for the bookmarks.

<comment><USER26> Mind telling me why that is an issue?

My bookmark bar is entirely favicons. I remove the name and this allows me to fit more in quick-access without having to delve into folders.

<comment><USER27> Same here. Sadly Safari does not use fav icons in the bookmark bar, so all of mine are emoji.

Unfortunately, you run out of sensible emoji very quickly, so my brokerage ends up 🎲, Github ends up 🐱, and Hacker News ends up ⌛.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How do other browsers behave?

<comment><AUTHOR> Firefox doesn't behave too well either. Gets to 23169 in the counter [http://i.imgur.com/3zkPKD7.png](http://i.imgur.com/3zkPKD7.png)

<comment><USER29> So why single out Chrome in this repository and post? Feels like a hit piece on Chrome this way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I didn't really consider Firefox and I didn't want to publish anything unsubstantiated about it. No intent to single out or attack Chrome - I've changed the title to clarify that now that I have evidence this works in FF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> You should try and use ServiceWorkers to generate the file -- then you can have the client DOS itself.

</comment><comment><USER31> This seems like an active exploit, as pointed out in the OP's inspiration Twitter post.

`tar` up an entire WordPress install, save it as `favicon.ico` and then easily pull the files from the server.

This would be a good idea to get fixed very soon, I would assume.

EDIT: I stand corrected in terms of exploit-ability, but I still assert that crashing a browser and chewing tons of bandwidth are pretty big issues.

<comment><USER32> > `tar` up an entire WordPress install, save it as `favicon.ico` and then > easily pull the files from the server.

assuming I have access to the server to create the tar and save it, what's the difference between downloading the archive as favicon.ico or any other name?

<comment><USER33> If you don't have control over the logging (for a number of reasons) you can disguise your xf in the access logs. I'd be willing to bet that a lot of logging config files for access logs even ignore favicon.ico.

<comment><USER34> You could also hide it as any kind of regular static resource. I still don't understand how it's any worse than, say, hiding a massive image in a webpage. Bogus websites are going to be bogus no matter what, I can understand browser devs not wanting to guess arbitrary limitations for some resources when an hostile attacker will have plenty of other opportunities to achieve the same thing.

What would be the point of adding a limitation to the favicon size really? Protecting users from websites where the webmaster is silly enough to put a 1GB favicon by mistake? Doesn't seem common enough to warrant the extra code IMHO.

<comment><USER35> >What would be the point of adding a limitation to the favicon size really?

Uh, yea, the browser shouldn't become unresponsive, break, or behave in such unexpected ways. Not having a limit is just sloppy. Understandable how it'd be overlooked, but sloppy none-the-less.

<comment><USER34> That's reasonable, but won't you get the same result in a million other ways?

I agree that preventing the browser to become unresponsive when loading bogus/malicious pages is a worthy objective but I don't see why the favicon needs to be singled out as a "bug".

These kinds of deny of service attacks against browsers have been known since, like, forever and they're basically impossible to completely prevent given the surface of attack and the complexity of modern web pages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I like Surf's approach:

      if(g_str_has_suffix(uri, "/favicon.ico"))
          webkit_network_request_set_uri(req, "about:blank");

[http://git.suckless.org/surf/tree/surf.c#n237](http://git.suckless.org/surf/tree/surf.c#n237)

</comment><comment><USER37> it's also working on iOS 8.1.2. As soon as you tap on the share icon, the download starts: [https://github.com/benjamingr/favicon- bug/pull/2](https://github.com/benjamingr/favicon-bug/pull/2)

</comment><comment><USER38> I've noticed it several months ago by going through my server logs - hadn't included 'favicon.ico' in the HTML and yet, the browser - Chrom(e|ium) - <USER2> downloading it every time.

Thanks for reminding me to report it ;^)

<comment><USER39> Most browsers have been doing that since favicons have existed. Older versions of IE used to check for /favicon.ico no matter what, even if you specify a different URL with a <link> tag. You really have no choice but to make the file available at the URL even today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Just tested on Safari 8.0.6, doesn't seem to download the favicon at all. Weird, even after closing the tab, Chrome still keep downloading the favicon.

<comment><USER37> Safari Version 8.0.6 (10600.6.3) on OS X 10.10.3 is downloading it: [https://imgur.com/B2LeRy4](https://imgur.com/B2LeRy4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Should this have been done as a private disclosure to browser vendors first before going public, or is that more for security problems?

</comment><comment><USER42> Way to ruin the fun for the rest of us ;)

</comment><comment><USER43> Anyone tested Firefox/Chrome/Webview for Android?

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Interesting to see server-side JavaScript being used as an exploit language.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is about as easy to do with every other language - I could have done it in C, or Python or PHP or Java or C# or whatever - node was just the lowest friction one for the PoC - all you ned is an HTTP server that lets you write dynamic requests - could have been bash even.

<comment><USER44>
        ln -s /dev/urandom /srv/wwwroot/favicon.ico

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Seems like an easy and logical fix for browsers.

       function fetchFavIcon() {
           if (favicon.fileSize > 1MB) { return false; }

           ...
       }</comment>


Dear FCC: Thanks for Listening to Team Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/fcc-votes-net-neutrality-big-win <comment><USER2> As a fiscally conservative technology person who got my first modem in 1985, I could simultaneously not be happier with how things turned out with the FCC and horrified how fellow conservatives seem to interpret it.

It is disheartening how much FUD is being spread by conservatives on the anti- NN side.

<comment><USER3> Why do you dismiss the anti-NN concerns as FUD? Conservatives are worried about what impact NN will have on infrastructure investment, and the fact that reclassification gets us one step closer to rate setting, etc, and other powers under Title II. Both concerns are more "real," more rooted in actual observable practice, than the specter raised by the pro-NN people of a tiered, pay-for-pay internet.

The incentive concern is real. What incentive will telecom companies have to build the wireline networks that enable next-generation of web services if they can't make enough money to justify the investment? The liberal response to this point is either myth or fantasy. Myth, in that they assume that wireline is insanely profitable, and that fat Verizon shareholders will just have to squeeze their belts a bit. In reality, the operating margin of Verizon's wireline division is 2-3%.[1] Fantasy, because they alternatively posit that municipal systems will take up the slack. How states and cities that are broke, crushed under liberal public union pension obligations, will pay for these municipal networks is up in the air.

The worry of further regulation is also real. Telecom is already a morass of regulation, largely to fulfill liberal concerns. For example, there is already rate-setting. Municipal governments require cable companies to offer basic cable at low regulated rates. Since it doesn't cost appreciably less to offer basic cable than more expensive packages, this sets an important constraint on the economics of the network. Huge amounts of wealth transfer from urban to rural areas are already baked into the system at the federal and state levels. And build-out restrictions, preventing upstart competitors from stealing away lucrative tracts of incumbants' service areas, are already stifling competition. The HN crowd acts like NN is being added on top of an otherwise pristine regulatory regime, but in reality it's just one more straw on a giant pile of hay.

None of this is FUD. The fact that these points are also raised by the telecom companies, who have a monetary interest in avoiding NN, does not make them FUD any more than the pro-NN points are FUD because they're raised by web-tech companies.

I'm not an ideologue. I'd be fine with, for example, the U.K. approach. But what that would mean, which most people on HN don't know, would be putting AT&T back together and letting them enjoy monopoly profits. Take a look at BT Openreach's financials sometime: [http://www.digitallook.com/news/news-and- announcements/retai...](http://www.digitallook.com/news/news-and- announcements/retail-and-openreach-stand-out-at-bt-margins-rise--update-- dl20468319.html). Their EBITDA margin is a staggering 45%, double that of Verizon wireline, significantly higher than Comcast's whole operation, and higher than AT&T and Verizon's wireless divisions.

[1] [http://www.verizonwireless.com/news/article/2012/01/pr2012-0...](http://www.verizonwireless.com/news/article/2012/01/pr2012-01-24.html).

<comment><USER4> "What incentive will telecom companies have to build the wireline networks that enable next-generation of web services if they can't make enough money to justify the investment?"

Regulation forcing them to build the networks or be heavily fined. Given their profit margins, I'm weeping...hold on...taking careful count...carry the seven...zero tears for them.

<comment><USER5> Which will cost less: sending political money to the current party controlling the Administration, or those build outs?

Comparatively speaking, politicians individually are cheaper by, say, 3-5 orders of magnitude, as a whole, maybe 2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "We won! A free tiger! But now we face the really hard part: making sure the tiger doesn't eat us."

</comment><comment><USER7> _Even better, the rules will apply to wireless and wired broadband in the same way, so you don't have to worry that your phone switching from Wi-Fi to a 4G network will suddenly cause apps not to work or websites to become inaccessible. Lots of people use mobile devices as their primary way of accessing the Internet, so applying net neutrality rules to both equally will help make sure there is "one Internet" for all._

Does this mean Apple cannot enforce "must use over wifi restrictions"? As it stands now, I can't use LTE to download large apps, media, or stream on the iPhone or iPad. Would the FCC have any authority to force Apple to change these restrictions?

<comment><USER8> There is less competition in smartphone OSes (2 dominant providers) than in most localities' high-speed internet (2 wired and 3+ wireless providers). So the same market-power rationales used for FCC regulation of ISPs could be used to justify strong federal regulation of the Apple & Google platforms.

<comment><USER9> App and data neutrality should be next. Apple shouldn't be able to monetize the phone they already sold me by extorting 30% of all apps I buy.

Google shouldn't be able to horde all the data. Make google a dumb pagerank index!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the immediate benefits for consumers is that companies can no longer block tethering apps on your phone or make you pay an additional fee for it. Sprint wanted me to pay an extra $30/mo when I was with them to be able to tether. Of course, I just rooted my phone and tethered anyway. (now I have Ting -- so much better)

<comment><USER11> You'll still be paying for this, except it will be through federal taxes for corporate subsidies instead of a bill, so you won't know the real price. Usually things you pay for indirectly are much more expensive than they would be if you paid for them directly, so you'll probably be paying more in the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Regulation has a history of locking in incumbents, and locking out potential future competitors. It will be much harder for challengers to enter the market now because of the increased cost of compliance, something only the big incumbents can afford. What's worse is that the costs for Title II companies will be subsidized by government. So they may appear to have low prices, at least for awhile, but the real price will be hidden in a nebulous cloud of federal taxes. You won't even really know how much you're actually paying due to price distortions caused by corporate welfare. It's sad that people have such a short term memory about these corporate welfare cons, and just fall in lockstep with the propaganda. This will be very bad for consumers in the long run.

<comment><USER12> Would you mind supporting your statement by explaining how this actually applies here? It comes across as generic anti-regulation-no-matter-what astroturfing, but would be more interesting if the details of your argument were fleshed out.

<comment><USER11> What details would you like me to flesh out?

Maybe I can offer an example. I'm sure you will be able to poke technical holes in this, but let's say a company comes up with a new technology (i.e. not cable) that can handle small packets very efficiently in a small locality. It's super cheap to do this, and it's great for networking small communities. But, video traffic really slows down the network so it's filtered out and thus it can't effectively treat all data equally. Instead of being able to quickly start up and offer their services, first they have to register with the FCC. Then they have to pay an inspection fee, and account for yearly audit fees. Plus, even though their prices are cheap, they're not much cheaper than cable because all the cable infrastructure is subsidized by taxpayers so their prices appear to be less competitive. All these extra costs to comply with the regulations add up to the point where the capital needed to even start this business is way too high and way too risky, so this technology just won't even have a chance of existing. It is effectively crowded out by the heavily subsidized and protected cable telecoms.

For a real historical reference, take the railroads for example, where these types of regulations began. The railroad businesses got huge subsidies from the government in the form of land and tax breaks. This allowed the railroad companies to effectively cartelize the industry because it crowded out more decentralized forms of transportation like the small rail and networks of canal systems. Even though these localized, less capital intensive systems could have served people better than railroads, we'll never know it because of the opportunity cost of central planning: the railroads used the state to force the public to pay for and subsidize their infrastructure. These crowding out effects are the unseen consequences of regulation.

Big business has a long history of using the power of the state to impose regulatory barriers on future competitors as a way to preserve their monopoly power. It started with the railroads, continued through the Progressive Era, and continues today with policies like "Net Neutrality". And they always use the same public relations con, too, appealing to the common good and fairness to get public buy in. They say that these policies will protect the consumers, but really in the end these policies will protect big business from competition. This creates artificial scarcity and allows big business to charge consumers higher prices.

See my other post here [1] if you want a little more historical background on how this works.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998958](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998958)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> TIL if you've run a bootstrapped web business for ten years, but didn't support Net Neutrality, you've just been kicked off Team Internet.

<comment><USER14> Didn't you vote in the election that gave the EFF the right to speak for us?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Doesn't Team Internet include Cisco, Intel, Broadcom, Qualcomm, and IBM, and other tech companies who came out against the NN regulations that were passed yesterday? Or does Team Internet just include Tumblr and Etsy?

<comment><USER16> Well yeah, those were the companies that were lined up to build the infrastructure for the multi-tiered Internet. How could you expect them to take any other position?

<comment><USER17> While I feel it's clear that you are on the opposite side of this discussion from myself, I nevertheless would like to pose the following to you.

Proponents of this FCC Title II reclassification have argued that this action will not curtail investment in network infrastructure and that Internet bandwidth will continue to improve unimpeded. After all, if they do not argue that, they would concede one of the points presently being dismissed as FUD hawked by the anti-Title II people such as myself: that reclassification will reduce innovation and ultimately hurt end consumers in the long run.

So an underpinning assumption of pro-Title II is that investment in networks will continue unabated and network bandwidth will continue to increase in spite of Title II regulation. Why, then, are the hardware companies that stand to profit from this unimpeded continued investment concerned? Is it because the regulation will require them or their customers to disable support for IPv6 Quality of Service flags on packets? That seems like a fairly trivial configuration change. It seems more plausible that they fear their customers (ISPs and backbone providers) will see less incentive to upgrade to the next generation of network gear to continuously improve the aggregate performance of their network. After all, the hard part of network R&D is steadily increasing bandwidth/performance at prices the ISPs and backbone providers can afford. Implementing IPv6 QoS bits isn't going to show up as a significant line item in the R&D budget or Intel, IBM, Cisco, and Qualcomm.

So yes, these companies were lined up to build the bogeyman "multi-tiered" Internet, assuming such a thing was ever going to come to pass (aside: we'll never really know if such a thing might have ultimately been a boon for consumers, because we took away the opportunity for the market to experiment with that preemptively). But more importantly, these companies were and have been lined up to continuously build the always-evolving "next" generation of Internet network hardware, full stop. And for some reason they are worried that their profits are now in jeopardy.

I for one find that a bit alarming. I want network companies to get rich selling my ISP ultra high-performance network gear because that ultimately improves my bandwidth. I don't want to still be at 30 Mbps five or ten years from now. I don't want asynchronous connection speeds to persist through my lifetime. I want more hardware and network innovation, not less.

All that said, I don't suspect much of anything to happen in the next few years because network R&D isn't a fast-moving process in any event. But in five or ten years, we should be able to assess whether the pace of innovation has been curtailed. I worry that in 2020 I'll look back with a tinge of regret.

<comment><USER18> Well here's the choices I saw personally:

1\. Allow network providers to continue to expand their network, while growing their own services on top of their own network which will compete with third party services. If those other services compete heavily with their own, they will enact tiers or reduce reliability so that their service is better/cheaper/etc.

2\. Regulate network providers, while still allowing them to grow services on top of their own networks and allowing third party services to compete more fairly. Network expansion may be slowed due to the loss of service revenue, but new service business risk will be lowered as they won't be competing unequally with their own (or customer's) network providers.

We got into this mess because networks were classified as information services in the first place. We wouldn't allow the oil companies to own the car business, nor would we allow the electric companies to own the appliance business.

Why should we think this would work any different?

Utility companies get public access across the country to install their cables and pipes. They're using vast public resources. Customers often have few or no choices.

In my opinion, the only reasonable option is regulation. I don't typically like regulation, as I think it hurts small business. But the tradeoff here is that some business will be hurt, while many more businesses should flourish.

<comment><USER17> Option #1 sounds like what we have today, which for all of the spin does not seem to be that bad. I don't buy Netflix's stance of no culpability in network peering deals gone awry. My ISP (AT&T) blocked outbound port 25 as an anti- spam measure, but at my request removed that block. I have observed no other interference by my ISP in my daily use of the Internet. Aside from some buffering on Netflix, what exactly is the mainstream beef with the Internet today? It's way better than it was 5 years ago, which in turn was better than it was 10 years ago.

There has been a building fear of some coming changes, presumably related to implementation of Quality of Service on Internet packets. QoS was originally considered a _good_ idea by many of us. Now we seem to be collectively convinced that it would certainly be used for evil. But we've not yet seen how that might play out. It looks like we maybe never will.

Option #2 sounds like new legislation and not Title II of the Communications Act of 1934.

Regulation is not always bad, but Title II is broad and current promises of forbearance should be taken with a heaping serving of salt. I feel that whatever rational or irrational fears were building, this was not an urgent matter despite what appears to be a massive amount of astroturfing by Netflix and its kin to spin the current Internet's tubes as ensnared at every opportunity by nefarious ISPs. I want a better ISP like anyone else, but Netflix is no angel here. Whenever a big business (e.g., Netflix) campaigns for the rules to change in order to smite its enemies—especially when painting it as a do or die, time-critical matter—my opinion of them is tainted.

Time and deliberation should have been taken to create the proper legislation for the situation at hand. The US has developed what I see as a dangerous and wrong-headed distaste for legislative deliberation, what with Congresses being labeled "do nothing" and frequent complaints of gridlock, as if those are bad things. They are in large part evidence of no consensus, which means subverting the legislative process is likely a mistake.

A great side-effect of deliberation in the legislative process is that the market sometimes creates a superior solution in the meantime. In many cases doing nothing and allowing things to find a way is precisely the right course of action.

<comment><USER19> > Regulation is not always bad, but Title II is broad and current promises of > forbearance should be taken with a heaping serving of salt.

If they are part of the regulatory package, they are as concrete as the Title II classification itself. They aren't "promises", they either are or are not part of the regulation.

<comment><USER17> Good to know. Besides, I should wait to see what specifically shows up in the package before worrying too unnecessarily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _" But now we face the really hard part: making sure the FCC doesn't abuse its authority."_

I just feel that the EFF didn't do a thorough check this time around.

Also, the decision was made at 10AM and they still haven't release the 200+ pages ruling document. It's most likely that this will head back to federal court and the process will get more complicated and lengthy before the dust settle.

<comment><USER21> Wow, you're all over the place with this comment. EFF didn't do a through check? What did they miss?

The "decision" made at 10AM was to adopt the rules that have been under public comment for months. If you haven't seen them yet, it's your own fault.

Yes this will go to court. Do you expect any better from America?

<comment><USER22> > The "decision" made at 10AM was to adopt the rules that have been under > public comment for months. If you haven't seen them yet, it's your own > fault.

From what I've read, the 322 page document wasn't released as of 3 days ago [1]. I'm not sure about the claim that it still hasn't been released, but regardless - the rules weren't really available for public review before the vote.

[1] [http://dailycaller.com/2015/02/23/republican-fcc- commissione...](http://dailycaller.com/2015/02/23/republican-fcc- commissioners-ask-wheeler-to-delay-net-neutrality-vote-release-proposal/)

<comment><USER23> The NPRM was published in May.

If it had gone through another comment phase, it would have taken another 9 months... And then another nine months...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ireland Launches National Cyber Security Strategy - <AUTHOR> http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/Press+Releases/2015/National+Cyber+Security+Strategy+published.htm

<comment><USER2> For those who may not want to click several times to get to the document itself, the PDF is available here: [http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/NR/rdonlyres/80C30B53-336F-45EF-9BDE...](http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/NR/rdonlyres/80C30B53-336F-45EF-9BDE-63F02A0E88C4/0/NationalCyberSecurityStrategy20152017.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeh sorry, I had originally posted it but changed it as I wasn't sure if the community preference was for a direct link to PDF or not. I know some security conscious communities don't like that.</comment></comment>


Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to "Rotten Tomatoes" for News - <AUTHOR> https://mondaynote.com/credder-wants-to-create-an-equivalent-to-rotten-tomatoes-for-news-94467294e57b <comment> rooam-dev Good luck to them if course, but I am not sure this will work. Couple of reasons come to my mind:

1\. How will I know that news have been reviewed by qualified people? Technically this should be news agency/source's job.

2\. By the time the score will depict the news' quality, the damage may be already done.

3\. RT is based on people's opinions, but news should be fact checked.

What I think it should do, is to score the publishers instead... some kind of publishing performance history. Although the most effective would be to have some kind of liability for spreading/posting fake news, this would make publishers to do more fact checking before fast publishing.

All above is just my IMHO.

<comment><USER2> Yep. Rating news is a terrible idea. The news should ideally be as objective as possible (or otherwise it's called "Fake News"), they don't always come out as a popular / most highly rated one. Movies, on the other hand, are highly subjective.

Elon Must has a similar idea where he wanted to rate journalists but later he gave up.[1]

[https://www.inc.com/brian-hart/elon-musk-wants-to-let- public...](https://www.inc.com/brian-hart/elon-musk-wants-to-let-public-rate- journalists-heres-why-its-a-truly-terrible-idea.html)

Ultimately, you as an individual have to decide, do you trust a startup / news rating site to tell you what it is to believe ? My answer to that is absolutely not! I want to do my own research before believing anyone. (Yes I understand some people will be different than that.)

<comment><USER3> I'm a life-long (but intermittent) NYT reader. Coverage of SpaceX (in NYT, WSJ, and WaPo) changed how I think of journalism.

Faced with the usual issue of good newspapers getting every topic you know about not-quite right, variously wrong, I used to explain it by an analogy. It was like when newspapers closed their foreign offices. Loss of ground truth, of sanity checking, of insight and nuance. An abundance of misinterpretation and missing the point. My analogy was that for science, and tech policy, and diplomacy, and engineering, and manufacturing, and so much else, the foreign offices were closed. Generalist journalists, not embedded in the various professional communities of expertise, writing from afar, and getting it variously wrong.

What struck me about SpaceX coverage was the process failure. Not the getting things wrong - that was unsurprising. But there was no sign of learning, of process improvement. For instance, there was a successful short-term disinformation PR campaign targeting the press (around Zuma satellite failure attribution). But afterwards, there was little sign of recognition, reflection, remediation. No sign that they wouldn't fail just as hard if the same thing was done again a month later. And journalistic devices to pursue quality, seemed not just poorly executed, but inadequate to need.

So my new analogy is with medicine. Like journalism, medicine has long had folk practices for pursuing quality. But medicine has had it's "oh, shit" moment. The realization that medical error was a leading cause of mortality. That even easy and important standards of care were failing to be consistently executed. That there were decades of experience in other fields, on how to engineer process to systemically achieve quality and avoid failure, to which medicine had been oblivious. Journalism seems still oblivious.

So I suggest that journalism as a profession, and even the best of newspapers as institutions, have not yet realized just how badly they are failing. Or recognized the need for, or even the possibility of, systemic process improvement.

Perhaps the existence of the OP project might help with that.

<comment><USER2> Feel free to write your own content - publish your own knowledge by contributing to the media outlets - NYT has tons of contributing writers who's full time job is not in journalism!

<comment><USER3> Nifty. This suggestion seems to nicely illustrate what journalism seems to be missing. I see it as analogous to...

Think you can operate our press without losing fingers? Great - we're often looking for replacement operators. Does the machine have guards? Well, we have both a day and a night watchman, why?

Think you can operate without ever leaving sponges and instruments behind in patients? Great, set yourself up as a barber surgeon and go for it. Do we count sponges? You'll have to talk to accounting, but they're not that expensive, why?

And so on.

Responding to operator errors with "well, just stop doing that". Responding to pervasive systemic failures with "well, maybe we need better operators". That's being oblivious to a half century of progress, to minimum standards and best practices, across multiple industries.

Some years back, someone said their first-tier newspaper didn't even have a process for tracking errors. Despite an institutional self-image of caring about quality. ISO 9000 has not hit journalism yet?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This, and many other concepts based on "vetting" news assumes that the audience cares. A significant portion of the audience does not care, and is instead looking for news that validates their worldview, and furthers their (and their chosen political party's) goals. So basically these services will cannibalize the part of the audience that does care about truth, turning people against each other over marginally skewed articles. Meanwhile, the other site is happy to share falsehoods, because it helps them ... win.

<comment><USER5> It's even worse.

For most people, news is just a social object. Something to talk about with family, co-workers, etc. Whether or not any particular story is true doesn't matter - what matters is that everyone in their circle is aware of the described event (whether they read the same story, or a different one).

Humans are pretty good at fact-checking and critical thinking when getting it wrong means some immediate loss. But most news stories are irrelevant to almost everyone's lives, and those few that are, don't have a direct and immediate impact.

<comment><USER6> That's what I find so disgusting about this tendency of many people. If I don't care enough about an issue to be rigorous about it, then by definition I don't care enough about it to 1) vote based off of it or 2) spread my uninformed opinion about it (when I do talk about it, I'm clear that I have only a tentative, uninformed model of the situation).

People have often defended the average voter with "people have busy lives and don't have time to think about this stuff" (and as you point out, don't really have the will to), but I've never understood how it's defensible to treat policies that affect other people's lives as idle fun.

<comment><USER7> An individual may not be that well informed when voting but the collective of all votes is supposed to average out to something more reasonable. There was a story about a bunch of people who were guessing the weight of an ox in a state fair ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton#Variance_and_st...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton#Variance_and_standard_deviation)) where people were generally not very well informed but the average weight guessed was pretty accurate. There are a lot of reasons why democracy as it stands today doesn't work as well but I don't think ill informed voters is one of them.

<comment><USER6> Sure, and that's the core value proposition of democracy, but it doesn't address my complaint. This over-simplified model isn't quite relevant in the face of the huge incentives to screw with voters' epistemology that voting creates. There was no small-ox constituency trying to push voters towards estimating lower, because it didn't matter, while modern culture is suffused with politics, and not symmetrically with respect to every issue. There's a reason that my original comment was disgusted by the tendency I'm describing, instead of modeling it as stupidity: a voter would have to be unbelievably dumb to think that their gut feeling is even remotely useful when it comes to 1) complex topics 2) that they haven't bothered to inform themselves about, 3) for which there are a huge amount of resources dedicated to skewing their views on the issue.

> There are a lot of reasons why democracy as it stands today doesn't work as > well but I don't think ill informed voters is one of them.

I agree with you in that I don't think it's a "voters these days" problems as much as a "most people's moral reasoning is horrifically stunted, in any population and time period". This is a baseline flaw of democracy, and one of the things that made Churchill call it "the worst form of government, except for all others that have been tried". But the inevitability of it across a population doesn't mean it can't be criticized at the individual level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Taking a look at the Rotten Tomatoes "Top 100 Films of All Time" list [1], I'm not exactly sure why it's a model to be replicated. It's extremely obvious that "top" means "popular and/or most advertised."

[1] [https://www.rottentomatoes.com/top/bestofrt/](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/top/bestofrt/)

<comment><USER9> _It's extremely obvious that "top" means "popular and /or most advertised."_

In RTs case, "Top" means films no one dislikes it and everybody thought it was at the very least OK. The "problem" with genuinely great films is that they can often be divisive and challenging and generate a lot of strong opinions in both directions, and thus they'll never rate as well on RT.

<comment><USER10> Looking at the RT top 100 list, 76 films are from 2010 or later, 6 from 2000-2009, and 18 from earlier.

Were films a lot more divisive before 2010?

<comment><USER11> > Were films a lot more divisive before 2010?

Honestly? Yeah, I think so. I'm not saying RT's rankings necessarily reflects this, but I think modern movies _in general_ are a lot less daring than what hollywood used to produce. Probably after 2008 or so, but near enough to 2010, it seems they stopped taking risks on movies and really started to search out the lowest common denominator to have the greatest shot at mass market appeal, even when that meant gutting the plot, degrading the sophistication of dialogue. SFX budgets have gone through the roof, movies are filled with explosions and vivid colors, but little that stimulates the mind. Even the exceptions that most would hold up as poignant movies are generally quite mundane, almost always appealing to the most popular public sentiments.

Consider _Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)_ at number 7 on that list, and _Mad Max (1979)_. 2015 has no shortage of explosions and vivid colors to keep anybody glued to their seat and eating popcorn; the movie watcher doesn't have to put forth any amount of effort to enjoy it, they could walk in half way through the movie, look at their smartphone 90% of the movie, and still enjoy the small slivers of the movie they did see because the movie was made to be as widely accessible as possible, even to philistines who don't pay attention to movies they pay to watch.

 _Mad Max (1979)_ on the other hand doesn't make it onto this Top 100 list. RT gives it 90% from critics and 70% from audiences, which hints at why. 1979 is not as easy for the casual modern _tech-induced attention deficit disorder_ afflicted movie consumer to enjoy. It's very far from non-stop action; it asks the viewer to pay attention even when things aren't exploding on screen. It's excellent, but the industry won't make another Mad Max like that again in the foreseeable future. They don't take risks like that anymore; not when littering the movie with 500% more explosions is so cheap and is so effective at shoring up the profit potential of a movie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wrote something that was trying to do this a back in January that was called desational[1]. What I did was very basic but the process I did went as follows.

1\. Break up news articles into sentences

2\. Pay Amazon MTurkers to tag sentences as `news` or `not-news`

3\. Train a text classifier based on the results for Mturk

4\. Process new articles using the trained model to identify and strip out parts pf the article that are sensational.

5\. Give the article a percent score and a letter grade about how much "news" is actually in the article based on the percentage of sentences that were identified as news.

I ran it for a few weeks on tech news, but then I figured that the news industry is not a business I really want to be in. The source code is all just sitting up on GitLab.

[1] - [https://desational.gitlab.io/desational.com/](https://desational.gitlab.io/desational.com/)

<comment><USER13> Very interesting idea. However, having dabbled with Bayesian classifiers myself, I suspect that your decision to break the article into sentences may be a fatal flaw...both the Mturkers and the classifier lose out on valuable context that way. I know because I took a a similar approach in one of my own projects, and the classifier could never gain enough 'confidence' to classify things, even after thousands of trainings.

The approach might work pretty well if you broke it down to paragraphs, where some context is preserved, but the more context you provide, the better the classifier will perform, often for surprising reasons. For example, I built one classifier that was performing poorly until I re-trained it without stripping HTML and headers; after that it performed splendidly. Upon examination I found that tokens such as domains and IP addresses in headers and links were hugely influential (and rightly so) in the classification.

Just something to consider. :) Apologies if I incorrectly assumed that your classifier is Bayesian.

<comment><USER12> No need to apologize. I'm actually not using a generative classifier like Bayes. I'm using Conditional Random Fields which is a discriminative classifier. I found that based on my training set, CRF produced higher accuracy.

That being said, I've also thought of way more ways to make the processing of the articles a lot better. I had an idea using an LSTM and another idea which would use an RNN to map the sensational article to a non-sensational article. The only problem with some of these approaches is that they would require someone to read an article and write a non-biased form of the article.

I do like your approach, do you have any results from what you've found tinkering around?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I want to bring a note of positivity here -- while most comments seem to be poking holes in the concept, all also seem to acknowledge the need for such a service to be successful.

This is a domain that I've also put a lot of thought into over the years, so I hope something succeeds. And some things do. Keep in mind that Wikipedia caught a lot of flak for being unreliable or impossible at first, but nowadays they have a robust editorial process for contentious subjects that I'd consider the gold standard for any such practical applications on the internet.

<comment><USER15> _> while most comments seem to be poking holes in the concept, all also seem to acknowledge the need for such a service to be successful._

Speaking plainly: anyone who believes you can get better news through some kind of external meta-review process is a fool. Probably a fool who also thinks the review process should validate journalists that share their political biases, because that's what it's all about these days.

You cannot test quality into the product. News sources are supposed to cross- validate each other in the first place. Clearly, that have stopped working some time ago.

The only thing that can save news now is an overhaul of its financing and discovery models.

 _> Wikipedia caught a lot of flak for being unreliable or impossible at first, but nowadays they have a robust editorial process for contentious subjects_

Hah.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What will happen here is what happens with all sites which attempt to curate news or check facts: people who disagree with the site's conclusions will write it off as propaganda. Using "professional" journalists or "domain experts" at all will be a red flag for people who believe mainstream media and science only serves political and corporate interests.

<comment><USER17> I have seen many efforts at "grading" news.

I have not yet seen one that isn't just a news site that grades whether or not the news is in alignment with some ideology, with the occasional fig leaf tossed out for some particularly egregious error to try to appear even-handed.

The closest I've seen are some news grading sites that are fair for a couple of months, but because a pure ideology site.

As near as I've been able to tell, discarding all such sites (not just the ones that disagree with your ideology, but "all sites" is a superset of that) is the rational move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > In order to be vetted as an individual critic, you should meet the following > guidelines: Written

> • Consistent output for a minimum of two years.

> • Demonstrated film/TV coverage at a publication outside of a self-published > website. If you are a self-publishing critic, your reviews should reflect > our key values.

Having journalist rate other journalists won't serve as a good filter on the actual quality of reporting. They may pick up on technical errors, but it doesn't address the large problem with modern reporting, which is inaccuracies or misstatements on technical topics. I'd rather have a review system of SME specific to the topic discussed.

For instance, an article written on some AI breakthrough would be critiqued by researchers in that field.

I understand that would be more difficult as it would greatly increase the number of reviewers required, but on the flip side a single reviewer would likely be more representative of her industry. I frankly don't care what other journalists think about the work of their peers since they all have the same biases

<comment><USER19> > _... it doesn 't address the large problem with modern reporting, which is > inaccuracies or misstatements on technical topics._ __

If I was going to pick a journalism problem to solve, the accuracy of technical details would not be it.

If I could solve one or both of (a) funding and (b) deceptive balance, then I would quite happily sell 'technical accuracy' down the river.

<comment><USER20> Yes, funding is the biggest one. "If it bleeds it leads" is a terrible way to give your readers or viewers a real picture of what is going on in the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What value does Rotten Tomatoes provide? Is review aggregation really the model for truth we want to use? "A lot of people find this reliable/unreliable" tells you exactly that and nothing more. This is an attempt to cram the huge, complex enterprise of discourse into some kind of boolean true/false reliable/unreliable binary it cannot fit neatly into. Disinformation and tribalism are social problems that aren't waved away with technological solutions.

At the end of the day, I'm not interested in startups as truth gatekeepers. It's empty when it comes to movies--it's downright disingenuous when it comes to the news. It provides the veneer of objectivity by being a technological solution, but the enterprise's foundation is still ideological. I trust them as little as any other outlet that can't honestly assess and describe their own viewpoint.

At best, you're adding another layer that will itself become ideologically polarized. If this or similar platforms succeed, we'll see a proliferation of them by people who feel like it is too <ideology> or not enough <ideology>.

</comment><comment><USER22> Someone's always negative in these threads, so this time it might as well be me.

First of all: that headline really has an apples and oranges feel to it.

Basically Rotten tomatoes worked because it merely curated and aggregated something which already existed in abundance: movie reviews, deriving a consensus based on that.

Doing the same for news, will depend on something which has yet to exist at any meaningful scale: news reviews (and what would that even _be_?).

So not only must it prove its value (and neutrality) as an aggregator, but it will also have to encourage the creation of something entirely new (news reviews) at scale, because otherwise it won't have anything to curate.

I'm not holding my breath.

</comment><comment><USER23> Considering how easily Rotten Tomatoes is gamed, including for political reasons, I'm not sure I want my news to be gamed the same way.

</comment><comment><USER24> And if you have questions about the credibility of Credder, you can just check the Credder ratings on Verrit, which is itself verified by Truther and Accurit, which are backed up by Credder. Solved!

News trustworthiness is not a technical problem and cannot be solved by technical solutions. News: something you don't know. Verifying news: asking people to opine about the trustworthiness of _something they don 't know_.

> "Here's an opaque cardboard box. In it is a banana. Now rate my news story > on its accuracy. NO, you are not allowed to open or inspect the box in any > way. Also, a lot of you have strong political opinions about bananas. Ready, > GO!"

Garbage in, garbage out.

Far too gameable, a fundamentally insoluble problem to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have had this idea for so long.

A Crowd-News Watch Dog which basically works like a wikipedia + archive.org + IMDB for News Reporting. There you can have profile for journalists or any content writers. You can basically see what a journalist has wrote about in her/his entire life. Political inclinations deducted from writings by crowd.

The article written can be critiqued in the platform using a set of pre- defined set of rules. If the reporter is found employing strawman or fallacies or incorrectly reporting based on botched data/ statistical mumbo-jumbo, the commentary can be added by anyone and verified by other community members.

I think it can keep rampant fake news and/or politically-charged posts masquerading as neutral pieces in check.

<comment><USER26> This would very quickly devolve into either a hardcore bullying platform, or a banfest of everyone who criticizes the favorite people of the site's owner, his friends, and moderators.

<comment><USER25> If an argument put forward by the article doesn't abide by journalistic principles and is bad and crtiques offer why it is bad with coherent counter- argument, I believe there can be a middle ground somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm solving a very related problem with [https://cited.news/](https://cited.news/)

It's a news aggregator based on Wikipedia references.

</comment><comment><USER28> It would be much more valuable to supply chains of evidence in news stories. So often, articles are treated as isolated islands with unresolved references and only loose links to previous events. News could be so much more credible if it had extensive underpinning of every exertion.

For example, in Europe, news stories almost always include a map of the local area. But one could do much better with timelines showing how each article is a step along an unfolding story, empowering readers. In theory, readers can go do all the research themselves, but the cost is quite high. That's almost exactly what the WWW was designed for! It could also includes links to wiki- like pages of every individual related to the story.

But obviously the big question is market. Especially these days, people don't _want_ evidence, only emotional crack. People for whom the information is actually financial valuable pay for accurate information in their niche. So the real challenge is to motivate people to focus on reality instead of their outrage addiction. That's a cultural goal and more likely to be a non-profit enterprise. :(

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe this project will help the general public start reading reality based media.

But we do have this already. Done by experts. It's called the Pulitzer.

The people in a democracy must have access to information. Once a public is persuaded to reject reality based media, democracy becomes irrelevant. Thus the campaign to denigrate it in the dozen nascent autocracies. Again, I hope this project helps reverse that.

</comment><comment><USER30> People in this thread do not seem to appreciate the real threat to society that censorship and propaganda pose.

A widely used news rating site will be used to suppress political dissent and alternate views.

Maybe take a look at history and the world. Do you think that Chinese authorities would like a tool installed on everyone's computer that could rate the trustworthiness of a news article or site? Of course they would love it because they could just downgrade any reporting that was critical of the party.

Based on the number of young people who seem to be begging for authorities to control their information, it appears that the China model is coming to the United States.

<comment><USER31> I'm with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I get the methodology but, what is the demand for this type of product? RT makes sense because there are too many movies coming out at any one time, and you need something to build a shortlist from.

But news? Are users so spoiled for choice that they need a journalist's opinion on what's worth reading? This doesn't even seem like an anti fake-news play, since the people that consume and share that stuff aren't actually interested in news, just whatever can be used as a stick to beat the political opposition with.

<comment><USER33> presumably it's marketed as anti fake news but the reality is it will be politically biased towards one faction. That's usually how these things play out.

<comment><USER20> The thing is, even if it's not biased, as soon as something is published which is inconvenient for one side or the other all the partisans are going to _claim_ it's biased. As they already do.

<comment><USER33> That's where providing the evidence comes in - you'll never convince your opponents but for skeptics and critical thinkers they can determine for themselves if the evidence supports the perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> People who want falsified narratives about reality don't care about these ratings. They will even go beyond and create their own "alternative facts" seal and go with that.

<comment><USER35> True, as we already know from the myriad fact-checking sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I like the idea but I don't know if I agree with the proposed approach to reviews. Personally, at a minimum, I would like to see the following from every reviewer:

A structured summary- background, objectives, data sources, synthesis methods used, results, limitations, conclusions and the implications of important findings drawn by the article.

In more detail:

An introduction that presents the problem and the issues dealt with. An assessment of the methods which describes the research and the evaluation process; specifies the number of studies references and gives a brief evaluation of their validity. A description of conclusions/results and their quality based on identifiable and preconceived academic/professional metrics. A strong summary of conclusions, limitations of those conclusions and the outcomes of the procedure used for the research.

I would really love to see reviews of reviews as well as a reviewers rating system (individual reviewers should have their own ratings) but given the limited number of reviewers that maybe asking too much.

</comment><comment><USER37> Perhaps they should have used a better example than rotten tomatoes.

RT is owned by NBCUniversal and is terribly unreliable as a movie ratings aggregator. At one point it was a very useful site, but now it is useless. Might as well ask disney, nbc or studio execs on which movies to watch. We know that RT has lied and fudged ratings for financial or other purposes. It has the same problem as NewsGuard. It is controlled by industry insiders to benefit themselves and the industry. Would anyone trust an oil company ratings company controlled by oil companies?

Rather than a "rotten tomatoes" for news, I'd rather have a "meta" news or wiki site which has a running list of all the fake news that news companies have pushed out. Make it part curated and part user driven. Let users provide, comment and even contribute to it.

Make it listable by news companies and journalists. So we can see which news companies and which journalists have pushed the most fake news to the american public.

</comment><comment><USER38> IMHO, journalism is slowly dying. These days you find more "opinion-based" or "make-it-viral" news pieces than proper investigative journalism. Services like this can help but at the same time they can create further segregation of true news vs poor news if most of the critics start growing to be biased.

<comment><USER39> I agree, I feel many times you can get more solid news from sources like Twitter. Especially how Western media covered Syria annoyed me to no end. To me the news coverage in my country seemed mainly aligned with Western political interests.

But I was happy to be able to follow at least 2 journalists [0][1] that were "on the ground" in Syria for some good solid investigative reporting.

\---

[0]: [https://twitter.com/jenanmoussa](https://twitter.com/jenanmoussa)

[1]: [https://twitter.com/HaraldDoornbos](https://twitter.com/HaraldDoornbos)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Rather than create an RT for news, just create a better news outlet please. A new form of news would be the more revolutionary startup imo. I think any RT style news review site will end up being regarded much as Politifact is today -- valued only by those who agree with its ratings.

<comment><USER41> what would you like to see in this new news outlet?

<comment><USER40> well right now in news we get stories with the different points of view, and just the points of view talking past each other. I want news that deals in raw hard to get data, and that monitors the data continually on a day to day basis. ie. for disaster relief in a country, to report neighbourhood by neighbourhood how much is being received and by who and in what quantity. basically it would require a ton of work, and would be much easier to achieve that level of coverage in a single city at first -- but basically try to have omniscience source of knowledge, and where knowledge is being blocked or obfuscated to identify that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is just going to descend into review-bombing chaos (look at what happens to games on Steam, and then think about how much more biased people are about news sources).

A much better idea would be a curated news source registry that does objective fact-checking and scores news sources based on various criteria, with the relevant research/scoring mechanisms shown openly so people can verify the results themselves. Like Snopes meets Charity Navigator ([https://www.charitynavigator.org/](https://www.charitynavigator.org/)).

</comment><comment><USER43> In my opinion, this doesn't really offer any value as the only way to get a good understanding of the news is to read from lots of different places and come to a view. Using this strategy then consuming a truly "random" site is better than consuming pre reviewed site as there is no bias in selection or outcome.

It's not like films, where each one is independent (except marvel and dc comics obviously :)

</comment><comment><USER44> A RT for news isn't going to fix the broken medium that is online journalism. Basic research, fact checking, editing/proofreading, journalistic integrity -- all things we take for granted with the news have been discarded in favor of more and more clicks/profits.

If anything, we need a new model for how news is manufactured/distributed in the age of the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER45> I place no value in review aggregators. They don't tell you anything useful. It's much better to find your own individual sources that you can trust over time, and they can earn or lose reputation with you based on the quality of their reporting. This isn't limited to news.

I definitely don't trust a consensus of journalists to tell me a study is misinterpreted.

</comment><comment><USER46> "Fake news" is such an easy problem to solve: Just sign all the work. So you can verify who said what. Done.

Don't see a signature, and it matters to you, just hit "next".

\--

Efforts to establish truth, factualness, credibility, whatever cannot succeed. Because humans don't work that way.

The people who watch Alex Jones (for instance) don't care about your truth. So stop trying.

</comment><comment><USER47> Jesus, as though there isn't enough vain people working in the news business already. Society needs fewer trophies.

</comment><comment> who-knows95 isn't this what elon musk was talking about?

:[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/25/elon-musk-may-actually-be- ma...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/25/elon-musk-may-actually-be-making-a- website-to-rate-journalists-for-credibility-and-core-truth.html)

</comment><comment><USER48> That's a step in the good direction, I think curating the news is going to be a very precious service. I'm looking forward to decentralised ways of achieving this though, such as with [https://civil.co/](https://civil.co/)

</comment><comment><USER49> If you like this, then you might also like spidr[0]

"SPIDR is an AI-powered news aggregator that uses text analysis to group similar news together. The aim is to provide fast access to relevant news from different viewpoints."

[0] [https://spidr.today](https://spidr.today)

<comment><USER50> I dunno -- the name "credder" sounds much more authoritative and trustworthy to me than "spidr", because they didn't leave out the penultimate "e".

<comment><USER49> But in spidr's favour I've been able to use it for quite a while whereas credder is still just an idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Like academic publications, every news article should be published along with acknowledgement of funding, conflict of interest and maybe data availability statement. It is a lot easier to judge a news article when you know who own the publication and such.

</comment><comment><USER52> Sort of reminds me of the website SpinSpotter. Great idea, but had trouble finding a real audience for its product.

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

</comment><comment><USER53> How would this pick up on the problem where stories such as the Mueller investigation are hyped and mischaracterized for a long period of time, and in the end Breitbart ends up being more correct on the story than most other news outlets?

</comment><comment><USER54> We're effectively creating the rotten tomatoes for science at scite.ai. We rely upon a deep learning model to classify citation statements as supporting, contradicting, or mentioning.

</comment><comment><USER55> This seems like a broader, more ambitious version of Snopes. If successful, I wonder would it replace it? Or could this be something Snopes could expand its existing community to handle?

<comment><USER56> Snopes is a great model for why this will fail, though. They'll be dismissed as "fake news" by one side or another on anything controversial.

Hell, I've seen folks met with offended "did I ask for criticism?!" responses when they drop a "no, Bill Gates isn't going to give you a million dollars for forwarding that chain email" Snopes article in someone's Facebook comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'd love to see this in combination with Knowhere News ([https://knowherenews.com/](https://knowherenews.com/)).

</comment><comment><USER58> Isn't this kind of already a thing? [http://www.emergent.info/](http://www.emergent.info/)

</comment><comment><USER59> So... A website clearly intended to be a parody due to its name, but still taken seriously by people that didn't get it?

</comment><comment><USER60> I hope they're paying close attention to Rotten Tomatoes' problems with politically motivated review bombing.

</comment><comment><USER61> 4\. Will be gamed by groups of bad actors.

</comment><comment><USER62> I cant wait for the first social civil war side trying to apply pressure to that approach.

</comment><comment><USER63> I thought that was what /r/worldnews was for?

</comment><comment><USER50> Dear Credder.com: thank you for using a penultimate "e" before the final "r". Such a breath of fresh air! (Was it because Creddr.com was already taken? ;)

</comment><comment><USER64> Isn't this the same crap Elon Musk was talking about when the media was roasting him for unsafe conditions at Tesla and calling rescue divers pedophiles?

</comment><comment><USER65> Until it is bombarded by fake reviews?

</comment><comment><USER66> How do they make money

</comment><comment><USER67> What is the evidence that people want 'trustworthy' news?

</comment><comment><USER31> Like Musk's pravda?

</comment><comment><USER68> give the user control of the reputation ranking, and you might have something here..

</comment><comment><USER69> I think I posted this somewhere else but here it goes.

I want a system that rates journalists not news. I want to see my previous ratings of this journalist and be able to base it on that.

I want the ability to rate a pieces objectivity.

I want to see ratings from users who have been proven to know how to rate objectivity.

I want a system that uses Machine Learning to break me "out of" my information silos by promoting the opposite opinion, and saying as much. "Because you like, Capitalism here's an argument for Socialism."

I want a system that making ratings less of a popularity contest by limiting them in a meaningful way (this is pie in the sky I'll take the first two).

I don't think it's possible to create the things I want, but that's what I want. Not Reddit for news. I've seen how that works.

</comment><comment><USER70> How is that having journalists reviewing the work of other journalists won't lead to corporatism?

</comment><comment><USER71> This seems far too complicated. The UX of Dissenter (boo, hiss, I know, control yourself) is simple by comparison, doesn't involve another destination site, and doesn't involve a committee deciding whose reviews are more worthy of consideration than others. What Id prefer is a ranking system of journalist merit: does this story cite anonymous sources? Is this story original reporting? Does this story simply repackage someone else's original reporting with an editorial headline? Is it news, editorial, or opinion? What corporations advertise with the parent company? These are objective measures of newsworthiness and Credder would track none of them by default.</comment>


And most awesome kafka debugging tool out there - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/birdayz/kaf <comment><AUTHOR> I swear to you, this is the most awesome kafka debugging tool out there. One simple command line to rule them all. If you like it so much and want to improve it and make it even better please open an issue, pull request or you can send a cookie to @birdayz.</comment>


Between the Mine and the Stream - <AUTHOR> http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/61/smith.php <comment><USER2> So! How is one to reconcile both since both are needful? I studied geology in the same building Hoover did; fish, perhaps the same streams he did for the same reasons; and pursued and still pursue a similar career in mineral resources. I believe after a long life that I understand no better than he did how to reconcile the two, and I find both needful. The best I can "reason" is that conflict and contradictions in life are inescapable. Maybe they define the human experience.</comment>


Gelato brings real-time search to online dating - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10358126-52.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody

<comment><USER2> I tried -- and failed -- to produce a online dating startup. I spent a lot of time reading the academic literature on the matter. Here is my summation:

compatibility ~ attraction + age + sex + serendipity

Serendipity is more appropriately called the error term. In my opinion, real- time news feeds will at best add nothing, if not actually degrading the signal by adding excess noise. You can't date (i.e. appraise compatibility) online. You have to date in "real life".

Then again, that was the premise of my startup, and it failed so maybe i should STFU.

<comment><USER3> I'm more interested in the kind of stuff a person reads on the internet. If you read similar topics, we're going to have a lot of stuff to talk about, which is attractive to me. There are tons of people on dating sites who I am attracted to and are around my age. You need a filter, and similar interests are easier to express implicitly than writing a huge block of text about all the things you enjoy. That was the premise for a site I worked on (mostly dead for now), though it isn't targeted at dating.

<http://sitesincommon.com>

Example profile: <http://sitesincommon.com/users/niran>

<comment><USER4> I'm never interested in women working in the same profession than I'm working in, having the same views, etc... I don't need someone to acknowledge everything I say. I can do that myself.

<comment><USER3> I read more on the internet than just tech stuff, and those are interests I'd like to discuss with the people I spend a lot of my time with. What do you plan on talking to someone about if not shared interests?

What heuristic would you use to find people who would complement your views rather than reinforce them? It doesn't sound like an easy problem to solve. Looking at what someone reads does give a good indication of what their views are, but that's not how you have to use it. You can just use it as an indicator of a general interest in politics, for instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> im sorry, but this realtime stuff is like web 2.0 overhype on steroids. There's a lot of great products that will come out of it, but there will also be a lot of WTF is going on here products as well.

"it's like friendfeed for dating". People usually go on dating sites to get laid and/or find soulmates, I don't think need real time dating search will make that happen more efficiently.

<comment><USER6> _People usually go on dating sites to get laid and/or find soulmates_

I often wonder if this is why most dating sites struggle: most people who are trying to get laid feel they need to at least pretend they are looking for a mate(1) or else they come across as being too crass. This then leads to mismatch between the "I want to get laid soon" and the "I am looking for a long term mate" groups and both end up unsatisfied. It's for just this reason my gut tells me that OnlineBootyCall.com will succeed.

(1) sometimes the unexpected happens and they converge: my wife and I met on Yahoo! Personals about 10 years ago when we were both just looking for a booty call :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reading the title, the image of the product I got in my mind seemed to be a great idea, a solution to some of the awkwardness that I personally feel toward OK Cupid. I don't want to send an email pretending to take interest in something particular in someone's profile. Bottom line, who's out there, _right now_ , who seems like they are at least potentially interesting? Who wants to meet? "You seem interesting enough, let's just grab a drink." I envisioned something like Twitter, with a more extensive profile. Maybe a Twitter app could do this.

But reading it, this just seems like stalking people before you even know them. Making online dating all the less natural.

<comment><USER3> _"I don't want to send an email pretending to take interest in something particular in someone's profile. "_

I don't want to have to _pretend_ to be interested in someone's profile. I want to actually be interested in it, but profiles are hard to write. If pulling information about what you do across the internet leads to an interesting profile, then that seems like a huge gain with zero effort.

If you just want to meet as many possibly interesting people as possible, it sounds like you're looking for <http://crazyblinddate.com>.

<comment><USER2> Hah. F*ck me. That is roughly the exact implementation of my project from two years ago (even down to the metro area concept). Difference being their site seems to be successful.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the site is very successful. I tried it once, and there was never anyone else in my area, which is right in the middle of one of their metro areas. They run OKCupid as well, and I'm sure CBD would be more popular (and therefore useful) if they advertised it on the site like they did at the very beginning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> <http://ge.la.to>

</comment><comment><USER9> Where is the link?

<comment><USER3> <http://ge.la.to></comment></comment>


Show HN: Connect for a Cause, Bid on meetings for charity - <AUTHOR> http://connectforacause.com

<comment><AUTHOR> This represents the launch of Connect for a Cause, a startup based in New Orleans.

The idea is to auction lunch meetings, where proceeds are donated to the charity of your choice. Bidders earn a meeting with someone that might be otherwise hard to reach, and auctioneers raise money for charity.

Please share your thoughts!</comment>


What's Up with the Hackathons, Man? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thecrimson.com/column/somebody-fix-the-copy-machine/article/2015/4/9/civic-hackathons-public-service/

<comment><USER2> Damn! RIGHT ON THE MONEY.... "The reason that the 21st century's techno- euphoria relies on technology to change everything in the world is because making new apps and finding points of 'disruptive innovation' is easier than changing our fellow human beings."</comment>


Ask HN: How to pay to kick start knowledge - <AUTHOR> Have you ever found yourself wanting to jump start your professional knowledge on a niche topic and wanted to pay X hundred USD to pick a professional's brain for an hour? Has anyone found a community that facilitates this?
An example might be wanting to understand the deep nuanced differences between practical applications of two distributed SQL engines (which wouldn't be answerable on Quora, Stack Overflow, etc.). <comment><USER2> There are a lot of professors who have public contact info, and many would be happy to answer your questions about their area of research. It wouldn't hurt to ask!</comment>


California Moves to Replace Gas Plants with Batteries from Tesla - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-08/california-moves-to-replace-gas-plants-with-batteries-from-tesla <comment><AUTHOR> Additional details in this GTM story: [https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/pges- recording-...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/pges-recording- breaking-battery-proposal-wins-loses)

 _...four projects, totaling 567.5 megawatts /2,270 megawatt-hours, to go into the transmission-constrained Moss Landing area south of the San Francisco Bay._

 _The portfolio includes a 300-megawatt /1,200-megawatt-hour system that Vistra Energy would build in an existing power plant owned by its subsidiary Dynegy, as well as a 182.5-megawatt/730-megawatt-hour Tesla system that PG&E would own at a substation nearby._

This is a _lot_ of capacity and storage compared to recent projects. The Hornsdale Power Reserve that Tesla installed in South Australia last year is "only" 100 MW/129 MWh.

<comment><USER2> > This is a lot of capacity and storage compared to recent projects.

California's policy makers and utilities are all in at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _Storage_ is fine, but it doesn't replace the lost _supply_. Do they just plan to recharge off the grid during off-peak hours?

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically, yes. Recall that in California the cheapest production is actually mid-day now, since that's when solar produces most strongly.

There's a chart here that shows renewable production over the course of the day and includes battery charging/discharging in another chart at the bottom:

[http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx](http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx)

Looking at November 8, 2018 you can see that batteries began charging around 7:30 AM as solar power started ramping up for the day, and switched over to discharging around 4:00 PM. There were also brief excursions to discharging from charging in between to deal with smaller fluctuations.

If you compare that supply chart to the net demand chart for the same time, you can see why the batteries are mostly charging in that time period:

[http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx](http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx)

There's a big "scoop" taken out of net demand by solar in the middle of the day. After the early-evening demand peak there's often a smaller "scoop" taken out by late night wind power. In states with better wind resources, like Texas, the net demand reduction is usually in the middle of the night instead of the middle of the day.

[http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/CURRENT_DAYCOP_HSL.htm...](http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/CURRENT_DAYCOP_HSL.html)

Today's wind generation in Texas is up past 12,000 MW as of 11:00 PM but dropped as low as 2,000 MW at noon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "batteries from Tesla" == Batteries from Panasonic, rebranded , repackaged and resold by Tesla.

<comment><USER5> "GPUs from nVidia" == GPUs from TSMC, rebranded, repackaged and resold by nVidia

"CPUs from AMD" == CPUs from TSMC, rebranded, repackaged and resold by AMD...</comment></comment>