Moves App – Lessons Learnt  - <AUTHOR> http://sampokarjalainen.com/post/89865109865/moves-lessons-learnt

<comment><AUTHOR> It's interesting that when you have a success in your hands, it's very hard to focus and find time for developing the core product. Moves had an awesome product design right from the launch, but it didn't evolve much from that.

It might have helped if Sampo (CEO) could have focused on the product design. Also, it seems that a lot of companies stumble with multi-platform strategy. I have experienced it myself too. On the otherhand, when you succeed executing it well, it can be huge (think WhatsApp).</comment>


Downvotes - <AUTHOR> I've noticed quite a trend of downvotes on well-composed comments over the last two months or so. It's disappointing.
I'm concerned that as it gains users, HN is acquiring an attribute common to other social news sites where users simply downvote a comment because they don't agree with it, or because it criticizes something that they favor or like. I believe that downvotes should only be used on content that does not generate interesting discussion, is spammy, or patently and generally offensive.
I've noticed that there is not much language addressing general appropriate voting behavior in the Guidelines (at http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ). Is this something we want to address, or not?
I think a good way to help curb inappropriate downmodding is to invoke a small cost for each downvote. StackOverflow does this and it seems to work pretty well.
Has anyone else noticed this trend recently? If so, what are your feelings regarding it? <comment><USER2> I think the simplest thing to do about it is to not give a hoot. The karma point system is so obviously broken that hand-wringing about its deficiencies is largely a waste of time. Case in point - the person who was lucky enough to post the google announcement regarding China got 1000+ points. Let's say a particularly insightful comment is worth 40 points. That means being first on something everyone is likely to know about within half an hour is worth 25 (count em) very insightful comments. If you take the hit of posting an unpopular opinion, you can make it up in spades by posting an old pg essay.

<comment><USER3> While I agree that the per-user karma is worthless, comparing the rating of comments with the rating of stories is a bit like apples and oranges: multiple users can submit the same story, and when one submission "wins" over the other, little harm is done to the whole of HN. But when a comment is downvoted solely because people disagree with it, it hurts the discussion because the well constructed comment is less likely to be seen. Furthermore, this works both ways: snarky comments with little added value suddenly get a lot of appearance.

It's a very difficult problem to solve, but to just "not give a hoot" is hard, given the fact that the order of appearance for comments on HN depends so much on karma.

<comment><USER2> Actually it's a surprisingly simple problem to solve. Split comment and submission karma. Reddit, which HN was inspired by does that already.

 _but to just "not give a hoot" is hard_

try it! at 1k or so karma you have more or less nothing to lose.

<comment><USER3> I don't think you understand my point: I agree that per-user karma records are worthless. However, I am not convinced that there is little to lose with bad comment ratings, since HN bases the appearance of comments on these ratings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _I'm concerned that as it gains users, HN is acquiring an attribute common to other social news sites where users simply downvote a comment because they don't agree with it, or because it criticizes something that they favor or like._

This is an often-discussed issue. I see your join date is not quite from long enough ago that you may have seen this comment from pg

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171>

in which he said, "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.

"It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against that."

But I have a still more recent join date, and I have seen links back to that comment on the MANY previous occasions when downvotes have been discussed, so I have become aware of this point of view.

Of course, more recent discussions of the issue of voting behavior on HN

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=507948>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057133>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1103339>

(this set of links is far from exhaustive) show that there is thought on the part of site management about how to improve current incentives.

I try to learn from the downvotes I receive. I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but I expect myself to analyze my own behavior to figure out what really contributes to the community. The site management, of course, has to figure out how to set up incentives for altruistic rather than mob behavior.

I always wonder, when I see a post about the evils of downvotes, why I don't see more replies about what is good to upvote. I tried opening a separate thread about that issue recently

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1065084>

but you can see for yourself it didn't get upvoted much at the time. I will ask again here: what ought to be upvoted? I would like advice from the community about how to use my upvotes to build up the community.

<comment><USER5> There's a difference between downvoting a +10 comment down to +9 out of disagreement and downvoting a +! comment down to 0 out of disagreement.

Also, "disagreement" isn't always the best characterization. If someone makes factual errors in their post downvoting is a perfectly valid signal, for instance.

<comment><USER6> > There's a difference between downvoting a +10 comment down to +9 out of > disagreement and downvoting a +! comment down to 0 out of disagreement.

I suspect that most people read once or twice a day so the difference between voting when something is +10 and +1 is when they see an article relative to its posting time.

In other words, most folks aren't looking for "close" votes to affect.

Besides, who's to say that +10 to +9 is actually different from +1 to 0? The score just tells you the difference between up and down votes. It doesn't tell you that the +10 was 10-0 while the +1 was 100-99. Do you really want to argue that a downvote is inappropriate in the latter case?

I think that public scores are arguably a mistake because folks read far too much into them. Someone didn't like something - get over it.

That said, I think that scores should be hidden except when they get "close". Or, maybe they should disappear if you vote "too much".

<comment><USER5> Personally, I'm far more cavalier about downvoting +10 comments than I am about downvoting +1 comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An up-vote is a bit different from a down-vote. It's a way of saying "I agree. Were I to post a comment, it would be similar to yours. In fact, you said it better". See, there isn't much to add to an up-vote, because it is agreement.

However, a down-vote is rebuttal. However, when no actual rebuttal is given, there is no meaningful conversation happening. It's just an anonymous rejection. I think that to be meaningful, a down-vote should _require_ some explanation as to why. And, the 'rule' should be that simply disagreeing is insufficient rationale to down-vote. You must state why.

Absent this kind of 'rule', I worry that HN encourages group-think. It's already a kind of psychological school yard, I fear. One gains "cred" by earning points. Ideally, these are earned by meaningful contributions and commentary. To avoid these anonymous down-votes, however, posters might very well be adding comments that seem consistent with the rest of the group, instead of what might be regarding as opposed to that of the majority.

The idea of charging would not be a good solution, at all. That would have a worse kind of school yard effect -- a nursery school effect, in fact. That would say "it's free to agree, but to if you disagree with somebody, you have to pay to express your disagreement."

If this is to be a forum of ideas, then make it so. Anonymous/un-qualified nay-saying does not contribute that.

<comment><USER8> _An up-vote is a bit different from a down-vote. It's a way of saying "I agree. Were I to post a comment, it would be similar to yours. In fact, you said it better". See, there isn't much to add to an up-vote, because it is agreement.

However, a down-vote is rebuttal. However, when no actual rebuttal is given, there is no meaningful conversation happening. It's just an anonymous rejection. I think that to be meaningful, a down-vote should _require_ some explanation as to why. And, the 'rule' should be that simply disagreeing is insufficient rationale to down-vote. You must state why._

The problem with your suggestion is that it would actively encourage fighting and discourage more agreeable discourse: Upvote all you like without comment but you _must_ comment when downvoting.

Yes, a forum of ideas needs to have a certain tolerance for different points of view and opinions and for the friction involved in expressing those differences. But it's really quite a tricky thing to foster an environment where sharing different points of view is constructive and additive rather than merely socially destructive and a promotion of in-fighting, promotion of polarized "camps" within the community, etc. I am someone who has, at times, asked why I got downvoted because I wanted to understand what the problem was with my remark. Sometimes, that turned out to be a constructive exercise. But requiring people to state their criticism/reasons for nay-saying is highly unlikely to be constructive or improve the atmosphere here. It will most likely just promote hurt feelings, feuds and so on.

<comment><USER9> The infighting you fear is more a problem when most users are teenagers or just unthoughtful

<comment><USER8> My experience has been that the majority of human communication is about pecking order, saving face, protecting one's ego and other types of "social" motivations. (There is likely data out there which backs up my view, but I wouldn't have a citation off the top of my head.) If that weren't true, I doubt you would see so much discussion and criticism on HN about the voting system, how things get on the front page, etc. So call me cynical if you want, but if your observation is true, than the vast majority of people are simply "unthoughtful" the vast majority of the time. (Which probably is true in some sense, unfortunately.)

(Ironically, I accidentally upvoted your comment and can't undo it. Perhaps bad form to mention it, but it seems funny somehow, given the context of the discussion.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I sometimes click on the wrong arrow accidentally, and on HN there is no way to repair the damage.

<comment><USER11> Especially using a (touchscreen) phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My opinion/experience:

Karma and other systems may have their social uses, but the single most effective means to improve a social setting is to set a better example. Resist the temptation to snipe at people. Give the benefit of the doubt and first assume misunderstanding rather than malice and, if possible, attempt to clarify rather than attack or defend. Don't take things too personally. If I am in a personal space (not feeling well, recently had something negative happen to me, etc) where I am feeling particularly prickly and thin-skinned, just walk away and come back another time when I am less likely to make a mole-hill into a mountain. And so on.

My experience over the years is that if I engage in more socially effective behavior and do so consistently, eventually, other people will begin to mimic some of those behaviors. Not because they think highly of me, but just because it works. If people don't know a better way, they fiddle around and do whatever it is they do know and then vent about their frustrations. Show them a better way and many people will eventually happily and voluntarily adopt those methodologies because it makes their own lives better. If you want to live in a better social "ecosystem", look to "the man in the mirror" (though, technically, in my case it is "the woman in the mirror") and work on their behavior. Then have a little patience. Sow the seeds. It will bear fruit (as long as you don't then pull it up by the roots to check if it's growing :-D ).

<comment><USER12> I think that really hits the nail on the head.

I don't know if people will ever stumble upon a set of interaction constraints that will make people civil if they're not already committed to civility. In that regard HN has always been good (but not perfect, as evidenced by some of the episodes mentioned in this comment section).

If someone lashes out and gets a calm response instead of being downvoted to oblivion or without being baited, the whole atmosphere becomes much less toxic (even if the original commenter insists on trolling).

<comment><USER8> _If someone lashes out and gets a calm response instead of being downvoted to oblivion or without being baited, the whole atmosphere becomes much less toxic (even if the original commenter insists on trolling)._

The other thing a calm (compassionate, tolerant) response does is it tends to prevent "train wrecks". One of the biggest problems with many online forums is the tendency for everyone to try to jump into the fray to "defend" righteousness and goodness and what not, thus keeping the fighting alive. Many of them are attempting to put a stop to the fighting but they miss the fact that fighting against the fighting is still fighting. Many people seem to just not know how to effectively defuse a negative situation and put a stop to it, which is a very different skill set than "arguing"/fighting. Fighting against it is the typical knee-jerk response of the vast majority of people, even for most very well educated and intelligent people. "Train wrecks" are best diverted by redirecting the flow of conversation in a constructive fashion rather than attacking the person who has said something that sounds asinine (but maybe wasn't really intended to be, they could be having a bad day or it's a pet peeve they aren't wholly rational about, etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would like to see two-axis voting. Up/down would mean, "valuable/non- valuable". Right/left would mean "agree/disagree" -- the easiest possible way to register opinion without the effort of composing a reply.

Up/down would show a net score, like now. Right/left would show both totals -- perhaps even a little inline sparkline bargraph (perhaps initially hidden).

It's reasonable that people want a lazy, one-click way to show disagreement. It's problematic that impulse gets channeled into the same downvote-gesture- tally that also means "this is spam; this is rude; this should be sunk and faded out of existence". Those meanings are scolding; the effect of a downvote is censorius (by the ranking/fading). It's coarsening for conversation to cross the signals for "I respectfully disagree" and "your comment should be penalized".

<comment><USER14> I don't think that an "agree/disagree"-axis would be very useful. If you disagree, just reply and explain your disagreement. That adds more value to the discussion.

I'm not interested at all in the number of agreements or disagreements to my statements. I'm only interested in those who agree/disagree _and_ care to elaborate on their point.

<comment><USER13> If it were as simple as asking people to only disagree with a thoughtful response comment, it would have already been solved.

The participants we actually have often can't be bothered to do more than a grunt's worth of disagreement. This gets channeled into downvotes, which carry a slight 'sting' of moral judgment, and spawn big threads like this one every so often.

An outlet for one-click-disagreement separate from one-click-censure could help remedy the actual problem without requiring an unlikely change in the behavior of the mostly-anonymous, distracted downvoting hordes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've seen perfectly intelligent responses downmodded for an opposing view. This wouldn't sadden me as much if some of the threads were not echo-chambered group think. I know I just thew out two very over used buzz words, but in this case there are some pockets of conversation that lend itself to this on HN (and anywhere else on the internet). There have been times I've decided against posting my two cents because its obvious other views (that aren't necessarily opposing) aren't welcomed.

<comment><USER16> The voting system encourages groupthink. The Mahalo/Calacanis issue is a perfect example. No matter what Calacanis says in the comments he gets massively downvoted, that certainly sends a message to anyone who might dare to agree with him.

<comment><USER17> Well, when I comment on anything to do with Mahalo the group of SEOs who are leading this campaign against me just attack en masse and overpower the native HN group.

I'm a polarizing guy who shoots from the hip, so I expect detractors or people who disagree with me to vote me down.

In fact, I think it's kind of funny that sometimes within 30 seconds of posting I'll have a ton of down votes.

It would be great if HN SHOWED the down votes and who votes each person down the most. If there was a leaderboard of who is voting me down it would be VERY telling. You would see ten folks voting me down all at the same time.

That's the thing about social news systems... they are easy to game. If control as not put in place the dialogue simply goes to shit.... which is starting to happen.

What normally happens is that intelligent folks leave the discussion and go somewhere else. I'm sure many folks here are refugees from digg or reddit or /. in fact.

At this point I don't bother commenting on threads about me or Mahalo... and I'm skipping the comment section on HN and going to the links themselves for dialogue.

The only way to correct the issue is really to expose the down votes.... folks need to take ownership of their voting.

we did this on Mahalo Answers and we don't have the problem of folks using voting down as a way to attack someone. we did have this problem in the early days and when we exposed it it was VERY telling. you had really good users who would have it in for just one person and they would follow them around the site voting everything they did down.

so, we did amnesty for past votes and turned on down votes from X day forward. That is what i would do here.... you should turn on link for every post from April 1st on that shows a list of who voted and how--as well as a leaderboard.

anyway.... hack on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This used to upset me, I have simply stopped caring and feel much better for it.

That said, I've had some fairly drastic changes in my private situation so I'm not nearly as active on HN as I have been in the past.

The best way to deal with an unjustly downvoted comment is to simply vote it up if you come across it (this you can do pretty much forever), and to ignore the issue if it happens to you on the assumption that on balance HN contains more nice people that griefers.

</comment><comment><USER19> IMHE, there's a paradox similar to the Dunning-Kruger effect on up-down voting. The loud strongly opinionated newbies (or even plain idiots) downvote anything that challenges their point of view or their latest fad, while many of the more educated, experienced, or rational users become apathetic.

<comment><USER20> My HN account is 521 days old and I can't downvote. Granted, I don't comment or submit very much, but I would assume that getting to 200? karma is something of a brake on opinionated newbies downvoting anything. Of course, this is less of a brake on idiots.

<comment><USER21> Getting to 201 karma is the threshold for downvoting I believe. It may have been moved to 251.

<comment><USER22> As of this post I have 228 karma. I got the privilege to downvote at 201 (which I got to about a week ago).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have noticed some more downvoting than is usual - and, yes, sometimes on well worded and apparently good comments. I've never seen much problem with downvoting for disagreement myself - but I do dislike this idea of downvoting instead of commenting your disagreement/counter view etc. (I personally don't think a downvote is worth much if you can't support it)

I think it would be nice to see a social pressure to add a reply if one doesn't already exist explaining disagreement etc.

Both for the benefit of the commenter _and_ other readers.

</comment><comment><USER24> I haven't really noticed this trend. But keep in mind, I'm just one data point. To give a rough estimate, I'd say that for every 20 or so down-voted comments I come across, there is one whose lack of points is actually confusing to me.

I find that most of the down-voted comments tend to contain at least one (or a combination of) a number of things, including being off topic, using immature language, presenting opinions as facts without anything to back them up, being hostile, etc.

It is because of these observations that I haven't gotten the impression that there is a trend towards down-voting solely due to disagreement. I believe it does happen, but not as much as some say.

</comment><comment><USER25> My feelings regarding downvoting are that downvotes are virtually inconsequential, aside from the rise they get from some as a result of bruised egos.

I also think that it's kind of silly to try and establish upvote or downvote "guidelines" because there's no way to ultimately control or accurately measure what upvotes or downvotes are being used for. You could put big, red text in the HN Guidelines that instructed people to upvote or downvote in a certain way, and users would continue to upvote or downvote however they wished.

<comment><USER9> Once downvoted to below 1, insightful comments tend to get ignored and this a real loss beyond bruised egos

<comment><USER25> I tend to read all of the comments, regardless of their comment score. The score just ends up affecting what order the comments get read in, which is fine with me. I often see downvoted comments still receiving replies, so I'm not sure it's fully accurate to say that they are being ignored. Also, quality and insightfulness are still subjective. You may feel that a post is of high- quality and very insightful, but someone else may feel that the post is junk for their own reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm a bit confused. Who can vote something down? I don't have a down vote button and thought only moderators had one or something like that. How does that work?

<comment><USER27> I believe if you have over a certain number of points you can downvote items

From the FAQ:

 _Why don't I see down arrows?

There are no down arrows on submissions. They only appear on comments after users reach a certain karma threshold._

<comment><USER28> The threshold being 200.

<comment><USER29> that may be the threshold now, but it almost certainly won't stay there. pg regularly increases the thresholds, to account for 'karma inflation.' so it's a good idea to quantify numbers, if you give them, so that people don't google them up in the future and come to mistaken conclusions.

<comment><USER30> Yep, I had downvote access for a while and then it passed me by... story of my life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Downvoting needs to cost a karma point, or perhaps a fraction of one.

<comment><USER21> That's actually a great idea. Maybe the karma point could be given back if the post is voted down to -4 (showing that it actually should be voted down).

<comment><USER31> I like this idea. Could be gamed by a group of 'bullies', but it would be very obvious and easy to pick up by an automated filter similar to those already in place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This might sound silly, but what about just listing those who have upvoted and listing those who have downvoted somewhere. I think there would be alot less downvotes if it wasnt anonymous.

</comment><comment><USER33> At the moment I am reading this, several most recent (and, it seems, perfectly legitimate) comments have been downvoted to zero: one by Mz (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1189009>), jacquesm (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1189007>), algorias (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1189004>), coryl (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1188999>), as well as arnorhs (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1188988>) and pbhjpbhj (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1188906>). And a few minutes later, they are now back in the positive.

Could it have been a case of vandalism?

</comment><comment><USER34> I agree with it "costing" something to down-vote, I actually thought it already did.... hmm.

However, when you click the down-arrow, what if it prompted you with options like Digg does (minus an "other" option) as to why you are down voting, and you have to choose one.

If the reason why you are down voting is not listed, you learn pretty quickly what reasons are valid for down voting.

<comment><USER4> _what if it prompted you with options like Digg does (minus an "other" option) as to why you are down voting_

pg opened a thread a while ago asking options for flagging posts.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006589>

<comment><USER34> Didn't see that one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> What's so bad about downvoting comments you disagree with? IMHO the problem rather is "kharma whoring", which is incited by the possibility of accumulating kharma. IMHO2 those points should be only relevant for sorting articles and comments but there should be now way to hoard "points" on a user level.

</comment><comment><USER36> This has been discussed to death many times. The system isn't perfect and various meanings get assigned to downvotes. I believe pg was considering a separate voting axis for uncivil messages, maybe he'll do that but I don't think there's any use us discussing this yet again.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is one of the flaws of the upvote/downvote system, it can give people a bit of a mob mentality where making a comment or opinion disappear is as easy as a click (and anonymously too).

Maybe downvotes could cost the voter karma, or have a higher bar for who can downvote.

</comment><comment><USER38> pg should just start charging a nominal fee for new user accounts. Cuts down on trolls AND spammers.

<comment><USER12> This is a cool idea. I'm just wondering how people without credit cards would be able to join (I know quite a few people who don't have credit cards). Perhaps via a premium SMS (very few people have neither a mobile nor a credit card).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> what bothers me most about downvotes is their _passive aggressive_ nature - when you get a downvote but no explanation. that, more than anything, has made me consciously try to ignore karma.

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't like drive-by downvotes, is basically how I feel about it.

<comment><USER4> What do you mean by "drive-by downvotes"? Some comments are more apt to elicit written responses than others. Sometimes a downvote is a user's efficient use of time to improve the quality of the forum, saving time for posting written responses in other subthreads.

<comment><USER40> :)

I mostly mean downvotes without an explanation, which you discerned. Technically, a drive-by downvote would be a subset of "downvoting without an explanation," since you're not always drive-by downvoting if you're not giving an explanation. Some comments just don't belong, and those comments are normally obvious.

I often get the impression that the downvoters did not read a comment too carefully, quickly passed judgment without thinking about it too much, downvoted, then moved on. Hence, the other reason I call them drive-by downvotes.

It is annoying to see a reasonable comment downvoted to 0, or less. I feel like I'm missing something and what I'm missing is an explanation. Why was the comment voted down? Then the comment gets voted up. I'll never know why the comment was downvoted, and it feels like a small loss. What's happening here can play out in different scenarios. So, that's it. I wish there was more explaining going on, and perhaps people would be less disposed to pass thoughtless judgment.

It is what it is. The submitter asked for our thoughts about the downvote system, so if there's one thing that I'm going to complain about -- and I don't mean to say that this is a horrible, horrible phenomenon -- it's drive- by downvotes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The problem is that we are given a single qualifier that is then conflated to represent a variety of reactions.

Even just one additional qualifier would go a long way to disambiguate the community opinion.</comment>


California governor signs nation's strictest net neutrality rules into law - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/09/california-governor-signs-net-neutrality-rules-into-law/ <comment><USER2> > FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who led the effort to reverse net neutrality, said in > a statement on Sunday that "not only is California's internet regulation law > illegal, it also hurts consumers.

Was not Pai's argument to repeal the laws in the first place that it was beyond the FCC's authority?

Is he really trying to play both sides of the same argument?

<comment><USER3> His argument absolutely does not make any sense. This combined with the fact that AT&T and others have already been paying administration for getting favorable laws passed, I hope someday this guy gets investigated for bribery.

<comment><USER4> > "this guy gets investigated for bribery"

This x 1000. Although I'm not sure how effective any investigation is in the Trump administration.

It seems the whole administration to the top knows of it, believes in it and treats it as the status quo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not optimal for the states to handle this rather than the feds, but it's better than having Ajit Pai pick winners.

<comment><USER6> A somewhat delightful potential side effect of having this being handled at the state level is the confusing and inconsistent array of rules varying state by state will hopefully make regulatory conformance a nightmare for Comcast et al.

<comment><USER7> Why exactly is it delightful? Comcast would be happy to employ another couple hundreds of lawyers, and guess who gets their internet prices increased to pay for them? And the most "delightful" part is that since every provider would have these costs, they'd all be forced to bump the prices, and thus nobody is going to be losing market share for bumping them.

<comment><USER6> I believe that the primary reason there are so many different public utility companies (e.g., electric, gas) is because of the patchwork of regulations in each locality makes it difficult to manage under one company. So it could have the effect of forcing large ISPs to either split altogether or at least divide themselves up into subsidiaries (e.g., Comcast New Jersey, Comcast Delaware).

I may be wrong, but I've read this rationale before and it seems to make sense. Utility companies seem to generally correspond to the public utility commission that regulates them.

<comment><USER7> There's no value in having sewers in New Jersey and sewers in Oakland, California belong to one company. I.e. same holding can own it, maybe, but there's not much network effect they gain, I think. Nobody from New Jersey would want to use Oakland sewer, or vice versa.

But with telecom companies, there are advantages to that. People/companies in New Jersey might want to connect to people in California, and owning the big network may make it easier for Comcast to provide this service and lower the costs of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Glad Brown signed this. It might've been more controversial, but I wish the new rules for zero-rating were also applied against cell companies

</comment><comment><USER9> Justice Dept has already filed suit: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- internet-california/u...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-internet- california/u-s-sues-after-california-governor-signs-net-neutrality-law- idUSKCN1MB13E)

<comment><USER10> It's all "states rights" ... to do things we want them to do.

After that ... no states rights.

<comment><USER11> This narrative is bad, as it reflects both a misunderstanding of the Republican perspective and a misunderstanding of the federal system at work in the US; each undermining your likely well intentioned concerns about the overturning of federal NN regulations.

<comment><USER12> Indeed, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I'm also of the opinion Republicans tend to champion states' rights only when they agree with the expected result. For instance, you'd think states' rights advocates would be in favor of eliminating the federal marijuana criminalization and leaving that up to states to decide (as they have already been doing in spite). And yet Republicans insist this is the sole domain of the federal government. Whereas when it comes to abortion, it's states' rights all the way down. As for NN? I've definitely heard the Republicans citing overreach wrt. to NN (although that might be solely within the FCC?), and yet when states try to regulate, it's the FCC domain again.

My personal opinion is that this should be the sole jurisdiction of the FCC as the internet is the very definition of interstate commerce and as such wholly the domain of the federal government. While it should be up to the FCC, the leadership is willfully disinterested in doing its job, as much of the Trump administration is, effectively forcing the hand of the states.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's great news. I hope other states, and federal law unifying everything will follow.

</comment><comment><USER12> Now we just need New York on board and things will be back to business as usual - just like the CARB rules. Depending on what the courts end up ruling, of course.</comment>


Dutch law enforcers access millions of encrypted messages - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2017-03-dutch-law-access-millions-encrypted.html <comment><USER2> company's website [https://www.ennetcom.com/](https://www.ennetcom.com/) contains a press release in dutch

here the google translation

<comment> <comment> <comment>

Press Release dated March 9, 2017

Following the press release of the prosecution today, in which the prosecution indicated to have the servers "cracked", which the prosecution had seized from clients business Ennetcom, Part I, as counsel for clients, including that first must be firmly stated that the prosecution without justification location which has herds based on a suspicion of money laundering with the mom as were the phones criminals customers. The dossier, which showed that the company Ennetcom had tens of thousands of customers who bought the phones and the software through resellers and that the prosecution called only about four examples of cases in which there would have been a PGP phone purchased from such reseller. The company also revealed many customers nationally and internationally also have with government agencies and businesses that wish to communicate not hacked not criminal reasons. The seizure of the servers, so it seemed more an attempt by the prosecution to have access on improper grounds for an immense amount of communications of tens of thousands in order to seek fish in a trawl. Like KPN or any other telecom company also simply be invaded and the entire contents meegeroofd to see who sends an error message. The prosecution now gives the impression that all servers were cracked, but at the same time states that 3.6 million messages were visible, obviously giving the impression as if that would mean a lot of communication. The prosecution while talking about 40,000 users. However, a message is part of a conversation, so successive "yes", "and when," "what do you mean", three messages in a conversation. Calculated as the number of messages and the number of users, so were about 90 messages per user are visible. Given the fact that the servers after 48 hours standard were cleaned, so the posts were destroyed, it would indeed be visible only in the last 48 hours made for those 40,000 users to 3.6 million messages. The prosecution speaks in the press release very remarkable about "encryption keys which were also owned by and the police in the investigation." Clients business, however, did not have those keys. Namely those keys are covered by the company that makes PGP, Symantec. There are many other companies, in the same way as clients business software like PGP to sell their products. The "fall into the hands" seems in this therefore involve a very shadowy area of irregularities and possibly the result of today's wild juicy Hack.

The prosecution considers this "booty" to get started, but the Canadian court location and in my opinion it deceived by the prosecution on so given the basis of suspicion, only authorize the use of only 4 with especially appointed investigations. And then the question is always what messages indicate which then can be linked to any physical entities. That still seems mostly a hack too much.

<comment><USER2> btw, ennetcom is cited on this Hackingteam leaked email [https://wikileaks.org/hackingteam/emails/emailid/117056](https://wikileaks.org/hackingteam/emails/emailid/117056) where the email start with a

"la GDF ci chiede se siamo in grado di catturare dati di BB che hanno a bordo l'applicazione PGP di Ennetcom. [http://www.ennetcom.com/"](http://www.ennetcom.com/")

which means: "the Italian Financial [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardia_di_Finanza](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardia_di_Finanza) is asking if we are able to get data from BlackBerry with Ennetcom installed"

So apparently the dutch way seams different then the italian one

<comment>

btw: Dutch Police claims in its statement the devices are used "extensively" by criminals. what about ...guns?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to write non violent creative code - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/19xxc2zWWdFMAQjT6tRdN5ZU13vAKSwM7jojaC2U4F6Q/edit#slide=id.p <comment><USER2> Sample quote: _During the 2019 p5.js Contributors ' Conference, a group formed to discuss how radical inclusion, decolonization, and a de-centering of dominant communities could be further integrated and emphasized in p5.js as a toolkit and a community. We acknowledged and discussed the ways in which p5.js is built upon (and benefits from) colonial projects like the English language, the Internet, and their related infrastructures._</comment>


Could science continue even if a civilisation breaks down? - <AUTHOR> Im just wondering, would it be possible for science and progress to walk on, after democracy and peace are gone? If so how? <comment><USER2> You ask about science after civilization has broken down, but then also mention after democracy and peace are gone.

If you're thinking of a lawless Mad Max style apocalypse, most likely sciences will be regulated to discovering things that were already known but then lost to humanity. You could see it like the unrest after the Roman Empire fell (the Dark Ages) where lots of knowledge was lost and had to be learned again from scratch.

It is entirely possible that things will still be recognizable as a civilization even if democratic institutions are gone and even if a nation is at war.

There are pursuits of sciences under a monarchy and even authoritarian dictatorships. During time of conflict, science might focus on military technologies (which often have later civilian applications) or on technology to help pacify the population (agriculture, comfort goods, surveillance technologies).

<comment><AUTHOR> You could prevent loss of science- by uploading a wikipedia to any device or persistent depos.

Or you could encode knowledge in a flue-bacteria.

<comment><USER3> Wikipedia barely scratches the surface of the scientific knowledge that would be lost in a breakdown of civilization. It also requires a certain level of technology to be able to read a digital version, or a large warehouse to store a print one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hopefully you're still interested in your question, because I'm afraid you really haven't gotten much of an answer.

Assuming you're in the US or Western Europe, you need to recognize that societal collapse wouldn't look like the middle East or Venezuela, where things are a fishbowl of chaos in a stable world. In the US, just-in-time logistics means we're fragile to the point where a week of trucks not making deliveries might be sufficient to stall out the country so it can't start again. Grocery stores have minimal extra stock, but we can work around that. Vehicle repair businesses can't sustain operations for even a week before they run short on parts. Parts start breaking down and people don't show up for work, and now your power plants aren't working. From there, you need to hope there's someone who can swoop in to save our asses, because with broken down vehicles, depleted gas stations, no electric grid, and all the societal chaos that ensues, we won't be self-starting ourselves. Maybe, just MAYBE, we could plug vital electric loads into aircraft carriers and submarines long enough to restore order, but it's a race against time, because there are plenty of vital components that could go at any time.

Science would proceed in a different direction, with agriculture and botany and did preservation and hunting and animal domestication being the fields where advances are made. Backing up Wikipedia might work for a decade, if your computer and storage media hold out, and if you can defend your windmill/PV panels from armed looters, and if you have the necessary hardware to make necessary repairs to wear components. But you'll probably have more pressing matters, like eating.

And it's a long climb back from the bottom. A lot of our important industries require extreme precision and tolerate few or no material defects. In modern America, fighting off complacency to preserve top notch supply chains is no small feat. If people are worried about the next meal for anyone in their family, you can forget about all that. And then we get to the uncomfortable reality that we may not be able to sustain quite so many billion people without mechanized farming and engineered crops.

There will always be science and education, but it's hard, when living in a stable society, to recognize just how expensive it is to take large numbers of your smartest and most capable people, and allow them to produce nothing that can be utilized right now, because they're investing their time in very abstract things that may pay off in future decades. That's why smart kids from poor families so often don't go to college, too.

</comment><comment><USER5> The Question I think is better dissected along demographic barriers and defining what you mean when you say Science.

If there is no one here to practice science, then the word loses its meaning.( tree falling in the woods analog)

If we take the lesser of your dystopia, Civilization exists its just not democractic nor peaceful, Here I give you the example of the Klingons (Star trek nerd that I am :) )

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, maybe my question was to broad. Science as in, furthering the common endeavors of the species, instead of science as tool for dissent solvent.

Meaning, more strange things, less besiege weapons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We'd all be more productive without the internet to distract us.</comment>


How to Bypass 2FA with an HTTP Header - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@YumiSec/how-to-bypass-a-2fa-with-a-http-header-ce82f7927893 <comment><USER2> Summary: 2FA token was only some digits, so can be brute forced. But they implemented rate limiting, based on IP. Unfortunately the application accepted the X-Forwarded-For header as if it were the real IP and by randomizing that header, you can do as many requests as you want.

<comment><USER3> Neat and clear summary, thanks.

I wonder how you balance this with the need to support VPNs and other legitimate request forwarders.

<comment><USER2> There are no legitimate request forwarders. A botnet can use tens of thousands of IP addresses, which is cutting it very tight even with 6 digits, let alone if you allow everyone to play proxy. But there are a lot of things you can do:

\- If you are not too large a service, an elevated failed login attempt rate (globally for your service) could trigger things like lowering the allowed attempts per IP from 4 to 2 and lengthen the recovery period per IP from 1 to 24 hours. Or perhaps you could ordinarily allow 2 requests from different X-Forwarded-For headers with a limit of 5 per IP, but with elevated attempt rates, you only allow 2 attempts per IP and ignore the XFF header.

\- Similar with elevated failed login rates to a single account: one could choose to block the account depending on its sensitivity (are you a bank or are you hacker news?) or, again, lower how many attempts one may do from different origins.

\- Alternatively to limiting all IPs that attempt to login to an account under attack, you could temporarily whitelist IPs whose geoIP is from the user's last 5 cities.

\- You can make tokens longer for an account under stress. Or for IPs that you never saw before (or that are from unusual countries, or from countries where it is now 5AM, or...).

You don't need to do all of this: if you're not large enough to have to bother with all of this, the solution is much simpler: rate limit without looking at anything user-controlled (such as the XFF header). For high-security applications, you should implement some monitoring and decide what to restrict (which depends on what metric you are monitoring), but still in no event use user-supplied values. Not only is it unnecessary for small services (people won't be having IP collisions often enough), it is also very likely to go wrong at some point (one day a developer will make an honest mistake) if you allow any sort of user-controlled value to influence your security limits.

Note that "IP" refers to a full IPv4 address or a /48 v6 address (those are often subscriber-assigned, though a few penny-pinching ones assign /64 or even individual addresses).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Misleading title, a better title would be: How I bypassed 2FA Rate-limits with an HTTP Header.</comment>


Show HN: Client-side, diceware-based password generator - <AUTHOR> https://goodpassphrase.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to submit a PR to have them move from Google Analytics to something else. Does anyone know alternatives (like what we discussed earlier this month - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23560823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23560823)) that are privacy-oriented but free to open source projects?</comment>


How to Unlock Netflix Hidden Categories - <AUTHOR> http://thebrotalk.com/entertainment/how-to-unlock-netflix-hidden-categories/ <comment><USER2> A more useful page: [https://github.com/Youpinadi/netflix- categories](https://github.com/Youpinadi/netflix-categories)

<comment><USER3> Why do you consider your page more useful?

<comment><USER4> Clickable links.

I think it's the bare minimum to expect from a webpage to have actual clickable links to the resource in question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cached version: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fthebrotalk.com%2Fentertainment%2Fhow- to-unlock-netflix-hidden- categories%2F&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fthebrotalk.com%2Fentertainment%2Fhow-to- unlock-netflix-hidden- categories%2F&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.1149j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

The link is throwing a 500 at the moment.

<comment><USER6> Ya, you guys murdered my server. Sorry about that.

<comment><USER6> Oh, I see it was OPs server that went down. I checked my logs and all was fine. If you guys want to skip to the app:

[http://www.netflixhiddencodes.com](http://www.netflixhiddencodes.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I see more the 76000 categories. The highest category number for me is 79349, "Suspenseful Miniseries from the 1990s". And 1 is "African-American Crime Documentaries", but I don't see any titles in many of these categories.

[https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/1](https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/1)

[https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/79349](https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/79349)

</comment><comment><USER8> In the comments: [http://netflixhiddencodes.com](http://netflixhiddencodes.com)

<comment><USER6> Glad you guys like what I built :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Got a 500 error. Google Cache View

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DZ2CzZp...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DZ2CzZpolQwJ:thebrotalk.com/entertainment/how- to-unlock-netflix-hidden-categories/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au&client=firefox- b-ab)

</comment><comment><USER10> Unfortunately in Germany most of the categories seem to be empty. E.g. Film Noir (7687) and Cult Movies (7627).

</comment><comment><USER11> This involves URL editing, so mostly useless if you watch Netflix through an appliance e.g. Apple TV

<comment><USER12> You can still browse from the computer and add to your watch list IIRC (I used netflix a long time ago).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quote because link is broken:

      To access any hidden category you need to log in to your Netflix account
      and click on browse then click on any existing category it shows. You
      will see the URL on your browser "http://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/1365″
      if you clicked on "Action & Adventure." The last number "1365" is the
      actual category, in this case being "Action & Adventure." To view a
      hidden category simply replace the number with any from the list below.
      I won't be listing the entire 76,000 category list (for obvious reasons)
      but here are the more popular categories:

      Action & Adventure: 1365
      Action Comedies: 43040
      Action Sci-Fi & Fantasy: 1568
      Action Thrillers: 43048
      Adult Animation: 11881
      Adventures: 7442
      African Movies: 3761
      Alien Sci-Fi: 3327
      Animal Tales: 5507
      Anime: 7424
      Anime Action: 2653
      Anime Comedies: 9302
      Anime Dramas: 452
      Anime Fantasy: 11146
      Anime Features: 3063
      Anime Horror: 10695
      Anime Sci-Fi: 2729
      Anime Series: 6721
      Art House Movies: 29764
      Asian Action Movies: 77232
      Australian Movies: 5230
      B-Horror Movies: 8195
      Baseball Movies: 12339
      Basketball Movies: 12762
      Belgian Movies: 262
      Biographical Documentaries: 3652
      Biographical Dramas: 3179
      Boxing Movies: 12443
      British Movies: 10757
      British TV Shows: 52117
      Campy Movies: 1252
      Children & Family Movies: 783
      Chinese Movies: 3960
      Classic Action & Adventure: 46576
      Classic Comedies: 31694
      Classic Dramas: 29809
      Classic Foreign Movies: 32473
      Classic Movies: 31574
      Classic Musicals: 32392
      Classic Romantic Movies: 31273
      Classic Sci-Fi & Fantasy: 47147
      Classic Thrillers: 46588
      Classic TV Shows: 46553
      Classic War Movies: 48744
      Classic Westerns: 47465
      Comedies: 6548
      Comic Book and Superhero Movies: 10118
      Country & Western/Folk: 1105
      Courtroom Dramas: 2748
      Creature Features: 6895
      Crime Action & Adventure: 9584
      Crime Documentaries: 9875
      Crime Dramas: 6889
      Crime Thrillers: 10499
      Crime TV Shows: 26146
      Cult Comedies: 9434
      Cult Horror Movies: 10944
      Cult Movies: 7627
      Cult Sci-Fi & Fantasy: 4734
      Cult TV Shows: 74652
      Dark Comedies: 869
      Deep Sea Horror Movies: 45028
      Disney: 67673
      Disney Musicals: 59433
      Documentaries: 6839
      Dramas: 5763
      Dramas based on Books: 4961
      Dramas based on real life: 3653
      Dutch Movies: 10606
      Eastern European Movies: 5254
      Education for Kids: 10659
      Epics: 52858
      Experimental Movies: 11079
      Faith & Spirituality: 26835
      Faith & Spirituality Movies: 52804
      Family Features: 51056
      Fantasy Movies: 9744
      Film Noir: 7687
      Food & Travel TV: 72436
      Football Movies: 12803
      Foreign Action & Adventure: 11828
      Foreign Comedies: 4426
      Foreign Documentaries: 5161
      Foreign Dramas: 2150
      Foreign Gay & Lesbian Movies: 8243
      Foreign Horror Movies: 8654
      Foreign Movies: 7462
      Foreign Sci-Fi & Fantasy: 6485
      Foreign Thrillers: 10306
      French Movies: 58807
      Gangster Movies: 31851
      Gay & Lesbian Dramas: 500
      German Movies: 58886
      Greek Movies: 61115
      Historical Documentaries: 5349
      Horror Comedy: 89585
      Horror Movies: 8711
      Independent Action & Adventure: 11804
      Independent Comedies: 4195
      Independent Dramas: 384
      Independent Movies: 7077
      Independent Thrillers: 3269
      Indian Movies: 10463
      Irish Movies: 58750
      Italian Movies: 8221
      Japanese Movies: 10398
      Jazz & Easy Listening: 10271
      Kids Faith & Spirituality: 751423
      Kids Music: 52843
      Kids' TV: 27346
      Korean Movies: 5685
      Korean TV Shows: 67879
      Late Night Comedies: 1402
      Latin American Movies: 1613
      Latin Music: 10741
      Martial Arts Movies: 8985
      Martial Arts, Boxing & Wrestling: 6695
      Middle Eastern Movies: 5875
      Military Action & Adventure: 2125
      Military Documentaries: 4006
      Military Dramas: 11
      Military TV Shows: 25804
      Miniseries: 4814
      Mockumentaries: 26
      Monster Movies: 947
      Movies based on children's books: 10056
      Movies for ages 0 to 2: 6796
      Movies for ages 2 to 4: 6218
      Movies for ages 5 to 7: 5455
      Movies for ages 8 to 10: 561
      Movies for ages 11 to 12: 6962
      Music & Concert Documentaries: 90361
      Music: 1701
      Musicals: 13335
      Mysteries: 9994
      New Zealand Movies: 63782
      Period Pieces: 12123
      Political Comedies: 2700
      Political Documentaries: 7018
      Political Dramas: 6616
      Political Thrillers: 10504
      Psychological Thrillers: 5505
      Quirky Romance: 36103
      Reality TV: 9833
      Religious Documentaries: 10005
      Rock & Pop Concerts: 3278
      Romantic Comedies: 5475
      Romantic Dramas: 1255
      Romantic Favorites: 502675
      Romantic Foreign Movies: 7153
      Romantic Independent Movies: 9916
      Romantic Movies: 8883
      Russian: 11567
      Satanic Stories: 6998
      Satires: 4922
      Scandinavian Movies: 9292
      Sci-Fi & Fantasy: 1492
      Sci-Fi Adventure: 6926
      Sci-Fi Dramas: 3916
      Sci-Fi Horror Movies: 1694
      Sci-Fi Thrillers: 11014
      Science & Nature Documentaries: 2595
      Science & Nature TV: 52780
      Screwball Comedies: 9702
      Showbiz Dramas: 5012
      Showbiz Musicals: 13573
      Silent Movies: 53310
      Slapstick Comedies: 10256
      Slasher and Serial Killer Movies: 8646
      Soccer Movies: 12549
      Social & Cultural Documentaries: 3675
      Social Issue Dramas: 3947
      Southeast Asian Movies: 9196
      Spanish Movies: 58741
      Spiritual Documentaries: 2760
      Sports & Fitness: 9327
      Sports Comedies: 5286
      Sports Documentaries: 180
      Sports Dramas: 7243
      Sports Movies: 4370
      Spy Action & Adventure: 10702
      Spy Thrillers: 9147
      Stage Musicals: 55774
      Stand-up Comedy: 11559
      Steamy Romantic Movies: 35800
      Steamy Thrillers: 972
      Supernatural Horror Movies: 42023
      Supernatural Thrillers: 11140
      Tearjerkers: 6384
      Teen Comedies: 3519
      Teen Dramas: 9299
      Teen Screams: 52147
      Teen TV Shows: 60951
      Thrillers: 8933
      Travel & Adventure Documentaries: 1159
      TV Action & Adventure: 10673
      TV Cartoons: 11177
      TV Comedies: 10375
      TV Documentaries: 10105
      TV Dramas: 11714
      TV Horror: 83059
      TV Mysteries: 4366
      TV Sci-Fi & Fantasy: 1372
      TV Shows: 83
      Urban & Dance Concerts: 9472
      Vampire Horror Movies: 75804
      Werewolf Horror Movies: 75930
      Westerns: 7700
      World Music Concerts: 2856
      Zombie Horror Movies: 75405

</comment><comment><USER13> Did we kiss it to death? I am getting a 500 error and hostgator landing page.

<comment><USER14> I can get it now.

I have this imagined idea of a post yo-yo'ing on the HN front page

goes up, gets 500s, goes down, gets 200s, goes up....

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I figured out how to use the Falcor API of Netflix to fetch a full list of genres.

Submitted to HN separately, but here you go :) [https://eliask.github.io/netflix- genres/genres.html](https://eliask.github.io/netflix-genres/genres.html)

The repository contains the scripts to fetch them also.

</comment><comment><USER16> So... anyone wanna run a quick scrape to dump the full list? I'd be interested to see how obscure they get.

<comment><USER17> this is easy to do in python if anybody wants to try

      #!/usr/bin/python

      import requests
      from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

      for g_id in range(76001):
          base_url = 'https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/'
          url = base_url + str(g_id)
          headers = {'Cookie': '<nf-cookies-copied-from-browser>'}
          response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)
          soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, 'lxml')
          genre_els = soup.findAll("span", { "class" : "genreTitle" })
          if len(genre_els) > 0:
              print(str(g_id) + ',' + genre_els[0].text)

<comment><USER18> seems pretty easy, but on my OSX machine I had to:

\- install requests

\- install beautifulsoup4

\- still had problems with xml parser in python2.7

\- python3 wouldn't recognize the requests version installed

\- i gave up, looks like I need to take the time to study python web scraping from a book.

\- >>> quit("ill have to try this later when I have more time")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does this really unlock additional content? Or is it just 76000 ways to organize their catalog?

<comment><USER20> > Does this really unlock additional content? Or is it just 76000 ways to > organize their catalog?

The later. It is fun sorting by those categories, for a while, but wish had they had more choices. I understand not their fault as licensing contracts are screwy. Their original stuff has been ok lately, last thing I watched was Stranger Things. Really enjoyed that.

<comment><USER21> Try Netflix's DVD service.[1] They have a far, far better selection than their streaming service.

[1] - [https://dvd.netflix.com/](https://dvd.netflix.com/)

<comment><USER20> I should switch back to that. I started by having that, then online selection was rather decent, so dropped it. Now I even forgot that was an option. Thanks for the reminder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> On a related topic, anyone know any good hacks for disabling autoplay while browsing?

<comment><USER23> Or.. simple keyboard shortcuts, like 'f' for full-screen with the Windows 10 player? It is downright aggravating to have to use my HTPC keyboard to find the little square in the bottom right every time I start playback. (Let alone just let the app be full screen all the time).

Or ability to play a 21:9 movie natively on a 21:9 monitor, not cropped to the 16:9 area for all the pillarboxing?

For their massive budgets Netflix _amaze me_ with their lack of UX clout and ability.

<comment><USER24> Are there API's complete enough to make a player? I'd love to have an alphabetical list in stand of pictures changing position every time you go to the main page.

<comment><USER22> They'd never allow that, I'm sure. Unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Any way to only display things that are available for download?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Site back up

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> sorry the site crapped out

</comment><comment><USER26> How are there 76000 categories but only ~15000 total titles available.

<comment><USER27> Each title belongs to about five categories on average?

<comment><USER28> > Each title belongs to about five categories on average?

Only if each category contains one title on average. More likely each title belongs to more than a hundred categories on average.</comment></comment></comment>


If elected president, Jeb Bush will get rid of net neutrality rules - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/09/if-elected-president-jeb-bush-will-get-rid-of-net-neutrality-rules/ <comment><USER2> Title is misleading. Jeb Bush _says_ that if elected...

No one knows was an elected President will actually do.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great, last this thing this country needs is the Lord of Morons brother coming into power and renewing the trend of idiocy that plagued our country from 2000-2008. Jeb Bush may seem smarter than his totally incompetent brother, but this proves he'll be just as moronic.</comment>


Show HN: A Haskell library for web and distributed composable applications - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/agocorona/transient-universe <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN".

Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that it meets the guidelines. It is a matter of reposting it with the prefix "Show HN"?

<comment><USER2> Maybe. Or use the contact link to ask the moderator, dang.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Since JavaScript and the browser is the only thing that matters nowadays:

transient-universe can run Browser nodes compiled from haskell to Javascript. they can display DOM widgets and are integrated with server nodes, using websockets communications. Just compile the program with the Haskelll to JS compiler and point the browser to [http://server:port](http://server:port). The server nodes have a HTTP server that will send the compiled program to the browser.

</comment><comment><USER3> How does it compare with an actor model?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. The actor model communicate via mailboxes, which execute callbacks sort to say. Essentially this produces the callback hell.

Taking away the initializations, this is the ping pong example in Erlang:

[https://gist.github.com/torgeir/3978785](https://gist.github.com/torgeir/3978785)

        ping(Receiver) ->
          { pong, Receiver } ! { ping, self() },
          receive
            pong -> io:format("Got pong!~n")
        end.

        pong() ->
          receive

            finished ->
              io:format("Pong finished~n");

            { ping, Sender } ->
              io:format("Got ping!~n"),
              Sender ! pong,
              pong()
          end.

This is the same in Transient: A message is sent to the receiver print "ping" in his console, then send a message to the sender, that print "pong" in his console

        pingPong receiver=
          wormhole receiver $ do
              teleport
              lliftIO $ print "ping"
              teleport
              lliftIO $ print "pong"

You see that the ping and the pong are composed "monadically" in a single piece of code. The flow is quite understandable.

Just start the program in both nodes (initialization code is not shown)

This is a distributed program but I can compose this program with any other.

This other program stream integers from a remote node from 1 in increasing order:

        streamFrom node=
           wormhole  node $ do
                      teleport
                      r <- threads 1 $ choose[1..]
                      threadDelay 1000000
                      teleport
                      return r

I can compose both distributed programs:

        composed node =  do
             r <-  (pingPong node >> return 0) <|>  streamFrom node
             lliftIO $ case r of
                  0 -> putStrLn "pong was received"
                  n -> print n

`composed` print the numbers received and the "pong" messages followed by "pong was received" in the console of the caller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does this compare to Haxl?

<comment><AUTHOR> Haxl is a great Haskell library and probably the biggest contribution to getting Haskell out of the academia. It is optimized for fetching querying and caching data sources, among other things, making use of parallelism and concurrency while maintaining a level close to the domain problem.

Haxl uses a controlling thread that spawn worker threads and is single purpose. No distributed computing in the strong sense.

transient has no controlling thread. It run multiple threads and is general purpose.

The alternative operator <|> can spawn parallel threads/or parallel distributed computations that follow the flow of the monad. for example:

        r <-   runAt node1 foo <|>  runAt node2 bar
        lliftIO $ print r

will print two results, since there are two thread generated. Well there may be any number of results because any of the two branches may generate multiple threads or none, since they can stop without any result.

(if we need a single thread, we can use `collect`)

note that `foo` and `bar` are distributed programs as well, so they can invoke other nodes and so on.</comment></comment>


How to read a patent in 60 seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/09/how-to-read-a-patent-in-60-second/

<comment><USER2> How to read the article in 5 seconds: Read the independent claims.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! But I must disagree. If you're time's short, I would recommend just basking in the majesty of the Sammy Hagar patent cover page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't really agree. Yes in some respects and for some purposes the independent claims are the most important parts of a patent, but reading only the independent claims is very different from reading a patent.

The specification and drawings are important as they, among other things, define the meaning of the claims. Usually, if you just skip ahead to the independent claims you will have no idea what the claims are talking about. This is especially true in the electronics/software/online arts where people tend to make up their terminology as they go along.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a great comment on the article itself by a Max Kennerly, who appears to be a practicing attorney. He cites a Federal Circuit court opinion that basically says - yes, the claims must and do stand alone. You're quite right that if you know nothing about the patent you may be lost in the claims, but from a legal standpoint, they should be sufficient. And more practically, if you come to the patent knowing a lot about the field, you'll usually get a very good sense of the thing from the claims alone.

And if you've only got a minute, you're time will be far better spent in the claims than in the abstract, description, or title, which is what most people do!

<comment><USER3> I am also a practicing patent attorney, and the case Mr. Kennerly cites to is the well known Phillips case. In any event, that case says that claim terms can be defined by the specification.

I agree that if you have a minute only and you are worried about infringement it may be a good idea to start from the independent claims. But you should not fool yourself that you have read the whole patent. Because if you only read the claims, and even if you think you understand the claims perfectly you can be in for a nasty surprise if you do not read the spec.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also important: understanding the difference between a patent _application_ and an actual issued patent. The rule of thumb is that if it has a number in the millions, like 6,123,456, then it's a patent. If it starts with a year, like 2008/1234567, then it's an application. The slash may or may not be omitted.

</comment><comment><USER5> A good chunk of advice for the dirty, messy world that is patents.

Unrelated: its very cool to randomly stumble upon someone using a theme I compiled: [http://midmodesign.com/news/general/our-special-wordpress- th...](http://midmodesign.com/news/general/our-special-wordpress-theme/) :-)

</comment><comment><USER6> This approach does seem to cut to the heart of the matter... I have had a patent in the system for a while, and just to reassure myself, I read just the independent claims.

While reviewing my patent I have always become worn out by the time I get to reviewing the claims so I have always been a little wary of them (especially because I am used to being as precise as I can, but claims are written to be interpreted broadly).

Sure enough, when I looked this time, the claims spoke loudly to me. What needs to be there is there in the independent claims.

</comment><comment><USER7> So. How would I identify the independent claims?

<comment><USER8> They are the claims that don't reference other claims. All the claims are bundled together towards the end of a patent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is a little disturbing that the "code" of a patent (the claims) only takes about 30 seconds to read and the rest of the ream of paper is just comments and/or obfuscation. (Most likely the latter.)

<comment><USER3> Don't worry, that is not really true.

<comment><USER10> Nevertheless, from the description you give to a lawyer to the final patent, there is both a notable expansion factor and a large drop in comprehensability. Last time I had to do this, the expansion factor was 10, although I think that's above average.

<comment><USER3> If there is a drop in comprehensibility, then you probably need a better patent attorney. Patent applications should be as clear as possible.

Regarding expansion, this is sometimes necessary. A good patent lawyer may need to add a lot of material to your description. There are many possible reasons for that: for example, you may be so advanced in your field that things that may seem obvious to you are actually pretty complex and must be described in more detail. Or if you have defined your invention too narrowly, a good patent lawyer will describe your invention in different scopes (both broadly and narrowly) and think of all kinds of different fields and applications for your invention, thus ensuring you get a better value out of your patent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Also, remember that the meaning of the words and phrases in the independent claims are subject to intense debate.

</comment><comment><USER12> One other way: Post it to reddit denouncing it based on the title and read the top comment.

</comment><comment><USER13> > Someone's claiming you're infringing your patent!

Uh...good luck with that.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you infringe the baby, you'll infringe the baby momma too.</comment>


Apple and OpenAI join research group for ethical AI with fellow tech giants - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/27/14411810/apple-joins-partnership-for-ai <comment><USER2> So much talk right now is what happens when AI because too smart/efficient/sci-fi kill all humans, when this research group will be working on the real problem, which I believe is that AI will start leading to programs that will allow companies/individuals to absolutely abuse markets/systems/people/data in a way that is both unethical and dangerous while not being explicitly illegal. I am glad to see some companies coming together to discuss what to do when these issues inevitably come up.

<comment><USER3> I worry about that as well... and don't think companies coming together is going to solve that issue.</comment></comment>


McDipper: A key-value cache for Flash storage - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/mcdipper-a-key-value-cache-for-flash-storage/10151347090423920

<comment><USER2> Twitter open-sourced an implementation of this concept recently: <https://github.com/twitter/fatcache> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5202868>

I hope Facebook ends up open sourcing McDipper in the future.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find myself not working memcached (and variants) into new designs these days, mainly because with Cassandra on the backend, there's no point -- better to spend the money on the Cassandra machines and let it manage the caching, in-memory indexing, and log-structured writes.

Memcached in that scenario just adds network overhead, devops complexity, and increases the number of things that can go wrong.

For the times when Cassandra is overkill, I still end up using Redis -- with the Lua stuff, it's ridiculously flexible these days.

Still, McDipper (and Twitter's fatcache) both look cool, and I'm glad people are thinking about SSDs as something other than faster "disks".

<comment><USER4> I've been chewing the idea of adding Cassandra to my stack for quite some time as Cassandra seems like inpenetratable moster :-)

Any pointers how to start? Also, do you have any posts on how you added Cassandra to your back-end?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't work out if the bit labelled "hash buckets" is in RAM, while data volume is SSD or if it is all SSD. I am guessing this is the case so it is quite similar to eg Twitter's fatcache.

<comment><USER6> It's actually all SSD by default, but you can pin the buckets into memory if you'd like. We generally do this in the memcached-replacement use case and specifically for CDN. However, we do have another use case not emphasized in the article that has a mix largely consisting of smaller values which we store in the bucket cache as direct records on SSD.

In general, if it fits in memory, it's faster to keep it there. If you don't have space for whatever reason, you leave it on the SSD.</comment></comment>


STEM OPT Extension Revamp on Cards? - <AUTHOR> https://www.perchingtree.com/24-months-stem-opt-repeal-trump/ <comment><USER2> OPT changes are possible but it will take a lot of time. Not gonna happen anytime soon.</comment>