Mossberg: I just deleted half my iPhone apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/20/12231176/walt-mossberg-delete-your-unnecessary-apps <comment><USER2> I guess for him the apps had a novelty they never had for me. I use a few apps and the browser. I'm very happy with my iPhone.

Overall this reads like "my refrigerator keeps food cold, it is reliable for years, the novelty has worn off" or "I went to the grocery store and bought every cereal in the cereal aisle, there are too many, it's hard to find good ones, the novelty of having all this cereal has worn off, let's go back to when oatmeal was the only choice." I guess this sort of thinking is inevitable when you hunt around for apps. Most people don't hunt around for apps. They have a need, then they get an app. They're happy.

<comment><USER3> I agree. I consider it a part of a more generic problem. The problem of "The next best thing", to search for novelty; I would say the last NBT was maybe Siri and I just use it to set lazy alarms...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recently wiped my Nexus 6 because the battery was draining (would die at 2 PM) faster than normal and I had some pretty bad issues with the camera. When I reloaded it I resolved to use the website version of apps as much as possible and not to download native apps.

My battery life now is superior to before. I suspect that a lot of the apps I had were phoning home or disrupting WakeLocks like Facebook does.

I am officially appskeptic. A lot of the old apps I used to use I can do most things through their mobile sites. For the ones I can't that I have to use I go through the website.

I remember the days of the first iPod touch and early iPhone where Apple championed web apps vs dedicated. I wish the trend would have continued that way (even Windows Phone would be viable if so).

<comment><USER5> Replacing the Facebook app on Android with Metal (or any one of numerous mobile web wrappers as apps) alone resolved most of the problems I was having with battery life.

The argument for apps over mobile web only works when the app respects _both_ the user experience and resources of the device as well as the mobile experience does.

<comment><USER6> Google Fit and Now (and everyone's friend, nlpwakelock) are also frequent culprits

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Man...every single time I see a title like this all I can think is "Oh what a special little snowflake you are"

<comment><USER8> Read a bit further. It's not really about him deleting apps (his case is an absurd outlier...). It's really more about the fact that, when it comes to apps, Apple and Google are the new Atari: mountains and mountains of shovelware.

<comment><USER9> > _Apple and Google are the new Atari: mountains and mountains of shovelware._

Apple and Google are just HUGE marketplaces where you can find anything, shoveware included.

We don't call Amazon the "new Atari" because you can find tons of crap books, and not just Shakespeare and awarded novelists.

It's absurd to expect not to find tons of shovelware in a app stores with 1 million titles. Plus, one man's shovelware is another man's "gem of an app I use everyday".

The question is whether there are a few thousands of great apps (and the answer is definitely yes) -- not whether all 1.5 million apps in there are great.

<comment><USER10> For me, the problem is having to sort thru all the shovelware to find one or two useful apps. It would be nice if:

1) there were multiple app stores 2) Apple would curate their own app store

I think that approach would solve so many problems. The first would see app stores that were limited in scope (not all, but some). Some would curate, some would not. The non-curated ones would be easily avoidable.

The second option needs to happen. The shovelware on the Apple app store makes me want to avoid it as much as possible. If Apple would hyper-aggressively curate their own app store, I think the overall quality would rise.

Of course, I realize this probably won't happen. Lockdown of the app store is directly tied to their bottom line.

<comment><USER11> Android has multiple app stores, but they are invariably worse than the Play Store. I'd agree that there is room for a curated app store, but the question is, what criteria would be used to curate it? No one needs hundreds of weather apps, but I'm sure you'd find disagreement on which are the best 5 or 10. And if we're honest, eventually a portion of the apps would probably be "sponsored" to appear.

Android also has the issue that installing from a third party app store requires enabling installing off all apps from "unknown sources", which presents a malware risk. It would be nice if you could insert trusted third party app signing keys.

There is also the issue that device vendors are contractually obligated to not install any third party app stores if they want to have access to the Play store. Of course, I'm generally in favor of this, since 3rd party app stores are generally awful (and certainly people don't really want a carrier or device manufacturer based app store, which is what would happen). But, that restriction also keeps 3rd party app stores from getting any traction, which leads to developers ignoring them for the most part.

<comment><USER10> I was specifically speaking of the Apple app store (I'm sooo done with Android), but the criteria for curation would apply equally to any app store: it's up to the owner of the app store.

Personally, I'd hope Apple would keep only the five or ten best-of-breed apps in each category; the apps that best showcase Apple's tech and UI.

<comment><USER9> > _Personally, I 'd hope Apple would keep only the five or ten best-of-breed > apps in each category; the apps that best showcase Apple's tech and UI._

So, basically keep, e.g. 100 categories * 10 apps, like 1000 apps, kill the other 1499000 apps, and alienate millions of people and especially all those programmers...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As I see it, the big problem is separating the worthwhile apps from the useless (and sometimes semi- or fully malicious) ones. User reviews aren't necessarily trustworthy, and unscrupulous publishers often game the system.

Then there is (at least on typical Android handsets) the undeletable bloatware. It doesn't seem to be quite the problem that it used to be, but it's still annoying. Though I have root, I'm wary of just deleting things.

I have about 85 MB of disabled apps on my current phone, and about 6 GB free out of 16 GB main storage. A 64 GB MicroSD stores my media, so 16 GB is less of a problem here than it is on a Nexus or an iPhone. It's too bad there's such a ridiculous markup on built-in storage, SD slot or no.

I already occasionally purge apps that I don't use, though - and when I install something new, I watch battery life like a hawk. If it shows any sign of misbehaving, away it goes. If it needs ridiculous permissions (like location information for a flashlight or a metronome) it doesn't get installed in the first place.

In-app ads aren't a huge problem to me, but they annoy me anyway just because of so many deceptive "Clean your phone of viruses!" ads (often with fake "close" buttons) that bamboozle less-savvy users.

I'd like to see the FTC give the deceivers a good stomping, but in today's political environment that's unlikely to happen anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've read a few articles like this that start with the assumption that storage space obviously needs to be conserved. I always wonder what these people are keeping on their phones. I always buy the version of the phone with the least storage, and I do zero things to manage how much space I'm using and I've never run out. Is it like large offline media libraries? I don't spend a huge amount of time outside of wifi range and don't really have a problem just streaming everything.

<comment><USER14> Podcast apps tend to save everything for some stupid reason. My iPhone was full and I noticed Overcast had saved like 3 GB of old episodes. Pretty terrible UX.

<comment><USER15> The default in Overcast is to delete after listening and to save only 3 episodes from each subscription, which is quite sensible IMO.

<comment><USER16> it still seems to...not do this correctly? I have it configured thus but still have to delete 1GB+ of old episodes manually on a regular basis.

<comment><USER17> Are you sure the episode finished, or did you start another at the end of the episode when it was essentially dead air?

<comment><USER16> I think I usually just let it run until it plays the next episode, but I'll pay better attention the next time I use the app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _Pokémon Go may be a sensation, but the novelty of the App Store is over_

It's been almost a decade since the App Store was introduced.

In what way would it still be a "novelty"?

It's now a tens of billions annual app marketplace.

</comment><comment><USER18> > For instance, I'd use Facebook and Twitter much less on my phone if I had to > use them through the browser

This was the most interesting line in the article for me because I recently had the same thought. But my reaction was to uninstall Facebook because I _wanted_ to use it less!

It's one of the best computing decisions I've made in years. I still have Messenger so I don't miss anything truly important. The FB web app is perfectly serviceable for the rare occasion when I need to use it. My battery life has improved. The rest of my Facebooking now happens solely on my PC and all I really miss out on is scrolling through the same items in my feed 6 times a day.

The two simple acts of uninstalling Facebook and turning off push notifications for email have given me back those periods of the day where I'm alone with my thoughts. You know, those moments that people are always lamenting have been destroyed by the smartphone.

</comment><comment><USER19> I feel like these purges are a relatively common practice? I've heard people say things to the effect of "Oh, I had that app but I deleted it because I never used it and I needed more space." That's usually what prompts me to delete some unused apps.

This blog feels like it's a few several years too late.

<comment><USER20> I use a 16GB iPhone and I delete apps all the time because of lack of space. In a sense I see this as a strategic mistake by Apple, you can't have people downloading and using lots of app and also sell most iPhone with only 16GB space.

<comment><USER21> And then carriers will sell Android phones with 8GB in which the OS takes 5GB and undeletable apps use 2+GB. But it runs quickly enough in a demo and once you buy it you're stuck.

<comment><USER17> Aren't most expandable via SD?

<comment><USER22> Older ones were, but the new Nexus phones aren't, and I'm pretty sure I've heard of others. I was horrified at first, but I will probably end up buying a new phone before it really becomes a problem... And I bought a huge one this time, too, so it really isn't a problem.

<comment><USER17> I have an S7 as my secondary (primary is 6S Plus) so I'm a casual user at best, but the SIM slot appears to hold both the SIM and a MicroSD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Over the past few days, I've methodically deleted 165 apps from my iPhone, > about 54 percent of the 305 apps I had on the phone when I started culling > the herd

I don't think I've had more than 50 installed at once. Having 305 installed seems like the app version of being on Horders.

<comment><USER24> Well, he points out that it's because he's a tech reviewer and trying out lots of apps is part of his job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have just gone, slightly, in the opposite direction. I used to install almost no apps on my android phone. Now with Android 6 fine grain permissions I have started installing a few useful apps.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe unrelated but I think that the Music app used with Apple Music uses up a lot of storage with caching that isn't surfaced in the app-by-app storage usage. I have a 16GB iPhone (mistake) that I'm constantly deleting photos from, deleting and reinstalling apps to bust caches, etc., just to find the space I free evaporate when I listen to music.

<comment><USER26> Google Play Music is the same, at least on iOS (well, the storage usage is accurate). It caches any song you listen to once or twice, until it eats up all free space. Then your only choice is to purge the entire cache, except for albums you've manually downloaded (which can only be set at an album granularity).

<comment><USER16> Well with Apple Music you can't manually trigger a cache purge (to my knowledge) and of course you can't delete the Music app and reinstall it. Maybe toggling Apple Music or iCloud Music Library off/on would do it? But I tend to want to avoid ever changing iCloud-related settings on my phone once they appear to be working correctly, due to my experience of them just falling apart in the past.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't see the need to delete an app. Just the quicker access using the icon is reason enough for me to keep an app. Memory is the cheapest thing nowadays. I'm carrying around 64GB memory in my phone. Why limit myself, worrying about space? Even older phones don't have this problem, you can put in an SD card for plentiful storage.

<comment><USER17> Problem is that new apps are often put near the end, and you're swiping a bunch of screens to get to what ostensibly are more frequently used at that time. Personally, I prefer keeping it clean, and often when I upgrade, I'll just start fresh without restoring. It's amazing what I really don't miss.

<comment><USER22> It's actually worse when they're alphabetized, and a lot of apps end up with short names that don't match the name you saw in Google Play.

Facebook Messenger, for instance, is just "Messenger", removing the company name. There's a built-in app named that as well, and I always forget which is which.

<comment><USER27> One of the worst offenders is Zomato food order app. Its icon just shows up with "Order". It took me five minutes to find it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This comment/quote seemed interesting to me: "A WELL-DESIGNED APP IS MUCH BETTER TO USE THAN A MOBILE WEB BROWSER, EVEN ON A LARGE PHONE" as The Verge did away with their native app a long time ago.

I wonder how he feels about The Verge not having a native app.

</comment><comment><USER29> The iOS SpringBoard needs a way to view apps by how often they are used (among other views). That would make it easier to clean up the apps I've downloaded and used only once.

<comment><USER30> That would be nice. I've developed a system of (periodically) separating out apps I know I use from ones I'm less certain about. So if I have a folder like "productivity" and it has 10 apps, I'll pull out the 2 or 3 I know I used in the past week and put them in a new Productivity folder. If the other apps don't get used after a month or so, and have no good reason to stick around despite their rare use, I'll delete them.

I have a handful of apps I use 2-3 times a year (like Eventbrite or Delta or Airbnb), but I keep them because it's easier than redownloading when an event comes up that does ticketing through them. Those go on the last of my homescreens so they're out of the way until I need them.</comment></comment>


The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre of 1902 Did Not Go as Planned (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-1902 <comment><USER2> I use this as an example of why we need to be careful to think about what we're optimising for in ML. They wanted to reduce the number of rats, but incentivised increasing the number of rat tails.

Do your performance measures correspond directly to things you care about? Are there ways of optimising the number while hurting something that matters to you? A good example to me is Google marking a picture of a black couple as "gorillas" \- to a training algorithm that can easily be counted as a single wrong answer equivalent to any other when it is actually very significant.

Edit - this is the same for optimising any KPI, but ML is a case where your optimiser has no wider context and so there's more surprising cases. Worth thinking about overall though, what are you rewarding?

<comment><USER3> See also: [https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Something similar happened in Rio de Janeiro under the supervision of the epidemiologist Osvaldo Cruz during the very same year.

Rio was infested with bubonic plague and yellow fever. Oswald started a campaign to get the city rid of mosquitoes and rats including the same idea of buying rats from the population. The result were the same, people began importing rats from neighboring towns and breeding them at home. He later switched the focus into hygiene and sanitation.

Cruz is also famous for making vaccination mandatory in Brazil, a decision that led to the infamous Vaccine Rebelion in Brazil: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_Revolt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_Revolt)

</comment><comment><USER5> The general name for this phenomenon is the Cobra effect: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect)

<comment><USER6> From the article:

> These days, the Great Hanoi Rat Massacre is mostly cited as an example of > the "Cobra Effect," an economic theory about how incentives, in a complex > system, can lead to perverse, unintended consequences. Sometimes, it's > trotted out as argument against government intervention of any kind—but Vann > says that that kind of misses the point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Michael Vann wrote this recent book on the Hanoi Rat Hunt

[https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/the-great-hanoi-rat- hunt...](https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/the-great-hanoi-rat- hunt-9780190602697?cc=us&lang=en)

</comment><comment><USER8> The moral of the story is wrong.

If people are going to go ahead and cheat the system en masse, no system of incentives will ever work properly and they will languish.

Civil society requires us to generally do the right thing, most of the time, because there's ample opportunity to be shortsighted and cheat.

FYI Here's how Alberta git rid of rats [1], though I don't see any mention of rewards either, more of a publicly managed awareness program with hired pets killers.

[1] [https://www.alberta.ca/history-of-rat-control-in- alberta.asp...](https://www.alberta.ca/history-of-rat-control-in-alberta.aspx)

<comment><USER9>
      "Buildings are occasionally moved or torn down, and in some cases, rats are dug out with a backhoe or bulldozer."

Alberta really hates rats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am interested in knowing what happened after. Did they just give up on the rats? What do cities around the world do to control the rat population?

<comment><USER11> You end up hiring "professionals" that will actually keep the spirit of the agreement not just the letter (contracts do wonderful things in the modern world).

Although, I do know of one case where the locals gave up on a building (exterminator said no, the cats ran for it, and hantavirus was a concern). They cut a trench around the building, filled it with gas, lit the trench up, then set the building on fire. It was a bit horrific. They built another building on the same plot but not the exact same place.

<comment><USER12> Reminds me of that hoarders house in the US, that was so infested with cockroaches the fire department built a fire pit around it and burned it to the ground.

<comment><USER11> Its a valid strategy, especially when you are dealing with disease or some insects. It provides a bit of a training opportunity and sometimes there just isn't any hope.

If for some odd reason, you are doing thing yourself (why?!), do remember the order: dig trench -> fill trench -> ignite trench -> ignite structure. Do the order of the last two step wrong can result in a very scary video on YouTube. Do not have squeamish people there with you. Keep plenty of firefighting gear near.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting! Whatever you optimize for in human (or machine) behavior is what you get.

</comment><comment><USER14> "To watch out for programs being created in situations where where the arrogance is so strong and the power differential is so intense that evidence can be ignored."

~historian Michael Vann

</comment><comment><USER15> TL;DR: rat hunters were cutting rat's tails to obtain the reward, leaving rats alive to let them multiply.</comment>


Ask HN: What's Google's motivation behind releasing Android? - <AUTHOR>

What's the motivation for Google to release Android freely? I don't think they're doing it for fun, because even if it's an open source project, it is developed behind closed doors till it's ready (unlike Firefox, Linux etc). Is it the same strategy that MS used to kill off Netscape by releasing IE freely? <comment><USER2> They get to expand the reach of their advertising to include mobile devices at the app level. The ubiquity of their advertising ensures that they'll thrive in the new dominant computing market.

<comment><AUTHOR> But, Is this really working for them? Is there anything stopping developers from using other ad-networks? Looks pretty risky to allocate a lot of resources to develop an OS and give it away for free.

<comment><USER2> I've read that it is working for them, but I can't recall the sources. If memory serves me, they benefit from expanding or establishing the reach of their search, web apps, native apps, and thus their ads. Since advertising is the keystone of their business model, anything they can do to ensure ubiquity of their brand (and thus, advertising) is an important thing to do.

Sure, it's "open", so developers can use other ad-networks, but that's not necessarily going to hurt them as much as it would to have no presence in the mobile space.

Now, why develop a whole platform instead of just offering their ads on other platforms? If Android becomes the dominant platform, Google is in a really good position, with respect to brand ubiquity. Better than they'd be if Nokia or HP or Apple had the dominant platforms, because there's no guarantee Google would have an "in" on any of those.</comment></comment></comment>


Emergence of Lab-Grown Meat Poses New Questions for Religious Leaders - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/emergence-of-lab-grown-meat-poses-new-questions-for-religious-leaders-11544834277 <comment><USER2> its good for decreasing environmental harm. I won't be eating it though</comment>


Do All Companies Have to be Evil? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=do-all-companies-have-to-be-evil

<comment><USER2> Yes, for certain approximations of Evil.</comment>


NASA - JPL Solar System Simulator - <AUTHOR> http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/

<comment><USER2> "Internal Server Error..."

when i tried to view Voyager 1 from Voyager 2 in the year 2025.

<comment><USER3> Well, Voyager 1 has already left the solar system, hasn't it? ;-)</comment></comment>


UK FTSE 100 finishes week up 2% - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXFTSE%3AUKX&ei=IN1tV4H8KsiwiQLZ3ZyoDg <comment><USER2> For those interested in a potentially more relevant number, here is the link to the FTSE 100 priced in USD: [http://markets.ft.com/research/Markets/Tearsheets/Summary?s=...](http://markets.ft.com/research/Markets/Tearsheets/Summary?s=UKXUSD%2B:FSI)

It is -10.92% this week, and -22.26% for the year. You can add in a comparison to the FTSE 100 in GBP.

Note: the GBPUSD hit a 31 year low today. The GBPUSD is down about 13% for the year: [http://markets.ft.com/research/Markets/Tearsheets/Summary?s=...](http://markets.ft.com/research/Markets/Tearsheets/Summary?s=GBPUSD)

<comment><USER3> Europe as a whole has been on a similar track, Europe's economy is a hot mess. Really, you could argue that the UK was the healthiest economy in the EU (or at least, the most diverse.) Germany is a powerhouse, but really if the Euro were to strengthen it would crush their exports, which is really where they thrive. The Euro is the best thing that has happened to Germany. It artificially lowers their currency valuation because of poorer member states, and the EU itself gives Germany immense power over other member states because they have deeper pockets. Then to top it off, Germany makes the ECB policy just tight enough (from being a stronger economy) to strangle off the economy of everyone else.

There's a reason many of the other countries want to leave, not having their own central bank that can loosen credit or even keep their interest rates at the market level is murdering their economies. There are other reasons, like dumb laws and regulations, but a struggling economy and a massive welfare state is a perfect combination for angst. Especially if you throw in an immigration crisis caused by external conflicts.

The UK not adopting the Euro imo is one of the best decisions they had ever made economically. I don't think Brexit is going to sting the UK as much as it's going to potentially sting Germany if other member states start to think about exiting.

<comment><USER4> Without a central bank you can use inflation a means of shedding your debt burden. And the Germans (a nation of savers) hate inflation.

Getting out of crushing debt burden (if the debt is denominated in local currency) by inflation is not really a great solution. But in many cases it the best of bad solutions. Everybody locally suffers from inflation equally (proportionally).

... With the exception of foreign lenders who lent money in local currency suffer the most (wrong side of FX). But again that might be the least bad option. It's the same idea as high hotel and travel taxes (parking, car rentals, cabs from airport)... Because the best tax is the one you don't have to pay yourself, instead it's the tax that people who don't live here pay. And, that's because they don't vote here.

Also, I'm not talking about runaway inflation. But higer the the gold standard of ~ 2%.

if you look at Greece. They would probably be a good candidate for the servicing debt via inflation as the least bad option. Except they don't have that option anymore. Instead the lender countries are going to keep pretending for the next 10 years that they will see all their money back. And they'll do that but lending more money to Greece and making it poorer at the same time. You know, ze Germans.

<comment><USER5> So, what's the difference here between Greece and, say, Hawaii? HI is a debt ridden state with no control over a central bank to help it address the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's amusing how the weakened pound is being hailed in the media as the End Times, and yet the weakened pound is the reason British stocks (minus financials) are actually doing fine -- it's very good for export industries.

If Greece could have just let their currency depreciate, they'd be in a far better spot than they are now, plausibly even competitive. But it was the tyranny of the Euro, driven by Germany that kept its currency strong.

<comment><USER7> That's fine until you realize long term, that common market won't be around for the UK to export to -- at least nowhere near as open and free as it is today.

<comment><USER8> Good for the countries of the Commonwealth who, despite being part of the same organisation and historical empire, and even all having the same head of state (the Queen), have been locked out of trade deals with the UK because of the EU.

What's the bet the UK falls back onto the "empire" that it has so long ignored.

<comment><USER9> Most commonwealth member states don't have the queen as their head of state. Only 16 of the 53. With the exception of Australia, NZ, Papua New Guinea and Canada these 16 are almost all small (in many case island) countries. You can very be sure that Pakistan, India, South Africa and Nigeria along with 33 other countries don't regard Queen Elizabeth II as their head of state.

<comment><USER8> I should have said Commonwealth Realm then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The FTSE 250, which is more representative of domestic companies instead of large multinationals[1] is still down more than 7%. [https://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXFTSE:MCX](https://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXFTSE:MCX)

[1]: [http://moneyweek.com/ftse-100-v-ftse-250-why-have-they- diver...](http://moneyweek.com/ftse-100-v-ftse-250-why-have-they-diverged-by- so-much/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Not in terms of any currency except the massively devalued GBP

</comment><comment><USER3> The pound sterling falling helps British exports by lowering their cost to international markets.

<comment><USER11> I wonder how long it will take to switch from being a net importer

[https://www.uktradeinfo.com/Statistics/OverseasTradeStatisti...](https://www.uktradeinfo.com/Statistics/OverseasTradeStatistics/Pages/OTS.aspx)

<comment><USER12> No time, really. This can be achieved practically overnight, thanks to now being free from the EU hegemon. Now the UK will hapily ssil to its glorious and deserved destiny!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> But only because of a huge fall at the start of the week. It's down 1.3% on the month.

<comment><USER14> 1.3% on the month! It's the apocalypse.

<comment><USER15> GBP/USD is down 7% on the month. We'll round up because we're being apocalyptic... according to outside investors, the UK economy lost 10% of it's value overnight.

<comment><USER14> The value of currency is not a measure of the value of the economy. CAD has lost 35% versus the dollar since 2011. But the Canadian economy has grown slightly more (in relative terms) than the US over that period.

<comment><AUTHOR> And if we were to measure everything against Bitcoin since 2009...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NASA Finds Likely Source of Mars Rover Curiosity's Short Circuit - <AUTHOR> http://www.space.com/28758-mars-rover-curiosity-short-circuit-drill.html <comment><USER2> Unusable on mobile. I think this is just click bait.

</comment><comment><USER3> what a terrible website.</comment>


Why so many shipowners find Panama's flag convenient - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-28558480

<comment><USER2> Panama with the Panama Canal has at least significance in the maritime world and a visiting Panama City is possible.

In the case of Liberia, the country has no relations to shipping and the ship and as well as the corporate registry were given to an American company called LISCR (Liberia Ship Corporate Registry Football) whose employees have probably never been in Liberia's capital Monrovia … most Americans of course would not want to spend any time in Liberia – too much crime and violence, and now there is Ebola too.

In the banking world, the US is on a crusade against other offshore locations such as Switzerland while protecting its own offshore locations. In the naval world, on the other hand, the two major offshore locations – Liberia and Panama – have already been under (at least) strong American influence.

</comment><comment><USER3> But then when it comes to serious issues, like the Somalian pirates crisis, the ship owners suddenly want all the protection again that the tax dollars they are not paying can buy.

All the benefits, none of the responsibility.

<comment><USER4> But _everybody_ benefits from functioning shipping lanes. After all, if shipping shuts down how will we keep wallmart stocket, no matter whose flag those ships sail under.

<comment><USER5> The piracy only affects Asia-Europe lanes. Wal-Mart's imports are mainly Transpacific and South American imports.

And the pirates also almost never hit container ships because their decks are too high and they go too fast. Maersk Alabama was an anomaly, they were actually transporting food aid to East Africa so they traveled much slower and closer to Somalia.

The pirates mainly hit tanker/bulker and LNG ships.

I worked at a container line at the height of the piracy in 2009-2010 and management was basically not concerned with it. The ships are insured anyway, they just added an Aden Piracy Surcharge to Asia-Europe freight to cover the premium increases.

<comment><USER6> There are wal-marts outside of the USA/North America, I'm sure you know.q

<comment><USER5> Sure, but the vast, vast majority of their freight is Asia -> US.

I work in the shipping/logistics industry and I assure you, Somalian piracy is not a threat to Wal-Mart's supply chain. It's barely a blip on their radar. If one container ship were hit and a few of their containers were on board it would not hurt them financially, they have cargo insurance anyway. Storms at sea are a much bigger risk factor, containers fall off of cargo ships in rough seas surprisingly frequently, and voyages often get delayed by a few days due to weather. Water damage due to holes in the shipping containers is also very common. And delays at the port and rail hubs due to congestion. These factors are all much bigger risks to Wal-Mart (or any major importer) than piracy is.

It's kinda like worrying about carjackings when an accidental collision is probably thousands of times more likely to kill you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From what I understand, it is/was relatively easy to re-paint, name, and title a boat in panama. This makes/made Panama a great place to take a boat that has a less than fantastic history and give it a clean slate.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how it would work out to just have a rule in whatever country that if you own a ship you had to register it there. Not change flags of convenience for everyone, just make it illegal within the context of a specific nation to use them.</comment>


How to be disciplined even when you don't have discipline - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/getting-art-done/how-to-be-disciplined-even-when-you-dont-have-discipline-a5c1376f20b4 <comment><USER2> Ha, I also wear blue-blocking goggles hours before sleep time.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's incredibly effective! I find I get tired shortly after putting them on. Changes in screen color temperature are great, but I don't trust it to be enough. The blue-blockers are killer!

Thanks for reading.</comment></comment>


NSA Reportedly Intercepts And Alters Routers And Servers Exported From U.S. - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/13/nsa-reportedly-intercepts-and-alters-routers-and-servers-exported-from-u-s-to-facilitate-surveillance/ <comment><USER2> Translation of the NSA statement:

We don't deny altering hardware. In fact, if we (likely) install backdoors into hardware used by foreign intelligence targets; but don't worry, we're not interested in the casual user. As the US Government relies on commercial hardware, we make sure that only the US Government can access the backdoors. We're angry that this was made public, and we can't prove that it jeopardizes human lives.

<comment><USER3> It also sheds some new light on the "China-hardware is bad for you" media campaign that was run right before Snowden happened. It seems that not buying American means keeping the American intelligence community out of ones network.

But I guess you _actually_ can't trust the Chinese either. That doesn't leave many hardware vendors for heavy-duty network equipment to choose from.

<comment><USER4> Sure you can. The Chinese are 10,000 miles away and don't really care about Western domestic politics. It might be different if you are an arms or pharma company, but for the average citizen concerned about civil liberties, you really _can_ trust the Chinese in this case.

<comment><USER5> China cares a great deal about Western politics. Their two biggest markets are the United States and Europe.

Check out the Chinese support of Hillary and Bill Clinton.

There has been a ton of illegal Chinese money all over US elections for decades. Read up on the scandals from the 1990's revolving around this, or the Chinese money that flowed to Hillary in 2008.

Obama.com is (was?) even owned by a money bundler out of China.

Or check out the Chinese hackers that targeted the Romney & Obama campaigns.

[http://www.latimes.com/la-na- donors19oct19-story.html#page=1](http://www.latimes.com/la-na- donors19oct19-story.html#page=1)

[http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/04/04/china.clin...](http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/04/04/china.clinton.money/)

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/08/the- illegal...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/08/the-illegal- donor-loophole.html)

[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/10/hillary- clin...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/10/hillary-clinton- campaign-received-funds-jeffrey-th/?page=all)

[http://www.nbcnews.com/id/4264134/ns/nbc_nightly_news_with_b...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/4264134/ns/nbc_nightly_news_with_brian_williams/t/john- kerrys-chinese-campaign-connections/#.U3Ix4Sis9kg)

[http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/06/18807056-...](http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/06/18807056-chinese- hacked-obama-mccain-campaigns-took-internal-documents-officials-say)

[http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2012/10/08/exposin...](http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2012/10/08/exposing_barack_obamas_illegal_foreign_campaign_money_loophole)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me of a story about a TOR developer who suspected her keyboard from Amazon was intercepted and implanted, because the redirection was included in the delivery log. Seems quite likely it was, in light of Glenn's latest slides release.

[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140124/10564825981/nsa- in...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140124/10564825981/nsa-interception- action-tor-developers-computer-gets-mysteriously-re-routed-to-virginia.shtml)

<comment><USER7> What is the specific smoking gun I am supposed to see there?

<comment><USER8> The Dulles area is known as a hub for US spook-agency headquarters and activities.

It's not obvious tho that this is suspicious - there's also a big airport there and it could be just a shipping facility. I guess the argument is that it is an unnecessary detour if it could have gone right to Alexandria.

I'd like to see (a) other CA shipments, say non-computer items, to Alexandria - and whether they go via Dulles and (b) a followup indicating whether Shepard found anything of interest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> no need for techcrunch spam, the original source was already submitted and discussed at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7734418](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7734418)

<comment><AUTHOR> oops, my bad. apologies everyone

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How much hardware is actually made in the USA anymore? Most HW is manufactured in Taiwan, China, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia or maybe Mexico. I used to work for a router manufacturer that manufactured all of its equipment in Taiwan and Mexico. When we shipped to someone in Europe(for example) we shipped directly from Taiwan to Europe, not through the US. So I have to wonder how much of this stuff the NSA could actually get their hands on.

The other question I have is what happens when there is an RMA, or the equipment is sent back for repair? Might someone notice that it's been tampered with? We need more specifics to really understand what was going on here. So many questions, no real answers.

<comment><USER11> Anything that's shipped from the US, basically. From the slides released with Greenwald's new book today: [https://i.imgur.com/lCM0apx.png](https://i.imgur.com/lCM0apx.png)

Here's the source, but be warned that this is a 90 MB pdf: [http://hbpub.vo.llnwd.net/o16/video/olmk/holt/greenwald/NoPl...](http://hbpub.vo.llnwd.net/o16/video/olmk/holt/greenwald/NoPlaceToHide- Documents-Uncompressed.pdf)

<comment><USER12> I get the feeling that if every router was being intercepted, that picture would look more like a giant series of assembly lines rather than three people casually sitting around a Cisco box.

<comment><USER11> Guess I should've been clearer: any equipment they're interested in that ships from the US is at risk. They don't need to go after all equipment. They only need to go after equipment being shipped to backbone providers abroad, and specific targets they are interested in that are "tough to crack."

Further, if one believes that TAO is limiting themselves to terrorists buying Cisco equipment, I have a bridge to sell you. That's absurd considering they produly boast about their economic espionage, their spying on activists such as Wikileaks supporters and other "radicals," and their partners bragging about how they DDoS IRC chat rooms of hacktivists.

One example: [http://justsecurity.org/2013/11/29/nsa-sexint-abuse-youve- wa...](http://justsecurity.org/2013/11/29/nsa-sexint-abuse-youve-waiting/)

All of this is summarized in Greenwald's new book.

<comment><USER12> I don't expect them to be limiting themselves to terrorists - they're a foreign intelligence agency. I expect them to be gathering info on foreign governments, militaries, etc. (along with spying on terrorists).

I've written about the NSA porno article before, so I'll just post the link to that thread[1]. The TLDR is that Greenwald seems to have left a good deal out of his reporting in order to both sensationalize and avoid discrediting his own argument. I haven't read his new book; maybe he addresses it in there.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6885325](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6885325)

<comment><USER11> No, but that's their justification the vast majority of the time. They don't limit it to foreign governments or militaries either. They do engage in economic espionage, fact. They do single out anyone they don't like which isn't limited to terrorists in these campaigns: "radicals", among them Wikileaks supports, fact.

Stewart Baker has discredited himself[1], his opinion is worth jack shit frankly. I wouldn't trust anything he says, not only because he was behind many of these programs as council but also because of Eben Moglen's interactions with him during the almost-prosecution of Phil Zimmerman, and suggest you do the same.

That the documents are 'sensationalized' is the favorite refuge of NSA goons: when Keith Alexander's comment about collecting it all became public, SEXINT, PRISM, etc. He talks about all of those and leaves no doubt that this characterization is horse shit after the third chapter.

[1] [http://www.skatingonstilts.com/skating-on- stilts/2014/04/hid...](http://www.skatingonstilts.com/skating-on- stilts/2014/04/hiding-in-plain-sight-evidence-that-nsa-isnt-wrecking-internet- security.html)

<comment><USER12> Wow, thanks for accusing me of being an NSA goon. For the record, I said the reporting was sensationalized, not the documents.

On the economic espionage front, I really don't care if the NSA spies in order to shape national policy. Things get a lot murkier when intelligence agencies spy and then hand off that data off to private companies. Huawei was caught red-handed using stolen source code from Cisco[1]. Cisco probably lost millions because Huawei was able to undercut them and skimp on R&D costs. Frankly, I don't want any foreign companies willing to steal trade secrets managing the same internet backbones I conduct business on, just like China probably doesn't want their internet backbones running on American equipment. If there is evidence that the NSA has been handing Huawei source code to Cisco, or any kind of data to any private organization for that matter, in order to gain a competitive advantage, then Greenwald has yet to show it.

You can consider Stewart Baker's opinion to be worth jack shit, but apparently Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallagher and Ryan Grim thought his opinion was good enough to quote extensively for the SEXINT article that they wrote. But that's not even the point - they could have been quoting Glenn Beck for all I care. The issue is that they quoted him _very_ selectively in order to not discredit their argument. That wasn't even the first time: right off the bat they omitted slides from the PRISM presentation in order to make the argument that the NSA had direct access to Google/Yahoo/Microsoft/etc.[2] I can see in the PDF file for Greenwald's book that he still extensively cites the Boundless Informant slides, despite the fact that they've been thoroughly discredited[3]. I'm honestly curious - did he mention that part in the book?

The Washington Post silently corrected their initial reporting without issuing a public statement[4][5], and as far I know Glenn Greenwald has never issued any retractions. I'm sure that there's probably plenty of interesting information in the Snowden cache, but I don't trust most of the reporting up until now.

[1] [http://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code- co...](http://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-correcting- the-record/)

[2] [https://medium.com/state-of-play/8ebc878074ce](https://medium.com/state- of-play/8ebc878074ce)

[3] [http://electrospaces.blogspot.com/search/label/BoundlessInfo...](http://electrospaces.blogspot.com/search/label/BoundlessInformant)

[4] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanhall/2013/06/07/washingt...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanhall/2013/06/07/washington- post-updates-hedges-on-initial-prism-report/)

[5] [http://www.zdnet.com/how-did-mainstream-media-get-the-nsa- pr...](http://www.zdnet.com/how-did-mainstream-media-get-the-nsa-prism-story- so-hopelessly-wrong-7000016822/)

<comment><USER11> Sorry for the wall of text, but I quoted verbatim from the book below.

>Wow, thanks for accusing me of being an NSA goon.

I didn't accuse you of being an NSA goon. Stewart is definitely one though.

> If there is evidence that the NSA has been handing Huawei source code to > Cisco, or any kind of data to any private organization for that matter, in > order to gain a competitive advantage, then Greenwald has yet to show it.

What does that have to do with anything? Why is NSA interested in "energy," "trade," and "oil" in the PRISM slides? Why is the NSA spying on "heads of international aid organizations, foreign energy companies and a European Union official involved in antitrust battles with American technology businesses." Why are they "monitor[ing] the communications of senior European Union officials, foreign leaders including African heads of state and sometimes their family members, directors of United Nations and other relief programs [such as UNICEF], and officials overseeing oil and finance ministries."

The answer is simple:

"When the United States uses the NSA to eavesdrop on the planning strategies of other countries during trade and economic talks, it can gain enormous advantage for American industry. In 2009, for example, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon wrote a letter to Keith Alexander, offering his "gratitude and congratulations for the outstanding signals intelligence support" that the State Department received regarding the Fifth Summit of the Americas, a conference devoted to negotiating economic accords. In the letter, Shannon specifically noted that the NSA's surveillance provided the United States with negotiating advantages over the other parties."

It's economic espionage no matter how you spin it. When NSA believes it's pertinent to the "national interests" of the USA, not the "national security" they'll take it.

>You can consider Stewart Baker's opinion to be worth jack shit, but apparently Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallagher and Ryan Grim thought his opinion was good enough to quote extensively for the SEXINT article that they wrote.

Two quotes shooting himself in the foot by acknowledging and defending the program is hardly extensively quoting him.

>they omitted slides from the PRISM presentation in order to make the argument that the NSA had direct access to Google/Yahoo/Microsoft/etc.

That was the Gellman and the Washington post that claimed that, without question. The Guardian article framed it as a question. Greenwald never had to issue any retractions.

And just fyi, Gellman is still sticking to the direct access accusations. And Greenwald now thinks that he's right, because analysts can query without staff intervention at Google et al.

I'll quote verbatim from the book:

The companies listed on the PRISM slide denied allowing the NSA unlimited access to their servers. Facebook and Google, for instance, claimed that they only give the NSA information for which the agency has a warrant, and tried to depict PRISM as little more than a trivial technical detail: a slightly upgraded delivery system whereby the NSA receives data in a "lockbox" that the companies are legally compelled to provide.

But their argument is belied by numerous points. For one, we know that Yahoo! vigorously fought in court against the NSA's efforts to force it to join PRISM—an unlikely effort if the program were simply a trivial change to a delivery system. (Yahoo!'s claims were rejected by the FISA court, and the company was ordered to participate in PRISM.) Second, the Washington Post's Bart Gellman, after receiving heavy criticism for "overstating" the impact of PRISM, reinvestigated the program and confirmed that he stood by the Post's central claim: "From their workstations anywhere in the world, government employees cleared for PRISM access may 'task' the system"—that is, run a search—"and receive results from an Internet company without further interaction with the company's staff."

Third, the Internet companies' denials were phrased in evasive and legalistic fashion, often obfuscating more than clarifying. For instance, Facebook claimed not to provide "direct access," while Google denied having created a "back door" for the NSA. But as Chris Soghoian, the ACLU's tech expert, told Foreign Policy, these were highly technical terms of art denoting very specific means to get at information. The companies ultimately did not deny that they had worked with the NSA to set up a system through which the agency could directly access their customers' data.

Finally, the NSA itself has repeatedly hailed PRISM for its unique collection capabilities and noted that the program has been vital for increasing surveillance. One NSA slide details PRISM's special surveillance powers. Another details the wide range of communications that PRISM enables the NSA to access. And another NSA slide details how the PRISM program has steadily and substantially increased the agency's collection. On its internal messaging boards, the Special Source Operation division frequently hails the massive collection value PRISM has provided. One message, from November 19, 2012, is entitled "PRISM Expands Impact: FY12 Metrics".

Such congratulatory proclamations do not support the notion of PRISM as only a trivial technicality, and they give the lie to Silicon Valley's denials of cooperation. Indeed, the New York Times, reporting on the PRISM program after Snowden's revelations, described a slew of secret negotiations between the NSA and Silicon Valley about providing the agency with unfettered access to the companies' systems. "When government officials came to Silicon Valley to demand easier ways for the world's largest Internet companies to turn over user data as part of a secret surveillance program, the companies bristled," reported the Times. "In the end, though, many cooperated at least a bit."

[...]

The Internet companies' claim that they hand over to the NSA just the information that they are legally required to provide is also not particularly meaningful. That's because the NSA only needs to obtain an individual warrant when it wants to specifically target a US person. No such special permission is required for the agency to obtain the communications data of any non- American on foreign soil, even when that person is communicating with Americans. Similarly, there is no check or limit on the NSA's bulk collection of metadata, thanks to the government's interpretation of the Patriot Act—an interpretation so broad that even the law's original authors were shocked to learn how it was being used.

> I can see in the PDF file for Greenwald's book that he still extensively > cites the Boundless Informant slides, despite the fact that they've been > thoroughly discredited[3]

How is that? That has nothing to do with whether the US records are correct.

<comment><USER12> > I didn't accuse you of being an NSA goon.

Sorry, I misinterpreted your tone.

> Sorry for the wall of text

No worries - I'm about to post my own. :)

> How is that? That has nothing to do with whether the US records are correct.

I have no idea how Greenwald brought up the issue of Boundless Informant in his book, I just know that I saw slides in his PDF showing the US and Poland (maybe more - I forget). In that series of articles, they seemed to make pretty clear that the program was showing where the collection came from, not where the targets were. So, for example, the numbers from Norway represented communications collected "to support Norwegian military operations in conflict areas abroad, or connected to the fight against terrorism, also abroad". Same with Germany, France, Spain and Italy (I'm probably missing some). When it comes to the US numbers, I don't see that it's that big of a leap to take the same statement that the Norwegian intelligence service made, and replace all instances of "Norway" with "US".

> That was the Gellman and the Washington post that claimed that, without > question. The Guardian article framed it as a question. Greenwald never had > to issue any retractions.

From the article published in The Guardian[1]:

 _The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian._

...

 _With this program, the NSA is able to reach directly into the servers of the participating companies and obtain both stored communications as well as perform real-time collection on targeted users._

With regards to the provider's denials, I don't see anything evasive about them:

Google: _" I'm not sure what the details of this PRISM program are, but I can tell you that the only way in which Google reveals information about users are when we receive lawful, specific orders about individuals -- things like search warrants. And we continue to stand firm against any attempts to do so broadly or without genuine, individualized suspicion, and publicize the results as much as possible in our Transparency Report. Having seen much of the internals of how we do this, I can tell you that it is a point of pride, both for the company and for many of us, personally, that we stand up to governments that demand people's information."_ [2]

Microsoft: _" We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data we don't participate in it."_ [3]

Facebook: _" Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers. We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received. And if we did, we would fight it aggressively. We hadn't even heard of PRISM before yesterday. When governments ask Facebook for data, we review each request carefully to make sure they always follow the correct processes and all applicable laws, and then only provide the information if is required by law. We will continue fighting aggressively to keep your information safe and secure."_[4]

AOL: _" We do not have any knowledge of the Prism program. We do not disclose user information to government agencies without a court order, subpoena or formal legal process, nor do we provide any government agency with access to our servers."_ [5]

Every one of them is very clear: the NSA needs a court order to get user's data, and they have only complied with orders for specific users.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech- giants-...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa- data)

[2] [https://plus.google.com/u/0/+YonatanZunger/posts/huwQsphBron](https://plus.google.com/u/0/+YonatanZunger/posts/huwQsphBron)

[3] [http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/news/press/2013/jun13/06-06st...](http://www.microsoft.com/en- us/news/press/2013/jun13/06-06statement.aspx)

[4] [https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10100828955847631](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10100828955847631)

[5] [http://blog.aol.com/2013/06/07/aol-statement-regarding- nsa-p...](http://blog.aol.com/2013/06/07/aol-statement-regarding-nsa-prism/)

EDIT: Fixed formatting

<comment><USER11> The two statements from The Guardian are referencing the documents themselves. If you want to talk about out of context, you missed the headline and the multiple paragraphs framing it as a question of what the providers say versus what the NSA documents say.

"Direct access," these are the NSA's own words. The Guardian ran the providers statements versus what the NSA documents said. That's a fact. That's why there are no retractions in The Guardian's story, and as Soghoian says they don't actually deny "direct access" in those statements, legally. What's likely is that the companies allow them to run informal searches to narrow the data down.

As for the "court order," they're just talking about a FISA court order which only "allows the data to be queried when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization," which they readily ignore, and it's more like a general warrant because NSA relies on self-reporting. As Snowden indicated, and LOVEINT showed, analysts can just use bullshit justifications and cover it up. And if they targetted a U.S. citizen, according to their own documents, it's "not a big deal."

<comment><USER12> Yes - they denied it... because it was false. "Direct access" is not the NSA's own words, they were The Guardian's/The Washington Post's words. The slides themselves say "Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. service providers...", which we later found out means "provided under court order directly from the providers". The Guardian article goes on to say:

 _" When the FAA was first enacted, defenders of the statute argued that a significant check on abuse would be the NSA's inability to obtain electronic communications without the consent of the telecom and internet companies that control the data. But the Prism program renders that consent unnecessary, as it allows the agency to directly and unilaterally seize the communications off the companies' servers."_

That is a blatant lie. The companies receive court orders - they have the ability to challenge the court order in the same way that they would challenge a subpoena or search warrant by going back to the court. If the FISA court doesn't agree, there's still a higher court to appeal to. There has yet to be a retraction of The Guardian's statement.

> As for the "court order," they're just talking about a FISA court order > which only "allows the data to be queried when there is a reasonable > suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query > is associated with a foreign terrorist organization,"

You're mixing up programs now. That quote comes from an ODNI statement[1] about the FISA Section 215 metadata collection (I'm not going into that one now - that's a whole different mess, and IMHO that program is rightly controversial). The PRISM slides repeatedly indicate that this collection under FISA Section 702, which gathers content and which has a whole different set of legal requirements. Most prominently, people collected on under 702 must be reasonably believed to be outside the US and not an American citizen/green card holder/etc. The Snowden trove has yet to show any general warrant style orders related to PRISM.

I think the LOVEINT example actually works in favor of my argument - there was a small group people doing illegal stuff at NSA; they got caught; as a result, they don't work there anymore. You could go on to ask why the DOJ didn't prosecute, and I wouldn't fault you for questioning - I don't know the answer to that one. But citing LOVEINT to justify limiting the NSA's capabilities is kind of like saying "this cop fired his weapon and killed an innocent civilian, so we need to disarm the entire police force."

[1] [http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press- releases/191-pre...](http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press- releases/191-press-releases-2013/868-dni-statement-on-recent-unauthorized- disclosures-of-classified-information)

<comment><USER11> You're right, partly. Either way, NSA ha(d|s) direct access to Yahoo and Google's internal networks with MUSCULAR and various other WINDSTOP programs that have collected many more records than MUSCULAR, without requiring warrants _whatsoever_. Arguing over why The Guardian didn't retract is just splitting hairs at this point, because they did include the slide that claimed "direct collection from the servers." Then there's also UPSTREAM. PRISM is hardly the smoking gun in these long chain of events. And again you're right, I did mix up the 215 blurb.

Nice chat.

<comment><USER12> > Nice chat.

At least we can agree on that. Thanks for the chat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So is it safe to assume every Intel or AMD CPU also likely has hidden capabilities waiting to be exploited by the NSA?

<comment><USER14> What are the hidden router capabilities being exploited here? What piece of COTS hardware couldn't be exploited by an attacker with unlimited physical access to it prior to delivery?

<comment> wes-exp Indeed. Somehow a story about NSA tampering with devices _after manufacture_ is being twisted into "all commercial products are deliberately backdoored". If you actually use logic, these are separate issues.

Actually, if anything, the story is proof that the routers are not backdoored from the start, otherwise why would they have to intercept shipments?

<comment><USER15> _Actually, if anything, the story is proof that the routers are not backdoored from the start_

Let me preface my response by saying I think there are probably more non- malicious (accidental) vulnerabilities than intentional backdoors.

Schneier has seen many of the original documents, and his constant refrain is that NSA programs are robust -- that they have multiple totally unrelated ways to accomplish any one goal. Quoting one of his articles:

"First and foremost, the surveillance state is robust. It is robust politically, legally, and technically. I can name three different NSA programs to collect Gmail user data. These programs are based on three different technical eavesdropping capabilities. They rely on three different legal authorities. They involve collaborations with three different companies. And this is just Gmail. The same is true for cell phone call records, Internet chats, cell-phone location data."

[https://www.schneier.com/essay-469.html](https://www.schneier.com/essay-469.html)

The takeaway is that, knowing the NSA has capability _A_ doesn't prove they lack capabilities B, C, D...Z.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How can we protect ourselves from this type of interception? It seems impossible. Why would any non-american customers buy US made devices? Any protections that are added can/will be bypassed if the US gov gets physical access (or even remote).

<comment><USER8> Just about the time of the previous revelation of computers from outside the US being intercepted by TLAs, my new Lenovo was delayed for a long time in some customs facility (according to UPS tracking).

Software is not a concern as I blew away the preinstalled and put a relatively trusted OS on. But hardware - I haven't had time to look into it but I'm still wanting some sort of guide on what to look for after unscrewing the case.

<comment><USER16> The scary part is that blowing away the OS install won't save you completely. There are BIOS, firmware attacks, to name a couple. Take a look at the following link with information about persistent root access via hard drive firmware hacking. Even if you reinstall the OS, your box will continue to be owned:

[http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack&page=1](http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack&page=1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wish they posted more details surrounding the implants, what they can do, and how they work. Knowing this would help us detect when devices were compromised.

</comment><comment><USER17> A dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7734418](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7734418).

</comment><comment><USER18> Hrm, guess I wont buy American any more.

<comment><USER19> "Do you mean a car designed in the US and built in China, or a Japanese car built in Ohio?" I'm pretty sure that given how few choices of mainstream hardware there are you are screwed no matter what you buy.

<comment><USER18> Oh certainly, I'm not saying I'm there's a need to be a fanatical purist and go through component that goes into my equipment.

I'll just stop purchasing the bulk from US supplies and subsidiaries it's not like there aren't alternative suppliers with good prices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can HN please stop censoring/penalizing NSA stories? Getting flagged is one thing, but I believe they are also penalized by the site.</comment>


The agricultural revolution that wasn't - <AUTHOR> http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-agricultural-revolution-that-wasnt.html <comment><USER3> And...three posts down on the author's homepage we get to race and IQ, then a little further down a cross-post deal with Unz Review. HBD-curious at best. I take his musings on Austronesians with a consequent grain of salt.

I think the key is here:

"The Austronesian advantage seems to have been threefold: (1) a more flexible and innovative approach; (2) a less present-oriented time orientation that extended further into the past and the future; and (3) a less individualistic approach to life that made collective goods and goals more possible."

First of all, these three traits are even less in evidence from the archaeological record than the alleged farming practices he is criticizing. Flexible and innovative is basically meaningless. The second one ("present- oriented") in particular is a staple of Austrian-economics-type diatribes against the poor (especially black poor), so it is likely to be a back- projection of present day arguments rather than a genuine window on the past.

But anyway, none of the three points are given any significant support - <USER2> a short handwaving paragraph each.

"Couldn't have been agriculture" \- I can go along with that - "must have been racial superiority of this particular type" EDIT: those are my paraphrases, not direct quotes - that is a step too far. It's too far not so much because arguing racial superiority is wrong (although it is) but because the evidence adduced is flimsy and does not support it.

<comment><USER4> _" must have been racial superiority of this particular type"_

The article does not contain that phrase. Please don't use quotation marks on HN when you are not quoting.

It's particularly bad to put words in someone else's mouth when the words are so inflammatory.

<comment><USER5> I think it's pretty clear from context that it was a paraphrase, especially since the phrase "must have been X of this particular type" is clearly a template phrase. It's a fairly common English construction; "oh won't someone please think of the children" in quotes as a response to an article doesn't imply that the article linked actually contains that phrase.

However at least the comments here are no stupider than the HN norm, when it comes to non-programming scientific topics. The frontpage right now contains two pseudoscientific bullshit stories: something from The Atlantic about "Toxins That Threaten Our Brains" (that's a verbatim quote), and this run-of- the-mill evo-psych bullshit.

<comment><USER3> I think it's a legit point. If I had to do it again I would have used italics.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The media in Singapore: Zip It - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21655044-feisty-bloggers-face-trouble-zip-it <comment><USER2> Quite the neutral title. We now understand your disdain for Singapore. The punishment is definitely harsh.

It is well-known that Singapore has quite the dictatorial side to it, but it is a fantastic country when you look at where it was only 40 years ago. A country with the total area of a city with absolutely no natural resources, no official language, and a large variety of ethnicities i.e. not homogenous like say SK. It took a lot of sacrifice to get it where it is today.

<comment><USER3> >no natural resources

The port was considerably more valuable than any natural resources they could have had, and was tapped as the 'seed capital' used to build the country.

Without it, they probably would still be as poor as they were in 1950.

The 'we built this with nothing but our bare hands' canard is useful, though, for domestic propaganda.

>It took a lot of sacrifice to get it where it is today.

It mainly just took sensible economic planning and a willingness to share the wealth on the part of the leadership from the 1960s onward.

The economic planning part - currency suppression via the purchase of US treasuries, investment in education and subsidies of key industries has been played out by other Asian tigers - Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and China.

The interesting part is where the willingness to share the wealth came from in the 60s.

In the 50s and 60s there was a sense of threat verging on outright panic among the country's elite about certain domestic political opponents. A threat which, not coincidentally, the elite of the United States _also_ felt very strongly in the 1950s-60s from similar domestic opponents.

<comment><USER4> 'we built this with nothing but our bare hands' is more than just propaganda. sure, they had a sea port, but looking at what they have done is amazing. many countries have some advantage, but most do not use them properly. Malaysia is a bridge crossing away with just as much sea access and ample amounts of oil and other natural resources, yet I do not believe they have accomplished what singapore has done.

taiwan, south korea, china, and japan are bad examples to compare to singapore, though Japan in the meiji restoration was at least somewhat comparable except that all of the countries you mentioned relied on heavy industry to get to where they were, where as singapore had no land for such heavy investment in industry - let alone the materials.

singapore had to make a long series of specific-successful long term investments which played out very well, and that had little to do with wealth sharing. one of the things that made everything play out so well is the singaporean's culture of kiasu - afraid to lose. singaporeans are very determined and trying to get ahead rather than sharing wealth.

it was always easy for singapore to guide the ship with everyone in the same direction because people obeyed so much to economic incentives. the only thing it really failed at was getting singaporeans to have kids recently.

<comment><USER3> >'we built this with nothing but our bare hands' is more than just propaganda.

It really isn't. The port gave the city a much greater head-start than PAP have ever given it credit for.

This intentional misdirection is used to give credence to the idea that it was Lee Kuan Yew's genius and the sweat and tears of ordinary Singaporeans that grew the country out of nothing.

Which isn't to say that the country wasn't reasonably well run. It's just saying that it just wasn't sheer genius or some kind of cultural superiority that pulled them out of poverty. The truth is much more mundane than that.

<comment><USER4> if your statements were true, why is it that the country was in such a terrible position come 1960s? the port is much older then that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For background on the Amos Yee case and to put things in perspective:

\- The laws against insulting religions are part of a wider system to allow for smooth integration in a region that has known genocide and riots as the traditional means of resolving racial and religious differences. They have been relatively successful in my experience, especially compared to some neighbours who have overtly racist government policies; amongst other things, Singapore has not known a race riot since the 1960s.

\- The laws against obscenity are a holdover from the British period which (like 377A, which is almost never enforced today - edit, seems Section 377 was repealed in 2007 according to Singapore Law Watch, as per link below! I never heard of this before) will probably gradually disappear as the country becomes a little less socially conservative and people stop putting pressure on their representative not to strike them off (as happened in the USA, where it took until 2015 for gay marriage to become legal).

Both were, nevertheless, the law, and he broke both repeatedly, including breaking bail. This is kind of like being a Colorado resident (where weed is legal afaik) and bringing a large bag of legally bought weed over to any number of particularly harsh penalty countries (Singapore included), then complaining when you're put in jail or even on death row due to local law, arguing that weed is a victimless crime and the punishment is disproportionate. Also worth noting that it was his own mother who first brought him to the Institute of Mental Health, not the authorities, but this is of course not mentioned by the Economist which is happy to resume the long standing feud it has with Singaporean authorities by diluting the quality of its usually high journalistic standards.

The charge against insulting LKY has been deferred to a later trial once the other two charges have been resolved. I suspect it was put on because the nation was grieving and the insult was particularly badly timed. Remember about a quarter of the population turned up for the funeral (and I lonely expat here for three years also did), because most have seen the country literally go "from third world to first" in the space of a couple generations. It is impossible for foreigners - particularly those whose country's independence and economic success is centuries old, or whose founders did not have quite the same results - to understand the esteem (and frankly, love) in which LKY is held locally. I would reserve judgement until the court decision.

Further reading: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Yee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Yee) appears quite detailed and well written. Some background on Section 292: [http://www.singaporelawwatch.sg/slw/attachments/64631/Penal%...](http://www.singaporelawwatch.sg/slw/attachments/64631/Penal%20Code%20s%20292rev.pdf)

I'm not taking sides, frankly I couldn't care less about the case. But wanted to add some perspective before the sharks circle. By the way, congratulations on the first HN Singapore thread that does not mention chewing gum!

<comment><USER6> >The laws against insulting religions are part of a wider system to allow for smooth integration in a region that has known genocide and riots as the traditional means of resolving racial and religious differences.

It has more to do with controlling public discourse than ensuring racial harmony. Despite Singapore's best efforts to forcibly integrate immigrants (i.e. racial quotas on public housing blocks) Sg has a race problem. They had their first race riot since the 60s last year. It was incited by a Chinese truck driver injuring an Indian laborer in the relatively impoverished Indian district of the city. The coverage from the Strait Times might be interesting to you: [http://www.straitstimes.com/little-india- riot](http://www.straitstimes.com/little-india-riot)

>Both were, nevertheless, the law, and he broke both repeatedly, including breaking bail. No one is disputing whether Amos broke the law. It's more of a question of whether the laws are intended to keep people safe or control public opinion. Everyone knows about the libel prosecution of political threats, but the PAP's crusade of information control goes far beyond that. Protests are essentially illegal. Dissent is illegal. When I studied at NUS for a semester, I was forced to sign a waiver going through customs that stated, along with many other conditions, that I wouldn't criticize the government in any way, online or off. Singapore is an extremely thoroughly policed country, and riots are just not an acceptable excuse for draconian policy.

>By the way, congratulations on the first HN Singapore thread that does not mention chewing gum! inb4 someone excuses the human rights violations by fawning over how excellent their metro system is. weev went into my Twitter mentions to do this once.

<comment><USER5> This is not at all how I understood the riots. Roughly: a bus driver arrived in an area where people were partying in the street, and refused to let in a very intoxicated fellow. This fellow somehow ended up in front of the bus (I think he decided to lie there) and got run over by the driver (I doubt intentionally). As is customary in the country of origin of said partying folks, the crowd got angry and "defended" its own. Within two hours, the police had restored peace.

After examining the situation, the government decided to make street drinking illegal in the area during the hours where further flash mobs were likely, and restricted alcohol sales island-wide during night hours (10.30pm - 7.30am).

Now, the suspects happened to be one race and the driver another, but people weren't protesting for racial reasons, it was a drunk crowd flashing up after it got sparked that happened to be mostly from a couple countries.

This is in stark contrast to, say, the 1964 race riots and similar riots around the region at that time against the Straits Chinese in Indonesia and Malaysia, or more recently, Ferguson in the US, which were explicitly about race. I suspect that the context of the Singapore riots was then lost on journalists who couldn't resist fitting them into their more common narrative of race or class based protest.

<comment><USER6> >As is customary in the country of origin of said partying folks, the crowd got angry and "defended" its own. So the reaction to the accident was motivated at least to some degree by race. I agree that it wasn't an example of race on race violence, and I don't think it was widely interpreted as such. Though I'll admit I'm not informed on the specifics of how it started, it certainly was nothing comparable to the riots that happened before Singapore was undeveloped.

The riot isn't important in the context of the Amos Yee story except as an example of an event where Singapore was portrayed in a negative light in int'l press. The first instance of public violence in the nation for over 40 years made a great headline.

I wasn't posting that article for the coverage of that event so much as to show how journalism in Sg. The Strait Times will literally never publish anything remotely critical of the dominant political coalition.

<comment><USER5> No, it was not motivated by race. Around 9% of Singaporean citizen are Singaporean Indian and 58% of those are Tamil (I attended two weddings in the last 3 years where one of the couple was Tamil) - the same as the non- Singaporeans involved in the riot. There have already been two Singaporean Indian presidents (Devan Nair and S. R. Nathan, the latter the longest-serving in Singaporean history).

It's hard to find a parallel with any Western country, because no Western country has as free an immigration policy for low income workers as Singapore does (the US has a large illegal immigrant population to meet demand, but the dynamics of that are very different) - around 12% of residents are on Work Permits (i.e. construction workers or domestic help) [1].

The Straits Time did not publish the event as a race-motivated riot because it wasn't - it was more about a bunch of drunk angry people burning a few cars - and that it wasn't was immediately obvious to the readers of the Straits Time (which include many non-Singaporeans; not to mention the ST has had its own feuds with the Singaporean government).

[1] [http://population.sg/resources/population- composition/](http://population.sg/resources/population-composition/)

<comment><USER6> >No, it was not motivated by race. You mentioned in your previous comment that it was a "customary" reaction to the accident. I'm no expert on the culture, but I'd assume that public drinking is a great deal more socially acceptable in South India.

Singapore is lucky enough to be close to a tremendous supply of inexpensive human capital - even more so than the US/Mexico. Their immigration policy allows low-paying marine/construction jobs to be filled quickly, but workers' rights are essentially nonexistent.

Those 12% of foreign workers are almost all guaranteed to be earning enough to support themselves and their families back home - and that's without the benefit of a minimum wage or membership in an effective union. This sort of public policy may attract foreign investment, but it's unfair to the workers that have made Sg rich and it's unlike anything seen in the rest of the developed world.

>not to mention the ST has had its own feuds with the Singaporean government Are you referring to the long-standing tradition of the PAP suing print journalists for libel?

I was browsing the front page of their site after I looked up coverage of the riots. The biggest story currently is about a marine trade union leader and MP resigning in disgrace after embezzling funds. Nowhere in the story does it mention his involvement in the PAP. There's a reason they have the worst press freedom rating of developed countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It will get worse for people given they are a top surveillance state that's deployed NSA-inspired tech widely. The people I know over there work hard to maintain a semblance of privacy to share their views. It's still not as bad as a lot of places, though. One of the things strengthening the government's power in these cases is that they tell me Singaporean culture embraces government as a caretaker of sorts. Comes with good and bad.

Most are more likely to be hurt by employers that exploit the heck out of them. I commonly hear about people working long shifts for next to no pay with overtime expected. Labor violations go overlooked by authorities too often. Kind of like the American situation pre-regulations and lawsuits. Hope their situation gets a bit better overtime as it did in some countries.

</comment><comment><USER8> >The media in Signapore: Zip It

Typo in title: should be Singapore.

<comment><USER9> Thanks, fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What a show of recalcitrance. You could probably bring up this issue in conversation and use it as a free speech litmus test. I am reminded of this comment [[http://lesswrong.com/lw/kat/the_benefits_of_closedmindedness...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/kat/the_benefits_of_closedmindedness/ayqg)]:

2-26% of Americans thinks gay people should not be allowed to speak

3-36% of Americans think that atheists like me (& 79.2% of LW) are better seen than heard

7-49% think militarists should shut up

16-48% of Americans disagree with free speech for racists

16-75% claim Muslims should not be permitted to preach against America

<comment><USER11> Surely those aren't confidence intervals coming from a place like lesswrong.

(also "16-75%"? Seriously?)

<comment><USER12> The data comes from a blog on Discover[1], which is itself an analysis of the data from the General Social Survey[2].

The 16-75 is because the blog author groups the answers based on the score in the Wordsum test by the responder. People with higher scores are less keen on censoring others.

[1] [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/09/intelligence-...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/09/intelligence- challenged-people-and-free-speech/)

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh, I thought maybe an underground press distributing encrypted archives was growing in Singapore.</comment>


Secure Your Application Guide - <AUTHOR> http://www.rubytreesoftware.com/courses/secure-your-application

<comment><USER2> Really? Praise from two accounts with 1 karma point, one of which has been created at the same time the post has been submitted? For a guide that is sent over email?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am definitely new to HN. A friend suggested I share my 7-part guide here. So, here I am :)

<comment><USER2> I wasn't talking about your account, but about the other two that commented, they looked a bit fishy :)

Anyway, welcome to HN. I don't comment much, but I've been here for a while. And thanks for your contribution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Some great stuff here. I learned a lot with this guide!

</comment><comment><USER4> Great. this tool is very useful</comment>


The Time Has Come To Regulate Search Engine Marketing And SEO  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/13/the-time-has-come-to-regulate-search-engine-marketing-and-seo/ <comment><USER2> Government regulation of search? So now we have a _right_ to be included in the top of search results? Whenever someone says that "free trade has broken down" you know what they really mean is "I want to use the government to my advantage because I can't compete in the market."

<comment><USER3> Also, regulations tend to lock-in the current market structure.

The article ignores that Google has a robust new competitor, Bing (as well as other new specialized options like Wolfram) and "search" itself is evolving in social forms like Twitter and Facebook.

Innovators, as usual, are already working on solutions to today's perceived problems.

<comment><USER4> _Also, regulations tend to lock-in the current market structure._

From the article: The anonymous author is an executive at one of the largest sites on the internet.

Why wouldn't he want to lock in market conditions?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Of all the nonsense that I've heard about government regulation this has to be the #1 in a long long time.

If a search engine gets enough traction with the general public then there will be people who will try to game the system. This will cause two things to happen, the engines being gamed will adapt and those that don't will be replaced by something better.

It's an arms race, and no amount of 'regulation' is going to curb it.

You might as well try to outlaw evolution. (I'm sure it's been tried though...)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you read his opening analogy without thinking it was a reference to SEO, you might assume it was about, say, books. I suspect that it's easier to get a web page read than a book distributed (if the author of the essay would like, we can have a race -- I will create a page and see if I can get it visited by a major search engine faster than he can get a book sold at a major chain).

Maybe Google isn't doing a good job. Maybe SEOs (like me) are manipulating search results in a way that's harmful to consumers. But in a capitalist economy, the way you say "That could be done better" is to, well, do it better. Or find someone who does it better, and use them instead of Google.

<comment><USER7> Of course there are harmful SEOs, ones who play the system with malicious intent. However consider that there are malicious marketers, malicious politicians, and malicious forms of every other occupation. The government does not regulate [all of] these.

At some point the government has to let the people govern themselves rather than coddling and protecting them from themselves. Protecting from themselves leads to an unhealthy government / citizen relationship.

[Edited to clarify text, added text in []s]

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So search is broken and the solution is to bring our government into it to monitor and regulate it? What about foreign based search engines?

This is bad all around.

<comment><USER8> > What about foreign based search engines?

Tariffs. Especially if they do not respect our labour and/or environmental protection laws.

<comment><USER7> I do not want to seem snarky, but I can't tell if this is a joke or not. If not, can you elaborate on what you mean? Would the government tariff foreign search engines on a per search basis?

<comment><USER8> A joke. But too close to reality to be comfortable, I guess.

<comment><USER7> Ah good. I was 75% sure it was a joke, but thought I would double check. And indeed, the fact that some of us weren't sure shows that it is something that we could see the US government doing. _Very sad._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author is an executive at a private company and has anonymously written an article calling for transparency, disclosure and government regulation in the online search industry. This is utter garbage.

</comment><comment> old-gregg His analogies portraying search engines as "borders" or "gates" are ridiculous. Without search engines most of his "streets" or "islands" of content won't ever be discovered by users. Pre-google Internet was small, categorized and somewhat boring. Search engines don't create borders or gates, they're expanding the "continents".

Moreover, I find google search results to be extremely accurate. Yes, some of our competitors are ranked higher than us in organic search results. That's because they've been around longer, their products have more reviews on independent blogs and they have more existing users. Yes, as a user searching for "XYZ" more often than not I mean to find the most popular "XYZ" at the moment, not the most innovative startup that's trying to displace "XYZ".

What I don't like is Google's adwords system. If something's broken, you're fucked and there is no customer service or an explanation what happened. It's like me coming back home to find out that my landlord changed the locks and won't pick up a phone number so I won't even be able to get my shit out of the apartment. Yes, it's illegal for landlords to do that but GOOG can.

<comment><USER4> Google Adwords has kick ass customer service if you just have to know where to find it (admittedly not a trivial undertaking).

1(866)2-GOOGLE (US Only)

More than once I've spent days going rounds with some sort of sophisticated responder bot (or maybe it was an Indian, I honestly couldn't tell) on a problem that was solved in minutes by calling that number. Now, I just call first and skip the email support. I've never been on hold for longer than a minute or two.

I hope this helps you in the future.

Love,

An SEM Account Manager in Kansas City

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am not sure how regulation is really going to help anyone except the black hat SEOs. If anything it will just make things worse by slowing down the ability of google to respond to black hat SEO and creating a more bureaucratic form of whose hand do I grease to get on the first page. I am not sure the author really grasps the scale that they are playing, or maybe he is sick of playing on that scale.

The author states that the only the large players can afford to reverse engineer googles current ranking algorithm.

However I don't see how forcing them to publish the exact algorithms would create any meaningful change for the "better". The big players will still game the system if anything they will be more successful as they will be able to move resources from reverse engineering to exploiting, and will have a larger time frame where an approach is viable due to red tape.

The little guys will probably be just as bad off with roughly the same rule of thumbs they have today.

</comment><comment><USER10> The Time Has Come To Regulate Techcrunch

</comment><comment><USER11> SEO people can be good-but they really need to stop the whining. Google doesn't owe anything to them-you don't hear Adware people for the PC complaining to MS that they need to reveal all the internals of the OS so they can better design nasty software do you?

<comment><USER5> I've long ago given up on google as a major source of traffic for anything that I sell and I think that if that is your main strategy you are stringing yourself up.

Just imagine, a 'regular' store that would depend on all it's business coming from a single source referring customers. It can switch at will to send that traffic to a competitor of yours, and your only guess as to why you are getting this traffic is a bunch of coffee-grind staring individuals that claim to have 'the inside track'.

If you have lots of google traffic because you have a premier listing in their rankings then good for you and now work like the devil to get rid of that dependency so that when - not if - the situation changes you are in control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _That said, the primary methodology for all users to reach any individual website destination is still search, of either paid or organic listings._

I don't know about that. I've had around 10.000 visitors to my blog in the last few days. No paid search, and around 10 referrers from Google search. The rest from social news sites, twitter, bookmark sites and other places that have nothing to do with Google.

<comment><USER5> That's a healthy traffic balance. Contrast that with sites that depend for 90% or more on google for their income.

<comment><USER12> It's a spike, I'm not sure that was implicit in the post. I only get that kind of traffic when I get myself together and actually post something, which isn't that often.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The argument is flawed since Google derives its indexes from the links contained within content itself. To use their metaphor: "Imagine if you went to Los Angeles and the easiest restaurants to find were were those most recommended by the the owners of the other places"

</comment><comment><USER14> All essential infrastructure on the net, like domain name servers, should be regulated. Since search engines is becoming and essential part of the infrastructure, it should be regulated too.

The European Union has sponsored a search engine project for some years now. I would rather trust them than a private search engine company.

<comment><USER15> > The European Union has sponsored a search engine project for some years now. > I would rather trust them than a private search engine company.

Is there someone stopping you from using said search engine? If not, your complaint is not that you can't use it but that someone else isn't forced to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hey, let's regulate "e-mail marketing" while we're at it. Pfft. Whatever.

</comment><comment><USER17> Isn't search is becoming mature? And once that happens, will it be any different than the Yellow Pages? Won't most of the talent exit the marketplace and then it leave it to the bureaucrats and such?

<comment><USER18> Search was a "solved problem" before Google.

I doubt that something as basic as finding things on the web will lose all its innovators.</comment></comment>