Instagram's official response - <AUTHOR> http://blog.instagram.com/post/38252135408/thank-you-and-were-listening <comment><USER2> I find this thread really fascinating. I have a hard time imagining a more better apology from Instagram. They accept responsibility, there isn't a trace of hostility towards any of the people who 'misinterpreted' their terms, they are upfront about needing to make money, and they communicate (or attempt to) that they were never in favor of any of those kind of downright villainous things it seemed like they were in favor of. If anyone in the masses of angry Instagram users could be appeased by words, this is probably about as good as you could do at appeasing them.

However, judging from the responses here, a lot of Instagram users are unappeasable, and I don't think unreasonably. Their motives are basically unknowable by anyone not in their inner circle, so all we have to go on is their actions and their words. If your internal heuristics say that when it looks like a social media company is trying to steal your personal data/intellectual property, they probably are and will then lie about it after the fact... well, that seems like a reasonable heuristic to have this day and age. I'm not sure I buy into it unreservedly, but I wouldn't try to convince anyone they're wrong about it, either.

This whole event shows me (or at least, reminds me) that there are limits to what words can fix.

<comment><USER3> "To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos."

Weasel words. What's so hard about saying "we _wont_ sell your photos, promise, fingers crossed", unless they actually do want to keep that option open.

I imagine a rock solid guarantee that users photos wont be used without their consent would go a very long way in appeasing people.

"If your internal heuristics say..."

No, when the _company TOS say_ they will appropriate _my_ property for their financial benefit, it is reasonable to assume that they may in fact act accordingly.

The right words can and do go a long way in rectifying mistakes. Weasel words that create even more uncertainty and appear to be hiding an agenda tend to infuriate people.

<comment><USER4> I respectfully disagree.

I've been involved in writing Terms of Service for a few big web sites. The back and forth with the lawyers is of course frustrating. And at the end of the day, you have something that comes off overly broad just to "cover everyones asses" from some future theoretical lawsuit.

So even though the TOS allows it, it was not their intention to actually do it. They're going to go back and revise the wording to be what they actually do intend.

Great apology.

I am always on the lookout for weasel words too, don't get me wrong. The "I am sorry that anyone was offended" apology always rubs me the wrong way, cause the person saying that is not sorry for saying it and doesn't regret saying it, but just sorry for offending. But this apology comes off to me as genuine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Take it with a grain of salt. They tried to sneak this by and it blew up in their faces.

While under oath, Kevin Systrom: "No, we never received any offers,"

Reality, Instagram had an offer from Twitter and Kevin Systrom had direct knowledge.

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/disruptions- instagr...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/disruptions-instagram- testimony-doesnt-add-up-2/)

That said, at least it looks like they're going to tweak the TOS change in favor of their users. But with Facebook pulling the reigns, we all know where this will end.

<comment><USER6> Oh for crying out loud, they did not try to "sneak this by".

Stop trying to cast a simple snafu regarding a ToS as some evil conspiracy.

Remember that the people running this company are you _peers_. It's disgusting watching the community salivating over burning them all at the stake today.

They're your friends, or just like your friends. Knock it off.

<comment><USER7> I disagree. This was a carefully worded response. Notice "commit to you that we will be doing more to answer your questions, fix any mistakes, and eliminate the confusion. As we review your feedback and stories in the press, we're going to modify specific parts of the terms to make it more clear what will happen with your photos." They expected this.

It's a classic move from the Facebook playbook. Push out a far-reaching privacy policy or feature update. Release a message or press release saying that "we're listening". Make token changes and say "we've listened and made changes". And just in case people start to sue, vigorously lobby and donate to government officials to keep the regulatory heat off their backs.

They are trying to get away with as much as they can. These stupid companies are going to be the reason why 10 years from now the Internet is going to be a morass of government regulation.

Don't work for or support companies that act like this. Shame on them. Period.

I wouldn't be surprised if at some point soon you won't be able to register a domain name or start an Internet company without taking a licensing exam.

<comment><USER8> >I wouldn't be surprised if at some point soon you won't be able to register a domain name ... without taking a licensing exam.

Who would impose such a requirement of licensure? Certainly not the government --- that would be a _prior restraint_ on freedom of speech/press and therefore unconstitutional.

<comment><USER9> Well, they would first impose it and then somebody sues them and it starts bouncing around various courts for the next 5 years. It would take some serious time until there would be a final ruling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's something I can't quite put my finger on, that makes this response seem a bit forced and insincere.

"Legal documents are easy to misinterpret. So I'd like to address specific concerns we've heard from everyone"

My understanding is that legal documents are written precisely to be as hard to misinterpret as possible. They say exactly what they mean, and (subject to possible judicial interpretation) mean exactly what they say.

I'm sure the average layperson might misunderstand or not realise the consequences or scope of a particular term, but as I understand it, the original concerns appear to have been raised by an EFF lawyer[1] who presumably does have a reasonable grasp of the matter.

That sets the tone for the piece.

"Instead it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing. To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos."

We are selling a package. Which might include some photos and some other advertising or whatever services, juicy user data, etc, but we're definitely not selling the photos. Only the package thing.

"Ownership Rights: Instagram users own their content and Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over your photos."

My understanding is that this is irrelevant to everything except maybe attribution; they're granting themselves sufficient rights to transfer & sub- licence the works, which is essentially everything necessary to sell/use/licence a copy. In fact, the existence of a perpetual royalty-free transferable/re-licenceable licence will significantly devalue the content, if the actual owner wanted to sell or exclusively licence the content.

Maybe I'm reading it wrong. But it definitely feels like the Non-Apology- Apology "We're truly sorry that you feel upset about how we're trying to shaft you good & hard."

[1] mentioned in [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57559710-38/instagram- says...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57559710-38/instagram-says-it-now- has-the-right-to-sell-your-photos/) as Kurt Opsahl[2]

[2] <https://www.eff.org/about/staff/kurt-opsahl>

<comment><USER11> > legal documents are written precisely to be as hard to misinterpret as > possible

legal documents reuse diction that has been ruled on and has court established precedent, which creates a bias towards diction which ended up in court in the first place.

i read that in a HN comment somewhere, sorry, no citation.

<comment><USER10> That's a very interesting "survival of the most litigated" sort of evolution. I wonder how much of a given document is unnecessary evolutionary baggage copy & pasted because it's part of That Standard Clause. I'd love to read more if you happen to recall the comment/story

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are several variations of "Our real intention is....", "we are aiming for...." in this post. Instagram users really need to realize that "Actual TOS agreement" trumps a thousand "our real intention...." blog posts.

Plus as other posters have pointed out there are some pretty clear giveaways in the Phrasing of some of the denials. In the very first paragraph is " Since making these changes, we've heard loud and clear that many users are confused and upset about what the changes mean...." Basically saying that our changes were not bad it is the users that are confused.

If you have not already --- ABANDON SHIP

<comment><USER13> Abandoned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't think Instagram/Systrom had any intention to sell user photos or do anything as drastic as the blogosphere made its TOS changes sound.

It did the right thing responding so quickly to user feedback. Hopefully it'll result in a TOS that lets Instagram monetize without infringing on the privacy of its users.

<comment><USER5> > Hopefully it'll result in a TOS that lets Instagram monetize without > infringing on the privacy of its users.

And maybe just maybe they will review further TOS changes before unleashing them. If these terms were really against Instagram's plans, it's almost even more pathetic.

<comment><USER15> I agree. There is a lot of attention paid to TOS changes lately. How could they not see that this would come with heavy backlash? I know he keeps saying "not our intention" in that post, but intentions don't amount to anything if the TOS clearly gives them carte blanche with your photos. Just some really bad public relations going on there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> They want to use your pictures to sell products to your friends. Say you take a picture of your friends at Domino's Pizza. They can show that picture to your friends and say "Look this guy who you know loves our pizza. Come try it out." Now you may not mind making an endorsement. But with this plan they don't have to ask you for permission. They can just do it.

And if you turn out to be a hit they can use it to sell the pizza to everyone not just your friends.

And if you're really a hit, they can use it to sell underwear. Or adult diapers. Or contraceptives. Or whatever you might not like them to use your imagery to sell.

<comment><USER17> > _"They can show that picture to your friends and say "Look this guy who you > know loves our pizza. Come try it out.""_

They actually can't. There's a world of difference between using a photo to depict an event, and using a photo to endorse.

"Domino's is featuring $5 large pizzas, here's your friend Bob at Domino's last week!" is legal.

"Look at Bob who loves our pizza, come try it out!" is not, unless Bob has signed off on it. You've crossed the line into commercial endorsement, which is a civil suit waiting to happen.

Now, there _could_ potentially be an argument that depicting Bob at Domino's next to a paid message by Domino's is implied endorsement - that's something Instagram will have to figure out. IANAL, though I have studied commercial vs. editorial usage of photography reasonably deeply.

Using someone to endorse a product is a legally non-trivial proposition. It's not as simple as "we can use your photo here".

<comment><USER18> I fail to see the difference between the two examples. They both imply endorsement.

In both cases, Dominoes has paid Instagram to promote its product. In both cases, Instagram has taken a photo of Bob (taken by Bob? Taken by a friend of Bob's?) And attached it to a marketing effort on behalf of Dominoes. In neither case does the photo's subject (Bob) or its author (Bob?) have a say over the photo's use.

<comment><USER19> The difference is that one case is clearly explicit: when the ad says "Bob likes our pizza", Bob liking your pizza is an explicit endorsement. The other is more statement of fact: that Bob ate there. For all you know he could have hated it.

On the other hand, add the context of Facebook. What if Bob hit the like button in facebook? You could argue that hitting the button is an endorsement. Or perhaps if the ad is only displayed in a Facebook context where "like" is understood to mean pushing a button on a page, you could argue that the traditional meaning of "like" doesn't apply so it's not an endorsement.

<comment><USER17> Indeed, and that's the subtle (but significant) difference. I've noticed for example that in my Facebook feed it never says "Bob likes Pizza Hut", it says instead "Bob liked a page: Pizza Hut".

It certainly goes into a gray area - but something as explicitly as "Bob likes Domino's! You should get Domino's too!" is a legal minefield I doubt anyone would willingly wade into.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What they claim their intentions were is unimportant.

They were granting themselves irrevokable rights to do things people didn't ever want them to be able to do.

<comment><USER21> A possible negative scenario: They grant themselves these rights and then get spun off / acquired by someone with malicious intent. The rights never expire... Can you guarantee that your company will respect the rights of users a decade from now? A century?

<comment><USER10> Also, you now can't ever sell exclusive rights[1], because there's a perpetual sub-licence capable party floating about out there.

[1] IANAL, but I think that's how it would work; for any licenceable aspect which you wish to grant exclusively, they can grant the same to one or more others, making it non-exclusive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a completely different style of incident response than parent company Facebook's. I much prefer this (relatively) straight up approach, although I'll admit it's more likely to come back and bite them in the arse a few years down the line.

<comment><USER23> Why will it come back to bite them?

<comment><USER15> Because some day they will want to do the things he is insisting they "have no intention" of doing and this post will come back to bite them.

<comment> mark-r How will it bite them? The blog post has no legal bearing, and they can just claim they changed their minds - circumstances have changed, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As a non lawyer who likes to pretend he knows what he's talking about, I say: "Lovely, now let's get that in writing."

<comment><USER25> I absolutely agree, the legal Terms of Service (ToS) are relevant and not some blogging about intensions. The legal text is in particular important because according to the ToS, you are now allowed to sue Instagram but you have to revert to arbitration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> >> The language we proposed also raised question about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement. _We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we're going to remove the language that raised the question_. Our main goal is to avoid things like advertising banners you see in other apps that would hurt the Instagram user experience. Instead, we want to create meaningful ways to help you discover new and interesting accounts and content while building a self-sustaining business at the same time. ---- <<<

.

This whole time, I was thinking, "whatever they do, they won't back away from this language...why else would they drop a bombshell if they weren't willing to suffer the blowback"...And it turns out, it was just some optional path they were considering and thought, "what the hell, let's just put in there for now, no biggie"

???

Is that seriously the mindset of a billion dollar company? All I can imagine is:

1) They are lying

2) They really thought people wouldn't read the TOS (hasn't Facebook learned by now that _someone_ will read it and make a big deal about troubling language?)

3) They are an incredibly careless company who will make other "mistakes" that could harm users.

I had been mostly ambivalent about this whole thing, as I don't maintain a very active Instagram account. But now I might just put in the energy to delete my account.

</comment><comment><USER27> There seems to be a disconnect between the TOS and this statement. If/when it comes down to brass tacks, a legal agreement between the Instagram and its users trumps a blog post about intentions. Talk is cheap -- codify the intentions expressed in the blog post in a TOS revision before the current changes take effect.

</comment><comment><USER28> "To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos."

That is less clear than saying "We will not sell your photos." It's either a knowingly slippery statement, or they forgot how to not be slippery.

<comment><USER29> This was exactly what I stuck with me. Intention can be either direct or indirect. So they could sell something as a package, which would be indirectly selling something, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention_(criminal_law)> . I'm no lawyer, but it does sound like that statement had the once over by a few.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> _One of the main reasons these documents don't take effect immediately, but instead 30 days from now, is that we wanted to make sure you had an opportunity to raise any concerns._

I see, they learned quite a bit from politicians. First push for the extremes, and if you get buried by bad press, produce a watered-down compromise.

Still, it is a surprisingly fair statement from a Facebook owned company.

<comment><USER31> Is it bad press? Or free advertising for their new features for promoting accounts? I don't think there was any downside to making the TOS changes the way they did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> _The language we proposed also raised question about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement. We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we're going to remove the language that raised the question._

Interesting use of the present tense in the second sentence, in an "I am not having an affair with that woman" sort of way.

</comment><comment><USER33> Does anyone else find the phrasing "Legal documents are easy to misinterpret. So I'd like to address specific concerns we've heard from everyone..." to be eerily similar to Dr. Breen's PSAs in the beginning of Half-Life 2?

Dr. Breen: "Let me read a letter I recently received. 'Dear Dr. Breen. Why has the Combine seen fit to suppress our reproductive cycle? Sincerely, A Concerned Citizen.' Thank you for writing, Concerned. Of course your question touches on one of the basic biological impulses, with all its associated hopes and fears for the future of the species. I also detect some unspoken questions. Do our benefactors really know what's best for us? What gives them the right to make this kind of decision for mankind? Will they ever deactivate the suppression field and let us breed again? Allow me to address the anxieties underlying your concerns, rather than try to answer every possible question you might have left unvoiced."

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't want "innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram" any more than I want what Facebook has done with advertising in my timeline. Please just give me an option to pay a monthly fee to turn all that garbage off.

<comment><USER35> I've paid for and really enjoyed Flickr's Pro service for years. The fact that they just released a really nice app made it easy to kill my Instagram account once and for all today (I'd thought about it when they first got acquired by Facebook, but never followed through).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I posted something similar on here[1] about how Instagram cannot sell its users photos and what they're _actually_ doing is trying to monetize similar to how Facebook does Sponsored Posts.

Instagram's terms of service stated that was their intentions:

      To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.

And "Section 106: Exclusive rights in copyrighted works aka. 17 U.S.C. § 106"[3] essentially states Instagram _cannot_ sell its users photos and it _cannot_ use its users photos and alter them in any meaningful way.

The problem was how they communicated the change and they've admitted that too[2] although they've started to fix this with this blogpost and will continue to communicate this.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4939650>

[2] <https://twitter.com/instagram/status/281133360833773568>

[3] <http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html>

</comment><comment><USER37> At my last job, our Director of Operations was responsible for rewriting the company rulebook/handbook. People didn't really know why, since we were a small company and I don't think anyone had ever read the handbook. Obviously, as you can imagine from someone with the title of Director of Operations, no one was asked for input.

A few weeks later, we;re all given copies of the handbook and ordered to sign it. People read the handbook and it was very clear that the new rules were not in line with company culture at all. No drinking in the office when we had multiple beer fridges, stuff about how you can be fired with less notice, etc. Of course, no one in their right mind would agree to an amended rulebook while at a company, especially when they could freely move to another startup.

The thing that amazed me most though, was in our next company meeting, people kept asking the Director of Operations about the rulebook and he finally snapped to say "Look, I made some changes, if you dont like them, its just really not a big deal, I don't think the rulebook actually means anything anyway".

Okay so lets recap. Our director of operations spent months writing a "meaningless" document? Doubtful. If so, why WRITE the document at all? This is the parallel I see here. There was no reason whatsoever to change the terms, yet they had some presumably high priced lawyers rewrite them. Why would they do this? Do we really believe they spent time an effort updating these terms for no reason? To me, this reads as some SERIOUS backpedaling and I would be shocked if they actually didn't intend to use data in the exact way people were upset they would.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Great, now all the bitching can change to be about their plans to advertise. The sense of entitlement that people have is getting ridiculous. Why do you _deserve_ an absolutely free service?

<comment><USER38> I don't think users feel that way. What they want is to be acknowledged and respected for helping build the server to what it is today. No users = no service. Don't sell us out just because you chose to take money and sell for a cool bil.

<comment><USER39> The users didn't help build anything. Instagram built a cool service, and the users used it. They didn't build anything.

Now obviously network effects help something like this grow, but don't kid yourself. They aren't running a charity. They are running a business. At some point you have to start making money or the service just goes away. Then all that those amazing users "built" will be gone in a second when they flick the power switch.

<comment><USER40> They aren't running a charity, you're right about that. But I think they misrepresented their business by giving it away for free, _knowing full-well_ that it won't be sustainable in the long run under that model. Their response? "Oh ok, no problem, we'll just switch the terms of use while nobody is looking."

<comment><USER39> You could characterize it that way, or you could assume that all of your users aren't complete fools and realize at some point they will have to make money to pay for the costs of running the service. They also _know full-well_ that it isn't sustainable to run this service for free forever.

<comment><USER38> They know and they don't care. It's not a customer's prerogative to worry about how a company makes money. As much as people like Instagram, if it disappeared or went under, people would move on and forget about it. I would say that the onus is on the company to find a way to monetize that does not insult, mislead, or deride their users.

<comment><USER39> How does adding ads "insult, mislead, or deride their users"? This whole discussion is silly. 99% of the users will keep happily using the service with ads. They were smart enough to know they were coming eventually. A 1% very vocal minority will piss and moan on internet message boards about how pissed they are and how absurd it is that this coming isn't continuing to give away a nice service.

Everyone bitched when Facebook added ads, but guess what, they keep growing and people keep using it. Shocking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What an absolute shock! Instagram hasn't actually decided to cut off their own hands!

</comment><comment><USER41> To late they lost my trust when facebook brought them, and even rumours of facebook behaviour was enough to walk away.

My account is now gone, same with atleast a dozen people I've talked to in the last day or so. I'd hazard a guess the quick response has been in response to sudden surge in accounts deleted.

</comment><comment><USER42> What blows my mind about this whole mess is how quickly this community has gone off on some witch hunt. Just read the comments. This is apparently what you have to look forward to if your startup is successful and you eventually try to monetize. Good luck everyone.

<comment><USER43> Boo hoo, the multi-millionaires are getting insulted when they try to fuck their users!

Won't someone please think of the feelings of the millionaires!

I'm pretty sure they can wipe away their tears with $100 bills and their feelings won't suffer permanent damage. Since their feelings are so much more important than all of the people they are trying to fuck over.

<comment><USER42> Are you an adult? These are your peers not billionaire bankers leeching off the backs of the poor. You know, programmers, marketers, entrepreneurs. They made it. And you want to tear them down because they've been successful? Now that they have money they are automagically evil? What planet am I on?

<comment><USER44> Wow, sorry your argument has nothing to do with the ToS. Peers really? And why is it that it is the CEO who answers and not those nice engineers?

Come on, the engineers made the product, the lawyers and the board made the company's legal arrangements. And they are utter bullshit.

<comment><USER42> That CEO is Kevin Systrom, my peer because he is a programmer and entrepreneur. Your whole argument is baseless. He wrote Instagram with his partner Mike Krieger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Exactly what part of "you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your ... photos (along with any associated metadata), ... without any compensation to you" is "confusing"?

It is not complicated legalese; on the contrary it is admirably terse and lucid English. The reason that "it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation" is because that is EXACTLY what it says they will do.

Unambiguous. Not confusing. What's confusing is that Kevin Systrom now claims it does not say what it very clearly and unambiguously says.

</comment><comment><USER39> <rant> I really have no idea what people are complaining about. What are you putting in your Instagram photos? It's a cool service that lets you share pictures with friends. What is it that you think your pictures are worth?

When you sign up for a free service, you have to know that you are the product. PERIOD. Don't sign up for free services if you don't want to be the product. Go pay flickr. They will take your money. Stop bitching about free services adding ads so that they can keep the lights on and keep offering your free service. </rant>

</comment><comment><USER46> _Legal documents are easy to misinterpret._

It's a shame this is the case. Isn't it part of the point of legal documents to be _hard_ to misinterpret? Isn't that supposed to be why they use such stiff language?

</comment><comment><USER47> It's difficult to believe that the language of the ToS communicates things they 'don't intend', Especially following this potential Twitter-acquisition / possible perjury situation.

Also, lets not forget that this is not a startup talking to us anymore--this is a Facebook-owned company. I would expect Facebook to take full advantage of their intentionally vague legal wording.

Although with that said, they don't need to stop the bleeding as much as shut up the major negative press about it, and this statement will probably do that.

</comment><comment><USER48> > Legal documents are easy to misinterpret.

Actually the reason legal documents are written in a quirky funny dialect is to make them _less_ ambiguous, not more so. If they are, whoever's written them is doing it wrong.

In today's social environment, the way people are made to feel like customers/users, only to later be sold as _product_ , with little regard to privacy and/or control over their data and profile, isn't it funny how people are starting to assume the worst?

In all fairness, except for that bad start, later on you write the confusing language _was_ your mistake, so you probably meant to say "Legal documents are hard to write, especially when people actually read them".

> Ownership Rights Instagram users own their content and Instagram does not > claim any ownership rights over your photos.

Um, yeah. What's "Ownership Rights"? It's not a legal term. Yet you capitalized and bolded the term. I'm sure you didn't mean to say "Copyrights" because you know what those are very well and take great care to not mention them. Also you can't have meant "Personality Rights" because they're generally non-transferable.

On the other hand, at least you acknowledged the public's reaction. And rather quickly, at that. That's good.

You also say you're listening and will improve the wording of the TOS. How that will turn out remains to be seen, when it happens. If so, I hope you'll excuse my skepticism.

</comment><comment><USER49> Another way to approach this might be to ask yourself specifically what uses you as a user do not want Instagram to pursue with your photos. Then look at the TOS and assess whether the TOS give you any protection against those uses. If the TOS do not protect against those uses then you can tell Instagram directly via feedback what you do not want them to do with your photos. It is easier to amend the TOS by adding specific, unambiguous restrictions on certain uses than it is to try to define the full scope of the permissions to users using random examples.

To restate this another way: Instead of trying to imagine everything Instagram might be permitted to do under the TOS, imagine what you as a user do not want them to do, and then ask for explicit restrictions on those uses.

</comment><comment><USER50> What the blogosphere seemed to miss when getting all crazy about Instagram selling their pictures to businesses for advertising: what business in their right mind would want the bad press that would go along with exploiting Instagram users? The first time a business used a user's picture without their knowledge, the Internet would go crazy with rage, and rightfully so. It was never going to work that way, because businesses wouldn't want to be part of that game any more than the users would.

The FUD that CNet was able to perpetrate far outweighs any reasonable outcome that I can foresee. For this reason, I take Kevin at his word: both that they aren't going to do stupidly publish user pics on the side of buses, and that they will learn from this blunder.

</comment><comment><USER51> I guess you still need to work on your language, Can't you just use clear sentences with straight meanings ? e.g. > we respect that your photos are your photos. Period wouldn't it be better to just say "we are not going to use your photos without your permission ? "

</comment><comment><USER52> It's odd. The vast majority of Instagram users seem to leave their accounts open to the public - more so that most photo-sharing services I've used in the past. Instagram presumably has business relationships with all sorts of entities. And Instagram has APIs allowing users to access the data exposed by these public galleries. It seems the pieces are already in place for a 3rd party to enter into a business relationship with Instagram to pay for access to the data contained in their users photos. Why were the new terms even necessary?

</comment><comment><USER53> Why don't they just offer to share some of the profit of selling/using the photos? I think this would gain more users who would not mind being in promotional post, as long as they get a cut.

</comment><comment><USER54> I think that a possible positive side effect of all this is that customers might start realising that they actually would rather pay for web-based software.

</comment><comment><USER55> Sorry. The damage has already been done, and we clearly hear your intentions, instagram. I deleted my account and don't plan on joining back.

</comment><comment><USER56> All of you a pathetic. Along with the blogosphere.

<comment><USER57> > All of you a pathetic. Along with the blogosphere.

Care to spellcheck and elaborate?

<comment><USER56> No, because that was a typo and typos happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> _Let's say a business wanted to promote their account to gain more followers and Instagram was able to feature them in some way._

Isn't this just exactly how facebook fooled the world? You pay x to gain y followers and when they have bleed that river dry, they roll out another update that requires you to pay z if you want your posts to show up in their feed?

</comment><comment><USER59> Seems to me this is a test. Push the updated terms of service out, if no-one complains, or if there is only minimal response then cool, it's acceptable by the users. If complainst come around, mitigate that risk by issuing an apology afterwards. As the phrase goes - " Do What You Think Is Right & Apologize Later "

</comment><comment><USER60> The more interesting question is what is Instagram planning to do that caused this change in terms of service. I would bet that they are going to group photos together that show off a product or to attach advertising around your photos based on location or what the photo shows. I think that they are doing this soon.

</comment><comment><USER61> I like this response. Terms of Service often need to change over time and, as of late, the Internet seems to have made a game out of ripping the changes to shreds when put forward by a known brand.

I'm looking forward to seeing how companies handle ToS changes moving forward. Is there a way to avoid the backlash altogether?

<comment><USER62> _Is there a way to avoid the backlash altogether?_

Err, write TOSes that are not a land grab of other people's intellectual private property and/or private data? You make it sound like it is unreasonable to care about that.

<comment><USER61> I think you underestimate the Internet's ability to find things to misquote and complain about.

The predominant backlash to Google's recent ToS changes come to mind as an example of selective content being reported out of context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> If they had said we're setting up a market to sell Instagram photos. You can opt-in any of your photos, we'll take a cut for running the service, and you get the rest. The problem would be filtering out the junk, not getting people to sell their cat pictures.

</comment><comment><USER64> For those that would still like to easily move their Instagram images to Flickr, without exporting to a zip then reimporting,we built a small webapp that will allow you to do so only a few clicks.

<http://freethephotos.com>

</comment><comment><USER65> A little bit of balance for the pitchforks crowd:

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/18/3780158/instagrams-new- te...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/18/3780158/instagrams-new-terms-of- service-what-they-really-mean)

This story is giving me a headache.

<comment><USER66> It's already been pointed out that the Verge ignored several important pieces of the ToS when writing that article - take a look at the comments both on HN (for other articles) and The Verge to see.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4940062>

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Is it just me who feels that it is just a re-run of the classic 'Zuck' way of doing things: Make mistake and apologize when it blows up? What's happening inside the company is any outsider's guess, but I definitely don't feel reassured.

</comment><comment><USER68> Hopefully the take-away is an explanation would have been helpful when the ToS was changed. Everyone was given limited information and they interpreted it how they could.

Maybe sites will think about this next time they quietly changed their ToS.

<comment><USER69> If they needed an explanation to say "the terms say this, but we don't really mean it" then perhaps they should just not release a ToS with stuff they don't actually mean.

It's little comfort for a company to say "oh the contract says X, but don't worry it's not true".

The take-away here is to actually properly review the ToS in light of "how might a user interpret this" not in "how can we make sure we have the absolute most coverage on our side".

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> I am happy with this apology. Everyone loves to hate on something, once one person starts hating others join in the mob mentality against someone or an entity continues until it gets to the point where the arguments have lost sight of what they were originally arguing about. What kind of apology were people expecting? An apology using animated GIF's and infographics?

Considering the photo quality of Instagram photos is extremely questionable, are people really upset that a photo of the nicoise salad they had could be used in an ad for for promotional purposes? Please. 99.9% of the photos on Instagram wouldn't be fit for advertising considering they're most shots of insecure teenagers taking photos in the mirror and the rest pictures of food.

Calm down.

</comment><comment><USER71> Kevin Systrom is the man. To be acquired, be part of a public company and still respond quickly, succinctly and effectively their monetization plan is something a lot of companies can learn from.

<comment><USER5> It's not hard to say what people want to hear, especially when you're not under oath.

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/disruptions- instagr...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/disruptions-instagram- testimony-doesnt-add-up-2/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> For me, that's too late. Flickr mobile app is getting better, using it.

</comment><comment><USER73> I deleted my Instagram account and won't be going back. Flickr's new mobile apps and their much more user-friendly TOS is where was before Instagram and where I want to be in the future.

</comment><comment><USER42> Not like it will matter. The witch hunt has started and nothing can disperse an angry mob. Except free pie of course.

</comment><comment><USER74> I still don't get why instagram is evil and facebook is fine.

Is it because instagram is more disposable/replaceable to people?

</comment><comment><USER75> Too late. I already deleted my account.

<comment><USER76> Same here. I'm also working on deleting my FB account. That one is a lot harder to do because so many of the small businesses and artists that I follow have abandoned maintaining their own blog/website in favor of just using FB.

<comment> g-garron what a big mistake! What if FB is suddenly turned off? they do not even have their own url.

Well, not everybody thinks about worst case scenarios.

<comment><USER76> It's really true.

What it really gets to is that there really aren't very good/affordable resources for artists and venues to reach a large audience.

Hiring a local "designer" is often really expensive and you end up with a crappy website that is hard to maintain.

Even using something as "simple" as WordPress can be way too technical for a lot of people.

FB has the benefit of giving them a platform that enables them to quickly connect with their audience.

I see it as a failure of the rest of the internet ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> li-ch I don't trust the legal opinions from the sales and marketing people. I'll read the ToS myself.

</comment><comment><USER77> tumblr seems to be doing quite well just letting users promote their posts. instagram could be moving that direction, not just for businesses. i guess they have facebook doing it from the business side, though, so it is natural for them

<comment><USER78> Speaking of which, how cool is it that Instagram's official blog is a tumblr? That infrastructure is everywhere!

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> "Legal documents are easy to misinterpret." => Isn't their goal the opposite ?

<comment> mark-r Easy to misinterpret by people who aren't lawyers and judges is the implication. But when actual lawyers come out and warn you about what it really means, you need to be concerned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> The proof is in the pudding. Let's see the new TOS.

</comment><comment><USER81> And we have always been at war with Eastasia.

</comment><comment><USER82> Decent response, but I remain unconvinced.

</comment><comment><USER83> imgur.com is something like $24 a year, and AFAIK they don't claim any ownership on your photos...

</comment><comment><USER84> tl;rd: We're not selling your pictures, just using them for our own ads.

</comment><comment><USER85> Still out.

</comment><comment><USER86> When you're getting into bed with Facebook, writing poor terms of service in the same week that you lie about acquisition offers is a pretty damn good way of souring the well. If they revise the ToS and remove the offending sections, good, but for some, it will already be too late.

</comment><comment><USER87> These mistakes are so common among billion dollar corporations. Can they not anticipate these sort of reactions? Do they get 'Larry' down in legal to quickly write something up and then post it without another thought?

<comment><USER43> If it slips by unnoticed, they are looking at hundreds of millions, possibly billions of dollars.

So the upside is VERY VERY big. Well worth the risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> It's time to say goodbye to both Instagram and facebook and say hello to iphoto!</comment>


The Fall of Mobile Apps - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/mattruddy/mobile-apps-are-dead-e8d <comment><USER2> A lot of modern mobile apps are shitty, because they're just browsers wrapped in permissions-shitpile (location, calls, contacts, etc.), and display a mobile webpage, while syphoning data a regular browser wouldn't allow (without asking you first, and you denying access), with no additional features (except for useless, spammy notifications).

Make a good app, and people will use it</comment>


The 'deaditors' of Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> https://www.haykranen.nl/2018/06/15/the-deaditors-of-wikipedia/ <comment><USER2> TLDR: "Two-thirds of those edits were done by anonymous users.... Did those 'deaditors' write about their subjects earlier? Usually not."

Young teens, I'd guess.</comment>


Electron App to Control Roku - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jakeboyles/roku-tv-electron-app <comment><AUTHOR> Could use some more testers. Right now only tested on my roku tv.</comment>


The Instagram dilemma and how it's hurting our startup - <AUTHOR> I run a UK based startup (a SaaS whitelabel social media scheduling solution). We've seen enormous interest from across the globe and have a very passionate group of initial customers.
However... We lose around 90% of our leads because we can't allow posting to Instagram. This isn't a technical issue - we can Integrate with the API very easily.
Instead it's a contact issue. In order to get access to the Instagram API we have to be a Partner. In order to apply be a Partner you have to know someone on the Partner team who will vouch for you. A catch 22.
I've been trying for 6 months to find someone we can talk to but everything has lead to a dead end. Cold emails, LinkedIn connections, asking my contacts for help, even running an advertising campaign trying to reach people who work at Instagram - nothing I try even results in a response from Instagram or Facebook.
Can you help? Even if you know a friend of a friend who works at Instagram who might be able to connect us with someone it could be the lead we need to get our foot in the door, and could give us the opportunity we need to take our startup growth to the next level. <comment><USER2> One hack you might try is signing up to be a customer of one of the current IG partners and relaying your own customer's requests through that if it's within their terms.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reverse engineer the official API or somehow automate Android devices to post the content through their official apps?

</comment><comment><USER4> You wont be granted that as a random startup

</comment><comment><USER5> Doesnt Buffer have access to that API? Ask their founder how they got access and if they help you. Lets see how well they live up to their reputation of being open and honest :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Damn, good luck. So much for a free and open internet!

</comment><comment><USER7> What's your startup?</comment>


Alan Turing is the face of UK's new £50 note - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/15/20694453/uk-50-banknote-alan-turing-announcement-scientist-computer <comment><USER2> Dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20439425](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20439425)</comment>


Making A Easy-To-Setup $50 Linux Multi-Seat Computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=plugable_multiseat_kick&num=1

<comment><USER2> It's not a computer. It does not perform any logic operations. (unless you are referring to the actual central computer, in which case that will cost you much more than $50)

These things already exist. They're called station hubs, and you can buy them from Wyse/Dell, HP, and other retailers for less than $100.

I'd be very interested to see one be sold for $50 dollars, but I'll believe it when they're actually being sold at that price.</comment>


Huge Security Flaw Leaks VPN Users' Real IP-Addresses - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/huge-security-flaw-leaks-vpn-users-real-ip-addresses-150130/ <comment><USER2> PoC author hear. This is the first I've heard of Windows making your ISP IP address available even when you're on a VPN. That definitely shouldn't be the case. Anyone have a link to the bug report in Firefox and/or Chrome?</comment>


Clojure Syntax – From Empty List To Macros - <AUTHOR> http://nebojsa.stricevic.info/2014/07/clojure-syntax.html

<comment><USER2> I don't think "repealing" is the word you wanted there...</comment>


Ask HN: Would presenting less evidence for evolution convince more people? - <AUTHOR>

Dawkin's book seems to suffer from presenting too much evidence, not all of which is equally convincing.  It takes effort for people to read and understand the different sorts of evidence.
Why not just focus on the strongest type of evidence -- DNA?
Wouldn't that convince more people? <comment><USER2> Keep in mind that to someone totally untrained in science, "a scientist says" is not that different from "a priest says" in terms of asking them to take something on faith. As level of scientific training increases, this changes somewhat, as we begin to understand that "a scientist says" carries a certain implicit claim as to the experimentation that went into the discovery; but even then, it's important to remember that much of what you and I _know_ about science we know because some authority figure told us. We may have chosen our authority figure wisely, but that's still what it is: do you believe light travels through a vacuum, or through a mysterious lumeniferous aether? Why? Is it because you did an experiment? Can you even explain what the experiment is?

As for me, I learned it in class and read it in a book. A lot of the "convince people of evolution" argumentation is focussing on entirely the wrong level of instruction, because it's asking people who learned one thing in class and read it in a book to instead believe a different thing that someone else learned in class and read in a book. Local evidence is no help either, because it's going to be anecdotal, and a lot of nonscientific arguments (including religious ones) can marshal evidence too. The problem is not convincing creationists to believe in evolution; it's not even convincing believers in one authority to believe in a different authority (which, while solving one immediate problem, just defers and sets up a different one). The problem is in convincing people of the scientific framework in the first place.

So no, DNA wouldn't do it.

</comment><comment><USER3> You're not going to convince anybody that evolution is real on the basis of evidence, no matter how much or little, if they've made up their mind they will just dig in further and see your attempt as a personal attack.

And don't forget that for plenty of people DNA is just as much a mystery as god (or even electricity) is.

At this point it is all about belief, loss of face and admitting that you've been duped half a lifetime or more.

People are very stubborn when it comes to holding on to beliefs that are wrong, because they have a very personal stake in it. They would have to rebuild a part of their identity that has that belief as the basis, the stronger the belief, the larger the resistance.

Scientists have this just as much as non-scientists, sometimes they will hold on to a wrong theory until they die.

If someone has a firmly held belief then you can start ramming on them from the outside to change that belief, or you can accept them the way they are and have peace with that.

Why would you want to change another persons belief structures, it really is their problem, not yours, and if they'll change they will have to make that switch by themselves, in the context of life as they see it, which is not something an outsider could ever know or change.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't think anti-creationism evangelists are fighting the right battle. blahedo basically nailed it in this post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=892757>

I would say it like this: creation is a non-scientific issue. It is not, absolutely NOT anti-scientific. Science is to creation as anthropology is to dependency injection. There just isn't any relation.

Allow me to illustrate. If you were God (more specifically, if you had the power to create something from nothing) and you wanted to prepare an awesome dinner for your significant other, what would you do? Would you create a huge cosmic explosion, wait for planets to form, set up the necessary amino acids for life on one of them, wait for life to form, direct the evolution of plants suitable for human consumption, start a garden to grow those plants, grow some produce, harvest it and cook it up? No, you would just snap your fingers and create the dinner. After doing so, any scientist looking at your dinner would conclude that something like the process I described above had occured. There would be absolutely no way for them to know it had been created from nothing as all scientific inquiry would point to a clear natural origin. The ingredients in the dinner would all be identifiable as known plants and animals, so the obvious conclusion would be that they came from those known plants and animals. That the ingredients just popped out of nowhere as you snapped your fingers is not a provable (or disprovable) explanation. It is therefore non-scientific.

It is quite possible that God created the world 2 seconds ago and everything we think we know about history was just pre-embedded in our minds. The situation would be almost exactly analogous to the dinner example I gave above, and science would still conclude the same things about our past. There would be absolutely no way whatsoever to prove or disprove our divine origins.

The situation is exactly the same regardless when God is alleged to have created the universe. Maybe God created the universe 100 years ago, maybe 1000, maybe 10000, maybe there is no God. The point is, these are not questions science can answer and they are not questions any scientist should ever try to answer.

In summary, evolution is as far as we know scientific fact. It certainly could be disproven (otherwise it wouldn't be science), but for now, it is irrefutable fact. It is simultaneously possible that the entire universe was created 2 seconds ago. The universe could have been created with this post already written and me only thinking I had written it myself. If that were the case, _evolution would still be an irrefutable fact_. It would be wrong, but it would be scientific truth. Science can only answer scientific questions (and can only answer them with scientific answers). It cannot and should not speculate on non-scientific ones.

So as blahedo alluded, evolution will only be accepted as ultimate truth when science is accepted as the ultimate framework. There is no way to "prove" however that science is the ultimate framework. That too is a non-scientific question.

Science can no more prove creation (true or false) than it can prove that the answer to "What is Buddha?" is "Three pounds of flax", and it makes just as little sense to try.

<comment><USER5> But, why would god's magic automatically create a meal that looks like it came from real plants?

There are many connections in the way organisms work internally. Patterns of characteristics never overlap; you never get fish with wings because wings evolved after fish (if you get them, it's cause of convergent evolution), but you do get whales and snakes with atavistic legs, because those genes may still be hanging around their DNA. There are literally thousands and thousands of characteristics like this, that can all be sampled independently; using this sampling organisms can be put into clades (trees of descent).

These can be based on many, many characteristics of the species: appearance & physical features (shape of leg, skull, lungs, existence of various organs, etc), mutation rates of mitochondrial dna, their appearance and geographical extent from fossils. You can create clades of all major species based on any one of these, and the amazing thing is that ALL of them match up! So if god just created a random new animal, there would be thousands of variables he would have to take into account of to preserve this characteristic - not all of which we even know yet. (This property was noticed before we were able to detect most of the more sophisticated ways of measuring these differences, but it's always come true. And there could still be more out there - for example maybe you could use the dna of undiscovered internal bacteria of mammals to derive an evolutionary history, and it would have to match up).

So God would have to do tons of extra work to match all these up - and the questions then is, why would he match all the other stuff up too?

<comment><USER4> If you didn't use real plants, science would just conclude it was a previously undiscovered species. That it exists is sufficient to prove it's real (and natural) to science. It's impossible to create something without causing it to exist. Therefore, it's impossible to create something without causing it to appear natural to science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's an empirical question. The best book I have found on the DNA evidence for evolution written for a popular audience is Sean Carroll's The Making of the Fittest

[http://books.google.com/books?id=tyRWHQAACAAJ&dq=Sean+B+...](http://books.google.com/books?id=tyRWHQAACAAJ&dq=Sean+B+Carroll&source=an&hl=en&ei=HN_dSvClBIyj8QaR36hv&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=11&ved=0CC4Q6AEwCg)

Perhaps one could compare changes in opinion after reading Dawkins's book with changes of opinion after reading Carroll's book. On my part, I think the change of opinion from believing young-earth creationism to believing the scientific fact of biological evolution takes assistance in dealing with opinions on religion as well as opinions on science.

After edit: I should note that I'm personally acquainted with people who have gone through the change of opinion being talked about in this thread. Such a change does happen, and it's legitimate to ask how it might happen more often, as having correct beliefs about biological evolution helps people have correct beliefs about other scientific issues (for example, safety and efficacy of vaccines).

<comment><USER3> The problem here is not if people would change their minds after reading those books, the problem is that when someone is not 'open' to new ideas they'll treat books that might change their mind (and people, for that matter) like they're radioactive.

As to the vaccine thing, there is a correlation between religiousness and refusal of taking things like vaccines, but it is definitely not an exclusive relationship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> No amount of evidence will convince people. The vast majority are married to what they believe is their origin and trying to convince them otherwise, in my opinion, is a fool's errand. Majority of these conversations aren't based on not having enough facts, or having too many facts.

Also, you should frequent HN's IRC channel. You seem to create a lot of mostly off-topic threads that pose a single question in an attempt to create a discussion and I think your goals will be better suited to the channel.

<comment><USER3> Unique ids are cheap though, and it does lead to interesting discussions:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=887466>

This particular one is not very 'on topic' though.</comment></comment>


Peter Thiel only spent 12 days in NZ before being granted citizenship - <AUTHOR> http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2017/06/peter-thiel-only-spent-12-days-in-nz-before-being-granted-citizenship.html <comment><USER2> As a Kiwi. The way they treat Kim Dotcom, and grant this guy citizen for little reason at all, makes me super disappointed in NZ. Just so sad we treat people differently based on politics that don't benefit NZ.

<comment><USER3> > Just so sad we treat people differently based on politics that don't benefit > NZ.

Surely someone there benefits from it, or it would have never happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> However controversial Thiel may be, there's no arguing the benefits his citizenship grants NZ. If millions of $$ of investment and hundreds of jobs created don't qualify him for citizenship, there's a fallacy needing fixing.

FYI - the US grants green cards to foreigners who invest $1M in new American businesses, NZ probably has an unwritten law that grants citizenship to those who stimulate it's economy

<comment><USER5> I think this mindset is largely harmful to the indigenous population of New Zealand, who will become increasingly margenalized in their home country.

<comment><USER6> There's no evidence to suggest that Thiel's presence will increase that marginalization, or if Thiel is actually interested in decreasing it in the first place.

<comment><USER7> "or if Thiel is actually interested in decreasing it in the first place"

So, even if hypothetically there were increased marginalization, it would only matter if it were against Thiel's intention?...

<comment><USER6> No, I simply mean that not only is there nothing to indicate that Thiel's presence will marginalize anyone, but also that Thiel himself doesn't seem likely to engage in any behavior that would marginalize anyone. Therefore the probability of it happening seems quite low.

<comment><USER8> Let 1000 people in worth 1,000,000 dollars or let on 1,000,000 people in with 1000 dollars, which group will on average create more jobs?

Look I'd like to take the high road too and say everyone is equal, but we only begin that way.

(Note: I'm from the second group in this mind game)

<comment><USER9> My tangential comment to your comment would be: Which creates more jobs, 1,000 millionaires, or 1 billionaire. I would say 1000 millionaires would have a much greater chance of creating many more jobs.

<comment><USER10> At least 1000 immigrant millionaires have spent the million buying a house in Auckland over the past few years. These are houses that would have sold for only, say, 950,000 if those immigrant millionaires hadn't been in the buyers market, so I guess that's created an extra office job or two at the local banks and real estate offices.

An immigrant billionaire might buy a mansion with airfield attached for his armageddon hideout. Or he might grow a business employing immigrant workers on work visas. Some citizens might get jobs in the service sector servicing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Full report from the NZ government [pdf]:

[https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/Peter-Thiel- rel...](https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/Peter-Thiel- release-29-June-2017/$file/Peter-Thiel-release-29-June-2017.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> It says he gave a $1 million donation to the Christchurch earthquake relief fund. That'll probably do it yeah.

<comment><USER12> It takes way less than $1 million to get citizenship in most countries:

[https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/countries-selling- cit...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/countries-selling-citizenship/)

<comment><USER13> Including the US. You do have to spend quite a bit of time here to be granted citizenship, even if you invest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So what? In Israel, you can become a citizen without spending even a whole day there: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Return](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Return)

I don't see why if NZ thinks having Thiel as a citizen would be good for them, they can't give him citizenship at any moment they'd like.

<comment><USER15> So because other countries do the same or worse, it justifies this ? I'm impressed.

<comment><USER14> How is this worse? What is bad in it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's so f __* up! Money can buy you everything. Even a citizenship. The NZ- gov should asked themselves why a close Trump supporter and VC is looking for a safe haven outside of the US. Will this person really add value to the society? Or will he build a massive mansion with a wall around it and an airport?

<comment><USER17> Of course you can buy citizenship. Here's a price list if you are in the market:

[https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/countries-selling- cit...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/countries-selling-citizenship/)

<comment><USER18> Latvian citizenship at 35.000€ with no residency requirements looks like a steal, considering that you would be allowed to live anywhere in the EU, if I'm not misinterpreting.

<comment><USER19> You didn't finish your research. Process takes ten years and requires you to become fluent in Latvian.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> He is very wealthy and adds intellectual capital to any country he chooses to live, why is that controversial?

<comment><USER21> He doesn't intent to live there, at least that's what he claimed in the application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So why did Thiel chose NZ? USA allows dual citizenship to many other countries as well. NZ seem to have 33% tax rate so shouldn't that be off putting? Also, why take duel citizenship at all because US may then force you to relinquish USA citizenship.

<comment><USER23> Safest place to be in case of nuclear war (due to low number of nearby potential targets, opposite hemisphere of most targets, good wind patterns to avoid fallout from potential targets).

There's probably more playing into it. But being a relatively geographically far, politically stable country probably has a fair bit to do with it.

I'm not sure if NZ is a net food importer/exporter, but IIRC AU can produce enough food to cover AU population so I wouldn't be surprised if NZ was similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> 1 rule for the rich quite a different bunch of rules for the rest of us

<comment><USER25> The rule is: if you're willing to spend a million for membership, welcome to the club!

...and it's the same rule for everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's funny a lot of people thinks it's not okay to grant citizenship because of Thiel's own opinion, or arguing whether Thiel will add value to the society. It's funnier when they themselves don't have the same net worth.

</comment><comment><USER27> He's probably one of their 5 richest citizens at this point. Why would they not seize the opportunity to increase their tax base?

<comment><USER28> Most likely he doesn't pay personal taxes to NZ. If he still retains his American citizenship, the IRS expects him to file there.

<comment><USER25> If he spends the plurality of days of a year in NZ, he will pay taxes there, and those are deducted from his US tax return (which usually means no US taxes, considering most countries' taxes are higher than the US').

Granted that's assuming he actually has any meaningful personal taxable income, which is somewhat doubtful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'll take any motherfucker's money if he given' it away - Geoff "Clay Davis" May

</comment><comment><USER30> That's ridiculous.

How can it take that long for funds to clear?</comment>


Please don't cut my balls off or "On the creation of useful coding standards" - <AUTHOR> https://www.highvelocityteams.com/blog/2017/12/29/please-dont-cut-my-balls-off <comment><USER2> I've had terrible experience with coding standards... and really don't think their worth for most orgs... especially if there isn't buyin from management to enforce this kind of thing

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, the bad parts are what my story is about.

But my recommendation isn't for management edicts, but for team consensus. Obviously people who join the team later will have to adapt to the teams choices in standards, but they are likely more beneficial and useful when they came from team-mates.

<comment><USER2> I agree I said in the end that we need team consensus. We have hundreds of teams...the problem is most of them don't care about this stuff, they care that their "business" customer(someone not that technologically oriented) gives the nod.

After that no one holds them to anything, in fact I've seen situations where new team members try to organize consensus and the rest of the team hits their seat's eject button and that person finds themselves team-less.

This is an interesting subject though!</comment></comment></comment>


Is burnout and depression real? How you know you are in it? - <AUTHOR> Is that real or is it just boredom feeling? I might be suffering from it but how you know for sure you are suffering from it and it is real? <comment><USER2> It's real and common. However, you're an individual person, and it'll affect you differently than it does others.

You won't find an answer by asking people on HN. You need individual assessment and care from a counselor or therapist.

If it's just boredom, you can always stop seeing them. If it's more than that, you'll find that it's worth the time and money to see a professional.

<comment><USER3> > You won't find an answer by asking people on HN.

However, there has been a lot of discussion of burnout on HN, and you might benefit from hearing what people who have experienced it have to say about it. Just type "burnout" into the HN search box and you'll see lots of past discussions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You know you're depressed when you stop caring about things, when you stop putting effort into things.

You may have a burst here and there, but it's short lived.

To fight this, you need to regularly (do not skip a week) put focus on your hobbies, spend time away from work (ex: a day trip up to Mt. Diablo), spend time with people that make you happy, spend time outside, sleep 8 hours a day (a lack of sleep will make you a zombie), meditate, exercise and stretch (make sure you do a light jog before stretching)

fighting depression isn't something you focus on after you're depressed, it's something you focus on while you're content so you don't get depressed. Crawling out of depression is extremely difficult, so make consistent efforts to fight it now.

</comment><comment><USER5> When I had severe burnout I would go to work but could not accomplish anything. I was more like a zombie. I asked to take a vacation and a few weeks leave without pay to help get my head straight. It was denied (I was too important to be gone that long, but not important enough to be paid well). So I quit. Took a 6 weeks to ride a bike to Maine. By about week 10 I was really ready to work again... oh well

Since then I have learned to recognize the signs much earlier and I take time off when I need to. Hey wow, guess who took today and tomorrow off. We are going to shop for Raspberry Pi parts .... that should fix me :)

Oh sunlight helps, a lot!

</comment><comment><USER6> It's real, and the warning signs of depression should be treated seriously and immediately.

Burnout is the result of ignoring the signs of chronic mental fatigue, at least in my personal experience.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here are some signs of burnout: Thinking about leaving the job every day. Not enjoying things that used to enjoy before. Irascible Thinking about taking sick days

The things you can do is : Take a few days off Try to sleep a lot

<comment><USER8> I think I just realized I don't like my job reading this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some things that I personally experienced:

No (or way less than usual) interest in going to work

Feeling tired, bored all or most of the time

Unable to concentrate on even the most trivial tasks</comment>


Skype goes open source: Flawless victory - <AUTHOR> https://joindiaspora.com/posts/1799228

<comment><USER2> It's obvious, but I'll just say for the record - that's not open source, they just de-obfuscated the binaries. Which _is_ a big deal, but still a far cry from having an open-source replacement.

<comment><USER3> I took the "open source" to be sarcastic, not an actual comment on the licensing structure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's hard to take anybody seriously when they write "M$". Reminds me of people _still_ using the "Windows crashes" argument as a reason to use Linux.

<comment><USER5> That's because Windows _does_ crash and there's nothing you can't do about it.

Truth be told.

P.S. I agree with your M$ comment tho.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That is what you get for putting in backdoors for big brother.

</comment><comment><USER7> On joindiaspora, pressing cmd+left (which is usually the browser "back") leaves me in the same page. Which is more strange is that pressing the back button it works properly.

<comment><USER8> A more reliable way to navigate with the keyboard is ⌘+{ (back) and ⌘+} (forward). The chords ⌘+← and ⌘+→ can be captured by text input, JavaScript, or Flash.

<comment><USER7> Nice... also cmd+shift+{ and cmd+shift+} works for changing tabs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I get the "Aw, Snap!" splash page when I visit this, or anything else on joindiaspora.com, in Chrome. The Diaspora folks may want to look into that.

<comment><USER10> Chrome 20.0.1132.47 here, working fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is stolen, not open source.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hasn't this been on HN more than once? Yes, it has. [http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+h...](http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+http%3A%2F%2Fskype- open-source.blogspot.ch%2F)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3753155>

and <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=skypeopensource>

We've been over this (re: wiretapping). Skype uses supernodes for STUN traversal and UDP hole punching, otherwise communication is peer to peer. Even if this were true, it would only apply to traffic that Skype is TURN tunneling, which is very minimal and can be avoided by one client simply _not having_ a corporate, full-cone NAT router.

It's really hard to take this seriously when it's obviously not a good faith use of the phrase "open source" and it's littered with tags like "#OWS", etc.

If you want open source, encrypted voice communication, it's easy to find.

edit: To cover all bases, if there is some implication of collaboration between Skype and the government, there is still the potential that the US could be listening in on peer to peer communications. I don't find the Azure/Super-nodes to be evidence of that.</comment>


Can Film-Inspired Project Financing Work for Games? - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/177981/Can_FilmInspired_Project_Financing_Work_for_Games.php

<comment><USER2> Thats a very interesting article.

What about a crowd sourced financing option, but different to kickstarter?

Kickstarter is not a financing option, its a "pre-order" system in which the crowd pays upfront for their product, and is not owed any profits or equity from the business.

i propose a crowd funding financing option, where you propose your product, and propose the amount of equity you are willing to give out. Say, you give out 50% equity. Each crowd funder can pay their desired amount, and will get a % of the equity that is equal to their contribution divided by the total (which is unknown till the end of the funding round). For example, if 10 people all contributed $10 each, then each will get $10/$100=10% of the 50% equity, or 5% of the total equity.

I expect that a game could be funded by thousands of people, each paying a few dollars each. The profit structure could be that each % of the equity is worth that much of the profits from the sale of the game.

The game developer(s) thus have full creative control, and the risk of failure is spread to many thousands.</comment>


Bikes vs Cars - We Are Many by Fredrik Gertten - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fredrik-gertten/bikes-vs-cars-we-are-many

<comment><AUTHOR> As much as dislike the divisive title, its nice to see some more docs about the current state of North American cities on cycling policy.</comment>


In California, It's U.S. vs. State Over Marijuana - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/14/us/14pot.html?hpw

<comment><USER2> Looking forward to another 4 more years of this "hope and change".

For the record DOJ is directly under the President's control. You can't blame Republicans for this one. If we can't trust Obama to take rational positions on such clear cut issues, who can we trust?

<comment><USER3> While I agree that pot should be legal, I don't think this is a clear-cut issue.

The President is head of the Executive branch. It's his duty to enforce Congress's laws.

Pot is illegal at the federal level (aka Congressional law). It's against the law to possess, sell, etc. So unfortunately the President is legally required to prosecute this.

Now, given that, I am a bit disappointed this is happening. There are plenty of other more important things to prosecute more zealously. Especially given Obama's "bigger fish to fry" comment.

<comment><USER4> The President could, and should, say that the law is unconstitutionally broad. It would be a much more conservative reading of the constitution to say that Congress does not have the power to arbitrarily outlaw substances within any and all states. This is why it required a constitutional amendment to outlaw alcohol. Given a traditional legal precedent and a strict-interpretation court the President has both the grounds to deem certain provisions of the law unconstitutional and the belief that that would be upheld by the court. Those are the only two tests he needs to pass to refuse to enforce a portion or all of the law.

Responsibility to enforce the laws of congress:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_State...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Clause_5:_Caring_for_the_faithful_execution_of_the_law)

Right to refuse to enforce un-constitutional provisions: <http://www.justice.gov/olc/nonexcut.htm>

History of the commerce clause (Or "FDR, how we miss your court packing"): <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause>

<comment><USER5> But if Obama claims the law prohibiting drugs is unconstitutionally broad and shouldn't be enforced, he couldn't justify prosecuting the Mexican drug cartels for selling drugs either. And I don't think he wants to go that far toward drug legalization, given what his position has been on this subject so far (he's waged the "war on drugs" as actively as his predecessors have).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As much as I support marijuana legalisation, I'm always puzzled at the righteous anger summoned against the federal government for prosecutions like this---how dare they, when the states have said it's legal! The problem is, that argument is an extremely shady one, with an extremely sketchy past. I currently live in a state (Virginia) where, faced with the Brown v Board ruling in the 60s, many counties just defunded their public schools entirely and funneled the money to "private" academies for white kids, with the state's blessing. The movement was called "Massive Resistance". Several other states across the South had other policies that were not permitted to stand when they conflicted with the federal government.

Don't get me wrong, I think the tide is moving in a different direction here ---marijuana legalisation, particularly medical marijuana, is a matter of "when", not "if". But in the meantime, it really shouldn't be a matter for surprise or outrage when the federal government prosecutes on it.

<comment><USER7> The primary error in this line of thinking is to draw parallels between a racial issue and a drug issue. In the case of the racial issue, the federal government was acting on the behalf of a portion of its citizenry, and against the will of a smaller portion of citizens; in this case the federal government would find itself on the right side of history.

In the drug case, the federal government is acting against the expressed will of a larger portion of citizenry, to the extent that many of those citizens have expended considerable effort to pass legislation contrary to the federal government's enforcement; in this case, I think it is quite likely that the federal government will find itself on the wrong side of history.

Merely drawing parallels from issues of states' rights versus federalism in the past isn't very enlightening. You have to consider each issue on its own merits.

That "righteous anger" isn't because this is simply a states' rights issue; rather, it's because the federal government is acting against the wishes and welfare of the citizens of states, and it is not doing so to protect the interests of some demographic group of victims.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> More prosecutorial shady behavior by the federal government. Here they are prosecuting someone who did everything above-board and in accordance with state law, after the president has made it clear that this type of prosecution should be low priority.

</comment><comment><USER8> The article refers to Davies's "seizing on what he saw as uncharted territory with a vast potential for profits." This is damning if true: California dispensaries are required to be non-profit.

If Davies really did seek "large profits from the cultivation and sale of marijuana", as the prosecuting attorney alleges, then he is in violation of both state and federal law. If he did not seek such profits, then he may indeed be in compliance with state law.

<comment><USER9> Not really. IIRC he can pay himself a nice salary, he just needs to invest the rest of the revenue back into the business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe it's the EU citizen in me, but I just done understand how this is possible? Isn't it legal in that state? So how can you face jail time?

It almost sounds like there are 2 legal systems and rules if law that operate in one physical area! And something can be legal in one, and illegal in another. But that can't be right, that sounds insane. What's the point of state law then?

Can someone explain this like I'm 5?

<comment><USER11> Federal law breaks state law. It's the same in federal countries of the EU. In Germany for example there are several laws where federal law overrides state law. For example the [Constitution of Hesse](<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Hesse>) allows death sentences but is overruled by the German Constitution (the "Grundgesetz")

<comment><USER12> A more practical example was the court case that allowed female soldiers to serve with weapons in Germany.

It went all the way up to European level, and there they overturned German law.

<comment><USER10> EU is not a great example, since there are no EU laws per se, it's countries that have to implement EU directives. additionally there is no EU jails or criminal justice system.

<comment><USER13> There are EU laws per se.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_(European_Union)>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You would hope that, if it's true that this business was compliant with letter and spirit of the State law, the California States Attorney would make a polite request to their Federal counterpart asking that the case be dropped as not in the public interest. If they don't, it seems like the State is hanging him out to dry.

</comment><comment><USER15> That argument was settled pretty decisively in 1864.

</comment><comment><USER16> Could we keep marijuana politics discussions elsewhere, please? This is one of those hotbutton issues that starts to dull the focus and quality of a site like this.

<comment><USER17> I think there probably are issues in this case that feel quite relevant here this week like federal prosecutorial discretion and the means by which plea bargains are achieved.

<comment><USER16> So because something is tangentially related to something else here, it's cool, right? Like since Aaron was Jewish, Israeli politics would fly too?

I disagree and think that "7 degrees of hacker news" is a fun game but should not seriously be considered a serious or legitimate reason to include some or other article.

<comment><USER17> I didn't say it was cool but that many people may have felt it was relevant for that reason. At times over the weekend the front page was 75% Aaron related so there are clearly large numbers of people with very strong feelings that his case is important. There is also a strong feeling that prosecutorial conduct was a significant factor in his death making this story potentially relevant. I haven't seen anyone suggesting Israeli politics was in any way related to his death.

Personally I neither upvoted this story or downvoted your comment but the fact that this story is on the front page and your comment has been downvoted may indicate that others (shockingly) have different views to yourself and I remind you of the submissions/comments guidelines:

> Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate > for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going > to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; > there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also > comment that you did.

<comment><USER16> My guess is that those upvoting the article and downvoting me are people for whom the issue is very important. Similar people might vote for articles about gay rights, euthanasia, immigration, and so on and so forth. They're all very important topics - probably more important than most of what we discuss here, if you think about it. That's what makes them so good at getting 'airplay'. Keeping them out has to be a conscious decision and effort.

There's nothing about this article that "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." and it might well be considered a "classic flamewar topic", although I suspect _mostly_ a one-sided flamewar here. Still though, it's a charged, political subject.

If no one calls out stuff that's off-topic, it's going to continue to be propagated.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NFC Ring - <AUTHOR> http://nfcring.com <comment><AUTHOR> The concept of a worn physical authentication token, along the lines of a historical signet ring, has struck me for a while as a probably ideal direction for identity / authentication to go.

It turns out there's product in the space already. (And a few earlier HN submissions, though little discussion.)</comment>


Ask HN: echo "127.0.0.1 facebook.com" ›› /etc/hosts? - <AUTHOR>

Yesterday a friend asked to use my computer so that he could complete a show flyer for a band. I've also added 127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com. He asked, almost cheekily, "Did _you_ do this to your computer?" -- He not being savvy enough to realize what was going on (He could have asked if the wifi hotspot we were on blocked FB, which, of course, is a wholly different, and more terrifying idea, but hey, the wifi I'm on now blocks torrentfreak.com...)
Usually if someone asks, "May I use your laptop to browse Facebook?" I will tell them that I have to re-configure a few things first. This usually steers the conversation to some other direction.
Generally, I don't want sites which use Facebook "like" buttons or Facebook's comments API to complete those requests from my system.
Is this good practice? Socially or technically? <comment><USER2> I think it's reasonable. I have a number of sites (reddit.com, facebook.com and google-analytics.com) blocked in the same way in my /etc/hosts

Since I don't have Facebook account I very rarely need to unblock it for anything and it's a bit of a pain to do so it stops me wasting time on sites like reddit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Same here.

What I find most surprising is the widespread belief that one "cannot delete one's Facebook account." (( <http://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account>, [http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_ac...](http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account) ))

This is surprising for the fact that no API of this sort sanely exists that does [EDIT: not*] allow for such a feature. I mean, to hazard a bit of hand waving and choir-preaching (perhaps): but it's shocking the rift between those who know what "CRUD" means and those who don't.

Why would anyone believe that one cannot "D" (delete) in the Facebook, given the historical trend of Web app dev practices, the organic SEO that has emerged around those practices, and the wealth of tags on the Web which contain terms like "CRUD."

It's almost unsettling...

<comment><USER3> I guess it depends on what people mean here by "delete". Do they mean erased as in no more data records, or no longer viewable / interfaceable from an application level. For instance, once I'm prod I almost always set a deleted flag instead of actually deleting for whatever piece of data it is in my CRUD actions. The Information is still there, and can be restored at any time, but its still "deleted" as far as my app is concerned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow! I was looking for a way to block Facebook and this is the best way I can think of :)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is actually a great idea. I'm definitely going to start doing this.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've done that for a few forums and gaming sites to discourage myself from wasting time there. A lot of people used to trade lists of marketing domains for adding to their hosts files before browser plugins were created for the same purpose. It is not an uncommon practice and should not bother anybody unless they suddenly need to access one of these sites from your computer, which can be easily fixed for a short time.</comment>


Google Chrome Benchmarks - <AUTHOR> http://scriptnode.com/article/google-chrome-benchmarks/

<comment><USER2> so operah is the fastest then?

<comment><USER3> Nope, Chrome is the fastest.

In one test Firefox 3 lead leads with 4 ms versus 6 ms. Those are the closest times in the tests, everywhere else Chrome is faster, and by a wider margin.</comment></comment>


Reminder: Leah Culver talking at Justin.TV tomorrow - <AUTHOR> http://techblog.justin.tv/2007/11/reminder-leah-culver-talking-at-jtv.html

<comment><USER2> I'm way, way more excited about the Peter Seibel talk coming up after this one, but I will still be tuning in live tomorrow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome. Feel free to ask questions in chat and I'll do my best to relay them all to Leah in the q&a at the end of her talk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Oh damn, I'm going to miss it. Good thing I got bumped back a few weeks so I'll get a chance to watch another one first.

</comment><comment><USER4> Will there be a non-live version afterwards?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. The beauty of Justin.TV is that _everything_ anyone broadcasts on our system is archived forever.

I'll post a link to the archive of Leah's talk when it's over.

<comment><USER5> > _The beauty of Justin.TV is that everything anyone broadcasts on our system > is archived forever._

Really? Because a friend of mine was playing with it and there aren't any archives. Does this mean it wasn't saved, or that it was manually deleted (by the account owner)?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you want to give me the channel name I'll look into it (email me at email@example.com if you want to keep it private).

It is possible to delete archives, so that could be what happened. We also have problems from time to time with archive playback even when the archives exist (obviously improving that is a big priority for us).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Who? I have no idea who she is.

<comment><AUTHOR> She's the co-founder of Pownce.

<comment><USER7> And?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> exciting!</comment>