Ask HN: If Uber is losing so much money, why not raise the price of fares? - <AUTHOR> In my city of Chicago the cost of an Uber is significantly cheaper than a traditional taxi. And Uber is losing money, supposedly a lot of money. So why not raise the price of fares, is Uber trying to condition commuters to choose ride sharing over a traditional taxis through lower fares? Do they just figure they can raise more money? Or are they biding their time because they believe they can have self-driving cars available before they run out of money? <comment><USER2> 1\. they have to compete with lyft and a handful of other ride sharing companies such as VIA (though the effect of the smaller players is probably negligible at best).

2\. They are trying to monopolize the market. if you can put all other players out of business you can set whatever price you want. The government doesn't seem too interested in upholding anti-trust laws and uber knows this. also, I think the effect of taxis is also moot at this point. they are so expensive and inconvenient relative to their rideshare alternatives that few people I know use them.

3\. They would eventually like to have self-driving cars as the default, and will almost certainly be profitable once that happens. It seems like they have struggled with this recently though and are pushing back the "launch date" further and further.

<comment><USER3> > 3\. They would eventually like to have self-driving cars as the default, and > will almost certainly be profitable once that happens.

I would eventually like to win the lotttery and will almost certainly not have to worry about money once that happens.

I don't know if I'm the crazy one here, but I just can't see this self-driving car end game coming inside of 10-20 years. And can Uber really drag their feet and remain solvent that long? And is it even certain that they'll be the "winner" in a self-driving car world?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's called penetration pricing.

Since it's a winner-take-all market - because of the network effects on both sides of the platform - they need to acquire users faster than any other competitor.

They'll stop when they know they're the clear winners of the market.

<comment><USER5> also known as a "land grab"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Because then everyone will use Lyft instead.</comment>


On Kickstarter: TAG titanium is a multifunctional credit card – Ask Me Anything - <AUTHOR> https://techama.com/tag-titanium-multifunctional-credit-card-ask-me-449031/ <comment><USER2> the size of a credit card, but not a credit card.</comment>


Panda Security Owned by Antisec - <AUTHOR> http://cybercrime.pandasecurity.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> For when it gets taken down: <http://cybercrime.pandasecurity.com.nyud.net/></comment>


HackCard: The world's first loyalty card for hackers - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/product-announcements/183043ba37d0

<comment><USER2> maybe i didn't get it but: why this is a physical card instead of an app on a smartphone? what's its advantage?

<comment><AUTHOR> This was partly an instinctive decision, but I think it's too easy to go mobile. Part of the reasoning for having a tangible card is the novelty and the failproof factor behind it.

No advantage, but no disadvantage either.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would Twitter have a problem with this also? - <AUTHOR>

At WordBiLLY.com we've been making custom word signs and one of the items we offer are custom Twitter ID pieces to be hung/placed at the office and/or home. Would this be a problem with Twitter? With the recent talk about Twitter's guidelines, I wanted to ask this. I am aware that asking this is also a risk but at the same time, I wanted to put it out in front of the community. <comment><USER2> No, signs with Twitter handles should not be a problem. Twitter is limiting access to their API for retrieving twitter feeds. You're not using any of their resources, so you're fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank You very much Wise Weasel. BTW, where can I get some good advice to market our product effectively? We are preparing a Kickstarter and also ran some fb ads (which were not great ROI). We got picked up by Uncovet and would love to get on fab.com

<comment><USER3> Instead of typical advertising, I would suggest you look at prominent Twitter users from various media organisations. For example, pick out an NPR personality, make them a sign, and send it to them. Do the same for others that do not have overlapping followings. If these people like them, they will probably take pictures and tweet them, giving you exposure.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a delightful and very helpful advice. Thank You! I must point out: my efforts to reach out to Media personalities on twitter has not been as successful as I had anticipated. But then again, I have not reached out to anybody on NPR. Is there a reason you specifies NPR? also, any tips to reach out effectively would be great. Thank You again.

<comment><USER3> I mentioned NPR because that is what I happened to be listening to at the time, but they seem to prefer Twitter over Facebook (vs. BBC, which seems to be the opposite). NPR's physical corporate address is on their site, and if you were to send a physical sign to the organization with the noted personality addressed properly, I believe it would easily get to its destination. Put your business card in the same package.

Same for any other organization: just send these signs to the physical addresses, and consider the costs your advertising/ promotions costs. I'm sure some "social media consultants" would love to have @twitterusername signs on their office doors to demonstrate to their clients how savvy they are.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is great advice. We are very grateful to you for taking the time. If there are any suggestions the cross your mind from time-to-time, please do share. Thank You very much again!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rust and Blockchain Workshop/Meetup in Berlin - <AUTHOR> https://www.meetup.com/Rust-in-Blockchain-Berlin/events/ <comment><USER2> What do you think are the best blockchain projects out there written in Rust? Thanks!</comment>


Why Hacker News should use a different Deterministic Algorithm, Not a Random One - <AUTHOR> http://www.bayesianwitch.com/blog/2013/why_hn_shouldnt_use_randomized_algorithms.html <comment><USER3>
      We assert that a randomized algorithm is unnecessary, and the
      problem can be solved deterministically (though of course random
      numbers will be used for sampling).

At a certain point this distinction becomes just philosophical wankery. Make no mistake, the proposed deterministic algorithm is a random one in disguise. And that's fine. Over large sample sizes, this randomness becomes sufficiently deterministic. Which is what the original proposal suggested, and it's also why sometimes a random variable can be elegant, too.

<comment><USER4> The article's philosophical wankery was way too pragmatic.

Random vs deterministic is a spectrum, anyway. Given enough information about the state of the machine doing the random picking/number generation all computer algorithms are deterministic anyway.

Heck, given enough information about the state of the universe everything is theoretically predictable, some predictions are just really hard.

Hopefully this achieves the needed philosophical wankery quota.

<comment><USER3> That's sort of what I was talking about. Sorry if that wasn't clear. Anyway, I'm with you on that. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a big fan of adding noise to systems to make them more predictable (it was the topic of my thesis: [http://tlb.org/#papers](http://tlb.org/#papers)). But, I believe it's not needed here because the arrival times of /newest voters are already sufficiently noisy. You only need random noise of +/\- 0.5 to get predictable results, and voter arrival patters give more than that already.

</comment><comment><USER6> imo the best argument for randomized algorithms is that you may want to show more "underexposed" articles without seeing all of them.

The issue with deterministic algos is that you basically have two options:

\- Treat new things as guilty until proven innocent and don't push them to the front until they get votes. This is the current approach here.

\- Push new things without "enough" votes to the front. This makes the front page almost all new items, invites spam, and generally defeats the purpose of a sorting algorithm.

The problem here is that you're necessarily combining both the act of "learning" article quality and the act of exploiting it, which necessarily makes at least one of those tasks suboptimal. One advantage of randomized algorithms is that you can add a third option:

\- Show just enough underexposed articles to gather evidence (votes) without polluting the front page too much.

<comment><AUTHOR> The flaw in your post is that deterministic does not mean showing everyone the same thing. You can deterministically decide how much evidence to gather about underexposed articles as well, which is what I advocated

Though to be fair, a random number generator would be used to determine _which_ users to expose the article too (just not how many of them).

Even if you fail to come up with a deterministic algorithm, you'll probably come up with a better random one simply by coming up with better probability distribution to draw from.

<comment><USER7> > The flaw in your post is that deterministic does not mean showing everyone > the same thing. Though to be fair, a random number generator would be used > to determine which users to expose the article too (just not how many of > them).

Well to be fair, what you are describing is a random experiment in the statistical sense, ie. something modeled by a probability space. I see what you're saying, but I would say your usage of the word is the nonstandard one, not chilldream's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Additionally to what we have, I wish each user could "simply" hide topics we don't care about, favourite others (and maybe even comments for good measure), and also have a view of the topics they replied to.

Yes, echo chamber, but also people talking about topics they know or want to know about with other people who do. Having an arbitrary and often rather short window of opportunity to discuss something sometimes really sucks.

<comment><USER9> So... subreddits?

<comment><USER10> Maybe you could do something with tags.

<comment><USER11> Interestingly, there's already an implicit HN 'subreddit' (ask) and a couple of implicit tags 'show hn, ask hn, ask pg.' Even the who's hiring threads could be argued to be a "board" in anything but name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you're interested in these types of algorithms, I'm writing a book / running an online course. You can sign up and read past content here: [http://bandits.mynaweb.com/](http://bandits.mynaweb.com/)

Next section is coming very soon. Just gotta finish the last visualisation. (Interesting that both bandit algorithms and Angular + d3 feature on HN today.)

I haven't had the time to read either article closely (at a conference) but the main issue I'd be concerned with is non-stationary rewards. What is interesting today is not interesting tomorrow. A simple hack to get around this is to decay the prior over time. Other issues to consider include:

\- the amount of data available. Even HN might not have enough readers to get sufficient data on each arm. Here you might use a similarity measure between arms (articles), such as tf-idf so votes for one article can inform the ranking of other articles.

\- the effect of ranking on votes. The highest ranked articles probably gets more votes just by virtue of being at the top. There is some work on submodular bandits that might be relevant here, but this research is very new.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just curious, do you have some links on handling non-stationary rewards?

I've cooked up a method of my own which I believe is theoretically sound, but I imagine there must be methods out there that don't involve solving PDEs. (Or at least simpler closed form approximations to the PDEs.)

[http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/time_varying_conversi...](http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/time_varying_conversion_rates.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would say, that surely flags of an article to count (how much, I really am not sure). At least I would do that.

And I believe, that comments would also count a fair amount. An up-vote is a strong signal, but a comment is an even stronger signal.

I would (without telling anybody) even take the length of comments into account when weighting. I would at least try this and do an A/B-test, to see if this heightens the quality of articles on the front-page.

I would also use clicks on the link as an indicator, but one would have to be careful, as this would push link-bait articles to the top. So here one should not put too much weight into clicks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, the recent articles on HN's ranking algorithm suggest that PG considers comments to be evidence _against_ an article being a quality article. Presumably that's why he penalizes articles with lots of comments.

<comment><USER10> He believes that the number of comments correlates with how controversial something is and wants to select against controversial topics. Anything with greater than 40 comments gets an automatic penalty.

I think a better way of doing it would be to get a large number of articles which are known to be controversial or uncontroversial and then use features from them (not _just_ the number of comments) and try to develop a good predictor of how controversial something is. It would probably be a lot more effective than just arbitrary penalties for articles with 40 comments.

Though I kind of object to this stuff being done automatically at all. There aren't _that_ many articles on HN that human moderation is impossible. As cool as automation is.

<comment><USER11> It appears he wants to correlate the number of comments with their contextual value, though.

A better indicator of how trollish a thread is and how much that's getting in the way of the conversation (because those are two different things - <USER2> may be willing to put up with vehement discussion in one instance but not another) would be the ratio of downvoted comments to comments. I can even see measuring the length of comments and the depth of a thread, as a deep thread with lots of tiny comments might be an indication of sniping.

I realize i'm probably being incredibly naive and that the whole thing is complex with multiple factors interrelating but I don't see how the ratio of upvotes to comments tells you anything useful, if it doesn't take into account that people may comment without upvoting, and people might upvote bad comments. I make certain to upvote the article now with every comment because i'm aware that not doing so, regardless of the content of my comment, is an implicit downvote.

I think it's also a mistake to correlate "controversial" with "unwanted" but that might just be a matter of semantics.

<comment><USER14> Agreed, the stories sunk include ones like the Anandtech review of the Surface Pro, and the site is quite reputed for being neutral, however the excessive number of comments combined with not too many upvotes can easily sink articles which are otherwise just news and this contributes to the filter bubble(funnily there's a anti-filter bubble post right near this article on the front page).

Read pg's comments in this thread. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6596038](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6596038)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is contention with HN's ranking algorithm common? I've perused the "new" page a number of times, and generally interesting submissions (i.e. what HN finds interesting) DO make it to the front page.

<comment><USER16> > I've perused the "new" page a number of times, and generally interesting > submissions (i.e. what HN finds interesting) DO make it to the front page.

Some do and some don't. Certainly, many interesting articles never make it to the front page. Due to lack of exposure rather than some failing intrinsic failing of the article.

It raises an interesting question of priorities; Is it more important that every interesting article spends some time on the front page, or that no non- interesting article spends some time on the front page?

In other words, given that there are lots of interesting things in the world, does it matter if a particular interesting thing never makes it to the front page, so long as the front page is full of interesting things?

</comment></comment><comment> a-priori I agree that introducing randomness would probably make it more fair to new posts. One idea I had, rather than an algorithm based on Bayesian prior probability estimates, would be one based on a Kalman filter (or similar) confidence interval from the up/down vote history.

The filter would give a range of possible scores for the post -- ones with few votes would have a very broad range, ones with lots of votes would have a tight range. Then you order based on a random number in that range (discounted based on its age).

</comment><comment><USER17> One of the problems with this approach, that I'm not seeing anyone mention in a cursory scan of the existing comments, is that it would make the front page different for different people. Other sites work that way (notably Reddit), but AFAIK, the HN front page is the same for everyone who views it at the same time (possibly modulo showdead; does that affect posts?). This is a useful property to preserve, and one that this proposal explicitly breaks.

</comment><comment><USER18> I find it amusing that they propose a Bayesian approach since PG contributed a fair deal to spam detection a decade or so ago.

</comment><comment><USER19> quasi random number sequences [1] are "space filling". A typical problem of sampling from the uniform distribution is that parts of the space never get sampled due to sampling bias. Quasi-random sequences ensure evenish distribution. This speeds up many sampling based algorithms e.g. MCMC, by an order of a complexity level.

I too believe random numbers are usually the wrong choice.

[1] [http://www.mathworks.co.uk/help/stats/generating-quasi- rando...](http://www.mathworks.co.uk/help/stats/generating-quasi-random- numbers.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> Another (perhaps unpopular) metric to use would be whether links were clicked before 1) upvoting, 2) clicking the comments link, 3) commenting

</comment><comment><USER7> Probability matching is hardly what I would call a deterministic algorithm. What the authors likely means is that we should use a _probabilistic_ algorithm rather than a _random_ one.

Nitpicking aside, I disagree with the usage of the original quote:

> "It appears to be a quite general principle that, whenever there is a > randomized way of doing something, then there is a nonrandomized way that > delivers better performance but requires more thought." E.T. Jaynes

What randomized methods are good at is _reducing bias_. In our case, there are several sources of bias: \- The population that upvotes links on the 'new' page is different than the one that upvotes links on the frontpage \- The probability of upvotes (which I assume are either ratios of upvotes to impressions or the ratio of upvotes to clicks) itself is determined by several factors other than article quality: article type and headline quality (and there is another interesting debate about quality vs. popularity, since sensationalized headlines are likely to get more clicks) to cite the main culprits, but there are many others.

I have three problems with this article:

1\. The proposed strategy answers the question of _variance_ but not _bias_ , which is where the problem differs from a simple multi-armed bandit problem. Now we could build sophisticated models that try to take all these into account and get an unbiased estimator of quality, but it's likely be a pursuit that's not worth the payoff.

2\. Adding random noise to the rankings is likely to be much more efficient. The author here suggests computing the posterior probability of an article being better than another for each pair of articles, which seems rather impractical.

3\. Most importantly: is overall quality of the frontpage really the ultimate optimization objective? This solution doesn't solve the problem of the N+1th article receiving _much_ fewer votes than the Nth, where N is the number of articles shown on the frontpage, while being arguably equally deserving. I would argue that the problem of minimizing the probability of a good article getting few pageviews is actually the more important one, because we have more good articles than slots on the frontpage. A randomized algorithm would be much better equipped for this purpose.

Of course, the other thing is that for bragging purposes "We made the frontpage of HN" sounds much better than "We made the frontpage of HN for 60% of the users". But that's a different problem altogether...

Edit: writing this comment made me think of alternative solutions. An easy-to- implement one would be to add 5 or so slots at the bottom of the frontpage that would contain random picks from the 2nd or 3rd page in a rotating manner. That would give good articles which weren't fortunate enough to get good visibility a chance at floating up to the top, without all the implications of changing the ranking algorithm itself. In other words, add fuzziness to the threshold instead of the ranking.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have little dispute with everything you've written.

However, one place I'd argue with you strongly is that handling _beliefs about the world_ should be part of your model. For example, you mention different upvote probabilities on the new and front page - I'd simply model that with a new parameter beta (possibly related to alpha in some way).

It's far from clear to me how randomization such as what Dan Luu proposed actually addresses this at all.

I'll also discuss one other point: _The author here suggests computing the posterior probability of an article being better than another for each pair of articles, which seems rather impractical._

It probably is. However, suppose we went through the effort of computing posteriors, only to discover that we get stuck at the stage of computing pairwise probabilities. There is still a very good chance we can draw samples from the posteriors.

Even though our deterministic algorithm has failed, we still get a _much better random algorithm_ out of the exercise. Given the posteriors on P(good article), we can draw samples from them and employ Thompson Sampling to sort the articles. (I.e., draw a sample from each posterior and then order the articles by increasing sampled posterior.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> bayesianwitch.com is those fucks that caused this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6780997](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6780997) and in particular is run by this asshole: [http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/human_checksum.html](http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/human_checksum.html)</comment>


What happens when children don't have the internet for a whole day - <AUTHOR> https://brightside.me/article/a-thought-provoking-experiment-showed-what-happens-when-children-dont-have-the-internet-for-a-whole-day-42855/ <comment><USER3> Is it even true?

[http://www.theitbaby.com/wordpress/2016/01/25/they-wanted- to...](http://www.theitbaby.com/wordpress/2016/01/25/they-wanted-to-see-what- would-happen-if-they-took-tech-from-kids-for-a-whole-day-it-was-fake/)

<comment><USER4> see damian2000's comment. It appears to be real.

I copy paste the url from damian2000's comment here for you convenience:

[https://snob.ru/selected/entry/45522](https://snob.ru/selected/entry/45522)

<comment><USER5> What makes you think that it's real. It's just the same text in russian language... With no references to the study or whatever... With ending like "А что вы об этом думаете?" meaning "And what do you think about this?"

<comment><USER6> It's the text signed by the named author, it's not some retelling, and it's from 2012. It's imaginable that it was included in some of her books afterwards. She still writes regularly online:

[https://snob.ru/profile/5591/blog](https://snob.ru/profile/5591/blog)

She also blogged about the continuation of her experiment here (2014):

[https://snob.ru/selected/entry/79799](https://snob.ru/selected/entry/79799)

2016 and it comes to the English-speaking media, here Feb 2016, where the New Paper from Singapore tried to reproduce the experiment:

[http://www.tnp.sg/news/singapore-news/what-happens- when-5-st...](http://www.tnp.sg/news/singapore-news/what-happens- when-5-students-spend-8-hours-without-internet)

<comment><USER7> It's interesting to read about the reproduction of the experiment. Some takeaways:

* The number is low, only five, but I think it's enough for an informal experiment of a newspaper (not a peer review article)

* They don't have a control group. What happens if you must log all your activities for 8 hours and feel that someone is looking over your shoulder? (Can you be with your SO?)

* It's not a 100% reproduction. It's nice that here the children were allowed to talk with families/friends, instead of being forced to be alone or with unknown people.

* No suicidal thought. Perhaps the problem with the other experiments was the isolation? Did the subjects in the other experiment have suicidal though before the experiment? Was the suicidal part exaggerated? For example:

\- "Do you think that you can survive one week in the conditions of this experiment?" _" No, I'd kill myself. (as a figure of speech) [1]"_

\- "Did you think about suicide?" _" No"_ "Not even a little?" _" No"_ "Not even for one moment?" _" OK, whatever, perhaps only once."_

* I think that an important quote is:

> _" When I wanted to play the guitar, I didn't have my phone to search for > new chords. Luckily I had some chords printed out already," she said._

Perhaps doing a two hour rehearsal and repeating the experiment one week after will remove most of the problems due to the lack of preparation. It's like trying to go to a camping without previous experience. You will put the cans, but forget the can opener. (Been there, done that.)

[1] I'm a native Spanish speaker, so I don't know the exact idiom in English. In Spanish from Argentina we sometime use phrases like "Cuando se me cayo el florero me quiería morir." -> "When I drop accidentally the flower pot, I wanted to be dead." but everybody understand that it's a figure of speech and not a real suicidal feeling. I'm not sure how to translate the exact feeling with the right idiom to English. I even had to add the word "accidentally" to the transition to make the first part of the sentence clear.

<comment><USER8> "When I dropped the flowerpot, (I just died|wanted to die|could have just died)." works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was initially surprised, but then I saw this:

> According to the rules of the experiment, the children had to explain the > next day how they had coped with being alone under such conditions.

Title is misleading; the children didn't have access to any modern technology.

tl;dr no modern technology (no TV radio) and no other people.

> the today's generation of young people are too often entertained by things > not of their making, are incapable of finding ways to keep themselves busy, > and are completely unfamiliar with the idea of the world of their > imagination.

The experiment doesn't imply that.

Even yesterday's generation was also entertained by things not of their making (books, radio, TV).

Talking to an imaginary friend can't replace real human interaction, especially for 8 hours.

Plus with modern technology they are able to keep themselves busy.

<comment><USER10> Every generation complains that the children of today can't entertain themselves are anti-social, etc.

When I was a kid (in my 30s now) I remember people saying it about me reading/watching tv/playing videogames.

Now it is smartphones/computers/internet.

When my mum was a kid apparently it was listening to records.

I am sure if you go back 1000 years you will find some record of an "old" person complaining about how the young ones have no respect for their elders and can't keep themselves entertained.

<comment><USER11> >I am sure if you go back 1000 years you will find some record of an "old" person complaining about how the young ones have no respect for their elders and can't keep themselves entertained.

Try 1000 years and some chage earlier:

"The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise." - Socrates

<comment><USER12> Sadly, that one is apparently apocryphal.

[http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving- children...](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-children-in- ancient-times/)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the information, I had heard this one long ago and took it for granted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They where not allowed to communicate with friends for 8 hours and stripped of their usual entertainment, while normally they would spend most time in school, sports clubs and with their families?

I think you could have done this experiment 20 years ago and get the same results.

What will be different nowadays is that your friends are always an your pocket. A situation where you are confronted with something emotional and unable to talk to a friend right away might be more unusual and frightening than it was 20 years ago.

Maybe kids 20 years ago could handle boredom better, but I think this study has too many flaws to judge about that.

<comment><USER14> I was a teenager 20 years ago, and I'm not so sure about that. My brother was an actual child then.

The equivelent would have been to take away all social contact, plus television and video games and some freedom of movement to see folks for 8 hours. It wasn't like I generally had 8 hours to myself back then - <USER2> school and homework and chores and church (parents insisted) and the few friends and outings I did have, I simply didn't have that. And then, suddenly, some person doing an experiment wants to isolate me for 8 hours? I'd have been horribly bored as well.

<comment><USER13> Exactly. Even staying at home alone while the supervising parent went shopping sometimes got boring after the first 30 minutes. Albeit no horrible experience, I went along shopping most of the time, not to stay home alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I actually find the results to be pretty optimistic. We've become a more connected society because of our technology and it feels good to communicate with other people. That's why we developed the technology in the first place; to shorten the distance between us. What's so wrong with that? We're only moving forward to a world that's even more connected, not back to the 1800's. Sure, we're dependent on things we did not make; we stand on the shoulders of giants, but that's how we move forward. We take the things passed to us, use and build on them to make a better world. It's ok to have some psychological issues when you take it all away.

<comment><USER16> I question your premise. Are you and I actually communicating right now in an emotionally meaningful, fulfilling way?

Am I less alone now for having this exchange of posts on HN with you than I would be had I spent this time reading from a book, which is of course also a communication, if only in one direction?

My instinct tells me that neither of these states involve meaningful (which I'm defining here as _personal_ ) human interaction, but I'll freely admit that's more a gut feeling than a scientific truth.

<comment><USER17> I would argue that the minute you checked back in here to see if anyone had responded to your post - it became a meaningful two way interaction, and you would have received the added stimulus of excitement/gladness (that someone had responded) or disappointment/emptiness (if someone hadn't).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A day? How about 6 months [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/01/technol...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/01/technology- ban-kids-home-experiment)

This and the article mentioned elsewhere ([http://www.tnp.sg/news/singapore- news/what-happens-when-5-st...](http://www.tnp.sg/news/singapore-news/what- happens-when-5-students-spend-8-hours-without-internet)) are far more accurate representations of what happens - kids may moan a bit but then they adapt. Your kids are not going to have suicidal thoughts because you turned off the internet for a bit (or if they are it's not the switch off that's the problem). The original article is just scaremongering, HN shouldn't be pandering to this kind of clickbait.

<comment><USER19> Did you read the whole article? Researchers mention that many of the children thought this was not a good reaction, tried this experiment again by themselves and reported that on second and third tries they fared much better. So it's just more like sudden withdrawal syndrome and they indeed adapted.

<comment><USER20> Voluntary solitude is so rare for people of any age. It's also profoundly useful. 24 years ago, as a high school senior, in lieu of regular gym class I elected to take a course in Survival. This culminated in a 3-day, 2-night "solo" \-- a sleepover on the edge of one of Boston's outer harbor islands, during which time I didn't see or speak with another human being. (We each had a large section of the island to ourselves, and were instructed to silently turn and walk in the other direction if we happened to see a neighboring student at our site's edge.) I had volunteered for the most-remote site, on the northeastern edge of the island. I made camp on a beach adjacent to the overgrown ruins of a military installment of some sort. Like my classmates, I'd walked in with a duffel bag containing a sleeping bag, 2 or 3 items of clothing, a 10x10' clear sheet of plastic, 40' of twine, a knife, 2 gallons of water, some non-perishable food, 5 waterproof matches in a ziplock bag with a journal and pencil, and a whistle. That's it. No phone (in 1992 nobody had these), no walkman (my tape-playing music player), no walkie-talkie. Just the same essentials available a century or more earlier.

After picking my spot and building my shelter, I walked, sat, breathed, and wrote in my journal. As the first day waned, I made a roaring bonfire against the outer wall of the fortress, feeding it the end of a massive driftwood log. I sketched the sun setting over Boston's skyline as the stars came out, listened to the fire and the waves on the beach, and had time, and space, entirely to myself.

That weekend gave me a chance to contemplate the myriad huge changes then imminent in my life: things like picking a college, moving out of the home I'd lived in since I was two years old, and moving to a different state in another part of the country.

At the time, I thoroughly enjoyed the solo experience. It flew by, and I was grateful to have had the chance to decompress and spend time outside. It was transformative in a few ways, and in writing this I'm realizing it again, and remembering just how valuable -- and rare -- that kind of solitude is. Human connection is so important. But so is the chance to _completely_ unplug and disconnect. I can't recommend it highly enough. My gratitude for that solo experience is profound.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > The author of the experiment, a family psychologist, wanted to prove her > working hypothesis that the today's generation of young people are too often > entertained by things not of their making, are incapable of finding ways to > keep themselves busy, and are completely unfamiliar with the idea of the > world of their imagination.

That is not how you do science.

<comment><USER22> Of course it is. The question is: do you accept the results even if they show against your hypothesis?

<comment><USER23> No, she directly influenced the experiment and had no control group, plus tiny homogenous sample.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This made sense until I got to the part that said _it was forbidden to communicate with others according to the rules of the experiment_. This, to me, makes the experiment less convincing and the outcome less of a surprise.

A lot of online activities, no matter how brainless, are social. It doesn't seem fair to say "kids can't live without their mobile phones" when it's really about them not being able to communicate. I'm pretty certain the results would be less drastic if they could have just hung out and played boardgames.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have 4 kids. The more I let them use the Internet the less they interact with each other and when they do interact it usually is in a poor way. The less Internet I let them use, the more they interact together, use their imaginations when playing and there are way less fights and bickering.

<comment><USER26> When my grandsons (4-6) are brought to visit us, we often leave them in the barn for a day while I and my wife go to the city with business. I have noticed they even started using their own words and other odd gestures to communicate with each other. Glad to see them bonding without modern electric appliances instead choosing to play with the hay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This experiment is interesting but doesn't only test what happens when the kids do not have access to internet, it also tests the result of social isolation. They were forced to be alone and not have any contact with other kids.

It would be more interesting to redo the same experiment but allow the kids to meet and talk with each other. I think there would probably be a lot less anxiety.

</comment><comment><USER28> The original source (Russian) from 2012 ... [https://snob.ru/selected/entry/45522](https://snob.ru/selected/entry/45522)

</comment><comment><USER29> Kids locked alone in a room for 8 hours get bored, News at 11....

</comment><comment><USER30> I get taking away Internet to see what would happen, but why would you remove all social contact altogether? And why remove the telephone? We've had access to the telephone for decades.

Plus I'm pretty sure you could find some variant of "damn kids, rap music" engraved on the wall of a cave in mesopotamia. It's somehow ingrained in our genetic structure to think our children are idiots (which I suppose is a little beneficial).

</comment><comment><USER31> Kids can't entertain themselves "with things of their making". Let's give them books to read instead. What?

I wonder if when books were invented people would complain "this youth, they do nothing but read, they can't even <insert outdated form of entertainment> anymore".

<comment><USER32> Indeed. Novels were widely considered frivolous and unfit material for children during the 19th century.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> They are fine and read more books and do more sports. My internet-at-home is strictly managed and they have to earn credits to use it shortly.

I consider internet/games are mental drugs for kids, maybe too harsh, but they can play at will when they grow up and leave my house.

</comment><comment><USER34> So if you deprive kids of 2 things (internet AND social interaction) for 8h, you can safely infer all abnormal behaviours were caused by the lack of only one of those things?

Also, as someone else mentioned, the "study" appears to be nonexistent.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't know about the study but when I cut out the Internet my kids become productive real fast - one cleans up her room other will look out the window and find the lawn needs mowing and will happily mow and sometimes even edge. Some times they come and talk to me.

I then give them Internet back - so far it's a good positive feedback loop for them. I guess it won't work with all kids - mine like doing other things but are just too distracted when there's Internet.

<comment><USER23> It works in my experience with cousins. Kids can easily go through whole summer break without apparent issues. Both the girls and boys enjoyed physical activity (different kinds most for each kid surprisingly with one exception) Half of the kids liked to draw in a group. All of them liked board games.

One boy liked to take apart and analyse computer hardware and other things mechanical. One girl liked to play with the piano and synthesiser. The other boys liked PE more and another girl liked to play football with them. One girl liked much more complex books than expected and talking about them.

Sample size of 10. Age and 9-12. Generally 2-3 at a time. Kids were very used to social media and passive entertainment as well as computer games. Also movies on demand.

They are allowed to make and talk to friends but not borrow cellphones, computers or watch TV. They were not separated from parents.

(also parents are sadly often busy with their lives and earning money. I bet kids like the personal touch and attention)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> More accurately would be "What happens when you socially isolate children for 8 hours".

The social isolation part is probably the most important aspect of the study. I'll bet you that if it only limited modern technology, but allowed the participants to interact with people, we would get totally different results.

I think it's quite easy to forego technology for longer periods - you often do that on vacations, to give an example.

</comment><comment><USER23> Obvious result if true. 8 hours is not enough, the block on social communication turned it into an experiment on loneliness with strangers not disconnection.

The kids should have been allowed to talk with their friends face to face in a monitored way.

What was the protocol to prevent interference by researchers? Was the questionnaire vetted against leading question and bias?

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm skeptical. I need more details about the anxious feelings. That is a key piece of evidence and all we have about it is hearsay.

</comment><comment><USER38> Alternative title "teenagers can't be alone for 8 hours without technology". The issue is being alone with their thoughts. The fact that such a significant number had severe anxiety without access to easy distractions seems problematic. Self-reflection, deeper thinking or ability to focus on a task are important skills.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The shortened title is simply the result of HN title length limits.

</comment><comment><USER39> Due to my age I thought back to my childhood. When we didn't have internet. My first thought was: they use the Commodore as it is? :)

</comment><comment><USER40> Internet (...and human contact whatsoever).

</comment><comment><USER41> What happens when children don't have magazines for a whole day.

Is what this article would be titled in 1740.

<comment><USER41> Clearly the common theme through history that adults have issue with is learning and socialization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This strongly smells of bullshit and has no place on Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER43> It is interesting, and the reactions are extreme.

But the experiment forces some element of social isolation that may have distorted the result.

I grew up without the Internet, and sometimes without a phone or TV. But I still had friends to play with.

<comment><USER44> This.

I remember the first computer my family bought that had a modem. The internet was a novelty and because it tied up your phone line you had to be careful when you used it (lest you miss out on a call). No mobile phones also meant that solo activities were limited to what these scientists listed: reading, writing, drawing, etc... BUT, I had access to my friends. I could go out and play basketball, run around on the play-gym playing tag, and just walking around town.

It's no wonder that these kids had anxiety! Forced solitude is brutal.</comment></comment>


What do you think needs to be redesigned? - <AUTHOR> http://cha1n.com/? Hey all :) So there have been some changes to Chain.  I've tried to emphasize more of the social aspect of the site, but we're still wondering if there's anything that could be emphasized a little better.  I've tried to keep the process of actually managing what you're accomplishing as simple as possible.<p>What would you like to see?  What would make the site useful or entertaining for you?  I'm at your command. <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all :) So there have been some changes to Chain. I've tried to emphasize more of the social aspect of the site, but we're still wondering if there's anything that could be emphasized a little better. I've tried to keep the process of actually managing what you're accomplishing as simple as possible.

What would you like to see? What would make the site useful or entertaining for you? I'm at your command.

</comment><comment><USER2> You asked for it...

I'm gonna keep editing this post with suggestions.

\- Too many colors. I count like nine or ten. Taking that down to three or four would be awesome and make the site feel less complex. <http://kuler.adobe.com/> to get some pretty ones.

\- A tag cloud style visualization for "popular chains" would be cool and would illustrate the data in a way that's not so tabular and numerical.

\- New user join times would be cooler as relative to now english statements (like "5 minutes ago" instead of 10:01). Same for new chains. And new posts.

\- I think you should put some thought into what people are going to be thinking when they see the front page. Odds are, a brand new user is going to be totally confused, because there's so much content named with some pretty site-particular jargon. Why not explain the concept there, rather than hiding it two links deep (About->link to a blog post)?

\- I have to admit, I don't understand what's going on when I click the name of an activity. Like, the chain pictures, what are they linking to? And what are the numbers underneath? Maybe I'm an idiot, but I'm seriously confused.

\- I see up arrows around the site. I eventually figured out that I could try to click them, but I have no clue why I'd want to (what do they do??) and when I try to click, it asks me to login (for what??). I'm so confused...

\- The register process was nice. Threw me right into using the site. I like. Maybe it would be nice, though, to give me the option to choose the interval of time when I'm putting in what I'm doing (rather than forcing daily, then letting me fix it).

\- So now I know what a chain gang is! But a faq would be nice.

\- Clicking the +0 next to my post took me to image moderation. That was wholly unexpected.

\- On the "What everyone's doing page," the link for me to do that activity too looks like a plus-or-minus symbol with the underline. I would vote for a real icon here instead of text, to avoid confusion. And maybe make it more clear what happens if I click it. Text that says "I'm doing this too!" (but in fewer words) might speak better to its effect.

\- Assuming I'm a continual user of the site, my number one priority when I visit is probably the ability to easily confirm that I've done the stuff I wanted to do. So, I think if I'm logged in, my front page that I see when I arrive should give me a way to check off everything I've done. As it stands, I have to click my name to get something like this, which is pretty unintuitive, I think.

I'll be back later to add more. I apologize retroactively if any of these suggestions come across offensively. Just my raw thoughts as I use the site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow. You're awesome

1) Colors: Yes.

2) Tag Cloud: Ehh.. Tag clouds seemed a little annoying, but it might be better than a straight table view.

3) Relative times instead of absolute times ("5 minutes ago"..): Strongly agree. Implemented.

4) Okay. I'll try to figure out how to make things more obvious for new users.

5) Hmm. Yeah, that is confusing. Whenever you're doing something (for example, "run") and you make a post about it, that post gets added to the "run" chaingang. From there, other people can read it and upvote it. If you happened to upload a picture along with it, that picture is displayed as a thumbnail.

6) That's for upvoting user content. It's probably less obvious on Chain than it is on say, YCombinator or Reddit.

7) Hm.. You can choose the interval time on the next page. I wanted to keep the frontpage as simple as possible, so I didn't include a dropdown time interval there.

8) Yes, a FAQ is probably way more useful than an About page.

9) The +0 represents how many community points you have. I need to represent it differently. This is tied in with, "How do I encourage users to moderate images?" The idea was you'd earn community points for moderating images, then it would be displayed next to your name whenever you posted a comment or a cheer. However, that's a little confusing too..

10) I was thinking consistency was better than making a new icon for that, and the consistent part is that it _looks_ like a link. It looks like something you can click on. Whereas the uparrow does not, but I was hoping people would figure it out. But maybe an icon is required.

11) Yeah, I'm going to add cookie-based authentication so that you can stay logged in. That's a great idea to make the first thing you see be your own chains.

12) No way, not offensive or anything. That was _exactly_ the kind of criticism I was looking for. Thank you so much! Got any more?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which programming bootcamp should I attend? - <AUTHOR>

Hey Hackers,<p>I've been doing some research into programming bootcamps recently. I've seen that many people recommend Hack Reactor, DevBootCamp, MakerSquare, and Devatory. Is there a special reason why many of these camps teach RoR? Which would you recommend and why? <comment><USER2> What are you looking to get out of the program?

Ruby on Rails is often taught because it is one of the most in-demand skills in tech startups (other skills would be frontend skills, iOS, data science) - this applies to Silicon Valley, NY, and possibly Austin (not too familiar with Austin's tech scene). Many startups use Python, Java, or C#, (popularity in that order), but it's a drastically smaller number. Big tech corps are a different matter, but coding programs don't really target them.

The location the program is in matters quite a bit and can influence your ability to get a job in a certain location.

I'm somewhat familiar with these programs. If you provided an email in your profile we could talk about it more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the information. I'm trying to get a job once I finish these bootcamps. many people have advised me to not take some of the bootcamps because they focus more on the frontend (HTML, CSS, Node.js).

My email is firstname.lastname@example.com.

Thanks again and Merry Christmas!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's your web development setup for vscode? - <AUTHOR> what extensions, tasks, etc. do you have installed for working with JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and various front/back-end frameworks? <comment><USER2> I use [http://emmet.io/](http://emmet.io/) plugin with Coda on MacOS, it helps write HTML/CSS markup a bit faster.

</comment><comment><USER3> Emacs keybindings.</comment>


Indian Govt order bans 32 sites including Archive.org, GitHub, Pastebin, Vimeo - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/pranesh_prakash/status/550196008416600064 <comment><USER2> Context: Apparently some users were hosting pro-IS content on these sites [1]

This smacks of incompetence and idiocy. It is clear that a lot of people in the government do not understand how the internet works, and what these sites do. (They probably do not understand that these sites contain user generated content)

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/31/indian-government- censorsht...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/31/indian-government-censorsht/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Fortunately these blocks are just DNS blocks at the ISP level. I just pointed machine to use the google DNS service and everything works fine.</comment>


Build increasing passive income with your Apps - <AUTHOR> https://hungry-babbage-9a1931.netlify.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello everyone. We are building an SDK tool for mobile developers who have many apps in the store. Literally we are building a tool do add features from remote, increase experience of users and monetize smartly. Enhance the experience, constantly engage users and increase value over time. Participate in the largest mobile phone market by investing minimal resources in exchange for large profits. Build a business based on data, informations, user experiences and create an increasing passive income system. Invitation website for mobile app publishers. [http://bit.ly/megageneralinvitus](http://bit.ly/megageneralinvitus)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We are building an SDK tool for mobile developers who have many apps in the store. Literally we will build a tool do add features from remote, increase experience of users and monetize smartly. Enhance the experience, constantly engage users and increase value over time. Participate in the largest mobile phone market by investing minimal resources in exchange for large profits. Build a business based on data, informations, user experiences and create an increasing passive income system.

Invitation website for mobile app publishers.

[https://hungry-babbage-9a1931.netlify.com/](https://hungry- babbage-9a1931.netlify.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: Please critique my product, ThoughtMuse - an online mindmap tool - <AUTHOR> http://thoughtmuse.com

<comment><USER2> The demo was very good at giving me an immediate experience. Except I never could figure out how to move items around.

I wonder if you might want to include some "below the fold" stuff in the demo, or maybe as its wrapup, that gives me a hint of what else I could do, even if it's not in the demo. I.e. "we won't show you here, but you can also create fancy reports..."?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, will definately look at adding some more hints/teasers of other stuff that can be done.

I'm also planning on producing some good content (articles and screencasts) on what you can do with mindmapping both in general, and with ThoughtMuse specifically.</comment></comment>


Yahoo Wants You to Linger (on the Ads, Too) - k-mcgrady http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/technology/yahoo-wants-you-to-linger-on-the-ads-too.html

<comment><AUTHOR> What a bore. Why would I want to read mill-produced articles weaved with sponsored posts? There's an overwhelming amount of meaningful content coming from thousands of different sources, made by writers and artists who have something to say to the world beyond optimizing for page views and ad clicks.</comment>


Why Eating Lab-Grown Meat Will Be More Ethical Than Eating a Vegetable - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/why-eating-lab-grown-meat-will-be-more-ethical-than-eating-a-vegetable?utm_source=mbtwitter <comment><USER2> From the article: "It's not the case that cultured meat is totally free of animal products at the moment. Calf blood serum is the best medium to grow cells, which is often a byproduct of the meat industry. "</comment>


How Apple's iCould datacenter got build - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/cleantech/the-story-behind-how-apples-icloud-data-center-got-built/

<comment><USER2> I'm just wondering what is so special about Apple that this whole thing warranted not just this article, but a whole series of four articles on that website...

If there was enough of an incentive to write it, then surely it must not have been due to some Apple worship, but a genuine attempt at educating whoever is about to read it and provide them with facts about the project and at least leave with an impression on the reader as to why this article was both worth writing and reading. Let's have a look and cherry-pick those special parts.

> "We almost lost it," says the President of the Catawba County Economic > Development group, Scott Millar, who has a background in advertising and a > penchant for crossword puzzles.

Crossword puzzles. Surely this has some part to play yet, otherwise it would be complete fluff.

> The site they found, off of Startown Road, is the one that years later Apple > settled on.

Well, I guess that covered one of the five 'w's.

> In its first year of operation, the Apple data center employed 67 full time > "badged" workers. Facebook, likewise, has 60 full-time workers for the first > building of its two-building data center complex.

It's a random number, without any context. 67. Well, I guess that's one actual fact.

> Still, there are a lot of indirect benefits of creating a data center > cluster. The thousands of construction workers that built the data centers > shopped in the local markets and ate at the local restaurants.

That's amazing. Construction project causes local area construction area workers to buy from local markets and 'the' local restaurant.

tl;dr: Fluff piece that could have been done in 150 words. Not Hacker News worthy. Honestly not worth reading unless you happen to be from the Catawba Chamber of Commerce.</comment>


Transactor Launches Beta - <AUTHOR> http://www.transactor.com

<comment><USER2> HN policy, as stated by PG on several occasions, is that companies should not identify themselves as "YC rejects". There are several good reasons for this -- search the archives if you want to know more.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know this (about the rules). I'll see if I can change the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks some one beat me to the punch.

Sorry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ok, great. Does this run on my OS of choice? Will you send me spam if I put my address in that box? I'm assuming the answer to both questions is no, but you should have that information on your website.

</comment><comment><USER4> Does it support github? Does it support osx? If not then it's probably irrelevant to half the people on here. I might be able to figure this out for myself, but I won't enter my email address on a site with no privacy policy in order to download a beta that may/may not work.

<comment><AUTHOR> It doesn't support OS X. Our privacy policy is simple:

We won't send you spam, and we sell your email address.

We only want your email so that we can yell you when the release version is ready. I will add that to the site tonight. It should be up tonmorow.

Thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER5> _...and we sell your email address._

Is that what you meant to write?

<comment><AUTHOR> No.

We will NOT sell your email address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You know...just because you were rejected once doesn't mean you're permanently rejected from YC. You can apply multiple times.

IMHO you would have been much better off launching with a title describing what you do. If you prove to be a success within the HN community (and beyond), your chances of getting in to YC the next time are much higher.

Besides, by actually launching you're showing (not telling) perseverance, execution and a willingness to listen to feedback. Don't ruin it.

</comment><comment><USER6> How is this different from having version control away from my work computer ?

I never have more then a day or twos work on my computer, so the most i can loose is a days work -- hardly seems worth having extra backup software for that case.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't think it was smart for you to identify your startup as "yc reject" here, you will be eaten alive : (

</comment><comment><USER8> What, exactly, does this have over any modern VCS? The website probably needs to be super-clear about this.

</comment><comment><USER9> Could you put the minimum requirements (especially OS) on the download page?

</comment><comment><USER10> Download is a Windows .exe so I can't tell what it does. What I can tell is that it _doesn't_ "Works with any IDE or code editor".

</comment><comment><USER11> What I'm hearing from these comments is that there is not enough product information for a technical audience. It's possible that you are marketing to a group that does not want the same product information as us, but it's not clear. Are you marketing version control to non-savvy users?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. I'm marketing to programmers. I'll add more info to the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Instead of identifying yourself as a "YC Reject" why not state what your startup does?

<comment><USER13> It got my attention, but now I want to know more... like blazamos says, what does your startup do. Also, why were you rejected by YC?

<comment><AUTHOR> See above for a discription of the product.

And I'm not sure why they rejected me, but I can think of a few reasons:

1\. My company is just one person.

They usually don't fund companies that have one founder.

2\. My software doesn't run on the web.

This is mainly because IDEs do not run on the web and my software needs to live on your machine in order to pick up your changes while you work. Most of the companies they fund write web software.

3\. My software only runs on windows.

This is all just speculation because I really don't know why.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just don't get it. How is this different and/or better than standard svn/git types systems?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not better than.

It's an add on. It helps you in between checkins.

Typically you checkin a "batch" of work when it's done, like at the end of the day. This protects you automatically, even if you forget to checkin.</comment></comment>


Apple's Deleting iCloud Emails That Contain The Phrase 'Barely Legal Teens' - <AUTHOR> http://www.cultofmac.com/217557/apples-deleting-icloud-emails-that-contain-the-phrase-barely-legal-teens/ <comment><USER3> Everything about icloud - from the terrible design to the clunky interface - is as Steve Jobs liked to say, "shit". I have icloud and I'm not even sure what it's for; is it a backup service, an e-mail provider, or a way to find my phone? None of these have much in common, so the fact that they're all bundled together really confuses me. And its name is a bit of a misnomer, you can't even do standard cloud stuff like share photos (like you could with mobileme).

I don't mean to stray off-topic, but this article just confirms my intuition to avoid anything with icloud in the name.

<comment><USER4> iCloud is first and foremost just a bit of service glue to make the native email/calendar/etc apps 'work' without sending people to Google or assuming they have a work Exchange account. In that capacity, it's as good as it needs to be. [1]

Similarly the file sharing is just to set a third-party baseline so that file/save sync'ing between Apps on the mobile devices 'works' without sending people off to Dropbox. And in that capacity it also works just fine.

Sure, it resists power-user use. But that's just because, in true Apple fashion, it's not built for it and doesn't care too much about it. But that only makes it 'shit' inasmuch as about 90% of Apple's services are 'shit' and places it distinctly outside the way Jobs defined 'shit'.

[1] Though filtering this crude is cause to reassess that.

<comment><USER5> "True Apple fashion" has only recently been about resisting power users. Before about five years ago, they were all about _enabling_ power users while still being friendly to regular people. This was much more compelling than their current direction. Remember, this is the company that built their OS on top of UNIX and _shipped a terminal app with it standard_. It all changed around when the iPhone came out, though.

<comment><USER4> While we're keeping history in context, let's also not forget this is also the company that was borderline irrelevant prior to their current direction.

<comment><USER6> I got a 17" Macbook Pro in 2009 (when they were still riding the wave of the iPhone) because it was a solid piece of hardware and gave me a sweet spot of down-the-road-choice (I exchanged the cd bay with another hdd, added Ram, installed Linux). I was looking forward to buying further Macbooks in the future.

All that was shattered with their new Macbook lineup (which are pretty much just beefier MB Airs). They flat out killed the 17" (which I still consider the perfect on-the-go workstation).

I considered Apple very relevant around the iPhone release. The current direction is not the iPhone direction. It is the iPad direction. That's when they started to go somewhat batshit on driving away professional users. They could have maintained both camps pretty handily in my opinion. Both camps were quite happy and got along great. Why they decided to kill off one is beyond me. Sure, there is more money in everyday clients, but I doubt they were actually hurting their business with power users.

Consider this: When I - a staunch defender of FOSS, user of Kubuntu, Free Software programmer, ardent antagonist of everything Microsoft - got my Macbook, I actually started recommending Macs as a choice to others. It actually did seem to me a better choice than going with Microsoft Windows. These days, I recommend Windows 7.

That's what they have accomplished.

<comment><USER7> My boss and I both had Early 2008 MBP 15". He spilled a large cup of coffee into the keyboard. He turned the machine upside down and it was pouring out.

I sprung into action and opened that machine up and started dousing all of the parts with distilled water then drying them. I didn't need any special tools or even a service manual.

That generation MBP had the most beautiful design inside and out that I have ever seen. It was the pinnacle of geekdom beauty and it only lasted a year or two.

<comment><USER8> Bah, the old IBM Model M keyboards had holes in the bottom, specifically for coffee draining!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Its hard to know what to be more amazed about: the fact that with one boneheaded filter Apple now seems creepier than Google in terms of respecting your privacy (one of the few things they could boast about), or the fact that it still seems to be amateur hour over at iCloud. Think about it for a second: they are literally pushing code into production that amounts to if (contents.indexOf(bad_phrase) != -1) delete_email();. How is the takeaway not anything other than "Of course Siri and Maps are a disaster, they can't even filter email in a more complex fashion than 1993."

<comment><USER10> I agree that it's boneheaded, but I'm not convinced this is a privacy issue, assuming the email only gets dropped. Shouldn't something need to reach the eyes of a human in order to be a privacy issue?

<comment><USER11> Try telling that to all the people who claim gmail ads are invading your privacy. Most notably Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I tested this on my @me.com account, and it's exactly how it works. Email containing the words "barely legal teens" is simply dropped.

I find it obscene to an Orwellian extent that Apple actually seems to think that no valid email would ever contain the words "barely legal teens". I wonder what other things Apple thinks are not worth talking about?

I have no trust in Apple's email services any more.

<comment><USER13> Microsoft has been doing this for decades. Ever try to collaborate on a web project using MSN Messenger? Every message you sent that contained 'index.php' was mysteriously dropped. It IS Orwellian, but you should not be surprised. The big communication services all seem to have their own little moral or technical hacks they use to keep your discussion limited and away from certain topics / words.

<comment><USER14> That's so surprising I tried to find evidence of it online, but I couldn't. Partly because "index.php" is such a common thing that Google won't use it for a search term, which is ironic. Can you point to anything corroborating that?

<comment><USER13> There are a whole bunch of banned words. There used to be a whole slew of sites that indexed all of the things Microsoft wouldn't let you talk about. Here's an article about it in the Inquirer: [http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1041509/microsofts-...](http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1041509/microsofts- banned-words-in-msn-messenger)

Edit: that article appears to be mostly user names. Here's a forum thread to get you started: <http://www.amsn-project.net/forums/index.php?topic=157.0>

<comment><USER15> MSN has also banned messages containing certain TLDs e.g. '.info' and '.cx'. [http://yoast.com/microsoft-censoring-info-domains-in-msn- mes...](http://yoast.com/microsoft-censoring-info-domains-in-msn-messenger/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> When you let someone else handle your email, they own your email. There is no postal secrecy law, no rule against reading. They can touch, modify or delete according to their whims. It's their email now.

So I am not that very surprised to hear a news article like this. It makes perfectly sense with the current mentality. It also adds another nail in the coffin about idea that "only a machine is reading my emails. Why should I care about that?".

Hopefully this will encourage some people enough to run their own mail servers. It's far less problematic than most people think it is. Maybe it was hard to install and configure this in 1990s, but this is 2013. You buy a domain name, install a Debian machine, and do:

      aptitude install postfix
      aptitude install postgrey

Afterward one follows any one of the many simple guides to install either a webmail (roundcube most commonly), or go to (<http://www.postfix.org/docs.html>). If a spam gets through, install blacklisting or spamassassin. Easy 3 step guides exist for both.

It always surprises me that people can use a software library with complicated, half insane API's, but can't follow a single page of simple single steps installation. It's not hard and you get the bonus of actually owning your own emails again. If you are a company, this should not even be a question. If the options are to give away all your emails and customers emails to a third-party and thus lose all ownership to them, or asking a sysadmin/programmer to spend 5-10-30m tops to do an email installation, the answer should be obvious.

<comment><USER17> In my experience, it is not so much the installation itself, but the regular maintenance and the many subtle errors that can occur, which make running your own email server NOT as trivial as you make it sound :).

As for a few examples:

1\. Mailservers around the world have different degrees of strictness in what they accept. Some require the sender's mailserver to have a valid and matching PTR and A/AAAA (!) DNS records. Others don't care. Some check black lists, some don't. Some even resolve the MX record of your sender domain, connect to it and try to start delivery of an email to ensure your address is valid.

2\. By default, postfix doesn't warn you about undeliverable messages for quite some time (a week is the default, I think). So if there is any error in your config (e.g. I changed my DNS resolver config, then didn't restart postfix), your mails will be stuck without any notice, for a number of days.

3\. If there are SSL certificates invoked, they should be valid. Some mail servers will not use TLS at all, some will fall back to plain text, others will cancel delivery if your certificate is invalid.

These are just a few examples I have encountered recently, but every time they happen I am incredibly frustrated that emails either did not reach me (usually I detect that quickly) or are not delivered (detected only after a few days).

<comment><USER18> So this implies there is a market for a simple mailserver that just mimics gmail (or whatever) on your own server:

e.g.

apt-get install gmail-server

<comment><AUTHOR> Search is IMO the hard part. I know you can do Lucerne, but getting that working well with email is hard. Until recently Outlook's search was crap compared to gmail. too, and mutt is still essentially "headers only".

Still, shouldn't be that hard to do as long as it is your own server and you trust it; I imagine a lot of the difficulty of gmail is scaling, and even a single user with 20-50GB of mail isn't in the same league.

If you were to outsource it to a service provider:

I'd love a way to do privacy-protecting search on my mailbox, either by building/maintaining a local index, or even more amazingly, some kind of cryptographic/data structure magic: do processing once either pre-encryption or on the local device, then add it to an index, with a configurable slider for data leakage vs. search quality. Search could execute locally and remotely.

(This is to allow you to use webmail with no local persistent storage, or a new phone, to search your email on a server, without trusting the server).

<comment><USER19> > and mutt is still essentially "headers only"

Mutt is more like "everything I can come up with from the command line." Sure, I won't make my grandma use it, but I've never needed any searching capability beyond grep and co.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I end up grepping organized-by-years Maildirs, but that's somewhat suboptimal.

<comment><USER20> Ever looked at Mairix?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, looks interesting, will check it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why do they mention "child pornography"? Maybe I'm wrong but isn't "barely legal" meant to mean 18 year old adults and not "nearly legal"? Or is it just a common code phrase child pornographers use I wasn't aware of?

<comment><USER22> That's a good point. Barely legal is still legal, and why is Apple even blocking emails that contain those words?

It might have to do with spam filtering. Trying sending an email that talks about Cialis.

<comment><USER23> As a man who has the ability to search Google (whooo!), I can add that "Barely Legal" teen movies are published by Hustler, and there appear to be hundreds of them with related names.

Some are sold on Amazon.

Presumably the people who operate in the legal pornography business -- working for Hustler, their distributors (I'm assuming there are several) and US-based retail outlets -- don't use iCloud or it could have an unpleasant impact on their legitimate businesses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In reading this, all I can think of is "buttbuttination" and the broader Scunthorpe problem [1] (to use Wikipedia's term). Strange that Apple is using such a crude filtration technique.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem>

<comment><USER25> I have also seen it called the clbuttic mistake:

<http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Clbuttic-Mistake-.aspx>

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2667...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2667634/The- Clbuttic-Mistake-When-obscenity-filters-go-wrong.html)

<comment><USER8> I remember reading a judicial response that had consbreastutional implications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Scanning _and auto-deleting_ your email, combined with the Gatekeeper technology wich houses the possibility of Apple telling me what Apps I can or can not run makes me seriously start to wonder the direction Apple is headed...

Edit: Gatekeeper is OSX technology. It allows users to only install Apple certified Apps _on your mac_ , not your phone. It's fairly new and possible to turn it off (for now at least).

<comment><USER27> Apple has always been against Porn on their devices. It's no surprise they're against it on their services as well.

Of course this could be a really poorly working spam filter, but I'm inclined to believe this isn't the case.

<comment><USER28> Why are you inclined to believe this isn't the case? What possible reason would there be for Apple to care one whit about the email that goes to iCloud accounts? The only thing that makes any sense at all is virus/spam filtering.

<comment><USER13> > What possible reason would there be for Apple to care one whit about the > apps that are installed to your phone?

There, fixed that for you.

<comment><USER29> Because they feel (rightly or wrongly) that they can practically provide a better, more secure, etc. experience for their customers by controlling/curating what executes on their devices.

<comment><USER13> Right. So it obviously stands to reason that they might think that's true for the email services too.

<comment><USER30> It really doesn't.

It is illogical to block just this phrase and not the many others that would be far worse.

<comment><USER31> What makes you think they're not blocking other phrases?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Great, now I'm tempted to spend way too much time experimenting to find other banned phrases. :-P But sure enough, whether it's buried in a bunch of lorem ipsum or standing alone, that phrase will send your mail to the ether. It never showed in Junk, it just never came across the wire at all. Edit: this behavior goes in both directions, BTW; receive or send.

I'd be willing to write it off as a one-time error on the part of some individual contributor, but what else will get your mail deleted? Since there are no checks in place for "rogue" ICs adding phrases on server-side, what will cause stuff to go missing tomorrow?

<comment><USER33> If you need some dirty words to test with, have a look at Searchdaimons list of adult words phrases: <http://www.searchdaimon.com/wiki/Adult_words>

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I know everyone is rushing to decry Apple and their draconian behaviour ("first they took my unsigned apps, now they want in my email? TO THE PITCHFORKS!") but the likelyhood is someone has fiddled with the spam filtering and they've broken something. If the first thing you jump to is some conspiracy you're ignoring the simple rule of technology that behind every good wild goose chase is a member of staff who's quickly hitting 'roll back changes'.

<comment><USER35> Spam should never be deleted. Plus when e-mail is sent OUT (not coming in) it is blocked.

No way to defend this. No spam filter should ever work like that, even if set up overly broadly.

<comment><USER34> Spam should never be deleted, it should be triaged and left to the user to deal with but it's definitely possible someone has screwed up. What I'm saying is it's probably a fuck up, what I'm not doing is defending it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> B-Con > After more research, Steven found that under the iCloud terms of service, > Apple reserves the right to remove any content at any time that it feels is > objectionable, without telling you that they're going to delete it.

Today it's a bad search filter, but tomorrow... what'll they do tomorrow?

Apple is the epitome of "we'll do what we think is best and you'll like it". For now they usually seem to have admirable (or semi-admirable) goals, even if you don't agree with them on the details. I'm curious how long until they make similar moves that are clearly Evil(TM).

</comment><comment><USER36> Ugh! Let's just list a _few_ reasons why we shouldn't be purchasing these things anymore. (Disclosure: Never owned one, but have played around with them a little.)

\- Not upgradable \- Super overpriced \- Dictator-style company that seemingly caters to grandma more than technical folk \- Obnoxious smug ethos created by marketing team \- Lots of people complaining about OSX going downhill \- The OP story and associated reports of mass censorship \- Just look at Objective C for 5 minutes

I'm perfectly happy with my beefy Win 7 box paired with a *nix machine that I can shell into when I need to do something that would suck in Powershell. Just don't install Java/Flash/ect and don't open JessicaAlbaBoob.jpg.exe and you will not get a virus.

<comment><USER37> > Just look at Objective C for 5 minutes

I'm willing to bet you've looked at it for much less than that.

<comment><USER36> Have I tried to develop anything using it? No.

Have I looked at the source code on numerous occasions, trying to come to terms with it's verbosity and ugliness? Yes.

<comment><USER20>
      | verbosity and ugliness

Subjective metrics to define objective reality? Say it ain't so.

<comment><USER36> True. It is inherently subjective. I knew I would receive some flak making that last argument about ObjC being ugly, but I felt the urge to be a little sloppy to see if it resonated with anyone.

Also, my verbosity argument would be hard to defend without concrete examples of equivalent functionality being performed more succinctly (while still maintaining readability) in another language. That would be hard given my ignorance of ObjC. I withdraw that argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Isn't the point of "barely legal teens" that they are indeed legal? On what grounds can they delete discussions of legal content?

<comment><USER39> On what grounds can they delete discussions of illegal content?

<comment><USER38> That might even be a better point than I made.

<comment><USER40> Do you guys really not understand, that this was not censorship, but just an over-aggressive spam filter?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Solution: Don't use iCloud.

<comment><USER42> This is wrong. It goes beyond this. There are various clear examples of Apple exercising far too much authority.

It's not a question of whether you should use certain products. It becomes a question of whether you should trust Apple at all.

<comment><USER43> You shouldn't trust any company. Not Apple, not Microsoft, and not Google. Which is why "the cloud" is a stupid idea.

<comment><USER44> > You shouldn't trust any company.

Trust them with what, exactly?

There are some things you shouldn't trust them with, but there are also things you _can_/should trust them with.

<comment><USER42> It all depends on what we mean by "trust." Realistically, you should be cautious when trusting any company with anything.

<comment><USER45> Exactly - since when has 'trust' ever been absolute?

Do I trust Apple to make awesome laptops and cell phones? Yes.

Do I trust Apple to keep OS X open to third party development? Yes, I do. Mostly.

Do I trust Apple to keep my personal email, email that might contain passwords and account names, secure and safe? Probably not, which is part of the why I don't use my iCloud email account.

Do I trust Apple to not sunset iCloud email in a few years, invalidating my @icloud.com address that I would have handed out to everyone, leaving me high and dry? No, I don't - and I think that's a much more potent danger for anyone using their @icloud.com email account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Isn't this a spam blocking technique?

<comment><USER47> It should send the messages to your spam folder, then.

<comment><USER48> It could be server side spam filtering (not all spam messages make it to your spam folder with any provider - the worst offenders are often just thrown out).

Just saying it is possible that this is an over-aggressive spam filter vs. Apple taking such an invasive measure. Although, Apple has done similar crazy things before, so who knows.

<comment><USER49> "not all spam messages make it to your spam folder with any provider - <USER2> worst offenders are often just thrown out"

This is news to me. Citation needed?

<comment><USER50> Greylisting, for one.

You could also reasonably configure a filter to not land emails over a spam threshold.

Given the amount and type of spam in my Gmail Spam label, I'm quite sure there's a hard filter in place there too.

<comment><USER51> Greylisting does not throw anything out. It does the exact opposite. The mail server simply says, "I have a temporary problem, so I can't take this right now. Try again later" Mail servers are supposed to (and do) try again, at which time a greylisted message will be delivered. Accepting a message for delivery _In Go Faith_ and then dropping it on the floor, is poor, lazy, cheap, RFC-breaking spam filtering.

<comment><USER50> What I mean is that greylisting is a trick mechanism where some mails, declared spam based on an unrelated and technical criteria, never reach the user's spam folder. This contradicts the 'spam should go to spam folder' point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Just tried sending this to myself from another account and received the email.

All the other experiments on here were from a few hours ago. Does this still happen for other people? If it does, it'd suggest it's more complicated than a simple filter on emails containing the phrase.

That said, deleting user data without user input _at all_ is completely insane. It's probably a good thing that iCloud sync sucks so much and developers aren't using it.

</comment><comment><USER52> Spam filter. It's disappointing someone seriously believes this is some sort of "objectionable content" censorship. Namely because that's easy enough to test:

"barely legal teens" isn't delivered (edit: now does)

"actually illegal teens" arrives

...along with everything else of the sort (that I've tested).

Surely the phrase was blacklisted by some algorithm after it occurred verbatim in massive amounts of spam.

</comment><comment><USER53> Censorship is always stupid. Censorship based on nothing than words or phrases is simply embarrassing.

</comment><comment><USER54> Just tried to reproduce the issue but I was able to send the email with the said phrase with no issues. They may have fixed the issue. Seems like some aggressive server side spam filtering which went wrong.

</comment><comment><USER55> Did anyone try to reproduce this? It doesn't replicate for me.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm a bit surprised there's no discussion yet about PGP/GnuPG (GPG). If we all encrypted our mails would this be such a big deal? No. Is client-side encryption difficult? Not really. I think there's a big market for a desktop email app that does PGP/GPG really well and does so _with other people_.

<comment><USER57> Add an PDF-attachment to your mail and it becomes a big deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> This is great news, actually. It's a free "get out of jail" card. Now you know you shouldn't trust Apple with your email.

Using other people's software or services which you don't control should be based on trust, in my opinion. What I mean is that you should build up evidence about different service providers, and choose whether or not they are trustworthy.

This is essentially why I am OK with closed source software. In many aspects of life (from the obvious, like banking, to more abstract, like personal relationships) we have to act based on our degree of confidence in something. The downside is that this thing is obscured (hence the need for trust), the upside is that through obscurity it was made possible (in this case, email providers make money by having a unique, high-quality offering).

</comment><comment><USER59> Apple trying to be data-mining company reminds me of apple trying to become a mapping company.

</comment><comment><USER60> Tangentially related, but emails are often auto-deleted by 'cloud' email services (Hotmail, Google etc) when the email is sent from a server-side script like PHP mail(), therefore it is not unheard of for emails to be auto- deleted when it is very likely to be spam. I don't know how the iCloud spam filtering works, but I wonder if there is a block filter being run before the check is done to see if the sender is a known contact (to bypass the spam check). 'barely legal teens' seems like a phrase that would almost certainly be flagged as spam. Perhaps this is just a badly implemented spam system at work (which wouldn't surprise me given Apple's reputation for web services)?

</comment><comment><USER61> Perfect situation for applying Hanlon's razor - I see no reason to assume anything other than just a (really stupid) spam rule bug which is _deleting_ messages when it should be filing them as spam.

Never attribute to malice ... you know the rest.

</comment><comment><USER62> This is why I don't trust things like email to Apple. Email is a universal thing: whether I'm on my computer, an iDevice (I've owned several), an Android device (I've owned a few), or something entirely different (who knows what the future holds?) iCloud is great for backing up iOS specific things (many apps rely on it for syncing between your devices, etc) but for those things which merely consume "universal" things like mail and photos, I rely on universal solutions.

</comment><comment><USER63> A few days ago it was reported that they also delete mails with subject "Аренда", meaning "rent" or "lease" in russian, and the subject of many spam mails.

</comment><comment><USER64> I just tested this with my @me.com account and it didn't delete anything. How many people responding to the post actually tested this?

</comment><comment><USER65> So, does this filter work for "not legal teens" or "totally illegal teens"? Because if not, that would be highly ironic.

</comment><comment><USER66> They also (used to) block you from receiving e-mail with "fuck" in the subject line. I had an amusing conversation with support about this and they said it's part of their spam filter. I just re-tested this and the e-mail eventually came through to my spam folder.

</comment><comment><USER67> Non-swipe [http://www.cultofmac.com/217557/apples-deleting-icloud- email...](http://www.cultofmac.com/217557/apples-deleting-icloud-emails-that- contain-the-phrase-barely-legal-teens/?onswipe_redirect=never)

</comment><comment><USER68> And this is why I switched to an android phone. I can't stand the puritan bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER69> I note that the original InfoWorld article is 3 months old. In the comments here one person has said that they still see the deletion and two say that they don't.

So, does anyone else have test results to report?

</comment><comment><USER70> First thing this made me think of were the "scroogle" ads Microsoft put up on the 101.

I don't care if someone reads my email to sell me an ad. I do care if someone reads my email to censor it.

</comment><comment><USER71> This reminds me of how Yahoo! mail screwed up over a decade ago: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medireview>

</comment><comment><USER72> One more reason why you should run your own mail server. I guess if it would take less time more people were doing it (I'm not either at the moment).

<comment><USER73> Really, running your own email server is a bad idea for most people.

Even on HN it's only good as a learning exercise or for a small number of people who have the use for it.

The problem isn't with the length of time it takes to set it up. The problem is with making sure you have all the quirks sorted out so your mail can get delivered through other people's set ups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> This is bad, I actually like iCloud, even the email client, calendar and address book. But I don't want them deleting emails like this... hm.

</comment><comment> mark-r Any reason to believe this is deliberate on Apple's part and not just some Bayesian filter trained with real spam?

<comment><USER75> They silently delete such emails, not mark them as spam.

Also, I've never seen real spam advertising porn - mostly it's fake watches, penis enlargement and fake social media or other identity theft scams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> seems to me this is a perfect example that could be used to promote widespread adoption of email encryption

</comment><comment><USER77> Some of us are old enough to remember the Calvin Klein ads with the girl in the "Catholic schoolgirl" uniform with her white panties showing. I had to admit at first glance I thought CK was using someone underage. It provoked a bit of reaction from the demagogues. Since then, the "barely legal" motif has had a bit of radioactivity hanging on it. The popularity of Manga didn't seem to help.

</comment><comment><USER78> Is anyone else being driven crazy by the cursor style on this page? I think it's hitting on a new ocd...

</comment><comment><USER79> That's one way to prevent spam from coming in. Next you'll find them blocking all chinese netblocks.

</comment><comment><USER80> Why in god's name would anyone use iCloud Email? Please Apple junkies, snap out of it.

</comment><comment><USER81> Isn't this Mobile Me all over again?

</comment><comment><USER82> They are going to call it iNanny

</comment><comment><USER83> But, they're legal...

</comment><comment><USER84> This is shit!

</comment><comment><USER85> "You just got iPlowed"

(Scroogle satire)

</comment><comment><USER86> M-x spook

</comment><comment><USER87> This may sound weird to say, but I'm starting to think that most of Apple's problems come from the fact that it is a hardware company rather than a software company. In a very real way, it seems that they don't _get_ software. I think it comes from pervasive product focus.

They are great with products. Less so with the area around the product. Can't have something as nebulous as a cloud without trying to control the product experience.

<comment><USER88> Apple gets software. The problem is they have never gotten _network software_ or _network services_.

It's nice that I can use iCloud to find my iPhone and that it keeps my contacts in sync.

Except that it can't keep notes in sync correctly. Which shouldn't be surprising because notes aren't actually notes, they're stored in an email box. That's why you need an @me.com account to sync them.

Really there is no iCloud. There is an email service, a calendar service, a contacts service, a layer _on_ the email service, a file storage service, a network transparent CoreData sync service (that is supposed to be _very_ problematic), a todo service, a photo sharing service, and probably other things.

If it doesn't involve a network service, Apple can do wonderful things. If it does... well... it might work well enough; most of the time.

<comment><USER89> Not really. Most of their software is bad. Their native iOS apps are inferior. iTunes is junk. HFS is garbage. Their office suite is poor except for maybe Keynote. iLife is marginal. They have a solid foundation in Cocoa but I'm increasingly unimpressed with what they do with it.

I think GP has it exactly right. Their hardware is great but their software is an embarrassment for a company with such resources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Clarke has just sold his afterlife iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER91> Haha, the Dictator Apple is going to mess with your mails... Awesome, you get what you pay for, i guess :P</comment>


Facebook Mobile Security Hole Allows Identity Theft (Gareth Wright) - <AUTHOR> http://garethwright.com/blog/facebook-mobile-security-hole-allows-identity-theft <comment><USER2> Is "identity theft" the new "bricked"?

Expanded version: You need two things for identity theft: SSN and mother's maiden name. Neither are particularly difficult to discover, but not on Facebook. Now matter how good your social engineering chops, none of my friends know those things. If your goal is stealing my identity, breaking into Facebook is only a waste of time.

Also, not to downplay the exploit too much, but it does require physical access. Anyone in a position to steal my phone, however briefly, could also steal my wallet containing my unencrypted driver's license.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why wouldn't FB et al be using the keychain to store this?

The problem with the "once they have physical access" argument is that it is easy to be in a situation where you don't think you are giving up physical access. Imagine a rogue coffee shop that builds a bunch of iOS chargers using Raspberry Pi machines that just look like cheap chargers.

Note that this is as much an Apple problem as a FB problem. FB should not be storing tokens outside the keychain. Apple should allow (require?) devices to have a shared key before accepting data connections (similar to the number that pops up for synching the old AppleTV).

</comment><comment><USER4> Physical access of a device usually screws you anyways. If I had access to your iPad why couldn't I just use a password reset and gain access to your Facebook account?</comment>


Boost VC Welcomes Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://adamdraper.com/post/44563343164/boost-vc-welcomes-bitcoin

<comment><AUTHOR> Boost (<http://www.boost.vc>) is getting ready to incubate their 2nd class this Summer. For this class hey have a strong preference for accepting companies revolving around Bitcoins.</comment>


Ask HN: How big is your monitor? - <AUTHOR>

Hey hackers... I'm wondering how big is your monitor? How many do you have?<p>Do you care about line length in your source code? <comment><USER2> I run 2 - 23" monitors and yes I still keep line length to around 90 chars or less usually. Mainly because I still go mobile on my laptop and it helps to have source readable on smaller displays. Not that I probably still couldn't go with longer line, so it is just a personal cut off nothing more.

</comment><comment><USER3> The one in the middle is 24", the two on the sides are each 22".

I do not limit line length intentionally, but it's quite rare that a line of code would go over 70 characters or so, and that's good enough for me.</comment>