Ask HN: Reverse asymmetry to combat dismissive comments on HN? - <AUTHOR> Dismissive comments about new things bother me partly because there's an asymmetry that seems unfair. It's so risky to create something new, and so easy to dismiss it. At their worst, the people making such comments are like schoolyard bullies picking on someone who tries to do something different. -- pg (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5364566)
It seems to me that people who have put made something on their own, put themselves out there, are less dismissive in comments. That would partly explain why HN in its first year was less mean - the people participating were more likely to be makers and founders rather than trolls and armchair opinionators.
Would it be possible to create a sort of reverse asymmetry, a soft filter, where people have to show "proof of work" in order to have their comments count or rank higher?
The point isn't to create a kind of expert stamp, but more about showcasing experience and empathy with the creative and difficult aspects of making something new.
What are your thoughts, HN? Is something like this possible? Is it desirable? <comment><USER2> _> Is it desirable?_

No.

 _> Is something like this possible?_

Maybe.

 _> where people have to show "proof of work" in order to have their comments count or rank higher?_

This would be counter-productive. You're asking whether its a good idea to remove a persons choice to choose what opinion they should believe in.

It's true that it's easier to criticize an idea when you are not personally involved, but to reduce any thoughts you don't agree with to "trolls and armchair opinionators" is incorrect.

There is simply no way to determine if the person giving advise is an expert in that domain, its one of the advantages of anonymity.

Furthermore, anonymity allows one to step out of the situation and see the bigger picture. For example if a founder was doing something that in an extreme situation could expose users to unforeseeable risks (unforeseeable for the founder), which often happens in the hopes of huge monetary gains.

Also, we already have an option to up/down vote, and if someone says something that is too extreme, not-credible or troll-like we the HN users can vote it down into oblivion.

No reason to deliberately promote cognitive dissonance.

<comment><USER3> What do you want this site to be?

Is the site you want one that is supportive of new ventures?

Straw men aside, civil and humane responses will encourage more of the great "look what I'm building," posts and culture that many people miss from the old HN.

There's so much thoughtless "no one wants that" type feedback that could be put into more constructive advice or elicitation of marketability.

<comment><USER2> _> Is the site you want one that is supportive of new ventures?_

How does one say no to that?

But, step back and consider this. Is support for the heck of support really supportive?

Additionally, I believe the tech community, is the single largest group of evangelists that have benefited the world in the last decade or two. They are also the usual intended users for most of these ventures, and their adoption could make or break most new products. Often, posters of these alleged ventures do not want to listen to users, wherein the problem arises.

Quote for this discussion would be: "The day we stop criticizing, will be the day we stop caring."

Most criticism is intended to be positive, most people also don't know how to criticize, those who know how to criticize positively also falter in some situations.

There are of course trolls too, would you really sacrifice everyone else for them?

edit: spelling

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I second this, if not this specific solution then at least the goal of being proactive about the problem. There are so many talented people that want to make cool stuff and improve the world around them in their own way, but the overall negativity here has become so overwhelming it's crazy. Especially in Show HN threads (the myth.io thread the other day was embarassing). It teaches creators and innovators that they're not welcome here. That we reject them and their hard work. Sooner or later there won't be any of them left. It'll just be a bunch of idiots clamoring over each other to determine who's the smartest.

It's like the old expression, _Those who can, do. Those who can 't just sit around and bitch about those who can_

Edit: Great, flagged off the front page. Way to go guys!

<comment><USER5> Aside from obvious trolls, I can't see where this alleged negativity is on HN. People are critical, but criticism is necessary for debate, improvement, and freethought. Everybody should be free to express their thoughts, as long as they're well meant and not obvious, unreasonable attacks. When we start considering censoring people who disagree with us, we're only inflicting cognitive biases upon ourselves. We resort to groupthink, people thinking one thing but expressing another in order to prevent discord.

And I don't see how this environment is unfriendly to creators. If anything, people giving honest opinions about something without fear of reprisal from their peers gives the creator the tools to reflect upon their own judgements. Without it, they could be digging themselves into deeper holes with confirmation bias. If anything, it presents a creator with a good opportunity to retort misconceptions about their creation by replying to those critical comments.

There are of course, creators who use HN for marketing their products, and marketing is often dishonest or not completely honest. It should be expected that when pitching a product to a technically competent crowd, you should cut the bullshit and let the product speak for itself. It's my hope that marketers should only be welcome here if they're honest, and having freedom of expression in comments gives us the opportunity to make judgements without investigating everything ourselves. It's "Hacker News", not "Startup News". I'm glad it's not Techcrunch.

The main reason I visit and comment on here is because it's nice to see variety of opinion from mostly open-minded and intelligent people. I can ignore the comments I dislike or disagree with. I don't care whether or not people agree with what I say either, because they can make their own judgements. I'm sure creators can learn to do the same. Sieve through the bullshit, but don't succumb to reactance when their ideas are judged.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the reason most large corporations fail is because they turn into self-diluted echo chambers. So, what if the neg comments came from a high profile blogger, you going to close up shop? Most of the time when I post I get nothing, silence is way worst than "I don't get your idea". I'm not saying trolls are good, but if your doing some kind of market research you need more bad feedback than good. so you can fix things.

</comment><comment><USER7> I believe the premise (that provable "work" by posters is a sign of sincerity or, inversely, lack of provable work is an indication of being a troll) is falsifiable enough that it renders an engineered solution impossible.

HN already has a karma score, and users can post their credentials, etc. in their profile - isn't this essentially already "proof of work?" in the sense OP describes? And yet, despite features already being in place which attempt to reinforce positive and constructive, there's nothing at all stopping high- karma posters with credentials from dismissing or criticizing anything they like. The asymmetry that pg describes hasn't been stopped because it can't be stopped. It can be policed, but not predetermined.

A better solution, I think, is to be more positive and to encourage people to put more thought into their comments.

Edit: I suppose this is a somewhat dismissive comment. What "proof of work" would I have needed here for my opinion to be credible? I've got a github account and i've been paid for code but I still think this is an intractable idea.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think that many comments are negative because most new things fail-- especially in software and the Internet, where only the best survive. Is it doing anyone a service to pretend otherwise?</comment>


Work on your best idea - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2235-work-on-your-best-idea <comment><USER2> In recent months the quality of the posts on the SVN blog seems to have deteriorated quite dramatically.

I can remember times when I enjoyed almost every single blog post from the 37signals guys. This blog entry seems to have taken one of their mottos ('You can always do less') to new extremes.

Too much fluff for my taste recently.

<comment><USER3> Ponder the possibility that you might be the one who changed. Maybe you read too much blog advice and got tired of it. Too much of anything is bad.

We have over a hundred thousand readers at SvN. Some just joined, some has been with us for a decade, everyone is different in some sense.

I write about what I care about and what I think about without too much concern as to whether everyone will love it all.

<comment><USER4> It seems like the content on SVN is more earnest and perhaps less thoughtful. I loved the blog back in 2005/2006, and perhaps I did just get tired of reading variations on the same themes over and over. Maybe the content has the same degree of earnestness and thoughtfulness, and I'm just expecting more nuanced discussion on ideas after five years.

I'm thinking in particular of this post: <http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2233-not-for-sale> . The language is over-the- top, especially in the first couple paragraphs. It feels appropriate for a pep rally, which I guess doesn't appeal to me any longer.

Beyond the tone, I found the content lacking. Can you really not understand why someone would want to sell their company? I mean, here you are denigrating serial entrepreneurs because they exhibit no understanding for why someone would want to hold onto his company. And then you proceed to spell out why serial entrepreneurs have no good reason whatsoever for wanting to flip.

You're using this hyped-up language to create this perception of a religious war - even using "worshipped", "non-believers", "holy grail". And for what? I just don't understand it. Why'd you write this article? If you have the time to respond, I really would like to know. I respect 37s immensely and you in particular, and I really do want to understand.

So you have different values than an archetypal serial entrepreneur. Well, so what? Why are your values so much better that they're "servants" and you're not?

I think the topic is interesting, but the way it comes across, it's like you're having a shouting match over whether blue or green is the best color in the world.

<comment><USER3> That particular post was born out of a frustration with the disbelief about not being for sale and what I consider an infatuation with flipping companies and serial entrepreneurs.

I don't think the language is any more colorful than it's always been. I prefer to put my writing in strong terms with clearly marked boundaries. I'm usually just writing a handful of paragraphs, not a dissertation. So the "ifs, buts, and maybes" have to be read between the lines.

<comment><USER5> Upvoted for giving insight into your process. I criticized that post for being over the top. A friend uses a similar technique where he overstates almost everything and it is effective. People listen to his opinions. The danger is in overstating too far or too often as it can turn into a boy who cried wolf kind of thing.

With that being said, I've thought a lot about my comment yesterday and have come to the conclusion that I need to work on finding the core spirit of posts and address that rather than the particulars. It's easy to pick apart blog posts because like you said, it isn't a dissertation and you can't address every edge case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This company is starting to sound like a broken record. They only have 4 or 5 main mantras that they constantly reiterate in 50 different ways. We get it. You're edgy. Keep working on your company instead of trying to convince the world how cool you are.

On the other hand, maybe I'm being too critical. They are probably just trying to do some cross-platform promotion of what's in their book. No shame in that.

<comment><USER7> _Keep working on your company instead of trying to convince the world how cool you are._

That's part of how they work on their company. I've often used quotes from 37signals' blog posts and books when trying to get a concept across to a coworker, and that keeps them at the forefront of everyone's mind.

<comment><USER8> Yes, exactly. I heard DHH speak and asked him about the importance of the 37s blog and their books and he said "If you can't out-market, out-teach."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some ideas aren't feasible at one time or another. I would say never abandon your best idea, and always work towards it - but if you can't work on it presently - no need to just sit around and wait.

<comment><USER10> I agree. Focusing on trying to figure out what your "best idea" is because you want to optimize your time and only work on that is not always the best approach. Sometimes this can lead to procrastination and self doubt because you are not sure what your best idea is and you don't want to waste your time working on anything else (which then causes you to waste time).

There is value in starting on any idea that you have and working hard on it because often you get inspired while working and a better idea will present itself. Then you can choose to integrate that idea into what you are working on or drop what you are doing switch to the better idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love basecamp and use it daily. It is a beautiful software. However, I find it hard to believe that Jason F and DHH don't think they can come up with an idea that is more brilliant than a PM system.

</comment><comment><USER12> FYI A lot of things that end up SvN are topics that they have talked about in their normal lives. I got to hang out with Jason Fried at Startup School and several of the things he talked about ended up on the blog in the following weeks, and several of the things posted recently came from dhh's appearance on This Week in Startups (can't plug this interview enough - it's really sharp: [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2219-jason-calacanis-vs- david...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2219-jason-calacanis-vs-david- heinemeier-hansson-on-this-week-in-startups) )

</comment><comment><USER13> the problem with this attitude is you build a list of ideas and then don't end up working on any because none of them feel like they're the best you can come up with. Or you switch from idea to idea without really finishing any of them to the standard required to make them successful because each idea seems better than the last, and there is a never ending stream of "good ideas".

Just pick something and work on it until it's successful or dead. Forget about "best".

<comment><USER3> The thinking is work on the best idea that you have right now. Not the best one you haven't even come up with yet. That's not going to be very helpful.

<comment><USER14> That's a good point. Even if you _think_ you're only making license plates, someone will catch on to how good you are if you do it really well. And who knows, maybe your license plates are just what the world desperately wants right now.</comment></comment></comment>


Apply HN: Wanderlust – Pandora for Travel - <AUTHOR> Wanderlust is a website that helps you find out where you could travel to based on how much you can spend. A new way to plan and book your trips and an answer to the question of 'where should I go?'.
The majority of traditional online travel websites (e.g. Booking, SkyScanner) work under the assumption that you know where you're going. But what if you don't know this? We don't always have a destination in mind, but what we typically do have is a general sense of how much we can spend, what we like to see, and when we'd like to travel. Taking these variables into account, Wanderlust provides you with a complete trip - including destination, flight, accommodation, and an overview of the best things to do and see while you're there.
To be sure, it's still a little rough around the edges, but here's a quick demo: https://vid.me/TnZL
Our Product Hunt feature a while ago: https://www.producthunt.com/tech/wanderlust-pre-launch
Happy to answer any questions you may have!
(A bit about the team: Technical founder, BSc & MSc in Engineering physics; PHd in Artificial Intelligence. Business founder, Background in Communications; previously at Google, Vodafone.) <comment><USER2> This is something I've wanted many times in the past.

How will you guarantee variety of trips? Will people just end up seeing roughly the same things?

How are you making money?

What similar things have been tried, and why have they failed?

How will you maintain a place in people's minds? Most people only travel occasionally, why would they think of you? How would they find you?

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you for your comment

re: variety of trips -- we think the magic lies in providing our users with suggestions they may have never thought of themselves, but that end up being exactly what they've been looking for. We hope to do so by learning as much as possible about exactly those destinations out of the 'mainstream' (like Paris, London, Berlin) and subsequently translate that to the categories of interest we offer. We currently serve 220 destinations and think that achieving a certain level of variety will certainly be possible, especially as we learn more and more about our users and how they like our suggestions.

re: making money -- We don't plan to rush monetization. Volume is key in the travel industry, so we plan to focus on building a great, differentiated, user experience first. Once we've ramped that up significantly, we aim to move down the funnel (from the 'inspiration' phase towards the 'transaction phase'). Having said that, we're exploring multiple paths to monetization. For example, we think that Wanderlust will have an interesting advertising opportunity, with 1) high ARPU, 2) high purchase-intent, and 3) a user still open to suggestions (a bit like Pinterest's opportunity). One other stream we're thinking about is offering hotels an annual/monthly flat-fee to be featured on our platform.

re: similar attempts -- Wanderfly did this in the US (we're in Europe), but got acquired by TripAdvisor and shut down. There's quite a few different start-ups that launched either this year or in 2015. We feel they haven't quite gotten it right for several reasons, but it probably comes down to a not being able to translate technical complexity to a pleasant user experience.

re: user acquisition -- definitely a key point. As pointed out above, I think no-one has gotten the concept quite right so far. I think there's some mindshare to be won if we're the ones who manage to do so; if we're able to connect to the feeling of ' _I know that I want to travel, but don 't know where to go_'. Initially, we'll be focusing on the channels the bigger players won't/can't focus on because of their scale (e.g. blogs, offline communities).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yes. Great idea. I think you're totally right that travel websites make the mistake of assuming you know exactly where you want to go.</comment>


Comby: A Tool for Changing:[Code] - <AUTHOR> https://comby.dev/ <comment><USER2> Red's Parse dialect [1] (basically PEG on steroids, think OMeta [2]) has this kind of functionality build-in, but it's not limited to strings and can work with any series-like datatypes, including code itself. Consider:

      ; multi-line string
      source: {
          func main() {
              fmt.Println("hello world")
          }
      }

      parse source [thru "fmt.Println(" copy arguments to ")"]

      foo: does [
          print rejoin [{fmt.Println(fmt.Sprintf("Red says %s", } arguments "))"]
      ]

      pattern: [set var skip '<= set rest skip]
      ; code (which is represented by heterogeneous data structure called "block")
      example: [
          if (width <= 1280 && height <= 800) [
              return 1
          ]
      ]

      parse example rule: [
          some [
              change pattern (random rejoin [var rest])
              | ahead paren! into rule
              | skip
          ]
      ]

      bar: does [probe example]

Running _foo_ and _bar_ yields:

      >> foo bar
      fmt.Println(fmt.Sprintf("Red says %s", "hello world"))
      [
          if ("21t8w0dhi" && "tig8e0h0h") [
              return 1
          ]
      ]

Of course, it's not as specialized and dovetailed to string rewriting as Comby (i.e. it's more general), but the trick is that you can build Comby-like template engine with Parse itself; this idea of building tools with linguistic abstraction is tied into Red's (and Rebol's) design: data-rich homoiconicity and idea of dialects (aka embeded DSLs) in general. Curious to see if Comby can offer similar functionality across multitude of languages and data formats.

[1]: [https://www.red-lang.org/2013/11/041-introducing- parse.html](https://www.red-lang.org/2013/11/041-introducing-parse.html)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMeta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMeta)</comment>


GitHub Maintainer Rule #1 - <AUTHOR> http://cheekycoder.com/2016/01/github-always-say-sorry/ <comment><USER2> Humorous, and just might work in many cases.</comment>


The world's first self-sailing, elec cargo ship to replace 40,000 diesel trucks - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/05/22/worlds-first-self-sailing-electric-cargo-ship-set-replace-40000-diesel-trucks/#.tnw_4Nfc4uQg <comment><USER2> This is a step in the right direction. Cargo ships are serious polluters at the moment, this won't replace them any time soon but its a start</comment>


Video hack in Times Square.  Guy takes over monitors - <AUTHOR> http://www.keepbusy.net/play.php?id=guy-hacks-times-square

<comment><USER2> This has been here before: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2322401> and guess what? hoax: [http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/03/17/thinkmodo- the...](http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/03/17/thinkmodo-the-firm- behind-the-fake-new-york-times-square-hack-video/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I thought it must have been. Had no idea how it could have been done.</comment></comment>


The Stupidest bike lane in america - <AUTHOR> http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid271557392?bctid=1475273846

<comment><USER2> WTF? That's nothing compared to UK cycle lanes...

[http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pete.meg/wcc/facility-of-the- mo...](http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pete.meg/wcc/facility-of-the- month/May2008.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> I can beat that easily (in Germany). Plenty of bike lanes where it is actually much more dangerous to use the bike lane than to just drive on the road.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems completely unrelated to HN.</comment>


Show HN: Chrome extension for collapsible and alternating colored comments on HN - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-collapsible-a/agjacimdflechekccnohppaaanjmadpi I got bored over the weekend and made a chrome extension for better HN reading. Inspired by reddit enhancement suite. Here's my code if you want to fiddle with it. https://github.com/louisinhongkong/Collapsible-comments-for-Hacker-News/ <comment><AUTHOR> I got bored over the weekend and made a chrome extension for better HN reading. Inspired by reddit enhancement suite. Here's my code if you want to fiddle with it. [https://github.com/louisinhongkong/Collapsible-comments- for-...](https://github.com/louisinhongkong/Collapsible-comments-for-Hacker- News/)

</comment><comment><USER2> what is the advantage of using this plugin over projects like autobahn <http://vlad.github.com/autobahn/> or HackerNew [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlnd...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernew/lgoghlndihpmbbgmbpjohilcphbfhddd)

Any plans to add additional features?</comment>


Ask HN: How to determine temperature of text? - <AUTHOR>

Given a review, say, about a book. What is the best way to determine if the review likes the book or hates it? Just doing a keyword search of "good" or "best" doesn't seem to cut it. What if the review says something like "this is not as good as that"? Some semantic analysis seems necessary.<p>The harder question: now that we know the review is positive, how can we assign a degree of positiveness? "The best since sliced bread" is much more positive than "good, but can be better". <comment><USER2> The usual approach for these problems is to admit that you don't know what the rules are, and instead train a statistical classifier based on some sample data:

<http://crm114.sourceforge.net/>

Depending on how hard your problem is, the accuracy of the classifier may not be very good. You can try to come up with fancier "features" to extract from the items and feed to the classifier, or you can use "artificial artifical intelligence" and just farm out the work to Mechanical Turk at a penny per review.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well outside my field, but I believe this is a reasonably well-established problem in text processing/NLP, known as "Sentiment Analysis" -

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentiment_analysis>

My very brief google scholar search on that key phrase turned up a whole lot of results that look like they may provide fairly concrete algorithms and techniques for doing what you describe.

</comment><comment><USER4> As other posters have said, it's a genuinely hard problem that touches on natural language quantification. You can find an excellent resource on the relationship between english words here <http://wordnet.princeton.edu/>. You could manually rank a set of adjectives and then use wordnet to find synonyms and generate some heuristic from there, but the bottom line is I think it's going to be a huge time sink unless you get someone with NLP experience involved.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you all for your wonderful comments. I now have some concrete directions to look. I must say it is much harder than I initially thought.

Are there companies employing any of these techniques to provide some service? This seems to be the next step up from keyword-based search. I remember seeing some startups providing a gauge of positive press coverage on stock symbols. How do they do it?

<comment><USER2> For one example, I've seen a couple of sites that classify Twitter posts about movies as positive or negative. I don't know what techniques they're using.

<http://flixpulse.com/>

<http://www.twittercritic.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Just checked out the 2 sites. They don't seem to be active? The movies there seem to be dated.

Actually flixpulse.com classified some reviews wrong. Here are some of the "bad" reviews on "Bolt":

\-- "Bolt" is bringing AWESOME back \-- @seanbonner awesome! BOLT loves you back.

Whatever algo they use need some tuning. But I don't think anyone is actively working on it anymore.</comment></comment></comment>


Flotsam General Store - <AUTHOR> http://www.flotsamgeneralstore.com/

<comment><USER2> The "Welcome" page is nothing of the sort. It should be called a "Logo Page". It doesn't welcome me or start an interaction in any way.

It's by 2 comedians, so maybe I am missing a joke. Possibly I am just overly grumpy: This push to minimalism has gone way too far.</comment>


In Portugal internet providers are starting to split the net into packages - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/923701871092441088 <comment><USER2> The beginning of the end of the internet as we know it. It started with the cell phone companies allowing partner service to not count towards data caps. It's really just a ploy to normalize that kind of activity. It is only a matter of time before you start to see this wide spread.</comment>


CPIP – A C/C++ preprocessor implemented in Python - <AUTHOR> http://cpip.sourceforge.net/

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I'm just starting to learn about C++ but the sense I get is that modern C++ is moving away from the preprocessor. One example is preferring the use of enums and inline functions over the use of macros.

Now, that doesn't change the fact that this project is cool and could lead to interesting developments but are preprocessor advancements a good thing in general for C++ or is it moving backwards?

<comment><USER3> Sure, where it is possible, C++ constructs (templates, inlines, constexpr, ...) should be used instead.

However, one very important bit, where we (sadly) are not really moving away from: The include system. This is still handled all by the preprocessor.

<comment><USER4> We're moving away from it, it's just not done yet. I'd be surprised if C++17 doesn't have a module system, especially after the clang guys implemented one as a proof-of-concept.

<comment><USER5> Interesting! Do you know if there's any proposals or papers detailing the idea anywhere?

<comment><USER6> This is one of them,

[http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2014/n404...](http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2014/n4047.pdf)

The other one is the clang one

[http://clang.llvm.org/docs/Modules.html](http://clang.llvm.org/docs/Modules.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can anyone come up with a good reason to use this instead over, say, jinja2?

<comment><AUTHOR> I doubt it. Jinja2 is a templating language for generating web pages. CPIP is a means of understanding what the C/C++ preprocessor is up to. These are unrelated.</comment></comment>


The End of the Free Internet Is Near - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2019/07/12/the-end-of-the-free-internet-is-near/ <comment><USER2> End of the free open internet, but not the free internet nalltogether. China has the great wall. People in china have VPNs. Not everyone can/is willing to break the law, but if the ride ever swings back to democracy and liberty, it will have originated on the free, hidden internet. You cant stop encryption because you cant stop math.</comment>


Ask HN: Is shipping my companys branding in a MIT repo a legal risk? - <AUTHOR> I am open sourcing a thing that my small company will "sponsor" development time towards every now and then. I made a doc/ folder and put our logo in it and put it at the bottom of the README.
The repo has an MIT license in the root folder and a note in the README to refer to that license.
Have I done something that's legally a problem, i.e. is my company's branding and name now MIT licensed? <comment><USER2> IANAL but trademark vs. copyright

[https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla- central/source/browser/brand...](https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla- central/source/browser/branding/official)

[https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla- central/source/browser/brand...](https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla- central/source/browser/branding/official/LICENSE)

</comment><comment><USER3> {I am not a lawyer. I am assuming that you have control of the company and not a random employee}

Hire an attorney now or hire an attorney later, maybe. Pay some now, or more later, maybe. The real issue isn't legality, it's risk. How much could it cost versus how likely it is.

Going a step further, anyone who is going to appropriate your branding in a way that hurts your company probably isn't going to worry too much about MIT...or rather they are not going to hire their own attorney to get an opinion that it is legal.

Or to put it another way, if it isn't worth hiring an attorney, it isn't really worth worrying about.

Good luck.</comment>


A practical, scalable, distributed data store - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/vacuum?url=http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-193.pdf

<comment><USER2> Is it just me or is scribd.com the worst thing to happen to the Internet since MIME-based email?

Insofar as I can tell all it does is strip me of basic functionality (e.g., save the thing so I can read it offline), introduce confusing functionality ( _TWO_ scrollbars on the left!? WTF?) and all for what? So some engineers could do some flash-based masturbation & feel web 2.0?

Scribd.com developers: you are not Web 2.0. You are not 1.0. You are web -0.5. You are what we people did when they had bullshit internal doc apps, _before_ HTML.

Now please stop pissing off the Internet & go under already.

<comment><USER3> I suspect that Scribd may be good for precisely the kinds of proprietary format documents you don't see as YC news items very often (Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc).

However for PDF, Scribd really isn't a good fit since there are already so many good PDF viewers out there. In particular the PDF support my OSX Laptop comes with blows Scribd out of the water so a Scribd link to a PDF is effectively a downgrade for me.

Too bad there isn't some info in the HTTP protocol Scribd could use to decide to deliver me the PDF instead. Oh wait...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the real PDF: <http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-193.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER4> I read the paper, and I must be missing something. (I'm not a computer scientist, so there's probably something important here that's flying right over my head.)

The paper mentions "fault tolerance" a number of times, and I'm thinking, "fantastic! They've got some magic in there so that if a node goes down, there are automatically some number of nodes that can instantly take over its place." Except, they don't ... their fault tolerance sounds like they just expect to use servers with really good data recovery. It does mention a primary backup server that's supposed to shadow each other data server, but now we're talking about an effective 2n nodes. Also, it doesn't sound like it would be all that fault tolerant in the event of network problems (broken pipe between nodes, denial of service attack, etc.), or if the root node goes down.

Since they're only storing actual data in leaf nodes, they're not outperforming a classic balanced binary tree in search time.

It does sound like they've done some good work in making sure that they keep data integrity in the event of client-server communication problems, but that's also been solved by a number of database and file systems already.

So ... can someone explain the novelty here?</comment>


How Many Friends is Too Many? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_many_friends_is_too_many.php <comment><USER2> _Human beings ought to live in groups of around 150 people, judging from the logarithm of our brain size_

The "logarithm of our brain size" meaning what, exactly? I'm curious as to how Dunbar arrived at this conclusion.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.liv.ac.uk/researchintelligence/issue17/braintease...](http://www.liv.ac.uk/researchintelligence/issue17/brainteaser.html)</comment></comment>


2 Things About That Google Memo… - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@100millionbooks/2-things-about-that-google-memo-75d3dcd29cc5 <comment><USER2> This is really just more evidence of a longer trending-up in the belief that fibbing is OK if it serves the greater good. You can exaggerate the dangers of secondhand smoke, if that helps you stamp out smoking. [0] You can exaggerate the general population's risk of contracting HIV, if that raises awareness for AIDS research. [1] And you can, clearly, misrepresent the science on gender differences if it serves a larger feminist platform. [2]

Surely, some scientists must _know_ they're doing this. But, crucially, most people are just repeating what they've been told by experts.

[0] [http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2017/02/secondhand_smoke_isn_t_as_bad_as_we_thought.html)

[1] [https://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations/people- think-i...](https://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations/people-think-it-s- easy-contract-hiv-s-good-thing-right-maybe-not-guest-post-jason-kerwin)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hb3oe7-PJ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hb3oe7-PJ8)

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anybody have a copy on line of the entire memo, with charts and references?

The author may have a good libel case against Gizmodo, in that they published his document under the heading "Full memo", while omitting key parts.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's at [http://diversitymemo.com](http://diversitymemo.com).

<comment><USER4> This is the best copy I've seen. Thanks for this. The Gizmodo version looks like it was a copy/paste leak with all the links and graphs removed.

I've actually read this memo. Regardless of whether you agree with it, it's well thought out.

I really hate the false left/right divide in our culture today. Issues are not on one side or the other. This letter is hardly hate speak or disrespectful. It's opinions and the reasoning behind those opinions, as well as what the author thinks are good solutions.

I don't agree with many of the things the author says, but my own opinions are equally as controversial. I think they're fewer women in tech because let's face it, they're soul destroying job. Even when working with the best engineers where I rarely worked over 40 hours a week with a six figure salary, I was still sitting on an open work space, chugging out Scala code, for a business that sold overpriced intellectual property.

Men should be encouraged to take jobs that are more fulfilling even though they might pay less.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be clear, I didn't create that site. I found it elsewhere and linked it here.

But yeah, to reiterate what I said in the article, the Gizmodo version is terribly lacking and not worthy of being called the 'full' version even though that's exactly what they did.

Thus inciting much hate about this guy's 'uninformed' and 'bigoted' opinions when they're just...not. Controversial, yes, but not uninformed.

<comment><USER3> In the full version, it looks like he's trying to get a handle on the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's funny how these mistakes creep in. For example, Dr. James Damore does not have a doctorate. Reference: [https://twitter.com/nitashatiku/status/894939560391565317](https://twitter.com/nitashatiku/status/894939560391565317)

<comment><AUTHOR> I checked his LinkedIn page beforehand and it indicates he has a Phd.

Regardless, I wouldn't consider this mistake to be like 'these mistakes' I discuss in the article.</comment></comment>


How Cloud Computing Edges Out Other Hosting Services - <AUTHOR> http://www.freearticlesnow.com/article-how-cloud-computing-edges-out-other-hosting-services-67709.html This is how cloud computing edges out other hosting services being offered by different hosting providers firms in Australia. A web hosting services include shared hosting, reseller hosting, dedicated server hosting, virtual private server hosting and cloud computing. <comment><USER2> Cloud computing is certainly shaping up to dwarf other hosting services. I'm not so sure that business will flock to it. Sure a start-up could gain all the benefits you mention but they need to consider ramifications for IP protection and possible ownership claims by hosts. More established business would love cloud computing but I bet they'd rather host the cloud themselves rather than farm it out, and for the same reasons IP, ownership as well as control. On the plus side, the cloud will definitely appeal to the same millions that are attracted to social-media sites and for the same reasons that draw them to social media sites. Still millions more home/mobile users will like it for the benefits you mentioned.</comment>


Show HN: Gardening with the ESP8266 - BionicCactus - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/samsonmking/BionicCactus <comment><USER2> when the wheel is being re-invented, it should be cheaper better easier.

[https://www.fullbloomhydroponics.net/hydroponic- systems/](https://www.fullbloomhydroponics.net/hydroponic-systems/)

[https://www.instructables.com/id/Hyduino-Automated- Hydroponi...](https://www.instructables.com/id/Hyduino-Automated-Hydroponics- with-an-Arduino/)</comment>


Is developing commercial desktop software dead? - <AUTHOR>

I've been wondering that is it really worth to develop and sell desktop software anymore? It seems that the market there used to be is slowly dying. Any thoughts?
The thing is that I actually developing desktop software way more than for example writing software for mobile platforms.
The point of this post is really just to hear thoughts from other commercial desktop software developers. :) <comment><USER2> One problem is that shareware limits revenue opportunity.

For us, copy protection was a problem in itself so we were inclined to look at software as a service. Saas is, at this time, a socially acceptable form of copy protection.

There are lots of points to ponder. I would love to go after say Adobe, or Intuit, but its been tried over and over.

Monopoly is a funny thing. People have thought that they could make an easier version of Quickbooks and break open the market. Perhaps someone will. But one reason no one wants to leave QB is because its hard enough to know accounting and QB. If you start by learning QB then you are scared off of learning another program.

So software opportunities, desktop or otherwise, are about getting new users before they are indoctrinated into hard to use products. So its a long game to earn a monopoly. And if you give them a superior experience they are more likely to be open minded about switching to something else. This is one of the reasons Apple had a difficult time earning PC converts over the years despite consistently low quality software from Microsoft. If Microsoft had ever shipped an excellent product they would have potentially lost customers faster!

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends on the niche. Commercial desktop software for, say, music production is very much alive, and unlikely to die off any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't think so, no. When I look at the software I've bought recently, a lot of it has been purchased through things like Humble Bundle, and I don't think I would have bought those apps if they _hadn 't_ been part of the bundle.

When I think about non-tech, but computer-involved relatives, the only one that has purchased software bought Parallels because they needed it for a legacy work program that doesn't play nice with OS X.

The only space I think that it might be worth it would be in games.

</comment><comment><USER5> As an engineer I don't see any of the commercial desktop software I use going away any time soon.

SolidWorks, L-Edit and CoventorWare are expensive and require a lot of interaction on the desktop. They are unlikely to be replaced.

Some big software, like Comsol, would be a good candidate for a move to the cloud. Simulations that take a few minutes to hours to run really should be on an elastic cloud server, and should stop being sold as desktop software.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've researched this a bit not too long ago.

My conclusions are that SAAS and app stores have swallowed the market of general applications and utilities. By "general" I mean, software of mass appeal.

The remaining applications that are still sold as shareware are specialized applications.

I think it would be massive fun to work on the second category of software but it seems like a hard market to break, in general.</comment>


Value of Facebook Ads Approaches Zero - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/22/are-facebook-ads-going-to-zero-lookery-lowers-its-gaurantee-to-75-cent-cpms/

<comment><USER2> Perhaps, but the cost of serving them probably approaches zero faster.

<comment><USER3> Good point... except that the number of eyeballs on Earth is limited, so the total amount of profit to be made in the market is presumably also approaching zero.

Or so it would be if "approaching zero" was not just a glib metaphor.

<comment><USER4> > the number of eyeballs on Earth is limited

That's obviously not true (in the medium term), more people are being born, and more people are coming online every day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why are ads on social sites so hard? They know my age, location, favorite bands and movies! It just seems like it should be really easy.

<comment><USER6> Because people don't go to those sites looking for stuff. They go to hang out. Google ads work so well because people go there searching for something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Its time to go back to the business-model drawing board. Get rid of the ads and start charging for the service? It would be interesting to see how many social networks could justify their existence based on utility alone.

<comment><USER8> If the charge was _minimal_, I'd be willing to pay a few bucks a year for Facebook.

If you use it properly (read: non-obsessively), it's a great way to keep connected with people you've known in the past several years. Without Facebook, I would have lost touch with a lot of people, whom I could now communicate with easily when I need to. I gave up the day-to-day "social" aspect of it a while ago, but for keeping connections with past high-school and college friends, there isn't a better way to keep the doors open.

That being said, if I was paying for the service, I'd hope they would open up their data (for export) and give a few more bells and whistles for the money.

<comment><USER9> They could do a flickr-type model and charge only heavy users (say, more than 1000 friends) or charge for premium services (high-res photos or similar features).

EDIT: Even if social ads don't work out, I think Facebook will probably find a way to make lots of money. Although, maybe not enough money to justify the highest valuations we've heard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why don't they do this?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=210434>

</comment><comment><USER11> Most of the applications are so clustered with ads, so that everbody is probably ignoring them.

I do however sometimes find the facebook ads (the main site) highligy targeted (I even clicked twice on those). I bet they charge more than a few cents per 1000 impressions.

</comment><comment><USER12> The CPM might be getting smaller and smaller but it's far from 0 as the numbers of pageviews on facebook applications are usually huge.

</comment><comment><USER13> As ad_price --> 0, bubble --> pop</comment>


Ask HN: How does your team utilise GitHub (or other) to release? - <AUTHOR> I work within a team of four developers, soon to be seven, and it feels like we are at the size where our release process doesn't feel like it's going to "scale".
Our current process is as follows:
1) Branch off staging to create a "feature branch"
2) Develop on the feature branch 3) Create a Pull Request (via GitHub) between staging and the "feature branch". This automatically creates a throw-away, staging-like environment just for this branch 4) Once the Pull Request has been accepted by another developer, and our Tester has tested the branch, squash and merge into staging. 5) Create a PR between master and staging - as we "squashed and merged" above, every commit on staging was an individual PR. 6) Each day, a developer starts the CI (and therefore deploys/releases) by merging the staging to master PR.
The issues we are having: - We don't currently force the feature branch to be "kept up with staging", as this takes time and organisation. We feel that staging moves "too fast" (We squash and merge around four PRs per day) - Often Developer A can "knock out" work by Developer B - Especially if the integration of the components has the issue, but unit tests and e2e tests pass. - We are split into two teams, often Team A does not know what Team B is working on, which increases the potential for merge conflicts, or the issues above.
I'm interested in how other development teams deploy and what issues there are with your current process.
Thanks :) <comment><USER2> We keep master to be the version of the code in production. So any pull request that has to be merged to production is code reviewed, automatically deployed to production via spinnaker in a canary, blue-greened across production, and with splunk and new relic monitoring we know if the code in the PR affects production, and if it fails after 15 minutes in production we rollback the code all the way (back in stg\dev too). One of the key things we leverage is feature flagging and ALL code is behind feature flags using launch darkly...so we do controlled exposure of the code (enabling the feature) for specific users\segments of our population until we enable it for all users.

Biggest issue is the delay between code being deployed and enabled in production and users actually using the feature which allows us to get meaningful metrics on the viability of the feature.

A DevOps Definition of Done is working software collecting telemetry against the intended business objectives.

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/learn/what- is-...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/learn/what-is-devops)</comment>


7 charged in $6B online money-laundering case - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2013-05-27/costa-rica-digital-currency-site-founder-arrested

<comment><USER2> It will be interesting to see how much of an impact this has on criminal activity on the Internet. I am wondering if its a >> $6B enterprise or ~ $6B enterprise. My theory is that if there is a big decrease then this took a big chunk of the monetary transactions off line, if there isn't much of an impact than either this wasn't a meaningful amount of the transactions or the whole thing is just much bigger than we might imagine.</comment>


Apple needs to change iPhone's call UI because robocalls are killing us - <AUTHOR> https://spencerdailey.com/2018/12/26/in-2019-apple-needs-to-change-iphones-call-ui-because-robocalls-are-killing-us/ <comment><USER2> "At the telelphony-infrastructure level, it's a supremely difficult problem that lacks a short-term fix because the underlying protocol is hopelessly insecure."

This is only partly true. Technologically the solution is difficult, but it's easy from the social side as carriers can blacklist the smaller carriers that allow this fraud to take place.

The real problem is that everyone except the consumer benefits from this. Every phone company in the chain from the scammer to you takes a penny out of the scammer's profits.

At this point these scam phone calls may be nearing the majority of the phone calls placed in the USA, so it's going to be a huge financial disruption to the carriers when they have to give up their game.

<comment><USER3> There already is a proposed technological solution to this: [https://transnexus.com/whitepapers/stir-and-shaken- overview/](https://transnexus.com/whitepapers/stir-and-shaken-overview/)

The FCC has recently "demanded" US telecoms to implement this [0], but at this point I don't believe there is actually a regulatory requirement to do so.

[0] [https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-354933A1.pdf](https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-354933A1.pdf)

<comment><USER4> I prefer an economic solution. Currently, you can sue a robocaller under the TCPA, but good luck collecting. Make each carrier liable for judgments against robocallers routed through their network. So, if I sue John Doe for robocalling me and I can't collect, and I'm a Verizon customer, the make Verizon liable for those damages. This should come with some limits, but they should be large (say 10% of nationwide annual revenue, and there could plausibly be a limit per carrier that routes to Verizon). This liability should be unaffected by any terms in Verizon's contracts with its customers (e.g. arbitration clauses), and telcos should not be able to penalize their customers in any way for collecting.

I bet that a law like this would get the problem fixed _fast_.

<comment><USER5> i bet that instead, you'd just get a new contract in which verizon decided that it was only free to talk to other verizon numbers, and would require you to pay extra to call outside the network. Then, they'd ask you to provide a birth certificate, SSN, CC number, and pay via direct deposit to have an account. if you want to penalize rob dialers, don't penalize companies that are not robodialing, or push the burden of law enforcement on them.

<comment><USER4> Huh? Those robocalls are not originated on Verizon cellphones. A contract like that would do _nothing_ to reduce Verizon's liability, but it would certainly help drive customers elsewhere.

<comment><USER5> The point is that they would not do anything to reduce the calls, instead, they would erode your freedoms and charge you more to pay the fines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> AFAIK, it's still the case that I can't block everything _but_ numbers in my contacts, right? That's all I'm asking, and it can't be that hard. Add that simple feature that should have been there ten years ago and the problem is solved for me.

<comment><USER7> You can do this, just set your phone to Do Not Disturb and then set it to "allow calls from my contacts"

<comment><USER6> I've seen that, but doesn't it take SMS/iMessages with it? IOW, I won't be notified of messages no matter who sends it? Regardless, it's just phone calls I want to block, I don't get enough spam SMS to care about who is sending it.

I guess I'm going to have to fiddle around with when the wife gets home and gather some empirical evidence.

<comment><USER8> > I've seen that, but doesn't it take SMS/iMessages with it?

Indeed it does, which makes it a non-solution for me. I apparently have the same desire you do - an option for voice calls to go direct to voicemail unless they are in my favorites list, without having to use the more general Do Not Disturb mode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fwiw, Android actually does do this. When the phone is unlocked, calls show up as a banner. In addition, they added that new call screening option, I've been using it and so far it has worked fairly well. Also, there is some built-in call filtering and third party apps as well, though I have mostly been able to rely on the built-in filtering.

Does iOS really not have _any_ options for filtering? I swear last time I had an iPhone (running iOS9) there was Something... but then again, I was jailbroken.

It's a bit funny that we got full web browsers on phones before proper call filtering.

(Disclaimer: I work for Google but not on phones.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent, I'll add this to the article. No idea why my post went from #1 on HN to the third page in under 30 minutes, I thought we were having a fruitful discussion here

<comment><USER10> Not sure if this has been mentioned but Android's DnD mode allows granular settings including blocking non-contact calls: [https://i.imgur.com/ZcRSXlK.png](https://i.imgur.com/ZcRSXlK.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I actually would like a regulatory solution for this.

Mandate a way for me to say whether incoming calls were spam. Require my phone company to pay me money every time I get spammed. Allow my phone company to, at their option, proactively block calls from specific upstreams and/or pass the charge to the specific upstreams.

Now from those incentives, the fines will naturally follow the upstreams to the source of the spam, and provide motivation for them to clean their acts up. Voila! (And if telephone companies decide that they need a more secure protocol to make spamming harder, that's up to them.)

<comment><USER12> _"I actually would like a regulatory solution for this."_

The UK has a solution. It does actually work, mostly:

[https://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/index.html](https://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/index.html)

<comment><USER13> It doesn't work, and i'm in the UK too. Bad actors simply ditch their LTD Co when they eventually get a small fine and some use it as a whitelist of active numbers to use. IIRC there was an idea about making directors of companies who flout this personally responsible, I wonder if this happened?

<comment><USER14> It works great. I get about 2 calls a year now, and just saying "I'm on the no-call registry" makes them hang up really fast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would love to be able to block all numbers coming from my area code and the first 3 digits of my number.. all my robo calls come from a number that looks just like mine.

<comment><USER16> Or send to Google Assistant screening. It's the best feature ever but they need to open it up to rules for automation (i.e. all unknown numbers from XXX area code).

<comment><USER17> The last thing I want to give google is access to all of my phone call data. I just want to reduce my footprint with that company.

<comment><USER16> Audio, transcript, and other call screen data is stored locally on your phone, not sent to Google or anywhere else: [https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9094888](https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9094888)

It really is a nice little feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In The Netherlands we have a "no-call register" for companies ([https://business.gov.nl/regulation/telesales/#article-do- not...](https://business.gov.nl/regulation/telesales/#article-do-not-call-me- register))

I never get robocalls. It's nice to live in a country that believes in smart regulation!

<comment><USER19> Yep. And live in UK and have never received a single spam call. I don't understand why it's such a large problem in US.

<comment><USER20> You're just lucky. I was too. Then my number got on some spam list and now I'm receiving a few calls a month (which is still something many Americans would consider great, I'm sure) - from random locations all over Europe. The spammer is effectively unreachable by local regulations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The eventual fix will be adopting ATIS SHAKEN and STIR protocols, which is, very roughly, signed caller ID. The FCC is now demanding it of carriers:

[https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-354933A1.pdf](https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-354933A1.pdf) (Background and open letters to carriers: [https://www.fcc.gov/document/chairman-pai-demands- industry-a...](https://www.fcc.gov/document/chairman-pai-demands-industry- adopt-protocols-end-illegal-spoofing))

How it works, short version: [https://transnexus.com/blog/2017/stop-spoofed- robocalls-with...](https://transnexus.com/blog/2017/stop-spoofed-robocalls- with-stir-and-shaken/)

How it works, long version: [http://www.atis.org/01_resources/whitepapers/#shaken- studies](http://www.atis.org/01_resources/whitepapers/#shaken-studies) (find in page for "SHAKEN" and "Caller ID")

<comment><USER13> Apologies for not reading through these links, but does this fix just the caller-id issue, or the routing issue - i.e. routing an SMS to a bad actor?

<comment><USER22> Just caller ID, and even then it seems like it's between service providers only - you have to trust your carrier to validate signatures and reject bad/missing ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> robocalls are illegal in germany. They are called unerlaubte Telefonwerbung and one energy company got fined with 140.000 euros.

[https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Sachgebiete/Telekommunik...](https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Sachgebiete/Telekommunikation/Verbraucher/UnerlaubteTelefonwerbung/unerlaubtetelefonwerbung- node.html)

FTA: After the E wie Einfach GmbH had found agencies for the advertising measures, obviously no more control took place. Therefore the E.ON daughter is occupied now with a fine of 140.000 euro. Because as a client of the call actions it must guarantee the adherence to the legal principles. This includes above all that in each individual case an explicit consent of the consumers is present. The client is responsible for this, even if the telephone calls are carried out by subcontractors. However, the decision of the Federal Network Agency is not yet legally binding: the electricity supplier can appeal the fine in court.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

[https://www.e-recht24.de/news/telekommunikation/10928-unerla...](https://www.e-recht24.de/news/telekommunikation/10928-unerlaubte- telefonwerbung-140-000-euro-strafe-fuer-energieversorger.html)

<comment><USER24> > unerlaubte Telefonwerbung

"Illegal phone advertising" for those do not speak German.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have no idea what a robocall is but I would LOVE a simple notification banner for when someone calls. I rarely get calls these days but when I do, it's a major annoyance if I'm doing something on my phone. It's time calls are relegated to the same level of urgency as WhatsApp messages and emails.

<comment><USER26> I just gotta say it's funny that receiving a phone call on your phone is a major annoyance these days.

<comment><USER27> I know what you mean but it wasn't funny when I was recording my kid at his first birthday party and got interrupted by a robocall just seconds before he cut the cake. From that day, I've learned to put the phone on DND mode before recording anything memorable.

<comment><USER28> What I don't understand is why Apple isn't fixing this.

It's simple - it's broken UI, Android has done it, people want it, it doesn't help in any way, so why keep it? I mean why? Hell, if you really want to keep it, give an option to disable it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> T-Mobile has a feature that uses the Caller ID to display "Scam Likely"...which is a great stopgap measure and doesn't cost me extra.

<comment><USER30> That got me thinking. I haven't seen that message in a while, but I've moved from regular android to AOSP. I wonder if that scam likely CID needs some google play support ?

<comment><USER31> google play has plenty of apps that keep track of robocalls via third party solutions. truecaller is an app i used when i was in india getting inundated by robocalls.

<comment><USER30> Right, I meant google play services. AOSP phone app, while quite similar to the stock google phone app, doesn't include this feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Because my phone number is not from where I actually live and most of these robocallers fake a number from your local exchange, seeing a number that looks like mine pop up basically tells me right away it's a robocall since nobody calls me from that exchange. Whole thing is still incredibly annoying though and problem is getting worse.

</comment><comment><USER33> I never get robocalls in Europe - what's different here? Why does USA have this huge problem with spam calls and most of Europe doesn't? Is spam blocking on OS level really the right approach to fix this problem?

<comment><USER34> > Why does USA have this huge problem with spam calls and most of Europe > doesn't?

Presumably because (1) it's much easier to find English speakers in countries where most robocalls actually originate, and (2) the same model can scale to 320M recipients with very little marginal effort.

<comment><USER35> Surely in Germany robocallers woul call people in German.

<comment><USER36> That was the point of the parent poster. Why bother with german and other much less common languages when you could just target a de facto global language that both your victims as well as those responsible for those scams know?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> As an Android user, I'm kind of shocked that the iPhone doesn't do this, and I'll say that the banner UI is decently better. Though I'm not going to lie, I still think we can do better, and I wouldn't doubt that Apple would just opt for the next generation UI instead of following Android's suit.

Sometimes I wonder what subtle differences there are between the two ecosystems, as I've never really gotten into Apple products before, with the exception of a few earlier iPods. Does anyone have confirmed differences that the other side might not understand?

</comment><comment><USER38> We don't have this problem in Singapore.

[https://www.dnc.gov.sg/index.html](https://www.dnc.gov.sg/index.html)

We have this do not call list. Once added, calls, texts, etc, drop to like nothing. Infact I cannot remember the last time I had a call... I get the occasional text message but it's mostly shops telling me to use my store points before a certain date. A reminder.

<comment><USER39> We have one of those in the US, but most (99%) of the automated calls I receive are not from legitimate enterprises.

<comment><USER40> Also the US is a much larger target, it's 300 million people that are almost guaranteed to speak English. Targeting countries like Denmark, The Netherlands or other countries where you'd basically need hire native speaker it's financially viable (That's not to say that the problem doesn't exist in these countries, just at a much smaller scale).

<comment><USER38> Singapore speaks English as a first language.

Sounds like the problem is to do with not honoring the do not call list and no punishment for those who don't honor it. Here companies are fined if they call people who are on the list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> My solution to robocalls is to answer them and then be totally silent. After a few seconds, they disconnect.

The number of robocalls I receive has plummeted since I started doing this. I receive hardly any these days. My theory is that due to silent answers, the autodialers eventually mark the number as bad, or as a machine-answered number. I have no proof of this, though.

<comment><USER42> I answer and have fun pretending that I'm a lunatic. I generally get hung up on within a minute, and at least that minute is a bit of fun.

<comment><USER43> I do this sometimes too. It seems like an ethical way to have somewhat the same sort of fun as old-fashioned crank calls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Apple provides a fix: get an Apple Watch and make your phone silent. Then you get a notification on your watch which you can suppress by placing your hand over it.

I make this comment in jest because obviously this is a very user-unfriendly "solution" unless you planned to buy an apple watch for some other reason. However I do use this feature.

As for the post's comment that dismissing the call leaks info: I don't know what the predictive dialers have any understanding of this -- if you simply refuse to answer it's simply a disconnect. I also doubt they keep stats on calls that go to vmail, if you accidentally do that or if you refuse to answer.

<comment><USER45> I have an apple watch... it doesn't solve the problem that if I answer a call that is not from a contact, it is 9/10ths spam, so I simply don't answer calls not on my contact list, and thus sometimes miss important calls from businesses that don't text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'm from Poland and while I never experienced a robocall, I have to deal with telemarketers every now and then because someone somewhere shared my number against my will and while in theory the caller is obligated to disclosure how my number landed in its company database, they're often hanging up in second they're asked or pulling the "it was randomly selected" bullshit, and recently, after GDPR they're giving premium-rated phone numbers claiming that's how you can exclude your number from database which obviously doesn't work.

While singing contract for fiber connection, I had to repeat few times that I want to opt-out almost losing nerves talking with agent saying that I'm _really_ not interested having telemarketers clogging my phone even if that means I'll miss a chance to win something - because that's how she tried to advertise that. I could either allow those calls for 5 PLN less on my bill or opt-out for same amount added to it and I did choose the latter.

Anyway, there are sites and apps which are trying to "rate" calling numbers and warn other people - most of the times they do good job.

</comment><comment><USER47> The other problem is with using third party navigational apps. While driving the phone app takes up the whole screen completely obscuring the directions. My wife constantly rejects calls because of this and I can't talk to her!

<comment><USER48> You can switch apps while in a call.

<comment><USER49> Hurtling down the interstate at 70+ mph and I also tend to mash the big red button when I get a call and need my direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Also when you take a video and someone calls it ends the video recording - even if you don't decide to answer. So you have to put your phone into airplane mode, which sucks because if you lost your phone before remembering to turn it off then find my iPhone wouldn't work... I wish there was some sort of option to not disturb while doing video... Something you could toggle on and off.

<comment><USER51> Get a better 'Phone' app. It's replaceable, and many have truly silent modes for some callers only which won't interrupt anything you're doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I would like to see this solved via a little regulation and tech industry cooperation that basically discards the entire phone system.

Problems that need solving

* Robocalls

* Companies using SMS for 2FA

* Companies still using phone numbers as part of my ID all. I'd much prefer companies contact me first via email/secure-text (whatsapp/line/messenger/...) and only later via secure voip

I feel like Google/Apple/Microsoft/Facebook whoever should basically design a new standard to replace the phone system and the government should then mandate that companies must support it (no more asking for phone numbers)

I'm sure there are lots of issues. I don't want one id to reach me, like email I want multiple IDs and if you want to know the ID I give you is me then send me a confirmation (I can crypto-sign it if need be)

I'm sure it's easier said than done but it does seem like it's getting to the point phone numbers are basically as useless as fax machines. Most people call me via Line, Hangouts, FB, Facetime, etc.. No one calls via phone number

</comment><comment><USER53> > And disrupt they do, at a massive scale. Several billion fake calls are > received each month in the US. Reports show this is a global problem, with > Brazilians averaging 37 spam calls per month. Actually, I'm getting a > robocall as I type this very sentence, my second today.

Is there a reason this isn't as prevalent in the UK? I get maybe 2 calls a month like this. Are robocallers in the UK more likely to get in trouble maybe? Putting this on Apple isn't addressing the core of the problem.

</comment><comment><USER54> I would love:

Auto-hang up on any call from someone who's number I don't have saved. Just give me a notification immediately thereafter. If it's someone I should know, I'll either have their number saved, or be expecting it. I don't want to be bothered otherwise.

<comment><USER55> This, and many, many other interesting use-cases is quite simple if you port your number to Twilio and create your own carrier inside their service.

I did this about 18 months ago and _love the results_. I manipulate and use the telephone network in many useful and interesting ways, all programatically, through twilio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> It's not clear to me why Apple can't have a Mark as Spam button for calls. Once you hit a critical mass from independent iPhones you simply block that number.

<comment><USER57> They're spoofing the numbers so that would likely cause apple to blacklist numbers belonging to innocent people.

<comment><USER56> A lot of them aren't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Since the phone companies are too busy trying to build content empires rather than working to improve their core competencies, it's time for Apple to step up the call-blocking experience at the OS level.

The addition of a call-blocking API was a very good first step, but the time is fast arriving when robust blocking patterns will be table stakes similar to what basic email spam filtering is today.

<comment><USER59> I'd give it a year before they buy someone like Hiya.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Or we could actually fix the problem and make the do-not-call list laws much stronger and put some enforcement behind them.

</comment><comment><USER61> > _I would love to be able to block all numbers coming from my area code and > the first 3 digits of my number.. all my robo calls come from a number that > looks just like mine_

Somewhat humorously, this has destroyed my ability to receive phone calls from my home town. I instinctively hang up and block.

</comment><comment><USER62> Check out Google's call screening feature available on their Pixel phones [https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9118387?hl=en](https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9118387?hl=en)

<comment><USER63> That's nice for keeping marketeers out, but meanwhile you're sharing all your info with the largest advertiser on the planet ...

<comment><USER64> No it doesn't:

[https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9118387?hl=en](https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9118387?hl=en)

> Call Screen doesn't save to your Google Account, your Google Assistant > Activity page, or to Web and App Activity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> This annoyance is three-fold when a call from your iPhone also takes over your iPad screen and rings on your MacBook.

<comment><USER66> I turned off the feature that shows calls on my MacBook because of this. It's nice that the UI shows "Scam Likely" as the caller, but maybe give me an option to filter out those calls entirely? Let them go to voicemail or something... who is answering the phone when the caller is unknown and identified by the UI as "Scam Likely"?

<comment><USER67> That's a T-Mobile feature, not an Apple feature, and you can change your settings to block the calls instead of just ID'ing them.

[https://www.t-mobile.com/resources/call- protection](https://www.t-mobile.com/resources/call-protection)

<comment><USER66> Awesome, thanks. I enabled it. That should cut down on at least ~40% of the junk calls I get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> imo the best way to combat this is to answer the call and waste as much of the scammers time as possible. Call spamming only scales because most people ignore or hangup immediately. If you waste 30seconds of a scammers time thats 30 more people they cant call. And that 30 seconds costs THEM money. I just answer say "hi" to start the recording and leave the phone on my desk until they hangup. Perhaps i dont completely understand the backend but if more people wasted the scammers time it would quickly become too expensive for them to continue.

<comment><USER69> How much is your time worth vs the robocallers ?

<comment><USER70> When I was getting robocalls a while back, I started saying "hi" and letting them talk, then I'd put the phone on mute and continue whatever I was doing. The calls stopped a few weeks after that. Usually this would take about 10 seconds of my time, and about 90 seconds of theirs, per call.

I'm pretty sure that over the long term, it costs me less time as it made the problem completely go away.

Things that I'd tried before that, that didn't work, include: immediately hanging up, politely and no-so-politely asking them not to call back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> So the garbage dump we call a USPS mailbox doesn't rise to the same level of concern for some reason still?

<comment><USER72> The USPS mailbox can be consumed asynchronously.

Isn't it possible to opt out of a lot of bulk mail anyway? Bulk mail can never be as bad as online spam since it's much more expensive to mail and easier to trace a sender.

<comment><USER71> It's effectively the same as opting out of these robo calls, there's a FTC list for both and yet it has zero effect. I also get 99.9% junk mail, so it's easy to lose actual mail in the pile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> I have a suggestion. If you receive robocalls from legit companies, I think you can try to sue them. I read an article about this at [https://www.whycall.me/news/consumer-wins- massive-229500-rob...](https://www.whycall.me/news/consumer-wins- massive-229500-robocall-lawsuit-against-time-warner-cable/). If those robocalls are coming from scammers, then you could just ignore those calls. There's no way we can stop them, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER74> About a year ago I put my phone on DND and have left it on ever since. My wife and the kids school are in my favorites so they can get through. If I have to make business calls I will initiate the call or just remember to turn it off if I get a calendar reminder for an incoming call. Maybe it will bite me in the ass at some point but it has been really nice to feel like I actually have some control of my phone again.

<comment><USER75> Same here. I also changed my outgoing voicemail message to say that I don't pick up unknown numbers so if you're a real person, leave a voicemail or text me. The voicemail transcription feature on my iphone is rudimentary but works well enough to see at a glance if a voicemail is a sales call or robocall.

<comment><USER74> Yea, it's funny how the fear of missing out makes people put up with so much bullshit in their lives. I don't use Facebook, I don't use Twitter, I don't deal with robocalls. I am not missing out on anything other than the high price of not missing out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Just let me have a phone where only my contacts get to ring it.

For those like doctor offices and others who need to reach you make them go to voicemail.

<comment><USER77> Honestly it blows my mind when I'm with someone who _answers_ their phone when it rings with an unknown number. I have literally never done that, save for a handful of occasions where I'm expecting a call. It's hard to imagine a scenario where it would be someone you would want to talk to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Apple added hooks a while back so that 3rd party apps can interject into the call process, and I've been using [https://hiya.com](https://hiya.com) to do that and block scam calls.

I have it set to disregard suspected scam/fraud calls, so they never ring my phone.

</comment><comment><USER79> I've completely turned off notifications for the phone. If someone wants to call me, they either need to use FaceTime (which hasn't been overrun with spam, yet) or schedule a time with me. I also subscribe a call blocker.

<comment><USER80> How would someone without an Appke device or AppleID get in touch with you realtime? If all friends and family are already part of the Apple ecosystem, then okay for now, but you also would basically be filtering your communications to only people that fit that description in the future, as well.

<comment><USER79> People without Apple IDs can't call me without texting first. I don't get calls over FaceTime except from my parents anyway, everyone just texts, either iMessages or Signal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> In India I got a Vodafone sim. Data was dirt cheap. $1.5 for 6GB of data.

However Vodafone would spam the shit out of everyone. Getting 10+ spammy calls in a day is very normal. They come from different numbers so you can't block them.

Any phone that has a serious robocall spam filter mechanism built in would be a huge seller.

I can count on Apple to make such a bold move. I remember when Telcos used to block personal hotspots and Apple just gave them a middle finger and made iPhones only available to providers that would play by their rules and not the other way around.

We need more bold and human centric companies.

</comment><comment><USER82> It's not just robocalls, but any app that uses CallKit. It annoys me to no end that apps like WhatsApp can take over my entire phone with a call and I am unable to disable that like I can with notifications.

</comment><comment><USER83> In China, most Android users have native feature or Apps which can block harassing calls. And every user can label the new unidentified bad call numbers. The crowdsourcing model works well.

</comment><comment><USER84> I don't know hardly anything about telephony protocols, SS7, etc but I'm curious how much information carriers know about where information originates.

Say I wanted to run a service offering phone numbers that can connect to VOIP or an app, where I connect to the global telephone network. How much information can I get at the lowest protocol level about where a call originates from? Can I tell the system the call came from? The country?

<comment><USER22> You connect to other carriers directly. Some of them will connect you to other carriers, and so on.

So for example if you're a small operation you will just connect to one carrier like Twilio or Nexmo and it's up to them to connect you to everyone else.

When you get bigger you may be able to set up "routes" (that's how they're called in the industry) to carriers directly.

So yes, carriers do see where the calls are coming from, however given that it's commonplace to route your calls through a carrier that has no relationship to the originating number, there's no easy way to tell whether a number is spoofed or not.

There is a solution which is to respond to complaints and stop interconnecting with a carrier that spews too much garbage, but that would go against the entire industry's business model so nobody cares to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> I got fed up enough to set up custom call filtering with Twilio just this week (sadly neither the iPhone nor Google Voice allows filtering calls to contacts only). [https://github.com/syakhmi/spamkiller](https://github.com/syakhmi/spamkiller)

There are good reasons why WhatsApp and the like are replacing phone calls in many countries.

</comment><comment><USER86> Isn't this exactly what Android already does?

<comment><USER87> Yes, Android has improved on this front.

It now treats incoming calls and voicemails basically like any notification and ongoing calls like any other app with an active notification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> The idea of a phone call taking up an entire screen and interrupting your activity hearkens back to the days when Apple emphasized that the iPhone should still be prioritized as a phone first. Clearly, people have evolved to richer forms of communication, and phone calls should not be put up on such a high pedestal.

</comment><comment><USER89> If you are in the "middle of a gaming experience" set to Do Not Disturb and set the option to allow calls from favorites. Meaning, if you are in a situation where a phone call is disruptive, then Do Not Disturb solves that completely, with the option of allowing favorites to get through.

</comment><comment><USER90> _Tapping Decline is not a great option because it actually tells the robocaller that you're with your phone and are annoyed by the call, information I'd rather not give._

Call me paranoid, but I take it a step further and absolutely believe whatever cold call company is calling knows when my phone is moving, or I am around it. I am the type of person that doesn't carry their phone all the time, I usually keep it in my home and work in barn next door, but I notice I don't have many missed called from bullshit numbers. Not saying all, but the majority of these calls are coming when I am around my phone. Anyone else experience anything like this?

edit: lol to ianlevesque quick paranoid response, but start paying attention I dont think its too far fetched. I imagine some code that has some sort of delay to wait for the phone to move or what so long after it is moved to then start to ring. Its not like there is anyone on the other line half the time or it will just hang up. I dont understand robocalls at all.

<comment><USER91> Yes, you are paranoid.

<comment><USER92> no, I think OP is on to something here

<comment><USER93> No I work in telecom and he's not onto anything. It's technically impossible for one, and the ROI wouldn't be there even if it was.

The ROI on spray and pray is high enough. (EDIT: Not as high as like actual legit telecommunications services but it takes a tiny fraction of the expertise.) Literally all the information they need is your phone number. They just spoof the "from" number, often to appear to be a toll-free number or a number in your area code and crank out as many calls as their carriers will let them without shutting them down. The underlying costs are cheap enough where only a teeeeensy percentage of people have to fall for it for it to be worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> It's amazing that calendar invitation spam isn't more prevalent. The times it has happened to me have been incredibly infuriating because declining means a response to the spammer and ignoring can leave it on your calendar.

<comment><USER95> If using a recent version of Apple's calendar, you should get a "decline but don't notify" option.

Another workaround is to make a new calendar, transfer that appointment to the new calendar, and then delete that calendar.

It shouldn't be necessary, but here we are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> So what's the trick? I've had the same cell number for a decade and I get zero unwanted calls a year. Is it just luck or am I accidentally doing something that keeps my number from being spammed?

<comment><USER80> While I don't get zero, I get far fewer than most others commenting here (50+/day!). My wife, on the otherhand, gets more than I do.

I sometimes somewhat arrogantly think it's because I have been more careful about giving our my info to untrustworthy sources, not using Facebook, myriad "phone/contact-sucking" apps like Line, Imo, WhatsApp, etc. that others in my family do/have, but then again, I finally caved and started using WhatsApp while abroad due to it being literally as or more important than a traditional line – many services here have WhatsApp-only numbers. I think I've finally lost the battle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> I use callblocking software to mitigate this robokiller. It costs 2.99 per month but I get signifiantly less robo calls and it allows you to put custom answer messages for the robo calls.

</comment><comment><USER98> I agree with the author's premise, and would go even go further and say that nothing should ever be able to steal focus from a user's active application. Ever. In any OS.

</comment><comment><USER99> Mr. Number does a pretty food job of blocking known robocallers and 'neighborhood' callers.

</comment><comment><USER100> Maybe we should junk the telephone system.

</comment><comment><USER101> No it doesn't. No they aren't.

</comment><comment><USER102> I'd like an option similar to the old answering machine / secretary screening for unknown callers: 1\. A voice assistant says to the caller "may I ask who's calling [records response] and what is your call in reference to [records response]?"

2\. Siri announces the call to me if the phone is not set to Not Disturb mode.

3\. I accept the call or decline. If I decline, Siri gives the caller the option to leave an additional message.

TL;DR Caller states their name and business before I pick up.

<comment><USER103> This is almost exactly what Google is doing.

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/16/18098714/google- assistan...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/16/18098714/google-assistant- spam-call-screening-pixel-2-xl)

> ...you can tap the "screen call" button. Google Assistant will then alert > the caller that you're using a screening service and that you'll receive a > copy of the conversation. From then, you can choose to pick up the call, > hang up, or block the number.

<comment><USER102> Oh, that's great (and now I feel validated that my feature requests aren't crazy). Google definitely seems to be ahead in layering on top of traditional telephony to fix the limitations. I've used a Google Voice number for ages for this kind of stuff, and basically just never answer it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> Spam has been solved by Bitcoin and email. It's called Proof of work.

</comment><comment><USER105> _Right now, any robocall hacker in the world can instantly take over your phone's screen, knocking you out of your mobile gaming experience, disrupting you as you check out at the store, or breaking your concentration as you try and type out an email._

jesus christ, call james bond, this is a super-villain grade world domination issue

</comment><comment><USER106> It is a phone. If you need uninterrupted productivity, use any other type of personal computing device.

<comment><USER107> > It is a phone. If you need uninterrupted productivity, use any other type of > personal computing device.

Phones have stopped being just phones for a while now. Modern smartphones are full fledged computing devices and are a key productivity tool for many users.

Personally I hardly even use the phone feature to justify calling my device a phone. I make maybe one or two traditional phone calls a month, as most of my day-to-day communications is done over the Internet.

<comment><USER108> With VoLTE and wi-fi calls, even the majority of my phone calls are technically over the Internet.</comment></comment></comment>


Using ImageMagick to reveal existence of hidden steganographic messages - <AUTHOR> http://saisa.eu/blogs/Guidance/?p=1128

<comment><USER2> This is sort of like saying that a one time pad is not secure because if you have the one time pad, you can decrypt the message.

</comment><comment><USER3> But why would anyone do steganography with such a well-known image?</comment>


Hacker News Seattle Meetup #2: Tuesday, September 6 at 6pm. - <AUTHOR> http://www.meetup.com/HackerNewsSeattleMeetup/events/29593861/

<comment><AUTHOR> We had 70+ people show up to the first one last month. It was a lot of fun! The only problem was the venue (too small, too hot, too loud), and Rand from SEOmoz volunteered up his office for this one - so problem solved! They'll also be providing snacks and beer. :)

We also have a speaker this time - Marcelo Calbucci will be talking for 10 or 15 minutes about the "State of Startups in Seattle."

Please RSVP if you're going to come (and don't if you're not). Looking forward to seeing everyone!

</comment><comment><USER4> We're tracking Hacker News meetup style events on Lanyrd - let me know of any we're missing: <http://lanyrd.com/topics/hacker-news/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Send me an email (I didn't see it in your profile), and I'll let you know when future events happen.

<comment><USER4> Even better, you can add them yourself - <USER2> <http://lanyrd.com/conferences/add/> (you'll need to sign in with Twitter - <USER3> won't tweet anything on your behalf)

(I'm simon at lanyrd.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> RSVP'd and really looking forward to it!

If anyone is working on interesting projects and would like to connect prior to the meetup, my email's in my profile. Let's chat!

</comment><comment><USER6> Bummer! So close; I'll be in Seattle from the 1st to the morning of the 6th. This would have been awesome.

Maybe next time! haha

</comment><comment><USER7> Sweet! I prolonged my stay in Seattle to about half a month and I knew I could bump into a hacker's meetup like this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Where are you from? There are a ton of other meetups in Seattle, maybe I can point you to a few more you'd be interested in. Email me and I'll see what I can do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can someone explain how organized these meetups are? what happens in them? What should I expect?

Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> My goal is to keep them fairly relaxed. I'm still experimenting with the format, but this one is:

6-6:30: People get there, hang out, chat. 6:30-6:50ish: Marcelo speaks and answers questions. 6:50-end: Back to misc talking.

And then two or three times I'll ask for 5 or 6 volunteers to stand up and give a quick 15 second introduction of who they are and some cool project they're working on.

My goal is to keep these groups of intros to under 2 or 3 minutes so people who want to introduce themselves can, and people who don't want to don't have to, and everyone else doesn't have to sit and listen to 70 people introducing themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The last one was pretty cool. Looking forward to a more comfortable venue.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looking forward to this. :)</comment>