Show HN: SponsorWhale Beta – Make money sharing products you love - <AUTHOR> https://www.sponsorwhale.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, I'm developing SponsorWhale primarily with the goal of helping content creators monetize their content regardless of their size. Here's how it works:

1) Enter any Amazon product URL and write a tweet-length review of the product 2) Share the link through your content 3) You make money as an affiliate when someone purchases the product

The Beta lacks in some important functionalities like detailed analytics, but I wanted to get the MVP out there to make sure this is something small content creators really want (I suspect they do based on interviews I've conducted).

Ultimately in its current state it's just a super simple way to do affiliate marketing, but I plan on building a user-base of small content creators for which brands can create custom, high-paying affiliate opportunities.

Looking for criticism.</comment>


My mom's experience with an iPad - <AUTHOR> http://alexknight.net/blog/2010/12/25/my-moms-experience-with-an-ipad.html <comment><USER2> We've been trying to get my mom to use a computer for as long as I can remember. She tried a few times to learn how to 'get on the internet' on a PC but never really used it herself. She'd get my brother to send emails from her email account.

A few months back we got her an iPad. She instantly took on to it. She was emailing recipes, sharing pictures and connecting with friends and family on Facebook within the first week. She picked everything up surprisingly quickly. Seeing the iPad have this effect on a person who hasn't used a computer for more than a day or two in ther life time was shocking.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. That's what I'm talking about here. Seeing people who aren't tech savvy, who have always found computers frustrating, and then suddenly discovering that using their iPad is enjoyable is awesome. For me as a geek it really puts a smile on my face seeing my mom and other people actually enjoy using software.

I have a feeling my mom is going to start using her iPad more instead of just watching the cooking network while on the couch. The biggest problem with cooking shows is you can't really follow along while on the couch which is frustrating. You're inspired to cook, but you have to run to the kitchen. Instead of having a TV in your kitchen, an iPad on a stand with your favourite cooking app seems like the ideal way to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> >She just calls them "apps" which clearly shows the power of Apple's marketing influence.

Huh? I have never owned or used an Apple product, and since I don't watch television I don't think I have ever seen an Apple commercial, and I have called programs "apps" for over a decade. It is a common term across all OSes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Contrary to what you may think, the layman doesn't go around saying "I just installed this awesome app". Before the iPhone got "apps" the reality is that the term itself wasn't popular until Apple started referring to "applications" as "apps".

It first started with Steve Jobs calling them "apps" then eventually Apple started renaming everything in iTunes and their documentation from "applications" to just "apps". If your non-tech savvy parents start using the term "app" then I'm pretty sure that speaks for itself and Apple deserves some credit.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps the exception is the term "killer app," which is entirely mainstream and surely has been around for at least 20 years.

<comment><USER5> Indeed! VisiCalc was a killer app on the apple ][.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not to doubt these stories, but I know a mom just got an iPad, and she's not comfortable using the thing at all (she uses Macs for her day-to-day computing). She's not remotely dim--she doesn't doesn't naturally work the way an iPad works.

So that's another mom's experience.

</comment><comment><USER7> My Mom used the iPad my Dad bought in a pretty sparring manner, mostly to look at Flickr and MLB (listening to games not on MLB Package on cable). She didn't like reading on it.

My brother and I got her an Apple TV for Xmas and so far that is going very well. Netflix is a hit (after we convinced her she wasn't paying for each show) and so is Flickr to see the grandchild on the big tv. It also helps all the video Dad has from iTunes.

<comment><USER8> Your mom seems quite open-minded indeed. It will take a little bit of time before I can convince my mom ordinary cable TV isn't the only way.

<comment><USER7> Actually, she is pretty much a tech hater, but the DVR supplied by DirecTV and then the local cable company sure helped. We described Netflix in terms of a DVR and it seemed to take. The new remote (aluminum) for the Apple TV works well since it is so much simpler than the cable companies remote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We got an iPad for my SO's mom for her birthday. She was skeptical at first, but she loves it.

What are the cooking apps you're going to recommend?

<comment><USER10> For your own personal recipes, I'd recommend Paprika: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1798717>

<comment><USER11> Paprika seems to be 100% tied to the iPad, which I don't like - I'd much rather have an iPad interface to something on the web.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My moms experience with my iPad:

Spent a good minute staring at the device once it was on trying to figure out where Firefox was on the screen she was on.

Spent a good minute, once I told her she needed to use Safari, wondering how she could bring up a keyboard to type the address she wanted into the browser.

Spent a good minute once she was on the sign in screen for gmail trying to figure out how to enter her username/password combo. Then she spent another 30 seconds looking for the enter key.

Once she was inside gmail the delete key took a mentioning, moving to the next page of her inbox was a lesson in futility, and while her fingers are substantially smaller than mine, she couldn't work the checkboxes without selecting the row above or below the one she wanted.

Apps? Apps? Are you kidding me! (trying to do my best Jim Mora impression)

While the iPad is great, and personally I love mine (doesn't hurt that I won it from a Rackspace marketing survey), it has huge way to go before it passes the Mom test.

<comment><USER13> So what? It took her 5 minutes to get to her email the first time she ever used an ipad. Do you really consider that a failure?

I'm sure that after learning that the keyboard comes out automatically and having used it for a while she can do it in 30 seconds without having to think about it.

I got my parents an ipad about a month ago. My mom has a macbook air and my father an Imac but now they use the ipad much more than the computers. They got it really fast compared to OSX that they still don't understand completely.

Also it's normal to not hit what you want the first time you use a touch screen. It even took me some time to get accurate at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My parents have a kitchen and living room laptop which is used to surf the web and (not so often) write emails (using Gmail) nearly all of the time. An iPad would be a perfect replacement but the big problem is Office. My parents very rarely would also like to write something or open some document and they will get annoyed pretty quickly if that doesn't work without a hitch. They need a laptop with Microsoft Office installed, an iPad (through no fault of its own) just doesn't provide that kind of fidelity.

I bet they would have loved to use an iPad in the living room and in the kitchen before they had a laptop but it just doesn't cut it anymore. They are used to their laptop.

(This equally applies to other "alternative" devices. A Chrome laptop would be so close to perfect for my parents. Google Chrome already is the one program they use all the time on their laptop. But Google Docs just isn't good enough.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Have they tried the iWork suite for iPad? There is also Quickoffice HD which allows you to edit Office documents and it works pretty well.

<comment><USER14> iWork tends to fail in interesting ways. (They have an iMac as their big desktop computer and I tried to convince them to use iWork at first but pretty quickly had to resort to installing Office.) My parents need perfect fidelity all the time. People tend to send strange documents around and they have to be able to open them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like my iPad, but the weakest link is that I can't do any serious typing. Even for small emails, it can be a pain. I need a keyboard I can feel.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've heard people say that. I can definitely understand some may type slower. I prefer a physical keyboard for long form writing, but I'm actually pleasantly surprised at how quickly and accurately I can type on the virtual keyboard. It's pretty comfortable for me to write a 2000 word piece on an iPad. For some though, they won't be comfortable doing it.

<comment><USER16> Mine isn´t speed. I find myself typing just as quickly on a virtual keyboard, but it just starts to get overly tedious and annoying because of the extra level of focus it requires. If I´m typing anything more than a couple of sentences I quickly become irate from it...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> These posts make me think I should no longer follow ycombinator.. I have a hard time keeping up with all the posts, if you post that much irrelevant stuff.

<comment><USER18> I'm going to assume you're not trolling, based on your long account history, and point out that this site is evolving, much like everything else on the internet. It's certainly not the "Startup News" it was when I signed up, and at this point this site is popular enough to a point where even the definition of "Hacker News" will probably shift slightly.

But that's Ok. The important thing is, we're evolving together. (Ok, it's technically a benevolent dictatorship, but you get the idea.)

If you want to see this board have different sorts of content, poke around and submit interesting content for us to read. I assure you, Hacker News does _not_ have a monopoly on interesting technical content. The reason it _does_ get the quality of content that it does is that people like you are free to submit stuff that's cool. And if this week is a little slow, forgive us a bit - it's the holidays, and people are distracted from reading technical papers for a bit.

If next week you still find we're not the droids you're looking for, there's plenty of other great tech sites on the internet - but I sincerely hope you don't leave because you felt you couldn't make a difference here. Try to think positive - I think it'll help both your enjoyment here and people's reactions to your comments - and have a great holiday.

<comment><USER19> I feel like that at some point we're going to need something like subreddits to help the community along.</comment></comment></comment>


The Simpsons actor Harry Shearer to leave the show - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-32733873 <comment><USER2> It's worth noting that Sheare has spearheaded negotiations and threatened to leave before. A few years ago the cast agreed to lower their pay from $400k per episode to $300k.

He is also one of the only cast on an ongoing tv show I've ever heard of criticizing his own show publicly.

I don't blame him if he is tired of working on the show. It can't just be Internet pundits who are tired of the falling Simpsons quality.

More on Wikipedia [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Shearer#The_Simpsons](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Shearer#The_Simpsons)

<comment><USER3> The Simpsons and HN have a lot in common - both still feasting on previous glories, both past their sale by date, both not even realising how tragic they have now become.

<comment><USER4> yet here you are

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you like some of Harry Shearer's more notable character roles (Derek Smalls, bassist of Spinal Tap, probably foremost among them), or the sharper edge of the Simpsons, I highly recommend his radio show/podcast Le Show. It's been going on for years now and offers some of the sharpest topical satire out there.

In the biting-the-hand-that-feeds-you manner that seems to drive his public Simpsons comments (and well, from what I've read of him, his career generally), public radio is one of his favorite targets.

</comment><comment><USER6> For folks who haven't watch The Simpsons in a while, the recent episode about piracy is worth watching [1]--I found it to be quite funny and clever.

[1] But how? :-)

<comment><USER7> The answer [1] is Hulu or re-runs on Fox ;) Which actually leads me to wonder why The Simpsons hasn't been toss around to any channel that will take it like Family Guy, American Dad, Cleveland Show, etc. did? I know FX has re-runs now, but man it would be neat to see some Simpsons on Adult Swim.

<comment><USER8> It's a big IP for Fox and they want to keep inside the family.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder what the latency on this is... given that "The Simpsons" is an animated show with a long lead time, when's the last episode that will air with Harry Shearer's voice? The end of the 2015-2016 season?

<comment><USER10> How does The Simpsons have a long lead time, yet have episode content be so topical?

<comment><USER9> See the notes at [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AnimationLeadTime](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AnimationLeadTime), there's a whole section on the Simpsons there. They use editing and rush animation to add in some topical items, but the majority of the content has to be voice-recorded months before the finished episodes are on TV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ugh, recasting his roles is the absolute death knell of the show for me. Recent episodes have been good for one or two good laughs per episode, which was enough for me to keep watching. Even though some have been absolutely abysmal.

But having someone else voice so many of the characters? It's just not gonna work. So sad.

<comment><USER12> Ah, but what if you could use machine learning to make the recording of the new actor sound exactly like the old one? They probably could. But yes, short of that, they have a problem on their hands...

<comment><USER13> Like Futurama acting bots?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hope the rest join him. Its a sad show now, with the occasional funny episode that reminds you of how all the episodes were. If all the voice talent left tomorrow they'd have to fold. Heaven forbid, giving it a planned send-off with dignity instead of milking and producing a less quality product year after year until all of its goodwill is gone.

Television, you just don't know when to quit.

Or do something risky like move the show up 20 years to the future they sometimes show where Bart is a divorced dad with two boys and Lisa is married to Milhouse. There's some amusing territory there, especially the Futurama- esque absurdism like when Homer bought the first hover car, which predictably was full of bugs, loud, and just a terrible vehicle.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've seen every episode multiple times and I always find it intriguing when people complain about declining quality and get up in arms about it. One of the hallmarks of the show and the storylines has always been its irreverence and it's lack of desire to be taken seriously. The fact that it continues to go on with silly episodes is only part of that funny, irreverent quality, in my view.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if it's a negotiation tactic.

<comment><USER17> The dude is 71 years old according to the article, it could be a negotiation tactic, but more likely it's just retirement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> the Simpsons died years ago

<comment><USER19> I've watched every single episode of the Simpsons. I thought the newer episodes were decent. However, the current season is a complete disaster _story-wise_. I don't know if they changed the lead writers, but there's a discernible quality gap.

 _" Let's Go Fly a Coot"_ is the worst episode ever. I'm shocked they thought it was ok to air such mess.

<comment><USER20> Ever since they lost Conan it's been suffering.</comment></comment></comment>


Centralized Zone Data Service (CZDS) Policy for .Apple – Apple - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/tld/czds-policy/ <comment><USER2> I don't know if this is new, but it sounds like Apple is planning to use the .apple TLD for something.</comment>


Japan to US shipping: illegal over 16 ounces, per new TSA guidelines - <AUTHOR> http://www.post.japanpost.jp/int/information/2010/1112_en.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a more detailed account: [http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/11/security...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/11/security- theater-the-ripples-spread-to-japan/66542/)

In short, private Japanese individuals would no longer be allowed to send packages over 1 pound to the US.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is going to put a serious damper on many ebay sales from Japan -- especially high-end camera and lens sales.</comment>


Super Easy and Lightweight( - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/a-jie/AniX <comment><USER2> OP's account is 16 days old and has literally no activity, besides spamming the same couple repos.</comment>


Facebook will show ads to non-Facebook users on other websites - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-wants-to-help-sell-every-ad-on-the-web-1464321603 <comment><USER2> > Users with a Facebook account can opt-out of the ad scheme by adjusting > their settings, while non-Facebook members can opt-out through the Digital > Advertising Alliance in the US, the Digital Advertising Alliance in Canada, > and the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance in Europe.

...or by using a wide-spectrum blocker like uBlock Origin, and for the cookie warning problem there is a solution too: "EU: Prebake - Filter Obtrusive Cookie Notices"[1]

[1] [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/liamja/Prebake/master/obtr...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/liamja/Prebake/master/obtrusive.txt)

<comment><USER3> Also use extensions like NoScript/Privacy Badger to block the background scripts

<comment><USER4> I enjoy using NoScript but I found I could not recommend it to non-techie friends, as it requires a lot of manual input to not break webpages. Is Privacy Badger more user friendly?

<comment><USER5> NoScript really needs a black-list mode powered by a community-curated filter similar to adblock filters.

<comment><USER6> How is a NoScript with community filters different from uBlock/AdBlock? It would be vulnerable to the same profit-driven whitelisting AdBlock does.

<comment><USER3> It would be the same i think; If NoScript pulled the same thing AdBlock Plus did there would be a new app taking its place(like how uBlock Origin did)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It did years ago :) When i didn't had account they already know my name, mail, telephone number, because some idiots gave them their mails login & passwords, allowing FB to read all contacts.

I wasn't on Facebook, yet in the "hey, join FB" message they listed 6 of "people I know that are already of Facebook".

So imagine how much data they got about me: 1) No account on FB 2) But FB tracked me with their cookies on almost every page, because almost every page has some FB widget (fanpage box, like buttons etc) 3) They know "some-random- guy-9348239849" likes to browse pages A, B, C, D, which means he likes AA, AB, BA, BB, BC, CA, DA activities 4) Then people start giving away "their" data about me. A lot of them did, so FB could connect who I know, and their connections with each other. 5) So FB got "my-name-PERSONAL_DATA", not associated with the data from point 3. 6) I got that message 7) If I'd click the welcoming link, then I wouldn't even need to register - FB then could connect that "some-random-guy" data with "my-name" data.

This probably goes even deeper, but we just don't know that.

Facebook with that message told me way too much about how much they know about unregistered users, I bet they don't do this anymore :)

<comment><USER8> Yep, what you're describing is what I believe is called "Shadow Profiles", and they've been unapologetically doing it for years. Very likely, even if you have all the privacy extensions and jsblockers installed on your computer, or even if you go full RMS and only wget once a day to get your daily content and email, odds are Facebook has a full profile on you because of the people in your life who leak the information about you.

Your folks filling out a form on Facebook saying that they have X children, your friends sharing their contact list with LinkedIn/Google/Facebook and you're on it, your workplace profile being crawled, and so on. Unless you go full on hermit, there's really no way to not be part of Facebook either actively as a user or passively as a shadow profile.

Exfiltrating this data, or even so much as seeing the entirety of it also appears to not be possible to see what bits of your information have been gathered, to know who has access to it, to know what it's being used for, or even to deny them the ability to make profit on this information. It's incredibly frustrating, as if any individual citizen were to do this sort of reconnaissance and data gathering on another citizen, it'd be called stalking, and people would have legal means to redress. But the fact that even those who have not agreed to the Facebook TOS are still profiled and sold and used for profit without the aforementioned persons' consent seems very wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Surprised they weren't doing that already. Facebook has javascript injected on a lot of sites, always assumed that they'd collect a shit ton of data whether you are a user or not.

Also, all ad blockers block google analytics like tracking services but social plugins are generally opt in. I guess they should be blocked by default too.

<comment><USER10> I know a lot of AdBlocking Tools/List that do not block Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics by default.

Do you know the ones that do?

<comment><USER11> Just to add to the others comments, get NoScript and you can control exactly who gets to run Javascript at all times. It makes the internet so much safer and you will be blown away at how many domains some sites are trying to run scripts from.

<comment><USER12> Gotta 2nd NoScript for blocking all detritus from wasting my data caps & cpu cycles, although the default white-list needs much purging out of the box.

For added goodness, I also run the Blender Add-On[1] for the sites I do allow on occasion. I value my privacy <b>MORE</b> than the marketeers do.

[1][https://github.com/meh/blender](https://github.com/meh/blender)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is really a big thing since it directly affects the Google cash cow(Adwords/Doubleclick). Facebook has all the data in the world about a user(location, personal details, current mood) which google lacks and so they can target users on the rest of the internet in a better way.

<comment><USER14> Google has all their internet searches

<comment><USER15> People use Facebook to search, too. Not only standard Web search, but search with whatever context they were doing or talking about. I don't know how Google would have that data without having a widely adopted social network.

<comment><USER16> From whatever I have seen over the years (including the present moment), Facebook is light years behind Google in searching for stuff and getting all the relevant results within Facebook. I can't help but be very amused at the thought of Facebook being able to search the web well. :)

To me (and my searches on Facebook) it has always appeared that Facebook search is a crippled and neglected product. It's so bad that I save important information I see on Facebook elsewhere. Facebook is the place for the ephemeral and constantly "new" stream of stuff to keep people clicking. So it doesn't seem to have had any good reason to put competent people in search related development so far.

<comment><USER15> Yes, good points. Notice I meant people use Facebook for search. Not that people use Facebook for Web search. You can't directly search for people on google (to a degree), but you can do so in facebook (and other social networks). Point being that search is bigger than the standard web. Google is at and business disadvantage because it does not have a widely adopted social network. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _while non-Facebook members can opt-out through the Digital Advertising Alliance in the US, the Digital Advertising Alliance in Canada, and the European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance in Europe._

Or you can just block all requests to their domains. I have *.facebook.com and a few others blocked.

<comment><USER10> wc -l /etc/hosts == 11846

About 90% are blocked sites. The rest is local (privat and business) dev configuration.

<comment><USER18> serious question, doesn't having such a big hosts file affects performance somehow?

<comment><USER19> The time it takes to scan a 10k line file (even if it's not cached in memory) is much smaller than a round trip to your DNS server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Again, I deplore the colossal waste of human effort and talent that is going into building a sophisticated panopticon for the noble purpose of _better targeted advertising_. For fuck's sake, what a waste of the best minds of our generation.

<comment><USER21> Of course this comment was downvoted.

I really want to know what's the opposing view to this statement. Who's going to step forward and say why they think this is wrong?

At the very least, make an argument like "the AI needed to trick a teenager into spending half their awake time on Facebook can also be used to solve actual problems."

<comment><USER22> \- spam free, virtually limitless storage free email

\- free video delivery channel, that has created its own industry

\- communication tool that has changed news delivery & how people organize protests

\- free chat communication (with e2e encryption) for nearly everyone in the world (including some of the poorest)

\- on demand data center infrastructure at ridiculously low cost

\- instantly freely searchable data set of most of the worlds written information

\- self driving cars

\- ubiquitous hand held computers

\- free easy to use video conferencing

\- a social network that connects a gigantic part of the planets population (if you are into that sort of thing)

Just some of the mind boggling technology at least partially funded by internet ads in the last 15 years.

Are there issues that have arisen? Of course, what sort of funding model doesn't have downsides? Acting like working for pay from advertisers constitutes some sort of modern Gallipoli is such a vacuous argument in the face of the staggering amount of tech it has at least partly helped bring about, I'm shocked that the comment hasn't been down voted more.

<comment><USER20> I deeply disagree with this on a level that will be difficult to capture in an Internet comment, but I will try:

What you're describing is the advancement of technology, which has occurred at the institutions that have accumulated the most power. Yes, Facebook, Google and others have hired some of the most talented people in the country, and these people have continued to produce useful technology while ensconced at these companies. Previously the same people could be found at AT&T, Xerox PARC, various DARPA-connected institutions, etc.

All you're describing is the shift in the center of power. In the 50s and 60s it was the government. During the 70s, as power began to shift more and more away from government towards private capital, we saw more and more technologists moving into the employ of monopolists.

It is a mistake to confuse this transfer of power, and the corresponding ability to purchase talent, with the output of that pool of smart people. Moreover in Silicon Valley these people are deeply connected to a much broader community of intellectuals (e.g. through HN) - I'd argue that this culture, of which many members currently sojourn in the arms of large corporations like Facebook, is the real productive unit.

Facebook found a money faucet and connected these people to it; but this money faucet could have been anything. It could have been something of real social value, except we have largely destroyed the mechanisms that direct productivity on the basis of social values and now direct it purely based on the interests of private capital, which is currently enamored with data accumulation and targeted advertising.

I'll end here, but I'd also like to point out that a lot of the stuff you've listed here existed long before Facebook and Google were a twinkle in anyone's eye. You're taking things that were literally developed in the 60s and giving credit to them for the private concentrations of power that were built on top of that work.

<comment><USER22> I was talking more about the idea that we've somehow wasted developer minds on the pursuit of non-valuable advertising. Which clearly isn't the case. Advertising might have paid for a part of it, but the benefits clearly exist.

I'll also stand by my argument that every model of financing these technical improvements (at least that I can think of) have downsides. Compared to the war machine of the 20th century, I find the ads pretty tame. Not to mention that advertising is a lot less coercive than tax based defense spending or government granted monopolies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Begins? I though they were already tracking everyone who saw a Facebook badge anywhere on the internet already. Or were they just trying to track the users who were not logged in at the time?

<comment><USER24> They WERE tracking you already. Now they're throwing ads at you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> All the more reason to block their widgets on other websites, using something like Ghostery or Disconnect.

<comment><USER26> Another alternative is EFF's PrivacyBadger:

[https://www.eff.org/privacybadger](https://www.eff.org/privacybadger)

All this in addition to an ad-blocker (such as uBlock Origin) of course.

<comment><USER27> I prefer uMatrix[0] (by the uBlock author) which gives absolute control over third (and first) party requests.

I don't even subscribe to the built-in Adblock filter because of my default- deny rule. It also negates the need for Privacy Badger and similar.

See the screenshots for how it works (similar to, but more granular than, uBlock advanced mode).

[https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/wiki/Very-bare- walkthroug...](https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/wiki/Very-bare-walkthrough- for-first-time-users)

[https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/wiki/Examples-of- useful-r...](https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/wiki/Examples-of-useful- rulesets)

0: [https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix](https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm seeing this now:

"To help personalize content, tailor and measure ads, and provide a safer experience, we use cookies. By clicking or navigating the site, you agree to allow our collection of information on and off Facebook through cookies. Learn more, including about available controls: Cookies Policy."

Am I signing a contract with Facebook by clicking on their website. Is that legal?

<comment><USER29> That's the cookies warning that must be shown according to the law to all European users on all websites that use cookies.

<comment><USER30> I have heard talks from one of the politician that wrote the directive , and they did not view "continue browsing" as a valid method. They are however only the writers of the directive, and they used the concept of "consent" as it was stated in a different directive. The interpretation of that directive was radically changed by most of the larger corporations as a direct reaction of the cookie law, and none has yet to challenge it.

Tha politician was not very happy about the company lawyers change in complying with the "explicit informed consent" requirement, as that is the strongest from of consent that EU directives uses, and it basically is a ticking time bomb until someone abuses this new interpretation. "continued browsing of this website mean that you give a explicit informed consent that you agree to buy our service" is a major concern that I got, but maybe we will need such thing before it get thrown to the courts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There are entire companies built on tracking non-users around the internet.

</comment><comment><USER32> Will Mozilla finally make ad blocking the default or do we need yet another organization that can stand up to corporate pressure and money going forward to do so? That's my only question: who if anyone will bring a web browser to market that blocks ads and thereby malware by default?

</comment><comment><USER33> Super annoying and sleezy of Facebook, but basically they are doing what Google already does with Analytics. Completely unsurprising.

Anyways, as a technically competent, privacy aware user, the first thing I do on a new installation of Chrome or Firefox is disable third-party cookies, install uBlock Origin and subscribe to a handful of third-party filter lists. I also do this for my friends and family, though I am more conservative on their installations.

</comment><comment><USER34> this does the trick: [https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts.git](https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts.git)

</comment><comment><USER35> France already pumped the brakes on Facebook using their position of power to target non-users [http://thehackernews.com/2016/02/facebook- france.html](http://thehackernews.com/2016/02/facebook-france.html),

I wonder where this will land them in the future with France, Brazil, or other countries that aren't as "friendly" with FB as the United States.

</comment><comment><USER36> Ads, Facebook and many a times google display network irritates me not because they demands my attention, but they do it by tracking my behavior, and hence usually shows me what I already know, used a million times, and can write review of ten pages. They take away discover-ability of internet from me, and I hate it.

</comment><comment><USER37> 127.0.0.1 facebook.com

<comment><USER38> Unless you're running a server on localhost, you'll have to wait for the connection to time out. Better to use 0.0.0.0 which is an invalid address and will fail immediately.

<comment><USER39> Wouldn't you get an immediate "connection refused" for localhost, not have to wait for a timeout?

<comment><USER38> That's true on my phone but not my laptop. I would guess that most firewalls would just drop the packets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Install Disconnect or Ghostery right now and spread the word.

</comment><comment><USER41> .... like every other company does?

</comment><comment><USER42> Surprised Facebook didn't by AddThis when it was up for sell; instead Oracle did.

</comment><comment><USER43> So Google Adwords/Adsense. That would have saved a whole article.

</comment><comment><USER44> I _just_ added FB ads to an iOS app this morning. The app doesn't even use FB login so I was suprised to see the sample ads were still very location- specific and targeted. They've also got web/HTML tools for placing ads on a domain.

</comment><comment><USER45> So we must assume their shadow profiles are complete now.

</comment><comment><USER46> Dear Facebook,

you can track me all over the net all you want. I am just not buying shit.

</comment><comment><USER47> Zero ethics

</comment><comment><USER48> They have been doing this since forever and if I remember correctly, the EU told them to stop. I don't remember if they really did stop (at least, I'm not sure if they say they did, nobody knows what they really did of course).

/me opens article

Oh, it's about showing ads to non-users, not about tracking. The article doesn't even claim they didn't track non-users before. Clickbait?

<comment><USER49> Didn't they also do this before? I remember installing Fanboy's Social Annoyances List in my ad blocker years ago and never seeing those like buttons and social media crap again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Facebook, please stop!

</comment><comment><USER51> Url changed from [http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/27/11795248/facebook-ad- netwo...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/27/11795248/facebook-ad-network-non- users-cookies-plug-ins), which points to this.</comment>


A Change in License for Berkeley DB - <AUTHOR> http://meshedinsights.com/2013/07/05/a-change-in-license-for-berkeley-db/ <comment><USER2> Personally I think this is great news. Great news for free software, great news for users, great news for the AGPL. So very few web apps are open source, despite so many of the people who develop them claiming to support free/open source software. It seems that the only way to make the web open source is to force the hand of the developers, and that means we need to start pushing copyleft licences like the AGPL. The GPL was created for a different age. So much of the software people use now runs on a different machine; we can't continue to ignore this loophole.

BDB has had a commercial licence available for a long time, this move just closes a loophole that people were exploiting to use BDB in non-free software without contributing back.

Additionally, to the people saying 'oracle are only doing this to make money', this is one of the ways you are supposed to make money/fund the development of free software. RMS talks about it here: [http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling- exceptions](http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions)

 _I consider selling exceptions an acceptable thing for a company to do, and I will suggest it where appropriate as a way to get programs freed._ \-- RMS

<comment><USER3> I, too, like GPL and free software, but I'd like to stress that this change hardly closes any loopholes. The previous BDB license was simply too vague and open to competing interpretations. The AGPL does _not_ require web software _using_ BDB to distribute its source code, only software actually _modifying_ BDB.

The gist of AGPL is this:

* If you _redistribute_ BDB with your software, then you must provide your software's source code (even if you haven't modified BDB).

* If you _use_ BDB on your web server, then you must provide the source for your software only if BDB is _modified_.

Since hardly anyone modifies BDB (I would assume), this affects almost no one. It simply makes the license clear.

<comment><USER4> Partly true. The FSF interprets "X linking Y" as "X modifying Y and therefore subject to Y's license," which is why Microsoft got to make so much hay out of the GPL's "virality."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I don't have made up my mind completely about AGPL but lean to liking it, changing to it for an infrastructure library, is really a backstabbing move.

Nice to see a company so consistently living up to its reputation.

And one simply must appreciate the elegant irony of using a strong copyleft license as a dagger.

<comment><USER6> > And one simply must appreciate the elegant irony of using a strong copyleft > license as a dagger.

That's always been one of the ways to make money from free software. Mysql did the same thing, and I think Qt did as well at some point in its history. If I recall correctly, even RMS sort of approves of it.

Downvoters: go read some history, there's nothing factually incorrect in what I wrote above. The bozo proliferation seems to continue unabated here:-(

Here's RMS himself: [http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling- exceptions](http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions)

<comment><USER5> The difference being that these projects had the restrictive licenses from early on. They did not change from permissive (and in the context of web service infrastructure GPL is actually a permissive license) to something more restrictive.

On the contrary Qt changed the license from GPL to LGPL what definitely helped the proliferation (and the survival after the Nokia disaster).

MySQL ... well moving this to AGPL would give MariaDB the final push it needs (if it still needs one). So they just let it rot.

Too bad there was no equivalent project for BerkeleyDB.

<comment><USER7> Regarding a Berkeley DB equivalent, how about Tupl?

[https://github.com/cojen/Tupl](https://github.com/cojen/Tupl)

> Tupl is a high-performance, concurrent, transactional, scalable, low-level > database. Intended to replace BerkeleyDB, Tupl supports true record-level > locking. Unlike BerkeleyDB-JE, Tupl doesn't suffer from garbage collection > pauses with very large databases. Tupl also includes support for cursors, > upgradable locks, deadlock detection, hot backups, striped files, > encryption, nested transaction scopes, and direct lock control.

<comment><USER8> In Java. For a low-level in-process library that most people link in to their actual app Java is completely unsuitable. Not quite sure how this replaces most of the BDB use-cases, but if you are going to run in another process then there are a whole host of options to consider. Tupl looks pretty interesting and it would be fun to have a reason to play with it, but this does not handle any of the cases where I turn to BDB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What an absolutely horrible company Oracle is. They are without a doubt the biggest enemy to free and open source software, and I'll be glad when they're gone.

<comment><USER10> I agree with much of this, but mainly on their sales and marketing tactics.

However, what does your rationale for finding them reprehensible have to do with the article? The Affero GPL/GPLv3 is arguably the most open source license available.

<comment><USER11> The Affero GPL has a clause requiring the operators of network servers that use AGPL code to provide full source of the network server. Berkley DB is used in, amongst other places, Subversion - so when they next do a distro upgrade in a few months, a whole bunch of developers are going to find they're no longer license compliant and have no easy way of becoming license compliant.

<comment><USER12> Subversion is Apache licensed, so I fail to see how this would be a problem.

<comment><USER13> Subversion uses bdb as its backend.

<comment><USER12> And the Apache licensed Subversion is still compatible with AGPL licensed BDB. What am I missing here?

<comment><USER12> Apparently the Apache License is not compatible with AGPLv3. I confess I do not understand why.

[http://lists.debian.org/debian- devel/2013/07/msg00041.html](http://lists.debian.org/debian- devel/2013/07/msg00041.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't understand the sentiments in this thread. They own the thing. They do whatever they want with it. They have paid good money for it. Yet they have chosen to give it away as free software (with a license even Richard Stallman and the other FSF folks would approve). What is this sense of entitlement here on HN?

<comment><USER15> It is not the change of license in itself that makes people think it is a questionable move, it is the strategic nature of this decision.

When building a solution/product, you have to choose the components you use, and invest in it, in time and sometimes money, and its technical and legal specificities can have strong implications on your solution.

License change is a hazard than can happen, and it is also one the harder to foresee, and when it happens to a product to you depend on it can have a big impact.

And it is Berkeley DB, same house as BSD known for the ultra permissive license. I wouldn't have anticipated that, and I guess with many others.

Given the fact that you may not be able to move to another product, and that your business may depend on the license permissiveness, it can be assimilated with totally legal, but nonetheless, extortion.

<comment><USER16> I wish people acted like this when Sparrow essentially stopped being developed. But the collective came back with: "You got what you paid for" and "You can still use it" and "You shouldn't have expected free updates for life."

And when free services shut down, or start charging, they say "If you aren't paying for it, you are the product" or "You can't complain if you didn't pay for it."

So now the same thing happens for the BDB, and people are upset. But it's the _same_ exact thing. Well, except the BDB's older versions are still available with full source available, and there has always been a paid license available. And the AGPL only applies if you are modifying the BDB source.

It's the two-faced nature of this current culture of developers. We'll consume open source products. Hell, we'll contribute back open source tools. Hell, we'll ship it under BSD because we are want to be permissive and "really free." But we won't do it with our real products.

> Given the fact that you may not be able to move to another product, and that > your business may depend on the license permissiveness

As has been said time and time again: there is nothing forcing you to upgrade. Nothing forcing you to change. You are free to continue using exactly what have depended on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Those people who think this is some sort of enormously evil event that will kill BerkeleyDB because the AGPL is the evilest most restrictive free software license ever should probably read Section 13 here [http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html)

This pretty much only affects you if you are running some weird internal forked version that has upstream merged into it regularly. I don't get the impression that this is a common situation for BDB users.

(Although since Oracle did it it's probably inherently evil anyway of course.)

<comment><USER3> You are absolutely right about the license, but I think you're confusing Oracle with Google. Oracle aren't evil, they just want your money. It's Google that wants to know everything about your life so that it can give you an IV line of ads. Google - evil, Oracle - just greedy :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow, Oracle has did again. Oracle has proven again it is now the single most evil software company out there, surpassing Microsoft. What they are doing is to incrementally convert open source free software into their proprietary cash cow.

<comment><USER19> how does this affect Python users? Berkeley is part of the default standard library and is installed by all Python users everywhere.

<comment><USER20> Wasn't it removed in python3, and deprecated since 2.6?

<comment><USER19> still included with the batteries in 2.7, which comes with most distros.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Oracle angering people with questionable money-driven greedy decisions? Yep, sure sounds like the Oracle we've come to know over the years. While the licence in itself isn't bad, making such a big change like that and essentially forcing people to buy licences is a dog move.

</comment><comment><USER22> In Python 2.x there was a module for Berkley DB which is removed in Python 3 (bsddb module). I'm curious that since Berkley DB has always had a strong copyright license and it was not PSFL, how things worked legally. There is no mention in the docs[1] that if you use an _import bsddb_ in your code you have to make it open-source. When they decided to remove it there was no mention of the license, just difficulty of maintenance[2].

So, was it possible to use Berkley DB without releasing your code as open- source before this change or was it because no one thought it was necessary to mention it in the docs?

[1] [http://docs.python.org/2/library/bsddb.html](http://docs.python.org/2/library/bsddb.html) [2] [http://jessenoller.com/2008/09/04/stirred-up-dem-bees- should...](http://jessenoller.com/2008/09/04/stirred-up-dem-bees-should-bsddb- be-removed-from-python/)

<comment><USER23> I thought bsddb was not actually shipped with CPython, and had to be manually built (which was a pain and would invariably fail, IIRC). I guess people were supposed to check source docs.

<comment><USER22> No, not really. This is what happens in my normal Python installation in Windows:

        Python 2.7.5 (default, May 15 2013, 22:43:36) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win 32
        Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
        >>> from bsddb import db
        >>> print db.DB_VERSION_STRING
        Berkeley DB 4.7.25: (May 15, 2008)
        >>>

And this[1] works completely. Just replace _bsddb3_ with _bsddb_.

[1] [http://code.activestate.com/recipes/189060-using-berkeley- db...](http://code.activestate.com/recipes/189060-using-berkeley-db-database/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Oracle is the Wall Street of IT industry. Toxic business practices and disregard to customer interest. Profit is the only imperative.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why do people complain when Oracle changes the license to a Free license? Just kidding. Denounce Oracle but also denounce the "Free" software zealots who invented unfair licenses like AGPL.

<comment><USER25> To be more precise: AGPL was invented by commercial software vendors to combine the aura of free and open software with a (largely unsuccessful) Shareware/Freemium business model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Fortunately for those not keen on the new licensing scheme, it seems like there are some other solid options on the market now for on-disk embedded key- value storage, under a variety of licenses: LevelDB, Kyoto Cabinet, and the new LSM library from sqlite4.

</comment><comment><USER27> If you change a software license, are users of that software bound to the new terms if they don't "update" to the version of the software released with the updated terms?

<comment><USER28> No, you can't apply licenses retroactively—if you have a version with the old license it is still under that license.

<comment><USER29> But you can stop supporting the older versions, say, by only applying fixed bugs to the newer versions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My startup works on free alternative (apache licensed) db engine. When I saw title I was really woried they would change license to more liberal. That would affect our future sales seriously. But this is great new for us! :-)

<comment><USER31> Why are you worried about the "future sales" of your free bob alternative?

<comment><USER30> We sell non-free tools and services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I feel this post has shown that many don't understand what AGPL is or just assumed that because the article is about Oracle and licensing then it got to be evil, let's bash Oracle!</comment>


Google Shows A Glimpse Of How Its Modular Phone Moonshot Is Progressing - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/04/project-ara-video-update/

<comment><USER2> I can't make up my mind if I would love something like this or not. At one level, it would be somewhat awesome to put together the phone you want. On the other hand, fragmentation is a pain and I don't see how this would do anything but make that worse.

</comment><comment><USER3> The direction others are taking with this is great, but I'm really interested in adding tons of sensors.

We can finally build the tricorder the world deserves : )</comment>


Handbrake malware analysis - <AUTHOR> https://objective-see.com/blog/blog_0x1D.html <comment><USER2> For those Mac users who are unfamiliar with objective-see... Their free security tools for MacOS are a boon to the community. I think that they are right up there with "little snitch" and the like, especially since they spare the user the typical IDS data overload.

<comment><USER3> I not longer use macOS, but Block Block looks pretty interesting. I couldn't tell from their website, but is it intended to eventually be a commercial product once out of beta? I didn't seem like it was open source.

<comment><USER4> Not at all. "Objective-See was created to provide simple, yet effective OS X security tools. Always free of charge - no strings attached!" [0] At the moment you may support him @patron [1]

[0] - [https://objective-see.com/about.html](https://objective- see.com/about.html) [1] - [https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=4857001](https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=4857001)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think hosting the Handbrake, (and Transmission) binaries on the GitHub releases page of the repo would be harder to compromise than their own servers.

<comment><USER6> github is not the answer

<comment><USER7> Go on?

<comment><USER8> If everyone hosts on GitHub and it goes away like Google's source code repository or codeplex then a big chunk of the internet goes away. Especially when it comes to old abandoned repos. Not only that but we could end up with another story like the SourceForge story.

Also if GitHub goes down and everything is hosted there then the internet stops working as well. Remember how broken the internet was when that DNS outage happened a few months ago?

<comment><USER9> This is a bit alarmist. If github went away or became like Sourceforge of old then we could just move to something else or do self-hosting again. Lose a chunk of the internet by moving popular software like Handbrake to GitHub? how could that happen? Most multiplatform open source software like this have copies of their source code across thousands of linux distribution mirrors.

Also, google code never went away. It just stopped working as an active platform, but Google still keeps the archive of what already existed there, to this day:

[https://code.google.com/archive/](https://code.google.com/archive/)

Microsoft is doing the same after shutting down their Code Plex because of moving toward GitHub:

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/bharry/2017/03/31/shutting-...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/bharry/2017/03/31/shutting- down-codeplex/)

> At that time, CodePlex.com will start serving a read-only lightweight > archive that will allow you to browse through all published projects – their > source code, downloads, documentation, license, and issues – as they looked > when CodePlex went read-only. You'll also be able to download an archive > file with your project contents, all in common, transferrable formats like > Markdown and JSON. Where possible, we'll put in place redirects so that > existing URLs work, or at least redirect you to the project's new homepage > on the archive. And, the archive will respect your "I've moved" setting, if > you used it, to direct users to the current home of your project.

If there is anything to lose after GitHub's shutdown at some distant point in the future, it probably won't be something people cared for.

"Don't use a very valuable, and more secure service, because of possible distant future, very tiny harm" doesn't sound like a convincing argument. You take "risks" every day in your life. Driving your car is a risk. In the US there's 12 deaths per 100k people per year on the roads, and that's only counting deaths, not crippling injuries. But it's valuable enough that you end up taking it, as living without a car is difficult in many places. Life is about calculated risks and using GitHub is not exactly at the top of the risk pyramid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you look at the XProtect files, the syntax is pretty funny.

        condition:
            Macho and filesize < 600000 and filesize > 10000 and all of them

<comment><USER11> These are YARA rules, see [https://virustotal.github.io/yara/](https://virustotal.github.io/yara/) for a short description. The 'all of them' in the rule refers to the list of strings above it; it means that all those strings should be present in the binary for the rule to match.

</comment></comment><comment> awinter-py Article talks about a fake authentication popup.

Has anyone used a platform that had an unspoofable one of these?

<comment><USER12> How would one make such a thing unspoofable, barring seperate hardware?

<comment> awinter-py Could use a hardware LED to inform user key input is secure. Could also reserve part of the screen for OS messages.

This prevents hostile apps from stealing your root password, but doesn't stop them from tricking you into giving them root access (which is nearly as bad).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you used brew install handbreak between May 2nd and 5th, you downloaded the malicious version; \- [https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew- cask/commit/461af7672fa...](https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew- cask/commit/461af7672fa267ed42bd5572c20bf337cb4da87e) The pull request has comments as well, and a snarky dev ;D \- [https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew- cask/pull/33354](https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask/pull/33354)

</comment><comment><USER14> The only actual counter-measure would be to take the extra step and calculate the SHASUM of the binary.

The shasum need to be digitally signed with a valid signature otherwise it can be manipulated as well.

ps. Ofc tools like littlesnitch and blockblock help, but keeping track of all the applications that try to access the internet is kinda hard these days, especially on a user machine.

<comment><USER15> Wouldn't it make more sense to sign the binary then?

<comment><USER16> Aren't both the same thing?

How else can you sign a binary?

<comment><USER15> OP was referring to creating a hash, signing the hash and publish the signed hash on the web site.

The alternative would be to sign the actual binary file using code signing (internally I assume that relies on a hash ).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> that's the reason why i install most mac programs that come from a website into user programs. this only works for programs that don't add stuff to the system of course.</comment>


New Wind Turbines Could Power Japan for 50 Years After a Single Typhoon - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/new-wind-turbines-could-power-japan-for-50-years-after-1787191781 <comment><USER2> Sure there may be the energy in a single typhoon equivalent to Japan's power usage for 50 years, but how do you store that energy? Sharp bursts of energy just aren't as useful as sustained power generation.

This kinda just feels like a clickbait headline.

<comment><USER3> Better: "Solar cell could power human civilization for 1M years from one second of light!" since the sun puts out that much power, total.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like The Onion has branched out into goofy wind power stories and gizmodo picked it up.

Wind turbine power combined with solar is an unbeatable combo, but this isn't the real thing.

<comment><USER5> Gizmodo posting rubbish, who would have thought!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Vertical axis wind turbines are pretty well studied, if less widely deployed compared to HAWTs. Reading the article it isn't clear to me what they propose that is fundamentally new or different from existing technology. There is brief mention of:

 _> the speed of the blades can be adjusted to ensure they don't spin out of control during a storm._

But a VAWT relying on huge torque during a typhoon would still seem to require huge investment into, well, typhoon-proofing. As is always the case with wind power generation, the real issue is energy storage which isn't touched on at all.

The entire article reads like fluff at best and clickbait at worst.</comment>


Steve Jobs Spotted at Apple HQ - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/seve-jobs-seen-at-apple-campus-2011-2

<comment><USER2> Good news, but this tabloid-style tidbit reporting seems pretty iffy to me.

<comment><USER3> True, but it his hard to do a 3 lines article when you're called "Business Insider".

I guess TechCrunch will do 10 big paragraphs on the subject.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the original blog post referenced in the BI article: <http://thedivinecode.com/blog/?p=61></comment>


Tips for foreign founders to succeed in the US - <AUTHOR> Hi all, http://www.businessinsider.com/french-entrepreneur-on-what-it-took-for-americans-to-take-him-seriously-2017-11
I shared in that article what it took to get Americans to take us, foreign founders, seriously.
I'm talking about our 2 min meeting with Michael Seibel that changed the trajectory of our startup, about why Jason Lemkin trusted us in the beginning and how we hired our first American hire. Obviously, I have only one data point, my own experience, so I'd be happy to hear from you about this particular topic.
Cheers! <comment><USER2> To me the 3 most important things are:

\- Get an American marketer. We can't really speak the language, and we really need that to talk about our product.

\- Get feedback on the name we chose. There might be subtleties that we don't get.

\- Clearly state your achievements, forget diminutives/modesty, don't take anything for granted. As European at least, we tend to use a language that in the US is perceived as diminishing our results.

</comment><comment><USER3> Make a product consumers want.

There's certainly a minority of folks who put nationalism first, but at the end of the day, if you find product market fit, no one really cares where you're from.</comment>


I have two Spock invitations - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Happy to send them to the first two people who email me at mattculbreth at gmail.com.

<comment><USER2> how do I know which _'mattculbreth'_ is from _news.yc_ on spock? The only one not from myspace & has a linkedin account. I'm noticing spock at this time throws lots of false positives. So you have to read the source of the person (self entered or machine parsed) to gauge who is who.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that's me. I noticed my LinkedIn is a bit dated, but otherwise it knows me. I might add some more information in there or I might just see how fast they update it.

<comment><USER2> _'... Yeah that's me. ..'_

I've added you as a news.yc link. The thing that gets me is spock falls flat adding people to networks. If you have a photo you might recognise a person. But if you select "John Smith" and there a lots of Smiths and each is missing a photo it is unusable.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best First Steps for a Startup? - <AUTHOR> I'm pretty close to finishing a prototype for an app in the live streaming space that I believe has a lot of potential.
My questions are:
1. Should I try to obtain some seed money? 2. If so how and from who (VCs, family, bootstrapping, etc) 3. Who are good ppl to get engaged early on? (marketing, biz development, etc)
Any advice would be appreciated. <comment><USER2> You should talk the users and iterate your product. When you have enough traction, talk to investors. It'll make your life and theirs easier.</comment>


Government Open Source Office deal set to provide major savings - <AUTHOR> https://www.collaboraoffice.com/government-open-source-office-deal-set-to-provide-major-savings.php <comment><USER2> Let's be clear on what this release says, and what it doesn't:

1\. Collabora Office's solutions will be available via G-Cloud Digital Marketplace. That's a big win for them as it makes it easy for government agencies to chose them.

2\. There's _no_ mention of displacing Microsoft Office, other than to the extent Collabora manages to convince individual government organizations to make the switch.

3\. There's the vague claim that Collabra will work together with the Crown Commercial Service to raise awareness about ODF and their solution. Notably absent is any kind of comment from the Crown Commercial Service or any government agency. This may mean a quite big push (but if so, where are the bigwigs making statements?) or it could mean they get to be included in a newsletter or something, or anything in between...

If there had been some deal to do a massive conversion away from MS Office, you can bet that would been made very, very clear.

</comment><comment><USER3> I honestly wonder if there is actually going to be any cost savings, once training and the friction of converting existing work-flows over from MS Office to LibreOffice are taken into account.

Unless OpenOffice/LibreOffice has gotten markedly better in the last couple of years since I got access to an MSDN subscription, it's still a second-tier product behind Office. I hate to say that, because I'm no great fan of desktop Word and Excel (I still think the 2003 editions were the best), but MS has really picked up the ball with their cloud versions integrated into Office365, which IMO, are better than Google Docs at this point.

<comment><USER4> I agree with you that they probably will not save money and I also agree with you that Word and Excel are the better products. However, I do like that there is money going from government to Open Source software. I know a lot will get stuck in consulting firms but this is bound to improve LibreOffice and I believe it's better to use public money to improve open source projects than it is to pay Microsoft and keep getting sucked into their ecosystem.

Public money should be spent on open (source) software. File formats should be exchangeable and switching providers shouldn't be intentionally difficult.

<comment><USER5> >Public money should be spent on open (source) software

I agree but only if the costs are reasonably comparable. For example if there's a commercial product that would cost 10x to replace then I don't think that's appropriate use of public money.

But if the costs are similar then OSS should always be prefered because it creates new value for other users and while a commercial entity can't necessarily capitalize on that value governments don't need to.

<comment><USER6> What's the cost of having fixing critical bugs 20 years from now when that company's folded?

<comment><USER5> Meh, most software isn't going to be used 20 years from now and the one that will can be licensed with source code - doesn't have to be OSS.

<comment><USER6> Software lasts a good long while in some organizations, even 10 years would have worked in my example (or 5!).

You can only have a license with source if you think about it ahead of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do we still care about anything other than excel? And we care about excel because it is far and away the best fastest and most robust spreadsheet out there.

This focus on office applications as the way in for Open Source software seems to me like transforming 19th Century transport by building faster horses.

<comment><USER2> Who are "we"?

It's been a decade since I've worked anywhere were anyone cared about Excel. I realize that I'm working in a "bubble" given the type of companies I tend to work with, but it does clearly illustrate that, yes, there are certainly people and companies that care about spreadsheets other than Excel.

<comment><USER7> Excel is cared about a lot in some industries - finance it is still running huge amounts of the workflow (from hedge funds to major banks whose auditors pull their hair out)

The main point I'm making is that of the troika of office applications, only the spreadsheet still has value. I suspect I could teach everyone Markdown far faster and with better outcomes than teach Word users to move to (open office equivalent)

It's something about software literacy - you just don't need Word anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It'll be great if Collabora is going to fix some of the notorious bugs that workers will inevitably come across like having the pictures deleted from their documents or their page layout silently changed.

<comment><USER9> I'd be very interested in bug numbers for those.

Not challenging, I use [open|libre] a lot for writing course guides and presentations and I'm sending other people stacks of .odt/.odp stuff and they are getting interested in being able to edit the material.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting, but I question the how much this will cost to change over considering training and current workflows on Microsoft Platforms.

</comment><comment><USER11> The way to actually save money, if that's the goal, is to try not to want full-fledged word processors and office suites.

For most internal communication, plain text or something like RTF at most is more than sufficient.

Trying to replace Word and Office with cheaper or open is doomed, because Office is far ahead of everything else, and everything else will be judged for not being Office.

Open source's best contribution could be a standardized simple text format.

<comment><USER12> For most communication, full stop. I edited a news-stand magazine with TextEdit on the Mac for several years (Apple's bundled text editor, speaks RTF). I found that the complexities of Word just got in the way, and the InDesign guys liked receiving consistently, minimally marked-up text.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's on your key chain? - <AUTHOR>

Any interesting tools or flash drives you really like? Something else? <comment><USER2> I've got the key shark and love it: [http://kk.org/cooltools/archives/8325](http://kk.org/cooltools/archives/8325)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ti Widgy Pry Bar from County Comm: [http://www.countycomm.com/titaniumwidgy.html](http://www.countycomm.com/titaniumwidgy.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I love stuff like this. Do you have a job where you need to pry stuff a lot, or are you able to find lots of day-to-day uses for it?

<comment><USER3> I am not a professional pryer. You dont need to use it that often to make it worth its weight in gold; it is god's metal so it is light enough that I do not notice it.

I also EDC a spyderco[1] tenacious and I am thinking about getting a Leatherman Piranha.[2] (which you should check out if you have never heard of it and like these kinds of tools.) With a spydie and the piranha I would have everything I would like to have on me during daily urban/suburban life.

I cant say enough about Spyderco. I wish they were more popular outside of the .mil/leo/tommy-tactical circles. Most of the knives are "Made in Golden Colorado, USA, Earth" and this is etched prominently into the blade. The one problem for me is that the USA knives are superior quality so they also cost $100+. If you dont mind spening 100+ get the Para-2 the thing is awesome.

Spyderco also makes a line of knives (they all have "human characteristics" names like: Tenacious or Persistence) that are made in China with a lower grade steel than their normal knives. They cost around $30 and given the price point they are extremely well made. This is the blade I EDC. I have a tendency to lose things and I never have to treat the thing like it is sacred. With a zip tie on the thumb hole you can essentially turn a manual opener into a knife with optional auto deploy.

All of the knives come razor sharp from Spyderco. If they lose their edge to such an extent that the average person can not resharpen it on a kitchen knive stone you can just put it in an envelop with $5 and send it to Spyderco. They will put a new factory edge on it, lubricate the bearings and send it back to you. The tenacious/persistence knives make great gifts for guys of any age. Anytime I need to buy a git for a guy I buy a Spydie for them if I have not already given them one.

I have a whale fetish so the following is one more reason I am such a fan of Spyderco. Spyderco makes a blade for marine biologists to free whales that have been entangled in large marine ropes.[3] They lose $100 a blade on these and they are only available to government and NGO biologists/wildlife folks.

I realize that this turned into a Spyderco advert, I apologize, I am just a big fan of the product and the company. I have no affiliation whatsoever with Spyderco.

[1] [http://www.spyderco.com](http://www.spyderco.com)

[2] [http://www.leatherman.com/product/Piranha](http://www.leatherman.com/product/Piranha)

[3] [https://www.spyderco.com/catalog/details.php?product=279](https://www.spyderco.com/catalog/details.php?product=279)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome info, thanks a ton for that.

I recently bought a Leatherman Wave for my EDC after carrying a Victorinox for about 6 years and I've been happy with that so far. In hindsight I wish I knew that the Piranha existed though since that + a good knife would be basically equivalent with less bulk, although I'd lose out on the pliers and scissors I suppose.

Anyways, there's still some random stuff I feel like I'm missing, such as perhaps some sort of flashlight or nail trimmers or a flash drive. I'm considering buying that pry bar as well just for the heck of it since it's small/light and my Wave just has a wide flathead screwdriver that I wouldn't trust with prying anything significant.

<comment><USER3> The flashlight is the one item I want to add. I keep holding out for one more bump in brightness/size ratio. If I am going to EDC the extra size of a flashlight I want it to be bright enough that i could temporarily blind/disorient an assailant long enough that I have 10-15 seconds to get away. With Af-Pak winding down I am hoping that companies like surefire turn their attention to the civilian market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would say the most interesting thing on my key chain is an actual chain - switched from a ring to a ball chain (use aluminum tape to keep it from coming undone.) The ball chain allows the key s & flash drive to lay much more flatter than using an ordinary key ring.

Second to that would be a San Francisco Public Library card, which allows me access to their extensive catalog of on-line books.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have this ([http://www.amzn.com/B006W8U2WU](http://www.amzn.com/B006W8U2WU)) flash drive and love it. It's much sturdier than the typical plastic drives and has a great simple design. Unfortunately it is only USB 2.0, so I wouldn't recommend it if you use computers that support USB 3.0.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just keys. Anywhere that I need to get a bottle top off there is usually a bottle opener and I never use a flash drive (Cloud ftw).

</comment><comment><USER7> My old Pentium 4 [http://imgur.com/ZTXkb8L](http://imgur.com/ZTXkb8L)

<comment><USER8> That's cool!</comment></comment>


Surprising Findings About How People Actually Buy Clothes and Shoes - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2018/06/5-surprising-findings-about-how-people-actually-buy-clothes-and-shoes <comment><USER2> _Myth: Consumers always want something new. Fact: Very often, they are happy to rebuy the same or a similar item._

This is something I wish more retailers would get. Once I find a pair of shoes that fits me that I like... I really, really don't want to go though that same discovery process 1-2 years down the line. I just want to buy the very same make/model of shoes I've grown accustom to.

<comment><USER3> My solution to this with shoes was to start buying really high-quality shoes. Bought some Red Wing Heritage chukka boots that look nice with jeans and business casual attire. I've been wearing them every day at work for over two years now, and they look like they're barely broken in. I expect them to last for a _very_ long time, especially since I can get them re-soled when the soles wear out (which they're nowhere close to).

Did a similar thing with Allen Edmonds dress shoes. Yes, they were expensive initially, but given how little I wear dress shoes, I wouldn't be surprised if they last me the rest of my life.

Now if only I could find a solution for clothing...

<comment><USER4> I got a pair of clarks desert boots a couple of years ago and they've lasted ages even though I'm tall and heavy. I thought the crepe soles might wear down quickly but they're still good. I usually have real trouble with soles as I walk almost everywhere and they wear down quickly on cheaper shoes.

Here in the UK, CDBs are £80 vs the £200 you're talking about (or $70 vs $170 that I can see on amazon.com).

Basically avoid really cheap, but you don't have to go to $200 though.

Also, we seem to be in a weird spot fashion wise right now. Hipster fashion doesn't seem to be fading. Reddit's MFA (male fashion advice) was recommending chukka boots and white trainers like 6 years ago and we're still there, same with skinny suits, etc.

Fashion, while apparently highly disposable for women, seems to have stabilized for men. MFA talk about "timeless" pieces, but in reality wearing chukkas, white trainers or slim suits in the 90s or early 2000s would have made you look like a plonker. When I was young Doc Martins were cool, then they weren't, now they kinda are again? I also remember Hush Puppies with a particular look were cool that really aren't today.

Same with dress shoes too, black, square fronted dress shoes were considered good, while pointy brown dress shoes were incredibly old fashioned. Now it's the other way around.

<comment><USER5> CDBs are the only shoes I've ever worn through the sole of. I wore them the great regularity for 2 years. Rest of the shoe is still fine. Clarks are definitely worth the extra cash.

That said, those crepe soles are like ice skates in the wet...

<comment><USER6> the D stands for desert after all! :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _In a store, however, a sales associate tries to guess a shopper's tastes in real time._

Shout out to the people who can afford to shop at stores with a business model that supports "sales associates" that actually do something besides take your money (or help unlock a dressing room) I can't remember the last time I was helped personally while shopping for clothing.

<comment><USER8> I don't shop at expensive stores but sometimes I get asked if I want help by an employee if they are standing around.

I always say no though - it feels awkward.

<comment><USER9> My knee-jerk reaction is always to reject shop-assistant help, but recently I've had a couple of experience where the assistant instead offered advice about what I was looking at ("there are more of that style on such-and-such aisle", "this model has 2 hdmi inputs, if you need more I can recommend something", that kind of thing) which has made the assistant seem much more approachable and given them an air of knowledgeability that makes me feel they actually can help too.

<comment><USER10> Trouble is there are many people, me included, who would never just walk into a store and buy something. If I'm about to buy something (and there are no limits to how trivial that thing may be), chances are I've done some research online.

Often it seems I know more of what to look out for than the sales associate, making the help moot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it just me or are the conclusion recommendations in this article all completely reaching?

I would hate stores to implement half of the recommendations. Swiping my smartphone on entry?!

I'd prefer to shop at the distributor's warehouse.

<comment><USER12> This is probably how the typical executive thinks in those retailers. "Hmm.. I need to use big data and personalization to create a better customer experience, I know a genius idea that will do that! Swipe their smartphones!"

<comment><USER13> "Those hip-hopster kids will love it"

<comment><USER14> Sadly a lot of idiots would love it and completely disregard the privacy implications, until the precedent has been set and you won't even be allowed into the store without tapping your smartphone and being tracked.

<comment><USER15> A lot of so-called "idiots" make the rational decision that prioritizes convenience at the expense of privacy. It may not be the decision many of us would make, but that doesn't mean it's not rational.

<comment><USER14> Setting a precedent that would completely remove the option of privacy is rational for you?

<comment><USER16> Yes. Trading a constant distress of fear of paranoia for a chance of invasive harm is rational for some cost-benefit measurements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can we put a ban on the analysis of consumer behavior?

And can we stop measuring the growth/success of the economy by how many redundant items are bought?

<comment><USER18> I agree with your sentiment, but studying consumer behavior is interesting for other reasons.

Then again, the fact that anyone had to do a study to figure this out is indicative of a bigger disconnect between business people and their customers than I expected.

<comment><USER19> _the fact that anyone had to do a study to figure this out is indicative of a bigger disconnect between business people and their customers than I expected._

I'd caution you against assuming that business people don't know this. This article is just a marketing post for Oliver Wyman (a management consulting firm).

<comment><USER20> There's no evidence business people do know it.

Most stores seem to redesign their clothing ranges for both women and men annually, and then make a big deal of it.

There are a few exceptions, like branded jeans with stable styles, and no- brand generic staples like tees and polos.

But generally when you find an article you like, it disappears within a few months.

It's astounding that clothing retail has been around for centuries, but hardly anyone has considered that at least some customers might prefer a stable product range.

<comment><USER19> I just warned against assuming. That said, what people like is just one of the inputs in the decision, the goal being profit. I'd say the fact that there _are_ exceptions shows that companies do know about it, and they are deliberately choosing to eschew it.

<comment><USER9> I'd think from a profitability point of view clothing retailers want to like it just enough to buy it -- and return to the shop -- but not enough that you want to keep wearing it rather than but a new one.

One way to do that is to change the fashion regularly in order to apply social pressure to not wearing older clothing.

Another way appears to be making clothes very thin so they wear out quicker.

Of something is good, but not great, you'll but from that brand again -- and I bet sooner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was surprised some of these myths were actually myths!

When it comes to online shopping, which makes up a majority of my clothing purchases now, these facts from the article are very important:

1\. Spend is dramatically higher at brand stores and websites than in multibrand stores.

2\. Very often, they are happy to rebuy the same or a similar item.

3\. Most journeys are still overwhelmingly single-channel, though this is changing.

For me, finding clothes that fit right can be difficult. I'm tall enough that many shirts are too short but many tall sizes are too long. Most brick-and- mortar stores don't stock tall sizes, so I had to go online to even try them. Since it's enough of a pain, I've settled on two or three brands whose sizing I know can work for me.

If I were to shop somewhere like Macys or Macys.com, I'm dealing with several dozen brands, each with different sizing. If I stick with a brand, say Banana Republic or Gap, it's substantially easier and I'd tend to spend more money at one place rather than buying pieces here and there. On the other hand, I do not like online returns at all, so I try and stick with brands that have a physical presence I can utilize for returns.

Additionally, many stores offer really great discounts that can be hard to parse and take advantage of in stores. They may have a %-off coupon valid for certain things, in combination with BOGO discounts that you can stack for big savings. Toying with that in an online shopping cart is really easy but is much more of a hassle in a store.

</comment><comment><USER22> The two most frustrating parts about online shopping are 1) the Byzantine pricing model, and 2) the inability to keep anything in stock.

I don't need the silly vanity of thinking I got some amazing "deal" at 40% off when your prices are clearly just inflated by 40+% across the board to start with. It's a tremendous waste of my time to have to figure out which items qualify for which promotions, only to be disappointed at checkout by some technicality.

Even worse is finally picking a few hundred dollars worth of clothing to buy only to find out none of the normal sizes are in stock. I cannot believe how many retailers are still failing the absolute basics like inventory, yet insist on investing billions in tracking everything we do, everywhere we go to hijack our privacy and attention with ads.

</comment><comment><USER23> >Shopping journeys concluding in online purchases have baskets that are 25% larger, on average. When someone first visits a physical store and then purchases online, the effect is even more pronounced: Baskets are 64% larger.

Something that's not addressed in the article, but I have noticed about myself is that I am more likely to order multiple sizes of a piece of clothing online, and return all but the piece that fits the best. That might contribute to larger purchase sizes. Sites like amazon make this particularly easy.

<comment><USER24> I do this a lot with shirts, especially if I'm going to a meeting and want a new white shirt that will look impressive in that meeting. I'll buy three white shirts, try them all, keep the one that fits best, and return the others. When traveling, I've sometimes been put in the position where I'm told suddenly that I should meet with a client at 10 AM tomorrow, and right now it is midnight. The trouble then is finding a clothing store that opens before 10 AM, so I can go shopping before the meeting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This article should have postfixed itself with '... in the United States.' I live in Saigon now, there is literally hundreds of thousands of clothing stores here. I can't go 20 meters without seeing something for sale. Why? Because most clothes you buy are actually made here. Which also has the added benefit of making them extremely cheap. I can get a big name brand shirt here for $4 that costs $50 in the states.

<comment><USER26> What would stop you from actually selling those yourself on ebay or so?

<comment><USER25> The Vietnamese govt. loves to tax things coming into and out of the country. Sending enough quantity out of the country to make a profit selling it, would require a lot of shipping contacts. Not impossible, I'm sure people do it, but it isn't easy to do without getting a lot of attention.

Also, legality of it all... name brand stuff here is usually some level of fake. For example, the labels, patterns and fabrics may be from the factory (likely removed without knowledge), but they were assembled by the same factory people, working out of a shop in their living room.

I bought a nice Pull&Bear t-shirt the other day for 100k vnd / $4.39.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > However, while omnichannel is growing in importance, our study suggests that > 83% of shopping journeys still happen within a single channel — > overwhelmingly in traditional stores, which account for almost 80% of > apparel purchases today.

The problem with this is marketing. Today, there is no effective way of targeted marketing for those 80%. That's a shame and there are tools to solve it, one is coalition loyalty programs. It's like a store loyalty program but for a coalition of stores. An important European brand for such a program is payback.

I'm working on improving such a programs (and there aren't many, and this in spite of 80% store purchases) by making it location and customer-aware and suitable for even small businesses to enter the coalition. Currently it's a working server back end and I need another 2-4 months to come up with a good demo. I'm looking for potential clients and/or strategic investors to make it a real product if anyone is interested.

email in profile.

<comment><USER16> > email in profile.

Nope. This is almost never true when someone writes it on HN.

<comment><USER27> Uff, there's an email field but turns out it's not visible. Anyway, fixed it, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Somewhat related, my mom the consultant loves to talk about a study on how men vs women shop.

When shopping, women tend to go to many different stores comparing items and prices at each one and then at the end, they go back to the one they liked best and buy it. Men on the other hand already know exactly what they want and so they go straight to the store that has what they want, buy it, and leave.

It is especially fun when you tell that to a group of guys and girls. My dad, brothers and I were so for the 'get in and get out' strategy but the girls were all talking about how it is fun to look at all the different options and look for good deals.

<comment><USER29> Women clothing has more variety - typically I don't find what I want in place where I found that last time (and often I don't find it, period). Most of time I am doing a sort of trade off. I would go to store that sells exactly what I want predictably, if it would exist.

Can confirm that I spend more time trying to get better deal then men I know who buy first regardless of price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's interesting just how much I've come to fit the facts stated in the article. Previous to online shopping, I'd wear clothes until they were threadbare to avoid going to a retail store, often having clothes for 10+ years.

Recently, I found that I like LL Bean for the style, quality, and sizing for both business and casual. So I'm slowly revamping my wardrobe and intend to replace pieces more often.

Shoes, however, I am still going in-person to find. I have a pair of podiatrist-made inserts to deal with my collapsing arches. It's devilishly tough trying to account for them when purchasing online.

</comment><comment><USER31> My wife is probably single-highhandedly causing retailers that she favors to fail. I feel for them.

She orders a ton of clothes online and then returns something around 75% of it. They give her free shipping and they take the returns in store at no cost. She prefers to order when there are sales.

What she is doing is completely logical and encouraged by their policies but I do not understand how they make any money?

<comment><USER32> Clothing, especially designer or specialty / technical clothing, can be marked up 1-10x. In other words, a jacket that costs $10 to produce might sell for $20 or $100.

Don't worry, they are still making money on your wife.

(This is just based on my experience working for a major outdoor clothing retailer, not any sort of real data)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've got a pair of 36x36 Duluth Trading flex firehose work pants that have finally worn out after 2.5 years. They were worn almost every day.

</comment><comment><USER34> I found military boots to be literally ever lasting. The problem is that alot of different political associations are connected to those boots.

You are obviously a facist or punk for wearing uncapitalistic everlasting boots.

<comment><USER16> Wear what you like.

"I mean, really, how often do you look at a man's shoes?"

      --Shawshank Redemption.</comment></comment>


Singaporean Websites Must Pay To Mention Singapore And Not Mention Gay People - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/singaporean-websites-must-pay-to-mention-singapore <comment><USER3> It is interesting to me how on HN there seems to be a disproportionate number (say relative to the general population) of Singapore fans. They pop up randomly and often. Say something negative about Singapore, sure enough, they'll chime in.

It is very strange. I don't care much for Singapore and don't usually think about it outside of HN. Much like I don't think about Peru or Qatar or Sweden. But the subject does come up on HN and sure enough there is a long series of arguments pro and against Singapore's political, economic and social setup.

Ok so they have canning, that's brutal, they don't mind executing people, but so do we in US apparently. The defense usually praises its economy and laws.

Now in this case with banning news related to homosexuality, I wonder how will the "enlightened" Westerners going to defend it, while also keeping up with the appearance of being modern libertarians. I tried playing devil's advocate and a plausible argument, but I couldn't. I thought of using religion as context (like say "it offends the religious sensitivities of the majority"), but it seems Singapore is a hodge podge when it comes to that <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Singapore>.

Anyway just pointing out the (meta?) topic of Singapore is an an interesting phenomenon here. Still not sure why. Is it just me that noticed it?

<comment><USER4> No, it's not just you. I'm genuinely curious to see how HN's pro-Singapore members will respond to this — particularly, as you observe, the ones who are otherwise ostensibly very libertarian.

<comment><USER5> What exactly does a libertarian supporter of Singapore look like, I wonder? Isn't Singapore sort of the opposite of a libertarian country? Are you sure such a beast exists?

It seems like "libertarian" in the last six months is being used more and more often as a contentless slur on HN. Not even with the standard stereotypes from those who disagree (selfish, greedy, etc.), I mean just flat-out content-free, no apparent understanding that it is a word with some meaning (even if ultimately as fuzzy as any other major political label).

"What about Singapore?" seems like a decent challenge to a libertarian. (I'm just using that observation that that is a fair, nontrivial question to further my main point. It's not a request for 150 messages providing a libertarian critique of Singapore; I've got one, thanks.)

<comment><USER6> There are real libertarians on HN, it is mostly a belief in a niche economic system that is mostly the opposite of communism. But many people are confused about the word, and a lot of young disillusioned Republicans have latched onto the movement without truly understanding its principles.

I always get giddy when a libertarian on reddit points Singapore out as the kind of country they want to live in: low taxes, high economic freedom! But that's only because they don't realize its an actual police state! (whereas we could argue that the USA is only partially a police state)

They then move onto talking about Hong Kong...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> original article headline @eff: Singaporean Websites Must Pay To Mention Singapore... And Not Mention Gay People At All

OK I was totally confused by the HN headline, which makes it seem like you have to pay if you mention Singapore AND fail to mention gay people at all, as if the govt is saying "hey if you Manton us, you mention gay people too. otherwise you gotta pay."

of course, I go to the article and see that whoever submitted the article totally broke the grammar of the original headline, most lily to save space.

<comment><USER6> I read a real article about this. Basically, any news agency that discusses Singapore more than N times a month must indemnify with a $50K SGD bond and follow the laws of the country in all of the content they report.

So even CNN, if they report Singapore stories, will be subject to this, though I doubt they will try to enforce this on international news agencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just thought I'd mention that someone has organised a protest in Singapore to this particular issue, at the government-sanctioned "Speakers' Corner", this weekend: <https://www.facebook.com/events/185882738236629/>

I'm looking forward to see if the government listens.

</comment><comment><USER9> Another reason to support anonymity (and pseudonymity) on the Internet:

So that you can mention your country -- or partner -- without fear of economic repercussions or prison.

</comment><comment><USER10> William Gibson calls Singapore "DisneyLand with the Death Penalty": <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/gibson.html>

Definitely sounds like a surreal place.

<comment><USER11> Been living here for almost a year, it's wonderful. Less personal freedom than Hong Kong, but all things considered, it's one of the best places to live.

You don't walk or talk worrying about the police or anything like that. You aren't going to be able to protest or stuff, but aside from the huge gap between rich and poor (a problem facing all Asian countries), there aren't huge issues to protest.

Edit: I was wrong to say the above. Apologies. Keeping it here though for context to comments below.

<comment><USER12> > there aren't huge issues to protest

Aside from the issues mentioned in the OP?

Or if you are gay? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_377A_of_the_Penal_Code_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_377A_of_the_Penal_Code_%28Singapore%29)

Or immigration policy? <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21485729>

Or...

I live in Singapore too, and while there are plenty of pluses there are also plenty of minuses and they shouldn't be minimized or ignored.

<comment><USER11> Ok, you and zainny make fair points. I guess I was looking at it from the perspective of, say, Turkey right now..or Somalia. But even if it isn't at that scale, freedom of speech is important and I was wrong do dismiss it so casually.

<comment><USER13> I don't think anyone seriously compares Singapore to Somalia or Turkey - <USER2> that measure it's a veritable paradise. The comparisons I have seen have all compared it to developed, first-world countries like most of western Europe, the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, etc.

It is, after all, the league that Singapore wants to play in both in image and influence.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NASA's Rocket Booster Cam Video - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/07/nasas-rocket-booster-cam-video/241976/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the link! I will always click on links that have cameras on rockets.

Something so primal and perfect about it.</comment>


The Carbonmade Status Board - <AUTHOR> http://www.massiveblue.com/clients/carbonmade/pulse/ Note: The figures are bogus. <comment><AUTHOR> Note: The figures are bogus.</comment>