Facebook Secretly Saved Videos Users Deleted - <AUTHOR> https://nymag.com/selectall/2018/03/facebook-secretly-saved-videos-users-deleted.html <comment><USER2> This reminds me of the long conversations that I used to have with family members and friends several years ago. With their continuous requests to create my own Facebook profile so I can keep in contact with them and with their activities as well as to share my whereabouts. I always used the same argument to reject these suggestions — _" I don't want Facebook to have too much data about me, more than the data that you already provided"_.

I got used to the looks of disbelief, thinking that I was some sort of hermit, an antisocial.

I also got tired of answering the frequent _" Why don't you have Facebook?"_ questions.

I remember the last time I had this conversation with someone, last year (2017) around August. I found a new love partner, and after the long intimate talks on the phone, they requested the usual _" intimate pictures"_, not necessarily sexual but certainly sexy. While I have no tabus with regards to my sexuality, having an understanding of how the Internet works, I have always refused to send that type of images/videos/audios, and I always tried to be patient with the other person to explain my constant denials. Unfortunately, expecting a non-tech-savvy person to understand how data moves around the Internet is most of the time based on hope, and even if they understand, they ultimately don't care because the result doesn't change: you don't get to share something with them and that affects personal interactions.

I am sure that the deletion of media files in services like Facebook has never meant to be absolute. Many of my colleagues believe the same thing that I believe: Facebook and other services do not actually delete data, they just mark it as _" deleted"_ and purge it only if they need the space. The same way a hard drive works, you don't really delete a picture when you hit the "delete" key, nor even if you clear the "trash" folder, the data is still there, where it was, it just loses the links to the metadata.

It is sad how this information becomes news only when bad things happen.

<comment><USER3> > I am sure that the deletion of media files in services like Facebook has > never meant to be absolute. Many of my colleagues believe the same thing > that I believe: Facebook and other services do not actually delete data, > they just mark it as "deleted" and purge it only if they need the space.

This is a dumb conspiracy theory. Facebook has made plenty of public statements that say otherwise, and there's a whole team that works on the system that ensures every trace is erased from disks, logs, cold storage and backups when deleting content.

<comment><USER4> Looking online briefly for definitions of "delete":

"remove or obliterate (written or printed matter), especially by drawing a line through it or marking it with a delete sign."

"synonyms: remove, cut out, take out, edit out, expunge, excise, eradicate, cancel"

All of these seem clearly "absolute" to me. "Delete" means it's gone.

I think Facebook has its own special linguistic distortion field. It requires no "dumb conspiracy theory" to realize that Facebook cannot be trusted.

<comment><USER5> Deletion by flag is very common in IT and presumably has been since the first undelete program was created. It's not a Facebook thing.

Some mail programs for a long time have had a soft-delete that requires an expunging process to create compete removal.

In an IT setting you can delete a blob from a db, but it might still be on disk, and it will still be in caches, on user machines, and in backups/archives.

<comment><USER6> Because FB deletes by flag so that content disappear instantly and then start the actual process of deletion (which can take while because of stuff like backup, cols storage)...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You mean they follow what many people consider best practices?

[https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1592...](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/159232/should- we-ever-delete-data-in-a-database)

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/820466/never-delete- entr...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/820466/never-delete-entries-good- idea-usual)

[https://serverfault.com/questions/31455/should-i-ever- delete...](https://serverfault.com/questions/31455/should-i-ever-delete-sql- and-db-anything)

[https://www.infoq.com/news/2009/09/Do-Not-Delete- Data](https://www.infoq.com/news/2009/09/Do-Not-Delete-Data)

[http://udidahan.com/2009/09/01/dont-delete-just- dont/](http://udidahan.com/2009/09/01/dont-delete-just-dont/)

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2549839/are-soft- deletes...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2549839/are-soft-deletes-a- good-idea)

[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/soft-delete-for- azure...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/soft-delete-for-azure- storage-blobs-now-in-public-preview/)

I find it fascinating how much shock there is that Facebook is doing what nearly everyone else is doing, and what many people here have likely implemented.

<comment><USER8> Disclaimer: I deleted my Facebook account a couple years ago and never looked back.

That said, Facebook is who is just getting collectively stabbed with the pitchfork right now. Engineering best practices are one thing. My right to privacy is another. As an engineer I care about efficiency. As a human I care about privacy. My rights win over any technocratic babble. Sorry if I am being harsh. I am, of course not surprised. Engineers are lazy at best and at worst, something truly sinister is brewing.

<comment><USER9> I agree that you have the right to privacy, but there's also technical reasons why instant deletion is not always possible. If they can guarantee that the data will be gone after X days, then that's fair to me.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that works. A best effort of actual deletion is good enough IMO. Maybe even notification it is actually done being sweeped out of a storage system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The most unsettling part is in Facebook's response: "We've heard that when accessing their information from our Download Your Information tool, some people are seeing their old videos that do not appear on their profile or Activity Log. We are investigating." Who wants to bet against their investigation being "how to keep users from seeing it." Anyone?

<comment><USER11> I honestly don't understand this cynicism. Facebook does not want your deleted video, and they certainly don't want to keep it given the current media frenzy, with the CEO under fire.

Every application of any complexity has features which inactivate, but don't delete data. At Facebook scale, deleting data is non-trivial, and it would be impossible to immediately delete something.

We all have bugs, including extremely critical security bugs, availability- threatening performance bugs, or many other types of bugs. It's strange that we accept those bugs as merely bugs, without assuming a backdoor, or intentional sabotage, but when it comes to personal data, suddenly it's a nefarious plot. It's an odd position to take that Facebook is not only saving these deleted videos intentionally (for what, exactly?) but that they'll now lie to us and pretend to delete them, but only remove it from their Download Information tool.

Kudos to Facebook for even having such a tool.

<comment><USER12> I agree with you.

At Facebook-scale the data is _massive_ \-- far bigger than anyone here could possibly comprehend and that includes the Facebook and Google-ers lurking around.

Data has incredible inertia. And when there's a lot of it, in a lot of different places, I can imagine that it becomes very difficult to keep track of.

I'm glad that Facebook's data export tool included some things that maybe it didn't expect to.

<comment><USER13> If it's too hard to do properly maybe they shouldn't be doing it /shrug

<comment><USER14> Don't allow users to delete things?

<comment><USER15> Don't gather data you can't manage it ethically.

Facebook has a responsibility to protect user data they have collected, and if they can't then they shouldn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One fascinating outcome of all this fallout is that there's now a readymade excuse to stop using Facebook.

My personal observations are that a good number of people have felt 'fatigued' by Facebook for a very long time, but were also unsure of how best to extricate themselves without incurring a social penalty.

But now there's an impetus that most people can understand. I'm not sure about how many people will move away or how quickly it'll happen, but the network effects Facebook capitalized on can also work in reverse: if you have just one or two very vocal privacy proponents in a friend circle pushing to get off the platform. One group I'm in recently migrated to Telegram for this very reason.

<comment><USER17> If you truly want privacy and security I would recommend Signal over Telegram -- Telegram has had some controversy with respect to their encryption protocol not being audited, as well as some weird stuff with a very large recent ICO that seems entirely unnecessary except as a money grab and Russian subpoenas for their master private keys.

<comment><USER18> > and Russian subpoenas for their master private keys.

While I cannit defend (or attack, I'm no cryptographer) their crypto they seem to have a solution to this:

They say they don't store keys in the same datacenter or even jurisdiction as the customer data they protect.

According to them this means getting unencrypted data through a legal process would mean getting a warrant in two or more countries at once.

<comment><USER19> > They say

> According to them

I find it very hard trusting their word. And we know the company has the ability to read messages. How is telegram better from FB messenger?

<comment><USER18> Sorry for my late reply:

> And we know the company has the ability to read messages.

I don't think we actually know that.

In fact I think they have a system to keep data and keys apart and in different jurisdictions to prevent USA, Russia or anyone from being able to get access to it.

I am no cryptographer or legal expert though.

> How is telegram better from FB messenger?

This is a bit simpler: while Facebook messenger might be E2E encrypted I have good reason to believe that Facebook will datamine my metadata and sell it to however wants to pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just an anecdote. I had a day set aside to purging my Facebook entries a year or two back. I manually deleted comments and posts.

Of course there was too many to do and it was very boring so I only spent a couple of hours at it. But that's nots what's interesting. What happened was that I got a huge uptake of people commenting on some old post I made, like a profile picture change. I think Facebook saw I was purging my data slowly and reached out to my FB contacts encouraging them to interact more with me. It was very odd.

<comment><USER21> Is there not a way to delete all posts and comments at once?

<comment><USER22> Facebook makes it very, very difficult. But there is a method using a Chrome browser extension, I've used this method recently with success: [https://www.mariusschober.com/2018/01/20/delete-facebook- act...](https://www.mariusschober.com/2018/01/20/delete-facebook-activity/)

It will take some effort, but it's doable.

<comment><USER23> So your stuff is not deleted when you delete your account (soft or hard)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The funniest part of it: All the media hype around the topic is generated... BY DATA collected by NYT/Bloomberg/Techcrunch/you name it. Those articles generate additional views and they just continue to ride this wave. And all those publications share this data with 3rd parties (ad networks, analytics providers, cpa networks)

On top of that, you know what else do they measure? SENTIMENT. So until kicking Facebook generates more revenue - the articles will paint Facebook as a world's main evil. But the day sentiment changes you will see all the articles about Facebook following best practices.

And in the end? Some EU commission will be created and make a law which oblige to "show cookie usage disclaimer", because of which 90% of sites welcome you with ugly popup and ruin the experience providing 0% advantage in managing your privacy...

<comment><USER25> > _On top of that, you know what else do they measure? SENTIMENT. So until > kicking Facebook generates more revenue - the articles will paint Facebook > as a world 's main evil. But the day sentiment changes you will see all the > articles about Facebook following best practices._

So what you're saying is that sites like nymag will only run stories that are profitable?

<comment><USER24> Kind of. When everyone is writing articles AGAINST Facebook, it will be very hard to 'sell' article which SUPPORTS Facebook to the editor (because of the potential PR nightmare when potential 4chan starts attacking you)

Article can't go through editor -> article is not published

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Secretly? Secretly from whom?

There is nothing I've come across, ever, that has lead me to believe that Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc., ever delete anything, ever. Not even to clean up space as some people on this thread are suggesting. Hard drive space is cheap and data is valuable. This isn't a secret, this is a fairly obvious business practice that _all_ the big players, and most competent small players, are engaging in.

<comment><USER27> Clearly there is a big disconnect here. It seems somebody is suggesting there should be a correlation between a user removing content from their account and Facebook destroying some of Facebook property.

Anything submitted to Facebook is the property of Facebook. Users have no business telling Facebook to destroy Facebook property.

<comment><USER26> > Anything submitted to Facebook is the property of Facebook.

I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion.

Are we to accept that this is how it works simply because Facebook says this is how it works?

<comment><USER28> You accept that when you join.

<comment><USER26> Users didn't accept anything just because they checked a checkbox next to a link to an ever-changing jumble of legalese to get past a screen. This isn't agreement, it's manufactured consent.

<comment><USER29> Unfortunately no matter how many times you say this or how much you wish it were true, US (at least) courts have disagreed with you by enforcing contracts of adhesion.

<comment><USER26> I think we're in agreement, we're just saying things slightly differently. I believe human rights exist and are an ethical imperative whether or not lawmakers/courts choose to protect human rights.

Or put another way, the law _should be_ (but often isn't) informed by human rights--human rights aren't informed by the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Huh. So now I'm starting to think: what if I purposely recorded thousands and thousands of meaningless video? None of my friends would ever see them since I never published them, but Facebook would use up hard drive space storing them.

What if a lot of people did that?

Suddenly Facebook's cost for hanging onto all these videos would become quite high with no value in doing so.

Anyone feel like making a website to help automate that process?

<comment><USER31> You should upload random-pixel uncompressible videos and delete them over and over again. It not only increases storage cost but makes the profile SNR very low.

There are general-strike level attack surfaces on these networks, but people don't really care that much.

<comment><USER32> Does their AUP/TOS allow them to lock you out in that case?

Lockout would be worse than account deletion. You would have no recourse to fight back on any of their use of your data right?

<comment><USER33> > You would have no recourse to fight back on any of their use of your data > right?

Yes you would if you were European. You can't stop people exercising their legal rights because they broke your terms of service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This (and the GDPR - even though my company is in the US) are why I now tell the developers on my team to not collect info unless they have a definitive use case as to why to store it. And make sure to delete delete data as soon as it is no longer needed.

It helps that my business doesn't monetize via advertising.

My guess is what actually happened here is that they had a use case to store it for a few hours or so (incase, say the user changed their mind about posting it) and no one ever bothered to write a cleanup script because "storage is cheap" and possibly "maybe we might have a use case for it someday"

I can't imagine this being intentionally. Even if I try to consider malicious use cases I can't think of any where it would be beneficial for Facebook to actually store this data besides being too lazy to clean it up.

Edit: Wow. Who new applying Hanlon's razor to this would get me downvoted so badly? I'm going to leave this here unedited and eat the downvotes of the people on an anti-facebook warpath because I think it is important to state that we as people who make tech products often take short cuts (like avoiding dev work because it is cheaper to just keep data in storage) and we need to stop doing that. There is plenty of stuff Facebook does that is beyond the pale but this one is more likely contributed to lazyness, and if you are going to downvote me without explaining why you are not contributing to the conversation.

<comment><USER35> Please don't break the site guidelines by going on about downvotes.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER34> My apologies, dang. I did not realize and/or forgot that was against the guidelines. Will not happen again.

<comment><USER35> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I would think this is common practice.

I know that YouTube, for example, retains videos indefinitely, because I've personally been able to retrieve videos that were deleted in as early as 2006.

It was possible for anyone to do this until some time in 2017, when they started requiring signatures for RTSP streams. All that was needed was the video ID (the eleven characters in every YouTube video URL). Didn't matter if they were private (IDs for these could be enumerated if the channel ID was known), "deleted" over ten years ago, or behind a paywall.

From ~2008 until 2015, you could do the same but with higher quality streams through the now-retired Apple TV API.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'd have been more surprised if they _didn 't_ save them. I always assumed that anything remotely hosted that I "delete" is soft-deleted, and that anything I edit is actually just versioned. (I'm not claiming to be especially smart, just cynical.)

</comment><comment><USER38> This was a bug. There was an old feature that used to allow you to record and post directly from the browser. Those videos were streamed to FB as they were being recorded. If you decided not to post those draft videos should have been deleted but were not. They showed up in download your information (DYI) as expected because that tool is designed to show you the data Facebook has about you. Thanks to New York Magazine for the flag. If you see anything in DYI that doesn't look right, let us know and we'll investigate. This was a bug, and we really do appreciate any help in finding them so we can fix them.

<comment><USER39> I downloaded my information and then deleted my account before realizing that the archive I downloaded did not include any of the photos or posts that I had been tagged in, because I made those posts only visible to me on my timeline.

<comment><USER38> If these are posts by other people that you were tagged in then those posts should still be up, just without the tags of you, on the original posters timeline.

<comment><USER39> Sure, this just doesn't do me any good because I don't have them archived or any ability to access them :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Is this really a secret or a surprise? Most SaaS companies of this size don't really ever delete anything. They set a deletion flag and call it a day.

<comment><USER41> Yeah for most things this is a good way to do it. For user data when they delete the account it would be ideal if they actually removed it though

<comment><USER42> Why would that be the good way to do it? Especially if that deletion action was behind a confirmation, or if the data was never recoverable by the user? At that point, just delete delete it.

<comment><USER41> A lot of reasons, here's a simple example: If you have a "product" which had a CRUD interface to make and users who add it to the card, deleting it would cause relationships to fail - as in if users who already purchased the item or added it to their cart would no longer be able to see it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm shocked. No one saw this coming.

* Facebook reads your private messages, California class-action suit alleges. || [https://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/01/03/facebook...](https://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/01/03/facebook_reads_your_private_messages_california_class_action_suit_alleges.html)

* Facebook asks users for nude photos in project to combat 'revenge porn' | Technology | The Guardian || [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/07/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/07/facebook-revenge-porn-nude-photos)

* Facebook CEO Admits To Calling Users 'Dumb Fucks' || [http://gawker.com/5636765/facebook-ceo-admits-to-calling-use...](http://gawker.com/5636765/facebook-ceo-admits-to-calling-users-dumb-fucks)

</comment><comment><USER44> Someone should mention also that in the downloadable facebook archive, in the html/ folder, there is a file called contact_info.htm and its a pretty large file. It is apparently every google contact you ever had, all synced to facebook, for every device you ever logged into. So, if you ever might have used a friends device to check your facebook account using then facebook app, then all of that persons contacts are there too, as well as their sms history metadata and call history metadata.

<comment><USER45> I've let quite a few people log into the Facebook app on my phone and now I'm pissed.

I was always careful with privacy settings on Facebook, but the thought never even crossed my mind of what I'd be "agreeing" to by letting someone briefly use my phone.

I'm sure someone will come along shortly to tell me I deserve it and should have know better and was _asking for it_ but whatever.

How will the GDPR handle instances like this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I imagine that the data in those downloads is a fraction of all the data Facebook collects. It seems that they disclose only what is required based on local laws, so it's unlikely they will ever disclose derived data unless forced to (for example, the location data they collect and combine to figure out which people were present at the same party etc.)

</comment><comment><USER47> Btw why do we think that the downloadable archive contains everything they have? Because they said so?

Just add a bool field to the table "canExport".

<comment><USER42> I don't think we think that. Obviously, in the context of HN crowd, FB has no real credibility / ethical compass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is no surprise, virtual delete is common design pattern.

</comment><comment><USER49> This is why I've never really deleted my FB account, I've just deactivated it. If I don't believe they would truly delete the data I might better have it available if I want it

</comment><comment><USER50> I don't think facebook really deletes any data. You deleting a comment or a picture pretty much means: isvisible=false;

<comment><USER51> More like visible=false;

<comment><USER52> Display=none is more appropriate

<comment><USER53> Maybe visibility:hidden too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> There are people on this very site complaning about how "hard" it is to delete data on request to be GDPR compliant. Highly paid developer experts are literaly throwing a fit when told that they should be able to delete data when "Delete" button is clicked.

It's not just Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER55> Storage costs next to nothing, recovery costs a lot. Why would facebook who depends on this data for income ever delete it. You get two massive benefits from keeping it and setting a "deleted" flag.

Why would anyone expect anything different. How entitled do people feel they are.

<comment><USER56> It's quite simple: if someone says they deleted something, you expect them to delete it. If they don't, they are lying, and you can't really trust them with anything else.

<comment><USER55> Facebook has been embroiled in back to back privacy scandals since it opened and you still trust them? How much simpler does it get, I agree, that's pretty simplistic!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> A lot of these revelations are coming from the fact that Facebook allows you to download the information it has stored about you.

There is an exceedingly high chance that the managers are going to notice this. And, rather than doing the right thing by storing less information, they are going to lie about what they have, and put a filter in place regarding what they let you download (a bit) vs. what they actually have (everything).

We need to be nuanced in our approach to the world, but it is becoming increasingly clear that Facebook has created a business model that incentivizes (and maybe depends on) evil behavior.

</comment><comment><USER14> What I think so many privacy advocates don't realize while frothing at the mouth is that odds are 99.9999% no one really wants _your_ old photos or data specifically. Surely in large aggregate, but on a macro level you are no more interesting than anyone else. You're not. You have a delusion of grandeur.

Sure, you might get some targeted ads by data used in aggregate and put you into a group but so what? If I had to see ads, I'd rather them be things I am interested in.

<comment><USER33> Ah the old nothing to fear argument.

<comment><USER14> Oh, there's plenty to fear, this just isn't it.

The proliferation of cameras and cellphone tracking hooked to state owned machine learning predicting your decisions - which is publicly happening in China and almost certainly quietly happening everywhere else? Terrifying.

Data collection on crap that's nearly public anyway? Merely a distraction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> m-p-3 It's kind of unsurprising. As soon as you upload some data into another system that you do not fully control, you can't really expect or trust the other party to discard it because you want to.

Unless there's a good an easy way to store that kind of data and share it with End-to-End encryption (and the server NEVER has access to those keys) so that only authorized users can view the plain data, that problem will remain.

</comment><comment><USER58> In all likelihood, this is simply the tip of the iceberg. I see Twitter's stock is collapsing, due to similar concerns. Nothing is private anymore in this day and age.

And yet - If we're concerned about what Facebook has on us, then just imagine what kind of treasure trove the government sits on.

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm looking forward to HN letting go of this enthusiastic expectation of FB's demise and putting forth higher quality articles.

(Note: I feel the same enthusiasm. I just want to read more meaningful, comprehensive articles.)

</comment><comment><USER60> I considered this a feature. It's interesting to compare true convo vs what's left after people have backtracked and deleted messages. Especially when the convo was daring so to speak. ;)

</comment><comment><USER61> Well, once you give permission to your data you no longer control how it's stored and shared(at least physically). To make sure you are not caught off guard you should always expect the worst.

</comment><comment><USER62> Could be non-malicious if they want to prevent redundancy of the same video going up twice or just laziness in engineers who didn't build D in their CRUD.

</comment><comment><USER63> And this is why I never signed up for social media in the first place. Remember the afage about stuff on the internet never really going away? Yeah, it's true. Another interesting note: some friends hiring in Austin, TX have told me they can't hire in town because almost every kid has a social media containing drunk pics.

<comment><USER64> who cares they have pics containing drunk pics online? is the employer supposed to dictate my morality?

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> "They're looking into it."

AKA they will continue harvesting the data but be better about not letting you know what is being harvested.

</comment><comment><USER66> I've downloaded my zip file to try to verify what's going on in the article

I _think_ I have an idea of what _might_ have happened.

When you add a video to the composer window

One of the requests is [https://vupload- edge.facebook.com/ajax/video/upload/requests...](https://vupload- edge.facebook.com/ajax/video/upload/requests/start/?dpr=1&__a=1) (Look it up in the network tab of whatever browser dev tool you are using)

With the response as,

for (;;);{"__ar":1,"payload":{"video_id":"11111111111111","start_offset":0,"end_offset":353662,"skip_upload":false},"bootloadable":{},"ixData":{},"gkxData":{},"lid":"1"}

The video 11111111111111 is now in an "unpublished" state. "unpublished" here meaning it's uploaded to Facebook but not linked to a post yet.

You can verify this by taking that ID and doing the following

[https://www.facebook.com/11111111111111/](https://www.facebook.com/11111111111111/) -> redirects to [https://www.facebook.com/phwd/11111111111111/](https://www.facebook.com/phwd/11111111111111/)

"Sorry, this content isn't available right now"

Your options now are to either discard the _post_ or publish with a privacy setting which will make the link above available. (Notice I didn't say discard the video, the video is still in an unpublished state)

Now for the archive.

You can verify by going to view-source:fb.com/me in a browser Search for the string "access_token" there will be a long string appended. (e.g. access_token:"EAAAAU...)

With that token go to your archive and roll over one of the links in the video section that has an issue and doesn't appear in the activity log.

file:///Users/phwd/Desktop/facebook-phwd-from-zip/videos/11111111111111.mp4

grab the ID 11111111111111 and do the following

[https://graph.facebook.com/11111111111111?access_token=THE_T...](https://graph.facebook.com/11111111111111?access_token=THE_TOKEN_FROM_view- source:fb.com/me)

That shows an unpublished video for me, it wouldn't show in your activity log (that's the only part of the story I can agree and can confirm with what I have available)

To delete add the method=delete to the request.

[https://graph.facebook.com/v2.9/11111111111111?method=delete...](https://graph.facebook.com/v2.9/11111111111111?method=delete&access_token=THE_TOKEN_FROM_view- source:fb.com/me)

Response should be

{ "success": true }

The next part would be to verify that the video is deleted from the archive. Since Facebook is still giving me the first download zip, I guess I'll have to wait a while (it's 1 am here so I'm heading to bed) until it resets so I can make it build a new archive and confirm the hunch.

This is just my guess, I'm NOT discounting what the Facebook user encountered. I'm just providing a possible background to how it can happen as well as a solution to deleting the "deleted" video. There is also the chance I might be wrong...

References to confirm for yourself. developers.facebook.com/docs/graph- api/reference/video

Disclosure: I don't work for Facebook, however, I do play with their API a bit.

</comment><comment><USER43> * This Is Why You Should Delete Facebook Permanently || [https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/delete-your-facebook...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/delete-your-facebook-matthias_n_5460164)

From 2014. Good summary video.

</comment><comment><USER67> How do I mass-delete all of my Facebook data? Likes, posts, etc. Is there a reputable tool out there that can take care of it for me since Facebook doesn't provide you with one?

I'm generally ok with keeping Facebook just as a contacts list, but I'd rather not have it have anything else.

</comment><comment><USER68> Storage is so cheap, it wouldn't be surprising they save everything they possibly can.

</comment><comment><USER69> I can't believe people don't pay attention. Facebook never removed any data generated, they just remove the index from the data. Deleted data is can be more valuable than data that is kept there.

</comment><comment><USER70> Isn't it kinda obvious that fb 'secretly' stores everything that may be beneficial to the company?. Who is still so naive as to believe that they care about your privacy?

</comment><comment><USER71> For maximum honesty, they should just rename all of the Delete buttons and text to 'hide' or better yet, 'hide from friends'.

Short, simple and to the point.

</comment><comment><USER72> It was already known that Facebook burns all user data onto a bluray disc.

How do you erase data that's been permanently burned onto an optical medium? You can't.

</comment><comment><USER73> The has happened numerous times in the past, especially when they switched to timelines. Everything you thought deleted reappeared.

Basically once in Facebook, always in Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER74> This is why for those 'special' videos one should always just use a handheld camera and not their cell phone. But the public will never learn.

</comment><comment><USER75> Lol I'm not impressed by anything at this point. I thought it was clear from the start, they don't care about you, you're the "useds" of facebook, as Stallman would say. But still, every new evidence that comes up confirming this must make into a separate headline, and we'll keep on getting plenty of those until... I don't know. Until it either dies or rebrands itself well enough to pretend all of this never happened, I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER76> Decluttered: [https://outline.com/zAZ4BM](https://outline.com/zAZ4BM)

</comment><comment><USER77> Given any data submitted to FB legally becomes their property, they don't have any obligation to delete it.

</comment><comment><USER78> I always believed in the right to be forgotten. That's why I am not on Facebook nor Google Plus

<comment><USER79> How does being on HN help? Your comments can't be deleted after a certain amount of time (a few hours).

<comment><USER80> At least Hacker News is transparent about that that behavior.

Facebook et al. are not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> How about youtube? Is there any law specifying website must delete the data user choose to remove?

</comment><comment><USER82> What you put on the Internet might stay there for ever, is an important lesson.

</comment><comment><USER83> This can not be a surprise to anyone with a just a bit of skepticism.

<comment><USER56> Agreed, but most do not have much skepticism. You and I may have known about Facebook and had accounts (or deleted them) for over a decade, however many current users are relative internet novices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Meanwhile, FB share price is on the up again ha

<comment><USER45> But still very much down from before the CA story dropped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Did they save any of the videos that Google Drive have recently deleted?

</comment><comment><USER86> "surprise"

</comment><comment><USER87> Heres something that I noticed earlier today that might be of interest:

420 million Facebook profiles uploaded to archive.org

[http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/03/the- kiwi-s...](http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/03/the-kiwi-social- network-that-still-has-your-deleted-facebook-data.html)

<comment><USER88> Definitely worth noting as another example of how data can be harvested — but also important to point out it was a third-party created archive made from 2007 and 2010. People will still be (justifiably, IMO) unhappy. Just as they were when YourOpenBook made the risk so blatantly obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> Meanwhile:

[http://fortune.com/2018/03/31/facebook-employees-are- reporte...](http://fortune.com/2018/03/31/facebook-employees-are-reportedly- deleting-controversial-internal-messages/)

<comment><USER89> that link doesn't work for me... this one appears to be the same thing: [http://start.att.net/news/read/category/politics/article/for...](http://start.att.net/news/read/category/politics/article/fortune- facebook_employees_are_reportedly_deleting_controv-rtime)

<comment><USER87> Sorry about that. Its just a brief article.

Heres a no-Javascript version:

        curl -o 1.htm  http://amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2018/03/31/facebook-employees-are-reportedly-deleting-controversial-internal-messages

        sed -i '/<p>/,/<\/p>/!d' 1.htm ;

        firefox file:///1.htm ;

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> "I do also think that, you know, Facebook has a responsibility to its users to protect their data and _not_ just to protect it but make sure that people understand _what data they 're producing_ and whether they own it, who has access to it and when.

And Facebook has failed them, you know, across the board.

And the question now is _not_ just what - you know, what can be done to ensure the security of that data. It's, how can we use this moment to ensure that we're having a broader cultural conversation about the data that we're all _creating_ on Facebook, Google, Amazon, through our phones, et cetera and make sure that the companies are held accountable for it?"

Source:

Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes

[https://www.npr.org/2018/03/30/598208043/should-facebook- use...](https://www.npr.org/2018/03/30/598208043/should-facebook-users-trust- ceo-mark-zuckerbergs-apologetic-tone)

</comment><comment><USER90> What app can put 2 major spy agencies in same app ?

Cia and fbi in facebook app.

</comment><comment><USER87> "The guy who was showing me around pointed out where they were building "apartments for our people to live".

"So they'll work on campus, they'll eat on campus, they'll socialise on campus and now they'll sleep on campus?" I asked. I wondered whether maybe that was kind of unhealthy. Creepy, even.

My guide looked right at me, and for a moment, his megawatt smile faltered. When he first worked there, it reminded him of the Dave Eggers book, The Circle, he said. Then he started talking about the opportunity to _connect the world 's people_, and I stopped listening."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(Eggers_novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_\(Eggers_novel\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(2017_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_\(2017_film\))

Source:

[https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and- style/people/jennifer-o-...](https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and- style/people/jennifer-o-connell-i-have-finally-deleted-my-facebook- account-1.3436928)

<comment><USER91> While this may sound creepy for a foreigner, getting a decent apartment in the SF Bay Area is really expensive and the commutes are horrible. So in this context, that could be a good thing.

<comment><USER92> Why does it sound creepy? What percentage of the population, historically, have been "free" in a sense that they don't belong to an organization that exerts some sort of control over their social world? It seems there are many shades and dimensions here...

<comment><USER93> Actually I think in some ways the lower classes have more psychological freedom here.

I've worked a bunch of minimum wage retail jobs and all the grunts mock the daily "walmart chant." At high status jobs people apparently really buy the "my employer is who I am" thing.

<comment><USER94> _" At the same time, the proles are freer and less intimidated than the middle-class Outer Party: they are subject to certain levels of monitoring but are not expected to be particularly patriotic. They lack telescreens in their own homes and often jeer at the telescreens that they see. "The Book" indicates that is because the middle class, not the lower class, traditionally starts revolutions. The model demands tight control of the middle class, with ambitious Outer-Party members neutralised via promotion to the Inner Party or "reintegration" by the Ministry of Love, and proles can be allowed intellectual freedom because they lack intellect."_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty- Four](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four) :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> I really do not like fb at all!

</comment><comment><USER95> I have no such duty. I'll teach my kids when they get a bit older, but trying to teach adult friends is an unrewarding exercise in futily (mansplaining even).

<comment><USER96> >mansplaining even

I am fascinated to know how you are going to wedge gender politics sideways into this completely gender neutral conversation.

I agree that talking data storage strategies to people that aren't interested is unrewarding, but please mansplain to me how explaining technical concepts is mansplaining? Ideally, also define mansplaining in the process.

<comment><USER97> It's simple:

\- most folks in tech are men

\- most men date women

\- in 2018 any attempt a man makes to explain something to a woman is a candidate for being accused of "mansplaining".

I'll say one other thing:

I honestly have no clue if mansplaining has a more technical definition but in general I see most people interpreting it as a man explaining anything to a woman.

<comment><USER98> It originated with Rebecca Solnit, who had an experience where a man and she were talking and a book came up that he had read. As he's telling her about the book, she points out that she's the author of the book, and he proceeds to continue explaining the book to her.

I certainly see this happening sometimes. Earlier this month I remember sitting in on a meeting where a boy fresh out of college was trying to explain SQL injection to a (female) senior security engineer.

That said, I think that happens to everybody, albeit disproportionately to women. And now mansplaining has other really silly uses as an epithet, like "a male with expertise is telling me something I don't want to hear" or "a male disagrees with something I believe very strongly."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Cue wave of outraged HNers because some people believed Facebook cared.

<comment><USER35> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

<comment><USER99> I don't think pointing out how disconnected half of the userbase here is is unsubstantive. 99% of people who use Facebook has not the fainstest idea of what Facebook is doing, why they're doing it, and why it might be wrong. Still, on each of these threads the top comment invariably starts with "why is anyone surprised that.. etc". I could find you links to prove my point, but I'm can't believe you're not aware of this. So I strongly disagree my comment is unsubstantive.

<comment><USER100> HN users live in this weird Silicon Valley bubble that is divorced from the real world..

<comment><USER35> Only about 10% of HN users are in Silicon Valley, and many of those are critical of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> FB is not dropbox, so "deleting" means a different thing.

<comment><USER88> Maybe, but that's not the case in this article, which describes an obsoleted video feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> At what point was any of this news? TOS is clear on this so if this was to bother anyone they would have read that before hand. If I was running a data collection business like google for ad-analytics I wouldn't delete anything either, that's your bottom line your wiping away!

</comment><comment><USER103> Fortune cookie:

Forgive and forget. Someone must do it and everyone else will not.

[https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2014/01/faceb...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2014/01/facebook-uses-10000-blu-ray-discs-to-create-petabytes-of- cold-storage/)

</comment><comment><USER104> I don't care. I stopped caring about my privacy. Nobody will hurt me by knowing too much about me. Facebook can have all of my life, because nothing is private for me.

It is a great tool for keeping up with friends, it allows to cultivate friendships a lot easier than anything before. We can have a lot of friends when we don't keep secrets, because by being open with your weaknesses you create new friend, not an enemy. You create enemies with secrets and lies.

<comment><USER105> Hi Mark!</comment></comment>


Simple idea. If everyone on here donated $1 we can change lives. - <AUTHOR>

Simply put, if everyone on here were to read what we do, and were to donate $1 we can save so many lives down here in NZ.<p>www.journeyofhopenz.org <comment><USER2> Transparency is important for nonprofit organization! :)</comment>


Vivaldi Browser: Chrome engine, no personal data collected - <AUTHOR> https://vivaldi.com <comment><AUTHOR> Is Vivaldi Open Source?

[https://help.vivaldi.com/article/is-vivaldi-open- source/](https://help.vivaldi.com/article/is-vivaldi-open-source/)

Short answer: no.

Long answer: no, but...

        Vivaldi is not made available under one
        unified open source license. It does contain
        the Chromium source code with changes made
        to allow the HTML/CSS/JS based UI to run.
        All changes to the Chromium source code
        are made available under a BSD license and can
        be read by anyone on vivaldi.com/source/.
        Details in this regard are explained in
        the the README and LICENSE files within the package.

        In addition, our UI code is written in plain,
        accessible code for those who read HTML, CSS and JS.
        This means that for all practical purposes
        the Vivaldi source code is available for audit.

        Vivaldi also contains third party code. Licenses
        for these parts can be found in the source
        package and in the installed browser by
        navigating to vivaldi://credits

</comment><comment><USER2> As it isn't open-source, how can you trust this? What certify me that my data are safely stored and don't sold to commercial partners??

<comment><USER3> I have the same reaction. I'd sooner use Firefox with a few privacy-enhancing extensions.

<comment><USER2> I'm running Chromium with HTTPS everywhere, uBlock Origin, Wappalyzer (curiosity purpose) & Bitwarden (password manager). It's the best setup I found regarding performances & energy consumption for my GNU/Linux laptops.

<comment><USER4> It might be in terms of performance and energy consumption, but it is clearly not when it comes to privacy.

<comment><USER5> Could you explain, what privacy issues exist with Chromium?

<comment><USER6> This was one of the more egregious ones from a few years ago; since fixed, but as far as I'm concerned the trust was permanently broken (what's to stop them from doing something similar and hiding it better, after all this made it past the package maintainer until a user complained).

[https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=786909](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=786909)

<comment><USER7> By the way, I think this comment [0] sums it up well for many HN folks:

> As a web developer, I like chrome. As a private person, I uninstalled it. > You might call it a feature or a core extension, most people consider this > spyware.

[0] [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=491435...](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=491435#c12)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Saw that Tell HN yesterday about Chrome logging you in to Gmail.

Switched to Firefox. It's so damn fast nowadays (it wasn't up until a while back)

Good job at amazing people at Mozilla. You're killing it.

<comment><USER9> And UI is better than chrome IMO. Built-in dark mode rules.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm missing a "Why we are doing this" section on the website. It's not open- source and I wonder what their motivation is. How are they making money?

<comment><USER11> Vivaldi ships with a load of preselected bookmarks. Mainly big news sites and some online stores. It seems like there is some affiliate marketing going on there. Some of these bookmarks link to a vivaldi.com page that redirects you to a siteplug.com page which again redirects you to the actual page.

Example bookmark: AliExpress -> [https://vivaldi.com/bk/aliexpresscom- us](https://vivaldi.com/bk/aliexpresscom-us) -> [http://ww2.siteplug.com/fly?${tracking](http://ww2.siteplug.com/fly?${tracking) params} -> [https://best.aliexpress.com/?${more](https://best.aliexpress.com/?${more) tracking params}

Siteplug seems to be the service with they use to monetize the traffic. Notice that the redirect link doesn't offer a https version. Neither does their website [0] that also just shows me a dead bird on most pages [1].

[0]: [http://siteplug.com](http://siteplug.com) [1]: [http://siteplug.com/for- partners](http://siteplug.com/for-partners)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I moved back to Firefox after an update to Vivaldi started lagging badly when I woke up my PC. Maybe it was an extension, but after disabling some of them I realised I don't really have time or inclination to find out.

Another thing I didn't like was the re-purposing of the F6 button so it didn't highlight the URL any more (I guess I could change this; not sure) and the history page, which seemed quite confusing whenever I tried to use it.

It's not a bad browser but neither is it so good I want to put up with those times it breaks or does something gratuitously different.

</comment><comment><USER13> I tried Vivaldi a few days ago as Firefox, despite their efforts to up performance, is still far too slow for me. The disadvantage I found that Vivaldi has is the number of extensions is basically 0 (please correct me if I am wrong). Installing chrome extensions is possible if you build from source and bake in the extensions, which is not something I am interested in.

I currently use Opera, but I am unsure about the privacy. Opera works very well though and there is an extension that allows installing chrome-extensions which works out very well.

Any thoughts on Opera's privacy?

<comment><USER14> You can install any Chrome extension using the regular Chrome web store: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/)

Link is on the "Apps" page: vivaldi://apps

<comment><USER13> Wow, how strange. I just reinstalled vivaldi and checked and I couldn't install extensions because 'Add to Chrome' read 'Available on Chrome', redirecting me to a chrome download page. After refreshing the button changes to 'Add to chrome'!? Either way, now I CAN install extensions. Thanks for making me retry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A colleague of mine tried Vivaldi 1.5 years ago, while he liked the split screen feature he found it way too slow and it had serious lagging issues from time to time. Much can happen in 1.5 years and I don't know if they were using V8 back then. But yeah, what I saw wasn't really that impressive. And no open source? Yeah, I think I'll stick with Firefox and my tinfoil hat extensions a while longer.

<comment><USER14> Performance is just fine, no issues running dozens of tabs daily, no "lagging" whatsoever. And split screen is amazing, yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Firefox is slow as molasses for me, Chrome-based browsers feel SO MUCH snappier - I'm talking about things like e.g. tab-detaching.

I moved fully to Vivaldi about half a year ago and I couldn't be happier. There are only 2 issues I've encountered so far:

\- sometimes, video in full screen is flickering (known issue) \- sometimes, when the tab is closed while playing video in full screen, the whole browser UI disappears and the only way to fix this is to kill and restart the browser - the obvious workaround is to never close the tab while being in full screen

Other than that I'm very impressed with Vivaldi. Gestures, clean and USABLE interface, web panels are great features that I can hardly work without anymore.

<comment><USER17> This is a tuned version of open-source Chromium with extra ergonomics. Made by the original Opera dev since they split a few years ago. Twenty years track record in making fast and secure stuff.

Why just use one browser???

I always have four or more and Vivaldi is #1 or #2 but FF is my mail/chat because of the containers

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would be more convinced in their "we respect and protect your right to privacy" if there wasn't a "we use cookies to enhance your experience" banner at the top.

</comment><comment><USER19> The main reason I like Vivaldi is because I can use a lot of the functionality which I could get in the old Opera (ver 12 and earlier).

The keyboard controls (especially the single key shortcuts) save a huge amount of time. An example would be to navigate across tabs, or close all the tabs on the right (or left) are a huge timesaver.

Additionally, viewing pages in the reader view (again with a single key shortcut) gets rid of all the unnecessary stuff on the web page.

People who remember the power of the old Opera browser should give this a shot.

</comment><comment><USER20> How does it differ from Brave [0]? (Which is also based on Chrome, is free and open source, and well integrated even in Xubuntu, for the latest dev version [1])

[0] [https://brave.com](https://brave.com)

[1] [https://brave.com/download-dev/](https://brave.com/download-dev/)

<comment><AUTHOR> In addition to what you noted, Brave has an integrated Ad-blocking / Tracker blocking software enabled by default + an integrated way to compensate content producers for the incurring loss of revenue.

Vivaldi has some neat features like Tab stacks and Split screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Developer mindshare is important for the success of a browser and, right now, if I go to 'caniuse' there are all of the main browsers plus a few that have no interest to me - old I.E., 'Opera Mini' and so on.

For Vivaldi to get a little bit further they need to become a first class browser that developers think about, test with and talk about.

<comment><USER22> It uses the same engine as Chrome/Chromium, my guess would be in 99% if not 100% of cases they will behave the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> ungoogled-chromium is what I use

[https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled- chromium](https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium)

<comment><USER19> Thanks for that. I hadn't heard of it before. Will give it a shot as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Closed-Source. No thank you.

<comment><USER25> [https://vivaldi.com/source](https://vivaldi.com/source)

<comment><USER26> That's source available, not open source.

You can view the source, but you can't contribute to it, create forks, etc.

Source available is one of the prerequisites for software to be considered open source, but not the only one.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How should pricing work for my app? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I posted before on HN about this, but at the moment I'm working on a series of sound toys for Android. Each one is 'organic' in its design, and resembles more an organism that produces sound than an instrument.
Initially I was planning on pricing them at $1 each, but maybe this is too steep for something that isn't a game, or has value that increases measurably over time. Should I package several of them into one app and sell it for $1? I've read somewhere that if people are given too much choice they have a hard time making a decision, so would it be best to package the organisms into one app? Also, is it an evil marketing trick to set a price when there is buzz around a product and say it only exists for a 'limited time'? <comment><USER2> Sell them both ways, apart and in a bundle. Keep the price of the bundle lower than the sum of all parts and somehow link to the parts from the bundle. This will show the user that hes getting a good deal.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this idea, I'll be doing this. Also are prices like $1, or $2 better than $.99 and $1.99, or does it not matter?

<comment><USER3> I do not know any solid answers from research for this questions. Half the things you read say that '.99' makes some people interpret the price as being lower than it really is while the other half of research says that people interpret as being an underhanded tactic.

Personally, I prefer flat dollar prices. I'm much happier with $25.00/mo as opposed to $24.95 or $24.99/mo. I read them all as "$25" anyway and I prefer nice round numbers.

ymmv.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > if people are given too much choice they have a hard time making a decision

Human psychology 1.0 :-)

YMMV, but 'too many choices' can be a _strong_ deterrent to _impulse buying_ which, imho, is your _best friend_ , given the kind of apps you have.

HTH

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe sell the less quality ones for 10c a piece, but the really cool ones for a buck. That's my vote.</comment>


Rate my startup: AFAR Connect - <AUTHOR> http://www.afar.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Guys,

We're a small startup in SF focused on the experiential traveler. We've built a Q&A community where we match you (psycho-graphics, interests, knowledge, aversion to risk) to other locals and travelers. You ask a question and we'll map it to someone with a like-minded sense about travel. We also route questions we think you might be a good fit to answer for others in the community. Thanks in advance!

<http://www.afar.com>

</comment><comment><USER2> This is cool! I've tried to do this sort of thing before by asking people with a high OKCupid "friend" percentage in the city I'll be visiting, but I'm always afraid it comes off as disingenuously concealing romantic interest instead of just wanting advice from locals.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know if this will really help, but since you mentioned quora-like discussions about travel, the following might be an interesting discussion.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2040132>

Opinions vary. And sometimes they are not written as carefully and politely as possible to avoid offending others. My exchange with HN user 'petercooper' could have been written a lot better but as you'll see, it seems offense was taken.

</comment><comment><USER4> I like the hunch.com-like quiz, but the site itself feels very corporate, somehow, in its design. Also, I started with the quiz, but soon got bored and left. That may be a common problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, Peter. Do you ever use Q&A sites like Quora, for instance? It requires a little bit of effort for us to pull some basic info, but the real magic comes from the current community that's being grown inside (assuming you want to talk about travel).

<comment><USER4> Yes, I use Quora. They didn't make me go through an endless questionnaire before showing me the goods (content).

Not sure what you mean by "It requires a little bit of effort for us to pull some basic info"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really like the idea and hope you guys will succeed. Here are some specific suggestions:

* Allow the user to customize Q&A list they see, perhaps through filtering tags.

* Indicate somehow about the number of questions still ahead. Some sort of progress bar might help. As of now, some people may not have the patience.

* Leave out some questions from the signup form. Ask them later, eg put location box at the top of the question list.

Hope this helps and congrats for the launch!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, nopinsight. Technically, the "filter" should get smarter based on the more activity you do (answering questions about specific locations, etc.) but yeah - calling out "here are my main areas of knowledge" somehow would clean up the list, especially as the community grows. Thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Your "Try a Risk–Free Issue" link is resulting in an error.

[https://w1.buysub.com/pubs/AF/AFA/Error.jsp?cds_mag_code=AFA...](https://w1.buysub.com/pubs/AF/AFA/Error.jsp?cds_mag_code=AFA&id=1296087037309)

      Error
      Sorry, the page you're looking for has moved, or is no longer in service. Please select a different customer service option.

<comment><AUTHOR> Odd, I just clicked it and it worked for me. [https://w1.buysub.com/pubs/AF/AFA/Connect_freetrial- US-v2.js...](https://w1.buysub.com/pubs/AF/AFA/Connect_freetrial- US-v2.jsp?cds_page_id=94158&cds_mag_code=AFA&id=1296087809448&lsid=10261823294030389&vid=1)</comment></comment>


Lantern – Open Internet for Everyone - <AUTHOR> https://getlantern.org/ <comment><USER2> The README has so much information except... From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lantern_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lantern_\(software\))

Lantern is a free peer-to-peer internet censorship circumvention software. It provides a way to bypass state-sanctioned filtration through a network of trusted users, but it's not an anonymity tool like Tor. Using Lantern, users in countries having free internet access can share their bandwidth with those who are in countries where the network is partly blocked. Network connections will be dispersed between multiple computers running Lantern so it will not put undue stress on a single connection or computer.

<comment><USER3> Yeah it would be nice if they actually said what the software does on the github or in the headline. At first I thought it was a browser or something. Here's the one liner though: "Lantern is an Internet proxy tool that lets you access blocked sites."

<comment><USER4> Yeah sorry about that! I just added a more detailed description.

<comment><USER3> Thanks :) Love the idea of making proxies simple by the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me of Hola.[0] Even if there's no risk of exploitation by developers, it's risky to freely share your uplink.

[0] [http://www.dailydot.com/technology/hola-vpn- security/](http://www.dailydot.com/technology/hola-vpn-security/)

<comment><USER6> Isn't Hola the company that sells "stressing" services using their network, aka DDOS attacks?

<comment><USER5> Yes, that's their claim to fame.

But that's a distinct issue from unregulated uplink sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mods, please change URL to [https://getlantern.org/](https://getlantern.org/)

<comment><USER8> Ok. Url changed from [https://github.com/getlantern/lantern?](https://github.com/getlantern/lantern?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is very cool, and in my opinion, a realization of how I feel the interwebs should be working anyway... voluntary distribution of bandwidth, freedom from large ISPs... enables high-capacity short-run network connections to thrive. Exciting!

With regard to states wishing to suppress this sort of activity, I do have concerns that a behavioral signature will emerge that will be fairly telling... I suspect it may not be difficult to crack down on users. Nonetheless, the concept has potential for many reasons.

<comment><USER4> That's certainly the big picture goal -- to build a decentralized network at the application layer that systematically removes points of control, with censorship being one of those points of control and a useful starting point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> They seem to have accidentally replaced their README with their INSTALL file.

</comment><comment><USER11> I was part of the indiegogo campaign to get the lantern [1] off the ground. I've heard very few updates from them since the campaign ended; here's hoping they still pull it off!

[1] [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lantern-one-device- free-d...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lantern-one-device-free-data- from-space-forever)

<comment><USER12> That looks like a different project of the same name. The lantern in this post is a desktop app that bypasses site blockers.

<comment><USER11> Ahh, you appear to be completely correct! The project I was referring to had a software component as well (which is on GitHub); I mistakenly associated the two. My apologies!

I will leave my GP comment here in case people find the other project interesting; but they do appear to be unrelated. Thanks for clearing that up :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I know someone who uses this in China and apparently it's fantastic. Faster than commercial VPN services even for streaming video. Not sure how that'll work out in the long run if it gets more users than providers.

The concept sounds quite insecure but apparently it only allows HTTPS connections so it's delegating encryption to that instead of doing it itself.

</comment><comment><USER14> This presentation gives an overview of the project:

[http://getlantern.github.io/Beating_GFW_With_Go/](http://getlantern.github.io/Beating_GFW_With_Go/)

The main idea is "domain fronting": hiding proxy traffic inside connections to regular websites.

The actual application is [https://github.com/getlantern/flashlight](https://github.com/getlantern/flashlight), the proxy library is [https://github.com/getlantern/enproxy](https://github.com/getlantern/enproxy).

</comment><comment><USER15> Page doesn't really say what it does. Can't it climb the great firewall?

<comment><USER16> See [https://getlantern.org/](https://getlantern.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Seems great so far! I've been living in Indonesia and Reddit has been blocked - normally I have to pop on my VPN to waste time, now I can do it at my leisure!

I should probably uninstall this.

<comment><USER18> Is bypassing the firewall illegal? How do you avoid getting caught? It would seem that using a vpn all the time would implicate you. I can only see it working with something like tor where you're always connecting through a different node and the nodes aren't officially affiliated with any common organization.

<comment><USER4> There are no known cases of people getting arrested simply for bypassing censors. Anonymity in the Tor context purely means anonymity from network observers learning your IP, not from network observers learning whether or not you're running Tor.

<comment><USER18> Well they know that you're running tor, but they can't prove that you used to access censored content. For all they know you just used it to make sure that your website blocks connections from tor exit nodes (please don't do that by the way).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The repo does not have License for the code. So is it not 'open source' project?

<comment><USER4> We recently migrated repositories when we ported things to Go, and this got lost in the process. I just added it back in!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wonder how this will play with BitMesh: [https://www.bitmesh.network/](https://www.bitmesh.network/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Pretty slick tool, hope it works well! How do they avoid the Tragedy of the Commons?

<comment><USER22> It appears that it decides for itself when to go direct and when to circumvent. This will limit bandwidth usage and the ability of bad guys to exploit it as an open web proxy, assuming they are good at software.

On the minus side, observer at the Great Firewall can probably learn a lot about Lantern users, unless the Lantern software is really careful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It seems dangerous to use this instead of Tor. If you're in a county censoring the Internet (possibly using deep packet inspection) just getting around the censorship may not be safe enough.

It's better to use a system that can actually help to protect your anonymity.

<comment><USER4> Adam Fisk from Lantern here. The big problems with Tor for a lot of censored users are:

      1) Download size
      2) Speed

Especially in a country like Iran where bandwidth is limited, the download size of the Tor Browser alone is enough to make it used relatively rarely. Couple that with much slower speeds once you're up and running, and it's just a non-starter for many users.

Beyond that, though, the vast majority of users are also simply not engaging in activity online that will realistically put them in danger. Users in censored regions are really like users anywhere else in that respect -- they are not doing illegal things online that would make them targets.

On the DPI front, every major censor definitely uses DPI in an effort to block tools like Lantern.

That said, Tor is great at what it does, and we strongly support the Tor team and their work and collaborate with them whenever we can.

<comment><USER5> What about the risk to users who provide access to other users?

Edit: In Give Access mode, what other users get access? Is that limited to those specified via Google Talk?

<comment><USER4> Yeah great question. The short answer is that we'll ultimately allow give mode users to control what sites are proxied through them. In Lantern 2.x so far we've actually stripped this functionality entirely __as a temporary measure __for a few reasons. First, we re-wrote the whole app in Go, and we wanted to cut as much scope as possible to make the leap. Second, the whole p2p model works a lot better with _a lot_ of users in censored regions, particularly from more of a marketing perspective in terms of users really having a real impact from uncensored regions as soon as they run Lantern. So for a long time that wasn't the case, but we're now seeing large user numbers and very fast growth in censored regions around the world. So we're going to re-introduce peers very soon, and those peers will have a really significant impact on blocking resistance and cost scalability.

<comment><USER5> Thanks very much for the thoughtful answer. I do get your focus on providing access for users in censored regions. And it is arguable that few of those users are doing anything that would be problematic for access-providing peers in uncensored regions. But still, Lantern is a system proxy, and so there's more potential for abuse. Have you looked at port filtering and blocklists?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Can I trust Lantern? > Lantern is open, anyone can check our source code ...

While it's great that this is open source, I don't see how I have any guarantee that the public source code is actually what's running on the server I connect to.

</comment><comment><USER25> Where's the link to a sitemap so I can find the downloads section? The autodetect offers me the wrong file for my PC. Minimalism can go too far when you strip out the most basic of basic functionalities.

<comment><USER26> All the available binaries are listed at the top of the readme on [https://github.com/getlantern/lantern](https://github.com/getlantern/lantern)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wonder how many people are donating their bandwidths to this. Will it become unsustainable in the near future when more and more Chinese (a huge number of people) adopt this?

</comment><comment><USER28> Blocked from work. Fortinet.

<comment><USER4> Really? Remember Lantern is only an HTTP proxy. It can't access web sites that are blocked from your work?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Uh oh; Get ready for another large-scale DDoS from somewhere in the vicinity of China.

</comment><comment><USER30> not a lot of people knows this tool in China.

</comment><comment><USER31> surf facebook smooth in china, +1</comment>


Bogus pyramids: Learning methods, Maslow and Bloom - <AUTHOR> https://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/2020/07/bogus-pyramids-learning-methods-maslow.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> Pyramids are narrative tropes for visualizing prerequisites, eg A is a foundation for B; B is a foundation for C. A numbered list will do. "Pillars" is another trope. Platform X rests on these pillars, P, D, Q. A list will do.</comment>


Ask HN: What answers do I have to know for a VC interview? - <AUTHOR> We are going to have an interview with a VC next week. This is going to be my first try at this and, to be honest, I'm really excited. I just don't want to blow it - so I would really like to prepare.
What questions could they ask that I should really know the answer to?
Please tell me what questions you got asked when being interviewed by a VC firm. <comment><USER2> Who are your customers? what is the existing market? how is the market segmented? Who are you? What qualifies you for this? What problem do you solve? for who? Why is your solution different? How big could this be? (realistically, based on facts). How much cash do you need? what for? what will be your burn rate? how long before revenue? when will you be profitable? What milestones have you already hit? What milestones do you need to hit to achieve your goals? Do you own the IP? Have you checked to see if you are infringing on anyone elses IP?

<comment><AUTHOR> All great questions! Thanks for your answer! :)</comment></comment>


Of interest? Vim, Emacs Google trend - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/trends?q=vim%2C+emacs&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

<comment><USER2> I've heard of a lot of people switching from emacs to vim these past couple years, and very little the other way around. I made the switch last month, and I'm pretty happy with it.</comment>


Mozilla gives up on producing $25 smartphones - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/22/8645983/firefox-gives-up-on-25-dollar-smartphone

<comment><USER2> It was inevitable. Not because they're $25, but because they're not built on the thinnest and leanest software.

If they were uber-cheap phones that were built entirely on a thin Linux kernel that contained 4G radios, I'd buy one. It's why I'm buying the OnePlus One. Unfortunately, Mozilla forces the HTML/CSS/JS stack onto everything they build, and an underpowered embedded environment really just doesn't match up with that ideal. "Adding support for 'key [Android] apps'" is also a bad idea, because now they get to play the gatekeeper on which apps are "key". There's no good way to put the Web on underpowered devices, and I think that's the way it should stay.

"The Web" is an inferior platform for realtime interactive applications because it's not built from the ground up for efficiency.</comment>


SICP review by Peter Norvig (2000) - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/review/R403HR4VL71K8/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm <comment><USER2> "Most reviews give a bell-shaped curve of star ratings;"

Not true now [1] and not true back then [2].

[1] <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1134743> [2] <http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/eclstabus/1670r.htm> (Fig. 1)

<comment><USER3> The same was true for YouTube comments, and that's why they switched to Like/Dislike buttons. When it comes to judging the value of things, people tend to be all or nothing.

<comment><USER4> That's more the case if you show some sort of aggregate 5 star rating on the front page, I suspect. If you look at peoples iTunes libraries they probably use 2-4 stars a lot and 1 or 5 stars more rarely. But on Amazon, people who think a book is 4 stars but see it rated as 3 stars are going to vote for 5 stars to push it up more.

<comment><USER5> They should aggregate the reviews by taking a median. That way there's no incentive to game the system.

<comment><USER6> Only works if people understand there's no incentive...

Which they won't, cause math is so hard...

<comment><USER5> Only the median voter(s) would need to understand that there's no incentive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also see pg's review, referenced but not linked from Norvig's: [http://www.amazon.com/review/R3G05B1TQ5XGZP/ref=cm_cr_pr_per...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R3G05B1TQ5XGZP/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0262011530&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=)

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html>

<comment><USER9> Lecture videos: [http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson- sussma...](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman- lectures/)

<comment><USER10> Although note they are for the earlier edition of the book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand how someone could give it anything but 5 stars.

<comment><USER12> Imagine if all you need to do everything is turn PSDs into HTML and your job title is programmer.

And then someone shows you this book and tells you that every good programmer loves this book and it is confusing. The reaction is always negative.

<comment><USER11> That is not the intended audience, it's a book about programming, not about some specific technology.

<comment><USER13> Well, yes, but the people giving it one star appear to not understand that they weren't the target audience. That's the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's sitting open on the desk next to me. I have loved seeing SICP-related links show up on HN over the past 6 months that I've been reading it.

</comment><comment><USER15> I loved SICP. That review definitely made me want to read TAoCP.

<comment><USER16> Even for those who love SICP (and I count myself among them), reading TAoCP cover to cover would not necessarily be enjoyable or fruitful. It's useful as a reference, but not as a teaching text. (IMO.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sounds like a good description of "sensing" vs "intuition" in the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator.

[http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti- bas...](http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti- basics/sensing-or-intuition.asp)

"Sensing" types will definitely hate this book, as they hate all high-level conceptual talks and writings.</comment>


Does Apple deliberately slow its old iPhones before a new release? - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2709502/Does-Apple-deliberately-slow-old-models-new-release-Searches-iPhone-slow-spike-ahead-launches.html <comment><USER2> Betteridge says no, others say yes.</comment>


Best Practices of Combining Typefaces (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/11/04/best-practices-of-combining-typefaces#

<comment><USER2> I've always found typeface selection to be totally baffling. Usually, when just writing a document or putting together a quick web page, I'll use whatever is the default. I can't be bothered to pick between the 40-50 or so fonts that are installed by default, let alone the thousands available free over the web or for purchase.

When it comes to putting together the shipping product or released document, I feel like I have only two choices: 1. Consult a magical "UX expert". Only this mystical being, who speaks secret incantations, and has access to access some design tome somewhere, can tell you what the exact right typeface should be. Or, 2. Pick from generic pre-designed templates (designed by the magicians, no doubt) and just paint-by-numbers into your product.

I wish there was a way to take this magic step out of designing.

The basic premise of this article seems to be that "Typefaces have personality". There are actually a couple of examples presented:

* Trade Gothic is no-nonsense

* Bell Gothic is dynamic and outspoken

* Slab serif typefaces are known for their distinct personality

* Franklin Gothic is stoic, sturdy, strong

* Souvenir is playful, casual, a little aloof, and very pretty

* Dax is an informal, modern, and bright typeface

* Bernhard Modern is classy, quiet, sophisticated, and even a touch intimate

So, who classifies these personalities? Where are they documented, so that I, as a non-designer, can look them up and use them correctly? This guide expects the reader to already know this typeface-to-peronality mapping.

I'd love a resource that lets you just look this stuff up. "If you're making an online newsletter about plants, use typefaces A, B, and C together, but never D and E, and don't make C bold. If you're making a poster for a concert for a new age marimba player, use typefaces F and G." That would be great.

Even better than a rule book, a more systematic process that gets you from subject matter to the right font, that is understandable and repeatable for non-designers would be perfect.

Anyone have any suggested reading?

<comment><USER3> A lot of these things are obvious just by looking. For example, "Slab serif typefaces are known for their distinct personality." Well, look at the two slab serif fonts in the example he gives you. You can see the letters have big exaggerated lines on the ends - the Ts have things coming off the top left and right and bottom center. These are the serifs and they are very large an decorative. His example has two fonts that have these serifs that are large and decorative and then the serifs for each are different. So it is kind of weird just looking at it. Oh, this T has a lot of decoration! But wait, that T over there has different decoration. It just feels weird on the eyes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A pretty good intro for typeface selection, but I disagree with one of the suggested arrangements:

> All in all, there are 4 fonts from 3 typefaces being used here, and they all > pull together into a cohesive design.

4 fonts in a setting that's only 300px tall don't really pull together cohesively. It's something I'd personally recommend avoiding unless absolutely necessary.

<comment><USER5> The article does recommend (later) only using 2 typefaces. Having more levels to a visual hierarchy would be helpful for navigating a larger work, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone have a list of good web fonts you can use together? I like all of these principles and their examples but sometimes I just need a reference to pick out a stack and apply it to my site. Something like "The Big Book of Font Combinations" but for web that shows a breakdown of font stacks supported by which devices or something. Thoughts?

<comment><USER7> The Google Fonts page has some recommended pairings for each font: [https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Open+Sans#pairings](https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Open+Sans#pairings)

<comment><USER8> I believe these pairings are based on the frequency they appear together on the web — not on any kind of aesthetic or functional judgment. I would take them with an enormous grain of salt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You know what words don't appear in that article: emotion, character, soul, attitude, or even communication.

Legible does appear.

"Don't confuse legibility with communication" \- David Carson.

He might have another take on how you can combine typefaces.

[http://zee.com.br/extranet/abduzeedo/posts/david_carson/img7...](http://zee.com.br/extranet/abduzeedo/posts/david_carson/img7.jpg)

[http://kingydesignhistory2012.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/ca...](http://kingydesignhistory2012.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/carson- pepsi.jpg)

David Carson's _The End of Print_ was one of my muses in the later 90's (that and The Designer Republic's work, especially Wipeout XL).

[http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Print-Grafik- Design/dp/B00FIBF...](http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Print-Grafik- Design/dp/B00FIBFWKO)

<comment><USER5> _Trade Gothic wants to get to the facts, but Bell Gothic wants to have some fun._

 _Their distinct personalities don't play well off of each other and create a kind of typographic mud if careful attention is not paid._

And did you miss the whole "Don't Mix Moods" section?</comment></comment>


Economics Reinvents Itself Every Few Decades. It's Happening Now - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-22/economics-reinvents-itself-every-few-decades-it-s-happening-now <comment><USER2> Also known as being wrong</comment>


The Haxe Code Cookbook - <AUTHOR> http://haxe.org/blog/the-haxe-code-cookbook <comment><USER2> Exactly the sort of thing the Haxe community needs! I've been impressed with the massive improvements in documentation and organization its seen in the past two years, and this is the cherry on top.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that as well,... also a bit more of batteries included and less frameworks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Direct link to cookbook: [http://code.haxe.org/](http://code.haxe.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you, somehow I published the note instead of the direct link... now I can't edit it</comment></comment>


Persistent PostgreSQL inside Docker - <AUTHOR> https://crondev.com/persistent-postgresql-inside-docker/ <comment><USER2> A benchmark to see how much perfs you loose by virtualizing Postgres would have been nice.

<comment><USER3> It would be interesting. But I would also note that Docker doesn't do virtualization. It uses e.g. mount namespaces to mount an existing Linux volume inside the container ([http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man7/namespaces.7.html](http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man7/namespaces.7.html)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Isn't this docker 101?</comment>


Apple could use custom x86 SoC made by AMD - <AUTHOR> http://www.bitsandchips.it/52-english-news/6183-apple-could-use-custom-x86-soc-made-by-amd <comment><USER2> Probably a leak organized by Apple to make Intel more amenable to a "correct" price.</comment>


Why (individual) Blogging Is Dead - Objective Measurement - <AUTHOR> http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/001445.html <comment><USER2> I'm a little confused by this. Has the word "dead" come to mean "not actively pursued by money grubbers"? I swear I still haven't lost hope that some day that word will appear in a tech headline to describe something that's actually going to fall into disuse.

This article was worth it, though, because it had a link to an older criticism, by Seth, of twitter: "A highly ranked person is free to attack anyone lower down the ranks, as there's no way for the wronged party to effectively reply to the same readers."

I hadn't thought about it that way. It makes sense now why the media is enamored with it: it allows an asymmetry similar to that of television and radio.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/may/07/twitter- is-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/may/07/twitter-is-a-suckers- game)

<comment><USER3> +++++, Thanks, would read again!

I thought the whole point of blogging when it appeared was that anybody could write and anybody _would_ write. It wasn't restricted to those who could afford a printing press or a pulpit.

The "A-list bloggers" aren't really bloggers in that sense, they're new media barons who happen to blog. If they move to twitter, they become new media barons who happen to twitter.

<comment><USER4> And few if any of them abandon their blogs. They just try to get their readers to follow them in both mediums.

Besides, nobody makes money of twitter directly. It's just a platform for sending people to your blog...where you make money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Once again, someone declares that twitter killed blogging..but they do it on their blog.

Please try to explain why twitter has killed blogging in under 140 characters.

<comment><USER5> Seriously. I wrote this comment, which (unfortunately), verges on feeding the trolls:

I'm skeptical of the (provocative) title: individuals will blog to the extent they want to, as they always have, and those with something to say will find a way to say it. As for "professional" blogging, I think to a large extent it's a myth, as I described in Youre) not going to a be professional blogger, no matter what the WSJ tells you.

When people tell you a medium has died, it usually means that medium has matured, at least somewhat, but the idea of being able to speak to anyone, anywhere, anytime, anyhow (as long as the receiver cares to listen) is going to stay, probably in some form that resembles blogging.

"blog reader-program development has ceased"

Shoot: someone) forgot to tell the developers of Gruml and Byline. Alternatively, someone isn't paying much attention.

Regarding Twitter, I like the comment in Why) I don't use Twitter: "What can be said in 140 characters is either trivial or abridged; in the first case it would be better not to say it at all, and in the second case it would be better to give it the space it deserves."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the reason's it's dead are headline fails. Who's going to subscribe to a blog if the headline is bad or misrepresentative of the article? I'd rather pickup an item on Twitter that's been pre-read by someone I've vetted, and who can prepare me for what to expect.</comment>