Facebook Blocks Internet Pioneer "R.U. Sirius" - <AUTHOR> http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2015/10/ru-sirius-facebook-ken-goffman.html <comment><USER3> Facebook has kinda chosen a path that sets them apart from, and often in active opposition to, the Internet RU Sirius envisioned. Facebook is antithetical to what a lot of folks wanted to see the Internet become, so it shouldn't be surprising that the early visionaries of the Internet find themselves being excluded from participation in facebook on their own terms. Participation in facebook is on facebook's terms, always, and it's not surprising when they're dicks who wield that power arbitrarily.

I've had several transgender friends excluded from participation in facebook based on this name policy, and I've known a wide variety of other people who use odd names for a wide variety of reasons (some silly, some deadly serious like trying to hide from an abusive ex) who've also been excluded from participation. Facebook makes pleasant noises about the policy and its implementation, but the reality is they're not doing this for us, for the good of the world, or for the good of the open Internet.

I'm not trying to go all RMS about facebook; I have a facebook account, and I use it daily. But, facebook isn't the Internet I envisioned, either. It is just another petty little walled garden where we're all peasants.

<comment><USER4> Excuse the poor pun but.. are you serious?

Facebook excluded several of your friends based on their terrible name policy. They run their walled garden however they want to. Your participation in it makes you (in your own words) a "peasant".

Yet, you're not trying to go all RMS about it and you continue to use it daily to give them more money/power?

Do you see anything wrong with this picture?

Say what you want about RMS, but at least he's principled and does/says what he thinks instead of conforming to social norms.

<comment><USER5> It's not reasonable to expect people to "just not use facebook". Not that it's not possible - it is (and I don't use it), but it doesn't mean facebook can just do whatever. Reposting an old comment of mine:

For a lot of people, Facebook _is_ "The Web". That's all or almost all they use. The less tech-literate ones don't even know "the web", they connect to Facebook. They get their news from Facebook. They communicate on Facebook. Everything they do online, they do on Facebook.

Like someone mentioned above, when you get big enough you start to have responsibilities. When your actions affect and your voice is heard by billions of people, you're no longer "some random privately-owned website"... you're a supergiant with the ability to affect the entire world.

<comment><USER6> > It's not reasonable to expect people to "just not use Facebook".

Huh? Nobody used Facebook before 2003. Now people simply can't avoid using it?

<comment><USER7> And in 2015 everyone is on Facebook. If everyone moves off of Facebook then we're back in the "good old days" but until then, there are many social aspects, such as event planning, that are being done entirely on the site. You can't point to a time when FB wasn't around and say that everyone didn't have FB then and can just as easily not have it again when reality has changed so much since then.

<comment><USER8> _there are many social aspects, such as event planning, that are being done entirely on the site_

I haven't had a Facebook account for 3 years and while that was my main concern, I found that any event worth going to the organizer would simply call, message or email you because they wanted you to be there. People vastly underestimate the power of their real social network and what friendship or love can do to motivate people to maintain relationships.

Canning your account is also a good way to cull relationships not worth maintaining. In my case it was around 70% of my contacts, leaving 30% who I gave a damn about. The ultimate tool for social networking is still at my disposal - the mobile phone. Facebook is a middle-man. A relationship broker.

Some advice for anyone who plans on closing their Facebook account: scrape any photos with you in them (and anyone you have an affinity for), phone numbers and the big one: birthdays. My calendar reminds me when someone has a birthday and their phone numbers sit in my contacts list.

<comment><USER9> (Please don't take it personally; I want to comment on a generic phenomenon.)

There is a pattern I see in every HN thread about Facebook. It consists of comments structured like this: "I haven't had a Facebook account for [1 year - ever]. I don't see what's useful about it. I think relationships maintained by it are bad / artificial / unnecessary." Am I the only one who notices that comments of the form "I don't use X therefore I have an opinion on X" are of... limited usefulness?

\--

> _I found that any event worth going to the organizer would simply call, > message or email you because they wanted you to be there._

Facebook invitations are equivalent to the forms above.

> _People vastly underestimate the power of their real social network_

Facebook is as real as any other social network.

> _and what friendship or love can do to motivate people to maintain > relationships._

If you're my friend or love interest, why are you making it more difficult for me to contact you?

> _Some advice for anyone who plans on closing their Facebook account: scrape > any photos with you in them (and anyone you have an affinity for), phone > numbers and the big one: birthdays. My calendar reminds me when someone has > a birthday and their phone numbers sit in my contacts list._

One of the most pathetic things people do on-line is putting a fake birthday into Facebook (and before that, into the IMs they were using), to see who actually remembers the real date. It always makes me wonder, what they're trying to prove this way? That some people don't care about them enough to remember the date? Well guess what, nobody is that fucking important. Your parents and your spouse may remember the date, but why should anyone else? Do _you_ remember the birth dates of people you expect to remember yours?

<comment><USER10> > Facebook is as real as any other social network.

This has been proven otherwise.

> If you're my friend or love interest, why are you making it more difficult > for me to contact you?

exactly! why do you force me to register an account on a known privacy invader website that don't respect its words nor its users to get in touch with you ?

>One of the most pathetic things people do on-line is putting a fake birthday into Facebook to see who actually remembers the real date.

The people I know who do that are doing it just because they don't want to give away their real birth date. This is sensitive info.

<comment><USER9> > _This has been proven otherwise._

[citation needed]. Seriously, what _exactly_ is so different about Facebook? As far as I can tell, it's the usual generational whining about "technology destroying social relations", that was repeated by every generation since invention of newspapers.

> _exactly! why do you force me to register an account on a known privacy > invader website that don 't respect its words nor its users to get in touch > with you ?_

The OP phrased his comment in a way that implied you are the one burdening your loved ones on purpose, and this was what I responded to.

> _The people I know who do that are doing it just because they don 't want to > give away their real birth date. This is sensitive info._

Birthdays are absolutely not sensitive info (regardless of legal definition); if you're thinking that, you're fooling yourself. Like name, address, sex, and bank account number, they're public info. Usernames, not passwords. You've probably left all of those multiple times this year to random untrusted third parties.

<comment><USER10> >[citation needed]. Seriously, what exactly is so different about Facebook? As far as I can tell, it's the usual generational whining about "technology destroying social relations", that was repeated by every generation since invention of newspapers.

This is not wikipedia. just use a search engine, talk to people who closed their or got removed from facebook, go to the library to get books on the subject, get in a horrible accident and count how many facebook contacts are on your bedside when you wake up, get convicted and thrown in jail and see how many facebook contacts will be visiting you regularly for 10 years.

I fail to understand how exactly it is news: party friends are not true friends, drug friends are not true friends, facebook contacts are not true friends either.

> The OP phrased his comment in a way that implied you are the one burdening > your loved ones on purpose, and this was what I responded to.

And I phrased mine to show that your counter argument works both ways, except facebook is preventing outside people from getting in touch with inside people, not the other way around.

>Birthdays are absolutely not sensitive info (regardless of legal definition); if you're thinking that, you're fooling yourself. Like name, address, sex, and bank account number, they're public info. Usernames, not passwords. You've probably left all of those multiple times this year to random untrusted third parties.

People who do not put heir real birth date may think that, on the other I know that it is a sensitive information for I have personal experience with its exploitation. You may have confused a few concept here, data that is public can also be sensitive, see social engineering. But let's just give you a random innocent example: girl has crush on boy, stalks his facebook for birth date, find out his astrology sign, renounces for astrocompatibility bs. Boy unknowingly missed opportunity to explore bases.

<comment><USER9> > _This is not wikipedia._

This is Hacker News. I actually expect higher standards of this place.

> _I fail to understand how exactly it is news: party friends are not true > friends, drug friends are not true friends, facebook contacts are not true > friends either._

You seem to believe that "Facebook network" and "real life network" are distinct networks. They're not. Usually there are only few points when they don't overlap - because in reality, you have _one_ social network and Facebook is a convenient tool to manage it. So yes, I if I get into an accident or get thrown into a jail I expect a lot of my Facebook friends, who are also real- life friends, to show up. Hell, I expect many more to come than without Facebook, because there really is no other widespread way of keeping many people updated about each other's day-to-day life.

> _And I phrased mine to show that your counter argument works both ways, > except facebook is preventing outside people from getting in touch with > inside people, not the other way around._

I accept that it works both ways. In most discussions, people actually bring up only the side from your counter, completely forgetting about the one I wanted to remind OP about.

> _You may have confused a few concept here, data that is public can also be > sensitive, see social engineering._

Part of the problem of social engineering is that people treat "public but sensitive data" as anything _but_ public. If I know your birthday or address or bank account number, it doesn't prove anything about my relationship to you. People who ignore it end up becoming victims of social engineering attacks. I think it's a part of basic security training to make them understand that this data is to be assumed public knowledge.

> _a random innocent example: girl has crush on boy, stalks his facebook for > birth date, find out his astrology sign, renounces for astrocompatibility > bs. Boy unknowingly missed opportunity to explore bases._

Well, so what? Things like these happen all the time with any random things. She may have overheard his birth date in a conversation. Or maybe he put a _fake_ date and she thought it's true and gave up even though both were astrocompatibile and believed in the BS. It's easy to invent such examples to prove just about any point.

<comment><USER10> As there is a current high profile story illustrating the issue of the effect of social media on teen, here are some of the requested citation: [http://www.letsbegamechangers.com/](http://www.letsbegamechangers.com/) and www.zmonline.com/photos/zm-photos/instagram-celeb-reveals-the-ugly-reality- behind-her-social-media-presence/

> You seem to believe that "Facebook network" and "real life network" are > distinct networks. They're not. Extraordinary claims requires extraordinary > evidence. Having a look in a teen's facebook versus his/her real life should > be enough to see by yourself the reality is not what you claim. But I'll > rather introduce you to Robin Dunbar and the Dunbar Number: "orry, Facebook > friends: Our brains can't keep up["1] and "The Limits of Friendship"[2]

> In most discussions, people actually bring up only the side from your > counter, completely forgetting about the one I wanted to remind OP about.

And there is a reason for that, which is simply that facebook added an artificial barrier between people as tool to force people to register to facebook. The wall of the so called walled garden.

> Part of the problem of social engineering is that people treat "public but > sensitive data" as anything but public.

Ok, it seems I have failed to express myself correctly and my simple and innocent example failed to get through. Allow me to reformulate: \- A birth date is personal data, for it is indeed related to a specific person. -Personal data is sensitive data. \- That's it, there's nothing more to it.

I suppose you live in a place and time too far away from the last attempt at rounding people for mass killing and attempted extermination to remember how important and sensitive personal data is.

I guess those who fail to remember history are doomed to relive it.

[1]: [http://www.cnet.com/news/sorry-facebook-friends-our- brains-c...](http://www.cnet.com/news/sorry-facebook-friends-our-brains-cant- keep-up/) [2]: [http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social- medi...](http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social-media-affect- math-dunbar-number-friendships)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is ironic to see the quote from RU Sirius about what a victory the internet is for the counter culture:

> The rise of the Net and the Web represents a victory for the counterculture > and the subculture. The next generation, raised on the Net as their primary > medium, won't even know what consensus reality is.

followed by this from the comments:

> This is what happens when you let little children manage grownup things.

basically begging for a more traditional power structure, and being extremely upset when the next generation, raised on the Net as their primary medium, manage it differently than how he'd expect.

I don't think RU Sirius is right about the internet being a win for the counter culture (I do hope he is right, though). I can't find a year for that, but I'll bet it was said before all the Snowden stuff.

<comment><USER12> Before the Snowden stuff... mmm probably yes.

I'd bet that quote comes from an old issue of "Mondo 2000" and is contempory with the Clipper Chip battles about mandated NSA backdoors in all telecoms circa '93/94.

<comment><USER13> Oh man. I read a story (possibly found on HN?) a few months ago about a guy growing up reading 90s techno-utopia stuff. He used the last of his money to go to a convention only to become disillusioned with it when he saw his idols were just making it up as they went. It was a really interesting read - <USER2> this ring a bell for anybody? I'm sure Mondo 2000 was mentioned in it.

<comment><USER14> Sounds like "The Guy I Almost Was" [http://electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/](http://electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/)

<comment><USER13> That's exactly it. Good pull!

<comment><USER14> I make it a point to read it at least once a year, because so much of it resonates with me. Always fresh in my mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Facebook have some really horrible policies.

A woman has some photos of her and her partner on her profile. He then murders her, is arrested and sent to prison. Her profile is memorialised. This means all those images of him are still on her wall. Nice memorial.

The family have asked FB to remove those images. FB have declined.

[https://www.change.org/p/facebook-remove-the-pictures-of- hol...](https://www.change.org/p/facebook-remove-the-pictures-of-hollie- gazzards-killer-from-her-facebook-page)

<comment><USER16> That story could easily read like this:

A trans woman has some photos of her and her partner on her profile. Her partner then murders her, is arrested and sent to prison. Her profile is memorialised. Her family gets access to her account from Facebook and replaces all of her photos with photos of her before her transition.

Facebook has no way of knowing the motives of people so they don't try to.

<comment><USER17> The family doesn't need access to the account. It can still be "memorialized".

Facebook could very well deal with a list of images to remove and the reason for it. In this case, the reason is cristal clear.

<comment><USER16> A trans woman has some photos of her and her partner on her profile. She and her partner die in a car crash. Her profile is memorialized. Her family gets Facebook to remove all of the photos with her and her partner.

<comment><USER9> That's why I think that accounts shouldn't be "memorialized" but "frozen in time". Once the person dies, all that data should become a matter of public history record. No alterations.

<comment><USER18> Better yet, their account should just be closed and the content be taken down permanently.

If someone else wants to "memorialize" them, they should just do so on their own active account, using whatever content they deem fit.

<comment><USER9> I disagree. The default should be to preserve the record of a person, not trying to erase them from history and pretend they never existed.

<comment><USER18> What happened before Facebook? Did dying people get "erased from history" and did everyone just pretend they never existed?

You don't need a Facebook page for people to know you existed.

<comment><USER9> It's the general principle - don't erase records of things that really happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Agree about Facebook being held accountable for the impact they have on the world.

But I also agree with shaming people who use it. If you have an account you are actively subsidizing the impact Facebook has on the world.

How frequently you use the product you are buying when you sign up for an account has no relevance.

And here's what disturbs me most; a vast majority of the citizenship has basically handed over all of their personal details to big brother. Now we live in an environment where not having an account is enough to raise suspicion.

History will prove Stallman the Cassandra of our times.

<comment><USER9> Well, I am subsidizing Facebook and its impact on the world, and I am proud of it.

Facebook had a tremendously positive impact on this planet - it connected people from all over the world like no other force in the history before. Maybe it's not really their accomplishment, maybe they just lucked into popularity at the right moment, but it doesn't change that they are there, helping over one billion people keep real-time communication across the world. People who don't use Facebook tend to not appreciate the impact it has on daily life, especially when it comes to staying up to date with lives of a hundred and then some people. 'peteretep provides some good examples[0].

So try and shame me all you want. I don't feel that I have anything to be ashamed of.

> _a vast majority of the citizenship has basically handed over all of their > personal details to big brother_

Oh well. And the vast majority of the citizenship extracts tremendous value out of it and sees no negative consequence. Yes, maybe one day there will be an evil ad-company government that will drone-strike us all in bedrooms because twenty years ago we disagreed with the leading feminist activists. Or it will torture us eternally because it'll be so bored and have nothing else to do with all those real names it collected. But until then, explain to me like I'm five, _why on earth should the majority of the citizenship care_?

And don't get me wrong. I'm not happy about what advertisers are doing. That industry is rotten to the core and should be burned down. But please, if you really need to shame someone, shame the advertisers using this data.

> _Now we live in an environment where not having an account is enough to > raise suspicion._

I see this repeated often, but there is no real point in that sentence. Not participating in _any_ activity or phenomena that the majority is participating in is enough to raise suspicion, by the very definition of "majority", "suspicion" and "standing out".

[0] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10475506](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10475506)

<comment><USER10> So facebook is really succeeding in replacing internet and the web in the mind of people who don't know better.

I mean internet connected people from all the world like nothing before, people who are not online fails to appreciate how it can affect daily life. Heck it even grown a pimple on its back called facebook, this pimple has grown quite a bit now and is looking cancerous, even looks like it is actively trying to kill the internet (Cisa, internet.org, etc.) Sort of what msn tried in the 90's and failed because open always trump closed in the end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think FB is so insistent on using real names because, through its partnership with companies like Datalogix, it allows advertisers to show FB ads based on offline / elsewhere purchases. Won't work if FB doesn't have real names. Not a fan. Have personally noticed FB ads shown to me based on my purchase of a prescription drug. Tempted to go all cash when it comes to paying for health-related and other sensitive stuff.

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-and- privacy/relevant...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-and- privacy/relevant-ads-that-protect-your-privacy/457827624267125)

<comment><USER21> I'm fairly certain it's illegal to target ads based on a medical condition.

That being said, I believe you're right as to why they require real names. It's also why I use it as my go to for advertising and marketing. The added data from Datlogix etc makes it incredibly useful as a marketing tool.

<comment><USER22> It isn't illegal to target based on a medical condition. I am not making any value judgement about it, just providing factual clarification. Unless HIPAA rules were violated, there's no problem. For example, at iCouch, if they were to take diagnostic information stored on their server by their practitioner and then send out emails to the patient based on the Protected Health Information, that would be illegal. But someone visiting a depression website and then targeting depression treatment ads based on that -- that would not be illegal. Don't would depend on where the information came from that was used to do the targeting. The targeting itself wouldn't be illegal, but the use of the data to do targeting could be illegal if that data were Protected Health Information covered by HIPAA or the Hi Tech Act. Of course, I am only speaking in a US context here..

<comment><USER20> In my case, I'm 99.9% sure the info was based on my offline purchase behavior at a CVS. I had a prescription filled for a very specific condition and, a few days later, was shown a Facebook ad for a related product. Not an ad that would be shown to a general population. I had not searched about the condition anywhere online in the recent past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This question may sound absurd to some, but does it even matter if you are not allowed to use Facebook anymore? I use it to sign into Candy Crush. They paid me a few thousand dollars for discovering a bug, that I only discovered because I was playing with their advertising system. That is the entire extent of my Facebook usage. It doesn't play a role in my daily life to any extent whatsoever, and its role in the lives of many formerly heavy users seems to be diminishing as well.

So while it sucks to be excluded from anything for arbitrary reasons, it shouldn't matter very much to him or anyone else. There are plenty of other places to accomplish the things that can be accomplished on Facebook.

<comment><USER14> > There are plenty of other places to accomplish the things that can be > accomplished on Facebook.

Except when there aren't. For example, my local cat shelter set up a Facebook group to coordinate volunteers. There's also a closed group for a particular program's volunteers.

Sure, they could have set up the groups somewhere else. A shelter I used to be involved with still has a Yahoo group. But the fact is they didn't, and the decision was made way above my level. So if I lost access to Facebook, I'd lose access to a lot more than Candy Crush.

<comment><USER10> This is vendor lock-in and this is how facebook retains users.

If facebook was not locked down but open, many people would have left already if they had come in the first place.

Now when the volunteers stop using facebook, it's the shelter that will lose their volunteers. The obvious solution is for the shelter to self host its own group.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Facebook is a private company with its own rules. It's not a government with a bill of rights.

I do not have a Facebook account and I do not use it because I disagree with everything they are doing and everything they represent.

It is sad, or shall we say pathetic, that individuals connect their identity and sense of self to an ability to patronize a particular brand of consumer ad delivery network.

</comment><comment><USER25> OK, so Facebook has a "real name" policy. People try to circumvent it, for reasons both good and bad. And there's risk of getting outed or losing high- value accounts. But bottom line, it's their business, and they can run it as they like, subject to law.

<comment><USER18> The law could always be changed to make them run it another way.

<comment><USER25> That seems unlikely in the US. It's my impression that shopping malls, which are arguably even more public than Facebook, are considered to be private property in the US. But I can imagine regulation on an antitrust basis. And if EU has jurisdiction, all bets are off.

<comment><USER26> Malls may be considered private property, but they're certainly also considered public accommodations, which comes with a whole host of legal restrictions on what you can and can't do.

<comment><USER25> That's a good point. Owners can exclude demonstrators. But they can't discriminate based on race etc. However, they probably can exclude people wearing masks. Except on Halloween, anyway ;) And maybe there's a better analogy to using pseudonyms on Facebook.

<comment><USER27> Facebook as a public accomodation? That's an interesting idea. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_accommodations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_accommodations)

Public accomodations in the US are in many states prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, national origin, sex, gender identity, or prohibited from discrimination against breastfeeding in public. That's an interesting angle to attack Facebook's hostility toward Native American names, breastfeeding photos, or queer folks who go by other names.

<comment><USER25> Yes, that's what hit me from thaumasiotes' comment.

But anonymity (or at least, pseudonymity) is the issue here.

It's possible that their policy is different for accounts created via their Tor onion service [https://www.facebookcorewwwi.onion/](https://www.facebookcorewwwi.onion/). But I haven't tested whether they require mobile text authentication, ID, etc. There's a thread on tor-talk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Facebook is a very closed system where it's users have little to no rights. I myself have checked out of most of it and only occasionally use it to chat with a few friends in a private group. I found that once you cut using it you really don't miss much. There are better alternatives in my mind that we should all start shifting towards.

</comment><comment><USER29> Perhaps, since Facebook is so terribly concerned with what we call ourselves, we should take it upon ourselves to be concerned with what Facebook denizens call themselves. I think I'll start inventing names for them. Henceforth, the industry titan formerly known as Mark Zuckerberg will be known has Howie Hughes II.

</comment><comment><USER30> why someone who preaches counter culture even was on facebook?!

this is akin to complaining that some kid was disappointed to be called Bartolomeo instead of Bart while attending the Sunday church bingo. Really?

<comment><USER31> Might as well ask why someone who preaches counterculture is on the internet.

If you want people to hear your message, you need to be able to reach them in the place where they listen. This isn't hard to understand. It's irrelevant that you or I think Facebook is dumb.

<comment><USER9> Oh well, no one is telling you to stop preaching counterculture. Don't act entitled. Counterculture is by definition the thing you'll have people reacting weirdly to, so complaining about it is like complaining the water is wet.

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure what you're trying to say. I think you may have misread my post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> How much more does Facebook have to do before people realize they're a scourge of the Internet and delete their accounts?

</comment><comment><USER33> Facebook also does not allow clergy prefixes such as Fr. (father), Rev. (reverend), Br. (brother), etc. If you are a priest or a bishop, apparently your facebook friends cannot know about it. Or something like that.

What's even more remarkable, some clergy I know have complied and dropped these prefixes because often the choice between not being on Facebook vs losing the "Fr." designation is not a choice if you need to be reachable by people on any medium.

<comment><USER34> If they allowed that, then they'd open themselves up to having to allow pretty much any prefix. Professional titles like Dr aren't even allowed, and those are far less disputable.

[https://www.facebook.com/help/132247486851813](https://www.facebook.com/help/132247486851813)

<comment><USER35> "Real names, but not real titles, those are too real-world for us"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is this intentional? Things like this are frequently done using scripts, or well-meaning support folks that don't know any better. Let's get all the facts before throwing a fit.

</comment><comment><USER37> I like this commenters take in the article:

"Fecesbook was the former MySpace, which was the former friendster, which was the former [keep filling in the blank]

Fecesbook is the next AOL walled garden of junk. They were founded on calling their users dumb f*cks and voyeristcally to spy on girls.

Google, worth an order of magnitude more that FB, is a true internet and technology company founded on algorithms and smart innovation as opposed to being a copy of myspace and walled gardens that anyone can cut and paste.

Good riddens to Fecesbook but I wonder what's next. Better yet, what's going to be the next Google/Alphabet?"

<comment><USER10> Don't worry, google will see that there will no be a next google any time soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Facebook = AOL 2.0 ;)

<comment><USER38> Exactly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> How does Facebook identify what is a real name and what is a pseudonym?

<comment><USER40> Reportedly a mixture of automated systems, user reports, and manual work by facebook employees.

See the 'How Fake Names are Flagged and Targeted' section of this article: [http://lifehacker.com/how-to-use-a-fake-name-on-facebook- wit...](http://lifehacker.com/how-to-use-a-fake-name-on-facebook-without- getting-flag-1637644101)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wonder what FB would do if everyone just changed their name to "John Smith" to comply with a "real names" policy... it's about the most common name in english speaking countries.

<comment><USER42> Facebook would block access to those accounts and ask to upload ID photo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Evey worse, nobody under 50 remembers him.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra I don't think people like him should even be on Facebook.

It's not that you should boycott Facebook; any more than you boycott North Korea. You don't really have business with it and the only take away is lulz.

Yes, real name policy is an unfortunate feature of Facebook, but I struggle naming any of its fortunate features.

<comment><USER44> Déjà il rêvait à une thébaïde raffinée, à un désert confortable, à une arche immobile et tiède où il se réfugierait loin de l'incessant déluge de la sottise humaine. -- Huysmans

<comment><USER45> OT: what brought you to Huysmans?

<comment><USER44> I realized that National Socialism, the iconoclastic world-view of Adolf Hitler, was the doctrine of scientific, racial idealism, actually, a new 'religion' for our times. I saw that I was living in the age of a new world- view. Two thousand years ago there had been a similar rise of a new approach or world-view, called a 'religion'; a world-view which shook and changed the world forever.

I realized that this new and wonderful doctrine of scientific truth applied ruthlessly to man himself, as well as to Nature and inanimate matter, and that it was the only thing which could save man from his own degradation in luxury, self-seeking short-sightedness and racial degeneration. The doctrine of Adolf Hitler was the new 'Christianity' of our times, and Adolf Hitler himself was the new 'savior', sent by inscrutable Providence recurrently to rescue a collapsing humanity.

Hitler's and Germany's 'crucifixion' was all according to the inevitable workings of this unknowable Scenarist. Even the eleven hanged disciples in Nurnburg were not without significance! The most hated and dreaded idea two thousand years ago was Christianity, and the most hated and cursed man on earth was Jesus Christ. His followers were bitterly persecuted and murdered by the 'good', 'sensible' people who could see that anybody in his right mind recognized Rome and the Empire as the solid, substantial reality.

I realized that today's Marxist- Democratic world is another sprawling 'Roman Empire', and today's Nazis the early 'Christians'. What is going on is far more than a battle for political supremacy in the present social and political situation. It is the utter smashing and destruction of a society which has become so rotten that it will tolerate and even love its own Marxist destroyers, just as it hates, despises and fears the slowly-growing Nazi society which will replace it. Such mighty, awesome thoughts come to a man but once in a lifetime, if ever, and when they do, that man changes for all time.

<comment> guard-of-terra "Germany's 'crucifixion'"

Germany did not suffer a thing. Returned to be European powerhouse in a whim.

Losers of WW2 (Japan, Germany) are way more successful than most winners of WW2 (UK, France and especially USSR).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are your thoughts on the Mill CPU? - <AUTHOR> Do you think that it will be a technical and/or commercial success?
Personally I think that they dance around the two issues that have historically plagued VLIWs, static branch prediction/accurate trace scheduling and stochastic memory latency.
What're your thoughts? <comment> j-pb I like the Ideas.

I believe that it can exist in a world dominated by entirely different architectures when I see it build into something.

Maybe with the decline of ever smaller processes and less new fabs being build the current ones become cheap enough to make wildly alternative chip designs viable. We'll see.

</comment><comment><USER2> The Mill CPU is very innovative and I think that it will have the "Mach 3" as promised in one of their videos: 3 times higher IPC. It has also a lot of features that will make it more efficient. OS calls, function calls, function returns, loops are all faster. And the cache is faster since there is no address translation.

So I think the Mill CPU has a high potential. But progress is slow and as far as I understood there is no big investor (yet). For good competition and better consumer proces I would like to see that a non-US investor helps Mill Computing Inc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where does the cache have no address translation? If anything I would expect that a killer for them would be that their caches are more expensive with 9-bit bytes.

And the "Mach 3" strikes me as nothing but a skewed pipeline (albeit maybe with some minor modifications).

<comment><USER2> The cache works with virtual addresses but the memory with real addresse, so when there is a cache miss and memory is accessed, the translation is done. Extra bits per cache byte is nothing new: CPUs already have ECC bits. Explaining Mach 3 is not easy in a few sentences since it is based on a few new concepts so I recommend to see the video to learn about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've watched the video several times and conferred with a few people familiar with Denver. It's quite similar to a skewed pipe, why do you say it's anything different?

<comment><USER2> I am not familiar with skewed pipes, but nonetheless the properties of the belt and the special Mill instructions like _retire_ gives the opportunity for a new class of pipelining not seen before and with a 3 times higher IPC.

<comment><AUTHOR> The belt is indeed interesting, but note that it precludes OoO should they choose to add it at a later time. I'm not entirely optimistic about the belt because basically the same thing exists on the Mali gpu (albeit not publicly documented to the best of my knowledge) and it suffers from saturation issues.

The issue with ilp extraction for VLIW compilers has historically been the difficulty of drawing accurate traces through branches to get sufficient ilp. Nothing the mill has shown so far addresses this.

<comment><USER2> time will tell :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Taming of Tech Criticism - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/taming-tech-criticism <comment><USER2> Highly topical criticism, such as the threat posed by wearable cameras or the revelation du jour from the surveillance apparatus, is difficult to engage because it seems shallow. Many faults seem to be presented like misdemeanors by errant entities given too long a leash, rather than the inevitable consequence of a certain philosophy and lifestyle.

It's shallow but easy to engage with, because that kind of criticism is actionable. You can ban Google Glass from your bar, or loudly demand (and perhaps even receive) substantial legislative change on some issues. But when someone tells you that this is something that started in the early 20th century and you must question the principles that have given you such conveniences as microwaves and mobile phones, not only is that criticism not actionable, it's easy to reject as merely theoretical. It's easier to feel in the right when you argue with someone claiming a century of creeping authority and technocracy, than to deny things that are manifestly true, such as the overreach that is supposedly the most recent result of that century.

But questioning the equation of progress=technology has been going on for a long time, centuries, even millennia, and you may find yourself convinced if you read Bacon, or Burton, or Plato, who said things long ago that we are still saying today. The preface to the Anatomy of Melancholy is particularly insightful and beautiful despite being some 400 years old, and I recommend it to anyone interested in the idea of what ails "modern society" \- it may be the same thing that ailed it in the early 17th century.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's disappointing that this needs to be said out loud, but I really suggest people complaining about the piece read til the end. It's fairly clearly divided into two sections. The first is a straightforward critical review of Carr's latest book which does good work exposing some of the worst examples of Carr's sloppy thinking.

In the second part, Evgeny, a self-proclaimed "technology critic" reflects on and examines his own complicity in the very type of thinking he'd previously been criticising. It's actually incredibly self-aware and insightful, both in the clarity of its self-criticism and how well it contexutalizes its arguments within the history of thought on capitalism, social organization, and technology.

I don't have any analytics on this but I'm fairly certain the reason that so many people have been sharing this recently comes from this section.

</comment><comment><USER4> I found this pretty fascinating (something like a mix of McLuhan, Marx, and Greenberg) and the comments here incredibly inane. There IS a substantial opinion being presented here about the reticence of tech critics to observe the more fundamental socioeconomic issues underlying many problems in tech, and the fact that people are complaining about $.50 words here would provide enough ironic fodder for even the shittiest tech critics.

<comment><USER5> The core complaint of the comment which mentioned "$.50 words" wasn't the existence of the words themselves, but the low information density. It's hard to take your criticisms of inanity and irony seriously when you're clearly misunderstanding what people are saying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't believe how many words were used in this article to convey such little substance. Does the author know anything other than 50 cent words, or is this style supposed to mean it's an intellectual piece?

Not that I'm anti-vocabulary, I was recently reading Denial of Death (Becker) which was very dense, but every sentence was justified in understanding the message.

Speaking of message, what were the key takeaways? Best I could tell it was something vague about the best strategies for attacking people who think technology has something positive to offer society.

<comment><USER5> I think it's funny that the author used such flowery language, yet seems to be of the opinion that "criticism" and "critique" mean "opposition", a common but incorrect belief. Film critics don't oppose films, for example. They discuss the pros and cons of various films, and suggest films that may be appropriate depending on your preferences. I wouldn't have thought a logophile would make that error.

Then again, the author also thinks that 'Silicon Valley' is synonymous with 'technology'. I wonder how many venture-capital backed startups were involved with the automation of the pilot's cockpit that he so mourns...

<comment><USER7> I think he's actually attacking the mourning of cockpit automation, not defending it. He uses it as an example of Carr's romanticization of manually performed work.

<comment><USER5> I don't read the 'pilot' paragraph that way. It leads in with "Carr's basic premise is sound" and the following sentence about the pilots is used to support that first sentence. I do admit that I only read half-way through the article as a whole, though; I found it pretty light on substance and more trouble than it was worth.

On a tangent, regarding the self-driving vehicle, I would venture that the critic referred to already has a... _cough_ "self-driving Carr" _cough_ ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So the _Baffler_ is joining me in full-blooded accelerationism?</comment>


She Warned of 'Peer-To-Peer Misinformation.' Congress Listened - <AUTHOR> https://nytimes.com/2017/11/12/technology/social-media-disinformation.html?_r=0&referer= <comment><USER2> >[...]misinformation on influenced the election.

Misinformation from our own government has been influncing the deaths of millions from Vietnam, to the Civil Rights Movement, to the War on Terror. It also played a role in establishing NSA domestic surveillance, among a host of other problems. The plutocracy spends billions on information warfare across elections. I've yet to see an article headline mainstream media complaining of plutocrats and Wall St bankers like Gary Cohn in charge of US tax policy. This same corporate media has deep and proven links with the CIA. Also, the DNC used deception and subvertion against their constituents' candidate in favor of their own. Then you even have institutionalized crony influences like Al Franken giving his super delegate to Clinton when Bernie had over 60% of his constituents' votes. And Russian social media influence and ads has also been linked to extreme left propaganda such as anti-fa.

Protecting democracy is important, but we can't just only do it when it is convenient.

I'm inspired by Greenwald's articles, along this same line of thinking.[1]

1 - [https://static.theintercept.com/amp/the-deep-state-goes- to-w...](https://static.theintercept.com/amp/the-deep-state-goes-to-war-with- president-elect-using-unverified-claims-as-dems-cheer.html)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that is a load of scatter shot whataboutism. The FA is about peer to peer trolling. Not sure what Al Franken voting for his Senate colleague has to do with that. Hillary won the Democratic primary (popular, delegate + state) without the superdelegates and Bernie campaigned for her in the general. What about that?

<comment><USER4> I'd say that, far from being whataboutism, there's a pretty strong correlation between the sort of post-modern relative view of truth that we've allowed out of our politicians when they're in office, and the techniques they (and third parties on their behalf) have been using in elections.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From Sunday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15683132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15683132)

</comment><comment><USER6> > How a small group of self-made experts came to advise Congress on > disinformation campaigns is a testament to just how long tech companies have > failed to find a solution to the problem.

The news nowadays simply build everything out of minimal fact, and popularize images they want to portrait with minimal reasoning.

This sentence jumps from A to B in such a mentally blind fashion, so much so that I think to describe just how absurd the connection would be an article in the same length of this report.

Did the author have any formal training in news writing at all, or they forgot what they learned...

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice picture there of the three honest men.

Reminds me of this: [https://ecigarettereviewed.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/03/to...](https://ecigarettereviewed.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/03/tobacco-chief-says-cigarettes-arent-addictive.gif)

</comment><comment><USER8> Dupe - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15683132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15683132)</comment>


Shopify and the Power of Platforms - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2019/shopify-and-the-power-of-platforms/ <comment><USER2> > Shopify is giving merchants an opportunity to differentiate themselves while > bearing no risk if they fail.

In addition to this being a great position for Shopify, this is an amazing thing for merchants compared to Amazon's offering; it's the critical difference between "We'll sell your stuff" and "We'll empower you to easily sell your stuff" that leaves power and agency in the hands of individual companies.

Semi-related: For a really insightful conversation about Shopify, personal interactions, and running a good company, I highly recommended The Knowledge Project's interview with the company's CEO, Tobi Lütke: [https://fs.blog/tobi- lutke/](https://fs.blog/tobi-lutke/)

<comment><USER3> What about traffic though? Amazon gives you traffic, user reviews, used confidence.

<comment><USER4> Sure, you have to work to target your own audience and build the trust with them yourself, but it's a tradeoff that benefits you in the long run. Your not beholden to the whims "the platform" as many media companies learned the hard way by putting so much of their focus on Facebooks platform in the past decade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Shopify is just the next closed-source iteration of WordPress and Magento. WordPress has one of the largest platforms and they've taken over (and open- sourced) blogging, content management, learning management systems, and ecommerce. They and Magento are better examples of a platform than Shopify.

In the long-term, "platforms" like Shopify lose because they don't have nearly enough developers. They have ~3000 "apps" listed in their app store: [https://apps.shopify.com/browse/all?pricing=all&requirements...](https://apps.shopify.com/browse/all?pricing=all&requirements=off&sort_by=popular)

WooCommerce has 285 plugins, and WordPress has 54,000+ plugins. Magento has ~5000 plugins.

It would be cool if Stratechery took a look at free/open source on the platform/aggregator spectrum.

<comment><USER6> Here's my hot take (with 2 years of running a #1 trending shopify app + multiple attempt in starting a store)

Shopify DOES NOT help you sell. Period.

Amazon will win in the long run because at the end of the day it's all about if the "platform" can move merchandize or not. Amazon captures top of the funnel all the way down to personalized targeting.

Shopify will never do that. they are just the tool to help you figure out all that yourself. Outsiders / beginners looking in would say Shopify is amazing because the ecosystem and how many "tools" there are to help you sell. but it's all load of horsesh*t. The merchant ultimately is the one responsible to run the ad campaigns, find the customers, run promotional pricing on BFCM.

<comment><USER7> That's a great take that others miss. Marketing is 100X harder than setting up a platform.

<comment><USER8> Devil's advocate: go make a listing on Amazon for a product that already has other competitors selling. How are you going to "market" yours to the top?

<comment><USER9> The answer is to pay even more money to Amazon to place yourself as a "sponsored" listing that goes right to the top of search results. Partly why Amazon is rapidly becoming a dumpster fire of an e-shop. It looks more like the search results page on Google these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems to me like Aggregators vs Platforms is related to Products as Commodities vs Products as Brands.

Aggregators win when products are anonymous commodities. Brands win when products are beloved.

It seems like the trend (for many reasons: over-marketing, dis-satisfaction, dis-trust, a race toward the barely-legal) is toward products as brands: brands which are authentic and relational and participants themselves in the experience (that "get it").

I think this trend will prove to be great for platforms, and bad for aggregators. [https://medium.com/@thecraigmartin/the-greatest-threat-to- re...](https://medium.com/@thecraigmartin/the-greatest-threat-to-retailers- acab2a5f864)

</comment><comment><USER11> Here are some excerpts from my recent conversation with Shopify support:

Q: noticed that sockfancy.com is using shopify? is there a way to set things up like they do: user checks off the options they want and then they go directly to a single-page checkout for their subscription?

A: A subscription is a recurring order. For recurring orders they are using Recurring Orders & Subscription Box App by Bold, and Recurring Orders Enterprise, which is only available to Shopify Plus merchants.

Q: how about the single page checkout?

A: The single page checkout is also a feature of Shopify Plus plan, which starts at $2000 per month. They are also using cashier by Bold.

Q: It looks like those Bold plugins add commission costs of about 3% or more per sale?

A: I don't know the details of that, but again they are available only for Shopify Plus.

Yes it's true that you can set up a generic site cheaply, but for a site that actually works well and has single page checkout, etc. you get into some very big bucks, and also some very large sales commissions.

<comment><USER11> Another point about hosted platforms: if they run slowly, there's not that much you can do to fix it. Here's a GTMetrix report for the aforementioned site: [https://gtmetrix.com/reports/sockfancy.com/gSNvns6s](https://gtmetrix.com/reports/sockfancy.com/gSNvns6s)

Fully Loaded Time - 7.8s

Not sure anyone would think this is an acceptable amount of time to wait for a page to load.

<comment><USER12> It's not like you could also do anything about slow page loads if selling via amazon or wallmart.

<comment><USER11> Yes, but Amazon brings traffic and a customer base to the picture. Shopify doesn't.

Shopify is competing with any other shopping cart software, and for companies concerned with performance there may be a case for hosting your own.

<comment><USER13> > _Shopify is competing with any other shopping cart software_

How many of them have better performance? Might just be a "all of you have to do is be faster than the slowest."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I predict that Shopify will eventually create an Amazon-like system where products from its merchants can be listed in a unified e-commerce frontend site all together.

Not sure if I will be correct about this but I might as well try for a third correct prediction about Shopify:

* Fulfilled by Shopify ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18524131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18524131))

* Shopify POS ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6289827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6289827)).

<comment><USER15> I don't think this makes sense to do. Shopify is great at developing software to help merchants sell online. They have successfully built a relationship with the merchant side of the market...but what is there advantage on the creating a business on the retail customer side? At the moment, Shopify only services the merchants. This being said, it is still possible to build a business on customer side, but the question is...would it make sense?

I'd say it wouldn't make sense to do this. Shopify has no relationship with the retail customer. To build it, they'd have to build traffic from scratch. They'd have to not only build a unique customer brand, but also have to figure out a way to drive traffic, which would likely be through aggressive marketing (Facebook / Google ads), which wouldn't be economical. Secondly, what would Shopify build a brand around for customers?

Amazon's brand is built on the promise of not only providing the cheapest prices, but also the convenience of 2 day shipping (achievable only through scale), amazing customer service (and lenient refunds, again achievable only through scale). This being said, what would Shopify's "brand" promise be?

Curation of their favorite products? Who says that Shopify is qualified to curate?

All of these factors make it hard for me to believe that they'd enter and create a serious business from a unified e-commerce site that'd compete with Amazon.

<comment><USER14> The issue is that Shopify will run out of growth in their current sector. Thus they need to seek out some way to grow their market by redefining it to be bigger than it currently.

One large issue that I see is that Amazon wins 40%+ of ecommerce because shoppers searches start on Amazon. Shopify stores lose by default 40% of the time because of that.

Shopify with its huge number of merchants and pre-populated product listings and its centralized cloud-hosted platform is uniquely positioned to compete here in a way that Magento and WooCommerce can't with their distributed install base.

Shopify has to have an angle that is unique to them for sure. I am not sure what that is in terms of marketing. But they have generally done well in marketing, so I trust they will find an angle.

I think the centralized store will be an adjunct to the main offering, thus it will be an option, but because it leads to more sales opportunities, because it helps to solve the search issue, most will opt-in.

I think that they can also somehow tie in the existing stores, of which there are 700,000 into solving the need to introduce people to the centralized search. Maybe if these stores act as a funnel to Shopify's central storefront, they will get click through advertising revenue. Thus the centralization is in effect another revenue stream for stores that refer traffic to the central store. E.g. "If you do not get a sale yourself, at least get the referral revenue on the eventual sale."

I wouldn't be surprised as well (another prediction) that Shopify wants to further own the customer relationship between their merchants and their merchant's customers so that Shopify can market on Shopify's behalf to these customers. I see suggestions of this from the breakdown of the Shopify- Mailchimp relationship. Shopify is working to maintain control of its relationships with merchant's customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If anyone is interested in a 'Shopify for SaaS' I am in private beta with one, my platform is an open source app store for web applications with developer registration and payouts through Stripe Connect. Developers can code single page apps on the website or import their servers by URL. Users can install the creations for personal or organization use, imported or freely subscribed or paid subscriptions.

My email is in my profile if anyone is interested in participating in my beta.

Example of a web app on my platform -

[https://github.com/userappstore/integration- examples/blob/ma...](https://github.com/userappstore/integration- examples/blob/master/hastebin/hastebin-app-store- subscription/src/www/public/14-second-user-creates-shared-post.png?raw=true)

Case study for how that app, hastebin, was ported -

[https://github.com/userappstore/integration- examples/blob/ma...](https://github.com/userappstore/integration- examples/blob/master/hastebin/hastebin-app-store-subscription.md)

</comment><comment><USER17> It's easy to think platforms are difficult to build. With some of the "platform infrastructure" mentioned, it's very possible to assemble a large majority of a new platform out of large chunks rather than building from scratch. One of the infrastructure components of Shopify missed in the article is Stripe. Stripe makes it possible for them to scale to serve clients in many countries and offer an e-commerce capability. Then there is AWS. I think the article misses some of the depth of platform building capabilities that are out there and available for use.

</comment><comment><USER18> The main differentiator between Amazon and everyone else continues to be Prime. Having people paying $120/year to come back and shop on their site is an advantage that nobody can compete with. Shopify could try and compete by creating a similar membership service, and perhaps they will, but at this point I'm skeptical it would gain much traction. The main reason people use Prime is to buy commodity goods with fast free shipping. In this case I'm defining commodity goods as those where the supplier isn't that important and the alternative is driving to a local store and buying the same thing.

Shopify is almost at the other extreme: the sites that sell goods on its platform must differentiate themselves with niche offerings and consequently, I'd bet that the average Shopify customer makes purchases a lot less frequently than the average Amazon customer. People shop on those sites because the local stores don't have what they are looking for.

Another reason I'm a bit skeptical about the "Shopify is a threat to Amazon" narrative is that at a certain scale it seems that stores would leave Shopify and just manage their own websites and inventory. So Shopify is sort of a business incubator that is extremely valuable when a business' scale is limited. But the few that become huge hits would likely leave to save transaction costs, so Shopify would lose that business.

Totally agree with the Wal-Mart analysis though. They seem to be all over the place. I sometimes wonder why Wal-Mart doesn't at least try to start a subscription service. They would definitely have to undercut Amazon on price and eat losses for a while, but I don't understand the idea of advertising a no-subscription required model when that model clearly works so well for so many other businesses. The most obvious issue is that they are at a huge disadvantage in distribution center build-out, but why couldn't they start regionally in a couple of densely-populated areas and expand from there? Price the service aggressively and maybe give members discounts on groceries or other in-store products, an area where Wal-Mart has a massive advantage over Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER19> As Amazon gobbles up more product categories, there may be less viable categories that potential e-commerce startups might venture into on their own.

This could mean over time, more Shopify merchants would be selling overlapping product categories (the ones Amazon has not yet gobbled up yet).

Which would mean that as a Shopify merchant, you would competing with other Shopify merchants (not Amazon).

How do you differentiate, when the Shopify platform makes the same set of selling advantages available to everyone?

You leave Shopify ...

<comment><USER20> "when the Shopify platform makes the same set of selling advantages available to everyone?"

Shopify doesn't make advantages like branding, brand awareness, marketing, market research, etc available. It simply makes setting up an online store more convenient for people do. Convenience != competitive advantage. You can extend this argument to cloud platforms. AWS, and Azure make setting up and scaling a SaaS easier, but it doesn't give you any secret sauce that you need to succeed, like the ability to know what your customer want.

<comment><USER21> Isn't the point of the article that the Shopify Fulfillment Network will be available to all merchants (that pay for it)?

Most of the Shopify plugins exist to give a store owner an advantage in sales, conversion or marketing. Sure execution counts, external branding counts, but Shopify is a closed platform. You use their plugins and approved apps. And most store owners rely on these plugins to some degree, to help them build brand awareness etc.

Eg: [https://apps.shopify.com/browse/sales-and-conversion- optimiz...](https://apps.shopify.com/browse/sales-and-conversion-optimization)

Shopify levels the playing field which is great. But if everyone selling Bananas is on the same field, using the same plugins, switching fields could be a great way to differentiate and possibly optimize beyond what Shopify can help you with.

<comment><USER22> I'd just like to point out that Shopify isn't a closed platform. Shopify has the concept of a private app that is not in the app store and not approved by Shopify. So a store can either build/hire an agency to build their own unapproved app using a wide variety and growing set of shopify apis. I've made a lot of money doing exactly that.

There also are a number of apps who choose not to be in the app store and not give up 20% of their revenue and instead market on their own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I just want to plug the Stratechery newsletter, which whether you agree with the author's conclusions or not is consistently excellent, and a spur to thinking about our industry,

<comment><USER24> I just took a look at it thanks to this comment and wow, that is some terrific content. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Tobi is like a younger Jeff Bezos :) I binge listened quite a few his podcast interviews [https://lnns.co/aECRtZ2fNn9](https://lnns.co/aECRtZ2fNn9)

<comment><USER26> He's also much generous, and technically adept (he created a bunch of popular early Ruby gems).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's an interesting article, but the most interesting part to me was the Bill Gates Line article the author also wrote. [0] The distinction between a platform and an aggregator was not one that I ever considered. I'm convinced by this article that it's a useful one.

Does anyone know why it is that Shopify's stock has risen by 100% over the last year? I looked it over and couldn't figure out why -- is it the 3PL Fulfillment Network this article mentions?

[0] [https://stratechery.com/2018/the-bill-gates- line/](https://stratechery.com/2018/the-bill-gates-line/)

<comment><USER28> Shopify reported 50% yearly revenue growth which helped the stock price, and gov of Canada/provinces used shopify exclusively for their online marijuana ordering starting last year too. That said their lack of net income is a problem [https://www.fool.ca/2019/05/07/where-will-shopify-tsxshop- st...](https://www.fool.ca/2019/05/07/where-will-shopify-tsxshop-stock-be- in-5-years/) and their hiring process is ridiculous even by modern meme hiring standards meaning it's going to get harder to hire people when they can just work for FAANG which are all opening offices, or already have offices in Canada and don't have the same very long process starting with telling a recruiter 'your life story' for over an hour.

<comment><USER7> On the How I Built This podcast, they mentioned AllBirds uses Shopify as their platform.

I just checked their site, and it looks like it's still the case.

<comment><USER29> They do, but I think they are considering moving off of Shopify. The reality is that shopify has a ridiculous amount of down time, and any high traffic store will actually be losing real revenue as a result. Just scroll their status page, they consistently have several outages a month.

[https://status.shopify.com/](https://status.shopify.com/)

<comment><USER29> Sorry was typing on my phone and didn't clarify. I have a friend who works at Allbirds and told me they are strongly looking at migrating because of the down time issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The main reason I don't use Shopify is the merchant fees. I can do better paying a developer to WooCommerce. and we have a pretty good system for doing all the patches and everything and haven't had any security problems or anything like that. and if I'm not happy with my hosting or with some feature I can just change myself. I don't depend on this other company which has already done a few things that were kind of heavy-handed in my view.

</comment><comment><USER31> I am Shopify app developer and I earn my living from 3 published apps in the Shopify marketplace.

I can answer any question you may have.

<comment><USER32> Thank You.

1\. Do you see the Market for shopify apps growing? Any indications would be helpful from your experience.

2\. Best way to get started on Shopify apps for developers?

<comment><USER31> New stores open every minute but at the same time some others close, if you have a good placement in the marketplace listings then new people use the app and if you can keep them, you will grow a decent monthly revenue.

Shopify is missing many things and the apps are there to fill those gaps, Shopify doesn't replicate the apps functionality to drag them out of the game so yea, there is much space left for new apps.

Shopify has a great resource of information on how to get started here: [https://developers.shopify.com/app- development](https://developers.shopify.com/app-development)

You may find an API library for your preferred language in this list: [https://help.shopify.com/en/api/tools/supported- libraries](https://help.shopify.com/en/api/tools/supported-libraries)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > "To that end, I would argue that for Shopify a high churn rate is just as > much a positive signal as it is a negative one: the easier it is to start an > e-commerce business on the platform, the more failures there will be. And, > at the same time, the greater likelihood there will be of capturing and > supporting successes."

Yes and no. The excessive lowering of the barrier to entry is self defeating. That is, more stores === more noise. Throwing still more at the wall isn't going to increase success. That friction will increase Failure.

<comment><USER34> but Shoppify's model doesn't involve marketing, they leave all that up to the merchants. so shoppify itself isn't directly affected by this.

<comment><USER33> The supply of customers is not endless. It's in Shopify's best interest to optimize the churn to success ratio - not simply have more success stories. We all know the metric. Happy customer tell three people. Unhappy customer tell 10 or more.

That is, as the number of failed store owners grows so does the fiction and reputation debt for the Shopify brand.

<comment><USER35> But is the Shopify brand featured prominently during the shopping experience?

I would assume no, given the article's assertion that Shopify is just a facilitator, which lets the shop's owner shine instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> On my first job ever, when I was an exchange student in Singapore in between 2007-2009, I did API integration for a trade company with Alibaba's APIs or whatever you can call them back then.

You was making a CVS file with product description, putting it on a web server, and directed Alibaba's product feed downloader on it.

Alibaba also had "hosted frontpage" back then. The same thing you get now with a store in *.alibaba.com subdomain. It was actually much more feature rich back then. They were allowing upload of more or less fully featured HTML pages, but around 2010 they discontinued both.

If Alibaba guys ever knew what a gold mine they were sitting on all that time...

</comment><comment><USER37> I love this tweet from Tobi :

"I'd rather buy @amazon in 2029"

[https://mobile.twitter.com/tobi/status/1068282069397123072](https://mobile.twitter.com/tobi/status/1068282069397123072)

</comment><comment><USER38> Amazon is a good cash business, but hard to build a brand on.

Shopify is easier to build a brand on, but harder to make actual money on initially.

If Shopify turned us off tomorrow (they can), we'd be able to continue. If Amazon did, it's game over on that platform.

</comment><comment><USER39> _This is ultimately the most important distinction between platforms and Aggregators: platforms are powerful because they facilitate a relationship between 3rd-party suppliers and end users; Aggregators, on the other hand, intermediate and control it._

Would YouTube count as an Aggregator? Are they becoming less about the task to "facilitate a relationship between 3rd-party suppliers and end users" and more about seeking to "intermediate and control?"

</comment><comment><USER40> Hi,

Considering about working on an open source with turnkey SaaS hosting modern alternative. Drawback: MVP is quite big. Would you see such a need, or is everyone happy with Shopify?

Some questions, if you can spare a few minutes:

What are top 3-5 issues with the platform that you're currently using?

What do you like most about the current platform?

What would be the must-haves of another store platform in order for you to switch to it?

Appreciate your insights!

<comment><USER41> I don't really understand who an "open source turnkey ecommerce solution" serves.

The last thing you need when trying to sell product is to now deal with running software and a server. Kinda reminds me of when I thought I could build a webshop for my father with Rails and Stripe. Thank god I realized sooner than later that there's basically zero upside to running this software and I switched my father to Shopify where he's happily been since.

I think this kind of solution only seems good to HN nerds who don't realize what Shopify brings to the table, or that technology is somehow the hardest part of running a webshop. It seems naive.

Since you're asking these questions, it sounds like you don't have much domain experience. I encourage you to create a simple Shopify shop and try selling something, if only to see what it gives you out of the box that your turnkey solution can't. That would be essential experience to have before you even make your initial commit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" We'll empower you to easily sell your stuff" that leaves power and agency in the hands of individual companies._

WordPress + WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Magento already do that. Drop $10 to $20/month on hosting on DigitalOcean, install Wordpress, install WooCommerce, buy a cheap theme, buy whatever extra plugins you need, setup your payment system (PayPal and Stripe are supported), and you're off to the races.

And it's better than that, there's people with years and years of experience in modifying and creating plugins and themes so once you have enough $$$ from the basic setup, re-invest into the business and get better developer support for all the GPL'd plugins and themes you're using.

<comment><USER42> "Just combine these _6_ things and it's just as easy as a single tool that does it all for you."

Is this satire?

<comment><USER43> No, it's the standard response from some open source people for any proprietary end-to-end solution. The most famous example was this response to the launch of Dropbox:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224)

<comment><USER44> _some open source people_

Hey now, stop with the name-calling :P I work on and use proprietary end to end solutions for ecommerce (but not Shopify).

Woocommerce wins for me because it lowers development costs and costs are lower overall. My perspective is definitely someone who has developed ecommerce sites, not solely as a non-technical user, and for me it's very advantageous to lower costs by using and modifying GPL'd plugins and themes.

I guess Shopify has 4000 employees and enough cash and enough direction to come out of box with a good UX and good defaults and that's good enough for nontechnical users.

<comment><USER45> I'm a technical user, and good UX and good defaults are something I often spend money on.

<comment><USER46> I'm a technical user, and if I needed to sell goods online I'd use Shopify. It's precisely _because_ I'm a technical user: I know all the things you you have to worry about, and I'd rather not. There surely a scale where it makes sense to roll your own e-commerce platform, but it's substantially higher than people seem to think.

<comment><USER45> Yup. I've taken some MBA classes, and one (in retrospect obvious) thing I latched onto is the idea of opportunity cost: you can never do everything you are capable of doing, and each thing you do comes at the expense of something else. So, focus on doing the things that (depending on your goal) are most fulfilling and/or most profitable.

Amusingly, grasping that concept was a big factor in my decision to put my MBA degree on hold...

<comment><USER47> There is one other reason to do things: you cannot trust anyone else to do it. Fullfilling and/or profitable are hopefully the only ones that apply, but sometimes you have to do something because the risk is too high...

<comment><USER46> I'm not sure that applies to the Shopify argument here, but maybe you didn't intend it to.

<comment><USER47> Hopefully - for Shopifys sake - it doesn't apply.

An example of how it could apply is if shopify were to "go down" often thus driving your customers to your competitors that roll their own solution that has good uptime.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stop the .NET GC Running with TryStartNoGCRegion() - <AUTHOR> http://mattwarren.org/2016/08/16/Preventing-dotNET-Garbage-Collections-with-the-TryStartNoGCRegion-API/ <comment><USER2> "Sever mode" What is that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for spotting that, it's now fixed

<comment><USER2> I'm the last person who should be correcting someone's spelling. Great Article BTW.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers, glad you liked it</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Licence stupidity in 2011. - <AUTHOR> http://www.progsoc.org/~wildfire/aum/2011/07/25#licence-stupidity

<comment><USER2> Software licensing in general has always been problematic because people with little idea of how the process works but a great deal of legal ego make statements.</comment>


How to Seed data and create objects easily in Scala - <AUTHOR> http://www.blogeek.com.ar/?p=197

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you think abut thiss?</comment>


Where to move post SOPA? - <AUTHOR>

Assuming that SOPA goes through with no/minimal changes, what would be the best country to move to in order to continue working in internet startups? <comment><USER2> Sealand? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand> (Be sure to research it before SOPA passes)</comment>


The Personal MBA (DIY MBA) - <AUTHOR> http://joshkaufman.net/personalmba/ <comment><USER2> Nice to see Poor Charlie's Almanack on there, I was wondering how many people bother to order it. I went to the Huntington Library on Friday and was reminded to pick the book up there from a link I saw on News.YC which you should read to get a great taste of Charlie Munger:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=9364></comment>


Show HN: Bricklayer.js – Lightweight Cascading Grid Layout Framework - <AUTHOR> http://bricklayer.js.org/ <comment><USER2> Loved the gradient example!

</comment><comment><USER3> Was just looking for something like this, thank you!</comment>


Rapportive (YC S10) adds Facebook: like, comment, and add friends from Gmail - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/02/02/rapportive-facebook-integration/

<comment><USER2> Every time I'm asked to connect a service to Rapportive I'm extremely impressed by how slick, complete, wholesome and reliable the experience is. I know it's not rocket science, but it is hard to make this simple interaction work with zero drama as a plug-in for many different types of users with different browsers. Well done guys!

</comment><comment><USER3> Rapportive is one great tool that's iterating pretty quickly! Looks like someone is putting the VC/angel money to great use. It's the one reason that I don't use Sparrow instead of GMail.

However, the main question again: how will they earn money?

<comment><USER4> It's a simple formula: build a product that people love, have a basic free version, charge users money for advanced features. The product you see now will most likely stay free forever, but we are planning additional premium features based on what our users are asking for.

You can see our analysis of freemium business models on the Rapportive blog: <http://blog.rapportive.com/is-freemium-right-for-you>

Edit: looks like rahulvohra and I had a little race condition here ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> The perils of working on different sides of the Atlantic…

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am so proud to be an angel investor in Rapportive... and that they presented at Open Angel Forum.

These guys are relentless and I predict they will a huge, huge success in the coming years.

Rapportive is a HUGE part of my daily activity online.

<comment><USER6> I use Rapportive all day, every day. It's now an automatic reflex to look in the Rapportive margin when I'm working on email.

The new Facebook integration will be awesome -- may actually get me to use Facebook more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just tried it. It sounded like a very neat idea.

But it didn't really worked. It wasn't able to connect a single contact with its Facebook profile. In one case I checked more details: It seems that he used another mail address in Facebook than I got from him via GMail. So in GMail, I added this other mail adress to the contact in hope that Rapportive could now connect it. But it still couldn't -- it only seemed to check the mail address of the mail but not the other possible addresses of this contact.

What I always missed was some way to manually connect it (in a way of course that it would remind/save that).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for giving Rapportive a go! If you can, please stick with it: the results will get better over the next 1-2 days. (We know we've got lots of work to do on first user experience, and we're addressing that.)

We're also building features specifically to help spot email addresses belonging to the same people, which would have really helped in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A way to manage FB from my chosen interface -- another stellar idea from Rapportive. But before pushing the button I would like to know, if, as with most things FB,there is a compromise of my privacy for the convenience? Indicating the level to which FB and Gmail will share my contacts would be helpful to have in the introductory information.It sounds like they will be matched together?

I want to be very selective. Ideally all the client FB accounts I manage could be tabbed through via Rapportive without any chance of the contacts getting comingled.

Would be happy to pay for such business conveniences in a freemium model.

</comment><comment><USER8> Amazing, Rapportive has made an alliance between FB and Google. Before I try it out, I would like to know how accessible my Gmail contacts become to FB, because Gmail has a different set of contacts than my FB account. Any plans to be able to post to FB pages? I wish Rapportive was on Kickstarter, where I can afford to be an angel :)

<comment><AUTHOR> There's been a bit of discussion about this on our blog: <http://blog.rapportive.com/40551428>

Does that help?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great addition. Pretty seamless how you can comment right from the Rapportive sidebar on people's FB postings.

</comment><comment><USER10> Glad to be a Rapportive Angel Investor too :-)

The linkedin integration was already Great! @KimaVentures

</comment><comment><USER11> Any plans, or existing ways for Rapportive to support Salesforce.com?</comment>


Motorola Has Sold Less than 50,000 Xooms - <AUTHOR> http://www.jeffreytalajic.com/2011/04/motorola-has-sold-less-than-50000-xooms/

<comment><USER2> There is an important flaw with this analysis. It is using Google's worldwide platform statistics with US-only numbers. Worldwide Android use is estimated at about 50 million, giving an estimate for Xooms sold closer to 100,000.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is the Xoom available in other territories? I thought it was currently US only (although I believe it comes out in Canada today).</comment></comment>


My Lisp Experiences and the Development of GNU Emacs (2002) - <AUTHOR> https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.en.html <comment><USER2> One of the previous discussions on this topic.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8433945](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8433945)

</comment><comment><USER3> > Our idea was that if each extensible application supported Scheme, you could > write an implementation of TCL or Python or Perl in Scheme that translates > that program into Scheme.

A perl-to-scheme transpiler would be quite an accomplishment!

</comment><comment><USER4> Just say yes to RMS.</comment>


Docker Bench for Security - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/diogomonica/docker-bench-security <comment> vezzy-fnord Certainly good work automating a category of base tests like this, though I notice some odd assumptions being made like having more than 5 ports open at all being an inherent warning, tests that assume presence of systemd and auditd (the audit trail can be useful, though from what I know many distros configure it poorly out of the box, if at all), aufs being marked as a warning (over what - Device-mapper? UnionFS? How is it a security consideration?) and the LXC execution driver being a warning.

EDIT: Apparently the CIS paper justifies marking aufs due to its age and gradual dropping of mainstream support. >5 ports isn't rationalized. LXC driver again legacy reasons in favor of libcontainer (though why do I seem to recall libcontainer had pluggable backends, LXC included... hm...)

<comment><USER2> AUFS can create shared locks between systems which use it. For example, spinning up multiple of the same docker container on AUFS can create a global (to those containers) mutex which serializes process flow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why is this distributed as a docker container?

Also, their README asks sers to pull their container from index (with no guarantee that it corresponds to the repo and, last I've checked, no real integrity guarantees stronger than "it's coming over ssl from docker.org") and then run it while giving it write access to /etc and command access to the docker daemon. This seems tome to be a very insecure way of starting a process that's not supposed to alter anything.

<comment><USER4> Because that's their kool-aid.

<comment><USER5> I can't believe this didn't occur to me earlier, but when you think about it, docker containers are like ... "aaS"-aaS!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looking at purely just output... this is useful for visual aid, but hard to use it for fully automated health check because I would have to parse the output. This is what made sqlmap hard in my previous work which I was trying to automate these awesome tools together. If I have time I might hack some JSON together...

<comment> vezzy-fnord sqlmap is actually quite malleable when it comes to displaying output through the verbosity switches (showing full HTTP req/resps), along with its optional writing data to one of CSV, HTML or sqlite.</comment></comment>


Your Newfangled Media Algorithms are Bullshit - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/ladybits-on-medium/your-newfangled-media-algorithms-are-bullshit-493c9597bb55

<comment><AUTHOR> Disclosure: The writer is a friend of mine.

That being said, she is one of the few science/technology writers whose articles I read from beginning to end, because the fascinate and engage me.</comment>