A very clever idea to enforce copyright with minimal lawsuits. - <AUTHOR> http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/targeted-copyright-enforcement-deterring-many-users-few-lawsuits#

<comment><USER3> _Eventually, all of the clueless players will learn not to cheat._

It may actually take forever to get through the "clueless", slower than new ones are being born.

Most people do not act rationally and do not compute probabilities in their head - they simply do what others do and expect to get the outcome in the same ballpark. An infringer will stop infringing if three of the people he knows personally are caught and punished, feeling that this sort of stuff is probably dangerous. That's the only way probability theory figures into normal people's lifes - through numbers.

More effective punishment strategy would be to punish someone on TV - <USER2> popular character on TV screen tends to be "one of the people I feel close to" so a punishment of such person will have effect.

Of course another strategy is to make it convenient to comply - I started buying my music from online stores after all the DRM stuff was taken down. When people put work into making my life better I don't mind paying for that, unless they make it difficult.

</comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of the paradox of the unexpected hanging:

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

Also, I believe research has shown that the size of a fine has relatively little effect, and it is the perception of the certainty of being caught that is most effective as a deterrent.

I agree with the others, people won't care, they'll do it anyway and feel secrure that they won't get caught. The few who do will have no effect on the vast majority.

Mass behavior isn't rational.

<comment><USER5> > Also, I believe research has shown that the size of a fine has relatively > little effect, and it is the perception of the certainty of being caught > that is most effective as a deterrent.

The original paper does note that the principle is limited to circumstances where catching is easy.

What the paper _doesn't_ account for, though, is _response_ : which allows a straightforward general counter-strategy:

The 'resistance' place a dummy wherever the 'police-state' target next -- to deceive or take the hit harmlessly. This simply turns the attack against itself: The police-state's strategy relies on: 1. announcing their next target; and 2. keeping that promise. The resistance exploits and completely negates that. To defeat that counter, the attack must disable itself.

The critical assumption behind the police-state's strategy is that the resistance is powerless, that they have no ability to respond. But there is enough evidence this would be foolish in the internet world. If the police- state has technical means to find targets, the resistance has technical means to fool or dodge them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> People have (severely) bounded rationality and don't continue the induction to its logical conclusion.

As proof simply see the 'guess 2/3rds of the average' game (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guess_2/3_of_the_average>).

As a quick summary: Put a bunch of people in a room and tell them to each guess a number from 0 to 100 - and whoever guesses 2/3rds of the average of everyone's number 'wins.'

Logically, no one should guess above 66 (since 2/3rds the average can't exceed 66 even if everyone guesses 100). Then, no one should guess above 44 since 2/3rd the average can't exceed 44 even if everyone guesses 66. Continue on, and the only logical move is for everyone to guess 0.

But, in real life, the winning guess is almost always around 20 (which implies most people only carry on the induction for 3 or 4 steps).

<comment><USER7> Your example proves nothing about the boundedness of the rationality of (most) humans. It tells you something about what people _expect_ about other people: others are not expected to carry an argument to its logical conclusion. However, taking that knowledge, or educated guess, into account, makes '10' or '20' a fully rational guess, based on lack of complete data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This won't "enforce copyright", it will just push the sharing even farther underground. Compare Bittorrent today (with distributed trackers and every byte encrypted) with Napster from the beginning of the file sharing era.

The good news is that if you are planning terrorist attacks (via Skype) or distributing child porn (via Tor or Freenet), your chances of being caught are much, much lower than they were in the late nineties. Back then, the only people that needed the strong protection provided by modern file-sharing protocols were people trying to do things that most people would consider illegal. But now, you get that when you call your Mom on Skype or when you are downloading the latest linux ISO -- meaning that the "real criminals" are just noise now. There's nothing suspicious about having no cleartext coming out of your 'net connection anymore.

Suing people for sharing music makes the job of the terrorists much easier. (Can I have my Senate seat now? I'm from Illinois and am willing to pay for it with the money I've saved from downloading _The Simpsons_ every week instead of buying the DVDs.)

Anyway, let's say we implement the system the article describes. Judgements of millions will be issued against people without that money. They won't pay. It will go to collections. They still won't pay. (You can't get blood from a stone.) They will be arrested and have another trial (at my/the state's expense) be sentenced to prison. Except wait, there is no room in the prisons, even for violent criminals. So society will have to build more prisons, at great expense, and pay to house these deadbeat file-sharers. Or, in the real world, they won't be sentenced to prison, and will do community service or something. They won't show up for that, and nobody will be care, because it costs society a lot of money to punish these people. Oh, and there's that whole Constitution thing too.

The "deadbeats" might also take a hit on their credit score, but there is nothing anyone wants to buy with credit anymore, so this is not much of a deterrent. Oh no, you mean I can't get a loan on a house that will decrease in value over the 30 years I live in it? OH NOES.

Basically, there is no way the Content Creators can win by playing the "punish the criminals" game. Society is already tired of it, and the strategy isn't even remotely close to being effective yet.

No, they will just have to adapt. Sites like Hulu probably took a bigger bite out of piracy than the threat of punishment ever will.

<comment><USER9> >This won't "enforce copyright", it will just push the sharing even farther underground.

That amounts to reducing the number of pirates to a manageable level. The MPAA/RIAA can live with piracy by the members of Slashdot, but if Aunt Tillie gets into it they're screwed.

> Judgements of millions will be issued against people without that money. > They won't pay.

If you get a judgement against you, depending on what state you live in your bank account can be frozen or your wages can be garnished. Maybe worse in some states. They don't have to collect millions to hurt you.

>They will be arrested and have another trial (at my/the state's expense) be sentenced to prison.

Charles Dickens, is that you? You don't go to prison for non-payment of debt, unless it's child support or taxes.

>The "deadbeats" might also take a hit on their credit score, but there is nothing anyone wants to buy with credit anymore, so this is not much of a deterrent. Oh no, you mean I can't get a loan on a house that will decrease in value over the 30 years I live in it?

That's a hell of an overstatement, and a hell of an extrapolation from a bursting housing bubble that will be forgotten by most people in 30 years.

<comment><USER8> _You don't go to prison for non-payment of debt, unless it's child support or taxes._

You do go to prison when you ignore a court order, however.

Just sayin', it is going to be too costly to society to deter people from committing piracy this way. You may be able to deter businesses (there is no Web 2.0 for-pay piracy app yet), but not individuals.

The best way to deter people from piracy is to listen to them and give them what they want. People _want_ to pay $1 for a high-definition DRM-free download of that just-released movie. The problem is, the industry won't let them pay, so they have to steal instead. It would be hilarious if so many lives weren't being ruined by lawsuits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This idea assumes a higher level of knowledge in participants than the real world can provide. Even with an absolute media blitz, there will be millions of people who don't know about the 8:00PM EST file sharing apocalypse. Even with persistent hammering of the point, repeated lawsuits, etc. it would take months and millions of dollars worth of lawsuits for every file sharer to know about and understand the rules of the game.

People will not only not know the rules of the game, they won't even know they're playing.

<comment><USER11> The numbers are just too massive to matter.

Forget something complicated like IP address. Lets go with something simple like east coast to west coast. If only 1,000 people can be sued I'll actually think I'm protected from being sued since I live on the west coast. I'd be willing to bet that there are 1,000 people between me and the Atlantic Ocean still willing to cheat.

This is a _great_ concept but it seems to only be effective on a much smaller scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It brings to mind the rationality taboo puzzle you get on one of your CS Algorithms assignments. You know, the one whre all the tribesmen with blue birthmarks commit ritual suicide or cuckolded wives kill their adulterer husbands, all because an outsider came in and said something that all of them knew.

Of course, the puzzle has some hidden requirements without which the whole logical arguement falls apart - Everyone is rational, everyone knows that everyone is rational, everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone is rational (I think this much meta is required...), and everyone has perfect information except to that one blind spot as specified by the puzzle (and of course, people know that people know that everyone has all that information...).

It's a carefully balanced house of cards that blows apart quite easily, when people are not rational, or knowledge is incomplete.

Same problem will apply here. Although, it's possible that lack of knowledge and irrationality could actually help a little bit.

</comment><comment><USER13> Bullshit.

Copyright has a lot of problems and the lawsuits aren't doing anything, no matter HOW you decide who to sue.

Professional copyright infringement (e.g. companies using pirated software) is easy to spot and easy to persecute. It's also a serious issue because you're really talking about lost sales here, not just hypothetical sales.

Private copyright infringement (e.g. mom downloading some MP3s) is hard to spot and even harder to persecute. You can't talk about lost sales because the amount pirated is in no relation to the amount that could have been sold -- if you've got a 80/20 distribution between pirated and sold, it's absurd to claim 80% lost sales.

If you're talking about real profit losses for the actual producer (i.e. the artist, developer or whatever), private copyright infringement is negligible.

In fact, the low cost of private copyright infringement could be soothed even more if the producers would allow for easy ways of donation (PayPal, whatever): in many cases the "lost sales" were lost because the would-be- customer wouldn't have paid the amount asked or was simply not willing to take the risk of paying for something before knowing they like it.

Whether you like it or not, private copyright infringement is here to stay (and has been here ever since the invention of copyright law). You can't stop it. You only have the choice between accepting it as a fact of life and trying to work with it (viral marketing, commercial support for Free software, live concerts, etc etc), or ignoring the social costs of your actions and trying to punish all the "evildoers" one-by-one making examples of the students and grandmas you actually manage to draw into courtrooms.

Publishing companies are not going to die over this, but their role will deflate back into what it had been before the record industry / Hollywood boom: as a service provider to the real artists, offering to do the marketing for them, arrange concerts and publish their work in physical form. It's only natural for RIAA and MPAA to try and tear down civil rights in their dying throes, but that doesn't make it any more ethical, no matter what the legal situation says (which they have nicely shaped according to their interests in the past, I might add).

Vive la révolution!

</comment><comment><USER14> I think a more effective "alphabet" would be amount downloaded by that IP. Start with the people who download the most first and then publicly announce what the limit was each week. The people who download the most are the most likely to be aware of this scheme so you mitigate against the problem of ignorant users.

Also, in this scheme, the inability to track every download is a virtue, not a vice. Say they announced that the limit last week was 600Gb and you downloaded 500Gb last month. you decide to download 250Gb this month just to be safe but of the 500Gb you downloaded, they only tracked 300Gb so you're bringing the limit lower for next month even though you're nowhere near the boundary case.

</comment><comment><USER15> This seems nice game theory but I don't see it practically unforcable for copyright laws.

\- Punishment is not automatic: people are innocent unless proven otherwise (spoofed ip address, pirated wifi network, etc...).

\- People are finding and adopting more and more sophisticated ways not get caught (like the transition from napster to emule/bittorrent).

\- Majors are powerful, but adding more pressure requires the right propaganda to legitimate their action, imho this would be percieved as too autocratic, arbitrary, unfair.

<comment><USER16> Frankly, being sued at all is a pretty big punishment. It's not fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It works okay with speeding -- in places where police consistently pull over the leading car in a pack of speeders, I tend to slow down when I'm in front.

I don't think it'd work as well in this situation. It would have to be immediately obvious to everyone what the rules were, whether someone had already been caught that day, and if they were about to become the first in line. Given the casual and distributed nature of the crime in question, I think that'd be difficult.

</comment><comment><USER18> This strikes me as an idea that is useful and interesting as a sociological theory, but in practice it's pretty pointless. Imagine the terrible press that the RIAA would get if they announced that they would start suing based on such ridiculous criteria as IP addresses or time of day. The RIAA is already seen by many to randomly submit lawsuits en masse, and a tactic like this wouldn't exactly add credibility to their effort.

</comment><comment><USER19> Some people mentioned defense funds.

Defense funds could be a business model in itself, if RIAA/MPAA/??AA just got the clue. They could establish their own defense fund and channel the money to themselves.

??AA establishes a defense fund: pay a $5 insurance a month and you get the right to download and share any (of their) content as much as you like as long as you're listed. Or maybe you won't get the right but you'll be guaranteed to not sued.

Then they proceed to sue non-listed downloaders and sharers in as large numbers as it is required to deter people from getting listed and as it doesn't consume too much money. Maybe they want to use Felten's ordering system, too.

Yes, some people would still not pay, some people would still be sued, but they would make lots of money pretty much "for free" because people would pay to avoid the potential hassle.

Ideally the online sharing culture would florish in open and that would bring more innovations to the field. Yet I'd like to see the world without copyright.

</comment><comment><USER20> This strikes me as an (at least theoretically) smart way to solve a very stupid problem.

There is an unspoken assumption in this article that piracy is actually a _crime_.

Well, if it is indeed a crime then the only victims are various MAFIAA execs, and the lawyers they supply.

And this article writer of course, who is almost assuredly being paid to write this dreck.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is fatally flawed, there is such a thing as a defense fund. All the 'cheaters' could pledge to each other to help out in case of a fine.

<comment><USER22> Yeah. That's what's going to happen. Uh-huh.

Let's modify the scheme just a tiny little bit:

"We're going to sue the first 1000 people we see violating our copyrights starting at 8:00, and we're not going to count people who we find during discovery accepted money from a 'defense fund'".

I'm pretty sure that leaves 99.999% of the original target population to sue.

<comment><USER21> [http://freeculturenews.com/2009/01/27/jammie-thomas- receives...](http://freeculturenews.com/2009/01/27/jammie-thomas- receives-3000-from-fsfs-expert-witness-defence-fund/)

<comment><USER22> I forgot if that case ever resolved itself fully, but, isn't $3000 like less than 1% of what she wound up liable for?

<comment><USER21> Yes, but that wasn't the point, defense funds exist, they're being used, and it won't take much to institutionalize them where people will simply set them up pre-emptively.

Such indemnification schemes can be made illegal by the authorities though.

It's a reverse lottery, if you play and you end up losing then the pot covers your losses.

<comment><USER22> What I said was, even if defense funds actually happened --- and the only example you have is a large organization defraying a tiny fraction of the legal costs for a hugely publicized case --- they wouldn't interfere with this recovery strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If the cheaters can collude in an enforceable way, they'll each pay a small amount to A to cheat, giving A slightly more than $10, making A happy to take the enforcement hit. The cartel of cheaters still earns a net $16 by cheating.

<comment><USER3> I think the cartel would be ruled illegal and shut down. Otherwise a business would have stepped up already to provide insurance coverage.

<comment><USER24> Enforcing the anit-collusion laws runs into exactly the same problem as enforcing the original anti-copyright laws, so that's not really a solution.

<comment><USER25> Colluders would be a subset of copyright infringers. Also, there wouldn't be that many insurance companies willing to do outlawed business, so it wouldn't be a problem to take a significant part of them to court.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sueing your customers and potential customers in proportion to their devotion will never be clever and only sustainable by virtue of abhorrent damages and societal control.

How about introducing a blackmailers charter for music fans ? Or just F __ __ __shoot them ? Federal PYITA Jail ? Racial profiling. Prohibition.

I listen to more music than I own. Copying is now free. Humanity is universally enriched. Make money from a joyful future.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is fundamentally flawed, because the sources for infringing content are many. Piracy doesn't line up for the counting. Not even all torrents could be watched, let alone all protocols, and darknets abound. This would only create an arms race of more darknets and new protocols.

</comment><comment><USER28> this feels ethically wrong, though i can't exactly state why. calling out who you're going to punish doesn't feel right, though the fact that it is a prioritization not a direct singling-out makes it a little bit better.

what if the enforcer said "i'll punish the person with the darkest skin tone"?

<comment><USER25> Ethical or not, it is certainly a PR disaster to be perceived as picking victims arbitrarily, almost playfully.

<comment><USER22> They're not "victims". They're "defendants".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> this assumes the players have full awareness and are mostly rational.</comment>


Show HN: Cli tool to manage multiple Vagrant boxes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MunGell/vgm <comment><USER2> Sounds great, but then I saw:

        $ npm install -g vgm

Nope. Nope nope nope.

Stop using nodejs to write simple shell tools, particularly when it's just a wrapper for another tool and could be done in a couple of dozen lines of shell script, with no dependencies.</comment>


Show HN: Textter, Live letter-by-letter messaging for iOS - <AUTHOR> http://textter.com/ <comment><USER2> This both a technically cool project and something that might do well in the market, but looking for a patent on something that existed on non-mobile for decades seems like it might be a waste of lawyer fees. Will that hold up to patent office scrutiny -- I actually hope not.

Putting that aside, I think this is really nifty. Your marketing really should target the fact that people can respond before you've finished typing. That can probably save 50% of keystrokes in a lot of cases, which gives your product a concrete leg up over others.

Nice launch, good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! I will not comment on the patenting process, suffice it to say I understand your point. I am working on the marketing angle as well, and will definitely pursue keying on the immediate response.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Your site calls it "The World's First Live Messaging System" and says it "is changing the way we send messages for the first time in a staggering 21 years" \- but what about the "talk" command on Unix systems since at least 1983?

<comment><USER4> ICQ, which was much more recent, was designed for cross-host large scale, and is one of the key brands in this market that people starting such a product should have intimate knowledge of, also had this feature (though it was removed, I believe, while merging with AOL).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This might be useful for some situations, but I won't use it. I often choose to communicate by text specifically because it means that I can compose a message, review, edit, and then send it without someone watching every part of that process.

How many times have you written something, and then decided not to send it in favor of something better suited for the situation (or even nothing at all) ?

</comment><comment><USER6> Wasn't it a big thing to see the other person type their e-mail when Google Wave (remember wave?) was first announced? And wasn't one of the things that people did not particularly like about Google Wave? I'm not sure, it was a long time ago.

I think the technology behind this is probably pretty cool, but I don't wan't anybody seeing how big a mess I make when I type. I'm a terrible typist.

[I already edited this post twice, I'm glad nobody got to see me do type this live]

<comment><USER7> I thought, it was pretty hilarious of Google Wave to have that "live chat" function. Maybe, it needed some kind of a "live editing" period after which you could not just edit/delete your message. But it's hard to say as it was not a big success. I wonder, what's the influence on bandwidth used on "live chat".

P.S. I miss Google Wave occasionally :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not trying to be negative here, the app looks cool, but "The World's First Live Messaging System" \- no its not.

And patent pending? I remember ICQ, there have been other services mentioned, and I'm sure 100's if not 1000's of other applications in the past have done this so called 'live messaging'... so good luck with the patent ;)

There is even a wikipedia page on it [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real- time_text](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_text)

<comment><USER9> I hope that they aren't seriously trying to patent this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _98% of Text Messages are read within minutes of receipt, which means there is a need for texting in real-time._

Not so sure about that. 98% of text message being read within minutes of receipt suggests that the existing system works just fine, to me. The page doesn't really ever seem to address why I would want this.

A less relevant aside:

 _50% of American Teens send 50 text messages or more per day_

Not sure why this is on the home page and not the investors page. Why do I, prospective user, care?

<comment><USER11> I'm just blown away at that second statistic. 50% of teens sending 50+ messages a day? That's excessive.

<comment><USER12> A habit I've gotten into since using fb messages, Viber/WhatsApp/Telegram is sending lots of messages with less words. So instead of one long text I might send 4-5 short ones. That will get you to 50 messages easy if you're texting a lot of friends.

<comment><USER11> I guess group messages would make the most sense with this stat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Your "what textter's are saying" has an issue. The `hover` pseudo-selector doesn't apply when on a child element. As a result, that section turns green when hovering over the containing div but not when hovering over the section title, for example.

You'll need JS to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish there. You've already got jQuery on the page so you may as well use the `.hover` method to toggle a `hover` class on the div and replace the pseudo-selector in your CSS with that class.

Something like,

        $('#u3397').hover(function () {
          $(this).addClass('hover');
        }, function () {
          $(this).removeClass('hover');
        });

Also, minor point but I believe that shouldn't have an apostrophe. That said, grammar has never been my strong-suit so might want to double-check on that.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right on the grammar. Thanks for the input, and for reading through the whole page! Thanks for the .hover tip as well ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This brings back memories of ICQ and it's built in live chat thing

<comment><USER15> I was just about to ask if anyone else had ICQ flashbacks. Nice to see I'm not the only one :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I so often have to edit messages before sending I'm not sure I see value in this-- but I'm also becoming vastly more lame by the day. There's a good chance I don't get it.

It also seems like it might be problematic to go through a history of messages as replies may be incomplete due to temporal context which I personally find hard to remember when just reading plain text.

</comment><comment><USER17> When I started college (in 2000) my dad and I used to communicate using this method via ICQ. It's strange but he still pines for it.

I do see the appeal. There's something very informal and personal about it.

I think the problem nowadays is that people are so used to multitasking they have ingrained habits to just switch out to another task while waiting for a reply.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think this is great and if the overhead is low it's a great solution (not that text takes much overhead). The issue I have is that I've actually typed out a text then deleted it because I thought twice about sending that message. Not sure where a situation would arise where this type of service would be of value.

</comment><comment><USER19> I would not ever use this personally. I prefer to always type and edit something ahead of time. That's the advantage of typing in the first place. I get to flesh out and edit my thought into a piece of writing, something that truly says what I intend, not the first thing that comes to my mind.

</comment><comment><USER20> The idea is not new but could be a cool product. I think the problem is there is no single powerful use case shown in the website why people should give-up editorship. The flaw is that if people really in urgent wanting to communicate in real-time, they would probably use phone call directly.

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit Other non-mobile IM clients had this. I'm not sure which ones but I recall using one. It freaked me out when I got an answer for a question I had not finished typing. I didn't like that feature then and I won't like it now. I edit too much to have someone watch me as I type.

</comment><comment><USER21> I like it. But I would never use it for the same reasons many others have mentioned - I'm self-conscious and need to edit before I send. I could see this working well with a mechanism like Snapchat's new messaging feature. Messages self-destruct unless purposefully saved.

</comment><comment><USER22> I love the idea, but it takes so long to register and find friends. Way too long for an app that is supposed to cut down on the time it takes for me to communicate. I'd think about having people login through various services.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah yes, we hit the front page of HN and signups slowed a bit. Do you have any suggestions on where to cut back on signup time? I agree on oAUTH and the like, and plan to integrate it soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> In case anyone's interested in how this could be done, have a look at rfc4103 & [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real- time_text](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_text).

</comment><comment><USER24> Yea this would be a great example of building something no one wants.

</comment><comment><USER25> Oh shit, it's talk(1).

WATHC OUT GUYZZZ THIS IS GONNA CHANGE MESSAGINF FOREVAR!!1

<comment><USER26> Yeah, us geeks are very good at dismissing amazing potential businesses. I mean, why would anyone use Dropbox when there's svn and git!

<comment><USER27> When Dropbox posted what is now usually called a "Show HN", someone did post a comment like that:

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

Although to be fair, it was a good comment and it elicited a good response from Drew.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Interesting concept, too bad you overide scrolling. I wanted to check out your website but it was too annoying on mobile. Can your target customer not afford browsers that scroll?

</comment><comment><USER29> "patent pending" = bad sign for a mobile app startup.

</comment><comment><USER30> Cool idea. But I personally hate this. I need time to formulate my thoughts and the idea of typing while someone else is watching me is a major turn-off for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point! Maybe you'd like the option? I do like the idea of giving users the option (maybe in _some_ cases it makes sense for you) but I didn't want to debut this app with a "turn our main feature off" option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Didn't someone experiment with a chat system similar to this within the HN site (as a Chrome extension)?

<comment><USER22> That was me. Still up for fun and giggles at [http://chox.co](http://chox.co). Best of luck to these folks. I can't stand waiting for people to hit return before I can read what they're typing. It's not efficient.

<comment><AUTHOR> Killin' app! Thanks for the encouragement. I'm interested to see how you created chox.

<comment><USER22> Just AngularJS and Firebase. Firebase is pretty amazing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What about a send text later app. Like Buffer for texting. I needed that feature today.

</comment><comment><USER33> Isn't this why people stopped talking on the phone?

</comment><comment><USER34> Seems down now. "Server Hangup"

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry! We hit the front page and had our first stress-test. Things seems smoother now and we're analyzing our weak points.</comment></comment>


India wants everyone who shares location data to get a license - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/in/2016/05/09/indias-plan-regulate-mapping-data-will-hurt-every-app-uses-location-data/ <comment><AUTHOR> Particularly this part is ridiculous:

"As per the current draft, every end user of these apps who does things like shares their location with a friend, posts a status update, or uploads a photo with meta-data, is effectively creating mapping information and will have to get one too."

I mean you got to be kidding me! $150,000 fine, if I tweet where I am having a lunch, yeah this should improve the economy.</comment>


Apple's Dev Agreement Means No EFF Mobile App for iOS - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/sorry-iphone-users-apples-dev-agreement-means-no-eff-mobile-app-iphone <comment><USER2> This comes across as though they never intended to make an app for the app store and all along just wanted to call out apple on their term sheet. It is purely a moral stance. Which is fine, but the article is slanted differently.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I would be more interested to read an examination of why they are OK with publishing on the Google Play store. You would have to be nuts to expect the EFF to think Apple's dev agreement is peachy-keen.

<comment><USER4> Isn't one big difference that Google doesn't attempt to prohibit you from installing apps from other sources, which EFF also pointed out?

I just took a quick look at the Google Play Developer Distribution Agreement, the Google Play Developer Program Policies, and the Android SDK license -- but it looks like some other differences are:

* Unlike Apple, Google doesn't seem to limit developers' ability to make certain "public statements."

* Unlike Apple, Google doesn't seem to restrict jailbreaking or "enabling others to do so." The "Security Features" language in section 6 seems to come closest but isn't, IMHO, equivalent.

* Unlike Apple, Google doesn't insist on being able to "revoke the digital certificate of any of Your Applications at any time." (Section 7.2 of the Google Play Developer Distribution Agreement does say your app can be removed from the store, but the list of reasons is rather short and includes copyright, porn, malware, viruses...)

That was just a quick look, so I may have missed some things and would welcome correction. I should add that I'm developing [http://recent.io/](http://recent.io/) for both Android and iOS, so to the extent Apple _is_ more restrictive, it's not a deal-killer for my purposes.

PS: EFF's Android app is on the Play Store here: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.eff.action...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.eff.actioncenter)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For any other non-profits or companies who might need a similar app to notify users, both the app (Cordova + Ionic) and the APNS/GCM push notification server are open source and available here:

[https://github.com/EFForg/pushserver](https://github.com/EFForg/pushserver)

[https://github.com/EFForg/actioncenter- mobile](https://github.com/EFForg/actioncenter-mobile)

If you're an Android user, consider downloading the app. Its really, really simple - it just sends you a push notification if there's an action EFF needs your help with - but we hope to improve it over time.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.eff.action...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.eff.actioncenter)

<comment><USER5> Honestly, the play store is not any better than the apple app store.

I myself never agreed to the play store's license agreement and use my android phone without it.

If you really care about privacy, consider hosting your apps apk yourself or post it to a store that really respects its users privacy, like f-droid instead of supporting the play store. If your app is opensource like you state, f-droid should host it.

Take care, Martin

<comment><USER6> I agree with your sentiments about privacy and f-droid, but must nit-pick your statement:

> Honestly, the play store is not any better than the apple app store.

Both stores fail at certain criteria, but by other criteria the Google Play store is actually far, far better than the app store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone know if the Google Play Store agreement or the Amazon App Store agreement contain similar terms?

I'd love to see Apple open things up a bit. My personal pet peeve is that it's nearly impossible to use LGPL libraries in iOS apps due to some of the terms.

<comment><USER8> The Play Store agreement has a very similar clause which applies to all apps plus the store itself (haven't checked the Amazon one). The Android SDK agreement also has one, which may or may not be preempted by whatever parts of it are available under open source licenses (depending on your interpretation of "require"), but definitely applies to anything closed source (e.g. the new Java compilers, if I remember correctly). So basically the EFF is full of shit.

> Security Features. You may not attempt to, nor assist, authorise or > encourage others to circumvent, disable or defeat any of the security > features or components, such as digital rights management software or > encryption, that protect, obfuscate or otherwise restrict access to any > Content or Google Play.

\- [https://play.google.com/intl/en_us/about/play- terms.html](https://play.google.com/intl/en_us/about/play-terms.html)

> 3.3 You may not use the SDK for any purpose not expressly permitted by this > License Agreement. Except to the extent required by applicable third party > licenses, you may not: (a) copy (except for backup purposes), modify, adapt, > redistribute, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or create derivative > works of the SDK or any part of the SDK; ...

\- [https://developer.android.com/sdk/terms.html](https://developer.android.com/sdk/terms.html)

<comment><USER9> It doesn't require that you put DRM in your app. The iOS one does (which is part of the build / submission process).

<comment><USER10> You can call it DRM but what it really is, is security. Apps are signed, preventing the running of unauthorized code, which keeps malware off the platform.

If google really doesn't have this, then it's a shame, but it would explain why there's so much malware on android.

EFF's position across this article is supporting malware, and preventing malware is the clear cause and reasons for all the things the EFF opposes.

<comment><USER8> Android encourages users to stick to the Play Store, but has an escape hatch for users who don't want to. If Apple had such a policy, it might increase the presence of malware, but only for users who explicitly decided to circumvent the normal distribution process.

Most Android malware is distributed on the Play Store; the reasons it is prevalent include the lack of review process and the Android permission system, both of which are orthogonal to the ability to circumvent the store.

<comment><USER11> I think Apple's policy is mainly aimed at preventing competing app stores. You see them having a conniption every time someone submits an app that includes an alternate app store. And while I don't particularly like their policy, they have every right to implement it in order to protect their revenue.

<comment><USER6> > I think Apple's policy is mainly aimed at preventing competing app stores.

Yes. Malware is the boogey man which apple uses to justify this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good job EFF exposing blanket agreement and requirements Apple makes developers sign. We need more of these come into lime light so developers can fight back against big corporations.

<comment><USER10> Nothing being exposed there, all those terms were well known, and when you cut thru the dishonest spin of the EFF, actually perfectly reasonable and designed to protect consumers.

<comment><USER13> Could you elaborate on the "dishonest spin" part? I've always been under the impression that the EFF were the ones trying to protect consumers, so you have me curious.

<comment><USER10> Sure thing, I'll illustrate point by point.

1\. Public Statements, reason for this is that many people have tried to publish various forms of malware, and then when apple rejected the app, they cried fowl and pretended like Apple was being unreasonable in its reviews. In fact, this is the PRIMARY reason that people think that Apple is strict in what it will let in the App Store. EFF is misrepresenting what the agreement says here, putting spin on it.

Revers Engineering-- The claim that this covers legal reverse engineering is created from whole cloth by the EFF, the section does not refer to types of reverse engineering, merely protects apples rights regarding such. Thus EFF is straight up lying.

App Store Only: Apple provides the SDK for free, and part of the deal is that it is to be used for deploying apps for iOS on the app store only. (This is not the case with the Mac SDK) Charactersizing Lydia as a "competing app store" is straight up dishonest. IT requires jailbreaking devices, which results in greatly reduced reliability and is bad for consumers, opening them up to malware, yet the EFF is effectively endorsing exposing consumers to malware here.

"No Tinkering" \- Obviously, Apple doesn't want people circumventing their protections against malware and getting malware past the review process.

"Apple owns security" \-- A profoundly dishonest comment given that Apple has done so much to protect security that a governor is trying to get a law passed that will let the government snoop again. The EFF apparently doesn't care about his, but uses the fact that you can't use a security bug claim to circumnavigate the review process to pretend like Apple leaves people exposed. Another straight up lie.

Kill your App-- yes, if malware gets in there, it can be shut down. Ignoring the reasoning for this puts a hard, dishonest spin, in fact as far as I'm concerned, makes it a lie.

This is also true of google's store. So, given that the EFF is publishing on android, they obviously don't care about this too much... yet they put it in here to bash Apple, making them both hypocrites and liars.

" and we certainly will not wrap our app in DRM."

DRM that signs the app to prevent it from being tampered with, which keeps the users data secure.

So the EFF here is rejecting keeping users data secure.

They care more about grandstanding than integrity and protecting consumers.

<comment><USER14> So basically, you can be draconian in managing how a user uses their app, in the name of "malware". Sorta like how content filters on "extremist material" and "child pornography".

User wants a legal porn app? Nope, but it's OK cause you didn't get malware. Ditto for any kind of app that Apple doesn't feel fits their brand.

There's nothing wrong with having explicit, manual, escape hatches. In your haste to hold Apple up as the great wall against malware, you forget they've completely taken away choice from the user. Considering it's the Electronic _Freedom_ Foundation, that seems like a legitimate thing to complain about.

<comment><USER15> It's the Electronic _Frontier_ Foundation, as their banner proudly says, but you're right that the spin here is on security.

The sentiment these days with regards to restricting user freedom seems to be not "think of the children", but "think of the security." I'm guessing it reaches a wider audience: the rhetoric is basically "who _doesn 't_ want to be secure?" ...everyone who doesn't want their devices secured _against_ them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The EFF dev said its a Cordova app, so why not just throw up the HTML mobile site for iOS users? You could still notify via sms, email, etc.

<comment><USER17> You can see the site here: [https://github.com/EFForg/actioncenter- mobile/tree/master/ww...](https://github.com/EFForg/actioncenter- mobile/tree/master/www)

Since the app is basically only for notifications, it's useless as a web site. If you want sign up for email notifications, go to [https://act.eff.org/](https://act.eff.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> They can use Cydia I guess. But this may be more an attempt to simply bring attention to how sickening Apple's developer agreement is. Which is a good thing to do anyway.

<comment><USER6> I'd rather see them not use Cydia.

While I'm glad that Cydia exists, for those individuals who love iOS and i-things but wish to step outside of apple's total control, it seems less professional to me to release an app whose usage specifically requires 100% of the users to violate the agreements they made with the manufacturer.

<comment><USER18> Not if that agreement is taking away their rights. Violating such agreement (or assuming users violated it) shouldn't be viewed as unprofessional. Not any more unprofessional at least than expecting Applet to violate users' rights when Apple make such agreement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't understand the purpose of the app, the one on play store looks like a one button subscription frontend. How is it better then their website, email, twitter?

<comment><USER20> They can release a press release to complain about Apple policies and get hits/donations?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think it would be really effective and tongue-in-cheek if EFF released their app on Cydia.

</comment><comment><USER22> Apple needs to remove each of these requirements. None of them serve any justifiable purpose, they only immorally and antisocially serve Apple's avarice.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't understand their position on DRM here. It makes no sense. The EFF is complaining that the DRM required by the App Store is onerous and puts restrictions on what users can do with their app, and says "we want them to be broadly available to others to use, adapt, and customize".

But that's nonsense. If the EFF hands me a binary for an app, it hardly matters whether it's DRM'd or not as long as I can still run it. The extreme minority of people are capable of doing anything remotely interesting with a binary without access to source code. If the EFF wants people to be able to adapt and customize their app, all they have to do is release it under a permissive open-source license.

In fact, if this really was a purely moral stance, they could have developed the application and released the source without ever publishing it to the App Store, thus allowing users to compile and use the application themselves. But they didn't do that. Instead, this seems to just be a flimsy excuse for the EFF to make a bunch of noise about Apple in order to drum up some PR.

<comment><USER24> If the EFF didn't develop the application and release the source, what exactly is this: [https://github.com/EFForg/actioncenter- mobile](https://github.com/EFForg/actioncenter-mobile)

And quoting from the README: "Although it works on both iOS and Android, the app is only targeting Android as of today. If you need to deploy to iOS as well, please check out the Ionic docs or contact the project maintainer for help."

What more do you want?

<comment><USER23> If that actually works on iOS then why didn't they talk about it in the article? It would have been much better PR for them to say that they have a functioning app and the source is available.

My expectation from that README is that Ionic (which I've never heard of before) supports iOS but that the app itself has not actually been configured for or tested with iOS.

<comment><AUTHOR> We did most of the development and testing, but didn't get it 100% production ready after we decided we wouldn't release the app.

Since the main functionality of the app is the push notification service, having users compile their own apps wouldn't really be very helpful. Users need to subscribe to our push notification channel via APNS, and they can't do that if they're compiling themselves.

We could have ignored that and built our own, less-than-realtime push service, but even still, having users compile their own apps means that our users have to pay the $99 and sign the developer agreements instead of us, and I don't think that's a very reasonable request.

I think the best solution is for us to release on the Cydia marketplace, and I think it's pretty likely we'll do that.

<comment><USER23> Cydia requires jail breaking and that's a decidedly user-hostile thing to suggest, especially when it comes from a respected name like the EFF. Jailbreaking disables crucial security measures on iOS, and many things people like to install after jailbreaking destabilize the OS (granted, you can jailbreak without installing those hacks). It's not a coincidence that every time there has been news of malware affecting iOS, it only affected jail broken devices.

All in all, I would vastly prefer that the EFF not encourage users to jailbreak.

<comment><USER25> The EFF fought for our right to jailbreak: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/02/apple-says- jailbreakin...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/02/apple-says-jailbreaking- illegal)

What are you getting worked up over? A digital rights organization expressing their digital rights? Sometimes freedom comes with greater responsibility and a slight inconvenience. I'd rather have that responsibility and inconvenience than just not care.

<comment><USER23> The right to jailbreak, and the recommendation to jailbreak, are two completely different things.

I absolutely support the _right_ to jailbreak your device. But I would never agree to actually jailbreak my own device, and I strongly encourage others to avoid it as well.

The issue here isn't that the EFF is expressing their rights. It's the fact that if the EFF releases an iOS app exclusively on Cydia then they're endorsing jailbreaking and encouraging people who don't know any better that they should do this. I would imagine there would be some pretty negative things said about the EFF if they released a Windows application that required users to disable all anti-virus software. That's basically what endorsing jailbreaking is, for iOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> People are still complaining about section 8 - the remote kill switch? I remember only one instance of an app remotely killed, and that was malware.

Even apps that enabled tethering, emulating, or are otherwise against the rules but make it through review have been simply pulled for sale, never terminated using this capability. I think Apple has proved they're using this responsibly after 6 years.

<comment><USER27> i dont really care that they've been using it responsibly so far - there isn't a guarantee that abuse won't happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> 0 downloads. I guess I'll have to be the first. Edit: Now that I think about it, it said 1-5 installs, so most likely not the first.

<comment><USER29> Looks like I'm number 2 :) It seems a very simple app indeed, but useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Kill Your App Any Time

I'm rather shocked to see the EFF linking to the horribly wrong old Telegraph article about Steve Jobs purportedly confirming that there was a kill-switch that would remove apps from iPhones. At least as of the time that was written, that was not true. The referenced "line of secret code" (hyperlink is broken), IIRC, was actually referring to a CoreLocation blacklist, not an application blacklist, with the intended usage being to be able to disable GPS functionality in certain regions if local governments demanded it, and that blacklist never actually ended up being used and was removed entirely in a future OS update.

<comment><USER30> So wait, does Apple have or do they not have not the same kind of kill switch functionality (read: either remote uninstall, or cert revocation -> app no longer runs) that Google definitely has and has demonstrated on a few malware apps?

Example: [http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/06/google-flips-android- kill...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/06/google-flips-android-kill-switch- destroys-a-batch-of-malicious/)

This article makes direct reference to such a function: [http://www.businessinsider.com/brazil-orders-apple-to-use- ip...](http://www.businessinsider.com/brazil-orders-apple-to-use-iphone-app- kill-switch-2014-8)

<comment><USER23> Apple has never demonstrated such a capability, and has never confirmed it either. Pretty much everyone claiming they have it (including the linked Business Insider article) sources back to the same thing in 2008 which was the CoreLocation blacklist I referenced. To the best of my knowledge, in 2008, Apple had no way to remotely delete an app from a device. And I'm not aware of them ever gaining that ability.

What Apple can do is remove an app from the store, preventing anyone from installing it. But as far as I'm aware no certificate revocation is checked after the app has been successfully installed.

<comment><USER30> So some further Googling. Steve Jobs himself, quoted in WSJ:

(Google SB121842341491928977 to avoid the wall)

 _Apple raised hackles in computer-privacy and security circles when an independent engineer (NB: the wrong one you were talking about) discovered code inside the iPhone that suggested iPhones routinely check an Apple Web site that could, in theory trigger the removal of the undesirable software from the devices.

Mr. Jobs confirmed such a capability exists, but argued that Apple needs it in case it inadvertently allows a malicious program -- one that stole users' personal data, for example -- to be distributed to iPhones through the App Store. "Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull," he says._

You don't get too much more clear than a quote from the then-CEO.

<comment><USER23> I've seen his response a million times but I've never seen anyone quote the actual question he was responding to. And I have it on extremely good authority (sorry, anecdotal, but the best I can do) that the blacklist under discussion was the CoreLocation blacklist I described.

My best guess is Steve was asked about the blacklist, didn't have any direct knowledge of what he was being asked about, so simply assumed that it was in fact an app blacklist as everyone else did, and came up with what was probably the best response he could under the circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've never understood why either users or developers put up with all of Apple's crap.

<comment> k-mcgrady Because it works. I have never wanted to do anything on my iPhone that I can't and as a developer I've only had one rejection that annoyed me and in hindsight I understand the rejection. I've also used Android devices a lot (I own two, and develop for the platform) and I hate it. Really hate it. Waiting for OS updates, lots of crashing, things in different places depending on the OEM. Not to mention how slow some devices are. The S3 Mini is horrible to use, I don't see how anyone could feel comfortable putting it to market.

In short, the crap either doesn't effect most people, or creates a better experience. The only people who seem to really complain about it don't use the platform anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> EFF have a lot of time on their hands, apparently.

<comment><USER33> Surely this is exactly the kind of thing the EFF should be doing?

<comment><USER10> No, the EFF Should not be writing articles full of lies attacking the company that has consistently defended consumer rights and supporting the company that has consistently violated them.

<comment><USER14> Apple defends my consumer rights? Please tell me how I can make the hardware I've purchased run the way _I_ want it to run.

<comment><USER6> Don't you see? Since we are all so very scared of malware, apple is our very best friend. This is the beginning and the end of the conversation on 'consumer rights'. If you disagree, then you support malware. Shame on you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > Ban on Reverse Engineering: Section 2.6 prohibits any reverse engineering > (including the kinds of reverse engineering for interoperability that courts > have recognized as a fair use under copyright law), as well as anything that > would "enable others" to reverse engineer, the software development kit > (SDK) or iPhone OS.

Wow. EFF should sue Apple over that alone. Private companies aren't supposed to "contract-out" your rights. This will be an easy win for EFF.

<comment><USER10> The case would be thrown out because the provision says nothing of the kind, and in fact, this statement here by the EFF is defamation and when Apple countersued they'd win.

Apple doesn't respond to critics like this, so the EFF knows it can get away with these kinds of lies.

It's just unfortunate that you and others believe them, and those who point them out are silenced here on HN.

<comment><USER35> Well, the agreement does say

 _You may not and You agree not to, or to enable others to, copy (except as expressly permitted under this Agreement), decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, attempt to derive the source code of, modify, decrypt, or create derivative works of the Apple Software or any services provided by the Apple Software or otherwise provided hereunder, or any part thereof (except as and only to the extent any foregoing restriction is prohibited by applicable law or to the extent as may be permitted by licensing terms governing use of open- sourced components or sample code included with the Apple Software)._

EFF is definitely oversimplifying and spinning a little, but that's certainly a restriction on reverse engineering "of the kind" that they describe in their post. Spin or not, it's hardly a baldfaced "lie."

(That said, you're right to respond that EFF couldn't sue over that provision - people contract away their rights to do things they otherwise could all the time.)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my QrCode Generator inteface - <AUTHOR> http://onlineqrlab.com/app/

<comment><USER2> The interface is a bit confusing. You probably should prevent people from typing in the url and short url field. In fact, they should probably be hidden until the QR Code is created. It's not obvious what they do until a QR Code is generated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I think I'll make it non-editable.</comment></comment>


Javascript event registration models, good explanation - <AUTHOR> http://www.quirksmode.org/js/events_advanced.html

<comment> jarek-foksa It's worth noting that DOM4 spec makes third argument in addEventListener() method optional.

It will default to false if you skip it (which is almost always preferable):

      element.addEventListener('mousedown', callback);

</comment><comment><USER2> There's also an object-based argument to addEventListener: [http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM- Level-2-Events/events.html#Events-E...](http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM- Level-2-Events/events.html#Events-EventListener)

More discussion here: [http://ajaxian.com/archives/an-alternative-way-to- addeventli...](http://ajaxian.com/archives/an-alternative-way-to- addeventlistener)</comment>


X.com - <AUTHOR> http://x.com/ <comment><USER2> Belongs to Elon Musk / Paypal. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal#Early_history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal#Early_history) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought I was going to be all clever and all by viewing source.

But it's worth viewing /robots.txt</comment>


Google's Self-Driving Car Gets Mixed Reviews - <AUTHOR> http://www.ktvz.com/automotive/31083190/detail.html <comment><USER4> Wow, this reporter was horrible. He reminds me of those clients who when you show them the early stages of their site after a few weeks of work, point out everything that doesn't work as a huge the-sky-is-falling catastrophic event that is proof of the project's eventual demise. This reporter got to sit in a car that is doing things that a few years ago still seemed like science fiction and yet he had these niggling complaints:

 _For now, at least, the car only drives routes it's been trained to drive._

Google is pretty good at mapping things.

 _Since the Google car only just got its learner's permit, it drives accordingly_

I think this is meant as a literal statement. The car is able to drive of its own accord, but needs an adult present who can take over if needed. But did you just say that the GOOGLE CAR HAS A LEARNER'S PERMIT?? That's amazing!

 _Then there was the jerking halt on a side street caused by a car that stopped a little abruptly almost two car lengths ahead._

If you don't think the software is going to err on the side of caution for YEARS after widespread usage, you are mistaken. Eventually we will be so used to trusting these cars that we will probably be napping on the way to work, so who cares that the car hits the brakes a few more times than it should?

And eventually I'm sure these cars will be a model of efficiency, with fast moving currents of cars zipping here and there. One step at a time.

 _Surprisingly, one thing the car can't do all on its own is use the turn signals._

Hey, how come when I click this button on my site does nothing happen??? THIS PROJECT IS A COMPLETE FAILURE!!!

 _If Google can get there before a major automaker beats them to it, I'll be really impressed._

The most preposterous statement of all. Please get the reporter on the line and let me place a bet of Google vs all the automakers combined on who will release this technology is first. Assuming that Google hasn't locked up all of the pertinent technologies, this wouldn't be a fair fight.

<comment><USER5> I'm really disappointed to see this as the top voted reply. Of course the reporter is wrong, of course his article can be ripped apart, of course this is a momentous achievement and the reporter is just too ignorant to know that, and we're all clever enough to see how amazing this is.

You're missing the point and the lesson:

        This is how normals think.

I've written more here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4018684>

Don't just laugh at the ignorance, learn from it.

<comment><USER6> On a slightly meta note, HN comments are weighted by the average karma score of the person leaving the comment, not just the number of up-votes that specific comment received.

So this comment being at the top could easily be down to the poster's karma/average karma.

<comment><USER5> I'm not convinced that's true, and would be interested to know your evidence. In particular, the commenter in question has no average karma, apparently not having made sufficiently recent previous contributions. Looking at the contributions made, they don't look to be the sort of thing that garners lots and lots of karma, but I only really glanced at them, so that impression could be wrong. But I doubt it.

It's impossible to tell without comment scores being displayed, but my feeling is that any ranking influence from average karma must be small, if any. I'd be interested in any concrete information, even if circumstantial.

If, however, I find that average karma does have an effect, I'm going to stop replying to individuals, stop providing information, stop correcting misapprehensions, and concentrate on only submitting populist items. That's clearly what PG would want, if that's how the ranking systems work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Disappointing because it's clearly not going to be ready for public use for > years and years.

> That step still seems -- to me -- many years off

Than you, KTVZ reporter. I will take your expert opinion into account.

<comment><USER8> FTA: _For now, at least, the car only drives routes it's been trained to drive. My ride in Washington DC was along a route that Google engineers had driven with the car earlier. Google refused to allow the car to be driven anywhere beyond this well-studied environment, at least not with the media tagging along._

Reporter, did you even ask the Google engineers about that? For a media demo, it is not at all surprising that they would use an already driven route. The reporting here was a bit disappointing.

<comment><USER9> _Reporter, did you even ask the Google engineers about that? For a media demo, it is not at all surprising that they would use an already driven route. The reporting here was a bit disappointing._

Actually, no, this limitation has been well documented (but cleverly brushed aside). The car doesn't see and understand the road ahead, it follows an invisible line on the ground, and can stop if it detects danger. It doesn't read signs.

So yes, demos are impressive, but slightly misleading.

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure there's no "invisible line on the ground". From what I've read, the route simply needs to be mapped at a higher resolution than most roads have been mapped before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _The first will be allowing the car to stray from routes that it has been specifically trained to drive._

I think the author is hugely overstating the importance of this.

<comment><USER12> I live in NYC and the best use-case for this is taxis. Taxi do not take the same route twice. Traffic is a nightmare during different seasonal, temporal, or accident events. So like a Garmin device it should be able to "remap" the trip.

In our lifetimes this will be possible but maybe not in next 1-3 years. (I hope I am wrong)

<comment><USER11> Google has covered large parts of the (populated) world with Street View. Pictures [1] indicate that the cars were equipped with laser sensors. So Google probably has enough data to have the cars drive new routes.

But thats not the point. Most of peoples daily driving routine is the same routes over and over, commuting to and from work.

Going even further: I'd imagine that you could train the car on a specific route by driving it manually. Such information could be crowdsourced, much as Google already does with its traffic data on Maps.

[1]: [http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/streetviewca.jp...](http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/streetviewca.jpg)

<comment><USER13> I believed that as well, but now I'm not so sure. The density of data gathered by the Velodyne on the self driving cars is far higher than the SICK lasers in that picture. Also, the scene may have changed in the interim.

<comment><USER11> Yes, but we're still talking cars that measure metres by metres, and streets with lots of extra room. As you mention, the scene may have changed - <USER2> trying to preplan the whole route to the inch will only hurt you. What is needed is basic data above GPS, and I think the Street View lasers can be that.

<comment><USER13> I'm sorry I was unclear - I meant that the scene could have changed since the Street View team was last through.

The Google Maps data is surprisingly bad - we saw several presentations about the Car, and they highlighted how awful it really is.

I don't think that they're preplanning. I think that they're analyzing the scene for differences to simplify and speed calculation. Having good a priori data is really powerful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So many of the comments here are pointing out the flaws in the reporter's account and, quite rightly, scoffing at their ignorance.

But there's a lesson to learn: he's an ordinary person, and this is what he thinks about the demo!

So don't just dismiss it as completely missing the point. Learn and understand that this is how the normals think. This is an important lesson for we who write code.

This really is how the normals think.

Dismiss and ignore it at your peril and loss.

</comment><comment><USER14> The lack of a turn signal made me chuckle.

That is such a software development moment :) Probably too easy to implement, that's why they forgot it.

But the fact that the car often needs the human to intervene is a bit more interesting. Why would a human better know if there is enough space for two cars to pass each other in a narrow street?

<comment><USER15> The lack of turn signals makes me highly suspicious. There is more to this omission than meets the eye, I am quite sure of it. As you say, adding turn signals in should be straightforward. The computer presumably has its turns planned far enough in advance. So why doesn't it?

I am actually even less inclined to trust these so-called "self"-driving cars now. Not like I even trust the human-driven variety all that much...

<comment><USER16> If the turn signals are not on the CAN bus it could be annoying to implement.

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

<comment><USER15> They've made a self-driving car. The merely annoying parts are going to be the fun bits! Everything else is going to be difficult, if not bordering-on- impossible. I find it very difficult to believe that there is any technical barrier to computer-operated indicators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> FTA: " _But the biggest step will be to create a car that will let me just sit in the back seat with no-one at all in the driver's seat. . . . If Google can get there before a major automaker beats them to it, I'll be really impressed._ "

A major automaker has as much chance of beating Google as a 350lb man has of beating Usain Bolt at the 100m dash. The automakers aren't really known for doing cutting-edge software, you know.

<comment><USER18> No major automaker will produce self-driving cars because self-driving cars greatly reduce the need for private car ownership. A two-car family might be able to manage with a single car if that car can drive itself to pick up individuals. Groups could pool their money to buy a single car the same way that fractional ownership of jets happens today but on a mass scale. The number of cars parked unused could go down substantially. Self-driving cars are a huge benefit for society and cities especially but a disaster for car companies.

<comment><USER19> Today's driving scenarios will be served by a small pocket of tomorrow's automated power, granted.

If we have self driving cars, fast switching and routing, we may find ourselves in possession of a packet switched human transportation network. I think we'd need a lot of cars in that world. They might become commoditized like the PC was, but still a profitable business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > The data from each situation would be ingested and analyzed so the car could > learn what to do in the future. Those lessons could, hopefully, be applied > to a broad range of driving conundrums.

This is huge. Maybe a handful of cars are learning there way around slowly, but if they have legitimate automatic learning systems, imagine two or three thousand cars all learning _together_.

<comment><USER21> This is a major piece in the overall puzzle that the article doesn't really explore. Google's greatest strategic advantage is _networked_ systems - <USER3> additional driverless car is a mobile, sensor-packed learning system for _all_ other driverless cars. I strongly doubt that the plan is for each car to 'learn' how to handle each new driving situation independently - as soon as one car learns a behavior, they all learn that behavior.

That level of networked learning system is probably not fully mature, but it's certainly not far from reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This won't be the last critical review that Google gets. History has shown that people are incredibly quick to dismiss and attack things they don't understand.

A good (recent!) tech example would be the iPhone: back in 2008; it's kind of funny now, but my first impression of it was "huh, where's the stylus?" and I wasn't alone. The amount of "No stylus, so it's hard to use" FUD being spread around was incredible.

Now my two year-old son tries to swipe on my computer dumbscreen to go to the next photo. The "People of the land.... morons" opinion curve is probably going to follow the same trajectory; they will dismiss and criticize until they can't remember how crappy driving a car really was.

</comment><comment><USER23> Can the lack of automatic turn signal be due to some legal implications? Like for example, the car falling in the same position as other car with assisted driving technologies.

Or perhaps it's just a quick way to change the car's route?

</comment><comment><USER24> No turn signals? How could they have not put those in yet?! Next you will tell me it won't tune the radio to my top songs on google music!

</comment><comment><USER25> First thing I'm going to do w/ my Google Car is put a label that says: "PRESS IN CASE OF SKYNET!" under the kill switch.</comment>


Disintermediating Doctors: Going direct to the lab? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newschief.com/article/20091229/NEWS/912295014/1053

<comment><USER2> Disclosure: I'm an M.D. (Which may impact my objectivity about why skipping out on seeing a doctor is a bad idea.)

Without an exhaustive review of the implications of Bayes' Theorem, suffice it to say that this isn't necessarily a good idea. The short version is: if you are unlikely to have a medical condition, a positive result _may well be a false positive._

Much like a full-body MRI with no medical indication, there is a risk of a false positive leading to more expensive, unnecessary, and possibly dangerous procedures to chase down a condition that doesn't exist.

Going "directly to the lab" is, for many people, predicated on an overly simplistic and idealistic understanding of how lab tests work. The context of the result (health history, family history, physical exam, etc.) is important for accurate interpretation.

Finally, some tests border on the fraudulent. I'm a psychiatrist, and increasingly tests to make a psychiatric diagnosis based on a genetic screening are being marketed directly to patients. These tests are not generally accepted in the medical community as being accurate. In fact, some them are very likely to be totally misleading.

 _Caveat emptor._

<comment><USER3> Sure, but for something simple like an STD screen or cholesterol surely these results are unambiguous?

The article says these tests can be _"at a cost that is as much as 80 percent less than going through a doctor"_ , what can explain that kind of discrepancy besides rampant corruption in the "official" medical lab work market?

<comment><USER2> Cholesterol: Probably. STD: Depends on which one.

Cost: I don't know why the difference is so large; that seems like a serious problem. For what it's worth, I don't make a single extra penny on lab tests. As far as I know, most doctors don't (except maybe the pathologist who runs the lab). We just order what's indicated.

<comment><USER4> I must say that I take a slightly different position on cholesterol. People seem to have a very difficult time interpreting the different values, particularly as most people cannot distinguish HDL from LDL from TGs. Plus, ATP-III recommends different limits on LDL-C for patients with different risk factors.

Would I say that the average person should be able to get a cholesterol test if they want it? From a rights/freedom standpoint, absolutely. Would I worry that they would misinterpret it without guidance? From a medical standpoint, absolutely.

<comment><USER2> Good point; maybe reading them all the time makes me underestimate what's involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1\. www.medindia.net $15 doctor consult with an indian doctor.

2\. personal health record.

3.expert systems for medical diagnosis / test referral.

4\. a lab-on-a-chip device , that costs a few $ , being developed by an Indian company , that could diagnose any viral/bacterial disease.

5\. direct-to-consumer testing as shown in this article.

Combining those methods , with usual doctor visits as needed could make a very effective combination , especially for the 1st visit to doctor , where only test referals are usually given.</comment>


Viola Web Browser (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://viola.org/ <comment><USER2> There is something very wrong with that page : its source code contains links to porn website in <div> elements with `display: none` styles.

I suppose the page was cracked, or that the domain was bought by black hat SEO. HN should probably not gives it credit by linking it.

<comment><USER3> Ugh. Well spotted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another early browser is MidasWWW. I found some code dump or something a few years ago and tried to build it[0] and after a few modifications to fix some C stuff that i guess at the time were accepted by compilers, i got it mostly working. The main issue (as can be seen from the image) is the main bar placement - from what i could tell the browser was made using a modified version of Motif for some workstation which wasn't 100% compatible with the "standard" Motif. The fix would probably be trivial but at that point i had lost interest :-P.

I uploaded the modified code to Mediafire[1] some time ago when someone asked for it, just in case you want to try compiling it yourself. Note that most of my changes were quick hacks to get things compiling, not proper fixes. The dates in the archive indicate the files i modified. The original code can now be found at GitHub[2] (though i'm not sure if it is the exact same code i used myself - looks similar enough though).

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/W37vhBW.png](https://i.imgur.com/W37vhBW.png)

[1] [http://www.mediafire.com/file/sr956k2fokms73d/file](http://www.mediafire.com/file/sr956k2fokms73d/file)

[2] [https://github.com/dckc/MidasWWW](https://github.com/dckc/MidasWWW)

</comment><comment><USER5> I am reminded also of the Cello web browser which I remember briefly using in the early days of the web. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cello_(web_browser)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cello_\(web_browser\))

<comment><USER6> Considering the uncanny similarity in names, I wouldn't be surprised if one inspired the other.

<comment><USER7> Cello didn't have Viola's salient features, did it?

<comment><USER8> What were those?

What I remember from Cello was that it was very simple. It just contained the bare minimum of functionality that a browser needed to support. I don't think there were any extras. It also had a very small executable size.

I think it's correct that the name, at least, and maybe some of the functionality, was derived and inspired from Viola.

<comment><USER7> ViolaWWW features: stylesheets, scripting, document embedding, at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone else just get good vibes from seeing this? Before everything became 1984 with a couple of companies controlling the internet..

I mean. Blogs! Blogrolls. RSS. I miss the old days.

Now get off my lawn.

<comment><USER10> Webrings. Catalogs of sites, described and sorted by humans!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If only...

There were a number of browsers with "applets" in different languages later in the '90s, at least: Hotjava (however it was CapitalIzed) with Java, Grail with Python, MMM with Caml (light?), and something for Tcl (I think). You can find mention of them in the Emacs 21(?) browse-url code; well, maybe not the (why- you-should-not-use-) Tcl one. As far as I remember, nothing came of the proposed Guile version. There ought to have been one for NeWS, but I don't remember. Probably just as well Emacs/W3 didn't join in.

There were also languages with "distributed scope", as opposed to "mobile code", particularly Obliq, and maybe Kali Scheme. I'm not sure why the concept seems to have died.

</comment><comment><USER11> Creator:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20101018012531/http://www.xcf.be...](https://web.archive.org/web/20101018012531/http://www.xcf.berkeley.edu/~wei/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pei- Yuan_Wei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pei-Yuan_Wei)

> Pei-Yuan Wei was born in Pingtung County, Taiwan. He graduated from Berkeley > High School in 1986. He received his Bachelor's degree from the University > of California, Berkeley, and was a member of the student club, the > eXperimental Computing Facility (XCF).

> In the 1990s, Wei was a founding employee of Global Network Navigator, one > of the first Internet-based businesses. Later he worked for various Palm OS- > related businesses. Since 2008, Perry has been living in both Taiwan and the > US, and has devoted most of his time to taking care of his ill family member

I remember GNN:

[https://web.archive.org/web/19961024024732/http://www02.gnn....](https://web.archive.org/web/19961024024732/http://www02.gnn.com/)

</comment><comment><USER12> What's struck me is how much of the current browser functionality was established by this time: graphics, tables, scripting, bookmarks, and stylesheets. But also the missing elements: the notion that browsed content would be persistently available, for example, was and remains absent. Understandable posibly in an age of 100 MB main storage, less so with terabyte-sized disk common.

Management of the browsed corpus is also apparently out of scope.

<comment><USER7> There were a number of fairly sophisticated hypertext systems around then (like the basis of viola). I was an early WWW user when it was mainly a question of using the line-mode browser for the CERN documentation, and it seemed incredibly primitive to someone who'd being developing with high- resolution networked hypermedia. The significance of the protocol and naming escaped me, unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Call me passeist but I'm intrigued.

also once upon a time I got the old sunOs java based hotspot.. it was so removed from the mainstream understanding of browsing, you had a main button to reclaim memory or see stats :)

ps: do you guys have some numbers on memory use and cpu requirements for these kind of programs ?

<comment><USER7> > hotspot

hotjava?

I don't know about memory usage, but I was probably running such things on a 48MB Pentium 1 then.

<comment><USER13> yeah I got confused sorry

I forgot how much ram this sun ultra 10 .. maybe 256MB

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just love the domain name. :)

</comment><comment><USER15> How do you get a dozen violists to play in tune?

Shoot 11 of them.

bdumtiss

<comment><USER16> What's the difference between a viola player and Dr. Scholl's Footpads?

Dr. Scholl's bucks up the feet.

Apparently viola jokes as a genre are 300 years old: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_jokes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_jokes)

<comment><USER15> I mostly associate them with the early internet, thanks to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Barry_in_Cyberspace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Barry_in_Cyberspace)</comment></comment></comment>


IBM: Mind reading is less than five years away. For real. (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/ibm-mind-reading-is-less-than-five-years-away-for-real/ <comment><USER2> > People will be able to utilize computing technology to figure out some of > what others are thinking. Also, we'll never need passwords again.

What is this, science fiction? People will _always_ need passwords.</comment>


Genuinely curious: What's a good alternative to gmail? - <AUTHOR> I'm probably not alone with this one. Opened my first account 10+ years ago, since then I use gmail for both work & personal accounts.
Recently, I started freaking out when thinking about privacy and Google knowing everything: reading my messages, subscriptions, bills, dentist appointments, heck, even my salary.
My perfect mail provider should have the following traits: - reliable - monthly paid plan. Business model is important, I don't want to be the product. - strong encryption - privacy first - guarantee that the company won't disappear in the future
Tried couple of alternatives, like running my own mail server (bad choice for me, not reliable enough) or other popular providers, none seem to Check all boxes.
Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> I also use thexyz and it is a secure and reliable service. They have been offering private email email hosting for around 10 years so doubt they will be packing up shop anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hello,

I work for Zoho Mail, so I may be slightly biased here but I would recommend Zoho Mail :). Let me try to answer a few of your concerns and tell you why you should trust Zoho Mail.

1\. Privacy - We are a 100% ad-free email service. And by this, I don't mean just showing you ads. This means we don't ever scan your email for keywords and show you ads based on that. The ONLY reason we scan your email is to analyze spam. So we never show ads, scan your keywords for ads, and we never will. We are 100% committed to maintaining your privacy.

2\. Reliability - We have a 99.9% uptime guarantee for Zoho Mail, which is the industry standard. We constantly work on upgrading our infrastructure to maintain that reliability. In the odd event of a downtime, we have contingency plans in place for you to access your email.

3\. Monthly paid plan - We have a free plan that is free for up to 25 users. Through our referral program, you can get another 25 users absolutely free. That's a total of 50 free users, which is plenty for most small businesses. Our free plan is perfect for that. Above that, our paid plans start at $2/user/month. You can take a look at our pricing here - [https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html](https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html).

Zoho as a company has been around for 20 years now, and we're going nowhere :) You can read about us online.

I hope I've allayed some of your fears and convinced you to try Zoho Mail. I recommend you try our free plan. All the features of the paid plans are available in Free as well, so you will get a clear picture of what Zoho Mail is. If I can help in any other way, please feel free to reach out to me at firstname.lastname@example.com.

Thanks!

<comment><USER4> I've used Hushmail and they've never done captchas, challenges, security questions and all the other nonsense the majors do when you move around to different IPs and devices. They try to look paid only, but there's still free accounts. No ads. Canadian. And three UIs, old school, new and mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> fastmail.com zoho.com protonmail.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tips.

Forgot to mention, but another point would be to avoid US based services. That excludes zoho.

Protonmail is definitely on the shortlist, what didn't convince me was a) not being sure how future-proof it is and b) their pricing table (limiting for labels used? emails sent a day? not that I'd exceed those values, but it sends wrong signals).

Thanks!

<comment><USER6> ProtonMail's mission is to keep your emails secure and they are relentlessly working to enforce and evolve this goal.

Giving the history of the team, coming from CERN and highly educated in MIT, Harvard and Stanford, I would not bet for a better company in the encryption space to survive better than them.

I don't understand your point related the pricing table. They are 100% community backed, started from a crowdfunding and they are surviving in an industry where email is considered free due to the other players in the market making profits with ads and data exploitation. It's normal for PM to limit the free account because it's based on a freemium model. The limitations, however, do not affect your experience and they offer you the same quality of security as the paid accounts.

Which in my opinion is pretty sweet. You should just check it out and see how it "feels" :) I pay for it but this is my choice because I support the mission and I want them to succeed.

Cheers,

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> thexyz.com</comment>


129 years of New York Times journalism, as it originally appeared. - <AUTHOR> http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser?smid=tw-nytimes

<comment><USER2> This is very cool... but I'm still not going to pay for a subscription. It just does not add enough value for me day to day. Sorry.</comment>


The Plot to Destroy America's Beer - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/78186-the-plot-to-destroy-americas-beer

<comment><USER2> I find this article to be an intriguing piece of journalism. In the end, it's not clear to me if the people who like the pre-InBev beers are merely sentimental, or are speaking to a real wide-spread erosion of quality for beers under their sway.

Is InBev -- compared in the article to a private-equity pump-and-dump operation -- buying brands and chipping away at them to turn their hard-earned customer loyalty into the impressive profits reported over a finite period of time, like strip-mining? Or, are they are a positive globalizing force that may make some sacrifices, but generally improves the quality and availability of beers available to all, especially in places without a local micro-brew economy or supply chain?

The answer is probably somewhere in-between, but how much of each?

</comment><comment><USER3> When I started drinking beer, long ago, the American options were pretty limited, and mostly to light lagers. They lost a lot of ground to imports and microbrews when younger consumers discovered that beers didn't have to taste like Bud/Schlitz/Miller (and when those consumers developed the earning power to pay for them). We'll see how the InBev model holds up if they damage brands.

</comment><comment><USER4> People still drink macro-brews, and expect them to taste good? Come on.</comment>


CAC is not S&M - <AUTHOR> https://www.causal.app/blog/cac-is-not-sales-marketing-expense <comment><USER2> Customer Acquisition Cost does not equal Sales and Marketing expenses.

Do uncommon or misleading abbreviations in titles equal clickbait?

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't forget that it all starts with business development, so consider the more holistic approach of BDSM.

</comment><comment><USER4> And here I was hoping to read a rebuke to some new form of fetish play

</comment><comment><USER5> I expected a totally different article based on the title.

<comment><USER6> me too, especially with the domain, thought perhaps this was the launch of a tinder for special interests

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Common Access Card is not Sadism and Masochism. Thank you, very cool.

<comment><USER8> Having heard about some of the nonsense in order to get one in your hand, The process for getting one might be however.</comment></comment>