You Can Now Tell Facebook to Delete Its Internal Record of Your Face - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/you-can-now-tell-facebook-to-delete-its-internal-record-of-your-face-d1def7f992c1 <comment><USER2> I'll speculate that facebook will never "delete its internal record of your face" as the title states. They're using misleading words to make this sound like a significant concession, when it isn't.

Suppose Alice appears in photos with Bob. And that Carol appears in other photos with the same Bob. Facebook can infer the Alice..Bob..Carol relationships.

If Bob "opts-out", facebook will still know that Alice appears in photos with unnamed person, and also that Carol appears with same unnamed person. So they'll infer the Alice..unnamed person..Carol relationships.

If, hypothetically, facebook offered Bob the option "do not use my face in your algorithms." Then maybe they wouldn't link Alice and Carol. But all facebook is offering here is "don't associate my face to my account".

This cleverly gives facebook some cover. Bob might ask facebook, "don't use my face to surveil my friends", but facebook can say "how could we possibly do that? We don't associate your face with your account, so we can't associate your face with your preference, even if we wanted to."

<comment><USER3> That's not accurate. If you are not a user or don't have the FaceRec setting on, we will not create a Face Template and won't be able to recognize you in pictures.

Source/Disclaimer: I work at FB and this feature is managed by my team.

<comment><USER4> > I work at FB and this feature is managed by my team.

How do you feel working at Facebook? Do you feel pressure from your peers on the outside about the moral compass of the company?

Maybe you can't answer these things if you aren't using a throwaway account, but I'm very interested in hearing how Facebook employees perceive the company themselves, as well as how they're treated by company outsiders.

My impression is that a lot of engineers are opposed to how Facebook operates and that this reputation must make recruiting and retention difficult.

<comment><USER3> > How do you feel working at Facebook?

See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19036507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19036507) or [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20768607](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20768607)

> Do you feel pressure from your peers on the outside about the moral compass > of the company?

Pressure is too strong a word. I do get into discussions with friends and family on the topic.

> My impression is that a lot of engineers are opposed to how Facebook > operates and that this reputation must make recruiting and retention > difficult.

That's mostly not accurate. Remember that these engineers can freely express their opinion internally or question Zuck live every week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is getting tiring. I have to submit a form to tell Facebook to delete data about my face. Submit a form to opt out of binding arbitration for each credit card. Submit a form to avoid being tracked. This whole mess puts a huge onus on the average internet user, and acts like it's the user's own fault if they're every movement and action is being tracked by a hundred entities at once.

<comment><USER6> I've never had, and intend to never have, an account with Facebook or any of their services.

Can we please have sane legal defaults like Facebook ONLY having data profiles for those who have agreed to the creation of such profiles?

<comment><USER7> Thing about that, Facebook is known to construct "shadow profiles" of people who don't have normal profiles, just to correlate all of the data they happen to gather on you from having their tendrils on half the sites on the internet. It might be better off to create a profile with your info just to turn off as many things as you can, and not interact with anybody on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How do I do this if I've already deleted my Facebook profile? I know Facebook is still holding some data on me because the "that account doesn't exist" page it shows when I type in my former account email is subtly different than the page when I type in an email I know doesn't exist.

<comment><USER3> If you are not or no longer are a Facebook user or you do not have the Face Recognition on, we will not create or store a face template to recognize you.

Source/Disclaimer: I work at FB and this feature is managed by my team.

<comment><USER9> I deleted my FB account a few days ago, and reactivated it today (within the 30-day permanent deletion cancel period) to see if I could delete FB's record of my face data. Like some others in this thread, I couldn't see any option to do so.

Do I need to wait for this option to be rolled out to my account (and how long will that take)? Can I delete my account anyway without this option having shown up? (While ensuring FB doesn't have records of my face?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Of course I can. The question is - will they actually delete it everywhere inside their data storages or will they just send me a 200 response code.

<comment><USER11> And what exactly does "delete" mean? It's removed from production, or it's also scoured from backups?

<comment><USER12> It is deleted, then added to a list of deleted faces.

Just so they can be sure not to re-add it later.

Yeah. That's it! And they're sticking with that story.

<comment><USER13> Sensing another Zuckerberg promise "to do better" in the works already.

<comment><USER14> Has he already apologized for the recent release of a half billion phone numbers?

<comment><USER15> Hey, we have just gotten a enormous phone directory for free! Why are you complaining?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can't find the setting to disable this. The EFF says they "have questions" about how Facebook is implementing this.

"Throughout Facebook's deliberately vague announcement, it takes great pains to note that the change applies only to new Facebook users and people who currently have the "tag suggestions" setting. However, Facebook migrated many, if not most, existing users from "tag suggestions" to "face recognition" in December 2017 (see here for Facebook's explanation of the difference between tag suggestions and face recognition). That means this safeguard does not apply to the billions of current Facebook users who have already been moved."

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/facebook-changing- its-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/facebook-changing-its-face- recognition-settings-we-have-questions)

<comment><USER17> The URL when I found it was: [https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=facerec](https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=facerec)

If that URL doesn't work I went to Settings and there's a tab for "Facial Recognition" on the left rail. Between "Language and Regions" and "Notifications"

<comment><USER16> I really appreciate you posting this.

Just to confirm my experience: when I click on that link, I see "General Account Settings" (like name, username, contact... Everything that's available from the first left-hand menu choice.) And no where in that left-hand menu is there any choice about Face Recognition.

I do have a left-hand menu choice about "Timeline and Tagging" \-- but there's still nothing there about face recognition.

<comment><USER17> Here's what my left hand menu looks like: [https://imgur.com/a/dFPibMc](https://imgur.com/a/dFPibMc)

I'd guess that it's a feature that's being gradually rolled out to all accounts.

I originally posted it because I was frustrated that I didn't see a link to the setting in the article, but I guess I understand why there was no link.

<comment><USER16> My left-hand menu looks exactly like yours -- but without the "Face Recognition" choice. (After "Language and Region" my next choice is "Notifications", with nothing in between.)

Thanks for posting the screenshot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is misleading to the point it's almost propaganda. From Facebooks announcement [1]

> ... if you're in a photo and are part of the audience for that post, we'll > notify you, even if you haven't been tagged. You're in control of your image > on Facebook and can make choices such as whether to tag yourself, leave > yourself untagged, or reach out to the person who posted the photo if you > have concerns about it.

[1] [https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/12/managing-your- identity-...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/12/managing-your-identity-on- facebook-with-face-recognition-technology/)

<comment><USER19> What the even what. This is double speak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "We've got all the data we need, you may now opt out" ¯\\(°_o)/¯

</comment><comment><USER12> Shouldn't it be that I have to tell Facebook what they are allowed to keep?

Especially since I have never had and never will have a FB account.

<comment><USER21> That's what you think. Your shadow profile is probably there, waiting for you should you ever claim it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> More info: [https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/09/update-face- recognition...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/09/update-face-recognition/)

The feature is now opt-in. It is turned off for all new users and for those who only had the "tag suggestion" setting on.

Disclaimer: I work at Facebook and this feature is managed by my team.

<comment><USER22> I deleted my facebook account years ago — how do I delete myself?

<comment><USER3> If you are not a Facebook user or you do not have the Face Recognition on, we will not create or store a face template to recognize you.

<comment><USER23> Is that the truth or will a court later fine your company for lying?

<comment><USER24> When you ask hypotheticals like this, it comes across as an attack. When you attack people, they stop showing up to share their unique knowledge and experience.

<comment><USER25> Facebook's chronic underhanded tactics requires one to ask for confirmation. The onus is on the dishonest party not the victims.

Good that he asked... we all should more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What do I have to do to get facebook to delete this after I already deleted my account 3 years ago?

<comment><USER27> Seconded, I'm in the same boat. I realize attempting to wipe my data from all the various sources it may be in across the web is futile but I'd still like to try.

<comment><USER28> Until Facebook states they won't store/analyze faces they can't recognize then everyone who has never had an account or deleted their account are at a disadvantage.

I've always wondered if COPPA could be used against Facebook with regard to this. Theoretical situation: I'm a parent and I find an image of my child (under 13 years of age). Facebook never notified me of they were storing my child's image. Facebook would argue they didn't know. But Facebook already scanned the image and likely guessed the child's age - and knew they were under 13. In that situation Facebook should be required to remove the image based on the fact they cannot notify the guardian. I realize this would have severe repercussions to their operational model, but that's also the point. Or... If I find an image Facebook didn't notify me about - then I'll take that $42,000 per image.

Seems fair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> >When you opt out of facial recognition on Facebook, the company will delete your template, meaning it will have no original reference point for your face and therefore cannot find your face at all.

The details are pretty sparse. It would be nice if they clarified how they manage black-listing your template ID somewhere but still disconnect it from your profile. If you opt-ed back in at some point, they need to know to remove you from that black-list, which might imply there's still some sort of connection from your profile to a template ID or maybe the generic template still exists but they're disallowed to associate it to a profile and it's in some shadow table?

<comment><USER30> Plus, just as another layer of "I don't trust this". I have to re-unsubscribe from AT&T's job search newsletter every few months because of what I assume is a new wave of recruitment emails being sent from an older mailing list. Doesn't matter how many times I unsubscribe, that backup will always have my information on it and that service only refers to that backup.

My only assumption is that Facebook is too big to properly manage that piece of specific knowledge and will delete it, but I'll still be there somewhere. Or I'll magically opt back in because of something like Messenger or whatever. Considering the news about Google circumventing their own GDPR restrictions, I just assume these companies aren't following through with any of their promises.

<comment><USER31> _> I have to re-unsubscribe from AT&T's job search newsletter every few months because of what I assume is a new wave of recruitment emails being sent from an older mailing list. Doesn't matter how many times I unsubscribe, that backup will always have my information on it and that service only refers to that backup._

That sounds like a violation of the CAN-SPAM act, and you could consider suing them.

<comment><USER30> Yes, but the hassle of deleting their email once every few months isn't enough to make suing them worth it. Plus, that doesn't really resolve the issue that requesting to be take off things doesn't actually remove me (the original concern of these comments)

<comment><USER31> You might be able to get some money out of them, though

<comment><USER30> You seem to be ignoring the rest of the issue entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is great for the new users it appears to apply to. But what about people like me? I haven't had a Facebook account in seven years. Yet, I'm not delusional to believe they don't still have my data (yes, I "deleted" it) along with my picture. So every time my wife posts a picture with me in it to Facebook, they know where I am.

</comment><comment><USER33> I still can't use it and won't be able to, probably forever.

I'm not on Facebook and I don't have plans to become part of that thing for the next two centuries or so, but a lot of people I happen to share the same geographical coordinates do. They take and upload photos at events thinking everyone wants to appear in their videos. Now imagine -as someone who strives every single day to stay away from that platform and all associated things- playing an instrument at a dinner and realizing there are no less than half the people there pointing a cellphone at you. How in the Universe can I ask people I don't ever recall the name not to shoot videos of me, or at least not put them on Facebook because once they do I can't ask Facebook to delete them because I don't have a Facebook account?

The real problem here is that I am already somewhere on Facebook since forever although I firmly refuse to be part of it, and I have no way of telling them to delete all my data, short of making an account, which would negate everything I am struggling for. This is crazy.

A while ago I proposed somewhere (probably here, can't recall for sure) a barcode which if shown (worn?) tells the system used to shoot the video that the associated human doesn't want to appear, so that the whole person is deleted from the scene. Now that the random-faces technology has progressed, I would add some AI that swaps that person with a fake one so that the photo won't be ruined by an empty area.

In the meantime we could create human readable symbols telling if and how we want our image to be used and instruct people how to use them, then one day hopefully if someone posts a photo of me while wearing a patch/shirt/whatever with a crossed camera, I can force that person to delete the photo or sue the platform that keeps it online. Of course there should be exceptions for well known public figures and/or public officers during service (read: the heck I'm not uploading a photo of say police abuse even if the cop wears a 5 meters wide photo of a crossed camera!).

<comment><USER34> What infuriates me is when parents do this to other people's children without asking. It's now just a given you'll be uploaded onto some giant corporations systems from birth to death.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Can anyone figure out how to actually turn this off? After bouncing around in Facebook's help docs I found the steps[1] but don't see the option.

Click the down arrow at the top right, then Settings. There _should_ be a "Face Recognition" item in the left but not for me.

This is so frustrating and part of me thinks they just disable this for a bit so 90% of people forget.

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/help/187272841323203](https://www.facebook.com/help/187272841323203)

<comment><USER36> I checked it in the Android app, and I was able to find it and it was already deactivated. I remember doing this a while ago. But it was burried in Facebooks settings. Here is how you can do it on Android.

1\. Click on the menu icon (three horizontal lines) in the top toolbar. 2\. Scroll down, expand "Settings & Privacy" if not expanded, and click "Settings". Don't fall for those privacy shortcuts. Facebook will hide a lot of settings from you. 3\. Scroll down and you should see the " Face Recognition" entry in the Privacy category.

Hope this helps.

PS: I personally find it lame, that Facebook needs to make it as much confusing as possible to find those settings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> >It's an assurance that Facebook isn't actually retaining data that it could use again someday to recognize your face.

Given fb's history of lying, it's only an assurance that they won't overtly use such data. No guarantee that they're not still storing it on a server somewhere, and good luck proving as much.

Also, what does this mean for people without accounts that are being tracked? I wonder if facial data is collected on them too, after being labeled by friends.

<comment><USER38> Where has Facebook been caught lying?

They've surely done many things you don't like, but they've not lied about doing those things.

<comment><USER39> From stallman.org: Facebook made deals for phone and computer manufacturers including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Samsung to access data about its useds and their friends as well. These deals seem to still be operative. [1]

When Zuckerberg testified to Congress, he said Facebook had stopped doing this years ago [2]. Apparently he lied.

1: [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/fa...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/facebook- device-partners-users-friends-data.html)

2: [https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/06/04/sure-looks- zuck...](https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/06/04/sure-looks-zuckerberg- lied-congress-about-user-privacy-new-facebook-data-sharing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've had this setting disabled for I want to say over a year now. Was I part of some early pilot or something? I followed the instructions here ([https://www.facebook.com/help/www/187272841323203](https://www.facebook.com/help/www/187272841323203)) and it was already set to "No". What the heck?

</comment><comment><USER41> FB is known to build profiles of pretty much everyone it encounters, even vicariously, ostensibly to be able to populate a new account with engaging info once they actually join.

Can I tell them to delete the records of my face that they keep even though I don't have an account?

And, of course, in all instances. will they actually expunge it from all locations in their data-universe?

</comment><comment><USER42> How does a person without a facebook account accomplish this though? Even without an account it's likely that fb has several dozens of photos of me via other people's posts.

</comment><comment><USER43> It'll be extremely difficult for the face-identification algorithm to not run on your face without remembering what your face looks like. Their algorithm is probably a two-step process: find where all the faces are in the photograph, and then attempt to match the found faces to user profiles. It's extremely probable that every failure-to-match gets logged somewhere, and probably annotated with extra data. Will Facebook wind up deleting your facial recognition data only to recreate it without the tie to your profile? It seems extremely likely, unless they keep some list of "deleted faces" and tell the match-to-profile algorithm to discard any results from that list. And that seems very different from actually deleting your face record.

</comment><comment><USER44> Sorry, but... So I don't have to go hunting for it (and get stuck in facebook land reading updates!) can some one provide a link to the place where this setting resides? Thank you!

<comment><USER45> Yes please. I hate articles like this that tell you what Facebook will now allow you to do... but don't give you the actual link where you could do it yourself _right now_. Makes me think these articles are actually Facebook PR which wants to control the narrative on the feature and deliberately not make it easy to find where to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Can I opt out if I'm not a Facebook user? i.e. opt out of having them store records of my face?

PS don't tell me they don't have records of my face

</comment><comment><USER47> This help page[1] claims you can go to Settings > Facial Recognition, but I don't have that option under Settings...

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/help/www/187272841323203](https://www.facebook.com/help/www/187272841323203)

</comment><comment><USER48> Okay, but how will they know if the face they found is yours, and thus should not be found?

<comment><USER49> I wonder about this too. They say they delete the template (the statistical model they know is your face). Ok.

So now I register a new fb profile, using a picture of _you_ , opting in to facial recognition. Now what?

They can't match the picture against your profile, because they've deleted the template?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> And they totally will from most of their archives _wink wink_. Who is really capable of verifying this actually happens that doesn't also have a vested interest in Facebook?

</comment><comment><USER51> I shouldn't have to tell Facebook to delete something it should never have had to begin with. How are we going to force Facebook to stop doing terrible things forever?

<comment><USER52> The article makes it sound like an ominous surveillance feature with not justifiable product reasons, so I should point out that this powers beneficial features like face recognition for image accessibility. Thanks to face recognition, blind people can know who's in a photo.

[https://www.facebook.com/accessibility/videos/new-face- face-...](https://www.facebook.com/accessibility/videos/new-face-face- recognition-features/1628143837229335/)

Remove yourself if you want to, but people should be aware there's also a useful side of this.

<comment><USER53> That there exists useful product reasons is beside the point. The point is that people who don't want their data to be involved should not have their data be involved.

<comment><USER52> Yes, it's good that you can opt out now. But I think articles like this are doing a disservice by glossing over the negative effects of opting out.

People choosing to remove their data from this should be aware that if they have visually impaired friends on facebook (or even friends of friends, depending on sharing settings) you will be degrading accessibility features that they probably use.

And it's great to let people make their own choice about whether they're OK with Facebook having face recognition of them, but encouraging people to disable it without at least mentioning that image tags are an accessibility feature is a dick move.

It's framed as just "this will remove features that _you_ might not care about," but blind people need the image tags more than you do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Surely after their AI neural net thingamybob has absorbed your face, FB doesn't care about deleting your face, as their model has already benefited from it?

</comment><comment><USER21> In other words, they've trained their models enough that they can now be ethical about this one particular piece of data.

</comment><comment><USER55> Is this for the people who haven't already legally prevented FB from using your face? I fixed this years ago by copypasting a legal message on my FB account refusing FB this permission. They have no right to use my photo for any means whatsoever without my express written permission.

</comment><comment><USER56> Give me physical opt-out. A "robots.txt"/do-not-track for computer surveillance spiders. Let me wear a necklace or QR code on my shoulder, and any commercial face tracking software, is required to create a big black blindspot where my facial micro-expressions used to be.

<comment><USER57> And then the minute it even isn't slightly visible, Facebook et al will likely take that as you consenting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Despite the headline I don't see anything about deleting data. Just that it won't try to recognize you.

That being said, I went on my profile to check and it was already set to No (don't do facial recognition). Is this the default? Or is this actually an old thing that I disabled a long time ago.

</comment><comment><USER59> So how do I do this if I'm not a facebook user? you can't even contact facebook by email to tell them to stop sending spam because they've allowed another user to sign up using your email address - they have no outward facing public email address

</comment><comment><USER60> I read this as "You can now 100% confirm to Facebook that, indeed, that is your face".

</comment><comment><USER53> ...and Facebook will tell you it's deleted. But why should anyone believe them?

</comment><comment><USER61> How do you do this if you no longer have a Facebook account? I am sure they have my data but I deleted my account several years ago and I don't plan to reactivate it.

</comment><comment><USER62> Interestingly, I just went into my account and I was already opted-out. Is this the case for everybody? If so, that's a very surprising move coming from FB.

</comment><comment><USER63> I can "tell" them. What a farce.

Until the title reads "New Law Criminalizes Sale of Private Data Without Consent", this crazy train will never stop.

</comment><comment><USER64> How can I, someone without a Facebook profile, ask Facebook to delete my internal profile?

</comment><comment><USER65> I deleted my Facebook account months ago. Does that mean all of the other records were deleted?

</comment><comment><USER66> Of course they don't delete it, which is why they know not to automatically tag you.

</comment><comment><USER67> okay....so how do you opt-out?

</comment><comment><USER68> You can now tell the Queen of England to make you a Knight!

</comment><comment><USER69> Didn't this happen over a year ago? (in the EU at least)

[https://www.wired.co.uk/article/facebook-facial- recognition-...](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/facebook-facial-recognition- opt-out-settings-lawsuit-turn-off-gdpr-eu)

</comment><comment><USER70> I mean you could always tell Facebook to do whatever.

</comment><comment><USER71> "You can now tell Facebook to " $*

Slowly, with me, now:

Hah. Hah. Hah.

</comment><comment><USER72> uh oh...here comes the facial data leak

</comment><comment><USER73> yeah? Zuckerberg promised? suuure

</comment><comment><USER74> What do they mean by "delete" ? Is this only FB? What about its 279387429 other connectors</comment>


Uber used Greyball software to evade 16 Portland city officials - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2017/09/15/uber-used-greyball-software-to-evade-16-portland-officials/ <comment><USER2> Means to an end, the consequentialist approach.

They expanded the collective conscious about the utility of ride sharing by offering it and avoiding the sanctions, and very soon after it received the license it wanted, all while protecting its drivers from a bad experience with law enforcement.</comment>


Ask HN: Where might I be happier than ecommerce? - <AUTHOR> Since graduating a few years ago, I've been working in ecommerce. This has been my first real development job. I've learned a lot from it. And one of the things I've learned is that I fucking hate ecommerce and I never want to work in this cursed hellhole again.
I hate the frameworks. I hate how they make doing basic things take hours to achieve and force me to spend most of my time on workarounds or with my head stuck in a debugger.
I hate the clients. I hate that I have to do work for rich people who sell stupid things to people who don't need them.
I hate how we sell things to our clients by telling them what they're getting is the best, when everyone knows it's  just polished garbage.
I hate how we act toward our users. I hate how absolutely anything that increases conversion is treated as a positive, no matter whether it's actually helping the customer or just inducing them to impulsively buy more products.
My job has reasonable perks. I like my coworkers. I like everything about it except the job itself, and it's eating me alive. I think I could put up with worse if I felt like I was really achieving anything. Right now I feel like everything I do at work is ultimately pointless and I want to know if that's something I can expect for the rest of my career. I'm at the point where it might be expected that I moved on to another job and I'd like to do a bit better this time. <comment><USER2> I'm sure Boeing needs some software developers now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I'm not sure that I get the reference.

<comment><USER2> When I asked Steve McConnell for career advice at a time when I was frustrated build web apps he suggested embedded systems as an area with interesting problems but a very different culture. (eg. inside cars, airplanes, thermostats, drones, ...)</comment></comment></comment>


Three Types of Programmers - <AUTHOR> https://mkdev.me/en/posts/the-three-types-of-programmers <comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure if the examples given of the tradeoffs between "engineers," "mathematicians," and "writers" quite matches my experience, but in general this strikes me as a pretty useful way to think of the personalities of the good senior engineers I've worked with. I definitely agree with his sentiment that the best teams will combine the three, as their strengths and weaknesses compliment each other.

I especially appreciate the bit at the end, which I think is a pretty spot-on description of the divide I perceive as an engineer mostly in the Ruby community who loves Ruby but isn't a huge fan of Rails.

Interested to hear what anyone else thinks :)</comment>


Education Needs to Be Turned on Its Head  - <AUTHOR> http://zenhabits.net/2009/08/education-needs-to-be-turned-on-its-head/

<comment><USER2> _Let them learn about what they want to learn about, and you know what? They'll actually care about what they're learning, because they chose it themselves._

I think that's the key to motivating students. I've seen teenagers who hate picking up a book, but spend hours reading Wikipedia articles.</comment>


MTME App – A new way to discover music - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/lb/app/mtme/id1151459508?mt=8 <comment><AUTHOR> MTME is a music discovery platform where people meet in random groups to discuss music and share tracks through YouTube and SoundCloud.

What distinguishes MTME from other music discovery apps out there is that it relies on recommendations from music curators and other people from all over the world to discover the latest tracks or hidden music gems.</comment>


Czech charity helps homeless by turning them into WiFi hotspots - <AUTHOR> https://www.rt.com/news/320097-czech-homeless-wifi-charity/ <comment><AUTHOR> A similar use in the US sometime ago: [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/wi- fi-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/wi-fi-hotspots- made-of-homeless-people-not-as-horrible-as-they-seem/254347/)</comment>


Making Google's CalDAV and CardDAV APIs available for everyone - <AUTHOR> http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2013/06/making-googles-caldav-and-carddav-apis.html <comment><USER2> While this is great and I sincerely congratulate Google for it, I still find the wording slightly disturbing. They say they were going to close down the API because only "a few large developers" were using it. Then that since they've heard from developers about a lot of "use cases" they've decided to change their mind.

For me, openness is a relatively unconditional principle. You do it because it is a virtue in and of itself. To hear that we need to spell out specific use cases to justify something being open seems to indicate that Google slightly misses the point. Google shouldn't have to like our reasons for wanting things open. Google should have to justify why they are closed. Indeed, it's in the most unfriendly situations when the openness matters (ie: we want to get our data out of Google and move away from Google services).

So while I'm happy to hear this, and I know I'm picking nits here, it still doesn't quite feel like the "old" Google that really made a principle out of these things.

<comment><USER3> > While this is great and I sincerely congratulate Google for it, I still find > the wording slightly disturbing. They say they were going to close down the > API because only "a few large developers" were using it.

Incorrect. They said they were going to make it a whitelisted, by-request, partner-only API for that reason, rather than that they were going to close it down. There is a fairly significant difference.

> For me, openness is a relatively unconditional principle. You do it because > it is a virtue in and of itself.

In the real world, few things are unconditional, and while Google has certainly claimed openness as one of its values, Google has never claimed that using open standards is an unconditional principal that is never weighed against other concerns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is pretty outstanding on Google's part. Thank you to whoever made this happen.

<comment><USER5> If you hear people saying that Google closed CalDAV (an open standard for calendar info), please point them to the blog post at [http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2013/06/making- googles-...](http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2013/06/making-googles- caldav-and-carddav-apis.html) to let them know CalDAV is remaining open and that Google is opening up CardDAV access (used for contact info) to everyone too. I'm glad that Google is doing this.

<comment><USER6> That's a great decision on their part. However I really hope they reconsider the removal of ActiveSync support aka Google Sync. Totally anecdotal, but my wife is not a fan of the official Gmail iOS client which is their current solution for push email, and IMAP works OK with the stock Mail app for her except for the lack of push. I'd be OK with paying for Google Apps account to get ActiveSync back, except that you can't do that with a Gmail address.

<comment><USER7> Gmail's IMAP supports the IMAP push extensions. I don't know if Apple's Mail app supports them or uses them, but just because it's IMAP doesn't mean it isn't push.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, I didn't even know there was such as thing as P-IMAP. So I guess it's up to Apple to add support for this to the Mail app huh?

<comment><USER8> OS X's mail client supports IMAP push as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm glad Google made CardDAV available and decided not to restrict CalDAV, at least for now. However, I wonder how long it will continue to support these standards, especially for users of the free services. Supporting these standards might not be directly in Google's best interest, since the more thoroughly Google supports task-specific protocols such as CardDAV, CalDAV, and XMPP, the fewer opportunities it has to present ads. So it may still be good for users to think about moving to services where the user is actually the customer.

<comment><USER10> In all cases the user is the customer. Some customers pay with real currency (e.g. those who have enterprise accounts), others pay by loaning a few thousand pixel-seconds to advertisers.

It's very much in Google's interest to encourage task-specific protocols, because they can be attached to subscriptions, and subscriptions are denominated in real currency. If Jane Smith knows that GAE has good support for syncing her calendar to her iPhone, she's more likely to use it as her company's email/calendar/documents provider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> While this is nice, it would be great to see native CalDAV/CardDAV support in Android without having to use non-free third party adapters that are not even feature complete [1] [2].

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.calda...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.caldav.lib)

[2] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.cardd...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.carddav.Sync)

<comment><USER11> I'm not quite sure why I'm getting heavily downvoted. Does anyone else find it odd that Google is supporting CalDAV/CardDAV on their servers but not on their operating system?

Or am I being downvoted for being critical of Google?

<comment><USER12> Because you're acting like it's Google's responsibility to provide a client in addition to a server. This is not the case. In fact, the two are barely related.

Or perhaps because it's kinda silly to say, "Oh, you gave me one thing? Now give me another thing!" It's just . . . a childish perspective? I'm really not sure how to describe this.

<comment><USER13> Is it not in Google's motivation to make Android the best phone platform it can be? The lack of native CalDav sync irritates me (the app/plugin listed works fairly poorly, from my experience), as well their horrid excuse of what they call "Exchange" support on Android. If you aren't using GMail, they make it very clear you are a second class citizen on Android. Part of the reason I left it after using it for a month.

<comment><USER11> user: jamesaguilar about: Staff software engineer at Google.

Apparently not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Good decision. Can Google also revert their decision to drop XMPP federation with their Hangouts now?

<comment><USER15> This has been beaten to death already. Hangouts supports way more functionality than XMPP calls for. In order to create a cohesive product, you can't have half your features not work with 3rd party clients that people might use. I think a better plea would be for Google to release Hangouts as a protocol.

<comment><USER10>
      > In order to create a cohesive product, you can't have
      > half your features not work with 3rd party clients that
      > people might use.

Why not? Having clients with a range of functionality is how the entire open- standards world works. Somehow, the world wide web continues to work just fine even though it's possible for people to use any browser they want.

If a user has a third-party client, and it doesn't support some fancy feature that the first-party client supports, that doesn't seem to be a big problem. I don't think a significant number of people would care if using video conferences required the official client.

<comment> UVB-76 The web browser analogy is a poor one. There are countless standards in place for the reproduction of content on the web, and these days most popular browsers are quite good at supporting those standards.

When it comes to a commercial product like Google Hangouts, allowing users to use unsupported third-party clients is a big risk. People will conflate the client and the service; problems with the client will damage the reputation of the service, and so on.

<comment><USER14> E-mail analogy is better. Imagine a service, which only allows using one e-mail client and doesn't allow sending e-mails to anyone outside itself. I wouldn't want to use such service.

<comment><USER3> Interestingly, such a system (e-mail like system which only supports first- party clients and can only send to and receive from other users of the same service) is a common feature of web discussion fora and social networking sites.

 _You_ might not want it, but such services haven't exactly failed in the market.

<comment><USER14> Your example isn't good, since forum messaging has limited scope, while e-mail is generic. Instant messaging can have limited scope in other scenarios (let's say you chatting with some support representative for some service). It can be generic as well. Here we are discussing generic instant messaging. Therefore it's proper to compare it to generic e-mail. When it's artificially limited by the service walls, it's unacceptable.

 _such services haven't exactly failed in the market._

Indeed, services like AIM, Skype, Whatsapp and etc. have many users, and are presented as generic instant messaging services, yet they don't allow their users to communicate with others. It's somewhat surprising to me, that people are ready to accept that fact. For some reason they'd see cutting their e-mail off from other servers as unacceptable, but the fact that they are confined within the network of proprietary IM clients doesn't bother them, even though because of that they need to use many clients or protocols to communicate with different networks having an account on each.

<comment><USER3> > Froum messaging has limited scope. E-mail is generic.

Making a system closed by boundaries automatically gives it limited scope, but forum messaging isn't any more limited in scope than results from those closed boundaries. Ditto with social network-based closed mail-like messaging.

<comment><USER14> See above. Social network messaging is presented as generic. So I won't compare it with forum messaging.

<comment><USER3> At this point, I'm not even sure what your point is, since you said my examples were bad, and now seem to be saying that your initial criticism doesn't apply to one of my two examples, and that you wouldn't compare the two examples I gave with each other.

<comment><USER14> My point is, that there are scenarios when closed messaging networks are acceptable, and there are scenarios when they aren't, but despite of that, people tolerate them in case of IM, which allows various messaging services to get away with it. I said that I really don't understand why that happens, since in case of e-mail they don't tolerate it.

Hangouts, FB messaging and etc. are generic cases, not the ones which should be acceptable as confined environments (like your example of the forum messaging).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does this mean there will be a way to sync Google contacts on iOS again?

<comment><USER17> You could already do this in iOS by going into Settings -> Mail,Contacts, Calendars -> Add Account -> Other -> Add CardDAV and entering your Google account user/pass.

This makes no difference whatsoever.

<comment><AUTHOR> The blog post says that both APIs will be getting OAuth 2.0, though. If iOS doesn't support that protocol for CardDAV, doesn't that mean that this may actually break it?

<comment><USER18> I wouldn't be surprised if they require OAuth2, but I'm guessing they'll grandfather in clients with lots of users (like Apple), until they can switch over.

I've suspected for a while that their issue with CalDAV was security. Currently you need to store a plaintext copy of the user's password to do caldav. The only copy of my google password in my iOS keychain is for caldav. Since Google Authenticator stores its key in the same keychain, both auth factors are there.

I'd kinda wished they'd propose fixes for caldav, rather than just drop it. Now it sounds like they're doing that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know that Google Authenticator supports application-specific passwords for applications that don't support OAuth 2.0, but I'm not familiar with Google's use of application-specific passwords outside of the context of Google Authenticator.

Perhaps that could be enabled for all users regardless of 2FA activation, and be made available for use with these and other applicable APIs?

<comment><USER19> Actually, application-specific passwords have nothing to do with Google Authenticator. Authenticator is only for the two-factor code. Application- specific passwords are just individual passwords you can set up for anything that doesn't support the two-factor authenticator login.

Just so you don't have to share the same password with multiple products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is good news, I guess, but I'll play the pessimist and ask: "How long will this commitment hold?

</comment><comment><USER21> Good move. Now please clarify what will happen with XMPP in Hangouts!

</comment><comment><USER22> Not merely a reinstatement: OAuth 2.0 as well.</comment>


Amazon EventBridge: The biggest thing since AWS Lambda - <AUTHOR> https://www.trek10.com/blog/amazon-eventbridge/ <comment><USER2> ESB is dead, long live ESB.

I think i'm getting old... was telling coworkers that their fancy micro services existed 15 years ago in the form of EJB and service bus was a thing. And look, here it goes again

<comment><USER3> Except you had to use CORBA or JMS to invoke them, which was pretty frustrating and expensive computationally.

<comment><USER4> CORBA and the object mapping model (similar to the issues of ORMs) is what led to the dreaded ClassCastException problems that required every service to re- deploy at once which was completely broken and indicative of the architects being engineers that hardly ever touched day to day production. The transition off of syncing object representation in a monolith and God Service Schema / Registry was necessary but by that point we had moved on to SOAP and screwed that part up once again by needing to re-deploy JARs yet again constantly and out of sync and also being unable to separately deploy and route components off which led to either more ditch digging via OSGI or by going to REST APIs... or if you didn't get here you used earlier incarnations of object and message serializations with protocol buffers. Only with these painful lessons have we as an industry learned how to actually decouple our services' business boundaries well enough to call them decoupled, scalable services.

<comment><USER2> Did we learn the lesson? Protobufs are getting traction, and some rising star companies started using them for data related purposes. The problem they are facing - change in the protobuf is not automatically reflected in you data schema (not like with avro), you have to recompile and redeploy pieces of your stack + orchestrate deployment so data is not lost in processing. It can be solved easily with avro, but "we want to use protos, Bla Bla Bla"

<comment><USER5> Protobufs are relatively good with backwards compatibility, no?

<comment><USER4> Thrift, ProtoBufs, and Avro solve the messaging compatibility layer problem at least (optional fields in a schema are all you need 99%+ of the time) and so far nothing out there has managed to solve any data schema incompatibility problem automatically because that's pretty much intractable, but providing tools that make finding problems earlier certainly helps with the reality of SOA in its various incarnations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> After reading it I can't understand how EventBridge is different to just using SQS or any old messaging service? It just sounds like a message system layered on a messaging system. Can anyone elaborate why this is significant?

<comment><USER7> It has built-in integrations so you don't have to standup a service or API Gateway to receive webhooks from their list of partners. Their initial list of partners is [1]:

\- Datadog

\- OneLogin

\- Pagerduty

\- Saviynt

\- Segment

\- SignalFx

\- SugarCRM

\- Symantec

\- Whispir

\- Zendesk

and of course that'll grow over time - anyone that produces events can become a partner.

[1]: [https://aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/partners/](https://aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/partners/)

<comment><USER8> So kind of an IFTT or Zapier piped directly into your AWS backend?

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I also thought of IFTT when I saw this: [https://ifttt.com/services](https://ifttt.com/services)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Pretty sure AWS is late to the party and just now achieving feature parity with Azure. Azure Event Grid came out at the beginning of 2018.

However, I suppose from an AWS cloud standpoint this great news :)

I would imagine this replaces a lot of SNS and SQS combo architectures in AWS?

<comment><USER11> it looks like it only replaces SNS no? As some of the examples are Lambdas and SQS queues that you can publish to. We have a small Go service that basically maps endpoints to SNS topics which then publishes events to SQS or Lambda or some other internal endpoint. Don't see how this is much different other than provided integrations with popular services out of the box.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Everything old is new again!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Pipes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Pipes)

But in all seriousness we've got half a dozen use cases for this just off the top of my head.

<comment><USER13> I loved yahoo pipes. Wonder why it never took off. You could do SQL style query on dozens of different services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this just Yahoo Pipes for Lambda? or IFTT for Lambda?

<comment><USER15> essentially, yes

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> How do you test this in dev environment?

<comment><USER17> By subscribing a dev AWS account to the EventBridge.

<comment><USER18> Live subscriptions sound like like staging, not dev

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Just saw Amazon CTO Dr Werner Vogels present this at their Summit here in NYC. He was very excited about it!

Their other big reveal was for new AWS CDK services allowing programmable config at scale in a few lines of code

[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-cloud-development- kit-c...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-cloud-development-kit-cdk- typescript-and-python-are-now-generally-available/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Amazon is a logistics company, not a cloud company. Their product strategy is spray and pray. "You want a DB? We have 10!" GC has fewer, more stable, high quality offerings. Amazon is like their store "Want shoes? We got millions." Google is like their site "You want search, we do search."

<comment><USER21> As people say in sports when someone is trash talking when they are losing: "Scoreboard"

The AWS approach (and Azure) is clearly working. And the reality is that people want multiple approaches, especially enterprises, which are typically migrating applications to the cloud and can't just rewrite everything for Google's random proprietary platform.

Also, I'll note that GCP is pretty aggressive about EOLing platforms. Good luck with that in the enterprise market.

<comment><USER22> You seem to have confused googles consumer platform policy and Googles enterprise policy. They are very different.

That's like saying AWS is low quality because you bought a fake widget off Amazon.com?

<comment><USER21> Google Cloud Messaging: [https://developers.google.com/cloud- messaging](https://developers.google.com/cloud-messaging)

App Engine: [https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/deprecations/](https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/deprecations/)

...

<comment><USER22> Several of those are showing multiple year deprecation policies. I think the min from notice to shutdown is like 2 years?

If you really want to build something and never touch it again, you need to go in prem. Good luck with being 5 years behind in security updates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It would be nice to see WhatsApp becoming a partner.

<comment><USER24> And maybe Pushbullet

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> We have a very small Golang service that exposes some endpoints and basically just forwards incoming events to SNS which then publishes to subscribers like SQS/Lambda/whatever. This small service basically never fails as it's only dependency is SNS. I don't really see how this EventBridge is much more than that?

<comment><USER25> I have a very similar setup what you have. I think what event bridge offers, is the ability to integrate with anything which can reproduces event. They are trying to expand their base beyond AWS ecosystem. Datadog, Zendesk, OneLogin are great services which could be helpful, to begin with. Still time will tell how popular it gets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Big win for serverless, especially in price:

" _There is no charge for events published by AWS services_ "

</comment><comment><USER27> Am I correct in thinking of Amazon EventBridge as a competitor to services like Zapier and IFTTT?

<comment><USER28> I don't think so. More like ifttt for Enterprise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is it the same as Azure EventGrid?

</comment><comment><USER30> For those confused, I suggest you go read the official doc: [https://aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/faqs/](https://aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/faqs/) . Let me quote the important bits:

> EventBridge was formerly called Amazon CloudWatch Events. It includes new > features that enable you to receive events from SaaS partners and your own > applications. Existing CloudWatch Events users can access their existing > default bus, rules, and events in the new EventBridge console and in the > CloudWatch Events console. EventBridge uses the same CloudWatch Events API, > so all of your existing CloudWatch Events API usage remains the same.

So EventBridge is CloudWatch Events. The difference is that now you can publish your own events and specify your own routing rules for them. As well as supporting 3rd party events from certain SaaS partners.

It is limited to 400 events per second, 5 targets per rule, and 100 rule per account. Consuming events is throttled at 750 per second. Events take about half a second to reach targets. Some of these limits can be increased by asking for higher limits. AWS published events, so existing CloudWatch Events don't count towards these and are unlimited.

What about SNS?

> Amazon SNS is recommended when you want to build an application that reacts > to high throughput or low latency messages published by other applications > or microservices (as Amazon SNS provides nearly unlimited throughput), or > for applications that need very high fan-out (thousands or millions of > endpoints)

> At launch, Amazon EventBridge is has limited throughput (see Service Limits) > which can be increased upon request

> Amazon EventBridge is the only event-based service that integrates directly > with third-party SaaS partners

> Amazon EventBridge uses a defined JSON-based structure for events, and > allows you to create rules that are applied across the entire event body to > select events to forward to a target

Also, the targets are not exactly same yet. For example, only SNS can publish to Mobile SMS, Email, or HTTP/S endpoints for now.

And SNS allows any type of payloads, while EventBridge forces you into JSON.

Finally, the reason this specifies serverless is because of the dynamic content based routing using configurable rules. This means you don't need to manage your own routing. So say you want to pair it with Lambda, you don't waste Lambdas starting then realizing the event isn't relevant for them, you can just setup rules for that. So it provides a serverless routing mechanism that auto-scales and is decoupled from producer and consumer. That's pretty cool!

Hope that helps!

</comment><comment><USER31> I would really like to see how this compares to Firebase. It sounds really similar in that you subscribe to events and then AWS or Google handles the difficult tasks of routing to the right places.

</comment><comment><USER3> "It re-establishes how the greater ecosystem of software integrates with your business logic, in addition to defining an excellent standard for your own services to leverage."

But what is it?

<comment><USER30> It's PubSub with dynamic message routing, but where each AWS account will also now be able to make themselves a consumer of events published by 3rd party SaaS. Say you want to start a Lambda whenever a Zendesk ticket is opened, you can now do that without having to setup any hosts or write any code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is "AppleEvents for Serverless" a reasonable analogy for this? It's an inter- process event bus?</comment>


International gamers in SF for convention 'shell shocked' by 'dangerous city' - <AUTHOR> https://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-crime-GDC-Game-Developers-Conference-12788774.php <comment><USER2> SF's street environment is unlike any other city I've ever visited. It's like a quantum superposition of dangerous ghetto and unattainably expensive luxury enclave.

<comment><USER3> > dangerous ghetto

It's not actually dangerous to random people. Berkeley is far more dangerous in terms of being assaulted randomly than San Francisco.

<comment><USER4> It's dangerous (moreso than ten years ago, too!) to people who are more readily endangered than the SOMA-standard white male software engineer, specifically but not limited to non-whites, women, and children.

<comment><USER5> > moreso than ten years ago, too!

[http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco- Californi...](http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco- California.html)

Generally steady or downward trend since 2002.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It'd be neat if they hosted it in Houston. Central location, cheap lodging, huge venues, great food.</comment>


Elite violence and elite numeracy in Europe from 500 to 1900 CE: A co-evolution - <AUTHOR> https://voxeu.org/article/elite-violence-and-elite-numeracy-europe-500-1900-ce-co-evolution <comment><USER2> > after the trauma of nomadic invasions, Eastern societies created > institutions primarily aimed at defence rather than economic development, > even over the following centuries when the threat had long disappeared.

This is not even wrong and assumes that old institutions were built on some deep strategic policy considerations. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth did have "nomadic invasions" even in the 17th century, but its main institutions were built on republican ideology, and more authoritarian/centralist arguments at the time were based mainly on internal affairs, not external threats. On the other hand, which Early Modern countries had institutions aimed primarily at "economic development"? It's probably debatable in the cases of the Netherlands and England.

Also they neglect to mention that many of these countries were not even independent for a long time. Modern populist Poland and Hungary, incidentally, both have had continuously own elites and statehood traditions since around 900-1000 AD (in contrast to some other Eastern European countries). But in Hungary in 16th-middle 19th century, Poland in the 19th century their own elites had to take the back seat or struggle with the foreign empires. So they weren't the ones creating dominant institutions.

And these, I would say, were the real formative years. If we are to play "find historical roots", the current Polish government (and probably the Hungarian one) is the direct descendant of romantic nationalist tendencies of the 19th century. It's basically LARP'ing a fight for independence which appeals to the intellectual core of these political camps. But admittedly it's hard to build nice charts out of it.

<comment><USER3> > On the other hand, which Early Modern countries had institutions aimed > primarily at "economic development"? It's probably debatable in the cases of > the Netherlands and England.

IIRC Spain was the first major European country to see serious state centralization (large moves toward the modern nation-state) _plus_ a major state focus on policy aimed at economic development across their entire controlled territory (well, the core of it, anyway—Spain proper, not sure how far that control extended to farther-flung territories). England and others followed.

<comment><USER2> This is consistent with what I was taught, but I interpreted the goalposts here a little differently. Of course kings of Spain wanted economic development but probably not for the sake of it, but to build up their own power. Most political regimes want development in this sense and in the East, PLC, Muscovy and the Ottomans all had some kind of pro-economic policies (even if in the PLC it was mostly maintaining low taxation and duties on everything). If they were successful it's another matter, I understand it as a question of motivation. [for the OP's argument anyway]

In this sense there were not many countries ran mostly, primarily to build wealth on a large scale, and not only for the purposes of the social circle controlling the government -- with some wider ideology (which I believe was more the case for Spain than for France) or not. In fact this is, to mind, in that period, equivalent to the dominance of a merchant class.

<comment><USER3> I think a powerful, centralized, and stable (across transitions of power, especially) state is likely a necessary pre-requisite to focused economic development across larger kingdoms. Otherwise there's too much temptation to treat parts of "your" territory as potentially part of a future rebel state you (or one of your children) will have to fight for control of the crown, because there's a really good chance _that will in fact happen at some point in the not-so-distant future_. Might be better to _undermine_ the development of some of them, even. Not a great environment for cohesive, grand, long-term economic planning. Gotta quash the infighting, gotta get the inheritance laws sorted out so the crown's territory's not being carved up all the time among kids who'll often end up going to war with one another. Then the serious economic development can start.

I think that's one of the key differences between how a monarch of France and a monarch of Spain, say, would have approached economic development, around the time Spain was starting to get serious about the whole nation-state thing. I think there may _actually_ have been different incentives and motivations driving less-effective patterns of economic development in less-centralized or less-internally-secure states, caused, more or less, by differences in effective state power.

I'm not sure how politically stable and internally secure Eastern states were then, but my _guess_ would be less so than what Spain was beginning to achieve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Baffling, the liberties taken by this article trying to link 'current' discrepancies using correlated variables from well over 500 years ago. Without mentioning trivialities such as evolution of religious beliefs, history or totalitarian regimes, industrial changes of 17th century or Industrial Revolution. Not to mention the generalisations and lack of definitions (unless I missed an appendix). It really shows that in order to perform interdisciplinary research you not only need competency in both but also understanding how those toolkits interconnect.

<comment><USER5> > correlated variables from well over 500 years ago

Not to mention that ithe reliability of inputs is completely ignored. If one would try to honestly estimate the error bars for all that, it should be obvious that the data for most of the places can't be used for any such analysis and even less to draw any conclusions, especially not to support current policies.

It's something produced with an agenda and it shows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The question posed here, about why Eastern Europe fell behind the West, is an interesting one, but the approach taken here (pick two random-ass variables we can measure and try to explain everything with them) seems pretty damn weak, as does the attempt to tie these explanations to modern EU politics.

<comment><USER7> Darren Asemoglu's "Why nations fail" gives a pretty good attempt at explaining the east vs. west divide in from the point of view of extractive vs. inclusive institutions and manages to build up a pretty convincing case.

I warmly endorse this book to everyone who is even sligthly interested of history or economics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Its about the appearance of serfdom in the early modern era, just as western Europe was freed from it, which in turn is partly driven by population- density.

This is far from a new idea BTW, and largely drove the abolition of these institutions in the 19th century (it largely came from the top, not as a result of great rebellions).

Here is a nice and short explanation from Paul Krugman:

"my old teacher Evsey Domar wrote a classic paper arguing that serfdom and slavery often were the response of ruling classes to labor shortage. Thus Russia imposed strict restrictions on the mobility of peasants from the late 16th century onward, precisely because the availability of rich new farmland on the expanding frontier would otherwise have increased their bargaining power against landlords. (The frontier expansion itself was probably the result of the growing effectiveness of firearms, which turned the military balance against the steppe nomads; so gunpowder, which contributed to the rise of the bourgeoisie in the West, created serfdom in the East). And, of course, slavery - which, along with serfdom, had died out in the West during the labor-abundant high Middle Ages - was reintroduced in the land-abundant conditions of the New World." [http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/Serfdom.htm](http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/Serfdom.htm)

Darren Asemoglu's and Robinson's "Why nations fail" in turn go on in length about effects of repressive economic and political institutions to economic growth.

Forms of serfdom and slavery were (re)introduced around the same time in the Muscovite state, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Hungary, Wallachia, Moldavia, the Ottoman Empire and even the Cossack Hetmanate which had roots in anti-serfdom rebellion had a form of serfdom.

<comment><USER9> Given that historical pattern, it's worth noting the exception: When the US west was being settled, they gave away the land to those who wanted to move there, rather than imposing serfdom to prevent it.

(Yes, I know, the US south fits the serfdom/slavery pattern...)

<comment><USER8> When the US (east coast) was first settled, it was largely by indentured servants and prisoners.

The settling of the US west parallels the cossack settlements - these guys were free to take land and paid few taxes, but were expected to defend themselves.

Normally the goverments of Poland and Russia tried to reduce the cossacks to serfdom (which triggered wars like the great rebellion of Bohdan Khmelnytsky) or at the very least turn them into a warrior class that enforces the serfdom institution (like what happened with the Russian cossacks after the defeat of the big cossack-peasant uprisings there).

I think the North of the US started colonizing the West late, when the North was already pretty urbanized, densely populated and industrial, which made the free-soil type settlement possible.

The South of course was still fully agricultural, which insentivised a different type of settlement driven by soil erosion by inefficient slave-based agriculture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article seems weak - it is extremely disappointing that it was written by a research assistant and a 'professor'. This line here 'Eastern societies created institutions primarily aimed at defence rather than economic development, even over the following centuries when the threat had long disappeared' \- someone who know history of Eastern countries will be aware that those countries where constantly attacked by Western ones - Germany- Poland wars lasted between 1000-1400. Poland was under relative peace in the 16th century when it gained wealth ( according to some statistics, Polish Kingdom was the biggest importer of luxurious cloths at that time, and as we know today if basic needs are satisfied people turn into consumption). Then in the 17th century Poland was attacked by Swedes, Germans, Russians which started the dawn of the country which ended in the end of the 18th century by splitting Poland between Russia, Germany and Austro-Hungary. Then when Poland re-gained independency in the 20th century it stared building an army, economy was raising, then WWII happened during which Poland was completely destroyed and until today it did not receive any compensation from Germany, obviously after WWII Communist Russia ruled in Poland which didn't help the economy. Since 1989 Poland is developing again, nobody is attacking the country and it is developing again. I'd like to know taking into account the above citation when did the threat had long disappeare? Obviously taking into consideration the dates which the article mentions, not know, as there are no wars ATM.

From my own experience Polish people are not EU sceptic, and the ruling party is not sceptic at all. The problem has far more deeper roots and is related to transformation process in which post-communist stayed in power even though the Communism collapsed. But this requires another article by people who know more than me.

<comment><USER11> To add further to your point, while no one in the EU is currently mobilizing their armies across the Oder or the Neman, a synoptic view of history shows that the present situation is rather unusual, geopolitically and historical speaking. And just because armies aren't involved does not mean a kind of "soft" economic and cultural imperialism isn't at work, often through the abuse of EU institutions. Sadly, the Western media (which includes >80% of the media in Poland) ignorantly or maliciously misrepresents the ongoing political realities in Poland, employing simplistic, boorish and slanderous slogans to discredit anyone that could possibly disrupt the comfortable but corrupt status quo in the country and on the continent. Too often, people eat all that up because, frankly, Westerners known next to nothing about Poland and the region. Years of propaganda during the Cold War and before only encouraged crude and bigoted stereotypes that make it that much easier to push false narratives.

N.b., for those interested in a brief introduction to Polish history, Adam Zamoyski's "Poland: A History" is worth a read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a bit weird; it seems to be taking a 10,000 foot view on history that isn't really warranted and not a great explanation for Eastern Europe being "behind" the West.

It notices the various "golden horde" invasions, but skims entirely over the huge impact of the 20th century - wars, occupation, pogroms, Communism.</comment>


Really Bad Startup Culture - <AUTHOR>

Blame everything on the developer who's creating the value for your company.
We developers all know Startups are hard, but do Business and Finance guys understand just how hard it is to create a ground breaking and sustainable technology?  I don't think many do
I'm pouring countless hours of my time into trying to develop a concrete product and the thanks I get is blame for any and everything that can and will go wrong (after all you're developing a NEW technology that's NEVER been done before, all with NO HELP).
If the job description read "We give generous 3% equity and fair pay, however, anything that can and will go wrong will be blamed on you personally" I would not have taken it.
I would much rather receive more equity, less pay and be treated like a valued contributor, and not a scrape-goat.
I'm not sure how others Startups are run, but when Startups are run by Business and Finance guys it seems like Beurocracy starts off in full-swing right from the gate
Here's how you (or I) know the Startup culture is not likely to be good: 1) The startup hired a previous developer but "it just didn't work out" 2) The startup hired the first graphic designer (who after only several months) is likely to be leaving shortly 3) The startup has a hard time attracting developers 4) The startup has more business/finance people than any other type of personel 5) The startup is more focused on minutia like absolute placement of elements and font sizes/styles, rather than perfecting hardcore functionality 6) The person "in charge" doesn't accept suggestions of others and believes his/her ideas are always right 7) The person in charge likes Job titles and creating Org charts (can you say ego-maniac?) <comment><USER2> I completely feel for you, I was in a somewhat similar situation although was working purely as a contractor for a startup. I was the sole web developer and basically took idea from conception to launch, for a rather budget rate as I was light on experience at the time, yet would still get all kinds of flack at times, basically I've come to realize that 'business' people often simply don't and won't ever have respect for what developers do. Having worked for a company also that is 'mature', 10 years old, or so, that is run by sales and business people, I can say its the same thing, there is a lack of trust and respect on their part for the engineering team, even though software is their core product and without the developers the company couldn't even exist. Really the only way to get away from this, IMO, is to work for companies that have someone with a dev background at the top, its the only way a company can ever truly "get it"

</comment><comment><USER3> thats why its better to have a tech founder business people should always have at least on tech founder to tell them when there ideas a crappy or impossible.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would have wanted to be a Technical co-founder but I think the Business guy is somewhat of a control freak and would not want to give any away to some unknown developer. I spent literally 3 hours on the phone the other day moving text and changing fonts/sizes for a SINGLE consumer facing page, because the "font looks blurry" or "like crap" and it's "not how [insert any popular website with over 2000 employees and millions of users here] looks"

<comment><USER4> sounds like Steve Jobs Jr. Don't know if that's a good or bad thing...</comment></comment></comment>


Are erasers in school 'instruments of the devil'? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32884330 <comment><USER2> When I was in art school years ago we were told the same thing. If you make a 'mistake', it is better to amend it, reshape it, draw over it, rather than trying to pretend it didn't happen.

It definitely makes you freer in a fine art context.

Probably similarities with programming. Better to write bad code than no code at all (at least when it comes to your own projects).

<comment><AUTHOR> The startup world has clearly proven that the strategy of not using eraser is successful.

Any founders, who don't hide their mistakes and overcome them by actions taken after the fact, show maturity.

I personally cannot imagine the VCs funding the ideas based on good looking idea presentations rather than actually hearing about the journey to success and the mistakes on the way.

Honestly, the mistakes and effort should be encouraged in the schools rather than neatness of the outcome.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Intelligence and the time of day - <AUTHOR>

I'm aware that a lot of scientific individuals read HN. I would like to take this opportunity to ask for feedback/possible explanations relating to intelligence and the time of day.
I'm a developer, I seem to solve most of my problems first thing in the morning  between 7am-10am. During the first 3-4 hours of the day I solve most of my problems, problems I couldn't decipher the night before. I have asked other developers if they experience the same issue and most concur.
Is this a real phenomenon? Is there a scientific explanation for this?
I would love to find a way to extend my morning problem solving skills to the rest of the day. <comment><USER2> Do you eat breakfast? If so, how much? Do you then not eat lunch into 12-1 o'clock? It may have to do with diet as well as sleep. I find eating snacks throughout that time, and drinking a decent amount of water helps keep me in that zone for a while longer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I may keep a diary and try to eat small and often. I don't really have breakfast at all. First meal is always after 11am.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you considered that your diet and exercise routines may have a greater impact on your cognitive abilities than sleep? Can you provide more information on your daily routine?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, no, I haven't considered that. I eat breakfast late due to my work routine. If I'm working from home I get up have coffee around 6.30am then work until around 11.30 before getting breakfast. If I'm at the office I up around 5.30, get coffee at the station around 6.30am. I then work on the train until I get in the office around 8.30am I don't eat in this time at all. Maybe I should just not eat, seems I work better without food.

<comment><USER3> The issue probably has something to do with the fact that you don't eat. Assuming that your last meal comes sometime between 7-10pm, that means you're going 13-16 hours without food. It's likely that body directs all energy to digesting food and then recovering from your 'starvation'.

I am not a nutritionist but try eating something small, first thing in the morning, maybe some nuts or a smoothie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you tried a 15 minute power nap?

<comment><AUTHOR> It takes me around 30 to fall asleep. Tried it once, made me feel a lot worse. Is this something you do?</comment></comment>


Gittools – perform Git commands in multiple repositories at the same time - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hwdegroot/gittools <comment><USER2> Nice aliases. Another cool project is git-extras.[1]

[1] [https://github.com/tj/git-extras](https://github.com/tj/git-extras)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This can be used to emulate a mono-repo, e.g. when working in a feature branch on multiple repositories.</comment>