Hong Kong police spraying protesters with blue-dye water to mark for arrest - <AUTHOR> https://www.insider.com/hong-kong-police-fire-blue-dye-water-cannons-2019-8 <comment><USER3> The protesters are smart. I hope they capture (or trace the manufacturer and counterfeit a batch) some of this dye and spray it onto local CCP-oriented politicians and police officers.

(My assumption is that the CCP/HK police used a chinese-made clone of something like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SelectaDNA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SelectaDNA) rather than just a random blue paint.)

<comment><USER4> Yikes! spraying people with random DNA fragments?

That sounds like a great way to end up with viri/cancer. Plus a lot of the chemicals used in manipulating DNA are _extremely_ carcinogenic.

<comment><USER5> Do you have any support for the claims you just made? Synthetically made DNA is not going to give people viruses or cancer when physically applied. It's hard for me to imagine it doing much of anything even if inhaled/consumed. Similarly, the replication and purification of synthetic DNA is trivially easy to purify of any contaminants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is this story flagged?

<comment><USER7> "good hackers" aren't supposed to care about things like politics, so it gets flagged as irrelevant.

<comment><USER6> HN supposedly cares. They should unflag it.

<comment><USER7> HN is very divided on the merit of political threads in general - <USER2> especially divided on discussions of China, which tend to breed a lot of paranoia and nationalist flamewar.

Also, mainstream politics is explicitly against the guidelines unless a story presents some "interesting new phenomenon," the assumption being that the mainstream offers nothing of intellectual merit worth discussing, by default.

So ignore Hong Kong. Let's talk about Clojure for the millionth time. It's a Lisp, good hackers like Lisps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They protestors could get Fünke and blue themselves.

<comment><USER9> Whoa, let's not be premature...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if the blue dye will get abused the way swatting is in the US.

</comment><comment><USER10> I guess we will next see the protesters spraying the police with blue dye so the police can all question each other if they are protesting when not on duty?

<comment><USER11> They could also spray bystanders so that there's plausible deniability

<comment><USER10> And this is the obvious problem with this tactic as it is non discriminant. You could simply clean up your shop after it was sprayed and get it on yourself and be targeted.

<comment><USER12> Since when does the Chinese government care about a few innocents? This is the country the labels entire groups of people as dissidents simply for being an ethnic minority and then tracks them using gait and facial recognition, as well as DNA and voice identification. If the US police are considered overboard, then the Chinese police are the ones saying "Here hold my beer." I'm not sure why this is a surprise to anyone at this point, as it's pretty much what the Chinese government does. They care more about image than anything and it pervades numerous points of their government including smiling during inappropriate times, train subsidies, recycling policies, currency manipulation, and constantly breaking their international promises against militarization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> sounds like _everyone_ should dye themselves blue and make it non effective.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note: This story was just artificially moved from the top of page one to the bottom of page two.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is pretty innovative on their end.

<comment><USER15> My dad told me about police doing the same during protests in 80s Poland

<comment><USER16> Let's hope it ends peacefully too then.

<comment><USER17> Not with chinese communists unfortunately

<comment><USER18> The Communist Party of China are not Communists. Communism is heavily centred around the rights of workers. It is a Capitalist country with state control of markets, as opposed to the usual paradigm of capitalism which is controlled by individual and independent monopolies.

<comment><USER12> It's not capitalist unless you're talking state capitalism. It's market socialist, and not the European flavor of progressive socialism, but the dictatorial flavor of centralized control of the soviet style. I agree though that this is definitely not Marxist communism, but that also has major social implications such as free love, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are Molotov cocktails actually dangerous? Haven't seen any police injured from them

<comment><USER3> Molotov cocktails are generally really dangerous, yes. Have there been any documented uses of Molotov cocktails in these protests?

<comment><USER20> Yes [https://www.gettyimages.hk/detail/新聞照片/protester-holds-a- mol...](https://www.gettyimages.hk/detail/新聞照片/protester-holds-a-molotov- cocktail-during-clashes-with-police-新聞照片/1170141263)

However they seem to restrain from throwing it to the police directly. There is only one report of anyone injured by any one of these, by CCTV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why don't they just do what the NYPD did to protestors during the RNC? Unroll flexible plastic fencing around the protest and then mass arrest everyone inside the fence.

<comment><USER22> You can't arrest a million protesters.

<comment><USER23> Are you aware of China's History and The Cultural Revolution.</comment></comment></comment>


Guy unknowingly live tweets the Osama raid in Abbottabad - <AUTHOR> http://tweetlibrary.com/damon/osamaraidlivetweets <comment><USER2> The Google Maps location that is ventured around (starting with Telegraph: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/8487...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/8487772/Osama- bin-Laden-dead-killed-yards-from-Pakistans-Sandhurst.html) ) is not the actual location of the compound.

There are aerial photos of the compound in the briefing obtained by ABC news:

[http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/Graphics%20for%20backg...](http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/Graphics%20for%20background%20briefing.pdf)

Based on these photos and looking around the area, I've found the actual location of the compound, which exactly matches the photos from the briefing:

[http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&#...
It's still in the area, but a bit further from the Pakistan Military Academy and in the SW direction from it (not NW, as the Telegraph map claims).

<comment><USER3> its interesting that this is in such an urban area. if it happened in some remote cave it is unlikely that we'd know much about his living conditions - beyond what the government chose to let us know.

since it is in a city environment such as this neighbors, post-mortems on the building and things like that will likely give us a much better idea about what was going on there.

makes you wish the troops had GoPros, doesn't it?

<comment><USER4> They've got way better than GoPros. You just wont see the video until election time, when it's 'leaked'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The revolution will not be televised. Live, inadvertant, real-time Tweeting on the other hand...

For all the discussion of business cases for technology like Twitter, let's spare a moment to reflect on how impressive it is in and of itself for this sort of event.

<comment><USER6> Meanwhile, the event happened too late to feature on today's print media in the UK.

<http://www.frontpagestoday.co.uk/2011/05/02/archive.cfm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So the article about Osama Bin Laden being killed -- which has nearly 800 up- votes -- is being flagged off the front page, but the article about a guy who tweets about him being killed is having no problem staying #1.

Then again, so many people had their comments down-voted into light gray in the original Osama article that I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of flaggings came from people that wanted to stem their own decline in karma. That would make for an interesting dataset.

<comment><USER8> I think you're comparing apples to oranges. An article from the mainstream media about bin Laden's killing is nothing out of the ordinary.

This link, however, is likely the first time in history that something so covert and meticulously planned has been exposed in real-time by someone experiencing it himself. We get the opportunity to see it from his perspective without the media's filters - just raw data. This is incredibly fascinating to me.

<comment><USER9> He heard about bin Laden being killed the same way the rest of us did.

<comment><USER10> But unlike the rest of us, he heard bin Laden being killed.

<comment><USER9> Ptolemy saw the earth go around the sun every day his whole life. So what? This guy didn't "expose" anything because he didn't know what was going on himself. All he heard was helicopters and an explosion. All the rest -- starting with the fact that one of the helicopters was not Pakistani -- was just gossip he heard nth-hand from eyewitnesses. If Obama had not held a press conference, he still wouldn't know what happened. What's historic about that? It's just the standard excitement and local gossip when something dramatic happens. If he had credibly detailed a piece of information that wasn't officially released, or if he had reported something interesting before it was openly announced by the U.S. government, that would have meant something.

<comment><USER11> Sure, it's not really historical, but it is certainly indicative of the new age. If you look at the top articles right now, not one of them is particularly important in the grand scheme of things. I think this is surely more interesting that finding out that some data center management tool that perhaps a few dozen people on here will ever use has switched to a different open source license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here is his compound on Google Maps:

[http://maps.google.com/maps?q=osama+bin+laden+&hl=en&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?q=osama+bin+laden+&hl=en&view=map&mcsrc=google_reviews&num=10&ie=UTF8&start=20&cid=11196890339658103699&t=h&ll=34.184471,73.246193&spn=0.010331,0.01929&z=16&iwloc=A)

 _BONUS:_ Click "Search Nearby" and enter "PMA Kakul" -- you will see that the Pakistan Military Academy was just a short trip up the road from his house!

PMA on Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_Military_Academy>

<comment><USER13> This is incorrect info, the actual compound is here:

[http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/video-inside-bin- lad...](http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/video-inside-bin-ladens-drone- proof-compound/all/1)

[http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&#...

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the update.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does anyone else think this is not important?

The guy unknowingly tweeted but without an official release we wouldn't have known it was Bin Laden so it wouldn't have become that important.

<comment><USER15> If the helicopter did crash, it's more than important -- that would mean that the operation was not as smooth as the official version.

<comment><USER14> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13256676>

One helicopter was lost due to "technical failure". The team destroyed it and left in its other aircraft.

<comment><USER15> Was that in the news before the tweets were found?

And even if they really destroyed it themselves at the end, that also speaks a lot about the circumstances there. Pakistan government is supposed to support U.S. but the helicopter has to be destroyed, obviously to keep it from failing in the hands of Al Quaeda. It's more than interesting.

<comment><USER16> Not letting military hardware get into other nations' hands is standard practice. Really, "not trusting the Pakistanis that much" is a sufficient explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _credit for the leak went to Keith Urbahn, the chief of staff for Donald Rumsfeld_

How is this not "state secrets" ?

If they do not prosecute him for the leak, it's a double-standard.

<comment><USER18> The NYT on how the bin Laden announcement was leaked to the press: [http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/how-the- osa...](http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/how-the-osama- announcement-leaked-out/)

 _Mr. Urbahn quickly added, "Don't know if it's true, but let's pray it is." He was credited by many on the Web with breaking the news, though he did not have first-hand confirmation.

Within minutes, anonymous sources at the Pentagon and the White House started to tell reporters the same information. ABC, CBS and NBC interrupted programming across the country at almost the same minute, 10:45 p.m., with the news. "We're hearing absolute jubilation throughout government," the ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz reported._

Seems like the leak was planned, or at least, unpreventable.

<comment><USER19> I can imagine everyone in the government, knowing that the announcement was imminent were happily let fly with the information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm probably going to be downvoted for this but... Increasing the speed at which our news is delivered is not even necessarily a good thing. Please wake me when someone invents something that makes it more accurate and unbiased.

<comment><USER21> I think decentralizing the story so that it comes from a bunch of noninstitutional observers is a pretty good way to get rid of bias. I think it also helps make news more accurate, in the sense that, in the very short term, the accuracy of a story is inversely proportional to the time since it occurred, because people need time to piece information together, and Twitter and such make distributing all of the relevant facts happen that much faster.

<comment><USER22> > people need time to piece information together

Isn't that what reporters do?

> Twitter and such make distributing all of the relevant facts happen that > much faster

Twitter certainly makes distributing all of the relevant facts happen that much faster. It also makes distributing misinformation faster.

<comment><USER23> Piecing information is what people do, whether they're reporters or not. Many reporters do great work, but we all need to develop the skills of detecting misinformation, rather than depending on a professional class to do it for us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> He's a friend of mine and he's also into CS. Sometime back he tried startup stuff but now he is into consultanct.

I've been doing a startup for years and I never made it to front page of HackerNews, TechCrunch, NY Observer and many other hot places at the same time.

I've advised him to launch a product ASAP. Its gonna be hot and I'm definitely gonna invest :P

</comment><comment><USER25> <http://twitter.com/ReallyVirtual/status/65015803543695360>

Poor guy. I feel sorry for him, the sudden fame must be an unpleasant shock.

<comment><USER26> and as reported by BBC, he left the city to live in peace and quiet for a while.

<comment><USER27> That BBC article makes it sound like they interviewed him. All the quotes however come from his tweets (verbatim or reworded).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Interesting eye-witness account on Al-Jazeera: [http://english.aljazeera.net/video/asia/2011/05/201152161017...](http://english.aljazeera.net/video/asia/2011/05/201152161017456791.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot of outlets are calling this Twitter's CNN moment. It'll be interesting to see if Twitter has the legs to maintain this crowd sourced news momentum that it has been building.

<comment><USER29> I tend to disagree with this.

The benefit to CNN is that almost every household had/has access to CNN. It's some channel on basic cable, even if you didn't regularly watch it, it was easy to find and was pushing the same news out to everyone.

Twitter on the other hand is not as simple to just start using. You need to sign up, and then find the right people to follow (granted, Twitter does try to make this easier), but for any given event it's hard to find in real time a tweetstream that is going to be _better_ than just watching CNN or other major news outlet. On top of that, Twitter is filled with parody accounts, people making stuff up, and lots of other noise.

<comment><USER30> That's a pretty narrow view of global access to things. Yes, probably most households in the US have access to CNN - but I'd bet a much larger slice of the planet has Internet access and therefore can reach Twitter.

<comment><USER29> s/CNN/BBC/ or whatever. I bet more people still have access to broadcast news than they do to Twitter.

<comment><USER31> Half of the world has SMS access and can therefore use Twitter.

<comment><USER29> And how would they functionally leverage an SMS-only Twitter feed to get breaking info to something like this?

Yes, conceptually a lot of people have access to Twitter. However, from a practicality standpoint my personal opinion is that it's not very effective tool for a scenario like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Are we sure that this is genuinely the Osama raid? I've read reports that Osama was in fact killed days ago. If he was in fact killed yesterday, have they really already buried his body at sea?

<comment><USER33> > I've read reports that Osama was in fact killed days ago.

Interesting. Can you provide links?

<comment><USER32> No, and I admit that it might very well be wrong. I read this on Slashdot and reddit (I can find some specific comments if you'd like), which obviously are not very reliable sources. But the articles I've read haven't mentioned when he died at all (unless I've somehow missed it), which obviously generates rumours.

Edit: According to harshpotatoes I am wrong, so please disregard this.

<comment><USER34> For what it's worth, last night -- before and after the presidential address -- on the bottom of a bunch of TV channels (ESPN for one) the reports were that the operation was carried out last week, not yesterday afternoon. You may have been wrong, but you certainly aren't crazy. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wonder when photographic proof will be available?

<comment><USER36> Or if his birth certificate will be shown.

<comment><USER37> Nope, death certificate. In long form!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I was under the understanding from the briefings that he was killed via action on the ground by US soldiers, with intelligence from drones. This does not corroralate with that account, it makes it seem like there was an airstrike from a drone. How do these fit together in the timeline of the raid?

<comment><USER39> The tweets clearly say he heard helicopters. That's how the US soldiers get on the ground and leave. Nothing in the tweets sounds like a drone attack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I fail to see how this is newsworthy. Why bunch of mainstream media broadcasted this story, why is it on HN? There is just no news in this story, guy saw a helicopter and tweeted, that's it.

</comment><comment><USER41> the irony is that he has been buried without any autopsy/DNA test in sea.and moreover, there is no sea around Abbottabad and in Afghanistan either maybe they took him to Karachi or somewhere and As a pakistani and Muslim i want to clear that we have no tradition to bury a body in sea.

<comment><USER42> NYTimes:

"Muslim tradition requires burial within 24 hours, but by doing it at sea, American authorities presumably were trying to avoid creating a shrine for his followers." [[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/world/asia/osama-bin- laden...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/world/asia/osama-bin-laden-is- killed.html)]

"It was 3:50 on Sunday afternoon when President Obama received the news that Bin Laden had tentatively been identified, most likely after a series of DNA tests." [[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/world/asia/02reconstruct-c...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/world/asia/02reconstruct- capture-osama-bin-laden.html)]

<comment><USER43> One thing that isn't particularly clear, is the timestamps on tweet library. Based on the top entry, I presume those are UTC. So if the action kicked off at 1 AM PST (UTC+5 according to wiki), then it would have been 4 PM EDT (UTC-4) in Washington. 3:50 PM doesn't jive with this (unless Pakistan is on DST).

Another article said that the burial at sea was completed by 2 AM EDT (so they presumably were done by 3 PM in Pakistan, about 14 hours after the first tweet).

<comment><USER42> Yeah, times didn't hold up in the yesterday's reports, the attack was around 12-1AM in Pakistan as witnesses' reports state so it must have been around 3-4PM in Washington.

Today's news are more accurate on that matter: "At 2:05 p.m., Mr. Panetta sketched out the operation to the group for a final time. Within an hour, the C.I.A. director began his narration, via video from Langley. "They've crossed into Pakistan," he said." [[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/world/asia/03intel.html?pa...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/world/asia/03intel.html?pagewanted=3)]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> So, was the heli shot down in the OBL assassination operation? Does that mean that this was not a secret/covert operation?

<comment><USER45> What does losing a helicopter have to do with it being a covert operation? Special forces use helicopters all the time. The official story is they brought two helis, had a mechanical failure with one, destroyed it and then left in the remaining unit.

<comment><USER44> I guess I mistakenly thought covert means secret, without helicopters hovering over the city and people tweeting about it.

<comment><USER45> It was covert enough that no one knew who the target was until well after the event. The neighbors knew something happened, but had absolutely no idea what.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Wow, they couldn't have found a more gracious accidental celebrity.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is of course how non-tech things can leak in HN. The tertiary technical angle. Are we amazed that people in Pakistan have Twitter?

</comment><comment><USER48> Wag the Dog anyone?</comment>


Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon - <AUTHOR> https://9to5google.com/2018/12/05/google-allo-shutting-down/ <comment><USER2> Google feels like a company that's run by a bunch of engineers/product managers instead of a product leader with a cohesive vision. Anyone with an iPhone would understand what iMessages is and what FaceTime is. What is what and what you can do with each. Now explain it to me Google - what's your vision? (Or is it "target end state" in engineering speak?) As customers we want (at most) one chat application and one video calling application. What is it going to be?

It's the exact same story with Music applications too. Android Music and Google Play Music seems abandoned. YT Music is pushed down the throat with a ton of the features of GPM missing. Subscription pricing keeps changing around. Same story with Gmail/Inbox. One by one I have left all Google's products now.

That said, whoever is running Google Maps is a genius. It's one product that gets it right. The fact that overlayed business listing, transit, traffic and now ride share systems ...etc. is just brilliant. We take it for granted. But if Google Maps ended up in the hands of whoever was in charge of their messaging or music strategy we'd have - Google Maps, Google Directions, Google Transit, Google Businesses, Google Restaurants and Google Rides.

<comment><USER3> I'd put Google Drive/Docs/Sheets in there as home runs. They just keep getting better and better. I hardly ever think about using a desktop office suite any more. Remember when collaborating on a document meant emailing copies and revisions back and forth to each other? Unthinkable now.

But Allo? My thought was "oh, another Google product I never heard of is shutting down."

<comment><USER4> No way do I put all my personal documents in the cloud of a company that doesn't do customer service, gets rid of whole product lines without warning whenever it feels like, and has no recourse to actual human help if you're locked out of your accounts and can't get authenticated.

You would want to back up your google documents offline or on another server constantly, which defeats the whole purpose.

<comment><USER5> You can pay for G Suite, it's not that expensive. I'm on a grandfathered plan (free) - so no phone support but email support is available, and the agent even called me to check if I was able to resolve my problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google dumped an _incredible_ amount of money into Allo's marketing at my (large state) university -- they plastered many buildings with full-length advertisements, filled all of the local businesses with pamphlets, and even drove students around campus in weird little (electric?) buggies[1].

Despite all that, I don't think I know anybody who installed (much less regularly used) Allo.

Edit: They also bought Snapchat filters that were geofenced to the campus.

[1]: [https://www.google.com/search?q=allo+campus+car](https://www.google.com/search?q=allo+campus+car)

<comment><USER7> People can smell when a product isn't earnest. From the beginning, Allo smelled like a directive by a Google VP to "get messaging market share."

<comment><USER8> Not that I'm defending Allo, but I don't know how useful your distinction is. What is an earnest product then?

Any product released by a company that has bills to pay is released to "get market share".

<comment><USER9> I assumed GP meant that there's nothing in it for the user, only for the company.

Other examples include carrier-branded apps that come preinstalled on phones.

<comment><USER7> Exactly this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I complain about Google having too many competing/overlapping products, so I can't really complain when they close/merge them.

The best time to shutdown Allo was before it launched, the second best time is now.

<comment><USER11> From an Xoogler's perspective, the launches are all about the promos. Eg, just think about all those engineers who would not have gotten a promotion because then they would not have had a product launch in their promo packet.

<comment><USER12> But there should be some VP which will be accountable for spent budget on dead product..

<comment><USER13> Ah - but if you're the one with VPs reporting to you, you _best_ not foster an environment where taking risks (even like this) is punished, if due diligence seems like it was carried out.

And you have to be _very_ conservative with what you consider a violation of that threshold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I usually jump right on board when Google engineers build something new.

I must be some kind of masochist.

Is there any internal understanding that these head fakes are punishing to fans?

Me and my friends were the ones that used plus. And buzz. And wave.

Now we're terrified to buy anything on the Play store.

I'm arguably a fanboy and even I am starting to worry that humanity might be better off if all the talent at Google was out from under their direct control. If only all the project teams at Google were free agents or in startups where the baseline comparison wasn't constantly asking if their product was as lucrative as advertising...

Be Bell Labs and dump your enormous profits into fundamental research with no expectation of return. Or be Softbank and just incubate the world.

But paying a bunch of talented engineers to build and maintain things you will kill seems cruel to the engineers, the customers, and maybe even humanity.

We already had Signal, et al. We could have used these cycles for other things.

</comment><comment><USER15> Hacker News: LOL! Google has so many messaging apps, their product strategy sucks!

Google: They're right, we need to focus our messaging strategy. Let's consolidate our platforms.

Hacker News: OMG! Google deprecates everything! Classic Google

<comment><USER16> Everyone except Google knew Allo was a bad idea before it even launched though.

<comment><USER17> Personally, I'd be on board with Allo if it was incognito mode by default with no option for the currently default mode.

<comment><USER18> That wouldn't be a Google product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Non-amp link: [https://9to5google.com/2018/12/05/google-allo-shutting- down/](https://9to5google.com/2018/12/05/google-allo-shutting-down/)

Also, s/it's/its/

</comment><comment><USER20> I forgot which HN thread I read this, but an ex-googler said something like: "the most important thing to do for career growth at google is to launch your product, doesn't matter how shit/half assed/etc it is. You don't get credit for maintaining the old stuff."

Reading that put a lot of Google's actions into perspective (how many chat clients do they really need?, youtube music, etc)

<comment><USER21> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18379394](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18379394)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hangouts and now this?

Their track-record is one of the reasons I don't adopt personally or recommenced new Google services to friends and family.

<comment><USER23> FYI, there was an update to that article that stated (from the lead for Hangouts) that Hangouts has no set shutdown yet, and they plan on transitioning everyone to Hangouts Chat/Meet before Hangouts Classic goes down.

see: [https://9to5google.com/2018/12/02/google-hangouts- shutting-d...](https://9to5google.com/2018/12/02/google-hangouts-shutting- down/)

<comment><USER18> I have never understood why Google always exposes these account migrations to end users. Okay, something significant about the implementation is changing, and that takes development time, sure; why do users need to know or care about it? Just figure out how to make the migration as seamless as possible for them.

<comment><USER24> They didn't, this was leaked.

<comment><USER18> From the official blog post:

"Allo will continue to work through March 2019 and until then, you'll be able to export all of your existing conversation history from the app—here are instructions on how to do so."

That's not terrible, but the bar is very low for this kind of thing. It's hardly seamless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Google's main problem is that they only promote people for releasing new products. So all the engineers and product people are highly incentive to only work on new launches. Doesn't even matter what it is. So now they end up with all these garbage products laying around, none of which make them any money.

<comment><USER26> They also only care about stupid metrics. One google dev said they got given an old project and they found it was full of bugs and reporting loads of bad info so the dev added a bunch of tests that picked up on the bugs and bad data and then they were denied the promotion because the errors logged from the program they were working on went up since they started working on it.

<comment><USER27> this kind of nonsense will be the death of google

<comment><USER26> I'm not so sure. Googles core product is search and that has been fairly rock solid as long as it has existed. A lot of the fuckery has been around their other products and I think the company could probably afford to shut down most of them and continue to run fine.

<comment><USER25> I always wonder if the other projects are just retainer projects. They dont really care as much what happens, they just dont want those engineers on the open market.

<comment><USER28> I think they saw Microsoft miss the Next Big Thing™, and they're afraid it could happen to them, so they're investing in _everything_ while the AdSense/AdWords cash cows last.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Google have all but eroded all trust in their chat products. I can't see anyone adopting anything they ever release in the future, they are going to have to purchase an existing successful product. I certainly wasn't going to use Allo or anything else after they killed Hangouts.

</comment><comment><USER30> Personally, I will miss Hangouts more than Allo, and RCS is not an direct replacement for Hangouts either. One thing I _hate_ about Allo is its use of phone number as user ID, so the same goes for RCS.

Just because I'm willing to chat with someone really doesn't mean I am willing to provide phone numbers to them.

Edit: Repeated Allo, where I meant RCS.

<comment><USER31> > Personally, I will miss Hangouts more than Allo, and RCS is not an direct > replacement for Hangouts either.

The replacement for Hangouts is more Hangouts, not RCS (that is, per the article, Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet are being opened to consumers next year, and are the official replacement for Hangouts classic for consumers, just as they already were for enterprise.)

> One thing I hate about Allo is its use of phone number as user ID, so the > same goes for Allo.

I assume one of these Allos is supposed to be RCS?

<comment><USER32> I agree, I'm of the opinion "hangouts" isn't dead. I don't see them removing a chat option from gmail. So far, they've pretty much kept the consumer and enterprise gmail experience the same. I feel like Google knows that just setting an if(enterprise) and hiding hangouts in gmail would just piss a LOT of people off, so I full expect them to find the brand with the best available and flexible tech stack, and just merge hangouts and whatever else into one thing that they'll call something different but will still be mostly the same, in the exact same spot in gmail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Seriously what the fuck is google doing?

<comment><USER34> Throwing shit at wall until something sticks?

Example: Google Talk, Messages, Hangouts, Allo

<comment> barry-cotter I still miss Google Chat. I spent at least a hundred hours using that, then they changed it to Google Talk and I used it maybe three more hours. Trash fire.

<comment><USER35> Wasn't chat just an extension of Google Talk into the gmail web client?

<comment> barry-cotter Gchat worked both in the browser and years after I started using it in browser as an app. Google Talk was a forced downgrade of a working app to an app that used way more data to not work for most practical purposes. I am ignorant of the technical details but Gchat worked and that was the first and last time I've spent more than ten minutes on a google chat platform.

They had a massive base of users in everyone who had a gmail account, many of whom used Gchat and they threw it away. It's like if Apple managed to so badly screw up iMessage that it disappeared from use.

<comment><USER35> Yeah I think you have the history somewhat backwards. Gtalk was the original app and then it got integrated into Gmail as well. The abandonment of Gtalk and related bits is definitely one of those weird and seemingly inexplicable user-hating moves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does anyone have a good alternative for someone who is not tech savvy at all and on an Android phone?

I set this up on my mom's phone because she doesn't get good enough cell reception at or around her place so an internet based messaging system works best. She is in very poor health and can barely hold the phone so something that doesn't have a lot of small icons and in general just easy to setup and use would be great.

<comment><USER37> Setup a family slack. Works well, full media support. Options for bringing other people in and having family connection there, or you can just DM each other.

<comment><USER38> Slack is significantly more complex than most messaging apps.

<comment><USER39> Is it though, beyond the initial setup (team creation etc., which only needs to be done by a single person)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It was a great idea... but then so was google plus... google buzz... the problem with a good idea is the people go where the people are. If they had only just bundled it as the default on Android One it may have just worked.

</comment><comment><USER41> Another one to the cemetery [https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)

<comment><USER42> I don't really think it is fair to include hardware in that list. It makes sense to memorialize the death of a hardware line, but it doesn't really make sense to memorialize every single piece of hardware. That's a bit like memorializing every minor version of software that is superceded by a new version.

<comment><USER43> Even then, the list of hardware profiles taking a dirt nap is pretty long. Gone are the budget Nexus phones and any true Android tablets. All they have left are a laughable "flagship" phone, a high end Chromebook, and a kiloton of Nest smart home gadgets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I think Allo is really cool. A lot of the features it had were pretty incredible.

 _BUT_ besides this I had a lot of problems.

1) It is not privacy oriented. (I still have _enough_ trust to Google that if they explicitly state something as privacy oriented I would believe them. But that's not their business model)

2) No one used it. I have more friends that use Signal than Allo. Even though I liked all the features, those aren't enough to push people over. I feel the only way it would have succeeded is if they completely replaced messenger with allo (I thought that was the plan).

But I hope Signal implements some of these features. Really what was useful is inline google searching. Possibly inline DDG searching?

</comment><comment><USER45> Duo can't be that far behind then, can it? I can't even remember the last time I thought about it.

<comment><USER46> I think Duo has had more success.

</comment></comment><comment> yjftsjthsd-h IRC it is. Can Google not see the image that they project anymore?

</comment><comment><USER47> Good to see the shuttering of Allo.

I'm sure I'm not the only one, but one of the big reasons I didn't use Allo was because they keep shuttering their apps.

I'm not going to use something I have doubts will last more than a year or two. I just don't have any use for such a product.

</comment><comment><USER48> Snowden on Google Allo: 'Don't Use It'

[https://mobile.twitter.com/Snowden/status/778588715736260608](https://mobile.twitter.com/Snowden/status/778588715736260608)

</comment><comment><USER49> Coincidentally, I uninstalled it a few hours ago before even reading this story. Feels good.

</comment><comment><USER50> What's Google recommanded messaging solution now? It seems a mess now.

</comment><comment><USER51> The AI that makes decisions at Google should run for president in Madagascar[1]

[1] [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/shut-down- everything](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/shut-down-everything)

</comment><comment><USER52> What's app, Google? (pun intended)

</comment><comment><USER53> g'bye, allo

[brit accent]

</comment><comment><USER54> Looks like Google is finally discovering they are just a SCUMMY advertising company and shouldn't be building consumer products that don't directly feed into that advertising.

<comment><USER55> That would be a brilliant insight actually. I would love it if they didn't even try to make consumer products.</comment></comment>


An equation for friendship - <AUTHOR> http://www.kwgn.com/health/la-sci-friend-or-foe-20110115,0,643907,print.story

<comment><USER2> The paper "Continuous-Time Model of Structural Balance" [http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/12/27/1013213108.full...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/12/27/1013213108.full.pdf+html)</comment>


Ask HN: What's the role of a business model in a lean startup? - <AUTHOR>

After reading The Lean Startup by Eric Ries it's not immediately clear what the role of a business model is in a Lean Startup.  Is it taken for granted that a business model exists? Or is the business model some that comes with time as the startup tests their ideas?
Chapter 5 of the book has a section titled "Strategy is Based on Assumptions" which while not spelling it out seems to suggest that our "leaps of faith" are derived from the assumptions that are spelled out in our business plan/model.  In my understanding the goal the lean startup methodology is to put these leap of faith assumptions to the test. Therefore my best interpretation is that a business model is taken for granted and should be the foundation on which we conduct our experiments.
My business partner disagrees and states "We need baseline numbers. We need to take a jump shot. We need to start without knowing the end, which is the exact opposite of the traditional business plan model. The old way of thinking is not suited for high uncertainty environments." <comment><USER2> Steve Blank says that _" a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model."_

[http://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first- princ...](http://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-principles/)

Edit: read the above link, he also describes his idea of a business model.

So, the "repeatable and scalable business model" does NOT exist when you start :) , it will come with time. However, I do believe your business partner is also right in that you will start without knowing the end.

Have you seen Osterwalder's slides?:

[http://www.slideshare.net/Alex.Osterwalder/successful- entrep...](http://www.slideshare.net/Alex.Osterwalder/successful- entrepreneurship-5747012)

(these are probably my favourite set of slides)

I believe the function of the business model canvas (and similar tools), is to help you think about the main points to address when trying to create a startup.

It's like a better checklist. I've seen many people stumble because they didn't think about a critical point.

Usually channels or distribution, and revenue generation are the two things many overlook when building a startup - it's nice to have a value proposition, but you need to get it out there and monetize it :)

I've never succeeded at creating a startup, so I hope others that have will help you better :) and YMMV and all that :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Those links were helpful!

I'm on the same page when it comes to starting without knowing the end. The part I'm having trouble with is starting without having any clear model of how we "think" it will end. In other words, I feel like we need to establish a clear set of hypotheses (assumptions) before we start designing our experiments to test them.

Right now we are testing assumptions without any sort of business model or picture of how they fit together, and I'm not sure the assumptions we are testing will be relevant once we do start thinking about our business model.

I will read the Steve Blank book which will hopefully clear up some of our misconceptions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My interpretation is that the business model is used for at least having some idea of how you will reach your customers and earn money. It may not work, so you may need to pivot or change your strategy, but you could have multiple channels for the same idea that you validated.

I found this link off Steve Blank's site - [http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/canvas](http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/canvas)

That's the canvas in his book and you can use that to generate some ideas. It's not the formal paper model. You and your partner could be thinking of a "business plan" in two different ways. A formal business plan is much too stuffy, but you want at least some list of ideas on paper. That way when you get stuck and you're stressed out, you can go back and re-visit something you made when cooler heads prevailed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I think you are right about us thinking of the "business plan" to different ways. I'm very much thinking of the business model canvas, and my partner probably thinks I'm talking about a formal plan.

I still think we need to have some kind of model as a foundation on which to build our experiments. Even if that foundation turns to be completely wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> To follow up, I started reading Steve Blank's book and it clears up most of the confusion. Specifically that the founders start with a product specification derived from their vision (not focus groups). The Customer Discovery phase is designed to test the assumption that customers exist that want the product. Indeed the business model changes through the process.

We've been trying to start without a product or vision, instead we've been trying to search for the product itself.</comment>


How to Subvert I.T. and Play at Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_tools_for_the_office_worker_subvert_it_and_play_at_work.php <comment><USER2> Why not just get a job where you're allowed to use Twitter? If you don't like the policy, take your brain elsewhere.

And also, twittering-mode.el (for emacs) looks very much like work :)</comment>


HN: I just started my own company, any recommended task management software? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,<p>I just started my own company, and I'm curious to know what you guys would recommend for project/task management software.  I'd like for it to be simple and elegant, and actually work.  I've used basecamp and bugzilla before; I simply don't like basecamp for many reasons, and bugzilla is awesome but too complicated and ugly. <comment><USER2> If you're familiar with Emacs you can use Org-mode. There's actually a pretty good video from its creator that shows you the main features:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJTwQvgfgMM>

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally forgot about org-mode. I have a few friends that use it and love it. Maybe I should go ahead and dive into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.redmine.org/>

Description taken from the website : Redmine is a flexible project management web application. Written using Ruby on Rails framework, it is cross-platform and cross-database.

</comment><comment><USER4> Pivotal Tracker has been getting good reviews.

<http://www.pivotaltracker.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Depends what you're trying to track I suppose but I use Pivotal Tracker for everything I work on (programming-wise) pretty much.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the 3rd time I've heard about it today, so I'll look into it. It looks really good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You could always try Verb. It's pretty good. <http://verbapp.com>

</comment><comment><USER7> Trac.

<comment><USER8> A great suggestion, it's super robust and powerful and has some very cool features for tracking the sorts of issues or work you do, where you end up spending time, etc.</comment></comment>


Gmail Tests Image Ads - <AUTHOR> http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/01/gmail-tests-image-ads.html

<comment><USER2> One of the reasons I like gmail is they do not display annoying image ads like hotmail / yahoo.

I'm ok with text ads but not image ads, please.</comment>


Goodbye Google Reader - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mediumequalsmessage.com/goodbye-ubiquitous-digital-service <comment><USER3> Wow. I use Google Reader every day, and I still can't quite figure out what I'm missing by not using all these other services. Somehow, I'm able to share, read what others are posting, and keep up with threads.

Most importantly, Google Reader keeps continuity. It has a history, a context that I find missing from the jumble of posted links and "in medias res" comments I get on my social share streams.

I don't see myself giving it up anytime soon. (Like others have posted, I do miss Bloglines...)

</comment><comment><USER4> I used Google Reader for years and years as a central repository for all of the webcomics i read.

I switched to Newsblur this year and haven't looked back. It definitely has a better take on sharing.

<comment><USER5> Glad somebody mentioned NewsBlur. I run NewsBlur and have been aggressive in developing it into a world-class feed reader. Native iOS and Android apps, a nice shared stories feature, and it's actively developed.

See for yourself, since it's open-source: <http://github.com/samuelclay>.

And because I run my own feed fetchers, you don't have to worry about the inevitable sunsetting and neglect of Reader. Also means I can do far more interesting things to feeds and stories that other Google Reader API-based clients can't.

Try it out: <http://www.newsblur.com>

<comment><USER6> Interesting interface. With my almost 500 feeds, not sure yet if I'd like to use paid version, since Google one is free, but I'll take it for a test drive.

Some feedback: \- "Original" button definitely didn't do what I expected. It just closed everything and took me to the target site. Maybe it's just for some "unframeable" sites but that's how it worked.

\- "Keep unread" and "Mark as unread" definitely missing. Sometimes after I start reading it turns out the item needs more time than I have now and I want to get back to it later. Not the same as "Save" which means I definitely want to keep it - here I just don't know yet.

\- Clicking on triangle and gear in the feed display seems to do the same thing? Why there are two of them then?

\- In feed stats for some sites, it says: "IF YOU WENT PREMIUM, THIS SITE WOULD UPDATE EVERY". That's it, nothing after that.

\- Something weird going on with stories display - folder with no unread content shows yellow "27" and clicking on folder that shows no content at all opens set of stories that seem to be unread stories from elsewhere.

<comment><USER5> Just to note that you can mark as unread by either right clicking in the story title or by hitting 'u' (get a list of all keyboard shortcuts by hitting '?').

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I continue to use gReader more frequently than any other news app. It's lightweight, on all the devices I use, and addresses my reading needs at least sufficiently.

My take on advertising likely differs from most here; I don't mind others paying the bills with my attention -- GOOG does a decent job of it, even. I understand and appreciate it goes deeper than text ads displayed contextually to the feeds' stories. Retargeting, psychographics and inference are OK by me, too.

I completely appreciate the wish to pay for a service in place of having one's contrail sold. Believing your attention and behaviors don't get sold -- or wont get sold -- because you pay should not be a presupposition (c.f. cable tv and [your ISP here]).

From the post -- "and I certainly don't buy products that aren't in some way designed to be functional" -- I don't understand how this would be otherwise: would you buy something without intended function?

There also seems to be no attention paid to Chrome Sync (yes, they're likely selling our contrails), Delicious, and other services that've come and gone.

I will provide my attention in return for services I find of value. gReader's been such for several years. Until there's a clearly compelling alternative, I'll stick with it.

</comment><comment><USER8> In case there's any confusion, the article's actual title is "Goodbye ubiquitous digital service" and uses the phrase "most ubiquitous RSS service of our time" as a euphemism for "Google Reader", hence the headline here.

<comment><USER9> I was wondering about that. Why would the author want to mask the name of the service in question?

<comment><USER10> I think it's just an oddly passive-aggressive writing style. He also keeps talking about services not selling his personal information, implying (I think) that Google does. However, that's of course not true, as it would violate Google's privacy policy and be a moronic business move in general.

Honestly, I think it's great if the author wants to sing the praises of some new products or services he found to replace his old ones, but that's not really how this read. It had this awkward tone of thinly veiled innuendo, without really saying anything. If the author found new services he thinks are better, I'd find it much more helpful as a reader if he actually expound on what makes the new choices so good.

<comment><USER11> When people imply that Google will "sell" your personal information, they don't mean that they will pass on your email address and your phone number to a third party but rather engage in "selling" to third parties by using your personal information.

<comment><USER10> Google sells advertising, including targeted advertising, not access to personal information. Claiming that Google sells your information is like claiming that Medicare rate setting boards are "death panels." It's grossly inaccurate and purposefully inflammatory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I miss Bloglines, honestly. I switched to greader after bloglines started having DB problems several years ago, but never really liked the UI - <USER2> too bloated and slow. I switched to using Reeder as a frontend, but in an effort to switch to local services I started using Fever + Sunstroke (iOS app). My main beef with Fever is that if you're reading an article and it does a feed refresh it will refresh the view and take away the article you were reading (since it was marked as read).

<comment><USER13> My main problem with Fever is that Inman is now a indie game developer. While his previous projects (like Mint or Fever) don't necessarily call for constant attention, and they're probably not providing a large enough cashflow to justify it, and I'm glad that he chose to keep them running rather than shut them down and focus on game development completely, it does suck knowing that they're basically in maintenance mode and won't be seeing anything other than security updates going forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does scoring (i.e. "designed to surface interesting content") really work out for you guys? I tried this back in the jurassic age with GNUS etc., and even then I always felt like I might miss something…

So right now, my prime metric for any RSS reader is how easy it is to get through my items and filter them out. Right now I'm using Google Reader for that again, and between vi-like keyboard shortcuts, "v" to open a tab in the background (w/ simple FF hack) and using either "starring", instapaper or pinboard for "read later" functionality, I'm pretty happy. Sure, if I'm away from my computer for quite a while, things pile up. But as I've said, just reading those scored "important" while just marking the rest as read would worry me a a bit. Never mind that syncing + webapp really makes it easy to keep up with things, even if I'm away from my computer.

I guess you need more support if your subscriptions are that huge or if you're aggregating aggregators.

Still, just like with gmail, I wouldn't mind seeing a good self-hosted replacement. Preferably one that doesn't have more requirements than a Van Halen tour rider.

<comment><USER12> Fever's scoring doesn't really work for me. I think my requirement is much like yours - I just need to be able to skim quickly through content. I can read quickly and skip over items of no interest. It helps to keep my list of feeds culled to the best so I don't get a lot of dupes. Having a responsive UI is important too; greader's web UI was not that great for me in that regard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I still use Google Reader, but only vicariously through the apps that utilize it as a backend, after having switched away from using GR directly quite a while ago. In all honestly, if both apps[1] I use swapped backends to something else, I likely wouldn't notice.

[1]: apps: Reeder (mac, iphone); Mr. Reader (ipad)

</comment><comment><USER16> I've recently found The Old Reader: <http://theoldreader.com/>

Feels like greader would be if they kept driving it forward. They also do an import of all your greader feeds in one step, so I was able to just drop-in replace greader.

<comment><USER17> looks nice but without google or facebook accounts how can I use?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> * Bookmarking: Mozilla Sync. It works perfectly for all my web bookmarks. It's free software, free service (as free of charge), it's encrypted so no one else can peek there for advertisement or what not. And it obviously works right in the browser syncing between all your instances.

* RSS: There are many different FOSS RSS aggregators. What do you need to pay for there? Akregator for example.

* Social network: Diaspora. Ad free, privacy oriented, free software as well. Free service too (no fees).

In essence, not every free service is built on breaching privacy of users to sustain itself.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's a real shame that Google Reader has been neglected for years now.

<comment><USER20> It is a shame RSS has been neglected for years as well. I blame Twitter basically doing the exact same thing, worse, and entirely in JS and with a platform lock to their service.

<comment><USER21> I would argue RSS was neglected by Twitter doing certain things better, things that the average user cares about

<comment><USER22> RSS + IM/IRC were a lot better than Twitter today, even for how most current Twitter users use the service.

<comment><USER21> For HackerNews readers, and also for me that's probably true. However, the popularity of Twitter would indicate to me otherwise.

<comment><USER20> Twitter became popular because Firefox / Chrome got rid of their in-navbar subscribe button and Google didn't advertise Reader. They had incentives to monetize doing things their own way, and every average joe who would go to twitter would have the easy path to just using what is in front of them or having to discover feeds in the page info, install an addon to return the subscribe button, and find an RSS application.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, I think one could have built IRC and RSS into good enough products to essentially reach out to everyone currently using Twitter who never used IRC/RSS.

I still think there's an opportunity for something better-than-Twitter, IRC, RSS in the mobile space. Twitter is SMS mobile, but has what is honestly a shitty client experience on (everything, but especially) mobile.

I wish someone would do something with the same initial goals as Diaspora (self-control, etc.), but focused on mobile, with ease of use on mobile as the goal. Snap Chat is kind of a step in that direction, but I'd rather have something where users got to explore the continuum of ephemeral stuff (like Snap Chat) to semi-permanent (like Twitter) to more permanent (like a blog, designed to be referenced in the future) to really permanent (publishing).

<comment><USER20> Why are you just targeting "mobile"? If you were making a new global chat system, it would almost certainly be cloud hosted and baked into a web app. The main reason that xmpp / jabber don't catch on is that you can't treat it with delayed delivery like you can twitter, and you can't broadcast messages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Too bad most of the RSS readers on iOS just plug in to Google Reader for feed management. Somehow they went from manual RSS to manual + Google Reader to Google Reader exclusive.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wrote this tool a while back to migrate my Google Reader to Twitter followings … since most of my RSS was pre-Twitter: <http://tmnt.benguild.com>

Then, I put only the 4 or 5 websites I check religiously into Google Reader, so that I can always get every update from those versus skimming the latest posts in my Twitter stream.

I find this a better/ideal solution, since that way it's 140 character summaries instead of entire articles that are unclear.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting idea. I feel like I would get overloaded following every author on twitter as then you get more than just their latest blog post...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I tweaked my Google Reader to get back the functions that were dropped out. You can read more here: [http://tek-that.blogspot.com/2012/10/getting-good- old-note-i...](http://tek-that.blogspot.com/2012/10/getting-good-old-note-in- reader-back.html)

Note sure if it helps, but thought I would share it..

</comment><comment><USER26> This was good. Thanks Chris.

There's a lot of thought-less consumption of (supposedly) free technology going on. I keep waiting to see more backlash about it. Instead I see a person here or there figure it out, share with others, everybody nods their heads sagely, then we go on as always.

What with YouTube purging a bunch of fake video watches this week, it certainly looks to me from the business side that we're scaling the freemium model way past where it would naturally take us. We're creating empty houses full of sock puppets. Meanwhile somebody has to pay the electric bill.

Keep up the good writing!

</comment><comment><USER27> Google has stopped doing anything with its interface but that hasn't stopped dozens of others who sync with Google Reader. I personally find that Newisfy (iOS) does everything I need for a Google Reader client. Don't like Newsify? Then choose from among many other apps on many platforms that sync with Google Reader.

I personally far prefer this arrangement to Twitter. I don't really like the Twitter concept to begin with but I can't even make it more palatable with a better client because they keep pulling the rug out from those who create better Twitter clients.

</comment><comment><USER28> Fever looks interesting. However, the video that walks through installing recommends changing the permissions on a folder and its contents (complete with executable code) to 777.

O_O

Not sure I trust you with my feeds.

</comment><comment><USER29> I use Tiny Tiny RSS[1] self-hosted and it's been running great. In many ways (design, key bindings, etc) it's a Reader clone, but it's fast, open source[2], has a good JSON API and it runs fine on nginx + Postgresql.

[1]: <http://tt-rss.org/redmine/projects/tt-rss/wiki>

[2]: <http://github.com/gothfox/Tiny-Tiny-RSS>

</comment><comment><USER30> Hi Chris Webb, Thank you very much for sharing alternative apps.

I'm searching for a service which wouldn't be hosted or have a dns name in U.S., especially for mails, because subponeas are not controlled enough there. Is there any chance some YC start-up works on something similar?

</comment><comment><USER31> "As a front-end developer and modern first-world citizen" -> This sounded douchey.

</comment><comment><USER32> Feedspot.com anyone? New startup in the town. Looks promising.

Try it out <http://feedspot.com>

<comment><USER33> Interesting! Basically giving people who've been introduced to RSS by Twitter an overt "subscribe to what you read" interface part Twitter part Facebook. Clever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I use Fever. Quite excellent, and very relevant in the context of what Instagram have been doing.

</comment><comment><USER17> pinboard is great

What i'd like now is a better version of instapaper or the alternatives.

<comment><USER35> What don't you like about Instapaper? There are many good alternatives, including Pocket and Readability.

<comment><USER17> Instapaper lately has been having many messed up conversions. I use instapaper because they have a pretty clear business model. They make money from subscriptions and app sales. Pocket and Read It Later both don't have paid apps nor subscriptions. So the only other option is that you are being sold.

I'd much prefer an app I run myself with user maintained site defined scraping definitions.

I like instapaper though, it's good for what it does. Could be better though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Bad link in the link to Fever.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that - thanks for letting me know! I fixed it in the post. Here it is as well: <http://feedafever.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Twitter is my RSS reader. Frankly, I'm surprised RSS is even still around. Twitter won that war.</comment>


DOJ files brief arguing federal law doesn't protect gays from discrimination - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/nyregion/justice-department-gays-workplace.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news <comment><AUTHOR> This, coupled with Trump's banning of trans people from the military, is disgusting.</comment>


Android Chief Says Your Phone Should Not Be Your Assistant - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20111019/android-chief-says-your-phone-should-not-be-your-assistant/

<comment><USER2> It's not a phone.

It's a constantly-connected computer that happens to be billed through what used to be phone companies.

I'm surprised that someone in charge of Android has such a regressive perspective on things.

<comment><USER3> His comment reminds me of that old adage that when trucking took over, railways would not have gone bust if they had known they were in the shipping business rather than the railway business.

Feature phones are communication devices that just happen to have basic computing features. Smartphones are pocket computers that just happen to have phone functionality. At least based on my own anecdotal observations of my friends, who primarily use them for apps, games and messaging and only rarely to make a phone call.

IMHO, If I were to take the various form factors of todays computers and rename them according to observed, contemporary, use case it would be more like:

smartphone -> personal computer

tablet -> family computer

laptop -> work/study/office computer

desktop -> room/workstation computer

<comment><USER4> Trucking didn't take over and the freight railways didn't go bust, so I'm not sure where that adage came from.

<comment><USER3> It's called poetic licence, this is why I never comment on here, it's tedious backing up every little comment with 10 pages of pseudo-factual internet trivia.

Trucking ships more ton-miles per year than rail and by value is an order of magnitude larger. ([http://www.bts.gov/press_releases/2008/bts058_08/html/bts058...](http://www.bts.gov/press_releases/2008/bts058_08/html/bts058_08.html))

Trucking became cost competitive with rail in the 1910's and took off in earnest with the construction of the interstate highway in the 1950s. It's approximately 1/5th the cost of rail.

The quip about rail companies forgetting they are in the "shipping" business is largely a reference to Penn Central which went bankrupt in 1970, the largest bankruptcy in American history at the time. The private sector failed to revitalize the company and it was nationalized along with 11 other lines in 1976.

From the wikipedia entry: "Facing continued loss of market share to the trucking industry, the railroad industry and its unions were forced to ask the federal government for deregulation. The 1980 Staggers Act, which deregulated the railroad industry, proved to be a key factor in bringing Conrail and the old Penn Central assets back to life."

([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_Central_Transportation_Com...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_Central_Transportation_Company))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> buff-a [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/c3e49548-088e-11dc-b11e-000b5df106...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/c3e49548-088e-11dc-b11e-000b5df10621.html#ixzz1bI5FOgrh)

2007: _Asked how Google might look in five years' time, Mr Schmidt said: "We are very early in the total information we have within Google. The algorithms will get better and we will get better at personalisation._

 _"The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?' and 'What job shall I take?' "_

Now, nearly 5 years later, Apple's Siri begins to deliver on that, so Google says "Oh, but not on your phone! Your phone is for talking to people."

<https://market.android.com/> <\- fuck this then, eh Andy?

<comment><USER5> He didn't say "ask the question out loud", he said "ask the question". When you ask Google what 2 + 2 is, it returns 4. Schmidt is talking about that for harder problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google is amazing bad at communicating strategy — for starters even though Eric Schmidt has left the CEO role he still seems to throw a curve ball every other week. And when I hear something like this which flies in the face of the fact that Google is ahead of the curve with voice recognition I just shake my head.

Larry Page doesn't just need to clean up the product line: He really needs to focus on cleaning up the messaging about the brand. This is even more critical than ever given that they're in the anti-monopoly zone and that there is an eco-system of companies that depend on Android.

<comment><USER7> They can't communicate because they shoot from the hip. They shoot from the hip because they're running behind but are trying to convince everyone they've already lapped their competitors.

They wouldn't want Android to do what the iPhone 4s does, even if they thought about it first!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This confuses me, maybe because of lack of additional context. "Your phone is a tool for communicating. You shouldn't be communicating with the phone; you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone."

He just doesn't like talking as a medium of communication with your phone? Tons of apps that require input do not have the end result of communicating to someone else. Maybe he wants a neat segregation of 'phone' and 'computer' tasks and voice is a line for him? But then, I can not explain the voice features currently on Android.

</comment><comment><USER9> This isn't the only complete asinine quote Rubin's dropped lately [1]:

"I don't think there should be apps specific to a tablet...if someone makes an ICS app it's going to run on phones and it's going to run on tablets."

What is going on at Google?

[1] [http://thisismynext.com/2011/10/19/andy-rubin-i-apps- specifi...](http://thisismynext.com/2011/10/19/andy-rubin-i-apps-specific- tablets/)

</comment><comment><USER10> If that were true I think we'd all be happily using BlackBerries. They are fine communication tools. If he's correct then everyone using todo applications or calendars (which Google builds into Android) or listening to music (which google builds into Android) are using their devices incorrectly? Even Android's rudimentary voice control system is outside the scope of his definition of a SmartPhone. Obviously he was just put on the spot and had to do some spinning. He cannot possibly believe that. He just can't admit that Google got caught a bit flat footed by Siri.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think a phone could make a good assistant... but I am perturbed at these attempts to give a robot personality. Every screencap I've seen of Siri is people asking it "What is the meaning of life" or "I love you". Perhaps it's just a novelty and people will actually start using it for its intended purpose but at this stage I really don't give a shit what a bunch of algorithms thinks about some philosophical question.

<comment><USER10> Honestly I don't really give a shit about how the weather is outside or what my co-workers are doing over the weekend either but small talk is pretty important to communication with other human beings. The artificial personality responses of Siri serve the same purpose. It's a brilliant way to lure people into using Siri and break the ice of talking to your device. Also by giving it a proper name and natural language recognition it totally breaks the barriers down. You can have a one sided conversation with Siri and the people eavesdropping on you would not think twice about it.

<comment><USER11> I have no doubt that giving Siri personality is a great adoption strategy and makes it more pleasant to use. What I am perturbed by (and not outraged as the other commenter above you suggests) is the end-result of making technology "too approachable".

I really don't want to sound like a Luddite because I think technology is often wonderful, but it seems with every new iteration of hardware/software we are moving further and further away from communicating with each other and instead having the machines do it for us.

Here's how I see that progression taking place:

1) Telephony enabled us to speak to each other without actually being in close proximity.... ok that's pretty convenient I guess

2) E-mailing, texting & other forms of messaging allowed us to remotely communicate long-form, pre-composed thoughts without even using our voice ... ok I guess still good

3) Siri now does the typing and the sending, you just tell it what to do and it'll act an intermediary between you and your friends…. Hmm I dunno if I like where this is going

…

4) Future AI will "liberate" us from the stress of even thinking about when or what messages need to be sent but will do it for us based on how we programmed it to manage our life… hell, just kill me now

<comment><USER12> I think 4 is a bad interpolation!...Lets imagine that everyone had a highly intelligent MIT grad as an indentured slave who will do everything you say..Everyone will still choose to send their own messages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Tangential to the point, but does anyone know what happened to the Wildfire virtual assistant? I was fascinated with it back in the late nineties, early two-thousands when it was circulating, but I can't seem to find it, which would indicate that it died somewhere along the way. Did someone purchase the company? Is there a spin-off product?

<comment><USER14> It appears that Wildfire is currently owned/sold by Virtuosity. The original wildfire.com domain is currently owned by Orange, though.

<comment><USER13> Wow. Talk about being put out to pasture. The Virtuosity website looks like it hasn't been updated since 1995, and a peak at the source code confirms it... MM_preloadImages()!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I develop a little for the Android platform and yet I guess I'm not following the "Android Chief". Is he really saying a network-enabled, geo-aware, 64-GB- of-memory, dual-core computer in your pocket should be designed _primarily_ to make phone calls?

<comment><USER16> I would be quite thrilled if it could actually make phone calls!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The rhetoric of sour grapes.

</comment><comment><USER12> yeah i am surprised too that someone like the "Android Chief" would make a baseless and opinionated statement like that....But I will give him the benefit of doubt...It is very likely that the reporter quoted him out of context!

</comment><comment><USER17> Regarding Siri: I talked to my Nokia phone years ago already. I spoke the name to call and it dialed the number. It worked quite good but: 1\. People around me thought I am stupid talking to my phone 2\. Dialing with the keys was easier and faster

<comment><USER18> Siri and Google voice actions do quite a bit more than dial people in your address book. In fact, they are probably worse at that than at other tasks because name pronunciation is difficult. I'd suggest looking at some demos.

As for your latter two points, yes, people may think you are silly if you speak to your phone in company. Also, background noise such as people next to you speaking can really confuse these systems. However, I've used it many times (the google version) to write short text messages and most of all to ask for directions. Why? Because it's _much_ faster thank keying in all that information, especially for directions to intersections or restaurants. For the latter, the system gives a huge added bonus in that it will actually look up addresses for you just based on a store name.

Siri gives one extra feature over google voice actions as well: speaking back and context. While speaking back may be somewhat of a gimmick, there are lots of ways to report information, using the previous action to fill in contextual information in the current action looks to be quite useful.</comment></comment>


HTTP 2.0 Draft – SPDY Protocol - <AUTHOR> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-http2-00 <comment><USER3> FWIW, Opera 12.1 and Firefox 15+ support SPDY, so it's not a Google-only protocol. The only major browsers left are Safari and IE, which are both slow at adopting new tech.

Source:

<http://caniuse.com/#search=spdy>

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm so surprised that the security consideration section has no reference to CRIME [1], which has made Google and Mozilla to turn off SPDY's header compression in Chrome and Firefox.

[1] [https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11eBmGiHbYcHR9gL5nDyZ...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11eBmGiHbYcHR9gL5nDyZChu_- lCa2GizeuOfaLU2HOU/present#slide=id.g1d134dff_1_100)

<comment><USER5> I think this version is basically SPDY 3. SPDY 4 (draft spec: [https://github.com/grmocg/SPDY-Specification/blob/gh- pages/d...](https://github.com/grmocg/SPDY-Specification/blob/gh-pages/draft- mbelshe-httpbis-spdy-00.txt)) uses a completely new header compression algorithm which is not susceptible to the attack used in CRIME.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://www.guypo.com/technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/>

_The results show SPDY, on average, is only about 4.5% faster than plain HTTPS, and is in fact about 3.4% slower than unencrypted HTTP. This means SPDY doesn't make a material difference for page load times, and more specifically does not offset the price of switching to SSL._

<comment><USER7> That absolutely horrible test is somehow posted to every story about SPDY. It uses a nonsensical methodology and adds nothing to the discussion.

<comment><USER8> This guy is the chief architect at Akamai and probably knows a thing or two more about HTTP in general than most HN regulars. But please feel free to improve upon his work by proposing a better methodology and your results.

<comment><USER7> He uses a SPDY enabled intermediary proxy with zero caching calling out - <USER2> request - to source http 1.1 sites. There was no world where that getup makes any sense at all, and his position at Akamai doesn't change that basic reality. This is saying that a performance car is no faster than a economy sedan by forcing the former to drive behind the latter.

At an absolute _minimum_ he should have enabled caching and then measured performance on the second run both with and without SPDY. As someone who has setup a rig exactly like this, using a SPDY enabled reverse proxy, the benefits are enormous.

Many, many absolutely terrible ideas have persisted on HN because of the appeal to authority (like listening to Digg's opinion on databases). It is not useful.

<comment><USER8> I mentioned this in another post, but calling Contendo simply a "intermediary proxy" is disingenuous. It gave SPDY an unfair advantage in my opinion.

But again, feel free to suggest better testing methodologies. I look forward to your results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you're using Chrome, type this into your address bar:

chrome://net-internals/#spdy

<comment><USER10> oh man, this one is and its "clear host cache" will come in handing in the future. chrome://net-internals/#dns

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> While I appreciate SPDY, what's the point of a draft if adoption is so far not widespread?

Google's documentation seemed quite sufficient to implement, and until we have a proper reference implementation, this seems a little half-cocked.

Maybe I misunderstand the point of the IETF draft?

<comment><USER12> Firefox, Chrome, and Opera support SPDY. Apache, nginx, and Node.js support it. Large Google sites support SPDY (gmail), so does Twitter, and Facebook is working on it ([http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http- wg/2012JulSep/...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http- wg/2012JulSep/0251.html)).

I don't know what qualifies as widespread to you, but this is at least a great start. And there are plenty of good implementations to reference.

<comment><USER13> Also, CloudFlare: <http://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-spdy>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I guess this is my naïveté showing:

1) What is the advantage of SPDY over HTTP/1.1? (Besides a possible (and debated?) speed up? (Due to sending assets w/o a request for them?))

2) Is it as easy to debug with tools like curl, wget, and telnet?

<comment><USER15> 1) A few things, notably server push.

2) curl and wget will probably eventually add support. telnet not so much, but then again you can't really debug HTTPS or even HTTP/1.1 (with chunked encoding) with telnet.

<comment><USER14> telnet is useful for somethings, but it does have it's limits. Often I'll compose my message and then paste it in (If I want to do something specific or have a header dump from chrome or something and don't want to convert it to a curl command).

openssl s_client is useful for debugging SSL issues. It gives you just about all the info you could want about the certs and then gives you an open pipe to the server that I treat like telnet above.

(Not really trying to argue. As things grow up more tools will support them and engineers like me will learn to adapt and debug them as they do the current generation of protocols.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> there should be a disclaimer that you will only see performance gains if you make a lot of HTTP connections on your site. people expect some magic happening once they install SPDY, which is just not the case. but if your site is heavily on SSL, then you have nothing to lose by installing SPDY, but not much to gain either.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is the SPDY protocol done? Have they submitted it for the HTTP 2.0 standard, or will it remain separate?

<comment><USER18> The point of this document is that SPDY will be the basis for HTTP 2.0. Until HTTP 2.0 is finished, I would expect Google and others to keep shipping SPDY implementations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Bring it. We're eagerly waiting for Heroku to release SPDY compatibility.</comment>